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Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Hulk Krogan posted:

So I realized that I'm missing a few pieces from my copy of Lords of Waterdeep + the expansion. The score track token for the grey expansion faction and one of the building markers for the green faction, specifically. Any suggestions on where to score replacements? I did some searching around and apparently WotC doesn't sell (or give out) replacements unless you bought a defective copy. Even just some place I can buy generic, colored wooden tokens would be fine.

I found a VP token for lords of waterdeep on the ground of a public bus once.

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Fenn the Fool!
Oct 24, 2006
woohoo
Recently got and played Sail to India, has anybody played this game? I like it in theory, but I'm not sure how you beat the harbor maintenance strategy. One of the players purchased it in the first couple turns and did nothing for the rest of the game but sail three ships in circles for a reliable two points per turn. Every 2-3 turns he had to sell goods and buy a new cube so he could track his points, but he was still making more points faster than any other way I could see on the board. Of course, the worst part about it is there's no thinking at all, its a really boring strategy to play out. Did we miss a rule somewhere, or is there a way to block this strategy? At the moment I'm thinking of adding a "max once per turn" rider to it like almost every other technology has.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Hulk Krogan posted:

So I realized that I'm missing a few pieces from my copy of Lords of Waterdeep + the expansion. The score track token for the grey expansion faction and one of the building markers for the green faction, specifically. Any suggestions on where to score replacements? I did some searching around and apparently WotC doesn't sell (or give out) replacements unless you bought a defective copy. Even just some place I can buy generic, colored wooden tokens would be fine.

If you're OK with non-matching bits, buy some thick card (picture framing card for example) and cut them out using an x-acto or similar?

echoMateria
Aug 29, 2012

Fruitbat Factory

Hulk Krogan posted:

So I realized that I'm missing a few pieces from my copy of Lords of Waterdeep + the expansion. The score track token for the grey expansion faction and one of the building markers for the green faction, specifically. Any suggestions on where to score replacements? I did some searching around and apparently WotC doesn't sell (or give out) replacements unless you bought a defective copy. Even just some place I can buy generic, colored wooden tokens would be fine.

http://www.shop.rockinbgames.com/#!/Wooden-Cubes/c/3344318/offset=0&sort=nameAsc sells wooden cubes of various colors and two sizes (8 & 10mm). My Mage Wars came with two cubes missing and I put in ones of matching colors that are almost the same size. I didn't see Gray as an option but maybe you can buy a natural one and paint it the color you need it. They are only 10-11 cents each anyway.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Tekopo posted:

People trying to build 'perfect ships' are the worst. The best people are the ones that, after playing a game against a few people that hadn't played with me before, were glad that I was speeding the game up because it meant that they were pressured during the game.
I keep trying to build perfect ships against the AI in the app and I take so long trying to decide where to place pieces that all the good ones are always gone. :downs:

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -

cbirdsong posted:

This is a few pages old, but it makes me think: Has anyone started maintaining a list of great Dominion boards?

http://www.dominiondeck.com/

You can filter by card, set, top rated, or even thumb through DominionStrategy's Kingdom Design Challenge Finalists and winners.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva
I'm going to have to start figuring out how I want to organize the lighter games in my bag. I just picked up Lost Legacy and Red7.

Lost Legacy is like Love Letter with a lot of the random guessing removed. I've only played a few hands of 2-player, but I already feel like it's stronger than Love Letter. The investigation phase after all the cards have been drawn is really interesting, with people trying to find the titular Lost Legacy from all of the possible locations where cards are (hands and the 'ruins'). The card abilities across both sets really emphasize looking at hands and the ruins. Knowing someone's hand isn't always a death sentence for them like in Love Letter, but it is a serious advantage. Really looking forward to playing more of these two sets.

Red7 is as great as the thread's been saying. Hits that quick, random, take that sort of gameplay that Fluxx and Munchkin try to do, but this game actually ends because you don't draw cards and people are actually eliminated. Much like LL, being knocked out isn't too bad, because you're back in less than 5 minutes.

JohnnySavs
Dec 28, 2004

I have all the characteristics of a human being.
Is there a gameplay element to Forbidden Desert that I'm missing? Specifically, once I paid attention to the "run out of sand" loss condition, the game seems next to impossible even on Normal difficulty. Last night we had meteorologist, climber, and archaeologist, and got two parts before losing, and I just tried a solo game with climber, water carrier and explorer and had the same ending.

