Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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McNerd: Aug 28, 2007

Sockser posted:

Is there a way to make King of Tokyo fun? I've played like four games and I have yet to use the poison tokens or whatever they are.

Are all my friends just playing too aggressive and dumb or is it a bad game for poopy babies?

It's not super clear what exactly your complaint is.

The poison tokens and some other components go with particular cards that I guess you haven't seen yet.

I don't know what your friends are doing but if they are too aggressive then you should let them knock each other out while you hang back rolling hearts and stars. Someone has to keep the person in Tokyo from running away with the game, but if your other opponents are willing to do the job for you, then let them.

McNerd fucked around with this message at 04:14 on May 29, 2015

# ? May 29, 2015 04:12

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# ? May 14, 2024 11:45

EBag: May 18, 2006

I'm sad to see more goons don't have Istanbul, it's one of our favorites. Plays super smooth and fast, is thinky but not overly heavy, scales really well, looks great and has a modular board. If you like worker placement games at all I think it's definitely worth checking out, the spatial element of moving around the board and dropping off/picking up your workers gives it a bit of a puzzle element and makes it stand out from other WP games.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:12

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

Harvey Mantaco posted:

Is dog cooperative? What's the price point to get started?

They're 10 months so it's currently a wargame.

EBag posted:

I'm sad to see more goons don't have Istanbul, it's one of our favorites. Plays super smooth and fast, is thinky but not overly heavy, scales really well, looks great and has a modular board. If you like worker placement games at all I think it's definitely worth checking out, the spatial element of moving around the board and dropping off/picking up your workers gives it a bit of a puzzle element and makes it stand out from other WP games.

It's actually right above Village on the bottom of my big shelf but my angle was too lovely :o:

e: and yeah it owns, almost owns too much because it gets requested all the time in my group and I wanna break out Dungeon Lords god drat it

T-Bone fucked around with this message at 04:19 on May 29, 2015

# ? May 29, 2015 04:12

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Sockser posted:

Is there a way to make King of Tokyo fun? I've played like four games and I have yet to use the poison tokens or whatever they are.

Are all my friends just playing too aggressive and dumb or is it a bad game for poopy babies?

Get King of New York which adds an actual board and more viable options to play the game beyond mindless free-for-all or turtling-fame-scorer.

It's still a dumb dice chucking game but now it's an actual board game.

EBag posted:

I'm sad to see more goons don't have Istanbul, it's one of our favorites. Plays super smooth and fast, is thinky but not overly heavy, scales really well, looks great and has a modular board. If you like worker placement games at all I think it's definitely worth checking out, the spatial element of moving around the board and dropping off/picking up your workers gives it a bit of a puzzle element and makes it stand out from other WP games.

I actually played Istanbul mixing it up with Five Tribes (because lol all Middle Eastern themed games look the same) and gently caress Five Tribes, Istanbul deserves all the praise it gets.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:13

jmzero: Jul 24, 2007

quote:

Is there a way to make King of Tokyo fun? I've played like four games and I have yet to use the poison tokens or whatever they are.

Are all my friends just playing too aggressive and dumb or is it a bad game for poopy babies?

There's a few different kinds of tokens - each is associated with a specific power card. You won't use the tokens unless someone buys that card. In general the game is better as you get more familiar and see more cards; to help with that we had a house rule that when a new monster enters Tokyo, you discard the oldest card in the market and add a new one. Playing that way, you get more chances at cards that fit different strategies, and you're less likely to have a situation where the market stagnates (or has bad cards nobody wants). It also rewards aggression a bit, which is good.

King of Tokyo is a really solid competitive game if you have 4 players (exactly, it doesn't balance out well at other player counts) playing reasonably. If people are super aggressive it can be kind of random, but generally you'll win super aggressive games just by camping outside and farming numbers while everyone else claws and heals. Once you kind of get the idea of how the game balance works - the balance between aggression and farming, that is - you should be seeing a pretty even split between elimination and VP wins - and at that point the game really shines. It's a pretty rare game in that it handles continuous player combat without being political.

