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Shadow225 posted:The Mind is possibly the most boring description of a game that I have ever heard. I'm sure that it plays at least marginally better than its description, but it screams everything that I hate about bad card games. Agreed. This discussion makes it sound like it was designed for the kind of people who constantly post on social media that they're introverts (who are, of course, more intelligent than extroverts). In contrast, the previous discussion of Spaceteam convinced me and some friends to download it and enjoy a frantic 15 minutes. It seems like a great alternative to suggest when among people who only know CAH and Secret Hitler. Jedit posted:I took one look at The Mind and wondered why it needs to exist in a world with The Game. At first I thought you were referring to this: http://www.losethegame.com
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Jun 27, 2018 16:41
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CaptainRightful posted:Agreed. This discussion makes it sound like it was designed for the kind of people who constantly post on social media that they're introverts (who are, of course, more intelligent than extroverts). I agree they occupy a similar... "weight-space", but if you're looking for a CAH/SH alternative, Jackbox is what you want. Keep in mind that there is massive variance in quality, but the better games in Jackbox are great. Set-up is slightly harder than Spaceteam (you don't need for everyone to download the app, but you do need a central screen everyone can view, and smartphones are still required for each person).
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Jun 27, 2018 17:10
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discount cathouse posted:I don't like The Game because the rules are in that confusing area where you are allowed to communicate, but not about your specific cards. Certain kind of words will become conventions fast, and after that your communication might as well be specific?! At least the Mind has a clear "no talking" rule. How playable is the Game without the communication? I guess you would have not enough information to do anything other than minimizing jumps most of the time...
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Jun 27, 2018 17:23
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I played a good game of Hanabi last week and it was with a bunch of newer players so no meta was formed yet. The most fun part of playing Hanabi in general is when you ask players to repeat what they know about their hand and everything they're saying is wrong.
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Jun 27, 2018 17:26
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CaptainRightful posted:Agreed. This discussion makes it sound like it was designed for the kind of people who constantly post on social media that they're introverts (who are, of course, more intelligent than extroverts). ...does it? It's all about reading subvocal nuance and pretending to be psychic. Are introverts interested in that stuff?
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Jun 27, 2018 18:39
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GrandpaPants posted:I don't know how Anachrony lasts 5 hours, but I'd recommend playing with the variant where the die value is fixed. Cuts down on the luck and makes the game play smoother. It was mostly just a combination of us never having played before and it being really late. The first couple hours were just figuring out how to play, and by then it was already well after midnight. The variant for the paradox die sounds like it would help make the game more consistent and play faster. I'll definitely champion for using that next time.
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Jun 27, 2018 19:34
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Mr. Squishy posted:...does it? It's all about reading subvocal nuance and pretending to be psychic. Are introverts interested in that stuff? I can't speak for Captain, but I think his attack was directed more at people who have this smug intellectual aura to them than introverts themselves In other words, The Mind is probably perfect for me 
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Jun 27, 2018 19:34
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I'm stopping at CSI while I'm in Florida for work and I'm in the market for a new game. What's pretty new that plays well at 2 players (If it plays more, that's cool too)
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Jun 27, 2018 20:11
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Kashuno posted:I'm stopping at CSI while I'm in Florida for work and I'm in the market for a new game. What's pretty new that plays well at 2 players (If it plays more, that's cool too) Azul is awesome and (kinda?) new
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Jun 27, 2018 20:13
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Kashuno posted:I'm stopping at CSI while I'm in Florida for work and I'm in the market for a new game. What's pretty new that plays well at 2 players (If it plays more, that's cool too) Today? I’m heading there for game night if you want to join.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:14
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Bottom Liner posted:Today? I’m heading there for game night if you want to join. Which location?
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Jun 27, 2018 20:17
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Kashuno posted:Which location? Maitland, which is where their warehouse is if you’re ordering online for same day pickup (it takes about 2 mins for them to pull an order after you place it).
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Jun 27, 2018 20:27
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Bottom Liner posted:Maitland, which is where their warehouse is if you’re ordering online for same day pickup (it takes about 2 mins for them to pull an order after you place it). Gotcha, I'm down in the Miami area!
