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Alris posted:Why did I only just find out there's a Big Trouble In Little China boardgame I had the same reaction as you. But: - Initial reports are that the rules are a mess, and you have to watch YouTube video to understand how the game works - I got a heavy sales pitch at the UK games expo and was unconvinced. Like I asked how the game worked and got a torrent of "endless variety ... lots of combinations ... miniatures ... get so much in a box", i.e. nothing about how the game works. Felt like a lot of other overhyped games to me.
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Jun 26, 2018 08:23
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PMush Perfect posted:Pandemic Legacy Season 1 April spoilers: Translucent rage... zombies? Not zombies because they calm back down. Is this basically an I Am Legend prequel? It's not a complex game - in the grand scheme of boardgaming, in a world where Bios: Genesis exists - but it's a reasonably involved one with a fair number of moving parts and variables. You can assume some of that load, e.g. making sure the monsters are set up right and following their orders, but I think you have to have some understanding of what's going on, as the game relies on you reacting appropriately to threats and playing clever. Without that, I think you'll get slaughtered: you just can't run in and hit things. Another way to look at it is the size of rulebook. It's 40 pages i think, with a lot of text. It's definitely a step up from Pandemic. I also wonder how the game is with two. My modest experience on that front is that it may be a little fragile - bad or good luck can have a big effect.
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Jun 26, 2018 08:34
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Raiders of the North Sea is so It's a bit more than that. The device is that you have three colours of worker in the game and they don't belong to you. On your turn you pick up a worker from a space, do what that colour worker does on that space, then replace it with the one worker you were holding and do what that colour worker does on the space. Certain colours of worker are required to do certain things. So by manipulating the colour of the workers on a location, you can block out your opponents.
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Jun 26, 2018 09:42
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I dunno what to say about it. Forgettable, light, and worker placement, I guess?
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Chicago Express is $10 on Miniature Market as their deal of the day.
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Jun 26, 2018 09:43
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nonathlon posted:It's not a complex game - in the grand scheme of boardgaming, in a world where Bios: Genesis exists -... Bios Genesis is just loving Yahtzee with an arcane rule book. The actual gameplay is laughably simple.
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Jun 26, 2018 09:48
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Xposting from the tg ks thread: Consentacle finally arrived, and my wife and I gave it a shot. Playing on any difficulty below "no talking or suggestive hand motions whatsoever" seems way too easy. Also playing without the extra power cards is fine exactly once then too simple. Overall, it's fine for a simple low communication coop and the theme is very sex positive which is why we backed it in the first place. Oh yeah and the plastic tokens are actually pretty and feel nice.
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Jun 26, 2018 11:26
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Some Numbers posted:Granted, the cards do get more complex than that, but that's mostly the unlock classes (and Mindthief), but the most complex cards also explain what they do. You DO have 9 (?) of those in your had to chose from, though.
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Jun 26, 2018 12:18
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al-azad posted:It’s CRPG rules so wound is bleeding and poison weakens you. Also originally 'Wound' was 'Burning', but it didn't make sense that you could 'Burning' flame elementals and sun demons and such, so he turned it to a more generic 'Wound' for the damage over time effect. At least, that's how he explained it in the first ks way back when. Edit: I got an extra long callout during his Skeleton Killing (51:47ish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3wXdTEmUpo&t=3107s Edit edit: Though I usually pronounce this name as rhyming with Hagendaz, but whatever. It's weird. Perils of naming yourself as a teen. Ravendas fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 13:23
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golden bubble posted:There is still the strange situation of poison and wound. Years of video games have taught me that poison is damage-over-time and wound should cause units to be more vulnerable to further attacks. But it is the other way around in Gloomhaven. At least its better than the Ice Damage/Fire Block situation in Mage Knight
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Jun 26, 2018 13:49
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nonathlon posted:I had the same reaction as you. But: I’ve played it twice, my brother got it for me as he knows I’m a huge fan of Big Trouble. I went in with the expectation that it would suck mightily and it did not. My initial impression was negative, you rolled dice to determine your actions was an immediate turn off, but when you dig into the rule book the dice faces just determine whether you get to use the regular dice (Fail, Fail, 1 success, 1 success, 1 success, 2 successes) or the epic dice (fail, 1 success, 1 success, 2 successes, 2 successes, 3 successes) for combat or skill checks or 2 versus 3 movement. So while you can get an inferior dice result from your roll at the start of the turn you still have your full range of actions and there is a push your luck pool of dice available when you want to do more in your turn. It’s a game of two halves, the first half is moving around solving quests which mirror moments in the film to level your characters up and make the second half of the game easier. Then when you either max out the good or bad track, the board flips over and you enter a final battle with Lo-Pan and his minions. The quests you complete are all basically scenes from the film with a few extras to bulk out the more minor characters. Lot of ideas in the game, most of them work out decently. If you are a fan of the film you wont regret getting it. Pros Game is a straight remake of the film. Randomness is there, but it’s acceptably random. Character upgrades are mostly all good with few lemons. Cons Rule book isn’t great, but its ok. Setup is a pain and you flip the board over halfway through the game. Each character gets a personal quest but only two randomly chosen are active at a time and you’ll struggle to get 3 done so generally some players won’t get their personal quest upgrade.
