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I dunno guys, I feel like a lot of the criticisms made in this thread about many other popular games and how some people defend them (fun moments/stories, beer and pretzels games, just fun for turning your brain off, fun because we play with house rules etc) kind of apply in spades to Arabian Nights. Like the thread (rightly IMO) slams games like Talisman but I’m not sure AN is super different? Maybe less egregious examples like Zombicide, Dead of Winter, Firefly etc.
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Jul 16, 2018 12:54
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Speaking of Tales of the Arabian Nights, has anything done that type of game better yet? Gloomhaven? 
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Jul 16, 2018 12:56
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Does anyone have a link to the Flow of History 2p variant? Thanks.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:03
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Lorini posted:Does anyone have a link to the Flow of History 2p variant? Thanks. If you mean Rahdo’s variant: Trash the rightmost card and slide the non-invested cards over. Everything else is the same as the normal 2P rules. Blamestorm posted:I dunno guys, I feel like a lot of the criticisms made in this thread about many other popular games and how some people defend them (fun moments/stories, beer and pretzels games, just fun for turning your brain off, fun because we play with house rules etc) kind of apply in spades to Arabian Nights. Like the thread (rightly IMO) slams games like Talisman but I’m not sure AN is super different? Maybe less egregious examples like Zombicide, Dead of Winter, Firefly etc. I think there’s less hate for it because it’s more an activity than game. Granted, it’s the same with apples to apples variants but a lot of the hate for CAH comes from the fact that it doesn’t make you work for the humor like Dixit and A2A do.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:16
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Whenever I play Eldritch Horror it seems to take fuckin' forever to play through, like three hours for four players or something. Always feels like we're doing something wrong. Doesn't help when there are effects that move the doom counter backwards. Otherwise I enjoy the game enough, random nonsense and all. I like how the mythos deck is tiered, somewhat, and how the flow of the game has you reacting to emergencies with just enough time to get some other objectives done before the next one rears its head.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:19
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Morpheus posted:Whenever I play Eldritch Horror it seems to take fuckin' forever to play through, like three hours for four players or something. Always feels like we're doing something wrong. Effects moving Doom backwards shouldn't matter. The game has a finite number of turns and unless you're taking it to the last turn every single game three hours should be the maximum, not the average. We usually manage it in two, because by that point we've typically either won or know we're turbofucked. Speed record for being nobbled is about 45 minutes.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:30
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Rad Valtar posted:If it holds up with multiple plays I may not have a reason to keep Through the Ages anymore.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:32
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Blamestorm posted:I dunno guys, I feel like a lot of the criticisms made in this thread about many other popular games and how some people defend them (fun moments/stories, beer and pretzels games, just fun for turning your brain off, fun because we play with house rules etc) kind of apply in spades to Arabian Nights. Like the thread (rightly IMO) slams games like Talisman but I’m not sure AN is super different? Maybe less egregious examples like Zombicide, Dead of Winter, Firefly etc. I think that's a fair comment. But - as someone who loves TotAN and hates Talisman - let me set up the differences I see: * TotAN is 90-120 minutes. Talisman goes for hours and hours. * TotAN is moderately predictable in terms of game length, and you often end up with multiple people sprinting back towards Baghdad at the same time. Whereas Talisman can be indeterminate in length, with some players way behind and one player way ahead, only for them to get slapped back from the finish so that you have another few hours to go. * TotAN actually builds a story, albeit a crazy one. "Lemme tell you what happened when I went out to find the Valley of Diamonds, got turned into a chimp and married in a strange land". It may be random but it masquerades as a story better. * TotAN's story elements are fairly high level and a surprise to you. Whereas Talisman is "roll 1d6, if I get a 6 the witch will give me something good" * TotAN's a bad game if we're talking about trying to win, but it's a good game if you want to shape the story that happens. Talisman just happens to you. * Bad things happening to you is good(-ish) in TotAN, in that you're trying to have the best story and some of the worst cards / aspects have good upsides (e.g. the Cripple gets extra Story) * There's a huge amount of stories and events in TotAN. Talisman, less so. Is TotAN a deeply strategic, many paths to victory, combinatorial brain-burner? Nope. Is it a game? Games involve meaningful choices, and I contend that there are meaningful choices in TotAN but they are more about the sort of story you want to have rather than winning. And I think there's plentiful space in the world for a few experiential story-generators, next to the thousands of trading-cube games.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:52
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Pierzak posted:Why, is there that much overlap apart from "civilization-themed card game"? I mean a Civ building game that doesn’t eat up 3 hours of my day is enough for me.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:56
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Thanks thread! That $25 copy of Flow of History is now an $80 used copy on Amazon. Glad I got mine!
