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OgreNoah
Nov 18, 2003

Thanks for the replies all, I've got Splendor and Century Golem already so I won't need a third version.

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gutterdaughter
Oct 21, 2010

keep yr head up, problem girl

Terminally Bored posted:

Are there any legit good roll&move games?

They're not uncontroversial greats, but both Merchant of Venus (Classic Version) and Septikon: Uranium Wars do interesting and clever things with roll and move.

Merchant of Venus uses the directional intersections (eg. can only move thisaway if one of your dice is a 3) to force you to reroute on the fly and plan for multiple contingencies. You might not be able to get that load of Designer Genes to the horse planet this turn, but maybe you can take the long way and pick up that passenger on the Ice World...

Whereas in Septikon, you usually have about 6-10 different dudes on different tracks, and each space activates a different effect. So a lot of the planning is about setting up your men to give you options for different roles. It has a slightly too powerful FOO strategy (laser rush) though.

Vivian Darkbloom
Jul 14, 2004


Tekopo posted:

Oh My Goods! is random as hell and overall not that exciting, although some of the production chaining is quite interesting as well as the rather limited ways to get workers. Overall though the impact of the market offers is too much to make it enjoyable for me. Also probably one of the worst game names ever.



I like Oh My Goods! well enough but I'll probably never get it to the table often enough to get any good at it. I also picked up the first expansion because it's got a solo mode but I never really got around to deciphering it. :shrug:

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Terminally Bored posted:

Are there any legit good roll&move games?
Also, does Can't Stop count?

discount cathouse
Mar 25, 2009
Impact: Battle of the Elements is the new printing of the so-dumb-it's-good dice dexterity game Strike a.k.a. Der große Wurf. You throw dice into an arena, hoping to topple other dice and get matching sides. Sometimes they bounce out instead.

I like it, but i don't have the old edition to compare it to.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



I just remembered, weirdest thing at PAX was a Metal Gear Solid game from Emerson Matsuuchi but there was no demo unit and zero information available, it was just a billboard stealth announcement. Also, from the company that brought us great titles like the Mega Man board game came Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie which had two copies hidden between a million Buffy the Vampire Slayer licensed games. I thought about buying it because Cowboy Bebop is the greatest anime of all time, if not one of the greatest original TV shows, but again there's zero information on BGG not even a single production screenshot.

Max
Nov 30, 2002

I saw the same thing, and was completely confused by it.

rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


Magnetic North posted:

There is a Wikipedia article for those that want a laugh. Afterwards, remember that this was not done by some private military company. It was done by a company that sells those foam balls kids used to make models of the solar system.

United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets sounds like it came from the Simpsons.

What was Hobby Lobby going to do with these, anyway? Have the owner loot them out of the company?

FulsomFrank
Sep 11, 2005

Hard on for love

al-azad posted:

I just remembered, weirdest thing at PAX was a Metal Gear Solid game from Emerson Matsuuchi but there was no demo unit and zero information available, it was just a billboard stealth announcement. Also, from the company that brought us great titles like the Mega Man board game came Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie which had two copies hidden between a million Buffy the Vampire Slayer licensed games. I thought about buying it because Cowboy Bebop is the greatest anime of all time, if not one of the greatest original TV shows, but again there's zero information on BGG not even a single production screenshot.

Can anyone who knows how licensing works explain to me how it's so easy for people to make what feels like the 100th iteration of a buffy game? And is there a single good buffy game out there?

Shadow225
Jan 2, 2007




al-azad posted:

I just remembered, weirdest thing at PAX was a Metal Gear Solid game from Emerson Matsuuchi but there was no demo unit and zero information available, it was just a billboard stealth announcement. Also, from the company that brought us great titles like the Mega Man board game came Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie which had two copies hidden between a million Buffy the Vampire Slayer licensed games. I thought about buying it because Cowboy Bebop is the greatest anime of all time, if not one of the greatest original TV shows, but again there's zero information on BGG not even a single production screenshot.

I remember a write up from someone in this thread many moons ago. It didn't sound like anything ground breaking. I will see if I can find his post through my thread history.

Mr. Squishy
Mar 22, 2010

A country where you can always get richer.

rchandra posted:

United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets sounds like it came from the Simpsons.

What was Hobby Lobby going to do with these, anyway? Have the owner loot them out of the company?

It's a family-run business, so I guess just have them. Maybe decode them to hasten the end times or something.
Another good hobby lobby story is that they don't use bar codes because the three thick bars at the beginning, middle, and end of every code are apparently 666, suggesting that barcodes are the mark of the beast as spoken of in the book of revelation.

