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Rocko Bonaparte posted:As I understand it, when you take a warfare or colonize role, you pick one particular aspect of that role to do. So you can either make fighters/take over a planet for warfare, or tuck in colonize cards/take over a planet with colonize. You can't, say, use 3 warfare cards to make fighters and then use a 4th in that role to take over the planet. Where it gets goofy is the leader bonus. I was lead to believe that despite all the card crap, people could choose to follow you in that "subrole." So if you play the warfare role to attack a planet, other people could then follow and attack a planet if they had one. If the followers wanted to instead, say, produce fighters, then they had to dissent. Does this seem correct with current thinking? I ask because I know it is not written that way, but some discussions made me think this was correct. quote:I also got completely mixed up at the end on what happens with boosters from cards--particularly colonize boosters. If somebody had a card with a colonize boost on it, and a planet needing 3 colonies, then I presumed they only needed to use 2 colonize cards on the planet. The third could implicitly come from their extra, although they'd still need one more colonize card to actually settle the planet in the settle role. Or is that wrong? If so, what good are those colonize boosters? It's not like warfare boosters were you can just point at them when making more fighters and go to town.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:00
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Does anyone want a $10 off coupon to GMT Games? I got one from the TS kickstarter that I've got no use for, so first person to reply (that has PM's or leaves their email) gets it. Please only claim it if you plan to use it, obviously. Edit: And it's claimed. CaptCommy fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 05:03
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CaptCommy posted:Does anyone want a $10 off coupon to GMT Games? I got one from the TS kickstarter that I've got no use for, so first person to reply (that has PM's or leaves their email) gets it. Please only claim it if you plan to use it, obviously. Yooooooo. EDIT: To make this less of a non-post, I've found the later Catan games (like Settlers of America, Merchants of Europe, and Catan: Explorers and Pirates) to be much better than base Catan, partly because they have mechanics to soften the bad dice--the gold mechanic in all three games, and the exploration rewards in E&P. You're always making some economic progress, and the dice distro/number control just accelerates your production, rather than gating it entirely. It's still a swingy chunk of bullshit, don't get me wrong, but it's at least a less frustrating swingy chunk of bullshit. Explorers and Pirates is probably the best of the bunch, because the multiple victory paths actually incentivize you to use the trading mechanics, which were supposed to smooth the RNG imbalances in the first place. Oh, I'm getting shafted on resources for city building? Cool, how about I divest myself of all this brick to the actual successful city-builder, in exchange for some extra sheep to work on constructing boats to go harvest fish? 'Course, that means buying a $50 expansion to fix a $45 game, and at that point you could've just bought a game that worked right the first time. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 05:10
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:
Ignoring all of your issues with Eminent Domain, which is pretty drat straightforward, how can you read the rules, decide they're goofy, then declare them wrong? Blocking is a huge part of Carcassone and that's exactly what that rule is talking about.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:11
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FISHMANPET posted:How well do you guys think kids are able to grasp deck building games? I've got a sort of nephew who's 13 and I think really smart, but not really educated (it's complicated) who also likes trains. I've got the game Trains that says ages 12 and up but I'm wondering if you guys think he'll be able to grasp the concept or not. Trip report, opened the box, started explaining, he's like "oh it's like Dominion." Now my mom and her boyfriend, on the other hand... Eventually they got it, fun was had by all.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:55
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quote:Meanwhile, we also decided the rules for Carcassone: Hunters and Gatherers are a little goofy. The rules at mention scoring for, say, the fisherman is the player "who alone controls" the river gets points. It implies if you wind up with two fishermen on one river by connecting separate rivers that nobody scores, but we assumed from seeing some other Carcassone stuff that was wrong. Wow, in my haste to correct you on EmDo, I completely missed this. Each river network can only have one fishing hut. Once someone drops a hut, no one else can place on that network. I don't remember what happens if two networks end up getting connected, but yeah, it's probably that no one gets the points.