There is a sequel. King of New York is not as well balanced or interesting when played to win, but it works better as a casual game; the little tanks and buildings make the game feel a lot more thematic.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:16

Harvey Mantaco: Mar 6, 2007; Someone please help me find my keys =(

T-Bone posted:

They're 10 months so it's currently a wargame.

I heard cleaning up all the chit gets annoying.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:17

al-azad: May 28, 2009

My sad stack

I'm blessed with a good gamer store with a massive shelf of store copies so I never buy anything unless it's old and interesting or I'm eventually going to donate it to the store.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:25

EBag: May 18, 2006

I love the giant rear end middle stack channeling all that weight down onto Catacombs(?). Does Eclipse sag in the middle now?

# ? May 29, 2015 04:28

fozzy fosbourne: Apr 21, 2010

How is Ascending Empires? Also I have never seen anyone talk about Hegemonic ever, goons like space, what's the deal

# ? May 29, 2015 04:28

EBag: May 18, 2006

T-Bone posted:

They're 10 months so it's currently a wargame.

It's actually right above Village on the bottom of my big shelf but my angle was too lovely

e: and yeah it owns, almost owns too much because it gets requested all the time in my group and I wanna break out Dungeon Lords god drat it

How is Village? It's one you don't hear about a lot but it seems like it has some interesting ideas. I like your collection btw. Also curious what do you think of Goa?

# ? May 29, 2015 04:31

Broken Loose: Dec 25, 2002; PROGRAM
A > - - - LR > > - - LL > - - -

EBag posted:

How is Village? It's one you don't hear about a lot but it seems like it has some interesting ideas. I like your collection btw. Also curious what do you think of Goa?

I posted about it a while back:

Broken Loose posted:

I got to play Village tonight.

It was a pleasant experience! I'd heard a few things left and right, that it's a cute euro worker placement thingy and it's on BGA or some poo poo. It's a pretty generic punktefest but they do some unique things to shake up the formula.

First, it's not a worker placement game. It's a worker removal game, where each action on the board has a pile of little wooden cubes on it and you have to take a cube to take that action. The cubes are basically workers in that respect, as there are a limited amount per action, but the cubes also function as a currency of sorts (more on that in a minute). You get actual meeples, too, that go places and do things, but they don't block placements like real workers do.

Your meeples can die. This is awesome and I loved it. Your meeples have a number corresponding to which generation they are (roughly), and the primary currency of the game is time which eventually kills off your older meeples. These meeples can work (but not place lol), BUT if they die they go down in the history book as being "the guy who died in city hall" or "the guy who died in church." One of the ways of scoring points is to have your dudes die in historically memorable locations faster and more often than your opponent's dudes. I'm making this sound a lot less thematically coherent than it really is, but it makes a ton of sense in the context of writing the history of the village and stuff without my embellishments. Trying to balance the locations of your oldest meeples with your time expenditures (because the history book DOES have limited space per death location, which is totally worker placement 101) and also understanding how the history book (and graveyard for people who die but can't make it to the book) control the endgame is key to doing well.

The game has little wooden cubes. The cubes are supposed to be, like, personality traits or something? It's awful. (BLNote: orange is skill, green is persuasiveness, brown is faith, pink is knowledge, and black are PLAGUE) I'm pretty easygoing as far as using cubes for whatever resources short of going full Lords of Waterdeep retard, but this poo poo is just plain non-sequitor. You get these cubes from largely arbitrary things, the cubes correspond to intangible concepts, and then you spend the loving cubes doing arbitrary things. The cubes are necessary for the game to work, but no work was done to make the cubes actually work in any thematic sense with the rest of the game. They're just there. It's easier to just call them colored cubes.

