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Chill la Chill posted:Try Babylonia. It’s a Knizia design that’s tile laying so should at least be decent, hopefully excellent. Also try mega civilization/western empires (same game different names) if you can, but it’s rather long unless they have a short demo copy. if it's like Gencon, it's a 2 hour demo. Also Babylonia looks interesting, hope it comes to the US soon.
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Sep 24, 2019 04:45
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Hey, does anyone have impressions about Call To Adventure? I saw it on sale and it looks kind of interesting.
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Sep 24, 2019 08:46
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So I found someone who is going to Essen and is willing to maybe pick up something small for me - is the info available for exactly what booth will have that AFfO Mini Expansion, and at what price?
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Sep 24, 2019 14:05
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CommonShore posted:So I found someone who is going to Essen and is willing to maybe pick up something small for me - is the info available for exactly what booth will have that AFfO Mini Expansion, and at what price? Feuerland Spiele should be in Hall 4 - Booth C-116. No info about the price as far as I know but the last mini expansion was like 5 bucks.
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Sep 24, 2019 14:10
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Selecta84 posted:Feuerland Spiele should be in Hall 4 - Booth C-116. Amazing.
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Sep 24, 2019 14:11
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CommonShore posted:Amazing. You're welcome. Just be aware that they try to get it ready for Essen but they are not 100% sure that is will be available then.
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Sep 24, 2019 14:17
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al-azad posted:I love it... Rutibex posted:Please... SoftNum posted:Dune is like those other games... Thanks for the recommendations. I've now ordered it. Looking forward to trying it out.
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Sep 24, 2019 14:36
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Selecta84 posted:Feuerland Spiele should be in Hall 4 - Booth C-116. I didn't think final booth numbers were due for another couple of weeks, and Feuerland are not one of the publishers that has staked out a booth for years. Best to keep an eye on it.
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Sep 24, 2019 16:33
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Agent Rush posted:Hey, does anyone have impressions about Call To Adventure? I saw it on sale and it looks kind of interesting. It's an engine builder whose gimmick is that you use weird 2 sided coin things instead of dice to determine success. There's some element of thematic narrative building but it's not particularly evocative. It's fast and inoffensive but I wouldn't say it's a must have by any means. It's nice as an end-of-night game or between crunchier games. I wouldn't buy it unless you're desperately needing an engine builder and hate race for the galaxy.
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Sep 24, 2019 17:08
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Agent Rush posted:Hey, does anyone have impressions about Call To Adventure? I saw it on sale and it looks kind of interesting. It's a lot like Splendor, if you've played that - except your bonus gems are bonus dice (weird two-sided "runes"), so they don't always work. The theme is better: your little character gets a little origin story and enemies and what not. My kids liked that part. And there's some other stuff with hidden objectives and a few political, "take that" sort of cards, but the core "my first engine game" thing is still there. It's Splendor with some other stuff pasted on and the theme changed. It's simple and inoffensive, but not a game I'd want to play more than a few times. I do want to play it one more time, though, as I think there might be a "stack fail bonuses, fail everything, stack experience" strategy that would be funny if it works.
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Sep 24, 2019 17:29
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Jedit posted:I didn't think final booth numbers were due for another couple of weeks, and Feuerland are not one of the publishers that has staked out a booth for years. Best to keep an eye on it. I pre ordered Crystal Palace and got that booth number with my confirmation e-mail.
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Sep 24, 2019 17:55
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It's weird. Pfister is one of my favorite designers, but of the murderer's row that Capstone is putting out for pre-order from Essen (Macaraibo, Cooper's Island, and Crystal Palace), the only one I'm hesitant to slap money down on after reading their rules is Macaraibo. Something about it just... I don't know... doesn't grab me as being all that novel. It feels a bit GWT, a bit Mombasa - both games I love - but nothing really blows me away, nor does the Legacy element do much for me. Maybe I'm just worn out on colonialism in the Caribbean. Anyone else seeing something in it they love?
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Sep 24, 2019 20:18
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dromer posted:It's an engine builder whose gimmick is that you use weird 2 sided coin things instead of dice to determine success. There's some element of thematic narrative building but it's not particularly evocative. It's fast and inoffensive but I wouldn't say it's a must have by any means. It's nice as an end-of-night game or between crunchier games. I wouldn't buy it unless you're desperately needing an engine builder and hate race for the galaxy. jmzero posted:It's a lot like Splendor, if you've played that - except your bonus gems are bonus dice (weird two-sided "runes"), so they don't always work. The theme is better: your little character gets a little origin story and enemies and what not. My kids liked that part. Thanks for the answers, sounds like I can skip it in favor of what I've already got. On another note, anyone tried Forbidden Sky? I've got Forbidden Island, that went over well enough as 'my first co-op board game', and I was wondering if either of Sky or Desert improved on the formula at all?
