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Mega64 posted:You can grab Tuscany Prima (Tuscany with the metal coins) from CoolStuffInc and Miniature Market now. I got it last week along with Archipelago, which I'm excited to try. Have fun with Archipelago, I really like it, even if we take too long to play it. It occupies my dreams.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:37
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PerniciousKnid posted:
I've lost twice in Archipelago thanks to the florins tiebreaker now. 
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Feb 8, 2015 20:44
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Anyone played Fantasy Frontier? Looking at Richard's video it reminds me of Takenoko and Ticket to Ride with some worker placement in the mix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klZ54vwPESE
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Feb 8, 2015 20:46
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PerniciousKnid posted:Have fun with Archipelago, I really like it, even if we take too long to play it. It occupies my dreams. And on a tangentially related note, is the tash kalar expansion/upgrade pack actually available yet in the US?
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Feb 8, 2015 20:54
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Blamestorm posted:How does viticulture compare to vinhos? Particularly for two? Vinhos is way more intense, since you have literally 12 actions for the entire game, with very few chances for extra actions. I liked it a lot more than Viticulture (which I've only played once 3p to be honest), but they're very different.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:55
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These Loving Eyes posted:Regarding the lazy Cthulhu mythos cash-ins talk earlier, I find it kind of ironic that such an easily marketable piece of royalty free intellectual property has yet to be used in a mechanically interesting and sound game. For some reason, it seems that such a popular theme and good gameplay are mutually exclusive. On the other hand, when the resource material is pulpy horror that suffers from purple prose and occasional misogyny and racism, maybe the inane Yahtzee rethemes and other dice rollers are more than fitting: cheap, mostly unoriginal and intellectually unstimulating. Despite thinking that Lovecraft never really managed to achieve the kind of horror he set out to write, I have to admit that I would get excited if someone managed to create a cosmic horror board game that actually imbued the dread of the unknown with the mechanics. But since slapping Cthulhu on the box is enough to ensure decent sales, we will probably be stuck with lousy card games, dice rollers and especially miniature games that offer nothing if you look past the theme for all eternity. At least A Study in Emerald tried to be something more and I have heard Ancient Terrible Things to be one of those better Yahtzee games. There was a discussion a Board Game Thread edition (or two) ago about what could be done, mechanics-wise, to actually convey some of the things that actually exist in the book. Like you say, there's not much in the way of horror in the books, but there were some ideas about just creating mindfuckery to get across the idea of fundamentally not understanding the world, and how understanding it is actually a bad thing. Things like using deck building with insanity cards (kind of like how wounds work in Mage Knight) to let you uncover possible end-game conditions, or using tile-laying to create It's not particularly hard to come up with ideas for such a game, but why bother when the name itself sells?
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Feb 8, 2015 21:37
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Tiran Dirth posted:Worth picking up the Anniversary box if you can, the game quickly became a favourite in our group, but the 5 player rules are handy to have around and the extra ships and parts extend re-playability a long way.
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Feb 8, 2015 21:51
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I played Dead of Winter last night and it seems fine enough, but either I was too exhausted or the rulebook needs more clarification/less ambiguity. I guess it's on us since but it seemed easy to miss. Needs an FAQ section. Errors: We moved survivors multiple times when we shouldn't have. This might have changed up some spawns, but might have saved us some food tokens. Hard to tell the complete effect on the game. We risked more exposure and required more food. We couldn't figure out the starvation token thing, so we reduced morale more than we should have. It's a nice state management kind of game. The secret objectives seem fine enough. Couldn't find clarification if we could talk about them, but we did anyway. The Betrayer couldn't meet their objective so they just let us succeed instead of being a downer.
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Feb 8, 2015 22:42
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Got in a game of 3-player Cosmic Encounter (no expansions), cut it down to no-frills 4-worlds, no flares and no tech cards game (wanted to keep things *really* simple for the first test game). No one, me included, had played before so it was a little touch n go, probably got a ton of stuff wrong. Ended up last as... Zombie, against the other two (Trader & Sorcerer/Sorceress? Switch encounter cards in the planning phase-species) who both in the end didn't even end up using their powers  Mostly due to rubbish cards on hand, but I managed to outpsych myself expecting them to use their powers at every opportunity, so I didn't play the few good cards I had... having more ships available doesn't really help then as it turns out! Real fun game though, and I can see why it's well liked / better with more players.
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Feb 8, 2015 22:50
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Amoeba102 posted:The secret objectives seem fine enough. Couldn't find clarification if we could talk about them, but we did anyway. Uh, what? They are pretty explicitly supposed to be secret, hence the name. Also the betrayer should be trying their hardest to tank the game in my experience, if they can't get their initial objective, they get a new one after being exiled.
