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Spent some time with the PC version of Gloomhaven (having played a few hundred hours of real life Gloomhaven). Most of the game feels correct, but you really feel the pain from a lack of a quick Undo feature. You can undo a whole round (even when that's effectively cheating, because you've seen new information) but it takes forever and means you have to re-do everything for the round. It's very easy to misclick something (...or forget to activate an element during a skill resolution, which probably should default to "on" instead of "off"), especially when you're getting used to the interface - and it's a tightly balanced enough game that missing a few clicks is often fatal. From a programming perspective, this ("instant undo") is the kind of feature that's easy to do if you make it a priority early: all you have to do is make sure your game state is kept in a unified model object that you can serialize/deserialize quickly. This has a ton of other knock-on benefits when it comes to maintenance, regression testing, and when you go to write AI, and all it takes is a little discipline. However, if you let your game state trickle out into 1000 view/controller objects, which I suspect they've done here, it can be very hard to get that back. Other problems are just that the game-as-written isn't perfectly suited to the medium. Playing by yourself, playing two low-level characters... it feels very grindy, and progression feels way too slow. I would have been very tempted to just jack up numbers for gold and experience gain so that players can try out more characters and see things progress faster. It also feels bizarre that the missions it gives don't form a little campaign of some kind (even if it was just a short "starter" campaign, which led into endless procedurally-generated fights or something). The visual style of the game is fine I guess, but I wish they had leaned a little more towards "clarity of information", especially in the environments. It's easy to get hamstrung by surprises about which tiles count as obstacles - or even to miss an enemy hiding behind something. The most common/important UI's in the game all need work. Like, all you see when picking an action are card names. Having some icons to show common stuff (eg. Move 3) from the "pick a card view" would help a lot. Other places are just broken - like, the game has lots of tool-tip windows, and they weren't all coded the same. Some don't follow window bounds, so they're half off the screen. Again, this points towards mistakes made early in the design process - the kind of mistakes you make as a developer when you're not used to making this kind of information-dense game. It feels weird/broken that you can't scroll the battlefield by dragging it with the mouse. For all my complaining, it's not terrible. Gloomhaven is a really solid base game. But I'm not sure this implementation will ever be as good as it could have been (without keeping the assets and gutting the code, anyway).
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Dec 26, 2020 21:20
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Codeacious posted:Played Pax Pamir 2E last night with my roommates. Fourth person ducked out so it was the three of us. I knew going in that it was a different thinking space than most games, but whoa, that game is weird in how you have to manage things. Two of us got into a murder war over cards and only realized after the fact that card murder isn't all that great or efficient, and we misplayed at least three different rules since nobody ruled regions for most of the game because of that. You may know already, but just in case since you mentioned rule errors: you should have 3 cards + the number of purple stars as your tableau. So a 1 star card acts as you mentioned, but a two star expands your max by two, supporting itself and one additional card, giving you a tableau of one political card and four among the other suits. Same as blue stars adding to hand size, yellow stars adding tax protection. And yeah, the game is very very tight and I love it. There are multiple ways to get where you want, and killing your own cards to make people lose spies which makes them lose on the tribes track is so great. The game is a great story generator too, like "ah this guy on my court is in the pocket of my enemies guess I'll bump him off" as a way that killing your own cards can make actual sense. Playing with my wife and brother in law me and him where in a war over control of russian influence. She couldn't compete with england so she jumped ship, took third, and quietly amassed economic and spy cards. So after the two warlords ran themselves empty jockeying for position, she destroyed us for the win in the following round by simply holding every coin in the game and using her spy cards to assassinate or control the few scraps we could get hold of. We could never get any cards to change out of blue so she was getting tons of actions to our two. Soft power won that one in the end once we were out of resources, like out of a real world political example. threelemmings fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 21:41
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My sister got One Night Werewolf for Christmas. What are good roles for 5 players, especially if villagers win too often?
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Dec 26, 2020 23:42
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StashAugustine posted:My sister got One Night Werewolf for Christmas. What are good roles for 5 players, especially if villagers win too often? Werewolf Werewolf Minion Tanner Seer Troublemaker Drunk Robber With this mix the Village is very likely to be in the minority, but there's about a 40% chance of a Lone Wolf and a good chance that the Wolves have to rely on the Village to figure out who their team actually is. If you play this set then don't use the optional rule where a Lone Wolf gets to view a card in the centre. If it's too hard for the Village, swap Minion for Villager.
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Dec 27, 2020 02:13
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Christmas was pretty good this year, having picked up the Gaia Project, Barenpark expansion, Antike, and Hansa Teutonica big box. Here's to 2021
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Dec 27, 2020 02:23
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Jedit posted:Werewolf Doesn't this raise the problem that a "revealed" minion+werewolf team can win by just picking someone
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Dec 27, 2020 02:45
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Yeah you never want the werewolves to outnumber the villagers. I would play with no seer because at 5p that's too strong for ONUW. Other than that, Tanner is a good role for low player counts because it introduces a third outcome that's hard for the villagers to play around if done well.
