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sonatinas posted:Funagain says new Mage Knight Expansion will be available next Wednesday (29th). Really looking forward to this. I played a game of Titan today that was just under two hours. Only 3 players, but that's still unusual assuming it's not a mutual elimination. One player was being ground down and crushed, after this I felt I was behind on the board but my Titan was near the leader's. This let me go for a winner-take-all battle before things got worse. I did not win the battle, though.
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Jul 26, 2015 05:27
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Played lighter stuff today. Ginkgopolis is kind of simultaneously complicated and simple. It's a combination of drafting, tile placement, tableau building, and area majority by one of the Troyes guys. The act of taking a turn is initially confusing and it's a bit obnoxious to teach. However, each turn ends up being pretty similar and there is not a lot of complexity outside of the basic turn dynamic. A complicated kernel with a basic array of options surrounding it, as opposed to a worker placement where you have a simple action selection mechanism and then usually a large array of options. We need to play it more such that the basic execution of the game is more effortless and less distracting, in the hopes that we can concentrate more on scoring and what our opponent is doing. Greed is pretty fun. It's a drafting game by Donald X. It actually reminds me a bit of Libertalia in that there is a lot of timing involved in playing combos, both your own and what you anticipate your opponent will play. Feels more interactive than 7 Wonders. There are some pretty sweet DXV combos in there. Ingenious is just a chilled out Knizia abstract, pretty relaxing. Fun. I think I might be on a bit of a Knizia bender. He and DXV just get straight to the point and it's refreshing sometimes.
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Jul 26, 2015 06:07
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Ojetor posted:Orbital bombardment is still quite worthwhile. You can eliminate units easily without ever risking yours. Sure an orbital with only a single crappy ship doesn't do anything, but once you get some upgraded orbital orders and the bigger ships you can really lay waste to entire planets. Hell, the Ultramarines have an Exterminatus event card that turns every dice in an Orbital Bombardment roll into a hit. It's brutal. I feel like with a maximum of 8 dice even with the best Eldar orders for a bombardment they're only useful when you have the Corsair order upgrade. That ultramarines one sounds good though. I've not played as them, just Eldar and Chaos.
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Jul 26, 2015 09:09
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Ginkgopolis is kind of simultaneously complicated and simple. It's a combination of drafting, tile placement, tableau building, and area majority by one of the Troyes guys. The act of taking a turn is initially confusing and it's a bit obnoxious to teach. However, each turn ends up being pretty similar and there is not a lot of complexity outside of the basic turn dynamic. A complicated kernel with a basic array of options surrounding it, as opposed to a worker placement where you have a simple action selection mechanism and then usually a large array of options. We need to play it more such that the basic execution of the game is more effortless and less distracting, in the hopes that we can concentrate more on scoring and what our opponent is doing. Yeah I really like Gink but I would hate to teach it over and over. If you can play it with the same group it rules.
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Jul 26, 2015 09:45
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Bubble-T posted:I do I don't, but the Hungry Hippo is a favorite venue for the state Young Greens to have our social meetups (as is the German Club, incidentally). It's a great place and it got me into designer board games, I just couldn't help but wonder if you were from Adelaide when you mentioned it.  Anyway, I also meet up with about half a dozen old friends for a board game night every couple of months and I'm trying to get them into designer board games and away from Articulate, Monopoly and CAH. I've had some success with Dixit and Coup, any other suggestions? They unfortunately prefer playing as a single group rather than splitting up, which makes it a bit more difficult.
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Jul 26, 2015 14:31
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Trip report: I got two games of Broom Service in on board-game day. It won KennerSpiel this year, and I can see why. At its core it's pretty simple - use gatherers to make potions and wands, fly around the map with witches, drop off potions with druids, get clouds out of your way with weather fairies. Except you pick 4 out of 10 of those actions every turn, and so does everyone else, and you have to follow the lead of the current, well, basically "trick leader", so you might not take your actions in the order you wanted. Each action also has a lesser "cowardly" version that lets you take it right away, and a more rewarding "brave" version that gives you bonuses... as long as nobody else picks brave before the end of the round. Then you get jack squat. Also, whoever was brave leads the next trick, so enjoy that bonus while you've got it. Round-by-round events shake things up over and above this guessing game (one forces the trick leader to play brave, another lets cowardly actions score 3 points instead of taking the action), and when playing with less than 5 players, you use one of the unused player decks to reveal (5 - players) "bewitched" actions every round, that cost -3 points when played, even if you play brave and don't get to do anything. It was a trip, and I managed to win both games (in one case by keeping parity but otherwise getting a large number of clouds, in another case by heading alone for a remote corner where everything was worth more points) but there was some really close play there and a lot of guessing and second-guessing. There's another side of the board with even more advanced tricks and mechanics, but we didn't play on that one.
