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Kraven Moorhed posted:For Innovation, how the hell do you explain this game to people in a cogent manner? Usually I can give people some understanding of a system at work (shut up Fuzzlewhack) but despite an elegant design, Innovation throws so many things in your way. The terminology in particular is unnecessarily abstract: "meld" has no reason to be called that, "I demand that you" implies a single target when it's the exact opposite, and the fact that "scoring" is only a means to get the actual cards that make you win is redundant and confusing to new players. I'm tempted to print out new tip cards with a key/errata to clear this up and serve as a more concise and useful reference, but I'm not sure where to start. The act of putting sets of cards down on the table or adding cards to one of those sets is called "melding", and has been for a very long time -- ever played Rummy? Innovation uses a lot of strange terms, but that isn't one of them.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:15
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Countblanc posted:That seems like a pretty crippling weakness to me!! And I don't really think "most people" knew that beyond those who have already sunk time into buying it, it's very rare that people mention that particular, damning flaw when doing recommendations here. They're exaggerating it just to be snarky and preachy. They do this in almost every video they make. Sentinels is not mechanically the best game ever, but saying that "there are no choices in the game and you just play the best card" is dumb.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:16
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Crackbone posted:Speaking of SotM, Shut Up just savaged it in their latest post. It felt like a pretty fair assessment to me. I like SotM, but it's never going to be one of my favorite games (or even one of my favorite co-op games) because you do have so few actual choices. A lot of people here like to point out that quarterbacking isn't really a thing because it's too hard to keep track of everyone's hands, but I think the real reason quarterbacking is a non-issue is because there are so few non-trivial choices to make in the first place. You usually just play the best card you have, and if everyone does that consistently you'll usually win.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:16
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Unfit For Space posted:That's weird. I just bought forty dollars worth of stuff off the site and paid the same ten bucks for shipping. Anyway, you could buy them off the BGG marketplace for less shipping. I actually wound up doing that with Unity before I went to the GTG site and it cost me maybe nine bucks total. Ambuscade on marketplace: $25. Unity on marketplace: $3.95+$9.50 shipping.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:22
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I wanted to give an update on the Netrunner Cores I mentioned earlier. I offered to buy some new and a few (6) used Netrunner Cores for 17.99 each and was willing to ship them for free, but some bunghole basically offered to buy all 8 Core sets for around 28 dollars (edit- 28 each). At that price, you could just get them from MiniatureMarket or CoolStuffInc. So I apologize for raising people's hope, but I thought this could have been a cool thing.
Shammypants fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Aug 3, 2013 |
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Aug 3, 2013 19:30
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Paradoxish posted:It felt like a pretty fair assessment to me. I like SotM, but it's never going to be one of my favorite games (or even one of my favorite co-op games) because you do have so few actual choices. A lot of people here like to point out that quarterbacking isn't really a thing because it's too hard to keep track of everyone's hands, but I think the real reason quarterbacking is a non-issue is because there are so few non-trivial choices to make in the first place. You usually just play the best card you have, and if everyone does that consistently you'll usually win. Only if you play with the most straightforward heroes against the easier villains. In every other match-up that best card depends on the situation. Sometimes you need to protect/heal your teammate instead of dealing lots of damage. Sometimes you need to save your hard hitting damage card for a bigger threat. Sometimes you need to risk not healing yourself because some spell you have deals more damage if you have lots of wounds. Sometimes you need to waste your turns opening equipment cards because your buddy needs to break them to make his robots. etc. etc.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:39
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Countblanc posted:That seems like a pretty crippling weakness to me!! And I don't really think "most people" knew that beyond those who have already sunk time into buying it, it's very rare that people mention that particular, damning flaw when doing recommendations here. Uh yeah gotta agree here. "Mechanical weakness of the gameplay" seems, uh, kind of important.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:40
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Vafthrudnir posted:Only if you play with the most straightforward heroes against the easier villains. We completely randomize everything and, despite having played a couple of the heroes with the highest listed complexity, this hasn't been my experience at all. The relatively small number of unique cards in each deck means there's almost always a "best" option. If you need to take damage to do damage, then you need to take damage because the alternative is being useless. If it's too risky to do that, then you might as well not even be playing. Most of the engine building decks don't actually offer you more than one way to build your damage (or support or whatever) engine, so any risk vs. reward mechanics feel like a complete illusion to me. The one area the game does offer choice is in deciding whether to do damage now and, if you do, what you should target. The problem is that there's usually a very obvious chain of target priorities. Like I said, I like Sentinels. It's just that we're something like 8-10 plays deep at this point and have beaten a lot of the villains, so I don't think my opinion of it as fun-enough filler is likely to change. It's a game I'd recommend, but only with reservations and caveats.
