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Cheers for the replies dudes, just spotted that Shutup & Sitdown have a opener video on it which is really cool. The bioterrorist stuff looks great for me as I love those type of additions in games (my favourite game is still BSG) which sounds great for future life for it. Basically what I'm after is a game I'll go back to but also use as an intro for people new to board gaming and it sounds like its good at doing both.
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May 30, 2015 18:49
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Bottom Liner posted:You can just not play with the bioterrorist role though, so it's a non-issue. That's pretty much universally true for all things Pandemic: its modularity means that there's little reason to avoid or wait buying the expansions. Mixing and matching the parts ends up being just another way to tune the difficulty outside of the rather crude cart count.
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May 30, 2015 18:53
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bobvonunheil posted:If you like these you might also like the Non-transitive Grime Dice. They're like rock paper scissors but with dice (as in, Die 1 has better odds of beating Die 2, which has better odds of beating Die 3, which has better odds of beating Die 1) I thought these were really interesting and was considering designing a game around them, but then I did the math and realized that they're pretty closely equivalent to each player rolling a standard d6 and the player with the advantage wins ties.
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May 30, 2015 19:04
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Question here. I have an assignment for class, and for that I'm trying to estimate the total number of people who own Twilight Imperium (yes, really). Now, BGG has info on how many people on there say they have the game, but that's obviously not the whole story. Does anyone know if FFG or a distributor has published sales or print run numbers, even if they're outdated in some way? My Google-fu has failed me here, so I figured I'd ask on the off chance that someone has run into something like that in the past.
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May 30, 2015 19:09
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I have a copy hope this helps.
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May 30, 2015 19:14
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That sounds like a lovely assignment. Like, how can you even be graded on that?
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May 30, 2015 19:16
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I know three people who own copies.
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May 30, 2015 19:20
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Bottom Liner posted:That sounds like a lovely assignment. Like, how can you even be graded on that? Sounds like the "estimate how many gas stations are in the U.S." or "find the quickest method to determine how high you can drop an egg" interview questions that were en vogue years ago (and probably still today). the purpose is to have someone come up with a reasonable algorithm, typically
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May 30, 2015 19:27
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yea like if 1 in 100 people own it and there are 318 milion people in the US then do the math pointdexter.
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May 30, 2015 20:07
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Sounds like the "estimate how many gas stations are in the U.S." or "find the quickest method to determine how high you can drop an egg" interview questions that were en vogue years ago (and probably still today). the purpose is to have someone come up with a reasonable algorithm, typically But with these questions you have a general base point to go by e.g. you can safely assume an egg will break if dropped at least 6" and you can use the number of gas stations in your town and work out from there. There's no published info on Twilight Imperium. It's also a game that went through three editions over a decade so are we counting those? The third edition has remained in print since 2005 so it's still selling. This Geeklist includes sourced sales information. I'll use Arkham Horror as a metric as I believe both games appeal to a similar subset of hobbyists. Arkham Horror also came out in 2005 and by 2011 it was cited by Diamond as selling over 140,000 copies. That's an average of 23,000 copies a year and AH is consistently in print so let's say 200,000 copies have been sold so far. BGG lists over 30,000 people owning the game so that's about a 15% disparity which I think is pretty accurate when it comes to casual players and people who are active in an online community. So going by those metrics, Twilight Imperium base game has over 13,000 people listed as owning it so I think it's safe to say that about 100,000 or more copies have been sold/shipped.
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May 30, 2015 20:20
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So all this Mage Knight chat inspired me recently, and I just got Lost Legion yesterday. I was about to start a solo volkare's return, go to lay out the map and I notice every map tile from Lost Legion is like, 1/16th of an inch larger on every facet than the ones from my base game. It's not much, but it's immediately noticeable upon looking at or touching the tile stack. Has anyone else experienced this, and what did you do? edit: the back of the tiles are also obviously lighter than the printing on my base game as well, so even if they're not stacked it's immediately obvious. And naturally, they don't fit together very well when laid out either. the backings on all of the new units/artifacts/advanced actions/spells/new class cards etc. are also noticeably less saturated for whatever that matters Hauki fucked around with this message at 21:08 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 20:39
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That's not normal and you got a bum copy. I'd talk to customer service ASAP.
