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panko posted:millennium blades was ridiculous. the theme of the game is that we are players of the in-universe tcg millennium blades, and we’re attempting to build decks and collect sets of cards to perform well at tournaments and to show off. the game feels janky as gently caress, some card combos were broken as hell, the game thinks it’s way funnier than it actually is (a cloud strife pastiche named blizzard angst…) and it took way too long, but I kind of really liked it. I have very similar feelings about argent, the level99 worker placement title. the real-time deckbuilding phase is 95% of the appeal of the game, wheeling and dealing with other players, spending the silly stacks of money to crack packs, keeping an eye on the secondary market, and trying to draft a set to display as well as a functional deck. the actual tournaments took too long and felt kind of rote. I wished this phase of the game was somehow more automated a la autochess. would play again, but maybe only as a once-a-year. I won primarily by exploiting the meta-destroying effect of the aptly-coined bro’kin the overpowered, a card I had from the very beginning of the game. For what it's worth I never got the sense that Millennium Blades actually thinks its funny, I think its aware of exactly how stupid the premise is and is just leaning into it as hard as possible. At any rate I find it endlessly charming. Also, frankly, I think its just one of my favorite games. I've never really played a game that has that same cycle of quickly building an OP deck out of disparate parts, then scrambling to build a counter deck in response to your friends overpowered bullshit. It's like if Galaxy Trucker was a CCG. And with Level 99's tendency to absolutely stuff a game full of content, you'll basically never have the same game twice.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:18
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:There are probably better races, but Hacan has to be near the top of the "you'll have a blast playing these guys" faction. It's also great for new players because it teaches them real quickly that the goal is not to play space risk, it's to convince all the other idiots to play space risk. Yeah fortunately/unfortunately the person teaching both me and the other new players was really clear on the whole not playing space risk thing. That combats almost never what you want to be doing and so forth. It did cause the board to sorta lock up in the final third where my lead petered out. LionYeti fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Dec 19, 2023 |
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Dec 19, 2023 20:17
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Arzaac posted:And with Level 99's tendency to absolutely stuff a game full of content.... ...and tragically under-develop it. They are very much the "giddy excited gamer" types who stuff all what they think will be cool into a game and then let the boat leave the dock, only for it to fall apart under its own weight as it nears the horizon. It's quite tragic really; I have a love-hate relationship with most of their games as a result.
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Dec 19, 2023 21:11
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Serotoning posted:...and tragically under-develop it. They are very much the "giddy excited gamer" types who stuff all what they think will be cool into a game and then let the boat leave the dock, only for it to fall apart under its own weight as it nears the horizon. It's quite tragic really; I have a love-hate relationship with most of their games as a result. you paid to change your name but willingly retained that av/title?
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Dec 19, 2023 22:58
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 If anyone needs a last minute ~$20 gift I can't recommend Royal Visit highly enough. Classic Knizia 2p game with all simplicity and tension he is best at, and a really charming production to match.
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Dec 19, 2023 23:16
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panko posted:you paid to change your name but willingly retained that av/title? I guess he could only afford one or the other, on his Private rank's wages  EDIT: Also, I was given Dune Imperium and the Rise of Ix expansion for my birthday the other day. I'm gonna give it a whirl in the coming days, but would it be OK to play with the expansion content for the first round, or is it best to only use the base game? I don't know a lot about Dune Imperium - I quite enjoy the original Dune game (/its 2019 rerelease) and from what I gather, DI is a bit less complicated - is that right? Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 02:33
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I’d say dune imp is significantly less complicated than og dune (most importantly, dune imp is significantly less asymmetric), and I’d recommend ix for the first play - it makes the game a lot less linear of a race for the third worker into spice dumping - with the caveat that once you play with ix, you likely won’t ever want to play the base game
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Dec 20, 2023 02:41
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panko posted:I’d say dune imp is significantly less complicated than og dune (most importantly, dune imp is significantly less asymmetric), and I’d recommend ix for the first play - it makes the game a lot less linear of a race for the third worker into spice dumping - with the caveat that once you play with ix, you likely won’t ever want to play the base game Sounds good, sounds good! If that's the case, I might see if I can transfer all the Ix expack stuff into the base game's box and just ditch the Ix box entirely.
