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Ropes4u posted:The best zombie game is pandemic with all the outbreak cards. Just pretend the diseases are different styles of zombies. My family and I do this already. "Oh no, the fast zombies are in Hong Kong!"
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Dec 14, 2014 03:50
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I mentioned in this thread that we've half-heartedly pretended a virus was zombies in Pandemic. Well, let me tell you, once you go whole-hog with that concept, Pandemic becomes the best zombie board game ever made. You can do it with just a handful of house rules. House Rule #0: This is the only one really required. Rename the four viruses after different kinds of zombies. We chose: Fast Zombies Slow Zombies Voodoo Zombies And my son christened the last one "atomic zombies" and said they glow in the dark. Kinda weird, but it made for some creepy stories later! House rule #1: when outbreaks occur, every player in an affected city has to narrate or describe some kind of zombie action. House rule #2: If possible, give a name from some kind of popular zombie movie/book/show to your character. I was a Dispatcher, and named myself "Metsfan" after the never-seen radio operator from that one story in the World War Z book. House rule #3: if you lose the game, you have to describe your character's last stand.
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Dec 17, 2014 03:55
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I played Galaxy Trucker with my son for the first time tonight! He's 10, and totally understood all the mechanics in the Test Flight portion. Unfortunately, he didn't take the warning about not leaving ports exposed, and got completely owned by meteors and put irrevocably in last place by Stardust. Still, he at least made it back to base. I used half my guys on an Abandoned Ship, then slavers took the rest!
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Dec 19, 2014 03:53
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I love Settlers to death, and I agree that most of those criticisms are valid. The RNG can be a fickle mistress. A large part of the strategy is making sure you get something on as many numbers as possible. A really bad board layout can make the first turn critical. You can mitigate that by using the "default" layout as much as possible, or googling for balanced board layouts to use. (The default layout is really quite good overall.) So yeah, it has some issues. However, I don't agree with it being The Game That Just Won't End. I've played scores, maybe even hundreds, of games of Settlers and have only seen the game drag like that a handful times. It can happen, but it doesn't happen often. New players tend to trade, which avoids that issue. Experienced players tend to squirrel away some dev cards that can be used to claim anywhere from 2-5 VP in a single turn. Most of the games I play these days end quite suddenly when someone manages to claim Longest Road and pulls out a timely Monopoly. Or something along those lines. In other news, I played my first full round of Galaxy Trucker today with my son. This game is a blast. The build phase is frantic and fun! Making fun of each other's ships is even more fun! And then watching the ships get blown to bits is the most fun of all. We did all three normal rounds, and then did round III-A for the hell of it. On round III-A, we both ended up with just a couple of components left. No guns, no engines, no crew. Just a cargo bay, some pipes, and for me, a shield without batteries. The very last card was Open Space and we had to give up. The ship in round III-A is hilarious. I thought, hey, it looks like the Enterprise! So it has to be good, right? Right? There's all sorts of great places for engines and guns and everything! Nope. Iwas wrong. So wrong. If you manage to lose the middle piece of Row 6, literally half your ship gets thrown in the trash. Similar fates can befall either "nacell" area--which coincidentally are the only things between that critical Row 6 middle piece and every meteor and pirate in the galaxy. I lost my port nacell to a meteor, then that connector in the middle to a pirate. That game is a blast.
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Dec 22, 2014 07:33
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Tekopo posted:This shouldn't be possible, for the reason I highlighted. If you ran out of crew, you are out of the race for that round. Oh, I thought your stuff still coasted along and you got something. We'll know better next time!
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Dec 22, 2014 07:54
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enigmahfc posted:You still get credits for your cargo, but rounded down. I thought you still got to play the cards, weather asteroids and whatnot, and just couldn't opt-in to things like planets stuff. I thought you only had to drop completely out if you hit Open Space with no engines, at which time you sold everything for half. Otherwise you kept on truckin, in a dead ship, til the end. If you had anything make it to the end, you could sell it for full. (To be honest, this was still hilarious, as it was fun to see if anything would make it to the end.) Now I know that was wrong, and you Drop Out immediately (sell for half, etc) if all your crew dies.
