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Also, I forgot to mention our house rule that makes Carc 10x better. We play with a hand of two tiles, so each turn you have a choice of which to place (and draw another randomly at the end of your turn, so you can be planning your move during others' turns). Adds a lot of strategic depth of saving tiles that might be good for you later, or something to screw over your opponents plans, etc. I hate playing the vanilla way after trying this, and everyone else likes it a lot too.
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Jun 28, 2015 19:06
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Thanks for the comparison explanation. I haven't played with the farm expansion in normal Carc but I do have inns. Is it pretty similar to just playing with those two expansions? I'll also try the double tile hand. Sounds like a good fix.
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Jun 28, 2015 19:08
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Bottom Liner posted:Also, I forgot to mention our house rule that makes Carc 10x better. We play with a hand of two tiles, so each turn you have a choice of which to place (and draw another randomly at the end of your turn, so you can be planning your move during others' turns). Adds a lot of strategic depth of saving tiles that might be good for you later, or something to screw over your opponents plans, etc. I hate playing the vanilla way after trying this, and everyone else likes it a lot too. While I'm happy that this change works for you, this and the two cards change for Kingdom Builder nullify a large part of the attraction for me for these two games. A lot of the challenge is to do the best with what RNG has given you and this change dilutes that significantly. It also adds to AP without much benefit. Like I said, I'm glad you like it, but I'd never play this way.
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Jun 28, 2015 19:10
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Lorini posted:While I'm happy that this change works for you, this and the two cards change for Kingdom Builder nullify a large part of the attraction for me for these two games. A lot of the challenge is to do the best with what RNG has given you and this change dilutes that significantly. It also adds to AP without much benefit. Like I said, I'm glad you like it, but I'd never play this way. For my (pretty casual) group, it actually reduced AP. We had a lot of turns that would drag on a while because the person got a tile they couldn't find anything to do with, so they spent forever finding something to do with it. This way they have twice the chance of getting something they find useful.
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Jun 28, 2015 19:16
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1. The Resistance: Avalon 2. Keyflower 3. Dominion 4. Tigris & Euphrates 5. A Game of Thrones (2nd Edit) 6. Twilight Struggle 7. Space Alert 8. Puerto Rico 9. Chaos in the Old World 10. Skull I'm a loyalist
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Jun 28, 2015 19:22
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Bottom Liner posted:For my (pretty casual) group, it actually reduced AP. We had a lot of turns that would drag on a while because the person got a tile they couldn't find anything to do with, so they spent forever finding something to do with it. This way they have twice the chance of getting something they find useful. We play the game more as a group, if someone couldn't find a place to place their tile, we'll pick out various alternatives. Both work I'm sure.
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Jun 28, 2015 19:31
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I'm looking for the name of a game that I think was mentioned in this thread. It had a feudal Japanese setting, 2 players, you stack blocks on top of each other with their markings facing you, and it's a military strategy game. Everything I think is its name just turns up weird anime. Anyone know what I mean?
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Jun 28, 2015 21:13
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Sekigahara: the unification of Japan
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Jun 28, 2015 21:24
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Lord Frisk posted:Sekigahara: the unification of Japan Which is at the very, very top of my want-to-play list and has been for a couple years.
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Jun 28, 2015 21:32
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Lord Frisk posted:Sekigahara: the unification of Japan Awesome, that's it! Thanks!
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Jun 28, 2015 21:39
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silvergoose posted:Which is at the very, very top of my want-to-play list and has been for a couple years. Mine too. I've also owned it for a couple years. 
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Jun 28, 2015 23:00
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Hauki posted:Mine too. I've also owned it for a couple years. Ah, I do not; a friend and I have been trying to play it at a con where someone else owns it. Neither of us want to actually buy the game without having a play first together.
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Jun 28, 2015 23:31
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The Sekigahara Vassal mod is really good. Give it a whirl.
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Jun 28, 2015 23:58
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What's the opinion on Forbidden Stars? I saw Quentin's very excited so-many-fiddly-bits review and sadly that kind of thing gets me excited too sometimes. Bleh maybe I should just play some more solo Mage Knight or Eldritch Horror instead.
