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Quick question: any games that use a skill card/crisis resolution system somewhat similar to Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable? I have an idea for a game mechanic that uses something vaguely in the same ballpark, but want to make sure I'm
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Mar 21, 2023 19:46
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That new The Thing game uses a similar system though much less exciting.
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Mar 21, 2023 19:52
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Admiralty Flag posted:Quick question: any games that use a skill card/crisis resolution system somewhat similar to Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable? I have an idea for a game mechanic that uses something vaguely in the same ballpark, but want to make sure I'm
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Mar 21, 2023 19:56
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Admiralty Flag posted:Quick question: any games that use a skill card/crisis resolution system somewhat similar to Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable? I have an idea for a game mechanic that uses something vaguely in the same ballpark, but want to make sure I'm Prototype it out and don't be afraid to be derivative. If early playtesting feels too similar to another game, that's your opportunity to look at mechanics and say "oh, but it might be more fun if THIS worked differently". Many years ago I had an idea for a co-op "boss fight" style board game. At the time I was incredibly into Space Alert, and I basically cribbed the basic mechanics for my design from Space Alert (programming, positioning, actions, etc.). As I fleshed it out, I discovered many areas where I could modify the design to fit my theme better. I never "finished" the game due to changing life priorities, but I felt confident it had evolved into its own unique thing and could have been amazing. I never would have gotten that far if I hadn't ripped off Space Alert as a base.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:04
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Morpheus posted:I have finished putting together my new 3d printer. Check back in with us and let us know if you still feel this way after you print a stupid little box and it takes three goddamn hours.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:17
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Age of Prints is a great game title for some Japanese woodblock art theme.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:43
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Tekopo posted:I saw the NPI review of that and eeeh, it seemed pretty weird and intricate. I watched plenty of reviews and videos before taking the plunge, including Ricky Royal's series. It feels very much like it's where Mage Knight should have been on the intricacy scale. You have to manage your team, but protect your hero. You have to plan your route, but it's all visible and you have a lot of foreknowledge. The encounters themselves are fairly simple and short, but with tactical depth.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:46
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I think the main thing that put me off was the dice combat, which was something that was highlighted by NPI as well.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:47
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Tekopo posted:I think the main thing that put me off was the dice combat, which was something that was highlighted by NPI as well. Dice combat, without a significant amount of mitigation, is something I'm less and less in the mood for. Honestly, that realization made me glad I resisted the urge to back Hoplomachus in its various incarnations and is slowing me down significantly in potentially backing Townsfolk Tussle (despite my love for its aesthetic). I really appreciate Oathsworn featuring dice but allowing you to either ignore them altogether or use them as an alternative for when the deterministic mechanism (the cardplay) will absolutely not favor you in certain situations. Much more my cuppa. Or, alternately, there are some games like Cthulhu Wars where I just kind of accept the dice are arbitrary and cruel but you'll roll a crap-ton of them and the game will be over in two hours anyway, so if the dice don't favor you, so be it - it's not like your 40 hour campaign is going to be rocked by them consistently going against you. You can just scrub the board and hope for a better independent result next time.
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Mar 21, 2023 22:11
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Memnaelar posted:Dice combat, without a significant amount of mitigation, is something I'm less and less in the mood for. Honestly, that realization made me glad I resisted the urge to back Hoplomachus in its various incarnations and is slowing me down significantly in potentially backing Townsfolk Tussle (despite my love for its aesthetic). I really appreciate Oathsworn featuring dice but allowing you to either ignore them altogether or use them as an alternative for when the deterministic mechanism (the cardplay) will absolutely not favor you in certain situations. Much more my cuppa. Same. I was playing Marvel's Midnight Suns (a tactical computer game) and really enjoying the combination of card battler and tactical terrain combat. I went looking for tabletop games that would scratch that itch and didn't find much, even in obscure titles. I'm really tired of rolling dice, custom or otherwise, to see what proportion of "yay" and "welp" will be lowering an opponent's health meter. Sakura Arms was the best I could find for alternatives to "keep rolling dice to lower HP" but the "terrain" is literally one-dimensional rather than two. I don't know much about Oathsworn. Are there others I should look at?
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Mar 22, 2023 00:51
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Does Dwellings of Eldervale live up to the hype? It’s available for sale (preorder) directly from the publisher today after having been out of stock everywhere for months. From what I have seen it combines Kickstarter excess with actual good Euro game mechanics and I am pretty tempted to pick it up as a new game to either play solo or with my kids.
