|
Yeah I'm honestly trying to think of any mwes I'd push for and am having trouble. I like castles of mad king Ludwig but the pricing might not be enough to warrant its place. Vanuatu is good but pretty mean.
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 06:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 16:50 |
|
|
I own 4 midweight euros: Hansa Teutonica Concordia Imperial 2030 RFTG. I could part with one of Concordia and Imperial 2030 but that's about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 07:05
|
|
|
Maybe my brain has shifted from being into this hobby for so long, but is Brass midweight? Maybe "heavy Euro" carries such a stigma for me that anything less complicated than Lacerda/Arkwright level fails to qualify? The Estates - surely that qualifies as a top tier MWE? CaptainRightful fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Feb 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 07:08
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:So I solidified my 10 med weight euros and I think it's settled unless something really special comes along. Doesn't feel like much overlap beyond Uwes. Recently I've been forcing myself to get rid of games that have good critical reception, but that I personally just don't love. Hansa Teutonica & Troyes both get hit in that purge. I like how Troyes uses dice, but I really dislike how the cards work. Those cards allow you to generate an action engine, but since they are random & come out sequentially over 3 turns there's no good way to plan ahead and some people can just fall into insanely powerful combos. My group really loved Hansa until we our entire metagame started focusing on acquiring the tokens. Like the cards in Hansa, there's just too much luck involved with them, and if you manage to snag some of the more powerful tokens you can really run away with the advantage they give you. On a more subjective level, both games were always fun experiences, but I never got the same level of excitement from then that I do with Agricola or Gaia Project, where I'm almost immediately itching to play again and try a different strategy. This echoed in my group because after a while no one wanted to play either title. My list would be: Caylus Keyflower Agricola Orleans Endeavor Gaia Project Bass Birmingham Great Western Trail (Unplayed) Feast for Odin (Unplayed) Madiera (Unplayed) Although I have to admit I'm not even sure I know what middle weight euro means anymore. I would have listed Bus & Great Zimbabwe here, but I saw you kept Splotter titles separate so I didn't. I also wouldn't have considered Gaia, Brass, FFO, or GWT middle weight. I think I've actually moved away from that term. I now delineate euro games based on their level of freedom in design. Games whose central mechanic involves you trying to generate point engines within a rigid set of rules (almost everything on the above list) vs. games with simple loose rules where the gameplay is driven by player interaction (Splotter Games, CHEX, Estates, 18XX from the sound of it).
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 07:25
|
|
|
CaptainRightful posted:Maybe my brain has shifted from being into this hobby for so long, but is Brass midweight? Maybe "heavy Euro" carries such a stigma for me that anything less complicated than Lacerda/Arkwright level fails to qualify? My cutoff for weight was 2.5, it's 2.34. AFFO is similarly to heavy
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 07:35
|
|
|
Megasabin posted:I now delineate euro games based on their level of freedom in design. Games whose central mechanic involves you trying to generate point engines within a rigid set of rules (almost everything on the above list) vs. games with simple loose rules where the gameplay is driven by player interaction (Splotter Games, CHEX, Estates, 18XX from the sound of it). Yeah that's a good way to phrase it really. Rigid structure vs player driven games is the simplest way to explain the "you know it when you see it" kind of thing. It's kinda like the flood of open world video games and resulting fatigue a few years back. The ubiquitous towers in those vs the endless tracks to climb in every mid weight euro, everything ending up feeling very similar, etc. I see The Estates as a filler (and top tier one). Happy to play a round or several.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 07:39
|
|
|
pospysyl posted:As for Ian o' Toole, I don't mind his graphic design, but I sometimes wonder what his games would look like done by someone else, especially The Gallerist, where a lot of the charm of the setting is lost so that the icons can look exactly like the components. This is a very strange criticism. Aside from the fact that not many of the game's icons do represent components, consistent iconography and graphic design is a colossal boon to making gameplay easy to follow.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 09:25
|
|
|
Heaviness for me has to do with the amount of strategic complexity you need to engage with to do well, which is sometimes generated by complex rule sets but more often (in good games) by complex dependency chains and every action counting. So the way I use the term, Food Chain Magnate is heavy as you can screw yourself early on, you need to be proactive and have a plan but also be able to factor in other people’s plans and actions and react accordingly. Games which then either lean more towards tactical and flexible (a lot of interactive euros like Knizias) or towards long term planning (multiplayer solitaire euros like feast for Odin) to me are more likely to be medium weight - again, just the way I use the term - as it’s the combo of both qualities that makes games heavier to me, as you need to be fully engaged every single turn and have as much of the game as possible “held” in your mind throughout. I find them sometimes more draining and just requiring more concentration. They usually have little or no randomness and are often closer to perfect information. On that list I’d put things like Vinhos, where you only get like 12? 16? Actions total in the game but they all matter. FCM and other splotters. Brass I think of as a heavier medium, Lancashire heavier than Birmingham as you can screw up earlier with less chance of bouncing back. Twilight Struggle tends towards heavy for me as do many pseudo war games, but I also tend to think of it as a heavier medium as the way chance works you usually have some room to screw around a bit. The concept is useful to me for working out what kind of games I like. I especially like games that seem relatively heavy for their play time, for example, or rules simplicity / ease of teaching. I like a lot of Knizias because while I feel they are mediumish weight with a lot of depth many also play in 45 mins to an hour. Chicago Express I think Is also very heavy for its duration. Lord of the Rings: the confrontation, also for a game that can be 20 minutes or less it’s got quite an amount of depth. (Maybe not the best example) Keyflower is quite heavy relative to its length. I suspect the Pax games are heavy in this sense but haven’t tried them yet. Anyway, this is just how I think about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 09:53
