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Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:39
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MadWOPR posted:Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it. Yes, but some goons will defend your choice if you buy Puzzle Strike instead.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:43
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Lichtenstein posted:Yes, but some goons will defend your choice if you buy Puzzle Strike instead. But if you, like me, feel like it's a game engine or mechanic without really any actual game attached, get Puzzle Strike instead.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:45
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It's probably the game I get the most mileage out of and it's surprisingly accessible to new gamers my mom loving loves it and is actually kinda good at it
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Feb 25, 2015 21:45
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MadWOPR posted:Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it. If you haven't played it, yeah. I got rid of my copy because I and my group got really burned out on it. It's still a really good game and one of the best deckbuilders.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:45
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quote:For some reason this kinda makes me like him/Argent more. Maybe just general props to go against the general circlejerkish nature of BGG while not sounding like an outright angry gamer stereotype. Yeah, I'm happy to see anyone daring to challenge the "game-quality-relativist"/"why are you hating on this guy's hard work" perspective on BGG. There's this notion that games are not really bad (or, by extension, good), they're all just perfect snowflakes waiting to exactly match some particular taste or preference. And this is made worse by the follow-ups: that the designer - or any designer - has a privileged position of omniscience about the game design decisions made for their game, and generally that if a design required work, it must have value at least proportional to that work. Obviously it's true that people want different things out of gaming - but the prevalence of these views makes any game criticism/analysis on the site mealymouthed and useless. I think lots of published games are terrible - and even many good games have properties that are the result of design laziness, lack of creativity, or straight up blundering (just like any other medium). Imagine if movie makers were afforded this kind of default respect? "Well, Disaster Movie isn't the absolute deepest film out there - but this movie isn't really about story or humor or characters or that kind of elitist stuff. It's just, you know, if you just want a light movie to watch with your friends and eat some popcorn then you should have fun. Lots of people have seen it and some of them liked it, so if you didn't like it then you probably just aren't good at relaxing and liking movies."
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Feb 25, 2015 21:51
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jmzero posted:Imagine if movie makers were afforded this kind of default respect? "Well, Disaster Movie isn't the absolute deepest film out there - but this movie isn't really about story or humor or characters or that kind of elitist stuff. It's just, you know, if you just want a light movie to watch with your friends and eat some popcorn then you should have fun. Lots of people have seen it and some of them liked it, so if you didn't like it then you probably just aren't good at relaxing and liking movies." yes it's finally clear now: every board game reviewer is Peter Travers
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Feb 25, 2015 21:53
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Echophonic posted:Yeah, Splendor really unimpressed me on its first showing. Seemed like every time I dare to buy a card, the guy after me in order got exactly what he needed and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Splendor is literally my baseline; it is so thoroughly mediocre that any game better than it has to be decent, and any game worse than it is decidedly not worth playing.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:55
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jmzero posted:Imagine if movie makers were afforded this kind of default respect? "Well, Disaster Movie isn't the absolute deepest film out there - but this movie isn't really about story or humor or characters or that kind of elitist stuff. It's just, you know, if you just want a light movie to watch with your friends and eat some popcorn then you should have fun. Lots of people have seen it and some of them liked it, so if you didn't like it then you probably just aren't good at relaxing and liking movies." Funnily enough, CD has been fighting exactly that mentality in discussions for a while now, usually expressed as "it's just dumb fun!" or via hamburger:steak analogies.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:08
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MadWOPR posted:Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it. Give it a try online at playdominion.com, it has a good tutorial and you can Just Play(tm) without any setup. I think Dominion is a great game but I got/get my fix playing online, I don't think I'd be up to all the setup necessary to play it on the table with any regularity.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:09
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taser rates posted:Funnily enough, CD has been fighting exactly that mentality in discussions for a while now, usually expressed as "it's just dumb fun!" or via hamburger:steak analogies. oh god are we turning into cd?
