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I stand by my statement that Ad Astra is a "fixed" Catan... minus a couple of the stupid artifacts. VVVVVVVVV It is, and I am very upset about it. I truly feel that it is everything Catan should have been. OmegaGoo fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 22:13
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OmegaGoo posted:I stand by my statement that Ad Astra is a "fixed" Catan... minus a couple of the stupid artifacts. Too bad it seems to be out of print.
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Dec 23, 2014 22:18
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Jmzero, of your 4 points, the first three very obviously apply to Dominion. 1. Your first couple of shuffles are very important and can torpedo your entire game if they go badly. 2. Cost thresholds... like $4 vs $5? $7 vs $8? 3. Having a better engine means being able to buy more and better engine parts to get even farther ahead. Snowballing. As points against Catan, I won't argue. You're right that those are things you don't like about Catan, and that many others also dislike. I dislike some of them, too. We agree, I think. They are also points against Dominion, and I hope we agree on that, too? Paper Kaiju posted:Nothing you have said addresses the central problem with Catan. In most games, both bad luck and bad choices can result in you losing. In Catan, bad luck and bad decisions can result in you being unable to play the game. If you want to talk about being screwed so badly you don't even get to play, I've played scores of games of Catan and only got screwed that badly twice. We're talking about something that happens less than 5% of the time (to me). How many times in Dominion will you have to wait for your third time through your deck before you get a $5 hand? Depends what you bought, with silver/silver being 9% and the other openings analysed here being 5% at best. Being unable to buy those best cards for your first 4 turns while everyone else is building their engine is exactly like only being able to afford dev cards while others can build cities. There are plenty of boards where picking up lots of silver or $3 and $4 junk early just slows down your ability to get your engine going. Dump on Catan all you like for the politics, the screw-the-leader gameplay, and the kingmaking. I won't argue. I love that stuff (except kingmaking) and you don't, which is probably why I like the game and you don't. I also totally understand the complaint about luck, but if you're unable to see that it applies to Dominion, too, then I think you're just being biased. You're allowed to like Dominion better than Catan. Maybe you like it for its faster gameplay, its greater strategic depth, its huge replayability, and so on. But you probably don't like Dominion as a luck-free test of pure strategy, because it's not that. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 23:05
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quote:Jmzero, of your 4 points, the first three very obviously apply to Dominion. Most games will have some amount of all this stuff. Games will all have thresholds of some sort. Some snowballing should absolutely exist; otherwise what does it mean to be in the lead? Even non-political games like Dominion have a certain amount of politics. None of this is absolute - it's about degree, and it has to be evaluated in context of how a game plays out. As to the specific points: your third point is totally a valid complaint about Dominion. It's very much a game of positive feedback. I think that's perhaps its biggest design problem (meanwhile its biggest popularity problem is that its dry as hell). On thresholds: In Dominion, sure there will be some kingdoms where $5 is awesome and $4 is much worse (and there might not be a corresponding inequality at $2/$3), but the gameplay ideal in Dominion is that there wouldn't be a huge threshold here. That is to say, in a "good" setup, you should usually want a potential $4 option only somewhat less than the $5 - and ideally there'd be more one than viable-looking one option at many of the price points (and Silver is often a fine consolation prize). Obviously sometimes $7 vs $8 is going to decide the game, but ideally that luck should only be deciding close games - and before that end, hopefully there's many opportunities for ideal and unideal hands for all the players. Dominion isn't perfect (and I don't play it often, honestly), but in its design it was clearly meant to be a game of small thresholds and small swings. I like small swings: if randomness distinguishes between two players who have generally played reasonable strategies, that seems right to me. If anything, I wouldn't mind Dominion being more swingy; it would help mitigate its tendency to snowball. But if, at times, players are locked out of a Dominion game by their initial draws, that means Dominion has a problem - not that it's desirable to have that sort of luck based swing in a game. The thresholds in Catan, meanwhile, seem more stark and more permanent. If you build on a spot we were racing to, my "next best option" might be terrible (or non-existent, as the game goes on), and that might have been the only important race for me that game (ie. there may not be later chances for that luck to fall the other way). There's lots of dice rolls in Catan; but in many games only a few will really be critical. Catan feels very swingy to me, and when Swingy + Random get together, I tend to have a bad time. But I'll admit I'm no master of either game. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 23:25
