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Edit: Nevermind, bobvonunheil said it right and I was just misreading things.
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Sep 3, 2012 02:39
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That makes a lot more sense. Thanks!
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Sep 3, 2012 02:56
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BlueInkAlchemist posted:Any reports back on the new Netrunner? I still have old Runner and Corp decks in my Big Box o' CCG and was wondering how the new one is turning out. The local guy who considers the original his favorite game is really really pleased with the reprint. I have some complaints about it, but they're "it's holding up my copies of Dominion: Dark Ages and 7 Wonders: Cites".
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Sep 3, 2012 03:01
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New game on kickstarter that I got to playtest on a couple of occasions: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/167427101/salmon-run-prepare-for-the-race-of-a-fishs-lifetim It's a deck building race game where cards you play are how you move. It's pretty light weight, but it's got some cool ideas. There's a trade off of speed vs gumming your deck up with Fatigue cards. You can also trash fatigue by giving up turns. First one to the end wins, if the rest of the table can't catch up.
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Sep 3, 2012 04:05
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Tippis posted:Living on the wrong side of the world and without a single con nearby where I could have tried it, I'd be interested in hearing something more in-depth. The KS looked vaguely promising and since they're apparently getting it out the door as we speak, I was considering getting it as an alternative to Zombies! and LNoE. Well - I'll start with some general stuff. The components are generally pretty good. My only real gripe is that one class of the zombies - runners - doesn't stand out nearly enough from the standard walker class of zombies. However, all the stuff looks good and past that little nitpick things are fine. The rule book is pretty decent. It's not the best but it is not the worst either. It's been a little while, but I think there's a decent ToC and a decent glossary to located stuff. There's a reference in there as well too - so it's good enough to learn and play the game without too much challenge or confusion. It's also of decent print quality and I didn't notice a ton of typos or grammatical errors. We had a few general rules issues - mostly related to what happens when zombies attack in large groups and how they move afterwards. The game itself is a bit... a lot.... almost completely luck based. The tutorial scenario is basically free, and actually does a pretty terrible job of presenting the actual dynamics of gameplay. The first scenario is a ball-buster if you don't quickly realize what needs to be done and you will lose. So - without going into too much detail about the scenarios themselves I can say that the game has a few tactics that significantly alter the difficulty of the game and the zombies move mechanics are easily exploited if you've played mechanistic movement games (like the D&D Adventure Games) before. This may be intended, but it can detract from the game. So on to the luck factor - there are dice and decks of cards. Almost nothing in the game is predictable and almost every action you take, inasmuch as killing the zombies, is to try and alleviate that. The items you get, with a SMALL number of exceptions, are random. In one mission you have to find rice, food, and water. Shouldn't be too hard... unless the first rice card is the 40th card down in the search deck. Shooting zombies and meleeing zombies? Dice rolls that, with few exceptions, don't have any mechanics to "fudge" the luck factor. In fact, you can easily overcommit and just outright die. Which brings me to another thing I don't like - player elimination. In a cooperative game, this should never happen. I don't really have a solution to fix it, but it's dumb and bad - especially if you're settling in for a 2 hour game and you die in the first 20-30 minutes. You better like playing Xbox while your friends play the boardgame you got together to play. So here we go, things that are random: searching for items (usually), combat (with only a few things to put a fix in), and how many and where zombies spawn. So... almost the entire game except how far you can move and how far and where zombies move. To find items, you draw from a deck of cards. Zombies spawn at set spawn points, but WHICH zombies and in what number they spawn there? Another deck of cards. Better hope that the final "widget" you need to complete the mission doesn't get some lovely draws, or you're hosed - because in some cases the numbers range from a pack of 4 walkers (not that bad) to 2 fatties and an abomination!!! HOORAY! Oh, did I mention that only certain weapons can kill fatties and the abomination? Did you not find one of those weapons? You're hosed! So yeah. The game doesn't provide what I wanted - a sense of tension surviving in a city of zombies and working to overcome the odds. It fails to do this because the odds are random and sometimes - like in real life - you just get hosed. That would be awesome if I wanted a simulation of zombie apocalypse survival - but I want to play a game where I feel like my actions actually affect the outcome. I don't feel this way with Zombicide the same way I do with Space Alert, Pandemic, Defenders of the Realm, or even Shadows over Camelot. I like co-op games, but this is probably one of the worst. Oh - and it still suffers from Pandemic levels of quarterbacking. You could play alone and it wouldn't change the gameplay at all - just the social aspect of the game. Pandemic suffers from this, but at least it doesn't take 1.5-3+ hours and feel random as poo poo.
