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The additions break either the carefully designed money or information economy of the original game for the sake of variety, but that variety adds no depth. Edit: in coup g54
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Nov 25, 2015 06:04
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Eh, it's been a big hit every time I've played it, but not enough for me to buy it since I have the original. For someone buying one fresh though (as the poster was asking), there's little reason not to get it. The new roles create a lot of interesting dynamics and situations that are just as good or better than vanilla, and plenty of new depth. Plus it's a game with like 2-5 minute rounds, are you seriously worried about the precious economy of a filler?
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 06:07
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Having played a fairly significant amount of Race, then a few sessions of Roll, I think I don't want to play either game any more. They're not bad per se, but the design just feels random + random nowadays. Play EmiDo instead.
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Nov 25, 2015 06:37
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My biggest Race problem is, the game ends as soon as you get your engine.
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Nov 25, 2015 06:47
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My first game of Roll for the Galaxy, I lost 5 points due to one die being the wrong face. Thank goodness I only have to play 500 more games for the randomness to even out!
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Nov 25, 2015 06:48
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Bottom Liner posted:So explain why it's not better, considering it has the full Coup game within, plus more when you want to expand. Bottom Liner posted:Plus it's a game with like 2-5 minute rounds, are you seriously worried about the precious economy of a filler? Ahahahaha. Not quite. OG Coup has a lot of subtle interactions, and they all revolve around that "precious economy of a filler". Duke is a very powerful card to claim, because you get three coins a turn, as well as discouraging people from taking Foreign Aid. This forces people into one of the following plays: 1) Claim Duke to keep up. This is the most popular play, but once a fourth person has claimed Duke then the chances someone was lying shoot to 100%, and if that person was you, then you have three other people who know that you are likely to not have a Duke. If you have a Duke, great! 2) Claim Captain to steal two. Now you're ahead! There's a problem, and we'll get back to that later. 3) If you have three, claim Assassin to try and knock out the Duke. Of course, if you don't have an Assassin, now you're really behind if you get called, and anyway, they could just claim Contessa. Because Contessa doesn't get mass-claimed like Duke does, you don't have the knowledge that someone else might call them out. Alternatively, Coup for seven to take it out, but if you're in a position where that's a winning move this flowchart is pointless. 4) Take Income for one. Sadface. It's the safest option, though. 5) Claim Ambassador to try and find a Duke of your own. Now, here's the thing. Duke beats most everything else, but Captain beats Duke: it's equivalent to taking Foreign Aid but changes the target's play from the best to the worst. This is why there's two cards that block Captain. One of those is Ambassador, which people are very reluctant to challenge because it rarely directly decides the outcome of the game. This depowers Captain, a lot. Combined with the fact that Captain blocks Captain, mass Captain claims don't happen the way mass Duke claims happen. This is the point in the metagame where most groups stop. Claiming Duke is very powerful in the early game, so people do it, and then the game revolves around who gets the Duke, or at least who gets away with claiming it. It takes a lot of play before people get to plays* like "Income -> Claim Assassin" on everyone who claims Duke. Challenging Assassin is very risky, so people are unlikely to do it. Thus, they're more likely to claim Contessa to block. Now they trapped themselves into claiming two cards already, and neither of those block Captain. Sure, they can go and claim Ambassador/Captain if someone tries to Captain them, but the fact is now people know they're lying about one card, which is a massive safety net to throw away. Coup relies on that interaction. It needs Ambassador to block Captain to depower Captain, and it needs Contessa to block Assassin to keep Assassin down, but it also needs Contessa to do nothing else to depower Duke/Contessa. Every card in the game is about getting to 7 coins as fast as you, stopping others from getting to 7 coins as fast as you, getting information to stop people lying their way to 7 coins, cheating four coins off that 7 coin cost, or stopping people from cheating those four coins. That "precious economy of a filler" right there is what makes Coup good as opposed to being Exploding Kittens. G54 takes that subtle balance and tosses it