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That Italian Guy posted:If you are interested in Mindbug and want to give it a go, there are currently two expansion sets on KS (and I would imagine you can get the base game there too): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nerdlab-games/mindbug-beyond Also, if you want to see a quick game of the new expansion, Paul Grogan has a sponsored playthrough with one of the designers. It is not played on Tabletopia, but instead on an internal app they are using for playtesting. The app looks incredibly good considering it is pre-alpha.
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Apr 7, 2023 09:14
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My adventures with Hoplomachus Victorum continue. This run I got Stygiana, whose thing is self-harm and self-heal. I started her off with Prowess cards that provide big benefits if she's deployed first and also gave her Agile, an ability that lets her attack without actually attacking and bypasses several troublesome enemy abilities. I had a really smooth Act I where I was able to rack up a ton of opportunities including recruiting Zeno of Gargaria, a special ranged unit that also has Agile. Between the two of them they spent Act II violating all the Absorb and Retaliate units that came out. Unfortunately I had a lot of terrible luck on my attack rolls - Stygiana was rolling 1 black 3 blue by the middle of the Act but kept rolling all blanks on the blues, which have a 3/6 chance to hit - and it cost me several Blessings that I know I'm going to need. I might be able to get through Act III if my luck turns, but I don't think this will be my first campaign win even though I have almost all my Prowess cards and two Special Prowess including Talent Scout, which will let me recruit all the remaining Vesuvian units before I fight the end boss.
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Apr 7, 2023 21:56
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Really really wanted to like Keyforge, and it was MASSIVE at my flgs for like, a week. But it very quickly became apparent that it was just gambling. Gambling that took a few matches to see if you'd won, where the prize was that people wouldn't play against that deck. Like, usually, one of the two decks was just better, whoever the pilot. Having so few options meant it was hard to play sub-optimally.
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Apr 8, 2023 00:56
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!Klams posted:Really really wanted to like Keyforge, and it was MASSIVE at my flgs for like, a week. But it very quickly became apparent that it was just gambling. Gambling that took a few matches to see if you'd won, where the prize was that people wouldn't play against that deck. If you get two decks that are both around the same SAS score, it's a great game. That doesn't make the original idea of ripping open two decks and going at it work though.
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Apr 8, 2023 01:00
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I thought the format where you gave your opponent the deck to play with was kinda a fun idea. Still gambling of a sort but it turns it on its head to who has the worst deck.
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Apr 8, 2023 01:19
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!Klams posted:Really really wanted to like Keyforge, and it was MASSIVE at my flgs for like, a week. But it very quickly became apparent that it was just gambling. Gambling that took a few matches to see if you'd won, where the prize was that people wouldn't play against that deck. How did the self balancing chain (?) system work out? Or the competitive formats where you'd bring 3 decks and after winning have to retire it or whatever the deal was? I have a of more than a dozen 99c decks from one of the big clearances but have only played 2-3 times.
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Apr 8, 2023 01:19
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My problem with Keyforge was that the turn-to-turn decisions just weren't that interesting, or at least didn't feel that interesting. The "pick a card faction and play as many of those cards from your hand and activate as many of those cards in play" scheme meant that most of the time you just vomit out the most populous faction in your hand and hope it all sticks around for next turn when, you guessed it, you will activate it all. Obviously there was more to it than that but I wanted way more hand management considerations and same-turn cross-faction synergies in my card game. Such a shame because I think everything else in the game way fantastically done. It's just missing the, uh, you know, fun.
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Apr 8, 2023 01:28
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Magnetic North posted:Also, if you want to see a quick game of the new expansion, Paul Grogan has a sponsored playthrough with one of the designers. It is not played on Tabletopia, but instead on an internal app they are using for playtesting. The app looks incredibly good considering it is pre-alpha. 
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Apr 8, 2023 01:29
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Staying at a friend's place for the weekend while I visit family and getting some board gaming in. Played Furnace, Ginkgopolis, Cartographers, some good games. Furnace was a real brain burner especially.
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Apr 8, 2023 03:20
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I played the Arkham Horror card game yesterday. We managed to do the first 2 parts of the campaign that comes with the base game and we both enjoyed it a lot. Enough that there's already talk of picking up some of the expansions. Are there any that really stand out as being particularly good? I think we played everything right but, using the standard difficulty, things felt pretty easy. After getting repeatedly destroyed by Mansions of Madness it does make me wonder if we missed something or were messing up the enemy phases somehow.
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Apr 8, 2023 09:44
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You missed the third scenario.
