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Kai Tave posted:I'm gonna toss out a quick caveat re: Kemet which is a game I really dig. Kemet is a medium-weight game, but it only becomes one once everyone playing it knows, say, what all the power tiles do and such. I don't think I've yet managed to play a game of Kemet that didn't run for 2+ hours, fun though they may have been. Yeah seriously. Most of our games run at least an hour, but usually 2+ when new people are involved. Even then we don't play it hardly enough so we're always looking at the printed out cheatsheets (and thankgod I took the advice of printing out 5 more) and its pretty slow.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:35
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Kai Tave posted:I'm gonna toss out a quick caveat re: Kemet which is a game I really dig. Kemet is a medium-weight game, but it only becomes one once everyone playing it knows, say, what all the power tiles do and such. I don't think I've yet managed to play a game of Kemet that didn't run for 2+ hours, fun though they may have been. One thing that kinda helped was printing out player aids for all the tiles/cards. e: This also goes for Keyflower.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:52
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AMooseDoesStuff posted:What are some good medium Length games? My personal favorites are Tash Kalar, Chaos in the Old World, Theseus The Dark Orbit, Archipelago (kinda stretching medium a bit here), Caylus, and Troyes. YMMV on the AP potential of your crew, though.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:53
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I really wanna get Troyes wonder if it will get a reprint.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:53
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fozzy fosbourne posted:If it weren't for the no-minis clause I'd be recommending X-Wing so hard right now. Skirmish rather than war, but list building is a big thing in that game Yeah X-Wing looks good (I played a lot of the d20 Star Wars minis stuff in junior high) but I doubt I have the money/space for it.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:54
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T-Bone posted:I really wanna get Troyes wonder if it will get a reprint. For some reason nobody in my group likes it because they're idiots who don't realize that the events are only crippling to them because the events generally cripple the person with the most investment in a given dice type, who also happens to be the person in the best position to deal with events! I'm saying that Troyes is a good game ruined by people. 
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Apr 7, 2015 05:57
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T-Bone posted:One thing that kinda helped was printing out player aids for all the tiles/cards. I did that and it's certainly better than the alternative would be, but I find what it leads to in practice is two or three people with their heads always buried in cheat sheets, which then prompts questions of "okay, what just happened?" when their own turn comes around. Part of the issue on my end is that I do board gaming one night a week with a semi rotating group of people instead of a single regular group, so I'm the only player to have really memorized what most of the stuff does largely by virtue of being the one who owns the game. I can't blame anybody else for not memorizing what the 48-ish power tiles and 16-some Divine Intervention cards do, and the rest of the game doesn't really present them with any difficulty...movement and combat and such is pretty simple. I just don't think I can count on the promised 90 minute playtime anytime soon and need to plan accordingly if I decide that it's a Kemet night.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:58
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I saw a Shadowrun Deckbuilding game at the FLGS, how terrible is it?
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Apr 7, 2015 07:27
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It fluxates between ok and loving godawful slog depending on how it plays out. The game itself appears to be designed with the thought in mind that the players will fail, and as such anything done is an attempt to mitigate failure. So theme appropriate, but not fun outside of the roleplaying system.
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Apr 7, 2015 08:13
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Kai Tave posted:I'm gonna toss out a quick caveat re: Kemet which is a game I really dig. Kemet is a medium-weight game, but it only becomes one once everyone playing it knows, say, what all the power tiles do and such. I don't think I've yet managed to play a game of Kemet that didn't run for 2+ hours, fun though they may have been. Counterpoint: my last game of Kemet was five players including three newbies and we finished in 1h40. We play to 8, though, and you may be playing to 10.
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Apr 7, 2015 08:25
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Thanks for all the suggestions. I actually do have a couple of those, Tash + 7 Wonders notably. I guess we're just getting a bit bored of those. So I'll probably pick up Galaxy Trucker.
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Apr 7, 2015 08:26
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Zombie #246 posted:I really enjoyed barbarian prince as far as those types of games go. First game I played I got left for dead by the traitor guard, and for killed by a bandit the next day irrc. It does have a little bit more to take account of than tales but I'm sure one could easily translate some stuff into cards. Thanks, I didn't know there was a redesign! I heard it was nearly impossible to beat, unlike Tales, so your story is encouraging. I like a challenge.
