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Mojo Jojo
Sep 21, 2005

TI3 is far and away my favourite boardgame

It has its own niche though. You don't meet for boardgames and end up playing it, you specifically meet for that one game.

Sadly it's rare I get six hour blocks with a big enough table. Only two games this year so far

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Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Mojo Jojo posted:

It has its own niche though. You don't meet for boardgames and end up playing it, you specifically meet for that one game.

Sadly it's rare I get six hour blocks with a big enough table. Only two games this year so far
That niche is called 'board wargames of any size' :v:

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.

Tekopo posted:

That niche is called 'board wargames of any size' :v:

W1815 :smug:

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Radioactive Toy posted:

I think now is the perfect time for FFG to slim down TI with a fourth version like they've been doing with so many other games recently. It has some great ideas but is just overly bloated and full of FFG relics of design from 10 years ago.

I'd be incredibly surprised if they don't do this sometime in the next two years.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

Radioactive Toy posted:

I think now is the perfect time for FFG to slim down TI with a fourth version like they've been doing with so many other games recently. It has some great ideas but is just overly bloated and full of FFG relics of design from 10 years ago.

It would be pretty cool if they could do Android: Second Edition and de-gently caress that game. There's literally too much going on for it to play with any sort of speed.

fozzy fosbourne
Apr 21, 2010

It's interesting how auctions used to be the dominant central euro game mechanism 10+ years ago but now seem to have been almost blotted out by worker placement/action drafting (Keyflower being a notable exception). I wonder why that is. Too much Knizia for one decade?

Drafting is probably a bit more approachable than auctions? Auctions usually favor the experienced, who will more accurately evaluate the relative worth of an item being auctioned. Maybe that makes the games less suitable to playing infrequently or with new players often, relative to action drafting euros.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

golden bubble posted:

Market row = only X cards are available to be bought during a turn. These cards are randomly drawn from a single deck containing all the cards shuffled together. The problem is you can't rely upon a strategy that depends on any specific card, or even any type of card, because you don't know if you'll ever have a chance to buy it.

Two currencies = there are two ways to "buy" things, with gold and with attack. This makes it hard to create a deck that can reliably buy things, which is most of the strategy of a deckbuilder. (The other main parts are how fast you can create that deck, and when to stop going after things that make the deck function in favor of victory points).

cards that are worth points can also do other useful things = The guy with the most points is currently winning. If the cards that give you the most points also have the best abilities, then it's near impossible to catch up to the current winner. This means the game is decided well before it's over.

Also, pretty much all the things you liked about it are true for Dominion, but better.

EDIT: The problem with "I had fun" is that I have friends who had fun reading Twilight and reading War and Peace. Fun covers so many activities that "I had fun" is a statement with no informative value. It should be erased from serious decisions for the same reason "the fact that" should be erased.

I'm a little confused by some of these explanations with regards to thunderstone advance. Market row: OK, the base purchase is one card a turn; why is this intrinsically bad? Also, in T:a, you lay out all the available cards at the start of the game; your strategy isn't really at the whims of chance.

Two currencies: I guess you're referring to buying attack with gold and "buying" XP and VP with attack? Again, it seems to me like balancing your deck's ability to do one or the other is an interesting challenge.

On your third point, I can definitely see that having the highest VP cards also being the best would be a huge problem, but I don't see that happening in the games I've played. High VP items have a marginal value at best, and some very good items have a very small amount of VP. Maybe this changes with some of the cards I haven't played with yet?

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


The problem with two currencies is that there is no way to meaningfully balance them. The worse thing you can do is actually balance your deck, because then you are more likely to get into situations where you have, as an example, 4 gold and 4 attack cards in your hand of 8 cards (I'm not talking about a particular deck builder here, just two resource systems in deckbuilders in general). If your deck is 7 attack cards and 7 gold cards, your ideal draw is 7 attack cards followed by 7 gold cards, which is almost never going to happen.

