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dropkickpikachu posted:All you need to know about Xia is that you get a victory point for rolling a 20 at any time for any reason. We played without that rule but next time I'd put it back. It's an experience generator, it's not meant to be some heavy strategy game, that should be fairly obvious? We all like space stuff but honestly the heavy space games like Eclipse don't work for us, they are too much conflict and not enough interesting.
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Aug 12, 2017 01:28
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S.J. posted:Do we know what he's doing with them? He's the CEO of Asmodee North America.
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Aug 12, 2017 02:09
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Acolyte! posted:He's the CEO of Asmodee North America. Explains why the pet project is all systems go
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Aug 12, 2017 02:22
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I always thought Twilight Imperium was an "experience generator" for Ameritrash in the same way Here I Stand is an "experience generator" for wargamers. It's not meant to be a good game so much as it's a vehicle for negotiation, politics, and the occasional slugfest. I bought a scratch n dent copy literally yesterday for $40 and will play it at Gen Con, the perfect place where I have nothing but time.
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Aug 12, 2017 02:27
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Love Letter 3e has a playtime of 5 to 245 minutes.
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Aug 12, 2017 02:33
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Acolyte! posted:He's the CEO of Asmodee North America. Yeah, exactly  Now he's even more in charge
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Aug 12, 2017 03:11
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Krazyface posted:Love Letter 3e has a playtime of 5 to 245 minutes. Sure, but translated what that boils down to is "playtime is one 5-minute game to however many you feel like before you get tired of it." I owned a copy of TI3 back when I was in college. I got super psyched to play it, rounded up some people, and 3-4 hours later we weren't even finished and everybody had checked out. I don't think I could justify going in on a copy knowing that logistically I would first have to organize a group of likeminded players willing to devote up to eight hours to play a single game, and that's assuming it even turns out to be good because the 3rd edition version had some flaws that made it less than polished. $150 isn't an unfair asking price per se, but it's still $150 which is enough to buy two or three entire other games, many of which would be easier to get to the table and play to completion.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:31
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Bottom Liner posted:Is that just an Easter egg thing or is it generally meaningful? Is it's a 100+ game usually or is 1 point a lot? The context makes that rule either cute or absolutely awful. The fact that the game uses roll to move is much more damning. The standard game ends when someone scores FIVE (5!) points. So yeah, it's meaningful.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:51
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TI3 does not have to be an 8 hour grind if you have the right group (which is admittedly a major challenge) and do a bit of prep. My friends and I played it weekly (typically 5 players, sometimes 6) and after the first couple of sessions it generally took between 2-3 hours. However, important caveats: I always used preset maps from the FFG site, was pretty selective about expansion components (I had both expansions), used a slightly tweaked set of objective cards, and we organized race selection before people came around. I also had every race bagged separately and was pretty religious about sorting all the components. It basically took 15 minutes setup (people helped), started after lunch around 1:00pm, and we were usually done by 4:00pm. Critical to this I think was that I personally chose all expansion elements and while we did add bits and pieces over time (or play with the different expansion roles) I generally sorted out everything beforehand and told people only 1-2 new things per game. TI3 is actually pretty simple for the most part (and is under appreciated in this regard) so once people got it and were just playing regularly the playtime went down fast. There are major things I'd hope get improved in 4e but by far my number one hope would be simpler combat and combat relevant tech trees/stuff. Even better if multiple players can execute combat simultaneously. In an ideal world I'd go for an even more streamlined Forbidden Stars model where combat is basically just played through cards, maybe with a fixed deck size per player of ten, hand size of five, three cards played alternately by players and done. Cards are race specific and all combat tech upgrades involve swapping one card in the 10 card deck for a new one. Roll a single dice at the start if you must and add it to your ship strength count, modify through cards (including tricky things like doubling it if certain ships are present or whatever, or negate opponents dice roll) and make the whole thing involve three quick decisions in practice.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:42
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I also wished combat would be streamlined or at least made more exciting but according to the product page it's exactly the same.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:57
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ketchup vs catsup posted:The standard game ends when someone scores FIVE (5!) points. Also keep in mind the the official rulebook method for resolving rules disputes is each side rolls a d20, high roller's interpretation wins. Thus creating the unbeatable "Rules Lawyer Strategy". There's also the one and only game I played which ended when the winner was killed, but rolled a 20 on his respawn roll to get the final victory point. Xia is trash as any sort of competitive exercise, and even if you try to play it as an "experience generator" one player probably spends most of the time rolling 1s and maybe doing one thing the entire game which doesn't exactly make for much of an experience.