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May 30, 2015 21:11
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There's an expansion to Go First Dice to bring the player count to 6: http://www.ericharshbarger.org/dice/go_first_dice.html#6player
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May 30, 2015 21:46
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The math behind those is neat, but that's really a solution looking for a problem.
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May 30, 2015 21:47
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Impermanent posted:That's not normal and you got a bum copy. I'd talk to customer service ASAP. Meh. I assume Wizkids is who I should contact about that? Doubly annoyed, because even though it's completely unrelated to the above issue, Cardhaus screwed up the order that included Lost Legion on top of that and I've gotten a couple promotion e-mails from them since contacting them, but no response to my issue.
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May 30, 2015 21:56
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It's actually a pretty common issue. Mage Knight has poo poo components in general. Just try to ignore it.
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May 30, 2015 22:17
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Hey so how does the terrible combat in eclipse compare to the terrible combat in ti3?
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May 30, 2015 22:22
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My biggest gripe with Mage Knight is the terrible component quality. My LL box has all the problems you mention with colour mismatches. But the size of the map tiles not matching seems problematic. Strange to say, but I wish it was published by FFG! A blinged out MK Anniversary Bundle would be an instabuy for me.
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May 30, 2015 23:21
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Zombie #246 posted:Hey so how does the terrible combat in eclipse compare to the terrible combat in ti3? Not dramatically different in terms of mechanisms, but you've got more control of the matchups in Eclipse due to the tech tiles - i.e. you can tip the balance of battles by using judicious upgrades rather than building more ships.
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May 30, 2015 23:36
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Fenn the Fool! posted:I thought these were really interesting and was considering designing a game around them, but then I did the math and realized that they're pretty closely equivalent to each player rolling a standard d6 and the player with the advantage wins ties. Non-transitive dice are even more fun if you let people make their own. Just get a bag of blank dice and let people distribute some number of points between the sides (I do 36 points for six-sided die, with zero the minimum point value). Then let people either change die between rounds and/or add to a growing die pool that everyone has to play against. If everyone really likes the math, you don't even need to bother rolling the die, just determine the expected margin of advantage. Open question: For 36 points on a D6, is there a "best" die that is expected to win or tie against any other 36-point D6? Edit: Or prove no best die exists... Stickman fucked around with this message at 00:18 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 00:12
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If you assign the pips A <= B <= C <= D <= E <= F, I can assign them A'=A-5, B'=B+1, C'=C+1, D'= D+1, E'=E+1, F'=F+1. This always wins if your A is at least 5. If your A is smaller, I can simply make A'=A+1 and some other face gets the -5 instead. The -5 is best placed on a face that won't drop it below more than one other face. I call this the +1/-5 strategy, and it nearly always works. However, I have found precisely one die for which I cannot make this strategy work no matter how I move around the -5. Moreover, I cannot find a way to beat this one particular die. It often gets draws, and sometimes wins, but it never loses. I believe I can prove that it never loses, but haven't double-checked my sketchy proof idea. So this is my hypothesis: there is precisely one "best die" (there could conceivably be more than one, so long as they draw with each other, but I believe there is only one), and that my "+1/-5 strategy" will work against all other dice with the correct choice of face for the -5. The "best die" is 1 3 5 7 9 11 Also, this will make a great question for my math contest prep students. Thanks!
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May 31, 2015 01:51
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Bottom Liner posted:That sounds like a lovely assignment. Like, how can you even be graded on that? Oh, that's not the assignment specifically, although the assignment itself is dumb. We're to design (as in conceptualize and mockup, not program) a mobile app for some thing or another. I had an idea for something board game related, but one of the things we need to do is identify the size of our target market. The app idea I'm writing about concerns Twilight Imperium, hence knowing how many copies exist/were bought would help. I didn't think there was going to be concrete sales info out there, but I figured if there was any place that would have someone be like "oh yeah, those are located on this page" it'd be here. al-azad posted:But with these questions you have a general base point to go by e.g. you can safely assume an egg will break if dropped at least 6" and you can use the number of gas stations in your town and work out from there. There's no published info on Twilight Imperium. It's also a game that went through three editions over a decade so are we counting those? The third edition has remained in print since 2005 so it's still selling. This metric is probably the best I'll get, thanks. Not sarcastic, I hadn't thought of doing things this way, so I really do appreciate this.
