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'Some' dull turns isn't a big deal, but Sentinels, for me, has a disproportionate amount. When it's clicking it really can be a great superhero engine, but there is a lot of 'doing your taxes.'
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Aug 4, 2013 05:02
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echoMateria posted:Take a chill pill guys. Aren't you overreacting a little? Well, if you're going to resort to that, I'll drop it. XyrlocShammypants posted:Even superheroes have to poop and eat- not everyday is a crime fighting day. I've always wanted to play a superhero game (board/otherwise) that approaches the genre from a similar perspective to the live action The Tick or ATHF: doing all the goofy back-end stuff like managing your PR and finding time to make enough money for sustenance, all the while trying to reconcile your eventual superiority complex with the fact that your neglected everyday identity gets constantly poo poo on when he/she bothers to show up groggy and bruised to work. I feel like Vlaada could pull off a suitably Orwellian mixture of mechanics and style to create a new, horrible tragedy for every game. Kraven Moorhed fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 05:14
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I have been in search of a particular board game for a very long time and I thought that perhaps this would be the place to ask about it (I did not see any rules prohibiting such questions in the OP). The game is essentially the polar opposite of the Game of Life. If I recall correctly, the objective of the game is to get rid of all of your cards or all of your money in an effort to "die." The cards you draw generally screw you or or opponents over by giving you more money and/or cards. Some cards will even have players stand up and trade positions with each other without taking their cards or money with them so that they have to completely re-do their entire strategy. It has been almost 10 years since I played this game, so its name escapes me, but I remember that it was great fun. I have tried to search for it under the name of the Game of Death, but that doesn't come up with a match. No one, not even board game retailers in my area, are familiar with this game, so it may be that it is a really old/obscurely produced game that is no longer in production. Who knows. Any help or even a name from a knowledgeable goon would be really appreciated.
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Aug 4, 2013 05:36
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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? I, for one, like TotAN quite a lot and I dislike Arkham Horror a whole drat lot. To put it shortly, the former is much easier to learn and play, equally thematic if not more so, and it lets you fart around and enjoy the stories as you please because it isn't co-op and there's no obligation to "play well".
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Aug 4, 2013 05:41
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Any opinions on Village?
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Aug 4, 2013 05:43
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Gloom, a card game all about ruining the lives of your family members while enriching the lives of your opponents' families, maybe?Cocks Cable posted:Any opinions on Village? I've played it twice, it was okay. The tempo game of having to kill off family at the right time was the most interesting thing about it; the rest felt like every other medieval euro around. I think Tzolk'in does the "timing matters" thing in a more interesting way. Ledhed fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 05:46
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Sithalchemist posted:I have been in search of a particular board game for a very long time and I thought that perhaps this would be the place to ask about it (I did not see any rules prohibiting such questions in the OP). The game is essentially the polar opposite of the Game of Life. If I recall correctly, the objective of the game is to get rid of all of your cards or all of your money in an effort to "die." The cards you draw generally screw you or or opponents over by giving you more money and/or cards. Some cards will even have players stand up and trade positions with each other without taking their cards or money with them so that they have to completely re-do their entire strategy. This sounds like The MAD Magazine Game.
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Aug 4, 2013 05:47
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Achmed Jones posted: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. That's an accurate summation of the SU&SD review, yes, which is not an accurate summation of the game. Damage output is important because ultimately it's how you defeat the villains, but there's a lot more going on than just doing damage and plenty of other potential priorities, and even when you're doing that damage in most cases you need to prioritize targets. And there are certainly (contrary to what the review suggested) synergies both within individual hero decks and between heroes. echoMateria posted: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). I saw characters from at least one of the expansions (Infernal Relics) in their box and possibly two. But I do think it's safe to say that the expansions would be unlikely to change anybody's mind. Some of the expansion decks get a little more funky and experimental with their mechanics but it's still essentially the same game.
