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thread needs more Zendo content whenever Zendo discussion is not here, all the other posters should be asking "Where's Zendo?"
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Dec 30, 2021 01:01
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Tekopo posted: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.  I think it's still pretty solid overall but it definitely has more rough edges than I'd like for how much time commitment it takes.
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Jan 1, 2022 00:14
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Handelabra's SI adaptation drives me nuts because for reasons unknown they decided to use click & drag to play cards and then have you click through a bunch of prompts to move pieces around on the board and it's the most bizarre UI decision I've seen in years.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:44
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So I know I'm super behind the times on this but we just started playing AffO after Christmas. I've never really followed AffO chat that closely but I have the impression that a lot of people talk about exploration being super high priority, and I'm kind of wondering what we're missing because we're just not seeing that so far. The highest scores we've seen always seem to come from vomiting out green & blue tiles to develop the home board ASAP and leisurely grabbing later islands to fill with overflow income; gunning for early islands always feels really really strong but then seems to come up short in the end. Having to keep going back to the mountains to get resources feels really painful in comparison to the bonus resources on the home board and it sucks filling in all those -1s from scratch instead of getting to do it organically as you build income. Granted, we've only just been playing the two of us and I can see how with 3-4 players you wouldn't want to get locked out of islands altogether, but from what we're seeing that still seems more like an expensive insurance policy than an improved engine. Overall we're still really impressed with the game so far. Everyone talks about how much better and more balanced the expansion is but so far the game feels way more robust than I'd been led to expect. From what we're seeing the game resists being boiled down into an optimal strategy, victory seems to come down to being efficient and tactical with puzzle pieces and action spaces (and, admittedly, some amount of occupation card luck.)
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Jan 7, 2022 18:28
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I know they're worth a lot, but they seem to balanced out by the opportunity cost of grabbing them early. Wood + ship + explore basically sets you back an entire turn if you're going for the middle islands, and then there are a lot of extra blank spaces to cover that you'll need the extra income just to make up from (the same is true of the home board, but the bonuses are generally more convenient to the income spaces, and filling in the income makes it easier & more rewarding to cover up all the -1s that you need to cover anyhow.) Do you generally focus on filling in the income spaces and detour to bonuses as they become convenient, or just beeline straight for the big bonuses? I've tried both ways, although maybe I'm still just not focusing the bonuses hard enough.
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Jan 7, 2022 19:12
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Glazius posted:But there's lots of ways to win the game. That's basically what I'm seeing, yeah. We are seeing some better scores coming out of early Iceland/Greenland, but our all time highs are still coming from games with an early focus on the home boards. It still feels more efficient to wait a couple turns on exploration, which creates an enjoyable tension over who is going to bite the bullet and accept the opportunity cost just to lock down an island and deny it to their opponent, since you probably don't want to be stuck with the home board forever (even when we were newer and weaker we were generating too much stuff to fit on the home board alone.) I definitely see how larger games would be more cutthroat about this, though, especially since there'd also be much more competition over actions to generate tiles. Overall the strategic balance feels very robust, outside of some variance on occupations (we're finding the occupation cards to be more useful and better balanced than what some of the discussion I've seen had led me to believe, but there's no denying that there's some real stinkers in the deck. I still need to track down the list of recommended removals, although judging by the size of the lists I've seen I suspect there's still some questionable ones they leave in the deck.)
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Jan 13, 2022 23:21
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armorer posted:Right, but I think folks here were talking about using card actions that inherently burn the card. Those should not be used until late or in emergency situations. This is debatable--burning a big attack preemptively to kill enemies faster can save you some damage and also cards played, so in the long run a well played burn card can increase your longevity.
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Jan 14, 2022 02:17
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Everything I've seen from the designer has been that Danes will be standalone with new home boards, action boards, occupation cards, etc.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:23
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This is a week or so old but I assume nothing has changed radically since then:Gernot Köpke posted:Standalone means standalone. What else should it be. Nothing more needed to play Danes than Danes. Its construction with ~200 new cards and 13 new Kaupang set and 19 Kaupang buildings and so on is optimated for Danes. The hugh impact of new things will last for long time having new experiences. I have seen similar stuff from Gernot along these lines elsewhere, too.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:29
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For that matter, in small games Finder often wants to find big hammer majors to help clean up (for a price) the invaders it contains. Defends are also quite nice since Finder can set up Dahan so easily. Having the occasional extra isolate is nice but for the most part Finder doesn't really need to double down on its gimmick.
