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The Argent guy is throwing some major shade on some games in that Defect/Feature thread, I'm lovin it. Speaking of, does anyone who really sperged out on Dominion like Kingdom Builder? It seemed unpopular but every now and then I stumble on some BGG user who likes some games that I like that has it as a 9 or something
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Apr 10, 2015 06:07
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Lottery of Babylon posted:They're not difficult to understand mechanically, but they're fiddly in ways that slow the game down for no reason, and lead to far more discussion and time being sunk into simple moves than should have been necessary. Even though they're intended to be used for planning future turns, half the time our use of tickets was "first action, gain a ticket, second action, spend that ticket to move two spaces" to jump from one named city to another -- would simply allowing you to take the move action twice have been so terrible? Even if you just get rid of the "the free move has to be taken first" rule and let all players take their action steps simultaneously (which is what we settled on), the game starts moving much faster and loses no content in the process. Which is good, because in my experience Eldritch is usually fun for the first couple hours, but then just keeps going. I don't see how tickets can slow down the game with discussion, since you just go "yep, taking a ticket, moving to here then here thanks to the ticket". As far as moving twice, you'd then have it be "move twice if you start in a city", because the wilderness/ocean spaces you can't get tickets on. The debt's seem fine to me. You get something now in return for a potentially bad thing later, which is a reoccuring theme with the reckonings. You end up having a lot of swords having over your head that may drop at any point to create tension in a way.
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Apr 10, 2015 06:11
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fozzy fosbourne posted:The Argent guy is throwing some major shade on some games in that Defect/Feature thread, I'm lovin it. Speaking of, does anyone who really sperged out on Dominion like Kingdom Builder? It seemed unpopular but every now and then I stumble on some BGG user who likes some games that I like that has it as a 9 or something i've only played kingdom builder once in person, but i have it on my phone and enjoy it well enough. Once you get it figured out you can play a game against the AI in about five minutes.
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Apr 10, 2015 06:13
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Lottery of Babylon posted:They're not difficult to understand mechanically, but they're fiddly in ways that slow the game down for no reason, and lead to far more discussion and time being sunk into simple moves than should have been necessary. This actually makes wilderness/expedition areas much easier to access, though I don't know how much impact that actually has on the game's difficulty. Rules as written, getting into an area with no boat/train routes is hard, because you have to do it with your first move, but you can have tickets prepared so that once you're done there you can easily leave. I kinda like how this works from a thematic/pacing perspective, and given the game is pretty much 100% theme, preserving that seems like a good thing.
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Apr 10, 2015 06:31
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Amoeba102 posted:I don't see how tickets can slow down the game with discussion, since you just go "yep, taking a ticket, moving to here then here thanks to the ticket". As far as moving twice, you'd then have it be "move twice if you start in a city", because the wilderness/ocean spaces you can't get tickets on. It's annoying when you need to get to a certain location in 2-3 turns and need to figure out the optimal route and action allocation. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that so many stipulations exist for no reason other than to make the solution more convoluted -- half the time you'll plan out a route that just barely gets you there in time only to realize that no, in this game Chicago is wilderness rather than a city, and King's Cross Station doesn't sell train tickets. The movement mechanics are just so much more fiddly than they need to be, which is jarring when Eldritch Horror is supposed to be the more "streamlined" game. Amoeba102 posted:The debt's seem fine to me. You get something now in return for a potentially bad thing later, which is a reoccuring theme with the reckonings. You end up having a lot of swords having over your head that may drop at any point to create tension in a way. It's not bad in concept, but the problem is that the effect of a loan is disproportionately strong compared to the effect of your influence score, and all the item costs are set on the assumption that you're taking out a loan whenever you attempt to buy items. Almost every item requires at least two successes to buy, but even an investigator with a remarkably high handshake score of 4 has only about a 40% chance of rolling two successes. If, for example, the items cost 1 less and taking out a loan were only worth 1 success instead of 2, it would feel a lot smoother, but when a loan is as strong as ~6 influence buying items ends up being all-loans-all-the-time. It usually doesn't even leave you with a sword hanging over your head because most of the time you just spend your second action for the turn to remove the debt. When there's only like three debt cards in the game and one of them makes you lose all your items, taking out a loan to get a good item and then keeping the loan around isn't much of an option unless the game's about to end anyhow. e: Oh, that's right, last time we played I was also kicked out more than an hour before the game ended, because Eldritch Horror introduces the joys of ~player elimination~ Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 06:34
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 I'm starting to think I have a Problem. (Not pictured: Eclipse resource trays, dndeeples I bought for a friend's copy of Lords of Waterdeep. Broken Token has so much of my money.  )
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Apr 10, 2015 06:48
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fozzy fosbourne posted:The Argent guy is throwing some major shade on some games in that Defect/Feature thread, I'm lovin it. Speaking of, does anyone who really sperged out on Dominion like Kingdom Builder? It seemed unpopular but every now and then I stumble on some BGG user who likes some games that I like that has it as a 9 or something I like Kingdom Builder! The variance is a little high (drawing 2 of the same terrain in a row sucks, drawing 3 of the same is basically a death sentence), and the game can go a little long with 4 or more people for its depth, but I don't mind playing it every once in a while. It's good when you want something mellow and straightforward.
