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Shadow225 posted:For context, she started slamming some stuff by saying it was either boring or not fun, whereas stuff she enjoyed was fun. That was the extent of her ability to evaluate games. I just wanted to get the conversation to a place where it could actually be fruitful, so I wanted to point out how trying to sway people away from things by using that criteria is meaningless. I would have accepted almost any other qualification, but I'm going to need something a little better than fun/boring if you're trying to convince me to play 5 player Tales of Arabian Nights or Legendary over like, Libertalia or anything that actually scales well with 5 people. I mean, honestly, eventually being able to be honest enough (to herself, not just to you) to say "I don't like board games, my husband uses the nerd fallacy and I just go along with it" is *fantastic*. It gives you some information for other games, but more importantly, you can subtly suggest to said husband "hey let's split into two groups" and hey presto, one group actually just wants to drink and talk and not play games! Who'da thunk!
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Jan 17, 2017 19:34
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I absolutely agree. We still won't split into two groups or even let one person sit out despite this. I have offered multiple times to watch them play Tales and then drift off into my own thing to no avail. However, there is now a framework for compromise that can be worked out.
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Jan 17, 2017 19:42
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EBag posted:Speaking of which has anyone tried Letters & Seals? Haven't seen much on it other than there's some mixed opinions, whereas Mocha & Baksheesh is almost universally positive. I've played a couple games with Letters & Seals now. Istanbul is among my favorite games, especially with the inclusion of Mocha which I feel is practically a mandatory addition to the game. L&S I don't feel is nearly as important as M&B, but I do enjoy some of what it offers. One of the big appeals of M&B for me was the extension of the game grid, and in that way L&S offers more tiles so you can play with a huge 5x5 area. If you really want to expand the possible paths to victory and/or really love Istanbul (and already have M&B), that's the best reason I can suggest getting L&S for. The new features aren't bad though. A big thing is the inclusion of a new Companion pawn which can be eventually spawned on the board by each player, and gives you the option of moving either your Merchant stack or the Companion; the difference being the Companion can only move a single space (not the 1-2 that the Merchant moves), but otherwise acts in all the same ways as your Merchant. This can be very useful in the big 5x5 games to help you cover more of the board with fewer necessary moves, or to "block" a space by leaving your Companion somewhere important like the Wainwright, forcing players to always have to pay you to use that space. I'm not sure how well the Companion would play out with a smaller 4x5 game (IE, playing without M&B which I haven't tried yet). The pick up & deliver system is sort of interesting, but honestly in the couple games I've played with it I personally haven't used it much. It has seemed that one person sort of honed in on it and tries to capitalize on it, similar to how the coffee works out usually in M&B, but can be tougher to use well since you can't plan around what location you're going to have to deliver to. The other couple new spaces add some interesting player interactive spaces where you do either a face-up draft of some new tiles for free bonuses, or do a one-time turn order bid for buying 2x Bonus cards. Again both weren't used a lot in my couple games, but with the M&B stuff in play it seems a lot more straight forward paths to victory are there, and those spaces became options for players only out of necessity and less because they were planning for them. Again I haven't tried playing L&S without M&B, which I think would have a very different feel. I'm just not sure about playing the game without M&B since I'm incredibly fond of everything it adds.
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Jan 17, 2017 19:43
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Shadow225 posted:I absolutely agree. We still won't split into two groups or even let one person sit out despite this. I have offered multiple times to watch them play Tales and then drift off into my own thing to no avail. However, there is now a framework for compromise that can be worked out. Yeah. I've had to actually insist "No. I will not play games right now. I want the five of you to play a game right now. I will be happier watching a five player game than playing a six player game." And repeat that about half a dozen times, and this is with actual gamers who like actual games. It's a powerful fallacy. 
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Jan 17, 2017 19:44
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Does Istanbul have any catch-up mechanic or hidden scoring? I keep hearing great things but one thing putting me off buying it is the fear that players will see that they are behind in rubies/VP and disengage.
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Jan 17, 2017 19:52
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Medium Style posted:Does Istanbul have any catch-up mechanic or hidden scoring? I keep hearing great things but one thing putting me off buying it is the fear that players will see that they are behind in rubies/VP and disengage. Well, generally, if you rush rubies off the start your engine/economy/whatever is weaker so other players start catching up. It's not a game that is usually won by blowouts, in fact in every game I've ever played of it, multiple players have been on the verge of victory on the last turn.