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Apr 8, 2023 09:53
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dwarf74 posted:I just want to say that Paul is a good dude and worth supporting. Paul is one of the best dudes in board gaming. I should support him on Patreon some day. edit: Just remembered that he was the one who convinced me to try Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Baker Street Irregulars with his relentless praise, and for that I certainly owe him a few buxx. Magnetic North fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Apr 8, 2023 |
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Apr 8, 2023 10:20
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I do support him; his supporters are a great community.Redundant posted:I played the Arkham Horror card game yesterday. We managed to do the first 2 parts of the campaign that comes with the base game and we both enjoyed it a lot. Enough that there's already talk of picking up some of the expansions. Are there any that really stand out as being particularly good? The first two scenarios are relatively easy; the third one is much harder. That said, it's easy to get rules wrong without even knowing it. Aside from Rodney's rules video, you might check out Quick Learner, who's done a couple videos on rules tips and several on strategy. Team Covenant does excellent playthroughs, though they don't have any for the core box, so you might wait to watch them until you're into expansion content. Of the expansions, I've enjoyed all the ones I've played so far. I know Dunwich Legacy is highly regarded, as it's the first major expansion and does a good job of expanding the mechanics and giving you new and interesting things to deal with. Carcosa was also a lot of fun. I personally enjoyed Forgotten Age, though it's definitely a lot tougher than the ones before it, and your investigators will get beat up early and often.
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Apr 8, 2023 13:59
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Starting with the Dunwich-cycle is fine. Just finished it with my group and it was a very fun experience. With just the Core set there is not too much variation with player decks yet. You should get Dunwich's Investigator expansion, since it adds lots of nice player cards to build your decks around. Also single Investigator decks add a lot of stuff for their classes (especially Jacqueline Fine and Winifred Habbamock for Mystics and Rogues). The Murder at the Excelsior Hotel is a very good single scenario pack that you can play as a stand-alone or as a side quest in a campaign. It is also very replayable.
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Apr 8, 2023 14:10
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SelenicMartian posted:You missed the third scenario. Phelddagrif posted:The first two scenarios are relatively easy; the third one is much harder. That said, it's easy to get rules wrong without even knowing it. Aside from Rodney's rules video, you might check out Quick Learner, who's done a couple videos on rules tips and several on strategy. Team Covenant does excellent playthroughs, though they don't have any for the core box, so you might wait to watch them until you're into expansion content. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into Dunwich.
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Apr 8, 2023 15:41
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Dunwich is a decent if straightforward campaign, good for a first go. Bring a high intellect character. The Dunwich player card set is foundational for many of the game’s archetypes and a must have. Path to Carcosa, the second campaign, is one of the best. Great theme, fun scenarios, some nice twists on the established formula.
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Apr 8, 2023 15:54
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I forget what I got wrong the first time I played Arkham Horror LCG, but I think maybe I wasn't drawing enough mythos cards? I did something like that on my first playthrough of the base campaign and it made it really easy.
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Apr 8, 2023 16:20
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Anonymous Robot posted:Dunwich is a decent if straightforward campaign, good for a first go. Bring a high intellect character. The Dunwich player card set is foundational for many of the game’s archetypes and a must have. I just got into it about a month ago and have been enjoying playing through the campaigns with my girlfriend (did Dunwich and Carcosa, currently on Edge of the Earth); if I were only going to play one campaign it wouldn't be Dunwich (we had fun but vastly preferred Carcosa) but if you're going to keep going it seems like the place to start for sure.
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Apr 8, 2023 16:22
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dwarf74 posted:I just want to say that Paul is a good dude and worth supporting.
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Apr 8, 2023 17:10
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Wallet posted:I just got into it about a month ago and have been enjoying playing through the campaigns with my girlfriend (did Dunwich and Carcosa, currently on Edge of the Earth); if I were only going to play one campaign it wouldn't be Dunwich (we had fun but vastly preferred Carcosa) but if you're going to keep going it seems like the place to start for sure. How are you liking EOTE? It’s between that and Forgotten Age for our next new campaign.
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Apr 8, 2023 17:23
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That Italian Guy posted:Has something bad happened to him? I don't think so? At least he hasn't reported anything out of the ordinary on Slack, recently.
