Board Games!

This forum is specifically for discussing non-Mafia games
(board, card, video, we're not picky)
.
Playing
such games should happen in the Mish Mash forum, of course.
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Post Post #261 (isolation #0) » Mon Oct 15, 2012 1:01 pm

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In post 260, Shmugen wrote:7 Wonders has become the modern day gateway game, replacing Catan.
I can vouch for this.
(That and I'm told Catan is less interesting.)
Of the board games I've been introduced to 7 Wonders is probably still my favorite. The major problem is that you have to spend your first five games asking "so what does THIS symbol do again". :P
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Post Post #293 (isolation #1) » Tue Oct 16, 2012 11:15 am

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In post 287, zoraster wrote:So THAT'S why he was bitching about TTR being "just card drawing and luck" last night.
I was being entirely calm about the subject!

Also, what Triple D didn't mention is that my moves are an art form all their own - nobody playing can ever quite tell what I'm going for... which I suppose is nothing new in general.
I still lose due to silly things like misreading my ticket.
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Post Post #916 (isolation #2) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 11:57 am

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I am apparently successful at recruiting people to play/purchase Sentinels of the Multiverse... without owning any of it myself.
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Post Post #919 (isolation #3) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:21 pm

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That's understandable. Any cooperative game is basically a single-player optimization experiment with the joy or frustration of dealing with other people. Maybe I haven't hit the point where it loses its fun.
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Post Post #1786 (isolation #4) » Sun Nov 23, 2014 3:19 am

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In post 1785, Oman wrote:
Lords of Waterdeep
is amazing. I love it so much.

Anyone played the expansions?
I did once, and I think the new boards make the game substantially more interesting. Having more places to go makes it a bit less likely that you'll have to stare down a small list of bad choices in the endgame turns. The Corruption mechanic was pretty neat as a collective-risk concept, though given how I was unable to screw my opponents over with it I'd say it might be a little forgiving. Also, being able to play Intrigue without going to Waterdeep Harbor is a lot better than it sounds.
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Post Post #2295 (isolation #5) » Sun Nov 01, 2015 5:25 am

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That is the face of someone who's very unhappy about losing all those wars.
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Post Post #2407 (isolation #6) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:19 am

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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. Other than that everyone agrees that it's top of class.

@GreyICE - on the subject, if you have the expansion, Golem Lab has never showed up in one of my games but it looks kind of lame (i place here turn one, and now I get an extra placement that will go in the location I would have gone to had the Lab not existed). Also, Synthesis Chamber showed up in one game but no one used it. Your thoughts?
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Post Post #2408 (isolation #7) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:26 am

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Oh right yes actual content.

Code of Nine
is another hidden information game for exactly four players. It's 50 minutes long, 15 turns per player, so fairly light. You have an ~idea~ of how to score, and it's up to you to learn or guess how far those ideas go. Or whether you've actually been driving your score into the negatives, if not disqualifying yourself outright. Watch your opponents carefully!
Last edited by Vi on Wed Oct 05, 2016 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #2412 (isolation #8) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 12:20 pm

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Child, please. Look at the B side of the Archmage's Staff and tell me it's not something to cause RL knife fights at the gaming table.
Cast a spell from your office, even one you have not yet researched, without paying any mana.
hello yes I would like to keep everyone waiting on whether everyone else's favorite room is going to be dynamited or whether I'm going to shuffle two of my mages there instead

<looks at Golem Lab again>
MERIT: Immediately pay 1 Mana to place a Temporary Mage and Lock its room
NO NEVER MIND THIS THING IS OP
but I mean you're sorta overhyping the ability to move mages around; like there's a bunch of B side rooms that are also immediate effect that are asking for a pump 'n' dump

Synthesis items are cool but they're disgustingly overpriced. There aren't many cases where I'd trade a Spell or especially a Supporter for anything, especially not in combination with a Treasure I must not care about yet still got somehow.
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Post Post #2417 (isolation #9) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 11:51 pm

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In post 2413, GreyICE wrote:Side B Archmage is a nightmare that I can't imagine. Am serious.
But doesn't that make you want to imagine it?~

<_< I'd be a lot better at the game (and remembering things about it) if there were people to play with, but due to the nature of the group, all social activity that doesn't have to do with college football appears to have been cancelled for the rest of the year. I guess there's the local gaming meetup or something.

The ability to assassinate voters, without playing the scenario, looked overpriced and limited. :/
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Post Post #2420 (isolation #10) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 6:00 am

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In post 2419, Titus wrote:Argent is fun.

Although, I don't know a single spell that effects shafowed mages.
Planar Disjunction. Boots everyone in a room and then shoves every shadowing mage into this reality.

Also the spell in the expansion that's basically the equivalent of snapping the room board in your hands and throwing the pieces back into the box.
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Post Post #2443 (isolation #11) » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:32 am

Post by Vi »

$37 is not a terrible sale price for a
hipster game
game that isn't Clue or Boggle. Usually they're in the $50 range regardless of how much material is actually used for the game (looking at you, Code of Nine). This is why you look for sales; they can go for shocking discounts.
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Post Post #2471 (isolation #12) » Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:29 am

Post by Vi »

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.

The midgame and onward is a huge resource stuffing game. Since powering plants equals money, spending to stop others from getting an income (or breaking even) is etc. Similarly, if you can kneecap someone in the expansion phase by making it prohibitively expensive to bypass your cities, you can make the game a long and unrewarding experience for them while you can focus on one fewer player.

For similar reasons, picking up the cleanest power plant available is not necessarily a good idea if it gives you the highest-value plant. It doesn't matter if you have the Lv. 50 5-for-free God Lab if there aren't any resources left on the market to power your other plants since you're going last forever on that phase.

On the other hand, going into resources no one else is into is pretty cool. Garbage costs a lot early but if you're the first in that market you may be able to get a few turns of super-cheap fuel. The effect is similar for nuclear but probably not as large in magnitude.

