|
Kazzah posted:Also, remember that blight cascades do NOT work like in Pandemic; it only cascades to one adjacent space, which you get to choose. I'm putting my money on this.
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 15:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 16:19 |
|
|
Selecta84 posted:drat shipping costs... I did check and it would probably only be about €13 in shipping, but you might also get hit with import fees and those would be exorbitant. Ordering online is the safe bet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 15:17
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 15:25
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Ok what's the best Legacy Boardgame? Whatever it is I want it. The best for me is "Vampire the Masquerade : Heritage"
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 15:57
|
|
|
Knightsoul posted:The best for me is "Vampire the Masquerade : Heritage" I bought it a few months ago, and finally tried it without the legacy mechanics recently. Liked it and now I'm trying to set a group together to do the full campaign. I was asking for other options because that game made me think about them. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 16:34
|
|
|
We got a game of Mega Civ in on the weekend, first time in two years we've played a game of it from start to finish. Played with three veterans, one experienced player, and two with a single game or so under their belt. It was a fairly wild ride. I was Hatti, which made me happy because I only had two neighbours to really worry about (Minoa and Hellas) both of which I had a good working relationship with. I grabbed all the territory I needed fairly quickly and rapidly was able to build up to 6-7 cities and traded well enough to not only avoid calamities but also trade in full sets of 5s and 6s for some fat gainz. The early game is honestly the toughest part and where you live or die based on a combination of things like whether you expanded properly, built cities at the right time, and were able to trade well. Obviously trading is where you live and die in the majority but if you are unable to get good sets early not only are you at a disadvantage for the benefits of the tech, you might not even by climbing the AST. Peace with neighbours is so critical and lets you actually focus on building up without worrying about people sniping cities or blowing up your poo poo too. It is not a coincidence that the two players who did the best were A) the veterans and B) did not fight with each other at all. Besides, for most of us in the late game we were just constantly rebuilding from the endless cavalcade of bullshit that calamities can throw at you (I got Barbarian'd twice or three times, so frustrating). What's especially curious is that in this game only one player managed to get to 9 cities and hold it for a single round. After that 7 was the most common count with fluctuations around 5 and 6. The ending was very surprising though and gave everyone at the table pause. What happened is that Rome who was behind and had rebuilt to a nice level drew into a Civil War. The second place player had just been ravaged by another calamity and had dropped down in city count to the lowest. That meant that he was the beneficiary of the civil war and because of the way the numbers fell, Rome ended up trading him three cities, which pushed him into the lead and gave him the ability to move forward on the AST and not only end the game, but receive a bonus 5 points for being the sole person to do so. An epic end but frustrating because it seemed annoying for obvious reasons that the recipient of the civil war could be someone in second place and nipping at the heels of the leader versus someone way behind but who happened to just have more cities out at the time than them. We have played enough MC that I think we are going to attempt to house-rule Civil War to be dependent firstly on AST track and then cities, stock etc. afterward. I know this is all part of the game and you could argue that he got lucky and that's the way she fuckin' goes bud, but overall I think with the frequency Civil War appears and its ostensible purpose to give a lagging player a leg up while punishing the player who drew it. But that gets into the second issue which is that it's in the 5 stack, which is really low for something as devastating as CW and can easily hit the second last player and theoretically result in the leaders taking advantage of it too depending on similar factors as to what I've described. Anyway, we all had a great time and it was incredible refreshing to play this to completion in person again. Also, the newest player said he loved every second of it and "could not believe how fast it went" something I agreed with completely. Very little downtime aside from some drawn out movement phases because of the total clusterfuck that was the central Mediterranean thanks to Roman aggression. Really the only thing I think I can say that slows the game down brutally at this point when you need to wait for people to finish moves before doing yours because responding is critical.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
Eraflure posted: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. So this is how I find out we have a first printing of Spirit Island and that the rules in there are worded incorrectly and do not clarify the game's intent that invaders deal damage to the land AND the dahan at the same time, meaning they're not the ablative shield we thought they were. We had been dealing damage to the dahan first and then bleeding the remainder over to the land, which the errata clarifies is not correct. Whoops. This list may help make the game run smoother, and there's also a little link to 'help the game is kicking my rear end what do.' https://querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Rules-semi-commonly-misplayed
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 17:33
|
|
|
Thanks for all the advice! I think we’d been too lax on adding Major Powers because of the AP of determining which cards to forget. We also hadn’t been aggressive about adding presence — usually opting to add 1 presence and gain energy instead of going for double presence. But we had been cognizant to avoid reclaiming unless we were running low on power cards. Our biggest issue I think was poor use of slow powers. Playing good powers that can work regardless of where the invaders explore (or knowing where they’re going to explore) makes a lot of sense. Edit: Found the problem. We were playing Pandemic-style Blight. Aggro fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 19, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:30
|
|
|
