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Played Oath for the first time in a long while the other day. We were all re-learning the rules, and the question of trading relics, favor and secrets came up. There hadn’t been an occasion to discuss this prior, as all players had been out for themselves, but in this game the Chancellor was powerful enough that the exiles were willing to pool resources to unseat them. My instinct was that trading is not allowed, because that’s just generally true in games, but there is nothing in the rulebook explicitly saying that you cannot trade freely with other players. What there is, is a confusing passage talking about “binding promises,” detailing that promises are not binding excepting in certain circumstances, namely promises of citizenship and specific denizen cards that explicitly permit the trading of certain resources as “binding promises.” The other players feel that the attachment of the term “binding” implies that unfettered trading is otherwise allowed with the understanding that you can get betrayed if you’re trading for a promise of fealty or services rendered. I disagree, because the game does outline fairly comprehensively the types of actions that players are allowed to take, and they’re pretty narrowly defined. How do you play, if you run this game? I acquiesced to the trading stuff in our game, and in that case it made for a raucous and fun session with a couple of dramatic turncoat moments. And it seems in keeping with the spirit of the game. In that session, it worked because the Oathkeeper began with an insanely stacked hand and position. But I could see it introducing a game ruining level of kingmaking, in ordinary circumstances.
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Jan 16, 2023 16:08
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grate deceiver posted:No trading (except when offering citizenship), the only actions you can do are those specified on the player board. It's not written anywhere in the rules I don't think, but it's made clear with the Festival District edifice, which explicitly allows you to trade favor or secrets as an action. If you could trade freely without it, then it wouldn't make sense that it exists. Yeah, this edifice actually is on the board currently and that was my reasoning too, but they got a bug up their asses about the term “binding” and its relationship to the language about “non-binding promises” in the rulebook. I’ll try and relitigate next time, and if they all still want trading, we’ll just play until a session when trading inevitably fucks things up and everyone gets mad about it.
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Jan 17, 2023 02:39
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Is Small World out of fashion these days? That’s a game I’m comfortable throwing down in front of anyone that’s a little heavier than something like Sushi Go but can be wrapped in under two hours. The components do a pretty good job of communicating the rules (with the aid of a quick reference sheet) and the deterministic combat makes resolving conflicts quick and painless. Plus, the ability to abandon a civilization and begin a new one gives players a bit of an ejector seat when they’re losing, and there’s naturally something to have a laugh over with the randomized combinations of races and traits.
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Jan 18, 2023 14:12
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I used to love playing Summoner Wars 1E, so I’m naturally interested to hear that there’s a 2E and it’s better. But I’ve become resigned to the fact that 1v1 games just don’t get to the table here. Nobody wants to bother with a game unless it’s an event with at least three players, unfortunately.
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Jan 23, 2023 15:34
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What’s the distribution model like for Oathsworn? I see that you can buy it on kickstarter after the fundraiser is done, is it a “buy it now or pay a scalper later” type deal? It seems like a nearly perfect game for my group, but $375 is a hefty price tag for a game that probably won’t make it to the table until next year.
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Jan 30, 2023 22:26
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jivjov posted:
Is this a Kallax shelf? I’ve been looking to finally get a dedicated game shelf recently, but I’m not sure that’s exactly right for me. I’d love to get something that would keep the games out of sight, so I’ve been thinking about a couple of these: https://a.co/d/aYCcl6m I’m mainly just worried they might look cheaper and uglier in person.
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Feb 2, 2023 14:22
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the great board game reorganizing has begun in earnest
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enigmahfc posted:i bought 2 of these while they were on sale. I don't like how Kallax's partition out into cubes, and i thought these looked better and were cheaper and are sturdy as all hell. The height between shelves are perfect too. I am going to grab one of these, thanks!
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Feb 2, 2023 17:21
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interrodactyl posted:Any thoughts on if it's worth getting Oathsworn if I already have Frosthaven? My group's preferred kind of game is co-op campaign games (biggest hits being Pandemic Legacy seasons and Jaws of the Lion), and what I've seen of Oathsworn looks promising. It sounds like they’re rather different experiences, and if you don’t care about minis then the game isn’t so expensive especially if you can split the cost. I’d say it’s more a question of whether your group has the time to spare, than anything.
