Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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

The Eyes Have It: Feb 10, 2008; Third Eye Sees All
...snookums

Jedit posted:

There's no such thing as "short and heavy". Heavy games require thought; thought requires time.

For solo heavies, you're missing Roads and Boats. Good luck finding a copy.

My local game store has a copy sitting on a back shelf... for $188 :effort:

# ? Jan 18, 2017 17:29

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# ? May 18, 2024 13:09

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

T-Bone posted:

You could maybe get in a scenario of Comancheria in an hour, but it might be pushing it but you should buy it anyway because it's loving rad: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159692/comancheria-rise-and-fall-comanche-empire

People should know that the opposition in Comancheria really is close to relentless. Anything good you do in order to build up the Comanche triggers assaults on your land, your people, or your future, but if you choose not to act, those same assaults also happen on a regular schedule. So you have a choice between playing it safe and being ground into dust or pushing your luck and being ground into dust even faster (but maybe just maybe you get lucky and that War Column gets whittled down and taken out by a Peace, without firing a shot).

# ? Jan 18, 2017 17:34

Dancer: May 23, 2011

FulsomFrank posted:

My only serious complaint is that the swan tokens in the expansion are so drat small that it's easy to forget to grab one when you add one of those pieces.

Good because that part of the game is stupid. I don't always play with the expansion (the opened copy in the store is base game only) but even when I do, I just skip those silly swans. Adds more randomness, and more point-saladness, and more fiddly-ness, and not enough depth for it to be worth it imo.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 17:42

Flipswitch: Mar 30, 2010

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

I already want to play Wir Sind Das Volk again, and I usually don't get into political/real-world themes at all. Was really solid - multiple paths of victory and you basically have to pursue all of them at once.

Mind giving me a run down on this game? it looks awesome.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 17:52

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

angel opportunity posted:

I don't really see how not wanting to split into groups is "nerd fallacy." If anything, It seems more nerdy to me to split into groups. It's very normal at boardgaming meetups to split into groups because most people are there for boardgames. If you're just there to hang out and boardgames are second, I totally understand why people wouldn't want to split into smaller groups just to play a better game. They aren't there for the games.

It's a phenom that also comes up a lot with freshmen invariably clumping around the same giant table in the cafeteria.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:12

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:24

Japanese Dating Sim: Nov 12, 2003; hehe; Lipstick Apathy

Flipswitch posted:

Mind giving me a run down on this game? it looks awesome.

C/P'ing my and CaptainRightful's posts from earlier (no snarkiness intended):

CaptainRightful posted:

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.

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

Played Wir Sind Das Volk last night with a friend.

In case it isn't that well-known, it's a 2P Histogame wherein two players play East and West Germany from 1949-1989. It's kind of similar to (what I remember of) Twilight Struggle in a lot of ways. You play through four decades, and each decade is basically a round. The play mechanic is done via cards that represent historical events, some that benefit East, some that benefit West. You're dealt two cards that you keep in your hand each decade, and there's a set of 6 cards that can be played by both players.

So as a West player, I might want to play an event card that lets me build one infrastructure unit, and lets me remove two units of unrest from one of my provinces (the Berlin Airlift). Or, I might want to select a card to prevent East from being able to put down two unrest in West Berlin (Benno Ohnesorg shot). If you select an opponent's card, you can use its point value to build up your infrastructure, improve standards of living if your provinces can support it with their infrastructure, or remove one social unrest (you can also do this with your own cards, which typically have a higher point value for you than they do for your opponent).

West seems to have an advantage in terms of the cards that can be played, but East sort of wins by default if West doesn't outright cause their collapse by promoting unrest or by combating socialism. East wins if the game ends without East losing, or if they need to put down a socialist unit but can't because they're all on the board already.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it. It looks and sounds a lot heavier than it actually is. Never would've touched it on my own because I tend to prefer more typical fantasy/sci-fi themes, but I'm glad I tried it.

To expand a bit - each decade, each player is dealt two cards. 7 cards are then laid out above the board (once they run out, 7 more are put down, and once those are gone the decade ends), and both players can choose to play them (you don't draft them, you just select them and they go into effect immediately) or the cards in their hands. Each card has an event effect that can be played if its to your benefit (they do things like move various meters to your direction, or decrease social unrest, etc); alternatively, you can choose to use the card's printed point value to build up that many units of infrastructure, or to increase three provinces' standards of living if the infrastructure's been built up enough to support it.

