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Durendal
Jan 25, 2008

Who made you God to say
"I'll take your sheep from you?"



Lottery of Babylon posted:

Incorrect. Puzzle Strike is an actual game, Dominion is not.



So Puzzle Strike is chili, while Dominion isn't because it has beans in it?

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andrew smash
Jun 26, 2006

smooth soul

Lottery of Babylon posted:

Incorrect. Puzzle Strike is an actual game, Dominion is not.

Ouch, i cut myself with this post.

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Durendal posted:

So Puzzle Strike is chili, while Dominion isn't because it has beans in it?

and mage knight is poured on macaroni

Stan Taylor
Oct 13, 2013

Touched Fuzzy, Got Dizzy
Oh man this thread gets particularly nerdy sometimes.

I love it. :allears:

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Still feel like I made the right choice with the thread title.

Bubble-T
Dec 26, 2004

You know, I've got a funny feeling I've seen this all before.

Guy A. Person posted:

Or the only way to represent "+ action" or "+ cards" is with an arrow or chip icon like the first guy used. Like gently caress it is supposed to be fighting game right? Couldn't the action icon be like a fist or something? I came up with this alternate design in 40 seconds.

The action arrow makes perfect sense from a fighting game standpoint, it's the one used to signify movement inputs required before you hit punch/kick/whatever to do a move. Fists are a symbol on the 'aggressive' chips that do something to your opponent's stuff.

The issue isn't that Sirlin used these design choices because, let's be honest, most of them a super-loving-obvious (a banner like on dominion cards, a circle to represent a chip, genius ideas!). Sirlin's right that changing things for the sake of it would be silly. He should just give proper credit to the guy who made the Dominion chips, that's all.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

StashAugustine posted:

and mage knight is poured on macaroni

Mage Knight was extensively tested for its taste and nutritional values prior to serving.

Dr. Lunchables
Dec 27, 2012

IRL DEBUFFED KOBOLD



I tend to elicit shithead responses because I'm such a smug shithead myself.

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

Jedit posted:

Mage Knight was extensively tested for its taste and nutritional values prior to serving.

That's why Kraft is recalling all those cheese packets; not from metal content but too much mage knight.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Bubble-T posted:

The action arrow makes perfect sense from a fighting game standpoint, it's the one used to signify movement inputs required before you hit punch/kick/whatever to do a move. Fists are a symbol on the 'aggressive' chips that do something to your opponent's stuff.

That's actually a good point, the arrows do remind me of the old SF instruction manuals showing moves.

quote:

The issue isn't that Sirlin used these design choices because, let's be honest, most of them a super-loving-obvious (a banner like on dominion cards, a circle to represent a chip, genius ideas!). Sirlin's right that changing things for the sake of it would be silly. He should just give proper credit to the guy who made the Dominion chips, that's all.

The banners in particular irritate the hell out of me because they're pointless design for PS outside of Sirlin just being too lazy to change them. They make perfect sense for Dominion because they look like the borders of actual cards which are reminiscent of medieval heraldry. If Sirlin had changed these to something more generic like just a solid bar across the top, and maybe even changed the color scheme to anything but an exact copy of the Dom chips, he would get so much less poo poo about these. They really don't have to look exactly the same, they only do out of laziness.

Elysium
Aug 21, 2003
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

fozzy fosbourne posted:

What's the gooncensus on Temporum? Will it get there with more expansions?

Temporum is pretty good. With an expansion that adds some more unique and interesting zones, and a new mechanic that does... something (hey, if I knew I would design the games and not play them), it could be really good. DXV said an expansion would depend on base game sales, which judging by the the lack of hype and activity on BGG (if that's any measure) I would say are not that great.

What the game definitely needs though, is entirely new components. A different, non-stupidly-large board. No more dumb crowns that fall over (honestly cubes would be better, but you could probably find some thematic thing that is better). Heftier zones (think Forbidden Desert tiles) would be interesting. Obviously better arrows, which they are already working on.

Elysium fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Mar 20, 2015

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Elysium posted:

Temporum is pretty good. With an expansion that adds some more unique and interesting zones, and a new mechanic that does... something (hey, if I knew I would design the games and not play them), it could be really good. DXV said an expansion would depend on base game sales, which judging by the the lack of hype and activity on BGG (if that's any measure) I would say are not that great.

What the game definitely needs though, is entirely new components. A different, non-stupidly large board. No more dumb crowns that fall over (honestly cubes would be better, but you could probably find some thematic thing that is better). Heftier zones (think Forbidden Desert tiles) would be interesting. Obviously better arrows, which they are already working on.

