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Finally got what is probably one of the few FOMO purchases I ever made:  Mini quality seems pretty good, although one of the Rathalos detachable wings doesn't sit flush. What I got was the Forest and Wastes core sets, Nergigante, Kulu-Ya-Ku, Kushala and Teostra single-monster expansions, and the Hunter's Arsenal expansion. Had a read-through the rules when I pledged years ago, but will give this a try this weekend and give an AAR if people are interested.
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Mar 17, 2023 13:42
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Tekopo posted:Had a read-through the rules when I pledged years ago, but will give this a try this weekend and give an AAR if people are interested. Please do, I got the Azure Rathalos & Black Diablos add-ons as well so I'm apparently in a later wave, super excited for everything to show up though.
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Mar 17, 2023 13:56
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xK1 posted:Please do, I got the Azure Rathalos & Black Diablos add-ons as well so I'm apparently in a later wave, super excited for everything to show up though.
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Mar 17, 2023 14:55
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Tekopo posted:I thought those were pack-ins for the base game? I might be wrong though. I didn't back the KS, I signed up after it was over for the All-in. Their cards and quests were included in the all-in bundle, but if you wanted separate colored minis for those variations they were an extra add-on. https://gamefound.com/projects/steamforged-games/monster-hunter-world-the-board-game/products/details/15047#/
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Mar 17, 2023 15:04
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Ahhh right, cool. I was getting worried that something was missing from the All-In pledge but I'm not too bothered about not getting those two extra minis, there's so much stuff already.
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Mar 17, 2023 15:07
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Tekopo posted:Ahhh right, cool. I was getting worried that something was missing from the All-In pledge but I'm not too bothered about not getting those two extra minis, there's so much stuff already. Yeah, it was definitely overkill but I figured I was already so deep into it I might as well go all the way, haha
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Mar 17, 2023 15:14
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Got my complete Final Girl season 1 and 2 sets, complete with all the minis and extras because I'm an insane person. A friend and I played together - it's a solo game, but we just collaboratively made decisions. Game is very good. Played two scenarios so far (Happy Trails and Maple Lane) and beat both, not sure if I've missed something and accidentally made it easier on myself. Love the Boiler Room mechanic when falling asleep in Maple Lane while trying to stop not-Freddy Kruger. So much content too. Think this will keep me busy for ages.
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Mar 17, 2023 16:58
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I’m interested in giving Final Girl a spin sometime myself. Personally, I actually think it looks better without the minis. The parcheesi style wooden pawns cohere better with the more abstract “gamey” aesthetic of the rest of the components imo.
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Mar 17, 2023 17:00
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Read the rules for Monster Hunter and I remembered why I backed it. I forgot the rules at first and was shocked when I saw three dice in the box, but upon reading the rules, there's only one thing that the dice are actually used for in the game, and it's not combat. Wanna guess what? It's rolling for loot at the end of a hunt. Thematic!
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Mar 17, 2023 17:32
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I'd probably have grabbed Final Girl in my solo gaming explorations last year except the company owner is a big NFT head.
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Mar 17, 2023 17:32
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RandolphCarter posted:I bought Tabletop Simulator and have no idea what I’m doing. Excited to figure it out and eventually play some Eldritch Horror with my friend who lives on the other side of the world. I feel like TTS lives or dies by the keyboard shortcuts, otherwise it's very fiddly.
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Mar 17, 2023 17:35
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My single film I ordered for Final Girl 2 still has not arrived, and they're almost done with 70% of orders
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Mar 17, 2023 17:57
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Tekopo posted:Read the rules for Monster Hunter and I remembered why I backed it. I forgot the rules at first and was shocked when I saw three dice in the box, but upon reading the rules, there's only one thing that the dice are actually used for in the game, and it's not combat. Wanna guess what? It's rolling for loot at the end of a hunt. Thematic! good ol hunt randomized loot. Where would we be without rolling to collect enough cat asses to craft a magic fedora
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Mar 17, 2023 18:09
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PRADA SLUT posted:good ol hunt randomized loot. Where would we be without rolling to collect enough cat asses to craft a magic fedora Uh excuse me the asses are for crafting leggings
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Mar 17, 2023 18:28
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Magnetic North posted:I'd probably have grabbed Final Girl in my solo gaming explorations last year except the company owner is a big NFT head. I was concerned that the KS money might turn into magic beans myself. I also left the Van Ryder discord because there were too many bros there raving about their "livelihood". I don't know if things have changed now that NFTs are already on the way out and the big crypto brokers are all reaching the end of the scam.
