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SilverMike posted:Any opinions on Imperial Settlers from people who have played it more than once at a con on a tired Sunday morning? Are there issues with it that pop up after a few plays? There was some discussion of it a few pages back: Malloreon posted:As I've said in a couple threads when it comes up, here is a great way to simulate playing IS in about 1 minute: GrandpaPants posted:It's weird, I actually enjoyed playing 51st State, but loving HATE Imperial Settlers. I think the main difference is that (if I recall, it's been like a year) 51st State has a common pool of cards that people are drafting and drawing from. Imperial Settlers has a common pool too, but the personal decks are where most of the broken annoying bullshit comes from. Also, if I recall, 51st State let you blow up any building, so if someone had a lynchpin combo settlement, you could just blow it up if you wanted to. Not so with Imperial Settlers, where bullshit combo pieces like Oasis are nearly invulnerable.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:29
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bobvonunheil posted:Thanks for this. I'm trying to write a summary for a game I haven't even played yet and still do it justice Pop into the online boardgaming thread if you need people to play it with, I'd offer but I've got finals coming up
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Apr 24, 2015 19:33
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So much hate on ole man Dead Winter, I found it entertaining when I played it. Little bit long but by no means a bad game.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:36
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Texibus posted:So much hate on ole man Dead Winter, I found it entertaining when I played it. Little bit long but by no means a bad game. What aspects of it are well-designed in your opinion, and why?
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Apr 24, 2015 20:26
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Regarding my last question of what to buy, I bought Dominion and Dominion Adventures despite your protests (I've played plenty of Dominion, so it wasn't my first expansion). I played a game of Adventures last night and immediately bought it. Adventures is awesome. It's a great mix of the best features of previous expansions as well as some great new mechanics. I think it plays great without mixing anything else, but it can also have some serious synergy with whatever sets and styles you like. It can play big economy, lots of interaction, etc. The leveling up Traveller cards are a lot of fun and extremely powerful if you get it rolling. I really enjoy Events and Duration cards too. If you still enjoy Dominion I highly recommend this set.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:58
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Bottom Liner posted:Regarding my last question of what to buy, I bought Dominion and Dominion Adventures despite your protests (I've played plenty of Dominion, so it wasn't my first expansion). I played a game of Adventures last night and immediately bought it. I may have to check it out. I bought Intrique, loved it, then bought Seaside, hated it, and never looked at Dominion stuff again.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:01
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I liked the game of Dominion Adventures I played last night. Probably because I started 5/2 with the event that lets you gain a four-cost card if you have no treasures in play and used that to get the treasure that gains you a Gold and a Copper every time you play it and the reserve card that lets you gain a duplicate card costing up to 6 whenever you want. It ended up working pretty well at flooding my deck with golds. Also played Pictomania with six. My only complaints are that it's a lot longer than other social games and that it can only play six max (though I definitely understand why it doesn't since practically any more would be a massive clusterfuck of scoring markers). Otherwise, it's fantastic, and I ended up winning, including a nice final round with the hardest difficulty where I actually guessed everyone's drawings correctly (though almost everyone missed mine, but luckily one was the same number anyway and I guess my "generosity" looked close enough to "offer", and it didn't help that there was an entire card of clues that was about people losing money to other people). I can't wait to try this one with my friends.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:11
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I know this thread loves Tash-Kalar, so maybe someone can explain to me why you guys love it so much. I have not played it, but I looked into it. For the outside, it seems like it'd be very difficult to control anything if you don't memorize the cards/patterns of your opponent's deck.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:13
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Magnetic North posted:I know this thread loves Tash-Kalar, so maybe someone can explain to me why you guys love it so much. I have not played it, but I looked into it. For the outside, it seems like it'd be very difficult to control anything if you don't memorize the cards/patterns of your opponent's deck. Knowing the patterns in the normal decks isn't going to help you prevent your opponent from pulling stuff off very well. Remembering the patterns for the legendary creatures is probably more important, I think.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:15