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I can't remember the last time I played Catan where there wasn't one player who had no chance the whole time. Their whole game was effectively a string of "lose your turns" with crappy dice luck as they were missing some key resource to make any meaningful headway. The problem is that someone always has bad dice luck. You can somewhat mitigate with good placement, but it's difficult for all four players to guarantee redundant access to both wood and brick, or to ore/wheat; if you can't do that, you're depending on luck to expand. Trading is usually worthless for the person in last place, because they usually don't have anything useful to trade.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:28
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*rolls dice, gets nothing* "Anybody wanna trade X for Y?" "Nope, I need that resource." "Okay." times like 20
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Dec 23, 2014 23:36
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Jimbozig posted:3. Having a better engine means being able to buy more and better engine parts to get even farther ahead. Snowballing. In Dominion, your great engine was slowly assembled over several turns (and must continue to be strengthened as you begin to win and buy vp cards or you might slow down too much.) in Catan, your main strategic decision making point that lead to your engine was made at the start of the game. There's just not as much actual strategy
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Dec 23, 2014 23:43
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They put in a gold resource in Catan with one of the expansions. You get gold when you don't get other resources, and it's used exclusively for trading, with the bank mostly.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:49
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I'm at a super casual level in Dominion, so when I have bad opening draws I'm perfectly content to pick up silver. I can't see far enough to know how that silver will affect my end game and as such I don't feel hosed by the draw. I'm just adjusting my strategy. In Catan, I feel hosed by the dice whenever I roll badly because there's no "adjusting my strategy." I either can do something or I can't. The multiple resource system aggravates this since it's a lot harder to have a contingency plan. It's much less likely that you can go "well, I didn't get what I want for a settlement but I can still get a dev card" because the costs are that much more exact. This, by the way, is also one of the biggest flaws of Ascension. If your costs are too exact in a game where your resource pool is somewhat random then you risk locking players out of turns they might otherwise be able to do something in.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:51
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Trip report : played hyperborea. It seemed imbalanced, but then I barely lost to another player with an ability I overlooked. Overall, the cube puzzling seemed AP inducing and the combat too simple for a game of its type, but it has a lot of good ideas and I look forward to someone making a different game inspired by the mechanics.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:55
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Gimnbo posted:I'm at a super casual level in Dominion, so when I have bad opening draws I'm perfectly content to pick up silver. .
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Dec 24, 2014 00:01
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Some Numbers posted:Well, seeing as Silver is one of the best buys you can make in the opening rounds, I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove. His argument was about how luck of the draw would force you to buy silver in the event that there's a better card for 4 or 5 and how it relates to missing your prices in Catan.
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Dec 24, 2014 00:05
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jmzero posted:What would I change in Catan? You want to play Deus.
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Dec 24, 2014 00:45
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Anniversary posted:Thanks for all the write ups on Sentinels! Sounds like its a little more flawed than I expected and has me putting it in the do not purchase category; but maybe play if someone has it. Personally, it's one of my favorite games of all time and I've gotten more playtime out of it than any other game I own, full stop. I love the variety, I love the coop nature of it (I hugely disagree that having a player play the villain would be an improvement), I love how unique and individual every one of the heroes and villains and environments are. I love that I get an (admittedly lightweight) version of the CCG combo experience with the decks, which is the appeal of those games to me, but I don't have to construct them, which I don't particularly enjoy. I think the people bitching about limited decision-making, intense book-keeping, and bad art are crazy, also not particularly representative - aside from the Shut Up and Sit Down crew and this thread I've never encountered anyone who's played Sentinels and had any of those issues with it. Certainly not any of the people I've played it with, and more than one of them have turned around and bought the game themselves. If you don't have access to someone with the game, I would try the app and see if you like it. It's relatively cheap, and it probably shows the game in its most favorable light (albeit minus all the expansion content...but I don't think they're likely to sell you on the game if you don't like the base.).
