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someone post that sonic ethical consumption picture
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May 23, 2018 22:11
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May 23, 2018 22:19
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I'm not agreeing with Eklund by any means, because the British Empire sucked, but he specifically points out that Afghanistan was a buffer zone between two empires and didn't get what he considers to be the benefits colonialism because of that. People seem to misrepresent his argument pretty frequently in these discussions.quote:Which of these advantages did Afghanistan enjoy? None, because it was a buffer zone, not a colony. A buffer zone is a rugged piece of territory between superpowers, such as (in Europe) Andorra, Switzerland, Karaman, and Finland. Both superpowers gain a mutual stabilizing advantage in maintaining a buffer zone with a bit of independence and neutrality.
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May 23, 2018 22:36
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Eklund is boardgaming's libertarian equivalent of Slavoj Žižek.
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May 23, 2018 22:44
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The best Eklund rant is the one right after Wehrle’s reasonable essay in John company.
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May 23, 2018 22:46
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golden bubble posted:His rulebooks are full of hot takes, and he manages to write that out even as his own game contradicts it. For example, Pax Porfiriana has a wonderful essay about more unfettered free markets would have made Mexico great again, even though the game is a great display of the destructive powers of wealthy politically active Mexican capitalists. Pax Pamir has an essay about how the British empire was great, since it brought infrastructure and civilization to the world. But the game Pax Pamir will see players tear down their own railroads in spite the moment infrastructure becomes too useful for the player in the lead. John Company has him talk up the English courts of a beacon of progress and a proper company would only use persuasion, while the game has you use your promises and votes in parliament to screw over other players and set up a fiefdom within the company apparatus. Jejoma posted:It's too bad that Phil "Captain Capitalism" Eklund got ruined by a bad business deal, but boy do I hope if Wehrle does his own deluxe version it includes a little gavel like he wanted to throw in originally - https://boardgamegeek.com/article/28981912#28981912. Hah, the first thing I did was throw in a wooden crab mallet as a gavel, working on making a dice tray/sound box.
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May 23, 2018 22:52
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Fat Turkey posted:Unmentioned in all this is what difficulty you play on. And, out of interest, what difficulty DO you guys play on. My experience was generally the default although the last couple of games I did Volkare at mid level and the Conquest games at 10 and 12. I was mostly playing on the easiest and Norowas was the only guy I lost with, crushed it with everyone else. (Krang ended up level 10 and managed to kill a dragon and clear a ruin the same turn he wiped out most of Volkare's army with ranged). Trying it on hard now since it was pretty easy going before
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May 24, 2018 00:21
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jmzero posted:Tried Werewords today. Seems solid. Their word list seems really good so far, and the "word level" selection gives you an easy way to balance the game for your group. If you want yet another team word game that isn't apparently stolen from Oink, I got to give Decrypto a try on Sunday. Each team has four words that never change. One player on each team draws a code card showing numbers referring to three of the words, then devises a clue relating to each one in order. Once both teams are done the white team reads out their clues, the black team get a chance to guess what the white code is, then the white team make their own guess. Then you do the same thing with the teams reversed. If one team guesses the other team's code they get a success, if a team fails to guess its own code they get a fail. If your team gets two successes you win, two fails you lose. It was a pretty neat game. You have to try to give clues that don't cumulatively make a word obvious - for instance, if you had "Desert" as a word you wouldn't want to say "Sand" and "Dune" - but at the same time you have to make them reasonably obvious because you don't want your team to fail.
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May 24, 2018 00:22
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golden bubble posted:His rulebooks are full of hot takes, and he manages to write that out even as his own game contradicts it. For example, Pax Porfiriana has a wonderful essay about more unfettered free markets would have made Mexico great again, even though the game is a great display of the destructive powers of wealthy politically active Mexican capitalists. Pax Pamir has an essay about how the British empire was great, since it brought infrastructure and civilization to the world. But the game Pax Pamir will see players tear down their own railroads in spite the moment infrastructure becomes too useful for the player in the lead. Now I'm wondering about Greenland and Neanderthal.
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May 24, 2018 01:03
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I'm really not looking forward to the commentary in his upcoming board game about slavery.
