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The Supreme Court posted:Cash n Guns: what's the First Edition like? I played the second recently and while it was brilliant drunken fun, it felt like it was mechanically missing something. I'd love a round of negotiation, for example, where you could promise anything, but only have to follow through on immediate promises. Things like bullets, blanks, treasure, pointing your gun at someone else etc. I've played 1st edition Cash n Guns a lot. You'll be disappointed to find it doesn't really have anything like that in it. I haven't played 2nd ed, but I think 1st ed is overall simpler. Hopefully I know the rules well enough to explain the differences. There is no drafting mechanic where standing players pick treasures. Instead, for each round of eight, you are fighting over 5 random bills, valued at 5k, 10k, or 20k. Anyone who is still standing at the end (not shot or ducking) gets a cut, but it must be able to be divided evenly. (You just robbed the bank, so it's not as if you can ask them to make change.) If there are four players standing when it's two 5Ks and three 10ks, everyone gets 10. But replace one of those 5ks with a 20k, and suddenly no one gets anything, because there is no way to divide the bills evenly among 4. If there is a remainder, it stays until the next round. The shooting phase is slightly different. You have 8 cards, but instead of 3 BANG cards, you have 2 BANGs and one BANGBANGBANG or 'Ambush' card. An Ambush works like a normal BANG card, but it resolves before any other shots. So, the turn order is: choose your shot, 321-point, 321-duck, reveal ambushes from standing players, then reveal all other cards from still-standing players. If I recall correctly, being shot by an ambush does not knock you down fast enough to keep you from taking other bullets, if you get shot more than once. There is no 'godfather' mechanic, though there are some 'mutation' cards used in an optional mode which gives players variable powers, like being able to pick target after everyone else or having 4 HP. I don't think any mimic the godfather mechanic. It is a whole lot simpler except in doing the division to see who gets what. It also means people who stood their ground can get nothing because what should have been a good payout is ruined because it doesn't divide by the number of players standing. That's probably not nearly as likely in 2nd ed. I don't see the new rules making it better, but I haven't played it, so I don't know.
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Dec 13, 2014 22:16
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Broken Loose posted:My love of Falling dates back to when Kill Doctor Lucky was my favorite game. While KDL has real problems that make it a bit of a drag to play nowadays, Falling's sharp, efficient, and visceral design still carries it even against modern games. It even has scaling difficulty based simply off how fast the dealer deals. I highly recommend it. Woo James Ernest . If you really liked Kill Doctor Lucky, have you looked at Get Lucky? It's a card game version of KDL but simplified and lightened up. There are 15 guests, each who wishes to kill Doctor Lucky, and they are numbered 1 through 15. Each player has 2 guests in front of them, and there are 3 in the drawing room. Any extras are absent. A little pawn represents Doctor Lucky as he goes around his manse and entertains his guests in numerical order, which determines the order of play. When he visits a guest in front of a player, they may play an upgrade on either of their guests, exchange either of their guests for someone in the drawing room, or simply draw a card. They may also attempt to kill Doctor Lucky, but that must be done with the guest who he is currently visiting. The deck is full of only 2 types of cards: upgrades and spite. There are three types of upgrades: motives, weapons, and opportunities. Each guest may only have one upgrade of each type, and each improves their power to kill Doctor Lucky by 1, unless the upgrade has the same number as the guest. In that case, it is the 'perfect' opportunity, weapon or motive and improves their power by 2. If Doctor Lucky visits a player in the drawing room, each player with a number of cards in their hand lower than the number on the guest may draw a card, clockwise starting from the player controlling the non-drawing room guest who Doctor Lucky most recently left. When a player makes an attempt on Doctor Lucky, they total their upgrades and add one for themselves. So, a guest with a perfect weapon and an imperfect opportunity has 4 attack strength. Now, each upgrade has either two, one, or zero clover leafs on it. (Each guest has them distributed randomly through their 3 upgrades, so no type of upgrade is necessarily better for this purpose.) Clockwise, players must discard cards with a number of clover leafs enough to reduce the attempt to zero, or at least as far as they wish to. Two exceptions to this: spite cards also have single clover leafs on them, and are only used to reduce attack power in the same way, but that spite sticks to that guest, permanently reducing their attack power. (This is one big reason for getting rid of a guest, once they get hobbled by spite.) Also, if a player discards a perfect upgrade for the attacker (that is, an upgrade with the same number as the guest Doctor Lucky is visiting), the attack automatically fails, even if it has no clover leafs. Play continues until an attack resolves without being reduced to zero. If that happens, the player controlling that guest wins. One other great "Ernest-ism" is in the special two player rules. For two players, it's the same except you start with 8 cards and 3 guests, and one other rule. Get Lucky Rulebook, Cheapass.com posted:Murder Changes: Yeah, you could just say "Draw from the top as well" but would that be as much fun? Similarly, the cards are so mechanically simple that there's room for lots of humorous flavor text, if you like that sort of thing. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it's silly fun with mild bluffing and risk management, with an elegant mechanical backbone. The best part is, you can get the fun of KDL with a setup of only two minutes and you don't have to worry about forgetting to move Doctor Lucky or dealing with the board or mixing up your spite chips or figuring out line of sight or 'oh poo poo we didn't move Doctor Lucky AGAIN' anything.
