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The genre isn't really suited for 2 players, so you need a pretty flipping weird one to make it fun.
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Oct 14, 2022 12:21
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Jewmanji posted:I’m feeling some fomo and thinking of submitting a late pledge for Shikoku 1889 despite having no one to play with. This would be my first 18xx. The game can apparently accommodate two players but does it actually work at that count? Or do you really need 3+ to have a good experience? If you wanted to try it out and see what you think, go to 18xx.games and try a 2P game of it with your victim. My wife and I play on there all the time (or at least used to before we had a kid) and you can get a feel for the system and whether you'll like it or not. Another one you can try is 1846 that even has special 2P rules. Playing in person is much, much more different though and you cannot discount the tactile benefits of being able to struggle to find the right tile, fiddle with them as you try and upgrade something surrounded by others tiles, and slap down a bunch of certificates into the bank causing your opponent to groan as the stock collapses and they're the sole owner of a soon to be trainless railroad. I admit that sometimes I miss the super simple route calculations that .games provides because goddamn if it doesn't slow down our games. The previous Grand Trunk release is the best looking of the 18xx's I own by a long shot (the AAG stuff is very clean and simple except for 1860 thanks a lot bud) and Shikoku is shaping up to be lovely too. Just need Josh to get off his rear end and commit to printing The Old Prince so I can stop trying to figure out how to PNP it.
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Oct 14, 2022 15:39
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armorer posted:If you play a couple of games of Calico you definitely start to be able to keep track of what tiles other players are waiting for to plug into their quilt for a lot of points, and then you hate draft them when you get the chance and stick it wherever it works in your own quilt. Granted, that is the extent of the player interaction. The trouble with hate drafting as a form of player interaction is typically that I sacrifice my own position to do harm to one of my opponents' positions, and I have other opponents. It works alright 2p though yeah. FirstAidKite posted:This'll explain it I'm sorry, this does nothing to combat the opinion that the game's well-liked because it has pictures of cats in it. The man even, perhaps unintentionally, declares the theme is a miss when he states that it's not a game of chill quilting at all but rather one of crushing disappointment regarding inability to get the patterns you want due to the clog-prone trickle flow of hex options that he in turn only avoids calling a "fatal flaw" because nobody who plays this game will be happy with it, see, it isn't just you! armorer posted:Calico at its core is 100% a brain burner puzzle game. If that's not your thing, you're not going to like it Ultimately, armorer has the right read here, almost. I enjoy brain burners and puzzles. What I think armorer means to say is understood is that Calico is a solitary puzzle experience, and board games with little purpose to the other players being present are not for all of us. ANYWAY all has been said there that probably can be said, I am not a hater on Calico, only unimpressed, and will probably try again at a games cafe When playing Spirit Island with the No Events rule, so that the team has the Command Beasts special card, and someone on the team is Many Minds Move As One, can Command Beasts be used to Push beasts 2 spaces per Many Minds' special text? That is to say, can Command Beasts be considered "Many Minds' Action?"
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Oct 14, 2022 16:54
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Yeah it has extremely low player interaction, and is primarily a solo puzzle. I have several similar games, Canvas for example, and some roll and writes like Railroad Ink and Cartographers. At board game nights I've run these games are always popular though. If it's not for you because of player interaction, I totally understand.
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Oct 14, 2022 17:13
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Quote-Unquote posted:Is Dice Throne Adventures good? I have both seasons and the Marvel one and I absolutely love Fancy Yahtzee, just want to get opinions before taking the plunge on co-op Fancy Yahtzee. I think so! It's challenging and the dungeon crawl elements are pretty fun if you enjoy that sort of thing. Being able to buy upgrades for your deck definitely changes things up from the competitive mode of dice throne, and I felt like it gives some of the lackluster pvp classes more of an opportunity to shine. My only complaint is that the playtime can be a bit long, especially if you want to do a dungeon crawl and a boss fight in one session.
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Oct 14, 2022 17:15
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A cute bit of chrome in Calico is that the tiles showing what patters the cats are attracted to are grey, because cats are colour blind.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:42
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Vidmaster posted:I think so! It's challenging and the dungeon crawl elements are pretty fun if you enjoy that sort of thing. Being able to buy upgrades for your deck definitely changes things up from the competitive mode of dice throne, and I felt like it gives some of the lackluster pvp classes more of an opportunity to shine. My only complaint is that the playtime can be a bit long, especially if you want to do a dungeon crawl and a boss fight in one session. I love dungeon crawls in general so this is a positive recommendation for me, cheers.
