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Books-A-Million has a buy 1 get 50% off on all board games, online and in stores. Their online selection is weak but their stores carry some pretty robust and expensive board games. My local store had Eclipse and one of the Carcasonne big boxes when they ran a similar sale last year.
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Dec 13, 2014 21:37
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I always thought Dungeon Lords could easily be reskinned as a zombie game. Your dungeon is a stronghold, your imps red shirts, you go out to various buildings to scrounge for food or recruit survivors which adjusts the noise you're making which sends zombies knocking on your door. At the end of the day what do people really want from a zombie game? The classics of the genre are about a diverse group thrown in a stressful scenario that could work out if they worked together but zombie board games are just dungeon crawling dice rollers. The point of the classical zombie genre isn't to fight the zombies, it's trying not to fight each other and every zombie board game is missing that.
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Dec 14, 2014 01:58
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sicarius posted:I hate that stores HAVE to have Magic to keep the lights on. Everywhere I go despises the game, the players, the support required, dealing with Wizards, everything. Almost every game after Magic has been better than Magic in some way... but something about Magic makes it so alluring. On the contrary, Wizards is incredibly supportive of stores. For practically all of their product lines they will bend over backwards to ensure you get customers in and playing their games whether it's D&D Encounters or their regional tracking system that makes setting up major events effortless. I'll tell you what's a huge waste of time, loving Games Workshop. GW is tolerated only because no other miniatures wargame has really eclipsed its popularity. You have no idea how much I wish Infinity or Warmachines were more popular than anything GW puts out.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:06
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ConfusedUs posted:Yeah, but there's ways to mitigate that (pick survivors with a range of skills) and even if you don't, there is always /[something]/ you can do that's useful, even if it's barricading. The exposure die is a great weapon for betrayers. Attacking zombies in the colony without a special ability carries a major risk and it's a much better option for lowering morale than contributing garbage to the crisis which immediately alerts everyone.
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May 9, 2015 15:34
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Bubble-T posted:Dead of Winter's betrayer role just gets the interesting part of zombie fiction all wrong anyway. The point is to see how ordinary people react in the face of implacable doom (standing in for age, inequality, race, whatever) and that some of them will make selfish decisions. DoW outright tells you you're a cartoon villain instead of putting just enough pressure on to make you choose to be a bad person. The Resistance already does the cartoon villain thing without the dice rolling, fiddlyness and inflated play time. But there are cartoon villains in zombie fiction. Practically every zombie fiction has included unrepentant evil assholes or mentally destroyed people that just want to wreck poo poo. And this is thematically appropriate because the idea behind the generic zombie apocalypse is that it's survivable in a stable, controlled environment. It's the villain or unstable person who doesn't want to conform that opens the floodgates and destroys everything. The betrayer role exists solely to enforce the exile mechanic. Everyone knows that you're trying to accomplish your secret objective therefor there's no need to exile another player except in extreme circumstances. The chance of an actual betrayer is small but now there's that doubt that someone is intentionally trying to lose. If there wasn't a chance of a villain the politics of the game wouldn't work.
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May 9, 2015 17:37
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My group has reached a point where inbetween long turns we play Carcassonne on our phones.
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May 9, 2015 19:31
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I usually suggest Stone Age as the replacement for Catan as a gateway game. You're still throwing dice for resources but you have much more control over their acquisition that you can't really screw yourself outside of being really inept or really unlucky. They ultimately addressed the potential bottomless pit setup in Catan with an expansion that introduced support cards, a tableau that everyone has access to which grants special abilities like improved conversion or ignoring the thief. For some reason this never came out in America, they couldn't even shove 10 loving extra cards in their reprints but Star Trek Catan is a reskin which incorporates them into the game. It's amazing how much better (and more importantly faster) they make the game.
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May 10, 2015 14:53
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Polis has been discontinued. Is it a recommended 2-player game for someone who's growing tired of the ol' Twilight Struggle? I'm not looking for a game that's mechanically similar, just a decent balls-kicking 2-player game with relatively little luck involved.Broken Loose posted:The tone of the subject matter changes wildly, as well, from gruesome and pornographic to cartoony and comedic. You're describing the zombie genre to the letter I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic.
