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Bottom Liner posted:They did it that way to cut costs, like every element of their production (clip art cards, poo poo map, etc). They really need to partner with a manufacturer to produce higher quality components at much lower costs. Every one of their games would cost 50% of their MSRP if they did it right, while not hurting their bottom line at all. They could serve their target base much better by moving out of their drat garage. Them partnering with Days of Wonder for gorgeous art would be powerful, but that would mean the same prices anyway because ~Asmodee.
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Jul 1, 2017 19:29
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Yeah if Splotter starter partnering with a publisher the former's track record is long enough at this point to not really encourage the latter to charge less money - people have already shown that they're willing to pay The Big Bucks for those games and I doubt there would be any sort of notable organized backlash if it was found out they could be charging 30% less but weren't.
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Jul 1, 2017 19:35
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I'm sure this is known but I just got an email from Peterson Games confirming Cthulhu Wars Onslaught 3 was coming to kickstarter this month. I think I'm going to back whatever level gets me the game and all expansions. I've been nerd salivating about this game for too long.
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Jul 1, 2017 20:51
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Captain Ironblood posted:I'm sure this is known but I just got an email from Peterson Games confirming Cthulhu Wars Onslaught 3 was coming to kickstarter this month. I'd be tempted, but I don't actually own a house to remortgage.
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Jul 1, 2017 20:57
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the benefit of being a self publisher is being able to print exactly what you need. No big publisher could fulfill Splotters orders so even if it's cheaper upfront you're paying more if you miss that initial run. I mean Z-Man can't even reprint Marco Polo their most acclaimed game.
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Jul 1, 2017 21:40
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Splotter should do whatever they drat well please.
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Jul 1, 2017 22:35
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Splotter should make a new game for me to buy.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:35
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cenotaph posted:Splotter should do whatever they drat well please. Exactly. This is a hobby for them. They don't have to do the American make the most money at everything all the time thing.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:47
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I had to pack it up like a turn and a half in but what tiny little bit I've played so far of aFfO (solo) is really awesome and goes a long way towards explaining the hype.
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Jul 2, 2017 00:38
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Played the first scenario of TIME Stories this afternoon. Our group enjoyed it a lot; took us 3 tries to solve. We did get stuck for a while on the lock puzzle not noticing one of the pentagrams was on the key. We're looking forward to the next scenario.
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Jul 2, 2017 01:10
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Papes posted:Splotter should make a new game for me to buy. They have one in the works that they were originally looking to debut at Essen this year, but opted to put their resources into the Antiquity reprint/refresh instead. So probably Essen '18 instead. 
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Jul 2, 2017 01:41
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Played Arctic Scavengers last night, it's one of the better deck builders I've played
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Jul 2, 2017 02:54
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Lorini posted:Exactly. This is a hobby for them. They don't have to do the American make the most money at everything all the time thing. That's not what I suggested they do at all. I said they could serve their fans/customers better. This industry is already headed towards a non-consumer friendly market, the more small studios making up for that the better, not the other way around.
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Jul 2, 2017 03:19
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I should probably get out of the BGG Facebook group. I can see why broken loose was always so angry. So many people there have poo poo tastes and it's like broken loose ranting about poo poo, except then those people reply telling you about how much they love rolling around in their poo poo. That you're a snobby pretentious rear end in a top hat for daring to have some semblance of standards when it comes to spending hours of your time playing games, as a hobby. These people agree it's a hobby but unlike other hobbies I'm part of it's utterly devoted to mediocrity instead of excellence. There's a monopoly Mario Nintendo game that just came out and now there a civil war going about how no actually it's a good game.  I should get out but it's like watching a car crash every day.I guess I'm just saying I'm glad this thread and it's good, thoughtful suggestions exists.
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Jul 2, 2017 03:47
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Bottom Liner posted:That's not what I suggested they do at all. I said they could serve their fans/customers better. This industry is already headed towards a non-consumer friendly market, the more small studios making up for that the better, not the other way around. Why though? Why should they serve their customers better? While you didn't say that they should be profit driven specifically you implied it. They have enough happy customers as their history shows.
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Jul 2, 2017 04:21
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Instead of Splotter joining the borg, existing board game makers with established publisher links, etc could just start making Splotter-level games instead 
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Jul 2, 2017 04:25
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Mister Sinewave posted:Instead of Splotter joining the borg, existing board game makers with established publisher links, etc could just start making Splotter-level games instead Imagine that instead of a new version of monopoly every year, we get a new FCM with a different theme. I would buy them all. 
