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Mr. Squishy posted:My understanding of Dune Impy was that it's been quite aggressively developed post-publication, leading eventually to Uprising. I thought Dune:Imperium was pretty close to a 9.5 game, with the only problem being the sameness of early-mid game goals — get enough spice to sell for solari to get the sword master, and maintain a solari drip for mental use if possible if you can’t trash your daggers. Still was willing to play it whenever it hit the table. My first few plays with Rise of Ix convinced me that the game had become a 10 — alternate paths to victory, victories without sword master, etc. But then it descended into the sameness of rushing the Guild track, and woe be you if you don’t have a Seek Allies or Diplomacy on your turn when you’re first player; you’ve lost ‘your’ chance at Foldspace. Still, victories are possible without the shipping track and dreads give you something to do with Solari besides going Mentat. Immortality was a side-step for me; possibly too much complexity for the value it added. This has nothing to do with the fact that I keep coming in second when playing Immortality & RoI. Still have to play Uprising, which I understand is a solid upgrade to D:I; the extra chrome is all worth it. This has all been a long way to say I agree with your assessment of continual improvement and iteration, as opposed to (e.g.,) Viticulture-style gameplay fixes (which RoI admittedly incorporated some of).
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Mar 13, 2024 23:05
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I've been watching streams of D:I, and I honestly feel quite non-plussed. It seems very easy to death spiral if you lose a couple of early conflicts that you invested into.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:42
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Giving advice for Hansa Teutonica is hard because so much depends on the specifics of the game and the local meta. I definitely agree that 3 actions as soon as practical is essential though.Mr. Squishy posted:I played and really enjoyed Fit to Print. Thematically, you are various funny animals running a newspaper. Mechanically, the game takes Galaxy Trucker's tile-grabbing and arranging mechanic and truncates the resolution phase to turn it into a 20~ minute filler. For three rounds, players get four minutes to grab face-down tiles, all rectangles of various sizes. They bring them to their newsdesk, flip them to reveal articles, photos, and ads. They can throw back unwanted pieces, but have to do so face-up where they may be nabbed by anyone else. After they're satisfied, they use the time left to fit all of their chosen tiles onto the front page of the newspaper (a very large rectangle). Although everything is just rectangles which makes things simpler, there are a few rules about legal placement. Tiles cannot be freely rotated, and cannot be directly adjacent to another tile of the same type. When everything's done, grab a placement tile (1st to 5th). Yeah it was a really pleasant surprise, I had a great time when I played (I bombed out due to a lack of advertising).
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Mar 14, 2024 01:12
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Jedit posted:I've been watching streams of D:I, and I honestly feel quite non-plussed. It seems very easy to death spiral if you lose a couple of early conflicts that you invested into. One of the key lessons from experience is that overinvesting in early conflicts is almost never worth it. You want to have troops in your garrison to fight the later battles that are worth VP, not a couple of spice. A lot of early battles are won 5-3-0-0 (troops are worth 2 and dagger cards accompanying troops 1), 3rd place going unclaimed, because the stakes are low and people are saving their troops for later. On a more macro level, in the later fights this brinksmanship is a key part of the game. How many will I push? Will I spend six spice to go Heighliners? If I do, will I push 5+2 troops, or save some for next round? And so on ad infinitum. If you run out of troops, there are some ways to get them back quickly or cheaply (but not both).
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Mar 14, 2024 01:37
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Jcam posted:My board game group just finished our campaign of The King's Dilemma and I have to say - wow, what a ride. Would highly recommend it. Also had a great experience with my group, a really unique experience. Looking forward to Queen's Dilemma when it finally releases.
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Mar 14, 2024 13:55
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Admiralty Flag posted:I thought Dune:Imperium was pretty close to a 9.5 game, with the only problem being the sameness of early-mid game goals — get enough spice to sell for solari to get the sword master, and maintain a solari drip for mental use if possible if you can’t trash your daggers. Still was willing to play it whenever it hit the table. The big thing i think immo adds is there's a few more deckbuilding approaches that make shipping not the most obviously best thing to do at all times, or at least offer someone who misses shipping some options. The problem is, it makes swordmaster a lot more important again.
