sonatinas posted:

I played Caverna for the first time over the weekend and compared to playing a lot of Agricola it was an easy transition. There are a lot more options and I felt like I needed to balance both the farm and the mines while still going on adventures. It is definitely easier to feed your family. I think the traumatic experiences I've had previously in Agricola made me build a decent food engine early so my dwarves won't suffer.

One main advantage(in a casual setting), in my opinion, it has over Agricola is not having any cards. If you just want to play the game casually then you can be more comfortable playing Caverna since everything is in front of you. With Agricola, if you don't know all the cards or people in your group go over every card and such, the people who don't play as much or do their homework with cards might not have as good a time. This also applies to people who don't like drafting games.

Both games can definitely exist in your collection. Agricola(with a draft in the beginning) is a more competitive game I think.

PerniciousKnid posted:

You guys are kind of making me want to take another attempt at reading the rules of the Agricola game I inherited.

jmzero posted:

Magic Talk
The card pool isn't really good enough to support interesting multiplayer play; I wouldn't buy this if that's what you're after. It's a single player campaign.

Poison Mushroom posted:

So, funny story. I was clicking around looking at solo games on BGG (because that is what I do with my free time), and I stumbled upon Tower of the Dread Mage, a pen-and-paper micro-RPG, played with a pencil on graph paper. Its rather luck-based, as you might expect from a game that small, and doesn't have much tactical depth at all. Still. the retro design charmed me, and I gave it a couple plays. Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at when it was first made, suspecting it'd be late-70s, early 80s.

2007.

And my first thought was "I could do this better than that". Knowing that I wouldn't be able to do much with one page, either, I instead opted to double my design space. Two pages of rules, two pages of tables. Still played with a pencil, graph paper, and two six-sided dice. And twenty-four hours later, I have a first draft of this horrible, horrible game that's probably barely any better at all than the inspiration, and is in desperate need of playtesting, and getting torn to shreds by people with better game design sensibilities than I.

Without further do, The Labyrinth of S'xsyde.

Robust Laser posted:

I should have listened. I was all like "man sometimes I like the games that the board game thread doesn't so whatever WHAT COULD GO WRONG" I am a fool.

I guess if there was an upside it's that when you play a digital version of a bad game vs computers, nobody cares if you play phone games in between turns.

Fungah! posted:

It does fantasy the fantasy SWAT "wander around, murder stuff and get money/get paid" gameplay as well as any pure dungeon crawler out there and IMO the co-op mode's the best way to play the game. It's not a 1:1 thing but it definitely scratches a very similar itch

Fungah! posted:

Uh yeah keeping live animals in your store's pretty much a no-no

goodness posted:

I'm looking for some solo games with high replayability. Picked up Takenoko and Dominion to try and get the gf interested but that fails I need a backup plan.

Dr. VooDoo posted:

So I'm considering getting Mage Wars but should I wait for the upcoming arena core pack? And does anyone have any experience with the game if it's a good one?

fozzy fosbourne posted:

My impression is that actively blocking other players is a pretty strong strategy in 2-3p games of Agricola. Keeping opponents out of animal food supply and room building actions (even doing poo poo like building a fence for no reason!). I'm not a pro though.

PopZeus posted:

What I find interesting and what I've been thinking about recently, is denial in 3 or 4 player games where you can't affect everyone at once. For example, I've been playing lots of quick games of TTR recently on my phone, and I've tried strategies based around denying routes to other players. I completed a few small routes pretty quickly and then focused my attention on blocking Red and Yellow player routes (this is against AI). Red was obviously going a certain way so I built a couple routes to stop him from connecting his cities. When the game ended, I realized my strategy had worked extremely well... against only the Red player. Once I blocked him, since I had finished my routes he couldn't retaliate, so he just kept trying to build around it. This gave me a decent score and Red a terrible score. Yellow, though, happily built on unencumbered and crushed us both. The only way I could've won is if while I blocked Red, he tried to block Yellow, tanking their score, too.

