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ThisIsNoZaku posted:Just played Cthulhu Wars and it's a not as good Chaos in the Old World. What did you like less? CW is shorter, easier to teach, and when you start out one faction doesn't win every game. Those are all plus points in my view.
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May 12, 2015 08:36
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bobvonunheil posted: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 short answer is the majority of them don't connect at all! There might some mention of "thanks to the intel you retrieved we now know we need to go here". But to fair previous missions aren't mentioned in any capacity and there is one mission that leads into another that makes sense Shockingly, if you lose while inside a Star Destroyer or some kind of base (i don't remember which exactly) they throw you into the Brig which you then escape from in the next mission immediately afterwards I know in my first campaign we got both Han Solo missions and seems ol' Han got such a thrashing from the first time he didn't seem to remember us the second time. Also the campaign mentions that everything is secret except everything in the mission briefing column You need to tell your friends that they have to destroy all the terminals to win, but they don't have to know Darth Vader shows up if they don't do it fast enough 
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May 12, 2015 08:53
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Jedit posted:What did you like less? CW is shorter, easier to teach, and when you start out one faction doesn't win every game. Those are all plus points in my view. That reminds me of something I really liked in CW: the rulebook has sections for each faction giving and overview and basic tips on how to play them. At first I sort of thought it ruined the ~experience~ of learning it for yourself but that didn't last long. It really helped us get up to speed and be effective at a minimal level & have fun right away. e: Instead of being like that game of Terra Mystica someone mentioned a short while ago where you were basically left to figure poo poo out entirely on your own (flounder) and be told later that 'yeah what you chose to do screwed you from the start lol' 
The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 12:10 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 12:05
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Mister Sinewave posted:That reminds me of something I really liked in CW: the rulebook has sections for each faction giving and overview and basic tips on how to play them. At first I sort of thought it ruined the ~experience~ of learning it for yourself but that didn't last long. It really helped us get up to speed and be effective at a minimal level & have fun right away The most important thing you can do when teaching Cthulhu Wars is tell the Crawling Chaos player to take Madness early. It's the second most powerful ability in the game after Hastur's ability to assign kills and pains and it's absolutely crucial to any winning strategy for CC. Beyond that, it's all about making sure everyone takes a minute to look at their spellbooks and note the key interactions. There's also something of a first turn script for each faction if you want to get things rolling: assuming four players, Black Goat sacrifices cultists for Red Sign then summons Shub for The Thousand Young, Cthulhu moves into South Atlantic and builds a gate, Yellow Sign moves to North Atlantic, summons the King (taking Shrieking Dead) and builds a gate, CC moves to Indian Ocean and builds a gate. This gets everyone their Great Old One and two spellbooks by the end of turn 2 in fairly obvious ways.
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May 12, 2015 12:18
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bobvonunheil posted: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. Get the rules summary here: http://www.orderofgamers.com/games/star-wars-imperial-assault/ The Campaign reference is what you really need and after reading it I found all the rules on how to actually run the campaign. I also looked them up in the Rules Reference Guide for more specifics. It's sad things in this game aren't clear enough until a good 3rd party cheat-sheet makes everything clear.
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May 12, 2015 12:42
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LordLobo posted:Get the rules summary here: http://www.orderofgamers.com/games/star-wars-imperial-assault/ Thanks, this is so much better. I was sick of running back and forth between three rulebooks to try to piece together exactly how a campaign was supposed to work.
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May 12, 2015 13:43
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I am curious what kind of sweatshop FF has at gunpoint that they can pump out a product filled to the brim with such high quality components for next to nothing. An MSRP of $100 seems a lot but I've seen games with less cost more.
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May 12, 2015 15:35
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Honestly, it's common that I don't grok a game until I read a cheat sheet and goldfish a turn. Board game manuals in general are pretty awful, with poor localizations, a lack of examples and visual aids for different learning types, no ability to summarize and repeat key points etc. They often read more like a vcr manual that hates its reader. Say what you will about Vlaada ('cept you Jedit, we know :P), but the Tash-Kalar manual made me feel like the designer actually gives a poo poo about me! With the little master yoda narrator providing examples and emphasizing key concepts, I can feel the love 
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May 12, 2015 16:06
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Tash Kalar also has that excellent comprehensive single sheet rules summary, so it gets the best of both worlds.
