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Quick Rules question: for estates, it says points for a completed building only go to topmost floor color owner, but also says each floor cube scores points equal to their printed value to the player who owns it. What’s that mean?
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Nov 9, 2018 22:12
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Sum the value of cubes in a building and the sum is the score/penalty to the owning player, which is determined by the color of the topmost cube.
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Nov 9, 2018 22:15
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Flipswitch posted:Kindle and cider it is then. Is it really that bad? Yeah, the downtime is that bad. It's baffling to me why they didn't come up with a way to have fewer actions per player turn or have some sort of portion of the round where people do simultaneous turns. Actually, I think you can play simultaneously early on until you get first contact. Also, I think the one time I played it, the Romulan player won by just going nuts with his science tech tree and making strategic agreements.
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Nov 9, 2018 22:18
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Fujoshi game #2 is up! El Fideo: You don't have Private Messages enabled, so I'm gonna need some way to communicate secret information with you. Are you on the tg discord?
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Nov 9, 2018 22:44
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If you do a third playtest, I'd love to be part of it.
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Nov 9, 2018 23:02
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Got my copy of Stephenson's Rocket on the table this week. Some quick feels: To put it short, it's a perfect information Knizia tile layer. During your turn you do two things, choosing from expanding the any of the seven railways on the 1830s UK map one hex and receiving a share in that railway company for your effort, investing in the industry of one city on the map hoping to benefit later when any railway company connects to that city or at the end of the game when investments on steel/cloth/leather/beer in different cities in the rail network are tallied together, or placing a station which you or hopefully some other player connects to some railway company network, giving you benefit when the railway connects to a railway town, or at the end of the game, if you have lead the station count for that line. Connecting one railway company line to another merges the two companies, scoring the disappearing company and cashing in those shares for the remaining company shares at 2:1 ratio. Towards the end of the game you see a huge, map spanning railway company worth tens of points forming, and jockeying for the first and second position in shares or stations in that is pretty big. The critical aspect in the game are the shares, which serve as the measure of control of the companies in mergers and at the end of the game, but also as a currency when expanding the company railway: when a player expands a company railway to a direction, another player with shares in the company can veto the action, which starts a single round bidding, where each player in order can bid any number of stocks in that company to change the direction to their liking. The acting player needs to equal the highest bid as the last bidder to get their way, and aggressively forcing even the small bleeding of stocks from other players by vetoing and changing the preferred direction to something else seems a good thing to do. The general gist of scoring is that each aspect giving points rewards the leading player in that category with the full haul, and gives the second player half of that, and leaves the rest with nothing. It honestly feels really an action economy game: spend the minimum number to reach that first or second threshold in different categories. If possible, have your opponent do the actions that score points for you - you can for example quite easily invest in an industry in a city three hexes off some company starting location, and expand the railway two times over two turns to connect to the city and score two points for likely majority investment in that city. But instead of three actions for two points (and two shares in the company) you might be much more happy investing in a city where opponent just invested and moved the track closer to, as it likely nets you one point for one action when the opponent does the connecting. With stations there's a mechanic where connecting a track to opponent station during your turn gives the you a passenger worth points in the end, thus there's an incentive to "co-operate", but honestly I got the feeling that at least to the mid-game the value of a connected station is much more than the value of single passenger pawn. It definitely felt like a game that could induce some hardcore analysis-paralysis: with all the information available, and the game-long strategy honestly pretty opaque in the beginning, you might have some players just bloody freeze with all the potential options. Towards the end this eased, at least I felt, when the number of active railroad companies and thus potential moves goes down, as do the possible positions of stations and relevant investment opportunities. It's a game I'd like to get on table soon again to get a better feel for it - it feels like a pretty meaty and quite fast flowing Knizia. There's a lot of opportunities to really, really screw with opponents with the track placements or vetos. The component quality is great and I love the visual design - really sorry if Grail folds over the production issues of this and Y&Y.
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Nov 9, 2018 23:04
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Chill la Chill posted:Quick Rules question: for estates, it says points for a completed building only go to topmost floor color owner, but also says each floor cube scores points equal to their printed value to the player who owns it. What’s that mean? At the end of the game you score all of the cubes that you own. When you place your color cube on top of a building, you take ownership of all the cubes below it. Players only own cubes of the buildings they own, which are marked by having their color on the top floor.
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Nov 9, 2018 23:14
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The Estates is basically Manhattan with an auction and rude.
