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Unbalanced games are fun when there are fun group dynamics where you can defeat a stronger faction. Sythe is super unbalanced and has no meaningful player interaction to overcome it.
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Jul 17, 2021 21:49
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Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out. I might be able to rope my family into trying Pandemic Legacy so that would be fun. Edit: How's 7th Continent? MonsieurChoc fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 17, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 22:16
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Some Numbers posted:Hot take: factions don't have to be perfectly balanced. There is perfectly balanced and there is literally twice as powerful. However these balance issues are more noticeable in leganct games - you might not notice on your first play, but scythe legacy wants double digit plays. Anyway this for me takes scythe legacy out of that top shelf of legacy games.
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Jul 17, 2021 22:46
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The Eyes Have It posted:It really doesn't work with two players though. It's far too random with only two and some maps don't even really "work" with two. Yeah I assumed you'd each play two mechs if you were to play with 4. I haven't actually tried it at any player count besides 4 though.
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Jul 17, 2021 22:47
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MonsieurChoc posted:
Not a legacy game but we like it. It's kind of a roguelike so if having to start over a game that spans multiple sessions sounds annoying then it's not for you.
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Jul 18, 2021 01:04
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John Dyne posted:I won Everdell two weeks ago at my gaming group's first game day since the pandemic started, and good lord, I love this game. I had gone in hoping to win Ruins of Arnak or the Artemis Project, but after playing all three, Everdell just grew on me, and it's become a fast favorite with my wife and my friends. Spirecrest has been enjoyable, a lot of variety added with those seasonal effects. Pearlbrook seemed extraneous.
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Jul 18, 2021 08:50
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Aramoro posted:The game is terribly unbalanced which as a Eurogame makes it bad. In a 4 player game Togawa have a 14% WR whilst Rusivet have a 37% WR. The gulf between these rates. If you go into the game thinking it's going to be fair you're going to really struggle with Togawa and Albion whilst your Rusivet and Crimea players are going to have an easy time. Just checking, but are those win rates as a percentage of all games played or a percentage of all games in which the faction was played? Because Togawa and Albion are the expansion factions, and so they've probably been played less.
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Jul 18, 2021 09:13
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Had another boardgaming convention on the weekend and played a bunch of stuff. Wildcatters we got to play a couple of times - first game for any of us. One of those games where even after the first game I felt like I had a solid understanding of all the rules, a clear idea of how they interlink, and almost zero idea about strategy or what I should be doing - which felt quite promising as usually (but not always) this means there's a lot to discover in the game. I picked this up because I love Brass and Barrage and this seemed like it would have a lot of the same symbiotic/parasitic player interaction, which it does, in spades - probably even more so than those two games. Just about everything you do other plays can either benefit from or piggyback off and there's a lot of difficult choices to make because of it - especially given that there are multiple types of resources (some harder to come by than others) and often you can do a somewhat similar action either by doing it yourself or by piggybacking off someone else, but doing it yourself costs more valuable resources than if you can wait for someone else to do it. The only thing I'm not so sure about it yet after two plays is that compared to Brass and Barrage it feels quite opaque as to how well everyone is doing - a lot of the endgame scoring is determined by a kind of area majority thing about where oil barrels are delivered, and this can shift dramatically right up to the last round or so. In addition, it's a lot easier than in Brass or Barrage to move resources around the map, which means that compared to those games you don't get the same sense that this is 'my' part of the board which has a benefit of increasing the sense of player inter-dependency, but maybe a drawback that you don't feel as invested in building up 'your' network. Either way it was a great game and one I'm keen to explore more. We then had a game of Stationfall which I've been enjoying so much that I spent quite a few hours making a fairly high quality print and play copy until my KS copy arrives much later. We introduced it to three new players (so a five player game) and everyone seemed to really enjoy it with the exception of one of the new players who seemed to have a hard time working out how to generate points for their character. They said they still had fun with the experience but felt like they'd only started to realise towards the end what they should have done earlier on. As usual, everything turned to poo poo pretty quickly with most of the station ending up on fire and someone having broken the controls to trigger abandon ship early on, making it difficult to escape and leading to a lot of tug-of-war over the single jetpack that would allow someone to escape back to earth. I spent a good part of the game fleeing from the one character that had a gun and a clear determination to use it on my space-counsellor. Played a game of Keyflower which I continue to be terrible at no matter how many times I play it. I enjoy it, but I always feel like I have much less control over my destiny in that game than I'd like - which probably means I'm playing it wrong. Even the games I've won I often feel like I'm not quite sure how I got there. Today we also played Lost Ruins of Arnak again which I didn't enjoy any more than the first time I played it. It's fine, but it feels like you can do way too much stuff, and there are waaaaaay too many resource conversion actions towards the end of the game which just makes it drag on, and also very hard to plan because the sequence of conversions and rewards gets so hard to mentally track. Also had a few games of Galaxy Trucker, Mysterium and Skull which are almost always a good time.
