|
Mayveena posted:My son gave his dad and me Too Many Bones to help with boredom Very jealous of this post.
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 14:59
|
|
Should be here Saturday, any tips for our first game?
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 14:13 |
|
|
Mayveena posted:My son gave his dad and me Too Many Bones to help with boredom drat that's one hell of a gift. Be ready to whip out the rulebook, a lot. Investing in stats is usually a good choice. You might end up with more stats than special abilities in shorter scenarios and that's fine.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 15:26
|
|
|
Eraflure posted:drat that's one hell of a gift. Be ready to whip out the rulebook, a lot. Investing in stats is usually a good choice. You might end up with more stats than special abilities in shorter scenarios and that's fine. Thanks I'll also read and re-read the rulebook before we play. Yes my son is absolutely awesome. So happy he's my son cuz otherwise I'd not know such a wonderful man.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 15:42
|
|
|
Preorders for the latest Root expansion and some other miscellaneous stuff just went up. Just paid $110 for something that will never make it to the table 
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 15:42
|
|
|
On that note, is the Clockwork expansion for Root worth a buy if I thought Mechanical Marquise was kinda lackluster?
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 15:59
|
|
|
uncle blog posted:What are some good solo-able games that are great for isolation? Mage Knight Leaving Earth grassy gnoll posted:On that note, is the Clockwork expansion for Root worth a buy if I thought Mechanical Marquise was kinda lackluster?
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 16:12
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:On that note, is the Clockwork expansion for Root worth a buy if I thought Mechanical Marquise was kinda lackluster? AFAIK, it's just an officially released version of the Better Bots you can download from BGG. I've tried a few of those and they're pretty good, although they weren't designed to counter the Underworld factions. The new Marquise is much more like a human player than the original was.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 16:17
|
|
|
We played one game against the Mechanical Marquise and went "meh" though we had the poor fortune of getting a whole bunch of multi fox cards in the first three turns (2, 2, 3, or something?)
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2020 16:20
|
|
|
Has anyone played the latest updated Pandemic app for iOS? I’ve never seen a game upgrade get botched quite so badly (the reviews in the store are now an endless string of single star rants). They more or less ruined it. And as a bonus, they revoked any expanded content you may have previously purchased. How does something like this even happen?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 18:17
|
|
|
What did they do?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 18:22
|
|
|
Jewmanji posted:And as a bonus, they revoked any expanded content you may have previously purchased. this seems reportable to apple at the least???
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 18:24
|
|
|
Jewmanji posted:Has anyone played the latest updated Pandemic app for iOS? I’ve never seen a game upgrade get botched quite so badly (the reviews in the store are now an endless string of single star rants). They more or less ruined it. And as a bonus, they revoked any expanded content you may have previously purchased. How does something like this even happen? Ascension was going to do this too, but they ended up walking back the announcement after everyone told them off. I think they even stuck with the same company instead of switching to one that would ruin it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 18:33
|
|
|
On the recommendation of SO Very Wrong About Games I bought Street Masters and have been thoroughly impressed with the system. It feels like a better version of Sentinels of the Multiverse to me. I love the spatial element that SotM lacks and play some beat’em’up OSTs during play. It’s a treat, try it if you get the chance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 19:48
|
|
|
Mr. Squishy posted:What did they do? They added a bunch of bells and whistles to the interface that actually just decreases the readability of the board state. Now your character performs some inane animation in the bottom left of the screen to make things feel more “dynamic”, for example. Otherwise, there’s obvious spelling errors, they seem to have implemented some of the event cards incorrectly (according to reviews), and the touch targets just straight up don’t work. It’s pretty atrocious.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 20:44
|
|
|
Are there differences between the first and second editions of Churchill? Do any changes need to be made to the first edition components, or are they rule changes/clarifications only? And mostly out of curiosity, what's the thread's opinion on Tom Vassel/The Dice Tower? I can glean that it's negative; is that purely due to his/their having different taste than the thread in general? I've seen some of his reviews, and they often seem haphazard in term of the gameplay explanation and perfunctory in terms of the actual review. I'm not interested in most of the top 10 lists because they just gloss over games they like without much depth of explanation. Who are they popular with?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 22:54
|
|
|
Generally Tom is not seen in a positive light for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Personally I don't enjoy watching his reviews because the meat of them is a game explanation and then a rather limited '"it's fun/it's not fun" ender, with very little analysis of the mechanisms involved or a deep look into what kind of reaction the game is meant to elicit, which is something that Dan Thurot, So Very Wrong About Games and even Shut Up & Sit Down manage to do so well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
I find the component dump in every video viscerally upsetting.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 23:20
|
|
|
mellifluous posted:And mostly out of curiosity, what's the thread's opinion on Tom Vassel/The Dice Tower? I can glean that it's negative; is that purely due to his/their having different taste than the thread in general? I've seen some of his reviews, and they often seem haphazard in term of the gameplay explanation and perfunctory in terms of the actual review. I'm not interested in most of the top 10 lists because they just gloss over games they like without much depth of explanation. Who are they popular with? There's a semi-famous (if you're into the industry) story about Riot Games hiring both Tom Vassel and Quinns to critique a pre-release version of their game Mechs and Minions. Vassel told them "it's fun" and bugged out but Quinns sat down and hashed out all of the poo poo that didn't work with it, all of the stuff that was standing in their way of making it great and they went back to the drawing board for a year or so to make it better.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 23:24
