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Trash OP seems to suggest most people hate Zendo. it’s really good actually. The OP that is. And Zendo.
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Dec 30, 2021 02:15
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 22:49 |
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We need someone to post all the old memes like fukken cubes
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Dec 30, 2021 02:22
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armorer posted:Excellent OP, now I want to buy Zendo. Is the Looney Labs version that's currently available good? Or do I want one of the older ones if I can find it? Although, technically, you don’t need any of that. You can play Zendo with Lego or really anything at all.
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Dec 30, 2021 09:55
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So I used to really like TS and when the app for it came out, I binge played it. And binging through it really affected my enjoyment of the game in the negative. I now think it’s a very innovative design (for the time) with quite a few outright design issues.
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Dec 31, 2021 23:20
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SelenicMartian posted:What about 1989 then?
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Jan 1, 2022 00:32
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Dungeon Petz is really good and I love both the theme and the mechanisms of the game.
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Feb 3, 2022 16:39
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So hmmm, Level 99 is doing a Dead by Daylight game. Which seems a bit weird.
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Mar 1, 2022 17:36
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FirstAidKite posted:....huh
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Mar 1, 2022 17:56
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FirstAidKite posted:They've done them plenty of times before, usually just adapting a license to another of their games though.
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Mar 1, 2022 19:16
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The best playtesting I was personally involved with was the custom Tash Kalar client coded by Vlaada that he used to get an incredible amount of stats about the game. I saw a bit of it and it was things like number of draws per faction, how long specific cards were kept in the hand before being played, how often they were discarded etc etc. Tash Kalar didn’t and doesn’t have perfect balance but a lot of effort was made in order to ensure it had at least an approximation of it.
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Mar 6, 2022 01:41
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Did you ever hear of the legend of Broken Loose the wise? It's not a story the thread regulars would tell you. It's a TG BG thread legend. Broken Loose was a good poster of the thread, so powerful and so wise he could use Fun to influence the thread and create arguments… He had such a knowledge of the thread, he could even keep the games he cared about from being forgotten.
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Mar 21, 2022 00:51
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That's bullshit, I've seen the same level of response to KDM in other threads, especially the chat thread and the Kickstarter thread.
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Mar 26, 2022 16:54
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The problem is the problem of every single thread, to be honest. There are topics in every single thread in SA which have been litigated and relitigated over and over again, so people that are regular to the thread get bored of talking about them, but also don't want to just ignore it if they think it is an actual problem that needs to be talked about. Also, KDM discussion has not been banned in any iteration of the thread, and what we are currently disccusing is a potential thread ban on discussing the game. The problem with KDM in my mind is that even if the sexualised violence is not as strong in the commercial product, it is still present and the company have made money by selling actual explicit sexualised violence, even as part of the KS that originally launched KDM. This is part of why the "oh, the game itself is not that bad" is not really a strong argument for me.
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Mar 26, 2022 17:12
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jarofpiss posted:it seems you are much more immersed in the kdm scene than i am so i'll defer to your expertise  " post, nice
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Mar 26, 2022 17:55
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jarofpiss posted:i moved on from kdm about two months ago but the board game thread has gone in my book of grudges and i will never forget this past holiday season.
