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Shadow225 posted:Also no joke, save on table space by buying a business card holder for cards and a small cupcake tray (preferably silicone) for components. What business card holder do you recommend? I'm looking for something that can withstand Food Chain Magnate but won't take up the whole table in other games.
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Feb 22, 2017 19:25
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Tekopo posted:The only good Rosenberg is Le Havre Notice that I didn't even list it, because I never actually ended up giving it a try. What's great about Le Havre that Agricola or Feast, say, don't cover?
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Feb 22, 2017 20:01
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silvergoose posted:Notice that I didn't even list it, because I never actually ended up giving it a try. It's definitely a different game. Agricola and Feast and Caverna are much closer to each other than any of them is to Le Havre. You don't gain more workers; you don't develop a two-dimensional space; other people can use your buildings; the game changes a lot later in play when you start shipping goods yourself.
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Feb 22, 2017 20:05
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Impermanent posted:What business card holder do you recommend? I'm looking for something that can withstand Food Chain Magnate but won't take up the whole table in other games. I keep all of my MtG decks in 19th century silver business card holders:  This one would be good for Arkham Horror: 
Rutibex fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 20:06
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homullus posted:It's definitely a different game. Agricola and Feast and Caverna are much closer to each other than any of them is to Le Havre. You don't gain more workers; you don't develop a two-dimensional space; other people can use your buildings; the game changes a lot later in play when you start shipping goods yourself. Yeah I know all that even having not played it. What makes it great?
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Feb 22, 2017 20:15
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Impermanent posted:What business card holder do you recommend? I'm looking for something that can withstand Food Chain Magnate but won't take up the whole table in other games. For FCM, box insert would be your best best since there are so many different cards and none of them can be consolidated. This specific insert will raise the box lid by an inch or two, but the organization is worth it. Otherwise, it depends on how many decks you're expecting to use. I bought this guy but haven't gotten to break it out just yet. Keep in mind that Standard sized cards are 2.5x3.5 and Euro sized cards are 2 5/16" x 3 9/16". So, to use the tray that I linked, I will have to stand the cards vertically.
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Feb 22, 2017 20:16
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Shadow225 posted:For FCM, box insert would be your best best since there are so many different cards and none of them can be consolidated. This specific insert will raise the box lid by an inch or two, but the organization is worth it. This: http://boardgamegeekstore.com/products/food-chain-magnate-milestone-boards-card-accordion is also sold now, it works pretty well.
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Feb 22, 2017 20:48
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silvergoose posted:Yeah I know all that even having not played it. What makes it great? I inferred that you thought it couldn't be great because you thought it was too similar his "let's feed our workers" games, so I was highlighting the differences. I'm not the one who thinks it's great, just one who thinks it's good and more different than his farming ones. The things I think make it good: *Turn order is strictly enforced, but a given player will not always be the first or last to act in a round, cutting out the "jockeying for 1p" thing that, while interesting, is also nice not to have sometimes *A more randomized selection of upgrades to the players' tableaux, with some of them entering the public sphere for all to use if nobody takes them *Buildings others purchase/build can be used by you (for a price), and vice versa, economic hindrance rather than outright blocking (but still, since it is worker placement, only one worker can be in a building, so there is still blocking) *Loans allow you to go into debt for immediate benefits, essentially a push-your-luck mechanism (just like real loans, I guess)
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Feb 22, 2017 21:19
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angel opportunity posted:Has anyone been playing a lot of Mechs and Minions or enjoying it much? I got it back in December and we played it one time. It felt OKAY but not super amazing to me. Now, every time I can get my wife to play something with me, I'd rather play something else (we don't get to play a lot). I feel like it really is probably best with 3 or 4 players. I've played it like 5 times, and I found it fairly fun. It's a pretty great option when not everyone that's present is hardcore. It helps that I have people over at my place every weekend, so I don't need to carry it anywhere.
