|
My wife and I played our first game of Tiny Epic Pirates the other day and I really enjoyed it. It's a lot to learn upfront, but once you get the hang of the different options and learn the symbols it turns in to a pretty interesting efficiency puzzle. When you set up the game each person randomizes the order their different actions are available, and the game gives you ways to skip actions to get to the ones you want, but it costs you the use of your crew members that could be doing other things like giving you extra movement or bonuses in combat. You end up having to plan a few turns at a time so you spend resources right and get the most out your regular actions and bonus actions from Captain and Crew cards. It's nothing ground breaking, but for a Tiny Epic game I thought it was good, and only lasts an hour or so, so it doesn't drag on too long.
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2021 22:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 18:46 |
|
|
Had a 4p game of Cosmic Frog last night which was fun, but surprisingly less chaotic and random than I'd been assuming based on what I'd heard/read about the game. It felt like quite a weird mix of quite a few turns that were quite procedural and deterministic, where your frog is just hopping around gobbling up land or disgorging it into their vault, and turns where someone was vulnerable and you'd jump on their head and have wildly swingy dice combat that could result in anything from nothing happening, to stealing a good portion of their land and knocking them to the far reaches of outer space. I had a good time, but it's not something I'd be dying to play again. The fact that the dice combat is so swingy and you potentially only roll a relatively small handful of times over the course of the game meant a few of us came away feeling like too much could end up revolving around these pivotal moments and big swings of fate. As a result, you could easily lose 2-3 or more turns of taking procedural, deterministic actions with a single attack. This might seem like it is then not worth taking those more guaranteed actions, but if nobody does them, then there would be no value in the more random attack actions either. Maybe this all comes together better with repeat plays and I suspect it does as a lot of people seem to really enjoy it, but it didn't totally land for me. We then had another 4p game of Stationfall (I've played about 7 times in the last week) which is yet to disappoint. This was a rather weird play as almost nobody achieved any of their objectives (the best score was 3 when typical winning scores tend to be 8+) due to the Daredevil character setting the ship to self-destruct on turn 3. Their plan had been to get a jetpack and a helmet and escape off the station that way, which would have worked if the doctor hadn't thrown the jetpack out the airlock and the mechanic smashed the machine that prints helmets the turn after they triggered self-destruct. The rest of the game devolved into everyone working out if there was a way to get the antimatter (which is what causes self destruct to destroy the station) off the station in the 4-turn time limit, or if they could get any of their characters off the station before it exploded, the answer to which was no in both cases.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:curious if you two prioritize initiative over all else of if that's just a meta we've fallen into? game seems really tightly balanced all things considered. Typically, yes. I’ve found that the quicker you force someone into a more defensive strategy, the better. It’s a delicate balance though because they can easily cut you off with a good draw. But like you said, it’s very balanced. We’ve encountered countless scenarios and seen each play out both ways so you really have to carve out a nice strategy while remaining fairly flexible. Watergate was our pandemic go to and it’s pretty much a must own IMO for anyone who plays a lot of 2 player games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 03:07
|
|
|
The Eyes Have It posted:We started playing Pandemic Legacy Season 0 and it's really well done. It's both similar enough to Pandemic Legacies that if you liked them (and we did) you'll like this, but the whole design feel considerably more smooth and tightened up, and the gameplay and structure is also different -- in a good way. We also just played our first 3 games last night, and the aesthetic is truly great. All of the components have really been refined and have a great feel. However, we played 3 games (Prologue and 2 games in January) and the objectives seemed almost insurmountable, to the point where we literally thought we were missing rules/doing something wrong. It also didn't help that in January we had some really bad card pulls that resulted in 2 characters losing 2 cover each in the first round and there was literally nothing we could have done to prevent it. In the prologue we didn't even come close to finishing an objective, and the first game in January we were one turn from completing one objective before losing. The upgrades we got from the first January game helped us to complete both objectives in the second game, but it left us wondering if winning the prologue/first January is just a complete improbability or we are doing something wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 14:25
|
|
|
