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Admiral Joeslop posted:I'm going to stop by the FLGS today to pick up Settlers of Catan and maybe Ticket To Ride to play with family. Any other recommendations? They rarely play anything more complex than Farkle or CaH and I want to ease them into easier stuff. I may be getting Machi Koro as a gift as well. Don't get Catan. Machi Koro is significantly less frustrating if you have bad rolls (also much cuter), and the negotiating part of Catan can be really annoying for casual gamers.
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Dec 24, 2016 14:54
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Forbidden Desert / Island seem like good ideas. Sushi Go Party maybe?
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Dec 24, 2016 14:54
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I like catan and would still recommend it to beginners. Carcassonne is a better game, but catan is a chill time.
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Dec 24, 2016 14:58
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I always confuse Carcassonne and Agricola and think to myself "I'd love to try it but $70 is a lot for a board game.." Thanks goons. I'll see what sales are going on and pick amongst those.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:03
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discount cathouse posted:but catan is a chill time.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:03
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A less known good option is Lanterns. It's really pretty, simple and has little direct conflict. I like heavy euros and economic games, but Lanterns is in my collection for when I need to scratch that itch. I'd also heavily recommend Patchwork, but it's 2 player only. The recently released Cottage Garden is kinda like Patchwork.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:07
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Also maybe consider Crossing (the game where you point at mushrooms for gems) or Codenames / Codenames Pictures.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:09
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Zark the Damned posted:Also maybe consider Crossing (the game where you point at mushrooms for gems) or Codenames / Codenames Pictures. Is that a mafia/betrayal/lying game? I tried to do One Night Ultimate Werewolf one year and none of my family could really grasp the concept. Monopoly is probably the most complex game they've ever played. I do already own Forbidden... Island? That or Desert, whichever one is considered worse than the other. I wasn't paying attention when I bought it.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:16
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I got them to play the gently caress out of Resistance last time and they will play Captain Sonar this year. It is known.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:18
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I'm going to stop by the FLGS today to pick up Settlers of Catan and maybe Ticket To Ride to play with family. Any other recommendations? They rarely play anything more complex than Farkle or CaH and I want to ease them into easier stuff. I may be getting Machi Koro as a gift as well. Your family sounds like they are ready for Mage Knight 
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Dec 24, 2016 15:23
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bowmore posted:yes, hello second account I played Captain Sonar with 4 people, turn-based, last night and it was a blast. It's definitely not the much hyped experience that is real time play. But it delivers a good strategic puzzle that is not at all watered-down or tacked on, just different. Give it a shot!
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Dec 24, 2016 15:31
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Rutibex posted:Your family sounds like they are ready for Mage Knight "Oh this description sounds neat, my friends might like it. What's this? 'Publisher: WizKids' Oh. Well it was a nice thought."
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Dec 24, 2016 15:42
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I'm going to stop by the FLGS today to pick up Settlers of Catan and maybe Ticket To Ride to play with family. Any other recommendations? They rarely play anything more complex than Farkle or CaH and I want to ease them into easier stuff. I may be getting Machi Koro as a gift as well. Don't get Catan. It's not a good game. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 15:47
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Crackbone posted:Don't get Caran. It's not a good game.
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Dec 24, 2016 16:23
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Catan is really good if you are someone who will eventually like good board games and have never played one. It was A LOT of peoples' "gateway game," including mine. If you look back about ten years though, at that point in time there were much fewer games out there, which is why it so often got people into boardgames. You'll still see people recommending it, but these are probably people who haven't played it in six years. There are so many other better gateway games available now. I still think Catan could be fun for people, but there are lots of other games that are probably even easier to get the hang of, which are more fun and less of a slog. Your starting locations on Catan make a huge difference, which kind of sucks for new players. The way dice rolling works isn't really fun. They at least make it clear that certain numbers are worse or better than others, but there aren't enough rolls that happen for randomness to get reduced enough. You can get really dice screwed in Catan, and it's very much not fun when it happens. You generally accumulate resources very slowly, and building roads takes up a lot of them. It's common to spend many turns struggling to build two roads, only to get blocked and have those roads become completely and utterly useless. The robber mechanic is a mechanism to stop the winner from winning too much, but it's generally not fun at all, similar to the annoying turtle shells in Mario Kart. The optimal strategy in Catan often ends up being to lay low and not be in the lead at first, because bashing the leader happens pretty bad. It introduces a fair amount of the concepts of a "euro," but there are too many drawbacks for me. Also, if you get people to like the game a lot, you'll have to play it a lot with them...
