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CitizenKeen posted:Those are two different distinctions, yeah? Kind of! Dead can't nominate (though they can technically be nominated due to some fun roles).
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Dec 24, 2022 04:35
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I finally gave in and bought Roll Player Adventures for myself for my birthday. I would say...the core gameplay loop is fun, it's cool to see how your choices play out, this game should absolutely not cost anywhere near $150. I'm halfway through it after a day and anyone who says it's got 'tons of replayability' is insane. Yes, you can see how other choices play out, but there's never anything drastic enough that matters other than some unique dialogue/slight branching. I also have no idea how this game would be fun in a non-solo environment. The entirety of the game is reading story and then solving a dice puzzle. Which, again, is super fun on my own, but I would not want to have to sit with 4 people figuring out which cards we all have to solve the puzzle. I really like it, but I'm also glad I'll be done with it quickly and can just resell it to someone else who's been curious.
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Dec 26, 2022 04:01
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SettingSun posted:Yeah, a lot of games in SI end with "look, there's one city left on the board and I can smoke it in the fast phase, we're done here" but I never really marked that as a con. Ratchet up the difficulty a little bit and more drama will unfold. I find the difficulty curve of a single game of SI to be fascinating. There's always a turn where you finally crest the parabola of difficulty midway through the game, and then the rest of the turns are just cleanup. It's a very weird feeling when you win because it was already fairly clear a turn or two ago that you had it covered. It's that middle part of the game where it goes from "OH poo poo OH poo poo" to "Okay I think we got this" where it feels best, whereas the actual 'we win' moment is less thrilling.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:09
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Chainclaw posted:How is ISS Vanguard for solo play? I just found out about it and I really like the setting and art. However, I don't think I want to convince my group to play, we're in the middle of Oathsworn, then we need to go back to Middara, then Gloomhaven, and yesterday the host pulled out the Frosthaven box that just showed up in the mail, so I don't think we want to divert to another long running coop game. I think it’s an excellent solo game. The entire core gameplay is just doing dice checks, so it’s not the most complicated gameplay, but that makes it simple to play multiple characters at once. I find the story interesting, though it does tap into every familiar sci-fi trope. I specifically backed at the non-mini level and am so happy I did. Well worth the cost.
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Jan 30, 2023 22:48
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The Search for Lost Species also went live today on KS. Effectively a sequel to Search for Planet X. I did a quick read through the rulebook and it seems mostly like a new skin on the same game. There are some rule differences and the layout is shifted around, but ultimately nothing that would convince someone who didn't like Planet X to try this one instead. I'll probably just wait for retail to decide if I want to pick it up; I love Planet X but I don't know if I love it enough to play another game that seems mostly the same with slightly different mechanics.
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Jan 31, 2023 21:19
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I saw iss vanguard in store, it's a big boy.... How's the solo components? I'm still kind of tempted... Given that the main mechanic is just 'roll dice, play cards to alter', it's extremely easy to handle two characters at once (which is the minimum you can play with). I haven't tried doing a 4-character exploration phase, but I suspect it would be fine too.
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Feb 5, 2023 15:59
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armorer posted:Based on the things you say after seeming to disagree with me, I clearly wasn't clear. I'm not saying that an RPG has to be played completely in the mind's eye, I'm just saying that it can be done. I've played every version of D&D since the paperback level range books (except 4th), Rifts, Gurps, Toon, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Battletech, Vampire, and a whole bunch of others I'm forgetting over 30+ years. I've run campaigns in almost all of those, both home brew settings and off the shelf stuff. I've played on modern VTTs, with and without miniatures on battle grids, with terrain, etc. Thanks for supplying your bona fides, your award for True Gamer is in the mail.
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Feb 6, 2023 22:16
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Losem posted:So I kind of fell off following/buying new games over the last 1-2 years and have been appreciating the games I currently own, but now I've got an itch for something new. So anyone have any good recommendation for a new game? Group is 99% 3 players, have been doing a lot of light games lately but Spirit Island is probably our favorite. We tend to lean more towards coop when the rules get heavy but have no problem with competitive/conflict. Have y'all done Pandemic Legacy? That's always an easy recommendation if your group loves co-op.
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Feb 16, 2023 16:12
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There’s no bigger endorphin rush for me than punching out tokens and doing initial organization of the box. Is this a viable business venture? Can I have people ship me their sealed copies and I’ll get it all set up and then sent back to them? I don’t even think I’d need payment, the contact high will be more than enough.
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Feb 22, 2023 16:33
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:I'm so bad at putting board games back in the box properly that I took pictures when I was pulling out components of a game I borrowed from a friend so I'd know how to put them back the way they were supposed to go. The boxes that utilize the sides of the game box to show you pictures of how to put it away are *chef's kiss*
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Feb 22, 2023 17:53
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Southern Heel posted:What was that tech-tree boardgame that came out recently? Was it any good? Beyond the Sun? I love it, but I’m also a sucker for any sort of tech tree in any game.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:58
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Rockman Reserve posted:Is Time Stories actually bad or is it just the fact that it's a one-and-done that turns people off? I enjoyed it as a very basic 'escape room' game but only when I threw away all the rules regarding time limits and failing the run/restarting the runs. The game has way too many "Pick path A or path B? Path B? You lose" moments especially when time is a factor. The design wants you to fail it multiple times until you nail the perfect run, but it is completely unfun with a group of friends basically having to memorize the optimal path in order to do it correctly. I bought the original game and the Zombie set that came after it; after I did both of those I was pretty much done and didn't want to see the rest. I heard the newer editions/base games are 'better' but I haven't looked into what's better about them.