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Dec 24, 2014 01:50
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Jedit posted:You want to play Deus. This is true; the resource management and hex area control are done better in Deus, and there's no trading or politics for the most part.
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Dec 24, 2014 01:55
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malkav11 posted:(I hugely disagree that having a player play the villain would be an improvement) Sentinels of the Multiverse would not be improved by having a player play the villain. A hypothetical game that used the basic gameplay fundaments (multiple fixed decks in play at once, varying setup with differing combos of elements, etc.) but had 1+ players be antagonistic to the others would be a vast improvement because then there would be a play-counterplay dynamic that would prevent every player's deck from having a One True Optimal Play to aim for.
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Dec 24, 2014 01:58
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Trasson posted:Sentinels of the Multiverse would not be improved by having a player play the villain. A hypothetical game that used the basic gameplay fundaments (multiple fixed decks in play at once, varying setup with differing combos of elements, etc.) but had 1+ players be antagonistic to the others would be a vast improvement because then there would be a play-counterplay dynamic that would prevent every player's deck from having a One True Optimal Play to aim for. Yes, I understand that you weren't talking about Sentinels specifically. I still disagree. You could probably make a fun competitive game using similar building blocks (indeed, Sentinel Tactics is vaguely along those lines and is so far seeming enjoyable), but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as if it were cooperative.
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Dec 24, 2014 02:04
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malkav11 posted:I think the people bitching about limited decision-making, intense book-keeping, and bad art are crazy, also not particularly representative - aside from the Shut Up and Sit Down crew and this thread I've never encountered anyone who's played Sentinels and had any of those issues with it. Certainly not any of the people I've played it with, and more than one of them have turned around and bought the game themselves. Your anecdote sure beat the hell out of my opinion there. Bravo. While we're slinging anecdotes, I've watched every single member of my gaming group who liked it go from red hot to ice cold on that game in the space of a year. Every single one. But yeah, obviously these are the rantings of a crazy person.
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Dec 24, 2014 02:15
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quote:I've watched every single member of my gaming group who liked it go from red hot to ice cold on that game in the space of a year. Every single one. We're in much the same boat. We enjoyed the discovery phase of Sentinels - and this took a while, as between us we got all the expansions and what not. It's been loaned out a lot, some times we were running 2 or 3 games at once right after we got it, and a lot of people have got some enjoyment out of it... overall, I don't think it's a bad thing to buy, as long as you have a bunch of people who'll want to give it a try. But none of us have really gone back to it, other than when new stuff comes out. I think for many groups, it'll be mostly a discovery game, where you try out the different characters/villains a couple time to see how they tick, and then put it away. Honestly, there's lots of "good games" we got much less value out of. For us, Tragedy Looper was a discovery game, where everyone wanted to play it 2 or 3 times, but nobody stuck with it. Lots of better designed games (eg. Trajan) have ridden the shelf much more than Sentinels. But for all the good (and potential) of Sentinels, I don't know how anyone wouldn't find it fiddly. It varies (with the boss/characters/environments), but at its worst it is the fiddliest game I think I've ever played - and it's not unusual you spend more time resolving the villain's turn than you do on all the player turns together. The frustrating part is that most of this is unnecessary waste - the effects are seldom complicated, the time is just in reading the paragraphs of text on all the cards (because nothing is standardized or done with icons or keywords - and because every stupid generic henchmen works slightly differently in terms of when they attack or whatever you can't even just skim). jmzero fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 02:32
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The End posted:Your anecdote sure beat the hell out of my opinion there. Bravo. While we're slinging anecdotes, I've watched every single member of my gaming group who liked it go from red hot to ice cold on that game in the space of a year. Every single one. Your opinion bears no resemblance to my experience of the game. But certainly my opinion isn't any more inherently valid than yours.
