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Spymasters explicitly cannot call out the correct pronuncation of homonyms, but they can freely give their clue by spelling out their words (or do so if asked), should help in situations like that.
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Sep 19, 2015 16:56
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A lot of Magic Realm does come down to, as Gutter Owl put it, flailing at dice tables. But the parts I love are many of the other elements and how they work together. Oldstench had made a post a while ago that summed things up well but I can't find it. Essentially MR allows a large variety of variable setup, interaction, and play styles (as well as pvp, pve, and co-op or backstabbing in any mixture) plus a very interesting wound and action system that completely predates modern games and requires no additional rules. I love the setup and setup card concepts. I love that the whole world gets built in a way that is deterministic once it hits the table. Even the way that not every great treasure, spell, etc is guaranteed to be on the board. I get a genuine sense of exploration from MR that I look for (and have not gotten) from other games. But for all that - yes once you die a few times and figure out the more efficient ways to do things with whatever character(s) there is really no reason to do any differently and play becomes like a flow chart where decisions are what's on the board/who am I /etc followed by "did I get screwed by dice rolling y/n" try again until die or hi score.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:38
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How do you deal with Codenames if English isn't the native language of the players? We played in Norwegian, but that language allows for an insane variety of compound words compared to English.
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Sep 19, 2015 18:24
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Mister Sinewave posted:Essentially MR allows a large variety of variable setup, interaction, and play styles (as well as pvp, pve, and co-op or backstabbing in any mixture) plus a very interesting wound and action system Mage Knight does all of these things, and it does it with a 10 page rule book rather than a 300+ page one.
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Sep 19, 2015 18:24
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lordsummerisle posted:How do you deal with Codenames if English isn't the native language of the players? We played in Norwegian, but that language allows for an insane variety of compound words compared to English. Easy. Don't live on the moon.
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Sep 19, 2015 18:37
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Bottom Liner posted:Easy. Don't live on the moon. tall talk from a Floridian
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Sep 19, 2015 18:41
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So I played Codenames yesterday, and while I really like the game, man do not play with dumb people, which is probably good advice for most games. Choice quotes: "What does 'Fan' have to do with baseball?" "I don't see the relationship between Jesus and 'Teacher'." "What's a jack-booted thug? I think 'Shoot' is a better word for thug." I'm glad he wasn't on my team but goddamn. The best clue of the night that I saw was "Pyramid: 2." Egypt was the easy gimme associated with it, but the one that was almost too clever was Racket (as in pyramid scheme).
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Sep 19, 2015 18:48
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Andarel posted:<snip> I'll totally admit, my opinion of Magic Realm is colored by low player count games (including a lot of solo games), where search table bullshit gets exacerbated because there's no one else to spam searches with, or trade information with. I've only played one game with more than two (the PBP I linked on the previous page), and I was playing a solo-built Witch King with no gold/treasure requirements, so I didn't really do a lot of interacting with the other players. If I were doing it again, maybe I'd take a gold requirement and spend the last week and a half camping in the central woods selling broomsticks. And it's nifty as hell that you could feasibly do that as a path to victory. And I'll totally cop, I'm mostly sour because effort-investment and hype raised my expectations waaaaaay too high. Especially for a mechanical relic from the 70s, which Avalon Hill specifically commissioned to compete with this newfangled "Dungeons & Dragons" thing. There's a lot of cool stuff buried in there. Sinewave hit on a lot. The combat system is my favorite part, or at least the initiative/undercutting system. It's deadly and punishing if you don't go in with a solid plan of some sort. (I could do without the battle grid. It looks so cool and thematic, but in 99% of combats it doesn't do anything that a 5+ roll on a d6 wouldn't. And multiple-sheet hireling fights are a logistical pain.) And the chit system is kinda brilliant, the way you can get such a wide variety of characters that feel very different, without using an exception-based ruleset or a huge number of character-specific special powers. But it all just kept getting stuck behind a frustrating wall of dice and slow Hide-Hide-Move-Move turns. I'd eat a live baby for a modern revision of the game. Of course, that'll never happen. The majority of MR players are the sort of traditionalist grognards who would have a spasming fit if you misplaced one hair on the head of their golden calf, and Richard Hamblen is a reclusive hermit.
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Sep 19, 2015 19:04
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GrandpaPants posted:So I played Codenames yesterday, and while I really like the game, man do not play with dumb people, which is probably good advice for most games. Choice quotes: Last night I overheard, "YOU'RE WEARING A FINAL FANTASY SHIRT! HOW DID YOU NOT PICK 'PHOENIX' FOR 'DOWN?'"
