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armorer posted:Is "Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective" the line that folks in this thread think highly of? There are several of them included in the Target buy 2 get 1 free sale. Kinda depends on the box. Overall, you will have to make peace with the idea that it's a strange sort of choose your own adventure book and not quite a board game in the same way. If reading with a partner and thinking out puzzles doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then this won't convert you. But if it intrigues you, it's worth a shot. It's limited uses but each has 10 or so cases so it's cheap overall. Thames Murders (1982) [the brown box] is the original, and is pretty good. Jack the Ripper and West End adventures (2016) [the red box] I have not played because I've heard it actually pretty grisly. Carlton House (2017) (the blue box) I also have not played because I heard there were some editing issues that dampened the fun. Baker Street Irregulars (2020) (the green box) is one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. We loved it. It adds a very small amount of mechanism to the game that elevates it above a reading exercise. On top of that, the writing was terrific and the cases are interesting and varied. I cannot possibly heap enough praise onto BSI. I might even say to not to bother with the others because the mechanical flourish makes it a thousand times more satisfying and interesting, except that as of right now there is no more and I think it'd be impossible to go back to the simpler other boxes. The designers is doing a WWII possible spiritual successor with Undaunted's Dave Thompson. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/408381
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Apr 8, 2024 18:10
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I haven't done the jack the ripper ones, but the other red box cases are good
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Apr 8, 2024 18:33
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Magnetic North posted:Kinda depends on the box. Overall, you will have to make peace with the idea that it's a strange sort of choose your own adventure book and not quite a board game in the same way. If reading with a partner and thinking out puzzles doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then this won't convert you. But if it intrigues you, it's worth a shot. It's limited uses but each has 10 or so cases so it's cheap overall. My play group would be my partner and I as a rainy evening activity. We've played through Micro Macro: Crime City and enjoyed it enough to get the 2nd installment. So reading with a partner and thinking out puzzles is basically the experience I'm looking for more of.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:02
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armorer posted:Is "Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective" the line that folks in this thread think highly of? There are several of them included in the Target buy 2 get 1 free sale. When you play it, you must treat Holmes as if he’s actually a bad detective. His “scoring” is absolutely unreal and impossible to beat, and his leaps of logic defy any bounds of reality. It makes a lot more sense if you imagine him just randomly showing up places and accusing people of things with zero evidence or insight. Ignore the scoring system and the game is amazing.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:24
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consulting detective does a masterful job of portraying the theme of the original stories that all the cops hate holmes and don't want him around
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Apr 8, 2024 19:33
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not universally true, but generally the people that want to be mentor are not the people that should be a mentor
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Apr 8, 2024 21:46
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Yup, find the most knowledgeable person and pester them with questions they can't help but answer through begrudging sighs.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:02
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eating pretty good w/r/t gaming this past month vanuatu is a “reverse worker placement” game that I was introduced to via online play during the pandemic. the quined games edition is very pleasant to look at but sacrifices readability for aesthetic. the group I played with were pretty lukewarm on it and it didn’t hit for me the same way I remember it doing when I first played it but I still think more games should steal its action resolution mechanic  Q.E. is one of the most ridiculous bidding games I’ve ever played and I greatly enjoy playing it consecutively with the same group because of the metagame evolution. behold these bids.  unicorn overlord sucked but in kind of an endearing way, like if it was released in 2004 it would have been revelatory and really popular but in 2024 it just made me want to play millennium blades again (millennium blades… again?)  wyrmspan improves on original wingspan significantly (besides losing out on cool bird facts) and I would readily play it again if someone was insistent upon it  found a brand new in shrink copy of sheepy time for $20 cad which was an instant buy for me because it’s tough to get in canada. in my opinion, one of the best push-your-luck games ever printed. the theme, aesthetic, components, and mechanics are all excellent, with my main qualm being that the box is stupid large and there are only three different nightmares to play with  not a good picture of the great split but this is a game that does I-cut-you-choose right and plays up to 7p  el grande is so good and I don’t hate the aesthetic of this newest edition as much as I thought I would  I did not like my first play of orleans as much as I expected to. It’s a mechanically fine and interesting bag builder but it felt my winning strategy was quite linear and not much would incentivize me to play differently  on the plus my friend that I went over to their place to play orleans has a pretty great collection of games I want to try but do not want to buy  I won a netrunner tournament  the CMON printing of modern art is great and modern art remains one of the best bidding games ever printed. great components except for the easel, which is flimsy.  I did not get to play this scout hand (no one beat my previous show) board games are the best…
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Apr 8, 2024 22:22