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Mar 22, 2023 01:14
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in today’s installment of minor annoyances the insert for the wolves is a few millimetres too shallow to house all of the terrain tiles without the top one slipping about. they get squashed down a bit by the player boards but once again woe upon the vertical displayer
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Mar 22, 2023 01:25
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Tekopo posted:I think the main thing that put me off was the dice combat, which was something that was highlighted by NPI as well. That's fair. But what determines the quality of a dice-based game is how readily you can mitigate and manipulate chance. Between upgrading dice for more hit sides, positional advantages in some arenas, the ability to plan around the AI scripts and the tactics I think there's enough of that. Another important point is that Hoplomachus Victorum is a solo game. As such I have a higher tolerance for randomness in it, as a fully deterministic solo game is just a tedious exercise in perfect planning. It's what turned me off Roads & Boats as a solo experience after one or two tries. Add too many random elements, though, and it stops being a game and becomes an experience generator instead. Again, I think Hoplomachus Victorum has struck a good balance here. I may of course be wrong. But if I am, I'll flip it.
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Mar 22, 2023 02:03
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homullus posted:Same. I was playing Marvel's Midnight Suns (a tactical computer game) and really enjoying the combination of card battler and tactical terrain combat. I went looking for tabletop games that would scratch that itch and didn't find much, even in obscure titles. I'm really tired of rolling dice, custom or otherwise, to see what proportion of "yay" and "welp" will be lowering an opponent's health meter. Sakura Arms was the best I could find for alternatives to "keep rolling dice to lower HP" but the "terrain" is literally one-dimensional rather than two. I don't know much about Oathsworn. Are there others I should look at? It's maybe a bit left field but I have been enjoying Wildlands a LOT which is a minis/tactical game based around card play. A lot of people don't like it that much though. I play with my kids a lot and it has been perfect as a family game. The fact that we knock over games in less than half an hour is a big win, IMO. I immediately got all the expansions and we've been playing it a lot, and I can't think of any other game that is directly comparable (that's in print, anyway). It is definitely more of a card optimisation game than it is a tactical minis game - but it has some very interesting and subtle ideas in it. Summoner Wars is kind of similar in that it's another tactical game with some elements of hand/terrain stuff with a simple/easy to learn ruleset, but it's got almost the opposite approach - Summoner Wars is built around special unit abilities and krazy kombos, Wildlands is built around factions having decks with different compositions of standard actions (e.g. one is all melee combat cards, one has melee and area attacks but no ranged, one has units which can move twice etc) - the expansions change this up a bit but it's basically about getting units in position on the map then managing your hand to take a whole bunch of related actions in one go, either to alpha strike members of the other team or grab victory points. I find it interesting as the rules are pretty simple and easy to learn, but you can set yourself up to do quite interesting things by using aspects of the map and understanding the card spread of a given faction. Some might find it too abstract though. Unmatched might be another one to look into. I'd love to try it but it seems pretty expensive to get some variety in.
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Mar 22, 2023 02:52
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Admiralty Flag posted:I do not think you will be disappointed. Dune Imperium seems to have quite divergent views online, but maybe that was pre expansion - I recall people saying there wasn't much interactivity, there were limited pathways to victory maybe? Does Ix refine it and address some of the prior complaints? I was interested but a lot of people seemed lukewarm on it. Now i'm interested again! Any other takes?
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Mar 22, 2023 02:55
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Blamestorm posted:Dune Imperium seems to have quite divergent views online, but maybe that was pre expansion - I recall people saying there wasn't much interactivity, there were limited pathways to victory maybe? Does Ix refine it and address some of the prior complaints? I was interested but a lot of people seemed lukewarm on it. Now i'm interested again! Any other takes? Ix fixes the early game, where people rush High Council and Swordmaster (though early Swordmaster seems to have somewhat fallen out of favor looking at BGG, and definitely in my local meta -- in fact, some of us don't even go for Swordmaster except as an afterthought these days). In all, it increases the total number of spaces that have value throughout the game, which opens the game up. I think DI has a lot of interactivity -- for a Euro. In addition to contention for worker placement spaces, there's direct conflict at the end of every round, though players can opt out of conflicts if they want to save their troops for later battles. This strategy doesn't work throug the whole game, because it's not reasonably possible to win without picking up a couple of victories in conflicts, and even VP-less conflicts usually pay off fairly well if you can keep your investment minimal. As to limited paths to victory, this is better phrased as things you must do in order to win. Ix gives you more options in how to do those things to get your 10 VPs. (E.g., with Ix, you can now also recruit troops to win those conflicts through the Spacing Guild's ladder, by deploying dreadnoughts, and/or by Ix tech -- can't think of a direct example here besides the one that allows you to immediately deploy your ladder troops but I'm sure I'm forgetting something). But I'm a big DI stan so maybe see if someone else has a countervailing opinion.
