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Funzo posted:Just got back from a long weekend of playing games with friends. We got an AirBnB rental and spent 2 and a half days playing board games. Everyone brought games, so I don't remember everything off the top of my head, but I took Istanbul, Spirit Island and Kemet: Blood and Sand, and we got in 5 player games of all three. Spirit Island at 5 gets pretty wild towards the end game, with everything that can happen. The sex pest (and workplace tyrant - he fired 13 employees as his parting gesture) is no longer in charge, but likely still benefitting financially from the company and involved in an advisory role. I have the crate from before people knew about the sex pest. It's a mixed bag. If you do get it, you may want to do some light sanding on the interior sides of the top lid of the crate to make it slightly easier to close. On a positive note, busting out the big SPRIT ISLAND crate does a lot for getting new players hyped. Also the storage for tokens doubling as storage during the game is extremely handy. Other issues: That fucker is heavy. Also, it probably won't fit everything in it once we get 8 new spirits and a few new tokens in the (soon to close so get in on it now if you want) current backerkit kickstarter thingy here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/greater-than-games/spirit-island-nature-Incarnate , so it might not be the storage solution to get if you're trying to future-proof. Since there's at least two expansions left in this series (nature incarnate, and some other hinted at JE-sized expansion that focuses on the Dahan in the far future) and the sex pest business doesn't seem to be fully resolved, I'd recommend against buying the spirit island crate in particular, or any other organizers as well, until NI is out. If you simply must have one, Etsy has some great stuff like this one https://www.etsy.com/listing/917189065/natures-wrath-organizer-storage-solution . And Laserox has a decent storage solution as well.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:00
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Eraflure posted:Rampant growth is probably the best spirit in the game, yeah. It's not just moss dude, though, the generic support powers are a bit too strong too. I assume it's by design, to encourage cooperation. I think it works well, as the end result is players going "oh awesome, I got twinned days/constancy/whatever" and immediately working on sick combos with the rest of the team. It's great going through a few plays of this with new players as they realize on like the second or third playthrough how bonkers the support powers are. It usually happens around the time they stop viewing slow actions as inherently worse than fast actions.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:03
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Impermanent posted:Since there's at least two expansions left in this series (nature incarnate, and some other hinted at JE-sized expansion that focuses on the Dahan in the far future) and the sex pest business doesn't seem to be fully resolved, I'd recommend against buying the spirit island crate in particular, or any other organizers as well, until NI is out. If you simply must have one, Etsy has some great stuff like this one https://www.etsy.com/listing/917189065/natures-wrath-organizer-storage-solution . And Laserox has a decent storage solution as well.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:10
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I feel like I must be exceptionally dumb or something because I try Spirit Island like once a year and have never once come close to a win. This last weekend my wife and I broke it out again, I was playing as the rock starter guy and she was the ocean starter guy, and even with all of the rock guy's Defend abilities we were always on the back foot and got overwhelmed by blight shortly before hitting fear level 3. We'd have a few great turns where we cleared a ton of invaders and generated basically the whole Fear pool in one go, but even those were rare and we were almost never able to really target them on lands that were about to be ravaged next turn. Rock guy's innate ability to Repeat a 1 (or 3+) cost card is listed as Fast, so it can only Repeat other Fast abilities, correct?
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Nov 15, 2022 18:35
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Admiralty Flag posted:Let me second the linked organizer if you feel the need to get one right now. I love Tower Rex's stuff, I get compliments on my organizer every time I pull it out, and it's supporting a Ukrainian company. Good stuff all around. (For storage: I put the spirit boards and the two foldable boards in the B&C box and everything else (rules, teaching script, and six island boards) in the bore box with the organizer. I get some lid lift earth both, mostly with B&C, but it works for me.) Thirding this. Everything I bought from Tower Rex has been very high quality. Easy to assemble, looks great, and arrives quickly. Their prices are also pretty comparable to other companies even though they are shipping direct from Ukraine. I have a laser cutter and there are several things I will by from them rather than design/cut myself just because their items are just so well designed. They are pretty much my go-to for organizers.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:39
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Just hearing about Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna thanks to a mailer Capstone sent out. Looks interesting because I'm always looking for 2p war games. Has anyone played it? Any thoughts?