out a window, and then tries to invite it back in. First of all, the Assassin equivalent now blocks itself. As do most targeted effects (especially most of the Force category). This makes mass claims more common, which massively depowers the non-coin gaining cards. What made Ambassador, Contessa, and Assassin strong was that you didn't have a bunch of people claiming them, which meant that you didn't have clear evidence someone was lying, and this let bluffs fly under the radar. It's a lot more likely for people to get called on their lies now, since every offensive claim comes with a counterclaim for the same card. By depowering these effects, the coin-gainers (mostly the Finance category with some Special Interest) gets buffed, and it didn't need it. Capitalist, Communist, and Priest are all basically game deciding cards, and it's very easy for someone to be economically taken out of the game long before they're actually eliminated. Finally, the Ambassador equivalents give out just as much or more information. This isn't strictly a negative element, but just after getting this information you get to switch out the card that just gave you that info. This means you can safely claim a third or fourth card. On its own this isn't bad. However, when combined with the above tendency towards mass claiming individual cards, lying is a lot more dangerous in G54. This is a bad thing, because it increases reliance on the cards you've been dealt as opposed to being able to work from basically any starting point. In Coup, the closest thing you have to a dud hand is Contessa/Contessa. However, this lets you almost assure a kill on anyone who claims it to block an Assassin, and the fact that Ambassador is rarely challenged means you can usually safely ditch them in favor of something else while still retaining that precious information. Tell me, what do you do with a pair of Customs Officiers in G54? All that being said, G54 is not bad at all. In fact, it's quite good: the varied roles provide a large amount of variety, the game plays pretty well all things considered, and some interactions and roles are a lot of fun (Peacekeeper and Spy being some of the standouts). However, it's not necessarily better than Coup, and it certainly isn't some sort of superset of Coup. There's a few small changes, they make a big difference. *Alternative answers: Ambassador to see how many Dukes are in the deck. Foreign Aid to see who actually calls it as a counteraction (someone who passes on doing so probably doesn't have a real Duke). Captain to steal: see how long they hesitate on remembering what the counteraction is. Spend three games challenging everyone who claims Duke to make them let up. Spend three games challenging everyone who claims Ambassador to keep them from information. Those last two won't make you win any more and likely will make you first out, but they could help you in future games and the look on everyone's face when you start challenging every Duke and get it right three times running will be totally worth it. With any luck, someone will think it's funny and start going it themselves. All the upside, none of the risk. Rosalie_A fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 07:12
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I like 7 Wonders. I want to spring for an expansion, do I get Cities, Leaders, Babel, or Roll for the Galaxy?? Thanks and god bless thread e: Oh I forgot Duel!! Vivian Darkbloom fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 07:13
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I like 7 Wonders. I want to spring for an expansion, do I get Cities, Leaders, Babel, or Roll for the Galaxy?? Thanks and god bless thread Leaders, (then the Wonder Pack) then Cities. Babel is somewhat forgettable.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:22
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Kiranamos posted:My first game of Roll for the Galaxy, I lost 5 points due to one die being the wrong face. Thank goodness I only have to play 500 more games for the randomness to even out! You what??? Like, what, it was the last turn and you were banking on a settle/develop worth 5 points and missed it because you were betting solely on the dice cooperating as your strategy? I mean, something I like about Roll is that by the end of the game you're having a lot less troubles with your dice because you're telling them exactly where to go. At least, reassign powers are always a must-get for me.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:22
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I like 7 Wonders. I want to spring for an expansion, do I get Cities, Leaders, Babel No, no, and no. If you must, get Cities if you regularly have eight people, or get Babel because it stays out of your way the most, or get the Wonder Board because it's the cheapest and you can just give Stonehenge to whoever wins a whole bunch. Cities and Leaders both add in a whole bunch of extra cards and not enough cheatsheets for all their new iconography in the game most known for fitting 7 players comfortably. Babel adds in a whole lot of "screw you" elements without improving the base game (It's really nice to lose all your coins to the luck of the draw or for everyone to have three more slots to hatedraft with, thus cutting away a sixth of actually playing 7 Wonders). All of these add in more time, complexity, and random variance without materially improving the game for their cost.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:23