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May 12, 2015 16:18
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The Hansa Teutonica rulebook is an incredibly bad translation. I'm going to have no idea what the gently caress is going on in that game until I watch a video.
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May 12, 2015 16:32
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T-Bone posted:The Hansa Teutonica rulebook is an incredibly bad translation. I'm going to have no idea what the gently caress is going on in that game until I watch a video. Was it that bad? The only part I remember giving me trouble was that whether you claim an office or upgrad an ability after completing a route, all your cubes/discs from that route go back into your dead pool. This wasn't specified for upgrading abilities IIRC, and it isn't mentioned until the common mistakes section in the back. HT is a pretty straightforward game rules-wise anyways.
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May 12, 2015 16:49
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So my wife and I finally opened up our Star Trek Catan box after this past weekend's Catan-strophe. I can see how the role cards help, although it looks like starting position is still king. I decided to see what would happen with us playing two players if I did not necessarily have access to one of the common resources for building ships (roads) and outposts (settlements). We were just testing it out; we know playing normal rules with two players isn't really valid. I think it sufficiently crimped my style; I had quite a few more turns where I could not really do anything, and I did not have anything of interest to trade. I guess if I was in a position where all those starting resources were claimed when doing initial layout, I'd have to latch on to development card generation hard and pick my starting positions to secure them. It still feels very arbitrary.
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May 12, 2015 16:59
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:So my wife and I finally opened up our Star Trek Catan box after this past weekend's Catan-strophe. I can see how the role cards help, although it looks like starting position is still king. I decided to see what would happen with us playing two players if I did not necessarily have access to one of the common resources for building ships (roads) and outposts (settlements). We were just testing it out; we know playing normal rules with two players isn't really valid. I think it sufficiently crimped my style; I had quite a few more turns where I could not really do anything, and I did not have anything of interest to trade. I guess if I was in a position where all those starting resources were claimed when doing initial layout, I'd have to latch on to development card generation hard and pick my starting positions to secure them. It still feels very arbitrary. Yeah, Catan is arbitrary. It's why many of us don't really rate it as a good game, but rolling dice, getting resources and trading them with each other provides enough interactivity to make it a pretty good gateway game, and it seems incredible if you're only used to the likes of Monopoly.
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May 12, 2015 17:12
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taser rates posted:Was it that bad? The only part I remember giving me trouble was that whether you claim an office or upgrad an ability after completing a route, all your cubes/discs from that route go back into your dead pool. This wasn't specified for upgrading abilities IIRC, and it isn't mentioned until the common mistakes section in the back. HT is a pretty straightforward game rules-wise anyways. Some pretty straightforward games still have tedious manuals that make them much more difficult to learn than they ought to be. Some popular euros come to mind; easy squeezy lemon peezy the moment I just executed a turn while looking at a cheat sheet, but myself and the others I play with simply kept putting down the rule books after a page or so because of the tedium and the feeling that this is the longest possible road to understanding the game. It wasn't hard on an absolute scale, but relative to the actual complexity of the topic it was funny how often we pitched the rule books back into the box before actually playing the things. I think it was less of a complexity thing and more of a repulsion to the way it's written and drifting off to something else more engaging. If you're familiar with the psychology of "flow", these things are like anti-flow It actually uncannily reminds me of trying to understand some poorly written but functional legacy code. It goes from "ok what the gently caress were they trying to do here" *does some reverse engineering, fires up debugger, looks at commit history* "really ..?" *explains what it does to someone else in 6 words* Maybe one of the reasons so many gamers are also devs is because we understand sperg  E: I dunno why I'm replying to you, since I have never played HT haha
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May 12, 2015 17:16
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bobvonunheil posted:Yeah, Catan is arbitrary. It's why many of us don't really rate it as a good game, but rolling dice, getting resources and trading them with each other provides enough interactivity to make it a pretty good gateway game, and it seems incredible if you're only used to the likes of Monopoly. I assume people playing Catan are not hobby gamers, so some level of arbitrariness is acceptable. The fact that you can't do anything for half the game, if you're the guy with the worst luck that game, is less forgivable and the reason I wouldn't recommend it even to casuals.
