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PerniciousKnid posted:My recollection was that the allies were overpowered and Russia could stall the Axis indefinitely by spamming infantry, to the point that limiting Russia's ability to mass produce infantry was a popular variant. Yes its this, most people do not leverage the US/UK resources to support USSR properly (fly planes to Karelia to defend basically) and they fold too fast to Germany. The Allies have the advantage if played correctly.
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May 11, 2022 19:47
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Ok I'm addicted to Gaia Project. I can see it's like its predecessor and an experienced player can and will blow a novice out of the water. I'm still trying to figure out how to score well. I'm still at the stage where I feel accomplished breaking 100, but the dev said that winners will hover around 160. Some outlier games can even break 200. Someday...
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May 11, 2022 20:14
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Fellis posted:Yes its this, most people do not leverage the US/UK resources to support USSR properly (fly planes to Karelia to defend basically) and they fold too fast to Germany. The Allies have the advantage if played correctly. Just to be sure, you're talking about the original, unrevised version from the 1980s, since that's the one I was mentioning? Because I know there was a balance change to the game, IIRC some time in the 90s or early aughts.
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May 11, 2022 21:22
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SettingSun posted:Ok I'm addicted to Gaia Project. I can see it's like its predecessor and an experienced player can and will blow a novice out of the water. I'm still trying to figure out how to score well. I'm still at the stage where I feel accomplished breaking 100, but the dev said that winners will hover around 160. Some outlier games can even break 200. Someday... For brief Gaia Project tips, so much of it is mapping an effective strategy from the start. Take a look at the two end-game victory point conditions, take a look at the round-end bonuses, and then look for a Faction well-situated to progress towards the former while taking good advantage of the latter. Also bear in mind what the bonus tiles are available as some factions can help shore up a type of income that may be lacking in the bonus tiles themselves. Where possible, try to take bonus tiles that will give you additional VP for your strategy (like grabbing the mines VP bonus tile whenever you can if you've regularly got 5 to 7 mines on the board). I personally find Ivits (red faction who have tremendous advantages in terms of making federations and cosmic cube income) and either White faction to be innately very powerful and easy to build around -- much like Terra Mystica, if I'm playing a competitive game, I *absolutely* want an auction for factions as they are NOT equals, imo, although the randomized board setup and rotating endgame goals go a long way to making them more even than I thought the factions were on the base TM map. It's a great game, one of the best imo, and a tremendous improvement on GP in every way. Now, if only it could get some expansion love...
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May 11, 2022 21:37
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Leperflesh posted:Just to be sure, you're talking about the original, unrevised version from the 1980s, since that's the one I was mentioning? Because I know there was a balance change to the game, IIRC some time in the 90s or early aughts. I saw 1942 in the original post and didn't notice "Spring" before it, and was in strong agreement but wouldn't call it mathematically solved. In A&A 1942, even with the suggested balance adjustments, it's extremely difficult for the USSR to hold out. However, in the first mass release "Classic A&A" in 1984 (the Milton Bradley Gamemaster series release), it's virtually impossible for the Axis to win against competently played Allies and would call it "inductively" solved, if not mathematically solved (because nothing stops an extremely long improbable string of high rolls). By balance change, are you referring to the second edition rules from 1986? Those just prevented England from creating a full-fledged Asia defense in India by limiting the number of units produced at new factories to the IPC value of the territory (plus some other minor changes). Or are you referring to something like A&A Revised (2004)? As far as I know (and I'm no expert; I haven't even played all editions of the game), the only ways to prevent the automatic neutralization of Germany are by increasing the distance between America and Europe as well as making unescorted transports defenseless. Otherwise, you can't stop the flood of US (and a few UK) troops that either sacrifice themselves to kill German units or hold Russian territory.
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May 11, 2022 21:54
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I got A&A in 1992 so I guess it was second edition? I remember variant rules to limit infantry purchases to 4/turn and giving the Axis free starting tech to balance the game.
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May 11, 2022 23:13
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Friend is having a hard time choosing a race for TI day on the weekend. His options are - Empyrean - Xxcha Kingdom - Ghosts of Creuss - Arborec He is a pretty good gamer, but only had one game of TI under his belt from years ago. I was going to push him towards Xxcha, but was also thinking Arborec - which might be a bit of fun for him. Empyrean seems a bit weird on paper.