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Magnetic North posted:I know this thread loves Tash-Kalar, so maybe someone can explain to me why you guys love it so much. I have not played it, but I looked into it. For the outside, it seems like it'd be very difficult to control anything if you don't memorize the cards/patterns of your opponent's deck. Nah, you can access mid-level strategy by recognizing basic patterns. For example, every faction has something that summons off an L-shape, a 2x2 square, a triangle, et cetera. And any dense cluster of 5+ connected pieces is going to have something your opponent can summon. It's far more important to pay attention to the current and upcoming Task cards, which are public information. Your opponent can dance pieces around her back field until the sun burns out, and it won't win her the game. She'll have to make a move for points at some juncture, and that's where you can see and respond to plays. "Oh hey, Green Summoning is out, and you sure have been gathering pieces around that green square. Let's go blow that up, whatever it is." There does come a point where card familiarity/card prediction starts being the deciding edge between players, but it's much further along the learning curve than you think.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:26
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Knowing all the decks and legends is helpful in getting good at the game, but even if you don't, there's a big element of optimizing your current (and maybe next) turn based on your cards in hand, the tasks in play and the pieces on board that is really satisfying. There's nothing quite like setting up the perfect werewolf summon to kill 4 enemy pieces in one action, or having a double summon turn, etc When it comes to learning formations, there are quite a few shared shapes among decks, which simplifies things a bit. Each deck also tends to have a certain pattern synergy between cards that essentially lets you prepare for multiple cards at once (good for bluffing if the other player knows the shapes as well). It's not that hard to start seeing the potential summons once you've played a few times.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:35
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Big McHuge posted:What aspects of it are well-designed in your opinion, and why? Theme. it creates a good atmosphere that draws on the theme of being a community of survivors in a post apocalyptic horror scenario, and it creates tension between players by having group goals, separate secret goals, and crossroad card decisions. Are your decisions always meaningful, no. Is it necessarily challenging to figure out resource problems, no. Does every game have to be strategic in nature to be entertaining, no. Enough resource management to help move a long a good story about of people on the edge of survival. I don't think any other zombie game provides as strong of a story mechanism as that one. How come you can't have a good time with it?
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Apr 24, 2015 21:43
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Fat Samurai posted:Doesn't Munchkin have some kind of stat tracker app that comes with in-game advantages? It does! You get one "boon" per game and how good the boon is, is directly tied to your current level so you basically just always cash in at like Level 9 or 19 (since it supports the Epic Munchkin set of rules). The boons you can get range from breathtakingly shite like "+1 to run away, one use only", to the absolutely game-endingly absurdly strong like "You can use class cards to add +15 to your combat strength each" and "triple effectiveness of all bonuses played this round of combat". Leaving aside how absurd it is that you pay for this stuff I actually recommend it if you dislike Munchkin because it's very good at reliably ending that lovely stalemate situation that occurs when you reach game level and it turns into "everyone fling poo poo at the guy whose about to win until everyone runs out of poo poo to fling" like you're playing Kill Doctor Lucky. Unless you're playing a fuckhuge game of Munchkin I sincerely doubt the other players will be able to top "double my effective combat strength" and whatever else you've got in your hand with just the cards in their own hands. Legit kind of a massive edge. i still don't win at that loving game
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Apr 24, 2015 21:45
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Texibus posted:How come you can't have a good time with it? You are re-opening a massive can of worms. Many people, especially people on these forums, cannot see past bad mechanical problems in a game, no matter how much theme is there. For them, it is simply lipstick on a pig. DoW has some pretty lipstick, but it doesn't keep it from being a big fat poopy hog.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:48
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Texibus posted:Theme. I think City/Mall of Horror does this better. Your argument is theme. Zombie fluxx has the same theme. Therefore it is as good of a game.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:49
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Texibus posted:Theme. I'm going to go ahead and say, yet again, Mall of Horror does this atmosphere way, way better, while having mechanics that do not detract from the experience. Why does it being a zombie game mean you have to have a good time with it?
