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Betrayal at the House on the Hill is back on Amazon for $40, if anyone wanted to pick it up without losing their mortgage.
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Jul 10, 2015 01:02
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I want to pick it up, and then drop it into a toilet.
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Jul 10, 2015 02:00
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SkeletonHero posted:I want to pick it up, and then drop it into a toilet.
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Jul 10, 2015 02:06
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Anyone have a chance to try out Broom Service? I like Witch's Brew and I guess it just won a big award but I haven't seen much in reviews for it yet
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Jul 10, 2015 03:00
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Dr. VooDoo posted:Anyone have a chance to try out Broom Service? I like Witch's Brew and I guess it just won a big award but I haven't seen much in reviews for it yet It's not widely available yet. CSI got some in and sold out in a few days, everything else is preorder.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:11
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There's one available here but better hurry. Anytime by the way you see 0 as stock levels at timewellspentgames.com it usually means they have a ding and dent version in stock.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:52
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Crackbone posted:It's not widely available yet. CSI got some in and sold out in a few days, everything else is preorder. My FLGS has two copies, but I wasn't willing to pull the trigger on a game I hadn't heard anything about.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:53
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I really like the new roles from One Night Ultimate Werewolf: Daybreak. Did a 5 player game where I was the Seer, nailed a Werewolf to the wall on a sloppy claim, the mystic wolf outed himself and then I realized the Paranormal Investigator was a werewolf and got lynched.  Not sure what I think of the Curator or the Village Idiot. They seem pretty swingy, but I'm sure it'll be interesting to see what kind of chaos it can cause. Also have the bonus pack coming tomorrow, so that should be neat. Really want to check out the Aura Seer. Anyone have some role sets they really like with certain player counts?
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Jul 10, 2015 04:58
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Me and my lady beat Arkham Horror today. We're not very good at boardgames, felt pretty good. I don't know where all the hate comes from, it's a bit long but I love the ambiance, there's so much to do and we just got lost in it (in a good way). So many expansions though - what makes it more fun? I don't need to just pile 30 pounds of cardboard in, just anything that really kicks rear end.
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Jul 10, 2015 05:12
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Me and my lady beat Arkham Horror today. We're not very good at boardgames, felt pretty good. I don't know where all the hate comes from, it's a bit long but I love the ambiance, there's so much to do and we just got lost in it (in a good way). So many expansions though - what makes it more fun? I don't need to just pile 30 pounds of cardboard in, just anything that really kicks rear end. There's a ton to do but none of it really matters, you're mostly drawing cards and rolling dice and hoping the game lets you win. Now, story generator games aren't inherently bad but they really shouldn't be saddled with a million tokens and doodads and fiddly mechanics in an effort to pretend that players have agency. That's why people in this thread will recommend Tales of the Arabian Nights (once or twice a year, at least) but not Arkham Horror. It's why I think Robinson Crusoe is a pretty bad game. Whenever I play one of these games I just feel like the designers are being a bit dishonest. Instead of having the game go "did you precognitively set your Will to maximum this turn? how good are you at rolling dice??" just tell me if my character goes insane or not. I don't care for all the smoke and mirrors. I also think a lot of those mechanics undercut the flavour text these games tend to rely on so heavily but that's another discussion I guess. Bubble-T fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 06:05
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Arkham Horror isn't peak FFG tokens-and-fiddliness, that would probably go to Android, but it's certainly a frontrunner. Eldritch Horror is a lot of the same sort of gameplay but with some of the more egregious fiddliness (i.e. a system for adjusting your Investigator's stats round by round, an entire subsystem for otherworld encounters, etc) excised and the experience somewhat (somewhat) more streamlined. Both Arkham and Eldritch Horror are, in my opinion, the boring sort of random in that it's a very binary sort of pass-fail setup and a lot of the game is spent grinding out stat boosts to improve your odds of not sucking when it comes time to roll dice to Do A Thing. The gameplay also isn't very deep really...there's not a lot in the way of strategies or varied approaches, everybody sort of wanders around and triggers random encounters and you try to do the X by Y to win. I don't find it to be an abhorrent fun-vacuum on the level of, say, Thunderstone or Frag and it's less of a crapshoot than Betrayal at the House on the Hill which is, if anything, even more random and can result in hilarious anticlimax after anticlimax while Arkham/Eldritch are somewhat more consistent, but after having played them a number of times the replayability is limited, the core gameplay itself isn't super exciting, and they do take a ridiculous amount of time to set up and tear down. I feel like they'd really benefit from some sort of digital multiplayer app where you could just click "play" and dive right in without having to shuffle a dozen decks of cards and hand out tokens and poo poo.