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Sep 3, 2012 04:41
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sicarius posted:Zombicide stuff Oh man it's like you condensed all my misgivings about Last Night on Earth into a review of a completely different game. What is it with zombies and randomfests?
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Sep 3, 2012 04:49
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bobvonunheil posted:Oh man it's like you condensed all my misgivings about Last Night on Earth into a review of a completely different game. Zombies are a pretty big thing in American geekdom, would be my guess, and a lot of modern nerd culture sorta shuns the math needed for dryer, more mechanical games.
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Sep 3, 2012 04:58
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Countblanc posted:Zombies are a pretty big thing in American geekdom, would be my guess, and a lot of modern nerd culture sorta shuns the math needed for dryer, more mechanical games. The weird thing about it for me (at least regarding LNoE) is that Flying Frog did a pretty good job IMO of A Touch of Evil, which, while also being a card-driven dicefest, gives you a ton of ways to mitigate and control the randomness based on the card draws you get.
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Sep 3, 2012 05:23
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The Dregs posted:What is a good game that can be played with kids in the 8-10 year old range? I mean these cool new games you all are talking about, not Monopoly or Stratego. I almost bought Small World today, but I didn't want to plop down 55 bucks on a maybe. Carcassonne seems like it would be a good fit for younger players.
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Sep 3, 2012 05:26
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bobvonunheil posted:Oh man it's like you condensed all my misgivings about Last Night on Earth into a review of a completely different game. Because people who make these types of games are usually people whose experience with tabletop gaming has been limited to the lowest common denominator, aka Monopoly/GW/D&D. They don't know that it's possible to have combat that consist of more than 5+ to hit, why coops aren't like RPGs with respect to player cooperation, and how to make rewarding and interesting scenarios. It doesn't help that all the smart people are sick and tired of zombies, too.
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Sep 3, 2012 05:27
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Broken Loose posted:It doesn't help that all the smart people are sick and tired of zombies, too. This is a lot of it. I barely wanted to play the game. Zombies - in as far as they are commonly represented - is a passed thing for me. I still like Dawn of the Dead and I recommend World War Z as decent zombie reading, but even Walking Dead's series is wearing thin. So yeah - zombies just aren't as nerd chic as they once were. They have entered the main stream.
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Sep 3, 2012 05:38
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Anyone played the Penny Arcade deckbuilding game? I know goons hate PA but I really like deckbuilding games and want to know if it's worth adding to the rotation.
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Sep 3, 2012 06:15
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Mage Knight is on sale at Cool Stuff Inc for $45 for Labor Day. I hear this is a Good Deal™.
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Sep 3, 2012 06:44
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quote:Anyone played the Penny Arcade deckbuilding game? It's fine - the game works. It's not terribly deep; there isn't a huge selection of cards, and the strategies are all pretty basic. The boss cards are generally too strong, but don't break the game too hard (they just lead to some positive feedback for people already ahead). Even if you're not a big Penny Arcade fan, some of the cards are a little funny: the first few times you ask if anyone wants to Touch Wieners there's some joy. Do note that Bat Milk shouldn't be in the rotation. It's way too strong. The designers suggest changing it to a single draw (they recognize it was a mistake as printed)... but I suggest you just don't use it. Summary: Dominion light. No big flaws (other than that one card), but neither is there any huge draws.
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Sep 3, 2012 06:59
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GrandpaPants posted:Mage Knight is on sale at Cool Stuff Inc for $45 for Labor Day. I hear this is a Good Deal™. Super tempting but I'm trying really hard not to spend any money. Decisions, decisions...
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Sep 3, 2012 07:25
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jmzero posted:Summary: Dominion light. No big flaws (other than that one card), but neither is there any huge draws. I'd also like to add to this that if people don't know or follow PA the theme is COMPLETELY lost on them. The cards don't have descriptions, or context. Know your audience, I guess.