I've never played T:A so I can't comment on that, but Ascension is pretty much the poster child for deckbuilders that tried to copy Dominion but didn't know how to and the game has this exact problem, coupled with the fact that the market could potentially show just poo poo that requires attack when you have only gold and viceversa, leading to further 'dead hands' that waste valuable resources.

golden bubble
Jun 3, 2011

yospos

Captain Foo posted:

I'm a little confused by some of these explanations with regards to thunderstone advance. Market row: OK, the base purchase is one card a turn; why is this intrinsically bad? Also, in T:a, you lay out all the available cards at the start of the game; your strategy isn't really at the whims of chance.

I've only played Star Realms and Ascension, but the way they work is six available cards are placed at the beginning of the game. As each card is purchased, a new card is made available by drawing from the big deck of every card in the game. So you might start working on a high attack deck, or a faction bonus deck, but none of those cards are available during your turn. Also, you can get in a situation where no one is able to afford the stuff in the market row (six available cards). If the high cost cards all come out early, it can take half a dozen turns of buying the basic get-2-currency card to boost up anyone's deck to buy stuff in the market row.

EDIT: To add onto the multiple currency types discussion, usually it is better to get a single 7-cost card over a 3-cost card and a 4-cost card. This is because the power of these cards usually scales really well, and having more mediocre cards makes it hard to boost the average power of your deck in the long run.

golden bubble fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 3, 2015

jeeves
May 27, 2001

Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire
The market row can really make Star Realms feel like too much of a lucky based game, as if someone snags the pretty good Machine Cult ships early (like first turn early) they can slim down their decks very fast and get rid of the pure crap you start with.

I think the only way to alleviate this is to use a house rule that makes the market row have 2-3 extra cards at the start only, and then it only refills when things go under the normal 5 cards.

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Captain Foo posted:

I'm a little confused by some of these explanations with regards to thunderstone advance. Market row: OK, the base purchase is one card a turn; why is this intrinsically bad? Also, in T:a, you lay out all the available cards at the start of the game; your strategy isn't really at the whims of chance.

Two currencies: I guess you're referring to buying attack with gold and "buying" XP and VP with attack? Again, it seems to me like balancing your deck's ability to do one or the other is an interesting challenge.

On your third point, I can definitely see that having the highest VP cards also being the best would be a huge problem, but I don't see that happening in the games I've played. High VP items have a marginal value at best, and some very good items have a very small amount of VP. Maybe this changes with some of the cards I haven't played with yet?

On point 1 - The Dungeon in Thunderstone is the very definition of the Market Row mechanic, where cards may be 'purchased' for attack, and after they are purchased new cards appear. This tends to result in advantaging whoever happens to be able to purchase the 'best' cards when they appear.

On point 3 - In Thunderstone, once you can kill monsters you get XP, which gives you the ability to kill more monsters. The person who is able to kill a handful of monsters first has a huge leg-up on the other players, as they get access to the better heroes earlier, and the cycle repeats itself. Plus many of the monsters are worth quite a lot of gold, give the ability to prune your deck, and so on, so being able to kill them off early can further increase a player's lead.

I personally quite enjoy Thunderstone Advance even though it isn't as well-designed a deckbuilder as Dominion. It does require you to rig the dungeon deck so that the weakest monsters appear at the beginning and the strongest at the end to be actually balanced, though (otherwise you end up in Market Row Hell where the first person who can 'buy' something will end up winning), and Thunderstone Advance introduced the concept of monster levels to help with this.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva

Tekopo posted:

I'm a X-Wing Minis player myself so I can't fill in all of the details, but be warned that there are some issues with Star Trek Attack Wing, especially when borg come into the picture. Wizkids have a history for loving up games and the game from what I've heard is very unbalanced at the higher levels. There's a reason why the X-Wing Minis thread here in TG is really active and the Star Trek Attack Wing thread doesn't get many posts any more. Playing casually though you should be fine.

Also, the Attack Wing minis look awful compared to X-Wing. I would have picked up a ship or two just to have the minis if they looked better.

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Mojo Jojo posted:

TI3 is far and away my favourite boardgame

FelchTragedy
Jul 2, 2002

FelchTragedy.
Internet, I call forth your power!
Let's T_Roll.
As deck builders go Ascension's early versions are easier to teach to people. However for complete newbs I spotted a trend where people are afraid to play their cards. This doubly so for card thinners. I'm advanced enough to spot if their card hasn't come out yet and reassure them to play cards.

