Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Ryoshi posted:

Remember about four hundred pages ago someone mentioned they were going to try to make Codenames except with needlessly "adult" words?

Because that is a thing that you can go and buy right now at your local Target superstore, and it looks completely godawful, and Vlaada's name isn't anywhere on the box.

There was also a copy of Telestrations After Dark which I think actually WOULD benefit from some more risque words.

Old news, we've discussed the fact that some of the cards would probably go fine in the regular deck but a bunch don't have enough definitions.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 20:30

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# ? May 19, 2024 03:38

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

i didn't realize Vlaada wasn't credited, any idea why that is?

# ? Aug 13, 2016 20:55

Rutibex: Sep 9, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Countblanc posted:

i didn't realize Vlaada wasn't credited, any idea why that is?

Likely the same reason Dog-opoly doesn't credit Parker Brothers.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 21:16

Aghama: Jul 24, 2002; We eat fish, tossed salads

silvergoose posted:

Old news, we've discussed the fact that some of the cards would probably go fine in the regular deck but a bunch don't have enough definitions.

Except a big(is) deal was made in this thread about how Vlaada play tested all the original words to work together.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 21:24

Caros: May 14, 2008

Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:

On Time Stories: So like others have said, the story is garbage at best and offensive at worst (Asylum campaign). The central mystery, if it can be called that, seemed incidental to the actions you take in the game, and the point-and-click tableaus and dice-rolling challenges barely qualify as interactive. There is a certain satisfaction when you encounter a card and can go "Oh, I have that item!"", but it's chancek as much as anything. The game seems to imply that you should be able to win your first time through, and while I haven't mathed it out I don't think it's possible even if you had perfect luck in your choices (unless maybe you also had perfect luck with that stupid die that determines how much time you spend each turn). Resetting the game felt lovely; being able to keep certain things the same felt cool, but still frustrating for the amount of retracing your steps we still had to do, and I can imagine it would feel a lot worse if had we missed our "checkpoints" (which we very nearly did).

All that being said, I really liked the central puzzle, which actually took everyone's participation to solve and went from "Is this even the puzzle?" and "Can we even solve this yet?" to a very satisfying "Aha!" moment. The other major puzzle was more mechanical and brain-burny, and probably would have been easier to solve solo, but I still dug it. However, my overall impression is that the game is more concerned with trying to be the first to do what it does (point-and-clickish puzzly story-based thing), and less concerned with trying to be the best implementation of that concept. Maybe later packs will be better, but judging from the reception its received I think they're probably just going to stay the course.

On X-Com: The only thing worse than FFG's rulebooks is FFG's app-based tutorial, what the goddamn ever living gently caress. An hour of reading staccato rules blurbs that all said basically the same thing, while they still withhold the big picture from you so you still have no idea why you're doing anything. gently caress this stupid game and it's stupid app. They could have just written "Space Alert, but worse and then you roll dice."

One of the weirdest things about time stories is its 'future' sections.

The game is designed with a groundhog day style of play, where you play through once, figure out what works, what doesn't, and then try, try again. It's clearly intended in the design of basically every mission that you should fail at least once, because there are time sink traps that take multiple time units that lead nowhere, something you would never, ever be able to guess based on the design of the card. You can luck into a round one victory (I did on the second mission) but those sort of victories are just that, luck.

Yet the game is flat out insulting in the face of player failure. I could understand your time boss being a dick if you failed so badly they had to send in the b-team, or if you stupidly make the obvious wrong choice at the end of the first mission, but the game gives you poo poo for even a single failure, which is such a bad design and narrative decision that it hurts my brain.

On top of that is the bonuses you get for victory. If you get a first round victory you spike the ball and get to pick two upgrades for future missions. If you utterly gently caress up and get the lowest rank you get a single, lovely upgrade. This means teams that do well continue to do well, and teams that do poorly have an even harder time in the future.

By contrast, funding for events in pandemic legacy gets lower the better you are doing, which helps to self regulate the difficulty. If you are doing well the game is harder to challenge you, if you are bad at it the game makes itself easier. How on earth would you think that the reverse design is ever a good idea?

# ? Aug 13, 2016 21:25

Talas: Aug 27, 2005

Countblanc posted:

i didn't realize Vlaada wasn't credited, any idea why that is?

I don't know but I wouldn't want my name on it either.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 21:57

Rusty Kettle: Apr 10, 2005; Ultima! Ahmmm-bing!

