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Chill la Chill
Jul 2, 2007

Don't lose your gay


The metagame being opened up as electronic implementations happened and one half of the world was completely blind to the metagame of the other half shows off its tournament viability. Really, it’s mindblowing reading about that on the forums when you’ve got games like mtg where the constant influx of new cards still leads to a solved set a few weeks in.

However, WsdV’s flatter learning curve and lack of dice rolls are still improvements. You lose out on the aforementioned dramatic swings that are part of wargames, but I’m also a bit of a fan of the attrition/grinding type of game. Big fan of Tom Russell’s designs and grappling-based martial arts for that reason.

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Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Chill la Chill posted:

The metagame being opened up as electronic implementations happened and one half of the world was completely blind to the metagame of the other half shows off its tournament viability. Really, it’s mindblowing reading about that on the forums when you’ve got games like mtg where the constant influx of new cards still leads to a solved set a few weeks in.

However, WsdV’s flatter learning curve and lack of dice rolls are still improvements. You lose out on the aforementioned dramatic swings that are part of wargames, but I’m also a bit of a fan of the attrition/grinding type of game. Big fan of Tom Russell’s designs and grappling-based martial arts for that reason.
I think the big swings in WsdV still happen, and when they happen, it feels more like your own goddamn fault for getting yourself into that situation. Some of the event cards in WsdV are absolutely crushing.

djfooboo
Oct 16, 2004




Twilight Struggle is good. It was the number one game on BGG forever. Lists don't lie.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


djfooboo posted:

Twilight Struggle is good. It was the number one game on BGG forever. Lists don't lie.
Numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you tonight in the Something Awful board game thread.

Legit Businessman
Sep 2, 2007


SoftNum posted:

Meeple Circus

Dexterity game about building stacks of meeples, and meeple-like things. This was pretty disappointing vs. our expectation. It was fun and engaging to build towers of stuff; but the scoring seems uneven, you get 4 points for some seemingly trivial things, and 1-2 points for things that are way harder. The cards in act 2 & 3 don't seem well balanced. It was fun, enjoyment was had, and laffs when things went wrong. It just seemed like the more complicated things didn't score as many points as like "here's a set piece for each scoring part gimmie points" My wife and I just felt disappointed with our initial run-through.

This game is great for the board gamers because it finally gives them a competitive outlet for all the practicing they have been doing whilst playing other games (and get to be slightly jealous that they didn't come up with the idea of monitizing stacking poo poo that everyone does in other board games when it's not their turn/bored). For people that are new to board games, it's straightforward and just requires physical dexterity, which isn't something usually demanded of board games, which is also interesting. The companion app is also very helpful as it provides a nice bit of circus music (on a good timer) to really set the tone of the game.

It's basically Who's line is it anyway, the points are made up and don't matter. It's a great aperitif before settling into the main board game of the night for our group.

SoftNum
Mar 31, 2011

Drewjitsu posted:

This game is great for the board gamers because it finally gives them a competitive outlet for all the practicing they have been doing whilst playing other games (and get to be slightly jealous that they didn't come up with the idea of monitizing stacking poo poo that everyone does in other board games when it's not their turn/bored). For people that are new to board games, it's straightforward and just requires physical dexterity, which isn't something usually demanded of board games, which is also interesting. The companion app is also very helpful as it provides a nice bit of circus music (on a good timer) to really set the tone of the game.

It's basically Who's line is it anyway, the points are made up and don't matter. It's a great aperitif before settling into the main board game of the night for our group.

Yeah I think my wife and I were expecting something a bit heavier (I also thought the game was a lot longer than it is). I think if we hadn't built it up so much we would've liked it better.

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




!Klams posted:

This thread dunks on it a bunch, but we've massively enjoyed charterstone. It's definitely not perfect, but every round is fun, trying to make optimal plays, and then when the round finishes something exciting happens! I think there's way more to like than not, if you can get it for a decent price and have a regular enough group of 4, 5 or 6 that can commit to 7ish sessions (two games in each) I'd say go for it.