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Sep 25, 2019 02:38
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Agent Rush posted:Thanks for the answers, sounds like I can skip it in favor of what I've already got. I haven't played forbidden sky, but I have island and desert. Desert is a good deal harder than island.
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Sep 25, 2019 03:50
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Forbidden stars is the best of the lot.
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Sep 25, 2019 04:09
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Chill la Chill posted:Forbidden stars is the best of the lot. This is pretty good.
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Sep 25, 2019 05:07
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Agent Rush posted:Thanks for the answers, sounds like I can skip it in favor of what I've already got. Forbidden Island is pretty basic, Forbidden Desert is a lot more interesting IMO, while still being similar enough to feel like an "intermediate level" upgrade to Island. Forbidden Sky bucks the formula a lot more and seems way trickier, considering a lot of the things you need to do to win (revealing tiles, laying wires) are also putting you in a more difficult spot (by adding lightning rods and connecting them to other tiles). I like Desert the best, but I haven't played all that much of Sky and I did like it better than Island at least. Worth noting, a ton of co-op games use a similar core formula to the Forbidden series, notably the Pandemic games (also by Matt Leacock and predating Forbidden Island). So if you're looking for similar, you can look there as well.
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Sep 25, 2019 05:25
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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:Forbidden Island is pretty basic, Forbidden Desert is a lot more interesting IMO, while still being similar enough to feel like an "intermediate level" upgrade to Island. Forbidden Sky bucks the formula a lot more and seems way trickier, considering a lot of the things you need to do to win (revealing tiles, laying wires) are also putting you in a more difficult spot (by adding lightning rods and connecting them to other tiles). I like Desert the best, but I haven't played all that much of Sky and I did like it better than Island at least. As a side note to this, between games that have 'Pandemic' in their title, variants from expansions and games that follow the formula, I have compiled a list of 33 'Pandemics'. My coworkers have been working our way through them one a week randomly... We'll see if we can hit them all. So far, we only played the Hinterlands variant (decent way to spice up vanilla Pandemic without adding difficulty) and Forbidden Desert (a bit dry). This week we are going to Rome. I'm looking forward to seeing how my coworkers like Black Orchestra (Hitler assassin pandemic), Kings of Israel (Christian pandemic) and Polar Bear Rescue (Climate change and bear breeding Pandemic).
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Sep 25, 2019 07:11
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Rusty Kettle posted:As a side note to this, between games that have 'Pandemic' in their title, variants from expansions and games that follow the formula, I have compiled a list of 33 'Pandemics'. My coworkers have been working our way through them one a week randomly... We'll see if we can hit them all. So far, we only played the Hinterlands variant (decent way to spice up vanilla Pandemic without adding difficulty) and Forbidden Desert (a bit dry). This week we are going to Rome. Huh, I just looked up Black Orchestra, and that does look like a cool and interesting take on the formula! Personally, the only ones I've played are base Pandemic, as well as Pandemic Rome - both of which I enjoyed. I quite liked the flavour and migration mechanics in Rome, although that might just be me
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Sep 25, 2019 07:36
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armorer posted:I haven't played forbidden sky, but I have island and desert. Desert is a good deal harder than island. Desert used to regularly show up at our group when it was new. We never won, ever. Once we had a near-perfect run of luck for the first three quarters of the game, but then it turned on us and we lost anyway. After that it quietly disappeared.
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Sep 25, 2019 08:33
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Rusty Kettle posted:Forbidden Desert (a bit dry) Boo
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Sep 25, 2019 09:01
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Today I played Horrified and Star Wars Outer Rim Horrified is a horror-themed co-op Pandemic-like and was okay, nothing to write home about but decent enough. I’m not a big co-op fan but the game went quickly, which is more than I can say for Outer Rim, which was interminable. It’s basically a Star Wars themed board game version of the Elite video games - you fly around space taking jobs, doing bounties, smuggling, etc. I’m not sure why it took so long, most of my turns were pretty quick. Part of the problem is that there’s little to think about during other players turns and little direct interaction. In a game like say Scythe I’ll be spending other players turns trying to figure out what I’m gonna do on my next turn and rethinking and adjusting as the game state evolves. In Outer Rim I already knew “I’m gonna fly to Mon Calamari and turn in this quest” or whatever before I finished my previous turn and spent most of the downtime on my phone. One of the other players spent three turns trying to complete the same quest on the same planet but failing due to bad dice the first two times. Speaking of which yeah there’s dice combat/quests too which I’m not huge on. There were some cool features like the different ships you could buy and upgrade but I’m not in any hurry to play it again. Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Sep 25, 2019 |
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Sep 25, 2019 09:18
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I forbid any more puns on this page.