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Nov 10, 2018 00:23
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Texibus posted:Hello, thought I saw some Seattle goons trying to connect on here a few months back. I just got here and would love to get into a new group. Some Numbers posted:Welcome to Seattle! There are plenty of board gamers in town, so don’t worry about finding groups. I've been attending the Tuesday night meetup at Mox for the past few months, so it's possible that Some Numbers and I have crossed paths? I highly recommend the group. If you turn up some Tuesday, look for the bald dude with glasses, a beard, and tattoos who is probably teaching someone Brass: Birmingham!
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Nov 10, 2018 01:00
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al-azad posted:The Estates is basically Manhattan with an auction and rude. It is rude and a joy to behold. 
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Nov 10, 2018 01:06
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Picked up Betrayal Legacy and Arkham Horror 3rd Edition, will report back
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Nov 10, 2018 01:59
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CaptainRightful posted:I've been attending the Tuesday night meetup at Mox for the past few months, so it's possible that Some Numbers and I have crossed paths? I highly recommend the group. If you turn up some Tuesday, look for the bald dude with glasses, a beard, and tattoos who is probably teaching someone Brass: Birmingham! Nah, I haven’t been to the Mox game meetups in forever. My group meets at peoples’ homes.
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Nov 10, 2018 02:30
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You guys weren't kidding about the downtime in star trek. We nearly bailed towards the end.
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Nov 10, 2018 03:21
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Some Numbers posted:Nah, I haven’t been to the Mox game meetups in forever. My group meets at peoples’ homes. Oh, hey. That's me too - I'm a Seattle resident who has lots of friends who play boardgames, has a super-active set of game stores that's an embarrassment of riches compared to just about EVERY other city in the country, and still manages to complain that I don't play games enough. Mox is cool, though. As is Blue Highway, my favorite import shop.
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Nov 10, 2018 04:37
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Not local to Seattle myself, but can absolutely 110% back the aforementioned recommendations of Mox/Card Kingdom/Blue Highway. They’re all incredibly great stores.
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Nov 10, 2018 05:20
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Memnaelar posted:Oh, hey. That's me too - I'm a Seattle resident who has lots of friends who play boardgames, has a super-active set of game stores that's an embarrassment of riches compared to just about EVERY other city in the country, and still manages to complain that I don't play games enough. Wow this hits way too close to home for me.
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Nov 10, 2018 05:21
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Hit my 306th logged play of Vs System 2PCG tonight. Not my favorite game but it's hard to understate what playing it nearly weekly for almost two years has done for my sanity. I used to go a little crazy without and outlet for my board/card gaming urge. Every play has been against one of my oldest friends who I met through CCGs in the 90s, which I think is pretty cool. Twenty years of friendship started with gaming. 
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Nov 10, 2018 06:37
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Hey Gutter Owl I got Meltwater to the table and it's really solid, although bleak as gently caress. We needed to use other tokens for dirty spaces for a chunk of the middle of game, although that went away as the dead zones expanded more. Is there a reason from testing why you can't make your soldiers flank through the dead zones to attack? Mad suicide missions through the radioactive snow seems theme appropriate.
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Nov 10, 2018 13:10
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Highlight of the year con right now, not gonna do a writeup until it's over but I played Brass Birmingham! First time I have ever played any of the steam/age of steam/brass whatever you want to call that genre. I don't even think all of them go into the same bucket?? My understanding after playing one game is that this was a great entry to it, though, because of some streamlining and ways to not get super punished early by not knowing the game well, etc. Anyway, for a first time, I had a blast, and by the end I even kinda understood how the game was supposed to work. On the other hand, I came in 2nd of 4 veterans of the game, so I feel pretty good about that! I basically just built basic buildings, didn't develop, and instead of connecting to the coal market like I'm supposed to, I just built my own damned coal so it would be free, and so the price of coal stayed sky high which hosed over at least one other person. When playing a game for the first time, the goal is to not come in last, right? Anyway, I got kinda smashed by the leader, but it was really fun. 162 to my 119 to 100 to 77 or somesuch. The guy in last place had to take so many loans, he barely ended positive in income. (other games yesterday: shogi, go, Wind The Film!, and new to me Nefertiti!!!, Century: Eastern Wonders.
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Nov 10, 2018 15:25
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Is that a genre? Economic games building factories in Victorian England?
