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SynthOrange posted:Couldnt find Keyflowers in store locally so I pulled the trigger and ordered it online. Don't know what you're talking about it's woah gently caress  I've played this once but goddamn I want to play it again. A game where meeples are both workers as well as currency is so loving genius.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:01
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Fenn the Fool! posted:I had the exquisite honor of playing the second T.I.M.E. Stories adventure yesterday, The Marcy Case. It has all of rolling dice to waste arbitrary time units, bullshit red herring dead ends, and almost zero exposition or explanation of the plot that you've come to expect from the franchise, but this time they've managed to poo poo up the few things the first adventure, Asylum, actually did right. At least all of you got to bond over how terrible you thought the game was.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:10
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Do a lot of deck builders devolve into long turns with compound operations? I seem to wind up in that mode because I like the moving parts, but it makes my wife want to kill me. Just put your action cards in separate piles depending on how many actions they give you. When the pile of +0-action cards is bigger than the pile of +2-action cards, you're done. Also, yeah, it sounds like you used more victory cards than you're supposed to. The number of VP cards scales to the number of players, so that the game generally doesn't last very long once you get to the point where you're cycling everything every turn. Which means 1) people don't have to sit through as many mega-turns and 2) you have to be a lot more careful because by the time you assemble an engine for mega-turns you might have already lost the game, which in the long run discourages players from blindly spamming villages and the like.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:31
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Applewhite posted:At least all of you got to bond over how terrible you thought the game was. Like hell, I bet all the other players thought it was the second coming of board gaming Jesus.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:34
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MrL_JaKiri posted:If they used all 12 it's not too difficult. Kind of a trivial mistake to make for your first game. Second game, yes. Apparently my wife played with her mom first awhile ago. Her mom won, for what it's worth. I looked some of this up last night. I guess people really analyze this game. I talked to my wife a little bit more and I think deck builders are just not for her. She's frustrated if I do anything that gives more actions, or draws more cards, or does anything that prolongs the turn from beyond dispensing and using the initial hand. So that pretty much means just playing a concentrated money hand (is that what the cool kids call "Big Money?"). She doesn't want to play Trains any more either as there are usually a few actions to draw more cards or similar, and I end up wading into them. It sounds like she doesn't like these games if 40% or more of any available cards are in effect table pollution. I can't emphasize enough: even a single village is too much for her style. I am pretty sure I did have too many villages though. I had bought all but one of them across this protracted 12-province game. If we had played through the same cards again in the same order, I probably would have been destroyed. As it was, with the drawn-out effect of having too many VP cards, I bought the last province cards and still lost. I had bought some junk thinking they would have mattered more, when they never did me anything. I also shied away from getting too much extra money, and favored using my two mines to upgrade my currency. My idea was to roll out all my cards and try to use that little money to do what I needed. I didn't have enough smithies (yeap, no foundry, smithy) to increase my hand size, and I went most turns with a surplus of actions. I also didn't realize remodel let me upgrade just about anything, apparently. I thought it was just the buildings, but you can throw it apparently at everything. All I can think we can do with cards like this and still do engine stuff are games like Deus because the chains are very well-established and are pretty quick to do even at the end of the game. Half the problem with these rapid cycling strategies is how hard it is to lay everything out on your turn. So the game does slow down dramatically on my turn. She does something in 5 seconds and then I grumble for 30 seconds over the diarrhea I generated on the table in front of me as I took actions to draw and play more cards. If I just started doing that during her own turn, it would take away 5 seconds, and then make it a huge pain if she plays a militia. disperse posted:There are a couple strategies with heavy cycling that seem effective (my experience is largely playing against the Androminion AI, so I'm not sure how good these would be against a good human player):
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Jan 27, 2016 16:35
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Try playing with the Chapel in your next game.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:38
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:That is all pretty much moon language to me. Is that even in the base game? Minions are from Intrigue, Alchemists are (appropriately enough) from Alchemy. The base set of Dominion - while still pretty good - feels like an engine in need of a game in comparison to Dominion with a few expansions (esp Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity) mixed in.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:43