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Sep 25, 2019 09:19
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Wafflecopper posted:Today I played Horrified and Star Wars Outer Rim Outer Rim is not too bad for a bit of fun. The game isn't balanced so I would recommend everyone plays Bounty Hunters or everyone plays Resistance folk. There's just that hint of Ameritrash in it like some people join Lando/Han Solo etc for free but there's no such benefit for Boba Fett for example. I think the game only really comes alive when you can use the factions to block people or when someone has crew on their ship that you need for a bounty. But in general it's not too serious, just chill and play. 4 Player game take 2 1/2 - 3hrs I think. We keep finding that it's close at the top and then there's someone in the wilderness points wise at the end and there's no realistic way for them to catch up in that last hour as well.
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Sep 25, 2019 09:28
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Jedit posted:Desert used to regularly show up at our group when it was new. We never won, ever. Once we had a near-perfect run of luck for the first three quarters of the game, but then it turned on us and we lost anyway. After that it quietly disappeared. I've lost every game of it that I've ever played except one. The one time we won, we would have lost on several of the preceding turns if the card flips had just gone differently.
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Sep 25, 2019 11:10
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Sounds like some people need to manage their water better 
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Sep 25, 2019 11:49
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Aramoro posted:Outer Rim is not too bad for a bit of fun. The game isn't balanced so I would recommend everyone plays Bounty Hunters or everyone plays Resistance folk. There's just that hint of Ameritrash in it like some people join Lando/Han Solo etc for free but there's no such benefit for Boba Fett for example. I think the game only really comes alive when you can use the factions to block people or when someone has crew on their ship that you need for a bounty. But in general it's not too serious, just chill and play. 4 Player game take 2 1/2 - 3hrs I think. We keep finding that it's close at the top and then there's someone in the wilderness points wise at the end and there's no realistic way for them to catch up in that last hour as well. Oh wow I had no idea you could even get bounties for peoples' crew, we never had anything cool like that happen. The factions barely came into play at all, I tried using one card that let me move a patrol to block one player's movement, but it turns out her personal goal was blowing up ships so whoops all I did was help her. That's on me for not checking everyone's poo poo out sooner but in general it seemed pretty easy to stay on neutral or positive with most factions and even random incidental blocking only came up once or twice. None of the faction ships higher than level 2 came out. We did only play to 8 fame but even that took 2.5-3 hours like you said.
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Sep 25, 2019 12:10
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Memnaelar posted:It's weird. Pfister is one of my favorite designers, but of the murderer's row that Capstone is putting out for pre-order from Essen (Macaraibo, Cooper's Island, and Crystal Palace), the only one I'm hesitant to slap money down on after reading their rules is Macaraibo. Something about it just... I don't know... doesn't grab me as being all that novel. It feels a bit GWT, a bit Mombasa - both games I love - but nothing really blows me away, nor does the Legacy element do much for me. Maybe I'm just worn out on colonialism in the Caribbean. Anyone else seeing something in it they love? I pre ordered Maracaibo. I don't own GWT or Mombasa and never played them unfortuantely but I own Blackout: Hongkong. Maracaibo seems to be parts GWT and parts Mombasa. Both games are regarded as good and I do enjoy Blackout: Hongkong so getting Maracaibo seems like a no brainer for me but yeah, if you already own GWT and Mombasa I'm not sure if Maracaibo will offer anything new.
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Sep 25, 2019 12:16
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Wafflecopper posted:Oh wow I had no idea you could even get bounties for peoples' crew, we never had anything cool like that happen. The factions barely came into play at all, I tried using one card that let me move a patrol to block one player's movement, but it turns out her personal goal was blowing up ships so whoops all I did was help her. That's on me for not checking everyone's poo poo out sooner but in general it seemed pretty easy to stay on neutral or positive with most factions and even random incidental blocking only came up once or twice. None of the faction ships higher than level 2 came out. We did only play to 8 fame but even that took 2.5-3 hours like you said. I would say playing to 10 points (I think that's right) doesn't take that much longer as they game accelerates towards the end. There are some light tactics in the game, but very light, it's mostly about you doing your own thing. A couple of the upgraded ships involve messing with other players, but it's incidental. If you have a Bounty on someone and someone else gets them as Crew then you can hunt them down and you opponents gets to either give them up and you fight them normally or you fight your opponent for them.