Is the game only winnable with specific characters (thinking navigator, climber, archaeologist), or one person being the designated dig monkey? My friend mentioned in the two other games he's played they also lost due to running out of sand.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!
Tabletop managed to win it, and they're... not known for tactical acumen. Which leads me to guess that it's presumably possible.

Dr. Lunchables
Dec 27, 2012

IRL DEBUFFED KOBOLD



Sure, but you've gotta clear sand from the get go. The archaeologist is helpful for this, but not necessary. Considering you can also clear sand from adjacent tiles, it's not unreasonable to expect everyone to spend at least one action per turn on removing sand.

Scyther
Dec 29, 2010

thespaceinvader posted:

Tabletop managed to win it, and they're... not known for tactical acumen. Which leads me to guess that it's presumably possible.

They also got vital rules wrong, in true Tabletop fashion, which made the game a lot easier for them. That being said, I've played the game three times, two of which were victories. I don't remember the difficulty setting but I'm sure it was on the lower end of the spectrum.

Schizoguy
Mar 1, 2002

I have so many things on my social calendar these days, it is difficult to know which you are making reference to, in particular.

ThaShaneTrain posted:

Star Realms as our opener, two copies so it could play 3.

For 3-player Star Realms, I just use one box and I sleeved some playing cards for the third starting hand - diamonds for money and clubs for punches. The Trade Row gets a little crowded, but if you don't have (or don't want to bring) a second copy, it seems to work alright.


Echophonic posted:

Red7 is as great as the thread's been saying. Hits that quick, random, take that sort of gameplay that Fluxx and Munchkin try to do, but this game actually ends because you don't draw cards and people are actually eliminated. Much like LL, being knocked out isn't too bad, because you're back in less than 5 minutes.

Red7 is a whole lot better if you play with the advanced rules - less random, more thinky - but it also takes longer. Especially if you're keeping score.

Kiranamos
Sep 27, 2007

STATUS: SCOTT IS AN IDIOT

Scyther posted:

They also got vital rules wrong, in true Tabletop fashion, which made the game a lot easier for them. That being said, I've played the game three times, two of which were victories. I don't remember the difficulty setting but I'm sure it was on the lower end of the spectrum.

They're still getting rules wrong? That's insane.

Gimnbo
Feb 13, 2012

e m b r a c e
t r a n q u i l i t y



https://www.change.org/p/tabletop-replay-forbidden-desert-with-the-correct-rules

All of 3 people cared.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva

Schizoguy posted:

For 3-player Star Realms, I just use one box and I sleeved some playing cards for the third starting hand - diamonds for money and clubs for punches. The Trade Row gets a little crowded, but if you don't have (or don't want to bring) a second copy, it seems to work alright.


Red7 is a whole lot better if you play with the advanced rules - less random, more thinky - but it also takes longer. Especially if you're keeping score.

Yeah, I figured as much, we just haven't gotten into it yet.

Rosalie_A
Oct 30, 2011
So I came into some Amazon gift cards over the last few days, and I've been trying to figure out what to get. I've had my eyes on Through the Ages for a while. For the people here who've played it, what do you think? 7 Wonders and the FFG version of Civilization are both really drat popular with my friends so this should be square peg square hole, but I don't want to go and waste time and money if there's something else I could get.

Magnetic North
Dec 15, 2008

Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

JohnnySavs posted:

Is there a gameplay element to Forbidden Desert that I'm missing? Specifically, once I paid attention to the "run out of sand" loss condition, the game seems next to impossible even on Normal difficulty. Last night we had meteorologist, climber, and archaeologist, and got two parts before losing, and I just tried a solo game with climber, water carrier and explorer and had the same ending.

Is the game only winnable with specific characters (thinking navigator, climber, archaeologist), or one person being the designated dig monkey? My friend mentioned in the two other games he's played they also lost due to running out of sand.

I just played my first game of this over the weekend, so this is strictly anecdotal, but I cannot imagine winning this game without the water carrier. Even playing on novice with 5 players, we were always dangerously low on water until we made a concerted effort to get everyone to the well with him. Without him, there is so little water to go around, every sun beats down card is costly, even if most of you are in tunnels. We also almost ran out of sand tokens too, but we used a Duneblaster to knock off a pile that was in the way anyway. We had the climber and navigator too, so we were ignoring as much as we could.

Kiranamos posted:

They're still getting rules wrong? That's insane.

