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I'm going to draughts, a board game cafe in London tomorrow. Anything in particular I should look out for to play, that's good in a "try it once but don't buy" kind of way?
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Jan 24, 2015 02:08
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Lichtenstein posted:When playing Cards Against Humanity I think it'd be Three Dog Night for CAH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkM7uWBjUrI
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Jan 24, 2015 04:40
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Zark the Damned posted:Everyone's favourite games reviewers put up a video of them playing everyone's favourite game! apparently they get a bunch of rules wrong and are sort of houseruling others, who'd have thought
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Jan 24, 2015 07:35
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I played Castles of Mad King Ludwig today and it was pretty great (coming from a fan of Suburbia) but why can't Ted Alspach make a scoreboard that only goes in one direction instead of zig-zagging? Ugh.
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Jan 24, 2015 07:45
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Bubble-T posted:apparently they get a bunch of rules wrong and are sort of houseruling others, who'd have thought
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Jan 24, 2015 07:56
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So I'm currently playing my first game of Arkham Horror (solo) and I've got to say - gently caress lost in time and space. I'm like 12 turns in and I've only managed to seal one gate; my characters KEEP getting sent there whenever they try to get through the otherworld zones to close the gates. At the moment I have three characters lost in time and space. Have I just been really unlucky?
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Jan 24, 2015 09:40
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We played Fief: France 1429! 5 players, out of a max 6, took 3 hours including setup and rules explanation. I have no idea what optimal is. Trip report ensues. Note that I have not played Diplomacy, Game of Thrones, or played the Crusader Kings games on Steam because they're on Steam, so I have no useful point of comparison. Sorry. Overall impressions: Interesting. Definitely warrants a repeat. The biggest concern is that the game is really hard to actually teach. There are a bunch of small rules, and for some reason there are no words on any of the cards and there's no good reference for what they do. It sort of does a Vlaada thing where the various cards are spread throughout the book, so that kinda sucks. The other thing is that there are a BUNCH of small rules and I don't think the rules as written are robust enough. There was a lot of small things, including timing, that either weren't addressed or we couldn't find it. For example, if a Bishop was elected that turn, can he vote for another Bishop/King/whatever position? What order do the various bishops get elected? Etc. The Diplomacy token rules were also kind of weird since they're kinda poorly defined. We just ended up playing with open trade since fuckit. It didn't get too bad time wise. Another possible concern is that everyone (except Yellow) married off to secure their back doors and proceeded to spend their turns making mills in these secured territories. I honestly think mills are really undercosted for what they do. I'm not sure if there's a way to prevent this from happening every game, since mills are super good, and with the way the alliances were arranged, super secure. Despite the occasional rule snafu that was generally compromised, the rest of the game flowed pretty drat well. The board has a LOT of references to tell you how a turn proceeds, and the included cheat sheets are likewise useful. I liked the buildup of politics, with people grabbing Bishoprics then turning them into Cardinals, and then colluding to trade some territory for a vote to be Pope. I don't think our group played the denial game as well as it could have, as people tended to be pretty passive. Not a whole lot of favors were traded either, which I think was a consequence of marrying as early as we did and solidifying our political blocs. Maybe if the deck had actually been shuffled better and women were a bit sparser, I dunno. Combat was definitely not something that we did very often, much to our detriment. I was ready to attack with Isabelle d'Arc (aka badass general), but my opponent played an Assassinate card that stuck, so I lost her before she got to do anything cool. Historically accurate, sorta. And since the player playing the Assassinate was the King, I couldn't play a Justice card in retribution. This means absolutely nothing to anybody who doesn't understand the rules, but this is apparently how things go. Overall I enjoyed it, and I definitely would have been more aggressive earlier. I really wish things had stayed political for longer, but I guess that was my mistake for marrying early (a bad idea in most cases, anyway). A couple of bad weather cards ruined my planned assault, although the economic advantage my opponents had was harsh as hell and would have likely hosed with my chances of breaking a siege, especially since my ally contributed nothing to the war effort. Choose your spouses wisely! The player in second was actually the guy who was alone, who traded some territory (and the Fief Title) to become the Pope, and I think he had his own Fief Title somewhere. Good negotiations by him, even if he did enable someone else to win. The other players at the table preferred it to Game of Thrones, so that's something. Most enjoyed it as well, but there's definitely some jank to it. Maybe a few more games will smooth it out?
