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Some Numbers posted:I know there's been a lot of chatter about the Arkham Horror LCG over time, so I played my LGS' open copy with a friend yesterday and it seemed decent, if not spectacular. The core box is a trash on-ramp, even the revised core. Dunwich, Carasoca, or Edge of the Earth are considered the most newbie friendly scenarios per the Internet. It’s a massive cost to get spun up right unfortunately. Also cheat yourself some xp for a leveled up deck if you are getting bodied and not having fun. Pros: Feeling of deck growth Losses still progress story in interesting ways Cons: Pretty loving fiddly Card organization woes 
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Mar 13, 2023 17:03
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FulsomFrank posted:Stealing this phrase. I hear where you're coming from on this. I've tried a few different approaches which have helped. A big one is starting the game with a rules explanation, but also sign posts about strategy. Not you can't let x or y private go for face, but more there are a few land mines to watch out for, specifically we as a table should make sure trains get bought, and that share price doesn't get too high unnecessarily, etc etc. That was you can refer back to it throughout the game or at least ask folks about it. The other approach to redefine victory. That the goal of this first game or set of games isn't to have the most cash/value at the end, but winning means everyone begins to see the strategic space and wants to play again. YMMV on this, but if it's people that you play a bunch with, I'd rather point out that they can trash my position so I can play 10 more 18xx games that are better in the future, than end the game with the high value but never get another 18xx to the table. Your incentive maybe shifts to the metagame!
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Mar 13, 2023 17:58
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For the Arkham LCG, do I need to get the Revised Core Set or could I get one of the expansions and just go?
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Mar 13, 2023 18:05
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djfooboo posted:The core box is a trash on-ramp, even the revised core. Dunwich, Carasoca, or Edge of the Earth are considered the most newbie friendly scenarios per the Internet. It’s a massive cost to get spun up right unfortunately. Also cheat yourself some xp for a leveled up deck if you are getting bodied and not having fun. I actually kinda don't like the "too bad, move on" system in Arkham Horror LCG and LOTR: Journeys in Middle Earth. I dunno, it just feels like a devastating loss of opportunity when you get hurled into the next mission without the rewards for winning.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:05
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Some Numbers posted:For the Arkham LCG, do I need to get the Revised Core Set or could I get one of the expansions and just go? You'll want the revised core for both the staple cards as well as the components (chaos tokens, resource chits, etc). The intro campaign makes a decent tutorial as well. edit: also some of the expansions do require Encounter cards that only come in the core set xK1 fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 18:11
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Carillon posted:I hear where you're coming from on this. I've tried a few different approaches which have helped. A big one is starting the game with a rules explanation, but also sign posts about strategy. Not you can't let x or y private go for face, but more there are a few land mines to watch out for, specifically we as a table should make sure trains get bought, and that share price doesn't get too high unnecessarily, etc etc. That was you can refer back to it throughout the game or at least ask folks about it. Agree with all of this. I usually try to signpost certain things but do you keep repeating them as they potentially occur? I did a poor job explaining the auction but the auction is almost always rough and no one understands the relative value. I even bailed out the guy who won the game when he deliberately took the non-B&O (apparently he was reading up beforehand on how good it was which made me kind of squint and wonder who wrote that) and wanted to par it immediately at 67 right from the get go and didn't remember the company shutters as soon as the first train is purchased. I was less sympathetic on that one because meta-strategy on a brand new game bugs me because it implies you're looking up gameshark codes rather than letting strategy develop naturally with everyone else and he's played enough of these to know better. I definitely didn't do a good enough job of articulating why letting someone's share price just coast to the right indefinitely is generally not a good thing. And I will gladly explode myself on a grenade in a game if that gets another ten to the table, total agreement. Zero issues. All I'm saying is it takes a bit of pride swallowing to let yourself become a bit of a pincushion to get there especially when your opponents act like they're the second coming of Cornelius Vanderbilt. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 18:22