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Jul 2, 2017 04:34
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Lorini posted:Why should they serve their customers better?  is that really your argument? Why should any company be proconsumer!?Do you not think a lot more people would be happy with being able to get their games, and their current fans wouldn't be happier with better production value and lower prices? Their games are great, their production values and business structure aren't, and the consumers have to deal with it one way or another via small print runs, premium prices for cheap quality, etc.
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Jul 2, 2017 05:18
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food court bailiff posted:I have found the best fuckin' game store. Comics, retro video games, and a better selection of board games than I've seen anywhere, and even in the midst of their Friday Night Magic it didn't have that awful pervasive nerd-funk that some places get. I mean they had multiple copies of FCM ON THE SHELF - I picked one up like "oh this is super hot right now but I've never seen a retail copy before" and the back is completely blank, lol. There are a couple of odd translations. Here's some errata and notes. You may or may not have a second printing depending on how popular aFfO was locally. Page 5: - when it's talking about the cards it gets occupations and weapons reversed. Occupation cards are the ones with "A", "B", and "C" on them. You always use all weapon cards. Everything except your occupation cards is visible to other players at all times, but they should know how many occupation cards you have. - the practical difference between the long (7 round) and short (6 round) game is that you get less free food proportionate to what you need in the short game and will have less leeway to cover the additional boards. Page 7: - "sooner or later you may want to cover the bonus spaces to increase your income." You don't get extra income just from covering bonus spaces. Bonus spaces are always considered covered for purposes of being able to cover income; however, if you don't have sufficient small tiles to route around them, you may want to cover them over and give them up for the rest of the game in order to get more income sooner. Page 11: - the "update and add new mountain strips" phase is explained a little bit weirdly. You always take exactly one item off each mountain strip; if that item is the 2 silver, the strip is discarded. The rules can make it seem like you should also discard a mountain strip if there are 2 silver left after you take the first thing off, but you don't. Only take one item off each mountain strip. Page 12: - in general it's recommended you lock in your tile placements at two points - just before you get income, and just before you get bonuses. In addition to freely placing and moving non-locked tiles to preview how the layout might look for you, when you lock in your tiles all at once you are considered to have placed them all at once. This is mostly to prevent circular dependency loops with some of the more concave special tiles. - if the bottom row of minuses is empty in the example that says it shows you how to cover negative space without covering the income diagonal, you have an early printing with a layout error. Page 16: - remember that those two spaces are considered "Overseas Trading". Several occupation cards mention "Overseas Trading" but there's no text printed on the board that calls out those spaces specifically. Page 17-18: - you can increase the die result with ore (when permitted) and by spending swords and stone to create a "battle result" of 6 or above (which will let you take a good) even if the die itself shows 5 or less. Page 18-19: - whenever you hunt, snare, or whale and the die result is reduced below zero (by occupations for hunting and snaring) you cannot choose to fail or keep rolling; you must succeed. Page 20: - the imitation spaces in the example are actually the first and fourth columns. You will always place Vikings on the stone-shaped spaces on the board. page 21: - you are allowed to play a yellow occupation for its point value only, aside from a few special cases where the card says "you must". In general, when you're playing Odin, let me repeat my earlier advice: You'll need to get positive points somehow, ideally through several somehows. Using "filling out your board" as kind of the baseline (through the bonus income you get at the end) here's some reference. - Two longships, or a full set of ships, is about one full board. - Animals could be one full board if you just let them ride, but ideally they should be used for other things, to get animal products or to upgrade directly. - Houses you fill up are worth half a full board for a shed or stone house, or a full one for a long house. - Emigrations are worth a full board. - If you can fill them, Labrador and Newfoundland are worth two full boards, Shetland and Faroe Island are mostly for getting the bonuses, and the other islands are a full board each (and good for significant income, too) Ultimately you're going to need about four-five "full boards" of positive points to get a good score, and six "full boards" will often win it for you but in most cases you have to do at least some work to fill those boards. If you ignore your main board in addition to actually filling up the negative space you have to get those points from somewhere. I've won a game with five immigrations and a long house when occupations favored that. Tonight, I filled my board, got one long house, two stone houses, a full set of ships, and Newfoundland. (and Faroe Island for the bonuses.) Glazius fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 05:38
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I will say this, I'm in the final operation phase of a 3 player, 4+ hour game of Indonesia and while the game is fine the board and design is garbage. I'll post a picture when I finish but shut the gently caress up about FCM because while it's ugly it's actually playable
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Jul 2, 2017 06:14
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Chill la Chill posted:I should probably get out of the BGG Facebook group. Linked from the BGG front page is a year-long, 93-page thread on "Can you shuffle one card". I clicked the last page wondering if it was just some in-joke run amok; but no, people are still arguing about it. I guess it's the same as any forum really, you'll have your good sub-places and your bad ones. In happier news I lost Voyages of Marco Polo by 1 point today (148-147-136 or so), thanks to that opponent (who I basically never beat at any Euro) having 2 resources left at the end and beating me to Beijing by 1 action, which is a 6 point swing. Such an interesting game, but I still have no idea how to formulate my plan at the start. I just have to start doing/getting stuff, looking for small synergies, and then see how I can make it fit. Also tried Steampunk Rally. Neat game, but I don't like the downtime/verifiability tradeoff. You're supposed to play simultaneously, if you don't it's slow but if you do who knows how many errors are made.