Shadow225
Jan 2, 2007




LuiCypher posted:

I'm crossposting this post of mine from the Gen Con thread, for it is board game-related.



I managed to playtest/demo two interesting games at Gen Con.

One was Wrestlenomicon, a 2-player card game by Arc Dream - Rob Heinsoo is the designer.

I really liked it. Some of the names for attacks are absurdly silly (Hastur has an attack called 'Say My Name Three Times') but I really like the momentum system (attacks appear on the momentum track in various places according to their 'speed' and further attacks also have a value that allows you to move cards closer to completion) because it feels like a fight. I mean, you're telegraphing the moves of deities the size of buildings and allowing for the opportunity to show a really big attack that you either move slowly or rush to completion, and it's all public knowledge. In addition, the last attack you successfully land can be used against you if your opponent lands an attack that 'punishes' that kind of attack.

It's really cool, and I'm Kickstarting it the moment it goes up. I also really respect Shane Ivey, because he told me that he wouldn't feel comfortable asking for more money in a Kickstarter until they deliver the Case Officer's Handbook for Delta Green.


The second game was a somewhat-secret Cowboy Bebop game. The reason why it's somewhat of a secret is because the potential publishers don't have the rights firmly in hand - they want to get the game as far along to completion as they can, show it to the rights-holders as proof of concept, and get greenlit to Kickstart. Also, my friend asked a whole shitload of vendors about it because a Cowboy Bebop picture appeared on a publisher's booth, but there was nothing related to it there. It was truly a passion project for him to track it down and have us play it - which we paid to do via generics.

For rights-related reasons, we couldn't take pictures of the game.

At any rate, I would call it Firefly minus the suck with a lot of inspiration from Battlestar Galactica in terms of card mechanics (but nothing involving traitors). It is a straight co-op game. One potential flaw of the game is that it demands four players - you play as the crew of the Bebop (Jet, Spike, Faye, and Ed) tracking down and scoring bounties in order to get money... which you will promptly spend on food, because HOLY poo poo do you run out of food quickly. At the beginning of everyone's turn, you draw an event card. The events are about equally good and bad, with some of the good events allowing you to play a card to get an additional (or different) benefit. Nevertheless, nearly every goddamn event tells you to spend one food.

As you can probably guess, running out of food is Bebop's primary enemy - which is pretty true to the show.

The reason why I say it demands four players though is that every player has 10 cards that represent different 'skills' - Hacking, Combat, Piloting, and Investigation. Naturally, every character has a varying amount of each type of card. For example, I think Ed has four Hacking cards, two dual Hacking and Investigation cards, one Investigation card, two Piloting cards, and one Combat card. Just like in the show, Ed's super-awesome at Hacking but does little to no good in combat. When called for, you can spend these cards a la Battlestar Galactica to clear conditions for checks, which will require either one or different combinations of skill cards.

In addition, although characters may have cards of the same skill, they have different effects when played as part of your actions for the turn or when you fulfill specific conditions - much like Battlestar Galactica cards. Faye might have a Combat card that, when played before chasing a bounty, the team will get additional money when you successfully catch them. Ed's Combat card (Feral Child) can be played to ignore spending food as part of an event card on her turn. No character shares card effects, though there are some similar themes (i.e., when interacting with a location, spend this card to gain an additional effect). These ten cards remain constant - as you spend them, you put them aside and stack them so that the most recently used card is on top. To refresh your hand, you spend an action to take the top two off the top of the pile - meaning that if you spend a particularly valuable first but don't refresh it until later, it take a lot of work to unbury it.

The core of the game revolves around navigating the board, gathering leads for where bounties might show up, and chasing the bounties. However, chasing bounties is really just a means to stay alive - to win the game, characters need to complete all three Acts in their 'session', which are themed after certain character arcs/stories in the show. Fulfilling sessions requires characters to spend the required skill cards as part of a check as well as fulfill certain conditions - one of Ed's Acts requires the Bebop to be in Jovian space before they can engage in the check on their turn, while one of Faye's requires her to be alone on the Bebop.

Oftentimes, meeting the requirements of sessions checks requires a lot of cards - however, players who are at the same planet can assist each other in any and all skill checks they might need to make. This makes teamwork a powerful advantage, as you can strategize how you spend cards and how you'll replenish them to you hand to ensure that you can make skill checks and help other make checks on their turns as well.

