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sirtommygunn posted:I believe he means the entire tutorial, which basically has you play several missions where each one introduces a new part of the game. Even that should only take you an hour total, though. I'm guessing the owner popped the shrink wrap for the first time at the table and nobody had looked anything up ahead of time.
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Sep 7, 2014 15:40
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It's a minimum of 40 minutes just to listen to all the tracks; it's not unreasonable that it should takee an evening to play through the opening scenarios. It took us I think 3 hours just to get through the first 2 albeit we are a wildly slow group.
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Sep 7, 2014 16:20
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I went to TABSCon in Toronto yesterday, played some fun games then stopped by 401 Games which is one of the greatest game stores I've ever been in. I ended up buying Tragedy Looper, Yggdrasil, and Ghost Blitz 2 which all look terribly out of place in my collection. I also grabbed Klaus Teuber's Barbarossa for $8 at an auction for a friend that likes clay and creativity. Along with some standard fare (Puerto Rico, etc.), I played Sheriff of Nottingham which I enjoyed more than I expected to. It's a bluffing/negotiation game where each round one player is the Sheriff who decides whether to inspect or allow each other player to send through a collection of goods cards. These goods cards are either lawful or contraband and if the Sheriff checks the goods cards any contraband are discarded with a fine imposed on the other player, or if it's a legitimate shipment the Sheriff must instead pay that player a fee. It's pretty straightforward and it's nothing mind-blowing but it's put together very well with a nice balance between costs and points and the amount of items you're dealing with. For this type of game, I think Sheriff of Nottingham has some of the quickest emergent gameplay where we were all double bluffing and feigning guilt and making outrageous claims by the 2nd round. I highly recommend it for 4 or 5 players as a light to medium weight negotiation game. I also tried City Hall which was OK. It's a role selection game where you bid for "city building" actions each round. There's 7 different actions which include opening up new areas of land on the board, putting buildings on those opened land spots, generating population based on those buildings and some common options like gaining money or turn order. Players use money to complete these actions, but bid Influence to actually take the action. The player that initially selected the action receives a round of bids from the other players and can either match or accept the highest bid. There's some good tension as with (in a 4 player game) only 4 actions per round and likely some players not getting a single action, your options to gain presence on the board or set yourself up for scoring points are quite limited. A well timed high bid or accepting another player's low-ball bid that was likely just there to increase your cost make it pretty interesting. The actual city building mechanics are quite uninspired though, simple enough to make it very accessible but I don't see enough meat there to make the game replayable. I definitely recommend trying it for a solid take on role selection but I am pretty sure the rest of the game doesn't have much life in it beyond a few plays.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:02
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So hey Tragedy Looper is amazing if only for novelty alone, and I finally got a copy for myself (that wasn't loving stolen....). It's also a game that's kind of hard to summarize for me. When I first heard about it from people in the thread (Gutter Owl's was mentioning it a lot), I had no idea what to expect. When I finally got to play it last month, I understood why--this game is nuts. The Theme: Three players are Protagonists with the ability to travel through time and do that thing where they can stop bad things from happening to NPCs and make happy endings or something. These three players are against one evil time-traveling Mastermind who is trying to cause bad things to happen to NPCs (and the Protagonists). The Mastermind is pulling all the strings; the Protagonists must figure out from scratch what said Mastermind's evil plots are and then stop them. Basically the game is played in Loops (rounds) made up of several Days (turns). The three good guys win by having one Loop go right. If the players get killed, or some triggered event causes the players to lose that Loop, the players have to rewind time and start another Loop. If players lose all the Loops of the scenario, the Mastermind wins. Each Day (turn) consists of the Mastermind putting down three face down effect cards mostly on NPCs--the main moving parts of the game--followed by the three Protagonists putting down one card each (i.e. 3 cards vs. 3 cards). When all cards are played, they reveal and resolve simultaneously. The effects can consist of moving NPCs to different board locations, giving them different resources like Goodwill that Protagonists can use to make an NPC perform a beneficial special ability or Paranoia that helps the Mastermind cause Incidents (i.e. the bad things) to happen. Each NPC character has a secret role assigned to them that only the Mastermind knows. After each set of card plays, triggered events based on NPC roles and how many resources they have (e.g. if NPC with character role X has 2 Intrigue tokens it will kill another NPC in same location). The Mastermind only says that these things happen; why triggered events occur and who caused them is never directly revealed. In addition, based on what scenario the players decide, there will be Incidents that occur on certain days. Protagonists know which Incidents happen on which Days, but have to figure out which NPCs actually are the culprits performing the Incident (note NPC culprits are different