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Kerro posted: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. That was one thing I had mentioned to BL when we played. I feel this is a great use of market row mechanics. The cards stay there long enough for the players to consider them and how to get them without getting too stale and feeling like they are locked in place. I really like that implementation.
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May 16, 2022 01:35
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Yeah I think we’re saying the same thing in round about ways. Relying on stacking all the bonuses and going up the tracks to be able to play whatever you get is a much better approach than basing your strategy on what cards you get. The problem with that is that it’s going to be a similar arc to every game only varying by the order of how you unlock them all based on what early and easy cards you draw. I didn’t see the whole deck, but the orange animal cards feel the most egregious of “I drew one I’ll never be able to play and my opponent drew one that perfectly fits their tableau to this point” on top of being dead draws early on with no real way to use them for anything. The market row works well and the break system keeps the game moving, but all of that doesn’t quite get it away from the undue influence of the giant deck. I think lowering every orange card by a single icon requirement would go a long way to making the game less swingy.
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May 16, 2022 01:41
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I think we’re saying the same thing in round about ways. Relying on stacking all the bonuses and going up the tracks to be able to play whatever you get is a much better approach than basing your strategy on what cards you get. The problem with that is that it’s going to be a similar arc to every game only varying by the order of how you unlock them all based on what early and easy cards you draw. I didn’t see the whole deck, but the orange animal cards feel the most egregious of “I drew one I’ll never be able to play and my opponent drew one that perfectly fits their tableau to this point” on top of being dead draws early on with no real way to use them for anything. The market row works well and the break system keeps the game moving, but all of that doesn’t quite get it away from the undue influence of the giant deck. I think lowering every orange card by a single icon requirement would go a long way to making the game less swingy. Because you have a way to choose what you want, then long term strategies are certainly possible. And I've seen plenty of games won by players who didn't do the card upgrade, meaning there was only so far they could go on the reputation track. Being able to draw a card that 'perfectly fits' won't happen for a long time in the game. And depending on what's giving conservation points there may not really be a perfect fit. In our game I chose a card that gave conservation points for diversity in continents. There is no 'perfect fit' for that card. And as I was pointing out to you, the conservation cards that are drawn from the start aren't balanced anyway. By that I mean you are going to pay a huge opportunity cost if you try to go after the conservation cards at the 5 level. Don't do that. In our games it's a race to the 2 level conservation points because they take the least investment, again leaving your tableau open to other choices. I guess you could play in a game with someone who got that 5th whatever and won, but depending on that is a losing proposition
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May 16, 2022 01:54
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Question about Ark Nova: the rules mention that players get points based on their Final Scoring Card(s). Why is the S in brackets? How can players gain/lose Final Scoring Cards?
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May 16, 2022 09:31
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Elephants, mostly (certain cards gained during the game can give you extra final scoring cards)
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May 16, 2022 09:38
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Kazzah posted:Question about Ark Nova: the rules mention that players get points based on their Final Scoring Card(s). Why is the S in brackets? How can players gain/lose Final Scoring Cards? You can never have less then 1 final scoring card. you get 2 at the start of the game and as soon as a player reached 10 conservation points you have to discard one of them. That happens only once. But there are, I believe 2, elephant cards that can give you an additional, random final scoring card. And maybe the rules mean the sponsor cards as well? Some of the offer additional end game points.
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May 16, 2022 09:42
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I think we’re saying the same thing in round about ways. Relying on stacking all the bonuses and going up the tracks to be able to play whatever you get is a much better approach than basing your strategy on what cards you get. The problem with that is that it’s going to be a similar arc to every game only varying by the order of how you unlock them all based on what early and easy cards you draw. I didn’t see the whole deck, but the orange animal cards feel the most egregious of “I drew one I’ll never be able to play and my opponent drew one that perfectly fits their tableau to this point” on top of being dead draws early on with no real way to use them for anything. The market row works well and the break system keeps the game moving, but all of that doesn’t quite get it away from the undue influence of the giant deck. I think lowering every orange card by a single icon requirement would go a long way to making the game less swingy. I think this is the crux of the problem with the game, its not as bad as it is in Terraforming Mars, but it is there and creates absolute blowouts. Played another 4 player game last night and it was fairly tight at the top 15 vs 10 but then one guy got like -45 points because he just had bad animals. Ones he couldn't play, or if he could didnt help complete any of the goals. You can try to draw the pain away but all the time you're doing that you're not putting animals in your zoo and actively pushing the break along, which if you're doing badly makes it even worse. We've instituted a mulligan if your initial 8 cards don't have at least a couple of playable animals in it. The game is fun, building a little zoo is nice, but it's not really balanced and incredibly swingy. Even the goals are wildly unbalanced, the reputation goal is trivial and nets you 2 or 3 conservation minimum, the don't build a zoo goal requires you to not build a zoo.