So there's this weird balance where the game would've been close only if we all went in a rock-paper-scissors circle of aggression. Any two players fighting amongst themselves just allow the 3rd too much freedom. Makes me appreciate the difficultly of balancing 3 player games in particular, since politics are inescapable and playing with people who aren't in the same headspace as everyone else can throw off the game and make spiteful kingmaking too easy.

Lichtenstein posted:

Talisman with Nickelback.

Tekopo posted:

Only one or two of the players would listen to that, everyone else would have 'Sad Trombone' on repeat.

homullus posted:

Mentally going back through 70s-90s music with special attention to the Cold War resonance is pretty fun. I wish "Let's Make a Cold War Soundtrack" wasn't such a digression for this thread.

Lichtenstein posted:

When playing Cards Against Humanity

Poison Mushroom posted:

So, have we decided what the definitive shark-jumping point for SU&SD was? The second sci-fi special was pretty bad, but personally, I feel like the quality began to wane right around the time they started putting The Opener in the mix, too.

thespaceinvader posted:

For new players, Caverna. It's a lot less punishing than Agricola, and more likely to make them into old players.

Robust Laser posted:

I know the imps in Dungeon Petz will work good in a pinch as caltrops, but are there any board games with pieces as dangerous as that, or even more dangerous?

Madmarker posted:

Are you......Rutibex?

alathar posted:

Just found Twilight Struggle for $20 at goodwill. I guess it's time to read about what makes this the #1 rated game on bgg. From what I've skimmed so far, I probably shouldn't read the cards so that I'm equally (un)prepared as whoever I find to play it with?

Kai Tave posted:

Y'know, I'm gonna be honest about it, I also played a few games of Fluxx around the post-college period of Arkham Horror and Betrayal and such, and compared to Munchkin I would play Fluxx any day of the week because at least Fluxx ends and ends quickly. Like yes, it's a game with no real depth at all to it and nothing in the way of strategizing, but as a "game you're playing because the host wanted to play something brainless as a sort of social facilitator" it's vastly better than Munchkin, less likely to reveal awkward and uncomfortable things about people you know like CAH, and doesn't require even the setup of something like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit.

I know three or four people are going to rush to tell me this is the essence of damning with faint praise which, no poo poo, but I still find Fluxx comparatively inoffensive next to what I suppose you'd consider its peers.

FISHMANPET posted:

Speaking of storing contents, is there a source for really really really tiny storage boxes? I threw out the little plastic bags for meeples in Viticulture because there are 6 slots for 6 colors, but I'm finding they're a pain in the rear end to get out of the tray. I saw a picture on BGG with some tiny plastic containers that fit into the slots, but I haven't found anything that small online.

PerniciousKnid posted:

So... do you have to shout the final attack when playing solo?

The worst submarine posted:

Sloober posted:

I don't even think it's the same dimension.

bobvonunheil posted:

I draw the Omnipotent Being. Oh hey, I rolled a 6! I will go to the Crown of Command please.

Zveroboy posted:

As Poopy Palpy said they're both very good games and have enough differences that you can have both.

Agricola is stressful, you're always wobbling on the starvation line, and because it uses the cards every game is different. It's really about making do with what you have and trying to be as efficient with your actions as possible.

Caverna to me wasn't stressful, but still offers a lot of variety. The cards are just replaced with so many things to do or build there's no way you can do them all in just a few games. You can have whatever you want, but the key is finding that past of least resistance and most points through the myriad of options.

I slightly perfer Agricola, but I wouldn't turn down a game of Caverna if invited to one.

jmzero posted:

When you first play the game, it seems like there's lots of decisions to be made in terms of how to lay out your farm, etc.. - but many of these become non-decisions quickly (at least when playing with the base card sets). You end up building your fields, rooms and fences in about the same place every game, and there's little reason to change unless you get one of a few specific cards (eg. Window Planters or whatever it's called).

Zveroboy posted:

So I played a solo game of Agricola tonight.

I got 22 points.

I'm sorry, I'll leave now

Zveroboy posted:

Aye but then I looked in my scorebook and saw my previous two solo games were 44 and 39 points.

I think what I did wrong was I got a few cards that all sort of worked together and I just tunnel visioned into then.