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Hmm, so you don't think the Leaders draft is any help at making the gameplay a little deeper? I would think that some asymmetry would help. Also Roll for the Galaxy is expensive, maybe I'll get Race even though a friend has it.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:31
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Trasson posted:Ahahahaha. Yeah but what's your ELO for tournament Coup Edit: I just skimmed all that but I'll give you a half serious retort. You obviously take a light filler game a lot more serious than myself or anyone I play games with, so the delicate balance is obviously more important to you. For us, having the variety of G54 makes the game not grow stale quickly or let a meta develop and stagnate. Introducing the new roles every few rounds fleshes it out into a full game session instead of a round or two in between other games. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 07:32
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Trasson posted:No, no, and no. If you must, get Cities if you regularly have eight people, or get Babel because it stays out of your way the most, or get the Wonder Board because it's the cheapest and you can just give Stonehenge to whoever wins a whole bunch. The good thing about Leaders and Cities is that they both expand the game, both add an additional round of drafting. Leaders does this by adding an extra Leader draft round before you start the game while Cities adds an extra card per player each round. We have never ever looked back after getting both expansions. Babel can go gently caress itself, horrible piece of poo poo.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:50
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After playing my first game on my copy of Castles of Burgundy tonight, there are actually two games there. The main game, Castles of Burgundy, and the post-game event putting hundreds of hexes back into the box, Castles of Bagging Things.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:58
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My impression of G54 is it makes the game really drag as everybody needs to learn and understand all the roles and their interactions. Is this wrong?
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Nov 25, 2015 08:04
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I recently picked up Mission: Red Planet, The Grizzled, and Between Two Cities. Mission: Red Planet is great, not that that's particularly surprising. It's a medium-weight territory control game; have the most astronauts in a region of mars and you'll collect the resources it produces. You send astronauts to mars by selecting role cards, each card lets you load one or more astronauts into one of the communal rockets and provides some special effect. Each card's special effect feels unique and powerful, there's never an obvious play. I definitely recommend the game; it has a good deal of depth, the component quality is amazing, and it's easy to teach. My only complaint is the names they used for the regions and resources. The region names are pulled from actual regions of mars, but they're in Latin and they don't exactly roll off the tongue. Similarly the resources are ice, "sylvanite", and "celerium"; it's tough to remember which is which for the latter two, so we've taken to calling them "crystals" and "the good one". The Grizzled is a cooperative game about French soldiers in WW1. Despite the military setting there is no real combat, the core of the game is about braving the horrors of war through the power of friendship. The game plays like some distant relative of Hanabi; you're all working together, but you can't talk to one another and have to infer information from how the other players are playing. The art for the game is fantastic and the theme comes through incredibly well, but the gameplay I'm only lukewarm on. I'll need to play it more before I come to any final conclusions, but from my plays so far it seems a little shallow and the difficulty seems a little sporadic. Between Two Cities is absolutely amazing. It's a drafting game that seats seven; it both plays faster and is easier to teach then seven wonders. Each player is building two cities, one in cooperation with the player on their left and the other in cooperation with the player on their right. Each player's final score is the weaker of their two cities, so you want to try and build them evenly. The game is definitely on the lighter end of things, but every group I've run it with has had a blast, I highly recommend it. Bottom Liner posted:Yeah but what's your ELO for tournament Coup Coup has a huge amount of depth in spite of it's very simple and elegant rules. If your group has overlooked that then you've missed out on a lot of what makes the game so great.