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May 10, 2015 19:20
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The argument of theme gets so ridiculous that I'm convinced the most contentious games are, as a result, the most thematic. Nobody pretends Smallworld is representative of the struggles of cartoon fantasy races but mentioning Arkham Horror will summon the defenders and naysayers in equal strength in a fight to the death. I'll throw my hat in and say Dungeon Petz is rather weakly themed. Strip away the art and you've got a game about purchasing and improving assets before selling them on the market. It could be about any kind of market from growing weed to selling real estate. But Dungeon Lords is so deeply married to its theme that when the defense phase comes around I don't know how anyone can misconstrue the game as anything other than building/defending a stronghold. As a result Dungeon Petz is easier to teach. Dungeon Lords is so thematic that I've seen people who love the poo poo out of worker placement games being incapable of understanding it. I don't understand how you can honestly say DoW "has no theme." The theme gets in the way of good gameplay, sure, but having no theme? A co-op game intentionally designed to make players perform selfish actions while working towards a common goal in the face of a near-impossible-to-contain threat while resources grow increasingly scarce isn't appropriate to zombie fiction, are you loving kidding me? Don't get hung up on the awkward writing in the crossroads cards, which I've actually heard more disapproval from fans than not (the event cards in Starfarers of Catan accomplish the job far better). EBag posted:I just picked it up last week but I haven't had the chance to play it yet. Based on the BGG impressions and going through the rules I'm quite excited to try it. It's hard to get a sense of what it will feel like to play but the mechanics seem really tight and deep, and like there will be all kinds of things you want to do but need to figure out how to get it done with the very limited resources you have. It seems like a really good 2 player area control/resource management game with a bit of combat and trickier thrown into the mix. I'll post an impression once I'm able to get it played, but the price is pretty decent and the component quality is very nice I look forward to it. Honestly the thing that drew me in was the minimalist aesthetic but I'm also hard pressed to find rewarding 2-player strategy games that aren't card based. elgarbo posted:I played Sherlock Holmes one time and know the missing building in the directory that you speak of... pretty much wouldn't bother playing it again if that sort of thing is consistent. Sherlock Holmes seems like the kind of game I'd enjoy with an app that tracked all the record keeping but then you may as well remake the Consulting Detective video game.
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May 11, 2015 12:21
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I don't understand what you mean by higher conveyance. The traitor exists to cast doubt on the players. If there's no chance of someone intentionally trying to throw the game then you wouldn't need to exile someone, even if they're not actually a bad guy. Is that not fitting of the zombie theme? The request action is intentionally limited as a another means of player tension. If players could freely pass cards and keep them then you're potentially giving someone the game. You all know everyone has a secret agenda so there's no point giving someone an item they may need to win. If players could freely pass cards to add to the crisis then you get a scenario where everyone waits until the last player who can make the determination if the crisis can be passed or not. If Player 1 contributes but none of the other players do then Player 1 is less likely to trust the others. Again, is this not thematic? Again, the fact we're arguing about what's appropriate in Dungeon Petz only shows how contentious theme is to board gamers. The entire game could be about botany, growing plants, properly taking care of them, disposing of pests that accumulate, selling to the highest bidder, seasonal plants are harder to care for than year-round plants and that's why they're worth more, and if nobody buys a plant at market it leaves the game and a fruit or seed is added because "um, it's just a rule." I'm not arguing Dungeon Petz isn't thematic, just that the theme is distant enough that it doesn't turn people away as strongly as Dungeon Lords which I can't imagine as anything else. Or hell, Pax Porfiriana which is so married to its theme that I can't teach it to most people without explaining thematically how destroying your own assets is not only appropriate, it's practically required to win.
