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Impermanent posted:Pretty excited to see this one getting a reprint. I've never been able to pick up a copy. There is an iOS port, in case anyone wants to try it for a low price. Interface is pretty good on an iPad, cramped on a phone.
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Dec 15, 2014 19:27
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echoMateria posted:I've only ever played Tigris & Euphrates on tablet, and while it isn't a bad port like some other games got, but it bored the hell out of me on all my tries. Maybe I would have liked it instead if I was able to play the actual version with someone who liked the game instead of the AI opponents. So I'd be vary of recommending digital versions of boardgames to people as samples. They just aren't the same. I think they are a good way to get a feel for the mechanics of the game. If you already know other boardgames, playing the app will give you a general idea of how the game flows, and whether you will like the physical version. In my experience, no amount of table talk will make you like a game you don't enjoy (negotiation-heavy games excluded).
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Dec 15, 2014 20:19
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parasyte posted:As a phone game it's great, because I'm looking to kill 5-15 minutes vs an AI and the game keeps track of all the shuffling and bookkeeping and rules interactions and I just get to play a random card game for a while. It's also not a whole loving gigabyte like Magic is. And there's basically no other competition at all aside from Playdek's own implementation of shittier card games like Penny loving Arcade. The AI is pretty horrible and will happily load up its deck with crap 1 value cards instead of doing the clever thing and leaving points unspent. Asynchronous multiplayer is where it's at. Have a shitload of games and go through them when you want to spend 10 minutes.
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Dec 17, 2014 08:20
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Vegetable posted:I just bought Dominion. Is the strategy really as straightforward as I recall it: Trash the Copper and Estate cards asap, buy tons of Silver/Gold, then go for the Duchy/Provinces? I played this game hundreds of times against the AI when that fan-made app was free on the iPhone, and I recall doing this almost every single game. Even in the base game, the diferent realm cards can give you some alternatives. For example, missing a Chapel means no trashing, and Remodeling early in the game means your deck will slow down too much and lose to Big Money (the "buy a bunch of Silver and Gold and then go for VPs" strategy you talk about). Another example: you have no defense on that deck so you're going to lose aganist a few Militia/Witch cards. And that's before talking expansions, which give you more options. Basically, Dominion hasn't been solved yet.
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Dec 17, 2014 08:56
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xopods posted:That has little to do with luck, though. A game of pure skill can also present situations where one player can put the other in a situation where they have few options and can't do anything productive. The existence of those situations is a design flaw regardless of whether they arise randomly or strategically. Are you saying that not having any options in a game of chess/go/Agricola is the same situation as drawing the "you're delayed. Skip a turn" in Arkham or "Go to Jail" in Monopoly?
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Dec 20, 2014 18:15
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Played 2 games of Abyss this weekend. The host had picked it up in Essen, and played a couple of games, the other two players were new. Second game took barely an hour. The pitch is that the players are trying to be elected by an undersea council as the rulers of the Abyss, by gathering the support of the Lords, Allies and a couple of other things. Lords give lots of VPs, and the game ends one player buys 7 of them, so they are the main focus. Basically a light point salad game. In their turn, a player can do three things: 1) Explore, which means to draw 5 Allies (the cards you can use to pay for Lords) from a deck, picking up one (you can only take one before drawing the next card) 2) buy up a lord by paying up cards (of 5 different colours and valued 1 to 5 each) from their hand, matching both point cost and colour criteria of the Lord (using only cards of a single colour, using cards of 3 colours including a particular one, using cards of all 5 colours, etc...) or 3) take the allies of one colour that haven't been picked up in earlier explorations, which are put on decks on the board after each exploration phase. There are a few complications in each mechanic: - Lords may have a permanent ability (ignore the color requirements of Lords) or one-shot, that happens n purchase (every opponent discards an Ally from their hand). - Lords may also have keys printed on their cards. Once you have 3 keys, you get a Location, which are mostly point multipliers (2 points for each Lord of one colour), but also blocks the abilities