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How are the Hold Fast games, I have been considering backing Hold Fast 41-42 I would also love to know if anyone has played any of the Nuts! Publishing games? I am considering ordering Urban Operations
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Feb 26, 2016 03:32
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:42 |
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One more person needed for multiplayer War of the Ring!
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Feb 26, 2016 16:29
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3rd printing of Sekigahara made the cut for the P500, chyeah boys.
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Feb 26, 2016 19:34
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3rd printing of Sekigahara made the cut for the P500, chyeah boys.
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Feb 26, 2016 19:34
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Woohoo! Might get it this year!
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Feb 26, 2016 20:36
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My friend and I are going to continue our coop Ambush! journey tomorrow with the second mission. I don't recall too many people being able to offer advice when I asked about Ambush! tips before, but thought I'd ask again, since we're excited to get back to it! I wish there were more coop wargames--it helps to not only discover the rules of a game with someone else, but to discuss the strategic and tactical decisions in real time as you play the game. Playing Tide of Iron in two 3-person teams was a really fun experience too--but I'm not sure how many two-player games you could make coop by splitting each player into a team of 2, if they weren't really designed for it. That is, if the decision making would still be satisfying.
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Feb 26, 2016 20:43
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So I just found a 1st edition GMT: Flying Colors game on Ebay that I picked up for $50. Anyone ever played this single player? Really looking forward to it, there have been multiple expansions since but most are out of print. Any other recommendations for preferably single player age of sail games?
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Feb 26, 2016 22:10
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attackmole posted:3rd printing of Sekigahara made the cut for the P500, chyeah boys. gently caress yes
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Feb 27, 2016 00:05
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I had a game of Sekigahara today. The guy I taught mangled me. I was holding a lot of territory as Ishida in the midgame and almost caught Tokugawa himself (he had a 2-stack running home, but had a Loyalty Challenge to get first move next round to move to Edo, reinforce, and move in the Date leftovers). After that he rushed up the coast road, I had to abandon some holdings to get home in time and didn't do so very well - allowing a 5-Fukushima reinforcement one turn sooner than I needed to. The interception attack had one unit I couldn't activate due to mismoving, and the impact total was something like 34-30. After that he was able to retake some stuff. I was able to go into his last turn up 1 castle and 2 resources (16-11), but swinging two resources back wasn't hard as long as he had any Fukushima cards, which he did (enough to survive a Challenge). When I had retreated to intercept, if I had left one unit to run amok in the east that would probably have done it - other than his one unit in Uesugi-land there was nothing there, using move to reinforce would probably have slowed him enough.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:09
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Man I don't now what any of that means but I honestly enjoy reading about it 
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Feb 27, 2016 11:03
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The Mantis posted:Man I don't now what any of that means but I honestly enjoy reading about it Sekigahara is a block war game (i.e. blocks hide unit values until conflict) with card-based combat. A cool system is that combat cards can cause units on opponents side to change loyalty (the civil war meant troops of various clans had foggy allegiance and would shift sides mid-battle). It's really good.
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Feb 27, 2016 15:44
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The Mantis posted:Man I don't now what any of that means but I honestly enjoy reading about it I do, and yeah it's really cool poo poo. Can't wait for the MADE THE CUT version to come! 
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Feb 29, 2016 01:09
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I really should stop reading about Falling Sky, because I'm more and more intrigued by the setting and the strategy articles, yet I've been waiting for Cuba Libre forever. And I already own FITL, which feels like it has a lot more strategic depth than I've yet been able to explore. Three COINs seems excessive.
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Feb 29, 2016 02:30
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CaptainRightful posted:Three COINs seems excessive. Every COIN is never enough.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:11
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Caedar posted:Every COIN is never enough. Don't reinforce my addiction. Besides: nobody actually plays 4-player face-to-face anyways  *(*except Cuba Libre because that one can play without planning ahead AS MUCH)
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Feb 29, 2016 16:49
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I think I'll justify it to myself because it adds new gameplay elements like leaders and neutral forces, so it will be more than just "same COIN, different setting".