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Apr 10, 2015 07:03
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burger time posted:I like Kingdom Builder! The variance is a little high (drawing 2 of the same terrain in a row sucks, drawing 3 of the same is basically a death sentence), and the game can go a little long with 4 or more people for its depth, but I don't mind playing it every once in a while. It's good when you want something mellow and straightforward. How many cards do you draw in a game usually? Dozen or so? Statistically, what chance would there be to get three cards in a row at least once in a game? It's 1 of 125 if you draw exactly three cards, but I hate probability so I want someone else to calculate it for n cards.
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Apr 10, 2015 07:13
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quote:Statistically, what chance would there be to get three cards in a row at least once in a game? It's 1 of 125 if you draw exactly three cards, but I hate probability so I want someone else to calculate it for n cards. For 3 cards it's actually 1 in 25 (since there are 5 land types your triple could be). For 12 cards (assuming 5 types and an infinite deck), you'll get at least 3 in a row just under 30% of the time. I might be misremembering something about the game, though. Anyway, I didn't really notice this particular thing as a problem, but overall I really didn't like Kingdom Builder. That said, I might have enjoyed it more as a digital game as largely my problem was that it overstayed its welcome. It felt like there wasn't enough real interesting decisions to justify its playtime (too many autopilot decisions), and too often it felt like the game balance hung on a few key "who can draw what they need to get to X first" type races. jmzero fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 07:29
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Assuming there are n different cards, and you draw k cards per game, and further assuming that the cards you're drawing don't change the distribution of cards in the deck... The chance, on any particular draw, of drawing the same card as last time is 1/n. You'll see this possibility k-1 times per game. So the probability that you never draw the same card twice in a row is (n-1/n)k-1. For seeing three cards in a row, it's similar - for any given two consecutive draws, the odds of them both being the same as the previous draw is 1/n2, and there are k-2 times per game for that possibility to appear. Further derivation is left as an exercise.
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Apr 10, 2015 07:29
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Gutter Owl posted:
Ooh! A Mage Knight insert. Described on their web site as Magic Night. Who are we to argue? Does it cope with the Lost Legion expansion? Does it make a big difference on set up/tear down or is it more of an OCD thing. (Not judging. I'm way prone.)
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Apr 10, 2015 08:06
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There are Volkare and Wolfhawk componentes in there. Now let's see Broken Token cram a second big expansion in the same box.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:11
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Broken Token seems very good at building their kits for expansion. The Mage Knight insert has slots for eight total heroes, and up to 16 different monster groups. The terrain tile space doesn't have much room for growth, though. We'll have to see what the new expansion has in store there. As for setup time, I couldn't tell you. I got it in the mail on Wednesday and put it together tonight. It does come with a lot of very nice trays, though.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:21
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Bubble-T posted:Plaid Hat are following up Dead of Winter with an absurdly awful looking game: http://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/ashes Holy poo poo. I saw the page and was like, "Lemme just see the fuckin' rules." I was not prepared. PAGE 1.  THAT'S NOT HOW NUMBERS WORK. PAGE 2.  Okay, so each die has a "normal" side, a hooghenphlanq side, and a glarbenstaufen side. The hooghenphlanqs and glarbenstaufens are completely random and do not resemble each other at all.  1 2 3 4 8 9 5 6 7, or 1 2 3 10 9 9 11 5 6 7. Jesus Christ. I shouldn't have to do a word-to-picture find with your goddamn cards when you're teaching me what's on them.  Yeah, gently caress colorblind people! Also, one of these things is not like the others. PAGE 3. quote:3. Choose your First Five by taking 5 cards of PAGE 4.  