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Mar 17, 2023 18:44
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PRADA SLUT posted:good ol hunt randomized loot. Where would we be without rolling to collect enough cat asses to craft a magic fedora
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Mar 17, 2023 18:54
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Jedit posted:I was concerned that the KS money might turn into magic beans myself. I also left the Van Ryder discord because there were too many bros there raving about their "livelihood". I don't know if things have changed now that NFTs are already on the way out and the big crypto brokers are all reaching the end of the scam. I joined recently and hadn't noticed anything, they apparently keep it locked behind a role that you have to opt-in to: 
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Mar 17, 2023 18:57
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xK1 posted:I joined recently and hadn't noticed anything, they apparently keep it locked behind a role that you have to opt-in to: What date is that- Jesus Christ, still a NFT stan two days ago?? What a loving dumbass.
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Mar 17, 2023 19:13
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Magnetic North posted:a NFT stan two days ago?? What a loving dumbass. A timeless statement
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Mar 17, 2023 19:19
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GreenBuckanneer posted:Anyone play Bloodborne & Dark Souls mini games? People have described the gameplay of blood borne pretty well so I’ll talk about the minis. Overall most of the mini sculpts are pretty good but the bases are not. I rebased all the minis which ended up being a very time consuming experience because they were not uniformly created. Some minis like the mobs were manufactured then attached to bases, others were manufactured with their base, and some like the church giants were even hollowed out to reduce the overall material. So some minis would be just easily cut off their existing bases and others required a dremel. My minis had a thick hydrophobic finishing coating that made paint not stick well so I had to scrub them pretty well. Lots of cool minis in the sets though.
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Mar 17, 2023 21:32
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Alright, so, I gave Monster Hunter World: The Videogame: The Boardgame a try and, well, I'm pretty impressed. Hunting a Great Jagras  Setup wasn't too difficult since I had pretty much prepared the decks already, and in terms of tokens there aren't that many that are needed to track. There's a huge amount of cards though and there's two decks per player, the time deck and the enemy behaviour deck.  I opted to go for my main-stays when I play Monster Hunter: the Hammer, which is my main weapon (I had to fish this out of the Hunter's Arsenal expansion) and Dual Blades (which are present within the core Ancient Forest box). The minis for both are really nice and detailed and have a nice silouette to make it clear which hunter is which. You are forced to only have one weapon per hunter but that's understandable. The Great Jagras mini was also pretty good. The rules suggested to play two hunters if you are going solo, and after playing the first hunt, I can see why. The first part of the hunt doesn't use the main board at all: instead, you basically follow a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game, where you have the potential to gather materials or try to get to the monster as quickly as possible. You create a time deck of cards before you do this phase, so spending more time gathering might give you less time to actually take down the monster, which kind of fits with the theme of the game. During this phase you build up tracking tokens as well, which are revealed once you find the monster and seem to only affect a single behaviour of the monster, making the monster slightly easier if you have more tracking. This rule seemed a little bit weird and not have that much effect, but didn't detract from the game. Once you find the monster, you build a deck of 11 behaviour cards, 10 that are pretty much fixed and 1 decided by how well you track it. At this point, you can also set up the board (as above), and randomly assign Threat Tokens to the hunters, which help determine who might be the target of the monster. The turn sequence is pretty simple: you draw a monster behaviour card, and the monster will target one specific hunter, either the furthest away or closest, with ties broken by which Threat Token you have. The monster will then move and attack (or vice versa depending on the card), with movement always being relative to the hunter they are attacking. The attack itself can target one area or several arcs, and does a set amount of physical or elemental damage. Damage for attacks seemed pretty high, with Great Jagras (which is the easiest monster), doing from 5 to 7 damage. Considering both of my hunters had only 1 armour, and a hunter has a maximum of 8 HP, it only takes two hits to make a hunter feint, in the very first scenario. This made the scenario feel quite hard, but kind of matched how difficult it can sometime be to complete early quests in Monster Hunter. It is possible, however, to dodge attacks: you can do this by discard cards from your hand into your stamina board: the stamina board can only hold a maximum of 5 cards, and once it's filled up, you can't do any action that would require placing a card on the stamina track, which also means no dodging! Once