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I'm enjoying Unfathomable but drat, I wish they'd made the distance cards a fixed number with variable amounts of destruction, instead of variable distance. Game is long, and it chafes when good play for the traitors is making it longer.
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Oct 9, 2021 10:42
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Gort posted:I'm enjoying Unfathomable but drat, I wish they'd made the distance cards a fixed number with variable amounts of destruction, instead of variable distance. Game is long, and it chafes when good play for the traitors is making it longer. I think making sure folk are stoking the engine every turn helps. There's few reasons no to stoke the engine anyway.
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Oct 9, 2021 11:13
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Gort posted:I'm enjoying Unfathomable but drat, I wish they'd made the distance cards a fixed number with variable amounts of destruction, instead of variable distance. Game is long, and it chafes when good play for the traitors is making it longer. That was a problem in BSG and kind of led to a groupthink in the forum games (in retrospect) that any sort of delay or stalling was a cylon tell. Pushing forward suicidally fast was equally as bad as the extra crisis cards you’d get for not pushing was the reasoning. I think that’s correct, but it definitely was our meta and other groups I played with IRL did not have the same opinion Did you have any other thoughts Gort? I remember you played a few forums BSG games.
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Oct 9, 2021 14:23
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Picking a 1 was a Cylon tell. Not picking a 3 wasn't necessarily a Cylon tell, but it was something that got everyone's attention. Unfathomable's 12 distance is actually a BSG house rule that we started using here.
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Oct 9, 2021 15:12
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I'm going to play Oath for the first time tomorrow, we'll have 4-5 people and a whole day set aside for gaming. I'm hype.
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Oct 9, 2021 17:53
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Some Numbers posted:Picking a 1 was a Cylon tell. Not picking a 3 wasn't necessarily a Cylon tell, but it was something that got everyone's attention. The unpicked destination card should go straight to the bottom of the deck without anyone else seeing it so, with some rare exceptions, no one should know you bottom decked a 3. I assume Unfathomable keeps the same rule?
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Oct 9, 2021 22:16
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I don't know if anyone's looked at Brazil Imperial, but it's truly amazing that we are still trumpeting European destruction of Indigenous people. Hey you can even play as Queen Victoria? Or a bunch of 'empire' building Spaniards? Geezus Christ, when will publishers quit this poo poo?? No I'm not doing a BGG thread on this because clearly they wouldn't give a poo poo, but honestly it's super disappointing that this is still happening. And no, no apology or anything else in the rules.
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Oct 10, 2021 00:44
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Mayveena posted:I don't know if anyone's looked at Brazil Imperial, but it's truly amazing that we are still trumpeting European destruction of Indigenous people. Hey you can even play as Queen Victoria? Or a bunch of 'empire' building Spaniards? Geezus Christ, when will publishers quit this poo poo?? I saw it mentioned in a bit of Spiel coverage so I checked it out last night. Looked vaguely interesting but a fairly new designer and like you mentioned the colonialist theme is a bit meh. I'm pretty sure the designer is Brazilian at least so maybe there is more too it than just full colonialism? Your post made me jump on the bgg page though and there is already a post about the theme and history and it is a cluster gently caress. A few posters coming out of the woodwork claiming the designer was on a pro-monarchist podcast. The designer just repeatedly calling everyone liars. Lots and lots of posts deleted by the mods. Yeah I think I'll give this one a pass.
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Oct 10, 2021 01:59
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There's no mention of any kind of context as it portends to the existing Indigenous people, so gently caress him.