There's a lot of moving pieces but once you've gone through one decade it's pretty straightforward. You're essentially deciding between playing cards that benefit you / harm your opponent, or selecting cards to prevent your opponent from being able to do the same. There's four decades/rounds. At the end of each decade, you look at the various scales and resolve their effects. There's four: prestige, which is how players are viewed on the world stage, currency, which East Germany needs to pay for its infrastructure, and Socialism, which is one way that East Germany can win, and it helps them remove social unrest. The fourth one is how many people are fleeing East Germany for West, and for each person who flees East has to dismantle a unit of infrastructure.

Victory conditions: If a province gets four units of social unrest, they get a flag (one set is labeled Wir Sind Das Volk !!! and I can't remember the other). If a decade ends while one player has four flags, they lose. If both players have four flags at the same time, East wins. If the socialist scale calls for a socialist to be placed on the board and no more socialist units are there to be placed, East wins. Alternatively, if the scale calls for them to remove a socialist unit from the board and they can't, West wins. And finally, if the game ends without any victory conditions being met, East wins by default.

Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Jan 18, 2017

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:24

Rutibex: Sep 9, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

I got a package in the mail today! Its finally arrived, the game I have been waiting for all this time. You Feast for Odin havers can suck on a goat token, I have a real game here! Trip report coming soon:

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:29

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Lord Hydronium posted:

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

My girlfriend really likes Five Tribes. I'm ok with it though not as enthusiastic. It's sort of a mancala game w/ point salad. Player action is mostly beating players to other things and thinking about how your moving pawns might set up someone after you for a sweet play so you want to avoid that. It also has bidding to go first which is kinda cool since sometimes you might want to pay 10 coins to go first if the board has some sick setups, but usually I find most people just put down the bare minimum to avoid even paying 1 coin because sometimes it's better to go last. I don't really think it's that great as a 2-p game because you have like double turns and then rebid for turn order so you're usually just swapping around the same places and that's not that exciting but ymmv and it's definitely not bad for 2-player.

But in the end, it's a point salad, there's a ton of different ways to get points that are fairly easy to score up at the end but will take you severals games to be able to pay attention to what other people have scored so far in terms of what things are worth and such. I'd say it's decent replay wise since you randomize the meeple placements and everything can go different, but not sometime I'd want to keep playing over and over.

e: I think if you can buy it fairly cheap used, go for it. I don't know if I'd drop $50 on it new though. There are some expansions which I have not tried that might change the game a bunch too but idk about that.

They have a new game coming out called Yamatai that looks pretty sweet, I've preordered it from CSI so we'll see.

Xaris fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jan 18, 2017

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:30

Big McHuge: Feb 5, 2014; You wait for the war to happen like vultures.
If you want to help, prevent the war.
Don't save the remnants.
Save them all.

Lord Hydronium posted:

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

I bought these both on the same day. Istanbul is still in my collection. I sold Five Tribes a year ago. It's not that I didn't like Five Tribes, but it just wasn't seeing enough play, and my gf has horrible AP and that game brings out the worst.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:32

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

Huxley posted:

Also, Stelas, thanks for running your threads. I've never participated in one, but being able to go back and read them is probably the only way I'm able to play halfway correctly (brainfarts aside).

Seriously, it's super helpful to have that resource to draw on.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:40

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Lord Hydronium posted:

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

Five Tribes is a concentrated dose of Analysis Paralysis. Because of the mancala mechanism, you can't plan your turns ahead of time. Because of the mancala mechanism, you can sit there and math out what action nets you the most points every turn. A lot of design effort was lavished on the Djinn cards, and it's a huge waste.

The board would be different every time you played, and the final result would be different, but there is nothing in the way of "next time I will try this other strategy" aside from learning the hard way not to let your opponent run away with set multipliers (as in any game that has them).

