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Don't be afraid to burn power and use the resource conversions to do more actions per round. Pay attention to what is giving bonus VPs each round and your place on the cult tracks, because they are the main sources of points.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:09
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List of newb friendliness: Italics are newb-friendly, bold are super-newb-friendly. Doesn't mean will score super-high, just means won't fall into horrible complicated death spiral: Black: Darklings, Alchemists (If Darklings, make sure you understand how to get Priests) Blue: Mermaids, Swarmlings Green: Witches, Auren (If Auren, make sure you understand cult bonuses at end of round/town keys) Grey: Dwarves, Engineers Red: Chaos Magicians, Giants Yellow: Nomads, Fakirs Brown: Halflings, Cultists Newbie tips: Don't be afraid to burn power, try not to go below 6 though. 6 Power > 2 shovels is amazing and you should probably take it if you can get it (you can use it on 2 separate spaces if the first shovel finishes terraforming a spot). Similarly, free shovel round bonus and possibly shipping round bonus are super good, don't underestimate being able to get cheap terraforming by just sailing to better (or free!) spots. Don't place your houses too close together, that makes it easy to be blocked out. You want to be in an area where you've got easy access to stuff that's your color and also next to another player that isn't competing for the same tiles (because, for example, they cost 3 shovels). If you can cheat the digging rules via power actions or cult bonuses that's really good, because upgrading digging is very expensive. Towns are amazing, make towns. Preferably on turns where you get bonus 5VP for towns. Remember it's 4 different buildings (3 if Sanctuary) with 7 or more total Power Rank (6 with Fire2). If you're given power, 1 for 0 is a no-brainer, 2 for 1 is generally a good deal, 3 for 2 is probably still a good deal and anything above that is risky but could still be worth it. For new players it's probably decent advice to take anything that would cost you 3 or less VP unless it's obviously not worth it, you'll get a feel for what is and isn't worth it as you go. Round bonuses, cult tracks, network adjacency (tough for new players...), and favor tiles are the main ways to score points. 2 points/house favor tile is really good, so if you grab an income favor and get a chance to get another favor, definitely pick it up. Similarly, 3 points/trading post is very good.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:16
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So is the new Warhammer Quest more of a LoTR LCG for babies, or a fantasy Death Angel 2? Asking for a friend.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:26
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TastyLemonDrops posted:RIP, it's not 2 for 1, it's buy 2 get 1 free. Anyone have a suggestion for a third pickup? Ludwig is a very pretty and fun game that has more going on underneath than at first glance. It's something that people can grab onto quickly and looking at the bizarre castles everyone has built at the end is nice. The bidding aspect of the game can get quite vicious and is well balanced as far as I can tell. I haven't touched the expansion but it looks like it adds a lot more tiles and bonus win conditions? That said I never played Suburbia.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:35
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Awesome thanks for all the tips! On a side not I got my copy of Orleans played last night, really fun game and it moves surprisingly fast. We were so eager to keep drawing workers and doing actions that we would sometimes forget to resolve/flip the events. Not really much conflict with 2p, not that it's a problem if you don't want a lot, but the travel could board could probably be tightened up a bit. Really good game though, looking forward to playing it more.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:43
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Pandante review: Insert doesn't fit sleeved cards. Sirlin'd again!
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Nov 24, 2015 16:47
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FulsomFrank posted:Ludwig is a very pretty and fun game that has more going on underneath than at first glance. It's something that people can grab onto quickly and looking at the bizarre castles everyone has built at the end is nice. The bidding aspect of the game can get quite vicious and is well balanced as far as I can tell. I really like Suburbia but Castles has such a huge downtime due to the master builder phase and if your not going second in the round your choices are so limited. Once you get your head around what rooms are really worth its even worse as you can eliminate the grossly over costs ones limiting your choices even more.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:58
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I like TI3 but i'm also one of those people who can get their group to play it in 1-1.5 hours per person and don't add any of the extraneous bullshit. I also used to use house rules that sped up the game and generally heated things up. I never had the expansion though I did print out the new strategy cards. It loving baffles me that people would try and cram in all the poo poo that you get in the base game let alone the expansions as well. I don't get expansions in general or the whole mindset that you need to add more More MORE to make a game good. My buddy has bought all 4 expansions for Shogun and i'm thinking, why? The base game is great but takes a while, don't pile more poo poo onto it.