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Jan 4, 2016 06:13
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Always played as most gets the points, or everybody tied gets them. Though that's for base carc, can't imagine any others being different.
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Jan 4, 2016 06:20
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:We tried a 4-player game of Eminent Domain last night, with a lot of confusion. I had been playing according to my own perceived adjustments I read on BoardGameGeek, and nobody else had played before who could say otherwise. I spent most of the game trying to keep everything straight with everybody and blew my score horrifically. A noble sacrifice. I am also pretty sure I screwed up all the adjustments too. The Colonize role is +1 colony per colonize icon. This means gain one Colonize card from the stacks, boost it with any number of cards from your hand with colonize icons, then tuck them all under any number of face-down planets. The Leader bonus is "may settle one planet instead". This means instead of doing that, gain one Colonize card from the stacks (don't tuck it anywhere), and flip over one face-down planet that already has the required number of colonies tucked under it. The cards that were tucked go into your discard pile, and during your cleanup phase so does the card you gained. All the other players get to Follow (or Dissent) your Colonize role regardless of which of these you chose to do. If they do Follow, they can only do the "+1 colony per colonize icon" role and tuck colonize icons from their hands, obviously, because it's the Leader bonus that allows "may settle one planet instead". (There's a tech card that lets a player use the Leader bonus when Following, though) Colonize icons present in your empire (either on face-up planet cards or on a few permanent techs) are described explicitly in the rules. They just permanently lower the number of tucked colonies required to settle planets. The Colony Ship tech card makes colonies work more like fighters: instead of tucking them under a planet, you can just tuck every colony icon under the Ship card itself, and later freely redeploy them to any planet that you are ready to settle. Plus, as a free action once per turn, you can tuck one card with a colony icon under the Colony Ship. Ralp fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 06:53
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I'll respond to different topics in different posts. Carcassonne here:Some Numbers posted:Wow, in my haste to correct you on EmDo, I completely missed this. Each river network can only have one fishing hut. Once someone drops a hut, no one else can place on that network. The rivers got connected after the huts were placed. Same for the fisherman. At any case, I was talking about the fishermen, because it was pretty clear in the end-of-game table that everybody got the same points if they wound up on a single, unified river. I finally have the manual here again. In the river section they have a section that is using just fishermen, not huts, so I assume the section is particular to fishermen. Huts are two pages away. quote:A player who alone occupies a completed river scores 1 point for each river tile, as well as 1 point for each fish in any lake terminating that river There's a separate section asking "What happens when multiple tribe members occupy one completed river or forest?" Apparently, the one with more members will score it, and they share otherwise. So I guess I just answered my own questions on that after finding that section again. The end-of-game section mentions huts share points too. Bottom Liner posted:Ignoring all of your issues with Eminent Domain, which is pretty drat straightforward, how can you read the rules, decide they're goofy, then declare them wrong? Blocking is a huge part of Carcassone and that's exactly what that rule is talking about.
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Jan 4, 2016 07:46
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Regarding Eminent Domain: I asked some of this on BoardGameGeek, so I guess I'll see from there eventually. I can't find where I had read about having to do the exact same role, so must have been hogwash in retrospect.Ralp posted:Colonize icons present in your empire (either on face-up planet cards or on a few permanent techs) are described explicitly in the rules. They just permanently lower the number of tucked colonies required to settle planets. The Colony Ship tech card makes colonies work more like fighters: instead of tucking them under a planet, you can just tuck every colony icon under the Ship card itself, and later freely redeploy them to any planet that you are ready to settle. Plus, as a free action once per turn, you can tuck one card with a colony icon under the Colony Ship. quote:Colony Ship holds Colonies. I suppose it could be something like: quote:Free Action: +1 Colony to Colony Ship
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Jan 4, 2016 07:58
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I'll respond to different topics in different posts. Carcassonne here: Real talk: do you work for Tabletop?