Bear in mind it has been a few years since I played so etc.
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Post Post #2486 (isolation #13) » Mon Oct 31, 2016 11:40 am

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In post 2474, Chevre wrote:7 Wonders (easy to explain and always a hit)
Meaning this as nothing against you or 7 Wonders, but it's not a game I'd consider "easy to explain". The first few games are full of questions about how the heck Science scores and what these weird yellow cards do.

Me and some people from work finally scraped together an afternoon of board games (apparently football was on a bye week or something). Argent will still never get played because it requires only these two people to be there and for them to both want to play it. :(

*Carcassonne - In which I made an unofficial allegiance with the yellow player so we could score the same cities and farms, and mutually hateblocked the green player from completing a field that would have swung a 24-point farm. I came out ahead mostly from better placements (gg experience) with like 80-90 points or something silly, carrying the yellow player ten points behind me and coming close to lapping the green player, who had gone all-or-nothing on drawing one of the two tiles he needed to make that field.

*Ra - A bizarre session where two auction tracks got wiped, I wound up with like 11 pharaohs, and all three of us wanted the second epoch to have a giant meteor end it. I thought I was going to lose it 4certain because I only had highest pharaohs, high suns, and one or two 3-civ rounds, but the score turned out 37-38-40 in my favor despite everyone else having all the Niles and one person with like 25 points on monuments. Everyone agreed that no one made any obvious mistakes.

*Sentinels of the Multiverse - Parse: Fugue State + Dark Watch NightMist + X-TREME PRIME WARDENS CAPTAIN COSMIC vs. The Dreamer at the Tomb of Anubis. The environment killed so many Projections. Then it pushed The Dreamer to 1 HP and began indirectly killing us. Then it killed more projections (five out of the six needed to end the game). Then it killed us. We would have won had we been able to survive the Environment turn. :/
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Post Post #2490 (isolation #14) » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:42 pm

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In post 2488, Mr. Flay wrote:
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.
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.
FWIW Power Grid: Factory Manager is a similar game with only a one-hour time investment.

LLD's time scale on Argent looks right, but playing with more than two new players just shouldn't happen, ever. It's too probable that at least one of the new players is going to short-circuit from information overload. (Full disclosure: I was that player when I first played)
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Post Post #2496 (isolation #15) » Fri Nov 04, 2016 12:09 am

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In post 2496, GreyICE wrote:It's a
really
big and interesting game.
Fixed. My core group (of professional nerds) agrees that it's the best game they've ever played, but also a brain-burner.

Also, I'd probably be in for committing arson dangerously near GreyICE's kids if four players wouldn't be too many. Unless the above post was referring to Sudo's post. Personally I'd be up for that too.

But, if 90 minutes is too long, I'd again point to Code of Nine as long as you have exactly four players. It's similar in concept but has many fewer moving parts.
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Post Post #2550 (isolation #16) » Sat Jan 07, 2017 5:28 am

Post by Vi »

Hmm, I guess it's not too bad if I post this.

Over the weekend I introduced Natirasha to my library. We played three rounds of Carcassonne; I won two, she won one. All of the games turned into cutthroat turf warz with both of us committing really unhealthy numbers of farmers and basically betting the game on who drew magic field-completing tiles (which never ended well). We played a game of Ra where I won by one point because :monuments: ; I went from 1 point to 36 in the last round (after losing two points for fewest Pharaohs). We also played a few rounds of Sentinels of the Multiverse and enjoyed how hilariously overpowered everything is, although "lol pick who you like" failed pretty hard to Miss Information.

I really don't get to play these things as often as I'd like. :/
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Post Post #2556 (isolation #17) » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:42 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 2556, zoraster wrote:
In post 2554, mykonian wrote:carcassonne is the kind of game I somehow keep playing but don't see the point of. There seems to be so little judgement to it :(
There's a pretty good degree of control over winning, particularly if you add an expansion or two (the basic ones, not the weird ones).
This.
More than the random element of who flips which tiles, it's largely a game of speculation over how the game will expand.
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Post Post #2561 (isolation #18) » Sun Jan 08, 2017 7:23 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2559, mykonian wrote:
In post 2557, Vi wrote:
In post 2556, zoraster wrote:
In post 2554, mykonian wrote:carcassonne is the kind of game I somehow keep playing but don't see the point of. There seems to be so little judgement to it :(
There's a pretty good degree of control over winning, particularly if you add an expansion or two (the basic ones, not the weird ones).
This.
More than the random element of who flips which tiles, it's largely a game of speculation over how the game will expand.
Must admit that I only play "a" base game but between hijacking places other people have created and building your own, it feels like there are often right and wrong decisions, but not many murky "well this is sort of mediocre but I'll make it work?".
I don't really agree. Some decisions are better than others when they're presented but given that you have a bunch of meeples and they aren't doing anything if you aren't throwing them onto the field, making things work even if you're not necessarily sure how is a pretty big part of the game.
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Post Post #2566 (isolation #19) » Sun Jan 08, 2017 1:52 pm

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In post 2563, mykonian wrote:heh, yes, but then you look at your tiles, look at your men, and go "get to buissness work". It's not so much a choice, is it, there's a clear best (locking down as many potential options away from your opponent by putting your men down).
yes playing the game to score points is the best option

You're missing that you have a limited number of workers. If you're overzealous about locking options away, you lose.
Work together with someone to make one big city and get lots of points. Carcassone is all about cooperation!
especially when you make them link a piece that's already in play to that city... and that piece has a second worker of yours on it :?
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Post Post #2583 (isolation #20) » Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:55 am

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In post 2582, chamber wrote:The term is poorly defined and I think first came about to separate the european board games coming out in the early 2000's from the traditional like monopoly. I'd differentiate it from 'ameritrash' games in the following ways:

Indirect competition rather than direct competition (I'm going to out bid you for something, or use a limited resource before you can, not steal territory from you, or kill your units).
No elimination, you play to the end even if you are doing terribly.
Some abstracted victory condition like Victory Points rather than something like player elimination.