|
|
|
Poopy Palpy posted:I find the component dump in every video viscerally upsetting. Yes! I forgot to mention this; maybe I unconsciously repressed it. It just makes me wonder which poor intern/peon has to clean it up. It's not even filmed in a way that's interesting or useful. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:There's a semi-famous (if you're into the industry) story about Riot Games hiring both Tom Vassel and Quinns to critique a pre-release version of their game Mechs and Minions. Vassel told them "it's fun" and bugged out but Quinns sat down and hashed out all of the poo poo that didn't work with it, all of the stuff that was standing in their way of making it great and they went back to the drawing board for a year or so to make it better. Haha, amazing. Dice Tower judgment: Two thumbs up! Thanks, Tom! If that's representative of his level of critique, why is he such a big name? Did he just get kinda lucky and build an audience early? (I'm probably assuming this thread is more representative of the hobby than it actually is.) I assume Quinns is from SUSD (unless I'm horribly unaware of another board game-reviewing Quinns). I find their reviews better, but they seem biased toward games that offer, I don't really know what to call it, an interesting/engrossing atmosphere/gameplay experience? Not that that's unimportant, but it can seem sometimes to outweigh the mechanics, which I think are more relevant. I take their reviews with a grain of salt because I'm less drawn in by theme/experience if that makes sense. Any other entertaining industry anecdotes? I have to assume this hobby attracts some interesting characters.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2020 23:54
|
|
|
Tom Vasel is there because he has prime mover advantage, yes. He started taking board games seriously and producing content in 2005 and it really took off the year after.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:00
|
|
|
Another question on the board-games-by-internet question. My group includes at least one or two people who might not be able to run tabletop sim (chromebooks) so we're looking around for other options. I've nosed around both Tabletopia and Boardgamearena, and aside from obvious stuff like game selection the differences seem to be: Tabletopia: - Basically a web based tabletop simulator. No AI. Physics-y. - Premium sub for $10 / month lets you invite non-premium people to a game. BGA: - Web app does the thinking for you, heavily / completely scripted. - Premium sub for $4 / month lets you invite non-premium people to a game. We're leaning towards messing around with BGA as the best option, but do people here have preferences on one or the other? Will Tabletopia perform okay on a chromebook? Seems to me on the face of it that if everyone could run TTS we should just do that, but the scripting from BGA is an actual value add and it looks like it'll run on a toaster. Also I nosed back a couple pages and saw scattered discussions on this sort of thing, but here's a bunch of links in one place for anyone else in the same boat: https://mattle.online/ - Has a few different rip-offs -- Azul, Splendor, 7 wonders duel, spice road https://dominion.games/ - Dominion, natch https://ondras.github.io/rri/ - railroad ink https://www.horsepaste.com/ - codenames https://colonist.io/ - Catan https://whoawhoa.github.io/decrypto/ - decrypto and of course vassal or tts or pointing a webcam down at your actual board. The House Party app on ios / android has apples to apples and some other basic stuff.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:00
|
|
|
mellifluous posted:Haha, amazing. Dice Tower judgment: Two thumbs up! Thanks, Tom! If that's representative of his level of critique, why is he such a big name? Did he just get kinda lucky and build an audience early? Yes. Got in on video reviews early and was committed to pumping out content - often, and about everything that came out. And on the internet regularity usually trumps quality. You could argue that in ye olde goode days when he started he wasn't really below the par in any way (there wasn't much in terms of meaningful competition, let alone anyone treating boardgame reviews professionally or even semi-professionally). It's just that he never really learned or improved anything, rather committing to churning out All The Content, while the tabletop reviews, and tabletop industry in general, got their poo poo together in the meantime.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:08
|
|
|
There's always BrettspielWelt. http://brettspielwelt.de/?nation=en Some German is helpful but has a lot of old euros, particularly puerto rico and funkenschlag (Power Grid) Sloth Ninja https://www.slothninja.com/ Has Tammany Hall, Indonesia (splotter) and others. BoardGame Core http://play.boardgamecore.net/ Has FCM (no expansion), antiquity, TGZ, and wsdv.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:44
|
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Tom Vasel is there because he has prime mover advantage, yes. He started taking board games seriously and producing content in 2005 and it really took off the year after. Tom is actually a pretty smart guy and I remember many, many years ago lamenting that he was no longer producing written content for BGG and was instead moving into Youtube, which, I thought, was dumb because he couldn't be anywhere near as incisive with his analysis there and nobody would ever really watch streaming boardgame video. Our respective levels of imagination and market analysis are why I'm a lawyer and he's a successful boardgame reviewing entrepreneur.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:49
|
|
|
Aside from the lack of content that he puts in his reviews, Tom Vasel also has, uh, interesting personal views. I wish I never knew what a quiverful was
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 00:50
|
|
|
Yea Tom’s a bit of a religious weirdo but he actually tries a good deal not to inject it into his videos or judge games that have themes that don’t fit with his beliefs. He might mention that it’s too dark for him or something but that’s generally all he’ll do. Sam loved inserting his bullshit into everything though. Tom’s a strange dude but I’ve never had an encounter with him or witnessed one where he wasn’t an exceptionally nice person, sometimes much more so than he honestly should have been (at GenCon).
