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The guy asked for 60-90 minutes to play not set up.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:13
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Another 2P that I haven't played but have heard good things about is Watergate, a competitive game in which one player is Nixon trying to stay in office, and the other player is an investigative journalist trying to take him down.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:24
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Played Tapestry finally last night and had a blast. Love the game, but had a few issues with the rules/teaching/cheat sheets. 1) The cheat sheet cards confused one of our players, which then confused the whole table, and turned into a 15 minute discussion about the core flow of the game. I'd call this a huge issue/oversight that I can't believe was missed. 2) We didn't realize that your income phase IS the fire maker age, and that your second income phase puts the first tapestry card on the second card space of the tapestry board. We ended up playing an entire extra round, so 6 incomes instead of 5, and that definitely made the game overstay it's welcome. There are some cards that allow you to place a tapestry card over the fire space, but otherwise it's left blank. Other than that, the game was really awesome. Probably my favorite civilization game to date, though to be fair I'm a big Stonemaier fangirl and haven't really been into previous civilization games that I've played.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:35
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Stonemaier stan here, 5 plays of Tapestry in the books, plenty more to come. Overall very fun, definitely get the GSC itch from trying to stack combos late in the game. I love the painted sculpts and puzzling out the capital city, would not be the same with cardboard chits or whatever. Balance issues with tapestry cards are totally overblown, but there are some serious issues with balance between the civ/factions. Had a game in which I played pretty much optimally with my faction and was blown out 300-81 due to someone playing optimally with another, literally nothing I could do to take points away from them without costing myself an equal amount. Having asymmetric powers can allow for the meta handling balance, but with a game with so little interaction, it just isn’t enough to make up for some combos. Stonemaier does lots of playtesting and it seems thorough, but imbalance stuff like this seems to make it into many of their games. If you don’t like Stonemaier’s other offerings then probably pass, if you enjoy wingspan/scythe/viticulture then it’s worth trying before buying.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:18
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Bodanarko posted:Stonemaier stan here, 5 plays of Tapestry in the books, plenty more to come. Wildly unbalanced with no player interaction for only £90? Where do I sign up. Also Stonemaier do not playtest for balance. They simply cannot be doing that and release the games they do.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:25
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Balance doesn't bother me that much. The games are fun, and that's what I'm here for. I get that in some games you want to be hypercompetitive and setup a tournament scene around, but really that's the only time I care about a game being balanced. Not all games need to be that. Hell, few games need to be that. I'm just here to build a civilization and see what happens.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:10
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Frozen Peach posted:Balance doesn't bother me that much. The games are fun, and that's what I'm here for. I get that in some games you want to be hypercompetitive and setup a tournament scene around, but really that's the only time I care about a game being balanced. Not all games need to be that. Hell, few games need to be that.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:22
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I just want to play advanced civ for that tbh. Makes me feel like I'm witnessing the rise and fall of civilizations.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:27
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Though if we want to start another derail about the benefits of games being well balanced, I'm totally up for that.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:27
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silvergoose posted:Though if we want to start another derail about the benefits of games being well balanced, I'm totally up for that. Let's go, balance is good and makes better, more fun games for everyone. The only thing worse than wildly unbalanced games are people who refuse to win at things like Fluxx because its more 'fun' that way.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:31
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Aramoro posted:Let's go, balance is good and makes better, more fun games for everyone. The only truly balanced games are symetrical simulatenous turn abstracts and you can argue every game is unbalanced if you try hard enough and lots of people just use "balance" as an excuse to hate on games that aren't to their liking.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:33
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Frozen Peach posted:The only truly balanced games are symetrical simulatenous turn abstracts and you can argue every game is unbalanced if you try hard enough and lots of people just use "balance" as an excuse to hate on games that aren't to their liking. I mean yes one can argue that, but I don't see where you're seeing someone presenting that argument other than the straw-man in your head. A reasonable approximation of balance can and is commonly reached in non symmetrical games, and that's the actual thing that is being proposed here as what we should care about.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:38
