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Trip Report from the bi-annual weekend of board gaming my friends host. Friday night there wasn't enough interest in Cutthroat Caverns, so I ended up teaching a few people Camel Up and Ticket To Ride. I had wanted to play Barony, but the one lady was really really new to board games, so I had to take it easy. Saturday morning I taught Scoville followed by Travel Blog. A guy kept interrupting me as I was teaching Scoville because he wanted to interject rules that I hadn't gotten to yet in my explanation. I eventually just asked him if he wanted to teach, and that thankfully shut him up. In the afternoon we settled in for a 6 player game of Game of Thrones. We set aside a 4 hour block, and it was only my second time playing/teaching and most people's first time playing. We ended after round 7 due to time constraints, and I won (but gave the winning raffle tickets to 2nd place since GM's can't win games they teach). It was alright but really not as enjoyable as I remember and I can definitely see flaws in it now that I couldn't see a few years ago. Saturday evening I had to cancel Bunny Bunny Moose Moose, Ugg Tect, and Code Names due to lack of interest, but I did get to teach a rousing game of Pictomania. I had one drawing in particular that I was proud of and I'll try to post it shortly. I'm so terrible at drawing but I love that game so much. After that we played some Manilla, which after several plays I somehow still can't wrap my head around. Sunday morning I taught Caylus, and finally managed to win. All in all a fun weekend, but I was still sad to see so many people playing lovely games like Xia or Dead of Winter, while I had to cancel so much awesome. My GF won two games from the prize drawings: Discoveries (a Lewis and Clark card/dice game) and Legendary Predator (which I think is missing one card). We also did a sort of board game garage sale that was decently successful. I made about 220 bucks from selling: Cosmic Encounter, Hawaii, Samurai Spirit, Lords of Waterdeep w/ exp, Smallworld Underground w/ exp, Unita, Through The Ages, Game of Thrones, and Argent. I know people around here love Argent, but there were just a few too many bells and whistles to keep track of and it just didn't feel right for me.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:07
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They were probably sad you were playing boring games like Game of Thrones and Travel Blog instead of joining them in their Xia and Dead of Winter revelries. No game night tonight, unfortunately. People planned a thing but too much exhaustion and disease going around...
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Oct 26, 2015 23:22
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My pictomania masterpiece: Swamp
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Oct 26, 2015 23:44
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Countblanc posted:Love Letter is really boring for me now, and I've never actually had Normies play it and love it, it's always a lukewarm comment that the art is nice and someone suggesting we play Euchre after a few hands. I really have no idea who the target demographic for it is. I never played it but I was completely unsurprised when people started saying they burned out on the 16 card game everyone was going apeshit for and buying crack pipes to gussy up. I'm not much for fillers to begin with but I think I'd rather play a trick taker to waste time. Tekopo posted:Target Demographic: Surprised you wouldn't warm up for 18xx by playing Knizia's Loco/Flinke Pinke/Botswana/whatever the hell else they've called it.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:53
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Big McHuge posted:My pictomania masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utuchVE_56M
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Oct 27, 2015 00:02
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Big McHuge posted:Race for the Galaxy, Istanbul, and Five Tribes are all pretty good as 2 player games, especially Race. Also Lost Cities and Jaipur. 2 player Five Tribes seems vastly superior to other player counts in terms of increasing strategy, although I wonder how bad the AP gets.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:44
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cenotaph posted:I never played it but I was completely unsurprised when people started saying they burned out on the 16 card game everyone was going apeshit for and buying crack pipes to gussy up. I'm not much for fillers to begin with but I think I'd rather play a trick taker to waste time. On which note, Fram R'lyeh is a fun little trick taker from 3-5 players if you can find it. There is a deck of 15 treasure cards, five at each of three depths, with the values available in the set printed on the back. At the start of the game one card from each depth is removed unseen, so the game plays over 12 rounds. Everyone gets bid cards from 4 to 15 plus a trump card that gives a special ability. One of the trumps is always played as it determines First Player. It gets removed from the game at the start so that player doesn't have a special ability, but instead they get to look at the three unplayed treasure cards. The bottom card of the treasure deck is moved out so everyone knows what depth comes last, and the card being played for each round is moved off the top so they also know what comes next. After that, it's simple. The First Player looks at this round's treasure card and plays a bid face down. All other players follow suit, then the bids are revealed. Everyone who didn't win puts their bid face down and rotated 90 degrees to mark it as a failed bid. The player with the highest bid puts his bid face up, takes the treasure face down (ties are broken by turn order)and removes all of his failed bids. The player who won becomes First Player, and the next trick begins. At the end of the game, players reveal their treasures. Your score is the sum of the treasures you collected less the sum of your winning bids. Each failed bid then counts for another -1. The highest score wins... unless everyone scored below zero, in which case the lowest score wins. As I say, it's a really simple game that plays out in 10-15 minutes. The Cthulhu theme is mostly pasted on, if that worries you.