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May 16, 2022 09:55
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Are you playing with Plan A? I feel like the end game cards are better balanced with the asymetrical boards ( I think the designer also said something about that in an interview ). Like getting reputation is much harder on some of them and yeah, maxing it out on Plan A is trivial
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May 16, 2022 10:01
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Thanks!
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May 16, 2022 10:27
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Good write up on Ark Nova above. I'm definitely a fan, but it's also a game where you really need to be formless and open-ended about your strategy. I feel like letting the game guide you towards how you build up is probably the way to go, rather than trying to force a strategy that just isn't in the cards available. BinaryDoubts posted:The ugly filtered art doesn't bother me too much except for the action cards. The artwork is serviceable, but 100% agreed that the player action cards should have gotten more love. ----------------- Not sure if this helps anyone out in any way/shape/form, but I packed up TI+PoK tonight and this is how I'm arranging things  - ALL the system tiles go in the base box. The legendary planets go on top. - ALL the cards go in the PoK box (Even when sleeved) - Individual bags for pretty much everything - Strat Cards + all the little mini tiles go in the right of the base box. - Free space in base box!  - Race sheets + commander boards + all the manuals in the PoK box - Bagged up race components /w system tile thrown on top in the base box. My group were discussing the Folded Space inserts, and while super cool and useful, isn't something you really need with the inserts and some creative arrangement ----------------- From chatting with people on the day it's looking like TI is going into a 2 month rotation, which is fantastic and means we can work on getting the hours played down once my group gets 2-3 games under their belt and I'm not hand holding new players. 8 player Alliance Game Variant next game day 
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May 16, 2022 15:00
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https://dontgofirst.herokuapp.com/
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May 16, 2022 15:27
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May 16, 2022 15:57
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I see that 1880 is going to be showing up soon. Cannot recall if I asked this already but has anyone played it and can weigh in on its quality? Ultimately I guess is it worth grabbing a copy of? Also Rahdo has just proclaimed Guild of Merchant Explorers his favourite game of 2022 so far but he is so drat positive and jubilant over what feels like everything that him getting excited about something doesn't quite mean as much if anyone else does it.
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May 16, 2022 18:57
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FulsomFrank posted:Also Rahdo has just proclaimed Guild of Merchant Explorers his favourite game of 2022 so far but he is so drat positive and jubilant over what feels like everything that him getting excited about something doesn't quite mean as much if anyone else does it. just by looking at the photo on alderac's site this looks like 8 minute empires 2.0
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May 16, 2022 19:16
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Guild of Merchant Explorers looks cool but $50 is beyond my price point for "just pick it up and see if it's cool or not"
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May 16, 2022 19:48
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Played a bunch of stuff at Geekway to the West this past week. So Clover might be a new favorite party game. My only complaint is that scoring is nebulous and consists only of "beat your previous score for your number of players" which is less fun than Just One and Wavelength having a silly congratulatory statement. So relatively minor complaint overall. Riverside is a great roll and write about trying to please guests on a cruise ship. I definitely want to pick this one up and introduce it to my sister and brother-in-law who met on a cruise ship. Libertalia: Winds of the Galecrest is a complete improvement over the basic Libertalia, which is one of my favorite higher player count games. The only downside to it over the original is 6 players instead of 7, which for my group is totally fine. Beyond that I got to play Amabel Holland's new train game prototype, Dinosaur Gauge, which is about Victorian dinosaurs in top hats and monocles running train routes and manufacturing and shipping lines. Absolutely loved it, despite getting schooled by both her and a 12 year old. Lastly I played like 8 play tests of my own new prototype, Line Go Up, and I think it might be close to finished. It's at the 95% design mark if I had to guess. Essentially it's a satirical look at cryptocurrency. It's an economic simulator where you spend gold on useless, worthless cryptocurrencies and can't get gold back out. Every turn FOMO forces you and your friends to buy into fictitious cryptocurrencies and each player tries their best to lose as little as possible. Most gold at the end of the game wins.
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May 16, 2022 20:32
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Frozen Peach posted:Libertalia: Winds of the Galecrest is a complete improvement over the basic Libertalia, which is one of my favorite higher player count games. The only downside to it over the original is 6 players instead of 7, which for my group is totally fine. Just to clear up what you're saying, the new version plays up to seven players, but falls apart at seven?
