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FulsomFrank posted:All this talk about Keyflower has me this close to pulling the trigger on it. Are the expansions any good and worth grabbing with it or should I hold off? Keyflower doesn't need any expansions to be "complete", it's an amazing game right out of the box. The expansions both add new ways to score VP that are completely different than the base game. Farmers adds a Carcassonne-esque setup of gaining points from placing animals in fields. Merchants has a contracts system that lets you acquire personal VP objectives that can't be taken away. Opinions as to which is better seems mixed, but both are nice as they change the direction of the game without making the base feel "incomplete". But short version, no, you don't need them.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:05
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I played a bit of Elder Sign over the weekend, since my roomie got it for Christmas and he wanted to try it out. I actually enjoyed it. We blazed through Yig, had a somewhat tense match against Azatoth. I was sitting around today and tried a single player game, and hated it. I guess the teamwork and planning aspect is really the meat of the game, because otherwise it feels like frustrating Yahtzee. One rule I thought I remembered from the app, but couldn't find in the rulebook was a limit on items / spells. Is there a limit on how many a character can hold, or is it unlimited?
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Jan 25, 2016 20:19
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homullus posted:"The Mechanic is the Message" is a take on games that's more explicit than the more nebulous "conveyance." The very essence of worker placement games is that workers are more or less interchangeable, sometimes expendable, and that some or all of an economy is a zero-sum game. I'd say picking on the Holocaust is pretty heavy-handed, but I'm not sure it's in poor taste. Agree. The Problem with Train is not that it tackles a difficult subject, but that it doesn't let the mechanics of the game do enough heavy lifting. A few extra rules should have come in when what you're doing is revealed. Faced with what you're doing, you now have more options on how to be the most efficient - but is that what you want to do?
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Jan 25, 2016 20:21
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Bought Bunny Bunny Moose Moose. I'll add it to the Vlaada pile. I imagine it's good.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:23
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sector_corrector posted:I played a bit of Elder Sign over the weekend, since my roomie got it for Christmas and he wanted to try it out. I actually enjoyed it. We blazed through Yig, had a somewhat tense match against Azatoth. I was sitting around today and tried a single player game, and hated it. I guess the teamwork and planning aspect is really the meat of the game, because otherwise it feels like frustrating Yahtzee. There is no limit The General posted:Bought Bunny Bunny Moose Moose. I'll add it to the Vlaada pile. I imagine it's good. It's good at making people look stupid. The instruction manual makes a point of this, it also is deceptively difficult with advance cards.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:52
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The General posted:Bought Bunny Bunny Moose Moose. I'll add it to the Vlaada pile. I imagine it's good. Sadly, this was (so far) Vlaada's one miss with me. Yes, it's silly fun, and yes, it has a brilliant rulebook with good humor (including making fun of people who are too afraid to look silly to play this game), but the actual gameplay fell a bit flat. I found the scoring to be a bit tedious, especially with a large group of players, and there's a "rubber band" mechanic that tends to make all the scoring seem a bit pointless since all the scores are confined to a small range. I will say that this is based off of only one play, so maybe more play will show more of a skill difference.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:20
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Drink more. That's the key.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:40
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Impermanent posted:Agree. The Problem with Train is not that it tackles a difficult subject, but that it doesn't let the mechanics of the game do enough heavy lifting. A few extra rules should have come in when what you're doing is revealed. Faced with what you're doing, you now have more options on how to be the most efficient - but is that what you want to do? Or a mechanic in which you _can_ figure out what you were doing, but it costs you something - to discover the horror, and afterward. There's an idea kicking around in social science that part of the reason why the Confederacy's economy never took off was because of slavery's psychological toll on the slavers, not just (and much more obviously) on the slaves. Maybe reduced efficiency is the price of knowledge (which I would think was less avoidable/deniable in the South than in Nazi Germany). Then again, the only thing I know about Train is the article above, and maybe it just didn't do justice to the mechanics as message idea.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:51
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Train gets all the buzz, despite historicity issues, but I think Siochan Leat is actually the more interesting execution of her mechanic-is-the-message concept. It's about Cromwell's ruthless invasion of Ireland in the mid-1600s, and the resulting catastrophic famines. Rather than relying on historical gotchas, the game just gives you less and less space to play your area control farming game in until meeples start to starve and die.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:15
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Caros posted:I really fail to see how anyone would be shocked by the 'revelation' with the Auschwitz card. You are playing a game involving 1930's era communications, on a table covered in broken glass where you load figures representing people onto a train. There were people who figured out what it was by how it was presented and refused to play. Those who played in the face of the evidence before the big reveal probably needed the history lesson. Doesn't seem tasteless or egregious to me. If you can't contextualise the horror, you needed the lesson.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:15
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The Mensa game list from a few pages back sparked a faint memory of really enjoying Clue: the Great Museum Caper twenty years ago at a friend's place. Is the game actually good or was I a particularly dull child? And since it's been out of print forever, are there any games that capture the same feel?