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Nov 24, 2015 17:11
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Tormented posted:I really like Suburbia but Castles has such a huge downtime due to the master builder phase and if your not going second in the round your choices are so limited. Once you get your head around what rooms are really worth its even worse as you can eliminate the grossly over costs ones limiting your choices even more. I see where you're coming from but the half dozen times I've played I haven't really noticed the choice limitation aside from someone maybe anticipating what other players want to to add (basements, gardens etc) and putting it high on the list in order to gouge them. You can either pass and get money (boo, boring) or buy the cheaper and maybe not as useful room and keep building, or you can build stairs/hallways, or depending on how long some of the less desirable rooms have been sitting there you can buy a room for a severe discount. I get that maybe not all options are great but in my experience people usually have too much stuff they want to buy, not too little.
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Nov 24, 2015 17:11
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MikeCrotch posted:I like TI3 but i'm also one of those people who can get their group to play it in 1-1.5 hours per person and don't add any of the extraneous bullshit. I also used to use house rules that sped up the game and generally heated things up. I never had the expansion though I did print out the new strategy cards. We usually play with (at about 1.25 - 1.5hr/person): All Races (Nekro and Arborec banned if playing with new players) Expansion Strategy Cards (Bureaucracy line, I'm convinced that if you're playing with Imperial 1 you're either a masochist or too stubborn to change to vastly improved rules) YES Board Drafting YES Racial Tech 1 & 2 YES Mechanized Units YES Flagships YES Political Councilors YES All expansion technologies/action/politics cards YES Refresh ability planets NO Factories/space stations/etc NO Shock Troops NO Leaders NO Distant Suns/Artifacts/Deep Space NO Space Mines SOMETIMES Bounty Hunters
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Nov 24, 2015 17:25
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Lichtenstein posted:So is the new Warhammer Quest more of a LoTR LCG for babies, or a fantasy Death Angel 2? It doesn't sound very similar to LotR LCG. To me, the big thing about LotR is that part of the puzzle is building a deck ahead of time to fit your scenario. In WHQ, your deck is pre-made. As for Death Angel comparisons, according to one of the designers of WHQ, it's a "very different game" from Death Angel. He could be telling the truth or he could just be marketing his game: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20072315#20072315
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Nov 24, 2015 17:36
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Lichtenstein posted:So is the new Warhammer Quest more of a LoTR LCG for babies, or a fantasy Death Angel 2? I like SH: Death Angel, even if 80% of the games are lost because of bad dice*. There is something about the way Genestealers move that fits exactly how I think a group of Aliens should move and ambush a squad. * It is bad dice, shut up. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Nov 24, 2015 |
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Nov 24, 2015 17:51
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lordsummerisle posted:Tried Witness yesterday. A lot of fun. I felt like a complete moron, unable to remember the most basic of things. We still managed to piece together things alright. And laughed a lot. Would you mind talking a bit about how the game works/plays? I read up on it a little but never really clued in on it.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:02
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As far as combat goes in card based games, what has been the most interesting/fun combat you've encountered? I've really enjoyed Mage Knight and how deep and puzzly it can be with the different resistances, elements and creature abilities, looking for other things to scratch that itch a bit more complicated than the generic straight magic the magic attack vs defense spin-off. Although, I guess some games can have a simple combat system made deep by exceptions from card to card, so who knows.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:14
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Dr. VooDoo posted:I've kind of been in the mood for some kind of economics game, one with a supply and demand mechanic would be pretty awesome. What are some of the better economic board games out that that involve supply and demand, trading, selling and buying, and maybe even contracts? Hab & Gut Power Grid (and First Sparks, and Factory Manager) That One With The Tulips whose name I can't remember Railways of the World (more so if you use the shares variant) A couple of other share trading games whose names I similarly can't remember; one of them was hotel themed, the other airlines I think? Navegador Merchant of Venus (kinda) Brass and Age of Industry EBag posted:Awesome thanks for all the tips! We found this to be a pretty big issue in our co-op playthrough, too. It suffers from the same issues as RollftG, in that everyone chooses what they're doing simultaneously and the AP guy takes loving hours, but unlike Roll, it doesn't have a mechanism where you absolutely DON'T want to continue with your actions until he's done, nor an obvious way of signalling done-ness. It's not a big enough problem to worry about IMO, but it could have done with a round tracker or similar.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:15
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I played Orleans and also really enjoyed it. I managed to win after getting Laboratory (which gives you a tech tile) and a couple other buildings (2 dev points, money for trading posts, money for dev level), and labbing them to all need 1 worker, and activating them every round. Laboratory seems awesome!
