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Spector Ops is pretty decent but Dungeon Lords is truly great. Spec Ops also changes a lot at different player counts whereas Dungeon Lords always has 4 (either players or dummy players).
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Jun 20, 2015 03:47
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Lord Frisk posted:Until he literally cries about his ex and mtg still better
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Jun 20, 2015 04:10
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Bottom Liner posted:Spector Ops is pretty decent but Dungeon Lords is truly great. Spec Ops also changes a lot at different player counts whereas Dungeon Lords always has 4 (either players or dummy players). It was probably cause I should have picked the obvious dude with more health, and more poo poo to disable the car. I feel like it was a poo poo run cause we had a 4 player game with traitor or whatever, and like my only ever choice was, stand still and wait for them to circle me cause the loving puppet can radar every round cause why act when a sniper and werewolf are present. Then just get loving destroyed cause no ones landing on my stupid ninja attacks, and I just get shot to death. Feels like a very weak version of that splinter cell merc v. spy game, but instead of being kind of scary and fun, it just turns into dude getting destroyed cause the hunters have absolutely no reason to fear you. Oh no you'll get stunned or blinded for 1 second, and I'll get shot to death because I used an item, and gave away that they were nearby cause I'm trying to escape. Could be decent with better maps, and something to buff playing agent, but god drat I felt real let down on Spector Ops. I'd like to give it another go but the choices as agent seem so pointless, I can't slip past poo poo with my pitiful movement speed, and playing the fake out game only gets you so far, but if the car sits in the center of the map, they get a pretty good idea of where you are at all times. MAYBE it was my friends gently caress up, they literally never get the rules right unless I read that poo poo myself, but I flipped through a good amount of the book and I don't think anything was underhanded. All in all: Feels like Spector Ops might only be a good 2 player game, and you either get double items, or you put the traitor cards out, and get to turn one of your opponents mercs on him whenever convenient. PROTOSTORM!!! fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 20, 2015 04:46
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Am I missing an obvious joke, or is there some other reason so many people are constantly misspelling Specter? Is it a Deus Ex joke or something?
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Jun 20, 2015 05:34
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Lord Frisk posted:Until he literally cries about his ex and mtg look if you introduce your gf to magic you deserve what you get
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Jun 20, 2015 05:53
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I got to play Brew Crafters today. It was pretty good. If I had understood the game a bit better, I probably would have done better at the end, but I had over 50 points which seemed alright for a first go. What's the advanced game like? Does it add significant depth? This isn't some sort of Agricola killer for me but I do quite like it. I also played Villainous Vikings today and it was alright. We were all kinda dumb, but I felt good because I won Ragnarok, and still lost. I dunno if I would buy this game but for the price of free? Not too bad.
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Jun 20, 2015 05:53
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Terra Mystica question because BGG, Reddit, and Google are being useless: With the Spielbox bonus tile that gives pass VPs based on shipping level, what do the Fakir and Dwarves get? Seems like an unbalanced tile that would strongly favor Mermaids and penalize Fakir/Dwarves if there isn't a mitigating rule. Not a huge deal if that's the case, I just won't play with it, but just wondering in case it comes up.
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Jun 20, 2015 06:50
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Scyther posted:Am I missing an obvious joke, or is there some other reason so many people are constantly misspelling Specter? Is it a Deus Ex joke or something? It's actually the officially licensed Moon Knight board game.
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Jun 20, 2015 06:54
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Flipswitch posted:I'm looking at Specter Ops at the moment as a potential pick up in the future, what are peoples thoughts on it? I'm checking out some videos online and it seems to be fairly positive. I thought Specter Ops was a really lovely version of Letters From Whitechapel, but putting a roll to hit mechanic in your deduction game seems like a really bad move. It's a Plaid Hat Games game, though, so I guess their schtick is basically being a worse version of FFG*, which is a really weird niche to have. *Dead of Winter < BSG; Mice and Mystics < Descent; Specter Ops < Letters From Whitechapel; Bioshock Infinite and City of Remnants probably have their analogs too.
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Jun 20, 2015 08:17
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What's Summoner Wars a worse version of? Legit question, Summoner Wars is pretty fun so if there's "Summoner Wars but actually way better" I'd like to know what it is.