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I can handle a game being unbalanced or random if it’s a 30 minute experience but I’m not playing something like Tapestry where lots of factions is so unbalanced for 2+ hours.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:43
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Frozen Peach posted:The only truly balanced games are symetrical simulatenous turn abstracts and you can argue every game is unbalanced if you try hard enough and lots of people just use "balance" as an excuse to hate on games that aren't to their liking. Balance is a spectrum not an absolute. Asymmetric games are very hard to balance but its possible to try. Look at something like Scythe where is was theoretically playtested a lot but then it came out and Stonemaier were like "idk ban rus-industrial?". If you sit down for a 2 hour game of Scythe but you get Nordic then you've got your work cut out to actually win. The game would be unarguably better if you had a closer chance of winning compared to the other factions. So unless you're saying that the more unbalanced the game the more fun it is we can all agree more balanced is more fun.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:44
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So here's my thoughts. If you're playing a competitive game (as opposed to coop) your main goal is to try to win within the game's framework. That Knizia quote and all that. There's exceptions for wanting to make sure everyone's having fun, of course. Aiming for balance above all else is probably just for abstracts, but ignoring it is also bad, unless your goal is to make a non-competitive game that pretends that it is competitive. No game is ever perfectly balanced and no one is arguing Tapestry should be. But I think "the starting states are unbalanced enough that it lessens my enjoyment" is a perfectly fair statement.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:45
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Aramoro posted:So unless you're saying that the more unbalanced the game the more fun it is we can all agree more balanced is more fun. No, I totally agree with you. The run on sentence nature of my post was mostly sarcasm making fun of both sides of the argument. Rad Valtar posted:I can handle a game being unbalanced or random if it’s a 30 minute experience but I’m not playing something like Tapestry where lots of factions is so unbalanced for 2+ hours. As long as I'm having fun building thing, I'm happy. Doesn't matter if it's a 30 minute filler or a 10 hour slog. Sure, most games are going to be more fun being more balanced, but there's a point, especially in games like Cosmic Encounter or Betrayal at House on the Hill, where nothing is supposed to be balanced. It's all just wacky fun. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 18:47
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There is absolutely a market for those kinds of games, and the fun people get from them is valid.
The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 19:12
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I'll play all sorts of historical simulations with asymmetric considerations where the point is to just survive, much less "win." I'll even include Bios Megafauna with this consideration. I'm less interested in that if it's supposed to be a more tournament-style euro. Everyone has their own lines. I love mega civ, megafauna, Pax Pamir, OCS...I love basic SE4x, but I hate SE4x with asymmetric/historical considerations. For the most part, I find games with tech trees are less interesting if there's already a wildly imbalanced "faction" component on top. Mega Civ leans more towards the historical considerations given that its tech tree is a la carte and gives ways to alleviate catastrophes from seafaring or agricultural disasters. But the idea of tapestry's tech tree with the factions leaves a bad taste compared to something like Flow of History or TTA which do not. In the latter, you can adapt your civilization as time progresses. SVWAG's Walker nails my problem with tapestry: It's very expensive for the kind of game it is. FOH handles the similar style (albeit the starting civ restriction is much less of an issue) and is much cheaper for the kind of experience you get. At this price, I would expect more granularity from the likes of mega civ/western empires, TTA, or antiquity.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:12
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Aramoro posted:Balance is a spectrum not an absolute. Asymmetric games are very hard to balance but its possible to try. Look at something like Scythe where is was theoretically playtested a lot but then it came out and Stonemaier were like "idk ban rus-industrial?". Scythe was playtested with the expansion factions and boards. That there turned out to only be two broken combos out of 49 isn't too bad, really.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:18
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I'd like to add that I played Root, magic maze, and cosmic encounter over the weekend and CE was worse than even this thread gave it credit for. When people describe the game as just fun like how SUSD or Tom Vasel would, I expected more than reading what my cards do 3/4 of the time and trying to keep a mental log of what I can do turn to turn even though it doesn't matter for the most part. There isn't even a fun negotiation component like JoCo or sidereal since there isn't even anything to trade. Root and MM are great, but playing CE was almost enough to call the entire night mediocre. Ending the session on it was probably why. This was with a different group of friends I haven't played board games with but I'll be sure to bring some winsomes and solid 1-2h classic euros next time.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:19