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Feb 8, 2015 22:51
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Trill Sandwich posted:Uh, what? They are pretty explicitly supposed to be secret, hence the name. Also the betrayer should be trying their hardest to tank the game in my experience, if they can't get their initial objective, they get a new one after being exiled. Secret usually means "don't reveal", I'm sure lying is an option if people start talking about them. It is a matter of trust. I'm fairly certain there is a game or two I've played that handle secret information that way - you canh talk but not reveal so it becomes a matter of trust and deception. The Betrayer didn't get exiled though, so they didn't get the chance. They only revealed after the game so we didn't know.
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Feb 8, 2015 22:55
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Yeah, I think that people should try and achieve as many of their objectives as they can (even if they can't get them all). You'd feel pretty pissed if someone couldn't get their five food or whatever their personal objective was, so they decided to let the zombies kill everyone so nobody could win. As others have said as well, if the betrayer has no way of achieving their objective, they should tank checks obviously so they get exiled and get a new objective that they might have a chance at completing.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:07
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Guess he figured he could do it got to the pointy end of the game. I heard talk around here about people tanking the game if they couldn't get their objective done.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:23
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Pimpmust posted:Real fun game though, and I can see why it's well liked / better with more players. It's not, at least in this thread. General goonsensus is 'it was a ground breaking game in its time, it has great theme, but awful, awful mechanics'.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:27
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thespaceinvader posted:It's not, at least in this thread. General goonsensus is 'it was a ground breaking game in its time, it has great theme, but awful, awful mechanics'.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:48
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The Secret Objectives to me in Dead of Winter seem completely backwards. If you think about what their aim is, the secret objectives are meant to sow distrust among the players by forcing them to keep resources that they would actually want to use to help themselves/the group. This sort of resource-keeping is thus meant to instill conflict in the game by having people say 'wait, why are you keeping this food, we need it!' in order to evoke the classic scenes in zombie films in which someone is found hoarding stuff because of their self-serving need. I guess it is also meant to create a feeling of having to make sacrifices/hard choices for the player. The issue is that I find it does the opposite. It decreases the ability to find someone suspicious of hoarding. 'Why are you hoarding cards?!' -> 'I need them for my secret objective'. 'Why are you getting so many helpless survivors?' -> 'I need them for my secret objective'. This leads to question why you wouldn't want to have full disclosure on your objectives anyway. If you aren't a betrayer, there is 0 reason to keep your secret actually secret. Why would other people knowing your objective be an issue? Wouldn't it actually be helpful? If your group is the sort to fully co-operate, it might actually help you by making people agree not to pick up something until you fulfilled your objective. The betrayer would have to lie of course, which would either be 1) make something up entirely or 2) if the group is experienced and knows ALL the objectives, either hope he is last to be picked to give full disclosure on his objective and give one of the ones not named or just get lucky and hope that someone else doesn't say the same objective he named. As well as that, if a newbie betrayer is in an experienced group, he basically outs himself at the start if that is the plan.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:50
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Pimpmust posted:Got in a game of 3-player Cosmic Encounter (no expansions), cut it down to no-frills 4-worlds, no flares and no tech cards game (wanted to keep things *really* simple for the first test game). thespaceinvader posted:It's not, at least in this thread. General goonsensus is 'it was a ground breaking game in its time, it has great theme, but awful, awful mechanics'. Awful mechanics is a bit much. Most of the mechanics in CE have been recycled and refined in newer, better games.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:01
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Tekopo posted:The Secret Objectives to me in Dead of Winter seem completely backwards. If you think about what their aim is, the secret objectives are meant to sow distrust among the players by forcing them to keep resources that they would actually want to use to help themselves/the group. This sort of resource-keeping is thus meant to instill conflict in the game by having people say 'wait, why are you keeping this food, we need it!' in order to evoke the classic scenes in zombie films in which someone is found hoarding stuff because of their self-serving need. I guess it is also meant to create a feeling of having to make sacrifices/hard choices for the player. There are a lot of objective cards, so it's either going to be hard to memorise them all or not being able to fake convincingly. You could probably claim the secondary stuff to your objective as the Betrayer if it's fairly basic too. Like "I need one of each item type".
