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Sir Gladu posted:I'm still mad about dying in Bang! BEFORE I COULD TAKE MY FIRST TURN. I once waited 45 minutes to die before I could take my first turn and then waited 45 minutes for the game to end. I simply don't play it anymore.
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Aug 12, 2019 03:54
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GrandpaPants posted:I know it's too late and it doesn't change any of the fundamental rules, but I find Dominant Species works way better when you remove the cards that adds action tokens. It makes the game move much smoother and prevents those games where all but one player gets an extra action by the end of round 1 and that sucks. Yeah, I can see how it would make things smoother (and slightly shorter). Those cards were spread out and everyone ended up with a couple extra APs. It was the intense and arbitrary politics that sank it like a leaden amphibian. Near-constant "the board state has changed in ways I didn't anticipate, so nothing I do with this move helps me anymore, I can only hurt others;" in much of that, the hurting wasn't even dominance-changing, just arbitrary cube-chipping. I can see how an experienced player could have anticipated more than a table of newbies. For some groups this would be a big hit, but ... wow.
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Aug 12, 2019 03:56
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You do end up better at reading how the actions will likely unfold after a surprisingly small number of plays.
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Aug 12, 2019 04:04
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It's a few years late, but I finally got to play Food Chain Magnate. It was a two-player learning game with the new milestones, and drat that game is brutal. He opened with recruiting girl and I went with marketing, and managed to snag the drink milestones with no resistance. During the game it felt like it was really lopsided in my favor, but if my friend had figured out his engine a turn or two sooner he'd have been able to start a burger monopoly while building gated communities around the map. The game definitely lived up to the hype and i can't wait to play it with four in a few weeks.
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Aug 12, 2019 04:23
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homullus posted:Yeah, I can see how it would make things smoother (and slightly shorter). Those cards were spread out and everyone ended up with a couple extra APs. It was the intense and arbitrary politics that sank it like a leaden amphibian. Near-constant "the board state has changed in ways I didn't anticipate, so nothing I do with this move helps me anymore, I can only hurt others;" in much of that, the hurting wasn't even dominance-changing, just arbitrary cube-chipping. I can see how an experienced player could have anticipated more than a table of newbies. For some groups this would be a big hit, but ... wow. The game is just very mean spirited. If people aren't prepared for that it's going to get ugly. I think you have to play with the type of group that can handle people attacking each other every turn and having individual plans disrupted often. I find that most of the offensive plays in the game do benefit you. For example usually to be in a position to cube chip, you need to have some presence in the area you are attacking, and thus the attack is helping your position relative to the other person you are hitting. Control of scoring contested tiles often comes down to a single cube difference so any attack matters. It is common when we play to have to make decisions about allocating cubes knowing you are definitely going to lose control of one area in order to gain another. When it comes to controlling ice tiles, chipping is essentially the name of the game there. Now if you have people using powerful dominance cards like Volcano in ways that don't benefit themselves than that is obviously a problem. If they are using those cards just to get back at another player with no gain to their own boardstate or if they are being talked into using them not in their own best interest by others that is going to hurt the game a lot. It can be tempting to use mass migration on the spot that causes the most chaos, but unless that spot benefits you instead of just hurts others, it's probably not the optimal move for the card (and in fact you are probably just helping someone else).
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Aug 12, 2019 04:33
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Finally got in a second game of The Voyages of Marco Polo. Man, that game's way better when you can pick your roles and goal cards. I played as the guy who can teleport between oases, and tried to get trading houses into all four of my targets. I was beaten pretty soundly by Matteo Polo and that guy who doesn't roll dice, who both went heavy on resources and contracts, while they slowly trekked to Beijing. I really should have looked over the whole map at the start and focused on towns that synergised well. I used my ability to snipe off the easiest sources of wealth, which meant I was always quite rich, and could basically ignore the costs of travelling and using occupied blue spaces, but I just didn't get enough ways to generate points.