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Jun 27, 2018 20:34
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I just got Dungeon Petz. I like Vlaada's games a lot, loved Lords, but hate anything Pokemon-related. How hosed am I?
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Jun 27, 2018 20:35
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Pierzak posted:I just got Dungeon Petz. I like Vlaada's games a lot, loved Lords, but hate anything Pokemon-related. How hosed am I? You're not trying to collect anything, you're just trying to fulfil needs without having your cages wrecked. It's an excellent game.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:36
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Pierzak posted:I just got Dungeon Petz. I like Vlaada's games a lot, loved Lords, but hate anything Pokemon-related. How hosed am I?
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Jun 27, 2018 20:43
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Kashuno posted:Gotcha, I'm down in the Miami area! 😡 Tekopo posted:Dungeon Petz is dangerously good echoing this, probably his best package as a whole.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:47
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Pierzak posted:I just got Dungeon Petz. I like Vlaada's games a lot, loved Lords, but hate anything Pokemon-related. How hosed am I? You're gonna get so much poop and your pets will get sad.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:58
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rchandra posted:How playable is the Game without the communication? I guess you would have not enough information to do anything other than minimizing jumps most of the time... I don't think it would be fun. Maybe its possible to houserule the communication to be more strict.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:58
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Shadow225 posted:I can't speak for Captain, but I think his attack was directed more at people who have this smug intellectual aura to them than introverts themselves It's more that playing a card game face-to-face is typically a social activity, but in The Mind you don't actually talk to anybody.
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Jun 27, 2018 21:31
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FulsomFrank posted:Surprised you find it bog standard. I've only played it 2p but it was sufficiently cut-throat/mean that we both enjoyed it even if it's a bit dry. I guess “dry” is the better term. Being able to muscle an opponents’ worker out of a key space is a cool, and voting on the scoring opportunities is cutthroat, but those are the only two croutons in a dry spinach-leaf point salad. “Haha! My strongest knight has claimed Castle Dorchester from your lowly knave and rewarded me with... some tan cubes and a lumpy-faced noble’s RSVP to my dinner party”.
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Jun 27, 2018 21:54
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Hell yes got my order in at the reduced P500 price for Dominant Species, can't wait to play it. I've been looking forward to it for years now. I also realized I'm not a piss poor student anymore and can afford stuff now so I bought Space Empires 4X and put in a P500 bid for Commands & Colors: Ancients plus SpaceCorp which looks pretty sweet. I've never got hyped by a rulebook and some jpegs before. Next up: more shelf space
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Jun 27, 2018 21:57
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FulsomFrank posted:Azul is awesome and (kinda?) new I'll second this and it's quite cutthroat at 2 players.
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Jun 27, 2018 21:57
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Azul is a great abstract game, that doesn't look like an abstract to the kind of gamer that loves dice and miniatures. If you want something that's more thematic, High Treason: The Trial of Louis Riel is one of a kind. But it's also strictly a 1v1 game.