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Feb 22, 2017 21:25
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silvergoose posted:Yeah I know all that even having not played it. What makes it great? <psst> Tekopo is wrong and LeHavre is not great. Or I guess it's great if you like having a game that only actually works when you only have three players who take loans all game to pursue one of two scripted paths.
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Feb 22, 2017 22:55
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Dancer posted:I've played it like 5 times, and I found it fairly fun. It's a pretty great option when not everyone that's present is hardcore. It helps that I have people over at my place every weekend, so I don't need to carry it anywhere. Yeah maybe I'll find a time to play it. I realize it's a pretty light game, which is nice, but to me the "lightness" gets cancelled out a bit by big painted figurines of videogame characters. At least when it comes to getting non-gamers to play 
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Feb 22, 2017 23:01
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Pfft LaHavre  Clearly the best Rosenburg game is Ora et Labora.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:03
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Lorini posted:<psst> Tekopo is wrong and LeHavre is not great. Or I guess it's great if you like having a game that only actually works when you only have three players who take loans all game to pursue one of two scripted paths. Oh no. Two people whose opinions I strongly trust are giving me conflicting advice?? ^^^ not this guy
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Feb 22, 2017 23:05
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But Ora et labora is non the less an amazing game
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Feb 22, 2017 23:10
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Le Havre has a lot more variety and scope for exploration than Agricola or (especially) Ora & Labora/Caverna. The buildings that come up do make a difference and I found that every game I played was different: I like it because I dislike drafting games (ie Agricola) or games with fixed game spaces (ie O&L). I played Anachrony today, I liked it with a few caveats. I liked the variable boards/bonuses/leaders that you can get, the way that action are become available if all the slots are taken, the warp mechanism is basically a loan to yourself but has enough differences to make it distinct from other similar mechanisms, the way that the game is a tableau builder and how the dinamyc changes after the catastrophe is really cool (it's harder to get to the capital later on and basically you spend the game setting yourself up for that moment. The theming is pretty cool and the models were nice and chunky and there is a lot of scope to explore different strategies. Things I disliked: rolling for paradox (basically if you have warped too many things you roll a dice to see how many paradoxes you get, with the dice having one 0 paradox side, four 1 paradox and one 2 paradox): this can be 'fixed' by using a diceless variant. Researching was also not extremely interactive: to build super projects you need research tokens that come combinations of one of three symbols and one of three shapes. You can build a superproject with either one token of the exact shape and symbol or two tokens of two specific shapes. The way you gain tokens is by doing an action where you fix one aspect and roll randomly for the other. So you might get lucky and only require one action to get the research tokens or get unlucky and need to use two actions. The other thing I dislike is that buildings are in stacks and building something reveals the next one, which leads to situations in which the next building might have been better for you or really good for someone else's strategy. The final issue is that some factions might benefit from really specific super-projects/buildings but you have no idea if they are going to come out at all. Overall I enjoyed it. There are enough interesting things going on to distanc it from a standard worker placement game and I esp finally liked there tableau building and the shift in gameplay post-catastrophe. I don't think it does enough to distance it from its own worker placement roots like Dungeon Petz and Dungeon Lords but if you want a game with a bit more setup/resolution randomness it's a pretty solid game.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:20
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angel opportunity posted:Has anyone been playing a lot of Mechs and Minions or enjoying it much? I got it back in December and we played it one time. It felt OKAY but not super amazing to me. Now, every time I can get my wife to play something with me, I'd rather play something else (we don't get to play a lot). I feel like it really is probably best with 3 or 4 players. I can't imagine playing it with less than 4. I burned through about half the game at a gathering and everybody loved it. It combines the best aspects of Robo Rally with the programming with some breakneck pacing and fun mission design. But the missions expect you to do fifty things at once so two players would pretty much have to run two characters. There are rules for making the missions easier but any game with modifiers like that outside of the devs intent suck. If you can't get a dedicated group you may as well drop it.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:36
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My wife and I did like two missions with just two people. The bomb moving mission was pretty hard, but we just barely completed it. I think the problem is that it didn't really feel very chaotic or hectic or anything. It was more just like we were quietly discussing what to do, and I didn't find the timer on the card taking to work out all that well with two people either.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:38
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silvergoose posted:Oh no. Two people whose opinions I strongly trust are giving me conflicting advice?? I think Lorini has a lot more experience with it than I do, so I defer to her.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:58
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Shadow225 posted:For FCM, box insert would be your best best since there are so many different cards and none of them can be consolidated. This specific insert will raise the box lid by an inch or two, but the organization is worth it. I have this insert and I have no idea how you are using it to raise your box lid an inch or two unless you are storing the cards the way they are shown here (as in, the way they are to be used during the game) instead of using the insert properly.