However it doesn't do for the team to stay clumped up together - as you visit locations on planets, they become 'used' and you need to visit ALL four locations on a planet before they can be used again. Oftentimes, this represents a huge inefficiency in action economy as character might spend their actions using locations they don't need to use, like grocery when you have no money, spaceports when you have no money, bars when you don't need to refresh your cards (but the last location, which allows you to draw contacts, remains pretty useful because they're how you locate bounties). To avoid this, Jet, Spike, and Faye can take their personal ships out to travel to other planets and locations by spending Fuel - but by doing so, they can't expect help from the other players. Ed has no ship but the Bebop, but even if the crew 'maroons' her she has a card that allows her to remote control the Bebop back to her so she can get on it again.

There's a lot more granularity to the game that I could explain (how tracking down bounties via leads works, etc.), but the core takeaways are:

- The game matches the theme very well.
- The characters' differing strengths and weaknesses makes playing them feel unique.
- The game delivers in terms of tension and making meaningful decisions. In addition to running out of food, another failure state is letting the Session tracker count down to zero (which you can only replenish by completing your Acts on your session cards, so the game tries to push you along to the victory state instead of staying in the failure spiral of catch bounties -> get food).
- Quarterbacking could still a bit of an issue (as it is in all co-ops), but the fact that the game state can change rapidly from your turn to your next one means it often becomes more of a collaborative decision-making process, and understanding each character's unique abilities would require severely spergy levels of game mastery to start dictating to other players what they need to do.
- It has an Ein card, it is special, and it is amazing. Ein is a wild card that any character can spend any time they need to make a check - he counts as Hacking, Combat, Pilot, and Investigation. Once used, he goes right into that character's discard pile, only able to be used again once he's refreshed.
- Fun fact: Ed has a card that allows her to fish Ein out of any discard pile no matter how deep he is and make him available again. They're such good friends.
- It passed the critical check among my group of four - we had fun playing, and we're really hopeful they'll score the license and Kickstart the poo poo out of it.

Here is the post from the dude who played the Cowboy Bebop game last year.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



I don't know if they Kickstarted it but there were maybe 3 total and they were literally hidden among the stack of Buffy games. It's up for preorder at a few places and looks to come out either this month or next but this company doesn't seem to be pushing it hard at all. Not nearly as hard as they pushed Mega Man and I would argue Cowboy Bebop has more reverence among their target audience than Mega Man.

Doubly so with Netflix announcing a live action show, that's just free advertising guys.

Merauder
Apr 17, 2003

The North Remembers.

FulsomFrank posted:

Can anyone who knows how licensing works explain to me how it's so easy for people to make what feels like the 100th iteration of a buffy game? And is there a single good buffy game out there?

Brands that don't carry a ton of equity at this point are often very willing to license their product out to any number of different licensees and/or product categories just to make any amount of money off the brand still. That's why you see stuff like Buffy which, while it carries a dedicated fan base for sure, is old and doesn't really run risk of hurting the brand by just pumping out products through anyone who expressed interest in making them. And generally your licensees don't care enough to fully understand niche products like board games; they only enter into a licensing agreement with a trust that their licencor will make the best choices for the product in the market which they are presumably the experts.

This isn't true of all brands, but generally tends to be my experience. I worked for a company who at one point made a deep pitch for a large series of card games, board games, and collectibles based on James Bond, for example. It's a brand that has more recent life in it for sure, but in general it's a lot of old content that's pretty well established, yet they were still incredibly protective of their brand and how it would be portrayed. To my knowledge they never did agree on any terms to produce anything.

Licensing is weird.

Shadow225
Jan 2, 2007




I think the answer to the Bebop question is more that Jasco is a bad company filled with bad designers who are hoping to coast off the reputation of their powerful licensed properties (Cowboy Bebop, Street Fighter, Megaman) than spend any amount of time or money innovating or advertising.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna

Shadow225 posted:

I think the answer to the Bebop question is more that Jasco is a bad company filled with bad designers who are hoping to coast off the reputation of their powerful licensed properties (Cowboy Bebop, Street Fighter, Megaman) than spend any amount of time or money innovating or advertising.

yeah this is the right answer 100% of the time if you're wondering if a Jasco game is good

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Speaking of weird licensing, I can't believe anyone still wants to work with Harmony Gold over Robotech knowing their reputation for being flaky and litigious. There were two or three Robotech games at the con by at least two separate publishers.

Also, did the Jordan Draper Tokyo games ship? I couldn't resist and bought them all but there's no reviews up for the games beyond the print and play versions. Tokyo Metro is a pretty handsome production but wooooooooobooooooooy the rules could've used a lot of work clarifying things and using specific language. Still I'm excited to play it because it has the same kind of few-rules/high-complexity that a Splotter game does. Any game where you bid for turn order is going to fly well in my group.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
Not surprising, I/E has a terrible rulebook as well. It needs a complete rewrite.

