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taser rates posted:You basically answered yourself there, unfortunately. TTR PA is pretty good, but the shares are really just a majority scoring thing, and I'm not sure if it's any good at 2p. Stephenson's Rocket is another cube rails-esque game that is great at 2p, if extremely different than the higher player counts, but the shares there are a bit more fluid than just scoring. Oh yeah, Rocket definitely looks like a good suggestion though just from my quick googling it's a little pricey - but I'll throw that on the wishlist and keep an eye out for sales! FulsomFrank posted:I know it seems like you're trying to get away from the more complicated 18xx games BUT... you could always take a crack at learning something like 1889 via 18xx.games? The rules overhead is honestly so so low that once you get over the initial hurdle you don't have to think twice about it and while it isn't primo at 2, it's quite playable and can lead to some amusing zero-sum situations. The reprint will be coming soonish too so you can see if you want to back it but considering how incredible his most recent project is, it's an insta-back from me. I may just have to take the plunge into the 18xx.games thing at some point - I know that it's something I'd enjoy at least even if I couldn't get my partner into it. I googled the rules for 1889 and you're right it doesn't seem too bad; a manageable sixteen pages!
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May 10, 2021 21:35
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18CZ with the Bohemia variant is two person, as is the upcoming (and on 18xx.games) 1860.
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May 10, 2021 23:48
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Mayveena, I've been trying to get a game of the original Civ on the table for a bit and am aiming for later this month or early June. I know you've got tons of experience about this stuff so I wanted to ask you about these changes as put by a guy on BGG who sounds like a veteran too:quote:1) The player who is forced to take a red-backed Calamity card receives a card of the same number, if any remain in the stack. Of these it's number 3 that I think is the most interesting because based on my reading the trading system seemed overly complicated compared to what Adv Civ did with it. What are your thoughts? EDIT: reading further in the thread you actually chime in! Hah, sorry. But curious if your thoughts have changed about these. I would personally not use the first two. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 19:04 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 18:53
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Yeah I don't play regular Civ so I wouldn't be able to advise. We haven't played it since before my kid was born and that was 30 years ago  . Naturally I prefer the Advanced Civ rules but that's up to you.
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May 12, 2021 20:19
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I’ve gone in the rabbit hole of poker chips recently. My board game collection is complete so I’d just like to round it out with 1-2 sets, a mid tier and high tier one. I figure spending $5-700 on some good chips that I’ll use for 30-40 years is worthwhile. Heck, these days that’s only as much as 2 kickstarters! I even have a poker chip forum tab open next to BGG now. For anyone who has CPCs and Paulsons, could you compare the two? I’ve watched a few videos and CPC seems to be more tactile. After getting several samples, I’m getting dunes for my mid tier chips. I could do a Clearclaw chip slip video, but in short the Apache milanos and majestic are too slippery without a good mood feel while the train/bank chips are very grippy but also lacking in the mold feel. Dune has both, but less friction coefficient than banks. So I highly value feel and grip. I warmed up to the dune labels even though they still look gaudy. But a different kind of gaudy to the iron clays that try to look too ornate.
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May 14, 2021 14:28
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Chill la Chill posted:I’ve gone in the rabbit hole of poker chips recently. My board game collection is complete so I’d just like to round it out with 1-2 sets, a mid tier and high tier one. I figure spending $5-700 on some good chips that I’ll use for 30-40 years is worthwhile. Heck, these days that’s only as much as 2 kickstarters! I even have a poker chip forum tab open next to BGG now. Yeah I have a friend who's done this, and I think it works well. So good idea, I think! Oughta look cool and be handy to have. That being said though, "$5-700"?! I think you might be giving yourself too narrow a price bracket there, Chill! You should consider broadening it to $1-1000, just to make sure you're not unintentionally excluding any potential options!  (I'm super helpful I know, haha)
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May 14, 2021 15:28
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Anyone know why Sleeping Gods is out of stock from board game sites but has been available on Amazon for weeks? I preordered it from GameKastle months ago and it's still listed as a preorder, though Amazon has been in stock and shipping for quite a while.
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May 14, 2021 16:26
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Today, I got the worst clue I have ever received in Codenames. BEHOLD: She gave us CAT - 0 because she wanted us to get the enemy of cat, since Mouse was on the board. But all that made us do was think "Okay, nothing related to cats. There's Mouse over there! Must be the black card, let's avoid it forever!"
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May 14, 2021 16:33
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Artelier posted:Today, I got the worst clue I have ever received in Codenames. BEHOLD: Probably has never read the rules then.