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May 12, 2015 18:36
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T-Bone posted:The Hansa Teutonica rulebook is an incredibly bad translation. I'm going to have no idea what the gently caress is going on in that game until I watch a video. The rules really are rather straight forward, but the book is so bland and poorly laid out. Like, it took me far longer than it should to figure out why those two cities were red, and the answer was buried in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of the book, then never mentioned again. Granted, the game wasn't mine and the owners are kind of bad at actually reading the manual, but i consider myself pretty good at finding answers fast for this stuff and I had to just start reading from the beginning to stumble on the answer.
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May 12, 2015 18:42
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taser rates posted:Was it that bad? The only part I remember giving me trouble was that whether you claim an office or upgrad an ability after completing a route, all your cubes/discs from that route go back into your dead pool. This wasn't specified for upgrading abilities IIRC, and it isn't mentioned until the common mistakes section in the back. HT is a pretty straightforward game rules-wise anyways. The game itself seems relatively simple -- like I'm sure once I play a round it will be easy but the layout and the literal grammar in the rulebook is really bad. It's like someone with English as a 4th language translated the German rules then switched around the sections at random. e: Actually looking online it looks like there's another print of the rules that is far better laid out than the version I have. I'll have to compare when I get home. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 18:47
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:So my wife and I finally opened up our Star Trek Catan box after this past weekend's Catan-strophe. I can see how the role cards help, although it looks like starting position is still king. I decided to see what would happen with us playing two players if I did not necessarily have access to one of the common resources for building ships (roads) and outposts (settlements). We were just testing it out; we know playing normal rules with two players isn't really valid. I think it sufficiently crimped my style; I had quite a few more turns where I could not really do anything, and I did not have anything of interest to trade. I guess if I was in a position where all those starting resources were claimed when doing initial layout, I'd have to latch on to development card generation hard and pick my starting positions to secure them. It still feels very arbitrary. You definitely want at least one resource that generates on a common roll e.g. a 6 or 8 and there's enough space for everyone to get at least one of those. But yes, Catan can feel arbitrary. There are ways to mitigate that arbitration but you're still at the mercy of the dice and stingy players. And even when you're doing well you'll have several turns where you can't do anything because it's a game about building up resources incrementally. Negotiation games hinge on player cooperation and it sucks when everyone is tight lipped even when they're winning. Could you imagine a game of Diplomacy where no one negotiates with each other? Holy poo poo.
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May 12, 2015 18:48
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The quote button is getting screwed up on my work filter for some reason. Is somebody posting boobs?al-azad posted:Negotiation games hinge on player cooperation and it sucks when everyone is tight lipped even when they're winning. Could you imagine a game of Diplomacy where no one negotiates with each other? Holy poo poo. I can barely imagine playing Diplomacy in the first place. I've just heard so much terrible stuff about it and how people degenerate. I think I've mentioned in the thread before that I'd love to get a cheap box of the game with half the missing pieces, just so I could replace the boxes contents with a bunch of knives from the thrift store. So on game night, I can go, "Anybody want to play Diplomacy?" *throws down box full of knives* fozzy fosbourne posted:Some pretty straightforward games still have tedious manuals that make them much more difficult to learn than they ought to be. Some popular euros come to mind; easy squeezy lemon peezy the moment I just executed a turn while looking at a cheat sheet, but myself and the others I play with simply kept putting down the rule books after a page or so because of the tedium and the feeling that this is the longest possible road to understanding the game. Then there's the case where nobody can seem to remember the cost rules for laying tracks in Trains, even with the back of base manual and the back of the expansion manual out and showing the table right there. That game and waste. It's funny that in a room of 10 people, somebody in the middle of the conversation can say, "trains" and three people will randomly say, "waaaaaaste."
