|
Chill la Chill posted:I have 49, FCM, and 17 slotted between today and tomorrow. Maybe get 30/89 on Monday You are a goddamn beast, Chill. How do you find the time?
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 22:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:33 |
|
|
49 and FCM are short, you could easily fit both in one night. 17 is a game day I'd expect.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 22:27
|
|
|
Memnaelar posted:Yarp. That's what I did. As soon as I saw that review and compared it to SVWAG, I burned through some Amazon Rewards points and grabbed that sucker. It'd be great if the major e-retailers out there collected some data that showed sales spikes on SUSD review days. I imagine that site doesn't get nearly the marketing dollars it should, despite its obvious influence. I don't think they take ad money
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 22:39
|
|
|
My games weekend is going to be a weird grab bag of Fake Artist, Avalon, Escape From The Aliens in Outer Space and Colt Express on Saturday and then some Pandemic Legacy and Concordia as a "lazy Sunday". Should be fun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 22:48
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:I don't think they take ad money They do have referral links from their site for games they cover, but I doubt that's more than pennies on the dollar.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 22:52
|
|
|
Redundant posted:My games weekend is going to be a weird grab bag of Fake Artist, Avalon, Escape From The Aliens in Outer Space and Colt Express on Saturday and then some Pandemic Legacy and Concordia as a "lazy Sunday". Should be fun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2020 23:05
|
|
|
Spirit Island question: Is there a bad group of spirits to play as? My friends want to do a 2 defense 2 fear spirit game. (Vital Strength, Rampant Growth, Shadows Flicker and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares)
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 00:23
|
|
|
CommaToes posted:Spirit Island question: Is there a bad group of spirits to play as? My friends want to do a 2 defense 2 fear spirit game. (Vital Strength, Rampant Growth, Shadows Flicker and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares) there's definitely spirit combos that are harder to win with than others but really when you're playing a co-op game you're signing up to collectively solve a puzzle, so just think of each combination of spirits as a different puzzle (or set of tools with which to solve it).
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 00:37
|
|
|
Shadows flicker is pretty bad in general. Otherwise not really. Things might get dicy if you're all playing slower spirits like keeper/serpent/bringer and also all go for greedy openings.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 00:40
|
|
God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
|
serpent can accelerate slower spirits in fun ways though. serpent plus wall guy is busted
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 00:44
|
|
|
Should be fine. Vital Strength + Shadows Flicker are not great individually or as a combo but they're not so bad that they're going to sink a 4p game, especially with Rampant Green in the mix. Just tell everyone to be on the lookout for element-appropriate Dahan powers, you will want a lot of Dahan support to turn all that defense into counterattacks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 01:07
|
|
|
Straight White Shark posted:Should be fine. Vital Strength + Shadows Flicker are not great individually or as a combo but they're not so bad that they're going to sink a 4p game, especially with Rampant Green in the mix. Just tell everyone to be on the lookout for element-appropriate Dahan powers, you will want a lot of Dahan support to turn all that defense into counterattacks. Vital Strength can beat difficulty 8-9 opponents without drafting any cards at all, I'm going to have to disagree that it is anything less than amazing. Shadows Flicker is the worst spirit though. It really needs an early major power to build around. Which means sometimes you'll get unlucky and not draft anything usable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 01:26
|
|
|
KPC_Mammon posted:Vital Strength can beat difficulty 8-9 opponents without drafting any cards at all, I'm going to have to disagree that it is anything less than amazing. Vital strength is v good but it needs to pair with an offensive partner
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 01:36
|
|
|
KPC_Mammon posted:Vital Strength can beat difficulty 8-9 opponents without drafting any cards at all, I'm going to have to disagree that it is anything less than amazing. I mean, that's... kind of an arbitrary metric. Most spirits are guaranteed to gain power cards, the fact that Vital Strength is designed to gain few to no cards doesn't make it better. You might as well say that Lightning's Swift Strike is better because it can win at high difficulty without advancing its energy track. At any rate I don't think it's really an issue in a vacuum anyhow, but I do think it's one of the worst spirits to partner with Shadows Flicker--they're both fairly passive at base and both of them want surplus Dahan support from their teammates. But that's only really an issue in smaller games; with 4 players they don't have to rely on each other in particular. Rampant Green and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares look passive, but Rampant Green's presence acceleration lets everyone be more aggressive (and Rampant Green itself is no slouch there) and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares pushes your win conditions hard with all that fear.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 02:11
|
|
|
Bringer of dreams and nightmares is my second or third favourite spirit. Having so many pushes but no kills lets you set tons of stuff up but you need some sort of partner with AOE. Or just Oceans hungry grasp existing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 02:21
|
|
|
Mayveena posted:So what games are folks playing over the holiday? (US only sorry Probably 1862 or 22MRS tomorrow, we'll see 
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 02:49
|
|
) I'm playing Age of Steam, Acquire, 1862 and Indonesia. I'll let y'all know how it goes.
