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General Battuta posted:I played Coup with a couple very honest people recently, and I didn't quite...get it. Scrupulous truth-telling seemed like a pretty dominant and pretty boring strategy. The endgame also seemed fairly deterministic. Maybe I hosed up something huge? Or we didn't lie aggressively and early enough? Coup usually doesn't work well with new players because the amount of solid information is so low, and the punishment for getting getting called on a lie, or for mistakenly accusing someone else, is so severe, that new players tend to be intimidated away from doing either, which results in a really boring game.
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Sep 4, 2014 23:07
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Xenophon posted:Not sure where the CAH came in, but I've gotten so sick of that/Apples to Apples/etc. at parties over the last few years that I don't think I could stomach buying a copy. Carcasonne is on the list of things I will buy when I see it in my FLGS. Forbidden Desert for me, and my friends, does add that much more. Can be quite a brutal game that comes down to the wire often enough to keep things tense and us coming back for more. If you are a fan of Pandemic I humbly suggest Flash Point I think it is better than Pandemic Look I started with Pandemic. played that game with all the expansions, on all the difficulties and have loved the poo poo out of that game But BUT.... I think Flash Point is better. Less quarterbacking with the ability to change your class as the game progresses. More randomness in the sense that you can pretty easily begin to guess when a Breakout is going to happen while with Flashpoint.......crap happens all over. figure it out and save them people!!! Really enjoy Flashpoint. Oh For Sale is a good "light" game for 3+ players. Its completely a filler but it sees adequate play time with my group. edit: Oh I like the theme of flashpoint too :3
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Sep 4, 2014 23:14
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I would be hesitant to recommend CE as a gateway game because I've had several groups where it fell completely fl at with hobbyist gamers. I can't think of something to recommend in its place however, possibly kemet? Edit: I recommend that due to everyone starting at the same point and squickly building up their unique abilities, though I admit the variance of abilities is much smaller than CEs but available to everyone from the start. Zombie #246 fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 23:55
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Zombie #246 posted:I would be hesitant to recommend CE as a gateway game because I've had several groups where it fell completely fl at with hobbyist gamers. I can't think of something to recommend in its place however, possibly kemet? I find that with the wrong people, Kemet falls incredibly flat as well. Some people REALLY want to know what all the tiles are and think about it really really hard. The best gateway games are ones with deep but quick/simple decisions. What route am I taking in TTR? What card will I buy in Dominion? Where should I place my tile in Carcassonne? These are decisions with a fair amount of strategy, but they are easy to make. In Kemet, the wrong players tend to think "Should I move my men? Where would I move them? Maybe I should spend my magic on a tile? What tile? What does this one do again? How about this one? I think I want this tile, oh wait I need to upgrade my pyramid... well maybe I'll move my guy... if I move here this guy will attack me... what cards do I have again? Did I see him play this other card?..." Continue for 5 minutes while everyone else groans. The right players think "I'm gonna do this thing and see what happens!!!"
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Sep 5, 2014 00:02
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Rusty Kettle posted:I find that with the wrong people, Kemet falls incredibly flat as well. Some people REALLY want to know what all the tiles are and think about it really really hard. The best gateway games are ones with deep but quick/simple decisions. What route am I taking in TTR? What card will I buy in Dominion? Where should I place my tile in Carcassonne? These are decisions with a fair amount of strategy, but they are easy to make. I don't know, to me that sounds more like generic analysis paralysis than anything else. Someone could spend five agonizing minutes decided what upgrade to buy in Kemet sure, but anyone that indecisive could probably spend five minutes pondering what direction to start building a road in Settlers of Catan for all the same reasons.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:13
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Re: king of Toyko and New York, I haven't played New York yet, so I can't say if it's made Toyko obsolete. It does seem like it has more rules/bits, and I've seen some critiques that it doesn't add enough to justify the added complexity.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:22
