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Unfortunately since I've never played Train, let alone played it blind, the following is just speculation. I think the criticism that it's disingenuous because it "surprises" you with the Holocaust is a bit off base. As someone mentioned earlier in relation to Archipelago, I think you could make the argument that the design is historically accurate. As far as I know, the consensus is that, of course, not every single person in Germany supported the Holocaust when it occurred. However, cooperation was required on many many fronts, and this was achieved through threats and deception, among other things. This is just cursory research, but the Holocaust Memorial Museum has a section devoted into how many Germans were deceived into believing the Jews were being sent to what was essentially retirement camps. I think an argument could be made that you're playing a historically accurate train station worker in Train that slowly realizes what's happening. cenotaph posted:Train is passing something off as a game and then saying "haha, it was Jews all along! Look at you blindly following orders!" and it's really disingenuous. I would consent to play a game, I would not consent to put people in box cars. I think this is a deliberate point of the game. Again, unless you think that pretty much everyone in Germany was a willing participant in the Holocaust while knowing exactly how bad it is. Given her video game background as well, I also read it as general commentary about how we as gamers will essentially not question anything a game requires us to do, whether it's brutally murdering people or load Jews into trains, unless it's blindingly obvious exactly what's happening and that we are The Bad Guy in a way society doesn't approve of. The point isn't that you were "tricked" into following Hitler; it's a question of WHY playing Train is so unpalatable yet games like Postal or Hitman or a Resident Evil game where you wipe out an African Village don't cause a similar reaction.
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Jan 25, 2016 08:26
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I like the Puerto Rico expansion with the nobles. I end up putting them in the fields while I put my colonists in town.
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Jan 25, 2016 08:29
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Lorini posted:Exactly which is why I didn't have an issue with Archipelago. It was far more realistic and gave the natives some power. I liked the representation myself. Not to mention that unrest rises faster if you treat the natives like poo poo and if you do it too much everybody loses, with the possible exception of one guy who was on the native side to begin with. Literally all the complaints about racism in Archipelago stem from the portrayal of unrest as a Maori warrior sticking his tongue out. It's stupid.
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Jan 25, 2016 09:03
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Aerox posted:I think this is a deliberate point of the game. Again, unless you think that pretty much everyone in Germany was a willing participant in the Holocaust while knowing exactly how bad it is.
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Jan 25, 2016 09:20
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As someone who would never meet eye contact from an artist and just stroll on past, I would never place a meeple in a train and am therefore a good person
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Jan 25, 2016 11:17
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Good thing you folks never played Endeavor  I wonder how many orphans I create in game of Brass or Tinner's Trail. Oh well, they are only future cogs in the machine of industry.
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Jan 25, 2016 11:28
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cenotaph posted:The problem is that it's a poorly made point. You are presumably recruited to play Train by the designer offering you the chance to play her unusual game which is very obviously some kind of art piece what with the broken glass and all. You play the unusual game, perhaps figuring out that it has something to do with the Holocaust before the Auschwitz card, or maybe you don't. At that point maybe you stop, or maybe you want to find out what the artist's vision is so you keep playing. But there's nothing past that. The whole message is "it was the holocaust, you blindly followed rules, and I want you to feel complicit." She says as much in the article. But you didn't blindly follow rules, you voluntarily engaged with her art project. The only thing you are complicit in is giving her a chance to express her creative vision. That's a hell of a lot different than what went on during the holocaust and I'm not going to feel like that's anything but a bait-and-switch. I think we're all overlooking the real issue here: she's ripping off Ticket to Reich.
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Jan 25, 2016 11:30
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Jedit posted:I think we're all overlooking the real issue here: she's ripping off Ticket to Reich. 1488: Railways and National Socialists
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Jan 25, 2016 11:33
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Do we talk about stuff on Kickstarter? I regularly trawl to see what's going down, what's looking good/terrible. Like Control, which looks kind of fun, and is relatively inexpensive. Or The Manhatttan Project: Chain Reaction. Both of those look interesting at least, which is more than be said for this, which inexplicably got funded: Bay Area Regional Planner a game about the San Francisco housing crisis. 
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Jan 25, 2016 13:00
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The_Doctor posted:Do we talk about stuff on Kickstarter? I regularly trawl to see what's going down, what's looking good/terrible. There's a TG Kickstarter thread. Can't link to it as I'm phone posting, but it's out there somewhere. E: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3565139&pagenumber=280&perpage=40 Didn't know about that app function.
