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Countblanc posted:I feel like team-based games are the largest unmet demand. Every time someone asks here people sorta shuffle their feet and halfheartedly mention Ladies and Gentlemen and maybe Dice Duels, and both of those really want at least 6 people. Dice Duels with 4 is one of the most masochistic games ever made. Dice Duels with 2 (each playing a fighter) is hilarious though.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:51
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Downside is extra complexity in terms of actually making things readable. Lewis & Clark does a decent job of having fairly intuitive cards without even giving a player aid, but the finer points of a turn definitely won't be clear without going through the book. That might be more of an argument for a solid 1-page "How to play!" on the back cover of rulebooks though.
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Aug 6, 2015 01:20
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Harvey Mantaco posted:It would be nice if at least obvious reminders were included. Like in Arkham Horror (which we still enjoy a lot), there is no reason there couldn't be little reminders about what exits the game on the giant loving board when certain levels of terror are reached, or have the limit formula next to the outskirts. Stuff like that. Especially things that can change game to game. Problem with MK rulebook is that it's sometimes scattered between setup and actual actions taken, so if you need to reference something it can take a while of leafing through the book to try and find where specific rules are. I remember a friend taking ages to figure out the details on exactly how fighting Volkaire worked in the campaigns (how units were assigned, how to calculate the attack, who has to defend against the attack, etc.) Those quickstart rules are getting more popular, though. Eldritch Horror does a pretty good job of it, and FFG's been distributing the double rulebooks which are nice.
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Aug 6, 2015 02:09
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Gimnbo posted:Of the top 20, Caylus and Puerto Rico stand out as classics amongst the newer stuff. Puerto Rico hasn't really held up for us, but Caylus hits the table a lot and everyone really likes it. I wish Attia would design more stuff, Spyrium was interesting. The Top 20 are mostly just good games in general. I'll probably never play Castles of Burgundy again and 7 Wonders has overstayed its welcome, but Caylus/Agricola are great (Caverna gets the honorable mention but we like Caylus more than the other two), Brass is fun and super unique, and Through the Ages is pretty much best-in-class for what it is. Ranks 20-30 are where it's at for me though. I like Robinson Crusoe but never really want to play it specifically, and Dead of Winter's decent enough but it hasn't lived up to the hype it's generated compared to a lot of other stuff. Crossroad cards sounded a lot more interesting than they actually played, unfortunately.
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Aug 6, 2015 03:21
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Kai Tave posted:Power Grid is really long and really boring imo. As far as heavy economy games, it's a pretty nice pure economic thing if you like buying things for cheap and playing some interesting markets. Personally I'd play Panamax or Planet Steam over Power Grid, but neither of those really play 5-6 well.
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Aug 6, 2015 03:24
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If you're looking to place workers, Caylus is best-in-class. If you're looking to place less workers but want a nicer game with less suffering, take a look at Agricola or Caverna.
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Aug 6, 2015 03:31
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QnoisX posted:I've heard that Agricola is getting an anniversary edition next year with improvements to the cards or something like that. I dunno if it would be worth waiting around a bit on that. Caverna is the one without cards. Why is Caverna so very expensive? Even Dungeon Lords Anniversary was cheaper and it comes with massive amounts of stuff! Caverna comes with a metric shitton of stuff, partly because it's got a pile of different resources and partly because they decided to add enough player pieces for the 7-masochist use case. It's probably the second-densest box I've seen after a Terra Mystica box that had acrylic inserts slotted in. I haven't heard anything about an Agricola upgraded edition though.
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Aug 6, 2015 03:42
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homullus posted:What's a game with better auctions and a comparable (or better, obviously) resource market? Because those are the things I like about Power Grid and am totally open to a better experience. Planet Steam has more interesting auctions - though one of them is almost entirely a player-controlled trap depending on how the Venturer plays, the other 4 are usually very relevant - and one of the best markets I've seen in an econ game. It's also super cheap if you watch for FFG sales. Downside is it pretty much needs exactly 4. Market in Keyflower is very different than that in Power Grid, though imo Keyflower's the better game by a solid margin. Keyflower is great though, so that's not really a major slight to PG.
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Aug 6, 2015 04:28
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For anyone who hasn't played it yet, Mysterium is really damned good.
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Aug 6, 2015 05:24
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Has anyone played with the old Polish rules? I heard you can play with those with the new edition I've played both plenty, imo Ukrainian rules are better for endgame, Polish are better for giving clues.
