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Blacknose posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for extremely portable casual games that play well with 2 players? My partner and me are going on holiday to a different continent and would like some stuff to keep us busy, but she isn't much of a gamer. Qwirkle
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Sep 4, 2017 09:12
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Blacknose posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for extremely portable casual games that play well with 2 players? My partner and me are going on holiday to a different continent and would like some stuff to keep us busy, but she isn't much of a gamer. Codenames Duet, maybe. If she can handle something a bit more serious I think Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (the recent small FFG edition) is phenomenal for replayability if you can find it - it's great to figure out the nuances with two players, especially with all the included variants. It's very simple and was a Knizier design. Attractiveness might vary depending on if she is in to LOTR or not. Jaipur is another one you could look into.
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Sep 4, 2017 09:27
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I really like Patchwork and it's pretty easy to teach to non-gamers, very portable as well.
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Sep 4, 2017 09:52
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Baller Ina posted:doublepost but Heroscape is awesome; it's a fun minis game where the rules are nice and easy to learn, apart from terrain rules which still aren't too complicated and don't come up often anyway Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers is extremely similar to Heroscape and is in print. It uses less terrain as well, so is less bulky.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:07
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Jaipur, Patchwork, and Dutch Blitz are all perfect travel games for two. They'll all fit in the Patchwork box as well.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:28
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Burgle Bros. and The Fugitive as good light travel games. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has a solid box but the game itself is just a few booklets and a map.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:33
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I played Spirit Island a few times solo just to get the rules down for teaching it to others. The game is really fun and really hard. I don't see how anyone could quarterback in this game because just keeping track of one spirit on an extremely small board was tough. I played a couple of times using different spirits and they play so much differently from each other I'm excited to play with a group to see how they can interact. There's also a ton of ways to customize each game differently in terms of difficulty by adding or subtracting whole mechanics, or giving the AI colonizers a country of origin that gives them buffs or new mechanics. This is my new go to co-op and I'd imagine that'll be the case for my friends too.
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Sep 4, 2017 12:40
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Looking back into my games of Time of Crisis I don't think me and this game are going to get along. We had several times in the game where someone won just because they rolled several 6s in a row, which is statistically unlikely but not impossible. The issue with the combat system is that there aren't that many ways to get around it, and in the end it just becomes a numbers game. The biggest issue I have is that you expend resources and then see the results, and wasting resources because you rolled poorly is not a pleasant feeling, especially since the game is so momentum based and since even a few points can potentially make the difference between victory and defeat. Most of my games ended up in relative parity in terms of points and it thus did feel that if one roll or another had gone a different way, it would have absolutely made the difference. I like most of the package, but the combat really puts me off, and I think the combat system is worse than even Virgin Queen and Here I Stand, where the combat system is almost excusable. In ToC, I don't think it is.
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Sep 4, 2017 13:15
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Just saw this on BGG: https://nonstoptabletop.com/blog/2017/8/20/does-story-matter-in-board-games I can't wait until I see posts from people trying to say that rolling some dice really make you feel like you're running away from a more thematic Cthulhu than Arkwright or 1830 actually making you feel like you're a pencil-pusher.
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Sep 4, 2017 13:17
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Tekopo posted:Looking back into my games of Time of Crisis I don't think me and this game are going to get along. Yeah, it's my love-hate with it too but I have exact deterministic combat games with no dice involved. I'm actually getting Imperial 2030 in a few days to add to that stack. But, as much as the dice can explode really well, the EV going towards 4.2 is a pretty decent decision to include it. So it's a nice number between the Barbarians and Citizens. It allows for surprise 1-2 blue (or red Praetorian) takeovers, real threatening barbarians that you'd want to buy off with Foederati, and surprising last stands from entrenched citizens. I think that, for a game about random poo poo happening in a short amount of time, it's appropriate. I think I've made peace with the game being more like GOG over NT. Frustrating, but appropriate.
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Sep 4, 2017 13:25
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Bottom Liner posted:Jaipur, Patchwork, and Dutch Blitz are all perfect travel games for two. They'll all fit in the Patchwork box as well. Patchwork eats a lot of table space though. The rest are much more portable. I'm having a lot of fun with dale of merchants. It's just a bunch of cards and a dice if you remove the not necessary market mat.