There are a bunch of ways to score. It's a lot like Caylus in that you can do a castle-like action once per round which forces everybody to spend certain resources for huge points, there's a tech chain kind of thing where you travel to neighboring cities, you can send your dudes off to be monks (including a cool random meeple bag minigame where you find out which of your dudes graduated from Monk Academy), you can sell poo poo for points normally, and then things are worth points at the end of the game. You don't do the majority of scoring until after the game finishes, so your opponents don't get too much of an idea that you have an insurmountable lead, but that didn't stop me from loving annihilating the others and then just being like "welp" during the final scoring bits. There are no hidden scoring mechanisms and no Big Money payouts that you can shoot for at high risk.

I like playing the game, but I'll never buy it. It wouldn't ever hit my table because I have better worker placements and better low-luck resource puzzles. If I have an hour completely free I might be down to play it online, but I wouldn't really give a poo poo if I never played it again. It's a cute idea executed mildly well that just isn't polished enough to compete in 2014.

There was a discussion (click the link to the post if you have archives), but the general consensus was that it was okay with some cool ideas and nothing else really going for it. Play Caylus.

edit: It's on BGA. Try before you buy.

Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 04:51 on May 29, 2015

# ? May 29, 2015 04:42

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

EBag posted:

How is Village? It's one you don't hear about a lot but it seems like it has some interesting ideas. I like your collection btw. Also curious what do you think of Goa?

Just got Goa by chance at the FLGS when they had a 30% off sale, so haven't broken it out yet. Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out this weekend because my brother loves auction games. I'll let you know my thoughts.

I really like the mechanic in Village of your workers dying and trying to get them into the hall of records (where they score VP) instead of the anonymous graveyard. It's a cool mechanic and it works thematically. I will see wanting some more variation in the buildings soon, but there's two expansions (Inn and Port) so that shouldn't be a problem. I would recommend it if you're looking for a medium weight WP game. I like it better for instance, than another medium WP game like Last Will, which is a good game with a cool thematic mechanic of its own (getting rid of your money rather than earning it), but Village is a bit smoother while still offering some interesting decisions.

e: I don't have Caylus \o/

Although it's back in print by July 1st so that will be rectified :getin:

# ? May 29, 2015 04:42

Shadow225: Jan 2, 2007

Honest question to you peeps with the huge collections: How often do you get to play through your entire library? Obviously you like some games more than others, but do you routinely pull out everything in your collection, or are some games more like decoration or a badge of honor?

# ? May 29, 2015 04:44

4outof5: Nov 10, 2003; Leader of the ULT Right.
Grabbing pussy since April 2, 1994

Broken Loose posted:

Play Caylus.

play dominant species

edit:

Shadow225 posted:

Honest question to you peeps with the huge collections: How often do you get to play through your entire library? Obviously you like some games more than others, but do you routinely pull out everything in your collection, or are some games more like decoration or a badge of honor?

The wargames get played slower than the ameritrash and eurogames, but that's because I have one opponent. I even have games in my collection that I loath but there are people in my playgroup who enjoy them so I have them. I find the ones that get played the least are the flash in the pan small games. The ones you can play 5 or 6 times in a night because people get burned out on them after the wow wears off.

4outof5 fucked around with this message at 04:53 on May 29, 2015

# ? May 29, 2015 04:45

sonatinas: Apr 15, 2003; Seattle Karate Vs. L.A. Karate

4outof5 posted:

play dominant species

Play both since they're very different games

# ? May 29, 2015 04:47

Broken Loose: Dec 25, 2002; PROGRAM
A > - - - LR > > - - LL > - - -

T-Bone posted:

e: I don't have Caylus \o/

Although it's back in print by July 1st so that will be rectified

Caylus is also on BGA! Play it now!

Shadow225 posted:

Honest question to you peeps with the huge collections: How often do you get to play through your entire library? Obviously you like some games more than others, but do you routinely pull out everything in your collection, or are some games more like decoration or a badge of honor?