of the Lords that "buy" the location. Some abilities are very powerful and it reflects on the high cost/low VPs of the matching Lord, so buying one of these as your third key is a bad move. - Players can buy 1 card per turn that other player is drawing on their exploration phase. Price goes 1 Pearl (money in this game), 2 pearls for the second card, etc.. - My favorite rule is that each time you buy a Lord, you "Affiliate" the lowest-value ally you've used to buy it. That means you keep the card in front of you, instead of discarding it like the rest you’ve used. At the end of the game, you score the highest valued card of each colour you have in front of you. That means that you want to use high cards to buy Lords, and those are at a premium, especially as the high value ones are kept on the table instead of being put back in the discard pile. - While exploring, you may encounter a monster and fight it as your action for the turn, getting bigger prizes as the number of monsters that player decide not to fight increases. - You can use money to buy Lords, to supplement the value of your allies if you’re short of value. So, opinion. First of all, the game is gorgeous. The lords are all different and well drawn, the board is pretty and functional and the money are actual (fake) pearls held in cups, rather than cardboard tokens. The cups are made of cheap black plastic, but everything else is a joy to look at and play with. Game seems pretty swingy, yet with some resource management. Getting lucky in the Exploration phase is a huge boon, and drawing locations matching your assets also help, but I feel that there are some skill in there involved with finding the balance between using only high level cards and using enough to get what you want without spending too many pearls. There are a couple of push your luck mechanics, like knowing when to cut your losses and pick a medium-value ally during exploration instead of giving your opponents a chance to get a high value one. There are also choices to be made regarding when to buy a location and close your Lords skills, and some skill in getting just enough allies for your plans, without being dragged down by low value ones. I’ll have to play it a few more times to decide one way or the other, but so far it’s a quick to play, easy to teach game that has some depth, or at least the illusion of it. No pun intended.
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Dec 22, 2014 11:00
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echoMateria posted:Any idea why Warhammer: Diskwars died? Outside the shameful treatment it got by SU&SD, I don't see any reason for it to rise and fall so much in such a short time. It was such a neat idea. Wonder if we can blame GW somewhere, like if they didn't like their share of the profits and pulled their license or something. I love blaming GW, they deserve every bit of it. I pitched the idea to a friend and he immediately asked me if I wasn't too old to be playing with tazos (Pogs). It's kinda hard to convince someone to play.
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Dec 23, 2014 15:29
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I may have gone a little too far bringing games home for the holidays. Incidentally, you can fit Dixit (minus board), 7 Wonders, Avalon, Coup, Dominion, Hanabi and Letters from Whitechapel in the box of Letters.
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Dec 24, 2014 11:03
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GMarshal posted:I'm considering getting Mage Knight, as my understanding is that it can be played solo. Can someone give me the rundown on the pros and cons of the game? Does it work well solo? Conversely, does it transition well to multiplayer? My only caveat with the game, besides the "big" thing is that in competitive it suffers from a runaway leader problem. As players get stronger, the first player can totally shut down the later ones scooping up all the loot/monsters and leave the other one without anything to do. This may depends on the map setup and isn't very common, but it's a thing to be aware of. 8 hours for 3 players seems excessive, though. Some charitable soul gifted me Cadwallon: City of Thieves. Anyone care to give me the bullet points? EDIT: quick scan of the rules shows a very light game with more thought spent on the minis than the mechanics. Oh, well, I can get some mileage out of it playing with my younger cousins today after dinner. Can't fault the intention. You have made a snob out of me, board game thread. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 12:31
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Regarding Tash Khalar, how high the skill ceiling is? I've only played a couple of times, but for the life of me I cannot imagine being able to disrupt my oponent enough to prevent a summoning, especially with the help of a flare.
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Dec 26, 2014 19:39
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Mister Sinewave posted:I don't think discarding based on "age" of card is even borderline cheating (not that you said it was) since card placement in your hand is up to the player to manage and they're free to screw it up since they can only see card backs.