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Jan 24, 2015 10:02
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GrandpaPants posted:The Diplomacy token rules were also kind of weird since they're kinda poorly defined. We just ended up playing with open trade since fuckit. It didn't get too bad time wise. If memory serves, you can use a Diplomacy token to take another player away from the table for three minutes of private discussion. If you don't use a token, all diplomacy must be open and at the table.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:21
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mottbag posted:So I'm currently playing my first game of Arkham Horror (solo) and I've got to say - gently caress lost in time and space. I'm like 12 turns in and I've only managed to seal one gate; my characters KEEP getting sent there whenever they try to get through the otherworld zones to close the gates. At the moment I have three characters lost in time and space. Have I just been really unlucky? Yes. It's certainly possible to get directly sent to Lost in Time and Space (as you have no doubt experienced), but it's much more commonly visited when you zero out either health or sanity in an Other World, and even that shouldn't be happening very often unless you either go in with perilously low health/sanity or terribly low skills, neither of which are wise. And there are also a bunch of encounters that immediately send you back to Arkham for an early close. So either you're playing it wrong or you're getting really unlucky. With Arkham, either is entirely possible.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:23
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mottbag posted:So I'm currently playing my first game of Arkham Horror (solo) and I've got to say - gently caress lost in time and space. I'm like 12 turns in and I've only managed to seal one gate; my characters KEEP getting sent there whenever they try to get through the otherworld zones to close the gates. At the moment I have three characters lost in time and space. Have I just been really unlucky? It's all about the narrative, man! Just have FUN! Not being able to play the game is so totally random in that Lovecraftian way, you know? There's so much theme! Aren't you having fun? Proper rules and mechanics are mutually exclusive from fun.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:26
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Poison Mushroom posted:So, have we decided what the definitive shark-jumping point for SU&SD was? The second sci-fi special was pretty bad, but personally, I feel like the quality began to wane right around the time they started putting The Opener in the mix, too. When they gave Warhammer Diskwars a bad review after playing it wrong for 3 days 
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Jan 24, 2015 10:36
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Rutibex posted:When they gave Warhammer Diskwars a bad review after playing it wrong for 3 days
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Jan 24, 2015 10:37
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I think it was when they stopped sitting down and shutting up
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Jan 24, 2015 10:57
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Aston posted:I'm going to draughts, a board game cafe in London tomorrow. Anything in particular I should look out for to play, that's good in a "try it once but don't buy" kind of way? Get there early. Between midday and 1 it started getting hard to see a free table. Check the website for the list of games. For a business started on Kick starter, they have surprisingly little web presence. They have a blog, but only two posts since they started in November. Eat a big breakfast.
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Jan 24, 2015 12:06
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You can cheat in small ways in almost every game if other players aren't paying attention to every one of your actions. Usually people do not because otherwise games slow down considerably but still you are in danger of being caught at any moment if someone stops and pays attention to what you are doing. So while it depends on how you feel about being a cheat most of the time, these are still small things, not the main mechanic of any of those games. What Roll for the Galaxy has is like you are free to decide on which cards you draw from your Dominion deck every turn... But please don't, pretty please? I like the idea of the game but I just can't accept such a huge design flaw. Lots of games have hidden information and use a screen in front of you to hide some bits of the game. Blueprints for example has you pile up dice on a card behind your screen to make buildings. But those dice are rolled into the open, you just pick and place them on your blueprints behind the screen. If you are a cheat maybe you can switch them to another face while placing, but a player with sharp memory can just say "That glass die from turn one (at the bottom of your building) was a 1, not a 6, you cheater!" On Roll for the Galaxy, no one can stop you from being a cheat.
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Jan 24, 2015 12:43
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mottbag posted:So I'm currently playing my first game of Arkham Horror (solo) and I've got to say - gently caress lost in time and space. I'm like 12 turns in and I've only managed to seal one gate; my characters KEEP getting sent there whenever they try to get through the otherworld zones to close the gates. At the moment I have three characters lost in time and space. Have I just been really unlucky? No that sort of poo poo has happened to me just about everytime I've tried to play Arkham Horror. It's just a dumb bad game with oodles of randomness that also exists in an unstable equilibrium of loving you once and then you in being too poor a state to recover leading to a perpetual cycle of failure. i have since flipped my copy of that game for King of Tokyo. I haven't even played King Of Tokyo yet and I still don't regret my decision.