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Jan 17, 2017 19:55
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silvergoose posted:I mean, honestly, eventually being able to be honest enough (to herself, not just to you) to say "I don't like board games, my husband uses the nerd fallacy and I just go along with it" is *fantastic*. It gives you some information for other games, but more importantly, you can subtly suggest to said husband "hey let's split into two groups" and hey presto, one group actually just wants to drink and talk and not play games! Who'da thunk! Please unpack this for me
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Jan 17, 2017 20:03
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CommonShore posted:Please unpack this for me Nerd fallacy #whatever: Everyone must always be doing the same activity It's a bad thing to perpetuate. There are certainly times to want to do something all together, but to insist on it is typically wrong. Basically, "someone's not doing the same thing == we are rudely ignoring that person" is not a great assumption; certainly it *can* be right, but it is equally certain that it can be wrong.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:09
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silvergoose posted:Nerd fallacy #whatever: Everyone must always be doing the same activity ty. Odd term for it, but I getcha.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:11
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Hi thread, wondering if you dude and dudettes could help me with some recommendations? I've recently got the other half into board gaming with games like Pandemic, Sheriff of Nottingham, Skull, Cash & Guns, TIME Stories and Coup but I don't really have any 2-player games or 2-player co-op games. We aren't really into super intensive games and enjoy games that have a strong theme to grab us, do you guys have any particular games that stand out for these player counts?
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Jan 17, 2017 20:11
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CommonShore posted:ty. Odd term for it, but I getcha. No worries. There's a bunch of lists of, now that I'm searching, geek fallacies, and this one is nearly always on them. I assumed it was universal knowledge but that's because I'm silly.  Anyway, yeah. It's a hard thing to fight against.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:12
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T-Bone posted:Well, generally, if you rush rubies off the start your engine/economy/whatever is weaker so other players start catching up. It's not a game that is usually won by blowouts, in fact in every game I've ever played of it, multiple players have been on the verge of victory on the last turn. Yah our games almost always finish with at least one or two people being within a couple turns of winning. Someone can be rushing gems and be up by 2 or 3, while someone who was building up for a stronger late game can grab a whole very quickly if they plan it out right. It's definitely possible to have blow-outs but it's usually a close game. Especially with the M&B expansion there are ways to open up the board/getting gems and make big moves.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:17
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silvergoose posted:No worries. There's a bunch of lists of, now that I'm searching, geek fallacies, and this one is nearly always on them. I assumed it was universal knowledge but that's because I'm silly. I bravely did my part by ordering my local game store group to play Captain Sonar among themselves this one time there were 9 of us .You may shower me with praise now.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:17
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Flipswitch posted:Hi thread, wondering if you dude and dudettes could help me with some recommendations? I've recently got the other half into board gaming with games like Pandemic, Sheriff of Nottingham, Skull, Cash & Guns, TIME Stories and Coup but I don't really have any 2-player games or 2-player co-op games. We aren't really into super intensive games and enjoy games that have a strong theme to grab us, do you guys have any particular games that stand out for these player counts? Patchwork!
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Jan 17, 2017 20:18
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Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy are great already with two players. Agricola: all creatures big and small is a two player have with a decent amount of theme and good depth, though it is competitive. But it has small wooden animals that are awesome! Hanabi is one of my favourites too, and it fits in a pocket or so for playing anywhere that's not too windy. The theme is abstract at best, but the gameplay is simple and interesting.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:20
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2 player couple's games are my specialty. Bottom Liner posted:
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 20:22
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Bottom Liner posted:2 player couple's games are my specialty. You still haven't added Santorini to this list.  (it's releasing retail any time now, and is amazing if you haven't played it yet)
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Jan 17, 2017 20:55
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Flipswitch posted:Hi thread, wondering if you dude and dudettes could help me with some recommendations? I've recently got the other half into board gaming with games like Pandemic, Sheriff of Nottingham, Skull, Cash & Guns, TIME Stories and Coup but I don't really have any 2-player games or 2-player co-op games. We aren't really into super intensive games and enjoy games that have a strong theme to grab us, do you guys have any particular games that stand out for these player counts? If you are looking for something with strong themes you might enjoy Tales of Arabian Nights, and the Arkham series of games (Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror). They are both fairly easy to play, though tye will be a bit longer than the games you are used to (except Pandemic maybe?). Arkham games are co-op, but tales is "sort of" competitive. There is a "winner" at the end of a game of Tales, but its pretty chill and you don't really compete with each other. There is also an Arkham dice game, its faster/easier, but it has less flavor text to enjoy. Both will work great with two.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:56