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Aug 12, 2017 08:37
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Wait, Xia ends when someone gets to 5? When I played it, we went to 20.
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Aug 12, 2017 10:46
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Mr. Squishy posted:Wait, Xia ends when someone gets to 5? When I played it, we went to 20. You decide at the start of the game. IIRC 5 is for a learning game, 10 to 12 is 'average' and above that is 'epic'.
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Aug 12, 2017 12:00
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Anything super cool coming out at Gencon? I've been checking the various lists and nothing is really jumping out.
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Aug 12, 2017 13:05
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Am I a sucker if i pick up Memoir '44 foe 50-60 bucks? I could have sworn it wasn't that pricey several years ago when i was browsing.
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Aug 12, 2017 15:28
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blackmongoose posted:Also keep in mind the the official rulebook method for resolving rules disputes is each side rolls a d20, high roller's interpretation wins. Thus creating the unbeatable "Rules Lawyer Strategy". Munchkin did this rule best. The owner of the game gets the final say in rules disputes.
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Aug 12, 2017 15:35
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Rutibex posted:Munchkin did this rule best. The owner of the game gets the final say in rules disputes. That's not any better if your rules are written in such a way that this is actually a problem
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Aug 12, 2017 15:58
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Sloober posted:That's not any better if your rules are written in such a way that this is actually a problem I can assure you, the rules of Munchkin need it.
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Aug 12, 2017 16:01
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Bloody Pancreas posted:Anyone have any thoughts on Parfum for $10? I've heard things ranging from excellent components and interesting theme to total snorefest and mediocre gameplay. For $10 I could get something like The Resistance or Bang: The Dice Game which are universally praised simple gateway games, yet the fact that this game is on a huge discount tickles my hoarder instincts.... Ten bucks is a super-low price for Parfum. It's a Queen game so component quality is good and you get a bunch of custom dice and cards to stitch perfume bottles together. The game is basically push-your-luck with buying up scent dice to try and extract various notes from them, and then mixing perfume to sell to various demand tiles that come in. Also there's a little of the Fresco mechanic in that you choose how late in the turn to go and do more things (but lose out on customers) if you go later. If your group's still testing the board game waters, it's not a bad low-middle weight game.
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Aug 12, 2017 16:03
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Rutibex posted:Munchkin did this rule best. The owner of the game gets the final say in rules disputes. It's also thematic in the sense that everything about Munchkin is designed to sell more copies of Munchkin. Want to have the final say? Buy your own copy!
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Aug 12, 2017 16:32
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blackmongoose posted:Also keep in mind the the official rulebook method for resolving rules disputes is each side rolls a d20, high roller's interpretation wins. Thus creating the unbeatable "Rules Lawyer Strategy". There's also the one and only game I played which ended when the winner was killed, but rolled a 20 on his respawn roll to get the final victory point. Xia is trash as any sort of competitive exercise, and even if you try to play it as an "experience generator" one player probably spends most of the time rolling 1s and maybe doing one thing the entire game which doesn't exactly make for much of an experience. Well fortunately none of us rolled many 1's so it was an experience generator for us  . Agree it's not a competitive exercise. We might play it again today unsure. Also we do play with the expansion, I've never played with the vanilla game.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:16
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Regarding Spirit Island, I played twice yesterday, one two player and one four player. We kept thinking that we must have gotten a rule wrong, as we were totally outclassed in both games. There's no inherent quarterbacking issue. However, it's not a game for me. Lots of other people enjoy (including the people I played with) it, but it's just not my thing. Too much micro coordination is needed (which I totally get is a thing in co ops) for my taste. Oh and if you do play it, do not under any circumstances play with the incredibly bad beginner rules, you'll have no shot whatsoever.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:18
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How do you play the triforce class well in Gloomhaven? I do dick for damage and have less useful aoe's than the Spellweaver. I can use the one ability to generate mana, but that puts me in a strictly crowd control role. Consistency seems to be an issue in general.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:29
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Glazius posted:Ten bucks is a super-low price for Parfum. It's a Queen game so component quality is good and you get a bunch of custom dice and cards to stitch perfume bottles together. The game is basically push-your-luck with buying up scent dice to try and extract various notes from them, and then mixing perfume to sell to various demand tiles that come in. Also there's a little of the Fresco mechanic in that you choose how late in the turn to go and do more things (but lose out on customers) if you go later. Really appreciate your input. I'm prob gonna pass on it, I fall too hard for games with discounts and Parfum is clearly passable. Still a real shame, I love the themes of games like Parfum, Rococo and Ladies&Gentlemen, but they're rated as mediocre at best.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:30
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Played the new through the ages last night; dense game and cleverly put together. I'm lukewarm at best on card heavy games generally but I really did appreciate how the map and whole area control element / warfare was abstracted away. I spent 99% of the game thinking everything that wasn't military was an "action card" and therefore couldn't be played the same round it was picked up. I think misplaying that actually helped me budget  It's also very unlike many other Vlaada games, like him or not he's a pretty versatile designer.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:32
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Lorini posted:Regarding Spirit Island, I played twice yesterday, one two player and one four player. We kept thinking that we must have gotten a rule wrong, as we were totally outclassed in both games. There's no inherent quarterbacking issue. However, it's not a game for me. Lots of other people enjoy (including the people I played with) it, but it's just not my thing. Too much micro coordination is needed (which I totally get is a thing in co ops) for my taste. Oh and if you do play it, do not under any circumstances play with the incredibly bad beginner rules, you'll have no shot whatsoever. In a follow up to this it turns out that again their ridiculous beginner rules had us starting out with Spirits that were too low powered to do anything. Which is at least part of the reason why we lost so badly. So really this time, don't use their stupid beginner rules.