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Jan 24, 2015 13:31
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Poison Mushroom posted:So, have we decided what the definitive shark-jumping point for SU&SD was? The second sci-fi special was pretty bad, but personally, I feel like the quality began to wane right around the time they started putting The Opener in the mix, too. Based purely on my observations from this thread, it was the A Few Acres of Snow debacle, where Quinns outright stated that, not only was it perfectly acceptable for one side in an asymmetrical 2p game to have perfect access to a literally unbeatable strategy, but that anyone who complained about it was somehow anti-fun because 'you would need a printed spreadsheet/flowchart to execute it,' despite the fact that multiple players stumbled upon it in their first game simply because they understood how deckbuilding worked. As far as the Opener goes, I have to commend it for giving me the idea to add chocolate and coffee in chili recipes. Unfortunately, this was also the episode where he raved about 'Werewolf' by saying that being eliminated early on and having to sit out for the next 30-45 minutes was still 'fun', because you could still watch and enjoy all the fun the players still in the game were having.  VVV Edit: To clarify, AFAoS is what I observed to be the point where Paul and Quinns stopped being Board Game Thread darlings and goons started questioning their perspective on how they judged games (And Quinns' response was another/first example of him doubling down versus fan criticism). Paper Kaiju fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 15:06
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I'm actually relatively willing to forgive the Few Acres of Snow thing, because it's a singular issue. It's kind of like their obsession with Cosmic Encounters. You know they're wrong, but we all have a fondness for the first game we played in a specific genre. Stone Age was my first worker placement game, and I've almost certainly got some nostalgia goggles on in regards to it.
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Jan 24, 2015 15:23
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I picked up Dungeon Lords Anniversary edition. The rule book seems... overwhelming. Even before you factor in any expansions.
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Jan 24, 2015 15:50
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It works out pretty logically once you get into it, but the feeling of panic that it's all going wrong never quite leaves. Somehow, it's still great fun. Vlaada 
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Jan 24, 2015 15:54
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I do have to say that the SU&SD GenCon special was really good and pretty recent, more recent than the second sci-fi special that everyone hates. They can be really funny guys, I just wish they'd focus more on that fun stuff.
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Jan 24, 2015 17:07
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mottbag posted:Have I just been really unlucky? Yes. Somehow, you ended up playing Arkham Horror when you should have been playing Eldritch Horror instead. (It's more of the same except it's easier to plan strategies, the bullshit is less random, and the critically destructive status effects aren't any more.)
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Jan 24, 2015 17:17
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I thought SU&SD was annoying before it was cool.
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Jan 24, 2015 17:17
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I have no opinion on SU&SD because I'm an old man who doesn't understand why someone would watch a video in a browser.
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Jan 24, 2015 17:21
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GrandpaPants posted:We played Fief: France 1429! 5 players, out of a max 6, took 3 hours including setup and rules explanation. I have no idea what optimal is. Trip report ensues. Note that I have not played Diplomacy, Game of Thrones, or played the Crusader Kings games on Steam because they're on Steam, so I have no useful point of comparison. Sorry. The order of the Bishops is the number printed on them! A newly elected Bishop can also vote in other elections. In was in the rulebook somewhere, but I don't remember where, now. Generally, these were my impressions when my group played last week, though I didn't think there were that many small rules that I didn't remember or find easily enough. We also had a group marry first turn and eventually win when they got the King. The rest of us conspired to give someone the D'Arc title and try to kill the King, but he didn't have enough units. Next time, I think we'll be much more aggressive about keeping titles away from people and have a better feel for who's closest to winning. I'm also happy to have a "big, political" game that doesn't take forever and is relatively easy to teach, if how quickly my group picked it up is any indication. I'm looking forward to trying it out with some of the expansions, especially the Crusades.
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Jan 24, 2015 17:58
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echoMateria posted:You can cheat in small ways in almost every game if other players aren't paying attention to every one of your actions. Usually people do not because otherwise games slow down considerably but still you are in danger of being caught at any moment if someone stops and pays attention to what you are doing. So while it depends on how you feel about being a cheat most of the time, these are still small things, not the main mechanic of any of those games. What Roll for the Galaxy has is like you are free to decide on which cards you draw from your Dominion deck every turn... But please don't, pretty please? Fortunately the people in our group would rather be challenged than win. I'm 100% certain there won't be cheating when we play it. It's not like we are playing for lotto winnings and no one's going to remember who won 10 minutes after the game is over anyway. I don't get all the angst about this. Do you guys play for money or something?
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Jan 24, 2015 19:13
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Lorini posted:Fortunately the people in our group would rather be challenged than win. I'm 100% certain there won't be cheating when we play it. It's not like we are playing for lotto winnings and no one's going to remember who won 10 minutes after the game is over anyway. I don't get all the angst about this. Do you guys play for money or something? It's not so dramatic. I'd just rather play a working game than something with this sort of issue. It's not like Roll doesn't have other design problems anyhow; there are plenty of strictly superior alternative games.
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Jan 24, 2015 19:20
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Just finished up the rough draft of a new game. Dragon, Griffon, Troll, a two player abstract strategy/deduction game inspired by what I felt where some flaws in Battleship's design. It could also seriously use some playtesting.