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Apr 19, 2023 21:52
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Infinitum posted:Seems to work OK I think? That response is very specifically the Gloomhaven rule/guidance. Frosthaven is the inverse (remove it from the game unless it says otherwise). EDIT: Got paranoid that I'd been playing wrong so went to look up the actual rule. 
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May 1, 2023 15:47
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FMguru posted:What gets me about KD is how the various kingdom tracks don't actually affect the kingdom at all long term. The wealth track goes super high or super low, it has no effect on anything except players who have their hidden agendas pay out on whether the tracks are high or low at the end of the game. If the military strength track gets super low, its not as if that triggers a foreign invasion. It's all just grist for the scoring system. Yeah this is the strength of the video game Reigns, which had the game end if any track hit either extreme, so you had to keep things from hitting any of the ends of the tracks. Feels like that should've been a rule in KD as well to force some very careful voting/balancing.
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May 4, 2023 17:44
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Robo Rally? I'm only half joking, it was one of my favorite games growing up when I wasn't 'into board games' yet. I think they remade/re-released it recently.
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May 5, 2023 18:12
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CitizenKeen posted:I've never been truly hyped for a board game since Seafall. The concept of Seafall still gets me every time. It still sounds amazing on paper, and every time I see it on my shelf I get excited all over again. It sucks that the actual game is bad.
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May 30, 2023 16:30
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Grundma posted:I've got just the base game and they claim you can fit a couple extra characters in the box but it seems pretty stuffed as-is. In your experience is it possible? I'm looking to get 1-2 more gearlocks sometime but id rather not do multiple small boxes if I can help it This should be possible; a new gearloc is just one neoprene mat and a dice tray, and the dice trays can fit two gearlocs’ worth of dice in a single tray so they’re easy to combine.
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Jun 25, 2023 17:33
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah Carly is awesome. I watched her FH videos - really solid. She and her crew were... I guess independent campaign testers? for GH2e. They were separate from us regular testers to keep our biases out. They apparently had a blast, too. She works (worked?) for the company that makes the official FH app (Lucky Duck). I would assume that's why her group helped out with 2e.
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Aug 22, 2023 16:46
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So today with the embargo dropping, it's the first time I knew that Ticket to Ride has a Legacy version coming out in November by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock (and Alan Moon). It looks great! https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23885707/ticket-to-ride-legacy-legends-of-the-west-review-spoiler-free My favorite legacy games tend to be the ones where the base game is a solid foundation to build off of, and the rulebook appears to keep the base game (nearly) exactly the same, so I'm very excited to see what all the unlockables bring to the table. Pryce fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Sep 25, 2023 |
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Sep 25, 2023 19:29
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Admiralty Flag posted:Unsolicited advice for Consulting Detective: disregard the explanations of how Holmes solves the mysteries in four clues. These are calculated through black magic and intuitive leaps of fancy. Your score should be calculated on "Did we read any entries we didn't need?" and ignore the Holmes' path. Another fun variant is “spend some time after the case absolutely dunking on what a lovely detective Holmes is for ignoring obvious leads and not following clues in front of him.” We rant at what a terrible job he did for 10-15 minutes after each case and we feel great about how we did because of that.
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Nov 9, 2023 22:28
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Lunsku posted:One hell of a SUSD video on John Company 2nd ed: This is even better than I expected it would be, because it goes beyond the usual 'colonization-themed games are bad/ugly' and into 'no, but because this game is intentionally satirizing the evilness of the Company, it is actually a horror game'. Really insightful piece about art and lenses on difficult topics.
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Nov 29, 2023 17:43
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Finished my first campaign of Distant Skies, and I really enjoyed it! The new rules really heelp smooth over some of the minor gripes I had wth Sleeping Gods, and the less stringent deadline/timer to beat the game gave me so much space to spread out and explore without panicking about timers. I did feel by the back half of the campaign my power had vastly surpassed the challenges, so some boss fights and the finale were both mostly trivial, but given that the whole point of the game is 'amass as much power/options/abilities as you can' I can't really complain. I might do another run starting on Normal difficulty and then bump it up to Hard halfway through if I'm feeling unchallenged. But next run I start with 8 new unlocked cards so I'm excited to try and head in different directions and see how it all changes up.
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Dec 22, 2023 20:12
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MisterBear posted:Are there any Solo game fans here? Or is there a solo gaming thread anywhere? Whoa, I didn't know Bargain Basement Bathysphere got a real version made! I remember printing out the print n' play during the pandemic and completely forgot about it. The production version looks so nice!