You can probably find counter examples where I'd ignore 1 or more of those though, like powergrid is euro as heck and doesn't use victory points.
In addition, by reputation euro games are much more complex and aren't intended for parties.

>Amerigames - Press the Pop-o-matic, then try to make as many words as you can from the letters that you see.
>Eurogames - You have a pool of workers, and you can assign them to these different spots on the board, and for each spot on the board you can throw dice to get resources or you can use those resources to get tools you can use to get swag that gets you points/better resources, and then if you don't have enough of a certain resource you lose points (or was it workers?).

If I tried to explain this to my mother she'd give me a glassy stare right around the second comma.
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Post Post #2585 (isolation #21) » Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:08 am

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Catan definitely doesn't pass the parent test. You have like five different kinds of resources but you can only get them on certain dice rolls, and you use them to expand your territory which can get you access to different resources and bonuses from ships; your goal is to get points from building things which have rules on when and how you can build them. Also some resources are more common than others because of math. Also there's a robber you can move to hose people.

The two games I was talking about were Boggle and Stone Age fwiw. I think most "gamers" would write off anything that requires rolling dice (including Stone Age) as "light" without thinking too hard about how different the games are from games that are a lot more self-explanatory like Clue, Sorry!, or even chess.

Also let me make sure I'm not slanting things too much...

In Monopoly you roll dice and buy the property you land on. Whoever lands there after you pays you. You can get more money from them by getting whole sets and investing in them. You can randomly go to jail and get stuck. There's an auction mechanic no one actually uses. You win when everyone else is bankrupt.

...and as evidenced by the auction thing, even Monopoly as it's designed to be played is too heavy for the parent test.
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Post Post #2587 (isolation #22) » Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:50 am

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The parent test is "can this game be taught to people who never graduated from college, hate math, have had their brains and attention spans pulped by decades of childrearing, and distrust anything from before 1990".

I may seem a little cynical but family time became something I stopped wishing for when I won every game of Connect Four, Stratego was too unfamiliar to play, and Monopoly was mostly an excuse to make up rules to bullshit for an hour, which I gathered was the fun of the exercise from their point of view. It's the same distrust that causes me to wince whenever anyone over 35 talks about pokeymons.
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Post Post #2602 (isolation #23) » Wed Feb 15, 2017 9:47 am

Post by Vi »

Hanabi.
*ducks thrown object*

Sushi Go! is basically 7 Wonders Lite, and is pretty easy to understand. That's a card drafting game.

Splendor is a solid pick and I don't think I've ever seen someone criticize it. That's a resource snowball game.

IDK I actually don't know too many two-player games. Dvonn was pretty good; it was like checkers/whatever that cone stacking game was, but for nerds.

Oh right, Ra. Auction game. I think LLD will hype it. But it's not for two players.
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Post Post #2606 (isolation #24) » Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:32 am

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Carcasonne is worker placement and "world building", so there's that. Love Letter is a really light game that's basically Coup Lite if memory serves.

I think all of the games I've mentioned are best with three. Love Letter probably wants more.

With three players Lords of Waterdeep can come in as a worker placement game as well. It has its flaws but there's a reason it has staying power. Five Tribes has been brought up and it's worth bringing up again because it's a neat board control/point salad/resource management game.

What is Citadels? I feel like that's something I should have heard of.
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Post Post #2611 (isolation #25) » Wed Feb 15, 2017 1:02 pm

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In post 2610, mykonian wrote:I guess if you want to find a bad point is that it could ruin relationships (I TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT CARD).
This, plus people will look at their own hand out of reflex for the first several attempts at games.
The last time I played it, I handed everyone their cards facing the right way and it worked out well.

But yeah it's one of those games where no one actually hates it but everyone groans from the bad memories when it gets suggested.
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Post Post #2621 (isolation #26) » Thu Feb 16, 2017 8:50 am

Post by Vi »

I feel similar. I played PR once and didn't like it much, but now that I have an idea how it works, etc.

It's definitely a game that heavily favors the person teaching you. :?

I've met two kinds of people when talking about Ra: the kind that can't stop smirking and the kind who hate it and you secretly think it's because they were played for patsies remorselessly.
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Post Post #2724 (isolation #27) » Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:08 am

Post by Vi »

I disliked Catan, for what it's worth. (my experience was akin to "let's get screwed by the dice for 20 minutes straight")

I say this often enough already but I'll restate that Pandemic is not actually fun while Forbidden ___ is mostly good for wasting time. Go get a real co-op game.

Sushi Go and 7 Wonders are basically the same game; the former is a lot more casual so you can get grandmas and people who are only hanging around to be polite into it.

Power Grid: Factory Manager exists, which is similar to Power Grid but doesn't take 2+ hours.
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Post Post #2730 (isolation #28) » Wed Apr 19, 2017 1:07 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 2726, PJ. wrote:
Vi wrote:Go get a real co-op game.
Yes?
More experienced people than me have chimed in, but Sentinels of the Multiverse has never not sufficed for my game sessions. Several people I've played with have told me that they enjoyed it despite fully expecting to hate it. Outstanding flavor, huge variety (the expansions add a lot), interesting decisions to make. It is vulnerable to becoming a one-player game, but there's so much variety in all the hero/villain/environment combinations that one person isn't going to know all of the "best" moves all the time. If you try to play the complex stuff it can get a bit fiddly though.