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Aug 3, 2013 19:53
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Deviant posted:Ambuscade on marketplace: $25. Sorry, guess the place I bought from only had one copy of Unity. I obviously didn't go with the guy that was charging ten bucks shipping upfront for an envelope's worth of cards.
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Aug 3, 2013 20:09
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Paradoxish posted:We completely randomize everything and, despite having played a couple of the heroes with the highest listed complexity, this hasn't been my experience at all. The relatively small number of unique cards in each deck means there's almost always a "best" option. If you need to take damage to do damage, then you need to take damage because the alternative is being useless. If it's too risky to do that, then you might as well not even be playing. Most of the engine building decks don't actually offer you more than one way to build your damage (or support or whatever) engine, so any risk vs. reward mechanics feel like a complete illusion to me. The one area the game does offer choice is in deciding whether to do damage now and, if you do, what you should target. The problem is that there's usually a very obvious chain of target priorities. Maybe our group is dumb but we've never really felt that the game is playing itself. We often argue about which target to destroy, who to heal and whatnot. And that's about all the choice I can expect from a co-op card game. I do think the expansions are kinda better at this. SuperKlaus posted:Uh yeah gotta agree here. "Mechanical weakness of the gameplay" seems, uh, kind of important. You play Sentinels mostly for the theme and variety. If playing a game mostly for its theme sounds dumb then you probably shouldn't play Sentinels.
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Aug 3, 2013 20:16
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Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Unity Mini 1 $3.49 Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: The Scholar Mini 1 $3.49 Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Ambuscade Mini 1 $3.49 Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Miss Information Mini 1 $3.49 Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: The Final Wasteland Mini 1 $2.99 Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Silver Gulch Mini 1 $2.99 Are the prices I got my Sentinels promos from Rockin'B Games (at March 2013). I don't think he has them in stock anymore but shoot him a mail at mrb.rockinbgames@gmail.com. He'll order them for you from his sources and if they are unavailable he'll let you know. Then you'll wait for the next batch to be printed. echoMateria fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Aug 3, 2013 |
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Aug 3, 2013 20:22
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echoMateria posted:Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Unity Mini 1 $3.49 Unity and Ambuscade just got back into print - they're listed on the main website. So people should be sending more of them out, at non-ridiculous prices. I think it's a fair assessment, exaggerated for comical effect. There is choice, but it's really dependent on what's going on with the field state, and there are enough times where there's only 1-2 really optimal choices to make. At times like that, SoTM does feel like a game where there's not a lot of choice at times, and there are certainly heroes who essentially play themselves. It's not especially mechanically complex, which can be seen as a flaw if you're looking for an intense strategic depth, or it can be an advantage if you're decompressing from a more intense game and want to relax with something where you have an excuse to yell cheesy one-liners. At that point, however, we start getting into the damning, subjective area of "What is fun?" and the attempt to justify games with more theme than substance. I've enjoyed SoTM as a co-operative game that plays quickly - if people don't want to do some team play, we'll bust out Love Letter, because it's quick yet has a bit more depth in choices. In a situational sense, it can lead one or two board game nights, but then move into the "We're looking for something quick and light, bust out SoTM", until variety gets added and people regain interest - I'm guessing that once the next box comes out, it'll resurge for a period, then calm down again. The rules text thing was a little irksome - they didn't really work with the tokens for bonus/penalty tracking, which removes having to constantly check rules text. Still, understandable, and it's a review of the base game - I'll admit getting the little phone app has smoothed play as far as HP tracking. Honestly? They did a good job looking at it, and while I'm not fond of some of their complaints, they're reviewing the game honestly, without misrepresenting anything or making far-out claims. Games are something that rely on depth of mechanics and player interaction, and interaction is limited to what your personal deck can do, what communication is shared between players, and what the optimal strategy is. The fact that it is mechanically possible to do solo play and that the villain/environment decks play themselves is the weakness that they're getting at - the mechanics are designed in a fashion that minimal interaction beyond some necessary choices, which usually hinge towards what information is being shared and what can be seen as the optimal choice.