My favorite Table Top error that I've seen so far is in the Gloom episode. The first move of the game was to play a modifier on one of their family. It's a modifier that says it can only be played on a character with a 'Marriage' icon... which is impossible on the first turn, as no character starts with any icon. This isn't mixing up a relatively elaborate game, this is a failure to read the card in a very simple game. It's even better because the big graphical flourish they have makes if obvious even to people who never played before.

Elysium
Aug 21, 2003
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
Forbidden Desert is loving hard. We failed miserably on 4 games on Normal before breaking down and trying on Novice. Then we lost 2 more times. The second time it looked like we were going to win, but we mixed up which of the 2 remaining unexcavated tiles we had peaked at earlier and needed to uncover, picked the wrong one, and then lost 1 turn before we would have won. The third game on Novice we got a really good start, kept the storm level at 2 for a ridiculously long time with some luck and good use of the Meteorologist power, and pulled out a pretty comfotable victory from there. We did not have the Water Carrier or the Archeologist, without whom my group was already writing off the game before we had started.

taser rates
Mar 30, 2010

Trasson posted:

So I came into some Amazon gift cards over the last few days, and I've been trying to figure out what to get. I've had my eyes on Through the Ages for a while. For the people here who've played it, what do you think? 7 Wonders and the FFG version of Civilization are both really drat popular with my friends so this should be square peg square hole, but I don't want to go and waste time and money if there's something else I could get.

TTA is amazing, but CGE is supposedly working on an improved version on it for 2015, so you might want to hold off. You can also play it online for free at BGA or BGO to give it a test run whether you decide to get it or not.

Celery Jello
Mar 21, 2005
Slippery Tilde
So, Imperial Settlers is a fun little engine-building game with neat art design. You know what makes it better?

A free Campaign Mode, where you play multiple solo games and have effects that carry over and make the game bigger and more difficult each round, complete with grognardy lookup tables for your random effects each round.

I've never been one for playing solo variants on games (It's already irritating enough having to play russian roulette with whether or not the 2-player mode of a game is any good), but I might actually have to give this a shot.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
Got a few proper, three player games of Lagoon. None of them with my regular gaming group, but rather light-to-medium euro crowd. I've warned people that it's rather mentally exhausting, but it still piqued interest due to prettiness. It was, surprisingly, received very well and described as "good, but difficult" (as in, strategy rather than rules-wise). The fluidity of the shifting board was praised as a fun element.

Myself, I appreciated that the less experienced players could successfully gang up on me in a non-bullshit way (i.e. while pursuing their own strategy).

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."
Just got the chance to play Sentinels of the Multiverse today and had a blast with it. There are some flaws, but everyone had fun and we had some good losses and some good wins (varying from one silly win where we just locked a boss down until he slowly was chipped to death while we took 0 damage and healed each round, and one game where we curbstomped the boss to death in ~6 turns). Our group really enjoys co-op games. Are there any more in this vein with a nice quick setup time, ~1-1.5 hour play time, that are co-op?

Some Numbers
Sep 28, 2006

"LET'S GET DOWN TO WORK!!"

Dirk the Average posted:

Just got the chance to play Sentinels of the Multiverse today and had a blast with it. There are some flaws, but everyone had fun and we had some good losses and some good wins (varying from one silly win where we just locked a boss down until he slowly was chipped to death while we took 0 damage and healed each round, and one game where we curbstomped the boss to death in ~6 turns). Our group really enjoys co-op games. Are there any more in this vein with a nice quick setup time, ~1-1.5 hour play time, that are co-op?

HANABI.

taser rates
Mar 30, 2010

Dirk the Average posted:

Just got the chance to play Sentinels of the Multiverse today and had a blast with it. There are some flaws, but everyone had fun and we had some good losses and some good wins (varying from one silly win where we just locked a boss down until he slowly was chipped to death while we took 0 damage and healed each round, and one game where we curbstomped the boss to death in ~6 turns). Our group really enjoys co-op games. Are there any more in this vein with a nice quick setup time, ~1-1.5 hour play time, that are co-op?

Space Alert

BonHair
Apr 28, 2007


Board Game Thread 4e: Just get Hanabi.

Some Numbers
Sep 28, 2006

"LET'S GET DOWN TO WORK!!"

BonHair posted:

Board Game Thread 4e: Just get Hanabi.

And Kemet.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Schizoguy posted:

Red7 is a whole lot better if you play with the advanced rules - less random, more thinky - but it also takes longer. Especially if you're keeping score.