the monster movement and attack is complete, the behaviour card tells you how many hunters can move, and how many attack cards they can play each: I think this is meant to represent bigger swings by the monster, which can lead to bigger openings. During the hunter's turn, they can either decide to attack or do support actions, but not both. To attack, you simply play the card on your stamina board, and resolve what it says, with some attacks being "finishers" that prevent you from playing anotehr attack if you play them. Damage is dealt by drawing from your Attack Deck, a weapon-specific deck that, for example, might have 10 cards that do 1 damage, 2 cards that do 2, and 1 that does 4. The interesting part is that the only way to reshuffle your Attack Deck is by taking a "Sharpening" support action, and if your Attack Deck runs out of card, you do 0 damage until you resharpen your weapon: a pretty elegant way to translate that mechanism from the videogame. Support actions are the aforementioned Sharpen, or to take a potion, which gives you full health and completely clears your stamina: you can only have 3 potions max, however. Hunters can also move 1 space per turn for free, or can discard attacks from their hand to the stamina board to move more. Once the turn of a specific hunter is complete, you draw a Time card, which usually will tell you to remove one card from your stamina board, discard any attack cards from your hand, and draw back up to 5, but might also have some special rules for this or the next turn. That's pretty much it: the hunt ends either when you run out of time cards, or the hunters as a whole have feinted 3 times, or the monster is dead. There's plenty of flavour in the game as well: both monsters and hunters can do elemental damage, there are status attacks as well, which afflict the hunters and monsters in different ways, and the monsters themselves can have their part broken, which can weaken them, do extra damage or can be simply broken to get extra rewards at the end of the hunt (if you kill the monster, that is). Results and Strategy My first game went down to the wire, with me having only one death left, and running down to 3 cards, but I don't think I was playing very well, and as I played I could see that the game really wants to reward you for being patient and setting up your plays, and especially for managing your stamina well. The Hammer was quite interesting since it dishes out damage by setting up properly in previous turns: you have cards that allow other cards to do more damage if they are present in the stamina board, but you don't have to play them that turn in order to get the extra damage. You have stamina recovery cards, but they only take effect at the end of your turn, so pre-planning what is left on your stamina board is important, especially because you have many cards that require at least two face-up attack cards on your stamina board to be playable. So the strategy for hammer at least is to set up your stamina board, and then do constant finishers, providing a steady but powerful stream of damage once you are set up, but leaving less room for dodging. Hammer also has a easier time breaking the monster's head, as well as having attacks that stun the monster. The Dual Blades, on the other hand, seem to be a set-up kind of weapon. Your stamina-reducers take instant effect, which is necessary because Demon Mode requires it to be the only card in your stamina board when you play it. Demon mode adds 2 cards to any subsequent attack that turn, so the idea with Dual Blades is to wait until you have a clear board and a 3 attack window, play Demon Mode and then 2 other attacks (most of which draw two cards per attack), for a total of 8 damage cards drawn in a single turn! I managed to do this combo exactly 0 times during my hunt, because I was instead doing the board-game equivalent of button mashing instead, and not managing my stamina properly/disengaging when needed. I also did not pay enough attention to the monster behaviour, or trying to get one of my hunters out of range while the other was targeted so that I didn't have the monster hit both of my hunters at once. So overall, the hunt went down to the wire, but I do feel that it was my own dumb fault and that the game encourages you to be a lot more careful about not just attacking at every single opportunity, which really kind of fits with the entire game. What I liked Well, most of the above, to be honest. The combat feels pretty good because if you do an attack, there isn't a situation where you aren't sure if you will hit or not: there is variance on total damage done, but no attack feels wasted. Likewise, monster damage, although high, feels fair, and dodging is also binary and doesn't require dice rolls, and can be set up properly if you are playing well. In essence, I like that the game rewards you for playing well, and that the only randomness is damage output, what cards you have in your hand (which just means you have to improvise or adapt to your hand), and the behaviours that the monster is going to do. The combat system flows well, plays well and has interesting choices and implications built in, and the weapons do impact the way you play and approach monsters. The rulebook is laid out nicely apart from a couple of rules I couldn't find, and was easy to read/learn using it. Mini quality of both hunters and monsters is really good, and although there are hundred of cards in the game, the number of tokens and things you have to track in the game is mercifully low. What I didn't like There are only three terrain types in the game: shrubs, which just decrease threat, rocks, which