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Dec 20, 2023 02:48
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Serotoning posted:Of course there is more of a there there, with such considerations as what direction the economy is going and trying to offer what is scarce and require what is abundant. But all in all, it feels like work to me to unknot this web, and really a big yapping contest when it comes to who will come out on top. tokenbrownguy posted:finally the truth about galaxy trucker comes to light: 
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Dec 20, 2023 08:11
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it's that time of year again goons post you're 2023 shame 
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Dec 20, 2023 19:24
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 Every session of mahjong was *at least* a full East-South round which means I played approximately a billion hours of mahjong this year.
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Dec 20, 2023 20:22
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A pretty good year! Finished the Frosthaven campaign, finished Pandemic Legacy Season 1, started Pandemic Legacy Season 2, and played The Great Zimbabwe and Sidereal Confluence for the first times. Also started playing Oathsworn, but it's left me a little disappointed. Maybe I'm just bad at it, but it feels like the enemies can always move the entire length of the board every turn, so positioning means little and it's always just a damage race. The story portion is fun though! 
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Dec 21, 2023 04:32
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2023 in summary: an incredible disconnect between all of the aspirational purchases I made of campaign games and mid-to-heavy Euros, and the games that I actually got to the table this year. I mean, I barely even like Skull King, the bidding and scorekeeping are both turnoffs for me, but my 7 year old son enjoys it and I'm just happy that he wants to play something together. But still a little sad that Skull King ended up topping my list on a technicality because I forgot to record several plays of Love Letter (a game I love and am always down to play) along the way.  I fancy myself a solo gamer but my gaming time this year was dominated by smaller competitive games and a few co-ops like Elder Sign and Destinies, all of which I played with my kids. Surely I will have Spirit Island, Mage Knight, Oathsworn, and Arkham Horror LCG at the top of my list for 2024, just like I planned it out in my head when I bought them.. edit: bonus picture of the 20x5 challenge I set up at the start of the year and failed miserably on, these were all games I was excited to play and 7 of them I failed to play a single time. 
Parker Lewis fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Dec 21, 2023 |
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Dec 21, 2023 05:03
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20x5 what the hell dude why would you do that to yourself.
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Dec 21, 2023 06:47
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Amabel Holland, cynosure amongst goons, features in a New Yorker article about board games: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design (might be paywalled, I don't know how to evade them, sorry)
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Dec 21, 2023 13:49
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Is the BG stats app useful? Seems popular looking at the recent posts
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Dec 21, 2023 14:48
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dishwasherlove posted:20x5 what the hell dude why would you do that to yourself. 20x5? I’m not sure I got in 10x1 legit plays of non-filler games with other people outside my household 
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Dec 21, 2023 14:56
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Magnetic North posted:Amabel Holland, cynosure amongst goons, features in a New Yorker article about board games: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design (might be paywalled, I don't know how to evade them, sorry) This was a good read. I can forgive them the one line in there which claims Magic The Gathering is a deck building game.
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Dec 21, 2023 14:58
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Magnetic North posted:Amabel Holland, cynosure amongst goons, features in a New Yorker article about board games: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design (might be paywalled, I don't know how to evade them, sorry) yeah, good article! (sideswipe mention of gutterdaughter, too)
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Dec 21, 2023 15:52
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OperaMouse posted:Is the BG stats app useful? Seems popular looking at the recent posts It's a good app with a bunch of features and it gets bugfixed regularly, with new features added every now and then. I've tried a few of these and this one is by far my favourite.
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Dec 21, 2023 16:11
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OperaMouse posted:Is the BG stats app useful? Seems popular looking at the recent posts For the price it's incredible. I've been using it pretty consistently since like 2017 when it launched for Android and I think it's great. Nice UI, links to BGG without problems, it even has an in-built scorepad for a lot of games now too.
