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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I mean, it's totally fair, it's just a more obvious 'reward of experience' ...poo poo, that's a really good description of how I like to teach games. Even if I'm obviously way more experienced, "helping close the skill gap a bit" by giving just a little "this path is a little harder", "generally winning scores are around here".
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Jan 24, 2021 04:55
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silvergoose posted:...poo poo, that's a really good description of how I like to teach games. Even if I'm obviously way more experienced, "helping close the skill gap a bit" by giving just a little "this path is a little harder", "generally winning scores are around here". Yeah. It's not fun to stomp on someone, or to be stomped on. I'm all for explaining the rules, and offering some ideas that aren't included in the rules that is also helpful to actually properly playing the game. I don't mean telling them what they should do, but what they should expect. It helps informs their decisions, otherwise they might just flounder if the game is complicated or a far cry from what they're used to.
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Jan 24, 2021 05:05
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Trip report: my daughter just spent a month with my wife and me, and several games, three of which were new, hit the table regularly: Pandemic Season One: I'm probably the last person in this thread to play it. Got through the whole year with 17 plays. We all loved it, winning December on the first try due to good luck and tight play, putting a welcome end to the tension ramping up throughout the whole year. I picked up season 2 but fatigue from the other two players and my daughter's approaching departure date kept it off the table. Looking forward to playing it eventually, especially as I've picked up from mentions the game is tighter than Season 1 (e.g., we opened box 8 instead of 8 on the Advent calendar due to not reading closely, missed the sticker for one of the boxes at first due to looking at and not behind the tab on the calendar, etc., and I've heard Season 2 is better about this stuff as well as providing some drastic changes to the base game). Parks (and Nightfall): Thanks to whomever recommended this to me a couple of months back. Played the base set for about a week before Nightfall appeared. Base game is great and flavorful -- plus we love the theme; we visit lots of National Parks -- but some no-brainers like Crater Lake were missing from the base set. Nightfall solved this problem and added some welcome complexity. A great addition to my collection. Slightly more complex than expected for a game sold in Target but still a gateway game. Pan Am: Lightweight, flavorful game. Only got three-four plays as we picked it up late in my daughter's visit. People have complained in reviews/comments about the randomness of the directive cards, but each card's benefit is a crapshoot compared to the concrete gains from placing your engineers on other spots. I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a quick (30 minute-ish), lightweight gateway-type game. Very easy to teach. Scratches the same sort of itch as Ticket to Ride, though of course the mechanics are different. I'd say I prefer it to Parks by a slim margin. And three old favorites made repeat appearances: 7 Wonders: I love this game heart and soul, but only with 4+ players. With 3, there's a need to focus on defensive play missing from larger groups. Still fun of course, but nail biting trying to weigh gaining points vs. denying opponents on each single card. Wingspan: my daughter had played but my wife hadn't. Easy game to teach, but of course the first game is stumbling around trying to figure out how to balance the four actions. Only two things I don't like about Wingspan: round four tends to devolve into everyone just laying eggs and unbalanced engine combos (e.g., in one game my wife had in her lay eggs/grasslands row both a 1 egg for 2 food crow and a bird whose activation that allowed you to activate another bird again; that game was a blowout). Still a favorite of mine. Morels: the favored casual 2 player game in the house. Whenever only two of us were in the mood for a game or available, this was the game. It's not my favorite game because so much depends on getting morels, but it's a good way to fill 20-30 minutes. Obviously anyone looking for deep or cutthroat games won't take much away from these impressions, but just thought I'd share our month o' games
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Jan 24, 2021 05:17
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Admiralty Flag posted:Pandemic Season One: I'm probably the last person in this thread to play it. Got through the whole year with 17 plays. We all loved it, winning December on the first try due to good luck and tight play, putting a welcome end to the tension ramping up throughout the whole year. Speaking of winning December on the first try, the one thing that soured Season One for my group was crushing December, and then finding out that not only was there a final score, but because we ended the game without bothering to destroy the last military outpost, which we easily could have by stalling one more turn, we had tanked ours.
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Jan 24, 2021 05:44
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rydiafan posted:Speaking of winning December on the first try, the one thing that soured Season One for my group was crushing December, and then finding out that not only was there a final score, but because we ended the game without bothering to destroy the last military outpost, which we easily could have by stalling one more turn, we had tanked ours. Edited to add (obviously) Pandemic Season 1 end of game spoilers: I was surprised by the scorecard too. IIRC we ended up with the middle tier of victory, but we could have been one tier higher if we hadn't opened box 8 by accident. On the other hand, we used at least two of those cards, so we might have lost a month or two and ended up with a lower score. I think knowing there was a final score accounting with points based on 1) winning months on the first try and 2) final board state {which accounts for success on final objectives} would have been nice to know without giving details to game the final score up.
