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Played our first game of Escape Plan last night. I think it'll serve as a nice "intro to Lacerda" for people wanting something a bit more medium-weighty, but otherwise it doesn't quite live up to his last couple offerings. It feels prohibitively short by design, in terms of total turns a player will get and what they'll be able to accomplish before the end, while still running long in play time. We ran a little over 2 hours with 4 players, and I think the maximum number of turns any of us took was 11, with the low end being 8. I'm sure that like any game ever, the play time would accelerate once we became more familiar with everything, and if it were closer to a 90-minute game with 4 I'd probably have a stronger opinion of it. On the other hand, the theme is pretty fun and unique, and I appreciate that it supports 5 players which is a space my personal library is often lacking in when it comes to proper strategy games. There's some interesting decisions in terms of the tile placement of the city map by the players; there's simultaneously a desire to place tiles and their locations in a way that make them easy to access for yourself, while also trying not to help your opponents who have the same goals. As such, if you choose to keep your distance from other players it can be helpful in keeping your Notoriety down (generally a good thing to do), but being separate means the aforementioned placement of tiles can punish you if everything is too far away to put to use. It's one I'll be happy to play another time or two to feel out a bit more, but at the end of the day I'm not sure it survives in the shadow of Lisboa. Speaking of, why the hell has no one picked Lisboa in the Goon Game Draft thread yet? Ya savages.
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Apr 12, 2019 20:29
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We’re busy picking the fun games!
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Apr 12, 2019 20:49
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I mean I'd pick the good games but that's just me
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Apr 12, 2019 21:29
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I was cautiously optimistic for Lord of The Rings Journeys In Middle Earth. After watching a review, it doesn't look that great  Has anyone played it? The theme, art, and concept are appealing to me but the mechanics don't look very engaging.
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Apr 12, 2019 21:55
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Morpheus posted:I mean I'd pick the good games but that's just me Por que no los dos!
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Apr 12, 2019 21:58
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Bottom Liner posted:Por que no los dos! Buddy I don't know what you just said to me but you better watch out because I've got a bag full of cardboard tokens and I'm not afraid to throw them like shurikens
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Apr 12, 2019 22:20
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Morpheus posted:Buddy I don't know what you just said to me but you better watch out because I've got a bag full of cardboard tokens and I'm not afraid to throw them like shurikens gently caress's sake, will people shut up about The Mind.
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Apr 12, 2019 22:21
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Chubbs posted:I don't know how much you've researched into it, but everything I've seen about Carnival Zombie leads me to believe it has a ton of replayability Cool thanks - it does look really tempting (the deluxe version especially). I guess I was less concerned about replayability in terms of the different scenarios and more in terms of the core gameplay loop - whether the actions that you're taking each night phase/day phase could start to feel repetitive by the end of the game or whether the decisions are interesting enough to keep it engaging. I feel like a game like Spirit Island gets around this by expanding the powers you have available as the game goes on, but it looks like the character progression in Carnival Zombie is maybe less significant? I'm really torn on this one as its the first zombie theme that's appealed to me at all and there's a lot that looks great in the play through I've watched.
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Apr 12, 2019 22:47
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With Game of Thrones season approaching, a new wave of requests arrives. Are there any well-tested house rules that hack off all the chrome and make the game easier to explain and go at a brisker pace? I know I've only played a half-dozen times (because it's much harder to get to the table than it should be) and it's a fools errand to go about hacking stuff off willy nilly. But on the other hand, it's a politics game, so relying on players to account for wild imbalances are part and parcel (and thematic) and for an event game that gets played 2-3 times then forgotten for a year, it feels okay? I'm thinking of things like getting rid of wildlings altogether (fidly & often unthematic - soldiers in the far south being affect by raiders wut), getting rid of the seasonal deck - have a new phase to update supply and recruit at the end of each turn. Have an end phase where you update supply, adjust armies then spend power, 1 power per location where you wish to recruit, following normal rules, except ports recruit 1 boat and castles/fortresses only land units. Throw away all other port rules. Boats from different factions can exist in the same region, but can only be used as transport / given orders if you control more boats than any other faction in that area. Before resolving any Naval battle the defender can flee to a neighbouring sea region (except where the attacker is attacking from) without penalty. Boats can only provide +1 support total to land battles. Voting on the 3 tracks happens at the end of the 2nd, 5th, and 8th turn. Your capital provides 1 power per turn as long as you hold it.