So my fiancee and I got our first game of Renature in and could use a clarification on the rules cause we couldn't quite agree on something. When you close off an area and score it, the rules say "if any colors are tied they are treated as if they are not present." So for example if an area has 4 White, 3 Black and 3 Neutral - I take that to mean that Black and Neutral would cancel out and White would score both the major and minor points for the area. Or in the same example, if 1 more Neutral was added with the last domino, White and Neutral would cancel out and Black would get both major and minor points despite having less total value in the area than the other two colours. She disagrees and thinks that if White and Neutral were tied then no one would get points, as Neutral had more points than Black. The addition of the neutral pieces seems to me to be exactly for this kinda reason where you can swipe out the points from under someone at the last moment without spending any more of your own trees, but I could be wrong. The rule book doesn't give any further explanation that that however and doesn't have any other examples to go after so it's hard to know for sure. Anyways, other than that the game is pretty great. Definitely zips along and has some serious cut-throat element to it underneath the cute woodland exterior. But the scoring is definitely weird, and maybe not badly explained necessarily, but a few more examples/clarifications would go a long way in making the first game a little smoother. We made a handful of mistakes and some stuff we realized far enough along that it wasn't worth trying to go back and correct. Also, I skipped the paragraph about setup for 3-4p since we were playing with two so I missed the only time the rulebook says your player colour is supposed to match the colour of the tiny icon on your player board...Meaning I played a 2 player game against White with the Blue pieces which only have half the shrubs  I didn't realize till the end, I guess i thought it was an asymmetric domino placing game 
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 00:36
|
|
|
untzthatshit posted:So my fiancee and I got our first game of Renature in and could use a clarification on the rules cause we couldn't quite agree on something. Your understanding is how my group played it. "Treated as if they are not present" comes into effect before the actual scoring so you can basically take any tied pieces off and then allocate points to what's left. A rules summary on BGG supports that as well: quote:For each area that you closed this turn, perform an area scoring as follows: DogCop fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Jul 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 02:33
|
|
|
Yeah the way that's written makes it a little more implicit that my understanding was correct. Also points out another thing we were missing - that the player who closed the area gets the token... We were giving it to whomever had "won" the area.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 03:00
|
|
|
Promo vid for Pandemic WoW just dropped and it looks dope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6JsLJojJNY Also comes with 47 minis! Alternatively you can fork out $180 for 20 minis
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 01:45
|
|
|
Infinitum posted:Also comes with 47 minis! But will those 47 minis come with the tactical complexity offered by making them all black and indistinguishable from one another? I only play games where I can’t tell my pieces apart from other players.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 02:47
|
|
|
Thread opinions for On Mars? I'm bored on lockdown and looking at the new expansion on KS https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaglegryphon/on-mars-alien-invasion Probably not backing it, but curious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 10:47
|
|
|
I personally really disliked On Mars. We had a day where I played Vinhos and everyone really enjoyed it/was really into the game and the game felt like the mechanisms of the game gelled really well with the theme (we played the newer version, mind you) and then we played On Mars, which had just come out and the owner was really excited to try it. On Mars fell really flat for everyone apart from the game owner, and the players were visibly disengaged. The main issues with On Mars, at least from my perspective, is that the main mechanical hook of the game (the off/on mars aspect of how actions are handled) wasn't really that interesting and felt clunky and repetitive rather than meaningfully limiting the actions. Kanban, for example, has a mechanism that limits actions, but it leads to much more interesting situations than the equivalent ones within On Mars. As well as that, the theming of On Mars seemed to be more of an attempt to have a game set to a particular topic of interest (that being Martian exploration, which at the time seemed to have a lot of interest due to Terraforming Mars), than an actual attempt to make a game about Martian colonisation. The game has very low conveyance, IMO, and it feels like a a city building game that only nominally uses Mars as a background, with renamed resources that, in some instances, don't make a lot of sense either (wtf are crystals in terms of Martian colonisation?). This seems to be a departure from the cohesive theming of Vinhos and The Gallarist, or even the more abstract theming of Kanban, which adheres more to the feeling of JIT manufacture rather than creating an accurate depiction of it. On Mars has none of that. EDIT: Mind you, I think there are people in the thread that like it: I think Mayveena had good things to say about it, so maybe wait for a positive review before making a decision.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 11:02
|
|
|
I liked On Mars, though some of that might be due to it being my first Lacerda. I think Tekopo's comments aren't unreasonable though. On first glance it might seem you shuttle back and forward between Mars and space but really you want to be spending all your time on Mars. Shuttling functions more as a reset/refresh than choosing a subset of actions since all of the good actions are on Mars. This becomes increasingly the case as the game goes on. I think this is a fair choice given the theme of the game, it's just that the (large) physical board devotes a lot of area to the space actions and it can feel like a disconnect from how the game actually plays. The thing that surprised me more was how easy survival was. I didn't expect Agricola-level subsistence farming but there's never a sense that the colony could fail or even that it's struggling. I was hoping the expac would address this (the original title / theme was Surviving Mars, as a tie-in to the video game) but they've gone a different direction and it's one I'm not interested in. Also it's hard enough to get to the table by itself and a few weird modular expansions would just compound the problem.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 11:44
|
|
|
I was super close to backing it but then I released I could get Spirit Island, A Feast For Odin: Norwegians, the Red Cathedral and still have change left over so I did that instead. I have the Gallerist and Lisboa and really like them both, but it is definitely hard to get them to the table often.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 12:21
|
|
|
Infinitum posted:Thread opinions for On Mars? Phone posting so more later but after 30+ years in the hobby it's my number 1 game. Love it!