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Dec 24, 2014 02:45
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There are a bunch of CO-OP VS AI card games out there now and still none felt as fiddly or lacking any meaningful choices as Sentinels to my group. Out of the ones that I can think of at the moment, LotR LCG feels closest to me in mechanics, maybe because I got them at similar times. I had to let that go because one LCG (Netrunner) was enough of a hole in my pocket, but its mechanics were leagues beyond Sentinels. I still wonder about picking it up again one day...
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Dec 24, 2014 02:51
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Gimnbo posted:I'm at a super casual level in Dominion, so when I have bad opening draws I'm perfectly content to pick up silver. I can't see far enough to know how that silver will affect my end game and as such I don't feel hosed by the draw.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:00
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At board game night, group is suffering through attempting to learn how to play Storm the Castle, send help.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:06
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jmzero posted:But for all the good (and potential) of Sentinels, I don't know how anyone wouldn't find it fiddly. It varies (with the boss/characters/environments), but at its worst it is the fiddliest game I think I've ever played - and it's not unusual you spend more time resolving the villain's turn than you do on all the player turns together. The frustrating part is that most of this is unnecessary waste - the effects are seldom complicated, the time is just in reading the paragraphs of text on all the cards (because nothing is standardized or done with icons or keywords - and because every stupid generic henchmen works slightly differently in terms of when they attack or whatever you can't even just skim). In the context of other games I've played, like Mansions of Madness, Arkham Horror, Mage Knight, and particularly virtually any CCG, Sentinels of the Multiverse just doesn't register as particularly fiddly. You're resolving one card at a time and most of the time there are only a few applicable modifiers if any. I'm apparently better at remembering these than some people because I've never found the need to use the various markers they included in my Kickstarter copy (aside from health tokens), but it's still not like trying to decipher an attack on Volkare's army in Mage Knight, or untangle a priority chain in Magic. (And icons would be actively harder to parse, as far as I'm concerned.) It's also not particularly difficult to understand why villain turns would take longer, because there's usually more characters acting than during a given player's turn.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:33
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malkav11 posted:Yes, I understand that you weren't talking about Sentinels specifically. I still disagree. You could probably make a fun competitive game using similar building blocks (indeed, Sentinel Tactics is vaguely along those lines and is so far seeming enjoyable), but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as if it were cooperative. malkav11 posted:(I hugely disagree that having a player play the villain would be an improvement) Which is it? Are we talking about whether having the villain player controlled would be an improvement to your enjoyment, or the objective quality of the gameplay? I'm talking about the latter, I suspect you mean the former. If that's the case, don't bother responding, since that's just not even what I'm discussing. The large majority of the Sentinels heroes have a One Optimal Play that their deck makes. Any deviations from this are minor or non-optimal. Omnitron-X wants all his components out and an armor. Parse wants three Critical Multipliers. Absolute Zero wants all his modules and his powers, etc. These are the complex ones, mind. Tachyon is an ongoing math problem of (total villain HP / (# of Lightspeed Barrages playable * number of bursts in hand) and trying to optimize for that first term equaling zero. Legacy doesn't even get that. If you're lucky, you get a choice picking two of Galvanize, Next Evolution, and Motivational Charge (Far more likely, you just Galvanize because you're not getting anything interesting to do in hand, but that's a whole different issue). In that case, the choice is again simple: will preventing a damage type do prevent more damage than healing 1 to everyone? Nope? Alright, then Galvanize and Motivational Charge. Otherwise, Galvanize and