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Dec 15, 2014 17:36
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Whoever does the next thread better do a Filthy Rich theme, so that game gets reprinted 
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Dec 15, 2014 19:43
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Megasabin posted:Also I have to say all this kickstarter exclusive poo poo is really dumb. Why are you releasing the full version of the game to only a limited amount of people. I agree. That type of behavior is awful and I won't stand for it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go preorder Arkham Duty: Advanced Unity to unlock the Ranger class (how the game is meant to be played) and get my Special Legendary Elite Doritosmith Armor. In all seriousness, Kickstarter has made that type of bullshit more tolerable, and exclusive content always causes money to burn holes in gamer's pockets.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:18
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Just brought Star Realms to the table for the first time. It went over well. One of the guys reminded me that it's more like Ascension than Dominion, That took me back, since it's been a while since I played Ascension. That and all this Ascension talk makes me think that I wouldn't bother playing Ascension again after playing Star Realms. All the extra flummery in it just doesn't do it for me. Star Realms is simple and clean. This game means you can have your asymmetrical common-market luck-dependent deckbuilder (that still isn't as good as Dominion, but what is?), in a lighter package (physically, gameplay, and also in cash outlay). e: VVV That thing about The Blob was one of the player's first impression too, but I dunno: I think the Machine Cult are bonkers soup to nuts. Magnetic North fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 07:38
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Paradoxish posted:It's also just a sort of inherent problem that a lot of co-op board games have. Funny enough, while you posted this, I was thinking: With all this talk of quarterbacking, I was wondering if there are any co-op games where quarterbacking isn't a problem, or at least reduced. Then I realized my girlfriend just bought Hanabi. It's a co-op game where quarterbacking is prohibited by the rules. Also, Hababi rules and people should buy it. Something tells me people may have already heard of this, but just in case... In Hanabi, you are absent-minded firework makers right before a big show. You have to make the fireworks quickly and correctly, or the show will be ruined, or worse! The goal is to make piles of cards in order 1 through 5 of each of the five colors of fireworks by playing cards from your hand. Sounds easy, right? Well, the interesting bit is that you cannot see your own cards. You hold your cards facing outward so that everyone else can see your cards, but you cannot. Obviously, there's no table talk allowed, but as an action, players may give you information based on the color or number of cards in your hand. "You have one card of value five" or "You have three yellow cards". You point to the cards so they know specifically which you're talking about. You can't selectively choose to not point to something; if someone has two 3s but you only want them to use one of them, you can't just point at that and say "you have at least one 3"; you have to find another way to get that across. You also cannot tell someone about information that is absent such as "You have no red cards" because you must be able to point at something. This action requires a token, so if the team is out of them, you can't do it. You can restore these tokens by discarding cards. If, for instance, you know that you have a 1 and there is already one of each 1 on the table, you can safely discard it. Sometimes, it's not that clear and you have to take a risk. The other action you can take is to play a card from your hand. If the card starts, extends, or ends a line, you are fine and it's added to the board. If it does not, you lose one of three fuse tokens (different from the other tokens, the name of which I forget) and are that much closer to losing the game. For instance, if you play a blue 2 and there is only a blue 1 on the board, you are fine, but if there is a blue 1, 2, 3 and 4, you discard the card and lose a fuse token. Play continues until either you run out of fuse tokens and the display blows up or you run out of cards, in which case each player gets on more turn, and if you haven't blown up, the display is scored. This game is hilarious and awesome. It's alternatively tense and light, as you try your best to make your friends understand whether telling them about a card in their hand means to play it or discard it. It's brisk and short too, so it's a nice filler without being brainless. I was impressed.
