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snickles posted:So, Spirit Island. Once people have moved onto branch and claw content (events and tokens), do you generally *always* use that content? I’ve played dozens of games of the base game, even though I own all of the expansions and have yet to try any of them. I teach new players with all the events and animals and diseases and stuff. If they seem the type to be overwhelmed it is quite easy to steer them toward a very simplistic god that doesn't interact with any of that stuff. I think the best coop games are the ones where losing is fun and Spirit Island fits that bill. I tell them we're gonna lose our first game and it's up to our skill and cooperation to actually beat it the 2nd time. If we do beat it the first time then they feel like a badass. I tell them up front that there is no real way to understand everything that is happening at the table and just to let yourself get into it thematically. You're a mud god, you can do mud things, and you're friends with the ocean god but you're not quite aware of how he does his miracles. Doesn't matter, you can still work together. I own the game and have played it dozens of times but there are still gods that I don't touch and am not quite sure how they work, and if someone wants to choose them I just tell them that it's gonna be complex and I'll be of little help but knock yourself out if you want to try.
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Mar 29, 2023 09:41
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Southern Heel posted:Thank you for the indepth responses. 90% of my boardgaming is duo, though I do have a couple of family members who occasionally get involved and a bimonthly meet-up with a work boardgame group. I want to orient mostly towards "Best a 2p" games. To be clear on what I've understood so far: Undaunted Stalingrad is a great 2 player game. It is relatively simple (there's like 3 unit types in Mission 1) and gains some complexity later, but never gets too wild. Obviously the WW2 theme is not for everyone but it doesn't require any groggy knowledge about weapons or units or tactics, things are pretty basic on the level of a 10 year old's knowledge. Machine gun shoots, scout scoots, etc. It is a legacy game that doesn't require any permanent changes and can be reset easily. Each game is maybe like 30 minutes and when you finish the legacy stuff you can reset it, or just play out random skirmishes forever without bothering with it at all.
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Mar 29, 2023 09:45
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Kerro posted:Tyrants of the Underdark or its reprinted version are I think the best option for that. I'm not a big fan of deckbuilding, but it's a really solid game and a lot more interactive than most since a significant part of the game is area control/majority. I was really surprised at this one. I thought it was going to be a throwaway D&D cash-in but there was some meat to them bones. Can't say much more because I only played it once and I took over from someone halfway through but was impressed at what I saw in that brief amount of time. Dominion and VotK are just the best but El Dorado was fun too. I am constantly fighting with my best board gaming friend about loving DC Deckbuilder that he unironically loves and says is the best deckbuilder out there, which is a position that has been trolling or some form of Stockholm syndrome, right? I get sticking up for a game you've played a million times and have tons of memories with but come on.
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Mar 29, 2023 15:40
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I teach new players with all the events and animals and diseases and stuff. If they seem the type to be overwhelmed it is quite easy to steer them toward a very simplistic god that doesn't interact with any of that stuff. I think the best coop games are the ones where losing is fun and Spirit Island fits that bill. I tell them we're gonna lose our first game and it's up to our skill and cooperation to actually beat it the 2nd time. If we do beat it the first time then they feel like a badass. I played the Sun / Moon Time god the other day, and my days. What a long walk for a short drink of water. Utterly mind melting, and the payoff is that 'you get to look at more cards'. Not that you get to play powerful stuff. Because you don't. You'll be lucky to just hold everything back. Unlike most of the other spirits, it feels like if the game went on long enough, you'd 100% lose. You start off piss weak, get to like, max strength slightly quicker than normal, but your max strength is about where other spirits are at the mid point anyway... and then that's it. That was my experience anyway, so, gonna go ahead and assumed I massively hosed it all up. Someone wanna let me know wtf you're supposed to do with that one? I mean, we won, I didn't really let any blight happen, but it wasn't fun in the usual way - no power fantasy whatsoever, but fun in the sense of just barely holding things together. It felt like trying to stay afloat on a sinking raft in a storm, where the only things to work with were a couple of newspapers and bits of my own naked body. !Klams fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 15:53
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Anonymous Robot posted:What’s a deckbuilder with a little more thematic flavor than Dominion, in that case? Legendary Encounters: Alien.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:05
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The Time spirit is by far the toughest one for me to grasp. I try to avoid it. I think the key to playing it is using their private power draft effectively as their own power cards are weird and tough to use effectively.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:05
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!Klams posted:I played the Sun / Moon Time god the other day, and my days. What a long walk for a short drink of water. Utterly mind melting, and the payoff is that 'you get to look at more cards'. Not that you get to play powerful stuff. Because you don't. You'll be lucky to just hold everything back. Unlike most of the other spirits, it feels like if the game went on long enough, you'd 100% lose. You start off piss weak, get to like, max strength slightly quicker than normal, but your max strength is about where other spirits are at the mid point anyway... and then that's it. Your sun growth lets you grab +6 energy on demand, so it's actually very easy to cherry-pick big stompy majors from your special cards and go to town with them. When I'm playing Fractured Days I usually play the first 2-3 turns very conservatively and focus on blowing through the presence tracks. If you keep your time expenditure down to a single use of stasis on your first hand cycle (which means foregoing your big expensive starting cards), then you can reclaim on turn 4 with maxed out tracks and then going into turn 5 you effectively have 3 plays and +9 energy (or maybe a little less if you had to spend 1-2 time to put out fires on turn 4), having had several turns to draft cards into the threshold of whichever major you want. I think the real pro strategy might be to play more aggressively and fire off big majors using the boosted energy growth even earlier, but trying to thread the needle on short term burst power vs. long term growth is usually beyond me, so I find the conventional ramp up to be more reliable.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:13
