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golden bubble posted:To be fair, Mage Knight expects you to conquer a region in 3 days and 3 nights. So it's not exactly walking from city to city. The thing that makes Mage Knight so cool to me is your character really is this ultra powerful demigod whose power grows even more the more famous they become. Those villages are implied to be many, many, miles apart and each unit is implied to be whole regiments that you cut down is swathes. You're simply exerting a simple demonstration of power in villages to gain extra cards; an action so trivial you don't even do it on your turn. The best strategy for monasteries is to threaten them into giving you all they have and then follow through with those threats and burn the place down even though they gave you what you want. Every action you take is expressly to gain more influence and power and nothing else. And then you get to the capitals, where you frequently play your whole deck at once (which you've prepared to do by viciously exploiting the populace and forcing them to do your bidding) which is almost literally raining armageddon upon it. Then there's Volkare, who despite the antagonism is literally trying to do the same thing you are. drat I love Mage Knight.
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May 10, 2015 07:40
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After playing a bunch of other board games, tonight I got the chance to actually try Catan. I believe it was with an expansion. I wound up in the most intractable position based on my start that I had to just abdicate. I had thought I had started next to a port where I could trade 2 resources for 1 brick, when it was the reverse. I also had this notion that I would connect based on other people's roads, so I had built my settlements on completely opposite sides of the island. The guy setting up did nothing to really try to tell me that might not work out. A bunch of us were beginners, and he just figured we'd play to 5 and then start over, but everybody else insisted on continuing. I did not have anything that could give me a brick, and I had nothing anybody wanted to trade for some. We had whatever expansion rules in effect that let us play with 6 people. So everybody else was starting to build everything else, and I literally couldn't do anything. When I'd get 4 of something to trade for bricks, the thief would come around and take it. So I had to just give up. I was pretty surprised for how well-regarded Catan was. I was just totally powerless. I just assumed I'd linger behind everybody and try a few of the game features, but I was stuck at the starting point the whole game until I just gave up and started cleaning up. The only thing I could had tried was development cards and just hoped I accumulated the 8VP I needed above my base 2 in order to win, but I couldn't imagine how I could sustain that. It's about as bad as when I played Risk as a teenager and tried to break out with 30 units, only to roll 1's over and over again until they were completely depleted. So all I could do every few minutes was toss some dice, and then just walk off to clean up a little more.
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May 10, 2015 08:18
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:The guy setting up did nothing to really try to tell me that might not work out. A bunch of us were beginners, and he just figured we'd play to 5 and then start over, but everybody else insisted on continuing. I hate to defend Catan but this is the bigger problem here. Anyone who sets up loving 6 player Catan for a bunch of newbies, doesn't at least stop them from completely screwing their opening, and then lets one person sit there doing nothing for twice as long because the others don't care is a moron, an rear end in a top hat, or both.
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May 10, 2015 08:36
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:After playing a bunch of other board games, tonight I got the chance to actually try Catan. I believe it was with an expansion. I wound up in the most intractable position based on my start that I had to just abdicate. I had thought I had started next to a port where I could trade 2 resources for 1 brick, when it was the reverse. I also had this notion that I would connect based on other people's roads, so I had built my settlements on completely opposite sides of the island. The guy setting up did nothing to really try to tell me that might not work out. A bunch of us were beginners, and he just figured we'd play to 5 and then start over, but everybody else insisted on continuing. I did not have anything that could give me a brick, and I had nothing anybody wanted to trade for some. We had whatever expansion rules in effect that let us play with 6 people. So everybody else was starting to build everything else, and I literally couldn't do anything. When I'd get 4 of something to trade for bricks, the thief would come around and take it. So I had to just give up. I was pretty surprised for how well-regarded Catan was. I was just totally powerless. I just assumed I'd linger behind everybody and try a few of the game features, but I was stuck at the starting point the whole game until I just gave up and started cleaning up. The only thing I could had tried was development cards and just hoped I accumulated the 8VP I needed above my base 2 in order to win, but I couldn't imagine how I could sustain that. It's about as bad as when I played Risk as a teenager and tried to break out with 30 units, only to roll 1's over and over again until they were completely depleted. So all I could do every few minutes was toss some dice, and then just walk off to clean up a little more. Hey that pretty much describes my first and only game of Catan!