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Sep 4, 2017 13:39
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Chill la Chill posted:Just saw this on BGG:
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Sep 4, 2017 13:47
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Tekopo posted:Looking back into my games of Time of Crisis I don't think me and this game are going to get along. I think for me it'll sit nicely in the collection as a 'advanced Risk' along with Risk Europe. It's definitely got a big old chunk of dice fuckery potential... but it's short (for historical grand strategy anyway) and has a cool theme :P
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Sep 4, 2017 14:01
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Tekopo posted:I commented on that post after you linked it. I don't think the article is wrong, actually. It feels like "baby's first step into understanding conveyance". I do think that both theme and mechanisms are important in a game, and the article is right in that TS would not be anywhere as good if it wasn't intertwined with its cold-era politics. I feel that some of the examples they used in the article I don't think are valid, but quibbling over that is pointless (and even in the comments, the writer says that Pandemic can be easily converted into a host of different themes). So overall, I kind of like the article, although it's not really anything that hasn't been discussed in this thread years ago. Yeah. I do think actual theme, so conveyance, is important, and is why I like immersive games like ADP, NT, or Arkwright. Also what's the name of that asteroid mining 18xx game?
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Sep 4, 2017 14:06
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Chill la Chill posted:Yeah. I do think actual theme, so conveyance, is important, and is why I like immersive games like ADP, NT, or Arkwright. Also what's the name of that asteroid mining 18xx game?
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Sep 4, 2017 14:13
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Chill la Chill posted:Yeah. I do think actual theme, so conveyance, is important, and is why I like immersive games like ADP, NT, or Arkwright. Also what's the name of that asteroid mining 18xx game? Yeah I feel like that post is someone barely understanding a significant trend which is the ongoing effort to integrate highly thematic games with sharp, streamlined mechanics that has given us fairly out of the box stuff like Gloomhaven, Cuba Libre etc.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:22
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Tekopo posted:We had several times in the game where someone won just because they rolled several 6s in a row, which is statistically unlikely but not impossible. The issue with the combat system is that there aren't that many ways to get around it, and in the end it just becomes a numbers game. Why not try playing with a house rule of "no exploding sixes"? Seems like that would eliminate the extremely random moments without entirely removing the uncertainty of combat (and voting).
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Sep 4, 2017 14:28
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Yeah I feel like that post is someone barely understanding a significant trend which is the ongoing effort to integrate highly thematic games with sharp, streamlined mechanics that has given us fairly out of the box stuff like Gloomhaven, Cuba Libre etc. The word theme has been tainted to mean zombies and Cthulhu that if your game was about farming and had mechanics up to and including you picking up a scythe and reaping, it wouldn't be considered thematic at all.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:31
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Chill la Chill posted:The word theme has been tainted to mean zombies and Cthulhu that if your game was about farming and had mechanics up to and including you picking up a scythe and reaping, it wouldn't be considered thematic at all.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:35
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Blacknose posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for extremely portable casual games that play well with 2 players? My partner and me are going on holiday to a different continent and would like some stuff to keep us busy, but she isn't much of a gamer. Hive is our go-to travel game. It's not too complicated, travels well and it's heavy tiles with no board so you can play on a hotel bed or a beach or whatever. Just pull it out of your carry on and send it through airport security separately because the tiles are ceramic.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:40
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I've played a few 4 player games of Time of Crisis as well, and pretty much everybody has hated the dice rolling combat. I'm not much of a math guy, but would it make any sense to replace the dice with a number of "hit or no-hit" cards? I'm thinking that you could build a deck of 2 hits and 1 miss per legion, 1 hit and 2 misses per wounded legion or militia and so on. Then you shuffle them together and draw as many cards as you have units. I don't know if it would actually change anything, but I think some of the guys I play with would like it since it could "feel" less random.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:21
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You guys are really helpful, thanks for all the recommendations.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:22
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Tekopo posted:Yeah basically that is my main problem with how people use the word theme, and something I touched on in my reply to that article. Like the first example in that article: he rails against a possible game about mining asteroid, and then says that it could be changed to an array of other themes, but that is kind of a strawman, since his pitch doesn't really show how the game play, and it could potentially have mechanisms that are intrinsically linked with asteroid mining, but we'll never know if that's the case or not based on his simple elevator pitch. Yeah he doesn't actually understand what is happening. He can vaguely see it but he doesn't seem to get it. It's a big thing though and I think going forward games without a tight integration between theme and mechanics are dead. (The continued success of A feast for Odin maybe argues I am wrong?)
