Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

thespaceinvader posted:

To expand:

3: learn that (absent things slowing it down) there's a fairly hard time limit to the game. If you just buy treasure and provinces/duchies according to an algorithm (3+: silver, 6+, gold, 8+ Province, when at least half the provinces are gone, 5 or less, duchies, I think it is) you will have enough points to win in 14 turns, on average. Engine-building is great fun but unless you have someway to either outpace 14 turns and be in the lead when you end the game, or to hoover up LOTS of VP after that time limit has expired or to slow your opponent(s) down, you will lose by building an engine.

4: learn trashing. This one's often key, because it takes a leap of logic to get to the point where you really understand why Chapel is a TOTALLY game-changing card which would probably be balanced at cost 5 or even 6, but costs 2 to make the game FUN for everyone. And why +2 cards, +1 action, trash 1 card would be fairly overpowered even at 5.

5: learn to recognise the key cards on a board which define its character - are there a couple of good draw cards and a village? It might be an engine board. Are there lots of attacks, or cheap VP like Gardens, Silk Road with things to enable it (card gainers, +buy)? It's likely to be a slog board. Are there ways to massively reduce costs (bridge, horn of plenty) for a small amount of time? It might be a megaturn board.

6: Learn how to build towards engines and megaturns. In short, get the payload first, because the payload will work regardless of whether the rest of the engine is working. This is an expansion on the 'don't buy village' concept - you only need as many +action cards (villages, but also things like throne room, king's court, procession) as you have terminal action card *which appear in the same hand with them* - i.e. if you buy village after your first bridge, it's probably a wasted buy, because a second bridge probably wouldn't clash with the first one and would give you the bridge benefit twice per shuffle, where village/bridge would only give it once.

7: (getting more advanced): control your deck. Know roughly what the composition of your draw deck is at any given time - have you used both your Smithies this shuffle, or only one? If you have 3 cards left and your PLAY a Smithy, will you draw actions you can't play? Conversely, will you draw green cards and improve your next hand? Knowing when to reshuffle is also vital. If you're playing a BIIIG engine (Hunting Party often being a culprit as it dumps lovely cards into discard), then reshuffling in the middle of your turn means your next hand will be full of crap, because all your stuff in play isn't going into your draw deck.

8: Always be aware of the endgame, and try, if you can, to be aware of whether you're ahead or not. It's not a game about having the most points at the end, it's a game of *ending the game whilst you have the most points*. It's a subtle but important distinction, and it means being on the lookout for the three pile even if you could carry on draining provinces, or buying the last province even if you're in the middle of getting your engine firing, as long as it means you end the game whilst you're ahead. Forcing the game to end to your advantage is a crucial skill.

9: My final point; learn a few of the key cards and 2-card combos. Minion, for instance, is an engine all by itself on a lot of boards (I mean come on, it's in the game name - Do Minion). Goons is an insanely powerful card with the right support. King's Court is ludicrous (but only with the right actions to play it on). Rebuild is ridiculous. Then things like Native Village/Bridge, Beggar/Gardens, Horse Traders/Duke, Apprentice/Fortress, etc etc etc. Knowing what people are going to be fighting for is very important.

That'll do for now. The real problem with learning high-level dominion these days is that the online implementations suck balls, so it's difficult to get a lot of games in a short time, which I found to be the only real way to get past certain skill barriers.

And yeah, dominion owns, buy dominion, there are no better deckbuilders than dominion, all you other deckbuilders are just imitating. But you will quickly find yourself buying a LOT of expansions, and one real issue with it his how much space it takes up. And that it only goes up to 4 players and still plays decently, and is by FAR at its best with only two. E: I'd probably look at Hinterlands as being an interesting starting point. It contains at least one way to make every major game type, so it's a good place to begin learning the differences.

Eminent Domain with the expansion is decent but I find it a lot less replayable than Dominion.

Thunderstone is themey and fun but not good and almost entirely arbitrary as to who wins.

Trains lacks significant interest for me because of the absence of the Actions step in Dominion. Being able to play everything without worrying about how it all fits together is just meh. The board is cute though.