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Jul 26, 2015 15:44
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Got Terra Mystica to the table, good times - went over well. My regular gaming cronies enjoyed how you pretty much have no hidden knowledge or reliance on dice rolls for resources, also it's astoundingly quick after you know what does what. Gonna take some time to really 'get' how to point up efficiently though. My first game I ended up winning by last turn securing the largest area, and turning in enough priests to get 1st in 3 of the 4 cult tracks. My second didn't go as well, but mostly because i planned poorly in terms of acquiring power, and one of the guys was making GBS threads out dwellings all over the place and the other just wanted to build his poo poo off in the side of the map. I was pretty starved for workers and spades the entire time since I couldn't really afford to spend power on it (as I had none). Only thing I had going for my dumb engineers was getting an early stronghold and 2 of the 3 bridges setup for point earning.
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Jul 26, 2015 17:30
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I was at Bastard Cafe in Copenhagen today and yesterday with the girlfriend and a couple of others, and their selection is excellent, but also not perfect. We didn't get to try Viticulture, because they only had Tuscany without the base game, which seemed silly. What we did play was Bunny Bunny Moose Moose. If anyone had this down as the counterexample to Vlaada being awesome at anything, they are wrong. It is extremely rewarding pretending to be a moose by making antlers with your hands for most points. We found that sticking out your tongue and point inversions made our heads explode, but it was very nice and thinky while also silly as gently caress. Highly recommended. Other than that, we played Istanbul a couple of times (good), Cacao (good but possibly slightly too simple), Red Dragon Inn (okay I guess?) and Red7 (good, but induced way more AP than I expected) and probably a few others that I forget. I also took care to look what other people were playing. Ticket to Ride is basically the number one, two and three game, with half the people playing that at any time more or less. Other than that, Small World, Sheriff of Nottingham and Lords of Waterdeep were common, as were Scrabble and trivia games. I also always see people trying out Munchkin. Also, more than one group were playing BatHotH. Of course, nerds like us also come and play Agricola and Tzolk'in and whatever, but we are definitely in the minority as of yet. The place is full of people though, especially in the evenings. It is even difficult to find tables sometimes, and it is not a small place. Edit:  what's the best weed themed game?
BonHair fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jul 26, 2015 |
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Jul 26, 2015 18:00
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BonHair posted:Edit: Is there anything even out there aside from Stoner Fluxx?
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Jul 26, 2015 18:30
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Andean Abyss is mostly harder drugs, unfortunately.
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Jul 26, 2015 18:34
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If there's a good weed looking wooden block, I'd substitute those for pumpkins in Caverna.
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Jul 26, 2015 18:44
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BonHair posted:Edit: Perhaps Grass? Not a great game but it's a small niche.
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Jul 26, 2015 18:57
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Baller Ina posted:You don't spend XP on leveling in Elemental Evil, you level up between missions. Also you get to keep any gold or treasures you find, even if you fail, so it acts as a somewhat cludgy difficulty slider, since you'll eventually have enough gold to get one or two people to level two, which helps both your combat and your survivability. The game says you can pool your money between the players, which is pretty much mandatory since otherwise you're all going to each be sitting on a chunk of gold you can't do anything with, since it takes 1,000 to level up. After you've leveled you can buy these treasure-like tokens that can be used once per dungeon to reroll a die, recharge a power, etc., so as you play through the campaign (which this game is pretty much built around, btw. The other games kinda just mention the option, but Elemental Evil is pretty clearly designed to be a campaign) you have those as a way to progress your character in lieu of the other games giving you treasures. Yeah I did misspeak about the XP (we were doing it right the night I played it). Never the less we were spending all our resources on negating the rain of AOE damage encounters. And I agree wizard is pretty useless in this because they have no survivability, but I think that's more the encounter cards than anything. I feel like all these boxed sets are the beginning of something good, the junior coop board gamer thing that could do with a little more depth.
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Jul 26, 2015 19:06
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BonHair posted:Edit: At my house every game is weed themed.