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Jul 2, 2017 06:15
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Chill la Chill posted:I should probably get out of the BGG Facebook group. Which group is this? It appears the official BGG page doesn't have such comedy.
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Jul 2, 2017 06:23
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Played Dungeon Lords for the second time. I went full evil--not intentionally, just happened to get the evil-producing monsters. I ended up fighting (and killing) both paladins, and losing seven dungeon tiles (THREE ROOMS), with one adventurer making it out alive each time. The player to my right somehow avoided all evil, built the dungeon equivalent of a rock garden, and murdered the weakest adventurers in the game with a golem. We tied for first. It's a pretty good game.
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Jul 2, 2017 06:46
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Krazyface posted:Played Dungeon Lords for the second time. I went full evil--not intentionally, just happened to get the evil-producing monsters. I ended up fighting (and killing) both paladins, and losing seven dungeon tiles (THREE ROOMS), with one adventurer making it out alive each time. The player to my right somehow avoided all evil, built the dungeon equivalent of a rock garden, and murdered the weakest adventurers in the game with a golem. We tied for first. It's a pretty good game. Full evil is best DL. The game hints that you're a pro player when you deliberately pull the paladin second letting someone else be smacked first and then taking over as their evil levels fall. I've not reached that level of evil greatness yet.
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Jul 2, 2017 06:52
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Bottom Liner posted:
Perhaps the splotter guys are just interested in making gams. They have a sustainable operation right now that allows them to do their hobby while presumably making some money. Why are they obligated to change that in any way?
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Jul 2, 2017 07:10
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rchandra posted:Linked from the BGG front page is a year-long, 93-page thread on "Can you shuffle one card". I clicked the last page wondering if it was just some in-joke run amok; but no, people are still arguing about it. How is that not a zen koan
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Jul 2, 2017 08:44
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Papes posted:Perhaps the splotter guys are just interested in making gams. They have a sustainable operation right now that allows them to do their hobby while presumably making some money. Why are they obligated to change that in any way? Bottom Liner is in no way saying that they are [b]obligated[/i] to change there methods. He's just saying that making some changes would let them 1) bring a higher production quality to their match the quality of game design while 2) lowering the MSRP to a price point that could bring their great games to more people. Obviously, they're welcome to do whatever they want, and changing production methods would require additional work that they may not want to take on. However, I would think higher quality products and more people playing your games would be a win for most designers, regardless of monetary goals. Actually doubly so if you don't care about profits! As a consumer, its a shame to see such great game design hampered by poor distribution and production values.
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Jul 2, 2017 09:57
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Papes posted:Perhaps the splotter guys are just interested in making gams. They have a sustainable operation right now that allows them to do their hobby while presumably making some money. Why are they obligated to change that in any way? And they enjoy their actual day jobs as well. I can't remember what Jerome does offhand, but Joris is managing director of a company that develops computer-assisted rehabilitation and exercise programs for the elderly.
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Jul 2, 2017 10:10
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Krazyface posted:Played Dungeon Lords for the second time. I went full evil--not intentionally, just happened to get the evil-producing monsters. I ended up fighting (and killing) both paladins, and losing seven dungeon tiles (THREE ROOMS), with one adventurer making it out alive each time. The player to my right somehow avoided all evil, built the dungeon equivalent of a rock garden, and murdered the weakest adventurers in the game with a golem. We tied for first. It's a pretty good game. DL is one of the best games ever made, imo.