Legendary is great if you're a marvel head, OK as a deckbuilder, but a bit prone to being frustratingly awkward (not difficult) if played on full random because you wind up with situations like villains that need certain attack types to take them out and no heroes with that attack type, or team-based heroes with a lot of buffs based on allies, appearing alone.

Mage Knight does merit a mention here though - deckbuilding is only a part of its mechanics, but it's a fantastic game that uses the deckbuilding concept in a much more effective way than any of the deckbuilders I've played except for Dominion and EmiDo.

thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jan 9, 2015

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 17:59

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 05:57

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

StashAugustine posted:

Do people use Spy at all in high-level games? I'm relatively new, and while it doesn't look that great I used it as a jerryrigged non-terminal engine piece when there was nothing else there.

Also on the subject of base-set Dominion: what can really support rush or combo decks? I can see big money, slog, and engine decks, but it seems like there aren't any cards for total gimmick play.

Not a lot. According to councilroom data people who buy it are marginally less likely to win, and people who ignore it are marginally more likely to win. Which is really unsurprising given that its attack is usually very low-return unless there's something it's really comboing with/fighting against (say, Wandering Minstrel) and its effect for the player is almost ignorable.

Card Availability Buys Gains % + Trashes Returns Win Rate with Win Rate without Turns Turns (C)
Spy 1637710 0.87 0.23 46.6 0.05 0.0 0.95 � 0.00 1.04 � 0.00 20.58 � 0.01 22.71 � 0.03

e: http://councilroom.com/popular_buys is a great way to work out whether it's worth bothering to buy a card or not in dominion.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 19:18

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Gutter Owl posted:

Base Dominion still contains one of the strongest rush decks in Workshop/Gardens. You can reasonably three pile before a BM player takes their fourth province on Turn 14/15.

If the kingdom contains Workshop, Gardens, Village, open double Workshop. If you can, pick up 2 workshops, 2 villages on the next pass through the deck. Then devour Gardens, Estates, and whatever third pile you can manage (usually Workshop or Village).

Eh, Workshop/Gardens is pretty old hat these days. Ironworks/Gardens is more efficient, Beggar/Gardens hilariously more so.

I'd rarely bother with buying villages in a workshop/gardens deck though. If you're playing it right your workshops shouldn't clash often even if you only get workshops. And don't forget to buy copper.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 19:36

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Fair enough.

I'm never sure about starting with the base set. It's a lot more difficult to build decks that are other than money in the base set, and it's lacking one of the major deck types - megaturn. There's nothing in dominion like the satisfaction when a new player realises that yes, KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge does mean you can drain a winning proportion of the Province pile, right the gently caress now. Or more so, pulling off a Horn of Plenty deck properly. I only ever managed the latter once or twice in thousands of Isotropic games but drat if it isn't happymaking when it works.

Starting with base set is OK, but base set is very limited when it comes to interesting cards.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 19:46

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Countblanc posted:

Big Money is actually the most fun strat anyway, so base set and prosperity are all you need.

Yes playing to an algorithm and not thinking about the game at all is very enjoyable beep boop.

(I genuinely can't tell if you're serious - but Prosperity is probably the set that changes the game most, of the early ones. Having colonies available really adds a lot more engine-building time.)

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 19:53

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Yeah, it's not good for cards which are easily misused, like Outpost, but in general it's at least a good indication.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 20:04

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Thief's a lot better in 4 player than it is in two, which is always worth bearing in mind. And a LOT better when you start getting things like Platinum into the mix.

Still pretty lame though.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 20:30

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

jivjov posted:

Based solely on the discussion of the last couple pages, I bought the base box for Dominion. Can't wait to get it to the table...any first timer tips I should know?

ABCD

Action - play one action card. Do what it says
Buy - Play as many Treasure cards as you have, you may buy one card. It goes in your discard pile
Clean-up - Discard all cards from your hand and all cards you've played this turn
Draw - Draw a new hand of 5 cards

This is what you do on your turn. Everything else is exceptions to this scheme, and written on the cards, they do precisely what they say they do, in the order that they say it, and if you can't do something, (e.g. you're told to draw a card but you haven't got any left, you're told to gain a curse but there are none left) don't worry about it.