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Aug 3, 2013 20:46
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Countblanc posted:That seems like a pretty crippling weakness to me!! And I don't really think "most people" knew that beyond those who have already sunk time into buying it, it's very rare that people mention that particular, damning flaw when doing recommendations here. Yeah, I knew the basic deck stuff didn't look very fun to me and that the art is supposed to be bad, but I had no idea of the samey-ness and tedium of the game. But I'm also one of those people who thought Seasons was a farming game.
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Aug 3, 2013 21:09
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XyrlocShammypants posted:I wanted to give an update on the Netrunner Cores I mentioned earlier. I offered to buy some new and a few (6) used Netrunner Cores for 17.99 each and was willing to ship them for free, but some bunghole basically offered to buy all 8 Core sets for around 28 dollars (edit- 28 each). At that price, you could just get them from MiniatureMarket or CoolStuffInc. So I apologize for raising people's hope, but I thought this could have been a cool thing. There's always some fuckwit ready to ruin someone's day, isn't there? Never mind, we've still got just as many sets as we did before. Thanks for trying.
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Aug 3, 2013 22:00
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For those of you looking to get a bit more from your Thunderstone set... you should try out Epic Thunderstone. I enjoy it quite a bit more than regular Thunderstone and this is a variant that got a bit of popularity on BGG a while back. I've played it enough to have refined it and this is how it works in my group at this point. Please note, I have ALL the sets of Thunderstone prior to Thunderstone Advance. I'm not sure how this would work out for the advance sets so your mileage may vary. I won't go into the heavy details on how to set up your game so this is just high level stuff here. If anyone wants more information, just let me know.
We don't play Thunderstone any other way now.
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Aug 3, 2013 22:07
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Achmed Jones posted:Yeah, I knew the basic deck stuff didn't look very fun to me and that the art is supposed to be bad, but I had no idea of the samey-ness and tedium of the game. That's because the game isn't samey and tedious. They're simultaneously complaining that the game gets complicated and there's a lot of stuff going on and then that the decks are too simple and repetitive. These are not compatible descriptions. In actual point of fact, while there are duplicate cards in the decks, this still means usually a minimum of 10 unique cards even in the villain decks and usually more, with a variety of different effects and (with the caveat that trading damage back and forth is a core element of the gameplay) relatively little overlap between decks. And even small differences wind up mattering. It's fair enough to say that a big part of the game is choosing what the best card to play is (and, if you have more than one out, which power(s) to use) - like many other tabletop games - but they seem to be contending that this choice is usually obvious and unequivocal. That might be true of a game like Pandemic, but it certainly hasn't been true in most of the games of Sentinels I've played.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:04
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malkav11 posted:That's because the game isn't samey and tedious. They're simultaneously complaining that the game gets complicated and there's a lot of stuff going on and then that the decks are too simple and repetitive. These are not compatible descriptions. They absolutely are, because the actions they're complaining are repetitive aren't actually difficult or interesting. They don't say the game gets complicated in that you make interesting decisions, but that you just add more math that you have to do. Nothing they said is contradictory.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:11
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Countblanc posted:They absolutely are, because the actions they're complaining are repetitive aren't actually difficult or interesting. They don't say the game gets complicated in that you make interesting decisions, but that you just add more math that you have to do. Nothing they said is contradictory. But the increased complexity of the situations is exactly what makes the decisions difficult and interesting.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:24