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Nov 25, 2015 08:53
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My FLGS finally got its shipment of Codenames in last week and so I got to pick up a copy today. We played...five or six games? Though two were early Assassin losses. Highlight of the evening is my team's spymaster gives the clue "PHX: 3" as we were using abbreviations and acronyms as valid clues. Me and my teammate are stumped until it clicks that oh, this isn't an acronym, it's an abbreviation. Me: Well okay, I know for sure that Phoenix is one of them, so now what are the other two? My teammate: PHX is like a code, yeah? So Code? Me: Sure, why not. It turns out both are correct but we're totally stumped on the last one so we pass. Game goes around and on a later turn we succeed on all our guesses and we have just one more to go and we win the game, so we're at our free pick...if we can make that guess then we win. My teammate: Wait, I've got it! I know what the one we skipped earlier was! Me: ??? My teammate: PHX! X marks the spot! Me: ???????????? My teammate: It's the word in the middle of the grid! Me: Are you for real? That is a serious stretch. I'm pretty sure that he didn't mean that. My teammate: No, it's gotta be that one, it's perfect! Me: Y'know what, I don't have any better ideas so fine, but if this is the Assassin I'm gonna laugh my rear end off. And guess what it was  Game owns, etc, y'all know this already.(The third word was Pilot, as "PHX" is also an airport.)
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Nov 25, 2015 09:01
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Kai Tave posted:My FLGS finally got its shipment of Codenames in last week and so I got to pick up a copy today. We played...five or six games? Though two were early Assassin losses. Highlight of the evening is my team's spymaster gives the clue "PHX: 3" as we were using abbreviations and acronyms as valid clues. Me and my teammate are stumped until it clicks that oh, this isn't an acronym, it's an abbreviation. That clue was probably illegal, since you can't use a form of a word on the board (ad I'd imagine an abbreviation would fall under that). (Also, that X marks the spot guess missed the part of the rules where a clue has to refer to the meaning of the card, not it's position etc.) Game still owns.
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Nov 25, 2015 09:04
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:That clue was probably illegal, since you can't use a form of a word on the board (ad I'd imagine an abbreviation would fall under that). (Also, that X marks the spot guess missed the part of the rules where a clue has to refer to the meaning of the card, not it's position etc.) It probably was, this was our first time playing so things had some rough edges, spymasters keeping a poker face was an occasional issue among others. Nonetheless, while I was convinced that the guess my partner was making was A). probably not correct and B). almost certainly illegal for the reasons you mentioned, I decided to go with it simply because I wanted to see how far off the mark he was. Turns out it was pretty far!
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Nov 25, 2015 09:14
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Fenn the Fool! posted:Between Two Cities is absolutely amazing. It's a drafting game that seats seven; it both plays faster and is easier to teach then seven wonders. Each player is building two cities, one in cooperation with the player on their left and the other in cooperation with the player on their right. Each player's final score is the weaker of their two cities, so you want to try and build them evenly. The game is definitely on the lighter end of things, but every group I've run it with has had a blast, I highly recommend it. Just want to chime in and say that this feeling lasts about 2 or 3 plays. The game has zero depth.
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Nov 25, 2015 09:15
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Space Alert with 3 players, yay or nay?
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Nov 25, 2015 09:18
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:That clue was probably illegal, since you can't use a form of a word on the board (ad I'd imagine an abbreviation would fall under that). Yeah, using abbreviations is absolutely illegal. Single words only, nothing on the board, proper names by mutual consent. There's still some debate about whether that last is only names of people or if you can name things, e.g. Jason Voorhees is a legal clue, but what about Friday the 13th?
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Nov 25, 2015 09:38
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Bottom Liner posted:Edit: I just skimmed all that but I'll give you a half serious retort. You obviously take a light filler game a lot more serious than myself or anyone I play games with, so the delicate balance is obviously more important to you. For us, having the variety of G54 makes the game not grow stale quickly or let a meta develop and stagnate. Introducing the new roles every few rounds fleshes it out into a full game session instead of a round or two in between other games. This isn't directed at you specifically but just in general, why do people think that just because a game is short that it is okay if it is flawed? Why can't we have the same standard for small filler games? Otherwise, why even bother talking about them if "They're just light filler games"?
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Nov 25, 2015 09:56
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah but what's your ELO for tournament Coup Yeah, gently caress the tryhards! It's just fun!!!