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Jul 10, 2015 06:47
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Kai Tave posted:I feel like they'd really benefit from some sort of digital multiplayer app where you could just click "play" and dive right in without having to shuffle a dozen decks of cards and hand out tokens and poo poo. Do you mean like the X-Com app style or an actual online multiplayer thing? I don't really see the market for online implementations of these games. Being around the table with your friends is probably the best part of them as far as board gamers are concerned, and I doubt they'd be of much interest to video gamers - even a game like Arkham Horror feels positively restrained in terms of chrome and bullshit compared to the kind of stuff that's popular on PC and mobile platforms. Compare it to Faster than Light or all the survival sim games. A tablet app that handles a lot of the busywork for you would be neat, though. I might even have kept Robinson Crusoe for the occasional solo play if I didn't have to shuffle 8 decks of cards every time.
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Jul 10, 2015 06:59
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Harvey Mantaco posted:So many expansions though - what makes it more fun? If you're really set on the game and want expansions, you can still make something vaguely resembling lemonade. Pick up the Dunwich Horror expansion. It adds Madness and Injury cards, which offer you alternatives to "lose half your poo poo, wander around being useless until you get it back" when you get beat up or go insane.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:00
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Bubble-T posted:Do you mean like the X-Com app style or an actual online multiplayer thing? I mean like an actual digital version that you buy on the Apple Store or from Steam. Talisman suddenly becomes a reasonably breezy casual way to kill some time when you have a computer do all the heavy lifting for you. If you can't make a game any deeper then you can at least make it convenient. Think of it like a Cthulhu-branded Mario Party.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:10
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Harvey Mantaco posted:what makes it more fun? Honestly without trying to be glib: get Eldritch Horror instead. It's a tighter game with better rules that won't give you quite as many random gently caress-yous.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:19
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So Seiji Kanai's God's Gambit arrived at my door today. For those who don't know Kanai is the guy behind Love Letter which a lot of goons seemed to like, but he has had some misses for me (Mai Star which was incredibly unbalanced, and Lost Legacy was so-so as it was like Love Letter but kinda lacking what made Love Letter so good). It's pretty late so I won't go into it much, but if you looked at the kickstarter and thought "This looks surprisingly like Uno" it really is basically Uno but with a spin on it where you have abilities that can activate which gently caress over people (skip turns, draw cards, give cards to others to dump them with more points possibly) or help you (extra turn, extra discard). Surprisingly, it actually all works. The game plays pretty fast, and I think it really rewards smart plays and it has good mechanics to make sure a round will never truly overstay its welcome. We played 3 games (3 rounds a game) and everyone had a good time (even though I only one 1 round out of the 3 games). For something light but still rewards good decision making, I'd give it a recommend.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:38
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Kai Tave posted:I mean like an actual digital version that you buy on the Apple Store or from Steam. Talisman suddenly becomes a reasonably breezy casual way to kill some time when you have a computer do all the heavy lifting for you. If you can't make a game any deeper then you can at least make it convenient. Think of it like a Cthulhu-branded Mario Party. Yeah, I still don't really see this being a thing. Having said that, One Man Left is making something along those lines so I guess we'll see how that goes.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:42
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Bubble-T posted:Yeah, I still don't really see this being a thing. I don't see what's so weird about this when things like Board Game Arena exist, when all sorts of board games (Galaxy Trucker, Summoner Wars, Talisman, Space Hulk, Small World, etc) get digital versions all the time, not to mention the various failed attempts at making a digital-based Dominion client that keep tripping over their own two feet. Apparently turning board games into their digital equivalents is a thing so I'm not sure why Arkham/Eldritch Horror would fare any worse. Any of the arguments you could make about something being lost in translation going from a face-to-face to a digital game, even a multiplayer one, apply just as much to every other board game/computer game conversion out there. I'd say that other games which have already been ported over lose more than a theoretical Arkham/Eldritch Horror port would...Galaxy Trucker has an entire phase of gameplay involving physically scrabbling for pieces for your ship that can only be approximated in the app, and yet it's still considered one of the better digital board games out there. All Arkham Horror has in the "real life tangibility" department that's even slightly unique is shuffling a dozen goddamn decks of tiny cards every time you decide you want to play.