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:All I can think we can do with cards like this and still do engine stuff are games like Deus because the chains are very well-established and are pretty quick to do even at the end of the game. Half the problem with these rapid cycling strategies is how hard it is to lay everything out on your turn. So the game does slow down dramatically on my turn. She does something in 5 seconds and then I grumble for 30 seconds over the diarrhea I generated on the table in front of me as I took actions to draw and play more cards. If I just started doing that during her own turn, it would take away 5 seconds, and then make it a huge pain if she plays a militia. Sorry to break this to you, but from what you're saying, and from what parallels I have with my own gaming group, you're an AP-prone player. Your turns are taking a long time, and when you get multiple cards that let you prolong your turns, it starts to wear on other players. The most telling thing is that she's taking 5 second turns and you're taking 30 second turns. It makes sense, and building an engine is a fun thing to do, but it's slow. We have one dude in our group who we all let out an audible groan whenever he picks up anything in any game that lets him draw cards, since that inevitably adds 10-15 seconds or more on per turn. We have a couple of people, both brothers, who when added to a game will double the length of that game. Have you ever played 5 hour games of Kemet, 2 hour games of Bloody Inn, or 2.5 hour games of Concordia? I have, it's terrible. Don't even get me started on how long Mage Knight takes with those two. The first time I played Eclipse took about 2 hours. The last time I played Eclipse took around 8 (different players in both games, obviously). What this means is that you're going to need to learn to cut down your turn times. Consider what the end result of your engine will be, and for Dominion specifically, figure out what you're going to buy before it's your turn (i.e. 3 gold buy x, 4 gold buy y, 5 gold buy z, 8 gold buy a province). Consider playing cards differently in Dominion so that it's easier to keep track of how many actions you have and how many actions you have used. Use the table space and the way you place cards down wisely to make this easier to understand. Sit around with the game for a while and play a solo game where you're just building a deck so that you can cut down your turn times - what you learn in Dominion applies to quite a few games and will help you to develop a better game sense. Speaking as someone who used to have horrendously long turns and who cut them down significantly, the thing that has helped me the most is to look at broad strategies within a game. Figure out what you want to go for, then go for it. See what synergizes, then get it and try it. Remember that if a game takes half the time, you can play two games and try out twice as many strategies; you don't need to win every game. You'll make a lot more mistakes, but that's okay, because not only will it let the people you play with win more (which makes them happier), the games will be shorter (which makes everyone happier), and you get to try out more strategies (which should hopefully make you happier).
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Jan 27, 2016 17:11
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Dirk the Average posted:Sorry to break this to you, but from what you're saying, and from what parallels I have with my own gaming group, you're an AP-prone player 30s for playing a load of villages and smithies (especially without actually organising where you're putting them down on the table, eg by pairing them up or by having two columns) isn't exactly peak AP - I very definitively do not suffer from AP, but with action heavy Dominion decks the turns can take forever just because it physically takes that long to do everything.
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Jan 27, 2016 17:18
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Also, Domnion has close to no tactical decisions, but a lot of strategy. This means that any individual turn should require very little thinking, except in cases where you have several action cards, which you should avoid as much as possible.
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Jan 27, 2016 17:21
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BonHair posted:Also, Domnion has close to no tactical decisions, but a lot of strategy. This means that any individual turn should require very little thinking, except in cases where you have several action cards, which you should avoid as much as possible. Actually there are a number of tactical decisions to make if you're playing at a high level. The order of buys and the time to start picking up provinces are tactical decisions that vary greatly depending on what other players are doing.
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Jan 27, 2016 17:23
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MrL_JaKiri posted:30s for playing a load of villages and smithies (especially without actually organising where you're putting them down on the table, eg by pairing them up or by having two columns) isn't exactly peak AP - I very definitively do not suffer from AP, but with action heavy Dominion decks the turns can take forever just because it physically takes that long to do everything. Eh, that's fair. It's still not a great idea to take six times as long as the other person in the game - that's the source of the frustration, not the villages themselves.