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Apr 7, 2015 12:11
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Tekopo posted:What I did on my holidays Tekopo, what do you think of Greenland as a solo game (I think there is a solo variant)? I've been interested in getting it for a while, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to rope anyone into playing Man vs. Wild with cubes, 1.200 AD edition.
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Apr 7, 2015 12:34
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Speaking of Kemet, I seem to remember reading in this thread that the best way to store the power tiles was in a set of card binder sleeves? Also, any recommendations as far as player guides for it?
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Apr 7, 2015 12:54
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Space Alert trip report: We had a ton of fun with space alert. My group is still in the simulation missions, so we haven't hit the clusterfuck zone with internal threats and all yet, but already we're barely making it through the game alive while half of us futilely pound the A Button for like 3 turns despite it being hooked up to completely drained reactor. At least we remembered the screen saver. The girlfriend is still angry because the person she was trying to coordinate with failed to listen when she said she was refilling the blue reactor, so there was just nobody manning the upper blue room after the initial shield charge 
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Apr 7, 2015 13:36
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deadly_pudding posted:The girlfriend is still angry because the person she was trying to coordinate with failed to listen when she said she was refilling the blue reactor, so there was just nobody manning the upper blue room after the initial shield charge 
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Apr 7, 2015 13:49
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WhiteHowler posted:Don't ever charge the shields. Don't believe the lies. Top off your shields before doing reactor charges or transfers, especially on minutes 1 and 2 (Turn 1: Hit B while a teammate near the end of the turn order uses the Lift; Turn 2: Teammate hits B).
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Apr 7, 2015 13:59
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Broken Loose posted:Don't believe the lies. Top off your shields before doing reactor charges or transfers, especially on minutes 1 and 2 (Turn 1: Hit B while a teammate near the end of the turn order uses the Lift; Turn 2: Teammate hits B).
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Apr 7, 2015 14:01
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deadly_pudding posted:Space Alert trip report: My group actually found things more manageable after we added the internal threats. Once we added internal threats it felt like we could more efficiently divvy things up so that everyone was busy with something and we weren't struggling to kill things as fast as they'd pop up. Given we'd still die anyways because someone played an A action on turn 6 instead of turn 7 and oh it turns out we didn't kill that alien fighter, guess the right half of our ship just blew up/
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Apr 7, 2015 14:02
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GrandpaPants posted:My personal favorites are Tash Kalar, Chaos in the Old World, Theseus The Dark Orbit, Archipelago (kinda stretching medium a bit here), Caylus, and Troyes. YMMV on the AP potential of your crew, though. After a couple games we haven't yet played Archipelago in less than three hours. Then again, I still have to remind my friends not to discard face-down in Dominion, so your mileage may vary.
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Apr 7, 2015 14:02
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Countblanc posted:The whole Timmy/etc thing always rubbed me the wrong way, because it's basically a horoscope hidden behind Very Serious Language so now it's ok. Seriously, I've yet to meet someone as uncomplex as any of those breakdowns imply, and the entire appeal is finding "yours" using selective memory so you can be like "yeah I totally LOVES IMMERSION, it's cool when my friends and I roleplay our characters in Dead of Winter," while ignoring that you finely tuned your Weiss Schwarz deck after hundreds of hours of playtesting to win Regionals, and also that you basically don't say a word during your bi-weekly Pathfinder game and just sorta bleed into the background. Not me. I am 100% a powergamer, constantly inventing justifications to talk about my attack bonus in-character.
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Apr 7, 2015 14:11
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Zveroboy posted:Speaking of Kemet, I seem to remember reading in this thread that the best way to store the power tiles was in a set of card binder sleeves? Also, any recommendations as far as player guides for it? The card sleeves are ones for coin collections. For the ones I got, anyway, the power tiles fit in sideways (since they are not square, unlike most coin cards I guess?), but you can fit one color per sheet and keep them in order. You can also slap them down on the table as-is, which makes setup easier -- you can clearly demarcate how much space those tiles will need immediately. As for player guides, I hard-laminated these.
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Apr 7, 2015 14:22
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Effectronica posted:Not me. I am 100% a powergamer, constantly inventing justifications to talk about my attack bonus in-character. A true powergamer wouldn't ever talk in-character period, you've shown your true colors funhaver.
