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Megasabin posted:Anyone else watch the video and have thoughts? I think that the players in the videos were way too ambitious in their campaigns which threw the game off balance. There were a bunch of instances where the players basically needed all 0s and x2s to actually win and have enough troops to actually control the areas they took. I think the combat is going to end up more like Inis with experienced players, where the threat of kicking people out is just as important as the combat, which is costly for all sides. I think Cole's doing the game a disservice by primarily showcasing the Oath where your goal is to control territory, because that one seems like the least interesting to me. The other oaths (popular support, control one of the two privileges) look to be more dynamic in how they play. I think a key element of the game is either convincing or forcing the chancellor to make you a citizen, and for the chancellor to only bring people into the fold once it's clear they're not a threat, so there's the brinksmanship you see in Root but instead of being zero-sum "we both fight and player 3 wins" it's more of a net positive for the two parties. I really like the brinksmanship and temporary truces in Root so I'm backing the project for sure, but I think that whenever I'm breaking this out I'll bill it as a 2 hour game and always do a double header. dromer fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 07:23
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Quixotic1 posted:Looks like the CMon time capsule kickstarter thingy turned out to be a poo poo show. From what I've gathered, alot of people were locked out but a minority were able to get in and make purchases. An update said any transactions made were going to go through and will try later to allow access again. Many of the desired items were also sold out quickly it seems. Way worse than that; CMON told backers they could add to their pledges but when they did so it released their items into the inventory and other people snatched it up instantly. A lot of people lost a lot of highly sought after items because of this.  My impression of Oath is that it's the culmination of all of Cole's previous work, which is to say more so than a typical design brings in previous work. The card driven gameplay leads to dramatic games and shifting balance, but it also feels pretty early in the design much like Root's initial KS, despite Cole saying this is much further along. It may have much more work already behind it, but it feels similarly unfinished. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 07:47
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Bottom Liner posted:Way worse than that; CMON told backers they could add to their pledges but when they did so it released their items into the inventory and other people snatched it up instantly. A lot of people lost a lot of highly sought after items because of this. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of loving clown shoes.
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Jan 21, 2020 07:49
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I got my hands on a copy of Neuland, and am going to play it on Saturday. But I know there were some rule changes between the editions, so which rule set is considered "the good one"?
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Jan 21, 2020 09:13
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pakman posted:I got my copy of On Mars to the table this weekend for the first time. I don't like all these vacuum formed trays, I need to find a better solution. Because you'll often not have anything to get LSS rewards from the first time you build. The 2OP are there as an incentive not to wait until you do. As for the missions: those are the reason the game isn't Terraforming Mars. Durdling around indefinitely isn't possible because you'll advance the game towards completion as you do, and the crystal rewards are an incentive to do so.
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Jan 21, 2020 09:15
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Electric Hobo posted:I got my hands on a copy of Neuland, and am going to play it on Saturday. But I know there were some rule changes between the editions, so which rule set is considered "the good one"? Play the 3 player side of the board using the first edition rules. The rulebook is trash (like indescribably bad) so learn the game from this link then implement the changes below https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/31884/rewritten-2nd-edition-rules quote:
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Jan 21, 2020 09:27
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al-azad posted:I prefer “diplomatic whining” and it’s totally a valid strategy. It's a valid strategy just as advising someone else of another players board position is valid. They're both politicking, and to the same end.
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Jan 21, 2020 10:00
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al-azad posted:I prefer “diplomatic whining” and it’s totally a valid strategy. Valid, sure. Makes me not want to play with someone if done a lot, yep.
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Jan 21, 2020 13:47
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Aramoro posted:It's a valid strategy just as advising someone else of another players board position is valid. They're both politicking, and to the same end. If someone is genuinely finding it hard to read the game state and that's to the detriment of the game, I'm fine with it. It's when the game is fine, the person is fine, they're making reasonable decisions, and someone tries to change those decisions solely as a strategy. Can make for unpleasantness.
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Jan 21, 2020 13:50
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Friend who I don’t play games with anymore used to do it a lot especially for oppressive games like Antiquity where everyone is being oppressed. I chalked it up to him not understanding the positional heuristics of those games but he’d do it in other games and it was annoying. It’s annoying because it goes against the Knizia adage. The point of the game is playing to win, but whining about it makes you look like the guy who really needs to win and gets mad at some kids at FNM. Then he took my displeasure of not wanting to play games with him anymore as a personal attack and stopped talking to me. Good riddance, probably masking other personal issues 
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Jan 21, 2020 13:56
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It's all part of negotiation. If I can point out a better position or offer you something to get off my rear end that's a legitimate strategy. Sometimes people play suboptimally for personal reasons and frankly that's more annoying than someone going "there's greener pastures over there."
