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Krazyface posted:RE Tash-Kalar: it might be worthwhile to play a 4p deathmatch if people aren't familiar with the game, but High Form is just better. Forbidden Stars uses the new FFG style of manual where there's a "Learn to Play" booklet and a rules reference. The booklet does not have all the rules, so give the important topics a quick read in the reference. Notably you should probably read the entries for the various orders, the phases of the turn, and combat. We just played it for the first time yesterday, so this is fresh in my mind. Little details we messed up:
Ojetor fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jul 24, 2015 |
# ? Jul 24, 2015 07:45 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:48 |
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Glazius posted:Tonight I played a game called Stuff and Nonsense at my FLGS and I had the oddest sense of deja vu, only realizing now it was from James Ernest's how to play video 10 months prior. (Though the rules have changed since then.) Huh, I had no idea this game concept had such steam in it. I remember playing it (or similar anyway) as Captain Park's Bogus Expedition... or something. I think I have it actually. I loved the concept that Park is soaking up all sorts of back slapping and drink-buying and dinners, etc for his amazing expedition from which he's always happy to share a story or souvenir. Except you (ie each player) know for a fact he's full of poo poo because you've seen him hunting second hand shops and crap for "relics" on the down low. He's a total fraud. Naturally you don't think "turn the old fraud in", you think "I want in on this sweet scam, I think I'll avoid everyone for a few months while I haunt garage sales and second hand shops for "artifacts" then say I've been on an expedition. Then helllooooo free drinks and dinner parties and RESPECT!
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 08:06 |
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Lorini posted:I think go7gaming has one or Broken Token. You can always leave a geek mail for Brad from Level99. The go7gaming insert is excellent. I bought it and it made Argent much less painful to set up and take down. Highly recommend.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 08:18 |
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Bubble-T posted:Thanks You just admitted that you don't know the game, so how will you know how effective they are? Play all-Terran once and take the warning that it's a little dry. The rules are pretty simple and most of what you need to know is iconography on the boards. The key rule that most new players miss is that passing doesn't remove you from turn order; you can still take the Reactions on the back of your turn card. Make sure that people know they need to keep their turn card in full view and flip it when they pass. The second rule people miss is that when you upgrade you can remove tiles from ships for free - only adding them counts towards the limit.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 08:23 |
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Memnaelar posted:The go7gaming insert is excellent. I bought it and it made Argent much less painful to set up and take down. Highly recommend. I was just going to make one out of foam core. Not sure I could even get a g07gaming insert in by the time I have to leave for Gencon. You don't happen to have a component list for the expansion do you?
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 09:40 |
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Ojetor posted:[*]When you reveal an order token, you can place it on top of your event deck instead of executing the order. This lets you draw an event card later in the turn just like the Strategize order does. Basically you get a freebie event if you are unable to use an order. Oh hey we haven't been playing it like that, where's that listed? I get them splitting it into "Learn to Play" and "Rules reference" sorta like Mage Knight but the learn to play misses out a lot of pretty important poo poo and is in kind of a weird order. I'm still not 100% sure on the movement of ships because of how it's down in the book. It infers you can move a ship from anywhere at all because "all voids are adjacent" for the purposes of moving ships from square to square. It's hard to tell if that only applies to the square next to you or any square in the entire game. We've played it both ways and I don't feel it actually makes much of a difference. If anything playing it so ships can move anywhere you like at any time as long as they all come from the same original square makes orbital bombardments slightly (only slightly) more useful. quote:Why not double-move through it to get some distance, and then stage a fighting advance?
