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al-azad posted:Seriously contemplating dropping $80 on this thing. Archipelago is well worth it. The "Semi Co-op" thing can be a sticking point, since somebody can tank the game for everybody, but to be honest I feel like it enhanced the game. Really good economic resource management game, with the overarching colony wide crisis providing a great driver for tense negotiation. The only thing I didn't really like was the open trading between players, which meant somebody good enough at making deals could end up with major advantages that were basically unrelated to the game. Negotiation is core to how the game plays so you can't really remove it, but I feel it's a bit too open ended. Also exploration sometimes felt like a real crapshoot. Other than that, great.
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May 11, 2015 18:53
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al-azad posted:If it's thematically appropriate, and it sounds like it is, I'm fine. It can't be any clunkier than Five Tribes' "slave" resource. Yeah, slavery was a thing in the Middle East, but why does your family friendly thinly veiled Mancala game include this dejected looking dark skinned man in shackles who does absolutely nothing except purchase/power other cards? I was not particularly impressed with Endeavor, but holy crap it was fun to free all the slaves and make my wife really mad because she really used them slaves.
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May 11, 2015 18:53
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quote:I can't even think of a zombie movie with 'deep' dialogue so that's going to be a hard poem to fill. Yeah, zombie stuff is a lot better when it lets action do the talking. Nothing is worse than characters getting all dramatic-faced to rehash "if we do ~this~, who's the real monster?" or "were we always zombies, what with all our consumerism and what not?" or "this is what it takes to survive and life is so so so important and also bravery".
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May 11, 2015 18:57
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jmzero posted:Yeah, zombie stuff is a lot better when it lets action do the talking. Nothing is worse than characters getting all dramatic-faced to rehash "if we do ~this~, who's the real monster?" or "were we always zombies, what with all our consumerism and what not?" or "this is what it takes to survive and life is so so so important and also bravery". Why are the dead rising? Because there's no more room in Hell! 
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May 11, 2015 19:23
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Archipelago is on my list as well, but it seems to be a little tough to find at a decent price at the moment. I'm pretty sure I read on BGG that a reprint is due soon, so I'll just wait it out (or maybe trade for it on BGG or something). I've got an Amazon gift card burning a hole in my pocket that I think may go towards Space Cadets and/or Space Cadets: Dice Duel. I'm also constantly intriqued by Imperial Assault but between the huge up front cost and the massive pile of expensive expansions coming out I think it might be better to steer clear of that money pit.
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May 11, 2015 19:25
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Archipelago is on my list as well, but it seems to be a little tough to find at a decent price at the moment. I'm pretty sure I read on BGG that a reprint is due soon, so I'll just wait it out (or maybe trade for it on BGG or something). Space Cadets isn't too hot. Dice Duel is apparently a way better version of it (I know how it plays but haven't played it) that has the downside of requiring a shitload more players. ImpAss is Descent 2.5 and a decent basis for a game for what it's worth.
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May 11, 2015 19:30
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Broken Loose posted:Space Cadets isn't too hot. Dice Duel is apparently a way better version of it (I know how it plays but haven't played it) that has the downside of requiring a shitload more players. ImpAss is Descent 2.5 and a decent basis for a game for what it's worth. Yeah, the number of players required is the one big knock on Dice Duel for me. I just love the idea of Space Cadets though, it sounds like a board game equivalent of that Artemis PC game that I've always been interested in but have never actually played (that could also be bad for all I know). I put Imp Assault in the same box as the X-Wing minis. I'm almost afraid to buy it in case I actually like it. I have a copy of Descent 2.0 that I haven't played that I got for $20 from B&N (thanks to this thread), so I'll probably just play that instead.
