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What's the gooncensus on Starlit Citadel's reviews? I'm sure it's been brought up, but I must have missed it in the middle of some good ol' Vasel-bashing.
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Feb 3, 2015 07:28
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cbirdsong posted:I can't believe they put out an entire giant survey trying to get a bunch of information any decent analytics package could've told them. I'm sure the obnoxious length won't at all effect the kind of responses they get. Jesus, no kidding. I'm going through it now and that's loving nuts. Shouldn't they already know or be able to know this poo poo? Also I knew how programmer-designed it looked but I never realized just how much loving cruft is everywhere. My brain just filtered half of this poo poo out.
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Feb 3, 2015 07:33
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Gutter Owl posted:What's the gooncensus on Starlit Citadel's reviews? I'm sure it's been brought up, but I must have missed it in the middle of some good ol' Vasel-bashing. That one lady is a robot.
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Feb 3, 2015 07:33
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I actually agree with the reviews coming off kind of robotic. I don't personally like having two people doing a review if they never interact. The videos seem like they're scripted for one but split for two like a school report. Kaja's face also sometimes animates like the two sides of her face are independently controlled and it weirds me out.
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Feb 3, 2015 07:49
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They're reviews done by the Canadian equivalent of CSI or Miniature Market. Don't expect them to be overly critical of games they just bought 200 copies of that they're hoping you'll buy from them. Otherwise, eh, they aren't bad overviews of the games in question.
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Feb 3, 2015 08:19
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Yeah, I'd consider them more overviews for customers than reviews per se, but they do outline strengths and weaknesses both for prospective buyers so it's close enough I guess. If you want fairly neutral information about the games and how they play, you could certainly do worse.
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Feb 3, 2015 08:32
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Their rules explanations are actually good and they breathe through their noses. But yeah, they come off very unnatural. Their judgement of the games are mostly about who it will fit, but from what I have seen it's decently accurate.
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Feb 3, 2015 08:38
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Countblanc posted:I think the difference between Exploding Kittens and Munchkin in terms of cultural relevancy is that "imgur and reddit poo poo" is basically loving synonymous with youth right now. Like, you could walk up to a wide variety of teens or college students and just say "SCIENCE For the win!" and expect them to laugh. That sounded a bit more derogatory than I meant it to, lord knows I loved plenty of dumb stuff (and continue to love dumb stuff), but my point was that Munchkin's D&D tropes and in-jokes are a lot more esoteric than EK's stuff. I mean, The Oatmeal was literally designed to be as meme-able as possible, it absolutely would not work as a product if it didn't have incredibly broad appeal (or a wealthy enough demographic, which young white people can definitely be but in EK's "defense," it's like $20 for the game so it's definitely quantity over quality here). That isn't a defence. EK is 52 cards for $20. Uno has more than twice as many cards and retails for less than half the price. Meanwhile, Tiny Epic Galaxies Deluxe is $24 - relevant as the vast majority of EK backers are paying $35 for the "NSFW" deck - and had to move some of its stretch goals to PnP because they literally will no longer fit in the box. EK backers are paying for neither quantity nor quality. They are paying for lovely art of cat memes.
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Feb 3, 2015 09:21
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Sistergodiva posted:Their judgement of the games are mostly about who it will fit, but from what I have seen it's decently accurate. Gotta remember, they are a game store. They are never going to call a game awful, because they need to sell copies of it. Instead, telling us if it's suitable for an audience is a way to pseudo-judge it while never saying "This game I want to sell, it's absolutely terrible!"
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Feb 3, 2015 09:34
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I never thought Joan Baez could sell me on board games until coming across Starlit
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Feb 3, 2015 14:17
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rchandra posted:He did not. My problem isn't that he disliked it, just pointing out that he does have negative reviews. I think he didn't like the number of options you have each turn? I'm hoping it's not fundamentally broken too but I could definitely see there being tile combinations that determine the winning energy if they show up early or something, especially in a 2-player game. Yep that's exactly what happened. Even if it didn't happen its too easy to basically force an energy.
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Feb 3, 2015 14:50
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cbirdsong posted:I can't believe they put out an entire giant survey trying to get a bunch of information any decent analytics package could've told them. I'm sure the obnoxious length won't at all effect the kind of responses they get. some of the stuff analytics can't measure, as in do you care about the name of the publisher. Other stuff yeah I don't know why Daniel isn't able to measure himself (Daniel Karp is their programmer). I didn't read the responses to the announcement so I don't know if that question has been asked/answered.
