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Q: What's a good zombie game? A: In spite of being a massively popular theme that produces tons of huge kickstarter campaigns, City Of Horror is largely accepted among goons to be the only safe recommendation because almost every other zombie game is a boring and creatively bankrupt dicefest (Zombies!!!, Last Night On Earth, Zombicide). One notable stinker is recently released Dead Of Winter which features such innovations to the genre as a fundamentally broken traitor mechanic poorly lifted from Battlestar Galactica, and a die that has a one in twelve chance of instantly killing you.
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Dec 13, 2014 17:24
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Cocks Cable posted:I don't care for City of Horror much because, for a very political game, you have very little resources with which to bargain. The central mechanics of the game are done better elsewhere. And the zombie theme is just kinda there-ish. One just has to accept that all zombie games are terrible (so play Last Night on Earth). Counterpoint: Last Night On Earth has roll-and-move as a mechanic.
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Dec 14, 2014 04:45
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PROTOSTORM!!! posted:Whats everyone thinking on the Memoir 44 expansions (really a question aimed at who owns them, or a handful of them). I'm definitely looking to expand later (for this 10 year old game) and was thinking of the best way to go about it. Right now I think the strongest openers after the base game scenarios are Terrain pack into the Equipment pack, then dole out any of the army specific packs as wanted (since a lot of them seem to ask for the terrain pack) You really want at least one or two of the army packs (probably all three) first, they come with a lot more bang for your buck than the terrain pack. It's not really accurate to say that a lot of the army pack stuff requires the terrain pack, the Eastern Front for example has 8 scenarios, only one of them calls for the terrain pack. The terrain pack comes with only four scenarios, and the equipment pack has probably the heaviest dependance on other expansions of the bunch, it requires the terrain pack to a much higher degree than any of the army packs, as well as having scenarios that require the Winter Wars pack, and many scenarios that require the army packs. I'd start with whatever Theater/Front pack appeals the most to you, then add one of the others, then get either the third one or get the Terrain Pack if you want to make your own scenarios or download scenarios from the website. After that, MAYBE look into the equipment pack. Scyther fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 23:37
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About the worst thing I can say about 7 Wonders is that it fills such a rare niche that if your group is usually 5-7 people, and you've got a majority of people clinging to the asinine ideal that everyone should play together at all times, you're going to get sick of 7 Wonders very fast. I have nothing really against the game, but I have no desire to ever play it again.
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Dec 15, 2014 01:57
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I guess my point is people use 7 wonders as a crutch. Great 3 and 4 player games sit unplayed because The Cat Piss Man's Wife doesn't want to split up the group so guess what we're playing 7 wonders and then a bunch of party games. It's no fault of the game, just my experience with lovely groups.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:29
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:So in the base game of Memoir 44 the only real sticking point in the rules I see is that they don't specify how many dice you roll when retreating, we've been going off the assumption that it's always 4? Unless there is something I missed. You don't roll any dice when retreating. What exactly would the purpose of these rolls be? Regarding Air Power, you basically target 4 or less connected hexes (they could be in a straight line or a line with a bend or all bunched up, or whatever) that have enemy units on them. The number of figures in the units doesn't matter, if that's what you're asking with your examples, which I'm having trouble parsing because the wording is ambiguous.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:11
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:When I mean went you take a hit, you roll the dice to see how many spaces back you move, the confusion was on how many dice to roll then, not during the actual retreat, sorry! You don't roll the dice to see how many spaces you move back. If I'm attacking one of your units, if I roll any flags, the number of flags I roll is the number of spaces you retreat (taking into account of course any abilities that let you ignore a flag, like being on sandbags). e: Please tell me you're not rolling dice to determine how far you can move in any other situations either, this should never happen. Regarding Air Power:  A "Unit" in Memoir '44 is a group of figures that occupy one hex. The individual plastic men and tanks are referred to as "figures". Whether a unit is at full strength (4 figures for regular infantry, 3 for regular tanks), down to its last man, or anywhere inbetween, it is considered one "Unit". Scyther fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 02:36
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We've been over this a million times but let's do it again. Randomness does not make a game more "newbie friendly", because it's just as likely to screw the new player over as the veteran player, if not more likely, because at least the veteran is likely to have some idea of how to mitigate the randomness, how to make contingency plans, etc. If your great introduction to modern games is playing some random crapshoot luckfest with a non gamer, you might as well sit down and play Monopoly with them. Play a game with meaningful agency and just go easy on them for a bit so they have a chance to learn without being utterly demolished at every step. It's not always an easy thing to do, but nobody said introducing people to board games would be easy. On a side note I find it interesting that by filing off some of the chaff from Ascension, Star Realms more prominently showcases just how awful and broken the random center market is as a mechanic in a deckbuilder, and as a result is even more mind numbing to pay. Scyther fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 15:08
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Rutibex posted:It's psychological not mechanical. When you lose at a particularly random game you don't know if you lost because of inferior skill or because of the dice; this lets defeat seem less bitter. If you're going to get into psychology you're very quickly going to have to face the reality that, unsurprisingly, people's brains work differently, and the situation you're describing here is the exact opposite of my reality, and that of many people I've introduced to games.