I went back ten pages and didn't see any mention of mansions of madness 2.0. Has anyone here played it and formed an opinion?

# ? Aug 14, 2016 00:06

Dr. VooDoo: May 4, 2006

So if GW really does break up with FFG I need to get some games before it's too late. I got Fury of Dracula, Chaos in the Old World, and Forbidden Stars ready to go in my shopping cart next pay day but is there any other games that I should look out for before it's too late?

# ? Aug 14, 2016 02:21

Thirsty Girl: Dec 5, 2015

Dr. VooDoo posted:

So if GW really does break up with FFG I need to get some games before it's too late. I got Fury of Dracula, Chaos in the Old World, and Forbidden Stars ready to go in my shopping cart next pay day but is there any other games that I should look out for before it's too late?

If you have any nostalgia for Talisman, Relic is better version of the same Candyland gameplay.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 02:32

Macdeo Lurjtux: Jul 5, 2011; BRRREADSTOOORRM!

Is there a anywhere with the Horned Rat expansion in stock? Or is it not worth it, since I've heard five player is completely unbalanced and you're better off treating it as an alternate to Khorne?

# ? Aug 14, 2016 02:35

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Horned rat expansion is straight up broken. Virtually impossible to win with the new nurgle. Stick to the base game.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 02:54

al-azad: May 28, 2009

cenotaph posted:

Horned rat expansion is straight up broken. Virtually impossible to win with the new nurgle. Stick to the base game.

It's almost like they took inspiration from the video game which is impossible to win without save scumming.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 03:03

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Did anybody else watch Voltron on Netflix and wonder how Broken Loose's robot game is coming along?

# ? Aug 14, 2016 03:08

Merauder: Apr 17, 2003; The North Remembers.

PerniciousKnid posted:

Did anybody else watch Voltron on Netflix and wonder how Broken Loose's robot game is coming along?

Nope.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 03:18

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

cenotaph posted:

Horned rat expansion is straight up broken. Virtually impossible to win with the new nurgle. Stick to the base game.

Woah woah woah, don't listen to this man. The Horned Rat isn't entirely broken. It's just mostly broken.

Specifically, the Horned Rat himself is a perfectly functional addition to the game, and makes 5-player games both possible and viable. (For the record, he should ONLY be played with five players. In a four player game, removing one of the basic four gods badly screws up the ruination math.)

Additionally, the card The Horned One's Due should be replaced in the deck with the new version, which doesn't advantage the Rat player as much.

Everything else is complete dogshit, though. The alternate power/upgrade cards are completely out of whack, making Khorne a monster and Nurgle a joke. And the new event cards mostly just say "randomly gently caress Tzeentch" on them in big bold letters.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 03:28

CovfefeCatCafe: Apr 11, 2006; A fresh attitude
brewed daily!

Caros posted:

One of the weirdest things about time stories is its 'future' sections.

The game is designed with a groundhog day style of play, where you play through once, figure out what works, what doesn't, and then try, try again. It's clearly intended in the design of basically every mission that you should fail at least once, because there are time sink traps that take multiple time units that lead nowhere, something you would never, ever be able to guess based on the design of the card. You can luck into a round one victory (I did on the second mission) but those sort of victories are just that, luck.

Yet the game is flat out insulting in the face of player failure. I could understand your time boss being a dick if you failed so badly they had to send in the b-team, or if you stupidly make the obvious wrong choice at the end of the first mission, but the game gives you poo poo for even a single failure, which is such a bad design and narrative decision that it hurts my brain.

On top of that is the bonuses you get for victory. If you get a first round victory you spike the ball and get to pick two upgrades for future missions. If you utterly gently caress up and get the lowest rank you get a single, lovely upgrade. This means teams that do well continue to do well, and teams that do poorly have an even harder time in the future.

By contrast, funding for events in pandemic legacy gets lower the better you are doing, which helps to self regulate the difficulty. If you are doing well the game is harder to challenge you, if you are bad at it the game makes itself easier. How on earth would you think that the reverse design is ever a good idea?

Oy, how'd you pull off the 1st run victory on the 2nd mission? Took my group half-way through the 3rd run to nail it (still got two upgrades out of it). Must be your superior skills at fighting the libertarian menace.