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Nov 15, 2022 18:43
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Rockman Reserve posted:
No, you can repeat other abilities too. Think of a Repeat as creating a second instance of the ability's effects that can be targeted in any place you could have targeted the original ability. If you do that in the Fast phase it just means you have two instances of the slow ability waiting in the slow phase. It sounds like your may be misplaying a rule or two that would make the game harder. I'd recommend scanning this list of commonly misunderstood rules in case anything else is tripping you up. https://querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Rules-semi-commonly-misplayed The most common misplayed ones that make the game harder for players are: 1. only one blight added per ravage, no matter how much damage (unless a specific invader is in play) 2. cascading blight only goes to one adjacent area, not to every single adjacent area (pandemic brain) 3. explorers are not a source of explorers. 4. you don't "use up" elements as you use them to activate effects. Elements listed under abilities are thresholds to meet, not a measure of how much you "spend" to activate them. 5. You don't need to choose where to target a power until you resolve it. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 15, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2022 18:48
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Rockman Reserve posted:I feel like I must be exceptionally dumb or something because I try Spirit Island like once a year and have never once come close to a win. Winning on the lowest difficulty is pretty easy, you may be getting a rule wrong but it's hard to say. A common mistake from pandemic players is that blight cascades only add one additional blight, not one to each bordering province. If you've got all the rules correct, try to focus on stopping problems before they start. It's often better to let a ravaging province take one blight and target the explore/build areas instead to prevent future builds and ravages before they happen.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:50
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Rockman Reserve posted:I feel like I must be exceptionally dumb or something because I try Spirit Island like once a year and have never once come close to a win. This last weekend my wife and I broke it out again, I was playing as the rock starter guy and she was the ocean starter guy, and even with all of the rock guy's Defend abilities we were always on the back foot and got overwhelmed by blight shortly before hitting fear level 3. We'd have a few great turns where we cleared a ton of invaders and generated basically the whole Fear pool in one go, but even those were rare and we were almost never able to really target them on lands that were about to be ravaged next turn. Nope, it's fast so it can repeat either fast or slow powers. (If it were slow, it could only repeat slow powers.) Are you sure you're playing with all the rules right? Some commonly missed rules:
Are you playing with power progression cards? You probably know the game well enough to dump them. If you're getting overwhelmed by blight, use the blight errata (first bullet above), read bullets 2&3 closely, and use the "5 per player" box on the board instead of blight cards. If you're still having problems, try one of the extra options (free growth before the game begins, no initial exploration, etc.) It'll click -- sometimes it takes longer than others. The last piece of advice I have is to think ahead a turn, especially with that combo. You need to be moving Dahan around with River's Boon to help Earth (so make sure River is dropping presence on Earth's board), because you have to have both Dahan and sacred sites in place to take full advantage of Earth's Defend ability, as well as getting them in place for Rituals of Destruction.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:06
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While SI is exceptional as a game, its rulebook(s) are kinda doo doo. I learned a lot of things I misplayed from playing the app, even after playing on board dozens upon dozens of times. From my experience new players have issues with two key parts of how to play SI effectively: Understanding the fast/slow relationship of powers and when to let things go to pot to gain momentum. And in many ways these two points are intertwined. The first -- Because slow powers fire off after the invader phase, it takes a little practice to think basically one turn ahead in regards to them. In a no adversary, no event deck game, you have near perfect information about what the invaders are going to be doing. You can see that they will build a town in a space and you can queue up a slow card that will move or eliminate it. The second: You can't save everything. Well, you probably can at the lowest difficulty with experience, but generally you can't. It's ok to let a space blight if it means you can 'catch up' in spaces that are coming up in the order. Blight is a resource. Make it work for you! Preventing builds is generally better value in the long run if you can manage it. River is especially effective at this. Its innate and Wash Away card both push en masse. Invaders can't ravage if they're not in the space to ravage it.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:15
