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ETB posted:Played Machi Koro a couple of times as well. It seems like the Red income buildings are a little broken in the early game, but otherwise it's a pretty light, fun game. I can't wait to see what the expansion does for the game. If you keep in mind the order in which buildings pay (in the order of the rainbow) they aren't that bad. Roll the 3 and they take your money and you then get the Bakery cash to spend on some more bakeries or whatever so 3s always give you a buy.
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Oct 19, 2014 08:48
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OperaMouse posted:Tash-Kalar CGE version Well?! Spill the beans!!
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Oct 19, 2014 08:58
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Broken Loose posted:Well?! Spill the beans!! Specifically, when is the new edition out so I can get it?
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Oct 19, 2014 09:00
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Tonight's highlight was a game of Twilight Struggle. I was teaching a new player, gave him the US. (I think the US is easier to learn, despite the early game struggle, because it's easier to learn by reacting, rather than having to dictate the pace of a game you don't understand.) Midway through turn 3, the USA hits 20 points and wins.  Highlights of the game include:
I'm not entirely certain what the hell happened.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:04
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Gutter Owl posted:Tonight's highlight was a game of Twilight Struggle. I was teaching a new player, gave him the US. (I think the US is easier to learn, despite the early game struggle, because it's easier to learn by reacting, rather than having to dictate the pace of a game you don't understand.) After reading this, I'm so glad I bought the game this week. Do you have any suggestions outside of memorizing all the rules for teaching myself and another new at the game?
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Oct 19, 2014 10:09
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Broken Loose posted:Well?! Spill the beans!! I have to shamefully admit I didn't have Tash-Kalar yet. Hope to get some playing time in later this week, although my wife is also really looking forward to Alchemists.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:19
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Today I had a longer-game games day at a friend's house. We played A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) and Tales of the Arabian Nights (2009). I don't know anything about Game of Thrones, and the game took forever to teach, but it was really solid once we got going. It took maybe 4 hours to play out + the learning time, so definitely not a casual game. We only had 5 people so it felt like the people who were closer to the "NPC" area of the board had a bit of an advantage because they could fight NPCs with no diplomatic repercussions and rack up the points. The roughest thing was keeping up the army size because every time the option came up to adjust supply (thereby increasing available army sizes), the guy with the Iron Throne didn't pick that, so we were stuck with the 3/2/2 (and one 3/2 player) armies. Anyways, I quite liked it but I don't know how often I would play it given how much time it takes plus rules explaining if there are new people. Secondly, Arabian Nights was a nice way to close the day. A bit of a light-hearted story-telling game where I honestly don't know what I was doing really. I just kept wandering around and running into things and hoping for the best. I guess that is sort of the point of the game and I don't know that there is any real strategy per se, but it was a good way to finish our games day after the 4+ hours of playing Game of Thrones.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:25
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Gutter Owl posted:I'm not entirely certain what the hell happened. Something in your game's timeline must have made communism incredibly and immediately unpalatable, like if the ministry of propaganda spent all their time mass producing Stalin/Lenin slash fiction instead of useful propaganda.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:32
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Bubble-T posted:Something in your game's timeline must have made communism incredibly and immediately unpalatable, like if the ministry of propaganda spent all their time mass producing Stalin/Lenin slash fiction instead of useful propaganda. That seems rather self-contradictory. Are you saying that Stalin/Lenin slash fiction wouldn't work better as propaganda than what they really tried? 
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Oct 19, 2014 10:43
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Twilight Struggle sort of assumes USSR propaganda did something worthwhile so I'm just staying within the game's world here  You could be right though, maybe slash fiction was the answer all along.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:54
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Gutter Owl posted:Tonight's highlight was a game of Twilight Struggle. [... ]I'm not entirely certain what the hell happened. If only Comrade Dice hadn't defected is what happened.
