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Shadow225 posted:I really wish I didn't know about the existence of Big Money in Dominion. The game went from building a Rude Goldberg machine to buying like, 2 action cards total and racing Big Money. Maybe it's a symptom of playing the AI in Androminion that improves with live competition, but it did kill the magic for me. This is a symptom of playing against very weak foes, a 2-card strategy like that will usually not be a good idea in a 2-3 player game. Big Money and its minor variations are a baseline, not a top strategy. (In 4-player there are so few points per player available that greening very quickly can be strong, so just buy your gold and immediate provinces. It's also way harder to build a reliable engine for several reasons.)
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Apr 28, 2015 05:20
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Shadow225 posted:I really wish I didn't know about the existence of Big Money in Dominion. The game went from building a Rude Goldberg machine to buying like, 2 action cards total and racing Big Money. Maybe it's a symptom of playing the AI in Androminion that improves with live competition, but it did kill the magic for me. Big money is kind of baby's first strategy, and will lose to pretty much any intermediate or advanced strategy. Here's a decent run down of basic Dominion strategy http://gameknight.com/?page_id=848
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Apr 28, 2015 05:22
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Shadow225 posted:I really wish I didn't know about the existence of Big Money in Dominion. The game went from building a Rude Goldberg machine to buying like, 2 action cards total and racing Big Money. Maybe it's a symptom of playing the AI in Androminion that improves with live competition, but it did kill the magic for me. I've found myself doing the same thing, so in the last few games I've played, I've gone back to just experimenting with cards. I haven't done that well, partly because I don't know what to look for, and partly because I'm simultaneously exploring new expansions. Still, the exploration part of Dominion is great, and I still really like the game. On the weekend I got to play Glory to Rome and Race for the Galaxy with one expansion, but I don't remember which one. I liked both of them, but I want to play another game of G2R before making any conclusions. It was a really degenerate game with virtually nobody taking the merchant. I misjudged how long the game would be, and ended up not getting anything done after building 3 buildings. I was planning to start merchanting things into my vault afterwards, but with 5 players, I ran out of time. RftG went much better than my first game. Knowing how important the scoring developments and planets were, and not getting any good consumer planets, I scoured the deck for military planets, while my opponent got a produce consume engine going. It ended up pretty close with me losing 50 to 47. I like the hand management better in G2R over RftG, and how there aren't as many unique cards. I think I like the way they do role selection more or less equally though. I'm curious how people compare these two with Eminent Domain (+ expansion) as role selection games. One of my friends got rid of Eminent Domain after playing a couple games of G2R, but I don't know if he tried with the expansion.
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Apr 28, 2015 05:23
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Shadow225 posted:I really wish I didn't know about the existence of Big Money in Dominion. The game went from building a Rude Goldberg machine to buying like, 2 action cards total and racing Big Money. Maybe it's a symptom of playing the AI in Androminion that improves with live competition, but it did kill the magic for me.  http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/01/23/the-five-fundamental-deck-types-the-engine/
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Apr 28, 2015 05:25
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Saint Petersburg 2nd edition is pretty solid. You get the base game + a 5th player expansion that adds a market phase + 6 additional modules. The base game is very easy to teach and adding the market phase + a few modules gives it enough strategy for repeated plays. Worth it.
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Apr 28, 2015 06:00
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T-Bone posted:Saint Petersburg 2nd edition is pretty solid. You get the base game + a 5th player expansion that adds a market phase + 6 additional modules. What games would you compare it to? I vaguely know it's a tableau builder, is it worth buying for someone who likes Race for the Galaxy a lot?
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Apr 28, 2015 06:09
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I found the original at least very disappointing back when it came out (picked it up after it won Deutscher Spiele Preis in 2004), but don't know how the reworked version plays out and how the market expansion changes things.
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Apr 28, 2015 06:20
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If you don't like the original I don't think this one will change your opinion. The market basically adds a set collection element wherein only the 1st and 2nd players in the particular set get points (you score the sets every market phase and the scoring increases in value each round). I actually haven't played Race  but yeah it's a tableau builder like 7 Wonders and the VP/Economy balancing reminds me of Dominion. It's definitely not going to blow you out of the water but for what I was looking for (a nice little weekday game I can play with a few folks in 45-90min depending on modules) I'm pretty satisfied.e: here's a link to the modules if you want to check them out. I've only used the first two (one of the players did some cool Dominionesque stuff with the purple action cards + the discard rummage buildings) http://www.hans-im-glueck.de/fileadmin/data_archive/Regeln/EN-StPetersburg_Modules.pdf Module 6 in particular (Obstacles) looks like it could be a fairly major change of pace. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 06:57
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Been playing the Galaxy Trucker iOS version and dang is it fun. I can only imagine how much funner it is to scramble for parts in real life. I wish I had more friends who liked Vlaadi games :[
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Apr 28, 2015 06:58
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jeeves posted:Been playing the Galaxy Trucker iOS version and dang is it fun. I can only imagine how much funner it is to scramble for parts in real life. Not even remotely fun. Never play with someone who grows their nails unless you like bleeding.