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Feb 29, 2016 17:25
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I've been setup FitL on my ping-pong table and have been playing solitaire, the scripts seem pretty effective for the most part and the US almost won in the first Coup! round in my current game as the insurgent side. Then again, that's actually fairly likely to happen because they start close at -12 to victory and can easily bump that to -6 by pacifying Saigon and getting good events for next 6 points. I hate the RVN so much, no matter who I play as they always make themselves a huge pain in my rear end.
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Feb 29, 2016 20:18
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Ithle01 posted:I've been setup FitL on my ping-pong table and have been playing solitaire, the scripts seem pretty effective for the most part and the US almost won in the first Coup! round in my current game as the insurgent side. Then again, that's actually fairly likely to happen because they start close at -12 to victory and can easily bump that to -6 by pacifying Saigon and getting good events for next 6 points. I hate the RVN so much, no matter who I play as they always make themselves a huge pain in my rear end. I've found that quick wins and big swings are more likely the shorter the scenario. However, the bot getting set to "LBJ mode" and/or ARVN draining resources below the threshold can make it very difficult for the US to get those last few points for the win.
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Feb 29, 2016 20:27
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Trynant posted:
A possible pro-tip from the internet: apparently adding the Winter Quarters rules from Liberty or Death significantly speeds up the play time of COIN games. Specifically, making the Propaganda/Coup card trigger immediately when it's revealed reduces a lot of the slowdown on the last turn as the eligible players try to calculate their most optimum moves. Depending on the game, you may also need to pair it with the other Winter Quarters rule of seeding the Propaganda/Coup cards in the last (six?) cards of each stack.
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Feb 29, 2016 20:29
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Caedar posted:A possible pro-tip from the internet: apparently adding the Winter Quarters rules from Liberty or Death significantly speeds up the play time of COIN games. Specifically, making the Propaganda/Coup card trigger immediately when it's revealed reduces a lot of the slowdown on the last turn as the eligible players try to calculate their most optimum moves. Depending on the game, you may also need to pair it with the other Winter Quarters rule of seeding the Propaganda/Coup cards in the last (six?) cards of each stack. But that will ruin my immersion! Everyone knows that in real life coups are always immediately preceded by monsoons.
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Feb 29, 2016 20:33
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CaptainRightful posted:I've found that quick wins and big swings are more likely the shorter the scenario. However, the bot getting set to "LBJ mode" and/or ARVN draining resources below the threshold can make it very difficult for the US to get those last few points for the win. In this case it was the RVN taking their first action to pacify in Saigon and then the US getting the event Senator Fulbright to push them up to 48 by the third card. NVA and VC don't start in a very good position to attack support and if the US were a player they could have taken an action to pacify in Hue or somewhere else on the fifth card to push them up quite a bit. Of course, if the RVN were a player this scenario would never even remotely happen. This could've been a typo though because my copy of the rulebook says that RVN will only increase support from passive to active if Support + Available < 45 in the section on RVN pacification, but then in a later paragraph it says 40 (I didn't notice that until later so I'm not about to reset the board) which makes far more sense. I have to say that running the script for the insurgent factions is much more pleasant than for the counter-insurgent side.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:58
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Caedar posted:A possible pro-tip from the internet: apparently adding the Winter Quarters rules from Liberty or Death significantly speeds up the play time of COIN games. Specifically, making the Propaganda/Coup card trigger immediately when it's revealed reduces a lot of the slowdown on the last turn as the eligible players try to calculate their most optimum moves. Depending on the game, you may also need to pair it with the other Winter Quarters rule of seeding the Propaganda/Coup cards in the last (six?) cards of each stack. Interesting idea, but I'd imagine the heads up is so you have to think longer term and the guy who squeaked to victory condition the previous turn doesn't just win immediately when the other factions couldn't respond.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:24
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A Strange Aeon posted:Interesting idea, but I'd imagine the heads up is so you have to think longer term and the guy who squeaked to victory condition the previous turn doesn't just win immediately when the other factions couldn't respond. Yeah, thus the suggestion for seeding, so you know vaguely when a card's going to come up.
