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rchandra posted:Speaking of Dead of Winter in good faith: does it ever come up that it's worthwhile for a non-traitor to use food to raise a die? I've never seen it and food usually ends up being in somewhat short supply between crises and not starving. I think the Classic rules/board are cleaner to play with. The new standard adds new fiddly things to keep track of that don't drag the game down, but they don't really add much to the core gameplay either. Edit: Although I will say I appreciate the new standard's ability of slotting a rolled 1 to get an extra die to roll, evening out dice luck in movement.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:15
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Any impressions on Cry Havoc?
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Aug 15, 2016 01:48
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thespaceinvader posted:WHy does the death star have 8 attack though, when you can only ever roll 5 dice for a given combat? Rebel shield generators or whatever eliminate 2 dice. All those effects are cumulative so you need two to reduce the Death Star to 4 dice.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:50
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Texibus posted:Yup, played a 1v1 round at Gencon, all of the races have different ways of scoring points, which is cool. The battle resolution is the most interesting part of the game, lots of strategy in deciding whether you're going to place your troops down to take the territory, as hostages (get victory points for each one held), or killing of dudes on the battle track, which can really sway the outcome. Also playing cards back and forth during this phase makes for interesting decisions. There are more hot takes on Cry Havoc around thread page 116 and 117 after mine I think.
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Aug 15, 2016 02:03
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I'm sure this has been asked, but I just got an Android tablet, any recommendations for digital board games for it?
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Aug 15, 2016 02:37
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StashAugustine posted:I'm sure this has been asked, but I just got an Android tablet, any recommendations for digital board games for it? Tigris and Euphrates, Galaxy Trucker
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Aug 15, 2016 03:16
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Played Terra Mystica for a second time. Is there a rough tier list for the races? I don't see why anyone would play like, the Aluren. I played Engineers two player and felt like I was crippled. With 14 or so races, I'm sure some are better or worse than others.
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Aug 15, 2016 04:33
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Shadow225 posted:Played Terra Mystica for a second time. Is there a rough tier list for the races? I don't see why anyone would play like, the Aluren. I played Engineers two player and felt like I was crippled. With 14 or so races, I'm sure some are better or worse than others. The ELO stats from the online one claim that the Alchemists and Fakirs are the worst races and the Darklings, Mermaids, Cultists and Chaos Magicians are the best.: quote:1118 shapeshifters 940 Engineers are tricky but powerful when you have them figured out. I've done 150+ points on them in two-player games a few times - it's about getting your power cycling big time and living off of the spell actions. Auren are at their best if you have a SA/SH round tile on turn one and then the cult/turn bonuses are clumped so that you can run your economy off of them, sniping bonus VP as you go. Also consider that winning two cult tracks is worth almost as many VP as having the most connected structures.
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Aug 15, 2016 04:40
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got to play Dominion Seaside; the only thing more fun than playing an Embargo on Silver was when I played an Embargo on Estates got to play Fief: France 1429 for the first time; three player game which took us about three hours. Very thematic, good mix of resource management, planning strategy, and getting lucky. Several turns in a row I tried to keep getting one of my titled lords up to King but would loose 3-3 on voting. Then one opponent captured a titled lord of another opponent; allowing me to to win a King vote 3-2. One of my three votes was a cardinal who died from a plague the same turn that my other lord became King. I had a smashing victory 4 VP to 1 VP. During the last turn my opponents figured that I would win even if they killed the King so one attacked the other again. In this battle one opponent had 2 lords and was down to a knight and 2 men-at-arms, the opponent rolls a total of 8 and all that players lords were killed. At the end of the game nine lords had died or had been killed (7 male, 2 female).
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Aug 15, 2016 04:58
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StashAugustine posted:I'm sure this has been asked, but I just got an Android tablet, any recommendations for digital board games for it? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nomadgames.talisman&hl=en
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Aug 15, 2016 05:35
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The Alien Frontiers app is well done and the AI players are good. Eclipse is very well done but lacks any expansion anything. The Witcher app is ridiculously well executed, shame the game itself isn't all that. Dominant Species is well done. Elder Sign is well done and frees you from the humdrum of book keeping so you can focus on rolling dice. Eclipse in particular will teach you how to play with a well done tutorial. Ghost Stories and Caylus are a thing but really are for people who have previously learned or otherwise grasped the game and it's concepts beforehand.
