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I read a reddit post a few months ago describing a Star Wars Armada experience. 'Five hours of gameplay came down to a single dice roll.' I quipped that was all I needed to hear to never play the game, and the replies seemed confused that I would hold the position.
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Oct 15, 2016 22:57
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Jabor posted:Well that's exactly what I said. The valuable part of the age 1 quests are the track bumps and upgrades that allow you to be more effective in later ages. Yeah I'm just going to say I dislike this style of game design because I can't really predict the direction of the final age and the nature of a drafting game means everyone has to agree to go after one player which just isn't going to happen. One person isn't enough to stop another person and you're never in a position to negotiate with the other players so "letting someone walk away with things" is an inaccurate statement it's more like "the guy to the right of the winner wasn't paying attention." Unlike other drafting games like 7 Wonders where you draft then react, Blood Rage leaves me feeling like there's no point in countering another player you should just always focus on making your position better which flies in the face of its theme.
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Oct 15, 2016 23:08
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Shadow225 posted:I read a reddit post a few months ago describing a Star Wars Armada experience. 'Five hours of gameplay came down to a single dice roll.' I quipped that was all I needed to hear to never play the game, and the replies seemed confused that I would hold the position. Multiplayer Euro-Yahtzee like T-Bone describes can burn, though.
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Oct 15, 2016 23:17
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Shadow225 posted:I read a reddit post a few months ago describing a Star Wars Armada experience. 'Five hours of gameplay came down to a single dice roll.' I quipped that was all I needed to hear to never play the game, and the replies seemed confused that I would hold the position. That's what bad players say about Armada or X-wing. What they didn't realize is that the game is about denying rolls to your opponent while making your own rolls stronger. Every single resource in either game exists for that purpose. Hell, nowadays you have guaranteed hits and evades on both sides.
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Oct 15, 2016 23:21
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I'm talking about in the actual round, not during drafting. Every player is equally capable of walking into his territories and pillaging for a free track bump and the glory for winning a fight. Every player is equally capable of placing troops in the Ragnarok territory so one player can't monopolize it. It's silly to think that it's all the responsibility of the guy passing to him in the draft. It sounds like the guy outplayed the rest of the table and you don't like that he won, which is quite strange to me because the alternative is ... someone has to play in round three even though there's literally no possibility of them winning?
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Oct 15, 2016 23:48
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Jabor posted:I'm talking about in the actual round, not during drafting. Every player is equally capable of walking into his territories and pillaging for a free track bump and the glory for winning a fight. Every player is equally capable of placing troops in the Ragnarok territory so one player can't monopolize it. It's silly to think that it's all the responsibility of the guy passing to him in the draft. You make it sound easier than it actually is. Going into someone's territory requires a move or an invade, you're at the mercy of the person already there can initiate the pillage. Everyone wants the track bumps so starting a pillage will just draw another player which may be a fight you know you can't win. The Ragnarok territory isn't necessarily a target at the start of an age, it becomes a spot you fill in towards the end as the number of dudes winds down. Ideally you want it locked down in the previous Age to prevent new people moving in, but this isn't efficient because of the unit limitations. You're not understanding how he won. His strategy up to that point was using the ability that lets you bring an extra warrior during an invasion but he was getting crushed in battle by everyone else. So in the final age he drafted every quest, the quest doubler, and just moved his dudes to pillaged spots where there's less interest from the competitive players. So in final scoring he basically got +60 points for quests (have 4 dudes in Valhalla, control one area in one region, etc) +50 points for his track upgrades which got an immense bump from the completed quests, +20 for Ragnarok which brought him up from like 10 to win the game. And there was nothing anyone could do because A) he didn't play the clan upgrade until his last action so we're all thinking "whatever, the loser isn't going to get anywhere with the handful of points from completed quests" but also the action economy and Glory system being what it is you're actively screwing yourself more when trying to screw another player. I can't pillage an already pillaged spot so I could predict his quests and mess with those but I'm also limited by the number of guys I can play so the very act of going after someone is removing you as a competing force. I can prevent this person from having 9 points but it's preventing me from having 10 points! That's not outplaying to me, that's lucking into a good draft and nothing about Blood Rage's design promotes me being aggressive beyond laser focusing on the most efficient play. I love area control as a genre and the more I think about it the more I believe Blood Rage may be the absolute bottom on my list, lower than even Small World. And this wasn't a "first time play, mad that I lost" I've played this game about a dozen times and this was the final straw.
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Oct 16, 2016 00:04
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cenotaph posted:Sounds like a great time!!!! It felt like La Granja but just kinda worse and more random. I mean, I wouldn't call it a bad game but both of them aren't really needed. e: not the Wargame thread but I think I'm gonna get some carpal tunnel and sticker Sekigahara/East Front/Julius Caesar tomorrow in anticipation of looking at the setup sometime wistfully T-Bone fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Oct 16, 2016 |
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Oct 16, 2016 00:04
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Impermanent posted:He's talking about Odin, not Gloomhaven. I am so glad I didn't ask a follow up question. I seriously thought I was just confused. Too bad Gloomhaven may be a bit lame, though I'll wait for reviews, maybe there's some really good stuff in there that doesn't take too long to get to.