help boost attacks, and water, which forces you to discard cards. I only had experience with the shrub but it didn't seem to do much, and I wish that the tokens for terrain were easier to see. The game forces you to track some stuff with pencil and paper: I think this is understandable and needed for stuff like materials, but why do it for potions? You have a maximum of 3 potions. Surely you can just give me three tokens to track them? I wish the game could be played with a single hunter: I think it might technically be possible to do it, but the monster will focus a lot on you and I don't think the behaviour system works as well with it. Some of the time card special events are decided by dice rolls: you can actually be forced to discard from 1-6 time cards on a specific one, for example, all decided by a dice roll. Other ones have stuff like 1-3: Something bad happens to the monster, 4-6: Something bad happens to you. The latter were fine, but the former seemed kind of bullshit and losing 12 time cards from dice rolls feels bad, especially when the total deck was only 35 cards. Might curate the deck to only have one of those cards in the future, I think. I've been reading on BGG that apparently there are a bunch of misprints, which is annoying, with the Damage Deck on weapon cards not agreeing with the Damage Deck given on the cheat sheets. Think I'm just going to default on what is given on the cards for those. I missed one of the special rules for Great Jagras: just completely forgot that every monster has one or more special rules. Overall, minor quibbles and they didn't overly detract from the game. What I haven't tried This first hunt was a test so I didn't track what materials I got or anything like that. I saw later that there are arena quests with set weapons/items which might have been better for a one shot, but alas. Didn't really try to upgrade weapons or armour either, but the system for that seems relatively decent, including having to randomly roll for materials, and potentially not getting them. You can trade materials with other hunters as well, which is nice, and generally the more hunters you have, the more materials you will get. Interested in trying out some of the other weapons and monsters, although if you are playing campaign, you won't be able to hunt much more than the Great Jagras until you have upgraded a bit. Final Thoughts tl;dr the game is actually decent and the combat system relatively well thought out, which surprised me for a Big Minis FOMO production. I would honestly recommend the game, especially if you are fan of Monster Hunter, and I think even just getting just one of the core boxes, with 4 monsters and 4 weapon types, is enough to have a good time with the game, without splurging out for both core boxes and the expansions. Honestly quite impressed, and don't have buyer remorse over getting this either. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Mar 19, 2023 |
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Mar 18, 2023 12:33
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Here's my trip report from a 5-player game of Sidereal Confluence: Cubes LMAO including the expansion About the Game Sidereal Confluence is a really unusual game, from the player count (4-9), to the theme (a bunch of aliens are coming together to form a galactic federation by trading and sharing technology) to the mechanics (real-time trading). I'm a huge fan, but it's a big, loud game that requires a huge amount of table space, isn't good for timid, quiet, or newer players, and takes an evening. For people familiar with the base game, the expansion adds flipped versions of the base factions that can be used in place of the base faction. For example, the Imdrill (Space Worm/Dragon things) base faction has a huge potential economy, but needs to convince other players to give them loans to get started faster, while the flipped Imdrill start off with a bunch of resources and an ok economy, but have basically no opportunity for growth, and need to loan other players things to be sustainable in the long term. Setup and Onboarding The group was 5 players who had played previously before, so rules rodeo was relatively straightforward (the core rules of the game aren't that bad, but the iconography isn't great, and for first-time players, it can be difficult to understand how things link together). That said, it's been a while since we've busted the game out, so it was against my advice that most of the players opted for factions in the expansion, which, despite listed difficulties (Deep Unity, the flipped Unity faction, are listed at 2, despite the base faction being listed at 5!?), are more complex than base-game factions. One nice addition in the expansion is that factions have an "impact" rating, which is basically how much this faction's gimmick changes what other players do (essentially acting as a difficult bump for all other players in the game). For example, the flipped Caylion (Space Plants) faction (rated at 2 Impact) has a bunch of economy that require the other players to vote to unlock, with all unlocking players getting a share of the spoils, which means that everyone needs to pay attention to the Caylion's situation in addition to their own to ensure that what needs to be unlocked gets unlocked. With that said, our factions were: Flipped Eni Et (Space Whale-Squids) who can make other people's economies cheaper, but have a very bad economy on their own Flipped Imdrill (Space Worm/Dragon things) discussed above Flipped Unity (Space Computer entities) who make "wild" resources and have access to a random ~1/3rd of their economy each turn. Flipped