|
jmzero posted:There's a good amount of skill involved in playing Star Realms. The absolute skill cap is probably higher than Dominion, to be honest, as the game state is very complex and for perfect play you'd need to work out some painfully complicated probability based on what's left in the deck. People may say it's not a skill game, but for the most part this is a confused complaint about the amount of luck in the game. I have played way more Star Realms on my tablet than I should probably admit to in this thread. It is enjoyable for what it is, but I would never play anything other than a quick game against someone who knew the game in real life. I disagree that the skill cap is high, at least in the perspective of a single game. The probabilities you can calculate will help you over the course of hundreds or thousands of games, but in any individual game, it's a gamble that gets resolved by pure luck. Basically, any potential for skillful play is way overshadowed by the randomness of the market in my experience.
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 06:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 09:14 |
|
|
Big McHuge posted:The first thing you should do after purchasing Lords of Waterdeep is bag/planobox everything and toss out that god awful insert. The insert is wonderful. The problem is that the box is badly designed so the lid pops off and everything spills out on account of being made to look like a book
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 08:54
|
|
|
Mojo Jojo posted:The insert is wonderful. The problem is that the box is badly designed so the lid pops off and everything spills out on account of being made to look like a book The box is also laughably large - keep the base + expansion stuff in the expansion box, keep OGRE stuff in the Waterdeep box.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 09:34
|
|
|
Mojo Jojo posted:The insert is wonderful. The problem is that the box is badly designed so the lid pops off and everything spills out on account of being made to look like a book Nah, the problem is that Waterdeep serves no purpose now that Caylus is back in print. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 10:08
|
|
|
Are any of the issues with the Shades of Tezla components relevant if you keep all the tokens in their own felt bags? I do that already for my grey units, since Wizkids crushed one of the Lost Legion tokens due to their insane packing methods.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 11:07
|
|
|
lordsummerisle posted:Are any of the issues with the Shades of Tezla components relevant if you keep all the tokens in their own felt bags? I do that already for my grey units, since Wizkids crushed one of the Lost Legion tokens due to their insane packing methods. Sizing and color issues should be negated unless people are component-feeling wizards when pulling them out of the bag. If someone tries really hard they might be able to compare by feel but it'll take way too long and you can tell - so don't worry too much about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 13:51
|
|
|
The Mantis posted:Who said I also didn't hate dominion? Look out everybody, we got a renegade over here.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 13:56
|
|
|
Played Churchill again tonight - just the training game again, sadly - but had a blast. In GMT style, another perfect marriage of mechanisms and theme. USA streamed out to an early lead, with some key wins in the first conference and in the Pacific theatre, so I, as Britain, started putting pressure on the Western Front to ensure we beat Russia to Germany, and push USA further in front. Sadly, I bungled my plan to surge USA out in front and force a Japanese surrender, as I couldn't get the Soviets into Manchuria by the final turn. Still, I felt authentically Churchill-esque, spending the last conference trying to rally one leg of the tripod against the other, instead of trying to focus on ultimate victory. It's a tricky game, and the myriad scoring opportunities takes a lot of learning, but I'm definitely champing at the bit to at least play the D-Day scenario, if not a full campaign. This game has legs. Also played {b]Roll for the Galaxy[/b]... it's better than Race, but it's got enough of the same DNA that I'm not terribly excited about this game, despite it being perfectly functional.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:08
|
|
|
Sheriff of Nottingham last night. Not bad for a relatively quick bluffing game, although we only had our requisite 3 people total so not as much going on as a more populated game would be. Not great at 3, but should be better with 4-5. Eminent Domain after it; my scenario was the one that gave biosphere and a couple other trade related techs. Managed to snag a influence on warfare dissent planet early while another player started with Battlecruiser, so i was scoring influence early on for it. Researched abundance early on to provide a trade boost, and the starting planet's produce boost helped keep providing resources to trade in, so when the Battlecruiser player started produce/trades i was able to keep taking advantage of it to keep getting influence. Managed 59 points at game end, i've only ever done better with colony ship/thorough survey abuse. Trade is usually a goal i don't take much advantage of, preferring colonize/warfare and the warfare dissent planets/peach treaty. Probably could have done better if i had managed to get more advanced planets to actually dig out better produce/trade techs, but most of the draws i got were metallics. For most of the game I lacked a lot of decent action use cards, so i ended up using the tech to just produce 2 resources. Biospheres was about my only resource slots for much of the early game too. Being able to take advantage of almost any role the other players did was a huge help. By game end I had dissuaded the others from using warfare quite a bit with all the planets i had with warfare dissent bonuses, and their decks/starts were very much warfare based.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:34
|
|
|
Is Nations - the dice game any good?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:41
|
|
|
Selecta84 posted:Is Nations - the dice game any good? Not having played Nations, I thought it was extremely boring and had almost no interesting decisions.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:48
|
|
|
Bummer... It looks kinda neat...