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Oct 16, 2016 01:03
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al-azad posted:You're not understanding how he won. His strategy up to that point was using the ability that lets you bring an extra warrior during an invasion but he was getting crushed in battle by everyone else. So in the final age he drafted every quest, the quest doubler, and just moved his dudes to pillaged spots where there's less interest from the competitive players. So in final scoring he basically got +60 points for quests (have 4 dudes in Valhalla, control one area in one region, etc) +50 points for his track upgrades which got an immense bump from the completed quests, +20 for Ragnarok which brought him up from like 10 to win the game. Sounds like he outplayed you in the draft.
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Oct 16, 2016 01:15
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foxxtrot posted:I am so glad I didn't ask a follow up question. I seriously thought I was just confused. With total respect to Jedit, he's also one of the regulars who hates mage knight, so he isn't the target audience for gloomhaven (or anything good.)
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Oct 16, 2016 01:17
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Crackbone posted:Sounds like he outplayed you in the draft. Which I can't counter in the move-dudes-on-map portion because his strategy was built on non-aggression requiring me to divert units that won't accomplish anything except deny him points, and I can't counter during the draft because I wasn't passing him cards.
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Oct 16, 2016 01:26
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Shadow225 posted:I read a reddit post a few months ago describing a Star Wars Armada experience. 'Five hours of gameplay came down to a single dice roll.' I quipped that was all I needed to hear to never play the game, and the replies seemed confused that I would hold the position. I can definitely understand that, and it does seem like poor game design, but then again that could describe a handful of BSG games I've played (albeit in half the time) and those were always some of the best game endings for me because of everything that happened along the way and the investment of both sides. So I can see how that could be a positive for some people.
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Oct 16, 2016 01:47
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Armada is one of the least luck dependent miniatures games I have played (although welcome to be corrected) so calling out a game that came down to a single die roll is notable because it is exceptional, not because it is the norm, and probably reflects a really tense and down to the wire session.
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Oct 16, 2016 01:59
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Blamestorm posted:Armada is one of the least luck dependent miniatures games I have played (although welcome to be corrected) so calling out a game that came down to a single die roll is notable because it is exceptional, not because it is the norm, and probably reflects a really tense and down to the wire session. It's also a really nebulous statement. "This player maneuvered into a winning position and my last resort fell on a die roll" is a lot different than "nothing else mattered in the end except a die roll."
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Oct 16, 2016 02:04
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An example that would also throw up red flags, is 'a dice roll 20 minutes into a four hour game decided the outcome', rather than at the end.
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Oct 16, 2016 02:29
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From your description it really really sounds like he identified that the rest of the table was under-drafting quests and successfully pivoted into something that was open. That's not "getting lucky", that's playing smart. A winning score of only 140 is definitely on the low side, so it's not like the rest of you were completely blowing things out before a sudden reversal. Your comments on the track completion points are also rather telling - 50 points from that is normal. It is expected. If you only got like 30 points there you should be wondering where things went off the rails.
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Oct 16, 2016 02:31
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Hadn't played board games in a while, went out to an event to play today. Ended up playing two. Scythe: Really fun resource game with excellent art set in some kind of alternate europe with mechs. I played the soviets and finished second. it was fun, but its one of those games that has so many mechanics and moving parts that it might take a few playthroughs to get the measure of it - whether its shallow, or unbalanced, or genuinely good or whatever. Bloodbowl Team Manager: A football season in the warhammer universe. While the themes and the premise were cool and the game has some fun mechanics, its kind of painful to play - espescially if you fall behind. I fell behind early, didn't get any star players and was getting pulped in matchup after matchup and it sucked...but i still won in the end because id picked up a bunch of status modifier cards that amplify your victory points in the end based on the number of status modifiers you have. So I won by kind of a gimmick mechanic while losing a lot of the actual meat of the game against other players a lot against the way. Too swingy, lots of luck involved, not fun. Also theres way too many status modifiers and they just pile up over the course and keeping tracking of what you have and what your oppponents have in a 4-5 player game is a bit much.
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Oct 16, 2016 02:32
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Jabor posted:From your description it really really sounds like he identified that the rest of the table was under-drafting quests and successfully pivoted into something that was open. That's not "getting lucky", that's playing smart. I can't imagine a game of Blood Rage where 140 points is "low" and every other player isn't within a competitive range. I was in 2nd 12 points behind and I use that as a metric of the average scoring move in the 3rd Age, in my mind he beat me by one good play which is totally acceptible except the vast majority of that came in the final round with no hope of countering it. Subtracting his Age 1 score he still would've won. You say the players were under-drafting quests but there are enough quests that the other players can't hate-draft someone out of them like you can with science in 7 Wonders. This is the core of my argument: there was no way I could counter my opponent's late game windfall. The moment I identified it it was already too late and if another player tried to push against it it would come at the detriment of their own score.