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Mar 22, 2023 03:39
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Ix definitely improves the game and probably shouldn't be played without it. I enjoyed DI much more than I expected to and I'd be happy for it to continue to hit the table for a while. I think most of the negative reviews of it have come from 1) people expecting a serious deck builder and 2) picking woefully underpowered leaders. The deckbuilding aspect of it is important, but there's limited turns and by about turn 5, it's almost not worth buying anything aside from The Spice Must Flow (tm). Otherwise there's lots of different options and little economic levers to pull and particularly with Ix, you've got enough options open to you to keep it fair, whilst also providing some serious contention at certain decision points.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:15
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homullus posted:Same. I was playing Marvel's Midnight Suns (a tactical computer game) and really enjoying the combination of card battler and tactical terrain combat. I went looking for tabletop games that would scratch that itch and didn't find much, even in obscure titles. I'm really tired of rolling dice, custom or otherwise, to see what proportion of "yay" and "welp" will be lowering an opponent's health meter. Sakura Arms was the best I could find for alternatives to "keep rolling dice to lower HP" but the "terrain" is literally one-dimensional rather than two. I don't know much about Oathsworn. Are there others I should look at? Blamestorm posted:It's maybe a bit left field but I have been enjoying Wildlands a LOT which is a minis/tactical game based around card play. A lot of people don't like it that much though. I play with my kids a lot and it has been perfect as a family game. The fact that we knock over games in less than half an hour is a big win, IMO. I immediately got all the expansions and we've been playing it a lot, and I can't think of any other game that is directly comparable (that's in print, anyway). It is definitely more of a card optimisation game than it is a tactical minis game - but it has some very interesting and subtle ideas in it. Summoner Wars is kind of similar in that it's another tactical game with some elements of hand/terrain stuff with a simple/easy to learn ruleset, but it's got almost the opposite approach - Summoner Wars is built around special unit abilities and krazy kombos, Wildlands is built around factions having decks with different compositions of standard actions (e.g. one is all melee combat cards, one has melee and area attacks but no ranged, one has units which can move twice etc) - the expansions change this up a bit but it's basically about getting units in position on the map then managing your hand to take a whole bunch of related actions in one go, either to alpha strike members of the other team or grab victory points. I find it interesting as the rules are pretty simple and easy to learn, but you can set yourself up to do quite interesting things by using aspects of the map and understanding the card spread of a given faction. Some might find it too abstract though. Unmatched is honestly awesome and it's cheap to get at least a 1v1 set to try it out - or you could try your luck finding the original Star Wars Epic Duels board game it's based on on Facebook Marketplace or something, if you can stomach the theme. It occasionally pops up for cheap. Another one you could check out that is a little bit weird but might scratch your particular itch is Malifaux, it's a minis game that uses regular poker cards for combat resolution and gets pretty fun with it. The aesthetic is very 2009 Steampunk Goth though, I haven't kept up with it for at least a full edition, and I don't know if it's even still going, but it was pretty cool at the time.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:19
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Finally got to try Revive after someone in my meet up got a copy. It has some fun card play/combos that give you huge dopamine hits, but holy market row batman! The game has 3 simultaneous market rows going at once, non of them are progression gated/tiered, and there is no way to manipulate/change/refresh them on your own turn. The power of the takeables in each market row (cards/machines/modules) have a WIDE variance and really affect the game balance. Two of those three components (cards & modules) build on each other additively, so if you manage to get 1-2 powerful modules & cards from the market row early, you're gonna skyrocket to victory. Since there's no mechanism at all to refresh or turn over any of the markets on your own turn, each time someone buys something, there is the chance the next person in turn order is going to get lucky with what's uncovered for them. I value games with high player agency and low ex-post randomness and the above simply just rules out this game as one I would ever purchase. I would gladly play it a few more times, but I can see this switching from fun to frustrating very quickly in a competitive group of players.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:55
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I'd be curious to know what cards/modules/chips you found wildly imbalanced in Revive. The market row hasn't been an issue for me in my five plays because in my estimation there really isn't a wide spread of efficacy variance at all in the offerings in the three markets. I also haven't seen any gripes about obvious choices in the offerings/lack of market refresh on BGG. Edit: not saying you're wrong, especially since it's still a very new release stateside. I've just not been confronted with your concerns in this regard at all since Essen so I'm honestly a little flummoxed in contemplating it now out of the blue. My curiosity is sincere, not confrontational. I actually believe it's one of the better balanced euros I've seen come out in the past year and it was definitely a top-3 release for me in 2022.