from NPC secret roles). A lot of bad things triggered from NPC roles can trigger the Protagonists to straight up lose a Loop. Even though the Protagonists only have to win a single Loop, they will have to learn through the Mastermind's actions and events which NPC roles and culprits are in play doing what. But this goes beyond deduction; even with all the information the Mastermind can still play his cards right to circumvent players from directing NPCs to safety (my first game of this involved us knowing all the roles in the final round but the Mastermind out-played us). What this all boils down to is programmed action game of asymmetric information and deduction. It's cool that unlike a lot of party deduction games the NPC triggers are straight-up evidence to which roles are in play, and because only certain NPC roles can be in the same hidden scenario as other NPC roles (all described on a nifty player aid), Protagonists can work out accurately which NPCs do what along with their suspicions, and yet solving most of the game isn't necessarily the end-all because the players still have to have one good Loop happen (although in the full game if Players correctly guess all the NPC hidden roles they will win even if they ran out of attempts to cause a good ending). What surprised me about Tragedy Looper was how it wasn't just deduction and bluffing--this is very much a strategy game. Hell, Tragedy Looper is a fairly heavyweight strategy game! I got tons of brain-burning from figuring out not only which character was what, but how each character interacted with each other one. It's great. So yeah, go for Tragedy Looper if this interests you. It's weird, unique, and straight up a good game behind its anime craziness.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:11
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I ended up ordering a copy of Dreadfleet (I wanted the ships to paint). I know people are pretty divided on it, but why? What's wrong with it?
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Sep 7, 2014 17:20
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REAL MUSCLE MILK posted:I ended up ordering a copy of Dreadfleet (I wanted the ships to paint). I know people are pretty divided on it, but why? What's wrong with it? It's a poo poo rule set that lives on d6s and random happenings and random damage draws and random random narrative theme random random
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Sep 7, 2014 17:26
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ah, so it's indeed a gw game
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Sep 7, 2014 17:27
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What's the best (euroish preferably) game with an old norse theme? Yggdrasil was just mentioned, and I've seen Völuspá around. Are any of these or another worth getting, and does the theme shine through?
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Sep 7, 2014 17:35
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:I thought you could only take one wound a phase in disk wars? I keep getting so many rules about this drat game wrong. He was one shot because of the scenario that was selected took 1 wound(1 stamina? I get the terms confused sometimes still) away from all the heroes and I should have pointed that out. So with that card pick one 6 wound hit insta dead to almost anyone.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:43
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BonHair posted:What's the best (euroish preferably) game with an old norse theme? Yggdrasil was just mentioned, and I've seen Völuspá around. Are any of these or another worth getting, and does the theme shine through? I like Yggdrasil. It's got nice artwork, lots of mythologic references, and the Ragnarok theme fits the game. Its biggest drawback is the same as Pandemic, that it's a solo puzzle masquerading as a multiplayer game.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:49
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My group recently picked up Archipelago and we really like it, but we don't understand the purpose of the screens. Obviously the intent is to hide what you have so you can't be sure if people are lying about not being able to contribute to a crisis or who exactly is in the lead for a victory condition. The problem is there isn't any way to secretly gain or spend resources, with no hidden information it's possible to keep track of exactly what everyone has. I assume the game was designed under the assumption that memorizing what everyone has is prohibitively difficult and taking notes on some scratch paper isn't allowed, but that is very much a design I don't like. It's entirely possible you could lose because you failed to memorize what someone had; at the same time everyone slowing down the game by taking notes that probably won't matter isn't very elegant design. It's a very minor gripe with an otherwise great game, it just seems like any method for taking resources in secret would prevent these problems. Along similar lines of what should and shouldn't be open information: in Dominion, how do your groups deal with wanting to know exactly what cards are left in your draw pile if you don't remember? We allow players to look at their draw pile and then reshuffle (respecting any previous "place card on top/bottom" effects, of course), because there isn't any hidden information there. In Love Letter, do the other players get to know if the card you played was the one you drew this turn? We have a gentlemen's agreement not to pay attention to which card is being played; if we did, it'd be optimal to play your hand from under the table or shuffle your two cards, and that ultimately just wastes time.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:52