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Aug 15, 2016 08:02
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Got another couple Gen Con acquired games in this weekend: Covert from Renegade, and designer Kane Klenko (Fuse, Dead Men Tell No Tales), and Guilds of London from Tasty Minstrel. I mostly wanted to write up an overview & thoughts on Covert, as I didn't love 'Guilds' quite as much myself (a bit too Dry Euro for my tastes, though mechanically it worked fine and was kind of interesting). So here we go on Covert! This was actually my second play of the game, the first being a couple months ago at an industry event where a prototype was available, so I held out writing anything up until playing the final version. After two plays, I really enjoy it and will be looking forward to making it hit regular rotation with my groups I hope. It's a spy themed game with a variety of mechanics including worker placement via dice, recipe completion for VP, point-to-point movement of pawns on a map for various functions, variable player powers, and some other pretty unique stuff too. Note that the theme is purely cosmetic, as there isn't too much actually "covert" about your actions; in fact, most of what you do is public knowledge. Though you do have a player screen where you keep a few cards secret, but that's about it. The game board features a map of Europe and beyond, with a very Pandemic-style movement pattern connecting certain cities to one another, and having different territories zoned in different colors. Each player starts with 3 Agents on the board in randomized cities, a couple each of action cards (each has 3 different functions), mission cards (your primary scoring method, and game timer- first to 6 ends the game), and code cards (more on these later), plus 5 dice of their color. For the first round everyone rolls their 5 dice, and after determining a first player, players take turns assigning their dice (one at a time) to action spaces found on the board. There are 4 possible actions (Move, Draw Action, Draw Mission, Complete Mission), with 6 spaces per action available; one for each number 1 through 6. If all 6 spaces of an action are open a player can place any of their available dice on a corresponding numbered space for that action, but once at least one dice is placed in an action space, players are limited to playing adjacent to the existing dice. IE, if I take the "4" spot for the "Move" action, players can later only place on the 3 or the 5 next to my 4 if they want to perform the Move action that round, and so on. Same goes for the other action spaces. In addition to the 4 action spaces, players have two other options they can use their dice for: drawing Special Operations tokens (bagged chits that give you one of ~8 different special one-shot abilities), or to modify the "cypher". Elsewhere on the board is a set of 12 numbered tokens; two of each numbered 1-6, which are randomly laid out in two rows at the start of the game. The "code cards" players start with have on one side what looks like those numeric spinning locks you would find on a briefcase, with 3 digits in a sequence. You goal to "open the case" is to have those 3 numbers all be in a left-to-right sequence somewhere on the cypher, after which the card "unlocks" and is worth 2 points at the end of the game, or can be spend later as a resource to complete a mission. After all players have allocated their dice for the round, each player in turn order has the option of swapping the location of two adjacent number tokens in the cypher in an effort to complete one or both of their code cards. If they allocated any dice there, they can place the dice atop any of the numbers in the cypher to change its value for their turn to help complete their card(s). After Cypher stuff is done, players take turns removing one or more dice from the original 4 action spaces, carrying out the actions as needed. The draw card actions are pretty obvious, but moving is a bit interesting. It lets you, surprise, move your agent pawns around the board, but with an extra catch: every time you leave a city, you leave behind some intel which can be collected by other players (represented on the board with cubes). If a player moves into a space with another player's intel cube he collects it for himself, and if you ever collect 2 intel cubes of a single color you immediately return them to the owner and get a free action card from the face up set next to the board (but only from one of the colored zones where you have a spy present, making your pawn placement at specific points important). Some missions will require you have an agent in a specific city to complete it, so you'll be forced to move around the map, but in turn may leave other players the option of "tailing you" to get the advantage of possible free cards. The action cards as mentioned can do 3 different things: Serve as a resource to complete a mission (ex. mission may be to have a Briefcase, a Watch, and Lockpick to complete- action cards all reflect a specific resource like those listed). They're also color coded to zones on the map and list a city on them, which allows players to fly to specific cities (think Pandemic) by discarding a specific city card (players still leave behind intel cubes when flying). Lastly, each also has one of the 8(ish?) different Special Operations icons on them, so they can be used to do special free actions like "place 2 dice at once", or "+1/-1 to any die when placed", or "go 1st for an action space regardless of turn sequence", etc. After all action dice have been resolved the next round starts, players re-roll all their dice, and repeat until a player has completed 6 missions. We played a 3 player game tonight, and the scores were incredibly close at 61-62-64. Play time is estimated around 20-25min per player (quotes 45-90min on the box, with 45 being 2p, 90 being 4p). None of the systems are particularly complex in and of themselves, but getting all your various actions to jive and timing them all correctly is pretty key, so it takes a good deal of strategy. I'd still put it pretty firmly in the medium weight strategy category, which is generally right about where I find myself getting the most enjoyment out of a game. Couple issues: The map can get a bit cluttered in some areas due to the size of the pawns used and the close proximity of some of the cities. Minor issue, but we noticed it. There was at least one print issue we caught; there was a Mission card that called out Stockholm as a city to have an agent in, but the city name had the wrong color coding which didn't match the game board. Geographically we're sure the game board had it right, so just the card was wrong luckily; an easy fix if they decide to offer replacements, or just when/if they reprint (which they probably will based on how successful it was at Gen Con). A couple of the rules in the book were a bit ambiguous to our group, but I think it was just us overthinking stuff. So all in all no major qualms. Overall really recommend it. Not sure when it hits stores officially, but will be worth picking up when it does.
