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Is there a good game in Lorcana or is it solely propelled by Disney hype?
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Sep 3, 2023 17:38
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Bottom Liner posted:Even with Ravensburgers puzzle production and all this was always the big red flag for them having an insanely hyped TCG license. They're not WotC or even Asmodee-FFG. They're loving Ravensburger. When it first came out that Ravensburger was doing it instead of FFG or whoever, I remember hearing that they were a surprisingly large company, but had trouble corroborating that. This comment made me curious to look again. Ravensburger Revenues in Euros Embracer Group Revenues in USD Hasbro Revenues in USD Ravensburger v Embracer v Hasbro 2019: 419m v 580m v 4.7b 2020: 525m v 880m v 5.4b 2021: 632m v 1.6b v 6.4b 2022: 636m v 3.23b v 5.8b Obviously, this is just looking at revenue and it's not exactly alike especially with the different currencies, but the exchange rate would mostly play in Ravensburger's favor. Also, this is for Embracer Group as a whole so I can't quite compare to just Asmodee, and similarly this is Hasbro as a whole and not WOTC as a division. I don't even really have anything to add to this, but I took the time to dig it up and thought maybe at least one other goon might find it interesting. edit: Unrelated to this, I was just reminded that Embracer group bought Asmodee from the PE firm that owned it (or whatever it was) in 2021 so these numbers probably don't mean poo poo 
Magnetic North fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 17:50
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Don't forget, ravensburger also sells a ton of jigsaw puzzles, and owns brio trains, among other non board game things. They're a big company
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Sep 3, 2023 18:01
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Yeah that's why I mentioned their puzzle production and all. They're a big company but a company with zero history in this specific space. TCGs are a radically different market from even Euro games etc.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:09
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SettingSun posted:Is there a good game in Lorcana or is it solely propelled by Disney hype? Disney hype. Reviews I read made it sound medicore at best. There's no real story or even coherence among the cards and colors. It's just random Disney art on random effects.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:59
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SettingSun posted:Is there a good game in Lorcana or is it solely propelled by Disney hype? The people who played it seem to like it, but I am definitely waiting-and-seeing. Just about every new TCG in the last decade has been completely blown up by the speculator market, and it's been iffy on which ones have staying power. Like FAB seems to be sticking around, but then there's poo poo like Metazoo.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:08
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Lorcana is at least a VP race like Keyforge and not the boring rear end "kill opponents health pool". That's about the only positive I can give it, but a game aimed squarely at families and kids (in design theory at least; whales and speculators in practice) really doesn't need to be more than that. 90% of the ire at the game is solely because it's a TCG, and that's all deserved.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:53
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Bottom Liner posted:Lorcana is at least a VP race like Keyforge and not the boring rear end "kill opponents health pool". That's about the only positive I can give it, but a game aimed squarely at families and kids (in design theory at least; whales and speculators in practice) really doesn't need to be more than that. 90% of the ire at the game is solely because it's a TCG, and that's all deserved. There's no meaningful mechanical difference between gaining VP and depleting an opponents HP.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:03
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armorer posted:There's no meaningful mechanical difference between gaining VP and depleting an opponents HP. There absolutely is when you have cards in play that each have a choice of attacking opponent characters or harvesting. It adds an entire new mechanical axis to the game.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:05
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armorer posted:There's no meaningful mechanical difference between gaining VP and depleting an opponents HP. what can this statement possibly mean in a vacuum. there's no difference between playing a card to do an action and paying 2 resources to do an action. there's no difference between activating a bonus structure to take a second action and waiting until the reed action fills up with extra reeds to save an action. there's no difference between racing to a set score of victory points versus racing to control four different areas on a nodal map.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:09
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armorer posted:There's no meaningful mechanical difference between gaining VP and depleting an opponents HP. If you can't attack opponents' creatures, that's maybe true. Maybe true in the abstract. But in practice, since every Lorcana character has one value for attacking creatures and one value for winning the game, it ends up being mechanically different. Compare to virtually every other TCG, every dude-smasher, where the attack creatures value and the winning the game value are the same.
