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jng2058 posted:It's a roll and move game similar to Firefly. You control one ship, fly around doing missions, hauling cargo, exploring, or blowing poo poo up in search of victory points. First to (select a number to determine length of game) in VPs wins. Doing almost anything, including dropping off cargo, blowing someone up, exploring a new system, completing a job, or rolling a natural 20(!) gets you VP. Along the way you can earn little bonus titles that give you minor abilities. You get cash, and use it to buy components to your ship or to replace your ship with a bigger, better one. This is important because they use the Galaxy Trucker style tetris mode ship construction system. While you do roll for movement, what dice you roll is determined by your engines so you can mitigate that if you emphasize speed over weapons/shields/cargo space/etc. Thanks for the detailed write up, there's only one room in my heart for trashy roll-and-move space game and her name is Venus Merchant. I hope I'm not turned off by how cheap looking Vlaada's Star Trek will end up being. It seems like Wizkids is going straight for a casual Mage Knight head to toe complete with Skittles colored dilithium crystals and
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Apr 13, 2016 10:15
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al-azad posted:Thanks for the detailed write up, there's only one room in my heart for trashy roll-and-move space game and her name is Venus Merchant. 
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Apr 13, 2016 10:18
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Tekopo posted:Space Empires 4X? Isn't that just a wargame?
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Apr 13, 2016 10:23
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Picked up Pax Pamir in a trade despite not knowing too much about it. Have never played any Ecklund game before and figured I should give one a shot. Learning the rules now, and i'm already dreading teaching this. 
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Apr 13, 2016 10:25
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Mojo Jojo posted:Isn't that just a wargame?
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Apr 13, 2016 10:40
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It's terrible but at the end of the day the kind of "adventurer in space" game I want to play is literally Mage Knight in space but ugh Star Trek Frontiers looks like such a cheap lazy cash in!
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Apr 13, 2016 10:46
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Nique posted:Picked up Pax Pamir in a trade despite not knowing too much about it. Have never played any Ecklund game before and figured I should give one a shot. There should be some kind of living rules document online written by a native English speaker rather than a, I don't know, a very intelligent monkey with a sugar overdose.
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Apr 13, 2016 10:50
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Countblanc posted:First Copper Country and now this, I can get behind this apparent criticism of capital via board games. I just woke up and didn't understand a word of your post so I checked out the link, I like the idea but despite the good sounding idea and nice looking game I get the feeling this is their first rodeo. Plus in the kinda weird FAQ it sounds like they consider this primarily an awareness-building educational "game" 
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Apr 13, 2016 13:25
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I'm really worried, after the disappointment of DoW, of 'collaborative games where players have secret agendas'. It's very difficult to make game like those work well.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:34
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It does kind of remind me of Judge Dredd Block Wars (I think?) in which players each control a block in Mega-City One which is at war with each other. The neatest thing about the game was the built in timer & great shift. The deck was two sided. First you pay the one side which applies during your block war (essentially reinforcements, etc.) Then when the deck has run out, law enforcement has arrived to kick everyone's asses. You turn the deck over; the reverse side is police actions. You play out the rest of the game with no new units and every turn the active player draws one police action and applies it (usually trying to target their enemies and avoiding themselves, but the ability to do that doesn't last long) The police rapidly and steadily mop up until there's no one left, while each player tries to make the most of their dwindling resources. I only played it a couple times but I remember really liking it overall and finding the end game clever. Although the main game was very tons-of-tiny-chits wargame-y, but those were the times. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 13:35
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Bloc by Bloc uses the same garbage action dice system that DoW has, welp, not gonna back. EDIT: I'll be more general: any system in which high dice rolls are strictly better than low dice rolls is garbage. For all of its faults, Bora Bora has a system in which both low dice rolls and high rolls are equally valuable, for different reasons. DoW and now Bloc By Bloc has straight 'oh you didn't roll well? welp, guess you don't get to do what you want to do' The reason why the incorporated the dice mechanism doesn't excuse it either: basically, there are districts in the cities in which it is harder to do actions, so you require a 4+ or 5+ or whatever. This is understandable, but instead of doing the smart thing and making it so that you have action points and doing certain actions in those districts cost more, they decided to leave your ability to do things to the whims of fate. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 13:49
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Ironically the idea of "insurgent actions are difficult in certain places and thus requires a die roll" reminds me of Labyrinth
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Apr 13, 2016 14:00
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All action points are theft t t tfirst up againt the wall, m8
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Apr 13, 2016 14:05
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Mister Sinewave posted:All action points are theft t
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Apr 13, 2016 14:10
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Dice come in a staggering array of shapes, sizes, sides, and colors (all beautiful) but they are all just D6s to you, aren't they? Anyway you're like totally wrong but I only played Bloc by Bloc until turn 3 so I can't tell you why yet, I might learn that next round though so lets just put a pin in this for now
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Apr 13, 2016 14:21
