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History of the World first impression: Smallworld but good. Good mid-light area control. Massively overproduced.
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Jun 13, 2018 18:34
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What are the quintessential area control games? I'd say that Ticket to Ride and History of the World (and Small World casually) are good intros to the genre, but what are the best? edit: I'd say that the Avalon Hill edition of History of the World was produced the correct amount, but I figure you played the Z-Man game edition? pospysyl fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jun 13, 2018 |
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Jun 13, 2018 19:04
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al-azad posted:History of the World first impression: Smallworld but good. Good mid-light area control. Massively overproduced. Sounds like a great game to grab in a few years for $notoverproduced!
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Jun 13, 2018 19:04
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Was just talking with the games director for my local con, and we came up with a concept that you guys might be able to help with a bit. We had trouble at the con this year making sure that every slot had enough offerings in certain genres - particularly the heavier stuff that this thread likes. But it's tough to throw a bunch of poo poo on the schedule and have them go unfilled, because tables are a limited resource. The solution we came up with is "genre slots" which change based on how many people are registered. The players sign up knowing that this is how the slot will be organized, and fully aware of the variables. So suppose we have a "Medium Eurogame" slot (off the top of my head) 2 - Agricola 3 - Terra Mystica 4 - Dungeon Petz 5 - Puerto Rico 6 - Dominant Species Could do a COIN one: 2 - Colonial Twilight 3 - Cuba Libre (with bot) 4 - ADP etc. Anyone have any lists they can suggest? The trick is putting together a list that will please those who sign up no matter how many players ultimately show.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:14
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pospysyl posted:What are the quintessential area control games? I'd say that Ticket to Ride and History of the World (and Small World casually) are good intros to the genre, but what are the best? Kemet is still king for me. Inis is also good. Ethnos is a good lighter end one just above TTR. El Grande is a classic. Chaos in the Old World gets a lot of love here too. Blood Rage is fine. A Game of Thrones 2.0 is fantastic but requires exactly 6 to be that good.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:17
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Kemet has actually mostly been supplanted in my group by Cthulhu Wars.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:20
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I still need to play more of that and see more factions. Kemet is more euro design and players start out the same and tech tree to asymmetry while having a knife fight in the phone booth of the equidistant-based map which I love. CW players start vastly different and have completely different goals and the map is traditional risk style, which is harder to teach and not as tight feeling. I do really like that there are a lot of different maps available though.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:26
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To add to the previous recommendations, Dominant Species is a good, albeit loving mean, area control game. Also as a caveat to Cthulhu Wars, while I think it's a fine game, it is by far the priciest option available, and if you're just starting the hobby, you're better off spending your money getting a variety of games across a number of different genres. Like base CW costs more than base Kemet and Inis, and you still have about $20 to spend on something. Chaos in the Old World is difficult to find because GW sucks and yes I'm still bitter about Conquest getting canceled.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:40
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al-azad posted:History of the World first impression: Smallworld but good. Good mid-light area control. Massively overproduced. Didn't even know there was a new edition out. Need to check what's changed - the last version I've played is I think the old one...
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Jun 13, 2018 20:37
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Trying to get this travel pack together has me looking at fillers. I may try to effort post this week, but in the mean time, has anyone played Deathbot Derby and want to share words about it?
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Jun 13, 2018 20:58
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Some good fillers: Skull (trivial to proxy with smaller pieces too, I use Qwirkle blocks) String Railway Mint Works Fake Artist goes to New York
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Jun 13, 2018 23:07
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  Updated my game box with stuff for convention season Food Chain Magnate Keyflower Battlecon Fox in the Forest Schotten Totten Valley of the Kings Innovation Mottainai Fake Artist Goes to NY Arkham LCG Spy Hive Pocket Mint Works
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Jun 13, 2018 23:14
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GrandpaPants posted:Chaos in the Old World is difficult to find because GW sucks and yes I'm still bitter about Conquest getting canceled. Did we ever find out exactly why FFG and GW split? My best guess is still "GW didn't like the competition from Star Wars Legion, so they decided to take their ball and go home".