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Sep 3, 2023 22:15
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Plus in Keyforge at least, you can steal VP, lock it down to gain tempo for as long as you can keep it held, etc. There are new types of interactions that come from it.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:17
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armorer posted:There's no meaningful mechanical difference between gaining VP and depleting an opponents HP. There is very much a difference in a game with more than 2 players. This is true especially if there's player elimination... but even if you think of health as interchangeable with generic VP, and with no important thresholds, "A hitting C for 5" is not the same as "A gaining 5 points". For the first scenario to be equivalent, B and D would also need to lose 5 points (as their relative scores have changed as well when A gains points). Edit: changed "gain" to "lose" in the last sentence there, trying to clarify. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 23:25
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I largely agree with all of you arguing against my broad statement that VP and HP are mechanically the same. For a basic two player combat game, they really are the same thing. Introducing more players and additional pools of HP for summoned creatures could probably be re-cast in terms of VP, but it would require some convoluted mechanisms. Stealing victory points is just life drain though if you think about it in terms of life points instead. Some other life point systems can be thought about as multi-track win conditions with independent VP per track.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:37
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As soon as the cards have different values for attacking the players health or players cards it's different mechanically purely because it's another axis of balance and interactions. The choice of attacking board state or victory condition is the difference, no matter what you call it.
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 23:43
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Bottom Liner posted:As soon as the cards have different values for attacking the players health or players cards it's different mechanically purely because it's another axis of balance and interactions. The choice of attacking board state or victory condition is the difference, no matter what you call it. Multi-axis isn't enough though really. There are quite a few games with multiple win conditions that can effectively be thought of as multiple distinct victory point tracks, where you're focusing on one or the other and players can battle with one another to impact one another's progress. There are also a ton of victory point based games with multi-use cards that have totally different effects based on how and when they're used. The thing that is probably the hardest to state in terms of victory points is really player elimination in a multi-player game. You can come up with some convoluted rules about granting victory points, but at the end of the day you have some track that forces player elimination and that's most naturally stated via hitpoints.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:55
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Lorcana just screams Collector Hype to me, but if it serves as a gateway to getting younger players into card and tabletop gaming maybe that's all it has to be in the end? A Cool Game That Exists? Keep seeing articles about 'Lorcana presales can't keep up with demand', and yeah that PR Machine is in full swing isn't it.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:59
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armorer posted:Multi-axis isn't enough though really. There are quite a few games with multiple win conditions that can effectively be thought of as multiple distinct victory point tracks, where you're focusing on one or the other and players can battle with one another to impact one another's progress. There are also a ton of victory point based games with multi-use cards that have totally different effects based on how and when they're used. This isn't a discussion about Lorcana vs all the possible design possibilities in hobby games. This is purely "Lorcana does this one extra mechanical thing that makes it at least not the laziest card battler design". There is also flavor and feel benefit to this, as "kill the other player" is not exactly the most friendly family concept. That one extra axis does matter for both mechanics and flavor. Also, your point about multiple victory tracks doesn't follow here, as the choice of attacking or farming VPs isn't choosing between different ways to win, only one of those is a win condition in Keyforge/Lorcana. You don't win by tabling the opponent, but you do have to balance your efforts and not get greedy. On the other hand, Star Wars Unlimited is exactly that, a lazy kill the other player dueling TCG. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 00:13
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Bottom Liner posted:
You're extra negative about Star Wars Unlimited. Like, moreso than usual.
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Sep 4, 2023 00:57
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Pointing out that it is a lazy design that does absolutely nothing new or novel isn't being extra negative towards it. That's just what it is. It might end up being a great one of those, but that doesn't do much to excite players that have done that with dozens of games at this point. A collectible release from a company that's proven time and time again to have trouble with distribution of even non-collectible lines makes it even less appealing. They had to kill the last extremely popular SW collectible game they did because of that. I'm even positive on the new art style, which a lot of people hate. The card layouts are pretty rough though. And I just praised their SW deckbuilder here for doing novel things with both deckbuilding mechanics and the star wars themeing, so it's not like I have an arbitrary bone to pick against FFG Star Wars.