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Feb 9, 2015 00:05
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I'm not too fond of it myself, but real life and venturing about the internet has led me to the conclusion that this thread is the only place in the entire universe that actively dislikes Cosmic Encounter.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:08
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Poison Mushroom posted:Did anyone ever come up with a better alternative? Depends what you're looking for from it - in the same time with the same theme I'd probably look at Galaxy Trucker, but it's not even close to the same type of game.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:08
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Twenty-Four Cards are non-betrayer, only 10 different betrayer ones. Also, they are all handily titled, which makes the situation worse. I don't know what the differences are of the secret objectives to see how easily it would be able to tell them apart from the titles.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:14
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Titles would be a tricky part. I'd have to be more familiar with them to know what's up. It's at least a lot more than Archipelago.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:21
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Pimpmust posted:Semi-related, but what 3-player games do you guys recommend? I'm finding myself in smaller groups lately, and still not exactly the super-boardgamey type, so I need... accessible things. Played Coup/SKULL/Love Letter/Escape!/Quantum, and those are all good(ish) with 3 players. I don't know how other folks feel about it, but I really like Seven Wonders with 3 people. The card distribution is perfect, and since everyone is next to each other it gets pretty cutthroat. Seems more strategic than playing with a lot of people.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:40
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Recaffeinated posted:I don't know how other folks feel about it, but I really like Seven Wonders with 3 people. The card distribution is perfect, and since everyone is next to each other it gets pretty cutthroat. Seems more strategic than playing with a lot of people. Agreed. Although to be honest I think most 2 to X player games that aren't specifically designed for 4 (CitOW, Dungeon Lords, Space Alert) are best with three. Paper Kaiju fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 02:00
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I just played 1944: Race to the Rhine for the first time, and it was excellent. It's a max 3 player racing game. With armies. Monty, Brad, and Patton start in Paris in 1944, each pushing east to see who can get to Dusseldorf first and become the biggest hero of the war. Each has 3-4 armies to move across the board, taking out Germans along the way, using their gas (movement), ammo (combat) and food (gotta eat) resources along the way. But each army can't carry nearly enough to get there. What do they need? Supply trucks. See 1944 isn't a racing game so much as it is a logistics and supply planning game set against a historical race. You have to establish supply lines, move resources back and forth to the right locations, and manage your convoys to make sure the armies don't stall out in the middle of nowhere. But if your supply lines are too thin, the other players can use German forces to cut them off, stranding your armies. It's a great game. Took about 90 minutes including rules.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:02
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Two unrelated questions: 1. I was watching a video of terra Mystica gameplay, and it sort of reminded me of Tigris and Euphrates. At least the way you strive to build kingdoms of connected areas and prevent others from doing the same. Is it anything like that, because I love T&E. 2. What's the best dominion randomized app. I was using dvault, but I feel like it's lacking options to make good sets. I like to play with every single expansion, so I need some decent restriction settings. Dvault only has options to guarantee at least one +buy and one +action cars, but ideally I'd like to guarantee a trashing card as well. I also would love if it let you lock in some sort of value curve so you don't end up with all 5+ cost cards
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Feb 9, 2015 07:36
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Sadly Terra Mystica is nothing like Tigris and Euphrates, it's much milder and less interactive. There is some limited competition for board spaces, although mostly because you are incentivised to build next to your opponent. It doesn't have the same dynamism and there isn't real conflict to speak of.
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Feb 9, 2015 08:48
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Megasabin posted:Two unrelated questions:
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Feb 9, 2015 08:49
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I always tell people Terra Mystica is like Eclipse without combat because I have no better reference point.
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Feb 9, 2015 09:03
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Gimnbo posted:I always tell people Terra Mystica is like Eclipse without combat because I have no better reference point. Now I want Terra mystica thanks a loving lot
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Feb 9, 2015 09:30
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Terra mystica is a loving fantastic euro.
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Feb 9, 2015 09:58
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Gimnbo posted:I always tell people Terra Mystica is like Eclipse without combat because I have no better reference point. I've had good results telling people "Its like settlers of Catan but better, and we don't roll dice for resources". The board full of terrain hexes and the pieces straight out of Catan reenforces this illusion long enough to capture their interest.
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Feb 9, 2015 10:29
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Played some Steam Park since it was on clearance from MM for ~$20. Pretty nice pieces which goes along way (i.e. the Splendor-effect), but its kind of.... just ok. Plays pretty similar to Castles of Burgundy, except with better pieces and a more interesting theme. Rounds are over pretty quick which is nice and it was pretty easy to teach compared to CoB imo. I can't say I'd particularly recommend it unless it's still on sale or if you really really like CoB. Also finally whipped out Kemet since having it in the box since Christmas. Was pretty cool and whoever recommended printing extra sets of the reference, THANK YOU! That pretty much made it much more bearable. How many game is it going to take before we don't need to refer to this nearly every turn?
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Feb 9, 2015 11:08
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Megasabin posted:2. What's the best dominion randomized app. I was using dvault, but I feel like it's lacking options to make good sets. I like to play with every single expansion, so I need some decent restriction settings. Dvault only has options to guarantee at least one +buy and one +action cars, but ideally I'd like to guarantee a trashing card as well. I also would love if it let you lock in some sort of value curve so you don't end up with all 5+ cost cards What platform do you want it for?