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Jan 24, 2021 06:07
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Ravendas posted:Yeah. It's not fun to stomp on someone, or to be stomped on. I'm all for explaining the rules, and offering some ideas that aren't included in the rules that is also helpful to actually properly playing the game. Yeah, though I think once someone knows what all the buttons do as it where there is definitely a level of play where you can/should go absolutely ham. Once we've all played enough to know what the buttons do I'm not holding back and I don't expect you too either. My general MO with new players is to try and give people a set of flags to swim between with some advice and let them figure it out from there. E.g in 1830, I'll tell first time players in a 4 player game that C&A is worth more than 200, and probably not more than 280, then open by bidding 195 on it as my first action. Similarly when I set up the companies I'll put the one generally agreed as the best on the left, and the duds on the right and say something like, generally I wouldn't recommend starting these companies on the right as your first company but after that you're on your own. That leaves people with a real decision space still, but stops them from kneecapping themselves at the start of a 4 hour game. But if we're playing blue moon legends, I just point out that you need to judge when to commit your resources and going all in on every fight might not always be a winning strategy and then jump in because it takes like 15 minutes and we can deal it out again. Again a green player here I will play as best I can but I will try and handicap myself with a self imposed limitation, usually trying to play as soon as my turn comes up.
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Jan 24, 2021 07:50
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I mean, it's totally fair, it's just a more obvious 'reward of experience' I really like carc as a little game. I'm not sure the expansions add much. But we alway play it with the rulebook there so you can look and see how many Tile Xs there are in the game.
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Jan 24, 2021 10:21
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For Carc, why not just burn X tiles for an X player game to avoid perfect knowledge?
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Jan 24, 2021 13:47
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Deathlove posted:For Carc, why not just burn X tiles for an X player game to avoid perfect knowledge? Oh, great idea and would ensure X players get an N even number of tiles.
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Jan 24, 2021 14:31
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That doesn’t prevent the benefit of knowing to not place a tile where the feature can never be complete. It just creates more random possibilities of that happening to all players based on burned tiles and encourages more conservative playing (smaller low scoring features). Some of the best moments in Carc is when you’re building a big city and know the exact tile you need is still in the pile and hoping you draw it. A lot of our games come down to the person that gets that tile being able to swing the game one way or another. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jan 24, 2021 |
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Jan 24, 2021 14:39
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spiderbot posted:I'm looking to get a scenario/ story type game that I can learn with my partner and hopefully play with a few more friends once we're out of lockdown! I'd like something on a tactical/ skirmish scale with miniatures that are interesting to paint. Not Gloomhaven, as one of my friends already has that. At the moment I'm looking at either Conan or Mice and Mystics, is there anything else I should be looking at? Imperial Assault if you're one of the eight people on the planet left who aren't sick of star wars. Just either play it co-op with the app or understand that the role of the bad guy is to lose in an entertaining manner rather than game the system to crush the players.
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Jan 24, 2021 15:33
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:Imperial Assault if you're one of the eight people on the planet left who aren't sick of star wars. Just either play it co-op with the app or understand that the role of the bad guy is to lose in an entertaining manner rather than game the system to crush the players. Just don't underestimate how long it takes to play though, it's a really long game.
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Jan 24, 2021 15:39
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:Imperial Assault if you're one of the eight people on the planet left who aren't sick of star wars. Just either play it co-op with the app or understand that the role of the bad guy is to lose in an entertaining manner rather than game the system to crush the players. We're almost at the end of a campaign with a bad guy who's kind of ok about that, but there have still been a couple of missions where it feels close, but then he'll play some event card or whatever that fucks you, and you try and math it out afterwards, and it was literally impossible from the start with that happening, and you just think 'why did we even waste our time playing that out then'. Kind of frustrating. The game is otherwise really good though, and to be fair, they've clearly done it to try and make sure there's some back and forth, to retain tension, and just sometimes that slides a bit too far.
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Jan 24, 2021 18:55
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The player who knows the game/rules better is going to have an innate advantage. This is true in video games and sports as well. The issue is not knowing the game better, but the dude in question being a jackass and gloating about it.
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Jan 24, 2021 19:21
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Jedit posted:Taste. TErraforming mars haters be warned........ you will be shown no mercy..................