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Aug 12, 2019 05:27
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homullus posted:Yeah, I can see how it would make things smoother (and slightly shorter). Those cards were spread out and everyone ended up with a couple extra APs. It was the intense and arbitrary politics that sank it like a leaden amphibian. Near-constant "the board state has changed in ways I didn't anticipate, so nothing I do with this move helps me anymore, I can only hurt others;" in much of that, the hurting wasn't even dominance-changing, just arbitrary cube-chipping. I can see how an experienced player could have anticipated more than a table of newbies. For some groups this would be a big hit, but ... wow. Perhaps the biggest change in Dominant Species Marine is that players take the action they choose immediately, instead of programming out their whole turn ahead of time--the catch is that you must play your actions from the top down, so you can't just rush for the Domination spots. Spiggy posted:It's a few years late, but I finally got to play Food Chain Magnate. It's never too late. FCM is my #2 game of all time and I haven't even played with the new milestones yet.
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Aug 12, 2019 05:52
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CaptainRightful posted:Perhaps the biggest change in Dominant Species Marine is that players take the action they choose immediately, instead of programming out their whole turn ahead of time--the catch is that you must play your actions from the top down, so you can't just rush for the Domination spots. Wow I'll skip playing that expansion then, I haven't enjoyed that mechanic in any game I've seen it (Glen More, Heaven & Ale).
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Aug 12, 2019 12:35
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Yeah the developer has gone on record saying Marine is purposefully cutting down on complexity (and willingly sacrificing some decision making depth) in order to get the game to a more standard playtime. I'm personally not interested because of the major change mentioned above. It seems like it cut outs the core of what makes Dominant Species a unique game.
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Aug 12, 2019 12:46
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Megasabin posted:Yeah the developer has gone on record saying Marine is purposefully cutting down on complexity (and willingly sacrificing some decision making depth) in order to get the game to a more standard playtime. I'm personally not interested because of the major change mentioned above. It seems like it cut outs the core of what makes Dominant Species a unique game. Yeah, it honestly sounds like it removes one of my favorite parts of the game with "eh fuckit we're doing it live".
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Aug 12, 2019 13:06
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homullus posted:Yeah, I can see how it would make things smoother (and slightly shorter). Those cards were spread out and everyone ended up with a couple extra APs. It was the intense and arbitrary politics that sank it like a leaden amphibian. Near-constant "the board state has changed in ways I didn't anticipate, so nothing I do with this move helps me anymore, I can only hurt others;" in much of that, the hurting wasn't even dominance-changing, just arbitrary cube-chipping. I can see how an experienced player could have anticipated more than a table of newbies. For some groups this would be a big hit, but ... wow. It’s a programming game and it’ll be frustrating for some people. Unfortunately it only goes up to 5 with the expansion, but Inis might be a much better pick. El grande is similar as well but also only goes up to 5.
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Aug 12, 2019 13:41
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If you like DS conceptually, but want it shorter and less bitey, Empires Age of Discovery hits some similar marks
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Aug 12, 2019 13:48
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Bang the Dice Game is an actually playable implementation of Bang. It's still not great.
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Aug 12, 2019 16:06
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Mr. Squishy posted:Bang the Dice Game is an actually playable implementation of Bang. It's still not great. That was in fact what we ended up playing. I wasn’t aware of Bang before that and can’t imagine how bad a non dice variant would drag.