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Jun 29, 2015 00:00
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Campbell posted:What's the opinion on Forbidden Stars? I saw Quentin's very excited so-many-fiddly-bits review and sadly that kind of thing gets me excited too sometimes. Bleh maybe I should just play some more solo Mage Knight or Eldritch Horror instead. I haven't played Forbidden Stars yet but it's based on FFG's earlier Starcraft board game which I have played and it's OK, though it's long and kinda fiddly. If Forbidden Stars is the Eldritch Horror to Starcraft's Arkham Horror, as reviews seem to indicate, it's probably pretty good.
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Jun 29, 2015 00:24
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Campbell posted:What's the opinion on Forbidden Stars? I saw Quentin's very excited so-many-fiddly-bits review and sadly that kind of thing gets me excited too sometimes. Bleh maybe I should just play some more solo Mage Knight or Eldritch Horror instead. I've been wanting to ask the same myself. It's popped up a few times, but I haven't seen anyone give a good critical review of it yet. There's a lot of positive buzz, but it's hard to tell if that's just it making a good first impression with theme and components. It certainly does look cool, but at the price point it's at it's hard to justify testing the waters personally. Been watching this thread and the one in Imp Zone for thoughts on it; I've got plenty of trashy stuff on my shelf already, so I hope it's something that's got some meat to it and does in fact hold up cause it looks pretty neat.
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Jun 29, 2015 00:30
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Unfortunately I have not played a full two player game where I felt both of us knew what we were doing. That might happen later this week, if so I'll post.
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Jun 29, 2015 00:32
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Mister Sinewave posted:FWIW I also thought that the killing monsters = up the legend counter seemed strange. But it made sense to frame it as "Monsters can make you lose but you can't WIN by killing them. Your mission is the actual victory condition. Any time you spend killing monsters is time taken from the main mission." We need to balance managing the risk from monsters (and the leveling up they grant you) with time needed to complete your actual mission. I kind of found the fact that monsters aren't the point and planning around that refreshing. Anyway, it made us think in different directions and planning was useful while still having some room for players to individually direct their turns. Mechanically the penalty for killing monsters seems arbitrary. Thematically it's bizarre. How often have you played it? We have only played four times, once per legend, and I wonder what you think of its replayability.
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Jun 29, 2015 01:30
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Played two more games of Terra Mystica on the weekend and I still don't really get it, increasingly feeling like it's Go but with questionably developed asymmetrical factions and a ton of surface complexity. We've yet to play it with 4 or 5 players though so I'm not solidifying my opinion. Also played King of New York, which was a resounding 'meh'. Like, I guess I'd play this over King of Tokyo if given the choice but the difference is so slight that I doubt I'd notice if we played KoT instead. EvilChameleon posted:I know it's on Rubitex's list if he posted one, but I am surprised no one else picked Agricola. That's the first 10 that comes to mind. I don't rate anything on BGG but I think my 10s would be something like I think 'gric is only a 7 or so for me, I'll play it but I wouldn't actively suggest it. The more I play it the more I feel like I'm mostly playing a strategic game about occupations/improvements that for some reason has 1-2 hours of trying to get to 5 workers attached. Dungeon Lords and Keyflower are for me more interesting and less front loaded. This might be partly because Agricola is such a popular and well understood game by comparison though - it's pretty easy to hit the point where you pretty much understand what to do with all the bits that don't change from game to game. The same could be said of Le Havre though and I love that game. Having said that my wife likes it a lot and it's miles better than Caverna. EvilChameleon posted:Do you play with the board? Or just the cards? I don't know enough people who know RftG to try to also add the board and it seems universally reviled so I just didn't bother with it. The cards are spectacular, though. My regular group (a friend of mine and our wives) is split on it - me and my friend actually really like it, our wives don't hate it but they'd rather play without. I can understand why it's not liked much as it really changes what RftG is, making it more like a longer and more interactive board game than a super-filler. If you purely play Race for the quick engine-building fix then it actually detracts from that.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:13
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Bubble-T posted:Played two more games of Terra Mystica on the weekend and I still don't really get it, increasingly feeling like it's Go but with questionably developed asymmetrical factions and a ton of surface complexity. That's the feeling I get too, don't understand the high praise for it. Same with 5 Tribes, both suffer from needless complexity to me.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:28
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Campbell posted:What's the opinion on Forbidden Stars? I saw Quentin's very excited so-many-fiddly-bits review and sadly that kind of thing gets me excited too sometimes. Bleh maybe I should just play some more solo Mage Knight or Eldritch Horror instead. Played a two-player game of it tonight and had a lot of fun.
