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Pandemic gets MUCH harder at 4-5 players though, and has the risk of new players getting steered around by the veteran(s).
TTR is good for that number of players. Dominion is good. Oasis is good if you have it, though it's hard to explain.
Blokkus us amazingly entertaining for such a simple game. Good for all ages too.Retired as of October 2014.-
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It's not like there's a single progression tree for experience in games. Catan may be "basic" compared to Puerto Rico, but TTR's gameplay is different from both. If anything it might be more like parts of Risk or Twixt, it's mostly board control with a smattering of random resources.Retired as of October 2014.-
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You say that like it's a bad thing...In post 424, zoraster wrote:But it is one of those games where if everyone else doesn't want you to win and that becomes their primary goal, you'll lose.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Mr. Flay Metatron
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I think that's kinda-sorta the point, though? Any territory-control game with a non-random map is going to have that characteristic to one degree or another.In post 572, Sudo_Nym wrote:Well, maybe breaking is too strong. But there are definitely cities and chokepoints on the map that are more valuable than they may initially appear, and once your group learns what the best routes and tickets are, it can turn the game into a race of "who can build there the fastest"
Also, just played the Switzerland variant. Interesting because it trades shorter routes for more interconnectedness. That's one of the few times I've won.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Sounds like your monotonous playstyle annoyed your friends out of playing before they could develop an effective counter. *shrug*In post 603, Sudo_Nym wrote:Except I almost always win playing my way, so I have no incentive to change. If I were playing on like BSW with high quality players, I'd certainly want to upgrade my play.Retired as of October 2014.-
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So, wemightbe writing an unofficial sequel to Love Letter... anyone played the original? It's a fast, fun little card game.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Haven't played Magic in years. Never played the other two. That said, it kinda depends on your target audience. In general we find that making players pay attention for the entire game is helpful to the game (multitask is just a polite way of saying 'this isn't important to me').In post 788, chamber wrote:mtg/heartstone/soulforge type. Key features being:
A hand of cards giving you options of what to play
Some cost for playing cards
A split between immediate effects and effects that develop your board position for later benefit.
More specifically I'd also likely include some sort of 'vanguard' system ala magics vangaurds/heartstone/and net runner.
I'm torn between heartstones 'everything happens on your turn' design feature, and magics you always need to be paying attention one. Heartstones method really simplifies magics priority and allows people playing it on the computer to more easily mulitask while playing the game, on the other hand simple isn't always a good thing and the reduced options for interactions really shows in heart stone.
Path of Exile is a good (ARPG) example of 'simple doesn't have to mean boring'. Mechanics are easy, details get complex and allow variety. Go is another. Given a choice we will pretty much always choose simpler mechanics to increase buyin and decrease training time, allowing people to get into the game quickly, even if they won't always have a good chance to win right away.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Mr. Flay Metatron
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BGG is, uhhh, nonplussed.In post 805, Porochaz wrote:In post 791, Porochaz wrote:Saw Gormenghast today, anyone recommend it/tell me what its about?
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1076187 ... ormenghastRetired as of October 2014.-
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Smash Upis fun, but holy SHIT are the rules written terribly. Too much emphasis on being 'hip', not enough on things like clarity. Once you play a game or two it goes fast and is fairly intuitive (especially if you've ever done something like Magic), but I kinda wish the winpoint was set at 20 rather than 15. Seems a little random and kept taking us off guard that the game was already over (especially since there are 16 bases to smash, and the most we ever saw was 6).
No one has wonMr. Jackas the Ripper yet... we screwed up and cleared one too many players Turn 1 in the last game, but overall it seems difficult for Jack to win. I could have gotten out Turn 3 if I'd been able to get away from being observed, but I was stuck by a lightpole, 2 squares away from the exit...
GotTimelineandTimeline: Historical Eventsfor giftmas, but going to try to exchange it forChrononauts(based on the excellent time we had playing it at the Portland minimeet, thanks Sudo). Timeline looks like it will suffer badly in replayability.