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I wish I could get so many different games to the table, but every group I play with has pretty much got to the point where we all refuse to play certain games and the goldilocks zone where we can actually agree has got really small, plus I'm the only person who ever suggests anything new (this has got significantly worse as two of the guys who usually want to play my games haven't been showing up for a few months). I'd like to hear your opinion on Wyrmspan because Wingspan is one of those games where half of us think it's close to unplayable garbage and the other half love it
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Apr 8, 2024 22:55
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Vanuatu is up there with Ponzi Scheme, in that they're great games but so confrontational people do not have a good time playing them.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:59
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panko posted:board games are the best… 
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Apr 8, 2024 23:00
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RabidWeasel posted:I wish I could get so many different games to the table, but every group I play with has pretty much got to the point where we all refuse to play certain games and the goldilocks zone where we can actually agree has got really small, plus I'm the only person who ever suggests anything new (this has got significantly worse as two of the guys who usually want to play my games haven't been showing up for a few months). I think my group is starting to feel this way. When I joined the local game group in late 2021 there were a lot of new faces, and a lot of us (myself included) were pretty new to modern board games in general. We had a couple of golden years where everyone wanted to try everything and everyone loved all the new experiences (new games and old games discovered anew) but now we're all sort of veering off into "well I know I like this type of game, and not that type" and we're strugging to get groups of 3-4 where we used to run 2-3 tables of 5 with people having to sit out some weeks due to physical space not actually existing.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:01
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RabidWeasel posted:I'd like to hear your opinion on Wyrmspan because Wingspan is one of those games where half of us think it's close to unplayable garbage and the other half love it take my opinion with the caveat that it’s based off of a single play of wyrmspan and a single play of non-base set wingspan but wyrmspan’s new mechanics are just enough to both make for interesting sequencing puzzles and disrupt egg spam as the dominant endgame. quick bullet points on the differences: - in order to earn the ability to play cards past the first in a row, players must first play caves, which always have “on played” effects that give various resources. a properly-sequenced cave play can save several actions - players are disincentivized from spamming a single developed row by an increasing cost to do so, encouraging diversification - there is a separate circular track that, when advanced on, trickle resources to the players, with a half-revolution and a full revolution bestowing powerful and unique one-time effects on players able to advance on it, creating a race for the best ones as they’re first-come-only-serve. there were like 3 or 4 different ones of these (I think they’re called guilds) which seem like they play pretty differently plus some other interesting things like hatchlings which don’t change up the flow of the game too much but are nice additions. the game is still pretty solitaire and a little draw-dependent but the extra parts add a lot of room for finesse so it might actually convince those that abhor wingspan
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Apr 8, 2024 23:28
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mikeycp posted:I haven't done the jack the ripper ones, but the other red box cases are good Same, the six West End Adventures are very much in line with the cases in the Thames Murders box.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:38
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Vanuatu was like a Feld to me in that I thought the unique twist, the action selection, was fantastic but the rest of the game was kinda blah.
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Apr 9, 2024 01:30
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Bora Bora is my go-to example of a game where I thought the action selection mechanism was really interesting and smart but the entire rest of the package is bad and point-salady. The only good Feld is In The Year of the Dragon.
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Apr 9, 2024 08:30
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panko posted:take my opinion with the caveat that it’s based off of a single play of wyrmspan and a single play of non-base set wingspan but wyrmspan’s new mechanics are just enough to both make for interesting sequencing puzzles and disrupt egg spam as the dominant endgame. quick bullet points on the differences: That does sound more interesting, thanks
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Apr 9, 2024 08:48
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Tekopo posted:Bora Bora is my go-to example of a game where I thought the action selection mechanism was really interesting and smart but the entire rest of the package is bad and point-salady. wrong! Trajan is good, but you have to roll with the tempo watchin CoB I still have a good time every play
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Apr 9, 2024 11:53
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Gf pressured me to get Coimbria since it's a type of game we do not have yet. Looking forward to it since it seems good and nobody has ever talked about it do maybe can introduce people to something new.
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Apr 9, 2024 12:08
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silvergoose posted:wrong!
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Apr 9, 2024 12:10
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Tekopo posted:Bora Bora is my go-to example of a game where I thought the action selection mechanism was really interesting and smart but the entire rest of the package is bad and point-salady. I like Feld more than you do but I want to agree that In the Year of the Dragon is an all time banger. I got it really cheap on a whim at a Half-Price Books and was shocked by how much I enjoyed it. Planning for a huge incoming penalty and realizing that the most beneficial action is to just take it is good board games.
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Apr 9, 2024 15:32
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I can't seem to figure out 1841 even though I love pulling the levers. 17 is easy to understand, get loans, short if you want to attack. But something about 41's shell companies doesn't jive with me and I think it's learning how to dissolve a failing company without any of the negative repercussions. It's like learning how to train shuffle in basic xx.