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Apr 24, 2015 21:49
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Texibus posted:I don't think any other zombie game provides as strong of a story mechanism as that one. After a few playthroughs my group has found the game to be profoundly more enjoyable by just leaving out the traitor card/mechanics entirely and always playing the scenarios on hard mode. Everyone still keeps their secret objectives, though, so there's at least a little tension about not always making the perfect move. Edit: The game still has problems, but we have a couple guys in our group who are really into storytelling stuff and we're happy to indulge them in the game once in a while. I understand and agree that the traitor mechanic is completely broken, but I'm honestly a little surprised at how much vitriol for the game there is. It's definitely not a perfect game but it's not anywhere close to some of the worst games we've played. Aerox fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 21:50
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Aerox posted:
Most of the hate for the game is predicated on the following: 1) The traitor mechanic is extremely poorly done. 2) Most of what it has to offer was done better by Mall/City of Horror and Battlestar Galactica years before this game was released. 3) The amount of hype surrounding this game is much higher than its mechanical soundness should allow for. Edit: To clarify that last point a little, Dead of Winter was highly touted in this thread around GenCon last year, but then people played it a few more times and realized that it wasn't nearly as good as they initially thought. After it had been discussed to death and "the hive mind" (I hate that description) had decided it wasn't good, it came in second on BGG's Game of the Year for 2014. OmegaGoo fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 22:01
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Texibus posted:How come you can't have a good time with it? Absolutely busted win conditions that make it hard for it to even compute as a game for me. Stuff just happens and then the winner(s) are decided largely arbitrarily. The theming actually goes against the game mechanics in this regard as well, since it's like "oh you're survivors and everyone's out for themselves hence secret objective" but then "oh wait one person actually is only out for themselves and wants to ruin your day" but then if you exile him his objective changes and it might be "he's totally normal now and not out to ruin your poo poo". Like it feels like it's trying to be either PvE or 4v1 but then functionally secret objectives makes it basically a free-for-all regardless so it just...doesn't work. i've written many words about this throughout my post history and I've still not really got a good handle on how to express this complaint properly but I can't even play this game anymore because it just fails to even work as a game.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:05
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Just play Archipelago and pretend the natives are zombies, it cant be any more racist than the actual art
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Apr 24, 2015 22:10
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Tekopo posted:The Secret Objectives to me in Dead of Winter seem completely backwards. If you think about what their aim is, the secret objectives are meant to sow distrust among the players by forcing them to keep resources that they would actually want to use to help themselves/the group. This sort of resource-keeping is thus meant to instill conflict in the game by having people say 'wait, why are you keeping this food, we need it!' in order to evoke the classic scenes in zombie films in which someone is found hoarding stuff because of their self-serving need. I guess it is also meant to create a feeling of having to make sacrifices/hard choices for the player.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:14
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Does it say somewhere you can't disclose your secret objective? I played it by stating mine, maybe that was out right cheating. it did force me to negotiate with the group over something that would be meaningless to me otherwise. Like yes you can have this food but I need it replaced the next turn or soon, otherwise go to hell the rest of you dudes. Didn't show it, just said I'm trying to do this thing.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:19
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Tekopo posted:Just gonna quote myself on why I think dead of winter does badly regarding what it is allegedly good at: theme. I agree completely with you on that, but if everyone played openly then the betrayer wouldn't work in the game. I like the betrayer, but I think it should be a different system than the objectives for the reasons you stated. In my game Wednesday night, people thought I was the betrayer and almost exiled me because I was searching the library when we needed fuel. One thing I think that helps is to constantly communicate what you need and ask for it without actually revealing your hidden card, since players can trade anything except equipment without being in the same location. That works well with keeping your objective hidden and even works with the betrayal aspect. But overall, the "survivors try to win, but everyone has to do extra things to WIN" mechanic is the worst part of the game. The scenarios, crisis, and crossroads cards work well enough to keep the game interesting without the secret objectives (except for the betrayer). Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 22:22
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If you trade something in the game, you have to use it immediately. The game forces you to search stuff on your own to fulfill secret objectives. This also forces you to prevent group wins in order to fulfil personal objectives, which is another cover for the traitor.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:25
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I didn't know that you had to use it as soon as you get it. That is a pretty big flaw, since there are situations where you will just outright lose if everyone is trying to fulfill secret win conditions. Eh, I think we'll just play hardcore with no hidden objectives next time and see how that works.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:27
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why play thematic games about dumb poo poo like zombies when it could be about cool poo poo like mobsters and communists
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Apr 24, 2015 22:31