|
FulsomFrank posted:You are a goddamn beast, Chill. How do you find the time? My friend group can be said to be a bunch of single guys who don’t have SOs so it’s like we’re living extended college days. Enjoying it while it lasts. Played 3 games of 1849 
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 06:01
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Vital strength is v good but it needs to pair with an offensive partner I disagree, playing Draw of the Fruitful Earth, doubling it with the innate, and following it up with Rituals of Destruction for 5 damage and bonus fear lets Vital Strength be the offensive partner. You can do this from turn 2 onwards. With good play you can simultaneously destroy multiple towns and cities, prevent a build (sometimes two), and set up a future protected dahan counter attack nearly every turn. Sure, certain adversaries ignore some of these effects but at least some of them will be incredibly useful against every country. Straight White Shark posted:I mean, that's... kind of an arbitrary metric. Most spirits are guaranteed to gain power cards, the fact that Vital Strength is designed to gain few to no cards doesn't make it better. You might as well say that Lightning's Swift Strike is better because it can win at high difficulty without advancing its energy track. Vital Strength of the Earth can beat most opponents solo with just their starting hand. That's not an arbitrary metric, that's evidence that Vital Strength has a ridiculously good toolset that doesn't need any additional help. Not having to advance your energy track is very different from starting the game with the tools needed to win. Having to rely on new power cards means you can have bad luck and draft poor elements. As a counter point, Shadow Flickers eventually has great innates but can't even activate them with all four of its starting cards. I've had games where using its 3rd tier innate was impossible due to bad luck, which is why I recommend getting an early major with that spirit so you can draft for two different sets of elements. edit: If Shadow Flicker's starting powers had better elements I think it would be a solidly mid-tier spirit. As is it has a start that is both inflexible and underwhelming and ends up relying too heavily on luck of the draft. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Feb 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 08:30
|
|
|
KPC_Mammon posted:Vital Strength of the Earth can beat most opponents solo with just their starting hand. That's not an arbitrary metric, that's evidence that Vital Strength has a ridiculously good toolset that doesn't need any additional help. Not having to advance your energy track is very different from starting the game with the tools needed to win. That's not even unique (River Surges in Sunlight says hi.) And there are spirits like Thunderspeaker and Rampant Green that need some kind of draws for filler that are still going to win more often at the highest difficulties even with the luck of the power deck than Vital Strength with or without it, just because they have a wide enough toolkit that they don't have to be very picky when it comes to draws. That's true for most spirits: many of them have multiple elements they can pursue, they just have enough stuff going on that they don't need to particularly rely on their innate elements alone, they have synergies that let them use off-element cards to great effects, or some combination of all three. Ocean turns pushes into kills, Thunderspeaker turns defense into kills, Lightning's Swift Strike has room for basically any cost 0 card, Rampant Green and Wildfire efficiently upgrade 1-2 damage hits into bigger kills, and so on. Part of what makes Shadows weak is that it doesn't really have this kind of synergy available; even if you get a card that works well with its special ability you still have to pay for it, so it winds up being a pretty marginal upgrade for most cards. Some of the new aspects previewed for Jagged Earth upgrade Shadows Flicker's special ability and that's enough to bring it up to the same level as other spirits, bad elements and all--when you can boost range without paying energy you can pick up high impact range 0 powers and get enough mileage out of them that elements aren't make or break for you anymore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 15:31
|
|
|
Straight White Shark posted:That's not even unique (River Surges in Sunlight says hi.) And there are spirits like Thunderspeaker and Rampant Green that need some kind of draws for filler that are still going to win more often at the highest difficulties even with the luck of the power deck than Vital Strength with or without it, just because they have a wide enough toolkit that they don't have to be very picky when it comes to draws. We don't ever lose with Earth though. There isn't a higher win rate than 100%. We've stopped using them unless we want an easy win and we only play difficulty 8+. Let me say that again, our gaming group specifically avoids both Earth and Lightning unless we want an easy time. Not even Ocean is in that category and Ocean is one of the best spirits. Most of the spirits are really good. I'm just really tired of people saying Earth needs help from other spirits and isn't offensive. It doesn't, and I think it gets a bad rap because it is a starter spirit and people learn how to play with it and then move on and not come back. The things it can do once you know what you're doing is ridiculous. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Feb 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 16:48
