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Toshimo posted:Yeah. gently caress every other game that is not a game where you are A PREDATOR COMPETING WITH OTHER PREDATORS FOR THE MOST TROPHIES. I don't think I've ever wanted a game so bad in my life based on a 1 line description. Haha, I only said that because you mentioned your friend really liked the idea of a coop deck builder (which alien has a bit more coop content than predator, but predator has the extra 'vs' game). If you get them both you can mix them together for all sorts of alien vs predator fun!
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Nov 8, 2015 13:40
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jng2058 posted:Coup the original game works for this as well, given the small box. Dunno about the new version that just came out, I haven't played that one yet. It's good. If you can grab it for $20 or less do it. The multiple characters add a great deal of diversity and make the whole thing less knowable by experienced players. I say this as someone that is annoyed with the publisher and their poor business tactics and abuse of KickStarter. Indolent Bastard fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 15:15
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Indolent Bastard posted:It's good. If you can grab it for $20 or less do it. The multiple characters add a great deal of diversity and make the whole thing less knowable by experienced players. Only problem is that, for the purposes of portability, the box is way too big, especially considering 90% of it is empty space. You could always stuff it into a smaller box though. I hate games that have much bigger boxes than you need. The new version of Cartagena is also bad in that aspect.
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Nov 8, 2015 16:32
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Jedit posted:In a four-player game of The Gallerist someone is being kicked out with almost every move, so the odds are very high that you will be kicked out at least once before it's your turn again. The game will stop dead every time someone takes a bio, trust me. Yah the Kanban board just looks intimidating as gently caress, but then I see some reviewers(like Rahdo) say that it's pretty simple once you get playing which I can't imagine being the case. The Gallerist is pretty straightforward but I would never say it was simple, there's a ton of things you can think about and you need to do a lot of planning to do well. I imagine it's probably similar for Kanban, simple mechanics but very complex decisions, but just the amount of poo poo on that board is scary. If you play lots of euros and like heavier games maybe it could be considered simple but I can't imagine that would be so. For The Gallerist I was more thinking if you are frequently waiting for 3 other players to do their turns who may in turn also kick out 3 other players, you could have long periods of time where you're waiting for 3-5 players to do their turns, exexutive actions, and then kicked out actions. Maybe it's not as bad in practice but the possiblility could be tbere. EBag fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 18:21
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Well, I played Argent a few days ago, 5 players, all new. All your suggestions helped the game flow nicely, and everybody seemed to have an idea about what to do. I lost horribly because I looked a what people were doing instead of getting lots of marks. Turned out the guy I was looking at was just having fun by getting lots of spells and int/wis but it wasn't part of any of the votes. I really enjoyed the game. Then we played Fauna to clear our heads. I like it as a filler and it's always fun when everybody goes "What the hell is a Slow Worm?". Finally we played Broom Service. I'm not a fan and neither was anyone else. I like the role selection system but the rest of the game feels kind of superfluous, even with all of the variants thrown in. I guess I should just make a copy of Witch's Brew.
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Nov 8, 2015 18:34
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The post a page back about Cave Evil intrigued me, but it's really hard to tell what the game is. For some reason everyone who has written reviews about it on BGG writes in weird flowery language that doesn't actually explain the game. Is it a dungeon crawl with campaigns like Descent? A competitive Area control game like CITOW? How long does it take to play? What's the deal with the new version coming out?
Megasabin fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 18:42
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Electric Hobo posted:Well, I played Argent a few days ago, 5 players, all new. All your suggestions helped the game flow nicely, and everybody seemed to have an idea about what to do. I lost horribly because I looked a what people were doing instead of getting lots of marks. Turned out the guy I was looking at was just having fun by getting lots of spells and int/wis but it wasn't part of any of the votes. I really enjoyed the game. We just played for the first time last night, and I have been thinking about it a lot today. I don't think you lost because you didn't get lots of marks; getting a mark always happens at the expense of something potentially better. If somebody is miles ahead of everyone else in a single category, I think you're better off just letting them have that one category, since the effort it would require to overtake them is better spent collecting influence and moderate amounts of all usable things.
