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Cosmic Encounter, as much as I dislike it, does have a modicum of choice available to the player, though. There are better games out there that do the all auction thing better or just rolling a bunch of dice better than Magical Athlete. Kings of Tokyo is basically just rolling a bunch of dice but it is fun, while MA doesn't feel rewarding at all. Maybe if the track wasn't just a number of spaces that you have to go up to the game would be worth playing, maybe if the powers weren't so cut and dry (having to choose between going one step back or making someone lose and entire turn isn't a choice at all), the game could be better. As it stands, the auction feels largely pointless, the races are decided by dice anyway ('Oh wow my pirate pulls you 15 spaces back to where he is, but then I keep rolling 1-2 and you get 3 6s in a row!') and the theme/design of the game detracts from the game itself: it just feels like you are pushing tokens up a track. Games don't have to be Campaign for North Africa in terms of complexity but that doesn't mean they can't be good.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:13
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I respectfully disagree with you.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:22
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But offer no rebuttals. This is the entire 'But the game is FUN!' thing all over again. Reviewing games by saying they are fun is like reviewing food by saying it makes you less hungry.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:39
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Tekopo posted:Reviewing games by saying they are fun is like reviewing food by saying it makes you less hungry. Actually, I think it's more like reviewing food by saying that it tastes good.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:42
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Cause we have a massive differing idea on games. Your 'rebuttal' was basically breaking down the mechanics of MA and just saying 'Other games do it better' without really saying why. The idea you don't have any power over the game beyond dice rolls is either you just being hyperbolic or you not really understanding the mechanics beyond 'You roll dice and chose characters'. I mean yeah I could post another massive paragraph explaining how character bidding isn't 'Pointless' (what) or how the point with the powers isn't choosing between 'Make Someone Miss a Turn' and 'Go Forward 2 spaces' but its pointless. I'm not going to change my mind and neither are you and the end result is we are just two idiots yelling at each other over a $10 anime board game where you race each other.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:46
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The purpose of games, even highly complex ones is to be fun. You are setting a low bar when you say that a game is fun, because that's what a game is meant to do in the first place and if it can't even meet that requirement there's something seriously wrong with it.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:48
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Cause we have a massive differing idea on games. Your 'rebuttal' was basically breaking down the mechanics of MA and just saying 'Other games do it better' without really saying why. The idea you don't have any power over the game beyond dice rolls is either you just being hyperbolic or you not really understanding the mechanics beyond 'You roll dice and chose characters'. I think I tried to give some examples of why I think other games do it better, but if you want even more specifics, I can give you them. The bidding is pointless because there's very little team cohesion: you just want to get whatever is best, hence there is little strategy to it. Since you are always aiming for the best characters, there's little reason to get one specific character over the other or block someone from getting a specific character. Maybe if certain characters had bonus powers if you had another character of the same kind, the bidding would be more interesting. Team management boils down to pot luck because you don't know what the other players will have. Even if you have the spy, it STILL boils down to pot luck because of the race resolution mechanism. I had the spy guy and always chose the guy that countered the ones of the other players and I won exactly 0 races even with that advantage. With the powers, the risk/reward is never enough, as far as I could see, to not use a specific power. There are choices, but the choices are always obvious, so they don't become choices at all.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:56