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Jul 18, 2021 09:25
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Jedit posted:Just checking, but are those win rates as a percentage of all games played or a percentage of all games in which the faction was played? Because Togawa and Albion are the expansion factions, and so they've probably been played less. The stats are recorded from games played, so faction + board. That stat is aggregated from there. With a bad board thier WR gets worse.
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Jul 18, 2021 10:45
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John Dyne posted:I won Everdell two weeks ago at my gaming group's first game day since the pandemic started, and good lord, I love this game. I had gone in hoping to win Ruins of Arnak or the Artemis Project, but after playing all three, Everdell just grew on me, and it's become a fast favorite with my wife and my friends. I liked Pearlbrook personally, but I know a lot of people consider it the worst expansion. It doesn't make the game too much more complicated imo, but it does drastically change the meta because you have wonders instead of events. As you might expect, wonders are projects that require a bunch of resources and give a ton of victory points. I believe this is why people are so sour on it, because games are frequently decided based on who has a decent town + a strong wonder or two. I'm not sure it makes the game "better" per se, but it's definitely different and I found it quite interesting.
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Jul 18, 2021 11:35
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Some Numbers posted:Hot take: factions don't have to be perfectly balanced. Root with vagabond is just a worse game than root with any other factions. Not because the other factions are more balanced than the vagabond necessarily, but because when one player is ahead it's easy to see and gang up, and you get points for doing so. You get points for taking out the buildings or tokens of every faction and setting them back. You don't get anything at all for setting back the vagabond, and if you spend your turn getting nothing while your opponents progress, you simply cannot win. Trying to prevent the vagabond from winning will probably cost you the game. So yeah, you're right that they don't need to be balanced, and assymmetry is great, but it needs not only an ability to counter the imbalance but also countering the imbalanced player needs to be productive and rewarding on its own.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:11
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Jimbozig posted:Root with vagabond is just a worse game than root with any other factions. That's a good observation. Several Sierra Madre games have imbalanced sides, and I've always been unhappy with their stated solution "well, gang up on them then". And when it gets to the situation where you have to do X or they win? It's an implicit boost to the player in second place.
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Jul 18, 2021 20:00
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Advanced Civilization isn't balanced and was never intended to be, but back in those days players expected war game like strategy games so being imbalanced wasn't a complaint. Noting that the original Civilization was so imbalanced it really couldn't be played in tournaments, thus Advanced Civ was created. So even then there was a limit on imbalance.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:37
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Kerro posted:Had another boardgaming convention on the weekend and played a bunch of stuff. Think I was at the same one - good weekend really. Great Western Trail with the expansion which was new to me, Space Base, Sidereal Confluence, Dune Imperium, Concordia, and Galaxy Trucker (-43 after 4 trips, god i love that game)
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Jul 18, 2021 22:27
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Any good storage solutions for Arkham Horror 3rd Edition and the expansions? Picked them up on a whim this weekend.
