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Megasabin posted:A few questions: Argent is great but a huge table hog. The biggest issue with getting it to the table is the same as every board gamer's issue of "there are a lot of good games and I own a lot of them". We always love it when we play it.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:14
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Anniversary posted:Personally I don't dislike it (it seemed pretty decent after one play); I was just being cheeky about how many game elements and the, apparent, theme support combat but the scoring usually doesn't. Interestingly theme-wise throughout the game, portraying mechs fighting is relatively rare. They are more commonly portrayed as either silently standing guard, or helping with e.g. farming 
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Aug 8, 2016 16:15
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Megasabin posted:2. What's the deal with Agricola Creatures Big and Small vs. Fields of Arle. I see they are both 2 player games by the same designer. I've been looking for a 2 player game that has a bit more meat than things like Patchwork, Lost Cities, Etc... Creatures Big & Small is a lighter game than Arle (and much smaller, too.) Not sure whether I'd rate complexity similarly to Patchwork or not but it has more moving parts than Patchwork, anyway.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:17
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Sloober posted:Not sure if anyone else has played it but Deception: Murder in Hong Kong was a surprise find at Gen Con thanks to Kaddish. Pretty sure he sold a bunch of copies of it by getting people to play it there. The game came out a couple of years ago apparently but i'd never heard of it. Myself and another goon also picked up this after one play. I like it a lot better than avalon with the way you actually have some things to discuss at the start of the game, it just feels like it winds up faster. I was thinking about how I'd do a forum game this morning to show it off, it has some interesting timing mechanics when you play at the table that i'd like to come across in a pbp.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:19
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Fellis posted:They sold out before the doors were opened, so the people who have copies probably haven't FTFY
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Aug 8, 2016 16:22
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Shadin posted:FTFY I heard a rumor at Gencon that someone had sold their copy for $200 already
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Aug 8, 2016 16:26
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Mister Sinewave posted:Interestingly theme-wise throughout the game, portraying mechs fighting is relatively rare. They are more commonly portrayed as either silently standing guard, or helping with e.g. farming Oh yeah! I tried to allude to that by saying apparent theme, but that's a good point.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:33
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Fellis posted:I heard a rumor at Gencon that someone had sold their copy for $200 already I'll never understand people paying huge money to get a board game a little early. I wish they wouldn't because I can't prove how many things sold at Gen Con are sold to scalpers but I feel like the percentage is high enough that it makes me not want to go.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:37
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Has anyone mentioned this yet? I'm not sure what to think.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:41
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CaptainRightful posted:I think it's far more liked than disliked, but this thread tends to drill in on every game's flaws (both real and perceived). There also seems to be an element in this thread that considers high production quality and solid mechanics to be incompatible (cf., the endless praise for Food Chain Magnate). I hope you're not talking about me because Food Chain Magnate is a good game. There are plenty of ugly bad games as well as ugly good games. Some of us are gamers and some of us are lookers 
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Aug 8, 2016 16:45
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I got to play FCM this weekend for the first time and It is a good game, but I feel it definitely has some problems with skill disparity, which is a major issue for me because I don't have a regular group. Also the way a single unforseen move can just blow out the entire game. With the right group it would be a fantastic game though. I absolutely love the theme and the way it uses a corporate structure as a psuedo-deckbuilding mechanic and jobs as a tech tree. The little jabs at corporate structure (there are 6 vice president positions and half of them are better than the CEO) are great too. Sorry if I'm retreading discussion, haven't been following this thread for a long time.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:56
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Megasabin posted:3. Rex vs. Dune. If I already own Dune is there a reason to also own Rex? Is it objectively better than Dune? They are the same game, don't bother. I would even say Rex is a little bit worse, because all of the faction powers are really specific to the Dune setting. Only get Rex if you are a nutjob and want to do an insane week long marathon game: Twilight Imperium: Shards of the Throne scenario -> Rex -> Twilight Imperium 3
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Aug 8, 2016 17:01
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Scyther posted:Has anyone mentioned this yet? Cautiously excited
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Aug 8, 2016 17:48