It was close at times but we played the prologue twice and January now and succeeded at all so far. We're both pretty experienced Pandemic players though. One of us is the faster thinker, and one of us is really good at remembering what has or hadn't come up yet. We've gotten card pulls that incident a city multiple times, so far those are serious setbacks but hasn't sunk us. Because it's Pandemic, we are always mindful of what is or isn't in the threat deck, and when the last intensify/reshuffle has been. Sometimes the difference between disaster and success has been the choice to remove an agent from city X instead of city Y (because Y was recently drawn and therefore won't come out, but X is still in there.) We also aggressively work to share research/Intel. Getting something out just a turn earlier can make a big difference. Also because it's Pandemic, we like everyone else occasionally get two epidemic/escalation cards very close to each other (or, rarely, right after each other) but that also has a silver lining. Because of how the decks are constructed that also means the players have benefited from having had a long length "dry spell" before the first epidemic/escalation, followed by knowing there's now a long dry spell guaranteed to happen after the second one. That can be very useful knowledge. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jun 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 16:05
|
|
|
The Eyes Have It posted:It was close at times but we played the prologue twice and January now and succeeded at all so far. We're both pretty experienced Pandemic players though. One of us is the faster thinker, and one of us is really good at remembering what has or hadn't come up yet. Yeah, we are also pretty experienced Pandemic players (we just finished S2 last week) and it still seemed overly difficult. Outfitting someone with the upgrade that lets you see the next two cards of the threat deck was a HUGE advantage in our second January game, as well as us being more aggressive about keeping agent population down, which gave us the longevity we needed to get enough card in circulation to finish the objectives. I think we ended up only have 2 incidents happen in that game. I am more than willing to accept that we are not missing anything and that it's just hard. We are also lucky enough that through S1 and 2 we never got the dreaded double epidemic. *knock on wood*
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 16:16
|
|
|
I think you're right that it is hard overall. I was kind of expecting the first couple games to be learn-the-rules softballs but we had to come out swinging. Also, can't say for sure yet but I feel like the subtly different handling of objectives seems built with more than just "win = good, lose = repeat the month" in mind.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 16:40
|
|
|
Does anyone know anything about this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/954412004/mosaic-a-story-of-civilization It looks up my alley but honestly it almost appears too similar to something like Clash of Cultures or New Dawn. And seeing Rahdo compare it to Terraforming Mars...
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 19:21
|
|
|
Yeah, that definitely looks like Glenn Drover does TfM. That doesn't mean it'll be bad, but those are both hurdles to overcome IMO.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 20:51
|
|
|
Maybe they could have used a different set of words after the main title though...
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 21:42
|
|
|
!Klams posted:Ahhh, that's really interesting. I've always had a tough time getting Starcraft to the table because we always leave it so long between plays and all everyone remembers is the big rules overhead. (And not the rules.) FS and Starcraft do play very similarly. The differences, apart from FS being half as long to play, are mostly in the battles. SC focusses on unit variety and making sure you build for matchups. FS builds counter play into the combat cards rather than units.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 22:46
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Yeah, that definitely looks like Glenn Drover does TfM. That doesn't mean it'll be bad, but those are both hurdles to overcome IMO. What's the problem with Glenn Drover? I only know him from Empires Age of Discovery (and Railways of the World which probably doesn't count for much since it's basically a Martin Wallace design I think) which I really enjoy mechanically while thematically it's a bit of a nightmare. I can see he has some pretty bad design credits as well - is it just that he's hit and miss?
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2021 22:59
|
|
|
Just had my first teaching game of Oath with my group and... drat, it's good. Like, really, really good. Came down to the wire in the 8th and final round and each player had a chance to win at the end of their turn before the Chancellor wound up with the win in the end. Next session is already planned. This one will have legs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 09:51
|
|
|
What player count? Using the guided setup?
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 10:21
|
|
|
Four. And yes. The guided setup is EXTREMELY effective. All of my players loved it and we immediately scheduled a followup game for next week.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 10:54
|
|
|
God drat. All this oath talk is really making me hope it ships soon .