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Mar 1, 2016 04:29
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GMT, where's the update on Falling Sky shipping? My erection is at stake! As an aside, the English rules for Urban Operations came out some few days ago. Skimming over them, they seemed cool, if not particularly revolutionary.
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Mar 4, 2016 12:15
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Popete posted:Any other recommendations for preferably single player age of sail games? Quoting this because I too want to know, and they don't have to be solo.
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Mar 5, 2016 03:12
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Sails of Glory is good, if a bit fiddly.
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Mar 5, 2016 03:42
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Played a great game of Maria today - I was teaching two newbies and was Austria, and got soundly squashed between France and Prussia, as is to be expected given that the most complex part of the game (the diplomatic balance which France/Prussia must maintain to not make the eastern front too random) is the hardest part to teach. The game took a long time for Maria - around 6-6.5 hours but was decided at one point around 4 hours in. France was low on cards but just happened to have exactly the suits he needed to fight effectively, and pushed hard in the Netherlands, wiping out the Austrian army and one Pragmatic army, and putting almost all his tokens on the board over two turns. This probably eventually won him the game (he eventually won on Winter Scoring), but we needed to stop him from winning immediately. I proposed to Prussia that we have a one turn truce so that I could fight France in the east and take back a fort. He however was upset that I had taken out his supply train in the previous turn (eventually killing 7 of his troops), and refused, instead encircling one of my armies, causing me to spend too many resources to stop the army being wiped out. I should have let it die, but I was upset he had given me no route to retreat given that France was at the brink of victory. This was a perfectly reasonable play on his part, but I found myself getting frustrated and snappy - in the moment, it felt like him throwing away the game through spite. Does anyone else get these bursts of emotion sometimes when playing very long/complex games? It really turns me off when I see it in other players so I try my best not to ever lose a cheery disposition when playing, but if you've been deep in something for hours and hours and then feel the game slipping away from you it can be difficult. It never stays for long, and I never hold grudges, but sometimes I just can't help getting a little pissy. Definitely something I need to work on.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:30
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The angriest I've ever gotten has been in games of Blood Bowl. For some reason, I really rage out in that game.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:46
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Stumiester posted:
Not a complex game by any stretch, but sometimes I'll RAGE OUT while playing Titan. It's not often, but when it happens it's when I'm doing everything right, I'm jamming along, and then -- through no fault of my own -- I'll get a sustained series of bad rolls and my game goes to poo poo as a result. Of course, I've been on the beneficial end of rolls too (tend not to remember those--ha!) and it's why in Titan you always have a chance, but man...it can sting like hell when lady luck frowns upon you when you're otherwise doing well.
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Mar 7, 2016 01:36
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After two 5 hour sessions I've finished my second Fire in the Lake solitaire campaign. This time as a combined counter-insurgent side and much more confident of how to run the non-player scripts because the insurgent scripts are considerably easier to handle. I have to say, that after a close-call on the second coup round this felt much easier than playing as the insurgents because I could go out of my way to lock down their ability to generate resources. After that point I began to systematically crush the insurgents and push them out of South Vietnam aside from a brief NVA resurgence in the final round that I was able to limit to Quang Tri. In terms of score I think the highest insurgent victory margin was the NVA with a -13 (the VC were at -26 because by the time I was done there were only two provinces with opposition left on the map) compared to my lowest score of +12. I probably should have called it after the 3rd coup round, but wanted to see it through to the end. In terms of difficulty I made one adjustment and that's the shuffling the Coup cards into the bottom six of each twelve card pile, but resolving the card instantly as it pops up. To compensate I resolved not to fall below the victory margin for any insurgent player in the 2nd and subsequent Coup rounds. My thoughts on this so far: Some of the 1964 and 1965 capabilities are powerful and feel almost mandatory. The worst of these is the Cadres VC capability that lets you agitate in one location when you rally. This is the sort of thing that should have been added to the rally action and not left up to chance because without it you're not even playing the same game. The 1978 capabilities aren't an issue - by the time they pop the game is at least half way over. The Support + Available bar for the US victory feels far too low, especially with Saigon giving 12 points out of 50. VC feel somewhat the same way though because there are a great number of events that can shift support in the blink of an eye. The NVA and RVN feel slower and have more build-up to them, but there are some events for the RVN that can create a large sudden shift in Patronage. That being said, I think the Counter-insurgent forces have a significant advantage over the insurgents and I'm not sure how I feel about that in a Vietnam war simulation. Overall, I enjoy the hell out of the COIN series and am looking forward to more additions if only because I enjoy the asymmetrical and political aspects to the series more so than I enjoy typical wargames.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:31
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I haven't tried the AI scripts but most of the wins I've seen in 4 player games are for either the NVA or the NLF. I haven't tried team games though so i don't know what's the balance there. I found that if the NVA targets the US, they are in for a lot of trouble and a well ran Easter offensive can remove a very large US presence from the board. You also need to be able to leverage the use of ambush (which is an incredibly powerful ability) to remove US troops. I don't think Cadres should really be baked in as the VC still has access to terror. I've never found the US limit that low either, but again this is experience with 4 player games, where the US can be kept in check by an hostile ARVN.