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May 31, 2015 02:24
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Jimbozig posted:If you assign the pips A <= B <= C <= D <= E <= F, I can assign them A'=A-5, B'=B+1, C'=C+1, D'= D+1, E'=E+1, F'=F+1. That's nice, and I totally believe it because (slightly fleshed out proof): Consider starting from the "best die" (dice A) and adding or subtracting from the sides to make dice B. Unless we're adding more than one point to the "11" side, in which case we're wasting points, each decrease will either add 1 more "win" to a side on dice A (when we subtract from a side on both die), or will subtract one "win" from a side on dice B (when we subtract from a side currently in between values on dice A). Adding one point either adds one "win" to dice B or subtracts one from dice A. Thus, any dice with no side greater than "12" will tie the "best" die, and the "best die" will beat any die with a side greater than 12! This "best die" exists for all games with DN die and N^2 pips! When I was originally thinking about this problem, I allowed sides to have zero pips (or equivalently, 42 pips with minimum 1), The cool thing about the existence of a "best die" is that, while it's the safe choice, it may not be the best choice in the ecosystem game, so long as you can take advantage of other players who haven't found it yet! For example A=[6,6,6,6,6,6] and B=[1,7,7,7,7,7] both tie the "best die" (on average), but B is the best choice if there are a lot of As around. It's a good example of how equilibrium strategies are not necessarily strongest outside of equilibrium (or in this case, would it be partial equilibrium?) Edit: On board games that exist: if anyone has the Stonemaier Games Treasure Chest, how do you like it? Do the pieces feel solid? It's super tempting to pick up for Keyflower etc., but $30 is a bit steep for some extra bling. Stickman fucked around with this message at 03:00 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 02:43
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Jesus Christ, how many loving times in a game of Caverna do I have to explain that all animals can live in pastures Agricola style, in addition to their special rules?
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May 31, 2015 03:17
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quote:Still not sure about that case, but I'll get around to writing up code someday! I went ahead and wrote the code. After trying every possibility, I can confirm that Jimbozig's dice is not beatable and also that it's the only dice (with 6 faces and 36 pips) that has that property. Fun little coding exercise for anyone who's into algorithms. If you're into programming and you get stuck, here's some coding hints: It's clear how to loop through possible dice - just keep the faces in >= order to avoid checking dupes. For each test die, first cache the value of each possible competing dice face (ie. a 7 would win against 3 faces of the test die) and keep this as an integer (win count) for speed. Now, to find the best possible "opponent dice" for a given dice, you write a function that says "what's the best possible win count I can get if I have X remaining faces, given that I have Y pips left to allocate". Then you memoize that function, and the whole thing ends up running very fast. quote:Edit: On board games that exist: if anyone has the Stonemaier Games Treasure Chest, how do you like it? Do the pieces feel solid? It's super tempting to pick up for Keyflower etc., but $30 is a bit steep for some extra bling. Kind of a mixed bag - some are great (the little gold bars), some are OK (the bricks are kind of cute, the gems are OK), some are just kind of boring plastic blobs (the coal and wood). Overall: kind of a disappointment. jmzero fucked around with this message at 03:31 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 03:24
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So, I found a few more dice that foil my +1/-5 strategy, but they can be beaten another way. Here's a relatively simple strategy to beat any die except the "best die" If its smallest face is greater than 1, reduce that face to zero and add one to the next two lowest faces. You just lost a m combinations that used to be a draws, where m is the number of faces equal to the smallest face. But you gained at least m+1 combinations that now win what used to be draws. Otherwise, if its smallest face is 0 or 1, order the die's sides from least pips to most. Let k be the largest difference between any two faces, and label those two faces M and N, so M - N = k . If the die is not the "best die", k must be at least 3 or else it won't sum to 36. So subtract 2 from face M and add 1 each to any two other faces, starting with any faces that had the same number of pips as M. Again, you gained at least one more combination than you lost for the same reason as above. Which pip totals have a "best die" for a dN? N^2 [1 3 5 7 ...], N^2-N [0 2 4 6 ...], (N^2 - N)/2 [0 1 2 3 ...], and any number less than or equal to N (trivially, by placing one pip per side until you run out of sides). Those are the only ones I could find, and I believe the only ones possible, although I can't confirm that for certain yet.