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Jul 10, 2015 07:52
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Me and my lady beat Arkham Horror today. We're not very good at boardgames, felt pretty good. I don't know where all the hate comes from, it's a bit long but I love the ambiance, there's so much to do and we just got lost in it (in a good way). So many expansions though - what makes it more fun? I don't need to just pile 30 pounds of cardboard in, just anything that really kicks rear end. What everyone else said is all true, but there is also the option of leaving some of the the ambience behind and playing more mechanically sound games. If you like the feeling of beating the game together, Pandemic is a really good starting point, especially for a couple who mostly play it together. It has a lot less fiddlyness and a lot more control and predictable consequences than Arkham Horror, and it usually leads to a lot of good discussions on what to do.
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Jul 10, 2015 08:03
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Kai Tave posted:I feel like they'd really benefit from some sort of digital multiplayer app where you could just click "play" and dive right in without having to shuffle a dozen decks of cards and hand out tokens and poo poo. The Arkham Horror Toolkit has been out for years and does nearly all of this. Its main restriction is only being able to track one Investigator.
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Jul 10, 2015 08:29
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Any good suggestions for a Warhammer Quest like dungeon crawl? Though my tastes have turned a bit euro after getting into the hobby again a few years ago, I really miss playing Warhammer Quest in my teens. Nothing has really replaced that feeling of playing a persistent randomized rpg-lite/roguelike. We have tried Descent and Mansions of Madness, and though I like both, I really don't want to have to be the keeper each time. Descent is kind of done now after playing the full campaign once. MoM will be pulled out whenever I feel like setting up the damned thing hours in advance. MoM also lacks that campaign itch I want to scratch. After that I tried Pathfinder and Shadowrun Crossfire. I HATE Patfhinder, finding it too thematic and too abstract at the same time. And just no fun at all. I like Shadowrun a lot. But its more of a quick and intense co op puzzle for us. The upgrades are nice and all, but don't really feel like upgrading a character. Next I tried Mage Knight, which I really really love. It is epic and amazing. But it doesn't have the beer and pretzels "oh poo poo what happens now?" feel from WQ. We basically sit studying our cards intensely, trying to create our perfect moves. And no campaign with persistent upgrades here either. So what are my options? Shadows of Brimstone really seems to fit the bill. Has anyone tried it? Galaxy Defenders? lordsummerisle fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 11:45
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Kai Tave posted:Arkham Horror isn't peak FFG tokens-and-fiddliness, that would probably go to Android, but it's certainly a frontrunner. Eldritch Horror is a lot of the same sort of gameplay but with some of the more egregious fiddliness (i.e. a system for adjusting your Investigator's stats round by round, an entire subsystem for otherworld encounters, etc) excised and the experience somewhat (somewhat) more streamlined. Really there needs to be an app to do all the little fiddly math and bookkeeping in just about every one of FF's board games, i love them to death but somtimes it's annoying keeping track of every little thing for every single entity in one of these games. Vaguely related point, I honestly can't imagine something having more cards and tokens and fiddly little counters more than Mansions of Madness. Imperial Assault is a close second but the cards aren't bad and even though there are a million different kinds of tokens and counters you can usually throw 90% of it until a big pile and forget about them until you actually need it. Hell i only have 1 expansion for MOM and it's like the amount of cards and monster figures you get seems to double up just from that! That said though are any of the other expansions actually worth the price? I was recommend Call of Wild last thread and it turned out pretty well actually!
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Jul 10, 2015 11:59
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Echophonic posted:I really like the new roles from One Night Ultimate Werewolf: Daybreak. I really like using the Witch a lot. Can definitely cause some craziness if they turn someone into a wolf and then that gets shuffled around with robber/troublemaker. I think the curator is ok, but I dont like using the mask or cloak. Seem kind of dumb to me. Also he can curate himself which is something people tend to forget for some reason. 
