Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I know that I'm probably out of luck on this, but are there any dungeon-crawler style games that are good for solo play and aren't too complicated?

I tried to do Descent solo with the Forgotten Souls expansion thing, but there's a ton of stuff to keep track of and it really stacks the deck against you from the get-go.

I'd like something like that but without the complexity. Kinda like what 7th Continent is trying to do without the bunches of added systems.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 05:30

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:51

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Bottom Liner posted:

7th Continent is hot garbage of the highest degree. "Choose your own adventure the board game" more like "random card flips with no interaction" the board game. Seriously, everything is randomly decided and it just turns into a mess quickly. Flip a tile, oh no you don't have the cards to pass that challenge, you're hosed. There's no real game.

What I've seen of 7th Continent reminds me of the one time I played Fortune and Glory, where most of the game was just deciding which deck of cards you wanted to draw from to see what you get to do. There's very little actual choice involved; it's just a card-flipping simulator.

I'd imagine 7th Continent would be even worse due to the lack of real randomization. The map and the events on it are always going to be fixed, with I think the only real randomness being the "exploration fog" cards.

Did anyone bother doing the 7th Continent PnP demo?

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 18:42

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Gutter Owl posted:

Like, the entire reason I want the game is because of the exploration/orienteering aspect. You have a huge, semi-static map (with potentially variable weather patterns) and by design you can never see all of it at once. And the central challenge of the game is a pathfinding puzzle, like the quiet segments of Shadow of the Colossus. Here's a lovely, hand-drawn landmark map, figure out how to get from A to B without starving to death. All the little card-flipping checks along the way are an involved means of seeing how resource-heavy your path is, and the knowledge cards throw the occasional wrinkle in your route-optimization.

Yeah, that's why I was originally interested too; I wanted a solo game of exploration and such. But I feel like 7th Continent gets too focused on the bells and whistles. I mean, it might still end up being good but it's gonna be a year before we find out, and I'm not feeling too confident about that right now.

From what I read, they slapped together the PnP demo so late in the KS because people were asking for a PnP version of what they sent out to all the board game bloggers, but they didn't want to do that because that demo is the "tutorial" section of the actual game. So instead you get the two-tile island with maybe three things to do.

The PnP also has a meta-puzzle that is kinda bullshit you can find a page of a diary that mentions "catching four times a turtle"; that's actually a clue that you're supposed to take card 16, because that's the number of the "catch a turtle" challenge card times 4. Figuring that out gives you a big bonus towards the catch-a-turtle ending but the devs have said they're not going to put puzzles like that in the main game.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 19:36

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

ambushsabre posted:

Yo Epic is real good. Totally has the interaction I love from MtG but the card drafting and replay-ability of something like Dominion. Love it.

I don't want this good comment about a good game to get missed, so here's my badly-written review of Epic.

Basically Epic is a single 120-card deck "CCG", with the cards split evenly between four "alignments": Good/Evil/Wild/Sage. In broad strokes the game plays like M:tG; you cast spells, summon and attack with creatures, doing the wizard fight thing.

In particular, there are a few significant differences:

There are only two card types: champions (creatures) and events (spells). You can only summon champions when it's your turn, you can cast events (or creatures that can be cast as events) on either players' turn when you're allowed to play cards. The trim at the top of the card art tells you what cards you can cast as events, which is really handy.
There's very little resource management. At the start of every turn, each player gets one gold. Cards either cost 0 or 1 gold. That's it. You lose your gold at the end of every turn, so it's a use-it-or-lose-it situation. There's also only one way in the game to get more than 1 gold per turn, and that's with a specific creature.
Every creature does something. With the exception of token creatures (which are only summoned by other cards), there's no filler monsters here. A lot of champions have effects that trigger when the hit the table, when you cast 1-gold cards of the same alignment, or if you reveal two cards from your hand of the same alignment.
Timing works as follows: if it's your turn, you can play cards all you want as long as you can afford them. When you pass or attack, then the other player gets a chance to play events in response. Then the active player can play cards again (or you resolve the attack), and so on until both players pass. When that happens, then the active player switches, everyone resets to 1 gold, and you go from there.
The game plays incredibly fast; it's like the whole thing is designed to feel like the last third of a game of Magic when you've finally able to break out all the good cards. Cards are meant to be played rather than held on to for the "right moment". Big monsters can be summoned quickly (since they only cost your 1 gold), but there's a lot of creature removal and ways to bring cards back from your discard. The only real way to remove a card from play is "banishing", which puts cards on the bottom of a person's deck. You can even attack multiple times on your turn; attack with small creatures, tie up your opponent's defenses, then plunk down a big dude and attack again.

