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Played some Arkham Horror third edition and a couple games of Psychic Pizza Deliveries To The Ghost Town yesterday. I enjoyed Arkham Horror enough and we ended up beating the recommended starting scenario pretty easily, though after looking we messed up a few things. Totally my fault as I'm the guy who usually buys games and teach them. Ended up using the wrong anomaly deck but after comparing some of the cards doesn't seem like that had an huge impact. Is Arkham a game that gets easier with a lower player count? It just felt really easy after a bit and I keep looking for a rule we did wrong or missed. Then again we were rolling really well. I definitely need more plays of Psychic Pizza Deliveries To The Ghost Town. It has an interesting concept but I really don't know how to play it as a delivery boy. I just kept trying to find a wall and go from there but It's probably better to just spiral out from your starting space maybe? I really need to play it more to figure out where I stand on it.
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Feb 16, 2020 20:40
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Losem posted:Played some Arkham Horror third edition and a couple games of Psychic Pizza Deliveries To The Ghost Town yesterday. I enjoyed Arkham Horror enough and we ended up beating the recommended starting scenario pretty easily, though after looking we messed up a few things. Totally my fault as I'm the guy who usually buys games and teach them. Ended up using the wrong anomaly deck but after comparing some of the cards doesn't seem like that had an huge impact. Is Arkham a game that gets easier with a lower player count? It just felt really easy after a bit and I keep looking for a rule we did wrong or missed. Then again we were rolling really well. If AH3 is anything like AH2 or Eldritch, it gets harder with fewer players and particularly harder if you play with an odd number. The sweet spot is four.
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Feb 17, 2020 01:22
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Glazius posted:
Compared to the original, Marco Polo II has several things that feel different. High dice rolls are not as good in II, since there are few spaces that scale with dice pips. But higher rolls are still better for most things. Even contract heavy strategies need to do some traveling, because you can't pick up new contracts without establishing a trading post in a contract city. Speaking of which, there are two new types of cities in addition to the old action space city and income city. Now there are contract cities that are necessary to take new contracts, and special action cities that can't be used unless you have an upgraded seal of that type. Travel costs have shifted greatly. The nearby city travel costs are much cheaper than the original, but the distant city travel costs are even higher than in Marco Polo I. Full circle routes seem near impossible to pull off, but there are more connections in the middle range to compensate. There's more random setup elements, but the overall game is still tight. People still get blocked hard at times, late game travel is still difficult, and I enjoy the shift towards bigger contracts (more resources needed, but higher rewards on average). That said, I don't like how the vast majority of characters in Marco Polo II have some sort of income per turn. The characters in Marco Polo are more interesting to me.
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Feb 17, 2020 06:44
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The Journeyman expansion for Isle of Skye at the weekend and would thoroughly recommend it. Instead of just adding more tiles or whatever it adds a whole other game on top of your island. Everyone gets a little dude who you make walk around the island you make looking at sheep and cows and giving you various bonuses for it, though you can just pay some money and pretend you saw a cow or whatever. It makes the construction of you island matter a bit more, and makes roads more important as that effects how fast your man can move around. It also gives you a bit of a bonus when people buy your tiles which is good because it's always a bad turn when people buy both your tiles. If you like Isle of Skye then you will probably like Journeyman, it's a really novel expansion that sits really neatly on top of the base game.
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Feb 17, 2020 10:27
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That sounds neat. I always had a soft spot for Isle of Skye as a filler. I like the simple bidding, the island tile building, and the clear goals/scoring.
