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FulsomFrank posted:Yeah like Staltran was saying there are a few ways to speed things up a bit and reduce some of the administration, but I would focus on A) using the normal AST track, not the expert one and B) set a brisk time for trades. We started with four minutes and then moved up to five after people had larger hand sizes. Uh wow, we usually go with 10 minute trades and 15 later, though usually everyone is done before then and we end it early. Brisk limits would save an hour to hour and a half, of course, but the game still takes the whole day so I personally prefer less pressure on trades. I can definitely see the upside though. Could let you play with expert AST without taking forever, the game on Saturday took about 13.5 hours including lunch and pizza in the evening with basic. But yes don't even consider expert AST with everyone inexperienced, it will add at least one turn and probably at least two to the game, and the later turns are longer. Could easily be more with inexperienced players. Plus it would be horridly unfun to get stuck for multiple turns. Anyway, some other advice I didn't think of earlier. Most important, though also obvious point: multiple people can be moving at the same time if they're far enough from each other that they don't care what the others are doing. Even if they're next to each other you can often just ask if the one moving earlier is going to attack you, then start moving yourself if they're not going to (though that can telegraph that you're not attacking either, but that's usually not a huge deal). Probably try to encourage people to think about what techs they want to go for next before hand too, since people can take 5-10 minutes to decide if you let them, especially if they're inexperienced and don't know/remember what techs there are. You should probably make suggestions in the latter case too. Have people tell everyone when they buy a special ability, one time someone just went "oh I bought fundamentalism last turn" at the special abilities phase, while having all of his techs in a single stack with only the top card showing to save table space, leading to all of us calling bullshit (he ended up not using it that turn). If possible play somewhere with plenty of space, not just table space (though a lot of that is obviously needed too) but also to walk around during trade phase. You don't want to sit for 12+ hours and unless you're playing with 5-6 players staying around the table for trade isn't really workable anyway. This is also probably a part of why I haven't actually found the game that exhausting, in addition to a lot of downtime during movement phase. One problem with the game is that since the non-tradeable calamity always start at the bottom of the stack, it's easy to count 9-stack buys and know when Regression is next. Especially with inexperienced players getting to 9 cities is rare, so it can easily sit there with no-one ever buying it. Not sure what to do about this honestly, even if you don't purposely try to figure out if it's next it can be pretty obvious if all 9 stack commodities have been drawn. A common house rule is to shuffle it in the bottom three cards instead of just putting it at the bottom apparently, though that seems like it could (with some player counts) result in the non-tradeable calamity being drawn before the tradeable. Finally some strategic rather than organizational advice, you should probably tell people that they shouldn't be too scared of calamities, especially early on in the trade phase. You can often just pass it on to someone else even if you get one, and you want to get started on collecting some set. And obviously if you already have a lot of some set collecting more of it is very valuable. Relatedly, cashing in partial sets is very suboptimal, and is very rarely worth it. Except for 1 and 2 stack cards, since they're not worth that much anyway and generally no-one is very interested in them, and occassionally a couple 3 stack cards.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:14
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CaptainApathyUK posted:Spirit Island expansion kickstarter is live The day I have been waiting for is here! Now I'm waiting for release.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:22
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Is Spirit Island Branch and Claw too much of a good thing? I have really been enjoying the base game, but Branch and Claw seems like it must try to do too much. I’m always interested in new spirits and power cards, but the new rules settings seem like they run the risk of giving the game some bloat, and now I’m wondering if this newer expansion will further that trend. Also: a 6 player game? Egads. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 19:12
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Jewmanji posted:Is Spirit Island Branch and Claw too much of a good thing? I have really been enjoying the base game, but Branch and Claw seems like it must try to do too much. I’m always interested in new spirits and power cards, but the new rules settings seem like the run of giving the game some bloat, and now I’m wondering if this newer expansion will further that trend. The game was originally designed with B&C but he stripped it out into an expansion. Really it just adds the token mechanics and event deck (which some people don't like, others do). I think you can get plenty of play out of the base box but I'm also pretty happy to have the expansion. The new expansion doesn't look to add much as far as mechanics, just a lot more of everything we already had. I'm in for the expansion and organizer I think. I'll just have to box band it.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:23