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xK1 posted:You'll want the revised core for both the staple cards as well as the components (chaos tokens, resource chits, etc). The intro campaign makes a decent tutorial as well. Yeah, the revised core is necessary for the game and provides enough cards to support deckbuilding for two players. You could jump right into a full campaign with only the core cards, but might find yourself a little underpowered and lacking in options. If you want the lowest buy-in to fullest experience ratio, I would recommend a revised core and one of the pre-made decks for your class of choice. Between the core cards and the pre-constructed deck, you will have a fully viable card set. The intro campaign isn’t that bad. It’s short (3 scenarios vs the usual 8) and the final scenario is poorly designed, but the first scenario is a decent tutorial and the second scenario is actually rather good.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:23
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the real con of ark-hams is the fukkin price.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:23
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tokenbrownguy posted:the real con of ark-hams is the fukkin price. I'm a CCG veteran who's also bought Gloomhaven and Cthulhu Wars. But yeah, I get what you're saying. The real question is, will I ever play it.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:28
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djfooboo posted:The core box is a trash on-ramp, even the revised core. Dunwich, Carasoca, or Edge of the Earth are considered the most newbie friendly scenarios per the Internet. It’s a massive cost to get spun up right unfortunately. Also cheat yourself some xp for a leveled up deck if you are getting bodied and not having fun. Yeah I have this and Dunwich, but haven't finished the dunwich campaign, I think I got like, two? into it and was starting to feel a bit burnt out for the same reasons you mentioned, both in cost (each one is really another $100 expansion, which, in a vacuum isn't that much, but we're all board game nerds with bunches of games, physical or digital, vying for us to buy their expansions). The revised box is cool and all but the campaign is boring and frankly unfun. I felt better about it on dunwich 1/2? but then when it came to setting up 3, I realized there were two more entire campaigns ahead of me and started to get kind of overwhelmed. I was 2h solo playing but it takes a while and I think maybe this would be the kind of game I'd enjoy more if I was playing with someone else instead of solo, if only for offloading both the esoteric rules and iconography saturation on everything (which, I don't know if that's just me but I find learning icon heavy games has its own mental load, especially if the icons are in inconsistent places, or just, has a lot of them that mean different things if they're in different places on the card) Maybe one day I'll pick it back up again, because I love the theme, just the execution doesn't tickle the right way
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Mar 13, 2023 18:51
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It is an expensive game when you consider the buy-in, but for me, a campaign is a guaranteed 24 -30 hours of gameplay for $100, before even factoring in that the cost gets split between my play group. Plus, if you have a decent card pool you don’t need the player cards so you can knock it down to $65. At the end of the day, the value of a game is best determined by if it will actually see play, which is of course hard to gauge with a new game. But like, Gloomhaven is a great deal if your table will play a whole campaign. Resistance is a waste of money if you have nobody to play it with.
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Mar 13, 2023 19:14
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Anonymous Robot sums it up pretty well. Here are some short notes from me:
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Mar 13, 2023 19:24
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Yeah I think i was 2h solo it was taking around 90 minutes for one of the 8 quests in the box, so one box only really has 12 hours of content for me. Maybe if I replayed it with different combination of characters I could see it being more but even if I was generous and suggested it was 24 hours due to replaying (which, I don't really replay anything anymore, not enough free time) before I started to get bored of it that's still close to $100 for 24 hours, or $4.16 an hour. If I get into larger amounts of money, like say a videogame, I am hoping for 60 hours for $100 or $1.6h (or if I can nab the game on a sale, $20 for 60 hours, which is even better at 33 cents an hour)
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Mar 13, 2023 19:46
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Getting the Revised Core and full Dunwich (campaign & investigator expansions) gives you plenty of stuff to do both scenario- and deckbuilding-wise. I would say that is pretty much step one with Arkham as it gives you a better idea what the game is like than just the Core set. If you want more, get Carcosa-campaign and some new player cards. Either Carcosa investigator expansion which is fine, or couple Investigator Starter Decks (Jaqcueline Fine & Winifred Habbamock give Mystics and Rogues a lot of very good cards). Also check out the AH-thread here, it is a very nice resource for information.