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Jun 20, 2015 09:00
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Locke Dunnegan posted:Terra Mystica question because BGG, Reddit, and Google are being useless: With the Spielbox bonus tile that gives pass VPs based on shipping level, what do the Fakir and Dwarves get? Seems like an unbalanced tile that would strongly favor Mermaids and penalize Fakir/Dwarves if there isn't a mitigating rule. Not a huge deal if that's the case, I just won't play with it, but just wondering in case it comes up. Our group assumed there was nothing. It's no different from other tiles and round bonuses having different value to different races, it's one of many factors in choosing your race. I was mermaids with it and didn't even bother to raise shipping before the last round. You can poke at it on the AI version for another opinion. I think the promo town tile that increases shipping does compensate for fakirs at least (+1 carpet range I think? flip it over) but not dwarves.
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Jun 20, 2015 09:01
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Kai Tave posted:What's Summoner Wars a worse version of? Legit question, Summoner Wars is pretty fun so if there's "Summoner Wars but actually way better" I'd like to know what it is. Summoner Wars is probably the one game that is pretty easily and guiltlessly recommended in their catalog, but you might want to look into Mage Wars, Battlelore (I haven't played this so I can't actually comment on the quality) or Warhammer Diskwars for a more advanced game. Summoner Wars would fit FFG's LCG strategy pretty goddamn well now that I think about it.
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Jun 20, 2015 09:22
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GrandpaPants posted:I thought Specter Ops was a really lovely version of Letters From Whitechapel, but putting a roll to hit mechanic in your deduction game seems like a really bad move I do see the point of that - mind you, I'm talking from a general game design perspective, as I haven't played the game so can't really judge how this particular implementation of a mechanic works in practice. The thing is, while stealth games are at their best when they are most tense, that is when you just manage to dodge the guards, they're usually quite binary when it comes to actual detection. You either slip by, or fail and all hell breaks loose. The space for a failure margin, various shades of alerting the guards and picquing their curiosity is usually quite limited in the genre and notoriously tricky to balance, while remaining the best part of gameplay - for an example, look at the implementation of being spotted in the PC game Invisible Inc., where unless you get caught with your pants down in the middle of an empty room, once spotted you can usually retreat, but the game tightens the noose removing your control over the situation piece by piece. It's the best stealth game in years for a reason. Now, lack of margin failure can be okay for a boardgame, where the stealth theme is really just a pretext for a competitive deduction puzzle. Then again, there's always a space for the Minesweeper dilemma: so often, for all your hard thinking, the endgame amounts to you going hail mary on last 2-3 spaces where you don't really have a way determine which is the winning choice. That is, the worst kind of randomness. Now, considering the tunnel vision sight in this game and all the fancy "get out of jail free" tricks, I am under impression it is not meant to be a game about pure deductive challenge, but rather about gradually honing in on the agent, making methodical educated guesses. It's a game about abductive, rather than deductive thinking. Therefore the game needs its failure margin: if you won the game spotting the agent from the other half of the board and won, it'd be lame as gently caress. Now, the chance of shooting the agent is primarily dependent not on stats or whatever, but the distance to target, effectively being an appraisal your performance, the level of your success in detection. Did you know exactly where the agent was? Your dice throw is pretty much a formality. You found him by having a loose idea of which lane he's in? That's okayish, you get a lesser reward. Did you see him across 20 tiles? Ha ha, he hosed up, now everybody gets a real tasty piece of info on where to hone in and finish the job properly (just a tool, rather than way to victory). Now, the roll to hit obviously introduces the thread-favourite issue of possibly losing the game due to a bad roll. That is precisely why the agent has multiple hit points: you're not meant to roll the die once and call it a day, the detection is meant to happen multiple times. The act of detection isn't really meant to end the game, but to build tension, as the agent gets gradually closer to the primary failure state (death), his control of situation deteriorates (he runs out of trick cards) and the entire wolfpack gets a pretty good idea how to close in on you. The mechanics are engineered to gravitate towards the state of agent trying to escape a snare: to create and prolong the partial failure state that is most tense and exciting for both sides. Winning is not a function of finding the agent (which would actually suck, since you work with abduction rather than deduction), but on maintaining a stranglehold, proving you took control of the situation, rather than lucking out. Summarizing, it's just trying to be more of a PC-style stealth game, rather than a Mastermind-like deductive exercise. It's a different paradigm. PS. This post is the grand opening of my new contrarian pro-randomness campaign. I don't really dig dice that much myself; I just feel the thread got really doctrinaire about them.