The basic idea is that with one deck you can do a few types of sealed draft, but you can also play each alignment as its own 30-card deck, or just deal out 30 cards to each person and go from there. You can also do constructed decks if each person has their own base deck. At most one person needs three decks, and that's only if they want to do the "you can have up to three of any card" level of deckbuilding. The way they break it down is that with one deck you can have up to 4 players, with two or three you can do up to 8 players for the various draft types.

Basically if you burned out on CCGs, give this a shot.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 20:27

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

GrandpaPants posted:

It's hard to make fun of someone for having the generally correct opinion and shutting down that dumb question.

You can make fun of the guy in the comments who probably asked the question.

quote:

The reality is once you remove wives, girlfriends and daughters of gamers the demo drops like a rock. Studies have shown most women prefer watching TV to gaming: http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/ It is rather silly to think that feminizing a dungeon crawl is going to attract female gamers - All it does is alienate your core demographic.

"Listen, if you don't count all the women who play games, there aren't a lot of women who play games."

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 03:28

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

General opinion on Forge War is that it's good, right? My game store just got a copy in.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 00:13

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I recently had a chance to play Fortune and Glory and Touch of Evil...

Are all of Flying Frog's like that? Because good lord they feel so much more complex than they really need to be. I was interested in Shadows of Brimstone since I like that western/horror mashup, but not if it's going to be like that.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 18:51

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tippis posted:

As much as one might accuse FFG of being glossmongers, Flying Frog is the epitome of style of substance. All their games follow the same pattern: unbalanced, overly-complex, randomfests trying desperately to convey theme through the use of bad photoshops of their friends and medium-sized OPEC country worth of plastic tokens, but failing to do so since nothing coherent has even the slightest chance of arising out of the huge mess you pour onto the table.

I don't know if I'd say they felt unbalanced, but yeah it's all drawing cards for a deck to see which deck you draw from to roll dice against other dice. The only choices I felt I had was where to move to on the map, which determined which of the dozen decks of cards I drew from. Fortune & Glory felt worse for this than ToE (which we played with the two expansions) because at least when you failed at something in ToE your next turn wasn't locked into a second iteration of the thing you failed at.

And it sucks, because I felt like there might have been the core of some interesting games there, except they got so tied up in creating this huge experience that covers so much stuff the games start to collapse under their own weight.

My favorite bit was the end of Touch of Evil, where the endgame is basically just a round-the-table roll-off where everyone takes turns attacking the boss monster, and I got killed in the first round and got to just sit there while everyone else got to attack and use the stuff they'd spent the whole game stockpiling.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 19:57

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

jng2058 posted:

Shadows of Brimstone is somewhat more tactical in that it's more or less a Descent/HeroQuest style tactical game with some mini-adventures in town between dungeon crawls. In that respect, Shadows isn't really all that different from Descent or Myth or Rebel Assault. Really, it's just a matter of what theme works for you. Like traditional fantasy? Play Descent. Like Star Wars? Rebel Assault is right there for you. Horror Western float your boat? That's when you want Shadows of Brimstone.

Well, I own Descent (and even tried to play it solo with those organized play kits), and I know that Shadows is in that style with the campaign and stuff. I was mostly wondering if it had the over-design or whatever you'd call it of the other games.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 20:13

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Soothing Vapors posted:

their whole campaign seems to be "remember that [guy/girl/tornado made of sharks] you liked so much, from that other thing you liked? we shamelessly ripped it off and made a lovely miniature out of it!" And yet somehow this made 63k so far

You'd be amazed how many mini-based KS have succeeded by doing this.

And holy poo poo that Furiosa mini looks terrible. I mean, they all do, but that one's standing out to me.

e: I don't know which is worse: the nerd-pandering, the bad sculpts, or the terrible grammar.

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 16, 2015

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 20:32

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

jng2058 posted:

Eh, I didn't find it any more fiddly than Descent. Maybe the between dungeons town bit is a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but that's like 10% of the game, tops.

I only found Descent to be fiddly when playing solo, but that was because I had too much stuff to keep track of since I was playing two heroes and the monsters. I suppose that's just the nature of this style of game, though; they don't lend themselves well to solo play.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 20:44

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I picked up Mage Knight the other day since everyone recommends it as a solo game.