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Sep 4, 2017 15:43
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What stuck out for me in that post is that the first line is incorrect - John Carmack said that. Shameful.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:44
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:There's a new D&D Deck-building game coming out. Looks legacy-ish, with character sheets that have sticker spaces. What's the Crossfire system and why is it bad? GrandpaPants posted:I played this. Never played the Shadowrun game but the D&D one was kinda poo poo. It just felt so very boring to play, and a loving market row meant that important cards (heals and cards that drew aggro) could simply never show up and that's cool design. Is there a deckbuilder that doesn't use some form of market row?
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Sep 4, 2017 16:20
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kinkouin posted:What's the Crossfire system and why is it bad?
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Sep 4, 2017 16:23
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I just realized that apparently there's an "old" Dominion basic set (with like the thief card etc) and a new basic set with different cards. I know the consensus is that it isn't worth sleeving Dominion because the sleeves cost more than new cards, hut is it worth sleeving an "old" basic set ?
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Sep 4, 2017 16:25
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2nd edition only changes a few cards and you can buy the cheap upgrade pack to make yours current, so yes it's worth it. Sleeves make the game much better all around. Using penny sleeves makes it very cheap as well.
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 16:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I just realized that apparently there's an "old" Dominion basic set (with like the thief card etc) and a new basic set with different cards. I know the consensus is that it isn't worth sleeving Dominion because the sleeves cost more than new cards, hut is it worth sleeving an "old" basic set ? The cards that you're losing are kind of really bad, so unless you're a major completionist, I wouldn't worry about it.
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Sep 4, 2017 16:30
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Here's what Eklund actually says about colonialism in Afghanistan: "Afghanistan’s legacy as a plaything of superpowers has left it as one of the world’s worst places to live. Female literacy is just 17%. Ranked 174 out of 176 on the corruption index. Ongoing civil wars since the Soviets pulled out in 1978. These Soviet-US hot wars of the Cold War Era were accompanied by just as much destruction for little gain as in the “Great Game” period." His other points are mostly inane or very weak: he touts British law as being inherently superior to local legal systems, praises the British for abolishing slavery , and mentions the superior manufactured goods available to colonized people. British law in the colonies was hardly known for fairness to the colonized; many historians argue that British abolition was mostly a cynical effort to destabilize the American and French Caribbean slave economies; and the idea that access to nicer tea kettles somehow makes up for loss of autonomy and subjection to brutal rule is not a strong argument. And as others have said he misses the key point that no culture in world history has ever wished that a bunch of heavily armed foreigners would show up and start bossing them around and taking their stuff. BUT at least he seems to get the fact that colonial adventure didn't have any benefit for Afghanistan in particular. Also, I think the actual gameplay works strongly against Eklund's point, especially in Pax Pamir. As others have said, Pamir is entirely about convenience and strategy - you're propping up local people so you can build a stronger hold on the region and frustrate your enemies, not for their own good. You build road to tax and move armies. At least in the games I've played players routinely butcher enemy tribes to deny to prevent the opponent from exploiting them economically. In Pax Renaissance you're shoving armies all around Europe in order to gently caress with other bankers, and possibly starting religious wars or assassinating kings just to affect trade routes. And Pax Porfiriana is one long dark night of corruption, thuggery and spiteful violence. I suppose a lot of it is in the interpretation, but I've never played any of the Pax games and thought "wow, the player characters are so cool and are doing so much good!"