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Sep 19, 2015 19:20
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StashAugustine posted:tall talk from a Floridian No, we live on the goddamn Sun
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Sep 20, 2015 01:59
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Rutibex posted:Mage Knight does all of these things, and it does it with a 10 page rule book rather than a 300+ page one. You know, one thing that always rubbed me wrong about Mage Knight was how the map is revealed. I feel like I'm building a semi pre-cooked map as I go along and there are glass walls on either side. I don't feel like I'm exploring. I understand why this is so but mentally I prefer when the tiles are pre-set and I'm revealing something that was there all along. One feels like exploring, the other does not.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:07
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What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:17
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Mister Sinewave posted:You know, one thing that always rubbed me wrong about Mage Knight was how the map is revealed. I feel like I'm building a semi pre-cooked map as I go along and there are glass walls on either side. I don't feel like I'm exploring. I understand why this is so but mentally I prefer when the tiles are pre-set and I'm revealing something that was there all along. One feels like exploring, the other does not. The Mage Knight tiles are pretty versatile, and the game just begs for alternative map configurations. Heck, half of the Mage Knight rules book is optional approved "house rules". I have fooled around with a few, with the expansion you have enough tiles to lay out a Twilight Imperium style "galaxy" with a castle on each side, with the portal in the centre. You could also do a infinite sized world by "scrolling" the tiles, by designating whatever tile the player is on as center, then maintaining a 6 tile ring around. So as you move around tiles that are not connected to the center are removed, and new tiles are added where needed.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:43
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Bottom Liner posted:No, we live on the goddamn Sun Florida's a bit too wet to be the sun.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:54
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. It's good, but mostly I appreciate it for laying the groundwork for Race for the Galaxy.
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Sep 20, 2015 04:04
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Man every time I play Ginkgopolis I like it more. It's Keyfloweresque in its elegant blending of so many different mechanics. Just an outstanding game (that needs to come back into print).
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Sep 20, 2015 04:10
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Xelkelvos posted:Florida's a bit too wet to be the sun. It's also not bright enough.
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Sep 20, 2015 04:29
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. I really like it. First played it within the last year after getting it as a throw-in, and it's gotten a fair bit of play. There's almost no randomness, which some people will not like. The randomness that is there leads to surprisingly different games after the first round or two. There's a lot of thinking about what other people want and how to make sure you're helping yourself more than them. As mentioned Race for the Galaxy does this well, but I think Puerto Rico does it better than multiplayer Race. The box is stupidly large. One thing that's helped me play it more is carrying the boards in a folder/clipboard and all the pieces in a small cloth bag so it's usually in my game bag without interfering with other things. Rutibex posted:I have fooled around with a few, with the expansion you have enough tiles to lay out a Twilight Imperium style "galaxy" with a castle on each side, with the portal in the centre. You could also do a infinite sized world by "scrolling" the tiles, by designating whatever tile the player is on as center, then maintaining a 6 tile ring around. So as you move around tiles that are not connected to the center are removed, and new tiles are added where needed. Do you have a scenario you've tried with this? Sounds like it could be fun. Brainstorming - try to take the minimum number of turns to overflow the fame chart. rchandra fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 04:52
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rchandra posted:Do you have a scenario you've tried with this? Sounds like it could be fun. Brainstorming - try to take the minimum number of turns to overflow the fame chart. Maxing out the fame track in as few turns as possible was exactly what I used for the infinite scrolling map, I never liked the idea of a limited number of days in a scenario. The Twilight Imperium style map I haven't actually attempted, I see it more as a large epic multiplayer scenario, and I don't know enough people that would play something like Mage Knight with me to test it. I figure it would be like TI3, each player would start with a "home" castle, and a set number of terrain tiles. Players take turns placing the tiles, first the outer ring, then the inner, until the map is complete. The map is particularly big, so each player should control three pawns instead of just one (using the same deck/skills/etc for each). Capturing and holding opposing castles is worth some number of VP, as is holding onto the portal in the center (Mecatol Rex). It would be best in this scenario to use all of the advanced variant rules for stuff like groves/mines/mage towers to make them worth capturing and controlling.
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Sep 20, 2015 05:11
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. It's one of the best economics games ever made and somehow manages to make indirect economic competition more nail-biting than thermonuclear war. It's right up there with Agricola. It is simply amazing. The only downsides are that the early moves are to some extent solvable and that skill differences are not only brutal but imbalancing because every player has to act as a check on the others. Puerto Rico excels as a game where a group explores it together and gets better together. It is a terrible game to invite a new person into once a group knows what's going on though because a single new player making random role selections will easily give the game away on turn two to the player on their left and lead to howls of anguish around the table that they won't understand. That's pretty much my only frustration with the game - once you really get it, it's really hard to play with new folks.
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Sep 20, 2015 05:13
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. It's held up really really well. I think I'd rather play Concordia these days but they're not exactly the same, PR is a bit more cut-throat which is both good and bad as hugemanatee explained. Mister Sinewave posted:You know, one thing that always rubbed me wrong about Mage Knight was how the map is revealed. I feel like I'm building a semi pre-cooked map as I go along and there are glass walls on either side. I don't feel like I'm exploring. I understand why this is so but mentally I prefer when the tiles are pre-set and I'm revealing something that was there all along. One feels like exploring, the other does not. The first expansion has a scenario that uses a (semi-random, face down) preset board which you have to explore in one direction to power up and then backtrack to stop the Big Bad from entering the portal you started at. It's really cool.