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May 16, 2022 22:48
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El Fideo posted:Just to clear up what you're saying, the new version plays up to seven players, but falls apart at seven? I dunno what they're saying, both versions are listed at a maximum 6. EDIT: VVVV nope.
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May 16, 2022 22:54
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Fate Accomplice posted:I dunno what they're saying, both versions play 6. I thought the original was 7 players. My bad!
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May 16, 2022 22:54
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Frozen Peach posted:So Clover might be a new favorite party game. My only complaint is that scoring is nebulous and consists only of "beat your previous score for your number of players" which is less fun than Just One and Wavelength having a silly congratulatory statement. So relatively minor complaint overall. Publishers believe that gamers will get depressed if a game doesn't have some source of victory points. Many party games therefore have a placebo scoring system that every right-thinking person ignores.
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May 17, 2022 00:18
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Mr. Squishy posted:Publishers believe that gamers will get depressed if a game doesn't have some source of victory points. Many party games therefore have a placebo scoring system that every right-thinking person ignores. This definition of "right-thinking" is why I end up being bored out of my mind when party games come out half the time. It never ends. It just becomes "the activity for the rest of the night".
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May 17, 2022 00:37
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armorer posted:This definition of "right-thinking" is why I end up being bored out of my mind when party games come out half the time. It never ends. It just becomes "the activity for the rest of the night". Yeah this is why, if I see something like CAH at a gathering, I immediately try to suggest anything else because the moment that thing gets pulled out, it dominates the rest of the evening
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May 17, 2022 00:42
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FulsomFrank posted:I see that 1880 is going to be showing up soon. Cannot recall if I asked this already but has anyone played it and can weigh in on its quality? Ultimately I guess is it worth grabbing a copy of? I think it's innovative and has some interesting elements but is also ultimately kind of boring, which is how I'd describe a lot of that designer's 18xx games. Basically, companies will run in a fixed order based on how they're parred regardless of their stock market value, and stock rounds interrupt the operating order based on how fast or slow trains are bought, which has some rather interesting effects on decision making. There's also a midgame event where the stock market freezes before unfreezing right as the permanents come out. My problem with the game is that I feel like there are really only roughly two interesting moments for how long it is, and it is a fairly long game. There are a lot of people that really like it though and I wouldn't really call it bad, so it could be worth grabbing for the right price.
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May 17, 2022 00:59
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armorer posted:This definition of "right-thinking" is why I end up being bored out of my mind when party games come out half the time. It never ends. It just becomes "the activity for the rest of the night". I too hate laughing with my friends
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May 17, 2022 01:06
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Infinitum posted:I too hate laughing with my friends I too feel like the quality of a game is directly rated to how many friends I have with me. Edit: I mean it please come play time agent with me
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May 17, 2022 01:40
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Infinitum posted:I too hate laughing with my friends Oh, so that's why you subject them to 13 hours of TI
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May 17, 2022 01:44
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Infinitum posted:I too hate laughing with my friends I guess I haven't played a whole ton of party games, but the good ones I have played have a definitive end, and we get a few rounds. The ones that don't are almost always terrible and yet continue being played past when they should've stopped.
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May 17, 2022 01:45
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Infinitum posted:I too hate laughing with my friends I own a few "party games" and I enjoy them. The point I was trying to make is that they contain victory conditions not so much because they need victory conditions to be enjoyable, but because they need victory conditions to have a well defined end point. I'll play Wavelength for a while, but I don't want to play it for 5 hours just because there are more cards we haven't used yet, and I've definitely seen that happen. If you hit the victory condition and everyone wants to play again, then great, play again.