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Feb 17, 2020 10:30
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golden bubble posted:Compared to the original, Marco Polo II has several things that feel different. High dice rolls are not as good in II, since there are few spaces that scale with dice pips. But higher rolls are still better for most things. Even contract heavy strategies need to do some traveling, because you can't pick up new contracts without establishing a trading post in a contract city. Speaking of which, there are two new types of cities in addition to the old action space city and income city. Now there are contract cities that are necessary to take new contracts, and special action cities that can't be used unless you have an upgraded seal of that type. Travel costs have shifted greatly. The nearby city travel costs are much cheaper than the original, but the distant city travel costs are even higher than in Marco Polo I. Full circle routes seem near impossible to pull off, but there are more connections in the middle range to compensate. There's more random setup elements, but the overall game is still tight. People still get blocked hard at times, late game travel is still difficult, and I enjoy the shift towards bigger contracts (more resources needed, but higher rewards on average). There are routes you can only travel if you have a guild seal, but it seems like the special actions can always be used, you just don't get as much without an improved guild seal? quote:
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Feb 17, 2020 10:47
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The Eyes Have It posted:That sounds neat. I always had a soft spot for Isle of Skye as a filler. I like the simple bidding, the island tile building, and the clear goals/scoring. None of the bidding or main scoring changes so that's all good, apart from how much you will value the tiles. What it adds are 3 tracks, Warrior, Merchant and Poet (I think that's what they're called). You advance on Warrior by seeing things on your Island, like sheep, cows, brochs etc. and when someone buys a tile from you. It gives you VP's every turn. Merchant you advance on by seeing thing like boats, completed land areas etc and it increases your income and makes you man faster. The poet track you advance by going to the Northern/Western/Southern/Eastern most tile on your island or being far away from your castle and it gives you instant VP. After the initial rules dump it doesn't really add too much time to the length of the game either.
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Feb 17, 2020 10:53
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Losem posted:Played some Arkham Horror third edition and a couple games of Psychic Pizza Deliveries To The Ghost Town yesterday. I enjoyed Arkham Horror enough and we ended up beating the recommended starting scenario pretty easily, though after looking we messed up a few things. Totally my fault as I'm the guy who usually buys games and teach them. Ended up using the wrong anomaly deck but after comparing some of the cards doesn't seem like that had an huge impact. Is Arkham a game that gets easier with a lower player count? It just felt really easy after a bit and I keep looking for a rule we did wrong or missed. Then again we were rolling really well. The game will be as difficult as the ghost mayor makes it. Part of why I’m so keen on it is that it’s so easy for anyone to be the GM, unlike tragedy looper. I think going one direction until you hit a wall is fine. Game scales with how many deliveries you must make but I think having fewer players is actually more difficult since you’ll have less players to share the map. I played it 1-on-1 as a deliverer and went one direction, teleported and kept going the same direction, teleported again and went the same direction such that my friend felt bad for me and kept saying “you feel like you’ve been here before” both times as I backtracked to my starting location twice.  needless to say I didn’t make the delivery nor did I even come close to smelling the pizza.
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Feb 17, 2020 12:57
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I played '62 yesterday and there was at least one incident where someone miscalculated their revenue because although we had green tiles, we didn't have green payouts. I was amazed it actually affected anything, I thought we were just grumbling. Also we very sombrely placed a black token on top of the misprint on the payout chart. I still think it's well produced overall, though maybe my standards have been lowered by playing too many Lonny games.
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Feb 17, 2020 16:37
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Losem posted:Played some Arkham Horror third edition and a couple games of Psychic Pizza Deliveries To The Ghost Town yesterday. I enjoyed Arkham Horror enough and we ended up beating the recommended starting scenario pretty easily, though after looking we messed up a few things. Totally my fault as I'm the guy who usually buys games and teach them. Ended up using the wrong anomaly deck but after comparing some of the cards doesn't seem like that had an huge impact. Is Arkham a game that gets easier with a lower player count? It just felt really easy after a bit and I keep looking for a rule we did wrong or missed. Then again we were rolling really well. i've found AH 3e is easiest at 4, 3 seems to be a sweet spot. the game does not really include anything particularly scaling based on player count, even the way to finish the story doesn't seem to account for player numbers. the only thing particularly variable is elite monster health. Some goals require more 'hits' but the additional players makes it require about the same amount of in game time Sloober fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 17:18
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If you get the right group of players King's Dilemma is fuckin' incredible.
