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This probably varies by player but my group found Aeon's End really goddamn hard to win. We enjoyed it, but losing more than winning really started to exhaust us of it.
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Jan 2, 2020 15:33
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SettingSun posted:This probably varies by player but my group found Aeon's End really goddamn hard to win. We enjoyed it, but losing more than winning really started to exhaust us of it. This has been my experience every time I've played it. The balance point is such that even playing perfectly, we would still have lost about 75% of the time.
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Jan 2, 2020 15:48
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Aeon's End is easiest 2p, hardest 4p. But I've had good success playing AE Legacy and New Age 4p, losing the occasional battle. I've only played the base game and War Eternal 2p
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Jan 2, 2020 17:10
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Llyranor posted:Aeon's End is easiest 2p, hardest 4p. But I've had good success playing AE Legacy and New Age 4p, losing the occasional battle. I've only played the base game and War Eternal 2p For us, the base game was maybe too easy at 2P/3P, but required some turn-order luck at 4P. In general, the game feels a bit to repetitive for us to really love. On the surface it has way more stuff going on than Dominion, but strategically it feels like it all comes down to normal Dominion pacing (with less interesting cards). If you lose, it's usually because you had too many people durdling at the start (buying silver/gold and trashing), or not aiming high enough (ie. you started greening early).
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Jan 2, 2020 17:41
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Earth Reborn teaches you the game scenario by scenario, adding in more stuff as you go on. Played Roads and Boats for the first time yesterday, christening our new gaming room/reno'd basement. The punching and organising of pieces took us an hour but we got going fairly quickly and we both really enjoyed it. Hilariously we both started building stuff immediately before going, hey wait, how do I get more planks? A real lose turn 1 Splotter experience. Anyway, we reset and played it out and had a blast. It started to drag by the end and we both made lots of mistakes but I loved it. Very cute. The duck/paper research thing is utterly bizarre though and maybe I'm just missing some Dutch fable or something.
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Jan 2, 2020 19:13
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Boxman posted:What’s a good engine builder? our playgroup has fun with Wingspan and Gizmos, but the lack of player interaction wears on me a little. I suppose a game with a key mechanic of “assemble your table so that it can bring itself to orgasm” may not lend itself to high levels of player interactivity. High interactivity usually means unforgiving and/or mean. Keyflower meets your criteria (not too heavy, high interaction) and is one of the all time greats, but it is an extremely mean game. Amazing if your group can handle the meanness. I tried to think of positive player interaction in an engine builder and couldn't think of anything. I guess if you stretch the definition a bit you could fit in Spirit Island? Building out your suite of powers from your starter powers to endgame major powers definitely hits a lot of the same notes as any of the more pure engine builders. Being coop, the interactions are all positive. Also, I am obligated by law to mention Mage Knight in every recommendation post (this is a joke, don't, it's too heavy).
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Jan 2, 2020 20:39
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Ojetor posted:High interactivity usually means unforgiving and/or mean. Keyflower meets your criteria (not too heavy, high interaction) and is one of the all time greats, but it is an extremely mean game. Amazing if your group can handle the meanness. I can handle the meanness of Keyflower I just can't handle the overall dogshitness of the game. That is to say, I hate it. In terms of game tutorials if it's on BGA or something like that then you can play it in tutorial mode there which is really handy. I actually learnt a rule about Lewis and Clark from BGA I didn't know (Because it was from an FAQ I never read)
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Jan 2, 2020 20:43
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I’ve never gotten to play it because it’s not right for my group, but isn’t Sidereal Confluence an engine builder with high interactivity?
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Jan 2, 2020 20:50
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nrook posted:I’ve never gotten to play it because it’s not right for my group, but isn’t Sidereal Confluence an engine builder with high interactivity? It is, it's also really really great. The best trading game I've ever played.
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Jan 2, 2020 20:55
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Aramoro posted:I can handle the meanness of Keyflower I just can't handle the overall dogshitness of the game. That is to say, I hate it. Boooooo. BOOOOOOOOOO. Curious to hear why you hate it though.
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Jan 2, 2020 22:19
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Crackbone posted:Boooooo. BOOOOOOOOOO. Yeah I love Keyflower, why the hate??
