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Are there any worker placement games that are nice and simple (like Waterdeep), but aren't unbalanced and political (like Waterdeep)?
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Nov 18, 2014 14:00
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So I just attempted to play a friend's copy of vanilla Arkham Horror, despite general hearsay that it wasn't good. Hoo boy. The game started well enough, but two quick monster surges took us into the mid-game phase, where every round had a monster surge that bogged us down in the street, at one point knocking every investigator unconscious. So, after 6 hours, we gave up, two locations sealed, and the doom tracker at 8 with no real method of gaining doom tokens (five gates open, two major points sealed). Is this a normal part of vanilla Arkham without house rules? Right now, I'm still annoyed that it plays like the worst parts of Munchkin Quest and Elder Sign stapled together.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:04
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^^^ Usually I end up saying this to new players who win, but you've forgotten a rule - several, probably. Unless you were killing all those monsters you should have been increasing the Terror level; once that went above 10 it's one Doom per time. Also depending on the number of players the GOO might have awoken with five open gates.Schizoguy posted:Are there any worker placement games that are nice and simple (like Waterdeep), but aren't unbalanced and political (like Waterdeep)? Caylus. You should also give Versailles a bash - it's very strong. Orleans is also good if you want to go more in the direction of Concordia. Jedit fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 14:12
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Torchlighter posted:Is this a normal part of vanilla Arkham without house rules? Right now, I'm still annoyed that it plays like the worst parts of Munchkin Quest and Elder Sign stapled together. This is a completely normal experience with Arkham. Bad game.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:13
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Torchlighter posted:general hearsay that it wasn't good I mean, there's a reason for this.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:14
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Jedit posted:And now we know we're into I explained the basic idea already. You drop an eight strength+ attack force (7 size, +1 attack, +critter later on) every turn, attack and recall it afterwards. Often you do not have troops on the board. It's the point because you're denying anyone the chance at easy VPs if your strength drops below max. Given that recruiting is the bottleneck for your VP engine, anyone parking themselves in your city is actually doing you a favor. Drop on top of them, take a VP, next action teleport out and attack someone else, take a VP, recall. That's the worst thing anyone can do. There are no level 4 pyramids, sweet tile combos or temples integral to this strategy. You might pick up one of the first two for VPs at the very end. Did I miss something where losing a temple disables already-purchased upgrades or something? Because that would be pretty cool. Sorry, I'm not theory crafting or making up flaws in a game because I'm spiteful or whatever. I thought Kemet was cool and then I came to rethink that. It gets recommended a ton and adding a single cautionary voice to this thread shouldn't make you question my motives. You could even try it in a game some time and see what happens. If there's some cool thing that shuts it down or some emergent gameplay that keeps the game from slowing to a crawl, I'd like to know. I swear I'll stop generating walls of text about Kemet now.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:14
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Jedit posted:Caylus. You should also give Versailles a bash - it's very strong. Orleans is also good if you want to go more in the direction of Concordia. Yeah, Waterdeep is sort of "Caylus lite", so Caylus is the natural next step.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:15
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Torchlighter posted:The game started well enough, but two quick monster surges took us into the mid-game phase, where every round had a monster surge that bogged us down in the street One of the best things Eldritch Horror does is remove any concept of streets or monsters blocking you. You can always move away from a monster, and the presence of a monster just stops you from doing a couple actions in the action turn. Okay, it'll also block encounters at that location too - but if you take everything out you get your choice of encounter as a reward. No more waiting around doing nothing if you're the combat character.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:16
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:You could even try it in a game some time and see what happens. If there's some cool thing that shuts it down or some emergent gameplay that keeps the game from slowing to a crawl, I'd like to know. Someone tried it in the first game of Kemet we ever played. He finished dead last. I've seen defensive strategies work, but they all revolve around buying Defensive Victory, War Elephant and the snake, taking a couple of temples and inviting people to come and have a go. It generally takes two players to kick you out, and you get a VP whether they do or not.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:24
