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Fat Samurai posted:I think it's time for my bi-annual failed attempt to grok Magic Realm. Last time I checked there were about two manuals and three different quickstart guides. Which one was the best to learn with, again? The Least You Need to Know to Play Magic Realm is a great place to start. It leaves out magic, hirelings, and PvP combat, but is only 8 pages long. (Note: I'm biased, it was written by my dad.)
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Jan 20, 2015 18:32
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Yep a woman. I dunno, there is so much gaming out there, why bother with something you didn't like? And at least at this point, I would argue that the quality of the games are getting better and are on an upswing, whereas with novels that's probably debatable.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:32
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Is the Tigris and Euphrates app good for learning the game. And playing on a 4 inch phone?
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Jan 20, 2015 18:33
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I don't care for deck builders, do I still get to be part of the hive mind? Guys?
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Jan 20, 2015 18:36
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Nobody really likes deck-builders. Everyone appreciates the mechanism but not the actual games 
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Jan 20, 2015 18:37
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I don't like Euros and grew up on Avalon Hill and Dominion is still cool and good. 
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Jan 20, 2015 18:37
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StashAugustine posted:I don't like Euros and grew up on Avalon Hill and Dominion is still cool and good. Sorry, I didn't get enough resources to make a proper rebuttal of this post.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:39
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Guy A. Person posted:OH! Maybe? If so I apologize! I need to remember to use neutral gender nouns/pronouns when I am unsure, that is my bad. I try to go with the old cliché of trying anything twice before rejecting it, so yeah, if I find interested people who have the game, I'm in. But I am sceptical at the moment. And also, I have a boatload of other games that I want to try and/or play more. Also, novels are a great analogy actually: I know that The Great Gatsby is supposed to be super good, but I just find it boring as gently caress and I have no desire to finish it. But I enjoy the Munchkin of literature, Discworld.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:41
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Fat Turkey posted:Is the Tigris and Euphrates app good for learning the game. And playing on a 4 inch phone? It does have a good tutorial, so yeah, you can learn from that. 4 inches is pretty cramped, but workable. For comparision, it has a bit more room than Le Havre on an iPhone. I don't know how good the AI is because I'm horrible at this and it keeps kicking my rear end. disperse posted:The Least You Need to Know to Play Magic Realm is a great place to start. It leaves out magic, hirelings, and PvP combat, but is only 8 pages long. (Note: I'm biased, it was written by my dad.) Cool, thank your dad for me.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:41
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Tekopo posted:*shuffles deck, draws cards* Well buy silver then.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:42
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Tekopo posted:Nobody really likes deck-builders. Everyone appreciates the mechanism but not the actual games Unless it's Mage Knight, in which case you suck Vlaada's dick as per regulations or the Hivemind sets about you.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:43
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Jedit posted:Unless it's Mage Knight, in which case you suck Vlaada's dick as per regulations or the Hivemind sets about you.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:44
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Dominion is definitely a game, it's just one with simple mechanics and no theme to speak of. Players form strategies and make decisions, and eventually whoever does the best job (subject to some randomness) is declared the winner. Sounds like just as much of a game to me as anything else.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:47
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Tekopo posted:This is incredibly funny to me because both me and Broken Loose think that Mage Knight has serious, serious issues. But keep tooting that horn. I'm sure you've posted them before, but I am curious what they are. Im a MK rookie as I've only played 3 games so far.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:47
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ChiTownEddie posted:I'm sure you've posted them before, but I am curious what they are. Im a MK rookie as I've only played 3 games so far.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:51
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Mage Knight is great, it's just that fire block blocks ice, and ice block blocks fire, and you can play swiftness to kill the guy powered but if you do that you can't actually reach him, and how many mana do I have? Right I used teh source but then I played mana draw so I can use this one right or shoot maybe I should just power one card and prepare for the next turn. Also pvp is busted. Busted to the point that I have no idea why anyone would play with it turned on. Also you can get lucky with flame shield and trivialize Volkare. It's still a good game in that it's the best of its kind, but I await longingly the day the next Vlaada makes Sage Warrior and it's a better-tuned, faster game with less random "gently caress you no movement" turns.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:53
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Tekopo posted:This is incredibly funny to me because both me and Broken Loose think that Mage Knight has serious, serious issues. But keep tooting that horn. You do? Because every time I've criticised any of Vlaada Chvatil's games they are for some reason beyond reproach.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:56