I like co-op games for one of the same reasons I don't like Mafia - if I'm around a group of people I like enough to willingly spend hours with, I'd rather do things that capitalize on us liking each other.
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Post Post #2732 (isolation #29) » Wed Apr 19, 2017 1:49 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 2731, hasdgfas wrote:
In post 2730, Vi wrote:
In post 2726, PJ. wrote:
Vi wrote:Go get a real co-op game.
Yes?
More experienced people than me have chimed in, but Sentinels of the Multiverse has never not sufficed for my game sessions. Several people I've played with have told me that they enjoyed it despite fully expecting to hate it. Outstanding flavor, huge variety (the expansions add a lot), interesting decisions to make. It is vulnerable to becoming a one-player game, but there's so much variety in all the hero/villain/environment combinations that one person isn't going to know all of the "best" moves all the time. If you try to play the complex stuff it can get a bit fiddly though.

I like co-op games for one of the same reasons I don't like Mafia - if I'm around a group of people I like enough to willingly spend hours with, I'd rather do things that capitalize on us liking each other.
My biggest problem with Sentinels is that it has so many little fiddly bits, but it's still a fun game.
Yeah. The people I've played it with have said that without me playing sherpa for which moves are legal and when people need to dunk their life counters, it would be a lot less enjoyable for them.

It's actually kind of interesting to learn that stuff because most of it was intentionally designed (e.g. the Argent Adept being able to use weaselry drop six powers on his turn), so I don't mind it, but people who only remember the game exists when someone else pulls it out would rather delegate that to a "moderator".
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Post Post #2749 (isolation #30) » Thu Apr 20, 2017 3:35 am

Post by Vi »

@P'jager - Sentinels does superheroes better than Legendary. That's as much a credit to Sentinels as it is a diss on Legendary, where it felt like a skin more than providing any sense of "playing a superhero".

The gameplay of Legendary was meh. I didn't really find anything in it I liked enough to play again.
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Post Post #2752 (isolation #31) » Thu Apr 20, 2017 4:07 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2750, PJ. wrote:I really, really dislike the scoring in carcassone. Alicia loves that like...we make the board, but also hates the scoring.
For information, how so? Were you running out of pieces?
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Post Post #2783 (isolation #32) » Sat Apr 29, 2017 9:25 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2778, PJ. wrote:VI? Vi? What does Vi have against regular meeples?

I need to pick up the LoW expansion.
I frigging
hate
everything that could have such a stupid name as ~meeples~

jk

The Waterdeep expansions are cool. It's a lot harder to get screwed via running out of spaces, which makes it easy to forgive any way they could be seen as monopolizing the main game.

Now that it's mentioned I don't think I've seen many games with visually distinct pieces. Basically, Argent (which has a different visual distinction problem).
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Post Post #2785 (isolation #33) » Sat Apr 29, 2017 9:47 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2784, Lady Lambdadelta wrote:
In post 2783, Vi wrote:
In post 2778, PJ. wrote:VI? Vi? What does Vi have against regular meeples?

I need to pick up the LoW expansion.
I frigging
hate
everything that could have such a stupid name as ~meeples~

jk

The Waterdeep expansions are cool. It's a lot harder to get screwed via running out of spaces, which makes it easy to forgive any way they could be seen as monopolizing the main game.

Now that it's mentioned I don't think I've seen many games with visually distinct pieces. Basically, Argent (which has a different visual distinction problem).
Argent lol
I don't know whose time mage this is but I'MMA GONNA NUKE IT get outta my space

wait that was mine

oh well #WORTH IT
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Post Post #2848 (isolation #34) » Sun May 28, 2017 5:11 am

Post by Vi »

Played Power Grid yesterday. Improving your position and winning that game are two completely different skill sets, as I found out when one of the other players started talking at length about his position and was said "and [Vi] *could* win this if they had this and this..." and I was like "whoa, I can win this?" (I clearly have very little experience with winning Power Grid.)

It's a game that's 30 minutes of last turn and 2.5 hours preceding it that consist mostly of spite.
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Post Post #2855 (isolation #35) » Mon May 29, 2017 3:17 am

Post by Vi »

Legendary is a game that seems dominated by better games on every metric.

WRT co-op games, when I run Sentinels I try to avoid talking to people about "but maybe you should do this" unless we're really, totally screwed unless the player knows to do ___. Maybe I shouldn't even do that, but losing because "oh! I didn't know I had that card" or "oh! I didn't read the card correctly" seems as bad or worse than me saying "check out ____" as they search their deck for the card of their choice. Either way, the small suboptimal moves usually don't matter in the end, and if they do, that's how people learn.
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Post Post #2861 (isolation #36) » Tue May 30, 2017 4:35 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2860, xRECKONERx wrote:Five Tribe is continuing to creep higher and higher on my list of faves every time I play it.
This is a good opinion. I like how it combines so many strategic elements with having the absolute wackiest game mechanic.
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Post Post #2872 (isolation #37) » Wed May 31, 2017 2:30 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2870, chamber wrote:I've played five tribes once and it seems like it would be the worst candidate ever for analysis paralysis. How do you fight against that?
Are you going first?
If so, do the awesome thing.
Otherwise, look for a good move but don't expect it to be there when your turn comes around. So get good at finding more awesome things.
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Post Post #2914 (isolation #38) » Tue Aug 08, 2017 4:17 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2910, Equinox wrote:I found out about Tragedy Looper a couple of weeks ago while browsing the local game store. One bad life decision later, I am the proud owner of one box.

This is relevant to absolutely no one. I just wanted to share because it'll be some time before I can find someone who would play. :?
Very interesting choice, yet highly relevant to your interests. I think you'll enjoy it! (don't read the book)

Uh, since it's all scenario-based, if you play it enough with the same people you'll eventually need to draw up your own
fanfiction
scenarios.
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Post Post #2982 (isolation #39) » Thu Aug 24, 2017 7:27 am

Post by Vi »

In post 2956, PJ. wrote:@ LLD: How is Code of Nine? It's on super sale at my lgs with Eminent Domain.
Not LLD, but--
I like it as a light hidden information game. It plays VERY quickly for a game that's not a glorified party game. It's mechanically very concise (every player gets 15 moves), pretty easy to explain, and you can play aggressive mind games. It's also a game where you can see how you're about to get screwed over several turns before it happens but well after you can do anything about it. I have ~thoughts~ about the design of the hidden information cards but you can come up with your own opinions.