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Jun 27, 2018 22:35
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I want to recommend Tenkatoitsu as a good hobbyist entry level wargame. Sengoku era Japan, hex and counter, chit pull activation. There are five mandatory phases (two combat, march, rally, initiative) randomly drawn and you can seed the bag with clan specific chits to activate your units. The highlight of the game is the orders system. Japanese medieval combat was a chaotic affair as you had dozens of lords and their retainers, a lot of them bitter rivals united under a single banner, organizing thousands of people together. So each clan can be assigned one of four orders (attack, defense, movement, regroup) which trigger differently depending on the chit drawn e.g. clan with attack orders will charge and attack when combat is drawn. Simulating the difficulty of orders in battle, you have to roll off when you want to change orders e.g. a clan on the defensive will be reluctant to attack, roll a 5+ to make the change modified by the leadership rating of the clan. There's a risk to seeding the bag, however. Once all five mandatory chits are drawn the round ends. Any chits remaining you roll a d6 and see what happens to them. Maybe the messenger is killed in battle, or he delivers the orders to the wrong clan, or he insults the daimyo so much that he's tossed out of camp. The game is as much about managing your orders as it is making do with what you got. You may want to call off an attack and regroup but a hotheaded daimyo refuses, but you can turn this misfortune around and use them as a shield to aid the retreat of the rest of your army. There's also a hidden battle plan sequence at the start of the game. Battle plans give you access to special abilities and tactics like being able to group attack easier or forcing your opponent to choose one of your units to attack them. It's a feature that goes a long way to providing variability and replay value, something that can be lost in wargames with a rigid adherence to history. The game respects the historic order of battle but lets the players modify how they approach the battle which is really cool. The game comes with three scenarios. Yamazaki can be played either a long scenario which is an endurance run (and includes ninjas!) or the short scenario which is a straight brawl. Nagakute focuses on Iwasaki and is primarily a castle siege battle with its own separate abstracted map for interior fighting. And then there's Sekigahara, a beast of a battle where both sides are trying to kill each other while at the same time sway the undecided clans into joining their side. This one has a lot going on off the map as it does on the map with Tokugawa making secret bids that give away points to Ishida who is trying to save face against impetuous clans that don't respect him as a leader. Tenkatoitsu is still a hobbyist wargame, far heavier than most of the stuff mentioned here, but the rulebook is superbly done. Aside from some spelling and a few weird issues where a word was accidentally left in French, this was the easiest time I've had learning a wargame. Each page is filled with full color examples and it's organized in an easy to reference structure that facilitates learning. Seriously, this book should be required reading for every wargame designer/publisher I can't get over how so many lovely rulebooks plague this medium.
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Jun 27, 2018 22:39
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I was rather underwhelmed by Azul initially, but I kind of grew to respect it more and more as this nice casual thing with potential to show fangs every once in a while. I mean, I'm still convinced it wouldn't get half the hype it has if it weren't for the pretty tiles, but it's just nice, like grandma's cookies. I only wish it was a tad cheaper, because one area it exceeds at is being a gift for casuals.
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Jun 27, 2018 22:47
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Lichtenstein posted:I was rather underwhelmed by Azul initially, but I kind of grew to respect it more and more as this nice casual thing with potential to show fangs every once in a while. Compared to its contemporaries, Azul has them all beat. Sagrada had its moment in the sun but I just can't see myself ever playing it again when Azul is available. And a whole company was spun off to market Azul and their new game Reef just doesn't hold a candle at all.
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Jun 27, 2018 22:49
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Reef looks good to me. The opportunity to make huge plays worth a ton of points is at least more exciting than the best plays in Azul, where the most exciting turns are forcing an opponent to take a lot of floor tiles. Azul should at least completely erase Splendor from most people’s rotation though, it’s better in every possible way.
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Jun 27, 2018 23:09
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Meh, just came from what should have been our last Pandemic Legacy S2 session of November and December. Instead we are all super bummed out and decided to postpone it. Question in spoilers. If Joburg is at 0, does it really mean an autoloss of 1st try in Dec because we have to wait to get points and raise it so we can build a center? That is hosed up. We had bad luck and never got the card/chance to search there and now the town is at 0 and we are hosed apparently. It's a super lovely thing to suddenly reveal we need to be able to build in a specific city this late in the game.
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Jun 27, 2018 23:11
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Bottom Liner posted:Reef looks good to me. The opportunity to make huge plays worth a ton of points is at least more exciting than the best plays in Azul, where the most exciting turns are forcing an opponent to take a lot of floor tiles. Azul should at least completely erase Splendor from most people’s rotation though, it’s better in every possible way. In execution it's not, though. Reef has a frustrating action economy where you can only do one thing on your turn, draw a card or play a card. So it has that issue in a lot of games like these (notably Splendor) where you take a card you kind of don't want only for the really sweet one to pop up next. But unlike Splendor you can't bank anything as an alternative to playing/drawing. A lot of the game is spent doing nothing. Every play in Azul is doing something. You're either blocking or screwing your opponents, building towards your next big score, or figuring out which pull will mitigate the most damage to you. Reef has none of that interplay, it's entirely solitaire but if you grab something off the top of the deck you're giving up points to someone else. e: With that said, probably the most interesting thing in Reef is end of game scoring where you still score what's left in your hand. So I'm sure there's a strategy involved that's grabbing as much garbage as you can to work towards scoring it all at the end. It basically gives you free turns equal to your hand size. al-azad fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 23:32
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I played Reef at Origins twice and really enjoyed it. As much, if not more than Azul. I think the hand management offers a lot more interesting decision making & planning than Azul's tile draft personally. Yeah, there's an odd chance of the perfect card popping up for your opponent after you collect something new, but in neither of the games I played did any player have a scoring pattern that applied to their board so well that it would be some game breaking amount of points for them. And if a player WAS to invest in duplicating the same pattern over and over again just to maximize a single type of card, they're probably losing in the long term anyway.