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:I explained the basic idea already. You drop an eight strength+ attack force (7 size, +1 attack, +critter later on) every turn, attack and recall it afterwards. Often you do not have troops on the board. It's the point because you're denying anyone the chance at easy VPs if your strength drops below max. If you are only generating 1 VP per turn, how can you win? You can only attack one temple per turn, meaning there are 4 others left over for the rest of the players to take. Hell, if you recall everytime you take a loss (which should be every fight as everyone should have learned to save their +1 str /+3 dmg card card just for fighting you), there are 5 temples for 4 players. Plus the temple where you sacrifice for points. This means that 1 person should be getting 2 permanent points per turn, or 2 people one, something you cannot compete with even disregarding the prayer point income from temples. If they all are trying to emulate your strategy, they are all idiots, because it can only "work" for the person with the 7 men troop tile. They should all profit like crazy from the fact that you are only ever going to do one attack per turn if you don't buy any movement increasing tiles. If you do buy those, you're going to have gotten some income from somewhere, meaning that you were on the board and thus vulnerable.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:45
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:You could even try it in a game some time and see what happens. If there's some cool thing that shuts it down or some emergent gameplay that keeps the game from slowing to a crawl, I'd like to know. You seem to be ignoring everyone telling you that your strategy is awful. There isn't any "cool thing" or "emergent gameplay" needed to stop to it because it's garbage that should only work on people who don't know what they're doing or somehow came to believe the same ridiculous theory. What don't you understand about that? I know it might be hard to accept that your master stroke strategy you're real proud of isn't actually any good but that's the reality. Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 16:24
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If everyone turtles the entire game without leaving anything on the board, then someone who turtled the entire game without leaving anything on the board will win. But that doesn't actually say anything about the effectiveness of turtling.
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Nov 18, 2014 16:42
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Everyone is making GBS threads on this guy but I think he does have a point: if your group is really passive, averse to aggression, and they spook easily then Kemet will not work. Manatee set up the lovely situation but the group had to play along for it to actually work.
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Nov 18, 2014 16:52
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Gimnbo posted:Everyone is making GBS threads on this guy but I think he does have a point: if your group is really passive, averse to aggression, and they spook easily then Kemet will not work. Manatee set up the lovely situation but the group had to play along for it to actually work. Yeah that's exactly what everyone is saying his lovely strat only works because of the group.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:06
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Yeah I was trying to reword it in a way that wasn't flagrantly telling him how much he sucks because it isn't a very conducive way to change someone's thinking.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:12
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Not all great games are for every group and perhaps they should simply move on to something they would like better.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:21
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Tekopo posted:The designer was meant to play LoW with Big McHuge, and when he couldn't (due to a fuckup by the con organisers), he ran the game for the people instead. I think he was meant to be there. It wasn't like Big McHuge went to pester him outside of that: I think you'd be pretty much expected to talk about your game/answer questions about it when you have been specifically booked to play it/run it for con attendee. When Richard Breese was at Strategicon, he literally played Keyflower from noon Friday til 7:00 pm Saturday night. No sleeping in between. How lucid do you think he was about 4:00 pm Saturday? Not so much, perhaps. Tom Lehmann did nearly the same thing when he was at Strategicon. If you really want to talk with designers in a serious way, I'd recommend sending them a geekmail on BGG.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:23
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Schizoguy posted:Are there any worker placement games that are nice and simple (like Waterdeep), but aren't unbalanced and political (like Waterdeep)? The thing with WP games are that they are either completely passive aggressive, or they immediately become political once you can take active aggressive actions like in Waterdeep. I haven't tried Caylus yet but from everything I've read about it, it sounds like what you're looking for. There's also Agricola, which is well designed, but I personally find it insufferably boring. Tzolkin is pretty good too, but the expansion is almost required. Both of these are a little more complex than Waterdeep, so it also depends on what you and your group are comfortable with.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:32
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Big McHuge posted:There's also Agricola, which is well designed, but I personally find it insufferably boring. Tzolkin is pretty good too, but the expansion is almost required. Both of these are a little more complex than Waterdeep, so it also depends on what you and your group are comfortable with. If you play Agricola in Family Mode without the cards its about as complex as Lords of Waterdeep.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:35
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Worker placement doesn't work (as far as I know) without being able to block the other guys, and that gets both political and stuff really fast. But yeah, Agricola family mode and Caylus probably work fine if that is indirect enough. Tzolk'in is great, but it might turn off your group because of the huge amount of options for what your workers can do. Also, Targi is great for two player worker placement, but the blocking aspect is really prominent. It doesn't get political per se though, so...