Kjas (Space Lizards) who cannot consume any of the resources they make and must trade for everything their economy uses and Base Kit (Space Bugs) who can settle new planets much, much faster than anyone else, and have no size limit on the number of planets they control The Game Itself I don't have a huge play by play of the game, other than that the Imdrill player was able to make a couple of really good trades in the early turns, to allow them to invent a bunch of early technologies (worth a lot of points). I ended up overproducing Black cubes by a huge amount and no other player consumed them, so I was stuck trading them less efficiently than I was hoping. The final scores were something like 73 (Imdrill) / 68 (Eni Et) / 46 (Unity) / 38 (Kjas) / 36 (Kit), but I think that part of the score issue was due to the Kjas and Kit players got taken for a bit of a ride by the Imdrill player, who lent resources at rates that I'm surprised they agreed to. One of the really interesting things about the game is that seating make a difference, because it's easier to talk to closer players, and it's easier to take a look at their economy to understand what resources they need etc. Another thing I'd note is that having some note-paper to write down long-term deals is hugely helpful. Broader thoughts I'd like to try some of the higher impact / more complex factions if I can get it to the table again some time soon, before people get rusty again. That said, it's a big, complex game, so my hopes aren't high. As a teaching note, I think I would stress heavily that the way that you win the game is by inventing technologies, and try to keep people pointed in that direction, as the point of having an economy in the game is to make technology, rather than for its own sake. I think I would also pre-screen the factions a little better for folks, to make sure they don't "bite off more than they can chew" as far as complexity goes. I really enjoy the game, and would encourage folks who are comfortable with heavy-weight games and enjoy high interaction to give Sidereal Confluence a shot. That said, the expansion really doesn't add much unless you're wild about the base game, as the expansion factions only really make sense if you're familiar with the base factions.
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Mar 19, 2023 04:41
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Quote-Unquote posted:Got my complete Final Girl season 1 and 2 sets, complete with all the minis and extras because I'm an insane person. A friend and I played together - it's a solo game, but we just collaboratively made decisions. It’s possible you missed something, but since Happy Trails is 100% straightforward with no gimmicks and Maple Street’s boiler room gives you a lot more control over when you’re most at risk of taking damage, they both shake out to be pretty easy. If you want to experience getting your teeth kicked in, try the Carnival (or even harder, in my opinion, Dr. Sleep at the Carnival - the extra traps dumping damage on you from the terror deck force you to rest a lot more often). Can someone talk about the Season 2 scenarios yet? Mostly looking at the Thing and Alien/s inspired ones, cuz I’m a huge dweeb.
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Mar 19, 2023 14:58
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I've tried a different strategy in Wingspan yesterday since I couldn't get a proper engine to materialize - vanilla Big Birds. I've built up the water and forest lanes up to the third bird so I had 3 dice from the feeder and 3 card drawn (with the +1 from a Mallard) > I got food and cards > I spammed Birdzillas (8-9 points with minimal effects) > I layed eggs on the 4th round. My only real automation was a water bird that allowed me to lay eggs on other birds with a specific nest 1/between turns when another player took the Lay Eggs action; with that and another egg laying bird on the Forest lane, I have not had to take the Lay Eggs action until the very end of the game for point reasons (which is definitely interesting in the early game action economy, as you can save 1-2 activations at the point where you have to kickstart your engine). Got to 87 points in a 4p games, which is not bad but definitely not as good as it could have been (I completely whiffed my Bonus Card) and ended up second. So I guess you could focus on food+cards and get some decent points even if you whiff on the engine draw, as long as you get something beef to play instead. That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 09:45
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Got to play a bunch of games over the weekend with two different groups.  Day 1 with 5 I played the following games. This group usually tends to prefer light to medium complexity games. We started off with Flash Point: Fire Rescue and played two games on veteran difficulty, since two of the players had played the game a lot prior. The first game went okay, but after a series of bad chain explosions, we lost the game! So we tried again, this time with the two doors version of the board. Managing the fire went a lot smoother this time around, as I switched to the driver/operator and spent all my turns driving the firetruck around anddousing fires with the deck gun. Some lucky dice rolls meant most fires were under control so the rest of the team could focus on rescuing the POI's, resulting in a swift victory! Hadn't played this one before. Overall a fun light to medium co-op game. Next up was Valley of the Kings. I had purchased the premium box a while ago and I'm currently in a mood for ancient Egyptian themed media, so I