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May 11, 2015 13:21
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Tekopo posted:The problem with DoW is something I said about before. The mechanisms destroy the theme. Why are you hoarding food? -> I need it for my secret objective! Why are you collecting survivors? -> I need it for my secret objective. Why are you not contributing? -> I need these cards for my secret objective. Everything is diverted to that, the fact that you know that they have some secondary objective that they need to fulfill and it removes tension from the game. And even thematically it doesn't make sense: so your group has managed to board up your house, but you are missing one tin of beans so you lose? And the only way to win would be to pro-long the game and prevent your house being boarded up? This is totally, 100% thematic to the zombie theme. You cannot watch a single zombie movie without seeing a character who actively endangers the group for their own agenda, this is so "zombie" that any other game that doesn't encourage reckless decisions is spitting in the face of the genre. Tekopo posted:As for the trading, all the thing that you mentioned are exactly my problem with this mechanism. It's entirely added to the system in order to make the traitor mechanism work and in order to force players to search items they need for secret objectives. But it also prevents stuff like 'well, I'll trade you this pack of canned beans for that can of fuel'. Are you telling me that trading like that doesn't fit the theme at all? I don't think it is a thematic rule at all and although I understand why it is done, it just smacks of something that the designers had to add in order to make their clunky system work. Also, giving something that someone might need for their secret objective can actively help the group AS WELL, because then that player will help the group, because he's not out searching for that last item they need (is there anything in the rules regarding enforced secrecy, because I can't see anything bad about actually revealing your secret objective to the group?). This I understand but I've not heard one suggestion on how to fix it. I think "hand off" and "request" could be simplified to one action called "exchange." Fitting to the theme there should be no altruism involved: you give something in exchange for something else. But no, objectives should stay secret and that's thematically appropriate. The mechanics aren't getting in the way of the theme it's completely the other way around. It falls into the same trap as that Marvel card game which is also co-operative/competitive. The objective of a board game is to win. In a co-op game it's win or lose. In a co-op game with traitors either one side wins or one side loses. But then you have these weird co-operative/competitive games where the players not only have to beat the board but they have to out-class every other player. It's antithetical to everything board games are about. I'm a good guy who's going to win for the team but I'm going to lose anyway? Might as well just throw the game! But I can't agree DoW isn't thematic. If anything it's too thematic. Watch the original Dawn of the Dead and you can see every single element from that movie shoveled into DoW from the rampant shifts in tone to the weird crossroads cards (some of them culled directly from Romero films and The Walking Dead comic) and cartoonish villains that ruin everything. Before playing DoW I was convinced that you could make a zombie game about the survivors instead of fighting zombies. Now I'm convinced you can't because the overarching theme of zombies is "people ruin everything" and you can't make a game where everyone is fighting for one goal while also fighting for their own goals while maybe having a goal that comes at the expense of everyone else. e: Lord Frisk posted:"I'd give you medical supplies, but you've gotta use them right now, in front of me." This is unironically thematic to the zombie/survival genre. Doing your own thing, acting suspicious, hoarding supplies you're not using are all points of contention that have been used in the genre for decades. Your example is actually the basis for John Carpenter's The Thing, you have to get your blood checked in front of everyone at the same time. al-azad fucked around with this message at 14:29 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 14:24
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Tekopo posted:The 'points of contention' you give are not there because the game gives you a handy escape route for all of those questions. "Man, why are you hoarding that food, we need it!" "I need it for my secret objective" "But we might lose otherwise!" "Well I'll lose anyway if I do give it to you". That line of logic just destroys the intention of the game. And that loss of tension is what kills the game for me. And notice that I've agreed with you that the game has a theme and tries very hard to keep to that theme, but in terms of conveyance it just fails: there's no need to trust or be suspicious of people when you know and are 100% certain that everyone has an ulterior motive. And my disagreement is that I'm fine knowing everyone has ulterior motives but the question is if one of these people want to end the game early. I know everybody is hoarding stuff so the tension comes from me trying to win my own objective while shoring up what little we have. Given your scenario that player would probably be exiled. Exiling players reduces food/zombie needs as their survivors leave the colony and also reduces the crisis requirements so it's totally appropriate to kick a player who's going against the flow of the game. Plus now they get a new objective which they may actually be able to accomplish. I don't have a problem with the secret objectives as a concept but I do take issue that some of them are practically impossible. A few of them are universally easy like "have X barricades in a certain location" and I don't think it's against the spirit of the game to reveal them. The resource collecting ones are difficult depending on the scenario, like good luck hoarding food in "Too Many Mouths." But then you get objectives that are like "Have more survivors than everyone else" which is totally appropriate (the cult of personality leader is a big zombie theme) but gently caress it if there's any good way to accomplish this objective at any point in the game! Then there's one scenario that kills the exiled player like what the poo poo??? I think all the mechanics serve the theme well but the theme is completely antithetical to a traditional game. And the maddening thing is I don't know how to fix it. Asking players to spend 60-120 minutes accomplishing two improbable goals is ridiculous. I wonder how the game would play if there was an option to exile yourself. The exile goals are universally easier when you're not playing towards the colony-survival goal but having more than one exile means the locations would fill up quick. At the same time the colony works better with fewer people. But the traitor doesn't want to be exiled so you can't have a situation where only the traitor remains unless at that point the traitor reveals themself and can ignore the traitor aspect of their objective? gently caress this is dumb! If I were designing an expansion to DoW