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Jan 25, 2016 13:06
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Durendal posted:
Could you (or anyone who has played it) kindly write some more words about this one? I like the looks of it and I am a fan of Keyflower and some games that look more cutesy and less like Chaos in the Old World would be nice on my shelf.
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Jan 25, 2016 13:13
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Jedit posted:There's a TG Kickstarter thread. Can't link to it as I'm phone posting, but it's out there somewhere. Awesome, thanks!
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Jan 25, 2016 13:21
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I played a version of Train where at the end I was handed a card that said "You were playing Fluxx all along" I then looked down at the table in horror as I realized there were no trains, no meeples, only keepers and goals.
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Jan 25, 2016 14:04
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Anyone played the new Eclipse expansion? How is it? Ditto Roll for the Galaxy.
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Jan 25, 2016 14:17
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cenotaph posted:The problem is that it's a poorly made point. You are presumably recruited to play Train by the designer offering you the chance to play her unusual game which is very obviously some kind of art piece what with the broken glass and all. You play the unusual game, perhaps figuring out that it has something to do with the Holocaust before the Auschwitz card, or maybe you don't. At that point maybe you stop, or maybe you want to find out what the artist's vision is so you keep playing. But there's nothing past that. The whole message is "it was the holocaust, you blindly followed rules, and I want you to feel complicit." She says as much in the article. But you didn't blindly follow rules, you voluntarily engaged with her art project. The only thing you are complicit in is giving her a chance to express her creative vision. That's a hell of a lot different than what went on during the holocaust and I'm not going to feel like that's anything but a bait-and-switch. I really fail to see how anyone would be shocked by the 'revelation' with the Auschwitz card. You are playing a game involving 1930's era communications, on a table covered in broken glass where you load figures representing people onto a train. Even if you missed every other blaring hint such as the goddamn SS symbol on the typewriter, it'd have to be obvious the moment you realize the goal is to load meeples onto box cars. The artistic statement of 'Haha you were complicit all along!' feels really forced and the whole thing seems in remarkably bad taste.
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Jan 25, 2016 14:39
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Arcadia Quest After Action Report: My wife and I just finished our first run through of Arcadia Quest. We played a 2 player game using the basic rules, though we accidentally played the outer ring scenarios out of order because we didn't realize they linked up in a particular way. Playing six scenarios took us three consecutive afternoons. The $80 price tag is a bit excessive, but I suppose there's a lot of overhead with so many miniatures and various card sizes involved. The $50 price tag is the only thing keeping me from buying the expansion. The figurines are excellent, though they and the tokens have a tendency to blend into the background of the board/each other. The colored bases help a little, but not much. The rules are simple and for the most part very clear, even though it took us a good forty five minutes to read and digest the entire rulebook, we got a good grasp of the mechanics of the game with very little need to refer back to the rules for clarification. That being said, there were a few gaps. For instance: Can Astral Strike only be used against a target who is close to a member of your guild other than the caster, or can it be used against a target close to any member of your guild? Also, can a member of a rival guild be considered an "ally" if the other player identifies himself as such? In our game, we decided that astral strike could not be used against an enemy close to the caster and that a rival guild could not be considered an ally. In the Final Showdown scenario does Lord Fang's Bloodbath ability heal him even after he's been dealt 13 damage? He has no overkill icon on his card. Also, can he be dealt more wounds than he has wound points, so that even if he can heal using his payback reaction, he still couldn't heal enough to revive? In our game, he could heal even from otherwise fatal damage, but he could be dealt enough damage (18/13) that he couldn't score enough critical hits to heal himself. My wife still has a tough time grasping the concept of "exhaust hero" and also consistently confused "bow type" attacks with any ranged attack because of the "bow" icon on the dice. This led to much consternation after stacking Greensleeves up with multiple magic cards only to be told repeatedly that scoring a crit with a magic card does not activate Greensleeves's Natural Ability. My Team: Diva, Wisp, Maya Game MVP: Diva, who, by the end, was rolling ten defense dice with one reroll, making her effectively indestructible. She took no damage in the Final Showdown in spite of being all up in Lord Fang's face for most of it. Surprise Breakout Character Maya, who I thought was going to be a liability but with a set of Lord's Plate and Burninate II is actually a pretty decent fighter and long range magic support. Surprise Suck Character: Wisp. Needs the Das Boot or Die Booten cards to really shine, but didn't take hits very well and ended up carrying heavy death curses for most of the game. My Wife's Team: Greensleeves, Scarlet, Spike Team MVP: Scarlet. Her extra dice roll against flanked characters got put to very good use. Surprise Breakout: Spike. With a decent set of armor, his critical retaliation ability really stacks up damage. Surprise suck: Greensleves. Although a decent ranged support, never really tilted the game one way or the other. Final Winner: My wife, who won ultimate victory with four medals but only because she kept killing my guys for no reason! I look forward to playing again, but probably not for a couple months at least.