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Dec 22, 2014 17:28
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Are there any good single player games out there? Sometimes I want to solve some puzzle or play out a story, but there's no one around.
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Feb 21, 2015 03:13
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I actually own Pandemic, but didn't realize it worked well with a single player. Mage Knight looks really interesting. Could anyone expand a bit upon how it plays? Or, if it's easier, any good video reviews?
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Feb 21, 2015 03:46
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Went out to a board game day today and played something called Arabian Nights. Might as well be called "Cross Referencing: The Game". I did not enjoy it, at all. There was no way to make meaningful choices in the game. Everything was randomized on huge charts and tables. Move to a place, draw a card, look up the number on a chart, roll a die to see what thing you encounter, pick your response to thing from a list (with no way to know which response gets which result), look up response in a HUGE loving BOOK of mini blurbs, read your result, pray that crazed beggar you helped isn't an evil djinn in disguise.
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Mar 9, 2015 03:21
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Echophonic posted:Sounds like someone attacked a beggar. I ended up crippled when I helped my first beggar. The next guy got a beggar on a different chart, tried to rob him, and ended up wounded and ensorcelled. If there were any way to correlate action to reward it wouldn't be so bad. But by turn five I just said gently caress it and picked "Drink" every time it came up as an option. This worked surprisingly well, as I ended up as a Blessed, Married Vizier after drinking some Mystic Fire.
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Mar 9, 2015 03:25
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Gimnbo posted:You basically nailed the appeal of the game. Hoping for more "game" than that is futile. You just have your Choose Your Own Adventure story running concurrently with the CYOA of the other players and you laugh at each other. Yeah, that doesn't really do it for me. I dislike the lack of agency in the game. Multiplayer "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a very apt description of the game.
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Mar 9, 2015 03:31
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I hear there are two versions of Tash Kalar. How much does it matter which one I get? Is one of significantly lower quality, or missing something, to the point that it really matters which version I buy? And if it matters, how do you tell them apart?
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Mar 14, 2015 04:12
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speaking of Vlaada, my copy of Tash Kalar came in today. This game is good! Here's my quick mini review. The basic rules are simple: you get two actions. You can place a token on a grid, or you can play a card to do a thing if you have tokens in the right positions. It's pretty abstract. The game is supposed to be a gladiatorial arena where you're summoning fantastic creatures to fight for you. The tokens represent your forces, which gain power as you do things. The game supports up to four players, in both free-for-all and team variations. Plus there are two rule sets: Deathmatch (points for taking out opponents' tokens) and High Form (points for accomplishing specific tasks). I played High Form twice today. First game, neither of us really knew what we were doing and didn't really focus on the objectives. The game ended when we ran out of cards, rather than by points. Second game, I went hardcore for the tasks; my opponent seemed more focused on messing with my formations than on tasks of his own. I won, in a near shutout. I've only played the two games, but it really seems that this is a game that's all about aggression. It seems pretty much pointless to protect individual pieces. It's sort of possible, kinda. But it seems that a better strategy is to set yourself up so that you'll make some sort of gain no matter what your opponent does.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:21
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Tash Kalar question. Under what circumstances can a token be upgraded? The guy I played with yesterday said tokens go from common to heroic if they kill something on their turn (during a combat move or leap, for example) in addition to if a card says so. This would make movement cards quite powerful, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if it's designed that way. I can't seem to find much in the rules to support either, which makes me think card-only is right.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:18
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Fat Samurai posted:No they don't. They upgrade if a card tells you so. That's it. Thanks for the clarification. Card-only does seem right. I think the guy was taking the Swordmaster's power (upgrade if you kill something) and applying it to all tokens. As for your edit, I caught that one. One I didnt' catch right off is that an upgrade piece can use a standard move to take out a lesser piece as if it weren't even there. Combat moves allow you to take out pieces equal or lower or empty spaces, standard moves are lower or empty.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:30
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sonatinas posted:He was trying to justify cheating(or thinks what the pieces ought to do) because there is nothing in the rule books that even get close to that idea. Eh, he'd only played a few games previously. No big deal, no malice involved, just a mistake. I won anyway.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:04
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I got to teach Galaxy Trucker to six people across two games tonight. It was a total blast. Everyone loved it, and they were all making up little stories about how their crew members were dealing with stuff. One guy called the cargo "Space coke, space heroin, space weed, and space....aspirin". Another kept making Event Horizon references every time an abandoned ship came up. Best moment of the night was when a guy who rolled in with a tiny fragment of a ship won the prettiest ship bonus; the whole group was rolling at his description of the lone survivor's desperate attempts to stay sane by relentlessly waxing what little remained of his ship.