I'd turn request/hand-off into a 1-for-1 exchange. I'd also add a "trader" location that offered a tableau of cards, including survivors (probably only starter cards and the survivors you don't pick at the beginning) in exchange for action dice. Starfarer's of Catan did the crossroads cards better and anyone should look at that game for how to do random event cards right. I don't know how I'd handle secret objectives because I think they're important but not when it's a hopeless scenario from the start. I don't think they should contribute to winning, the game should definitely be good-guys-win or traitor-wins. The objectives should instead count as some kind of reward. Maybe something like a player can turn in their objective (by proving they've accomplished it) and receive a specific reward like three food turns into a shotgun they traded with a passing traveler. The argument is that the reward will make up for the loss in some way although if you're a traitor you just cost the game 3 of something permanently. What if once morale reaches 0 you remove the colony instead of ending the game. Everyone receives an exile card. First person who accomplishes their objective during upkeep wins. This is actually advantageous to the traitor because the exile objective is usually synergistic with the betrayal objective while the good guys have their objectives entirely replaced. This encourages selfishness from good guys because maybe they see the collapse of the colony coming? The selfishness needs to be the core of the game. The whole point of the zombie genre is that mankind's demise is a result of his vice. The question is how to design a game that's structured around cooperative play but with the caveat that everyone is also out for themselves? e: This turned into a bunch of words about a dumb game but I really want to see a good zombie game where fighting zombies isn't an objective. I think the ideas in DoW can be salvaged I'm just not good enough to decide how. al-azad fucked around with this message at 16:30 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 16:23
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Broken Loose posted:Nah, the traitor and objective mechanics are internally hosed. The optimal way to play the traitor is to be 100% good until you get 2 turns in a row, then Scyther's comic happens. Traitor just divebombs the team in a ridiculously unthematic way. And I'm telling you this fits in line with all zombie fiction. You keep talking about the weird shifts in tone but between the original and remake, Dawn of the Dead features nazi bikers, a stunt dog who delivers food, a pregnant woman as a central plot point, people throwing pies in zombies' faces, having sex, going wild, rampant hedonism, shifts from cartoonish violence to realistic violence, and characters making horrible decisions at the drop of a hat. Romero's description of Day of the Dead is "a tragedy about how a lack of human communication causes chaos and collapse even in this small little pie slice of society," and DoW takes several elements directly from the movie, the game couldn't be any more appropriate to its inspirations. Day of the Dead, btw, features a character who literally opens the gates for the zombie horde because he's tired of living and wants to take down everyone else. Sound like one of the betrayer cards? Oh, but how unthematic this game is! The player is the one with the agenda and the survivors are your followers. The survivors aren't autonomous and maybe that highlights some kind of disconnect you're having here? Perhaps from a gameplay perspective it would be better if survivors were shared from a pool every turn that way each player has an opportunity of getting a character they might need for their objective. Dre2Dee2 posted:The crossroads mechanic also sucks. So many cards are "If the current player is using character _____ " .... that's just a crapshoot, and most of the time nothing happens. It's not a risk/reward mechanic where you have to consider doing something you need with risking a crossroad, people just take their turn and random bullshit sometimes happens where they usually have the option of declining it anyone. Yawn. The risk is taking the crossroad, not triggering it. Would you rather it be like the omen effects in Betrayal where you're forced to roll instead of declining? al-azad fucked around with this message at 17:51 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 17:47
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Poopy Palpy posted:"So if you try to do something you roll a die that can kill you outright? I'll take the guy who ignores that rule." Turn starts, crossroads card kills character outright. Pretty sure this will never happen. You always know the risk associated with an action and the option to ignore it.
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May 11, 2015 17:54
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Misandu posted:I think it boils down to how in a lot of zombie fiction the characters make hilariously insane, sociopath-esque decisions nearly constantly and while that might be fun to watch it's probably worth toning it down a little in a game. The Walking Dead tv show is a great example of zombie fiction that is very popular but would make a terrible game if you got the 'tone' of it right. And that's ultimately what I'm realizing here. You cannot make a good game where everyone is cooperating while simultaneously trying to come out on top while possibly trying to cooperate + fail + come out on top. But thematically if stunt dogs, pirates, hedonism, fatalistic idiots, and sudden bad decisions (sometimes all at the same time) are not "zombie" enough for you then you don't know anything about the zombie genre. It's as ridiculous and impossible to analyze realistically as much as the slasher genre. Why do the characters in Alien keep splitting up? If they stayed together to accomplish their goals they probably could have made it out alive but that doesn't make a good movie. Likewise in Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space the humans often benefit from sticking together as they can collectively lie about their position. But the game offers no way of sharing that information and it's intentionally designed so no one knows who they are so the game doesn't become predictable. silvergoose posted:Uh, yes, and the game that does that *better* is, as has been noted many times, Mall/City of Horror. DoW does it badly. I haven't played it so how does Mall/City of Horror represent the colony aspect of the game? If Dead of Winter's intent is to replicate the scenario in Day of the Dead where a group of survivors could legitimately survive if it wasn't because of fatalistic/sociopathic/selfish people with their own agendas destroying everything, how does Mall/City of Horror accomplish the same thing better? al-azad fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 18:10
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Clockwork Gadget posted:Archipelago does this pretty well, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ quote:According to the author, what he's tried to create is a "German" economic worker-placement game, but without the two things he dislikes in them: the superficial theme and the lack of interaction. Seriously contemplating dropping $80 on this thing.