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I had read that B&C was part of the original design before getting separated out as an expansion, but that just buttressed my sense that if Reuss’ publisher thought it might be too bulky. I’d be thrilled to be wrong though 
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Oct 16, 2018 19:30
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Bottom Liner posted:The game was originally designed with B&C but he stripped it out into an expansion. Really it just adds the token mechanics and event deck (which some people don't like, others do). I think you can get plenty of play out of the base box but I'm also pretty happy to have the expansion. The new expansion doesn't look to add much as far as mechanics, just a lot more of everything we already had. Yeah, it looks like the only new mechanic is the badlands, which is just another token thing. Going from the base game to exp1 was a lot in terms of added overhead though. I'm glad this one isn't quite the leap. I'd rather have more options within existing mechanics than new mechanics altogether.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:51
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Jewmanji posted:Is Spirit Island Branch and Claw too much of a good thing? I have really been enjoying the base game, but Branch and Claw seems like it must try to do too much. I’m always interested in new spirits and power cards, but the new rules settings seem like the run of giving the game some bloat, and now I’m wondering if this newer expansion will further that trend. I could take it or leave it. Most of the tokens are just straightforward representations of effects already present in the base game (e.g. "skip the next build here"), which is hard to object to. I was leery about events, but they're handled pretty well overall (can occasionally be swingier than I'd like, though.) I'm not a big fan of the beast token implementation; if you're not playing a spirit based around them their effects are likely to be very minor and random, but you still have to spend a lot of time fiddling with them and making decisions about them. They're fun as hell when you are playing that spirit, though. IMO they probably should have just tied tokens to specific spirits that use them, but oh well. Overall it's a good way to mix things up and add variety, but the base game holds up very well on its own, it's not like B&C fills a gaping hole.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:06
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With stretch goals it's looking like there's going to be something like 13 new spirits. Unreal. Looking forward to the volcano spirit.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:20
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SettingSun posted:With stretch goals it's looking like there's going to be something like 13 new spirits. Unreal. Looking forward to the volcano spirit. I counted 12? Plus 10 aspects, which modify existing ones. It's insane. Edit: 8 in the expansion base, 1 in the promo, and 3 more in the stretches? Also insane is them asking for full MSRP for the game that will be delivered in 18 months, when it can be bought right now for like $25 off what they're asking. The bundles save like a dollar from what you get just picking them one by one in the add-on list. They're not really trying to save anyone any money here, there's not a lot of enticement to go beyond just the basic expansion-only pledge.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:24
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Gonna back this as soon as I get home, hopefully we get pnp versions of songs of the spirits so I can mess around with them in the TTS module a bit early. 18 months, oof. Also I really love B&C's event deck. I certainly understand the issues some people have with it, but it adds the perfect amount of drama to the game for me. Plus it's not like it's just things happening at you, there's a lot of decision making during the event phase too. I can't imagine playing without it.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:49
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Countblanc posted:Gonna back this as soon as I get home, hopefully we get pnp versions of songs of the spirits so I can mess around with them in the TTS module a bit early. 18 months, oof. Yeah, I like the event deck a lot. It adds some more variance in the otherwise conveyor belt system the AI runs on.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:50
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Ravendas posted:I counted 12? Plus 10 aspects, which modify existing ones. It's insane. Edit: 8 in the expansion base, 1 in the promo, and 3 more in the stretches? And unless there are Kickstarter exclusives there is little enticement for backing the expansion.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:51
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Ropes4u posted:And unless there are Kickstarter exclusives there is little enticement for backing the expansion. Yeah, the exclusive right now is the two extra spirits in the promo, which will get sold on its own for $9.95 (plus $5ish shipping) from their website later on. I'm backing it for now, but if I don't see pressing reasons to back it now instead of picking it up cheaper in retail, I might drop. It's not like I don't have enough games to play as it is, when this arrives in 18 months I'll have even more games that don't get played. Side note: My game night tends to be like every other week, and every other time it gets canceled. So I get to play like once every three weeks it seems, from 7:30pm to midnight-ish, with friends that aren't keen to learn rules-heavy games or have any thoughts of boardgames outside of the instant we're playing them. So, I already have a ton I want to play that just doesn't. Ugh.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:56