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Feb 3, 2015 14:54
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Shes Not Impressed posted:I never thought Joan Baez could sell me on board games until coming across Starlit I'm not sure what Joan Baez has to do with Starlit Citadel, but if she can't sell you on anything at all she chooses you're listening wrong.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:14
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fozzy fosbourne posted:BGG has a survey regarding their proposed site redesign: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/boardgamegeek Even though people talk about how horrible BGG is, I for the most part don't care too much. I'm able to find what I need most of the time, so it works for me. I fear any tweaking to the site is going to result in an even bigger mess, I don't have much trust in the developers of the site after looking at this survey.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:57
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zandert33 posted:Even though people talk about how horrible BGG is, I for the most part don't care too much. I'm able to find what I need most of the time, so it works for me. I fear any tweaking to the site is going to result in an even bigger mess, I don't have much trust in the developers of the site after looking at this survey. If your survey takes too long and people give up part way through (like I did) it is a bad survey.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:09
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Got to open and go through my copy of Argent: the Consortium last night and it looks like an absolute wideawake nightmare to play with anyone prone to AP. You have 5 (6 with the expansion) different *kinds* of workers who all have different abilities (with alternate abilities), the board is constructed by randomly selecting ~10 tiles from 15 (21 with expansion) (there all have alternate B-sides), like four kinds of currency to monitor, spells that have to be Researched with one currency and upgraded with another, consumable and reusable items to dig for, one shot supporters to find, and while you're trying to keep your workers from being sent to the hospital or being shuffled into a shadowy second realm just left of reality where they suddenly get second pick, you have to investigate 10 hidden VP conditions that actually count for points at the end of the game. I can't shake the feeling that it's all too much but it looks incredible and I can't wait to get it to the table this weekend.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:10
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Hey, you know at least one of those hidden VP conditions at the start of the game! But yeah, I'm really interested in seeing how it'll run. Reading the rules made a lot of sense, except that I recall reading a lot of little exceptions, especially in regards to Shadowing and whatnot, but we'll see how it shakes out.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:20
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parasyte posted:Also I knew how programmer-designed it looked but I never realized just how much loving cruft is everywhere. My brain just filtered half of this poo poo out. I would say 90% of it. Also, the fact that they have no mobile version makes BGG a fuckin' joke.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:39
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Sistergodiva posted:and they breathe through their noses. How do people even do this? I wish there was a class I could take, maybe at a con.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:41
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Starlit Citadel is fine. They are pretty objective and clear on what they are presenting and is definitely for the general market. It's good to show someone their reviews if they want a short, concise review and impressions of a game. Sometimes, I don't need to be entertained by a video review, I just want a nice video that was shot with a decent camera in a well lit area showing all of the bits and basic ideas behind the game.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:47
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I would say 90% of it. Also, the fact that they have no mobile version makes BGG a fuckin' joke. They have an Android app! It's just terrible.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:53
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Trip report, played test game of Archipelago with girlfriend. It is good and when the slavery card came up we both made a face. We were, as we tend to when playing a game for the first time with just the two of us, playing fairly nice in order to get a feel for how the mechanisms work in play. It's interesting how much time you can spend just trying to assemble the right resources to build something if you don't trade w/ people, and what a massive loving rear end in a top hat move it is to build towns anywhere at all. I especially like the market manipulation aspect of putting resources on foreign and domestic markets. Being first to export fish is great and far better than tax early on, but that kind of strategy quickly takes a nose dive as they fill. Then, after a crisis or two, you really want to be the guy sitting on a bunch of pineapples. It is entirely possible to, in a 2-player game, wind up with neither player pursuing either of themselves or each other's game-ending strategies. But you can start to accelerate to the end fairly quickly if you think you're ahead. Calling people on that looks very interesting. All in all, I think it will be our go-to for when we have friends over whose experience is Catan but could definitely play a harder game. It is Way Better Catan. 10/10 great game.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:59
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Echophonic posted:They have an Android app! It's just terrible. Oh my gosh you're not kidding: quote:Not supported (at least not yet): So just the useful social parts of BGG, but hey, I can look up Board Game Rankings all day! Also Archipelago owns and I wish I could get War and Peace but it has completely vanished from the USA.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:08
