Kiranamos posted:

Holy poo poo, this is some galaxy brain DIY

https://youtu.be/aXqi5PULMqg

Chill la Chill posted:

Sometimes it’s just neat to make your own things. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people ask where they could buy my copy of Chinatown or Bus because of the unique theme. And how many times I’ve scared people off with 18xx redesign ideas. Speaking of, this owns



Someone make an 18xx game with the style of cave evil please, tia

Chill la Chill posted:

Wafflecopper posted:

jesus christ my eyes

Chill la Chill posted:

Yeah it’s really good

Aramoro posted:

It really levels the playing field for colour blind people who can have a tough time with other games.

Jedit posted:

Some may argue that the best way to make games accessible to the colour blind is not to make a board that nobody can look at.

Fat Samurai posted:

Going to play Forbidden Stars this weekend for the first time, 4 players. At least two other players have played it before. Anything I should know about so I don’t embarrass myself?

Chill la Chill posted:

Someone make an 18xx game with the style of cave evil please, tia

Ravendas posted:

The base Inis game is great. Once you get used to playing it, it takes maybe an hour, which is a third the time it takes my group to play Kemet. It also tickles the card drafting itch my friends get, as every round starts with a drafting of the 4 cards you get, which controls which actions you can take.

Combat is brutal for both sides, unless you've prepared with action cards and got some lucky epic cards. But since it's optional, and players can coexist in areas, and one of the win conditions is sharing places with people and another two are just about being in a certain number of locations, it's a tricky thing to balance. You want to lord over others, but their mere presence there is helping them with a victory condition as well. If you wipe them out to prevent their victory, you might be preventing your own too.

I have the Inis expansion, and while it's modular so you can pick and choose what to use, they just seem to add complication with very little actual added fun. 'Seasons' add extra complicated rules per round to track, the new island tiles confuse the neat tile system they have, the new end game bit was based on people not ever acquiring deeds and making the game last forever (and can be done without the expansion), which was never a problem we needed solved, though the new epics are interesting.

Get the base game, skip the expansion unless it turns out you played Inis enough you need to spice it up a little more.


Oh, and the Inis tiles are the darkest of tesselated sorcery. If you orient them all the same way, they're functionally hexagons. If you turn one compared to the rest, you've suddenly locked out a spot on the map and created a 'lake'. It's funny how many groups don't find this out because everyone's monkey brain makes them want to line the tiles up so their words and images all point the same way.

quote:

Finally did a full play of 2-player Inis. Going to do a sperg post about it.

I really like the game now. I hesitate to disagree with "all the games you like are bad" guy, because he has played the game way more times than me. With 2-player though, I think his big issue with the epic tale cards isn't really a negative to me. I'm not sure about 3 or 4-player, but I still think I disagree with him. 2-player plays very nicely, and on our second time playing we both knew the cards quite well. The limited action card pool is great design because it makes the draft and the season phase both feel inter-connected to each other and very strategic. Compared to something like Seasons, where you have a big fat draft at the beginning of the entire game, and then you play for over an hour and never draft again. In Inis the drafts are quick and always related to the current board state, so they don't feel tacked on at all. My wife is one of the slowest players in the world at every game, and the draft almost never takes more than 5 minutes.

My take on the epic tale cards--which is what most people who don't like the game complain about--is that if you let your opponent just sit there and amass them, you need to "get good," and a) start to get a stack of them yourself to maintain parity with your opponent, b) use your more active action cards to force your opponent to use epic tale cards to stop your own victory conditions, or c) use "The Bard" to get deed tokens rather than epic tale cards.

I lost the game we played tonight because I tried to do b) while my wife piled up epic tale cards. I probably would have been okay, but I botched two clashes and put myself too far behind on the board. I think if I hadn't botched the clashes the way I did (I misread one of my epic tale cards and didn't realize until it was too late), I probably would have forced her to use up one of her epic tale cards to stop my own victory. When I hosed up the clashes, it put me behind on board and allowed her to use her epic tale cards to combo into a victory condition.

What I mean by "more active action cards," is that the only two action cards which give you epic tale cards are "The Bard," and "Sanctuary." If you use "The Bard" to get an epic tale, that's all it does. You haven't affected the board state at all, and the fact that you drafted "The Bard" means that your opponent will have more "active" cards than you in general. "Sanctuary" is a complicated card to evaluate, as placing a sanctuary can affect the board state, but without solid map control, a sanctuary you place can easily end up benefitting your opponent. I think it's a very powerful card if you can place a sanctuary that guaranteed benefits you and you only. If you draft the card and get stuck throwing a sanctuary in a spot that benefits both players, you still got an epic tale card out of it, but your "affecting the board state" is mostly a wash and you played a "passive card."