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Jun 29, 2015 03:22
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How long did it take? Did it feel like two was going to be an inferior experience to more players or well satisfying in its own right?
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Jun 29, 2015 03:30
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Blamestorm posted:How long did it take? Did it feel like two was going to be an inferior experience to more players or well satisfying in its own right? With rules explanation, it took around 2.5 hours, ending on round 5/8. If it went to round 8, it would've been maybe 3.5 hours. I expect with experienced players, the play time will be about 0.75-1.25 hours per player, depending on when the game ends and the players' AP. Two was definitely satisfying in its own right, and it had had a very Chess-like vibe. I expect it'll be fun with 2, 3, and 4 players.
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Jun 29, 2015 03:38
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Thanks! I have ordered it so I am in prepurchase justification phase of owning something I will probably end up playing mostly 2 player.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:30
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Ugh yea that's good info. I'll probably have to pick it up too!
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Jun 29, 2015 05:13
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Just pulled the trigger on the new T&E reprint because it's on sale and it is so drat pretty, how does it play with 2? I've only played it as an app with the full set of AI players (and god I am bad at this game) but I think maybe with 2 you'd have a lot more space and therefore incentive to sit in your "own" kingdoms rather than starting revolts/wars so much.. I'll have two others at home to play with and my partner loves tash-kalar and keyflower so I think abstract-euro-tile placer-resource knifefight will go over well with her, it's just my other housemate suffers from crippling AP in every game so I kind of prefer the option to play two player more often than not
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Jun 29, 2015 06:36
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Three or four for TE is definitely superior, IMO. Two is playable (with the rule that you only use half the board or play inside the river) but I think loses complexity and interesting interactions compared to more players. I would rate TK superior with two players, no doubt.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:58
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Kruller posted:Awesome, that's it! Thanks! Feel free to pm me to set up a game via Vassal if you want to try it. Really, anyone, pm me if you want to play it 
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Jun 29, 2015 07:04
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So okay for the first time in ten thousand years I'm going to have DISPOSABLE INCOME and I'm going to use it to pad out my board game collection. I'll be getting Mage Knight because of my slow quest to collect Vlaada games and also because I want a good game I can play solo. I'll also be getting Paperback because I love word games more than I should and even though I have... like one friend who also likes word games THAT'S ENOUGH I'LL PLAY WITH JUST HIM IF I HAVE TO. Anyways with Paperback being a game that's a bit more limited in use for my regular group, and Mage Knight really tricky to pull out at game night on a whim, I'm looking for a third game that I can pull out a bit more often. I was thinking of Roll for the Galaxy because I have a secret dice fetish and oh my so many dice, but I'd like alternate options because I also love double guessing myself. I'm mostly looking for something of, I'unno, medium complexity that isn't too like what I already own and can hit a decently variable amount of people (3-5 is our usual) I've got -Ticket To Ride -Carcassonne -Dungeon Petz -Cash n' Guns -Robo Rally -Galaxy Trucker -7 Wonders Also I don't like Agricola. I want to like Agricola but I don't. And I guess I tend towards neat mechanics over specifically polished ones? I mean, not to say I like all poo poo games. Dead of Winter lost it's charm for me after the second play but I still really enjoy Betrayal. So I'm saying I only like SOME poo poo games. But I'm fine with my friends owning the games that are poo poo but fun. (shut up i love robo rally) So... I guess my specific request is what are some good games with cool bullshit.