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Apr 13, 2019 01:56
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Aaaugh. BoardGameArena just added Not Alone to their library. As implemented, it's just about unplayable in turn-based mode. Plays fantastically in real-time, of course.
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Apr 13, 2019 04:37
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hoiyes posted:Boats from different factions can exist in the same region, but can only be used as transport / given orders if you control more boats than any other faction in that area. Before resolving any Naval battle the defender can flee to a neighbouring sea region (except where the attacker is attacking from) without penalty. Boats can only provide +1 support total to land battles. Geez, did a Greyjoy player go on a date with your mom or something
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Apr 13, 2019 10:43
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terebikun posted:Geez, did a Greyjoy player go on a date with your mom or something 2. Greyjoy are garbage 3. I tried to headsim it and I think it suit greyjoy to play a long build up game or immediately ally up with lannisters, instead of Viking blitzkrieging them out of the gate, so thematically it works better. 4. Maybe give sword holder +1 bonus to fleet size but then you're getting fiddly again. 5. Greyjoy are really just garbage flotsam people
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Apr 13, 2019 13:13
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If anyone is at Congress of Gamers today my friend is selling Napoleon's Triumph for $100 at the auction store. You won't find a better deal.
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Apr 13, 2019 14:16
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al-azad posted:If anyone is at Congress of Gamers today my friend is selling Napoleon's Triumph for $100 at the auction store. You won't find a better deal. Only 40 over MSRP! No seriously, there is no way you'll find a better deal, I'd consider getting it as a second copy if I were there.
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Apr 13, 2019 14:53
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FulsomFrank posted:Did they just temporarily disable every option including the $1 one?? I've never seen this before with a KS and would have tried to grab the expansions.  FYI they are now doing a March of the Ants reprint, after seeing the interest, and all pledge levels with base games and expansions have been re-opened. (It also means international shipping might get better, at least to China) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/910041337/march-of-the-ants-empires-of-the-earth dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Apr 13, 2019 |
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Apr 13, 2019 16:05
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Played Root again the other night. The Vagabond built the cats up and then betrayed them, for tons of points and the game. My Woodland Alliance just couldn't get off the ground, my sympathy kept getting crossbowed. Anyway, can you target pieces of lumber in a battle? My understanding of the rules is that you can, they're considered "tokens", and you can kill them for points so long as there are no warriors protecting them.
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Apr 14, 2019 02:40
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Krazyface posted:Played Root again the other night. The Vagabond built the cats up and then betrayed them, for tons of points and the game. My Woodland Alliance just couldn't get off the ground, my sympathy kept getting crossbowed. Anyway, can you target pieces of lumber in a battle? My understanding of the rules is that you can, they're considered "tokens", and you can kill them for points so long as there are no warriors protecting them. Correct. The person losing pieces chooses targets if warriors aren't there, though. (so lumber over buildings, or instead of the keep)
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Apr 14, 2019 02:55
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Krazyface posted:Played Root again the other night. The Vagabond built the cats up and then betrayed them, for tons of points and the game. My Woodland Alliance just couldn't get off the ground, my sympathy kept getting crossbowed. Anyway, can you target pieces of lumber in a battle? My understanding of the rules is that you can, they're considered "tokens", and you can kill them for points so long as there are no warriors protecting them. Yes. Any piece of cardboard can be attacked and you get a free hit if there are no warriors present.
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Apr 14, 2019 02:55
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It’s better to call it a bonus hit - any bonus hits you get from Undefended, upgrades or faction features are added to whatever you rolled and aren’t bound by your warrior count. So the Eyrie lead by a Commander with Brutal Tactics could battle an undefended Marquise clearing and generate six hits. Not that I’ve ever seen that, but it’s possible.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:44
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dwarf74 posted:
It seems like a relatively cheap gamble all things considered but if the game is just bad that changes things.
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Apr 14, 2019 11:52
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Redundant posted:If I've played and enjoyed eclipse, but worry I will rarely have chance to get it to the table, could MotA be a quicker/lighter alternative? Does "quicker/lighter" also translate into "less fun"? It's not bad at all, and it's much faster than Eclipse. Feels less like a 4X game though. Between March of the Ants and Master of Orion I've practically retired Eclipse now.
