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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:So I showed my boyfriend cutthroat caverns as well as a few of the other games you guys suggested. Unfortunately one of the links I gave him went to SUSD and now he wants cosmic encounter. This plan certainly went well. Well, we tried. I think Cosmic Encounter is vaguely better than Munchkin, at least.
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Dec 14, 2014 15:20
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I've just played Castles of Burgundy for the first time, and I'm feeling a little disappointed by this game that a bunch of people seem to be talking up. We played a four player game which lasted for over 2 hours and I ended up winning by about 30 points. It feels like a game of 'action economy' more than anything else; trying to make sure that you're able to do as much as possible on a turn-by-turn basis rather than specifically building towards a goal, and the only long term strategy is completing all of your larger 'regions' before the end of the game comes around. None of this ever felt difficult to do, in our game everyone filled their largest areas and populated their farmlands all with one variety of animal. It didn't ever really feel like meaningful decisions were being made. So I guess I'm a little surprised that everyone seems to think Castles of Burgundy is such a great game. It's mathematically elegant I suppose but for how long it goes, it feels like there are too few actual decisions to be all that enjoyable. Is there something about this game I'm missing? Maybe some Castles of Burgundy apologists can speak up and let me know what it is about this game that makes it so amazing.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:40
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silvergoose posted:It gets shorter once everyone's played a few times, and/or you have a lot of AP people. 2 player it takes well under an hour, and 4 player I'd say more like 90 minutes. We were playing it for the first time, and we were chatting a lot as well. I'm sure that it could be pretty fast with a more dedicated or experienced group, but it still felt a lot like going through the motions instead of making actual strategic decisions.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:57
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I've been playing stuff like Agricola and Terra Mystica for years, I guess I was surprised that such a highly-regarded game didn't seem to have more going on strategy-wise. At least Castles of Burgundy will be easier to get to the table than those other ones, which tend to sit around unopened for years 
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Dec 14, 2014 20:54
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elgarbo posted:I have a small but growing board game collection. So far, my fiancee and I have accrued Carcassonne, Love Letter and Pandemic, which we've enjoyed immensely. However, we also picked up Tales of the Arabian Nights and Ladies and Gentlemen and the really strong themes in both these games has really won us over. Battlestar Galactica is a classic highly-thematic game, but it plays best with exactly 5, and only OK with other numbers. Chaos in the Old World is quite thematic, and a good buy if you are into Warhammer Fantasy at all. Plays exactly 4. If you are looking for thematic co-op probably Eldritch Horror is your best bet, but that can boil down to a whole lot of dice chucking. It isn't as restrictive with player numbers as those other two though. Also people keep talking about Kemet, which is packed with gorgeous Egyptian-themed art and a really good game to boot. If that fits the bill as 'thematic' then you should definitely go for that.
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Dec 15, 2014 08:54
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Broken Loose posted:Space Alert, Tragedy Looper, Dungeon Lords, Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Petz, Click Clack Lumberjack, Falling, Lifeboats, Netrunner, the previously mentioned Battlestar Galactica, and The Resistance+. Come to think of it, if you and your fiancee liked Ladies and Gentlemen, the realtime components of Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert will be up your alley. plus you will be paying proper respect to Vlaada. Space Alert needs 4 or 5 players though.
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Dec 15, 2014 09:02
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ambushsabre posted:Speaking of free print-n-play games, does anyone know of any good ones? You can get a Print-n-Play copy of BattleCon: Devastation of Indines that comes with four characters. The Battlecon thread has more info. The Battlecon system is a very elegant card-based combat system reminiscent of fighting games like Street Fighter, based around simultaneously revealing adjective-noun pairs (like 'Burning Strike' formed by a 'Burning' card paired with a 'Strike' card), and is very strongly based around second-guessing your opponent. I highly recommend it, and if you get into the main game there are a ridiculous 30 characters in the big box, all of which play very differently, and about a dozen different ways to play the game itself. The box says it's a game for 1-5 players but it's a two player game at heart. Maybe a 4 player game in 2v2 teams if you like clusterfucks. [EDIT] Another four characters for Print n Play can be found here bobvonunheil fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 14:25
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Elysium posted:So update on the suggestions I was asking for... I ended up just buying Puerto Rico. It probably won't see much play with my group but I figure it's one of those games I should probably at least own and try out. Puerto Rico's a solid game that has a place in any collection; even if it doesn't get a whole lot of play, it's a good pick.