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May 10, 2015 09:15
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:After playing a bunch of other board games, tonight I got the chance to actually try Catan. And this is how poor teaching can ruin a game.
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May 10, 2015 09:35
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Bottom Liner posted:Any recommendations for Pandemic expansions? In the Lab looks great with the added puzzle to cure things, On the Brink looks like more of the same as the base game, and State of Emergency looks pretty eh. Get the expansions in the order they came out, but don't be in a rush. Each later expansion adds fewer things that are actually good and will find regular use.
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May 10, 2015 09:38
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SettingSun posted:The thing that makes Mage Knight so cool to me is your character really is this ultra powerful demigod whose power grows even more the more famous they become. I'm just going to drop this here. Gutter Owl, as Torvak posted:Gonna go ahead and CO. A red die would let me save a crystal, but is otherwise unnecessary. That was a fun game. Not for Volkare, mind you.
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May 10, 2015 09:44
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Fat Samurai posted:I'm just going to drop this here.  Well that settles what two things are going in my next CSI order.
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May 10, 2015 11:11
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Has anybody played Omega Centauri? I stumbled across it and it seems to be a pretty well received light space 4x. It seems to have all the bits and pieces: Distinct races, a modular board, technologies, space battles, etc. I had a look at the rulebook though, and it's an absolute clusterfuck, so I want more opinions before picking it up.
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May 10, 2015 11:15
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:After playing a bunch of other board games, tonight I got the chance to actually try Catan. I believe it was with an expansion. I wound up in the most intractable position based on my start that I had to just abdicate. I had thought I had started next to a port where I could trade 2 resources for 1 brick, when it was the reverse. I also had this notion that I would connect based on other people's roads, so I had built my settlements on completely opposite sides of the island. The guy setting up did nothing to really try to tell me that might not work out. A bunch of us were beginners, and he just figured we'd play to 5 and then start over, but everybody else insisted on continuing. I did not have anything that could give me a brick, and I had nothing anybody wanted to trade for some. We had whatever expansion rules in effect that let us play with 6 people. So everybody else was starting to build everything else, and I literally couldn't do anything. When I'd get 4 of something to trade for bricks, the thief would come around and take it. So I had to just give up. I was pretty surprised for how well-regarded Catan was. I was just totally powerless. I just assumed I'd linger behind everybody and try a few of the game features, but I was stuck at the starting point the whole game until I just gave up and started cleaning up. The only thing I could had tried was development cards and just hoped I accumulated the 8VP I needed above my base 2 in order to win, but I couldn't imagine how I could sustain that. It's about as bad as when I played Risk as a teenager and tried to break out with 30 units, only to roll 1's over and over again until they were completely depleted. So all I could do every few minutes was toss some dice, and then just walk off to clean up a little more. Catan can be cruel, especially if you are new and no one will trade resources with you. You would be happy to know that Catan is basically an antique by board gaming standards now, there are much superior games out there. Though I laughed a bit when you said you where starved for Bricks (I assume you mean Clay and not Stone). Clay is the lowest tier building material, you still had everything you needed to build Cities and Development cards. You should have been buying as many development cards as possible, to screw the other players (and steal their clay) as well as secure the 2VP Largest Army card.
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May 10, 2015 12:03
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Rutibex posted:Catan can be cruel, especially if you are new and no one will trade resources with you. You would be happy to know that Catan is basically an antique by board gaming standards now, there are much superior games out there.
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May 10, 2015 12:28
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Fat Samurai posted:I'm just going to drop this here.
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May 10, 2015 12:43
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Bubble-T posted:I hate to defend Catan but this is the bigger problem here. Anyone who sets up loving 6 player Catan for a bunch of newbies, doesn't at least stop them from completely screwing their opening, and then lets one person sit there doing nothing for twice as long because the others don't care is a moron, an rear end in a top hat, or both. Bad teaching was a big problem, but the bigger problem is that this situation can happen in the first place. There's a reason I stopped playing Catan and sold my copy after getting more into board games. So many games do the mechanics better at this point.