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Jun 26, 2018 13:54
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I need some info about Mage Knight, specifically what are the differences between the first and the most recent editions? Any major changes, or just minor stuff that's normally covered by an errata? Also, do we know anything about possible changes in the upcoming big box edition? Is it gonna be the same stuff, just base game + expansions in one set, or revamped in some major way?
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Jun 26, 2018 14:05
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nonathlon posted:I also wonder how the game is with two. My modest experience on that front is that it may be a little fragile - bad or good luck can have a big effect. Gloomhaven works beautifully with 2 characters, aside from the rare combo of 1 that benefits from adjacent allies and 1 who does damage to adjacent allies. Even in that situation, you could go with a different "build" for 1 of them. At any player count, the first important concept to grasp is that there is no tank. That lesson will be learned the first time you rush into a room and lose half your health + some cards.
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Jun 26, 2018 14:09
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golden bubble posted:There is still the strange situation of poison and wound. Years of video games have taught me that poison is damage-over-time and wound should cause units to be more vulnerable to further attacks. But it is the other way around in Gloomhaven. I got the same reflex. Every time my character gets poisoned, I think "It works the other way, it works the other way ..." HidaO-Win posted:(Big Trouble In Little China) Good to hear a firsthand report. So, decent but inessential?
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Jun 26, 2018 14:10
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Pierzak posted:I need some info about Mage Knight, specifically what are the differences between the first and the most recent editions? Any major changes, or just minor stuff that's normally covered by an errata? It looks like the "Ultimate Edition" will just have all of the expansions. There will be 5 new cards, but thats it. You should be able to proxy them if you already have Mage Knight + Expansions.
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Jun 26, 2018 14:13
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PMush Perfect posted:Yes but how complicated is Gloomhaven, assuming I'm there to help her but don't want to just quarterback the whole way? This thread already has a stated penchant for recommending the flavor of the month to everyone and their dog. I ran Gloomhaven at a con as a beginner friendly thing. All in all I taught 18 people, 17 of whom had never played before, how to play it. Everyone picked up their individual roles pretty quickly (I was handling setup, teardown, rules explanation, and monster movement). The first hurdle for new players is the top/bottom thing on the cards. The second, and biggest, is just having a sense of what the cards do as a whole to be able to make strategic decisions without reading through the entire hand every time.
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Jun 26, 2018 14:44
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I got flow of history deluxe because it was being sold cheap. You people had better be right!
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Jun 26, 2018 14:52
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I got Citadels for $12 on amazon yesterday because somehow I'd never played it. Reading the rules makes it sound a like a worker-placement 7 Wonders. Talking about it in this thread makes me sound like a guy who just saw, like, Memento for the first time in 2018.