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Mar 13, 2023 20:18
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I have a steady group that plays 4p Arkham nearly every week and like, if you have the time, the replayability really can’t be oversold. Our most recent campaign was Return to the Circle Undone and we kept doing really well and siding with the Order of the Silver Twilight (I was playing Charlie Kane and figured it was appropriate- “I can count on all your votes, right?” - so we ended the campaign a scenario early and became besties with Azathoth and helped reshape reality to our whims, The End.. It was loads of fun. Frankly I think the game is a *lot* better when you go through a campaign at least twice, so you know what you can expect and can sorta plan your upgrade path around it. Despite all the Arkham FFG doom-and-gloom oppression mechanics, the investigator card pool is deep enough that you really can really stomp through a lot of scenarios if you’re a little clever about it. (Or just play Ursula Downs with charisma, Dr. Milan Christopher, and some sled dogs).
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Mar 13, 2023 20:34
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FulsomFrank posted:Stealing this phrase. You could have chosen a less mean title to play with noobs. Absolutely brutal game with the classic trap of not enough yellow cities to go around.
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Mar 13, 2023 21:45
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FulsomFrank posted:up. Trestle Table isn't nearly as good as the 1830 equivalent
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Mar 13, 2023 22:36
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Has anyone here played Lockup? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/240855/lockup-roll-player-tale
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Mar 13, 2023 22:54
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FulsomFrank posted:Agree with all of this. I usually try to signpost certain things but do you keep repeating them as they potentially occur? In the past I've mainly focused on natural breaks, so when it's SR3 I'll say ok, we've done a few ORs/SRs now, do you see what I mean about X or Y? Or as we come out of a stock round mention that people might want to think about train buying this round given etc. Not each action, but pointing out the shape of things every 45 minutes/hour or so. That way I'm also not like playing for people, but talking about the game space in general. FulsomFrank posted:
Yeah that's a bit frustrating haha. Cthulhu Dreams posted:Trestle Table isn't nearly as good as the 1830 equivalent I figured they meant the Skatch Carillon fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 23:31
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If I remeber the numbers from the tournament, SC wasn't super relevant, the more important thing is seating order due to the importance of CPR in 1882 Overall in the context of new players I wouldn't worry about the specifics of the auction in 1882, it's not like 1830
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Mar 14, 2023 00:38
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Quick aside, we now have a Trad Games/TGR feedback thread. Swing on by if you have any input!
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Mar 14, 2023 02:57
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My gf and I have been slowly making our way through Arkham LCG (currently in the...uh, Circle one. The one before Dream Eaters) and yeah it has its ups and downs. The worst thing I find in it is that because there is an instant-fail token in the bag, sometimes you can spend a ton of resources and completely waste your turn, and the resources, and be left with nothing. I feel like we're getting kicked while down when that happens (and I'll be honest we sometimes ignore it because it sucks). Sometimes the first card you draw is the most powerful enemy in the game and you're just hosed (a tiered encounter deck would help fix this entirely). And sometimes things just feel unfair because there's just a bevy of poo poo stacked against you and you can't succeed a goddamn test or draw a card that might actually be useful instead of weaknesses, items you can't afford, and other non-applicable things. We can feeling the energy being sucked out of the game when this happens and often we just stop playing and take the loss because it just sucks. But we keep playing because when it's good, it's good. When you happen to draw the right cards to put up a fight, or narrowly avoid an enemy or devastating attack, it's good. The mechanics of the scenarios are also often varied and interesting, and I'm always curious to see what's coming up. Plus we like the stories, simple as they sometimes are.