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Jan 4, 2016 08:04
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Bottom Liner posted:Real talk: do you work for Tabletop? Ehh, nope. What? We watched some of those some time ago but it seemed like the more seasons there were, the more tattoos Wil got, the more he transformed into a dick. We mostly just pay attention to the upcoming Tabletop season list so we can tell if we should buy a game before the actual episode airs because everybody usually sells out afterwards. For video, my wife likes to play a bunch of Rahdo, Game Night!, and some Dice Tower stuff as television background stuff though. In our experience, it gives just enough information to do something stupid trying to play these things. I think everybody's figuring that out. That being said, this past weekend was just particularly bad for it. We tried a bunch of stuff that was pretty new to all of us. I had only played Eminent Domain with my wife previously. We have played it repeatedly, but we have reached a point where we tend to both look at the same paragraph in a rule book and just assume the same thing anymore. So I had decided it was time to bring some other poor bastards in and make a mess  .When it came to Carcassonne, it looks like the one rule we actually broke was "starting an unpracticed game after midnight." The games end up taking twice as long and everybody collectively turns stupid. I remember ranting on here how terrible my first Cataan experience was. We did get smashed by the mechanics of the base game when we had played it, but the real issue was we tried to start it after midnight. Everybody else was all like "Hey gently caress hearing all the rules in details let's just wreck this thing," which we went on to do in slow, painful detail. I don't think it will bring my any faith, but we did successfully play a game of Eldritch Horror a few months ago, but it was started before midnight, you see . . . Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 08:53
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I can't find where I had read about having to do the exact same role, so must have been hogwash in retrospect. quote:How can one expect somebody to even understand that?
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Jan 4, 2016 10:04
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The best New Year's news ever: Pearl Games just announced that a reprint of Troyes is finally coming this year – although only the base game, the Ladies will follow suit "if the base game is well-received". Right, like it's going to be a flop or something, come the gently caress on PG. Also, a Deus expansion is in the works, for whoever cares about that bland thing.
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Jan 4, 2016 11:56
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I got Arctic Scavengers for Christmas and it's alright. My wife is getting depressed about the theme, especially when I suicide bombed her tribal family.
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Jan 4, 2016 13:35
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Lichtenstein posted:I'm truly enamored with the Galaxy Trucker android app (pirate boss escort mission is a bitch, though!). Any other pro board game adaptations the thread would recommend? Pandemic is pretty slick, but might feel watered down without the available On The Brink DLC. Star Realms is also not bad, but same deal - the DLC cuts down on the repetition. The only other one I really like is Zulus on the Ramparts, but now I can't seem to find it in the store (googling, it seems Victory Point opted to remove it at some point).
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Jan 4, 2016 15:16
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foxxtrot posted:Has anyone here played Catan with the deck that smooths out the probability of the dice rolling? Does that noticeably improve the game? This thing? I tried to get the people who still like Catan into the deck to make the game more bearable, and they said 'I like the dice because it means you can come from behind with bad numbers'.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:50
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silvergoose posted:I literally mentioned it today in this thread. :facepalm: This thread moves faster than my reading comprehension sometimes. sector_corrector posted:I tried to get the people who still like Catan into the deck to make the game more bearable, and they said 'I like the dice because it means you can come from behind with bad numbers'. I bet they bitch incessantly when the dice aren't going their way too. Part of what drives me nuts in Catan is simply people refusing to trade with me because I tend to win, unless I offer ridiculously one-sided deals, further dropping me into the doldrums when the dice aren't working out for me.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:11