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Mar 22, 2023 05:06
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Memnaelar posted:I'd be curious to know what cards/modules/chips you found wildly imbalanced in Revive. The market row hasn't been an issue for me in my five plays because in my estimation there really isn't a wide spread of efficacy variance at all in the offerings in the three markets. I also haven't seen any gripes about obvious choices in the offerings/lack of market refresh on BGG. Totally fair point. I only got my first play in and you have 5 plays.I will share where some of my concerns in more details. The number one concern was the module market row. Barring crystals, there are only 2 types of modules-- The common module that can be activated by two colors and give a single resource OR the rare module that is activated by a single color but gives 2 resources. As I've been anticipating the game, I had read some of the BGG forums and had seen several people voice concern across multiple threads over the power of the double-resource modules combined with the ability to instantly gain their benefit by placing them on the bonus module slot. This rang true in the game I played. I took advantage of this, saving up my module buying cards/abilities, until double modules went down. I had about 2 more than anyone else, and the large resource advantage they gave me, let to a significant early-mid game boost and I was able to crush my competition, two of which had multiple plays of the game under their belt from conventions. It's hard to imagine a situation where the double resource modules don't get instantly purchased by whoever is lucky enough to be next in turn order when they flip over. They are so much better than 1 resource modules (there's 4 slots, you don't need the flexibility on card color) that it just seems like a no brainer choice. Given that, it's going to feel bad if luck just doesn't send any your way, as they instantly get purchased after coming up. It was less apparent in the cards & machines but still there. The cards that allow you to either stack other cards or play another card of any color for free, seemed very powerful compared to the rest. The stacking ones were quite rare in our game and the first one didn't even show up til mid game. It felt bad waiting for a stacking card f a certain color, only for it to randomly come up right after you turn, meaning there was nothing you could do about it. And ultimately, that's the issue with market rows that lack refresh mechanics or tiered progression. They remove player agency. If you set up a green card strategy by purchasing a few basic green cards, but can never secure the more adv green cards, while the person who did the same with yellow cards lucks into theirs, it doesn't feel good. It feel like it was entirely out of your control. And in Revive, you have 3x the opportunities for this to occur, since every significant component is tied to a market row.
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Mar 22, 2023 05:23
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Tekopo posted:I saw the NPI review of that and eeeh, it seemed pretty weird and intricate. I got my copy of Hoplo Victorum around Christmas (America stays winning  ) and I've played 3 full campaigns since. I disagree with NPI's overall conclusion. There's two things I do agree with him on:Dice - I don't like dice resolution in general, but I feel it's reasonable in Victorum. It is true there's no rerolls or similar direct dice mitigation, and you can definitely get a bunch of misses and feel bad. There's other ways to ameliorate the dice. You can go for tactician/defender type units, which tend to have black or red dice, the most consistent damage dealers. Hero abilities can do a lot of heavy lifting, from giving extra dice to your entire squad for more consistency to straight up dealing automatic damage or otherwise bypassing dice for results. Still putting this aspect of the game in the con column, but I don't feel it's a deal breaker. Pacing - This is my main complaint with the game. Four acts of 12 weeks (up to 48 battles per campaign!) does feel too long. There's rules for saving your progress of course, but really the game feels a bit too drawn out. IMO they should've dropped the 4th act, or made each act only 8 weeks long. Make the map slightly smaller, reduce the numbers on the Scion battles to compensate, boom, done. That said, it is a solo game, so no one besides yourself can judge you if you fudge a little in order to speed things along. What I disagree with: Complexity - As far as tactical combat games go, Hoplomachus isn't complex. The base rules are extremely simple, units have a grand total of 4 stats: HP, Attack, Movement and Range, they basically just move and attack, unless they have some special keyword. There's a total of maybe 30 keywords, of which non-basic units have maybe 1-2, and most of which are incredibly simple like Retaliate (unit deals 1 damage to attack after being attacked) and Taunt (units must attack this unit if next to it). Enemy AI is extremely simple, enemies move towards a target determined by the arena priority list and attack if able. There's no line of sight, flanking, height, or similar rules to account for, besides the odd arena rule. There's only eight arenas and the ruleset for each is very intuitive. Efka gives the Amazon arena example with the moving pillars, making it sound like it's just random chaos that ruins your plans... except it isn't. The player knows in advance where the pillars will move, and exactly how they'll push units and how moving units alters that. There's literally zero randomness involved in the pillars, it's just a simple mechanic you have to account for or even use to your advantage. I think the genius of this game is how all these very simple rules and tiny battle maps manage to interact and create interesting tactical battles. It's the definition of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. Tribune - Not sure why this minor rule got such focus in the review, but I think the rule is perfectly fine. It's never been an issue for me. You can play around it trivially easily in most cases. Tribunes only appear on sporting events, which means you're completely free to sacrifice units at no penalty. Park a defensive unit next to the tribune to keep them busy. Doesn't matter if they die, they'll be back. The tribune penalty is only punitive if your hero has a ton of current health, otherwise who cares if your 3 hp hero is reduced to 1? Kill the tribune and spectate next week for the heal, you were due for that anyway. I'll agree it's wonky that the player gets to choose who the tribune is, but that just tracks with the rest of the game where it is explicitly encouraged to play things to the player's advantage when the enemy AI has two tied choices. In any case, the tribune is an important balancing mechanism for sporting events. The fact is that sport events being non-lethal allows for far more aggressive play than in a lethal event. The tribune is there as wrench thrown in the mix that has the potential to cause long term consequences and encourages the player to engage with the king of the hill or flag capture mechanics instead of just wiping out the enemy squad as in a bloodshed event.