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I can't enjoy cosmic anymore. I understand people like it, but I just can't. It's in the group of games that I'd rather play nothing, and that really is a small group.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:21
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Chill la Chill posted:But the idea of tapestry's tech tree with the factions leaves a bad taste compared to something like Flow of History or TTA which do not. In the latter, you can adapt your civilization as time progresses. This I mostly agree with. The price point and overproduction is impressive, even for Stonemaier, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. For me, it is, because I'd be going all in and getting all the upgrades and fancy pieces anyways, so not feeling like I have to "upgrade" my edition of Tapestry. However, the overproduction does create a price point where if you're not a fanatic the game doesn't justify the cost. That being said, to me, price point isn't a signifier of how in depth or balanced a game is. To me, it's more a factor of how much time will I sink into this game compared to the cost I've spent on it. In the case of Tapestry, and given the tastes of the groups I play with, the cost is more than enough to justify how much I'm going to play it.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:25
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Jedit posted:Scythe was playtested with the expansion factions and boards. That there turned out to only be two broken combos out of 49 isn't too bad, really. Best thing is that combo isn't even the most powerful. It's also more about the general power levels, Nordics are just worse than everyone else. A whole standard deviation worse than normal.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:41
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Rad Valtar posted:I can handle a game being unbalanced or random if it’s a 30 minute experience but I’m not playing something like Tapestry where lots of factions is so unbalanced for 2+ hours. This.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:43
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Frozen Peach posted:This I mostly agree with. The price point and overproduction is impressive, even for Stonemaier, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. For me, it is, because I'd be going all in and getting all the upgrades and fancy pieces anyways, so not feeling like I have to "upgrade" my edition of Tapestry. However, the overproduction does create a price point where if you're not a fanatic the game doesn't justify the cost. That's fair. I paid the same amount for jumbo container myself. I think it's more balanced and depth, but I'm agreeing with you wrt how much time I've sank into it so far.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:46
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Straight White Shark posted:ehhhhhhh.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:20
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Frozen Peach posted:No, I totally agree with you. The run on sentence nature of my post was mostly sarcasm making fun of both sides of the argument. at the risk of recalling a previous thread, what does fun mean to you?
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Oct 1, 2019 20:24
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Tapestry brings up an interesting question for me: how does the amount of money you spend on a board game affect how much you enjoy it, if at all? For instance, I like Wingspan well enough, but I think if I had paid $100 for it I probably would like it a lot less.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:40
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pospysyl posted:Tapestry brings up an interesting question for me: how does the amount of money you spend on a board game affect how much you enjoy it, if at all? For instance, I like Wingspan well enough, but I think if I had paid $100 for it I probably would like it a lot less. I feel that for most games, as long as I get it to the table more than a couple of times, and especially if I can involve 3+ people, it’s probably worth it at any realistic price point. I think Pandemic Legacy is a good example. I think I paid $45 for that, and four people got like 15 nights of fun out of it. Amortized over time, that’s like 75 cents, per person, per session. If we had decided to go to 15 movies together, it’d be like $1000. You simply can’t beat the value of any board game that gets a reasonable amount of play. Unrelated question for BottomLiner: I see to recall from months back that you were not very sanguine about the Underworld expansion for Root based on Cole’s lack of involvement. Is that still your stance, or are you more interested in it now? I’m considering preordering it but your pessimism is giving me pause. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 20:47
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pospysyl posted:Tapestry brings up an interesting question for me: how does the amount of money you spend on a board game affect how much you enjoy it, if at all? For instance, I like Wingspan well enough, but I think if I had paid $100 for it I probably would like it a lot less. For me cost doesn't factor into how much fun I'll have playing a game. But it does affect if I buy the game at all. Recently I was considering Everdell, looks OK. But for our normal number of players I'd need to base game plus the expansion to play it really. So I'm looking at £100 for something which is OK. With it being only OK it's not going to get to the table that often either so that's where it falls down.