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Sep 3, 2012 07:47
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Played my first couple of games of Arkham Horror tonight, both solo. First game I played with one investigator (the mobster guy who is good at fighting but terrible at everything else) and it ended so fast it was insane. I'm pretty sure I was interpreting the rules (or most of them anyway) correctly, but with a gate opening almost every turn and fucktons of monsters spawning on the turns a gate didn't open, there was just no way to deal with everything at once, let alone to waste time doing things like shopping or kicking around to see what kind of encounters showed up. Azathoth awakened and that was that. So I figured that's just not how the game was meant to be played. Of course one investigator couldn't do anything, no wonder I was overwhelmed, etc. I played another game, this time with three investigators, and while the game was much more manageable, gates were still opening up much faster than I could close them. Most turns ended up with everyone inside gates, and when they came out again they just ran to the next gate immediately, which ended up being really boring because I was just handling gate encounters and doing nothing else every turn (it got to the point that I stopped granting one character money on her upkeep because she was never going to spend it on anything anyway). I can't help but feel that the game would play much better if there was a way to slow it down some. I want to introduce the game to some friends on Tuesday, but I need to find a way to "fix" it before that - either find out what I'm doing wrong with the rules or tweak them to make the game less rear end-crushingly hard. Here's some tweaks I'm considering: * Remove most of the rumor cards - gently caress these cards. Most of them are basically "do this thing that's probably impossible or else the terror track goes straight to ten". * Get rid of monster surge - maybe just spawn a monster in that spot or something. The outskirts gets filled up way too fast. This might just be a problem with poor shuffling, though (I'd run into stretches where gates were supposed to open in the same location 3 or 4 times in a row). * Remove Hound of Tyndalos from the game, because poo poo Anyone with some experience with the game want to pitch in?
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Sep 3, 2012 08:04
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Funkmaster General posted:Anyone with some experience with the game want to pitch in? Your experience is accurate. There's not much to it other than people constantly getting the rules wrong. You can either have everybody bumrush the gates and not "experience" any of the "rich" "encounters" or "storytelling" the game has to offer, or you can just sit on your rear end and gather weapons so you can one-shot the final boss once he inevitably appears because you spent all your time doing sitting on your rear end and gathering weapons. One way is not very fun and the other way is incredibly anticlimactic and also not very fun. If you have more than one player then things get more "fun" by virtue of the group playing suboptimally unless somebody quarterbacks. But then again, what usually happens is one guy gets good encounter cards/rolls and everybody else spends 2-4 hours waiting for him to save the day. Arkham is broken as gently caress due to the same poo poo that makes Zombicide bad. Combat is bad, too many dice, cards done poorly, terrible balance, etc, and any attempts at criticism are usually deflected as going in the face of being "thematic" (thus why one GOO is trivial while another is instant game over).
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Sep 3, 2012 08:11
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I've always felt that it's bullshit that you can even fight the GOOs in Arkham Horror. They are supposed to be elder gods, essentially unkillable, to gaze upon them is to go insane, etc etc. Should really just be "welp, game over, gods win", like with Azathoth. Anything would be better than rolling literally hundreds of dice, though.
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Sep 3, 2012 08:32
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bobvonunheil posted:I've always felt that it's bullshit that you can even fight the GOOs in Arkham Horror. They are supposed to be elder gods, essentially unkillable, to gaze upon them is to go insane, etc etc. Canon: Cthulhu got taken out by a yacht ramming into him.
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Sep 3, 2012 08:36
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Funkmaster General posted:I can't help but feel that the game would play much better if there was a way to slow it down some. I want to introduce the game to some friends on Tuesday, but I need to find a way to "fix" it before that - either find out what I'm doing wrong with the rules or tweak them to make the game less rear end-crushingly hard. Here's some tweaks I'm considering: You don't need any of those rule tweaks, maybe don't use rumors for your first game so the experience isn't ruined. The way to slow the game down is to seal the four hot spots, which are Woods, Independence Square, Witch House, and one other that I forgot. These locations show up much more often in the deck (which is why you saw the same location multiple times in a row), so sealing them first gives you tons of breathing room. Also, another thing it sounds like you're doing wrong is that you should absolutely never go into a gate unless you can seal it (unless you're at the gate limit). When playing with 4 or more, some people take on specific roles, usually either gate closing or street cleaning, which helps things from getting out of hand. You definitely have time to go shopping and pick up clues and poo poo if you keep this in mind.