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Oct 16, 2016 03:15
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I'm still amazed that you think there's nothing anyone could have done to detract from his score while increasing their own when literally nobody else played into the Ragnarok territory.
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Oct 16, 2016 03:24
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Jabor posted:I'm still amazed that you think there's nothing anyone could have done to detract from his score while increasing their own when literally nobody else played into the Ragnarok territory. Because there were better moves elsewhere e.g. Yggdrasil and adjacent regions that hadn't been pillaged. By the time anyone could commit units it was already locked down. Even if you were in a position to invade or move, losing a battle there would just feed your opponent. Also, the score being what it was at the time, no one could imagine that 20 points would be the deciding factor because no one could predict they would close a losing gap by quintupling that. 7 Wonders has a ballooning score but you're straight up building off the previous ages and every draft allows another player to immediately respond. Blood Rage keeps its strategy building secret and you can wipe your slate clean instantly because the cost to upgrade is a flat rate. And even the simplest area control like Small World doesn't blindside you by unseen factors and forces the player to constantly be aggressive. For a game called BLOOD RAGE the best move almost always seems to be outlasting the other players rage expenditure so you can plop down all your upgrades unmolested. I can't think of a more unappealing design compared to the games it's trying to imitate. It's a mediocre area control game smashed into a really, really bad drafting game. e: I take that back. Blood Rage is actually a good area control completely ruined by its drafting. Knowing when to hold and when to fold are key elements of area control, as is the efficiency of committing your units. Everything about my opponent's play was sound but the sequence that got him there was unassailable. If it was something like Kemet or El Grande where upgrades and actions were visible and accessible I'd enjoy it far more. As it is I feel powerless during the drafting phase and just praying my opponents strategy doesn't hinge on a gear in my strategy. al-azad fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Oct 16, 2016 |
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Oct 16, 2016 04:18
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Quidthulhu posted:I bought that Ashes: Rise of the Phoenix card game today. Was gonna play it with some buds tonight but that fell through so now I'm wishing I picked up something I could solitaire instead I think it's a fun card game, the dice mechanic is really well thought out, there are tons of ways to manipulate the dice pools and it makes Ashes stand out from the FFG games. Good luck finding any of the expansions, though.
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Oct 16, 2016 05:01
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Is anyone familiar with Thunder Alley and Grand Prix? After the gushing reviews of Thunder Alley a few pages back, I'm sold on trying one, but they seem pretty similar to me. Which would be a better buy for a group of people that doesn't care about the racing theme?
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Oct 16, 2016 05:07
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The next game in that series is going to be a mad max style game with combat.
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Oct 16, 2016 05:14
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Demon_Corsair posted:Is anyone familiar with Thunder Alley and Grand Prix? I've only played Thunder Alley but Grand Prix is described as being more technical and players control fewer vehicles. I don't know how this works in execution but part of the appeal with Thunder Alley is using healthy vehicles to push your busted ones and knowing when to cut in line to let your opponents carry you. Grand Prix says it seats 11 which would be better for larger groups but TA's 7 is enough for me. I think you'll do well with either but Grand Prix isn't as time tested as TA. You don't need to be a racing fan to enjoy them, I've never sat through a full NASCAR match in my life.
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Oct 16, 2016 05:31
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:I think it's a fun card game, the dice mechanic is really well thought out, there are tons of ways to manipulate the dice pools and it makes Ashes stand out from the FFG games. I didn't realize any were out! I just thought Plaid Hat was imploding trying to make them with a potential Asmodee buyout. My sealed copy came with a copy of the pre-order/Gencon 2015 promo pheonixborn and her 2 minions, so, that's a bonus I guess? Thanks, FLGS!
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Oct 16, 2016 06:28
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cenotaph posted:The next game in that series is going to be a mad max style game with combat. Is... is this real?
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Oct 16, 2016 06:34
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Lord Frisk posted:Is... is this real? It sure is.
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Oct 16, 2016 06:36
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Sweet mother of god.
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Oct 16, 2016 06:41
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Impermanent posted:With total respect to Jedit, he's also one of the regulars who hates mage knight, so he isn't the target audience for gloomhaven (or anything good.) The target audience for Gloomhaven isn't the Mage Knight audience, though. Gloomhaven is Descent: Legacy with a campaign map, and as such has been obsoleted before release by the Descent random scenario app.