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Mar 8, 2016 10:14
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Ithle01 posted:My thoughts on this so far: Some of the 1964 and 1965 capabilities are powerful and feel almost mandatory. The worst of these is the Cadres VC capability that lets you agitate in one location when you rally. This is the sort of thing that should have been added to the rally action and not left up to chance because without it you're not even playing the same game. The 1978 capabilities aren't an issue - by the time they pop the game is at least half way over. Arc Light and Search and Destroy (the bad side) are like this as well. After playing the medium scenario a bunch, playing a game where the US can't bomb outside Vietnam with impunity but aren't penalised by assaults is a real eye opener. My thought is that due to the fact there are less event cards overall compared to amount of stuff you are pushing around the board compared to other COIN games, the designers wanted to make the capabilities correspondingly more powerful so that people would take them instead of just performing actions. Having said that, the other COIN games have some pretty game changing capabilities too. Looking at you, Aerostats.
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Mar 8, 2016 11:17
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The most game changing ability in any COIN ever is the Suicide Bomber (iirc) terror capability for Taliban in ADP. It allows you to remove US troops when doing terror, without having to go through the ANA/ANP meatshields first. It's incredibly powerful and completely changes the landscape of the conflict.
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Mar 8, 2016 11:20
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Ithle01 posted:The Support + Available bar for the US victory feels far too low, especially with Saigon giving 12 points out of 50. VC feel somewhat the same way though because there are a great number of events that can shift support in the blink of an eye. The NVA and RVN feel slower and have more build-up to them, but there are some events for the RVN that can create a large sudden shift in Patronage. That being said, I think the Counter-insurgent forces have a significant advantage over the insurgents and I'm not sure how I feel about that in a Vietnam war simulation. I've only played it once solo, running through the game outlined in the play book and finishing the game from there. At least starting from there, the US is in an incredible position to start the game. I think the playbook ends with them being 6 or so points short of victory. The US got a nice padding of points, and then started to withdraw until they were totally off the board. All the other factions tried gunning for them, but it was too late. Granted, I probably hosed the game up at some points, and I forgot about the pivitol events which isn't trivial, but I'm not sure that would have changed the outcome any. Really the US would've gotten Linebacker II out sooner so it might have exacerbated their lead. What horrible bizzaro world is this where good, American lives aren't needlessly wasted? 