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May 12, 2015 19:04
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Yeah looking at the two I think the rulebook you guys are referencing (or taser anyway) is: http://www.argentum-verlag.de/download/hansa_regeln_en.pdf which is actually pretty decent. This is the monstrosity I'm dealing with: http://files.geekdo.com/geekfile_do...f08d7f50ebc9939 e: It's really just in the language I guess -- the first rulebook is just way more direct and easily referenced. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 19:24 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 19:08
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People do play diplo online with no press, it's more tactical and luck based obviously.
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May 12, 2015 19:08
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I've been playing some Kingdom Builder. A couple similarities I'm seeing with Dominion is the criticality of your first few turns and the pivot point when you switch from trying to not connect terrains to trying to connect a bunch of terrains
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May 12, 2015 19:27
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al-azad posted:Negotiation games hinge on player cooperation and it sucks when everyone is tight lipped even when they're winning. Could you imagine a game of Diplomacy where no one negotiates with each other? Holy poo poo. Catan always seems to have one resource that is in short supply, so people spend it as soon as they get it because they need the only unit of wood in the game more than they need three more sheep, so there's no trading happening.
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May 12, 2015 19:33
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Most turns of Catan involve every person at the table requesting the same resource which nobody possesses, usually while all offering the same surplus resource to boot.
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May 12, 2015 19:37
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Jaipur or Splendor? Mostly going to be playing 2 player.
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May 12, 2015 19:43
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Bottom Liner posted:Jaipur or Splendor? Mostly going to be playing 2 player. People say Splendor is pretty underwhelming, and it's only the high quality components that make it seem really good.
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May 12, 2015 20:02
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jeeves posted:People say Splendor is pretty underwhelming, and it's only the high quality components that make it seem really good. I played Splendor once and whoever it is in this thread that uses Splendor as the absolute average baseline value to measure a given game's quality (if it's worse than Splendor it's bad, if it's better than Splendor it's good) has the right of it. It was a game, it existed, it provided the minimum baseline of playability, and then it ended. I don't consider my time to have been wasted but I have absolutely no desire to ever play it again.
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May 12, 2015 20:05
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Kai Tave posted:I played Splendor once and whoever it is in this thread that uses Splendor as the absolute average baseline value to measure a given game's quality (if it's worse than Splendor it's bad, if it's better than Splendor it's good) has the right of it. It was a game, it existed, it provided the minimum baseline of playability, and then it ended. I don't consider my time to have been wasted but I have absolutely no desire to ever play it again. This is what I've heard as well. If it wasn't for the very well made components it wouldn't even be on most people's radars.
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May 12, 2015 20:09
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Yeah, Splendor is ok but I don't really see the niche that it fills. It's basically an engine builder stripped down to the chassis and while I like engine builder I can't help wondering why I'm not playing Dominion/RftG/EmDo instead. Jaipur is a pretty slick set collection game but it gets very tactical and interactive after a few plays and j think that can catch some off guard. My wife and I get into these brain burny stalemates now where we are playing chicken because we don't want the other player to top deck the good they need. Not sure what niche it fills anymore I think I would recommend Jaipur to someone who should already be playing games like Dominion and Race, and Splendor to some hypothetical person who can't play those other games for some reason. Games like Splendor seem more fun for the people I play with than games like Jaipur, but Splendor is dominated by better similar games imo
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May 12, 2015 20:13
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Kai Tave posted:I played Splendor once and whoever it is in this thread that uses Splendor as the absolute average baseline value to measure a given game's quality (if it's worse than Splendor it's bad, if it's better than Splendor it's good) has the right of it. It was a game, it existed, it provided the minimum baseline of playability, and then it ended. I don't consider my time to have been wasted but I have absolutely no desire to ever play it again. that was me i think and yeah i stand by that. it's like the most aggressively average game I've ever played. the poker chips are super nice though
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May 12, 2015 20:14
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Just as a mild counter point, I own it and have well over a dozen plays, and still enjoy it. The complaints are pretty much spot on; it's an engine builder stripped down, a bit faster, the components are super nice, and then it's over and you don't think about it anymore. I really like stripped down games, really like engine builders, and really like games that can literally be taught in 5 minutes. So, I agree that it's not really a top tier game by any means, but it sure does fill its purpose very well, which is a medium weight filler that explains super quick and lets people play with poker chips.