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Dec 29, 2014 19:34
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Got Space Hulk: Death Angels the other day, been playing it a bit during the holidays, all by my lonesome. The pitch is that you control a bunch of demi-gods in armour that would make a tank pale with envy, moving into a derelict spaceship infested by (game controlled) Alien knock-offs. The objective is to survive enough to reach the final area of the ship and do something there, depending on the mission. There is some variability because different fireteams (each 2-Marine group, the box comes with 6 for a total of 12 Marines) have different powers, and there is some variance in the setup as well. I've played with 6 Marines (3 fireteams), although the manual claims that you can play with the full complement of 12 Marines. This seems a bad idea and a bit of a mess. There are interesting ideas, mainly that positioning is vital. Your marines face either left or right, and can only attack or defend properly if they are facing the aliens. They are sluggish by design, and shifting your formation around usually means wasting the action of at least one fireteam. Meanwhile, the genestealers jump around like monkeys with a sugar high, and love to flank your marines. The game devolves into whack-an-alien, because as soon as the number of genestealers on the board gets out of control it's probably game over. And the game is designed to keep then coming right up till the end. You see, you get a chance to kill aliens in your turn as soon as they spawn, and then they get to strike back if they are still on the table after your turn. Killing one is basically a 50% chance affair (before you consider skills and rerolls), but the interesting thing is that aliens have an X/6 chance of killing the marine they are in contact with, where X is the number of aliens facing a marine. One genestealer is laughable, but three of them are a serious threat that must be cut down now. There is a lot to think about each given turn, and many times I've realized I could have done something better while playing the turn, which is a plus. That said, the game is pretty hard, and you'll need a good plan AND plenty of luck, because bad rolls mean a lot, and a bad situation snowballs out of control very quickly. I'd have preferred to increase the number of aliens but make the Marines better shots (say, having a 75% of killing an alien), to lessen the luck factor, but in general I'm happy with the game. Most of the rules fit the theme, it plays fast and has some thinking involved. Probably a bad game for cooperative play, best for solitaire. One complain I have is that the expansions are ridiculously overprized for the content they give you, but it's a GW game, so that's par for the course. Another game I’ve played recently is Street Fighter: the Deckbuilder which is by the same guys who did the DC Deckbuilder and has mostly the same faults. I’m a snob and want to lord over my friends with my good taste in games, so could someone give me a quick run down of Yomi and the Indines games? I think the thread had good opinions on them.
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Jan 5, 2015 11:48
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malkav11 posted:Death Angel is a Fantasy Flight game, not Games Workshop. It just uses the Space Hulk (/40K) license. I think the price of the expansion content has more to do with the fact that all of it is print on demand and thus avoids economies of scale. Yeah, I know. I just like blaming GW 
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Jan 5, 2015 15:12
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My 55 year old aunt has sent me an email asking about Dixit, after I brought it to a Christmas dinner. I may still be able to convince them that there are boardgames beyond Trivial and Bingo. Small steps, small steps...
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Jan 7, 2015 10:25
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echoMateria posted:Me and my friend who bought it had high expectations (he has all Legendary stuff) and we liked it even more than expected. It is nowhere as solid as a deck builder as Dominion of course, but it is a tense co-op with a working deck builder system. It's basically Legendary Marvel, right? For me, Alien is Ripley running a lot, not Hicks blasting aliens with a shotgun.  Echophonic posted:Manikin Pis and Stonehenge should be fine? Sorry, are we talking about the little peeing boy in Brussels?
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Jan 7, 2015 18:09
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echoMateria posted:If "running away helpless from horrors" is what you seek, there are games like Level 7 [Escape] that does it. But everyone hates that game. Maybe others can recommend an alternative?  Second movie, as you said, is more of a turf war between aliens and marines, so the kill everything approach is OK. This is a minor complaint, anyway, I've enjoyed Marvel Legendary the times I've played and probably end up getting Legendary Encounters. Chomp8645 posted:I think that if someone finds 7 Wonders overwhelming then they can find literally any game in the universe overwhelming. Maybe on an individual level some people might find it more difficult than Dominion or whatever else, but on the whole I think it's about as entry level as a game can get. Hell my mom thought that Catan was "too complicated and confusing" and even she loves 7 Wonders and got the hang of it after a practice game. I think Carcassone give people less time to complain, which is important. The "play a tile down, place a worker" bit can be explained in seconds. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 09:43
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Double post.