The major concern is that you want to play it with a group of exactly four people.
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Post Post #3362 (isolation #40) » Fri Jul 26, 2019 12:49 am

Post by Vi »

Digging through my old posts ITT.
In post 2861, Vi wrote:
In post 2860, xRECKONERx wrote:Five Tribe is continuing to creep higher and higher on my list of faves every time I play it.
This is a good opinion. I like how it combines so many strategic elements with having the absolute wackiest game mechanic.
I think I'm done with Five Tribes. The ratio of AP:actual gameplay is too darn high. Also lurking BGG has kind of ruined my notions of this game being balanced.

(Another game that lurking BGG has ruined for me: Trajan.)

7 Wonders is still great, although I'm bearish on the expansions. Carcassonne is still good at what it does. Ra is still decent enough and I don't have anything else in its niche.

Argent is still my all-time favorite. As complex as other peoples' favorite heavy games, but so much more blatant in how rude you can be. The two-player variant is actually way smoother than I imagined. I learned that Synthesis Workshop is pretty much only useful in games where it comes after Council Chamber B.

It's so difficult to get exactly four people to play Code of Nine :( and they don't want to play with me any more. I swear, you disqualify every other player
once
, and they etc.

Azul was boring af, plus the rulebook was so badly translated that I found out later that we were playing the game very wrong twice over.
If I'm going to have a mediocre stained glass game I'd rather have Sagrada because it's way shinier.

I feel like I'm way behind the curve on ~new games~ but I also lean hard into not wanting to purchase anything that's not exceptional and won't get a bunch of plays.
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Post Post #3372 (isolation #41) » Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:30 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3363, PJ. wrote:I don't think Sagrada is mediocre =(
I will gladly play it with someone who has gone to the trouble of purchasing it so I don't have to. Please change my mind.
GreyICE wrote:
In post 3362, Vi wrote: Argent is still my all-time favorite. As complex as other peoples' favorite heavy games, but so much more blatant in how rude you can be. The two-player variant is actually way smoother than I imagined. I learned that Synthesis Workshop is pretty much only useful in games where it comes after Council Chamber B.
As someone who has probably played more Argent than me, I'm interested on your thoughts on the factions. First, I'm strongly leaning Council B/Infirmary A is the only way to play at more than 2. Otherwise Council Room is such a 'don't really care' room when it comes to ordering. Second, I really feel like Purple A is ridiculous to the point where I keep feeling like banning Ezra or handing him to the new player is the right call. B side feels more balanced. Having 2 purple mages is already so good that having arguably the best spell (behind MAYBE Trias) feels super bs. Also orange doesn't really get anything from having two technomancers since 1 is usually all you need, which makes them feel a little weak. Also boy does Red B side feel bad when you don't have any Immediately rooms.
Disclaimer: I randomize as much as possible.

Council Chamber A is fine as is because the Supporter tableau doesn't refresh until the between-round reset.
Infirmary B is made of :gimmicks: but I don't really care; if you're wounding people to begin with you're okay with the other party getting something for it.

Planar A is fine, but having it and Mysticism A in the game simultaneously means that the rushdown strategy totally dominates. Since pretty much every newbie assumes that setting everything to their A side is the recommended setup, this can result in some feelsbad roflstomping when someone has all five of their mages on the board while the newbie is staring down at their four waiting to be placed. If Argent were being reprinted and I could browbeat the dev, I would make both Planar A and Mysticism A cost 1 Mana to use their effects.

Xal Ezra is fine.
Lavanina's spell is so situational that it could probably be free without it becoming OP.
I find that people choose the Sorcery school least; maybe this is because Sorcery B and Burman's spell are both relatively subtle while Sorcery A is actually not as OP as a newbie may think. Rikhi's spell would actually be pretty okay if it were a Fast Action and/or could be used on mages on the board. (I really like Rikhi's character concept; please make her good.)
Sophica's spell badly needs a rework to just about anything except what it is; fast action wounding is pretty uncommon but it's not at all worth paying the person you're wounding a mana.
Riflam is by far the most overpowered character. On boards with Research or Mark scarcity his spell is borderline "you win", and otherwise it's just good. If I were in charge his spell would cost 2 Mana.

Talking of Riflam, there's an orange spellbook out there that lets you get Research and Marks as well... except with no cost and as a Fast Action. I know this game is hell to balance but
come on
. I'd make those spells cost 2 as not-Fast Actions as well.

Everything else seems fine. All the movement abilities on Green may be more silly than average but it's nothing worth changing.

I didn't really have a problem with the pre-revision tie-breakers for votes (i.e. without the Mark tiebreaker). I didn't, and still don't, have a problem with Influence. I acknowledge that this argument has already been had and that my non-preferred outcome is now canon.
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Post Post #3374 (isolation #42) » Fri Jul 26, 2019 12:47 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 3373, GreyICE wrote:Ezra is fine if he only had the spell - it's among the best, but it's only among them. It's the combination with the purple mages that makes it almost offensively annoying. Not only can he rushdown like Berman, unlike the Lich he can take a prime spot in absolute safety, with only the tiny drawback that he gets it second (which is irrelevant on many spots).
You've lost me.
*Burman doesn't rush down. He lets you wipe a mage off the board and then do something else.
*Byron's spell lets him gain 2 Mana for free. No shadowing.

You have the right idea with nuking purple mages as soon as they hit the board. They're wide-open targets who arrive nice and early for your blasting pleasure. I'm even on board with "if they didn't want to be a target they wouldn't have chosen Planar A mages".