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Jan 25, 2016 14:39
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thespaceinvader posted:I don't think it's been officially confirmed anywhere (though I have a vague feeling that a CGE employee said they were considering it) - but I'd be shocked if they don't given the demand for the game, and there's something to suggest it given that there are tactics with obsolescences written on them which only make sense if they have units which currently don't exist... The obsolescence of Mobile Artillery makes sense if you use a warrior as cavalry with Genghis Kahn
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Jan 25, 2016 14:52
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COOL CORN posted:I bought the digital version of Talisman, and I actually like it a whole lot. Should I hate myself for this?  Good purchase bro, this is also a personal favorite of mine. Its a great time waster on the phone! This program is what got me into Talisman in the first place. COOL CORN posted:Yeah, I think I spoke too soon. After about an hour of playing, I thought "man, I really wish this were a digital version of Mage Knight", and then sent Steam a refund request. 
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Jan 25, 2016 15:30
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Nevvy Z posted:Ditto Roll for the Galaxy. Roll for the Galaxy: Ambition is great - more interesting start tiles and a smoother early game while buffing a few strategies that could use a little bump (Military, Produce/consume with heavy leeching). The goals work really well (better in some ways than Race, I'd say) and they near-tripled the number of start tiles if that was an issue for you. There are 2 new 6-devs that are pretty strong: 3 points per 4+ -cost world (and 3 settle reassigns) and 1 point per red die (and you get 2 reds when you build it), plus a couple of bizarro-tiles (like the return of an extremely expensive Psi-Crystal World/Forecasters). In general it's not strictly necessary but if you like the base game the expansion adds a lot of interesting stuff and has made the game more balanced in our opinion (pulling some power from Dev-spam and buffing heavy settle/produce+consume).
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Jan 25, 2016 15:35
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PBS Newshour posted:I played a version of Train where at the end I was handed a card that said "You were playing Fluxx all along" I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to dislike Fluxx. My non-gaming neighbours are obsessed with it and want to play nothing else! I have Agricola and Coup and Love Letter or Mage Knight we could be playing, but NO they only ever want Fluxx 
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Jan 25, 2016 15:56
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Rutibex posted:I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to dislike Fluxx. My non-gaming neighbours are obsessed with it and want to play nothing else! I have Agricola and Coup and Love Letter or Mage Knight we could be playing, but NO they only ever want Fluxx
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Jan 25, 2016 16:01
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Rutibex posted:I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to dislike Fluxx. My non-gaming neighbours are obsessed with it and want to play nothing else! I have Agricola and Coup and Love Letter or Mage Knight we could be playing, but NO they only ever want Fluxx And they say that his heart grew three sizes that day...
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Jan 25, 2016 16:07
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Rutibex posted:I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to dislike Fluxx. My non-gaming neighbours are obsessed with it and want to play nothing else! I have Agricola and Coup and Love Letter or Mage Knight we could be playing, but NO they only ever want Fluxx When the Keepers become Creepers, Rutibex shall fall.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:10
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Rutibex posted:
Don't worry Rutibex my friend, I did get it on my phone since I had some spare survey money to spend, and it's a lot more fun when I can just take my turn and then do something else for a few minutes while the computers go.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:18
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Here are a few Netrunner cards that seemed to me to be not very useful. Maybe I'm missing something. Pad Campaign: Gain +1 credit at the beginning of each turn. Not bad, the earlier the better, but it has a res cost of 2 and will need to be protected with ICE. The best I can see with this is basically bluffing with your ICE strength or hoping that your opponent won't bother trying a run for it? It's not worth protecting with good ICE and will only become a net profit after several turns of being unaccessed. Is this just a kinda trash card for keeping unrezzed and distracting from your agenda servers? Snare: If the runner pulls this from R&D, they immediately suffer net damage (or something like that). This seems like a worthless card. Its usage is contingent upon your own failure to protect your R&D, and even then it's basically random chance. When you're succeeding, ie drawing up cards from R&D, it immediately becomes a useless, even detrimental, dead card in your hand. Jinteki has 3 of these. Drawing them while thirsty for credits was like a kick in the balls. I forget the name of this next one, but it's a region upgrade that costs 6 credits to rez and makes agendas take 1 less advancement to score. This seems incredibly situational. Installing it early in the game obviously gives it the most benefit, but it's 6 credits for 1 click and 1 credit less on an agenda. I realize that the corporation must place and score agendas as fast as possible, but placing this card has a steep cost, especially when you consider that you will need to bulk up your ICE as well, because the runner is going to presume you're placing high-value agendas in that server. I definitely don't have a handle on cost/return with ICE yet. While playing I declined to rez most of the time because the runner had icebreakers that would compromise my defenses immediately, but now I'm realizing that introducing an arduous resource drain to runs might be almost as important as ending runs.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:49