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Aug 6, 2015 05:53
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Merchants is kinda fiddly but definitely worth it if you play lower player count regularly. I wish there were more ways to get contracts though.
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Aug 6, 2015 14:11
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GrandpaPants posted:He also fails to understand how luck affects the outcome of a game (this becomes remarkably clear if you've ever played Imperial Settlers). The effects of luck on Imperial Settlers final scores are often vastly overstated, in my experience. Especially with WCWBF, but base game definitely isn't that luck-driven. I think Eldritch Horror's got enough skill and crisis management involved to have graduated to "good game", but sometimes it just decides to gently caress you over and there's not much you can do about it. A badly-timed mythos card can end the game if players are unlucky (see: Bermuda Triangle, Wanderlust, Tide of Despair) and there is definitely a tiny bit of stuff that should be removed (Azazoth research encounter #8, you know the one - I wish they'd replaced it in Forsaken Lore) but the mechanics are rock-solid for that kind of game and it's got some of the best tension of co-ops I've played. Robinson Crusoe's theme is cool but the mechanics are too puzzle-y, and if you want to do well it becomes more of a push your luck and hope to do well than actually fun. Also the whole thing with hunting doesn't feel right, it's not like the only animals you run into are ones that try and destroy your camp...
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Aug 6, 2015 14:46
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Basically if you want a couple people running around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere trying not to die and rolling sadness dice just play Ghost Stories. Or give it all up and become a Hanabi god.
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Aug 6, 2015 14:55
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StashAugustine posted:Basically if you want a couple people running around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere trying not to die and rolling sadness dice just play But yeah, huge co-op fan and got bored of RC after a couple of plays. It's not that bad, but there are so many more interesting games out there even if they aren't quite as "thematic". Magic Realm still the best though. I really want to play Fire in the Lake :<
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Aug 6, 2015 15:36
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Mister Sinewave posted:I really can't stand Ghost Stories any longer - and I never really liked it much in the first place. I've even played it a bunch since it was one of the only co-ops we had at the time. I don't understand how people can grumble about e.g. Robinson Crusoe's die rolling or quarterbackable-ness and junk but not feel the same things about Ghost Stories For one, the rules of Ghost Stories are way more straightforward and the gambling is much more obvious on its face so new players don't really feel like they need to follow what experienced players are saying because otherwise it doesn't make sense. For two, the die roll odds are super predictable and you can actively mess with them unless you're dealing with Black Widow bullshit by picking up tokens, and once you get going you can chain actions and do really fun poo poo with some of the monks. There's enough randomness to make things tense but since you're usually trying to roll a 1-in-3 on 3 dice the odds definitely don't suck. You want to risk big turns that's on you (I've seen quad red rolled to kill a 4-red at least twice but usually it just screws you). And for three, it's like 1/2 to 1/3 as long and the difficulty is pretty stable, you get to see how screwed you are at the start of your turn and usually things get worse slowly rather than just popping up a bunch of bullshit you need to deal with ASAP. Plus the you're hosed over clock is also the game clock so if you're dealing with annoying mooks you're also progressing in the game faster. Plus poo poo like Buddhas and double attacks let you obviously gain ground over the game while there are reasonable Oh poo poo buttons like the Sorcerer. It's not anywhere near solved, it's damned hard, but you kinda need to go into it knowing you're a default level of hosed and you've gotta fight your way out of that. Plus individual consecutive turns reduce quarterbacking as opposed to RC's collective planning because some new BS will pop up each turn to deal with and Red needs to make sure people are where they need to be (and of course everyone wants Red to help 'em out so it's not like he's calling all the shots).
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Aug 6, 2015 15:51
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Plus speeding up the clock and getting hit by a lot of ghosts isn't necessarily bad in GS because if you can deal with them it lets you focus on the actual problems (since win condition is "survive a certain number of ghosts" which isn't necessarily equal to turns) and a bunch of ghosts are just annoying and can give big rewards like the rank 4 guys. Cursers are annoying as hell though and spawning lots of ghosts is usually bad though.fozzy fosbourne posted:It's funny that ~dripping with theme~ is a high form of praise elsewhere, but it suggests that the theme could be removed and is not intrinsic to the thing at all. I think ~dripping with theme~ is the sarcastic version that implies the theme kinda works but they went way overboard at the expense of mechanics and the game kinda turned into a Mediocre Story Generator. Go play Magic Realm then, the real best Thematic Co-Op.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:05
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Bubble-T posted:*gif of a man dropping a cardboard box, theme spills everywhere* Mage Knight! It's themaaaaaatic!