Wish there was a monster attack where you made your opponents discard several cards returning all starter deck cards to the to of their deck.

FelchTragedy fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Aug 3, 2015

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

fozzy fosbourne posted:

It's interesting how auctions used to be the dominant central euro game mechanism 10+ years ago but now seem to have been almost blotted out by worker placement/action drafting (Keyflower being a notable exception). I wonder why that is. Too much Knizia for one decade?

Drafting is probably a bit more approachable than auctions? Auctions usually favor the experienced, who will more accurately evaluate the relative worth of an item being auctioned. Maybe that makes the games less suitable to playing infrequently or with new players often, relative to action drafting euros.

Drafting has the same issue, it just shows it differently. Try drafting as a green Agricola player vs a bunch of experienced guys, forget it.

Auctions: Blind bid auctions play out differently than auctions where you can keep upping the bid, and really differently from auctions where you can pass and then get back in like all the 18xx's I've played. A lot of people refuse to play blind bidding auctions because it feels arbitrary. And when there are a group of new players playing, it just about will be arbitrary. After some experience, blind bidding will get better, but I still don't think it's a great mechanic. Sometimes it feels like a cheesy way a bad developer tried to balance the game, and that really makes me mad.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


That's why you need a game with all of the auctions present! :v:

I kind of like Modern Art actually.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Captain Foo posted:

Two currencies: I guess you're referring to buying attack with gold and "buying" XP and VP with attack? Again, it seems to me like balancing your deck's ability to do one or the other is an interesting challenge.

My Thunderstone experience was a frustrating slog of never drawing enough attack stuff to meaningfully have a chance against the dungeon monsters with 9's and 11's which meant essentially skipping my turn to try and "prepare" a better hand for next turn which often had one of two results:

1). I still wouldn't wind up with a good hand after giving up my turn, or

2) I wouldn't wind up with a good hand, and someone else would manage to luck into the right hand to kill a monster, snag some more XP or gold or whatever.

Because of the specific set of cards available for purchase, I had very few options for curating my deck and even if I did I didn't have the reliable resource draws to restock it with things that would actually have helped me. The "dungeon lighting" mechanic was completely frustrating because all it did was add another layer of difficulty to monsters that I already had no hope of making a dent in and since there weren't any readily available light-producing cards for sale in the market layout we were using (which according to the game's owner was an official layout that came with the game and not just something he'd made up) it meant that we had to hang on to our torches which are clearly one of the first cards you'd want to thin out of your deck given an opportunity to do so.

I posted a couple of rundowns of my thoughts after playing Thunderstone earlier in the thread following my experience with it and the conclusion I came to is that too much of the game relies on setting up Magic: the Gathering style arrangements of heroes equipped with magic weapons and spells and stuff, but Magic allows you to build that stuff up gradually while Thunderstone forces you to either do it all on the turn you need it or the opportunity passes you buy. I also think it's a bad decision to make some cards entirely dependent on other cards simply to function, i.e. you can buy this rad axe for killing monsters but if you don't have a hero to use it with who also happens to have the right stats to use it then it might as well be junk, and you also need some light too, and then you need this, that, and the other to beat this Smashfucker Colossus and actually accomplish something. Are any of those things missing from your hand when you need them? Tough poo poo.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Thanks for everyone weighing in, I wasn't thinking of the dungeon as a row and so on

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Captain Foo posted:

Thanks for everyone weighing in, I wasn't thinking of the dungeon as a row and so on

I hope you got something useful out of this!

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Captain Foo posted:

Thanks for everyone weighing in, I wasn't thinking of the dungeon as a row and so on

Yeah I've been deep in this hobby for over 30 years, but it's still a challenge to be able to tell the difference between a good game that you like, a bad game that you like, and a good game that you don't like. I know bad games that I don't like :) It's important though when you are giving recommendations though, because while many people are well off and could buy all of CoolStuffInc, most of us can't and it's really disappointing to buy a 'fun' game that sucks for you and your group.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

OmegaGoo posted:

I hope you got something useful out of this!