I think you're overrating the shadowing mechanic in general. It pretty much always costs something to do, and it
requires
a tempo that your opponents can gleefully deny you. If you run out of worthwhile actions before they decide to take the spot you want, you have to play the game the normal way without all the ducking and covering. I have spent multiple games getting schooled in this and feeling sad.

The purple legendary spellbook is pretty obviously the best of the bunch for that first spell, yeah. Not even because of the shadowing, but because it places two mages to begin with. It could probably cost 3 mana instead of 2... although I'd be more in favor of
reducing
the cost of the more destructive spells. You've already gone out of your way to get a legendary spell; you should be allowed to have fun.

TBH I feel like most of the mana costs above 3 could be reduced by 1 and the game would be more fun. No one is actually going to use those 6-cost spells, m8.

I really think that not putting Planar A and Mysticism A in the same game is simply healthier.
It's just that two Technomancers is garbage - spending 6 coins on just mage placements is a cost that's too damn high to make much use of
My copy of the game is out in the car but I'm pretty positive that the scientology mages don't actually
require
you to spend to place. It is true that you don't really need more than one except in extreme cases, but then again using the ability once per round is already strong.
Oh and agree the free shit orange spell is B.S. It's one of the ones I'll happily nuke if I get the spell that lets me do that, and trust me using that thing makes serious enemies. But if I use it on that, usually the table thanks me. Friggin free marks for the cost of a single research is stupid. Normally you'd have to pay gold for a vault item and you wouldn't get any of the benefits of casting a spell (last game Lexi had that and the spell that let you use other spells again... yeah, that was bad)
My last game was 2P and this spell flipped up midway through round 1 (because I used my orange research to grab a spell midround). Of course, my opp got it with their orange. The board had Mark scarcity.

We agreed after the game that the other person played p.badly because I only lost 6-6 by the Influence tiebreaker.
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Post Post #3383 (isolation #43) » Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:54 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 3382, popsofctown wrote:Carcassone for 4$ is a pretty good deal.
Agreed. It's still my preferred gateway game.
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Post Post #3388 (isolation #44) » Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:55 am

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In post 3386, popsofctown wrote:People will tell their teammates about the cards in their hand to the extent that it's relevant for cooperation
but won't volunteer the contents of their entire hand generally
.
You play with a blessed group.
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Post Post #3420 (isolation #45) » Sun Aug 25, 2019 11:34 am

Post by Vi »

surprise board game cafe day

*Sagrada x2 - It's pretty much what I expected. Colorful dice, shiny premise, and ultimately a vaguely interactive game where whoever fulfills their private win condition best wins. Although I won the second game more because my opponent had a REALLY bad time with their board.

*Dice Throne (Cursed Pirate vs. Artificer) x2 - Artificer has a lot of toys to play with but he spends too much time with them to outpace Cursed Pirate's damage output. CP won both games by dropping megabombs of damage.
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Post Post #3433 (isolation #46) » Sun Sep 01, 2019 1:09 pm

Post by Vi »

Spicy rice and board game cafe day.
*Argent: The Consortium - 6 (Exhufern, me) - 3 (Burman) - 3 (Monad)
There was so much frigging salt coming out of this game... and y'know what? Get frigging outplayed. You're welcome to hate the game, not the playa, but don't lose sight of how the playa in question didn't just accidentally land into a victory.

...not that I told them that or anything.

At some point I really need to compile and print off a list of frequently-occurring corner cases so we can FINALLY frigging feel like we're parsing them consistently and not however I hazily remember someone somewhere adjudicating them. I'm okay with rules-lawyering, but the rulebook for this game is quite bad (and the designer, who has a technical-writing background, has been savaged mercilessly for it) and doesn't cover a lot of the odd interactions that come up like five times every game.

*Terror in Meeple City - 41 (me) - 30 - like 6 lol
None of us had played a dexterity game before, and the only thing I knew about them was that I should never play them. I think what saved me was having a terrible second turn that put me behind long enough to realize that you're NOT supposed to act in such a way that the pieces fly to the next table over. It's kind of a miracle that we (think we) found all the pieces afterward.

The game's okay? It has a cool theme but it's a lot more difficult than it initially lets on (e.g. the penalties for launching pieces off the board add up pretty darn quickly). I don't really have a baseline to judge this against.
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Post Post #3436 (isolation #47) » Mon Sep 09, 2019 1:04 pm

Post by Vi »

you're saying it's a poor showing when it's actually a
nice
showing
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Post Post #3462 (isolation #48) » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:44 am

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fROOT - Cat (9, me) vs. Birds (9) vs. Alliance (30) vs. Panda (like 22 or something) vs. Lizards (waiting for unstoppable dominance on their turn) vs. Otters (like 12)
anarchy was a mistake

BattleCON - Magdelina (0, me) vs. Heketch (7) on beat 9
Even accounting for a lack of experience against the hecker I played wretchedly. Maggie was very sad about not being able to contest Prio at Level 3.

Ra - 42 (me) vs. three scores that were not 42 but also respectable
I don't think anyone did really badly, and the person to my right was doing a good job with calling auctions, but sometimes you get the bear. The joy of this game continues to be watching other people feel like they're making bad decisions.

Terraforming Mars - 70 to 60 (me) to like 57, 48, 47
I have never played this game before and I scored like a puppy. The crying over this game started on turn 1 and, I'm told, these scores are indicative of why. I'm still pretty sure I don't have a handle on at least one major mechanic.

TROGDOR!! The Board Game
Won in endgame rage. The machine you have to fight against in this co-op makes it really difficult to cover everything; I'm not entirely sure what "good play" looks like.