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Feb 2, 2023 20:17
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They might be tied up doing People Make Games, which is a longform video games journalism series on Youtube. I miss da boys too tho.
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Feb 10, 2023 16:54
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million dollar mack posted:After coming off The King's Dilemma, my Saturday night group sat down to play/learn Oath. One of the guys in the group bought it a while ago and has been mad keen to introduce it to everyone. The first game of Oath is rough because it executes familiar concepts, like attacking dudes on a map, in different ways. The map behaves uniquely, the attacks behave uniquely, the dudes behave uniquely, etc. I almost wonder if it would be more easily learned by new boardgamers. The draw of it, to me, is in the social experience. We gather around, tell a funny, dramatic story together that allows us to badger, betray, and malign one another in a friendly setting, and enjoy the continuing flow of the kingdom almost like a fantasy football league or something. It doesn’t hurt that the pieces and art is all gorgeous and, once you understand the game, it is generally fairly breezy. It’s probably not a game for highly analytic and competitive players. They won’t enjoy it, and it won’t support them. Edit: It also helps a lot to have someone that can explain the rules as broad concepts. Most things in Oath make sense, if you get what they represent, but as rules in themselves they don’t make their logic immediately evident. Like, a “campaign” needs to be understood as an abstraction of hostility in general, sending armies in conventional attacks, sending agents to steal items, propagandizing to win public support. Supply is a lot easier to keep in mind and grasp if you understand that it represents your resources generally: the more standing armies you’re doing upkeep on, the less agile and adaptable you can be. Anonymous Robot fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 01:33
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I always thought that Vast looked like a really intriguing, frequently unfun trainwreck.
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Feb 13, 2023 17:27
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fr0id posted:What are some fun games for two players to play cooperatively against the game? I know of Gloomhaven and spirit island. Any other really good ones? I am interested in the Downfall game from GMT p500 where it’s competitive but both players are trying to murder nazi germany. Basically something where you’re on the same side, but there may or may not be competition. Especially if it’s a war game. It doesn’t have the competitive aspect, but the Arkham Horror LCG fuckin rocks.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:22
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homullus posted:Is there a way to summarize why the Arkham Horror LCG rocks in comparison to the LotR one? I have only played the latter. I have never played the LOTR LCG so I can’t speak to that except to say that the urban fantasy period-piece horror theme of Arkham is more interesting to me than Middle Earth. AH does a great job of executing on that aesthetic compared to other games that leverage it. For my group, Arkham Horror makes a character-based role playing experience accessible without the huge time sink of a tabletop rpg, and hybridizes rpg style skill check gameplay with the tight, crunchy mechanics of a ccg, which works really well. I also find the deck building aspect to be intriguing and satisfying. To return to the rpg comparison, it brings me back to experience I used to have reading the d&d players’ handbook as a kid, shopping it like a Sears catalogue full of fantasy artifacts. My Arkham binders are full of cool poo poo and it (for the most part) all offer ways to design characters that feel powerful and capable. Then you start the game and it’s mean as hell and makes you prove it.
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Feb 21, 2023 17:58
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Just play it if you like it, the product range isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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Feb 26, 2023 04:37
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uncle blog posted:What´s a good, meaty 2 player game? Most recommendations / top 10 lists are all about small box games that last around 20 minutes. I want somethinger bigger, more involved. Could potentially support more players, as long as it's great at two, and no co-op or too euro. Memoir 44? Edit: Also Summoner Wars, Undaunted, Watergate Anonymous Robot fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 13:25
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Siivola posted:Dear goons, do you have a go-to channel for "how to play" videos? I'd like to play Ark Nova but my brain's grown so smooth the rulebook slides right off. I like Watch It Played, but they do not seem to have a video for this game.
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Mar 10, 2023 19:56
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Yeah, games always have to come before drinks. Maybe you can have one if you all know the game very well, but even then you’re introducing some room for error.