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Nov 24, 2015 18:39
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My copy of Orleans was delivered on Friday while I was at BGG Con, and my roommate left town that day as well. No package was awaiting me when I got home last night. 
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Nov 24, 2015 18:45
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Mister Sinewave posted:Would you mind talking a bit about how the game works/plays? I read up on it a little but never really clued in on it. Imagine four people sitting at a table. Everyone gets a character and a unique booklet. A case introduction is read and then everyone reads from their book. This contains a unique clue that will help solve the case. Everyone has a minute or so to read and memorize their clues. Time's up, books down. No notes. Now, players 1 and 3 whisper their clues to 2 and 4. Next round, 2 and 4 whisper their clues plus the clues give to them by 1 and 3 to 3 and 1 (respectively). Next round 1 and 3 whisper the clues given to them from 2 and 4 to 2 and 4 again. So it's like this: Round 1: Person (clue known) > person whispered to 1 (1) > 2 3 (3) > 4 Round 2: 2 (1, 2) > 3 4 (3, 4) > 1 Round 3: 3 (1, 2, 3) > 4 1 (3, 4, 1) > 2 At this point, the rules have gone around the table telephone style and completely hosed up and forgotten and added to, etc. Notes can now be written down. When the note taking is done, someone reads 3 questions from the book about the case, everyone writes down what they think the answers are, and then a collective score is tallied up. The cases go from pretty easy to you-gotta-be-loving-kidding-me really quick. It's a lot of fun and very frustrating. Drinking is encouraged.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:47
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I stopped following board game news about a year ago. What goon approved products came out in 2015 that I should try out this holiday seasons? I'd like to start getting back into the hobby by spending grossly irresponsible amounts of money on cardboard chits.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:53
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Harvey Mantaco posted:As far as combat goes in card based games, what has been the most interesting/fun combat you've encountered? I've really enjoyed Mage Knight and how deep and puzzly it can be with the different resistances, elements and creature abilities, looking for other things to scratch that itch a bit more complicated than the generic straight magic the magic attack vs defense spin-off. Although, I guess some games can have a simple combat system made deep by exceptions from card to card, so who knows. I really like the combat in Star Wars LCG, but it's probably less about being super-clever in itself, and more about various game mechanics interacting with each other nicely, so it probably won't sound very interesing when singled out. Still, I'll try: - There are Units, Objectives and other poo poo, related to combat purely by card abilities. - You declare attacks against particular objectives, both as a means of pursuing victory and denying your opponent Cool poo poo. This usually means up to 3 combats can be declared per turn, with some often being less important to defend than others, leaving some possibility to feint or force to peel off some defenders from your true target to block a card ability on a peripheral combat or something. - The damage is persistent and there are three icon types: unit damage, objective damage and tactics. The damage icons allow you to put X hurt into a single target involved in combat, and tactic icons allow you to spread focus tokens (these tokens are basically tapping a card. Except you can stack them and tap someone for several turns) however you see fit among your opponent's units. - There are also shield tokens I guess, which allow you to absorb 1 damage or focus token. This is the kind of mechanic that is really forgettable until one day you discover both how powerful it can actually be and how it works for the game to self-balance some things. - Twist #1: the units get to attack one at a time, with both players alternating initiative after each shot. This makes for a quite puzzly dance of what combination of units you really need to safeguard against different scenarios. - Twist #2: after committing units and before going pew-pew, you play out the so-called Edge Battle, representing thousands of bothans dying off-camera to give you crucial advantage. It is basically an auction using funny pips on your cards that you only reveal after both players pass. There's some bluffing room here, as you only know the number of cards your opponent dumps, with each of them possibly having zero to five pips (though not all factions have such a big spread). Furthermore, there are Fate Cards, only usable in the Edge Battle which add some surprise effect. Maybe they add an extra point of damage your opponent didn't include in his maths. Or maybe you've baited him with zero-pip cards and Twist of Fate which resets the entire auction? Please note that this works at all due to game's kooky deckbuilding system, which both prevents you from just dumping high-pip cards into deck and gives fair amount of knowledge to the opponent to make educated guesses about your capabilities. - So