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Feb 9, 2015 11:11
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Rutibex posted:I've had good results telling people "Its like settlers of Catan but better, and we don't roll dice for resources". The board full of terrain hexes and the pieces straight out of Catan reenforces this illusion long enough to capture their interest. I love the 'it's like x but better' strategy, where you leverage their desire to play a game they like to get them over the hump of trying something they are completely unfamiliar with. Bonus points if the two games share no mechanics whatsoever.
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Feb 9, 2015 12:13
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Megasabin posted:2. What's the best dominion randomized app. I was using dvault, but I feel like it's lacking options to make good sets. I like to play with every single expansion, so I need some decent restriction settings. Dvault only has options to guarantee at least one +buy and one +action cars, but ideally I'd like to guarantee a trashing card as well. I also would love if it let you lock in some sort of value curve so you don't end up with all 5+ cost cards I use Randominion on iOS. It lets you toggle individual expansions as well as set white lists and black lists and a slider for more or less interaction cards. There's no visible toggle for value curve, but I think it's doing something for that under the hood because I've never had an issue with the boards it's generated for me.
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Feb 9, 2015 12:23
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I think that Secret Objective breakdown is pretty much spot on. It seems a lazy bit of design to have an element in a game be forceably secret, but would actually benefit the co-op group to share. Its secret because the rules say so, but the rules say so because it would be a basic strategy and too easy otherwise. I think you can tell the mechanics get mashed in to fit the theme. I visited Draughts again on a whim on Saturday. I got there at 11:15am and got the second to last table, and there was always a queue for tables from 11:30pm onwards. Consider that if you intend on going. What am I missing with Quantum? I read the rules. I rolled two 3s and a 4. To win the game I need to lay down all the quantum cubes I have, but the rules say that from the 5 of my colour, that two of them are for bigger games and so I have 3, and I start with one built anyway. This meant I could build the other two quantum cubes within 3 turns (both neighbouring planet were 7) with nothing my opponent could do. Even if he could, it pretty trivial to build two cubes. What rule am I getting wrong here? Played Five Tribes. Glad I played it, but it doesn’t quite work for me. It’s just too mathsy, and I love maths. Every turn seems to be just the player staring at the board trying to quickly tot up all the possible current combinations and 1-2 combinations, and attribute the starting bids accordingly. Me and my buddy don’t really get AP, we prod eachother after too long and are happy to have a clock for games like these, but when the bulk of the work is mathsing over a 5*6 square and all the possibilities, then the game has to be quick. If it was 30 mins, that would have been fine, but it was about an hour and I was willing it to end from 30 mins onwards. The theme is very much pasted on, the abstract notion of moving tribes around does not really tie into what is happening. I also think the board tiles should be more interesting or colour co-ordinated, not just varying shades of beige. My rough thought is that it should be 4*4 or 4*5 to shorten both thinking time and overall game length. Tried to convince buddy to play Castles of Burgundy. While he wouldn’t say no, he clearly thought it looked very dull. I’ve commented on that before. We had a really good time with Memoir 44 though. I can tell it’s just a light gateway game to that kind of thing, so its subject more to the variance of dice and card drawing. But the theme and mechanic worked well, and we liked the variance scenarios. Might pick this up if I find it at a good price.
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Feb 9, 2015 14:08
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Fat Turkey posted:What am I missing with Quantum? I read the rules. I rolled two 3s and a 4. To win the game I need to lay down all the quantum cubes I have, but the rules say that from the 5 of my colour, that two of them are for bigger games and so I have 3, and I start with one built anyway. This meant I could build the other two quantum cubes within 3 turns (both neighbouring planet were 7) with nothing my opponent could do. Even if he could, it pretty trivial to build two cubes. What rule am I getting wrong here? Number of cubes is based on the board size. Even the smallest set-up has 4 cubes, and that's one of the 4 player ones. For 2 players, the lowest number of cubes is 5.
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Feb 9, 2015 14:31
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Fat Turkey posted:What am I missing with Quantum? I read the rules. I rolled two 3s and a 4. To win the game I need to lay down all the quantum cubes I have, but the rules say that from the 5 of my colour, that two of them are for bigger games and so I have 3, and I start with one built anyway. This meant I could build the other two quantum cubes within 3 turns (both neighbouring planet were 7) with nothing my opponent could do. Even if he could, it pretty trivial to build two cubes. What rule am I getting wrong here?
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Feb 9, 2015 14:46
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Jedit posted:What platform do you want it for? iOS please. So how much interaction is there in terra Mystica? Does it get start getting cutthroat in terms of cutting people off or is it more geometry solitare? I've been debating between TM and dominant species for a long time now. Both seem like medium-heavy weight euros that are highly regarded. Our group tends to like games like Caylus, eclipse, Tigris and Euphrates, Game Of thrones.
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Feb 9, 2015 14:54
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