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May 10, 2015 12:45
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:In retrospect, if I had been stuck again like that, I would have asked to see that deck and had it reshuffled afterwards. I did not really know what was in it. Given the glacial pace of the game with beginners, that probably would have worked, but I would have probably just concluded it was a very one dimensional game. All I recall was being told not to play those cards right away, and not being sure if they counted in my hand limit when the thief came around. Yeah, knowing the deck would have been a great help, then you would have seen the Road Building and Monopoly cards (both of which would have solved your Clay problem). Development cards don't count as "in your hand" for the limit or for stealing with the robber. After all, development cards and resources have different cards backs, so people would always steal them over resources if they could. I like to have at least on Development cards unrevealed at all times. You don't want people knowing if you have VP cards, but more importantly if you have one Development cards you can bluff that its a soldier. I always tell the table "I have a soldier here, if anyone uses the Robber on me they will get it back, on their most productive space, next turn". Seems to work pretty well.
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May 10, 2015 12:51
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So, I played Dead of Winter tonight which gets a pretty bad wrap. I was a betrayer and came pretty close to winning - got morale down to 1 before the main objective was completed. I can see where the mechanics of the game aren't much chop, but as someone who thrives on theme, I thought it was pretty rad. I'm in no major rush to play it again, but I won't complain if it gets pulled out in future.
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May 10, 2015 14:21
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I usually suggest Stone Age as the replacement for Catan as a gateway game. You're still throwing dice for resources but you have much more control over their acquisition that you can't really screw yourself outside of being really inept or really unlucky. They ultimately addressed the potential bottomless pit setup in Catan with an expansion that introduced support cards, a tableau that everyone has access to which grants special abilities like improved conversion or ignoring the thief. For some reason this never came out in America, they couldn't even shove 10 loving extra cards in their reprints but Star Trek Catan is a reskin which incorporates them into the game. It's amazing how much better (and more importantly faster) they make the game.
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May 10, 2015 14:53
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Mega64 posted:Bad teaching was a big problem, but the bigger problem is that this situation can happen in the first place. I know Catan can be slow and random, but here it sounds more like the problem was that Rocko Bonaparte didn't know the rules and the other players messed him around.
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May 10, 2015 16:49
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elgarbo posted:
That's my feelings on it. It also works really well with non-board gamers for the same reason. They can buy into the theme and zombies are in vogue.
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May 10, 2015 16:53
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Mega64 posted:Bad teaching was a big problem, but the bigger problem is that this situation can happen in the first place. No, this is bs. Being without Brick is not even a problem at all. You can focus on grain+ore to go for cities and you need literally 2 bricks to get one more road and one more town (use dev cards if they won't trade). Once you have 3 cities, you should be totally self-suffiient. If nobody will trade with you when you are behind, they are playing badly. Less still should they be trying to hit you with the robber, wtf. I have to think that your group was playing some kind of cruel prank on you if they kept stealing your poo poo and refusing to trade when you were stuck in last place.
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May 10, 2015 17:11
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elgarbo posted:I can see where the mechanics of the game aren't much chop, but as someone who thrives on theme, I thought it was pretty rad. I'm in no major rush to play it again, but I won't complain if it gets pulled out in future. The problem is that Dead of Winter doesn't have much in the way of actual thematic conveyance. It just has text on its cards and artwork to match. The tone of the subject matter changes wildly, as well, from gruesome and pornographic to cartoony and comedic. It has, in fact, very little theme at all. It would be trivial to change the appearance and setting of the game without losing anything, especially the Crossroads cards (which constantly get praise for some reason) since they're just "gain resources at a risk or do nothing" more often than not.