I've played Temporum a few times and it hasn't really gripped me. The Ages (outside of Age 4) generally seem extremely similar with only subtle differences (Age 1 for scoring cards, 2 for playing cards, 3 for card draw) and it's just sort of about optimising the way you get the 30 advances you need for victory, and planning it so that you don't run out of money and cards until you get your 30th tick. You hardly even seem to really interact with the other players. Am I missing something?

Elysium
Aug 21, 2003
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

bobvonunheil posted:

I've played Temporum a few times and it hasn't really gripped me. The Ages (outside of Age 4) generally seem extremely similar with only subtle differences (Age 1 for scoring cards, 2 for playing cards, 3 for card draw) and it's just sort of about optimising the way you get the 30 advances you need for victory, and planning it so that you don't run out of money and cards until you get your 30th tick. You hardly even seem to really interact with the other players. Am I missing something?

It's definitely a game of optimizing, much like Dominion. Your main resource is "turns" in that you have to get money to score, play cards to get money, and draw cards to not run out, so your plan is to sequence your actions and movement to do this in the least turns possible. That definitely doesn't appeal to everyone, just like some people find Dominion really bland. If you get a really basic board the game can definitely be a bit rote. But then you get a board that has say, Communist Utopia, and so you drop Gang of Pickpockets to stay under 12 gold, so you can drop another card, so you can draw a card from GoP and you're off to the races. Or you carefully manage your crowns so you have 4 in key zones and abuse Information Age to go to Bureaucracy in Zone 3 playing a card (one of which is Papal Tiara to let you score a card), making everyone else with $12 retreat a crown and then move to zone 2 (Plague) to draw 2 more cards and make everyone in Zone 1 and 3 discard a card.

I think it's fun. It's not super interactive, but again like Dominion, what your opponents are doing matters. How quickly are they scoring? How many cards do they have in their hand? How much money do they have? That defines your "clock." Can you make them discard cards or money? Can you take over ruling a zone for a small swing (an extra card for you and one less for them could make all the difference!). But like I said, I think some new cards, and one mechanic could really push it over the edge.

ps. http://pittersplace.com/temporum/ although the AI is really easy. I've literally never lost.

Elysium fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Mar 20, 2015

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Elysium posted:

What the game definitely needs though, is entirely new components. A different, non-stupidly-large board. No more dumb crowns that fall over (honestly cubes would be better, but you could probably find some thematic thing that is better). Heftier zones (think Forbidden Desert tiles) would be interesting. Obviously better arrows, which they are already working on.

I might agree with you about the zones were it not that making them into tiles would significantly jack up the price beyond what can be justified for a light filler game, but not the rest. The board isn't stupidly large when you consider it needs to hold four rows of up to four cards plus a score track for five players. It just looks stupidly large next to the tiny clock hands. And why are you standing the crowns up when there's room to lay them out flat?

Elysium
Aug 21, 2003
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
The board is extra large. You can easily configure the cards and crowns into a space at least 2/3 the size, and that's before considering alternate component sizes. The scoring track doesn't need to nearly be as big if you aren't laying down the crowns. We play without the board at all, hence my interest in tiles, however, given the price for the minimal components already, I would think they can afford tiles.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -
Temporum was one of Rio Grande's first stints at having Hasbro publish their games, and it was a massive fuckfest. Just compare the clock hands on the back of the box with the wooden fingernail clippings inside. DXV's actually pretty pissed about that in particular. Then Hasbro started misprinting Dominion cards and RGG hinted at that sort of thing being completely unacceptable.

I tried to like Temporum, but nearly all the good parts of it exist in Dominion without any of the accompanying bad parts.

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Elysium posted:

The board is extra large. You can easily configure the cards and crowns into a space at least 2/3 the size, and that's before considering alternate component sizes. The scoring track doesn't need to nearly be as big if you aren't laying down the crowns. We play without the board at all, hence my interest in tiles, however, given the price for the minimal components already, I would think they can afford tiles.

I don't play with the board either. The entire game fits in one of the large UltraPro deck boxes that are designed for Commander decks and have the compartment on the bottom.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Elysium posted:

DXV said an expansion would depend on base game sales, which judging by the the lack of hype and activity on BGG (if that's any measure) I would say are not that great.