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Apr 8, 2023 20:02
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Played a bunch of new stuff yesterday Illiterati: Deluxe - Easiest description of this is Communal Co-op Scrabble. You each get given a book with different themes you need to make words out of to complete. For example I got "Money & Accounting", which allowed me to make  Penny. Absolutely no other word could be formed from this. Once you complete your objective, you try and form as many other words as possible so noone has any left over letters - otherwise you take penalties Everyone needs to complete 2 books individually, then you move onto the final round which involves you all trying to complete the SAME objective, with no excess spare letters in the communal letter pool at the end. Ours was the following  We all managed to complete the objective with time to spare, created a few extra words, but then were left with 5 letters of absolute hot garbage - when you can only have 3 spare at the difficulty we were playing out Finally as we were all stressing out about failing the round, and having to attempt a new one, I put this bullshit together from the remaining 5 letters in an absolute "gently caress IT" moment  Did you know Vey is a word?  Met the Valid Word rules, so it was a win!~  Quite a bit of fun, and something you could probably pop out for non-boardgame nerds to play with. One of my players also backed this on kickstarter, and has young children who he has played it with a couple of times and says it's great for helping them learn letters. I think the non-Deluxe version of this has cardboard letters, so I could probably go out of my way to grab the Deluxe version for the wooden tiles to give it some longevity. Solid recommendation here ----------------------------------------------------------- Highlight of the day was easily Ra: Deluxe. A pure auction game with set collecting, with basically no overhead.  Each round you can take one of 3 actions - Draw a tile from the bag, and place it on the auction track - Invoke Ra/Start the auction - Play a God tile/Wild card if you have one and take a tile from the auction track There are Ra tiles in the bag, if you draw one it will also start an auction immediately, as well as move the timer for the current round down. It's played over 3 rounds, called Epochs, total. At the end of each round you score, and then the RIGHT side of your board is cleared fresh for the next round. Now the trick is that you only have 3 bids per round, the blue discs in the middle above, and everyone can also see what your numbers are. If you win a bid you place your bidding token in the middle, take ALL the tiles from the auction, and then take the bidding token that was there previously (and flip it upside down as it's spent for that round) The meta game that evolved from this was insane - I won rounds with a '1' token, swapping up to the highest token '13' for the next round - Players would invoke Ra with only 2-3 tiles on the auction track, EVERY TIME it came to them, to attempt to win with garbage bids to deny others, which forced them to bid to many heated "gently caress YOU" statements - One round the Ra track moved down to 2 spaces left before the Epoch ended and one player was left and filled the entire auction track solo TWICE - One Epoch saw Ra tiles pulled out pretty much back to back effectively ending the round before anyone had a chance to bid, and then the next Epoch was slow as molasses with massive auction sets being won This game loving rules. I want to play this again right now So so so happy I got the Deluxe version with the giant wooden tiles, and it feels amazing passing around this big rear end heavy bag and just diving your hand in to pull out the next one. I think a lot of people in this thread would love having a copy of this. Absolutely get the Deluxe if you can. I can't overstate enough good the tactile feel of this is, and the metal coins are the cherry on top ------------------------------------------------- Got another round of Mind MGMT: Deluxe in, as one of my players asked me to bust it out. While I think this is an absolutely fantastic 1 Vs Many Hidden Movement game I also want to state upfront - It has one of the worst loving game manuals I have ever seen gently caress you if you had any part of it. DON'T INCORPORATE QUICK START RULES IN THE MAIN RULE BOOK, PRINT A SECOND SHEET Every goddamn section has Training Mode rules and Full Game rules stacked on top of each other, and it makes tracking down explicit end case rules and absolute nightmare. Just gently caress it makes me so angry that it was easier to pop on a fan made How To Play video for my players than it was to do a quick reread and do the teach at the table. *sigh* That said, once you're actually playing it quickly becomes one of the most strategic hidden movement games I've played  Unlike Whitehall Mystery, or even Fury of Dracula, the Recruiter cannot ever back track on their position. So they must play a stressful game of snake to hit their recruiting marks. Which is easy at first, but an absolute nightmare when the Agents constantly gain more insight into who the recruiting targets are, shakedown the Recruiter's Immortals for information, and constantly close-in round after round. I played on the Agent said this time, and by sherlocking it out we KNEW we were on the tile with the Recruiter and could have ended the game, except the Capture action was blocked by one of his Immortals on the same spot  After that they managed to outwit us by zagging when we thought they zigged and ended up