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Aug 12, 2019 16:19
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VanguardFelix posted:That was in fact what we ended up playing. I wasn’t aware of Bang before that and can’t imagine how bad a non dice variant would drag. Count yourself lucky, bang the original card game really is awful
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Aug 12, 2019 16:24
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Deckscape: El Dorado: An escape room type game. This series eschews a normal "check whether my answer is right" system (as seen in every other Escape series). Instead, the front of the card has a riddle, the back has an answer. If you get the answer wrong, you take a penalty and move on. This is a pretty big negative to swallow, but it does mean the games should be free to explore some interesting space with their riddles. They do not. Terrible game. Best thing I can say is that some of the puzzles were easy enough that my young kids could help. Exit: Scheheheurrzade's Tale: Terrible. Call to Adventure: Not an escape game! This is a short, fantasy-themed game where you get points for adding cards to your story (out of a tiered market row that looks like Splendor). To add cards to your story, you need to pass tests by flipping runes. Players also have a hand of cards that either help with tests, or mildly screw with other people's tests/points (adding a medium level of politics). Overall it feels like Splendor, but with a better theme and a little more stuff going on. You'd think it would feel more random (what with the rune-flipping success checks), but it honestly feels about the same (because Splendor is a very random game too). And at the end you can maybe kind of tell your character's story, which is fun. I think it might have some goofy degenerate strategies, and I don't think it's going to work as a serious competitive game. The solo/co-op rules look tacked on/lame. But it's short, attractive, and basically works. jmzero fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 12, 2019 |
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Aug 12, 2019 16:41
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Been playing a lot of Antike Duellum since Gencon and it immediately became my favorite Gerdts game. It ticks all the boxes for what I want in a civ/4x style game and the head to head nature combined with the rondel means the game is lightning fast and you rarely stop doing something. One of the more fulfilling <1 hour games I've ever played. If you like Imperial or any of his other games really, check it out. It has a lot of Concorida flavors as well with the cities and resource production. I'm going to have to track down a copy of Antike II to go with this for 3-6 player nights. If you like Scythe, definitely try Antike. Also got to play The Merchants expansion for Keyflower and I agree with the general reception that it's the better of the two expansions by a good bit. The development tiles in particular are game changing, and the contracts add some really great variety as well with their dual use. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 12, 2019 |
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Aug 12, 2019 17:40
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I actually played Antike II for the first time last week and wasn't too fond of it. It's a VP race that ended up playing out like a much worse Kemet. There are like 5 ways to gain VP, but they are resource limited. Pragmatically, this meant that the end game was everyone just building armies and ships to do combat but in a way that wasn't guaranteed to lead to permanent VP. Couple that with the Imperial/Diplomacy need for the players to immediately recognize who they need to be checking politically and ugh. I played some things other than Antike II which I will write about in another post shortly.
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Aug 12, 2019 17:52
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Detective: City of Angels, which was discussed a page or two back, just started accepting orders on the Van Ryder website. https://www.vanrydergames.com/new-products/detective-city-of-angels Not clear when it's set to ship, but the website doesn't seem to indicate it's any kind of preorder. I'll update when I get an arrival date.
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Aug 13, 2019 01:06
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Vindication came in Saturday and I got it out in the table yesterday. I don’t know if my experience will stay the same after many plays but initial impressions were very positive. Storage: 10/10 First, the storage system that comes with the game is fantastic. Everything has a home and setup/breakdown takes 5-10 minutes at most. Most games overlook how important this is but a good storage system means I’m far more likely to play the game, especially on a whim. Art/Theme: 7/10 The theme (scummy castaway that must reclaim their honor) is fairly bland but the game executes it very well. You start off weak with limited options and become reasonably strong by the end of the game. Everything makes sense in the narrative of the game and nothing feels out of place. The art is gorgeous with lots of detail put into pictures, pieces, shapes of components, etc. They made a lot of assets for the game and very few of them feel half-assed. Gameplay: 8/10 The rule book and player aids are equally good. Straightforward rules written for humans. The basic rules are simple and all the complexity comes form the board state and your strategy. It is very light on player interaction outside of denial or counterplay. It’s like suburbia; there are limited direct interaction points but you can counterplay. Simple but varied secret goals, multiple ways to score, and variable end game triggers means you have to carefully consider what you do and the ramifications. Even still, the actions per turn are simple enough that turns are usually a minute or two. Lots of “expansions” in the box that vary rules, the map, scoring, etc. I doubt I’ll have the same strategy for many games. My wife and I had vastly different strategies during one game and we had almost the same score. I built a large pool of resources, maxed my movement speed, and tried to hit as many easy scoring goals as possible. My wife went all in with one resource type and focused on controlling the map. She was ahead most of the game and I only pulled ahead at the very because I trigger the end before her strategy could fully come to life. One or two more round and she would have clenched it. Time: 10/10 This is the other area Vindication really shines. The setup and fast but so is the game itself. None of us had played before but the game only took around an hour and no one took more than a minute or two per turn. Later turns went very quick as we got a hold on the game and could plan our turn while waiting on others. I think we could probably get it down to 30 minutes for 2 people and an hour for 4. We only had to look up one or two rule clarifications and it took less than a minute each time. I’ll probably get Vindication to the table at every game night for a while just because it is fast to setup, easy to teach, fast to play, and more engaging/strategic than anything else that plays this quick. We’ll see how well the gameplay holds up over time.