Have fun. Don't buy village unless you have a very good reason to.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 11:49

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

jivjov posted:

Ohhh, so when I do the reaction, the card stays in my hand after that?

When you play a reaction card, you only do the bit below the line. The part above the line only happens when you play the card as its normal type (in this case, Action, but there are other combos later in the game).

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 19:33

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Paper Kaiju posted:

I'm going to risk sounding anal retentive, because it will matter later on, but during the Buy phase you do not HAVE to play as many Treasure cards as you have; you can choose to hold some back. As far as I can recall, there is zero reason to hold any back when playing the base game (since they'll just be discarded anyways during Clean-up), but the expansions do contain some cards (Mint being one of the big ones) where you may have a reason, so knowing that distinction early will save learning players a few headaches down the line.

Grand Market is the biggest one. And yes, playing treasures is optional. So's playing actions.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 20:51

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Lord Frisk posted:

The strategy game you're after is Chaos in the Old World, a WH40k board game where the players act as gods of the old world and try to win... I dunno, shoulder pads and skulls?

Anyway, it's asymmetric, area control, hugely driven by theme and is regarded as an excellent game by most. People end up saying "faction A is too strong" every once in a while, but it never seems to be the same faction across play groups, so that implies that it's actually relatively balanced.

And those particular dishes are from the Pandemic: On the Brink expansion. But if you didn't want them for pandemic, they're just regular Petri dishes.

CitOW isn't WH40k, it's Warhammer Fantasy. Same four gods, fantasy world not scifi.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 17:38

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Lord Frisk posted:

Fair enough. I know gently caress all about warhammer outside of shoulder pads and skulls.

Still plenty of shoulder pads and skulls in WFB, just not scifi ones.

I really must play CItOW some time, I understand it's supposed ot be really good.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 21:03

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Buying in release order works fine (Alchemy is skippable but it's worth proxying Apprentice if you do, on occasion), but for my money if you want to skip straight to an expansion that has a lot of interesting cards and really adds a lot of interesting ways to play, Hinterlands is probably the best, or Prosperity.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 00:13

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

S.J. posted:

Is there any difference between Dungeon Lords retail and the anniversary edition from the KS?

Since I don't think I spotted an answer to this... yes, there is. Anniversary Edition bundles in all the expansions (Festival Season, Minions Bearing Gifts) along with a couple of KS-exclusive events and spells (nothing else but events and spells, so nothing particularly important to miss out on) and comes with a better set of components (some nice glass cubes instead of wooden ones for player colours, primarily as well as minis instead of tokens for the trolls, and a set of little boxes for all the bits. The box insert fits everything in really nicely, too.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 18:24

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Gutter Owl posted:

It also comes with one additional mini-expansion (currently exclusive to Anniversary Edition), which gives you randomized initial setups with special rules.

Blah, didn't realise that was a KS exclusive.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 18:57

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

fozzy fosbourne posted:

I don't suppose anyone has played a majority of the following and could compare them to games like Mage Knight (good but long and fiddly) and Arkham Horror (less good and even more long and fiddly:

Assault on Doomrock
Shadows of Brimstone
Robinson Crusoe
Eldritch Horror

The only one I've played other than Mage Knight is Robinson Crusoe and I would play co-op Mage Knight any day over Robinson Crusoe.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:03

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Even if everyone has similar experience levels, I definitely found that the two players who were less skilled at games generally didn't wind up doing a lot.

It just didn't feel like it was a team game, it felt like it was a solo game played by committee. It was fun, but it was nowhere near the best co-op game I've played.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:15

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

T-Bone posted:

What other co-ops do you like after thread favorites / bg standards like Space Alert/Forbidden Desert/Pandemic/Flashpoint?

Is Descent any good? The D&D board games? Mice & Mystics? Pathfinder? Anything else to recommend ?

