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fozzy fosbourne posted:You know, we might be a little jaded on SU&SD but drat do they still do a fine job of getting new people hyped over games. Sat down and watched the 1st Annual Hexagonal Tile-Laying Fest with some friends and they immediately wanted to play Suburbia, are interested in learning Archipelago next time, and are (rightfully) intimidated but curious about my copy of Keyflower. If I sat them down and told them to watch Vassel or Rahdo or something they might try to escape while I wasn't looking. Yeah it turns out that attractive people and a modicum of production goes a long way in keeping people interested in a video. I like Rahdo's videos but sometimes it takes me a few sittings to actually make it through one of his videos. Gimnbo fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Feb 1, 2015 |
# ? Feb 1, 2015 21:09 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 15:46 |
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I gave my cousin Forbidden Island for Christmas, and she gave her boyfriend 7 Wonders, both of which they have been playing a lot by themselves (yes, two player 7 Wonders a lot. I don't get it.). They wanted different stuff, so for her birthday I just gave her Targi, which does two players a lot better and taught them the rules for it, and they seemed like they enjoyed it. So great success! On the other hand, the boyfriend also just went "we like games, I have no idea, I'll check BGG and get the number one game for her". Which meant they had gotten Twilight Struggle and were intending to just set it up and run through the rules along the way. I told them to find tutorials and also that one of them should attempt to learn it before playing. Also I just sent them a link to SU&SD, because that sure is a better way of picking than getting the heavy gamers games on that list. BonHair fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Feb 1, 2015 |
# ? Feb 1, 2015 21:40 |
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Hey, at least the BF blind-picked a good game.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 21:41 |
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Yeah, he sort of lucked out, but only sort of, because I don't think it's a good step up from 7 Wonders. He has played Go and Catan though, so he knows about strategy and hates dice, so that's awesome.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 21:47 |
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Gimnbo posted:Hey, at least the BF blind-picked a good game. Yeah it's pretty much the acid test, either they'll play it a couple times and get scared off or we'll find out they're running multi-day 18xx tournaments in a couple months
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:02 |
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Fungah! posted:multi-day 18xx tournaments But I repeat myself
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:03 |
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Played Lords of Waterdeep today and really enjoyed it. I don't think I've ever actually played a worker pavement game before I'm dimly aware that it's disliked here though (due to imbalance between the secret objectives?), so what's a better game in the same vein?
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:24 |
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EBag posted:Played Concordia for the first time tonight and really enjoyed it.... Will be really interesting to see how it evolves over subsequent plays. Please do make a follow up post. I want to pick up Concordia but I don't know how a medium weight euro will stand up to the rest of the heavy ones in my collection over time.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:30 |
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Mojo Jojo posted:Played Lords of Waterdeep today and really enjoyed it. I don't think I've ever actually played a worker pavement game before Caverna, Agricola, Keyflower, Caylus (though I'm very much not a fan of Caylus), Dungeon Lords, Dungeon Petz, Viticulture (or so I gather, I've not yet played it myself though my group now has a copy so I expect to soon)... Etc etc etc. LoW isn't a terrible game, it's just not a very good one. It's a great way to get your D&D group playing board games if such is your wont.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:33 |
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Mojo Jojo posted:Played Lords of Waterdeep today and really enjoyed it. I don't think I've ever actually played a worker pavement game before Hmm, a worker pavement game? I'd say Keyflower, dungeon lords, caylus, dominant species, viticulture... Really anything in the genre. The genre of... Worker pavement
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:35 |
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Agricola, Caverna, and Caylus are the worker placement kings. Lords is a good game though, don't let anyone tell you it's not, but you should get its expansion asap. If you like wine, Viticulture and its expansion is a very good game as well. Edit: the guy above me mentioned Keyflower, aka the best game. It has worker placement, but at it's more of a hybrid worker placement/auction/pickup+deliver/tile laying game. It owns bones. and if you can get it for MSRP, get it. Durendal fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Feb 1, 2015 |
# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:36 |
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thespaceinvader posted:Caverna, Agricola, Keyflower, Caylus (though I'm very much not a fan of Caylus), Dungeon Lords, Dungeon Petz, Viticulture (or so I gather, I've not yet played it myself though my group now has a copy so I expect to soon)... Etc etc etc. Maybe I just have bad opinions but I really like lords of waterdeep. It's so easy to teach, and each game is varied enough (because of the random buildings and quests) that I never really get bored with it. I dunno!
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:38 |
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ambushsabre posted:Maybe I just have bad opinions but I really like lords of waterdeep. It's so easy to teach, and each game is varied enough (because of the random buildings and quests) that I never really get bored with it. I dunno! Na, you have good opinions man. Lords is a good game and great for people like you who are just getting into the hobby. It's just that Lords isn't as deep and engaging as the game we listed, and most people who post here have moved on from it. Now if you said you wanted Munchkin or Talisman recommendations on the other hand...
