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Got to play my kickstarter copy of AEGIS last night. It was a three player game, and we played with the suggested beginner decks, which are intentionally more straightforward. The rulebook is well-written, and we only ran into a couple of instances we weren't sure of, but we just went with what was intuitive. For those who don't know, AEGIS is a skirmish game where the fighters are teams of robots, which have the ability to combine, voltron-style, into bigger robots. Teams use an easy-to-track Energy generation mechanic to power their movement and abilities, and abilities are resolved by dice, but in a way that generally effects how well you do, rather than whether you succeed or not. Even though we were using the beginner teams, robots had a wide variety of powers that were still easy to grok, but supported wildly different strategies and playstyles. Two out of the three players made use of the Combine mechanism, to join their robots together, and it seems really interesting. The game is fast, simple, and seems to have a good amount of depth with low rules overhead, and it does a good job of reminding you what the rules are whenever you're likely to overlook something. I liked it a lot, and I'm glad I backed it. Still not sure whether I should have gone deluxe, but the base version should have enough content to keep me going for a good long while. I have to applaud the designers for fitting a huge amount of content into a box the size of a dictionary, which they did with a really well-designed insert, and by using standees instead of miniatures, which also kept the price down. I have a couple minor aesthetic complaints. Mostly the art is nice. A little cartoony, which works for me. I could see these robots in a cartoon, probably running right after the Digimon cartoon on Saturday mornings. As you combine your robots into higher-level robots, their illustrations get more cool and detailed and a little more Gundam-flavored. Where the art falls flat for me is with the human commanders of each team. Those guys look like they came out of a webcomic. Luckily, you rarely ever have to look at them. The other minor issue is with the otherwise lovely insert. The base game includes 100 robot standees, and only 8 compartments to store them in, and that just rubs my finicky rear end the wrong way. Other than those two niggly bits, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
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Nov 21, 2018 02:47
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Like Harvest Dice? Actually, It's probably a bit simpler than you're envisioning.
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Nov 21, 2018 23:30
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I'll also put in a good word for Broom Service. It's got low downtime, with low rules overhead yet a wealth of strategy. For getting new people into games it has some plusses. The art is very cute, for one. The board is double sided, one for beginners and one for advanced players.It's also cheap! I got my copy for about $25 on Amazon. Just tell them you're playing Kiki's Delivery Service for assholes. Another one I like for new players is Fresco, either in base game or Big Box versions. You play as master painters working to restore the fresco in a cathedral. You plan out your day of buying different colors of paint, blending colors, and restoring the fresco, among other things. Having to choose what time your workers wake up adds a nice wrinkle(that I think Viticulture ripped off?). The biggest reason it works well for new players is conveyance of theme. Pretty much every mechanism makes thematic sense. You want green paint? One blue cube and one yellow cube, please. You want your workers to get up early, so they can buy all the red paint? Fine, but that will put them in a bad mood, so consider letting them go to the theater, or they might go on strike. The rules are easy to keep track of, because they all make sense. I'm pretty sure you can also get the base version of this for about $25, and you can pick up enough expansion boxes that you'll have modules coming out your rear end.
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Nov 30, 2018 14:57
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We got to try out Greed last night, three players. First impressions are good, seems like it will reward repeated plays. Also played two games of Imhotep. "Ah, a better version of Otys."
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Dec 5, 2018 00:00
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https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/5498/games-sequentially-numbered-cards-aka-games-you-ca No Thanks and The Game are two of the best ones on the list. El Fideo fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:23
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Bring Your Own Book is a CAH-type, except instead of a hand of cards, you have a book to try and find answers in. Click Clack Lumberjack is one of those children's games that becomes an excellent drinking game. Cash N Guns works as a party game for gamers, Bang! the Dice Game for non-gamers. Really Bad Art is a good one for normal people. Everyone takes a card and then draws what the card says. You only get six seconds to draw. Then there's a Dixit-style guessing of who drew what. I have heard very good things about Just One, which is kiiiind of like a co-op version of Trapwords.
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Dec 27, 2018 19:43
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Mad King Ludwig is the superior take on the mechanisms, anyway.
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Jan 7, 2019 22:28
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That is just blatantly false. Square rooms good, weird rooms better!