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Jan 27, 2016 17:32
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Jan 27, 2016 17:49
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I think I'll argue 30 seconds isn't AP, but it is annoying with just villages. If I had a nice basket of things in front of me and I had to figure out how to make hay of it, then that's one thing. It's another that it was "village, village, village, village." Mostly I was using them as placeholders to try to draw out all my money. The only tactical decision I had to make was whether or not to keep going and see if I could buy two provinces, since I needed to catch up from the lag building that deck gave me. In truth, the lag time was too long anyways and we would have run out of provinces if we set up right. Still, I saw that stack and made a semi-informed guess at the pace. What really took a lot of time with doing them was keeping track of how many actions I had, and I was trying to be judicious about it since it was my first time, and my wife doesn't necessarily trust me when a gajillion cards come out. Not that I'm cheating, but that I'm going to fumble it. So I have to think, "One action spent, now I have zero, then I add two for my village, draw a card, play village, now I have one action, but I add two, so I have three..." when I figured out it was just an odd number series, it got much faster... down to about 12-15 seconds, at most. It's still not what I think my wife wants, which is "Card, card, card, card, card, I do this, I buy that k thx bye." MrL_JaKiri posted:Minions are from Intrigue, Alchemists are (appropriately enough) from Alchemy. Is there a particular expansion well-suited to thinner decks in general? Impermanent posted:Try playing with the Chapel in your next game. ...or should I just be doing this?
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Jan 27, 2016 18:43
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I played with a fellow I eventually could not stand. He has to read and carefully understand every card and every option always equally. So this means he can't go "oh what's this? Oh extra exploration that's not relevant to me right now nvm" Any action that expands this decision space in any way doubles whatever his current think-time is. On top of it all, he always does whatever expands his options the most. I'm one of those people who doesn't understand how a turn in e.g. 7 Wonders should take more than 7 seconds max. I hope he found a group that works for him because he does like games just not in the same way I can stand.
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Jan 27, 2016 18:59
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Is there a particular expansion well-suited to thinner decks in general? All of them. Deck thinning - barring some edge strategies like Gardens spamming - is almost always the best idea where possible. Rocko Bonaparte posted:Mostly I was using them as placeholders to try to draw out all my money An important thing to realise is that this strategy is just a waste of buys - yeah, fine once they're in your deck but the opportunity cost of having them there is pretty high given that - if you're not using the extra actions - there's no end result between playing 10 villages in sequence and then drawing a card and having 0 villages and just drawing that card in the first place. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jan 27, 2016 |
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Jan 27, 2016 18:59
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:So I have to think, "One action spent, now I have zero, then I add two for my village, draw a card, play village, now I have one action, but I add two, so I have three..." when I figured out it was just an odd number series, it got much faster... down to about 12-15 seconds, at most. It's still not what I think my wife wants, which is "Card, card, card, card, card, I do this, I buy that k thx bye. You play against my wife and I'll play against your wife and everyone has fun cruising at whatever speed floats their boat 
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Jan 27, 2016 19:04
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ugh great now we're wifeswapping.
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Jan 27, 2016 19:05
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If only there was some kind of quality, digital replica that could be played online for us to use. Alas, that is still but a fantasy in 2016, Year of Our Lord 
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Jan 27, 2016 19:05
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At least I can play 10 games a day against the AI in Dominion.net... although it's not doing any favors for my skill.
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Jan 27, 2016 19:27
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Valley of the Kings: Afterlife is a great deckbuilder with a mechanic to force you to thin your hand. This mechanic is that once per turn, you may "entomb" a card. Every card has a victory point value, a gold value, and an action associated with it. When you play a card, you are either playing it as gold to buy something, or playing it for its action. Entombing a card removes it from play, and allows you to score it at the end of game for victory points. So throughout the game you are constantly thinning your deck, but also balancing the thinning against needing to have a certain card for its powerful action or high gold value. It is a good game, and these days we pull it out as often as we do Dominion.
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Jan 27, 2016 19:51
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Mister Sinewave posted:I played with a fellow I eventually could not stand. He has to read and carefully understand every card and every option always equally. So this means he can't go "oh what's this? Oh extra exploration that's not relevant to me right now nvm" Any action that expands this decision space in any way doubles whatever his current think-time is. On top of it all, he always does whatever expands his options the most. You should set up a game of Shadows over the Empire with them. Just set it up, tell them they go first, and move on with the rest of your night.
