The pressure build up can be quite a lot from fermentation. I’ve accidentally fermented drinks in glass swing top bottles. And upon attempting to open the bottle the pressure ripped the stopper and the metal parts right off the bottle at high speed.
If you were purposely fermenting something, you could build enough pressure to pop the bottle.
I also found this the hard way, once you open a bottle of kefir or yogurt and then close it again to drink/eat later, the fermentation process speeds up due to the additional oxygen, building up pressure until you open it the next time. Fortunately no one got hurt.
If you aren’t finding Arcs or Root “deep” or competitive enough you’re probably playing it wrong. Both have war game elements and a lot of subtle shenanigans you can play.
If you’re pure euro gamers but need a bit more interaction maybe try Brass Birmingham, Food Chain Magnate, 1846, City of the Big Shoulders, Inis, Kemet.
The problem we had with Arcs (and Root) is that we didn’t find the strategy as deep as Dune Imperium. If you think about Dune Imperium, when you make a turn, and even between turns, you are constantly considering reveal power vs card powers vs war power vs resources, and you are making long term strategic decisions vs short term tactical ones vs deck building vs even the order of operations within a turn and round. Every time an opponent makes a move, because the game is so zero sum, you constantly have to pivot your plan if a space is taken, if a war shifts, etc.
When we played Arcs, we found it was much more about making short term tactical decisions, and there wasn’t as much room for that kind of deep long term planning, so the experience felt less competitive and less tense for us.
So we are looking for something that gives a similar player experience of constantly balancing short and long term strategy like that, but without going all the way to something with very very complex rules like Twilight Imperium.
I’ve played all those games And I understand why you’re saying what you’re saying.
The war games aspects of Root and Arcs are kinda polarising and there’s definitely a certain mind set required. Dune imperium is a lot more straight forward in that it’s clear what needs to happen and how you might do it.
These days far too many board games are designed to appeal on Kickstarter with needless plastic minis and content. All that time and effort could have gone to play testing and improving the game but instead you get 2kg of plastic that doesn’t improve the game in anyway, increasing costs, and day one expansions or bonus content that’s often mediocre.
For every truely innovative game out there, there’s many more that look great and have incredible table presence but are throughly mediocre rehashes of the something else and rely purely on hype or great art.
Now you see people backing KS or buying 2nd hand games specifically for scalping, and Kickstarters preying on people with FOMO.
Also you can no longer trust Board Game Geek ratings.
The good news is, the vast majority of what’s really good, is probably already out there and available new or 2nd hand for a fair price.
If you wander around the gencon halls this seems less true than people think. The number of innovative things or even kids ish games that are actually pretty interesting for all is _expansive_. The smaller stuff just doesn't get all the marketing splash.
I came back from last year with a few things but one of the hits was a physical area control game with just cards. The 2 play version is a pack of cards.
In theory BGG should help here, but I agree there are discoverability issues. Not sure what a better plan would be though, the margins on some of the small games are not that great. Outside of working on distribution deals with big stores, going to cons with a booth and word of mouth ends up being the main way...
Agree 100%. This hobby jumped the shark probably 5-10 years ago.
Thanks to crowdfunding, there are deluxe editions of games all the time being announced for $400–500.
Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great and like a ton of replayable content, until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
As you noted, games come with a ridiculous number of minis and trinkets and baubles that drive the price of new games well past $100 in many cases.
As the industry has gotten larger, many publishers are turning more toward bankable IP as opposed to innovative concepts. Or, they're releasing a bajillion reskins of the same game (looking at you, TtR, Azul, Pandemic, 7 Wonders, etc..) This is not unique to board games by any stretch. But it's a sign of an inflection point.
I'm not saying there aren't good games being released. I'm saying they're harder to find and getting drowned out by the shameless cash grabs and lazy IP-based games.
Go find some of the classics by Rosenberg, Knizia, Feld, Luciani, and others. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck.
> Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great [...] until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
Hot take: I have never played an expansion that I liked more than the base game.
I won't argue that. There are a handful that I think improve the experience (some of the early Carcassonne ones, for example) but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.
Innovation is worth playing but it’s a Chudyk game. Perhaps with a lot of plays there is more strategy and nuance, but even with experienced gamers, I find Innovation much too swingy. With the right mindset to embrace the chaos, and players with the same level of experience/skill in the game, it can be fun though.
Having a battery pack has its uses though. As crazy as USBC is, you can now get a relatively large amount of power from a battery pack.
There’s a bunch of things that don’t need their own battery if they just drew enough power off USBC. I have an office coffee setup. My grinder and espresso maker have their own batteries. But there’s no reason I couldn’t have a single battery pack and just plug both into USBC saving me a ton of weight. (In fact the Lagom Mini 2 grinder is powered straight off USBC with no internal power.)
For phones and cameras, that need their own power source, a replaceable battery is mostly just an end of life thing for me. Because I’d still have to carry a cable or spare battery around.
These things aren't mutually exclusive. Once upon a time, batteries were generic and fit some standard form-factor. You could swap batteries between devices and often did! You could even connect your device to a pack of batteries, and swap out the batteries within the pack.
240W max is very little when it comes to hearing up water, and most powerbanks don't even do more than 100W output. That's more in the range of those swappable tool batteries.
You're worried about me actually throwing a drink - 'threatening?' Really. - and I'm taking things too seriously? This is a website!
It is, though, interesting to me that you see someone behave in a way you aren't expecting and don't quite know how to wrap your head around - no blame; it's a relatively common experience in my vicinity, though normal people typically enjoy it much more than those here - and your immediate recourse is to assume it must have been generated by AI. That's interesting indeed, and I greatly appreciate you sharing it.
The account is from 2016 maybe this is a real person.
But you sound self important and a bit unhinged. It’s not that no one here can wrap their heads around such behaviour. It’s that your comments sounds like a troll response but could also be real.
I hope you’re not comparing a gold trophy to a straight up bribe. It’s like giving Trump your Noble peace prize.
Having the prize doesn’t make you the winner. But it feeds Trumps ego sooooooo muuuuuch, it’s probably the “best” thing you can do to get on his good side without actually giving him anything.
If you were purposely fermenting something, you could build enough pressure to pop the bottle.
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