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May 12, 2022 01:17
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Re Axis & Allies: HMmmmmmm. I never played it that much. On USENET in the mid-90s, there was a fair bit of discussion about optimal strategy - at that time, there were fewer versions/revisions/updates to the game. As I recall, the consensus was that Germany stabs straight for moscow with everything it has, and the allies cannot prevent it or recover when it wins. BUT I guess there's several possibilities: they could have been full of poo poo, I could be remembering wrong, and I could have the combo of game edition/variants/strategy wrong because my memory is fallable. In any case it sounds like the game was rebalanced in 2004? I wonder if it's actually an enjoyable game now. When I played as a teenager it was a massive slog and not very much fun once we got past the novelty of "it's like RISK, but with awesome little tanks and submarines and all these cool fiddly details" and realized that it took 5 hours to play and usually one player got hosed early and wound up sidelined. e. I'm remembering wrong, based on skimming old USENET stuff in rec.games.boardgames. Must be. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 01:51 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 01:35
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Twilight Imperium (2e) was way better than AA, basically the same combat system but with spaceships and action cards, also you could vote down laws that nobody cared about.
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May 12, 2022 03:11
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Infinitum posted:Friend is having a hard time choosing a race for TI day on the weekend. Don't give him Arborec. It's a really tough faction to play with a bad start. It also breaks the basic production rules, which you need to know to play them well. Xxcha are fairly forgiving, but he'll need to fight the urge to "turtle". Ghosts have some weird quirks with movement. They can be rough for first timers. Empyrean are great, especially if your friend likes negotiation and making friends.
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May 12, 2022 06:38
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PerniciousKnid posted:Twilight Imperium (2e) was way better than AA, basically the same combat system but with spaceships and action cards, also you could vote down laws that nobody cared about. Oh god yes, I have TI 2e (and had 1st e, lol) and the main annoyance is that they keep making new editions while I've only gotten to play the one I bought like... twice.
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May 12, 2022 06:59
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Memnaelar posted:For brief Gaia Project tips, so much of it is mapping an effective strategy from the start. Take a look at the two end-game victory point conditions, take a look at the round-end bonuses, and then look for a Faction well-situated to progress towards the former while taking good advantage of the latter. Also bear in mind what the bonus tiles are available as some factions can help shore up a type of income that may be lacking in the bonus tiles themselves. Where possible, try to take bonus tiles that will give you additional VP for your strategy (like grabbing the mines VP bonus tile whenever you can if you've regularly got 5 to 7 mines on the board). Hey thanks for these tips. Scored a cool 159 in my latest game, destroying the (easy AI)competition. Spent a bit of time before faction selection and noticed that gaia scoring was huge and there were a lot of transdims and gaias really close to each other so I cleaned house as the Terrans.   Mini-review of the digital version: Very busy with an unintuitive UI, but gets the job done. Also I think it's a mobile port.
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May 12, 2022 08:22
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Afriscipio posted:Don't give him Arborec. It's a really tough faction to play with a bad start. It also breaks the basic production rules, which you need to know to play them well. Yeah he's ended up Xxcha, which I thought he might. Did setup tonight, so I can relax tomorrow night.  Only problem with the new table is I'm not sure how players 5+6 are going to work at the ends. lol gently caress knows how I'll make 8 players work with the table Annnnnddd just because I own a cat  
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May 12, 2022 14:46
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I've been loving around with Gaia Project on BGA and... I dunno, I appreciate the improvements over Terra Mystica but somehow it's just not gripping me in the same way. I miss the more cutthroat competition for board space that TM had.
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May 12, 2022 14:49
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Infinitum posted:Friend is having a hard time choosing a race for TI day on the weekend. I won the first game of TI I ever played and I was Arborec fwiw
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May 12, 2022 14:53
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HHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Can't wait for further details on this. BGG rankings have been widely criticized for a long time, we'll see what happens! E: Need to clarify. None of the games are showing a ranking at the moment, no matter how you login. But if you want to see a ranking of all the games you can see that using Dashboard. They are back, drat. Mayveena fucked around with this message at 15:55 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 15:40
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^^^ I still don't see them? I guess all those people who were mad that I rated Ark Nova a "1" finally hired Russian hackers or something. Now, I stand by my behavior; frankly gently caress elephants, they've had it too easy for too long. In all seriousness, I kind of doubt this is intentional like YouTube taking away the Dislike display; this is a key part of BGG's functionality we're talking about here. If it is, I hope users loving excoriate them over it.
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May 12, 2022 15:58
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Magnetic North posted:^^^ I still don't see them? There's a difference between the ladder ranking and the individual game ranking. They are not ever getting rid of the individual game ranking, that'd be dumb. But I'm unsure if the ladder ranking serves much purpose.