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Aug 13, 2019 01:34
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Finally got together with some friends to play some board games over the weekend. First up was Space Alert. I haven't had the best luck with Space Alert; I've only gotten to play it once with my regular group of 3 others, and all three hated it. (One of my group described it as "the exact opposite of a board game I want to play.") Fortunately, with this group things went much better. I went with three teaching missions (first test run, simulation 1, advanced simulation) and we managed to survive all 3 (though advanced sim was a bit of a lucky accident). Decided to play a "real" mission for our 4th and final game. The real-time half ended in style as everyone planned to run down in turn 12 to all look out the window together - even though we weren't keeping track of score, as soon as I introduced that rule everyone was so excited to look out the window. We would've been OK if we'd read the "reactor malfunction" card properly in the moment; turns out one of us got knocked out, which meant they couldn't wiggle the mouse, which delayed all of us and lead to a simple frigate blowing up the ship because no-one fired at it. That said, it was hilarious to see everything go wrong. I think the training missions can be easy in a bad way, whereas our real mission felt more like what Space Alert should be. Everyone loved it and thought it was hilarious, we're definitely playing it more again, and I'm glad I bought it ages ago on the basis of this experience alone. Followed it up with a first game of Chinatown, which made for a nice cooldown. I was worried that Chinatown was going to be too mathsy. Maybe because it was our first game, but there was mostly decision-making from the gut. I had a couple of rounds where I was able to pick a lot right in the middle of the same player's block and force him to pay through the nose just to get me out of there. One thing I observed was everyone was pretty cautious, in the sense that we all tried to lock down big contiguous sections rather than have a few areas going at once. Final scores were $1.3m, $1.11m, $980k and $850k, with the winner being somewhat surprising. A great gaming day with two games I'm already itching to play again.
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Aug 13, 2019 02:31
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Invited a localgoon (i.e. in our local city thread not this thread) and played Nauticus I honestly am not going to get tired of this game. It plays really quickly, it's got the action/follow mechanic very similar to Puerto Rico but takes out the "lots of unique buildings all available" poo poo I hate and streamlines stuff pretty well. Obscure game, but really good. Coloretto I last played this ten years ago when I visited my now-wife for the first time after starting dating long distance. Not a whole lot to talk about, it's great, way better than Zooloretto, really short and good, but it's the memories that really tickled me. 
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Aug 13, 2019 03:41
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At least your crew gets to look out the window together in the afterlife. I've come to terms that my group will never be good at Space Alert but enjoy it for being a great Rube Goldberg machine of death.
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Aug 13, 2019 04:31
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A friend brought out Pipeline at board game night, and I am extremely a fan. An engine builder where you're you're trying to assemble randomized pipe tiles of three different colors into as long a length as possible to purify crude oil into higher quality stuff, ideally branching off from a single tile since at the beginning you can only activate pipes that run through a single tile. Combine the decisions involved in which pipes to acquire and how to assemble them with accumulating raw resources, tanks to hold them, contracts to sell the output, and upgrades to make the whole process more efficient, along with the ability to chain two actions in a single turn results in the greatest analysis paralysis I've ever encountered. That's really saying something, usually I value getting through a game as quickly as possible. My initial strategy of focusing on getting a single massive pipe focusing on a single oil color paid off majorly though. The entire first year(of three progressively shorter years) went to assembling the engine while having access to virtually no cash, then immediately upon the start of the second year I was able to sell my stockpile of high-tier oil for a huge sum and buy a machine to allow passively refining more oil every single turn for a relatively small fee. After branching out into the other two colors and adding another machine I was able to end the game at over 800 points, compared to both opponents running under 200. Makes me wonder if I hosed up some rule majorly but the person who taught the game was watching and didn't point anything out. Really looking forward to another game once everyone has a good handle on the mechanics.
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Aug 13, 2019 06:52
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Your opponents didn’t use machines I take it.