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Nov 8, 2015 19:04
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Played print and play Codenames last night. Made an excel sheet that randomly creates spy sheets and word sheets from a list and printed a bunch out. Went over very well, except everyone seemed to struggle to Clue anything more than 2 words, and sometimes would even drop 1s when they couldn't think of a 2. I managed to get at least one 3 both times I was a spy master and that let us pretty easily Cruise to a win on 2s. One loss we were setting up the win when the spymaster gives the clue "university, 2" and someone sees Slip and Rock right next to each other (slippery rock university) which is then discussed, but we decide to go with New York (NYU) as our first guess, and it turned out to be the Assassin, and slip and rock was correct. Also played 2 player Tash Kalar (first time I was able to break it out since buying it months ago) it was fun except it seemed to take us super long since we were probably very unfocused just trying to make shapes and hardly scoring goals. The other thing was that it seemed to have a strange pace (even on the second game) where it just kind of slowly builds until maybe someone just got a goal on consecutive turns and goes "oh hey I won." Elysium fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 19:36
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My experience of Codenames was that it was rarely possible to clue more than 2, and trying usually led to reaching too far and failing until very late in the game, unless you got very lucky. Still an awesome game though.
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Nov 8, 2015 19:45
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Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else.
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Nov 8, 2015 19:53
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Might not be easy to clue more than 2 but it's definitely possible. Especially if you can make the obvious misinterpretations be neutral contracts.
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Nov 8, 2015 19:54
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else. I rather like Shadows of Brimstone. Its got a bit more depth than Descent, and you can have some interesting times just hanging out in town between dungeon crawls. That said it's "cowboys menaced by Cthulhu" rather than standard fantasy themed, so if that's not your bag, you might need to go elsewhere.
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Nov 8, 2015 19:59
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else. Look into Mage Knight. It might not hit all the notes you're looking for, but it is a fun fantasy romp through the countryside slaying enemies and getting stronger. Pick up the Lost Legion expansion if you want pure co-op against a very tough enemy.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:01
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homullus posted:We just played for the first time last night, and I have been thinking about it a lot today. I don't think you lost because you didn't get lots of marks; getting a mark always happens at the expense of something potentially better. If somebody is miles ahead of everyone else in a single category, I think you're better off just letting them have that one category, since the effort it would require to overtake them is better spent collecting influence and moderate amounts of all usable things. I guess you're right. I think the real reason I lost was a lack of spells and supporters. I got the diversity vote but none of the specific department votes which there was a lot of.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:09
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Megasabin posted:The post a page back about Cave Evil intrigued me, but it's really hard to tell what the game is. For some reason everyone who has written reviews about it on BGG writes in weird flowery language that doesn't actually explain the game. Is it a dungeon crawl with campaigns like Descent? A competitive Area control game like CITOW? How long does it take to play? What's the deal with the new version coming out? It's a beat-em-up dungeon-crawl. Each player plays a Necromancer who has 6 squads. You summon creatures and items by collecting resources (gore, metal, and shadowflame). You gain resources by killing the other players' squads and by digging into the cave to expand it. Each time the first player has a turn, or a necromancer summons a creature, a timer increases by one level. Halfway through the track, a super-baddy reveals its presence. Halfway around again, the super-baddy wakes up and (usually) makes a bee-line for one of the Necromancers and kicks the poo poo out of it. There are specific ways to kill (almost) all of the super-baddies, but most of the time once they awaken, the timer is on and the game will come to a quick ending. So, the goal of the game is to be the last necro standing. You can kill other necros by attacking them directly, or by destroying their soul gem in their starting area. There is no co-op. There is player elimination. It is a bit fiddly, what with controlling up to 6 squads and all their equipment. It is also pretty long - 3 player games usually take about 2.5-3 hours. That being said, I love the game. The art is awesome, and the gameplay is just a blast. Re: the new version - do you mean the expansion? The 2nd printing of Cave Evil is gone, the expansion isn't out yet but can be played standalone. It focuses on Warcults and their leader, the Warlord. It's apparently a bit more squad-level wargame based then Cave Evil is, but it's not out yet, so I can't comment.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:13
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else. You should look up Gloomhaven. It's the dungeon crawler I'm most excited about and releases in may.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:14
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else. Avoid Mice and Mystics, it has nice presentation, but it's puddle-deep and gets samey fast.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:16
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Actually already have mage knight and mice and mystics. I'll check out your other suggestions though, thanks!