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 11:52 |
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Ojetor posted:We just played it for the first time yesterday, so this is fresh in my mind. Little details we messed up: Except void spaces. The stacking limit for void is 3 space craft. Why? I dont know but it is
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:07 |
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Dre2Dee2 posted:Except void spaces. The stacking limit for void is 3 space craft. Why? I dont know but it is Pretty sure you can still move 5, it's just that if you have more than 3 left after combat you have to destroy them.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:25 |
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Jedit posted:You just admitted that you don't know the game, so how will you know how effective they are? Play all-Terran once and take the warning that it's a little dry. The plan is to read and comprehend the rulebook, mostly. One or two of the alien races do look like they have significant rule changes I can't be bothered to teach so I think we'll stick to all Terran for the first game.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:27 |
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Dre2Dee2 posted:Except void spaces. The stacking limit for void is 3 space craft. Why? I dont know but it is Well no, it's exactly the same for spaceships. It is just that all void spaces have the equivalent of 3 skulls. So you can move 5 ships just like you can move 5 troops into a space that has 3 skulls, it's just not the best plan.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:30 |
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Bubble-T posted:The plan is to read and comprehend the rulebook, mostly. Just don't play with those aliens. If I recall, the main 'different' aliens are the Centauri (red) and the Descendants of Drago (yellow). The other aliens add just a touch of diversity, like being able to research or upgrade better. If someone really wants to go those colours then just play them as human. It's worth mixing in at least a few aliens.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:31 |
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Played Merchants & Marauders last night for the first time. It took us about 3 1/2 hours, but was overall quite good. With experience I could see this getting down to 2 1/2 hours and that would be perfect. It's pretty much Sid Meier's Pirates the boardgame. I highly recommend you at least give it a try if you get a chance.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 16:37 |
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Any advice on Cyclades? We will be playing it tomorrow. Without the Hades expansion but with the Titan expansion.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 16:50 |
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It arrived
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:12 |
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Rumda posted:It arrived
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:28 |
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Taear posted:Oh hey we haven't been playing it like that, where's that listed? I get them splitting it into "Learn to Play" and "Rules reference" sorta like Mage Knight but the learn to play misses out a lot of pretty important poo poo and is in kind of a weird order It's mentioned in the rules reference, under Operations Phase and also under Event Cards. It might also be in the Learn to Play somewhere but I didn't check. Here: Rules Reference for Operations Phase posted:3. The active player removes the chosen token from the game board, placing it in his play area or on the top of his event deck as appropriate. Then, the player to his left resolves one of his orders. Taear posted:I'm still not 100% sure on the movement of ships because of how it's down in the book. It infers you can move a ship from anywhere at all because "all voids are adjacent" for the purposes of moving ships from square to square. It's hard to tell if that only applies to the square next to you or any square in the entire game. We've played it both ways and I don't feel it actually makes much of a difference. When you perform an Advance Order you can only move units in the active system and one single adjacent system of your choice (and they all must move to the active system). So you can't teleport your ships across the board or anything just between two adjacent systems. "All voids are adjacent" basically means you don't need a continous path to your destination like you do with ground units.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:38 |
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Lorini posted:Any advice on Cyclades? We will be playing it tomorrow. Without the Hades expansion but with the Titan expansion. It's simple, but good. It may seem like it's never going to end, but it really speeds up towards the end so don't worry about it. Also, buy priests, because everyone will be envious of your low costs.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:02 |
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Rumda posted:It arrived Congrats and Enjoy!
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:04 |
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Last night I gave Tragedy Looper a shot with a group of completely new players (including myself). My friends usually play roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, and they expected more roleplaying out of the game itself, especially since the rulebook recommended choosing an experienced RPG Game Master to play the Mastermind. Learning and practicing the rules proved to be a real slog, and I ended up wishing I had played a practice round "against myself" before attempting to teach the game to others.Additionally, the players ended up being really detached from the action. Even in the incredibly simple starter script we played, they ended up basically just playing cards at random and then being totally surprised when the loop passed with a victory for them. If it had gone to Final Guess, they would not have been able to succeed. Part of it was, even though I constantly directed them to the reference sheet, they just had no clue about what kind of behavior to look for to deduce roles. Additionally, I had to make overt gestures to remind them they had access to Goodwill abilities. Overall, now that I've played through the game, I feel I could teach most of it better. But I'm not sure how I could clue the players into paying closer attention to the roles and get them thinking about how to isolate factors for the sake of deduction.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:13 |