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Cripes, ok. You missed the point of the game entirely if the character bidding came off as pointless and you think the dice are the main thing that rule your choices. MA isn't a racing game any more than BSG is a Math Game. The Player Agency in the game comes from, first, the bidding. Building a stable of racers that work with each other and react well to the other players choices is a pretty big step toward winning and choosing at random is a bad idea. If you missed how this works then I guess I can see how you'd get so angry at the game. The idea that you'll always grab The Best One seems to just forget that you have a resource that you have to get rid of to get Racers, so grabbing The Best Every Time is basically impossible. Further, you seem to be focusing on the idea that One Race is what wins the game, where as in MA the main metachoice you get is knowing when to use crappy racers and when to use the good racers you got. You race multiple times with the winnings increasing as you go. Add in the Meta-Game uses of Assassin, Thief, Etc, and you have a lot of pretty interesting tactical choices to make to shift the game one way or the other. The Dice being the only thing that matters is just dumb. The powers you pick and how you use them (most being a choice) contributes more than that, the dice are more akin to how Dice works in Summoner Wars, where an element of randomness can swing the game one way or the other, but generally the 'better' player wins. Granted its not nearly as balanced in that direction than SW is but it's not really supposed to. I'm not sure what you declare Good Game Design, but MA does exactly what it sets out to do. There's not much depth to it, but it works as a very accessible party game with some minor added complexity through the opening phases. It's a game you can play in 15 minutes, with anyone, gamer or not, and they'll most likely enjoy it. Not enjoying the game is fine, but acting like Fun is some objective metric you can analyse is kinda silly, especially when we're talking about things like MA. The game is designed to feel pretty random and chaotic and that's where the enjoyment is derived. Under that, as I pointed out above, there's plenty of extra stuff to think about. It's not a perfect game, the components are rear end, it lacks much effective strategic depth but to act as if its all random luck is flawed. You always have enough info available to make smart choices that increase your chances of winning. It has a pretty low Skill Factor for sure but again, that's not really a bad thing every single time.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:07
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I'd like to note that even from what your saying Tekopo, comparing Magic Athlete to Candyland is hyperbole. Sure, you can argue that MA boils down to non-choice, but Candyland is literally, without reduction of mechanics, a non-choice 'game.' Sure this is splitting hairs, but it's all too easy to make someone go on the defensive if you exacerbate issues with a game. That being said Magic Athlete sounds utterly terrible and if I were interested in a Roll and Move game I'd probably try Formula D.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:08
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Even I'll happily admit that Formula D is way better than MA in basically all respect, too. It's pretty fantastic.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:11
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Tekopo posted:I can't believe someone would earnestly suggest Magical Athlete, which is a glorified Roll and Move game. I guess the appeal is that you get to see the wacky combinations of powers, but as a game it's seriously only a couple of steps up from candyland. drat, it was about the only thing to fill out my order the other day, and I'd seen it played a lot so I figured why not? I already have a bad Candyland taste in my mouth from playing Tokaido so that kinda sucks. E: oh wow you guys had a long argument about it. We'll see how it is. Kiranamos fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 17:17
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Waynebo posted:Definitely had the same hangups as you folks as I cold played Space Alert for the first time with two other people last night. With all due respects to Vlaada as an awesome game designer, his approach to learning the rules for his games in partial sequence while playing is loving stupid. One person should know the drat rules before trying to play, and then they can easily explain any questions people have, and play through the entire mission without stopping to figure out what the heck you're supposed to do next. I just tought my brother and sister how to play over thanksgiving. Along with 1 other player who had played a few missions before, I explained how to play as briefly as I could (which is effective because I know the rules, interesting concept!), said "you'll understand the actual flow of the game after the tutorial mission" and we were off. They easily breezed through the tutorial mission with random threats and tracks. Then I explained the C button, the internal threats, advanced damange, and delays, and we immediately jumped into a full mission, which we passed fairly easily. Tutorial to passed full mission in 2 steps! Then I shuffled in the advanced threats and we got raped, but hey, that is supposed to happen...