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Dec 15, 2014 16:44
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Tekopo posted:I haven't tried it myself, but it was commented within my meetup group and the overall consensus was 'why go to a board game cafe that's kind of out of the way when you can play at the meetup for free?' To comment on this, my partner and I often attend Thirsty Meeples, the Oxford board game cafe, and we love going there even though there is a weekly boardgame meetup close by. However that meetup is only on Monday, not practically every day of the week like London On Board is. It's great to be able to just turn up and play one of their huge library of games, and have good quality snacks/drinks without having to interrupt everything to go make them. It also provides a neutral meeting place to play boardgames instead of having to invite people you've just met to your home. I've played about a dozen games I wouldn't have touched otherwise by going to the board game cafe, and they are pretty good for limited-life games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. If you wanted to be really frugal I suppose you could arrange to meet people at pubs to play boardgames you already own (as in, outside of a Meetup arrangement), but a cafe dedicated to boardgames is pretty nice to have.
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Dec 16, 2014 19:10
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Impermanent posted:This is a perfect summary of one turn of Kemet.
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Dec 16, 2014 19:14
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The first time I played Kemet, it was with 5 people and the last two rounds devolved into everyone collectively working out how to prevent a particular player from winning that round, like a highly quarterbacked many-vs-one co-op game where the solo player shifted around based on who was about to win. I really want to play it again with all the hype this thread has been giving it. Probably with fewer people, I think 5 is too much, and can cause 2 or 3 of the players to be forced to play Kingmaker towards the end.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:13
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Shut Up and Sit Down are talking up Doomtown now. Has anyone played this?
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Dec 18, 2014 20:59
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Countblanc posted:I haven't, but these people probably have: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3658929 Man this is just like the time I asked why nobody was talking about Battlecon
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Dec 18, 2014 21:45
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ambushsabre posted:What do you guys think about the Lord of the Rings LCG re: quaterbacking? Quarterbacking is a problem that happens when one person at the table is much more experienced than the other player(s). If everyone has a similar level of experience, it's called collaboration instead, and encouraging collaboration is the actual goal of co-operative games. Lord of the Rings LCG is a prebuilt deck game, so you have the problem that you always have with prebuilt deck games when playing with a more casual group - the person who's most keen on the game will be the one who builds the decks, gets the expansions, brings everything to the table while the other(s) play through what that person has decided to give them. In these cases, you will be much more experienced than your gaming partner, and you risk turning the whole thing into a game you are playing by yourself with someone else helping keep track of what you're doing. In most games you can just play them a few more times until everyone knows enough about the game that they can all provide meaningful input. It's a different sort of quarterbacking problem you get with LotR LCG, as it needs people to go away and do their homework (that is, build their own deck), and it can be hard to get people to start making that kind of mental investment. Once that happens though, quarterbacking will start to turn into collaboration, but getting to that point can be difficult with a game with as much going on as LotR LCG.
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Dec 23, 2014 04:48
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Impermanent posted:Trip report : played hyperborea. It seemed imbalanced, but then I barely lost to another player with an ability I overlooked. Overall, the cube puzzling seemed AP inducing and the combat too simple for a game of its type, but it has a lot of good ideas and I look forward to someone making a different game inspired by the mechanics. What do you mean by a 'game of its type'? Hyperborea is a euro area control game, I would expect combat to be simple. It dresses in the clothes of a 4X game but it's really not.
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Dec 24, 2014 07:22
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Blamestorm posted:In my experience with TI3 combat is like a switch that only flips one way, it almost never happened until someone in our group started playing more aggressively and now it happens a lot. Eclipse even more so. I think in both games once people started getting their heads around mechanics and strategy they started focusing more on what other players were doing and interaction sky rocketed. In Eclipse in particular fighting starts early and keeps going heavy throughout the game. It's definitely a mentality thing, and 4x games are prone to it. It's like those guys who play RTS games and never attack until they have researched every technology and hit the game's unit limit. The other problem is that if you attack early and are wildly successful you can put someone out of the game, which means there are another 4 hours they have to sit around not doing anything for (or just leave).