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Dec 21, 2023 16:47
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Elysium posted:20x5? I’m not sure I got in 10x1 legit plays of non-filler games with other people outside my household just lol if you buy games to “play” them, you’ll never transcend with that mentality
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Dec 21, 2023 17:26
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Ok so, Camel Up, I get that it’s just a luckfest filler game, which is totally fine with me, I just want to make sure I’m assessing the scenario correctly. Since leg win tickets are worth so much, you should basically just gamble on the most valuable 2 as early as feasible in the colors that are likely to win the leg, and refuse to ever roll the die which gives other players info while locking you out of taking a betting ticket that turn. Sure, you miss the bets sometimes, but the alternative seems to be, roll the dice and make $1, while every player after you empties the bet slips for the camel that is probably going to win now. Does that sound at all accurate?
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Dec 21, 2023 22:10
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Elysium posted:Ok so, Camel Up, I get that it’s just a luckfest filler game, which is totally fine with me, I just want to make sure I’m assessing the scenario correctly. Since leg win tickets are worth so much, you should basically just gamble on the most valuable 2 as early as feasible in the colors that are likely to win the leg, and refuse to ever roll the die which gives other players info while locking you out of taking a betting ticket that turn. Sure, you miss the bets sometimes, but the alternative seems to be, roll the dice and make $1, while every player after you empties the bet slips for the camel that is probably going to win now. Does that sound at all accurate? Sounds about right. At least it's what I do. But I play this game often with younger kids, and they love to roll the dice.
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Dec 21, 2023 22:17
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Speaking of making sure one is not misunderstanding the rules: with Cat in the Box, someone is almost certainly going to cause a paradox by the end of the hand, correct? My group bounced off it hard as it seemed all about avoiding being the one causing the paradox (and taking a hefty point loss) rather than winning hands or playing the area control mini-game. Everyone else seems sweet on it, which makes me wonder if we weren’t playing it right.
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Dec 21, 2023 22:54
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Tempura Wizard posted:Speaking of making sure one is not misunderstanding the rules: with Cat in the Box, someone is almost certainly going to cause a paradox by the end of the hand, correct? My group bounced off it hard as it seemed all about avoiding being the one causing the paradox (and taking a hefty point loss) rather than winning hands or playing the area control mini-game. I've played it a bunch of times and had non-paradox and paradox hands. I don't have exact data available but my memory says it's been maybe 50/50. It's certainly not a given.
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Dec 21, 2023 23:00
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You discard a card and don't play the last one in your hand so can be avoided. Sure if you have 5 of a card and don't discard one you are gonna paradox ez.
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Dec 21, 2023 23:48
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Elysium posted:Ok so, Camel Up, I get that it’s just a luckfest filler game, which is totally fine with me, I just want to make sure I’m assessing the scenario correctly. Since leg win tickets are worth so much, you should basically just gamble on the most valuable 2 as early as feasible in the colors that are likely to win the leg, and refuse to ever roll the die which gives other players info while locking you out of taking a betting ticket that turn. Sure, you miss the bets sometimes, but the alternative seems to be, roll the dice and make $1, while every player after you empties the bet slips for the camel that is probably going to win now. Does that sound at all accurate? it is a dice game and therefore luck is a large factor but players have more control over the proceedings than at first glance, making it more of a probability jockey than an outright luckfest. judicious use of the oasis/mirage tiles can really skew the results of a leg, and often it’s a pretty high-value play to place a tile on the board in lieu of taking a betting token because it can proc multiple times, making $1 each time, and accordingly screw over multiple players. it can also be pretty high-value to drop down a final result card early on to potentially collect a sweet $8 at end of race. you’re correct it is pretty poo poo to roll the dice though, and shouldn’t be done unless there’s no more money to be made on the board. Tempura Wizard posted:Speaking of making sure one is not misunderstanding the rules: with Cat in the Box, someone is almost certainly going to cause a paradox by the end of the hand, correct? My group bounced off it hard as it seemed all about avoiding being the one causing the paradox (and taking a hefty point loss) rather than winning hands or playing the area control mini-game. a lot of rounds will end in paradox until your group gets experienced enough to play defensively. usually that means spending tokens to play off-lead sooner in a hand, because the results board fills up very quickly and makes it difficult to spend tokens later. also a rule I missed the first time I played is that after the initial deal, everyone must discard a single card facedown. that first game the same player paradoxed every single hand 
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Dec 22, 2023 00:03
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Checked out the new board game cafe/shop that moved to a few blocks from me, and they had the second Space Base minilegacy expansion that i didn't even know exists, i'm so psyched for next week now, the first minilegacy expansion was an absolute high.