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Oct 15, 2022 01:14
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SuperKlaus posted:I'm sorry, this does nothing to combat the opinion that the game's well-liked because it has pictures of cats in it. The man even, perhaps unintentionally, declares the theme is a miss when he states that it's not a game of chill quilting at all but rather one of crushing disappointment regarding inability to get the patterns you want due to the clog-prone trickle flow of hex options that he in turn only avoids calling a "fatal flaw" because nobody who plays this game will be happy with it, see, it isn't just you! The point of the video was that calico is a brutal game of constant damage control where no player is truly in control of anything through the theme of passive aggressive quilting. It's fine that you aren't a fan of it, just saying that you've got things backwards. It isn't that you have little control and numerous ways to score and therefore gameplay ultimately doesn't matter, it's that the ways you do have control are so limited that the few choices you do have can greatly influence the ways the rest of the players are playing. Everyone is managing their own little dumpster fire. The scoring methods are many to provide players with a variety of different outs for managing their quilt and the game is about constantly making these choices on the fly. Like I said, it's fine that it isn't for you. All I'm saying is the game's intent isn't to provide so many ways to score that it becomes pointless but that the game is about managing your quilt, with scoring being the representation of how well you managed to piece everything together.
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Oct 15, 2022 05:14
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Calico is just Hard Mode Azul That's it. That's the review.
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Oct 15, 2022 06:01
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Infinitum posted:Calico is just Hard Mode Azul they're opposite ends of the same genre. Heavy interaction through drafting with rote tile placement vs no interaction through drafting with pretty engaging tile placement
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Oct 15, 2022 06:24
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I still need to pick up azul...
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Oct 15, 2022 06:28
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FirstAidKite posted:The scoring methods are many to provide players with a variety of different outs for managing their quilt and the game is about constantly making these choices on the fly. In general I like it when games have a distinct gameplay shift and the player has to choose when to "change gears", so to speak. In Calico, this happens with each scoring element -- usually the bigger ones that can take all game to set up -- as players one by one judge the remaining tile distribution, their own hands, and what opponents and going for, and decide whether and when to cut losses (or whether to press on to the bitter end) especially for the bigger-scoring elements. Denying your opponent(s) the tiles they sorely need for a big score is important too. You invite ugly stares doing that every bit as much as you do in Azul, if not worse.
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Oct 15, 2022 08:48
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SuperKlaus posted:When playing Spirit Island with the No Events rule, so that the team has the Command Beasts special card, and someone on the team is Many Minds Move As One, can Command Beasts be used to Push beasts 2 spaces per Many Minds' special text? That is to say, can Command Beasts be considered "Many Minds' Action?" No. It is a special action that belongs to no spirit, just like Fear Cards.
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Oct 15, 2022 16:30
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FulsomFrank posted:If you wanted to try it out and see what you think, go to 18xx.games and try a 2P game of it with your victim. My wife and I play on there all the time (or at least used to before we had a kid) and you can get a feel for the system and whether you'll like it or not. Another one you can try is 1846 that even has special 2P rules. Very helpful info, thanks! The Shikoku KS did point me to the 18xx online platform but I found it a bit inscrutable without having put much effort in. It really does seem like a fascinating system and nothing else in my collection really overlaps with it. Ah well, I may just add it to Brass, JoCo, Dune, and a few others as games I’ll play in some other life. On a separate note, had a great game of Spirit Island playing as Many Minds and Grinning Trickster. They are super synergistic with claw tokens (or paw tokens, as I call them). One thing caught my eye though. On the player board for Many Minds it says a fear victory is possible in a way that made that seem unusual and all of a sudden I’m now wondering if people often win by completely clearing the board? Perhaps they just meant it’s possible with Many Minds to exhaust the fear deck, rather than just winning at Terror level 3 as we always do. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 16:34
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If I were to aggregate all my played games of Spirit Island I would wager that a fear victory was the dominant win trigger, by at least 70%.
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Oct 15, 2022 19:08
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I've played maybe a dozen games of Spirit Island and have never won by exhausting the fear deck, it's always by getting to terror 3. Granted I don't often play with adversaries so....
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Oct 15, 2022 20:29
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Resident Idiot posted:Five at least, if you're willing to count Tuggeranong. This is going back a ways, I know. But 6. Unless someone else posted haha. GLOG regular. Hit me up. Look for the tall guy with black hair playing something heavy or with lots of minis. The End fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 09:47
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CitizenKeen posted:
Actually had this happen in my first game, a player had a big lead in VPs and held on to some presidencies and so was able to sabotage the Trading the company to end the game early. The Failure card (Shipbuilders Blamed!) wound up hurting everyone about equally, so it wound up being the right decision, but if he had pulled the Failure Card that punished the Prime Minister it’d have lost him the game.