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Aug 15, 2016 09:14
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Mister Sinewave posted:The Alien Frontiers app is well done and the AI players are good. Eclipse is very well done but lacks any expansion anything. The Witcher app is ridiculously well executed, shame the game itself isn't all that. Dominant Species is well done. Elder Sign is well done and frees you from the humdrum of book keeping so you can focus on rolling dice. He did say Android.
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Aug 15, 2016 09:17
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Why did you list a number of non-Android apps?
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Aug 15, 2016 09:18
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Does anyone have a home-built box organizer of Keyflower they can take a picture so I can copy for myself? There really is a lot of stuff to this game.
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Aug 15, 2016 09:34
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I've been holding back on making my own Mage Knight insert, as I only have the original game and not any of the expansions. Lost Legion is the must get and I'm hoping to pick it up when the reprint comes. Is that the point at which to build the insert? Or does the other expansions add enough pieces to hold of making an insert until I get them? I only want to build the insert once!
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Aug 15, 2016 11:54
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Fat Turkey posted:I've been holding back on making my own Mage Knight insert, as I only have the original game and not any of the expansions. Lost Legion is the must get and I'm hoping to pick it up when the reprint comes. The Lost Legion expansion about doubles the number of monster tokens, so keep that in mind if you make your insert before buying the expansion.
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Aug 15, 2016 12:29
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The two new Runebound expansions (while a little pricey) are really good, if anyone else is interested in them. The "Tactics" token that has been added really gives loads of depth to the combat and creates some amazing combos. We had a game with them against the new Scenario and while the new Scenario is very easy (it seems) I still had loads of fun messing with the new stuff. Charge is good too but only Jonas has it, none of the new equipment adds charge tokens for other people to use yet. If anyone wants to know how they work I can break them down. It did bring up another problem with the new way FFG formats their rulebooks though. It turns out that with the skill deck there's six subdecks. With the new expansion there are now seven. You're only meant to play with six. The shop deck is the same - there's 3 subdecks and the expansion adds a new one. You're only meant to play with 3, so you sub one out. There's no indication of this in the main book! The shop decks also don't really have a theme to them. The seven skill decks do so I can see making a proper choice there. Shop decks are just "Which really good item do we want to miss out on?". It's a strange choice. Although I do understand that they don't want the deck to end up too bulky.
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Aug 15, 2016 12:50
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Played Dead Last for the first time last night. Then we played it for the second time. 20-25 minutes for a nine player competitive social game is pretty nice.
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Aug 15, 2016 13:04
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Rutibex posted:The Lost Legion expansion about doubles the number of monster tokens, so keep that in mind if you make your insert before buying the expansion. Would it be wise to make it after Lost Legion, not worrying about Krang or Tesla?
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Aug 15, 2016 13:28
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Fat Turkey posted:I've been holding back on making my own Mage Knight insert, as I only have the original game and not any of the expansions. Lost Legion is the must get and I'm hoping to pick it up when the reprint comes. I believe the other expansions are only a miniature and some cards. But you might as well check the rules pdf for a list of components to be sure. Beware, it's not easy to nail down the design without actually owning the games. In any case, I have found exactly one foamcore insert example on the internet that fits MK and all its expansions in the base game box, but I didn't like the design. I own all of it and will be making my own insert this fall/winter, so if you can wait that long, I'll share my SketchUp files here.