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Dec 20, 2014 15:27
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Even playing Sentinels on the app, controlling the maximum number of characters by yourself, there's practically never an interesting decision to make. The mechanics feel incredibly archaic, and almost everything revolves around spitting out or manipulating or nullifying damage numbers. That is, when you're not sitting around waiting for your deck to throw you the card you need to do the one trick your hero does.
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Dec 23, 2014 17:46
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echoMateria posted:I wonder if anyone even saw my Spyfall question between the I haven't played Xia but my understanding is the game is full of dumb dumb things like rolling a die based on your engine quality to move (a crappy engine might be a d6 while a good engine might be a d10), rolling your attack, then the defender rolls shields (a crappy shield again might be a d6 and a good one might be a d10), and all sorts of other poorly thought out crap like "every time you roll a 20 on a d20 for any reason, you get a victory point, hooray!" Basically the design reeks of "this is my first game and the only playtesters were a handful of my friends who played the game exactly as I'd envisioned it should be played so everything went fine".
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Dec 26, 2014 01:55
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thespaceinvader posted:Tabletop managed to win it, and they're... not known for tactical acumen. Which leads me to guess that it's presumably possible. They also got vital rules wrong, in true Tabletop fashion, which made the game a lot easier for them. That being said, I've played the game three times, two of which were victories. I don't remember the difficulty setting but I'm sure it was on the lower end of the spectrum.
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Dec 29, 2014 02:42
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To me the depth and length of Hanabi seem to aim it towards a filler slot, but it requires too much focus and memorization and restricts communication too much to function as a filler. On the other hand it has too much luck to function as a satisfying co-op deduction game. I can't think of a time where I wouldn't rather play a less demanding filler, or a much meatier main event game. The designer came up with a gimmick and forgot to design a real game around it, I guess because they knew all you need is novelty value to coast by on.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:37
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Broken Loose posted:You can use basic clues to complete a game of Hanabi fine. In order to get a high score, you either have to be lucky or cheating. There are simply not enough actions available to give players the information they need to determine what to discard without gambling or or metagame solutions. I think this is really the key point but people are so entrenched in their meta and groupthink that they can't recognize the subtle ways in which they're subconsciously cheating.
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Dec 30, 2014 12:32
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 It's official. Nobody should ever give money to IB&C.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:30
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:What are the main differences between mad king Ludwig and suburbia? I know I've heard goons say that Ludwig is better but suburbia's theme seems more appealing. Suburbia uses uniformly shaped hexagon tiles that gradually roll down a price track, starting out expensive and becoming cheaper over time as people buy out the cheaper tiles. It has a central mechanism of accelerating your per-turn income and population (score) growth, with the score track peppered with increasingly dense "speed bumps" so that as your population (score) grows, your population increase per turn and cash income per turn go down. The strategy somewhat boils down to "get a great cash flow going before you start going for score or you'll never get anywhere" but I feel there's enough challenge finding the right balance that it makes for an interesting game, some may disagree, ymmv. Plus I like putting hexagons neatly next to other hexagons and making them combo off each other. Castles of Mad King Ludwig has a lot of different shaped and sized rooms (Squares, Rectangles, Circles, L-shapes) that can fit together in various tricky ways, and a mechanic where one person will decide where the different rooms up for grab in a given round go on the price board from higher to lower. On rounds where you are that person (the "buildmaster"), everyone else gets to choose before you, but they pay you the cost, whereas you will pick last and pay the bank. There's a lot of interesting challenges as to how to price tiles that someone else might want. If you price them too high they won't buy them, they'll probably just buy something cheap so you'll get less money. You have to consider how to price the rooms that YOU want so that hopefully nobody else will buy them, but also so you don't end up overpaying to the bank. I like this style of game enough to own both, but I'd be hard pressed to say which one is better if you only wanted one. AP prone players are definitely going to have a hard time with Ludwig's auction mechanic.
