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Guild of Merchant Explorers looks cool but $50 is beyond my price point for "just pick it up and see if it's cool or not"
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May 16, 2022 19:48
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CitizenKeen posted:I played Cartographers over the weekend and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I haven't had that much fun with a new game in a long time. Cartographers rules. I went completionist on it and it wasn't too expensive. If you haven't grabbed it yet I recommend going through the Thunderworks website, because they throw in a skills expansion that is a pretty big improvement.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:05
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Tekopo posted:What’s the most interesting part of cartographers? It sounds interesting but I wanna know where the juice is Like any good placement game, deciding where to place a shape can both score you a lot of points or completely screw you over. The specific thing that Cartographers does well is the seasons mechanic. There's four goals (A to D) and four seasons in a game (spring to winter), and each season scores two of the goals (spring is AB, summer is BC, fall is CD, winter is DA). Scoring high requires balancing the current season's goal with building towards a future one. The seasons also get shorter as they go, which gives the game a good pace. There's also a lot of nice little fantasy theme stuff, like collecting gold or dealing with monster threats, that gives it some extra spice. The game is never really anything other than an abstract game but the character does come through, particularly in expansions. Flaws are that the goal cards can be extremely confusing, so like read and reread them if you haven't played them before. And yeah at the end it kind of devolves into bingo, like waiting on specific cards you need, but I find that fun Lol.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:35
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Played It's A Wonderful World recently and kind of fell in love. It's a drafting game like 7 Wonders with a really quick four rounds, that's set up so the rounds are really meaty and let you build up a little engine quickly. Not a ton of player interaction but I was hate drafting and competing with players across the table way more than in 7W. I was wondering if anyone here has put a lot of time into it, and if it has legs after a dozen plays or so.
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Sep 16, 2022 03:56
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Aramoro posted:I've played a dozen or so games on BGA now and still liking it. Being a drafting game the digital version is faster but the game itself holds up though I'm not convinced about the game balance in asymmetric mode. Aztecs win a lot of games. Yeah the manual says that the asymmetric mode is just for learning the game, it's not balanced at all. Honestly it probably shouldn't be there.
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Sep 16, 2022 23:44
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Perry Mason Jar posted:Played my first Modern Art. I absolutely bodied my two opponents (also first timers) who couldn't break $150 (can't remember exactly) while I ended with like $600. This lead to some feels bad from one opponent who accused me of fumbling the banking role? [To be fair my strategy looked way different than theirs, in the first two rounds they had collectively bought far more paintings than I did, I had like two or three per round. I just drove up bids on stuff and got them to chase, pulling bids as high as $100 and $200 rather than rely on selling to the bank as heavily as they did. I played them more than the board/bank while they hyperfocused on the end of the round.] I won't play with them again til November but it's funny that one of them just loves auction games (newly discovered) while the other doesn't like losing to a score only shown on that end. Is that irreconcilable? Doesn't really matter just curious. I love Modern Art but I've had basically this exact experience with it. Players don't remember that they pay to the player selling a card, and chase five point payouts while the person who's selling cards is making 5x that. I think a table that fully understood the game would try for way higher profit margins. But we all enjoyed it a lot even in a janky table, one of the players basically chased whatever art they liked the most Lol Anyway I actually like the ties go to the left feature, the card counts are balanced around it and makes each artist feel unique in a numbers way. And yeah, there can be only one that gets to 5 so it isn't like game defining.
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Sep 26, 2022 06:24
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Sprawlopolis is good, no idea about Agropolis. I've played both, Agro is really good and way harder. Its main new mechanic is that parks are replaced with livestock spaces, and those spaces have one of a few different animals. That makes for some tough goals, but they're really fun. The animals are hard to see on the cards tho Lol. Definitely play Sprawl first, Agro is really for people who have just played the first one to death. I've played the combo expansion, it's cool in concept but I couldn't really get into it. It loses the quick pace that makes me like Sprawlopolis in the first place. The expansion that does make the game more fun is Beaches, which puts three cards in your deck that force you to put a limit on the size of your city as well as a new goal to make up for the limit. Forces you to change things up a lot, it's really cool.