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May 10, 2015 18:23
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Nevermind
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May 10, 2015 18:39
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Jimbozig posted:No, this is bs. Being without Brick is not even a problem at all. You can focus on grain+ore to go for cities and you need literally 2 bricks to get one more road and one more town (use dev cards if they won't trade). Once you have 3 cities, you should be totally self-suffiient. If nobody will trade with you when you are behind, they are playing badly. Less still should they be trying to hit you with the robber, wtf. I have to think that your group was playing some kind of cruel prank on you if they kept stealing your poo poo and refusing to trade when you were stuck in last place. This. I don't really play Catan anymore, but everyone should usually be happy to trade with the person in last because they don't typically want to trade with people who are clearly winning. Your group just sounds like a bunch of jerks kicking you while you're down.
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May 10, 2015 18:47
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Multiple new players not trading with last place sounds like general strategy wasn't explained at all.
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May 10, 2015 19:05
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Polis has been discontinued. Is it a recommended 2-player game for someone who's growing tired of the ol' Twilight Struggle? I'm not looking for a game that's mechanically similar, just a decent balls-kicking 2-player game with relatively little luck involved.Broken Loose posted:The tone of the subject matter changes wildly, as well, from gruesome and pornographic to cartoony and comedic. You're describing the zombie genre to the letter I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic.
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May 10, 2015 19:20
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Wir Sind Das Volk is similar to TS in terms of "two-player CDG about the Cold War" but it has some interesting twists on its card mechanics, and it's much more low-luck than TS is.
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May 10, 2015 19:34
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al-azad posted:You're describing the zombie genre to the letter I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic. I can enjoy 48 Days Later and Shawn of the Dead, and they have pretty different themes. Watching a movie that went from sitcom jokes to rape and back each 5 minutes would be grating, to say the least.
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May 10, 2015 19:57
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Anyone know a good solution for storing the mini cards that come with some games? The only one I know is that they'll fit laterally in an Ultra Pro deck box, but I'd like something smaller. I could get boxes for mini poker decks too but if you have many more than 50 cards to store it's too small.
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May 10, 2015 20:22
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signalnoise posted:Anyone know a good solution for storing the mini cards that come with some games? The only one I know is that they'll fit laterally in an Ultra Pro deck box, but I'd like something smaller. I could get boxes for mini poker decks too but if you have many more than 50 cards to store it's too small. 
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May 10, 2015 20:51
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I don't generally get bothered by Rutibex posts, but this does it. You are the worst.
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May 10, 2015 20:54
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lmao if you use storage solutions other than ziploc bags and rubber bands
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May 10, 2015 20:55
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StashAugustine posted:lmao if you use storage solutions other than ziploc bags and rubber bands   Peasant. 
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May 10, 2015 20:59
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al-azad posted:I usually suggest Stone Age as the replacement for Catan as a gateway game. You're still throwing dice for resources but you have much more control over their acquisition that you can't really screw yourself outside of being really inept or really unlucky. That's funny. We had Stone Age out as an alternative the whole night, and we have a box of Star Trek Catan that we haven't even opened yet. It's just two people knew the regular version, so we thought we'd cut our teeth on that first. Only one of the group that was actively playing had played before. The person that brought the game and tried to explain everything played as the bank. I'm going to chalk it off to "A Game Too Far." We have this tendency to play one game more than we should in the night, and that game ends up taking twice as long and everybody plays like complete idiots. Last time it was Temporum. The cards we drew to establish what ages were available were not very useful together. There were three ages everybody had to just move between: one to draw cards, one to play them for money, and one to score them. Every once in awhile, somebody would be in a position to screw a player or two by switching them to an age they couldn't immediately escape. Other than that, we were all pretty much at the mercy of the cards we had drawn, and we could have just turned it into a card game for the way we were playing it. Even while he was trying to explain it, I think it was pretty obvious our brains were just fried. I think we'll just force a better end time and stop with a party game. Since I am hosting these, it kind of scares me to think if one of the guests had been in that situation I felt I was in.