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Mar 14, 2024 14:35
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I looked at early reviews for Dune imperium uprising, and it sounded like with the OG plus expansions, actually it probably wasn't worth getting it? Consensus seemed to be the big new thing they added is worms, and it skews the game too much? I haven't looked at the rules myself so Im just going what I've read from other people, anyone who's played both got any thoughts? Should I upgrade?
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Mar 14, 2024 15:07
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!Klams posted:I looked at early reviews for Dune imperium uprising, and it sounded like with the OG plus expansions, actually it probably wasn't worth getting it? Consensus seemed to be the big new thing they added is worms, and it skews the game too much? I have OG plus expansions and have not felt the need to upgrade. A friend of mine has the new one and I'm going to have him bring it over sometime so I can play through it and see if it's really that much different/better. I suspect I'll be happy to just keep what I have though.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:43
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AngelesXO posted:Also had a great experience with my group, a really unique experience. Looking forward to Queen's Dilemma when it finally releases. Five minutes after we finished we talked about how we can't wait for Queen's Dilemma to do it all over again! We're all a little excited to get back to a non-campaign game for a little while, but definitely excited for Queen's Dilemma.
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Mar 14, 2024 17:37
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My group has been doing betrayal legacy and we're having an absolute blast, and none of us even particularly care for the regular version
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Mar 14, 2024 18:22
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my ranking of legacy games I’ve played, high to low: - risk legacy (first and still the best) - pandemic legacy s1 - pandemic legacy s0 - betrayal legacy - king’s dilemma - pandemic legacy s2 still want to embark on ttr legacy but it hasn’t come back in stock yet
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Mar 14, 2024 18:36
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What didn't you like about Pandemic Legacy S2? I would rate that one at the top for me. Loved everything about it, expect perhaps handling the giant stickers.
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Mar 14, 2024 18:37
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Heroes of Might and Magic 3 arrived. That's a lot of boxes. Now to not play it for months because we already have three campaign/legacy games on the go plus D&D.
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Mar 14, 2024 18:47
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my expectations were set super high narratively from s1 and I found s2s plot underwhelming. mechanically it was neat, cubes as protection rather than liability and multiple cards for cities in the infection deck changed up the strategy in an interesting way but I’ve forgotten almost everything about s2s plot whereas I’ll always remember the big moments from risk, s1, s0, and betrayal
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Mar 14, 2024 18:47
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Having played a ludicrous amount of Dune Imperium, D:I with Ix, with Ix and Immortality and a handful of Uprising, I have a couple observations: * App version is well done. But playing Vanilla feels kinda weird now... a bit simplistic. Still good though. * DI plus Ix is the best way to play DI "classic". Makes the game feel a bit more open and varied. * Uprising is quite a refreshing remix. The game feels a lot tighter and if you want flexibility late game you must build for it early, setting up spies, getting spy cards and paying close attention to the spaces you can access with new cards. Conflicts are essential. Coming 2nd often gives more long term benefit while 1st pushes you towards points. I quite like it overall.
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Mar 15, 2024 11:02
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panko posted:my expectations were set super high narratively from s1 and I found s2s plot underwhelming. mechanically it was neat, cubes as protection rather than liability and multiple cards for cities in the infection deck changed up the strategy in an interesting way but I’ve forgotten almost everything about s2s plot whereas I’ll always remember the big moments from risk, s1, s0, and betrayal S2 stuck out to me because I love the simple creativity of "Oh it's Pandemic, but the inverse". It definitely swung hard for the fences with most of its mechanics and plans, and it was the first time a Legacy game really went 'off the rails' in terms of not having a base game to work off of. Over time it's become more and more obvious that the stronger Legacy games are ones that have a good game as its foundation in the first place (i.e. Season 1, Risk, Betrayal, Ticket to Ride). But I'll always appreciate a game that tries to go way too big even when it falls on its face (Hi, Seafall!!)
