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Got to play Spector Ops: Shadow of Babel last night with three players, myself being a hunter. It's the new Plaid Hat game where a team of hunters try to track down an agent moving through a city completing objectives and then escaping from one of three exits at the end of the board. First impression, holy gently caress this is a big board and made me want to grab my grandmother's bingo marker because of the grid system used on it. The components were alright, the board is pretty despite all the numbered and lettered squares on it, the figurines are detailed however it's a real crazy cast of characters from a weird dog man to a physic mind bolt shooting dude. Everybody's got a few abilities on their character sheet that either lets them do their job better evade hunters/capture the agent. The agent also gets to outfit themselves with some gear that helps accomplish their goal like being able to throw stun grenades that makes affected hunters stunned for their turn ( decreased movement and unable to attack agent). As far as mechanics, it starts out like playing a game of battleship where the Hunters move into an area to try and catch the agent in their line of sight in orthogonal directions so the agent could be one square diagonally away from a hunter and still not be seen. The agent gets a pad with the entire grid system and moves around the board on that pad and only reveals his character if they're in line of sight and the Hunters are always represented on the board. If the agent stops in the line of sight of the hunter he's revealed if he just passed through the line of sight he puts down a last seen token. If the agent is stopped in line of sight of the hunter you roll a D6 to wound the agent (4 wounds they're dead) the hunter needs a roll greater than the amount of spaces between the characters 1 is a always a wiff and on a 6 you get to re-roll and add the next result to your distance check so you could potentially hit someone 18 spaces away with three consecutive 6 rolls.(Can't kill a hunter) I had a good time with it but it took too long to play, with just three people playing it took close to two hours to finish. Also, Every bit of the fun is in the finding of the agent and zero in catching him because the combat mechanic is super straight forward and not fun. I think after about three games of this I'd be bored because you're basically just moving your character around saying, "Do I see you?" and then the agent thoughtfully looking over their bingo sheet and saying,"Mmmmm....Nope." While it was a fun experience for the single play I don't have a desire to own this game, but I'd recommend if you see it laying around to give it a shot. I've never played Mr. Jack before but it seems that it might do all of this hiding bit better, don't know. In a 5 player game there is also a traitor among the Hunters, maybe that is your thing. B- TL;DR A loooong cat and mouse game that comes up short in the catching but does ok in the hiding, fun for a few plays but nothing that has any staying power. Texibus fucked around with this message at 16:04 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 15:57
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T-Bone posted:I think I was worried a little too much about food + I should have turned my cows into steaks earlier (I was harvesting for a long time but was mostly selling my bread for gold and my cows just kinda stat there for a while) which would have saved me some cash to use another players steelmill which might have got me another luxury ship. I also had a bunch of those buildings with the fishery icon but I only actually used the fishery once or twice so despite the VPs I got I think I should have paid more attention to the icon bonuses. It also depends which buildings come up, and how the other people play it. You won't get to use exactly the same strategy every game because you might not see the same buildings, unless everyone aggressively builds things as fast as possible.
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May 8, 2015 15:58
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True -- I liked how you could see what was coming up too although it made the other new guy kind of APish.
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May 8, 2015 16:00
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Texibus posted:I had a good time with it but it took too long to play, with just three people playing it took close to two hours to finish. Also, Every bit of the fun is in the finding of the agent and zero in catching him because the combat mechanic is super straight forward and not fun. I think after about three games of this I'd be bored because you're basically just moving your character around saying, "Do I see you?" and then the agent thoughtfully looking over their bingo sheet and saying,"Mmmmm....Nope." While it was a fun experience for the single play I don't have a desire to own this game, but I'd recommend if you see it laying around to give it a shot. I've never played Mr. Jack before but it seems that it might do all of this hiding bit better, don't know. I played this and came away with the same reaction. Rolling for combat (combat in the first place?) loving blows. I don't even like the whole "haha I have tricks" because that doesn't make the game any more fun for the agents. Letters From Whitechapel works because the cops knows exactly what tricks Jack has but knowing what tricks he has literally doesn't help them any. In Spectre Ops it's another layer of random bullshit stuck between random combat resolution, in a game that is ostensibly about DEDUCTION. Everyone might as well roll to loving move. If you want a similar but better game, check out Letters From Whitechapel. If you want a better deduction game than that, get Tragedy Looper.
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May 8, 2015 16:07
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If you're going to throw combat in at least have it be a two way street so that the hunters take damage as well, but elimination in a two hour long game would also be poo poo.