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Ropes4u posted:And unless there are Kickstarter exclusives there is little enticement for backing the expansion. Kickstarter exclusives (except like, aesthetic exclusives) are a loving poo poo practice and I'm glad that they're not doing that. That being said, it's also kind of difficult to convince myself to get this KS instead of just waiting for it on CSI or something. Like, drat, at least offer a 10% discount or something.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:56
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GrandpaPants posted:Kickstarter exclusives (except like, aesthetic exclusives) are a loving poo poo practice and I'm glad that they're not doing that. That being said, it's also kind of difficult to convince myself to get this KS instead of just waiting for it on CSI or something. Like, drat, at least offer a 10% discount or something. Yeah. Kickstarters need at least one of these three to really entice backers: 1. Exclusives (which are problematic in their own way) 2. Discounts 3. Early arrival There aren't exclusives here, since the promos can be bought later. The discount is nonexistant, you're going to pay more here than retail, and early arrival isn't really guaranteed, and might not be worth it really since it's so far out already.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:59
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Or, y'know, "this won't exist without you and you actually want it to exist" The entire loving point of the platform. Not glorified preorders. 
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Oct 16, 2018 21:00
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silvergoose posted:Or, y'know, "this won't exist without you and you actually want it to exist" So give them one of the three I listed above to get them to back it
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Oct 16, 2018 21:07
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Eh the free shipping is a decent enough option, plus it was very hard to get a hold of Spirit Island for a while that I'm fine kickstarting and guaranteeing a copy.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:07
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silvergoose posted:Or, y'know, "this won't exist without you and you actually want it to exist" This would be a valid point for a project that didn't blow through its goal in 17 minutes.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:14
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After waffling for most of the day I settled on just the base pledge to get the expansion. I thought about the one that gets me a the base game and first expansion, since this isn't coming out for 18 months(!) and who knows what condition my very well played copy is going to be in. I'll just deal with it; maybe just buy again at retail when the time comes. The goodies tier didn't entice me either. Eh.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:16
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It's also an incredibly expensive MSRP. I got B&C for like $25 from Amazon, I can't see why I should pay $59 for this one.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:33
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SettingSun posted:After waffling for most of the day I settled on just the base pledge to get the expansion. I thought about the one that gets me a the base game and first expansion, since this isn't coming out for 18 months(!) and who knows what condition my very well played copy is going to be in. I'll just deal with it; maybe just buy again at retail when the time comes. The goodies tier didn't entice me either. Eh. if you're worried about your copy getting owned by then i really recommend you start sleeing your cards.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:26
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Morpheus posted:Rajas was a cool game, but I didn't really feel much from it besides the pretty art and such. Nothing really new in its mechanics that I didn't see better elsewhere. Just a really standard dice-placement euro. For me, it does at least one unique thing with its endgame condition. For those who aren’t familiar, the money track and the VP track start at opposite ends of the board and move towards each other, and the endgame is triggered when they meet. It makes it feel like a race and complicates the question of when to transition from money making to point grabbing, as money making is still valuable throughout the whole game. Other than that though, pretty standard mechanics. At least it’s free on yucata.de, so you can give it a try risk free.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:28
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silvergoose posted:Or, y'know, "this won't exist without you and you actually want it to exist" Ship sailed on that long ago. KS embraced being a preorder store as soon as they realized it was more profitable.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:42
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Oh I know. I'm just bitter.
