Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Vlaada Chvatil
Sep 23, 2014

Bunny bunny moose moose
College Slice

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

The game is based on the novel Dracula (it actually takes place 10(?) years after the book) and presupposes that Dracula survived and is back with a new, more subtle plan. The game only draws items, themes, and abilities from said novel. It's fairly low-key, so no sending Werewolves after the Hunters or other crazy stuff.

If you wanted to raid Mansions of Madness and Ravenloft for components and go full-on Hammer Horror you could make a pretty decent Vengeance of Dracula game out of it. Dracula worshippers popping up in major cities, werewolves attacking the Hunters in Eastern Europe, kidnap plots in Spain. It would be a lot more encounter heavy and probably based on the Hunters going full on offensive during the day and buckling up together at night for Drac's counter-attack. It would be a lot less hide and seek and a lot more "run around Europe and stop Drac's plans, oh and btw if you stumble across Drac's trail you might want to stake the fucker". At least how I envision it.

Oh so just Arkham then.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Vlaada Chvatil posted:

Oh so just Arkham then.

Yeah map wack-a-mole isn't exactly the most original design paradigm. I knew that as I was typing it, but I can't think of a clever way to meld that and the deduction mechanic together. For greater minds than mine, I suppose.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Oh hey I'll talk about Fury Of Dracula which I actually own and have played a half-dozen times.

So, it's not great, for a couple of reasons:

1) Anticlimactic endgame. Big time. Dracula loses in slow motion. There's a point where the game just isn't interesting anymore, Drac is in real trouble and being hounded and has a 10% chance of winning, and if you don't just throw up your hands and call it you're probably in for an extra 45 minutes of time before Drac finally does lose. Or the Hunters just stumble around the board and the clock clicks over while they can't find Drac and Game Over.

2) The combat. It is Not Good. Imagine the most unsatisfying hybrid of Paper-Rock-Scissors and Roll A Die you can think of and you've pretty much got it. It's also kind of lovely in the sense that it requires a bunch more player knowledge than the rest of the game (you have to know how the various inventory items that the Hunters have interact with Drac's powers for the Paper-Rock-Scissors part)

The early and middle game are actually pretty fun and alright. The game is also easy to teach and pick up in every way but the overly-engineered combat. Ultimately the game is brought down by the unsatisfying ending and the fact that any direct confrontation between Drac and the Hunters feels mushy. I would not recommend purchase for what it is going for, and have thought long and hard about selling my copy (but I loving love the look of the game and the draw-from-the-bottom deck mechanics)

The remake of Fury of Dracula introduces problems that weren't in the original, then?

Medium Style
Oct 11, 2002

Tiny Chalupa posted:

Can I get some more opinions on castle of mad Ludwig, or whatever the name is, please?
Is it like carsaonnon, don't have game near me phone does not know the word, but with bidding?

I really enjoyed the c game way more than I thought I would.

I mentioned Castles of Mad King Ludwig earlier when talking about two player games. It's a good game. I have not actually played Carcassonne but I can see similarities. You place tiles, arranging them in certain ways to score points. In Castles, players are choosing those tiles (rooms for your castle) from a row of five or six possible purchases. It's not really "bidding", but one player is the "master builder" for the round and gets to set the prices for those room tiles. The other players give their money to the master builder when purchasing a tile. The master builder gets last pick and buys from the bank. The master builder role rotates each round.

It's a really easy game to learn and to set up but you can put a lot of thought and time into each of your turns. The master builder has to balance between not giving good room tiles (and therefore points) to his/her opponents too easily, not making the room tiles too expensive for him/herself, and making money from the other players. Everyone else has to weigh how many points they can score with how much money they are giving the builder.

It does have some problems. The game is expensive for what you get. The box is mostly thin cardboard and empty space. The rooms are colorful but not especially detailed, and the neutral scoreboard / resource area is a big grey slab that manages to be huge and cluttered at the same time. There game also has an element of luck if you are playing with fewer players and not using all of the rooms. The rooms you need to score your objective cards might not even be in the stack. A game doesn't take long but it can drag out if players are indecisive about how to price rooms, which rooms to buy, and how to arrange them in their castle.

Despite all of that, I think it's a game that most people would enjoy. It's light but still has depth. It's fair but still has interaction. It's Euro but still has fun.