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Mar 22, 2023 08:26
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Megasabin posted:Revive talk You raise completely valid concerns. I will say this - yes, the double resource modules are, generally speaking, flat better than their single resource/double color counterparts (except crystals, natch). Yes, the play a card cards are, generally, better than many of the other cards (slot cards are, imo, overrated unless you've heavily invested in modules for that particular color in one of your four slots). That said, this is a race game and, imo, more about tactics and tempo than about waiting for the right module or card to fall into the market for a strategy. There may not ever BE a double resource module that fits the colors you're focusing on and if you wait on it, your opponents should punish you by beating you out on the race and grabbing a handful of singles while you wait. That "play a card" card may not hit the market until late game and a skilled player will focus on the available tech before them. Now, is it possible that someone will just happen to have the right modules and cards for their strat pop into the market early or as a blind drop after someone else's selection? Sure. But in my five games, the winner didn't seem to rely on a particular set of awesome modules or cards. They (me, in three of those games) pushed for claiming artifacts with ruthless efficiency and playing each turn for its optimal move. I read the Petyr Baelish thread that seemed to be the lengthiest discussion on this issue at bgg and noticed that, apart from the designers answering some of his concerns, there weren't a lot of folks chiming in to support his worries with their own anecdotal observations. I understand how some folks hate random markets that can't be flushed; there's a certain threshold of randomness in a lengthy euro I find intolerable. Revive doesn't cross it for me. Maybe after another five plays I'll see the issues you're talking about trend more, but so far they haven't impacted my group and we're a pretty competitive, luck-hating bunch. ;-) Obviously, play what feels good but give Revive another whirl if you feel like it and see if these elements have the same impact over multiple games. In two of my wins, I could NOT get any double resource mods to save my life but made up for it by focusing on my tech tree and lakes to more than make up for the resource loss from mods. Totally cool if you're already certain it's not your cuppa though.
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Mar 22, 2023 09:02
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Ojetor posted:Efka gives the Amazon arena example with the moving pillars, making it sound like it's just random chaos that ruins your plans... except it isn't. The player knows in advance where the pillars will move, and exactly how they'll push units and how moving units alters that. There's literally zero randomness involved in the pillars, it's just a simple mechanic you have to account for or even use to your advantage. I watched the NPI review and this was where I stopped. It was obvious from the start that Efka didn't like the game. That's fine; if he doesn't like it he's got every right to give a negative review, and in fact I'd expect him to - nobody should be getting a free ride. But as I continued to watch it became clear that he hated it at first sight and was finding reasons to justify his kneejerk reaction. Now again, I'm not going to criticise Efka for not liking a particular type of game because we all have that one type of game that we won't countenance playing. As a reviewer, though, he has an obligation to present the good as well as the bad, to explain what is different about this game. And he didn't. He was ignoring or wilfully misunderstanding how the game works, and in the process giving a false impression.
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Mar 22, 2023 09:14
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I don't think he even mentioned that there are different strength of dice either. I mean, dice are going to be dice no matter what you put on them, but it's an important detail.
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Mar 22, 2023 10:22
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A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine who is unapologetic in his desire for simple and elegant gaming systems, and we discussed at length how complexity does not necessarily yield a more authentic or enjoyable experience, and on that note I think it's the end for my relationship with Eldritch Horror. With one solo attempt under my belt I've tried to play it at least half a dozen times before everyone (including me) just lost interest. The proverbial straw was yesterday where I had a dedicated, experienced board-game group sit down to play it and (though we did take a short break to eat) we were there for over three hours before we all just agreed to end it there as nobody was really enjoying themselves. I think with EH fundamentally there was just too much going on - characters who can take one of six? actions plus potentially a unique action. Six? stats each with improvement possibility, four kinds of cards you can obtain, each with multiple subcategories and each with different positive and negative effects and yet more actions, two kinds of health to track, two kinds of movement tokens. Six? decks of encounter cards, two decks of monsters, two internal game timers and more counters in various places, portals and monsters and clues and regular encounters and rumours, etc. etc. you get the picture and for me it's just too little fun and enjoyment compared to the degree of admin and cognitive load. Basically, it's War of the Ring when I really just want War of the 1812. I also happen to be selling War of the Ring for precisely the same reason, so If anyone in the UK wants to nab either then you can have it for a steal, PM me. 