|
|
|
Sure, but there are higher difficulties than 8-9. Not many spirits lose at 8 once you get a handle on them. I actually agree that Earth is underrated; a lot of players see the Energy track and immediately hit the major power deck and don't really realize what their uniques and innate can do. I still find that the last difficulty bump hits it pretty hard. I guess it's not really fair to say it's towards the back of the pack on that basis, though, because up until about difficulty 9 it will definitely hold up with the best of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2020 18:56
|
|
|
Has anyone tried non-standard drafting variants for Terraforming Mars? For a 2P game, was thinking of trying Fact-or-Fiction drafting (something like 1st player draws 5 cards, splits them into 2 piles, 2nd player picks a pile to keep and 1st player gets the remains) Goal is to make the drafting more interesting and interactive than 2P drafting would typically be.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 00:38
|
|
|
You could do Inis style of two smaller drafts per round.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 00:42
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:You could do Inis style of two smaller drafts per round. That's an interesting idea. I haven't played Inis, but looking up the rules, seems like it would encourage synergies due to being able to toss back one's first pick. Also, two smaller drafts is probably less AP than one big one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 01:58
|
|
|
Lord Of Texas posted:That's an interesting idea. I haven't played Inis, but looking up the rules, seems like it would encourage synergies due to being able to toss back one's first pick. Also, two smaller drafts is probably less AP than one big one. Yeah the smaller crafts would be critical in TFM. Other option is a grid draft I think. Deal a 3*3 grid, player takes a row or column, other player takes a row or column, discard unused cards. Do that three times instead of drafting 10 cards I think. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Feb 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 02:01
|
|
|
Lord Of Texas posted:Has anyone tried non-standard drafting variants for Terraforming Mars? When I was trying to salvage the game I theorycrafted a Pax style market row but tossed it when I realised I didn't want to play the game again
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 03:50
|
|
|
Brought out The Taverns of Tiefenthal for the first time today, in addition to The Voyages of Marco Polo. Tiefenthal was an alright first play - we brought in the performers and the reputation track right away, and nobody really minded too much about it. It's nice to topdeck everything you buy in the game, but as a result it doesn't feel like you really get going until the third or fourth round of the game, out of eight, when you shuffle your discards and everything you bought shows up at once. It ramps real fast though, and the three mulligan tokens are definitely appreciated, but strangely enough most people had a power seventh turn and the eighth was pretty quiet. Managed 133 on 11 nobles, which was enough to take it. Taught The Voyages of Marco Polo without the expansion. Took Matteo and barely managed to edge out a Rashid who pretty much went pure contracts. Drew three different destination cards for Sumatra, but it did have camel/gold for 9 and two goods for one move cards, and I actually managed to get around the bottom part of the map and into Beijing turn 3 as a result, thanks to an Alexandria silk city card and a cash bonus in Adana that I hit first turn to take some of the sting out of portage fees. My last turn was almost entirely setting up 5 steps (with 9 camels) into Kashgar for my last trading post + card destination. I'm looking forward to Marco Polo II - the powers seem to have been toned down a little and the map emphasized more, but it's definitely the same game philosophy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 04:45
|
|
|
Played and won a game of 1862 today. What a glorious mess. GMT did a terrible job of producing it though. I'm disappointed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 05:54
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Played and won a game of 1862 today. What a glorious mess. GMT did a terrible job of producing it though. I'm disappointed. Terrible? It’s great. Pretty much every detail is printed on the board and the crib sheets are succinct as GMT games normally are.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 06:10
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Played and won a game of 1862 today. What a glorious mess. GMT did a terrible job of producing it though. I'm disappointed. If you think that’s terrible you should see the original.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 06:38
|
|
|
I have no complaints about the GMT production apart from two things. It's annoying that something labelled "home station" has to go on the stock market because every other token is the same on both sides. And one of the few changes to the map design is the off-board revenues have gone from gradients (because they're paying middle value from midway through the green trains to the first russet) to flat colours (because it looks nicer I guess). I didn't mind but my playgroup mocked it a little. Also the PD elephant is tiddley. I just put it on my desk with all the other wooden animals.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 11:40