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Oct 2, 2022 18:52
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FirstAidKite posted:Sparkle Curry (This one's on the tip of my tongue but I can't place the name) Sparkle Kitty Lol
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Nov 4, 2022 21:08
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Bodanarko posted:I loved the spin that Raiders of the North Sea put onto WP (Do all the "NOUNS of the DIRECTION NOUN" games use a variation of it?) No, some of their games don't even have WP. But they usually have something clever like that going on.
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Jan 9, 2023 18:01
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Wallet posted:I will say to its credit that the expansions have smoothed off a lot of the rough edges, particularly Oceania. I've played way more of base Wingspan than I actually wanted to just because it's so popular, and yeah I'll second this. It turned it from an ehh game to something I actually liked.
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Jan 13, 2023 23:25
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Admiralty Flag posted:The one thing Oceania didn't fix is that a solid default strategy (unless you get birds that suggest a better one, like wetlands multi-tucking) is to make sure your grasslands are full by the fourth round, ensure you've got lots of egg space, and just poo poo out eggs for your last five actions. Last game I played, I was laying six eggs a turn thanks to a couple of brown powers, which is neat but not especially noteworthy. This is still an improvement on base Wingspan, where even if you aren't going for an egg strategy you'll probably end up laying eggs for points eventually. It's still probably weighted towards eggs, but Oceania felt more open for possibilities.
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Jan 14, 2023 00:40
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Morpheus posted:I tried to get Final Girl in an order the other day, but they were all sold out except for poltergeist, and a friend already owns that so I decided not to :/ I haven't played Final Girl, but I love Hostage Negotiator which uses the same system. It's definitely a game where luck can cause very good and very bad things to happen, up until the very end, but luck isn't everything. You feel clever when you win, and can think of a way to improve when you lose. And most importantly, the points where luck is involved is crates a satisfying story arc. Make sure you understand the strategy basics, they were easily looked over in the HN manual and help you handle the randomness.
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Feb 6, 2023 03:38
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Perry Mason Jar posted:You should've blocked them as soon as they spammed you and saved yourself a lot of heartache. That sort of disregard of boundaries is never just the one off thing. Yeah I find myself having to make judgement calls about cutting people off every couple weeks in this hobby. I've met some great people board gaming, and some really terrible people lol.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:06
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Infinitum posted:Watching the latest NRB Blood on the Clocktower game and it's definitely a game I would play, and I would love, but if you don't have a regular crew that enjoys werewolf/mafia and is comfortable with that terminology & mindthink it really would be a bit of dust collector. I first played BotC at a game night with a guy who also wasn't sure if he was going to actually play it a ton, so he printed out a bunch of stuff and we had to look at the roles on our phones, very jank stuff. And despite all that, it ruled! He eventually went in on the big boy, which is worth it. It makes more complicated scripts work lol. But for Trouble Brewing you can start without it. It's worth noting that game night group was just people who showed up. Not everyone liked it as much as I did, but it works with more than just people who are experienced with this kind of game. Like it's not like everyone on NRB knows what they're doing, lol. So yeah, it's definitely not a game that everyone needs, but it might be worth a second look.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:13
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Is this game actually officially out? It always seemed like one of those absurdly simple projects that could not get its poo poo together. I was in contact with them a few years ago to be one of their 'promoters' or whatever as a storyteller to drum up interest at local game stores but then they eventually ghosted me and I completely forgot about it. Every so often I'd remember it and see some Kickstarter style nonsense. There's definitely some kickstarter nonsense going on with BotC (not shocked that happened to you, lol), and they could have made it work at a cheaper price. But the game rules enough that it washes away a lot of the sour stuff. For the right person it's worth looking into.