I didn't say it was bad! I said it was not great, our group enjoyed the whole 12 games. But I strongly think 2p would be baaad.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


CaptainRightful posted:

Twilight Struggle is a pretty good game but extremely overrated, because it's so much about memorization. I prefer Wir sind das Volk for this reason. Other "fully hidden" CDGs like Paths of Glory are also superior because they have a lower percentage of nullifying response cards and no instant suicide cards.

The two main 2p war games in my collection are Twilight Struggle and Sekigahara. I never end up playing TS because it's not that good for a first-time player who has never seen the cards before.

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




CommonShore posted:

The two main 2p war games in my collection are Twilight Struggle and Sekigahara. I never end up playing TS because it's not that good for a first-time player who has never seen the cards before.

To be fair, sekigahara is magnificent.

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

sekigahara is tied up with my adp order and it still hasnt shown up :argh:

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


silvergoose posted:

To be fair, sekigahara is magnificent.

Yeah. I guess my point is that Sekigahara is a better 2p war game than Twilight Struggle because a slightly more experienced player can actually get a game out of someone who has never played before.

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




CommonShore posted:

Yeah. I guess my point is that Sekigahara is a better 2p war game than Twilight Struggle because a slightly more experienced player can actually get a game out of someone who has never played before.

Yeah but that would mean Sekigahara would be a better 2p war game than NT, and that's just plain silly. ;)

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


silvergoose posted:

Yeah but that would mean Sekigahara would be a better 2p war game than NT, and that's just plain silly. ;)

I'm not convinced that NT actually exists

Chill la Chill
Jul 2, 2007

Don't lose your gay


silvergoose posted:

Yeah but that would mean Sekigahara would be a better 2p war game than NT, and that's just plain silly. ;)

Same, was about to say NT and Go would get knocked down a few notches by that metric.

The End
Apr 16, 2007

You're welcome.
For me as a history nerd, TS just has so much theme and flavour, and does a great job of evoking the 'domino theory' view of the Cold War that I'll always enjoy it. There are definitely a lot of cracks showing in the facade, having been so extensively played and scrutinised over the years, but I love what it does with the subject matter.

I'd love to see someone try to build upon it, do a more realistic take on the Cold War, but this will do till then.

vulturesrow
Sep 25, 2011

Always gotta pay it forward.
I recently bought the electronic version of Though the Ages (never played on tabletop) and I'm getting absolutely poo poo on by the AI. Can anyone recommend a guide or throw me some tips?

al-azad
May 28, 2009



I haven't played the 2+2 expansion, but in my experience WsdV lacks the dynamism of TS. With the exception of a few cards that swing in huge directions I find a lot of it is a tug of war played out over a couple inches of ground with most of the action happening in between rounds where it goes through a COIN-esque microgame scoring system. I wish Maria or a game like Maria was good at 2 because like Sekigahara the on-map action is straightforward enough for new players to feel competitive but the political sideboard impacts a lot of the decisions you make.

An important thing for me in TS' design is its zero sum scoring which when coupled with the knowledge of the possibility of a scoring card being in your opponent's hand leads to a lot of the paranoia fueled strategy other 2-player games lack. The digital version developed this meta where you value any card that scores you points the highest but I found this strategy to be a huge gamble where if you don't win by the middle of the mid-war you've hosed your board state up so badly that you'll lose in the final scoring state.


vulturesrow posted:

I recently bought the electronic version of Though the Ages (never played on tabletop) and I'm getting absolutely poo poo on by the AI. Can anyone recommend a guide or throw me some tips?

TtA is also a game that highly rewards knowledge of what cards come out in what ages so play a few full games until you recognize your possibility of leaders and buildings. But generally speaking TtA is all about the military game and unless you combo into something that scores a poo poo ton of points in Age 2 carrying into Age 3 you're not going to win without at least maintaining parity in military. The AI is aggressive, attacking weaker players almost exclusively. If you don't get good military cards yourself then you definitely want to seed the events with detrimental things that happen to the weakest player or colonies but only if you know you could rebuild the units you lost acquiring it.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
TtA military generally won't win you the game, but neglecting it will certainly lose you the game.