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May 24, 2018 01:06
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Chill la Chill posted:The best Eklund rant is the one right after Wehrle’s reasonable essay in John company. I like the one where Eklund makes a paragraph about how the EIC was bringing enlightened libertarianism to a chaotic india and then Wehrle basically refutes it in the next paragraph.
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May 24, 2018 01:14
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Jejoma posted:I'm really not looking forward to the commentary in his upcoming board game about slavery. Foreword by Kanye
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May 24, 2018 01:22
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Panzeh posted:I like the one where Eklund makes a paragraph about how the EIC was bringing enlightened libertarianism to a chaotic india and then Wehrle basically refutes it in the next paragraph. Are you sure that's the John Company rulebook? His bit there is about how the EIC wasn't ~real capitalism~ because it violated the NAP or something
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May 24, 2018 01:41
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Quixotic1 posted:Now I'm wondering about Greenland and Neanderthal. Well enjoy the living rules for Neanderthal and wonder no more.
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May 24, 2018 02:20
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homullus posted:Well enjoy the living rules for Neanderthal and wonder no more. I can't wait to flip my Sexuality Card and release my MPI disks.
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May 24, 2018 03:01
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Anyone know about board gaming in Oslo? I'm going to be there a couple weeks. I see there's a gaming night on Meetup, but the timing on that looks like a problem.
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May 24, 2018 03:56
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Volko Ruhnke should be getting some of the political hate too, as he is a neocon warmonger.
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May 24, 2018 06:46
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his historical references aren't awful but iirc there was kind of a dustup because the fitl playbook weaseled down the casualty count on the my lai event explanation
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May 24, 2018 07:02
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At least Vlaada is shedding a light on capitalism's uncaring attitude towards the fate truckers in delivering their wares.
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May 24, 2018 07:38
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al-azad posted:I don't mind supporting Eklund because while he has dumb opinions they exist outside of the game itself and the actual design disproves his thesis. It would be different if he was like "no, colonialism was good!" and the game ends up being as milquetoast as Mombasa. I am pretty angry about how unions and strikes are the same as theft, personally.
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May 24, 2018 07:58
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Looked up a few of those and they're  indeed.To clarify: are the actual games fine and mechanically good if you ignore the more  bits in the flavor/explanation text of the manual?
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May 24, 2018 08:13
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Pierzak posted:Looked up a few of those and they're Tough question. The games are unlike almost anything on the market. They generate great experiences. But mechanically sound? * The rules are dense, complex and strangely written. There are lots of edge cases. So it will take a while for you to play the games "correctly" * Thus there's constant rule tweaks and clarifications * The games are generally not imbalanced or luck driven but brutal. Someone can get together a combo that will just drive you into the ground. * As an exception to this, some of the games - Neanderthal, Greenland - have a huge amount of dice throwing, so that they're almost about playing odds and risk mitigation. Once again, brutal. * Some of the designs do feature "self balancing": there's an obviously powerful thing that the players are supposed to recognise and team up against or make sure no one gets away with. (The Vikings in Greenland, the Zubrin in High Frontier). I don't think much of this approach because it assumes everyone recognises the value of something and can respond to it and will respond while possibly harming their own position. I've cut back my Eklund collection to those games that are stable, balanced and that i can easily remember the rules and teach: Pax Porfiriana, High Frontier, Origins. I sold on Greenland etc. because they're just too hard, brutal, unforgiving, demand too much of a game that I'll only play twice a year, and there's new editions that tweak and fix the game.
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May 24, 2018 08:44
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discount cathouse posted:Volko Ruhnke should be getting some of the political hate too, as he is a neocon warmonger. He is a CIA spook, so I'm not sure how he could be anything but :P
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May 24, 2018 09:55
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Eklund games to me are the ideal "experience generators." They're like old Avalon Hill Saturday afternoon games condensed in 2-3 hours. They are largely well designed and mechanically interesting but often a bear to play and teach. The Pax games are most like traditional games and I can recommend all of them. High Frontier is impossible to get a hold of but wholly unique and I would argue his best designed game once you get over the hurdle of learning its systems. Bios: Genesis is filled with bullshit jargon that makes it impossible to learn and I hope Megafauna is easier. Haven't played Neanderthal or other game. Fat Samurai posted:I am pretty angry about how unions and strikes are the same as theft, personally. Get angry at capitalists because from their perspective labor unions and government regulations are the exact same, a theft of private assets.