# ? Jan 18, 2017 18:53

EBag: May 18, 2006

Lord Hydronium posted:

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

I also vote for Istanbul. I like both, I've only played 5T with 2 players and don't really care to play with more, but it is fun if you like a lighter point-salad sorta thing. Istanbul has better variability depending on how the board is laid out, games can feel quite different depending on where the different actions end up. It also scales great and the expanion opens it up a lot if you end up liking the game and want more depth.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 19:11

FulsomFrank: Sep 11, 2005; Hard on for love

I am a big fan of both but Istanbul gets more play because most of my gaming group loves worker placements. I think both are great two-player games though, and Five Tribes has some solid chrome going on. If you had to choose I'd take Istanbul but if you saw Five Tribes on sale pick it up too.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 19:14

Flipswitch: Mar 30, 2010

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

C/P'ing my and CaptainRightful's posts from earlier (no snarkiness intended):

To expand a bit - each decade, each player is dealt two cards. 7 cards are then laid out above the board (once they run out, 7 more are put down, and once those are gone the decade ends), and both players can choose to play them (you don't draft them, you just select them and they go into effect immediately) or the cards in their hands. Each card has an event effect that can be played if its to your benefit (they do things like move various meters to your direction, or decrease social unrest, etc); alternatively, you can choose to use the card's printed point value to build up that many units of infrastructure, or to increase three provinces' standards of living if the infrastructure's been built up enough to support it.

There's a lot of moving pieces but once you've gone through one decade it's pretty straightforward. You're essentially deciding between playing cards that benefit you / harm your opponent, or selecting cards to prevent your opponent from being able to do the same. There's four decades/rounds. At the end of each decade, you look at the various scales and resolve their effects. There's four: prestige, which is how players are viewed on the world stage, currency, which East Germany needs to pay for its infrastructure, and Socialism, which is one way that East Germany can win, and it helps them remove social unrest. The fourth one is how many people are fleeing East Germany for West, and for each person who flees East has to dismantle a unit of infrastructure.

Victory conditions: If a province gets four units of social unrest, they get a flag (one set is labeled Wir Sind Das Volk !!! and I can't remember the other). If a decade ends while one player has four flags, they lose. If both players have four flags at the same time, East wins. If the socialist scale calls for a socialist to be placed on the board and no more socialist units are there to be placed, East wins. Alternatively, if the scale calls for them to remove a socialist unit from the board and they can't, West wins. And finally, if the game ends without any victory conditions being met, East wins by default.

Thanks buddy, somehow missed those two posts, I blame the flu I'm coming down with. Good read and I'll see if I can snag a copy from my stores supplier.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 19:22

Mayveena: Dec 27, 2006; People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Yokohama over Instanbul (the KS Yokohama should be out this year) and we don't find Five Tribes particularly AP inducing, but we play it a lot.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 19:31

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

Well, just shelled out for the Dominion 2nd ed Big Box... it was a pre-order so I save 10%. I've never actually played Dominion, so pretty excited to get it. The big box was released last week so hopefully it doesn't take too long to come up to my local shop.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 20:44

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Jordan7hm posted:

Well, just shelled out for the Dominion 2nd ed Big Box... it was a pre-order so I save 10%. I've never actually played Dominion, so pretty excited to get it. The big box was released last week so hopefully it doesn't take too long to come up to my local shop.

This seems like a pretty optimal way to get introduced to the game. It gets rid of the handful of lovely trap cards in the game, gives you the base expansion (which teaches the basic ideas of the game) and then complicates it with the more interactive Intrigue mechanics.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:00

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

sector_corrector posted:

This seems like a pretty optimal way to get introduced to the game. It gets rid of the handful of lovely trap cards in the game, gives you the base expansion (which teaches the basic ideas of the game) and then complicates it with the more interactive Intrigue mechanics.

Is there a summary of Dominion 2nd Big Box vs Dominion? Curious what these lovely trap cards are and if there's a way just to upgrade/build an optimal fun box of dominion stuff that I can easily pull out. I have Dominion + Intrigue + Prosperity but I haven't actually played with the last expansion yet, and honestly haven't played Dominion as much as I would like over the years but I'd like to get back into doing so.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:05

Some Numbers: Sep 28, 2006; "LET'S GET DOWN TO WORK!!"

Xaris posted:

Curious what these lovely trap cards are

I'm hoping it's all the variants of Village so the bad players get super mad.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:13

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

The Dominion Big Box 2nd Edition is filled only with copies of Swindler and Curse.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:19

Ojetor: Aug 4, 2010; Return of the Sensei

Xaris posted:

Is there a summary of Dominion 2nd Big Box vs Dominion? Curious what these lovely trap cards are and if there's a way just to upgrade/build an optimal fun box of dominion stuff that I can easily pull out. I have Dominion + Intrigue + Prosperity but I haven't actually played with the last expansion yet, and honestly haven't played Dominion as much as I would like over the years but I'd like to get back into doing so.