He actually made a post about that in the past week and it sounds more optimistic:

DXV posted:

I won't know for sure it will happen until the printer has the files and there's a date for it. It's tentatively happening though. Alayna has agreed to do the art and it's waiting on her finishing another project. The design/playtesting has been done for a while.

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Broken Loose posted:

I tried to like Temporum, but nearly all the good parts of it exist in Dominion without any of the accompanying bad parts.

This sums up how I feel about Temporum so far.

The only thing Temporum has going for it over Dominion is a much quicker setup time. Pretty much everything else gameplay-wise in Dominion is superior, just in the base set.

SuperKlaus
Oct 20, 2005


Fun Shoe

The worst submarine posted:

Puzzle Strike... would've been better with cards instead anyway

I don't agree. Cards would permit artwork that there simply isn't room for on a chip, which would really spruce up the game, and would similarly allow more room for rules text (during Puzzle Strike's various public-on-forum development phases you can see ideas get shot down for the simple reason of "ain't gonna fit on a chip"). Those, particularly the art, are things I'd really like in Puzzle Strike. Certainly I think it's odd that so much effort went into Yomi's art and Puzzle Strike stopped at one rendition per character for the box art. I'd love to see those "chibi" characters joking around doing wacky Super Gem Fighter stuff on card art. However, I overall much prefer the chips for pure ease of shuffling and manipulation.

Also, to the thread in general, please know that though Puzzle Strike's fundamentals are Dominion's - the A B C D phase order, the common buy/gain/+money/+action effects, attacks that you block with defenses, some other stuff - the different victory condition revolving around gem pile size and the "crashing" concept of sending gems to your opponent makes for a very different play experience. For one thing, every deck begins with a chip that is an action chain ender effect (the Crash Gem), and these particular action chain ender effects are typically key to winning the game. This means that while Village is a trap card to the newbie in Dominion, its Puzzle Strike near-clone Punch Punch Kick is rarely such a poor decision. This is to say nothing of the effect the character chips have, especially the enders!

It is not a mere Dominion clone. I left a thread about Sirlin's games adrift on the forum here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3559377. Find it and ask about Puzzle Strike or complain about Sirlin being a dick all you like in that thread!*

*and as a parting shot remember Sirlin's a dick but no one is a perfect person, especially not in the world of board games...

Zark the Damned
Mar 9, 2013

gently caress off SJ Games, stop ruining everything good with your Munchkin bullshit - http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/steve-jackson-games-announces-munchkin-the-nightmare-before-christmas/

Is there any franchise they won't despoil?

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
It's just a bad card game, man. Don't worry about it (unless you have to play it)

Lottery of Babylon
Apr 25, 2012

STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Forget it, Jake. It's Munchkin.

Poopy Palpy
Jun 10, 2000

Im da fwiggin Poopy Palpy XD

SuperKlaus posted:

I don't agree. Cards would permit artwork that there simply isn't room for on a chip, which would really spruce up the game, and would similarly allow more room for rules text (during Puzzle Strike's various public-on-forum development phases you can see ideas get shot down for the simple reason of "ain't gonna fit on a chip"). Those, particularly the art, are things I'd really like in Puzzle Strike. Certainly I think it's odd that so much effort went into Yomi's art and Puzzle Strike stopped at one rendition per character for the box art. I'd love to see those "chibi" characters joking around doing wacky Super Gem Fighter stuff on card art. However, I overall much prefer the chips for pure ease of shuffling and manipulation.

Chips make shuffling easier, but shuffling is really loving easy. Chips make the following essential manipulations harder:

Drawing a card
Knowing when your deck is empty
Holding your hand such that you can assess what you drew
Keeping stacks of more than 5 cards tidy

It's not a good trade.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

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

Poopy Palpy posted:

Chips make shuffling easier, but shuffling is really loving easy. Chips make the following essential manipulations harder:

Drawing a card
Knowing when your deck is empty
Holding your hand such that you can assess what you drew
Keeping stacks of more than 5 cards tidy

It's not a good trade.
Steal some letter-tile-holders from Scrabble.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Poopy Palpy posted:

Chips make shuffling easier, but shuffling is really loving easy. Chips make the following essential manipulations harder:

Drawing a card
Knowing when your deck is empty
Holding your hand such that you can assess what you drew
Keeping stacks of more than 5 cards tidy

It's not a good trade.

You also need supplemental accessories to simulate basic properties of a deck of cards. I.E. you need a bag or some other container to simulate a randomly shuffled deck, and a screen to have a hidden hand of cards. This is a lot of extra cost to save like 5 seconds per shuffle.