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Dec 21, 2014 22:13
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Sentinels was good in one way: it was the game that solidified my goal to know about the content and mechanics of games before purchase rather than simply knowing them to be popular. (Yes, I ostensibly already knew that, but this was a real shock as to how terrible it was.) I played more than a dozen games at PAX this year, and Sentinels was by far the worst despite being the highest ranked on BGG. (I also played Splendor, which is much-more deservedly well-liked, but I don't think it was ranked yet.) I think the unspoken assumption to remember is: board gamers like some terrible crap. e: vvv I looked at games catagorized Super Heroes on BGG, and it's surprising how few there are of merit. Maybe it's just market starvation that make fans like SotM? Magnetic North fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 17:56
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Cash 'N' Guns is a game that is basically screaming out to have your own custom version made, with character cards of, let's say, Reservoir Dogs or something.
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Dec 25, 2014 22:51
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Dr. VooDoo posted:I got Galaxy Trucker anniversary edition for a holiday gift The person in our group with the copy of Galaxy Trucker just moved away. (We only got to play it once, as he was usually busy.) I was thinking of rectifying that, but I'm cheap. Are the expansions really needed? I don't know what was in the expansions or not, since he had the big box.
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Dec 26, 2014 18:58
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I could beat someone to death with this box.
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Broken Loose posted:Because the game is incredibly unbalanced, uncomfortably gruesome, wildly random, too long, and done way better by many games that came out before it (but the designers didn't play because they thought they knew better). Not that I disagree (I'm lukewarm on Dead of Winter after seeing Rodney play it, though I can imagine having a laugh), but what games are you thinking of that 'did it better'?
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Dec 27, 2014 07:05
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JohnnySavs posted:Is there a gameplay element to Forbidden Desert that I'm missing? Specifically, once I paid attention to the "run out of sand" loss condition, the game seems next to impossible even on Normal difficulty. Last night we had meteorologist, climber, and archaeologist, and got two parts before losing, and I just tried a solo game with climber, water carrier and explorer and had the same ending. I just played my first game of this over the weekend, so this is strictly anecdotal, but I cannot imagine winning this game without the water carrier. Even playing on novice with 5 players, we were always dangerously low on water until we made a concerted effort to get everyone to the well with him. Without him, there is so little water to go around, every sun beats down card is costly, even if most of you are in tunnels. We also almost ran out of sand tokens too, but we used a Duneblaster to knock off a pile that was in the way anyway. We had the climber and navigator too, so we were ignoring as much as we could. Kiranamos posted:They're still getting rules wrong? That's insane. My favorite Table Top error that I've seen so far is in the Gloom episode. The first move of the game was to play a modifier on one of their family. It's a modifier that says it can only be played on a character with a 'Marriage' icon... which is impossible on the first turn, as no character starts with any icon. This isn't mixing up a relatively elaborate game, this is a failure to read the card in a very simple game. It's even better because the big graphical flourish they have makes if obvious even to people who never played before.
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Dec 29, 2014 04:32
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I think what's important to consider in Hanabi is to have the level of table talk suit your group and relative level of experience. They even say in the rulebook something to the effect of, "You can hold yourself to whatever level of strictness you see fit. So you can say something like, 'Now, why would she have told you that particular piece of information?' or 'Boy, I have no idea what I have.' or "Sheesh, these hands are terrible." or something like that. We did a little coaching for a player's first game this weekend to demonstrate the necessary logic behind the game, and it helped him catch up very quickly. Obviously, if you're doing this sort of thing as a means to increase your ending score, that's not really the point. But if you're doing it to increase enjoyment of the game by making it mildly more social, then that is fine. And if your group wants to be hardcore and not say a word and try and get the best score, godspeed you beautiful bastards.
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Dec 29, 2014 16:32
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Chomp8645 posted:Well, I mean he's right. Quoted for truth. One of our guys is addicted to Kickstarter, and while occasionally we get something serviceable, most of them are played once and are proven to be so bad that no one will play them again. Even the ones that are good are casual, light and still have flaws. Tekopo posted:On that note, more games should be colourblind friendly. Age of Industry was good about this, as can be seen below: I think colorblindness considerations is one of the most important things a game can have. I mean, if someone has a physical handicap like Muscular Dystrophy or Cerebal Palsy that somehow prevents them from playing Jenga, there is only so much you can do as a designer to help them. However, colorblindness is something that can be overcome with some foresight in the design process. I just played Guildhall this weekend, and it's based around 5 colors, but the colors are also indicated with symbols for each color on one side, so people of any level of colorblindness can still play. Also, I saw a friend's newer printing of Splendor, and it's been changed to have little gem symbols in addition to the colored circles, presumably for the same reason. It's something I wish more designers would be cognizant of.
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Dec 30, 2014 16:26
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Wazzu posted:Sheriff of Nottingham - After fixing what the rules are about your decleration ('you must make a decleration of a number of a legitimate good')game works quite simply. We quickly reached a problem where we didn't allow the sheriff to pick up the parcel until they decided (as the weight would give away a lie about numbers), but I'm sure some people would argue that's against the spirit of the game. I suck at deception and lost horribly. Would play again. I haven't played this game myself, but I did recently watch Rodney's Watch It Played of this game, and if I recall correctly, you are not allowed to lie about the number of goods you are transporting, just the contents.