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Evil Sagan posted:Last night I gave Tragedy Looper a shot with a group of completely new players (including myself). My friends usually play roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, and they expected more roleplaying out of the game itself, especially since the rulebook recommended choosing an experienced RPG Game Master to play the Mastermind. I think you basically need to stress the fact that it’s a deduction game. It’s a game about deducing things. The mastermind plays cards to make it difficult to deduce things. The players play cards to try to make it easier to deduce things. If you don’t try to deduce things, you’re not even playing the game, really. This isn’t something that everyone will enjoy or be able to really “get”, so make sure you play it with the right group and prepare them for it.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:33 |
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There's also the very real possibility that people will just play things arbitrarily or by instinct and still win. It'll happen once every 1,000 games or whatever, but it can still happen, especially if you use even tiny bits of info like "I should probably play cards on the same thing as the mastermind since he probably needs to do stuff with that." This gets increasingly less likely as the Mastermind skill goes up and the scenario complexity increases, but the first scenario has very few moving parts and takes place over a relatively short period of time. If my first experience with the game was winning like that (or losing like that as the mastermind) I'd probably be pretty soured to the game.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:51 |
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Evil Sagan posted:Last night I gave Tragedy Looper a shot with a group of completely new players (including myself). My friends usually play roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, and they expected more roleplaying out of the game itself, especially since the rulebook recommended choosing an experienced RPG Game Master to play the Mastermind. If you are teaching a new game, you pretty much should ALWAYS do that. Evil Sagan posted:Part of it was, even though I constantly directed them to the reference sheet, they just had no clue about what kind of behavior to look for to deduce roles. Additionally, I had to make overt gestures to remind them they had access to Goodwill abilities. Run through a few scenarios with them. Treat game 1 as a teaching game and help them figure it out when they have problems. When going over what the roles are point out connections between roles and plots. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jul 24, 2015 |
# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:53 |
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Thanks for the tips. It's apparent that failing to teach myself beforehand was a crucial mistake. Besides that, though, I don't think they were in the mindset for a deduction game, even though we discussed that component of the game at length. I may try again with a different group, but not before making sure they're really interested in a logic puzzle/deduction game.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:10 |
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Madmarker posted:If you are teaching a new game, you pretty much should ALWAYS do that. When teaching, I also like to point out how they lose the loop, which on the First Steps side is only 6 ways 1. Intrigue on the Brain's starting location 2. intrigue on the School 3. Key Person killed 4. Protagonists murdered by Killer 5. Friend Dies 6. Protagonists die in a Hospital Incident The nice thing about this is it's a tour of the deduction map (almost) and they should be able to say "OK we lost so it's one of these 5 things. How do those happen?" and if they aren't able to go from there, you can literally say that phrase at them until they get it. If they still don't get it, tell them to remember to breathe. PlaneGuy fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jul 24, 2015 |
# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:17 |
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Here's a Q for you gents, i'm looking to expand my small collection of games with some more variety in gaming type and one of my groups still tends to prefer lighter games as they (and myself) are still fairly newish to board gaming in general, I'm looking at picking up Quantum and it looks like a decent game to try to get into that style of game, anyone here in the thread recommend it? the reviews are generally really positive but I wouldn't mind some goon opinions on it.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:27 |
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Funagain says new Mage Knight Expansion will be available next Wednesday (29th). Really looking forward to this.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:49 |
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Flipswitch posted:Here's a Q for you gents, i'm looking to expand my small collection of games with some more variety in gaming type and one of my groups still tends to prefer lighter games as they (and myself) are still fairly newish to board gaming in general, I'm looking at picking up Quantum and it looks like a decent game to try to get into that style of game, anyone here in the thread recommend it? the reviews are generally really positive but I wouldn't mind some goon opinions on it. It's not bad. The rules are simple enough to learn, the game ends quickly enough, and it has an interesting use of dice for ships. However, the combat is still very swingy. It's kinda strange in that Quantum looks like an abstract spaceship combat game, but plays like an ameritrash spaceship combat game.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 20:00 |
sonatinas posted:Funagain says new Mage Knight Expansion will be available next Wednesday (29th). Really looking forward to this. I wish Mage Knight were being handled under a better company so that they can get a bigger, better box for all the poo poo. Maybe even by not having the original box not be weirdly shaped.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 21:23 |