winning the game. Probably the most cerebral hidden movement game I own, and I love that there are basically mini-modules you can add in to spice things up, which I'll be doing the next time we play. I'm very glad I have it in my collection, but yeah.. manual is not great when you need a refresh. --------------------------------------------------------- One of my players went All-in on Casting Shadows, and brought it around for us to try out. It's a cute little arena battler that's mostly aimed at a young kids (Apparently his son loving loves it)  Production quality on this is top-notch. He's a MTG player, so he was pretty chuffed about the card sleeves and individual player mats for everyone. The models are also really good quality, and each monster has an evolved form to bust out. Each round you roll 5 dice, and then take up to 4 of the following actions - Move, Buy, Use a Spell, Reroll, or Defend Dice can act as currency, energy for various things, or potentially harm you So you roam around the board buy spells and beat people up. It felt really luck based and dependant on dice rolls to determine what you can do. For example one round I rolled 4 harm dice, and had to use all 4 of my actions to defend. If I hadn't that would have been 4 points of damage. I ended up winning the game by sorta being on the sidelines a bit, getting a tier 2 spell which allowed me to do 4 points of damage every time I cast a spell, and then had an upgrade that allowed me to cast spells as a free action. Like I get it.. but I don't think there's a great deal of strategy here beyond Do Things And Have A Fun Time. If you have kids though this looks like a winner. We busted Dungeon Mayhem out afterwards for a round and go pretty much the exact same experience out of it with what is effectively a pack of cards. ---------------------------------------------- Ended the night with a bunch of rounds of Pass the Pandas Giant table sized playmat + massive amounts of dice + 5min game where you're rolling as quickly as possible = incredible Buy Pass the Pandas. It's like $10. Thank me later.
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Apr 9, 2023 01:11
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But seriously Ra is so good.
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Apr 9, 2023 01:12
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Very excited for my Ra Deluxe pledge to reach me. And yeah, that Mind MGMT rulebook is so so bad. Makes me not want to break it out after a long break because I hate parsing those rules every time.
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Apr 9, 2023 02:13
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I've been playing Mind MGMT two players over and over to get through all the unlocks/check out what all the modules do. It is really really good 2 players like this. Another week or two and we'll have seen all the stuff. Agreed about the rulebook if you don't play often/haven't internalized the base rules, and it gets even more complex when you add in adding/removing modules/etc. There is a lot to keep track of/remember when you each have like 5 of 7 boxes unlocked.
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Apr 9, 2023 03:45
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BinaryDoubts posted:Very excited for my Ra Deluxe pledge to reach me. I think US shipping starts soon? But yeah look forward to it as it's an absolute cracker. Sometimes you just gotta hand it to the bloke; The Kniz knows what he's doing Hopefully Tigris & Euphrates can get a reprint with this treatment BinaryDoubts posted:And yeah, that Mind MGMT rulebook is so so bad. Makes me not want to break it out after a long break because I hate parsing those rules every time. King Burgundy posted:I've been playing Mind MGMT two players over and over to get through all the unlocks/check out what all the modules do. It is really really good 2 players like this. Another week or two and we'll have seen all the stuff. Agreed about the rulebook if you don't play often/haven't internalized the base rules, and it gets even more complex when you add in adding/removing modules/etc. There is a lot to keep track of/remember when you each have like 5 of 7 boxes unlocked. Yeah if yall want a look at why we're ragging on it, take a look for yourselves https://offthepagegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/mm-RULEBOOK-v6.pdf Up to version 6(!!) somehow and still looks like an absolute dogs breakfast. Just absolute word salad in sections
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Apr 9, 2023 06:07
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Infinitum posted:Highlight of the day was easily Ra: Deluxe. Where can I get the Deluxe in Europe? Is it going to be sold at all or is it a Kickstarter-only thing?
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Apr 9, 2023 11:30
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It's shipping out to Gamefound backers atm, it has a planned retail release in May https://www.25thcenturygames.com/store/ra-deluxe-edition
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Apr 9, 2023 11:36
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Anonymous Robot posted:How are you liking EOTE? It’s between that and Forgotten Age for our next new campaign. We're about half way through and it's great so far; it has an interesting set of campaign mechanics and the investigators from it are a lot of fun to build. We also did Carnivale of Horrors after the third scenario (which was a neat little jaunt) and Guardians of the Abyss (which was absolutely brutal blind).