Yeah, for sure. My main other friend who plays games had played dominion before and hated it. Found it too easy to find the dominant strategy and crush everyone, his words. I know he had played with a couple people that had played before and he had not. I've never played dominion, so I don't know how the game runs. I do feel like the market side of thunderstone advance is probably better designed than the dungeon side, but I'm not sure how much that is really saying anymore

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
^^^For real, you should try Dominion sometime. If you like Thunderstone's market row and the idea of buying cards to make a better deck to let you buy more cards and becoming this cool card-buying engine, Dominion is an incredibly elegant game.

I feel like there's maybe a way you could make a "Thunderstone but better" where things are semi-cooperative, semi-competitive by having everyone go around the table in a round laying down the cards that will, at the end of the round, turn into a single adventuring party which then goes and smashes poo poo in the dungeon during a designated Dungeon Round, and from there XP and loot is divided among the players in some manner that still gives people something to compete over. So if one person draws a hand of nothing but axes and torches he can lay that poo poo down and then the next person can play beefy dwarf heroes and the third player has a mage and some spells and, like, a lovely dagger or whatever, and then you put all of that together and so even someone with a trash hand gets to contribute towards making things happen.

medchem
Oct 11, 2012

I played Thunderstone and Thunderstone: Advance several times and I tried desperately to make it a better game. Here are the issues I had with it:

- Dungeon row is random. Others have talked about this issue. Basically, it comes down to the dungeon row being different for each person. Having an extra slot in T:A makes it slightly better, but you're still limited by the fact that each spot in the row is progressively harder to fight based on the whole light mechanic. So, you can plan your turn if you want, but it won't matter since you don't know what you'll face in the dungeon when it's your turn. Playing with 3 or less players is the best way to play it.

- Takes way too long. Setup and tear down takes a while. Also, downtime seemed to take way too long. Often, people would do the math on the dungeon, and then realize they couldn't go there, so then they'd spend time figuring out what to get in the village. All of that led to many of our games taking 2+ hours (our games were usually 4 people with 2 of them being a bit AP-prone/slow thinkers).

- Imbalanced cards. Thunderstone: Advance seemed like it was better playtested, but the earlier Thunderstone sets were not very well playtested. There were some overpowered cards and quite a few weak cards. Later sets actually introduced more cards that were dual use in the village and the dungeon. This at least helped with the whole idea that you may have many boring and dead turns where you had a mix of cards that were good in the dungeon or the village. It might be that the later T:A sets were better made and tested, but I pretty much stopped buying the game at that point.

By all means, if you really liked Thunderstone, get Thunderstone: Advance only and only if you can get an insanely good deal (i.e. 60-70% off retail at least) on a used collection. They did reprint and fix some Thunderstone stuff in Thunderstone: Advance format, so it's not like you'll miss out on pre-Advance stuff that much. Aside from this, go with Dominion or some of the other suggestions others have made here. I also don't know if AEG is really going to support Thunderstone a whole lot at this point.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Captain Foo posted:

Thanks for everyone weighing in, I wasn't thinking of the dungeon as a row and so on

Incidentally the last game I played uses the horde monsters, which seem to alleviate the problem somewhat. In the d dungeon deck, they are represented by placeholders, and every time one comes up it's represented by the actual card, which come in ever-but-slightly increasing difficulties and values

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!
To cut a long story short, don't buy Thunderstone. Buy Dominion if you want a great deckbuilder, buy Eminent Domain if you want a good and slightly more themey deckbuilder, and buy Mage Knight if you want a good version of Thunderstone's theme and setting with a deeper and broader set of mechanics.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Legendary Encounter is actually a pretty fun co-op deckbuilder. It has a few design issues, but just the fact that it is a non-competitive game papers over many of the issues that the other deckbuilders have. It feels good doing poo poo like playing a card out of turn that allows your friend to buy that card/defeat the alien that saved the game, and they design the co-op cards well in that playing them always allows you to draw a card to replace them, meaning that you aren't out of a card simply for helping your friend. They can also be played to help yourself as well. I enjoy Legendary Encounters a lot.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

medchem posted:

I played Thunderstone and Thunderstone: Advance several times and I tried desperately to make it a better game. Here are the issues I had with it:

- Dungeon row is random. Others have talked about this issue. Basically, it comes down to the dungeon row being different for each person. Having an extra slot in T:A makes it slightly better, but you're still limited by the fact that each spot in the row is progressively harder to fight based on the whole light mechanic. So, you can plan your turn if you want, but it won't matter since you don't know what you'll face in the dungeon when it's your turn. Playing with 3 or less players is the best way to play it.