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Jul 18, 2021 22:43
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xiw posted:Think I was at the same one - good weekend really. Great Western Trail with the expansion which was new to me, Space Base, Sidereal Confluence, Dune Imperium, Concordia, and Galaxy Trucker (-43 after 4 trips, god i love that game) Nice set of games - I haven't played GWT with expansion either, only have the base game but keen to try that some time. Was it your copy of Sidereal? I saw that was there and wanted to try it but never quite managed to find the right opportunity, I've never played it before.
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Jul 18, 2021 23:40
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Mayveena posted:Advanced Civilization isn't balanced and was never intended to be, but back in those days players expected war game like strategy games so being imbalanced wasn't a complaint. Noting that the original Civilization was so imbalanced it really couldn't be played in tournaments, thus Advanced Civ was created. So even then there was a limit on imbalance. History isn't balanced 
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Jul 19, 2021 01:28
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Sister Cassia posted:History isn't balanced changelog: nerfed guns, germs and steel as they were having a regressive effect on the meta
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Jul 19, 2021 02:25
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Is there a primer on how to not completely suck poo poo at Spirit Island? My wife and I played two games today which took like six hours because we had to keep referencing rules, but we also got absolutely shithoused by Blight both times. I get that one of the keys is to eliminate or push explorers off of regions they’ve expanded to in order to prevent building. We got way better at that the second game. We also get that you really want to prevent more Cities from being built because it’s typically pretty easy to deal 2 damage, but 3 is way harder. We also got better at leaving one explorer to ravage to either deal no damage or get killed by the Dahan. We also learned the value of playing powers just for their elements to activate or improve innate powers. Both games seemed to be going well until the invaders started to explore two types of regions simultaneously. As soon as that happened, they would inevitable get to build in at least a couple of them, and then ravage, and then the Blight would cascade, and we’d lose presence, and then none of our cool powers would work because we didn’t have presence where we needed (like The Jungle Hungers). The second game was particularly frustrating because we felt like we were closing to winning — we had Fear at level II and seemed to be on track to get it to level III within the next turn. And then all the sudden we added 6 or 7 Blight and that was that.
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Jul 19, 2021 04:36
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It sounds like you've got many of the basics down, I'm guessing what's tripping you up is just not getting going fast enough. At least on basic difficulty, you want to be getting close to a victory by the time the double region cards show up. As to why you're not quite there, my first question would be whether you're taking the growth options that let you place presence every chance you can (and two if you have a spirit that lets you do that). Unlocking those tracks (and particularly the extra card plays early) is crucial to be able to ramp up enough to keep up with the invaders. The second possibility is not getting major power cards early enough. If you ever end up with three or more power left over after paying for your power cards, you should really consider taking a major power as these can substantially increase your ability to generate fear (through destruction or otherwise) which is your main route to victory. Of course this depends a bit on the spirit as some are more geared towards playing fewer cards but more majors while others are more about playing a high number of weaker cards. Lastly, getting good at using slow powers is also key as these are generally more powerful than fast. As you say, getting rid of an explorer to prevent a build is great, but if you have a slow power that could destroy that town after it's built for the same cost that's even better cos of the fear. Or if your presence is sufficiently spread out you can use a slow phase push to get rid of the explorer that will appear and being a slow card it'll likely have more other beneficial effects than doing the same thing in fast phase. Edit: also if you can see that a ravage is coming that you absolutely can't defend and will cause you to lose presence in a crucial region, try and get a second presence down before that happens so that you don't lose targeting options.