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Nov 18, 2014 17:48
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Gimnbo posted:Yeah I was trying to reword it in a way that wasn't flagrantly telling him how much he sucks because it isn't a very conducive way to change someone's thinking. If he had just said "hey this happened in my group, what's the deal? Is this normal?" then I would agree. However he basically declared his awful strategy to be the king of all strategies that breaks the game and then plugged his ears saying when we told him otherwise. So I think making GBS threads on him is ok.
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Nov 18, 2014 17:49
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Lorini posted:When Richard Breese was at Strategicon, he literally played Keyflower from noon Friday til 7:00 pm Saturday night. No sleeping in between. How lucid do you think he was about 4:00 pm Saturday? Not so much, perhaps. Tom Lehmann did nearly the same thing when he was at Strategicon. If you really want to talk with designers in a serious way, I'd recommend sending them a geekmail on BGG. And yes, if I have a question, my usual (and only) call of port is asking them on BGG, I've done it in the past. EDIT: Sorry, I don't mean to be a dick here. I don't actually know how we ended up with this argument, because I generally avoid being a dick to any designers, no matter if I like their game or not 
Tekopo fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 17:59
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The only way to resolve this Kemet issue is a Kemet forum game.
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Nov 18, 2014 18:32
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nimby posted:The only way to resolve this Kemet issue is a Kemet forum game. I own the game and get it to the table, so I wouldn't need to be a player, but I would absolutely love to watch others play it here.
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Nov 18, 2014 18:38
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nimby posted:The only way to resolve this Kemet issue is a Kemet forum game. I've never played it, so obviously I really want to play it via PBF.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:12
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In the run up to Christmas I'm looking to expand my wish-list a little bit with a few games. Recently I have managed to get my parents into board games and they seem to have taken it up rather keenly, particuarly Pandemic, but they also enjoy Catan and Ticket to Ride: Europe as well. So whats a good co-op that can sit alongside Pandemic in my collection? The obvious one is Flash Point: Fire Rescue I suppose, and Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game has been recommended to me though I'm not really sure about its complexity (it took a while for my parents to be totally comfortable with Pandemic, and they still forget things like how to trade cards) and how it would play with just the three of us. Freedom: The Underground Railroad has also been suggested which looks interesting. The second request is as a result of my dad having a quick look through Shut Up & Sit Down's (other board game reviewers are available of course) review listings last night. 1944: Race to the Rhine really caught his eye, especially that it focused more on the logistics of warfare rather than combat, and it made me realise that my collection is missing a wargame. By "wargame" I really just mean a board game with a war/military theme and not specifically a classic hex-and-counter game like Advanced Squad Leader. So 1944: Race to the Rhine is there, and I'm also sorely tempted by something like Twilight Struggle. 1775: Rebellion has also been recommended and looks good. Anything else I should have a look at? I don't mind too much if the "wargame" suggestion is just for 2 players, as while both my parents are big military history buffs, it's really my dad and I who read the most about it and are more likely to play such a game just between ourselves. My mother likes Pandemic primarily for its co-operative gameplay, and she doesn't mind competitive games as long they're easy to think about and not overly aggressive.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:44
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Zveroboy posted:So whats a good co-op that can sit alongside Pandemic in my collection? The obvious one is Flash Point: Fire Rescue I suppose, and Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game has been recommended to me though I'm not really sure about its complexity (it took a while for my parents to be totally comfortable with Pandemic, and they still forget things like how to trade cards) and how it would play with just the three of us. Freedom: The Underground Railroad has also been suggested which looks interesting. Pass on Dead of Winter. It's got a lot more moving parts than pandemic, plus it has some poorly designed mechanics. Flash Point seems to be what you're looking for. I'd also put in a recommendation for Forbidden Desert. quote:So 1944: Race to the Rhine is there, and I'm also sorely tempted by something like Twilight Struggle. 1775: Rebellion has also been recommended and looks good. Anything else I should have a look at? I don't mind too much if the "wargame" suggestion is just for 2 players, as while both my parents are big military history buffs, it's really my dad and I who read the most about it and are more likely to play such a game just between ourselves. My mother likes Pandemic primarily for its co-operative gameplay, and she doesn't mind competitive games as long they're easy to think about and not overly aggressive. I haven't played Race to the Rhine, but it's on my list to check out. Twilight Struggle is an awesome game, but the complexity is fairly high compared to some of the other games you listed earlier. You might also try Memoir 44. It's a decent light wargame that has a lot of scenarios, and if you like it there are a ton of expansions that cover the different theaters of WW2.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:53
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Seven Wonders has been a hit with pro-gaming parents in my circles, and Timeline is a big hit with almost everyone, while being short and portable too. Hanabi is a sure thing too.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:54
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Already have 7 Wonders, but I'll definitely check out Memoir 44. I know it has an Eastern Front expansion which is probably the theatre of WW2 we've read the most about.