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Mar 26, 2022 18:16
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Finally actually played some boardgames for the first time in two years, so here's what I tried. Cryptid and Search for Planet X: Both of them seemed fine although I only played the beginner version of each of the games. Beginner version of Cryptid suffered from being a bit too deterministic/too easy to math out exactly all of the clues, while Planet X beginner felt a bit too luck dependant since everyone had different starting clues/the research topics weren't equally useful. Still, entertaining as far as competitive deduction games go. Spirit Island: Played Volcano Looming High for the first time: we went against level 8 Habsburg and got soundly trashed. Volcano is probably one of my favourite spirits now, although I do tend to prefer simple offense-orientated spirits when I play. Still not the best co-op I played all weekend, but very close. Space Alert: Still the best co-op and honestly I wish I could play it more. We had one mission where everyone looked out the window at the end because we thought all of the threats had been dealt with (they hadn't) and one game where one person fired missiles too early and we only just scraped through. I did my job as internal threat officer, and that was good enough for me. Dominant Species: Marine: I have mixed opinions with this version of dominant species. I think the way that actions are conducted is quite interesting and probably better than the way it is present within dominant species, and the fact that there is now an evolution and domination spaces makes it slightly better, but I have three big issues with Marine: first of all, I dislike the trait system. I understand that it was included to enhance replayability but I don't think all of the traits are balanced in any way and I dislike the fact that trait and place within the food chain is now completely disjointed. The way that survival/extinction can pop up semi-randomly left a sour note as well, since it's possible to have survival and not score anything and then suddenly someone gets it from you and scores a lot of points. Finally, the fact that specific land types might not pop up for Evolution is pretty annoying, and it might be the case that a particular land time never pops up. Overall I think I'd rather play the original. Brass Birmingham: The more I play it, the more I think I prefer the original. I need to try it out more but going deep into pottery/boxes seem a mistake more than anything. Although I guess the strats for the original Brass are also pretty calcified by this point. Tash Kalar: Played a couple of games of this, but against newbies, so I won handily. Still extremely good. Exit: Orient Express: Probably one of the better Exit games I've played, and had a neat murder mystery attached to it. Can't really explain it without spoiling it though. Factory Funner: Actually better than the original: the hexes add a lot in my opinion and it has a more freeform way of building the pipes. It also removes a lot of crap that was necessary in order to make the original balanced, like for example having to have machines that gave additional reservoirs: it's much easier now to feed machines, but the pipe-laying puzzle is still present and still feels so good. It all starts so easy and ends up being so hard, and the constant "Oh, I shouldn't have picked up that machine) is always present in any games of it. Don't think I really need to bring out the original ever again. And it's a smaller box too! The Crew: Deep Sea Mission: Not sure if I like this one or the original, but I think the mission variety of this one will win out in the end. Glory to Rome: Although relatively random, I kind of enjoy this game, much more than Innovation, which gives me similar feelings. I did win one game out of pure luck though, and the game rests in the uncanny valley of it being too relatively heavy for a casual game, and a bit too random for a heavy strategical game. Mixed feelings, but I still enjoyed playing it. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jun 5, 2022 |
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Jun 5, 2022 20:16
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I played the Orient Express one recently and it was really good, better that Tomb or Secret Lab, which are the other ones I played.
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Jun 12, 2022 12:38
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The one and only time I played RoR, we played the Punic Wars scenario, another player hosed me out of something for no reason, I swore a vendetta on his house and then we lost our war against Carthage and the republic collapsed. So overall I think it fairly accurately models Ancient Rome.
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Jun 12, 2022 15:19
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Being bad at board games is not a big issue IMO. I've seen (and experiencied) elitism in terms of board game skill even during playing a game and it's lovely as hell. On the other had, if you are bad at games and have AP/take 10 minutes every time it's your turn, I have no sympathy.
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Aug 4, 2022 09:58
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Poopy Palpy posted:I'm pretty sure it was Donald X who said that if there are more than 2 players in a competitive game most of them are going to lose, so for a game to be good it has to be fun to lose.  that's why the best games are multiplayer solitaires where you are doing your own thing
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Aug 4, 2022 13:15
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Played Stone's Unyielding Defiance yesterday in Spirit Island and drat, what a fun Spirit. It felt quite strong to allow the enemies to blight but having tools in the innate powers to just more or less ignore the blight, and to strike back just as hard. It's an interesting twist on a defensive spirit, but I felt a lot more active (and less reliant on dahans to actually do damage). I also liked that all growth options allowed me to put down presence: my progress through the tracks felt slow but inevitable. You do need a bit of foreplanning with Stone, though, since you don't have any double presence growth options and most of your powers are slow and only really have an affect the turn after you use them. Overall, really enjoyed the spirits, and so far two of my favourite spirits (Stone and Volcano) have come from Jagged Earth, which has some stellar designs in terms of Spirits IMO.