As a rule of thumb, you want to stay close enough to the leader that you can play hand cards to defend yourself from an aggression. Don't overcommit though - resources you invest in early military is far less useful later on than investing those resources elsewhere, so if you build up to be the military leader but don't actually use that edge for anything then you're being inefficient.

The Eyes Have It
Feb 10, 2008

Third Eye Sees All
...snookums
Through the Ages is about sustainable growth (and to a lesser extent, diversity) more than anything else, I think. Not exclusively, of course. But is not really workable to (for example) ignore X to go all in on Y in an age so that you can buy some pivotal card that gives you a massive payoff and pull way ahead because your gamble paid off.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
Scavenging the AFfO trays was the best decision. Antiquity is finally organized in a sensible way (the other tray went to The Colonists).

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Last night I played Ticket to Ride: UK for the first time. I know those games are looked down on for being entry-level tabletop, but it's neat how the different boards and the gimmicks they use can change the game. UK has a lot of short routes and no longest road goal, so things spider a lot more than on the US map and you can easily hang onto tickets that don't directly link into your main mesh. On top of that there's technology you need to buy with wild cards (or using four of any color as a wild). Want to build 3-length routes? Takes a wild. 4/5/6-length? Two more. Ferries? Two wilds for propeller technology. You also need to buy to access Wales, Scotland, or Ireland/France. As a result everything starts very cramped and short, and then as people buy more techs they spread out. And you can also buy a tech (but only one) on top of your move for the turn, so you can sit on things until you need them to avoid tipping your hand.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
TtR is great and pretty universally loved even if some are burnt out on it. I prefer the smaller maps and shorter versions but it’s a solid design.

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
Played 7 Wonders with the Armada expansion for the first time...I like Armada WAY more than Babel. Adding an extra layer of "Here's a bonus thing you can do alongside the cards you're already playing" integrated really well, and none of the extra mechanics were too terribly punishing for those who didn't heavily engage with them. (In contrast to, say, the Great Projects from babel, with their crazy punitive effects for not engaging with them.)

teacup
Dec 20, 2006

= M I L K E R S =

Bruceski posted:

Last night I played Ticket to Ride: UK for the first time. I know those games are looked down on for being entry-level tabletop, but it's neat how the different boards and the gimmicks they use can change the game. UK has a lot of short routes and no longest road goal, so things spider a lot more than on the US map and you can easily hang onto tickets that don't directly link into your main mesh. On top of that there's technology you need to buy with wild cards (or using four of any color as a wild). Want to build 3-length routes? Takes a wild. 4/5/6-length? Two more. Ferries? Two wilds for propeller technology. You also need to buy to access Wales, Scotland, or Ireland/France. As a result everything starts very cramped and short, and then as people buy more techs they spread out. And you can also buy a tech (but only one) on top of your move for the turn, so you can sit on things until you need them to avoid tipping your hand.

I love ticket to ride Europe but haven’t really played the expansion. I don’t care if it’s entry level, it’s great fun!

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

teacup posted:

I love ticket to ride Europe but haven’t really played the expansion. I don’t care if it’s entry level, it’s great fun!

Oh absolutely. It's just entry-level enough that I feel odd talking about strategy on a different board. But it works and really changed how we approached the game while still being recognizable.

Saltpowered
Apr 12, 2010

Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC
Several of my friends are major Binding of Isaac fans so they all bought The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls on Kickstarter a few months ago. We all received our games in the last few weeks. Since we live in various locations across the country we played many rounds of it on Tabletop over the last week. Here are my thoughts.

Short Version:
Four Souls is what Munchkin and all similar copycats imagines themselves to be in all of their marketing except actually fun and well-designed. It is a relatively fast-paced, dungeon delving card game about killing horrifying monsters and backstabbing everyone else to win. The card game was developed by the creator of the Binding of Isaac video game so it feels very similar in theme. The monsters and items in Four Souls are as close as possible to their video game counterparts while still fitting into the setting. The theme is better than any game I've played that has been adapted from another medium (though BSG and CITOW are pretty close). If you have a close group of friends that want to play a high player interaction game focused on screwing each other over on your way to victory, Four Souls fits the bill. There is definitely some weakness to the game as it has RNG from cards you draw and also from dice rolls. You can have some moments where you get screwed on rolls and cards which feels bad. If you get to a point where you are just topdecking or everyone is topdecking, that makes for a very unfun time. There are plenty of catchup mechanics and alternate playstyles to even things back out though.