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Oct 10, 2021 02:59
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This reminds me of something I came across a few days ago. Apparently, there was an art project out of Singapore about the history of the interactions between Imperial Britain and the native Malay and other indigenous locals. The major part of this project was a fictional board game called "1819 Singapore" an asymmetric semi-cop negotiation game where players have individual goals. It's meant as an "exhibition featuring a board game could offer an interpretation/investigation of history through it's mechanics and presentation." The creators went so far as to hire SUSD to create a video preview to play in this art gallery as an informational-type video. It feels kind of like something you might have seen Troy McClure do in a museum telling you about the history of the steam engine, crossed with a normal board game review. Again, the game is entirely fictional and the video is meant as supportive media in the gallery, and was not really for the wider internet (at least in Quinns' mind). The fictional SUSD video is here: By clicking this link, I agree to hold Magnetic North blameless if you get hyped over a board game that doesn't exist irrevocably in perpetuity throughout the multiverse. It contains no references to it being art project, no wink to the audience. I did not realize it was fake until I saw one of the top comments mentioning it. Some additional background can be found here on Reddit from Quinns and one of the creators Having this be Quinns is certainly fascinating from a metatextual level, more than the simple verisimilitude you see in movie cameos where Jay Leno or Jim Cramer show up to make us feel like the video exists in our world. It's so much more involved than most instances of this type of thing. Of course, beyond that, I think the art project is incredibly thought provoking about both colonialism and how board games can process such things mechanically. We already know how to extract resources from so-called 'terra nullius'; that is a well-trodden path. This fictional board game is instead about the way people interact as people and as members of nations/civilizations with a mismatch in goals and strength. I was also sadly left hype for something that doesn't exist, but who knows? Maybe this will be the next Cones of Dunshire.
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Oct 10, 2021 11:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmzfpxNVcGg Oh it's fictional? I heard about it from this video.
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Oct 10, 2021 13:00
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I just had my first game of A Feast for Odin. By that I mean I popped all the pieces and backed the base game and The Norwegians into one box (thanks to Jedit for the handy guide). At some point I will bust it out for a 1p game before introducing it to my friends later this month. The fake game review made it sound fascinating, I guess I will just have to make do with John Company for now which seems like th closest facsimile to what they were putting up.
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Oct 10, 2021 15:26
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Mayveena posted:There's no mention of any kind of context This bothers me more than games with an imperialistic theme. While most of the time you could come up with another theme, I understand that one can't always mechanically reflect the downsides of imperialism. You can always include context.
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Oct 10, 2021 15:59
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Dang that fake review is awesome, they did a great job with what they were trying to accomplish, it’s completely believable as a game. There is a mailing list signup linked in the description, it’s a very strong pitch and simulationist things like that are very interesting to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes reality some day
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Oct 10, 2021 16:58
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grate deceiver posted:I'm going to play Oath for the first time tomorrow, we'll have 4-5 people and a whole day set aside for gaming. I'm hype. Played one game, 4 players, I was the Chancellor and won by rolling 6 on the first imperial win check. Training game with the starting setup, everyone was pretty muc just exploring what to even do in the game, so I held onto the Oathkeeper for the whole game pretty much, but the agreement was that it owns? I think hardest part to grok was the campaigning - when to add defender die from what, and it wasn't clear to everyone that you can target more than one site, so it was a lot of small battles. I might have won solely because at one point I remembered I could just take all sites from someone in one go. I like how the whole world box set up is design to make you go through and see all the cards, you can only take something out of the game if at least one person has drawn it. One question about the relic deck setup - since you're supposed to put the Chancellor's relinquary relic on top of the deck, does that mean that they are supposed to persist through games, unless given out and stolen? Or am I missing something here and the relinquary should be randomized every new game?
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Oct 10, 2021 19:36
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If I understand the timeline correctly: --fake board game is made as an art piece --Quinns makes the video, with no context that it's fictitious because everyone involved thought it would only play in the exhibit and thus have the context clear. --The video finds its way onto the internet. The folks involved are quick to try and do damage control and provide appropriate context, but viewers are still hooked and want to play the game. --The designer says "I designed it to look right rather than play right, but if y'all know that going in then what the heck why not?" and the kickstarter happens. It's a really neat story all around.