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Jan 7, 2015 02:15
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Toshimo posted:
Cribbage is boss. Cribbage goons represent. There is a variant of cribbage where you play cards one at a time in a 5x5 grid, and one player scores 5-card Cribbage hands vertically while the other scores them horizontally. It's a great game you can play with a standard deck of cards. (edit: rules for this variant are here. It helps to know what cribbage hands are the 'best' - the highest scoring cribbage hands are the likes of 5-5-5-5-10, 6-7-7-8-8, etc) bobvonunheil fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 06:24
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Wildly different art for different localizations of a game is fun. Check out the variety in box art for Coup: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgameversion?linked_src_objecttype=thing&linked_src_objectid=131357 This is the best version of Coup: 
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Jan 7, 2015 08:27
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Elyv posted:Speaking of reskinning games, I remember someone posted a reskinning of Dominion with anime girls in the last thread. I can't find pictures though, probably searching for the wrong thing. You're looking for Tanto Cuore. But don't get it unless you want to perpetuate the stereotype of boardgamers being socially maladjusted shut-ins.
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Jan 7, 2015 08:38
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Countblanc posted:It's actually cool The game itself may be good (I haven't played it), but it sure as hell doesn't pass the 'Would I feel comfortable playing this in public' test. See: The game's base currency cards.
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Jan 7, 2015 09:28
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Dominion is killed for me by people who don't understand how to loving play a few goddamn cards and what the available cards in the card pool do, gently caress. Dominion should last 20 minutes, tops. When it takes over an hour I start pulling my hair out and never want to play it again. This is due to the people I play it with more than the game itself, mind.
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Jan 9, 2015 12:49
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Mister Sinewave posted:I have been playing some Legends of Andor lately, and let me tell you I'm quite pleased so far. It's a 2-4 player co-op and I'm going to say nice things about it I quite liked how combat fit into the wider strategy of this game, and it hit us a completely unexpectedly the first time we played it. We were all 'man, these monsters are easy! Let's smash them all down!' and then we realised we needed to get to the tree on the other side of the map in 2 turns without so much as touching another monster if we were to have any chance of winning. Definitely an interesting take on standard co-op type games, where you are just trying to stave off the inevitable until you win.
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Jan 19, 2015 10:47
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Fat Turkey posted:Castles of Burgundy has been fairly cheap for a while on BBGuru (£19 which would be akin to $19), I recall hearing good things but know nothing about the game. Any words? Castles of Burgundy is an excellent buy for $19. It's a 2-4 player game where your actions are restricted by dice rolls and what's available on the market. You can mitigate the dependence on random chance by acquiring resources - workers and silver - that help you adjust your dice rolls or buy from a central 'black market', respectively. The rules are all fairly straightforward and after you explain them once they should gel together easily. It's pretty frontloaded when you first pick it up though. I found it a bit of a letdown on my first play but that was because it took 3 hours (with 4 new players) and with 4 players you don't have nearly the same problem of having to make hard decisions with suboptimal actions that you do with 2 or 3 players, as the market is much bigger. I have played it twice since, with 4 and 2 players, and enjoyed it more. The game is the definition of point salad. You will win the game if you are able to make the most of your actions to achieve a wide range of smaller goals (like 'build all mines asap', 'corner the cow market' or 'fill this massive brown space with buildings'). If this sounds like it would interest you, then you will probably like Castles of Burgundy. If, however, you want to have a grand strategy and execute it, this game is probably not for you. bobvonunheil fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 12:33
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Single Tight Female posted:Also, while going through your old posts I was amused to see this Earth Reborn is one of those games where after you put it down for a long time you have to read a ton of poo poo to get yourself up to speed again. I can understand how he might have the intention to play it but the actual act of doing so is more daunting.
