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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:Mousetrap
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Apr 1, 2024 21:52
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| # ? May 16, 2024 17:02 |
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Tekopo posted:Been playing a lot of 18xx lately and had two constrasting opinions. Thanks for the heads up on Neb, sounds right up my group's alley. I am notorious at this point in the same group for disliking 1822 and its degenerate spawn, not because I think they're bad games (even a bad 18xx is usually better than most dry 4 hour track climbing cube pushing euros IN MY OPINION) but because I find them generally so procedural and slow. The auction should be the meat and potatoes where you jockey for position and make people pay for theirs but we almost always play online and it's brrrruuutttaaaalll. I have come to the conclusion that I will only ever play these games in person. It may not fix my main issues with the game regarding the loop (get minor that doesn't suck, get concession/major that connects to them, run trains until cows come home etc blah blah) but at least it's interesting and fun and FASTER doing that in person rather than async on .games. Also just winding up a 4P game of 1828 that I think I'm the only one who doesn't mind it. It's definitely a weird game and I don't understand mergers really but it feels like 1830 by way of an obsessive fan of the genre, someone with hard opinions who has been thinking and arguing about the genre and board games as a whole for years... I think it's designed to be a bankruptcy simulator and we played too conservatively but it's ending via the final 4(!) ORs, much to the chagrin of all the two people who are way, way behind. Also wrapping up a game of 1848 that I am enjoying and would happily play again. Screwed up not buying BoE shares at first chance though and trying to rush trains in lieu of holding onto a well positioned company but it's still very close.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:05
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1822-alikes are a bit boring asynch if you don’t have people that play fast. I can still stand them but I bought PNW/MX specifically to play live and make the auctions more palatable. I haven’t tried 1828, I think it’s made by someone called Martin2D and yeah, he’s very vocal about preferring 1830-alikes and is not a fan of the 1846 genre of games. If you are in the market for something really weird and gimmicky but kind of cool, try The Old Prince if you haven’t tried it already, it has loads of weird little rules and interesting track building.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:15
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I've only played one game of 1828 (technically none, but it's basically over) and it was 4P and not 5P but I found it rather uneventful and I was pretty disappointed.Tekopo posted:I haven’t tried 1828, I think it’s made by someone called Martin2D and yeah, he’s very vocal about preferring 1830-alikes and is not a fan of the 1846 genre of games.  it's by Clearclaw (though both are big fans of 1830).
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Apr 2, 2024 14:22
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Oh is it? I thought reading the chat in .games that Martin2D was involved with it, my bad if it’s actually clearclaw
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Apr 2, 2024 14:39
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Yes 2D and JCL are obsessives and I think Martin consistently has about 30 games going at once on .games. I was making a joke about Clearclaw myself. I actually played it with someone who knows him a bit and when we're done I want to hear his thoughts because he generally hates 1830 derivatives but enjoyed the auction in this. I have a feeling that's all he's going to say that's positive. I own 1822 and 1822CA mostly because I'm a sucker for any Canadian themed 18xx's :cryingbeaver: but I also like the giant map in CA. I played MEX and preferred it the most of the bunch. PNW was maybe one of the worst (18xx) games I have ever played. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 14:41
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28 is all jcl yeah
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Apr 2, 2024 14:41
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Anyone here try Dune: War for Arrakis? I was a bit cautious as it seemed to be another lots of minis KS game which I tend to avoid. I'm thinking of picking up Imperium Uprising though, that looks neat.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:43
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Flipswitch posted:Anyone here try Dune: War for Arrakis? I was a bit cautious as it seemed to be another lots of minis KS game which I tend to avoid.
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Apr 2, 2024 17:40
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FulsomFrank posted:Thanks for the heads up on Neb, sounds right up my group's alley. Asynch 1822 needs a tacit agreement by players to do multiple moves a day or, yes it does get very painful. tomdidiot fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 19:55
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Need some 18xx advice from you aficionados. All-Aboard Games is doing a one-time inventory shipment from their European/International warehouse for some games that are currently out of stock at their US Warehouse. The games include the following:code:They are also doing pre-orders for: code:Please let me know your respective opinions. Thanks in advance!