They're seriously just loving with me, now. quote:3. Draw Cards: Draw cards until you have 5 cards in your  This requires a screenshot to properly transfer the madness. On your turn, you can take a maximum of 2 actions. There are actions from a mandatory column, 1 of which is "pass," and there are actions in an optional column, none of which is "pass," and you can take the actions in either order. 2 of the mandatory (but passable) options are "attack an opponent's card" differentiated only by who can block. One of the mandatory (but passable) options is "use any ability that requires you to pay a star icon cost," and one of the optional options is "use any ability that requires you to pay a star icon cost." I'm seriously hitting Poe's Law thresholds, here. This game is more obviously parody than that horrible and overproduced POWER/RANGERS short that was apparently satire according to the creator. PAGE 5. quote:2. Remove Exhaustion: Remove 1 exhaustion token I'm not even, like, a third of the way into this fucker. quote:4. Resolve Damage: One at a time, in an order of your The next 2 pages are examples of combat. Page 6 is an example that shows a unit being destroyed, which is extra hilarious because it's apparent from the images that all 3 types of counters will be on cards at any given point in time (and damage is persistent), making the counter disparity even more of an eyesore. Page 7 is an example of combat when you target a unit a page before discussing combat when you target units. You know how annoying future-quoting is? Think that but in a rulebook. Page 8 is a rapidfire series of rules exceptions, some of which are appropriate for the location (Phoenixborn can ignore Exhaust tokens to block) and some of which would be better off in an appendix (when a Unit is targeted only a Phoenixborn can block, but a Unit Guard can usurp this restriction). quote:Pass quote:Activate Dice Power Ability PAGE 9.  This starts somewhat tame and then gets radically worse as you go down. Exhaust (again) makes some semblance of sense as the most basic form of this stupid keyword and accompanying token. When it's 10x the size of how it's supposed to look on the card, it's possible to see why the main and side action stars look the way they do (and why that look required them to be largely identical) even if it's a terrible loving idea. Then, we get to the magic stuff. You can do magic by spending hooghenphlanqs which exhausts (not that exhaust) the die. However, you can also use hooghenphlanqs as "normal" dice, whatever loving use that has. Also, glarbenstaufens can be used as hooghenphlanqs if they come from the same die as the hooghenphlanq in question or they can also be used as a "normal" die. Note that this only applies for card costs and not for when you're actually using the dice, in which case hooghenphlanqs and glarbenstaufens each have their own water fountains and schools and such. (Hey, you know what's a better loving idea than this? How about a die's faces are something like dot (basic), fire, and sun? Dot, leaf, and cloud? Dot, water droplet, and moon? Holy poo poo, it's like it's actually possible to understand that these are directly upgraded and related versions of each other!) I'm done. I can't take this anymore. There are 3 pages left and I can't do this. Did you know that cards with Exhaustion tokens count as having no text except for sometimes when they do? Did you know that Damage results in Wound Tokens that can destroy a card, but none of those affects a units Life? Do you know what a Conjuration Pile is or how cards begin the game in it (because the manual sure as poo poo doesn't say anything about it)? Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 08:27
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Broken Loose posted:
I can think of many things to criticise about this, but not being colourblind-friendly isn't one of them. The Wound and Status tokens have inverted border designs that are very clear.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:33
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St0rmD posted:I thought it was kind of a ripoff of Cap'n Needs Help: Pick up the Berries! that Quaker Oats put out several years ago. Man, that one was a classic, and I think still managed to have more innovations like the steal square. I mean sure it's playable, but I'd much rather get one of my really old boxes to the table for my first game of the day than settle for shameless reskins like TPoO anyday.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:35
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Phoenixborn is going to sell a ton if for no other reason than "From the designer of Dead of Winter." It's disappointing that Summoner Wars was Plaid Hat Games's exception, rather than its rule. Did Mice and Mystics become less boring with expansions?