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Jan 27, 2016 19:56
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canyoneer posted:Valley of the Kings: Afterlife is a great deckbuilder with a mechanic to force you to thin your hand. This mechanic is that once per turn, you may "entomb" a card. I like it a lot. Worth noting that the market row mechanic makes set-up a breeze, while getting rid of a lot of the problems that other games have with market rows.
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Jan 27, 2016 20:06
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I am pretty sure I did have too many villages though. I had bought all but one of them across this protracted 12-province game. If we had played through the same cards again in the same order, I probably would have been destroyed. As it was, with the drawn-out effect of having too many VP cards, I bought the last province cards and still lost. I had bought some junk thinking they would have mattered more, when they never did me anything. I also shied away from getting too much extra money, and favored using my two mines to upgrade my currency. My idea was to roll out all my cards and try to use that little money to do what I needed. I didn't have enough smithies (yeap, no foundry, smithy) to increase my hand size, and I went most turns with a surplus of actions. I also didn't realize remodel let me upgrade just about anything, apparently. I thought it was just the buildings, but you can throw it apparently at everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weO-3cWqV0A
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Jan 27, 2016 20:15
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canyoneer posted:Valley of the Kings: Afterlife ... Have you played the base version (just "Valley of the Kings"), too? I have a few times, and although I bought the expansion, I haven't wanted to bust it out yet. Was hoping for tips on what's really viable - whether first to mix them, or first play VotK;A on its own with a group, or try VotK:A's solitaire version to familiarize myself with the cards... edit: vv Oh, duh. Thanks. Mortley fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 27, 2016 |
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Jan 27, 2016 20:46
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Mortley posted:Have you played the base version (just "Valley of the Kings"), too? I have a few times, and although I bought the expansion, I haven't wanted to bust it out yet. Was hoping for tips on what's really viable - whether first to mix them, or first play VotK;A on its own with a group, or try VotK:A's solitaire version to familiarize myself with the cards... I haven't. I bought Afterlife because the base version was out of stock
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Jan 27, 2016 20:58
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Mortley posted:Have you played the base version (just "Valley of the Kings"), too? I have a few times, and although I bought the expansion, I haven't wanted to bust it out yet. Was hoping for tips on what's really viable - whether first to mix them, or first play VotK;A on its own with a group, or try VotK:A's solitaire version to familiarize myself with the cards... They have a few suggested sets on the AEG site: http://www.alderac.com/valleyofthekings/valley-of-the-kings-suggested-sets/
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Jan 27, 2016 21:02
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So I had a weird, possibly dumb idea the other night to turn Argent: the Consortium into a drinking game. Some friends of mine are excited by the prospect so I think we might actually be giving this a try. The obvious go-to is taking a drink every time one of your students winds up in the infirmary but I'm also going to try to come up with a few more conditions that hopefully won't lead to alcohol poisoning along the way. Also for those of you who've done the Codenames/Dixit crossover, how exactly are you doing it? Is it just "Like Codenames, only using Dixit cards instead of words?" Do you allow Dixit-style clues or stick with Codenames' stricter guidelines? Folks at Tuesday boardgame night were interested in trying this next week.
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Jan 27, 2016 21:29
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Mortley posted:Have you played the base version (just "Valley of the Kings"), too? I have a few times, and although I bought the expansion, I haven't wanted to bust it out yet. Was hoping for tips on what's really viable - whether first to mix them, or first play VotK;A on its own with a group, or try VotK:A's solitaire version to familiarize myself with the cards... Valley of the Kings: Afterlife is more meant to be a brand new version starter version more than just an expansion I think, like how Dominion versus Dominion:Intrigue. I think a lot of people had some balance issues with the first game, and they fixed that bit with the Afterlife version. They can still be mixed though, however the game's ending depends on when your pyramid pile runs out, so you can't just mash all of the cards together.
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Jan 27, 2016 21:47
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How is Argent: the Consortium? (normal version, although I'm down to hear your drinking game rules) I kinda liked the idea of it, but being kickstarted turned me way off, something about the art turned me off further, and what little I read of the rules sounded kinda messy? But now apparently I'm reading on boardgaminggeek that its euro style? Is it actually well balanced? How about fun?