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Nov 18, 2014 20:00
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If you're turned off by World War II as a setting, but like magical elf poo poo, would Battlelore 2E be a decent substitute for Memoir 44?
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Nov 18, 2014 20:11
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:If you're turned off by World War II as a setting, but like magical elf poo poo, would Battlelore 2E be a decent substitute for Memoir 44? I haven't played Battlelore, but it looks pretty god drat the same, so I'll tentatively say yes.
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Nov 18, 2014 20:14
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Big McHuge posted:I haven't played Battlelore, but it looks pretty god drat the same, so I'll tentatively say yes. If you like the look of BattleLore but would prefer more military history than Agincourt with goblins, look into Commands and Colours. Either Ancients or Napoleonics, depending how your taste runs. (I think someone mentioned Memoir 44 - it's all the same system, roughly, but C&C is the purest form.)
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Nov 18, 2014 20:22
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Zveroboy posted:So whats a good co-op that can sit alongside Pandemic in my collection? Get Hanabi.
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Nov 18, 2014 20:52
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Jedit posted:^^^ Usually I end up saying this to new players who win, but you've forgotten a rule - several, probably. Unless you were killing all those monsters you should have been increasing the Terror level; once that went above 10 it's one Doom per time. Also depending on the number of players the GOO might have awoken with five open gates. You absolutely cannot say that Caylus is not political. Caylus is political as gently caress.
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Nov 18, 2014 21:37
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Some Numbers posted:Get Hanabi. Samurai Spirit also looks like a cute, fast co-op game if you're fine with the quarterbacking issue (which I assume you are if you like Pandemic).
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Nov 18, 2014 22:02
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quote:You absolutely cannot say that Caylus is not political. Caylus is political as gently caress. Any worker placement game with limited places is going to have some amount of politics. In some sense, taking an action takes it away from everyone else evenly - but in practice, often one other person will need it greatly while others won't want it at all. As such, there's a lever here to hurt or benefit a specific player (and this is particularly stark with the Provost/Bailiff shenanigans in Caylus), so you have politics. But you can say the same about most anything - pretty much any interactive multiplayer game is going to have some effective politics. Even Dominion has a bit. To me the important part is that politics doesn't steamroll other mechanics in the game - and to measure this I think it makes sense to imagine how much of a "skill gap" (or luck gap, even) could be erased by politics in a given game (under normal play; I mean, you could collude in Dominion by doing things like asking whether someone has a defense card before attacking - but that doesn't feel like a part of normal play). For Caylus, I feel like a significantly better player could still win against 3 other players who were "out to get him" (but still playing generally normally). By contrast, in Lords of Waterdeep, I feel like even a very good player would quite often lose to newbies blanketing him in mandatory quests (without even any collusive intent, perhaps, just as "targeting the person who's ahead"). I don't feel like I want to "fly under the radar" in Caylus. I always consider what actions will get taken first, but who I'm taking actions from is often a tertiary concern. I'm doing my own stuff, with only a general idea of who's ahead (except maybe at the very end). In much more political games, eg. Risk or Catan or Munchkin, there'd be no way to survive 3 other players out to get you - and "who's ahead" is pretty much paramount. Anyway, I think that in a normal game between similarly skilled Caylus players, the end result will come down to politics sometimes - but that's most unavoidable, and I wouldn't say the overall game is very political. I think it's less political than most other interactive, multiplayer (ie. >2 players or teams) board games. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 22:57