Argent: the Consortium - Jesca (6, me) vs. Xal (4) vs. Rikhi (2)
Gold and mana scarcity; there were dirty deeds and they were done dirt cheap. The other players figured this game out pretty quickly (e.g. not putting me in the Infirmary so I could get those sweet blue plastic bits), and I felt awkwardly behind for most of the game. Pulled two votes out in a last round where I only placed one mage.
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Post Post #3473 (isolation #49) » Sun Sep 29, 2019 12:43 pm

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Argent: The Consortium - Trias (6, me) vs. Mannheim (3) vs. Jesca (3)
I am the absolute worst Neutral player in history. I managed to scrape up 2 IP at the end of round 4 for my second merit badge (including the one I started with). While my opening Mark was 2nd Most Influence (I didn't win it). The votes favored me really well; I put my other three Marks on cards that were relevant exactly when I got them and no later (Most Divinity and Most Planar Studies in round 3, Most Mana in round 4), and I correctly called Green going for Most Wisdom (beating them to it) and accidentally picked up Most Int along the way.

The other players have agreed that maybe the best play is to tag-team me in the next game. They insist all of my good sportsmanship and cheering for them is low-key patronizing :/

7 Wonders - Giza (48, me) vs. Ephesus (52) vs. Babylon (46)
Ephesus was the only person who had access to Glass because I stuffed both Glassworks for the inherent hilarity therein. One hand had five cards that required Glass. :V Brown guild was hatestuffed turn 1 before it could get to me (I built a double-Stone, Papyrus, two trading posts, and the basics-for-free card and spent my way to not-victory) and that stopped me from winning considering the wonder guild required Glass. I did selectively torch military cards so I could win that though. All in all a perfectly surreal game.

Ticket to Ride Europe - Black (me, conceded) vs. other scores that were rlly good
I have forgotten how not to suck at this game. Also I get dehydrated when playing board games more than any other activity and that likely didn't help.
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Post Post #3478 (isolation #50) » Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:48 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 3476, vonflare wrote:
In post 3473, Vi wrote:Argent: The Consortium - Trias (6, me) vs. Mannheim (3) vs. Jesca (3)
I am the absolute worst Neutral player in history. I managed to scrape up 2 IP at the end of round 4 for my second merit badge (including the one I started with). While my opening Mark was 2nd Most Influence (I didn't win it). The votes favored me really well; I put my other three Marks on cards that were relevant exactly when I got them and no later (Most Divinity and Most Planar Studies in round 3, Most Mana in round 4), and I correctly called Green going for Most Wisdom (beating them to it) and accidentally picked up Most Int along the way.
I've never played this game but reading this post-game report has me intrigued
I don't think there's an official Tabletop Simulator mod, and the TTS table is borderline too small for this game, but it's not out of the question...

If you're more interested in window-shopping than playing, watch this person try their best to give an overview in 3 minutes and do as well as you could expect from anyone.
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Post Post #3488 (isolation #51) » Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:21 pm

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Argent: The Consortium -- Sophica (6) vs. Monad (4) vs. Byron (2, me)

Well, this was the result of their agreement to come at me as one would expect from bros. Although that's being too uncomplimentary; looking back on what happened, I was shut down so hard that I couldn't comprehend the wreckage until after the game since I didn't get any Marks. Had one player not screwed up round 5 and had I Wounded the wrong mage in round 5, it would have been 7-5-0. Incredibly brutal, and I feel like I got outplayed so hard that I need to obsess over it for a while until I get better.
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Post Post #3502 (isolation #52) » Fri Jan 03, 2020 9:05 pm

Post by Vi »

Argent: The Consortium - 5 (Mannheim) to 4 (Trias) to 2 (Jesca, me) to 1 (Lavanina)

I thought I knew how to play this game, but honestly I got humbled so badly this time around. It was a gala event with no scarcity of anything, plus the utter nonsense that is Golem Lab A (or whichever side has "1 Merit 1 Mana = Place a Temp Mage and Lock its Room"). My first three Marks were Research and two colors, and I rolled it so hard that I wound up boxed in. Supporters and Influence were distant dreams, and everyone else was (in some cases literally) locking down the rest. I managed to lose both Intelligence and Wisdom - to different people. Maybe now they'll learn that when I say I can't win, I mean it? Or maybe that's just an open invitation to pick off what they can from me. Utterly vicious game from all parties; I think I learned that I (still) can't ever dump Influence and that in wide-open setups like this I simply can't stop people from getting what they want, so much as outrace them.

But at least everyone acknowledged that no one is challenging me for the fanciest bank-shot turns. I mean, I had Staff B for the entire game, and picked up both Dazzle and Future Power. Actual mid-turn time loops.

I'm still on the fence about whether Festival of Masks is a silly module. It sure does make whoever takes the last turn each round very sad.

this game started at 20:30 or so and the post-postgame ended at like 02:15 how did this become my life
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Post Post #3504 (isolation #53) » Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:31 am

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In post 3503, chamber wrote:
In post 3502, Vi wrote:this game started at 20:30 or so and the post-postgame ended at like 02:15 how did this become my life
This has been my biggest complaint with the game the few times I've played it, seems to take forever for the experience I get. But it's always been with newish players (myself included). Hearing that it still took you this long makes me never want to play it again.
The game doesn't have to be this long, but this was a
particularly
elaborate randomly-generated monstrosity of a setup with a new player and two overthinky types. Also by "post-postgame" I mean "after half an hour of everyone reliving their joys and agonies from the game, armchairing everyone else's moves in retrospect, and then after two people left me and the other person kept talking for a while longer while I decided whether I was awake enough to drive across town".

...But it's still a commitment. This experience is basically all the anecdotal evidence anyone needs to get the hint that this is not something you pull out for an evening of gaming, unless you're one of those weird not-me people who doesn't associate the AM hours with daylight. This is something you play on a weekend maybe once a month, getting some good food beforehand and then settling in for the afternoon. I would hesitate to play this game with five people not just because there's an additional person who takes their time, but because that's compounded by how the pressure becomes even more crushing when one more person competes for the same total number of voters.