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Jun 20, 2015 09:55
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The thread isn't doctrinaire about dice  Mage Knight, Twilight Struggle, Chaos in the Old World, Castles of Burgundy, Eclipse, X-wing, Galaxy Trucker etc. are hardly pariahs here. It's just that dice are the easiest, laziest, cheapest option designers tend to resort to when it comes to variance and resolution mechanics and X to succeed in particular is a garbage mechanic almost without exception. Good games that have it tend to succeed in spite of it because they are so well designed otherwise that they can withstand a bit of diceroll bullshit (thinking of TS, Eclipse and CitOW particularly here) Edit: speaking of X to hit I'm playing Arkham Horror right now and it's so terrible, how does anyone like this Bubble-T fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 20, 2015 10:15
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Let's just put it this way: there's a reason why I love Unonditional Surrender and dislike Virgin Queen. The former uses dice randomness well, the latter doesn't. It's not the use of dice that bothers, but how you use them in the context of the game. There's also the difference between the pre and post decision randomness as well. Deciding to do something and the being gated by a dice roll is not a good feeling. Having something random happen and then you get to make a choice based on that is usually better.
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Jun 20, 2015 10:31
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GrandpaPants posted:I thought Specter Ops was a really lovely version of Letters From Whitechapel, but putting a roll to hit mechanic in your deduction game seems like a really bad move. It's a Plaid Hat Games game, though, so I guess their schtick is basically being a worse version of FFG*, which is a really weird niche to have.
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Jun 20, 2015 10:52
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Kai Tave posted:What's Summoner Wars a worse version of? Legit question, Summoner Wars is pretty fun so if there's "Summoner Wars but actually way better" I'd like to know what it is. Mage Wars would qualify, it is in a technical sense a better, more complex game. Some might say too complex though, as I have never been able to find a person to play it with me 
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Jun 20, 2015 11:19
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Mage Wars is probably a better game, just not for human beings to play.
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Jun 20, 2015 15:58
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I distinctly prefer Summoner Wars to Mage Wars. Mage Wars is what you get when you really commit 100% to a highly thematic wizard battle card game: it takes hours and hours, every turn is an AP-fest because you have to choose two of your three dozen spells before you even start the turn, the rulebook is bloated with a thousand status effects and edge cases. And yet for all of this, it's still a pretty good game, and that's a significant achievement. If you play Diablo PvP and say "I wish there were a super-complicated board game that was just like this and actually pretty decent" then that's Mage Wars. Summoner Wars is what you get if you take the same concept and you make a few more concessions to mechanical tightness. It's easy to learn, can be played in a reasonable amount of time, has some very cool hand management mechanics and Interesting Decisions (TM). The disadvantage is it's slightly more abstract; like thematically it's not entirely clear why you get more mana from killing enemies or from discarding monsters from your hand. Even still it's a very thematic game by most reasonable standards. McNerd fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 20, 2015 17:37
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Kai Tave posted:What's Summoner Wars a worse version of? Legit question, Summoner Wars is pretty fun so if there's "Summoner Wars but actually way better" I'd like to know what it is. Talisman.
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Jun 20, 2015 18:10
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my problem with summoner wars is that it's really good in a bunch of ways but it uses loving roll to hit as its main resolution . like, what the gently caress guys
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Jun 20, 2015 19:51
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Mage Wars loving rules because of how cinematic it is. Shooting a fireball lights people on fire, casting a tornado blows people around the arena. I'm a big fan of the quick sand spell as it slowly devours someone struggle to pull themselves out. The spells are loving awesome. I like the idea of Summoner Wars, but it doesn't work for me. My brain can't wrap itself around the casting system of discarding cards, it just feels bad to me. Also finally got Forbidden Stars. I actually kept the insert since it perfectly holds two medium plano boxes to hold all the bits, and they are exactly tall enough to top off the box with the manuals. Owns. The sculpting for the figures are awesome considering their size.
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Jun 20, 2015 20:06
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The best thing Summoner Wars has going for it is using cards for miniatures and a grid battlefield. The actual combat is meh and there are serious balance issues. I like it and have played probably 200 games on the iOS version, but I'm waiting for a new game to capitalize on the aforementioned mechanics in a much more elegant way.
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Jun 20, 2015 20:27
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Jedit posted:Talisman. I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job
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Jun 20, 2015 20:45
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Sometimes I wonder why I stay in this thread. This is not one of those times.
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Jun 20, 2015 20:47
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Out of curiosity, where do you think the balance issues lie in Summoner Wars? I like the game a lot and though I have fewer games under my belt than you I've found most matchups to be fairly even. Even if one of the factions ends up being slightly over or underpowered, there's enough variety (there's a stupid number of possible faction combo decks with the new Alliances set) that it all comes out in the wash for me.