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Thanks for the suggestions so far people, am doing some research on each one tonight as I don't have that much to do on my late work shift this week. Arabian Nights looks well cool, I'm not too worried about game length as games like Battlestar Galactica and New Angeles hit the table fairly often but that's about my limit in terms of game length.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:04
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Dancer posted:I bravely did my part by ordering my local game store group to play Captain Sonar among themselves this one time there were 9 of us The first time I played Captain Sonar, there were 9 players and the owner of the game (the one who organized the meeting) sat out for the first couple of games to be a rules resource.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:15
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Played Conan the other day. Introductory scenario of Conan the Barbarian, Hardrataha who is a wizard, and Setava or something who is a thief saving a princess from a Pict village and taking the head of the shaman there too. I come away from my first session pretty unimpressed and thinking it rates as a C, maybe C+ in its RPG-lite, adventure-game genre, stacking up poorly against Descent, Imperial Assault, and Level 7: Omega Protocol. I would not purchase it for its gameplay qualities. However, before going into my first impressions on those, I will note it has a metric fuckton of miniatures available and they are excellent sculpts by and large, so it wouldn't surprise me if its sales are driven by that as much as anything. Like Kingdom Death, which doesn't get bolded because it doesn't deserve attention, but Conan's minis aren't persistently goddamn creepy and it has actual gameplay merits. As follows. ACTIONS AND HEALTH You, as a PC, get roughly ten energy crystals. Excepting a couple of movement points you are awarded for free, taking any action requires you to move one of your ready energy crystals to your fatigue box. You may also pour extra power into an action by moving more crystals to the box. The quirks are that you only get to redeem two crystals from your fatigue box each turn unless you spend a turn at rest, and that whenever you are hurt by a monster, the damage deletes your crystals (available ones first, then fatigued ones), killing you when all crystals are deleted. Deleted crystals are extremely difficult to recover. The overlord also has an energy crystal supply that he spends to activate monster groups on a system that's really got nothing in common with the way PCs use crystals. He spends a crystal to activate whichever monster group is up next in a turn order tracked on an overlord board, moving the group to the back of the line after its turn. Monsters can move and attack and get hurt and do stuff without additional crystal expense. He can also spend a larger amount of crystals to use a monster group who is not next in line. He starts with I think ten crystals and refills five per turn. Those totals might be scenario-dependent, I don't know. Evaluation: The theme here is "bad feels." The system encourages a PC to move and do two other things per turn (seeing as how you refill two crystals per turn baseline). Your remaining ~eight crystals are therefore sort of your life points, and you can tap into your life points to have a more energetic turn. First off, there's player elimination. Descent literally never kills a given PC. ImpAss can technically kill a PC but it very rarely happens. L7 kills PCs more freely than those two games but still has crutches and safeguards. Conan just lets a body hit the floor and it seems regressive that way. Now, when a PC dies all remaining PCs gain increased crystal regeneration per turn, so the effect on the hero team's action economy is heavily mitigated and I give props to that bit of design work, but the "bad feels" of having your guy taken out of a possibly very-long-time-to-go game remain.* Second, it consumes your entire turn to rest and redeem the three additional crystals from that. Descent and ImpAss let you declare a rest as half of your turn; L7 lets you spend like 1/3 of a turn restoring one of your five or so health points. Getting three crystals out of ten back for not doing poo poo is a really "bad feels" exchange rate and links into the third thing I want to note: the "bad feels" of the basic two crystal/turn economy, stunlock, and death spiral. It is very hard to have a fun and interesting turn on two crystals, given details of movement and monster fighting that I'll do in another section. You're also going to have a very hard time coping with a pack of monsters on two crystals per turn, but resting is a good way to just watch your extra crystals leave again immediately as monsters pound on you because you did literally nothing productive. You can basically get stunlocked by enemies this way. Then there's death spiral, where being wounded means a small crystal supply and the reduced ability to ever have explosive, fun turns again. At the extremes, as you lose your last few crystals, you won't even be able to take your two "standard" actions per turn.  Oh, and remember that unlike in the other RPG-lites, getting a deleted crystal "life point" back is not easily done in Conan.Now keep in mind I chose "bad feels" here as a theme for a reason. Much of what I knocked on might be excused if you like a different play style or think it's "appropriate to the Conan setting." Many people don't mind PC death.