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Apr 5, 2015 07:16
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I seem to remember that there's a thread preference for one of the * Horror games over the other, but I can't remember which. So which one should I pick up? Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror?
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Apr 10, 2015 01:39
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Huh. Eldritch Horror is rated pretty highly on BGG, and there are lots of positive reviews. Why do you guys seem to hate it?
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Apr 10, 2015 03:13
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A couple pages ago I asked about Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror, and the consensus was that both suck somewhat, but Eldritch sucks less. Then someone asked why I wanted to look into these games. So maybe I'll post that and you guys will have an alternate suggestion! I'm looking for a more narrative-style game. One where there's a story, rather than a puzzle to solve. Most of my games are of the puzzle sort. At their heart, the games I have today are trying to solve for the most points or territory, or to outmatch your opponent, or whatever. I love me some tight, crunch mechanics, but I've been wanting something more in the way of theme or narrative. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of that puzzle-solving aspect for a good, solid theme. I'm totally okay if the mechanics are a bit iffy. An unwinnable scenario isn't the end of the world. I just want a game that tells a story. The big limiter here is that it must work with 2 p layers, as my primary game-buddy is my 11 year old son. Edit: He's way into "scary" things right now. Like I'm also on a hunt to find horror movies that would fit into a PG-13 rating, as he's outgrown things like "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and "Goosebumps". ConfusedUs fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 20:53
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Madmarker posted:I don't know how it would work with two players, but Tales of the Arabian Nights is by far the best theme game out there. Sorry but "Spreadsheet: The Game of Indexes" isn't really my cup of tea.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:06
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Thank you for all the suggestions! Claustrophobia definitely sounds interesting. I just edited this into my request post on the last page, but the horror theme is something we're very much interested in. My son is way into "scary" things right now. Like I'm also on a hunt to find horror movies that would fit into a PG-13 rating, as he's outgrown things like "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and "Goosebumps". So some good ol' cosmic lovecraftian horror is right up his alley.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:22
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Rutibex posted:What you are after then is Betrayal at House on the Hill. Each game you explore a randomized haunted House, until there is an "haunt" that makes on of the players a traitor and sets them against the others. Each Haunt is different and they all try an emulate classic horror movies, like vampire attacks/aliens/ghosts/the devil/whatever: If it worked for 2 players I'd own it already. Sadly, it's 3-6.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:58
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Rutibex posted:Just play two characters each How would that work with the betrayer mechanic? Would the extra player be given to the other guy?
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Apr 10, 2015 22:09
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Got to play Betrayal at the House on the Hill today with my son; as expected, he was really into it! So much that he wanted to play again immediately, and then asked if we could buy a copy. So even if it's not the best mechanically, it was exactly what we were looking for. My biggest criticism of the game, after playing only twice, is that the random nature of the Haunt events can sometimes be completely unfair to one side or the other. In our first game, the haunt was that the house started sinking into an underground swamp; players took movement penalties and, eventually, damage based on how much water was on their level. Two of our three hero players were in the basement and there were no discovered paths back to the upper levels; they drowned before finding the stairs. I was the traitor and won through no real effort of my own. Still, the simplicity of the game mechanics makes it easy to play and to teach, and the horror theme is exactly what we were looking for.