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:52
|
|
|
BonHair posted:I have played way more Star Realms on my tablet than I should probably admit to in this thread. It is enjoyable for what it is, but I would never play anything other than a quick game against someone who knew the game in real life. Star Realms and Ascension are honestly pretty perfect phone/tablet games, I just can't figure out who would ever want to play them as an actual card game
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 14:54
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:Not having played Nations, I thought it was extremely boring and had almost no interesting decisions. I thought that about Nations so I guess it runs in the family.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:00
|
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:Star Realms and Ascension are honestly pretty perfect phone/tablet games, I just can't figure out who would ever want to play them as an actual card game I've got a copy of Star Realms from the Humble Bundle, but have yet to actually play it. I'll give it a go at some point with the actual cards
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:06
|
|
|
Selecta84 posted:Is Nations - the dice game any good? I tried it out a couple of months ago at Origins. For 4 of us, it took less than an hour to learn and finish a game, so it was at least quick. The gameplay was a bit simple, so I can imagine non-gamers getting it fairly quickly. The one play I had was ok, but I don't know if it has a great replay value since you pretty much go through 80% of the cards in one game. The MSRP was $50, which we all thought was way too high. With the replay value being questionable, I'd say it's a pass. Two of the other players had Nations btw, and they both preferred that game to the dice version.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:24
|
|
|
Mojo Jojo posted:The insert is wonderful. The problem is that the box is badly designed so the lid pops off and everything spills out on account of being made to look like a book The Lords of Waterdeep insert is a thing of beauty, it is the one insert that I have not thrown out. You can tell it was designed with speed of set up in mind, not just ease of storage. It was the first "designer" game I ever got, and I had hoped that every box was as well designed, unfortunately not. They make an effort to look pretty, but they just take up loads of space.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:31
|
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:Star Realms and Ascension are honestly pretty perfect phone/tablet games, I just can't figure out who would ever want to play them as an actual card game It really annoys me that decent matchmaking seems reserved for lovely card games. I'm looking forward to Twilight Struggle and TTA on mobile platforms.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:39
|
|
|
Bubble-T posted:It really annoys me that decent matchmaking seems reserved for lovely card games. Twilight Struggle app should hopefully be legit. I also have hope for BattleCON online when that comes out next year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:40
|
|
|
quote:I disagree that the skill cap is high, at least in the perspective of a single game. The probabilities you can calculate will help you over the course of hundreds or thousands of games, but in any individual game, it's a gamble that gets resolved by pure luck That last part is all that I meant. It's like the toy example of Rando-Chess, wherein you start by playing a regular game of chess and afterwards roll a bunch of dice. Whoever rolls higher wins - but if you tie then the winner of the Chess game wins. This game has all the skill of Chess, but obviously much more variance in a single game. So it comes down to how you define "skill cap". If it's "the amount of ability you could have" then Star Realms has a high skill cap (though skill in this sense is very hard to quantify). If it's "the extent to which skill can be applied to win games consistently" then it's much lower.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:41
|
|
|
medchem posted:I tried it out a couple of months ago at Origins. For 4 of us, it took less than an hour to learn and finish a game, so it was at least quick. The gameplay was a bit simple, so I can imagine non-gamers getting it fairly quickly. The one play I had was ok, but I don't know if it has a great replay value since you pretty much go through 80% of the cards in one game. The MSRP was $50, which we all thought was way too high. With the replay value being questionable, I'd say it's a pass. Two of the other players had Nations btw, and they both preferred that game to the dice version. Thanks. I guess I'll pass on that game then.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:42
|
|
|
jmzero posted:That last part is all that I meant. It's like the toy example of Rando-Chess, wherein you start by playing a regular game of chess and afterwards roll a bunch of dice. Whoever rolls higher wins - but if you tie then the winner of the Chess game wins. This game has all the skill of Chess, but obviously much more variance in a single game. So it comes down to how you define "skill cap". If it's "the amount of ability you could have" then Star Realms has a high skill cap (though skill in this sense is very hard to quantify). If it's "the extent to which skill can be applied to win games consistently" then it's much lower. What skill? The only "skill" is counting cards and identifying good cards. It's not exactly difficult, and has nowhere near the skill cap of something like chess.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 15:47
|
|
|
Bubble-T posted:It really annoys me that decent matchmaking seems reserved for lovely card games. I don't understand why people would play Star Realms and Ascension on their phone when Androminion exists.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:07