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Nov 10, 2018 15:34
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Goose, are you ranked in Go? I know you talk about how infrequently you play it now, but I'm curious if you got up to the higher kyu or even dan rankings. Mr. Squishy posted:Is that a genre? Economic games building factories in Victorian England? There are several heavyweight factory-building games like Arkwright, Brass, City of the Big Shoulders, Age of Industry, and Kanban. They're not all victorian era, but they're all in BGG's industry/manufacturing group.
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Nov 10, 2018 15:44
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silvergoose posted:I basically just built basic buildings, didn't develop, and instead of connecting to the coal market like I'm supposed to, I just built my own damned coal so it would be free, and so the price of coal stayed sky high which hosed over at least one other person. Glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. You didn't keep building level 1 buildings in the Rail Era, did you? Because that's a pretty significant rule. Same with building more than one thing in the same town during the Canal Era. I don't know what the last place dude was screwing up, because development and loans are usually smart choices and should lead to big scoring opportunities. Maybe he was waiting too long to sell and others were using up all the beer first? I've seen games won by people who ended with single-digit incomes, but scoring less than 100 indicates something went very wrong. Whatever overall strategy you pursue, I've found that building tons of links is always a good idea. Maximizes your choices of building spots, blocks others off from them (particularly those precious farm breweries!), and lets you scavenge VPs off everything the other players flip.
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Nov 10, 2018 17:42
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Played two games of exodus paris nouveau. It’s the Avalon sequel Both times it was three hunters, two resistance. Won the first game when I was a Hunter through some careful could play and sowing dissent. It was much harder the second time but the Hunter’s gave themselves away immediately, so me and the other resister were able to find each other and run successful missions. The new wrinkle is character abilities that are public and number of voting tokens. The hunters should’ve been able to win but they voted for organized, and then didn’t elect a leader who would’ve damaged our mission twice and won for their team. The game is all right but don’t rush out to buy it, frankly.
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Nov 10, 2018 18:04
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Chill la Chill posted:Goose, are you ranked in Go? I know you talk about how infrequently you play it now, but I'm curious if you got up to the higher kyu or even dan rankings. Ahaha no I'm not. I play roughly once or twice a year, and get crushed by this one friend who also goes to lobstertrap.  I only lost by 80!!CaptainRightful posted:Glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. I did not, no, but I didn't develop much so I was mostly building some lower level but not 1 buildings. Definitely did not screw up the "build more than one thing in one town by the same player in canal era" rule, these were people who definitely knew the game, thankfully. Yeah the guy who got 77 screwed up hard, I think just by ending up with very little income after canal era, and then having to take more loans to build anything and spend tons on coal that I was keeping expensive. I ended up building links, but I actually had no access to coal so in order to build links I had to build coal and then links and it was all a mess. Still happy with my score though! All of what you said makes total sense and that means I mostly get the game systems now. Good stuff. Also, the commodity market is wacky but interesting, with the "iron just flies so building one can be almost even money wise" thing and coal sometimes being even better than that if the price is high.
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Nov 10, 2018 18:54
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silvergoose posted:I ended up building links, but I actually had no access to coal so in order to build links I had to build coal and then links and it was all a mess. Still happy with my score though! All of what you said makes total sense and that means I mostly get the game systems now. Good stuff. Also, the commodity market is wacky but interesting, with the "iron just flies so building one can be almost even money wise" thing and coal sometimes being even better than that if the price is high. Yeah, the other players should have just built their own coal mines, preferably connecting to an external market so they could immediately flip them and make some decent cash, since you say the supply was scarce. Maybe that's what the winner did? One thing with rail links (and you may have gotten this right): you can build a link to a source of coal, not just from one.
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Nov 10, 2018 19:17
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CaptainRightful posted:Yeah, the other players should have just built their own coal mines, preferably connecting to an external market so they could immediately flip them and make some decent cash, since you say the supply was scarce. Maybe that's what the winner did? One thing with rail links (and you may have gotten this right): you can build a link to a source of coal, not just from one. What's the difference? Really, here's my main question: can I build a link from a source of coal if I do not have any presence there (in the town next to the infinite source, I mean, across that link)? Cause if not, then I had to build my own in order to get any coal, or PERHAPS do a double build using some imaginary beer that didn't exist. What that *really* means is that I should have made sure to have a level 2 building or better next to a source of coal, obviously.
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Nov 10, 2018 19:51
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Is there a co-op deck builder that plays over multiple games? Something like how Pathfinder adventures works, except I'm looking for a good game. Like a co-op deck builder roguelike.