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malkav11 posted:But the increased complexity of the situations is exactly what makes the decisions difficult and interesting. Imagine you have (for no reason at all) four columns of numbers, and choosing the column with the highest number wins you a game. You can add increasingly difficult mathematical operations to each column, greatly increasing the complexity of the calculation without increasing the complexity of the decision at all.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:39
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malkav11 posted:That's because the game isn't samey and tedious. They're simultaneously complaining that the game gets complicated and there's a lot of stuff going on and then that the decks are too simple and repetitive. These are not compatible descriptions. These aren't incompatible at all. From the review, it looks like every turn, you do whatever does the most damage. To figure this out, you do some math. The strategic dimension comes in not knowing what cards you will get, and in not knowing what cards are going to come up from the villain/environment decks. As far as I can tell, the villain/environment decks add a couple more terms to the calculation that you must compute, but do not actually do anything to make your choice of what action to take interesting. You might be able to go all Tales of the Arabian Nights on it and pick what you want to do purely based on flavor/fluff than on mechanical effect, but from what I can see Sentinels of the Multiverse does not have a strong enough narrative to make non-mechanically-optimal choices otherwise fun. This is compounded by the fact that unlike narrative-first games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, you know precisely what effect your choice will have and so there's no element of mystery and no hoping for a long shot. That is, you can't do something that looks silly (talk to a lion, say) while hoping that it'll turn out well because you know exactly what the result of every choice will be, even if you do not know what complications will arise from the villain/environment decks in the future. I say this having played neither game, but this is the impression I got from what I've seen and read online.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:58
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echoMateria posted:Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion: Unity Mini 1 $3.49 Yeah, he just got them to me for $3.95 each, with 3.95 Shipping. I am satisfied with that.
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Aug 4, 2013 00:11
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I love the SU&SD Show but this video felt to me that they just hyped up each other in a negative way and the video turned into a flood of complaints as a result. I agree with half of the stuff they said, Sentinels is a game with issues and we don't play it often but lets be fair, some of their comments were just ridiculous. Of course playing one of the cards in your hand is a better choice then the others in your turn, that's same for all the card games, how is that one card being optimal in a situation is a bad thing? Then the one about all the text being on cards, that all the flavor and color of the game depending on the decks that the game itself not having any before the decks come in. Isn't that the same with most of the card games, again? Think of Magic the Gathering for example, isn't it just "Warring wizards with 20 HPs, go!" if not for all the cards with complex texts in them, all the colorful decks? The biggest problem I see here is the way they convey their opinion and how seriously most people take it. This video is the opinion of these three individuals, based on the limited number of plays they had of this game, by using only the core set (even if they don't expressly state this so there). So please, go play a game somewhere and decide for yourself. Do not take a single game group's opinions on a game as the final word. My personal experience shows that if you are able to take part in this hobby, you can find a way to try most of these games before buying them.
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Aug 4, 2013 00:36
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Ultimately it seems like a very shallow review from a group of people I expect more from, because I've seen more from them. And that's from someone who played plenty of games with just the core box before getting the expansions.