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Jan 27, 2016 21:50
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It is well balanced and fun if you like euros with a good amount of direct interaction and fighting. It's not a simple mechanical beauty like Keyflower but the chrome and fiddly components of it work to its advantage. It actually reminds me of a lot of Vital Lacerda's designs but with a more maximalist approach. Instead of competing just about worker spaces or positioning you can also do negative effects and push people out of spaces In terms of weight I'd say it's solidly middle-tier.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:05
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Played Viticulture and did basically nothing but give tours and sell grapes for points. I only got 3 points from fulfilling orders, and I got 10 points in the last turn thanks to cards + that order. Is this a normal game of Viticulture?
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Jan 27, 2016 22:06
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TastyLemonDrops posted:Played Viticulture and did basically nothing but give tours and sell grapes for points. I only got 3 points from fulfilling orders, and I got 10 points in the last turn thanks to cards + that order. Is this a normal game of Viticulture? It is certainly a strategy, one I have only seen get as high as 2nd place, but a strategy nonetheless. Once your engine gets churning orders give you so many drat points and income.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:10
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TastyLemonDrops posted:Played Viticulture and did basically nothing but give tours and sell grapes for points. I only got 3 points from fulfilling orders, and I got 10 points in the last turn thanks to cards + that order. Is this a normal game of Viticulture? This also happened in the first couple games of Viticulture my group played until people wised up and started competing more heavily for tour and grape spaces. If everyone else in the game focuses on fulfilling wine orders it's an easy win but once everyone in the game starts aiming for more diverse strategies it's much harder to win this way.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:10
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Zaphod42 posted:How is Argent: the Consortium? (normal version, although I'm down to hear your drinking game rules) I kinda liked the idea of it, but being kickstarted turned me way off, something about the art turned me off further, and what little I read of the rules sounded kinda messy? But now apparently I'm reading on boardgaminggeek that its euro style? Is it actually well balanced? How about fun? In no particular order, I bought it long after it was Kickstarted but Level 99 isn't a fly-by-night company, they produce pretty decent games and aren't hucksters shilling snake-oil, they seem to know what they're doing enough that I backed the Millennium Blades Kickstarter and it seems to be proceeding right on track. I know that "don't Kickstart board games" is kind of a thread rule and all but a game being Kickstarted at some point in its history shouldn't be an inherent black mark against it. Argent is a game that by all rights should be a complete clusterfuck but it somehow actually works really well and is a fun, good game that so far hasn't fallen apart to degenerate strategies or anything so while it's very, very difficult for me to look at a game with as many variables as it has and go "yep, this is balanced" I'd say it qualifies as such. It's a worker placement game where you're playing as the various department heads of a magical college when the Chancellor announces his surprise retirement and you have one week to curry as much favor with the Consortium board of voters as you can to try and persuade them to vote you in as the new head of the school. That's the victory condition, get a majority of votes at the end of the game. The trick is that there are 12 voters, only two of which are public knowledge at the start of the game, the rest are hidden info that you can either try and learn for yourself as the game goes on to tailor your approach or you can say "gently caress it" and just try to cover a wide variety of bases and get by that way. The game comes with a bunch of different voters and you randomly select which ones are used each time you play so no two games will have exactly the same victory conditions to aim for. It's a game with a lot of replayability. You make the school where your workers get placed out of a bunch of room tiles, each of which has two sides with different layouts/payoffs, and so there's a huge amount of variety there, it's a school for wizards so naturally you have spells you can purchase with different levels of power to research over time, there are magic items for you to use, school supporters to collect, and even the workers themselves all have special abilities which forms a key gameplay component...some workers can be placed as special "fast" actions freeing up your turn for other stuff, some workers can blast opponents' workers into the infirmary and take their spots, some workers are immune to being blasted, etc. So part of the strategy isn't just "which spots do I take and when" it's "which of my workers do I use to take which spots knowing which workers my opponents have?" It's been a hit with my game group, one of my friends considers it her favorite game ever and it's certainly my favorite worker placement game. The downsides to it are that it has a huge table footprint, the rules aren't messy exactly but there are some rooms/spells/etc. that aren't as clear-cut as they could be (there are FAQs by the designer posted to BGG and such though, so it isn't unsupported in that regard), and it's not a lightweight game that you can throw casual acquaintances into the deep end with, it's a high intensity game that can be a bit of a brain-burner especially with 4+ players.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:10