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Aug 12, 2017 17:41
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Just doing a quick interest-check on a potential Game of Thrones pbf. I love the game but never get to play it, so I might as well experience it this way. I've set up resources and a low effort work-flow so I'm fairly confident I can run it to completion. Any interested players?
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Aug 12, 2017 18:09
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Dancer posted:Just doing a quick interest-check on a potential Game of Thrones pbf. I love the game but never get to play it, so I might as well experience it this way. I've set up resources and a low effort work-flow so I'm fairly confident I can run it to completion. Any interested players? I'd be interested, although it might take forever.
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Aug 12, 2017 19:14
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GrandpaPants posted:How do you play the triforce class well in Gloomhaven? I do dick for damage and have less useful aoe's than the Spellweaver. I can use the one ability to generate mana, but that puts me in a strictly crowd control role. Consistency seems to be an issue in general. I feel like doing the solo scenario to get its reward is vital to operating the triforce. You may also need to be level 5 to take advantage of its cards which generate double elements, or simply have someone else in the party who sets elements and is willing to share with you. Even then, you need to resign yourself to having some down turns where you need to set elements for next turn in exchange for the ability to later eat 3+ elements and supercharge an attack.
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Aug 12, 2017 19:20
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Dancer posted:Just doing a quick interest-check on a potential Game of Thrones pbf. I love the game but never get to play it, so I might as well experience it this way. I've set up resources and a low effort work-flow so I'm fairly confident I can run it to completion. Any interested players? I'd show some interest, though communication between turns would get pretty burdensome. Maybe a discord channel may help with that?
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Aug 12, 2017 19:26
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ETB posted:I'd show some interest, though communication between turns would get pretty burdensome. Maybe a discord channel may help with that?  Also, expansion or no? I played the original a million times but never got around to playing with siege engines, special orders, etc.
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Aug 12, 2017 20:05
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CaptainRightful posted:I'd be interested, although it might take forever. I've played Keyflower pbf, and by my estimate, the total number of decision points is similar. The planning phase is a big part of why the game lasts so very long normally, and that time shouldn't be amplified in the pbf format. ETB posted:I'd show some interest, though communication between turns would get pretty burdensome. Maybe a discord channel may help with that? Can't guarantee a Discord channel, but the goon board game Discord is Cool and Good and there's nothing stopping people making initial contact there and using private messages. I'm perfectly comfortable adding this as a requirement to join the game. rydiafan posted:
2nd edition is basically the only edition I know, So, yes. One tiny house rule to counteract an imbalance (Lannister gets one extra starting footman in Stoney Sept), and we'll be ignoring the silly rule for the planning phase when a house has more territories than they have order tokens available.
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Aug 12, 2017 20:58
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Sounds good. Can I request that we leave out the Tides of Battle cards?
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Aug 12, 2017 21:02
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CaptainRightful posted:Sounds good. Can I request that we leave out the Tides of Battle cards? I've played exactly one game with them and I intend to never do it again .