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Feb 23, 2017 00:35
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How does Terra Mystica play two players?
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Feb 23, 2017 00:52
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FCM has a shitload of cards, and I have a bunch of Uberstax modular holders and discovered two will fit in the FCM box side-by-side. The box is the right size to fit 6x2 or 7x2 with a bit of room to spare so nothing is squished or anything. It's enough to fit all the milestones. When a milestone is gone just turn the cards around. e: pic chur  For employees I just sort them into face-up decks sorted by color that players help themselves to. I'd like that cardboard accordion thing on the BGG store but it's pretty handy putting the plastic stands in the box and it's quick to set up and take down (the holders get used for other games and junk instead of being stored with FCM) The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 01:04
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EvilChameleon posted:I have this insert and I have no idea how you are using it to raise your box lid an inch or two unless you are storing the cards the way they are shown here (as in, the way they are to be used during the game) instead of using the insert properly. There are two versions - the ones designed for sleeved cards is taller than the one for unsleeved cards and raises the lid. Though not an inch or two.
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Feb 23, 2017 01:21
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homullus posted:I think Lorini has a lot more experience with it than I do, so I defer to her. Yes I should have mentioned that the first 8 plays or so of LeHavre were fun until the Obvious Best Way to Play was found and then it wasn't fun anymore. I do agree with Rutibex that Ora is an awesome game, we've played it over 30 times and still are happy to play again.
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Feb 23, 2017 01:35
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Another day, still no Gloomhaven. It's not even like I have a group lined up for it but dang.
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Feb 23, 2017 01:38
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LongDarkNight posted:How does Terra Mystica play two players? Pretty terrible IMO. I did it once a long time ago and we were both just... bored.
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Feb 23, 2017 01:42
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LongDarkNight posted:How does Terra Mystica play two players? Only really functions at all if you play on a smaller map. Even then, better to play 3+.
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Feb 23, 2017 02:43
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How does Terra Mystica work with 2? Do they give you more starting houses? Part of the game's strategy is building next to each other and in a 2 player game you have enough space to basically do what you want which yeah, sounds boring.
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Feb 23, 2017 03:01
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al-azad posted:How does Terra Mystica work with 2? Do they give you more starting houses? Part of the game's strategy is building next to each other and in a 2 player game you have enough space to basically do what you want which yeah, sounds boring. Yeah that's precisely the problem. That's why we play with like half the map or less, but even then it's not very engaging at two. Scythe and Kemet are both better at two players, which says a lot.