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Jul 19, 2021 04:53
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Aggro posted:Is there a primer on how to not completely suck poo poo at Spirit Island? My wife and I played two games today which took like six hours because we had to keep referencing rules, but we also got absolutely shithoused by Blight both times. Sounds like you've got the tactical part of the game more or less in hand. One common newbie trap to watch out for is that there is such a thing as overinvesting in defense, especially early on: it's often worth it to punt on ravages that you can't efficiently prevent in order to focus on doing more damage elsewhere. Save defend cards for when you have Dahan available to counterattack with or need to prevent a cascade, don't make a habit of slapping down defends on lands that don't have Dahan or blight unless you actually have nothing better to do. By "spending" your blight pool aggressively early on you can focus on being more proactive about taking out key invaders rather than just stalling. One other point that you didn't touch on: generally, consolidating invaders is better than spreading them out. If you're going to push a town out of a land that will build/ravage, it's usually better to push it into a land that already has a town vs. an empty land. That cuts down on the number of problem terrains that can get drawn and maximizes the impact of juicy major powers. On the strategic front, how frequently are you reclaiming? You generally want to put off reclaims as long as you reasonably can in order to get out more presence (and if your spirit has a double presence placement option you usually want to use that more often than not.) That typically means leaning on card gain options pretty hard in order to pad out your hand size. If you reclaim too frequently to try to get your good cards back you will fall behind rapidly towards the late game. EDIT: Also, don't feel compelled to stick with the "Low" complexity spirits or the power progression cards--they're good for simplifying things while you get the rules figured out but they don't necessarily make it easier to win. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 04:53
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Also, remember that blight cascades do NOT work like in Pandemic; it only cascades to one adjacent space, which you get to choose.
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Jul 19, 2021 04:58
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It's also possible you're getting a rule wrong somewhere. You mentioned that you're losing when the invaders start ravaging using the stage 3 cards. When you're playing on low difficulty (I assume you're not using an adversary, scenario, or event cards) you'll usually win before it gets to that point. Are you correctly adding fear from all the sources you should be? (1 from destroying towns, 2 from cities, plus any fear from spirit powers) You have the correct amount of tokens in your fear pool (8 in a 2 player game)? And you have the correct number of fear cards (9 total, split among 3 tiers)?
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Jul 19, 2021 05:21
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Also, make sure you're using any triggered innate powers and your special abilities. New players often forget those trying to manage their card powers. Some spirits really rely on these more than just minor/majors.
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Jul 19, 2021 05:36
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If you don’t mind some stronger guidance, there’s a really good series of posts on BGG from @antistone and @jyonker13 for every spirit that outlines how they’re designed to play and suggests, in detail, sample plays for their first three turns. I found it really helpful for understanding both what my spirit was designed to do and more broadly what I should be aiming to do in the early stages of the game as anyone. Some people might consider it too detailed or taking away some of the fun of discovery but for us, it put an end to us repeatedly getting into unwinnable states early on because we bungled our first moves so badly. If you think this’ll wreck your fun, ignore it. Original Spirits: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1965751/openings-spread-rampant-green Expansion Spirits: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2484534/openings-vengeance-burning-plague
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Jul 19, 2021 05:46
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This video has a good example of gameplay that you might find helpful: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTDyy7vtmY
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Jul 19, 2021 05:58
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Aggro posted:Is there a primer on how to not completely suck poo poo at Spirit Island? I've found my wife and I tend to swing the game closer to a win in the third and fourth rounds, when we're better able to predict where the invaders will be; knowing that they're going to explore into the mountains and that slow powers go off AFTER the explore means you can wipe out the invaders there very easily and have some breathing room on worrying about where the next build/ravage is gonna be. Typically we try to do what we can to thin the herd on the first explore, either through straight up murder or pushing them around, so that the subsequent build isn't as bad. Remember that if the land isn't coastal or adjacent to a city or town, explorers DO NOT explore into that land, so if you can cut them off, your island gets that much easier to handle. Another important thing to keep in mind is that, unless you're playing a spirit specifically inclined to protect or save them, you do not have to give a poo poo about the Dahan. They are a living, breathing shield and that's about it. So long as they can reduce the damage in a place to 1, there's no blight, and you have more breathing room until that land type comes up again. About the only time we run into blight problems is if someone is playing the Wildfire spirit and is expanding a TON. A very important thing to note is that the errata now says you add +1 blight to the initial setup and to the blighted island setup if you ever reach it, which gives a little bit of wiggle room.