I think this may become my go-to game for introducing new players to more complex boardgames. The basic rules are simple but there's a lot of complexity and strategy on how to react to the choices you have from you character and cards. You can teach it in 5 minutes or less but it takes a while to pick up all the nuances and know when to make certain decisions. And the theme is just really, really good.

Pros:
  • Easily Teachable: Very easy to teach/learn. The basics of a turn are uncomplicated as are the win conditions. All of the complexity comes from the cards you can draw and buy. This is very true to the feeling of Binding of Isaac.
  • Great Theme: The best themed card game and one of the best themed board games I've ever played.
  • High Variery: Lots of cards in the box. You will see different cards every game.
  • Multiple paths to victory: The different characters and cards enable multiple playstyles (engine building, fighting, stealing).
  • Travel Friendly: Very compact and doesn't take much space to play, would be a great traveling game.
  • Highly Interactive: Will generally get all players into the game backstabbing, bargaining, and stealing from one another.

Cons:
  • RNG: There are a lot of cards in every deck so you can have an absolutely horrible set of draws/flips and bad rolls. Some of this does go with the theme though and there are ways to mitigate through the cards you take.
  • Character Balance: Some characters are almost always good (Samson, Forgotten), are very overpowered with the right RNG (Eden, Blue Baby), or are almost always bad (The Lost, though he does start with a handicap).
  • Highly variable length: I've had 20 minute games and 1.5 hour games. Depending on starting characters and items, games can really drag on. Analysis paralysis prone people can have trouble with this game.
  • Rule Clarity: Because of the way many of the effects on the cards resolve, there are some opportunities with rule clarity. The develop is provided a lot of rulings via Twitter and the website but some cards could use better writing.

Trip Report
We've probably played 10+ games over the last few days. Most of the group weren't much of boardgamers before but are now open to trying other games because of how much they enjoyed Four Souls. The first games we played it really safe and didn't attack each other much while we learned the game. Those games were a little slow and not that much fun even though the theme kept us playing. We segmented certain cards/characters as really great and others as really bad. We were really afraid to fight monsters and die and played much too carefully.

Then we played a few games that were heavily cut-throat/dogpile on the leader or whoever screwed with us last. These games were much more fun and opened up a lots of different strategies for trying to get ahead while keeping everyone else from getting ahead. We rethought a lot of the cards/characters that we thought were good/bad at this point. Many of the not great for personally getting ahead cards were great for screwing over everyone else. People got even more careful about actual combat at this point for fear of getting killed by the other players

We shifted to a more cooperative approach for 2 or 3 games but found this to actually make the game take significantly longer and be much less fun overall. We did get a feel for bargain and trading at this time which was good. We got a lot of experience with combat and when it is a good idea. Then everyone would just go scorched earth for the home stretch.

After 10 or so games, we finally settled into a good balance of attack and defense. People started regularly bargaining and trading while still backstabbing. Sometimes everyone will come together to pull down the lead player (with mixed success). Games are getting much closer at the end with 2-3 people being a turn or so away from victory before it ends. Different strategies have started emerging as well instead of just kill whatever gives me souls (victory points). Depending on the characters they draw, people have started focusing on building engines (for coins), combat, thievery, or active items.

Also, while it is a 2-4 player game you can play it with 6 people. The game slows down significantly with anything over 4 but it is playable. You could probably even play it with 8 but that would be really miserable from a downtime perspective. If you play it 2, use the alternative 2 player rules, they are better but still not great. The game plays best with 4.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Dec 30, 2018

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




Your review makes it sound indistinguishable from a Binding of Isaac retheme of Munchkin.

Super random, can take forever to play, easy to make unfun.

discount cathouse
Mar 25, 2009

Bottom Liner posted:

TtR is great and pretty universally loved even if some are burnt out on it. I prefer the smaller maps and shorter versions but it’s a solid design.