* One might argue the two crystal/turn economy weighed against the overlord is just right for appropriate mission tension (I have more to say on that later). One could also say there's hardly a game in print where being surrounded by monsters without friendly assists isn't a death sentence. All fair, and I'm still trying to think rationally on how Conan's action/health hybrid economy compares to ImpAss, where health and do-fun-stuff points are actually closely tied together. But the initial impression remains that Conan feels bad there. As for the overlord's action economy, no complaints. He doesn't have elimination, he doesn't have resting. The overlord crystal system is just a slightly oddball way of having monsters go in their turn order. It's a lot like L7's overlord system, really, though without the fun twist of scaling according to player actions. I kind of like it because it gives him the chance to be trickier than just "monsters in order" but the PCs will know what might happen because he doesn't hide anything about his resource supply. *I have a lot of opinions about player issues in these RPG-lites but I'll leave 'em for another day. MOVEMENT AND COMBAT Each PC gets a couple of free movement points every turn and may purchase more with crystals at a one-to-one rate. Movement is between oddly-shaped zones on a map visually but not functionally much different from good old fashioned squares. The intro map had twenty or so zones, I'd guess. Almost every PC also has leaping, swimming, and climbing rules, none of which matter in the intro and will be left to a later section for discussion. Monsters get free movement points as well and can also squeeze out more one-for-one via overlord crystals. The presence of an enemy in a zone increases the movement point cost to leave that zone at a one point/enemy rate. Some entities also prohibit leaving their zone while they yet live. Also, entering a building costs an extra movement point. Attacking a monster as a PC means spending a crystal to initiate an attack and rolling a die according to your character's competence with the attack type (melee or ranged). Additional dice are gained by having gear or pouring more crystals into the act, which unsurprisingly gets you another die per crystal. Each battleaxe symbol rolled is one damage. Many monsters have armor that negates damage on each attack before their life points can be touched; in the intro, the abundant Pict mooks had 1 armor and 1 life and therefore needed two axes in a single roll to die. I can only assume this is common. A yellow die's sides are half blank, twice one axe, and once two axes; orange dice are 1/3 blank, 1/3 one axe, 1/3 two axes; red dice are one blank side, twice one axe, twice two axes, and once three axes. Being attacked by a monster as a PC is notably different. The monster rolls whatever dice at you, but you almost never have armor. Instead you just suck down the axes as deleted crystals unless you use ready crystals to declare a block. If you do, you roll (again) one die matching your character's competence per crystal used, with extra dice from gear, and negate an enemy axe for each axe you generate. The crystals spent on blocking are fatigued as with use for any other action. Evaluation: This is where I explain why I don't think the two crystals/turn economy is right. Look at movement: you get two or three points per turn, but that's not going to take you fuckin' anywhere if monsters are about because of the hindrance rule. You will need to spend crystals on moving, and with ten total crystals that typically refill two/turn, spending a whole crystal to get another zone or spending two or three (!!!) to get away from some bastards is prohibitively expensive. You often have a hard time finding ways to snake around or through enemies because of the big, fat, few-in-number zones, where in ImpAss or L7 there are commonly gaps in the square patterns. And entering a stupid Pict hut costs an extra point because apparently your big dumb heroes have serious trouble brushing aside fur pelt door-flaps.  "Well, if monsters are about, fuckin' kill em and then get to your objectives!" Sure, maybe. The Pict mooks won't die in a single axe. If your character has orange die melee competency, one crystal = one orange die = only 1/3 chance to kill a single Pict. You're going to want to spend that extra crystal to smooth your odds. We're now looking at both of your crystals/turn to kill one Pict. The fuckers are numerous: twelve started on the intro map, maybe sixteen. Even at red die competency you can't comfortably make this roll on a single die, and Crom help you if you've got yellow die competency. At yellow you can't even kill a one-health monster like the Picts' pet hyenas reliably on one crystal. When a serious monster like a giant snake or shaman boss shows up, the rat bastard could easily have three to five armor (!!!), meaning you cannot deal lasting damage without several dice' worth of axes, meaning I hope you have crystals handy. Then there's PC defense. When a monster axes you a question, the intelligent thing to do is to spend one crystal per axe on blocking (you do get to see the incoming axe total first at least, unless I was taught incorrectly). This is because, at orange defense competence, that spent crystal will probably generate one defense axe and counter the attack axe. Then the spent crystal goes from ready to your fatigue box, whereas if you'd just taken the axe, you'd have seen a ready crystal deleted. However. It's a die roll. You face the joyous prospect of spending X crystals on block dice, getting a low roll, and watching those X crystals fatigue while Y other crystals are still deleted. Imagine getting skunked entirely, rolling two blank orange dice against an incoming two axes and watching four crystals slip away from your ready box of only ten. It's more likely than it should be. And, again, Crom help you if your character has yellow die defense competence. That's useless. You just take it in the rear. So, depending on competencies (and gear), a character might just kind of be useless at combat. Sevetana the thief was that way in the intro. Other RPG-lites do not make this mistake. Gear helps the above issues considerably by contributing dice at no additional crystal charge but I'm covering gear separately. The combat is ultimately uninteresting compared to other RPG-lites. The FFG titles have the Surge system to deliver little quirks and benefits to each attack. L7 has combat stances and (underutilized) cover-based gun play. Both fix you up with nifty character powers aplenty. Conan characters might have a trick or two that could be reasonably compared