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Jul 26, 2015 19:31
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Is this an OK spot for Mage Knight questions? My hand is the advanced action that lets me destroy a card for triple its primary action and Fireball (5 fire/ranged). My bad guy is a Fire/Melee resist Dragon with 7 HP. I used the basic action on my card to discard Fireball for a total of 15 Fire/Range, which halved rounded down gave me 7 to kill my dragon. Discounting the strategic logic of this (which may have been terrible, I just wanted him dead), did I actually work that combat correctly?
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Jul 26, 2015 20:18
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Considering the Dragon was Fire/Physical resist i believe you did do it correctly since you would have needed about 15 Fire/Physical to actually kill him with that alone. Really your biggest error was throwing away Fireball though 
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Jul 26, 2015 20:37
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Huxley posted:Is this an OK spot for Mage Knight questions? Fireball is a spell, not an action, so this just flat out doesn't work. However, if you take your premise that it does work as correct, then the way you did it is fine and works as long as the dragon is not fortified - you need 7 damage to kill it, and fire and melee are inefficient, so deal half damage, You need 14 fire or melee damage, you get 15, so you're fine.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:38
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Huxley posted:Is this an OK spot for Mage Knight questions? The advanced action you are talking about (Maximal Effect, I think?) only works with action cards (your starting deck and other advanced actions), not spells or artifacts. edit: beaten
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Jul 26, 2015 20:40
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thespaceinvader posted:Fireball is a spell, not an action, so this just flat out doesn't work. Haha. Thanks. I'm on my 4th or 5th solo play through and have yet to finish a game without cheating accidentally.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:44
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I'm assuming all posters in this thread have a game they love but rarely get to the table. I finally got to play Archipelago for the second time with my partner. I had thought the rules would have rusted by now. Overall though, I am still in love with the game, its mechanics, and the tension that builds throughout even in a simple two player scenario. I wish I had the opportunity to break it out more because it's such a beautiful beast. Fortunately, the go-to alternative lately for a board game date night has been Twilight Struggle. There's even a Spotify playlist for that game for extra moodiness.
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Jul 26, 2015 21:30
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I picked up Eminent Domain Microcosm a couple days ago. It's a small 2 player spinoff of EmDom. Each turn you take one of three face up action cards, or draw one from the top of the action deck. Then you either play a card from your hand, or pick up cards from your discard pile. The main actions are similar to the basic ones in EmDom. Colonize gets you a planet that can give you extra icons for actions. Warfare lets you take planets, colonized by the other player, or from the center, and take them as spoils, where they can't be taken, but also can't be used for their icons. Research lets you take tech cards which give an icon. The others let you interact with the action cards or planets in different ways. I played a couple games, and I kinda liked it for a quick 2 player filler game. In each, the player that went for warfare managed to win, but I can't say if it's unbalanced or not. Since I liked it, I think I should look into getting EmDom + Escalation.
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Jul 26, 2015 21:38
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T-Bone posted:Yeah I really like Gink but I would hate to teach it over and over. If you can play it with the same group it rules. I really Xavier Georges games. His first game, Carson City is pretty good with the tile instead of dice dueling variant. It's very similar mechanically to Caylus, but places more importance on location of the buildings.
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Jul 26, 2015 21:42
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Huxley posted:Haha. Thanks. I'm on my 4th or 5th solo play through and have yet to finish a game without cheating accidentally. Well at least you haven't made it hard on yourself by forgetting something like forgetting you alternate gold and grey units when you have a core tile discovered.
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Jul 26, 2015 22:42
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Rumda posted:Well at least you haven't made it hard on yourself by forgetting something like forgetting you alternate gold and grey units when you have a core tile discovered. I tend to mess up to my benefit. The first game I played I was turning cards sideways to boost siege attacks from units.
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Jul 26, 2015 23:25
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A friend bought Imperial Settlers (I advised against it), so I played it yesterday. Fate gave me Egyptians, we ended the game after turn 4 because I had ~20 cards played, 6 gold income and a 10 point lead, while the others had 4-10 developed cards. They tried to curb my production, which led to more income and points from Egyptian buildings. If you get a bit of income and card draw, you snowball so fast. I didn't even have the oasis for further snowballing. Meanwhile, my girlfriend never got any production buildings and got nothing done. Don't think she'll play it again. My friend says he heard the expansion fixes the game, is that right?
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Jul 27, 2015 11:50
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Shes Not Impressed posted:I'm assuming all posters in this thread have a game they love but rarely get to the table. It's Twilight Imperium for me. The length of the game is just too much when we tend to start playing at 6pm. I think it's also too abstract for most of my friends to enjoy. All those technologies and ships but they're not really what the game is about.