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Defend powers are really tempting because it's vastly cheaper to neutralize a pile of invaders about to ravage with defend cards than it is to destroy them outright (and once you get past the "single explorer about to build" stage, often cheaper than moving them out) but by itself defense doesn't really do a lot for you and leaning on defend cards too much is a common trap. Prioritize combining defends with Dahan for counterattacks and use them sparingly otherwise, dropping a defend on a land with no blight or Dahan there is kind of a "weeeellll, I guess I don't really have anything better to do" move as opposed to something you should aim for.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:26
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Hmmm. The only thing from those lists it looks like we were misplaying was only Repeating fast powers with Earth (and I guess not adding an extra blight to the pool at the start of the game). Honestly, that alone would have probably tipped the scales pretty heavily in our favor, we could defend and push all day long but had real trouble dealing worthwhile damage for most of the game. Most of the damage powers were Slow, so....yeah, that would help. Also I think we do have to move away from the progression power cards and into the standard decks. Like, there really wasn't a good opportunity to use Poisoned Land without it biting us in the rear end hard on the next turn.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:27
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Saltpowered posted:Thirding this. Everything I bought from Tower Rex has been very high quality. Easy to assemble, looks great, and arrives quickly. Their prices are also pretty comparable to other companies even though they are shipping direct from Ukraine. I have a laser cutter and there are several things I will by from them rather than design/cut myself just because their items are just so well designed. They are pretty much my go-to for organizers. That's the one I ended up going with. It shipped already but since it's coming to the US from Ukraine, I'm guessing it might take a little while, which is fine.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:41
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Impermanent posted:No, you can repeat other abilities too. Think of a Repeat as creating a second instance of the ability's effects that can be targeted in any place you could have targeted the original ability. If you do that in the Fast phase it just means you have two instances of the slow ability waiting in the slow phase. Also don't forget to add 1 fear per destroyed town, 2 fear per destroyed city. I forgot that more than once even though it's written on the drat board and it makes a large difference. To add something else: although River is often touted as the best beginner spirit it's a bit of a trap because River really depends strongly on T3 Innate and card play track. For River you'll want to take G2 T1 and T2 to rush 3 card plays and 1 Reclaim. Your unique cards are enough to hit T3 when you can play 4 cards so T3 Is usually G3 to hit 4 and then T4 you play G1. Then you'll enter a Reclaim loop. I usually don't touch the energy track at all. Since new players tend not to prioritize their plays around Innate, which you should do for all spirits basically, we might miss that River T3 innate is functionally infinite damage. River strategy is bunching invaders into one land then washing them away. By the way since you're not taking energy track and only G1 gives energy you'll be best off never picking any Major Powers. You might but unlikely. Don't ever forget any of your unique powers if you do! That said, River is a good newbie spirit because more than the other Low complexity spirits it has greater interest in preventing builds and explores than ravages. In general, with any spirit, focus on preventing Build and Explore and don't worry overly much about stopping Ravages! I have no advice for the Rock cause I haven't played him. I feel like it's harder for new players to figure out what they're meant to do with Defend and Control focused spirits - try an offensive or fear spirit that might feel better for you. I'm reticent to plug Reddit but /r/SpiritIsland is both active and friendly. Edit: saw your followup. Absolutely do not play with power progression cards. See above regarding how you're meant to do damage with River. For Rock I don't know cause haven't played him but as a Defend heavy spirit you'll be looking to rely on Dahan for removal.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:58
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Rockman Reserve posted:Like, there really wasn't a good opportunity to use Poisoned Land without it biting us in the rear end hard on the next turn. Why did you feel this was the case? It should absolutely delete a land at the cost of a blight. It's very strong.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:08
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Toshimo posted:Why did you feel this was the case? It should absolutely delete a land at the cost of a blight. It's very strong. It seemed strong, but we only had one action that could spawn new Dahan and it required there to be several in the target land already. That, combined with our other big damage dealer requiring 3 Dahan in the land to trigger the extra damage and fear, just meant there was no situation where dumping a pile of damage where we needed to would have also wiped out a huge population of Dahan and hamstrung us for the rest of the game. I think we also misplayed that Dahan weren't fighting back after a Defend protected them completely from an attack, and with all the turtling defensive powers of Earth we ended up with a lot of lands with Dahan and invaders in kind of an uneasy stalemate.