DogCop
Aug 6, 2008

Bake him away, toys.

Bottom Liner posted:

Not surprising, I/E has a terrible rulebook as well. It needs a complete rewrite.

Very true. It's organized so weird. Don't think we managed to play with the correct rules until the 3rd game.

Fellis
Feb 14, 2012

Kid, don't threaten me. There are worse things than death, and uh, I can do all of them.
How are the Jordan Draper Tokyo games? I saw them at PAX unplugged and they looked interesting, but I had just bought $250 of 18xx and Hollandspiele and needed to stay within budget

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

Mr. Squishy posted:

Another good hobby lobby story is that they don't use bar codes because the three thick bars at the beginning, middle, and end of every code are apparently 666, suggesting that barcodes are the mark of the beast as spoken of in the book of revelation.

If you buy a bunch of hobby paint and one or two more expensive ones they will without fail, 100% of the time, ring them all up as the cheapest item because they look similar and it's better to get robbed blind due to your own ignorance than buy into the Mark of the Beast UPC system.

gently caress Hobby Lobby, though, for real. They actively go out of their way to make life worse for millions of people because of their insane evangelical beliefs.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Much like a Splotter game Tokyo Metro makes many unfortunate design choices and will never change because the designer likes it. I would never introduce this to a colorblind person, this game where cyan and teal are adjacent colors.

Kiranamos
Sep 27, 2007

STATUS: SCOTT IS AN IDIOT
At least that Cowboy Bebop game looks like a standard, inoffensive coop design, compared to the actively terrible Mega Man game. I would imagine if they had KS’d Bebop with minis and stuff it would have easily made a ton of money.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
All the Good Mega Man Game mojo was stolen by Pixel Tactics.

Play Mega Man Pixel Tactics.

Oenis
Mar 15, 2012
I had a lot of fun with the Concordia base game when I played it, but it wasn't my copy. I'm now looking to add it to my collection, has anyone played the new Venus version? Would that be a good entry point?

Terminally Bored
Oct 31, 2011

Twenty-five dollars and a six pack to my name

Oenis posted:

I had a lot of fun with the Concordia base game when I played it, but it wasn't my copy. I'm now looking to add it to my collection, has anyone played the new Venus version? Would that be a good entry point?

AFAIK Venus adds team play rules and the standalone version has a good 2-player map (Cyprus) which the original lacked. I'd say it's a really good entry point, you get 4 maps which pretty much cover all player counts, the updated rules and everything the original game had.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Is something going on with Catalyst? They had a huge booth but the only thing available was Dragonfire and some other Hasbro licensed games. I don't remember seeing any Shadowrun products and they had a couple boxes of their Battletech skirmish game.

I've asked them at three separate cons over the past year when the new Battletech box set was coming out to get a lot of shrugged shoulders.

Impermanent
Apr 1, 2010
Is there a rewritten import export rulebook somewhere

gutterdaughter
Oct 21, 2010

keep yr head up, problem girl
For the curious, there was a Bebop video from Origins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMUg7U-AE1s

Looks like a pretty ho-hum hand-management game with a bit of proto-Cryptid location-narrowing. The Sessions are definitely the biggest disappointment, because I was foolishly envisioning Android-style multi-card branching narratives, instead of bland contract fulfillment.

Then again I'm pretty soured on non-Vlaada co-ops in general. (And even then, I'm the last human alive who actually prefers competitive Mage Knight.) So this is extremely not-my-wheelhouse.

Mr. Squishy
Mar 22, 2010

A country where you can always get richer.
6p Conc with team play rules is surprisingly playable.

TheNakedJimbo
Nov 18, 2004

If you die first, I am definitely going to eat you. The question is, if I die first...what are YOU gonna do?

Magnetic North posted:

There is a Wikipedia article for those that want a laugh. Afterwards, remember that this was not done by some private military company. It was done by a company that sells those foam balls kids used to make models of the solar system.

"United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets" is objectively the best name ever for a court case.

Edit: TNJ, you moron, refresh the thread before commenting :saddowns:

Actual content: I'll be teaching my six-year-old to play Ticket to Ride over Christmas break, and I'm curious to see how she handles it. There's a big difference between being able to make legal moves versus actually having a strategy (I can "play" chess, for instance, in that I know what all the pieces do, but I don't have a clue where to go from there). I'm going to encourage her to think out loud while playing so I can check her thought process and make sure she's thinking a step or two ahead.

