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I distinctly prefer Summoner Wars to Mage Wars. Mage Wars is what you get when you really commit 100% to a highly thematic wizard battle card game: it takes hours and hours, every turn is an AP-fest because you have to choose two of your three dozen spells before you even start the turn, the rulebook is bloated with a thousand status effects and edge cases. And yet for all of this, it's still a pretty good game, and that's a significant achievement. If you play Diablo PvP and say "I wish there were a super-complicated board game that was just like this and actually pretty decent" then that's Mage Wars. Summoner Wars is what you get if you take the same concept and you make a few more concessions to mechanical tightness. It's easy to learn, can be played in a reasonable amount of time, has some very cool hand management mechanics and Interesting Decisions (TM). The disadvantage is it's slightly more abstract; like thematically it's not entirely clear why you get more mana from killing enemies or from discarding monsters from your hand. Even still it's a very thematic game by most reasonable standards. McNerd fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 20, 2015 17:37
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Rad Valtar posted:Need some thoughts on Dicetown and also Bang vs Bang The Dice Game? Couple of games my wife thinks looks interesting. Bang is a hidden roles games where the roles aren't really that "hidden" once you figure out how to play well, IMO. The battle lines are drawn pretty quickly and then it's mostly just a straightforward shootout where everyone follows the script. The card art adds a lot of flavor, but the cards are complicated to explain and don't really add gameplay depth as most decisions are pretty obvious. Also it's very long and that's annoying if you got knocked out early. So I guess the publishers figured there's little value lost in taking out the overcomplicated card deck and replacing it with simple dice rolls. I haven't played it but reading the rules, it looks like they did a decent job of that, and these days if I had to play either game, I'd probably go with the dice game. I'd also recommend looking into Coup or The Resistance depending how many players you typically have if you want a game that really gets the most out of the hidden roles/bluffing concept. (Not to be confused with the new Coup: Resistance G54.) McNerd fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 02:41
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Rusty Kettle posted:Cool Mysterium tip, especially with those with quarterback problems: have the investigators describe their visions instead of just laying them out. The game gets harder, but it is more thematic and everyone has a part. This seems to go really far in the other direction. The problem, so often, is that the clue is buried in some very small detail of the vision. So if the player doesn't know to describe that detail, the other players won't be able to give any help. I would really hate to be the new guy that gets stuck losing round after round and loses the whole game when everyone else figured their clues out three rounds ago.
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Oct 27, 2015 19:23
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NGDBSS posted:So what were the issues with Dead of Winter? I've gathered that as a whole this thread has soured on it, but I've not noticed an aggregate of its perceived problems so much as folks mentioning this or that detail. (I was at a board game meetup this evening and someone else mentioned it.) I haven't played, but here are the complaints I've heard:
McNerd fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 04:26
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Rutibex posted:It is pro-tier strategy to never trade in Catan, of course once everyone figures this out the game is ruined forever. I always hear this, but why/how is it true? Or is it just very exaggerated? In a 4P game if I make trades with all three opponents (and if those trades are more or less equitable, at least on average), surely I benefit three times as much as they do? Isn't that huge for me? Obviously you don't want to trade with someone who's clearly winning or who is about to block you on the board or steal the cards back with Monopoly, but other than that trading ought to be very strong and important?
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Nov 11, 2015 16:58
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Rutibex posted:I think it comes down to the fact that almost always the trades being offered will be of more benefit to the person offering the trade than anyone that wants to accept it. People don't offer trades unless they they need a specific resource to build what they want to. By offering to trade your opponent is telling you that they are close to scoring a point and/or more resources, so its generally better to block that then allow it to happen for some marginal benefit to yourself. Right so you're not saying that you shouldn't trade, just be more finicky about it than most beginners are. I can get behind that.
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Nov 11, 2015 18:04
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" but experienced players know never to accept a trade unless its really nice, because your opponent is going to build something right away and gain an immediate benefit from that trade.
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Rutibex posted:But experienced players don't just look at individual trades, they look at the meta and quickly realize what you are doing. The three opponents in this scenario would see you gaining and embargo you. I think you mean, if you pull ahead then people will stop trading with you? Which, yeah, they will. But you'll be ahead. If the dice don't go your way and you don't pull ahead, then no one cares about embargoing you. The implicit caveat to jmzero's argument is that you only count the people who are still contenders to win the game. If Jim is basically out of the running, you can trade with him for free, even if the trade is more beneficial to him than you; you just don't care. If Jill is winning then you don't trade with her because best case it's going to come down to a head to head contest between you and her, and equal trades just shorten the endgame and let her close the deal. (Obviously if the trade is much better for you than for Jill then you would do it, but she won't, so it's moot.) But among equals, the math works out as above. McNerd fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 19:28
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Bottom Liner posted:You are thinking and posting way too hard about a dumb game. I'm more interested in the general theory of political/trading games, and why it does or doesn't apply to Catan as an example case. Virtually this whole discussion could have been about, say, Bohnanza. The only really Catan-specific point I saw was Rutibex saying, Catan has a high proportion of really terrible lopsided trades that act as beginner traps. Which as far as I know might be true, but ok, you rule those out and you're back to the same basic idea where trading appears to be a crucial part of keeping up. Full disclosure: I generally suck at these games so if there's something I'm not getting, I'm very keen to find out. McNerd fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 20:40