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May 14, 2021 16:46
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The newest frosthaven email is really interesting and worth reading TL;DR he's entirely reworking Frosthaven and his setting to get away from the discourse of "race," which I think is really interesting and worthwhile.
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May 14, 2021 17:50
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Yeah, I love that he says "hey if you don't read this whole thing, at least read the end before you comment". And then at the end he basically says "Don't be an rear end in a top hat. You can have your money back if you're unhappy with this."
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May 14, 2021 18:08
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CommonShore posted:The newest frosthaven email is really interesting and worth reading armorer posted:Yeah, I love that he says "hey if you don't read this whole thing, at least read the end before you comment". And then at the end he basically says "Don't be an rear end in a top hat. You can have your money back if you're unhappy with this." This was a very good read and I am even more excited for the changes than I am to read the already-growing gnashing of teeth in the comments. it won't happen, but some time after FH's release I'd like to read a detailed list of the narrative changes that result from this re-imagining. it could be insightful and instructive.
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May 14, 2021 18:31
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Is this related to the really awkward bits in JotL where Vermlings are a menace, a villainous race "barely capable of a language of crude scratches," a sapient species where wholesale slaughter of them for daring to nest is okie dokie, and where one of the events reveals them to be clever enough to engage in insurance fraud (which means someone will give life insurance to Vermlings). Cuz yeah that has made multiple groups go "ummm."
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May 14, 2021 18:57
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Yes, pretty obviously.
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May 14, 2021 19:11
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PJOmega posted:Is this related to the really awkward bits in JotL where Vermlings are a menace, a villainous race "barely capable of a language of crude scratches," a sapient species where wholesale slaughter of them for daring to nest is okie dokie, and where one of the events reveals them to be clever enough to engage in insurance fraud (which means someone will give life insurance to Vermlings). Like, when a city event gives you +rep for lynching a vermling. And both Mindthief retirement adds are... uh... Something. He also rightly called out Scenario 3 as being kinda icky! What's more relevant here - there was always a possible subtext with FH about, uh, colonizing the north and subduing the natives. Most board games ('cept spirit island!) kind of ignore or tacitly approve of colonialism, and he wants FH to be better than that. Now - That's not really the narrative of FH even now - but it could be even less that narrative, if that makes sense.
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May 14, 2021 22:35
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FH commenters sure are having a normal one right now.
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May 15, 2021 00:01
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Chill la Chill posted:I’ve gone in the rabbit hole of poker chips recently. My board game collection is complete so I’d just like to round it out with 1-2 sets, a mid tier and high tier one. I figure spending $5-700 on some good chips that I’ll use for 30-40 years is worthwhile. Heck, these days that’s only as much as 2 kickstarters! I even have a poker chip forum tab open next to BGG now. Apache poker chips has a set of poker chips called Bank for 45 cent a chip, these come with the unusual demonetizes of 20 and 2000 chips where a normal set would only have 25 and 1000. It was a set made for both boardgames and poker.
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May 15, 2021 00:30
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Nice to see Isaac owning up to those issues, which were one of the only notes about the original gloomhaven that bummed me out
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May 15, 2021 00:35
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dwarf74 posted:
I thought that city event would have worked a lot better if the city event deck wasn’t so big, and you were guaranteed to see the consequence of your actions. If you let the citizens lynch the vermling, it adds another city event into the deck where the citizens pull a night of broken glass on the Quatryls. The only bit I don’t like is that the mob can be talked down, so you are able to draw the line against racism above Vermlings as it were.
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May 15, 2021 03:25
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fadderman posted:Apache poker chips has a set of poker chips called Bank for 45 cent a chip, these come with the unusual demonetizes of 20 and 2000 chips where a normal set would only have 25 and 1000. It was a set made for both boardgames and poker. I got a sample set of those when I ordered. I like their friction but don’t like their colors and feel around the edge. The tracks are muddy compared to the dunes. Dunes have blue 1s but a set of 1/5/20/100/500 looks good and visually striking. Might get some 0.25 too since they’re pink and useful for home games. I guess the bonus is that I now have a single train chip for priority deal and can place them in a bag to draw from when assigning turn order. Otherwise you have to order the train chip in sets of 25. Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 13:23 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 13:21
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Is there a website that shows the current delivery estimates for various Kickstarter campaigns? I've got 15 games on order and it's hard to keep track of delivery estimate changes when they're all buried in small updates all over the place
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May 15, 2021 18:18
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PRADA SLUT posted:Is there a website that shows the current delivery estimates for various Kickstarter campaigns? I've got 15 games on order and it's hard to keep track of delivery estimate changes when they're all buried in small updates all over the place a miles long google spreadsheet with the word "lol" next to every kickstarter currently active
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May 15, 2021 21:55
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Buck Wildman posted:a miles long google spreadsheet with the word "lol" next to every kickstarter currently active Ha, yeah. Any Kickstarter I back, I ask myself, "Would I be okay receiving this 12-18 months after their estimated delivery?". Because that's what always happens, even before COVID delays. My copy of Middara got here last week, less than a year behind schedule, which I felt to be a minor victory.