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Nov 10, 2018 20:47
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silvergoose posted:What's the difference? Really, here's my main question: can I build a link from a source of coal if I do not have any presence there (in the town next to the infinite source, I mean, across that link)? Cause if not, then I had to build my own in order to get any coal, or PERHAPS do a double build using some imaginary beer that didn't exist. You basically explained what the difference is. If you have a building in a town next to an external market or next to a town with a coal mine (that has coal available), you can build a rail link from your building to that place, using coal obtained from that source. Some people incorrectly assume that you need to already be connected to a source of coal before laying down the rail link. However, you cannot lay down a double rail link this way unless the first link placed establishes a connection to a coal source. Also, your link network can pass through towns regardless of your presence there. So if you have any existing link to a town that you have no presence in, you can still build a link from that town that connects to a new source of coal. I'm realizing that this is all so much easier to explain when sitting in front of the board!
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Nov 10, 2018 21:07
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PRADA SLUT posted:Is there a co-op deck builder that plays over multiple games? Something like how Pathfinder adventures works, except I'm looking for a good game. I *think* Aeon’s End has a multi-game campaign? Otherwise the forthcoming Direwild features deck-building plus tactical combat elements with a campaign I think too.
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Nov 10, 2018 21:46
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Moonwolf posted:Hey Gutter Owl I got Meltwater to the table and it's really solid, although bleak as gently caress. We needed to use other tokens for dirty spaces for a chunk of the middle of game, although that went away as the dead zones expanded more. Yeah, that rule was specifically put into place because attacks. It caused occasional havoc if a soldier tried to put down radiation when its own hex was already dead, since the attack radiation needs to go somewhere. Specifically, we ran into two cases. a) If an enemy left a soldier near radiation, you could flank a soldier around in the glow, blow up the enemy soldier, and drop a rad on some enemy civilians. This was just too strong a power play. b) It led to more situations where players could intentionally divide the board in half with radiation markers. This was sometimes the optimal play, but it leads to a very boring game state--civilians become quarantined to "their half," and at that point the game usually resolves down to who gets the better doomsday draws. So I decided to cut it off. Besides, it's very hard to line up a coordinated assault plan when your troops are vomiting out their own glowing guts.
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Nov 10, 2018 23:04
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PRADA SLUT posted:Is there a co-op deck builder that plays over multiple games? Something like how Pathfinder adventures works, except I'm looking for a good game. The Arkham Horror LCG may fit the bill.
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Nov 10, 2018 23:05
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CaptainRightful posted:You basically explained what the difference is. If you have a building in a town next to an external market or next to a town with a coal mine (that has coal available), you can build a rail link from your building to that place, using coal obtained from that source. Some people incorrectly assume that you need to already be connected to a source of coal before laying down the rail link. However, you cannot lay down a double rail link this way unless the first link placed establishes a connection to a coal source. Yeah that all makes sense, but it reinforces my knowledge for the next time I play to make sure I have at least one building next to an external market if possible that will live through the era swap, else I'll be sad.
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Nov 11, 2018 00:14
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Merauder posted:I *think* Aeon’s End has a multi-game campaign? Otherwise the forthcoming Direwild features deck-building plus tactical combat elements with a campaign I think too. The currently available Aeon's End games are single session - but Aeon's End Legacy is coming out soon. In general it's fine, but not overly exciting. Honestly, I think the best current answer is Gloomhaven. It's a deck builder only by the absolutely loosest possible definition, but it just has so much more on offer than other co-op campaigns.
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Nov 11, 2018 00:21
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Thunderstone Quest has a campaign mode I believe. It’s literally a coop deck builder. I think advance has at least some unofficial variant campaign modes.