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Feb 23, 2017 03:03
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LongDarkNight posted:How does Terra Mystica play two players? I like 2p games online only. One of my friends and I can smash out an online game of it in 30 mins if we're having coffee.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:43
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Lorini posted:Yes I should have mentioned that the first 8 plays or so of LeHavre were fun until the Obvious Best Way to Play was found and then it wasn't fun anymore. The biggest thing in Le Havre is reading what your opponents are going to be doing. The optimal strategy is to go heavy industry with iron and bricks, then build a hoard of iron and coal. Convert the coal to coke, and make a ton of steel. Build a couple of steel boats and ship everything at the harbor for a huge win. The problem with that, is that someone smart will get just enough steel to grab like 3 of the steel ships the instant they are available. Without those ships, the big steel producer can't effectively convert the steel to cash. And if multiple players are fighting each other for heavy industry, that will leave the odd man out who can take advantage off all the plentiful food and lesser building supplies to build a lot of the early buildings. Left alone enough, that route is very competitive with heavy industry. Granted, it is much easier to win with heavy industry, especially if the players are at different skill levels. But the game is all about balancing that fine line of amassing a lot of basic resources to be efficient in converting them to advanced, and knowing when to go to the conversion building with a smaller pile to put a massive delay in an opponent. I also really like the fact that loans in Le Havre don't really work like loans in any other game. The interest is fixed at $1 per round, no matter how many loans you have. So you can work around feeding your people much easier. The loans add up fast during the middle and late game if you are not careful.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:48
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Played three more scenarios of Gloomhaven this week, including an escort mission (which is actually fun because it mixes things up so that you have to move fast and can blow cards on one-shot actions much more liberally since you've got a fairly fixed scenario length), and a loot-and-run scenario. Still madly in love with it. The writing's pretty great, every scenario feels very different and tactically satisfying, and my Mindthief just unlocked (level 4 ability card spoiler) the ability to explode an enemy's head Scanners style and damage every enemy adjacent with skull shrapnel .
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Feb 23, 2017 05:07
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malkav11 posted:Played three more scenarios of Gloomhaven this week, including an escort mission (which is actually fun because it mixes things up so that you have to move fast and can blow cards on one-shot actions much more liberally since you've got a fairly fixed scenario length) I like to imagine that the character we were escorting spent the entire scenario bitching at us for clogging up her path with unnecessary amounts of rats, walking boxes (decoys) and our slow-rear end Cragheart. I think we took nearly twice as many turns as we needed to on the first escort quest due to repeatedly failing to leave the way clear.
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Feb 23, 2017 09:30
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah that's precisely the problem. That's why we play with like half the map or less, but even then it's not very engaging at two. Scythe and Kemet are both better at two players, which says a lot. 2P Terra Mystica is fine, but not particularly engaging and can be a lonely experience if you spread out across the map and don't have proximity with one another as others have noted. Frankly, I think it's kind of a waste to play TM at anything less than 4 for similar reasons. The fact is that the static board is a problem, not a feature, for TM in that it doesn't scale to number of players and it lends itself to fairly rote patterns in terms of optimal plays for certain races with regard to starting spaces, strategies for expansion, preferred neighbors etc. and gives even more of a familiarity advantage to experienced players over newer players accordingly. I think the devs have recognized that they could do better and the next TM (in spaaaaace!) appears to have a modular board set-up that varies based on player count and randomizes tilesets somewhat, which resolves both of the above issues.
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Feb 23, 2017 09:43
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Thanks for the advise on Terra Mystica. Friend was asking if it would be a good fit for him and his wife.
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Feb 23, 2017 13:44
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I finished my copy of Pandemic: Legacy last night. Would it be better to post my impressions here or necro the quarantine thread?
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Feb 23, 2017 16:11
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Shadow225 posted:I finished my copy of Pandemic: Legacy last night. Would it be better to post my impressions here or necro the quarantine thread? If you spoiler things and make it clear you're talking about that stuff I'll just skip past it but I'm woefully behind on mine still because goddam if it isn't tough to get the gang together on a regular basis, especially when the other two you started with have become... difficult to get a hold of/along with all of a sudden.
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Feb 23, 2017 16:24
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Orvin posted:The biggest thing in Le Havre is reading what your opponents are going to be doing. The optimal strategy is to go heavy industry with iron and bricks, then build a hoard of iron and coal. Convert the coal to coke, and make a ton of steel. Build a couple of steel boats and ship everything at the harbor for a huge win. The problem with that, is that someone smart will get just enough steel to grab like 3 of the steel ships the instant they are available. Without those ships, the big steel producer can't effectively convert the steel to cash. Unless you're the fourth/fifth player and then you're hosed. Yes what this is saying is correct, it's just that for me Uwe's other games offer greater breadth in strategy.