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Dec 27, 2020 02:53
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Horrified seems to be the go-to family-weight cooperative game these days, yeah? The new Back to the Future game seems fun and accessible too, but dunno about replay vs Horrified, considering Horrified’s variable monsters. Any thoughts on comparing these two? Anything other light co-op games besides the Forbidden series that will stand up to (at least) Horrified?
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Dec 27, 2020 05:14
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Major Isoor posted:Excellent, thanks guys! Looks good - I'll check if it's in stock at the GW near me, then give it a look. Well after posting the above, I've just been to GW and picked up Fort. Also had enough left over for Kingdomino Duel, since I remembered someone recommending it in the past. Gonna get boardgamin' later today 
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Dec 27, 2020 05:28
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Street Horrrsing posted:Hansa Teutonica big box. Here's to 2021 Lemme know if this turns out any good. I've been tossing up between picking up the Hansa Big Box or Concordia
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Dec 27, 2020 06:23
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Hansa Teutonica is a classic and one of the best mid weight euros, but Concordia is too. Both feature quick playing simplicity and blocking based interaction and a variety of maps to change things up (mostly for player count in Concordia's case). Can't go wrong with either but HT is a bit more unique though Conc's card play and scoring is pretty unique as well. You can't go wrong with either.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:28
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I feel like I landed an enormous haul, having received A Feast for Odin, Paladins of the West Kingdom, LotR:JiMe and Jagged Earth. I'm admittedly a lucky guy. Now I just need a few more weeks worth of vacation time to learn and get familiar with them.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:59
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StashAugustine posted:Doesn't this raise the problem that a "revealed" minion+werewolf team can win by just picking someone Only if all three of them come out, and even then there's a chance that they lose to the Tanner. That set was a response to a statement that the Village had it easy, though, it can stand to be toned down.
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Dec 27, 2020 10:24
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Who needs inserts when you have SANDWICH BAGS! Also pictured: A regular sized screwdriver to highlight how gigantic the TI box is There's an hour and a half of my life spent just popping cardboard out and bagging them  Bottom Liner posted:Hansa Teutonica is a classic and one of the best mid weight euros, but Concordia is too. Both feature quick playing simplicity and blocking based interaction and a variety of maps to change things up (mostly for player count in Concordia's case). Can't go wrong with either but HT is a bit more unique though Conc's card play and scoring is pretty unique as well. You can't go wrong with either. Yeah I feel like both games occupy a similar space in my mind. I'm leaning more towards Hansa, as it's not a game I feel anybody in my gaming group has seen before.
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Dec 27, 2020 13:35
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Minus1Minus1 posted:Horrified seems to be the go-to family-weight cooperative game these days, yeah? The new Back to the Future game seems fun and accessible too, but dunno about replay vs Horrified, considering Horrified’s variable monsters. Any thoughts on comparing these two? Anything other light co-op games besides the Forbidden series that will stand up to (at least) Horrified? I quite like Quirky Circuits too
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Dec 27, 2020 14:17
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I like Concordia so much more than HT. HT felt like the Euro version of whack the leader. Concordia is a much cleaner design
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Dec 27, 2020 18:25
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nordichammer posted:I like Fixed!😀
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Dec 27, 2020 18:41
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Sometimes you should just start afresh.
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Dec 27, 2020 18:48
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Anyone have experience with the Root game on Steam? Does it teach the game well?
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Dec 27, 2020 19:33
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Sorta. The tutorial is very good but in game everything is hidden except the map so to see what a faction is doing (like the Eyrie's decree) you have to click their icon and then you get their player board up so you can play accordingly. You kind of have to know the game to know what to look for at that point but overall it makes it easy to play. The fully zoomed out view with icons instead of 3D models for the board pieces is much clearer too. The game will not help you learn to play the tabletop version very well though. Since so much of the ruleset is automated you won't understand a lot of things like WA sympathy placement rules unless you still read the rulebook.
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Dec 27, 2020 19:50
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The most complicated game our group plays is probably Kemet, I think the physical version of Root is probably too complex but if it does a good job automating rules do you think that would help ease the learning curve?
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Dec 27, 2020 20:02
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i'll probably get shot for this but i honestly think the included two round step-by-step guide does an excellent job onboarding people. you still need someone to read the rules beforehand but i've used it twice with two different groups and the game that follows is usually smooth sailing.
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Dec 27, 2020 20:15
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90% of the rules needed are on each person's playerboard they just have to actually read every word and follow the step by step turn order since that's so different for each faction. The main things you have to learn/teach your group are universal rules for movement, combat, and ruling clearings.
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Dec 27, 2020 20:19
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Infinitum posted:Who needs inserts when you have SANDWICH BAGS! I vote on a pro-baggie platform, but after playing The Colonists from them, I realized that there is a maximum acceptable number of bags.