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May 24, 2018 10:07
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High Frontier's the best designed? Aren't there gas clouds that explode your ship if you roll a 1?
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May 24, 2018 10:13
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al-azad posted:Get angry at capitalists because from their perspective labor unions and government regulations are the exact same, a theft of private assets. I can get angry at both 
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May 24, 2018 10:18
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Mr. Squishy posted:High Frontier's the best designed? Aren't there gas clouds that explode your ship if you roll a 1? High Frontier, as is thematic with space exploration, is about risk management. There's usually a long and safe way to land on an object and a dangerous shortcut where you try to land on an obstacle hurtling through space at 366 miles per second or use a parachute on a planet with a thin atmosphere which is a totally bad idea. So you either accept a 1/6 chance of blowing up or you can pay some money to avoid it entirely, explained as a hotshot programmer uploading corrective algorithms to your flight unit.
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May 24, 2018 10:36
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I was a bit misinformed since I thought high frontier was kerbal space program in board game form. Is there something like that? My aero engineer friend was asking and he was using “children of a dead earth” as a reference point which afaik is a simulator. There’s also the upcoming stellar horizons game which is a build your own space program but there’s almost nothing about it and the publisher is a grognard wargame company.
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May 24, 2018 12:46
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Chill la Chill posted:I was a bit misinformed since I thought high frontier was kerbal space program in board game form. Is there something like that? My aero engineer friend was asking and he was using “children of a dead earth” as a reference point which afaik is a simulator. What does he expect from Kerbal? High Frontier is gold rush in outer space. You race to make claims on distant planets, set up factories, and produce goods while hampering your opponents. The movement rules are hard science and building the right ship is half the game. You're not managing a space program, you're managing space capitalism. Leaving Earth is the 60s space race. You're building ships to go on missions like landing on the moon and collecting samples. Much lighter than High Frontier but not really a competitive game in the traditional sense and also not very Kerbal because everything operates as it should but there are chances for glitches and problems. Attack Vector is hard science combat simulator. Newtonian physics, vector movement as God and Heinlein intended, and relative velocity calculations.
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May 24, 2018 12:55
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Thank you. He was after the hard science and calculations portion of simulation. Attack vector sounds exactly like children of a dead earth. Really a shame that stellar horizons has barely any info since that might fit the bill and is $100 preorder vs $150 retail (whatever that means, it’s compass games lol).
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May 24, 2018 13:12
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Someone talk me out of buying Sword & Sorcery. The best my conscience came up with was "why the gently caress do you need another dungeon crawler when you still haven't played or painted half of the ones you own" and it's not working.
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May 24, 2018 13:38
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Pierzak posted:Someone talk me out of buying Sword & Sorcery. The best my conscience came up with was "why the gently caress do you need another dungeon crawler when you still haven't played or painted half of the ones you own" and it's not working. You’ll be stuck on level 2 of your implied Gloomhaven game forever.
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May 24, 2018 13:46
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Hey anyone got words on Feudum, the art style is drawing me in hard. It seems to be getting good reviews but I'm not sure how much is kickstarter hype. I realize it's fairly weighty but does it do a good job of introducing you your possible moves and how to evaluate them? Another big question is, it says 2-5, wheres the sweet spot here? Is 5 players going to be a slogfest? or does it play quickly enough to not be a problem?
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May 24, 2018 13:49
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Cerepol posted:Hey anyone got words on Feudum, the art style is drawing me in hard. It seems to be getting good reviews but I'm not sure how much is kickstarter hype. I realize it's fairly weighty but does it do a good job of introducing you your possible moves and how to evaluate them? Another big question is, it says 2-5, wheres the sweet spot here? Is 5 players going to be a slogfest? or does it play quickly enough to not be a problem? I'm told it's a lot like King Chocolate. 
