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Fat Samurai posted:Have fun playing as Kane and spend the entire game on shopping duty. That's actually who I played last game. For the first half of the game every turn was action: buy item, action: clear debt (or occasionally grant someone else an action, but usually even the dedicated shopping character failed to shop without taking out a loan), and I guess have a san francisco encounter because I haven't had a chance to move out. Later in the game nothing was worth buying anymore and and the "no shopping ever again" rumor appeared, so people started expecting me to actually do something helpful. But his only good stat is influence, which isn't all that useful for doing much of anything except shopping. The instant Shub-Niggurath awakened I was killed on my only attempt to close a gate ("take 6 san damage" wooooooo). MorphineMike posted:How can a round take 15 minutes? Do you write an in depth analysis of each and every option you could take? No, though we are rather argumentative. I want to know how your rounds are taking 5 minutes, how are you blowing through the entire game in just over an hour? MorphineMike posted:You also know that each GOO has a custom deck of mythos cards, and you lose if that runs out right? Yes. The GOO spawned around the start of the third segment of the deck.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:33
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MorphineMike posted:You also know that each GOO has a custom deck of mythos cards, and you lose if that runs out right? I don't know how it is in Arkham, but in Eldritch, the Mythos deck is not GOO-specific, its randomly set at the beginning of each game with a distribution of types of cards that GOO-specific, but the cards themselves aren't specific.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:34
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Broken Loose posted:Holy poo poo. I saw the page and was like, "Lemme just see the fuckin' rules." Oh man, I looked at that page and felt my eyes immediately glaze over with "Oh, it's magic but the cards are harder to read". I'm glad you dove deeper into it, because this is all amazing. Broken Loose posted:(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!) Not that it's well expressed, but there actually is one of these things! There's: Arbitrary Shape, Inanimate Object, Living Creature for each die. It's just hard to tell what the dice are representing half the time.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:37
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Yeah, it's the Mysteries (victory objectives), Research Encounters (used for when you try to get clues) and Special Encounters (I've just realised I don't know what these are for - maybe for if the GOO awakens?) that are unique to each GOO.
Gort fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 12:39
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jivjov posted:I don't know how it is in Arkham, but in Eldritch, the Mythos deck is not GOO-specific, its randomly set at the beginning of each game with a distribution of types of cards that GOO-specific, but the cards themselves aren't specific. That's what I meant. The deck is customised, but the cards are generic. As for how our turns are quick, it's difficult to say how we're saving time. I'd say most of our games are 1:30 to 2 hours, so we're looking at 10 minutes turns, which is easy. We also play 4 player mostly, so that probably helps. It helps when you realise that, realistically, there's not much overall planning you can do, or if you need to do stuff that affects other people you do it when other people are doing stuff. If you sit down and discuss overarching plans for multiple turns, things are going to suck. If you go "person who has the gate skill, do gates. Person who is good at combat, kill the big monsters or gear up to be" etc then for the most part there's very little interaction or cooperation. Also digging for Plumb the Void helps.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:48
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Broken Loose posted:Ashes rant Yep. I agree with you on all fronts. I hate to bash a product that has my name in the rulebook, but it isn't a good game. I am still a playtester for them, but this taught me to agree to projects carefully. I almost wrote up a long document criticizing this mess, but what would be the point? By then the game was years in development and already too far gone. Plaid hat needs to play to their strengths and backgrounds. Summoner wars is good because they all have intimate experience with Heroscape. None of them have experience with card games, and it shows in Ashes. Still, it is sad that they are crossing my reputation line to the bad side. I have hope about Spector Ops, mostly because it was licensed from an outside designer and seems good from the watch it played. Seafall I want to be good very badly, mostly because I like the idea of Risk legacy but hate risk. I always want more summoner wars. But otherwise, anything that they release is going to be met with instant skepticism... Especially if Vega is involved.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:50
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Gort posted:Yeah, it's the Mysteries (victory objectives), Research Encounters (used for when you try to get clues) and Special Encounters (I've just realised I don't know what these are for - maybe for if the GOO awakens?) that are unique to each GOO. There are a couple uses for the Special Encounters. Some are tied to specific mystery cards, so it's possible to not hit that particular Mystery in a given play (especially after Forsaken Lore upped the Mystery card count), and some are used when the GOO is awake.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:54
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I don't even think Summoner Wars is good. Plaid Hat's name on a game is enough to make me avoid it. In case anyone wasn't aware, this week's Humble Bundle is board game adaptations. The basic set is Small World 2, Magnifico and Talisman with the Frostmarch expansion, $7 gets you Catan, Ticket to Ride complete pack and some anime shite called 100% Orange Juice.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:58
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Rutibex posted:I count 8 Dice and 5 piles of cards in my Mage Knight set, I guess terrible themed garbage too Mage Knight is a bad game for funhavers, your movement is randomly determined at the start of each turn and you don't even know what's going to be ahead of you until you get to the edge of the board. What trash.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:58
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Rusty Kettle posted:Summoner wars is good because they all have intimate experience with Heroscape. RIP
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Apr 10, 2015 13:01
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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. You can't cast Swing Dead Cat in Magic without needing some +1/+1 counters (which are a different thing from countering a spell, why did they use the same word?!) and plenty of cards put tokens into play. The mistake everyone else makes is supplying fancy bits instead of saying "use some pennies or whatever".