just had to bring it out again. We used the Last Rites starter decks and the Afterlife sets. Despite informing my friends about needing to entomb sets to score points, they, for some reason, were extremely focused on grabbing all the shiny and expensive cards, while not really bothering to focus on entombing cards other than the starting cards. This resulted in a pretty decisive victory for me. I admit I still find it difficult to form a good strategy in this game, as a lot of my actions depended on what other players were doing and since they were focused on grabbing as much cards as possible, it meant I had to entomb a lot of cool stuff early. After deckbuilding, we moved on to Nidavellir. The owner originally purchased this game thinking it was a dwarves vs dragon game, but he was quite satisfied with what the game actually is. I really enjoy the coin building mechanic in this game and I think the bidding is fun as well. Taking slow turns to make your coins stronger might pay off for those turns where it matters. Timing your upgrades is important as well, since there's a limited supply for the higher valued coins. Which means if you were to upgrade to an 8 coin, but the 8 coin isn't available anymore in the supply, you get the next available coin at a higher value. So with some clever play, you can get a big increase in coin value. The people I usually play board games with don't like auction/bidding mechanics, since they feel they might overspend or waste resources on mediocre rewards. Luckily for them, this game doesn't have that. After the beefier games we started playing some lighter games, as the stronger beers started kicking in. We played Mascarade and Saboteur: The Dark Cave. I've played them before, but the more I play them, the less I like them. They're both bluffing games, but I just can't articulate why I don't like them other than them being kinda boring and unsatisfying. We ended our board game day with Hanabi. This is a light and quick game I did like. The aforementioned beer had made things a bit more difficult, as people started to forget the hints as soon as they got them. A nice and breezy game that I might pick up as well to play with non-boardgamers! Day 2 I got to play more complex games with two of my friends who are into heavier Euro games. Awesome! This time we also used https://melodice.org/ to put on some thematic music for the games we played. It definitely set the mood for the first game. Underwater Cities plus the expansion was the first game to hit the table and boy, I'm still thinking about this game. It scratches an itch I didn't know I had! We didn't use all the modules, from what I can tell we didn't use the government contracts and the museum features. The other two players had played this game a lot together already, but this was my first time playing it. Thanks to the A card I got at the start, my focus was on getting diverse cities, until one of the players pointed out the paired upgraded buildings out to me. Together with some cards allowing me to build on expansion slots and action cards allowing me to upgrade farms, I managed to get a big kelp+points production going. Add in an island and some extra cards giving me points during production and I somehow managed to score first place. I fully expected to get last place, since it was my first time playing Underwater Cities. I read up on strategies today and it seems people have strong opinions on the kelp strategy. I really want to play this game again and I was quite happy to find out you can play it for free on https://www.yucata.de/. Time to get in some solo games. This was definitely my game of the weekend and I am considering purchasing it myself as well. The other game we played was Endless Winter: Paleoamericans plus the expansion and once again not all the modules were used. From what I could tell the mammoth and wolves modules were used. Once again also the first time I played this game and once again the other players had played it before. This game has a lot of board presence and a lot of different tracks and places to keep track of. Nevertheless, I felt it was very doable to complete all my goals, that is to say, get the three big huts down, get all my megaliths down, get the extra scoring stones and get on top of the idol track on the left side, etc... The owner did inform me there was an expansion or a rule coming up forcing you to use less workers in the first and/or second era. I think that would make the game a lot tighter. I'm curious to play it again with that rule. One major rule I forgot was the fact you can replace certain actions with lower tier of actions. This cost me some points in the end as a result, but nothing that would really get me higher than third place. I admit I did find it hard to track what scored a lot of points for the other players, although both seemed to go heavily for animals near the end, while I mostly butchered animals and got the matching scoring tiles for those type of animals. I think I probably could've planned out my turns better so I wasn't wasting some turns just getting resources. I also underutilized the eclipse deck in the eclipse phase, so I might've dropped some points there as well! Would love to play this again, but I admit I was still thinking about those Underwater Cities during this playthrough.
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Mar 20, 2023 15:06
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I'm planning to PnP some tiles where I'd be gluing a printout to 70 pt (~2mm) chipboard and then cutting it. Does anyone here know of a good corner rounding punch that will handle that without it being a struggle?