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Oct 16, 2022 13:07
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drawing a card with a political cartoon of my family patriarch's cartoonishly big rear end being like "MINISTER OF CRUMPETS?! COLONIAL EXCESS GOES TOO FAR" and I just throw my victory chips in the air with a shout of despair like I'm at the race track
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Oct 16, 2022 22:46
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Played JoCo 2e and it was rad af
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Oct 16, 2022 23:55
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I played a second game of Oath. Two of us were newcomers, the other three had a little experience. Anyway, it was a better experience this time around. The empire used the banner-of-secrets Oath, and appropriately enough it won despite collapsing militarily and controlling zero sites. One of the exiles got into a good position with the Banner of the People's Favour and the corresponding prophecy, but we were just barely able to keep it off her enough to prevent the victory. I wound up joining the empire in return for that one artifact that doubles your musters but prevents you from taking land, and was going to attack the chancellor to steal the sceptre, but the game dice-ended just in time. The Acting Troupe is a god-tier Advisor card.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:59
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Got Horizons of Spirit Island to the table for one player finally. Played a number of games between yesterday and today. First... too many games was just for learning the rules. This is the highest complexity game I've played yet and keeping all the triggers, options, and rules in mind proved a fair challenge. The two rules in particular that I got wrong for three (?) games were: Reclaim cards - I was reclaiming one card rather than the pile. Predictably I used that Growth ability about once before abandoning it until getting stuck with nothing in hand and feeling forced to use it; Towns generate 1 fear when destroyed, cities generate 2... I was generating none. I lost those games handily but they did drag on for a while. Now I've got the rules down the game feels a little too easy, unfortunately, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just ponied up the extra money for the base game. The spirits I've played: Fathomless Mud of the Swamp - abusing innate generates fear quickly and gaining sacred sites isn't difficult enough to temper the special power. Stopping towns and cities getting built and generating fear from innate and cards gets a win from Level 2 or 3 victory conditions fairly quickly. Eyes Watch from the Trees - pumps out tons of fear making winning by drawing out the pile the obvious strategy. Drawing out Paralyzing Fear or similar makes this dead simple while maintaining huge board control. I haven't tried adding the Enhancement option yet and these are the only two spirits I've tried. It's possible the Enhancement difficulty kick makes a Mud victory harder but it won't do anything for Eyes who can basically ignore towns and cities except to counter ravages. Other than Enhancement there's no way to increase the difficulty except adding stuff from the base game. Which might be perfectly fine to PnP but right now I wish I had a more difficult game in my box or an option for a more difficult game directly in it. To be clear I really really enjoy the game and think it's fantastic. I'm not sure if starting with Horizons is necessary but I have no way to (from experience) compare Horizons spirits to the lowest difficulty spirits in the base game. I think the option to play without scenarios, adversaries, and blight cards in the base game kinda obviates the need for Horizons which is probably best suited for people who want to add the extra spirits, errata'd cards, or whatever else to their base game. Edit: the strong feeling I get despite not having played the base is that the game is simplified/balanced around assuming the player will mostly fail to generate useful elements. But then it hits you over the head with elements by putting them on tracks making that not really a problem at all? Edit 2: as a game to get you to buy the base game it's a remarkable achievement I'll give them that Edit 3: Progression cards don't really have a place in this game. Not fun even for a new player trying to learn. I ditched it after the first game - my problems with the rules were apart from figuring out what cards I want in hand. I think Progression cards have the potential to be used as a difficulty lever though, by making the game more difficult but even then it would suck out too much fun to be worth it Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 20:05
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Not sure how different Horizons is but if you're playing difficulty 0 not much point commenting on balance.
