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TheRealMcFoy posted:I'm about to be quarantined for a while and I'm looking for good solo board games to keep myself occupied. What are some good solo games I should look at? I play tested, and I am still a HUGE fan, of Viticulture + Tuscany solo mode Death Angel is a game like Space Hulk from 40k that HATES you and is plenty challenging
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Mar 19, 2020 19:56
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Tiny Chalupa posted:I play tested, and I am still a HUGE fan, of Viticulture + Tuscany solo mode Ugh, I have Death Angel and all of the expansions. Only ever won one game playing co-op. It's currently at my parents house and I'm not going over there to get it.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:02
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TheRealMcFoy posted:BGG is blocked at work, along with all the publisher sites and youtube. Can you give me a real basic overview of the primary mechanics? Invader pieces have a deck of terrain cards that indicate where they act. When a card is drawn they send explorers into that terrain, which goes onto a track (seen at the top of the photo) that moves progressively each turn. The turn after they explore in a terrain, any invaders still standing in that terrain build more settlements. The turn after they build, any invaders still in that terrain ravage and potentially do irreparable damage to the land and the natives. Meanwhile they're continuing to draw additional terrains, so every turn they're still building and exploring more. Each player gets a spirit that has a hand of unique cards that they use to try to stop this process. Each spirit has tracks representing your max # of cards played and energy income (used to pay to play cards.) Every turn depending on spirit you do some combination of progressing your tracks, reclaiming cards from discard, gaining extra energy or drawing additional power cards from one of two decks (one deck of cheap powers, one deck of much more expensive game-changers.) Then you select and play your cards to try to stop the invaders (by killing them outright, moving them into terrains that are in less danger, defending or repairing the damage they do, etc. depending on card.) In addition to a set of unique starting cards each spirit has always-active special abilities that change basic game rules for them, unique tracks and power-up options, and a set of built in powers activated by gaining and playing cards that match their elemental theme. There are 8 spirits in the base game and 4 more in currently released expansions and they all play pretty differently, plus there are rules for different difficulty levels, special scenarios, and different invader abilities based loosely on different sets of European countries. So there's quite a bit of variety in the box. It's reminiscent of both Pandemic and Mage Knight in different ways, but really it's its own beast.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:04
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To add to all of that, my favorite part about the game is the power curve. You start out feeling competent and the invaders are weak, but you end up ramping up much faster than the invaders so even though you have more plates spinning, you have way more tools to deal with them and feel very strong by the end. That plus the highly adjustable difficulty makes it nearly perfect for solo and co-op play.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:06
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All of that sounds amazingly fun, I'll add it to my cart. I'm trying to get most of my stuff ordered today to reduce potential exposure for delivery personnel.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:07
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So with the current state of things I've got to wonder, is there a tts thread floating about anywhere? Feels like prime time to really start digging into it and learning to use it properly.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:16
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I'm a huge fan of A Feast for Odin solo, which I think is a common opinion. It's a bit of a bear to setup just for one person, though. I've also got Marvel Champions in the rotation for solo play, it's pretty quick and snappy to run through. For shorter solo play I've been enjoying Railroad Ink, and have played a lot of Ganz Schon Clever in the past.
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Mar 19, 2020 20:32
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Fart Car '97 posted:Yes the [for all] was implied. Oh, I was agreeing with you. Just spelling it out for those among us for whom the letter of the law is more important than the intent. Not that there'd be anyone like that in board gaming. It was probably unnecessary!
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Mar 19, 2020 20:38
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Tabletop Sim for half off on fanatical
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Mar 19, 2020 20:54
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So I keep eyeing Undaunted: Normandy , and it's currently on my buy list to order tomorrow but I want to make sure I'm not wasting money here....has anyone here played it and what was your thoughts? SUSD seemed to be a big fan and the videos look like it's up my alley. Want to make sure I'm not missing something that makes the game terrible.
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Mar 19, 2020 21:02
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Is this a trustworthy website?
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Mar 19, 2020 21:16
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Koskinator posted:Is this a trustworthy website? Yeah Fanatical's been around for years. They used to be Bundle Stars.
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Mar 19, 2020 21:24
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Tiny Chalupa posted:So I keep eyeing Undaunted: Normandy , and it's currently on my buy list to order tomorrow but I want to make sure I'm not wasting money here....has anyone here played it and what was your thoughts? I haven’t played but the main criticism I’ve heard even from those who liked and recommend it is that rng can have an outsized effect on the game so keep that in mind if you dislike randomness.