to the innate abilities of an ImpAss character, such as The Barbarian's power to cleave his high rolls into additional victims, but they're sparse, not on everyone, and literally drawn from a common repeated pool. Initial conclusion on combat: serviceable but rote. CHARACTERS, GEAR, AND SKILLS The game is choked to the brim with characters. There must be a dozen Conans (Conen?) representing his various adventures and job titles, plus a zillion other guys drawn from Howard's stories or perhaps made up from whole cloth. I think you're allowed to take a team of all Conans on a mission. The characters generally look like they fall into warrior / thief / wizard archetypes. Gear cards are rather less numerous. They seem to be almost all weapons and armor. Weapons and shields give you a bonus amount of dice when you spend at least one crystal on an attack or block. Body armor gives you baseline defense dice regardless of whether you bought a block. Other bits of gear do whatever. Wizards can get spell cards, which again do whatever, at the cost of fatiguing X crystals per cast. As mentioned above, characters also get skills such as cleaving attacks, climbing walls, or ignoring movement penalties. Evaluation: Taking a team of nothing but Conans sounds hilarious, and probably also very strong because Conans look like they get good die competencies and crystal pools and special powers. This fun idea thus sadly brings me to a harsh point of evaluation. There is no effort to balance the characters whatsoever. Or the gear, or a wizard's spells. Nothing, anywhere, has a point cost or other balancing mechanic (at least not that I was shown). Why is the intro team Conan the Barbarian with Battle-Axe, Shield, and Leather Armor and his friends Sevata the thief with Throwing Daggers and Hadratha the wizard with a Dagger and Lightning Storm magic? Well, because it is. Is it fair that Conan's geared up and Sevata has a couple knives? Probably not, but nothing here measures this. Does anything offer guidance about whether Conan The General with Chain Armor and a Crossbow is more or less good or balanced relative to the overlord than Perais the wizard with Teleport and his innate Leadership talent? No. How do I even determine whether Conan gets to start with armor, before even reaching the question of whether Armor A is fair compared to Armor B?  FFG games and L7 give you the guidance you need as the power-ups cost money units and/or experience points that are gained at a controlled rate through gameplay or fixed at the beginning of scenarios. It is not just possible but in fact very likely that some characters are radically better than others - certainly Sevata the thief seemed like a piece of crap next to his friends in the intro - and the game does not account for this at all. As an aside, Sevata made me wonder if "nimble thief" archetypes might just suck in this game as a general rule, as their whole schtick is having maybe +1 free movement point per turn in a game where monster blocks and fur door-flaps are going to suck that right up and leave you burning crystals inefficiently to get around the map and "fulfill your role." Sevata had something to help with that but I'll get to it later. Oh, and I have not mentioned that the overlord periodically gets to reinforce his monsters. He does this by respawning four dead monsters. That's it. Does it cost him more if he respawns four Hell Knights over four Newborn Mice? No. Hey, if the overlord wants to put Skeletal Guards in a map instead of Pict mooks, how's he do that? Hell if I know. If I'm wrong about this I need to know. Otherwise, everything mentioned above is flagrantly bad design born of a failure to consider the value of game elements against each other. MISCELLANY Maps may have treasure chests that PCs can access by spending crystals and rolling dice according to their Manipulation competency. These chests contain weapons, armor, doodads, and maybe even lost crystal recovery potions. Gear has weight, and characters have limits to the weight they can carry. At certain points along the way to the limit they will suffer movement penalties and lose access to some of their skills. Conan the Barbarian can't swim any longer past six weight units, for example, while Conan the Mercenary loses swimming at five weight units. I made those numbers up but the point is correct. The intro map and presumably the other maps work off timed objectives. The PCs in the intro had to slay the shaman and take his head and the princess out of the village in eight rounds. The game is covered in commissioned artwork. Every character has a full-body illustration and a miniature that matches it. Evaluation: The treasure chests kind of piss me off. Picking up mid-mission loot in FFG titles and L7 is a matter of saying you want to do it at the right time and then doing it at the cost of an action. Here your action leads to a die roll requiring two hits and therefore probably requiring a little something like gear or extra crystal expenditure to get good odds (see: fighting a Pict mook) and still leaving you a risk of total failure. Sevata the thief's sole purpose in the intro seemed to be going into huts to find the princess and maybe cracking chests inside, because he alone had a reasonable chance of making the roll without burning more crystals. Boring, frankly, and worse because of the effort he'd need to take to deliver any useful found loot to comrades. There's a reason the mid-mission loot in the other games is always grenades and health packs that anyone would want instead of weapons and armor that could be duplicative. Here's the worst part, though: encumbrance. Once Sevata found a bit of loot he'd have to account for its weight. Remember, his primary feature is his improved movement, paired with a special power to ignore the cost of moving through enemies. This power turns off when he becomes so-much encumbered and he loses movement to boot. Finding a suit of chain armor suddenly means losing my mobility. If I don't want to lose that, the chain armor find translates to having spent my action on loot-finding for nothing. poo poo! Here's the worst of the worst: in the intro, taking the shaman's head or the princess was encumbering. She apparently needs to be slung over the shoulder. So Sevata, doing his job of finding the young lady, is rewarded for finding her with a huge encumbrance penalty that kills his movement range and special evasion talent, therefore making getting away with her a crystal-intense bear and a half.  