My only criticism is that it takes too long for the decisions it offers. It's a sunday afternoon kind of game.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Alright I did some gaming and here are my thoughts:

This Guilty Land: I like it as a simplified TS that plays in an hour or less. The game itself is quite easy to get to grips with and there aren't any major areas that you can slip past when you play. I have issues with it, however. The strength of games such as Twilight Struggle, Wir Sind Das Volk and other CDGs is that the cards that you play can be used for anything, which allows you for a lot of flexibility in how you play the game. The event display present within TGL has issues because whatever pops up is what you are able to play, and there isn't really a way to get around that, which severely limits the choices that you have throughout the game. Also, some cards tend to be a lot stronger than other depending on when they appear. Also, apart from special events, the event cards in the game tend to be homogeneous: sure, they could have different PW costs and thus different breadth of effects, but most of the cards function in very similar ways. I think I need a few more games of it, but I feel like there is something that truly makes the game click.

An Infamous Traffic: I've finally managed to get a proper game of this going. The game ended on the last turn when we had too many smugglers and missionaries and the country descended into revolution, with the person triggering it winning in the end. I think I agree with the thought that the game is less of a game and more of an experience, but there are elements that I like a lot about the game. It's quite unique: the game isn't about making money really, and the way that the demand and supply play against each other, along with how the country is shown to be destabilised feels quite good. The game is also nasty as hell and there's a lot of opportunities for screwage between the players. The issue is that sometimes the entire situation feels a bit out of your control, which is suitable for the theme but might make people that are used to euros feel a bit weird, because the simulationist aspects of the game mean that a lot of euro-players will feel that there is too much out of their control. Overall this is a bit of a weird one, and I'm really interested in trying John Company since people compare it favourably to this game.

Brass: Birmingham: Honestly I'm thinking of getting rid of Lancashire, and I can't see myself going back to Lancashire since Birmingham has just so much more to offer. I went with a strategy of pottery/manufacturing in the first era, then went just rails/brewery/pottery in the rail era, and although I came third, the distance between 1st and 3rd was 7 points, so the game was quite close even though we had different strategies. i was aiming to get my level 3 pottery out in the canal era but too many people went pottery: I think it's possible, and getting out the level 3 pottery is the single highest amount of points in the game (11 points in canal era + 11 points in rail era is the single best source of points IIRC). No one went cotton in our game either, which lead to a pretty weird game overall. The different market layouts and the potential for different strategies due to the 3 different kind of sell-able goods really add something to the game. Breweries especially can radically change the game: they have amazing VPs/income/cost ratio, and they really improve any railway plays connected to them, which mean that 4-slots like Birmingham are less important and spaces like Uttoxeter can have monster 8-point railways if lots of breweries are constructed there. Overall, really good stuff.

I didn't play it myself, but we were discussing Underwater Cities. I do want to give it a try although its description as a mixture of Agricola and Terraforming Mars didn't really appeal to me, since I have a mild dislike of the former and a heavy dislike of the latter. I was actually put on the spot in regards to why I didn't like Terraforming Mars, and I came up with the following in the discussion:

- Without drafting the game feels too random, and I dislike drafting as a mechanism in the first place.
- The shared board feels too open and the positions that you gain on it aren't critical enough to make or break your strategy, so jockeying for position there doesn't feel as rewarding.
- The actions outside of the cards are too limited and usually you want to do actions on your cards rather than doing communal actions.
- Once every player has dozen of cards in front of them in the end game, being able to tell the board-state at a glance becomes more difficult, and thus hate-drafting becomes more difficult. I'll acknowledge that this becomes easier with more plays/skill in the game, but I don't have the motivation to really reach that stage in comparison to games which are similarly challenging but the board state is easier to tell (like Dungeon Lords).
- The game can sometimes feel like multiplayer solitaire as people just do stuff on their board with little interaction with others apart from the milestones (which I think are actually a pretty nice addition).
- For all the claims that the game feels thematic, the cards don't really feel all that thematic to me in terms of mechanisms. Once they are on my tableau, I just feel like I'm moving cubes around at the best of times, unlike the conveyance that I feel in a game like Dungeon Petz.