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Oct 10, 2021 21:17
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Aramoro posted:I think making sure folk are stoking the engine every turn helps. There's few reasons no to stoke the engine anyway. Huh? You can't stoke the engine without strength cards, which only half of the characters in our game drew, and there were always pressing matters for those characters to deal with like damaged locations for the engineer and swarms of fish-men for the first mate to gun down. Not to mention you're risking fuel each time you do it. We did do it a few times towards the end of the game since we were pretty sure we were secure on fuel at that point, but I guess that knowledge comes with experience.
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Oct 10, 2021 22:34
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Aerox posted:The unpicked destination card should go straight to the bottom of the deck without anyone else seeing it so, with some rare exceptions, no one should know you bottom decked a 3. Yeah, it does. Presumably Some Numbers was meaning in a situation where other players knew what was in the distance deck through scouting or president/keeper of the tome actions.
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Oct 10, 2021 22:36
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Fellis posted:Did you have any other thoughts Gort? I remember you played a few forums BSG games. It's fun to be playing BSG again is the main one. Unfathomable is definitely BSG (they even threw in a few references like a dog called Starbuck and a character named Dualeh (more tenuous, but reminded me of Duallah from BSG)) with a few tweaks and upgrades. An example of something I'd consider an upgrade is how every character has a unique "reveal as traitor" mechanic - the Master of Arms can shoot everyone in a location, the First Mate can lead people off course, the Stowaway can steal things from other characters. Just a nice character thing with no downside. Another one is the crisis cards giving specific characters choices, like the Doctor having a medical ethics choice to make. Just makes the game a tiny bit different depending on which characters are in it. For my group, we basically played BSG so many times that it doesn't really get to the table any more, so it's been nice having a revamped version to play. If you didn't like BSG though, you won't like Unfathomable. It has the same basic gameplay and I have the same issues with Unfathomable as I do with BSG, which others may or may not agree with: 1. The game is much less interesting once you know who the traitors are - I always wonder if there would be some way to house-rule the end of the game once everyone's revealed, where the traitors get points for damaged locations, missing resources and remaining distance, and if they score over a certain amount then they win on the spot. The interesting part of the game is dealing with problems while simultaneously suspecting the other players of working against you, and once the teams become clear you're just going through the motions to find out who won. 2. The game is too long. This is made worse since a traitor captain can lengthen the game, and bad play, traitors or bad luck can lead to the game becoming longer still. I feel Unfathomable missed an opportunity to remove the game-lengthening elements and replace them with game-shortening elements - instead of a traitor captain driving the ship in circles, they should instead be driving you into an iceberg and damaging the ship. Or a crisis that would move the travel track back instead burns extra fuel. In both circumstances the humans get closer to losing, but with the former rules they lose in a longer game and in the latter rules they lose in a shorter game. I don't think either issue is fatal, and there's nothing quite like BSG and Unfathomable out there, and it's also possible that as my group learns the game it'll take less time to run due to us being more familiar with the rules and more familiar with how to ensure the ship goes faster (making more use of the captain's cabin and boiler room locations, basically) so flaw 2 might decrease with more plays.
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Oct 10, 2021 22:51
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Bruceski posted:--The designer says "I designed it to look right rather than play right, but if y'all know that going in then what the heck why not?" and the kickstarter happens. The only thing is I think the existing Kickstarter video is part of the art project and is also not real? I can't find anything of it on the real kickstarter page. Though maybe it will become a real project later based on the positive response but I think in this timeline it's not real yet.
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Oct 10, 2021 23:12
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Bruceski posted:--The designer says "I designed it to look right rather than play right, but if y'all know that going in then what the heck why not?" and the kickstarter happens. ModernBoardGames.txt Like, its so on the nose you can't convince me that's not an intentional joke.
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Oct 10, 2021 23:20
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finished Pandemic Legacy Season 0 with one loss, by far the best of the series in story and gameplay.
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Oct 10, 2021 23:46
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Me and my partner quit and game too, it just felt like the story didn’t do very much. I read all the cards and there are a few interesting twists, but I hate it was it felt like we spent most of the game waiting to catch cards instead of making choices.