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Oct 16, 2018 23:24
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Container and Pax Pamir are my most recent “wouldn’t exist” games. They are still around. Missed out on Orc Stabr 😡 Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 03:50
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I'm not sure how I feel about the new rules for adding an additional board in Spirit Island. My group has been playing with all four thematic boards without an adversary two player or with an adversary three player and our house rules seem a lot less clunky. Number of fear tokens, blight, and per player effects from fear cards or events are based on number of boards, not players. Nothing else changed. Only being able to add a single board and it starting out mostly empty seems anticlimactic after what we've gotten used to. Also the +1 fear token per player seems kinda arbitrary. I'll still give it a try. Spirit Island is our gaming group's Gloomhaven, we've played it nearly every week and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
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Oct 17, 2018 09:05
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Bottom Liner posted:
Lemme tell you how I got a copy of C&C Ancients, stickered it up and then realised I'd stickered about 20% of the blocks wrong. It's still sitting there unplayed on my shelf.
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Oct 17, 2018 12:35
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KPC_Mammon posted:I'm not sure how I feel about the new rules for adding an additional board in Spirit Island. My group has been playing with all four thematic boards without an adversary two player or with an adversary three player and our house rules seem a lot less clunky. Number of fear tokens, blight, and per player effects from fear cards or events are based on number of boards, not players. Nothing else changed. Only being able to add a single board and it starting out mostly empty seems anticlimactic after what we've gotten used to. Also the +1 fear token per player seems kinda arbitrary. I gather that the intent is to create a more smoothly scaling variant to accommodate a wider range of scenarios/adversaries, something you can just plug into whatever scenario for a modestly longer/more difficult game instead of just "this is a beast, so pick something easy or it will be unwinnable."
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Oct 17, 2018 15:02
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Bottom Liner posted:It's also an incredibly expensive MSRP. I got B&C for like $25 from Amazon, I can't see why I should pay $59 for this one. This. I'm sure the discount will be greater than $9 or whatever it would cost to buy the bonus spirits separately. Also, I've still only played the base game about 5 or 6 times without even changing the blight levels or doing scenarios and my copy of B&C is still in shrink.
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Oct 17, 2018 15:17
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nonathlon posted:Lemme tell you how I got a copy of C&C Ancients, stickered it up and then realised I'd stickered about 20% of the blocks wrong. C&C doesn’t have secret blocks like Columbia games or Triumph and Tragedy. You should still play with them even if the colors are wrong
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Oct 17, 2018 15:26
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T-Bone posted:also the Ganz Schon Clever online implementation is a fun time waster but it's led me down the rabbit hole of what a perfect score is: https://www.schmidtspiele.de/static/onlinespiele/ganz-schoen-clever/ (334 in solo apparently according to https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1975758/maximum-score) I can't break 297. It definitely works perfectly as a phone game, just the right length to be a quick distraction and enough thinking to not be totally mindless. For what it's worth, I can consistently score 305-315 (high of 325 so far) with one of two basic strategies: Fill all the blue zone and an hourglass shape in yellow (top and bottom rows and middle two columns) while filling orange to the +1 bonus. Also either 1) fill purple all the way and green to the fox or 2) fill green to the purple 6 bonus and purple to the fox. Once you get used to which results are priorities to check off, you should be able to complete one of the two patterns about 1/4 of the time, which will usually get you 300+.  DANGER: Strategic analysis of a roll and write follows, which is probably not the best use of your time to read I started by noticing that blue and purple are the most efficient zones in terms of bonuses out to dice in ratio. Then I looked at point sources and quickly realized foxes are the best point source around. I figured green and yellow are usually the lowest scorers, so I targeted the green 28 point space and 2 yellow columns for 30. Then I looked at the most efficient places to get foxes - orange is by far the worst, so I plan to get the other 4. The rest of the strategy falls into place from there: if you're getting the blue fox, you might as well fill the whole zone since it outputs bonuses so efficiently, the yellow shape is the best way to get 2 columns and a fox, with the top left also being checked since it gets you two bonuses for one die. The green strategy is based on bumping your fox values even higher and the last two green checks being worth a lot, while the purple one makes up for slightly lower fox values by having 2 extra numbers written in powered by the efficiency of the purple zone. The theoretical high score of the purple route is 334, while the green route can get 335, but I usually find the purple route scores better in actual play.