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

So for those of us who have played Argent, is there any good general strategy advice out there yet? I mean, I've played four games of this thing so far and all I can really figure out to do that is more effective than a rush strategy. By that I mean loading up on purple and gray mages with maybe one blue or green mage and just trying to blitz into open slots and end the round before my opponent's get to deploy all their actions. On top of this always try and get marks, influence, and supporters of all else. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall strategy for this thing?

Also I'm referencing the A side mages, I haven't even looked at B side mages yet.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Madmarker posted:

So for those of us who have played Argent, is there any good general strategy advice out there yet? I mean, I've played four games of this thing so far and all I can really figure out to do that is more effective than a rush strategy. By that I mean loading up on purple and gray mages with maybe one blue or green mage and just trying to blitz into open slots and end the round before my opponent's get to deploy all their actions. On top of this always try and get marks, influence, and supporters of all else. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall strategy for this thing?

Also I'm referencing the A side mages, I haven't even looked at B side mages yet.

Marks are super imprtant early on so that you know what you can focus on.

I haven't played against a rushing player from round 1 (did play a game where one player placed 4 mages on his first action in the final round), but if you rush too hard, people will murder your mages, and all of your mages are sitting ducks. Also keep in mind that you still have to grab the belltower cards, so other players can still take actions.

I feel like influence is an all or nothing thing. You generally want 1-2 merit badges, but if the other players push hard for influence, let them duke it out and use your actions to secure other votes.

Supporters are likewise fantastic, but you can replace them with research if you get a way to do large amounts of extra research on your turns.

Really the game is all about figuring out what you have, what you need, what your opponents want, and what you can safely secure. If you get out to an early lead on a vote, you can scare away competition and make them pursue a different path to victory. It's so dynamic that it's hard to really lay out a general strategy at all.

Prairie Bus
Sep 22, 2006




Dirk the Average posted:

Marks are super imprtant early on so that you know what you can focus on.

I haven't played against a rushing player from round 1 (did play a game where one player placed 4 mages on his first action in the final round), but if you rush too hard, people will murder your mages, and all of your mages are sitting ducks. Also keep in mind that you still have to grab the belltower cards, so other players can still take actions.

I feel like influence is an all or nothing thing. You generally want 1-2 merit badges, but if the other players push hard for influence, let them duke it out and use your actions to secure other votes.

Supporters are likewise fantastic, but you can replace them with research if you get a way to do large amounts of extra research on your turns.

Really the game is all about figuring out what you have, what you need, what your opponents want, and what you can safely secure. If you get out to an early lead on a vote, you can scare away competition and make them pursue a different path to victory. It's so dynamic that it's hard to really lay out a general strategy at all.

This is right on as far as I can tell for strategy. A lot of it will depend on player count, too. In a five player game, it's a safe bet that if you can solidify 3-4 voters, you've got the game. That makes marks less important. I'd disagree on points though. In the last two games we played, I lost 4 or 5 votes on the tie breakers.

I've really liked what I've seen of the game. There's a lot of ways to play it, even on just the A sides. I was borrowing a copy; I think I'm going to have to get my own.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Prairie Bus posted:

This is right on as far as I can tell for strategy. A lot of it will depend on player count, too. In a five player game, it's a safe bet that if you can solidify 3-4 voters, you've got the game. That makes marks less important. I'd disagree on points though. In the last two games we played, I lost 4 or 5 votes on the tie breakers.

I've really liked what I've seen of the game. There's a lot of ways to play it, even on just the A sides. I was borrowing a copy; I think I'm going to have to get my own.

First game I played, I got 7 votes in a four player game, and 4 of those were tie breakers.

In my second game, I got 3 votes in a five player game and was dead last in IP. The winner had 4 votes, and I made the mistake of not getting enough marks to secure another vote or two.

You can double down hard enough on certain votes (mostly school dominance) to scare other people away from them so that you don't need to win on IP. It's definitely incredibly powerful though, and is worth at least two votes since you get one vote guaranteed and win ties.

GrandpaPants
Feb 13, 2006


Free to roam the heavens in man's noble quest to investigate the weirdness of the universe!

Madmarker posted:

So for those of us who have played Argent, is there any good general strategy advice out there yet? I mean, I've played four games of this thing so far and all I can really figure out to do that is more effective than a rush strategy. By that I mean loading up on purple and gray mages with maybe one blue or green mage and just trying to blitz into open slots and end the round before my opponent's get to deploy all their actions. On top of this always try and get marks, influence, and supporters of all else. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall strategy for this thing?