- Takes way too long. Setup and tear down takes a while. Also, downtime seemed to take way too long. Often, people would do the math on the dungeon, and then realize they couldn't go there, so then they'd spend time figuring out what to get in the village. All of that led to many of our games taking 2+ hours (our games were usually 4 people with 2 of them being a bit AP-prone/slow thinkers).

- Imbalanced cards. Thunderstone: Advance seemed like it was better playtested, but the earlier Thunderstone sets were not very well playtested. There were some overpowered cards and quite a few weak cards. Later sets actually introduced more cards that were dual use in the village and the dungeon. This at least helped with the whole idea that you may have many boring and dead turns where you had a mix of cards that were good in the dungeon or the village. It might be that the later T:A sets were better made and tested, but I pretty much stopped buying the game at that point.

By all means, if you really liked Thunderstone, get Thunderstone: Advance only and only if you can get an insanely good deal (i.e. 60-70% off retail at least) on a used collection. They did reprint and fix some Thunderstone stuff in Thunderstone: Advance format, so it's not like you'll miss out on pre-Advance stuff that much. Aside from this, go with Dominion or some of the other suggestions others have made here. I also don't know if AEG is really going to support Thunderstone a whole lot at this point.

I've only ever played the single thunderstone advance box

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

Captain Foo posted:

Yeah, for sure. My main other friend who plays games had played dominion before and hated it. Found it too easy to find the dominant strategy and crush everyone, his words. I know he had played with a couple people that had played before and he had not. I've never played dominion, so I don't know how the game runs. I do feel like the market side of thunderstone advance is probably better designed than the dungeon side, but I'm not sure how much that is really saying anymore

Probably went big money in dominion - it's good, but you can get beaten by people looking for more creative ways to get a kingdom to work together - which happens to be a big piece of the fun for me. There's so many kingdom combinations that what you did in one game is probably not going to work in another, short of the big money strat.

Kai Tave posted:

^^^For real, you should try Dominion sometime. If you like Thunderstone's market row and the idea of buying cards to make a better deck to let you buy more cards and becoming this cool card-buying engine, Dominion is an incredibly elegant game.

I feel like there's maybe a way you could make a "Thunderstone but better" where things are semi-cooperative, semi-competitive by having everyone go around the table in a round laying down the cards that will, at the end of the round, turn into a single adventuring party which then goes and smashes poo poo in the dungeon during a designated Dungeon Round, and from there XP and loot is divided among the players in some manner that still gives people something to compete over. So if one person draws a hand of nothing but axes and torches he can lay that poo poo down and then the next person can play beefy dwarf heroes and the third player has a mage and some spells and, like, a lovely dagger or whatever, and then you put all of that together and so even someone with a trash hand gets to contribute towards making things happen.

This is sort of like the Shadowrun Crossfire game - not the best game in the world by any means but it is a cooperative 'deckbuilder' of sorts. it is also somewhat difficult. The various star trek deckbuilders also have cooperative borg scenarios that work the same say - lay down characters and add up the stats compared to whatever you're fighting etc.

Sloober fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Aug 3, 2015

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Kai Tave posted:

^^^For real, you should try Dominion sometime. If you like Thunderstone's market row and the idea of buying cards to make a better deck to let you buy more cards and becoming this cool card-buying engine, Dominion is an incredibly elegant game.

I feel like there's maybe a way you could make a "Thunderstone but better" where things are semi-cooperative, semi-competitive by having everyone go around the table in a round laying down the cards that will, at the end of the round, turn into a single adventuring party which then goes and smashes poo poo in the dungeon during a designated Dungeon Round, and from there XP and loot is divided among the players in some manner that still gives people something to compete over. So if one person draws a hand of nothing but axes and torches he can lay that poo poo down and then the next person can play beefy dwarf heroes and the third player has a mage and some spells and, like, a lovely dagger or whatever, and then you put all of that together and so even someone with a trash hand gets to contribute towards making things happen.