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Apr 12, 2015 04:28
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I played a worker placement game called Stone Age tonight. It was pretty good! I enjoy this kind of game, even when I come in last.
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Apr 20, 2015 01:11
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AMooseDoesStuff posted:We only managed to play babies first Game in Galaxy Trucker but it went down really well. I love Galaxy Trucker. It's usually a hit when I bust it out at the local game store. My only beef with the game is that there aren't a lot of meaningful choices to make during the in-flight phase of the game. It's even worse the further back in line you are. If you're not the first player you have very few choices at all. I feel there should be more ways to jump forward in the caravan.
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Apr 20, 2015 22:55
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Why the hell doesn't someone make a Vlaada-esque zombie game where you prepare for the invasion and then watch the world burn? I'm pretty sure you could reshuffle Galaxy Trucker's mechanics into something like barricade building, followed by event cards that gently caress up your barricade.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:35
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taser rates posted:Or hell, zombie Space Alert. But those might accidentally be good zombie games I know, right? I've been tempted to experiment with theming galaxy trucker to work as a barricade building zombie game. Block up a gap in the wall with junk in a mad scalable with the other players, see what gets through.
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Apr 25, 2015 02:26
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Zurui posted:Hey all-knowing board game goons: how is Smash-Up? Smash Up is a light game that has a decent amount of fun hidden within, especially if you really get into the themes. It has lot of replayability, but it is not a mechanically elegant game. And since this thread seems to prize mechanics above all other factors, you're bound to hear a lot of "it sucks" kind of replies. So with that said, I enjoy the game. I don't ever really think "Man, I want to play Smash Up!" but when it does come out, I never fail to have fun. Many people in this thread use Splendor as their baseline for good or bad. As in, "If it's better than Splendor, it's a good game. If it's worse, it's bad." For me, my baseline is Smash Up. Pros: The themes and art are mostly well done and frequently funny, some more than others. One of the expansions has Giant Ants, of which every Action card (and a few minions) is a joke based on a Queen song. Nothing like throwing a Killer Queen down and playing Another One Bites the Dust on top of it. The spies deck (also in an expansion) is nothing but James Bond jokes, and in the stock game, the Dinosaurs have all these high-tech augments that remind me of the 80s cartoon Dino Riders. Only a few decks are complete duds. The rules are easy to learn and make sense. The competition aspect isn't super confrontational for most decks. Most of the time it's better to help yourself than it is to gently caress the other guy over, so you don't end up in Munchkin-esque stalemates. Games are pretty quick--about 15 minutes plus 5 per player if everyone knows what they're doing. Cons: Some deck combinations really suck or are overpowered. In the stock game, Dinosaurs are pretty weak and Robots are quite powerful. Usually you balance this out by choosing random decks or doing a round-robin style pick, but you can absolutely end up in a position where it's virtually impossible to win or to lose, depending on your factions. (I really prefer random deck selection for this reason) Two player games show this imbalance more than larger games. Decks that flood the game with minions (zombies, robots) are incredibly powerful in two player games, for example. As mentioned before, there are some clunky mechanics. The most ubiquitous is probably the shuffle/draw mechanic which drives the game. Unlike Dominion, you can't build your deck so that you have a reliable engine. This means that you will often not be able to use cards in their best combinations. This affects everyone equally, so it's not really a handicap, but people who prefer to min-max their experience may not enjoy it.
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Apr 25, 2015 03:40
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I played Roll for the Galaxy last night and really enjoyed it. Am I crazy?
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Apr 30, 2015 18:41
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Ojetor posted:Pandemic is the best zombie game. Agreed. Just pretend the diseases are different kinds of zombies.
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May 8, 2015 18:16
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Ordered Mage Knight. This is going to be the most complex game I own. I'll mostly be playing solo to pass time while caring for my sick grandma next week. Any good hints or tips for a first time player?
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May 8, 2015 20:34
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ThisIsNoZaku posted:You have to roll dice to determine if your survivors can attack zombies or search for things. Yeah, but there's ways to mitigate that (pick survivors with a range of skills) and even if you don't, there is always /[something]/ you can do that's useful, even if it's barricading. The dice rolls for actions are actually handled well, and I say this as someone who's not really a fan of the game. I hate the potential instant-death dice though.