But yeah, the game definitely seems to want to force you to go through multiple runs no matter what. And the player insults are terrible when you realize that there is actually no penalty to running out of time, except now you have to reset the board. But even then, on the second mission, that's not that big of a deal. But yeah, the time wasting dead ends are loving terrible like the loving tobacco shop in the first mission, or dancing with the crazy guy around a plunger. If anything, I think one of our player's suggestions would be helpful: use a notepad like hardcore mystery readers do, and take notes of everything you see and do. Nothing in the game says you can't. May as well.

In other new, impulse bought Keyflower at a local shop. Now I have instructions in five languages!

# ? Aug 14, 2016 04:48

deadwing: Mar 5, 2007

God I fuckin love plano boxes

e: gently caress, one of the vp tokens was in the wrong slot

deadwing fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Aug 14, 2016

# ? Aug 14, 2016 06:36

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Gutter Owl posted:

Woah woah woah, don't listen to this man. The Horned Rat isn't entirely broken. It's just mostly broken.

Specifically, the Horned Rat himself is a perfectly functional addition to the game, and makes 5-player games both possible and viable. (For the record, he should ONLY be played with five players. In a four player game, removing one of the basic four gods badly screws up the ruination math.)

Additionally, the card The Horned One's Due should be replaced in the deck with the new version, which doesn't advantage the Rat player as much.

Everything else is complete dogshit, though. The alternate power/upgrade cards are completely out of whack, making Khorne a monster and Nurgle a joke. And the new event cards mostly just say "randomly gently caress Tzeentch" on them in big bold letters.

Of fine if you're desperate for a fifth player I guess but everything else is just so awful.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 06:39

Shadin: Jun 28, 2009

Dr. VooDoo posted:

So if GW really does break up with FFG I need to get some games before it's too late. I got Fury of Dracula, Chaos in the Old World, and Forbidden Stars ready to go in my shopping cart next pay day but is there any other games that I should look out for before it's too late?

I really love Space Hulk: Death Angel. It's also cheap.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 06:55

Paradoxish: Dec 19, 2003; Will you stop going crazy in there?

deadwing posted:

God I fuckin love plano boxes

e: gently caress, one of the vp tokens was in the wrong slot

You're going to super regret having those dice stored that way when you actually need to get them out. Unless you're just going to dump the whole thing, but then separating them seems strange.

Edit- Plano boxes do in fact rule for things that aren't cubes, though.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 06:56

deadwing: Mar 5, 2007

Paradoxish posted:

You're going to super regret having those dice stored that way when you actually need to get them out. Unless you're just going to dump the whole thing, but then separating them seems strange.

Edit- Plano boxes do in fact rule for things that aren't cubes, though.

It's really easy to take things out of them? I guess it depends on finger size

# ? Aug 14, 2016 07:02

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

Getting at the bottom layer of those green ones seems particularly fiddly. Unless you've got long fingernails, idk.

One trick you can do is to get a strip of paper a bit longer than the compartment, and tape it down at one end. Then put the dice in on top of it, and you can pull the end of the strip when you need to get some out.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 07:05

deadwing: Mar 5, 2007

Jabor posted:

Getting at the bottom layer of those green ones seems particularly fiddly. Unless you've got long fingernails, idk.

One trick you can do is to get a strip of paper a bit longer than the compartment, and tape it down at one end. Then put the dice in on top of it, and you can pull the end of the strip when you need to get some out.

My fingertips easily fit between the dice and the walls of the box, then I can just pull them up against the walls. Maybe I have weird tiny baby hands like Donald Trump????

# ? Aug 14, 2016 07:08

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

cenotaph posted:

Of fine if you're desperate for a fifth player I guess but everything else is just so awful.

A little player count flexibility can be a huge make-or-break for games.

Dungeon Lords is one of my favorite games of all time, and I'm lucky if I get to play it twice a year, because I'll so often have either three or five players at the table on game night.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 07:09

PlaneGuy: Mar 28, 2001; g e r m a n
e n g i n e e r i n g; Yam Slacker

PFlats posted:

Whoa, let's come back to this for a second.

How does this work? Through your local nerd store? Through a publisher/distributor? I'd totally be down to do this.

Local nerd store. Friday nights and all Saturday there's a staff just recommending and teaching games. I was one of the old regulars before it was a café, so I stepped up to teach.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 08:00

Safety Biscuits: Oct 21, 2010

Gutter Owl posted:

A little player count flexibility can be a huge make-or-break for games.