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Has anyone ever played a game called Atlantis Rising? We played it at our last board game night, and I don't think I've seen a single post mentioning this game in the thread. It's a co-op worker placement game, which I think is unique enough to mention at least. The board is the island of Atlantis, with six peninsulas coming out of a center point. Each peninsula has worker placement spaces on it performing a certain type of action (gather resources, draw cards, get more workers). Workers placed near the edges of Atlantis perform these actions more efficiently, but flood cards drawn every turn from the misfortune deck cause the edges of the board to slowly sink into the sea, removing that space from the game (and causing the worker placement to be wasted). Players can pool together their mystic energy to prevent a flood from occurring, but it's a rare resource and multiple floods occur in a turn. For us, it ended up playing out with choosing one or two edge spaces on a turn to collect vital resources, and placing other workers more conservatively close to the center. It was an interesting sort of push-your-luck mechanic and enforced the theme of waters constantly rising closer to the center, cutting off your options. We beat the game pretty easily, but we were playing the easiest difficulty setting. I found myself doing a lot of quarterbacking once the end was in sight - I could see that we needed a certain amount of each resource to win the game and wanted everyone to strip-mine each peninsula in turn, taking the resources we needed so we could abandon it to the mercy of the seas. I got to the point where I was placing everyone's workers for them. Which is obviously not a good place to be in a co-op game. There's also the issue of resource acquisition and trading. Resources are gained as the result of a dice roll, with better odds based on how far you are from the center (for example, workers gain coal on a 2 or better on the edge, 3 or better near the middle, and a 4 or better next to the center). It's really frustrating to place a lot of workers, gain no resources, and have the rest of your plans screwed up. Also, resources can't be traded between players (except with a select few special cards that allow you to trade one resource), which just feels completely wrong for a co-op game. The game is balanced around these rules just fine, but I'd rather have guaranteed resources, higher resource costs for things, and some ability to trade resources (maybe using mystic energy, which works as a sort of universal currency in the game). All in all, it was a good game. Not a great game, but a good enough game. Considering we played Arkham Horror last week (quitting by mutual consent after four hours of play) and loving Talisman the week before, it was a marked improvement. We also played Red Dragon Inn, which I'm getting to enjoy more each time I play.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:04
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Fenn the Fool! posted:Along similar lines of what should and shouldn't be open information: in Dominion, how do your groups deal with wanting to know exactly what cards are left in your draw pile if you don't remember? We allow players to look at their draw pile and then reshuffle (respecting any previous "place card on top/bottom" effects, of course), because there isn't any hidden information there. If you want to play at a level where knowing which cards are left in your deck matters, the burden is on you to remember that poo poo.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:38
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BonHair posted:What's the best (euroish preferably) game with an old norse theme? Yggdrasil was just mentioned, and I've seen Völuspá around. Are any of these or another worth getting, and does the theme shine through? Theme? pffft play Hnefatafl the board game that actual Vikings played! Be sure to make your copy out of the finger bones of your enemies  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNM4054Io7I Rutibex fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 18:44
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Fenn the Fool! posted:Along similar lines of what should and shouldn't be open information: in Dominion, how do your groups deal with wanting to know exactly what cards are left in your draw pile if you don't remember? We allow players to look at their draw pile and then reshuffle (respecting any previous "place card on top/bottom" effects, of course), because there isn't any hidden information there. In Dominion even the contents of your discard pile are considered hidden information (except for the top card) because nobody wants a twenty-minute game turned into an hour-long game from dumbasses going over every single card they own each turn.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:56
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BonHair posted:What's the best (euroish preferably) game with an old norse theme? Yggdrasil was just mentioned, and I've seen Völuspá around. Are any of these or another worth getting, and does the theme shine through? Vikings just got a reprint, and is very European; you're playing Norse settlers, claiming islands and defending them from raiders. There's also Fire & Axe, which is more of a hybrid game involving trading, settling, and raiding all across Europe. Has dice for combat and gently caress-your-neighbor event cards, but also has more Euro-style action, movement, and scoring mechanics.
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Sep 7, 2014 19:19
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Went on a buying frenzy this weekend. Ended up getting:
Anyway, I bought these games as I will be hosting some game nights for my cohort. We have a whole lot of students from China in Security and Risk Analysis who are interested in American culture. They've expressed interest in learning through games and we had some great success with Cards Against Humanity. Why certain things are awful or ironic is something you can't really teach but somehow that game creates a lot of situations that are super awkward to describe. So, my question is, I know what most of these games are and how they work but which of the board games in this list do you feel would work best to describe something useful in American Culture?