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Dice as actions is fine but the smart thing is like Marco Polo where you get free poo poo for rolling bad and the most plentiful resource more or less changes the value to whatever you need. Paying money based on the lowest die is also super smart because you want to pair 1s with 6s to get the most value.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:36
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I'd love to be proved wrong, and maybe in this particular situation, the action dice systems actually works, but I do have my doubts.. I've had another look and sure, you can get stuff that affects the rolls, but this still doesn't get past the crucial point that high rolls are always better than low rolls. There isn't anything that I've seen so far (in the rules, the PbP of the loot cards etc) that couldn't have been done with an Action Point system.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:36
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al-azad posted:Dice as actions is fine but the smart thing is like Marco Polo where you get free poo poo for rolling bad and the most plentiful resource more or less changes the value to whatever you need. Paying money based on the lowest die is also super smart because you want to pair 1s with 6s to get the most value. EDIT: Also, cards that affect your dice rolls are not a fix to the issue of rolling badly. Someone that doesn't have to use a resource in order to fix his roll is still in a better position that someone that does Tekopo fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 14:41
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Nique posted:Picked up Pax Pamir in a trade despite not knowing too much about it. Have never played any Ecklund game before and figured I should give one a shot. Do yourself a favor and get the board from Sierra Madre. It's so much easier to visualize and even has small blurbs on what each special action does: 
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Apr 13, 2016 14:47
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al-azad posted:Dice as actions is fine but the smart thing is like Marco Polo where you get free poo poo for rolling bad and the most plentiful resource more or less changes the value to whatever you need. Paying money based on the lowest die is also super smart because you want to pair 1s with 6s to get the most value. Signorie does this interestingly too. You're shooting to come in under some total for end of round bonuses, but high dice are still useful since a) actions need a minimum result though you can dump cash to make up the shortfall and b) you can build your engine to take advantage of higher results on most actions.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:10
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Pairing a 1 with a 6 just gets you a pair of 1s, though, which is the worst possible result on a lot of the tables.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:13
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Mojo Jojo posted:Isn't that just a wargame? It is. And nowhere near as much fun as Merchant of Venus, one of my all time favorites. If you have to play Space Empires, be sure to play it with two, otherwise have a phone or tablet available to stay awake between turns. (No, I didn't like Space Empires but I like my 4x games on the computer where they belong).
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Apr 13, 2016 16:34
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al-azad posted:Thanks for the detailed write up, there's only one room in my heart for trashy roll-and-move space game and her name is Venus Merchant. No problem. I don't mind Xia, but it's not a game I like enough to buy (particularly at full price). And since neither of the guys in my gaming groups who own the game like it enough to break it out in favor of other, better, games I'll likely never play it again. Which doesn't really bother me, which, in turn, should tell you everything you need to know about Xia.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:49
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Xia is poo poo.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:26
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The Warhammer Quest ACG is so loving good and my partner who really only likes co-op games is loving it too. I hope they come out with a ton of expansions I can vomit dollars into. Also next to no setup/cleanup. It's like the perfect game for us.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:27
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Got an email from GMT saying they've charged my card for Cuba Libre. Not long now! 
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Apr 13, 2016 19:32
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hoiyes posted:Got an email from GMT saying they've charged my card for Cuba Libre. Not long now! Yup. How lucky am I that I'm getting hit with like $300 in GMT reprints all at once!? 
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Apr 13, 2016 19:39
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Nique posted:Picked up Pax Pamir in a trade despite not knowing too much about it. Have never played any Ecklund game before and figured I should give one a shot. It's actually pretty easy, just make sure to let the other players flip through the tiny rule book a little bit so they know what actions they can do. You'll want to get the living rules doc because it is much better at explaining the game. The big thing that my group missed on the first play through was that you can't draw above your hand limit except for the mandatory recall of cards in play during a failed topple (although you can play above your tableu limit). There are a couple other fiddly bits, such as the cash being more or less zero-sum. If a card adds money to the table through Leveraged then that money leaves if that card leaves play. If someone 'spends money on an action that money goes to the cards in the last column of the queue.. The British favor card is sort of an exception to this. Oh, that's another rule we missed, the favor card goes to whoever has the most influence in an empire regardless of their loyalty. In case you're wondering how you can get influence without being loyal the answer is spies. Spies are awesome because when they're on a card not in your tableu they can give you influence from the card they're spying on, but they won't save your rear end from being taxed or crushed by armies. Overall it's a pretty well-designed game, but try to play with more than three people and don't read the last page of the rule book because holy poo poo what the gently caress Eklund.
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Apr 13, 2016 20:13
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As someone who has never played a COIN game, and just got charged for the P500 of Cuba Libre, I probably shouldn't start purchasing other COIN games until I give this one a try right? I ask because A Distant Plain and Falling Skies are about to go for reprint, and if I miss my chance now, I'm guessing it will be close to another year. They both sound awesome, but I'm guessing they are significantly more complex than Cubra Libre, and it might be a bad idea to jump the gun on them.