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Dec 31, 2014 16:04
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Gabriel Pope posted:2) We completely missed the rule where you discard 2 cards from your opening hand. Why does this rule even exist? Basically, since some of the rooms are Advanced rooms and could be useless and some spells are totally useless, this is to give you some option of what to start with instead of just being screwed. Gabriel Pope posted:I will say as well that the spell deck is definitely a weak point. I did not mind the randomness of the room cards: you get lots of room draws, there's a decent amount of flexibility in how to build a dungeon, and the bait system means that even lovely room cards have plenty of opportunities to be relevant. On the other hand, in most games you only ever get to draw a couple of spell cards and there's no guarantee that they will ever be relevant. I don't feel like any of the games we played were unfairly decided by spell cards, but some of them may potentially have been decided by a lack of good spell cards. You found the big problem of the game. But rather than repeat myself, here are many  I wrote in the old thread:Me from the old thread posted:I know the thread pretty well hammered this, but I figured I'd share my anecdotes/feelings from this game as well. We played it probably about 6-9 times trying desperately to like it before just giving up on it. So, yeah, this game blows.
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Jan 1, 2015 06:23
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Gabriel Pope posted:Right, but... why not just keep the cards? The added flexibility seems to go a long way towards smoothing over the game's faults. V  V Normally, I'd say it's because the game is balanced to have only 5 cards in hand, but there's no way the designers of this game did that kind of math to understand that. Also, while I can't back this up with fact, I am inclined to believe that since you normally only get one card per turn, there is not a titanic difference between 5 and 7 after the first turn. There is still probably going to be only one sensible play a good percentage of the time.
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Jan 1, 2015 16:59
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Crackbone posted:If you want babby's first deckbuilder but refuse to get Dominion, just get Star Realms. Quoted for truth. It is a perfectly serviceable center-market deckbuilder that has the same problems as other center-market deckbuilders. The advantages are that it's much simpler, faster, cheaper, and an often overlooked benefit smaller. There's no big box, no tokens to carry around or lose. You can carry it around in a box about the size of a large CCG deck, and everything you need to play is in there. I think it has been improved (by my estimation, may be false) by not trying to 'replace' Dominion, but instead trying to scratch a simpler, more luck based, less strategic itch. It may seem like I'm trying to drat the game with faint praise, but I am really enjoying it so far.
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Jan 9, 2015 18:07
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echoMateria posted:you wonder if they ever heard of a quote that starts with "With great power...". Oh my god, please tell me I've been reading the Tumblr thread too long and I can no longer tell the difference between a troll post and a real one. But, on the off chance this isn't a troll and I'm talking to some sort of sentient lichen permeating the pages of a cheeto-stained comic book draped over an unplugged keyboard, let me try and work with this metaphor: You see, the prominent people in board game reviewing aren't actually the smartest and most worthy of that position: that would be the equivalent of Batman, the hero we deserve. He watched his parents get cut down in The Game Of Life and now has a Monopoly on pain. Only thematically rich and mechanically sound board games dare show their faces in Gotham. Unfortunately, just like in 52, Batman is absent. Instead, those heroes are more like your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Peter Parker got his powers entirely by chance when bitten by a radioactive spider. Well, our board game reviewing heroes also got where they are in part by good fortune, or at least partly by means other than just their game design knowledge. In this case, they got it because of their ability to make the content that works within YouTube's system. For Rahdo, it's his gift of gab so he makes entertaining videos and gets subscribers. For Rodney Smith, it's his commitment to excellence and neutrality and that garners subscribers. For Tom Vasel, it's just a pure numbers game: enough content and eyeballs will accrue subscribers. For SUSD, it's probably a little of everything. (Yes, a Fantastic Four metaphor might be more apt here, but let's go with this one.) So, these board game reviewers are our street level heroes: they might not be the best or most righteous, but they'll do what they can to keep your wallets safe. Still, Spidey has ways of doing things, which the public doesn't always agree with. J. Jonah Jameson is one of them, a newspaper editor of The Daily Bugle. In this metaphor, JJJ is represented by SA board game grognards: old, crotchety, self absorbed, constantly seeking to destroy the 'menace' of Spiderman. So, who does Spiderman fight? Doctor Octopus, The Green Goblin, et cetera. These are guys that pose a threat to the public good, but just aren't big enough to threaten anything more than that. These villains represent games are the bad, cheap drek that publishers churn out that an unsuspecting citizen might find has robbed them of their money. Harm can be avoided so long as Spiderman's there to help. But what happens when Carnage shows up? In this case, Carnage represents Munckin: a bad game that continues to spawn other even worse games. Well, Spidey just can't fight him on his own: Carnage is far too strong and awful. He has to call