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May 11, 2015 18:22
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GrandpaPants posted:Archipelago is a great game that I wish would hit the table more often, but it's seriously my favorite board game representation of the tragedy of the commons. Note that someone can sink the game even if they're not the traitor role, just to be a dick and screw the player she/he thinks is in first place because that person didn't help with the crises. That is, you can't let someone get too far ahead and you can't let anyone get too far behind, which is a pretty great tension. I really wish the rulebook would emphasize negotiating with other players more, though. Like, add a sidebar in the "trade with the market" action telling people that this is a kinda lovely action to take when other people may be able to satisfy your needs (for a price). If it's thematically appropriate, and it sounds like it is, I'm fine. It can't be any clunkier than Five Tribes' "slave" resource. Yeah, slavery was a thing in the Middle East, but why does your family friendly thinly veiled Mancala game include this dejected looking dark skinned man in shackles who does absolutely nothing except purchase/power other cards? Endeavor is a game where slavery is contained solely to cards but you can abolish it resulting in a penalty to for anyone buying into it, that's how you do risky themes well without dwelling on them. Man, Endeavor is another game that needs to be reprinted. Sloober posted:No more terrible than zombie games already are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCPkOB3Ci-U
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May 11, 2015 18:49
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Archipelago is on my list as well, but it seems to be a little tough to find at a decent price at the moment. I'm pretty sure I read on BGG that a reprint is due soon, so I'll just wait it out (or maybe trade for it on BGG or something). I had zero interest in Imperial Assault (and zero experience with Descent) but I've been playing in a campaign occasionally with a friend and it's pretty good. As a D&D nerd the persistent aspects of IA keeps me into it. But it also feels like the players are really fighting against a constantly evolving enemy. The GM, or whatever the game calls the imperial player, gets points to spend on enemy units plus abilities he can enact based on victory conditions. The game is meant to be played over a long period of time and for the $80 or whatever he dropped on it I'd say he's gotten his money's worth and then some. I know the game can also be played as a tabletop points-based miniatures game which may interest some people. Basically you get a lot of mileage out of the standard product. My biggest issue up front is the lack of information the players are given. We were told that a mission ends if "some number of us" are wounded. We're also not given a time limit on mission objectives so more often than not we think we have more time than we actually do. Around the fourth mission the GM decided to just tell us up front that a mission isn't over until everyone is wounded, he would give us time limits, and for cases involving objective counters he would tell us how many we needed to protect/destroy to win. I think the writers came into the game like an RPG but it's still a board game! In an RPG the GM controls the drama, he can fudge timers and add enemies if the scenario calls for it. Imperial Assault as a board game has hard limits on everything but the rules don't make it clear what the players should know so you often go into a mission with only a vague clue and that loving sucks. We realized something was up when the GM played the enemies as being completely suicidal while we were playing extremely conservatively. Taking an entire turn to heal in an RPG is an expected action but in Imperial Assault the rebels can't win unless they're eating hits. Understanding that it's a good co-operative experience against an rear end in a top hat GM. Don't drop that much money unless you have like minded players, it is a game that requires everyone at the table to work together.
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May 11, 2015 19:40
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Clockwork Gadget posted:The Imperial player is supposed to tell you all of those things. You were playing incorrectly for the first three missions, probably because he misread the rules. He learned the game from another player so this is just another example of how a bad teacher can influence first impressions. Big McHuge posted:If I'm going to play a zombie game with randomness in it, at least have it serve a purpose. Like, imagine a game where you're all trying to escape some compound that's infested with zombies, but along the way you have opportunities to help other people, etc. You get something like karma points or whatever for helping them, but it slows you down. The game ends when the first person escapes, however then some random mechanic determines how much each karma point is worth, so people who are furthest behind might actually win because they "did the right thing". I dunno, maybe that's a little too on-the-nose for most gamer tastes. It just goes back to the genre trappings being incapable of working well in a game. A victory point based system kind of flies in the face of the theme. The goal should be survival until the end, you shouldn't get bonus points for going out of your way. Either one or more people live/escape (great!) or everybody dies (too bad!). Random events should add something tangible to the table that everyone can interact with. Like a survivor's mother is sick, first person to trash a medicine gets him and a helpless victim. Or a motorcycle gang has taken over the gas station, you can't search there again until you kill them all.