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Apr 13, 2016 20:53
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Megasabin posted:As someone who has never played a COIN game, and just got charged for the P500 of Cuba Libre, I probably shouldn't start purchasing other COIN games until I give this one a try right? I ask because A Distant Plain and Falling Skies are about to go for reprint, and if I miss my chance now, I'm guessing it will be close to another year. They both sound awesome, but I'm guessing they are significantly more complex than Cubra Libre, and it might be a bad idea to jump the gun on them. I own Fire In The Lake, which is generally agreed to be the most complex COIN, and I eagerly await the arrival of both Cuba Libre and Falling Sky. CL seems much simpler and faster, but no one really knows how FS plays. ADP is supposedly similar to FITL in terms of complexity, so pick it up if the setting interests you. They all share the same underlying system, but they aren't simply reskins of the same game.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:04
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I think the big disconnect with Pax Pamir at first is understanding that you, the player, are separate from the dueling factions. I picked up Imperial 2030 on a whim and I'm pretty excited at the prospect of a game where I'm cultivating and exploiting the growth of multiple powers instead of being one of those powers. Pax Pamir is similar and you need to stress that loving yourself over to tactically switch sides is a viable strategy. It's easy to get hung up in the mindset of "I am Afghanistan or Russians and I need to stick with it."
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Apr 13, 2016 21:48
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One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is having a board game made based on one of his series. I'll probably just get it regardless, as Mistborn is pretty cool, but I don't have high hopes as for quality.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:53
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Megasabin posted:As someone who has never played a COIN game, and just got charged for the P500 of Cuba Libre, I probably shouldn't start purchasing other COIN games until I give this one a try right? I ask because A Distant Plain and Falling Skies are about to go for reprint, and if I miss my chance now, I'm guessing it will be close to another year. They both sound awesome, but I'm guessing they are significantly more complex than Cubra Libre, and it might be a bad idea to jump the gun on them. The designer of the COIN Series has said that he's purposefully tried to pull back the complexity in Falling Sky from the height achieved in Fire in the Lake, so it's probably on the level of A Distant Plain or between Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain. Based on my read of the rulebook, it does look simpler than A Distant Plain, but in a very different way than Cuba Libre. However, COIN is definitely an acquired taste: a friend of mine hates the series because of its fairly slow pace and its focus on methodical yet fragile strategy (all of which I love). Check out Cuba Libre first, try to get a quick play in to see if it clicks for you, and then grab Falling Sky if you like it before it sells out.
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Apr 13, 2016 22:04
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Taran_Wanderer posted:One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is having a board game made based on one of his series. I'll probably just get it regardless, as Mistborn is pretty cool, but I don't have high hopes as for quality. Kevin Wilson? Really? I'm not holding my breath. But I'll still probably buy it, cause Mistborn <3
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Apr 13, 2016 22:26
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Played a 3 player game of Quadropolis. Final scores were 51, 49 and 41. Even though I came dead last I still liked it a lot! Basic rules, of course.
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Apr 13, 2016 22:35
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How many of y'all still actually like Carcassonne a lot? I still take a turn or two in the iOS app against friends who live abroad pretty much every day, with varying expansions (although not phantom or princess or whatever other annoying ones). I own Hunters and Gatherers, which is OK, but the art style is occasionally unclear and isn't very attractive, and the mechanics encourage you to fight nearly every move of your opponent. I played the South Seas and Gold Rush variants at the local board game library and liked them both. South Seas is much less cutthroat and thus my girlfriend likes it more. I actually like that no one has to keep score on the track. Gold Rush is fun, but basically it just partially randomizes the scores for cities. It's hard to imagine a situation in which the mining tent mechanic would determine the winner. Are there any other variants that you would recommend? Carcassonne: The Castle (the one in which the new tiles you place don't have to connect with previously-placed tiles, because you're playing within a walled city) seems interesting, but it's a chunk of change to drop without knowing and with having access to so many other ways to play other games in the series. I started playing random opponents through the matchmaking, and I noticed that people play quite differently than I do. I was surprised that someone who made what I saw as a newbie error - placing a meeple in a field within the first ten tiles - ended up beating me. I realized that since I learned the game, these are the first people I've played against who I did not myself teach how to play. And that I've never read a strategy guide for this game. The board game library has a Carcassonne tournament coming up at the end of this month. Can anybody point me toward a strategy guide? I am also wondering if there's kind of a way to learn about board game design in general through the lens of Carcassonne, given that it's the board game I know best. Are the new variations still meaningfully "designer" games?
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Apr 13, 2016 22:49
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Taran_Wanderer posted:One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is having a board game made based on one of his series. I'll probably just get it regardless, as Mistborn is pretty cool, but I don't have high hopes as for quality. At least they are doing something potentially more interesting rather than a mini bases coop Dungeon crawler but the back catalogue from those guys is lacklustre at best
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Apr 13, 2016 23:11
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I'm really fond of Carcassonne Gold Rush. Farms are tied to icons on the board, the monastery equivalent has to be completed with roads, roads get a bump in value with train car icons doubling their worth, and the city equivalent mountains spit out tokens other players can siphon. There's more to do and it's a little more chaotic which puts a fresh spin on an old game without having to cart around expansions.
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Apr 13, 2016 23:33
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Sounds neat. Mix up some good parts of Carcspansions into a single game without bloating playtime with more tiles.
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Apr 14, 2016 01:04
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How is TS:Steam?
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