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Nov 8, 2015 20:22
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Fat Samurai posted:AFAIK, all traitor objectives require you to drop the morale to 0 and then do some other stuff. I don't know the game well enough to be 100 % sure, but otherwise you're working in parallel, rather than against the group. Both groups could win and that would be silly in a traitor game. I have no doubt you're correct. I know I didn't do a whole lot on my own as morale was an issue for us just through the normal game. So I must have done something toward the end to kill it off. I remember trying to get the timing of it to work (end the game while having barricades up) so it's likely I was trying to coincide that with when I could drop the morale, but I remembered it incorrectly as coinciding it with the end of the normal game. Now that I think about it, I may have let a character die to put morale at 0 and give myself the win. I definitely didn't have to try really hard to tank morale throughout the entire game though. It's very possible my experience is atypical, but everyone is so negative here I figured I'd share my positive experience.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:25
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Oldstench posted:It's a beat-em-up dungeon-crawl. Each player plays a Necromancer who has 6 squads. You summon creatures and items by collecting resources (gore, metal, and shadowflame). You gain resources by killing the other players' squads and by digging into the cave to expand it. Each time the first player has a turn, or a necromancer summons a creature, a timer increases by one level. Halfway through the track, a super-baddy reveals its presence. Halfway around again, the super-baddy wakes up and (usually) makes a bee-line for one of the Necromancers and kicks the poo poo out of it. There are specific ways to kill (almost) all of the super-baddies, but most of the time once they awaken, the timer is on and the game will come to a quick ending. Excellent summary, and echoes my feelings about the game. It's a hoot.
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Nov 8, 2015 21:18
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Oldstench posted:It's a beat-em-up dungeon-crawl. Each player plays a Necromancer who has 6 squads. You summon creatures and items by collecting resources (gore, metal, and shadowflame). You gain resources by killing the other players' squads and by digging into the cave to expand it. Each time the first player has a turn, or a necromancer summons a creature, a timer increases by one level. Halfway through the track, a super-baddy reveals its presence. Halfway around again, the super-baddy wakes up and (usually) makes a bee-line for one of the Necromancers and kicks the poo poo out of it. There are specific ways to kill (almost) all of the super-baddies, but most of the time once they awaken, the timer is on and the game will come to a quick ending. This sounds awesome. It seems like its been out of print for a while. I'm guess BGG marketplace and ebay are gonna be the only places to get a copy?
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Nov 8, 2015 22:23
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Megasabin posted:This sounds awesome. It seems like its been out of print for a while. I'm guess BGG marketplace and ebay are gonna be the only places to get a copy? There's going to be a 3rd printing.
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Nov 8, 2015 23:20
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Picked up Fury of Dracula 3rd Edition yesterday and I was able to get it to the table with two others last night. As far as hidden-movement games go I definitely liked this one better than Letters from Whitechapel and I'm glad I picked this one up to fill that gap in my collection. I never played the second edition, but as far as I can tell the rules are streamlined and combat is way better. It's solely a card vs. card type of combat where certain hunter cards can cancel out some of Dracula's cards and there is no dice at all whatsoever, so it ends up being a pretty great mind-game. The biggest issue I had with the game was that the early stages are VERY slow. When the hunters have no idea where Dracula is I found both Dracula and my hunter partner were losing interest in the game. Once we hit Dracula's trail and started the cat-and-mouse game everyone became much more invested. There's a pretty good balance of hitting up every city on Dracula's trail and stopping his Vampires from maturing, which gives him a large chunk of the 13 influence he needs to win, or chasing after Dracula to try and kill him for the win. It ended up in a final combat in Paris where Dracula had one influence needed to win, but only one health left. If the wrong combat cards were played either Dracula would have killed or bitten one of the hunters engaged with him and won or he would have taken a damage and lost. Hunters ended up winning the game and it was both engaging and exciting. While the group I played it with are both excited to play again, I'm worried that teaching new people I have to say "yeah right now the game is boring, but just you wait until later when it's more fun!!!" I also do not really recommend playing it with less than 4 or 5 people. You have to play with 4 hunters no matter what, and keeping track of two characters per player was a little unwieldy with all of the item and event cards.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:19
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One of the issues I had with the last edition of Fury of Dracula is that the entire hunter side can be quarterbacked, so it can lead to a one-on-one between Dracula and the quarterbacking hunter with the other players pretty much just along for the ride. Is there anything in place to prevent that in the new edition?
