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PerniciousKnid posted:This is basically what I thought, and then I figured if I'm playing it solo digital then I should just play XCOM or something instead. this is the eternal dilemma I face with all tabletop solo games. I have a small handful of solo-only games, but every time I see a 2+ player game "with solo mode included" I get +small% more excited and think "I'll also play this solo!" when it comes time to find something to do, though, 100% of the time it's easier to fire up a video game or watch a movie than bust out a solo game.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:57
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All you solo board gamers should go post in the war games thread because nobody ever plays hex and counter games IRL.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:59
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A good solo game to me is more like a jigsaw puzzle where you pick at it for 10 - 15 minutes and then go about your day to pick at it some more later.
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Jan 26, 2022 03:29
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Joe Chill posted:A good solo game to me is more like a jigsaw puzzle where you pick at it for 10 - 15 minutes and then go about your day to pick at it some more later. I just started doing this. Set a game up on the table, and I play a few turns occasionally when I walk by. I was psyching myself out by thinking I needed to complete an entire game. Turns out, I do not. Very enjoyable!
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Jan 26, 2022 03:40
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My fiance and I finished the campaign of The Initiative the other night after deciding that our kid wasn't going to have patience for it. It was neat. You get a choice of two out of four actions every turn, plus your character's special action. Each requires a card to be played on it with a higher number than the one before; play a card too high and you'll need to take the Regroup action to clear that action space off. You play on a map with tokens sprinkled throughout, and collect those tokens to reveal symbols on a board, trying to guess the answer Wheel of Fortune style... but the trick is the answer might be encoded using those super secret spy tricks such as Morse code, a code wheel you found, etc. The plot is told in a comic book format, and sometimes clues are hidden on those pages (or elsewhere, in some clever twists). It's not replayable at all, and some of the design choices would make it really easy to accidentally spoil yourself and ruin the whole reason to play a mission if you're not careful. I got a little tired of the collect-a-thon mechanics towards the end. I can't think of many cooperative story-driven games with this kind of light complexity though.
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Jan 26, 2022 03:41
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I played Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective with my wife but it would easily work as a solo game.
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Jan 26, 2022 05:52
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armorer posted:This is true. I have a number of 3d printed accessories for Gloomhaven that make it much easier, so if you have a 3d printer you can definitely fix some of that, but stock it is a ton of fiddly bookkeeping My biggest pain point in Gloomhaven was managing all the health tracking for all the enemies (and when you get to four players, there are a LOT of enemies and they have a lot of health). Even using some small d10 dice to track health gets super clunky as enemy count rises.
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Jan 26, 2022 07:22
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We played.physical but used an Android app to track health and status stuff
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Jan 26, 2022 07:45
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gschmidl posted:We played.physical but used an Android app to track health and status stuff This!!! Made life SOOOOOOO much easier. And then I started using an app for the campaign and tracking characters as well. Now I could 3 scenarios in an evening with my wife.
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Jan 26, 2022 07:51
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Hi i am new to this thread but wanted to say that Mage Knight is a very fun solo game. It is very heavy (for me anyway) but once you get in the flow its like a big puzzle you can chip away at. I have also been playing the resident evil 3 boardgame solo for some dumb fun. It has a suprising amount of variety, and as a big fan of space hulk, it creates a similar sort of tension. Also like spacehulk the modular floor tiles mean you can build your own campaigns which is fun.
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Jan 26, 2022 08:23
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The Eyes Have It posted:My biggest pain point in Gloomhaven was managing all the health tracking for all the enemies (and when you get to four players, there are a LOT of enemies and they have a lot of health). Even using some small d10 dice to track health gets super clunky as enemy count rises. I bought some little stands that have life spinners built in.
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Jan 26, 2022 09:03
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I was going over the OP to fix more of the thousands of typos I left in it and I thought of something: We're recommending Kingdomino at 3-5. However, BGG does not recommend the game at 3. I think BGA even directly suggests not playing it at 3. (I let my premium lapse, so I can't check it myself.) I've only played it at 2. Has anybody played Kingdomino at 3? I imagine the idea is that issue is two players swapping spots, leaving the third player stuck with no choice in last position, but with the random distribution of tiles, I guess there is only a 2/3 chance they will have a viable tile in the top two?
