Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

IMO the moneyless Poker problem is less about people craving flashy wins and more about seeing they're too behind in matchsticks or whatever they measure non-money with, and decide then can as well go all YOLO, have fun doing so and either miraculously return to a decent position or reset the matchstick count so that they can go for the win again. It's the exact same way of thinking that makes people do dumb poo poo when behind in unwinnable/kingmaker position and bored, but offering the temptation of immediate salvation.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 01:52

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 13:54

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Munchkin. It feels like an apocalypse and only braindeads play it.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 02:43

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Shame BL forgot he has a kickstarter running, I really want to play this game.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 09:31

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Well it won two categories...

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 20:47

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

And yet nobody remembers Mall/City of Horror.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 21:43

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

MadWOPR posted:

Is Dominion a must buy for every collection? I feel like it is, but I've never played it.

Yes, but some goons will defend your choice if you buy Puzzle Strike instead.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 21:43

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Poison Mushroom posted:

I'm one of those goons, and I definitely say you should at least try Dominion before you decide. If it feels slim and elegant and deep and rich, then great, get that poo poo.

But if you, like me, feel like it's a game engine or mechanic without really any actual game attached, get Puzzle Strike instead.

Me too, actually. Though it's a bitch explaining to folks what the hell is up with the victory condition.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 22:32

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

And now Rutibex turns into a handsome prince.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 10:19

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

silvergoose posted:

Ehhh. If you're going by Tekopo's "theme is different than setting", I'd argue that go's mechanics are more strongly tied to its theme than Dominion.

What is the theme of Go? Autism simulator?

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 01:09

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I also like GtR quite a lot: the crazy, broken combos elevates it above general euroness. The card economy is quite confusing at first, you probably want to try it with experienced gamers.

On the other hand, the rest of my playgroup considers it to be just a boring euro and only ever agrees to play it semi-ironically.

Also, I happen to have the cheap and beautiful Polish edition that AFAIK was licensed out to like 4-5 other European countries and I have no idea why English speakers are stuck with the ugly-rear end editions.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 23:16

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Can you feed your family footballs?

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 21:25

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Zark the Damned posted:

FFG announced a 40k version of their Starcraft game - https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/3/17/forbidden-stars/ (kinda fitting since Starcraft is essentially a 40k RTS with the serials filed off).

OK the game may be quite different but the order stack is the same.

I'm actually moderately excited about it. Starcraft had quite a few neat ideas going on (like, pre-Dominion deckbuilding) buried in a horrible FFGesque bloat. It'll be interesting seeing what lessons they've learned.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 23:45

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Poison Mushroom posted:

Oh, Jesus. SU&SD, a week ago, posted a glowing review of loving Saboteur.

And yet it makes more sense than the charades rant in yesterday's monikers review.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 21:46

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Having played as Gore a few times, I don't think it being the harder way to do poo poo is indended as a political message, but rather a general balance problem.

The idea behind the soft power game is that it's easier to get Europe aligned (and therefore boost Prestige, and therefore boost your way of winning the game), while at the same being shielded from a number of nasty events and all sorts of bad stuff that can happen during an invasion. Not rolling that dumb prestige roll before invasion is probably an advantage too.

Now, it is completely possible to win the game without ever going hard (even to shut down the initial jihad spawning pool), it's just that... poo poo is random. Sometimes Europe just happens to turn Hard and your supposed advantage is not worth anything anymore (sure, you can try to flip them back to soft, but there's a certain point at which it is not worth bothering with) and if you switch to hard sometime later in the game, all the other advantages evaporate completely the second you roll that prestige die.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 20:50

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Well, as a political simulation it is pretty hard to be worse than Labyrinth.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 21:14

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Well, Original War had terrible multiplayer balance if that counts.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 20:53

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Struggle of Empires was pretty boss too.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 21:45

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Fat Samurai posted:

Tzeentch finally clicked for me in Chaos in the Old World yesterday. I can do OK with the other three gods, but I was unable to get my head around the magic guy.

Being a dick, running away with my cultists while taking my toys with me, always having PPs and having 2-3 moves to play with after everyone was empty was great. I'm usually the kind of guy who feels bad when I'm antagonizing other people in games, but this time I positively gloated.

Tzeentch is the raddest god. Both in this game and life in general.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 10:15

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Tekopo posted:

example:

That's not that bad, it's like a non-GMT wargame. I remember some of your photos of PnP 18XX that were way worse (not as in shittily printed and cut, but more core material having some truly atrocious color/design choices).

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 02:00

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

In a cruel irony of fate, Rutibex will be gifted a Space Alert avatar.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 01:49

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Just solo a test game until it clicks. The rulebook is poo poo and it's impossible to explain it succintly and elegantly, but it's only a step above Munchkin in actual complexity.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 13:17

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Scyther posted:

I like the resource system in the Star Wars LCG.

I think it's pretty neat, too.