I can't even conceive of playing Red7 with the advanced rules. It's a five minute filler; there's no need to try and turn it into a main event.

echoMateria
Aug 29, 2012

Fruitbat Factory

Dirk the Average posted:

Just got the chance to play Sentinels of the Multiverse today and had a blast with it. There are some flaws, but everyone had fun and we had some good losses and some good wins (varying from one silly win where we just locked a boss down until he slowly was chipped to death while we took 0 damage and healed each round, and one game where we curbstomped the boss to death in ~6 turns). Our group really enjoys co-op games. Are there any more in this vein with a nice quick setup time, ~1-1.5 hour play time, that are co-op?

Don't get Hanabi, it is overrated. Get Tragedy Looper instead. It is co op for 3 playing against you (+1) for 30-60 minutes after the initial tutorial table talk play.

If you want something closer to Sentinels' "players playing against an AI deck" thing, Legendary: Encounters would be my recommendation.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.

taser rates posted:

Space Alert

This.

The best part is that you can lie through your teeth to hesitant people by saying "come on, a game is just 10 minutes flat". No one will call you out on this afterwards, because they'll be busy having fun.

BonHair
Apr 28, 2007

echoMateria posted:

Don't get Hanabi, it is overrated.

I respect your right to this opinion, but could you please elaborate on this? I am honestly curious how you could not enjoy this game.
I have played it with people ranging from spergy engineering students who knew statistics too well to liberal arts chicks with no boardgaming experience, and after getting used to the honour system of avoiding to cheat as much as possible and the lack of a clear cut victory/loss everyone enjoyed it immensely. I think it has a great depth and challenge in it, mostly in how to deal with and give limited information in the best possible way, despite it being very simple to teach. Also, evolving a group meta is great and it makes you feel that you are progressing you skill at the game in a very tangible way.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -
The thing about Hanabi is that the act of playing is a series of very negative restrictions on what should be the least restricted parts of a game. There's a difference between "no talking" and "only say X specific things" because the former doesn't restrict one's creativity. Ugg-Tect gets away with it because you have a giant silly inflatable club and cavespeak itself is enjoyable. In Hanabi's case, players more often find themselves frustrated by the communication restrictions than enjoying them.

Also, the game boils down to luck slightly more than Solitaire. I know people who love Hanabi, but it's not for me.

BonHair
Apr 28, 2007

Broken Loose posted:

The thing about Hanabi is that the act of playing is a series of very negative restrictions on what should be the least restricted parts of a game. There's a difference between "no talking" and "only say X specific things" because the former doesn't restrict one's creativity. Ugg-Tect gets away with it because you have a giant silly inflatable club and cavespeak itself is enjoyable. In Hanabi's case, players more often find themselves frustrated by the communication restrictions than enjoying them.

Also, the game boils down to luck slightly more than Solitaire. I know people who love Hanabi, but it's not for me.

I don't get why table talk should be the least restricted part a game. It should not be restricted in political and traitor games as a rule, sure, but otherwise there is no reason for saying it should not be restricted. In most cases, there is no reason to restrict it either, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be restricted when it serves the game.

I will absolutely agree that not being able to tell someone what you want them to know is frustrating. But that to me is a good frustrating, because you can usually see how it could have been avoided and thus you can correct it the next time around. It's the same kind of frustration that you get in the resolution phase in Space Alert, where you missed out on shooting that one ship dead and it kills you. You know that you could have saved it, but you didn't, and now it will mess up everything. And you will definitely kill it next time, for sure. The restriction might hamper obvious creativity (like "play that drat card in the middle"), but it requires you to be more creative to figure out other ways of saying something.
When playing with my girlfriend for instance, it will be her turn and she will be out of hints but know that she can play a specific card, but doing so will force me to discard a card we actually need. So, instead of playing the obvious card, she will discard something. This will let me know not to discard the card I would otherwise discard, and I might instead discard the next one. This kind of subtle hinting is only possible because you can't talk, and it is very rewarding to me. The game restricts talking as indirect hints (that is, hints not requiring flipping a token), but actions within the game work as well for providing indirect hints.
The game forces you to think quite a lot about what someone else knows and thinks, and figuring out how the other person is thinking and how you can get them to think what you are thinking is hugely rewarding to me. And it requires nonverbal creativity.