Medium Style fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Feb 18, 2015

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Jedit posted:

The remake of Fury of Dracula introduces problems that weren't in the original, then?

I've never played the original, couldn't tell you. I do know that a major difference is that Dracula's trail is six locations long (and represented by cards, so no doubling back easily) vs. the original game's 2 location trail noted on paper (so you could double back). I only know this because a bunch of reviewers on BGG mention it and they seem split about it.

It's been four years or so since I've last played the game, so I'm hazy on particulars, but I remember combat being REALLY risky for both the Hunters and Dracula (so you didn't want to get involved with it) and Dracula's trail being pretty easy to find.

PlaneGuy
Mar 28, 2001

g e r m a n
e n g i n e e r i n g

Yam Slacker
I saw Keyflower pop up a bunch lately, and it got me thinking about making an effortpost about my a recent acquisition: Richard Bresse's Keythedral or as I call it, Hatethedral or Painthedral or Dickthedral

Plot: the citizens of Keytown have built a cathedral, but it's standing room only so y'all gonna finish it. woo.

The game's split in two parts: set-up and actually playing.

Usually set-up isn't a "part" in a game: it's just part of the fact of life having to keeping the game in a box when you're not playing. Even in my first edition copy set-up is almost glossed over. In the second edition, the text for set-up is the same, but it is followed by a large box of text with lots of bold telling you how absolutely hosed you are if you don't pay attention in the set up phase. So yeah, you've already started playing.

Setup is, starting with the first player, taking turns:
  1. drawing a tile and adding it to the board. Tiles are placed orthogonally even though they're hexes oxes, creating little square gaps in the board
  2. dropping one of your numbered cottage counters into one of those little square gaps

It's actually rather clever. Now you have a cottage surrounded by up to 4 tiles that provide resources. It's important where you play your house because if it's near a house of the player to your right and the same number, you could have getting-poo poo-on problems later.

Actual gameplay is also pretty clever and simple. Starting with the first player, you go around activating cottages. Each cottage has a number 1 to 5 on it. So a player grabs the "1st" dobber and drops it on 3. Starting with that player, everyone activates their cottage #3, which is placing a worker on one of the tiles adjacent to that cottage. Only one worker per tile. cutenote: each and every worker token is unique; no two workers - even across players - have the same piece of art. It would all very polite and quaint if it weren't for the incredible amount of overlap between cottages. Sure, the first set of cottages go ok, but by the 5th set there some that can't activate because the tiles around them clogged with assholes. I mean look at this. You can't take two steps without running into some other rear end in a top hat who could've gone on the other side of their house and picked up that wood but NO they had to come on this side and take YOUR water and you DON'T GET poo poo and that wood tile will sit empty YOU COULD'VE GONE THERE INSTEAD GODDAMMIT. It gets worse once people start upgrading cottages to houses and TWO workers pop out.

Once all the houses activate, everyone gets a bunch of cubes and spends them. This is your standard "go around and take an action until everyone passes in a row" affair. You can buy chairs in the cathedral for points, upgrade the cottages, trade up for advanced cubes, etc. There are fences you can buy and play on the border of a house and tile, blocking any worker from that house from landing there because it's my water. There are gently caress you cards that do retarded poo poo like make all tiles of one type barren for a round or let you and you alone set the order of house activation this turn (but you have to buy them blind). You can also tear down a fence for 2 wine, which I assume is used as an accelerant.

All in all, it's a dirty dirty euro with cute art, just like Keyflower. I have the first edition, which has fewer points that only come from chairs. Second edition give more points for chairs and also give points for cubes but gently caress you and your sissy points for buying things. Build chairs, get points and if you bought too much gold too bad go cave your neighbour's head in with it to let out the frustration of having to sit in the nosebleed section. At church.

This goon recommends Keythedral if you can find it used or NOS somewhere. I got mine "used" from BGG for 50 shipped only to find while punched and bagged, the player shields had never been folded, so nice.

PlaneGuy fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Feb 18, 2015

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Tiny Chalupa posted:

Can I get some more opinions on castle of mad Ludwig, or whatever the name is, please?
Is it like carsaonnon, don't have game near me phone does not know the word, but with bidding?

I really enjoyed the c game way more than I thought I would.

Oh hey because I'm a masochist I started writing a blog with short board game summaries and Castles of Mad King Ludwig was one of the ones I just wrote up recently!