Next Evolution for whatever will hurt the most. Pretty much everyone works like this. This is due to the villain being automatic. Because the villain can't actually respond to any hero plays, there is being Optimal and there are the rest of the turns. In a game where the villain is player controlled (not one of the SotM villains: they are automatic and designed to be so. I mean a specifically designed antagonist deck) then the One Right Play is less obvious. Even in the existing Sentinels framework, where min/maxing damage dealt versus taken is the name of the game, there would still be more interesting plays to be had if they were made with the knowledge that the villain could make intended counterplays. Not "gosh I hope that all Hero Equipments don't get blown up this turn" but "I could throw the Staff of Ra because Baron Blade is going to blow up everyone's equipment anyway but if I do so he might not blow all of them up thus wasting my time..." and so forth. That's way more interesting on a turn by turn basis, especially when that's the entire game. Now take that concept. Put in the idea of a bunch of different characters to play as, give them all a bunch of differing decks with all kinds of different moves and combos, and have a set of decks for the villain to play as, and you've got a much stronger game, and nothing about this removes the theme or simple concept, the strongest strengths of Sentinels of the Multiverse*. That's what I mean by having a playable villain being an improvement. *If you're reading this and thinking it's some kind of strange bastardized child of Sentinels of the Multiverse, Yomi, and Super Dungeon Explore, then you're not particularly wrong. If you're thinking it sounds like it could have potential, then you've got my point.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:48
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malkav11 posted:or untangle a priority chain in Magic. I'm always confused when someone brings this as somehow being complicated, because it's literally the opposite. Like, you can literally just put the cards on top of each other as you play them (and then one-at-a-time into the graveyard as they actually take effect), it's dead simple.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:50
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Jabor posted:I'm always confused when someone brings this as somehow being complicated, because it's literally the opposite. Like, you can literally just put the cards on top of each other as you play them (and then one-at-a-time into the graveyard as they actually take effect), it's dead simple. It actually isn't once you get beyond "the stack", and instead get into the resulting state-based-effects when things go into and out of each zone which triggers each and every other zone. 613.1, regarding Layers, is actually something you have to memorize if you want to judge events.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:55
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Gerund posted:It actually isn't once you get beyond "the stack", and instead get into the resulting state-based-effects when things go into and out of each zone which triggers each and every other zone. 613.1, regarding Layers, is actually something you have to memorize if you want to judge events. It literally just works as you'd intuitively expect it to work outside of some weird edge cases. The rules are specifically written (and rewritten, when necessary) in order to make that happen. Yes, if you're actually judging an event you need to know enough of the rules to recognize when one of those weird edge cases crops up, but as a player it's honestly not particularly relevant. And even then, Magic is far and away the easiest TCG/LCG to actually know the rules for, since there are no fiddly exceptions and nothing ruled on a case-by-case basis, the rules themselves are straightforward and cover every scenario.
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Dec 24, 2014 04:11
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It's all dead simple until someone Krosan Grips their own Oblivion Ring while its ETB trigger is on the stack. Seriously though, Magic is definitely a bad example to use for complicated CCG mechanics. You want Netrunner for that (a game that has to resort to flowcharts for anything to make sense).
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Dec 24, 2014 04:27
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As much as I love Yomi, there's a few cases where the base rules just aren't good enough and you're forced to go to a FAQ. I got way too spoiled with MTGs rules. EDIT: the gods in Theros were pretty confusing at first though.