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:44 |
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Nah, it's good fun with the right group, it's simple, it's got solid theme if you work at remembering it exists (better if you get the adventurer meeples). It's just not particularly deep, has a little too much randomness for some tastes, and people really don't like the mandatory quests (though I still hold that they're rarely worth actually playing) particularly as they're very political. The expansion is similarly solid from what I've played of it. It's also definitely quick enough to play in an evening, an honour it shares only with Caverna and maybe Keyflower for our group. Possibly Petz too, but we've not played that one since the first learning game. Also, some of the lords are really quite unbalanced and more difficult to work than others. It's not terrible, it's just not good.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:44 |
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Oh, I'd played Agricola. I just apparently forgot about it completely. Good lists. Thanks.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:46 |
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It's not that Lords of Waterdeep is terrible, it's just painfully cookie-cutter in terms of design, has some big balance issues, and the designer thought the worker placement genre was missing "take that" elements in the form of the mandatory quests (hint: this was not something that was missing) I can imagine someone enjoying it as a sort of introduction to worker placement or as a gateway game for your D&D group, but compared to any of the other big worker placement games theres really no contest.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:50 |
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Play Caylus and never look back.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:53 |
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Yeah, about the only thing that you can say about LoW is that it is horribly, painfully mediocre.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 22:59 |
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Scyther posted:It's not that Lords of Waterdeep is terrible, it's just painfully cookie-cutter in terms of design, has some big balance issues, and the designer thought the worker placement genre was missing "take that" elements in the form of the mandatory quests (hint: this was not something that was missing) What's the balance issues of LoW? I mainly ask for the sake of leveraging broken poo poo to my advantage. I have a group whose rather fond of the game and I also like it on account of it being about the only worker placement game we collectively own.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:02 |
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:What's the balance issues of LoW? I mainly ask for the sake of leveraging broken poo poo to my advantage. I have a group whose rather fond of the game and I also like it on account of it being about the only worker placement game we collectively own. It's not something you can easily leverage, some lords are just blatantly poo poo compared to others, that sort of thing.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:08 |
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The weird lords are a lot harder to make work, basically (the building one from the original game and the open one from the expansion are particularly problematic IIRC). And there's a lot of luck-based imbalance in it - the quests with ongoing effects snowball HUGELY if you get them early, and are worthless if you get them late - so picking up the one that gives extra points for a given quest type, and the one that gives a bonus for completing a given quest type, when you have the lord for that quest type, makes you much, much harder to beat - but other people taking those quests do a lot less for them than for you, and costs them turns they don't cost you. MQs are very political as well, but IME they are bad for the person playing them as well - in a 4 player game the two people who weren't involved at all do better out of them being played then either the victim or the perpetrator. But it's been a long while since I played.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:12 |
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Tekopo posted:Yeah, about the only thing that you can say about LoW is that it is horribly, painfully mediocre. One thing it has going for it, especially when introducing newcomers to the worker placement genre, is that it is really non-confrontational: you rarely get denied of actions in a way that would grind your plans to a halt. By the way, is there a game that has the engine building and actual structure building parts of Agricola (i.e. forming your own small empire, village, city or whatever), but you a) actually have time to use your beautiful engine for more than two turns before the game ends and b) you don't feel like every turn you just barely get anything done, because of lack of resources? I would rather try a game in which I could drown myself in resources but lose because the stuff I built didn't really work together well.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:14 |
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That would be Caverna. It's basically Agricola, but with a bit more theme and a lot less punishing.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:19 |
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thespaceinvader posted:The weird lords are a lot harder to make work, basically (the building one from the original game and the open one from the expansion are particularly problematic IIRC). And there's a lot of luck-based imbalance in it - the quests with ongoing effects snowball HUGELY if you get them early, and are worthless if you get them late - so picking up the one that gives extra points for a given quest type, and the one that gives a bonus for completing a given quest type, when you have the lord for that quest type, makes you much, much harder to beat - but other people taking those quests do a lot less for them than for you, and costs them turns they don't cost you. MQs are very political as well, but IME they are bad for the person playing them as well - in a 4 player game the two people who weren't involved at all do better out of them being played then either the victim or the perpetrator. Yeah, the 25-quests are huge offenders with respect to this; they obviously didn't get enough playtesting because their effects don't make up for completely totaling your economy to achieve them. The expansion's 40-quests are much more worth it, and the expansions in general show that the design of the game greatly benefits from using actual play data. Unfortunately, the expansions don't fix the main problem that Scyther stated-- Waterdeep is a generic worker placement whose sole defining trait is a sloppy attempt to fix something that isn't broken about the genre. It's like a more popular version of Carson City.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:23 |
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To be fair, fixing something that ain't broken does sometime lead to interesting innovations. Coops as a genre didn't need a traitor to fix anything (in my opinion at least), but drat if BSG isn't amazing with the right group.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:28 |
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thespaceinvader posted:That would be Caverna. It's basically Agricola, but with a bit more theme and a lot less punishing. Ora et Labora even more so, although it's a bit tighter than it initially looks - you don't have to feed anyone, but there are opportunities you need to prepare in advance for so the practical impact is similar (as either way you miss points if you don't plan ahead a bit).