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Aug 4, 2013 06:23
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There are a number of villain decks that do not care how much damage you can put out in a single turn because if you don't remove their ability to kill you they will do so anyways, or they'll just consistently throw threats out that have to be deal with while they destroy your cards that allow you to effectively retaliate. That being said it usually isn't hard to figure out what you're doing on a turn to turn basis, but I enjoy having a relatively light-medium game with tons and tons of variety and theme. Honestly my biggest complaint about Sentinels is a lack of key words or key symbols.
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Aug 4, 2013 06:34
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SuperKlaus posted: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. This really gets me thinking about a superheroes expansion or variant of Flash Point Fire Rescue, actually. It would fit really well...
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Aug 4, 2013 08:47
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Sithalchemist posted:I have been in search of a particular board game for a very long time and I thought that perhaps this would be the place to ask about it (I did not see any rules prohibiting such questions in the OP). The game is essentially the polar opposite of the Game of Life. If I recall correctly, the objective of the game is to get rid of all of your cards or all of your money in an effort to "die." The cards you draw generally screw you or or opponents over by giving you more money and/or cards. Some cards will even have players stand up and trade positions with each other without taking their cards or money with them so that they have to completely re-do their entire strategy. Could be Go For Broke?
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Aug 4, 2013 11:12
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SuperKlaus posted: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. Descent 2nd Edition actually fits this bill really well. In most of the scenarios, you aren't just trying to bash down the monsters until they relent, you are trying to rescue civilians, protect farms, race to powerful artifacts, etc. It's just got a Fantasy theme instead of a Superhero theme.
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Aug 4, 2013 11:35
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I find all the discussion about Sentinels really interesting. My own experience of the game was really ambivalent: I liked the unique challenges/heroes but it did feel like I was playing it in auto-pilot most of the times and once my combo was out on a hero, it was just a matter of playing it out again and again until you won/lost. On the other hand, heroes did tend to play differently so at least there was some variety there. In the end, I stopped playing Sentinels because, weirdly, the Lords of the Rings LCG gave me the exact same things feelings I got from Sentinels but with much more choices involved. It might be weird to think about but the two games are remarkably similar: they both have you face a custom encounter deck, but I always feel the LotR game gives you a lot more choice: you have to deck-build for a start, which some people might not like but it does add variety and choice to the game. As well as that, you have to make meaningful choices on who's going to quest/defend/attack, which cards you are going to play, how you use your resources etc. It just seemed to offer so much more than Sentinels in terms of choices, at least to me.
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Aug 4, 2013 12:36
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My group liked The Lords of the Rings LCG a little more than Sentinels of the Multiverse too. But since we played both with four players, we ran out of things to do in the Lords of the Rings LCG core game box very fast. It was also boringly easy playing four players, which was quite disappointing. There are some unofficial variants like adding more encounter cards to up the difficulty but we haven't tried those yet. After everyone played with each of the pre-constructed decks and beat all three of the scenarios no one asked to play it again. I thought about buying expansions to spice things up with new adventures and open up deck customization, but in order to have enough cards to customize four decks I ended up calculating to buy a bunch of them together and their total price was something that I can get 2-4 other games and it didn't really feel that good of an investment as a four player game. The core box still has a lot of mileage as a 2 player though, I'd highly recommended it as such. Trickyrive posted:Is this out of print, or just an artificial shortage due to the review early this week? If you can't find a place to buy Tales of the Arabian Nights or instead you would want a Cold War Spy Movie themed co-op version that feels like a better version of Pandemic :P, there is always Agents of SMERSH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVS--ehfo-4 Speaking of the superhero theme, if anyone got a chance to try Heroes of Metro City at an earlier convention or tries it at Gen-Con, please let me know of your opinions about it. echoMateria fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 13:15
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Yeah, I play with a friend that loves LCGs and bought pretty much all of the expansions, the latter quests are increasingly hard and pretty much not possible to complete using the pre-mades.
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Aug 4, 2013 13:19
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echoMateria posted:If you can't find a place to buy Tales of the Arabian Nights or instead you would want a Cold War Spy Movie themed co-op version that feels like a better version of Pandemic :P, there is always Agents of SMERSH In case anyone is interested, there is currently a KickStarter for Agents of SMERSH: Swagman's Hope, the (first) expansion to Agents of SMERSH.