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Rusty Kettle posted:In Kemet, the wrong players tend to think "Should I move my men? Where would I move them? Maybe I should spend my magic on a tile? What tile? What does this one do again? How about this one? I think I want this tile, oh wait I need to upgrade my pyramid... well maybe I'll move my guy... if I move here this guy will attack me... what cards do I have again? Did I see him play this other card?..." Continue for 5 minutes while everyone else groans. The right players think "I'm gonna do this thing and see what happens!!!" Kemet is a game where you both can and should plot your whole first turn before the game begins. This isn't complex, and once you've played a couple of times you'll have your main plan and a couple of audibles lined up.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:23
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I'm a huge Stars Align fan, because it tries to train you not to get too invested in planning ahead, and, once you get a few summons, the madness inducing possibilities of how the board could be altered are a testament to the setting. Plus I love the cute illustrations. The deep end of how much there is to think about stokes a lot of people to just get on with it and play, I find. Whereas if you show someone something like carcasonne, there's always the person who *can* see the entire possibility space, so they then go out of their way to explore the entire thing. Twice. Just to make sure they really 'get' their options. And the meeple scoring mechanism tends to be the 'potion' problem for a lot of people; if I use it now, then maybe, later, I'll want to use it, but won't have it. So it ends up feeling weirdly like fantasy football in some groups, where you build the entire map, and then people 'draft' all the good spots in turn order. :/ Know your audience, I guess, is the only helpful thing to offer. Some people get into boardgames on the strength of munchkin, cards against humanity, or arkham horror. Not because those are awesome or anything, but because they represent a quantum leap over 'sorry', 'battleship', and 'chutes and ladders' which might be all they've tried before. There's people who love poker but 'hate board games' because they just don't get that anything cool and intricate is possible. And there are a bunch of my friends who are on the cusp of playing something fun or cool who think 'apples to apples' with naughty words is the poo poo.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:26
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How much of overlap is there between Coup and Mascarade? If it comes down to a choice between this, Masquerade seems better suited for new players because it's so confusing (if that makes sense). I assume there's definitely room for both in a collection. Does it just come down to gameplay preferences, then?
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Sep 5, 2014 01:03
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The Narrator posted:How much of overlap is there between Coup and Mascarade? If it comes down to a choice between this, Masquerade seems better suited for new players because it's so confusing (if that makes sense). I assume there's definitely room for both in a collection. Does it just come down to gameplay preferences, then? Personally, I think Mascarade is quite a bit better than Coup, mostly because it doesn't have player elimination. I don't actually think there's room for both in a collection; they're pretty fuckin' similar.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:10
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The Narrator posted:How much of overlap is there between Coup and Mascarade? If it comes down to a choice between this, Masquerade seems better suited for new players because it's so confusing (if that makes sense). I assume there's definitely room for both in a collection. Does it just come down to gameplay preferences, then? There's no real overlap. Mascarade doesn't really work too well below seven players, and Coup can't go above six.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:11
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Masquerade is more accessible overall, while Coup requires a good teacher and the right group to truly enjoy.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:20
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DontMockMySmock posted:Personally, I think Mascarade is quite a bit better than Coup, mostly because it doesn't have player elimination. I don't actually think there's room for both in a collection; they're pretty fuckin' similar. Jedit posted:There's no real overlap. Mascarade doesn't really work too well below seven players, and Coup can't go above six. cheers for the input. Mascerade sounds more "fun" for my group and me, so I suppose I'll think about that one.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:21
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Coup is 15 bucks. Hell, you could make a copy out of poker deck and some pennies. Aces are Assassins, Kings are Dukes, etc.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:43
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I made a copy with poker chips and MTG basic lands. There are only five roles, after all.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:45
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Some Numbers posted:I made a copy with poker chips and MTG basic lands. There are only five roles, after all. Now I want a Captain Planet retheme of Coup..
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Sep 5, 2014 01:51
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Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options.