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May 11, 2015 19:39
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Archipelago is on my list as well, but it seems to be a little tough to find at a decent price at the moment. I'm pretty sure I read on BGG that a reprint is due soon, so I'll just wait it out (or maybe trade for it on BGG or something). I had zero interest in Imperial Assault (and zero experience with Descent) but I've been playing in a campaign occasionally with a friend and it's pretty good. As a D&D nerd the persistent aspects of IA keeps me into it. But it also feels like the players are really fighting against a constantly evolving enemy. The GM, or whatever the game calls the imperial player, gets points to spend on enemy units plus abilities he can enact based on victory conditions. The game is meant to be played over a long period of time and for the $80 or whatever he dropped on it I'd say he's gotten his money's worth and then some. I know the game can also be played as a tabletop points-based miniatures game which may interest some people. Basically you get a lot of mileage out of the standard product. My biggest issue up front is the lack of information the players are given. We were told that a mission ends if "some number of us" are wounded. We're also not given a time limit on mission objectives so more often than not we think we have more time than we actually do. Around the fourth mission the GM decided to just tell us up front that a mission isn't over until everyone is wounded, he would give us time limits, and for cases involving objective counters he would tell us how many we needed to protect/destroy to win. I think the writers came into the game like an RPG but it's still a board game! In an RPG the GM controls the drama, he can fudge timers and add enemies if the scenario calls for it. Imperial Assault as a board game has hard limits on everything but the rules don't make it clear what the players should know so you often go into a mission with only a vague clue and that loving sucks. We realized something was up when the GM played the enemies as being completely suicidal while we were playing extremely conservatively. Taking an entire turn to heal in an RPG is an expected action but in Imperial Assault the rebels can't win unless they're eating hits. Understanding that it's a good co-operative experience against an rear end in a top hat GM. Don't drop that much money unless you have like minded players, it is a game that requires everyone at the table to work together.
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May 11, 2015 19:40
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Yeah, the number of players required is the one big knock on Dice Duel for me. I just love the idea of Space Cadets though, it sounds like a board game equivalent of that Artemis PC game that I've always been interested in but have never actually played (that could also be bad for all I know). I typed a big thing about Space Cadets a long time ago. It takes too long to teach, too long to play, and the difficulty curve is horizontal after several hours of setup and teaching.
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May 11, 2015 19:47
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So is Space Cadets: Dice Duel good? I'm curious because it's a non-coop team game.
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May 11, 2015 19:49
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fozzy fosbourne posted:So is Space Cadets: Dice Duel good? I'm curious because it's a non-coop team game. I like it a lot and there's literally a quarterback role if you play with 8 people (the captain, who just tells people what to do and watches the board state/other team) which is novel and cool. 6 player is pretty ok too but it's insanely difficult to find a group to play it with; Even one mousy player can gently caress up a team, there's nothing to hide behind like in a traitor game.
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May 11, 2015 19:53
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al-azad posted:My biggest issue up front is the lack of information the players are given. We were told that a mission ends if "some number of us" are wounded. We're also not given a time limit on mission objectives so more often than not we think we have more time than we actually do. Around the fourth mission the GM decided to just tell us up front that a mission isn't over until everyone is wounded, he would give us time limits, and for cases involving objective counters he would tell us how many we needed to protect/destroy to win. The Imperial player is supposed to tell you all of those things. You were playing incorrectly for the first three missions, probably because he misread the rules. e: For the record, for anyone considering picking up Imperial Assault, when the rules tell you as the Imperial player to read the Mission Briefing section to the players, they mean the ENTIRE Mission Briefing section, from the "Mission Briefing" subheader until the next subheader. Same for any other time you are instructed to read a labeled section to the players -- read the WHOLE section. The game does not work otherwise. Clockwork Gadget fucked around with this message at 20:04 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 19:56
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Countblanc posted:I like it a lot and there's literally a quarterback role if you play with 8 people (the captain, who just tells people what to do and watches the board state/other team) which is novel and cool. 6 player is pretty ok too but it's insanely difficult to find a group to play it with; Even one mousy player can gently caress up a team, there's nothing to hide behind like in a traitor game. Does 4 player work decently? My odds of getting 6 people who aren't going to gently caress up or bow out when the going gets tough are low but 4 is doable
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May 11, 2015 19:58
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it's got something like 5 stations to be managed, which I think would be hard to manage all that dice rolling with just two on each side. I wouldn't recommend it with less than 6, but it is a fun game and tends to always get played at my local meet up. Also, the games are over super fast but it takes awhile to explain the stations and how the dice mechanic is going to work.