I tend to avoid overlap in the collection, with different games having different uses for different moods (see the Play Caylus statement, where I insinuate that Village doesn't really deserve a place in a collection over it). There have been times where I've given away games that haven't been played enough because I got newer games that obsoleted them or simpler reasons like nobody to play with (like my copy of Caylus, heh, which I gave away to one of my closest friends when he moved to New York). Games need to be played, and it's a waste and disservice to not play them.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:48

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

I probably should. I'm a bit sad that the reprint doesn't have the old school cover

Shadow225 posted:

Honest question to you peeps with the huge collections: How often do you get to play through your entire library? Obviously you like some games more than others, but do you routinely pull out everything in your collection, or are some games more like decoration or a badge of honor?

The lighter/filler/quicker gets played more. As much as I'd love to break out Dominant Species on a weekday I'm gonna reach for Dominion (which I need to sleeve/mega storage asap) or Istanbul or something. I definitely try to get everything played, although I'll probably end up trading some stuff off eventually, especially if this wargame addiction I'm starting becomes a problem. gently caress you Twilight Struggle.

e: there's a meetup group here on Thursday too so I get stuff played there too, like Keyflower which my regular group doesn't like what the gently caress guys

# ? May 29, 2015 04:53

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Top shelf and Robo-Rally are mine, the rest is my housemate's. I bought Samurai Swords back in the 90s and have gotten to play it once ever. I dream of getting out all those tiny plastic samurai again one day. Cosmic Encounter includes More Cosmic Encounter so it has all the expansion stuff, I just only kept one box.

# ? May 29, 2015 04:54

al-azad: May 28, 2009

EBag posted:

I love the giant rear end middle stack channeling all that weight down onto Catacombs(?). Does Eclipse sag in the middle now?

Nope, Eclipse's box is a horse. Now, Advanced HeroQuest requires a weighty significant other to rest on top and smooth out those wrinkles.

fozzy fosbourne posted:

How is Ascending Empires? Also I have never seen anyone talk about Hegemonic ever, goons like space, what's the deal

Ascending Empires is awful. The board is not glossy enough to facilitate proper flicks, the pieces don't fit well, and the whole action economy is completely busted. The ship-discs are taller than they are wide making it easy for them to roll on their side and they'll commonly bounce off the ridges created by the ill fitting board (the designers in their FAQ actually call this a feature). The whole flicking thing isn't even integral to the game, you actually lose your ships if you collide so you're trying to flick within a loving inch of an enemy (you even measure with a range rule). And you need two ships to destroy an enemy without dying yourself, I don't get it! What's even the point in this being a dexterity game?

The action economy is very tight and there's one planet type that lets you research more moves per turn, which is insanely powerful, but the placement of planets but also their types are random so one player could have access to the power turn 1 while another could never see it. But the actual worse thing, and this is related to the limited actions and limited token count, the game is boring. There are long stretches where nothing happens. When you do get into conflict it's a matter of lining up 2-ships against 1 within attack range but you can't physically hit your enemy or you lose a ship. You have 2 actions by default so unless you already have two ships on the board you can't even engage an opponent (unless you researched the extra action at which point you're God now). I'm sure the designers realized how boring this game is so they have a power that gives you VP for ramming (normally you only get VP for "proper" 2-on-1 combat) and there's also an action where you sacrifice dudes on a planet for VP. You can totally win the game by just doing this "mining" action as they call it on a planet close to the edge and keeping a ring of ships around it.

I really wanted to like it but I totally understand why the game is out of print, no one would want this product on a store shelf. It's also telling that this game has some diehard fans on BGG who address criticism by earnestly suggesting tossing all the components and making your own board and pieces. I'm not joking.

