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BioTech posted:We houseruled the game so that after someone finds the gold he doesn't hand the remaining reward cards over to the previous player, but instead the cards go to the next player. This way people are still working together to reach the gold, but setting it up so the next player finds it will leave you in the worst position when it comes to the rewards being handed out. Everybody still wants to dig and reach the goal, but at the same time they try to add twists and turns to the mineshaft so that getting there happens in a way more convenient to them. This removes the obviousness of the Saboteurs, because everyone is trying to change the shafts now.
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Mar 22, 2015 15:19
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BioTech posted:We houseruled the game so that after someone finds the gold he doesn't hand the remaining reward cards over to the previous player, but instead the cards go to the next player. This way people are still working together to reach the gold, but setting it up so the next player finds it will leave you in the worst position when it comes to the rewards being handed out. Everybody still wants to dig and reach the goal, but at the same time they try to add twists and turns to the mineshaft so that getting there happens in a way more convenient to them. This removes the obviousness of the Saboteurs, because everyone is trying to change the shafts now. Saboteur 2 works really well to fix the game; there are two teams (Green and Blue) and green or blue doors that only admit the relevant team, so players have a reason to sabotage the game without necessarily being the Saboteurs. Plus instead of handing gold out on cards, each player on a winning team just gets gold based on how big their team is, so a smaller winning team gets a bigger payout than a larger winning team. But there are some broken roles, like the Geologist who can be summarised as "This player doesn't care about what happens and always wins". I don't think people are playing Saboteur for a rich and fair gaming experience though.
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Mar 22, 2015 15:27
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tarbrush posted:Trip report from the megagame Is this that sort of live-action concept X-COM with a "media" faction added in? I had no idea what you were talking about, and only sort of do after looking at the (I think) homepage for it that I found after a web search.
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Mar 22, 2015 18:37
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Mister Sinewave posted:Is this that sort of live-action concept X-COM with a "media" faction added in? I had no idea what you were talking about, and only sort of do after looking at the (I think) homepage for it that I found after a web search. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play-megagame/ <- start there, since it gives context to his description. 
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Mar 22, 2015 18:44
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Mister Sinewave posted:Is this that sort of live-action concept X-COM with a "media" faction added in? I had no idea what you were talking about, and only sort of do after looking at the (I think) homepage for it that I found after a web search. Watch the video above is the best explanation. But yes, pretty much, only if instead of creating X-Com the nations of the world decided to fight the aliens themselves, and keep competing with each other whilst doing so.
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Mar 22, 2015 18:59
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Fat Samurai posted:I ended up with the impression that it's a better version of Smallworld. Rules light, very tactically focused (although less than Smallworld, due to the draft), quick. It really misses in the first impression,though. Is nowere nearly as colourful and attractive as Smallworld, and the theme equally nerdy, but it's the wrong kind of nerdy. The much more metal-sounding "Blood Rage" was Lang's attempt to update and prettify Midgard for the modern era -- i.e. post-CitOW mechanics and super-duper miniatures. Sounds like a game where I don't feel like I missed much in the original.
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Mar 22, 2015 19:40
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Played some Arcadia Quest yesterday and today. I don't give a poo poo, it was fun, IT'S JUST FUN, COME AT ME *breaks a bottle and backs against a wall* It's this light free for all skirmish game that feels a little like a rogue-like and MOBA. Run your little squad around the map getting loot and trying to complete the quests before the other teams, occasionally skirmishing. Sometimes it turns into a blood bath. I haven't really seen another game that manages to combine a light loot-hunting rogue-like campaign with a free-for-all tactical skirmish. I guess it reminds me of a really simplified and streamlined Mordheim or Necromunda. The different characters have different abilities that you craft a build around via drafting upgrade cards in between campaign missions. Drafting the upgrade cards actually reminds me a little bit of making an X-Wing list, where you are trying to "de-dice" the game and remove some degree of random chance via a bunch of rerolls and guaranteed hits. Except you do it over time as you complete missions and draft new cards. It's definitely got DICE, though. It has the exploding dice mechanic thing, where crits turn into more dice that can turn into more crits, which pretty much means you can't take it very seriously. There were moments where something did twice as much damage as expected and just crapped all over my plans. If the combat results were perfectly calculable, I think our brains would meltdown trying to analyze the game state with 4 players; that might be fun sometimes but not what we're looking for all the time. That said, I can't recall many other games that have that level of chance that I've enjoyed like this, maybe Blood Bowl comes to mind. Anyways, it's fun and different than what I'm used to. No one slept with Cleopatra, though, so that guy was wrong fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 00:15
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Seems so hard to set up though. Is it?