Choose Woodcutter for my first occupation and got the Private Forest out early as well. Then I got Master Builder and Turnwrest Plough out. I had a lot of wood available, so I was able to get my house to 5 rooms and Master Builder gave me a sixth. I was able to make three 2-square pastures and the plough allowed me to plough the remaining 3 spaces in one action.

While I was doing all this though I was only just scraping by on food. Because I didn't have any decent food production going I struggled to feed a 3 person family nevermind getting more family members, so I wasn't able to renovate the house or get any point giving cards into play.

quote:

Turn 1: Sheep. Plow, take grain.
Turn 2: Improvement. Plow, take grain.
Turn 3: Sow/Bake Bread. Sow 2 grain, day laborer for 2 food.
Turn 4: Fences. Fishing pond for 4 food, take 4 clay. (Spend all 6 food at harvest. Harvest 2 grain.)
Turn 5: Stone. Buy cooking hearth for 4 clay, take 5 reeds.
Turn 6: Family growth. Take 12 wood, add to house and build 3 stables - on the 3 spaces in the far right column.
Turn 7: Renovate/Improve. Family growth and take 7 sheep - keep 3 and turn 4 into 8 food. (Spend 7 food at harvest. Harvest 2 grain, breed 1 sheep. 1 food left over.)
Turn 8: Vegetable. Plow, take 1 veg., take 4 clay.
Turn 9: Wild boar. Plow, sow 1 veg. and 1 grain and bake 2 bread into 6 food, take 5 stone. (Bake 1 sheep, spend 9 of 9 food - 0 left over. Harvest 3 grain and 1 veg. Breed 1 sheep.)
Turn 10: Cattle. Renovate to clay hut and build well, Plow, Build basket weaver's. (Take 1 food from well.)
Turn 11: Stone. Take 'n bake 4 sheep, take 7 fish, plow. (Bake 1 sheep, then breed one. Spend 9 food. Harvest 1 grain and 1 veg. Get 1 food from well.)
Turn 12: Family growth. Family growth, take 3 stone, build stone oven. (Take 1 food from well.)
Turn 13: Plow/sow. Family growth, take 8 reeds, take 3 stone, sow 3 grain and 1 veg. and bake 2 bread into 8 food. (Turn 1 reed into 3 food, bake 1 sheep for two more. Harvest 4 grain and 2 veg., breed 1 sheep, take 1 food from well.)
Turn 14: Renovate/Fences. Take wood, renovate to stone and build fences,take sheep, boar, and cattle. (Bake 1 sheep, turn 1 reed into 3 food. Breed 1 sheep, 1 boar, and 1 cattle.)

The fences look like this in the right-hand 2 columns of the board:

_ _
|_ _|
|_|_|
|_ _|



Maxes all categories = 28
3-room stone house = 6
5 Family members = 15
3 Fenced stables = 3

Well = 4
Stone Oven = 3
Cooking Hearth = 1
Basketmaker's Workshop = 2 + 3 bonus.

Total of 65.
I did this a couple of months ago with the help of the java solo version and a couple of layovers at airports, but I haven't looked at it much since then, so it can probably be improved. An earlier first family growth, maybe? Or possibly build 2 rooms and a stable at that first build to get two fast growths?

Edits: Grammar and clarifications.

Crackbone posted:

It has a 122 page rulebook. It's the fever dream of a diseased genius.

Impermanent posted:

Man I should just have listed all the games I own because I have a biweekly Mage Knight group and that game is A+ in my book. (Also I played in the 1st thread hosted by our most gracious game master Tekopo.)

Impermanent posted:

We effectively play Mage Knight with the PvP combat rules off, but we may consider changing that. For competitive play, I wouldn't be surprised if we started implementing some of the "screw the leader" options for dealing with whenever someone is able to pull ahead very early.

I wouldn't mind playing with magic glades on in order to offer more options to players that get screwed over by movement. That Mage Tower house rule though seems like it would be very easy to pull all the spells someone would want out of a single mage tower.

Echophonic posted:

I've never found Zee (the other guy in the top 10s) all that offensive, he's better than Vasel or Sam at explaining why he likes something.