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djfooboo posted:It is certainly a strategy, one I have only seen get as high as 2nd place, but a strategy nonetheless. Once your engine gets churning orders give you so many drat points and income. I did win that game though. The card draws are so random as to whether they'll be useful to you that it seems better to go for the sure but slow and steady route.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:11
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Argent is kind of like... the Twilight Imperium of euros It's pretty loving cool
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Jan 27, 2016 22:13
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Dre2Dee2 posted:Argent is kind of like... the Twilight Imperium of euros The difference being you can finish a game of Argent in three hours or less.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:17
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I liked playing Dominion with my brother and my nephew over the holidays. It all went pretty fast, we just pile up any +ap cards we play to keep track of them. Then the nephew sometimes rushes ahead and finishes his turn and we go 'Wait what the gently caress just happened?' so we go back and count up all his points. About 1/4 of the time he messes up, but not bad for a 10 year old 
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Jan 27, 2016 22:20
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Zaphod42 posted:How is Argent: the Consortium? (normal version, although I'm down to hear your drinking game rules) I kinda liked the idea of it, but being kickstarted turned me way off, something about the art turned me off further, and what little I read of the rules sounded kinda messy? But now apparently I'm reading on boardgaminggeek that its euro style? Is it actually well balanced? How about fun? Disclaimer: I have only played with five players and have not played the expansions. My experience with Argent was that you have four opponents, and each of them has four spells, and each of those spells is actually three different spells stacked on top of each other, and also they have a half-dozen magic items and supporters each, and you can't see what any of them do because the table is enormous. But if you don't keep track of every line of text on them, anything you do could backfire horribly. You also can't tell at a glance whose workers are whose, because ownership is distinguished not by the figurine's color but by the color of a small cardboard chit on one side of the figurine, and all their colors are very dark and washed-out and hard to distinguish without looking closely. Basically, I find it unnecessarily difficult to keep track of the game-state, which isn't a complaint I remember having about any other game I've played. The way end of game scoring works is that each player gets one "vote" for each of twelve categories in which they did best, then whoever got the most votes wins. Two of the categories are publicly known, but the other ten are secret. Each player knows one of the secret categories, and can learn a couple more over the course of the game if they go out of their way to do so, so the idea seems to be that you watch your opponents to figure out what categories they're going for and then, having learned that those categories exist, try to win them. In theory, this should be an interesting read-the-other-players dynamic. But the gamestate is much too cluttered for that to be reasonably doable. I can't tell at a glance what each opponent is doing because everyone's workers look the same, and yet you expect me to keep track of the treasures-to-consumables ratio of the vault items each opponent is purchasing? Even if you can keep track of what everyone else is doing, it's usually too vague to figure out what categories they're going for. Someone who's getting a lot of wisdom might be trying for the Most Wisdom category. Or they might be trying for the Most Research category, since wisdom is one of the two things you might need for research. Or they might be trying for the Most Mana category, since you gain more mana if you have more wisdom. Or they might be trying for any of the five "Most Stuff In This Color" categories. Or they might just want to level up their spells to do more stuff, and the wisdom might not be related to the secret category they've seen at all. Sometimes it does become obvious that someone is going for a category, but by that point either the game is already over, or they've gotten so far ahead in that category that it's too late for you to catch up. Out of the sixteen possible secret categories, more than half are in play, so each game I've played the winner has been someone who just stacked a lot of IP, collected a lot of general goodstuff, and tried to win several overlapping categories that they weren't sure actually existed, of which enough happened to exist that they won. The game's approach to balance seems to be to just include so much stuff that nobody can actually figure it out. All the rooms, base spells, and worker colors have A and B versions, so there's enough variation from game to game that it's hard to figure out if anything in particular is broken. That being said, after our first game we all drafted pink and black mages (using the A versions) super heavily because action economy is important enough that being able to place them for free made them seem significantly better than the other colors, especially blue/green. I don't know if they're actually stronger, but we haven't been proved wrong yet. It's fun, but got drat every aspect of the game seems to just throw as much as it can at a wall and see what sticks. I feel like I'd like it a lot better if the visual design weren't so bad.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:22
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