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Funzo posted:Tried our first game of Spirit Island and got our asses kicked. I'm not sure if we played a rule wrong, but I think we just didn't grasp the strategy right away. We made it 4 turns until we ran out of blight to place. Starting out is hard. I'd recommend someone play as the tree/forest because having access to an easy way to stall the invaders and defend helps a lot in the beginning, and speeding up another spirit by placing more presence on the board is phenomenal. The game is effectively won once you've stabilized and stemmed the bleeding, and blight is a resource that you spend to get to that point. Running out of blight and making the island unhealthy isn't the end of the world, but it does hurt.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 02:19 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 12:18 |
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Funzo posted:Tried our first game of Spirit Island and got our asses kicked. I'm not sure if we played a rule wrong, but I think we just didn't grasp the strategy right away. We made it 4 turns until we ran out of blight to place. Assuming you were playing at the lowest difficulty, losing that quickly certainly sounds like you messed something up (though maybe not, who knows!). Based specifically on running out of blight, there's one specific thing you may have done wrong, Spirit Island's blight doesn't work like Pandemic's diseases. What I mean is, in Pandemic when you put a disease cube in a space with three cubes already it cascades and you put a cube in every space that's connected to the origin space. In Spirit Island, when you put a blight in a land that already has a blight you put an additional blight in that land (so it now has two) and one blight in a single adjacent land. You do not put a blight into each adjacent land, you just pick one. e: another thing you may have got wrong is that the amount of blight you use scales with player count, though I think that's specifically written on the blight card so you probably didn't mess that up.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 02:20 |
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I'm really curious to see how this affects set up/tear down, because that was really the biggest barrier to playing the game for me. As dumb as I might feel to buy the babby version when I own and barely play the "real" version, it'll be worth it if being a more casual experience actually makes it easier to get to the table. Edit: Someone on reddit said they're thinking about doing something like a storybook format for the maps to make it pretty much pull out and play. I don't know if that's going to be aesthetically appealing or not, but seems like it would save a lot of time. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 6, 2019 |
# ? Oct 6, 2019 04:31 |
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We played again at 2 players and barely won. We had the blight rules correct, just a crap strategy in the first one. We were using Vital Strength of the Earth and Shadows Flicker like flame. We got really lucky with some of the fear effects too.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 04:32 |
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Another easily missed rule for new players is that blight placed on the board during setup comes from the bag and not the blight card/space.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 04:33 |
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A general tip for lower difficulty Spirit Island is to not get too cute with helping your partner(s). Until like invader level 4 or even 5 in some cases you can generally ignore the other player's boards and focus on keeping yours clean. Obviously if there's an easy way to help someone go for it, but keeping the focus on your board might help you internalize the game's basic combos more than trying to play triage across the entire island.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 05:17 |
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StashAugustine posted:Idle question: what games are set up so that players are not identified directly with an in game entity (country, company, etc) but rather are manipulating various entities that organically rise and fall? Examples I can think of: Nobody has said Dogs of War, so I'll say Dogs of War. While you do identify with a specific mercenary company, the Great Houses that are actually fighting the battles and giving out the points are interchangeable, and when I teach the game to people who have played stocks games before, I tell them they're playing a stocks game.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 05:42 |
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Irish Gauge was a good impulse purchase. It's quick, light, and has enough decision space to give options without bogging down. It seems like a game to bring to local meet ups to play before or after something heavier while shooting the bull.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 06:27 |
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Finally got Chinatown to the table and I got my rear end kicked in two four player games (3rd and 4th) because I was pretty unlucky. Went two turns in a row in the second game without making an impact trade, and one other player always had the only thing I needed so I couldn't get any competitive deals. Also first play of HMS Dolores, which is a nasty prisoner's dilemma game that I snagged for under $5. Nice , quick filler.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 07:01 |
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uncle blog posted:I'm going to play Twilight Imperium 4 tomorrow with a full group of 6 people. I've only played it once before, and that was a while ago. We're randomly assigning 2 races to people beforehand, letting everybody chose between those two. I've been given Yssaril Tribes and The Barony of Letnev. From what I can see, the latter is more offensive and the former more sneaky? Anyway, was hoping to get some tips on which race to choose, and preferably some hints of how to play them (and maybe some game tips in general) so that I won't lag too far behind the rest of the group? Played quite a bit, and certainly in our group, Yssaril is the much stronger choice. Combat is kind of a losing proposition for both players, so actually the best thing to do with letnev is bully your opponents into letting you take planets instead of invading theirs early to get a good economy going. Use the enhanced army capabilities politically, rather than directly. That's pretty hard to do well, and essentially always makes you the 'bad guy', which is fitting, but hard to convert to a win. Yssaril on the other hand gets to play entirely as the underdog, while having access to a billion combat cards that in effect mean you're never the underdog.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 10:00 |