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:I don't understand why people would play Star Realms and Ascension on their phone when Androminion exists. It's not as hard for a naïve AI to present a challenge in a game as random as Ascension and its various clones. Androminion bots are just there to get steamrolled.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:10
|
|
|
Note: You may want to ignore this Skill Realms Chat between two people who both don't like the game, unless you're just interested in the idea of "what is skill" or something.quote:What skill? The only "skill" is counting cards and identifying good cards. It's not exactly difficult, and has nowhere near the skill cap of something like chess. That's like saying the only skill in chess is knowing what piece to move where. It's reductive and pointless. And what do you mean it's not difficult? Not difficult to beat someone? Who? Or do you mean it's not difficult to play optimally? Because it's absurdly difficult to play anywhere near optimally - much more difficult that it would be to play Chess optimally. The state space is gigantic, and the amount of randomness means that looking forward becomes intractable very quickly. Now, to be clear, in practice what this (and the randomness) means is that human players will rely on graduating levels of vague heuristics, and nobody will ever even grasp for very high levels on the skill ladder - because why become "100 hours of study better" when randomness means those skills won't significantly increase your win percentage? So in a practical sense I agree that nobody will ever reach a skill level at Star Realms that is anywhere near that of high level Chess players - but that doesn't mean Star Realms isn't a high skill game. Moving away from theory, to be clear, there is plenty of skill in a game of Star Realms and lots of learning to be had at very human levels of play. There's consistently successful tournament players who are much better than me or you. Now, it's different than Chess in that the amount of luck means that I could well sit down and beat one of them in a game. But that doesn't mean there isn't skill in the game (any more than winning a few hands of Poker against better players would mean Poker doesn't have skill) - luck and skill are separate buckets. And also don't take this as a vigorous defense of Star Realms. I listed a bunch of problems I have with the game in a previous post. I'm just defending it from the accusation that it's not a reasonably high skill game. We have a range of evidence that it is one: the clear ways win percentage diverges based on decisions (and the difficulty of analyzing those decisions), we can see large performance differences between high level players with lots of games, and we can see the personal experience of all the people who've banged out games against AI on their phone and quickly gotten better. VVV: Yeah, Dirk, I think we're seeing things mostly the same way on Star Realms, I'm just being more pedantic! jmzero fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 20, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:13
|
|
|
Poopy Palpy posted:It's not as hard for a naïve AI to present a challenge in a game as random as Ascension and its various clones. Androminion bots are just there to get steamrolled. By the way, I am convinced that the new Ascension expansion is almost entirely random luck. More than usual, at least. Any of you East Coast USA and interested in Pax Pamir? I'm trying to get the sierra madre free shipping because the Euro looks like it'll be weak for a bit and I'm 1 copy of Pax Pamir short. NYC the most convenient since I can hand-deliver that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:13
|
|
|
Well it's true that even a basic decision like "should I scrap my explorer" could conceivably involve consideration of every card in your deck, your opponent's deck, the stock, and all the odds associated with those etc. The problem is (and jmzero is aware of this) that getting better in terms beyond "buy good stuff, have an understanding of tempo" increases your winrate by almost negligible amounts. I think there's an interesting issue here that Star Realms demonstrates well, actually - it's so luck driven that what skill reward it has is only noticable at large enough skill disparities that it becomes indistinguishable from the game just being really unfair. Like if I'm 'noticeably' better than you at Star Realms it means you're either getting ridiculously blown out or losing despite everything going your way the whole game. They might as well go full Epic Spell Wars and not even pretend to care about skill, because if anyone even notices then the game is going to seem really unfun anyway. As an aside, because it's so easy to get a game I end up playing a bunch of Star Realms every time this argument comes up out of morbid curiosity. I won 8/10 games tonight and came away feeling it was more luck driven than before. I don't remember the first loss but the second was the most ridiculously unfair game I think I've ever seen = I opened 3/3 as first player on a board with Freighter and Command Ship from the start, my opponent skilfully opened 4/4 and bought Freighter + Blue Base then drew them together for a topdeck Command Ship in their 4th hand. Only reason I didn't concede was because I've seen people gently caress up starts almost that good before, which this guy did the next game I played him. edit: jmzero basically explained it already. Rutibex posted:I don't understand why people would play Star Realms and Ascension on their phone when Androminion exists. There's no multiplayer. We can thank Goko for the lack of mobile Dominion, and I'm sour that they effectively killed any chance of RftG being ported too. They were basically offered the excellent Keldon AI as a base and that would have been a killer mobile app. Bubble-T fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Aug 20, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:17
|
|
|