in help from more powerful people. He could call up Iron Man. Tony Stark has no super powers, but instead of training his mind and body to perfection as Batman did, he drinks a lot of alcohol and uses his engineering prowess to build power suits that lets him fight crime. In this metaphor, this is Wil Wheaton of TableTop: still lacking the raw qualifications to be the true hero, but made more powerful with resources. Unfortunately for Spiderman, that's not always an option: Tony Stark is likes to do his own thing, and his own thing usually involves keeping Stark Industries afloat more than it does protecting the public from small-time crime. If Iron Man's not answering Peter's calls, there are others. Maybe Doctor Strange or even Doctor Doom. The thing is that heroes of this power who can change reality at will aren't really on the same scale as Batman or Spiderman. These reality shapers don't represent game reviewers but rather well respected game designers. (Let's say Richard Garfield is Doctor Strange (duh) and Vlaada Chvátil is Doctor Doom. That'd be especially appropriate for this thread since everyone loves him so much he apparently never fails, and if he does it was really a Doombot.) The hope would be to get them to talk trash about bad games like Munchkin to hopefully exterminate the problem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But what if something even worse happened? What if Spiderman had to fight Galactus? Spiderman simply cannot fight the power cosmic. Galactus is as old as time and can never die. Those forces that survived the chaotic beginnings cannot be defeated. In this metaphor, Galactus is Cosmic Encounter: It's simply too old and too powerful to be defeated at this point. It's evergreen, even if it's awful. Also, let's say it turns out that Spiderman thinks Galactus is a cool guy with a sweet purple hat and he becomes the Herald of Galactus. So, Spiderman shows up but instead of saying, "All that you know, is at an end" he says, "Forty dollars will be teleported away from your pockets. In exchange, Galactus offers you endless replayability of this shallow gameplay and the ability to generate mirth between your friends." Would that really be so irresponsible of Spiderman? Anyway, for those of you who don't need elaborate superhero metaphors, I think this thread is waaay too hard on reviewers for their likes and dislikes. These people are not prominent because they have PhDs in Mathematics: they're prominent because they fit into the systems of popularity on Youtube and to a lesser extent BGG. Just listen to what they have to say and their reasons why, then consider if those reasons would hold water to you. If the rationale does not meet your satisfaction, then hold off on any purchases. If it does, then give them all your bitcoins.
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Jan 13, 2015 07:31
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TheKingofSprings posted:At no point while typing this did you think "Maybe I should stop typing this"? Yeah, but I figured it'd be worth a laugh, either with me or at me. Tekopo posted:I don't think there is a 'best game ever', because that description is purely a subjective view and in the end, it is just a personal ranking. I don't think it is possible to have the platonic ideal of a board game that would be universally praised by all people, which all have different tastes. Quoted for truth. There seems to be an attitude among some gamers have they have left the cave and seen the form of Game, and that they bear a terrible burden as they return to witness everyone playing with their shadow games. Lord Frisk posted:
If I recall correctly, that was a common complaint when it came out. People said D&D4E was like WoW. Having played it now, I like it and I would disagree with that assessment, but not so severely that I would discount someone's opinion that it was unlike what D&D had been to them. At the same point, I accept that's kind of a nothing statement, basically the the reverse of "I like it so that's what matters."
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Jan 13, 2015 16:49
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Elysium posted:No video reviews can even remotely compete with UFBRT. He is one of the only people who actually uses the power of video/editing to actually illustrate how the game plays and why it's fun, quickly and clearly, instead of just showing you stuff in the box and seeing someone's talking head explain the game and move pieces around. Unfortunately he has been retired from reviews for quite a while. Never heard of this guy before. Seems already, but I already see this guy committed thread heresy.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:05
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Megasabin posted:Do we have a board game trading thread? I think I've seen it mentioned once or twice. There is one in SA-Mart here. Make sure you're familiar with the specific rules to SA-Mart here.
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Jan 15, 2015 06:59
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MildManeredManikin posted:What is the thread consensus on Jaipur? Can't say what the overall consensus is, but I picked it up at the recommendation of this thread because I needed a two player game. I think it's really good. It's light but strategic, simple to play, with a surprisingly strong economic theme. It has nice components and excellent visual design. Sure, it has a fair bit of randomness as it is based on drawing things from a deck and a center market of cards, but the inclusion of the camels gives players some choice and control over that randomness as well as the ability to accrue resources if their opponent overreaches. If you want to learn the rules, Watch it Played! has a video on it, with only one very minor rules hiccup: Players are allowed to keep the amount of camels in their herds secret, so you don't have to have them spread out like that. Of course, I suppose you could spread them out if you'd like.