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Removed_cards

It's an interesting read since it includes DXV's reasons for the removal of each card.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:20

Rockman Reserve: Oct 2, 2007; "Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

Elysium posted:

The way the Tash-Kalar rules are nested within themselves for the multiple different ways to play is dumb. It makes it seem more complicated and harder to reference.

This is totally true. The guidebook is really weirdly laid out for how easy the game is to explain.

-On your turn, you have two actions. The only actions you can take are placing a common piece or summoning using the pieces on the board. First player only gets one action on the first turn.
-You can activate a flare by meeting either of its requirements, you can use both effects if you qualify for both at the time you play it
-"Standard" means lower rank, "Combat" means equal or lower, "move" means adjacent, "leap" means anywhere
-Summons can be summoned onto equal or lower ranked stones, and in fact this is necessary to play cards like Cannon.
-At the end of your turn grab a Task if you qualify for one, then check your points (tasks earned + legendaries on board). If it's 9 or up, you trigger the end of the game and the last round begins (ending with the player that triggered the last round)
-At the end of your turn, draw up to 3 of your cards, 2 legendaries, 1 flare. If you draw the last of your deck, you trigger the last round as above.

I mean...that's pretty much the entire high form game right there, right? I'm trying to think of weird exceptions or edge cases but those are pretty much all on the cards themselves, and generally pretty straightforward. The training game doesn't even really make things much easier, it just removes advanced Tasks and Legendaries completely and gives the impression that everything is way more complicated than it is, because there's so many more pages in the guidebook after you read the basic game.

Rockman Reserve fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jan 18, 2017

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:27

The Lord of Hats: Aug 22, 2010; Hello, yes! Is being very good day for posting, no?

Just got notice that AFfO has been delivered (I said screw it and just went with Amazon). Only four hours until I can unbox it and find out how hard it is to play with a cat that keeps wanting to jump on the table!

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:29

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Sounds like I could just buy the Dominion -> 2nd ed upgrade pack for $10 and I'd be good to go then? I guess I could also get Intriuge 2nd ed upgrade but doesn't really seem worth it atm.

Side note: Did everyone else get headache inducing smell with all of Donald's games? Dominion, it's expansion, and even Temporum all had this god awful smell to them that gave both my girlfriend and I an awful headache. We had to stick them outside/in another room for several days before it wasn't as bad.

Haven't had a problem with any other game except his.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:33

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Xaris posted:

Is there a summary of Dominion 2nd Big Box vs Dominion? Curious what these lovely trap cards are and if there's a way just to upgrade/build an optimal fun box of dominion stuff that I can easily pull out. I have Dominion + Intrigue + Prosperity but I haven't actually played with the last expansion yet, and honestly haven't played Dominion as much as I would like over the years but I'd like to get back into doing so.

There are only maybe four cards that I'd call really bad (Chancellor, Saboteur, Thief, and Spy), and I'm tempted to say that their design is almost intentional. One example is Thief (original) and its replacement Bandit (2nd Ed.).

Functionally they're similar cards. Your opponent loses treasure, you gain a treasure. However, Thief is directly trashing and stealing, and it doesn't care what the treasure is. What this means is that if you buy thief early, then you're doing your opponent a favor. Trashing Copper is actually really, really useful. And you should almost never want to intentionally gain copper. But, unless it's some weird-rear end game that involves gaining a lot of Silver or Gold, Copper is going to be the vast majority of treasure you sift to. And, if you don't hit any Copper, then you haven't hurt your opponent much at all (and maybe helped them if you sifted off a Curse or Victory) and wasted an action, AND haven't done anything to hit $8 to buy a Province this turn. So a best case scenario is you've inconvenienced your opponent in a few hands, and marginally helped out yourself in a few hands while not doing anything in the current turn. You've wasted a $4 buy to do this, which could've been a terminal silver of some sort, or a Smithy type card that lets you reliably draw to $8.

Bandit improves upon that by filtering out Copper (so your attack never helps your opponent), guaranteeing you gain a Gold (so you never have a dud attack turn), and compensates by bumping the card up to a 5-buy (meaning you get it a little later in the game, but that it's more useful at that point since that's when you'll be hitting the Silvers and Golds that will actually make the attack hurt).