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Apr 10, 2015 08:35
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Also, as a colorblind person (or shadeblind), I can say that I wouldn't mix those up in most circumstances.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:35
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The worst submarine posted:That game's a piece of poo poo. It's 2015, why are there still games that have dice rolls to determine how much of a nutritional breakfast you get? I much prefer Kellog's CORN series for thei The next big entry in Kellog's CORN series, Fibre in the Lake
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Apr 10, 2015 08:36
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oh, thank god. this is exactly what i needed right now. Jedit posted:I can think of many things to criticise about this, but not being colourblind-friendly isn't one of them. The Wound and Status tokens have inverted border designs that are very clear. Worse yet-- the border design is present on all 3 token types, it's just sometimes colored in white. It's seriously just a mishmash of bad design ideas (the clashing of numbers with symbols, the miniscule non-color differences otherwise, the exhaust icon in general, the marble texture breaking up the clarity of the design, etc.) that all form a perfect shitstorm.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:38
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I still can't believe they thought that what Magic really needed was a bunch of tokens complicating the tap and damage systems.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:24
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Gutter Owl posted:
Where/how did you get that eclipse insert? I need
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Apr 10, 2015 09:33
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Gutter Owl posted:Broken Token seems very good at building their kits for expansion. The Mage Knight insert has slots for eight total heroes, and up to 16 different monster groups. The terrain tile space doesn't have much room for growth, though. We'll have to see what the new expansion has in store there. Stop making me want this, I live in the wrong side of the ocean!  Any companies in Europe that do a similar thing? I'd rather not repeat the Mage Knight Tucker Boxes Incident.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:35
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Broken Loose posted:PAGE 4. oh what the hell is this bullshit Disgusting.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:39
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For all its faults, one of Magic's strengths is its ultra portability in that you only need a deck to play. I don't know why all the Magic imitators decided the best thing to do to improve the game was to add a bunch of extra components for people to carry around.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:41
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fozzy fosbourne posted:The Argent guy is throwing some major shade on some games in that Defect/Feature thread, I'm lovin it. Speaking of, does anyone who really sperged out on Dominion like Kingdom Builder? It seemed unpopular but every now and then I stumble on some BGG user who likes some games that I like that has it as a 9 or something I'm a big fan of both Dominion and Kingdom Builder. The latter requires skill in choosing where you build to set yourself up for different turns, either avoiding terrain at first to give yourself more flexibility later, or later on touching as many types of terrain as possible to give you flexibility in how to approach the scoring rounds. It requires you to adapt based on what you draw and of course has many replayability options with the different powers and ways to score each game. Simple and somewhat quick game.
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Apr 10, 2015 10:06
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Lottery of Babylon posted:The movement mechanics are fine. If the concepts of "planning movement in advance" and "looking at spaces on the board" are too fiddly for you, I don't know what to say. quote:It usually doesn't even leave you with a sword hanging over your head because most of the time you just spend your second action for the turn to remove the debt. When there's only like three debt cards in the game and one of them makes you lose all your items, taking out a loan to get a good item and then keeping the loan around isn't much of an option unless the game's about to end anyhow. quote:e: Oh, that's right, last time we played I was also kicked out more than an hour before the game ended, because Eldritch Horror introduces the joys of ~player elimination~ Also, I'm unsure how the game is taking hours for you, unless you're playing 8 players. The game lasts for at most 15 turns, and around half the turn is automated, just reading cards, rolling the relevant dice and shuffling tokens. Unless you've got tonnes of players or severe AP, there's no way it can take that long, even with new players.
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Apr 10, 2015 10:16
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MorphineMike posted:If it i on an awakened GOO, the game shouldn't take more than an hour after that because an awakened GOO is designed to be "unless you're really close, you've lost. An hour is frankly still too long to sit out a game after being eliminated.
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Apr 10, 2015 10:27
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Yeah, the movement rules are fine. Certainly better than shuffling around stats like in Arkham Horror. Arkham Horror uses the same rules for player elimination as Eldritch Horror - pick a new character if Cthulhu's asleep, you're dead if he's not - so saying that Eldritch Horror introduces player elimination to the formula is inaccurate. There's no change here.
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Apr 10, 2015 10:41
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:An hour is frankly still too long to sit out a game after being eliminated. That was really poorly worded of me. I can't imagine the game taking an hour after the GOO has flipped, so unless you die immediately it will never be that long. All of the GOO have rules to prevent the game continuing on for too long after they've flipped, to the point where I can't imagine the game taking more than a couple of turns (which is 5-10 minutes in my experience) to close out. And whilst sitting out for 5 minutes isn't great, 5 minutes of downtime is hardly an issue. Gort posted:Yeah, the movement rules are fine. Certainly better than shuffling around stats like in Arkham Horror. Is that on the back of all the GOOs? I can see it being so, but I honestly don't remember (them flipping happens so rarely for my group these days)
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Apr 10, 2015 10:59
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MorphineMike posted:Is that on the back of all the GOOs? I can see it being so, but I honestly don't remember (them flipping happens so rarely for my group these days) Nah, players getting eliminated when they're defeated after the Great Old One wakes up is a standard rule in the rulebooks for both games. Arkham Horror, main rulebook, page 21: Any investigator reduced to 0 Sanity or Stamina by the Ancient One’s attack is devoured. If an investigator is devoured during the final battle with the Ancient One, that player is eliminated from the game (i.e., the player does not draw a new character). If all investigators are devoured, the Ancient One is unleashed on the world and the players lose the game. Eldritch Horror, main rulebook, page 16: After the Ancient One has awakened, when an investigator is defeated or devoured, the player controlling that investigator is eliminated. Eliminated players do not select a new investigator to control and can no longer participate in the game. If all players are eliminated, investigators lose the game.
