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Morpheus posted:I'm looking for a game to play at work - every week (Thursdays) a few people get together at lunch and play a board game or two from noon to 1 PM. Right now we have Pandemic and Carcassone, and have played stuff like Castle Panic, Ricochet Robots, Love Letter, and Fairy Tale, and have generally enjoyed them all. Depending on your group, Hanabi might fit. It only plays up to five, though. A good friend of mine plays that game obsessively with his co-workers over the lunch hour. One bonus with Hanabi is that as your group gets better at the game, you can make it harder by adding the rainbow cards.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:36
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PuttyKnife posted:Thinking about buying Robinson Crusoe since it is a Robinson Crusoe game and I just watched Robinson Crusoe on Mars. It seems to have a decent score on BGG but I was a bit surprised at Shut Up & Sit Down's review. From what I could tell, they were a little lost on the game because the details of the system are really sort of opaque and unknowable which ends up taking away from any sort of fun you might have. I've only played it a few times, but from what I can tell there are only two things of note for Robinson Crusoe: 1) It is hard as poo poo, and 2) the rulebook is horrendous. Like, easily one of the worst rulebooks I've ever had the mispleasure of reading. I don't particularly like Robinson Crusoe since the difficulty seems very much based on luck of the draw and dice. You have to do a lot of things and don't have enough actions to do all of them, so when you (inevitably) fail at some of those things, it doesn't feel like you planned poorly, it just feels like you got screwed by RNG, which doesn't make for a good experience. You might think it's a clever bit of game design to give you the choice of a chance at 2 successful actions or 1 guaranteed successful action, but again, you need to do all those gambles because there's simply not enough actions to do everything. Compare that to something like Space Alert, where you actually feel like you have control over the misery because everything is deterministic. Imagine if Space Alert had a "Roll a die to see if your cannon jammed" rule in there. It would be terrible and make for such wildly varying experiences that it wouldn't be as consistently fun as it is. Between this and Imperial Settlers, I'm really souring Ignacy as a designer. He feels like the board game equivalent of an Eastern European PC game dev in that he has some neat ideas, but it is executed with so much jank that you have to be the kind of person who derives enjoyment from the ghosts of missed potential.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:36
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Zombie #246 posted:How does it compare to the Marvel version? I haven't played either. I think it compares very favorably because Encounters stops pretending like it isn't better off as a co-op game and doesn't bother having the players compete against each other.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:38
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Yeah when we played it, it was full on co-op. I actually think the way that the co-op is done in the game to be pretty good: basically certain cards can be played out of turn to help other players but they always allow you to replace that card by drawing when you do play it. It leads to great moments when someone just needs a tiny bit more 'money' or 'attack' and desperately asks if anyone has anything that can help him. About the only thing I dislike about the game is player elimination, although the game doesn't get any harder/easier if you add or remove players, really.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:52
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Also we kind of roleplayed a bit when I played it but it seemed to fit the game and it was an effective strategy to boot: you receive a specialist 'avatar' at the start of the game which gives you an alright card right off the bat. I was playing as the gunner so I started to stock up on attack cards, stuff like 'Close Encounters' and 'Knife Play', another was the corporate suit so he had ways to get a load of money and kept helping us that way (and other ways I don't want to spoil), while the third player in our group kept stocking up on Ridley cards and was the one that eventually took out the Alien Queen. We also went into the game blind so there was a certain mechanism half-way through the game (we played the Aliens scenario) that didn't seem to do much and I pretty much said to the other guys 'We have to deal with that, I think it will have an effect later' and it turns out it did, so I felt smart about sussing that out 
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Nov 3, 2014 18:57
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Did you guys use the rule where dead players turned into aliens and attacked everyone else?
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Nov 3, 2014 19:04
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S.J. posted:Did you guys use the rule where dead players turned into aliens and attacked everyone else?