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Jan 22, 2015 14:42
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Prairie Bus posted:I think we're in agreement that it's elegant, but for the sake of argument, i maintain that it's not tight. It's an extra, easily forgotten rule. Tightness is about having less rules that easily slot into each other, not in having weird corner case rules. I'm pretty sure nobody that I've ever taught Dungeon Petz to has ever, ever forgotten that pets you don't buy from the stalls are rendered into meat.
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Jan 23, 2015 11:17
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Robust Laser posted:I know the imps in Dungeon Petz will work good in a pinch as caltrops, but are there any board games with pieces as dangerous as that, or even more dangerous? You want Kemet, those pyramids are designed to be extra pointy. Plus they've got enough heft to put an eye out.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:03
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Krazyface posted:The fuel rods in Space Alert can be used to gradually drive someone insane. If you have the second edition plastic ones, definitely. That poo poo is practically designed to roll onto the ground after the table is given an accidental nudge.
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Jan 26, 2015 11:28
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I discovered board games through Betrayal at House on the Hill and Descent 1st Edition about 8 years ago. Cue months of trying to invite people over to play a sprawling dicefest dungeon crawl and getting that ridiculous "Road to Legend" expansion that nobody in their right mind would actually play to completion.
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Jan 27, 2015 12:57
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You should call it 'The Chip' for short, like people call Agricola 'The Gric'.
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Jan 27, 2015 13:47
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Can't play this game while barrelling down the M25 with a rabid dog in the passenger seat, would not back.
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Jan 28, 2015 17:33
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Xaris posted:I don't know know if you're talking about the same scoring problem, but I agree it's not so good. I love the artwork, concept, and almost everything, but hot drat it really needs some work with how things are scored and its kind of a fundamental problem that isn't so easy to fix. I had a great time with Sheriff of Nottingham generally being a sneaky bastard and offering money to the Sheriff to open my bag, goading him into opening clean bags or outright admitting there was contraband in my bag and that the Sheriff was allowed to have one of the cards if he let me through, and so on. It really does feel like it needs less of a penalty on the Sheriff for inspecting clean bags though, especially when they get big. In a hypothetical situation where 4 players put out bags of 4 goods, 2 of which are clean and 2 of which contain a single contraband (but are otherwise clean), the Sheriff will lose out on inspecting all bags while even the smuggling players who are caught will come out ahead. I think in that sort of situation the Sheriff should break even or come out ahead, otherwise the main 'game' of negotiating with the sheriff over a bag of unknown (to him) stuff just doesn't happen My proposed fix: The sheriff can only be penalised for a maximum of 5 coins per player. bobvonunheil fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Jan 29, 2015 |
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Jan 29, 2015 10:26
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QnoisX posted:I didn't really like Sheriff of Nottingham. Of course, maybe it would just that I played with terrible people or had terrible luck. The person to my right wouldn't let me through with any contraband. I tried bribing and it was a no go. If I have contraband worth 9 coins and you demand 12 to let it through or like all of my chickens, it's just a non starter. The person to my left would let pretty much everyone through even if it was obvious that you had all contraband. At most he'd ask for a single card. I really tried to be honest and just put in legit goods, but unless you draw a bunch of the same item, you're screwed on that front as well. I know one guys put in 5 apples, 4 times in a row. I even tried to call him on it, but he had 5 loving apples every time. That part seems really luck based. I mostly drew contraband, so after about 3 bags everyone started checking mine regardless of what I said. Even the guy that was letting everyone else through. I ended up in last place with the least of every good and not even the most contraband. Apple guy bribed the guy to my left twice in a row and threw in 5 contraband each time. He'd mostly been drawing legit goods the whole game so he also was number 1 on 2 different things. Honestly the game felt like I was playing Coup with 2 Contessas. Sure you can lie all you want, but if someone calls you on it on the first turn, you're done. The game I played had a player try to get heaps of apples through, turn after turn. She got called out every time and routinely had all apples. She'd tried smuggling through some contraband now and then but if she hadn't tried that she would have won the game easily. So luck (and particularly apples, as they're so common in the deck) is a significant factor. Also yes, you can declare one legal good, if you bring in different legal goods you lose them and get fined for them. That said, if people aren't going to engage in the social aspect of a social game, then it's never going to work or be fulfilling. It's like not having any discussion in The Resistance.