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foxxtrot posted:Has anyone here played Catan with the deck that smooths out the probability of the dice rolling? Does that noticeably improve the game? This thing? I took two decks of playing cards to build a dice deck for Catan (Jacks for 11 and Queens for 12, just numbers without the "Events" of the deck you linked) and the biggest difference I noticed after a few games with the deck was that there was absolutely no complaining at all about numbers coming up too often or too rarely. Obviously it evens out the probabilities, and one positive comment was that because 7 comes up the "right" number of times, it keeps the robber moving and can prevent people from hoarding resources. On the flip side though, a constantly moving robber can make the game more confrontational and because a 7 comes up once every six turns it might drag the game out as people struggle to gather the resources to make big turns. Also, some people just like the dice and the randomness that comes with them. My mother for example likes the tactility of rolling the dice and that they can give runs of good or bad luck.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:34
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I absolutely loathed base Cataan due to the dice, and it kept me from unwrapping the Star Trek Cataan we had bought at a decent price. The Star Trek one has role cards, which I think is in at least a few of the other themed Cataans. It takes off a lot of the edge. You always have a role card regardless of what ever ill fortune you have. You can force a trade with one of them, outright take something with another, or substitute resources with a third.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:50
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I have never played, nor will I ever play Cataan as it astounds people that I play many board games but somehow missed Cataan on my way into this hobby. Also, why would I want to play a game widely seen as good for its day, but its day has long passed? That is my Cataan story.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:56
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I absolutely loathed base Cataan due to the dice, and it kept me from unwrapping the Star Trek Cataan we had bought at a decent price. The Star Trek one has role cards, which I think is in at least a few of the other themed Cataans. It takes off a lot of the edge. You always have a role card regardless of what ever ill fortune you have. You can force a trade with one of them, outright take something with another, or substitute resources with a third. The role cards make the experience more tolerable, and they created some for base catan. So if you absolutely must play it or w/e, buy them as a gift for whoever really likes catan.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:02
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The only Catan game worth playing is the Catan Card Game w/expansion. Tournament rules add a deckbuilding element which makes it even better. It's not great, but it's so much better than regular Catan. 2p only though. e: 3rd printing of Food Chain Magnate starts shipping tomorrow. Huzzah!
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Jan 4, 2016 17:27
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Indolent Bastard posted:I have never played, nor will I ever play Cataan as it astounds people that I play many board games but somehow missed Cataan on my way into this hobby. Also, why would I want to play a game widely seen as good for its day, but its day has long passed? You aren't alone. I've been slowly getting a consistent game night going with some friends whose boardgame experiences are all over the map--from Resistance to Pandemic to Dominion to Game of Thrones--and none of them have ever played Catan.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:36
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Bullbar posted:I got Arctic Scavengers for Christmas and it's alright. My wife is getting depressed about the theme, especially when I suicide bombed her tribal family. I pretty much prefer Dominion in every possible way.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:39
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Board with Life: Top 10 Games of 2015 10. Gold West 9. Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn 8. The Grizzled 7. Spyfall 6. Isle of Skye 5. Mysterium 4. Roll for the Galaxy 3. Codenames 2. Blood Rage 1. Orleans
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Jan 4, 2016 17:48
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I ignore all top 2015 board game lists that do not include Food Chain Magnate 
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Jan 4, 2016 17:54
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Oldstench posted:e: 3rd printing of Food Chain Magnate starts shipping tomorrow. Huzzah! How do you know? I placed an order at Splottershop a while ago back in Am I missing out on updates somewhere?
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Jan 4, 2016 18:00
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Oldstench posted:e: 3rd printing of Food Chain Magnate starts shipping tomorrow. Huzzah! This is the best news I've heard all year!