Also I'm referencing the A side mages, I haven't even looked at B side mages yet.

Remember that the objective of the game is to win the most of 12 different races, 3 of which you know at the start of the game. You obviously can't win all of them, but you know that you basically just need more X than other players. Most of this information is public (secret supporters is the exception), but don't be That Guy that incessantly demands a count of, well, everything. You should have a feel for which of these races you can win and which you can't and, of the ones that are still in contention, figure out what the best path to victory is. A lot of this will be dependent on the type of spells that come out, so if you see nothing but defensive or planar spells, you know that you need to basically ensure that you're doing your plan the best/fastest. If there are a lot of attack spells, then you know that you need either defenses or contingencies. But the most important strategic advice is to know what races you still have a stake in and pursue THOSE. There's no point starting to compete in Most Divine if someone already has a level 3 divine spell and you have like, one supporter.

Also for the love of God don't neglect Influence Points. Very, very important in all the races, since it's essentially a soft +1 to your count if you're competing against someone else.

But basically the styles that I've noticed are either Rush (Planar + Mystic) where you poo poo out your mages asap and start ringing some bells Control (Sorcery + some Nature + some Mystic) where you use your abilities to displace other players, or Defensive (Divine + some Nature) where your dudes are just nigh unfuckable. Hybrids of the various styles are possible depending on the spells that come out, but are generally not guaranteed, especially if other players recognize that you can get some ungodly synergy (getting a really good Divine spell when you're rushing is a godsend). The game being as variable as it is, it's hard to prescribe any given strategy since the dynamics can be so different. It's all about adapting to the board state, which is why it's rapidly becoming one of my favorite games.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."
Yeah, the fact that even two games with the exact same board layout will diverge rapidly based on what comes out from the various decks is amazing.

That's even before you start using the B side of the mages and the rooms. There's so much variety that I don't think it'll ever get stale. Even then, there are scenarios and more optional add-ons.

Neglecting influence and/or supporters is not something to do lightly. They're both very powerful and almost mandatory to win. You can win without them, but it requires your opponents to spend lots of actions fighting each other over them while you pick up votes on the edges and use the extra actions you didn't spend on IP or supporters to win a few extra votes and snatch up more powerful spells/items to control the other players.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

Broken Loose posted:

I tried to like Temporum, but nearly all the good parts of it exist in Dominion without any of the accompanying bad parts.

If you are a completionist and do not want to own 50 boxes of dominion in order to 'complete' the game, then Temporum is great because at the moment it exists by itself!

McNerd
Aug 28, 2007

bobvonunheil posted:

This sums up how I feel about Temporum so far.

The only thing Temporum has going for it over Dominion is a much quicker setup time. Pretty much everything else gameplay-wise in Dominion is superior, just in the base set.

I am a huge fan of Dominion and it may well be the better game, but I can list a lot of things Temporum does better:

* Better theme, if you're into that.

* Better game flow, shorter turns.

* Supports up to 5 players (without turning to poo poo).

* It has a basic newbie strategy akin to Big Money: just draw, play cards for money, and score. But it's not boring or automatic to play like this, nor is it frustrating to lose against it. These aren't problems for advanced Dominion players but they're undeniably annoying for beginners.

* More direct player interaction baked into the core rules. Absent attack cards you can ignore your opponent in Dominion (not that it's advisable, but some people do and then complain about it). You really can't in Temporum; they just took over that Time you needed to rule, or they changed history so you can't go to that Zone you needed. The basic core strategy is pretty tamper-resistant, but anything else you try to do is subject to interference, accidental or purposeful.

McNerd fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Mar 20, 2015

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

McNerd posted:

* It has a basic newbie strategy akin to Big Money: just draw, play cards for money, and score. But it's not boring or automatic to play like this, nor is it frustrating to lose against it. These aren't problems for advanced Dominion players but they're undeniably annoying for beginners.


I've not played, so I'm genuinely asking: how is draw, play for money, score NOT boring and automatic?

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

thespaceinvader posted:

I've not played, so I'm genuinely asking: how is draw, play for money, score NOT boring and automatic?

Basically, the different cards you can draw really do a lot more than just get money. Otherwise, your point stands.

Memnaelar
Feb 21, 2013

WHO is the goodest girl?