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Nov 25, 2015 09:58
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah but what's your ELO for tournament Coup Cute. Unfortunately, the question isn't whether or not I take Coup too seriously. Which, for the record, I don't. It's just a fallacy of game design that gives us gems like Munchkin and Exploding Kittens to assume that because something is "light" and "filler" it can't have complex gameplay and depth, which can thus be analyzed. The questions are these: Bottom Liner posted:Eh, it's been a big hit every time I've played it, but not enough for me to buy it since I have the original. For someone buying one fresh though (as the poster was asking), there's little reason not to get it. The new roles create a lot of interesting dynamics and situations that are just as good or better than vanilla, and plenty of new depth. Plus it's a game with like 2-5 minute rounds, are you seriously worried about the precious economy of a filler? Bottom Liner posted:So explain why it's not better, considering it has the full Coup game within, plus more when you want to expand. Considering you asked what made G54 not better and than mocked the response when you were the one who originally gave false information, I'm not sure what you're confused about. You're welcome to the opinion of "dude it's just a light filler game chill out". That doesn't make you wrong. Claiming something to be true when it is obviously not and getting sarcastic as to why someone answered you seriously when you posed a serious question with merit makes you both wrong and an idiot. Rosalie_A fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 10:09
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Jedit posted:Yeah, using abbreviations is absolutely illegal. Codenames Instruction Manual, Page 7 posted:You can decide to use common abbreviations like UK, lol, and PhD. Like okay, it is illegal to use a form of a visible word, that's on us, but the rulebook itself says abbreviations are okay if your group agrees on it, at which point you're down to arguing whether an abbreviation is "common" enough to qualify, so no, they aren't "absolutely illegal," sorry. quote:Single words only, nothing on the board, proper names by mutual consent. There's still some debate about whether that last is only names of people or if you can name things, e.g. Jason Voorhees is a legal clue, but what about Friday the 13th? Codenames Instruction Manual, Page 7 Yet Again posted:Your group can agree to count proper names as one word. This would also allow titles such as The Three Musketeers. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
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Nov 25, 2015 10:17
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Fat Samurai posted:Space Alert with 3 players, yay or nay? Yay. You all just share control of a 4th player, the android, and get a few more cards each. It can make the game a bit easier if any player is really on the ball and takes charge of the android. Otherwise, you'll all die, so it's just like usual.
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Nov 25, 2015 10:37
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Kai Tave posted:Like okay, it is illegal to use a form of a visible word, that's on us, but the rulebook itself says abbreviations are okay if your group agrees on it, at which point you're down to arguing whether an abbreviation is "common" enough to qualify, so no, they aren't "absolutely illegal," sorry. Well, all the example "abbreviations" are actually acronyms, so that's the rulebook being misleading because it is specifically Forbidden to use part of a word in play.
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Nov 25, 2015 10:50
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lockdar posted:The good thing about Leaders and Cities is that they both expand the game, both add an additional round of drafting. Leaders does this by adding an extra Leader draft round before you start the game while Cities adds an extra card per player each round. We have never ever looked back after getting both expansions. Babel can go gently caress itself, horrible piece of poo poo. Vivian Darkbloom posted:Hmm, so you don't think the Leaders draft is any help at making the gameplay a little deeper? I would think that some asymmetry would help. Okay here's the thing. Base 7 Wonders is a really tightly balanced game. It's not perfectly balanced, but for a game that starts with shuffling up a whole bunch of cards and dealing people random hands of them it's pretty drat skill reliant. Blue cards are worth their stated value. Green cards are worth more the more of them you get. Red cards are worth it for the first two and become a bad deal when you start needing more to get points (thus are worth more the fewer of them you get). Yellow, brown, and silver cards are all worth less/none but are important to get you the cards that do get you points. Purple cards are usually going to be worth the same as an Age III blue, but only to some players. Additionally, three of your cards have a value of "whatever my next wonder stage" says. Leaders ruins that. Let's take the most direct examples. The Leaders that give you VP for each color card. In Leaders you start out with three extra coins, for six, over the base game. Thus, anything with a cost of 3 or less is, effectively, a free bonus to the base gameplay. For 3 coins you can get 2 VP for each purple or silver, and 1 VP for each brown and yellow. This is okay. For 6 coins, or your entire starting allotment, you can get Pericles, giving you 2 VP per red card. This is bad. Red cards have a fixed maximum output (18 VP plus knocking your neighbors for -3 each) that is effectively split between each card you play. If you play one red card Pericles is worth 2 VP. If you