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Jan 4, 2016 18:02
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Indolent Bastard posted:Board with Life: Top 10 Games of 2015 Looking at top 10 of 2015 lists makes me realize I play a lot of older games I guess.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:04
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Mister Sinewave posted:How do you know? I placed an order at Splottershop a while ago back in https://boardgamegeek.com/article/21373544
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Jan 4, 2016 18:06
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Thanks, I was worried for a moment maybe my order wasn't as confirmed as I thought or something.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:08
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quote:8. The Grizzled Did these people didn't actually play "The Grizzled"? I mean, there's a lot to like about the game (great theme, some good ideas, novel art style) until you try playing it. It's one of the worst-designed games I've ever played.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:12
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djfooboo posted:Looking at top 10 of 2015 lists makes me realize I play a lot of older games I guess. No shame in that. I own Codenames and Spyfall and I might pick up The Grizzled. Everything else isn't to my taste or I already have a similar game. Food Chain Magnate just looks so boring that I never get hyped up for it, the art is bland, the theme is bland, nothing really intrigues me. I hope to play it at some point and be pleasantly surprised, but I will likely never pick it up myself. jmzero posted:Did these people didn't actually play "The Grizzled"? I mean, there's a lot to like about the game (great theme, some good ideas, novel art style) until you try playing it. It's one of the worst-designed games I've ever played. This actually isn't a bad thing to hear. Our tastes are so divergent that an F rating from you tends to be a plus in my mind.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:15
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Sloober posted:The role cards make the experience more tolerable, and they created some for base catan. So if you absolutely must play it or w/e, buy them as a gift for whoever really likes catan. Are those Catan Scenarios: Helpers of Catan Expansion? There are two people I work with that have the original that I think would make use out of it, so I might give them a late Christmas present. One of them had brought Catan over the one time we had a horrible run.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:21
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quote:This actually isn't a bad thing to hear. Our tastes are so divergent that an F rating from you tends to be a plus in my mind. For my part, I would actually like to hear "the other side" on Grizzled. For us, the whole group sort of gave up pretty early on; there was a lot of "Why did you buy this crap?". Once you're in that kind of thought pattern, it's hard to be objective. After the game, we sat around trying to construct situations where players would have had an interesting decision to make, or where it would have felt like the game mechanics functioned - and none of us could really see it. But maybe, again, we just got locked in a bad pattern. This has happened to us a few times before - most clearly on Quarantine - where everyone hated early plays enough that what was probably just a "mediocre game with elements that don't suit us" came through as "holy crap this is the worst game ever".
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Jan 4, 2016 18:54
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Any list about games in 2015 that doesn't include Pandemic: Legacy is a list not worth discussing. 
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Jan 4, 2016 19:42
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jmzero posted:For my part, I would actually like to hear "the other side" on Grizzled. The game can really eat you alive if you get the wrong hard knocks early. Also did you play without traps a few times? It is probably almost impossible for a new group of players to win with traps in play. The game isn't super deep, but the strategy of when to go for broke or when to play safe, when you can't table talk is pretty enjoyable.
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Jan 4, 2016 20:32
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jmzero posted:For my part, I would actually like to hear "the other side" on Grizzled. For us, the whole group sort of gave up pretty early on; there was a lot of "Why did you buy this crap?". Once you're in that kind of thought pattern, it's hard to be objective. After the game, we sat around trying to construct situations where players would have had an interesting decision to make, or where it would have felt like the game mechanics functioned - and none of us could really see it. But maybe, again, we just got locked in a bad pattern. I think the best game of a similar type might be Hanabi. The lack of communication is frustrating, but that is just part of the game. I completely understand your position, but I don't specifically agree that a game with little to no information is automatically bad. I play with a couple of (near literal) human calculators so any game that doesn't allow them to know the outcome by counting cards or otherwise crunching the numbers is a boon. The way I look at it it is cheap enough and only lasts 30 minutes. Based on those factors I can risk the purchase even if it does fizzle in the end. Any chance you want to off load your copy?
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Jan 4, 2016 20:42
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Anyone have thoughts on the game Samurai by FFG? I saw it my FLGS shop and thought it was interesting, and did not realize at the time that it's actually a reprint (remake?) of a classic game. Am I correct in deducing that it has as much in common with old parlor games as it does modern board games? I was thinking it might be something my family would like.
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Jan 4, 2016 20:50
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