Companies always talking about numbers when it comes to how much you can fit into a bag. Board Game Garage ( currently on Kickstarter) shows off what it looks like to have 30lbs. of gaming in their bag. Before we start doing warm-up stretches, let’s look at how much gameplay experience you get in just those three games alone. You might be concerned about the weight, but the amount of content you can fit into the bag will put at ease any ache.
Gloomhaven
This year’s biggest game comes packed in one of the biggest boxes, nearly bursting at the seams with miniatures, monsters, lands to trod through, and more than enough scenarios to keep you wading through adventures for quite some time. To be exact, there are 95 scenarios requiring you to kill, steal, or simply survive the monsters swarming around you. And between all of this clanking of swords and brandishing of shields, the game unfurls the world around you in stories that branch out in multiple directions, making each play through unique to your choices.
The side of the box might tell you that it could take up to two hours to play, but that’s barely scratching the surface of the game. Gloomhaven is a legacy game with tough choices that not only will have your nose down in the cards for far longer than you expect, but these choices will stick with you as the game progresses. New treasure and new choices shift the direction of both you and your character as you try to accomplish secret tasks and finally manage to polish off that one task that put your person in peril in the first place. Finish that and you get to retire your character, only to start a whole new one that you unlocked.
What are we looking at here? Hundreds of hours? Gloomhaven begs not for an afternoon, but demands for a weekend of dungeon crawling excellence. It just so happens we know of something you can carry it in.
War of the Ring
Maybe you can tuck in the extended edition of Lord of the Rings into one of the side pockets to keep you inspired as you slog it out in this board game version of the story. War of the Ring pits the Free People against the Dark Lord Sauron’s nearly endless forces as you struggle to hold back the shadow and find a way to get the Fellowship to Mount Doom. You’ll roll dice each time to determine the possible actions as you toss your forces at the board in hopes of gaining ground or surviving another round.
Two hours is not enough to fully wrap your head around all the mechanics and abilities you’ll find in the box. Among the many miniatures, you’ll find cards that allow you to turn the tides and a hidden movement mechanics that will have you searching far and wide for those nasty little hobbits. Characters and actions you find in the book take place on the board as well as each side calls on more heroes to your aid. Expect players asking to switch off a time or two to see how the other side fights. You might just have to run through the movies before anyone puts the board away.
Power Grid
The high-risk world of power infrastructure may not sound like something you will spend hours doing, but in a world where every move you make seems to help your neighbor just a little bit more, it’s going to happen. In the smallest box of the three, Power Grid is the classic struggle of energy conglomerates trying to soak up the most money by pushing out the most wattage to the most cities
As you rise to greatness, you’ll need to start picking up power plants to power cities and picking the cities that you want to power. The struggle here is that often having the most plants to power means that you’ll need to pony up more money for the resources you need to power them. Players can raise the prices for other players to send more power out from their substations by physically blocking them in. Money, board management, and driving up the cost of resources; Power Grid works on anyone’s shelf or travel bag.
Just going through the three titles tucked away in the Board Game Garage, you’re looking at half a day at least if each one just happened to be set up perfectly and everyone suddenly became an expert. If you’re looking for something a little longer, you can pack in a deck of playing cards for hundreds of games or try to break the Monopoly world record at 1680 hours (though no one ever mentions the body count in these records.)
Board Game Garage manages to pack in all those hours and keeps your games free from dents. Head over to their Kickstarter right now to get your hands on one.
This was a sponsored post.
Feature image credit: Board Game Garage
Additional image credits: Cephalofair Games, Ares Games, Rio Grande Games