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Mar 14, 2023 03:38
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The fail-forward mechanism in Arkham Horror LCG is really best-in-class. And if you don't like it, guess what? You can completely ignore it and just replay the scenario if you weren't happy with how it went! More games should use it (looking at you, Frosthaven) but writing it in a way that's not just "oh you get fewer XP/resources so the next games will be harder, sucks to be you" is hard. Having your entire game hinge on a token draw then drawing the Doom token sucks though.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:19
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bobvonunheil posted:Having your entire game hinge on a token draw then drawing the Doom token sucks though. I don't completely hate it happening now and then, even if we'd invested a bunch of resources into a critical test, but having played for years now and through every campaign often multiple times we've now had several sessions where we drew it multiple times over just a handful of tests and it meant we didn't even remotely have a fighting chance. At that point we said gently caress that and now house ruled that after you draw the auto pass or auto fail token, you leave it out of the bag until you draw the other one, then swap them (so after the first time you draw one, there's either only the auto pass or the auto fail in the bag but never both). This definitely makes the game easier and means that at times you can calculate exactly how much you need to commit to make sure there is zero chance of falling, but if it means we never have a scenario fail and waste two hours of time by repeatedly drawing the auto fail on the final hurdle I'm totally fine with that.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:44
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Last night we had board game training for the staff. Most of us are familiar with TCGs but only a couple of staff are familiar with board games, so they decided it would be a good idea to do a short demo of a few of them for our monthly staff meeting. Just so we could get familiar with some of our better selling games, and what kind of people to sell them to (and what features to play up when talking about them). The four were Azul, Everdell, 7 Wonders, and (although we don't currently carry it) Inis. We played for about half an hour of each, and then talked about the mechanics and such. I gotta say I wasn't too impressed by 7 Wonders although I think that one suffered the most from the short playtime. We didn't even get into the third era, so we didn't get to see how certain strategies (or lack thereof) in the drafting could potentially come back to bite you, so it seemed really simplistic (even if that isn't the case in the late game). We barely got to play much of Inis just due to the short time, but it seemed fairly interesting from what little we played of it. It was definitely the game I'd like to sit down and play a full session of the most of the four. Azul was super easy and fun and definitely was the source of a lot of "I am a genius!/OH NO" moments for me. Everdell seemed neat but it felt like a little much. I didn't take it too seriously at the start since I knew we weren't going to finish it, but even so it was obvious that I made a ton of poor choices. I was the first one to change seasons simply because I didn't allocate resources well, as compared to the guy teaching it to us who was still in spring six rounds in and just playing combo after combo. I couldn't really see myself playing more Everdell though. I am, admittedly, incredibly dumb, so engine builders aren't great for me because I fail to be able to see ahead and how to keep chains in things going. This is true in every type of game I've played, I'm just terrible at planning and strategy, so I would absolutely be terrible at Everdell and always lose. And I know Everdell isn't really a true engine builder game but it does have some traits of it. We probably will do actual engine builder games at another board game training session. Overall it was a lot of fun and helped me to understand the draws of some of these games, since board games are mostly an area I'm completely unfamiliar with.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:45
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Kerro posted:I don't completely hate it happening now and then, even if we'd invested a bunch of resources into a critical test, but having played for years now and through every campaign often multiple times we've now had several sessions where we drew it multiple times over just a handful of tests and it meant we didn't even remotely have a fighting chance. At that point we said gently caress that and now house ruled that after you draw the auto pass or auto fail token, you leave it out of the bag until you draw the other one, then swap them (so after the first time you draw one, there's either only the auto pass or the auto fail in the bag but never both). Ooh I'm going to adopt this.
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Mar 14, 2023 05:06
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Kerro posted:I don't completely hate it happening now and then, even if we'd invested a bunch of resources into a critical test, but having played for years now and through every campaign often multiple times we've now had several sessions where we drew it multiple times over just a handful of tests and it meant we didn't even remotely have a fighting chance. At that point we said gently caress that and now house ruled that after you draw the auto pass or auto fail token, you leave it out of the bag until you draw the other one, then swap them (so after the first time you draw one, there's either only the auto pass or the auto fail in the bag but never both). An alternative: All drawn tokens stay out of the bag until the end of the round, then they all go back in. Maybe at the start of the Mythos phase or something.