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May 31, 2015 03:41
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Jimbozig posted:So, I found a few more dice that foil my +1/-5 strategy, but they can be beaten another way. Here's a relatively simple strategy to beat any die except the "best die" Cool! Edit: Okay, there must be other values, but still working on classifying them. For example, the 1 and 2 pip trivially have "best die" (and the 2-pip game has a die that better than it's alternative!) Guess I'll stick with N^2+N when I use this as a game for students in the future! jmzero posted:I went ahead and wrote the code. After trying every possibility, I can confirm that Jimbozig's dice is not beatable and also that it's the only dice (with 6 faces and 36 pips) that has that property. Fun little coding exercise for anyone who's into algorithms. Thanks! I'm rusty enough that its difficult to just bang this stuff out. Would be good to get back into it though! jmzero posted:Kind of a mixed bag - some are great (the little gold bars), some are OK (the bricks are kind of cute, the gems are OK), some are just kind of boring plastic blobs (the coal and wood). Overall: kind of a disappointment. My wallet thanks you. Stickman fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 04:12
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I played Dominant Species for the first time today. 3 rounds and 3 hours with rules in, we decided to remove 10 dominance cards from the deck. Finished the game in 4 hours with rules on a shortened deck. Game was intense. Completely nuts, and a ton of fun.
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May 31, 2015 04:16
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So I've got some more questions after finishing up a solo of volkare's quest. First off, I felt like I got dicked by the map layout. Between walls, marsh, wasteland and a chain of mountains and water I could barely get out of the starting four tiles, and never felt like I had the movement in hand to push out. I spent most of the game tooling around in circles assaulting everything I could within that area, took a keep, 3 Mage towers, a monastery, dungeon, monster den and ancient ruins before ending back near the portal. At this point, Volkare was two spaces from the portal near the end of the second night, so I felt I had to just go for it. Felt like it made the last day/night cycle pretty redundant though. When do you guys usually end up taking him down? Going back to having to assault volkare, I also feel like I pulled pretty mobs that were pretty well suited to what I had in hand and would've gotten completely wrecked by some of the others. Anyway, I managed to drop a swamp dragon, lava dragon and altem mages in ranged and siege, but that left me dodging a catapult, with unblocked attacks from a summoned gargoyle, utem guardsman and volkare. Left me with four wounds in hand, two wounded units and two more in my discard, as I didn't have the influence to get my thugs to take a hit. Luckily that gave me a level and I pulled regeneration from advanced skills to heal and ready up, and that combined with volkare being slowed down from loss of units let me recover enough to finish the job a couple turns later. Regardless, I felt like I was just out of time and had no other options, and had I not had a great hand plus good draws in enemy units, I would've lost immediately. Edit: I should also add this was on the normal/easiest solo difficulty, so it's not like he was just bee lining to the portal every turn, there were plenty of wounds in his deck. Hauki fucked around with this message at 04:24 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 04:21
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Hauki posted:So I've got some more questions after finishing up a solo of volkare's quest. First off, I felt like I got dicked by the map layout. Between walls, marsh, wasteland and a chain of mountains and water I could barely get out of the starting four tiles, and never felt like I had the movement in hand to push out. I spent most of the game tooling around in circles assaulting everything I could within that area, took a keep, 3 Mage towers, a monastery, dungeon, monster den and ancient ruins before ending back near the portal. Hauki posted:At this point, Volkare was two spaces from the portal near the end of the second night, so I felt I had to just go for it. Felt like it made the last day/night cycle pretty redundant though. When do you guys usually end up taking him down? I've only played Volkare's Quest a few times but it's generally seemed pretty well time to have Volkare hit the portal just before the end of the third night.. not sure if you did something wrong with his movement or just played super slowly.
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May 31, 2015 04:39
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Sometimes Volkare will just be a dick, though, and if you're new to the game then even Normal/Fair is a pretty rough time of things. A couple days ago I had a solo game where Volkare immediately rammed into me first turn and then attacked twice on the second round.
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May 31, 2015 04:43
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Malloreon posted:I played Dominant Species for the first time today. We almost played Dominant Species last week at our game day. But the guy that brought it hadn't even opened it yet. He took one look at the dense rulebook and just gave up. Instead we played 5-6 other games in the same time frame. Maybe next time. I'm big on the owner of the game at least reading the rulebook before we try to learn it.
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May 31, 2015 04:56
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Yeah, four hours for dominant species? That sounds a little extreme. My first game was three hours with rules explanation and multiple cigarette breaks. However it's pretty essential that someone should read the rules before putting the game on the table. This goes for all games.