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Nov 3, 2014 19:06
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Tekopo posted:Nah we didn't use that one, I wasn't even told it was present! How does that work? Uh... pretty much what it says on the tin, I guess? Nobody I know uses it yet because the normal scenarios are tough enough 
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Nov 3, 2014 19:36
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GrandpaPants posted:I don't particularly like Robinson Crusoe since the difficulty seems very much based on luck of the draw and dice. You have to do a lot of things and don't have enough actions to do all of them, so when you (inevitably) fail at some of those things, it doesn't feel like you planned poorly, it just feels like you got screwed by RNG I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Robinson Crusoe does not screw you with randomness; it uses it very sparingly to make the game more interesting. The game goes out of its way to give you tons of information about what is coming up in the immediate future and methods of mitigating randomness where you absolutely need to. If you built your shelter poorly and end up putting some kind of shoddy workmanship card into the event deck you know that card will be coming up eventually. You can plan a way to mitigate it.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:17
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Get Bit! and Walk the Plank are fast simple ones you can knock out multiple games in an hour and they don't take up much room. 7 Wonders takes 30min and that can include setup once you get fast enough at playing it. My group got fast enough at Yspahan that we can knock it out in 40min or so. The main complaint I have in my group for Smash Up! is that one or two factions are just better than others. The consensus is that whomever ends up with Zombies or Robots or worse both will win. This hasn't always been the case but they will not budge from that belief. To get them to play the game+expansion I bought again we made a new rule on deck selection. The person to the start players right going counterclockwise removes a deck from the game until it reaches start player. Then deck selection continues like normal: start player selects until last player then it reverses. It takes out the things that may always get played and usually makes for more interesting builds. My favorite part about Smash Up is that it is the satire pinnacle of the "everything vs everything" genre to the point that it has almost killed it. There are so many games I played/saw/walked out of my first year at Gencon that it was retarded. Each game was the same: take a bunch of nerd trope bullshit and have it fight. It's like Deadliest Warrior level stupid where you have a bunch of unbalanced poo poo facing off and some things are just better than others but someone loves something so they think that it is the best thing. Smash Up. I see far less low-hanging fruit of the caliber coming up because everyone says "eh, I already got Smash Up and this game doesn't have giant ants trying to take away property rights from Felicia Day. I guess I'll pass on Vikings vs Gladiators vs Nuns vs my compulsive need to own nerd things for my identity."
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Nov 3, 2014 20:44
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Rutibex posted:I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Robinson Crusoe does not screw you with randomness; it uses it very sparingly to make the game more interesting. The game goes out of its way to give you tons of information about what is coming up in the immediate future and methods of mitigating randomness where you absolutely need to. If you built your shelter poorly and end up putting some kind of shoddy workmanship card into the event deck you know that card will be coming up eventually. You can plan a way to mitigate it. I wasn't complaining about the event cards, I was complaining about the fact that your actions can straight up fail unless you dedicate your entire turn to that one action. It ties back to the dev diary where Vlaada tells Ignacy to split up the good and bad events, or else the variance makes games unfun. Apparently that advice didn't translate to the rest of the design since it still makes the game unfun, regardless of whether you succeed or not. A game where it's too easy because you succeeded at all of your roll to succeed actions and a game where it's too hard because you failed at all your roll to succeed actions are both lovely experiences. Whether it's likely to occur or not is irrelevant, the fact that the possibility for both exists comes down to bad game design. I'm not sure why I spent so many words trying to convince Rutibex that a game is bad because it's too random.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:54
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I will acknowledge that Robinson Crusoe has severe problems. I just wish it worked well, because I really like some of the ideas like the event cards that come back to bite you, or the tremendous scarcity and the need to jimmy your camp around the place. (For 'gently caress I wish this actually worked' see also: Android.)