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Oct 27, 2015 01:04
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Jedit posted:The Cthulhu theme is mostly pasted on, if that worries you. It's funny that pasted-on theme is starting to become a good thing for some games.
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Oct 27, 2015 01:28
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Countblanc posted:Love Letter is really boring for me now, and I've never actually had Normies play it and love it, it's always a lukewarm comment that the art is nice and someone suggesting we play Euchre after a few hands. I really have no idea who the target demographic for it is. That's weird... it's one of my most successful introductory, quick games, right behind Sushi Go.
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Oct 27, 2015 01:32
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sector_corrector posted:That's weird... it's one of my most successful introductory, quick games, right behind Sushi Go. Yeah, it's been a big hit whenever I've brought it out (in fact, sometimes it can be hard convincing people to move past it).
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Oct 27, 2015 01:37
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I'm actually pretty sick of it at this point, but it's a decent filler and it's easy to explain.
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Oct 27, 2015 01:51
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Jedit posted:On which note, Fram R'lyeh is a fun little trick taker from 3-5 players if you can find it. There is a deck of 15 treasure cards, five at each of three depths, with the values available in the set printed on the back. At the start of the game one card from each depth is removed unseen, so the game plays over 12 rounds. Everyone gets bid cards from 4 to 15 plus a trump card that gives a special ability. One of the trumps is always played as it determines First Player. It gets removed from the game at the start so that player doesn't have a special ability, but instead they get to look at the three unplayed treasure cards. The bottom card of the treasure deck is moved out so everyone knows what depth comes last, and the card being played for each round is moved off the top so they also know what comes next. Sounds cool. I've had ideas for a similar type of game which would basically be Cosmic Encounter with all the bullshit removed. I don't mind the Cthulhu theme at all since I actually like Lovecraft's writing. My current go to trick taker is Sticheln but I've only ever played it with three so I'm not sure how the aggressive element would work with higher player counts. Might put too much emphasis on the take-that aspect. With four I quite like Slovenian Tarock because it has ~hidden partnerships~ but you need to buy a real Tarot deck for it, not the stupid occult decks that are prevalent in the states. cenotaph fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 27, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2015 02:09
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GrandpaPants posted:I played Codenames and Cards Against Humanity at a party this weekend, and the contrast between the two games was really stark. So much of CAH was the monkey cheese "lol panda sex" type poo poo that is about as funny as the word of the day on dictionary.com. It baffles me that CAH is used as anything besides a literal time waster. loving Charades probably enables funnier moments than CAH. Next try the Codenames variant using the white CAH cards.
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Oct 27, 2015 02:51
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Gutter Owl posted:The PNP demo is kinda awful, mostly because it removes all the bells and whistles. And 7C seems like a game made of its bells and whistles. Huh, I checked out 7C based on this chat that was going on and it looks like exactly the kind of game I'd buy just out of sheer curiosity. Exploration I think is under-served in boardgames.
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Oct 27, 2015 04:01
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I played CAH today and it sucked. Still. I also played Machi Koro for the first time and it was very underwhelming. I think there were all the expansions (what expansions there are) in there. I can see how this would look appealing, because it has some nice graphic design and it seems, at a glance, like a nice light game but I am unsure how people keep playing it. Justifying their purchases? It was not all lost because I played Agricola at the end. Still won with two begging cards (and no Mendicant).
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Oct 27, 2015 05:04
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Xelkelvos posted:I'm glad I dropped the cash on Gloomhaven instead of 7th Continent. I made the print and play demo for Gloomhaven and it was amazing. This designer is clearly someone who has played every dungeon crawler and co-op game I have and has had exactly the same aggravations I've had with all of them. The design is just tight as all hell, unique and incredibly streamlined. It gives me the same vibes as Mage Knight but in a faster, more graceful package.