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Aug 6, 2015 16:10
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Yeah, Vlaada's really good at it. I'm not super impressed by how a lot of his games play because they always feel like either micro-optimization puzzles or clusterfucks (or both in the case of Galaxy Trucker) but the theme always works real well. And they're usually legit good games across the board. Richard Hamblen is probably the real theme-master but now he's the bg designer equivalent of a crazy hermit who lives in the forest and doesn't answer emails.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:15
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Tragedy Looper is definitely hella thematic. Those mechanics pretty much do exactly what the theme'd make you think they do and if you changed the theme nothing would make sense. Code of Nine, another Bakafire game, is interestingly thematic - it didn't feel like the theme worked that well when I was playing, but looking back at it it actually makes a lot of sense. I'm just not sure why the Memory cards apply to everyone. Btw, the Ignacy/Vlaada thing was posted here.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:35
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What's the mechanic for scathingly criticizing your opponents until they give up on their hopes and dreams and make more mass-market dreck?
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Aug 6, 2015 16:54
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Tekopo posted:I think the term 'conveyance' is still a pretty good word when describing games that make the actions/thoughts that you are doing within the games feel like the actions/thoughts that you would be doing if you were actually in that situation. Space Alert is probably the best example out there, but there are plenty more. Knizia is good at this, despite his games being really abstract.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:03
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Lichtenstein posted:If I were to crown a king of conveyance, it'd definitely be the person who I consider the king of wargame* design at a given moment. This is a genre, whose entire point is conveyance. I see you too would give the title to Allan B. Calhamer.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:44
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Soothing Vapors posted:Bought a copy that's coming tomorrow. Feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Miserable, miserable Christmas.
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Aug 6, 2015 20:09
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But seriously why does Feld make such aggressively boring games.
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Aug 7, 2015 01:59
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silvergoose posted:I really like CoB and Trajan. Bruges is decent and I hear The Speicherstadt is actually good. But CoB did something between put me to sleep and make me irrationally angry about how pointless everything felt.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:04
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silvergoose posted:Weird. I actually really hated Bruges after a couple plays. I feel like everyone has their own one or two Feld games that they are willing/happy to play, and likewise Knizia (mine happen to be Tigris and Euphrates and Ra, and I know a lot of people really dislike Ra) and don't much like any other ones. Half the bruges expansion makes the game less butt (boats) but the event cards are pretty dumb. The problem with Feld for me is that his games feel really scripted, you've got to go through this specific chain of actions to get these specific carefully-laid-out point maps to cash in for VP and then start the cycle all over again without anything except VP to show for your trouble. Give me a game with a good sense of progression (Caylus, Keyflower, any tableau builder) and let me feel like I'm making progress rather than just durdling for VP. Whoever goes on the slightly smarter points expedition comes back with the 4 extra VP to throw onto their 150 VP and take the game, give me less optimization and give me actually interesting resources to manage :< Also I love how in CoB if you get really good at boats to get the turn order bonus you just get extra screwed once people catch up because lol nope.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:10
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Lord Frisk posted:"The only good use of dice in a modern board game" That title should clearly go to Space Cadets Dice Duel. (Or Panamax, but we all know SC:DD is better.) ^^ I actually really want to play La Granja, might be able to get it in on Sunday. It looks actually decent, so it's definitely not a Feld.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:12
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Broken Loose posted:Ugh, I'm fuckin' Gric?! Why couldn't I be a good game? Serves me right for posting less than I used to. The fact you can't actually cut up your dice is extremely disappointing.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:23
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Malloreon posted:Alien Frontiers I liked alien frontiers but the fact that you can only roll on your turn should disqualify it from the standing. Played with two slow players once and the game took almost 3 hours and it was awful. If people want variable but controllable options as determined by dice each turn Roll for the Galaxy is probably the best option. ^^ En Garde or bust.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:26
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It would be a kinda lovely PBF but it probably wouldn't be that bad. I'm in if someone starts it.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:28
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Luckily Caylus is actually really easy to teach. Step 1: Place worker Step 2: Place worker Step 3: Place worker Step 4: ??? Step 5: Cry because you are broke and half your workers didn't activate and now the king is pissed and you just lost 2 points because gently caress everything