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Aug 15, 2016 13:30
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I'll likely save Lost Legion as a Christmas present someone can get me, so waiting till the New Year is fine. I'll just try and hold it in after that, I like making things. Thanks!
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Aug 15, 2016 13:38
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Fat Turkey posted:Would it be wise to make it after Lost Legion, not worrying about Krang or Tesla? Krang adds almost nothing, just a few cards and one mini. I couldn't tell you about the Tezla personally. I never got it because it didn't seem like a very good value. Tezla doesn't add much more than the Krang expansion, but I can not find it for less that $50 in Canada and often much worse (check out this bargain https://www.amazon.ca/Mage-Knight-Shades-of-Tezla/dp/B01HFCSR8M/). Lost Legion is 100% essential to make Mage Knight complete, I feel like Krang and Tezla are optional.
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Aug 15, 2016 13:47
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Played some Dungeon Petz last night with three, game is fun as balls. Can't wait to play it with four people. Also played the solo variant of Viticulture and discovered that I currently suck at it, any tips? I never found that I had enough decent wine to fulfill the orders - should I be grabbing a bunch of orders, trying to get wine early and letting it age, or just grabbing visitors to hope that there are some that help me out?
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Aug 15, 2016 13:59
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I'm looking for a little advice on catching new players up with Dominion. We all went into the game mostly blind; I played a few rounds vs. the computer on a knockoff iPad app to help with teaching. My usual gaming group is about half former MtG players who can quickly grok card combos and half who have no experience with building decks or deckbuilding games. The latter half of the group likes Dominion as a game, but inevitably gets trounced, which isn't fun for anyone. I read up a little on the Dominion strategy site this morning, and I was thinking of doing the following: 1) Introduce the Big Money as the baseline strategy. 2) Show how Big Money + Smithy is better than Big Money. 3) We talked about the power of draw, dead cards, and action economy last time, but revisit that. 4) Once 10 cards are drawn for the supply, talk out the interactions and which cards/combos seem useful before the game starts Any thoughts?
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Aug 15, 2016 14:43
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PFlats posted:I'm looking for a little advice on catching new players up with Dominion. We all went into the game mostly blind; I played a few rounds vs. the computer on a knockoff iPad app to help with teaching. Dominion seems a bit daunting at first, but once you understand Big Money its pretty simple to gauge how everything else compares against that base line. If they can't figure it out once you point out Big Money + Smithy than Dominion might not be the game for them.
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Aug 15, 2016 14:52
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Rutibex posted:Krang adds almost nothing, just a few cards and one mini. I couldn't tell you about the Tezla personally. I never got it because it didn't seem like a very good value. Tezla doesn't add much more than the Krang expansion, but I can not find it for less that $50 in Canada and often much worse (check out this bargain https://www.amazon.ca/Mage-Knight-Shades-of-Tezla/dp/B01HFCSR8M/). The Tezla expansion is just as big as Lost Legion. Unfortunately the card stock used to make it was absolutely poo poo and it suffered in sales because of it. It's worth buying if you really like the game although I've not bothered. Talking of expansions I'm totally baffled as to why I can't get the latest Eclipse one in the UK anywhere at all.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:06
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That reminds me, the card stock in the Argent expansions (both 'Mancers of the University and Summer Break), specifically for the consortium voters, is a noticeably lighter shade. Which is sort of a problem when you're dealing with explicitly hidden information about victory conditions in the game. It's a real bummer - I sleeve all my poo poo, but with clear sleeves so I guess I'll need to use some opaque backs for this.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:08
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Fat Turkey posted:I've been holding back on making my own Mage Knight insert, as I only have the original game and not any of the expansions. Lost Legion is the must get and I'm hoping to pick it up when the reprint comes. Foamcore will be bulkier than fiberboard, but the Broken Token insert holds base + Lost Legion easily. Maybe you can use their layout as a guide so you can build your insert now yet be confident that it has room to spare.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:10
