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The Grey posted:I'm not sure this is the right place for this, but... It takes up a bit more space than some other suggestions, but Patchwork is made for two players and plays in like 30 minutes.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:42
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Does anyone know where to find the Greece vs the Eastern Kingdoms expansion for Command and Colors: Ancients? US or Canada would be ideal. It doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere, and last time I saw it on Amazon it was over $100.
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Feb 28, 2016 06:34
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Gilgameshback posted:Does anyone know where to find the Greece vs the Eastern Kingdoms expansion for Command and Colors: Ancients? US or Canada would be ideal. It doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere, and last time I saw it on Amazon it was over $100. Do you believe in the power of prayer?
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Feb 28, 2016 07:00
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Bottom Liner posted:Jaipur is the best game for non gamers I've found yet. Endlessly replayable and no more complicated than traditional deck card games. It's our go to travel game. Seconding Jaipur. For me and my wife, Jaipur goes way better than Hive. Hive is too brain-burny sometimes as you try think several moves into the future like you would in chess, while Jaipur is easier to play without ever thinking more than a turn or two ahead. It has enough randomness to make your plays uncertain (which makes it easier to play, since you know that the difference between the optimal move and an okay move is up to the luck of the draw.) But Hive is cool, too, as long as you make sure to take turns going first, since 1st player has a very significant advantage, to the extent that when I play against myself on my phone, I have never once had me2 beat me1. It's basically a race and second player starts a turn behind and has to trick 1st player into dropping a turn to take the lead - and since I'm playing against myself, the whole trickery thing doesn't really work.
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Feb 28, 2016 07:40
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Gilgameshback posted:Does anyone know where to find the Greece vs the Eastern Kingdoms expansion for Command and Colors: Ancients? US or Canada would be ideal. It doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere, and last time I saw it on Amazon it was over $100. Click here and your dreams wll come true
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Feb 28, 2016 13:24
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Went to game night yesterday, and I keep wishing for a crowd that I can sucker into the heavier euro / economic side of things (I was so close to a game of Pax Porfiriana guys!). Here's what I played instead: Started out with Skull because it's good and lightning-fast filler. Explaining the turn structure tends to make new players trip over themselves (especially that you have to flip all the discs on your own stack first if you win a bid), but once things get going it's just a good, quick game of bluffing and pushing your luck. I aced that play of it. I've also been putting all the discs players lose under the box lid and calling it the "Shame Box." I recommend this for any game of Skull. Side note: gently caress "players" who just randomly pick a card from their hand without looking. That is the most literal way you can not participate in a game while still affecting it. Ugh. Thankfully nobody did that last night bug gently caress. Then moved onto San Juan, which despite lacking the lower-luck of Puerto Rico I'm more glad I own this game moreso. San Juan advantages: 2-4 player-count fits who I play with way better. The game is quicker and less complicated, again a plus for what I want out of this level of game. And I don't know why, but I'd rather have the card-gently caress-luck of San Juan over Puerto Rico's "well poo poo that experienced player is sitting to the left of the newbie I guess he's got the game" syndrome. I mean, that's still there in San Juan's drafting, but I'm going to blasphemy and say that card-luck does cause that complaint to happen less (because people can call bullshit on their bad hand instead. Yay?). Still, 45 minute Puerto-Rico card game over 90-minute Puerto Rico board game with a 2-player out-of-box version just fits what I need in my collection better. Concordia: I ended up being sold on this by SU&SD's review. Bought it, the expansion, and the extra board. Actually I really like this one. I like how it takes a very loose take on deck-building and maps it to the network-city/blocking elements of Power-Grid. The victory point system in that game is ingenious. It elegantly sidesteps "point-salad" syndrome by basically letting your acquired action cards also having each card score a certain VP condition again. Basically the strategy to the game is balancing out your power-grid'ing style network/blocking with getting as many cards of what you have advantage on in the board. The expansion adds a joker resource (salt) that is great for spending on buildings and costs but worthless as a trade resource. Glad I got this one: it fits well into the "90-minute euro" group that I somehow ended up getting less and less games of over time in trade of "3-hour heavy euro" because my eyes are bigger than my common sense. It should be noted that my group viewed Concordia as a worker placement games. I guess because there are meeples on the board that you move and they are needed for building things. It's not a worker placement, guys; it's card-drafting/"hand-building" networking. Know your genres jeez  At this point we started moving to other players' games because, frankly, even if I'm going to goon it up here, any game group meetup things just work better if you can compromise and play games that are poo poo by goon-standard if it means I can get more leverage to push the games I actually like. This means that I played Blood Bowl: Team Manager with five players (apparently the expansion adds that option). I got second place in the end, but...ugh. I played Baseball Highlights 2045 a while back and would rather have played that again if I'm doing "sports match deck-builder." I can't say anything about balance in the first play of a game, but I will say if there's