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Apr 9, 2024 16:24
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Anyone have ideas for games you could play outside on a nice afternoon? I think Azul would work, since it’s all tile based. No cards to get blown around.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:12
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Anonymous Robot posted:Anyone have ideas for games you could play outside on a nice afternoon? I think Azul would work, since it’s all tile based. No cards to get blown around. I mean, Hive is the obvious answer, you could probably play that game in pouring rain during an earthquake if you really wanted to.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:38
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Anonymous Robot posted:Anyone have ideas for games you could play outside on a nice afternoon? I think Azul would work, since it’s all tile based. No cards to get blown around. go
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Apr 10, 2024 04:09
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or hive if go's too big an ask
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Apr 10, 2024 04:29
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Chill la Chill posted:I can't seem to figure out 1841 even though I love pulling the levers. 17 is easy to understand, get loans, short if you want to attack. But something about 41's shell companies doesn't jive with me and I think it's learning how to dissolve a failing company without any of the negative repercussions. It's like learning how to train shuffle in basic xx. From what I've seen/played the specifics of a force train purchase matter a lot.
The 50% penalty is huge but par values go up so much that you can still get a lot of cash out if you need to. A company floated with 2 shares at 340 gets 1360 if they dump the remaining 8 shares in EMR which is almost enough to afford an 8T (which costs 1450). The first step is the one that really lets you get out of obligations though. The timing is crucial and you need the right kind of structure to pull it off (eg A owns B owns C, force a purchase with B to get rid of C) but it can work. You can also do mergers but while I get the basics I don't know how to do them efficiently. As for how SFL got frozen during the Secession event in our current game I have no loving idea. I do not get the IRSFF.
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Apr 10, 2024 06:01
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It's pretty normal for the bad (eastern) half of the IRSFF to get frozen after the split, it'll happen naturally as long as you don't own more than 3(?) shares I believe. Everything else you said is basically right, though another way of dealing with your empty shell companies at the end of the game is just juggling a spare permanent train between them.
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Apr 10, 2024 07:21
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Just played Ra! and Modern Art. I know people say Ra! is the distilled Platonic form of an auction game, but I think I prefer Modern Art -- there's more strategy around bidding/not bidding based on who's auctioning the given art piece(s) and more strategy about valuing pieces vs. when the round might end. Didn't have time for Medici for the Knizia triple play, but as I recall (it's been a while) I liked Medici better than Ra! as well. Perhaps I'm just perverse. Also, I prefer my cargo-culted version of Ra! with BGG printed files and BGG's shop's Bakelite tiles to the new version with the giant cardboard tiles, because those tiles are hard to shuffle in the bag you're given.
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Apr 11, 2024 04:45
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I agree. MA is the pinnacle of auction games, Ra is more about push your luck/set collection than bidding and money management. What files did you print for Ra? I still need to sell my deluxe edition and do the same, likely with a mousepad board.
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Apr 11, 2024 04:54
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Bottom Liner posted:I agree. MA is the pinnacle of auction games, Ra is more about push your luck/set collection than bidding and money management. What files did you print for Ra? I still need to sell my deluxe edition and do the same, likely with a mousepad board. The two files I originally printed were a board to track Ra tiles and auction tiles, and playmats that list the points per tile type and whether to discard/score each type after each epoch. They're both in the BGG files for the game. If you have the BGG deluxe tiles, PM me your address and I'll email you a playmat I made using those illustrations divided like the new playmat (e.g., keep on left, discard on right). I need to upload it to BGG but haven't gotten around to it.
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Apr 11, 2024 05:06
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Admiralty Flag posted:Just played Ra! and Modern Art. I know people say Ra! is the distilled Platonic form of an auction game, but I think I prefer Modern Art -- there's more strategy around bidding/not bidding based on who's auctioning the given art piece(s) and more strategy about valuing pieces vs. when the round might end. Didn't have time for Medici for the Knizia triple play, but as I recall (it's been a while) I liked Medici better than Ra! as well. Perhaps I'm just perverse. The thing about comparing Ra and Medici is that they have basically non-overlapping player counts, so I like Ra at 3-4 and Medici at 5-6 and don't like modern art so I'm good (yes I know ra plays 5, but I don't think it shines at that count)
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Apr 11, 2024 12:01
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Doctor Spaceman posted:From what I've seen/played the specifics of a force train purchase matter a lot. You're really scaring me about 41. Also, I don't know WTF it is about inc cap games but I have the damnedest time understanding them. I get broadly the concepts and I think I have a decent track record with 49 and 46 but it feels like it takes me forever to grok onto them versus good ole steady 10x par prices after float. I'm quite fond of hybrid games like 56 that change it up based on the phases but lol @ explaining those rules to people who are already being polite and patient with your train obsessions.
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Apr 11, 2024 13:54
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FulsomFrank posted:You're really scaring me about 41. It's an absurd playground for creative accounting and it rules.