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Apr 7, 2015 14:29
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Countblanc posted:A true powergamer wouldn't ever talk in-character period, you've shown your true colors funhaver. The best powergamer roleplays heavily to hide the fact that he is a min/maxing munchkin, and to curry favor with the DM to get bonus XP Geez it's like you never even played D&D before.
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Apr 7, 2015 15:00
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StashAugustine posted:Yeah X-Wing looks good (I played a lot of the d20 Star Wars minis stuff in junior high) but I doubt I have the money/space for it. If you are interested in building some decks for some nostalgia and don't want to get caught up in a lifestyle game, you could try screwing around with LotR LCG solo on OCTGN.
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Apr 7, 2015 15:12
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fozzy fosbourne posted:If you are interested in building some decks for some nostalgia and don't want to get caught up in a lifestyle game, you could try screwing around with LotR LCG solo on OCTGN. I should try that actually, I've got a coworker who's interested in it.
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Apr 7, 2015 15:24
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Rutibex posted:
 Seriously, you are a treasure to this thread.
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Apr 7, 2015 15:28
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As a new player to Space Alert, it took me and my friends a game where we all literally had 1 A button to realize that Shields exist. The realization of which took until the second phase of that game.
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Apr 7, 2015 16:17
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I'm thinking about picking up either Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert but I'm not sure which. I have pandemic and love it so I'm looking for another good co-op game. Are the mechanics of either of those two games different enough from Pandemic or am I likely to feel like it's the same game with a different setting?
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Apr 7, 2015 16:53
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Countblanc posted:A true powergamer wouldn't ever talk in-character period, you've shown your true colors funhaver. Unfortunately, I am pressured into the funhaver lifestyle by my playgroup, send help
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Apr 7, 2015 17:09
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lifts cats over head posted:I'm thinking about picking up either Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert but I'm not sure which. I have pandemic and love it so I'm looking for another good co-op game. Are the mechanics of either of those two games different enough from Pandemic or am I likely to feel like it's the same game with a different setting? Buy Forbidden Desert. I won't go into details beyond "it's better than". You'll just have to trust me on this.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:30
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lifts cats over head posted:I'm thinking about picking up either Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert but I'm not sure which. I have pandemic and love it so I'm looking for another good co-op game. Are the mechanics of either of those two games different enough from Pandemic or am I likely to feel like it's the same game with a different setting? I love Pandemic, and the only time I tried Forbidden Island I felt like it was a dumbed down (and streamlined) version of Pandemic. They are really loving similar, or at least that's how I felt. At the very least, they're using the same take on how to do co-ops, which is "avert disaster by taking turns, each turn followed by drawing "bad stuff" from a deck". I would recommend Hanabi or Space Alert (or both) if you want a different co-op experience. Or going into Mage Knight if you feel like you are ready for the insane amount of fiddly bits. Those three all try to do something different with the genre (asymmetric information, real-time craziness and absolutely everything at once, respectively). Also I played some games at my joint birthday party! Hooray! I actually got Masquerade as a gift, and we played it a few times. My impression is that it tries to do too much for how limited human memory is. We were only like six players, but I still couldn't remember near enough to play it convincingly. We had a lot of fun with it, because no one could remember anything, but I really feel like it's too much of a strain on my memory to be enjoyable in the long run  We also played a neat little thing called Diamonsters, which contains a stack with a number of sets of five unique cards and some diamonds that function like love tokens from Love Letter. Incredibly simple, and yet elegant. I think the sweet spot is slightly fewer than six players though Next up was Tsuro, which is simple fun too, and after dinner we basically just did Resistance, which is way more fun with gamers than drunk coworkers. I actually managed to fail the first mission and still have people believe I might be a good guy until the end!