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May 12, 2022 16:02
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Morpheus posted:I've played half a dozen games and I still don't understand the value of cards. I tend to not think about them (except for the ones that obliterate all other tokens or whatever) I’ll make a longer post when I have the time, but in the original deck I find getting two Rabbit (yellow) crafting pieces is ideal and Rabbit Cards being most desirable because they give you those extra actions.
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May 12, 2022 16:57
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Got to play Ark Nova last night, 4 players took 4 hours including setup and learning the game. The comments about it being like Terraforming Mars are fair I think but it does feel a lot better to me. The distribution of goals and icons, building your park etc all feels a bit more interconnected than it does in TM. I've not checked but it also seems like the Icon distribution is better, there are just more opportunities to get any icon that you need. Turn clip along at a nice pace as well, turns are short unless you've built some hellish bird engine so down time is fairly low even in such a long game. Game has a really slow start up though, really feels like you're not getting anywhere fast but it accelerates a lot towards the end. You have to do maths at the end though to work out the winner, unforgivable.
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May 13, 2022 09:20
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Any recommendations for the Food Chain Magnate Ketchup expansion modules? Three maybe four players all experienced with the game? We will use the new modules. I've been reading that the marketeer issue is solved somewhat by using some of the modules. Which ones do you folks like?
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May 13, 2022 19:34
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Milestones, Night Shift Manager, Reserve Cards, Lobbyist, new tiles (avoid house 25 at 3p because it can determine the winner from setup). Add in Coffee if you really want to add another layer to the game, all the previous ones just refine the original but Coffee is another level of production/demand puzzle that is more complicated.
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May 13, 2022 19:42
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Bottom Liner posted:Milestones, Night Shift Manager, Reserve Cards, Lobbyist, new tiles (avoid house 25 at 3p because it can determine the winner from setup). Add in Coffee if you really want to add another layer to the game, all the previous ones just refine the original but Coffee is another level of production/demand puzzle that is more complicated. Yeah I generally agree, I'd actually leave out coffee because it's a lot of faff. My rating of modules would be similar New Milestones >= night shift manager ( this one is important for rebalancing the openings) >= New tiles > Lobbyist > reserve tiles (I go back and forth in these, I originally thought they were a straight upgrade but they do change the game in some ways) >> coffee
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May 13, 2022 23:47
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Re: Ark Nova, just got my first 4-person game in. So far, I like it a lot - but I'm happy to not own it myself. The action-card mechanic is brilliant (I know it originated elsewhere but this is my first experience with it). Deciding every turn whether to "spend" your highest-ranking card to get maximum use out of it and move up you other cards... very satisfying choice. I'm less keen on some of the subsystems (the worker-placement board feels incredibly perfunctory) and the luck factor is definitely high. Yes, you're supposed to play tactically and not try to force a strategy, but there isn't much you can do if one person (me, in this game) keeps getting exactly the cards they need to build an engine that's perfectly suited to the goal cards while you struggle to get any synergies going. I would probably feel pretty frustrated if I got screwed by the card draw and I'm not convinced there's enough ways to mitigate that factor. It also takes so, so long, even if the turns move at a nice clip as long as no one triggers any combos or plays two animals. Overall, loved the theme, loved the action selection system, building a zoo is fun, but felt like the design could use a bit of a trim, as could the overall runtime. I'd rather they started you off with more buildings and animals so you can get to the fun parts sooner since the early-going feels so slow. I've got nothing against long games but I do always ask myself "would I have had a better time playing three medium games in this time" and I'm not sure my answer would be yes if I spent the game struggling like two of my opponents did.
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May 14, 2022 08:05
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Enjoying Ark Nova a bunch now, we've seen some really weird games pop out where people win with only 2 upgraded cards etc. I managed to skip buying the 5 card upgrade last night and wrecked face. The biggest thing about the game compared to TFM for me is how the money flow works - in TFM you generally always had a use for more money, but the games I've lost badly have often been games where I end up with 50 money and no effective way to turn it into points. We've also found that the breaks vary hugely - a lot of how you win is timing your resources so that a break shows up when you need it and nobody else does.
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May 14, 2022 08:24
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Is there a way to get all 5 cards upgraded? It looks like only 3 or so is possible.