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Mar 19, 2020 21:25
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Bottom Liner posted:To add to all of that, my favorite part about the game is the power curve. You start out feeling competent and the invaders are weak, but you end up ramping up much faster than the invaders so even though you have more plates spinning, you have way more tools to deal with them and feel very strong by the end. That plus the highly adjustable difficulty makes it nearly perfect for solo and co-op play. I just want to comment this is backwards from how most of our games go, although maybe it's because we've played enough to push the difficulty. Most if our games start out as you have to triage what lands you can stop and which ones you have to let go. Midgame starts getting tense and often have a turn or two where we're thinking "oh God there's no way we win here," often being one or two points of damage from outright losing(sometimes down to last blight). But if you play well and push on you hit this turning point where all of a sudden you're like "wait if I do this and you do that we wipe out these lands" and all of a sudden you feeling invincible smiting these colonial assholes. It really gives the game a satisfying arc and a sense of accomplishment. As mentioned the difficulty system is well tailored to let you adjust what kind of game you want to play. If we're trying new spirits we dial it back. The thing that really enhanced the get for us is when I read a note somewhere from the designer that talks about blight as a resource. The general idea was if you were never flipping your blight card (which is roughly the halfway point to losing) you're probably playing on too easy a difficulty and never seeing the full challenge the game can offer. Either way, everyone else is correct in that the game is probably the number one co-op game out there and plays well at any number of players from 1 to 4.
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Mar 19, 2020 22:57
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Bottom Liner posted:I haven’t played but the main criticism I’ve heard even from those who liked and recommend it is that rng can have an outsized effect on the game so keep that in mind if you dislike randomness. Thank you
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Mar 19, 2020 22:58
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threelemmings posted:I just want to comment this is backwards from how most of our games go Yeah I didn’t word it well but we’re saying the same. The invaders ramp up faster early to mid but you end up flying past them in a satisfying way if you can hold on through that.
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Mar 19, 2020 23:19
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mkultra419 posted:Got some store credit and our shelves are a little light on worker placement games. Raiders of the North Sea or Architects of the West Kingdom? I have both Raiders and Architects, plus all expansions and most of the promos. It's pretty hard to choose between the two, but if I had to I'd say Raiders is more fun, especially when you start stacking up the expansions. Something about tooling up a viking crew and wrecking some settlements scratches an itch for me. Keep in mind however, Raiders is pretty steeply discounted on https://garphill.com/ right now.
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Mar 19, 2020 23:26
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I didn’t word it well but we’re saying the same. The invaders ramp up faster early to mid but you end up flying past them in a satisfying way if you can hold on through that. Ah I gotcha. Didn't want to make it sound like you were playing wrong either, I really like how flexible the difficulty is for setting how your game will go.
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Mar 20, 2020 00:10
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In honor of our ongoing pandemic, what's everyone's favorite board games where the players sit six feet apart from each other?
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Mar 20, 2020 01:16
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PerniciousKnid posted:In honor of our ongoing pandemic, what's everyone's favorite board games where the players sit six feet apart from each other? Giant Azul? Make an oversized Sekigahara and use croupier sticks? Roll & writes? Might be playing more online - I renewed my Dominion subscription to play with a friend, got a local team to enter a giant bridge tournament (64-board matches, double elimination), some hopes of Twilight Struggle or Through the Ages. Could even *shudder* play online with strangers, but suspect I'll just play more Race and Slay the Spire.
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Mar 20, 2020 01:24
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PerniciousKnid posted:In honor of our ongoing pandemic, what's everyone's favorite board games where the players sit six feet apart from each other? Argent
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Mar 20, 2020 01:50
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We had a great couple rounds of Cash n Guns last week, brought out for just that reason.
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Mar 20, 2020 02:00
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My group is hard and heavy on BoardgameArena and Yucata. Any other good sites with rules enforcement? Even the single game ones like Civilization.
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Mar 20, 2020 02:08
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Oh hey this exists now: Lehmann's follow up to 46: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-864-1833ne.aspx My lifetime dream has finally been realized: The 6/9 train nice
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Mar 20, 2020 03:14
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GMT should publish an xx I'm actually interested in.