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Feb 25, 2015 22:11
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It sounds like CD is turning into us, actually.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:12
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It's improved a lot over the past couple of years, all the bads are usually confined to the Star Wars thread et al lol
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Feb 25, 2015 22:20
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Rubitex is secretly SuperMechaGodzilla.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:21
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It's the same problem everywhere. It's not like boardgames have a monopoly on fanbases that are almost intolerant to criticism. Movies have had this problem for ages. You could argue that video games have it even worse, as people want to define what a 'good game' is without having a concept of 'good' or 'game.' The issue that most -game mediums have is that their barrier to entry is much higher than movies or TV, which simply require you to be able to watch and listen. (I know. It takes more effort than that to actually engage with a good movie. But you can successfully get to the end of anything by watching and listening.) It will take a long time before we even have something equivalent to an Oscars. As bloated, disreputable, and politics driven that awards process is, at least movies are able to agree on a difference between "actually good" and "momentary diversions of no consequence" or "it was fun because my friends were there." Video games require that you have a specific kind of skillset to play them, and board games require that you and your friends have a specific kind of skillset. I think that the broadening of the hobby is good - eventually enough people that are interested in Splendor will get into better games - but the most prolific and high-profile reviewers being mindless champions of whatever they come across definitely doesn't help.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:23
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Mister Sinewave posted:Serioustalk: I have been off and on kinda-maybe interested in BattleCON and figured I might just have to buy and try. Cool, glad you're enjoying it! Now I've just got to wrestle with Wordpress so that I can make pages wider than about three centimetres.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:25
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Poison Mushroom posted:I'm one of those goons, and I definitely say you should at least try Dominion before you decide. If it feels slim and elegant and deep and rich, then great, get that poo poo. Me too, actually. Though it's a bitch explaining to folks what the hell is up with the victory condition.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:32
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chemosh6969 posted:What he said isn't true. Thread regular here, reporting in to poo poo on a thing. Not actually doing any research, I'd say you were dumb and wrong and your arguments are flawed. The hivemind agrees, I already sent a message to their pagers. What were we talking about?
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Feb 25, 2015 22:34
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Impermanent posted:It's the same problem everywhere. It's not like boardgames have a monopoly on fanbases that are almost intolerant to criticism. Movies have had this problem for ages. You could argue that video games have it even worse, as people want to define what a 'good game' is without having a concept of 'good' or 'game.' I'm probably misunderstanding, but it sounds like you're saying both "only people good at or who understand [games] will ever really care enough to entertain the medium" and "lots of people who are bad at [games] engage the medium and even take the time to talk and write about their experiences." While games certainly have a barrier for entry, that barrier can be incredibly low. Not quite as low as a movie where you can literally just sit there if you want to be as uncritical as possible, but pretty dang low, and becoming increasingly lower in the case of video games with the huge influx of Let's Plays/streams which pretty much distill the experience down to that movie level if you want it. Few video games are Monster Hunter, and plenty of board games are Caylus (which is arguably a middle weight game anyway).
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Feb 25, 2015 22:35
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Lichtenstein posted:Me too, actually. Though it's a bitch explaining to folks what the hell is up with the victory condition.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:35
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Poison Mushroom posted:I've actually had a lot of luck explaining it like Puyo Puyo/Kirby's Avalance/Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, which has a lot more fans than Super Puzzle Fighter. (Fun note, though, if they're Mortal Kombat fans, Puzzle Kombat is pretty much identical.) Or just... Tetris.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:40
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MadWOPR posted:Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it. Do you not hate deck building? Do you have no problem owning hundreds of cards worth of expansions? Then yes. Otherwise, no.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:43
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admanb posted:Or just... Tetris.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:44
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admanb posted:And that's bad because he might buy and enjoy a game that your community groupthink has decided is suboptimal? My point was simply by that unengaged people are more likely to be exposed to a game because it won a BGG Golden Geek award or Sperg de Gas or whatever. Like, I personally know around 10 people who play designer board games. 5 of them are totally unengaged with the hobby outside of our semi-weekly sessions. I mean they literally don't give a poo poo about it at all and would be playing whatever caught their eye on the shelf of the local game store, even rancid turds like Fluxx or Arkham + all the expansions (or they might be playing good stuff! the point is they don't give a poo poo, they don't buy based on mechanics). 3 more watch vids and stuff occasionally or semi-randomly. And then there's me and another guy who sit around debating the merits of worker placement and can easily spot Dead of Winter for the trash that it is. And the people who are not heavily engaged are the kind of people who are influenced by those awards. That's the only point I wanted to make. Edit: I cleaned up/modified some numbers and took a hardline stance against lazily-designed garbage like Dead of Winter Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 22:52