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Oct 16, 2016 09:02
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Finally picked up Tragedy Looper! And uh, holy poo poo did not expect this to be a 2 hour long game.  I've watched a few videos on how to play, and I totally did not get the impression that game lasted that long. My SO and I enjoy long games so that's not an issue, but I am a little concerned with teaching these rules to other people. I've already downloaded a teaching script from BGG to follow, but drat it's kind of a confusing game to be honest. I want to play a run-through with my SO before trying to teach other people, but I don't want to use up any of the "campaigns" in the box. Does anyone know of a good fan-made "campaign" we can try? Or should we just suck it up and play the first one in the box?
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Oct 16, 2016 09:59
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In contrast I was fairly impressed with Gloomhaven, box size doesn't usually wow me but man is it big. It is definitely in the descent dungeon crawler vein but the card based combat is a big draw for me as I'm a long term ccg player and cards make for a more controlled combat experience. Also unlockable content within the game like extra characters and loot is one of those factors that will make the experience feel more rewarding. The whole product seems well designed and the dungeon book impressed me with going ring binding so it lays flat much better for ease of use. Little touches like that all over it.
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Oct 16, 2016 11:23
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al-azad posted:I've only played Thunder Alley but Grand Prix is described as being more technical and players control fewer vehicles. I don't know how this works in execution but part of the appeal with Thunder Alley is using healthy vehicles to push your busted ones and knowing when to cut in line to let your opponents carry you. Grand Prix says it seats 11 which would be better for larger groups but TA's 7 is enough for me. The big difference between Grand Prix and Thunder Alley is that Grand Prix has a more intricate system of NPCs and the player teams are smaller (2 cars each). Pitting is also a little different(based on a system of duration where the more stuff you repair, the more spaces back you go), and you can choose your tire type. Other than that, if you know Thunder Alley, you know Grand Prix and the tracks are totally compatible with one another.
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Oct 16, 2016 11:43
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Jedit posted:The target audience for Gloomhaven isn't the Mage Knight audience, though. Gloomhaven is Descent: Legacy with a campaign map, and as such has been obsoleted before release by the Descent random scenario app. Except that the elevator pitch for Gloomhaven isn't "Descent Legacy" it's "Mage Knight Legacy".
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Oct 16, 2016 12:15
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bean mug posted:Finally picked up Tragedy Looper! And uh, holy poo poo did not expect this to be a 2 hour long game. The "How to teach" part of the Mastermind's Handbook is pretty OK, IIRC. The first tragedy has detailed information for the Masterming on how to win it while teaching the Protagonists different concepts (basically because they lose each day in a different way) The rules are simpler than they seem, although the game is pretty frontloaded and throws a dozen concepts at you all at once:
The last one is particularly important and the main source of confusion. Beffer posted:Except that the elevator pitch for Gloomhaven isn't "Descent Legacy" it's "Mage Knight Legacy". Gameplay seems much more like Descent than Mage Knight. Deckbuilding seems way less important.
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Oct 16, 2016 12:52
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Except in MK you build a deck of action cards with various effects (movement, damage, block, diplomacy, mana) while in Gloomhaven you build a deck with numerical modifiers and multipliers that get applied as damage in combat.
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Oct 16, 2016 12:56
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theroachman posted:Except in MK you build a deck of action cards with various effects (movement, damage, block, diplomacy, mana) while in Gloomhaven you build a deck with numerical modifiers and multipliers that get applied as damage in combat. So, less important? Or were you answering to Beffer? From what I've seen, and it's been a while, it's more akin to Forbidden Stars deckbuilding than MK. You upgrade your combat abilities, but they are not the entirety of your character, like in MK. You still have basic skills instead of being completely defined by what you have in your deck.
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Oct 16, 2016 13:02
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bean mug posted:I want to play a run-through with my SO before trying to teach other people, but I don't want to use up any of the "campaigns" in the box. Does anyone know of a good fan-made "campaign" we can try? Or should we just suck it up and play the first one in the box? What I did was use the first script to teach people, and then I went straight into the 'Basic Tragedy' rather than doing the second teaching script. Then, if I had a mix of experienced and new players, I could use the second 'First Steps' with them. It's worked out fine for me so far.
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Oct 16, 2016 14:39
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Finished my first two games of Pandemic Legacy, drat this game is amazing! We failed the first part of January(didn't think our limiting factor was drawing out the player deck  ) but then absolutely smashed the second half. Unfortunately one member had to leave so we didn't start February  The city rioting mechanic is the most terrifying addition I've found so far. RIP in peace Santiago already 
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Oct 16, 2016 14:50
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I officially like Mansions of Madness so much more than Betrayal, but Betrayal is fun for a lighter experience!
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Oct 16, 2016 18:37
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Johnny Truant posted:Finished my first two games of Pandemic Legacy, drat this game is amazing! We failed the first part of January(didn't think our limiting factor was drawing out the player deck 
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Oct 16, 2016 19:43
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