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Sep 4, 2023 01:54
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Realised I never reported back on how our first game of Sidereal Confluence went! We had 6 players, with the 5 "easy" races, and I took the Unity from the "harder" factions as it seemed the least complicated. The end result was Caylion Plutocracy - 48 Unity & Fadoran Conclave tied for 42 Im'dril Nomads on 38 Kjasjavimalimm & KT'ZR'KT'RTL tied for 32. It was definitely a "learning pains" game as we all wrapped our heads around it but by the last couple rounds we were in full swing. As Unity, I completely spaced on building my mech planets in order to get the strong converters, so wasn't really playing to my strengths, but that was offset by everyone else also learning and uncovering their tactics as they went. Caylion absolutely creamed it as they smashed out all the colonies that everyone needed, seeding the really key ones for some players which then removed their reliance on my converters by the time I had realised I needed them out and working hard. The Kit and Kjas had a rough start, and were a little more hurt by the fact that it took a couple rounds for people to fully realise the value of ships, so they didn't elicit much interest in trades from others early on which definitely hurt.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:51
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Impermanent posted:what can this statement possibly mean in a vacuum. there's no difference between playing a card to do an action and paying 2 resources to do an action. there's no difference between activating a bonus structure to take a second action and waiting until the reed action fills up with extra reeds to save an action. They have played us for absolute fools
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Sep 4, 2023 21:26
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Bottom Liner posted:Pointing out that it is a lazy design that does absolutely nothing new or novel isn't being extra negative towards it. That's just what it is. It might end up being a great one of those, but that doesn't do much to excite players that have done that with dozens of games at this point. A collectible release from a company that's proven time and time again to have trouble with distribution of even non-collectible lines makes it even less appealing. They had to kill the last extremely popular SW collectible game they did because of that. I'm even positive on the new art style, which a lot of people hate. The card layouts are pretty rough though. Fair, fair. It felt like it came out of nowhere, but that's probably on me. I will speak up in defense of Star Wars Unlimited, though. It's been the best "new TCG" experience for me since Netrunner. I've been out of the lottery-packs half of the market since Onslaught block, but I'm in on SWU. You're absolutely on the nose - there's nothing novel about it mechanically. But much like Tarantino films, there's something to be said for taking a bunch of inspiration from elsewhere and combining it in a new way. Alternating actions, two-lanes, two-card draw, resource anything - other games have done each of those things before but it's really a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Its got sequencing problems that remind me of the "do you know that I know" moments I had in Netrunner, but I can teach it to my seven year old and it plays really fast. The art and the IP are the art and the IP - yay or nay isn't an argument thing. I will say about the card layouts - I was pretty negative on them until I saw them on the table. After Hearthstone/Eternal/Runeterra/Snap I wonder if I've gotten so used to looking at cards on my phone that I forgot they're meant for physical sleeves. The SWU layout is really clear ("clear", not "pretty") when double sleeved on a table from three feet away. Still a licensed game put out by FFG, though, and I don't think anybody in this thread will ever have 100% confidence in that, myself included.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:01
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The alternating activations deserves more credit than I gave it in previous comments. That was the best part of SW Destiny too.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:03
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https://www.coolstuffinc.com/main_saleItems.php?p=1&sb=price%7Cdesc&sh=2 CSI is clearing out basically everything. Don't know if they're getting out of boardgames or what, but there's a lot of random stuff in there (& Cetera expansion for instance)
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Sep 5, 2023 02:25
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iceyman posted:Disney hype. Reviews I read made it sound medicore at best. There's no real story or even coherence among the cards and colors. It's just random Disney art on random effects. I've been watching Youtubes of Pixelborn/TTS games and from what I can tell the colours definitely have themes, eg. blue is ramp, green disruption, steel is direct damage, but the characters themselves are all over the place. It really does feel like Ravensburger tried to make a good game out of it too. I linked this video in the other thread, which is a TTS tournament game with commentary. It's currently about the highest level play I've been able to find, and it does demonstrate some nuances with the lore/VP system. One of the key plays in one of the games was the control player dropping a character that reduced the opponent's lore by a single point, and there's a lot of talk about board clears vs threats that would be familiar to anyone who's played TCGs before. The game isn't available in my country and I don't think I'd spend money on it if it was, but I would definitely give it a chance if it had a proper digital client. It feels like it would occupy the same space as Hearthstone for me, which is a game I enjoy in small doses from time to time.
