PopTop. Railroad Tycoon 2&3 and Tropico 1&2. They got bought by 2K, which eventually killed the studio. The Railroad Tycoon series is dead. Tropico is still around, but I’m not excited about the latest interation. Some of the guys tried to kickstart a new Railroad Tycoon but it didn’t fund. Phil Steinmeyer was an underrated developer, though I believe he’s retired today.

It’s too bad it worked out that way. I think they could have been on the level with Paradox as far as strategy games are concerned, but focusing more on economic games, city builders, and the like. On Steinmeyer’s blog he said he didn’t think there was demand for heavier games anymore about mid 00s. That might have been true then, but so many games out now prove that wrong.

Yeah, mechanism is a lot more objective way to classify board games. We can argue all day about, say, what exactly a wargame is, but what games have hex grids, area control, and resource managements is a lot easier to agree on.

Yeah, modded Minecraft is still a big deal. You can join us over at !moddedminecraft@sopuli.xyz if you want. The mod Create is a big deal right now, and rightfully so. It may well be the greatest of all time, as far as Minecraft mods go.

!strategygames@sopuli.xyz

Edit: didn’t mean to make this a comment reply instead of post reply, but it still counts

There’s a pair of Beatles albums in this list. I don’t mind “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or “Revolution 9,” but “Tomorrow Never Knows” on Revolver counts for me. Frankly, it’s the worst Beatles song. I prefer the Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair cover of it on It’s Spooky to the Beatles version. It’s just that bad.

Tichu is the bomb, literally.

The trigger happy mergers probably helped me more than they hurt. At one point I dumped a spice company in the chaos and took the cash lead, letting me get a bargain on a rubber merger. It put me back into the game, but it wasn’t enough to take the win.

I have played Bus at three. It’s been awhile, so I can’t say too much about it. That said, I do remember having fun at that count.

As far as expropriation, I felt confusion more than anything. It got better as the game went on, but it does take a moment to wrap your head around it. Still, I though it was an interesting mechanic.

New plays were:

• Mahjong
• John Company
• Sol
• Nana
• Kreigbot
• Kremlin
• Lifeboats
• Category 5
• Fresh Fish
• Santiago

Nah, I probably won’t make it to Pax Unplugged. I will be at Age of Steam Con, so I might get a play in there.

Horseless Carriage is great. SoPac is one I still need to try. There was a copy at DoamCon last weekend, but I didn’t get a game in. I did get West Riding Revisited in, which is excellent. It’s one of the few cube rails to have minor and major railways. I’d like to see it licensed, but it’s a little unlikely

My list looks similar. Splotter is at the top. I did preorder Horseless Carriage back before we had much info about it and don’t regret it. John Bohrer would be up there as well, but though various connections I’ve played enough Winsomes to know they aren’t an instant buy. (Iberian Railways, Italian Railroads, and 1836)

Tangent, but I’m very split on 1836. The opening is incredible, but once you get past the first stock round all the interesting decisions have been made.

I haven’t played many, but it does lead to some interesting cases of board games being adapted to video games and back to board games, like Civilization and Europa Universalis.

Intrinsically, definitely. Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Victoria 2, and etc.

Warsim deserves love. It’s a real passion project: a text-based kingdom management sim with lots of things to do and nooks and crannies to explore.

I loved John Deere American Farmer back in the day. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on modern machines. The menus don’t display right. If it wasn’t for that, it would be half-playable. The deluxe version might not have that problem, but I never got around to trying it.

One funny quirk was that family members would gain happiness from certain items (housing, bbq, pools, etc) and lose it from working. If happiness dropped too far for two long, you’d get an event about them leaving to join the French Foreign Legion or some other nonsense (there were a handful of variants.) The thing is, though, the happiness gained from these material possessions would degrade over time, meaning that it quickly evolved into a materialism simulator as you built pools (or giant statues of Paul Bunyan) to replace the pools that no longer where providing happiness.

You could also just hire people. That was usually the way to go if you wanted to get any serious work done. As long as you could pay wages, the hired help would stick around.

I’m a big fan of Age of Steam myself. I plan on heading to Age of Steam Con come September.

I have mixed feelings about the Great Western Trail change. I understand the reasoning, but it feels like it’s replacing genocide with erasure. I joked with my local group about how now it takes place after we killed all the Indians.

It’s a pretty common term, actually, and not always used unlovingly. Still, the idea of “American” games versus “Euro” games isn’t as useful as it once was for differentiating board game genres.

Big fan of The Resistance, as well as Blood on the Clocktower, though the latter is a bit of an investment. If you don’t want social deduction, there’s also 7 Wonders and Citadels.

In those cases, I buy it if I really, really like it, if there isn’t anything similar in my collection, or if I think I can get it played outside the group that there’s a copy floating around in. Usually takes a combination of those three factors, as I try to keep a lean collection since I’ve got friend who seem to own just about everything.