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Jun 26, 2018 14:55
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A cool geek list COOPs that are impossible to play solo
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Jun 26, 2018 15:13
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fozzy fosbourne posted:A cool geek list COOPs that are impossible to play solo  I am now interested.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:17
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Technically true. Playing the game in real time does something to people's brains.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:21
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Chill la Chill posted:"Spaceteam: This game is the literal worst. Mostly just screaming at each other." That's pretty much a perfect description of Spaceteam. The players are given out various technobabble cards. Then each draws malfunctions from their decks, with the goal being digging for six victory cards hidden underneath them. To solve a malfunction you have to throw a particular card, which you obtain by screaming at people to share. You can only pass to neighboring players, so you have to scream at a bunch of people to conga line you what you need. Everything's on a sand timer so there's really no other way to do than shouting. It's fun for what it is (screaming enabler) but extremely light. I would also expect it to fall flat among experienced real-time coop players who will simply be competent instead of screaming.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:25
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There’s also an App version, which I think came first, that plays similar. You get an instruction, usually technobabble, on your phone for a control that’s (probably) on someone else’s phone. And there’s a timer for your instruction to be completed. So you’re screaming “SET GUZZLEFLAPS TO 3” louder and more desperately while your timer ticks down. Also there’s no winning - just losing later. It’s still shouting: the game, and it’s an absolute blast.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:29
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Yeah the app was first (and some time ago) and was novel for two reasons other than the gameplay: it was a "face to face" bring your own device same-room co-op network game, and the method for connecting up together was pretty effortless & even worked across different devices. The actual gameplay had technobabble streaming like the above example but the "thing" is that your panel never had the controls matching your own directions. You only got directions for controls OTHER people had. And so did everyone else! It's hard (in a good way) to pay attention to your console instructions and get people to do it while simultaneously listening for stuff that matches your own console. In later difficulties things would happen like goop sliming down the screen obscuring control labels, etc. It was really clever and a great party game. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 15:35
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SettingSun posted:Technically true. Playing the game in real time does something to people's brains. Lichtenstein posted:That's pretty much a perfect description of Spaceteam. The players are given out various technobabble cards. Then each draws malfunctions from their decks, with the goal being digging for six victory cards hidden underneath them. To solve a malfunction you have to throw a particular card, which you obtain by screaming at people to share. You can only pass to neighboring players, so you have to scream at a bunch of people to conga line you what you need. Oh it's funny if you know the context: my friends and I shout at each other in space alert. We have never beaten space alert (note: I don't do intro missions, they're bad and lame). The day when we beat space alert, I will either sell or burn my copy. This is why that is very intriguing and your descriptions make it sound better.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:44
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Chill la Chill posted:Oh it's funny if you know the context: my friends and I shout at each other in space alert. We have never beaten space alert (note: I don't do intro missions, they're bad and lame). The day when we beat space alert, I will either sell or burn my copy. This is why that is very intriguing and your descriptions make it sound better. No, that day you will buy the expansion. It's... funny.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:44
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You must play it hardcore style though. Absolutely required.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:45
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Oh, I already have the expansion. At this point I think the intrigue of having never beaten space alert is why we keep playing. It's become the raison d'être.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:47
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nonathlon posted:Good to hear a firsthand report. So, decent but inessential? Basically, Darkest Night or Gloomhaven are better games but if you were a big fan of the film you wouldn’t regret the purchase. I’m glad my brother got it for me and I enjoyed playing it.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:18
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I think spaceteam is by far my best and most played KS ever. I'm really glad I bought it because it's hilarious and never boring. The only issue with it is that it's a very obviously a "we never made a boardgame before" boardgame, and has a host of issues, although they are minor. The first issue is that even though it has several different difficulty settings, it made the bone-headed decision to make reaching the victory random. Fixing this issue is really easy by simply making the victory cards be at the end of everyone's deck, which leads to really tense end-games where there's like one guy left to go through his stack and everyone else is trying to help him. The other issue is that some of the random events aren't exactly clear about how you clear them. It's still a good game though.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:46
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Important question: does the card game remind you to work together...as a Spaceteam?