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Jun 13, 2018 23:20
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Henker posted:Did we ever find out exactly why FFG and GW split? My best guess is still "GW didn't like the competition from Star Wars Legion, so they decided to take their ball and go home". Pretty much, it was X-Wing at the time. Popular theory is GW told FFG to choose between them and their Star Wars license, and the choice was obvious.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:21
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pospysyl posted:What are the quintessential area control games? I'd say that Ticket to Ride and History of the World (and Small World casually) are good intros to the genre, but what are the best? On those I've played: El Grande still is the classic in its style, the pure cubes on a map. I've always enjoyed the Shogun / Wallenstein style of cross between more abstract cubes on a map and more overtly aggressive and often more thematic dudes on a map, which I think they in a way are. Plus That loving Combat Tower gimme some of my own cubes for change lmao. I think it's a fairly specific niche that I can't think of a game I have played that would compete (certainly there probably is one, just unplayed). Web of Power / China (same thing, different theme and slight differences otherwise) has been something of a gaming group specific perversion because the I don't see those being brought up in discussion pretty much anywhere, but they've fill up the almost snack size area control niche for us where you can finish up a light area control fest in thirty minutes when you simply don't want the brain burn of El Grande right now. Ticket to Ride I honestly have never considered an area control game as such - though for example Web of Power above shares the mechanic of having a deck of differently coloured cards you draw from to your hand, then use those cards to place (among other things) pieces of your colour on routes on the map. The difference though is that Web of Power has none of the set collection element as you get no growing number of points from growing sets of a colour, which is a major factor in TTR, the element of connected route building is much more minor, and you use the cards also to make El Grande style cubes-to-an-area moves. Pure dudes on the map style is honestly something of a mystery to me - not something that has been popular in our group. Would I pick up something to my shelf, it has always sounded like it would be Kemet.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:41
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pospysyl posted:What are the quintessential area control games? I'd say that Ticket to Ride and History of the World (and Small World casually) are good intros to the genre, but what are the best? El Grande, Kemet, Inis, A distant plain, Dominant Species, and Twilight Struggle/Wir sind Das Volk are my picks. BGG considers Tigris and Euphrates too but I put that more in tile laying and set collection.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:50
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Chill la Chill posted:El Grande, Kemet, Inis, A distant plain, Dominant Species, and Twilight Struggle/Wir sind Das Volk are my picks. BGG considers Tigris and Euphrates too but I put that more in tile laying and set collection. WSDV! is really stretching the concept of "area control", but it's always a good recommendation and should be far better known.
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Jun 14, 2018 00:04
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A good thing to have around for fillers is either a Sticheln or Rage deck. Rage decks are 0-15 in six suits and Sticheln is similarly constructed (varies by edition, up to 18 in some, I think). You can play regular card games and lots of designer ones.
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Jun 14, 2018 00:56
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Relevant geeklists: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1907/games-playable-rage-deck-not-ccg-please-add https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/9356/games-playble-sticheln-deck-please-add
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Jun 14, 2018 01:05
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For area control I would add König von Siam, which is immensely tight in a way that makes three the best player count, which I feel can be rare for area control. It’s been reimplemented as The King is Dead, which I haven’t personally played but hear good things about.
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Jun 14, 2018 01:15
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Blamestorm posted:I haven’t played 18xx games but my experience with CE is experienced players will terminate new players and over/under valuing stocks will cripple you compared to more Euro-esque auction games - BUT, and this is a big but, these are all super compensated by its fast play time (like 45 minutes without new players). I should clarify that what turns me off is stuff like the ease with which you can waste people's trains, which I think will just come off as "mean". Being able to screw yourself in the auction phase hurts too, but at least the game is short, as you say.
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Jun 14, 2018 01:32
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Rajas of the Ganges first impression: pretty, solid worker placement, dice as workers with enough options that "bad" rolls are just as viable as "good" rolls if not more so but ultimately too simplistic to stand next to contemporaries e.g. Lorenzo Magnifico.
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Jun 14, 2018 02:40
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http://www.pubmeeple.com/board-game-ranking-engine/ Good tool to rank your games. Import your BGG profile and set it to "Own" only.
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Jun 14, 2018 06:00
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New good podcast I found tonight via Reddit: The Thoughtful Gamer. Pretty chill and intelligent discussion. Latest episode is an interview with Spirit Island designer, who is smart as hell and well spoken.
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Jun 14, 2018 06:41
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Bottom Liner posted:http://www.pubmeeple.com/board-game-ranking-engine/ Pretty bad site design. If you set it not to import expansions it imports them anyway, and if you select the "do not allow page to create further dialogues" option that appears every time you want to delete an item the delete button stops working.
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Jun 14, 2018 08:20
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FunkMonkey posted:Pretty much, it was X-Wing at the time. Popular theory is GW told FFG to choose between them and their Star Wars license, and the choice was obvious. Thinking they're in any kind of position to rival the biggest franchise in history probably isn't the most powerful GW self-own that has happened, but it has to be pretty drat close.
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Jun 14, 2018 10:37
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PerniciousKnid posted:I should clarify that what turns me off is stuff like the ease with which you can waste people's trains, which I think will just come off as "mean". Being able to screw yourself in the auction phase hurts too, but at least the game is short, as you say. My biggest problem with CE is the disparity in money. You can never sell back shares so the player with the most money can single handedly out buy any auction. There's no new cash flow into the game.
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Jun 14, 2018 13:10
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al-azad posted:Rajas of the Ganges first impression: pretty, solid worker placement, dice as workers with enough options that "bad" rolls are just as viable as "good" rolls if not more so but ultimately too simplistic to stand next to contemporaries e.g. Lorenzo Magnifico. At first I really liked Rajas but at the end of the day I think Lorenzo is better.