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Jan 22, 2022 21:50
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I don't do it exclusively (depends on card draws, turn order etc.) but I still enjoy skipping an early boat to go hard on hunting/crafting/upgrading to blitz the home board and then buying boats outright a couple turns in. I've been cleaning up pretty handily on BGA, although like you say that doesn't necessarily say much about the quality of the strategy. If I get a good starting occupation that doesn't rely on boats one of my favorite T1 moves is to dump most of my vikings on the 4 resources + 2x double upgrade space. In larger games, if other players go deep enough on the mountains sometimes you can grab an early iron and get one of the bigger metalsmithing pieces. Hunting & trapping are both very high value spaces if you have the draws to support them. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 23, 2022 |
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Jan 23, 2022 22:09
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Mayveena posted:And one thing that board games have in common with Lego is that they get re-sold and re-used, reducing demand for new product. Yeah I realize that the hobby doesn't affect much in the scheme of things, but I keep having this visceral reaction to plastic in the ocean which sickens me and I want to do something about it. Rationally we can keep on keeping on, noting that our choices within this hobby don't amount to a lot regarding climate change. I'd be more worried about the shrink wrapping on boxes and cards than about plastic minis, that stuff is far more insidious environmentally.
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Jan 25, 2022 17:22
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Quote-Unquote posted:Played Spirit Island for the first time with a couple of friends tonight. We just did the basic intro game and it was pretty fun! We won by getting to the third level of terror and killing all the cities. I can see this game becoming much, much harder in future. I played the Shadow guy that makes tonnes of fear, and it seemed really difficult until I got the 'just nuke anything next to a jungle you have presence in' power. That's a pretty normal experience playing Shadows, the general consensus is that it's a tiny bit undergunned (not so much that a good power draw can't make up for it, it just needs a little more luck to get what it needs.)
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Jan 30, 2022 01:38
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homullus posted:Everyone I've met with AP did not have mental health issues (that I knew of) and were not choosing to be that way at the table. One friend did choose to work on it, but it was a several-years-long struggle to mitigate it. I am not defending it; it sucks the life out of some game nights, and you're not obligated to play games with people when doing so isn't fun. Anecdotally, though, people with AP are often aware they have it, aware people don't like it, and still can't act differently. In my experience a lot of AP-havers just don't handle pressure well and are afraid of being judged for poor play, which creates a vicious cycle because then they get judged for taking too long. It sucks but it can be helped by weeding out jerks, which kills two birds with one stone.
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Feb 4, 2022 17:46
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Jagged Earth does a better job of introducing the B&C elements than B&C does, IMO. B&C feels too sequestered from the base game, so when we were playing just B&C the tokens felt like more of a chore than anything. JE has more spirits interact with them and more interesting & appealing token powers.
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Feb 20, 2022 15:13
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Sharp Fangs does get substantially better with JE powers and JR partner spirits. The main thing is that it relies on being super proactive; build prevention + explorer kills + a strong push + fast phase damage is an incredibly good toolkit for shutting down invaders before they get established, the tradeoff being that Fangs is worse than most at dealing with heavily dug in invaders.
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Feb 21, 2022 17:44
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Kerro posted:And gets completely wrecked if you get a lot of early blight on the board, so it seems to be more dependent on how the initial explore cards play out and can have a hard time with adversaries where you want to allow blight (like Habsburg). I really enjoy playing Fangs against certain adversaries though, it has a fun set of mechanics. True. If you see that the initial explore is not going to be favorable, gunning for major powers makes for a pretty effective Plan B; Fangs might not look like a major power spirit but you have excellent burst energy and lots of card gain from growth, and the top track elements let you trigger your main innate without needing to stay strictly on-element.
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Feb 22, 2022 00:41
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canyoneer posted:I just started playing Spirit Island in the app and I'm getting clobbered. Doing small board, one spirit, low complexity. I won a single game with Vital Strength of the Earth and got wrecked in a few attempts each with Lightning or River Surges. Solo is absolutely harder than two-handed. Once you know what you're doing it's not that big of a deal but it's always going to be a little tougher going and that makes a big difference starting out. In particular, both Lightning and River have support powers that are dramatically more powerful when used on a teammate. Try running both of them together, they're practically made for each other.
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Feb 22, 2022 18:35
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New Coke's testing basically held up, the problem was that they were asking the wrong questions. They successfully developed a more popular flavor than classic Coke and then it turned out no one actually drank Coke because they thought the flavor was good, they drank it because it was an institution. In board game terms, they decided to remake a classic Ameritrash game and rigorously fixed all the balance issues and pain points and then no one wanted to play anymore because the stupid bullshit was the only reason anyone liked it in the first place.