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Jan 8, 2015 09:49
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Broken Loose posted:I cannot recommend Avalon for people anymore. Or just ignore the character powers for your first games. Merlin becomes a blue guy with a beard. EDIT:I haven't played Resistance 3.0, so maybe it's the definitive version of the game, but if you want the simplest version of the game, they are exactly the same. EDIT EDIT: R3sistanc3. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 17:20
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Azran posted:While we're on the topic, what are the best deckbuilding games out there right now? I've never played Dominion, but I have played Ascension and Star Realms I think it was called. I've heard about the complaints levered towards Ascension, but the main thing keeping me away from Dominion is the theme. If you need theme and your friends are into superheroes, Legendary Marvel is pretty good, and I assume the alien one is good too, given that it seems basically the same. Note that I say Marvel. Do NOT get the DC one, I don't care if you all want to be Batman. I think someone said that Artic Scavengers was good, but that it needed the expansion (or optional cards? can't remember) to really shine. Speaking of deckbuilders, someone say bad words about Shadowrun: Crossroads so I don't buy it.
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Jan 9, 2015 11:17
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Jedit posted:It's Shadowrun and hence is poo poo. Thanks 
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Jan 9, 2015 11:45
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Broken Loose posted:dominion is amazing for newcomers and only lacks player interaction if you're poo poo at the game. Or if you don't draw Militia and/or Witch in the base game. Which is bound to happen about 90% of the time if you're using random Kingdoms. I agree with the general spirit of the post, but the lack of interaction IS a valid complain for a new player. What's your 2nd best deckbuilder, by the way? Temporium?
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Jan 9, 2015 12:33
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Jedit posted:Temporum is not a deck builder. Haven't played it, BL had wrote some words about it recently and it kinda mixed together.
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Jan 9, 2015 13:00
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rchandra posted:Intrigue might be a good starting point for you if you want something a little more complex (it stands alone), and that way if you like it you can later get the Big Box (Base + Alchemy + Prosperity). So similarly, I'd recommend Cornucopia or Hinterlands or Seaside as first expansions. Don't buy Dark Ages / Guilds until the end. I find 4 takes a bit too long between turns, but agree with the rest of this post. Alchemy should be the very last expansion that you buy. Fungah! posted:There's a lot more kinds of interaction in dominion than just direct attack cards. Cards in the supply are a limited resource and if there are only a couple of good combos on the board competition for the key cards can get very cutthroat. It's the same principle as a WP game being super competitive even though there aren't usually a lot of ways to directly attack your opponents Yes, but a new player won't see that until he gets relatively good, which was the point I was trying to make. WP placement games make this much more obvious because other player got there first and then you can't get you reed/stone/quest and then you're screwed. To a new player, base Dominion can look like every player is doing his own little thing until one says "finished", especially if you remove attack cards from the equation.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:34
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Rubitex was right all along...
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Jan 13, 2015 14:16
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xopods posted:The natural evolution of the deck-builder is for someone to build a deck-destroyer. Now that I've said that, I just had a great idea for how that would work... it's been a while since I've worked on a new design, gonna have to give this one some thought. Uno?
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Jan 17, 2015 17:36
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disperse posted:So, a gamer in the neighborhood is coming over tonight and, after viewing my game collection, requested Magic Realm. I think it's time for my bi-annual failed attempt to grok Magic Realm. Last time I checked there were about two manuals and three different quickstart guides. Which one was the best to learn with, again?
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Jan 20, 2015 18:28
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Fat Turkey posted:Is the Tigris and Euphrates app good for learning the game. And playing on a 4 inch phone? It does have a good tutorial, so yeah, you can learn from that. 4 inches is pretty cramped, but workable. For comparision, it has a bit more room than Le Havre on an iPhone. I don't know how good the AI is because I'm horrible at this and it keeps kicking my rear end. disperse posted:The Least You Need to Know to Play Magic Realm is a great place to start. It leaves out magic, hirelings, and PvP combat, but is only 8 pages long. (Note: I'm biased, it was written by my dad.) Cool, thank your dad for me.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:41
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Sistergodiva posted:Yeah, gonna go out on a limb and guess a whole deck or two is completely missing. Yeah, with the crazy way they packed up the cards (i.e. decks were shuffled together without any order whatsoever), that looks like a you're missing 2 of the 7-8 the game came with.
