Here's the info for the next round of giveaway! (photo by u/BenjaminK)

Starts: Monday, February 17

Ends: Sunday, March 1

You will get +1 entry every time you complete any of these actions to contribute to our community:

• Make a post on our forum or write an article
• Comment or reply on posts/articles
• Create a topic
• Refer a friend using this link: https://www.boardgameatlas.com/signup?referral (send this link to your friends and have them input your username under the referral section)

Each contribution is 1 additional entry and there's no limit to your contributions.

Thanks everyone for continuing to make this community a great one! And as always, which game will you be getting if you won? (Also, for those who are curious, I ran the last giveaway's result and am waiting on the user to respond so that I can make the announcement!)

So I've been especially inspired due to all the talk of #Paladins of the West Kingdom recently to look into these games a bit.  (I still have some research to do).  I want to add one to my wishlist and I'm not sure which one I should add.  I'm curious to hear what people think of either one (if they've only played one), or both if they've played both.  Some things that I'm curious about are

1. What is the player interaction like?  Even if it's near nothing is there the need for a lot of table talk?

2. What's the solo experience like?  Which one is better, which one is more challenging?

3. Which one do you like better in general and why?

4. How much time do they take?

5. If you've also played #Raiders of the North Sea how are they alike and how are they different?

6. Anything else you may want to add?

Cheers!

Board games come with all kinds of different conclusions, but one of my favorites has got to be ones where you look down on the table and feel a sense of accomplishment. For me, this often comes from "building" type games where you start from scratch but by the end of the game, you see a tapestry of your work that tells a sense of progression (I recently got #Tapestry by the way).

Games like these tend to have the following mechanisms (and more):

• Engine-building
• Route/network-building
• Area control
• Tile placement or pattern building (e.g. Azul, Tiny Towns)

So, what are your favorite games that give you this sense of accomplishment and why? (I'm excluding campaign type games in this post to focus more specifically on building-"X" type games, whether its an engine, route, tile, map presence, etc).

Here are my examples with some commentary:

• #Wingspan - You end with a tableau of beautiful birds with unique powers. With 170 unique birds in the game, you'll have a very different board every single time. I should add though, that while the end result looks great, I don't feel as much of that satisfaction in comparison to the other games below, for three reasons. (1) I've only had three or so plays so I'm inexperienced, but find that I'm usually left wanting just 1 or 2 more turns to finish a cool engine. I end up opting for actions in my last turn that will net me the most points instead--just feels way less cool. (2) I feel like I don't have as much of a say or control in building the engine to the degree that I have in other more satisfying games. But again, this likely comes from my inexperience. Lastly, (3) Wingspan requires you to be efficient because you lose a worker in each round. I like this because it really tests your engine's quality . BUT, in comparison to games where you continue to ramp up in "power" until the end of the game, I feel like Wingspan sometimes ends anti-climatically. Regardless, it's the most elegant engine-builder I've played and I'll have fun with it every time someone bring it to the table.
• #Viticulture: Essential Edition - You look down on your board and it's all there--the different structures built in your vineyard, your army of workers, the fields you sold off for money, variety of vines, grapes, and wines produced, and the orders you managed to fulfill. You see the progression, the story, the accomplishments. It's certainly not an exciting story, but one that works for me and my wife.
• #Root - War in the Woodland. There's always a story that you can trace by looking at the board, although you might not like how the story ended :D
• #Clans of Caledonia - This is currently my most satisfying game in regard to end game results. It has a lot of the parts behind what makes Viticulture's ending satisfying, except better. This is because the progression and story of the game is told via what you've built on a map vs. other players, and not just your own player board. Plus, they did a fantastic job in the look of the game. The map is simple in its graphics and in color, which helps communicate important landscape info without being busy. The colors of the player tokens "pop" off the board and look very nice as the map gets populated with little animals, laborers, barrels, cheese, etc :)
• #Tapestry - I can see this game fitting into this category very well. With zero real plays in though, I can't help but feel that the story of each civilization can feel... "forced". The idea is that each player starts with a unique civilization which will develop in the span of multiple Eras, where the course of each Era will be determined by Tapestry cards you acquire and play such as "Militarism," "Dystopia," "Academia," "Oil Magnate," etc. For example, the Entertainers (think clowns) will start the first Era with "Maker of Fire" (like all other civs), and then go through an Era of "Oil Magnate," then "Dystopia," etc, depending on the benefits/tracks that a player wants to focus on. I get the game's intent and the brilliance of it, but the execution isn't quite convincing enough to me yet, because its requiring a level of creativity from a player to picture a convincing story (again, this is my first impression without any real plays in). 

Congrats again @Skurvy5!!! 

Let's see how long your reign will continue xD

I am seriously excited for this watching some of the video of gameplay. It won't work with every game out there, but it will work with the majority which to me is super impressive.

Main reason I backed this is the majority of my board gaming friends are all around the country and I just hope this will help me see more playtime with my collection since my remote friends can join in without travel.

What games did you play that, for some reason, you just couldn’t figure out?

What games did you play and immediately grok? You saw the strategies and paths to victory and played them to perfection?