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Mar 6, 2022 04:21
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Mayveena posted:Why do so many love Scythe when it's so bad??? I met a ton of people at DTW who love the game, even folks who I really respect. I totally don't get it. However I can't blame Jamie if he doesn't change (much of) what's working so well, the game is super popular. My impression is that it's a pretty fun game at its core, just held back needlessly by awful faction balance (which is not a dealbreaker for some people, somehow). I've only played it a couple times though, so maybe there are more fundamental issues that I didn't play long enough to pick up on. I know that some people are disappointed that conquest is not more rewarding but I feel that's almost more of a strength than a weakness.
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Mar 6, 2022 07:09
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silvergoose posted:But then what if the experienced player gets the op faction, and the game is guaranteed decided before it starts, instead of likely? Not to mention, more skilled players are going to be better at spotting and exploiting the imbalance, so any imbalance is going to be more likely to work to their favor than not. A balanced-ish game with a healthy dose of randomness throughout is going to be a better fix than an imbalanced game with a single game-defining random draw to start.
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Mar 7, 2022 14:47
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5 Minutes of Crime would be a fantastic lite filler game.
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Mar 17, 2022 06:52
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I am sure the video game that is almost entirely aesthetics will have a very meaty tactical boardgame adaptation.
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Mar 20, 2022 19:38
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jarofpiss posted:i wonder if posters itt are acting like this because you probate anyone new that comes in and offhand mentions kdm or frosthaven(????) and causes the thread regulars to immediately poo poo their pants and go full aggro poster? lol are you still butthurt that other posters don't like kdm and talisman
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Mar 26, 2022 15:27
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jarofpiss posted:i will never forgive having 3 days of my posting life stolen for posting about kdm that is a bit rough, I just assumed that was a 6er. you were one of the most aggro posters in that discussion though, there were plenty of people discussing what they liked about kdm with a side of "shame about the tiddy violence" and you came back swinging pretty hard for some reason??? idk if you thought you were just engaging in casual banter but you did come across as a bit of a dick and that's when people started getting really mad.
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Mar 26, 2022 16:05
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Saying there's an issue with swords & sorcery is disingenuous. People are talking about Mage Knight on this very page, which is extremely swords & sorcery. For such a dry crunchy game it's very evocative, it does an excellent job of replicating the feeling of conaning across the board alternately saving the day and beating people up for their loot (to the point that my main obstacle getting it to the table isn't the formidable set up or play time, it's that my wife doesn't like to get into that headspace and wants to play something more unambiguously heroic.) It does all this without any sexualized violence and not a whole lot of sexualization in general; there's a sorceress in a skimpy sorceress dress, but it's like maybe a 3/10 on the scale of oversexualized fantasy art.
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Mar 26, 2022 17:03
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Slyphic posted:I'm new. I had no idea KDM is verboten. I did not realize there were literal unwritten rules, after I read the entire rules posts so I could participate in good faith. That's a trap I'd probably eventually stumble into, as I love classic sword & sorcery games (got a huge Franzetta print in my office). to be clear, no one has ever been probed just for mentioning titty minis and the only "trap" is that saying you like them will cause 1d6 posters to say "I don't like titty minis", forcing a save vs. disapproval to avoid an embarrassing meltdown defending titty minis.
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Mar 26, 2022 17:12
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jarofpiss posted:i'm saying there ISN'T an issue with sword & sorcery in general here. like i wouldn't assume i'd get tuned up for bringing up the old vallejo "worlds of boris vallejo" game that is just his paintings on lovely cardstock, and because it's like the exact same kind of art content, i didn't assume that would happen for kdm. my bad, I thought you were drawing a line around this thread and saying "the rest of tg tolerates s&s but not the boardgames thread", not "tg including this thread tolerates most s&s but not kdm". jarofpiss posted:i like old school fantasy art, and i don't really have an issue with the aspects of sword and sorcery art that are hyper violent or hyper sexual. they really are both fundamental aspects of the genre. like i just don't think it's "bad art" if it's exhausting when folks post in hyperbole then stop doing it  I would argue that most of the posters itt have a more nuanced view of the subject than the one you are putting forth. I doubt anyone bitching about kdm has an issue with, say, the comic Oglaf, despite Oglaf being vastly more explicitly sexualized (which is saying a lot.) reducing the arguments against kdm's art to "titty bad" is not doing you any favors. jarofpiss posted:i'm a communist and i care deeply about those things too. i'm also a fan of vintage pulp, sword & sorcery, conan, etc and i think there's room for discussion around the troubling elements of those genres without completely writing them off as entirely racist or bad or whatever. robert e howard's work has lots of troubling elements that are reflective of the time period, but it's not hateful, and i think there's still room to enjoy that kind of stuff with an informed perspective. I think most people itt would agree with you here, even as it relates to kdm. but if you're going to "enjoy that kind of stuff with an informed perspective", something which plenty of other posters have done w/r/t kingdom death monster with relatively little issue, you can't flip out when people get skeeved out by it.