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Feb 23, 2017 16:33
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I personally think you should keep that to the Pandemic thread but you can provide a link to it as a post here. Considering the potential that has to spoil what is a contender for best game evah to anyone not expecting it, I think the quarantine thread makes sense in that instance. But putting a link to your question here still allows interested people to view your post before it disappears.
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Feb 23, 2017 16:57
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That's all of the affirmation that I need! As mentioned, I finished my copy of Pandemic Legacy last night. It took about 5 months to get through 19 games. Here are things I think it did well: - The objectives move you along the path to the plot subtly without forecasting its spoilers, even if the objectives don't make a lot of sense. The military base in each region -> sabotage military bases is a good example of this. - The characters are updated just enough to remain really useful across the changing scope of the game. - Opening boxes is cool. However, there are a lot of things that I just did not care for: - Once the Faded are introduced, the game just isn't nearly as fun until the last month or two when you can actually deal with them. Pandemic can be kind of swingy as it is depending on the opening infections. Add to the fact that you can get screwed by that and get cities that you cannot affect pretty much ever and it just kills my motivation to play. There's nothing I enjoy more than auto-losing a game from the start when the loss makes my future games more difficult. Before you find the vaccine, you can use the Colonel and one unfunded event to get rid of faded. You could make an argument about conveyance here, but I would rather play a game where my decisions always matter. Why wasn't I ever given a funded event to kill 2 Faded or something similar? - Speaking of vaccine, I think that it's weak that you get the vaccine regardless of finding the 4 people. I busted butt to the point of throwing away a game or two to find those guys (Patient Zero was the dumbest), and then it falls into my lap regardless. Ignoring the inconsequential scoring at the end, I felt like my decisions didn't matter at that point. - I felt that some mechanics were difficult for the sake of being difficult, rather than any sort of conveyance or thematic story telling. I was especially annoyed that you drop a faded on a city when you draw a player card of that color. The Faded are already a problem at that point; why artificially increase the difficulty? Why do you need to discard a card of the region's color to drive into a Collapsing or Fallen city when you are already subject to bad card draws? There is a story reason for the military bases making your vaccinations cost more actions, but it still felt frustrating for the sake of being frustrating. - The game eventually soon got very fiddly. One of the reasons I enjoy base Pandemic and keep it in my collection despite not having played it in 2 years is because the design is minimal and cohesive. This game balloons out to include like 5 kinds of tokens, additional things to do in set up, and additional 'Gotcha'' rules. There were a few things that we screwed up for our favor early in the game because it was so easy to miss clauses here and there. - The secret file folder should have been organized by the order that you open things. It felt real bad to pause the game for 5 minutes as we thumb through the pages looking for 6 doors. 'Did you find 43 yet? Are you sure you didn't already pull it? Okay, I'll look again.' - A lot of the character upgrades and equipment seemed fairly useless. We ended up winning the last game on the last turn with maximum funding. It did feel real cool to have the game come down to the final play, which we had to think about for 10 minutes before seeing the solution. Very end game spoiler: we scored 612. I did have to open box 8 unfortunately, but whatever, I'll take it. I'm curious to know what you guys got. All in all, I'd give the game a 6 or 7. I actually prefer base Pandemic because the middle 6 or so months were frustrating to play. I will say that (November spoiler) it was Real Cathartic to play the Immunologist and just go ham vaccinating all of the problem cities. In the first half of December, which we dedicated entirely to vaccinations, I probably vaccinated double digit cities solo.. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about Season 2. Also, does anyone (Rutibex) want my copy for parts? I will give it to you for the cost of shipping. I didn't rip any cards except maybe sticker cards, so you would have everything needed included in the game. Shadow225 fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 17:03
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Lorini posted:Unless you're the fourth/fifth player and then you're hosed. Yes what this is saying is correct, it's just that for me Uwe's other games offer greater breadth in strategy. Uwe's clearly moved in the direction of "all of the options are available throughout the game" and with A Feast for Odin got rid of even the per-round variation that lingered on through Caverna. The variation in what will even be in the game at all is what appeals to me about Agricola and Le Havre.
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Feb 23, 2017 17:15
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