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I got into this hobby exactly one year too late  Megaman's Jockstrap posted:
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Feb 3, 2015 17:12
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Oh my gosh you're not kidding: I literally only use it to log plays at conventions so I don't forget wtf I played. And by use it I mean I did that this past LobsterTrap and it was great.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:15
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You know what, gently caress it: if some UK guy picks up Illegal and Archipelago: War and Peace for me and ships it to the USA I'll cover all the cost and pay you 15 Euros or pounds or w/e for your time. Sick of trying to find that poo poo online - one or the other is out everywhere I look, or the place won't ship to the States. PM me if interested.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:20
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Man I'm glad that I have no impulse control sometimes. I still wish the US got the last two Dungeon Twister expansions, though So that I can continue not playing Dungeon Twister.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:27
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What do you think about handicaps in games? I play with some people who like dueling games and conflict but generally can't compete with me, especially if I own the game. This includes my wife, who surprises me by bee-lining towards tactical games like Summoner Wars, but always eventually loses interest when the difference in skill becomes apparent. Some games allow for some balance by letting the more experienced player pick a character/deck/army that they are less experienced with or are just generally lower strength. This tends to be a lot more subtle than the blunt "120% health" type of handicap. The latter often rubs people the wrong way, essentially feeling like they have already lost the game. I'm curious if there are more subtle tricks to handicap a matchup without making it blatant. In particular, I want to try some BattleCON and X-Wing but the people who I play 2p with most consistently tend to have an uneven matchup with me. I wonder if they can be balanced a bit via character/unit selection or if I should steer away. The people that I play with that kick my butt in duels are all sadly completely sunk into M:TG and will only ever take a break to play multiplayer board games. Edit: I got the War and Peace expansion a month ago from cardhaus. Might be able to ebay it from France? I bought the solo expansion from Ludically Edit2: poo poo, France isn't even selling it now . This hobby preys on the OCD
fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Feb 3, 2015 |
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Feb 3, 2015 17:30
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Just play go, handicaps are built in!
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Feb 3, 2015 17:37
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Oh right, I forgot to post about how Roll for the Galaxy went. I'll TL;DR it and say my group really enjoyed it and it was a good continuum of Race experience (two newbies, one person familiar, another frequent player, and myself with quite a bit). The way the phases work is really interesting and I, personally, thought the way the dice and credits abstracted a hand of cards was extremely clever. It feels very much like Race for the Galaxy, in terms of how the game flows from phase to phase. The basic way the game works is that worlds give you dice and technologies give you more flexibility in how you use those dice. You build produce/consume engines in a similar way and rush a tableau fill endgame with military or gene the same way. The various kinds of dice are all biased towards different phases, to represent the sorts of strategies you'd want to do with those colors. You start off with a home tile, which is usually a planet and a tech, and a start world. These give you your starting unique dice. There's 6 kinds of dice. Home dice (white) are biased towards explore, but all phases are represented. Novelty dice (cyan) are biased towards production, Rare Elements (brown) are biased towards develop, Gene (green) dice towards settle or wild, and Alien (yellow) dice have a lot of wilds on them. There's two non-production based dice, the red Military dice that are biased to develop and settle, and the purple Consumption dice are biased towards Ship. Consumption dice have another perk, which is relevant to scoring points. Basically, you roll the dice in your cup, line them up to match the phase they're showing and take one, regardless of face, to pick the phase you want to take. Any dice under a phase another player picks can also be used during that phase. There's no extra benefit to picking a phase, unlike in Race, it just makes sure it happens. This encourages a lot more reading of what you think your opponents are going to do, so you can pick phases that set up what you want to do in that phase you think they'll pick. Something important to note here is that the order of Produce and Ship are the opposite of Race's Consume and Produce. This accelerates the endgame quite a bit if you have two players with a produce/consume strategy that are paying attention to each other, which I found really nice. Every die used for an action is placed in your citizenry and are effectively locked for a bit. Dice in unused phases go back into your cup for next turn. Citizenry have to be bought back with credits you gain during your turn. This is done via Explore or Ship, mostly. There's techs and planets that give you credits for doing things, as well. Basically, if it got you cards in Race, it'll get you credits to buy dice back. You always get at least one, so you're never going to be unable to at least pick a phase. I thought the Develop and Settle mechanics were pretty cool. You