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Radioactive Toy posted:It's been over a week where are the impressions?! Getting ready to play a two player game today so tonight  So we played it with just the base game and only to eight fame. And it was good. It took us most of the game to realize that the contacts could be crew so that wasn't great. And of course it has a lot of randomness to it but we're used to that with Merchant of Venus which it kind of reminds me of. Next time we'll absolutely throw in the expansion, I'm looking forward to that play. Mayveena fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 1, 2022 20:12
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Magnetic North posted:
It all comes down to the designers' (and somewhat players') intent. If the game is taking a position up front, that will naturally inform what players get out of it. Recency also plays a big part in it. Cole is mostly dealing with older topics where the history is settled and there is not really an ongoing debate about the politics of them. Volko is often working with ongoing and recent conflicts, and a lot of the games are presented and informed by his career and personal politics. Even the taglines of his games tell you his position. There's also the actual presentation. Some COIN games include extremely graphic imagery but not in a way to really add context or teach anything, they're just kinda there in a way that feels gross and pointless. I don't think any topic is inherently off limits but everyone is going to have their own limits of what and why they would play different things. I've had players not want to play Nixon in Watergate, but I don't mind playing him there at all, but I would not want to play Reagan or GWB in a similar game. Is that a fuzzy distinction? Sure. And thanks for the link, never knew we had that thread.
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Jul 1, 2022 20:42
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Yeah everybody has to decide what they're comfortable with gaming. I won't play Labyrinth or A Distant Plain (recent evils) but have no trouble with Thunderbolt-Apache Leader because it just feels cartoony, like Strike Commander. WW2 is far enough back that I'm mostly fine to play it, but Black Orchestra actually makes me uncomfortable. In Black Orchestra the characters need to witness atrocities to get their nerves up to assassinate Hitler. This means the players emotionally want them to happen (to move towards victory), I've seen multiple cases of "Kristallnacht. Cool/good!" purely because mechanically that's what they needed.
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Jul 1, 2022 22:28
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rchandra posted:WW2 is far enough back that I'm mostly fine to play it Me rolling like poo poo in Axis and Allies and getting my infantry killed in Africa: "Sorry pop-pop!".
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Jul 1, 2022 22:40
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rchandra posted:Yeah everybody has to decide what they're comfortable with gaming. I won't play Labyrinth or A Distant Plain (recent evils) but have no trouble with Thunderbolt-Apache Leader because it just feels cartoony, like Strike Commander. WW2 is far enough back that I'm mostly fine to play it, but Black Orchestra actually makes me uncomfortable. In Black Orchestra the characters need to witness atrocities to get their nerves up to assassinate Hitler. This means the players emotionally want them to happen (to move towards victory), I've seen multiple cases of "Kristallnacht. Cool/good!" purely because mechanically that's what they needed. Also the way it lionizes a lot of conspirators that were anti-hitler but pro-Nazi is wildly gross.
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Jul 1, 2022 23:31
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unlike the good ol’ days of global conflict, when you could simply poke your opponent in the chest for 2 vp
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Jul 2, 2022 00:24
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Magnetic North posted:Are any of these topics, ideas, or structures morally grey to include in board games? I don't know, and as a person who has discussed ethics a shitload in his day, I don't really imagine we'll get far talking about it in this thread. But it is something I think about a lot. Is it simply attempting to engage in a topic with intellectual honesty, or is it harmful, potentially a symptom of some deep poor beliefs or even active misinformation? It's all about presentation. You can basically make a game out of anything, just as you can make a movie, book, song, play, video game, musical, tv show, radio drama, podcast, painting, sculpture, engraving, architectural work, etc about anything. It's the presentation of it, how the creator intends for it to be presented as well as well as the cultural climate in which it is presented and the way in which people are looking to be presented to. You can make a game that tackles all kinds of tough subjects as well or as poorly as possible. You can make a game that shows as much or as little tact for a subject as possible. It's less about the subject itself being specifically morally gray and all about how it is used. Sometimes you just end up with games that might be good but have unfortunate baggage attached due to a lack of forethought on the creator's part. Sometimes you end up with a game that knows exactly what it is trying to do and say and it just ends up coming off rather tasteless. 