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Jan 22, 2015 08:54
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The Supreme Court posted:Anyone fancy a game of Kemet here via the forums? I played it three times over the holidays and have still got a total craving to play it, and think it'd work fine; Chaos in the Old World was cool as a PBP, and Kemet is definitely simpler and shorter. I'd be up for it, too. EDIT- Never played it before Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 16:46
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Countblanc posted:To add to the solo games with replayability pile, Archipelago with the single player expansion (like $10, it's a big ol' deck of cards) is my favorite SP board game. What, is this a thing? How does it work? fozzy fosbourne posted:I don't think thematic games and solid mechanics are mutually exclusive. Twilight Struggle is, without doubt, the most thematic game I've ever played. The only thing that doesn't fit with the theme is the Space Track, but everything else (Mil. Ops being saber-ratting, DEFCON, the fact that regions can be important just because your oponent makes it so, the small countries doing all they can to screw with your plans, etc). Explaining the rules is a breeze, because they just make sense.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:39
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Some Numbers posted:Units can only be placed in or adjacent regions containing units of the same color. Cards may be played in any open spot on the map.
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Jan 25, 2015 18:06
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Gutter Owl posted:Second, Fat Samurai has the correct interpretation Played Smallworld Underground during the weekend. I don't particularly like the first one, with the politicking and the long time reading all the stuff races can do, which is quite a lot of setup for a supposedly light game. But Underworld is in dire need of a better FAQ. There is lot of skills that contradict each other, and even the usual "denial powers take precedence over powers that let you do stuff" didn't help in some cases (for example, whether a race being Martyrs due to a location gains a coin when losing that location). I know the answer is going to be Kemet, but I'll ask anyway. What game should I push my friends towards, so we stop playing Smallworld?
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Jan 25, 2015 20:40
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You can bludgeon someone to death with Galaxy Trucker: Anniversary Edition. Does that count?
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Jan 26, 2015 10:02
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Heavily edited conversation from 5 minutes ago. "Hey, FS, thanks for bringing that weird game the other day. Whatisface, the one where you buy cards from the middle and put them into your deck. The villages one." "Dominion" "Whatever. It was fun! We decided to try something else, went to a shop and asked around. The guy in the counter was pretty helpful, too!" "Well, you could have asked me and would have given you a shortlist, but anyway... Did you get Dominion, or something else?" "Nah, we wanted something more interactive, and funnier and where you can be a jerk to the other players, and you know we have some friends that are into D&D and..." "Oh, God..." "The guy on the store says that it's a best seller, so it must be good. There are tons of expansions, too" "You bought Munchkin, didn't you?" "Yeah, why?"
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Jan 26, 2015 14:05
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Broken Loose posted:"The villages one." They were so happy drawing their entire deck each turn
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Jan 26, 2015 14:11
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Tekopo posted:When I got started into the hobby, I played Arkham Horror and bought Star Munchkin and the Munchkin Western version. I remember also buying one of the Arkham Horror expansions (Dunwich?) even though I didn't own the base game. I also really liked Fluxx as well. This must have been about 8 years ago. Well that's my story Now imagine having to play them again, knowing, deep down, that it's your own bloody fault. I'm exaggerating, obviously, and I'm happy for having convinced other people to try the hobby. Good games can be introduced later, and an hour of barely paying attention to whatever happens in the table while drinking with friends isn't going to kill me. I hope.
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Jan 26, 2015 14:56
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Blood Bowl is a part of the collective consciousness because it is 30 years old, was the very first "fantasy world football" game, was a large-box title on every game store's shelf in the 1980s and 90s and was cross-promoted by GW in White Dwarf magazine for years. Do you think it's fair to compare a 2-year old Kickstarted game to that? Anything would come up short. Don't forget the PC game, it's two expansions, the sequel in the works and the ports to other platforms.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:52
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Bloodbowl isn't a game. BB is an exercise in inner pece.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:07
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So, you have been playing this thing for three hours? Think that you're going to win? Think that your decisions in the face of completely random events were the best and that's why you've reached this point? gently caress you. You lose. Now you get to sit quietly until your friends finish playing the game.* *I have never played Talisman, let alone whatever that card comes from. I'm just guessing.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:11
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The Supreme Court posted:I'm going to put that into our Kemet game as a DI card Karma demands that you lose your Elephant to it.
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Jan 29, 2015 17:08
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