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Aug 4, 2013 00:40
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echoMateria posted:I agree with half of the stuff they said, Sentinels is a game with issues and we don't play it often but lets be fair, some of their comments were just ridiculous. Of course playing one of the cards in your hand is a better choice then the others in your turn, that's same for all the card games, how is that one card being optimal in a situation is a bad thing? poo poo, 7 Wonders is full of actual choice. Dominion's choices extend outside the cards in your hand. Even Thunderstone, gently caress that game, has actual choices. Innovation is awful random monkey cheese and that game's chock full of decision-making. Dixit? Holy gently caress. That's been A Thing in game design ever since the Board Game Renaissance started. Making games that involve actually interesting choices, and why games that play themselves aren't worth buying. echoMateria posted:Then the one about all the text being on cards, that all the flavor and color of the game depending on the decks that the game itself not having any before the decks come in. Isn't that the same with most of the card games, again? Think of Magic the Gathering for example, isn't it just "Warring wizards with 20 HPs, go!" if not for all the cards with complex texts in them, all the colorful decks? Dixit is full of life, color, and variety, with no text. Magic uses keywords. Most of their text nowadays either reiterates keywords or is for flavor. You don't have to go through 2 paragraphs with each individual M:tG card to determine how much damage you do; one guy has Trample and the other guy has Phasing, etc. Sentinels doesn't compare because they decided they were too good to have a "system."
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Aug 4, 2013 00:50
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I would love a superhero game where the theme involves actual superheroics. I don't consider a battle royale a proper superhero theme, certainly not one I'd accept to a point I'd ignore other aspects of the game experience. Plus, stuff like saving civilians from burning buildings while still trying to stick it to a villain is great material on which to build a real strategic experience.
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Aug 4, 2013 00:51
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I've only played Sentinels a few times, but I had a similar reaction. A lot of the flavour stuff was cool ("we threw that bad guy to the velociraptors!") but it had the whole "deck plays you" thing that people complain about with MtG, without any deckbuilding aspects to alleviate it. In the last game I played we used a bunch of cards that gave us all +5 damage or something but it never really felt like we had done that so much as the cards gave it to us. Maybe some of the expansions or the more complex heroes change that, though.
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Aug 4, 2013 00:51
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echoMateria posted:I love the SU&SD Show but this video felt to me that they just hyped up each other in a negative way and the video turned into a flood of complaints as a result. That's completely not true. Their complaint was that there was ALWAYS a clearly best card. Good games should present a player with a difficult choice about what to play at least sometimes. quote:how is that one card being optimal in a situation is a bad thing? When you never have to make a difficult choice, that's a bad thing. quote:Then the one about all the text being on cards, that all the flavor and color of the game depending on the decks that the game itself not having any before the decks come in. Isn't that the same with most of the card games, again? Think of Magic the Gathering for example, isn't it just "Warring wizards with 20 HPs, go!" if not for all the cards with complex texts in them, all the colorful decks? Based on what I saw, MtG cards have far less going on than many of those SotM cards. MtG is actually very good about minimizing the kind of "always have to be tracked" effects that SotM seems to have. quote:The biggest problem I see here is the way they convey their opinion and how seriously most people take it. This video is the opinion of these three individuals, based on the limited number of plays they had of this game, by using only the core set (even if they don't expressly state this so there). So please, go play a game somewhere and decide for yourself. Do not take a single game group's opinions on a game as the final word. My personal experience shows that if you are able to take part in this hobby, you can find a way to try most of these games before buying them. I don't have enough time to try every game that somebody wants to play. Hence I find reviews are kind of a necessity.