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Jan 29, 2015 12:48
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Rutibex posted:Those who enter the Timescape rarely leave....unchanged I draw the Omnipotent Being. Oh hey, I rolled a 6! I will go to the Crown of Command please.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:24
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Does 'lose the game' mean you are out of the game and can't play any more? I think when you die you are supposed to start with a new character but 'lose the game' is different wording. This might actually be a better outcome than getting to the Crown of Command!
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Jan 29, 2015 16:15
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GrandpaPants posted:Judging by the wording, I think you see that when you get to the Crown of Command. So it's worse because you had the opportunity to end it but failed. In fact, you can even see him grabbing the Crown in the picture. Standard Talisman 'death' conditions require you to start again with a completely new character, whereas this just says 'You lose the game'. As I recall, getting to the Crown of Command gives the player a chance (50%) to cause 1 damage to another player of their choosing each turn, and removes the ability for dead players to restart as new characters. Even after getting to the Crown, the game still has roughly half an hour to go as you zap your opponents down turn by turn and hope there isn't a healer nearby. So if you want the game to be 'over', at least for you, drawing this card can actually be an improvement over continuing to play because it says that you lose instead of just dying and starting over. Though some may want to houserule it (hah!) that you do get to keep playing as a new character.
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Jan 29, 2015 17:21
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disperse posted:Speaking of Agricola I have a rules question. I've been playing a fair bit of solo Agricola recently and have been playing such that excess food gets eaten at every harvest because this was a rule I remember existing. I looked it the rulebook and didn't see this rule listed, am I playing it wrong? You don't have to give away all your food after a harvest; you just need to feed them what they need. Though that might be an interesting rule, maybe you could total up all the excess food you 'spent' and get a Feast Bonus or something at the end worth a few victory points.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:49
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Ravendas posted:Played Castles of Burgundy for the first time, two players with my wife. I'd like to add to this that I didn't enjoy Castles of Burgundy all that much the first time for a lot of the reasons you've listed, but on repeat plays I've started to enjoy it a lot more as the real point of the game comes across - trying to best optimise each of your turns and slowly push all of your goals until you reach them in the closing rounds (like filling large regions, completing building types, etc), while preventing your opponent from doing the same, if possible.
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Feb 2, 2015 08:25
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Indolent Bastard posted:Any thoughts on Sheriff of Nottingham? I like what I see, but I wonder how it holds up over repeated plays? It works best as a gateway or icebreaker game, I don't think you'd get much out of repeated play with the same group.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:10
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Medium Style posted:I'd also like to hear from goons about this game. This was recommended to be because I like bluffing/deduction games, but it looks to me like there's next to zero in-game information for the sheriff to use to work out who might be lying. It's mostly just on a hunch, or on who is acting suspicious. It also seems like the best way to score points is to ignore contraband completely and just go for sets of legal goods. I would worry that those two things would drive the bluffing/deduction out of the game after several plays. There is no real in-game information about what a player is smuggling, apart from watching what your opponents discard and seeing how much contraband they have already smuggled through. You mostly guess on a hunch, or try to extract cash from players to make you open other players' bags. A player who brings in legal goods of the same type over and over again will probably beat a player who tries to smuggle contraband and gets caught now and then, but if you shuffle the deck well players are much less likely to draw 6 chickens in a row and this is less of a problem. Shuffling well is super important in this game - after each game, all the goods will be bunched together. I recommend a pile shuffle with at least 10 piles. I feel that the penalty on the Sheriff needs to be reduced (either capped to 4 coins or halved) for the game to work properly, as the Sheriff takes on way too much risk. The power needs to be in the sheriff's hands for the game to work, and it just kind of... isn't.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:19
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Schizoguy posted:Why does the Sheriff have to pay a penalty if he searches a legal bag? In fact, why are there penalties at all? Why can't it just be something like "The Sheriff must search exactly one bag each round. If the player whose bag gets searched is caught lying, then the Sheriff gets to keep and score ALL of the contents of that bag." I guess it's to stop the Sheriff from just opening every single bag every round, that would be just as boring as if he didn't. The more I think about your other suggestion, the more I like it. It doesn't balance for 3-5 players though.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:35
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