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GrandpaPants posted:There are 3 different kinds of playmats available for Summoner Wars. I guess the Alliances one is a cloth playmat, or whatever "premium" means. I dunno, I don't have it yet. The one in the Master Set is two halves of the board, made with cardboard. It's pretty good. The last one is a paper playmat in the "starter" sets with 2 factions (Phoenix Elves vs. Tundra Orcs, for example). It is crap. To add to this, the alliance playmat is essentially two thick rubbery mats that you slide together. It is essentially two big mouse pads that, when placed next to each other, create a summoner wars board. It reminds me of what people win at Netrunner tournaments. It is awesome. My only complaint is that it smells like rubber so I am planning on airing it out. Meanwhile the old master set board is a standard fold up board. Nothing special but not awful, like the paper ones. If you like summoner wars and you want a better board and a storage solution, Alliances is exactly what you want. The eight armies are very good too (in my opinion they are amoung the most interesting armies released) but the components are great.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:00
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Mister Sinewave posted:Give it a try online at playdominion.com, it has a good tutorial and you can Just Play(tm) without any setup. I had no idea this existed, thank you much
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Feb 25, 2015 23:06
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MadWOPR posted:I had no idea this existed, thank you much You also don't have to store all the expansions at home and always have somebody to play against. It's pretty great and I have a hard time imagining playing Dominion in person now. Some gigantic combo that has a player going through not only his but everyone else's full deck would just suuuuuuuck at the table IRL.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:09
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bobvonunheil posted:Cool, glad you're enjoying it! I like the blog a lot, but I have one minor correction. BSG is best with exactly 5 unless you own Daybreak, at which point, 6 players becomes the best number.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:12
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quote:I don't think I'd be up to all the setup necessary to play it on the table with any regularity. We hadn't played much real-life Dominion for quite a while. But I randomly bought Guilds a few weeks ago and we've ended up playing it a lot since; we'd forgotten how well it works. It's not ultra lightning fast, but we finish a game in 30-40 minutes. I was kind of worried as I've played a bit on Android and figured I might be jaded, but it definitely hasn't felt fiddly/draggy.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:21
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Isotropic kinda killed real life Dominion for me. Then that died and I'll probably not play much of it ever. That said, I did play one game of it(base box only) this weekend, before the other half of the group showed up.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:30
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It was literally terrible sleeving all those cards, but it has made the physical game much more approachable for me. I can almost instantaneously shuffle a small pile of sleeved cards whereas shuffling 15 or so unsleeved cards is the hitler of shuffling
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Feb 25, 2015 23:39
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Countblanc posted:
My argument is 1. Game consumption is harder than most other media consumption, which means that less people get into them. (and it only needs to be slightly harder for this to be true. Think about how UX design is all about making something slightly easier and how big of an effect it has on buildings.) 2a. Games criticism is as difficult as other types of media because most people won't/can't think about stuff critically. 2b. But, game criticism is currently worse than other types of criticism because it is less popular, so there's a not as many people in that smaller group of "people who play games and want to play just the good ones, thanks." 3. Tom Vasel and SU&SD and other like them aren't experts so much as they are just game pundits. 4. Few people are good at game criticism because of point 1. and point 2. 5. Tom Vasel and SU&SD and the rest are seen as real reviewers and functionally are tastemakers because of 1., 2. and 3. despite how poor their tastes are. 6. That's bad. Obviously there are other influencing factors like the "maturity of the hobby" or whatever but I don't find them that interesting. Videogames are beginning to step out of this with the rise of some much more compelling reviewers (Sarkeesian helped), but they are still basically building a language. Board games will probably take longer because it is harder to achieve what you might call a "critique-able experience." Obviously if you play Tash Kalar once that game will seem much more random than if you play it 20 times. But you only need to play Dead Space all the way through once in order to be able to write about it. I actually think that Let's Plays might be great for videogames because they can demonstrate high-level play to people who might never have the skill or inclination to develop it. High level play in good games is inherently more interesting because of the tenseness and complexity of decision making, and there may likely be more of a willingness to think about "how does this game work when people try to break it."