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Jan 25, 2016 22:38
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Gutter Owl posted:Train gets all the buzz, despite historicity issues, but I think Siochan Leat is actually the more interesting execution of her mechanic-is-the-message concept. It's about Cromwell's ruthless invasion of Ireland in the mid-1600s, and the resulting catastrophic famines. Rather than relying on historical gotchas, the game just gives you less and less space to play your area control farming game in until meeples start to starve and die. If you would like another fine example of "mechanic-is-the-message" board games, about Irish people starving (this time in the 19th century), you could check out my Agricola clone Feirmeoir. It adds a push your luck mechanic to the normal Agricola formula in the form of Potatoes, a super crop that can makes food engines easily, but that fails at random a certain percentage of games. But of course, the game is balanced such that you can not easily win and survive without growing potatoes  https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175694/feirmeoir 
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Jan 25, 2016 22:40
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Y'all should play Navajo Wars.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:41
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Bottom Liner posted:How good is that Vassal module? Does it automate anything or is it just a graphical interface? It's very, very, good. It automates setup at the beginning of each round, everything else is left up to you.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:04
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The End posted:There were people who figured out what it was by how it was presented and refused to play. You are probably right, I sometimes forget that perspective is relative. It seems so obvious to me, but I'm sure even I know people who would look at the Grand reveal and still be confused.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:15
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disperse posted:It's very, very, good. It automates setup at the beginning of each round, everything else is left up to you. Awesome. I haven't picked up my Lost Legion expansion from CSI yet so this will be great in the mean time.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:20
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Tekopo posted:Y'all should play Navajo Wars. Not an empty quote.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:24
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Like the game was made with quite a bit of feedback from one of the larger museums on Navajo culture. It also has a weird balance of how the Spanish/Mexican/Americans attempt to attack you, and in the end the game becomes a tricky balance of having to raid to impede the colonists and stop them encroaching, but the more you raid, the more aggressive your opponents will be, and the more punitive their raids will be. It has a lot to tell about the era.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:40
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Gutter Owl posted:Train gets all the buzz, despite historicity issues, but I think Siochan Leat is actually the more interesting execution of her mechanic-is-the-message concept. It's about Cromwell's ruthless invasion of Ireland in the mid-1600s, and the resulting catastrophic famines. Rather than relying on historical gotchas, the game just gives you less and less space to play your area control farming game in until meeples start to starve and die. I thought Train's "thing" wasn't the mechanics being the message but more that it's the Milgram Experiment in boardgame form, which is interesting. (That observation was from someone else and Train didn't make a lick of sense to me until I thought of it that way. I had to look it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment ) Anyway the idea is that you're playing this game then realize you're stuffing Jews into cattle cars. At this point people react in a variety of ways. For example, a player may feel icky and may do a 180 and intentionally underload a train car or find some other way to subvert the game rules. The point is that people might try to subvert the rules due to their new knowledge but they will often still acknowledge the implicit authority of the game rules and their agreement to play and still play the game despite trying to sink it or "win" in a different way. In other words the game rules are taking the place of the authority figure who is simply telling them "the experiment requires that you continue", and they frequently do continue (in one way or another.) It makes total sense to go "well I agreed before but now things have changed in a way I don't like and it's just made-up boardgame rules anyway that aren't actually the boss of me in any way whatsoever so bye". Or just make up a new game on the spot and declare that you're now carting hay bales to Jupiter to be happy forever (since it's all made up anyway and you completely have the freedom to do that if you so wished) but it just doesn't normally work out that way.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:41
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I thought he point of Train is that you don't discover the truth until the very end, which is why it is unlike the Milgram experiment because there was no deception by omission (well, apart from the actors screaming) in that experiment.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:44
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Maybe I'm wrong about that part, it sounds more like just an introspective thought experiment thing in that case.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:48
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Tekopo posted:I thought he point of Train is that you don't discover the truth until the very end, which is why it is unlike the Milgram experiment because there was no deception by omission (well, apart from the actors screaming) in that experiment. No, you discover about ten or fifteen minutes the game, after you deliver your first trainload of victims. The game then tells you to run your train back and pick up more.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:49
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Rutibex posted:If you would like another fine example of "mechanic-is-the-message" board games, about Irish people starving (this time in the 19th century), you could check out my Agricola clone Feirmeoir. It adds a push your luck mechanic to the normal Agricola formula in the form of Potatoes, a super crop that can makes food engines easily, but that fails at random a certain percentage of games. But of course, the game is balanced such that you can not easily win and survive without growing potatoes This sounds neat. Now I kind of want to see an economic farming game where some crops are better than others but have a higher chance of going bust. Something where the blights are secretly determined at the start of the game so you have no idea what would happen or not. Hell, it probably already exists.