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So there's this quarterly tournament for The Great Zimbabwe some folks organize, and I filled a spot someone left by not responding to the initial invites. Four games at once, cut to top whatever. I've solidly lost all four, and am thinking I should try to write up some commentary and review at least one or two of them, to see how people actually won, and why every move I made was probably absolute trash. Anyone here interested in reading such ramblings from someone who has maybe a dozen games all told behind them?
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Mar 29, 2023 16:37
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silvergoose posted:So there's this quarterly tournament for The Great Zimbabwe some folks organize, and I filled a spot someone left by not responding to the initial invites. Four games at once, cut to top whatever. 
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Mar 29, 2023 16:41
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Yeah, I like TGZ, and 6 is actually quite a lot of times to play a modern board game. You're basically an expert.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:52
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the holy poopacy posted:Your sun growth lets you grab +6 energy on demand, so it's actually very easy to cherry-pick big stompy majors from your special cards and go to town with them. It only really struck me reading your comment, that the major powers in your days that never were pile could actually be useful ones and not just a bunch of trash, in which case getting to late game level tracks around mid game could be useful. Yeah, ok, I can see that.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:53
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Mr. Squishy posted:Yeah, I like TGZ, and 6 is actually quite a lot of times to play a modern board game. You're basically an expert. Given how many people completely dumpstered me, lmao
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Mar 29, 2023 16:54
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TGZ is getting a bit of a renaissance it seems, maybe the effect of Horseless Carriage stirring up interest in revisiting some older Splotters? I know my extended group has played it a couple of times the past month after it collected dust for years. Maybe I'll have to give it a look again.
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Mar 29, 2023 17:28
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!Klams posted:It only really struck me reading your comment, that the major powers in your days that never were pile could actually be useful ones and not just a bunch of trash, in which case getting to late game level tracks around mid game could be useful. You do have to get creative sometimes, but a lot of major powers get way better when you know in advance what you're getting and have several turns to build towards their thresholds. You don't really need to worry that much about staying strictly on-element for your innate; you can alternate between playing sets of off-element cards for a major and sets of on-element cards for big support turns where you give someone else +3 plays and reclaims.
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Mar 29, 2023 17:30
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The 2021 Descent, a game that could have been expanded with DLC, is getting a $160 big box physical expansion that keeps the main cast, but replaces their cards and minis in addition to all other stuff, and can't be used standalone  But it comes with a big plastic dragon!A BGG argument: getting the first box and disliking it is cheaper than getting F-haven and disliking it.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:07
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SelenicMartian posted:A BGG argument: getting the first box and disliking it is cheaper than getting F-haven and disliking it.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:24
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silvergoose posted:So there's this quarterly tournament for The Great Zimbabwe some folks organize, and I filled a spot someone left by not responding to the initial invites. Four games at once, cut to top whatever. I loving love TGZ. Indonesia is my favorite, but TGZ is the best bang for your buck in terms of duration vs strategic depth. I would love to see the write up of your games.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:38
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Megasabin posted:I loving love TGZ. Indonesia is my favorite, but TGZ is the best bang for your buck in terms of duration vs strategic depth. I would love to see the write up of your games. Ironically I think in my experience it's the most expensive splotter in terms of the Rutibex price-to-component/weight ratio. For a $144 game there's not a ton inside there to justify the price even by their contentious standards.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:44
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There's a good argument to be made that TGZ is the best Splotter. It's nearly flawless.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:47
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That's kind of where I'm landing. Bus is still very high up there, and I have to play Indonesia a second time, but, yeah. TGZ is stupendous.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:50
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A nice thing about TGZ is that it's short and fairly simple. Very efficient in terms of weight to splotteryness.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:54
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big box mini-driven whale magnet? I do not have an F
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Mar 29, 2023 19:04
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I've never seen TGZ before, and looking at pictures, it looks superficially similar to Horseless Carriage, which looked like a nightmare to my uninitiated self. That is, it looks like you're putting out tiles over maps for some process. Are the two actually similar?