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Feb 17, 2020 18:02
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If only the scoring wasn't contingent on voting to move tokens up and down an open scale.
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Feb 17, 2020 20:14
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Lampsacus posted:If only the scoring wasn't contingent on voting to move tokens up and down an open scale. Works for us...
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Feb 17, 2020 20:22
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So I work in the library service, and I recently moved branch/gained seniority and am interested in creating a board game collection as a special project since we're in the process of diversifying generally (Makerspace area, graphic novels area, coding set up, etc etc). There's been a lot of useful info online, but I'm trying to come up with mostly casual to mid-weight games that introduce general game concepts, with a few heavier picks for advanced players. I'm not sure what format these will be used in just yet, though borrowing to take home is off the table for the time being. If you have any experience of that though, please do chime in with how it worked/how you found it! Anyone have suggestions to add or thoughts? Some I've already got as personal donations. I don't quite have a handle on what budget will be like, as we're a relatively underfunded jurisdiction, but hoping I'll be able to argue my way up to a satisfying number.
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Feb 17, 2020 20:38
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That's a pretty solid list for a general library but I would drop Robo Rally entirely and maybe add a few more 2p dedicated games (Patchwork is a great choice).
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Feb 17, 2020 20:59
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My impression is that most, if not all of the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series have significant and story-altering printing issues that never seem to be completely resolved without lots of checking around online. Is that the case?
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Feb 17, 2020 21:08
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Schizophonic posted:So I work in the library service, and I recently moved branch/gained seniority and am interested in creating a board game collection as a special project since we're in the process of diversifying generally (Makerspace area, graphic novels area, coding set up, etc etc). There's been a lot of useful info online, but I'm trying to come up with mostly casual to mid-weight games that introduce general game concepts, with a few heavier picks for advanced players. I'm not sure what format these will be used in just yet, though borrowing to take home is off the table for the time being. If you have any experience of that though, please do chime in with how it worked/how you found it! so i am about to purge a good chunk of my collection. there are some games that are not worth trying to sell because with shipping i'll never compete with amazon and mm. if you want, i can try and get a handle on what games these are and throw them your way for cost of shipping and maybe like 
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Feb 17, 2020 21:10
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As fantastic as Galaxy Trucker is, it tends to be a very loud game (due to the realtime element) and maybe not perfectly suited to a library environment?
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Feb 17, 2020 21:10
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Lampsacus posted:If only the scoring wasn't contingent on voting to move tokens up and down an open scale. Perhaps if we found a way to make each session three hours longer where you place worker-pawn tokens on various spaces to buy stock in the various sliders, draft a set of power tokens to place in your bag for voting time while also deck-building more powerful yay or nay cards from a fixed market, we'd have a REAL game! The King's Dilemma 12XX: Intrigue - Invasion, coming soon to REAL hobbyists everywhere.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:23
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We go to board game cafes a lot. Some thoughts: There's some games that are hard to keep in a functional state. The trains for Colt Express will get destroyed immediately. Galaxy Trucker has a ton of little bits (eg. batteries) that will get lost. The little markers that come with Fake Artist will quickly die - and that's pretty much all that's in the box. Probably want to work in a copy of Settlers of Catan - people will expect it to be there. Don't give in to people who want Risk or Monopoly, but Catan will get played a lot. Get Avalon instead of base Resistance - it's more accessible, despite having more going on. Cat Lady. But yeah, I think you've done a good job covering bases.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:34
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along the same lines, Betrayal at House on the Hill also has that level of brand recognition and may be worth looking into. I've never played it, but I know a lot of people who have only played that, Codenames, and Catan as their designer board games.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:41
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Memnaelar posted:Perhaps if we found a way to make each session three hours longer where you place worker-pawn tokens on various spaces to buy stock in the various sliders, draft a set of power tokens to place in your bag for voting time while also deck-building more powerful yay or nay cards from a fixed market, we'd have a REAL game! This game is John Company.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:46
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Schizophonic posted:So I work in the library service, and I recently moved branch/gained seniority and am interested in creating a board game collection as a special project since we're in the process of diversifying generally (Makerspace area, graphic novels area, coding set up, etc etc). There's been a lot of useful info online, but I'm trying to come up with mostly casual to mid-weight games that introduce general game concepts, with a few heavier picks for advanced players. I'm not sure what format these will be used in just yet, though borrowing to take home is off the table for the time being. If you have any experience of that though, please do chime in with how it worked/how you found it! Kemet is unplayable until you print an extra 4 copies of the power tile and DI card player guides.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:46
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Chill la Chill posted:This game is John Company. ...I mean, I'm not going to lie, that perversely does make me more interested in John Company.