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Jul 16, 2018 15:06
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Jedit posted:Effects moving Doom backwards shouldn't matter. The game has a finite number of turns and unless you're taking it to the last turn every single game three hours should be the maximum, not the average. We usually manage it in two, because by that point we've typically either won or know we're turbofucked. Speed record for being nobbled is about 45 minutes. Mm, true - I forgot that the Mythos deck ends the game (I think I'm thinking of Elder Sign). Still though, I'm not sure why we take so long to play it. I think people I play with might over-plan things, despite my attempts to rush things along. It's frustrating, because it's a game I'd like to play more (and at this point have gotten...a lot of the expansions), but it's hard to pull out knowing the commitment that we'd be making.
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Jul 16, 2018 15:29
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Lorini posted:Thanks thread! That $25 copy of Flow of History is now an $80 used copy on Amazon. Glad I got mine! I ordered from that posted link and got the normal version.
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Jul 16, 2018 15:56
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I'm pretty sensitive to downtime and wasted time in games, and it's usually because of small things that add up over time. One of the big ones is turn control. The #1 biggest and easiest way to speed up gameplay is for people to announce that their turn is done / tell next player it's their turn. Wasting 15-30 seconds per turn figuring out that someone's turn is over translates to 12-24 minutes of extra wasted time in a four player game lasting twelve turns. In Eldritch Horror there's at least that amount of time spent asking things like "does it help anyone if I..." and "Should I x or y?" questions. Also reading out encounter cards and hemming & hawing about a choice. There's also downtime in running each round's upkeep, which is not onerous but if the game doesn't have a clear process for who does it and when, that adds up. On this subject, I bought a Time Cube and we used it to play Eclipse. We finished that game of Eclipse in about 90 minutes which blew my mind but it came down to this: People treated the time cube as a sort of mini game. You had a quota of 2 mins per turn but would bank any unused time, so building up a time bank was sort of a score. This led to two things: 1. People planned their turns ahead of time more. The ones that already planned ahead and played quickly did so to an even greater extent. 2. There was virtually no "are you done your turn?" and "whose turn is it?" downtime. These are huge.
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Jul 16, 2018 16:07
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Crackbone posted:I ordered from that posted link and got the normal version. Friend also got the normal version. I’m guessing amazon switched the sellers and you were supposed to look at the ASIN, or the seller ran out at some point.
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Jul 16, 2018 16:07
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Speaking of Eldritch Horror I have no expansions for it but I have a group of friends who like to play it quite a bit. We've pretty much exhausted the whole game so if I were going to get an expansion or two which would be the ones to grab first? Also specifically how is the Carcosa expansion because I'm a fan of The King in Yellow?
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Jul 16, 2018 16:13
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Glagha posted:Speaking of Eldritch Horror I have no expansions for it but I have a group of friends who like to play it quite a bit. We've pretty much exhausted the whole game so if I were going to get an expansion or two which would be the ones to grab first? Also specifically how is the Carcosa expansion because I'm a fan of The King in Yellow? Carcosa is a fun one, themed around losing sanity as you'd expect. It adds impairment as a mechanism, which does make the game harder. And Hastur is pretty drat hard, with doom starting at 11 and some difficult mysteries (though you only have to solve two of them). Strange Remnants is a neat variation on the usual type of AO, and it comes with focus tokens which make the game easier (although they can be proxied in if you don't have any of the expansions that come with them). The only big box one I own is Under the Pyramids, for which I've only played Nephren-Ka, but his mechanics were pretty cool and the Egyptian sideboard integrated nicely into the game. That one's got some good investigators too. Like Carcosa, it features impairment, so it'll make any game harder with those cards in the deck. e: Oh yeah, actual recommendations. I'd say Forbidden Lore and Strange Remnants (or Carcosa if you prefer the theme) if you want two small boxes, FL and UtP if you want a big box. Although as I said I haven't played any other big boxes, so I can't speak to them.
Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 16, 2018 |
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Jul 16, 2018 16:32
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Mister Sinewave posted:
Sorry, what? Is this like a chess clock of sorts?
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Jul 16, 2018 17:11
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!Klams posted:Sorry, what? http://timecube.2enp.com/ 
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Jul 16, 2018 17:18
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This raises a whole lot more questions. I love the bounty for disproving the time cube.
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Jul 16, 2018 17:23
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!Klams posted:Sorry, what? Sorry, yeah. The DGT Time Cube Each face has a color and a timer. Whichever timer (and color) is facing "up" is the timer that's running. The other timers are dormant if they are not face up. So if you're Yellow and next player is Red, on your turn the cube is sitting next to you with Yellow side up, counting on Yellow's timer. When your turn is over, you hand it to the next player (Red) and they turn it to Red side up, and do their turn, and so on. So there's a built-in mechanism to tracking turns and being snappy about it.
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Jul 16, 2018 17:35
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The biggest feature is that there are modes where you accumulate time between turns. So, if you want a game to take roughly 1.5 minutes per player turn to get it done by a specific time, you set it to the accumulating mode and then when they have short turns they will "bank" time for later turns. It incentivizes players to spend less time on unimportant decisions so they have time for the important decisions. Another side effect is that if there was any doubt about who takes a long time, there will no longer be. Heh.
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Jul 16, 2018 18:32
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Huh, looks like the Mega Civ team is making a version called Mega Civ: The West that as far as I can tell is just half of normal mega civ for people who are unlikely to play the full 18 player version. That said, based on the cryptic note at the top of their website I'm inclined to believe they're getting sued or are in some sort of legal limbo at the moment. I always wondered how they got away with the game in the first place.
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Jul 16, 2018 18:37
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A Feast for Odin expansion due this year or early next year - unlikely to make Spiel as it seems to still be in playtest. Features include: Completely revamped action board with a fifth column that you can only use with your last meeple Reworking of the basic islands Four new islands Two new animals (pigs and horses) The ability to discard unwanted professions for VP (with diminishing returns) A "small emigration" action that emigrates a whaling boat Six special building tiles that create a slightly asymmetric start
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Jul 16, 2018 23:40
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Glad to see changes like tossing professions. They really need to take an axe to the islands because Iceland is Bestland and every other item is more or less crap.
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Jul 16, 2018 23:52
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I have a cube timer but I'll probably never use it because my casual gaming friends would probably get upset that I'm "rushing them" or something so all of our games will continue to take an hour too long.
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Jul 17, 2018 01:21
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al-azad posted:Glad to see changes like tossing professions. They really need to take an axe to the islands because Iceland is Bestland and every other item is more or less crap. Not really. Greenland is good, and the flips of both little islands are good. Also, whaling boats are super cheap so getting shetland is really easy.
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Jul 17, 2018 01:28
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Cheap whaling boats getting access to emigration irks me. It already has easy access to food too and i thought the point of emigration was to get rid of more expensive boats in the typical infrastructure->VP switch common to Euros.
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Jul 17, 2018 01:37
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Radioactive Toy posted:I have a cube timer but I'll probably never use it because my casual gaming friends would probably get upset that I'm "rushing them" or something so all of our games will continue to take an hour too long. You need some convenient deadline. Pretend you have to go pick up a kid from soccer practice or something (borrow one if you don't have one)
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Jul 17, 2018 02:09
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Crackbone posted:I ordered from that posted link and got the normal version. Me too, but looking at the KS page it looks like gameplay is the same, but it has a smaller footprint, so I'm keeping it.
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Jul 17, 2018 02:13
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silvergoose posted:Not really. Greenland is good, and the flips of both little islands are good. None of the other islands have the same return as Iceland, not even close. What makes Iceland so objectively better, and why I really want to ask Rosenberg why he didn't design the other islands in this manner, is that covering Iceland's income track also covers negative points from the start. All the other islands have dead space along their income (and comparatively poorer income). Getting $4 in Iceland covers -5 points which immediately generates a profit. Even better if you snag the horn or horseshoe and drop a dollar to start spitting out stone and coal from turn 1. Greenland looks nice because it has two income tracks but the cost to maximize those puts you far behind what Iceland could generate. I think Rosenberg even nerfed Shetland (or as I call it "Shitland") for some dumb reason and we always play with the original that had an extra good on there. al-azad fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 02:21
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Morpheus posted:I love the bounty for disproving the time cube. The .00 on the end really caps it.
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Jul 17, 2018 04:36
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Got my Flow of History from Amazon, and it was indeed Deluxified. It was the distributing company they were using, Paper&Plastic. I think there were 10 left the day I ordered, and after that Amazon itself took over, and started shipping regular editions again.
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Jul 17, 2018 05:26
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al-azad posted:None of the other islands have the same return as Iceland, not even close. What makes Iceland so objectively better, and why I really want to ask Rosenberg why he didn't design the other islands in this manner, is that covering Iceland's income track also covers negative points from the start. All the other islands have dead space along their income (and comparatively poorer income). Getting $4 in Iceland covers -5 points which immediately generates a profit. Even better if you snag the horn or horseshoe and drop a dollar to start spitting out stone and coal from turn 1. quote:Greenland looks nice because it has two income tracks but the cost to maximize those puts you far behind what Iceland could generate. I think Rosenberg even nerfed Shetland (or as I call it "Shitland") for some dumb reason and we always play with the original that had an extra good on there. I dunno if you've played with the extra islands but I'm pretty convinced that Lofoten is the strongest start in the game. Plus having six islands instead of four fixes a lot of the problems with early game/turn order, especially with three or four players. misguided rage fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 11:05
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Chill la Chill posted:Cheap whaling boats getting access to emigration irks me. It already has easy access to food too and i thought the point of emigration was to get rid of more expensive boats in the typical infrastructure->VP switch common to Euros. Don't let it bug you. Knarrs and Longships both profit 13VPs for emigrating and cost 2 or 3 meeples, but Whaling Boats will only profit 3VP and you have to use your "last meeple" action to do it. Those actions are meant to be worth 1.25 meeples, so it sounds like it's mostly a choice you'll take when better options have been snagged or you're desperate for food.
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Jul 17, 2018 11:19
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Probably either going to play my new copies of Brass this weekend or if I don't get them in time, Caverna. It's pretty weird for me, I'm not a huge Uwe fan, but Caverna is really chill and feels like a lazy sunday type of game. It's the equivalent of playing 1853 for me, just doesn't feel all that competitive but it can be nice if you want to have a stress-free time playing board games.
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Jul 17, 2018 11:36
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I know I'm a bit late for the Tales of Arabian Nights talk, but we found Agents of SMERSH fills roughly the same purpose in our collection, except that it's co-operative and doesn't run into the situations where "One person spends the game in jail from the start, while someone else goes on to become arabian fantasy Jesus and experiences Places of Power multiple times a game" (last time I played it, I spent the entire game in jail. My wife was going around literally healing the sick and got access to a place of power, did the encounter there, and the following turn got an adventure that allowed her access into the same place of power. Everyone at the table called it shortly after that.)
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Jul 17, 2018 13:12
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As threatened, had our first game of import-Export last night. Had a good time, although the game dragged a bit (nearly 3 hours, mostly due to questions and player puzzlement, some due to missing a rule, also due to a card that delayed the end of the game substantially). Some questions: * What do you do with actions you can't or don't want to take? For example, someone declares Pirate and you follow Pirate. But when it gets to your turn, there's no cards left to Pirate or no cards you want to Pirate. We ruled that you didn't have to take the action, which seems logical. * Likewise, if an action gets you cards you can't fit into your Harbour (due to Import or Goal limits), those cards are discarded? Or can't you take the action? (We ruled for discard.) * Towards the end of the game, the deck started running super-thin. Perhaps due to a rule misunderstanding (we initially missed the "use two cards of same type as wildcard") but have other people seen this happening. * There's some timing issue in completed shipment powers, e.g. one card that lets you take a container off a just completed shipment, so can it be used to take a card off its own shipment? I figured not, because you get the power when you complete the shipment and it seemed like reaching back in time before you had the power.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:24
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misguided rage posted:That's a really weird way of looking at it, you don't get bonus points for covering up those five negatives sooner and covering the other 19 requires filling in the entire rest of the island, which you probably want to do anyway. But you basically do get bonus points, those points being income. Iceland requires the least investment for the greatest monetary return and cash is flat out the best thing to have in AFfO.
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Jul 17, 2018 16:26
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nonathlon posted:As threatened, had our first game of import-Export last night. Had a good time, although the game dragged a bit (nearly 3 hours, mostly due to questions and player puzzlement, some due to missing a rule, also due to a card that delayed the end of the game substantially). Some questions: 1. Never ran into that problem because we just didn’t take the action and drew instead but taking it back as an illegal or nonsensical action seems reasonable. Game doesn’t have anything supporting otherwise iirc so I assume it’s an illegal action 2. You take as much as able, discard the rest. Note that you can’t swap for older cards. 3. No. Once you’re drawing only 1 card/turn, you’re losing out on action efficiency big time. You said you forgot about the wildcard rule so that’s why; in any similar case I would almost always prefer to take a less optimal wildcard action and draw 2 cards on the following player’s turn instead. 4. The loaded ship goes to the sea as the last step in the resolution after putting the contract in the harbor, there’s no timing conflict. Some contracts have a visual indicator saying they’re to be done immediately upon completion, so it’s even more of an interruption to the usual shipping process (seed supply, take credits, etc). Also idk if you got the normal or captain’s edition but the Tokyo expansion has an upgraded supply island that’s much better than the base. You put cards in there according to contract level (0-1, 2, 3+) and you can buy contracts from there during a contract action (2/4/6 respectively).
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Jul 17, 2018 16:54
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Got my copy of Container from KS last night, and whoever thought it was necessary to pack out the 85 shipping container components in tiny individual ziplock baggies deserves to be punched.
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Jul 17, 2018 16:59
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