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Jun 26, 2018 17:56
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Boxman posted:Important question: does the card game remind you to work together...as a Spaceteam? I think it does in the rulebook. Also spaceteam has really slippery cards, they just loving fly out of your hands.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:00
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Tekopo posted:Also spaceteam has really slippery cards, they just loving fly out of your hands. Honestly this could probably be a thematic decision.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:08
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Lichtenstein posted:It's fun for what it is (screaming enabler) I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please
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Jun 26, 2018 18:22
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Merauder posted:I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please Well the first you thing you need to know is that there are two subgenres: coop screaming enablers (yelling at your team to do something) and competitive screaming enablers (yelling at the other players/teams because gently caress them I was goiNG TO TAKE THAT TILE PAUL YOU SON OF A BITCH)
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Jun 26, 2018 18:30
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Merauder posted:I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please As far as Videogames/Apps go, i can recommend Overcooked and Keep talking and nobody explodes. For Boardgames, there's Space Alert. I haven't tried Kitchen Rush yet, but it seems interesting.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:31
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I wanted to talk about my experiences playtesting for a while now that I've got a fair bit of experience in it. Some of the stuff that I've playtested so far has been: - 1 wave of FFG X-Wing stuff, which was interesting to look into and kind of showed me how difficult it is to playtest stuff that's purely meant for a competitive game. - Tash-Kalar Etherweave which was one of the more serious things I playtested in a while. - Nights of Fire which was interesting in terms of how the design developed through the design process. - Some of the Kitchen Rush expansion things (although my role was minimal and not as involved as the three above). - Other games currently being tested that I'm not really open to discuss at the moment (apart from the potential new Tash-Kalar deck) Overall, I think that largely the perception of playtesting is a lot different from its reality. Playtesting can be boring to the extreme. Playing broken games is really that fun, and playing them over and over again is even worse, each time making incremental changes to fix this or that. But that's also what's interesting about playtesting: looking at the game through iterations and then comparing the start of the process with the end is quite interesting and really shows how much a designer is willing to change his design if he wants to get out a good product. I think the best example of this is Etherweave, which was by far the most interesting project I took part in. I came in early on the design process and saw it through till the end and it was amazing how much the game changed. The first iteration of the expansion faction for Tash-Kalar had a separate board that had several different actions on them (place a piece, upgrade a piece, extra action etc). You could pick one at the end of a turn and used one of your pieces to signify that you were using it. The only way to remove the piece covering the action was to summon specific cards that allowed you to uncover the action. This was bad for several different reasons, chief of them was that the deck was extremely reliant on you getting those specific creatures. When compared to the final product (and the easy to understand Warp feature, which mirrored the Thaws in Everfrost), it's clear why the change was made. Another interesting aspect of Etherweave development is that it really changed my perception of how games are developed by (some) designers. Vlaada was always stressing some of the importance of tying the flavour and theme of a card with the action that it did and the art. The Ziggurat Sentil (iirc) was one of the more interesting cards thematically, because the action on the cards signifies the sentil going down the ziggurat and then, paradoxically, still being on top of it. One other element that surprised me is the sheer amount of statistical data that CGE uses in order to see if something is balanced: the expansions are tested on an online platform that records when cards are drawn, the average retention in hand, how often they are played and to what impact. Most games I don't think go to this level of detail or accumulate as many statistics during playtesting, but it was interesting to see. Another interesting part of playtesting is that it actively encourages you to sometimes play to extremes. If I take this strategy and go to its logical extreme, will it allow me to win? Will I overwhelmingly lose? Trying for those extreme without spoiling the game for everyone else is quite liberating, especially when you manage to chance into a strategy which is effectively gamebreaking. Sometimes trying to do extreme strategies in a normal gaming format can be kind of antisocial, especially if the strategy you choose is unlikely to succeed and it overwhelmingly affects one player in disproportion to the others. I think overall playtesting has helped me to view games in a different light but, paradoxically, I've been involved in playtesting more than actual gaming and the former has affected the latter, since I find it difficult to get past small issues with games now. I've become a lot more critical of both mechanisms and issues with games that obviously should have been picked up in playtesting (which is why I refer to stuff like X+ to hit as "lazy mechanisms").
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Jun 26, 2018 18:36
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Merauder posted:I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please John Company Space Alert Chinatown Sidereal Confluence (though with this and Chinatown, any open bazaar type of trading game will suffice) Happy Salmon Archipelago Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 18:46
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Merauder posted:I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please Uh, it's that and Panic in the Wall Street. Negotiation games can be good in that role too, if they allow the player to blackmail the rest of the table once in a while.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:50
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Lichtenstein posted:Uh, it's that and Panic in the Wall Street. Negotiation games can be good in that role too, if they allow the player to blackmail the rest of the table once in a while. PIT!
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Jun 26, 2018 18:54
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Merauder posted:I'd like to know more about this genre of Screaming Enabler games, please Pit is the classic Screaming Enabler game. It has the benefit of having a bell that you can ring, so it’s all the fun of yelling at your friends combined with the excitement of trying to kill someone in a mad dash to the bell. We’re getting away from board games a bit, however: Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes isn’t really about screaming - in fact, if it gets that hectic, you’re probably going to explode - but it is absolutely incredible. It’s also only $6 on Steam at the moment.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:57
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