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Nov 9, 2015 01:02
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My group has gone through two plays of 3rd ed Fury of Dracula now, and I am generally impressed. I think the nature of the design creates an experience that can't result in a good experience every time, but it has the potential to create some excellent experiences. I only ever played one game of 2ed here on the forums, but I think the inclusion of Mina Harker as an additional hunter was very healthy for the game. Both games have been Dracula wins so far. The first game, I was the Count and they picked up my trail almost immediately and held it due to some critical event cards. I picked up a few early points fighting an unprepared Van Helsing and my final points off Mina catching me by accident. She had garlic out, but the damage was short of killing me so I just kept biting. I think I only got one vampire matured? It was a reasonably close and tense game, but I wasn't healing off bites like I should have been. The next game, Clockwork Gadget was Dracula and clowned on us. I think the other hunter and I were in the wrong mindset from the get-go, but also that it really helps to actually have more people at the table. If you can quarterback the entire game, good for you, but I was struggling even with another person helping. Wolf Form into Misdirect is a good play. If there's anything I don't like, it's the variance of the event deck. Some are way more crucial than others, it's hard to balance when usefulness is situational.
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Nov 9, 2015 02:46
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Mina was in 2nd ed.
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Nov 9, 2015 03:08
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Sorry, I knew I only played 2ed with three hunters and thought I read Mina was the one left out.
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Nov 9, 2015 03:24
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Are there any gm-less dungeon crawl boardgames that take it a bit further than the d&d adventure systems and descent do? My partner and I enjoy making characters and d&d 4e style combat but our gaming group are very non-combat role-playing game focused and we wish we could get our fix somewhere else. Maybe you'd prefer a story game like Fiasco or The Quiet Year, as opposed to a board game?
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Nov 9, 2015 03:56
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PerniciousKnid posted:Maybe you'd prefer a story game like Fiasco or The Quiet Year, as opposed to a board game? I think you misread what they want. They are getting their roleplaying fix from their regular group but not their tactical dungeon-bashing. They want a tactical dungeon crawl board game they can play together. That's how I read it anyway. I could be wrong.
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Nov 9, 2015 05:04
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I played Fury of Dracula 3rd Edition tonight as a hunter and it was really disappointing. It was long, slow, and frustrating. It felt like Eldritch Horror but with the enemy constantly throwing Munchkin cards at me to wipe away all of my progress. It's a shame, because I actually liked Specter Ops and Whitechapel.Gort posted:One of the issues I had with the last edition of Fury of Dracula is that the entire hunter side can be quarterbacked, so it can lead to a one-on-one between Dracula and the quarterbacking hunter with the other players pretty much just along for the ride. Is there anything in place to prevent that in the new edition? No, not that I saw. Medium Style fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 05:26
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Played through Time Stories (the Asylum scenario, which comes with the core box). Pretty meh. Fairly mild potential spoilers in the following review: The writing was pretty mediocre. The puzzles were uninspired, and there were only really 2, one of which we didn't see. So, yeah, 1 puzzle that we encountered normally (we went back through the cards after to see the other one). The rest of the game involves a lot of rolling dice to see if you pass tests (and spending time/HP if you fail, making the key strategy be: don't fail a lot). Exploring felt pretty random; sometimes you made fast progress, sometimes you wasted time, without much in the way of interesting decisions. Maybe we missed something really interesting amid the flavor that would have pointed us towards more efficient exploring, but in any case we solved the scenario in 2 runs and it seems like 1 run would require tremendous luck.. so that wasn't satisfying. I am not a value-focused game buyer, but even I'm feeling a little stung on value here - there just isn't much content, and even on the second play it's annoying to have to replay (we took a bunch of notes, so we didn't have to go revisit the information-type clues). I think they should have engineered some replay value in somehow, like a Legacy game or something where there's some gated progress/changes that force you to at least play through a few times with some sort of interesting variance (their method of preserving progress between runs is not very granular or interesting). Anywho, I don't think I'll bother with expansions - I'll let the work crew go through it, then sell it off while it's the new hotness.