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Anonymous Robot posted:Here are a few Netrunner cards that seemed to me to be not very useful. Maybe I'm missing something. Please join us in the netrunner thread. Snare! and PAD Campaign are indeed useful. Also, San San City Grid is so dang good it has been restricted.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:53
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Rutibex posted:I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to dislike Fluxx. My non-gaming neighbours are obsessed with it and want to play nothing else! I have Agricola and Coup and Love Letter or Mage Knight we could be playing, but NO they only ever want Fluxx You dug your grave, now lie in it. Facedown please.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:08
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Bottom Liner posted:The starter decks are pretty awful and not a good intro to the game, but people online have made much better balanced and designed decks depending on what cards you have access to. Especially the NBN and Jinteki starter decks, which are really not very good. Anonymous Robot posted:Here are a few Netrunner cards that seemed to me to be not very useful. Maybe I'm missing something. PAD is typically thrown out behind cheapo ice like Hunter or none at all, since trashing it will usually put a hit in the runner's economy. Some runners will kill it, others won't, but either way you come out ahead in the short term. It does hurt that core set decks that rely on it for econ, PAD is a mainstay of a lot of corps but they usually have some other synergy with remote servers. Snare! is great because it punishes the runner for accessing your cards. No server is perfectly secure in Netrunner, the bomber always gets through. This is especially true for Jinteki, their ice typically prioritizes hurting the runner over actually ending the run. Additionally, if you can stack up some other net damage during the run or by following up with a Neural EMP then you can potentially get a flatline out of it; even more so if you're playing Scorched Earth and the runner can't drop the tag. Keeping one in your hand is a decent way to discourage HQ accesses even without ice. That said core set Jinteki has garbage economy options and Snare! does cost quite a bit of money. SanSan City Grid ties into NBN's specialty- 'fast advance.' Trying to score, say, Private Security Force, with it is an exercise in frustration- PSF costs 4 clicks to score, SSCG reduces that to 3, so you're spending six credits to save a click and a credit- not good. It's meant for 3 point agendas such as AstroScript Pilot Program- you can install, advance, rez SanSan, advance, and suddenly you've scored a two-point agenda that the Runner never got a shot at stealing. AstroScript also has a paid ability to instantly place an advancement counter on an agenda so you can score another AstroScript with no SanSan or other support- and you can even score a 4/2 along with a SanSan. SSCG and Astro (along with Haas' Biotic Labor) are foundations of 'fast advance' strategies that score their agendas from hand without ever putting them on the board for the runner to steal. ICE payment is rather complicated. Early on your economy sucks and lots of runners will blindly run your ice without breakers just to hurt your economy. Late game the runner will have icebreakers to get past all of them and usually have a huge chunk of money to get through. Ice is largely meant to slow down the runner either by discouraging them from running it (Neural Katana) or by costing a huge amount of money to break (Tollbooth), but when you rez it you have to keep in mind the size of your credit pool- do you still have the money to protect other servers, score agendas, play operations in your hand? Also yeah this wall of text probably should have gone in the actual thread
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Jan 25, 2016 17:17
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Thanks for the tips y'all, my understanding of the game's nuance is expanding quickly. I'll take future questions to the thread.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:52
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Tekopo posted:This is like a M. Night Shyamalan film. One day, Rutibex finds a duplicate of this post, but instead of Fluxx, the game being complained about is Talisman. It is only then that Rutibex realises that he was that friend all along. sector_corrector posted:And they say that his heart grew three sizes that day... PBS Newshour posted:When the Keepers become Creepers, Rutibex shall fall. Bottom Liner posted:You dug your grave, now lie in it. Facedown please. Fluxx, not even once. COOL CORN posted:Don't worry Rutibex my friend, I did get it on my phone since I had some spare survey money to spend, and it's a lot more fun when I can just take my turn and then do something else for a few minutes while the computers go. Ok, all is forgiven. I will admit that I do not watch the computers take their turns, I'll usually have it in the background as I am reading forums or something. The fact that the computer players take so long lets me read quite a few posts between having to make any kind of decision. It has all the appeal of Progress Quest, with a decision here and there for flavor.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:09
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disperse posted:Best Mage Knight starting position & hand ever. utana posted:The obsolescence of Mobile Artillery makes sense if you use a warrior as cavalry with Genghis Kahn The obsolescence of Fortifications, OTOH...