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To give an example of how much my parents love Pandemic, we've just finished a three game session. We played three games last night as well and spent 45 minutes talking strategy and the best role combinations afterwards while we finished off the wine. Standard difficulty five epidemic games (I shuffle the normal and Virulent epidemics together then build the deck from that) are entertaining us quite happily, and I've still not introduced them to the Mutation, Bio-Terrorist or In The Lab challenges yet. Regarding quarter-backing, someone watching us play would most likely accuse me of it, but by my parent's own admission they do forget about certain mechanics (such as discarding a matching city card to fly anywhere, or easy opportunities to trade cards) and are more than willing to hear out any ideas I might have. If one of them has a move in mind though, I let them take it with no questions asked, even if it isn't "optimal". I never have and never will say to anyone who plays a co-op game with me "That was a bad move." but because my parents and I have played so much Pandemic I really don't have to worry about them doing bad turns anymore. On the flip side they often point things out to me that I miss so it's a two way street really, and they're quite happy for me to keep track of the infections and crunch the numbers on what might be coming up (for example I keep an eye on what cities are potential outbreaks, something which my parents would lose track of). We've played dozens of hours of Pandemic since I introduced it to them a couple months ago and we've never fallen out or had harsh words over it, and the fact that even after a hard loss they still want to play again must be evidence that whatever system we're using works. There's always laughter and smiles, and we always want to play again. The gf is the worst for quarter-backing. It only took one game with all four of us playing (my parents, gf and me) for us all to mutually agree that next time she wants to play Pandemic with us, she's being the Bio-Terrorist by default. Will have to get some card sleeves though because dad likes to shuffle cards by mashing them together  He also flip-flops from game to game, initially badgering us about building research stations ("They're the key to victory!") then in the next game getting too focused on eradicating diseases ("It's the key to victory!") while the rest of the board is chain-outbreaking like crazy.I'd completely forgotten about Hanabi which actually might be a really good idea, and I'll look more into Flash Point: Fire Rescue. Zveroboy fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 22:59
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jmzero posted:Any worker placement game with limited places is going to have some amount of politics. In some sense, taking an action takes it away from everyone else evenly - but in practice, often one other person will need it greatly while others won't want it at all. As such, there's a lever here to hurt or benefit a specific player (and this is particularly stark with the Provost/Bailiff shenanigans in Caylus), so you have politics. Moving the Provost makes Caylus more potentially political than most WP games IME. Mandatory quests aren't that difficult and aren't usually worth the effort to put on as opposed to playing other cards and getting your own quests, again IME. They hurt, but not as much as the provost eating your actions entirely does. It's not the action selection that's political, it's whether you get to take them at ALL. gently caress me the arguments we had the last time we played Caylus. They were bad enough that it's now on our 'get-rid-of' shelf.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:10
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thespaceinvader posted:Moving the Provost makes Caylus more potentially political than most WP games IME. Mandatory quests aren't that difficult and aren't usually worth the effort to put on as opposed to playing other cards and getting your own quests, again IME. They hurt, but not as much as the provost eating your actions entirely does. It's not the action selection that's political, it's whether you get to take them at ALL. While I don't disagree that the Provost is political, it's also not as much as a targeted "gently caress you" as a Mandatory Quest. The Mandatory Quest feels like it came right out of Munchkin design, whereas the Provost can at least be mitigated by not placing dudes close to where the Bailiff is. Those sorts of moves become calculated gambles, where you can at least determine how much money other players would have to spend to gently caress you. And chances are, someone else is going to lose an action too, unless you're at the very end (beginning?) of the road, in which case, that's sort of on you if you're winning. Provost provides an interesting mechanic that requires you to gauge other players and what they're likely to do (gasp, player interaction in a Euro???), wheres you just sit and take the Mandatory Quest because Lords of Waterdeep is kinda a lovely game.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:22
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Anyone else just play Lords of Waterdeep without Mandatory Quests? I've done it a few times and generally enjoyed it more that way since it's kind of a crap mechanic, plus Attack cards still fulfill the same role without being as crippling.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:59
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