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Mar 22, 2023 11:47
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Tekopo posted:I don't think he even mentioned that there are different strength of dice either. I mean, dice are going to be dice no matter what you put on them, but it's an important detail. He did, when talking about the lack of roll mitigation. But yeah I think he just didn't like the game. Chances are by the point of the review that he was just, as the review title says, totally exhausted with it and was starting to see negatives far more prominently than any positives as the repetition took its toll.
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Mar 22, 2023 12:02
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Memnaelar posted:You raise completely valid concerns. I will say this - yes, the double resource modules are, generally speaking, flat better than their single resource/double color counterparts (except crystals, natch). Yes, the play a card cards are, generally, better than many of the other cards (slot cards are, imo, overrated unless you've heavily invested in modules for that particular color in one of your four slots). You bring up an excellent point-- This is a race game disguised as an engine builder. Much like TFM people's impulse is going to be to build some sort of super card-stacking module activating engine, when really they should be doing the bare minimum to grab the artifacts ASAP. Each artifact is incredibly potent-- it gives you points and denies points from your opponents. If anyone can get a ~2 artifact advantage, they are certainly going to win. I won by 20 points with a 1 artifact advantage and I ended the game when people didn't expect it, meaning a lot of people were not able to use their last turn to do much at all. From that perspective, it's not as problematic that the market rows are not balanced and all ex-post randomness, although I imagine if all players recognized the above and played it as a tightknit race, then that randomness would come back into play, as those who got the double modules & best cards, would be able to race more efficiently and thus faster. Thinking on the game like this, I can see population/faction powers & tiered cards all being traps. The fastest way to simply get artifacts would be to focus on food/gears to continuously explore & drop high yield structures to advance tracks heavily. If you don't care about population, you can basically ignore books as a resource, maybe getting just enough to drop 1 pop into the end-game bonus location at the edge of the board.
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Mar 22, 2023 14:03
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Admiralty Flag posted:Ix fixes the early game, where people rush High Council and Swordmaster (though early Swordmaster seems to have somewhat fallen out of favor looking at BGG, and definitely in my local meta -- in fact, some of us don't even go for Swordmaster except as an afterthought these days). In all, it increases the total number of spaces that have value throughout the game, which opens the game up. million dollar mack posted:Ix definitely improves the game and probably shouldn't be played without it. Curious what your go-to strategy/meta is? It seems like the rush-to-swordmaster-and-then-HC is cut into stone for us (no IX yet but I've got it) and then after that it's just trying to build whatever little engine you can to climb the faction tracks/win enough conflicts. I'm still furious about the intrigue cards that result in some free VPs at the end just for showing up but that's neither here nor there.
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Mar 22, 2023 14:43
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FulsomFrank posted:Curious what your go-to strategy/meta is? It seems like the rush-to-swordmaster-and-then-HC is cut into stone for us (no IX yet but I've got it) and then after that it's just trying to build whatever little engine you can to climb the faction tracks/win enough conflicts. I'm still furious about the intrigue cards that result in some free VPs at the end just for showing up but that's neither here nor there. First: Intrigue cards. These are the worst part of the game. Some are near useless (+1 water), some are OK (+1 with a faction), and some are outrageous (+1 VP for 4 spice or 7 Solari). There are only two ways to mitigate Intrigue cards' randomness: get a lot of them yourself (and use the, so you stay under the limit) or stay ahead of the scoring curve. Swordmaster is problematic to buy because you have to dump a load of spice on the market that could have gone toward thinning your deck or Heighliners, getting a Dagger or a Dune the Desert Planet out of sight permanently (and drawing two cards) or winning you a VP conflict. He's also less useful than he appears because each turn 1) he uses up an extra card from your hand that could have gone toward buying something useful (though you can always end your agent turns early, it takes discipline to do this) and 2) by the 9th+ pick, the best spots are generally gone. I think the better play is often to go Mentat on four different turns, because you replace a Dagger with something useful (to place or to buy with). Card draw, even if it's a single card draw, is extremely powerful in this game. It can be a do-over for a crappy Dagger on Mentat, giving you the last two points you need to buy The Spice Must Flow. If, later in the game, you've got the Solari to spare and you do draw a Dagger, it might be worthwhile to go SM, especially if you already have some TSMF cards, because it'll be hard for you to get back to 9 persuasion points with those clogging your hand. Rushing High Council isn't the best strategy, because your hands will be weak until you pick up a couple of 2 point cards, meaning you won't see much of a reward early, but getting your seat by turn 3-4 is a good idea. Those 2 points are critical for getting TSMF cards, but also, sometimes, 5-6 point cards if you still have Daggers and Dune the Desert Planets clogging your deck. If a great card comes up, don't be afraid to end your turn early to grab it (whether for the points or because someone else can get it). CHOAM Directorship has the potential to score you more points than a TSMF card near the end of the game. This brings me to the most important point: don't clog your deck. Get 1, maybe 2, Arrakis liaisons in your first turns if nothing better is