You basically start with at least four resources (could be more, depending on how your deck is built) and have a possibility of putting extra "lands" in play to smooth things out. The starting resources can't really get rid of (or more accurately: are replaced with other cards after destruction, retaining the minimum resource count, but possibly losing some other important card effects). Stuff costing five or more resources (that is, above your bare minimum) is explicitly meant to be late-game stuff - and for sake of framing, I believe the costliest card that's not explicitly meant to somehow be cheated for under its printed cost is priced at 6.

The color system is fairly lenient - of all the "lands" used to pay for a particular card, at least one must match its faction. Now, of the 4+ starting resources, one you can guarantee the color of (your faction ID card). This makes playing two-color decks fairly effortless, but posing some questions about deck composition. Is the risk of being locked out with evenly split halves worth it? Do you want to take some good faction-restricted cards that would require you to risk aligning your ID with the majority color? Do you take into consideration that one color in your deck provides big, costly efects, while other mostly spams cheaper cards (thus requiring more color matches)?

Now, playing with three colors is ~~retarded~~ tricky, as you can't just set your ID to the minority color and be done with it, requiring you to plan around being possibly locked out of a color or two, knowing which "lands" to protect just for their color and possibly putting some other safeguards into the deck.

So far it's just a more lenient, hassle-free iteration of typical mana management. Where it gets clever is that it gets stealthily balance by the Edge system. See, in Star Wars LCG, apart from buying poo poo for its effect, you need to discard some cards to gain an (often extremely important) advantage in combat. Therefore, if your opponent somehow massively out-resourced you and goes on a shopping spree, he lacks cards for the aforementioned combat-bidding, meaning his awesome army can oftentimes be curbstomped by whatever chumps you've managed to scrounge up.

Mind you, the player with resource advantage remains advantaged - as he should be - but the general game balance puts enough brakes on this, so the opponent has a chance to catch his breath and greatly reduce the number of times where you get a beat bad enough no amount of skill can save your skin.

[edit] Also, most of the time, cards providing multiple resources take as long to "untap" as how much resources you've taken from it. So while there are cards that straight provide you with 2 resources a turn (usually with some strings attached), more often than not they just offer the possibility to drop both Lord Vader and a lightsaber right now, during this turn, for the opportunity cost of having one less card to draw resources from on the next turn.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 17, 2015

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 16:54

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Hey, Rutibex, have you thought of spreading out spell and purchase decks in Talisman to create a market row?

# ¿ Apr 21, 2015 20:09

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

fozzy fosbourne posted:

So, I think I understand why there are market parade deck builders. I think they are close to the situation where you top deck a wrath of god at exactly the right moment, or pull some unbelievable bomb in a magic booster draft. Or get pocket aces in a game of poker where you are outmatched. Sometimes, people just want their opponents to be struck by lightning. It can also make these games feel like slot machines, where you just pull the lever over and over and occasionally you get a jackpot.

Frankly, I think they have a similar appeal to Solitaire (the MS Windows kind), or lighter ameritrash games: some people just want to sit down and chill while loving around without much effort put into thinking. I've downloaded the PC version of Star Realms just to see what goons keep bitching about and it's a 100% cellphone poopbreak game, it just might be less noticeable when presented in cardboard form.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2015 22:29

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Broken Loose posted:

The absolute best RTS in my opinion is Company of Heroes.

Thank you for having good opinions.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 08:59

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Rutibex posted:

There is no way for a piece of cardboard to up-sell me on micro-transatcions

Magic.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 12:10

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

GrandpaPants posted:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/millennium-blades-the-ccg-simulator-board-game ?

Thank God euro shipping is prohibitively expensive ($43 for a $50 game, lol) because I'm hyped as poo poo on the idea alone. Even despite anime.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 17:02

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

The Star Wars LCG sale is great, because it covers the only two boxes you want a second copy of, in a way negating this FFG's dubious practice.

Don't listen to grogs pissed off by the simplified deckbuilding, game's mechanics are Eric Lang at his CiTOW strong (If I was feeling cheeky I'd say they're stronger because of no dice involved :smug:

).

(It is I, Lichtenstein, the warden of great games nobody plays.)

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 09:31

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Thesis: the more times you repeat a rule, the more likely it is someone will get butthurt during the game over you supposedly withdrawing that information from them.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 11:35

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Ah, that's some vintage BG thread right here.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 10:05

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

bobvonunheil posted:

This is the culmination of 3 months' worth of writing

And yet you filed Coup as a game with a complex ruleset.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 17:53

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

So what I'm trying to say is that Warhammer: Diskwars is a pretty cool game. Great mechanics, 8/10. 9/10 if players rap about each move they're making. So good in fact, I was too engrossed to make proper photos of the games themselves.

In other news, I had a rather pleasant Warhammer: Diskwars meetup punctuated by a few games of Star Wars LCG and an insightful talk about Emperor Palpatine's computer problems. It's good to be a nerd.