In short: It's pretty fun and has some unique ideas but it's not especially deep.

jmzero
Jul 24, 2007

quote:

Tiles are placed orthogonally even though they're hexes, creating little square gaps in the board

I spent too many brain cycles trying to figure out what this would look like (before clicking on the screenshot and seeing that they are octagons :goleft:).

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

I wonder why nobody calls them "oxes"?

PlaneGuy
Mar 28, 2001

g e r m a n
e n g i n e e r i n g

Yam Slacker

jmzero posted:

I spent too many brain cycles trying to figure out what this would look like (before clicking on the screenshot and seeing that they are octagons :goleft:).

hahahah i didn't even notice

fozzy fosbourne
Apr 21, 2010

Going back to an old topic, any recommendations on soundtracks for Tash Kalar? Castles of Mad Ludwig? BattleCON? I was thinking of something like that goofy Star Trek song that played when Kirk was fighting in an arena for TK, or maybe Mortal Kombat music or something? Maybe some playlist of Street Fighter music for BattleCON

We have this playlist of Mark Mothersbaugh film score and Sims soundtrack stuff that we play for Suburbia that totally makes it better.

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

fozzy fosbourne posted:

Going back to an old topic, any recommendations on soundtracks for Tash Kalar? Castles of Mad Ludwig? BattleCON? I was thinking of something like that goofy Star Trek song that played when Kirk was fighting in an arena for TK, or maybe Mortal Kombat music or something? Maybe some playlist of Street Fighter music for BattleCON

We have this playlist of Mark Mothersbaugh film score and Sims soundtrack stuff that we play for Suburbia that totally makes it better.

well the soundtrack for BattleCON is Guile's theme.

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

fozzy fosbourne posted:

Going back to an old topic, any recommendations on soundtracks for Tash Kalar? Castles of Mad Ludwig? BattleCON? I was thinking of something like that goofy Star Trek song that played when Kirk was fighting in an arena for TK, or maybe Mortal Kombat music or something? Maybe some playlist of Street Fighter music for BattleCON

We have this playlist of Mark Mothersbaugh film score and Sims soundtrack stuff that we play for Suburbia that totally makes it better.

This song is the correct one for all of those situations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKubwMZxg2M

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Street Fighter is like, the least anime fighting game I can think of outside of 3D fighters and BattleCON is pretty clearly based off those if anything

e: what I'm saying is to use the Melty Blood or UNIEL osts

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

Countblanc posted:

Street Fighter is like, the least anime fighting game I can think of outside of 3D fighters and BattleCON is pretty clearly based off those if anything

e: what I'm saying is to use the Melty Blood or UNIEL osts

Blazblue has some good music, if nothing else, I want the announcer to start every game of BattleCON I ever play.

"The Wheel of Fate is Turning, REBEL ONE, Action"

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Madmarker posted:

Blazblue has some good music, if nothing else, I want the announcer to start every game of BattleCON I ever play.

"The Wheel of Fate is Turning, REBEL ONE, Action"

They need to take these "card fighting games" and make a version based on Marvel vs Capcom. They could sell an infinite number of expansions and make more money than they could count.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
If you want crazy anime fighting game music then you really need the Guilty Gear soundtracks.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
GG's music is way too real for a board game

Moriatti
Apr 21, 2014

Rutibex posted:

They need to take these "card fighting games" and make a version based on Marvel vs Capcom. They could sell an infinite number of expansions and make more money than they could count.

Isn't that what the Versus system was supposed to be?

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Moriatti posted:

Isn't that what the Versus system was supposed to be?

VS is like playing Magic but instead of summoning dragons I summon the xmen. It's a collectable card game where you build your own deck. What I want is the whole idea behind BattleCON but with Marvel vs Capcom Hypercombo FINISH and all! I like the idea of a pre-made "Spiderman" or "Hulk" or whatever deck. Making the decks customizable makes the balance fall onto each individual card. When you pre-make all the decks you can have much more interesting mechanisms because each card doesn't have to be equally as good as every other, each deck does.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Minor note on Versus: I hear there are plans to revive it as an LCG.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Rutibex posted:

VS is like playing Magic but instead of summoning dragons I summon the xmen. It's a collectable card game where you build your own deck. What I want is the whole idea behind BattleCON but with Marvel vs Capcom Hypercombo FINISH and all! I like the idea of a pre-made "Spiderman" or "Hulk" or whatever deck. Making the decks customizable makes the balance fall onto each individual card. When you pre-make all the decks you can have much more interesting mechanisms because each card doesn't have to be equally as good as every other, each deck does.
And then you basically end up with Sentinels of the Multiverse.

fozzy fosbourne
Apr 21, 2010

Jedit posted:

Minor note on Versus: I hear there are plans to revive it as an LCG.