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Aug 4, 2013 14:43
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We had a game of Chrononauts last night with 4 new people because it's my wife's favorite game. For those of you who have taught it to other people how do you go about doing it? Last night we had multiple people who were throughly confused with flipping a lynchpin and then needing to patch a year to get their ID to line up properly. A bunch of people always seem to think that they need to use a Reverse Fate on the year they actually need for their ID as opposed to the lynchpin that is associated with the year. Then if they do grasp that they need to flip the lynchpin they get confused on the need to put a patch on the year to actually have it 'finished' if they need it for their ID.
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Aug 4, 2013 14:55
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Funny, my playgroup is the opposite: we became completely disillusioned by the LOTR LCG and love SotM. LOTR might have more choices and deck building, but the core gameplay is too ridiculously spiky to be even remotely fun. There were too many games where we'd overcome absurd odds just to have a bad guy top deck that not only put us back in the shitter, but put us so far into it the game was lost within the turn. Sentinels is much less spiky depending on villain chosen, and each villain presents a smooth curve of difficulty. The strategy of SotM is 60% in hero selection and 40% in the gameplay, which we circumvent by going all-random using the sentinels app. My only complaints about sentinels is that GTG desperately needs to overhaul half of their heroes because they're just garbage compared to the other half. Each hero should be able to stand on its own while still building in team synergies - as it stands, half the heroes rely on specific other heroes to even become effective. Expatriette is a prime example - she desperately needs card draw and global damage buffs yet has none of her own, then you have Tempest who has all of the above.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:00
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I don't know, once you know the deck it's not too difficult to work out what to expect. With sentinels it just felt like we were going through the motions again and again with little variance from turn to turn. I'd play both games to be fair, since there are enough differences to make both worth playing, but at a push I would always pick LotR because the resource management in that game is so much more interesting.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:08
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The one time I played LotR the decision space was significantly narrower than when I played Sentinels because the quests said "you can't play 3/4 of the cards in your deck."
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Aug 4, 2013 15:14
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Poopy Palpy posted:The one time I played LotR the decision space was significantly narrower than when I played Sentinels because the quests said "you can't play 3/4 of the cards in your deck." Hint: don't start by playing the hardest quest in the base set.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:27
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Having just opened my seasons box I will say if nothing else this game is loving beautiful.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:36
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Having just opened my seasons box I will say if nothing else this game is loving beautiful. For those who have played it, is there any significance to the coin that pops out of the lower right corner of the player boards? It's perforated but there's no label on the coin. The rulebook doesn't seem to mention it. There are also photos in the book showing it both in place and removed with no mention of it directly. Ed: sorry quote not edit.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:40
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andrew smash posted:For those who have played it, is there any significance to the coin that pops out of the lower right corner of the player boards? It's perforated but there's no label on the coin. The rulebook doesn't seem to mention it. There are also photos in the book showing it both in place and removed with no mention of it directly.
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Aug 4, 2013 15:49
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andrew smash posted:Having just opened my seasons box I will say if nothing else this game is loving beautiful. Having played it for the first time this lunchtime, we used that popped-out space for the dice you choose. It's a pretty fun game, and it was interesting spacing out the engine-building part of the game over several years. The dice are incredibly cute, as well.
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Aug 4, 2013 16:03
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Played Clippers and Kings of Air and Steam yesterday, and disliked both. Clippers seemed like a chaotic try-to-get-routes-to-your-poo poo game and didn't really have that much depth to it that I could see. Perhaps 5 players was too much. Kings of Air and Steam, on the other hand, was a pick-up-and-deliver game, a genre which I've never played in before, and I'm not too inclined to do so after that (though again, I've heard that Steam or Age of Steam might be better as an example?). The zeppelins were awesome but too big for the spaces, the mechanics were so simplified as to make decision feel mostly pointless, and the visual design was beautiful steampunk. I just wish it was a more fun game!