Is there, like...a "Mage Knight For Dummies" video or something? Because this looks pretty complicated.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 16:09

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Gutter Owl posted:

(And don't watch Rahdo's video. You'll just be more confused than you started.)

Oh trust me, I don't watch Radho videos to learn how to play games. I appreciate how enthusiastic he gets about stuff, but after his third nested iteration of "oh wait I need to back up because I forgot to explain something again" I just had to stop.

Seriously, dude, get the rules straight then make the video.

quote:

Otherwise, it's like your first time taking it up the butt. Go slowly. Get yourself comfortable and try to relax--you're not going anywhere for a while, and being tense is just going to make things harder. Take it in a tiny bit at a time. Even if you feel like you're getting a handle on things, don't jump ahead, or you're just going to hurt yourself and sour the whole experience. Pause every so often to acclimate before trying to cover more. It's best to experiment by yourself before involving a second person, and get used to two-player before involving three or more people. And remember, a tiny bit of pain is part of what makes the experience enjoyable.

Also, take a poop and a shower beforehand. That's not a metaphor for anything, it's just generally good advice.

...are you hitting on me? :confused:

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 16:56

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Has anyone gotten their hands on the new Warhammer card game FFG just put out? It looks like it might be a good low-footprint dungeon crawler.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 17:00

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Radioactive Toy posted:

I'm pretty sure this isn't out yet, right? I've been keeping an eye on it. The only thing that worries me is that it's not an LCG so longevity might be a bit short if there aren't enough quests and enough variety in the box. If it doesn't sell well they might not come out with expansions.

I wasn't sure if it was or not; I saw it was shipping on FFG's website so I figured I'd ask.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 17:37

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Sadly, "games need boobs" isn't an idea that's in danger of dying out that quickly. There are still a bunch of kickstarters out there that offer minis of scantily-clad women as stretch goals or whatever because there's still a large amount of gamers who don't seem to realize that it's 2015 and that you can just type "naked women" into Google and see as many as you want whenever you want.

Hell, this is from a project that's running as we speak:

Although this is probably a better topic for the Industry thread.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 19:06

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Lorini posted:

Let me know when they actually get funded....most of that kind of stuff is just junk now.

They're at 550% funded with 19 days to go.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 19:30

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Zveroboy posted:

I read and sometimes posting r/boardgames and they definitely seem to steer more towards the casual end of gaming. If you can cut through the barrage of incredibly vague questions questions from people about what game to get ("I want a deep strategic game game for 5?" for which the usual usual reddit response is Cosmic Encounter, and Munchkin is still recommended from time to time) there is sometimes some good discussion. I took a break from it for a while after saying that Catan was 90% luck, I got dog-piled by the casual crowd, one of whom argued that Catan was actually a "deeply political game."

Man, I am totally a casual boardgamer who gives no shits about meta or knows my eurogames from a hole in the ground, and even I know you don't play Cosmic Encounter or Munchkin.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 02:30

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Is there currently no way to get the Mage Knight Lost Legion expansion for less than $100 without eBaying it?

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 17:18

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

What other solo games do people recommend?

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 23:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Speaking of Steampunk Rally, what other engine-builder games are out there besides it and Galaxy Trucker?

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 06:56

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tekopo posted:

It's really hard to answer this question without first working out what you mean by 'engine'. GT isn't an engine builder by the traditional definition.

Well, just going on what people have been saying around here, I thought "engine builder" meant a game where you assemble some sort of contrivance via card layouts. I haven't played GT, I just saw it mentioned like it was similar.

Basically I'm interested in other games like Steampunk Rally.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 15:41

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

From what I've read, not only is it full of IAPs and ads, you can't even play solo if you're offline.

e: hahahaha

quote:

In this case the "item" is a large amount of their IAP currency. Nothing individually costs $95.

What is shady, though, is that expansions cost 75 or 150 coins, and you can only buy 80 or 160 coins, so you're left with garbage that you can't buy anything with.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 18:53

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

On the plus side, the whole Dominion thing made me realize there's a Galaxy Trucker app that seems pretty well-reviewed, so I can give that game a shot.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 19:35

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Yeah, I went through the basic GT tutorial and really liked it. The scrambling for pieces was a little rough since I was on my phone (and my finger was usually covering the tile) but I like trying to build the ship quickly and trying to cover as many situations as you can.

e: I should probably give Ascension another shot; I messed around with the app and I have that mini "starter kit" they were selling a while back, but I haven't done much with either.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 20:31

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I've played the tablet version of Galaxy Trucker a few times, and while I like it, it seems like it's very easy to have a good run completely borked in the final missions by a bad die roll you can't do poo poo about. "Oops, space pirates blew off one of your components and now a meteor hit the exposed space and took out half your ship, sorry!"