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Jan 26, 2022 10:25
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BGG tells me just under a third of my plays have been at 3 player. It's a little more work administering the tiles, but not much, and the game itself is pretty much just Kingdomino. It's ... fine?  isn't really a condemnation.
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Jan 26, 2022 11:19
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I finally lost a game of Wir Sind Das Volk! Most of my games have featured me teaching a new player, and then outlasting them while playing as East (always East, because while the game is well balanced, that side is a lot more stressful than the other). I'm going to chalk this up to an improvement in my teaching technique, rather than a decline in my abilities. I was able to lock down Bayern with unrest early, and get a nice lead in the socialist track, but in a way I think this helped West, since it broke him out of the newbie trap of developing everything super evenly. He never got a chance to develop Bayern, so instead he wound up making a few killer provinces, and was able to overwhelm me in the fourth decade. There's just not enough time to do everything, man.
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Jan 26, 2022 11:27
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The Eyes Have It posted:My biggest pain point in Gloomhaven was managing all the health tracking for all the enemies (and when you get to four players, there are a LOT of enemies and they have a lot of health). Even using some small d10 dice to track health gets super clunky as enemy count rises. We used stacks of small d6s and it felt pretty fine - I did fill in in another group who were carefully putting life counters on the segments on the monster sleeves though and i felt like i was playing blind.
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Jan 26, 2022 12:14
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gschmidl posted:We played.physical but used an Android app to track health and status stuff yeah, the app takes away like 80% of the bookkeeping, can't imagine playing without it
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Jan 26, 2022 12:40
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Kingdom Death: Monster is a game absolutely drenched in misogyny. If you could wring it out, the little puddle on the floor would tell you that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Enjoying KDM, then, means you either haven't noticed the misogyny or you have noticed it and don't care. And to put it charitably, neither of those is a good look. This is my position as a person, and as a moderator. I'm not going to defend KDM and I'm not going to defend KDM-enjoyment as an activity. And I want that to be clear so that you read what I say next through that lens. I feel that going from 'enjoys KDM' to 'is a rape apologist' is a jump too far. People are allowed to disagree on how to interpret media. What's obvious to one isn't necessarily obvious to all. The reason I'm not inclined to threadban PRADA SLUT is because all I see is him sometimes disagreeing with thread consensus on things, sometimes shitposting, and sometimes making reasonable posts. I mean I could be wrong -- I've been wrong about things in the past and I'll be wrong about things again in the future -- but contrary to what Leperflesh said earlier I do follow this thread on and off and I'm not convinced of PS's Irredeemable Bad Person status. I know a bunch of you are going to disagree with my judgement here. I'm not trying to convince you, just explain why I'm making the decisions I am in a transparent way, in public. If you want to argue the case I'd prefer not to continue doing it in the board game thread -- you can PM me, or you can PM an admin and ask them to overrule Leperflesh and I, or if you want to keep it public and transparent you can start a thread in QCS. Or I guess we could keep doing it here; I'm aware that controlling the location of an argument can often be a silencing tactic and I don't want to do that, I just want to let people talk about Zendo in peace.
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Jan 26, 2022 12:43
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armorer posted:I think it's quite fun to sit around the table and play Gloomhaven with friends every two weeks or so. It's something I miss since the pandemic set in. If you're only in it for the tactical combat then sure, digital is probably fine, but it's not the same experience as sitting around with your friends. This was going to be the plan with my friends and I pre-covid. Now it is exactly what we do on digital, without the added need for travel, set up and clean up, who cares if we aren't face to face, we could always just use zoom instead of steam voice chat if we wanted to see each other Edit: we're usually able to get 2-3 scenarios done in a night in digital, where on physical we'd probably be limited to only one
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Jan 26, 2022 13:13
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nordichammer posted:I just started doing this. Set a game up on the table, and I play a few turns occasionally when I walk by. I was psyching myself out by thinking I needed to complete an entire game. Turns out, I do not. Very enjoyable! This sounds great until I remember I have cats and anything unattended is going on the floor immediately
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Jan 26, 2022 13:24
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Shout out to Gameology, a very good store here in Australia, for hosting the shittiest Australia Day flash sale https://www.gameology.com.au/collections/summer-sizzler-aus-day-sale Just the absolute bottom of the barrel nonsense purely because it's Aussie themed.