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Apr 10, 2015 13:26
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Rusty Kettle posted:Yep. I agree with you on all fronts. I hate to bash a product that has my name in the rulebook, but it isn't a good game. I am still a playtester for them, but this taught me to agree to projects carefully. I almost wrote up a long document criticizing this mess, but what would be the point? By then the game was years in development and already too far gone. Is it even really that far gone? I feel like a graphic designer and a super careful clarity pass over the rulebook could actually fix a ton of what BL posted. A lot of poo poo like "Pass" being classified as a mandatory action seems like it could be made massively less confusing with very minor rules alterations. Did all the complexity actually result in interesting in-game choices, at least?
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Apr 10, 2015 13:31
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GrandpaPants posted: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? Well, Specter Ops looks pretty good. 
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Apr 10, 2015 13:51
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Yeah, I thought Summoner Wars sucked too. I mean, it's not horrible... but I think there are some real flaws in the system. The whole discarding cards to cast things never really flowed with me, but I am horrible at the game so maybe that accounts for it. If I want a more strategic spell slinger I take Magic, if I want more miniature battle tactics I play Mage Wars. Summoner Wars just sits in this unsatisfying middle. Honestly, I dont think there's a Plaid Hats Game I've tried that hasn't disappointed me. They sound like such cool ideas but it never meshes quite right. Phoenixborn will sell like gang busters based on the inevitable SU&SD rave review alone. fozzy fosbourne posted:The next big entry in Kellog's CORN series, Fibre in the Lake It looks promising, but it's got quite an act to follow with A Distant Grain 
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Apr 10, 2015 14:04
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Summoner Wars is one of my favorite games, I love it and I want to kiss it on the lips, but I can see how someone would not enjoy the dice combat or getting screwed by the luck of the draw (although I think the luck of the draw matters less than many other card games, because you at least start with units on the field unlike MTG, and you can turn any card into magic.) It can be real agonizing to draw your champion(s) early and decide between just burning them for magic, being stuck with them in your hand for a while, or burning the rest of your hand trying to build enough to summon them while letting your opponent go hog wild on the field. Of course it's even more agonizing to draw a champion super late game and realize you're not going to have enough magic to summon them, but at least then it's an easy decision to burn them so you can squeeze out another common or use a card ability on an already summoned unit.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:14
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djfooboo posted:RIP Summoner wars isn't without its flaws. Especially with early sets, many times games can boil down to Summoner vs summoner in that there is no real reason to push him forward. Many early events are very swingy and lead to singular strategies. Some of the art is god awful. In deck building, there are some over powered units that need errata otherwise there is no reason to not include as many as possible in every deck. There are more. I think the designers looked at Heroscape, said 'this sucks, but what can I do to make it better?' They then founded their company on a good game that, while not great, is undeniably better than Heroscape. I still whole heartedly recommend Summoner wars to anyone looking for a light cheap two player game with a lot of content. However upon SWs success, they came out with a bunch of garbage that ranges from tolerable under the right conditions (mice and mystics, city of remnants) to complete trash (dead of winter, bioshock, Ashes). Plaid hat has sullied any reputation regarding designing games internally. They are now publishing games from external designers like Spector Ops and Seafall, so we'll see how that goes. If they cannot even do that right, then I fear that there is no hope. They'll slide into cryptozoic levels of distrust. I do worry about Plaid hat making the games worse by forcing their own ideas on the final product. There appears to be some evidence of this in Spector Ops, but perhaps I am blowing a minor rules snafu out of proportion. That being said, it still looks like something I would like to play and hope that I don't regret my impulse preorder. To be honest, I am pretty much there with FFG as well. Other than Eric Lang, I don't think they can design something that isn't a fiddly mess. I still like the Lord of the Rings lcg, but no one can argue that it is a tightly designed game. The laziness of Netrunner made me never want to play it again, though I might jump back into it once I cool off. At least the mediocre star wars games have pretty miniatures.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:14
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Dre2Dee2 posted:It looks promising, but it's got quite an act to follow with A Distant Grain Everyone knows the first game to start with in that series is Cocoa Libre.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:15