Mage Knight is still my favourite co-op, Flashpoint is the only other one from that list I've played more than once and is good. Space Alert I've played once and enjoyed immensely but not yet had the energy to play again. Descent 1e is not very good, it's WAY too long for its content. 2e is OK-to-decent if you play it quickly. Neither is strictly a co-op game, they're traditional D&D adversarial GMing incarnate, the PCs are playing competitively as a team against the Overlord ayer.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:38

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Gort posted:

I get the feeling I would've played a lot more Descent (both editions) if it hadn't been one-versus-many and had instead just been everyone playing against automated opposition. The trouble with competitive games is that any balance problems get magnified, and that goes double if there's a positive-feedback loop going on where the side that wins gets greater rewards than the side that loses. Descent is not a meticulously balanced game.

Pretty much every Descent campaign I've played has ended in one side getting disheartened and not wanting to play any more. I've never seen past the half-way "interlude" adventure.

Yeah, Descent is very death-spirally if you play the campaign.

Descent with an AI would be great, if they could design a good enough AI, but I tend to thing games with mobile enemies want a directing intelligence rather than the sort of AI you can get in a hardcopy boardgame. Descent would be a lot easier if the monsters were algorithmic.

Our problem with it though, is always that everyone wants to play it, but no-one wants to be Overlord...

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 23:21

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

SuccinctAndPunchy posted:

There's a number of good Dominion strategy articles on the web and on YouTube to peruse through. I watched the three videos made by this guy on Dominion and it really helped me gain a good understanding of a few basic Dominion strategies and principles which is why I've currently been cleaning house with my friends. A few basic fundamentals go a long way with this game, it seems.

burned through like 10 odd games recently and holy poo poo the Chapel is loving amazing you guys weren't joking, if it's in the game I probably want it. It's weird how goddamn fast I can reach a point where I'm guaranteed to draw $8 every turn. Chapel thus experience, I think I'll see about mixing Intrigue in next time.

Aaaaah a convert.

Now try King's Court/King's Court/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge.

If you really want to go down the rabbit-hole, try dominionstrategy.com - though, be warned, that rabbiit hole is DEEEP and full of way more obsessed people than Broken Loose or myself. And the online community is a lot less satisfying with Goko dominion's slower, less reliable play than it used to be.

Be warned though, our friends may get tired of your sharking the poo poo out of them if you spend too long there. Mine did. Fortunately I've forgotten most of it now, so we can play IRL again.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 00:16

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

GrandpaPants posted:

I saw someone playing Androminion while playing a game of Power Grid or something, but however one feels about those respective games, that sort of behavior would just annoy the poo poo out of me too (I was at another table). It doesn't help that that guy had no social skills to speak of and was a general weirdo.

I've done it. I've also played simultaneous online games of Through the Ages WITH THE PEOPLE I'M PLAYING IRL THROUGH THE AGES WITH. Our group has that much AP problems that no-one minds at all.

For Power Grid in particular, when you're out of the bidding first it can sometimes be a LONG time before anything relevant to you actually happens.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 20:35

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

fozzy fosbourne posted:

I guess Vlaada helped playtest Robinson Crusoe. And apparently he consulted on Nations development. I'm pretty interested in that one, it kind of sounds like it does to Through the Ages what Eclipse does to Twilight Imperium?

Didn't obviously spot an answer to this, so...

Nations is a shorter, less directly aggressive version of TTA. It plays up to 5, which is nice, and thematically feels very similar, but plays in 1/2 to 2/3 the time, making it viable for my group to play in an evening (just). It's also a lot less fiddly, generally, so it's better as a tabletop game whereas it's hard as hell to play TtA now that I've spent so long playing it online. Its not without its flaws though; it's a lot less finely balanced, primarily. Because there are so many cards and you don't necessarily see all of them, it's a lot easier to get irretrievably hosed over by the lack of a particular sort of production building early on, and find yourself in a position you can't get back from well before the game is over, which is demoralising.

But it's a quicker play and less prone to lots of downtime, so overall I'd recommend it.

And yeah, Vlaada helped with Crusoe. IIRC there was a great post from him basically explaining that wounds reducing your actions is dumb and death spirally, and you're designing a boardgame first and a storytelling engine second, you fuckwit, so put fluff after mechanics not before. Fortunately, they listened.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 18:15

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Shadow225 posted:

This is the reason I don't really care to pick up any Vlaada games. From the outside looking in, it sounds like everything but Mage Knight, which looks long and fiddly, and Tash Kalar, which looks awesome, is designed to screw you. I cannot convince myself it sounds appealing.