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:29 |
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BonHair posted:To be fair, fixing something that ain't broken does sometime lead to interesting innovations. Coops as a genre didn't need a traitor to fix anything (in my opinion at least), but drat if BSG isn't amazing with the right group. Actually, that's arguable. Traitors are an attempt to fix quarterbacking, which Pandemic had in droves.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:30 |
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Is Ora et Labora worker placement? It's been so long since I played it I'm not really sure but I don't remember it feeling like a typical WP game.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:30 |
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Tekopo posted:Yeah, about the only thing that you can say about LoW is that it is horribly, painfully mediocre. Oh, get knocked. LoW is a perfectly acceptable gateway game that is more accessible than Caylus due to its recognisable theme. For the likes of you and me it has no purpose beyond that, but it serves that purpose very well.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:41 |
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I'll drop a loving Caylus on the gateway and all the middling games it tries to protect.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:43 |
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Jedit posted:Oh, get knocked. LoW is a perfectly acceptable gateway game that is more accessible than Caylus due to its recognisable theme. For the likes of you and me it has no purpose beyond that, but it serves that purpose very well. I don't see how saying something is mediocre is such a controversial opinion.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:50 |
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Played Castles of Burgundy for the first time, two players with my wife. There was no excitement, joy, frustration or any feelings besides boredom whatsoever during the game, no strategy beyond 'get mines early', no planning from round to round, and just felt unexcited and uninspired the whole time. At the end, I asked what she thought. She basically said what I was thinking, saying it was too much work for such a simple game. There wasn't any interaction between players, so we just felt like we were playing a solitaire game together. Too many counters to set up, put away and dish out round after round. 15 minutes to set it up and put it away isn't really fun when the whole game takes just 45 minutes. Also, having to consult the book to see what half the weird yellow tiles did was annoying. D+, would rather not play again.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:55 |
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thespaceinvader posted:That would be Caverna. It's basically Agricola, but with a bit more theme and a lot less punishing. Yeah, I have heard it is a dolled up Agricola. The only big complaint I have heard is that the smorgasbord of options may introduce analysis paralysis, but I would rather have that over getting royally hosed because someone blocked you from grain or something. All this talk about Cthulhu Wars makes me sad of the fact that no game has really managed to combine theme, area control and asymmetry as succesfully as Chaos in the Old World. I am even in the small minority who thought the Horned Rat expansion was great. Even a new expansion with one or two new chaos gods that would replace the existing ones and alternative chaos and upgrade cards for the existing ones would make me a happy man.Too bad City of Remnants was a forgettable mishmash of ideas, because it was the only recent title which seemed it could pull off what CitOW did. These Loving Eyes fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Feb 1, 2015 |
# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:56 |
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thespaceinvader posted:Is Ora et Labora worker placement? It's been so long since I played it I'm not really sure but I don't remember it feeling like a typical WP game. As much as Le Havre/Agricola/Caverna - actually all of the Uwe games are a bit different than most other worker placements in that you have far less workers per player. I think they all start with two except for Ora which has three (one with a special go anywhere ability).
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:59 |
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Ora & Labora that just dragged so long, I actually got bored while playing it, which was a new experience for me. People complain about Agricola ending when the engine is setup, but it takes just as long to set up the engine in O&L and then you end up running it after that at least 2 times, if not more. It's weird because I liked Le Havre and Agricola but O&L just really wasn't for me.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 00:09 |
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I can't stand Lords of Waterdeep because when I sit down to play all I can think is "poo poo, I could be playing Caylus right now." It's an okay game in its own right but when there already exists basically the same game but better, I don't ever see any reason to play it.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 00:29 |
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So my group has mined the included scripts with Tragedy Looper so I am working on getting a few together, and wanted to see what people thought of this one I put together. I haven't played it yet, but I'm more interested in seeing if anyone sees any glaring issues with it before I try running it:"Custom Script:Ingenue Rising" posted:Plots: Thoughts? Criticisms? Suggestions? Madmarker fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 2, 2015 |
# ? Feb 2, 2015 00:49 |
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Blamestorm posted:As much as Le Havre/Agricola/Caverna - actually all of the Uwe games are a bit different than most other worker placements in that you have far less workers per player. I think they all start with two except for Ora which has three (one with a special go anywhere ability). Le Havre has only one and you don't even use it much of the time.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 00:54 |
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Madmarker posted:So my group has mined the included scripts with Tragedy Looper so I am working on getting a few together, and wanted to see what people thought of this one I put together. I haven't played it yet, but I'm more interested in seeing if anyone sees any glaring issues with it before I try running it: It seems like an amazing setup for the mastermind...but it might be nearly impossible to win outside of the final guess. I think even with 4 loops you will likely be able to keep the hidden factor hidden with all of the ways to win. It would come down to the final guess, and so long as the friend isn't revealed, I doubt they'll figure it out in time for the final guess. Please post your results when you play it. Social Dissonance fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Feb 2, 2015 |
# ? Feb 2, 2015 01:25 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 15:46 |
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Social Dissonance posted:It seems like it may be too difficult. With 12 characters a Hmm, Ill cut the Class Rep. All the other characters have good abilities for the characters to use to deduce roles or manage paranoia. If it still ends up being to hard, I'll try cutting the Butterfly Effect Incident.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 01:36 |