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Jan 21, 2020 14:56
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It gets very annoying when someone is in fact playing optimally, but some other player loudly proclaims that they're not just because it happens to affect them negatively.
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Jan 21, 2020 14:57
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al-azad posted:It's all part of negotiation. If I can point out a better position or offer you something to get off my rear end that's a legitimate strategy. Sometimes people play suboptimally for personal reasons and frankly that's more annoying than someone going "there's greener pastures over there." That's assuming every player is on an equal skill level. Again, some of this discussion is talking about how you treat newbies in the group. I don't play with a local 18xx player anymore because he explicitly said in one of our games that he will try to play politics in that way. Sure, do it in JoCo, don't do it in 18xx.
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Jan 21, 2020 15:01
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I have no idea why people continue to give CMON money. Anyway, I will often be that person who's like "Look you should attack that player, what do you gain to attack me? Nothing!" but when I inevitably get attacked, I'll often just chuckle with a 'how could you, I trusted you, I thought I was your friend' in a very overdramatic manner. Then I'll completely forget about it next turn. Every game is political. The only games that aren't are the ones that don't let you talk. And if a player plays their game in a way that fucks me over, welp. Thems the breaks. Edit: I should mention I only ever do this with close friends.
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Jan 21, 2020 15:01
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Jabor posted:It gets very annoying when someone is in fact playing optimally, but some other player loudly proclaims that they're not just because it happens to affect them negatively. I only play games with high player interactivity where the impact of a player's actions can have rippling effects unseen in the current action. I constantly jab at my friend who says he will always collapse the eyrie if given the chance and even if it's the best move on that single turn the end effect is almost always tipping the balance unfairly to another faction. It has basically reached the point where nobody who plays Root frequently will play as the eyrie when he's around which is fine, there are plenty of other factions, but it's still incredibly dumb.
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Jan 21, 2020 15:26
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al-azad posted:I only play games with high player interactivity where the impact of a player's actions can have rippling effects unseen in the current action. I constantly jab at my friend who says he will always collapse the eyrie if given the chance and even if it's the best move on that single turn the end effect is almost always tipping the balance unfairly to another faction. It has basically reached the point where nobody who plays Root frequently will play as the eyrie when he's around which is fine, there are plenty of other factions, but it's still incredibly dumb. if it's tipping the balance in favour of a mutual opponent then perhaps it's not actually the best action, even if it happens to score the most immediate points. but is it really "unfairly" tipping the balance, or would it be unfair to not tip the balance if other players have seen the possibility and planned around the eyrie collapsing? are you not just kingmaking in favour of the eyrie at that point? in any case, if i have the opportunity to do it and it ends up tipping the balance "unfairly" towards myself then i'm absolutely going to do it, that's literally the point of the game.
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Jan 21, 2020 15:34
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Jabor posted:if it's tipping the balance in favour of a mutual opponent then perhaps it's not actually the best action, even if it happens to score the most immediate points. but is it really "unfairly" tipping the balance, or would it be unfair to not tip the balance if other players have seen the possibility and planned around the eyrie collapsing? are you not just kingmaking in favour of the eyrie at that point? If you're tipping the balance to yourself that's an optimal play and I have no issue with that. Everyone can read the board state and know who keeps who in check. The problem here is my friend on turn 2 is like "AAAH YOU"RE IN A WEAK POSITION *commits a ton of resources to blow up the board* drat, I lost again to the faction that depends on overwhelming force knocking them down ugh." The thing is he knows how to play Root well. In one instance he purposefully attacked all my lizards and deftly manipulated the outcasts to ensure I could stop a player from winning with domination only for him to turn around and win on his turn. It was an excellent maneuver that enticed me to attack the right person and secure his victory. What I hate is that he will always go after the birds no matter what, it's like an obsession that carries over between games and our #1 rule is "bring no drama to the table, take no drama from the table."