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Mage Knight expansion question: We've played through 2-3 campaigns now with the base game and have really loved it. We're not particularly interested yet in a roaming army and we don't necessarily need another hero yet, but how transformative are the fixed starter cards and units and enemy tokens? I've read they fix a couple of things for balance and add more variety to the starter decks. So I'm interested if those changes make that big of a difference in how the base game operates for people who haven't yet exhausted all the nooks and crannies of the starter box.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:22
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Huxley posted:Mage Knight expansion question: How do you prefer to play the game? If you like playing cooperatively, then I can't recommend Volkare enough as he adds a bunch of extra depth to the cooperative game. You can add him in whenever you feel like it though, really. The extra cards for the heroes add quite a bit and help distinguish heroes from each other out of the gate, as well as making them just a touch more powerful, which Level 1 heroes probably needed. There are a number of 'fixed' tokens and cards - don't just mix everything in and expect it to be fine, because a lot are replacements for problems that were in the first printing of Mage Knight, as well as subtle rules adjustments and balances. I could honestly take or leave some of the extra tokens, especially the brown ones as I hate fighting random enemies in a game like Mage Knight and they just add more ways for you to fail to kill something you couldn't have planned for. On the whole you're not losing out on the original game by getting the expansion, it tweaks the game more than outright changing it (except for Volkare, who you can just play without until you want to put him in)
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Apr 10, 2015 14:33
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Huxley posted:Mage Knight expansion question: The expansion is worth it even if you don't want to use Volkare at all. The expansion adds a bit to every aspect of the game, new units, advanced actions, monsters, map tiles, etc. Not in a bloated way ether, all the new content fits in seamlessly and feels like it should have been there the entire time. You also don't have to make Volkare wander around, there are rules to use his camp as a stationary 5th potential city to ease you into the concept. bobvonunheil posted:There are a number of 'fixed' tokens and cards - don't just mix everything in and expect it to be fine, because a lot are replacements for problems that were in the first printing of Mage Knight, as well as subtle rules adjustments and balances. I use all the components. The basic actions I took out of the character decks I put into the Advanced Actions deck so that people can buy them during the game. I'll be damned if I'm going to waste components 
Rutibex fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 14:35
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Rutibex posted:I use all the components. The basic actions I took out of the character decks I put into the Advanced Actions deck so that people can buy them during the game. I'll be damned if I'm going to waste components You should bring in your custom Talisman decks too, if you end your turn without taking an action in a green-backed hex you have to draw an Outer Region card, and in a brown-backed hex a Middle Region card.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:42
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OtspIII posted:Is it even really that far gone? I am up to date on Netrunner, warhammer conquest, lord of the Rings, Mage wars, and summoner wars. I even have a whole bunch of dice masters stuff. For some reason, these kinds of games call to me. This game does very little better than any of the aforementioned games, and does so much more worse. In my opinion, it plays even worse than the rulebook reads. It was a hard decision to give Netrunner an extended break, but I don't feel bad passing this up. It isn't all bad. I like that there is more reason to include multiples of cards outside of consistency. I like the art in general, though they could have chosen to make some of it more interesting and dynamic... Of the many faults of plaid hat, they can certainly make an attractive game. Hell, DoW may not be a good game, but it is pretty and distinctive. But regarding Ashes, the dice can lead to interesting decisions but dice masters does it better. That is about it off the top of my head. Every other 'wizards fighting' does the theme better. Every card game I collect has clearer rules and wording, and that is saying something when you remember that I collect Mage wars. Every other game seems to have put some thought into 'playtest-ability' by limiting deck building to open design space and lower the combinations to test. There are so many other card games that are similar but better, and I don't think they considered any of them. I could go on, but you all get the idea. Again, I hate trashing this game because my name is in the rulebook and I would like to playtest again, but god drat it is not for me. This is going to be the biggest challenge Rodney of 'Watch it played' ever faced.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:46
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Tash-Kalar has raised the bar so high in terms of fighting wizards games I don't see myself wanting to play any of the others for a long time. It's just so much better.Huxley posted:Mage Knight expansion question: Play the base set until it's almost boring to you. The expansion is great but there's no need to rush!