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May 11, 2015 20:06
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al-azad posted:Good thoughts on Imperial Assault Hah, thanks for the thoughts on IA. Honestly I like Star Wars and I usually very much like 'dungeon crawler' type games so I think this game would be a slam dunk for me, I just don't know if my usual gaming group would be into it enough to justify the purchase (basically your last sentence). I already have a lot of big great games I never get to play *sadly glances over at Twilight Imperium*.
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May 11, 2015 20:11
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Does 4 player work decently? My odds of getting 6 people who aren't going to gently caress up or bow out when the going gets tough are low but 4 is doable Not really. e: Supposedly the expansion addresses this, and the game becomes 3v1 where the most experienced player gets a little baby ship to pilot.
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May 11, 2015 20:20
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al-azad posted:Pretty sure this will never happen. You always know the risk associated with an action and the option to ignore it. This is actually one of my major beefs with the crossroads cards and is yet another reason they feel like a wasted opportunity. If you're going to have a bunch of other dumb randomness in your awful zombie game, why not just go hog wild and not tell people the outcomes of their decisions beforehand. Also make all of those decisions more interesting than "Option A: Risk/Reward. Option B: Nothing Happens". If I'm going to play a zombie game with randomness in it, at least have it serve a purpose. Like, imagine a game where you're all trying to escape some compound that's infested with zombies, but along the way you have opportunities to help other people, etc. You get something like karma points or whatever for helping them, but it slows you down. The game ends when the first person escapes, however then some random mechanic determines how much each karma point is worth, so people who are furthest behind might actually win because they "did the right thing". I dunno, maybe that's a little too on-the-nose for most gamer tastes.
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May 11, 2015 20:32
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quote:Does 4 player work decently? My odds of getting 6 people who aren't going to gently caress up or bow out when the going gets tough are low but 4 is doable I wouldn't play it with less than 6. Also, I also wouldn't play it again in general. It's a fun little experience for the first few plays, but there's not anything there to bring me back. It's like XCOM or Room 25, unique experiences that are fun to discover in a few games, but then are best forgotten. I don't bear these games real ill-will - I got my enjoyment out of them - but it's also hard to recommend them to a group that may want more play time for their dollar.
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May 11, 2015 20:33
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Clockwork Gadget posted:The Imperial player is supposed to tell you all of those things. You were playing incorrectly for the first three missions, probably because he misread the rules. He learned the game from another player so this is just another example of how a bad teacher can influence first impressions. Big McHuge posted:If I'm going to play a zombie game with randomness in it, at least have it serve a purpose. Like, imagine a game where you're all trying to escape some compound that's infested with zombies, but along the way you have opportunities to help other people, etc. You get something like karma points or whatever for helping them, but it slows you down. The game ends when the first person escapes, however then some random mechanic determines how much each karma point is worth, so people who are furthest behind might actually win because they "did the right thing". I dunno, maybe that's a little too on-the-nose for most gamer tastes. It just goes back to the genre trappings being incapable of working well in a game. A victory point based system kind of flies in the face of the theme. The goal should be survival until the end, you shouldn't get bonus points for going out of your way. Either one or more people live/escape (great!) or everybody dies (too bad!). Random events should add something tangible to the table that everyone can interact with. Like a survivor's mother is sick, first person to trash a medicine gets him and a helpless victim. Or a motorcycle gang has taken over the gas station, you can't search there again until you kill them all.
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May 11, 2015 21:07
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al-azad posted:
On the contrary, it's *exactly* what zombie infestations are all about. It's about weighing individual survival versus having morals (but probably getting killed as a result). However, there's a very real chance that those morals meant nothing in the end. Maybe your good deeds count for a lot in the "afterlife", thus winning you the game. But maybe there is no afterlife and you should have been a greedy rear end in a top hat the whole time. Unfortunately there's no way of telling till the game is over. Like I said, probably a little too on-the-nose to actually put in a game. I'm not sure I could bring myself to make a game that was *that* arbitrary, but it's at least fun as a discussion generator.