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Jan 21, 2020 15:46
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Jabor posted:if it's tipping the balance in favour of a mutual opponent then perhaps it's not actually the best action, even if it happens to score the most immediate points. but is it really "unfairly" tipping the balance, or would it be unfair to not tip the balance if other players have seen the possibility and planned around the eyrie collapsing? are you not just kingmaking in favour of the eyrie at that point? It's unfair in the same way as poltiking is unfair really. If someone will always make the Eriee collapse if they can, irrelevant of the board position then it really frees up everyone else to not really care about the Eriee too much, you know someone is all over it. It's like playing 7 Wonders and someone declaring they will always always counter pick the Pyramids. It's kind of a weird thing to do I guess It depends how far he'd go to make the Eriee collapse.
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Jan 21, 2020 15:48
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Electric Hobo posted:I got my hands on a copy of Neuland, and am going to play it on Saturday. But I know there were some rule changes between the editions, so which rule set is considered "the good one"? Bottom Liner posted:Play the 3 player side of the board using the first edition rules. The rulebook is trash (like indescribably bad) so learn the game from this link then implement the changes below I'll add that (imo) the changed costs of the VP tiles and different smelter restrictions aren't nearly as important a) using the right turn track, b) not using random mines and making sure they are returned to the display once exhausted, and c) getting rid of the one-time emergency markers in favor of the 3 actions = forage rule. If you use the second edition costs, then you don't have to remember which costs appearing on the game components are wrong (and the planning is pretty involved already, no need to overcomplicate imo) Edit: I also recommend this player aid for the buildings: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/47955/neuland-tile-ref-liumas prokaryote fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 16:17
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There's tons of whining at our table from everyone when we play Civ and someone uses secondary calamity targeting to go after anyone BUT the leaders. Occasionally you can argue it's better for them to target one of their neighbours to weaken them for some invasions/territory gobbling but generally speaking everyone groans if someone does a sub-optimal or political non-targeting of the winners. EDIT: And there is also some annoying whining from people in the lead when they take the hits/get attacked to the tune of "I'm already down to like 2 cities! Why are you targeting me???" Bitch, you're winning, we have to crush you into the dust or else we lose, take it as a compliment. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 16:41
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Spikes32 posted:Just quoting this to clarify, for new players I will give the best advice I have regardless of how bad it will wreck me. It's only for experienced players I'll point things out less optimaly and more politically. I appreciate all the perspectives everyone has given, I'm glad there are multiple people on both sides of the argument and as I said on my initial post (at the end) I do intent to play less politically going forward because it was important to them.
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Jan 21, 2020 16:51
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Empyreal impressions from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/ergwko/empyreal_spells_and_steam_initial_thoughts/
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Jan 21, 2020 17:10
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FulsomFrank posted:There's tons of whining at our table from everyone when we play Civ and someone uses secondary calamity targeting to go after anyone BUT the leaders. Occasionally you can argue it's better for them to target one of their neighbours to weaken them for some invasions/territory gobbling but generally speaking everyone groans if someone does a sub-optimal or political non-targeting of the winners. And the calamities are in the game for that express purpose, which is why it doesn't bother me.
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Jan 21, 2020 17:15
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I hate diplomatic whining. This is because, in practice, I have never been with someone who engages in the practice and stops in one interaction or turn. It always seems to be coupled with "developing a huge chip on your shoulder" or "being an unpleasant person to be around." If you are whining cause people aren't going to let you win; and you mention it the rest of the game and are generally unpleasant about it, that's outside influence in the game. You are basically saying "Your enjoyment of the game is going to be proportional to my winning of it." Which is poo poo.
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Jan 21, 2020 17:19
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Running D&D games for 35 years has broken me with most board games. I'm so used to not going all-out competitive that it's very hard to get cutthroat.
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Jan 21, 2020 17:28
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Most good board games are designed with cut-throat players in mind. If you go all out in Tragedy Looper, the other side still has a reasonable shot of winning. D&D is not designed for that sort of player, for the editions that are designed at all.