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Mar 23, 2015 07:12
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Lorini posted:Seems so hard to set up though. Is it? Yes, absolutely! I should have mentioned that. Might be my biggest peeve with the game right now. It got better when I started delegating the doors and critters and stuff to the other players. I think it might take 20 minutes sometimes if you aren't receiving any help. It might also benefit from some more organization than baggies, like Plano or something.
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Mar 23, 2015 12:46
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Buy Pictomania now!
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Mar 23, 2015 12:58
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djfooboo posted:Buy Pictomania now! I have too many games already! Stop tempting me! 
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Mar 23, 2015 13:01
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After years of talking up Twilight Imperium 3 as the be all and end all ameritrash clear you calendar takes 2 days to play game, we just played our 2nd 4 player game in just 3 hours and I don't know what to think anymore. Probably had something to do with the game being 90% posturing and only 3 or 4 battles were fought. I wish Eclipse had something as cool as the political deck, wheeling and dealing to pass laws is probably my favourite thing.
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Mar 23, 2015 13:17
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dishwasherlove posted:After years of talking up Twilight Imperium 3 as the be all and end all ameritrash clear you calendar takes 2 days to play game, we just played our 2nd 4 player game in just 3 hours and I don't know what to think anymore. Probably had something to do with the game being 90% posturing and only 3 or 4 battles were fought. I wish Eclipse had something as cool as the political deck, wheeling and dealing to pass laws is probably my favourite thing. I always wished TI3 had cooler laws, but maybe that was fixed in an expansion, or I'm thinking of TI2. We always seemed to pass or fail them unanimously because the impact of their effects are so ambiguous or unimportant.
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Mar 23, 2015 13:25
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I’m not sure how many people will care, but after a single good review here, some good but few reviews on BGG and an interest in trying a football board game, I did in fact manage to buy Time of Soccer from Spain and give it a play at the weekend. I will go into more detail if anyone wants to know more about it, but we played a two player game at a standard difficulty, and it took a little over three hours. I imagine when you know what you’re doing though, you can trim this down to two. For a small publisher with what looks to be their only game made, I was really impressed at the card stock and art quality. It’s a touch cartoony, but the game is heavily symbol/colour based and so you need the clear signals of what a tile does when you glance at it, so that was fine. To me, it put to shame some games from bigger publishers with substandard game pieces. The game takes place over 11 weeks, making up a 6 team league and an 8 team cup competition. During the week you are able to ‘drive’ around a fictional city (unthematical but mechanically sound) to sign new players, sell old ones, bring in new coaches, grab better sponsorship deals or go to press conferences. You improve your team not just by getting players with ‘bigger numbers’ but finding players with matching symbols (for teamwork, passing, shooting etc) who will link up well and give you point boosts. You start with two rubbish players and a youth squad, and over the course of the season will improve it to a solid team. It is very entertaining, with two things to keep your mind thinking strategically. The first is that the ‘traffic’ system in the city means you can’t just drive to get whatever it is your need that turn. Not only are you competing with others to get there first, but you have to think some moves ahead to make sure you can pick up more useful tiles after the next one. The second is the make-up of the team, and the variety it provides in different teams. You can focus your money on simply better players, or players that link up well, or coaches to get the most out of existing players. The matches themselves are a dice-based affair which merely give the better team a better chance of winning than making anything a dead cert, and while some people don’t like the element of dice and chance, I did find that the tension of the dice rolls does come to