Madmarker posted:

Unfortunately, 7+ is a tough number, there are a few Euro's that support 6 players, Ground Floor, Agricola, Caverna. However most boardgames have a range of somewhere between 2-5 players, so its almost always best just to split the table, as has been previously mentioned.

Poison Mushroom posted:

I just spent the last two days home sick, and hammering out a Pokemon hack for HeroQuest of all things, to get some online friends to dip their toes into other board games.

This is my life, these are my choices.

Zylen posted:

I'm on a bit of a board game bender at the moment, having bought Netrunner at the beginning of January, Doomtown last weekend and both Tash Kalar and Mage Knight should be arriving tomorrow.

Now I'm a huge fan of Vlaada Chvatil, already owning Space Alert and Galaxy Trucker, so I'm pretty excited for the new arrivals. However I was wondering if there are any tips or things I need know before the boyfriend and I dive in - most likely with regards to Mage Knight?

Poison Mushroom posted:

Talisman uses cards for monsters. Talisman lets you choose to go left OR right. Therefore, by your own rules, the only example is Chutes and Ladders.

Jedit posted:

Not quite. Arkham Horror provides several means to manipulate the rolls; Blessings make rolling successes more likely, equipment increases the number of dice you get to roll (and in some cases makes successes count double), and Clues can be spent to re-roll dice. All these things can be obtained by spending limited resources, although they can often be acquired for free via skill checks. AH is also a cooperative game, so you will have several characters who can be allocated to perform the different tasks and the requirements for those tasks are as a rule known ahead of time. This gives the players agency in being able to pick the best character for any given job. If that character is occupied elsewhere or too far away you have to choose between waiting and wasting time or attempting the task with a character less likely to succeed. This adds a level of tactics to the game.

Compare this to Talisman. Every player has to face the same tasks, and as the game is competitive you have to do it for yourself. All checks are roll a die, add stat and get a total, which some characters cannot achieve naturally. You can manipulate your stats to some small degree, but only at certain locations. Whether or not you get to those locations is the result of a die roll, and in most cases a second roll is required to improve the required stat. Both these rolls are entirely random and except in very rare cases have no modifiers. As a result, success or failure in Talisman is entirely at the whim of the dice.

Poison Mushroom posted:

I hope think the point Rutibex is trying to make here is that you can have luck management and dice mitigation and still have a horribly random, unfun game.

jivjov posted:

It it really that light on mechanics? There's so much...stuff in there, I thought it had the same "gather resources, expend them to modify dice rolls" feel that Eldritch does.

Ravendas posted:

It's yahtzee with icons, where you choose which sets to go for before you roll instead of after.

Durendal posted:

Who cares? It still has zombies in it. I can add dice rolling as well. Roll 3d6 and compare each dice to the jump table. Those are the only jumps you are allowed.

Then you add stuff fast horrors/zombies who can jump an extra space or arch demons and tanks who can jump on top of opposing pieces, but only if the size chart says they can.

Elyv posted:

So I played Forbidden Desert for the first time with my roommate and her boyfriend, and we came out very disappointed. For a bit of background, none of us have played any co-op board games other than a couple games of thread favorite punching bag Betrayal at House on the Hill, but it still felt way too easy. Game 1, we played on Novice and crushed it, so we turned up to Legendary...which we proceeded to crush. Game 3, we did some custom things(started the storm at level 4, had the board wrap around only for storms so that the wind cards would always give maximum amount of sand), and it was still fairly easy.

Is the game actually supposed to be that easy, or did we miss some rules? I kind of hope it's the latter, because we enjoyed the concept but didn't really feel like fiddling more dials right now.

Edit: Actually I think I figured out what we did wrong, nvm.

TastyLemonDrops posted:

I am kinda addicted to civilization building board games now. I've been playing them non-stop in the past few weeks/months: Through the Ages, Patchistory, Clash of Cultures and Sid Meier's Civilization being the most recent. Anything else I'm missing that I'll probably like if I enjoy all of the above-mentioned games?

Gimnbo posted:

I always tell people Terra Mystica is like Eclipse without combat because I have no better reference point.