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Sep 5, 2023 08:00
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I didn't realize Final Girl was getting a series 2 of Feature Film boxes. I was in the Kickstarter for the original, but haven't had the chance to play it yet. Does anyone have experience with the game, or the preceding one Hostage Negotiator?
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Sep 9, 2023 14:10
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Agent Rush posted:I didn't realize Final Girl was getting a series 2 of Feature Film boxes. I was in the Kickstarter for the original, but haven't had the chance to play it yet. Does anyone have experience with the game, or the preceding one Hostage Negotiator? I have experience with it. It's a bit narrow - I think there's only one real strategy and that still comes with a lot of luck - and sometimes the game is lost on setup or within the first turn or two. But it's carried by theme, and the differing mechanics of the locations and killers mean you can't predict everything that will happen. I won my first game in Creech Manor in hilarious fashion when I managed to get the Poltergeist locked out of the house, giving me free rein to do everything I needed. Once you've completed all the "home turf" combos with both Final Girls in the respective Feature Film box you can also mix them up freely, so it has a lot of narrative replayability. Also there is already a Series 2 of Final Girl - I have it on my shelf. The upcoming Kickstarter is for Series 3, which will bring the game up to 18 killers, 15 locations and 31 Final Girls.
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Sep 9, 2023 14:49
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Agent Rush posted:I didn't realize Final Girl was getting a series 2 of Feature Film boxes. I was in the Kickstarter for the original, but haven't had the chance to play it yet. Does anyone have experience with the game, or the preceding one Hostage Negotiator? I played the game a few times, with two different feature film sets, and ultimately decided that it was just mechanically uninteresting and didn’t really do anything to excite me, and cumbersome in terms of setup, components and playspace to boot. I ended up selling it off.
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Sep 9, 2023 15:17
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Got a few small light games played yesterday between 3 total players. Turing Machine is still my GOTY, but at 3 there's not as much to do for co-op. Certainly better at 2. Was cool to let this player see the tactility of it in person and come to some eliminatory conclusions on their own. Codenames Duet is terrific, somehow improving on the original which was already basically perfect. I hecked up bad early because I wasn't even thinking of a Bridge Club for the clue Club but we averted disaster until the very last clue. Trial By Trolley was our first time playing, since it arrived just before lockdown. It's very straightforward. Each track will have 2 goods and 1 bad and you need to argue your team's side. The teams change every round, and you get a little skull if your team dies. Low score wins. So far, so standard. The part I thought was creative was the Modifier cards. They can be either positive or negative, and have a little arrow to show which individual person you're talking about. Such as "Is immortal and can only be killed by a runaway trolley" or "Just punched you in the face" or something. This makes it similar to Joking Hazard where the comedy comes from creative mixing rather than essentially only the contents of the cards as in CAH. It's perfectly fine for what it is. We didn't open the KS exclusive content or root through the decks to see what was in there, but what we saw was moderately funny. I think it will be better with more than one person per team to make it more chaotic with more Modifier cards. I am inclined to say it's less offensive but slightly less funny than JH but we've only played that one twice, once with rollicking hilarity and once with stultifying silence, so Strike is always wonderful. In one game it was my SO with 3 dice remaining and myself with 12, and she managed a full clear, so I figured I was in trouble. Nope: rolled zero Xs and all pairs, so she then had to throw in and lost.  Just One is not great at 3, but it is certainly playable. Me and one of the other players managed to pair with each other twice in a row  , which obviously gives the guesser absolutely zero clue. It's a fine activity at 3, but even one more player makes such a huge difference.The Mind is an amazing game. First time playing it in ages, and we somehow managed to beat all 10 rounds. We were just crazy in sync. It's super satisfying. Maybe playing Just One first primed us for this. Also, after we finished playing and left, we came across Scout in the wild, so it looks like a reprint finally arrived stateside. I am hype to try it. Yeah, it's a shame that in some audiences I can't play something more complicated, but light games can still be terrific games for what they are and I had a great time with all of these.