available. You want these cards for their access and for their '2' value. After that, only buy cards if they give you lots of persuasion points (rare), give you faction access (less rare), have some OP ability (Gurney is nice if I'm remembering correctly), or an unskippable one-time benefit (CHOAM Directorship; TSMF). Ending your reveal turn with unspent points isn't necessarily a bad thing. Thinning your deck aggressively is difficult without the xpacs, because the only reliable way to do so is through Selective Breeding (which requires some spice and gives you two card draws, which is a nice bonus), which directly competes with an opportunity to draw Intrigue cards. It's a difficult decision to make, especially if you're low on Intrigue cards. On a meta level, unless you've got BG-specific access through purchased cards, you're also competing with the other six faction spots with your Diplomacy card, so the decision gets more difficult. Finally, and I'm sure you're glad to hear that word, there's a rule from the Immortality xpac I recommend importing into any game: Family Atomics. Once per game, during your turn (agent or reveal), each player may trash the row of five imperium cards and replace them. This is a way to get rid of the logjams when they get to be all pointless 1s and 2s, as well as a chance to stop someone from running off with Reverend Mother Mohiam or whatever her name is.
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Mar 22, 2023 16:15
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Megasabin posted:You bring up an excellent point-- This is a race game disguised as an engine builder. Much like TFM people's impulse is going to be to build some sort of super card-stacking module activating engine, when really they should be doing the bare minimum to grab the artifacts ASAP. Each artifact is incredibly potent-- it gives you points and denies points from your opponents. If anyone can get a ~2 artifact advantage, they are certainly going to win. I won by 20 points with a 1 artifact advantage and I ended the game when people didn't expect it, meaning a lot of people were not able to use their last turn to do much at all. Actually, a two artifact advantage is not necessarily dispositive - one of my games ended in a victory for me despite an artifact deficit (2 or 3) because of other factors - specifically what those artifacts actually counted towards in terms of end-game scoring as well as my focus on getting some of the corner end-game scoring locations. It really is hard to make many quick and dirty generalizations about what will trigger a win -- are some machines/mods/cards better than others? Without question (even if there are edge cases where another choice works better for a given strategy). But let's take your thoughts on population/faction powers and tiered cards being traps -- they certainly CAN be, depending on your game state. However, they can also be incredibly strong if you've developed a strategy that works with them -- while also working towards your other long-term goals in expedient fashion. Population powers are, in most instances, very strong. Remember that the top of all three population trees also give you artifacts alongside other benefits. In a pair of winning games, I got two artifacts off those trees alone -- with one of those branches also giving me an extra crate (which I needed to collect to score off of my artifacts) and the other giving me 2 VP (which, as you know, went towards working on another artifact). The extra energy on the third branch is also potentially VERY strong if you've been moving tracks and gotten some nice machines. Racing to grab artifacts may not mean much if, while you're accumulating all of one color, someone else is moving quickly in a way that's detrimental to what you actually *score* off that color. EDIT: Also, remember that population may, itself, be a scoring component for artifacts or corner scoring locations for how many meeples you have on the board. Game is *very* situational based on set-up. ;-) Those double modules are, simply put, not always conducive to what your artifacts actually want you to do, at least not as much as a single resource or a crystal would be. Consider the one tribe that uses books as a wild resource once they get their first population power -- for them, a single book module can often be far more valuable, in terms of flexibility on a round-by-round basis, than a double-food or double-gear, especially because that book is likely tied to green cards which they will almost certainly be collecting first anyway. Would they RATHER have a double-book? Sure. But that may not be in the cards on their turn and grabbing a helpful single-book NOW so that a later turn can be used exploiting that book may be more effective than taking a less efficient turn now while waiting for that double-book that may never come. Again, I strongly encourage getting a few more plays in while your theorycrafting develops. I'm not saying it's possible that the end result is still unbalanced - I need and want to play more myself. But I do think it's obvious a LOT of work went into this design and it's extemely hard to be reductivist about balance without taking a closer look at the clockwork in action. Memnaelar fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 22, 2023 |
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Mar 22, 2023 17:04
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Memnaelar posted:Actually, a two artifact advantage is not necessarily dispositive - one of my games ended in a victory for me despite an artifact deficit (2 or 3) because of other factors - specifically what those artifacts actually counted towards in terms of end-game scoring as well as my focus on getting some of the corner end-game scoring locations. I think I may have overstate my balance concerns. I was mainly rattling potential concerns off after a first play. I generally believe no one should be making any definitive judgments in a game after a single play and honestly probably not until 7-10 plays. I definitely found the game fun and would love to play more in the future. I'm not quite sure I want to own it yet though, but that also has to do with me being obsessive about keeping my collection round 50~ games that I consider my "best of the best". Just curious-- you mentioned that Revive was in your top 3 for 2022 designs. What were the other two and can you say a bit about what you liked about them?