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Dec 27, 2020 20:44
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After investing in inserts and plastic cases I would never go back to bags. It's a much bigger pain in the rear end to take something out of a bag and then put it back in. Inserts are definitely the best, but obviously cost $$$ or even don't exist for some older games. Plastic cases still go a long way towards set up/tear down time & table space, as they are confined organized units of space that can just be instantly placed on the table and popped open, ready to go.
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Dec 27, 2020 21:10
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Megasabin posted:After investing in inserts and plastic cases I would never go back to bags. It's a much bigger pain in the rear end to take something out of a bag and then put it back in. Inserts are definitely the best, but obviously cost $$$ or even don't exist for some older games. Plastic cases still go a long way towards set up/tear down time & table space, as they are confined organized units of space that can just be instantly placed on the table and popped open, ready to go. Yeah, plano boxes (or the equivalent) are life savers; there are certain games that I would never play if I had to use baggies.
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Dec 27, 2020 21:35
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Bags are great for "Here are all the cards and pieces you will need to play, since you wanted to be blue" though.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:01
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Sandwich bags, at least here in the US, break way too easily to be used for boardgame pieces. Thus I have to buy them and then the cost between a Folded Spaces insert (they are cheap for inserts) and bags becomes less.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:42
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Infinitum posted:Who needs inserts when you have SANDWICH BAGS! You know, I didn't actually mind the factory insert for TI4. I mean, now there's an expansion I'll start looking into third party ones so I can one box everything, but pre-expansion, didn't feel the need.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:47
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Mayveena posted:Sandwich bags, at least here in the US, break way too easily to be used for boardgame pieces. Thus I have to buy them and then the cost between a Folded Spaces insert (they are cheap for inserts) and bags becomes less. instead of sandwich bags I use bags like these: https://www.amazon.com/1000-Clear-R...09105615&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/1000-Count-R...09105675&sr=8-5 $35 for 1000 of each means I can cover a few hundred games
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Dec 27, 2020 22:48
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tofes posted:The most complicated game our group plays is probably Kemet, I think the physical version of Root is probably too complex but if it does a good job automating rules do you think that would help ease the learning curve? I'd suggest watching this video first. It's a tutorial for the physical game, and though not quite as concise as Rodney or Paul's vids, it is excellent at conveying the necessary thematic and gameplay information in a conversational and occasionally jokey tone. Then, the stuff in the video game version should hopefully make enough sense for you to kick it around a little easier. (Note: I say this as a person who learned on the physical game and Tabletop Simulator, and was well versed by the time the app came around.)
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Dec 27, 2020 22:49
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Mayveena posted:Sandwich bags, at least here in the US, break way too easily to be used for boardgame pieces. Thus I have to buy them and then the cost between a Folded Spaces insert (they are cheap for inserts) and bags becomes less. I save every little baggie that I get so I've never run out of decent bags for board games.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:51
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Mayveena posted:Sandwich bags, at least here in the US, break way too easily to be used for boardgame pieces. Thus I have to buy them and then the cost between a Folded Spaces insert (they are cheap for inserts) and bags becomes less. I discovered this by accident, but breast milk bags are really great. I use them for xwing token storage.  They are extremely thick. They are double-zipped. The bottom is gusseted, so they can stand upright or lay flat. The opening is wide and they're easy to dump chits into or out of. Bought in bulk at Target, they're about 15 cents each. They're also wide enough to hold standard cards.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:56
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I use the freezer bags with a zip top that also have a flat bottom. Cheap and perfect sizes to choose from for games. I also use them in the Sous vide for cooking and they hold up to 165 degrees for 24+ hours so no worries about durability.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:00
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i just rubber band all my components. yes even the cubes.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:25
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Countblanc posted:i just rubber band all my components. yes even the cubes.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:28
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canyoneer posted:I discovered this by accident, but breast milk bags are really great. I use them for xwing token storage. As if you didn't already feel like a tit playing X-Wing.
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Dec 28, 2020 01:20
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Magnetic North posted:I'd suggest watching this video first. It's a tutorial for the physical game, and though not quite as concise as Rodney or Paul's vids, it is excellent at conveying the necessary thematic and gameplay information in a conversational and occasionally jokey tone. Then, the stuff in the video game version should hopefully make enough sense for you to kick it around a little easier. (Note: I say this as a person who learned on the physical game and Tabletop Simulator, and was well versed by the time the app came around.) Thanks, I'll check it out.
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Dec 28, 2020 02:58
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Slimy Hog posted:I save every little baggie that I get so I've never run out of decent bags for board games. This. We have collected a Volleyball sized sack full of sacks.
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Dec 28, 2020 04:46
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homullus posted:I vote on a pro-baggie platform, but after playing The Colonists from them, I realized that there is a maximum acceptable number of bags. Is 31 too many bags? Because that's how many I used for TI  The End posted:You know, I didn't actually mind the factory insert for TI4. I mean, now there's an expansion I'll start looking into third party ones so I can one box everything, but pre-expansion, didn't feel the need. Yeah if/when I pick up Prophecy I'll probably invest in some inserts. This was a $2 solution to get it ready for game day lol
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Dec 28, 2020 05:10
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