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Jan 7, 2019 22:41
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I've been slowly getting my brother into games over the past year and a half. Ticket to ride, King of Tokyo, Forbidden Desert, Arena of the Planeswalkers(not a mind-blowing game, but it works as a beer and pretzels fighting game that the nephews can handle, and he used to be into Mtg, so hey). Tonight I opened up Pandemic Legacy with him. After I explained the general concept of a legacy game, my sister in law said, "well that sounds wasteful," went to watch Ghost Adventures in the other room, and we got down to business. I almost wish we had made that our first game of the campaign, because we mopped the floor with those punk-rear end germs! We each had two characters: him with the dispatcher and medic, I had the scientist and the researcher, and we kept the hands separate using some card holders I picked up at a garage sale. We won really handily, but we were also really lucky. We cured blue on, like, the scientist's second turn, then managed to eradicate it two turns later with some good dispatcher/medic comboing. Then we hit a run of blue cards in the infection deck, and we managed to keep the board under control for the rest of the game. We finished with three or four outbreaks, and got through four of the Epidemic cards. I'd only played Pandemic a couple times before, and wasn't my copy, so I wasn't intimately familiar with the rules, but I think we did everything right. The dispatcher and medic are a very strong team. Every time I checked the rulebook, sure that it would restrict us from using them a certain way, it specifically said we could. The researcher is more restrictive, but their power effects the most constrained part of the game, so it sort of evens out. We think for the campaign, we're going to replace the scientist with the generalist, because we really like the look of the upgrade stickers, and the scientist's ability felt more incremental than everyone else's. We are both excited to start the campaign next time. We see how the powers work together, and the upgrades available, and we just know that that means the game is going to throw some wild poo poo at us, we can hardly wait to see. I've somehow managed to remain mostly unspoiled about season one, more so than season two, actually, so it's nice that after I spent this first game teaching my brother how the system works, we go into it at the same level. I didn't mean for this to become a super long Pandemic Legacy post, years after anyone else gives a poo poo, but it already feels like basically everything I want gaming to be.
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Jan 13, 2019 09:25
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Game night! We played through the Christmas haul: Flick 'Em Up: Dead of Winter. We played through the first scenario. The scenario itself was very simple, but that was good, since it let us internalize the basic rules, which are a bit fiddly. The noise mechanism makes you think about positioning, and the Zombie Tower makes a dexterity co-op really work. The different weapons work in interesting ways. For instance, one of our guys can't flick for poo poo, so we let him always use the character with the rifle. Definitely a good drunk game, if enough people already know it. HMS Dolores. Clever little take on the Prisoner's dilemma. We played with three players, and I think that must be the best way to do it, for minimal downtime, while still keeping the matchups different each turn. The scoring system gives you good reasons for making different choices. There's not a whole lot to say about it, but it's solid. Blue Lagoon. Fuuuuck. This just shot right to the top of my Knizia games. Might replace a few other games I already have, too. I played this twice tonight, both times with four people, and I was the only one who played both times. I agree with everything people on here have said! I really like games that give me multiple reasons for doing something, then make me deal with my priorities shifting over time as a result of those actions. That's a really inelegant way to put it, but Blue Lagoon is very elegant. At least one other person who played tonight is going to buy it too.
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Jan 15, 2019 10:47
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Bottom Liner posted:Also I've been solidifying a list of games to play with a standard deck I keep in my bag when traveling and here's the list I've come up with. A: I assume you saw that article Meeple Like Us shared, with recommendations for the best classic card games? B: My travel pack includes a standard deck of cards, but also a Rage deck. I've never used it to play Rage, but I have used it to play Lost Cities, Schotten Totten, Arboretum(two players), Parade, Coup, Skull, Sticheln, and The Fox in the Forest. It needs modification to be colorblind-friendly. I'm considering adding a copy of The Game with the new, prettier art, so I can also play The Game, The Mind, No Thanks, and 6 Nimmt. ...umm, speaking of colorblind-friendly, can anyone link me a good source for colored wooden discs? I managed to find a flaw in Blue Lagoon.
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Jan 17, 2019 04:26
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Bottom Liner posted:sequels to Jaipur Wait, what? Please elaborate, googling gives me nothing.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:04
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gently caress. YES.
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Feb 3, 2019 21:02
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Amazon has Corporate America for $33. I can't remember, is that one good or not? I don't have much for negotiation games.
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Feb 10, 2019 22:10
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Roll for the Galaxy Libertalia Broom Service Ra Steampunk Rally Dogs of War Condotierre
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Feb 15, 2019 18:34
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It looks really interesting, and the Deal module would probably add a lot of both customizability and interaction with other players, but I'm going to wait for a price drop. The MSRP is more than what I paid for Roll plus Ambition on Amazon, and I'm good with those for now.