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Jan 16, 2015 05:34
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Durendal posted:There's something I have been pondering lately - why is it that no one has been able to improve upon Dominion? So many games have come and gone over the last six years yet not one has been able to improve upon its formula. Did Donald sell his soul or something? Or did he just some how make a game that is mechanically flawless? I admit I haven't played all that many deckbuilders at this point, but I'm still waiting to see one that adds something to the game that actually adds something to the game. This is my biggest problem with Thunderstone: you get cards to beat monsters which is a means to get additional cards... or I could just buy cards in Dominion and cut out the middleman. At least with something like Shadowrift, it feels less like filling out paperwork: sure, you can get cool cards to do fun stuff, but if you don't kill monsters, you're going to lose. Don't get me wrong: Shadowrift is not really better than Thunderstone, but it is at least different from Dominion to make it play its own way, and doesn't feel like adding dull hurdles to an otherwise elegant game. I'd still rather play Dominion.
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Jan 17, 2015 16:44
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esquilax posted:Just because you prefer Dominion doesn't mean other games haven't added anything. Sometimes I want to play Dominion, sometimes I want to play Star Realms. Likewise, actually. Star Realms has been a big hit with me and mine, I just didn't mention it because every time it comes up, someone talks about it being luck based (which is true). And to be fair, once it came up, it did get mentioned so  Anyway, for content, I played a new-ish deckbuilder last night called Valley of the Kings. Each player is a noble in Ancient Egypt attempting to fill their tomb with the most impressive stash for when they eventually take up permanent residence. At it's heart, it's a common-market deckbuilder, but the market works differently. 6 cards are revealed, in a 1-2-3 pyramid, but only the three cards at the bottom of the pyramid can be purchased. Don't worry if it sounds like it's ripe to become a logjam: one of the base cards lets you rearrange two cards in the pyramid or sacrifice one (this game's version of Dominion's trash, to a zone called the Boneyard). Also, if a player's turn does not include removing of any cards, they must choose one card from the bottom to sacrifice. Once a card is removed for any reason, the cards fall down the pyramid as they would logically and are replaced from the deck. (If the center card of the bottom is broken, the player who caused that chooses how it 'crumbles'.) Each card has three main uses: first, it can be used for it's value in Gold to purchase cards from the pyramid. They are added to your discard pile as in most deckbuilders. Second, each can be used as an action. The actions vary from card to card, such as getting other cards for free, messing with your opponent's hands, and entombing your own cards. What's entombing? This is the third use of a card, and arguably the most important. As an action once per turn or when a card allows it, you can put cards in your hand into your tomb, represented by a card in front of you. Cards in your tomb are the only way you get victory points. If something is in your deck at the end of the game, it doesn't help you, but then again, if something is in your tomb before the end of the game, it's not directly helping you either. Your starting items are worth 1 VP each, and some special items are worth straight VP values as well, but most of them (Sarcophagi, Canopic Jars, Statues, Books, etc) are instead the square of the number of different types of cards from that category you have entombed. For instance, if you entomb one Inner Sarcophagus and two Middle Sarcophagi, you only get 4 points (2 squared). Each type has a specific number of different versions (which is indicated on each card), so for instance there are only 3 types of Sarcophagi and 4 types of Canopic Jars. (I don't know if the deck actually has more or less of each, or if it's the same number but spread among the variations.) Once it's entombed, you can't get it back unless a card says so, so you lose the ability to use its gold value and play its action. The game ends when the supply of cards has run out, the pyramid is empty and everyone has had an equal number of turns. Whoever has the highest value among cards in their tomb wins. It's interesting, but I have to give it a few plays before I can really say what I think about it. It's not as breezy as Star Realms, but I feel it could have a bit more of that "Take that!" element in it with more tactical depth. The everchanging market is nice, though it makes it hard to establish well laid plans. Also, because you're sacrificing stuff and entombing stuff so commonly, you're probably going to have a very small deck; it's almost more of a pool management game than a deckbuilder. On the plus side, since you can't just destroy all your opponents authority or buy province 8 on turn 14, having a mechanically sound five card deck doesn't mean anything if you don't have your tomb full of pimp swag for the afterlife. The fact that it has a definite end is probably a good thing too. Also, the flavor of the game is quite strong, and the game has very interesting semi-educational flavor text. If you like anthropology more than space pew-pew and being Real Estate Agency Century 13, then it's worth looking into. It also seems to be fairly cheap, which is nice.