match the tension of other football management games. There are some not so great points (I think the character art could be a bit more varied, and the fan/social media system seems tacked on and pointless), but overall, my first impression is that it’s a solid board game that plays an entertaining a football league season with a fair whack of strategy and chance. You would have to be into football to get the most out of it I think (it’s not like you need to be a pet shop owner to enjoy Dungeon Petz) and I’d be interested to know what a non-football playing board gamer would think of it, but I think it’s definitely worth the RRP of £30 for it (the shipping, not so much, but that was the price of experimentation). I may make a Youtube review to show off the pieces and gameplay because I think the game deserves more exposure J Fat Turkey fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 14:04
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dishwasherlove posted:After years of talking up Twilight Imperium 3 as the be all and end all ameritrash clear you calendar takes 2 days to play game, we just played our 2nd 4 player game in just 3 hours and I don't know what to think anymore. Probably had something to do with the game being 90% posturing and only 3 or 4 battles were fought. I wish Eclipse had something as cool as the political deck, wheeling and dealing to pass laws is probably my favourite thing. TI3 is a funny beast. I played a huge 7 player game a few months back and we came to the conclusion that while we love the idea of playing TI3, everything we actually enjoy about it is stuff that the other players bring to the table rather than the game itself. There's still nothing that really fills the same niche as TI3 that I know of though.
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Mar 23, 2015 14:07
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Fat Turkey posted:I’m not sure how many people will care, but after a single good review here, some good but few reviews on BGG and an interest in trying a football board game, I did in fact manage to buy Time of Soccer from Spain and give it a play at the weekend. Glad to see it wasn't just rampaging confirmation bias for me 
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Mar 23, 2015 14:23
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Fat Turkey posted:I’m not sure how many people will care, but after a single good review here, some good but few reviews on BGG and an interest in trying a football board game, I did in fact manage to buy Time of Soccer from Spain and give it a play at the weekend. How many does it play and how much did you say it cost? I don't know what you mean by £0, especially, since it shows up as £0, but looks like an ampersand, a hashtag and some stuff.
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Mar 23, 2015 14:43
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dishwasherlove posted:After years of talking up Twilight Imperium 3 as the be all and end all ameritrash clear you calendar takes 2 days to play game, we just played our 2nd 4 player game in just 3 hours and I don't know what to think anymore. Probably had something to do with the game being 90% posturing and only 3 or 4 battles were fought. I wish Eclipse had something as cool as the political deck, wheeling and dealing to pass laws is probably my favourite thing. Was it just the base game or with the first expansion? Base game objectives are all very turtle and hoarder friendly, which would make for quicker, but more boring games.
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Mar 23, 2015 15:11
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It plays 1-4, although its hard for me to guess how the game would differ with more players. I imagine there'd be a stronger fight for the top players, but there were a decent number of spare players going in our 2 player game. What a silly typo. Its £30 basically, but then you have shipping from Spain. I think they have plans to sell abroad but they probably need more demand. Hoping to play again this weekend. I think it would be kind of fun to try a single video review considering how opinionated I can be on others. I think I'd try a 10-15 overview and opinion video, and a 20 mind rahdo style in game video. Maybe this weekend or over Easter. That said, maybe it'll be too much work and I don't bother!
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Mar 23, 2015 15:15
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The End posted:Glad to see it wasn't just rampaging confirmation bias for me I need to play a bit more to make sure I'm not doing the same, but I often suffer from unnecessary buyers remorse but not getting it for this game.