This is almost literally Shadowrift... which is an ok, if brutal, game.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Kai Tave posted:

^^^For real, you should try Dominion sometime. If you like Thunderstone's market row and the idea of buying cards to make a better deck to let you buy more cards and becoming this cool card-buying engine, Dominion is an incredibly elegant game.

I feel like there's maybe a way you could make a "Thunderstone but better" where things are semi-cooperative, semi-competitive by having everyone go around the table in a round laying down the cards that will, at the end of the round, turn into a single adventuring party which then goes and smashes poo poo in the dungeon during a designated Dungeon Round, and from there XP and loot is divided among the players in some manner that still gives people something to compete over. So if one person draws a hand of nothing but axes and torches he can lay that poo poo down and then the next person can play beefy dwarf heroes and the third player has a mage and some spells and, like, a lovely dagger or whatever, and then you put all of that together and so even someone with a trash hand gets to contribute towards making things happen.

This sounds really cool

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Legendary Encounters has come up before and the thread generally seems to be positive about it, so if you and your group want a deckbuilder game where you fight monsters and stuff that'd be where I'd start looking assuming that you all dig the Alien franchise and like the idea of shooting xenomorphs with pulse rifles instead of more fantasy-themed stuff.

I wish Shadowrun: Crossfire was better than it sounds going off of reviews here and elsewhere because I would dearly love a tabletop Shadowrun game of some sort that wasn't a goddamn mess.

OmegaGoo posted:

This is almost literally Shadowrift... which is an ok, if brutal, game.

I kind of figured someone out there had probably already done something similar to this.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Alternatively, while I don't think Star Realms is a good game, it's cheaper and better than other market row deckbiilders.

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Kai Tave posted:

I wish Shadowrun: Crossfire was better than it sounds going off of reviews here and elsewhere because I would dearly love a tabletop Shadowrun game of some sort that wasn't a goddamn mess.

If it's any consolation, Crossfire isn't that bad. It's better than Splendor!

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

OmegaGoo posted:

If it's any consolation, Crossfire isn't that bad. It's better than Splendor!

I know you're half joking, but the Splendor metric is actually pretty useful and hell, if it clears that threshold maybe I'll try and find a copy on sale somewhere.

fozzy fosbourne
Apr 21, 2010

edit:^^ I also think Legendary Encounters is pretty much tops amongst all the very similar thematic deckbuilder games. It's weird because it doesn't do anything really brilliant, it still has a lot of the same issues as these other market row dual resource games, it's just much better at the obvious things like making the encounter deck actually have some structure, throwing some interaction in there, asymmetric starts, etc.


Lorini posted:

Drafting has the same issue, it just shows it differently. Try drafting as a green Agricola player vs a bunch of experienced guys, forget it.

Well to be clear, I was referring to the actual worker placement mechanism of something like Agricola as essentially being drafting (you might be, too). So for example, you could take a game like Caverna and just make all the worker placement possibilities each round into one big draft of cards or something.(as an aside, some of the resource accumulators in Uwe games behave a little like dutch auctions). So just like in a Magic draft or fantasy sports draft or whatever, each round you are evaluating whether an action is worth a 1st pick, 2nd pick, 3rd pick, etc. A lot of the skill is determining how much value you can get for your pick each round and denying others too much value.

And yeah, those things all favor experience quite a bit, but seem a little more approachable to newbies than an auction. In a fantasy sports draft, you might be able to stumble through and get reasonable picks in the first few rounds, but make it into an auction and you are going to have some serious trouble even formulating your first bid without a bunch of research and experience. A bad decision in the first round of an auction can cripple you for the rest of an auction, whereas a bad decision in draft might have a lesser impact on later rounds of drafting. Keyflower mitigates this a bit by letting you go back and raise your bid at any point which is cool.