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May 12, 2015 20:17
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Splendor is one of my go to introductory games. If a player is relatively new to the hobby, the gameplay is simple enough that even a novice can understand it, but has enough of a breadth of decisions that there can be some real strategy discovered and executed. Now the depth of these decisions is relatively shallow compared to a lot of modern games, but I still believe it to be deep enough to be considered "good". It is quick, pretty and fast to set up and take down. It is both a great filler game and a great introductory game. I'd rather play argent all day everyday, but if someone is just graduating from munching and CAH to real games, then Splendor is a great stepping stone.
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May 12, 2015 20:30
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Is it dramatically different with 2 vs 3-4?
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May 12, 2015 20:32
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Bottom Liner posted:Is it dramatically different with 2 vs 3-4? It's slightly meaner with 2, as watching what the opponent is going for and tactically reserving the mines they were building for can screw the opponent. It is also slightly harder to get the 6 and 7 gem of a single color cards as there are less gems in circulation. That being said it is a very slight difference, and the overall experience is similar.
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May 12, 2015 20:35
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In Splendor's defense it can be played in like 10 minutes, taught in a minute, and setup in the same amount of time. I think we underestimate how important brevity is to some groups and I can't think of many games like Splendor that can be played in Splendor's time frame. The most annoying thing to me is when I'm playing a game I deeply enjoy and want to run it back but oops we spent 3 hours on that one game so try to remember what tactics you want to try out next week guys!
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May 12, 2015 20:39
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I don't think Splendor's a bad game by any means, no, and I suppose its value as a stepping stone for people new to engine builders and/or games beyond CAH or Catan is a useful niche to fill. I just don't think there's a ton of depth or interesting stuff going on there for anyone who's ever played, say, Dominion (which is a game I enjoy playing about once in a game night and then not playing again for a while, so take my opinion for what it's worth).
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May 12, 2015 20:53
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Kai Tave posted:I played Splendor once and whoever it is in this thread that uses Splendor as the absolute average baseline value to measure a given game's quality (if it's worse than Splendor it's bad, if it's better than Splendor it's good) has the right of it. It was a game, it existed, it provided the minimum baseline of playability, and then it ended. I don't consider my time to have been wasted but I have absolutely no desire to ever play it again. I'm surprised anyone remembered that. Splendor scales just fine, but I've actually heard good things about Jaipur, so that might be a better option.
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May 12, 2015 21:03
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Regarding the ImpAss scenario thing, it's kind of ridiculous that war games have had functional scenario descriptions since the 70s but there are still more mainstream games that can't figure this poo poo out. Often they're on separate cards so you can pass them around.
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May 12, 2015 21:31
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Yeah I guess there is probably a niche for playing Splendor as either an intro to engine builders or just want slightly less effort to setup/remember/teach etc. Usually I just jump straight into Dominion though for introductory games, even with non gamers and it's been fine with the exception of the occasional village obsession. Now that I think about it, Splendor actually seems like it would be a good gift for new people because I would be more confident that they could figure it out from the book. I'd rather get someone started on the path to Dominion than TTR or LoW etc  Wife and I still play Splendor from time to time we want something on autopilot but it's kind of deep in the rotation
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May 12, 2015 21:38
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Jaipur is a better game I would say, but I am not a huge fan... but also I don't care for set collection or short-ish games or 2 player games all that much so it has basically everything working against it for me. Have you considered Targi? It is about as difficult as the other two and I liked that a bit more. It takes a bit longer to play, though. You're not really giving any context for what you want, though, other than "something that could be 2p." edit: How is the Galaxy Trucker app? I haven't played the actual game but I am familiar with its concept and some Vlaada stuff. It's 6bux. Will I like it or will it make me not want to play the physical game? And speaking of apps, does anyone have a preferred Agricola scoring app (Android)?
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May 12, 2015 21:46
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