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May 14, 2022 11:27
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There should only be 4 spots for upgrading your cards. Second university, second partner zoo and 6 or so reputation. These are always available and when you reach 2 conservation points you can get an additional worker or upgrade a card
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May 14, 2022 11:40
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gently caress I love TI. Game ended in a Titans of Ul victory, who snatched it out from under the Emirates of Hacan player by claiming the Imperial card and keeping shtum about being able to claim the new 2 point Scoring Objective. Think I could have only got to 9 during the Status Phase. So it was a very close game. Vuil'Raith Cabal are a hell of a lot of fun, I should have been even more aggressive than I was (And I was already being pretty aggressive) Exhausting day, one of the newbie players came down with analysis paralysis due to the sheer amount of options available to them. Whip cracking was initiated, but the game day did still drag 13 hours with breaks for lunch and dinner, and lots and lots of talking So tired  Everyone had a blast, and it's looking like TI Day is going to become a regular 2 month thing We're looking at an Alliance Game Variant for the next game. - Effectively full co-op mode with all the bells and whistles - You win when you of you scores 14, and the other has scored 10. Bonus: Eat poo poo You Can't Score action 
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May 14, 2022 15:14
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Infinitum posted:gently caress I love TI. That top pic is giving me anxiety. 13 hours of TI is... too much for me. How well versed was everyone at the table? I find that the things that makes the game drag the most are the action selection resolution phase (if I had a dollar everytime someone wasn't paying attention and went oh, did we resolve science?) and combat. At least combat is fun to watch. Playing referee/administrator and going down the line and ensuring everyone is watching and paying attention gets old fast, but so does doing census I guess. We could probably play an expert AST version of Mega Civ in that time or two games of regular AST.
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May 14, 2022 16:03
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6 player game with 2 newbies. Also started a little late, and with actual play time involved would be around 9-10 hours? If you factor out all the non-game related breaks. Still a lot of non-game related chat Pretty much every round also has 2-3 rounds of combat after the initial wedges were claimed. Pretty aggressive game tbh Everyone had a great time, as we chatted for at least another hour afterwards. I'm dead tired now so I'm going to go sleep for a thousand years
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May 14, 2022 16:12
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Pro-tip for Vuil'Raith players Feel free to ransom captured ships back to players. Particularly a players Fleet Ship. I got 10 trade goods and a promissory note out of one player
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May 14, 2022 16:14
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  I had the pleasure of playing Ark Nova with Mayveena this week. Apart from her being a delight to chat and game with, I've been thinking about the game a lot and all that it does well and what I think holds it back from being truly great. This is a big, complicated game with tons of iconography and systems, but they're held together pretty well and the play is very snappy and keeps moving thanks to individual turns being simple and mostly isolated from others' actions. Its still overbaked and too long though; it's more Lacerda than Splotter. TfM comparisons are natural and fit well, but there's a lot more going on and it does it all better, flat out. The action selection via card slots that make them more powerful the longer you wait to use them feels almost like an evolution on Concordia, and the upgrading them to a better version creates a natural ramp up in the speed of the game and your engine (more on that later). The player maps are better than the shared map of TfM in creating a more engaging puzzle for the rest of the game to interact with despite removing a layer of interaction, but still feel underused for their rules load. It mostly serves as a braking system to slow your economy and animal plays but thankfully also provides enough bonuses to speed up your engine (more on that later). The giant deck is as much of a hindrance on the game as everyone has said. It's not as bad as TfM, where some cards are just dead draws based on terraforming parameters. The cards here have a lot of requirements you must meet to play them, but they can be brutally statted to make them all but impossible to play. At one point in the game I had a hand of 3 cards that all required 2-3 more tag requirements than I had even SEEN in the game to that point, and we had been through a good portion of the deck. There is some control over your hand, but this is much like RftG where you need to just play what you can and not be precious with cards. Unfortunately, you don't have nearly as much control over card fishing as RftG. Cards flow steady but slow, and when you have a bad hand, you have to focus on other aspects of the game or hope something shows up in the market. Seeding the deck or separating it by card types would do wonders for the core of the game. The two scoring tracks are a great idea but don't feel impactful as there's no tension between them. The worker placement sideboard is another system that feels superfluous, as it mainly just helps you unlock some bonuses and icons that assist your card play requirements and speed up your engine (ok now I'll get to that). This game is in effect a giant roll and write style engine builder game of many tracks and bonuses that all have synergy. There were many times where I played a card, moved up a few spaces on one track, got bonuses that cascaded to moving up elsewhere, which unlocked more bonuses, etc. When approached that way and not as a traditional tableau builder where I wanted to strategically play cards, the game really opened up and things took off. Instead of working towards a big animal card I had or multi turn plans, I just focused on stacking bonuses everywhere and suddenly everything clicked and I was cruising along. I'm not saying this is the correct or best way to play, but it's certainly the most reliable way to do well because you can't rely on a strategic card based strategy, despite that being the heart of the game. It's a tactical race, not a grand strategy game. The most thought I had to put into later turns was "what level do I have to let this card get to?" which is good for keeping game moving along, but also not very satisfying for a game this big. I certainly see the appeal and why it's been a big hit. It's very pleasant, you do a lot of stuff, have a lot of things built up at the end of the game, and it keeps you engaged because of how quickly turns go. The art is pretty shoddy though, with a lot of really low res photos pulled from a free use database or something. You're not getting National Geographic animal photography here, and some of the photos are clearly mobile phone images zoomed in and compressed really badly. I would happily play again, but in the end it feels both overcooked and underdeveloped.