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May 24, 2018 13:54
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Cerepol posted:Hey anyone got words on Feudum, the art style is drawing me in hard. It seems to be getting good reviews but I'm not sure how much is kickstarter hype. I realize it's fairly weighty but does it do a good job of introducing you your possible moves and how to evaluate them? Another big question is, it says 2-5, wheres the sweet spot here? Is 5 players going to be a slogfest? or does it play quickly enough to not be a problem? Feudum does not play fast at any player count. It’s a super heavy euro point salad, and the pretty arts hampers the readability of the map. Shuffling cubes between the various guilds is entertaining, but I’d prefer if that were its own guild phase rather than a single guild action card that could be used in eighteen different ways. You could probably cut out a third of this game and it’d be twice as fun.
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May 24, 2018 14:23
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Chill la Chill posted:Thank you. He was after the hard science and calculations portion of simulation. Attack vector sounds exactly like children of a dead earth. Really a shame that stellar horizons has barely any info since that might fit the bill and is $100 preorder vs $150 retail (whatever that means, it’s compass games lol). I've played Children (good game btw) so I'll elaborate a bit more. Children is a real-time-with-pause strategy game and when you bump into an enemy you go into a tactical battle scenario. Attack Vector, and by extension Squadron Strike, are purely tactical skirmish games with hard scifi. Attack Vector is harder but Squadron Strike (which I recommend over Attack Vector) uses a modular system to simulate your hardness from Star Wars "WW2 in space" to Newtonian physics. Attack Vector is a defined universe while Squadron Strike lets you import and customize whatever you want so you can realistically have the Enterprise fighting a Star Destroyer. Both games have a pretty complex systems of vector movement and a rather ingenious use of blocks to simulate 3D position on a flat map. High Frontier is like the back end of Kerbal and Children. You're already established in space, now you're trying to set up industry. High Frontier has a combat model and is also modular so you can downplay the more industrial elements you don't care for. I'd tell your friend it's like combining Children with Sins of a Solar Empire which he has probably played. Still, it's a purely strategic game and combat is as simple as coming up on an enemy or their claims and rolling dice but the movement is hard sci-fi and half the difficulty of the game. He might also be interested in Triplanetary which Steve Jackson said should be available by Origins next month. It's a game played on a dry erase map and uses vector movement but it's simplified because you chart coordinates by drawing them. Gravity will modify your points so passing by a planet adjusts your course, and since velocity is an issue the only way to stop is by moving in the opposite direction which leads to hilarious scenarios where you overshoot your target at a million miles an hour.
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May 24, 2018 14:29
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I've played a game with the Triplanetary system. It's workable.
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May 24, 2018 14:42
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Cerepol posted:Hey anyone got words on Feudum, the art style is drawing me in hard. It seems to be getting good reviews but I'm not sure how much is kickstarter hype. I realize it's fairly weighty but does it do a good job of introducing you your possible moves and how to evaluate them? Another big question is, it says 2-5, wheres the sweet spot here? Is 5 players going to be a slogfest? or does it play quickly enough to not be a problem? Many people have said its the hardest game to learn and teach that they've ever played. Read the rule book online and get an idea if it's too much for you. Teaching others is literally a 45+ minute exercise.
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May 24, 2018 14:52
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Sort of along the same lines: I opened up and got ready to play Wildcatters the other night but by the time I finished setting it up and grinding my way through the first couple pages of the rule book an hour and half went by and it was getting late in the evening. Maybe I was still hungover from the long weekend but it was very disheartening that certain things just didn't seem very clear and god knows me floundering as the GF stared at her phone wasn't the greatest experience. I think I'll just watch the Heavy Cardboard run through. Also, it drives me crazy when games don't scale with player count except by just quietly making you use dummy players. I get that the game maybe doesn't work at less than 4 or whatever, but it I hate managing two companies because there is no better option as the game is designed. Still look forward to getting a full game in though. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:16 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 15:00
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discount cathouse posted:Volko Ruhnke should be getting some of the political hate too, as he is a neocon warmonger. So is Mark Herman. And Labyrinth is neocon fantasy. Without denying or excusing any of that, the COIN games are remarkably progressive inside the world of wargaming, where the mere existence of civilians is rarely even acknowledged. In the BGG discussion about that My Lai card description, Mark and Volko said that some playtesters were upset they mentioned the massacre at all! Volko mostly flies under the radar because of his calm, reasonable public manner, unlike Eklund's spittle-flecked ranting persona.
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May 24, 2018 15:44
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