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Mar 23, 2015 15:16
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Played A Distant Plain with a goon and two others this weekend. For reference, I was the Taliban player and it was my first time ever playing a COIN game. First impressions - I like it. Having some experience with Afghanistan and how politics are there, I thought that it really captured the feel of how things work there. We did not get to finish the game as I had to leave early, but it was a tie between Warlords and Coalition when I did. Since it was my first time playing a COIN game, I definitely made a lot of suboptimal moves and I needed to flex the Taliban's power much more. I came to dread the event deck, though. More often than not, it felt like there were a ton of cards that benefited the Coalition and the Government that they could always take, and even when there was a card that benefited me, I usually didn't get to take it because I was inactive or even if I passed, I would be lower on the order of activation and thus miss out on it anyways. For some reason three of the Coalition Capability cards were floating near the top of the deck and the Coalition was always the active player at the right time to take them. I also got hosed hard early in the game with an event that made Islamabad hostile towards me and resulted in a lot of activated guerrillas. Which, of course, are about as useful as a wet nap for the Taliban since practically all of their powerful special actions rely on having inactive guerrillas. Even so, I think the Taliban mechanically are one of the most interesting factions. The ability to infiltrate and ambush are definitely some of your strongest moves and extortion, sabotage, and terror are excellent tools to use and pretty real to life. The warlord player did a good job staying under the radar yet remaining powerful, but the government player did allow himself to get pushed around by the Coalition a ton. Still, one of the most satisfying moments in the game for me came in Zabul Province, which I started calling the Graveyard of Kings due to earlier successful ploys to eliminate Coalition cubes there. In response, the Coalition (dragging the government along for the ride) sent a huge fist of 10 troops from Kabul to Zabul to squash me... Only to see the Coalition run away to Kabul once I infiltrated and converted all of his Government 'meat shields' and left his troops in a very dangerous position to get ambushed with impunity. All in all, good game. Methinks I want it.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:20
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Could someone please tell me what "COIN" actually means? I can't figure it out 
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Mar 23, 2015 16:28
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e: COunterINsurgency. It's a military acronym. Did you shuffle the deck The event deck can be a little frustrating at times and sometimes an innocuous event at the wrong time can be a real killer. Taliban does get some killer capabilities, though.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:28
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Literally saw COIN in the middle eastern D&D thread and was like "Wait is this the boardgame thread nope it's not"
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Mar 23, 2015 16:29
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LuiCypher posted:Played A Distant Plain with a goon and two others this weekend. ADP is pretty brilliant because of the power dynamic between government/coalition, which colors the rest of the game.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:39
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PerniciousKnid posted:I always wished TI3 had cooler laws, but maybe that was fixed in an expansion, or I'm thinking of TI2. We always seemed to pass or fail them unanimously because the impact of their effects are so ambiguous or unimportant. At some point, me and my friend pruned his copy of the political deck. It's still extremely large, and has some cards which are sometimes duds, but we made sure that every political card would have a serious impact a decent portion of the time, as opposed to some of the dreck that populates the deck. Elyv fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 16:41
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Pretty great Washington Post article about the designer of the COIN series, Volko Ruhnke. He also designed Labyrinth and the upcoming expansion.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:50
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Warning: Labyrinth is pretty bad, don't buy Labyrinth.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:52
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Tekopo posted:Warning: Labyrinth is pretty bad, don't buy Labyrinth. Noted. Out of curiosity, what makes it bad?
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Mar 23, 2015 17:14
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Asymmetry is handled as 'one side has to roll to do ANYTHING while the other can just do it (as long as they have the number of Ops)'. This means that you can have more than a couple of lost turns as that side. On the other hand, the faction that doesn't require dice roll to do anything, requires dice rolls in order to achieve their objective, meaning that if you don't get the dice rolls you are still SOL. There are actions that are outright BAD to take and there is one action (doing plots), which is much better and less risky. The deck mechanism is poorly implemented. The game is neo-conservative as gently caress (and yes, I know that TS is a Cold Warrior wet dream but, as I've argued in the past, it doesn't provide alternatives to the Cold Warrior theories: Labyrinth has both interventionism and non-interventionism, which TS lacks, but makes non-interventionism outright bad and detrimental to a US victory, thus creating a political message).