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Mar 14, 2023 05:43
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Twelve by Pies posted:I gotta say I wasn't too impressed by 7 Wonders although I think that one suffered the most from the short playtime. We didn't even get into the third era, so we didn't get to see how certain strategies (or lack thereof) in the drafting could potentially come back to bite you, so it seemed really simplistic (even if that isn't the case in the late game). It is simplistic, but that's why it's so successful and recommended so often. A nice easy game for quite a lot of people, some of whom are new to boardgames and haven't learned what drafting is yet. Inis is worth tracking down to play. Always happy to play a game of Inis.
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Mar 14, 2023 07:14
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The auto fail token is one of those things in Arkham that just doesn’t scale as well as the rest of the game for player count. Failing one of a (baseline) twelve actions a round has a way different impact than automatically failing one of three or even six. Similar issues up in a few other scenarios with specific movement rules and stuff but *generally* things scale to the player count pretty well. There are also ways to mitigate the auto fail though - like Stella’s whole deck is built around failing at least one test a turn and getting nice effects off of it.
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Mar 14, 2023 08:18
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Yeah that's another part of my problem with it, since we play 2p exclusively it just completely throws the game if you get a string of draws of it, and while there are decks and cards that can absolutely mitigate or even benefit from it I don't want to feel forced into building that way to have a good time. I love building around the weird characters with unique mechanics like Preston, Luke, Calvin, Patricia and some of those just have no protection from bad auto fail luck.
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Mar 14, 2023 08:49
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I played new-Splotter Horseless Carriage last night, with rulebook recommended baby setting of treating all cars as the same. I am tragically bad at spatial reasoning but still really enjoyed it. Honestly, the tetris aspect, while still very present, is fairly muted as it has to contend with the weight of the rest of the game. Compare it with Isle of Cats or Barenpark, and there's actually not much variety in the shapes of pieces. The most extraordinary one is the bumper, which is (iirc) 4x1, but most blocks are like, 3x2, 4x4, and all are simple rectangles or squares. It's made a little more complex because each car part requires a 1x1 square attached to it to actually convey any benefit, but you're never wrangling with T-shapes or anything like that. My main observation of that aspect was how punishing the size restriction is. Each turn you get an expansion to your board, and it can fit like, 1 dealership. I spent 3 turns not being able to lay anything down because I couldn't wrangle everything I needed into the new space, while also being unable to add on to the existing structure because it had been walled off. I would recommend you do not do that. I can see why Splotter-fans think this is a little lonely. The meat of the game is spent looking at your personal player board, and the player interaction is limited to the occasional demand for a tile by someone higher up in the priority. But honestly, I think there's enough interaction in the game outside of that phase that it's ok. It's also nice that the most time-consuming part of the game takes place simultaneously. The non-factory floor stuff, well, just a bunch of individual systems, each of which I think are really neat. There are 5 tech trees that you can push yourself or others up, and one function of the player order lets you borrow techs. The 1st player can use techs 1 person knows, the 2nd can use ones that 2 other people know, and so on. I've not seen something like that, and I really enjoyed figuring out what tech I needed and how to borrow them from others. I also liked how those tech trees changed what people want from their cars. I'm not sure how easy it is to push to a favourable tech, but I wasn't trying to do so. The selling was fun, but I did miss the variety of car types. Though I was thankful not to have to figure out how to specialize in trucks or sports cars on the factory floor, the game is less interesting if you treat everything as sedans. It was really enjoyable seeing the car industry explode over the course of the game. It might have been a result of a table of scrubs, but at the end there was a field of demand that we were nowhere close to meeting. Nice change from the start where we were trying very hard to nab the few customers there were for ourselves. My biggest complaint is that the game is like, unreasonably hard to get to a table. You need a rock-solid conference table, with the variety of tiles, chits, pieces, all trying to bounce around the factory and the sales... field? I have not played FCM without the achievement whiteboard and the job card-accordion, but this was the biggest table hog I've seen outside of like, speciality con games. We were playing on the biggest table in the place yet still every player had annexed an extra seat to use as a side table for various things. The mis-printed components are unreasonably annoying to me, given that I was playing somebody else's copy. And I think the clock icon could have done w/ a splash of colour to make it pop more.