I do disagree with it boiling down to luck. Sure, you will need luck to get the perfect 25 (or 30) score, but in most games, the difference between 18 and 23 is the interesting bit anyway, and you will be able to get 23ish with most hands in a skilled group. Able to being the key, because someone will gently caress it up half the time.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
Partially restricted communication sucks, because it invites endless arguments about what is acceptable communication and what is borderline cheating. Including the numerous cases of "someone thought of a clever way of communicating something once and it kinda stuck and should we now pretend humans are incapable of winking with their right eye because it breaks the challenge".

Like, when playing Concept, I described one of James Bond's aspects as woman + wind + heart, which was quite obviously a raunchy phrase in :poland:, perhaps similar to english "to blow somebody", except referring to sex in general. This was pretty funny and a good play, but it soon became obvious it's now the single best, obvious way to phrase "sex" in the game afterwards. Which kinda sucked for the gameplay.

[edit] The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: I ruined sex for everyone

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Dec 29, 2014

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

So my gaming group has been playing a lot of Ground Floor lately. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the game considering how I usually find pure worker placement games boring, but this one really seems to click. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here had played it and had any insight into good strategies for it?

Currently, my preferred strategy, if available, is to snatch the Empty Room w/ the Human Resources Tenant Improvement first turn, and placing my remaining time counter on Advertising or in the Meeting Room (depending on how the competition for Popularity looks).From there on I strive to sell a cube and get in the conference room for the next two turns, using the Human Resources to hopefully get discounted workers for turns 4-5 and training them if I have any remaining actions (starting as a non-profit makes this much easier). From there I usually rush to get the Assembly Line Floor and the Research Floor (the one that turns cubes into 3 cash and 3 info)and if I have budgeted correctly, and have sufficient employees the Construction Admin Floor. Then on turn 7 I use the Construction Admin to quickly place in the construction area and build an achievement floor ending the game, generally with me in the lead.

I'm open to other ideas, but I've seen a dearth of discussion on BGG so was wondering if anyone had any ideas here.

Madmarker fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Dec 29, 2014

Magnetic North
Dec 15, 2008

Beware the Forest's Mushrooms
I think what's important to consider in Hanabi is to have the level of table talk suit your group and relative level of experience. They even say in the rulebook something to the effect of, "You can hold yourself to whatever level of strictness you see fit. So you can say something like, 'Now, why would she have told you that particular piece of information?' or 'Boy, I have no idea what I have.' or "Sheesh, these hands are terrible." or something like that. We did a little coaching for a player's first game this weekend to demonstrate the necessary logic behind the game, and it helped him catch up very quickly.

Obviously, if you're doing this sort of thing as a means to increase your ending score, that's not really the point. But if you're doing it to increase enjoyment of the game by making it mildly more social, then that is fine. And if your group wants to be hardcore and not say a word and try and get the best score, godspeed you beautiful bastards.

echoMateria
Aug 29, 2012

Fruitbat Factory

BonHair posted:

I respect your right to this opinion, but could you please elaborate on this? I am honestly curious how you could not enjoy this game.
I have played it with people ranging from spergy engineering students who knew statistics too well to liberal arts chicks with no boardgaming experience, and after getting used to the honour system of avoiding to cheat as much as possible and the lack of a clear cut victory/loss everyone enjoyed it immensely. I think it has a great depth and challenge in it, mostly in how to deal with and give limited information in the best possible way, despite it being very simple to teach. Also, evolving a group meta is great and it makes you feel that you are progressing you skill at the game in a very tangible way.

Hanabi feels more like a social experiment than a game to me. And I'd rather play a game then keep wondering "What counts as cheating?" the whole time. Even you mention "after getting used to the honour system of avoiding to cheat as much as possible" foremost. Playing Hanabi is hard not because of trying to guess what is what and that but because you are trying so, so hard to not to cheat. It feels like an incomplete game to me with vague rules and a tackled on goal. Last time we played it, I said "So we got X points guys, lets try to do better next time!" And everyone said "Let's not play again" together, like they agreed to do beforehand. I sold it not long afterwards and we never talked about it again.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

taser rates posted:

Space Alert

As the previous thread said, it is the most fun you can have with four people that doesn't involve cake and/or lubricant.

JohnnySavs posted:

Is there a gameplay element to Forbidden Desert that I'm missing? Specifically, once I paid attention to the "run out of sand" loss condition, the game seems next to impossible even on Normal difficulty. Last night we had meteorologist, climber, and archaeologist, and got two parts before losing, and I just tried a solo game with climber, water carrier and explorer and had the same ending.