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Apr 28, 2015 09:34
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Played Patchwork today, a perfect information 1v1 abstract game by Uwe Rosenberg. Players spend buttons (money) to buy patches (tetris-style pieces) which are placed on their quilt (board). Doing so also costs you 'time' though, which basically means you move ahead on a track. Moving forward can net you benefits like more buttons and some 1x1 patches, but the catch is you don't get another turn until your opponent has passed you on the track. You can also always choose to move as far as it takes to get 1 space ahead of your opponent on the time track, which gives you buttons as well. Players score one point for every button they have left at the end of the game and 2 points for every patch they've covered up. Patches have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, button and time costs, additionally some patches increase your button 'income' as you move around the time track and cost more as appropriate. In an odd way it's basically Caverna boiled down to the bare necessities - the rooms are reduced to a bunch of simple tiles players try to draft from each other giving varying amounts of income and points, and worker placement efficiency is reduced to jostling for position on the time track. Seeing as I hated the bloat and complexity of Caverna this is all upside in my book. I'll need to play it more to see if the perfect information creates look-ahead issues or if the end game is weird, but I give it a tentative thumbs up. It's an efficient design that plays 20 minutes and comes in a relatively small box, though it does take up a fair bit of the table in play.
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Apr 28, 2015 12:19
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Scyther posted:Bunny Bunny Moose Moose exists in a weird limbo where it's too fluffy and wacky for most core gamers and has too weird a gameplay structure for casuals to easily learn it. I've found it tends to fall flat with both types of groups. Guess where it didn't fall flat. That's right, VlaadaCon!  Mix of serious gamers and medium weight gamers, and people thought it was hilarious. Distracted a bit from the TK tourney, though.
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Apr 28, 2015 12:26
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When is VlaadaCon, anyway. All day, everyday?
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Apr 28, 2015 13:05
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nimby posted:When is VlaadaCon, anyway. All day, everyday? Exactly! This year, it's July 25th, details are on the website (still updating some other stuff, but the date and time are there). Vlaadacon.org Massachusetts, so I doubt anyone outside new England would even remotely consider coming, but hey, could happen! Maybe when we get bigger and/or move out of the cheap suburbs.
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Apr 28, 2015 13:33
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silvergoose posted:Exactly! I'm going to have to see if my local board game meetup can be coerced into hosting a Vlaadacon
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Apr 28, 2015 16:07
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bobvonunheil posted:I'm going to have to see if my local board game meetup can be coerced into hosting a Vlaadacon If you're gonna do it, please email info@vlaadacon.org we'd love to coordinate or make it a bigger thing or something. 
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Apr 28, 2015 17:21
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Jimbozig posted:I have used rats to eat my feodums and make me silver to buy more feodums. I also had some way to trash the leftover rats. It was a fun time and I did well. So there, I like Rats and Feodum. In fact, I like Dark Ages a lot. Guilds, I'd agree is weaker, but I also have a lot less experience with it. Rats is great with basically any form of trash-for-benefit, especially Apprentice/Rats which is amazing. Bishop/Rats, Salvager/Rats, Upgrade/Rats etc etc etc. Rats eat your trash, then get killed for benefit plus an extra card. Shadow225 posted:I really wish I didn't know about the existence of Big Money in Dominion. The game went from building a Rude Goldberg machine to buying like, 2 action cards total and racing Big Money. Maybe it's a symptom of playing the AI in Androminion that improves with live competition, but it did kill the magic for me. Functionally Big Money is a time-limiter not a strategy. But it's a lot more prevalent on some boards and in particular with some sets than with others. Without much trashing/engine potential big money, well-executed, is pretty good.
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Apr 28, 2015 17:32
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Big Money is kind of irrelevant unless someone else is actually going Big Money. You take two people, who both know about Big Money, and they both know that there are generally better strategies, so you each explore the possibilities of the Kingdom and end up having a non-big-money game. Sometimes the game ends up dragging on and you think "wait a minute, if I had just gone big money I would have won by now!" but that is irrelevant. It's 1) possibly not true because the other guy would have adjusted to your strat and shut you down with a better one, and 2) doesn't mean anything because you just need to beat his strat, not beat big money.
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Apr 28, 2015 17:51
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As far as banning cards go, in my gaming group, we are this close to banning Cartographer because of how much it slows down the drat game. Yes, let me wait while you chain together 4 cartographers, a couple cities, etc... all intermixed with each other. There are plenty of other cards that can have a slowdown effect, but none as big as what we've experienced with cartographer.