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Mar 20, 2023 15:39
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Tekopo posted:Alright, so, I gave Monster Hunter World: The Videogame: The Boardgame a try and, well, I'm pretty impressed. Thanks for the writeup, I had assumed the game wouldn't be any good because of the usual red flags (Kickstarter, lots of plastic, huge all-in pledge etc.) but now I'm regretting missing out. Hope the later hunts are as interesting as the first one. I played some Bullet <3 (hereafter I will call it Bullet because Jesus Christ) with friends and I really think it's a brilliant design. If you haven't played, there are two key influences to understand: Touhou, and Bejewelled. The Touhou side (to be clear I have no experience with or interest in that world, but the game is so clearly inspired by it) is fine, the little things you clear are called "bullets," you have a diverse and fun selection of anime-esque heroines (no horny art!!!) and you can pick up powerups. But really, the game is a shape-matching puzzler, requiring you to move the bullets around on your personal player board to match patterns from your hand of 3. As in multiplayer Tetris, there's no direct competition aside from the fact that every bullet you clear gets sent to your opponent's board next round. Together with the fact that the number of bullets you draw goes up every round, there's a really nice feeling of ratcheting tension as your bag of bullets gets bigger and bigger every time. The final twist is that the game is played with a time limit, a surprisingly-tight 3 minutes per round (and remember, you get more bullets every round, leaving you less time to react!) It's frantic, surprising, and just a lot of fun. The characters are all very distinct, ranging from kinda boring (your hand size is 1 bigger) to ridiculous (you can levitate bullets off the side of your board, or get crosshairs that can shoot bullets right off your board), and they all double as bosses in the coop mode. Excited to get this one back to the table again.
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Mar 20, 2023 15:58
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BinaryDoubts posted:Thanks for the writeup, I had assumed the game wouldn't be any good because of the usual red flags (Kickstarter, lots of plastic, huge all-in pledge etc.) but now I'm regretting missing out. Hope the later hunts are as interesting as the first one. For me, a KS not having a rules PDF available is a huge red flag and I will always stand by my self-imposed "no rules, no pledge" rule.
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Mar 20, 2023 16:06
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BinaryDoubts posted:
This seems like the video game Twinkle Star Sprites more than Touhou, FWIW.
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Mar 20, 2023 16:18
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interrodactyl posted:This seems like the video game Twinkle Star Sprites more than Touhou, FWIW. Yes, the two Touhou Phantasmagoria games (dimensional dream, flower view) were heavily derived from Twinkle Star Sprites.
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Mar 20, 2023 18:22
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Played 18Korea for the first time yesterday, it has a cute bit of historical detail where halfway through the game the north is cut off and all the cities in the south disappear and need to be rebuilt. Other than that, it has a million private companies with some hilarious abilities which you draft from a random selection of at the start of the game, and is extremely cash rich. Not my cup of tea but it was short (about 2 hours from rules explanation to the second to last set of permanents) and I'd probably play it again if asked just to see more of the private companies. Also finally got around to playing my copy of South African Railroads which I definitely want to play more of mainly because I think I won in the opening when the other players way overspent, everyone still enjoyed it though.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:24
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Glazius posted:Yes, the two Touhou Phantasmagoria games (dimensional dream, flower view) were heavily derived from Twinkle Star Sprites. You're right, I forgot ZUN made those two games as well.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:17
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Autodrop Monteur posted:Flash Point: Fire Rescue and played two games on veteran difficulty, since two of the players had played the game a lot prior. The first game went okay, but after a series of bad chain explosions, we lost the game! So we tried again, this time with the two doors version of the board. Managing the fire went a lot smoother this time around, as I switched to the driver/operator and spent all my turns driving the firetruck around anddousing fires with the deck gun. I also played Flash Point somewhat recently, and in my extremely expert single play only opinion it seemed like the operator and firetruck are a bit of a design mistake. If you choose to go that role, you are of course vital to the success of your team, but it’s essentially ALL you do. “Oh my turn? I use my actions to move the truck to this quadrant and try to dowse the fire. You’re right, I did do that every single turn of the game so far, why do you ask?” It almost seems pointless to put a human person in charge of doing this, like, just have a ghost player who does it and the rest of the players can actually play the game. Elysium fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 22:43
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played stationfall pretty neat game, absolutely not for me. me and another overly competitive player were at each other's throats for the entire game and it was actively killing the vibes. would not recommend to anyone who uses the phrase "kingmaker" more than twice a year.