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May 31, 2015 05:07
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I'd read all the rules before hand and played a few rounds of the ipad game. I taught the game and we have some AP prone people. I think we'd be a lot faster the next time. Also, playing 6 handed the first time was probably a mistake.
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May 31, 2015 05:09
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Poopy Palpy posted:Jesus Christ, how many loving times in a game of Caverna do I have to explain that all animals can live in pastures Agricola style, in addition to their special rules? "Page 20, motherfucker, did you read it?!"
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May 31, 2015 05:17
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QnoisX posted:Maybe next time. I'm big on the owner of the game at least reading the rulebook before we try to learn it. I don't understand people who will bring games, expecting to play them, without having gone through a practice explanation or at least the drat rule book beforehand. Even if you're with people you like playing games with, it makes for a slow and unpleasant experience.
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May 31, 2015 05:20
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I got to play Titan today, went over really well with some new players. One was a bit slow but hopefully that will improve, finished a 5-player game in around 6 hours with rules explanation and not playing any turns during battles. 3rd and 4th place was a mutual elimination: Titan-on-Titan battle with the attacker having forgotten his only Angel had already died, so had to use his Titan a bit more aggressively to win, letting the defender counterattack and kill it at the end. Also played Fistful of Penguins which definitely needs a 10-second decision timer to be a reasonable quick dice game. And Dominion (base + seaside + promos) which is always great - one game had everybody trash estates with lookout and use Treasure Map with various supports to 4 provinces, winner had kept 1 estate.
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May 31, 2015 05:20
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unpronounceable posted:I don't understand people who will bring games, expecting to play them, without having gone through a practice explanation or at least the drat rule book beforehand. Even if you're with people you like playing games with, it makes for a slow and unpleasant experience. This right here is why I never buy games without having played them first. If I own a game, my players expect me to be able to explain the rules.
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May 31, 2015 05:22
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unpronounceable posted:I don't understand people who will bring games, expecting to play them, without having gone through a practice explanation or at least the drat rule book beforehand. Even if you're with people you like playing games with, it makes for a slow and unpleasant experience. Yeah, I find it really annoying. I usually like the read the rulebook, then hit up BGG to print out player aids and check for "first time mistakes" threads. Maybe download the faqs or quick reference to my tablet. No one else seems to think being prepared is a good idea. That's why Imperial Assault was a bad time. The Imperial player was the owner and I guess only skimmed the rules. The rebels only got one turn each instead of 4 total and then the Imperial player went after each of our turns, even when he was down to only the boss. Quickly killing us. Same day they tried to break out Agricola for the first time with about an hour left. No one else agreed. Hopefully they've read the rules by now so we can play next time.
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May 31, 2015 06:43
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Bubble-T posted:You weren't putting core tiles in the wrong spots were you? It seems unlikely there's that much awful terrain around with just the regular ones. Nah, the map was exactly as described and illustrated in the scenario. I've still got it set up because I had to run earlier. I think part of it was I just didn't have the movement in hand when I needed it to push through the harder tiles and explore more, so I just skated around through already revealed plains and hills a lot picking off what I could reach and still save my stronger stuff for actually clearing. I don't think I did anything wrong movement wise, 1 move in indicated direction per colored, non-red action revealed, two for the non-red spells. Although I think I did hit all four spells. Most turns I was dumping a good portion of my hand, and day 2 went really quickly as I was running the tactic that increases hand size, and I was in a spot to bounce between a few major things to conquer. There were a few turns in night 2(?) where I had literally no movement (or influence) and was stuck on an already conquered mage tower or the like and didn't really want to dump a bunch of strong spells and poo poo sideways for 1 move a piece just to hold my dick in an adjacent empty tile. As is I burnt through a few advanced actions and a couple artifacts cycling for extraneous crystals just so I could keep cards moving. I dunno, it's been a while since I last played so maybe I was slow rolling my hand, but I felt like I was still accomplishing a fair bit all things considered. edit: so yeah looking back for reference, I had a total of 8 hexes that were impassable in my starting tiles and the only hexes bordering unrevealed tiles that weren't wasteland, marsh or walled hills/etc. involved a route through three consecutive hills between water and mountains. Hauki fucked around with this message at 07:37 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 07:29
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