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Mar 14, 2023 12:56
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Mr. Squishy posted:I played new-Splotter Horseless Carriage last night, with rulebook recommended baby setting of treating all cars as the same. I am tragically bad at spatial reasoning but still really enjoyed it. Honestly, the tetris aspect, while still very present, is fairly muted as it has to contend with the weight of the rest of the game. Compare it with Isle of Cats or Barenpark, and there's actually not much variety in the shapes of pieces. The most extraordinary one is the bumper, which is (iirc) 4x1, but most blocks are like, 3x2, 4x4, and all are simple rectangles or squares. It's made a little more complex because each car part requires a 1x1 square attached to it to actually convey any benefit, but you're never wrangling with T-shapes or anything like that. My main observation of that aspect was how punishing the size restriction is. Each turn you get an expansion to your board, and it can fit like, 1 dealership. I spent 3 turns not being able to lay anything down because I couldn't wrangle everything I needed into the new space, while also being unable to add on to the existing structure because it had been walled off. I would recommend you do not do that. I can see why Splotter-fans think this is a little lonely. The meat of the game is spent looking at your personal player board, and the player interaction is limited to the occasional demand for a tile by someone higher up in the priority. But honestly, I think there's enough interaction in the game outside of that phase that it's ok. It's also nice that the most time-consuming part of the game takes place simultaneously. Nice writeup. It sounds like you like it overall but do you think this is something that is Good Enough that you'd make an effort to get on the table frequently enough to justify it in spite of drawbacks you've described or is it simply just too big like you're saying, outside of specifically organised events to play it? I just worry that if I grabbed it it'd become another big novelty dust-gatherer even if I like most of what I'm hearing from people who've played it. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 13:59
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Maybe someone else would wanna know; I managed to fit almost all of Root into one* box including the three big expansions without buying an insert. Basically, sleeved the cards, and put them in the (2) sleeve boxes (I used Dragonshield clears). Bagged up all the different faction stuff and chits and what have you in tons of sensible baggies. Then: Take one of the expansion box LIDS, and in that, I put all the faction boards, the latest Law of Root, and one of the game boards. Then, on top of that, I put in the bottom of the main game box, with no insert. All the baggies fit in there with the two deck boxes, and then on top of that I put the 'how to play' books and the other game board. By putting the two deckboxes either end of the box, the game board is sitting on those, rather than on any of the baggies of pieces. Then I put the lid of the main game on that. I didn't include the clockwork stuff, because I don't use it, or the old deck, because I just think E&P is better. Probably could fit it though, there's still some room in the deckboxes. I reckon you could probably get another deckbox in there if you were tight with the baggies too. I debated not putting the Vagabonds in because we never use them, but I thought I'd see with it all first. There's probably room for another expansion as it stands so Vagabonds were fine. I do have the landmarks in there, but I don't have the extra hirelings. They would certainly fit. (* Yeah, kind of not a single box, but, you know, ends up being all in one place). !Klams fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 16:50
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I've had a good week of games. I played Stationfall for the first time, played an 18XX for the first time (18Chesapeake), and played Frosthaven for the last time (or at least we are setting it aside now that we've finished the campaign). Stationfall was pretty fun. I played twice, as the Station Chief the first time and the Digital Assistant the second time. Both are characters that want lots of other characters to escape, so they felt a little similar: rarely using your own character and instead just grabbing whatever character could do something helpful at the moment. I appreciated how it was a very chaotic and exciting game, but entirely player driven with near-zero randomness. It can be a bit frustrating with how incredibly few actions you get over the course of a game: you only get about six turns with a single character, so if someone moves your character in the wrong direction even just once, it feels like an entire third of that character's turns have been wasted. But I still enjoyed it; it felt engaging the entire time and I always felt like there were interesting decisions to make because of the way you could use any character. 