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Oct 27, 2015 05:32
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Wow this actually looks like a strong iteration on mage Knight. Sort of a Mage Knight: Legacy
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Oct 27, 2015 05:48
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So we had a gaming weekend this weekend and I got to try a few new games. Mysterium - "Clue with all the boring bits carved out" was our table's overall impression. It's decent, but we had some quarterbacking issues. Particularly annoying because the player being quarterbacked the most kept getting bullied off of the correct answers by the loudmouths around him.  We lost the first time we played, with everyone getting through to the end but our voting wrong on the final problem 2-3, then our second game the next day we reached the same point and won 4-2. Bang! The Dice Game - It's Bang. With dice. It probably is better than regular Bang because in the original version if you lucked into a good gun early on you could get onto a victory spiral, where-as the dice version is pretty much just a Press Your Luck game. But those can be fun, if that's your bag. I died both times, early the first game as a Renegade, late the second time as a Deputy whose Sheriff went on to win Pandemic: Legacy - Which is great even though we only got to play two rounds. I like basic Pandemic but it can get kind of samey from game to game. In Legacy the game's changing from round to round, and sometimes WITHIN the round. Oddly enough, we had less quarterbacking than when we played Mysterium, probably because the four players were all of relatively similar experience levels and/or had strong enough personalities to tell everyone else to stick it. We lost the first game, though it was close, and won the second game because of the increased funding you get when you lose and the upgrades we managed to secure between rounds. Last Night on Earth - Not technically a new game to me, but it'd been years since I'd seen it on the table. Not terrible, I guess, but not really good compared to better games of the sort that have come out since. I would rather have played Dead of Winter, but that got vetoed as being "too grim for the last game of the weekend".  Humans, of whom I was one, beat the Zombies but there'd been a mis-interpretation of the combat rules that wasn't discovered until half way through that meant the Zombies probably should have won. All in all, though, it was a fun weekend of gaming (including a few hours of Amber Diceless Roleplaying), with good friends, and good food. I could use more weekends like that. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Oct 27, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2015 06:05
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jng2058 posted:Mysterium - "Clue with all the boring bits carved out" was our table's overall impression. It's decent, but we had some quarterbacking issues. Particularly annoying because the player being quarterbacked the most kept getting bullied off of the correct answers by the loudmouths around him. It's me, I am the loudmouth who ruins your games of Mysterium. (at least according to my wife)
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Oct 27, 2015 07:14
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:I made the print and play demo for Gloomhaven and it was amazing. This designer is clearly someone who has played every dungeon crawler and co-op game I have and has had exactly the same aggravations I've had with all of them. The design is just tight as all hell, unique and incredibly streamlined. It gives me the same vibes as Mage Knight but in a faster, more graceful package. If you haven't tried his first game, Forge War, yet, you have to. It's the best new game I've played this year.
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Oct 27, 2015 07:14
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Had a board game sesh the other night. Kicked off the evening with 7 player Avalon. It was all good, but maybe I've just been playing the game with the same core crew for too long now and I've figured out their habits because I nailed it every game. The only marginally exciting thing that happened was one of the bad guys torpedoed a group that would have won the baddies the game simply because he wasn't selected to go on the quest. I knew who Merlin was so it didn't end up affecting the result, but it was nonetheless kind of annoying seeing this guy reject everything because he wanted to go "questing." It was like he'd totally misunderstood that the game is about bluffing and deduction, and instead about going for rad quests. Anyway. Then I got introduced to 7 Wonders in a seven player, hour and a half game. The two who taught the game were abysmal at it (ironic because they're teachers) but after finally wading through their teaching, the game itself was pretty rad. I have no doubts it'd be tighter and radder with fewer players though.
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Oct 27, 2015 07:43
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7 Wonders should take half an hour, no more, Jesus. It's good at that length though, with 5 players being the sweet spot, but anything above 3 being good. I tried out 7 Wonders Duel the other day, and I quite liked it. It's very similar to regular 7 Wonders, but with the changes I think it works for two players. Also the insert is great.
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Oct 27, 2015 08:25
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I wasn't sure if I should post here or in the Japanese RPGs thread, but I'll be heading off to Tokyo for vacation fairly soon and wanted to poll the thread on if there were any known Japanese exclusive games that were worth checking out. Last time I was in the country, I picked up Kobayakawa, and since then, quite a few more games from the region have gained English releases (e.g. other Oink Games titles such as Troll and In a Grove; Tragedy Looper). With how much more frequently popular games from Japan have been finding international releases, it doesn't seem likely that there'll be any games that are recommendable, not yet localized, and still potentially findable, but if anyone's got a tip, I'm all ears.
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Oct 27, 2015 08:36
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A friend of mine is going to Carcassone tomorrow. She didn't get the joke. 
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Oct 27, 2015 09:01
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BonHair posted:7 Wonders should take half an hour, no more, Jesus. It's good at that length though, with 5 players being the sweet spot, but anything above 3 being good. Whaaa? I'd say 7 Wonders is only actually decent with 3 players, otherwise it's basically random, based on whether your opponents build the resources you need, or if they forgo military buildings.