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Mar 12, 2023 14:57
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Some Numbers posted:I know there's been a lot of chatter about the Arkham Horror LCG over time, so I played my LGS' open copy with a friend yesterday and it seemed decent, if not spectacular. Arkham LCG is my favorite tabletop game bar none. Pros: -The hybrid of “rpg lite experience” and crunchy CCG style mechanics is close to my ideal boardgame blend. -The game is, mechanically, super interesting. The ways that they are able to exploit the base mechanics of the game and the various facets of the player and encounter cards to dovetail theme and function is really fun to witness, and more than that, it makes deckbuilding a treat. None of my friends really enjoy the character building process in Arkham, to the point where they usually ask me to tailor decks for them, but in my opinion character building and theorycrafting is almost half of the fun of Arkham. -The Lovecraft theme is well-trod territory for board games, but I personally am not overexposed to it and it is pretty singular among other fantasy settings. If you don’t like the theme I think Arkham would be a hard sell. -The designers have enough latitude, through the sheer breadth of content, to experiment a great deal with campaign design. One scenario plays like a mini version of Pandemic. Another is a spin on Betrayal at House on the Hill. One campaign lets you chart an expedition across a huge map over multiple play sessions. Another is a dual-track campaign that sees two parties working simultaneously in the real world and a shared dream. Cons: -The playtime runs long if you have a high player count. It also lets you build more interesting parties, but we are taking on a fourth player for our next campaign and I worry that play sessions may run up to five hours. (An average two-player game can easily be done in under three though.) -People talk up the game’s narrative aspect but I think it’s pretty weak. The stories often leave too much to the imagination, and though I appreciate the branching paths where they exist, they’re pretty minimal in their impact. -It’s a fantasy flight game. The board can get cluttered and pretty visually noisy. Some aftermarket components can help with this, but the game should honestly come with standees for players and enemies. It’s easy for location cards to become totally unreadable unless you have a huge table. Recommendations: First off, the player cards and campaigns are no longer married together like they were in the game’s original distribution format. You don’t need the investigator set to play its corresponding campaign, and you can feel free to grab a block of investigator cards without picking up the matching campaign. -If you have the original core set, that is sufficient for one player. The revised core set supports two players. You will want access to these essential cards to make strong decks. -The Dunwich investigator box is fairly essential, and offers many strong characters and bread and butter cards. -The Path to Carcosa investigator box is the next most essential. As an earlier set, it adds a lot of cards that became staples or are built off of by later sets. After Carcosa, there is no particular player card set that is more important than any other. -The investigator pre-made decks are not a bad pickup either. They stand on their own and are all generally pretty strong. This is an easy jump-in point if you want to get going with minimal buy-in. The only watchout here is that Nathaniel Cho, the blue deck, is good and fun to play but that his cards don’t really synergize with other blue cards. He sort of has his own thing going on with his brawling mechanics. For scenarios, the one-off scenario blister packs seems like the obvious entry but I would recommend against that. They can be pretty difficult and don’t really give you the full experience that a campaign with character progression does. Rather, I’d say to pick whatever campaign looks like the most fun to you. Path to Carcosa is the only campaign that enjoys near-universal praise and would be my recommendation for your first run. Other than that, there doesn’t really seem to be any consensus on which campaigns are good or bad, or which ones are harder or easier, which is honestly a good sign. I would avoid Dream Eaters for your first choice just because its structure is a little weird and it asks you to build two parties, which could be straining on a small collection depending how you go about it. Anonymous Robot fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 16:51
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xK1 posted:You'll want the revised core for both the staple cards as well as the components (chaos tokens, resource chits, etc). The intro campaign makes a decent tutorial as well. Yeah, the revised core is necessary for the game and provides enough cards to support deckbuilding for two players. You could jump right into a full campaign with only the core cards, but might find yourself a little underpowered and lacking in options. If you want the lowest buy-in to fullest experience ratio, I would recommend a revised core and one of the pre-made decks for your class of choice. Between the core cards and the pre-constructed deck, you will have a fully viable card set. The intro campaign isn’t that bad. It’s short (3 scenarios vs the usual 8) and the final scenario is poorly designed, but the first scenario is a decent tutorial and the second scenario is actually rather good.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:23
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It is an expensive game when you consider the buy-in, but for me, a campaign is a guaranteed 24 -30 hours of gameplay for $100, before even factoring in that the cost gets split between my play group. Plus, if you have a decent card pool you don’t need the player cards so you can knock it down to $65. At the end of the day, the value of a game is best determined by if it will actually see play, which is of course hard to gauge with a new game. But like, Gloomhaven is a great deal if your table will play a whole campaign. Resistance is a waste of money if you have nobody to play it with.