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Aug 4, 2013 01:39
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echoMateria posted:The biggest problem I see here is the way they convey their opinion and how seriously most people take it. This video is the opinion of these three individuals, based on the limited number of plays they had of this game, by using only the core set (even if they don't expressly state this so there). So please, go play a game somewhere and decide for yourself. Do not take a single game group's opinions on a game as the final word. My personal experience shows that if you are able to take part in this hobby, you can find a way to try most of these games before buying them. This is solipsistic. Your personal experience is just that: personal experience. It has little bearing on the buying habits or ease of access of anyone else who takes part in these hobbies. If someone has no FLGS nearby that stocks this (or one at all) or a friend that owns it, what do they have other than reviews? And sure, nobody should take a single review as gospel, but when it brings problematic aspects to light it should at least be given weight-- especially if it echoes past complaints and builds consensus among those with experience. As for your criticism about them only using the core set, do the expansions actually address their critiques about the core system of the game, or is it simply adding variety to lengthen its lifespan? If there were serious rule changes and alterations to the workings of the game I could see the validity in that, but to expect a reviewer to track down every expansion and promo pack to try every possible combination of playstate is a bit much. Kraven Moorhed fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 02:01
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Played my first game of Tales of the Arabian Nights with MY BOYFRIEND earlier today. It was everything that was promised, although I would recommend a house rule that having a changed sex doesn't automatically prevent you from winning. It's much too difficult to get rid of, since the only way is to have another. He'd won basically a half-hour before the end, but spent that whole time having to aimlessly wander in hopes of finding a way to remove a condition. Other than that, an absolute blast. I was a charming sea pirate who ended up spending two turns trapped in a jail in an undersea prison 'for his own protection', comically failing to outwit the mad jailer and outfight the ugly one, before becoming wealthy and powerful after he tried to outwit a trickster spirit. (Not because he succeeded, just because the spirit thought it was cute.) And MY BOYFRIEND started out as a charming ladies' man in a pursuit for knowledge, had a few hilarious pratfalls that ended up with him greedy, insane, and in despair, but all's well that ends well, because he won the game a wealthy, knowledgeable mage who married into the position of Vizier and even more wealth. (And then his wife died.) Great game, but do not take it out around 'play-to-win'-ers, or you will lose a friend, a table, or both.
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Aug 4, 2013 02:29
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Sentinels is not a great game, but it works well. It's too bad SU&SD had such a bad time with it. In terms of the more specific complaints: it's true that it's not a terribly deep game, but it does require good strategy (some of which must be picked up over a few plays as you see how each villain and hero plays) to maximize your chances of winning. Once you've figured these out, and once you have a good idea what's in each deck, play does become less interesting and more auto-pilot - but there's a lot of combinations to play with before you get to that point. Like many co-ops, there's a puzzle to solve, and once you've solved it well then further plays are less rewarding. As a comparison, though, I'd say there's many more interesting decisions in Sentinels than there are in other popular co-ops like Forbidden Island or Flash Point (both of which I find to be frustratingly auto-pilot/tedious). To be clear, this is not an auto-pilot story-generator game or something. This is a game that's meant to be challenging and strategic, that also happens to be strongly themed (much moreso than, say, Legendary). But yeah, there's not as many interesting decisions as there are in most competitive games, because your opponent is (after all) just a deck. If you aren't getting joy out of the theme, out of being heroes co-operating against a super-villain, this game isn't going to work for you. There's other problems. The game is a fiddly and, more frustratingly, it's more fiddly than it needs to be. Some symbols and some better design (and probably another core mechanic) would go a long way here. But it's also a game that I've seen positive reactions to from almost everyone who's tried it (and it's probably the game that's been "checked out" of our work collection most often). Right now it feels like the champion of a particularly untalented weight class. With a few fixes and mechanical tweaks, the game would be a lot more interesting and have much more longevity. But it's still a decent game.
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Aug 4, 2013 02:59
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Take a chill pill guys. Aren't you overreacting a little?
echoMateria fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 03:03
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Can't you all just accept my criticism of this criticism at face value? Do you all hate fun or something?
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Aug 4, 2013 03:10
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In sum, some people like the game because its thematic while others dislike its flawed mechanics. Some people hold more nuanced positions along this continuum. Alrighty, lets move on. Colon V posted:Other than that, an absolute blast. I was a charming sea pirate who ended up spending two turns trapped in a jail in an undersea prison 'for his own protection', comically failing to outwit the mad jailer and outfight the ugly one, before becoming wealthy and powerful after he tried to outwit a trickster spirit. (Not because he succeeded, just because the spirit thought it was cute.) And MY BOYFRIEND started out as a charming ladies' man in a pursuit for knowledge, had a few hilarious pratfalls that ended up with him greedy, insane, and in despair, but all's well that ends well, because he won the game a wealthy, knowledgeable mage who married into the position of Vizier and even more wealth. (And then his wife died.) I really want this game, and made the mistake of not buying it before the SD&SU review. It's now unavailable on CSI AND amazon. I'll have to spend a fortune to own this.