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Apr 9, 2023 13:08
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Jedit posted:My adventures with Hoplomachus Victorum continue. This run I got Stygiana, whose thing is self-harm and self-heal. I started her off with Prowess cards that provide big benefits if she's deployed first and also gave her Agile, an ability that lets her attack without actually attacking and bypasses several troublesome enemy abilities. I had a really smooth Act I where I was able to rack up a ton of opportunities including recruiting Zeno of Gargaria, a special ranged unit that also has Agile. Between the two of them they spent Act II violating all the Absorb and Retaliate units that came out. Unfortunately I had a lot of terrible luck on my attack rolls - Stygiana was rolling 1 black 3 blue by the middle of the Act but kept rolling all blanks on the blues, which have a 3/6 chance to hit - and it cost me several Blessings that I know I'm going to need. I might be able to get through Act III if my luck turns, but I don't think this will be my first campaign win even though I have almost all my Prowess cards and two Special Prowess including Talent Scout, which will let me recruit all the remaining Vesuvian units before I fight the end boss. Ah, poo poo - lost in Act III Week 7 after some really unfortunate rolls. The losing fight was a simple KOTH where I started with 4 out of 6 points for discarding tactics and was able to get a 5th on turn 1, but Zeno completely whiffed an attack on a Tactician that only needed one hit. I had to abandon the chariot to stop my hero dying, and I wasn't able to get it back.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:11
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Brought out an old classic(?) to play on Easter, the Resident Evil Deck Building Game. This game and all its expansions released before RE6 so all the art is full of nostalgia, with even more knocked-off names for guns. Like RE4's Chicago Typewriter (tragically in the remake called the Chicago Sweeper) is called the 'Gangster's Machine Gun'. It's more or less a clone of Dominion -- 1 action 1 buy 1 explore, with an open market but you're trying to acquire weapons to defeat monsters you draw from a central Mansion deck. When someone takes out the Biggest Monster everyone tallies score and highest wins. It's not without flaws of course; because you have a singular goal to kill monsters as quickly and efficiently as possible you are likely to come up with dead turns where you didn't draw any weapons nor ammo for them and you don't want to gum up your deck by buying something. Or you know the Big Bad is around the corner and you know he has 90 HP so it would be actually irrational to explore when you can't do so with at least that much power. Exploring is also optional so you can just run economy until you're OP which I think is against the spirit of the game but it would be hard to counter without changing how the Mansion deck works.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:34
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SettingSun posted:Brought out an old classic(?) to play on Easter, the Resident Evil Deck Building Game. This game and all its expansions released before RE6 so all the art is full of nostalgia, with even more knocked-off names for guns. Like RE4's Chicago Typewriter (tragically in the remake called the Chicago Sweeper) is called the 'Gangster's Machine Gun'. It's more or less a clone of Dominion -- 1 action 1 buy 1 explore, with an open market but you're trying to acquire weapons to defeat monsters you draw from a central Mansion deck. When someone takes out the Biggest Monster everyone tallies score and highest wins. It's not without flaws of course; because you have a singular goal to kill monsters as quickly and efficiently as possible you are likely to come up with dead turns where you didn't draw any weapons nor ammo for them and you don't want to gum up your deck by buying something. Or you know the Big Bad is around the corner and you know he has 90 HP so it would be actually irrational to explore when you can't do so with at least that much power. Exploring is also optional so you can just run economy until you're OP which I think is against the spirit of the game but it would be hard to counter without changing how the Mansion deck works. I'm sure I didn't play it enough to find the issues, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game every time I played it.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:38
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Man, why is the box for Furnace so dang big. I'm packing after picking it up on a trip and I swear it's twice the thickness that it needs to be, creating issues fitting it into my luggage.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:34
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Morpheus posted:Man, why is the box for Furnace so dang big. I'm packing after picking it up on a trip and I swear it's twice the thickness that it needs to be, creating issues fitting it into my luggage. https://youtu.be/fU__BXSHt5Q
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Apr 10, 2023 14:42
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Morpheus posted:Man, why is the box for Furnace so dang big. I'm packing after picking it up on a trip and I swear it's twice the thickness that it needs to be, creating issues fitting it into my luggage. The size of a game box is determined primarily by the price that the MSRP, the volume needed to contain the components is a minor consideration. People will pay more for a bigger box.
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Apr 10, 2023 15:20
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boop. is getting a spooky version https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/383579/boooop
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Apr 10, 2023 15:22
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Boop is my favorite new bga game. So simple!
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Apr 10, 2023 15:27
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SelenicMartian posted:boop. is getting a spooky version Dude, NSFW tag that poo poo
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Apr 10, 2023 15:43
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If you think I am going to cut up my precious board game boxes then you are as Insane as this man is
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Apr 10, 2023 15:47
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You could just rehome smaller games into larger ones and throw away the unneeded boxes like I do. I'm still looking for where I placed broom service.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:14
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