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 02:42
|
|
|
Out of the blue Tom friended me on Facebook. Being that I'm atheist and he probably doesn't agree with my political views, I was quite surprised. John Clair of Mystic Vale friended me as well and I'm not sure that I'm a good fit for him politically either, but I don't know.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 03:13
|
|
|
I don't seek out Tom Vasel, but on the odd case I watch his stuff he seems ok. I think a definite positive point is that he's big enough to say outright that he doesn't like a game, which a lot of smaller outfits try to avoid.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 03:26
|
|
|
Tom Vasel gets a lot of hate, but I think it's mostly unearned. Sure he's not going to be the reviewer for everyone, but he's a pretty nice guy and he gives an honest opinion. But he gave a Seal of Excellence to the last game I worked on that he reviewed, so I may be biased now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 03:29
|
|
|
One useful thing about Tom is that he plays a lot of different kinds of games with a lot of different people. My friend group skews more towards lighter fare, so I can usually get a feel for whether my friends might be into a game by skipping directly past the rules explanations on one of Tom's reviews and just listening to like the first two sentences he has to say about. If he does a lot of whiny "hmmmm" noises and tilts his head from side to side a few times then that usually tells me what I need to know about a game in less time than someone wordier and more articulate. I just want to know if I can slap it down in front of my goofy friends or not. I get the feeling Tom values the table experience of a game as much as he does, if not more so, than the mechanics of a particular game. I'm into that.
Amorphous Abode fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 10, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 03:33
|
|
|
Yearly reminder that Tom Vasel is a homophobic piece of poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 04:14
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Yearly reminder that Tom Vasel is a homophobic piece of poo poo. Is there a source for this or examples?
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 04:15
|
|
|
He used a slur at a table here in Orlando. Another player called him out on it, he refused to apologize and left the game instead. A fellow goon was either the one that called him out or was a witness. I know the guy he said it to and believe him.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 04:29
|
|
|
which is hardly surprising considering he is or was a quiverful weirdo
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 04:35
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:He used a slur at a table here in Orlando. Another player called him out on it, he refused to apologize and left the game instead. A fellow goon was either the one that called him out or was a witness. I know the guy he said it to and believe him. I have also heard this from sources I trust.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 06:19
|
|
|
Dice Tower as a brand is drat successful. It’s hard to avoid the content because the amount of coverage is insane. They are the McDonalds of hobby gaming. If you are interested in a game, TDT likely has you covered. As far as review quality, Zee should be given a nod as having a better critical eye than the rest of the crew. I pulled a dick move at Gencon and gushed about how much I appreciated Zee’s content while Tom just stood there and I never engaged him.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 11:53
|
|
|
Vasel is the embodiment of first mover advantage. Easy to be a nice guy to everyone when you lucked in to making a living out of your hobby.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 12:18
|
|
|
mellifluous posted:Yes! I forgot to mention this; maybe I unconsciously repressed it. It just makes me wonder which poor intern/peon has to clean it up.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 13:16
|
|
|
Just listened to GutterOwl chat with spacebiff about Meltwater on spacebiff's podcast, absolutely awesome stuff, go listen everyone.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 16:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 14:13 |
|
|
djfooboo posted:As far as review quality, Zee should be given a nod as having a better critical eye than the rest of the crew. I pulled a dick move at Gencon and gushed about how much I appreciated Zee’s content while Tom just stood there and I never engaged him. From the reviews and lists I have seen, my tastes seem to line up with Zee's the most, and he also seems the most thoughtful and quick-witted. One of the top 10 lists I did like was this one with Rodney Smith from Watch it Played!, whose rules explanations are great.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2020 16:54
|
|