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May 10, 2015 21:07
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Gutter Owl posted:
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May 10, 2015 21:16
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al-azad posted:You're describing the zombie genre to the letter I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic. Fat Samurai posted:I can enjoy 48 Days Later and Shawn of the Dead, and they have pretty different themes. Watching a movie that went from sitcom jokes to rape and back each 5 minutes would be grating, to say the least. GalaxyQuest and Battlestar Galactica are incredibly different approaches to future space opera science fiction. If the BSG board game included random chances of getting comedically lost in illogically designed deathtrap set pieces in the underbelly of the ship, you bet your rear end I'd call the game out on it. Stunt dog and graphic depictions of sex and suicide don't belong in the same game together. It is actually indicative of the problems of "zombie games" in general-- nobody who buys them gives a flying gently caress about how the theme actually applies to the game; they're just ecstatic that there's undead. See: Zombinion's popularity back in the day. The upsides of the better games that feature zombies are that they utilize the less stupid and boring conventions of the fiction, like how zombies would never logically be the main antagonist in any narrative where the characters act like actual people. Dead of Winter comes close to utilizing this, but it then fails horribly due to easily discovered degenerate traitor strategies. Everything else in the game is just grapeshot zombie fiction from comedy to snuff to pornography. That "everything else" isn't executed mechanically well, either. The only thing that outright shows conveyance is having outbreaks when somebody is bitten. Since the rest of the featured theme of the game is so incoherently toned, it harms the ability of the game to properly convey tone to the players. On top of that, the players are given largely unthematic freedoms and limitations as band-aid solutions to clear problems with the game (such as not being able to give an item to somebody else unless they immediately use it). Once you get past the flavor text, it's all little wooden cubes that occasionally have episodes that cause each other to disappear.
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May 10, 2015 21:47
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What size are the Tragedy Looper cards for sleeving? Specifically I want clear sleeves; would FFG's standard american ("green") sleeves work? I know it seems like a weird game to sleeve since there's no shuffling involved, but a single mark on the back of something like the Intrigue +2 card could ruin everything, and there are so few cards that sleeving should be dirt cheap.Broken Loose posted:If the BSG board game included random chances of getting comedically lost in illogically designed deathtrap set pieces in the underbelly of the ship, you bet your rear end I'd call the game out on it. Seasons 3 and 4 of the show are basically this, except then bon jovi music plays in the background to signify that the random hallway chompers are God's plan.
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May 10, 2015 22:41
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Lottery of Babylon posted:What size are the Tragedy Looper cards for sleeving? Specifically I want clear sleeves; would FFG's standard american ("green") sleeves work? I know it seems like a weird game to sleeve since there's no shuffling involved, but a single mark on the back of something like the Intrigue +2 card could ruin everything, and there are so few cards that sleeving should be dirt cheap. Magic sized.
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May 10, 2015 22:52
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I missed the boat on buying The Village when SUSD talked about it, but It's like 40~ bucks on amazon right now and I'm quite tempted into grabbing it. My main question is, I want Agricola, I want The Village. Do I jump at the Village now? or should I just go for what sounds like a rad time with Agricola? I'm not weighing them against each other, but I just kinda wanna know how people felt about the village, sans expansions (thoughts on the expansions?) cause I'm probably just gonna keep twiddling my thumbs and get neither. I hate when I have more than one game on my radar cause its never about the cost, it just becomes a stalemate of what am I going to crash into first. Either way my group of friends sucks and hardly has the attention span to finish a game of Castles of Burgundy, but my partner is very much into anything they can win.
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May 10, 2015 23:29
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To save people ever asking about sleeve sizes again, we should link this in the OP.
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May 10, 2015 23:31
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PROTOSTORM!!! posted:I missed the boat on buying The Village when SUSD talked about it, but It's like 40~ bucks on amazon right now and I'm quite tempted into grabbing it. My main question is, I want Agricola, I want The Village. Village is fine but it's nothing really special. I wouldn't pine over it.
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May 10, 2015 23:47
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Fat Samurai posted:That was a fun game. Not for Volkare, mind you. God drat it, I'm going to end up running the third thread rather than anything else I wanted to do this week thanks to this.
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May 10, 2015 23:50
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