It's neat though how auctions let you exert some control on the game without suffering as much from turn order. Instead of the player to your right getting something amazing because several players let it get to them, you can now put in a bid to make sure they have to pay for it. Seems generally less arbitrary feeling and more interactive than a draft. But more complicated. That's one of the neat things about a game like Argent is that it's a draft but you can go back and make a draft pick more costly by pwning the worker.

quote:

Auctions: Blind bid auctions play out differently than auctions where you can keep upping the bid, and really differently from auctions where you can pass and then get back in like all the 18xx's I've played. A lot of people refuse to play blind bidding auctions because it feels arbitrary. And when there are a group of new players playing, it just about will be arbitrary. After some experience, blind bidding will get better, but I still don't think it's a great mechanic. Sometimes it feels like a cheesy way a bad developer tried to balance the game, and that really makes me mad.

Yeah, I think sealed or blind bid auctions are not really my thing. Also, I think I prefer just standard English auctions or once-around English auctions, where you get your losing bid back, than poker-style auctions where you lose it to the winner (except I like poker so go figure). I haven't played Taj Mahal or Beowulf yet, though. Dutch auctions are cool and seem like an interesting twist on a draft.

Also, I think both auctions and drafting are shortcuts to internally balance a game (by having the players do it) rather than externally balancing a game and trying to accurately cost each thing of value statically. Probably making development less important.

For example, if you have a game with 10 available actions, you could try to figure out the expected value of each (and adjust the cost as the game state changes, like a feld game reducing the points you receive for a task as the game progresses and that task becomes easier). Instead, you could just make it into a draft and let the players sort that out dynamically (although when the player to your left keeps getting 1st player and the player to your right keeps hosing you, it doesn't matter, dammit Uwe :doom:). Same thing applies to auctions, you can try to establish a cost for everything or you can have the players sort it out (or make something really weird like Modern Art).

That's why I wonder if a lot of these bad market row deck builders could end up being much better internally balanced if they either made it into an auction of some sort or at made least many many more of the cards available as a draft (while still keeping the developer defined costs but letting the players further balance it by a draft rather than fudging it by randomizing what is actually available and hoping the same person doesn't get all the good cards each turn)

fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Aug 3, 2015

Rumda
Nov 4, 2009

Moth Lesbian Comrade

OmegaGoo posted:

If it's any consolation, Crossfire isn't that bad. It's better than Splendor!

I love that splendor exists just as a dividing line between OK and bad

medchem
Oct 11, 2012

A friend of mine just got back from Gen Con. He tried out Legendary: Predator and said he liked it better than than Legendary: Aliens because of the replayability of Predator. He said Predator is more replayable since it's competitive whereas Aliens is co-op and you pretty much stop playing it once you beat it. So, it may be worth waiting for Predator if you're thinking of getting Aliens?

OmegaGoo
Nov 25, 2011

Mediocrity: the standard of survival!

Rumda posted:

I love that splendor exists just as a dividing line between OK and bad

And it was BGG game of the year last year!

GrandpaPants
Feb 13, 2006


Free to roam the heavens in man's noble quest to investigate the weirdness of the universe!

medchem posted:

A friend of mine just got back from Gen Con. He tried out Legendary: Predator and said he liked it better than than Legendary: Aliens because of the replayability of Predator. He said Predator is more replayable since it's competitive whereas Aliens is co-op and you pretty much stop playing it once you beat it. So, it may be worth waiting for Predator if you're thinking of getting Aliens?

I thought you were supposed to be able to combine the sets (Alien and Predator) since that's sort of a thing? Also, the competitive Legendary (Marvel) is way worse than the co-op one, if for no other reason than the co-op one eliminates the random draw factor of the market row. The weird thing about the co-op one though, is that it seems like the game gets harder the more players you have, since each player has less refined decks, but the onslaught of encounter cards doesn't really slow down. It still does the two currency thing though, but even in Aliens that is somewhat alleviated since your buddies can always throw in assists as necessary.

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Gimnbo
Feb 13, 2012

e m b r a c e
t r a n q u i l i t y



OmegaGoo posted:

And it was BGG game of the year last year!

A lot of people think Big Money is the supreme strategy of Dominion.

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