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Oct 19, 2014 11:17
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Level 7: Invasion is so good you guys. loving loved having a giant coop world vs aliens game. Watching as the rest of the world fought off the invaders but Africa got hosed was kind of upsetting. We all tried to help them, with units and resources but it just couldn't help poor dice rolls and ALL OF THE ALIENS. So so so so fun. Interested to see if X-Com stacks up.
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Oct 19, 2014 11:32
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:If only Comrade Dice hadn't defected is what happened.
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Oct 19, 2014 13:01
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Sure thing, friend. Speaking of Twilight Struggle, I also had the pleasure of getting into another game of it recently with a friend who had played it before. Neither of us are actually good at it, but we each had a few games under our belts. I was the US, he was the USSR. Strangely, he didn't go for Iran at all, which of course meant I jumped on the opportunity to reinforce it and spread into Asia, which worked great... until a combination of Indo-Pakistani War (India changed hands several times throughout the game) and Vietnam Revolts painted most of Southeast Asia red. A few turns later, with most of Asia still solidly communist, I drew Asia Scoring. I had Malaysia, but not much else, and India was neutral. Thinking "screw it, I'll go for it anyway, it's all in good fun", the dice were suddenly solidly in my favor and I somehow managed to realign away something ridiculous like 15 points out of Asia with one card and score Domination in the region, jumping to something like a +10 point lead at the start of the mid war. That entire game turned out extremely strange. The Space Race ended somewhere on the 6th or 7th boxes, DEFCON was 5 more often than not, and Europe was nearly completely communist because I spaced out and didn't notice what my opponent was doing or something. In the end, the US won by hitting 20 on the back of consecutive Central America Control + Asia Domination scoring into Soviets Shoot Down KAL-007 for the headline win on the first Late War round. I'm sure we played like complete idiots both of us, but we had fun. Can't recommend the game enough.
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Oct 19, 2014 14:09
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I played La Granja with the explicit plan of skipping all the craft buildings and going straight for market barrows. So is it just me or are Craft Buildings a trap? Maybe I'm missing something, but it's just not worth it at all, especially in terms of VP. Considering the amount of resources and deliveries you need to make, getting, at most, 2 VP and a bonus that will work for, at most, 4 turns just feels lovely. In my first game, I went for the Trade Commodities building, which meant I had to use 3 trade commodities and 3 deliveries to get a recurring 1 trade commodity/turn (total 4 in the game) and 2 VP. That seems incredibly lovely to me when 3 trade commodities could probably fill out 1-2 market barrows on their own. Did I miss a rule where you get a ton more points? I played Imperial Settlers again and I am fairly certain I don't like the game because of its randomness. For some reason there are card rarities within the faction decks, so if you draw your "rare" early, congrats your game just got a lot easier! Cards like Oasis for the Egyptians are doubly stupid since their power scales with the number of players, but its cost doesn't. It just feels like incredibly janky design. At least 51st State has you drawing from a common pool of cards, so everyone has theoretical access to the same pool of cards, but this just fails to understand balance. Also man, they must be planning a ton of Machi Koro expansions because that box is empty as hell.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:19
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EvilChameleon posted:We only had 5 people so it felt like the people who were closer to the "NPC" area of the board had a bit of an advantage because they could fight NPCs with no diplomatic repercussions and rack up the points. You're right for thinking this because it's an extremely well known and criticized flaw of the game. If your host hadn't played the game before either then he can be forgiven, otherwise pretty much everyone in the universe should be house ruling that "NPC" territory just doesn't exist.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:11
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I didn't see this in the last few pages, but apologies if this is a repost. What are people's thoughts on the upcoming Magic: the Gathering Strategy Board Game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHN2NpEOYSg It looks like a Magic skin over a very mediocre skirmish battle game, and I'm assuming they'll be milking unit expansions for some time to come. What upsets me a little is that, if it's successful, it could be a huge cashcow for them, and a huge cash drain on the consumers of skirmish battle/tactical RPG type boardgames. I think that niche is already getting flooded with mediocre, minis-for-sale Kickstarter games, and now another huge company is dipping its toe into the same market. Just worried it'll make better games in a similar vein less successful, which, as a wanna-be boardgame designer, is unfortunate to me.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:40