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Jul 2, 2022 00:59
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They made the meeples yellow
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Jul 2, 2022 03:58
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Rockman Reserve posted:Carson looks just....really underpowered as an investigator. Charlie "Hook Music Video Citizen" Kane, on the other hand, has had my group arguing about who gets to play him first since he leaked weeks ago. They might have erred on the side of caution with his stats, but granting an extra action every turn right from the start of the game, no strings attached or other cards required, is definitely a powerful ability. If his deck building rules aren't too restrictive he could still be pretty effective by himself, but as with Carolyn he might only really shine in higher player count games.
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Jul 2, 2022 05:09
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EXIT: The Gate Between Worlds was even better (imo) than The Secret Lab. A bit easier, but more memorable and clever puzzles.
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Jul 2, 2022 06:50
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Has anyone ever heard of Horizons? BGG link It's a 3X space game from Daily Magic Games from 2018. A local publisher began distributing it today here and I'd like to hear some goon opinions on it.
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Jul 2, 2022 15:49
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Azran posted:Has anyone ever heard of Horizons? BGG link It's a 3X space game from Daily Magic Games from 2018. A local publisher began distributing it today here and I'd like to hear some goon opinions on it. I played it once or twice and really enjoyed it. Not my usual style of game but it was really fun.
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Jul 2, 2022 15:54
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Azran posted:Has anyone ever heard of Horizons? BGG link It's a 3X space game from Daily Magic Games from 2018. A local publisher began distributing it today here and I'd like to hear some goon opinions on it. I hope this is good cuz I just found and grabbed a used copy for an absolute song. Kalko posted:They might have erred on the side of caution with his stats, but granting an extra action every turn right from the start of the game, no strings attached or other cards required, is definitely a powerful ability. If his deck building rules aren't too restrictive he could still be pretty effective by himself, but as with Carolyn he might only really shine in higher player count games. Nah, I don’t buy it - he’s entirely dependent on sticking to actually useful characters like glue and is going to have a really hard time dealing with encounter cards every round - especially when he gets hit with his weakness, which 1) is sticky and bounces back to his deck and 2) pings him for his already-low sanity when it hits. MJ is doing such an amazing job as design lead that I’m convinced I’m missing something, but I definitely don’t see it yet.
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Jul 2, 2022 23:21
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Frozen Peach posted:I played it once or twice and really enjoyed it. Not my usual style of game but it was really fun. Thanks! Ordered it.
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Jul 3, 2022 00:43
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What I thought the challenge would be in Zendo: coming up with clever sculptures and incisive guesses unlikely to be disproven by the game master What the challenge actually was: coming up with guesses not disproven by examples already on the table
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Jul 3, 2022 01:08
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welp the “used” copies of horizons and super dungeon explore: forgotten king I grabbed today aren’t used at all, the rulebooks have been flipped through but everything is unpunched and in shrink i was kinda hyped to try SDE as I have a soft spot for mediocre minis based board games but now seeing how much it sells for I would feel guilty actually playing it e: looking at the rules it seems dumb as hell but also very similar to like 80% of the dozens of loose game prototypes I dreamed up as a kid trying to make a dungeon-crawler kind of game, and I’m pretty curious to try it….. Rockman Reserve fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jul 3, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 04:01
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So I played Root with the same people that taught me Oath and told me you needed to make beeg army and attack people, and they gave me the same terrible advice. I got second, points wise as the mice/bread token people, stirring revolution and getting a lot of free cards because the cat guy blew most of his turns killing my sympathy token. The guy playing Birds was the same guy who told me the Oath game was about armies and conquering, and he didn't seem to understand what he was doing since he basically just had his government collapse like five times and finished the game with less than 5 VP. Anyway Root is wicked loving sick, I'm glad it's out of stock(with distributors. in canada) since I can't really justify buying any new board games but boy did I go looking for a little while here and there. I don't really have a point of discussion, I just really super get why that game is popular, because goddamn that poo poo was fun
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Jul 3, 2022 05:15
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Very cool, have you heard about the Cuban revolution?
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Jul 3, 2022 09:23
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The good news is, my Crokinole board is off the wall for the first time in three years. The bad news is, I've jobbed my back clearing the wardrobe to get to the carrying case.
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Jul 3, 2022 10:44
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I beat level 5 England in Spirit Island! As Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds, so it's not THAT big a deal, but still. England kind of makes wilds tokens pointless, since they don't need presence to build, but that one starting power that does damage based on wilds starts to stack up over time. By the end I had this major power that added 3 wilds tokens, quickly, for only three energy; I was able to keep playing that and the wilds-damage starter to nuke spaces for like 16 damage per turn, and got a pure Fear victory. I don't believe it's possible to win any other kind of victory against England; the double-build is just the most brutal thing, you can't stop all those new cities. There was no safe zone, no front line, no wilds-wall, just invaders and presence all over each other. Three Dahan survived.