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Oct 27, 2015 09:29
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That's stupid. Part of the fun is not being certain that all the resources will be available to you, and especially to our neighbours. loving your neighbour by denying her stone which you can get from the other side is the best part of the game. Three players is more predictable, but in reality a lot less interactive because there is no denial. And there is a huge amount of playing your neighbours at 4+ too, like going for early military so they just give up on matching it right away, leading to easy points. Basically, playing 7 Wonders and only focusing on yourself is like playing Agricola without playing cards.
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Oct 27, 2015 10:19
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Two unrelated questions: - In Kemet, if the defending player wins a battle but loses all the troops, the attacker is forced to retreat. If the attacker wins but loses all his troops, the defender has to retreat. In either case, neither gets a VP (even if the defending player has the tile that allows for a VP in case of a defensive victory). - What are the differences between the Blue and Red boxes of Pandemic:Legacy?
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Oct 27, 2015 10:56
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Fat Samurai posted:Two unrelated questions: 1. I'm pretty sure victories are mutually exclusive from combat losses. You didn't actually ask a question, so I'm not sure what you're looking for here. 2. They are identical in every way save box color.
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Oct 27, 2015 10:58
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Fat Samurai posted:- In Kemet, if the defending player wins a battle but loses all the troops, the attacker is forced to retreat. If the attacker wins but loses all his troops, the defender has to retreat. In either case, neither gets a VP (even if the defending player has the tile that allows for a VP in case of a defensive victory). RAW the defender would get the victory point. But I'm pretty sure the intent was to mirror the attacker VP conditions (i.e., you have to have at least one unit alive).
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Oct 27, 2015 11:01
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Lord Frisk posted:1. I'm pretty sure victories are mutually exclusive from combat losses. You didn't actually ask a question, so I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Whether I was right or not, sorry.
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Oct 27, 2015 11:09
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Bought Witness on a whim yesterday. I dont think it will be played with a dedicated group of 4, though. Is this a problem?
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Oct 27, 2015 11:18
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Morpheus posted:My only worry about Pandemic Legacy is spending hours and hours and 60 bucks for a game that you can straight-up lose and not really have a chance to try again (or, at least, getting severely diminishing returns if you do). We started a game last night. Lost January due to 8 outbreaks, 4 of them on blue in 2 cities, after we turned down an opportunity to spend a turn eradicating blue in favour of trying to win the game quicker. This loss was entirely due to us being bad at pandemic rather than any new rules Replayed January and won with the added special events. Moved on to February and lost horribly , we totally ignored the mutated disease (red) and eventually lost when we drew an epidemic then drew a mutated card off the bottom that already had a cube on from a previous outbreak which ran us out of red cubes. Unfortunately we ran out of time after the third game and have to wait until next week to retry February. We found rotating who was opening the new stuff was fine - we were all nervously excited every time something new triggered and no one felt left out. Light basic rulebook spoilers: There is definitely an element of potential failure cascade with the city stability levels - we do have a few hotspots that we really don't want to outbreak again. It didn't feel like this was necessarily going to ruin our possibility of winning, but bad infection draws could make things hard for us in future. Potentially losing research stations is also awful - Atlanta rioted in our first game, so the CDC is now gone! The funding level adjustment if you lose felt like good compensation. If you lose four games in a row there's also a box to open which one would assume helps out a bit! We also are now much more careful about where we leave people to try and avoid them getting scars, we took one in the first game and it was extremely painful.
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Oct 27, 2015 14:04
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kalthir posted:RAW the defender would get the victory point. But I'm pretty sure the intent was to mirror the attacker VP conditions (i.e., you have to have at least one unit alive). No no no. Attacker gets VP if they win on strength and have troops left. That's it. If and only if the defender has the Defensive Victory card can someone win VP on defense, and only by those same conditions. Kemet does not favor defense for scoring VP.
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Oct 27, 2015 14:18
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The way I understand it, Pandemic Legacy eventually gives you some way to deal with every terrible new twist it throws your way. So don't worry so much about cascading failure, the game balances itself out so that way it's never at the point of total hopelessness for the future unless your group is just a bunch of incompetent idiot fuckers.
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Oct 27, 2015 14:25
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Trasson posted:No no no. Attacker gets VP if they win on strength and have troops left. That's it. If and only if the defender has the Defensive Victory card can someone win VP on defense, and only by those same conditions. Kemet does not favor defense for scoring VP. I agree with you, I'm just saying the blue tile doesn't mention the survivor condition. I realize it was left out to keep the tile description as simple as possible, and the intent was to use the same conditions.