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Mar 26, 2022 17:31
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Stickman posted:Nobody is mad about Frosthaven because of Kickstarter's dumb stuff. People have been mad at Kickstarter for dumb kickstarter stuff. Prada Slut used Frosthaven to intentionally stir poo poo, leading to discussion separate discussions of Kickstarter and Frosthave, and some disingenuous claims that people were mad about Frosthaven. oh ho, but you see, producing and distributing physical products carries environmental costs, therefore all environmental costs are always equally justified, even to the point of deliberately wasting energy for no benefit.
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Mar 26, 2022 23:49
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like if you're going to pretend to be concerned about the wastefulness of printing and shipping new games then you should already be mad at Kickstarter anyhow, and them latching onto the blockchain bandwagon for the ordering platform for people shipping new games is just the cherry on the poo poo sundae
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Mar 26, 2022 23:52
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Radioactive Toy posted:Co-op with my wife, but I've never even tried to get it to the table with others. I've never been a solo board gamer for whatever reason. Yeesh, that interface is pretty rough. Not nearly as rough as my skills after not playing MK for several years, though.
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Mar 28, 2022 23:57
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jarofpiss posted:tbh kickstarter enabling the endless production of miniature based plastic board games shipped overseas from china to be played once and never again is probably worse than whatever crypto related things they've done then you should be glad that people are up in arms about the blockchain bullshit, because that means fewer people willing to engage with Kickstarter and ultimately less plastic being shipped. hooray!
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Apr 1, 2022 02:23
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it's also debatable whether larger gross energy expenditure to deliver physical products that theoretically have value is in fact more wasteful than a potentially smaller energy expenditure to deliver absolutely nothing of value to anybody but either way, anything that dissuades people from participating in mindless kickstarter consumption is probably a good thing.
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Apr 1, 2022 02:39
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The worst we've ever done is rushing through the setup for Lords of Waterdeep and missing that the number of action markers was based on player count, so we played a 5 player game with everyone having way too many action tokens.
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Apr 18, 2022 15:14
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jarofpiss posted:this is such a stupid tedious post Please don't sign your posts.
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Apr 20, 2022 22:16
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jarofpiss posted:no bitcoin ever floated out into the middle of the ocean and made an island from plastic game pieces and dead dolphins So I assume you're already boycotting Kickstarter on principle as a vehicle for distributing plastic game pieces, then?
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Apr 20, 2022 22:27
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PerniciousKnid posted:It seems like the "bait", as it were, is people constantly bringing up controversial topics and then probating people for having opinions on them. it's weird how the only two people who are moderated for wrongthink have repeatedly admitted that they're just trolling in bad faith to rile people up it's almost as though they are being probed for something other than their opinions and are only hiding being "I was probated for wrongthink!" as a smokescreen 
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Apr 21, 2022 03:04
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Aramoro posted:Lets not forget the incredible system of having action spots for you to use in everyone's Village so you end up having to peer across the table to see what folk have that you could use. There's that, the memory game of remembering everyone meeples, the system mastery of just knowing what's good to do. Using action spots in other players' villages is a cute conceit and the memory game is easily houseruled away by saying only blind draws go behind your screen and the rest of your meeples go in a pile everyone can see (which seems like a no brainer to me but the concept of trackable hidden information has actually had defenders itt before, so  )idk, maybe it is too fiddly for the payoff though, we hardly ever actually get around to playing it. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 21, 2022 |
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Apr 21, 2022 20:08
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Admiralty Flag posted:Both of you are dead to me. SI confounds me because there's some conceptual barrier most people run into on the first try that I am unable to put my finger on. After a game or two some indefinable something just clicks and suddenly everything makes sense and is easy (until you crank up the difficulty), but I'd be hard pressed to describe what the trick is. Normally once I get a game down pat I can boil it down and get new players up to speed pretty quickly, but SI resists my efforts to explain the core loop even more than other games that are nominally more difficult or complicated.
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Apr 22, 2022 01:10
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 08:17 |
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Azran posted:SI is weird because the invader loop is much, much more important than the Spirit loop in terms of 'information you 100% need to know" to the point where I teach the entirety of the Invader phase before I even touch what players do. Also the fact that you don't have a single physical presence on the board, but rather points of influence from which you measure your reach and so can take a while to adjust. This is where I always start and it still tends to wind up going straight into "learn by failing" mode (outside of one pair of newbie savants who picked Bringer and Ocean against all recommendations and immediately dumpstered the invaders)
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Apr 22, 2022 01:30
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