Ascension is the most played game on my iPad, but gently caress playing that with paper cards. Way too much stuff to track and manage for such a simple game. And yes, market deck builders are influenced by luck, but there is still plenty of room for skill. We've had some Ascension tournaments over in the iOS game threads, and the skilled players always rise to the top. I'd put it on par with standard MTG as far as skill/luck ratio with two equal players. I do think Star Realms is a much simpler game with more obvious choices.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:22
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:I don't understand why people would play Star Realms and Ascension on their phone when Androminion exists. It's not on the google play store anymore, so it takes more digging to find Androminion these days if you don't know anyone that can just get you the apk.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:26
|
|
|
I seem to have missed it by a page, but if anyone mentions wanting to play Star Realms, I try to steer them toward The Valley of The Kings. It shares some things with SR - small, cheap, easy to explain deck-builder- but actually has some skill beyond "pick best card that the horrible market row provided". In TVotK, the 'market row' is forms in a pyramid, with players only able to buy from the bottom, which causes the pyramid to crumble and allowing other new cards to be bought. There are also cards that allow the player to rearrange the pyramid a little. This means there actually has to be some thought going into which cards to buy or not. Also, cards can be 'entombed', which is the only way for actually score cards (Cards in you hand are worth nothing at end game). Of course, cards in your tomb cannot be be used during the game. 4 player games of tVotK can get sort of brutal. I really like it. Of course, because so many people look at theme first, they gravitate toward 'spaceships' before looking at 'archaeology'.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:28
|
|
|
enigmahfc posted:The Valley of The Kings. I met the designer and played the new expansion/standalone with him at Gencon. Really cool old guy, super friendly and passionate about his game (which he didn't hesitate to tell everyone it was the best deck builder in the world).
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:34
|
|
|
So I got to play Exploding Kittens this past weekend when somebody brought it to a wedding I went to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:55
|
|
|
I guess that wedding party was....... ... the bomb!
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I got to play Exploding Kittens this past weekend when somebody brought it to a wedding I went to. I had my first experience last Tuesday. I love the kickstarter box.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:04
|
|
|
jmzero posted:Now, to be clear, in practice what this (and the randomness) means is that human players will rely on graduating levels of vague heuristics This is what I mean by the game being simple. The heuristics aren't particularly difficult, and there aren't that many decisions to make or that can be made on your turn. Sure, there is an element of skill involved, but the extreme amount of luck inherent in the game means that a lot of it boils down to probabilities (i.e. you have 10 purchasing power and nothing that is particularly good on the market row ) - do you buy a cheap card in hopes of top decking something better or do you purchase a solid middling card or two instead). Poker is similar; the game itself is incredibly simple. The difference with poker is that you're playing your opponent instead of the game. Your available decision space is huge - you have a very wide range of available bets, and different values may elicit different responses from other players in terms of what they bid. I know I'm not an expert at Star Realms, but to me there's just not a hell of a lot of game there. I feel like being a Star Realms champion is on the same level as winning a Machi Koro tournament. Yes, there are decisions to make, but I think we're in agreement on just how important luck is to the game. On a completely different subject, what's a good place to learn about 18xx games? I've heard them bandied about here and on podcasts, but I know frustratingly few details.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:05
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I got to play Exploding Kittens this past weekend when somebody brought it to a wedding I went to. "got to"?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:06
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I got to play Exploding Kittens this past weekend when somebody brought it to a wedding I went to. I hope you made a note never to invite him to anything.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:19
|
|
|
Anyone played/own Chicken Caesar? Looks like fun, tough to find.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:20
|
|
|
Mr.Trifecta posted:Anyone played/own Chicken Caesar? Looks like fun, tough to find. It's actually a pretty cool little politics-driven game that becomes significantly less fun when your friends decide to gang up on your chickens because it will be funny. I got the game pretty cheap, but I've never regretted the purchase. Also, re: Lords of Waterdeep insert. It's a neat concept that falls completely flat unless you keep the box completely flat. Even with a box-band to hold it snug, every single time it was opened there was giant mess of tokens and cards waiting for me. It even exploded in my trunk once, and I found pieces in there for months on end. Still missing one gold piece token (unless the rulebook is wrong and it actually comes with 49 instead of 50).
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 09:14 |
|
|
Mr.Trifecta posted:Anyone played/own Chicken Caesar? Looks like fun, tough to find. I've played it twice, had fun both times. A little harder to explain than it should be but it's a good light/medium negotiation game that should probably last about 30 minutes less than it actually does but isn't quite long enough to overstay its welcome.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:30
|
|