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Jan 18, 2015 20:19
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Why the hell is Glory to Rome still out of print? It's a card game for crying out loud Looks like you said "Rome demands Glory to Rome." and the publishers are just sitting there saying "Glory to Rome."
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Jan 19, 2015 03:01
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Looks like Dead of Winter is one of those games that looks fine on the surface until you actually look at the guts of it. I do like the idea of the Crossroads system where stuff may or may not happen in a way specifically related to what the players are doing, as opposed to "Now it's raining! A guy jumps out at you! Boo!" Hopefully whatever the next one they do will revise the rest.
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Jan 19, 2015 15:52
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Jedit posted:It's called Dreadball, you're welcome. I played a demo of Dreadball last PAX east, and even though I got the 'simple' version, I couldn't get over just how much goddamn dicerolling and (to borrow some Shadowrun 3rd ed parlance) "target number" changing there was. You compare strengths and position and if you ran to determine how many dice you roll. That part is fine, but then your opponent rolls opposing dice to counteract them. It gums up the works so hard, and makes it take forever. As I played, I kept thinking: if I wanted to play something where I would have endless combats with many dice on both sides that took forever to figure out and resulted in very little after counteracting effects are taken into account, I would play 40K. Maybe this is the Blood Bowl fan in me, but I looked into other combat sports games (Dreadball, Kaosball, Slaughterball), and none of them seem to be what I want. I don't see the risk-management that exists in Blood Bowl in them, but then again, these guys were probably BB fans who hated turnovers ending turns and made the game less about risk and more about tactics. Of course, I may be misrepresenting things here: I've only actually played Dreadball. Still, nothing about the reviews I've seen for the other two make me want to touch them with a ten-foot clown pole. Side note: I hate that these games have it that some positionals can't carry the ball. The great part of football are things like nose tackles getting interceptions and weird schemes where guards make touchdowns and stuff. If a big guy having the ball is a problem, then balance your game better. Also, looking into those games with disappointment might have also caused me to start working on a combat sports game in my spare time, trying to reduce the dice rolling to one or maybe two rolls per block. fozzy fosbourne posted:Blood Bowl has also been popular on Something Awful in the last couple years because of the online implementations and a couple really popular Let's Plays. Yes, that might be part of what makes me favor Blood Bowl: I bought it on release, but got back into it because of LP. I've never played it on the table top and the online implementations do the tackle zone etc math for you. Maybe I am being too hard on the other ones.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:57
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Broken Loose posted:Here's a short (6 minute) video that lightly describes how the game is played: I don't know if you're at the point of taking notes, but there could be some sort of way to have the command word phrase be different for each mission, or even generated randomly or systematically throughout the game. Maybe even some sort of memory/deduction element where the players have to work it out as the game goes on? Maybe that's getting a little crazy.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:30
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fozzy fosbourne posted:*fills basket with gummy bears* I'd be too afraid for that to end up in my obituary.
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Jan 28, 2015 15:29
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Poison Mushroom posted:TL;DR: Blood Bowl is the largest, most convoluted, most rules-dense press your luck dice game in existence. That hit me a little while back in the Blood Bowl CE thread. Magnetic North posted:I was going to go on about how risk management is a big part of Blood Bowl, and that Dread Ball is an entirely different (and worse) game but something just hit me: Blood Bowl is basically an extremely elaborate push-your-luck game. Seriously, I think this comes down to the immortal battle of people who dislike luck in games waging their immortal war against fun. Lichtenstein posted:Blood Bowl has a whole slew of issues (as evidenced by this thread), but I wouldn't really call it a bad game, rather a really dated one. Quoted for truth.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:29
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admanb posted:I'm not saying all those games are equal, I'm just saying that people don't have to be introduced to boardgaming with a top 10 game in order to become serious boardgamers. Okay, to give the Dice Tower a tiny bit of credit, I think the Viewer's Top 100 (or at least the top 20) is an interesting place for someone to start if they have no other idea of what games are good or popular. It's built on it's an aggregate of votes where each person get 20 points and you can vote a game from 1 to 20, but cannot give a game negative votes. Maybe that methodology is flawed, but it's better than just the opinion of an individual. Of course, anyone posting here already has a better resource at their disposal. If you're curious about the top 20 but don't want to subject yourself to the video, they are from 20 to 1: Caverna Descent 2 Race For The Galaxy Robinson Crusoe The Resistance Android: Netrunner The Castles of Burgundy Love Letter Power Grid Cosmic Encounter Carcassonne Small World Eldritch Horror Agricola 7 Wonders Lords of Waterdeep Dominion Ticket To Ride King of Tokyo Pandemic Sure, there are games on here the thread hivemind hates, but many people like them, so if you had absolutely nothing else to go on, that's a reasonable place to start.