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Jul 27, 2015 11:55
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nimby posted:My friend says he heard the expansion fixes the game, is that right? If by "the expansion" he means "lighter fluid and a box of matches", yes. Even the guy in my group who bought Imperial Settlers and raved about it doesn't want to play it after he realised Egypt always wins.
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Jul 27, 2015 12:02
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I am so psyched - just got an email today telling me that the megagame Watch the Skies is going to be held in my city (Ottawa) on September 20th. Apparently they're taking the premise from the Shut Up, Sit Down video that most of you have probably seen, and changing it up so that people who have watched it won't know exactly what's going on.
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Jul 27, 2015 14:32
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Azran posted:Anyways, Ashes looks like it will be one hell of a mess. THIS. Everyone is going gaga over this mess of a game and I can't figure out why. It's like Dice Masters + Magic but everything about it looks terrible.
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Jul 27, 2015 15:27
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Bottom Liner posted:THIS. Everyone is going gaga over this mess of a game and I can't figure out why. People liked Dead of Winter and Ashes has pretty pictures. It really doesn't take much.
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Jul 27, 2015 15:32
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I had a fantastic success story this week of getting a bunch of non-gamers into some intro games. I was at the beach for the week with a group of about 15 people and I pulled out One Night Ultimate Werewolf and showed 3 others the game. After one round we had everyone's attention and after the next round we had 10 players and everyone cheering and getting really into it. They played the rest of the night, pulling off some crazy good bluffs and strategies, and a few of them ended up ordering it on Amazon when we were done. The next night we played Sushi Go and Coup with great success as well.
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Jul 27, 2015 15:50
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Played Forbidden Stars yesterday. It's a step up from Starcraft, but that's not saying much IMHO. I'll probably be willing to try it again, but I won't seek it out.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:15
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I played Alchemists again and I'm not sure I like it. It seems like such a promising concept, but playing it feels like trying to play Ticket to Ride while also doing Sudoku on the side. The game comes down to who makes the fewest dumb mistakes because they were solving side puzzles. I can't decide if it's because the game hasn't clicked yet, or it's just not a good game.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:21
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Chomp8645 posted:Can you imagine showing up to a place that bills itself as a "board game cafe" and seeing loving Hungry Hungry Hippos on the table? http://boardroomdc.com/games/ It's true - some do.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:33
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Oldstench posted:Played Forbidden Stars yesterday. It's a step up from Starcraft, but that's not saying much IMHO. I'll probably be willing to try it again, but I won't seek it out. What faction were you?
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Jul 27, 2015 17:44
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PerniciousKnid posted:I played Alchemists again and I'm not sure I like it. It seems like such a promising concept, but playing it feels like trying to play Ticket to Ride while also doing Sudoku on the side. The game comes down to who makes the fewest dumb mistakes because they were solving side puzzles. I can't decide if it's because the game hasn't clicked yet, or it's just not a good game. I remember reading an interview with Antawn Jamison, a basketball player, explaining why he had such a funky high arcing shot when on the move. He said that when he was growing up, they had a hoop on top of the garage and there was a big tree branch in front of it, so they would shoot the ball with a really high arc such that it would clear the branch. Sometimes, board games feel like just another game of basketball, but this time with a branch in front of the hoop
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Jul 27, 2015 17:45
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Bottom Liner posted:I had a fantastic success story this week of getting a bunch of non-gamers into some intro games. I was at the beach for the week with a group of about 15 people and I pulled out One Night Ultimate Werewolf and showed 3 others the game. After one round we had everyone's attention and after the next round we had 10 players and everyone cheering and getting really into it. They played the rest of the night, pulling off some crazy good bluffs and strategies, and a few of them ended up ordering it on Amazon when we were done. The next night we played Sushi Go and Coup with great success as well. Does anyone have good role recommended combinations for different player counts? I've just got One Night and Daybreak and I'd like to prevent an introductory few games from falling flat.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:46
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LuiCypher posted:http://boardroomdc.com/games/ Is this place actually in business? No kids and no Good Games™, not even Ticket to Ride (but I guess Catan), but you get to pay for a deck of cards or a set of dice that most pubs will just let you borrow for free.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:53
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Do you actually need to pay to rent each game separately? Why the heck would anyone do that? Edit: Also, laughing at the idea of this place that appears to want to look 'high class' while having loving Hungry Hungry Hippos CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK ringing through the establishment.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:56
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I would have thought Hungry Hungry Hippos would be a bad investment as well - I can't remember anyone who owned that game who didn't end up breaking it.
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Jul 27, 2015 18:04
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