PS. Go buy Warhammer: Diskwars I need FFG to print a Skaven expansion.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 15:00 on May 3, 2015

# ¿ May 3, 2015 14:30

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

snuff posted:

I own the base game and both expansions, did my part. Great game. You need a bigger play area though, I bought a green piece of felt 90x90cm and it works great.

I'm generally covered, but the party mode streched my logistics a bit. The round glass table missed about a big disk's worth of space at the corners but on the other hand it had a cool feature of a black tape showing through the tablecloth to indicate the borders (not visible on the photo though).

Rutibex dream table is quite rad, though.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 16:51

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Let's talk logistics. I'm considering to fight the ever-rising number of needless game boxes by dumping some poo poo into plano boxes or similar fancy toolboxes. To the guys who went this way, what do you do with the actual boards?

# ¿ May 4, 2015 16:16

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Flipswitch posted:

Also anyone got much to say on The Witcher board game?

Let me quote my favourite poster from the last thread, myself:

quote:

Since one of my many hobbies is mercilessly mocking Ignacy Trzewiczek and I had a long train ride to suffer, I decided to check out the (digital version) Witcher Adventure Game. It was... Better than I've expected, actually. It's surprisingly elegant for an Ignacy game.

Mind you, it's a very talismanesque game at its core, about drawing random-rear end cards and chucking dice at your problems, it just happens to have a nice action economy puzzle built over it all. At first I wasn't convinced of the claim that the characters feel different, seeing as their development cards all revolve around the same things, but just get charged with tokens differently - but they do.

While the game has learned the Vlaada lesson, with separate 'good stuff' deck you need to work for and 'bad stuff' deck whose avoidance is a big part of the aforementioned action efficiency puzzle, the investigation decks (basically: burn an action to draw a random card hoping to get more clues of a particular type) feel like a regression to Talisman standards. I do, however, see the rationale behind decisions Trzewiczek made there: cards with negative effects are there so that a character can specialize in questing (sorting cards) rather than combat. There's also some set collection involved, with ability to cash out some previously drawn cards, which I guess promotes sticking to a particular deck? Yet, perhaps the mechanics are too constrained to provide enough meat to differentiate these, and therefore they feel like a homogenous, random mess. The gold (thankfully a minor part of the game) seems underdeveloped in a similar way: with exception of a particular gold-aligned character, you can attempt to semi-randomly gain gold to buff some cards you might or might not draw.

After the first game I thought to myself that this was quite fun, if probably seriously lacking replayability. And still, I felt compelled to play it a few more times to try and crack the puzzle behind actions (I might have been quite bored at the time, though). Would I recommend it? I think I'd be hesitant when talking to a seasoned gamer, but if you:

Routinely play with kids

Need a gateway game for the Talisman/Munchkin crowd

Are Rutibex

Are a sick weirdo who really likes the genre and keeps playing Arkam Horror, just doesn't tell goons
I guess it is worth considering. If you end up as the lone seasoned gamer at the table, pick Triss Merigold as the character: she requires a bit more meticulous playstyle.

PS. The game does recycle a lot of art from the Witcher games and whatnot and I shed a tear on sight of the tastefully-cropped sex cards from Witcher 1.

PPS. Yes, there are a lot of ladies to bang in this game, you're able to play as Dandellion after all.

# ¿ May 4, 2015 20:32

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Storage solution proof of concept:

Try to imagine this poo poo all stickered and on a shelf.

These cheap motherfuckers are exactly the size of a standard playing card and high enough to hold roughly two decks per drawer. The box in the back is to look good (well, not this one) and hold miscellaneous stuff (mounted boards, rulebooks, occasional baggie with cubes not worth cramming into these) for games held in the two shelves.

Pictured set-up fit:

CitOW in six drawers (one per player for ease + 1 for generic tokens/cards. I cheated and put dice in Horned Rat drawer).
Pax Porfiriana cards in three (could probably fit in two if not for the sleeves).
Citadels in one.
All Fields of Fire decks in two (there was never room for them in the proper box once I put counter trays inside).
Both Star Wars LCG challenge decks in one.

Notable poo poo that does not fit:

FFG standard card sleeves (grey ones)
Tash-Kalar and Space Alert. I guess I'm back to simply keeping them both in a single Vlaadabox.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 21:04

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

The Supreme Court posted:

Where did you get that exact box?

Castorama, five bucks each. It's made by a local :poland:

producer apparently, so no guarantees it'll be in stock where you live.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 22:20

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Since all zombie games being poo poo is a given, what is the best skeleton game?

I love me some skeletons.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 18:31

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Hey, Broken Loose, if you're still looking for investors for Final Attack!, have I got some product placement opportunity for you!

# ¿ May 12, 2015 04:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 13:54

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Broken Loose posted:

what

I just saw it today and thought it sounds more like a FA! track/attack name rather than whatever :catdrugs:

it actualy is.

# ¿ May 12, 2015 07:42

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

«‹›18 »