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 12:01
|
|
|
To continue the Cole chat, I had a game day recently and managed to get my first group game of Pax Pamir played. It was with a full 5 players so things were fairly hectic but there was a shocking lack of people changing loyalty. We started with 2 Afghan players, 2 Russians and 1 Brit and it stayed like that to the very end. The build up to the first dominance check was very much learning how to pull levers and what they do, when it came around the powers were deadlocked leading to only one person getting points for cylinders. After that the Afghans rallied and we took a decisive power lead by constantly chipping away at our opponents blocks and when the next dominance check came around I had the most loyalty and took the lead. The board clear left things up in the air somewhat and the third dominance check came around pretty quickly. With no chance to gain a strong military foothold I played a card to get tribes on the board which also let me trim down my court, I dumped a card with several enemy spies on it, sending them back to their board instead of the safehouse, giving me the cylinder lead and the eventual victory. I worried at first my group would find it slow but they got invested and even if it did take longer than expected I think it went down very well. I definitely messed up a few rules (careless end of turn clean up, some missed bribes, nothing major though) but I think it will make it to the table again soon enough. We also played some Quacks and for all its justifiable criticisms it was a roaring success, especially after a bunch of drinks. We did the simultaneous draw thing in every round not just the last one which slowed things down but made explosions even funnier. I'm not sure if I'd do it again or if I'd do individual draws to speed it up but still. £30 for the big box seems like a bargain because I imagine it will see a lot of play time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 14:30
|
|
|
I can't get into Mage Knight solo no matter how much I try, and I'm mostly trying because a friend bought it for me. Spirit Island is one of my favorite solo games, and I can see why people make the comparison between it and Mage Knight. Both have semi-perfect knowledge of what the game is trying to do to stop me, and let me strategize over how to play the cards in my hand to make the best of a bad situation. Both have me starting off weaker than the enemies and give me the tools I need to outpace them as long as I play smart. But Mage Knight is so flavorless. It's like if every Spirit started with a handful of cards that simply did one basic game action, like deal 1 damage (2 damage if you have a fire element) or defend 2 in a land (defend 3 if you have an earth element). And the upgraded cards don't add that much excitement. I can see why people like it; it's pure Game. No concessions to a theme to dilute the gameplay, just cards to play and a thin layer of lore because it had to have something, and whether it was generic fantasy or Star Trek didn't matter. Mage Knight is close to a board game roguelike, which sounds amazing. I thought for sure I'd like a game with an expanding map to explore, permadeath, and a focus on mechanics over story. I could see playing it more if it didn't take up so much table space and have so many fiddly components, rules, and exceptions for every rule. But everything it does, Spirit Island does better for me, personally.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 16:32
|
|
|
MK is very good and was maybe my favorite game for a number of years but it does feel like Spirit Island has at this point taken its crown. Just about everything MK does, SI does in a more streamlined way. I will say that the real powerhouses of Mage Knight are your units, artifacts and spells - the combos involved there (and the planning involved to make those combos happen) are where stuff really goes off. And the combos you get there are more involved and intricate than anything you'll pull off in a game of spirit island with less than three people in it. It really rewards playing as multiple different mages because the differences between them don't feel so stark at first but actually become quite large given time. Also play your solo games on the really well done VASSAL mod or TTS. Setting that up every time is going to give you RSI Impermanent fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Jun 3, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:04
|
|
|
LifeLynx posted:No concessions to a theme to dilute the gameplay, just cards to play and a thin layer of lore because it had to have something, and whether it was generic fantasy or Star Trek didn't matter. I don't agree with this. The way wounds work to slow you down, especially via poison, is thematic, as is Arythea's ability to do blood magic from her own wounds. Monsters' attacks and defenses thematically with the lore. You enter the game as a potential savior as far as the people of that land are concerned, but that changes after you torch some of their monasteries for their treasures. It's approximately as thematic as Dungeon Petz. Is it as thematic as Spirit Island? I don't know how anyone could say it's close to Spirit Island's mechanical-thematic integration, but then again, what is?
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:10
|
|
|
Redundant posted:We also played some Quacks and for all its justifiable criticisms it was a roaring success, especially after a bunch of drinks. We did the simultaneous draw thing in every round not just the last one which slowed things down but made explosions even funnier. I'm not sure if I'd do it again or if I'd do individual draws to speed it up but still. £30 for the big box seems like a bargain because I imagine it will see a lot of play time. So I think simultaneous draws is quite important in Quacks as you need to know when you can stop. With the exception of the bag of bird skulls that means you're going to be fannying around for ages, then you can crack on yourself.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:13
|
|
|
My wall of shame, the games I own that I have not learned how to play: Gaia Project Sideral Confluence Antike Earth Reborn Puerto Rico La Citta Merchants and Marauders Dungeon Lords Mice and Mystics Which should I learn to play first, which should be last
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:26
|
|
|
Street Horrrsing posted:My wall of shame, the games I own that I have not learned how to play: I'm biased so Lords first, Mice last.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:29