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Sep 5, 2014 02:46
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Mr Jack Hive The Duke
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Sep 5, 2014 02:47
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Mage Knight. Tash-Kalar. Mage Wars.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:06
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Castles of Burgundy is a nice medium weight euro.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:11
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I thought Space Alert was fun when we played it with two people. The players get androids so that they'll have enough actions to try and win. It should have been easier with just us, but we still managed to mess everything up.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:16
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Summoner Wars, anything using the Commands & Colors system, Tash-Kalar. Suburbia is at its best with 2. These are just my personal picks, but worth looking into I think.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:16
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unpronounceable posted:Castles of Burgundy is a nice medium weight euro. I have to agree with this one, my wife and play the heck out of CoB. I would add Dominion and Netrunner to the list.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:24
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Tiny Chalupa posted:Forbidden Desert for me, and my friends, does add that much more. Can be quite a brutal game that comes down to the wire often enough to keep things tense and us coming back for more. This is the one thing that keeps Forbidden Desert away as a light/intro suggestion for me - if you get a bad run of wind/Sun Beats Down the game can turn really tight really quick. It's a great game overall though.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:29
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Last time this came up, several people recommended Province. I haven't played it, but I want to. Might make my own at some point.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:31
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Schizoguy posted:Coup is 15 bucks. Hell, you could make a copy out of poker deck and some pennies. Aces are Assassins, Kings are Dukes, etc. I did this very thing and think I almost prefer my homemade version to the real kickstarter copy I received recently. The art on the cards is just kind of dumb. The hardest part was recreating the player aid. I plugged it into a spreadsheet, printed them out and pasted them to 4x6 index cards
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Sep 5, 2014 04:21
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Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll look into all of them and probably get 2.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:24
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Agricola, Keyflower and Castles of Burgundy are our favorites and the ones that probably have the most replay value. Escape is also a lot of fun.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:32
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signalnoise posted:Anyone wanna recommend some games, competitive or cooperative doesn't matter, but best with 2 players? Preferably not some endlessly-expensive card game, and I already have a lot of X-Wing Miniatures stuff but I want some other options. Warhammer Diskwars is A LOT of fun and has surprisingly more depth than it first appears. If you like some of the randomness that miniature games typically have just throw in some ranged(Nothing like 1 shotting a Bloodthirster when your stone thrower gets double hits and a 6 for damage) I have not picked up any of the expansions yet and still quite thoroughly enjoy it. Deep man
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Sep 5, 2014 05:07
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Xenophon posted:Last time this came up, several people recommended Province. I haven't played it, but I want to. Might make my own at some point. I like Province. Solid Micro Euro.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:31
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What are the opinions on Sultaniya? It looks neat but I wonder about the replay and lasting abilities of it. Which I noticed that most of the popular reviewers doesn't care about these days. Sultaniya - Dice Tower Reviews: Sultaniya Come to think of it, I am on the fence about getting Jupiter Rescue for the same reasons. Jupiter Rescue - Dice Tower Reviews: Jupiter Rescue Also please tell me why I should not grab Dungeon Run as a light dungeon crawler / gateway / slightly-longer-filler etc? Dungeon Run - Drakkenstrike's Dungeon Run Components Breakdown Video Review in HD Dungeon Run - Miami Dice 020 - Dungeon Run echoMateria fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 06:37
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Question for Chaos in the Old World: Some Old World cards can be applied to a nonspecified area, e.g. "The Crusade is Come" instructs the players to put 2 peasants, 2 nobles, and 2 heroes in 6 different regions. Who gets to decide where these are placed? It's kind of a big deal in a competitive game like this, and the rulebook isn't really helping out. e: woo awesome dude. Kazzah fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 10:00
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Krazyface posted:Question for Chaos in the Old World: Person with the lowest threat. It is in the rules somewhere, probably in the description for Old World phase.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:09
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GrandpaPants posted:Person with the lowest threat. It is in the rules somewhere, probably in the description for Old World phase. In case of a tie, Horned Rat has the lowest threat. There can be no ties between the other 4 gods.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:28
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echoMateria posted:Also please tell me why I should not grab Dungeon Run as a light dungeon crawler / gateway / slightly-longer-filler etc? Dungeon Run is not a filler by any means. Also, it's very out of print, so you probably won't find it reasonably priced. There are much better dungeon crawlers out there, like Mice and Mystics.
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Sep 5, 2014 12:21
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mongol posted:Dungeon Run is not a filler by any means. Also, it's very out of print, so you probably won't find it reasonably priced. There are much better dungeon crawlers out there, like Mice and Mystics. I actually tried most of the dungeon crawlers already and never had any interest in the Mice and Mystics in the first place, the theme never got to me. Lately I've been hearing quite a number of complaints about its mechanics too. I thought Dungeon Run might be a game of running through a dungeon, grabbing the orb and trying to run out pace your friends or slowly trampling on their dead bodies. Like a better version of Android: Infiltration. Does it really drag on? Reviews made it sound like it'd be fast and simple. Though I guess its all moot if Plaid Hat's not printing it again.