Look, encumbrance has NEVER been fun. In making an RPG-lite board game, that is the last thing to port over from full RPGs. It's not good there or here. A total weight limit can be a way to balance gear, and this game needs a balancing mechanism for such, but degrading performance as weight increases is not good gaming at all. It's far, far worse when you lose one or two movement points and you only have two or three before needing to inefficiently spend from your two crystals/turn! It seems rather inappropriate to Conan's style, to boot. Does he not have a habit of slinging wenches over one arm while valiantly slicing up bandits with the other? You'd never have the crystals for it here.As for timed objectives, that's good. That's industry standard for RPG-lites and produces more interesting games than deathmatches would. Nothing to really say about the concept but that I did thematically wonder what timer still hung over the PCs' heads when they had the princess safe from the shaman's ritual on account of her being in their arms and his head being on their spear. The art, it's beautiful. They got some serious for reals artists to do these pieces (Brom!) and they kick rear end. The miniatures are really sweet too. I raise an eyebrow at the titty factor on almost all the women but I've got enough words written here on the actual game. The impropriety of the Conan world's view of women is for another day. FIN. I have generated perhaps my longest post ever on SA on this game, maybe longer than my OP for Fantasy Strike Games (check them out at http://game.fantasystrike.com/game/index.php). Why? I don't really know, I like Conan but I'm not a fiend for him. I hope it has been insightful and helpful to you readers. I can't bitch at the game too much. For all that life as a PC seems difficult, the three heroes won the intro. Hadratha died but smarter play could have avoided it. My friend reported that they lost when he tried it with others (though he felt those others played terribly). I have ultimately given it a C or C+ despite all the words above being 90% complaints. It's very pretty, it's a serviceable adventure experience with competent core mechanics, the crystal expenditures give you some dimensions of strategy, and it didn't take very long to play. It is, however, ultimately very basic, regressive in some key areas, and bereft of anything really innovative. I cannot recommend it over other RPG-lites as a game rather than an attachment to a horde of miniatures. SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 21:29
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To add to the 2-player game recommendations, Claustrophobia is really good as well - especially if you want something with a strong theme and a relatively short play time. For 2 player, my wife and I have tended to enjoy co-op games or games that are not too directly confrontational (multiplayer-solitaire-style Euros), and we still enjoyed Claustrophobia a great deal. It's perfect as something you can pull of the shelf and be playing within 5 minutes and still have fun with interesting tactical decisions and heaps of theme. Other than that, our most played 2-player games are probably Lord of the Rings LCG (now Arkham), and Descent 2e (with the app - also now has a brand new campaign if you already have Shadows of Nerekhall) so adding further recommendations for those games as well.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:36
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Hi I have a board game date and need recommendations. Whats a good, 2-player board game without a huge amount of experience needed that plays inside a couple of hours? Tash-Kalar and Twilight Struggle recommended in the OP seem a little heavy. edit: This is literally the current conversation topic, I should have read til the end, thanks dudes.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:41
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I would add Inis and Via Nebula to the list of 2 player games.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:53
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Miles O'Brian posted:Hi I have a board game date and need recommendations. Whats a good, 2-player board game without a huge amount of experience needed that plays inside a couple of hours? Tash-Kalar and Twilight Struggle recommended in the OP seem a little heavy. If you like the idea of Twilight Struggle, 13 Days is basically a "TS-lite" focusing on Cuban Missile crisis.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:57
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Kerro posted:To add to the 2-player game recommendations, Claustrophobia is really good as well - especially if you want something with a strong theme and a relatively short play time. For 2 player, my wife and I have tended to enjoy co-op games or games that are not too directly confrontational (multiplayer-solitaire-style Euros), and we still enjoyed Claustrophobia a great deal. It's perfect as something you can pull of the shelf and be playing within 5 minutes and still have fun with interesting tactical decisions and heaps of theme. Other than that, our most played 2-player games are probably Lord of the Rings LCG (now Arkham), and Descent 2e (with the app - also now has a brand new campaign if you already have Shadows of Nerekhall) so adding further recommendations for those games as well. Seconded this along the same lines. Wife and I lean heavy toward co-op or low-confrontation games, but she loves Claustrophobia. Great theme, fun scenarios (with mixed balance), really nice minis.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:03