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Oct 17, 2022 21:52
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No I mean that the design philosophy balances the game against the mistakes it assumes the player will make in its goal of making it a noob friendly game
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Oct 17, 2022 22:09
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We got a five player game of Spirit Island in on Saturday and it was fun but felt like it ended just as we were getting warmed up. After a very slow start we loaded up on major powers and got the fear flying. Two of us played new Horizons spirits to keep it simple, lava dino (Rising Heat of Stone and Sand) and mud otter (Fathomless Mud of the Swamp). Guy who only plays Keeper of the Wild (outside Second Wave+) stuck with his Towering Wrath. Gotta give him props for knowing what he likes. The MTG player we got into the game played Shifting Memory of Ages and spent the whole game gaining new power cards and not reclaiming outside of his one per turn on the spirit track to get back the card that gives you new cards. We beat the game just as he got the major power that destroys entire boards*. Finally new guy had played only once or twice before and played River Surges in Sunlight with some coaching. He didn't like the game so we moved on to Blood Rage after. I hope the digital version gets Jagged Earth soon. or Horizons, the new spirits should be easy enough to add and would keep me busy a while. *destroying his own board would have completely isolated the new guy on his own mini island with us mostly unable to help, would have been interesting to see.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:29
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Perry Mason Jar posted:No I mean that the design philosophy balances the game against the mistakes it assumes the player will make in its goal of making it a noob friendly game I see. I think that's pretty cool actually. Veteran SI players have the upcoming expansion to look forward to anyway. I haven't really seen Horizons sold to anyone but newbies other than the 'hey you can technically play with these easy spirits in the real game'.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:48
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There's a section on page 25 of the Horizons of Spirit Island instruction manual (not the quickstart) that has advice for increasing the game difficulty. Some of the advice won't apply since it basically says "buy other Spirit Island content to try out scenarios and adversaries" but the other stuff mentioned should still apply for anyone who only has Horizons.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:55
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Tried the Gofer Gold table for Super-Skill Pinball, which along with having a very punny game, was actually an interesting table with tactical choices, even though it is the "Beginner Table" of Ramp Up. The flume loop gives you a few choices to go for: you ideally want to get at least one boosted full loop of it, but to do that you want to never go to it, and also potentially load up on skill shots. But doing too many loops can make it difficult to light up the mine carts or the the falls locations, so there is an interesting choice of when to duck out of there. The Pan targets were also interesting, what with them giving once-per-game bonuses of either your dice multiplied or added to each other when you complete them, which also rewards judicious use of skill shots. Overall it wasn't a hard table by any means, but I felt it rewarded planning and strategies much more than the other two beginner pins (Starfleet Academy and the Circus one in 4-cade). I'm starting to really appreciate the mixture of luck and strategy involved within the game and although this can be a feature of other roll-and-write games (like for example, Railroad Ink), I've never quite played a roll-and-write that has such a high level of conveyance such as this game. I'm honestly surprised that I'm enjoying the game this much. It just all makes sense in terms of both mechanisms and the diversity of the pins available, along with some of the really inventive mechanisms that they have applied to the system. Strong recommendation from me.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:33
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FirstAidKite posted:There's a section on page 25 of the Horizons of Spirit Island instruction manual (not the quickstart) that has advice for increasing the game difficulty. Some of the advice won't apply since it basically says "buy other Spirit Island content to try out scenarios and adversaries" but the other stuff mentioned should still apply for anyone who only has Horizons. I recommend just printing out the Brandenburg Prussia Adversary card to everyone who wants to crank the difficulty. Lowest rules overhead, does significantly increase difficulty. What's not to love.
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Oct 18, 2022 01:01
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Hey thanks. I’ve been too timid to start scaling but will take this under advisement. Ps Volcano and Rampant Spread of Green are insane together
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Oct 18, 2022 02:25
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I know the thread doesn't love Betrayal at House on the Hill, but does the 3rd edition balance out any of the wonkier aspects (e.g. inconsistent quality of haunts)? Trying to work out if it's worth 'upgrading' from 2nd.
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Oct 18, 2022 04:46
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Jewmanji posted:Hey thanks. I’ve been too timid to start scaling but will take this under advisement. What makes them work? Green supercharging V’s growth? Preventing ravages until Volcano is ready for a major eruption?
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Oct 18, 2022 05:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcYupaxFNeI
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Oct 18, 2022 16:04
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Just what Spirit Island needs, 4 more token types…
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Oct 18, 2022 16:18
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I appreciate the kaiju spirits butBottom Liner posted:Just what Spirit Island needs, 4 more token types… yeah, jesus christ, please stop adding more fiddly bits and just give me more variation on the stuff thats already there.
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Oct 18, 2022 16:42
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Unclear but seems like the Incarna tokens replace presence tokens for those spirits?
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Oct 18, 2022 16:57
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Should have twice as many extra tokens tbh. I crave complexity.
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Oct 18, 2022 17:09
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From the Backerkit video it looks like they’ve upped the quality of the spirit panel art, which is nice. Some of the spirits have always had frustratingly mediocre art imho.
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Oct 18, 2022 20:13
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SettingSun posted:Should have twice as many extra tokens tbh. I crave complexity. Just play Mage Knight like the rest of us complexity fiends.
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Oct 18, 2022 22:00
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Jewmanji posted:Some of the spirits have always had frustratingly mediocre art imho. Which ones?
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Oct 19, 2022 00:48
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