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Mar 22, 2023 17:17
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Played hey that's my fish, mayfair edition, and it's fantastic. Knocked out several games in a couple hours with 3P. Really up there with Knizia-likes. If only the box wasn't so big - I'd mash together the new smaller box with the older components.
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Mar 22, 2023 17:39
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Megasabin posted:I think I may have overstate my balance concerns. I was mainly rattling potential concerns off after a first play. I generally believe no one should be making any definitive judgments in a game after a single play and honestly probably not until 7-10 plays. Woodcraft MAY get there, but I have yet to actually get a chance to PLAY it. I love Suchy and Woodcraft seems to take my favorite part of Praga (the action wheel) and plop it into a game that I think may actually be MORE fun. Guards of Atlantis 2 is a masterwork. Now it might be the best design of 2022 overall that I get to play the least of because of how tough it can be to sell a luck-free, incredibly tight MOBA team-play experience to 3 to 9 of my friends on any given weekend, but it's all of those things. Tons of characters, LOTS of deep decisions on how you advance them, luck-free and entirely skill-based. Some of the character art is a little cringe (but not terribly so) but overall, it is just an incredibly realized experience and I loved my first two plays of it... and have yet to get it back to the table with my group given the cult of the new and my terrible superbacker tendencies -- yet another reason Revive stands out for having five plays, and why my opinions can't be trusted as overly deep. I need to curate as well as you do. I'm blanking right now at work as to what the third in there would be, in terms of purely great design. We've been going through a home reno these past few months and a lot of games went into storage while we get things squared away. I also spent some time on games that aren't particularly great designs, but had enough theme and crowd satisfaction to them that my group really enjoyed them (specifically Wonderland's War -- which has some identified balance problems and revisions incoming. I also played a lot of new games last year that weren't 2022 releases but were firsts for me that I thought were excellent - Pax Pamir 2nd being a real stand-out from that crowd and probably my favorite thing Wehrle has done -- but I'm a sucker for multi-use cards and shifting alliances.
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Mar 22, 2023 17:41
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Southern Heel posted:A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine who is unapologetic in his desire for simple and elegant gaming systems, and we discussed at length how complexity does not necessarily yield a more authentic or enjoyable experience, and on that note I think it's the end for my relationship with Eldritch Horror. This is kind of how I feel now about most rules-dense games. The mechanical overhead rarely translates to additional enjoyment for me. What's funny is Eldritch is even supposed to be their "streamlined" Arkham Horror.
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Mar 22, 2023 17:53
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Memnaelar posted:Woodcraft MAY get there, but I have yet to actually get a chance to PLAY it. I love Suchy and Woodcraft seems to take my favorite part of Praga (the action wheel) and plop it into a game that I think may actually be MORE fun. Sweet. I'm glad to hear that because I have the second printing preview page of GoAII favorited on gamefound. As a former DOTA players I am very excited for it. I was considering buying a used copy, but it looks like this second printing will have an enhanced box and storage solution, so I'll wait it out.
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Mar 22, 2023 18:51
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Crackbone posted:This is kind of how I feel now about most rules-dense games. The mechanical overhead rarely translates to additional enjoyment for me. What's funny is Eldritch is even supposed to be their "streamlined" Arkham Horror. It was more streamlined, but each new expansion added more and more mechanical density to the game. Sorta like what happened with Arkham Horror, what a surprise.
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Mar 22, 2023 19:37
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Controversial take: the mechanical complexity and extremely hard to parse rules for Arkham and Eldritch Horror are part of the experience and 100% on theme.
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Mar 22, 2023 19:59
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Megasabin posted:Sweet. I'm glad to hear that because I have the second printing preview page of GoAII favorited on gamefound. As a former DOTA players I am very excited for it. I was considering buying a used copy, but it looks like this second printing will have an enhanced box and storage solution, so I'll wait it out. Yeah, the storage for GOAII is, well, terrible as initially presented. I'll definitely be backing for the new characters and (hopefully, if provided separately) the updated storage, even though as a full-on late backer for GOAII, I already likely have more characters than I will ever reasonably be able to get to the table. But it's such a great game and system that I want to encourage its growth with my wallet.
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Mar 22, 2023 20:04
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 21:17 |
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 board games were a mistake
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Mar 22, 2023 20:07
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