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Apr 10, 2015 11:06
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Gort posted:Nah, players getting eliminated when they're defeated after the Great Old One wakes up is a standard rule in the rulebooks for both games. Missed that when I skimmed the rulebook just now, somehow. Either way, it's fairly rare that you can be in a situation where people are getting eliminated and you can still win in my experience.
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Apr 10, 2015 11:16
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Bubble-T posted:This is also why Robinson Crusoe is so high, if anyone is wondering. Robinson Crusoe is high on the list because it marries excellent theme with solid mechanics, not on theme alone  Aston posted:For all its faults, one of Magic's strengths is its ultra portability in that you only need a deck to play. I don't know why all the Magic imitators decided the best thing to do to improve the game was to add a bunch of extra components for people to carry around. This is 75% of the reason I never get to play Mage Wars, but can carry a Magic deck in my bag all the time. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 11:54
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Rutibex posted:Robinson Crusoe is high on the list because it marries excellent theme with solid mechanics, not on theme alone 'Solid' is a funny way to describe 9 dice and 3 piles of cards which may or may not be good to draw.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:00
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MorphineMike posted:If it i on an awakened GOO, the game shouldn't take more than an hour after that because an awakened GOO is designed to be "unless you're really close, you've lost. This was against Shub-Niggurath. The problem is that they don't say "you've lost", they say "you probably will lose, eventually". Maybe it's not an issue if you can reliably get your group to concede instead of playing it out, but... MorphineMike posted:Also, I'm unsure how the game is taking hours for you, unless you're playing 8 players. The game lasts for at most 15 turns, and around half the turn is automated, just reading cards, rolling the relevant dice and shuffling tokens. Unless you've got tonnes of players or severe AP, there's no way it can take that long, even with new players. This was with 5 players. If we're making good time, we can go through a round in 15 minutes, maybe 20 for a bad one -- we'll see if it gets faster now that we've started taking everyone's action step simultaneously. Unfortunately, the endgame rounds are generally bad ones. Gort posted:Arkham Horror uses the same rules for player elimination as Eldritch Horror - pick a new character if Cthulhu's asleep, you're dead if he's not - so saying that Eldritch Horror introduces player elimination to the formula is inaccurate. There's no change here. When the GOO awakens in Arkham Horror, the entire board disappears, there are no more decisions to make, and both sides just roll dice until one side is dead. When the GOO awakens in Eldritch Horror, the number of "mysteries" the investigators need to solve before they can win the game increases by 1 (so the remaining time before you can win increases), and an extra "Oh, if doom advances like 5 more times and you don't do anything about it, then you'll actually lose for real" rule appears. Technically both games have the player elimination rule, but the context in which it appears is very different. Like, I'm not denying that Arkham Horror is much, much worse. It was full of fiddly bullshit that never mattered like the sliders, the terror track, 3-4 parallel currencies, and potentially five hundred expansion mechanics, and you'd be stuck in space for several rounds trying to seal a single gate. But there's some bad decisions in Eldritch Horror too.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:02
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Bubble-T posted:'Solid' is a funny way to describe 9 dice and 3 piles of cards which may or may not be good to draw. I count 8 Dice and 5 piles of cards in my Mage Knight set, I guess terrible themed garbage too 
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Apr 10, 2015 12:10
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Lottery of Babylon posted:But there's some bad decisions in Eldritch Horror too. Have fun playing as Kane and spending the entire game on shopping duty.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:19
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How can a round take 15 minutes? Do you write an in depth analysis of each and every option you could take? You also know that each GOO has a custom deck of mythos cards, and you lose if that runs out right?
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Apr 10, 2015 12:20
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Fat Samurai posted:Have fun playing as Kane and spending the entire game on shopping duty. Last time I played Kane I shopped a bit, then a rumour appeared that ate all the assets before we could stop it, then a proto-shoggoth appeared and ate me. We still managed to win despite losing about four investigators since coming in with a new investigator who is exactly the person for the job at hand is really powerful. One of our mysteries was to defeat the Dunwich Horror so when Kane bit the dust I came back in with the Motorcycle Cop who has a carbine rifle and starts right on top of the Dunwich Horror.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:31
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Rutibex posted:Robinson Crusoe is high on the list because it marries excellent theme with solid mechanics, not on theme alone I played Robinson Crusoe here, and it's loving terrible. At no point did I feel like I had any real agency to influence the game. By about the midpoint I'd given up completely and was just saying "sure, right" when one of the other players quarterbacked a plan.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:32
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