Through The Ages isn't.

Basically every other one I've tried is, but trust me when I say, having played most of them, that despite being insanely difficult and designed to screw you to a ridiculous extent, every single Vlaada game I've tried has been hella fun, and more importantly, very well designed to be engaging, interesting, and keep you into the game til the very last tile flips. They're all very different, but not a one of them is bad.

If Vlaada has a theme for me, it's games that are great fun even when you're losing horribly, and for me that's the mark of a great game. If I can come away from a full 8 hour gaming marathon having lost everything I played but still having had a whale of a time and looking forward to playing those games again... those are good loving games.

E: but yeah, even if oyu don't get anythign else, buy Tash Kalar.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 00:36

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Sloober posted:

You have to inform people that unpurchased pets go off to live at the farm happily for the rest of their days. (As you slide another meat cube into the available pool at the market)

Or (for Stareplant) plant cube. Or (for Baby Golem) gold token. There is no thematic reason for this rule.

I love the Dungeon petz rulebook. Especially the fact that all the important rule points are in bold red text, including, 'if you let a pet die you must feel guilty'.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 17:45

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Tekopo posted:

I love Dungeon Petz but I sometimes worry about the theme because sometimes it is explicitly the best option to make your pets suffer in order to gain more points. I think this is the reason Lorini (iirc) doesn't like it and why my SO also kind of dislikes it.

The thing that minorly bothers me about it is all the poop references. It feels a little juvenile as an adult, but it's way too complex for a kids' game. The overall theme doesn't feel the same way to me as it does to you though - it's very important to minimise suffering as much as possible in Petz. It's just really drat hard.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 18:08

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Tekopo posted:

No, you don't understand: sometimes it is worth more VPs to make a pet suffer than to prevent him from suffering: the lich buyer is one example.

In one case, I guess.

Every other buyer dislikes Suffering, and if your pets suffer too much they die and then you're proper hosed.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 18:59

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Transportation is vital if you're able to actually get the war train rolling. You need to be able to start and end a trade route in a single turn if you want to make war efficiently. But I've played it three times and thus far not even come close to waging war successfully even once, let alone a bunch of times as a main strat.

The cards... if you're able to track how many votes people are getting, you can theoretically work out how many they'll put in and work to knocking out all of the cards which do good things for other people - but it's hellish difficult to track and gets very difficult to judge anyway. One time when the game went against me I wound up with no good way to spend any of my 20 or so votes it was really annoying.

So yeah, that is a flaw in the game, I'd agree.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 10:34

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

It's not flawless - it has its issues, I don't think anyone's claimed otherwise. Alchemy in particular is pretty widely disliked as being a bit of a failed experiment. It just has far fewer issues than the clones.

My suspicion as to why no-one's dethroned it though, is mostly that I don't think the copies have received anywhere near the level of design thought or the level of playtesting that went into Dominion. Dominion was years if not decades in development before it came out, and even now most of the cards being released have been in development since the earliest days (if you believe the interviews with DXV) and been playtested in various forms for ten years or so, and all the cards are still heavily internally playtested on Isotropic, which is still active, just no longer public, and only remains available to friends and family - hell, it was initially designed as a Dominion testing server. Contrast that with basically any game in the genre which Dominion began, and you wind up with games without that level of dedication and design time put into them. Not to mention that the vast majority of the competitors simply don't come anywhere close to having the sheer amount of content Dominion does.

Refining the concept takes a LOT of work, because the concept took a LOT of work. I don't think there's a deckbuilder out there that;s put the amount of work in that DXV did.

Except maybe Magic, and Magic is phenomenally successful, well designed, heavily playtested, and not really a deckbuilder, or Mage Knight which was heavily playtested and Vlaada is a ridiculously talented designer.

thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jan 17, 2015

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 13:34

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

fozzy fosbourne posted:

That said, Dominion's biggest flaws in my opinion are:

shuffling

having to recalculate your play and/or reshuffle due to someone's attack card

shuffling in the middle of your turn

Shuffling is an easy fix, you play the version printed on poker chips, which is actually a great idea.