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Sep 3, 2012 08:45
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If you really want it to be less ball-crushingly hard, here's the important stuff to remember from the base game. 1) Stamina is only slightly useful, Sanity is godlike. This makes the professor and the psychologist the best characters in the game. 2) Mandy (the Researcher) is broken as all hell. 3) 4 players is the sweet spot. 3 people doesn't give you enough time (you're constantly running into gates), and 5 people has a difficulty jump. 4) Elder signs are broken as all hell, and thus, unique items are the best draws. (they're the best draws, anyway) 5) The newspaper is the best location. 6) GET BLESSED. Do everything in your power to not be cursed (this includes not playing the game) 7) Get Allies. They're probably some of the best cards in the game. 8) If you are going to die or have something really bad (like getting cursed) happen to you, spend the drat clues. Even if you won't be able to seal a gate, at least you can close the drat thing. 9) The King in Yellow (a unique item) is the most efficient way to get clues. Otherwise, you're getting maybe one or two at a time. The King in Yellow is 4 for a Sanity. 10) $8 is a skill. Skills are good. $5 is an Elder Sign. Elder Signs are good. I'm not particularly fond of the game, but this is what you need to know to destroy the game. EDIT: Kiranamos posted:The way to slow the game down is to seal the four hot spots, which are Woods, Independence Square, Witch House, and one other that I forgot. I believe it's the Unnamable, but it might be Unvisited Isle. OmegaGoo fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Sep 3, 2012 |
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Sep 3, 2012 08:45
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So OK, it turns out Hero Quest is still really loving fun with a room full of 25-year olds. I had to even add an extra character to fit everyone in! It was one of those little 50c machine teddy bears, which we used as an extra barbarian. Everyone had such a great time with the first mission, and the bear ended up felling the chaos gargoyle in one attack. Epic, epic start.
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Sep 3, 2012 09:03
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pw pw pw posted:So OK, it turns out Hero Quest is still really loving fun with a room full of 25-year olds. I can't remember if it was HeroQuest or WarhammerQuest, but one of those games had these killer Minotaurs that would ALWAYS gently caress our poo poo up. I can't remember the actual gameplay, but I loved the hell out of those games in high school.
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Sep 3, 2012 09:11
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Funkmaster General posted:Anyone with some experience with the game want to pitch in? If it's any consolation, I lost my first 3 or 4 games of Arkham hard, but before too long ended up buying my first expansion because the game was getting too easy for me and my group. There's definitely some time needed to adjust, but if you got the flow charts linked earlier, you should be fine (though I personally wouldn't blame you for removing Rumors, they are definitely gamechangers). Also, everything Omegagoo said is on the money (particularly about 4 investigators being the sweet spot; you can play with more once you're used to it, but never less). That's likely the source of your frustration, but do make sure that you're only spawning 1 monster per gate if you've got less than 5 investigators. And don't let the weapons-grade hate some people here have for the game discourage you. As the google doc in the OP shows, it's actually well-liked by a decent number of posters here.
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Sep 3, 2012 09:12
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sicarius posted:slaughter Well, that certainly sounds like a pass or house-rule-the-poo poo-out-of-it decision, which is sad. It really shouldn't be that hard to make a good [whatever]-survival game or to have co-op that works. Oh well…
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Sep 3, 2012 09:25
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OmegaGoo posted:I believe it's the Unnamable, but it might be Unvisited Isle. Yeah, it's Unvisited Isle.
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Sep 3, 2012 09:41
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InShaneee posted:And don't let the weapons-grade hate some people here have for the game discourage you. As the google doc in the OP shows, it's actually well-liked by a decent number of posters here. I loved the poo poo out of Arkham Horror back in 2005. I also loved the poo poo out of Settlers of Catan in 2007. I loved my copy of 40th Anniversary Risk at the same time. I bought a new copy of Arkham in 2008 thinking I'd enjoy it, but by that point, well... Arkham came out near the beginning of the current "Renaissance" of designer board games, when we were all innocent and everything was special. Coops weren't entirely a thing and having lots of thematic components tended to stand out as an indicator of quality. However, like the speed of CPUs, the quality of games shot up every so often, and those moments got closer and closer to each other. Arkham was kind of alone until Betrayal came out one year and then Pandemic came out 3 years later and then Ghost Stories, Space Alert, Wok Star, etc. all tumbled out after each other. Caylus signaled a wave of worker placements. Dominion started the deckbuilder craze. Each new game either builds on foundations from prior games or revolutionizes its genre. Arkham Horror was a product of its time. Fantasy Flight, having previously just been known for Twilight Imperium, got a huge hit out of the Warcraft board game (at the beginning of the WoW craze) and used that to completely reinvent itself. This wasn't the first time they'd taken an older game and tried to freshen it up with new art and a new manual, but it would definitely be one of the most notable. Arkham Horror was a stereotypical Fantasy Flight Games Frankenstein Game Design; it was a 1987 re-release with everything redone for better or for worse. A lot of old problems weren't ever solved, and new problems were made by virtue of the designers' focus being something other than making a game that plays well. It was a lot of GW "wouldn't it be cool if" design where things just got added for the sake of adding them. When it came out, it was fresh and new and revolutionary. Cooperative games were very rare, and this one was a theme completely untouched! There was so much you could do, it seemed like you could just play this game over and over! Now, however, we have alternatives that we didn't have in 2005. We have games that actually require the players to work as a team, don't take an hour to set up, don't take 2-4 hours to play, and have better pacing, mechanics, rules, and replayability. These games owe it to Arkham Horror for blazing the trail to their existence, and those games have later games that owe them, and so on. So, yes, it is accurate to say that Battlestar Galactica or Space Alert or even Shadows Over Camelot is better than Arkham Horror, in much the same ways that a 2010 Prius are better than a 1992 Camry. And, obviously, if you ask us for recommendations, it shouldn't be surprising that people would push you to the newer, better product than the worse but historically significant one.