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Nov 27, 2012 17:18
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Got a chance to play Trajan for the first time over the weekend and I think I am in love. Quite possibly my new favourite Euro-y game. Not noticing a lot of Trajan love in here, perhaps Trajan lovers love their Trajan in silence with a glass of pinot noir. Maybe it's just the the little peg mechanic that has got me all hot and bothered, though.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:22
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Tekopo posted:Cosmic Encounter, as much as I dislike it, does have a modicum of choice available to the player, though. Cosmic encounter is a terrible game, and the only choice you really have is "Help this assault or not" which the answer is always Yes, unless it would cause somebody else to win.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:22
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I mentioned Android a page or two back, and speak of the devil, somebody brought it in for us to play over lunch hour. It had been a while so I decided I'd thrown in and play it again. It took the entire lunch hour just to explain the rules to the new players. I realized why our group had only ever played it once. Despite it being the most Kevin Wilson game that I've ever player, even more than Arkham Horror, I really like the theme and the concept behind it. Is there any variants or house rules that make it more playable? Edit: I really disliked the games of Cosmic Encounter we played. I felt like the winner was decided the moment we determined who was playing what race. Oh, you got the Gambler? Well GG guys. LordZoric fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 17:23
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I'm not arguing if it's fun or not: I know that to some people it will be fun, but using fun as a metric is flawed due to reasons that I have outlined above already. Fun IS subjective, after all, which is why I get annoyed at arguments that boost up games (mostly things like Munchkin) 'because they are fun'. As you said, the bidding part of the game forces you not to have a stable of superpowerful characters since you don't have resources to do so, but you still set out to get the best possible characters out of your starting resources, with some characters being subjectively better than others. I don't understand the point about having characters that work well with each other, since each race is a seperate, discrete part of the game and the characters don't boost each other in any way. As for tactical choices, don't latter races give more points? Iirc, you always want to race your crappy stuff first, so there isn't much of a tactical choice there. Choice in of itself isn't good enough, it's necessary to make both options equally compelling: this is especially true when you know only what your opponent could potentially be playing, rather than what he will be playing. I guess I can give the fact that some of the characters do affect the decision more than others (isn't there one that cancels enemy powers?), but there should be more powers along those lines. As well as that, the assassin is a crapshoot because the enemy racer has to be replaced with another, random one. It's usually worse than what he had, but that's not entirely certain. I don't think comparing the dice resolution to Summoner Wars is fair: you could use the same comparison for any resolution system that uses dice. Summoner Wars has a wealth of choices, including card-play, positioning, using effects at the opportune moment with a limited number of resources. I do agree that perhaps I was unfair with the comparison to Candyland, and for that I'm sorry, but the game is still bad by any account. Games like Formula D and Powerboats are examples, in my opinion, of Roll and Move dice games that don't suffer from the problems that MA does, because there is a way to mitigate or affect the luck element which isn't present within MA.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:25
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The General posted:Cosmic encounter is a terrible game, and the only choice you really have is "Help this assault or not" which the answer is always Yes, unless it would cause somebody else to win. You haven't played Cosmic Encounter, have you?
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Nov 27, 2012 17:33
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Jedit posted:You haven't played Cosmic Encounter, have you? I have, just not in years, because after every game I get the feeling of nothing I really did matters.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:38
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Well of course you're going to want to get the best characters that you're able to get, resources and choices withstanding, that's basically true of all games with any sort of similar mechanic, I don't really think I get what you mean by that. None of the characters boost, no, and I agree that if the game had that in it, it'd be way better. There is some synergy in picking a good all round stable with the right meta-power characters. A team with an Assassin, a Thief and a Merchant is objectively a worse team than one with an Amazon, Demon and Pirate. The latter races give more points, but you could still win by grabbing the early victories first if you think your opponents are going to hold their Good Stuff till later. It's not quite as cut and dry as 'Use Crap Early, Use Good Later', you have to try and figure out what your opponents might field given their stables and how far ahead or behind they are. Again, agree that there should be more of that sort of power too. There's a couple other minor tactical things that come in here too (left over bidding coins become points, etc) Maybe on the Dice thing. Its certainly no SW and as I said, SW does it way way better. MA isn't even my fave Roll and Move, I just think that saying its entirely random is more than a little unfair, and most of the criticisms it gets are usually structured as if each of its mechanics are an island unto their own. It's not a particularly good game, but its certainly not a bad one. It's a very cheap, very easy to explain game that fits in your pocket, which is what the original intent of the suggestion was for. By all means, Formula D and King Of Tokyo are outlandishly Better Games.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:46
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I think what I'm trying to say about the bidding is that there's no real reason to prevent others from getting certain characters, outside of those characters being good. It's what makes 7 Wonders interesting (I know it's not an auction), sometimes you have to make a worse choice in order to prevent someone else from getting something they might find useful. There's none of that within MA, which is why I think making interconnected characters would have made the game more interesting: do you hurt yourself slightly to prevent a powerful combo? That's a meaningful choice. 'If I don't get this powerful character, the other player gets him' isn't a meaningful choice, even with limited resources. I get your point about winning early, but the dice resolution system doesn't make it work for you and it feels unfulfilling to lose even if you think you played the right way. I had the spy, which I used to try to win early in the game but it didn't work thanks to crappy rolls: I won one race later on (with the spy, of all people), but that was largely out of randomness as well. I think I got soured too much of the game because the people that I played it with didn't explain that the race element of the game was roll and move until we had finished the bidding. The game to me doesn't feel like it has any longevity after the novelty factor wears off. Munchkin can be entertaining the first few times you play it but it doesn't take long for the novelty factor to wear off and MA is in the same boat.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:56
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Speaking of games that have little decision making. We played the new stronghold games edition of Crude and boy was that a game where luck played a huge factor. I won with about $300 more than my nearest competitor and wasn't the one who ended the game. What happened was the guy that ended the game was to my left so by the time it came back to me there was a new economy on the board and I ended up getting to sell all my stuff for a lot more than everyone else. Overall the game had really great pieces and the mechanics were smooth it just wasn't very interesting and the dice were too random.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:09
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Serious question - how would you feel about the game if the movement mechanism was made less random? Say for example, roll 2/3 dice and pick one, or limit the random movement to 2-4?