Dre2Dee2 fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 8, 2016 19:14
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Tekopo posted:I haven't tried the AI scripts but most of the wins I've seen in 4 player games are for either the NVA or the NLF. I haven't tried team games though so i don't know what's the balance there. I found that if the NVA targets the US, they are in for a lot of trouble and a well ran Easter offensive can remove a very large US presence from the board. You also need to be able to leverage the use of ambush (which is an incredibly powerful ability) to remove US troops. I have to agree that in a four player game things are going to be completely different because you can't predict the behavior of the other factions. You also can't set up power plays where you use Faction A to Op+Special and then pick the event you want with Faction B. This is just my solo experience and when I was playing as the US without the RVN it felt like the greatest threat to me from the RVN was that they would let the VC win the game. When I was playing as the insurgent side it felt like the greatest threat to me was that the RVN would let the US win by blowing all their money pacifying everything. I actually managed to negate their ability to stealing through Govern by draining all their Aid and then during the Pacify phase in Coup rounds they would spend all their money on boosting support instead of using it for anything else. As for Cadres the reason I think their so powerful is because they present the RVN player with a choice. Either pacify every space you have troops in to at least passive or surrender that space to the VC player at Active Opposition in one strike. Sure they can only hit one space at a time, but it's still a Sophie's Choice. To make matters worse VC can still do this as they Subvert so if the RVN even think about leaving a space open they're not only at risk of giving the VC points, but losing points as well when control and patronage disappear. Arc Light and Search & Destroy are both really powerful, no question there, but S&D has US player priority and Arc Light runs into a wall depending on the event deck because there are so many momentum and capability cards that shut down or weaken airstrikes. I see what Tepoko is saying about killing off US cubes because when I played as the insurgents I was racking up casualties with ease through ambush - it really is the most effective way of striking at the US, but they were still the greater threat to me somehow even with four bases and twenty troops in the out of play box. The problem here is that solitaire is extremely different from actual play and there's no way in hell I'm ever going to get a game going with actual players. edit: I think the reason I'm feeling this way is because in my first full game I played as the insurgents and barely won with a combination of lower difficulty and lots of luck (almost two entire coup rounds where the US couldn't Air Strike due to momentum events). When I played as the US/RVN I had one close call where I was one point off from losing due to Easter Offensive leaving lots of NVA control on the map combined with low RVN patronage, but other than that I crushed the insurgents and by the third coup round I was just going through the motions to finish the game. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 8, 2016 20:07
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I'd need to try some of the single player bots to see what I can make of it, but yeah, the dynamic in most of the games of FitL I have played is that the US can get a lot of casualties very easily and once they lose presence on the board, the ARVN is rampant with governing as they desperately try to get as much Patronage as possible before they are over-run. The problem is actually acerbated in ADP but is also present in FitL and I've noticed that it mostly affects games with inexperienced players, but seasoned players realise that the Coalition/US can very easily and quickly get a massive amount of points and it is in the interest of everyone to keep support as low as possible so that the Coalition/US can't just pull out for a win. The problem in FitL is that the ARVN does actually benefit from having support (since then the NVA/NLF can't rally in those spaces), but in ADP there's no way to stop the Taliban from rallying, so the government should do its upmost to completely gently caress over the Coalition at any chance it gets.
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Mar 9, 2016 11:52
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Anyone in the UK may be interested in this damaged copy of Empire of the Sun (2nd Ed.) for super cheap: https://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/PR_Empire_Of_The_Sun_2nd_Edition_Damaged.html
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Mar 9, 2016 18:13
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INinja132 posted:Anyone in the UK may be interested in this damaged copy of Empire of the Sun (2nd Ed.) for super cheap: https://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/PR_Empire_Of_The_Sun_2nd_Edition_Damaged.html 
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Mar 9, 2016 18:15
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Tekopo posted:I'd need to try some of the single player bots to see what I can make of it, but yeah, the dynamic in most of the games of FitL I have played is that the US can get a lot of casualties very easily and once they lose presence on the board, the ARVN is rampant with governing as they desperately try to get as much Patronage as possible before they are over-run. That sounds more like what I was expecting. Unfortunately, the solo experience was a bit different. That being said I still enjoy the game and once I'm less burnt out from having played two full length scenarios I'll be playing more, probably with different scenario setups. At least until I'm distracted again by Falling Sky.
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Mar 9, 2016 19:30
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:42 |
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When I play FITL solo, I have more fun playing a single faction than playing either of the "teams". If anything, the bots seem more selfish and less likely to inadvertantly give the game away to their allies than inexperienced players would be.
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Mar 9, 2016 20:25
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