If you go for a), you will have a stack of epic tale cards that will probably allow you to strip the victory condition your opponent can create using their own epic tale cards. You do have to look at your epic tale cards and sometimes form strategy based on them. Many epic tale cards will dictate a longer-term strategy for you, and I think this aspect of them is pretty cool. With more plays under our belt, I could potentially see it being possible to predict what kind of epic tale card an opponent has based on things they are doing on the board.

I hadn't realized that deed token created by "The Bard" never goes away. It just sits there as your deed forever, and it immediately makes victory much easier to achieve. There are probably situational epic tale cards more powerful than a deed token--when used under ideal conditions--but I think getting a deed token is generally more powerful. Since "The Bard" gives you an epic tale card for free, but only gives you a deed token after removing any enemy clan, this is the game design itself telling you a deed token is stronger than an epic tale card. Holding "The Geis" to counter someone trying to get a deed token is a really strong play that denies them a ton of resources--and it's probably one big reason I lost the game I just played (I had my attempt to take a deed token countered twice). If you can bait "The Geis" and then guaranteed accumulate deed tokens, this is stronger than an opponent who is just using "The Bard" to pile up epic tale cards, as having two deed tokens stocked is likely going to force your opponent to blow their epic tale cards just to stop you from hitting victory conditions.

The dynamic between deed token vs. epic tale card is actually really cool and seems easily overlooked since the rulebook doesn't spell the deed token out very well. I had to read this thread to be sure: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1633265/deeds

The other major thing people don't like about this game is the "attrition-based combat." The way combat worked turned me off on my first play, but after playing a full game and having everything click, I like how combat works. I'll just do some bullet points about why I think combat in this game is good:

-The instigator getting to attack first, and the defender getting to use citadels is a cool design that gives asymmetric advantages to both sides of the clash.
-"Warlord" is an easy card to overlook that can give you a really powerful and overbearing attack if you combo it with another attack/movement card. You can use it to start a fight and attack twice in a row, or attack, and then immediately withdraw.
-The choice of losing a dude from the map or discarding an action card when you are attacked is awesome. Passing your turn and trying to get your opponent to use up their action cards can give you strong attack opportunities where you know what the outcome will be.
-The limited reserve of 12 clans on the map forces combat, as does "The Bard" card's mechanism for giving you an epic deed. I think a lot of people get a first impression of combat in this game as lovely and "lose-lose" for everyone involved, but once you get a better grasp on all the cards and how to actually achieve victory, you will know how to attack in a way that will generate advantages for you while harming the other person (rather than just loving over both people equally).

I'm just really impressed overall. I might change my mind about how epic tale cards work, but I think epic tale cards and deed tokens both function as a timer to move the game toward its end state. It feels to me that there is A LOT you can do to mitigate randomness, especially in a 2-player game. The way passing works and the way you grab a pretender token to go for a victory condition also helps to stop instances of: "I just played four epic tale cards and won..gg," from happening.

FulsomFrank posted:

Also for anyone like myself that enjoys games 2p mostly, a while ago Angel Opportunity I think posted a great summary of 2p Inis:

Funzo posted:

This is really interesting. From all the Inis chat the last page or so it looked like something I'd enjoy, but I rarely get to play with more then 2 players.

Fellis posted:

Is there a full 1828 redesign like this or did they just do that corner as a proof/joke

GrandpaPants posted:

I still loving hate how kingmakery the Geis card is but I think my opinion is biased since the person who consistently has the worst board position grabs it (instead of something that helps him) and denies me a win.

But does he ever do it to stop a Bard from getting a deed? Nope, never.

Mr. Squishy posted:

Pointing at any one part of Inis and saying "this is the kingmakery part I dislike" doesn't really make sense to me. I've never played a game of it which hasn't ended with a player deciding which two people should be blocked from winning.

pospysyl posted:

IMO in that situation it's okay to try to persuade them to do something else. It goes back to that "strategic whining" thing that someone brought up earlier in the thread, it's a legitimate social strategy.

By the way, I love the strategic whining concept. I've played with so many people who do that and it's great to have a concise description of it. Genuinely, thank you.

Pierzak posted:

I wanted to make a copy of Patchwork from actual scraps of cloth/leather for maximum comfy, but got stuck on the labels (and didn't wanna just write/paint on the cloth).

GrandpaPants posted:

Geis specifically doesn't do dick all to advance your own win condition, it just stops one person from advancing theirs. It's fine if you're the one in the lead and just want to solidify your position, but it gives someone kingmaker powers when they'd otherwise not be in contention.

bobvonunheil posted:

Little notes attached with safety pins are a nice thematic way to do it

CaptainRightful posted:

This isn't entirely true. Geis can prevent anything you don't want to happen--you don't have to be in the lead to want to prevent attacks against yourself, or conversely to prevent a festival from screwing with your planned attack--and it's often worth grabbing simply to prevent the leader from getting it.

Pierzak posted:

Tried that, it looks ugly and is way to fiddly because the labels get in the way all the time.

Corbeau posted:

Part of why I like Inis is that players are almost never out of the running

Jedit posted:

Don't take the bait, folks.