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Nov 15, 2022 21:16
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Rockman Reserve posted:I think we also misplayed that Dahan weren't fighting back after a Defend protected them completely from an attack, and with all the turtling defensive powers of Earth we ended up with a lot of lands with Dahan and invaders in kind of an uneasy stalemate.
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Nov 15, 2022 22:01
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Rockman Reserve posted:. A big thing with SI is that it does have lots of rules so try and table it again a couple of times quickly so you can make sure you internalise it. I also going to say: you're supposed to start with one more blight than the rulebook says due to the Errata. I know everyone else has said that too. If you're still struggling, I recommend switching to the following spirit combination: Rampant growth of green and lightnings swift strike. Lightning should T1 place two presence from top track and play no powers. T2 place 2 presence from bottom track and play all but your 3 cost power. Turn 3 reclaim, gaining a minor.
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Nov 15, 2022 22:28
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So I'm sure I'm going against the grain on this one - but I've played my first (and last) game of Terraforming Mars against some friends tonight. We had 'that one guy' who had spent the preceding weeks swotting up on strategy and tactics, and won by at least double the VP of the next player, but someone who'd not played at all before came in a close second. I'd played the game against myself (rather than as solo) and found it was tolerable, but playing it with four opponents was just not my cup of tea. Honestly it felt like it should have been 'done' in half the elapsed game turns (in terms of actions undertaken, rather than time elapsed) and the complete and utter lack of meaningful player interaction and point salad just landed badly. The mechanics feel bolted-together rather than seamless, with so many levers and moving parts, and so many trap options. Oh well, I'm glad I tried it!
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Nov 16, 2022 01:20
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I hate the game so no you're not alone. Though I liked my first play, was okay with the second, and actively disliked the third, it went downhill rather than immediately.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:31
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Southern Heel posted:So I'm sure I'm going against the grain on this one - but I've played my first (and last) game of Terraforming Mars against some friends tonight. We had 'that one guy' who had spent the preceding weeks swotting up on strategy and tactics, and won by at least double the VP of the next player, but someone who'd not played at all before came in a close second. I'd played the game against myself (rather than as solo) and found it was tolerable, but playing it with four opponents was just not my cup of tea. This thread has very few kind things to say about Terraforming Mars. Personally I enjoy the game, but I enjoy a lot of other games that are arguably bad games as well, so yeah.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:31
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Southern Heel posted:So I'm sure I'm going against the grain on this one Welcome to the thread! Don't worry, around these parts you will not hear much love for Terraforming Mars. I also played it exactly once, and though I had a perfectly nice time with the engine itself with the waste energy becoming heat and all that, it was way too long. The inequal opportunity of drawing from such an enormous common deck is usually a drag, but it's exponentially worse the longer the game gets. Feel free to check out the third OP for some of the games generally well liked by the thread hivemind, or just ask if you want some suggestions.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:33
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Had a long weekend of board gaming, and then our annual games-week where a bunch of us take leave and play board games all week (or at least as much we can around school pickups and things of that nature). Played a bunch of stuff that was new or newish to me, but the standouts for me at least were: Circadians: Chaos Order This is a heavily asymmetric economic/dudes-on-a-map combat game. I love this game. We've played four times now, and every time has been extremely close between at least 3 of 4 players. The basic gameplay is pretty familiar if you've played stuff in the Kemet or, Cthulhu Wars kinda-vein, move around dudes on a map, use cards and a combat wheel to determine combat, a little bit of economy and tech in the vein of Scythe. What makes the game so good for me though is a couple of things: Firstly, the factions are incredibly asymmetric and victory comes down (usually) to whoever achieves their faction's specific goal first. There's no VP, no 'generic' points or anything, just get your objective done first. Some factions want to kill units, others want to win battles, others don't care and just want to hold territory or max out their research etc. The asymmetric goals I think is part of what has led to such close games, since everyone can to a certain extent pursue