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Feb 17, 2020 21:48
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Memnaelar posted:Perhaps if we found a way to make each session three hours longer where you place worker-pawn tokens on various spaces to buy stock in the various sliders, draft a set of power tokens to place in your bag for voting time while also deck-building more powerful yay or nay cards from a fixed market, we'd have a REAL game! Somehow this gave me a game idea: 18x: rear end Carting in Commodus's Rome
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Feb 17, 2020 21:48
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CommonShore posted:Somehow this gave me a game idea:  18EA, eat rear end
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Feb 17, 2020 22:03
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Thanks for the responses guys, noting it all.Bottom Liner posted:That's a pretty solid list for a general library but I would drop Robo Rally entirely and maybe add a few more 2p dedicated games (Patchwork is a great choice). I included it for the action coding element, but Colt Express is there in that place I suppose? Patchwork is a good choice though, definitely will add it. Shadow225 posted:so i am about to purge a good chunk of my collection. there are some games that are not worth trying to sell because with shipping i'll never compete with amazon and mm. if you want, i can try and get a handle on what games these are and throw them your way for cost of shipping and maybe like With it being States(?) to Ireland shipping would likely be killer, but thank you for the thought! Gutter Owl posted:As fantastic as Galaxy Trucker is, it tends to be a very loud game (due to the realtime element) and maybe not perfectly suited to a library environment? So I don't know about other countries, but in Ireland's libraries have been kind of rebranded as 'community spaces' in the last ten years. So while screaming and running around is still not ideal, no one gets shushed and generally there's an expected understanding that if you come in to study, there can and likely will be groups using the space speaking etc (I don't know how anyone studies when the knitting group is in  ).Regarding games that are harder to keep in a good state, that is a very good point, I'll have a think about it. And yeah, Catan and, much as it pains me, Betrayal should probably both go top of the list retrospectively.
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Feb 17, 2020 22:09
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When i had family members ask why i do a board games, i tried replying with games that spawned genres, but were still some fun in their own right. I went with Pandemic, Agricola, and Dominions?
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Feb 17, 2020 22:16
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ketchup vs catsup posted:My impression is that most, if not all of the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series have significant and story-altering printing issues that never seem to be completely resolved without lots of checking around online. I think that's only the Carlton House box. We played through all of the base game aka Thames Murders without running into any problems like that, and I've not heard anything along those lines for West End Mysteries either.
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Feb 17, 2020 22:19
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NRVNQSR posted:I think that's only the Carlton House box. We played through all of the base game aka Thames Murders without running into any problems like that, and I've not heard anything along those lines for West End Mysteries either. That's our experience as well from doing the 6 West End cases and about half the Thames Murder ones. New set of cases is due soon too.
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Feb 17, 2020 22:32
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Memnaelar posted:Perhaps if we found a way to make each session three hours longer where you place worker-pawn tokens on various spaces to buy stock in the various sliders, draft a set of power tokens to place in your bag for voting time while also deck-building more powerful yay or nay cards from a fixed market, we'd have a REAL game!