going to be asymmetric card play I'd rather it come from a deck/faction that you'll know is going to be the same one next game against the same asymmetric factions (Chaos in the Old World, Here I Stand/Virgin Queen). As it stands, the amount of randomization both in setups and during the game (really, we need dice along with the already random card draws? Oh and cheat tokens too?) just kind of make this game feel like the bullshit you get from Ascension rather than something of a more palatable deck-builder (let alone a balanced, good game like Dominion). Maybe I wouldn't call this game poo poo if it played in a reasonable time for the randomness. With five players, 90 minutes of Blood Bowl: Team Manager definitely makes me want to never play this game again. Speaking of goon-hated games, though, after this we somehow compromised on Cosmic Encounter (the other choices were Smallworld and Lords of Vegas). Basically all the talk of its brokenness and how essentially if players try to play it strategically the "n-1 players win" result will happen still completely holds up. The amount of random effects and how players feel they want to win kind of fucks over strategic play. I'm pretty sure Cosmic Encounter is secretly a party game buried under a bunch of strategy jargon. Instead of playing a strategy game, basically we ended the game in like half an hour or so with absurd negotiation results and some utterly stupid power interactions. We got some laughs at the expense of the game and I think that's about the best experience you can draw out of Cosmic. The utterly wide range of setups that can make any given play bullshit or at least enjoyably stupid is like Betrayal except with mock-diplomacy instead of wandering around a board and then getting confused at a scenario book. The next game up was going to be Lords of Vegas but at that point I was either going to play that game with a headache from not eating anything for 10+ hours or just going and getting a good meal and not finding out how much I like 2d6's in a euro. Though if anyone wants to say good things about the game do tell, it keeps getting pushed at my group and if it's not terrible, well, I can avoid Cosmic and Blood Bowl more. Sad game group things: one player won't play Food Chain Magnate because of how his first play went (a guy who doesn't get angry at games wanting to table-flip at how screwed he got), and another won't play Le Havre because its "unfair worker-placement bullshit" to paraphrase (oh thread, this guy has terrible opinions). Oh well, I can still get some of the stuff I like on the table there. Just have to trade it out with some...less ideal games from time to time. EDIT: Should be noted we were really close to getting Forbidden Stars to the table but the group members jumped to 5-player before we could set the time for it. Trynant fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 15:52
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Trynant posted:Concordia: I ended up being sold on this by SU&SD's review. Bought it, the expansion, and the extra board. Actually I really like this one. I like how it takes a very loose take on deck-building and maps it to the network-city/blocking elements of Power-Grid. The victory point system in that game is ingenious. It elegantly sidesteps "point-salad" syndrome by basically letting your acquired action cards also having each card score a certain VP condition again. Basically the strategy to the game is balancing out your power-grid'ing style network/blocking with getting as many cards of what you have advantage on in the board. The expansion adds a joker resource (salt) that is great for spending on buildings and costs but worthless as a trade resource. Glad I got this one: it fits well into the "90-minute euro" group that I somehow ended up getting less and less games of over time in trade of "3-hour heavy euro" because my eyes are bigger than my common sense. Your turn to spend money, bitch: check out Mombasa.
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Feb 28, 2016 17:03
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Trynant posted:The next game up was going to be Lords of Vegas but at that point I was either going to play that game with a headache from not eating anything for 10+ hours or just going and getting a good meal and not finding out how much I like 2d6's in a euro. Though if anyone wants to say good things about the game do tell, it keeps getting pushed at my group and if it's not terrible, well, I can avoid Cosmic and Blood Bowl more. I personally love Lords of Vegas, but based on the rest of your post and your response to some of the games, my guess is LoV would not be something you'd enjoy a lot. It's a game of high randomness, and trying to play the odds to mitigate that randomness as much as possible. You get randomly dealt starting plots on the board to build off of, some of which are simply better overall and can drive someone into a leading position very early on, followed by random dealing of new plots and in turn VP payout, which you can try to estimate based on how much certain card types have already paid out, but it's still pretty random. Then you can get hosed by random die rolls if someone decides to gamble in your casino and take a bunch of your money (there's a recommended variant that has the bank covering half of this if it's a major concern, but eh). You can mitigate that to a degree as well, namely by not stockpiling a bunch of money and thus not being a target to get cleaned out, but all in all lots of random chance can hose you no matter what you do to plan for it. It's pretty thematic in that sense, as it really captures the essence of gambling and what not, but that means that sometimes you go out on a limb for something and still get burned, and may not have a chance to recover from it. Throw in the ability to trade and negotiate with players for belongings and you can find yourself facing off against a kingmaker in a losing position who decides to trade off a valuable real estate to your closest competitor and give them the game. All in all lots of what people here would consider fatal flaws in a game. Again though...still a favorite of mine and many of my friends, as the theme goes a long way if you're a fan of casinos/Vegas/gambling.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:12
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The SU&SD review of 504 has to be one of the least motivated reviews I have ever seen. And it seems, for good reason.