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Apr 7, 2015 17:31
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Yeah I bought Forbidden Island from reading one of these threads a few years ago and we played it a couple times and then I ditched it on my nephew. It felt too simple, like an early wave iPhone game or something that was novel for a minute but doesn't really scratch any of those timjohnvorthos itches. It's also pretty much a solitaire game in the guise of a co-op as there's nothing mechanically stopping everyone from just playing each other's turns together. I haven't played Forbidden Desert, but it seems to be the strictly better recommendation these day from what I gather. Anyways, in addition to Bonhair's co-ops, (Hanabi, Space Alert, Mage Knight) which I have and enjoy, I'd add Legendary Encounters: Alien and Lord of the Rings LCG as having some different appeals. Legendary Encounters: Alien has the cinematic spectacle and hyperbolic experience thing going with some aliens theme and a flawed but serviceable deck building engine. LotR has deck construction, so you can make gimmicky decks like a deck with dwarves that dig for cards, it has stupid levels of difficulty so you can really dial it in and keep challenging yourself, ~lore~, and it has a culture surrounding the game in the form of blogs that do card evaluations and deck analysis, etc. So it has some appeal beyond just playing the actual game. I play co-op mostly with my wife and sister. Wife likes Hanabi, LotR. Sister likes Hanabi, LotR, Alien. I'm the only one who really digs Mage Knight and Space Alert. The former lost their their engagement a few hours in and the latter is too stressful I think. When I have more people around we usually play something more competitive I've only played Pandemic on my iPad and it seemed pretty cool but I haven't felt compelled to buy a physical version because I'd probably just end up playing one of those other games I mentioned.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:55
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Island is basically identical-except-simplified Pandemic. Desert has different mechanics and is harder than Island, and overall is a better game.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:56
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I've heard Forbidden Desert is far better than Island. I did buy Desert and after 3 plays it is really fun, but ultimately not super different from pandemic in my opinion. (Someone else in my group owns Pandemic so I don't regret my purchase hehe). In both games you pick a character and run around doing one of a few actions. You also flip over an increasing amount of cards to add stuff to spots (so specific) and if poo poo gets too crazy, then you lose. It is good, just...pretty similar. By far my favorite coop is the Lord of the Rings LCG, but if you want a board game then the only other ones I've played are the real time ones... Escape: The Curse of the Temple (light, dice rolling, I find it really fun and love the screaming that comes out of it...but it is light) and Space Alert (thread favorite, god I cannot wait to play more). E: Oh yeah, I forgot I also love Mage Knight and my one coop experience (usually play solo) with my brother was great. ChiTownEddie fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 18:00
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Hanabi is good, but easy to chat at inadvertently. Your group has to be okay with repeatedly getting yelled at for talking out of turn, or the whole "limited communication" thing goes out the window. I usually prefer team games to co-op games, just because it's so hard to find good co-ops.
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Apr 7, 2015 18:05
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I have Hanabi and I'd agree with the recommendations, although I've only had opportunity to play it a few times. Looks like I'll check out Forbidden Desert first. I'm certainly going to add Mage Knight and Space Alert to my wish list, although ever since I found this thread that list is growing much faster than I can buy/rent games.
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Apr 7, 2015 18:17
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I'd stay away from Forbidden Island. I wouldn't call it bad, but it's very easy and if you want an actual challenge you won't find it there. I don't think I've lost a single game of it the numerous times I've happened to play it. (For a while the only light, short filler game I had was that and King of Tokyo)
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Apr 7, 2015 18:25
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quote:I'd stay away from Forbidden Island. I wouldn't call it bad, but it's very easy and if you want an actual challenge you won't find it there. I don't think I've lost a single game of it the numerous times I've happened to play it. We didn't get much play out of it - people were very much "is this all there is?". You can turn it up high enough that you'll probably lose, but even then winning doesn't feel very satisfying - rather, it just feels like you got lucky on what tiles flooded. That said, it should be very cheap, and it works with very diverse groups (including kids and definitely-not-gamer types who seek out quarterbacking).
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Apr 7, 2015 20:37
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Something to worry about when going from Pandemic to one of the Forbidden games is that Pandemic tends to click better with people. The can get behind the whole "there are different diseases, these starters cities will be hotbeds, and diseases spread" vibe. We found with Forbidden Desert, it was just a little more abstract, so your more casual co-op gamers don't wrap their head around it. The storm in Forbidden Desert is a much better mechanic than Forbidden Island, but confuses the poo poo out of people. Actually speaking of that storm, the official rules are that you move the cards in the indicated direction, but it's easier on our heads to act like the storm is what is moving. That means the storm is technically moving in the exact opposite direction of what the card shows, but that fundamentally doesn't change anything over the course of a game. We generally rank the games in this order from least to best: Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Pandemic. Since you already have Pandemic, you might consider instead an expansion if you don't have one already. We got On The Brink, and found that you it is set up so you can elegantly fit the original game into its box along with all the expansion material.
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