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Jun 29, 2015 10:42
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If you have Dungeon Petz and your group likes it, have you thought about getting Dungeon Lords? Depends on your group though, but if people liked Petz I don't see an issue with introducing them to Lords.
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Jun 29, 2015 10:45
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Robust Laser posted:So okay for the first time in ten thousand years I'm going to have DISPOSABLE INCOME and I'm going to use it to pad out my board game collection. I'll be getting Mage Knight because of my slow quest to collect Vlaada games and also because I want a good game I can play solo. I'll also be getting Paperback because I love word games more than I should and even though I have... like one friend who also likes word games THAT'S ENOUGH I'LL PLAY WITH JUST HIM IF I HAVE TO. Roll for the Galaxy is a good pick. Otherwise, you might like Viticulture, it has some neat mechanics and is a mid-weight euro that plays 2-6. Tekopo posted:If you have Dungeon Petz and your group likes it, have you thought about getting Dungeon Lords? Depends on your group though, but if people liked Petz I don't see an issue with introducing them to Lords. bobvonunheil fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 10:47
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Petz isn't dramatically worse with 3.
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Jun 29, 2015 10:58
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Lords isn't that bad with 3 either. Yeah, the dummy is annoying but the game is still enjoyable when you use it.
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Jun 29, 2015 11:11
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House Louse posted:How often have you played it? We have only played four times, once per legend, and I wonder what you think of its replayability. We're on legend 7. Had to replay two legends so far; one of the early ones when we had our "Oh!" moment realizing that unlike e.g. Defenders of the Realm or Pandemic etc your job isn't wiping out the monsters, and we had to replay the first legend using the reverse of the board. It's satisfying to pull things off by balancing what you need & want with what you can do and where you need to be. Wins feel like we worked for them and we always feel like there's a fighting chance. The later legends have more replay value than the earlier ones; there's an almost tutorial like progression of complexity and knowing how the legend develops overall won't necessarily help you much on replays. But like I mentioned, if you're "eh" on the game after the first 4 (heck, even the first one or two) there's nothing waiting around the corner that'll rock you. I like DM-less adventure games as a concept and category though and I'm biased in favor of things I see as interesting & different approaches to design problems. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 12:55
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Robust Laser posted:So okay for the first time in ten thousand years I'm going to have DISPOSABLE INCOME and I'm going to use it to pad out my board game collection. I'll be getting Mage Knight because of my slow quest to collect Vlaada games and also because I want a good game I can play solo. I'll also be getting Paperback because I love word games more than I should and even though I have... like one friend who also likes word games THAT'S ENOUGH I'LL PLAY WITH JUST HIM IF I HAVE TO. Kemet! It has cool stuff you'd associate with poo poo games (monsters and a beautiful board that's not a spreadsheet), but also has a solid fighty game too. There's a couple of house rules I'd go with (turn order and fixing the endgame final turn that develops) but it's a great game. Fits 3-5 players well, plays 2ish hours and everyone can be total dicks to each other without ruining each others' fun. Expansion is coming out soon and it'll fix the turn order stuff too. I picked up Cyclades a couple of months ago and had strongly considered getting the Cyclades/Kemet crossover pack to use the creatures in both, but a quick glance makes it look quite poorly done; the new Kemet tiles at least don't really seem that balanced. What are people's thoughts? The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 13:35
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Robust Laser posted:I'm mostly looking for something of, I'unno, medium complexity that isn't too like what I already own and can hit a decently variable amount of people (3-5 is our usual) Perhaps a tad on the light side for a medium recommendation but Istanbul is quite good. I've been digging both Hansa Teutonica and Concordia lately as well which both play great at those player counts. Hansa is a little more abstract and conflicty, while Concordia is a beautiful card driven Euro. Ginkgopolis is another 3-5er that I love but I don't think it's in print anymore. You could just do Puerto Rico too, it still rules. Ayn Randi posted:it's just my other housemate suffers from crippling AP in every game so I kind of prefer the option to play two player more often than not T&E is fantastic but it will cause big time AP for first time players, be warned. e: I'm with you guys on TM -- I want to like it but it hasn't come together yet for me. Still want to give it another go or two soon. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 14:18