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Mar 20, 2023 23:09
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Elysium posted:I also played Flash Point somewhat recently, and in my extremely expert single play only opinion it seemed like the operator and firetruck are a bit of a design mistake. If you choose to go that role, you are of course vital to the success of your team, but it’s essentially ALL you do. “Oh my turn? I use my actions to move the truck to this quadrant and try to dowse the fire. You’re right, I did do that every single turn of the game so far, why do you ask?” It almost seems pointless to put a human person in charge of doing this, like, just have a ghost player who does it and the rest of the players can actually play the game. Yeah - I guess the role could work for a kid who's "kind of joining" the game or something, but it's not enough decisions for a player. In general, the game feels lacking in "meaningful decisions per minute" - lots of upkeep and resolution, and a lot of turns where you're just "continuing towards" something. The "things pop up co-op" genre has some real solid entries in it now (Pandemic Legacy, Cthulu: Death May Die); it'd be hard to go back to Flashpoint.
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Mar 21, 2023 00:49
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jmzero posted:Yeah - I guess the role could work for a kid who's "kind of joining" the game or something, but it's not enough decisions for a player. It's on the list of games I'd pick up used to play with the kids
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Mar 21, 2023 00:57
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The TG feedback thread is very mad about our no KDM chat policy and the offensive OP and are asking for feedback from someone besides myself. This includes a non TG mod and an admin suggesting we change it to allowing chat about any offensive stuff about the game be hidden behind spoiler text. They seem to think the rule is some huge gatekeeing thing and are very salty. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=4026756&pagenumber=6&perpage=40#post530607626 This only came to light when they heard about the rule, no one came into the thread to complain about it or raise it as an issue. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 01:02
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Autodrop Monteur posted:We started off with Flash Point: Fire Rescue and played two games on veteran difficulty, since two of the players had played the game a lot prior. The first game went okay, but after a series of bad chain explosions, we lost the game! So we tried again, this time with the two doors version of the board. Managing the fire went a lot smoother this time around, as I switched to the driver/operator and spent all my turns driving the firetruck around anddousing fires with the deck gun. Some lucky dice rolls meant most fires were under control so the rest of the team could focus on rescuing the POI's, resulting in a swift victory! Elysium posted:I also played Flash Point somewhat recently, and in my extremely expert single play only opinion it seemed like the operator and firetruck are a bit of a design mistake. If you choose to go that role, you are of course vital to the success of your team, but it’s essentially ALL you do. “Oh my turn? I use my actions to move the truck to this quadrant and try to dowse the fire. You’re right, I did do that every single turn of the game so far, why do you ask?” It almost seems pointless to put a human person in charge of doing this, like, just have a ghost player who does it and the rest of the players can actually play the game. Yeah, that's a fair point Elysium - it definitely feels like it could be done as a "once the last person takes their turn, the trucks spray water in an area that no player occupies. Then player one acts again" kind of mechanic. Since yeah, it's powerful and good to have a truck operator, but drat is it boring! My partner and I much prefer hit firefighting sensations like FIRE EXTINGUINSHER MAN, CHAINSAW WOMAN, CHEMICAL POURER-DOWN-SINKERER MAN, as well as the cute doggo character, naturally. Either way, Flash Point is pretty drat fun, in my opinion! I think we've managed to win all but one game, but it was tense each time. In the loss, the fire actually seemed like it was under control most of the game, right until it suddenly (and explosively) wasn't  I think we've only lost a couple of civilians, in total. Naturally we always make sure to rescue the cat and dog first
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Mar 21, 2023 01:11
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does anyone even give a poo poo about KDM? isn't it just another D&D for people who can't keep GM's? let them post
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Mar 21, 2023 02:07
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BinaryDoubts posted:I played some Bullet <3 I picked up Bullet Star (the completely compatible sequel) and it's... fine? I love the idea, but the actual mathematics of how the game progresses just seem to make it a foregone conclusion. You have the ability to clear, say, 10 bullets from your board each round, but each round there will be 15, then 16, then 17 bullets added to your board, so... you're doomed to lose, at the same rate as the other players, it just comes down to who randomly draws enough bullets that hit them first. I'm simplifying a little. It's interesting at least, and the theme is fun - Jane Doe, Deertective always gets a laugh.
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Mar 21, 2023 02:12
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