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Feb 17, 2020 22:39
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Glazius posted:There are routes you can only travel if you have a guild seal, but it seems like the special actions can always be used, you just don't get as much without an improved guild seal? You're right. But all the special guild actions are near the end of the map. So I don't believe it's worth it to pay those high travel costs unless you have said improved guild seal. Shadow225 posted:along the same lines, Betrayal at House on the Hill also has that level of brand recognition and may be worth looking into. Betrayal at House on the Hill is peak ameritrash. It's a game with a random traitor scenario selected after about 20-30 minutes of mindless wandering by the players. 25% of the time, this results in a tense and interesting conflict between the traitor and the other players. The rest of the time, it's a forgone conclusion or a total mess of rules. Regardless, Betrayal is a really random game. But it does have a lot of scenarios, so players that like novelty more than anything else, love it. golden bubble fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 22:40
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Yeah I also remember when libraries were expected to be quiet. Maybe the ones in schools, but not community ones any more.
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Feb 17, 2020 22:49
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Lampsacus posted:Yeah na yeah, I mean I'd rather it have less mechanics. I am a massive fan of not playing economic euros. 5/10 dig though cheers mate! You're it. You're the one person in this thread who wants less mechanics in a boardgame that's light enough to make people question whether it's actually a boardgame. My bad for lumping you in with the herd on the other side. 10/10 uniqueness factor for you!
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Feb 17, 2020 22:54
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The Eyes Have It posted:Yeah I also remember when libraries were expected to be quiet. Maybe the ones in schools, but not community ones any more. Definitely not quiet in secondary school libraries. Printed text has definitely moved down the ladder in terms of how it is valued as a resource, at least as far as kids are concerned. Libraries are gaming spaces and places to catch up on work on personal devices
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Feb 17, 2020 23:02
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Not a fan of cube economy games myself, and I feel like this thread is pretty heavy on people who don't feel the same. I played Explorers of the North Sea + Rocks of Ruin last night and had a blast. Really simply mechanics, just the right amount of loving each other over with tile placement and Catan-like settlements. I went all in on Garphill games stuff a month or so ago and haven't regretted it in the slightest. This is probably the simplest of the bunch, and feels like a great beer and pretzels game.
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Feb 17, 2020 23:03
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Less mechanics is actually why I love 18xx, splotter, and some wargames. Lots of new heavy euros eschew elegance for complexity and obfuscation. People used to joke about Vlaada mashing mechanics together, but his old designs hold up very well. Compare them to a Lacerda or one of the Italian atelier games.
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Feb 17, 2020 23:03
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ketchup vs catsup posted:My impression is that most, if not all of the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series have significant and story-altering printing issues that never seem to be completely resolved without lots of checking around online. No, the reprints have fixed a great deal of them, though some remain
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Feb 17, 2020 23:04
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golden bubble posted:Betrayal at House on the Hill is peak ameritrash. It's a game with a random traitor scenario selected after about 20-30 minutes of mindless wandering by the players. 25% of the time, this results in a tense and interesting conflict between the traitor and the other players. The rest of the time, it's a forgone conclusion or a total mess of rules. Regardless, Betrayal is a really random game. But it does have a lot of scenarios, so players that like novelty more than anything else, love it. This is correct, it is an absolutely terrible game. How about something like Whitehall Mystery, that a fun game and of a type you dont have on the list there.
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Feb 17, 2020 23:04
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Chill la Chill posted:Less mechanics is actually why I love 18xx, splotter, and some wargames. Lots of new heavy euros eschew elegance for complexity and obfuscation. People used to joke about Vlaada mashing mechanics together, but his old designs hold up very well. Compare them to a Lacerda or one of the Italian atelier games. gonna respectfully disagree with you wrt Vlaada. His heavier offerings are mashing so many mechanics together that it hurts the brain to teach.
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Feb 17, 2020 23:07
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