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May 8, 2015 16:13
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Fury of Dracula has the same mistake: good hide & seek, crap combat. Just get Letters from Whitechapel and be done with it.
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May 8, 2015 16:16
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I wonder how many games would go from mediocre to good if they just had something more elegant for resolving combat *stares into the distance, sheds a single tear*
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May 8, 2015 16:25
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Eclipse and Virgin Queen right of the top of my head
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May 8, 2015 16:35
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StashAugustine posted:Eclipse and Virgin Queen right of the top of my head eclipse is still good, but yeah less lovely combat would kick it from good to great in a hurry
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May 8, 2015 16:39
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Played a new game last night called Cheaty Mages. It was interesting, probably shouldn't have drank so much and paid attention more. Seemed all right.
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May 8, 2015 16:44
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 seriously how hard is this, we've been doing this for half a century now
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May 8, 2015 16:48
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Fungah! posted:eclipse is still good, but yeah less lovely combat would kick it from good to great in a hurry Terra Mystica solves this problem.
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May 8, 2015 16:51
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Rutibex posted:Terra Mystica solves this problem. Tom, I love Terra Mystica but I don't know if removing combat entirely counts as less lovely combat.
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May 8, 2015 16:58
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Texibus posted:TL;DR A loooong cat and mouse game that comes up short in the catching but does ok in the hiding, fun for a few plays but nothing that has any staying power. While I agree with you on much of your review, after 5 games, I can say that I've never seen it go longer than our 1.5 hour first game. The agent turn should be no longer than 1 min, and the hunters should be no longer than a 1 min a piece. Turns are mostly just moving and/or a special action, so most of our turns are 30 seconds or so. There might be some time for thinking/discussion, but most of the time it boils down to short collaboration like, 'I know he is in this area so I'll watch the corner while you sniff him out'. I consider this a quick game. I give it a A-. Rolling to hurt sucks but at least it is scalable to the main draw of the game: the deduction aspect. I don't know what the alternative would be. Honestly, with people who know the game, it lasts 45 mins or so. Usually it is a pretty good 45 minutes but I don't think I'll want to play it past ten plays. They would be a good ten plays, but by then everything will get repetitive. I'd recommend it as an 'upgrade from battleship' for people new to the hobby.
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May 8, 2015 17:00
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sonatinas posted:Pro end game move with birds is move them all to glaciers on last turn to for max bonus points. You have to glaciate a lot though to make it happen. He was asking for beginner strategies. That's what I gave him.
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May 8, 2015 17:11
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How many people were you playing with? I could see this being quicker if you had someone staying in the car constantly doing motion detection.
Texibus fucked around with this message at 17:18 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 17:15
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Texibus posted:How many people were you playing with? I could see this being quicker if you had someone staying in the car constantly doing motion detection. 2,3, and 4, but mostly 3. One dude (usually the gunner or puppet) would post up on the corner and not do much, but no one complained. Usually the player is participating in the conversation, and he doesn't need to be posted there for more than a turn or two until the agent is forced to make a move. You don't need to constantly motion detect, but doing it every few turns to make sure the agent is where you expect is important.
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May 8, 2015 17:32
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I could see it going quicker with that particular character and play style, we randomly took hunters.
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May 8, 2015 17:37
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Obviously the rest of the world is in love with Dead of Winter, but is there a gooncensus on the "best" zombie themed game on the market? Accepting the baggage that comes with that theme of course, and that they pretty much all are so-so to bad. What are the best/worst mechanics people have seen in them? I'm curious what it would take to make a genuinely good game with that theme.
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May 8, 2015 17:52
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Space Alert
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May 8, 2015 17:55
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People keep mentioning Mall of Horror/City of Horror but I haven't played them myself.
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May 8, 2015 17:57
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Tekopo posted:People keep mentioning Mall of Horror/City of Horror but I haven't played them myself. As an owner of City of Horror, I will say that I'm happy I only paid $20 for it. It is OK, but very cut throat so doesn't seem to play well with a wide variety of people. In CoH the zombies are almost incidental. The players are who kills the other players characters, admittedly by feeding them to zombies, but the point stands. The game is man's inhumanity to man, the board game; though I strongly suspect that there are many other board games that do that theme better. All in all CoH is the best zombie game, but still only a B+ game over-all.
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May 8, 2015 18:02
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I'd throw Zombie '15 out there. It's a real time turn-based co-op game where the game lasts 15 minutes long but you have to take turns, so you want to take your turn as fast as possible. There's a set of campaign rules, and you do a lot of scavenging for weapons.