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May 16, 2021 01:16
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WhiteHowler posted:Ha, yeah. Any Kickstarter I back, I ask myself, "Would I be okay receiving this 12-18 months after their estimated delivery?". Because that's what always happens, even before COVID delays. Yeah, same here. Still, I'm at the point of being past where I was when I backed Middara, and would like to unload the game and KS pack that came with it, but knowing that I'll be getting crap in WAVE 2 probably in 2022 has me unsure of how to valuate what I have as far as selling is concerned and whether I'd be better off waiting for the other exclusives due later. FOMO is a helluva drug.
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May 16, 2021 05:18
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Had a boardgaming convention over the weekend so got to try out a few new things. Played one game of Beyond The Sun which was fun and one of the better plays of the weekend, but for whatever reason never really seemed to create a spark of excitement for me despite being mechanically very sound. There's a cool system for managing your resources - you have supply, which can become population which you need to research technology, but can also become spaceships that you need for an area-control side-board, but if you have too much of your supply committed to technologies or turned into spaceships you have no easy way of generating more without first eliminating some of your spaceships by colonising planets. It creates this nice ebb and flow effect where you need to be constantly cycling your resources and not overcommitting in any one area. I think one of the things that made me hesitant about wanting to play it too many times is that it's effectively worker placement where the number of worker placement spots available grows as the game continues, which means that towards the end of the game you have a potentially very large number of options to consider which I could easily see leading to AP. It wasn't too bad in our game as it was new for all of us so we were all treating it as a bit of a learning game and not overthinking our turns too much, but I could see that it could easily get bogged down in the latter half with players who were playing more seriously to maximise their score (which I tend to want to do once I know a game well). We then played Hadrian's Wall which was honestly one of the more bizarre experiences I've had with a board game. It's essentially a very complex roll-and-write in the vein of something like Fleet the Dice Game but with three times more boxes. However, instead of something like Fleet (or Welcome To or Ganz Schon etc) where you're effectively getting one or two dice/cards to decide what to do with per turn, in Hadrian's Wall you effectively get given 6-8 dice worth of stuff which you then resolve as you see fit. At the start of each turn, a card is revealed which shows you the resources you have for the round which are the same for every player. You then get a player card that gives you a couple more that are unique to you, and maybe income from previous turns. So later in the game you might have 10 or more resources at the start of each round. Each player then spends the round, in their own time, spending the resources to fill in boxes on their sheets, which inevitably give you bonuses of more resources of the ability to cross off other boxes. Some of the sections of the sheets are very involved and have some clever and interesting mechanisms for comboing and gaining resources, including a little mini spatial puzzle, a little mini game of training up gladiators who can then fight and earn you valor (or piety if they die) and so on. But this happens simultaneously with each player just checking off boxes and getting combos on their own board with absolutely zero interaction or even looking at/talking to each other apart from the occasional question of 'wait, where do I go again if I need more bricks?' At the end of the round, you reveal a couple of attack cards that maybe lose you or gain you points depending on the choices you made during the round, and then you do it again, six times in total. However, because everyone does everything completely on their own and because the gameboards are so complex, we ended up spending a good 30 minutes or so on a rather bewildering rules explanation of what every box did and what prerequisites you needed to be able to activate it just so that everyone actually knew what to do once the game started, since there's not even the minimal interaction of a worker placement game where you could at least ask for clarification on how something worked. Then we spent six rounds scribbling furiously at our own boards for ten minutes or so at a time without any interaction at all, at the end of which we each calculated a number which was our final score and apparently someone won. It's absolutely baffling to me that they made this a multiplayer game at all, as it's so far beyond multiplayer solitaire into something else entirely, which is more like single-player solitaire played alongside other people. The actual mechanics and chaining/comboing of the various board spaces are quite interesting, but even as someone who very much likes the 'clever' series of games, this is not one for me. Then we played a couple of games of Regicide which is a very clever co-operative card game using just a standard deck of cards (though the official printed version has beautiful art which made it worth the purchase for me). Basically you have to defeat all the royal cards (4 Jacks, 4 Queens, 4 Kings) in that order by playing numbered cards from your hand to deal damage to them, or discarding numbered cards from your hand to block their attacks. What makes the game very clever and leads to some tough decisions is that each suit of cards has a special ability - spades block damage, clubs deal double damage, diamonds allow you to draw more cards (the only way to draw more cards, making them absolutely critical to play correctly), hearts shuffle cards back into the deck. There's