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Jan 26, 2022 14:00
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Infinitum posted:Shout out to Gameology, a very good store here in Australia, for hosting the shittiest Australia Day flash sale The sales up here have been pretty lame lately. I always get a chuckle when one of the big dogs in the GTA area, 401 Games, does a sale on like Canada Day or Labour Day and WHOA 6% OFF GAMES, INCREDIBLE. Better than a kick in the pants sure, but just barrel scraping. BGB has been weak lately too, I stayed up until midnight to get first crack at their boxing day sale and it was... not good. I did get my copy of 1848 though and is it me or are the tiles in it extra large? Looking forward to laying track through the outback and avoiding kangaroos, cheers mate.
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Jan 26, 2022 15:59
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potatocubed posted:I feel that going from 'enjoys KDM' to 'is a rape apologist' is a jump too far. It's not just the KDM enjoyment, it's saying that a drawing of an almost naked woman being pinned down and tied up by a group is just a regular old magic ritual, downplaying the sexual violence implied. This has happened in the old thread. FulsomFrank posted:The sales up here have been pretty lame lately. I always get a chuckle when one of the big dogs in the GTA area, 401 Games, does a sale on like Canada Day or Labour Day and WHOA 6% OFF GAMES, INCREDIBLE. Better than a kick in the pants sure, but just barrel scraping.
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Jan 26, 2022 16:18
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potatocubed posted:I'm not convinced of PS's Irredeemable Bad Person status. It makes sense that if you don't see them as a rape apologist, then yeah they're not a Bad Person. Just apparently an appreciator of the finest misogynist media.
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Jan 26, 2022 16:43
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Infinitum posted:Shout out to Gameology, a very good store here in Australia, for hosting the shittiest Australia Day flash sale Outside of the disappointment from this sale, are they an online retailer worthy of inclusion in the OP? I noticed I have no Aus/NZ stores listed, just US, UK, and EU. In other terms, are they like the Melbourne Monopoly, or are they more like like the Perth Monopoly? That's it, that's the only Australia joke I know. Everyone makes fun of Perth for some reason.
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Jan 26, 2022 17:02
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potatocubed posted:I feel that going from 'enjoys KDM' to 'is a rape apologist' is a jump too far. I imagine there wouldn't be as much of an issue if he was saying he enjoyed playing in spite of the uncomfortable amounts of eroticized sexual violence but his opinions were that those elements just flat out do not exist. I don't know what you should do about him and I feel like the recent crypto posts are more just idiotic than the actively bad KDM denial stuff. I agree that going from "someone enjoys KDM" to "that person is a rape apologist" is a jump too far, but it's not really a significant jump at all to go from "this game does not feature sexualized violence against women" to "this person is dismissing the sexualized violence and making making excuses for it." On top of that, this is an issue that really should have been dealt with when those posts were actually relevant because now we're in a new thread months later and this stuff has come back up over a separate issue that is completely irrelevant to why some people wanted prada threadbanned.. FirstAidKite fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 17:21
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Infinitum posted:Shout out to Gameology, a very good store here in Australia, for hosting the shittiest Australia Day flash sale oh wow, 40 cents off of Top Trumps Melbourne, what a deal!
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Jan 26, 2022 17:22
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Yeah I don't wanna bring back the KDM chat but the issue imo was always, not even pointing fingers here, people who are apologists for it in a actually the problematic elements in it don't exist, or only exist in side material, or exist but aren't that bad, etc. and misrepresenting people's valid criticisms of the game and act as if it's all puritan pearl clutching because people don't like the game that includes a (admittedly optional add on before anyone corrects me) tentacle monster surrounded by nude, pregnant women.
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Jan 26, 2022 17:26
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Dr. Lunchables posted:All you solo board gamers should go post in the war games thread because nobody ever plays hex and counter games IRL. my favorite solo game experiences have all been non-solo wargames where I played all sides myself I need to think about that some more. In some ways it scratched the same kind of itch as The Sims, where I am watching a story unfold, and where I have a medium amount of control over the story's direction, but can still be surprised. I am not sure whether wargaming non-solo games is even "gaming" but it's definitely a thing that "experience generator" games do. hmm.