start off with one development and one planet. As you Explore, you can draw new tiles and discard ones you don't want to mess with to get even more. As you take Develop or Settle actions with your dice, those dice hang out on top of your stack until you have enough to match the cost on the tile. Then it goes into your tableau and you get what the planet or tech gives you, then put the used dice in your citizenry. You then keep applying further dice to the stack, until you run out of dice or tiles in that stack. There's no limit to how many tiles you can play during a phase. Scoring is a little different than Race. Everything is always worth its cost in VP, as your baseline. So a 3 point development is worth 3 points, no muss no fuss. You still get VP for consuming, it's just a little different. Producing with a dice puts that die on a planet, just like in Race. If you're selling it with your Ship action, the color doesn't matter. If you're trying to score it, it does. So say you have a Gene world. If you just want the credits from the sale, you can put a white die on it. If you want points, match it with a green. When you ship, you can either sell the die based on the planet's color or consume it. Consuming a die is 1 VP. If the die on the planet or the shipping die matches the planet, you get an extra 1VP for each. So the best point scoring is two dice that match the planet for 3 VP. TL;DR This ended up kind of long, but I really enjoyed the way the game flowed. You are given a wide variety of ways to mitigate the inherent randomness of the dice, but once you start on the path to an engine of some sort, the dice self-support that strategy and you need them less. Compared to Race, there's much less in the way of information overload. If you're familiar with Race, you'll be right at home. If you're not, it's way less of a brick wall in terms of rules and symbol dump. Scoring points is much simpler, which is a major boon, as well. Cuts down on the math compared to figuring out the precise order of consume actions to take. Everyone I played it with enjoyed it. One even said he liked it better than Race. I'm not sure I agree just yet, but this is a much easier game to teach and it plays very smoothly. I came in third by doing the same thing I usually do wrong, which is start running a blue engine for VP too early. So if you're a Race fuckup, you can gently caress up in Roll too! New Sparta isn't the deathtrap it is in Race, but it definitely hamstrung me a bit. I was going to say something about the 'screens mean potential cheating' discussion, but I doubt anyone will be convinced if they already have an opinion. I don't think the game's fatally flawed because of it, but it does make it a bit harder to teach the dice->phases mechanic when people can't watch to see how the various reassign mechanics work. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Feb 3, 2015 |
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Feb 3, 2015 17:42
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Are you looking up strategies online for your games? You can't assume other players are doing the same. If that's the case, pick a game and don't look up strategies and such and see what happens.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:43
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We really enjoyed Roll as well, and I think we'll skip the screens and just not look at each other's set up like we do with Orleans. More on Lagoon: I think it's too easy to break. As soon as one energy looks at all like it'll be the scoring one then everyone will just run to that one. I just don't think it's well designed. While I know a lot of you don't care for BGG, I find it invaluable. While you guys are awesome, you don't discuss many of the games that I enjoy and that's fine but there are many times good discussions on those games on BGG and that's always my next step. The geekbuddy analysis is perfect to find out about games I'm not sure I want, that's the best asset on the site. I can look up people, see if our game interests coincide, add them as geek buddies and see what they think about games I'm thinking about acquiring. You get designers answering rule questions and Rodney Smith's tutorial videos which I couldn't live without (yes I know he's on YouTube but a lot of times he's doing games I have no interest in, and with BGG I can locate his vids with the game I'm looking at).
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Feb 3, 2015 17:57
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I'm not saying that BGG is a worthless resource, just that it's a bad one. It's like a moldy old decaying Costco painted purple-blue and yellow with aisle after aisle of expired wet naps and with dust devils full of playbills advertising old kickstarters and worthless user variants swirling down the center of the store while every third customer randomly screams out "it needs TITS!" at whatever piece of merchandise they are holding. Yes, I can probably get some of what I want out of the place but it sucks.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:04
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zandert33 posted:While what you've written may in fact be true for the most part, and while Vasal is not a very indepth reviewer or strong reviewer, I simply cannot agree with your comment that he's "irrelevant" even though you so want him to be. For example: Money's a nice argument to use because it's easily quantifiable, but can just as easily dismissed. Fact is, the hobby is growing - look at Gen Con attendance over the past few years. Logically, there will be more people patronizing Mr. Vasel. If he's sort of maintaining the same level of fanbase relative to the size of the hobby, he hasn't necessarily gained relevance so much as he has maintained it. But using money as the pure metric for relevance also introduces some fun fallacies! Let's go over a few. TableTop - which, I might mention, is a much newer entity in the realm of board game reviews, made over $1.4 million on an IndieGoGo campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tabletop-season-3-with-wil-wheaton. By