Now Hegemonic I haven't played. Owned the game for going on 2 years now, backed the Kickstarter and everything. I really want to but I can never bring it to the table. I swear to God I'm going to play the drat thing this Sunday and post a trip report because the manual makes it sound like my kind of game. It's got RftG simultaneous action selection, Eclipse's tile placement, and weird abstract combat with Kemet's power card setup. Of course being a Frankenstein's monster probably means it's going to blow but I have high hopes!

# ? May 29, 2015 04:54

Durendal: Jan 25, 2008; Who made you God to say
"I'll take your sheep from you?"

T-Bone posted:

I probably should. I'm a bit sad that the reprint doesn't have the old school cover

The lighter/filler/quicker gets played more. As much as I'd love to break out Dominant Species on a weekday I'm gonna reach for Dominion (which I need to sleeve/mega storage asap) or Istanbul or something. I definitely try to get everything played, although I'll probably end up trading some stuff off eventually, especially if this wargame addiction I'm starting becomes a problem. gently caress you Twilight Struggle.

e: there's a meetup group here on Thursday too so I get stuff played there too, like Keyflower which my regular group doesn't like what the gently caress guys

Hi! Have you backed Cuba Libr�?

# ? May 29, 2015 04:56

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

Durendal posted:

Hi! Have you backed Cuba Libr�?

are you trying to kill me

al-azad posted:

Nope, Eclipse's box is a horse. Now, Advanced HeroQuest requires a weighty significant other to rest on top and smooth out those wrinkles.

I just got my youngest brother HeroQuest for his birthday because it was like the childhood game of ours but I didn't even know AHQ was a thing until I saw it sitting on the same shelf as HQ at this store that just opened. How is it?

T-Bone fucked around with this message at 05:07 on May 29, 2015

# ? May 29, 2015 05:04

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

Broken Loose posted:

I posted about it a while back:

There was a discussion (click the link to the post if you have archives), but the general consensus was that it was okay with some cool ideas and nothing else really going for it. Play Caylus.

edit: It's on BGA. Try before you buy.

Village is, in fact, NOT on BGA. Maybe it's on a different similar site?

# ? May 29, 2015 05:11

al-azad: May 28, 2009

T-Bone posted:

I just got my youngest brother HeroQuest for his birthday because it was like the childhood game of ours but I didn't even know AHQ was a thing until I saw it sitting on the same shelf as HQ at this store that just opened. How is it?

Like it says on the tin, it's a more complicated HeroQuest. Best I can describe it is a precursor to Descent (or literally a precursor to Warhammer Quest). Instead of a pre-made board you have tiles you can piece together. The manual has a basic campaign and includes suggestions for campaign play. It's actually kind of sparse beyond the minis and tiles. I miss the cheap, overwrought props from the base game (although you can import/export at will) but you get cool plastic doors with hinges and a puzzle-piece amulet that I openly admit to using as a prop in a D&D campaign.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:14

taser rates: Mar 30, 2010

Friend/landlord recently bought these shelves for me, for which I am extremely grateful:

Not pictured: All dominion sets, which I carry around in long boxes, and A Distant Plain, which I'm running through solo at the moment.

Descent is not mine, and I'm probably going to end up selling/trading everything on the bottom shelf of that second picture lol.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:21

Broken Loose: Dec 25, 2002; PROGRAM
A > - - - LR > > - - LL > - - -

Countblanc posted:

Village is, in fact, NOT on BGA. Maybe it's on a different similar site?

What the hell? It's not even on BSW. I could have sworn Village was on BGA in this iteration of the universe. Maybe I was thinking of Troyes. I'm losing my mind.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:24

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

Just thought you could sneak The Great Zimbabwe by us at the top there eh -- is it as good as its rep?

# ? May 29, 2015 05:24

taser rates: Mar 30, 2010

Broken Loose posted:

What the hell? It's not even on BSW. I could have sworn Village was on BGA in this iteration of the universe. Maybe I was thinking of Troyes. I'm losing my mind.