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Apr 3, 2024 07:27
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I’m gonna give a contrasting view and say that I really liked PNW but that’s just me
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Apr 3, 2024 08:19
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Flipswitch posted:Anyone here try Dune: War for Arrakis? I was a bit cautious as it seemed to be another lots of minis KS game which I tend to avoid. Love it. Playing Atreides is challenging though
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Apr 3, 2024 08:21
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Coincidentally, I was able to give my copy of 21Moon a spin last weekend, and it's a weird beast. You might want to take my thoughts with a grain of salt since I only have a total of two games of 18xx experience (the other being a game of Shikoku 1889). There are three major ways in which 21Moon distinguishes itself from 'standard' 18xx rules of play. (I'm gonna say a fixed turn count and partial capitalization are standard enough for the purposes of explanation.) First of all, there's some initial randomization of the board state in the values of revenue centers and the deferment of one corporation from being able to be started until the third stock round. So rather than there being different types of towns and cities or capitals, one resource type is fixed at the town-like 10 credits at all levels of hex, and one resource type decreases in value if its hex is upgraded. This provides the game some variety in replays, though one of the other players (who has the same amount of experience as me) wasn't too big on the "RNG" aspect of the game setup. Second, corporations get their own stock round (one per corporation, rather than cycling until all pass) after the players' stock rounds where they have the chance to issue shares for fundraising, as well as purchasing of certificates of other corporations (or their own from the bank pool). I didn't know what to make of this mechanic before playing, but there are ways of playing shenanigans here. For example, since it's also possible to swap a certificate between yourself and a corporation for which you are president in a stock round, you can use this mechanic to hold more than the standard 50% limit in an individual corporation. Third, each corporation has two revenue collection bases, and their transports (space trains) are split between the two. Revenue collected by trains operated from the space port are dividends, and revenue collected at the corporation's local base are withheld to its own treasury. So in one way, this makes the question of whether to withhold or pay dividends baked into a different part of the operational round. But the bigger twist is that the space port is a hex shared by all corporations. So there's a certain cooperative aspect as track laid out from the space port are clearly shared by all corporations. But competitively, there's a higher focus on how you want to use tokens to block opposing corporations. Combine this with 21Moon's tile manifest tending to be a bit limited in the number of tracks per hex or station slots, and there can be a lot of tactical grief in how tile lays shake out. I'm pretty happy with this being the second 18xx game in my collection, and it feels like a very good contrast to Shikoku 1889 and the upcoming Railways of the Lost Atlas. While I was initially drawn to the game due to its fixed turn limit forcing a controlled game length, I was kind of shocked how much the game's gimmicks / chrome affected the decision-making in the game. I like how substantial each of the private companies' abilities feels, and how the bonuses for connecting East to West maintains tension in tile lays up to the end of the game. I'm not that interested in longer 18xx experiences, so this might be where my collection will stand for a while, as long as I can keep getting good experiences with what I've got.
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Apr 3, 2024 08:51
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MrBlarney posted:Coincidentally, I was able to give my copy of 21Moon a spin last weekend, and it's a weird beast. You might want to take my thoughts with a grain of salt since I only have a total of two games of 18xx experience (the other being a game of Shikoku 1889). There are three major ways in which 21Moon distinguishes itself from 'standard' 18xx rules of play. (I'm gonna say a fixed turn count and partial capitalization are standard enough for the purposes of explanation.) It sounds like you went from as basic as it gets with 1889 to wtf with Moon. I salute your decision to immediately go into strange new places. My only worry with something like Moon it's juuuuuust weird enough that it'd fall into then category of "mondo chrome DoubleO-esque" that makes playing and learning a slog compared to more typical fare.
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Apr 3, 2024 13:34
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I’ve played loads of weird Doublr Os. Nothing. In those prepared me for the mindfuck of 21Moon.
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Apr 3, 2024 14:11
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I still think that 1824 is the best double-O and it has chromey stuff but is still fairly playable and not too chromey.
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Apr 3, 2024 15:09
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So I played some 18Lilliput, 18MS and 18Cuba recently and came across 1862 and the idea of a solo 18xx intrigues me. So 1) how good is the solo mode and would buying it be worth it just for solo and 2) If not how good is the multiplayer mode? Selecta84 fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 15:39
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1862 is a weird beast, I haven't played it solo, the game is mostly meant to be multiplayer as far as I know. The game has a lot of weird things that aren't present in any other 18XX games: it has three different types of trains, each with specific rules, and companies can only use one type unless they merge, presidents don't have any liabilities for companies and you can sell down to 0 player-owned shares, you refinance companies instead of going bankrupt if you don't have a train, companies can potentially be either full-cap or partial cap depending on how you start them, and loads of other weird quirks. It really doesn't play like any other game I've played, and I'm still in a limbo in terms of if I like the game or not.