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Feb 2, 2015 23:03
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Good luck with the Kickstarter, BL.
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Feb 11, 2015 03:28
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Jedit posted:BL, if you think you're going to be getting this much feedback about your game throughout the project it might be worth starting its own thread. I'm honestly surprised there isn't a Goon Kickstarter thread for that type of thing in general. At the same point, I guess the existing Kickstarter thread is enough anyway, and Lowtax would probably prefer people buy banners.
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Feb 15, 2015 20:35
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chemosh6969 posted:I guess Star Realms too unless you only have one tablet. You can also pass-and-play on the Star Realms app. It's not ideal since you don't necessarily see what your opponent does, but it's serviceable.
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Feb 22, 2015 20:47
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Timett posted:Is Kill Doctor Lucky/Get Lucky any good? I was eyeing it a while back (was Get Lucky a KS game? Maybe while it was there) and thought it looked okay but based on the caliber of the other games on that Exploding Kittens list I'm starting to think it might be terrible. Pardon me while I quote myself: Magnetic North posted:Woo James Ernest . If you really liked Kill Doctor Lucky, have you looked at Get Lucky? It's a card game version of KDL but simplified and lightened up. As far as that list goes, obviously it's tough to compare Munchkin and Fluxx to anything because they are so drat bad in such different ways. I've never played Guillotine and only played Chex Geek once. Gloom is fine. Really, I just don't think Red Dragon Inn and Get Lucky don't really deserve to be lumped in there with Munchkin. Those are perfectly serviceable, admittedly fairly luck-dependent light games. You know what I think the key difference is: resources are limited and they really can't go on forever. Get Lucky has the decency that it basically cannot run for more than a half hour because people will just run out of cards. RDI is similar in that people will just eventually start accruing alcohol and wounds, the problem is when you play with 7 or more players.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:20
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Now I am sad that the Wikipedia article for The Law of Large Numbers does not contend with how some consider it radically underdetermined.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:10
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Jedit posted:Thank loving Christ someone else is willing to say that. I'm getting tired of being stared at like I sprouted a second head. I dunno, I've noticed the opposite. I haven't heard noticed anything but making GBS threads on Splendor in this thread in what seems like forever. I think it's just that everyone overreacted to the hype, which to be fair, is overblown.
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Mar 8, 2015 03:28
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Rutibex posted:Talisman is the Icecream sandwich of games, lots of calories and zero nutrition. No, because an ice cream sandwich has substance. It's more like salmiakki-flavored cotton candy, and I think that might be giving it too much credit.
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Mar 8, 2015 17:36
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jeeves posted:I'm worried she'll absolutely hate it the first time she tries playing it. Why on earth would you be worried about that? That is the logical response to Munchkin.
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Mar 8, 2015 22:10
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Sorry to jump in a little late on this one, but I just don't understand the incessant caterwauling about the 'air in the box' of Splendor. 1: This isn't a bag of potato chips or pick 'n' mix bulk candy: when you buy a board game, you aren't buying fun by volume or weight or anything. What do you care if there is air in the box? The only situation where that matters is if you own enough board games that storage space is actually becoming a problem. I admit, that aspect has some legitimacy, because I'm sure you play every one of those two hundred games every few months, right? 2: Splendor comes with a very nice insert (except that it doesn't hold sleeved cards, which is a separate problem) that makes set up and clean up easy. Compare that all the other games that leave it to the player to devise their own organization, a state that is so commonplace that multiple businesses exist to sell people inserts. So, even if you believe that you are somehow paying for that air, just consider that you're not paying someone else to make an insert for you or spending time devising your own. 3: Just as an example, consider that King of Tokyo isn't that much better if you take the insert out and compare the volume, and yet no one bellyaches about it. It's also an extremely popular game, but maybe it gets a pass because its on-the-face silliness immunizes it from criticism. (There are probably much better examples than that, but it's the first one that game to mind). 4: I don't know where I heard this or if it's actually true, but they say that publishers want big boxes because bigger boxes take up more real estate and are more likely to be taken seriously by board game consumers. That doesn't make it right, but it's important to remember that the way the box is shipped is going to be a publisher's decision, and not any reflection on the game itself. If you want to see smaller game boxes then you should buy and enjoy more small games. 5: If your car goes off a bridge into a lake on your way to board game night, you can survive for several hours slowly sucking the air out of your Splendor box. Who knows how many lives have been saved?
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Mar 17, 2015 16:38
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