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Mar 15, 2024 14:56
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!Klams posted:I looked at early reviews for Dune imperium uprising, and it sounded like with the OG plus expansions, actually it probably wasn't worth getting it? Consensus seemed to be the big new thing they added is worms, and it skews the game too much? It depends on what you want. I think the spies and new deck cycling in Uprising mean that you get to the fun parts of the game faster, and I like that there's much more drama going on. You have to pay attention to things like "so and so really wants to win this battle because ___". For my taste I enjoyed it a ton, and I don't really want to play the original anymore. But not everyone seems to feel this way, I think people are miss the slower build in the base game and the closer games. I'd definitely give it a try when you get a chance, though.
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Mar 16, 2024 08:23
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For those of you who like Lost Ruins of Arnak, would you say Expedition Leaders is a worthwhile expansion to get? I enjoyed Arnak but it got a bit samey after a while.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:20
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18xx help needed! I’m teaching 18Chesapeake to three suckers tomorrow. Two have played Brass Brum with me a couple of times, and the third has shown an aptitude for picking up moderate Euros quickly, so I’m not worried about their basic ability to learn the rules. I am worried about overwhelming them and trying to “program instruction” to get to “just-in-time” learning. 1) I’m thinking of dividing the privates into groups (e.g., 1&4, 2&3, 5, and 6), giving myself 5 or 6, dealing the other three groups out at random, and just having everyone pay face price for their privates instead of holding the auction. Holding the private auction at the beginning of the game just seems like a lot of overhead for people who don’t understand what will eventually be worth money. This might interfere with how some people want to develop, but they’ll have the option to mitigate that by selecting which RRs to IPO/float. Thoughts? 2) I’m thinking about “just-in-time” instruction. E.g., for the first stock round, mention that you can sell stock in future rounds but otherwise skip all the rules about it in SR1 and focus on buying, president’s certs, and floating. Then, in SR2, cover sell any number, sell then buy, no more than 50% in the pool, transferring presidency, cert limit, etc. My only worry is that someone might say, “I didn’t realize that stock might become available in the pool/could drop price/etc. and thus I wouldn’t have spent all my money on B&O in SR1 since I couldn’t afford the presidency.” Thoughts? 3) Same thing with ORs. Cover how you go from phase 2 to 3, what’s different in phase 3, and then high-level what happens in each successive phase, outlining (e.g.) phase 5 in detail once we hit phase 4. But for OR#1, only hit the minimum of basics on the OR steps because no one can lay track; in OR#2, talk about pale green->yellow->brown->grey, how track has to be connected to a station marker, and what a route is; when green is unlocked, talk about how new track is semi-permissive with the example from the rulebook; etc. Thoughts? 4) Any other suggestions about how to make a first teach of 18Chesapeake effective?