their goals without it directly preventing others from achieving theirs. At the same time, everyone has to be super-focused on what everyone else is trying to do and make that tough decision at certain points between furthering your own ends, and preventing others from furthering theirs. Add in a bunch of fun, game-breaking faction-specific powers and there's a huge amount of variety and replayability. The second thing I love is that there's an element of 'economic' warfare alongside the actual fighting on the map. Each round, the main actions (Research, Build, Harvest, Recruit and Move - all of which do about what you'd expect) get priced by the players, one per player. The player who priced that action gets to do it for free, everyone else who wishes to do the action has to pay the player who priced it. What this means is that there's a whole other level of strategy in pricing - do I price low, so that other people will pay me and stimulate my economy, or price high and hope to block others from taking that action by making it too costly? In some games, this led to situations where a player who had very strong military presence on the board could be inhibited from making full use of it by other players pricing the recruit (so they couldn't afford to replace lost troops) and move (so they were limited in their ability to mobilise) actions at high cost. It creates a really fun push and pull between the need to have a decent economy (which comes about from using and upgrading the Build and Harvest actions primarily) with the need to mobilise and dominate on the map (through using and upgrading Recruit and Move). On top of all this, the game is super affordable at least here in NZ and has one of the best designed inserts I've seen in a while, with each faction's pieces having a separate illustrated tuck box to keep it all inside. Vengeance Roll and Fight I really enjoyed this one, though it was a bit hit and miss with different players. It's a fairly streamlines roll and write game following the tropes of revenge movies, where you use different dice combinations to move around rooms, punch or shoot baddies, upgrade your character with unique special abilities and items and ultimately aim to kill the boss or achieve various objectives on the different location boards that you can use from one game to the next. What makes it unique is that the rolling is done in real time, and as soon as you've used your dice to assign to abilities you can take more dice from a central pool and keep going. Once the central pool is out of dice however, that's it, there's no more. It creates a really frantic experience that was highly reminiscent of the build phase of Galaxy Trucker due to the need to grab and use stuff as fast as possible - which is partly why it fell a bit flat for a couple of people that just couldn't get the hang of the speed required - but for those that could, the game is a blast. Also played a bunch of Oathsworn (still great, though starting to find the story sections longer than I would like - I think extended narrative in games is just not for me), Bullet (Continues to be an amazing filler), Ark Nova, Cerebria, Tichu, Tyrants of the Underdark, Black Orchestra (great theme, randomness is terrible), Dog Park (beautiful but bland), Wonderland's War (still loving this after 6+ plays), Hansa Teutonica (still such an amazing design), Homeland, Sidereal Confluence and Coffee Traders.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:35
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Magnetic North posted:Welcome to the thread! Don't worry, around these parts you will not hear much love for Terraforming Mars. Not that you should have worried if we did like it! I didn't like Race for the Galaxy much but I still think it's a much better version of TfM.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:54
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TfM Ares Expedition is an improvement in every way but still falls short of RftG, despite directly lifting a lot of the design into TfM.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:58
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Southern Heel posted:So I'm sure I'm going against the grain on this one - but I've played my first (and last) game of Terraforming Mars against some friends tonight. We had 'that one guy' who had spent the preceding weeks swotting up on strategy and tactics, and won by at least double the VP of the next player, but someone who'd not played at all before came in a close second. I'd played the game against myself (rather than as solo) and found it was tolerable, but playing it with four opponents was just not my cup of tea. I enjoy Terraforming Mars, but I'd never play it with 5 people or with shitheads, because either will always be miserable. It's not hyper-laser-balanced like the gooncensus demands, but it's fine to me with a 2-3 playercount, and even better with the web client which makes the games take half as long. Your point about it taking too many turns is explicitly a new player issue, because as players get better, they push the endgame faster and the turncount naturally decreases. It's not perfect, but it's better than the thread generally gives it credit for, and I would work on the social problem of having a shithead ruining your games as a general rule, since that can sour any game, and maybe give it another play when you've got less people.