We already play a few games together like Pass the Pigs, Roll For It, Vegas, and checkers, so she understands the rudiments of board gaming. I'm hopeful she enjoys it.

TheNakedJimbo fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 5, 2018

Papes
Apr 13, 2010

There's always something at the bottom of the bag.

al-azad posted:

Speaking of weird licensing, I can't believe anyone still wants to work with Harmony Gold over Robotech knowing their reputation for being flaky and litigious. There were two or three Robotech games at the con by at least two separate publishers.

Also, did the Jordan Draper Tokyo games ship? I couldn't resist and bought them all but there's no reviews up for the games beyond the print and play versions. Tokyo Metro is a pretty handsome production but wooooooooobooooooooy the rules could've used a lot of work clarifying things and using specific language. Still I'm excited to play it because it has the same kind of few-rules/high-complexity that a Splotter game does. Any game where you bid for turn order is going to fly well in my group.

I ordered his Tokyo games on thanksgiving and still haven’t received a shipping notice, so I think he is having some fulfillment issues.

Chill la Chill
Jul 2, 2007

Don't lose your gay


I’ve seen the Tokyo games all over fb and it was definitely at the convention.


Bottom Liner posted:

Not surprising, I/E has a terrible rulebook as well. It needs a complete rewrite.

I like that we played at least a couple dozen (it’s so fast) games of it before I reread the book and realized that everyone starts off with a base of one generic contract. You know, so you can import on turn 1 if you’d like. Is it anywhere in the setup rules, like it should be logically? Nah it’s hidden in some example. Also I should just get 6 generic contract cards made, one in each player color, that has a nice reminder that they also get a +1 contract level to containers of that color.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna

Chill la Chill posted:


I like that we played at least a couple dozen (it’s so fast) games of it before I reread the book and realized that everyone starts off with a base of one generic contract. You know, so you can import on turn 1 if you’d like. Is it anywhere in the setup rules, like it should be logically? Nah it’s hidden in some example. Also I should just get 6 generic contract cards made, one in each player color, that has a nice reminder that they also get a +1 contract level to containers of that color.

Yep same exact case I was thinking of. I hate when a critical rule is hidden away in an example snippet.

FulsomFrank
Sep 11, 2005

Hard on for love

Chill la Chill posted:

I like that we played at least a couple dozen (it’s so fast) games of it before I reread the book and realized that everyone starts off with a base of one generic contract. You know, so you can import on turn 1 if you’d like. Is it anywhere in the setup rules, like it should be logically? Nah it’s hidden in some example. Also I should just get 6 generic contract cards made, one in each player color, that has a nice reminder that they also get a +1 contract level to containers of that color.

Why... why would you hide a SET UP RULE IN AN EXAMPLE arghhhhhh.

I've been re-reading the Here I Stand rules and maybe it's just me but the book is so well-written and the examples are crystal clear.

EDIT: Yeah I am with you on the faction specific stuff.

FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 5, 2018

Chill la Chill
Jul 2, 2007

Don't lose your gay


FulsomFrank posted:

Why... why would you hide a SET UP RULE IN AN EXAMPLE arghhhhhh.

I've been re-reading the Here I Stand rules and maybe it's just me but the book is so well-written and the examples are crystal clear.

Well, technically it isn’t even setup. There are no cards to remind players they have a base 1 contract at the start of game. The player harbor/aid says “base 1” and seeing that somewhere in those couple dozen games made me scour the rulebook as to why. Draper should’ve just removed 6 cards from the set and made those base contract cards that gave a bonus +1 contract level to each respective color.

GMT rulebooks are great because of the technical writing setup but they can still have bad authors. I think it was unconditional surrender and 1846 that I had trouble with. Here I Stand is great but the faction-specific rules should’ve also been included in the general rules (even as asterisks/footnotes) as well as compiled neatly at the back.

Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 5, 2018

al-azad
May 28, 2009



FulsomFrank posted:

Why... why would you hide a SET UP RULE IN AN EXAMPLE arghhhhhh.

I've been re-reading the Here I Stand rules and maybe it's just me but the book is so well-written and the examples are crystal clear.

That sort of SPI derived wargame style may not facilitate easy learning but they are all encompassing when it comes to information.

taser rates
Mar 30, 2010
mark herman is awful at rulebooks

Jejoma
Nov 5, 2008
Where does Fire in the Lake sit on a scale of Falling Sky to Pendragon, in terms of rules complexity / weight?

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blackmongoose
Mar 31, 2011

DARK INFERNO ROOK!

TheNakedJimbo posted:

"United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets" is objectively the best name ever for a court case.

Someone hasn't heard of United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins

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