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Feb 28, 2016 19:56
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Tekopo posted:The SU&SD review of 504 has to be one of the least motivated reviews I have ever seen. And it seems, for good reason. I was really intrigued by this game when I first heard about it but I'm not at all surprised by how it turned out, and the review seemed to be pretty solid evidence of that.
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Feb 28, 2016 20:22
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Played my first game of Puerto Rico yesterday, have to say that I understand why it's so well regarded. Then played half a game of A touch of Evil and wondered about my friend's taste in boardgames if those two are sharing a shelf.
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Feb 28, 2016 20:25
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Trynant posted:This means that I played Blood Bowl: Team Manager with five players (apparently the expansion adds that option). I got second place in the end, but...ugh. I played Baseball Highlights 2045 a while back and would rather have played that again if I'm doing "sports match deck-builder." I can't say anything about balance in the first play of a game, but I will say if there's going to be asymmetric card play I'd rather it come from a deck/faction that you'll know is going to be the same one next game against the same asymmetric factions (Chaos in the Old World, Here I Stand/Virgin Queen). As it stands, the amount of randomization both in setups and during the game (really, we need dice along with the already random card draws? Oh and cheat tokens too?) just kind of make this game feel like the bullshit you get from Ascension rather than something of a more palatable deck-builder (let alone a balanced, good game like Dominion). Maybe I wouldn't call this game poo poo if it played in a reasonable time for the randomness. With five players, 90 minutes of Blood Bowl: Team Manager definitely makes me want to never play this game again. I actually really enjoy the base game of Blood Bowl: Team Manager but is the dice rolling part of the expansion? I find that the cheating token mechanic is a really nice balance of risk vs. reward as some players are super good but have a chance of swaying your points one way or another, but adding dice to this game seems like it would really ruin an otherwise decent game. I haven't ever heard good things about the expansions for this game, but I recommend trying it again with just the base if the amount of randomness turned you off.
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Feb 28, 2016 20:41
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Radioactive Toy posted:I actually really enjoy the base game of Blood Bowl: Team Manager but is the dice rolling part of the expansion? I find that the cheating token mechanic is a really nice balance of risk vs. reward as some players are super good but have a chance of swaying your points one way or another, but adding dice to this game seems like it would really ruin an otherwise decent game. I haven't ever heard good things about the expansions for this game, but I recommend trying it again with just the base if the amount of randomness turned you off. It's in the base game. Every tackle you do involves the dice, as does some special abilities.
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Feb 28, 2016 20:58
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Yoshimo posted:It's in the base game. Every tackle you do involves the dice, as does some special abilities. Whoops, yep you're right. I guess it's been a while since I played it. I'll have to try it again but I remember enjoying it a lot.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:18
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If there weren't dice it just wouldn't be Bloodbowl. It's great theming.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:20
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Played some Roll for the Galaxy yesterday for the first time since I got it. Then we played it again, and again, and a fourth time later. It's pretty good!
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Feb 28, 2016 21:22
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Tekopo posted:The SU&SD review of 504 has to be one of the least motivated reviews I have ever seen. And it seems, for good reason. From the looks of 504, it seems like someone filled a box with $10 worth of bits and bobs from the dollar store crafts section, then figured out a way to sell it to people for $90. 504s gimmick of "procedurally generated games" is not very good, an interesting concept that doesn't deliver. I much prefer the Piece Pack for a generic game piece system, which actually has some coherent games to play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3IGn7SK0fI Rutibex fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 21:41
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It's unsurprising that 504 (to quote the review) "doesn't really work." Power Grid sort of hangs together limply and has an incredibly bad rulebook considering how many printings its gone through. In fact "doesn't really work" probably sums up Friedmann Friese's designs which is a shame because he seems like a pretty nice dude.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:52
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The 504 rulebook look like a modular nightmare.