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Mar 22, 2024 18:38
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Admiralty Flag posted:18xx help needed! 1) just do the auction as normal. If they can play Brass they can handle understanding the waterfall. Tell people not to overpay and if they don't listen to you let them hang themselves. it sounds harsh but it's actually funnier and barring some extraordinarily bad bidding (stop that before it gets out of hand) they'll have more fun, believe me 2) again, it isn't that complicated. Just say you can sell as much as you like but only buy ONE. Whenever you sell, stock go down. That's really it. The floating stuff is weird and confuses people because it's unintuitive but just say you cant run a company until 60% of it has been sold and then it gets 10X whatever it was parred at. People struggle with this because it's bizarre. Go into bank pool stuff/market stuff as you see fit but I don't think it's that bad and honestly more intuitive. Go into more detail as the game goes on about cert limits and what not. Maybe make a special point to explain that the President is the person with the MOST SHARES and then wink at everyone, lewdly. 3) just stress that trains rust, companies need trains, presidents have to make sure a company has trains. As more trains are bought, time moves on, better trains become available, towns and cities grow etc. Trains can go as far as big number say they go. Have to touch a station at some point. Can't reuse same track. Add up. Pay out or don't, heres what happens depending. Also, company money and player money is ALWAYS SEPARATE. 4) the game is simpler than brass I think, honestly. The auction and abstract floating mechanics are the weirdest parts. You've got a good group and they'll take to it well. For YOU THOUGH, your job is to KEEP THE GAME MOVING which means A)lways B)uy T)rains Yes it may be suboptimal, yes you may not personally be having as much fun, but if you don't the game will drag. Or maybe the group takes to it like ducks to water and you can be less heavy handed with the gas pedal. DON'T LET THE GAME DRAG. END IT YOURSELF VIA TRAIN DEATH OR CALL IT. This is critical.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:42
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FulsomFrank posted:A)lways A)lways B)uy C)hoo-choos Seriously, you make some great points for me to think about. Not 100% sold on the auction, though. Seems like starting a James Bond film with 20 minutes of Meet the Press talking heads, if I can steal a line from some Paranoia rulebook somewhere. Will consider.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:52
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My order for teaching 18xxs is first the Stock Rounds, then the Operating Rounds, then the privates and what they do. You can give a simplified overview for the first SR: since you can't sell shares, you don't have to get into the specifics on how, or buying sold shares. For the ORs, you don't have to get into the restrictions on upgrades, or what happens if the train limit drops on them. For my mob, I'd tell them at the start and then reiterate them when the rules are relevant. But if your lot are more trusting, I'd say that you can eventually do something, and the specifics are pending. Important things to say are company dumping, rusting and the possibility of emergency fund raising, which tiles are unupgradable, and cities getting tokened out. Those are the meanest things about the games. I'm not sure I like your ISR replacement. With the privates you are buying money, and having everyone pay face for them? I'd probably outline how the most expensive one is bunk (assuming it is, it's been a while), and how they should end the ISR with enough money to start a Co or else they're going to have a boring time.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:54
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Azran posted:For those of you who like Lost Ruins of Arnak, would you say Expedition Leaders is a worthwhile expansion to get? I enjoyed Arnak but it got a bit samey after a while. I'd say it's worthwhile! My group hasn't played it enough to decide if it's imbalanced but the amount we've played hasn't shown an obvious imbalance, and they add some fun flavor. Definitely increases the mileage of the game since, from the start, each player is going to have different things they're focusing on and different concerns. That being said, even with the expansions it's more likely to hit the table in a "well this needs some love too" sort of way. Leaving the "what games need some love" question aside, between Lost Ruins of Arnak, Hansa Teutonica, and GWT (and Brass Birmingham kinda), Arnak remains the least likely to be played of that weight/length group (Brass is kinda there in the length department, but weight wise it leaves me feeling like I put my brain through a taffy stretcher); we mainly play it because someone will randomly say "y'know we haven't played Arnak in ages", and then we'll play it another couple times before it goes back to the shelf for months.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:39
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Yeah I know exactly what you mean. I recently got rid of a bunch of games for that same reason and Arnak was on the cutting block unless the expansion was a major improvement like, say, Orleans and its first expansion.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:48
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Yea, the private auction is basically the last part of the teach for newcomers since it has implications on everything else. I would mention the breakpoint amount of cash on hand needed to start a company in SR1 if you think they need some guidance, but other than that just let them go wild and don't be afraid to restart if that's what people want.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:53
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A full 18xx explanation is long and complicated enough that you are going to be explaining the private auction right before it happens regardless of how you structure the teach.
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Mar 23, 2024 00:18
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Y'all. I knew it would be small, but Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs exceeded my expectations for tininess. It's also really good.