Dungeon Lords is one of my favorite games of all time, and I'm lucky if I get to play it twice a year, because I'll so often have either three or five players at the table on game night.

I really wanted to buy Dungeon Lords but the "four players only you can kind of have two or three playing" stopped me because of this. It's a shame.

Caros posted:

One of the weirdest things about time stories is its 'future' sections.

It's less weird when you realise the designers are totally incapable of putting together a scenario that makes any kind of sense whatsoever - logical or rules-wise - and they're probably all lobotomy victims. Zork and stuff are free these days, and CYOA books are 50p a go in charity shops.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 08:09

Caros: May 14, 2008

YF19pilot posted:

Oy, how'd you pull off the 1st run victory on the 2nd mission? Took my group half-way through the 3rd run to nail it (still got two upgrades out of it). Must be your superior skills at fighting the libertarian menace.

But yeah, the game definitely seems to want to force you to go through multiple runs no matter what. And the player insults are terrible when you realize that there is actually no penalty to running out of time, except now you have to reset the board. But even then, on the second mission, that's not that big of a deal. But yeah, the time wasting dead ends are loving terrible like the loving tobacco shop in the first mission, or dancing with the crazy guy around a plunger. If anything, I think one of our player's suggestions would be helpful: use a notepad like hardcore mystery readers do, and take notes of everything you see and do. Nothing in the game says you can't. May as well.

In other new, impulse bought Keyflower at a local shop. Now I have instructions in five languages!

Honest to god it was dumb luck. I did the math after the game and it only takes about 2/3rds of the total allotted time to hit all the crucial points. We brute forced a couple of the puzzles, got lucky on our attempts and guessed on the final choice.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 10:41

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

DL is one of my favorites, too, and I basically only get to play it at VlaadaCon once a year.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 20:23

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Should I be hyped for Captain Sonar? I enjoyed my one game of Space Cadets DD, and this game seems at first glance to be far superior.

Edit: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-captain-sonar/

PerniciousKnid fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Aug 14, 2016

# ? Aug 14, 2016 21:15

al-azad: May 28, 2009

PerniciousKnid posted:

Should I be hyped for Captain Sonar? I enjoyed my one game of Space Cadets DD, and this game seems at first glance to be far superior.

Edit: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-captain-sonar/

Now I'm hyped. Anything remotely similar to Space Team gets my attention but Space Cadets didn't interest me at all.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 22:46

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Gutter Owl posted:

A little player count flexibility can be a huge make-or-break for games.

Dungeon Lords is one of my favorite games of all time, and I'm lucky if I get to play it twice a year, because I'll so often have either three or five players at the table on game night.

You seem to think I'm arguing in good faith while what I'm really doing is ranting about how much I hate that goddamn expansion. I would probably not play Chaos at all than play with the rat, if only because it has the stink from the rest of the expansion on it. In fact I haven't played chaos in years because it has steadily slid down my rankings into good-not-great territory and we kind of played it out when it was new.

For serious: if it's a top tier game for you and you want the flexibility of a fifth player then by all means get it for that but if it's one of several 4p games in your rotation then I wouldn't bother.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:10

Neurotic Roleplay: May 20, 2005

it would suck if ffg had to stop printing fury of Dracula. I would like to see some expansions for it, but I have no idea what kind of expansions they could put in that game.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:27

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Finally had a chance to play Star Wars Rebellion today.

It was FFG as gently caress but it was great. Themey but still quite strategic, and the comments about replay value are probably accurate, but I feel like I wouldn't play it much more than once every six months anyway. I played Rebels and after a really tense early section, over-committed horribly to an assault to clear a subjugated planet and claim an objective, using all my troops including those from my Rebel Base, then proceeded to storm Imp system after Imp system whilst the Imp player drew ALL THE PROBE CARDS as a result. He ended up maybe 2 turns away from landing on my all-but-empty base, when I killed the Death Star and liberated Kasshyk to drag the rep maker back far enough to ensure victory.

WHy does the death star have 8 attack though, when you can only ever roll 5 dice for a given combat?

Can't justify buying it though. I'll probably only play it very rarely because of how long it takes and the low player count.

Super fun though.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:44

Meme Poker Party: Sep 1, 2006; by Azathoth

Recently my group of friends started getting into board games and having a game night. Along the way we've come up with some little tweaks we feel make some games more fun.

Deluxe weed is a game where you have five spots infront of you that you want to fill with weed. Which can suck if your hand is all low numbers. So we agreed you could stack one's onto the same space.