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Apr 14, 2019 12:27
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I really want to be into March of the Ants, but it's got such off-putting art, and I already have Quantum, Rise of Tribes, and an unplayed copy of Omega Centauri filling up my light 4X slots.
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Apr 14, 2019 17:08
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El Fideo posted:I really want to be into March of the Ants, but it's got such off-putting art, and I already have Quantum, Rise of Tribes, and an unplayed copy of Omega Centauri filling up my light 4X slots. I love the actual artwork, but the graphic design is jarringly inconsistent.
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Apr 14, 2019 17:30
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CaptainRightful posted:I love the actual artwork, but the graphic design is jarringly inconsistent. It drives me bonkers that the variant ant species don’t have the name predominantly displayed somewhere on the mat. Or I’m blind but I always have to match an ability or any body segment to the variant.
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Apr 14, 2019 17:46
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<sigh> Just backed Blood on the Clocktower. The SUSD review makes me angry for its lack of objectivity, but (a) I really like the idea of a Storyteller with a lot of agency, and (b) while I try to be objective about game quality, I know in my heart of hearts that games Quinns likes are usually games I like. And the unspoken (c) I'm privileged enough that I can spend $75 on a game to only play it two or three times and feel like I've gotten my money's worth.
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Apr 14, 2019 20:44
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March of the Ants is incredibly fast, but the caveat of "how attentive are your boardgaming partners?" applies. The entire game is tiny actions on other players' turns. If you can't get through that without "hey jared do you do this or not" every time it's gonna be super slow.
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Apr 14, 2019 20:47
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Impermanent posted:March of the Ants is incredibly fast, but the caveat of "how attentive are your boardgaming partners?" applies. The entire game is tiny actions on other players' turns. If you can't get through that without "hey jared do you do this or not" every time it's gonna be super slow. Glad someone is pointing this out. It's not a BAD thing, it's just that most players expect to "check out" to some degree when it isn't their turn and that's not how this game works. You're going to be actively playing the whole time and if people aren't, it's going to tank the pace bigtime.
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Apr 14, 2019 20:53
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You all are making me want this game
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Apr 14, 2019 21:02
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I actually find March of the Ants more enjoyable because of the little actions on every person’s turn. Eclipse and Scythe are filled with so much down time at 5 people and a lot of the time I find most people’s turns don’t require your involvement or attention. Getting a few reactions by your next turn can shake up your own plans by having different cars available or more larvae than your previous plan had. Just feels way more engaged
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Apr 14, 2019 21:08
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canyoneer posted:I was cautiously optimistic for Lord of The Rings Journeys In Middle Earth. After watching a review, it doesn't look that great I haven’t played it either but looking at a let’s play on YouTube killed any interest I had. It looks like peak FFG. Amazing production values hiding gently caress all content and gameplay very much the last thing anyone thought about. It’s like they looked at the success of Gloomhaven and thought ‘we need a big box with a flexible campaign and no dice.’ So they got a big box, put in an app to randomize the campaign to disguise the lack of content and replaced dice with flip a card to see if you win. Good work guys.
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Apr 14, 2019 21:59
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CitizenKeen posted:<sigh> I've been thinking that Blood on the Clocktower looks really good; it's a Werewolf/Mafia type game, but they address, like, all the usual issues with those and add some new neat stuff too. They've also put some seriously impressive effort into making the game accessible. Price being so high is unfortunate, but given the utility of the grimoire in managing a game like that I can see how it wound up costing so much. I suppose the ideal way to deal with that price is, if you have a large enough group of people you're likely to play with, to try to get multiple people to chip in. I mean, it's meant for five (or seven on any scenario but one) to twenty players, plus the storyteller; splitting those costs seems more than fair. As for objectivity... Has SUSD ever really been objective? Like, their reviews of Twilight Imperium and Root both come to mind; the latter, if I recall correctly, they even admitted that their waning enthusiasm for it was subjective. And they said at the start that this was possibly their favorite game too, so it wasn't like they were hiding their subjective feelings about it. Besides, when it comes to stuff like game reviews, they're already extremely subjective, even if people pretend they aren't. Once you get past stuff like whether the mechanics are just broken, force players in one particular direction, don't encourage the desired behavior, and so on, and into whether something is fun, you're pretty much entirely outside the realm of objectivity. As long as all the information in the review is true* and the viewer/reader can still get an idea of what the thing being reviewed is like and try to judge for themselves if they'll