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Oct 1, 2019 21:02
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Shadow225 posted:at the risk of recalling a previous thread, what does fun mean to you? Am I enjoying myself for the entire span of the game? Do I wish I could be doing anything else during that period of time rather than sitting there playing the game? Does the game not overstay its welcome? pospysyl posted:Tapestry brings up an interesting question for me: how does the amount of money you spend on a board game affect how much you enjoy it, if at all? For instance, I like Wingspan well enough, but I think if I had paid $100 for it I probably would like it a lot less. I wouldn't say "money spent on the game" equates to enjoyment, more than my enjoyment of the game equates to how much I'm willing to spend on it. Some games I'm perfectly happy with a $30-40 box of cardboard bits, but some games I'm more than happy to buy a deluxe upgraded edition and/or splurge on Meeple Source and Broken Token upgrades. Honestly, I hate how much Tapestry cost me. I would have been perfectly happy with a $40-50 box without the plastic buildings and the overproduction. I was expecting more out of it for the price. I can't say, yet, whether or not I'd be interested in getting an upgraded version or fancy bits and pieces if I had only paid $40 for a base version. Knowing me, I'd probably splurge anyways, but still. Some games just don't need deluxified that much. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 21:10
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Jewmanji posted:
Cole went on record on BGG to clarify the process a bit and it seems that he did the overall development on the expansion and was much more involved in than it initially sounded (he did the deck, play testing, etc), similar to his role in Vast 2. The last overhaul to the Crows probably came out of that, so I'm a lot less hesitant on the expansion now, especially after all the praise Vast 2 is getting (Cole mentioned somewhere that he came to Patrick and was like "you can have 20 iffy scenarios, or a handful of really good ones"). So I am looking forward to seeing the new factions more now, but mainly excited to see the new maps and deck since the card powers are going to really mix things up and make them less of a resource and more of an action pool for everyone. For balance talk, it's a spectrum like many things in game design, and a perfectly balanced game either doesn't exist or would be really dull. But the farther you get on the random side of things combined with length and what a game is presenting itself as, the less I'm likely to enjoy it. Tapestry is a two hour plodding affair about building up civilizations (thematic integration problems aside), but for the game to be determined from the outset with no player ability to make a say in that is unforgivable in a game of that length IMO. Moving up tracks and throwing bits out on the map and player boards don't mean anything if the game was already decided before you started, and if a game is going to have setups like that then it either needs a design intent for why (historical war game scenarios, Space Hulk missions, etc), or editorial rigor to recommend not mixing specific elements because they break the game. Jamey has been moving more towards the Lang style design of just tossing in everything that fits the theme of the game without any care for the way it fits the game and leaving it to players to figure it out. I think that's a big reason why Rising Sun was mostly forgotten about pretty quickly and Blood Rage is still more popular and played/talked about. Blood Rage was pretty sparse content wise, especially for a CMON game, and the expansions were designed to only use a figure or two at a time, keeping the core game in tact. Ever since Fenris and now with Tapestry, Jamey has gone more the Rising Sun route which can either create a great experience for players or a complete mess that leaves players with a bad taste in their mouth. Dead of Winter had the same problem, my first play was great thanks to the cards that showed up and just happened to work well with our characters, scenario, and my perceived tone of the game, then subsequent games were nowhere near that good and made me see that the game is just a mess. Some games I love have balance problems too, including  and Terra Mystica. In Splotter games the players always have the ability to react to the few random elements (map setup, gods available, etc), and things like openings in FCM aren't "unbalanced" because they're available to all players, not dealt out. Everyone has access to the stronger strategies and plenty of room to maneuver within them. In Terra Mystica the problems are only apparent at higher skill levels and not an issue formost players, and can be fixed by VP bidding for factions (a stop gap solution, but at least it helps). Tapestry could have handicap values for factions but that doesn't fix a lot of the problems. We weren't looking for a reason to hate the game, by all accounts it has turned out to be a worse game than I was expecting, genuinely. I thought it would be in line with Scythe as a game I wouldn't refuse but would never ask to play. All of my problems before its release were marketing and production related, but it turns out the game is a turd too so its fair game to talk about. I really don't understand the reasoning of "I don't care if a game is broken, I just have fun putting stuff out and seeing what happens" because you know what happens, you lose or win not based on your actions, so why not see what happens in a game that functions better? Even "it's just fun" ameritrash games have the expectations of being solid mechanically and not just a total luck fest, and they'll be rightly criticized if they're bad. I'm speaking broadly of the worst offenders, of course, or the worst case scenarios of games like Tapestry, but I don't think it should be on the players to find the functioning setups for games like this and I don't personally have time to waste on hoping a game works. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 21:17
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Bottom Liner posted:I really don't understand the reasoning of "I don't care if a game is broken, I just have fun putting stuff out and seeing what happens" because you know what happens, you lose or win not based on your actions, so why not see what happens in a game that functions better? I don't consider "winning" or "losing" as tantamount to having fun. To me, winning and losing is a sliding scale. I had a blast playing Tapestry last night, despite a dismal score for my first game. I was more interested in the story my civilization was telling, than focusing on score. I loved watching my friends build cool cities while I focused on stealing inventions from other players. I get "well what about just playing a better game" and I agree, but to me it's not a zero sum game about finding the best game and the best use of my time. I play a lot of games, and I play a lot of bad and good and mediocre games. I just like playing games. Terra Mystica was my absolute favorite game for the longest time, and has only recently been dethroned (Black Angel has taken its place). That doesn't mean that Terra Mystica is the only game I ever want to play. I'd argue Gaia Project is probably a "better" game than Terra Mystica, but it loses some of what I find enjoyable about TM and that's largely thematic. Sometimes I just want to play the new hotness. Sometimes I just want to play a stupid trick taking game about walking doggos. Sometimes I want to play a long, dense, multi-hour long slog of Mage Knight.