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Nov 11, 2018 01:19
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Went shopping and picked up The Estates, Wendake, Rise of Fenris, and Ganz Schon Clever. Only played the last one so far but my wife loves it so 
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Nov 11, 2018 03:21
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Played Churchill today, the full 10-turn scenario, with blind scoring (except for immediate things like winning the Global Issue). Only 9 turns, as it turned out. I was the US. The start was inauspicious. The first conference card compelled me to focus on one of the Pacific fronts, and then the Japanese ended up committing all their forces to that one. Nothing happened in Europe. On turn 2 I was able to support both my Pacific fronts, but their dice rolls both failed by a single point. Stalin rushed the bomb as fast as humanly possible, and Churchill made steady progress in the European Southern front. Still, we were able to get things together eventually. The Brits and I kept trading leadership of both theatres at once, which can generate something ridiculous like 8 offensive supports per turn. We broke for lunch at the start of turn 5; by this point, every front had progressed by a step or two. The Soviets already had the bomb, while I'd only taken a single step, but the Western Allies had cleaned up on Pol-Mils; we controlled almost every country, while Stalin never won a single PM token. Also, each conference was always won by one of us. At this point I decided we were definitely headed for a Condition 2 victory, in which the second- and third-place players team up against first place in the post-war world, and the second-place player wins (unless it's a total blowout). Therefore, I was going to keep bullying Stalin, while letting Churchill run up a lead, and cruise into being the senior partner in the post-war anticolonial alliance. Anyway, in Europe, the southern front made steady progress. The Russians pulled off an astonishing breakthrough against basically the entire German army, and made it into Prussia while we had only just taken Normandy. In the following turn, we faced almost no resistance as we got our own breakthrough (the Germans decided it was a good time to send some reserves into the Arctic theatre). By focusing on Directed Offensives we were able to divert resources out of the eastern front and take Germany ourselves, although Stalin still got eastern Germany. On the final turn I became convinced that Stalin was going to get a breakthrough, and take Germany at the same time as us, which could reduce the score difference enough to cause a Condition 1 victory (in which whoever has the most points just wins, without complications). I decided that instead of pumping up the Brits I was just going to maximise my own score. In the Pacific, the Brits very slowly walked across SE Asia. My two fronts were able to steadily advance, and I'd taken Okinawa and Kyushu by the end of the game. Stalin, after seeing my early failures in the Pacific, got kind of fixated on blitzing down into Japan ASAP, and spent most of the early game trying to get the conditional event that let him do that, but we were always able to stop him. In the final turn, again against his will, we compelled Stalin to invade Manchuria, and so met all the conditions for the surrender event (I also had the bomb). Anyway, the final scores were myself in the mid-70s, Churchill in the high 60s, and Stalin down in the 30s. My last-minute conviction was dead wrong; Stalin didn't have enough to break through into Germany (and also it wouldn't have generated enough points either way), and I ended up 7 points ahead of the British, giving them the win. I controlled 8 countries; they controlled 9; the Russians had none. There were some clear successes in our approach. Rushing naval support into the Arctic really paid off in terms of production. We were able to divert Axis forces away from the active fronts pretty consistently, and we had some great (voluntarily-)coordinated advances. Just talking about our goals for each turn at the start of every conference was a really good way to set the agenda, outside of the game mechanics themselves; it's a game that really benefits from the tabletop format. The Russians got a really raw deal. They probably should have been more active in contesting theatre leadership, on account of all the offensive supports you get for winning the issue (even if they're not allowed to hold theatre leadership). They also really should have been more assertive about early-game Pol-Mil, and maybe eased up on the A-bomb, and on invading Japan (especially given that they never won the Agenda phase, so they could never go last and guarantee the Manchuria thing would pass). Things would have been very different if they'd won an Agenda phase in one of those first few rounds. Roosevelt survived the war, which I consider to be a moral victory. Churchill had one heart-attack, in the final round, and Stalin had several paranoid phases, mostly at the end of each conference.
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Nov 11, 2018 09:52
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The Lord of Hats posted:If you do a third playtest, I'd love to be part of it.
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Nov 11, 2018 09:59
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NmareBfly posted:Have a regular 'board game' meet up where we never really seem to have less than 6 people, and sometimes it balloons out to 10 or so. I have a fair number of high-player-count games for this reason, but would welcome a couple more since most of these have been in rotation for a year. Have: Didn't see Steampunk Rally mentioned in reply to this but it's been my go-to game to tuck in in case we need to play with 6-8. Super fast and entertaining and doesn't speed up with more players particularly.
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Nov 11, 2018 10:28
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Krazyface posted:Roosevelt survived the war, which I consider to be a moral victory. Churchill had one heart-attack, in the final round, and Stalin had several paranoid phases, mostly at the end of each conference. Okay, now I want to try this game.
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Nov 11, 2018 14:56
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Jimmeeee posted:The Arkham Horror LCG may fit the bill. Technically, the Arkham LCG Is a deck-construction game; that is, you build the deck before you play. In a deck-builder, you build the deck during play.
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Nov 11, 2018 15:24
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