On a different note, where does the hivemind sit on Clash of Cultures? I played it for either the second or third time today after a LONG drought (this time with the expansion) and just found it... WAY too fiddly. It has the core of a good game, and I like the tech tree and more importantly, the way the tech tree is designed, the die cut holes work great. But there's just so much to learn and I feel like I have to know all of it and even when I do it's very difficult to know what I should actually be doing and what's important to get now and whether I should be getting this which makes that thing I'm doing cheaper or better or just doing that thing straight away and what you just killed me gently caress arg where did that come from poo poo.

There's too much of it to be straightforward, i think. I far prefer a relatively simple game with emergent complexity than I do a complex game with lots of complexity. It's similar to the issues I have with Civilisation (the newer version) only magnified a lot by the techs being fiddly as poo poo and having a bunch of text on them which doesn't necessarily do intuitive things and at least 7 resources to consider and remember and work out how you're getting.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 00:12

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

It's +1 baby only as far as I'm aware.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 11:00

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Page 9 of the main rulebook under ending you turn: use glade occurs in step 4, draw cards in step 7. So no, you can't use the glade to heal a wound you draw when you draw cards.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 11:24

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Back to discussions about building on the theme of Dominion, I've just been sorting out my second edition printing version of Paperback (I'm giving away my original KS edition to my hackspace) and I feel like it could be said to be a genuinely interesting expansion on the concept - crossing Dominion with Scrabble, basically. It's quite simplistic without a lot of expansion potential, but where I really see it having value is as a gateway game - people who are used to word games can play it and get used to the idea of deckbuilding strategy and tactics, and people who are used to Dominion can enjoy it too.

I only mention it because right throughout that discussion, I'd more or less forgotten it existed, and it merits a mention.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 18:24

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Legendary works better if you think of the players as the SHIELD agents/Jarvises/Oracles (or equivalent) directing the action from behind the scenes and giving orders to one group of heroes, I think.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 18:29

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Black Market's actual mechanic (play treasure outside the buy phase) is interesting.

Black Market as a card (access all the things) is really, really bent if not outright broken due to the amount of cards out there where getting the first one is absolutely vital. Picking up King's Court on the right board is ridiculous, picking up Rebuild similarly so. Or Mountebank or Familiar or Witch when there's no other junking. And conversely, it can be utterly hilariously useless. Picking up Treasure Map, say, or the other couple of examples that i can't quite recall... it's a solid card but the 'play everything' part is silly.

PerniciousKnid posted:

Player 1: Iron Man, fly up and get that hostage!
Player 2: Iron Man, punch Red Skull in the face!
Player 3: Iron Man, shoot Green Goblin!
Iron Man:

That's what it's felt like to me every time I've played.

Iron Man: but boss if I DON;T punch this guy and instead get one more money, I can buy the Tank Missiles and blow the poo poo out of everyone, can you supply me with some resources?
Player: Nope. Punch that guy.
Iron Man: Punching...
Mastermind: Destroys the Tanks Missiles
Iron Man: :smith:

(I know Iron Man's big card isn't Tank Missiles, but it should be, why did he never use that thing again after Gulmira it was insane)

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 19:13

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Lottery of Babylon posted:

Agreed, Black Market and Stash are great promos for that reason. In contrast, Envoy and Walled Village seem like they could have been printed in a regular expansion without anyone batting an eye, and were just chosen arbitrarily to be promos because the publisher suddenly wanted promos right this instant.

I wonder if there's a way to make a card that has a good reason to use that mechanic but doesn't let one player get the only Witch.

Grey Market (Cost $4)
+$2
You may buy one card immediately, putting it into your hand.
Action

You need to have the bit specifying you can play treasure, and putting the card in hand is (could be) very powerful; I'd go with topdecking it maybe.

Governer definitely needed to be a promo, it's way powerful.