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May 11, 2015 21:07
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To turn this away from zombie talk, I'm looking at running a pbf game of El Grande but I've always wanted to hear opinions on alternate means of picking starting provinces beyond them being randomly assigned. For people who've played the game do you just go with the random assignment or do something else? I've been thinking about games like Nations where the first player is the last to pick their spot and I wonder how that would work out in El Grande.
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May 11, 2015 23:25
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El Grande play-by-post. Get your asses in there, jefe.
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May 12, 2015 02:16
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I am curious what kind of sweatshop FF has at gunpoint that they can pump out a product filled to the brim with such high quality components for next to nothing. An MSRP of $100 seems a lot but I've seen games with less cost more.
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May 12, 2015 15:35
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:So my wife and I finally opened up our Star Trek Catan box after this past weekend's Catan-strophe. I can see how the role cards help, although it looks like starting position is still king. I decided to see what would happen with us playing two players if I did not necessarily have access to one of the common resources for building ships (roads) and outposts (settlements). We were just testing it out; we know playing normal rules with two players isn't really valid. I think it sufficiently crimped my style; I had quite a few more turns where I could not really do anything, and I did not have anything of interest to trade. I guess if I was in a position where all those starting resources were claimed when doing initial layout, I'd have to latch on to development card generation hard and pick my starting positions to secure them. It still feels very arbitrary. You definitely want at least one resource that generates on a common roll e.g. a 6 or 8 and there's enough space for everyone to get at least one of those. But yes, Catan can feel arbitrary. There are ways to mitigate that arbitration but you're still at the mercy of the dice and stingy players. And even when you're doing well you'll have several turns where you can't do anything because it's a game about building up resources incrementally. Negotiation games hinge on player cooperation and it sucks when everyone is tight lipped even when they're winning. Could you imagine a game of Diplomacy where no one negotiates with each other? Holy poo poo.
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May 12, 2015 18:48
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In Splendor's defense it can be played in like 10 minutes, taught in a minute, and setup in the same amount of time. I think we underestimate how important brevity is to some groups and I can't think of many games like Splendor that can be played in Splendor's time frame. The most annoying thing to me is when I'm playing a game I deeply enjoy and want to run it back but oops we spent 3 hours on that one game so try to remember what tactics you want to try out next week guys!
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May 12, 2015 20:39
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Keyflower is a great game that demands multiple plays because there's so much going on. It's easy to get caught up in bidding while your opponents are abusing your tiles. In one game I had a nice little engine going that I didn't get to use and one guy scored like 80 points off my own poo poo.
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May 13, 2015 04:05
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The Mantis posted:Fair. What about A&A attracts you? I'm not big on "wargames" or even skirmish games but Kemet has opened me to the genre. It's a game that rewards aggressive action as the primary way to score permanent victory points is by winning battles as an attacker. The model count is low, it's a very "clean" looking game and the only luck factor involved is the distribution of minor ability cards. Practically everything is public knowledge, everyone has access to the same pool of resources so it's 99% smart play and tactics.
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May 14, 2015 19:36
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EvilChameleon posted:How well does Keyflower play as 2 players? Ideally I won't be playing 2p that much but sometimes I just have me and the roommate and if it isn't horrible I could do that sometimes. (I have other 2p games, just wondering if this one is one that is okay with 2 or if I'll hate myself for some reason). I think someone said Farmers expac makes 2p better? I forget what was said about the expacs other than they are definitely not necessary to make the base game great. I mostly prefer it 2-players. At that point it's a clean, elegant, and ruthlessly cutthroat game of blocking and bluffing your opponent. It's everything I like about Uwe Rosenberg games without the bloat of most Rosenberg games.
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May 15, 2015 21:31
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Lorini posted:One of the most awesomest things about Keyflower is that it scales wonderfully. Just as good with two as it is with any other number. As long as everyone plays swiftly. I'd say Keyflower is worse than Five Tribes for AP players as a full game means you have a huge range of choices from the market, turn order, your own village, and opponent's villages.
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May 16, 2015 00:29
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I just stared buying my own games because I moved and my old group had everything, so I'm rebuilding a library from scratch. Also, what kind of thrift stores do you find board games at? Usually church thrift stores. The biggest board gamers I've met are often devout Christians.
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May 16, 2015 01:33
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Lorini posted:I don't play with AP people so I haven't experienced that. I played a three player game that somehow lasted 2 hours because one guy had to calculate the potential point value of every single move on every single turn. Keyflower is a game where the board changes four times in the entirety of play. The only thing you have to worry about is using tiles to generate resources or bidding on tiles to win them. This guy played out every single possible move in his head it was maddening.  Somebody kickstart this thing I will buy a dozen of them.