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Jul 10, 2015 14:01
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I think maybe I didn't communicate fully that I really enjoy Arkham horror, I was just wondering if there are any decent expansions. For what it's worth, I totally get that you're all sincere with your criticism, there's no doubt that you're heartfelt in your hate of it but MAN have I had a different experience. It really doesn't seem that fiddly to me? The fiddly-bits seem important and the game, for how long it is, seems to flow quickly from turn to turn. It was also really easy to explain and teamwork mattered. The game is about finding little pockets of risk and orienting yourself to have the best odds of overcoming them without leaving you vulnerable to the things around you, all-the-while collecting resources and working towards the larger goal. There are some more random parts of the game but for all the dice hate, I like that, I like having to deal with (and having the anticipation of) the unexpected and even though there is a lot of it I don`t think it defines the experience. But hey, different strokes.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:13
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I think maybe I didn't communicate fully that I really enjoy Arkham horror, I was just wondering if there are any decent expansions. I have heard nothing but good things about Dunwich Horror. The other Horror expansions (Kingsport and Innsmouth) are also popular with my friends. You might have better luck checking out the Arkham Horor BGG subforum, where people actually like the game and don't post pagelong screeds about how terrible it is. Here's a recent-ish discussion: link
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Jul 10, 2015 14:34
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I used to love the hell out of Arkham Horror myself (about 11 years ago?) but it has a ton of issues and unfortunately, the game has aged extremely badly. The problems only become apparent when you play the game a few times as well: one of the previous boardgaming threads had pretty much an entire page of people going 'Holy poo poo, I got that rule wrong?' and in the end, it almost seemed like no one had played the game correctly: there are a lot of fiddly stuff that you don't even fully realise unless you work out that you've actually done something wrong. The problem with the game in my opinion is that it is entirely anti-climactic. The GOO are partially to blame for this: the ones in the base game were completely abysmal and the base strategy for someone like Yig (or hell, even Cthulhu) if you saw that you weren't going to close gates fast enough was to just tool up and shoot the GOO to death (which is partially why I only played with the GOO that ended the game if he woke up, since it lead to a much tenser game). Arkham horror is also pretty much a quarterbacker's dream game and it suffers that most of the characters are either: a) go to close gates or b) go to punch monsters. Once you know most of the locations you know which ones to avoid as well (there is almost no point in ever going to the Unnamable or Unvisited Isle cause the encounters there are almost universally bad). Closing and sealing gate is pretty tedious as well: you either have to mill the special item deck in order to find the elder sign, or keep the only resource that actually allows you a degree of control on rolls. Also, the gate exploration system is interesting until you get to the boring 'failed to close the gate, wait next turn, fail again, wait next turn', where your character is basically stuck baby-sitting a gate because otherwise you have to go through it all over again. And in the end, the issue with the dice hate is that you can't really do much to predict it. You enter a gate and didn't have enough luck on the encounter? Tough poo poo. How did you know that you needed luck? No real way to know. The fact that some characters can't really change their sliders on the fly acerbates the problem.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:37
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The Carson city big box kickstarter is ending soon. How's the game? I'm interested but I already pledged for keyflower, and the idea of rolling dice to see who gets an action seems iffy.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:39
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Tekopo posted:I used to love the hell out of Arkham Horror myself (about 11 years ago?) but it has a ton of issues and unfortunately, the game has aged extremely badly. The problems only become apparent when you play the game a few times as well: one of the previous boardgaming threads had pretty much an entire page of people going 'Holy poo poo, I got that rule wrong?' and in the end, it almost seemed like no one had played the game correctly: there are a lot of fiddly stuff that you don't even fully realise unless you work out that you've actually done something wrong. I think this is the true strength of Arkham Horror. No one quite knows how to play it properly, forcing people to create their own house rules accidentally. This allows the game to adapt to the needs of the players, but at the same time satisfies people that insist the game be played by the book.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:45
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Soothing Vapors posted:I have heard nothing but good things about Dunwich Horror. The other Horror expansions (Kingsport and Innsmouth) are also popular with my friends.  Harvey Mantaco literally posted that he didn't understand what the hate for the game was coming from, some people decided to reply to explain, this is how a discussion works.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:46