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Jan 24, 2015 19:24
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Poison Mushroom posted:Just finished up the rough draft of a new game. Dragon, Griffon, Troll, a two player abstract strategy/deduction game inspired by what I felt where some flaws in Battleship's design. It could also seriously use some playtesting. Poison Mushroom, were you aware of this thread? Just for designers like yourself. BL, last night we played a game of Orleans. Now what's a badly kept secret about it is that it's easy to cheat by looking at everyone else's board before doing your own. But you know what, we just don't do that. We have an agreement that no one will look at boards until everyone says they are done. Now does that make Orleans a badly designed game? No, it just asks people to be adults. I don't know what other issues Roll for the Galaxy has, but I'm looking forward to playing it.
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Jan 24, 2015 19:51
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edit: ^^^ how is orleans overall? IF you had to repurchase your collection again or were on a desert island etc etc would it be on your short list? If I were playing Roll for the Galaxy in prison or something, could we use those terrible loud dice cups? Or maybe backwards dice towers? Suburbia -> Mark Mothersbaugh (Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Sims 2, etc) edit: if you don't sleeve everything you probably have marked cards and people could be cheating!!! fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 19:56
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Sinlaeshel posted:I picked up Dungeon Lords Anniversary edition. The rule book seems... overwhelming. Even before you factor in any expansions. Meanwhile in the US still waiting for the "stuck in customs for a month" Kickstarter shipment of this
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Jan 24, 2015 19:59
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fozzy fosbourne posted:edit: ^^^ how is orleans overall? IF you had to repurchase your collection again or were on a desert island etc etc would it be on your short list? We have liked it for our first four plays but after last night we are wondering if the trading strategy is just too strong. What I mean by too strong is that to counter it, players will have to go out of their way. Now, one main thing is that we were playing with three, and I suspect three is not a good number for the game. One player tried the harvest strategy and he lost by like 40 points to the trading strategy. If the game really is nothing but who builds the most trade posts then while it would still be good, I'd certainly not take it with me to a desert island and it will probably get sold long before the kickstarter comes through.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:07
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Taran_Wanderer posted:The order of the Bishops is the number printed on them! A newly elected Bishop can also vote in other elections. In was in the rulebook somewhere, but I don't remember where, now. That's what we assumed re: the bishops, but I still can't find the rules for it. I did find the rules that said that new Bishops couldn't vote, though, so that was neat. I played with the politics expansion since I thought it would be funny to have various titles. It adds a lot of randomness to things, since one family can get assed out and get The Ugly and The Bastard or whatever, while another can get awesome ones like The Swift, The Persuasive and The Shadow. Most are surprisingly irrelevant. The attendants may have been unbalanced, since the dude with the Toll Collector was collecting a ton of money every turn. It would have been useful if he were spending that money for things like troops and stuff. Worst wife ever. It was also hosed up that the second time I tried to wage war, after Isabelle d'Arc died by the cruel hands of fate, my Lord was ambushed and kidnapped. Lesson learned is that fortune cards kinda own.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:27
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Lorini posted:BL, last night we played a game of Orleans. Now what's a badly kept secret about it is that it's easy to cheat by looking at everyone else's board before doing your own. But you know what, we just don't do that. We have an agreement that no one will look at boards until everyone says they are done. Now does that make Orleans a badly designed game? No, it just asks people to be adults.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:31
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korora posted:Is looking during the planning phase even cheating? I played for the first time last night (2P) and the rulebook didn't give any guidance we could find on that point. We decided it was fine to look and it didn't seem to cause any problems. The rulebook does say "If need be, [finalize planning] in turn order" which seems like it would solve any problems. I like the dynamic of at least being able to see what other players could do—if you don't look you can't even see what followers they've drawn. Our group would come to a complete halt if people could look at other people's plans because no one would plan anything ever. We didn't want to do turn order because we felt that made turn order too important. I think though that next time we play we will announce the followers drawn, that is a good suggestion, so it would give some indication on what could or could not happen.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:34
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For fans of Broken Token's organizers, their updated 7 Wonders box insert is available now.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:48
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So what's the consensus of Cosmic Encounter?
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Jan 24, 2015 21:05
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AMooseDoesStuff posted:So what's the consensus of Cosmic Encounter? Random mess
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Jan 24, 2015 21:06
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Lord Frisk posted:Random mess Thanks.
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Jan 24, 2015 21:08
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AMooseDoesStuff posted:So what's the consensus of Cosmic Encounter? Good theme, bad game.
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Jan 24, 2015 21:09
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