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May 8, 2015 18:07
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Tekopo posted:People keep mentioning Mall of Horror/City of Horror but I haven't played them myself. What are your thoughts on Zombicide? You seem pretty passionate about it. You can probably retheme a lot of games into "zombie games," since most games don't really do a whole lot with zombies besides have them as generic mooks to kill or appeal to a wider nerd audience. That is, it means about as much as Dungeons and Dragons does to Lords of Waterdeep.
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May 8, 2015 18:09
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GrandpaPants posted:You can probably retheme a lot of games into "zombie games," since most games don't really do a whole lot with zombies besides have them as generic mooks to kill or appeal to a wider nerd audience. That is, it means about as much as Dungeons and Dragons does to Lords of Waterdeep. Pandemic is the best zombie game.
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May 8, 2015 18:13
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Ojetor posted:Pandemic is the best zombie game. Agreed. Just pretend the diseases are different kinds of zombies.
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May 8, 2015 18:16
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Galaxy trucker would retheme great into a zombie game. Not that I'd want them to.
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May 8, 2015 18:26
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Yomi, Puzzle Strike, and Flash Duel all have one and a half zombies in them, so they're probably the best Zombie games.
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May 8, 2015 18:28
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Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game? I love me some skeletons.
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May 8, 2015 18:31
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Zombie game is too broad. There are many different types of game that covers. For example Zombicide is basically Left 4 Dead: the board game but e.g. City or Mal of Horror is more a player versus player game where, as another poster put it, the zombies are almost incidental. They are both zombie games. I broken record this a little but the old Dawn of the Dead board game is really good. You can print and play it. It's a little old school wargamey but unlike any other zombie game it really captured the feeling of gradually being painted into a desperate corner - the easy overconfidence that comes from being able to just so easily avoid zombies, it is easy not to take the danger they present seriously. It can be played solo, co-op, or as one player playing the zombies (but imo that's the least exciting option)
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May 8, 2015 18:33
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Countblanc posted:Yomi, Puzzle Strike, and Flash Duel all have one and a half zombies in them, so they're probably the best Zombie games. And Battlecon has a dude that summons zombie metal fans.
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May 8, 2015 18:36
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Lichtenstein posted:Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game? If there was any way to just get Mr. Bones as a board game. One mechanic that hasn't been explored in gaming is blues guitar duels.
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May 8, 2015 18:36
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Mister Sinewave posted:Zombie game is too broad. There are many different types of game that covers. Lichtenstein posted:Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game? Operation
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May 8, 2015 18:40
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Lichtenstein posted:Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game? DungeonQuest.
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May 8, 2015 18:41
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Lichtenstein posted:Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game? Descent.
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May 8, 2015 18:41
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Indolent Bastard posted:In CoH the zombies are almost incidental. The players are who kills the other players characters, admittedly by feeding them to zombies, but the point stands. The game is man's inhumanity to man, the board game; though I strongly suspect that there are many other board games that do that theme better. This is the only way zombie fiction works anyway. Zombies are boring as poo poo, since they are by definition mindless and predictable, so just combatting them is either boring or race war masturbation material. Also, yes, Pandemic is the best Zombie game. Best actual zombie game would be Zombie Dice, because it's short and push-your-luck random. It's sitll bad though.
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May 8, 2015 18:43
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Been playing a lot off solo Thunderstone Advance this week and I found a glaring issue and solution with the game design. When defeating monsters, instead of playing them like other cards from your deck, play them as constructs a la Ascension that stay out turn to turn. If you use their abilities in the dungeon or village, discard them like familiars. I was having far too many dead turns because I drew a few defeated monsters and weapons and had no heroes to use the weapons with, and didn't need to buy from the village anymore. It's a good solution that gets the clunkininess out of your deck after the first draw. The game is much more fun this way. I haven't tried the epic or other variations yet, so I can't speak to the balance of this in those modes. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 19:08 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 18:50
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Bottom Liner posted:Been playing a lot of Thunderstone Advance this week and I found a glaring issue and solution with the game design. When defeating monsters, instead of playing them like other cards from your deck, play them as constructs a la Ascension that stay out turn to turn. I was having far too many dead turns because I drew a few defeated monsters and weapons and had no heroes to use the weapons with, and didn't need to buy from the village anymore. I assume you haven't played Dominion? This is literally the best part of Dominion and one of the major reasons Ascension, et al are pretty bad.
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May 8, 2015 18:51
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GrandpaPants posted:What are your thoughts on Zombicide? You seem pretty passionate about it. 
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May 8, 2015 18:53
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Ready to get rid of the avatar yet?
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May 8, 2015 18:54
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