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Mar 20, 2020 03:19
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GMT buy the rights to 1828 you cowards.
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Mar 20, 2020 03:23
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djfooboo posted:My group is hard and heavy on BoardgameArena and Yucata. Boiteajeux has some janky interface stuff but also some great games. It’s my third site I regularly play on aside from the two you mentioned. Also have to mention Boardgamecore, which only has four games but they’re all bangers (food chain magnate, antiquity, great Zimbabwe and wir sind das volk).
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Mar 20, 2020 05:24
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Last post like this before I orde,r as I gotta have some semblance of impulse control, 2 very different games....but not sure which would be better. Both sound fun to me but looking for input Mysterium or Burgle Bros both are roughly the same cost. Both are coop. One is a heist theme and one has the spooky guessing deduction game going for it. I know there is a Burgle Bros 2 coming in May with a casino theme I can preorder. I'm pretty dead set on Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Flick Em Up Dead of Winter, 5 Minute Marvel. Undaunted: Normandy I can MAYBE wait on and grab both games listed about. I'm basically trying to stick around 200 and that is harder then expected
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Mar 20, 2020 05:34
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Bellmaker posted:Oh hey this exists now: Lehmann's follow up to 46: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-864-1833ne.aspx Taser Rates told me in the discord, so now's my chance to tell you in the thread: '46 was a spin-off from '34 (now '33NE) as he continued to work on it.
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Mar 20, 2020 11:09
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I hit Buy on Amazon as soon as I got the email notification that Inhuman Conditions was available. I was expecting it to arrive next week or later with how they are expected to prioritize shipping. Nope. It's out for delivery in the normal prime delivery window. Even a day earlier than originally projected. Thanks for knowing what's important, Amazon! Now to do my best not to impulse buy Watergate when I have at least a dozen unplayed two player games my wife will already have to endure.
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Mar 20, 2020 12:13
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Mighty Eris posted:post="Boardgamecore, which only has four games but they’re all bangers (food chain magnate, antiquity, great Zimbabwe and wir sind das volk).  FCM! I’m in!
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Mar 20, 2020 16:12
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Got Inhuman Conditions to the table a few times before the quarantine, and it's really got me on a philosophical problem. Not like the ones the game wants to engage me on about arrest-as-violence or the targeting of vulnerable minorities or the anxiety of surveillance or whatever--I'm already a cop-hating anticarceral wonk, so all that stuff is just preaching to my choir. But it's sending me deep in the tank about epistemology and Gettier problems and the game design problems of a satisfying victory. See, the Gettier problem is this: Epistemologists traditionally define knowledge as "justified true belief," but there *are* things that you can believe, and you can have justification for that belief, and which can turn out to be true, but are not "knowledge." Edmund Gettier, in challenging that definition, put forward a particular strange example:  (from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Wienersmith) Okay, that's cute and all, but what am I getting at? So in Inhuman Conditions, one player is the Investigator, and one is the Suspect. The Investigator must interrogate the Suspect to determine whether they're a robot or a human. The Suspect wants the Investigator to believe they're a human. (Or kill the investigator. There's other wrinkles involved, but that's the elevator pitch). Humans have no special rules, but robots are stuck with specific communication restrictions: either things can't do or say, or obsessions that they are compelled to do or say. In a strange majority of our games, the Investigator picks up on a quirk in the Suspects behavior (justified) and stamps them as a Robot (belief). And the suspect *IS* a Robot, and the Investigator wins (true). But when the robot reveals their restriction, it's something totally different from what the Investigator noticed, and the real restriction flew entirely over the investigator's head. (An example. I was the Suspect, my roommate was the investigator, playing the Creative Problem Solving scenario. I had drawn a character prompt that said I was a retired athlete, so I pretended to be a tennis star. They noticed I spoke about my joints a couple times, and stamped robot, thinking I was a violent robot obsessed with certain body parts. I was actually a patient robot who couldn't describe *myself* as doing something or taking an action.) So the question I've been flipping around in my head is, is this a design flaw? And does the flaw make Inhuman Conditions a bad game? Because the scenario above is kind of unsatisfying! But also, only kind of??? Because I started rambling about my joints because I was floundering around a bit on a really good question the Investigator caught me with. (Specifically, he asked: "If I decided to have you killed right now, how would you try to escape?" And I struggled to avoid answering the question and claimed my knee injury would make escaping pointless, and that convinced him I was a toaster.) So is that a a skilled play on my opponent's part, or a disappointing lucky coinflip? Does it matter, ludologically? Is it a game problem, or a me problem, or even a problem at all?