Yeah last I saw there were even some cards being shown off at an event .. which had the term "Living Card Game" on the backs, which people speculate is a trademarked property of FFG and was going to get them a C&D. Upper Deck is like that big cute puppy that pees on your floor :shobon:

My only exposure to VS was via the DS and PC games, but I actually really liked the system. Combat was pretty fun. I had fun sperging reading years old tournament analysis and development blogs. Also had a lot of fun piloting tourney decks against the AI or random internet peoples. Struck a nice balance between gimmicks, aggro and plain curve decks. I liked the Fantastic Four toolbox decks. There were some seriously imbalanced cards like Dr. Light that really screwed up the meta but I imagine that only makes it even better as a candidate for a revised LCG.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Poison Mushroom posted:

And then you basically end up with Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Uh how.

Lottery of Babylon
Apr 25, 2012

STRAIGHT TROPIN'


It is a superhero game where each hero has its own premade deck and you don't deckbuild.

fozzy fosbourne
Apr 21, 2010

Not much in common. If you replaced the cards with dials like in X-Wing, there would probably be just about nothing in common other than the (proposed) theme.

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Lottery of Babylon posted:

It is a superhero game where each hero has its own premade deck and you don't deckbuild.

Mechanically they would be quite different. Sentinels of the Multiverse is a co-op game, I want a 3v3 dueling game! I'm talking about literally just taking BattleCON and putting a Marvel vs Capcom (the best fighting game series) set out. It would be nerd candy.

Hyper COMBO FINISH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnpCm2N_eE4

goodness
Jan 3, 2012

When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?
What would be the best resource to learn MG and subsequently play it solo (I will be using Vassal if that matters).

S.J.
May 19, 2008

Just who the hell do you think we are?

Rutibex posted:

They need to take these "card fighting games" and make a version based on Marvel vs Capcom. They could sell an infinite number of expansions and make more money than they could count.

Un-loving-goddamnit to loving poo poo hell-fortunately, FFG sold the rights to the Universal Fighting System card game to shithole producer Jasco Games.

I am so loving angry that there isn't a UFS LCG in the works right now.

Tiny Chalupa
Feb 14, 2012

bobvonunheil posted:

Oh hey because I'm a masochist I started writing a blog with short board game summaries and Castles of Mad King Ludwig was one of the ones I just wrote up recently!

In short: It's pretty fun and has some unique ideas but it's not especially deep.

Thanks for both replies to my question!
This game will make my short list of things to order in the next week or 2

Imperial Assault
Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Pressure Cooker
Zombie 15

Not sure if I will get all 4 at once. May drop one but unsure which one to wait on :/

Xom
Sep 2, 2008

文化英雄
Fan of Britches
From what I've read, Yomi 2v2 mode sounds pretty wild.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Xom posted:

From what I've read, Yomi 2v2 mode sounds pretty wild.

The 1v2 rules are insanely bad, but the 2v2 looks cool. Haven't got to try it though.

rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


Board game night report:

Final Attack! (PnP demo). Trying this as a 5-player game for the first time (difficulty 8) was maybe not such a great idea. It was pretty confusing, often we'd end up doing something a bit useless from not knowing what everybody has / can do, with the time pressure. I wanted to try it solo this afternoon first, but I had to use the time to re-trim and sleeve / Magic-back the cards since the paper I used wasn't solid enough to shuffle. In the later part of the game we seemed to be overflowing with goodies from boosting systems and counterattacking the Robeasts viciously. The ending itself seemed unsatisfying, I'm not sure what it needs. I don't think it was well received (partly from being an artless PnP of course) and it's hard to justify spending almost as much as Mage Knight but I'm still on the fence. Hopefully I can try a 3-player game and see how that works. Rules question: does the Robeast start in Alpha form or does it need to evolve once to get there?

The Print-and-play has some issues component wise, so if you want to make it yourself I recommend doing some thinking and tinkering first to try to save yourself some work / paper / etc.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is always fun, but the more I play with Daybreak the more I think it's better with just the base game. The powers just seem wackier with fewer interactive/deductive possibilities, and more random side-changing leading to never knowing your own goal. Maybe the app just needs a good semi-random setup function.