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Sep 5, 2014 14:34
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It is fast paced and simple, and as long as your group embraces the PvP aspects Dungeon Run is a fun game. The set up is really easy as well compared to other dungeon games we have. Two problems my group has with it: 1) The lack of balance between characters... The game transitions from light PvP at first to 95%+ PvP at the end. Given that everyone makes it to the end stage, why would you ever want one of the PvE specialist characters? 2) You have to gang up on people who are getting too powerful to avoid run-a-ways but people get bent out of shape when a couple of other plays gang up on them and rob their gear.
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Sep 5, 2014 16:27
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Played Clash of Cultures and Quantum for the first time tonight. Clash is a 4X game, that runs from the Neolithic to about the end of Antiquity. It starts the players as civs with one settlement and knowledge of farming and mining. From there, you have three actions per turn to expand your civ, research new advances, gather resources and conquer your neighbours. Combat is dice based, but uses a cumulative system to reduce random bullshit (basically you roll 1 dice per military unit in your stack (to a max of 4) then divide the result by 5. The result is the number of hits applied to your opponent's force, with remainders binned. Given that 4x games are usually pretty drawn out, it was no surprise that this was about 3 and a half hours to play out. Came down to a close result, with a 4 vp spread between 1st and the two tied for second. The last place player pursued a highly aggressive strategy that saw him make great gains early in the game, but he never shifted away from a war footing and didn't cash in on his early success. I had banked a lot of tech and built up my cities, whilst my neighbour had profited off my building by focussing on trade. The eventual winner was forced to shift from his democracy engine early to a heavy war footing, and this helped mid to late game as when he finally had breathing space he could spam out strong units. Overall, it was an agreeable game that I would happily play again. It compares quite strongly to Romolo O Remo but with more emphasis on conflict rather than economics. Having one player push his military to a suicidal degree and break apart the game made the late game less fun than it should be, but future playthroughs should see that strategy checked easily. Quantum was an great score I made. Amazon sold it for half price, and even with shipping to Australia, it still came out $30-40 cheaper than it normally sells for here. Still on the 4X theme, the game is a very breezy half hour on the starter maps, with combat a central element and some interesting, game-breaking technologies available. The game makes genius use of dice, and the Command cards break the game in really interesting ways - they compare quite strongly to Cosmic Encounters race powers, although the advantage in Quantum is that they are clearly designed to push the game towards end game, rather than spiral it into crazy randomness. The game is very lightweight, so I can't see it being a focus for an evening, but it's a good opener if you don't have the numbers for Avalon, or want something meating than Coup or Mascarade.
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Sep 5, 2014 16:56
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I played a game called Red November last night. I think it's the most FFG game possible. The basic premise is that you're gnomes on a sinking submarine and you have to survive for 60 minutes in order to be rescued. As you take move around the sub and take actions, you move your marker around the time track, finding items and triggering events. I feel like there's a decent filler game in here somewhere but it massively overstays its welcome and took us well over 2 hours. A lot of this was us loving up rules and looking stuff up constantly, which is par for the course for an FFG game. The rules aren't presented all that well, but we were able to figure out what we were getting wrong without a lot of hassle. As for crappy rules, there's quite a few that suck all the fun out of it. Firstly, there's a grog item that lets you get a bonus on rolls to do stuff. You have to check to see if you pass out and waste 10 minutes, which gets harder the more you use. This lead to the other rule that sucks: player elimination. You can die in flooded or burning compartments, which happens automatically if you pass out or at the end of your turn if you don't/can't leave. It also has this really dumb semi-traitor mechanic that lets people with a certain item bail out during the last 10 minutes on the track and win if the other players lose. Basically, it's all the boring parts of Battlestar Galactica with all of the politicing and off-turn stuff that keeps you engaged removed.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:03
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quote:I played a game called Red November last night. I think it's the most FFG game possible. I think there's an cool game in there somewhere. Mechanically and thematically, it's a lot like Flashpoint (random fires and floods pop up in areas of your sub, you go fix them before you sink). But it also has some more variety (eg. there's a Kraken you might have to fight) and a little mini-traitor mechanic (you can abandon ship if you find the right equipment - and then you win if everyone else dies, or lose if they win). I also thought their use of a time track was clever, and could potentially have made for some interesting decisions and gameplay elements. But, like you say, it's a clunky mess in practice - and we only ever got through a couple games before giving up.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:34
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