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Mar 23, 2024 22:55
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Played two games at the weekend game club, but one of them was Caverna: The Cave Farmers (+ Forgotten Folk) so that was most of the day there. We had mountain dwarves, pale ones, cave goblins, humans (me) and trolls. Overall just a 10-point spread between first and last, which was pretty surprising considering we had three newbies including two to the game. The mountain dwarves bought both craft discount rooms and a stone supplier, and pretty much only got outside elements to put animals on. They made up the food with a breeding cave and got a bonus from the menagerie and prayer chamber, since they went weaponless. They had better things to do than finish the cave and the writing chamber helped there and with the single begging token they got from an early-game crunch. They did something I hadn't seen before, which was buy the couples' dwelling on the one midgame round with no harvest and grow their population twice - and then they went for the sixth dwarf. They also had the mixed dwelling, so well done on special dwellings for that dwarf, but maybe not the best play overall since the board got extremely cramped near the end of the game. (total people count: three 4s, one 5, one 6) The pale ones armed up and bought the trolls' bone grinder and candle maker and the goblins' kennels, so their dogs were worth 2 food and they could breed them and got a point for eating a pair. They mostly put meadows outside to pile up animals and supplemented themselves through mushroom planting. They also had the stone storage and I kind of disappointed them a bit by grabbing a big pile that had built up on the ore delivery space in the last round, on the off chance I'd be able to hit up the trading space with the ore half of it. The cave goblins got their guard dog school and the pale ones' sheepdog school and both armed up and had extremely good boys remaining. They built the mining cave and wound up with 4 donkeys in mines pretty early for a nice feeding discount. They got the mountain dwarves' training chamber to dynamically amp up their weapons and ended with most of them near the cap, and a bonus from the supplies storage. Only 4 cave goblins total, oddly enough. The trolls played a fairly conventional game for trolls, getting their goblin dwelling and otherwise arming up and going on tons of adventures. I (humans) won with a combination of a cooking cave early and a 4-pasture manure pile and the pale ones' schnapps parlor late to get that extra 10 points from my pile of stored vegetables. Entire field was overhangs, and I only dug out 4 additional caverns, two of which (plus my starter) just had normal dwellings in them. I honestly figured I was fairly behind since I didn't get a big combination or very much special, but I did build a whole lot of pastures and was rapidly breeding 3 or 4 animals per harvest and just leaving them there.
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Mar 24, 2024 04:24
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Played a 4 player game of Through the Ages on the table today. 2 brand new players, one that’s played 2-3 times, and me who’s played that many on paper and hundreds of times on the app. Clocked in at just under 7 hours. Not including rules explanation and food breaks. Worth it.
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Mar 24, 2024 04:55
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I am loving the Slay the Spire board game - I am playing it with my two sons and my wife. One of my sons is a huge fan of the video game and I have also played it way too much. I find it a bit hard to evaluate on its own merits because I think it’s a superb adaptation from the video game with a lot of clever design decisions - but my wife is really enjoying it too without having played the digital version. We have it set up on a table and we just went over and played through a couple of encounters at a time over the weekend, it was very fun. My kids are 7 and 9 and they are super into it. As the combat has minimal randomness (all enemy actions are set at start of turn with fixed damage before players take their turn, like the video game) I can see some groups mathing it out and having some AP, or a strong personality taking over (the co op problem). For us it’s great though. I nearly prefer it over the video game as it’s so fun as a co operative experience.
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Mar 24, 2024 05:10
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Did gloomhaven again, and we got saw to join our party. Sadly didn't change stage calculation so we were throwing attack 2s at shield 3-5 opponents entire second dungeon while trying to keep an npc from doing suicide by cop. Circles remains best used as a glorified vet while the beast master and triangles argue "summons are great, actually" when their summon are exceptions (and i'm frankly shocked designers allow them to remain in the game as they are useful and even fun) We played for over 7 hours and managed 2 scenarios and a half hour lunch break. Had a good time but can't wait for gloomhaven to end so we can do Oathsworn.