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Gencon recap: Goons or not goons?    Here's my haul:  I went in with a pretty sparse wishlist, but found a lot of great deals (both Battlecon sets there for ~$40 total in a ding and dent deal) and some new unexpected gems like Masmorra and Evolution. Had a great time playing Millenium Blades, Arcadia Quest, Keyflower, Evolution, and Kemet with goons, not to mention a lot of party games. Game rundown of new stuff I bought: Pina Pirata - Donald X Vacc's party game. It starts out similar to Uno, you have a hand of cards with one or two suits and you're trying to play a matching suit on the previous played card to empty your hand. But the twist is that when you empty your hand you draw three tokens, one you keep as a victory piece, one that gets added to the game as a new rule, and one that gets discarded. This creates chaos after a few rounds when you suddenly have a ton of new rules that change what all of the various suits do. Great little party game. Innovations & Echoes - The only Carl Chudyk I hadn't played, and in a new printing by IELLO. I like how different this is from Glory to Rome and Mottainai, but still feels like a Chudyk game. The freedom of how you use your two actions each turn is also great, and seems to create a lot of depth in a small box game. The expansion doubles the card pool and adds another mechanic, which I haven't tried yet. Valley of the Kings: Last Rites - This version is all about manipulating your tomb and discard pile to maximize action efficiency. It adds citizens to the deck of artifacts that let you do some really interesting actions. For example, the Priest of Horus lets you discard any number of cards then repeat the first action you took this turn that many times. It also adds a collection of 8's to the deck, adding another set to score with. Really awesome so far, maybe my favorite set yet. They also have some recommended sets to mix, though I think just mixing the original and this one would make for a great game. Evolution Climate - I'd played the original before and could immediately see the balance issues people always talked about, but this is based on the revised second edition and adds a climate track. The climate affects how much food is added to the pool each round and causes population loss based on your species' size. Larger breeds die off in heat, smaller in winter. With 5 players, the swings that could happen because of climate change was a bit much, sometimes wiping out 3-4 species a round. Carnivore balance is definitely much better than first edition. Masmorra - Dungeons of Arcadia - This was the hit of Gencon for me. I like Arcadia Quest quite a bit for a dice chucking dungeon crawl/pvp brawl but this game is vastly different. It's basically a Mage Knight-lite puzzly dungeon crawler. Each round you roll the 6 action die (and have 1 free reroll of any number of dice) and those dictate your actions for that round. You have the following actions: Movement - move two spaces/flip a new tile and move to it for free. Every character also has a free step token they can use each round to guarantee they always have 2 movement points. melee - used to attack monsters ranged - used to attack monsters, but if you use only ranged and kill them, they don't attack back (like Mage Knight) shield - block a damage potion - heal magic - change any die to another face of your choice When you flip a tile, it might have a monster slot, which you populate by rolling a monster die and placing it in the room with you. You can't move out of that room without fighting the monster first. You also get cards (either pve or pvp oriented) that have two uses, a spell like effect or dice icons. Each character also has special slots and abilities where they can spend dice to get various benefits (like changing swords into 2 swords, etc). Killing monsters, opening chests, and disarming traps all give xp and gold. As you level up, you unlock additional abilities that let you do more with each action. Gold can be spent on more cards or on certain abilities or effects. Your character starts out pretty basic, doing a few things each turn, but later in the game you are a monster killing machine and can pull off some really cool turns if you are clever with your dice and cards, which also reminds me of the best part of Mage Knight. There is a pve and a pvp version of the game, each with their own decks of player cards. The pvp version is a race to level 16, and the pve version is a typical "find the boss and kill it to win" design. The pvp version is very take-that. After your character finishes their turn, you act as the DM and move any active monsters towards other characters and repopulate and rooms that have monster symbols. The pve version has a deck of cards that act as the DM and cause bad things to happen each round and you have a clock mechanic, every game will last exactly 21 turns. More players means each person gets less turns but you will explore the dungeon faster and find the boss easier. Overall it's a really good experience that reminds me of Mage Knight while being about 95% simpler. I can teach this game in 10 minutes and play the full thing in about 1:30 max. I went ahead and late pledged the Kickstarter to get all the extra content that comes with it (like 15 more characters, more monster dice, tiles, token upgrades, etc) and I'll sell the base game off when it arrives. It also comes with regular Arcadia Quest cards for every character which is a good perk. Dominion Empires - Haven't played it yet, but heard great things and the new cards look really good. Games I demoed that were good: Star Wars Destiny - as lovely as the CCG model is, I actually like this game a lot. It's simple and fast, think more Hearthstone than FFG's LCG games, and the dice add an interesting element without making things too wacky. 30 card decks, ~20 minute games. It's less random than any of the crazy stuff in Hearthstone, but adds just enough uncertainty to your turns to make it not auto-pilot. I'd put it on par with mana in MTG. I'm not sure about the battleground cards and effect they have on the game, as they have some pretty powerful effects and are determined by a dice roll to start the game. Either way, this game is going to be a huge hit for FFG and they know it. I'll pick up the starter sets at least, as I liked what I saw so far and don't have any card dueling games besides AGoT, which is on the opposite end of the time and complexity spectrum. Vast - I didn't get to play, but I watched a full demo. It's got a learning curve, especially since every role plays so differently and has different win conditions, but man what a cool idea. I think this game had the most buzz over the weekend, noone was really talking about Cry Havoc or Seafall but everyone was talking about this and playing it. Codex - Good but also messy. Balance seems off for a Sirlin game. A lot of interesting ideas, I love the idea of various bonuses for where you play cards on the board, but the inconsistent art and tone is still a game killer for me. Also, special shout out Sirlin Games for having the saddest booth in the entire hall and reflecting perfectly on how much he values high quality presentation  It was literally two fold out plastic tables with white table cloths over them and a single banner with the Sirlin Games logo.