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Jan 5, 2015 16:11
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malkav11 posted:Having received the latest Sentinels expansion today, Wrath of the Cosmos, I'd just like to clear up a popular misconception: A number of people here seem to believe that Adam Rebottaro, the artist for Greater Than Games, is incompetent and his (supposedly) lovely art is because he is not capable of doing better. (Personally, I like the art in Sentinels and think it's perfectly appropriate for the subject matter, but YMMV.) However, this expansion contains an environment deck called the Enclave of the Endlings and the art on this deck, still by Rebottaro, is as far as I can tell a spot-on emulation of Jack Kirby's art on various cosmic Marvel titles. So the style he normally uses on their games is clearly a deliberate choice. Rebottaro has obviously improved his technique over time, but the only thing the art for Sentinels and its expansions emulates is deviantart faux-anime scribbled on some 13-year old's school notebook. fozzy fosbourne posted:Yeah, I'm not a fan of his style but I figured it was a deliberate 90's kind of thing like Joe Madureira. I also don't think his pencils are colored the way modern comics are. Not my thing but I don't think it's due to lack of talent, more a matter of taste. His art looks more like super hero saturday morning cartoons than superhero comics.  Did you grow up watching saturday morning cartoons made in a former soviet country or something?For your collective comparison pleasure: 90s saturday morning cartoon, Spiderman (1994):  Joe Madureira  Jack Kirby:  Old Rebottaro:  Recent Rebottaro:  I'm not saying it's necessarily fair to compare card game art to prolific comic book artists or even cartoon studios that have comparatively large budgets and staffs, but when you're actively inviting these comparisons I'm more than happy to point out the obvious: Rebottaro does not come out looking good compared to any of them. A more fair comparison would be other indie board game developers, but Rebottaro doesn't compare favorably to many of those either. John Ariosa for Summoner Wars, Plaid Hat Games  Can't find artist credits for this one, but it's for Heroes Wanted. Imagine that, a comedic superhero game where you mash two cards together randomly to create your character STILL has better art than Sentinels 
Scyther fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 13:17
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fozzy fosbourne posted:This is more of what I had in mind: Well you're definitely right that he does the style worse than those examples, but I still don't think his bad shading, shapeless anime blobfaces, tenuous grasp on anatomy, or anything else about his artistic incompetence is a stylistic choice no matter how you spin it.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:44
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For what it's worth I would much rather they hired an actual competent game designer 
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Jan 7, 2015 16:25
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S.J. posted:I don't think there's a single horror game out there like that that is good, and that's sad. Fearsome Floors seems to sort of fit the description but I have no idea if it's any good.
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Jan 8, 2015 04:38
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7 Wonders is easy enough to learn for someone who's already comfortable with the basic ideas of modern tabletop games, but for complete newbies it's just a handful of cards, every single one of which has symbols on it that you have to ask what they do because to a newbie, the reference sheet may as well be written in Latin. It's doable, especially if you play the first some amount of hands open but there are plenty of other games that don't require this caveat, and are much easier to teach, like Carc, TTR, Dominion, etc.
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Jan 8, 2015 13:08
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Lichtenstein posted:Coup. It's simple to learn and you will feel emotions while playing, unlike TTR. In my experience, a lot of new players have a hard time figuring out when to lie (or when to challenge for that matter), and will not lie nearly enough to enjoy coup the first couple of games.