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Feb 22, 2023 18:39
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Poopy Palpy posted:I got the tuner cube, tried to use it once or twice, but a real problem was defining what happens when your time runs out. In a 2 player game of chess you can just lose, but in a multiplayer euro game you can't just drop a player, they're explicitly not designed for that. Everyone I played games with would feel a social pressure to not use up their timer, I think that might be all you need.
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Mar 2, 2023 22:28
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7 Wonders plays 7, and It's A Wonderful World plays 5 (7 with expansion). Both aren't too hard to teach, and use a simultaneous drafting system so there's not much downtime. That's a kind of game I like to play with a large group. I also love Lords of Waterdeep, but if you're playing high player counts the expansion is basically required. 5 base, 6 with expansion.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:53
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It's special when a game can take a large group and not drag. There's games I've played more than I'd actually like to just because they're smooth with a large group.
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Mar 9, 2023 22:03
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It seems a little bloated but it might be fun to play.
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Mar 22, 2023 20:42
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The biggest red flag on the gamefound is that it's launching with an expansion lol.
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Mar 22, 2023 20:45
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I played Dwellings of Eldervale which is the designer's previous game, which was just about as overstuffed with mechanics as this one but everything was so simple that it worked anyway. The extremely over the top production turned me off, and there's more focused games that I'd rather play, but it's mostly a shrug from me. This one seems to be trying to that but even more. It is definitely amusing how lazer focused this one is on croundfunding types lol.
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Mar 22, 2023 20:55
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I love Furnace but I think you kind of have to play with the rule where when you get a card you place it immediately and can't move it. Without it you spend too much time playing a barebones engine builder when you should be playing a great auction game. Chill la Chill posted:Hello have you heard of Vanuatu Yea the bonus for not winning is what makes Furnace so good.
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Apr 11, 2023 22:49
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My buddy bought Great Western Trail: Argentina despite having never played the original, and while it was an absolute pain to learn once we got going it was a good time. I'm not sure if I would even want to get the base game, having all the extra stuff to do gives you room to specialize that I really appreciated. Reminds me a lot of Brass: Birmingham that way.
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Apr 22, 2023 19:41
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Azran posted:It's a Wonderful World I get a ton of plays out of this one cause it's quick to set up, plays quick, and is pretty satisfying
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Apr 23, 2023 03:59
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Leperflesh posted:crossposting from the coupons & deals subforum because I know this is a popular game in these parts: Root has been on discount a lot and it's cool, I think they're cutting their margin in order to sell more expansions.
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May 5, 2023 20:24
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My favorite last few years game is Anno 1800, it's a midweight euro by Martin Wallace (Brass/ Railways of the World) based on the PC game. Extremely clever design, involves building up your own workers and factories in front of you, while competing for a limited number of upgrades in the center. It bakes conflict with other players into the efficiency puzzle in ways that I'm used to seeing in much meaner games, this one flows very nicely otherwise in a way I like. And the pacing is really good, a lot happens really quickly at the start, then it feels like it could just expand forever, before it ends really quickly and in an exciting way. I recommend looking up rules variants, there's a few ways I play that makes it a little less luck driven, but it's still pretty loosy goosy. It's just very fun though in general. There's been talk about an expansion that makes it more of a gamers game and I'm excited to see what that's like.
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May 10, 2023 19:13
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For what it's worth there's a couple of house rules that can fix those issues, such as removing powerful cards from the deck before dealing starting hands and doing draw two, pick one for exploration. I'm really casual about that kind of thing though so I still really liked it as a base game. Edit: I wouldn't use all of these but here's a couple of popular house rules.
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May 10, 2023 21:44
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Luck of the draw can be really brutal in a lot of games. I just played Ark Nova for the first time and goddamn should never wait for specific cards in that cause you'll get super hosed. Still really liked it, though.
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May 10, 2023 22:04
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Spiteski posted:Dammit I just recently got a copy of base + norwegians and printed an organizer for it! That's cool as hell and will continue to be cool after whatever it is they're making comes out.