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Nov 3, 2014 21:00
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PuttyKnife posted:Thinking about buying Robinson Crusoe since it is a Robinson Crusoe game and I just watched Robinson Crusoe on Mars. It seems to have a decent score on BGG but I was a bit surprised at Shut Up & Sit Down's review. From what I could tell, they were a little lost on the game because the details of the system are really sort of opaque and unknowable which ends up taking away from any sort of fun you might have. I'd say RC takes a few games to start being fun. The first time playing was utterly exhausting because there are so many rules and the rulebook kind of blows. I think it took my group around four hours to set up, learn, and play the first time and we were just relieved to be done. The next game, a lot of time was spent just figuring out all the rules we had wrong, which was many of them. After that though, things started going more smoothly and we were just able to enjoy the game. The theme and art is fantastic and the game is brutal, but still fun. I don't know if I'd buy it again because most of my gaming sessions just aren't long enough to get it to the table, but I do enjoy it when I actually get to play.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:02
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GrandpaPants posted:I wasn't complaining about the event cards, I was complaining about the fact that your actions can straight up fail unless you dedicate your entire turn to that one action. It's true they can fail but it's never just failing. When an action fails you get determination tokens which can be used to reroll your next risky action. Action failure is pretty rare (1/6 and 2/6 chance) and you are always guaranteed to get something out of it that will help you with another action down the road. I don't think that's terrible; it forces you to evaluate just how important each action is before you dedicate workers to it.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:04
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ThaShaneTrain posted:The main complaint I have in my group for Smash Up! My main complaint is the price you have to pay for a game that is only cards. The game isn't cost effective at all. Smash Up! 176 cards @ $29.99 = 0.17 a card Sentinels of the Multiverse 578 cards @ $39.95 = .07 a card Not to mention Smash Up doesn't come with tokens in the base game for some dumbfuck reason so you almost are compelled to buy the expansions to get them. It's a cute little game, but I will never own it unless they do a big box at a decent price.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:21
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ThaShaneTrain posted:The main complaint I have in my group for Smash Up! is that one or two factions are just better than others. The consensus is that whomever ends up with Zombies or Robots or worse both will win. This hasn't always been the case but they will not budge from that belief. To get them to play the game+expansion I bought again we made a new rule on deck selection. The person to the start players right going counterclockwise removes a deck from the game until it reaches start player. Then deck selection continues like normal: start player selects until last player then it reverses. It takes out the things that may always get played and usually makes for more interesting builds. I have not been able to play a full game of Smash Up with my wife because she wants to tableflip with it. We play plenty of adversarial stuff, but that game just puts her into a rage. We are new to tabletop gaming, so I am unsure if it's right to say that games with control decks in it make her crazy. It's fine enough to get into combat against another player, but some people just don't react well to you taking cards out of their hand or off the table. Last time, I tried the magician tricksters and just about became a bloodsmear across the table. I don't think we even got far enough into the game to imply a winner.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:21
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djfooboo posted:It's a cute little game, but I will never own it unless they do a big box at a decent price. They do sell this: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/202430 It is just a giant box with one faction inside of it
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Nov 3, 2014 21:24
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djfooboo posted:My main complaint is the price you have to pay for a game that is only cards. The game isn't cost effective at all. Smash Up had to pay an artist for the card art, though. Sentinels just jacked a 10 year old's science notebook and used the doodles.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:24
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I have not been able to play a full game of Smash Up with my wife because she wants to tableflip with it. We play plenty of adversarial stuff, but that game just puts her into a rage. We are new to tabletop gaming, so I am unsure if it's right to say that games with control decks in it make her crazy. It's fine enough to get into combat against another player, but some people just don't react well to you taking cards out of their hand or off the table. Last time, I tried the magician tricksters and just about became a bloodsmear across the table. I don't think we even got far enough into the game to imply a winner. I have played through my entire deck, or close to it, in a single turn with wizard robots. It's not a very good game.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:47
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I have not been able to play a full game of Smash Up with my wife because she wants to tableflip with it. We play plenty of adversarial stuff, but that game just puts her into a rage. We are new to tabletop gaming, so I am unsure if it's right to say that games with control decks in it make her crazy. It's fine enough to get into combat against another player, but some people just don't react well to you taking cards out of their hand or off the table. Last time, I tried the magician tricksters and just about became a bloodsmear across the table. I don't think we even got far enough into the game to imply a winner. It was pretty much exactly her reaction to the Game of Thrones card game too, after we got comfortable with that, and is the whole reason I don't want to spend any money on games like Netrunner or Magic - I fuckin' love those dumb goddamn control games where you throw out half your deck and have a huge duel over whether or not you can wind up casting that fireball or not. My favorite M:tG decks were always either green/black graveyard control weirdness, or pure blue permanent-shutdown rear end in a top hat machines, and it's kinda frustrating realizing I don't get to play one of my favorite gametypes with her any more. Unless it involves area or resource control, of course. Give her Terra Mystica, or Suburbia, or Tzolkin, and she'll steamroll everyone playing spur-of-the-minute crazy gameboard shutdowns constantly and 
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Nov 3, 2014 22:08
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How is Blue Moon Legends ? Looking for another 2pl card game to play and seems interesting enough.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:13
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Does any thread folks know or are excited about any upcoming super-heavy non-wargame games? I'm talking about stuff that's as brain-burney as Vinhos or as ridiculous as Die Macher. Agricola, Caylus, or others of that caliber are not quite as complex as what I'm trying to find. For instance, any thoughts on Kanban? Or something else?