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Aug 12, 2017 21:04
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When I'm home I can create a custom channel for you guys on the board gaming discord! Edit: I can actually do it from the app so feel free to use the channel! Tekopo fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Aug 12, 2017 |
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Aug 12, 2017 21:28
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GrandpaPants posted:How do you play the triforce class well in Gloomhaven? I do dick for damage and have less useful aoe's than the Spellweaver. I can use the one ability to generate mana, but that puts me in a strictly crowd control role. Consistency seems to be an issue in general. He's one of my favourite and I think potentially most powerful classes I've played, but it certainly takes a while to get there. You are very dependent on items and enchants to do consistent damage. I took Cloak of Pockets and then stocked up on a ton of mana-generating items, and also prioritised buying the 150 gold 'any element' enchant on a bottom movement card as quickly as possible - I think getting this is pretty crucial, and so he is a difficult class if you unlock him early and don't have as many money generating options. He definitely doesn't start coming into his own until around level 4/5 and some decent items, but once you reach the point where you can keep 2-3 elements generated each turn (between ability cards and combat deck cards) you can chain together turns of crazy damage output. I also particularly like his level 2 fire-generating AoE since it's considered a melee attack in conjunction with the hammer that adds stun to the entire attack action. Of course that's only usable once per scenario, but at the right time can be very powerful to lock down a group of monsters for an entire turn. Speaking of that card (or the similar ice one) you should be using those to hit groups of monsters not so much to do damage to them but to generate more elements for your subsequent turns as a result of drawing them from the combat deck.
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Aug 12, 2017 22:11
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HidaO-Win posted:Anything super cool coming out at Gencon? I've been checking the various lists and nothing is really jumping out. Nothing jumped out for me as well. L5R, That's a Question, Fallout? All sound meh. I suppose FFG might come out with some surprise game, but it almost seems like they're slowly announcing things just before the convention rather than surprising people during the convention. Compared to previous years, this is a pretty lackluster sounding Gen Con for board games.
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Aug 12, 2017 23:22
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Played some games today: Eminent Domain: Exotica I like eminent domain but disliked the Exotica additions, I think the only real way to play is with Escalation (which we didn't use this time). We played with scenarios and these also seem to be unbalanced. The Exotica additions weren't great: Exotic planets with associated new techs that focus on those planets, asteroids that you have an alternative method to take over and that combo if you have a lot of them and alien symbols that can only be used if you have the correct tech or ambassador planets. The latter part was especially bad, since you ended up surveying the planets in order to search for very specific things. Not great IMO and all of the new additions felt clunky. Eminent Domain itself is still very well thought out and does the whole deckbuilding/race of the galaxy mash-up really well (just make sure to just buy and play with escalation). Evolution: Climate: I kind of liked Evolution because of the way that the cards combo and interact and how you can build stories out of your choices. I think the game can be a bit card-driven and sometimes luck is a factor, but I did like the changes that were provided by the climate track, which has a huge influence in the game, with carnivores doing better in the cold and herbivores thriving when it's hot (but not TOO hot). I did feel, however, that the card pool is diluted by the inclusion of the new cards, but I also think that there isn't enough meat in the base game alone that makes the game a bit too rock-paper-scissory. Overall I enjoyed it and I think both the bird and climate expansions add interesting levels to the game. I do find, however, that the name of the game is funny, since it isn't so much Evolution but Intelligent Design. Space Alert: Played two games with one newbie and three old hands. Our first game with white cards only would have been a success if someone hadn't forgotten to get bots to follow him and someone else had filled a reactor. Second game with yellow and white threats was a victory for us, as a randomly fired missile managed to destroy the one threat that we had miscounted on: this meant that all threats were destroyed without a single scratch on the hull of the Sitting duck!
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Aug 12, 2017 23:42
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Tekopo posted:without a single scratch on the hull of the Sitting duck! Well, yeah. You're charting uninhabited space.
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Aug 13, 2017 01:21
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I really liked how Events are handled in Through the Ages. For those who don't know, on your turn you can do one political action, and one of those possible actions is "Prepare an event". Events are things like Plague (everyone loses a population), and so forth. Some good, some bad, etc. The events are not random, nor are they "cooked" random (cooked random meaning: this age will have 2 good, 2 bad, and two REALLY bad but they're on the bottom. i.e. Eldritch Horror style mysteries.) On your turn, if you choose to prepare an event, you get some points and put it face down on an "prepared events" deck. This deck is not yet in play. Then you play an event from the in-play event deck. One in, one out. If the in-play deck is empty, you shuffle the Prepared deck and move it to in-play and start a new Prepared deck. As a result, you might put Plague in and know it'll come out in the next age, but you won't know exactly when. This is the only way events get added -- by players putting them there. I thought it was a clever idea that I liked very much.
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Aug 13, 2017 04:36
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