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Mar 13, 2023 19:14
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I’m interested in giving Final Girl a spin sometime myself. Personally, I actually think it looks better without the minis. The parcheesi style wooden pawns cohere better with the more abstract “gamey” aesthetic of the rest of the components imo.
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Mar 17, 2023 17:00
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While we’re talking about deckbuilders, has anyone played Core Worlds? I have enjoyed Dominion when I played it but it is a little light on presentation for me, and conversely I also did enjoy my time with Ascension but it’s kind of a stupid game.
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Mar 28, 2023 18:34
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OmegaGoo posted:Core Worlds has some neat ideas but regularly overstays its welcome. It’s about an hour too long in my experience and really didn’t work well without the expansion that adds the guild cards. Good looking out, my usual group runs long on playtime so that would be tough.
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Mar 28, 2023 20:47
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What’s a deckbuilder with a little more thematic flavor than Dominion, in that case?
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Mar 28, 2023 23:07
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I wish I had friends that were more interested in Keyforge. It isn’t a game I’d want to play seriously, but it’s a fun quick game and I like the push and pull that comes from the scoring mechanic.
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Apr 6, 2023 19:57
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Dunwich is a decent if straightforward campaign, good for a first go. Bring a high intellect character. The Dunwich player card set is foundational for many of the game’s archetypes and a must have. Path to Carcosa, the second campaign, is one of the best. Great theme, fun scenarios, some nice twists on the established formula.
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Apr 8, 2023 15:54
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Wallet posted:I just got into it about a month ago and have been enjoying playing through the campaigns with my girlfriend (did Dunwich and Carcosa, currently on Edge of the Earth); if I were only going to play one campaign it wouldn't be Dunwich (we had fun but vastly preferred Carcosa) but if you're going to keep going it seems like the place to start for sure. How are you liking EOTE? It’s between that and Forgotten Age for our next new campaign.
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Apr 8, 2023 17:23
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Finally found some time to play Final Girl. The game is a lot, in terms of setup and components, and feels a little slight in play by comparison. I’m a greedy little magpie that fawns over specialty components, but the game’s footprint is huge for a single player game, and the neoprene playmats don’t do much to help (I sort of suspect they bloat it further, even.) Notably, there’s no place to actually set your hand of cards down, and if they expect you to be rolling dice in the designated “play area,” they’re kidding you. A box or bowl to roll your dice in is a pretty necessary addition to the already huge game. Also, though they already put limits on what the playmats can handle by designating them the “season 1” playmats, they can’t even totally do that- the Maple Lane gameboard has more item decks than the playmat sets space for, as well more action cards than the tableau can hold and an additional nightmare deck. As far as setup goes, their “feature box” system is clever as a distribution model and for allowing you to mix and match sets, but they seem to think it streamlines setup, when the opposite is true. Turning the box end over end to get at the alternating location and killer components, while also managing the core box, is a bit much. I think the Dr. Frightmare/Maple Lane feature may exacerbate the game’s worst qualities. I picked it because Elm Street is my favorite slasher franchise, but between all the special tokens, the extra decks, and the sleep/wake gimmick, it seems like they’re grafting a lot of “stuff” onto the core game loop without getting much value. I think the sleep/wake dynamic may also make the game too easy, but I would need to play another game or two to say that with confidence. There are some things I like about the game. The theme is a lot of fun. I like the tempo aspect of the game, where you’re burning cards to gain resources for buying cards, and those (as well as any cards you used that turn) are inaccessible to buy again until the next turn. It creates a sort of hi-lo, catch your breath and plan, burst into action type of gameplay that feels appropriate for the theme. And, despite my grousing, the presentation is slick, the packaging is fun, and the core/feature system and its ability to mix and match sets feels like a good value. Whether the game is any good is still undecided, for me. My first run-through was sort of a breeze, but I got some lucky breaks in terms of events, setup, and draws. There is an extra hard mode for the game, but it just restricts your dice pool which is sort of not very interesting or fun to me. Over all, the closest competitor I’ve played in the solitaire dice-culling genre is D-Day Dice, which has a smaller footprint, easier setup, can scale up to 4 players, and right now feels like it offers more interesting choices (while also having a higher level of randomness.)