Prince could probably have gotten away without being. It's interesting.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 20:26

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

SuperKlaus posted:

You are right, it is not very good. Far, far too fiddly. Mr. Marcussen's games seem to go that way - but somehow, in Merchants and Marauders, I can accept the fiddlin' as part of it being a "board game port" of Sid Meier's Pirates! that lets me and my friends sandbox around doing pirate stuff. I look at M&M these days as a "toy" as opposed to a "game," the former being something you just kind of play with with no particular goals. Like Tales of Arabian Nights. Clash of Cultures, though, is so restrictive and careful with the resources, action economy, technological progress and whatnot that I don't find it conducive to "toy"-level loving around (not to mention playtime), but it's a kind of spaghetti as a "game." I don't think it's balanced well. You can kind of get hosed for no reason sometimes. And it's got that thing where you scrape through the first like three entire game rounds of six, and just as you finally assemble your strategy the game ends.

What's the expansion like though? I'm super curious if we can divine anything about how Marcussen will design the M&M expansion he's promised for so long.

It certainly adds some things and sets a distinct direction for the game (makes it more efficient to move on your first turn as well, because the leader fig can scout for you if you want) - but I'm not sure it was helpful to add it without knowing the base game well in the first place.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 20:06

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Tekopo posted:

Played Transamerica. Verdict: I still prefer to play TtR rather than Transamerica.

Also played Port Royal. Almost entirely luck-based. Lost two turns after I got unlucky and drawing the same colour ships on my first two draws. It's alright as a filler? Not much there tbh.

Yeah, fun filler basically defines Port Royal. it's good at what it does, but what it does is neither deep nor long.

We've tended towards Love Letter as our current fun filler though, because the components are some drat minimal. I've been meaning to invest in a copy just to keep in my bag in case I'm with a group of bored people.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 22:08

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Caverna, IMO, but others will argue.

I wouldn't necessarily call Keyflower a worker placement game I don't think, at least not a traditional one. The bidding mechanic is much more the heart of the game.

Basically, it really depends how difficult you want your game to be. If you like games which are punishingly hard, get the 'Gric. If you like games which are a little more relaxed, Caverna.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 00:09

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

fozzy fosbourne posted:

I don't think thematic games and solid mechanics are mutually exclusive.

Edit: Vlaada Chvatil is a mechanically solid thematic gangster.

Vlaada Chvatil is a loving wizard.

Playing Dungeon Lords with Festival Season yesterday gave me a minor epiphany into realising why I dislike certain games that my group play a lot and enjoy - here's the thing. I'm not as good at these games as my group. Nowhere near really, I've got to get quite lucky to come close to winning. So I value a game I enjoy even when I'm losing very highly. And I think I've worked out WHY I enjoy losing the games I do.

It's when the loser doesn't do less than everyone else. The problem I have with Civ is that if luck gets you behind, your lack of available actions through not having built or through having lost cities means you get less to do on your turn, which in turn means you spend proportionately less time playing the game. The same is true of a LOT of games, even Clash of Cultures where everyone only gets three actions anyway - except, if you're doing poorly (got bad luck with city locations or your opponents' locations, or seas being in the way or w/e) it's more difficult to play and you have to spend more time researching things which aren't you're focus, to get around. And that means you don't get to the action multipliers, which means you have less to do on your turn. Same with Agricola. If you gently caress up, you have fewer family members to place which means you get less to do, and frequently wind up having to pick up food now rather than food later in order to not starve.

Why I really, really like Dungeon Lords, Suburbia, Galaxy Trucker, etc; games where even the losing player is doing the same amount of stuff as the winning player. I was losing horribly in DL basically all of last night (following a hideous parade of bad luck and/or planning which led to me not being able to use 3 action spaces in relatively quick succession in a 5-round game). I knew I'd hosed up and had probably lost as a result - but a: I didn't have fewer things to do as a result, b: I still felt like I could do things to improve my score, and c: I still felt like my opponents might have also screwed up somewhere to, which meant I didn't feel left out.

So yeah, there's that.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 09:32

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 05:57

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

It works out pretty logically once you get into it, but the feeling of panic that it's all going wrong never quite leaves.

Somehow, it's still great fun.

Vlaada :allears:

# ¿ Jan 24, 2015 15:54

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

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