Also we playedThe Resistancefinally last night, after having enough people present. Definitely a better game with the Plot Card expansion, it's nearly random in the basegame).Retired as of October 2014.-
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Except that EVERY route color has a separate and distinct symbol? On both the card and the route, last I checked (we only own the American version).In post 946, GreyICE wrote:As an unrelated pet peeve, it's completely unplayable in my group because we have a colorblind player and it makes zero attempts to respect that color blindness is even a thing (would you like to build on the red route or the green route? How about the middle finger route?). Literally none. I have very rarely seen a board game that makes so little acknowledgment that color blindness is even a thing (and it would have been very simple to do).
I mean, I get that it's cool to hate on TTR, but let's at least hate on it for things that are true.Retired as of October 2014.-
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It's not invisible in person, your image is pretty small. Also notice how Red is much darker than Green? (Riga/Wilno, Wilno/Warsaw). I don't think your suggestion of making the 'tracks' different shapes would work, that would be an even smaller difference than the symbol currently, and harder to see. Plus you have the Locomotive/Tunnel mechanic in some later versions that already uses the track edge to convey information.In post 954, GreyICE wrote:Okay so later (in a new edition of the game I'd have to give them more money for) they added... an invisible dot to the center.
I greyscaled it. Anyone wanna play this game?
I will concede that I did not know that early versions didn't have the symbol. Sounds like they ARE paying attention to the problem, then.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Yeah, the concept is great but really it's a race to somebody's loss, not your win. I agree with zor that it's likely better with friends (we've never played with more than one acquaintance in the mix).
Tsuro is a lovely $15 game. It just usually is marked at $30 or more.Retired as of October 2014.-
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So yesterday was International Tabletop Day, I guess because Wil Wheaton is famous? idk.
Anyway, I got to watch my friend who is ga-ga over Last Night On Earth play, and I finally understand why she loves that game and I hate it to pieces. She's basically houseruled and custom-charactered it into something much easier and less annoyingly luck-based.
After that I got to play/watch Betrayal. Being Avalon Hill, it is WAY overcomplicated (we rolled the Hidden Traitor haunt, which is really more like Saw with the numbers filed off). We lost miserably with five players, three dead necks by Danger 5. Both of us felt on the way home that Hidden Traitor would work better to just have no traitor at all in that scenario, it was hard enough to get keys and the mess of extra rules were hard to remember. On the other hand the board progression, the Omen/Haunt mechanic, and the character card-balance was quite good. I don't know what scenario we watched at first, it had a Cursed Weapon research thing going on, but the Traitor didn't understand how to use her new role and died too easily.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not a Real GeekTM because I've never seen FD inIn post 1109, quadz08 wrote:Because Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are famous. DUH FLAY.anything.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Played Asteroyds the other evening. It's like Robo Rally on crack. REALLY hard to learn (ok we were drinking, but not that much), but once you get it it's kind of entertaining. I'd definitely want to play with more than 2p next time though (it supports 6), because I won by default of my opponent having bad spatial reasoning and smashing into her 6th asteroid in like 8 turns while I only had 2 of 4 gates completed... I did complete the others anyway to prove I could do it, but rolling dice by yourself sucks.
Also, fuck 'Haggis'. It wants to be a quick trick-taking ditch-your-cards game but it's vastly overcomplicated. Not even linking it, it's that bad.Retired as of October 2014.-
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In post 1444, ChannelDelibird wrote:Thinking about arranging another game of Battlestar Galactica on Vassal - Saturday October 4 would be the next convenient day that I'd be free; anyone else fancy it? Relevant information on how to play on Vassal here.
I miiiight be free. What time(s) are you thinking?
I can never get anybody local to play BSG, so it'd be a good option.Retired as of October 2014.-
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My other thing that 'day' is in the evening (6:30 Central US), so if it can be in my afternoon (European evening), I am almost 100% in.
I am not obligated to it though, so if everyone else wants to do evening, that's fine.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Got theBear CavAwesome Level 9000 expansion forSmash-Up, andBoss Monsterfor Giftmas. Both look hilarious.