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Apr 28, 2015 17:57
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I'm a novice Dominion player but last time playing with some people they rolled out some expansion stuff and I'm reading the cards seeing all sorts of stuff like "person to your left does thing, if they did a b or c then you get d e or f" ie you can't decide what to do on your turn until it is literally your turn then you'll need to figure out what resources you have AND THEN you can plan your turn (you know that thing you normally have all table circuit to do) and I'm like whelp better get comfortable because this game is going to be  zzzzzzzz downtime
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Apr 28, 2015 19:02
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Mister Sinewave posted:I'm a novice Dominion player but last time playing with some people they rolled out some expansion stuff and I'm reading the cards seeing all sorts of stuff like "person to your left does thing, if they did a b or c then you get d e or f" ie you can't decide what to do on your turn until it is literally your turn then you'll need to figure out what resources you have AND THEN you can plan your turn (you know that thing you normally have all table circuit to do) and I'm like whelp better get comfortable because this game is going to be Yeah. Attacks are pretty cool.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:05
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Mister Sinewave posted:I'm a novice Dominion player but last time playing with some people they rolled out some expansion stuff and I'm reading the cards seeing all sorts of stuff like "person to your left does thing, if they did a b or c then you get d e or f" ie you can't decide what to do on your turn until it is literally your turn then you'll need to figure out what resources you have AND THEN you can plan your turn (you know that thing you normally have all table circuit to do) and I'm like whelp better get comfortable because this game is going to be Yeah, can you believe that the game lets you draw extra cards that can completely change the gameplan you already had and force you to redo your decision tree?
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Apr 28, 2015 19:09
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Mister Sinewave posted:I'm a novice Dominion player but last time playing with some people they rolled out some expansion stuff and I'm reading the cards seeing all sorts of stuff like "person to your left does thing, if they did a b or c then you get d e or f" ie you can't decide what to do on your turn until it is literally your turn then you'll need to figure out what resources you have AND THEN you can plan your turn (you know that thing you normally have all table circuit to do) and I'm like whelp better get comfortable because this game is going to be This also applies any time someone plays a card to draw a card.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:10
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Mister Sinewave posted:I'm a novice Dominion player but last time playing with some people they rolled out some expansion stuff and I'm reading the cards seeing all sorts of stuff like "person to your left does thing, if they did a b or c then you get d e or f" ie you can't decide what to do on your turn until it is literally your turn then you'll need to figure out what resources you have AND THEN you can plan your turn (you know that thing you normally have all table circuit to do) and I'm like whelp better get comfortable because this game is going to be This is why Dominion with more than 3-4 players, or Dominion with AP players, is a huge mistake.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:16
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*spends five minutes pondering* I play... pawn, for... an action and... a card. *draws pawn* *five more minutes pondering*
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Apr 28, 2015 19:17
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admanb posted:This is why Fixed.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:21
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admanb posted:This is why Dominion with more than 3-4 players, or Dominion with AP players, is a huge mistake. Dominion completely falls apart with more than 4 players. Don't do that.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:23
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Dominion is barely tolerable with 4 adding more is madness
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Apr 28, 2015 19:24
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Lorini posted:Fixed. Yeah ain't that the truth. I play a game of Kemet last night with 3 new players and one guy who is famed locally for his AP, but Kemet is basically his favorite game so I wouldn't be too bad right. It took 4 hours. ( with rules explanation set up and tear down) It turns out that one of the new players is nearly as bad plus doesn't pay attention to the rules and then lectures everyone on how they can't do that because for example moving a troop into your city when you have a creature in reserve doesn't automatically attach that creature onto the troop. Of course he goers for the white tiles that give him more DI cards so he has more stuff to get AP about 
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Apr 28, 2015 19:30
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Lottery of Babylon posted:*spends five minutes pondering* Thought I read somewhere where the designer said Pawn was somewhat of a mistake to print and they should've just made it "+1 Action +1 Card"
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Apr 28, 2015 19:35
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Rumda posted:Yeah ain't that the truth. I play a game of Kemet last night with 3 new players and one guy who is famed locally for his AP, but Kemet is basically his favorite game so I wouldn't be too bad right. The first time I played Eclipse was with three players. We took about two hours and enjoyed the game thoroughly. I later played a game with some friends who had played Eclipse a dozen times or more. It took 6 hours. AP is the worst thing. About the only game that I'll play with people who have severe AP is 7 Wonders. I'll also accept Roll for the Galaxy, but simultaneous action selection is a godsend since you don't have to go serially.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:54