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May 15, 2023 23:32
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A good engine builder should end before you get a chance to actually finish it. The juice is in figuring out shortcuts and what you can do without.
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May 18, 2023 19:11
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Mr. Squishy posted:Wasn't the reprint a catastrophic fuckup that resulted in few games produces, an argument on who owned the rights to the game, and Chudyk declaring himself done with the whole ordeal? Ars Technica did a rundown of all the info we're ever gonna get about what happened.
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May 22, 2023 04:47
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interrodactyl posted:Anyone have thoughts on Paladins of the West Kingdom? I'm missing a more complex worker placement game in my collection, and from the reviewsd it seems pretty solid. Almost no player interaction, but the core puzzle is extremely satisfying. The paladins deck where you choose what you're good at for that turn is extremely slick and gives the game a good arc, and gives games variety. I haven't played it in a while because of the multiplayer-solitaireness but it's real good. I like Hadrian's Wall better as a complex solo euro. Paladins has a lot of stuff that feels like it should be putting players into conflict but they really don't. Hadrian's doesn't even pretend, and with simultaneous turns and a quick setup it's easier to get to the table. And yeah it has a really simple solo mode that's very good. I think which one you like more depends on what kind of puzzle you like. Paladins gives you a smaller number of things to manage and is less random, Hadrian's has a much larger amount of stuff to manage and some really fun gambles. Both are worth a look.
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May 25, 2023 18:50
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I've just been doing this in my head: https://twitter.com/NoPunIncluded/status/1564586027746054145?s=20
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May 26, 2023 17:34
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Memnaelar posted:I see that complaint frequently and I don't entirely get it, maybe because I'm really lucky. I think you might just be good at presenting games. There's definitely games that were presented to me poorly that I hated at first but eventually liked, and games that enjoyed more than maybe I would otherwise just because the person presenting them got excited.
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Jul 9, 2023 01:49
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I've definitely gotten salty about board games but I've convinced myself that's just part of me enjoying it.
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Jul 11, 2023 04:07
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My experience with early plays of GWT was a pretty leisurely experience where we started quickly but basically always had our heads in the manual. With Brass we had a long teach upfront (you can't learn it as you go) but once we got it we barely looked at it. It's less about manual quality and more just the designs of the game being different.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:05
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They added a ~$20 mini Solo Gloomhaven game to their big croundfunding thing that looks pretty rad. Surprised I didn't hear about it until it bubbled up on BGG.
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Jul 13, 2023 21:20
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taser rates posted:I've played the computer game it's based on which is basically single player Carc, which makes this board game adaptation kind of amusing. It looks like the board game is also single player Carc, the only real difference between the solo and co-op versions is that people take turns placing pieces. So yeah, no defense against quarterbacking, but that's not really an issue with a game this chill. The PC game is incredibly good though, and the board game looks like it's adapting all the stuff that's great about the game to something that's better on the table, so not surprising that it's winning awards. The core of what's addictive about the original it is that you (mostly) have the freedom to place any piece anywhere, but then little optimization puzzles start sticking out. It's a lot of trying to fix problems that you made yourself. And yeah while it looks like that's all in the board game, I'll think I'll stick with the PC game, just because I have too many solos as is.
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Jul 21, 2023 17:32
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uncle blog posted:I've seen Stationfall described as a heavy weight party game.This actually sounds right up my alley, but after reading more about it, I suspect the weight might actually be a bit much for my playgroup. Are there any good suggestions for a medium weight party game? "Medium weight party game" is i think the right attitude to bring to Betrayal at House on the Hill.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:24
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Eraflure posted:More than half of my games of betrayal were either close to unwinnable for one side, or just completely hosed over a player. Highlights include: All that stuff sounds funny and cool to me, though it's worth mentioning that a lot of that kind of stuff will just not happen in the third edition, for better or for worse.
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Jul 24, 2023 15:50
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