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Oct 17, 2018 21:32
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blackmongoose posted:It definitely works perfectly as a phone game, just the right length to be a quick distraction and enough thinking to not be totally mindless. For what it's worth, I can consistently score 305-315 (high of 325 so far) with one of two basic strategies: I follow a similar pattern with results around three hundred, only instead of an hourglass yellow I get a bow tie (outer columns and middle two rows). You still end up with thirty points, use all yellow numbers 1-6 with 2 1s and 2 2s, and the +1, and I find that the orange bonus can really come in handy to get the orange fox and the multipliers. The green bonus can come in handy to get past the 5 or get to the green's purple 6. I usually end up finishing blue without needing to use the yellow bonus, and the orange fox replaces the yellow one. I've never tried filling up purple though, so I'll give that a shot! As for turn by turn priority, your first three rounds should go Blue edges (2-4 and 10-12) > Purple 6s > High Oranges > Greens > Common blues > Middle Oranges > Purples = Yellows. Never use low oranges unless you have to. You can stall on yellows early on since you'll need every number, which means every number is equally valuable. Greens are important since you should get past the 5 as soon as possible. After the first three rounds, what you need to do should be more clear. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 22:09
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pospysyl posted:I follow a similar pattern with results around three hundred, only instead of an hourglass yellow I get a bow tie (outer columns and middle two rows). You still end up with thirty points, use all yellow numbers 1-6 with 2 1s and 2 2s, and the +1, and I find that the orange bonus can really come in handy to get the orange fox and the multipliers. The green bonus can come in handy to get past the 5 or get to the green's purple 6. I usually end up finishing blue without needing to use the yellow bonus, and the orange fox replaces the yellow one. I've never tried filling up purple though, so I'll give that a shot! I prefer the hourglass because I tend to have more trouble getting the blue 10-12s and because not going for the orange fox means I can be incredibly picky on orange 5s or 6s only. It definitely would help with yellows though, busting on yellows is one of my common sources of failed runs. I agree with everything else in the post other than that I value yellow 3+ higher because it's a higher difficulty zone for me.
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Oct 17, 2018 22:19
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Played Yellow & Yangtze for the first time last night, and it's definitely not something I would judge after a single game. The hardest thing for me was to get Tigris & Euphrates out of my mind. I initiated and won a war between 2 kingdoms and got 1 cube out of it--removing only the enemy leader from the board and no tiles. Felt pretty weird.
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Oct 17, 2018 22:27
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So, Maisherly said they were doing some promo art for Hanamikoji for Essen: Is it possible for someone going to arrange picking these up and sending them to me? I'm gonna end up spending more on dumb promo art for the game than the actual game itself lol
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Oct 17, 2018 22:48
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Chill la Chill posted:So, Maisherly said they were doing some promo art for Hanamikoji for Essen: 
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Oct 17, 2018 23:00
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blackmongoose posted:It definitely works perfectly as a phone game, just the right length to be a quick distraction and enough thinking to not be totally mindless. For what it's worth, I can consistently score 305-315 (high of 325 so far) with one of two basic strategies: I feel bad now because my playgroup back home really likes GSC but hasn't gotten the chance to play it much and I'm just gonna be beating them by like 150 points  actually this is why I generally avoid playing board games I'd like to play with friends/family online too much, crushing people is boring Although for some reason my Terra Mystica skills just evaporate if I don't play online a bit, it's embarrassing. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 23:22
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Chill la Chill posted:So, Maisherly said they were doing some promo art for Hanamikoji for Essen: Holy crap, I would love to some of these too.
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Oct 17, 2018 23:30
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Chill la Chill posted:So, Maisherly said they were doing some promo art for Hanamikoji for Essen: The Kickstarter for these just ended. Of course no one knew about it because who would.
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Oct 18, 2018 04:40
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