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May 17, 2022 01:47
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Yeah to be fair I was taking the piss  If it's Party Game Time, just grab out a selection of them. You play a few rounds and move onto the next. Bottom Liner posted:Oh, so that's why you subject them to 13 hours of TI Mmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaatttttteeeeeeeeeeeee
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May 17, 2022 02:27
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Played a couple of new (or new to me) co-op games recently. Vagrantsong I picked up retail after reading some reviews that got me intrigued. It's an AI-driven boss-battler campaign game in the same vein as things like Townsfolk Tussle and the-game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned, except that instead of fighting in a big open arena, you're battling through a series of fairly confined train cars against various 'haints' that you are trying to save by restoring their humanity to them (sometimes in thematically appropriate ways by trying to soothe them or remind them of their past, and sometimes for some reason by beating them with sticks). It's got a pretty cool action-selection mechanic for the players where you have about four basic skills, and up to four special skills that do various things like moving, investigating, healing, fighting etc and each turn you get three action tokens that you can place on any of your skills depending on what you want to do. Placing more than one action token on the same skill typically powers it up in some way, and in some cases gives you extra bonuses if you achieve enough successes. This creates a very simple but flexible system that allows you to focus on what you need to do in any given turn, rather than games that default to giving you a move+action when you often don't need to do both. The boss AI is also handled in a simple but clever way, where you have an opaque bag full of tokens with different icons. After each player's turn you draw a token and that corresponds to a particular boss behaviour, sometimes simply moving and attacking but often doing more unique things that relate to the scenario you're doing or the boss' particular theming. These tokens are not evenly distributed - some are much more common than others, and once you draw them you place them on a track where they remain until you draw enough of one type of token at which point they go back into the bag and get shuffled. On top of this, players can also take actions that allow them to draw and keep tokens from the bag that can be used for beneficial effects. All of this combines to mean that as the fight goes on and more tokens get drawn, you can predict to a certain extent what actions the boss is likely to take next and even control to a certain extent when he 'resets' his token bag (which often triggers other effects) by managing the tokens that you hold as players. These are just a couple of examples of systems that I thought worked really well in the game, but what I like a lot about it in general is that it manages to accomplish a lot of interesting decision making with pretty streamlined and generally unfiddly rules. On top of this, the boss and scenario design seems really well done - despite the simple mechanics, most of the scenarios we've played to date (about 8 I think) have had quite different objectives and played out quite differently. This is helped by the fact that each scenario has three 'rituals' that you can optionally complete but which typically help you substantially in the fight, but these are vaguely defined at the start (e.g 'get the Haint to look out the window') and you have to discover as you play what this means and how to achieve it. I really enjoy this sort of co-op game that forces you to really think on your turn about what you need to prioritise - achieving the objectives/rituals, damaging the boss, healing each other, investigating for things that might help you in the fight, repositioning to avoid damage etc. On top of all this, the game looks beautiful and I really like the acrylic standees for characters rather than the usual miniatures. My only real knock against the game so far is that there's less character progression than I like - your characters start with two special skills and can acquire at most two more (plus one item) and because of the way the campaign is structured, there's not really much power-growth with the new skills and items you acquire as the game goes on. Typically they're just different rather than better, and while it's interesting to try out different approaches to scenarios I really do enjoy the sense you typically get in these games of your character growing and becoming more powerful over time. The other game I played which is a much older one is Assault on Doomrock which I'd heard discussed very positively on SVWAG quite a number of times, but had always been put off by the kinda unfortunate cover art and theming. After playing it, I still don't much care for the theme (silly fantasy), the art or the graphic design but the game itself is far far better than I'd expected. It follows a somewhat similar format to something like Too Many Bones but shorter, you have three 'adventuring' phases where you move around between locations and make decisions that spend resources to get upgrades, level-ups etc. and three combat encounters that you have to beat to win the game. The adventuring part is nothing special or new, though interesting enough as you get the chance to acquire new gear and abilities out of a HUGE deck of extremely varied stuff, but thankfully this is only a small part of the game and the majority of your time will be spent in the battle phase which is extremely well done. Battles use a really simple but effective positioning system where characters are either distant or engaged - there's no grid, no line of sight etc, you just move in or out of engagement with enemies or allies. From reading the rules I wasn't expecting much from this system which seemed overly simplistic, but in practice it's implemented really well with a ton of abilities that allow you to push enemies or be pushed, change positioning and abilities that can only affect distant or engaged characters, meaning that managing positioning becomes crucial to surviving the fights which are typically brutally hard. This is paired with a system of yahtzee-style dice rolling and then assigning dice to abilities which are hugely varied and seem well designed to have some really interesting synergies and combos. Many of the abilities can be used at different phases of combat, meaning that there's a lot of thinking and timing decisions to make which felt meaningful and satisfying. This was probably the most 'fun' combat system I've played since Gloomhaven and it definitely feels like a shame that this game seems to have slipped under the radar. I've only played this once so far so it'll be interesting to see how it goes with repeat plays, but the variety and depth of decision-making seems to be there to give it some pretty good longevity. I think the biggest drawback is that it has a very 'old-school' aesthetic (as in it reminds me of Talisman 1e) with poor graphic design, quite a few typos, poorly explained rules in places and I suspect given the sheer number of enemies, items, abilities etc probably a lack of balance and consistency. If you're just after a fun time with some very solid mechanics and don't mind the variability that might come from drawing powers/items/etc out of a huge deck then this is an easy game to recommend, particularly since it seems to be very cheap to pick up.