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PerniciousKnid posted:Dominion is definitely a game, it's just one with simple mechanics and no theme to speak of. Players form strategies and make decisions, and eventually whoever does the best job (subject to some randomness) is declared the winner. Sounds like just as much of a game to me as anything else. It is a game. It just doesn't feel like one. Kind of the opposite of how generic roll-to-move feels like games but aren't. Also, Mage Knight owns, but the deckbuilding bit is somewhat limited, you only reshuffle 5 times in a 3+(+) hour game. And the no movement thing does suck, but I have not had it come up that often, especially if you discount the times where I was being a retard by going deep into a forest at night. And, you know, didn't refuse to buy movement cards for any reason. It's definitely not a game for everyone though, it's way too long and fiddly for some people.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:57
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Tekopo posted:To summarize, the biggest issue with the game is movement. MK is very tempo-based, especially at the start. You want to move, then fight, then move, then fight etc. If your starting hand is good to fight but not move, you might get royally screwed and be forced to use your fighting cards to move, only to end up drawing movement card when you need to fight. This issue is especially pronounced in competitive games of Mage Knight. That's the main issue with the game for me. Overall the game works better co-operatively than competitively, I feel. Basically my first thought when playing Mage Knight was "I've played enough Dominion with Alchemy to know that this is too many orthogonal resources to work in a deckbuilder."
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Jan 20, 2015 19:02
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Impermanent posted:Mage Knight is great, it's just that fire block blocks ice, and ice block blocks fire, and you can play swiftness to kill the guy powered but if you do that you can't actually reach him, and how many mana do I have? Right I used teh source but then I played mana draw so I can use this one right or shoot maybe I should just power one card and prepare for the next turn. I imagine that pvp is most useful to combat the bunching up at the start. If all the good tokens are taken at the beginning, you can move into their space and spend 2 or 3 attack to force the other guy to retreat. If they were level 2, you get 3 fame and are now level 2. They might be able to spend some of their cards to prevent this, but if they do it makes their next turn kind of lovely.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:07
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My biggest beef with Mage Knight is that it feels like it crossed that invisible threshold where I'm wondering why I'm not playing an automated version on a computer or iDevice. Vlaada mentioned in his Tash-kalar blog how he got the motivation to design TK because of an initiative to make more mobile friendly games, and I'm surprised that they haven't considered Mage Knight. It seems like it would be perfect, and it doesn't have negotiation or other weird mechanics that make it unfriendly for digital adaptations. Edit: I still like it, and enjoy playing it once in a while, but it's mostly respect for the attempt at pushing the boundaries of games like this. Outside of Magic Realm, I haven't really encountered anything else like this
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Jan 20, 2015 19:08
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Jedit posted:You do? Because every time I've criticised any of Vlaada Chvatil's games they are for some reason beyond reproach. So I guess you never actually really criticised a Vlaada game. But to get back, yes, there have been discussions of the issues with both Mage Knight and Through the Ages in the past.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:08
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Tekopo posted:Well you know Jedit, I went through your posts in this thread and the last one, searching for Vlaada mentions, and the only thing I could find was you agreeing with me that Vlaada does bad rulebooks and then saying stuff like Dungeon Petz had 'needless weight' and that you hate Vlaada and you know guys, I don't like Vlaada and hahaha, another one liner aimed at Vlaada. Really? I could have sworn I've gone over them at more length.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:15
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fozzy fosbourne posted:My biggest beef with Mage Knight is that it feels like it crossed that invisible threshold where I'm wondering why I'm not playing an automated version on a computer or iDevice. Vlaada mentioned in his Tash-kalar blog how he got the motivation to design TK because of an initiative to make more mobile friendly games, and I'm surprised that they haven't considered Mage Knight. It seems like it would be perfect, and it doesn't have negotiation or other weird mechanics that make it unfriendly for digital adaptations. Here's a link for that, because it's a good read: http://tash-kalar.com/designers.html
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Jan 20, 2015 19:16
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fozzy fosbourne posted:My biggest beef with Mage Knight is that it feels like it crossed that invisible threshold where I'm wondering why I'm not playing an automated version on a computer or iDevice. Vlaada mentioned in his Tash-kalar blog how he got the motivation to design TK because of an initiative to make more mobile friendly games, and I'm surprised that they haven't considered Mage Knight. It seems like it would be perfect, and it doesn't have negotiation or other weird mechanics that make it unfriendly for digital adaptations. If I could play Mage Knight on my phone, I probably would never stop playing Mage Knight.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:16
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I mean, just last week BL basically said he hates TtA because it's a single deck game where you can get completely screwed early and have to play it out, which all of us who love the game completely agreed with.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:16
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Does anyone have any experience with Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers? My lady and I are huge fans of the base game, and I just recently discovered H&G (and how rare it is). Is this worth going out of my way to get a copy of?