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Dec 24, 2016 16:37
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Is that a mafia/betrayal/lying game? I tried to do One Night Ultimate Werewolf one year and none of my family could really grasp the concept. Monopoly is probably the most complex game they've ever played. I do already own Forbidden... Island? That or Desert, whichever one is considered worse than the other. I wasn't paying attention when I bought it. Nah, neither of those are like that. In Crossing there are a bunch of mushrooms with gems on them. On the count of 3, everyone points at a mushroom. If a single person points at a mushroom, they get the gems. If multiple people point at the same mushroom, those players get nothing. Where things get interesting is in subsequent rounds - you can point at players to steal their gems using the same rules. Of course, before the count you're allowed to discuss with the other players what you'll point at, and maybe even tell the truth about it  (there's a bit more to it than this but those are the basics).In Codenames you have a 5x5 grid of words and are split into 2 teams. Each team has 1 spymaster who knows which words 'belong' to which team, and the remainder are guessers. On a team's turn, the spymaster must give a single word clue followed by a number. e.g. 'Metal, 3'. The guessers then have to figure out which words on the grid their spymaster meant. Once they've made a guess their spymaster will put a marker on it showing whether they are correct. If they are correct, they get another guess, up to a maximum of the number in the clue +1. The aim is to find all of your team's words before the other team get theirs. Complicating this further there are neutral words which don't count for anyone, and the Assassin word which if guessed makes you auto lose. The Pictures version uses images instead of words on the cards and a smaller grid but otherwise works the same.
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Dec 24, 2016 16:37
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I guess I'm certainly in the minority when I say I still enjoy Catan! I've got a fairly dedicated group of homies who I play it regularly with, and we have a blast. The trading and haggling aspect of it I really enjoy. Ours is like half Pit, half trading, heh. I can definitely see where the disdain for it can come from, though. The randomness of the dice can certainly be frustrating. A friend of mine slightly fixed(?) that with a house rule where 12=2 and vice versa. Currently we're in the scheduling phase of trying to get together a massive Catan homebrew game. It requires the base 5-6 player, Seafarers with 5-6 players, and the extensions from Cities & Knights. She calls it Mystery Island, where there are three islands: one in each end of the board and a centrally located island that remains a mystery until... something happens, I forget. Hopefully that'll be in early 2017. AFfO Weekly Solo Challenge talk though, I'm currently devising our first scenario, and I'll playtest it later today! I'm hoping it's not going to be incredibly unbalanced, but it's my first time doing this so who knows. 
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Dec 24, 2016 17:33
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Johnny Truant posted:I guess I'm certainly in the minority when I say I still enjoy Catan! I've got a fairly dedicated group of homies who I play it regularly with, and we have a blast. The trading and haggling aspect of it I really enjoy. Ours is like half Pit, half trading, heh. I'll play along. I've only played two solo games today so I don't think i'll be pushing playing too much.
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Dec 24, 2016 17:37
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I'm going to stop by the FLGS today to pick up Settlers of Catan and maybe Ticket To Ride to play with family. Any other recommendations? They rarely play anything more complex than Farkle or CaH and I want to ease them into easier stuff. I may be getting Machi Koro as a gift as well. Codenames. Bang! The Dice Game. Skull. Trekking the National Parks
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Dec 24, 2016 17:42
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New players often love the trading part of Catan more than anything else, yeah. I can't think of other gateway games which feature trading, probably because direct trading is almost always a busted mechanic that leads to lots of accidental kingmaking and opportunities to gently caress yourself over. Chinatown maybe?