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May 16, 2015 01:53
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PerniciousKnid posted:Games with points are math exercises; if you aren't calculating you aren't playing. The problem is you'll get someone who takes longer than everyone else combined to take their turn. But the thing about most VP based board games is that the board changes so rapidly it becomes pointless trying calculate beyond your next turn. Like take an action drafting game like Terra Mystica. You can plan ahead some moves especially if it deals with scoring points from placing buildings, but unless your current or next action is to use a spell on the board or send a priest to a cult then you may as well pretend that action doesn't exist right now because someone else is likely to take it. But I've seen players who mentally plot out their "perfect turn" then when a wrench is thrown into that plan (as is 100% likely to happen) they'll create a mental thread of "what-ifs" based on all available choices. Each. Turn. But the worst offenders are people who don't pay attention to the game then when it comes time for their turn they're like "oh poo poo, what changed let me take 10 minutes on this one."
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May 16, 2015 06:24
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Countblanc posted:If someone is really taking much longer for their turn than the other players it's because they're almost certainly worse at the game than everyone else, in my experience. Obviously if "everyone else" is just slapping pieces on the board randomly that may not be the case, but AP is often an expression of someone failing to grasp the mechanics of the game on some fundamental level. Pretty much what fozzy said. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it's a case of inattentiveness, and sometimes it really is just people over thinking an otherwise simplistic scenario. Lorini posted:Some people seem to truly believe that three other people showed up at the game table purely to give them an opportunity to calculate and recalculate and then do something and then take it back and go back into calculation mode. They do not seem to care about how their behavior impacts others enjoyment. A part of me wonders if Vlaada grew up with people yelling at him for taking too long in board games so he intentionally designed games where at some point everyone goes into "solo mode" and fiddles around to find the optimal sequence of moves.
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May 16, 2015 14:13
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Tekopo posted:I lik legendary encounters but I can't adequately explain why I like it. I generally dislike deck building games but it's surprisingly thematic, the board is dynamic, and I always feel like I'm contributing something even when my hand is garbage. I'm glad it muscled out Marvel and DCs deck building games.
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May 16, 2015 19:51
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Tekopo posted:Played Sheriff of Nottingham and it was really kind of meh. The risk/reward doesn't seem to be all there and there is no real way to tell if someone is bluffing or not. Sure, if you have a bag of only contraband you can get dinged, but if you have, for example, 3 legal goods and one contraband, you don't stand to lose much even if your bag gets opened. The bluffing just isn't there either, either: you can load a bag legally, then offer the sheriff a low bribe for not opening (1 or 2 coins) and if he doesn't open, you don't lose much, but if he does, you gain a lot more. The bluffing aspect of the game is a bit overblown. At its heart it's a set matching game where everyone is trying to manipulate the board to claim the king/queen bonus. I've found the best strategy is to sneak in unclaimed legal goods so you always have something to offer. Contraband should be an all-or-nothing affair. In a 5 player game after everyone's had a turn at the sheriff, you almost always reach a point where the discard piles are 90% contraband and someone has completely outclassed you in legal goods. So the three worthless apples on my board are worth an extra 16 points to a Sheriff whose trying to move up from apple queen to king while the three crossbows I actually have in the bag are worth 24. My bag passed inspection? Great. Oh hey, apple Sheriff. I have royal apples in my contraband I'll give you one if you open Player B's bag. Now Player B has to offer something. Maybe I just gave away points to player B who's harboring legal goods, I don't care, the sheriff loses money and I'm going to give him some pepper because gently caress the police. I don't agree with the sheriff confiscating legal goods as well, but I'm curious how the game would play if you got to keep confiscated goods instead of discarding them. Most people are trying to get legal goods in greater number than illegal but there's added incentive to open bags if you can steal the items.
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May 17, 2015 19:29
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Archenteron posted:Imperial Settlers is the game where egypt is laughably overpowered and japan is laughably underpowered, right? Apparently an expansion for it came out recently. Does that fix anything? I don't necessarily agree. Egypt has a lot of options to generate workers which in turn can be converted into resources but Japan arguably has the strongest faction buildings in the game which is probably why they made it so opponent's can destroy them. They're not as versatile right off the bat but they have a bunch of cards that effectively remove enemy faction building's from the game and/or convert them into deals for you. I'd argue that they're "underpowered" in that each faction deliberately has a card that counters Japan. Egypt has chariot builder (ignores samurai), Rome has engineers (lets them take out shrine and gates), and the barbarians have robbers (lets them remove all the deals Japan likely has built up). Japan seems weak because the other players are required to keep them in check. But the fact that their buildings are vulnerable is kind of overblown because 3-4 raise tokens for 1vp isn't very optimal when there are resources to be gained elsewhere.