What I was told was that Underwater Cities does actually fix some of those issues, so I'm curious what people think of it and if they recommend it even though I dislike TerraMars.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR
This may not be that helpful but I played Underwater Cities four times and was never (even with good experienced players) was able to get a game in under 3 1/2 hours. At that time length I'm playing an 18xx or Colonists. It was fine as a Euro but took way too long. Sold.

Spikes32
Jul 25, 2013

Happy trees

ketchup vs catsup posted:

Your review makes it sound indistinguishable from a Binding of Isaac retheme of Munchkin.

Super random, can take forever to play, easy to make unfun.

I just played it last night and you are correct sir! I will say it's better than munchkin, but suffers from all of its faults.

Papes
Apr 13, 2010

There's always something at the bottom of the bag.
Don’t forget about the discard action in this guilty land. It’s not a sexy play but it can help when you have a dud hand. Also getting your org level up is important so more cards will be in your display.

Saltpowered
Apr 12, 2010

Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

ketchup vs catsup posted:

Your review makes it sound indistinguishable from a Binding of Isaac retheme of Munchkin.

Super random, can take forever to play, easy to make unfun.

It's definitely very similar and that's why I mentioned it. I think it is significantly better than Munchkin though it does have some of the same faults with randomness. There is actually a level of strategy and planning that goes into Four Souls whereas Munchkin is most randomness with the illusion of choices.

There's a pool of monsters you can choose to fight or go for a random. You also don't have to take a fight. Everyone has the same monsters and plays them from their hand. Deciding whether to attack or let your enemy get a chance at the monster adds a good bit of complexity. There are no monsters in players hands that they can play. You can also see the rewards for fighting each monster and make a choice about whether the fight is worth it or not.

There are two separate item draw piles. A weaker, mostly single use loot pile that you draw from every turn and a much stronger permanent treasure pile that you generally have to get money to buy from. The treasures are much more impactful and unique than Munchkin treasures.

I have some friends that like Munchkin and I've suffered through enough of it that I never want to touch it again. Four Souls feels different and it's not something I'd actively avoid like Munchkin. More choices, more strategy, less pointless grind, more controllable rng. It still has many of the same faults but it's a significantly better light RPG card game.

Abisteen
Sep 30, 2005

Oh my God what the fuck am I?
Thanks for the write-up. We brought Binding of Isaac to the table a few weeks back. Due somehow to all four of us spacing over a piece of the rules, thought we only got ONE roll of the die for an attack on the enemies. This led an hour of playing where no one wanted to attack until we somehow built up power some other way. When I finally was poring over the rules and DIDN'T miss that we could just keep attacking until one of us died, we all just decided to pack it up for the night and try again some other time.

Seriously don't know how the three of us who read the rules ALL missed that line and thought we only got a single attack roll per turn.

Kiranamos
Sep 27, 2007

STATUS: SCOTT IS AN IDIOT
Underwater Cities feels nothing like Terraforming Mars. It’s pretty lazy for someone to call it that + Agricola just because you have a “feeding phase.” I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

al-azad posted:

An important thing for me in TS' design is its zero sum scoring which when coupled with the knowledge of the possibility of a scoring card being in your opponent's hand leads to a lot of the paranoia fueled strategy other 2-player games lack. The digital version developed this meta where you value any card that scores you points the highest but I found this strategy to be a huge gamble where if you don't win by the middle of the mid-war you've hosed your board state up so badly that you'll lose in the final scoring state.

On the flip side, if you're running a 15 point lead your opponent has a LOT of ground to make up for in final scoring and they're going to be constantly pressured to try to stave off the constant threat of a loss, so they're probably not going to get much of a chance to improve their board state to that point.

Saltpowered
Apr 12, 2010

Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

Abisteen posted:

Thanks for the write-up. We brought Binding of Isaac to the table a few weeks back. Due somehow to all four of us spacing over a piece of the rules, thought we only got ONE roll of the die for an attack on the enemies. This led an hour of playing where no one wanted to attack until we somehow built up power some other way. When I finally was poring over the rules and DIDN'T miss that we could just keep attacking until one of us died, we all just decided to pack it up for the night and try again some other time.