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Apr 10, 2015 14:51
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I think it's fair to say that Tash-Kalar has very little in common with any of the other games mentioned save for thematic similarity. Like, my first thought when playing Suburbia wasn't "Wow, time to go throw my SimCity 2000 floppies in the trash." Scyther fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 15:04
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Broken Loose posted:Holy poo poo. I saw the page and was like, "Lemme just see the fuckin' rules." I'm just relieved to see she's got some clothes on 
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Apr 10, 2015 16:10
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Poopy Palpy posted:You can't cast Swing Dead Cat in Magic without needing some +1/+1 counters (which are a different thing from countering a spell, why did they use the same word?!) and plenty of cards put tokens into play. The mistake everyone else makes is supplying fancy bits instead of saying "use some pennies or whatever". Yeah but like you say you can use pennies or generic dice or whatever, there's no need for custom counters and dice and a playmat, which lots of newer CCGs/LCGs like Warhammer Invasion, Mage Wars, Doomtown or now Ashes appear to require. Also there's nothing wrong with Magic jargon, cards like this make perfect sense: 
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Apr 10, 2015 16:14
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Aston posted:Also there's nothing wrong with Magic jargon, cards like this make perfect sense: Note that this is literally a joke card from a joke set that isn't legal for tournament play because every card in it is a joke.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:23
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I think the point is that despite how confusing it is to read it's also totally unambiguous as to what it means? Idk I don't play magic.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:25
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Jabor posted:Note that this is literally a joke card from a joke set that isn't legal for tournament play because every card in it is a joke. No don't spoil it!!!!
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Apr 10, 2015 16:27
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Also "comes into play" has since been changed to "comes onto the battlefield."
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Apr 10, 2015 16:28
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I regret everything.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:28
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Bubble-T posted:Tash-Kalar has raised the bar so high in terms of fighting wizards games I don't see myself wanting to play any of the others for a long time. It's just so much better. I got to play that game exactly three times because everyone I know just doesn't enjoy abstract games. How does that game play with four? I've only played head to head.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:32
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Texibus posted:
4 player high form is awesome. You play in teams of 2.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:35
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Aston posted:
While this is obviously a joke card, there are cards that are borderline just as convoluted in Netrunner. I went around the Internet collecting different interpretations of the same card (IT department) and stopped at around a dozen. Then the FAQ came out, giving me a totally different interpretation. So I threw my hands in the air and vowed to spend my hard earned dollars elsewhere. If the wording/rules are vague and open to so much misinterpretation, why should I think the playtesters played it the way it was meant to be played. It might as well not been playtested at all. Ashes is similar but better than Netrunner in this regard. I think lots of people were playing wrong to begin with, but it was cleared up eventually. Still, even though I was a playtester, I think the poor rules led to poor playtesting. I didn't have the complete picture though so I could be wrong.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:41
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Jabor posted:Note that this is literally a joke card from a joke set that isn't legal for tournament play because every card in it is a joke. Honestly having not played Magic in like 10 years I a) figured out it was a joke and 2) still pretty much got the jist of what it is supposed to do (it's intentionally stupidly worded but you just have to keep track of one of two events and then their outcomes). Magic is actually pretty solid for having new cards come out all the loving time. If it wasn't so hilariously obviously trying to steal all of my money from me I might be interested in following it.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:44
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Yeah I read the rules for it, but just immediately knew I couldn't talk three others into it. I did love my few plays of that game though, loving vlaada.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:50
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I think my favorite clusterfuck rules card game is Decipher Star Wars CCG. I mean it' was a demented poo poo show of rules, but god drat if you couldn't launch Vader from the Executor to the Tatooine catina to play Sabaac and bet on a pod race 
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Apr 10, 2015 17:05
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Magic actually has a really strong language template. Uwe Rosenberg got a guy to help him standardise the Agricola cards using CCG-style language because its so unambiguous when done right.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:24
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Dre2Dee2 posted:I think my favorite clusterfuck rules card game is Decipher Star Wars CCG. I mean it' was a demented poo poo show of rules, but god drat if you couldn't launch Vader from the Executor to the Tatooine catina to play Sabaac and bet on a pod race I would watch the gently caress out of that movie.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:42
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Bubble-T posted:Magic actually has a really strong language template. Uwe Rosenberg got a guy to help him standardise the Agricola cards using CCG-style language because its so unambiguous when done right. I don't know if it's just the Dutch translation, but I found some expansion cards to be confusing. Like the roads, what the hell? It isn't really made clear what a road is/does, but there you are getting points for them.
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