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Nov 27, 2012 18:09
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I dunno really: making powers overall stronger (which would happen if the overall movement was lower) could work. Rolling 3/choosing 1 wouldn't work, in my opinion. I'd prefer changing the board (branching paths/making specific parts give you a boost/penalty) etc.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:17
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I saw someone mention Chrononauts last page and I have to offer a dissenting opinion. I liked it well enough, but I've found it kind of hard to teach and god help you if you ever do UberChrononauts (using the base and Early American, we also added The Gore Years). THAT killed my love of the game because it took forever and was only dragged out by us not wanting the one person who had the game on lock to win. As an alternate suggestion Back To the Future is very similar mechanically, but drops the hand size and collection win conditions. It's way more snappy to play and I enjoy it more. I also have to back the Epic Spell Wars recommendation, it's fast once everyone gets the rules down and it's not all that serious. The art's fun and my group really digs it as filler. I really don't like Munchkin and Cosmic Encounter. Munchkin always drags in my groups and Cosmic Encounter felt way too arbitrary the one time I played it, which killed it for me. I have the same feeling as The General, in that nothing I did felt like it mattered all that much.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:12
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DeepSpaceBeans posted:Got a chance to play Trajan for the first time over the weekend and I think I am in love. Quite possibly my new favourite Euro-y game. Not noticing a lot of Trajan love in here, perhaps Trajan lovers love their Trajan in silence with a glass of pinot noir. Maybe it's just the the little peg mechanic that has got me all hot and bothered, though. It's hard to be heard between the Ameritrash and the co-ops but our group loves Trajan as well. I think it's better than the new Trajan rip-off, T'zolkin. I finally won it after playing it about 10 times because it's difficult for me to plan ahead that well. I'm glad that it's finally getting better distribution here in the US, as previously you had to queue up for it from gamesurplus. Ginkgopolis has been a huge hit with our Euro gaming friends. The box is really ugly but inside is a very tight elegant Carcassone like game with cards and a lot less luck. It's not in stores right now, but it should be in a couple of weeks. It lasts about an hour and is about as complex as Kingdom Builder. It is more complex than Carc but that complexity adds a lot to the game. I'm glad I paid somewhat of a premium to get it at BGG Con, worth the extra bux I spent.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:30
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PaybackJack posted:Speaking of games that have little decision making. We played the new stronghold games edition of Crude and boy was that a game where luck played a huge factor. I won with about $300 more than my nearest competitor and wasn't the one who ended the game. What happened was the guy that ended the game was to my left so by the time it came back to me there was a new economy on the board and I ended up getting to sell all my stuff for a lot more than everyone else. Overall the game had really great pieces and the mechanics were smooth it just wasn't very interesting and the dice were too random. My group had a positive experience a couple weeks ago where the game was pretty competitive with a couple big swings and the player that won was the player that manipulated the markets the most and bought and sold his equipment with the most foresight. We played again last week and it it was terrible. A ridiculous number of double 6s came up which triggered an awful amount of events. 2 hours into the game a quick series of double 6s and those associated events in a row caused 3 of us to basically reset to a standing worse off than the initial state of the game. I think one guy was down to less than 20 million on hand and nothing other than 2 gas stations on the board. I realize it was just due to a statistical anomaly but I will probably never play that game again.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:46
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Were you playing the original Crude or the new one? I thought they got rid of the die rolls in the new version of Crude.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:08
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So what is the Euro-de-jour or hot new worker placement economy game? I've been looking for something fresh. My friends and I enjoyed Puerto Rico quite a bit, so that level of complexity and specifically time commitment would be good. I'd prefer something that is shorter rather than longer. For what it's worth, I didn't care for Agricola the few times I played it. I felt it overstayed its welcome and I couldn't get a handle on the abstraction between what I was doing with my people and driving toward a victory condition. I've also heard that Container is interesting, but really long and requires experience to enjoy. I actually stumbled across Ginkgopolis browsing BGG last night, but it doesn't seem actually available in stores right now. I personally haven't played 7 Wonders, but I hear it's pretty fantastic.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:34