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Aug 7, 2022 11:59
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Mayveena left, as far as I know, because there were some boardgaming-related disagreements regading Euros, and she told people that she didn't feel like she fit within the culture of the discord, which is different from the culture of the thread. We discussed her leaving within the admin channels when she left, she reached out to one of the admins explaining why she left, and we reviewed communications to see if there had been anything that was actionable when she left. She didn't leave because of thread drama, she wasn't hounded by anyone in the discord because of thread drama, and she wasn't pressured to act in any way within the Discord. The entire thing has become a game of chinese whispers where people heard that she had left and then immediately assumed that there had been huge drama where there hadn't actually been any. It's really irritating especially that Leper would spend an entire paragraph trying to cast allusions to the discord while simultaneously saying that he doesn't want to know anything about it, and especially when trying to create doubt and inter-community drama by saying poo poo like "if so I cant imagine why, shes hardly a problematic poster or anything?", which is an incredibly lovely thing to say when you actually don't have any knowledge of what may or may not have happened. I barely post in this thread anymore and that's been partially due to my waning interest in board games, and partially because moderation of known bad-faith posters and concern-troll has been minimal and innefective. Thanks for making me have to write this. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 23:53
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Played Lure of the Deep Wilderness in Spirit Island, and I loving loved the spirit, it felt so good and thematic to play. We were just playing England level 1 since we had newbies and actually won a terror victory. I kept luring the invaders to this extremely hospitable and not at all threatening land, and for some reason they kept disappearing, wonder why: 
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Aug 10, 2022 21:12
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I love the little thematic touches on Spirit Island: like how the innate powers of Lure paint a story of a bunch of people just leaving their towns and cities deserted, others trying to stop them from entering the dark foreboding interior of the island, but no one can stop them, and then those people just disappear into the jungle, never to be heard from again. It’s kind of frightening to think about, to be honest. But it’s why I love the game. Each spirit tells a unique story and it’s all done with simple mechanisms.
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Aug 10, 2022 23:32
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CommonShore posted:this makes me want to play Lure/Nightmares next time I get to play https://spiritislandwiki.com/index.php?title=Cast_Down_Into_the_Briny_Deep Just making an entire side of the island collectively dreams that the land sinks into the ocean, a dream so vivid that they run the gently caress away from fear and never return.
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Aug 10, 2022 23:42
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Played couple of games of SI in the past few days. Volcano and Ocean unfortunately didn't work well together and we couldn't deal with the invaders fast enough, although we were one city away from victory. Decided to do a solo to try out Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds, going for Habsburg level 2, and the Spirit was alright, but I got extremely lucky with Major Power draws (the two on the left):  Just dumping out a whole lot of Wilds every single turn, and Keeper has enough energy economy to be able to just recall -> play again and again. Unrelenting Growth also meant that I was getting sacred sites to use Towering Wrath against, and any infiltration into my lands was dealt with by my innate. This is the look of the board at the end of the game:  Pretty fun spirit, but yeah, got lucky with those draws, even though there was a moment where the Habsburg had like 6 towns in a single area, which was pretty scary. I was one 8+ ravage away from losing the entire game.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:44
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i think the only deckbuilder that felt like a pure deckbuilder but still managed to do something different and also have a different dynamic of deckbuilding that I found interesting was Eminent Domain.
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Aug 15, 2022 10:54
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I kinda get annoyed at games where they repackage the base game as a more or less feature-incomplete version of the game, and then quickly release an expansion to actually make the game whole. Eminent Domain as well as Spirit Island are examples of this as well.
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Aug 15, 2022 11:12
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Mr. Squishy posted:In case anyone reading this thinks Tek is talking about Taverns, Taverns has a lot of stuff in the base game, but has a modular set-up and a legacy-lite staggered introduction of rules.
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Aug 15, 2022 11:31
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Branch and Claw was, as far as I can remember, removed from the base game even though they were technically done at the same time in terms of development. It's relatively minor for SI/Branch and Claw, but for Eminent Domain the issue is much more egregious, where the base game is boring and uninteresting and the game only becomes complete when you add the expansion. I don't agree with how you boil down the argument though, because there are games which have expansions that build on a strong base game, and it's clear that the experiences intended for the base game versus the base game with expansion are meant to be wildly different. So the difference for me isn't that I don't want expansions to come out altogether, but how feature complete the base game feels with or without the expansion. As an example, some of the most stellar expansions for games I have ever played and enjoyed are the ones for Dungeon Lords and Dungeon Petz. Those expansions add new modular systems to the base game, but still leave reasons to play the base game over the expanded game. I love playing Dungeon Petz with Dark Alleys, but it's not for everyone and if I have new people trying to play the game, playing Dark Alleys would suck for them. Since it's relatively easy to remove or add the expansion materials without them affecting the base game at all, the expansions basically act as completely disparate games instead of adding new things to the base game or trying to balance patch issues with the game. I think Spirit Island has only a minimal issues with this repacking problem: there's really not that much reason to play the base game of SI over adding the B&C changes (or the Jagged Earth replacement rules if you really hate the event deck). On the other hand, SI expansions are more about adding variability to the game: more spirits, more powers, more adverseries, so the base game without Jagged Earth isn't that bad an experience, apart from lack of diversity after a while. I think probably the worst expansion system I've seen was the one for the Battlestar Galactica game: the base game was entirely playabable, but a little bit of unbalanced at times. The expansions for the game seemed like a scattergun approach to balancing the game as well as adding new features, and it led to a weird situation where to get a playable game again you had to pick and choose specific systems from specific expansions: it felt (and was) a mess.