It definitely used to be on BGA, I guessed they removed it at some point? Weird.

T-Bone posted:

Just thought you could sneak The Great Zimbabwe by us at the top there eh -- is it as good as its rep?

Still haven't played it unfortunately :v:

Someday, maybe after I get off my current Arkwright/Argent kick.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:29

fozzy fosbourne: Apr 21, 2010

Does Arkwright always cost 1 million dollars?

# ? May 29, 2015 05:34

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Speaking of storage the COIN games have me terrified since there are exactly enough wooden cubes to play the game and availability of pieces is a hard limit so I'm really paranoid about losing them.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:38

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

StashAugustine posted:

Speaking of storage the COIN games have me terrified since there are exactly enough wooden cubes to play the game and availability of pieces is a hard limit so I'm really paranoid about losing them.

Terra Mystica and Viticulture freak me out. That's just too much wood to keep track of. I think if I ever opened Antiquity I'd have a panic attack.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:39

Durendal: Jan 25, 2008; Who made you God to say
"I'll take your sheep from you?"

T-Bone posted:

Terra Mystica and Viticulture freak me out. That's just too much wood to keep track of. I think if I ever opened Antiquity I'd have a panic attack.

# ? May 29, 2015 05:55

Gimnbo: Feb 13, 2012; e m b r a c e t r a n q u i l i t y

T-Bone posted:

Terra Mystica and Viticulture freak me out. That's just too much wood to keep track of. I think if I ever opened Antiquity I'd have a panic attack.

A lot of the wood in Viticulture just sits on your player board until you ~~accidentally sweep them off the table with your arm~~ finish the game.

# ? May 29, 2015 06:20

Rutibex: Sep 9, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Hey guys, I didn't want to be left out of the posting of our board game storage. Its a good closet, I still have lots of room, I could get more games in there easily. Behold!

# ? May 29, 2015 06:35

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

Do you sleep in there too? You win.

sike, I won

# ? May 29, 2015 06:41

Echophonic: Sep 16, 2005; ha;lp; Gun Saliva

Bottom Liner posted:

Do you sleep in there too? You win.

sike, I won

# ? May 29, 2015 06:50

Broken Loose: Dec 25, 2002; PROGRAM
A > - - - LR > > - - LL > - - -

Rutibex posted:

Hey guys, I didn't want to be left out of the posting of our board game storage. Its a good closet, I still have lots of room, I could get more games in there easily. Behold!

i love it.

# ? May 29, 2015 07:08

Hauki: May 11, 2010

Shadow225 posted:

Honest question to you peeps with the huge collections: How often do you get to play through your entire library? Obviously you like some games more than others, but do you routinely pull out everything in your collection, or are some games more like decoration or a badge of honor?

virtually never

yes

to elaborate, I buy a bunch of games I really like the mechanics or design of and then get it to the table like, once

# ? May 29, 2015 07:33

The End: Apr 16, 2007; You're welcome.

Rutibex posted:

Hey guys, I didn't want to be left out of the posting of our board game storage. Its a good closet, I still have lots of room, I could get more games in there easily. Behold!

I assume your custom Ultra-Talisman requires a closet all of its own?

# ? May 29, 2015 07:39

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

The End posted:

I assume your custom Ultra-Talisman requires a closet all of its own?

Rutibex-Talisman never actually ends, so he never has to put it away.

# ? May 29, 2015 07:40

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# ? May 14, 2024 11:45

cyberia: Jun 24, 2011; Do not call me that!
Snuffles was my slave name.
You shall now call me Snowball; because my fur is pretty and white.

al-azad posted:

My sad stack

I'm blessed with a good gamer store with a massive shelf of store copies so I never buy anything unless it's old and interesting or I'm eventually going to donate it to the store.

How is Starfarers of Catan? I like the ~theme~ but am not sure if it's worth hunting down a copy from eBay or BGG?

# ? May 29, 2015 08:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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