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Jul 19, 2021 07:23
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The Dahan don't protect anything unless you play specific powers/draw specific events, and I'm guessing they're not using the event deck if they're beginners.
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Jul 19, 2021 09:40
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John Dyne posted:Another important thing to keep in mind is that, unless you're playing a spirit specifically inclined to protect or save them, you do not have to give a poo poo about the Dahan. You monster  I play mostly Thunderspeaker so I can save my little mushroom people.
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Jul 19, 2021 11:02
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Playing Pandemic Season 1 online via TTS and we just hit the reveal in April  We also managed to cure Red in 1 turn due to some lucky pulls in March, managed 0 outbreaks, 2 eradications, and 0 faded outbreaks
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Jul 19, 2021 12:53
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I also may or may not be starting to prototype a board game idea I have, and TIL you can just straight up buy 100 Ninja meeples for like 8 euros And I'm definitely not going to do that, and then proceed to stick them around my friends homes in weird places for the next few years.
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Jul 19, 2021 13:02
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Infinitum posted:I also may or may not be starting to prototype a board game idea I have, and TIL you can just straight up buy 100 Ninja meeples for like 8 euros Those are just paper labels for sticking to meeples
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Jul 19, 2021 13:19
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Curses, I'll just have to resign myself to sticking googly eyes on things then.
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Jul 19, 2021 13:24
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Also I'm now looking at spending lots of cash on random boardgame bits. That site is wonderful
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Jul 19, 2021 13:24
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I'm looking at CO2: Second Chance as a coop Euro game. Can anyone chime in on it?
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Jul 19, 2021 14:09
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Selecta84 posted:I'm looking at CO2: Second Chance as a coop Euro game. It's pretty heavy, like most Lacerdas, and as a full coop game with near perfect information you will spend 90% of the play time discussing what to do before you move a few pieces around. It's also incredibly hard, so the competitive variant is essentially playing to see who will be responsible for the loss. If you're still interested, my copy is for sale.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:14
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Jedit posted:It's pretty heavy, like most Lacerdas, and as a full coop game with near perfect information you will spend 90% of the play time discussing what to do before you move a few pieces around. It's also incredibly hard, so the competitive variant is essentially playing to see who will be responsible for the loss. It sounds like I might enjoy this. Getting Orleans: Invasion vibes and I quite enjoy that style of coop game. You're in the UK, right? I can get a new copy for 70€, incl shipping. Don't know if you can match that.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:20
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Aggro posted:Is there a primer on how to not completely suck poo poo at Spirit Island? My wife and I played two games today which took like six hours because we had to keep referencing rules, but we also got absolutely shithoused by Blight both times. I'm making an assumption that you're not playing with events. If that's the case, why was adding so much blight a surprise? What the invaders Ravage is known two turns ahead of time. Makes sure you do your invader phase correctly. It goes (in only the lands shown on the card in the space) Ravage -> Build -> Explore -> shift all cards left. Some other advice: -Blight is a resource and don't be afraid of it. Sometimes you need to take an 'eco round' in order to get ahead of what's coming. Let a land blight if it means you can prevent two blights in a following turn. -Make sure you can play the powers you gain. If you pick up The Jungle Hungers, get a presence in a jungle that turn if possible. -If you need help somewhere on your board, speak up. Sometimes your allies can spare a power your way. -Plan for your slow powers. You know where they will build; you can ready a slow power for a town that doesn't exist yet.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:27
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Selecta84 posted:It sounds like I might enjoy this. Getting Orleans: Invasion vibes and I quite enjoy that style of coop game. Possibly not in this day and age, although my copy is a signed Kickstarter edition with the Arctic expansion.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:41
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Jedit posted:Possibly not in this day and age, although my copy is a signed Kickstarter edition with the Arctic expansion. drat shipping costs... Gonna order online then, thanks.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:52
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