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I'm surprised at the hostility toward Ricochet Robots. I can appreciate it wouldn't be your cup of tea if you can't stand calculating lots of moves. But I think it's a really well-designed filler game. Short rounds, easy setup/cleanup, any number of people can easily drop out between or even during rounds. High skill ceiling but beginners can still sometimes be the first to solve some of the easier problems, or if not, they get the satisfaction of finding solutions on their own, even if they're a little slower or not the best solutions. You feel like a game god announcing "Mate in 25," and there's a fun social aspect in reviewing the solution afterwards and saying "Oh, I was almost there but I couldn't find *this* move."Lottery of Babylon posted:If you make some sets not count then you make it much more likely to encounter collections of twelve cards in which no sets are possible, which makes the game worse. Relevant: http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fc-2015-08
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Nov 14, 2015 03:26
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JohnnySavs posted:I taught the game once to a mostly new group, emphasising that even if you win a fight against Khorne, it's probably still benefiting him. So everyone pseudo-cooperate to prevent him from fighting! Does anyone have any advice on giving basic strategy advice in such a manner that people will actually take it? It seems like every time I offer some important guideline, people do the exact opposite. I don't know if it's an ego thing where they can't take advice, or I have some sort of condescending tone that brings out stubbornness, or if their first instinct on hearing a general rule is to seek out every exception, or if they think they're somehow winning the metagame by doing what I don't expect. But it always just ends in misery. The worst culprit is when I play Dominion with someone who has a couple dozen games under their belt but hasn't seen a particular card, so I give a helpful warning. "Hey guys, this is Torturer, you will usually get your rear end kicked for ignoring it and it's especially bad in a 4P game like this one." So of course neither of the new players buy Torturer, they get buried alive and complain all night. It happens every time. McNerd fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 19:31
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Impermanent posted:
Nay, not so. At least not for Betrayal (I don't remember Cosmic Encounter well enough to say much about it.) The thing is, you can have a demonstrably bad episode of Maury, even if the bar is set pretty low and even if the standards are totally different than a David Lynch film. There are some standards, though we rarely think about them. And Betrayal is like an episode where Maury stands up for 25 minutes rambling about nothing, and then the episode ends as soon as they introduce the first guest. This sort of thing might fly if there were literally no better shows of this genre on TV, and it's true there is a dearth of good games with horror themes and strong narrative elements (because it's a hard thing to do well) but that doesn't make the problems any less real. Betrayal fails in a variety of ways at its intended goal of being an entertaining, quasi-interactive spooky story with friends. Its pacing is terrible from a purely narrative perspective. The Haunt roll system is a great source of tension but it obviously needs a tweak to the fine details, as game length is extremely variable, and sometimes people just get bored after an unusually large number of failed rolls. The Haunt phase is often a terrible anticlimax. And the early-game mechanics actively detract from the tension you're supposed to feel. It's supposed to be nerve-wracking to explore a haunted house, right? Shouldn't you be worried about what might be behind that door? In Betrayal there's no point worrying: the same tile is quite literally behind both doors. In fact one of your biggest fears at this stage is running out of movement points because you literally couldn't run fast enough to find a spooky thing this turn. Now you can make an effort to get in the spirit and psyche yourself up every time you flip a tile, but it would be objectively better if the game mechanics supported your effort instead of getting in the way. My preferred solution to this last issue, for instance, would be to implement a simple push-your-luck mechanic whereby you're rewarded for exploring rooms but penalized for getting too greedy about it. Then you sincerely have to take a second and ask yourself "Do I dare to see what's in the next room?" In fact this is a good change for the narrative and also an Interesting Decision (TM), and that's not a coincidence. No dogmatism about it.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:01
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Impermanent posted:I agree with you in your specifics, but I don't think that you really damage my argument's spirit, which is that frequently what people want out of a board game has nothing to do with well-designed rules or a coherent vision. A modernized version of Betrayal would be better constructed, but it would also tilt the scales of the game in favor of good players. People play roulette and slot machines when the option of poker is available. Why do you think that is? If this is true, it only shows that our modern understanding of game design is still incomplete. There is an art and science to making a better game that scratches the same itch as Betrayal, just as there is an art and science to making a more addictive slot machine. If a "modern designer" would be incapable of doing this, then modern designers still have something left to learn. But standard game design concepts like "interesting choices" can certainly still play a role, as I tried to illustrate in my example of how to improve on Betrayal's opening phase. I don't really agree with your point about luck versus skill, though. Lots of acclaimed modern games contain a heavy element of luck, such that the better player might only win 55 or 60 percent of the time. And if you'll excuse my tossing your own example back to you: people certainly would not play slot machines if a 10% house edge were an insurmountable barrier. Then there are other ways to avoid the frustration of being outplayed and beaten, such as cooperative games where it doesn't arise. McNerd fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 19:38
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jivjov posted:Alchemy isn't even that bad! Its just that Potion-cost cards don't synergize super well unless there's a lot of them in the Kingdom. On the contrary, only a couple of the Potion-cost cards are that lovely (Transmute and Philosopher's Stone) and honestly you almost never want them under any circumstance; they're just terrible cards. The rest are designed to be good enough to be the only reason you buy a Potion, and they are. They'll get ignored in some games but that goes for all cards. Possession is a great example. If Possession is the only Potion cost card in the game then it's well balanced: you could have bought a Silver instead of the Potion, and then you could have bought a Province instead of the Possession. So now you're down a Province and a Silver, your deck is clogged with Potion, plus you're stuck with an extra terminal: Possession's good, but it has a lot of ground to make up. But if you already had a Potion from the early game then there's none of this opportunity cost; at some point in the game you're going to have a 6P turn and buying Possession will be a no-brainer. I really think a major reason people hate this card so much is that they follow the bad advice of always playing with 3-4 Potion cards, so they only see it in these sorts of kingdoms.
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Feb 3, 2016 02:31
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Indolent Bastard posted:The game changes as you play it. After 12 or so sessions you are done and the game cannot (easily) be played again. To be precise, if I understand correctly, you can still play the game; it just stops changing after the first 12 or so games. Of course that's half the fun, but still.
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Feb 3, 2016 19:35
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