Cthulu Wars for the second time. This game is very interesting with a scaling map and different units/powers for each faction, but something seems off. You build a bunch of units and try to hold areas, but you need your weakest units to actually make use of places and you have a very small limit on each type of unit. War is very expensive and hard to be effective at (roll dice for each combat strength you have , 4-5 pushes an enemy 6 kills one). If somebody gets a lead in money/points it's hard to do anything about them. The latter half of the game was basically 2v1 but we still weren't able to slow the leader down much. Needing a higher point total to win the game would either save it or make it completely awful.

Roll for the Galaxy for the second time also. Would you like Race for the Galaxy better if you couldn't necessarily choose the phase you wanted? Then you will like this. OK, but frustrating and I'll take Race/Gathering Storm over this by a lot. Collusion seems stronger too, with not having the bonus for choosing the phase. (Each player does get to choose any phase, but if their dice don't support it they won't get much out of it. It's lovely having 8-9 dice and a 6-development you can't play thanks to having no Develop faces showing.

edit: Thinking about it a little more, I think Roll might be better with 4-5 players and Race with 2-3, since more phases will be called with more players you can often decide between using all your dice and using a few less but better.

rchandra fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Feb 19, 2015

The worst submarine
Apr 26, 2010

What are the best characters in talisman 4e + expansions? My money's on martyr, she's rigged.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

The worst submarine posted:

What are the best characters in talisman 4e + expansions? My money's on martyr, she's rigged.
I personally think the humble Warrior is stupidly good. Getting an extra die to pick from on every single (physical) combat roll is not something to be underestimated.

rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


Poison Mushroom posted:

I personally think the humble Warrior is stupidly good. Getting an extra die to pick from on every single (physical) combat roll is not something to be underestimated.

In the base game characters like Warrior/Troll/Assassin are really strong but I found they got a bit worse with expansions added. The already strong Prophetess might be even stronger with expansions. I haven't played with enough of the new characters to say if any of them beat her.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -

rchandra posted:

Final Attack! (PnP demo). Trying this as a 5-player game for the first time (difficulty 8) was maybe not such a great idea. It was pretty confusing, often we'd end up doing something a bit useless from not knowing what everybody has / can do, with the time pressure. I wanted to try it solo this afternoon first, but I had to use the time to re-trim and sleeve / Magic-back the cards since the paper I used wasn't solid enough to shuffle. In the later part of the game we seemed to be overflowing with goodies from boosting systems and counterattacking the Robeasts viciously. The ending itself seemed unsatisfying, I'm not sure what it needs. I don't think it was well received (partly from being an artless PnP of course) and it's hard to justify spending almost as much as Mage Knight but I'm still on the fence. Hopefully I can try a 3-player game and see how that works. Rules question: does the Robeast start in Alpha form or does it need to evolve once to get there?

The Print-and-play has some issues component wise, so if you want to make it yourself I recommend doing some thinking and tinkering first to try to save yourself some work / paper / etc.

I'm currently redoing the PnP in prep for the public release. What issues did you have?

To answer your question, a Robeast has no form at the start of a game, because it has no Evolution Tokens at the start of a game.

The easier difficulties are really easy and (especially at 4-5 player counts) to the point where you might find not enough to do with large player groups without reducing the number of Events. If you're overflowing with stuff in the late game, it's time to make the game harder (or you're not resolving Burnouts when you should be).

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

I need advice for a board game to give to my brother and his girlfriend. Problem is, he really likes outsmarting people, but she hates being outsmarted (and as such hates games that revolve around misdirection like Resistance or Werewolf). Any ideas? I'm considering Formula D but could use more suggestions.

Aston
Nov 19, 2007

Okay
Okay
Okay
Okay
Okay

I think I'm going to have to house rule your game Broken Loose

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

double nine posted:

I need advice for a board game to give to my brother and his girlfriend. Problem is, he really likes outsmarting people, but she hates being outsmarted (and as such hates games that revolve around misdirection like Resistance or Werewolf). Any ideas? I'm considering Formula D but could use more suggestions.

You're asking for a game that fulfils two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive conditions. The best thing you could give them is Diplomacy, AKA the Instant Divorce Kit.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply