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I started with Fury of Dracula, Descent 1e, Stone Age and Carcassonne (on a weekend away with friends in a beach cabin) and it all blew my mind. None of that felt very difficult to learn with entirely new groups, although everyone had plenty of experience with CRPGs and things. I was driven to buy stuff because I figured there had to be something better in the two decades since what I played as a kid, thinking of monopoly, hero quest, Scotland Yard and Talisman. Carcassonne and Stone Age were harder I think than FoD and Descent just because we were more intuitively ready for move people around a map stuff. That was about 10ish years ago I think and I basically started going down the BGG top 20 list right after that weekend (back when it was more stuff like Puerto Rico, Le Havre, Agricola, war of the ring etc).
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Sep 5, 2018 09:45
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Is 2nd Edition Pictomania, which seems to be a lot cheaper and smaller, a good pick up? Love me a Vlaada game, and nearly picked up the original in the past but never got around to it. Cheaper is good, but worse would not be!
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Sep 5, 2018 09:58
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If you or anyone else are looking for 1st Edition (5x card holders), Root: Riverfolk Expansions there are two charity auctions here, benefitting the Against Malaria Foundation: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113231053923 https://www.ebay.com/itm/113231054329 You may notice these are being run by Ceadar. That is indeed the same person that posts here, he’s just too cool to advertise his own charity auctions. 4 days to go!
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Sep 5, 2018 11:50
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So I’m just discovering what Key Forge is and I’m a bit  about it. I started on Magic back in the day, but I’ve shied away from CCGs for a long long while. I can understand anyone who isn’t excited about it, but it’s just too bizarre for me to miss. I’ll definitely by a couple decks to rope my old Magic buddies into.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:29
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Fat Turkey posted:Is 2nd Edition Pictomania, which seems to be a lot cheaper and smaller, a good pick up? Love me a Vlaada game, and nearly picked up the original in the past but never got around to it. Cheaper is good, but worse would not be! Yep, it's good, tried and tested at VlaadaCon. There's a few minor rules changes that don't really affect the game much, but it's still the best drawing game ever made.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:30
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Minus1Minus1 posted:So I’m just discovering what Key Forge is and I’m a bit You can get the same experience right now. Just buy one of those "bundle" starters of magic cards, they come with 10 packs and a bunch of lands. You used to be able to buy something called a "starter deck" that was basically the exact same thing as a keyforge deck, but a starter bundle should work fine. 10 packs = 150 cards so I guess you will have to do a bit of deck construction. You could split up the pack between two people and have 100% random decks though. https://www.amazon.com/Wizards-Coast-Bundle-Magic-Gathering/dp/B07D3RZRXH/ 
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Sep 5, 2018 13:17
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Minus1Minus1 posted:So I’m just discovering what Key Forge is and I’m a bit The tech aspects of it and the low barrier to entry are what intrigues me. Plus I've tried it and it's a pretty solid game.
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Sep 5, 2018 13:20
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I agree with those who are willing to introduce newbies to more complicated games, although you have to be able to assess people's capacity to handle things. For example, this past weekend, my wife and I introduced two newbies to A Feast for Odin. The one player had played CCG's for many years and is really good at trivia so we felt he should be ok with it. Same for the other player, who is pretty intelligent and she works in an IT job, so she can handle programming/strategizing things. At the end of the evening, their brains were pretty fried. I haven't had a chance to talk to the first player, but the second one said the game was a bear, but she found herself thinking about it the next day or two and even asked to play it again sometime soon so 
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Sep 5, 2018 15:21
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Feast for Odin, surprisingly, isn't very complex - there's a lot of things to do in it, but they all come down to "You get some tiles". The entire depth of the game is finding out what to do with those tiles and where to put them, but the game mechanics themselves are pretty simple. I introduced it to some people who don't often game and was surprised by how quickly they picked up the mechanics, even though I needed to explain every single action to them because dang there are a lot of actions.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:01
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Morpheus posted:Feast for Odin, surprisingly, isn't very complex - there's a lot of things to do in it, but they all come down to "You get some tiles". The entire depth of the game is finding out what to do with those tiles and where to put them, but the game mechanics themselves are pretty simple. I introduced it to some people who don't often game and was surprised by how quickly they picked up the mechanics, even though I needed to explain every single action to them because dang there are a lot of actions. Yeah the design is very clear on the board as to what does what. I played it (yes I know, it's not my favorite but a new gamer wanted to play it) with the new gamer and she was quickly totally comfortable with it. Uwe's games in general are usually very good with being accessible.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:30
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Speaking of Uwe, I just played Merkator for the first time on the weekend and had quite a bit of fun. I was expecting a very dry, and slow game of moving around a map and trading things. Instead I got a very dry, and fast, and fun game of moving around a map and trading things! Not to mention the little cardboard crates you build into the board are adorable (if slightly impractical considering the amount of time you're fishing cubes out of them, but maybe that's just me). Honestly, it's a little treasure that is not a classic by any stretch but still manages to be quite fun and chaotic. It's also neat seeing the way older Rosenberg designs make their way into his newer games. Really recommend people give it a shot if they haven't and I'm surprised it hasn't been tightened/cleaned up and re-presented in a new format like so many of his titles appear to be lately.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:45
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Onitama app is out and free on iOS and Android. Beta tested it and it’s great. Hope they add the new wind spirit expansion because it takes the game from solid to great. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onitama-the-board-game/id1288557147?mt=8
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Sep 5, 2018 17:57
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Got Brass: Birmingham back to the table last night, with 2 noobs and 1 person who I'd played it with before. They were all seasoned heavy Euro players. Unfortunately, one of the noobs had a sort of AP-by-committee. He would talk through all of his possible moves each turn and ask how viable they were. I'm fine with this for a learning game, but it did stretch it out to 4 hours. There are tons of little rules exceptions, although the board and player boards have tiny icons to remind you about them. Everyone wanted to play again in the future, and I suspect experienced players will knock it out in under 2 hours. I enjoy it much more than I expected, and the variable markets should give it legs. In this game, Shrewsbury was empty and the other 2 blanks were in the northwestern and southwestern markets, which also had 1 pottery and 1 goods respectively. That meant we were mainly battling for control of the eastern side of the board. Aggressive link building can really screw other people's networks and it always pays off in VPs. Right now, prioritizing links seems like the strongest strategy. Pottery seems really risky--there are so few available spaces that you can only reach that big 20 point finisher if everyone else ignores pottery and/or you overbuild. I can't wait for this to hit retail so more people are playing and discussing it.
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Sep 5, 2018 18:12
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Mojo Jojo posted:I'm very much on the side of gateway games being a patronising idea. Instead just make sure your teaching matches the experience level of the people in the group Those two things aren't mutually exclusive
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Sep 5, 2018 18:27
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Bottom Liner posted:Onitama app is out and free on iOS and Android. Beta tested it and it’s great. Hope they add the new wind spirit expansion because it takes the game from solid to great. Their IAP pricing is loving bizarre. Sci Fi Skin: $1.99 Medieval Skin: $1.99 Sensei's Path Expansion: $3.00 Bundle of all 3: $20.00 Savings from buying the bundle: Negative $13.02 EDIT: And you can't actually buy any of them; apparently jivjov fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 19:21
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FulsomFrank posted:Speaking of Uwe, I just played Merkator for the first time on the weekend and had quite a bit of fun. I found it super boring and procedural. To some degree I think Merkator was a response to Feld's Macao as both games are about drafting these cubes to build up a little engine within a tight play space but neither game has enough under the hood to drive the kind of interactions you expect from both designers. They're the kind of games Tom Vasel must think of whenever he goes "NOT ANOTHER MEDITERRANEAN CUBE TRADER!"
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Sep 5, 2018 20:13
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al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: What are the best games for 'engine building'? Bonus points if it plays <90 minutes
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Sep 5, 2018 20:17
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Shadow225 posted:al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: Dominion On another note, Cole Wehrle posted a short essay about Pax Pamir, Orientalism, and how he tries to counter the glib cultural appropriation of most Euro boardgames: https://katiesgamecorner.com/2018/09/04/politics-and-perspective-in-the-artwork-of-pax-pamir-guest-blog-by-cole-wehrle/
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Sep 5, 2018 20:24
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al-azad posted:I found it super boring and procedural. To some degree I think Merkator was a response to Feld's Macao as both games are about drafting these cubes to build up a little engine within a tight play space but neither game has enough under the hood to drive the kind of interactions you expect from both designers. They're the kind of games Tom Vasel must think of whenever he goes "NOT ANOTHER MEDITERRANEAN CUBE TRADER!" I could see that. I think I liked it because it moved quickly and there was enough of people bouncing from place to place and cubes being generated and the odd surprise move that threw a wrench into my plans that I enjoyed it. The bonuses and buildings are neat too. And yes, the thought of trying to sell someone on the game by describing its theme and and artwork made me almost start to fall asleep. That said, my GF and I had a quite a bit of fun with it and the rules were dirt simple to learn. This isn't the most flattering of comparisons but perhaps reminded me of Lords of Waterdeep/Caylus meets Pandemic in that you're going around grabbing those cubes (ayyyyyy) and wherever you go pops more cubes based on where you went, kind of like you caused an epidemic. Anyway, I think it is one of the weirder of Rosenberg's repertoire similar to Glass Road in that there isn't an obvious sort of evolution from game to game like there is from say Agricola -> Le Havre -> Caverna -> Feast for Odin
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Sep 5, 2018 20:27
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CaptainRightful posted:On another note, Cole Wehrle posted a short essay about Pax Pamir, Orientalism, and how he tries to counter the glib cultural appropriation of most Euro boardgames: My takeaway was "varied, contemporary outsider eyewitness images in the public domain are better because they are authentic and still closest to my own outsider perspective as a designer." Plausible, but I still wish he had commissioned art.
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Sep 5, 2018 20:45
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Shadow225 posted:al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: Race for the galaxy.
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Sep 5, 2018 21:06
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Shadow225 posted:al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: Race for the Galaxy Roll for the Galaxy Ginkgopolis Steampunk Rally Glen More
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Sep 5, 2018 21:17
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Shadow225 posted:al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: I'm a fan of Oh My Goods!
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Sep 5, 2018 21:32
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CaptainRightful posted:Got Brass: Birmingham back to the table last night, with 2 noobs and 1 person who I'd played it with before. They were all seasoned heavy Euro players. Unfortunately, one of the noobs had a sort of AP-by-committee. He would talk through all of his possible moves each turn and ask how viable they were. I'm fine with this for a learning game, but it did stretch it out to 4 hours. There are tons of little rules exceptions, although the board and player boards have tiny icons to remind you about them. Everyone wanted to play again in the future, and I suspect experienced players will knock it out in under 2 hours. As a fairly experienced Brass Lancashire group we are still nutting out Birmingham but my tentative verdict is that it loving rocks. Pottery seems a slightly better bet than Shipwrights in regular brass, but yeah, overbuilding is necessary, two of the buildings are clearly intended to be used to reserve spaces for the high value ones later up the chain.
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Sep 6, 2018 00:21
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Shadow225 posted:al's post has a trigger word that reminds me of a question that I have been wanting to ask for some time now: Race for the Galaxy is considered the top of its class, but I also hear good things about 51st State (based on the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie).
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Sep 6, 2018 01:24
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pospysyl posted:but I also hear good things about 51st State (based on the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie). You can test out the mechanics by looking at your phone instead of paying attention, so that every turn is like playing a brand new game!
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Sep 6, 2018 01:31
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I reflexively get a look of half fear, half disgust on my face when a dice tower video comes up in my auto play before I can catch it. I just wanted you all to know.
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Sep 6, 2018 04:01
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pospysyl posted:Race for the Galaxy is considered the top of its class, but I also hear good things about 51st State (based on the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie). Yeah Race (with 1 or 2 expansions) is definately the best option going.
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Sep 6, 2018 04:28
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I was out and about today and passed by the board game store. I decided to pick up Tiny Epic Quest. At $25 these tiny games are kind of an impulse buy. I've played one game solo so far, and I have to say I am just as impressed with this Tiny Epic game as I am with Western and Galaxies. They really do manage to pack a full "sized" game into a very tiny package. I'm sure I will pick up Defenders and Kingdoms at some point; I'm too deep in not to get them all. Tiny Epic Zombies is coming up and it looks really cool, kind of like a Dead of Winter type of game. Tiny Epic Quest has a lot going on. I would call it something like "MageKnight Jr", with the random hands of cards replaced with dice rolls. Instead of powered up cards you get little plastic items that can be clipped into your meeples. The little item rack and plastic items are a bit silly, but I enjoyed using it. Its actually pretty handy to be able to see which meeple has which equipment at a glance. I think this game will be a lot more interesting multiplayer than solo. Even though it is a competitive game movement actions are chosen with a communal process, and damage from goblin attacks is shared with the entire party. There is the potential for some politicking here that you wouldn't see in a typical euro. I rate it: 9.8/10 
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Sep 6, 2018 04:36
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Scared me there for a bit until I saw the username.
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Sep 6, 2018 04:53
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Slimy Hog posted:I'm a fan of Oh My Goods! a very good game, incidentally by the same designer as Great Western Trail
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Sep 6, 2018 05:11
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The meeples in tiny epic quest own, and are handy minis in a pinch.
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Sep 6, 2018 05:30
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Countblanc posted:I've said this a hundred thousand times by now, but it's not so much that games need to be simple as they need to appeal to a given prospective player's sensibilities. My mom is a math wizz and could easily play Agricola if she wanted... but she doesn't want to. She wants to play Carcassonne (and more recently Azul), and there's nothing I could ever say to convince her otherwise. And it's not a matter of the theme looking boring to her, but instead that she's convinced that it's "too much" and again, there is nothing I could say to convince her that she's definitely more than capable of playing The Farm Game. This is truth. The concept of gateway games may be condescending, but the games in this category appeal to a wider audience than 4 hour misery farming. The really patronizing thing is when people ask how to get their friends and loved ones into heavier games. Do not use a progression. Do not buy 5 minute dungeon as a stepping stone to gloomhaven. These are real people and not dogs to be trained. Don't force your hobbies on them.
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Sep 6, 2018 07:41
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I really like Scythe but I'm not sure my play group is as keen sometimes. We often have 8, but usually we have 5 or 7 players. What's a good exciting accessible game that plays well at a variable player count? Ideally something with asymmetry, personal quests, etc but that isn't Arkham related?
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Sep 6, 2018 09:25
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Yggdrasil is getting a reprint, but only a limited one. Pre-order for Spiel collection or BGG are getting 300 copies for the store (which will sell out in a day, probably).
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Sep 6, 2018 09:27
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While we're getting all these great reprints of classic Euros, can we get an updated look for El Grande? And preferably one that's not a $90 Big Box?
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Sep 6, 2018 09:40
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!Klams posted:I really like Scythe but I'm not sure my play group is as keen sometimes. We often have 8, but usually we have 5 or 7 players. What's a good exciting accessible game that plays well at a variable player count? Ideally something with asymmetry, personal quests, etc but that isn't Arkham related? Sidereal Confluence?
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Sep 6, 2018 10:21
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!Klams posted:I really like Scythe but I'm not sure my play group is as keen sometimes. We often have 8, but usually we have 5 or 7 players. What's a good exciting accessible game that plays well at a variable player count? Ideally something with asymmetry, personal quests, etc but that isn't Arkham related? Once you get to 7, and arguably 6, you'd be best of splitting the group in two
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Sep 6, 2018 11:25
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Hey folks, we've played Root four times now and have yet to see the Cats win. What's a winning strategy for them?
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Sep 6, 2018 12:07
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Mayveena posted:Hey folks, we've played Root four times now and have yet to see the Cats win. What's a winning strategy for them?
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Sep 6, 2018 12:11
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