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Feb 25, 2015 23:40
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Did anyone else notice that there's a free online version of Dungeon lords apparently, with (rudimentary) AIs. gently caress me I suck at this game. http://www.dungeonlords.ukfun.com/
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Feb 25, 2015 23:45
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Ok, that makes sense. Also I reread my post that you quoted and meant to say "plenty of board games aren't Caylus," in case that wasn't obvious. Whoops. What do you think a game critic, versus a reviewer, would look like? What level of expertise or pedigree is important to bridge that gap? I agree with you, we need those voices, but I'm not really sure what that entails. I feel like it's one of those "you know it when you see it" affairs, like when someone clearly practiced at a particular game that benefits from repeated plays starts talking about the positive and negative design elements, but I think that, much like more matured media criticisms, you can also work towards that instead of just being born with it or whatever. I like to use Paul from SU&SD as an example because he's basically the Very Serious Person of board game reviews where he does an excellent job sounding like all of his opinions are grounded in whatever you'd call board game science, but then he randomly starts waxing nostalgic for D&D 3e as "Real D&D," and that sort of Seriousness is very appealing and I don't really know how to get critics to move past that or for audiences to recognize it. You're also right that you must have some intimate familiarity with a board game (versus games abstractly or as a whole [this is where I tell BL that Yomi owns instead of being decidedly Mediocre like he thinks, sorry m8]) to talk about certain elements of one, but I think it's worth noting the time involved in that process versus video games. Dead Space isn't super long, but it's still several hours and if you played any one board game for that duration you'd probably have a pretty solid understanding of it (assuming you were playing with a critical eye, which you would be in this example). Is there some psychological hitch we need to overcome there? e: Also, are film/literature critics actually listened to by anyone other than other critics and certain content creators/hardcore hobbyists? Like, other than really known names, do people really care about what a critic says versus a "tastemaker"? I know that the purpose of criticism is for the creators in hopes that they or future creators will take those lessons to heart and make better media in the future, but most board games are made by individual people or a couple who just love games or certain themes; I'm not convinced the critical voice actually has an audience beyond just reading it for funsies (which I certainly would) Countblanc fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 23:55
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Impermanent posted:Obviously there are other influencing factors like the "maturity of the hobby" or whatever but I don't find them that interesting. Videogames are beginning to step out of this with the rise of some much more compelling reviewers (Sarkeesian helped), but they are still basically building a language. Board games will probably take longer because it is harder to achieve what you might call a "critique-able experience." Obviously if you play Tash Kalar once that game will seem much more random than if you play it 20 times. But you only need to play Dead Space all the way through once in order to be able to write about it. I think that board games generally requiring multiple willing participants also hurts how easy it is to review things. One can play Dead Space 20 times on personal time if need be, whereas to play Tash Kalar 20 times requires people to find and spend common time. The majority of people will for the most part only be able to give 2nd or 3rd play reports in a reasonable timeframe.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:55
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Actually, speaking of Paul and SU&SD, I think they're actually pretty decent cultural critics of board games. Not just calling out BGG's weird "#girl" tag or whatever, but actually looking at themes in games and representation in them, as well as how games can evoke those. But I also think, as insanely important as that is, it's also significantly easier to do because gender and other forms of sociology are already tightly entwined with media criticism (and pretty much everyone at SU&SD has a history in media criticism) but ludology or w/e you want to call it really isn't, and in fact there's often the assumption that someone who talks about the latter is a dork who isn't worth listening to on the basis of being a gross dork.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:01
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Hey guys, somebody should make a thread for playing board games online. Gather the master list of playable games with links in one convenient location.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:03
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Countblanc posted:Actually, speaking of Paul and SU&SD, I think they're actually pretty decent cultural critics of board games. Not just calling out BGG's weird "#girl" tag or whatever, but actually looking at themes in games and representation in them, as well as how games can evoke those. Didn't they absolutely fail to say anything about how Archipelago presents colonialism? Or am I forgetting something?
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Feb 26, 2015 00:06
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MadWOPR posted:I had no idea this existed, thank you much   I was in the same boat as you until I did.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:08
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Lord Frisk posted:Hey guys, somebody should make a thread for playing board games online. Gather the master list of playable games with links in one convenient location. I'd probably be up for that, but not right now as it's time to sleep. Having just lost at dungeon lords to computers for like the sixth time this evening  And I'm out at hackspace tomorrow so earliest I'd be likely to get to it is Friday. Start gathering resources, people. I'll probably make it digital boardgaming in general, so online versions, game and helper apps, vassal modules, dice rollers etc etc.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:08
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