For clue we thought the dice were pointless and just took up time, so now you can just go to whatever room you want to when it's your turn.

Exploding kittens is a drawing game where a certain number of cards (the exploding kittens) according to players will eliminate you from the game. The rest of the deck is built to avoid that happening to you. We always play with max danger cards regardless if how many players we have.

I'm not sure if it is actually against the rules, but when my group plays Dead of Winter we are pretty upfront and honest with each other about our secret objectives without actually stating them. Like, "Hey, I'll play some food cards if someone can just give me all of their junk cards and I can't say why."

Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Aug 15, 2016

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:32

GrandpaPants: Feb 13, 2006; Free to roam the heavens in man's noble quest to investigate the weirdness of the universe!

Since there's a nonzero chance of it going away, how does Fury of Dracula compare to Letters From Whitechapel (or other chase type games that I may be forgetting)?

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:39

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Chomp8645 posted:

Recently my group of friends started getting into board games and having a game night. Along the way we've come up with some little tweaks we feel make some games more fun.

Deluxe weed is a game where you have five spots infront of you that you want to fill with weed. Which can suck if your hand is all low numbers. So we agreed you could stack one's onto the same space.

For clue we thought the dice were pointless and just took up time, so now you can just go to whatever room you want to when it's your turn.

Exploding kittens is a drawing game where a certain number of cards (the exploding kittens) according to players will eliminate you from the game. The rest of the deck is built to avoid that happening to you. We always play with max danger cards regardless if how many players we have.

I started doing game nights with friends and the biggest tweak we've been doing was thinking more critically about the games we played.

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:41

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Chomp8645 posted:

Recently my group of friends started getting into board games and having a game night. Along the way we've come up with some little tweaks we feel make some games more fun.

Deluxe weed is a game where you have five spots infront of you that you want to fill with weed. Which can suck if your hand is all low numbers. So we agreed you could stack one's onto the same space.

For clue we thought the dice were pointless and just took up time, so now you can just go to whatever room you want to when it's your turn.

Exploding kittens is a drawing game where a certain number of cards (the exploding kittens) according to players will eliminate you from the game. The rest of the deck is built to avoid that happening to you. We always play with max danger cards regardless if how many players we have.

I'm not sure if it is actually against the rules, but when my group plays Dead of Winter we are pretty upfront and honest with each other about our secret objectives without actually stating them. Like, "Hey, I'll play some food cards if someone can just give me all of their junk cards and I can't say why."

Don't take this as insulting, but all of those games are pretty bad. I'd play better games rather than house rule bad ones.

Don't think that's against the rules in DoW but what *is* against the rules is giving someone something and them not immediately playing it; this means you can't give people cards for their objectives.

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:41

Rutibex: Sep 9, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Chomp8645 posted:

Deluxe weed is a game where you have five spots infront of you that you want to fill with weed.

Don't listen to these Debbie Downers, this is a great game! :420:

House rules are awesome, and you should do as many as you can! It really personalizes a game and makes everyone feel like they had a say. House rules can make bad games into great games

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:51

rchandra: Apr 30, 2013

Speaking of Dead of Winter in good faith: does it ever come up that it's worthwhile for a non-traitor to use food to raise a die? I've never seen it and food usually ends up being in somewhat short supply between crises and not starving.

Tried Merchant of Venus today (the old version, as the player with the new one couldn't make it). The supply and demand mechanics are interesting and unpredictable, yet prevent farming routes to extinction, this automatically downgrades Xia for me. The game went kind of long, felt like we used a lot of time trying to figure out "where's Culture X" when considering purchase plans and when restocking, I'm not sure how much that would improve with repeat plays. Certainly poker chips would help a little. Does playing "Classic Rules" on the new FFG make it easier? And would you recommend classic over the new standard rules?

# ? Aug 15, 2016 01:00

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# ? May 19, 2024 03:38

unpronounceable: Apr 4, 2010; You mean we still have another game to go through?!; Fallen Rib

rchandra posted:

Speaking of Dead of Winter in good faith: does it ever come up that it's worthwhile for a non-traitor to use food to raise a die? I've never seen it and food usually ends up being in somewhat short supply between crises and not starving.

Isn't there a chef character that can use a die to make two food? It wouldn't be great, but I could see using a food to make a die higher for a net one food.

# ? Aug 15, 2016 01:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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