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Nov 3, 2014 23:49
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Stelas posted:I will acknowledge that Robinson Crusoe has severe problems. I just wish it worked well, because I really like some of the ideas like the event cards that come back to bite you, or the tremendous scarcity and the need to jimmy your camp around the place. It does have some good ideas but doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a mechanically thematic euro puzzle or a narratively thematic experience generator. It probably succeeds best at the latter, but all the fiddlyness gets in the way pretty badly (especially in solo play, far too much setup for how much game there is). I still think it's a decent game but I wish I didn't buy it, never sees the table in favour of Ghost Stories or Mage Knight. GrandpaPants posted:Between this and Imperial Settlers, I'm really souring Ignacy as a designer. He feels like the board game equivalent of an Eastern European PC game dev in that he has some neat ideas, but it is executed with so much jank that you have to be the kind of person who derives enjoyment from the ghosts of missed potential. Yeah, just based on the difference between RC's hype and how it actually plays I'm taking response to his other games with a massive grain of salt now. Imperial Settlers sounds pretty bad.
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Nov 4, 2014 00:58
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Trynant posted:Does any thread folks know or are excited about any upcoming super-heavy non-wargame games? I'm talking about stuff that's as brain-burney as Vinhos or as ridiculous as Die Macher. Agricola, Caylus, or others of that caliber are not quite as complex as what I'm trying to find. For instance, any thoughts on Kanban? Or something else? We played three player Arkwright Saturday. It's meaty like 18xx meaty, and it took us five hours to finish it so it's a commitment. On the other hand, if you ever played Automobile but was disappointed, Arkwright fixes everything about Automobile and adds an additional strategy direction on top of it! It's a hard core economic game. We didn't see the interaction the publisher says is there, but that's probably because we missed two big rules in the game. It's the heaviest game I know of from Essen 2014. I'm not going to be able to play Kanban until BGG Con but I'm looking forward to it. I should have ZhanGuo this weekend and hope to get it to the table, should be at least medium-heavy weight.
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Nov 4, 2014 01:28
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djfooboo posted:My main complaint is the price you have to pay for a game that is only cards. The game isn't cost effective at all. Goldmine
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Nov 4, 2014 02:24
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Lorini posted:We played three player Arkwright Saturday. It's meaty like 18xx meaty, and it took us five hours to finish it so it's a commitment. On the other hand, if you ever played Automobile but was disappointed, Arkwright fixes everything about Automobile and adds an additional strategy direction on top of it! It's a hard core economic game. We didn't see the interaction the publisher says is there, but that's probably because we missed two big rules in the game. It's the heaviest game I know of from Essen 2014. God dammit this checks all my marks when money is tight and that game is limited. I'll have to look at ZhanGou as well. If Kanban is going to be nearly as crazy as Vinhos then it'll sell me immediately.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:39
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I've got copy of Space Alert on the way for the cost of shipping. Pretty excited about it. Is it a pretty easy one to learn/teach? Any recommended videos or resources to make this one easier on me. I learned Galaxy Trucker quickly but as evidenced by any Mage Knight talk that doesn't mean all Vlaada games are easy to figure out. I had a random thought while reading the thread that there should be a Board Game thread version of the "Before I Play" website for video games. We could talk about easily confused rules, share videos and other helpful links, whatever.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:22
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Timett posted:I've got copy of Space Alert on the way for the cost of shipping. Pretty excited about it. Is it a pretty easy one to learn/teach? Any recommended videos or resources to make this one easier on me. I learned Galaxy Trucker quickly but as evidenced by any Mage Knight talk that doesn't mean all Vlaada games are easy to figure out. Space Alert comes with a great little booklet to teach the rules that takes you through a training mission or two. It's got pretty great humor throughout, and if you follow it with a group, you'll more or less know what's what on the other side of it. Make no mistake, though, you'll still probably get the ship blown up.
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Nov 4, 2014 08:19
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Timett posted:I've got copy of Space Alert on the way for the cost of shipping. Pretty excited about it. Is it a pretty easy one to learn/teach? Any recommended videos or resources to make this one easier on me. I learned Galaxy Trucker quickly but as evidenced by any Mage Knight talk that doesn't mean all Vlaada games are easy to figure out. Ricky Royal has a full solo playthrough, heavily edited so he plays for a bit, inserts the resolution of that phase, etc... He explains the rules and components beforehand, too. You could watch that and then play the tutorials, that should be enough. It's a more complicated game than Galaxy Trucker, I think.