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Antillese posted:So what is the Euro-de-jour or hot new worker placement economy game? I've been looking for something fresh. My friends and I enjoyed Puerto Rico quite a bit, so that level of complexity and specifically time commitment would be good. I'd prefer something that is shorter rather than longer. Castles of Burgundy is pretty fantastic, relatively short, and well-received as a good euro.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:44
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Lorini posted:Were you playing the original Crude or the new one? I thought they got rid of the die rolls in the new version of Crude. It was the new one and there were definitely dice. I have no idea how it differs from the original, it felt like it was an older game with a couple of its quirks.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:44
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Netrunner is up for $20.99 as the daily deal at coolstuff: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165000 And I just got it last week, too 
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Nov 27, 2012 21:53
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The Sean posted:Netrunner is up for $20.99 as the daily deal at coolstuff: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165000 Yeah, I saw that and this is right after I decided to skip out on their Black Friday sale last night.
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Nov 27, 2012 21:59
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Cosmic Encounters owns and is an almost pure negotiation game, like Diplomacy which inspired it. Just like their isn't really ~optimal play~ in Diplomacy that will lead to a solo victory without other people loving up horribly, same in Cosmic Encounter. I guess it is just the euro-babby mentality of needing to prove yr da best.
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Nov 27, 2012 22:01
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The General posted:Cosmic encounter is a terrible game, and the only choice you really have is "Help this assault or not" which the answer is always Yes, unless it would cause somebody else to win.
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Nov 27, 2012 22:09
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I'm not really sure how Answering Yes is always the right answer. Do you play your games with robots?
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Nov 27, 2012 22:27
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PerniciousKnid posted:You should email FFG and tell them your copy was missing all the cards, hopefully they'll make it right and you can play the game for real. Cards aren't really that important in CE. The ~optimal play~ is in negotiation, not cardplay.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:10
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The Sean posted:Netrunner is up for $20.99 as the daily deal at coolstuff: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165000 Did you get two sets? You should get a second set.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:13
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OK guys, I need a recommendation for a huge, long, political-ish game. I'm thinking something along the lines of Twilight Imperium or Eclipse, but my group always seems to prefer fantasy themes more than sci-fi. I've been successful in getting them to play Space Alert and Galaxy Trucker, but it was a huge pain selling the theme. They all seem to like the Dune board game (I know it's sci-fi, but they have all already read the books so it is forgiven) and Risk 2210, but are always talking about playing new 3+ hour games. I have very little interest in playing Dune or Risk, as when it comes to long games I prefer less war and more politics and trading. And yes, I do recognize that the two games I said they like are both sci-fi, they just seem to want things that are not too science-fictiony. I convinced my wife to buy me TI3 for xmas, but is there something that we can play before-hand to try and get them on-board with it?
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Nov 27, 2012 23:15
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Shadows over Camelot isn't Huge but it's pretty good. The Game Of Thrones game is basically exactly what you're looking for though.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:17
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Shadows over Camelot isn't Huge but it's pretty good. The Game Of Thrones game is basically exactly what you're looking for though. Well that makes it easy, as I already purchased GoT for my bother who is part of my gaming group for xmas. Since he and many of the others in the group are totally into GoT, I figured they would dig it.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:20
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