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May 17, 2022 06:00
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Kerro posted:probably a lack of balance and consistency. It's worse than you guess. I liked Doomrock on my first play through too. Then I played it again and ran into enemies that threw up endless defences and/or spawned enemies as fast as the players could defeat them. It's super random whether you're combat effective on any given turn and paired with enemies that can randomly negate entire player turns and have randomly timed vulnerable states combat can be interminable. We saw combinations of AI cards and player actions actually regress a fight a turn or two. And they were long fights to begin with. If I were teaching someone how to make a tactics game I would give them Doomrock and say "don't do this."
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May 17, 2022 15:22
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taser rates posted:I think it's innovative and has some interesting elements but is also ultimately kind of boring, which is how I'd describe a lot of that designer's 18xx games. Basically, companies will run in a fixed order based on how they're parred regardless of their stock market value, and stock rounds interrupt the operating order based on how fast or slow trains are bought, which has some rather interesting effects on decision making. There's also a midgame event where the stock market freezes before unfreezing right as the permanents come out. My problem with the game is that I feel like there are really only roughly two interesting moments for how long it is, and it is a fairly long game. There are a lot of people that really like it though and I wouldn't really call it bad, so it could be worth grabbing for the right price. Thanks for this. The price isn't atrocious all things considered. I agree with your assessment of the Double-Oh lads. I can't quite put my finger on it but there's something about their designs that leaves me feeling... nothing. I only asked about 1880 because like you said, I've seen some people have it on their lists as one of their favourites so I was curious.
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May 17, 2022 15:33
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 ooooooooh poo poo, Mindclash kickstarter day verdict: Perseverance: A Good Game and very mindclashy. Not actually a "co-op", insofar that you're building/protecting a settlement together, but you can still "accidentally" let a few Dinos through to eat someone else's hotels if they're expanding too aggressively and assuming everyone else will protect them. Buy  Anachrony And Trickerion: still good years later, don't try to play all the expansions at one, play them like variations of a base game Also, they're launching a new kickstarter in summer for Septima, where you lead a witches coven and hex villagers and stir cauldrons and bust out sisters from trials and poo poo, while avoiding pissing off the townsfolk who come after you and threaten to compare your weight to a duck :strip_icc()/pic6811017.jpg) :strip_icc()/pic6811020.png) :strip_icc()/pic6811018.png) Siiiiiiiiiick
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May 17, 2022 20:24
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:It's worse than you guess. Well that's disappointing. I guess I'll keep playing until I encounter that but it's a shame if it's that bad, since the core mechanics are really satisfying.
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May 17, 2022 23:33
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PRADA SLUT posted:
I hope that some of these are going to be available as addons for Septima - I'd love to save up and get Anachrony, Trickerion and Perseverance. They look so good.
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May 17, 2022 23:49
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Spiteski posted:I hope that some of these are going to be available as addons for Septima - I'd love to save up and get Anachrony, Trickerion and Perseverance. They look so good. I got the trickerion all in as a perseverance add-on so there's a good chance
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May 18, 2022 00:01
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Fate Accomplice posted:I got the trickerion all in as a perseverance add-on so there's a good chance Same, and I think they offered it up with Voidfall. I think you can order Trickerion directly from Mindclash right now as well. e: Yeah, Voidfall is open for pledges and they have the entire catalog on there: https://gamefound.com/projects/mindclash-games/voidfall?ref=search#/section/mindclash-games-products-3186 PRADA SLUT fucked around with this message at 01:40 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 01:35
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Ahh that's awesome. Not great for my wallet, but awesome.
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May 18, 2022 01:52
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Mindclash started splitting out content so they wouldn't have $120 "complete" games anymore, and instead you get a base game and can add-on whatever else you want. The Anachrony base is $70 and it's available all over. The games are already too big to play with every expansion (or too nonsensical, see the Everdell problem), so the expansion inclusions are pretty flexible. I play with usually one big expansion depending on what kind of game I feel like. For Perserverence, they changed it around so the box has two different "episodes" that play like different games (different mechanics, boards, pieces, victory conditions, etc), so the game is delineated by default. Trickerion base is $42 on CardHaus: https://www.cardhaus.com/trickerion-legends-of-illusion/
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May 18, 2022 03:53
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I also got to get Furnace to the table and really enjoyed it. Looking forward to playing this one some more. Don't think I have played such a "pure" engine builder before. The bidding and auction phase is pretty interesting and unexpectedly thinky; you have fixed bid tokens (a bit like Ra) but those who don't win a bid get a consolation multiplied by their bid amount. This can be surprisingly lucrative, and the order in which things are resolved can be especially important as well. Amusingly a friend of mine said that when he saw the game he figured it was right up my alley. Turns out he was right 
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May 18, 2022 05:46
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