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Nov 4, 2014 09:22
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I was looking at Space Alert the other day since everyone seems to agree it's the bee's knees, but decided to buy Tragedy Looper instead. See, I scouted out the rulebook ahead of time (always read the rulebook first if it's available online) and geez, it sounded a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. Even with the startup guide, I feel kind of daunted, like it would be a lot of effort just teaching people the game before they actually get to play it "for real". The fiddliness is probably intentional, since, y'know, it's a game about screwing up in hilarious and technically-but-not-practically predictable ways, but it feels to me like it's going to end with someone misunderstanding the rules and there being no time to correct it in the heat of the moment, and then it'll kind of suck because you didn't understand the rules rather than because you had a hilarious pratfall type moment. How wrong am I about this?
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Nov 4, 2014 10:02
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Space Alert is not all that complicated in terms of actually getting rules wrong in my opinion, and it's cleverly designed in that you can't possibly get the rules wrong within the real time segment of it. Sure, you could realise that you got something wrong later on in the resolution phase, but that's just part of the learning experience and can happen in any game, really.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:08
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What's the trick to the resolution phase in space alert because its long and super boring.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:09
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:What's the trick to the resolution phase in space alert because its long and super boring. Empathy basically. You have to feel the excitement of seeing whether you get blown to bits or you manage to kill dat space octopus, and you have to laugh at the situation when people go to check the window instead of shooting the guns. I guess if you really don't enjoy that bit, don't play the game.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:28
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If you can't see the humor of watching the whole crew's plan steadily crumble into farce once control has been taken away from you, then yes, Space Alert probably isn't the game for you.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:32
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Tekopo posted:Space Alert is not all that complicated in terms of actually getting rules wrong in my opinion, and it's cleverly designed in that you can't possibly get the rules wrong within the real time segment of it. Sure, you could realise that you got something wrong later on in the resolution phase, but that's just part of the learning experience and can happen in any game, really. This. The problem is that a lot of the information is frontloaded, so it seems pretty daunting. Also, the board is very nicely designed, so by only reading the rules without the board in front of you you're taking extra unneeded mental steps.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:35
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I honestly don't get the criticism that the resolution is long. Also if you can't interject jokes within the resolution phase I don't know what to tell you. And if the resolution phase is boring simply because you are breezing through the threats, then up the difficulty, either by using the apps that increase the number of threats/the severity of them or just use Yellow threats only (or Red threats if you have bought the expansion). And if you find your plans going wrong to be boring, the game isn't for you.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:42
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What is the absolute maximum amount of time the resolution round could possibly take? 10 minutes?
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Nov 4, 2014 10:44
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Yeah, I mean, how long does it take to flip 4/5 cards and do their actions and resolve damage/push threats down. I can't see it taking more than 1 minute per action and since the total number of actions is 12 and many times people won't even have an action at all, if you are taking more than 10 minutes to resolve the phase, something is wrong.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:50
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The one misstep to watch out for is that the walkthrough is going to tell you at one point to "play the first track" after not really explaining much to you, then after all the explaining it will say "now you're ready to play the first simulation" What they mean is that they want you to play the track on the CD and listen to it so that everybody knows what the computer will say and you explain what each of those things want you to do when they happen. Then after the explanations are done is when they want you to try it for real. Oh and if you're playing with less than a full group REMEMBER YOUR ANDROID! Somtimes i get a bit to excited about the extra cards in my hand and forget that i can't do everything that needs to be done in just 4 moves and then time is over before i remember that Green has moved all round and now we're dead 
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Nov 4, 2014 10:51
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Hey, I love failing, as long as it's funny, and it sounds like Space Alert fits that bill. I just have this prophetic vision of the phrase "That's how that thing works? So I just wasted three moves? If I'd understood that 10 minutes ago, I would've done something else. Man, this game sucks." being uttered at some point or another. I like the idea of screwing up because you stress out and forget things you honest-to-god knew a moment ago; but not so much because you never understood it in the first place due to the sheer deluge of concepts being piled on before the game has even started. Maybe this is just my imagination and the problems don't actually manifest when you're actually playing it, which I guess is kind of why I'm posting? I'd like to like the game, I'm just wary of spending $70 on it given my first (and admittely pre-game) impression.
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Nov 4, 2014 10:51
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