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Jan 8, 2015 16:36
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GrandpaPants posted:Speaking of horrible first impressions, I saw a game of Smash Up that took 2 hours to finish. At least 3 of the 6 player game were complete newbies. I don't really expect them to come around anymore. The one player I knew at the table was practically begging to play something else (he had never played Smash Up, and I guess wanted to learn). Smash Up is trashy for sure, but to be completely fair, it only officially supports 4 players. It's a slog with just 4, I don't know why anyone would subject another person to a 6 player game.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:10
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Mega64 posted:Rules Question: If you place a cube during the card phase, do you then get to draw another card? For instance, when I placed a cube on the turn, I used my card draw at the end of the turn to grab the +2 Dominance card, enough to let me place a cube. I assume you could, but it's good to clarify first. I don't think that particular situation has happened to me but I would agree with your assumption. The manual says that during the advance phase you take one card for every cube you placed on your turn , and since the advance phase is part of your turn (and since gambit cards resolve as soon as you gain them), I would say yes. The past tense wording makes it a bit unclear, and I'd like to see a FAQ address the question, but I think this interpretation of the rules as written seems the most sound.
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Jan 11, 2015 15:31
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Every time the D&D Adventure Board Game series gets mentioned I feel the need to mention that I find them a blast to play. They scale very well from 2-5 players, are fully co-op, fairly easy to set up, easy to play, really the only downside is they rely on a whole bunch of d20 rolling.Poison Mushroom posted:[...]'fantasy SWAT team'[...] This is also a very accurate description.
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Jan 13, 2015 00:22
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I think the point where SU&SD jumped the shark for me is when I realized they often just review games they enjoy and assume the reason they enjoy them must always be because they're mechanically brilliant (because they're really smart and have good taste!!!), and then they try really hard to rationalize that idea (See: Cosmic Encounter, Dead Of Winter, A Few Acres Of Snow). You can't perform an objective analysis of a game if you can't come to terms with the fact that you sometimes enjoy things that are objectively bad. Also they used to be pretty funny which leads to me forgiving a lot. Nowadays they are painfully unfunny, and they keep bringing in their painfully unfunny friends.
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Jan 13, 2015 13:10
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Maybe "Objectivity" is the wrong word, but I think their "critical evaluation" is sorely lacking (See: Cosmic Encounter, Dead Of Winter, A Few Acres Of Snow). Most of the time they're just using petty rhetoric to provide justification for their opinion, often formed after just a few plays or based on nostalgia. In the beginning they had lots of enthusiasm and humor going for them at least, but that well has pretty much run dry.
Scyther fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 15:26
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My FLGS came in handy for meeting new people to invite to my house to play my online-bought games. I'm being facetious, of course, I do buy from the store from time to time, especially since they sometimes have games that are hard to find online.
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Jan 14, 2015 23:14
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Star Realms is quick because it's snowballs out of control incredibly quick. It's the worst parts of Ascension magnified to encompass the entire game, and some pointless chaff added.
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Jan 17, 2015 18:55
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It's almost as if the game's entire design is irredeemably broken.
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Jan 19, 2015 15:41
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I have a Tragedy Looper rules question (script 2 spoilers): If the key person is in the hospital, and the hospital has two intrigue, and the hospital incident triggers, it seems like the key person dies, but at the same time, so do the protagonists. Do you tell the protagonists that they've lost or that they've died?
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Jan 20, 2015 15:28
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Broken Loose posted:The designer says, "All the deaths happen simultaneously, then immediate effects happen simultaneously." So in the case of a Hospital Incident going off with a Key Person, Time Traveler, Friend, Lover, and a Loved One in the hospital at the time, all the characters but the Time Traveler die, the Mastermind says, "You die," the Friend is revealed off the Loop End condition, go back to Time Spiral and collect 200 Yen. Okay, that's the way we played it, good to know I didn't cheat the protagonists out of any information.
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Jan 21, 2015 01:11
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Betrayal and DoW are both complete bullshit, but at least Betrayal is honest about it. DoW insists on pretending to be a legitimate game.