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Spiggy posted:Irish Gauge was a good impulse purchase. It's quick, light, and has enough decision space to give options without bogging down. It seems like a game to bring to local meet ups to play before or after something heavier while shooting the bull.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 16:13 |
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Had a full Saturday of gaming with 5 people, got plays of Magic Maze (hectic and friendship ruining), Root (very close, win went to Vagabond, and Otters lagged behind), 7 Wonders (continues to be a drafting favourite, plays pretty quick with all of us knowing the symbols), Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (not the best at 5,but still a good time to make dumb stories with friends), Sidereal Confluence (first play, went pretty smoothly surprisingly, really close scores), Letter from Whitechapel (just barely caught Jack, tense the whole time but runs long), Vast (the Vile Ghoul is just a bullet meant to kill people, but the cave ended with the win), 5 minute dungeon (a good, quick time), and Startups, Mint Works and Deep Sea Adventures for filler (all our favourites for killing time between games) A good weekend was had.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 16:36 |
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uncle blog posted:I'm going to play Twilight Imperium 4 tomorrow with a full group of 6 people. I've only played it once before, and that was a while ago. We're randomly assigning 2 races to people beforehand, letting everybody chose between those two. I've been given Yssaril Tribes and The Barony of Letnev. From what I can see, the latter is more offensive and the former more sneaky? Anyway, was hoping to get some tips on which race to choose, and preferably some hints of how to play them (and maybe some game tips in general) so that I won't lag too far behind the rest of the group? Hope it’s not too late to say, every decision you make should be towards scoring points. Two of the weakest players are more powerful than the strongest player so if you can convince someone to watch your flank you’re in a good position. My group plays TI very politically and things get kind of intense when the voting starts.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 18:06 |
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Picked up Pax Porfiriana and Pax Pamir 2nd ed knowing full well it's going to be a struggle to get them to the table but goddamn to me they are so beautiful.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 21:39 |
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Anyone played Pax Pamir 2e with 2P + Wakhan? Of course it’s not ideal, but I hope it’s decent.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 21:56 |
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This gaming Saturday had a decent variety to it. Played Bruges to teach it and because I hadn't in a while. Just a two-player game, so there might have been some color bias, but early on I put down a citizen who turned every canal build into a disaster purge, and the disasters lined up with my canal colors well enough that it was the point difference. Did some Not Alone as a filler. It's an asymmetric one-vs-many game where people try to scramble around getting resources to escape from a planet while a Beast works off a deck of power cards and picks locations to hunt people down. The game decisions are pretty simple, but there's a baffling lack of explaining some simple stuff on the player prompt cards, and our Beast got pretty lucky to be able to lock down two of the five locations for several turns at the start of the game (one location is "unlock the other five locations"). Got hunted down in pretty short order. Brought out Euphoria to ride some people out for an hour and a half, in part because we had that magical number 5 and Euphoria doesn't super care about how many people you have going. I rolled trips and had a lucky chance to catch up to the guy who'd bought into most of the markets, but they were trips on the one number that I shed resources from because of one of the markets and I shed the wrong ones because I didn't think I had a chance at the time. Ended my night with some two-player A Feast For Odin: The Norwegians with a fellow experienced player, and the A deck "because we were trying to go faster" to sync up with some other people with a Gloomhaven dungeon. Well, we ran the entire thing and the dungeon was still going so mission successful I guess? I went Skye and Cork and some sheds for extra resources (I had hunt cards and went for the "mine and pull weapons" action a lot), he went Lofoten and Waterford and a bunch of long and stone houses (he had Proficient Hunter and was hunting and raiding a decent amount), and we both pretty much filled everything and the homeboard - local meta doesn't really abandon the homeboard much. The point difference between us was down to the pair of horses I bought on the last round that bred (for a net of 11 points: 14 for the pair - 3 silver) but more than that it was because I could spare four Vikings to do that while he was scrambling to get the last of his board coverage. (Also helped a bit that I started with the pigsty, got pigs turn 1, and built and filled it turn 2.) Even after all these plays, and especially with the Norwegians to reinvigorate it, there's still stuff about Odin to discover. Filling the board always seems daunting and getting coverage seems a little bit like a magic trick, but there's just enough game to get it done, or to barely not get it done.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 22:10 |
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Kiranamos posted:Anyone played Pax Pamir 2e with 2P + Wakhan? Of course it’s not ideal, but I hope it’s decent. Wakhan is not a smart AI by any means, but it should move pieces around enough to keep things interesting for 2 players.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 22:35 |
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If you are trying to make a more dynamic 2p game it might work, but it might just end up making the tug of war nature of every 2p element more lopsided randomly. The game works well at 2, just turns it into more of a direct push your luck fight on a few axis (similar to 2p Through the Ages) instead of the political natured 3+.