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:So I solidified my 10 med weight euros and I think it's settled unless something really special comes along. Doesn't feel like much overlap beyond Uwes. If you're going to pop one out that means you have a space for Power Grid and/or Lewis and Clark I assume based on your description of Deck Builders that Sidereal Confluence wouldn't count?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 10:39
|
|
|
Sid Con is in no shape or form a deckbuilder
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 11:14
|
|
|
I have/will have a few MWEs. Namely Concordia, Wingspan (if that counts?) and soon Smartphone Inc. I assume things like Import/Export don't count?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 11:19
|
|
|
The End posted:Sid Con is in no shape or form a deckbuilder I was thinking in terms of cards without a board.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 11:25
|
|
|
I measure heaviness with scales and will hear of no other metric. Last night I played The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9, a co-op trick taking game that I was very impressed by. The trick taking itself is very standard. The deck consists of 1-9 in four suits and 1-4 in trumps, and gets dealt in its entirety to 3 to 5 players. The captain leads a card, everyone must follow suit if they can, and whoever played the highest in-suit number or highest trump wins the trick and leads next time. What's new is the table wins or loses based on if they achieve whatever mission they've chosen, which places demands on who can win what trick. The rulebook comes with 50 which vary from trivial to the very silly. Easy level is drawing three cards from a secondary deck which mirrors the main deck. Players then draft those and must win the matching cards in tricks. Slightly more difficult is the same thing but these tricks must be won in a specific order. Higher levels are the player to the left of the person w/ the high card in the pink suit must win all pink cards in tricks. Mission 50 demands that the captain wins the first two tricks, then the player to the left win the next four, then the player to their left wins all remaining. Players can only communicate one bit of info about their hands. Any time in between tricks, they may reveal a suit card and state that it is their lowest, highest, or only card in that suit. I believe that's taken from Bridge, and looking through the rulebook you can see ideas taken from a lot of other games in a way that understands why they were worth taking. I'm a big fan of trick taking as a mechanic, and making it co-op lessens the frustration the family can have because of losing because of a bad hand. It's still entirely possibly to have a losing situation because of luck, but you know, everyone else is losing too. It also scratches the Hanabi itch, and indeed will probably develop similar tactics of saying you have a high-yellow will mean you also have the second-highest yellow they need. I know people dislike that aspect, but I think it's kinda fun, and this time there's more of a game around it. I would guess it's got good replayability after you've marched through the missions, because there's an awful lot of randomness at set-up. Players will just find a mission with associated percentage chance of losing they're happy with and can play that one pretty much indefinitely. I heartily recommend it, though I will say at 3 it's a bit easy. I don't believe it's terrifically expensive, but if you've got two decks of cards it should be easy to proxy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 11:45
|
|
|
Mr. Squishy posted:I measure heaviness with scales and will hear of no other metric. Yeah, it is a really great game. Lots of fun and but I agree, 3 seems to be easy mode. There is also a 2 player variant where you take out the trump 4 card, shuffle the rest and place 7 cards face down and then 7 cards face up on top of them. Shuffle the remaining cards and put the trump 4 back in. Deal out all the cards to the 2 players, look who is the commander for that round and draft missions as normal. Whenever the dummy would have to play a card the commander decides which card from the 7 piles is played. Reveal any face down cards when the top card is played from that pile. Also fun but like the 3 player mode a bit easy. Proxying the game should be easy and the rules and the mission log can be found on BGG in English.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 12:01
|
|
|
Yeah Die Crew is shockingly compelling. I liked it a lot more than Hanabi for coop trick takers with limited communication.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 12:15
|
|
|
I use rules complexity primarily for my sense of heaviness. Whether the depth of decisions made in that game are worthwhile or not doesn’t really move the meter but decides if it’s even worth bothering. This is where the high complexity for relatively shallow decisions make me loathe the flood of MWE/heavy that come out. Trajan was a simple rule set but then everything else afterwards wanted to make the mini games and tracks and bonuses much more complicated for no real gain. Teotihuacan is just layers of flowcharts for the exact same thing. I also think MWE is going to be a much much wider net than everything else combined because it has to be. It’s the average, so you’ll have new people thinking Azul as an MWE and you’ll have people like me thinking TGZ is an MWE - even though I really think its complexity is much much lower than your average euro with variable player powers nowadays. And I’m the sort of person who encourages people to play 1889 after Chicago express and FCM after dominion so you can intuit my opinions about their complexity there. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 12:29