a few special rules such as Aces being played alongside another card to give you the bonus of both suits and the ability to play pairs/triples of low value cards and get the benefit of every suit that make for some remarkably interesting card play out of just a basic deck. The rules for this are available for free online so for anyone who enjoys co-op games at all I highly recommend at least giving this a go. For me this rivals The Crew for a fun, easy-to-teach co-operative card game that can be played in a few minutes - the only thing lacking that perhaps could be added would be some kind of scenario system to create more variety from game to game in the way that The Crew has done. Lastly I got in a game of Ruins of Arnak which is pretty and fun enough but is basically just a mish-mash of mechanics found in other games. It suffers from a problem I seem to encounter in quite a few modern designs, which is that late in the game you can end up with the potential to create huge action/resource chains from turn to turn to the point that it can be very hard to hold in your head whether you have exactly the right amount of resources to do what you want or not, potentially bogging the game down into a lot of AP as players try to calculate it (as an example, one turn I might have a card that allows me to play on a space that gives me two tablets. I then have a card that I can play on a subsequent turn that allows me to spend one tablet to move up a research track at a discount of one tablet and one arrowhead, giving me two compasses if I do so, which I could use with the one compass I already have along with the two car cards in my hand to go to a new dig site, getting a ruby and another arrowhead which would be enough to go up the research track again as long as I have another compass, which I think I had or wait had I planned to spend that on the buying-an-artifact action?). The game almost seems to acknowledge the potential to misjudge how many resources you have by providing you with a limited free option to lose points in exchange for one or more resources, and indeed at times I ended up using this exactly because I had miscalculated and found myself one short of the thing I thought I needed. It also seemed like it has the potential for the end game to really drag out, as you end up with a lot of options towards the end to draw more cards/gain more resources which can give you more actions, which can give you more resources/cards, and so on and on. I also won a random door prize of a copy of Everdell. My impression from reading this thread is that it's probably not for me as it sounded like a fairly heads-down non-interactive tableau-builder kinda thing, but I seem to recall reading that maybe one of the expansions improved the interactivity (or maybe just the game as a whole in some other way). Anyone have any thoughts on the game, whether it's worth keeping and if there is a must-have expansion if I did decide to hang on to it?
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May 16, 2021 10:30
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Every picture of Hadrian's Wall looked exactly like what you described. Someone had a lot of hubris making that.
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May 16, 2021 10:46
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Very cool post. I played Everdell once with the first expansion. It is a heads down Tableau builder. That's fine with me, but it is not interactive. I wouldn't be opposed to maybe talking a trade if you don't want it
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May 16, 2021 10:47
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Regicide is very good.
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May 16, 2021 11:06
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Artelier posted:Today, I got the worst clue I have ever received in Codenames. BEHOLD: The worst clue I ever got was a person trying to connect two words by giving a clue that was like multiple parts removed from being a direct clue, in addition to not even being a legal clue. I don’t remember the exact target words but it all hinged on the idea that in my local dialect the word “crayon” can sometimes sound like “crown.” So the clue was something like “Pencil - 2” and they wanted you to guess “Stick” and then go “Ok, a pencil is like a crayon, and crayon sounds like crown, so the other word must be “King!”
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May 16, 2021 14:46
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Are there any generally recommended Youtube channels for how to play videos? Finally got bored of trying to source a copy of the Norwegians and am moving up the worker placement complexity scale to play base AFFO with the wife. With more complex stuff I normally get her to watch a tutorial video before I try and explain the rules to her. To be fair, by comparison Trickerion looks way more complex. I punched and organised both games during the week, and my Trickerion collector's edition took about 4 times as long to do as AFFO, even using the pdf guide available on BGG. So, er, we're definitely doing AFFO first. nordichammer posted:Very cool post. I'd say it's a tableau builder/worker placement mash-up, no? The worker placement elements offer a certain degree of interaction, insofar as you can block people from spaces, but yeah I guess that's not exactly a lot of interaction, especially at lower player counts (my understanding is that, with regard to AFFO, the scaling of available worker spots is one of the main pulls of the Norwegians, though to be honest I quite like the idea of not having to worry about being blocked, so I'm not too disappointed to be starting without said expansion). Anyway, I quite like Everdell.
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May 16, 2021 14:49
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OneSizeFitsAll posted:Are there any generally recommended Youtube channels for how to play videos? Normally I Iook at Gaming Rules!, Watch it Played and Johngetsgames. These are my go to Channels for rules videos.