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Mar 23, 2015 17:24
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I can't speak for the goals of Labyrinth because I haven't read about them (and I've only played it once) but the designers of TS are also very up-front about the fact that TS is a game first: "Twilight Struggle does not reach beyond its means. Wherever there were compromises to make between realism and playability, we sided with playability. [...]Twilight Struggle basically accepts all of the internal logic of the Cold War as true—even those parts of it that are demonstrably false." Siding with playability is something designers should always do in a game - if you're making a "conflict simulation" or whatever, go nuts, I guess.
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Mar 23, 2015 18:47
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dishwasherlove posted:After years of talking up Twilight Imperium 3 as the be all and end all ameritrash clear you calendar takes 2 days to play game, we just played our 2nd 4 player game in just 3 hours and I don't know what to think anymore. Probably had something to do with the game being 90% posturing and only 3 or 4 battles were fought. I wish Eclipse had something as cool as the political deck, wheeling and dealing to pass laws is probably my favourite thing. There was a time when I played a couple of times a week with 3-4 players and would usually finish in less than 3 hours. Good times. The politicial deck is a bit balls as lots of the cards aren't interesting enough. Politics II (or whatever the one that gives you a politics hand is called) tries to fix this, but doesn't really manage.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:33
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Mojo Jojo posted:The politicial deck is a bit balls as lots of the cards aren't interesting enough. Politics II (or whatever the one that gives you a politics hand is called) tries to fix this, but doesn't really manage. You're thinking of the Assembly card and yeah it's stupid as hell. It has the opposite effect since for some inane reason they decided to let you spend political cards as a trade good so everyone just empties their hand ASAP. Really the best way to make the politics more interesting is to vet the deck and take a bunch of poo poo out. Just remove any card that meets one or more of the following criteria... - One of the outcomes is "no effect" - Can have no effect based on game state (basically anything involving neutral planets) - The effect(s) apply equally to everyone - No matter what the vote is the effect is very minor Also if you like talking about TI3 come on down to the thread. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3651978
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Mar 23, 2015 19:41
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Acolyte! posted:I can't speak for the goals of Labyrinth because I haven't read about them (and I've only played it once) but the designers of TS are also very up-front about the fact that TS is a game first: "Twilight Struggle does not reach beyond its means. Wherever there were compromises to make between realism and playability, we sided with playability. Vaguely reminds me of this up-front warning from Bay12 games (for Liberal Crime Squad): quote:WARNING: The scope of this game is narrower than that of real life. We have attempted to include foul language, graphic violence, politics, religion, sexual references, adult situations, narcotics, prostitution, bodily functions and bad pickup lines, but Bay 12 Games recognizes that there might be omissions which will make some players uncomfortable. In light of these facts, use your discretion when making decisions about downloading LCS. Also this is a good point: quote:Siding with playability is something designers should always do in a game - if you're making a "conflict simulation" or whatever, go nuts, I guess. Yeah, ask yourself if you're primarily making something to be enjoyable or not, and base your design decisions around that. One of my favorite examples of this idea for choosing a design direction was from a guy who was designing a moving flight sim seat. He got to a point where he struggled with a design direction: how to handle banking (turning). He's a pilot and recognizes a gotcha. What a person expects is basically how it happens in a car: you feel a pull to the side when you make a turn. However, in a plane what you actually feel is getting pushed down into your seat. He was struggling with which to do (what people expect - even though it's demonstrably wrong - or be 'realistic') when his nephew's 10th birthday rolls around and as part of the birthday he takes his nephew and niece for a plane ride. Well barely 10 minutes in he lands because they both barfed and he realizes something: their plane ride experience was 100% authentic, and 0% enjoyable. He decides that 100% authentic isn't what he's aiming for with his carnival-ride-style flight simulator and proceeds to not sweat the realism; conflict solved and he gets a solid design direction out of it, to boot.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:51