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Jul 3, 2022 11:12
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My Mayday crokinole board came on Thursday. I waxed it and the discs on Friday, and I played it yesterday. It's fun! Even though my kid beat me 100-0 on the second game 
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Jul 3, 2022 14:17
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Terror III's win condition is very achievable even against max level England, but it usually needs a heavy dose of building destruction & control from spirits that start strong and don't need a lot of ramp up. If you have any whiff of slow or defensive spirits in the mix, yeah, count on going for fear victory.
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Jul 3, 2022 15:41
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:So I played Root with the same people that taught me Oath and told me you needed to make beeg army and attack people, and they gave me the same terrible advice. I got second, points wise as the mice/bread token people, stirring revolution and getting a lot of free cards because the cat guy blew most of his turns killing my sympathy token. The guy playing Birds was the same guy who told me the Oath game was about armies and conquering, and he didn't seem to understand what he was doing since he basically just had his government collapse like five times and finished the game with less than 5 VP. Hell yeah, Goon, thanks for sharing. That’s pretty cool that you got second as the Toasts on your first time playing. They’re pretty tricky especially if the advice you’ve been given is “fight people”.
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Jul 3, 2022 17:30
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:So I played Root with the same people that taught me Oath and told me you needed to make beeg army and attack people, and they gave me the same terrible advice. I got second, points wise as the mice/bread token people, stirring revolution and getting a lot of free cards because the cat guy blew most of his turns killing my sympathy token. The guy playing Birds was the same guy who told me the Oath game was about armies and conquering, and he didn't seem to understand what he was doing since he basically just had his government collapse like five times and finished the game with less than 5 VP. If you get the Steam version I'm down to play.
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Jul 3, 2022 18:03
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Played 2v2 cribbage with my wife, my dad, and my nephew. I legit love the game and it feels very different at each player count 2-4. Good stuff, kid and my dad wrecked us in the 8yo's first game ever after watching the three of us play earlier.
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Jul 3, 2022 20:21
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Playing Oath by making a big army and fighting people was how I won my first game... but man, I did not win it because that was the best strategy.
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Jul 3, 2022 21:03
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Sometimes when teaching games you just throw out something nice and simple. Even if it's not true, it helps to give a framework to hang all of these rules on. When teaching Modern Art, for instance, I say is a game of just saying numbers.
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Jul 3, 2022 21:07
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!Klams posted:Ares Project I'm an Ares Project booster and would strongly recommend it for an RTS in board game form. TBH I haven't played in uh years so I'm not equipped to talk to your concern of dryness but I remember enjoying it very much and feeling it did not deserve to come and go into the dustbin of board game publishing history. Give it a look and maybe I'll dig out my copy and we can talk about what does and doesn't work. With Unfathomable still on probation - someone wants to buy, I might want to sell, CA Bay Area - the group had a look at its older brother in the "FFG product reimplementing a janky older design" family: Fury of Dracula. We played the most recent edition with Dracula looking smug on the box. It was our first hidden movement one versus many game and we fundamentally found the concept interesting but the game itself felt a little cold. We played introductory rules where Dracula did not have his special power cards or lairs or rumors. We felt unsatisfied with the core loop. We hunters would take a bunch of time trying to sniff out a lead, which aside from Mina's power meant aimlessly wandering, then upon stumbling on a lead the game would have a fun phase where we root Dracula out, then one hunter got to engage in the solid RPS combat game while the others watched (not optimal), then Dracula would Escape as Bat and essentially reset the whole loop. We are concerned with the time it took each loop loving around even trying to get a lead within two or three steps of Dracula. Leads farther away from his position didn't provide much value. And of course he's throwing Bat Clouds and poo poo at us. We're concerned because we know that the full game rules are loaded with power ups for Dracula alone. The last thing we felt like we needed was him being able to Wolf double move or pull some other bullshit while we're trying to cope with his last Escape as Bat reset. What advice do you have for hunter teams? What other hidden movement games could offer a better play experience? (We have and love Captain Sonar)
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Jul 3, 2022 21:41
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silvergoose posted:Played 2v2 cribbage with my wife, my dad, and my nephew. I legit love the game and it feels very different at each player count 2-4. Good stuff, kid and my dad wrecked us in the 8yo's first game ever after watching the three of us play earlier. I love Cribbage but I swear to God that between it and Euchre there have been times I'm playing cards during the pegging (heh) phase that I think, this is a lock no way and then I proceed to feel tears welling as everything I play somehow they have a double for or the perfect number to hit 31.