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

Also, I read through everyone's inputs on last week's post about the forum structure. @trentellingsen and I will talk and see how we can improve the experience in the future.

As for me... I'd love to see a revamp of two main things:

1. Revamp the play log feature for ease of use and add interesting statistics to look at/share.
2. Game page - first, adjust the design/layout to be more efficient use of space and to show better hierarchy of info. Especially from PC, I'd like to be able to see all of the crucial info in one screen without needing to scroll so much. When you search for a game, I'd like it to take you straight to the game's page when you click on the suggested game title. Also, a game page doesn't show all of the pictures that users have added and some of the buttons don't work for "scrolling" to see the rest of them. Add weight/complexity ratings for rules vs. gameplay, and make this info prominent. I'm sure there are more, but I'd just love to see a revamped game page that will make me go to BGG less for info.

Here's what I'm hoping to do:

• #Clans of Caledonia solo session tonight
• #Atlantis Rising (second edition) on Saturday night
• #Architects of the West Kingdom or #Tapestry solo on Sunday night (unless my wife is wanting to play something)

Mihajlo (the artist behind the North Sea and the West Kingdom trilogies) shared this on his page! This should be similar to #The North Sea Runesaga Expansion which aimed to tie in all of the games in the North Sea trilogy. I've heard that one felt like an afterthought but seeing that Shem and Sam continue to build on their past experiences, I wonder how this one will be.

If anything, I'm excited to try out #Architects of the West Kingdom once it arrives soon! Also curious how #Viscounts of the West Kingdom's Kickstarter campaign will be. I don't back Kickstarters in general but I do like Garphill Games' practices and enjoy seeing their growing success in the industry.

This is really cool.  I believe you can find the Printable files on BGG.  If I had the ability to print high quality boxes I think I'd do this.

Root Storage Solution

Happy Saturday everyone!  A post where I was talking to @BenjaminK about #Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea got me thinking that I would really like to add a 4X game to my wishlist to eventually add to my collection.  It’s a style of game I think I’d really like but don’t have yet.  So fire away.  What is your favorite 4X game and why?

I decided to get Cartographers after seeing it come up on several lists.  I have never tried the "roll and write" game mechanic.  I honesty thought there was a guy named Rollin Wright who was making games for a while there!  Looking forward to trying something new :)

Does anyone remember the old computer game Sim Farm? I haven't found a good farming economic computer sim game in the 27 years since that one. Today they all seem to be about tediously driving tractors and hooking up equipment. Oh and dressing up your farmer in branded gear...

In Sim Farm, you planted crops and tended to your herds. There were abstracted farm tasks to complete in a top down fashion. The real joy of the game came from knowing what to plant and when and trying to get the best price for your crops and animals.

Are there any board games like that? If you were to design one, what mechanisms might you include in the game?

I have several questions about written reviews/content:

• How many of you read/like written reviews? Is that your preferred medium vs. video?
• Who are your favorites?
• What do you most like to see in a review? The least?
• What are some other ideas I should think about that's more fun to you?

I'm just trying to see if I should entertain the idea of writing review articles from time to time for games I've played, or whether it will be more worth it to focus entirely on interviews (which I'll be going back to now that Trent's starting to work again). It can be hard to be consistent with interviews since it's dependent on another person's schedule and their pace. Plus, it take a lot of time for me. At the same time, interviews definitely get the reads and I'm guessing reviews will have a much smaller audience.

I thought it could be a nice way to fill in the gap in content when I'm waiting on my interviewees. Another idea I have is to forgo reviews entirely and to focus on analyzing our traffic data--think BGG hotness in terms of keeping track of the changing trends, but expanding it to cover other types of statistically interesting groups and writing articles on it (maybe a monthly coverage?)

Let me know what you think!

Edit: I should add--I seldom read written reviews by "professionals". I enjoy reading reviews and first impressions from everyone in the forum though, mostly because it's more relatable and because we know each other enough to care about our opinions on games lol. Besides this, I mostly like to watch videos of reviews (SU&SD, Zee Garcia), runthroughs (Rahdo), and 3 Minute Board Games for quick snippets of game info (if there's anyone following me, are you getting multiple notifications for my edits?)

I've debated for a while whether or not to post anything regarding game design.  I am interested in feedback from anyone who has gone through the process.  I don't want to get into specifics too much but figure there are roadblocks along the way.  

I have a good theme and most of the game mechanics and concepts figured out (tweaking quite often, but in more subtle ways now) and have started working through the component interactions and scoring factors.

Once I have the script for all the parts completed I'll start basic design.  Very basic design...lol.  

My goal for the end of this year is to assemble a makeshift playable game using simple components and gather a few brave souls to play through the game and work out rule barriers, issues with game play, and other whatnot.  I'm figuring at least 100 play-throughs to iron out issues.

As #Viscounts of the West Kingdom hits Kickstarter soon I thought it would be fun if we brainstormed themes for the next two trilogies of games from the series. 

North - Vikings

West - Frankish Kingdoms

South - ???

East - ???

What are your themes?