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# ? Oct 6, 2019 22:43 |
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So with all the talk of great card games here lately, does anyone play Skat? I was in a hotel last night with a couple of people and looked up good three player card games. I keep running into Skat as some deep and amazing game loved and widely played in Germany, but the rules look ridiculous for a commonly played game (like bizarre card rank orders where a ten is higher than the king but not the ace, the cards have strange point values unrelated to their actual face values, etc.). SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Oct 7, 2019 |
# ? Oct 7, 2019 00:58 |
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Sounds like the perfect blend of strategy and luck
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 01:46 |
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Played a game of Letter Jam today, I'm going to have to pick it up when I get the chance, it's real fun. Someone gave us a clue that basically went ? H I ? Where the ? spaces were a letter facing away from me. So obviously I wrote down C, because what else could be there except 'chic'? Cue the end of the game where I'm looking at the letters I've figured out, and have no loving idea what word is in front of me. Had absolutely no idea, and after we reveal, I look at the letters I was given at the beginning of the game. "Oh, it was loving OHIO!" 'Chic' had never even occurred to him.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 04:27 |
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SlyFrog posted:So with all the talk of great card games here lately, does anyone play Skat? you're telling me Germans are into skat?
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 04:39 |
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I mean my first experience of Germany was walking into the toilet in the main train station in Frankfurt and seeing a cock ring vending machine so it wouldn’t exactly surprise me
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 07:50 |
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Played Sidereal Confluence at the weekend. It's not an easy game by any means but it's fun and everyone is happy to play it again soon now we know what's going on. Had a 12 point spread from 47pt over 6 players which didn't seem too bad really. That last turn trading is wild though, 'I'll give you all my cubes for 1 Blue cube?'
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 09:31 |
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Got to try Tapestry, some thoughts:
All that said, I might give it another shot, provided that there are no more than four players, and all of them know the rules. The actual puzzle was pretty interesting, and I'm curious to see how it holds up under more realistic expectations.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 10:41 |
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cave emperor posted:Even in Terraforming Mars - another game where the map is far less important than initially appears - the final map state can at least have a significant impact on scoring.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 10:58 |
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hoiyes posted:Say what you want about the game, but I love the fact that this player dichotomy of "it's all about the map // the map isn't a big deal" exists. "The game" in this case being TM, right? I can't imagine anyone saying "it's all about the map" about Tapestry.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 11:03 |
cave emperor posted:"The game" in this case being TM, right? I can't imagine anyone saying "it's all about the map" about Tapestry. TfM yeah, many folks here say "if a card isn't directly letting you play on the map, it's useless, focus entirely on the map, don't build combos".
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 13:26 |
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Building combos can work if you're playing 2P and let the other person do all the terraforming while you dickfart around with microbes. It's especially boring though.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 13:39 |
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Morpheus posted:Played a game of Letter Jam today, I'm going to have to pick it up when I get the chance, it's real fun. Someone gave us a clue that basically went Last time I played Letter Jam someone gave the word BRIME [sic] as the very first clue of the game. The guy who gave that clue was the only one to complete their word because everyone else was hosed up turn one. It honestly soured me on the game as a whole.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 17:08 |
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A lot of Barnes and Nobles have games for 75% off as of today, including Dragon Castle and Paper Tales for $10–$12. You can use the website or call your local ones to check stock of them. Anything left in two weeks will be $2.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 17:51 |
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I thought Dragon Castle was fine, didn't change my life but enjoyable. It'd be a steal at $10-12
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 18:58 |
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hoiyes posted:Say what you want about the game, but I love the fact that this player dichotomy of "it's all about the map // the map isn't a big deal" exists. It's because the act of placing tiles is critical, but where you place them is mostly boring and irrelevant. Using a map to track terraforming in TM just feels like overproduction.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 19:19 |
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Glazius posted:Ended my night with some two-player A Feast For Odin: The Norwegians with a fellow experienced player, So i had a game of AFfO yesterday with four first-time players, and while we all had a good time for a several hour endurance match, the scoring round maybe wasn't quite what everyone was hoping for. I was the only one to take any islands, and i squeaked ahead of the pack to second place off the back of it (despite losing a few points from having filled islands instead of home board -1's), but the game definitively went to the player who went all-in on emigration. I remember hearing (here) back when that that was the obvious point pinata in the game, so I was wondering about it. Is it just up to the players to know how good that is, and take First Player away from someone who has more emigrates than everyone else?