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Dec 22, 2023 02:07
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I played Galaxy Trucker last night and I'm still riding the high of it. A question came up from the Evil Machinations cards which we hadn't used before - if they tell you to pay, is it like losing tiles at the end of the flight where you pay as much as you can until you go to $0, or are you forced to take a loan? This came from looking at two cards, where the first was pay $7 or lose a tile (we agreed that if you didn't/couldn't pay you would lose the tile) and one where you have to pay $x based on your most common component but without a penalty if you didn't (we ruled the other way, pay as much as you can). I didn't want to spend too much time looking it up and it's not my copy so I can't check now, does anyone know that ruling?
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Dec 22, 2023 09:57
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Walking through Brighton yesterday I picked up Dune: Imperium: Uprising - the fact it ostensibly has a solid 1p option is enough to tempt me, but seeing it top many people's GOTY and being a fan of the Dune universe it was a complete no brainer. I may even manage to bribe the local Dad's group to play it with me, but the 'Watch it Played' tutorial video taking over 45 minutes does not bode well...
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Dec 22, 2023 11:43
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Finished my first campaign of Distant Skies, and I really enjoyed it! The new rules really heelp smooth over some of the minor gripes I had wth Sleeping Gods, and the less stringent deadline/timer to beat the game gave me so much space to spread out and explore without panicking about timers. I did feel by the back half of the campaign my power had vastly surpassed the challenges, so some boss fights and the finale were both mostly trivial, but given that the whole point of the game is 'amass as much power/options/abilities as you can' I can't really complain. I might do another run starting on Normal difficulty and then bump it up to Hard halfway through if I'm feeling unchallenged. But next run I start with 8 new unlocked cards so I'm excited to try and head in different directions and see how it all changes up.
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Dec 22, 2023 20:12
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Played the first chapter in Oathsworn yesterday, 3 players with me controlling a full character and a companion to round out the free company. No experience with the game before from anyone. Not too much to add that hasn't already been said; its a beast to set up, the app integration is actually pretty cool and the narration is well done by James Cosmo. I did think that the story portion would last a little longer, but it seems we accidentally did the almost the most efficient path through the investigation phase. It did result in an extra item bonus at the end which was nice, but we probably should have investigated more parts of the town. The moving around the map portion of the story phase was well done and gives the city a real sense of place, combined with the narrative and the (optional) ambient soundtrack. The boss battler phase itself was good, albeit not as challenging as I was expecting (none of us got below 50% HP), but since none of us really knew what we were doing I can probably chalk that up to beginners luck. I'll need a few more fights to get a handle on the system, but as has been said its way less puzzle-y than something like Gloomhaven, in a way that I greatly appreciate as a beer-and-pretzels-and-miniatures kind of way. Mostly because I think I will able to get people back to continue to play this game in a way I was never able to with Gloomhaven. Also looking forward to breaking into the next chapters' boss boxes, as I have no idea what is coming and that's a very neat concept as far as boardgames go.  Pictured: One giant rat about to die
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Dec 22, 2023 20:37
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Commander Jebus posted:Played the first chapter in Oathsworn yesterday, 3 players with me controlling a full character and a companion to round out the free company. No experience with the game before from anyone. Not too much to add that hasn't already been said; its a beast to set up, the app integration is actually pretty cool and the narration is well done by James Cosmo. I did think that the story portion would last a little longer, but it seems we accidentally did the almost the most efficient path through the investigation phase. It did result in an extra item bonus at the end which was nice, but we probably should have investigated more parts of the town. The moving around the map portion of the story phase was well done and gives the city a real sense of place, combined with the narrative and the (optional) ambient soundtrack. This was pretty much our experience with chapter 1 as well, including feeling like we accidentally skipped parts of the story. We're only up to chapter 2 and the boss battles have been more complex so far. We've been trying to figure out ability combos and optimized turn orders to not get wrecked. Our only issue so far is rules interactions can be a little unclear. edit: Typo! I meant we're through Chapter 3. Funzo fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Dec 22, 2023 |