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Sep 4, 2017 16:46
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:It's a big thing though and I think going forward games without a tight integration between theme and mechanics are dead. (The continued success of A feast for Odin maybe argues I am wrong?) I'm not clear on what Theme means in your example; I'd describe theme as... if it were an essay I'd say it's the Thesis Statement, ie what it's about. Feast for Odin is about viking clan governance and development but also (and mostly) it's about balanced and sustainable growth & the mechanics certainly do follow that. If a Viking theme should be about setting poo poo on fire and stabbing fuckers in the face then yeah, FFO isn't that 
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Sep 4, 2017 17:04
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Bottom Liner posted:2nd edition only changes a few cards and you can buy the cheap upgrade pack to make yours current, so yes it's worth it. Sleeves make the game much better all around. Using penny sleeves makes it very cheap as well. But if I sleeve it will it fit into the packaged organizer? 
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Sep 4, 2017 17:04
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Mister Sinewave posted:I'm not clear on what Theme means in your example; I'd describe theme as... if it were an essay I'd say it's the Thesis Statement, ie what it's about. Feast for Odin is about viking clan governance and development but also (and mostly) it's about balanced and sustainable growth & the mechanics certainly do follow that. Yeah - Uwe is quite upfront in his supporting materials that the history he builds his game from is history, not Viking romance (my term, not his). That's why those motherfuckers love beans so much. That Uwe is also obsessed with beans is entirely a coincidence.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:06
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Electric Hobo posted:I've played a few 4 player games of Time of Crisis as well, and pretty much everybody has hated the dice rolling combat. I'm not much of a math guy, but would it make any sense to replace the dice with a number of "hit or no-hit" cards? I'm thinking that you could build a deck of 2 hits and 1 miss per legion, 1 hit and 2 misses per wounded legion or militia and so on. Then you shuffle them together and draw as many cards as you have units. You would also need to do something about rolling dice for politics. You would also be modifying this deck constantly as the state of the board changes and you would through off the numbers if you bolstered your legion in an area where you're not fighting in. I think the only alternative is some kind of limited deck like Kemet or Polis but then you lose the opportunity for amazing last stands where one guy 300s an entire army. The dice are just too integrated into its design for an alternative. Maybe 2d6 and you move the exploding to 12. But ultimately it is a trashy wargame that encourages you to be bold and I still feel resource management and knowing when to push the momentum are more important. There are certainly Twilight Struggle games I feel like come down to a dice roll but I still enjoy the game in spite of its flaws. But I will file it away in my "steal this design" cabinet except Japanese Muromachi period with hanafuda cards.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:51
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CommonShore posted:But if I sleeve it will it fit into the packaged organizer? Burn that thing and never look back. Has anyone else played solo Terraforming Mars? I did last night and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's either way better or way worse than the regular game and I can't decide. Maybe I'll effort post about it if I can make up my mind.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:11
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The day with my cousin went well. She watched some Power Grid tournament play and then we played Dominion and Castle of Burgundy. She liked Dominion but really liked Burgundy. After watching Power Grid she wanted to play a game with money in it but I couldn't think of any for two players. We hope to get together soon at the Game Haus game cafe in Glendale, CA.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:12
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Lorini posted:After watching Power Grid she wanted to play a game with money in it but I couldn't think of any for two players. The most low-key game of Panic on Wall Street ever
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Sep 4, 2017 18:14
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al-azad posted:But I will file it away in my "steal this design" cabinet except Japanese Muromachi period with hanafuda cards. Mahjong is fun, though.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:16
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Big McHuge posted:My friend had what turns out to be a pretty large collection of Heroscape: That's a nice collection. He has the flagbearer bags, but I see no flagbearers. Those are worth selling separate if you can find them. edit: Looking at your friend's collection makes me sad  . He had good taste and seemed to be a trooper until his last.
djfooboo fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 18:21
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Played Happy Salmon yesterday and it really captures that intense feel of a busy bazaar/market in a way that millennium blades does not. Does there exist a game with a real-time component of finding people to buy-sell your wares or stocks and then a procedural component afterwards? I'm thinking space Alert but for the stock market.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:21
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