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Sep 10, 2023 08:41
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Codenames Duet is my wife and my go-to coffeeshop game when we have a few hours to spend out and about. It's fantastic - and it's great that it's co-op. Are there many other games out there like it? Cooperative, lower-theme, easy to learn and explain? She's not a hardcore board gamer, so a suitably casual "feel" is welcome.
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Sep 10, 2023 14:31
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dwarf74 posted:Are there many other games out there like it? Cooperative, lower-theme, easy to learn and explain? She's not a hardcore board gamer, so a suitably casual "feel" is welcome. Most of the co-op games me and my SO play together are fairly thematic (Pandemic: Iberia, The Grizzled, Under Falling Skies, escape room style games like the Exit series) so I don't have tons of suggestions. Turing Machine might work, depending on her proclivity towards math. The downside is it's not the easiest to explain, but for what it's worth I've explained it to 4 people of various shades of "gamer." Only one was completely lost and he's not usually tripped up by this kind of thing. You could show her the tutorial video and see if it might be her speed. Sprawlopolis is a great game, but it's really a solo game that can be played with 2 reasonably well. Very simple rules, fairly abstract, quite variable. Also, quite cheap and incredibly tiny. The other low-theme co-op I can think of is The Fox in the Forest Duet. I have not played this but but I have played the competitive original (which I liked but not as much as Air Land and Sea) but I have heard positive things about the co-op. It's almost certainly better than trying to play something like The Crew with two.
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Sep 10, 2023 15:03
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Oh thanks! I will look into those. I'm thankful for the board game café in Asheville who introduced us to Codenames Duet. I think Turing may be up her alley!
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Sep 10, 2023 15:23
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Regicide is great at 2 and very simple to explain
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Sep 10, 2023 15:32
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Azran posted:Regicide is great at 2 and very simple to explain Anyone who has won a game of Regicide at 2 is a wizard or a charlatan.
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Sep 10, 2023 15:52
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Magnetic North posted:Most of the co-op games me and my SO play together are fairly thematic (Pandemic: Iberia, The Grizzled, Under Falling Skies, escape room style games like the Exit series) so I don't have tons of suggestions. 
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Sep 10, 2023 16:25
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Mage Knight (I'm not sure if I can in good conscience actually suggest this, but it's incredibly good solo and good coop 2p)
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Sep 10, 2023 16:27
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I bought a single episode of final girl season 2, having never played final girl before, and I'm looking at the instructions and it is too confusing for me and I haven't played it once because of it
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Sep 10, 2023 16:30
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Yeah, the instructions and setup are pretty convoluted for what is mechanically a rather simple game. I do like the resource system they’ve devised to represent conserving one’s energy, but it doesn’t really stand a whole game up on its own.
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Sep 10, 2023 16:57
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dwarf74 posted:Codenames Duet is my wife and my go-to coffeeshop game when we have a few hours to spend out and about. It's fantastic - and it's great that it's co-op. So Clover is the one you want. It completely replaced Codenames Duet for my and my husband. Ignore that the box says minimum 3 people, it works fantastic as a couples game.
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Sep 10, 2023 16:58
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