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Oct 10, 2021 23:52
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Bruceski posted:--The designer says "I designed it to look right rather than play right, but if y'all know that going in then what the heck why not?" and the kickstarter happens. I think the kickstarter video is also part of the exhibit, to prime you for the video review later. Pretty sure there’s no actual game at all aside from how much they prototyped so Quinns had more of a thing to show. I’m glad it made its way out though, its incredibly interesting!
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Oct 11, 2021 01:15
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I have lived in Singapore and I would play the poo poo out of that game.
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Oct 11, 2021 02:38
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Ventured out and found my new FLGS this weekend, and they had 1 last copy of Cascadia, so it came home with me. I really dig it - an easy teach, quick turns, chill vibe. Love the flexibility of the nature tokens. My only real gripe is that while understanding scoring is easy - 4 ways to score points - actually calculating scores is a bit of a pain. Check out the scorecard - https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6372969/cascadia.
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Oct 11, 2021 05:43
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Did a 6 player Boatalstar Atlantica yesterday and games good. Still long took us 2 1/2 hours to get to a Hybrid victory having gone 10 distance. The game harder than BSG because there's simply no let up for the humans once you get on the death spiral. The game defaults to being hard for humans so I think it's going to take a bit more practice to get a human victory. Someone mentioned that is you don't like BSG you won't like Unfathomable but I'm going to say no. I really dislike BSG but pretty into unfathomable at this stage.
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Oct 11, 2021 08:44
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Aramoro posted:Someone mentioned that is you don't like BSG you won't like Unfathomable but I'm going to say no. I really dislike BSG but pretty into unfathomable at this stage. That's interesting - what do you dislike about BSG that you don't dislike about Unfathomable? Mechanically they're very similar.
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Oct 11, 2021 10:48
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grate deceiver posted:One question about the relic deck setup - since you're supposed to put the Chancellor's relinquary relic on top of the deck, does that mean that they are supposed to persist through games, unless given out and stolen? Or am I missing something here and the relinquary should be randomized every new game? Both the Chancellor's reliquary and the winner's relics are shuffled and put on top of the deck, so it'll be randomized to a varying degree depending on how many relics the winner had/how the shuffle turns out.
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Oct 11, 2021 10:53
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Gort posted:That's interesting - what do you dislike about BSG that you don't dislike about Unfathomable? Mechanically they're very similar. So for me the fundamental problem in BSG is the game is boring for the humans. You get 1 action on your turn and there's usually a 'right' answer for what you're doing that's defined by your role. If you're a pilot you're out in a fighter fighting etc. Cylons have the fun in the game but even then they spend a bunch of time not on the ship dicking around somewhere else by themselves. In Unfathomable everyone stays on the ship all the time so there's more interaction between the players. You get 2 actions and with Items it doesn't matter who you are you can do everything. Anyone can get a gun and go shoot some deep ones and anyone can fix the boat. This gives more more space in the game for plausible deniability as well, there are more good things to do which are kinda equally valid. The skill card actions are also better than BSG, again giving more options for players to do things. You could be stoking the engine to escape the monsters or because you're trying to make the fuel run out. Also the traitors can unbrig themselves which is great. So whilst they are fundamentally the same game the way they play out is very differently in terms of having things to do, player interaction etc. My overriding memory of BSG is how boring it is a lot of the time, you wait for your turn to come round, you take your single action which is doing the only thing that you do and you're done, Unfathomable is just more fun. Aramoro fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 11:14
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Fate Accomplice posted:finished Pandemic Legacy Season 0 with one loss, by far the best of the series in story and gameplay. We just started it and are really enjoying it. I don't know you managed to only get one loss because we managed to lose the goddamn prologue. Aramoro posted:So for me the fundamental problem in BSG is the game is boring for the humans. You get 1 action on your turn and there's usually a 'right' answer for what you're doing that's defined by your role. If you're a pilot you're out in a fighter fighting etc. Cylons have the fun in the game but even then they spend a bunch of time not on the ship dicking around somewhere else by themselves. The positive chat has me firmly interested in this and assuming there aren't stock issues, will almost 100% pick up a copy when it makes sense. What are the average run-times do you think for the game? fischtick posted:We've played it a few times. It's cool and chill, and will slightly tickle your low/med weight Euro analysis systems. Thanks for the write-up. I'd love to try it before buying but it's honestly not expensive and I don't think any of the cafes around me would have a copy. EDIT: Just wanted to chime in and say we got a 6p game of 1830 in yesterday with two total newbies to the genre. We had to call it early before the 6s got purchased because it took forever for the 3s to break thanks to no one buying more trains than they needed or selling down to start new companies... That's something that kind of irks me about 1830 in particular is that it can drag if people aren't pushing the trains but it isn't intuitive to buy more trains than you need. Either way, everyone had a good time as far as I could tell and were discussing their moves and strategy when we ended things and were very curious about the other games in the series. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 18:53
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FulsomFrank posted:What are the average run-times do you think for the game? 2-3 hours. It's very procedural, but the more discussion you have about things will make it take longer so that part will affect length the most.