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 13:17
|
|
|
Infinitum posted:Thread opinions for On Mars? I haven't played it enough, but I would put it in the middle of the Lacerdas I've played. Better than Vinhos or CO2, worse than The Gallerist, roughly on the level of Lisboa and Escape Plan. (I haven't had a chance to play Kanban EV yet due to the pandemic, but I think it will also wind up ahead of On Mars.) I absolutely do not think that it needs an expansion, though. It's already complex enough that there isn't enough time to both teach it and play in an evening.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 13:43
|
|
|
On Mars has little to do with Terraforming Mars. It instead clearly takes its inspiration from the movie The Martian. The movie production worked directly with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to produce an authentic movie based on how NASA would create a colony on Mars. Thus in my opinion the theming for the game is spot on. There would be an orbiting spaceship over the colony and in the early days of the colony there would be travel from the colony to the orbiter and back to Earth. I think the game represents this scenario very very well. While the game is a significant teach, once you are experienced with the game, the game flows very well. The game has perfect information, no need for a bunch of cards to grok and figure out what to do with. The game is competitive and presents thoughtful decisions that can affect other players' decisions. I think the BGG description of the game is exactly what the game is (except the hated word unmanned; NASA hasn't described any of its missions as 'unmanned' since the early '80's, the proper word is robotic). We've enjoyed all of our plays of the game and would like to get more in (if only I'd stop buying all these other games )The game is expensive partially because (as Lacerda told me) Eagle Gryphon Games compensates him well, so at least some of your money is going directly to the designer. I don't think it needs an expansion either, but assuming Before You Played still has a copy, I'll eventually borrow it from them (they are nearby) and see if it offers anything worth getting.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 13:58
|
|
|
Mayveena posted:On Mars has little to do with Terraforming Mars. It instead clearly takes its inspiration from the movie The Martian. I think the OP was referring more to how there were suddenly all these Mars themed games, like there was something in the water where several designers suddenly were inspired to Mars-theme their games. Less a case of stealing from each other, more like culturally everyone was thinking about Mars. c.v. the sudden appearance of multiple games on wine, coffee and craft beer after decades of none.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 14:09
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:I think the OP was referring more to how there were suddenly all these Mars themed games, like there was something in the water where several designers suddenly were inspired to Mars-theme their games. Less a case of stealing from each other, more like culturally everyone was thinking about Mars. c.v. the sudden appearance of multiple games on wine, coffee and craft beer after decades of none. Tek wasn't the OP but first responder This is what I was referring to quote:As well as that, the theming of On Mars seemed to be more of an attempt to have a game set to a particular topic of interest (that being Martian exploration, which at the time seemed to have a lot of interest due to Terraforming Mars), We'll not ever know for sure I don't think but clearly On Mars tracks to the movie better than any other game(s) that was out there.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 14:11
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:I think the OP was referring more to how there were suddenly all these Mars themed games, like there was something in the water where several designers suddenly were inspired to Mars-theme their games. Less a case of stealing from each other, more like culturally everyone was thinking about Mars. c.v. the sudden appearance of multiple games on wine, coffee and craft beer after decades of none. Another factor might be the coming-of-age of kids who grew up with Pathfinder now buying games and designing their own games.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 14:18
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:I think the OP was referring more to how there were suddenly all these Mars themed games, I fuckin love Mars as both sci-fi/where we're headed as a species (If we don't gently caress up) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZScGEeNPTsQ Also thanks to everyone responding. Goon Hive Mind has worked out fairly well in the past for me, so always good to get opinions.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 14:19
|
|
|
Much love for On Mars here. I love the tension of the surface vs orbit actions, and the combo/bonus action economy expands on Kanban in a cool way. One of my favourite euros.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 14:57
|
|
|
I just wish you could get EGG stuff more easily outside the US. I could get Kanban through the On Mars pledge manager and they say there's stock available in different regions, but that wouldnt ship for like 12 months. The FAQ says "If you want stuff sooner than that just buy it off our website" but if you do that they try and charge $100 for shipping. So is there stock available in the different regions or does it all need to come from the US warehouse? Make up your drat minds.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 15:05
|
|
|