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Jan 26, 2016 00:26
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Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub
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Jan 26, 2016 01:30
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub Hive I guess?? Do you mean like, underwater?
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Jan 26, 2016 01:31
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub marbles
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Jan 26, 2016 01:32
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub Cards against humanity.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:34
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub
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Jan 26, 2016 01:34
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub almost any card game works, if you laminate the cards (I have done this before with resistance, it kind of works)
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Jan 26, 2016 01:34
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So does train allow you to more efficiently pack people into cars at later stages of the game or what? Reading about it, it seems to be more ameritrashy that relies heavily on theme and components but I'd be disappointed since the premise could make for a good euro. Just gotta up that efficiency and action economy.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:36
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EvilChameleon posted:Could you (or anyone who has played it) kindly write some more words about this one? I like the looks of it and I am a fan of Keyflower and some games that look more cutesy and less like Chaos in the Old World would be nice on my shelf. I don't know what world you live in where this game looks less terrifying than Chaos in the Old World 
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Jan 26, 2016 01:59
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The_Doctor posted:Bay Area Regional Planner a game about the San Francisco housing crisis. That would be the most boring game ever. You'd put together your plans, and then get shut down by NIMBY bullshit so you'd never be able to make any progress.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:04
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bobvonunheil posted:I don't know what world you live in where this game looks less terrifying than Chaos in the Old World More like Inhale The Earth.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:27
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I would imagine a lot of issue based board gaming suffers from similar problems that issue based video games suffer from: games are mechanical systems that are typically set up to instill feelings of mastery in their players. You can design games mechanically to be frustrating, and tie this to a theme (digitally, http://jayisgames.com/games/dys4ia/ Dys4ia or http://www.darfurisdying.com/ Darfur Is Dying), but neither of these are necessarily good or fun games to play. Reducing these ideas to simulations also cheapens them. Are you really, in any way, helping your player to understand that life in Darfur is difficult because you've made a mechanically unfair game? I'd say, "absolutely not." So, at some point, you need to put feelings of mastery into the game. Train does this with the ol' switch-a-roo, where it asks you to develop a gameplay skill, and then says, "Oh, actually you're a Nazi." Hilariously, the game "Playing History: Slave Trade" did this too with Slave Tetris.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:35
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Bottom Liner posted:Awesome. I haven't picked up my Lost Legion expansion from CSI yet so this will be great in the mean time. You'll have to contact Benkyo via BGG to request the Vassal module that includes the Lost Legion expansion. The one available on the Vassal site is the base box only.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:46
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Little_wh0re posted:Odd request: suggestions for a board game that could be played in a hot tub I'm not sure this is a serious request, but Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective can be played almost anywhere and doesn't require a tabletop. If you're careful, you wouldn't even need to laminate the handouts.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:49
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You're in a hottub. Probably drinking. You'll want to waterproof the everything. I've actually had this discussion, and a wooden cribbage board would float, and plastic cards wouldn't get ruined. How big is your hottub? How many players?
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Jan 26, 2016 02:54
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Indian poker would be a good one too.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:55
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Campaign for North Africa in a swimming pool??
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Jan 26, 2016 02:57
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Mage Knight. Laminate all parts and just houserule the tiles drifting away into a game mechanic.
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