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Jun 20, 2015 20:47
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job  I feel bad because a lot of people won't get this joke.
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Jun 20, 2015 20:48
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Tekopo posted:
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Jun 20, 2015 20:51
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dropkickpikachu posted:Out of curiosity, where do you think the balance issues lie in Summoner Wars? I like the game a lot and though I have fewer games under my belt than you I've found most matchups to be fairly even. Even if one of the factions ends up being slightly over or underpowered, there's enough variety (there's a stupid number of possible faction combo decks with the new Alliances set) that it all comes out in the wash for me. To be fair I haven't played the Alliances stuff, so I'm talking base game and all factions that are available in the app. Some match ups had serious imbalance, and every game came down to a runaway winner that took a little long to play out.
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Jun 20, 2015 21:25
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job Jeeeeeez.
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Jun 20, 2015 21:32
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job whoa
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Jun 20, 2015 21:46
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Poison Mushroom posted:At this point, whether or not Jedit likes a game is basically the canary in the coal mine about if there's crucial rules that can ruin the game if they're misunderstood. Nah, I just played it a bit on iOS and wondered what people were fussing over.
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Jun 20, 2015 23:43
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My favourite Summoner Wars fact is that tournament play apparently requires house rules to stop certain matchups devolving in to never ending stalemates.Fungah! posted:my problem with summoner wars is that it's really good in a bunch of ways but it uses loving roll to hit as its main resolution . like, what the gently caress guys Plaid Hat Games The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job lmao
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Jun 21, 2015 01:12
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job 
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Jun 21, 2015 01:56
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Food Fight: just want to say I had a round where my army was 5 pancakes. Lost the first two servings, crushed the last 3.
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Jun 21, 2015 03:26
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I wonder what the stacking limit on pancakes is.
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Jun 21, 2015 03:39
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cenotaph posted:I wonder what the stacking limit on pancakes is. pretty short, actually
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Jun 21, 2015 03:47
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm sorry Wil Weaton was such a dick to you, good luck on finding a new job  Tekopo posted:
Only 2014 Board Game Thread Kids Will Get This!
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Jun 21, 2015 03:51
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I played my first game of Eclipse today with 5 other, slow players. It took too long, but I had a good time. With my first explore, I lucked into the discovery tile with the +3 computer, so from that my aim was to load up with plasma missiles on my cruisers. I made a bunch of strategic mistakes, but in the end, I ended up winning with 33 points. It felt a bit too claustrophobic with 6 players, so I'd like to try it with 4, but I definitely want to play again. I'm gonna have to bring out a game timer for the next time we play though. It took way too loving long.
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Jun 21, 2015 05:13
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Lichtenstein posted:I do see the point of that - mind you, I'm talking from a general game design perspective, as I haven't played the game so can't really judge how this particular implementation of a mechanic works in practice. Good summary of how the game seems to play, but in specter ops it seems as though there is little to no control for the agent against a hardly competent team. They turn on the radar, get an instant read on where to stand, and can dice you to bits once you are spotted. I wrote a good essay, but that poo poo is impossible to parse without having played the game. Boils down to this; if you are a god drat spy that needs to stay hidden, but the only tension in the game is whether or not you get caught, while a radar beeps and points in your general direction with an extremely small area to investigate. That is just shooting fish in a barrel, the agent has no teeth, and rushing them down early on just makes them to use all their consumable abilities, then they are dead in the water. No ability is useful enough to negate people being able to shoot you every round with the biggest consequences possibly being (lose a turn, don't see for a turn). It only makes sense to play that dude with more health, cause that lets you get spotted the most, in a sneaking game with a map wide spotting mechanic. Facing could go a long way in requiring a lot more team work/positioning to matter, and with the traitor mechanic could make the game very stressful for the mercs when a pair of eyes goes belly up to help someone hack your nodes or whatever is happening. Radar should be straight removed, or require some kind of vehicle side reload, or spy should be able to disable it manually, or with an emp, and require some sort of full turn action to reactive it. Better yet gently caress up the radar entirely, make it a guessing game; it should get a short burst ability which is what it does now but with a limited range (3-5 tiles or so) or it should be able to get a much longer range but the mercs have to call one direction, and use the current rules for the agent to call out if they are within that area or not. Just handing out the agents relative position in the game with near endless line of sight is awful.
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Jun 21, 2015 09:03
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