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Sep 25, 2019 12:30
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FirstAidKite posted:Sounds like some people need to manage their water better My coworkers didnt think the game was very fair because you could draw all four sun cards during the first two turns. This means that we could lose before everyone gets a turn. This didn't happen to us, but three of the first six were suns, so we wasted turns digging out the wells. The deck setup for Vanilla Pandemic prevents this from happening. Another complaint was that they thought that the boat should function like a shield because you can shelter from the sun inside the boat. I think we lost because they spent a lot of time spinning their wheels fighting sand, and in the end we got our just deserts.
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Sep 25, 2019 13:39
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Everything I've read or heard about tapestry so far points to it being a much worse Civ-light game than flow of history. The latest Dan Thurot https://spacebiff.com/2019/09/24/tapestry/ piece solidifies this opinion. Walker's question of who this overproduced game is supposed to appeal to hits the mark. At least with something like jumbo container, that game offers many more interesting decisions turn to turn. And I'll take J U M B O ships over these playdoh buildings.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:03
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Major Isoor posted:Huh, I just looked up Black Orchestra, and that does look like a cool and interesting take on the formula! Personally, the only ones I've played are base Pandemic, as well as Pandemic Rome - both of which I enjoyed. I quite liked the flavour and migration mechanics in Rome, although that might just be me I've played Pandemic: Rising Tide and enjoyed it a lot. Really would like to try Rome. I don't know if Spirit Island is on the original dude's list of Pandemic-likes, but to me it's the be-all/end-all of that genre if the group is ok with going heavier.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:17
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FirstAidKite posted:Sounds like some people need to manage their water better I don't think I've ever played it with the same group twice, so that may have a bit to do with it. You don't really have 4 actions per turn, because if you don't clear sand fairly frequently then you'll lose that way. Also the board often gets shifted around so that a tile you intended to go to next is now blocked by a bunch of sand and too far away besides. Water is only really the main problem when you're playing a game where no one is the water carrier. Don't get me wrong, I'd almost always rather play forbidden desert than forbidden island, I just don't expect to win.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:17
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Rusty Kettle posted:My coworkers didnt think the game was very fair because you could draw all four sun cards during the first two turns. This means that we could lose before everyone gets a turn. This didn't happen to us, but three of the first six were suns, so we wasted turns digging out the wells. The deck setup for Vanilla Pandemic prevents this from happening.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:27
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Played Underwater Cities a second time. I had no clear strategy, got sidetracked a lot, and who could have guessed, I lost badly. I still like it as a tableau builder above basically most others apart from Race. It's definitely in the "very limited number of turns" mindset that is seemingly getting more prominent. Also got to try a weird trick taking coop Trick n Trouble. It felt a little deterministic by the end, but not bad for a 20 minute light thing.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:41
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Lord Of Texas posted:I've played Pandemic: Rising Tide and enjoyed it a lot. Really would like to try Rome. Spirit Island is not on there. It is excellent and certainly my favorite co-op, but I think it is too heavy for this group.
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Sep 25, 2019 15:07
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Major Isoor posted:Huh, I just looked up Black Orchestra, and that does look like a cool and interesting take on the formula! Personally, the only ones I've played are base Pandemic, as well as Pandemic Rome - both of which I enjoyed. I quite liked the flavour and migration mechanics in Rome, although that might just be me Black Orchestra is good. I think Yggdrasil is a good Co-op game as well. Or Flashpoint, we played that last week and actually managed to save the Submarine.
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Sep 25, 2019 15:22
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Yggdrasil is hard as balls and honestly I feel that it goes a bit over the edge and winning and not winning is entirely reliant on luck.
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Sep 25, 2019 15:26
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Tekopo posted:Yggdrasil is hard as balls and honestly I feel that it goes a bit over the edge and winning and not winning is entirely reliant on luck. It's hard but relatively balanced. More players makes it harder, as does not picking the optimal gods. One trick is to make sure that anyone who picks up a weapon gets the level 2 version ASAP. Then someone else can pick the level 1.
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Sep 25, 2019 15:43
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Chill la Chill posted:Everything I've read or heard about tapestry so far points to it being a much worse Civ-light game than flow of history. The latest Dan Thurot https://spacebiff.com/2019/09/24/tapestry/ piece solidifies this opinion. Walker's question of who this overproduced game is supposed to appeal to hits the mark. At least with something like jumbo container, that game offers many more interesting decisions turn to turn. And I'll take J U M B O ships over these playdoh buildings. I mean, Flow of History is the best of its class. At least compare Tapestry to something like Nations or Clash of Cultures idk
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Sep 25, 2019 15:51
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