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Jan 2, 2020 22:39
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I find the scoring really oblique right up until the last turn when you actually get the buildings that score you points. So it's hard to work out the board position, but if you do it's really easy to poo poo in the winners cornflakes. So it becomes less of a game of worker placement and more of a game of persuading people that someone will win if they get x so they should get it before them etc. That and the incredibly tedious moving of resources. Until the last round where its objectively better to produce resources in someone else's village. The theme doesn't really work for me either, you have boats and villages but you can use unconstructed buildings but your workers get trapped there? You sell your villagers to other people for stone or something? It just doesn't make sense to me. All in all its just personal preference, I've only played it maybe half a dozen times in total but feels like a chore to play vs some other worker placement games.
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Jan 2, 2020 22:54
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Aramoro posted:The theme doesn't really work for me either, you have boats and villages but you can use unconstructed buildings but your workers get trapped there? You sell your villagers to other people for stone or something? It just doesn't make sense to me. Your workers get a job at the stone quarry/beer garden/woodcutter. If that new job is in someone else's village, they decide to stay there. Only similarly colored workers can be put in a single employment tile because of racism. Workers used for bids are bidding to purchase/build the new location. They can't be used anymore because they aren't wandering day laborers anymore, but owners.
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Jan 2, 2020 23:01
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Ride the Rails is the next game in Capstone's Iron Rail series. It's a reimplement of Rail USA from Winsome (2014). Also selling a separate expansion featuring maps of Germany and France and featuring some unique mechanics. The cover art looks beautiful, it'll look great next to Irish Gauge... if my preorder ever arrives in Australia... Anyone ever play Rail USA?
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Jan 2, 2020 23:03
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golden bubble posted:Your workers get a job at the stone quarry/beer garden/woodcutter. If that new job is in someone else's village, they decide to stay there. Only similarly colored workers can be put in a single employment tile because of racism. Workers used for bids are bidding to purchase/build the new location. They can't be used anymore because they aren't wandering day laborers anymore, but owners. Unless you have the magic anti-racism boat which breaks the game.
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Jan 2, 2020 23:07
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Aramoro posted:Unless you have the magic anti-racism boat which breaks the game. Not at all. They’re convenient but 4a is the weakest boat and 4b only slightly better utility.
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Jan 2, 2020 23:25
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If anyone hasn't played Wavelength yet, imagine 18 relatives from ages 10 to 67, all involved in a shouting match over whether ice is wet or dry. This is the new best party game.
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Jan 3, 2020 00:12
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golden bubble posted:Only similarly colored workers can be put in a single employment tile because of racism. The next game in the series will be called KeyKeyKey for this very reason.
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Jan 3, 2020 00:23
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It was just a joke until the Keymelequin expansion came out Keymelequin official rules posted:Keymelequin is a mini-expansion for the game Keyflower that consists of the two colored Keymelequin keyples — Paulo and Sven — and a ship tile, the Keymelequin. But now I'm pretty sure the color restriction really is racism.
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Jan 3, 2020 01:21
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jmzero posted:For us, the base game was maybe too easy at 2P/3P, but required some turn-order luck at 4P. I read about this strategy to hold starter spells on breaches to trash them temporarily while you do other stuff, is that good?
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Jan 3, 2020 01:44
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Aramoro posted:I find the scoring really oblique right up until the last turn when you actually get the buildings that score you points. So it's hard to work out the board position, but if you do it's really easy to poo poo in the winners cornflakes. So it becomes less of a game of worker placement and more of a game of persuading people that someone will win if they get x so they should get it before them etc. The intent wasn't to dogpile you, apologies if it turned out that way. I'm always curious to hear people take a dump on critical darlings.
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Jan 3, 2020 01:44
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Kiranamos posted:I read about this strategy to hold starter spells on breaches to trash them temporarily while you do other stuff, is that good? If you can get away with this, it's definitely worth it (plinking the boss is usually a waste). But in many scenarios you'll need this kind of incidental damage to keep minions in check.
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Jan 3, 2020 02:03
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So the next in the Iron Rails series, Ride the Rails, is coming out soon, so I wanted to scope it out on BGG and see what the hype was. I saw that the designer was a guy named Harry Wu, but looking at BGG, it looks like it's a white dude named John Bohrer calling himself Harry Wu? What the gently caress?
