Mojo Jojo posted:

How dare you not be able to read my mind to know what game I was talking about

(Yes)

al-azad posted:

You can play it on Steam if you want to try it out without dropping an obscene amount of money on it like I did recently. I missed the Kickstarter last month but apparently it's just them offloading unsold stock under the guise of player mats.

It's a primarily 2 player card game although expansions add more to that. You have a deck of 24 cards with various military and political actions to destroy your opponents fief which starts as just a palace. Fiefs can be extended with castles and lands that garrison troops used to attack opponents. Any card can be played face down as a tower to defend your fief. There's a built in timer that begins to summon vikings and you can influence them to join your side.

It's a fairly straightforward game with a limited card pool but the game encourages you to construct your own deck and all the cards interact well with each other. Like you need lands to garrison soldiers but mercenaries can also garrison soldiers. However soldiers are immune to politics whereas mercenaries can be removed or stolen. There's zero text on the cards and the meat of the game is getting into the deck building meta so I can't imagine it's an easy game to get people into.

StashAugustine posted:

while trying to wrap my head around what im gonna be doing in 18usa, it occurs to me it's a shame the game is purely financial and doesn't get into the political scrapes of the period

CaptainRightful posted:

I looked up 1848 to see if it included any political aspect... and it's set in Australia.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

There were literally zero steam railways in Australia in 1848.

CaptainRightful posted:

Presumably some Australian designer wanted to make an 18XX game and just picked the first unused year they could find?

A game about trying to run rail systems throughout Europe in the midst of widespread revolution could be really interesting.

Mr. Squishy posted:

18USA specifically has a very goofy theme, even besides its randomized metropolii. The game starts with a America with modern-day boarders and population zones, but the Baltimore and Ohio railway predates the Mexican Cession by 19 years. In history, railways were the engine of America's westward expansion, in the game they are cavorting around an already-settled land. 18USA is not really trying to say anything about the impact railway had in America, but instead is just feeding content to 1817's stock market system.
There are 18XXs that tell a historical story, instead a fable of economic development (ie bigger companies running faster trains to richer cities). 1856 has a stalking national rail, 1880 has a full-on communist revolution, 18CLE has the brown-tiles and off-board values worth less than the green due to the great depression, and 1849 you cause an earthquake in Messina with a phase change. I think 1817 in particular is depicting an unregulated boom time, hence the 20 companies and extensive stock-market manipulation.
Besides that, what are you talking about? One of the privates is a government land grant, that's politics.

Jedit posted:

That game about running trains in Germany missed a trick when it didn't call itself 1488.

Jedit posted:

That game about running trains in Germany missed a trick when it didn't call itself 1488.

andrew smash posted:

This post is bad

Chill la Chill posted:

I’ve tried it on steam a few times but didn’t find it interesting enough to buy the KS. I don’t think I’m too off base saying it plays like a fighting card game with towers set up as shields/pre emotive blocks but is much less satisfying due to the random draws. So it’s like Sakura arms but with less control. The additional Viking pool seems like a cool alternate resource idea but it just feels like a weird orthogonal attachment to a fighting game.

andrew smash posted:

This post is bad

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

A new low for normally stellar forums poster Jedit, jfc.

silvergoose posted:

Yeah it's not funny from a trains perspective, the actual reference is for recent neo-nazism not actual nazi germany, and it doesn't even note why 1848 was an important year.

StashAugustine posted:

The point about 18USA being an expansion to 1817 is probably the issue, since it was a pretty huge deal in western politics. I'm not a huge expert on the subject but stuff like the political wrangling around the transcontinental railroad (never mind the Mexican and Civil Wars) would be cool. I'lll have to check out some of the other ones

Jedit posted:

So I take it you've all forgotten Train, then?

Jedit posted:

So I take it you've all forgotten Train, then?

Jedit posted:

So I take it you've all forgotten Train, then?

Jedit posted:

So I take it you've all forgotten Train, then?

Mr. Squishy posted:

When i was researching the companies in 'USA, I learned that the government had to step in to stop the fighting between the Denver Rio Grande and ATSF was so bad the government had to step in. Apparently they were hiring gunslingers and city toughs.

Bum the Sad posted:

Quick spirit island question. I know play is “simultaneous” but for example can you set up a move for another. Let’s say we both get to push any number of explorers and towns. Can I push them to one square then my other player push them from that square I just pushed them on to?

Mister Sinewave posted:

I feel like this is an opportunity to do what we say we like to see; a more meaningful critique instead of simply declaring "it's not fun(ny)"

With this kind of joke the input is a simple (and ideally lower effort) twist that connects together different elements inherent to the situation, resulting in a change of context that's "bigger" than the input. Bonus points for stacking contrasting or complementary elements. In short, a (relatively) small input results in a larger number of other elements suddenly mashing together in a surprising, shocking, or delightful way. The payoff is anything from a groan, to sensible chuckle, to LOUD GUFFAW and they are all acceptable payoffs.

A bad payoff is a shortfall in any of that, making the result not "worth" what went into it and in the worst case making the listener feeling cheated or tricked. (The emotional payoff shortfall or even deficit from the failed joke will be "made up" by the listener in some other manner but that's beyond the scope of this critique.)

In the 1488 joke's case, "1488" tries to draw together:

Similarity to original 1848 number
1848 = trains in Germany
1488 = Nazis
Nazis = "at least the trains run on time", also holocaust

All the right joke pieces are technically there, but the fact that there were no trains in 1488 and '1488 as Nazi dogwhistle' is itself not fully common knowledge make the connections weak, and overly reliant on the shock value of "Nazis (indirect)" + "Trains (direct)".

As a result the payoff delivered is weak, and easily overcome by elements such as work needed to go into figuring it out, bias against Nazi as a joke element, and so on.

While all the right pieces are there, it doesn't add up to much. The add-on consisting of additional backstory does nothing to address the joke's shortcomings.

These factors sum up as "it's just not very fun(ny)"

Mister Sinewave posted:

StashAugustine posted:

smh if you don't have the years of every major european revolution memorized

StashAugustine posted:

smh if you don't have the years of every major european revolution memorized

Jedit posted:

That game about running trains in Germany missed a trick when it didn't call itself 1488.

Papes posted:

The next 18xx game should really be named 42069

silvergoose posted:

The great weed wars of the 43rd millennium will inspire many train games, don't worry.

Archenteron posted:

Anyone planning on going to Origins this week?

al-azad posted:

It's not a dueling game, it's more like if Phil Eklund made MtG in one box. Cole Wehrle sells it better than I can.

silvergoose posted:

In other news, Imperialism and Imperialism 2 were some of the finest strategy games ever made.

Triskelli posted:

E: For the uninitiated, Imperialism 1&2 are essentially “Total War: Transport Tycoon” and focus on the overlap between war and trade in a package that looks like modern euro games.