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May 16, 2021 15:13
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OneSizeFitsAll posted:Are there any generally recommended Youtube channels for how to play videos? Finally got bored of trying to source a copy of the Norwegians and am moving up the worker placement complexity scale to play base AFFO with the wife. With more complex stuff I normally get her to watch a tutorial video before I try and explain the rules to her. I used this video to learn: https://youtu.be/hqEPY2XLbYg I'm 5 games into the base version but already slam picked Norwegians on a boardlandia sale.
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May 16, 2021 16:09
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OneSizeFitsAll posted:Are there any generally recommended Youtube channels for how to play videos? Finally got bored of trying to source a copy of the Norwegians Amazon.de has one copy of the German edition for €30. It's language independent apart from two words on the action board, one of which is "or" and the other is "with".
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May 16, 2021 16:10
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OneSizeFitsAll posted:To be fair, by comparison Trickerion looks way more complex. I punched and organised both games during the week, and my Trickerion collector's edition took about 4 times as long to do as AFFO, even using the pdf guide available on BGG. So, er, we're definitely doing AFFO first. I didn't find Trickerion terribly hard to learn. It's a MindClash game so it's got extra mini-expansions included that you can remove for the first game to just learn the "base". It's easier to learn than Anachrony, and that wasn't even too bad. quote:I'd say it's a tableau builder/worker placement mash-up, no? The worker placement elements offer a certain degree of interaction, insofar as you can block people from spaces, but yeah I guess that's not exactly a lot of interaction, especially at lower player counts (my understanding is that, with regard to AFFO, the scaling of available worker spots is one of the main pulls of the Norwegians, though to be honest I quite like the idea of not having to worry about being blocked, so I'm not too disappointed to be starting without said expansion). Anyway, I quite like Everdell. Everdell is fine, but no expansion makes it more interactive than like.. A Feast For Oden. Interestingly, the base game of Everdell is probably the best experience, as the expansions just add a lot of disjointed extra mechanics but don't make the game better. The only benefits to the expansions are the extra "regular" cards to put in the deck and the asymmetrical start you get with the different animals.
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May 16, 2021 17:41
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My local book clearance shop has copies of the Marvel games Sinister Six and Hail Hydra for cheaps. Either of them good, because they both sound fun?
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May 16, 2021 21:35
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PRADA SLUT posted:Everdell is fine, but no expansion makes it more interactive than like.. A Feast For Oden. Interestingly, the base game of Everdell is probably the best experience, as the expansions just add a lot of disjointed extra mechanics but don't make the game better. The only benefits to the expansions are the extra "regular" cards to put in the deck and the asymmetrical start you get with the different animals. Cool thanks for that. I suspect it won't be for me then but there doesn't seem to be too much resale difference in price between new /played once games so maybe I'll just give it a go as it does look pretty and the theme appeals.
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May 16, 2021 21:48
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Elysium posted:The worst clue I ever got was a person trying to connect two words by giving a clue that was like multiple parts removed from being a direct clue, in addition to not even being a legal clue. I don’t remember the exact target words but it all hinged on the idea that in my local dialect the word “crayon” can sometimes sound like “crown.” So the clue was something like “Pencil - 2” and they wanted you to guess “Stick” and then go “Ok, a pencil is like a crayon, and crayon sounds like crown, so the other word must be “King!” Some guy from work did that all the time when I brought Codenames to boardgames lunch. Even in the beginning of the game, when there are usually multiple options to link two words with straightforward clues, he goes like "door - 5" and you need the most ridiculous logic leaps in order to find everything. Even when he explained it afterwards it made zero sense. I dunno, I guess some people have difficulties with this kind of stuff. We switched to playing Wizard after that 
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May 17, 2021 00:12
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When my wife and I finish a "once-through" game like Gloomhaven or Etherfields, we put our character minis on the game shelf. Is there some sort of interesting backdrop / display / etc for them? I'm looking for something more thematic, not just like an acrylic riser or similar.
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May 17, 2021 01:18
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I've seen a couple videos of Stationfall recently and it seems like an interesting game almost in the genre of Battlestar Galactica, or a more interesting Betrayal House Hill..
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May 17, 2021 01:39
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PerniciousKnid posted:I've seen a couple videos of Stationfall recently and it seems like an interesting game almost in the genre of Battlestar Galactica, or a more interesting Betrayal House Hill.. I backed it without really reading anything about it because I'm an idiot and based on the comments from Cole Wehrle and Dan Thurot.
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May 17, 2021 01:57
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