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Jul 3, 2022 22:06
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JackDarko posted:Hell yeah, Goon, thanks for sharing. That’s pretty cool that you got second as the Toasts on your first time playing. They’re pretty tricky especially if the advice you’ve been given is “fight people”. I think it's because one of the players had this weird interpretation/house rule where you remove the sympathy when you revolt, so we hit this loop where I'd revolt, lose the sympathy, re-spread it, because of course I would, so that's 8 points and this happened for a three-point, a two point and a four point token twice, so I think like, nine of my victory points were not legitimate. And the cats kept killing one of my +4 sympathies on their turn, and I literally never did not have enough foxes to deal with that.. Anyway, the game is really, really cool. I didn't like Oath, but I might try Oath again .
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Jul 3, 2022 22:44
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Oath is super table-dependent. I wish I could play it more often, I've gotten in 3 games in... a year or so? With 'table-dependent' I mean moreso than other games. I can have fun playing aFfO with randoms or people who are sore losers, etc. With Oath I need people I actually really like. Root is way easier to get to the table, you just have to be sure people are aware the cute animals are a feint to distract you from how brutal and merciless the game is.
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Jul 4, 2022 00:34
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Yeah, Oath is a big collection of props and extras for you to collaborate a story with. Like in our table we had the last winner styled as King of Beasts because he kept eating everyone’s board with his pack wolves, and he was looking to extend his reign in the following game, until a thought-lost heiress usurp him at what seemed like the hour of his victory. And she was employing her own forest allies, to the point of erecting a Forest Temple and letting the civilized debate hall decay into a house of ribaldry as the kingdom moved further away from the old Bandit Lord’s ways and deeper into a symbiosis with nature. Which might sound interesting, but it’s all made up by the table. There is a wolf card and there is a long-lost heir card, but there is no flavor-text or background lore to provide any depth or even explanation as to how they tie into their game mechanics. The game’s currencies, favor and secrets, are also vague and up the table to determine what they mean in the setting. So if your table is very gameplay-focused, then they might enjoy the enjoy building, but it’s the people who enjoy building narratives that will get the real mileage of Oath. It also has a kinda-sorta clever way to deal with kingmaker scenarios, as the third player can still impact the legacy-esque portion of the game even if they have no clear road to victory. Do you hate a particular region? Attack it so whomever wins won’t be able to include it in the next game. Again, this means a lot less if your only focus is winning.
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Jul 4, 2022 02:01
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I kind of want to get Condotierre but I hear the 2 player rules are not good which surprised me because it seems similar to Battle Line which is touted as a great 2 player experience. In fact someone linked to a thread on BGG where someone created rules to approximate Condotierre to Battle Line. As much as I want to hope I can play it at 3+ players if the 2 player version isn't salvagable maybe I should just go for Air, Land, and Sea or Scotten Totten. Any thoughts? Any other alternatives I should consider?
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Jul 4, 2022 04:42
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Fiancee and I have been pecking away at the 2nd set of puzzles in The Emerald Flame, usually focusing on 1 puzzle at a time before putting it away for later. Still having a blast with it. We had a really good time with the puzzle we solved though there were a few instances where we used the online hint system just to confirm we did things right. Only major issues that popped up were for (2nd package spoiler) I misread one number as a separate number. Since a lot of the stuff is copied from handwriting, some numbers look similar to me. That's not a problem with the game, just with me. The only other trouble we had was that we were trying to narrow down parts of the puzzle, we got to a point where we couldn't comfortably say with 100% certainty what a particular answer was, only that it was either one thing or another thing, so we looked used the hints to confirm which of the 2 things was correct to save us any trouble down the line with wasted time/effort. We already knew that everything else was correct and just didn't want to end up in a situation where we get to the end of the puzzle and find out an incorrect element from the beginning ended up messing the whole thing up and forcing us to restart. I feel like the puzzle could have been a little finer tuned because in this particular case it was difficult to discern and match the solutions and clues due to some vagueness/abstractness in the clues provided. Spoilered the puzzle discussion but I still tried to be vague with it. Long story short we had a bunch of fun with it and I'm looking forward to working on more of the puzzles. Still very happy that we're in tune enough with the puzzles to be able to get those moments of epiphany, the feeling that lightning has just struck our brains.