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 17:54
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Bottom Liner posted:Gencon recap: I have Sylvion and it's not bad for a solitaire tower defense game but man, it takes up a ton of table space. Similar to what i've seen CoB card game taking up. Hope you got a big table!
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Aug 8, 2016 18:14
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Big weekend of gaming for me! Finally got to try Deception: Murder in Hong-Kong after the fellow that owned it managed to get enough people together. Loved it. Plays like a mix between Codenames and Resistance. Rules are very simple and aside from a slight gently caress-up everyone had a blast making tenuous connections between clues and then throwing wild accusations around. If your group is burned out on the aforementioned party games, definitely give it a shot. It's a litttttttle pricey if you ask me for what you're actually getting but loads of fun regardless. Also got to pick up and play Seven Wonders: Duel with the GF and we both fell in love with it immediately, which is interesting because neither of us are really fond of the original. Overall, it plays like a super streamlined and quick version of the base game. Highly recommended for fans of 2p games. I'd put it up there with Patchwork as far as we're concerned. Then we got to play Relic Runners. Kind of a mix between Tikal and Ticket to Ride if that's possible, we weren't as thrilled with it but had a nice time overall. Fairly easy to teach as well. Like most of my games, it would be totally different and a lot more chaotic (and fun) with more players. And then we got to play Barony. Oh man, I liked this one a lot. It's like a very light 4x-y experience involving moving knights around a modular, hex based board with various types of terrain worth different values. The object of the game is to advance your character's status from a lovely little Baron to a badass Duke (and then King). You do this by sending knights out across the board, one hex at a time, finding good locations, and then settling there by building a structure. Once you've built something, you immediately take a shield token that represents the terrain's value (ranging from 2 to 5) that you can use on your next turn to buy a new rank on the point track. Only problem is that you need 16 points to advance, and that anyone can take resources from you by destroying your villages. Also you can only do one thing a turn. So basically you have be very careful with where and when you build villages and whether you risk settling somewhere someone else can just pillage before you can actually use the resources that you spent turns planning on acquiring! There are a couple of other things to it, of course, but generally speaking It goes very quickly and can be mean as hell with just 2p, so imagine trying to hold onto your resources in a game with three turns worth of rivals eyeing up your resources before you even get a chance to cash them in! Great game. Plus, the components are gorgeous but that's always been my experience from Matagot.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:15
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Megasabin posted:3. Rex vs. Dune. If I already own Dune is there a reason to also own Rex? Is it objectively better than Dune? Rex has some weird rule changes from Dune that I don't really understand well enough to say whether they are an improvement. I haven't played Dune though, just read the rules. This thread on BGG summarizes the changes. If you've played a bunch of Dune you can probably decide for yourself whether they are good or not. Most of them seem to be based around speeding up and streamlining, which since Rex is quite a long game anyway is probably a good thing. I like the Dune setting much more than the Twilight Imperium one, and a lot of the abilities seem a little odd shorn of their dune lore context.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:20
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sonatinas posted:I have Sylvion and it's not bad for a solitaire tower defense game but man, it takes up a ton of table space. Similar to what i've seen CoB card game taking up. Hope you got a big table! Yeah that was the first thing I noticed too, don't know why they didn't make the cards small squares or something. Onirim on the other hand takes up no space really, so it will definitely be in my travel bag more often even if I like the tower defense style a lot more than hand management. Great art on these games though, and elegant design as well. I want to pick up Castellion as well when I see it.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:23
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I'm sorry for your money spent on Innovation. Unless the reprint changed things drastically it's an incredibly luck-based game.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:27
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Here is what I think I played at GenCon: Brew Crafters, Food Chain Magnate, Red7, The Grizzled, Imperial Assault Skirmish, Legend of Andor, Arkham Horror LCG, Lord of the Rings LCG, Star Wars LCG, Mysterium, Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, The Networks, Codenames Pictures, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (I feel like I am missing 1-2 more haha) Didn't buy a ton, just Concordia (40$ no tax/shipping seemed to good to pass up), Imperial Assault character packs, Codenames Pictures, and Flame of the West for LOTR. I did get a copy of Last Friday but gave it to a friend haha. Highlights were definitely MoM 2nd edition, my first play of FCM, LotR LCG events, and just the general ridiculousness of it all.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:27
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Countblanc posted:I'm sorry for your money spent on Innovation. Unless the reprint changed things drastically it's an incredibly luck-based game. I'm sorry too, but only because he bought the Iello version and not the new Asmadi Deluxe version.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:36
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Kiranamos posted:I'm sorry too, but only because he bought the Iello version and not the new Asmadi Deluxe version. I actually like this one a lot more! Countblanc posted:I'm sorry for your money spent on Innovation. Unless the reprint changed things drastically it's an incredibly luck-based game. All of his games are kind of a hot mess, but I enjoy the craziness.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:38
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Whoops, wrong thread.