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Jan 21, 2020 17:55
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I played a 5 player game of Blood Rage this evening. It was a fairly close game overall. I was the first player and set my stall out in the region that was getting blown up and that I also had a quest to dominate. A couple joined me on that but the others spread out for their own quests/pillaging. I got lucky and pillaged a few rage upgrades and pumped my quest rewards into that as well. In the second round one of the others solidified a position in a 3 town territory that had the 5 glory reward and used some card synergies to repeatedly pillage it and bump up their rage. I had been pretty frivolous when drafting and my big fire demon was cool but kind of useless/expensive, although it did let me sneak some pieces into getting blown up gloriously. There was some discussion about balance because it was difficult to oust the player from their glory farm. Round three I drafted some big war cards in order to try to break up the glory farm. I had a sacrificial boat that would get 12 points when it died. I managed to break to grip on the territory temporarily but it was immediately re-established. Towards the end of the game a huge battle for Ydrassil kicked off, I managed to use it to complete my Valhalla quest and then I used my excess rage (armies and glory from battles was still at square one) to complete another couple of quests by exploiting the now free spaces to win the game with my 4 basic soldiers. It turns out there wasn't really a balance issue, who could've guessed? It was good and made me very keen to try Kemet and Inis.
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Jan 21, 2020 23:42
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I had one friend who was a serial whiner. He played games with us back in the day, but has probably been over for board games only two or three times in the last ten years. He whined a lot those few times as well. I don't bother inviting him back. Last I heard he's into Magic now. "You guys are all ganging up on me!" is some poo poo I expect out of a child, I'm not about to placate an adult that cries like that all the time. Worse, I think, are the people who don't bother learning mechanics, paying attention, or even attempting to play games well. We had one friend who would show up to EVERY board game night, but was absolutely terrible to play with. She never knew when it was her turn, never paid attention to what other players were doing, never remembered the rules, took goddamn forever to make the simplest of decisions, and just never got the hang of any game we ever played. She would just stall until someone else started telling her what to do, and she would do that every time. While we still play simpler games often enough, our group has been growing larger and moving more towards middle and heavyweight games for quite some time know, and she still can't wrap her head around Catan or Ticket to Ride. Eventually the group reached a consensus and decided to give her the boot.
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Jan 22, 2020 00:20
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Reynold posted:Worse, I think, are the people who don't bother learning mechanics, paying attention, or even attempting to play games well. We had one friend who would show up to EVERY board game night, but was absolutely terrible to play with. She never knew when it was her turn, never paid attention to what other players were doing, never remembered the rules, took goddamn forever to make the simplest of decisions, and just never got the hang of any game we ever played. She would just stall until someone else started telling her what to do, and she would do that every time. While we still play simpler games often enough, our group has been growing larger and moving more towards middle and heavyweight games for quite some time know, and she still can't wrap her head around Catan or Ticket to Ride. Eventually the group reached a consensus and decided to give her the boot. I cannot abide that. If you just want to hang out and chat while spending half the time goofing off on your phone, you can do all of that stuff without getting dealt into the game and making it miserable for everyone.
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Jan 22, 2020 00:32
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Got two more games of Food Chain Magnate in. Both 1v1s. Game 1 was a map divided neatly in half by a long stretch of nothing. Openings 1. Me: Recruiting Girl into Luxuries Manager 2. Him: Trainer into Marketing spam Game went in my favor early, and was over the second we flipped our bank cards and both selected $100. My Luxuries Manager rush meant I ran the bank out before his engine could spin up. Game 2 was a spiral of roads / overpasses, with me cutting my opponent's restaurant off and pretty much winning round 1. Openings 1. Me: Trainer into Guru 2. Him: Recruiting Girl into general food production I got a radio out on turn 6/7, and my opponent wisely went into beverages to counter my radio burger campaign. However, due to my restaurant placement gutting him early, I quickly was able to switch to a discount war before he was ready. Ended up with a much smaller win than game 1. tldr, FCM owns bones. 2 players still gives the full experience, but is much more calculating and vicious. Would not recommend 2p unless both players are vets.