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Mar 29, 2023 19:21
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Nope, not really even a little bit. HC has a personal board where you Tetris stuff to try to fit enough stuff to compete on a shared market board representing customers and their product needs TGZ is on a fully shared board, and the stuff you're putting out are either monuments that you're trying to upgrade, or craftsmen that everyone can use (paying you) to upgrade those monuments. Very shared economy, decisions affect everyone else in big ways.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:28
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That does sound way better. Yet another game for the pile that I will never ever get my group to play.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:39
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My favorite splotter is still probably R&B, but I'd also put Greed Incorporated up there as well most likely. Duck Dealer is also quite underappreciated, unjustly imo.
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Mar 29, 2023 20:00
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SelenicMartian posted:keeps the main cast, but replaces their cards and minis in addition to all other stuff, and can't be used standalone Did you see what Ghosts of Saltmarsh did with the D&D Adventure System? This is better than that at least. It’s no wonder small companies are eating big companies breakfast IRT dungeon/adventure type games.
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Mar 29, 2023 20:01
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taser rates posted:My favorite splotter is still probably R&B, but I'd also put Greed Incorporated up there as well most likely. Duck Dealer is also quite underappreciated, unjustly imo. Only the unknown, most hipster Splotters for this poster (I kid, but I've played none of those three)
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Mar 29, 2023 20:10
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Someone always pops in with GI and DD but no one I know has even heard of them let alone played them. Incoming reprint??? R&B is great but something about it bugs me and this may sound heretical and risks my banishment from this thread but I feel like a lot of the splotter-y concepts of shared resources and timing their acquirement/conversion is very familiar for fans of Martin Wallace games and on a sheer fun-to-time scale, I can usually get more out of something like Brass or Via Nebula than R&B, FCM or TGZ... Forgive me thread. Forgive me. (I haven't played TGZ in a long time so my memory might be wrong on that one but I seem to recall some strong similarities.) FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 20:17
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Brass and TGZ are about the same length ime. Love both though!
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Mar 29, 2023 20:24
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I'm surprised nobody's mentioning FCM as their favorite Splotter, given how famous that one is.
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Mar 29, 2023 20:58
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It is my favorite and by far most played non-party game. Edit: wouldn’t call it their best though. That might be down to the fact that I’ve played it enough to see the rough edges and those same edges might be present in their games I think are tighter designs. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 21:00
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CitizenKeen posted:I'm surprised nobody's mentioning FCM as their favorite Splotter, given how famous that one is. This is because we're all very cool. e: apart from Liner.
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Mar 29, 2023 21:01
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FCM is my most played competitive game right now, I think. Other than lighter fillery games like no thanks or dominion
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Mar 29, 2023 21:05
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I have disliked every play of fcm I've had, all async. It's me, though, not the game, it just doesn't gel with me.
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Mar 29, 2023 21:46
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Worth playing it over the table with people of a similar skill level, should such seem opportunity present itself. Asynch online is a very different, and less enjoyable experience for any game.
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Mar 29, 2023 21:53
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All waitress, all the time is the only way to play. Why not be the game clock for a change
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Mar 29, 2023 22:21
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FulsomFrank posted:Someone always pops in with GI and DD but no one I know has even heard of them let alone played them. Incoming reprint??? On BGG, the Splotter folks have mentioned they are considering/looking into the logistics of a Greed reprint.
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Mar 29, 2023 22:43
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I feel shame that I don't have a splotter in my collection. The combo of the cost, weight and cut throat nature make me worry I'd never get it to the table enough to justify the expense. Pax Pamir has taught me that lesson. Yet here I am, still very much on the fence about buying Bus...
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Mar 29, 2023 22:44
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Redundant posted:I feel shame that I don't have a splotter in my collection. The combo of the cost, weight and cut throat nature make me worry I'd never get it to the table enough to justify the expense. Pax Pamir has taught me that lesson. Yet here I am, still very much on the fence about buying Bus... Being around goons will do that to you. That's part of why I have 1830 in my collection, even though I doubt I'll coax anyone to play it with me.
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Mar 29, 2023 23:44
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