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Apr 3, 2024 15:46
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'62 is a fun, short, route-focused game with some very important randomisation (which order do the companies start and what trains can they run). It's not got much of the vindictive stock stuff but the route-laying is extremely consequential - track only joins together in city tiles, so once a track has been laid going north to south, nobody can later come in from the east and go south too. It's got too much chrome, but that's my only complaint for an otherwise very likable game. And the single player mode was added by GMT, and designed by someone else. I've not bothered to try it, but heard slightly positive things iirc.
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Apr 3, 2024 16:28
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18NEB is brutal so far. The tokening is wild. We did come across something though in our 4P game that no one wanted to be then first to buy the 3T because it just unlocks the better tiles for everyone else so I ended up doing it just because the game was dragging. So far, enjoying it, even if I think I am doing very very badly. Also, reading that Herman write-up about WotR 2: Desert Boogalo makes me want a copy badly even if the odds of me playing it anytime soon are hilariously low.
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Apr 3, 2024 18:53
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Tekopo posted:I’m gonna give a contrasting view and say that I really liked PNW but that’s just me Can you talk a little about what makes 18PNW good? I'm intrigued because I live there.
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Apr 3, 2024 19:40
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I think I prefer to play 3P with Neb, since otherwise the board becomes a bit too busy and cut-throat. With 3P you usually end up with two eastern majors and one western one and the western one usually breaks the 3s since they are in less danger of being tokened out. The thing about Neb as well is that the tokens in Omaha/Denver, which are the best cities in the game, are not that meaningful in the long run, because they only add +10 to even a generic grey city tile, which means they aren't crucial for scoring well, and east/west control is much more important. My majors were the C&S and CNW, with the former ending up with two 4Ds and two good E/W runs, which sealed the deal for me at the end of the game. I didn't have Omaga/Denver tokened by either company, but it didn't matter. My opponents didn't have many tokens left to cut off my runs either.
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Apr 3, 2024 19:44
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Admiralty Flag posted:Can you talk a little about what makes 18PNW good? I'm intrigued because I live there. The privates in the game are very chromey and pretty unique, and are stuff like making lumber better, or allowing you to build track in water, or ports, or to blow through a mountain which is otherwise impassable. I personally really like this, because it makes the privates more unique and interesting over the more standard privates present in other 1822s. All of them feel also fairly impactful, unlike some of the minors in the original 1822, which some of the times you buy more for the $10 income every OR rather than their special ability, but I can see how they also add some rule overhead without adding enough to the game. Minors in the game are all fairly decent, although there are also regional railways which are basically just a $10 income and a potential token: these are mostly dogshit and there's an extremely limited reason to actually buy them in the auction. Otherwise, most minors can upgrade without too much trouble, which is also helped by builder cubes. There's no certificates for majors, and instead there are specific minors that are associated with major companies, and you need to merge them with other minors to actually form the major. This is relatively interesting but it does mean that in later stages there's an annoying rule burden since the game must still allow you to get majors even if the minors are not being offered once you get to a specific phase. Overall, I like the major merging, I really like the map and how it can develop differently, and I really like the interesting and unique minors on offer, but I can see why the game might rub people the wrong way. My favourite 1822s are MX and PNW and I recently bought copies of both.
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Apr 3, 2024 19:54
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opks22 posted:Need some 18xx advice from you aficionados. All-Aboard Games is doing a one-time inventory shipment from their European/International warehouse for some games that are currently out of stock at their US Warehouse. The games include the following: I've played 73 once on .games (and 60 a few times). 1873 is a heavily operational title that goes vey far afield from 18xx standards. All trains are diesels, nothing ever rusts, and a non-trivial number of companies in the game don't even run railroads. I really enjoyed the game I played but I worry it'd be fiddly and slow in person. I don't really get 1860. A lot of the systems seem interesting (companies can be dumped onto the bank, companies can lease trains to run, companies can go bankrupt and then reform like a phoenix) but I've never worked out anything to do other than a basic bit of train shuffling into one good company. It's viable at 2P which makes it stand out from the crowd though.