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Mar 24, 2024 07:02
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Long shot, but, anyone have the inside line on where I might be able to acquire the Banners or War expansion for Rune wars?
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Mar 24, 2024 12:10
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My 4P game of 18Chesapeake went off yesterday. I appreciate all the feedback folks gave me and used most of it, but I did omit the private auction as I could see people were raring to play and the teach had run long, though I had tried to keep it minimalist with the idea of filling in blanks as we played; too many questions popped up. So I discarded P5 (the real trap company), gave myself P6 (the sort-of trap company), randomly distributed P1&P2, P3, and P4, and had everyone pay face value. I think this worked out for the best for a first play. The game ran a bit long, about 4:45 including teach for three new players and a relatively inexperienced teacher, but we played it all through — didn’t call it, broke the bank, and played out the final OR after bank breaking. I won, but only beat the second place player by about $50. Avoidable mistake: I forgot about moving sold-out stocks up a couple of times. Much less avoidable mistake: people were annoyed to find out (e.g.) unnamed cities had only one grey upgrade tile available or that towns were not upgradable past yellow, even though I had printed out copies of the tile inventory and upgrade chart. (I could have spent more time on this, but I think it would have been in one ear and out the other during the early teach. Maybe something to hit during the phase 3 upgrade during a future teach?) Everyone said they really enjoyed it and wanted to play again, with the only issue being the time to play. They did see how it would go faster in a second game.
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Mar 24, 2024 19:37
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Glazius posted:Played two games at the weekend game club, but one of them was Caverna: The Cave Farmers (+ Forgotten Folk) so that was most of the day there. We had mountain dwarves, pale ones, cave goblins, humans (me) and trolls. Overall just a 10-point spread between first and last, which was pretty surprising considering we had three newbies including two to the game. I find I've gone off caverna a bit with the expansion because it felt like it pigeonholed the folk types a bit much - like, the asymmetry is so high that if mountain dwarves and humans and trolls are at the table, the action spaces all get nicely split up and the game gets a bit predictable. Kind of wish they were less all or nothing into their various gimmicks. Next time we play I'm intending to just shuffle in a random subset of forgotten folk buildings instead of using the full boards and abilities, hoping that'll thread the needle for me. I like the game but I just want some variety of options each time we play.
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Mar 24, 2024 22:35
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I’m getting to the point at wonderful world where I can beat my friends consistently. Hooray.
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Mar 24, 2024 23:36
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Have come into possession of a copy of Shogun. All of the parts are awesome until I get to the actual rules. I've never really played any of these old tactical games.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:21
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Harold Fjord posted:Have come into possession of a copy of Shogun. All of the parts are awesome until I get to the actual rules. As in the cube tower one? I've always wanted to try that one. Cube towers are just such a strange, tactile mechanic to add randomness.
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Mar 25, 2024 10:41
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That game is so weird. I think I had a good time playing, but it's really really not a wargame even though it sorta looks like one, and the unpredictability of the tower means you have to just roll with it. Haven't touched it in a long time though, like 15 years long.
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Mar 25, 2024 11:29
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I got Fit to Print a week back and gave it a go and was pretty pleased at the purchase. It's a pretty fast-playing Galaxy Trucker-alike and everyone was pretty well invested in laying out and finishing their newspaper. There's some replay value as well but it plays fast enough that we managed to get a couple of games through. Overall I was impressed and glad I bought this as a more approachable/lighter offering. We also played Codenames Duet which I still like a lot as well as Zendo, which I haven't played in years.
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Mar 25, 2024 12:01
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Harold Fjord posted:Have come into possession of a copy of Shogun. All of the parts are awesome until I get to the actual rules. Alternatively, do you mean the old milton bradley one? You might be able to find new versions of the rules under its new name, Ikusa
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Mar 25, 2024 13:17
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