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Feb 28, 2016 22:21
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I already get annoyed at just having to teach Concordia, which is one of the simplest games around. I would probably throw the Action 504 rulebook across the room. The components do look pretty well made, though. I'm also glad that Paul did the review since if Quinns did it it would be 15 minutes of cocaine fueled excitement over the amount of physical stuff followed by AH HAH IT'S poo poo.
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Feb 28, 2016 22:30
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Played some Roll for the Galaxy yesterday for the first time since I got it. Then we played it again, and again, and a fourth time later. It's pretty good! Lately I've been wishing I picked up Roll instead of Race, because I might be able to get my friends to play with me. Yesterday I got one game of Race in, and there were four games of multiplayer Magic. 
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Feb 28, 2016 22:48
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Lately I've been wishing I picked up Roll instead of Race, because I might be able to get my friends to play with me. Yesterday I got one game of Race in, and there were four games of multiplayer Magic. It was the first time ever that there was no MtG going on, clearly Roll is itself magic!!!!!!!- 
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Feb 28, 2016 23:14
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Tekopo posted:The SU&SD review of 504 has to be one of the least motivated reviews I have ever seen. And it seems, for good reason. 504 is 30 or 40 decent games that were cherry picked for demo purposes and 450+ mediocre to bad games that don't work or last too long. It's a brilliant and brave idea, though.
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Feb 28, 2016 23:30
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It's probably better than Stonehenge. Someday I'll make a game with those pieces.
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Feb 28, 2016 23:38
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Which game is going to win big at the Oscars™ tonight
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Feb 29, 2016 02:25
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Recent picked up Lost Cities to play with spouse and it is fantastic. Light hearted and quick to play, and we like that each player has so much control over their fate. I never feel like I lost because of random chance. Random question, what are reasons for the forums hating Touch of Evil? I've played it a ton as a friend of a friend knows the designers and has most of their catalog, and it has always been a solid entry for game night. The mechanic of a different type of game depending on the monster is fun (running from the werewolf, hunting the vampire, beating the zombie horde) and building up a hero's inventory is fun. I liked the wide variety of heroes from the militia leader, the monk, and the Batman analogue. The base game is a little limited, but it was a ton of fun with the first expansion (although the second expansion did get too sprawling). I know it's not Dominion-good, but I am curious about why it is so disliked?
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Feb 29, 2016 02:42
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Setting up a nTTA game. First three to join are welcome. Game name is goongame, pw is stairs.
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Feb 29, 2016 04:42
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Is there a copy of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective anyone is selling?
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Feb 29, 2016 05:37
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Gaming report: - RftG: Xeno Invasion (Cards Only): worked fine. Cards aren't as synergistic as Alien Artifacts, themes are harder to see. Went produce/consume, lost by about 5VP to big military (31-24-20-19-15 or so) - Keyflower (Base Game): A few new players, so didn't put in Merchants (which I usually play with). People undervalued movement, which led to 2 players getting Movement + Storage + 3xProduction Tiles and going to town with 35-40VP storage tiles. Won 76-70-59-58-56, with the two storage players coming in first/second and Scribes coming in third (30VP scribes, would have been 40 if had played for Boat Tile #4 for the purple meeple). - RftG: Xeno Invasion (Invasion Game): definitely a step up from cards only. Not that complicated, led to a bit of silliness trying to figure out the rules but once we got them everything went really quickly. Much simpler than the Orb Game. Took it 41-37-36-29 with a Produce/war donations engine + big planets against big (huuuge) military and a mixed produce/consume + settle but was sorta starved for cards. Game ended on Xeno repulse with 11 cards down, so pretty close to when it'd normally end. New stuff is really interesting here, game works quite well. - Nevermore x2: Game is so-so. The core is really interesting, but with the way ties work it can get extremely swingy and with the amount of healing it feels like the only damage that's really threatening is burst kill (off of ties). Tying for 2+ VP with another (or 2 other players) can DQ everyone else from the rest of the game almost immediately, which is an issue, since it's very punch-the-leader but there can suddenly be a bunch of leaders showing up. I feel like tweaking the tie rules would help, but the health/attack/points EV-per-turn is really wild and means the game can get extremely RNG if you're not a turn-winner.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:49
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Jedit posted:504 is 30 or 40 decent games that were cherry picked for demo purposes and 450+ mediocre to bad games that don't work or last too long. It's a brilliant and brave idea, though.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:55
