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thespaceinvader posted:Dungeon Lords is the other major one. It's no coincidence that they're all by Vlaada. Dungeon Petz as well, to a lesser degree.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 05:22 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 19:10 |
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Murano is a recent good game with rondel mechanics
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 06:43 |
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Over the weekend I had got to play some games! We started off playing Mysterium in Polish, which was absolutely awesome, although very difficult. We played two and a half time (there was a fuckup leading to a reset) and did not win once. The second ghost either had incredibly bad hands or was just bad at making associations, so we were really struggling. The artwork is really awesome and intricate, and absolutely everything matches something, so there are lots of possibilities and good discussions. I will definitely try this again, and you should too. Next up was Pandemic: Contagion, which was a bit more meh, especially since people took a bit too long planning their turns. It really suffers from drawing being an action, because you can't plan out your turn in a meaningful way. Also, the we felt it lacked aggression and interaction. We then went nuts and played Colt Express three times. I had a lukewarm memory of playing it once, so I was a a bit sceptical going in, but that was baseless. The game kicks absolute rear end. Obviously, the fact that the board is a 3D cardboard train means that it looks amazing, and the action planning hits the sweet spot between being able to predict what you should do and still having unexpected consequences. It's light, but has interesting choices, reading the other players and a certain amount of politics, without being really political, since you often have no idea who you are going to be able to shoot. It's also dripping flavour bot from the gameplay and the actual 3D terrain features that come with the game that serve no purpose other than being awesome. My only objection is that the rules are terribly written (but otherwise simple) and has the discard pile being an advanced rule for some strange reason. And finally, a game of Flash Point which went south because one guy was a horrible quarterback, which pissed my girlfriend off to the point where she wasn't really part of the game, which made everything bad. It didn't help that we were learning the rules from the rulebook simultaneously. The game itself seemed fine, although we accidentally made it too easy, but I will have to play it again with a better group to make any real judgement.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 08:11 |
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fozzy fosbourne posted:You should also check out Mac "Rondels 4 Lyfe" Gerdts Check out the "See Also" section. The best rondel game is still Amyitis, though. Versailles may overtake it, but I need to find out if it doesn't maybe have a degenerate strategy first.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 08:16 |
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Does anyone remember the name of that boardgame about ratifying the US constitution? It involve attempting to change it so that it leaned towards the political leaning of the character you were playing as. EDIT: nm, I found it, it's 'Founding Fathers'. Does anyone know if it is any good?
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 09:59 |
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OtspIII posted:Do people have any other suggestions for good games where you actively make a bunch of strategic decisions and then basically sit back and see how well what you did fares against the bullshit the game throws at it? It seems like a really hard thing to make fun, but Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert both manage to nail that transition super well. Well pretty much every worker placement with separate planning and resolution phases are basically this.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 10:05 |
Tekopo posted:Does anyone remember the name of that boardgame about ratifying the US constitution? It involve attempting to change it so that it leaned towards the political leaning of the character you were playing as. Own it, have played maybe three times. It's not bad, certainly, but it's not great either, the Federalist anti Federalist thing is just two factions, not very thematic. I mean, the game looks very nice, just the mechanics kinda don't lend themselves to making you feel like you're writing the constitution. Play it once, I'd say, but don't buy before trying, and I'm saying this directly to you.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 10:28 |
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone remember the name of that boardgame about ratifying the US constitution? It involve attempting to change it so that it leaned towards the political leaning of the character you were playing as. The only time I have ever heard about it, the game was talked about favorably. However, the person talking about it was Sam Healey of the Dice Tower, so take that as it is.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 10:46 |
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My roommate found a copy of Star Realms that he forgot he had received for a Humble Bundle, or something...it was...eh. I think I remember reading opinions here about it, though I couldn't quite remember what they were. Really does suffer from the fact that you can get really hosed by the market, or whatever it's called. I kept getting access to lovely cards, whereas after I'd buy them I'd flip over the next card and boom, some great card that my roommate could afford and immediately buy on his turn. Because of this he was able to keep healing and scrapping cards whereas I was stuck with just sort of hoping I'd draw something not terrible from my deck.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 14:53 |
Morpheus posted:My roommate found a copy of Star Realms that he forgot he had received for a Humble Bundle, or something...it was...eh. I think I remember reading opinions here about it, though I couldn't quite remember what they were. Really does suffer from the fact that you can get really hosed by the market, or whatever it's called. I kept getting access to lovely cards, whereas after I'd buy them I'd flip over the next card and boom, some great card that my roommate could afford and immediately buy on his turn. Because of this he was able to keep healing and scrapping cards whereas I was stuck with just sort of hoping I'd draw something not terrible from my deck. What hey, you've discovered exactly why Broken Loose calls all market row deckbuilders poo poo.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 14:56 |
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Is Through the Ages a market row deck (I guess actually tableau) builder?