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Jan 3, 2020 02:39
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GrandpaPants posted:So the next in the Iron Rails series, Ride the Rails, is coming out soon, so I wanted to scope it out on BGG and see what the hype was. I saw that the designer was a guy named Harry Wu, but looking at BGG, it looks like it's a white dude named John Bohrer calling himself Harry Wu? What the gently caress? John Bohrer is hosed up in a great many number of ways, yes.
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Jan 3, 2020 02:46
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GrandpaPants posted:So the next in the Iron Rails series, Ride the Rails, is coming out soon, so I wanted to scope it out on BGG and see what the hype was. I saw that the designer was a guy named Harry Wu, but looking at BGG, it looks like it's a white dude named John Bohrer calling himself Harry Wu? What the gently caress? Apparently John Bohrer decided to design under a bunch of different pen names.
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Jan 3, 2020 02:48
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Llyranor posted:Aeon's End is easiest 2p, hardest 4p. But I've had good success playing AE Legacy and New Age 4p, losing the occasional battle. I've only played the base game and War Eternal 2p I've only played Aeons End 2p, and I dont think I would recommend it with more. The scaling basically means people get less turns, so their whole engine gets set up half as fast. The flow of the game feels right with 2p. The only 'unfair' loss I had was when I combined all the expansions' encounter cards. I randomly chose a whole bunch of monsters that hurt the players, and we died well before we could have done anything about it. Now we 'vet' the random cards to make sure there are only a few monsters, like the base encounter set. It can still lead to some uneven encounter decks, but none of them were really unfair.
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Jan 3, 2020 02:57
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GrandpaPants posted:So the next in the Iron Rails series, Ride the Rails, is coming out soon, so I wanted to scope it out on BGG and see what the hype was. I saw that the designer was a guy named Harry Wu, but looking at BGG, it looks like it's a white dude named John Bohrer calling himself Harry Wu? What the gently caress? John bohrer is a train game designer who designs a bunch of weird train games under a bunch of names and sells them to a mailing list in sets a few times a year for about $150 per set of 3-4 games. He’s also gotten embroiled in rights disputes with Martin Wallace and others about train games. Recently he’s started licensing his designs to publishers. Chicago express is a John bohrer design https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/366/john-bohrer
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Jan 3, 2020 03:27
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GrandpaPants posted:So the next in the Iron Rails series, Ride the Rails, is coming out soon, so I wanted to scope it out on BGG and see what the hype was. I saw that the designer was a guy named Harry Wu, but looking at BGG, it looks like it's a white dude named John Bohrer calling himself Harry Wu? What the gently caress? Yeah someone asked Capstone that instant the announcement hit twitter. https://twitter.com/Capstone_Games/status/1212736800382423043?s=20
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Jan 3, 2020 03:49
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ketchup vs catsup posted:
That's not a recent thing, it's been his business model every since he started Winsome.
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Jan 3, 2020 05:15
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Just lmao if you dont possess near perfect knowledge of every player's worker colors and numbers by winter. Lmao.
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Jan 3, 2020 06:25
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What are some opinions on New Frontiers? I love both Race and Roll for the Galaxy, though I don't get them to the table as much as I would like these days.
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Jan 3, 2020 06:33
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Radioactive Toy posted:What are some opinions on New Frontiers? I love both Race and Roll for the Galaxy, though I don't get them to the table as much as I would like these days. I have not played it but honestly from the reviews/play through I watched it seems like an attempt to make Race more accessible, which failed and actually made the game more fiddly. Like halfway through learning about what made theoretically more streamlined I was just like “nah gently caress that just give me the drat single deck of cards game”
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Jan 3, 2020 07:03
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Bottom Liner posted:New Frontiers - Played 3x This has mostly held up. It's a great introduction to the franchise and plays super quick, almost as fast as the card game. The production is nice and while the colonists are pretty superfluous they do add a crucial bottleneck to colonizing. The fact that phases can happen in any order is a nice change to the system too, and lets you make more interesting gambles on others actions than you could in set phase orders. The game desperately needs the expansion to drop soon though because the tech setup (even double sided) means you see much of the game pretty quickly and can steer your strategies a lot more knowingly. I'd put it second to Race and above Roll, though I haven't tried the latest Roll expansion which looked like it changed things up a lot. For the price though, you can grab Race and the first two expansions which is undoubtedly a better game thanks to the wealth of content for what is mostly the same game, but if tactile experience matters more to you it is definitely a bigger fuller experience with the nice chunky cardboard and resource cubes, etc. Also here's some delicious storage porn: FCM and Ketchup fit in my insert with everything but that awful lemonade tile. I did take out a handful of each food meeple since we use the personal supply trackers and that cuts down our requirements a lot. Also no milestone cards since we use dry erase boards. Box fully closes too! 