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GrandpaPants posted:I played La Granja with the explicit plan of skipping all the craft buildings and going straight for market barrows. So is it just me or are Craft Buildings a trap? Maybe I'm missing something, but it's just not worth it at all, especially in terms of VP. Considering the amount of resources and deliveries you need to make, getting, at most, 2 VP and a bonus that will work for, at most, 4 turns just feels lovely. In my first game, I went for the Trade Commodities building, which meant I had to use 3 trade commodities and 3 deliveries to get a recurring 1 trade commodity/turn (total 4 in the game) and 2 VP. That seems incredibly lovely to me when 3 trade commodities could probably fill out 1-2 market barrows on their own. Did I miss a rule where you get a ton more points? I think getting the three income bonus at the beginning of the game is pretty special, other than that I don't go for them as much either. Machi Koro has been a disappointment, I sure hope they are planning some expansions to make the game better.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:54
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JMBosch posted:What are people's thoughts on the upcoming Magic: the Gathering Strategy Board Game? Pierzak fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Oct 20, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 18:54
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JMBosch posted:What are people's thoughts on the upcoming Magic: the Gathering Strategy Board Game? It looks like Heroscape with cards and a life point system for units. I'm pretty sure those are repurposed Heroscape tiles, even, since Hasbro does own the IP. There isn't much in the way of rules available, it seems, but those dice look an awful lot like the Heroscape hit/defense system.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:57
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It looks like Heroscape: Magic edition, and while I never played Heroscape, I heard it was a pretty good game. If it's at least half as well designed as the actual card game, it should be a fine game. Those minis look pretty awful, though, even for pre-painteds. I am like 99% certain they will release "premium" minis for people to paint later, though, at least of the Planeswalkers. I wonder what their distribution model will be, though. Random packs or set packs?
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Oct 19, 2014 18:57
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I believe I read somewhere that its designed by the people that did Heroscape and Risk Legacy, so that's not surprising at all.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:59
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MtG: Heroscape edition is exciting to me for two reasons. First: I might actually be able to convince people to play Heroscape. Second,  more plastic hex terrain!
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Oct 19, 2014 19:08
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How long does a game of tragedy looper take? My friends keep getting scared away by the 2 hours on the box, but it doesn't seem like it should take that long to me, especially for the first few scenarios.
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Oct 19, 2014 19:13
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burger time posted:How long does a game of tragedy looper take? My friends keep getting scared away by the 2 hours on the box, but it doesn't seem like it should take that long to me, especially for the first few scenarios. It's sorta highly variable for the scenario and whether the Mastermind actually does a good job. The first few scenarios should take < 1 hr, though.
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Oct 19, 2014 19:21
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GrandpaPants posted:It's sorta highly variable for the scenario and whether the Mastermind actually does a good job. The first few scenarios should take < 1 hr, though. Table talk adds a large amount of time, depending on your group.
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Oct 19, 2014 19:56
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Poison Mushroom posted:MtG: Heroscape edition is exciting to me for two reasons. First: I might actually be able to convince people to play Heroscape. Not to be a pessimist but while those pictures do show a couple of heroscape one hex tiles stacked on top of each other, looking closely the main board seems to be roughly rectangular large-ish cardboard tiles with heroscape style interlocking hexes printed on, but the actual interlocking edges using a different style.
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Oct 19, 2014 20:07
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Scyther posted:Not to be a pessimist but while those pictures do show a couple of heroscape one hex tiles stacked on top of each other, looking closely the main board seems to be roughly rectangular large-ish cardboard tiles with heroscape style interlocking hexes printed on, but the actual interlocking edges using a different style.
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Oct 19, 2014 20:16
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The Mage Knight expansion PBP is up.
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Oct 19, 2014 20:21
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It could just be a separate style for the base boards and they'll use hexes for stacking terrain on top it. Either way, the entire thing as shown at Essen was clearly just a prototype. The cards were all simple mockups and will 100% have a different design later on. It's entirely possible they'll redo the terrain tiles too. Too early to tell what they'll be compatible with, if anything.