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StashAugustine posted:Just play Archipelago and pretend the natives are zombies, it cant be any more racist than the actual art Yea this. Archipelago is the same "competitive co-op with possibility of a traitor", but far more mechanically sound, as long as you don't mind a healthy portion of colonialism.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:32
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Bottom Liner posted:I didn't know that you had to use it as soon as you get it. That is a pretty big flaw, since there are situations where you will just outright lose if everyone is trying to fulfill secret win conditions. Eh, I think we'll just play hardcore with no hidden objectives next time and see how that works.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:32
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Why the hell doesn't someone make a Vlaada-esque zombie game where you prepare for the invasion and then watch the world burn? I'm pretty sure you could reshuffle Galaxy Trucker's mechanics into something like barricade building, followed by event cards that gently caress up your barricade.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:35
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Or hell, zombie Space Alert. But those might accidentally be good zombie games 
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Apr 24, 2015 22:37
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StashAugustine posted:Just play Archipelago and pretend the natives are zombies, it cant be any more racist than the actual art This guy must be super racist then. You can be the first to tell him. (basically, yeah the art choice in Archipelago is pretty puzzling but it's not exactly unprecedented)
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Apr 24, 2015 22:40
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StashAugustine posted:why play thematic games about dumb poo poo like zombies when it could be about cool poo poo like mobsters and communists I know, right? Preorder this poo poo ASAP
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Apr 24, 2015 22:42
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bobvonunheil posted:This guy must be super racist then. This argument is in bad faith and you know it.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:44
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bobvonunheil posted:This guy must be super racist then. We already had this discussion for like three pages in the last thread. If the islander being depicted is supposed to be performing a maori haka, it's a) badly-conveyed, b) inaccurate to the historical purpose and usage of the haka, and c) presented without appropriate context for distribution to a market (America and Europe) that at large does not understand this gesture except through an infantilizing lens, when d) that market has a longstanding history of perceiving Pacific Islander cultures as infantile, uncivilized, and savage. This is why we have nota bene citations, people. Christ.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:54
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Big McHuge posted:What aspects of it are well-designed in your opinion, and why? I like the deterministic manner in which zombies appear and where, how many will be stopped by barricades and what will happen, how noise attracts more, and even how combat works. There isn't "roll a die to see how many show up, roll a die to see whether attacking a zombie kills it, roll a die to see whether your extra search makes noise", etc etc. Not everything is 100% deterministic of course but it's very possible to "manage" the horde because of how it's structured, and to know what you're setting yourself up for next round. This helps me as a player feel like I have some control over how much risk I accept doing what. I think the crossroads cards are clunky and haven't had stellar luck with the traitor mechanic but I liked the stuff above. As a whole it's a mixed bag, a game might come off really well or it might just kind of flop.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:32
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Gutter Owl posted:We already had this discussion for like three pages in the last thread. If the islander being depicted is supposed to be performing a maori haka, it's a) badly-conveyed, b) inaccurate to the historical purpose and usage of the haka, and c) presented without appropriate context for distribution to a market (America and Europe) that at large does not understand this gesture except through an infantilizing lens, when d) that market has a longstanding history of perceiving Pacific Islander cultures as infantile, uncivilized, and savage. But in the game you play as a imperialist settler, enslaving the native populations and manipulating them for your own ends. Why do people care about the pictures when the theme is 1000x worse? It's like people getting upset about large nosed Jewish caricatures, in an economic game about conducting the holocaust most efficiently.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:42
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Rutibex posted:It's like people getting upset about large nosed Jewish caricatures, in an economic game about conducting the holocaust most efficiently. I'm guessing that would be a worker placement game.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:50
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Worker displacement.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:01
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Rutibex posted:But in the game you play as a imperialist settler, enslaving the native populations and manipulating them for your own ends. Why do people care about the pictures when the theme is 1000x worse? I honestly find the theme a bit off-putting, but here's the thing about theme: You can depict a system, and even fictitiously engage with a system, without morally condoning it. War games have been doing this for generations. Most people playing Totaler Krieg aren't piloting the Third Reich to demonstrate the superiority of the Nazi ethos. But in making the natives appear infantile and savage (albeit possibly through an accident of cultural adaptation or gesture translation), Archipelago grants implicit weight to the colonial narrative: "The natives are wild and childlike. We must control them for their own good." To use your own Holocaust example, there's a huge difference in what Train implies about the subject and what Juden Raus! implies. tl;dr The content of your game means something. Do some research. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 00:13
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The last couple of times they've been mentioned, City and Mall of Horror have been lumped together. Is City just a straight upgrade or something? Looks like Mall is older and pretty much out of print but just checking.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:42
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