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Tekopo posted:I'm honestly impressed by 504 and I can appreciate what it is trying to do (much like I appreciate Dominion) but that's pretty much it. Oh yeah I definitely "appreciate" 504. I'm certainly not going to "buy" it though.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:48
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Mojo Threepwood posted:Random question, what are reasons for the forums hating Touch of Evil? I've played it a ton as a friend of a friend knows the designers and has most of their catalog, and it has always been a solid entry for game night. The mechanic of a different type of game depending on the monster is fun (running from the werewolf, hunting the vampire, beating the zombie horde) and building up a hero's inventory is fun. I liked the wide variety of heroes from the militia leader, the monk, and the Batman analogue. In my case, we cut our game short after 2 hours, and probably would have lasted another one. In each given turn there were no interesting decisions, as all four players went clockwise around the board trying to get one card from each of the four corners to improve our characters, because playing competitive meant that there was little incentive to hurt and not kill the bad guy. Each turn consisted of 2-3 dice rolls, which is always fun, assuming no combat. The only decision I took was what to get from the shop (2 torches because the nemesis was weak to fire and a thingy that made me roll against Spirit instead of Combat), and it was a no-brainer anyway. The Scarecrow is not interesting at all, because the only thing that it does is get harder the longer the game goes on, so no running from anything or hunting anything (in fact, there was a significant lack of monsters on the board, so we had few ways of getting investigations, making the game even longer). My game plan for the end game (after getting a lair card and looking at an Elder to bring along, so at least 3 more turns) was rolling 13-15 dice, twice, against the bad guy. I guess I had about 75% chance of killing it, but otherwise I'd have been back to (almost) square one due to losing items after being KO'd and discarding my torches. So, basically, a full game would have been three hours of my life making no decisions and waiting to see what happened to my guy. At least the pictures of guys LARPing are pretty?
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Feb 29, 2016 09:21
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Ordered Keyflower  in the last two weeks I've gotten to play Dominant Species and Dungeon Petz (both with more than 2 players for the firs time), so I'm having some pretty good board game times right now.It was either going to be Keyflower or New Through the Ages. I figure for the moment at least Keyflower will be a comfortably medium game - while I'm sure I can do TTA, I feel like something that won't melt my brain for the moment. Also worried about how long nTTA might take. It's definitely on my to-buy list, just for another time.
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Feb 29, 2016 10:10
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Has anybod played American Rails? Is it any good? Could it be a possible good intro to train games?
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Feb 29, 2016 13:07
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Selecta84 posted:Has anybod played American Rails? Just order 1830
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Feb 29, 2016 14:32
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COOL CORN posted:Just order 1830 I'll look into it
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Feb 29, 2016 14:45
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I played Favor of the Pharaoh on Friday and it was "not that great". I was able to race towards the endgame and by the time I got the queen tile I was 1 or 2 dice ahead of everyone else so they didn't even have a chance to top my final roll. It basically ended like a wet fart and I'd rather play something like King's Forge if I'm going to roll dice for half an hour.
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Feb 29, 2016 14:46
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Fat Samurai posted:In my case, we cut our game short after 2 hours, and probably would have lasted another one. In each given turn there were no interesting decisions, as all four players went clockwise around the board trying to get one card from each of the four corners to improve our characters, because playing competitive meant that there was little incentive to hurt and not kill the bad guy. Each turn consisted of 2-3 dice rolls, which is always fun, assuming no combat. The only decision I took was what to get from the shop (2 torches because the nemesis was weak to fire and a thingy that made me roll against Spirit instead of Combat), and it was a no-brainer anyway. The Scarecrow is not interesting at all, because the only thing that it does is get harder the longer the game goes on, so no running from anything or hunting anything (in fact, there was a significant lack of monsters on the board, so we had few ways of getting investigations, making the game even longer). Gotcha that is understandable, yeah scarecrow is probably the worst villain for the reasons you said, with him being super elusive but not impacting the board enough as he isn't spawning monsters. The "visit town squares for items" does get better with the first expansion and some of the areas are much more high risk/high reward, but yeah the base game isn't fantastic.
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Feb 29, 2016 15:11
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Are there any kickstarter board games that you guys find interesting right now?
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Feb 29, 2016 15:35
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No, but that's more by definition than anything.
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Feb 29, 2016 15:53
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