Is the physical game like that too, or am I just missing something apart from "sometimes you just get bad draws/rolls"?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2015 18:09

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Gutter Owl posted:

There is no card or roll in the game that can hurt you, unless you let it hurt you. If you don't wanna get rocked by space pirates, bring more dakka. (Or if you're slick, watch your opponents and figure out who's flying a gunboat, then ride their tail as best you can.) Sure, you can't cover every eventuality, but that's what Precognition is for.

Additionally, there's a few general tricks you just learn from experience. Have two batteries for every battery-powered thing on your ship. Never built crew cabins that touch other crew cabins. Have sideways guns covering rows 6-7-8 whenever possible (a gun on 7 covers all three). If you have exposed pipes, try to face them to the rear of your ship, or bury them in mid-ship donut holes. Et cetera.

Thanks for the tips; I've only played like three actual "games" so far so I'm still learning what the strategies are.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2015 18:52

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Speaking of sleeving cards, I've been playing the Ascension: Apprentice Edition and the phone version and have determined that I like deckbuilders. What's worth getting foe Ascension or other games? I know about Dominion, of course, but that looks a little more complex than I'd like (and don't want to risk getting sucked into the vortex of 500-card expansions).

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 21:36

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I actually have Race for solo play since it had a lot of recommendation.

Really shouldn't have bought the second and third expansions, though.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 21:47

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Gimnbo posted:

How can you play Ascension and then decide that Dominion is too complex?

I haven't played Dominion, I've just gone on BGG and read the instructions. Admittedly I checked out the "combined rules" that has everything, so I probably scared myself off by doing that.

Mainly I don't want a game that's going to balloon.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 22:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Amazon is having a one-day strategy games sale. There are a few goon-approved games on there like the Dominion Big Box for $52 and Kingdom Builder for $32.

I'm kind of surprised to see RoboRally there, though. I thought that went out of print ages ago.

e: also Dominion core is on sale for $20. I was going to wait and get it at my FLGS maybe after the holidays, but I don't think I can pass it up at this price.

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 4, 2015

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 16:18

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Wouldn't The Thing be more of a traitor game?

Unless they can figure out how to do a deckbuilder traitor game...

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 16:55

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Big McHuge posted:

Patchistory and Kanban just came in the mail, and now my brain is leaking out of my ears after reading the instructions.

Because they're complex or because the instructions are poorly written?

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 18:29

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

fozzy fosbourne posted:

For Patchistory, it's both. There is a rules rewrite on BGG, though.

I feel like "wait for a rules rewrite on BGG" is the board game equivalent of "wait for the fan patch" on Steam.

And I say this as someone who's pretty much writing "Mage Knight For Dummies" so I can get the rules straight in my head. I've played the "walkthrough" game like four times and I keep making stupid mistakes because it feels like the rules are split between the two books.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 18:59

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Are we still posting bad YT boardgamers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3A87gWKXcQ

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 02:11

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

MrDru posted:

I lasted twenty seconds, how long did you last?

I actually watched the whole drat thing. Somehow.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 04:50

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Speaking of Dominion, I got my copy yesterday and sorted all the cards...am I supposed to have 11 of each Kingdom card? Because the rules say each supply deck is only supposed to have 10 cards.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 18:40

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Some Numbers posted:

One of each should have a different colored back and are used as randomizers.

Yeah, that occurred to me a little after I posted, but I didn't think that was the case because...

jeeves posted:

Also the randomizers are dumb and should not be used. They can make you have really boring games without any good interactions-- once I had a game with like no extra +action cards, and made the game really lame.

Use a lot of the recommended kingdoms you can find online. Way better than ever using randomizers unless you are masochistic.

..this is what I've seen mentioned a lot of places. Hell, even the instructions give you recommended layouts.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 19:43

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

canyoneer posted:

I would really like someone to create a series of fast tutorial videos for games that present the rules and gameplay in a concise, narrated, visual way. There are a lot who try, but it's a lot of unscripted babbling, tangents, umms and ahhs while waving around components and cards in front of the camera.

I wouldn't say they're fast-paced, but Watch It Played doesn't do voices or skits or dumb gimmicks, but are focused on clearly presenting how to actually play the game.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 23:44

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:51

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Personally, I find a good "how to play" video more useful than a review because they tend to be better indicators of if a game's going to be something I enjoy.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 23:58

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