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Oct 27, 2015 15:06
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BonHair posted:That's stupid. Part of the fun is not being certain that all the resources will be available to you, and especially to our neighbours. loving your neighbour by denying her stone which you can get from the other side is the best part of the game. Three players is more predictable, but in reality a lot less interactive because there is no denial. And there is a huge amount of playing your neighbours at 4+ too, like going for early military so they just give up on matching it right away, leading to easy points. Basically, playing 7 Wonders and only focusing on yourself is like playing Agricola without playing cards. This mini discussion highlights why 7 Wonders is a bad game. It CAN play 5-7, but at that point the game is more or less random. It's BEST with 3-4, but at that player count there are dozens of better/more interesting games.
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Oct 27, 2015 15:17
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Malloreon posted:If you haven't tried his first game, Forge War, yet, you have to. It's the best new game I've played this year. Ugh you are really making me regret dismissing Forge War out of hand thanks to its fantasy theme. I just wasn't prepared to believe that a D&D-themed euro would be any good after Lords of Waterdeep. Now that I've taken a look at Gloomhaven I'm really interested in it. Could you tell me what it's like / what makes it special?
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Oct 27, 2015 15:24
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EvilChameleon posted:I also played Machi Koro for the first time and it was very underwhelming. I think there were all the expansions (what expansions there are) in there. I can see how this would look appealing, because it has some nice graphic design and it seems, at a glance, like a nice light game but I am unsure how people keep playing it. Justifying their purchases? The base set actually has a static setup and less landmarks and plays quickly. It just has no variety so even if you like the light gameplay things start getting super redundant in under a dozen plays. In order to add variety they added more cards and a market row setup which means the games go super long and is even more random. We pnp'ed it months before it was released stateside, got bored of the base set, then played the expansion twice (I actually sat out of the second game because I had already had enough at that point) before tossing it. Glad we didn't actually buy it.
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Oct 27, 2015 15:28
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Impermanent posted:Ugh you are really making me regret dismissing Forge War out of hand thanks to its fantasy theme. I just wasn't prepared to believe that a D&D-themed euro would be any good after Lords of Waterdeep. Now that I've taken a look at Gloomhaven I'm really interested in it. Could you tell me what it's like / what makes it special? I thought it was an underdeveloped KS with a bunch of mechanics thrown into a blender and then tossed out as a game, so there is that 
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Oct 27, 2015 15:32
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Impermanent posted:Ugh you are really making me regret dismissing Forge War out of hand thanks to its fantasy theme. I just wasn't prepared to believe that a D&D-themed euro would be any good after Lords of Waterdeep. Now that I've taken a look at Gloomhaven I'm really interested in it. Could you tell me what it's like / what makes it special? The simplest way to put it is "Everything you wished Lords of Waterdeep was" or "the game someone who clearly loves euros and D&D made after realizing LoW is bland as poo poo." There are two games, short and long. Short is 7 turns, Long is 18 turns. I've played a short 2 player game in 45 minutes, and a long 4 in ~3 hours. Each turn has 3 phases. The first is an area control mining game. You have a mine with various resources and you move overseers around the board dropping workers behind you and collecting resources. As you pass over opponent workers they become yours, as you pass over your own, they become opponent's. If you can create a block of 5 workers of your own, you cause a strike and they're all removed. This is key because turn order is ascending by number of workers in the mine. Next is the market phase. in turn order you acquire new weapon designs, access to public weapons, adventurers, market upgrades, and one-off bonuses. weapon designs / public weapons allow your adventurers to use those weapons on... the last phase, questing. Here you acquire quests and manage your adventurers. You can acquire 1 quest per turn, then each player simultaneously manage their quests. you manage your quests by adding and equipping adventurers to them. Each quest takes 1-4 steps to complete a leg, and 1-5 legs to complete. Each quest automatically moves forward 1 step per turn, but you can speed that up. Once you complete a leg there is a small reward, as well as a fallback reward if you fail the quest. All the resources you got during the mining phase are used to pay for the gear you use to equip your adventurers. when the quest is done and they come back (and level up, making them able to use better gear / give you more VP/ gain special skills) all resources used to equip them are lost. The short game uses the most basic mine resources / gear / quests. the long game features an evolving mine - every 6 turns the mine shaft gets deeper, newer resources are exposed, which allow for more advanced magical gear and much tougher quests. It's pretty much the best "manage a group of adventurers" game so far.
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Oct 27, 2015 15:48
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