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Aug 4, 2013 16:05
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andrew smash posted:Having just opened my seasons box I will say if nothing else this game is loving beautiful. None whatsoever. There's supposed to be a hole there in the player boards in which you place your die selection during drafting. The coins you popped out were just for support. Toss 'em or keep 'em, doesn't matter! In the expansion you get crescent-shaped player buffs that fit in that slot, too: 
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Aug 4, 2013 16:49
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LOTR LCG is probably a deeper game, and if you -want- to deckbuild regularly for different quests and such I could see enjoying it more than Sentinels. But personally deckbuilding is something I'd either like to be the game (as in Dominion etc) or skip entirely (as Sentinels lets me do). That said, I think there's room for both at my table and someday maybe I'll invest in LOTR. (On the other hand, this upcoming Pathfinder LCG looks pretty tempting too, and appears to offer a more complete base set - a friend of mine who owns the LOTR LCG complained that two base sets were necessary...I think to play with more than two people, but I can't recall exactly.)
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Aug 4, 2013 17:05
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silvergoose posted:Played Clippers and Kings of Air and Steam yesterday, and disliked both. Yes Kings of Air and Steam simply isn't fully developed. Try Cinque Terre or Valdora, they are both better pick up and deliver than Kings of Age and Steam. Age of Steam/Steam is a much more complex/deeper system than the others I mentioned, so if you like heavier games, those are both good, as is Railways of the World.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:08
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Someone convince me not to buy Archipelago. The SU&SD review piqued my interest, and so far nothing I've run into in any of the BGG reviews for the game has put me off. Our group manages to get pretty big, crunchy games out somewhat regularly. I love semi-cooperative games with competitive aspects, I like the possibility of a group loss, and I like the theme well enough. My opinions generally seem to align pretty closely to this thread and Archipelago doesn't get talked about much around here, so what's the deal? What big flaws am I missing and what other new-ish games should I possibly consider instead?
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Aug 4, 2013 17:13
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Cocks Cable posted:Any opinions on Village? We just played this yesterday with the expansion. It's a better game with the expansion because without it, the game becomes stale. Of course you don't need to buy both at first, but if you do enjoy Village then you'll want the expansion. It's basically a low luck Euro with an interesting mechanic where you basically try to kill off your original guys so you can get fresh guys who'll last longer to do the work for you. I'd give it a 7.5. Also for you Euro players, I just updated my Top/Hot 10 here.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:17
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malkav11 posted:That said, I think there's room for both at my table and someday maybe I'll invest in LOTR. (On the other hand, this upcoming Pathfinder LCG looks pretty tempting too, and appears to offer a more complete base set - a friend of mine who owns the LOTR LCG complained that two base sets were necessary...I think to play with more than two people, but I can't recall exactly.) I'm not really sure if this is accurate, but that might just be because as the card pool has grown you don't really need a handful of extra copies of a few cards from the Core Set. The core set is fine on its own, and if you are going to buy a second core set you are going to be way better served picking up new expansions for the same price. I guess if you absolutely must have 3x of every possible card for deckbuilding you should get it- but in a cooperative game I really don't think its important at all.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:30
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Paradoxish posted:Someone convince me not to buy Archipelago. I've played Archipelago about 8 times now, and it's definitely an amazing game. That said, a few things that might be enough to save you $50: 1) The short game is very unsatisfying, and pretty much only worth playing if you either have a group that wants to play a full game to learn the rules, or you only have 45 minutes and you and a friend just NEED to collect some sweet, sweet pineapple. The risk of rebellion is very low in a short game, so there's really no reason to cooperate (which means less dealing and trading). In other words, you're probably going to need at least 90-120 minutes to play a game of any real consequence, possibly up to 3-4 hours depending on number of players and levels of analysis paralysis. 2) The storage solution leaves something to be desired. The game has a lot of little components: Port/church/etc tiles, 6 different resource cubes, lots of discs, several card types, and of course the player's various pieces and the island tiles themselves. The designers cleverly decided to leave indentations for each specific thing in the box, and even did something cute where you put the leftover cardboard from punching out the tokens beneath the plastic inlay to prop it up, which makes it very nice to use while playing... Unfortunately, none of the little chambers are very well contained, and the box is so packed with stuff that you pretty much need to keep things in their compartments that storing/transporting the game in any way beyond completely flat at all times leads to components being all mixed up upon opening. 