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Jan 25, 2016 18:21
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thespaceinvader posted:I'm assuming Savage Harvesting onto the Ruins works, but I can't work out the exact sequence without spending more time on it. Green die to power Harvesting for move 4, discard Promise/March/Concentration for crystals. Mana Draw to take red die plus the three crystals you just made. Swap out for Gold and Gold in competitive, to be a jerk. If you have your choice of tactics, you can use Mana Steal to take the green die and save having to discard Concentration, which is usually your best card in the early game.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:47
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How good is that Vassal module? Does it automate anything or is it just a graphical interface?
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Jan 25, 2016 18:56
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All this talk about Keyflower has me this close to pulling the trigger on it. Are the expansions any good and worth grabbing with it or should I hold off? Also, I got to try Bohnanza this weekend with our group and it was a delayed hit. At first people were hesitant and not really getting it (which I suppose is the same for everything) but by the second round it was madness and everyone loved it. Can't believe I've never heard of it until recently. We also got to try Machi Koro and Seven Wonders for the first time. Machi Koro was cute and fun and frustrating because the one player kept rolling sixes and stealing cash and buildings from us. Seven Wonders was an odd duck, I think it'd be more interesting in repeated playthroughs but there was just so much going on and I had no clue really on what was a good strategy and what wasn't. Just a whirlwind. Very quick though.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:00
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Aerox posted:This discussion reminds me a lot of a bunch of issues that came up when Brenda Romero released Train, which I still think is one of the most interesting things to ever happen in the board game space. Assuming the article is based on Romero's own words, given that quote:The challenge she created for herself was to capture and express difficult emotions with game mechanics. and she seems to have accomplished this via the visual design and the revelation of the destination, Train seems to be a failure. On the other hand, she clearly doesn't view it that way. This bit quote:The game was designed with “procedural gaps,” or intentional missing explanations that force the players to stop the game and agree to the rules. Those procedural gaps “force complicity,” Romero said. makes sense in context, but most people would view it as bad game design in any other context. Same with the lack of an ending condition. This, and the fact that there seems to be only one copy, seems more like questioning the boundaries of games and art to me.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:01
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Gutter Owl posted:Green die to power Harvesting for move 4, discard Promise/March/Concentration for crystals. Mana Draw to take red die plus the three crystals you just made. Using Mana Steal, getting level 3 and then probably knocking off a mage tower on the next turn with concentration is amazing.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:21
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"The Mechanic is the Message" is a take on games that's more explicit than the more nebulous "conveyance." The very essence of worker placement games is that workers are more or less interchangeable, sometimes expendable, and that some or all of an economy is a zero-sum game. I'd say picking on the Holocaust is pretty heavy-handed, but I'm not sure it's in poor taste.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:22
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FulsomFrank posted:All this talk about Keyflower has me this close to pulling the trigger on it. Are the expansions any good and worth grabbing with it or should I hold off? Keyflower is a solid 10 without expansions, so definitely pick it up. Great at all player counts too. 7 Wonders really clicks around the 3rd play through, once you've seen most of the cards and understand the importance of various resources and learn to read your civ card and what you need to build towards for your wonders. I think at this point I prefer the 2 player version of the game though, 7 Wonders Duel. Other than being a two player game, it streamlines the whole experience and feels more refined. My only critique of Duel is that it plays almost too quickly, a lot of games I end up wanting a fourth age to continue building the tableau I've worked on.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:35
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The thought that the brown pieces in Puerto Rico represent slaves has never occurred to me because the brown pieces are used throughout the game. Folks, slaves don't work in universities or factories, or trading centers. So why would anyone think they were slaves??? Confused now.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:35
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I see the focus of Puerto Rico as being more on industry, and that industry happens to be built on plantations run by European interests. You see and interact with the plantations and workers before you get to anything else. Ultimately it's all up to interpretation, sure. Like someone else said, I don't really have any issue with someone choosing or refusing to play based on their interpretation. It doesn't handle dicey topics insensitively like CAH does, so I wouldn't campaign against it. I also wouldn't totally ignore the potential for it to be offensive, either. Baron Fuzzlewhack fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 19:51
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