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Aug 13, 2019 15:16
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Eschatos posted:I was able to end the game at over 800 points, compared to both opponents running under 200. Makes me wonder if I hosed up some rule majorly but the person who taught the game was watching and didn't point anything out. Our first game also had this kind of scoring difference. It's not necessarily wrong. (I was using machines but I also completely misunderstood how contracts and the other thing worked so I sold all my oil at market. Also I went after blue which was twice as hard as silver).
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Aug 13, 2019 15:21
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Mayveena posted:Your opponents didn’t use machines I take it. Or used them on lovely pipes that wasn't worth the 15 bucks which left them struggling to pay for crude to upgrade. That happened to one of the people in the 200s in the game I played...
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Aug 13, 2019 15:21
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Mayveena posted:Your opponents didn’t use machines I take it. One did. I think where they messed up was just not building enough pipes. At the end my network was about triple the size of either of theirs, and refining 5 or 6 oil 1-2 steps every single turn with two machines. Another thing was I was pretty much completely uncontested for access to orange, whereas they were mostly focusing on blue and driving up its price(since blue pipes/tanks was one of the endgame scoring conditions).
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Aug 13, 2019 16:40
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So I saw part of the SU&SD review for Too Many bones and they seemed pretty positive on it but then a part comes up about the combat and is like "Well sometimes the combats are just randomly unwinnable but whatever you just lose time, not the game" and that set off huge warning bells in my head. I need a second opinion on this very expensive game.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:30
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I haven't played it but typical KS fare is if the game is worth having it will hit retail. If not, nothing of value was lost. I'd probably lean more toward the latter .
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Aug 13, 2019 21:35
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Oh god I watched more of the video and when they got to the cons on the game it sounds like a loving nightmare. I feel like y'all are buying the lede on this one SU&SD. "Oh this game is super cool and fun and all the characters and dice are great and you make fun decisions and this game is so much fun! Oh but you have to reference the rulebook constantly for rules that sometimes don't make any sense and they specifically reference outside youtube videos in their manual to teach you how to do things that are like... on like a handful of events in the entire deck. Oh and the combat is just horseshit sometimes for no reason and you can't possibly win." Like goddamn why are you so positive on this game then spend the latter half of the video talking about why you absolutely should not play this game. Edit: It's not even their like, mid-review turnaround gimmick they're just like "here's some little nitpicks" about some serious dealbreakers.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:38
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SVWAG loves it too so maybe too many bones just broke everyone's brain in the review community
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Aug 13, 2019 21:42
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Glagha posted:So I saw part of the SU&SD review for Too Many bones and they seemed pretty positive on it Glagha posted:Oh god I watched more of the video and when they got to the cons on the game it sounds like a loving nightmare. They like to do that. With SUSD, it pays to not get hyped until the video is over.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:52
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Do you want a gloomhaven-like (but non legacy) where you roll dice for combat and the grid based dungeon exploring is abstracted away? If yes then Too Many Bones is good. We played I liked it OK. We didn't have to reference the rule book too often and never found an encounter card where we NEEDED the youtube. Though one of the people we played with was misplaying/cheating like a sombitch and everything ended up being way too easy. We were also careful about party composition so we had the traditional roles. I would play again. I wouldn't spend $200 on it.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:57
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SUSD has a naive enthusiasm I find very offputting.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:08
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This game just has far too many bones.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:25
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There are tonnes of instances where I'll disagree with the svwag guys; their recommendations aren't bulletproof. But where they are good is that they'll articulate their thinking really well and its rare that I won't at least have a good understanding on where their tastes and mine diverge
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Aug 13, 2019 22:28
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The End posted:There are tonnes of instances where I'll disagree with the svwag guys; their recommendations aren't bulletproof. But where they are good is that they'll articulate their thinking really well and its rare that I won't at least have a good understanding on where their tastes and mine diverge Not that I've watched much of their stuff for a while, but when I was, 2-3 years ago, I felt like SUSD did a good job of this. I remember their review of Kingdom: Death Monster was excellent in this respect. They also had a review of some samurai fight game that they loved but their description made me go "meeeeh"
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Aug 13, 2019 22:41
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SUSD came out as pro star in the star v circle debate
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Aug 13, 2019 22:51
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M a x posted:SUSD came out as pro star in the star v circle debate
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