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Robust Laser posted:I'm mostly looking for something of, I'unno, medium complexity that isn't too like what I already own and can hit a decently variable amount of people (3-5 is our usual) I made a detailed post a while ago about The Captain is Dead, a sci-fi oriented co-op game; my friends and I really like it, and everyone we've introduced it to always enjoys it. I also played Bring Out Yer Dead at the Upper Deck booth at Dice Tower, and really enjoyed it. It plays 2-5 players, but plays best with 3 or 5. The goal of the game is to bury all of your family's coffins in the highest point graves on the board, before other people can. To do this, you play cards to get the coffins on the Gravedigger's cart; if you play a coffin and fail to get it on the cart, it goes into the river. You can also bury a coffin into one of two mass graves to get Treasure or Fate cards; Treasure cards get you more victory points, and Fate cards allow you to do things like rescue a coffin from the river, or switch your coffin with someone else's coffin in a better spot. This game in very hilariously morbid, like Addams Family or The Munsters, and the demo tables at the con were constantly full; everyone I talked to about it who played it, loved it. It's a bit expensive for such a simple game, but the pieces and the board are high-quality, and there is a lot of replay value.
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Jun 29, 2015 14:28
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The End posted:Petz isn't dramatically worse with 3. Tekopo posted:Lords isn't that bad with 3 either. Yeah, the dummy is annoying but the game is still enjoyable when you use it. They're both not bad with 3, but that's about my only experience with those games is 3 player, outside of one or two 4 player Petz games. 2 is where I think they fall apart a little bit since the scarcity in petz disappears a bit. Got a chance to play Archipelago on saturday at a local area convention, i think it stands up to the hype pretty well, so it's going on my list of games to get. I got sort of boned on exploration early on by having a very unfriendly tile layout that it was drat hard to find one to fit, so I quit bothering with it and lived with my massive glut of cows and stone. Managed to pull a win though since I clinched my pacifist goal the turn right before the ending got triggered on it, and the shared goal was just having a ton of boats, which I did because i was super limited by terrain and resources, so fish was a thing i wanted to get a bunch of. It helped that the foreign market kept demanding fish so the sell price stayed high after I flushed the market full of cows. The other goals were having a bunch of exploration tokens and having the most non-character evolution cards. I'm sure we played some part wrong since no one had played it prior outside of the game owner having read through the rules. Unemployment was rampant so in the end we cared only about lining our own pocketbooks at the expense of gainful employment.
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Jun 29, 2015 14:37
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Well I have fired up a recent acquisition: The Vesuvius Incident.  It's a print-on-demand 2013 reprint/reboot of an older game. I especially like their counters. Laser-cut from a thick (almost MDF ish) sheet of cardboard on which some really nice printing has been done using some sort of witchcraft.  God bless the kind soul who made a flowchart (http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/103934/last-frontier-helpsheet-all-4-phases-v06) because while no specific part of the game is especially complicated, the rulebook is very so-so and the whole flow of the game is much better served up and explained as a process-based flowchart than what they did. A once-over of the shipped rulebook followed by the flowchart would have let me learn the game in like a tenth of the time. The game is basically  written in reference tables and d6. The marines' job is to board the ship, rescue the crew, and escape before the degrading orbit of the ship burns it all up.So far it's fun in a meat-grinderish kind of way.
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Jun 29, 2015 15:30
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This list is biased by the fact that I own all of these. My 10's: Dominion + all its expansions Mage Knight Caverna My 9's: Castles of Burgundy Trajan Descent (Imperial Assault will replace Descent once it gets as much content) 7 Wonders + expansions - Babel By the way, my ratings aren't reflective of order of priority of what I'd like to play. For example, for a while now, I'd rather play something like Legendary over Mage Knight. It's not that I think Legendary is better than Mage Knight. It's just that more often than not play I'd rather play something that takes less than an hour and is a lot less brain burny than something that takes 3-4 hours and is very brain burny.
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Jun 29, 2015 15:54
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