Is the game only winnable with specific characters (thinking navigator, climber, archaeologist), or one person being the designated dig monkey? My friend mentioned in the two other games he's played they also lost due to running out of sand.

Sand is basically the game's timer. It's easy to manage at first, but it will very quickly get out of hand. The fact that you need to get rid of it to excavate things is kind of a bummer, but that's why you try to excavate a ton in the early game when it's easy to get rid of and doing so will find things like the Duneblaster and clues.

Also, try putting the Navigator and the Climber together next time. They have a janky rules interaction when paired together that is essentially makes them the star quarterback of your team and able to make all of the Hail Mary plays. When I initially played the game, it was really hard to beat even the basic difficulty level. When I put those two together, they swept through the game like a... a great wind!

sonatinas
Apr 15, 2003

Seattle Karate Vs. L.A. Karate
It's rather easy to not cheat in Hanabi. However, the game's manual does say you can adjust table talk to how you want but in my playing if there was just a little table talk we would get 25 every time. It's definitely not a game for everyone. If you can't handle someone in a co-op setting making what you perceive as a "stupid move" Hanabi might infuriate you.

When we play there is 0 table talk and we only say the minimum required things such as "you have 3 ones (points to them)" or "you have one five(points to it". After a while you can try to lead in a way that most people can understand and score like 18-21 consistently.

However, Hanabi is not for everyone due to the fact that it requires a good working memory and that mental skill can be challenging for some.

The last game I played in 2pl was a near disaster when I had 5 fives in my hand. Ended up getting an 18 but it was after making some hard decisions on discarding.

The Eyes Have It
Feb 10, 2008

Third Eye Sees All
...snookums

BonHair posted:

I respect your right to this opinion, but could you please elaborate on this? I am honestly curious how you could not enjoy this game.
I have played it with people ranging from spergy engineering students who knew statistics too well to liberal arts chicks with no boardgaming experience, and after getting used to the honour system of avoiding to cheat as much as possible and the lack of a clear cut victory/loss everyone enjoyed it immensely. I think it has a great depth and challenge in it, mostly in how to deal with and give limited information in the best possible way, despite it being very simple to teach. Also, evolving a group meta is great and it makes you feel that you are progressing you skill at the game in a very tangible way.

I'm with you on this post but right at the end there I'm getting a little "yeah, BUT..."

I like Hanabi very much, had lots of fun with it and it's clever. But it never gets played anymore because it is no longer Hanabi. It eventually changed into a game of "When I say THIS I mean THAT" :mad: which I don't find fun.

e: My regular game partner is an Optimizer though, so what they like and enjoy isn't always the same as what I like and enjoy. We did totally get our money's worth out of Hanabi however.

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BonHair
Apr 28, 2007

Mister Sinewave posted:

It eventually changed into a game of "When I say THIS I mean THAT" :mad: which I don't find fun.

I have not really experienced this yet, and I have played like a hundred games of this, mostly with roughly the same group, but also branching out to everyone I could get to play it. I think it has to do with the same hint being able to mean completely different things depending on the game state, which in itself may be perceived differently by different players. Basically, unlike raunchy polish Concept, you can't really get a away with "when I say this, you should do this" on more than a basic level, because to optimize play you have to adapt to the game state. This is also a major source of little succeses, because it feels really awesome when you correctly decipher whatever the other players are thinking based on vague hints. Also, we threw in the rainbow cards when things started to get too easy, and so far, that has kept the ceiling high enough, because now you can't even trust colour hints.

I can see how the honour system, lack of a clear win condition and the very big and unusual restriction on table talk might make the game less fun for hardcore play-to-win gamers, since you basically have to "play badly" to follow the spirit of the rules, and you are never really sure if you did well.

Paying attention to not cheating has not been a big thing after the first couple of (learning) games, because you pretty much know what constitutes cheating, even though you can make it sound legit with rules-lawyering. As long as everyone agrees that not cheating is fun, the problem in my experience goes away, mostly. There will be some light accidental cheating, but that's usually just shrugged off and remembered for the next game. The rule of thumb is simply that if you are unsure if it's cheating, it probably is. Just like scams on the internet, which I do hope you guys manage to avoid.
But I guess I do see the social experiment aspect of the game, though I like to think there's a lot of actual game in there too.

I may be slightly defensive of the game, sorry about that. I just really like it and I want you to like it like I do.

TL;DR of this and my previous couple of posts: Hanabi is probably my favourite game and I think it offers amazing possibilities forever. YMMV

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