Mayveena posted:Tek wasn't the OP but first responder I do have a problem with the theming of On Mars because, as mentioned by others, it doesn't feel like you are surviving on a hostile planet at all. I feel like it would be trivially easy to retheme On Mars as a city building game and it wouldn't lose much in the translation. I don't really feel like On Mars really represents the barely-alive theme that The Martian went for, where it's a scramble to stay alive, or even the moments prior to the accident that happens in the film. There were entirely too many things that took me away from the theme, and if the map had been set on earth I don't think I would have felt any different in terms of the theme alone. I felt like I was just building a city in On Mars, there was nothing to discover, no adversity to go through or work around. It just really missed the mark for me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 15:16
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:Yeah, the meaning of that sentence was that there were a lot a couple of big Mars-themed games that came out at once after the release of Terraforming Mars, not that the games were actually alike or were trying to represent similar things. You know Tek, me and you don't seem to live on the same planet at times . The theming is perfect. It's not a city builder, cities don't have to go on separate planes to get anything done. Agreed that it's not like the actual The Martian character, absolutely, that wasn't what he was going for clearly. You are looking for more of a survivalist theme perhaps? That could be taken from the movie as well but that's not the direction he wanted. I don't know that the game was presented as a survival style game either, so I will give Lacerda a pass on that. I have to say as a woman who was at JPL for 25+ years and then living with a father who was at JPL for 35+ years, the theming is natural and familiar to me. The concept of an orbiter was discussed way back when my dad first started there and as far as I know, given that there's no actual funding for a colony on Mars, is still the approach they would take. You're of course free to disagree with the theming of the game and the concept by NASA but at least it's rooted in some kind of scientific thought. I think there is a Mars survival game yet to be designed, this just isn't it
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 15:31
|
|
|
Hey, I'm happy that someone disagrees with my take! I just felt that, mechanically, the mars/space part of worker selection was an easy retheme, and the actual play on the map itself didn't really seem to have much to distance it from a standard worker placement. As well as that, I had a big issue with the use of the crystal resource for the game, which didn't really seem to be connected to anything beyond being another resource within the game. You are right, of course, that the base of the game itself is rooted within the actual science, and since it's clear that you have a deeper knowledge of that field than me, I won't contest it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 15:36
|
|
|
As well as that, a Mars survival game was actually created. I even watched like an hour long tutorial on it. I can't remember the name of it but it was critically panned.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 15:37
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:As well as that, a Mars survival game was actually created. I even watched like an hour long tutorial on it. I can't remember the name of it but it was critically panned. Trzewiczek's First Martians is a game in that vein and is so bad I never got around to actually playing it despite purchasing it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:15
|
|
|
SettingSun posted:Trzewiczek's First Martians is a game in that vein and is so bad I never got around to actually playing it despite purchasing it. Honestly, I like Lacerda but when I heard he was doing a game about Mars I think I was just so overwhelmed by the amount of Martian related titles that were released recently and how bad I heard First Martians was made me just completely skip it. Maybe the upcoming COIN game set on Mars will help rejuvenate the setting for me but currently it sits next to Cthulhu and Zombies in terms of excitement.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:24
|
|
|
SettingSun posted:Trzewiczek's First Martians is a game in that vein and is so bad I never got around to actually playing it despite purchasing it. First Martians is a reskin of Robinson Crusoe.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:43
|
|
|
SettingSun posted:Trzewiczek's First Martians is a game in that vein and is so bad I never got around to actually playing it despite purchasing it. Martians: A Story of Civilisation predates all of them, I think, and is pretty good imo. Jedit posted:First Martians is a reskin of Robinson Crusoe. But now With An App(tm)!
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:46
|
|
|
SettingSun posted:Trzewiczek's games are so bad
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:58
|
|
|
I think First Martians gets a bad rap, but then I put more work into understanding the awful rulebook than I'd recommend anybody sensible doing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 16:59
|
|
|
Mission: Red Planet, while merely an okay role selection/area control game, taught me a lot of Martian topography, so I respect it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 17:16
|
|
|
MizuZero posted:Mission: Red Planet, while merely an okay role selection/area control game, taught me a lot of Martian topography, so I respect it. I actually really like this game. It feels bananas at higher player counts too. Works decently at 2, which is saying something for a Cathala game all things considered.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2021 18:13
|
|
|
All the Mars games just merge into one clump in my head. I'm not even sure which I played
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2021 06:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 16:19 |
|
|
Mojo Jojo posted:All the Mars games just merge into one clump in my head. I'm not even sure which I played Monopoly: Mars Edition
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2021 06:22
|
|