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:10 |
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Aston posted:Is Through the Ages a market row deck (I guess actually tableau) builder? Sure, it has a row of cards but it fixed the main problem of market row deckbuilders about a decade before market row deckbuilding even became a thing, yet somehow they still haven't learned it. One of the main problem with market row deckbuilders is that the market gets glutted with cards that are too expensive or bad to buy, and when one player just happens to pull together enough resources to buy a good card that's been sitting there for ages they buy it, then gain a major lead over their opponents who no longer have access to that card. Either that, or a really good card appears on the turn after one player buys something, so the next player gets it without any competition. In TtA, the longer a card has been on the market, the cheaper it gets - so you're having to give up a lot if you want a desirable card that's just appeared. On top of that, cards will disappear off the bottom if they're not claimed. This keeps the market cycling around and makes sure that if you really really want something, you're going to have to pay through the nose to get it instead of just picking it up for cheap because it happened to appear on your turn.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:23 |
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Sounds like Suburbia used the same mechanic for its market.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:28 |
Texibus posted:Sounds like Suburbia used the same mechanic for its market. Yeah, it sure did.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:29 |
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silvergoose posted:Yeah, it sure did. Oddly enough, so does Morels (which looks like a fairly interesting, light 2p game with a couple bad mechanics). Unfortunately, I haven't played it yet, so I can't say more.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:38 |
OmegaGoo posted:Oddly enough, so does Morels (which looks like a fairly interesting, light 2p game with a couple bad mechanics). Unfortunately, I haven't played it yet, so I can't say more. Oh I actually played Morels at a con last year. It's...okay, I guess? Your description is accurate, there's certainly choices to be made but then some of the mechanics detract from the experience. Played it once, probably never going to again. Meh.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:40 |
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silvergoose posted:Yeah, it sure did. Cyclades uses that mechanic too, for buying monsters.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:44 |
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I played Morels with my girlfriend last week and we had a great time with it. It's set collection with a shared market, you get your option of the two front cards to pull into your hand of 8 cards (you can expand your hand size with basket cards that came out) if you want to draw cards further along the "road" you need walking sticks that you get from selling pairs of mushrooms instead of scoring them, after every turn you move one of the mushrooms at "your feet" (the two oldest cards) to the decay, which you can draw instead of the two mushrooms at your feet. The decay fills to 4 and once you try and add the 5th card you throw out the old cards in the decay. All in all, I wouldn't say the mechanics are bad but elegant. Fun game that gets you into a theme with beautiful art. Texibus fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Apr 21, 2015 |
# ? Apr 21, 2015 15:58 |
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Morels is a fine little game. It's a quick, light 2P game with nice art and enough depth to stay interesting for as long as I've had it. Its biggest problem is that I slightly prefer Lost Cities, for the same niche; but I could see someone preferring Morels, or of course owning both for variety.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:00 |
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The scoring is easier to handle in Morels for sure. Not that I have any trouble scoring Lost Cities, just easier to know what you're at with just a glance.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:11 |
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Pax Porfiriana's another game with a dutch auction market row.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:28 |
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McNerd posted:Morels is a fine little game. It's a quick, light 2P game with nice art and enough depth to stay interesting for as long as I've had it. Its biggest problem is that I slightly prefer Lost Cities, for the same niche; but I could see someone preferring Morels, or of course owning both for variety. Odin's Ravens is the best light 2P game I've played. I don't know of many other games I would describe as beautiful.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:33 |
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Dutch auctions aren't new or special at all really it's just that a bunch of people designed deckbuilding games seemingly without having the first clue about anything.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:54 |
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Bubble-T posted:Dutch auctions aren't new or special at all really it's just that a bunch of people designed deckbuilding games seemingly without having the first clue about anything. My favorite part of The Secret History of Dominion is the paragraph where Donald considers making it a poo poo Parade and figures out straight away all the reasons (which apparently never came up during Ascension's playtesting) that it was a bad idea.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 17:12 |
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Poopy Palpy posted:My favorite part of The Secret History of Dominion is the paragraph where Donald considers making it a poo poo Parade and figures out straight away all the reasons (which apparently never came up during Ascension's playtesting) that it was a bad idea. Ditto for multiple resource types. Yeah yeah, he turned around and made Alchemy, but even if you're a Potion hater you have to admit he handled it a lot better than games like Ascension did.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 17:44 |
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At the same time, I totally understand why people do (or could/should want to) make market row deckbuilders: 1. You can fit a lot more unique cards in a box - an average market deckbuilder might have as many unique cards as Dominion with a couple expansions. If you're creating a theme driven game, you could legitimately want a lot of unique cards to explore your theme. 2. The designer has an extra knob to turn - they can control the number of copies of each card - and designers love knobs. Particularly, it lets them feel like they can have a few crazy cards as long as they're rare. Players often like these momentous sort of arrivals. 3. It makes setup easier/faster, and reduces storage/printing burden 4. It gives some sense of increased interaction, because your buys block other people from taking a card 5. It can be simpler to improve (as a player) at the game, because more elements of the game are static; you learn that Card X looks bad, but it usually ends up good if you buy it early because Card Y or Z often shows up. That said, I don't think most Market games represent efforts to get the most out of these potential advantages; rather, it's just the default lowest effort design - the same thing that leads to no limits on buys/actions, no negative feedback on VP, multiple resources, direct attacks, and other intuitive looking choices that detract from the game. And to be fair, lots of these decisions are also forced. Dominion got away with a lot of stuff because it hit first - and it'd be hard to sell a very similar game now that the core mechanics are no longer a novelty. They have to distinguish themselves somehow, and many of the best decisions were already taken.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:42 |
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You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 16, 2018 |
# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:46 |
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I like Ascension and Star Realms... Please don't hurt me!