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Aug 15, 2022 12:13
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I've played M&M and it was fine at the time. I think when it was released there were some issue with the base game in terms of how balanced the various paths to victory were, but it always felt more like an experience generator (and I don't mean that in a disparaging sense) than a competitive board game.
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Aug 15, 2022 14:38
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The worst deckbuilder I ever played was the aforementioned DC Deckbuilding game. It built on all the bad design choices that Ascension contributed to the genre but made them even worse. I think the worst design decisions that it made was that pretty much every card gives you points and that the cards with the most powerful effects give the most points. So basically if your turn is crappy due to your draw you either have to make your deck worse in order to keep getting points or just not get points, which means that you are behind the curve. Meanwhile sometimes gets a lucky draw that allows them to pick up one of the big villains (there is a stack of big villains that you can defeat, defeating all of them ends the game), and along with a ton of points you also get a really powerful ability, thus accelerating your deck and making it more likely to keep winning. I'm not sure if DC Deckbuilder had a split economy but since it took inspiration from Ascension, it probably did. Like if I had to point to a deckbuilder that got every single lesson wrong, and just didn't understand how deckbuilding is meant to work mechanically, DC Deckbuilder would be it.
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Aug 15, 2022 15:16
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Aramoro posted:You'll be delighted to know Matt Hyra designed an even worse deck builder game in the form of the Transformers Deck builder.
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Aug 15, 2022 15:49
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Can we talk deckbuilding guilty pleasures as well? Cause I loved me some of the original Legendary Encounters with the Aliens franchise, it was cool going through the films and I’ll let a lot of things slide if the primary mode of play is Co-op
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Aug 15, 2022 17:18
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CitizenKeen posted:What's the alternative to market row? Stacks of single cards a la Dominion?
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Aug 15, 2022 22:53
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I do feel like the market is oversaturated at the moment in terms of boardgames. As well as that, there has been a steady increase in monopolisation, primarily by Asmodee (they got recently bought out themselves, right?). Anecdotally, there has been very little that has truly excited me in terms of board games recently (apart from SI, and that's not a recent development), and my board game purchases have gone way down. I think that might be more because my interest have calcified, though, and I don't feel the need to buy much more than I currently have.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:09
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dishwasherlove posted:This is a good thing.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:14
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What’s the most interesting part of cartographers? It sounds interesting but I wanna know where the juice is
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Aug 18, 2022 19:11
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Played Downpour Drenches the World in Spirit island, and what an interesting Spirit it is. Having to discard cards for one of the growths really makes you think about your options, and in terms of a defensive spirit, Downpour has a few quirks that make them a little bit different to play in comparison to other spirits. Although the defensive options are strong, they also either make the counterattack of the Dahan weaker, or drive the Dahan away altogether, which means that unlike some of the other defensive spirits, you have to think outside the box in terms of how to deal with the invaders permanently. Being able to repeat powers is extremely strong, especially coupled with the ability to make any area a wetland for the purposes of cards or special rules. This also plays into how you pick powers as well, with relatively crappy Minors becoming powerhouses. For example, I got a 1 cost fast power that either moved 3 Dahan, or did 1 damage per Dahan, but to a different enemy. The 1 damage to a different enemy is alright, but being able to spam this same power 2, 3 or even 4 times? That's a lot of damage building up. The last play in the game I played was using that card to move 3 Dahan to a land two spaces away, and then playing the card twice more to deal enough damage to an already-damaged city to win the game. You can do some crazy stuff with Downpour, and the spirit really plays unlike any other I've played in Spirit Island. Also, let me know if people are interested in these mini Spirit Reviews/thoughts. I'll keep doing them if people are interested. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Aug 20, 2022 |
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Aug 20, 2022 22:31
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 22:49 |
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Yeah I spent like a weekend looking at every single one of their videos and they owned. I kinda liked the almost informal way that the narrator describes the spirits. Would recommend watching them for anyone interested in the game.
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Aug 20, 2022 22:49
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