18Chesapeake went well. None of us had played an 18XX more than once before, and we all played in a pretty friendly manner, with nobody getting substantially screwed over ever. I'd be interested in playing a little more cutthroat next time, though. The last few rounds of the game really did drag though, as once we got past the final rusting we all just ran our trains without any more exciting happenings. So, the last hour of the game was just a bunch of tedious calculations. If we knew the game better, I'm sure there could have been some clever strategies to screw someone over somehow, but we couldn't tell exactly who was in the lead and couldn't see any profitable moves other than running our trains, so that's all we did. My 2-player Frosthaven campaign has finally come to an end. After 85 plays, we've completed the three main branches of the campaign and the puzzle book as well. Of course, there are still lots of side scenarios left, but we'll stop playing so often. Fantastic game.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:18
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Arkham is probably overtuned in favor of the players... but only once you have close to a full collection. It does a good job of putting up a challenge no matter what your skill level though. I agree with most of the complaints about it but I think a lot of it is mitigated by spending time deckbuilding and learning strategies. I get that's not for everyone, I just really like tinkering with deck builds, finding synergies, etc. Getting it and playing through a ton of the content during the lockdown parts of the pandemic probably helped.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:51
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Photux posted:18Chesapeake went well. None of us had played an 18XX more than once before, and we all played in a pretty friendly manner, with nobody getting substantially screwed over ever. I'd be interested in playing a little more cutthroat next time, though. The last few rounds of the game really did drag though, as once we got past the final rusting we all just ran our trains without any more exciting happenings. So, the last hour of the game was just a bunch of tedious calculations. If we knew the game better, I'm sure there could have been some clever strategies to screw someone over somehow, but we couldn't tell exactly who was in the lead and couldn't see any profitable moves other than running our trains, so that's all we did. Chessy is designed to be friendly. I'm sure there are meaner or nicer ways to play it, but it's intentionally softened a lot of ways to be a total bastard. Mostly the train roster is fairly plentiful, and the stock market is pretty shallow. I mean that literally, there aren't great depths you can plunge people into by selling down their stock. I would say the big rule of thumb for more aggressive play is buy more trains. Buy trains that increase your profit by $2 a share, buy trains you can't run at all. If you're not winning right now, buy trains to change that. Most games reward this level of aggression, and the train deck is the in-game clock for most games, so they drag on without players being reckless. Chessy has a feature where the train pile automatically depletes, imagine how boring some of the games can get without that feature. If you want a laugh, look at the mini-expansion Off the Rails. It certainly stops the game from dragging, I think most games end on bankruptcy in phase 5, about 3 rounds in. FulsomFrank posted:Nice writeup. It's got great potential for a dust-trap. I would say only buy it if you've got a definite group in mind that already exists. There's a lot to spring on a person. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the foot-print issues get minimized with experienced players or maybe secondary market solutions. I bet shoving the factory tiles into the box lid that gets passed around, that might make sense. But as we laid it out, I seriously doubt it'd fit onto a middling dining room table. Some complaints I forgot about the selling board: while the little cars are neat, they do tend to spill over. Laying down those sales windows is also not a joyful thing to do. They're flimsy, they tangle together, and jostle the cars.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:55
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I 3D printed the lay-and-play insert that you can find the stl for here and I cannot recommend it enough. If you, or anyone you know has a 3D printer, it makes set up <10min and minimizes table space to a degree. It's still big, but not nearly as unwieldy. 
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Mar 14, 2023 19:14
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drat, that looks good. Thanks for sharing the link.
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Mar 14, 2023 19:18
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!Klams posted:Maybe someone else would wanna know; I managed to fit almost all of Root into one* box including the three big expansions without buying an insert. Can you take a couple pics of this? Would be nice not to have three boxes on my shelf.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:02
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Simply put the three boxes into a larger box.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:40
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