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:46 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too). It's not that there's randomness, it's that you can do very little to mitigate when the randomness goes against you.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:50 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too).
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:53 |
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I enjoy Star Realms on my tablet, but I know it's bad as gently caress. It's basically a guilty pleasure. I really think a Suburbia-style market row would do lot to decrease randomness and increase meaningful choices during the game, but I'm not too sure it would improve gameplay all that much, given how obviously better certain cards are and that the general balance is sketchy because it didn't need to be better than the randomness dictated.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:59 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too). There's a difference between randomness that effects all players equally (or allows mitigation) and randomness that's "welp, sucks to be you". Sorry you're too thick to tell the difference.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:59 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too). It's RNG that arbitrarily benefits one player over another based purely on chance, in a game that should be about who played their cards the best and developed the best strategy. If you have two players of similar skill, luck of the market will have a bigger determining factor than who played better. I've only played the SR app but even if there is 5+ market choices, more often than not 1 or 2 are just plain better than the rest, and wether those cards are available for purchase on your turn or your opponents is purely luck with no way for you to mitigate it. At least in Carcassonne you can mess with other peoples tiles or through smart placement get in on their city/field/whatever, and you can do variants like start with 3 tiles so you have a small hand to pick from instead of just the one.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:59 |
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BonHair posted:I enjoy Star Realms on my tablet, but I know it's bad as gently caress. It's basically a guilty pleasure. I really think a Suburbia-style market row would do lot to decrease randomness and increase meaningful choices during the game, but I'm not too sure it would improve gameplay all that much, given how obviously better certain cards are and that the general balance is sketchy because it didn't need to be better than the randomness dictated. I think someone, maybe it was fozzy, described Star Realms as competitive Angry Birds.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:02 |
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Market row deckbuilders are also inherently less replayable. There are N-choose-10 setups in Dominion; there is only one setup in Ascension.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:02 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too). Have you played Ascension's first expansion? There's a card called Black Hole that, if gotten in the first two shuffles, wins you the game. That is not acceptable.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:03 |
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Texibus posted:Sounds like Suburbia used the same mechanic for its market. Once both players figure this out it's basically the same as any other market row—the penalty for buying the newest tile just doesn't matter very much when you're sitting on 60+ money. I like the solution in Castles much more: you have to actually pay the other player, not the bank, for pieces. It also helps that money is much tighter in Castles. Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too).
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:08 |
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Bottom Liner posted:You guys' gripes about market row drafting basically boils down to not liking RNG elements, which are a fundamental part of many great games. I think the fact that there are 5+ choices to buy from in say Ascension downplays the effect of RNG, as opposed to a game like Carcassonne where you draw 1 tile face down and are completely at the mercy of RNG (I like both games a lot too). Hey buddy, the Bottom Line is you're wrong. Ha ha, ho ho. (For real though you're wrong and apparently can't tell that all randomness is not created equally)
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:10 |
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At least with Star Realms the pool is small enough that I know what cards I muy be able to buy into / flip. Ascension has so many cards and so many one-offs there's no garuntee you'll get more than one copy of any given card. I'm sure Star Realms will gently caress that up though by adding a million expansions.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:13 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 19:10 |
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Market row deckbuilders are also inherently less replayable. There are N-choose-10 setups in Dominion; there is only one setup in Ascension. Well that's Ascension. Legendary would be an example of a market row deckbuilder with variable setup.
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# ? Apr 21, 2015 19:13 |