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Dec 22, 2023 20:49
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Righto, first game of Dune: Imperium: Uprising down - I played a 2p game double handed without the AI just to get a feel for how things work and honestly I'm really really impressed. It was very fun throughout, even on that first awkward play-through where you're not really sure how everything interacts. In my game Feyd-Rautha was well behind (0vp to 4vp) but managed to win enough matching conflict pairs to break even and then surged ahead with the incidental VP from "The Spice Must Flow", alliances with the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild, then a cheeky double-VP conflict on the final turn. I'm not all that sure about the trashing mechanic - I get the idea of slimming down your deck, but I never really had enough trash actions to make that feasible, and it felt like an inconsequential pay-off compared to getting at least two influence in each faction, getting my sword master pawn, and then smashing through conflicts. I didn't realise you could trash from your discard pile until the very end, though. Some of the more complex cards felt overly fiddly and I've yet to really understand the implication of some cards, but I guess that's all to come. The thing which scares me the most at the moment is the jump in table footprint - I feel like there are quite a few mechanics going on here but actually they're quite straight forward - and how I'm going to sell this to the local casual gaming group. I've already said I'll bribe them with beers, but I reckon it's going to need more than that! Does anyone have recommendations for card pouches/boxes/dividers? There are so many sub-sets of cards in this game! Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 22, 2023 |
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Dec 22, 2023 21:00
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if you played both sides of a title with a hidden-information element and sans automa, does it count as a played game or as a learning exercise?
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Dec 22, 2023 21:30
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Funzo posted:This was pretty much our experience with chapter 1 as well, including feeling like we accidentally skipped parts of the story. We're only up to chapter 2 and the boss battles have been more complex so far. We've been trying to figure out ability combos and optimized turn orders to not get wrecked. Our only issue so far is rules interactions can be a little unclear. Good to know it wasn't just us. It felt like as soon as things started getting going narratively it was suddenly giant rat time.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:37
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Southern Heel posted:Righto, first game of Dune: Imperium: Uprising down - I played a 2p game double handed without the AI just to get a feel for how things work and honestly I'm really really impressed. It was very fun throughout, even on that first awkward play-through where you're not really sure how everything interacts. In my game Feyd-Rautha was well behind (0vp to 4vp) but managed to win enough matching conflict pairs to break even and then surged ahead with the incidental VP from "The Spice Must Flow", alliances with the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild, then a cheeky double-VP conflict on the final turn. It's funny to look at this having played Dune: Imperium a few times this year. At a glance it looks like the exact same game. There are small differences in some spaces on the board and a few icons that aren't in the original game but overall it looks like the same game. I've also wanted to get a couple of friends to play it but it's kind of a hard sell with the complexity and the setting only appealing to me.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:51
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panko posted:if you played both sides of a title with a hidden-information element and sans automa, does it count as a played game or as a learning exercise? I mean I literally said I played "just to get a feel for how things work" so quite obviously a learning exercise? Jolo posted:It's funny to look at this having played Dune: Imperium a few times this year. At a glance it looks like the exact same game. There are small differences in some spaces on the board and a few icons that aren't in the original game but overall it looks like the same game. I've also wanted to get a couple of friends to play it but it's kind of a hard sell with the complexity and the setting only appealing to me. As I understand it's essentially a variant of Dune:Imperium - the instruction book highlights sections which are different and the text is very small indeed, and all the expansions are cross-compatible. I think my sell is going to be "Think Catan on steroids in space mixed with Pokemon cards" is about as close as I'm going to get to their usual level...
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Dec 22, 2023 22:06
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“first game” means something different to you than to me then 
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Dec 22, 2023 22:11
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