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Nov 16, 2022 02:54
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Toshimo posted:It's not hyper-laser-balanced like the gooncensus demands My problem with it was that the fun part is drawing cards and looking for synergies, but doing so is a fool's errand while the winning strategy is to focus on the boring tile placement game. If you can find the fun in plopping forests then I imagine it would be more fun, otherwise it seems like other games are strictly better.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:26
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Terraforming Mars is one of my favorite games, but as a more casual game. It's not fun if people are playing extremely competitively. I've probably played the digital version (against AI) hundreds of times on my phone, and physical maybe 10? It's a pretty chill "I'm waiting in line at the pharmacy, I need something to kill half an hour" game. 3 players seems to be the sweet spot for it. For those complaining about lack of player interaction, did you play with drafting cards between rounds instead of getting 4 random cards to potentially buy? It's not a ton of additional player interaction, but it's at least something. PerniciousKnid posted:My problem with it was that the fun part is drawing cards and looking for synergies, but doing so is a fool's errand while the winning strategy is to focus on the boring tile placement game. If you can find the fun in plopping forests then I imagine it would be more fun, otherwise it seems like other games are strictly better. Some of the cards scale in pretty extreme ways, I've felt that going for Jupiter synergy cards is pretty hard to beat if you get the cards, due to how many of them are basically "Get a VP for each Jupiter card you have"
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Nov 16, 2022 03:27
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I've played TfM and all player counts and expansions and it always felt like a coin flip whether or not any single person could come out ahead. I strongly love the theme so I can't really hate it but I prefer to play Ark Nova.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:28
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SettingSun posted:I've played TfM and all player counts and expansions and it always felt like a coin flip whether or not any single person could come out ahead. I strongly love the theme so I can't really hate it but I prefer to play Ark Nova. Ark Nova feels so much better to play then TfM in pretty much every way. Feels like a game that has taken all the good things from TfM and put it together in a much better way. I’m in love with Brass and play it every chance that my group allows me to foist it on them. Anyone know if there anything similar in theme and greatness? Industrial, building factories/systems, stuff like that.
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Nov 16, 2022 05:09
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BGN trip report Taught and played Blood Rage. Boy it's not so easy to teach a game that you only know the rules of from the digital edition. It's my first "teach" at a BGN, only other times have been kitchen table. It was fine, everyone is very nice and patient and friendly (except, nearly without exception, one player at the table). I'm confident our second game and/or my second teach will go great Really enjoy the game. Picked it up cheap with the expansions (plus a ton of other stuff) here recently and since no one could settle on a game figured why not. Glad I did just to feast on the components! Sea Snake and Giants look soo good on the board. Really pretty stuff Only got the one game in, packed it up, and snuck in a couple games of chess before heading out. 1-1 record there but only cause I let him take back a blunder in the loss (besides that one little thing I got bodied though. Great defensive pin on my rook in the early-mid sunk me)
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Nov 16, 2022 05:15
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Chainclaw posted:I've probably played the digital version (against AI) hundreds of times on my phone, and physical maybe 10? It's a pretty chill "I'm waiting in line at the pharmacy, I need something to kill half an hour" game. I had intended to play an app version since I did imagine I'd like it just fine if it was faster, but didn't want to pay the 16-20 bucks or whatever it cost at the time. If I recall correctly, I think it got pulled? Rumor was they weren't happy with the bugs, but I don't know how true that was. Did it ever get replaced by a different version?