Andarel fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 18:43
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Megasabin posted:A few questions: 1. I think Argent is pretty great. It's a complex worker placement with a lot of options, a variety of set ups (because the 'rooms' you get on the table are random, and then each of them have two sides), though there is an element of luck that I'm not fond of in the spells and vault cards that are drawn. Some are just straight-up better than others. 2. Fields of Arle is the meatiest two-player game I've seen that isn't a wargame. Whereas Creatures Big and Small is a much more pared-down version of Agricola, as it deals exclusively with animals and their management, Fields of Arle is arguably more complex than Agricola. You must manage a series of resources, buildings, animals, and vehicles in a barn. There are numerous strategies possible in it, and after playing it twice I picked it up and have sort of had an itch to keep playing it since (especially since I'm very bad at it). There are mild elements of variable replayability in it, as some of the possible buildings are randomized. So, if you want more meat, this is a great game for it.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:43
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Played a bunch of Coup for a goodly time on Saturday; then in the spirit of going along with things, played Betrayal at House on the Hill which went pretty much exactly as I'd remembered it from years back. First game, the second omen immediately triggered the haunt which made my character the traitor: turn passed to my left immediately, that person moved two rooms and attacked me and killed me outright with one attack, ending the haunt abruptly. Second game went on until we had entirely exhausted all the room tiles before FINALLY triggering the haunt... which made me the traitor -again-. The scenario called for the spear, holy symbol and medallion... all of which a single character already had. Because they were the only one that could kill the traitor and the traitor's win condition was killing all of the explorers, I heaped the entire 'zombie horde' at them--and because of how awful BAtHotH handles conflict resolution, they basically annihilated the entire zombie horde just with defensive rolls and walked away barely scratched. (They were rolling 7 dice and the zombies, which ordinarily rolled 5, only rolled 3 against someone with the holy symbol. It was Pretty Dumb.) Then over the next several turns we had a back and forth of rolling lots of dice at each other all standing around in the same room until an investigator would die, the next investigator would pick up all of their equipment from the same tile and repeat, until finally through sacrificial attrition they killed me and won the scenario. Hooray! I can probably already gauge the answer, but the group is prodding at Zombicide which does not strike me as being particularly... good. Apart from 'it sucks' is there a good synopsis of why / why not? (My eyes already bugged out when BGG listed 77 expansions.) GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 18:58
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Bottom Liner posted:Masmorra - Dungeons of Arcadia This game name makes me smile, because there's a Peruvian purple corn pudding dish called mazamorra morada Thanks for the great writeup. The new Valley of the Kings you bought/played is Last Rites. Afterlife was the other one.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:08
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It's also Portugese for "dungeon" so it's "Dungeon - Dungeons of Arcadia" And oops, your right, fixed my post.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:22
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GaistHeidegger posted:I can probably already gauge the answer, but the group is prodding at Zombicide which does not strike me as being particularly... good. Apart from 'it sucks' is there a good synopsis of why / why not? (My eyes already bugged out when BGG listed 77 expansions.) It's "meh". It's definitely better than Betrayal as a game, but it's firmly Ameritrashy. It's coop, lots of random card draws, rolling to hit, player elimination, etc. As I recall one of the later big-box expansions fixed player elimination though. As for expansions, most of those are KS-exclusive extra characters or alternate sculpts that you'd be fine without. If they are deadset on a Zombie game, City of Horror is pretty good, it's not so much about fighting zombies as it it negotiating with and against other players as you try to survive.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:31
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Doesn't Zombicide also have the thing where you level up which increases your abilities, but also increases the zombie spawns across the board, so you can gently caress your team over if you level up too fast? And the thing where if you shoot into an adjacent location you automatically hit your friends before any zombies? And the thing where you could spawn a big mega-zombie really early in the game if the deck says so?