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Oct 11, 2021 18:59
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Aramoro posted:So for me the fundamental problem in BSG is the game is boring for the humans. You get 1 action on your turn and there's usually a 'right' answer for what you're doing that's defined by your role. If you're a pilot you're out in a fighter fighting etc. Cylons have the fun in the game but even then they spend a bunch of time not on the ship dicking around somewhere else by themselves. Big agreed for me, too. The baseline in unfathomable being everyone gets two actions while the XO equivalent only grants one removes the BSG thing where the most optional human play is 90% of the time to give your turn away to someone else. It feels like there's also a ton more room for active sandbagging and sabotage without revealing as a hybrid, because of how many tradeoffs and downsides some spaces and cards have.
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Oct 11, 2021 19:14
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I dunno, "two actions instead of one action and a move" sounds like a huge change, but since it takes an action to move, a lot of the time a turn will still be "one action and a move" unless you're lucky enough to have action cards it makes sense to play or to already be standing where you need to be.
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Oct 11, 2021 22:14
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Gort posted:I dunno, "two actions instead of one action and a move" sounds like a huge change, but since it takes an action to move, a lot of the time a turn will still be "one action and a move" unless you're lucky enough to have action cards it makes sense to play or to already be standing where you need to be. Quite a few of the characters have abilties that grant an additional action after doing thier thing so this does help a bit. But also the skill card actions do more things. So a lot of the time you are moving and acting but having the option to stoke the engine and exo someone else, or exo two other people etc makes a big difference.
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Oct 11, 2021 22:51
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Aramoro posted:Quite a few of the characters have abilties that grant an additional action after doing thier thing so this does help a bit. But also the skill card actions do more things. So a lot of the time you are moving and acting but having the option to stoke the engine and exo someone else, or exo two other people etc makes a big difference. Yeah, it's this. It also rewards planning ahead by basically giving everyone the BSG equivalent of critical situation at all times.
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Oct 12, 2021 03:48
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EU goons - Taiwan Boardgame Design have a 50% off sale on all their leftover stock from Spiel 2019. Games available include Fortune City, Dadaocheng 2E and Power On!, which people may remember me nominating in the last Goon Draft. Stock is very limited, and the sale lasts until Saturday. Fill your boots. https://www.tbdgames.com/french-warehouse
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Oct 12, 2021 07:40
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Watched some preview videos of Messina 1347 & Bitoku. Both look great for different reasons, and I probably like Messina better over all, but gently caress a duck Bitoku is just absolutely eye glazing at first glance:strip_icc()/pic6441505.jpg) The board is waaaaayyyy too busy.
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Oct 12, 2021 08:59
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It gets better. There are only a dozen or so spots for workers and they are the size of a die. The rest of the space is taken up by markets and progress tracks. Why yes, David Turczi has a design credit. How did you know?
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Oct 12, 2021 09:30
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The best thing about Bitoku are the offended French players.
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Oct 12, 2021 12:09
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