Seriously don't know how the three of us who read the rules ALL missed that line and thought we only got a single attack roll per turn.

Yeah, not attacking would have made for a very, very slow game since most of the power you get comes from killing monsters for loot. There are a few characters that can do really well not attacking anything (Forgotten, Blue Baby) but most everyone else needs to engage in combat pretty early on.

The rulebook is probably my biggest complaint about the game. I get what they were going for: a really simple rulebook to cover the basic interactions. Anything more complex is supposed to be covered by the tutorial video (watch the video, it does a lot to help with combat and other things) or the website FAQs. But not having basic FAQ info especially about ability interactions in the rulebook really causes some confusion. Some examples questions:

Can I use Lord of the Pit to end combat and take no damage even after I've failed a roll? (Yes)

If a monster has an passive that deals damage on X roll/situation, does that resolve before my attack? (Yes) If so, do I still kill the monster? (No)

Can I use Guppy's Paw to prevent the damage from Guppy's Paw? (No)

Can I use Devil Deal to search for Dead Cat and then avoid all the damage from Devil's Deal with Dead Cat? (Yes and Unclear)

If I take damage and then trigger something to prevent that damage, do other effects that trigger on take damage still trigger? (No)

We've had a lot of moments of trying to logic through how cards work and frequently disagree. The creator is good about answer any rules questions on twitter and adding them to the web FAQ but it still caused some confusion and frustration for the first few games.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Dec 30, 2018

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
Played a solo game of Tokyo Metro today, and I really enjoyed it! Playing solo made it feel like an optimization problem more than a game, and I definitely can see how having more players active would make things a LOT more dynamic...but as a solo exercise, it's rather chill to just move your trains around the map.

Gonna try to rope my wife and maybe one of my housemates into playing sometime next week, getting more people involved should complicate the gamestate in a very good way.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
Doing some 10x10 style challenges for 2019, what's on your to play lists?

2x50 of these:

Go
Battlecon

10x10 of our favorite small games for 2p

Patchwork
Targi
Arboretum
The Fox in the Forest
Lost Cities Rivals
Schotten Totten
Railroad Ink
Jaipur
7 Wonders Duel w/ Pantheon

10x10 of some of our favorite full games

Tash Kalar
Star Wars Rebellion
Keyflower
Antiquity
Food Chain Magnate
Gaia Project
A Feast for Odin (esp once the expansion arrives)
Spirit Island
Agricola with the new mini's deck we have
Root


5x5 of heavier games

Fire in the Lake
Commands and Colors Ancients
1846
Mage Knight
The Colonists

The first two will be easy to get done, but the 5x5 heavy games is probably too ambitious because my heavy gaming friends are more into Lacerda types. Either way it'll be a lot of good games in 2019. I'm also looking to trade away the last of my culled games and keep my collection at an even 100.

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pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Bottom Liner posted:

Doing some 10x10 style challenges for 2019, what's on your to play lists?

2x50 of these:

Go
Battlecon

10x10 of our favorite small games for 2p

Patchwork
Targi
Arboretum
The Fox in the Forest
Lost Cities Rivals
Schotten Totten
Railroad Ink
Jaipur
7 Wonders Duel w/ Pantheon

10x10 of some of our favorite full games

Tash Kalar
Star Wars Rebellion
Keyflower
Antiquity
Food Chain Magnate
Gaia Project
A Feast for Odin (esp once the expansion arrives)
Spirit Island
Agricola with the new mini's deck we have
Root


5x5 of heavier games

Fire in the Lake
Commands and Colors Ancients
1846
Mage Knight
The Colonists

The first two will be easy to get done, but the 5x5 heavy games is probably too ambitious because my heavy gaming friends are more into Lacerda types. Either way it'll be a lot of good games in 2019. I'm also looking to trade away the last of my culled games and keep my collection at an even 100.

I'm currently taking night classes, so regular gaming has been pretty difficult for me. I'm set to graduate this year, so my goal is to arrange my schedule such that I can game once or twice a week.

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