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Jun 14, 2018 14:50
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Question for the thread re worker placement games: It finally hit me when I was looking over the Neta-Tanka KS that I think I've become skeptical of worker placement games. That's not to say I don't like them because I think it's been a long time since I played one I actively disliked. I just mean that considering my collection has grown fairly significantly and I've got and played a lot of middling/okay WPs already, it's tough to justify getting/playing another. It's also difficult to muster too much excitement for new ones as well because from the look of things the mechanics are almost always identical just with a gimmick or two added. This isn't intended to be an old man yells at clouds post, but more of a general exhaustion with a genre as someone whose favourite games could be classified as WP. Has anyone else hit this point? Or are you guys still as psyched when you hear about a new WP game? FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 15:30
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FulsomFrank posted:Question for the thread re worker placement games: Not yet, but I don't have that many. I think WP is still a solid mechanic that's easy for most players to wrap their heads around, but can still scale up to be interesting and crunchy. It's a good base mechanic that can be used centrally or in addition to others. I do think that it's one where it's potentially harder to differentiate from one game to another, but I don't have any precise examples or analytic reasons for thinking or saying so. And I say this as an excited Neta-Tanka backer. It does seem that WP games - those where WP is the primary mechanic and not one among many others - would be more prone to falling into that more than, say, area control or drafting etc. So if you've already got a handful that fill that niche it does make sense that you'd not necessarily want another WP, even if it does look to be very solid.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:37
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I'm not that psyched about any particular genre of game unless the genre is "Vlaada non-filler game" or "Rachel Simmons wargame". I got psyched for a feast for odin because I played it and then couldn't stop thinking about it, not "Ooh a new uwe worker placement must play it". In fact, nujsford fell super flat for me.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:38
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I’ve hit fatigue with WP too and that’s probably because I have the mean kind and sandbox kind and you can’t really seem to do much else with it as a core mechanic. The last WP to really wow me is three kingdoms redux and that’s both because of the 3P perfection and that it’s a combo of WP and bidding. There’s what my group calls “worker comp” for games like gallerist but I would be keen to see or learn about more games where WP was more like bidding. I think it could be explored further.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:44
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My thought on it is that worker placement is a mechanic, not a game type. What matters is how the workers are used and how well it integrates with the other systems. Case in point: last night I was playing Ave Roma. It's a worker placement game where the workers have different values from 1 to 5. There's one placement action where high is better - it gives you money equal to twice your worker's value. There's three other actions where low is often better because it lets you take the newest card in a display. There's three more actions where you need a worker of a specific value to get what you want. And lastly, there's an action where as a rule you will want to place a 3. So far, so Marco Polo. What makes Ave Roma interesting is that the workers don't belong to you. Once all the workers have been placed, the players redraft them from the board. You also have to take all the workers from a given action, so if everyone put their 5 into the same action you're going to be picking up all the 5s - restricting your options next turn. And to cap it off, turn order is arranged in ascending total order of worker values. All these factors make for a worker placement game with a very different feel to Caylus with its road, T'Zolkin with its time-based resolution, or Anachrony with its specialists. That's what makes it worth owning. I don't need another Caylus. But a new WP game that doesn't feel like Caylus is a different game altogether.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:45
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Jedit posted:My thought on it is that worker placement is a mechanic, not a game type. What matters is how the workers are used and how well it integrates with the other systems. I agree 100% with a Jedit post.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:01
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:I agree 100% with a Jedit post.  What world are we living in?
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Jun 14, 2018 17:05
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Raiders of the North Sea is a fun worker placement game that plays like a race. There are a few different ways to accumulate victory points, especially with the expansions, but overall the path to winning is relatively the same for everyone, so I don't consider it to be a sandbox at all, really. While there are some ways to mess with other players, they're more to do with using certain card powers. You all play as vikings in the same village, trying to impress the clan elder. The unique thing about it is that the worker pawns are all in a shared pool, so every turn, you put down one worker and then pick up a different worker. When you take a specific action, you enable the next player to do that same action on their turn. It makes for an interesting twist in that there's no way to block other players from taking actions, and everyone gets the exact same number of actions per turn. And since you share the same workers, when a player upgrades a worker, it enables other players to use that same upgraded worker later on. It keeps everyone on roughly the same level of capability throughout the game, but the game still manages to be competitive and strategic.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:10
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Bottom Liner posted:New good podcast I found tonight via Reddit: The Thoughtful Gamer. Pretty chill and intelligent discussion. Latest episode is an interview with Spirit Island designer, who is smart as hell and well spoken. The Long View podcast is also very good, even though it's from The Dice Tower. They tell a lot of unfunny jokes, but they know a lot about the hobby and the industry and when they get around to talking about the games it's usually very sharp.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:10
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Mighty Eris posted:For area control I would add König von Siam, which is immensely tight in a way that makes three the best player count, which I feel can be rare for area control. It’s been reimplemented as The King is Dead, which I haven’t personally played but hear good things about. The King is Dead is identical to King of Siam, except for the looks. Even map layout ends up working out 99% the same.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:18
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https://smile.amazon.com/Feast-Odin...HJFRKE95PZ3E8J9 A Feast for Odin promo islands cheap on Amazon prime.
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Jun 14, 2018 20:32
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pospysyl posted:The Long View podcast is also very good, even though it's from The Dice Tower. They tell a lot of unfunny jokes, but they know a lot about the hobby and the industry and when they get around to talking about the games it's usually very sharp. I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with the dice tower
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Jun 14, 2018 21:43
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