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Rutibex posted:I think this is the true strength of Arkham Horror. No one quite knows how to play it properly, forcing people to create their own house rules accidentally. This allows the game to adapt to the needs of the players, but at the same time satisfies people that insist the game be played by the book.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:47
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Tekopo posted:Oh no, people posting opinions on a discussion forum Cool. I gave him an alternative place to go to for information that might get him what he asked for (information about expansions). That's also how a discussion works.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:48
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That's fine and not what I had an issue with when I quoted your post.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:49
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I think maybe I didn't communicate fully that I really enjoy Arkham horror, I was just wondering if there are any decent expansions. Dunwich Horror beefs up the locations (and gives you Dunwich to roam around in, which provides some additional threat) and generally has a ton of new cards, which is useful since it dilutes Elder Signs in the Unique Item deck. The King in Yellow (or whatever the one that is clearly Hastur-focused) small expansion gives you the King in Yellow as a herald, which makes the Terror Track actually mean something, and I think it has one of the better "plots." Innsmouth Horror gives you a lot more investigators and great old ones, although I suggest using either only Innsmouth or Dunwich, and not both. The rest are kinda eh and tend to bloat the game up a lot. That being said, I would still look into Eldritch Horror, as I find it a much better game/experience in general, but you need Forsaken Lore to beef up the card count.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:54
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Tekopo posted:This was actually the running joke, that the Arkham Horror game was perfectly encapsulating the theme because it was eldritch and unknowable and whoever read the rules would eventually go insane. This is actually why I enjoy the game for what it is: a metagame dripping with theme. It's like diplomacy where the real theme comes from you punching your friend in the dick. I've had an argument in AH before erupt into a shouting match until we flipped the table. A++ would play again. Game design wise? It sucks.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:54
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I don't like Arkham, but I've played enough to know what expansions mitigate its problems, and which exacerbate them. If you get a big box, get Dunwich Horror. The injury/madness mechanic should have been in the base game. It gets you back into the swing of things after a bad string of combat dice, without having to camp the hospital/asylum. Plus, of all the sideboards, Dunwich feels the least like a babysitting gig. Innsmouth Horror is Kingsport Horror is crap. Someone gets to go play mall cop on the Kingsport board and keep it from getting squirrelly, while everyone else plays the main game. Of the small box expansions, pick up The Lurker at the Threshold. The Pact mechanic actually gives you a tiny bit of decision-making, since you can opt to gain pseudo-clues at the risk of getting dicked around by the game. No matter what you get, though, only play with one expansion at a time. Think of them like RPG scenarios. Mixing multiple expansions together just dilutes the decks, and prevents you from experience any of them. EDIT: gently caress, wait. I forgot, Innsmouth has the stupid loving Gate Burst mechanic. Randomly lose your sealed gates, with absolutely no warning or player input! What a rich and engaging thematic experience! loving pass. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 15:04
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We all had a time when we had a less-than-fantastic game that we thought was The poo poo, before we'd played enough different and better games to start seeing the flaws. I mean, if you go back and check my post history, you can see me in this very thread trying to defend Epic Spells Wars.
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Jul 10, 2015 15:24
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As someone who, a year or so ago probably would've named Arkham Horror as my favourite board game (while fully recognizing what a horrible mess the loving thing is), I wholeheartedly second the notion of playing Eldritch Horror instead. It's Arkham Horror done better in pretty much every way.
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Jul 10, 2015 15:34
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Tekopo posted:Oh no, people posting opinions on a discussion forum You have to admit though, that's it's a problem in this thread where people will go "Oh hey guys I really like X game does anyone have any advice for it or what expansions etc I should get?" "This game is terrible and you shouldn't play it." "Okay, but, like, I do enjoy it, warts and all, and would just like some advice about -" "Stop playing this game, play other games" "Okay, great. Nevermind I guess."
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Jul 10, 2015 16:15
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Morpheus posted:You have to admit though, that's it's a problem in this thread where people will go Except nobody really did that here. Pretty much everyone who replied suggested that he check out Eldritch Horror which is essentially Arkham Horror 2.0, several suggested expansions for him, and nobody just straight up just told him "this game sucks and you suck for playing it idiot."
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Jul 10, 2015 16:29
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We did answer the question. Just with the disclaimer "hey, you'll probably enjoy Eldritch Horror more". e:f;b
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Jul 10, 2015 16:29
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