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Dec 29, 2023 18:21
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WhiteHowler posted:Here's an example of a verifier I don't know how to evaluate: This was the bit that took me the longest to wrap my head around; like the poster above me explained, the verifier is only verifying one specific conditional; these verifier cards show you all the possible options for what's it's verifying but before you can figure out the actual number, you need to deduce what it's actually verifying. It's not looking at all three numbers, it's only actually examining a single one of them (and you don't know which yet).
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Jan 1, 2024 21:23
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Mr. Squishy posted:I'm sure that TTS was designed as a joke by people who had never heard of designer board games and thought it would be funny to build a frustrating way to play checkers and backgammon. This is why one of the core features is a 'flip table' button.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:41
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CitizenKeen posted:Trip Reports (ish) for Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West. The very first box we opened immediately sold us on this game. It's so perfectly on-theme and obvious in hindsight and one of the most satisfying experiences of any legacy game by far.
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Jan 8, 2024 16:37
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So I started my copy of 7th Citadel and was pretty thrown off by the intro scenario, which felt just as punishing and difficult as the original game. I was initially really unhappy with this game…and then I took a break overnight and came back the next day and started an actual Threat/campaign. My god, this is so much better than the original. There’s far fewer random punishments for making a binary choice, there are tons of mechanics for recovery, and they split up the “campaigns” into multiple scenarios that consist of “go out from the Citadel, do some objectives, then come back when you feel ready to move on”. The scenarios are all “fail forward” where no matter what you move onto the next chapter when you return. Improving the Citadel feels great and gives a ton of options for how to improve your next outing. I’ve done the first two scenarios and had an absolute blast. The story is far more compelling too, so I’m eager to see where it goes. All that to say, if you find the intro a bit hard, don’t sweat it. You gotta take it at its word when it says the objective is to GTFO; don’t try to be a completionist.
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Feb 19, 2024 01:45
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alkanphel posted:Is 7th Citadel still multiplayer unfriendly like 7th Continent? I remember how 7th Continent looked like it could have 4 players but was really best played solo or 2p. I can’t speak to it directly but with both games I looked at the rules and went “yeah I’m not gonna play this with other people”. So probably not much has changed there.
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Feb 19, 2024 16:49
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PRADA SLUT posted:after 3 years it's here boys lets gooooo Welcome to the world of “every game needs a binder from now on”! Life changing.
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Feb 25, 2024 03:06
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Board Games 5E: they hide the fact that you’re just doing a procedure over and over
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Mar 5, 2024 04:14
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panko posted:my expectations were set super high narratively from s1 and I found s2s plot underwhelming. mechanically it was neat, cubes as protection rather than liability and multiple cards for cities in the infection deck changed up the strategy in an interesting way but I’ve forgotten almost everything about s2s plot whereas I’ll always remember the big moments from risk, s1, s0, and betrayal S2 stuck out to me because I love the simple creativity of "Oh it's Pandemic, but the inverse". It definitely swung hard for the fences with most of its mechanics and plans, and it was the first time a Legacy game really went 'off the rails' in terms of not having a base game to work off of. Over time it's become more and more obvious that the stronger Legacy games are ones that have a good game as its foundation in the first place (i.e. Season 1, Risk, Betrayal, Ticket to Ride). But I'll always appreciate a game that tries to go way too big even when it falls on its face (Hi, Seafall!!)
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Mar 15, 2024 14:56
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Anyone have opinions on Mythwind? Seems like a game that's right up my alley. And the reprint Kickstarter just launched: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mccaskellgames/mythwind-reprint-new-content/description
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Mar 26, 2024 14:47
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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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A lot of people don’t like that the Storyteller has some agency in decisions with BOTC, but I lean into that as a game rule I explain explicitly beforehand so that they can incorporate it into their puzzle-solving. The Storyteller’s ultimate goal (aside from making sure everyone is having fun) is to lean towards making the game last to the final night. So while they have rules they have to follow, when given a choice, they typically will lean in favor of the losing team. Once you have a group that plays together enough and the games become too straightforward, that’s when as an ST I will start bending my own decisions and randomizing it slightly more so that you can’t rely on “Storyteller meta” to solve the game.
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May 2, 2024 22:15
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Bottom Liner posted:I haven't played it, but I've read the roles and scenarios and seen it played enough to measure the impact the story teller has. I don't think the storyteller influencing the game removes skill and choice, but it does reduce it. The previous poster even said they make choices as the storyteller randomly to shake thing up. It's still Werewolf at heart and requires social problem solving and probability management, but that extra layer of haze and second guessing is unappealing at every level to me. I hear you, and I think on paper it does sound bad. In reality, with a good ST that just isn’t the way it plays out, it’s fundamentally a solvable puzzle with social elements. That said it absolutely isn’t for everyone. I have friends who ask to sit out at game night if we’re debating about playing it (and then we ultimately play something else instead).
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May 2, 2024 23:47
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:00 |
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The "trick-taking" seems to be extremely thin in the final design of the game, as it appears to come down to "match the lead suit to do all your actions or play any other card to take one single action". I'm not sure if there's more to it than that, but it definitely doesn't seem like the original 'this game is a trick-taking game' pitch.
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May 6, 2024 15:22
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