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Nov 16, 2022 11:11
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Perry Mason Jar posted:BGN trip report It's been so long but what is the consensus on Blood Rage? No one I know owns a copy and I used to see it show up on al these Best Of lists (Dice Tower comes to mind) but I feel like the Lang DOAM games start to blend into each other and are all variations on CitOW. I got the mythical Japanese one and it's fine but overproduced and I should just steal the minis to play D&D with (something I can say for a lot of games on the shelves I guess). Also I recognise the irony in an 18xx obsessive throwing some passive aggressive shade at a guy remaking the same game for ~13 years. Elysium posted:Anyway, the real problem with both the game and the app, is that Through the Ages blows it out of the loving water in every possible dimension. The game itself is an amazing, cutthroat, thematic adventure of building a civilization, and the app is an absolute masterclass in translating a board game into digital. The biggest problem with the live game, like TfM, is the time and tedium of managing all the resources. The app takes care of that for you, but it's also displayed in a manner that you immediately understand what is going on, and what the result will be if you do what you are trying. You easily flick resources and cards around the board with swipes (just throw a cube up onto that card to train a new soldier!), but if you don't want to do that? Just click on it and you can manage the same through button menus, with all the additional info that provides. The board, by the way, is coolly reimagined from your tableau of cards into a visual map of actual buildings and soldiers. And if you want to see the cards the way they really are? You can! Want to see what specific cards are left in this round? You can. Want to see the cards that are upcoming next round? You can. Want to undo your actions infinite times because you messed up or just to see what would happen if you tried this, or that? You can. (To be fair this is an actual rule in the game). Unless that action changes something for an opponent in terms of revealing new knowledge of course, and the game knows that. The game also knows automatically how to apply bonuses from cards that you could play. Like just swipe the "discount this building" card from your hand and it will bring up the build that building menu, and if you try to build a building and there are 4 overlapping different bonus ways to apply it? Easily displayed all right there. Did I mention that this app also has the greatest tutorial of all time? Or that there is a scenario-challenge mode with like 30 different crazy scenarios to try to beat? I'm just gonna stop because I could go on forever. Get the Through the Ages app. The biggest problem with the TtA app is that it's so good it makes me not want to play the physical game ever again. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 16, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 16:51
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Magnetic North posted:I had intended to play an app version since I did imagine I'd like it just fine if it was faster, but didn't want to pay the 16-20 bucks or whatever it cost at the time. If I recall correctly, I think it got pulled? Rumor was they weren't happy with the bugs, but I don't know how true that was. Did it ever get replaced by a different version? I don't remember ever seeing it get pulled, but I might have missed it. It's still up at $9 + two $4 DLCs https://apps.apple.com/us/app/terraforming-mars/id1353471030 It's also on Steam for way more money. https://store.steampowered.com/app/800270/Terraforming_Mars/ The digital adaption of a board game I'm still salty about is Lords of Waterdeep. It was a great, well playing app, then all of a sudden they switched developers and shoved an entirely new but way shittier version of the app into the store, so I pulled down what I thought was a patch or whatever and instead it just made the game suck. Lords of Waterdeep is also the only board game I had ordered Broken Token upgrades for, before I found out about the company sucking. The coins were great, but the laser cut inserts are bad. They're way too expensive for how low quality they are.