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Jan 24, 2021 22:11
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Played On Mars and Barrage back to back yesterday... man was it some delicious brain cramping fun. I've played OM about 6 times now and managed to screw up at least one rule every session... if people weren't so bloody intimidated by it, being able to play it back to back would let me finally lock in all the rules :P I do love it though. If you're going to play a game about terraforming Mars, this is the one that doesn't suck. Barrage is the Splotter game that the Splotter lads didn't make. The rules and play are relatively simple, but the actual decisions are tight as heck and it constantly wrinkles your brain to try and plan out the best moves. Eager to play it again.
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Jan 24, 2021 22:41
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I read that as a jest in good fun, not a sick burn, and I like terraforming mars (although I do understand the criticisms.)
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Jan 24, 2021 22:42
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Whoever reported jedits one good post is a coward
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Jan 24, 2021 22:50
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One of my gaming group buddies has a very low tolerance for mediocre games. Which critically-acclaimed game is least likely to make them ragequit, Terraforming Mars or Scythe?
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Jan 24, 2021 23:00
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Bottom Liner posted:Whoever reported jedits one good post is a coward For the record, I thought it was funny and did not report it.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:09
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Llyranor posted:One of my gaming group buddies has a very low tolerance for mediocre games. Which critically-acclaimed game is least likely to make them ragequit, Terraforming Mars or Scythe? buy you friend an account
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Jan 24, 2021 23:20
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I would play neither, but I think Scythe is marginally better.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:23
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Bottom Liner posted:Whoever reported jedits one good post is a coward
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Jan 24, 2021 23:32
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Scythe will probably be quicker. Maybe better overall.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:33
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It also looks prettier and if theyre never going to touch either game again, might as well pull out the one that cost big $$$
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Jan 24, 2021 23:33
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Llyranor posted:One of my gaming group buddies has a very low tolerance for mediocre games. Which critically-acclaimed game is least likely to make them ragequit, Terraforming Mars or Scythe? Scythe is a slightly better game I think. With TfM you have to play with drafting unless you're insane and for a first game that can be a bit hard when you're looking at hundreds of cards.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:35
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TfM doesnt have any real unintuitive mechanics like Scythe though, so that could be a consideration as well. Ill personally never pull out Scythe again because I hate it and I dont want to spend a half an hour reexplaining the movement rules to someone who just cant wrap their head around one-way river crossing.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:37
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I think TfM does a better job at pretending to be a good game than Scythe, which I was bored of halfway through my first game.
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Jan 24, 2021 23:38
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It's a real Hobsons choice though. You could go for the good TM and get Terra Mystica instead, it's critically acclaimed.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:35
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Control Volume posted:TfM doesnt have any real unintuitive mechanics like Scythe though, so that could be a consideration as well. Ill personally never pull out Scythe again because I hate it and I dont want to spend a half an hour reexplaining the movement rules to someone who just cant wrap their head around one-way river crossing. I think this hits the nail on the head. Terraforming Mars is easier to play and grasp during one's first game, and it is friendly to new players in other ways, as well:
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Jan 25, 2021 00:37
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The thread must accept that it's not that TfM in of itself is bad, but that all drafting games are bad.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:43
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Aramoro posted:
Just waiting on Terra Mystica 2nd Edition to get released!
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Jan 25, 2021 00:45
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I tried Ex Libris the other day and I wasn't overly taken with it. I didn't really like the combination of worker placement with turn order effects with no mechanism present to lessen the effect, the random draw of the action spaces, the random draw of some of the cards and relative lack of ability to affect other players apart from standard worker placement action denial.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:47
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Tekopo posted:The thread must accept that it's not that TfM in of itself is bad, but that all drafting games are bad. Thats not true, just look at Magic the gatherrrrhmmmmm. huh.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:48
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Infinitum posted:Just waiting on Terra Mystica 2nd Edition to get released! But Gaia Project exists.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:52
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Tekopo posted:The thread must accept that it's not that TfM in of itself is bad, but that all drafting games are bad. I actually completely agree with this, and nominate Seasons for the main proof.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:57
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Memnaelar posted:But Gaia Project exists. Yeaaaaaah but naaaaaaahhh
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Jan 25, 2021 01:16
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silvergoose posted:I actually completely agree with this, and nominate Seasons for the main proof. If you are trying to prove all drafting games are bad, it would be quicker if you don't start from the worst one.
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Jan 25, 2021 01:18
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We also need to make a distinction between pure drafting games and games that have drafting because the designer was too lazy to balance properly.
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Jan 25, 2021 01:22
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Deathlove posted:For Carc, why not just burn X tiles for an X player game to avoid perfect knowledge? I actually do that, since I knew the count of tiles and would burn the remainder to make sure everyone had an equal number of turns.
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Jan 25, 2021 01:57
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