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May 9, 2015 11:58
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Speaking of Mage Knight, I bought it last Friday and brought it with me for something to do while taking care of a sick family member. First thought: holy poo poo that's a lot of cards! Second thought: holy poo poo this is going to need a ton of space!! Third thought: holy poo poo there are two rulebooks!!! So it's kind of overwhelming, at first. This is easily the most complex game I own. But, once you start playing, it all comes together. The introductory adventure is pretty good at teaching you how to play! It covers all the basics and really eases you into things. Believe it or not, I managed to complete the first adventure without taking any wounds! I always had enough cards to kill during the ranged phase or enough to block. Or enough units to sacrifice. I didn't bother attacking places with hidden tokens or super tough monsters. I found the city on the last turn, and that was that. Feeling cocky, I then set up a solo adventure. I followed the same philosophy...and then I got demolished by the first city assault. Absolutely destroyed. So many wound cards! I don't think I gathered enough powerful stuff to do it effectively. I had only a couple of spells, a couple of units, and a small group of advanced actions. No artifacts. Not much mana in my inventory. Couple of questions: 1) To assault a city, do you have to move into its space? Physically you cannot put your mini there, since there are minis for both the city and the player. Still, it seems like you should have to do it. I went ahead and paid cards to enter each city to start a fight, similar to a fortress. I couldn't find a definite rule in the book, but there are a lot of words there! 2) What happens if you can kill some of the enemies in the city but not all? Do you get to try again on your next turn? Do enemies respawn in any way? Or is the city just permanently without whichever tokens you killed? 3) Does mana in your inventory stick around between Rounds?
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May 14, 2015 03:13
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Stelas posted:1) Yes. It takes 2 move to move into the city and start the assault. If you win, you stay there. If you lose, you drop back one space in the direction you came from. Okay, glad to know that conquering a the city is expected to take a couple of turns. I was despairing at the thought of trying to get that much attack and/or block at once. And whoa, it only costs 2 to get into the city? I was totally paying whatever the city sat on. So the green city, which is on a swamp, I was paying 5 to get in. I did mean mana crystals, in the inventory.
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May 14, 2015 06:11
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To the guy wanting to buy the reprint of Tash Kalar http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O4CMRQU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I bought this and it was the second printing.
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May 22, 2015 03:23
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I love Galaxy Trucker, and the app is amazing. Some of the dialogue is hilarious. However, now that all my buddies have the app, no one wants to play the actual game. This makes me sad. Maybe I'll buy the other big expansion to entice them back to the table.
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May 27, 2015 06:48
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Speaking of storage: is there a dominion storage box that is something along the lines of the Smash Up big box or the Bigger Blacker Box for Cards Against Humanity? I think a long row with dividers would be way more space-efficient than half a dozen 12"x12"x3" boxes.
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May 29, 2015 00:53
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 00:36 |
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Back to Mage Knight for a bit. I can trash any individual, non-draconum monster, usually with little planning. I have no problems with jumping face first into a Keep, or a Monster Den, or a Tomb, or whatever. But the moment it's time to take on a City, I feel absolutely overwhelmed. I have no idea what to do. How are you supposed to do this, solo, without taking enough wounds to spend several rounds simply resting? I played a game just now where, on the last round of the game, I was able to take out a level 5 city at the cost of ten wounds. Game was over before I could get enough of them out of my hand to resume play. I think there's some key component to leveling up and gaining cards that I'm missing. Like there's a strategy that I have not found which causes me to woefully under-prepared for the City assaults. Would anyone like to share how they prepare for the endgame as they go through the game? Are there certain sites--like Monastaries or Keeps or Dragons--that you tend to target or avoid? Certain combinations of cards that I should be on the lookout for? I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the basic mechanics of the games;it's just the long-term strategy I can't wrap my head around yet.
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May 30, 2015 02:58
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