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Apr 4, 2024 00:38
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opks22 posted:Need some 18xx advice from you aficionados. All-Aboard Games is doing a one-time inventory shipment from their European/International warehouse for some games that are currently out of stock at their US Warehouse. The games include the following: 18USA uses 17 as a base, but bigger and with random setup. It has like a bazillion privates that you select a random subset of for each game, three resources that do slightly different things like 17's coal, randomized offboard values, and randomized Pittsburghs (aka metropolises). There are some other structural changes to the game, but it's basically a far richer 17, for better or for worse. I like the Volatility expansion for 17, it changes the private auction up a bit and also adds a bunch of privates, but not to like the ridiculous extent that 18USA has. 18NY is a decent minors-merging-into-state-railway type game, one of the more interesting things is that you're always allowed to voluntarily discard a train from a company into the bank pool, which opens up train space and refunds you a quarter of the purchase cost. Harzbahn 1873 is a very strange game, unlike regular 18xx where it's just about running train companies, Harzbahn introduces mining companies as well, which have their own required infrastructure. The two types of companies are symbiotic, since mines ultimately want to connect to the rail network, and train companies get revenue bonuses for running to active mines. Trains and miners never rust, but they do eventually incur increasingly punishing maintenance costs as they age. The opening auction is really tricky too, because every mine plus the concessions for the first two companies gets auctioned off. 1860 is also a strange beast. The map is incredibly tight, and companies only open up in bands of 2 at a time. You're also allowed to sell the president's cert to the pool, companies don't have a train obligation, and companies that fall trainless are allowed to borrow a train from the market to withhold with, all of which open up quite a few tricks. It shares some DNA with 1862 since that is a later game by the same designer, but they play completely differently.
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Apr 4, 2024 01:08
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taser rates posted:18USA uses 17 as a base, but bigger and with random setup. It has like a bazillion privates that you select a random subset of for each game, three resources that do slightly different things like 17's coal, randomized offboard values, and randomized Pittsburghs (aka metropolises). There are some other structural changes to the game, but it's basically a far richer 17, for better or for worse.
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Apr 4, 2024 01:26
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Mr. Squishy posted:'62 stuff Tekopo posted:More 1862 stuff Thanks. I will watch a video or two and make a decision. It sounds different enough from the other ones own and I don't have a route focused one. And it is one of the easier ones to get thanks to it being printed by GMT
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Apr 4, 2024 11:20
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As someone who has been pretty deep in the board gaming hobby for ~15 years now, it's wild reading this 18XX chat and having absolutely no idea what you are all talking about.
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Apr 4, 2024 14:41
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Radioactive Toy posted:As someone who has been pretty deep in the board gaming hobby for ~15 years now, it's wild reading this 18XX chat and having absolutely no idea what you are all talking about. Don’t worry, I've been gaming for over 40 years and still don't know what they're talking about, beyond what 18XX games are.
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Apr 4, 2024 15:16
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Radioactive Toy posted:As someone who has been pretty deep in the board gaming hobby for ~15 years now, it's wild reading this 18XX chat and having absolutely no idea what you are all talking about. All it takes is one taste and you'll be hooked, friend. one of us one of us Unironically, not playing 18xx until more recently when I have no time is one of the biggest disappointments in my board game life. Between it and Civ they are two games that everything else is weighed against.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:51
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Has there been recent talk of taking train games to their own thread? They seem to be quite popular yet niche.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:54
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We had an 18xx thread but it was low traffic and it died. This thread doesn’t move fast enough to warrant recreating it again.
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Apr 4, 2024 17:09
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I wish board games were a more popular niche. Every trad game community has it hidden somewhere underneath all the dnd, warhammer and mtg discussions.
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Apr 4, 2024 17:53
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Board gaming is extremely popular but the subset of nerds that play board games and obsessively post about it in dead internet communities is far smaller.
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Apr 4, 2024 18:03
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yeah it's gotta be location dependent - I attend a weekly board game meetup with 60-80 people minimum, and know of 2-3 more weekly/monthly events with 10-20.
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Apr 4, 2024 18:06
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Tekopo posted:Board gaming is extremely popular but the subset of nerds that play board games and obsessively post about it in dead internet communities is far smaller. Definitely feels like board gaming has turned a corner in the last 5 or so years where even non-"nerdy" people will be caught playing a modern board game, or owning a copy of Codenames. Definitely location dependent and I recognize that as someone who lives in a Mecca of board gaming, but it's a very nice trend to see nonetheless.
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Apr 4, 2024 18:13
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I finally played Castles of Burgundy recently, it was a lot of fun. The old version at least. Never played it before but I like it!
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Apr 4, 2024 18:14
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What I’m saying is that there are more weird obsessives in both RPGs and 40k et al
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Apr 4, 2024 18:24
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I finally played Castles of Burgundy recently, it was a lot of fun. The old version at least. Never played it before but I like it! I think Burgundy is a classic 7 out of 10, but when I saw that the new edition had tiles that explain what they do in plain text, it took a lot of resistance not to buy a copy immediately.
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Apr 4, 2024 18:25
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