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Rumda posted:Yeah ain't that the truth. I play a game of Kemet last night with 3 new players and one guy who is famed locally for his AP, but Kemet is basically his favorite game so I wouldn't be too bad right. I'll make you cry a little. Sunday, we had a bit of time with friends, but not much, so we decided to do a round of Kemet. 8 points instead of our usual 10, but otherwise a normal four player game. With setup, we actually managed to come in under an hour. AP is the worst.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:10
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Trasson posted:I'll make you cry a little. Sunday, we had a bit of time with friends, but not much, so we decided to do a round of Kemet. 8 points instead of our usual 10, but otherwise a normal four player game. With setup, we actually managed to come in under an hour. I always play to 8, because I initially forgot that after the training game to 8, you can play to 10. We still take 2-3 hours. Next time I'm playing with our massive AP-guy and it looks like it's going to be another game where we get to see him stare at the board for 2 minutes at a time, I'm going to time his rounds. Then if he comments that someone else is taking too long (he does this), I'll just show the timer. One time in Mage Knight, he managed to take a 17 minute turn. It wasn't exactly timed, but when it gets that long, we can afford to be a few minutes off either way.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:14
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Dre2Dee2 posted:Thought I read somewhere where the designer said Pawn was somewhat of a mistake to print and they should've just made it "+1 Action +1 Card" That's an... interesting read on the Secret History for the card: quote:A very early card that never changed (except the name - it was originally called Spare Room). It was considered for the main set for a while, but left because it slowed down new players too much. You play Pawn, stare at the card for forever, trying to make sure you've considered all of the possibilities, then finally pick +1 card +1 action. The card you draw is another Pawn and somehow you have to reconsider everything. It's one of my personal favorites, but really had to wait for an expansion, so that most players will have played a bunch already. The point isn't that +1 card +1 action is the correct choice, (that would be +1 card +1 coin) just that it's the choice you'll make if you have no idea what you're doing.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:41
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Some Numbers posted:Yeah, can you believe that the game lets you draw extra cards that can completely change the gameplan you already had and force you to redo your decision tree? In my novice (e: base-set-centric) view, "normally" you draw your new hand at the end of your turn & have the whole table rotation to observe play and adjust your meta-strategy, inasmuch as allowed by the options you're holding in your hand. When it's time for you to play you already know your basic options and it's just a matter of putting your observations into action when you do your turn. Suddenly playing with a bunch of new cards, all of which change your options during your turn and depend on interaction with other (distracted, novice) players before they can be resolved = yeah better get comfy this is not going to be one of our 20 minute Dominion games. How this is some kind of controversial observation I have no idea. I mean sure you guys probably all know this poo poo like the back of your hand but novices going from cards that say things like "+2 Actions" or "+1 Card" to cards that read like "get X if Z or A next turn if B but not C unless D" is pretty intimidating. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 20:41
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I don't even know what cards have to do with the player to your left besides Masquerade (pass a card to another player), Smugglers (gain a card the last player just gained), Possession (which is complex but is crazy expensive and a poo poo card anyway) and one or two new ones in Adventures. Most of those types of cards are pretty drat simple and don't really do anything to add to AP. Also, Pawn is a trap for newbies because +1 Card +1 Action is the thing most people will always do with the card, which is also the most worthless thing you can do with it since you end up with a five-card hand with one action. It's mainly nice for the flexibility it gives you when you want more money/buys and maybe if there's a Throne Room-esque card in the kingdom. \/\/ e: Forgot about Tribute. Mega64 fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 20:49
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quote:Yeah, can you believe that the game lets you draw extra cards that can completely change the gameplan you already had and force you to redo your decision tree? To be fair, Tribute (which I assume is the card he was talking about) does seem especially prone to creating long (and sometimes unproductive) turns. And in practice it often feels even worse than it is, as you'll end up with noticeably painful chains like "I Tribute -> Other Player Shuffles -> OK, so based on that I'll draw -> I shuffle -> I draw -> Nothing". Normally turns that take that long are at least hastening the end of the game. Sure Governor, Governor, Governor... Province takes a while to resolve, but the game isn't going to last through too many of those kinds of turns) - cards like Tribute are inconsistent enough that often your long turns still durdle and go nowhere.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:49
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hrm, it's almost like i've spent the last 6 loving years recommending new players start off with the other expansions and work their way up in release order which is ALSO relative card depth/complexity order edit: not that i think adventures is complex at all, just that if you're a loving idiot and jump to it you will make a ton of bad assumptions in addition to being able to appreciate it less
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Apr 28, 2015 20:50
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I just assumed he was talking about Advisor.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:52
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Broken Loose posted:hrm, it's almost like i've spent the last 6 loving years recommending new players start off with the other expansions and work their way up in release order which is ALSO relative card depth/complexity order Tribute's in Intrigue.
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Apr 28, 2015 20:54
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