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 07:16
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Speaking of Race/Roll/New Frontiers, I complained about this in the discord already but I still want to complain so: Have any goons played Jump Drive? One of my friends with less good taste really likes it, but I just don't see it. It seems like it's so short you just have to draw something with a high income early, turn 1 or 2, or else there is no chance for you. In something like San Juan, if I get an early Library or something, the advantage I get is +25% in a 4 person game, as I get the bonus on my action. It's similar with a Poor House or other building that affects one action, and even then I don't get them if certain actions are not taken. In Jump Drive, if someone gets an +3 draw on turn 1 (which I believe is possible, but I don't have a card list, so I could be wrong) and I get a +1 draw, they have a +200% advantage over me. It doesn't matter if I get a piddly one point that turn because they will have more options and more fuel to settle more planets and start more developments, making it snowball. You draw 7 out of the 112 cards and that has a huge part of if you win. Maybe people like it because it's so short, but there are plenty of decent filler games that kick the crap out of this.
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Jan 3, 2020 12:00
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Crackbone posted:The intent wasn't to dogpile you, apologies if it turned out that way. I'm always curious to hear people take a dump on critical darlings. No problem at all. I just find the whole game incredibly tedious and when I do win it doesn't feel like it was because of my masterful plays but rather by making someone else lose. It's a really unsatisfying experience. If I wanted a bidding, village building game I'd play Isle of Skye, a good game, instead. But like I say it's all subjective. We rarely play Inis because 1 person in our group doesn't like it, despite being objectively wrong.
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Jan 3, 2020 12:01
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I mean, in any orthogame that has a built in way to judge player ranking, them by defitnion any time you’re winning more someone else is losing. Some games “feel” more constructive than destructive, and that’s a valid way to feel about them, but the only difference is in the +/-. You’re still increasing delta between yourself and an opponent.
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Jan 3, 2020 13:45
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For what it's worth "making someone else lose" is absolutely how Keyflower is played. The "better" you're doing the more opportunities you give other players to capitalize on your investment. As your infrastructure grows your opponents gain exponentially more value from it. You want the smallest, tightest engine while giving your opponents as little as possible to work with. The masterful plays of Keyflower is determining the inherent value of the tiles. How much should you commit and when, when is it best to free up your opponent's bid, is a tile better in the short term or long term and will that become a liability if it's too enticing, do you commit resources just to jack up the activation cost of powerful tiles even if you can't efficiently use them, do you have enough information to predict which winter tiles your opponents are holding and save up to snipe them or avoid building your town to synergize with something you can't obtain? e: Keyflower passes my "good auction game" test because the winning strategy isn't "make the most money" it's "spend the least money" and in Keyflower being the richest player is almost always losing. al-azad fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 13:52
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Bus for $53.99 at CSI, which is basically convention prices with shipping.
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Jan 3, 2020 15:30
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al-azad posted:For what it's worth "making someone else lose" is absolutely how Keyflower is played. The "better" you're doing the more opportunities you give other players to capitalize on your investment. As your infrastructure grows your opponents gain exponentially more value from it. You want the smallest, tightest engine while giving your opponents as little as possible to work with. I’d also like to add that for me and my wife Keyflower is the best 2 player auction game by a mile. Which also seems like the player count where it gets the most cutthroat.
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Jan 3, 2020 16:14
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Magnetic North posted:Speaking of Race/Roll/New Frontiers, I complained about this in the discord already but I still want to complain so: Have any goons played Jump Drive? I've played JumpDrive and for the life of me IDK why you wouldn't just play race.
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Jan 3, 2020 16:28
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