play six he's worth 12 VP, but you've also just split up that VP allotment to make each red card worth only 3 VP each. Adding in Pericles means each red card was worth 5 VP each. This is on par with an Age II blue, so this is only a worthwhile investment if all of your red cards came from Age II or before. But! If they did, you've only got between 5 and 10 Shields while those Age 3 military cards give 3 shields each. Meaning, a player that wants to catch up against you on military can do so easily. You're screwed either way: if you draft more military than you're wasting drafts and points, but if you don't then you're throwing away even more points because the lion's share of that 18 VP output comes from Age III. Pericles is really bad unless both of your neighbors literally never draft red. What if you add Alexander, for 1 extra VP per VP token? Nothing changes. Alexander makes red slightly better, but it doesn't change the fundamental concept of "military wants fewer red cards, Pericles wants more". For 4 coins, or effectively 1 from of your base game start you get 1 VP per green or 1 VP per blue. This is, umm, well, it's okay, the math isn't too destroyed (Hypatia adds on way too much weight to the lower end of the scale but it's not the end of the world), except you're already encouraged to get as many blues and greens as possible so this rewards you for doing so while Pericles gets you 2 VP per card that you don't actually want a whole lot of. For 4 coins we can also get Plato, who gives us 7 VP for each set of colors we amass, or for 3 coins we can get Justinian, who gets us 3 VP for each set of blue/red/green we amass. Functionally these add on 1 VP to each card but only for each set. Practically, since you're not likely to have an even number of each card, they're worth something less than 1 VP per card. However, their cost is equivalent to those above cards who give no questions asked 1 VP boost to their categories. This isn't even counting in things like "adding 1 VP to red and green cards doesn't change the fundamental math that clashes with this boost" that I'm sure you can figure out. Continuing the science trend, there's Aristotle at 3, who gives 3 VP for each set of symbols, or 1 VP per symbol. Since each green card comes with 1 symbol, this is effectively 1 VP per green card at less than Hypatia. If you don't get full sets or some of it comes from non-green sources then it comes in at a bit less, but it's telling that science gets a double boost here. Speaking of science, there's Pythagoras and friends, who clock in at 5 coins and come with a science symbol. How much is that science symbol worth? Well, the most it can be worth could be as your seventh copy of that symbol (four base cards, 1 leader, Babylon/Great Wall, Scientists Guild. As a seventh it's worth 13 points (seven symbols makes each worth 7, but without it each would be worth 6. So it's worth 7 on its own plus one for each other card it just effectively boosted). Alternatively, if it's filling out a fifteenth symbol in a set of 5x3 then it's worth 14 (7 for creating a full set, 8 for the set of 5 symbols using the above logic). That's up to 14 points for 5 coins, or nearly 3 points per coin. The next best exchange is Sappho who gives 2 points for 1 coin. Oh, but what if Pythy's and his friends are just part of a set of 3 different symbols. Well, then he's effectively worth 7 points for 5 coins, which is merely competitive with Cleopatra and her VP giving crew as opposed to laughingly dominant. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by comparing this exchange with with Hypatia up there. Then there's the oddballs. Croesus gives you six coins for one. Midas makes all coins worth two thirds of a point, while Berenice and Hatshepsut both give you extra money. Between all of this, the actual value of a coin is a complete mystery. Caesar is 5 coins for two shields, so I guess five coins is worth an Age II card except you can't spend five coins on a Forum or Caravansary. You can spend four on Bilkis who's the freemium app version of both. I think I've succeeded in establishing that the balance of the Leaders is out of whack. Their one control, cost, means very little. Oh, but how do you get more coins? Well, you can draft yellows or discard cards for 3 coins each. Both are throwing away one of your 18 age cards for coins. This encourages discarding crucial green, brown, and silver cards so others don't have them, so we have the same problem Babel gets of the expansion encouraging you to do things other than actually play 7 Wonders. Now, here's the thing. You draft the Leaders, but they aren't all going to be in play. You can't plan a strategy around any of these ahead of time. Where base 7 Wonders has every single card in play, with duplicates for higher player counts, what happens is that someone gets Bilkis in their opening hand and you get Pericles, Caesar, Cleopatra, and Sappho. Like, the Rhodes player opens that set of uselessness, Alexandria gets Phidias and Praxiteles, while Babylon gets Aristotle. Gee, I wonder who got the better opener and is in a better position to win the game? Like, it's not even a matter of hatedrafting green at that point because Babylon just needs to score two different symbols and they've got a small but very material point boost over everyone else, for no reason than because their opening hand of Leaders happened to include something synergistic and the others didn't. To boot, it's entirely possible that no one will know Aristotle is in play until there's too many points from him already that hate-drafting is pointless. So, the balance is out of whack, and there's an extra round of drafting to add time, and there's no way to deal with opponents getting synergistic combos. What's the plus side? Well, it's fun to get both Midas and Gamer's Guild. I will admit that.