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Apr 1, 2019 03:26
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Aaaugh. BoardGameArena just added Not Alone to their library. As implemented, it's just about unplayable in turn-based mode. Plays fantastically in real-time, of course.
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Apr 13, 2019 04:37
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I really want to be into March of the Ants, but it's got such off-putting art, and I already have Quantum, Rise of Tribes, and an unplayed copy of Omega Centauri filling up my light 4X slots.
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Apr 14, 2019 17:08
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Zark the Damned posted:Vault of Dragons trip report: pretty tedious Interesting. This is the one that's a reimplementation of the Sons of Anarchy game, right? That one's been sitting on my to play pile for a few weeks now. The SoA rulebook is pretty well put together, and describes a game that sounds way better than what you played. I wonder what went wrong.
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Apr 21, 2019 03:53
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CaptainRightful posted:
Aside from the running time, the same can be said of Fresco, so add me to the votes for those two. They're both about struggling to make your plans actually work, but go about it in wildly different ways, so you can absolutely own both of them. They also both go heavy on the modular expansions.
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May 5, 2019 10:03
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Vanuatu 2nd edition is really interesting. We played with a full five players, none of whom had played it before, and in a combination of people who tend to go off into conversational tangents, so we expected a learning game to go long, but this was a little over three hours. We had a good time anyway, so that's fine, and we all liked the game's systems. Each of them is fairly simple, and they come together to form an interesting whole. It can be brutal. I had one turn where the only action I managed to take was getting the first player marker for the next round, and another one not much better than that. Everyone else had at least a taste of that, and we took it in good humor. The rulebook isn't amazing. It needed another pass on editing for clarity and some edge cases. Looking at the kickstarter page, a lot of the tokens got upgraded to meeples, which explains our confusion when we couldn't find the fish discs it told us to remove whenever some took the fishing action, that sort of thing. Sloppiness, and what looked like some vagaries of translation. One issue, the lack of replenishment meant that resources quite simply ran out around round 5-6. That made it so 3/4 of the actions and roles were basically worthless for the last few rounds of the game. Players ended up just putting all their markers on the few actions that actually did anything, which actually speeded things up a bit, but wasn't exactly satisfying. It feels like the game is just not a five player game, and zero effort was put into player scaling. We all want to try it again with three or four, we just have to agree on who doesn't get to play next time.
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May 7, 2019 20:22
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Minus1Minus1 posted:I’ve been working on introducing new games to a friend of mine for awhile, and I’m having a bit of trouble pinning-down his preferences. Well, they(much less so Sushi Go) have some major push-your-luck and risk-taking elements. Consider your options, make a bold move, deal with the fallout, sort of thing. Diamant is the king of press your luck games with my group, but doesn't play with two. Jaipur is a definite possibility. Biblios has some aspects of that, as well as the drafting from Sushi Go, and would be a good way of turning him on to auction mechanisms. Battle Line/Schotten Totten might be too similar to Lost Cities, but it has a bit more going on. Ditto for Lost Cities Rivals. I'll even recommend Roll for the Galaxy, if you want to try him on something more mid-weight, it's way easier to learn than Race for the Galaxy.
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May 13, 2019 10:06
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I'll speak up for Flash Point as well. It's not particularly difficult or complex, but it's absolutely thematic and satisfying. My group will play it at the end of a night when we want something we can play while chatting. DO NOT GET THE TRAGIC EVENTS EXPANSION. It will turn the game into a two hour slog, at a minimum.
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May 27, 2019 02:56
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I was thrift shopping today, found some really neat-looking educational games, so I'm giving those to my friend who is pregnant, the kid can have some fun with those in a few years, learning vowels and marine biology. I also found a copy of this: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1621/mutant-chronicles-siege-citadel  (not my picture of course, it's real dark right now.) The box is in not in great shape, a good amount of scuffing(of course the thrift store people taped it closed, too), and some broken seams. I open it up, and the drat thing is unpunched. The only thing anyone's touched is the minis, the cards are still in shrink, etc. So what do I do with it? Is it worth playing, or just a bygone novelty? Is it worth selling? I see on ebay and the BGG Market copies listed for either $40, or $150, but is anyone buying either of those?
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Jun 2, 2019 07:25
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SoftNum posted:
I haven't played Qwinto, but I've played Qwixx, and I'll recommend that one for just about anyone.