3) If trading and grudges sound exciting to you, make sure your group is equally excited about that part of the game, because short of a pressing crisis, the game doesn't really evoke those on its own. I've played a medium game where everyone pretty much ended running their own little engine the whole time, and the game simply doesn't feel crunchy enough to survive purely on that (which is also part of why the short game stinks). There's plenty of opportunity to trade and such, and the rulebook makes this clear, but unless someone really wants a specific development card or wants to act before a certain player - maybe to end the game that turn before they can overtake them on points - trading is left to the players to encourage. 4) I guess the components other than the island tiles might seem flat to people used to miniatures or the big ol' wooden towns of Terra Mystica? Oh, and color blindness loving sucks for this game; A friend of mine has trouble with reds and greens, and regularly mixes up pineapple and cattle. He actually lost a game because of this once. Now, these are all very subjective and 8 games with a limited group of players isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, so I have no doubt other people either find them non-issues (the storage one in particular is mostly me trying to find things wrong with the game, but it's there) or maybe even wrong with certain groups or after enough plays. And of course, I could tell you all the wonderful things about it, but it sounds like you've seen that many times now.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:39
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To add (although I really like the game): - It absolutely requires a group with the right mindset - the threat of rebellion creates an interesting mechanic but also has the potential for spite-loving if you have some bad sports. The coop-competitive mechanic is really cool but very breakable with the wrong people. - The rulebook is a bit of a mess, and some of the rules like when citizens are "engaged" aren't consistent, which makes playing more complicated than it feels like it needs to be.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:46
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I've had the chance to play King of Tokyo a few times and its such a blast. Easy to understand, lots of ways to interact with other players and react to what they are doing, different strategies that are all very viable, pleasing art direction.. every aspect of the game is done well.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:39
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Lorini posted:Also for you Euro players, I just updated my Top/Hot 10 here. Luna? I really enjoyed the area majority positioning tradeoff with the actions to take, but the scoring left something to be desired. I thought the inner board was a little clumsy to navigate and changed control a little too spontaneously for my liking. Admittedly I've only played it twice now so some familiarity is sure to bring more of a sense of control. The outer islands though had some great mechanics. It felt a lot like Nurnberg/Norenberc to me with the majority investment gambits and strong-arming and bluffing. How much play have you gotten out of Luna? I'm not sure I can get my group to but would a few more plays and familiarity open the game up?
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Aug 4, 2013 19:36
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I like Euros where your actions affect others actions and Luna does that pretty well. I also like the island hopping mechanic. The inside game play was interesting as well. We've played it five times and everyone would be willing to play it again.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:59
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Gravy Train Robber posted:I'm not really sure if this is accurate, but that might just be because as the card pool has grown you don't really need a handful of extra copies of a few cards from the Core Set. The core set is fine on its own, and if you are going to buy a second core set you are going to be way better served picking up new expansions for the same price. I guess if you absolutely must have 3x of every possible card for deckbuilding you should get it- but in a cooperative game I really don't think its important at all. Unexpected Courage is the only singleton in the Core Set that you'd really like to have three of, but there's a few Core Set cards that you want extra copies of. Horn of Gondor and Celebrian's Stone are singletons that you'd like two of; Galadhrim's Greeting, Strength of Will, Sneak Attack and Steward of Gondor are 2-ofs that you want a playset of. You can add Swift Strike and Northern Tracker as well, but they're less important.
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Aug 4, 2013 20:13
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What I'm really curious is, will Archipelago give us the feeling of Sid Meier's Colonization the Boardgame? I loved that game at Amiga and one of my friends is looking at Archipelago with that shine in his eyes as well, I fear disappointment caused by wrong expectations.
echoMateria fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 20:32
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Ashenai posted:This sounds like The MAD Magazine Game. This could quite possibly be it. It fits the description I gave almost to the T and the artwork looks vaguely familiar. I will have to do some looking into it for more confirmation. Thanks for the heads up.
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Aug 4, 2013 21:26
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