|
|
|
On one hand, Mice and Mystics is very easy to learn because it's puddle-deep and mostly serves as a gateway game to actually good ones like Imperial Assault and Gloomhaven. On the other hand, it's puddle-deep and mostly serves as a gateway game to actually good ones like Imperial Assault and Gloomhaven.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:32
|
|
|
Exactly. I mean when it comes down to it, it really depends on who you've got to play with and what you actually want to get going. Tight punishing euro: Dungeon Lords Wider, full of competitive depth euro: Gaia Project Go around and do random stuff: M&M Shout at a bunch of people: Sidereal Classic euro: PR 2p skirmish: Earth Reborn Haven't played but Gerdtz classic rondel: Antike no idea: La Citta Super light roleplaying campaign thingie: the other M&M
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 17:43
|
|
|
Street Horrrsing posted:My wall of shame, the games I own that I have not learned how to play: Dungeon Lords or Earth Reborn first (though Earth Reborn has a kind of "tutorial" series of scenarios and it doesn't really shine until the 3rd scenario or so, but then holy cow, that game is amazing). Puerto Rico is really not great by several modern standards (weird importance of seat position, optimal strategy pretty solved by now, unpleasant imperialism theme), so I would put that last. Of classic Euros, it's the one I would vote off the island second after Catan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:24
|
|
|
On that list I would say SidCon is both a great game and offers the most unique gaming experience so start there. It already has enough hurdles for getting it to the table, might as well take "don't know the rules" off that list.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:25
|
|
|
girl dick energy posted:On one hand, Mice and Mystics is very easy to learn because it's puddle-deep and mostly serves as a gateway game to actually good ones like Imperial Assault and Gloomhaven. Given that argument, I'd play Mice and Mystics first because if you don't play it first, you never will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:34
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Given that argument, I'd play Mice and Mystics first because if you don't play it first, you never will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:34
|
|
|
Running my first Oath game today, hyped as hell. Expect most folks to come having read the rules or at least having watched a video. We're starting with five players--although I'm nervous 'cause the book seems to stress only starting with three / four. I figure I'll do the quickstart setup with myself as the last player not getting a guided start? Anyone with more experience want to chime in if I'm doomed to failure with five?
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:49
|
|
|
Street Horrrsing posted:My wall of shame, the games I own that I have not learned how to play: If you're familiar with Terra Mystica, learning GP will be straightforward
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:50
|
|
|
tokenbrownguy posted:Running my first Oath game today, hyped as hell. Expect most folks to come having read the rules or at least having watched a video. We're starting with five players--although I'm nervous 'cause the book seems to stress only starting with three / four. Nah it'll be fine. Hopefully your group is used to heavy-ish games that take a few hours to play. There's nothing inherently chaotic about adding the fifth player (unlike, I would argue, Root) it just makes everything that much slower. Make sure when you draw cards for yourself before you finish the guided walkthrough (just your starting Advisor, iirc) you draw from the bottom of the world deck, because the deck is stacked for the walkthrough to work.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
Yeah they're all veterans of poo poo like Pax Pamir, Root, Scythe, etc. Thanks for the reassurance.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 19:44
|
|
|
girl dick energy posted:Keep it on the shelf for when your friends start having kids? Personally I need the shelf space. If it ain't getting play, it can get on its way.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 19:55
|
|
|
I decided to buy the Japanese version of 'Piece o' Cake' because it sounded life a game my playgroup might like, and also I didn't want to give Bezier Games money to get New York Slice (which despite their MO is actually licensed from the designer). In doing so, I discovered many things. 1: Amazon Japan will send stuff to America. 2: Apparently you can get something shipped from Japan to New England some 6600 miles away, order it on Sunday and get it Wednesday for the equivalent of $15? I don't get it. 3: It's so wee! 4: Google Lens is seriously amazing. At some point it became the future already. 5: The only English on the box is the Bezier Games logo, so womp womp on my personal vendetta.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 20:04
|
|
|
Thanks for the feedback. I actually do have two children under the age of ten, so it might be the perfect time to break out the mice and mystics. I have terra mystica on the iPad so learning that, then gaia project doesn't sound like much of a stretch. The first 'real' game to learn on the list is Dungeon Lords. Maybe antike
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 21:49
|
|
|
Street Horrrsing posted:My wall of shame, the games I own that I have not learned how to play: Sideral, Gaia, and then sell the rest. These games are on your shelf for a reason.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 21:51
|
|
|
nordichammer posted:Sideral, Gaia, and then sell the rest. These games are on your shelf for a reason. :agree:
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 21:56
|
|
|
nordichammer posted:Sideral, Gaia, and then sell the rest. These games are on your shelf for a reason. I would try Antike and DLords as well because they're both unique and really solid (and among some peoples top games) but agree overall.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 22:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 18:46 |
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:I would try Antike and DLords as well because they're both unique and really solid (and among some peoples top games) but agree overall. Yeah, I'm on this side, despite loving lords a lot. Entirely possible you'll not like it, just, worth trying since it's not like most other games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2021 23:02
|
|