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That nerd fallacy stuff is dumb. Specific to the "I'm ok just sitting out this game and watching" example, the problem is that this isn't an example of everyone needing to do the same thing, it's an example of someone not participating in the thing they are there to participate in. If I invite you to come play pickup hockey with me, and you decide halfway through that you're ok just watching, I'm probably not going to invite you to come play pickup hockey with me again. I invited you to play hockey because I wanted to play hockey with you, and perhaps because I needed extra players to balance out the sides. If I had wanted you to spectate, I'd have invited you to spectate. Similarly, if there are 6 of us playing board games at a night where we got together to play board games, and rather than play the big meaty game the other 5 people want to play, you decide to sit out, that would make me question why you are there in the first place. Splitting into two groups is fine, as is sitting out short games as you go for a smoke or take a break or whatever, but I find someone sitting out and watching for an extended period of time weird and distracting. Anyway... I played Mage Knight with my 8 year old last night. I had to read the cards and give him some pretty significant direction but he had a blast running through the opening scenario. I'm pretty sure I got most of the rules correct given there wasn't much complicated, except I did screw up the tile placement. I was also encouraging rushing to find the city so that we could finish in a reasonable timeframe. I really enjoyed it too. The game is what I was hoping it might be. Need a huge space to set up though, which right now precludes me having the ability to set it up and leave it overnight.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:08
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I would also add the following to the list of 2P games: Targi - A kind of worker placement/set collection game with a really interesting geometry mechanic. The game is played on a 5 x 5 grid of cards. The borders never change game to game, while the inside 9 cards are either goods or tribes. You each place two workers on border cards, and take the inside cards where the lines formed by your workers intersect. Your goal is to collect sets of tribes, placing them in your own 4x4 grid, by paying a combination of peppers, dates, and gold for them. FWIW it's Rahdo's favorite 2P game. I'm not a huge Rahdo fan, but his niche is 2P non confrontational games. His opinion should hold some clout in this discussion. Baseball Highlights 2045 - It's a baseball themed deckbuilder. I can define the gameplay loop if you would like, but I wouldn't do it justice. EDIT: Jordan7hm posted:That nerd fallacy stuff is dumb. Specific to the "I'm ok just sitting out this game and watching" example, the problem is that this isn't an example of everyone needing to do the same thing, it's an example of someone not participating in the thing they are there to participate in. If I invite you to come play pickup hockey with me, and you decide halfway through that you're ok just watching, I'm probably not going to invite you to come play pickup hockey with me again. I invited you to play hockey because I wanted to play hockey with you, and perhaps because I needed extra players to balance out the sides. If I had wanted you to spectate, I'd have invited you to spectate. Similarly, if there are 6 of us playing board games at a night where we got together to play board games, and rather than play the big meaty game the other 5 people want to play, you decide to sit out, that would make me question why you are there in the first place. Splitting into two groups is fine, as is sitting out short games as you go for a smoke or take a break or whatever, but I find someone sitting out and watching for an extended period of time weird and distracting. There's a few things wrong here. I hate modifying analogies, so I'll just address what I see as the key points. 1. Board games encompass a variety of interests. Cards Against Humanity, Food Chain Magnate, Secret Hitler, Exploding Kittens, Imperial Assualt, Love Letter, TIME Stories, Jenga, Monopoly and Pandemic are all board games. If you invite me to play board games, at face value you seem to assume that I will enjoy all of those. I don't think you want to make that claim, so let's work on the assumption that I don't enjoy every game. What happens when a conflict in interests arises? You can either sit out, play something you don't enjoy, or no one plays what they enjoy because you don't want to play. I don't think there is necessarily a wrong answer there. However, if you want to play the big meaty game and I'm just not feeling it, I think it's quite alright to sit it out and let the rest of the table play. 2. You will have exactly the number of players you need for all board games. Some games have flexible player counts. Some do not. What happens when a group of 5 wants to play a strictly 4 player game? If everyone is set on playing something, that idea gets put on hold. If everyone is white hot on the idea, and one person wants to take a break, is there actually an issue? 3. Board gaming is a social activity. People are more than just board game players. It is entirely possible to enjoy one's presence without being in a game. 4. Sometimes people need breaks for whatever reason. Even when I play Ultimate, we generally have subs. If my ultimatum is play something the entire time I'm at your place or I'm not welcome, I probably don't want to play games at your place. Really it all comes down to compromise unless your group has the exact same tastes. I do not have such a group. Offering to sit out a game so that the other people can play a game they enjoy in exchange for playing a game I enjoy shouldn't be such a huge issue. Shadow225 fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 22:17
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Crackbone posted:If you like the idea of Twilight Struggle, 13 Days is basically a "TS-lite" focusing on Cuban Missile crisis.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:18
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Shadow225 posted:I would also add the following to the list of 2P games: It's weird that he thinks Targi is non confrontational, I think played well it really comes down to locking out your opponent.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:23