Speaking of Civ-like games (which you guys were two months ago) I got to play the other night. Very fun, quite fast, pretty self-explanatory. Pitched at kids but the adults (who were all bigtime Civ veterans) enjoyed the hell out of it too. Once we knew what we were doing, it was probably a 20m game. Good icebreaker/intergenerational game.
Got for my birthday last month. We've now played twice... it's pretty enjoyable, butgood gods does it take foreverfor a relatively simple game. 2400+ 'stories' in the book, each one with multiple options that vary based on your skills or treasures or statuses... this thing REALLY wants to be a video game. Without all the number crunching and page flipping, it would probably take an hour. As it stands, a 3p game took us about 2 1/2 hours (while learning it) and a 5p game took almost 3 1/2 hours. Doesn't scale well. Only other real complaint is that the player tokens are much too large for the board, obscuring your travel routes/city name/etc.Retired as of October 2014.-
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In post 1889, Thesp wrote:If you enjoy that style of game,Agents of Smershis the same, but co-op, and with a tongue-in-cheek James Bond spy theme to it.
Interesting. How long of a play is it?Retired as of October 2014.-
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Evil Hat Productions (FATE, etc) is almost done with the Kickstarter for . This is a boardgame (resources/worker style) set in the same nightmare world as their RPGDon't Rest Your Head. It looks like it's about to fund in the next 48h and they've just reduced the threshold on some stretch goals, so if you want it, get it. The art is amazing and I absolutely love the setting, plus I trust Fred Hicks to make a rock-solid product.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Yeah, that's why I gave up on it. The end game is so disjoint from the rest, and the time investment is purely insane.In post 2471, Vi wrote:Power Grid is a three-hour game that basically comes down to the last turn as long as a given player wasn't knocked out of contention a long time ago. If you're remotely close to the lead, going first on the resource buy will probably win you the game if you've saved up for it.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Related note, are you saying it goes 150x2?? Jesus.In post 2407, Vi wrote:A note about Argent is that you will absolutely go over the advertised game length unless everyone playing has played a couple of games before. I've played several games with people from my department (and lost every one because of silly Astronomy Tower abuse on the part of one of the others/heavy gambling on schools that didn't count) and it was easily over half the gaming session every time.Retired as of October 2014.-
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Finally got to play BSG with 5p the other day - it's fun but brutal (we usually play with 6p - NoSymp variant, which gives the Humans twice as many actions as the Cylons). I got a weird pull...not only was I a Cylon from the outset (Gaeta), but at Kobol I also pulled the second Cylon card! Never even went over to the Cylon Fleet board, as it was more fun to pass on that second unrevealed loyalty card to Helo and watch the humans play WIFOM. After AdmiralPresidentHelo revealed himself, the humans died a couple of turns later with three boarding parties on the board. Ugly synergy there!
I really like the Cylon Fleet and Personal Goal options from the Exodus expansion... they even out the game considerably. Also a friend of mine 3d printed some diemnsional Basestars for me, which help the visual of the board a great deal (especially since the expansion with plastic Basestars is now out of print). Apparently Asmodee Games has bought Fantasy Flight and might be reconfiguring the entire game for re-release...?Retired as of October 2014.-
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So we played another 5p game of BattleStar Galactica last night, and saw something new: 1 Cylon!
The Exodus expansion adds some fuckery to the Loyalty Deck, so it always contains 1 more card than you'll actually play. So a Deck of 11, +1 for Baltar, +1 for Sharon, +1 for a resolved Personal Goal (the other two didn't get resolved, and almost took Fuel to 0), +1 for Cally executing Sharon and me having to reroll as Gaeta.... and the card left on the table was the other YAAC card!
We were paranoid as hellllll. The (revealed) Cylon was pissed at everyone trying to find his incompetent scumbuddy. When it was all over we laughed, the Cylon laughed, the toaster laughed, it was a good time.
::edit:: Assuming I can still do math, that's 7/13 (Initial Loyalty) * 1/7 (Sleeper Loyalty) * 1/2 (Execution) * 1/2 (Personal Goal) = 1/52, or about a 2% chance.Retired as of October 2014.
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