what does the entire edge thing do? First, it decides who goes first. Second, the attack icons come in two varieties, white and black. Black icons always fire, while the white ones work only if you have won the edge battle! This both forces you to consider multiple scenarios when committing units, and poses quite a few hand management questions (some edge battles are important, some are not. You need cards for edge and you need them to actually do poo poo.) - It's an LCG, so there's a shitton of cards to play with the base mechanics. For example, one of the factions explicitly tries to bait you into beating them at edge. I like it, because it has a bluffing component that doesn't evaporate at an advanced level of play (I'm looking at you, mathrunner) and offers an interesting, dynamic puzzle that strikes a nice balance between AGoT-like fleet-in-being style deterrence and poo poo actually happening.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:03
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Vlaada Chvatil posted:I stopped following board game news about a year ago. What goon approved products came out in 2015 that I should try out this holiday seasons? I'd like to start getting back into the hobby by spending grossly irresponsible amounts of money on cardboard chits. Uh well, you should probably look at your own new releases for starters.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:04
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Vlaada Chvatil posted:I stopped following board game news about a year ago. What goon approved products came out in 2015 that I should try out this holiday seasons? I'd like to start getting back into the hobby by spending grossly irresponsible amounts of money on cardboard chits. Codenames is king of the party games, and is the current thread darling (it is a very, very fun game)
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Nov 24, 2015 19:04
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Mostly euros here but the good ones I've played are Orleans, La Granja, Roll for the Galaxy, The Gallerist, Mottainai, Codenames and... i dunno there's a bunch of good heavy euros that came out at essen a bunch of goons seem to enjoy like Food Chain Magnate and Mombasa.thespaceinvader posted:We found this to be a pretty big issue in our co-op playthrough, too. It suffers from the same issues as RollftG, in that everyone chooses what they're doing simultaneously and the AP guy takes loving hours, but unlike Roll, it doesn't have a mechanism where you absolutely DON'T want to continue with your actions until he's done, nor an obvious way of signalling done-ness. It's not a big enough problem to worry about IMO, but it could have done with a round tracker or similar. It wasn't so much a problem with that game as much as it was us just enjoying it so much that we just kept immediately wanting to draw our workers and plan our turn. Something like Roll's assign/reveal phase would be nice though. It won't come up often but there was one moment where we were both retiring a boatman at the same time to fill up the last spot in the town where it would have good to have screens so we didn't see what each other were doing, though usually it doesn't matter. EBag fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 24, 2015 |
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Nov 24, 2015 19:07
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Lichtenstein posted:I really like the combat in Star Wars LCG, but it's probably less about being super-clever in itself, and more about various game mechanics interacting with each other nicely, so it probably won't sound very interesing when singled out. Still, I'll try: I will buy this now.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:14
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Orleans should've won the Kennerspiel des Jahres and I could've been smug about the fact that I blindly supported it as a relatively cheap Kickstarter. 
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Nov 24, 2015 19:15
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Hauki posted:Uh well, you should probably look at your own new releases for starters. Codenames looks good, but I already have so many social deduction games I don't really want another. Also, I didn't like Tash-Kalar. Wake me up when I release more Space Alert or Galaxy Truckers or Dungeon games.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:33
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Vlaada Chvatil posted:Codenames looks good, but I already have so many social deduction games I don't really want another. Also, I didn't like Tash-Kalar. Wake me up when I release more Space Alert or Galaxy Truckers or Dungeon games. Frankly, name your social deduction games and we'll tell you codenames is better than all of them. Seriously, game of the year, in my opinion.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:40
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Impermanent posted:Hey anyone got good insight on mafia de Cuba? Looks like a good traitor game and I like that players can select their goals. John from our meetup taught it to us a few months ago. We ended up playing 4 or 5 rounds. If you enjoy One Night and The Resistance, you'll enjoy Mafia de Cuba. It's different enough from those to justify owning all of them.