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Aug 8, 2016 19:34
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Wizard Styles posted:One of my favorites this year so far. I only wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for a game that'll fill a whole night by itself or your group doesn't like having their plans hosed with. Thanks for the info. I've got Via Nebula on my list. Is its rank on BGG as low as it is just because it's new? Also, how long would you say it takes to play with 4 people?
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Aug 8, 2016 19:52
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Acceptableloss posted:Thanks for the info. I've got Via Nebula on my list. Is its rank on BGG as low as it is just because it's new? Also, how long would you say it takes to play with 4 people? They really flopped on the marketing of this one. It's had so little advertising or buzz that it's under most people's radar. It would still play quickly with 4.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:54
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Yeah, the euro crowd should have consumed it rapidly but there just wasn't enough advertising for people to know how good it was. Who knows, hopefully it'll do well in retail.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:57
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Scyther posted:Doesn't Zombicide also have the thing where you level up which increases your abilities, but also increases the zombie spawns across the board, so you can gently caress your team over if you level up too fast? And the thing where if you shoot into an adjacent location you automatically hit your friends before any zombies? And the thing where you could spawn a big mega-zombie really early in the game if the deck says so? Yup. Like I said, Ameritrashy as hell.
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Aug 8, 2016 20:02
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Scyther posted:Doesn't Zombicide also have the thing where you level up which increases your abilities, but also increases the zombie spawns across the board, so you can gently caress your team over if you level up too fast? And the thing where if you shoot into an adjacent location you automatically hit your friends before any zombies? And the thing where you could spawn a big mega-zombie really early in the game if the deck says so? The black plague version of the game makes a couple of nice changes. One of which is you no longer default to shooting your friends in an adjacent location, instead you only hit them on misses, which is probably the way it should have always been.
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Aug 8, 2016 20:12
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Megasabin posted:3. Rex vs. Dune. If I already own Dune is there a reason to also own Rex? Is it objectively better than Dune?
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Aug 8, 2016 20:49
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Cow Bell posted:I think Dune is the superior game in all regards except time played. I believe Rex caps out at 8 turns so the game can be significantly shorter. The difference is literally "It ends on turn 8 instead of 12(I think?), so it isn't as if Dune cannot be played in the same time frame changing that. The theme fits much, much better in Dune (specially the Sandstorm/Bombing fleet mechanic).
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Aug 8, 2016 21:07
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Countblanc posted:I'm sorry for your money spent on Innovation. Unless the reprint changed things drastically it's an incredibly luck-based game. James The 1st fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 21:09
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Acceptableloss posted:Thanks for the info. I've got Via Nebula on my list. Is its rank on BGG as low as it is just because it's new? Also, how long would you say it takes to play with 4 people? Also, I'd never trust BGG ranks. I don't know what bizarre logic went into their geek rating and ranking, but it basically means that older or massively hyped games that accumulate more votes get to the top.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:21
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I played a four player game with someone who had incredible AP and also managed to lose a piece so we spent a while trying to find it (he had put it back on the board in a spot where it wasn't obvious). Still took under an hour.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:30
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Fat Samurai posted:The difference is literally "It ends on turn 8 instead of 12(I think?), so it isn't as if Dune cannot be played in the same time frame changing that. The theme fits much, much better in Dune (specially the Sandstorm/Bombing fleet mechanic). I've played both but not for a while, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy. But my recollection is that the changes to Rex go beyond the turn change and generally improve the game, particularly making it far faster and easier to get a handle on. This is not a trivial issue given how long Dune runs, it's the difference for me between playable and near unplayable for me, given both games also are greatly improved with the full six player count. The theme is a huge whammy in Dune's favor as it is such a clear fit, but I'll take the better game in terms of seeing actual play. I would love a new Dune with all of the Rex changes (and FFG art/components) and am sorely tempted to Rutibex one up. But really I'm very happy with Rex from an actual playability standpoint. It's basically the game Cosmic wishes it was in terms of politics.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:50
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