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Mar 20, 2020 21:36
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Spiggy posted:GMT buy the rights to 1828 you cowards. Clearclaw would never in a million years.
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Mar 20, 2020 21:49
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Sounds to me like the investigators are (correctly) cottoning on to the fact that players are imperfectly acting out their (strange, unnatural) restriction. I mean the game isn't about deducing a robot's specific malfunction/compulsion. It's about Y/N spotting robots who are actually humans hampered by (inhuman, unnatural) restrictions to their normal behaviour. Which is happening, isn't it?
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Mar 20, 2020 21:50
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Gutter Owl posted:Got Inhuman Conditions to the table a few times before the quarantine, and it's really got me on a philosophical problem. If the humans are not required to do anything special, then any player doing basically anything but acting like they would out of game will immediately out them as a robot. In your example, requiring the robot to act a certain way will raise a billion red flags when they start acting weird. "Act like a retired athlete" is weird to me. Since most people are not retired athletes pretending to be one would be pretty obvious. Unless I'm missing something about this game, since I've never heard of it.
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Mar 20, 2020 21:51
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Gutter Owl posted:(An example. I was the Suspect, my roommate was the investigator, playing the Creative Problem Solving scenario. I had drawn a character prompt that said I was a retired athlete, so I pretended to be a tennis star. They noticed I spoke about my joints a couple times, and stamped robot, thinking I was a violent robot obsessed with certain body parts. I was actually a patient robot who couldn't describe *myself* as doing something or taking an action.) This is analogous to the endings of Avalon / Werewords. Sometimes you have a good reason to go for somebody being the Merlin/Werewolf/Seer and it feels fine. Other times you don't, and guess, and it's unsatisfying even when you're right. I think it's a game problem.
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Mar 20, 2020 21:55
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Gutter Owl posted:Got Inhuman Conditions to the table a few times before the quarantine, and it's really got me on a philosophical problem. Not like the ones the game wants to engage me on about arrest-as-violence or the targeting of vulnerable minorities or the anxiety of surveillance or whatever--I'm already a cop-hating anticarceral wonk, so all that stuff is just preaching to my choir. But it's sending me deep in the tank about epistemology and Gettier problems and the game design problems of a satisfying victory. That's a lot of deep reading into a game by the company that brought us Secret Hitler, where a bunch of people with no real evidence for anything argue with each other until everyone gets tired and makes a choice because they just want to move on
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Mar 20, 2020 22:02
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SettingSun posted:If the humans are not required to do anything special, then any player doing basically anything but acting like they would out of game will immediately out them as a robot. In your example, requiring the robot to act a certain way will raise a billion red flags when they start acting weird. "Act like a retired athlete" is weird to me. Since most people are not retired athletes pretending to be one would be pretty obvious. My restriction wasn't "being an athlete," it was trying to answer the investigators questions without ever mentioning "taking an action myself." (We were using the Creative Problem Solving set for this game, so the Investigator was given suggested questions like "how would you survive a sudden avalanche?" And all the robots for that scenario set have something that would make it hard to answer those sorts of questions. So my robot couldn't say "Well, I'd run for a nearby cave," so I had to say something like, "Well, I think a smart person might look for a cave or something.") The game just has a deck of roleplaying prompts (e.g. retired athlete, very old person, maker of false animals, etc) so you have something to talk about without having to talk about your own real life. Which can be a useful layer of abstraction for some of the darker scenario sets like "Processing Grief" and "Recognizing Moral Failings."
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Mar 20, 2020 22:06
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Fart Car '97 posted:That's a lot of deep reading into a game by the company that brought us Secret Hitler, where a bunch of people with no real evidence for anything argue with each other until everyone gets tired and makes a choice because they just want to move on OK but whether and why "victory" is satisfying or not (and whether the conditions -- about why you know what you know and how it matters -- are the game working as intended, or whether it's actually a flaw or design problem) is legit.
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Mar 20, 2020 22:07
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Yeah my point is it's very clearly a game flaw from a company known for making flawed games
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Mar 20, 2020 22:14
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