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Played an abysmal game called the target on Sunday. The goal is to get Intel to the base on either side depending on your allegiance. You do so by unlocking decks and using the cards to bomb, get Intel etc, and you unlock them by drawing random rookie cards and 3 of a kind unlocks a deck permanently. The decks and cards are color coded so it's mostly luck dependent, and you only get one card per turn on average, except when you are the target (1st player) everyone gives you a card, which plays the card effect on you which can make you lose all your cards, move the target and a variety of other effects. The bad part is its very difficult to stop effects on you short of someone playing a miss for you. The reason someone might do that is everyone has a role of either CIA, KGB or double agent. The double agents can pick their side too, which means the game might be a massacre of lopsided teams. This particular game was 4x CIA vs 2x KGB. The roles are also hidden and short of someone having an effect that plays thier cards face up its tough to figure out who is what. Took forever to do anything and it was over from the start due to the lopsided poo poo. I bet they hosed up some rule. But the game doesn't even start until a bunch of rounds in due to the deck unlock mechanics. Why did anyone think this game was a good idea? If it helps you decide on it Dice Tower loves it, or so I'm told. Sloober fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Aug 15, 2016 |
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Aug 15, 2016 15:15
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Taear posted:Talking of expansions I'm totally baffled as to why I can't get the latest Eclipse one in the UK anywhere at all. It's come back in stock at the online retailers this week. Enjoy time travel and the grey goo faction.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:33
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Has anyone played Mansions of Madness 2.0 yet? Is it worth me selling my 1st edition copy to get it? Mostly I want it for the app.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:47
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Taear posted:
I immediately decided that I can't be bothered to remove asset cards until that deck is just unmanageable. I stopped sleeving games starting with Runebound so that helps a ton. I'll still use the proper count of encounter and skill cards but I can't really fathom a way the asset deck being bigger is going to meaningfully affect gameplay.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:52
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Flaggy posted:Has anyone played Mansions of Madness 2.0 yet? Is it worth me selling my 1st edition copy to get it? Mostly I want it for the app. I think it's very good but you should also keep your first edition because you can reuse the investigators, monsters and tiles.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:53
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Shadin posted:I immediately decided that I can't be bothered to remove asset cards until that deck is just unmanageable. I stopped sleeving games starting with Runebound so that helps a ton. I'll still use the proper count of encounter and skill cards but I can't really fathom a way the asset deck being bigger is going to meaningfully affect gameplay. My thought is that it adds more 0 cost and other small items. If you think that each deck has one (or two in D) expensive weapon then if you've got four decks it's diluting it even more. Imagine if you just got contraband and such like.
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Aug 15, 2016 16:16
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CaptainRightful posted:Foamcore will be bulkier than fiberboard, but the Broken Token insert holds base + Lost Legion easily. Maybe you can use their layout as a guide so you can build your insert now yet be confident that it has room to spare. This won't work if he wants to add Tezla and Krang later, it'll be tight even when explicitly designed with all the components in mind.
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Aug 15, 2016 16:15
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Rusty Kettle posted:I went back ten pages and didn't see any mention of mansions of madness 2.0. Has anyone here played it and formed an opinion? I played it once - I definitely want to get it and revisit it though. Basically, the app is really great in that it allows everyone to play the game while the app takes care of all of the 'random' elements of the game, including tile placement. It fixes one of the major criticisms of MoM 1.0 in that once you played a scenario, it was basically done. I thought it was pretty good and while it's my first use of an app-supported board game, it actually appears to pull it off very well.
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Aug 15, 2016 16:16
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Dungeon Petz works much better with 2 than Dungeon Lords, correct?
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Aug 15, 2016 16:33
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Taear posted:The Tezla expansion is just as big as Lost Legion. Unfortunately the card stock used to make it was absolutely poo poo and it suffered in sales because of it. It's worth buying if you really like the game although I've not bothered. Tezla doesn't add as much as lost legion, but in addition to the new char it does add some monster chits, a couple other larger pieces and so forth. If you think you'll end up buying the other expansions, I would wait to get it all before designing an insert unless you get approximate dimensions now and leave plenty of room for them. For what it's worth, wiz kids did finally send me new/nicer components etc. for tezla as part of their replacement policy thing. It only took seven (eight?) months to get.
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Aug 15, 2016 16:33
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the panacea posted:I think it's very good but you should also keep your first edition because you can reuse the investigators, monsters and tiles. Perfect, thanks.
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Aug 15, 2016 16:45
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