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Miles O'Brian posted:Hi I have a board game date and need recommendations. Whats a good, 2-player board game without a huge amount of experience needed that plays inside a couple of hours? Tash-Kalar and Twilight Struggle recommended in the OP seem a little heavy. And there are also the classics 7 Wonders Duel , Red7, and Patchwork. Though I'd argue that Tash-Kalar is about the same weight as 7 Wonders Duel + Pantheon expansion or Baseball Highlights 2045. Tash-Kalar is not that heavy, assuming both players are good at spatial recognition. If all of those are still too heavy for your group, Hey, That's My Fish is much better than the title makes it sound. golden bubble fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 22:26
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 Welcome to board game meetup, so what do you want to play? I want to try out 2-4 player game X, always wanted to try it. Who else is game? oh ok but looks like there's six of us here therefore we need a six player game.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:33
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Are your groups honestly not smart enough to split into two separate groups, or do you just lack tables? This is all boggling my mind.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:41
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I do get the desire to have everyone play the same thing, but yeah, it only causes problems. My group's taken to scheduling specific games as opposed to doing generic board game nights. We'll put a calendar entry in a shared calendar, put a little blurb of info in case people aren't familiar, and list the number of open spots. We'll still do generic nights occasionally but it's typically assumed that those will be larger group games, though not necessarily.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:44
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Chill la Chill posted:Yeah that's probably it. The end goal would be to try and get them to play more complicated games so we could have a full player count for 1830 (7 I think?) or get a full roster for campaign for north africa going. But I'm pretty sure it's just for socialization purposes. I mean, my board gaming friends and I almost have our thursday, friday, or sunday night board gaming sessions down to a schedule: dinner while watching sunny in Philly and socializing, then a really meaty game afterwards. 1830 is max six unless (I think) you use one of the included expansions, none of which are particularly well regarded in the community. Also, six player 1830 is a vastly different experience where people can't afford to float a company by themselves. You'd probably be better off with four when you're learning, maybe five.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:57
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Flipswitch posted:It kinda looks like a budget TS, does it play similarly or well? I'd say so. Card play is similar, either ops or event and you have to mitigate your opponents event if you're holding it. DEFCON is split into three tracks that decrease towards war as opposed to TS where they increase towards peace. You lose with either DEFCON 1 or all three markers in DEFCON 2. But you may score off the DEFCON track so you're playing a balancing act by being in there. In effect it pulls off the paranoia and creeping doom better than TS. On the negative side there's no real way to throw away your opponent's cards. It succeeds as TS-lite in the same way 7 Wonders Duel succeeds in its field.
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Jan 17, 2017 23:11
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OgreNoah posted:Are your groups honestly not smart enough to split into two separate groups, or do you just lack tables? This is all boggling my mind. I play with two people off and on in a monthly group that simply do not want to split a table, even if we've got 8 and a few games that are perfect for 4. Some people just get weird about inclusion.
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Jan 17, 2017 23:27
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:My group's taken to scheduling specific games as opposed to doing generic board game nights. We'll put a calendar entry in a shared calendar, put a little blurb of info in case people aren't familiar, and list the number of open spots. I've considered doing this withing the scope of a current meetup, like "hey who is up for X". Like all my ideas I think it'll work out great 
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Jan 17, 2017 23:30
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Wir Sind Das Volk! is also sort of a Twilight Struggle-lite. It has a few mechanical differences: 1. Instead of using influence/coups/realignment to play tug'o'war with countries, both players are trying to build up their own country's infrastructure, and thus living standards, while reducing political unrest. Simultaneously, they try to do the opposite to the other player's country. 2. The players only have 2-card hands, with 7 event cards viewable and available to both for each round (+ 1 special card only available to East Germany). 3. If you play a card for its numerical build/living standard/unrest value, the other player does not get to use that card's event. 4. While both sides have end-of-decade win conditions, East Germany can win just by surviving to the end of the 4th decade. As you can imagine, this means the gameplay is pretty asymmetrical.
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Jan 17, 2017 23:37
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Our group just chooses what to play when we figure out who is going to be there. We all have similar tastes so lately it has been something like 6 - Dominant Species, 5 - Fury of Dracula or Terra Mystica, 4/3 - Feast for Odin or Food Chain Magnate. I'm not sure what we'd do if a 7th showed. Related question actually- I bought a copy of Pandemic Legacy for this group. Do you think it would be bad to do it with a group when we don't know if everyone will be there every time? Or do you think that it could work for a group if there was the general understanding that it's fair to play a round or two of it if any 4 are there on the given night? I mean mechancially/fun speaking - not personality wise, of course.
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Jan 17, 2017 23:40
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