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Oct 19, 2014 20:41
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Got in my first game of Quantum today, really impressed at how elegant yet deep the game is while still staying ~fast~. If I must point out a downside it's the dice, for some reasony they were ...sticky?? Really weird, like the plastic wasn't solid in spots  e: Seems like the shoddy dice (in otherwise good quality game) is a known "issue". Washing them with soap might help, or I'll just find replacements of better quality. Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 21:17
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Broken Loose posted:Well?! Spill the beans!! Tash-Kalar: Everfrost talk... Optically it's a big improvement from the old stuff. I especially like the look of the redesigned flares. I didn't get to play the expansion deck yet, but there's frozen effects that can be 'stored' (only one at a time) and used later like the effects of a flare. There's a few cards in the deck that only provide frozen effects. Then there's a new effect for mirroring pieces which is only used on one card. There's also ways to completely remove pieces from the game and to switch pieces to the enemy color. On first look it seems way less straightforward to play than the three base decks are. Complete Essen loot (where is my self control? Bunny Bunny Moose Moose? Really?): 
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Oct 19, 2014 21:25
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How can you *not* want BBMM??
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Oct 19, 2014 21:28
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GrandpaPants posted:It's sorta highly variable for the scenario and whether the Mastermind actually does a good job. The first few scenarios should take < 1 hr, though. I ran the introductory scenario, open table talk, with 2 other players (our fourth did not show). With going through the rules, running the book's recommended practice round, the protagonists talking strategy and the added logistics of trading off the third protagonist deck throughout the game it took almost exactly 2 hours and we went through all three loops.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:28
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Pimpmust posted:Got in my first game of Quantum today, really impressed at how elegant yet deep the game is while still staying ~fast~. I believe if you got the initial run of sticky dice you can ask for better.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:29
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derkaiser posted:Complete Essen loot (where is my self control? Bunny Bunny Moose Moose? Really?) There're some great games in that picture, but bunny bunny moose moose is by far the one I'm the most jealous of.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:29
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Bobfly posted:There're some great games in that picture, but bunny bunny moose moose is by far the one I'm the most jealous of. They sold it at the CGE boot and also a German version at the Heidelberger Spieleverlag (which I only saw after I had already greedily grabbed the English one), so maybe it's a new printing...
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Oct 19, 2014 21:36
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derkaiser posted:They sold it at the CGE boot and also a German version at the Heidelberger Spieleverlag (which I only saw after I had already greedily grabbed the English one), so maybe it's a new printing... I sure hope so. I've been trying to get my hands on that for ages. My FLGS has it listed on their site, but it's never in stock.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:39
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SilverMike posted:I believe if you got the initial run of sticky dice you can ask for better. Yeah I found the threads about that and apparently I can just contact Funforge france to get replacements, which I'll probably do because god drat these dice are horrible. Apparently they got hosed over by the chinese factory not delivering the same quality as their preview-dice (not uncommon, for any product from China). Let's see if the Frenchies are amendable, I live in Sweden so I hope there's not too many hoops to jump through. e: This is the last update I can find on the replacement dice, doesn't seem like anyone has actually gotten any yet? quote:Quantum Dice Update: Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 21:42
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Tekopo posted:There's a difference between going for the leader (perfectly legitimate in most games) and spiting the guy that made a move that inconvenienced you. The first is good tactics, the second is stupid and an rear end in a top hat thing to do. To weigh in. I think they're both valid tactics, it's just that one of them might result in your not getting invited to play more games. Some groups tolerate assholes and others don't. If you're playing with relative strangers - as happens sometimes in this hobby - you take that into account. With some of my friends being a total rear end is acceptable and just a part of the game. With others it's just not. We'd rather someone step away and autopilot their turns than to deal with that. All depends on the game, the people, everything. I'm really not sure there's a clear cut answer here.
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