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Jul 2, 2017 11:51
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This type of thing gets a lot easier to tolerate once you realize that poor taste is outrageously pervasive in all media-consumption hobbies. Movies, video games, television, people just love trash. Also, arguably more importantly, there is a subset of fans that are convinced that their lovely tastes are superior to everyone else's lovely tastes. Whether that describes the thread or any other source of board game intel is up for debate.
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Jul 2, 2017 13:30
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silvergoose posted:DL is one of the best games ever made, imo. It is my favorite game to note an interesting design decision, realize why it is that way, and then also read the amusing diegetic explanation. It's also got my favorite dummy player rules.
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Jul 2, 2017 14:48
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Mister Sinewave posted:Instead of Splotter joining the borg, existing board game makers with established publisher links, etc could just start making Splotter-level games instead Yeah, instead of selling $60 games with nice components and production values and making it easy to buy their games, all the other publiahers should start selling $100 games with print and play level production values and make it hard to find and buy them. Why is Warner Bros obligated to release playable video games? They have plenty of customers buying their lovely unplayable buggy slideshows. I'll never understand how "but they are still in business" is considered a defence against any and all criticism. None of you making that argument would be making it in defense of Tanto Cuore.
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Jul 2, 2017 14:50
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Papes posted:Perhaps the splotter guys are just interested in making gams. They have a sustainable operation right now that allows them to do their hobby while presumably making some money. Why are they obligated to change that in any way? Exactly. Just accept them as they are and be grateful for what they do. Clearly they don't want 'happier customers' or to make their games better/cheaper/whatever. They just want to design some games, put them out there, and keep it moving. I'm very fortunate that I have the budget to be able to afford their games.
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Jul 2, 2017 14:51
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, instead of selling $60 games with nice components and production values and making it easy to buy their games, all the other publiahers should start selling $100 games with print and play level production values and make it hard to find and buy them. How about that Warner Brothers is in business to make as much money as possible? How about that profit is all Warner Brothers cares about? How about that Warner Brothers is a publicly traded company? If you can't tell the difference between Warner Brothers and Splotter you are really really stupid. Most companies including board game publishers are in business to make as much profit as they can. Splotter is not. Get over it.
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Jul 2, 2017 14:56
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I'd rather pay a higher price to some cats who enjoy making games and aren't a huge corporation  I know, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism yadda yaddaBesides, Splotter doesn't need to churn out games. I have only met a handful of people IRL that even know about FCM, and none of them had even played it, just a passing knowledge of it. Even one of the co-owners of my old FLGS hasn't played it.
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Jul 2, 2017 15:54
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At the end of the day, it's not worth it. The hobby isn't big enough to sustain them without taking a big hit in their income. The changes people clamor for aren't cheap and take time away from their 'real' money. The games they make are niche and appeal to a niche set of people. In video games you can do this, you can be a one man show or whatever and be niche and still make a lot of money. Board games simply aren't there yet. Lorini after she's woke up and not starving.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:13
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Does anyone have thoughts on Trickerion? I like the theme and there's a cheapish copy around.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:25
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, instead of selling $60 games with nice components and production values and making it easy to buy their games, all the other publiahers should start selling $100 games with print and play level production values and make it hard to find and buy them. Please do not tempt Rutibex on this, the Hitler page. Thank you and g-d bless.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:50
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Lorini posted:At the end of the day, it's not worth it. The hobby isn't big enough to sustain them without taking a big hit in their income. The changes people clamor for aren't cheap and take time away from their 'real' money. The games they make are niche and appeal to a niche set of people. In video games you can do this, you can be a one man show or whatever and be niche and still make a lot of money. Board games simply aren't there yet. Every metric we have to gauge your claims proves otherwise. Their games sell out, have high demand for reprints consistently, and their production values are objectively lacking. I don't get why you're the one arguing all they should care about is keeping their profits up when that had nothing to do with my suggestions and you claimed that's what I was suggesting. You haven't raised a single point against my suggestions other than, "deal with it". Board games being a niche compared to video games changes nothing about the issue at hand, their method of production and distribution is still much worse for consumers and most likely for them as well, compared to licensing their games out to a company to handle that stuff or at least partnering with a publisher for distribution. Lorini posted:How about that Warner Brothers is in business to make as much money as possible? How about that profit is all Warner Brothers cares about? How about that Warner Brothers is a publicly traded company? If you can't tell the difference between Warner Brothers and Splotter you are really really stupid. Never mind. This post is mind numbingly stupid. You completely missed his point as well.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:58
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What are the best scoreboard Apps for iOS. Loopings to Track wins and scores for multiple games and Players.
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Jul 2, 2017 17:50
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