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May 11, 2015 21:59
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al-azad posted:I haven't played it so how does Mall/City of Horror represent the colony aspect of the game? If Dead of Winter's intent is to replicate the scenario in Day of the Dead where a group of survivors could legitimately survive if it wasn't because of fatalistic/sociopathic/selfish people with their own agendas destroying everything, how does Mall/City of Horror accomplish the same thing better? In * of Horrors, each of your characters are worth points at the end of the game if they survive. Also, things to collect - like food and zombie vaccine - are worth points. And also, if you don't have a vaccine for each of your characters at the end of the game, they are treated by the army with a flamethrower. Players have to collect, horde, and trade to score well. BUT on top of that there are zombies that eat a character if they breakthrough the barriers. Which character? You have to vote on that. Another bargaining chip in the cornucopia of assholery. I can shoot a zombie and push them back if you give me some vaccine. I can vote for the old man instead of you if you get your buddy in the bank to vote to keep my wife alive. But then again, I never liked you and you're worth 4 points to your player, so gently caress you i'll sell this extra vaccine on the black market for more points when the army save me and hot gently caress drat this tin of beans tastes like 3 points bitch. I don't agree you can just say "survive until the end!" without having points to compete. Then either you get: A) full on coop, which doesn't have any of the retarded drama of a zombie survivor flick, or B) you just turn it into a deathmatch because to win everyone else must DIE and that's less zombie-apocalypse and more Tina Turner's Thunderdome-apocalypse. The points + just enough chrome to give you bargaining chips help convey the theme through how the game works intrinsically without resorting to kludges like "my secret objective" or "and one of us is a traitor". People can already make their own objectives and backstab each other without having a card tell them to do it - if you set up the game to nurture it. That's the most important rule of zombie fiction after all: given the opportunity, the zombies are not the greater monsters, we are.
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May 11, 2015 22:56
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To turn this away from zombie talk, I'm looking at running a pbf game of El Grande but I've always wanted to hear opinions on alternate means of picking starting provinces beyond them being randomly assigned. For people who've played the game do you just go with the random assignment or do something else? I've been thinking about games like Nations where the first player is the last to pick their spot and I wonder how that would work out in El Grande.
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May 11, 2015 23:25
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al-azad posted:He learned the game from another player so this is just another example of how a bad teacher can influence first impressions. Surprisingly common. I ran into it twice in two different games. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Also, first time Imperial Assault players - make sure the Imperial player knows that he has to read the entire mission briefing verbatim! I "filled in" for another player on a second campaign with another, different group of friends and guess what the Imperial player was doing? That's right - the same thing that the first Imperial player was doing in my main campaign before he was corrected - paraphrasing the mission objectives and picking and choosing poo poo to leave out. All that benefited him, of course. The Imperial Player is not the GM. He is another player at the table with some special rules.
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May 11, 2015 23:56
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PlaneGuy posted:In * of Horrors, each of your characters are worth points at the end of the game if they survive. Also, things to collect - like food and zombie vaccine - are worth points. And also, if you don't have a vaccine for each of your characters at the end of the game, they are treated by the army with a flamethrower. Players have to collect, horde, and trade to score well. BUT on top of that there are zombies that eat a character if they breakthrough the barriers. Which character? You have to vote on that. Another bargaining chip in the cornucopia of assholery. I can shoot a zombie and push them back if you give me some vaccine. I can vote for the old man instead of you if you get your buddy in the bank to vote to keep my wife alive. But then again, I never liked you and you're worth 4 points to your player, so gently caress you i'll sell this extra vaccine on the black market for more points when the army save me and hot gently caress drat this tin of beans tastes like 3 points bitch. I wish I could empty quote this every time DoW gets brought up. An excellent post.
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May 12, 2015 01:07
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Lord Frisk posted:I wish I could empty quote this every time DoW gets brought up. An excellent post. As a note, that post is mostly about City, Mall doesn't give points for items and doesn't have a black market, it's a bit simpler. I've never played City, but I'm sure the extra complications don't hurt the game much given what I've heard/read.