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Flipswitch posted:Here's a Q for you gents, i'm looking to expand my small collection of games with some more variety in gaming type and one of my groups still tends to prefer lighter games as they (and myself) are still fairly newish to board gaming in general, I'm looking at picking up Quantum and it looks like a decent game to try to get into that style of game, anyone here in the thread recommend it? the reviews are generally really positive but I wouldn't mind some goon opinions on it. Quantum is fantastic, and pretty easy for inexperienced gamers. It has a lot of room for multiple plays as well, since there’s a lot of cool combinations of ship and card powers. It can definitely be a bit swingy though, especially if someone gets a big lead over the other players. Overall I've had a lot of fun with it and would absolutely recommend it.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 21:28 |
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GrandpaPants posted:I wish Mage Knight were being handled under a better company so that they can get a bigger, better box for all the poo poo. Maybe even by not having the original box not be weirdly shaped. What it's come down to for me is little baggies for everything and I put the cards in deckboxes from netrunner game night kits.Made setup and take down really fast. I wouldn't mind buying different colored opaque bags for the enemies/ruins so I don't have to stack them each time. poo poo, I may buy them off amazon. I know there is the broken token option but I don't want to buy a box divider if I already have baggies.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 21:29 |
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I know that technically you can play Tragedy Looper with 2 or 3 people, but that sounds like a really bad idea. How bad an idea is it? If I were to play with just one Protagonist, should I be looking for slightly harder scripts to run? should i just not bother and play summoner wars instead
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:16 |
Robust Laser posted:I know that technically you can play Tragedy Looper with 2 or 3 people, but that sounds like a really bad idea. How bad an idea is it? If I were to play with just one Protagonist, should I be looking for slightly harder scripts to run? Two is fine, since one guy can just play all three protags. Three may be weird, but probably doable. Summoner Wars is a weird second choice since it has nothing to do with Tragedy Looper, but sure why not. It's a solid game that Plaid Hat made before they sunk their reputation here with lovely designs, which they are apparently going full speed ahead on since it sells like hotcakes. How bad is Ashes supposed to be? On a range from terrible to mediocre?
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:20 |
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Summoner Wars is the second choice because it's the two player game that is available
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:21 |
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sonatinas posted:What it's come down to for me is little baggies for everything and I put the cards in deckboxes from netrunner game night kits.Made setup and take down really fast. I wouldn't mind buying different colored opaque bags for the enemies/ruins so I don't have to stack them each time. poo poo, I may buy them off amazon. Yeah, my Mage Knight box has plenty of room after I got rid of all the stupid inserts and put everything in baggies. I even have both of the current expansion in there, and there is more than enough room for the next expansion. Not much after that though.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:27 |
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Oldstench posted:Played Merchants & Marauders last night for the first time. It took us about 3 1/2 hours, but was overall quite good. With experience I could see this getting down to 2 1/2 hours and that would be perfect. It's pretty much Sid Meier's Pirates the boardgame. I highly recommend you at least give it a try if you get a chance. I concur. Was that 3 1/2 hours with 4 players? That wouldn't be too bad. You can always reduce the victory point requirement if you want a shorter game. It really is at its best with 4 players; otherwise, the merchants have an easy time buying and selling goods on the other side of the map from the pirates.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:29 |
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SUSD's latest review: Only buy Fief if you plan on playing it more than twice. Great job guys.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:30 |
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The End posted:SUSD's latest review: Only buy Fief if you plan on playing it more than twice. I'd say that statement should hold true for literally every tabletop product.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:31 |
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Sherlock. Holmes. Consulting. Detective.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:32 |
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I have grown to hate baggies a little bit. So I hopped over to the dollar store and grabbed a little bead organizer It fits so nicely in the box and keeps all my pieces separate and I made some tuckboxes for the cards and I basically cut my Mage Knight set-up time in half. I use another identical bead case for Tragedy Looper and want to start buying them in bulk
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:40 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:48 |
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disperse posted:I concur. Was that 3 1/2 hours with 4 players? That wouldn't be too bad. You can always reduce the victory point requirement if you want a shorter game. It really is at its best with 4 players; otherwise, the merchants have an easy time buying and selling goods on the other side of the map from the pirates. Yeah, it was 4 including an Italian fellow who has a decent but limited grasp of English, a girl who thought it was going to about an hour long and kept leaving on other players turns, and another dude who was having a really hard time with many of the rules so they had to be repeated several times. We all still had a good time and I'm really looking forward to playing it again. Sucks that you say it's not that good with less than 4 because I think 3 is going to be the most I'll be able to get to play it for a while.
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# ? Jul 24, 2015 23:40 |