|
|
|
Chill la Chill posted:I use rules complexity primarily for my sense of heaviness. Same. Chess/Go are incredibly deep but I would never describe those as "heavy" games.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 13:37
|
|
|
Lord Of Texas posted:Same. Chess/Go are incredibly deep but I would never describe those as "heavy" games. Chess is heavy. Memorising an opening book is more 'rules' internalisation than here I stand. Not memorising and opening book is playing on beginner mode.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 13:57
|
|
|
So, axes are rules complexity, strategic depth, and player interactivity? Any other major ones that are usually associated with heaviness?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 13:57
|
|
|
I assume by Player interactivity you mean the secondary effects from each decision made by an opponent? Was thinking for a second you probably don't mean solitaire vs interaction but how many knock-on effects a single decision has to all other players?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:00
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:So, axes are rules complexity, strategic depth, and player interactivity? Any other major ones that are usually associated with heaviness? I don't think the general understanding includes player interactivity
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:01
|
|
|
Chill la Chill posted:I assume by Player interactivity you mean the secondary effects from each decision made by an opponent? Was thinking for a second you probably don't mean solitaire vs interaction but how many knock-on effects a single decision has to all other players? I mean decisions by other players affecting your decisions yeah, but I feel like that's kinda the same thing as the second thing too...
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:02
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:I don't think the general understanding includes player interactivity Hm. I mean I guess, Lacerda sure makes heavy games without a lot of interactivity, but higher interactivity can lead to way deeper games? I dunno.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:03
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:Hm. Interactivity is a difficult one to gauge because it depends on how the players interact as well as how much. Worker Placement games have player interaction but that interaction is exclusively denying someone the ability to do something. A trading game like Sidereal Confluence is way more open ended with a much more complex interaction but it's also a lot less adversarial.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:09
|
|
|
Well I mean turn order wrangling exists in 18xx. Worker placement is a much simpler decision. Except for Bus which does the gradient action drafting well. Like even the case of when you’d want to sell down a good stock in an 18xx (say majority owner is on your left and you may or may not have sold to max market allowance) such that others buy the cheap stock and you’d set up priority deal for the *next* turn is a pretty neat concept from the simple rule of “last to act in stock round gives priority to the player on the left.” Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Feb 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:10
|
|
|
pospysyl posted:Franz's masterwork is obviously Barenpark. I also like the houses in Agricola and Le Havre, and the main board for Merlin. Basically, anything that isn't a person. The Franchise map is the best thing he's ever done by far.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:38
|
|
|
Chill la Chill posted:
I 100% agree with this. I remember when I was starting out in the hobby and played Great Western Trail and thought it was a very heavy game because my comparisons were stuff like Splendor or Carrcasone. Today I solidly put it in the MWE category and some of the people that I show it to that are newer to gaming think I’m crazy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 14:47
|
|
|
Dominion isn't a Euro because it has no cubes.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:04
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Dominion isn't a Euro because it has no cubes. Dominion: Renaissance has cubes, so it clearly transitions into a Euro with expansions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:07
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Dominion isn't a Euro because it has no cubes. Cubes were added in expansion #12.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:07
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:John Company also has similar issues in that it creates a compelling and interesting story, but sometimes due to how events and rolls are handled within the game, that success can feel a little bit out of your hands. My first game encapsulated this: none of the people in offices could roll to save their life and I think I managed to accumulate a single VP throughout the game. I think the experience was still worth it and I'm certainly interested in trying the game again, since it has emergent themes and storylines that I found personally very compelling.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:20
|
|
|
I got Clinic in the mail (after they found out where it was originally delivered) and opened it up last night. Dang that's a lot of components. Some of them, like fire extinguishers or blood, are tiny, like smaller than my pinky nail. That said, game looks interesting - hiring doctors to treat patients, building an efficient hospital so that people don't waste time walking around, the rulebook was a little daunting at first until I realized that a good chunk of it was just examples and such, it's otherwise pretty easy to understand. Looking forward to playing a solo game tonight. It's also an Ian O'Toole game, which I think works in its benefit. I'm looking at a couple pictures of the old board, and it has a kind of sterile blandness that's relatively thematic, I suppose, but it lacks a lot of information. I remember Small City having this same issue. Lots of iconography, which some of you dislike, but I have no idea how otherwise to represent stuff like "This module must go near both a supply station and a service station or it is unavailable for use" without mashing text all over the board. Alban Viard games tend to have that kind of issue.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:21