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Dec 24, 2016 17:58
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Countblanc posted:New players often love the trading part of Catan more than anything else, yeah. I can't think of other gateway games which feature trading, probably because direct trading is almost always a busted mechanic that leads to lots of accidental kingmaking and opportunities to gently caress yourself over. Chinatown maybe? Bohnanza, too.
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Dec 24, 2016 18:03
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My nieces said their favorite games are now One Night Ultimate Werewolf and A Fake Artist Goes To New York. The latter is quick and accessible to all ages, and you can even proxy it fairly easily. I got them Dixit for Xmas and have high hopes for that.
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Dec 24, 2016 18:06
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How is Baseball Highlights 2045? The theme looks fun, but I have no idea how the actual gameplay is.
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Dec 24, 2016 18:31
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CommonShore posted:I'll play along. I've only played two solo games today so I don't think i'll be pushing playing too much. I will totally do this too. Zero solo games so far but still.
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Dec 24, 2016 18:40
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Lord Hydronium posted:How is Baseball Highlights 2045? The theme looks fun, but I have no idea how the actual gameplay is. It's good! The biggest issue with the game imo is its pricing points. But the gameplay is good, simple deckvuilding with multiple strategies where you're trying to predict/outplay/ counter your opponent through sequencing your cards correctly. Relatively simple rules too, good to play with a parent.
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Dec 24, 2016 18:44
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My local FLGS isn't run competently. They didn't have: Catan, regular Ticket To Ride, regular Carcassonne, Codenames, or anything else. I got Sushi Go Party and NSFW Exploding Kittens because my gf wanted it. Next time I'll just use the internet. Admiral Joeslop fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 19:05
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T-Bone posted:Bohnanza, too. This is the truth.
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Dec 24, 2016 19:08
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Johnny Truant posted:AFfO Weekly Solo Challenge talk though, I'm currently devising our first scenario, and I'll playtest it later today! I'm hoping it's not going to be incredibly unbalanced, but it's my first time doing this so who knows. Hope I can play along as well. Didn't have time this month but i'm itching to play again.
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Dec 24, 2016 19:28
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Admiral Joeslop posted:My local FLGS isn't run competently. They didn't have: Catan, regular Ticket To Ride, regular Carcassonne, Codenames, or anything else. I got Sushi Go Party and NSFW Exploding Kittens because my gf wanted it. 
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Dec 24, 2016 19:53
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Hi happy hanukkah everyone I just wanted to let you all know that every time I see AFfO written in this thread, I read it phonetically in my head as "A Feefo" well bye have a good crimbo and new years i hope you all get the board games you want (my in-laws got me Inis and i'm thrilled to bits)
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Dec 24, 2016 20:00
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I'll be alone on Christmas day with my cat, so this will be a good time to play some solo AFfO!
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Dec 24, 2016 20:05
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Admiral Joeslop posted:My local FLGS isn't run competently. They didn't have: Catan, regular Ticket To Ride, regular Carcassonne, Codenames, or anything else. I got Sushi Go Party and NSFW Exploding Kittens because my gf wanted it. Sushi Go Party is good stuff, other than the box organizer sucking balls.
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Dec 24, 2016 21:01
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I'm only phone posting until the 27th so I probably won't make an entirely separate topic for the solo challenge, but I'm about to playtest it for the first time once I decide what island must be explored. Might not have a little story blurb to go with it either but we'll see! Glad to see interest in it, though! 
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Dec 24, 2016 21:01
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I optimistically picked up captain sonar today as my lgs got like, forty copies in. We frequently get 8 people when we host, but I'm not sure all of that group will be willing to learn & play it.
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Dec 24, 2016 21:27
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Anyone played Aeon's End? https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191189/aeons-end It was described to me as "Sentinels meets Thunderstone" and now I will never try it, but I'm curious if that's actually a fair comparison.