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Nov 9, 2015 06:41
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Castles of Burgundy - everyone talks about how good it is as a 2 player game, but nobody really talks about the higher player counts. Is it still respectable with 3 or 4?
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Nov 9, 2015 08:07
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Gzuz-Kriced posted:I have no doubt you're correct. I know I didn't do a whole lot on my own as morale was an issue for us just through the normal game. So I must have done something toward the end to kill it off. I remember trying to get the timing of it to work (end the game while having barricades up) so it's likely I was trying to coincide that with when I could drop the morale, but I remembered it incorrectly as coinciding it with the end of the normal game. Now that I think about it, I may have let a character die to put morale at 0 and give myself the win. Fair enough. Glad you had fun 
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Nov 9, 2015 08:21
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Nique posted:Castles of Burgundy - everyone talks about how good it is as a 2 player game, but nobody really talks about the higher player counts. Is it still respectable with 3 or 4? Yeah it scales well. The great thing about castles of burgundy is that it is the same game at 4 as it is at 2. If you're using the game to shepherd new players into euros, though, you may have to deal with some wait times between turns and AP. Players that are used to heavier games or that have played castles more than once won't (or shouldn't) have that issue. CoB really is the perfect beginner's euro. It teaches a lot of concepts, like the importance of turn order and the ability to plan long term and tactically, to players that would otherwise be unfamiliar with them. It's not a game that I pick out for myself anymore but I love teaching it to newer players.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:30
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You know, it occurs to me that I love the fact that we live in an age where there can be such things as spoilers for board games!
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Nov 9, 2015 08:37
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Played 7 Wonders: Duel tonight. It was interesting, though not groundbreaking or anything. It's a pretty interesting take on "drafting" for 2 people built into the familiarity of traditional 7W (mostly same symbols, costs, upgrades, actions, etc.), though the system did lead to a few turns which forced some unfortunate situations strategically and felt not great. Namely, since you can only purchase cards which are completely revealed (in a pyramid style stack of overlapping cards), you can find yourself in a situation where you only have a single card which you can 'draft' from the center, which will give your opponent a perfect card; in my case it most notably occurred during the 3rd age in which I had no choice but to take a card which freed up a Military card for my opponent, which insta-won him the game (there's a Military strength track which you can insta-win with by getting all the way to the other end of the track), and there was nothing I could do about it. In a traditional 7W draft you often are in situations where you are looking at the possibility of passing your neighbor something really great, but can opt to use that card yourself or otherwise make it unavailable to them instead of passing; it would be nice if there was some similar design space that could have been explored in Duel to allow you to manipulate cards which were only covered by one other card, at some kind of cost. Overall I'm pretty interested to play it more though, as this was only based on one play through and choosing draft picks from the center tableau might require more forethought / strategy than I was able to put together on a first go. Though, the fact that 50% of the tableau is face down in each age makes me wonder if those situations may just come up from time to time no matter what kind of strategy you attempt to employ.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:39
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jng2058 posted:You know, it occurs to me that I love the fact that we live in an age where there can be such things as spoilers for board games! Eh, it depends on the game in question. I'm glad we have things like Risk Legacy and Tragedy Looper, but I'm not so excited that it's now acceptable to make a $50 game that can only ever be played once.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:20
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Eh, it depends on the game in question. I'm glad we have things like Risk Legacy and Tragedy Looper, but I'm not so excited that it's now acceptable to make a $50 game that can only ever be played once. dont worry, that hasn't happened yet. legacy games dont just turn into ash when you finish them, and even if they did, you get plenty more than one play out of them. lets say that it is just a "one and done" situation. that makes it equitable to any video game that has a railroad plot. you play it once and you're done with it. sixty bucks. oh noes! what will we do? surely they knew the hubris before they attempted such a thing! you have a stupid opinion. im sorry to put it in such harsh terms, but your opinion on this is stupid.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:24
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Lord Frisk posted:dont worry, that hasn't happened yet. So you missed the discussion of TIME Stories, then.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:30
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Jedit posted:So you missed the discussion of TIME Stories, then. just because time stories doesnt mean always. duh.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:47
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