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May 18, 2015 07:56
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GrandpaPants posted:This means that the person who plays Japan can't be in first place, otherwise it paints a target on their back, especially from the person in second (or the Barbarians, who are generally incentivized to raze). Literally no other faction can be as directly punished for being first as Japan. That's such a spectacularly lovely design decision, especially since Japan really doesn't have that many better buildings than the other faction. The other lovely thing about the game is that there's just a high variance factor. If Egypt rushes out an Oasis turn 1 or 2, that's a hell of an obstacle to fight through and you might as well call the game right then and there. Oh, and the buildings for some reason don't scale in cost with number of players, even if the effect does. I'm pretty sure they realized that because Japan has buildings that score a truckload of points at the end. I'm sure some designer somewhere was like "Japan should play like a ninja, sneak a victory in the shadows." Yeah, the game has high variance but that's Egypt's weakness as well, they have 1 oasis in a deck of 30. I don't care enough about card games to fully analyze the thing but Egypt's strength is overestimated. Although I totally agree that all locations should be equally vulnerable, I don't even know why this was a thing.
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May 18, 2015 15:22
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Dirk the Average posted:I played a game as Egypt and my first faction building was Oasis. I won that game with almost 100 points and played nearly every faction card in my deck. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do to touch me the whole game. The next highest score was 52. I mean, congratulations on your 5% chance opening turn. I can't speak for your group but 52 points is pretty low when I know the other factions have ways to outclass Egypt in everything except resources. Instead of feeding you they could have been razing their cards from hand for resources and making deals with their faction cards. I agree with the earlier sentiment that Egypt's is the easiest to start with, not the be all end all. You'd think the company would offer some kind of errata like only being able to benefit once or twice but then it would conflict with their game-wording as the location is an active ability. Imperial Settlers won't be hitting my table again, 7 Wonders is everything I could want out of a Civ card game in a fraction of the time and without all the extraneous cards.
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May 18, 2015 16:17
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Bottom Liner posted:Not defending Imperial Settlers as I haven't played it yet, but aren't they completely different games mechanically? Sure the theme is similar, but 7 Wonders is drafting game and IS is worker placement and resource management? I don't mind games that overlap thematically as long as the mechanics and gameplay vary. They play different but in my mind they're not dissimilar. In 7 Wonders I have the variable powers, player interaction, resource management, and creating powerful card combinations but without the high variability of Imperial Settlers. I realize it's not fair to compare them on a play level but they both occupy the same space in my head for some reason. GrandpaPants posted:Imagine if that was your first game of Imperial Settlers, where you get trounced like this, even if it was only a small percentage chance of the time. Would you give it a second chance or write it off as random bullshit, which it completely is in this case? While I hear the same thing in Chaos in the Old World with respect to Khorne dominating newbie games, most people can at least realize that you can play around Khorne and otherwise learn to not engage him like he were some mouthbreather wearing cat ear headphones. What are you not supposed to do in Imperial Settlers? Not use one of your resources? Pray that the Egypt player doesn't realize how broken Oasis is? Realize that there are better balanced games that aren't as frustrating to play? And this is just the not-Egypt players, versus the very specific bullshit the Japanese player has to contend with. Maybe IS is a decent game if it were just Rome vs. Barbarians, as some sort of weird representation of the Gallic Wars, I dunno. I can name far better board games I get unfairly trounced in the first play because I didn't know how to play the game. I'm not going to pass judgment on a game after one play unless it's very obviously trash. There are easier and better ways to get resources beyond spending 2 workers for 1. FWIW my first game was 4-player and Rome won with something like 120 points because they chained up some ridiculous vp machine every time they built a building. Egypt had both the sphinx and oasis out and couldn't do poo poo about it. al-azad fucked around with this message at 17:26 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 17:18
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S.J. posted:Most people loving suck at teaching games Which includes 90% of the people writing the rules.
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May 19, 2015 16:58
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GrandpaPants posted:Of course the other rule of explaining rules is that the more you emphasize something, the more likely someone will claim that you didn't mention that in the explanation at all. My favorite teaching trick when someone's eyes are glazing over is to ask them a question. "So if you played this against me how many points would you score if the board looked like this?" That puts them on the spot and now everyone else has to pay attention to their explanation.
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May 19, 2015 17:15
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