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Jun 4, 2019 20:16
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quote:Downloaded the iOS version of Evolution yesterday, and it’s got the hooks in. I’m not sure if it’ll last, but it’s been interesting finally getting a look at this game. They recently finished a Kickstarter for Oceans, the next in the series. It had some interesting gameplay, and gorgeous art, but I couldn't see a reason not to just wait for retail . El Fideo fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 16, 2019 |
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Jun 16, 2019 09:09
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There's literally no non-numeral text in Can't Stop, go multilingual.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:42
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Incan Gold/Diamant. Plays up to 8, it gets more interesting the more players you have, and it's cheap. Between Two Cities/Castles is great, but only goes up to 7. A lot of the Roland Wrights/Bingo variants don't have their gameplay changed by adding more people, so a second copy would get you there. NMBR 9, Karuba, that sort of thing. Also, I'll throw in a recommendation that if you play Cash n Guns at the highest counts, play with the Team Spirit expansion. I suppose you don't even need to pay for the basic rules, really.
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Sep 18, 2019 06:15
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Blamestorm posted:Panic on Wall Street is $100
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Sep 18, 2019 07:22
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I got Mansions of Madness on clearance at Target for $50, have I made a mistake?
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Oct 2, 2019 22:45
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A friend saw and picked it up for me, so I don't know for a fact that it's Second, but I can't imagine a Target would still be carrying First, so looks like I'm good. How necessary are the expansions? There are...a lot of them.
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Oct 2, 2019 23:06
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StashAugustine posted:Idle question: what games are set up so that players are not identified directly with an in game entity (country, company, etc) but rather are manipulating various entities that organically rise and fall? Examples I can think of: Nobody has said Dogs of War, so I'll say Dogs of War. While you do identify with a specific mercenary company, the Great Houses that are actually fighting the battles and giving out the points are interchangeable, and when I teach the game to people who have played stocks games before, I tell them they're playing a stocks game.
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Oct 6, 2019 05:42
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A friend bought Game of Thrones Catan, and I'd never played Catan, so we played it last night, but without the Game of Thrones bits. I can see why people dislike the game. I can also see why it works as a gateway. How many of the issues could be fixed by just making the low-probability numbers have a better payout? Can't Stop figured that out decades ago.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:01
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Amazon seems to think Via Nebula is made of asbestos or some thing, because they had it priced at $17. I figured I'd pick it up. It arrived today, but was missing the three craftsman pieces for the black player. My replacement request has been submitted, but in the meantime, what are the best choices for replacement pieces? Currently I'm thinking the zombies from Arena of the Planeswalkers.
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Oct 16, 2019 04:27
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Man, Via Nebula really is better than $17. It's got this wonderful brinksmanship of not wanting to be too helpful to other people, and just trying to get the timing down, so you can have a really good turn, without leaving anyone the opportunity to mess you up before your next one by taking the last brick(Jeff!!), or buying the only building in the market that needs stone(Me!!). It goes ridiculously fast, too. Quick rules explanation, quick turns, we finished a 4 player game in an hour and forty five minutes, but that was with a lengthy pause in the middle to put a baby to bed. It and Blue Lagoon will probably be my go-to gateway games. Also this might be the best insert of any game I have? Makes me even more keen to track down a copy of Black Fleet, from the same publisher. Amazon still has Via Nebula for less than $20, down from the MSRP of $49.99, so people should get it before it disappears.
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Oct 23, 2019 09:09
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Roll and Write games are complicated Yahtzee, Flip and Place games are complicated Bingo.
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Nov 6, 2019 22:16
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All this talk of semi co-op, and nobody talks about Between Two Cities/Castles? I feel like that's the only game I've played that actually functions as an example, since it's extremely unlikely for one person to tank one of their castles for being too good, or suchlike fuckery.
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Nov 13, 2019 22:14
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The 'tail of spite' makes me laugh. People holding a grudge against pick-up sticks.
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Nov 20, 2019 16:18
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Can't be anything but 6 Nimmt! https://www.amazon.com/AMIGO-4910-6-Nimmt/dp/B00006YYXG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Nimmt&qid=1574621131&sr=8-1
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Nov 24, 2019 19:47
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Chubbs posted:It's one of the best dexterity games that's both accessible to kids but still fun for adults. The extra map configurations add variety, and the ability to play with up to 8 people makes it a great party game if you've got the table space. Yes! But only if you're actually playing it at a party, where it's fine to go off and talk to people and the other players can call you back when it's your turn to take a shot. 8 players at a game night was miserable.
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Dec 12, 2019 09:49
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