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May 15, 2022 20:15
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Selecta84 posted:There should only be 4 spots for upgrading your cards. Ahhh crap we misread the Conservtion bit, and thought only the first player to pass the fixed reward got either a worker or card upgrade, leaving the second player with the other option, and the rest with nothing. Turns out that's only the case for the "drawn" conservation rewards.
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May 15, 2022 20:35
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Bottom Liner posted:
The ugly filtered art doesn't bother me too much except for the action cards. You look at those all game! I think the worst is the Sponsors card which is so badly filtered it looks like it came from one of those AI-generated art bots on Twitter that always end up at least a little psychedelic
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May 15, 2022 20:49
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Great writeup, though! Makes me feel like I'd enjoy learning it, but not enough to put it on my must-try list.
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May 15, 2022 20:49
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A lot of the criticisms of Ark Nova seem to focus on it being "very good but not truly great", but also the descriptions make me feel like the game is one expansion away from being a best-in-class. The criticisms mostly feel like a corner of the or two just to be zhuzhed up a little bit and we're golden.
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May 15, 2022 22:35
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re: Ark Nova, I think it's not a coincidence that the two action cards that advance the break token allow you to get (1) more cards, and (2) more money. I think it's theoretically possible with a deck that size that you could have a stretch of unplayable cards so long that you can't catch up...but it's not likely, and in the meantime you'd be able to fill out the zoo grounds with empty enclosures and collect all the space-covering bonuses. Combined with passing for +/X tokens, I think nobody could really be shut out of the game by the RNG. And while you're constantly accelerating toward the break, you are also messing up other people's plans and sometimes discouraging them from taking +break actions.
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May 15, 2022 22:44
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CitizenKeen posted:A lot of the criticisms of Ark Nova seem to focus on it being "very good but not truly great", but also the descriptions make me feel like the game is one expansion away from being a best-in-class. The criticisms mostly feel like a corner of the or two just to be zhuzhed up a little bit and we're golden. Especially when it's most-often-used comparison of TfM is regularly touted as "needing" Prelude and possibly 1-2 other expansions to be considered playable
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May 15, 2022 22:45
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homullus posted:re: Ark Nova, I think it's not a coincidence that the two action cards that advance the break token allow you to get (1) more cards, and (2) more money. I think it's theoretically possible with a deck that size that you could have a stretch of unplayable cards so long that you can't catch up...but it's not likely, and in the meantime you'd be able to fill out the zoo grounds with empty enclosures and collect all the space-covering bonuses. Combined with passing for +/X tokens, I think nobody could really be shut out of the game by the RNG. And while you're constantly accelerating toward the break, you are also messing up other people's plans and sometimes discouraging them from taking +break actions. The problem isn’t that RNG can shut you out (unless you erroneously hold on to higher level cards stubbornly), it’s more that you can’t play to a certain strategy, even if you get the tools to start on that engine (cheap animals to get the right tags), because you may never draw the matching more valuable cards. That wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the goal scoring variable setup cards that end up being crucial at the end of the game and DO encourage specialization and long term planning. So the most valuable goals encourage game long strategy, but the systems force turn by turn tactical play that may or may not line up with them.
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May 15, 2022 22:59
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I felt similarly about the rng and availability of cards after my first few plays, but in my more recent games I'm shifting to feeling like longer term strategic play and planning towards specific goals is more viable than it first felt like. The main thing that has shifted my opinion is appreciating and getting better at improving reputation early and using snapping more liberally. Once you can pick from most of the cards in the display as well as from the deck and can use card effects like digging to discard and redraw, I've found most games it's quite possible to build a more focused engine than what I was managing in my first three or four plays. We also always draft our opening hands now which I think improves this. It still tends to be more tactical than strategic, especially since most cards don't give ongoing bonuses only immediate effects so anyone looking for an engine/tableau builder could be disappointed but I still find it a lot of fun for what it is. I suspect it's not one I'll keep in my collection long term but for right now it's one I'm almost always happy to play.
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May 15, 2022 23:15
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