Madmarker posted:

So for those of us who have played Argent, is there any good general strategy advice out there yet? I mean, I've played four games of this thing so far and all I can really figure out to do that is more effective than a rush strategy. By that I mean loading up on purple and gray mages with maybe one blue or green mage and just trying to blitz into open slots and end the round before my opponent's get to deploy all their actions. On top of this always try and get marks, influence, and supporters of all else. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall strategy for this thing?

Also I'm referencing the A side mages, I haven't even looked at B side mages yet.

As others have pointed out, being all-out first on the board by way of purple/black is initially *awesome* and can be quite powerful but it does leave you a sitting duck while also telegraphing what you're prioritizing in your races. Now, if you have some movement abilities that let you adjust your placement after the fact (like Green's Gust of Wind ability), you might be able to fake out your opponents or recover from being sent to the infirmary, but after about five plays, I've learned that being able to place last can, under some circumstances, be more effective than being first out of the gate.

The Technomancers (orange) from the expansion also offer some great strategies. I was locked out of purple mages by the draft in the game I played last night and ended up with 2 Orange, 2 Black, 1 Green while my other three opponents had at least one purple (and two had two) -- we play the limited draft pool variant. I found that having fast research with Orange meant that I could gain spells from the offer sooner than anyone else could (nobody else really invested in Orange) *and* then benefit from casting them with my Black. It meant that starting in Round 1, I had a spell immediately available to me which, as it turned out to be Slow Time, in turn immediately gave me some speed to counter my opponents' Purple advantage. I ended up winning the game despite the fact that I never achieved more than my base five mages and would almost always be placing my last mage last *if* I got to place him at all.

Incredibly good, balanced game.

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

Dirk the Average posted:

Yeah, the fact that even two games with the exact same board layout will diverge rapidly based on what comes out from the various decks is amazing.

That's even before you start using the B side of the mages and the rooms. There's so much variety that I don't think it'll ever get stale. Even then, there are scenarios and more optional add-ons.

Neglecting influence and/or supporters is not something to do lightly. They're both very powerful and almost mandatory to win. You can win without them, but it requires your opponents to spend lots of actions fighting each other over them while you pick up votes on the edges and use the extra actions you didn't spend on IP or supporters to win a few extra votes and snatch up more powerful spells/items to control the other players.

Yeah, I've been focusing on the recommended beginner layout, and honestly, I'm not even sure I will go past it for a long...long...long time. I mean, theres just so much going on. I start playing and I have no idea what I'm doing, in a good way.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

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

thespaceinvader posted:

I've not played, so I'm genuinely asking: how is draw, play for money, score NOT boring and automatic?

Temporum revolves around a deck of 60 (2x30) cards. Each time you play a card, you potentially get money. In order to win, you must essentially purchase 30 points.

The cards are mostly balanced, but your specific engine is wildly dependent on what comes up out of the deck for you (even ignoring the available actions on the board and their temporal volatility*). The cards that give 0 money in particular are powerful engine cards that do things like automatically draw or reduce scoring cost, all of which drastically improve your action economy. The upside is that the cards are balanced enough that decisions are not automatic when you have multiple cards in hand. The downside is that it's still possible to draw the "right" or "wrong" cards.

The game has other mechanics that throw curves at the draw/play/score formula, like ruling time zones and what time zones are even in the game. In the end, it still feels like a much less personal and customizable Dominion, however.

*There are 10 random actions on the board not unlike Dominion. Only 4 are available at any given time unless you alter the timeline, with each age's actions having a theme until you get to the futuristic cards which exist in the age most susceptible to timeline disruption.

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McNerd
Aug 28, 2007

thespaceinvader posted:

I've not played, so I'm genuinely asking: how is draw, play for money, score NOT boring and automatic?

There are a lot of decisions along the way. At a minimum you still have to decide which cards to play and which to score; what order to do all these things in; where to move your crowns when you score; what Zones to use to perform these actions (typically there are at least 2 Zones that let you draw and 3 that let you play cards, and they'll have little bonuses and side effects); whether to change history and mess with people, etc. If you get all these things wrong you're still heading toward the finish line at the bare minimum baseline rate, but the benefits of getting them right can add up.

Beyond that, you're presented with a lot more opportunities to deviate from this simplistic plan in small ways without shooting yourself in the foot. You can visit a wacky Age 4 zone for a turn if it looks juicy, or exploit some card combo that comes up, get a little edge from it and then go back to what you were doing. Again I'm comparing to Dominion, where if you decide to play a BM-like strategy, you can't just say "Oh wait, King's Court/Bridge is cool, maybe I'll toss a couple of those in too."

McNerd fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Mar 20, 2015

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