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Oct 1, 2019 21:31
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Bottom Liner posted:
there's one exception to this for me - wargames and other games like them that have a simulation element to them. I don't mind playing a game where one side is favored if it allows me to get into something like the mindset of a general of the time or similar. It's almost a role-playing game at that point. The point is feeling the choices and getting into the mind set.
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Oct 1, 2019 21:32
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Jewmanji posted:I feel that for most games, as long as I get it to the table more than a couple of times, and especially if I can involve 3+ people, it’s probably worth it at any realistic price point. I think Pandemic Legacy is a good example. I think I paid $45 for that, and four people got like 15 nights of fun out of it. Amortized over time, that’s like 75 cents, per person, per session. If we had decided to go to 15 movies together, it’d be like $1000. You simply can’t beat the value of any board game that gets a reasonable amount of play. Trying to calculate what is worth it this way is a mistake. Not because it isn't a valid thing to think about but because it often times fails to include quality and other factors. I also find when I start doing this I might not buy something I'd enjoy because it's not as efficient in fun as something else. Trying to minmax my fun is unappealing to me. I'm new to this board game thing but I can certainly appreciate higher quality/shinier stuff. Take Quacks of Quedlinburg, would the game be better with nicer tokens that don't stick together when you draw them and containers? Sure. Would I have bought it at 70 bucks? No probably not. Am I more tempted by Dinosaur Island because it has rad plastic dinosaurs? Yep. Did I not pick up Splendor because I thought it was ugly? Yeah. I almost didn't pick Arboretum up because I liked the old art better. Low quality (be it bad art, flimsy/non existent organization, confusing rule books etc.) can hinder a good game while high quality stuff can make up for a game that may not be as solid (this is pretty much true for anything so I assume it's true for board games). In the end though it's easier (edit:safer) to be low quality and just sell cheaper, because it's safer, people aren't risking as much money. Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 21:33
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I think to have this discussion we need to realize that people have different reasons for playing a game and different expectations for what they are going to get out of it. I prefer to play games that start out with everyone on a level playing field so something like unique player powers don’t do much for me. At the end of the game if I lost because I know I made mistakes and not because the game was skewed in someone else’s direction then I’m satisfied.
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Oct 1, 2019 21:41
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Duck and Cover posted:Take Quacks of Quildinberg, would the game be better with nicer tokens that don't stick together when you draw them and containers? Sure. Would I have bought it at 70 bucks? No probably not. Did I immediately go out and purchase the fancy bits from BGG Store? Yes I did. <_<
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Oct 1, 2019 22:10
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Frozen Peach posted:Did I immediately go out and purchase the fancy bits from BGG Store? Yes I did. <_< My friend got a bunch of coin cases to put all the token in, makes a very satisfying bag of tokens now.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:17
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pospysyl posted:Tapestry brings up an interesting question for me: how does the amount of money you spend on a board game affect how much you enjoy it, if at all? For instance, I like Wingspan well enough, but I think if I had paid $100 for it I probably would like it a lot less. Well, the poster child for that is my Cthulhu Wars set. I have everything except most of the 8-player maps. I could have paid less for it and still had as much gaming enjoyment from it, and having paid more doesn't mean I enjoy it more. But godfuckingdrat does it feel good to slap a Tsathoggua the size of my fist onto the map, and the number of people who don't even game that say "Holy poo poo" when they see it is a source of joy.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:40
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If I'm playing a two player game and the game is unbalanced such that I will lose regardless of if I make strategic moves or move randomly if my opponent plays well I didn't have player agency that game. If I don't have agency, why I am even playing? There is no excuse for having a 300-82 score gap if both players played optimally unless one card flip breaking well is worth 220 VP. If a card flip is worth 220 VP you don't have agency because now the game comes down to card flips. This is just playing snakes and ladders, which we all agree is terrible. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 22:45
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