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Nov 25, 2015 11:24
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Jedit posted:Well, all the example "abbreviations" are actually acronyms, so that's the rulebook being misleading because it is specifically Forbidden to use part of a word in play. Yes and I get that and acknowledge that's what happened for one of the three words the spymaster chose, nonetheless it's not impossible to conceive of abbreviations one might use which aren't acronyms in the strictest sense and also aren't a derivation of a word on the board. If someone wants to try SIGINT or Interpol as clues, or if they want to use PDX for "Airport" or "Code" or whatever, then by the rulebook under the heading titled "Abbreviations and Acronyms" those are valid clues so long as they don't violate any of the other rules in the process. Saying that abbreviations are "absolutely illegal" is incorrect. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 11:27
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Kiranamos posted:Just want to chime in and say that this feeling lasts about 2 or 3 plays. The game has zero depth. We have people here who've played it 10-15+ times, can't confirm your statement. It's not incredibly deep but the gameplay is there and the strategy space is pretty interesting.
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Nov 25, 2015 14:08
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The General posted:My biggest Race problem is, the game ends as soon as you get your engine. Engine building games tend to end by design not long after you get an engine up and running
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Nov 25, 2015 14:34
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Doubly true for race games, where the primary goal is to build an engine as fast as possible while making sure it has decent quality and will sustain you through the rest of the game. I'd make a sarcastic point about dice not cooperating and the loss of points due to that, but it'd just be a reiteration of Robust Laser's (accurate) point from earlier...
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Nov 25, 2015 14:56
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Sloober posted:Engine building games tend to end by design not long after you get an engine up and running Yeah, by design they almost have to because otherwise the first person to get going would runaway with the game.
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Nov 25, 2015 15:25
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Once you get your engine up and running the game must end very soon, otherwise it's just masturbatory and pointlessly extending the game.
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Nov 25, 2015 15:55
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I always set Ascension to 120 point games on my phone so that once I get my ludicrously broken deck going I get to enjoy it for at least 2-3 turns before the game's over. That's less acceptable when instead of beating an AI you're making your loved ones watch as you poo poo in their mouths and there's nothing they can do about it.
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Nov 25, 2015 16:28
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The Prodigals Club is available in my country now. Haven't seen any reviews of it, but love Last Will. Has anyone tried it?
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Nov 25, 2015 16:38
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Soothing Vapors posted:I always set Ascension to 120 point games on my phone so that once I get my ludicrously broken deck going I get to enjoy it for at least 2-3 turns before the game's over. That's less acceptable when instead of beating an AI you're making your loved ones watch as you poo poo in their mouths and there's nothing they can do about it. It's also nice on the phone because then you don't have to subject your loved ones to Ascension because you love them.
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Nov 25, 2015 16:39
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Soothing Vapors posted:making your loved ones watch as you poo poo in their mouths and there's nothing they can do about it. What if they're into that sort of thing Asking for a friend
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Nov 25, 2015 16:48
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MikeCrotch posted:What if they're into that sort of thing Talisman is still in print.
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