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Sep 7, 2014 20:00
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Trynant posted:So yeah, go for Tragedy Looper if this interests you. It's weird, unique, and straight up a good game behind its anime craziness. Basically it's the best release of the year thusfar, and everyone should buy a copy so Z-Man will translate the five expansion booklets.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:13
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Not Dracula posted:So, my question is, I know what most of these games are and how they work but which of the board games in this list do you feel would work best to describe something useful in American Culture? Cartoon Action Hour is the only one on the list that makes sense to me.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:14
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Fenn the Fool! posted:My group recently picked up Archipelago and we really like it, but we don't understand the purpose of the screens. Obviously the intent is to hide what you have so you can't be sure if people are lying about not being able to contribute to a crisis or who exactly is in the lead for a victory condition. The problem is there isn't any way to secretly gain or spend resources, with no hidden information it's possible to keep track of exactly what everyone has. I assume the game was designed under the assumption that memorizing what everyone has is prohibitively difficult and taking notes on some scratch paper isn't allowed, but that is very much a design I don't like. It's entirely possible you could lose because you failed to memorize what someone had; at the same time everyone slowing down the game by taking notes that probably won't matter isn't very elegant design. It's a very minor gripe with an otherwise great game, it just seems like any method for taking resources in secret would prevent these problems.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:14
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Not Dracula posted:Tabletop All the games there are Sci-Fi or Fantasy games which isn't particularly American. Lords of Waterdeep might be a good way to describe American style capitalism 
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Sep 7, 2014 20:19
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REAL MUSCLE MILK posted:ah, so it's indeed a gw game That undersells it. It's the worst GW game. It's garbage.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:29
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Gutter Owl posted:Basically it's the best release of the year thusfar, and everyone should buy a copy so Z-Man will translate the five expansion booklets. Does that include Dead of Winter? Because if so, I can't agree.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:31
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Speaking of licensed games, a non-gamer geek friend just posted about wanting the Firefly game, and I think I broke her heart by mentioning that it doesn't have a good reputation. 
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Sep 7, 2014 20:32
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Rutibex posted:All the games there are Sci-Fi or Fantasy games which isn't particularly American. Lords of Waterdeep might be a good way to describe American style capitalism Ha, yeah. That was the one I was leaning toward. I thought about Dune or Warrior Knights for bluffing and strategy but I think Waterdeep teaches these things more directly.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:41
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PerniciousKnid posted:Speaking of licensed games, a non-gamer geek friend just posted about wanting the Firefly game, and I think I broke her heart by mentioning that it doesn't have a good reputation. My sister was really disappointed when I told her I hadn't heard anything good about it.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:43
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Lottery of Babylon posted:In Dominion even the contents of your discard pile are considered hidden information (except for the top card) because nobody wants a twenty-minute game turned into an hour-long game from dumbasses going over every single card they own each turn. This. People can be ridiculously anal for board games. Just played with a friend who took a game that should be 90 minutes tops and turned it into a three hour bore-fest.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:48
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Gutter Owl posted:Basically it's the best release of the year thusfar, and everyone should buy a copy so Z-Man will translate the five expansion booklets. The generic anime art is really putting me off the game, to the point where no review is good enough to make me want to buy it without playing it first.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:57
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PerniciousKnid posted:Speaking of licensed games, a non-gamer geek friend just posted about wanting the Firefly game, and I think I broke her heart by mentioning that it doesn't have a good reputation. Even some people that I know who are usually very knowledgeable about board games always go on about Firefly. I've not played it yet but given the reputation that it has, I just assume that they so desperately want to enjoy it because of the theme, that they ignore any bad parts
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Sep 7, 2014 21:08
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Some Numbers posted:My sister was really disappointed when I told her I hadn't heard anything good about it. I know that the Dice Tower guys seem to like it. Just seems like a Firefly Game for Firefly fans. If you're not fussed on the series, you'll find other games much more appealing. (from what I've heard)
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Sep 7, 2014 21:11
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Zaii posted:Just seems like a Firefly Game for Firefly fans. This is pretty much the verdict I get from friends that love Firefly but also like good games. They fully acknowledge that without the Firefly label they probably wouldn't play it. It's so incredibly steeped in Fireflyness that PerniciousKnid's friend would probably still enjoy it given how rabid Firefly fans tend to be. I don't know how it was designed, but I'm fairly certain it would not exist in a different form without the Firefly property to build around.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:15
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thespaceinvader posted:It's a minimum of 40 minutes just to listen to all the tracks; it's not unreasonable that it should takee an evening to play through the opening scenarios. Re: Space Alert, yeah it took four hours to read through the "lessons," do the two test runs, and attempt to survive the first simulation twice (we died both times). Add a little time in between to attempt to strategize (it didn't work).