|
|
|
Those were the same issues I had with the GMT version as well, just extremely stupid mistakes no 18xx producer should be making nowadays, doubly so since GMT got the single-sided tokens right in 46. The original 62 production was actually still better with tokens, GMT's mistakes aside, since they used tall cylinders for home tokens. The change to the offboard colors is terrible since the yellow/green/brown color coding is just straight up lying to you about when the values change, even with the phase numbers are printed on them. The double sided charters are also rather silly and unnecessary, but I can live with them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 12:35
|
|
|
If I get 62 I would likely just glue the tokens on extra wooden pieces I have around. Maybe someone’s made a sticker sheet. Local guy has the game so I should try it first but I’ve been apprehensive given the chrome and my desire to only play clean designs lately. I have a preorder sitting around waiting to ship but maybe I should turn that into Nevsky instead.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 14:08
|
|
|
Yesterday, my friends got together and explicitly only played games we hadn't played for around a year or more. Anything played recently was out (except for The Mind as a failsafe, which did get played once). It was a great way to break out of a rut where we gently caress about with 6-7 player social games, and reminded us of a bunch of games were remembered liking. The group still skewed sort of light due to certain friends in attendance, so we didn't break out any complicated classics, but it was a very nice change of pace. It might be a fun idea to bring to your gaming group, though I don't know if it works for very long games since you will get fewer of them in. In that case it's more like "We haven't played TGZ in ages" rather than "Here are 6 games we have not played in a year, who wants to play what?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 15:39
|
|
|
al-azad posted:Terrible? It’s great. Pretty much every detail is printed on the board and the crib sheets are succinct as GMT games normally are. Yeah but there are typos on the board and I'm cranky that the tokens don't have an opposite face for flipping them on the stock market. Maybe terrible is an overstatement but those two things really make me cranky because they're so easy to fix and have such an effect on gameplay. 62 is particularly hurt by the latter because of the extent to which the stock price order can change during a round with mergers and stuff. The offboard revenue track kinda sucks too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 15:41
|
|
|
Magnetic North posted:Yesterday, my friends got together and explicitly only played games we hadn't played for around a year or more. Anything played recently was out (except for The Mind as a failsafe, which did get played once). It was a great way to break out of a rut where we gently caress about with 6-7 player social games, and reminded us of a bunch of games were remembered liking. The group still skewed sort of light due to certain friends in attendance, so we didn't break out any complicated classics, but it was a very nice change of pace. It might be a fun idea to bring to your gaming group, though I don't know if it works for very long games since you will get fewer of them in. In that case it's more like "We haven't played TGZ in ages" rather than "Here are 6 games we have not played in a year, who wants to play what?" I focus on this: either a friend brings something they've gotten recently, or I suggest a half dozen games we haven't played in a while. I love revisiting older games that only need a refresher.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 15:50
|
|
|
Played my first game of Empyreal yesterday and hot dang I really enjoyed it. Mind blowing how much of the game can change from play to play.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 19:11
|
|
|
My friend apparently hates money and combined the wooden tokens from his old copy of 62 to his new one. Another friend got the combined “bad” copy so there’s always a chance for more 62 
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 19:22
|
|
|
I managed to get together with some friends yesterday, we played Photosynthesis and Arctic Scavengers. Photosynthesis went well enough, though it was our first time and we all tried to rush for the center and ended with a two-way tie for first. With Arctic Scavengers we tried some of the expansion hires, and it seems like the Provocateur is incredibly good? A few bad hands prevented anyone from grabbing an Assassin or Sniper Team and let the player with the provocateurs win a good chunk of the skirmishes to run away with the game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 20:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:33 |
|
|
Played two games of Sekigahara this weekend, once as Tokugawa and once as Ishida. Won both games. In both cases, the person I was playing against overextended themselves late in the game when securing their position at castles and resource locations would secured their win, probably. I really like it, and will be trying to bring it out more when we have time for a longer two player night.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2020 20:11
|
|