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:Chess is heavy. Memorising an opening book is more 'rules' internalisation than here I stand. Not memorising and opening book is playing on beginner mode. Is Fischer Random more or less heavy than traditional chess?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:43
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:I got Clinic in the mail (after they found out where it was originally delivered) and opened it up last night. Yeah mine came on Monday and I haven't cracked it yet but I have zero problem with O'Toole's art on the box at least. I think the clean and arguably bland colours of something like Irish Gauge work perfectly well too. Trying to think of any other games I've got that he did. Didn't realise he worked on Lisboa... SO MUCH LIGHT BLUE de gustibus non est disputandum
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 15:45
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:I too have only played JoCo once and had a similar reaction, I might try the low luck variant on BGG for retirement where (iirc) you get a token for each 'failed' retirement which you can trade or spend to boost retirement rolls. Cole said it's not an official variant because he wanted retirement to be unpredictable, which is a good point but also tying the game to a couple of single die rolls you can't modify kinda sucks With that said being an officer is the main agency within the game itself. Even in the lowliest position you can negotiate for favors and dump your earnings into manors. Yeah, retirement is the primary way you score but if nobody is retiring because of dice rolls then no one is being promoted either. I agree with Cole that it's against the spirit of the game. You're a rich rear end in a top hat who wants to ride the gravy train as long as it's profitable, but also being able to influence retirement lessens the impact of players who are trying to collapse the company. I would maybe argue for those tokens being worth victory points at an unfavorable trade, maybe 2 or 3 for 1 to represent the clout of holding office but I don't believe a player should just hop out to the Cayman's that quickly when all their assets are tied into a collapsing company. e: I would also look into a way to abdicate where you give every officer a favor as a representation of bribes and shaking hands to let you leave in good standing without any unsavory rumors or ballroom drama for abandoning your post (truly a cowardly thing). al-azad fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Feb 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 16:30
|
|
|
al-azad posted:With that said being an officer is the main agency within the game itself. Even in the lowliest position you can negotiate for favors and dump your earnings into manors. Yeah, retirement is the primary way you score but if nobody is retiring because of dice rolls then no one is being promoted either. Yeah that's my concern with it too- its a rule that makes thematic sense and is important for game balance but also feels bad so idk how "fixing" it plays in practice
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 16:40
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:I too have only played JoCo once and had a similar reaction, I might try the low luck variant on BGG for retirement where (iirc) you get a token for each 'failed' retirement which you can trade or spend to boost retirement rolls. Cole said it's not an official variant because he wanted retirement to be unpredictable, which is a good point but also tying the game to a couple of single die rolls you can't modify kinda sucks It also works thematically. Cole said each turn in JoCo is a bit more than a decade. New clerks are probably in their 20s, so a seven-turns-old cube is nearly a 100-year-old executive actually making real decisions. I don't think there was ever such a situation in the historical Company. Alternatively, you can replace all the cubes with dice of their appropriate color, and say the company has a forced retirement policy at around 80. Overall, I don't think you should be able to trade the tokens or use them to boost the retirement roll until you have enough to force the retirement roll to succeed. Then, you have to use them to force the retirement. golden bubble fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Feb 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 17:43
|
|
|
Trading promise cubes to force opponents' people to retire might be neat. Definitely not your own and it should be a high cost.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 17:56
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:My cutoff for weight was 2.5, it's 2.34. i believe using our special board game caucus rounding rules, it would drop to 2, and we'd add 1.34 to LAMA, making it a solid mid-weight euro
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 18:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 16:50 |
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:Chess is heavy. Memorising an opening book is more 'rules' internalisation than here I stand. Not memorising and opening book is playing on beginner mode. Beginner mode is relative, and plenty of people throughout history have played and enjoyed chess without even knowing what an opening is. You can't say the same thing for 18xx or Lacerda - those are heavy mental burdens from the outset, in addition to having deep decision space. The term I personally would use to describe chess, or go, or hive, or santorini, is "deep" not "heavy" Lord Of Texas fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Feb 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2020 18:06
|
|