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Sep 7, 2014 21:55
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Is it possible to buy blank fluxx cards in a way that's suitable to make a playable deck? The blanxx packs have one of each type of card, so you'd have to buy a shitload of them then have tonnes of wasted ones. I'm trying to make a set themed around House MD as a gift and wanted it to look like a real set as much as possible. (for anyone interested, the goals are diseases, the keepers are symptoms and the creepers are things the patient lies about)
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Sep 7, 2014 22:28
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Servoret posted:The generic anime art is really putting me off the game, to the point where no review is good enough to make me want to buy it without playing it first. Why? I'm not suggesting Tragedy Looper is necessarily something you'd enjoy, or that there's anything wrong with trying before buying, but if the art is the only thing otherwise holding you back, that's bizarre to me. I actually don't like anime art at all, but to me this is the same as dismissing a video game purely because of graphics. Essentially putting form over function. Now don't get me wrong, if the subject matter is legitimately offensive (Tanto Cuore, Barbarossa, Kingdom Death) that's a different matter.
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Sep 7, 2014 22:44
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Kiranamos posted:Adventure Time Munchkin is coming out, I'm really excited. I picked it up about two weeks ago but have only found time to play one game. As much as Munchkin is reviled by goons I found it pretty fun. All the cards are appropriately Adventure Time-themed and it didn't take long to play through. Just don't take it too seriously when you play and you'll be fine, imo.
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Sep 7, 2014 22:44
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Quote-Unquote posted:Is it possible to buy blank fluxx cards in a way that's suitable to make a playable deck? The blanxx packs have one of each type of card, so you'd have to buy a shitload of them then have tonnes of wasted ones. Get a printer and some cardstock then scan some Fluxx cards to get the backs and layout templates (or just go here and get some images someone else scanned http://boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/258/fluxx/). Use photoshop or GIMP or something to make your card layouts. Then print out your own cards! Simple as that really; making your own cards isn't very hard.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:35
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Boardgamegeek says Tragedy Looper is best played with either two or four players - how would a two player game work? Would it be any good? My wife and I generally play games just with (or against) each other, and we both really want to get a deduction game. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective seems like a safe bet for two people, but neither one of us really gives a poo poo about Sherlock Holmes and it seems kind of dry as hell. Plus, it's fun to play against each other. I just can't really wrap my head around how a two player game would work.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:46
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Whalley posted:Boardgamegeek says Tragedy Looper is best played with either two or four players - how would a two player game work? Would it be any good? My wife and I generally play games just with (or against) each other, and we both really want to get a deduction game. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective seems like a safe bet for two people, but neither one of us really gives a poo poo about Sherlock Holmes and it seems kind of dry as hell. Plus, it's fun to play against each other. I just can't really wrap my head around how a two player game would work. it's pretty simple; one player is the Mastermind with all the information and the other plays the three Protagonists instead of divvying each of them to one player. Also you can play three players as well (good guys alternate using the odd-player-deck-out). It works pretty well two player, although the Mastermind is at a slight disadvantage because one of the card mechanics (playing a powerful card that can fizzle of two good guys play it at the same time) suddenly favors the good guy.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:56
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Gutter Owl posted:Basically it's the best release of the year thusfar, and everyone should buy a copy so Z-Man will translate the five expansion booklets. I went to my FLGS, and got a copy earlier today, along with Space Alert. I can't wait to get them to the table.
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Sep 8, 2014 00:47
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If you had to buy one or two of the expansions for Ascension, which would make it a less lovely game? I bought the base game real cheap and I enjoy it alright but I know it's not great, and I'm just wondering if you figure there is any expansions that make it decent and more enjoyable.
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Sep 8, 2014 02:00
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