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Apr 16, 2023 22:59
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Quote-Unquote posted:I recently bought both seasons and all the addons because I'm an idiot like that, and I have to say that I really enjoy Final Girl. I only play it with one or two friends so we make decisions together about that we're going to do, with the person whose 'turn' it is getting the final say if there's a disagreement. Have you ever played D-Day Dice? I would recommend giving it a try if not. It’s a game that can run solo or up to four players, all players take their turns simultaneously so it doesn’t add too much playtime per player. Players lead a squad of infantry up a section of the beach at Normandy, trying to muster stragglers and scavenge equipment as they go via a Yahtzee dice system while suffering attrition from field hazards and enemy fire. Nice tension in terms of trying to manage a few different resources, as well as risk-reward in how you need to push for high-value dice combos to buy the equipment and specialist troops you need to succeed.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:55
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In general SUSD has much more appetite for role playing than my group does, but I am intrigued by Thousand Year Old Vampire because it’s a solo experience.
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Apr 24, 2023 15:53
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Another part of it is that board game players trend older as a demographic. Older often means more income and less time for hobbies/social opportunities, so buying a new game offers the “feeling” of engaging in your hobby, having a rule set to pore over and new trinkets to tinker with, despite that it will maybe never make it to the table.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:24
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I find, lately, that I’ve developed an interest in solo games just so that I can play more and on my own time. Otherwise, I’m content to alternate between Arkham Horror and Oath for the foreseeable future. Though, Arkham Horror in itself sort of builds in that “retail therapy/shiny new game” aspect by design.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:55
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Tekopo posted:I don't mind getting demolished by better players, I just see it as steps towards getting better and allows me to see what they do in order to win. I feel that way about fighting games, because a similar massive skill gulf exists in those, but in the case of a fighting game a match lasts under three minutes and you’re reset back to a neutral position at the midpoint. Different story with an hour+ board game. I came to eventually dread playing Android: Netrunner for this reason, even though I think it’s a great game. My friend would just play me like a fiddle every time.
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Apr 28, 2023 14:35
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panko posted:https://boardgamechat.com/ Can’t seem to handle Arkham Horror LCG. The answer it posed to an inquiry about enemy spawn logic had appropriate terms from the game and was sort of sensible, but was ultimately incorrect and also not a really salient reply to the question. Those are pretty complex, conditional rules, though.
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May 1, 2023 04:21
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Clank looks like a fun game but man it is too ugly for me to ever play. That art is rough.
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May 11, 2023 23:28
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I’ll be looking to clear out some games soon too. Final Girl, Dungeon Lords, Seasons, Inhuman Conditions. I may end up just doing a local sale for most of it tho as it’s hard to make it worth it for both partners with shipping costs
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May 13, 2023 17:54
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Arkham Horror core set for $12 today: https://www.miniaturemarket.com/ffgahc01.html This is probably the original core and not the revised core set, so a player that wants the full suite of deckbuilding possibilities will want 2 copies. Still a great deal for $12 and a single set is totally viable to support 2 players to sample the included intro campaign.
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May 31, 2023 20:30
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People seem to enjoy Oathsworn for a game similar to Gloomhaven, but if the buy-in/commitment is the issue, that may not be the choice. You may try looking into Arkham Horror LCG. Pick up a revised core set for each pair of players and grab one of the boxed campaigns and you’re off to the races for eight play sessions. Quarterbacking is more or less impossible due to the complexity of game states and the amount of information that is not very transparent (players will have different decks with different mechanics, different cards in hand, etc.)
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Jun 6, 2023 02:22
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Iki looks fun. I don’t usually like point salad euro style games but I am a sucker for Edo period history and the idea of someone fixing Monopoly appeals to me (always wanted to play Lords of Vegas for a similar reason.)
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Jun 7, 2023 20:04
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Yeah, as someone who is generally averse to the heavy hitter euro games, that sounds potentially appealing.
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Jun 9, 2023 16:05
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