Also there's a dedicated Dominion thread now. Come by and talk about strategy if you want.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:34

The Eyes Have It: Feb 10, 2008; Third Eye Sees All
...snookums

Wir Sin Das Volk is playable for free online at boardgamecore.net if anyone wants to try it out.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:34

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Xaris posted:

Side note: Did everyone else get headache inducing smell with all of Donald's games? Dominion, it's expansion, and even Temporum all had this god awful smell to them that gave both my girlfriend and I an awful headache. We had to stick them outside/in another room for several days before it wasn't as bad.

Haven't had a problem with any other game except his.

The "X" in "Donald X. Vaccarino" stands for "well eXcuuuUUUUUse ME!"

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:48

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

sector_corrector posted:

Also there's a dedicated Dominion thread now. Come by and talk about strategy if you want.

And that thread can be found right here!

# ? Jan 18, 2017 21:50

T-Bone: Sep 14, 2004; jakes did this?

Jordan7hm posted:

Well, just shelled out for the Dominion 2nd ed Big Box... it was a pre-order so I save 10%. I've never actually played Dominion, so pretty excited to get it. The big box was released last week so hopefully it doesn't take too long to come up to my local shop.

All the hockey dudes coming to the board gaming thread. You'll love Dominion, Jordan, it's incredible.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 22:20

taser rates: Mar 30, 2010

food court bailiff posted:

This is totally true. The rulebook is really weirdly laid out for how easy the game is to explain.

The manual is intended purely as a learning guide iirc, the actual "rulebook" is literally that single double sided sheet, which I haven't had any problems with. I think I skimmed the manual once when it was first uploaded to BGG, then didn't bother once I had the actual game.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 22:49

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

sector_corrector posted:

There are only maybe four cards that I'd call really bad (Chancellor, Saboteur, Thief, and Spy), and I'm tempted to say that their design is almost intentional. One example is Thief (original) and its replacement Bandit (2nd Ed.).

Functionally they're similar cards. Your opponent loses treasure, you gain a treasure. However, Thief is directly trashing and stealing, and it doesn't care what the treasure is. What this means is that if you buy thief early, then you're doing your opponent a favor. Trashing Copper is actually really, really useful. And you should almost never want to intentionally gain copper. But, unless it's some weird-rear end game that involves gaining a lot of Silver or Gold, Copper is going to be the vast majority of treasure you sift to. And, if you don't hit any Copper, then you haven't hurt your opponent much at all (and maybe helped them if you sifted off a Curse or Victory) and wasted an action, AND haven't done anything to hit $8 to buy a Province this turn. So a best case scenario is you've inconvenienced your opponent in a few hands, and marginally helped out yourself in a few hands while not doing anything in the current turn. You've wasted a $4 buy to do this, which could've been a terminal silver of some sort, or a Smithy type card that lets you reliably draw to $8.

Bandit improves upon that by filtering out Copper (so your attack never helps your opponent), guaranteeing you gain a Gold (so you never have a dud attack turn), and compensates by bumping the card up to a 5-buy (meaning you get it a little later in the game, but that it's more useful at that point since that's when you'll be hitting the Silvers and Golds that will actually make the attack hurt).

Also there's a dedicated Dominion thread now. Come by and talk about strategy if you want.

This is a really awesome write-up about the changes.

I also want to add how this updates improves the overall player interaction, which was a big complaint about base Dominion for a lot of people - you'd hear "multiplayer solitaire" thrown around a lot. The issue is that a lot of the early dud cards (Thief, Spy, arguably Bureaucrat) happened to also be attack cards, and since there seems to be roughly 25% of the set (and subsequent sets) allocated for attack/interaction cards, you saw less interaction on a game to game basis when those cards got skipped over. In addition, the base game attacks/interactives that were good (Witch, Militia, Council Room) were also super straight forward - you gain a Curse or discard your two worst cards.