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Sep 3, 2012 10:25
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We need a goonsay emoticon but instead of the goon it's King Philip IV.
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Sep 3, 2012 10:25
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InShaneee posted:but do make sure that you're only spawning 1 monster per gate if you've got less than 5 investigators. Oh poo poo, I missed that rule. Arkham! 
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Sep 3, 2012 10:45
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Cult of the New And Improved
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Sep 3, 2012 10:46
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BlueInkAlchemist posted:Any reports back on the new Netrunner? I still have old Runner and Corp decks in my Big Box o' CCG and was wondering how the new one is turning out. It's really loving good and I'm hooked as hell. Anything in particular you want to know?
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Sep 3, 2012 10:59
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I'm curious to hear about how asymmetry works within Netrunner, since this might be just about the only thing that would make me interested in the game.
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Sep 3, 2012 11:20
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Tekopo posted:I'm curious to hear about how asymmetry works within Netrunner, since this might be just about the only thing that would make me interested in the game. The rules are up online, but the gist is this: -The two players play Runner and Corporation. They use completely different cardsets, with not a single card shared between them. -The Corp's goal is to play the Agenda cards from their deck and then, either by letting time pass or spending money on them, gain VPs from them. -The Runner has no cards in his deck that allow him to score VPs. The only way he can gain them is by stealing them from the Corp. -The Runner plays Hacking cards to attack the Corp, and the Corp plays ICE cards to defend them. Each Agenda must be defended seperately, however, and the runner can also attack the Corp's hand, deck, or discard if they're not defended as well. -Most importantly, while the Runner plays all of his cards face-up, the Corp plays most of their cards face-down. This adds a huge element of bluffing, as the Runner usually won't know the strength of the cards he's attacking, or if the card he's trying to steal is even worthwhile. I was a fan of the original game (though late to the party, my decks were from ebay), and I'm really excited for the new game.
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Sep 3, 2012 13:46
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The game is for sale on Amazon w/ prime shipping.
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Sep 3, 2012 15:36
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Prefect Six posted:The game is for sale on Amazon w/ prime shipping. No discount?! Amazon is a harsh mistress.
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Sep 3, 2012 16:34
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Broken Loose posted:We need a goonsay emoticon but instead of the goon it's King Philip IV. code:
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Sep 3, 2012 16:35
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Anyone have any plans to start a Netrunner/LCG type of thread? Or will we just keep the chat here?
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Sep 3, 2012 20:05
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Played a bunch of lighter games at a get-together yesterday, was my first time playing Mord Im Arosa which was fun for what it was. A good mindless filler. Much like how The Resistance takes the best part of BSG and condenses it from 3 hours to 20 minutes, Mord Im Arosa takes my favorite part of Wallenstein: dropping cubes down a tower, and puts it in a half-hour game. note, Mord Im Arosa has absolutely nothing to do with Wallenstein.
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Sep 3, 2012 20:47
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 08:10 |
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PaintVagrant posted:Anyone have any plans to start a Netrunner/LCG type of thread? Or will we just keep the chat here? There is a CCG thread, where there's already been some Netrunner talk.
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Sep 3, 2012 21:19
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