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Dec 24, 2016 22:02
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I finally got around to playing Monopoly Deal after having it for a few months. It's really fun! I like how you build up a bulwark against attacks by banking cards, while arranging your own strategy to steal properties and win the game. It almost feels more like a game that would work with a fighting theme, rather than property management. The action that steals a full set seems sort of overpowered, though.
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Dec 24, 2016 22:46
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79 cards in that deck, yet only 5 bears. 5 loving bears! After several botched attempts, I finally managed to play a complete game of Bear Valley. Several botched attempts, naturally, because the manual was unbearable. The manual to Bear Valley is so awful that I can only assume the game was translated horribly. Basic rules (like how you leave items where they're used) are broken into each individual edge case and explained individually, repeatedly, rather than starting from the bear concept and explaining the exceptions. The game is split up into a Basic Game and 4 complete sets of variant rules that contain the entire game when combined. The Basic Game is just the bear minimum of what makes the rules function, so it's bearely playable by itself. Even the game setup is spread out all over the manual-- they didn't have the decency to put it near the beginning, where it talks about starting the game. A fair few important rules are left out entirely-- it took a while for me to understand the bear essentials of the time mechanism, and even up until my last game I was starting the clock at any time I wanted*. In the end, I blocked my opponent from being able to take any more legal moves and coasted to victory. *When you move, you name a clock hour. Movement takes time, and you announce the passage of time as you move. It doesn't tell you to advance the clock in the manual, though, neither does it tell you that you're required to start at 1 o'clock. There's moments in there, I suppose. Blocking players Carcassonne-style is cool. Bear discovery holds your attention for a few seconds. But outside of that, it's a very automatic series of false choices that revolve mostly around "head to the exit" and "don't get screwed by RNG." Unfortunately, the rules are too poorly written for the game to be considered light. And the game doesn't feel tense unless it pushes max length, at which point it's too long to bear. silvergoose posted:Anyone played Aeon's End? https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191189/aeons-end Well, for starters, the game was "published" by Indie Boards & Cards. By published I mean kickstarted, of course, because why would a company that has recognizable retail reach bother to actually invest any of its capital? Anyway, it's Thunderstone, but with infinite actions and infinite buys in any order and you win by Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 23:05
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Johnny Truant posted:I'm only phone posting until the 27th so I probably won't make an entirely separate topic for the solo challenge, but I'm about to playtest it for the first time once I decide what island must be explored. Might not have a little story blurb to go with it either but we'll see! First time I nearly rage quit AFfO because of the dice, Jesus gently caress. About to do the second playtest with a slight modification, but I'm in a conundrum. The cat who started the original weekly solo challenges over at BGG said they'd prefer if everybody here just went to BGG and did the challenges that way, instead of me having a separate one over here. They said we could do it but it'd "make them sad." I'm conflicted as to what to do, thread. I mean it's not a unique idea, the challenges; the adding a bit of a story kind of is I guess? What do you think, thread? I'm not tryna front on anybody but I also want to create my own challenges(also have anybody else create them, and I was thinking of just a leaderboard-Google Docs perhaps?) and not have a waiting period for them...  I'm conflicted.I said I'd buy the cat an SA account as thanks for starting the one over at BGG, and give them credit for the format and all..
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Dec 24, 2016 23:16
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 for the punny puns I got a demo of Aeon's End at Spiel (just before buying the aforementioned Coup Brazilian art by the way). I've never heard of Thunderstone but I can tell you I didn't like what I saw. It's a market row deck builder with a trashing mechanic that is always available (I mean every game, probably not at all times during a game, don't remember exactly). One of the biggest red flags for bad game design that stood out to me is that you never shuffle your discard. You just flip it over and it becomes your new draw pile. Someone who implements that as a mechanic does it because it sounds smart at first but in reality it accomplishes nothing as a player can not predict which cards he will need at what time.
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Dec 24, 2016 23:17
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Idk some of those puns were pretty grizzly.
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Dec 24, 2016 23:18
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