like it or not, then it still works as a review. *Their review did have the problem of saying that the Storyteller should ignore the rules if they want to, because the rulebook actually explicitly says the opposite in big bolded letters, because it's not fair to the players to have completely unknowable parameters changing what's meant to be a game of logic and deduction, and restates the point again later. Edit: quote:Don't break the rules. Even if it seems like it might be exciting to do so. Don't simply decide that players should die instead of remain alive, or put in more or fewer Minions or Outsiders. The good players are relying on all the information available to win. If they base their logic on incorrect information, but they have no way of knowing that their information is incorrect, then they are simply guessing, and it will not be fun for them. Even if you think it might be wacky to secretly not put a Demon in play, to add a Drunk out of the blue, or to alter some other important rule, the players will probably not appreciate this, as they will feel like a victory was not fairly won, or a loss unfairly thrust upon them. Tangent, this is pretty good advice for the most part, I think, though it probably takes some experience to recognize when pushing things one way or the other would be too much. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 22:07
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Bottom Liner posted:You all are making me want this game I'd like to play BotC but I won't back that kickstarter though. Partly because I want to see how production/delivery plays out and partly because I want to see how often I get other big group games to the table.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:29
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Ojetor posted:Speaking of kingmaking, I really wonder why team games are pretty much not a thing. It seems like hugely unexplored space. Sure there's stuff like Codenames and Captain Sonar, but what if dudes on a map games could be played in teams? I'd love to play some 2v2 Forbidden Stars or Root and whatnot. It would allow you to play 4 or 6 player games and maintain 1v1 dynamics, seems like a no brainer solution to kingmaking. Duel of Ages is kinda like that. You have two sides, but each side can have multiple characters and you can divvy them up to multiple people. Not exactly sure it qualifies as a dudes on a map game though, there's a lot of stuff going on in it.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:40
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VanguardFelix posted:I actually find March of the Ants more enjoyable because of the little actions on every person’s turn. Eclipse and Scythe are filled with so much down time at 5 people and a lot of the time I find most people’s turns don’t require your involvement or attention. It also introduces a nice little meta game element of "do I want to leave x resources open in case Sarah does y so my reaction action is more useful?" It's very well done imo, although I personally only play on the longer mode because I find the game is a little too short.
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Apr 14, 2019 23:00
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Redundant posted:Same, looks like I might have another kickstarter to back! Ants all the way! Given how long it will be until the game is out anyway (estimated delivery January 2020, so probably not sooner than that and possibly even later), I'm thinking of trying to print stuff out and make a set for the basic scenario myself to test it out with people in the meantime. The token art and stuff is all on the wiki, rules are there for a free download, and the Script tool on their website will let you put together character lists and storyteller night sheets (though a couple characters seem to be missing from it, one each from Bad Moon Rising and Sects & Violets, so a bit of personal editing is needed to not leave those out), so almost all the necessary assets are right there. Just need things like death and reminder tokens, the little cards you show people for stuff like "You are the Demon", and of course to put everything together. Doesn't seem that hard, just a bit time-consuming.
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Apr 14, 2019 23:09
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Impermanent posted:It also introduces a nice little meta game element of "do I want to leave x resources open in case Sarah does y so my reaction action is more useful?" It's very well done imo, although I personally only play on the longer mode because I find the game is a little too short. Yeah, with all the evolving/colony goals/etc., it feels like it's going to be a much longer, more epic game than it really is.
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Apr 14, 2019 23:25
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Does anyone have experience playing March with the expansion? Some of the reviews I've read suggest that it's a little too simple for my tastes and I was wondering whether the expansion adds some complexity.
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Apr 15, 2019 16:19
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pospysyl posted:Does anyone have experience playing March with the expansion? Some of the reviews I've read suggest that it's a little too simple for my tastes and I was wondering whether the expansion adds some complexity. It doesn't need more complexity. It's fine without the expansion.
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Apr 15, 2019 17:00
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Anyone going to Geekway to the West?
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Apr 15, 2019 18:14
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CitizenKeen posted:<sigh> I couldn't quite justify it to myself, as the number of times I'm going to be able to grab a dozen or so folks for hour is not enough for 75$. Maybe if you have a larger group of regulars, I could see it, but I have trouble gathering 5 folks for Sidereal.
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