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May 12, 2015 01:25
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El Grande play-by-post. Get your asses in there, jefe.
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May 12, 2015 02:16
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silvergoose posted:As a note, that post is mostly about City, Mall doesn't give points for items and doesn't have a black market, it's a bit simpler. I've never played City, but I'm sure the extra complications don't hurt the game much given what I've heard/read. That's true. The only thing you can bargain with in Mall is other votes and using a weapon card. And the location of next zombie spawn I guess. There's a bit less, but its so much more visceral: the ONLY way to win is get other people killed. City is one of the few times adding some themed chrome improved the game, imo.
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May 12, 2015 02:20
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Archipelago does Dead of Winter's theme so much better than Dead of Winter it's not even funny.
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May 12, 2015 03:35
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Just played Cthulhu Wars and it's a not as good Chaos in the Old World.
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May 12, 2015 03:37
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Convinced a stranger to buy Mage Knight instead of the Firefly Game at my local board game store. 
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May 12, 2015 03:57
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You're doing the lord's work.
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May 12, 2015 04:10
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I can't wait 'til CHURCHILL comes out, so we can debate if you could make a good zombie game with it. Also, it looks dope.
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May 12, 2015 04:23
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Hey, Broken Loose, if you're still looking for investors for Final Attack!, have I got some product placement opportunity for you!
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May 12, 2015 04:24
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what
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May 12, 2015 04:56
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Krazyface posted:I can't wait 'til CHURCHILL comes out, so we can debate if you could make a good zombie game with it. Also, it looks dope. Easy, it's not the Nazis, it's the zombie Nazis, same exact characters, think wolfenstein.
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May 12, 2015 07:10
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Broken Loose posted:what I just saw it today and thought it sounds more like a FA! track/attack name rather than whatever  it actualy is.
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May 12, 2015 07:42
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The Imperial Player is not the GM. He is another player at the table with some special rules. All of those special rules fall apart when your Rebels didn't know that they were suppose to go after the terminals instead of all your stormtroopers, oh and you guys lose because it's round six and you're not done? GUESS I WIN  What do you mean you didn't know you had a time limit? That was suppose to be secret! It should have tipped you off that there were terminals on the map in the first place!Edit:totally not venting about my first game of Impass as well no sir The Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 07:50 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 07:47
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I know that FFG has a rightly deserved reputation for lovely rulebooks but is ImpAss really that bad? Because I've heard quite a few stories now about things like Imperial players withholding information that's supposed to be shared so is this a result of bad rules clarity or just collective stupidity?
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May 12, 2015 07:49
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Kai Tave posted:I know that FFG has a rightly deserved reputation for lovely rulebooks but is ImpAss really that bad? Because I've heard quite a few stories now about things like Imperial players withholding information that's supposed to be shared so is this a result of bad rules clarity or just collective stupidity? It's a bit of both, you have rules split up over multiple books so it can be easy to go over the "extensive" portion of the rules that was already covered in the Learn to Play guide and go "okay yeah we get that part already" and kind of skim through not really paying attention.But when really the couple of sentences they left out changes things so immensely! Plus the wording on certain things can be finicky. Maybe it's a holdover from Descent? I've never played it so i don't know if everything was super secret to in that and thus people assume it works the same way in ImpAss
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May 12, 2015 08:05
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Kai Tave posted:I know that FFG has a rightly deserved reputation for lovely rulebooks but is ImpAss really that bad? Because I've heard quite a few stories now about things like Imperial players withholding information that's supposed to be shared so is this a result of bad rules clarity or just collective stupidity? I have spent a while looking over all the cards and rules in my own copy and I'm still utterly mystified about how missions are supposed to tie together. Haven't started playing it yet though. The campaign book does stress that a lot of the content is supposed to be 100% secret so it's likely people being too picky about what they share with the Rebel players to avoid ruining the ~*experience*~
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May 12, 2015 08:23
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