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Jan 26, 2022 17:36
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PRADA SLUT posted:I bought some little stands that have life spinners built in. I printed some standee bases that I can put small d10s and status markers in, but there are some standee bases with counters built in that I may print. There's NO WAY IN HELL that I would deal with using life counters on the number slots on the cards. That's a level of fiddliness that I refuse to deal with.
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Jan 26, 2022 18:29
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PRADA SLUT posted:I bought some little stands that have life spinners built in. xiw posted:We used stacks of small d6s and it felt pretty fine - I did fill in in another group who were carefully putting life counters on the segments on the monster sleeves though and i felt like i was playing blind. Both of those are huge improvements, but IMO 3d printed dials or dice also take up enough real estate on the boards -- they are considerably "bigger" than the standees themselves -- that once you are into 4p numbers of monsters in groups all adjacent to one another, it no longer feels like an elegant solution and becomes clunky. I think an app that is screen casted to a monitor or TV screen everyone can easily see would be a great solution, but I never did get around to trying that.
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Jan 26, 2022 18:50
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I just memorized all the monster health and statuses in my brain because I am Beepbo, the Amazing Computer Boy
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Jan 26, 2022 18:54
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RE: solo chat Setting up a game and going back to play a move or two at my leisure sounds like a great idea.... but I have a cat who will 100% gently caress with whatever I setup so a move or two at my leisure would then require me taking my table topper on/off each time and that's no longer leisurely. I guess I'll stick to playing war games via VASSAL 
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Jan 26, 2022 19:04
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The Eyes Have It posted:Both of those are huge improvements, but IMO 3d printed dials or dice also take up enough real estate on the boards -- they are considerably "bigger" than the standees themselves -- that once you are into 4p numbers of monsters in groups all adjacent to one another, it no longer feels like an elegant solution and becomes clunky. I never had a board space issue with the standee bases, and played exclusively with 4 players.
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Jan 26, 2022 19:05
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For Gloomhaven, I just put spindown dice directly next to the corresponding monsters
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Jan 26, 2022 19:11
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Just use the Gloomhaven app
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Jan 26, 2022 19:15
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For gloomhaven we use an app to manage monster attacks but then health and status tracking we do with dice and chits. The book keeping isn't so bad if you're distributing the workload around the room, and the communication between me operating the app and my friends managing the analogue stuff means that everyone has access to the information. (in other words, player A says "this monster attacks this person," then player B says "ok 5 damage," then player B goes "I retaliate for 3" and player C goes "ok that monster has 3 health left" )
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Jan 26, 2022 19:23
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armorer posted:I never had a board space issue with the standee bases, and played exclusively with 4 players. I found that most of the dice-based or 3d printed solutions for tracking the standee's health ended up basically taking up the whole hex, so when we had bigger groups of monsters all adjacent to one another there's not much room to get fingers in and fiddle the indicators (not much visibility of them either.) You end up lifting it out, making the adjustment, then putting it back down and doing that for a ton of monsters is what really made me wish for a better way.
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Jan 26, 2022 19:25
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CommonShore posted:the communication between me operating the app and my friends managing the analogue stuff means that everyone has access to the information. The app we used networked everyone's phone for information sharing. Gloomhaven Helper, I think?
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Jan 26, 2022 20:00
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I used these PLASTIC bases (they had white paint on the numbers). I didn't want to use an app for bookkeeping (like Descent), but I did use an app for a spoiler-free room setup and campaign tracking (since it's annoying to understand what you have prereqs for). Couldn't see terrain or monsters until I opened doors, couldn't see advanced paragraphs of the scenario or rewards until I triggered them. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 26, 2022 20:01
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Magnetic North posted:Outside of the disappointment from this sale, are they an online retailer worthy of inclusion in the OP? I noticed I have no Aus/NZ stores listed, just US, UK, and EU. Board Game Oracle works for Australia so I'd just mention that I guess? Gameology is normally pretty good though.
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