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Nov 24, 2015 19:58
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Harvey Mantaco posted:As far as combat goes in card based games, what has been the most interesting/fun combat you've encountered? I've really enjoyed Mage Knight and how deep and puzzly it can be with the different resistances, elements and creature abilities, looking for other things to scratch that itch a bit more complicated than the generic straight magic the magic attack vs defense spin-off. Although, I guess some games can have a simple combat system made deep by exceptions from card to card, so who knows. Despite its other flaws (namely, being produced by AEG), Doomtown Reloaded has a nifty combat mechanic. From what I remember The first part of combat is a game of chicken and positional sacrifices. One Dude can challenge an enemy Dude in the same location to a Shootout. The enemy Dude (or "Mark") can either stand their ground, or run away home. If the Mark stands their ground, both players form Posses from the allied Dudes in the same location. At this point, both players can bring in other fresh Dudes from nearby locations to bolster the respective Posses, but this exhausts them and drags them away from their location, possibly leaving crucial VPs undefended. The second part of combat: Play poker. Each card in Doomtown has a poker suit, and when a Shootout happens, both players draw a five card poker hand from the top of their respective decks. The dudes in your posse either give you a larger hand size (silver bullets) or let you discard and redraw a certain number of cards (brass bullets). After doing all hand manipulation, both players reveal and compare poker hands. Better hand wins, and the loser takes casualties equal to the rank-difference between the hands. But! Remember, Doomtown is an LCG--you build your own deck, and you're not restricted to the standard poker distribution. Which means your hand might include multiple cards of the same rank/suit in your poker hand. This is called a Cheatin' hand. A Cheatin' hand doesn't affect the combat resolution by itself, but there are a LOT of card effects that care about Cheatin'. So quite often, you might have to make a tactical choice with your brass bullets--do you risk the stronger Cheatin' hand, or a weaker legit hand?
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Nov 24, 2015 20:00
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silvergoose posted:Frankly, name your social deduction games and we'll tell you codenames is better than all of them. Yeah I've had fun with Codenames with my board game geek buddies and also with their retired cribbage-obsessed parents. It's a fun game that's really easy to get on the table. Plus it comes with enough extra plastic baggies that you can use them to store chits for other games that have serious storage issues.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:07
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Vlaada Chvatil posted:Codenames looks good, but I already have so many social deduction games I don't really want another. Also, I didn't like Tash-Kalar. Wake me up when I release more Space Alert or Galaxy Truckers or Dungeon games. If you mean social deduction like Resistance or ONUW, Codenames ain't that at all. There are no traitors or secret roles or anything. Codenames has more in common with Dixit or Taboo.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:17
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The only problem I've come across with Codenames is that my entire gaming group wants to play it all the time, whereas I get burnt out after a couple of games, so games night has become Codenames night.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:20
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Oldstench posted:Imagine four people sitting at a table. Thanks for writing this up, I found this really helpful.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:20
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Gutter Owl posted:So quite often, you might have to make a tactical choice with your brass bullets--do you risk the stronger Cheatin' hand, or a weaker legit hand? It's also a deck-building concern which I think is cool. A lot of the outlaws love cheatin' and a lot of the lawmen are good AGAINST cheatin', but then you can also build a lawmen deck that cheats or whatever. It's really cool. I wish I could play it more often.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:40
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All these board game deals are great but it would be nice if they weren't all god damned entry level games Cardhaus will put some serious poo poo up there tho I bet EBag posted:May be playing TM for the first time tomorrow at a meetup. Anyone got some newbie tips, races to avoid? While it may seem counterintuitive there are some races where it's absolutely vital (perhaps depending on the board) to get your stronghold up very quickly, possibly even in round one (Giants for instance). T-Bone fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 24, 2015 |
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Nov 24, 2015 20:47
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T-Bone posted:All these board game deals are great but it would be nice if they weren't all god damned entry level games Miniature Market has some good stuff in their thanksgiving sale
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Nov 24, 2015 20:59
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canyoneer posted:Miniature Market has some good stuff in their thanksgiving sale i grabbed dunglords anniversary from it, dunno if they still have copies
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Nov 24, 2015 21:01
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So I just discovered they have an app for the Codenames spysheets. Now I need an app for the board! I would totally play with the word grid on an ipad (touch for guess!) and the spy sheet on an iphone even more than with the actual game. I'll pay!
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Nov 24, 2015 21:02
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I've seen Roll for the Galaxy and Race for the Galaxy in stores lately - which is the better game? I understand there are differences between how each of them play out, but I can never remember which is which.
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Nov 24, 2015 21:23
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Roll is faster, much easier to teach, and better. The expansion just came out and is apparently solid as well.
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Nov 24, 2015 21:26
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