this metric, TableTop is approximately 7.86x more relevant than The Dice Tower. Shut Up and Sit Down - which is also new - only raised $26,178 in a pledge drive. The Dice Tower (by this metric) is approximately 6.88x more relevant than Shut Up and Sit Down. Exploding Kittens is easily the most relevant, most important thing to ever happen in board games ever! Raising $5,179,295 at approximately 11:35am EST, it is 28.77x more relevant than The Dice Tower. Cards Against Humanity, scourge against humanity that it is, only raised $15,570 through Kickstarter. The Dice Tower is approximately 11.56x more relevant than Cards Against Humanity, and I think history continues to prove this statement to be nothing less than completely accurate. But CAH is great, because it lets us test effects over time! Cards Against Humanity, just within this past year, also raised $180,000! They raised that much money by selling people actual bullshit. By that metric, bullshit is about as relevant as The Dice Tower. Personally, I think Vasel is a little more relevant than that. What I'm trying to say is that money isn't a good argument for proving someone's relevance. It's a great argument to use when the federal budget is released to assess a President's policy goals, but not so much for what is relevant within a given hobby. To do that, you'd need extensive market research the likes of which I don't have the time or money to conduct - you might want to see if Forbes has some analysts who are looking at the boardgaming market and have access to sales data over a large period of time to see whether or not a Vasel review generates as much of a sales bump as, say, a TableTop of a SU&SD review. Better yet, you could talk to your FLGS - the one near me very pointedly talks about the 'TableTop bump' but never anything about a 'The Dice Tower' bump. Finally, I'm not sure where you're going with the point 'he's not doing it for the free games anymore' when your next line is 'companies seek him out to do reviews' which just so happens to include a free copy of the game. I mean, isn't that the point of doing reviews? So that someday people will give you free games with the expectation that you'll do a show on it? Edit: Put an honest opinion in there somewhere after the comparison between CAH's special sale and TDT, as opposed to a dishonest opinion. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 3, 2015 |
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Feb 3, 2015 18:10
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Lorini posted:
That is the primary reason I don't back Kick Starter games anymore. If it is a good game it will prove itself over time and I can likely buy it from CSI or MM at a better price than the KS anyway. Sad but true.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:10
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I guess two other subtle handicaps are luck and politics(in 3+ player games)
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Feb 3, 2015 18:11
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Speaking of RollFTG, as someone that is very interested but hasn't bought yet there is a stream of it from Drive Thru Review tonight: https://plus.google.com/+Drivethruvideos/posts/ckmh9BLtziA
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Feb 3, 2015 18:12
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I'm not saying that BGG is a worthless resource, just that it's a bad one. It's like a moldy old decaying Costco painted purple-blue and yellow with aisle after aisle of expired wet naps and with dust devils full of playbills advertising old kickstarters and worthless user variants swirling down the center of the store while every third customer randomly screams out "it needs TITS!" at whatever piece of merchandise they are holding. Yes, I can probably get some of what I want out of the place but it sucks. I use BGG for its files section, mostly. It's nice to have one site where I can find the rulebooks for a lot of games with minimal effort. I don't use any of the social aspects of BGG so I can't speak of those. I have a pretty good grasp of what my tastes are at this point so I don't put much stock into the opinions on the site. I'm the kind of person who naturally gravitates to positive reviews because I want validation for my purchase decision so negative reviews are what I actively seek out the most. BGG can get a bit hugboxey so it really doesn't help me in that regard.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:15
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Impermanent posted:All in all, I think it will be our go-to for when we have friends over whose experience is Catan but could definitely play a harder game. It is Way Better Catan. sonatinas posted:Starlit Citadel is fine. They are pretty objective and clear on what they are presenting and is definitely for the general market. It's good to show someone their reviews if they want a short, concise review and impressions of a game. Sometimes, I don't need to be entertained by a video review, I just want a nice video that was shot with a decent camera in a well lit area showing all of the bits and basic ideas behind the game.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I'm not saying that BGG is a worthless resource, just that it's a bad one. It's like a moldy old decaying Costco painted purple-blue and yellow with aisle after aisle of expired wet naps and with dust devils full of playbills advertising old kickstarters and worthless user variants swirling down the center of the store while every third customer randomly screams out "it needs TITS!" at whatever piece of merchandise they are holding. Yes, I can probably get some of what I want out of the place but it sucks. We'll just have to disagree. I find it very useful. I can get what I need from it. Yes it's UI could be improved. But that doesn't make it suck. I guess if you aren't buying or playing many boardgames then yeah there's better places to hangout but it works well for me.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:17
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