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Jan 20, 2015 19:18
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deadly_pudding posted:If I could play Mage Knight on my phone, I probably would never stop playing Mage Knight. And if they kept selling new characters, tiles, advanced actions, et cetera (of the same quality) I'd keep buying them. It would be like a more complicated Desktop Dungeons. EdsTeioh posted:Does anyone have any experience with Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers? My lady and I are huge fans of the base game, and I just recently discovered H&G (and how rare it is). Is this worth going out of my way to get a copy of? If I recall, it's the same game but some of the field spaces are worth something different because of the animals. homullus fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 19:19
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I am now getting excited for my pending Mage Knight game this weekend. Druid Nights is a fun scenario.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:20
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silvergoose posted:I mean, just last week BL basically said he hates TtA because it's a single deck game where you can get completely screwed early and have to play it out, which all of us who love the game completely agreed with. And then someone challenged him to Twilight Struggle and he never accepted
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Jan 20, 2015 19:24
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BonHair posted:Here's a link for that, because it's a good read: http://tash-kalar.com/designers.html Yeah, I thought the following were particularly interesting: quote:As for the two player games, I started to treat the games with my friends more as a social interaction than as a competition. There was a downside of being relatively good at games. Defeating a friend repeatedly in a two-player battle feels a bit... awkward to me. I do play (and actually prefer) two-player games when playing online, because smashing (or being smashed by) a complete stranger is okay. I just do not enjoy feeling like I just destroyed a friend sitting right in front of me. I prefer when there are more players around the table, having fun together but concentrating on developing their own game stuff rather than on destroying their opponents' stuff. The idea of "conflict with strangers, shared struggle/misery with friends" as a guiding design principle for Vlaada makes so much sense now and I think it's a big reason why I like his games. I wonder what he thinks of TtA now, though, since that's a little more nasty than his other non-Tash-kalar designs from what I can tell. Anyways, I feel this way, too. I can play Magic with strangers or really competitive friends, but for most of my friends and family I have a different pool of games that I prefer to play like Dominion or Galaxy Trucker. quote:(Just a note: Since the very beginning, I kept the cards closely tied with the theme. Even for my own virtual prototype, which no other player has seen, I googled and adjusted a picture for each card, and with every creature I created, I imagined how its effect would look and why it has such a pattern. I admit it is my own thing, and the players can't see what I had in mind. So if the game feels purely abstract to you, you have full right to feel it like that. On the other hand, I am very glad some players see and feel the theme, and I will love sharing my point of view with you on this site.) This is another reason why I love Vlaada (yes, Jedit, yes..). I think many designers would just skip the theme as a shortcut but he relentlessly tries to make it work in his games, even an abstract design. I feel like I would be more attached to more euros in my collection if they had this approach from Vlaada to throw some thematic chrome on it.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:31
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homullus posted:If I recall, it's the same game but some of the field spaces are worth something different because of the animals. Ah, gotcha. I'm not sure that justifies the prices it's going for. I did, however, have a dude offer me a copy in exchange for my copy of Legendary+Expansion. I dunno though.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:36
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fozzy fosbourne posted:My biggest beef with Mage Knight is that it feels like it crossed that invisible threshold where I'm wondering why I'm not playing an automated version on a computer or iDevice. Vlaada mentioned in his Tash-kalar blog how he got the motivation to design TK because of an initiative to make more mobile friendly games, and I'm surprised that they haven't considered Mage Knight. It seems like it would be perfect, and it doesn't have negotiation or other weird mechanics that make it unfriendly for digital adaptations. I have really enjoyed Mage Knight but the #1 thing that would improve it for me is an app that would automate or semi-automate the fights. Most of the fights are just finite state machines with only optimal decisions to find and make, no real choices in them (that's capital-C "Choices" as in choices between things that are more like apples and oranges, as opposed to Decisions which have a "correct/most optimal" solution.) The rest of the game grinds to a halt while it and everyone else waits for you to get through this. It's not so bad with smaller fights but as soon as things get larger with a big web of resistances and poo poo it quickly becomes 