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 22:15 |
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Gloomhaven for $75 https://www.miniaturemarket.com/cph0204.html Everdell for $36 https://www.miniaturemarket.com/gsuh2600.html
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 22:20 |
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Ceebees posted:So i had a game of AFfO yesterday with four first-time players, and while we all had a good time for a several hour endurance match, the scoring round maybe wasn't quite what everyone was hoping for. I was the only one to take any islands, and i squeaked ahead of the pack to second place off the back of it (despite losing a few points from having filled islands instead of home board -1's), but the game definitively went to the player who went all-in on emigration. I remember hearing (here) back when that that was the obvious point pinata in the game, so I was wondering about it. Is it just up to the players to know how good that is, and take First Player away from someone who has more emigrates than everyone else? It's not super op imho (plundering is better imho) it is just that you can get a good - very good score by doing it fairly easily which is typically better than what newbies will do otherwise. For example: in a 3 player game (with extra islands) I have filled 3 islands and the home board and still lost. Sounds like that score would have handily won your game.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 22:26 |
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Ceebees posted:So i had a game of AFfO yesterday with four first-time players, and while we all had a good time for a several hour endurance match, the scoring round maybe wasn't quite what everyone was hoping for. I was the only one to take any islands, and i squeaked ahead of the pack to second place off the back of it (despite losing a few points from having filled islands instead of home board -1's), but the game definitively went to the player who went all-in on emigration. I remember hearing (here) back when that that was the obvious point pinata in the game, so I was wondering about it. Is it just up to the players to know how good that is, and take First Player away from someone who has more emigrates than everyone else? No. Emigration is strong when people are bad at the game, but as you get better you'll be able to fill way more spaces and taking islands and adding buildings will get a lot more powerful.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 22:27 |
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Ceebees posted:So i had a game of AFfO yesterday with four first-time players, and while we all had a good time for a several hour endurance match, the scoring round maybe wasn't quite what everyone was hoping for. I was the only one to take any islands, and i squeaked ahead of the pack to second place off the back of it (despite losing a few points from having filled islands instead of home board -1's), but the game definitively went to the player who went all-in on emigration. I remember hearing (here) back when that that was the obvious point pinata in the game, so I was wondering about it. Is it just up to the players to know how good that is, and take First Player away from someone who has more emigrates than everyone else? Emigration isn't as much "overpowered" as it is "hard to screw up". Taking the 2-emigration action is 3.25 points above replacement per viking (PRV) even on the last round, going up 0.75 PRV every round prior. In comparison, successful whaling is 4.167 PRV, and upgrading 4 cows or whale meat or stealing a treasure hoard on a 2-pillage is 6 PRV. (PRV is a rough metric that counts food at half coverage value and goods at full.) But the points from emigration are unconditional - you don't need board space or good tesselations. Unless you've got a really compelling plan for the round that needs all your vikings, then as long as you've got the silver to buy a knarr and emigrate it's probably worth doing, and jockeying for first player in order to do it. Some more tips: - unless you've got a really compelling plan, never upgrade anything smaller than 6 tiles. - decide early on if you're going to care about your homeboard income or not. 2 income and the ore bonus are usually easy gets regardless, but just cover the -1s if you're already planning to get enough income from somewhere else. - don't sleep on the grey tiles. They're extremely good at securing bonuses and being board cover. The hammer and cloakpin can get you out of a lot of jams even for homeboard bonuses. - when you're burning money or goods tiles to rush income or a bonus, consider two things: is the cost worth the benefit on this turn only, and am I leaving Future Me a clean line or a jagged edge to work around? Future You will have all your leftover money and pretty much a pick of tiles, but working around a jagged edge can be much more costly than missing a little silver or one bonus.
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# ? Oct 7, 2019 23:56 |
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Duck and Cover posted:Gloomhaven for $75 https://www.miniaturemarket.com/cph0204.html Ugh, that's such a good deal but I'll never play it. I'm holding out for a good sale on the bummer edition some day, I know I'd be lucky to play through two dozen scenarios.
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# ? Oct 8, 2019 01:07 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 12:18 |
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Thanks for the analysis and advice, all. It didn't seem overpowered, especially since if someone is using it too much you just take the moose away from them. But, I still think there's some odd player psychology there, where cancelling out negative points is easy, but nothing else on the action board gives VP in the same order of magnitude. I guess I'll just have to play the game a bunch more times to get a feel for it and alternate strategies, oh noooo
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# ? Oct 8, 2019 01:24 |