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I actually wouldn't have a problem with Labyrinth if there was only one possibility: interventionism, and nothing else. But the game has a 'Gore wins' scenario, and it is a harder scenario because being non-interventionist, as defined within the game mechanisms, means that you are not able to stop the spread of the Jihadists. The only thing that it improves is, IIRC, popular opinion within Europe. So the alternatives the game presents are either: be interventionist and stop the spread of the Jihadists, or be non-interventionist and be almost unable to reach your objectives. Imagine if TS had a political segment for the US where you could only create coups/realignments when a certain government was in power, with the other type of government just giving you a minor bonus. Sure, that is part of the narrative that anyone not directly striking the commies is just letting the world fall into their grasp and thus part of the Cold War, but TS never gives you the other option and paints it in a negative light: the option is simply not there at all (unless you want to lose the game, that is). That is why I feel that Labyrinth is politicized while TS isn't. The mechanisms try to paint both sides of the story, but fail to do so at all. Maybe if non-interventionism had much more solid background (f.ex. making it harder for the Jihadists to recruit or something along those lines) it would have worked. There are some events that draw along those lines, but it should have been much more tightly tied to the existing mechanisms, instead of being just 'once or twice in the whole game' type things.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:27
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How impartial is the COIN political lens when it comes to these issues? It seems like the subject matter could have the same dilemma and since Volko is involved in all of them, I'm curious if the perception is that the COIN games are less politicized or maybe they just benefit from better game play? I'm going to experience Cuba Libre for myself sometime this year.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:42
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Having played as Gore a few times, I don't think it being the harder way to do poo poo is indended as a political message, but rather a general balance problem. The idea behind the soft power game is that it's easier to get Europe aligned (and therefore boost Prestige, and therefore boost your way of winning the game), while at the same being shielded from a number of nasty events and all sorts of bad stuff that can happen during an invasion. Not rolling that dumb prestige roll before invasion is probably an advantage too. Now, it is completely possible to win the game without ever going hard (even to shut down the initial jihad spawning pool), it's just that... poo poo is random. Sometimes Europe just happens to turn Hard and your supposed advantage is not worth anything anymore (sure, you can try to flip them back to soft, but there's a certain point at which it is not worth bothering with) and if you switch to hard sometime later in the game, all the other advantages evaporate completely the second you roll that prestige die.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:50
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I think COIN games are more politicized, but less partisan. Andean Abyss creates situations in which the Government gets help from the AUC for example, and it isn't something just present in a few cards, it is a core gameplay mechanism. The same thing happens with CL: the government is shown as corrupt and in the pockets of Mafia interests, while the 26th July Movement IS shown as a popular movement (partially by how easy it is for them to gain cells). ADP was one game I was worried about in which the viewpoint would not be as balanced, and although I don't think it is as non-partisan as AA and CL, it still is a much, much more balanced portrayal than Labyrinth. Fire in the Lake (apart from one controversy) is also very good about it: I mean, one of the strongest weapons that the US possess is actually detrimental to reaching your victory conditions (airstrikes make you lose support). COIN are better games and their political viewpoints, as dictated by the mechanisms they use to showcase the conflicts, are also much better.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:52
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Well, as a political simulation it is pretty hard to be worse than Labyrinth.
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Mar 23, 2015 21:14
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There's some interesting stuff in the Andean Abyss playbook (http://www.gmtgames.com/andeanabyss/AAPLAYBOOK-3.pdf) where he specifically mentions that he tried to represent both viewpoints through the dual-use event system, although some assumptions have to be made (ie FARC is an ideological movement rather than a glorified drug cartel, AUC and the government may cooperate but represent fundamentally different interests) and he takes pains to list sources across the political spectrum. (An interesting aside is that the playbook for Cuba Libre admits that the player is much more likely to spend funds on Civic Action that Batista was historically, but with the benefit of hindsight and objectives other than 'stuff your bank account and get the hell out of Dodge' your actions will be much different.) I do think Lichtenstein makes a good point that it's a little difficult to dig out the political interpretations with the game is badly unbalanced to begin with.
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Mar 23, 2015 21:19
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