DXV got a lot better with attack and interactive cards in subsequent expansions, and that comes through in the cards he subtracted and added to the 2nd editions. The attacks are more beneficial to the player (as s_c explained), there are more non-attack interactives (which can speed up the game rather than slow it down like attacks do), and there is more interesting stuff going on in general. Even 1st edition Intrigue was a great improvement over the base set for interaction (a lot of people would call it the "attack set" at the time even though it had the exact same number of interactive cards and one fewer attack) and swapping stuff like Saboteur will only make it better.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 23:08

Rockman Reserve: Oct 2, 2007; "Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

taser rates posted:

The manual is intended purely as a learning guide iirc, the actual "rulebook" is literally that single double sided sheet, which I haven't had any problems with. I think I skimmed the manual once when it was first uploaded to BGG, then didn't bother once I had the actual game.

Good catch - I actually called it the guidebook later in the post but wasn't consistent. The point I was trying to make though is that the guidebook is bad for actually learning the game, just because it makes things out to be far, far more complicated than they actually are due to weird layout decisions and the whole existence of the basic learning game.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 23:23

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

Selecta84 posted:

What are some really short but heavy solo games?

Like 1/2 - 1 hour play time but still heavy?

I already have the LOTR LCG, FoA, aFfO, Glass Road and Loyang which fit the play time requirement.

Don't have Agricola but I may get it when the anniversery edition comes out.

Anything I'm missing?

You could always play Cruel Necessity

# ? Jan 18, 2017 23:26

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I have just met Bizarro Broken Loose today; he's the same, but lives on another hemisphere and likes Munchkin.

Also had a great deal for weed, but I'm not sure how that compares.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 23:44

CaptainRightful: Jan 11, 2005

corn in the bible posted:

You could always play Cruel Necessity

Is that a significantly heavier game than Ottoman Sunset/Hapsburg Eclipse? Because those are great for historical detail, but I find the gameplay gets old fast since it combines luck of the draw with dice rolls.

# ? Jan 18, 2017 23:51

Spikes32: Jul 25, 2013; Happy trees

Lord Hydronium posted:

In the genre of "somewhat orientalist games where you move bunches of tokens around a random grid of cards", what are people's thoughts on Istanbul and Five Tribes? Replay value, player interaction, accessibility, and suitability for two players are a few of the things I'm wondering about.

I'll talk about five tribes since I own it and really like it, can't speak to Istanbul as I've never played it.

With five tribes you have the mechanic of caring about where meeples are on the map, and where they might go. This was the first game of its kind for me (previous games were things like catan, game of thrones, lords of water deep) and makes your brain think in very different puzzle solving ways.

The downside to this was AP for some players, which my group got rid of my instituting a two or three minute timer based on how familiar you are with the game. This works great, but involves actually holding your players to the timer.

A later post talked about how too much design was spent on the djini, but I think they look awesome and form a really integral part of the game. Since there are four main ways to score points, you should always be on the lookout for synergies to your primary method.

My favorite mechanic is the bidding on turn order. It leads to new players never bidding anything (which is the best thing for them to do) and adds tension when people see a great move on the board. My closing thought is that this is a VERY tactical game that plays in under an hour, which is a very welcome change from many other games I play.

# ? Jan 19, 2017 00:05

LongDarkNight: Oct 25, 2010; It's like watching the collapse of Western civilization in fast forward.; Oven Wrangler

Lichtenstein posted:

I have just met Bizarro Broken Loose today; he's the same, but lives on another hemisphere and likes Munchkin.

Also had a great deal for weed, but I'm not sure how that compares.

Hey BL, you got a joint?

# ? Jan 19, 2017 00:05

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Mister Sinewave posted:

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.

This is from a bit ago, but oh my god this. I'd been trying to get Viceroy replayed for a year, but since it maxed at 4 it could never get played because there were always 5 of us around. gently caress, what's really stupid is that we have tons of unplayed 2 player games and less played 4 player games that we could do if we weren't trying to cram everyone into some 7 player game.

How did I get Viceroy played, you ask? At a two-day New Year's Eve event that had around 13 people at its peak. Fortunately we didn't want to play Telestrations for 48 hours.

# ? Jan 19, 2017 01:23

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# ? May 18, 2024 13:09

The Lord of Hats: Aug 22, 2010; Hello, yes! Is being very good day for posting, no?

The Lord of Hats posted:

Just got notice that AFfO has been delivered (I said screw it and just went with Amazon). Only four hours until I can unbox it and find out how hard it is to play with a cat that keeps wanting to jump on the table!

Just opened it up!

My purchase is already justified on the basis of how happy the included component storage makes me, god daaaaaaaamn.

# ? Jan 19, 2017 01:41

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

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