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Aug 4, 2013 03:36
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Colon V posted:Played my first game of Tales of the Arabian Nights with MY BOYFRIEND earlier today. It was everything that was promised, although I would recommend a house rule that having a changed sex doesn't automatically prevent you from winning. It's much too difficult to get rid of, since the only way is to have another. He'd won basically a half-hour before the end, but spent that whole time having to aimlessly wander in hopes of finding a way to remove a condition. My playgroup really needs a less "crunchy" game, and I've been on the fence about TotAN for a while now. The only thing that worries me is that when people talk about how you don't have a lot of "real" input into the story, and you're at the mercy of randomness, it reminds me of the criticisms for Arkham Horror. Is that an unfair comparison, and if so, why?
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Aug 4, 2013 03:37
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echoMateria posted:Take a chill pill guys. Aren't you overreacting a little? Whew, careful there, you were dangerously close to having a discussion!
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Aug 4, 2013 03:48
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Ashenai posted:My playgroup really needs a less "crunchy" game, and I've been on the fence about TotAN for a while now. The only thing that worries me is that when people talk about how you don't have a lot of "real" input into the story, and you're at the mercy of randomness, it reminds me of the criticisms for Arkham Horror. Is that an unfair comparison, and if so, why? It's the difference between "I just got mauled by a lion because I didn't have Weapon Use, gently caress this game" and "I just got mauled by a lion because I didn't have Weapon Use, I knew I should have prayed instead!" Trickyrive posted:Is this out of print, or just an artificial shortage due to the review early this week? girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 04:11
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Radio Talmudist posted:In sum, some people like the game because its thematic while others dislike its flawed mechanics. Some people hold more nuanced positions along this continuum. Alrighty, lets move on. Is this out of print, or just an artificial shortage due to the review early this week? ^^^^ Probably no need to worry yet then, distributors should have shipments come in next week. I see it's in stock on the zman website (msrp) so that's probably a good sign. Trickyrive fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 04:12
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Put me in the 'like Sentinels but agree with SUSD's criticisms' camp too. There is plenty to like about the game: there's tonnes of variety, it carries its theme well and it leads to some great moments. However, moment to moment it can be terribly dull as well. In the six or so games I've played (including expansions) there's been a number of turns where players had no options but to draw more cards, waiting for something useful to pop up. That's not 'playing a game' nor is it 'being a superhero'. There should be options, risks and trade-offs. It's a nice game that is in desperate need of a couple good house rules. That said, its still going to hit the table, since its fun enough. At an hour a throw and requiring little rules lawyering, it fills a niche.
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Aug 4, 2013 04:38
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This is approaching Arkham Horror levels of discourse...
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Aug 4, 2013 04:48
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 09:33 |
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There's nothing wrong with some number of turns being 'unexciting' so long as those turns have meaning in the game. In Netrunner, you sometimes spend turns doing nothing but getting 3 credits. In Dominion, you sometimes play a single action, buy a single card or do absolutely nothing. As long as those 'less exciting' turns have some consequence later in the game, they are probably better than amping up all cards power level (or, in some cases where higher costs of cards are limiting actions on turns, lowering the price of cards to where card cost is inconsequential). Simultaneously, sometimes having 'null turns' is good for game balancing. I also feel like from a roleplaying perspective, those boring turns are like the scene at the end of Avengers where everyone is bored eating dinner at the restaurant. Even superheroes have to poop and eat- not everyday is a crime fighting day.
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Aug 4, 2013 04:57
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