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Apr 11, 2024 15:20
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Played a gimmicky but interesting game tonight, Time of Empires. It's worker placement plus dudes on a map, with personal worker placement boards and shared boards (for recruiting leaders, building wonders, or developing technologies). The hook is each player has two thirty-second hourglasses, and when you take an action, whether it be "commit researchers to developing a wonder" or "moving dudes on the map (and possibly attacking someone)," you turn over one of your hourglasses and put it on the appropriate worker spot, immediately taking the action, but the hourglass is frozen until it runs out. When both of your hourglasses are going, you can't take any actions, so you can survey the map or check your technology cards, but you have to think quickly, because those timers run out fast, and you can reposition or repeat them whenever they run dry. The game takes place in three eras, each lasting nine minutes; there is a free app that plays a soundtrack, alerts you at 3 and 6 minutes into each era that you can develop new researchers, and sounds a gong when the era is over (and stops you from placing hourglasses, of course). Not sure I'd recommend it heartily on its own over classics of worker placement or dudes on a map, but it was an interesting combination, and the gimmick seems like it would make each game somewhat fresh. Definitely not a game for everyone, though; even a drop of analysis paralysis and I think you'd hate it. Also played KuZOOka, a no-communication set-making cooperative game; each player is a different animal attempting to escape a zoo with a special power. The deck has cards of six different colors in it in different frequencies (e.g., only 6 yellows but 11 greens); of the 51 cards, 20 are dealt out on the first day. The game board is laid out in sections, and the players go around in turn placing their tokens on color-number spots that steadily increase (e.g., "red 3") ahead of the last player's token, either in the same section or the next one, until someone finally says, "halt." You then see what the last marked spot was (e.g., green 7), and if the players have at least 7 greens amongst them, then they're successful, possibly scoring stars if they've advanced far enough along the track, and adding a wildcard to the deck if they had exactly that number of greens+wildcards. If the players collected enough stars in this and/or previous days, then the team spends a certain number of stars to level up, and 21 cards are dealt to the players as well as a single card face up that counts toward the total. (I think we managed to level up five times, getting to something like 26 cards plus five face-up cards.) Then you repeat until you run the gauntlet seven times (and fail to escape), or get to the final section of the track and successfully halt on one of the very high card/color combinations. (E.g., the final section has Yellow 7, which requires at least one wildcard plus all six of the yellows in the deck, or multiple wildcards -- as well as someone who figures out to call halt when the farthest token is on Yellow 7.) Very fun but super intense. Played a round of Hot Lead, pronounced "leed" in spite of the elephant holding a pistol on the cover of the game; it should be called Hot "led," I think. A rare miss from Dr. Knizia, I think; I just played Mind Up a couple of weeks ago and I think it fills that space better. (Never mind 6 Nimmt, which I've somehow yet to play.) Ended the night with a round of Hit!, which I gracefully played by collecting so few cards that I was able to politely calculate my score quickly and efficiently before anyone else.
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Apr 12, 2024 06:25
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tomdidiot posted:Minis games also drive more internet engagement because “look at this sweet mini I just painted” is something people are a lot more keen to share to “look at my sweet Agricola engine” my dream is to one day play a game where i've painted every single miniature
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Apr 12, 2024 09:27
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Anyone play Riff Raff? MM has it on sale for $69 and I was wondering how it stacks  up to other dexterity gamesDoctor Spaceman posted:From what I've seen/played the specifics of a force train purchase matter a lot. Thanks for this. I'll probably have to dig around for a couple example scenarios to understand it better. Might be one of those things that are more easily explained in person, but lol 1841 learning games (though I know I'll have to do a few of them if I can get the old crew back)
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Apr 12, 2024 12:49
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FulsomFrank posted:You're really scaring me about 41. Also, I don't know WTF it is about inc cap games but I have the damnedest time understanding them. I get broadly the concepts and I think I have a decent track record with 49 and 46 but it feels like it takes me forever to grok onto them versus good ole steady 10x par prices after float. Yeah, the tricky thing about inc cap is that they (usually, probably an exception) pay into the treasury with whatever shares are still owned by the company. So that really makes calculating how much money they need more difficult than 10x par, especially with how much route prices fluctuate early-mid game.
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Apr 12, 2024 12:55
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Target has a Space Marines board game on sale that is probably unremarkable mechanically but one thing caught my eye: the back of the box shows beautifully sculpted and painted Tyranid and Space Marine minis but in the fine print on the bottom they are quick to specify that all the miniatures are unpainted. Perhaps that's a tale as old as time.
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Apr 12, 2024 13:53
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Maybe this thread could help me on this question but how difficult would it be to proxy up my own version of Advanced Civ if I already have the original Civ? I know there would be some extra trade goods and techs or modified ones at the least but curious if anyone has any clue. Or knows if someone "sells" an upgrade kit...
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Apr 12, 2024 14:41
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