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Aug 7, 2015 02:34
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Some Numbers posted:Jesus Christ, I've finished a game of Alien Frontiers in FIFTEEN MINUTES. Who the gently caress were you playing with? The slowest of players. It might have only been two and a half hours. I've finished Eldritch Horror in half that time... Broken Loose posted:How to play Caylus, a comprehensive guide You forgot the part about turn 1 Gold Mine.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:37
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Kai Tave posted:Is there an interesting limited pool/LCG style card game meant specifically for more than two players? One that isn't bad like Sentinels of the Multiverse? Game of Thrones supports >2 solidly I think. But I might be wrong. Or you can play Imperial Settlers and pretend it's an LCG because it pretends to have deckbuilding and is pretty good.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:40
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Trynant posted:Wow do I really not post enough to be on that list? Not even in top 100...but then again neither is Archipelago; so I can deal. I really like Eldritch Horror if you want to be running around fighting the world and trying not to die, but it's set up as more of an indiana jones-style globetrotting action flick with bonus madness and less constant oppressive evil/hunger/etc eating your face. Mage Knight's good but it's really far on the puzzle scale, not really the best if you want to explore a random world but real nice if you want to be optimizing your moves and Making poo poo Count like nobody's business. Magic Realm will probably always be the king of thematic co-ops if you're doing that but the rules are a brick wall and the game length is brutal (though not that different from mage knight tbh) and it's really really old-fashioned which makes it tough for the newer generation of gamers who don't like Avalon Hill tables, die rolling, and constant risk of failure -> character death unless you plan way ahead.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:29
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Durendal posted:I heard Magic Realm was getting a reprint, no idea if that's true or not. They've been saying that for years. Rumor had it Stronghold was going to reprint it but I think Richard Hamblen still has the license and he is incommunicado so it's kind of in licensing hell there. Otherwise WotC probably ate it when they picked up Avalon Hill but I doubt they'd release such a niche (rules clusterfuck, super long, old as hell, rabid fanbase that won't tolerate change) game.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:54
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homullus posted:They wouldn't be reprinting it for the old, rabid fanbase -- those people generally already have a copy. It's a golden opportunity to release a better version. You'd be surprised. The older fanbase might have original copies but the first edition is universally considered terrible in terms of components and second isn't that much better. Best edition out there right now is Carthaginian's pnp which is what a lot of us are using, and something official along those lines would definitely be picked up even by people who had 1E copies because people like Print n' Play Productions haven't gotten permission from R. Hamblen + Carthaginian (per the latter's request) to assemble custom copies.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:08
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Paper Kaiju posted:I'm near the bottom, but I'm honestly surprised I'm even on the list; I didn't think I posted that much. Everyone is trying to be Twilight Struggle. Huxley posted:One unit, one artifact, one spell, one advanced action, and three crystals to smash a level 11 city. So that's why you can't rescue Delphana Masters from a ruin. Yeah, the higher-level units are pretty nuts...pretty sure you're right and you just need to park yourself in a city and pay the influence to pick 'em up. City units are mostly boss tier in general, especially city-only units. --- As much as I like Mage Knight, the print quality has been pretty much universally awful in terms of cardstock. Shame with how popular the game is.
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Aug 7, 2015 13:50
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Ayn Randi posted:Trip report: We played argent, it was loving awesome. My partner loves worker placement. Next stop, caylus Nice.  Argent is good, I need to play it more. Am really bad at it. Far as worker placement games go it's up there with Keyflower and Caylus but I don't think it's quite as good as those two unless what you really want is all the anime. Speaking of worker placement + all the anime, picked up Code of Nine at Gencon. Game is so weird.
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Aug 7, 2015 14:27
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Playing Arctic Scavengers this evening and maybe some other poo poo. Don't have 4 for Meuterer sadly. I need to get rid of a bunch of my older stuff. Maybe combine Dominion + Prosperity into 1 box and figure out how to get rid of SW: Underground but it's not that bad...tiny apartment extra-problems.
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Aug 7, 2015 14:52
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^^ I've only got base + prosperity, might see if I can fit everything in a 300ct or 600ct. Much more efficient that way and I don't pull the game out that often anymore.BonHair posted:Denmark is not USA It's The Best Game so everything worked out okay. If you like fast card games with race condition wins and building a board there's not much that compares to it. Glory to Rome's got the powers but it's way less elegant and the race can be awkward because pool control is so big.
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Aug 7, 2015 14:58
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