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Sep 20, 2015 06:12
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. Puerto Rico is widely considered to be the gold standard in role selection games, and is an obvious buy for any collection. You can easily compare 70 percent of modern euros to Puerto Rico, and also use it as a relatively rules light game for newcomers. Strong recommend. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 08:07
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Smeef posted:What's the goon consensus on Puerto Rico? I'm irrationally drawn to it and see that it has good reviews. There's nothing irrational about it; Puerto Rico is a solidly-designed game for the most part. Two of the buildings are miscosted (not a typo, just bad playtesting, the designer later admitted he hosed up, also most fan redos of the components switch the costs as they should be), seating order matters a great deal, it's partially solvable, and game-to-game variance is very lacking, but the only game that does role-taking as well is Eminent Domain. Even if you don't plan to buy it, it's absolutely worth playing, and you can play it for free online at Board Game Arena.
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Sep 20, 2015 08:45
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Codenames: It's good.
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Sep 20, 2015 09:25
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Big Ol Marsh Pussy posted:Codenames: It's good. I played with four yesterday. Don't bother playing with two teams if you only have four.
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Sep 20, 2015 09:50
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lordsummerisle posted:How do you deal with Codenames if English isn't the native language of the players? We played in Norwegian, but that language allows for an insane variety of compound words compared to English. We play in Danish, which has the same problem. We allow any common language, and compounds must be "realistic", so no "kongeskotyveribog" (king shoe theft book), only words that would actually be used in real life. Also six seems like the minimum for two teams, but on team is good! Big Ol Marsh Pussy posted:Board game thread 4e: Codenames: It's good.
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Sep 20, 2015 10:05
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I've enjoyed 2v2 codenames, it feels more personal. Teams of 3 is probably my favourite though, a good balance of varying POVs to discuss, speed, and having everybody involved. 4+ gets unwieldy. The 3-player with two spymasters is OK, but it's harder for the cluee to track who gave which clues when.
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Sep 20, 2015 10:23
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Going to try out more of the games in the goon-approved order I placed this week. Viceroy and Codenames were great. Today I want to try Voyages of Marco Polo or Keyflower. Going to play with two experienced gamers, so both games should work. Which should we play? I am leaning toward Marco Polo, simply because it seems like an easier game to teach. Also find the concept of a euro with crazy powerful asymmetric powers quite alluring. Any tips on how to teach Keyflower?
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Sep 20, 2015 11:34
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Mojo Jojo posted:I played with four yesterday. Don't bother playing with two teams if you only have four. I still am going to violently disagree with this sentiment; it is very playable with 4, less banter does not mean it's not fun.
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Sep 20, 2015 12:11
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silvergoose posted:I still am going to violently disagree with this sentiment; it is very playable with 4, less banter does not mean it's not fun. I think it's playable with four if you play the co-op variant, yes.
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Sep 20, 2015 12:44
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Is there actually strategy to Ascension? I've been playing against the computer in the digital version, and the hard AI cleans the floor with me, but I have no idea what it's doing to win consistently. Every strategy I try seems to come down to luck of the draw, since you're not guaranteed that any investment will pay off as the market row changes.
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Sep 20, 2015 12:58
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sector_corrector posted:Is there actually strategy to Ascension? I've been playing against the computer in the digital version, and the hard AI cleans the floor with me, but I have no idea what it's doing to win consistently. Every strategy I try seems to come down to luck of the draw, since you're not guaranteed that any investment will pay off as the market row changes. Buy the best cards, thin your deck hard. I don't remember the AI being that bad but I've only got the free version and I don't even know if that has Hard AI.
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Sep 20, 2015 13:06
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Mojo Jojo posted:I think it's playable with four if you play the co-op variant, yes. 2v2, then. It is extremely fun and enjoyable and captures the same game, you all just hate having all the mistakes obviously put on you as couriers. 
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Sep 20, 2015 13:15
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We played with unequal teams on Wednesday, it was me and two other guys on one teams and two people who have known each other for way too long on the other it worked well both sides won one game.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:13
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Bubble-T posted:Buy the best cards, thin your deck hard. I've been working with the base set, and have been prioritizing runes or thinning (or overdrawing) over combat to start. This sort of fucks you over when everything is monsters, which the AI has built to, and half of the monsters have bad effects against you when killed. IDK, it doesn't seem like I'm getting better at the game as I play.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:25
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I played with five and we did two teams of 1.5 (one person was on both teams). It worked out pretty well.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:26
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Another Keyflower question: What is a good time estimate of length for a 3 player game with rules explanation?
lordsummerisle fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 14:30
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sector_corrector posted:Is there actually strategy to Ascension? I've been playing against the computer in the digital version, and the hard AI cleans the floor with me, but I have no idea what it's doing to win consistently. Every strategy I try seems to come down to luck of the draw, since you're not guaranteed that any investment will pay off as the market row changes. You have found that problem with Ascension. That said: Never buy a 1 cost card and think before buying 2 cost cards.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:47
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lordsummerisle posted:Another Keyflower question: What is a good time estimate of length for a 3 player game with rules explanation? Couple of hours.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:48
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thespaceinvader posted:Couple of hours. And Voyages of Marco Polo will be more like 60-90 minutes? Seems way easier to teach. At least much easier for me to wrap my head around the rules than Key.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:57
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