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Jun 27, 2018 23:52
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In the rulebook for the Mind, there's a box that says at the top: "Don't read this until you've finished your first game of the Mind!" Inside that box it says (paraphrasing), now that you've played the game you've probably figured out the winning strategy is to count the seconds (or arbitrary time unit) after the last card is played and play cards based on that. It's all about wordlessly syncing up and using the same delay. So this strategy isn't some unnatural thing that ruins the spirit of the game; the designer expected you to figure it out. It's the obvious extension of the very most basic strategy possible: if you have a card that comes right after another card, play it immediately, and if you have a card that is farther away, wait longer. When I played it, the interesting experience of the game was each player coming to this realization at different times. I enjoyed it a lot that first time, but I don't really feel any desire to ever play it again, expect maybe if I was introducing it to some new people.
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Jun 28, 2018 00:12
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I feel like Reef would obviously be improved if instead of a market row of cards you had some sort of card waterfall or pyramid.
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Jun 28, 2018 00:56
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Photux posted:In the rulebook for the Mind, there's a box that says at the top: "Don't read this until you've finished your first game of the Mind!" Inside that box it says (paraphrasing), now that you've played the game you've probably figured out the winning strategy is to count the seconds (or arbitrary time unit) after the last card is played and play cards based on that. It's all about wordlessly syncing up and using the same delay. Huh, I actually have a lot more respect for the game now. I guess I just don't really see why it's gotten such press, but the designer's probably equally surprised.
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Jun 28, 2018 01:18
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I feel like Reef would obviously be improved if instead of a market row of cards you had some sort of card waterfall or pyramid. I mean, it sort of addresses the concept of row randomness though it’s top-of-deck / spend VP system. There’s three cards on the table face up, and the top card of the deck. You can take any of the 3 tabled cards for free which is then replaced by the already known top-of-deck card, kind of removing the “ugh random card popped up for you” issue; or you can take the top card of the deck, but only if you spend a point to increase the value of one of the tables cards, making a 2 point swing between you and an opponent. So a new card is always revealed after a card is drawn by someone, but the only way the next player can get the blind revealed top card is at the cost of points. It’s simple, but works well enough in place of a pyramid or whatever, in my experience.
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Jun 28, 2018 02:30
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Has anybody tried the Istanbul app?
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Jun 28, 2018 09:07
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I ended up picking up Azul and Shadows in Kyoto. I've heard so much about Azul from everyone that I figured I had to just take the plunge on it already, and Shadows in Kyoto is from the Hanamikoji folks so I gotta try it out
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Jun 28, 2018 12:55
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Kashuno posted:I ended up picking up Azul and Shadows in Kyoto. I've heard so much about Azul from everyone that I figured I had to just take the plunge on it already, and Shadows in Kyoto is from the Hanamikoji folks so I gotta try it out Shadows is even the same characters as Hanamikoji in that game's 'universe'. It's game 2 of it. Wonder when/if game 3 is published? Yesterday I just realized that Shadows in Kyoto, Herbalism, that Crow game and probably the Chinese character game are on CSI now. They were just in an ~exclusive~ kickstarter a few months back it feels like that I'm glad I skipped on now.
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Jun 28, 2018 13:19
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Has anybody tried the Istanbul app? Just got it on Android since you let me know it exists. Once I learn the rules I'll try some asynch with people itt if the app has asynch. I have a baby so can't do real time
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Jun 28, 2018 14:49
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Interesting thread about the history of RPGs and wargames: https://twitter.com/manixur/status/1011787777849954305
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Jun 28, 2018 16:53
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