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Jan 22, 2020 00:35
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The best argument for how I feel about table talk involved a game of Mare Nostrum. It’s a real fragile game where you can win turn 1 if nobody is paying attention which results in a lot of clever ways to manipulate your position openly or secretly. So going into turn 2 someone pointed out that I needed only one resource to win outright and nobody should trade with. It evolved into a complex process of figuring out how to block me from trades all the while I was arguing that the balance of power could tip too far with one person cut off. But I was so outwardly dangerous they ignored the other guy’s position who dominated the trade and won instead. And it was frustrating as hell but also a brilliant move. He stopped me from winning while manipulating everyone else from analyzing his own position. It was perfectly played. Both of us huffed and puffed and pounded our fists but his argument was better and my position was compromised from the beginning. Had everybody just played in silence the victory would’ve felt hollow. Instead everybody acknowledged they got pantsed and immediately demanded we play again. E: lack of table talk is basically why we’ve moved away from Euros completely. I think it was Splendor we played literally in complete silence and at the end the silence was broken with “I win... well that was a poo poo experience.” al-azad fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 00:47
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Reynold posted:I had one friend who was a serial whiner. He played games with us back in the day, but has probably been over for board games only two or three times in the last ten years. He whined a lot those few times as well. I don't bother inviting him back. Last I heard he's into Magic now. "You guys are all ganging up on me!" is some poo poo I expect out of a child, I'm not about to placate an adult that cries like that all the time. I think talking at the table is good, provided that experienced players are honest with new players and don't try to engineer things for themselves. When I'm playing with new people in a game that I'm very experienced in (which there aren't many of) I think its nice to suggest a few examples of moves that they can make, and explain the consequences in reasonably basic detail - nothing more than the immediate consequences and maybe a little bit about what might happen next turn if they're still not getting it. Telling them what you think is the best isn't great, because you might as well just play the game for them, but so long as you're honest about who is going to be affected and why then I think it's good. I've not won the last few games of Chaos in the Old World - which is my favourite game - despite playing with new players, with me as the only experienced player at the table, and I absolutely love that. I wasn't pulling my punches at all, either. I say stuff very jokingly when I am genuinely getting ganged up on. It's part of the game to stop me if I'm winning. This happens a lot in Chaos In The Old World (especially when I draw Tzeentch, because it's my favourite character), and in BSG (I have legitimately been the cylon a disproportionate number of times, so my friends now automatically accuse me of everything). It's funny, it's good natured, I pretend to be hurt and we all laugh.
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Jan 22, 2020 01:09
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I played Le Havre this MLK Day and it just cemented for me how wrong, wrong, wrong Mark Bigney is about how the worker placement aspects of the game are underbaked. You won't take an action just to block someone, but making sure you have the resources to get to the Sawmill, the Bakehouse, the Smokehouse, or the Wharf first is a huge part of the game's strategy. The ownership of the buildings also adds a neat wrinkle. During the game, both Wharfs were out but neither were modernized. When another player had the resources to build the first iron ship, I went to their Wharf to build my wooden boat first. That forced them to modernize my Wharf instead of their own, which ended up paying out major dividends.
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Jan 22, 2020 01:11
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Quixotic1 posted:Looks like the CMon time capsule kickstarter thingy turned out to be a poo poo show. I didn’t think Dogs of War stuff would sell out so fast 
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Jan 22, 2020 01:38
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Already gone, huh? I was locked out of the KS. I'm glad I only late-pledged for a buck and I think I'm pretty much over future CMON projects after their bungling of the last few I've looked at. It's funny - they helped make KS what it is for boardgames, but they've largely failed to evolve with the medium.
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Jan 22, 2020 01:42
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I love strategic whiners because theyre really easy to manipulate into attacking someone else. "Here, Ill help you out a bit, real shame about that other guy thats loving up your plan" I say as I run away with the game through sheer lack of competition
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Jan 22, 2020 01:47
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Oath sounds really good conceptually, does anyone know when it's supposed to be finished or shipped?
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Jan 22, 2020 02:42
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PerniciousKnid posted:Oath sounds really good conceptually, does anyone know when it's supposed to be finished or shipped? According to the campaign, this time next year.
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Jan 22, 2020 02:51
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PerniciousKnid posted:Oath sounds really good conceptually, does anyone know when it's supposed to be finished or shipped? Timeline on the KS page has it shipping next January I believe. I'm planning on just waiting and pre-ordering when it hits retail.
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Jan 22, 2020 02:53
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In line with the current discussion of players verbally coercing others to do their bidding, the absolute worst I've come across was a friend who wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't stop telling you that your move is suboptimal and then goad you with "NO. You must tell me why this move is better than the move I propose and then the game can continue." He would move players pieces back if he thought there was a better move. He would cite forum posts on boardgamegeek and demand everybody min/max according to his understanding of the game. Even in social deduction games like resistance he kept saying stuff like "actually statistically you should vote this. all feelings don't count, only voting records track." oh yeah he would record everybody's vote for sending ppl on missions. What's worse is he'd bring along a friend who was very similar and would agree with him. I guess they're off somewhere now, playing chess with AI aids and having aneurysms.
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Jan 22, 2020 03:20
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