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Jul 4, 2022 05:23
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Tried out the Guild of Merchant Explorers. We decided it is "medium fun." The components are in general pretty frustrating -- the wooden and cardboard bits slide all over the mats, and the coin denominations are almost identical for no clear reason (the only way to affect other players is to complete an objective first, so how much money they have is nearly immaterial). The ability to easily see what is still to come in the small exploration deck is quite good and makes the second half of every era a fun puzzle, but it's probably not fun enough for us overall in that "game space."
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Jul 4, 2022 06:11
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SuperKlaus posted:I'm an Ares Project booster and would strongly recommend it for an RTS in board game form. TBH I haven't played in uh years so I'm not equipped to talk to your concern of dryness but I remember enjoying it very much and feeling it did not deserve to come and go into the dustbin of board game publishing history. Give it a look and maybe I'll dig out my copy and we can talk about what does and doesn't work. Ah, OK, I'll try and hunt down a copy. The thing is it looks like the kind of thing I would LOVE where you have to play a few games with the same people to really get into the swing of it, but the guys I used to do that with have all moved away and now it's a much more casual crowd. Well, not casual, but like, conflict averse. I have this theory that most board gamers are kind of conflict averse, and that it's a major driver of CotN. People playing a new game are much less in conflict with each other, and much more playing against the game itself. But once you've played it a few times, you're really playing against each other then. You can't just win through a novel strategy, unless you feint it somewhat. This is when games get their best, though. Fury of Dracula looks so good on paper, but I've never known anyone actually have a great game of it. When I played, I was Dracula, and I just ran rings around everyone. To the point where I had to stop the game and show them what I was doing to see if it was legal. It turned out I'd not been playing properly, but actually in a way that hugely hampered me. The guys who had insisted I MUST play it then revealed that last time they'd spent the whole game looking for Dracula and then when they did he killed them all handily. We just kinda left it there. I'd be interested to hear if there is some aspect to playing humans we missed? I can't stand pandemic, but love the varient with the bio terrorist. I really like Nemesis, but it's very much an experience generator rather than competitive game.
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Jul 4, 2022 08:01
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Apocron posted:I kind of want to get Condotierre but I hear the 2 player rules are not good which surprised me because it seems similar to Battle Line which is touted as a great 2 player experience. In fact someone linked to a thread on BGG where someone created rules to approximate Condotierre to Battle Line. As much as I want to hope I can play it at 3+ players if the 2 player version isn't salvagable maybe I should just go for Air, Land, and Sea or Scotten Totten. Any thoughts? Any other alternatives I should consider? Thanks for linking that. I don't know why but the rules for such a simple game kept tripping us up especially for 2 player. I just need to fork over the money for Gwent decks on Etsy and play that instead.
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Jul 4, 2022 08:42
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Shes Not Impressed posted:Thanks for linking that. I don't know why but the rules for such a simple game kept tripping us up especially for 2 player. I just need to fork over the money for Gwent decks on Etsy and play that instead. If you're interested in that then there's another 2p variant someone posted on BGG where the map is reintroduced (since from what I gather the official 2p doesn't use the map)
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Jul 4, 2022 09:06
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Went to a small gathering over the weekend and the first game our host opened up was a new one he has just gotten called Here to Slay just based on the name and the art, I was hesitant, but after the rules were explained I knew I'd be in for a bad time. Basically just Munchkin with dice rolling, lots of take-that actions and modifying people's dice. Like any Munchkin-like, I won by waiting until everyone had exhausted their modifier cards and then played a bunch of stuff in a row to get the winning objective (get all six classes in my party). Was pretty dumb, thankfully was fairly short. Didn't help that I had a growing migraine, I might've enjoyed shooting the poo poo more if that hadn't been the case. At that point I pulled out The Crew Deep Mission, which was a ton of fun. I love the new objective structure, though am kind of bummed that I needed to buy this new game just for that. Would've liked just getting a mini-pack of cards for the original game instead to replace the objectives in that.
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Jul 4, 2022 13:39
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I played Wrong Party yesterday. Very light drafting filler where you're inviting guests to a party which might through fuckery suddenly change its theme. I was dubious because I believe it's from the people who committed Unstable Unicorns, but it's unobjectionable and doesn't outlast its welcome. Also we had a child's birthday party turn into the January 6th insurrection, which was amusing.
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Jul 4, 2022 14:21
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