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Jan 20, 2015 19:40
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Oh dear after a few weeks or so of LoW/Dominion/etc I dragged my dad into http://www.sci-fi-city.com/ and he bought Imperial Assault on the spot. He even wants to paint the minis what hath I wrought quote:The idea of "conflict with strangers, shared struggle/misery with friends" as a guiding design principle for Vlaada makes so much sense now and I think it's a big reason why I like his games. I wonder what he thinks of TtA now, though, since that's a little more nasty than his other non-Tash-kalar designs from what I can tell. This is a good point. Space Alert/Galaxy trucker have worked really well for me for more or less new boardgamers because it's such a shared experience of dread and destruction. There's an immediate element of player participation/ownership that he does quite well. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 19:54
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Tekopo posted:you agreeing with me that Vlaada does bad rulebooks I have seen this before and I'd like to ask you to take the time to explain this to me. I want to invoke the thread's semi-between-the-lines "explain your feelings/claims" clause (which is normally invoked at claims of "Fun", but I think it can apply here.) I don't want to really single you out. I'm ready to see things differently, but I honestly do not follow the claims that Vlaada's rulebooks are bad. I have read the claims of "lots of front-loading" but I either don't know what that means or I'm not seeing it because my experience is the opposite of what I'd call heavy front-loading:
I think that's all the Vlaada games I have experience with. Not all the games worked for us, but I never had any issue with any of the rules. What am I not seeing, or not thinking, or have missed?
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Jan 20, 2015 20:03
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I think the main culprits are MK and TtA, and not because of learning necessarily, but they are complicated and looking things up in the rulebook is really awful.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:07
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After a few plays in Mage Knight, we just use the rulebook's back page for combat ref and the info cards for sites if we forget anything. I think the last rule I missed was that the lights are on at cities all the time so you can park next to it and see what you are going to fight. There are a ton of rules but games are long enough so you will get them repeated enough to stick in memory. I do need to reread the faq to see if there are any glaring mistakes we've been making.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:11
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https://www.humblebundle.com/ started a Humble Card Games Bundle which includes digital versions of a bunch of card games including Scrolls, SolForge, Star Realms, Talisman, Magic, Dominion, Card Hunter and possibly more.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:18
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The main thing about Vlaada rulebooks is that they might be great for starting up and are fun to read, but they are incredibly awful about actually finding rules that you might have missed, because you don't have a clue where the rule is: is it in the advanced section, or maybe it is in the 'learning how to play', wait, no, it's actually handled separately in THIS section etc etc. And the problem is that Vlaada games are usually fiddly as hell. There are a TON of small rules that you have to remember, especially for some of his meatier games. I bet that there were a ton of rules in Dungeon Petz that you outright missed out when you read the rulebook in a Tabletop Cafe: thankfully none of them actually detract from the game, but it is incredibly easy to realise later on that you haven't played the game right (it took me at least 5 attempts to be reasonably sure that I hadn't missed anything out) TtA is pretty much the Magnum Opus of Vlaada rulebooks because it is divided into multiple different games types: there's the base game, then the advanced game, then the full game and rules could be in anywhere of the three sections. Lastly, and this might just be me, I dislike doing 'stepping stones' type learning. I've had a lot of success just outright going for the main scenario in Space Alert, partially because I think it isn't a difficult enough game to warrant the 'stepping stone' approach and partially because I like making newbies dive into the deep end (and so far everyone I've done this with seemed to love the game).
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Jan 20, 2015 20:21
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Impermanent posted:Also pvp is busted. Busted to the point that I have no idea why anyone would play with it turned on. PvP helps a lot with somebody standing on an important space, or stealing all the targets. In 2-player it is useful more often, in multiplayer the threat of PvP is more important than the actual combat. I've mostly played without it, but now I wouldn't skip it unless I'm teaching new players. The MK rulebook is bad _after_ your first games because things are not always in obvious places, and because the location cards are not just reminders.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:26
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