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Jan 21, 2015 01:38
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Sistergodiva posted:I'm in Sweden, but I called my FLGS and they said they can't take it back since they can't sell it again since it's opened. I'm sure I could pull consumer law stuff on their rear end, but I really like the store and the people who work there and I play there a lot. Unfortunately on top of having the cards sorted in the least helpful way possible, Upper Deck has a seemingly bad record of cards missing across their entire line of Legendary games and expansions. I've heard so many stories of missing cards but I've been lucky enough myself that my Legendary stuff has been mostly complete, I was missing one card from Villains but that seems to be it. Their support people were helpful and the card shipped in a reasonable time, but you would think a company that started out in CCGs would be able to get their poo poo together. Come to think of it, I should crack open the Guardians of the Galaxy expansion I got for my birthday and check if it's complete. e: Yes it's complete. Scyther fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 22:31
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Sistergodiva posted:Basically Swedish consumer law gives me the right to go back to the store and demand that the store repairs or replaces my faulty product. They said they could take the game, count the cards and order the replacements themselves, but that would just add the time it takes until I get the replacements. I don't really feel like screwing over the guys who takes 30 min out of their workday to help me find a game I will probably like and even explain how games I'm thinking about play. It's not "taking 30 minutes out of their workday" if their job is selling games, and the result is making a sale. Being an enthusiast as well as a professional and selling hobbyist items rather than say a broken TV or a hamburger that's missing the onions does not change anything about the basic tenets of customer service.
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Jan 21, 2015 23:50
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Sistergodiva posted:Yeah, I bought the last of the game they had in stock and I had already checked cards to make sure they were missing and that I didn't just gently caress some deckmaking up, so I was like halfway there. Rather count card for an hour than wait an extra 3 days for the game because they order the replacement cards for me. Exactly how many cards are you missing? Do you have enough of those double-sided blanks to maybe paste up some proxies so you can at least get to play?
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Jan 22, 2015 01:26
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I played CS-Files while listening to the original Phoenix Wright soundtrack while playing it on my birthday. There's even a little silhouette of a dude on the side of the box that looks like he would be right at home in Phoenix Wright.
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Jan 23, 2015 20:58
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Sadsack posted:Me and the wife have been playing through D&D Castle Ravenloft. While its a good introduction to D&D's basic mechanics, it's...not good. The instructions have huge holes in them and the encounters mechanic seems deliberately broken. What's a good dungeon crawler to move on to? Descent seems to be the most high profile if nothing else. You're out of luck because the D&D adventure game series are by far the most tolerable fantasy SWAT team games, unless you like dexterity games, in which check out Catacombs. Both editions of Descent have their own share of issues, I would heavily recommend trying them before buying.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:22
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King Burgundy posted:So I just played Shadows of Brimstone for the first time tonight and had a blast. I actually own Castle Ravenloft and I don't know why I'd ever play it again when given the choice since SoB was better in every possible way. I really can't wait to play it again. I'm going to have to ask for some more detail here on what makes this supposedly better than anything, because I look at the BGG page for Shadows of Brimstone and about a million red flags immediately pop up. Flying Frog Productions, same designer as all their other godawful games, contents include sixteen six-sided dice. And of course, it's a Flying Frog game so:   e: Oh my poo poo, the rabbit hole goes deeper. When enemies attack you, they roll some number of dice to hit, and then you roll a die to attempt to defend for each enemy die that hits. The rulebook makes sure to mention that enemies don't get to roll defense when you attack them as this would be "cumbersome". Instead for every hit a hero rolls, he must then roll a d6 to determine the damage and subtract the enemy defense value from each roll. Because that sure as gently caress isn't cumbersome, right? Everyone at Flying Frog Productions literally grew up in a monastery and took strict vows to never play any board games that weren't designed in the 80s because they might learn heretical ideas like good game design.
Scyther fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 04:35
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King Burgundy posted:I never said it was better than anything?? I should have been clearer, I didn't mean to imply that you said "This is better than literally anything else", I was questioning your assertion that there exists a game (specifically Ravenloft) that this compares favorably to. King Burgundy posted:The things I liked about it were the campaign continuity(basically being able to keep playing with the same characters, leveling up, etc like an actual pen and paper game), the variety of options when going back to town after the adventure, things to buy/do/etc, the variety of actually interesting items and such, etc. So instead of being "being better in every possible way" like you initially said, it's better at one thing. Even that is questionable, as Wrath of Ashardalon introduced campaign rules. Scyther fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 05:02
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