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Dec 24, 2014 05:34
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The Sentinels app is now out on Steam, according to the Handelabra blog. Which means that now it's out on PC, iOS, and Android. I'm probably not going to try the Steam version, but I'm assuming that it's the same thing as the Android version, which handles all the fiddly bits for you, but limits you to the base set, which contains
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Dec 24, 2014 05:54
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Bosushi! posted:As much as I love Yomi, there's a few cases where the base rules just aren't good enough and you're forced to go to a FAQ. I got way too spoiled with MTGs rules. I was spoiled for playing it online for too long; when I sat down with my buddy and we played our first game, I couldn't remember exactly what happened if you played two throws of the same speed. After searching fruitlessly through the rules, I just found it days later under the "Anatomy of a Card" section, where it explains what the Speed box means. Also, now that I'm leafing through, it doesn't seem to mention anywhere that you have to discard a card with an ability to use the ability. Still love Yomi. Yomi yomi yomi
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Dec 24, 2014 05:57
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quote:In the context of other games I've played, like Mansions of Madness, Arkham Horror, Mage Knight, and particularly virtually any CCG, Sentinels of the Multiverse just doesn't register as particularly fiddly. You're resolving one card at a time and most of the time there are only a few applicable modifiers if any. I'm apparently better at remembering these than some people because I've never found the need to use the various markers they included in my Kickstarter copy (aside from health tokens), but it's still not like trying to decipher an attack on Volkare's army in Mage Knight, or untangle a priority chain in Magic. It's also not particularly difficult to understand why villain turns would take longer, because there's usually more characters acting than during a given player's turn. I think you're confusing "fiddly" with "complicated" (or at least what I'm trying to say with "fiddly" in this instance"). Fiddly means that you're spending time maintaining or evaluating the board state (the kinds of thing a computer would do, or help you do, in a computer version). MtG can get complicated, but is seldom fiddly. Even when the board is packed with stuff, their deft use of keywords, design consistency, and text templating mean that you can read the board state quickly and can usually resolve effects without much diggling. If anything, Magic is impressively not fiddly - for example, other similar games make you track damage with little counters on each creature, while very seldom would you have to do that in Magic. On the other hand, Mage Knight I would agree is somewhat fiddly - but I'd still say it has a better "deciding what to do"/"resolving that on the board" ratio than Sentinels does. Arkham Horror.. well, there, maybe that's a game that's more fiddly than Sentinels. But even if Arkham Horror was universally beloved (it's not, and its fiddliness is one of the prime reasons) it being fiddly wouldn't necessarily excuse another game from having the same flaw. quote:(And icons would be actively harder to parse, as far as I'm concerned.) It doesn't need to have some complicated symbology language, or replace the text - it just needs consistent callouts for things like "BEGINNING OF VILLAIN TURN" (so you can quickly scan all the cards in play and resolve those effects) or "TRIGGERED EFFECT" (so you can quickly find where that bit was when somebody does the thing). Or maybe have a mark on cards that you need to search the deck for so they stand out a bit. This isn't rocket science, just basic usability. I mean, I'm sure this pain lessens once you have played the same villain/environment 10 times and remember crap... but it's crazy bad when you're just starting - and it makes these phases take way longer to resolve. Even if they just followed the Magic pattern of Keyword (what the keyword does) it would make the game much faster to play. You could also say some of this is just a symptom of a bigger problem: they needed more design space so they could do something besides spam cards and modifiers. quote:It's also not particularly difficult to understand why villain turns would take longer, because there's usually more characters acting than during a given player's turn I didn't mean the villain took longer than one player, I meant they take longer than all the players combined. Quite often your turn in Sentinels can be done in 10 seconds - especially if you're pumper truck'ing (eg. every turn you're using your power to make sure Jinx isn't going to get a "lucky" card next draw); meanwhile, many villains are crazy spam happy. Worse, sometimes the environments can get out of hand, and you're spending 2 minutes simulating some gun battle between outlaws, counting how many bits of cover are out right now, and in the end it often doesn't affect the "real" game much at all. Of all the games I've played more than a few times, Sentinels has the worst "time playing my turn" to "time spent fiddling/watching" ratio. That doesn't mean it's a crap game - but I think it'd be better if it was streamlined. jmzero fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 06:13
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Any recommendations for bird/card games on the iPhone? I'll have an iPad after Xmas I think so that should open up my options a bit.
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Dec 24, 2014 06:28
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Impermanent posted:Trip report : played hyperborea. It seemed imbalanced, but then I barely lost to another player with an ability I overlooked. Overall, the cube puzzling seemed AP inducing and the combat too simple for a game of its type, but it has a lot of good ideas and I look forward to someone making a different game inspired by the mechanics. What do you mean by a 'game of its type'? Hyperborea is a euro area control game, I would expect combat to be simple. It dresses in the clothes of a 4X game but it's really not.