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Nov 16, 2022 17:01
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I actually just started playing the Terraforming Mars IOS app ($9) about a week ago. Like I felt when I played the game live a while back, the game is fine, maybe even good, but not great. And not worth the amount of hype people go on about it for sure. About the app though, I'm a little disappointed in it. It's great that it takes away all the tedious bookkeeping, of course, but now it's all just numbers flashing around on the too dark screen (I know, space) because things happened, and sure, if you wanted to you could check the log to see what your opponent really did or look at their cards but you probably won't. I hate that you can't (as far as I can tell) undo an action. Accidentally clicked the wrong line of text to put a microbe on a card? Well gently caress off you're putting a microbe on that card. Like the kind of thing that in real life would never happen because you're just putting a cube down on a card you can see right in front of you, and no opponent ever is going to go "dude I saw that cube roll onto that other card, it has to stay there!". And do I really need to be warned, every single time, that if I pass this turn I won't be able to take any more actions this generation? Doesn't seem like I can turn it off (at least you can make it auto pass when you are out of actions). Anyway, the real problem with both the game and the app, is that Through the Ages blows it out of the loving water in every possible dimension. The game itself is an amazing, cutthroat, thematic adventure of building a civilization, and the app is an absolute masterclass in translating a board game into digital. The biggest problem with the live game, like TfM, is the time and tedium of managing all the resources. The app takes care of that for you, but it's also displayed in a manner that you immediately understand what is going on, and what the result will be if you do what you are trying. You easily flick resources and cards around the board with swipes (just throw a cube up onto that card to train a new soldier!), but if you don't want to do that? Just click on it and you can manage the same through button menus, with all the additional info that provides. The board, by the way, is coolly reimagined from your tableau of cards into a visual map of actual buildings and soldiers. And if you want to see the cards the way they really are? You can! Want to see what specific cards are left in this round? You can. Want to see the cards that are upcoming next round? You can. Want to undo your actions infinite times because you messed up or just to see what would happen if you tried this, or that? You can. (To be fair this is an actual rule in the game). Unless that action changes something for an opponent in terms of revealing new knowledge of course, and the game knows that. The game also knows automatically how to apply bonuses from cards that you could play. Like just swipe the "discount this building" card from your hand and it will bring up the build that building menu, and if you try to build a building and there are 4 overlapping different bonus ways to apply it? Easily displayed all right there. Did I mention that this app also has the greatest tutorial of all time? Or that there is a scenario-challenge mode with like 30 different crazy scenarios to try to beat? I'm just gonna stop because I could go on forever. Get the Through the Ages app. I will give a warning though, TTA is much less of a "build whatever and the point salad will all work out in the end to be a close game" type game. If you gently caress up your early game, or you misjudge the ability of your opponent to suddenly raise their army 20 levels, you can get loving smoked. But that's one of the things that make it great. Your actions loving matter. You have to ride that perfect line of using your available actions to do as much as possible, knowing you can't possibly do everything you want. And the person who does that the best IS going to win. Elysium fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Nov 16, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 17:06
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Setting and theme is a big part of my enjoyment of Terraforming Mars. I also like that it's basically just Mario Party as a board game, no reason to stress out too much about winning / losing because the cards are so random and can swing the game so hard so many directions. We don't pull the physical game out all the time, but we pull it out at similar times to playing multiplayer Commander Magic the Gathering, or Fortune Street on the Wii. Usually after we've played something actually competitive, and we need something that balances things out so the try hards have as much a chance as winning as the person half paying attention on their phone. It's nice to play a game where I have a chance of winning after playing something where I'm going to 100% lose to the person who memorized the spreadsheets for Puerto Rico.
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Nov 16, 2022 17:10
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Chainclaw posted:Setting and theme is a big part of my enjoyment of Terraforming Mars. I also like that it's basically just Mario Party as a board game, no reason to stress out too much about winning / losing because the cards are so random and can swing the game so hard so many directions. I'm not diagreeing but I'm kind of enjoying the read of TfM as an experience generator
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Nov 16, 2022 17:14
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Played terraforming mars 12-15 times with 5 players. It’s thoroughly Fine, low player interaction in that kind of game is a plus because hell if I’m squinting across the table to read the fine print on everyone else’s cards
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Nov 16, 2022 17:18
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FulsomFrank posted:It's been so long but what is the consensus on Blood Rage? It seems popular and well loved but I hate it with a passion so the consensus is 0/10 burn it for heat hth.
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Nov 16, 2022 17:33
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I play a fair amount of TM, it takes way longer to play than it probably should but I know people who usually hate euro-style games or are at least generally reluctant to play them who will happily sit down for a game of TM precisely because you kind of have to just play to the card you see and don't have too wide of a decision space. The Venus expansion is absolute poo poo though. With that said, if I could convince my friends to enjoy RftG, Troyes and Concordia as much as they like TM I'd happily never play TM again
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Nov 16, 2022 17:44
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