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Dec 24, 2014 07:22
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goodness posted:Any recommendations for bird/card games on the iPhone? Puerto Rico, Caylus, Eclipse, Galaxy Trucker, maybe a Dominion port.
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Dec 24, 2014 07:46
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Does anyone have experience with Lewis and Clark: the Expedition? I've got a giftcard to Barnes & Noble and it seems like it's rate pretty highly on BGG. EDIT: Also thoughts on Shadowrun: Crossfire now that it's been out for a while? Spincut fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 08:28
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Board game night take two. Being as it's the holiday season there were fewer people in attendance this time, but when I came in every single one of them was in the process of attempting to play an introductory game of something called Storm the Castle. Is Storm the Castle any good? I have no loving clue because for in 45 minutes I was sitting there virtually no progress was made, largely due to a combination of A). the person who brought the game not knowing what on earth they were doing and B). the instruction manual being kind of poo poo. It didn't help matters that Storm the Castle apparently has enough tokens, cards, and other fiddly bits to make a Fantasy Flight board game jealous. I almost called it a night right there because I wasn't sure if this guy was going to insist on trying to keep hacking away at this thing or not and geek social fallacies aside I wasn't coming up with any tactful ways of going "you are kind of bad at this, how about packing things up and let's all actually play a game sometime this evening?" Fortunately that was about the time that he finally conceded defeat. Several of the players escaped upstairs to go play Warhammer, several more escaped in general, which left me, the store owner, and Storm the Castle guy. Thankfully the owner at least knows how to impart the rules of a game and so we wound up playing Takenoko and later after another person showed up a couple games of Forbidden Island. Overheard during Takenoko by Storm the Castle guy -  Heh, that reminds me of this one time at [COMMUNITY COLLEGE] where some friends and I played Snake Oil using Cards Against Humanity cards and, um, there was this one round where someone was an alien and I had to convince them to buy brown people, heh, um.Me and the store owner -  Me - Okay so irrigation markers have to be running along one of a tile's edges for it to count, right? Forbidden Island was all right. Is it quarterbacking when everybody is quarterbacking everybody else all the time? Or does that just wrap back around to cooperative? We played two games, the first one we lost when one of the treasures sank beneath the waves, the second we pulled out an uncannily coordinated victory that ended with a skin-of-our-teeth escape with the water level at 5 and 2/3rds of the island gone. I probably wouldn't make it a go-to, but it played quickly enough that I wouldn't turn it down playing a game of it if offered. Anyway, I'm telling you that story to tell you this one, I was so annoyed by that first hour being a waste that in a convoluted fit of pique I bought a copy of Kemet off the shelves then and there, resolving to do everything I can to learn how it works and learn how to effectively teach it so that when next Tuesday rolls around I can do a better job of teaching everybody a new game than that dude. I've never played Kemet before, so those of you with experience please impart upon me your wisdom. Things to bear in mind, common pitfalls, easily misinterpreted rules, anything, I want it all. Also what's the best way to go about teaching it to new players, if you have any special tricks for that? I see the instructions have rules for a quick "Beginner's Mode" and I have next Tuesday free so I can go to the store early and get in a two-player game with the owner to give him a feel for how things work before other people show up.
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Dec 24, 2014 08:43
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Spincut posted:Does anyone have experience with Lewis and Clark: the Expedition? I've got a giftcard to Barnes & Noble and it seems like it's rate pretty highly on BGG. No personal experience, but here's SUSD's video review. They didn't like it all that much.
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Dec 24, 2014 08:45
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Eponymous posted:No personal experience, but here's SUSD's video review. They didn't like it all that much. Which is how you can tell it's a good game. I've played it and enjoyed it, but I do think there are more interesting games with the same mechanical style. It can also run a bit long with five players.
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Dec 24, 2014 09:26
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