It's still less analysis paralysis than Five Tribes.
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Post Post #3506 (isolation #54) » Sun Jan 05, 2020 3:53 am

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In post 3505, popsofctown wrote:So it was a 3 hour game? That's not that long? Do I have more endurance than normal people or can I not do math across midnight? Maybe both.
The game took about five and a half hours. Still not as long as Twilight Imperium (although I'm told that is also a good game if you don't mind losing the whole day).
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Post Post #3509 (isolation #55) » Sun Jan 05, 2020 10:27 am

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In post 3508, xRECKONERx wrote:We played Spirit Island last night. Hooooooly shit what a dense game
preach

but did you enjoy it
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Post Post #3523 (isolation #56) » Tue Jan 07, 2020 1:52 am

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In post 3522, implosion wrote:No Pun Included
this seems like the worst name for a commentator
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Post Post #3526 (isolation #57) » Tue Jan 07, 2020 5:16 am

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I don't disagree with that line of thought... but I also only play games that I enjoy (and keep replaying them). 's why I would be okay if someone made me an offer for an airline-battered copy of Five Tribes, which shouldn't be a three-hour game but tends to turn into one.

With that said I don't really understand the appeal of games that are so short that you count your wins in sets, like Love Letter or Coup.
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Post Post #3530 (isolation #58) » Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:10 am

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In post 3527, zoraster wrote:also i hate that 5 tribes is max 4 player. What's with that!
have fewer friends

The players aren't any of the titular tribes though.

zor is correct about non-party 6-8 player games though. 7 Wonders is really the best option if you want something serious; if you'd rather not play that but don't want to play a social manipulation game you may as well run a TTRPG with those numbers.
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Post Post #3541 (isolation #59) » Tue Jan 14, 2020 2:06 pm

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EXCEED Fighting System (Season 3 demo)-- Ken (like 12, me) vs. Ryu (0), and then Ken (0, me) vs. Ryu (5)

I got a demo from a not-a-loot-box, and decided I would try it out. I know it's overly cliche to compare it to L99's other two-player fighting simulation (the BattleCON line), but look, that's my prior experience. Some thoughts...

*Much, much, much more approachable. Street Fighter theming goes a long way toward a system that's much more like a slugfest. Doesn't require advance knowledge of the deck and what you play is only loosely tied to its consequences. Also has a pretty cool name. Nothing I just mentioned is true of BattleCON, which is something of a duel where you can usually point to a single mistake that made you lose, causing it to become a pseudo-lifestyle game as you learn how not to throw games away while amplifying small differences in skill into blowout games.
*I dislike that as the game goes on, reading your opponent's discard pile to see which cards
cannot
be played is strongly encouraged.
*The game is basically a punchy variety of poker, which I'm not good at.
*I do appreciate that, especially as Ken, you can basically spend several turns in a row Striking and feeling confident that you can own your opponent by throwing cards down with the power of literal aggressive mind games :]

I'm not sure it's a better game than BaCON as a well-designed system and I'm not sure it's a game that I'm ever going to be as good at as I am with BaCON, but it is a much better game in the sense that I feel like I can actually get this to a table within a single eternity without massive forcing. Given that it fits into my feels-pretty-strategic two-player game niche. I don't have an urge to evangelize it or purchase the actual boxed products but I also kind of want to proactively keep it, which is better than baseline.
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Post Post #3542 (isolation #60) » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:55 am

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Argent: The Consortium -- Jion (7, me) vs. Burman (4) vs. Riflam (1)

Riflam player was new, but watched a how-to video before playing. A much simpler board this time, but it was heavy on Marks. Handicapped myself terribly with a bad mage draft (2x Green B, good; 1x Blue A, not so much) and getting pushed out of Chapel A, so Influence and Marks kind of ran away from me. Scored lots of votes by virtue of rolling hard on Research/research items and sneaking Most Consumables out at the end because no one was going for it. The Burman player tried contesting my Wisdom and we spent the most of the fifth round fighting over Library B's second slot. Drew Most Sorcery as my first Mark, grabbed the 2x Sorcery Research Supporter Round 1, and didn't see a Sorcery spell on offer until round 5. Kinda lucked into Most Technomancy considering my first two spells were orange purely because they were better than the alternatives.

It felt like a very classic game of Argent, but I also feel like my perspective should probably be discounted considering how not-close the game was...
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Post Post #3547 (isolation #61) » Tue Jan 21, 2020 1:04 pm

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In post 3546, Lady Lambdadelta wrote:Argent is so fun.

People who have TTS can play it online if they want? Cpuld setup an MS game night for Argent.
I have TTop, and have played Argent with it.

Playing the game with five people or with more than two new players would likely stretch the definition of game "night" fwiw.
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Post Post #3558 (isolation #62) » Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:03 pm

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Innovation - A (20 [4]) vs. V (10 [1]) vs. Vi (9 [3], me) at timeout

Surprise board game day with surprise board game. None of us have ever played this before. I tried to roll too hard with paleotech and wound up getting more or less beaten into a corner while A swept the 2, 3, 4, and 5 achievements. I prolonged the game by getting my people to more or less exclusively concentrate on shooting rockets at the others so they couldn't score anything else. Just as I laid down my bluetech and started developing a technocratic revolution, V repeatedly goaded A into nuclear war until it happened, which made us look at the ash piles that were our works and despair mightily. V then stole my last working computer and I had to deal with rebuilding my empire with refrigerators, which was not a good place to be in as the millennium dawned.

It's an intriguing game. I'm not sure if it will hold up once I learn how to play it (i.e. learn which relevant decisions the player actually makes) but I hope it does. There's an element of bash-the-winner (or at least don't-let-the-winner-get-winnier), but the game escalates (both in power and absurdity) in such a way that it's hard to stay on top for very long. Plus I think everything my group plays is full aggro so that's not a problem for us.
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Post Post #3561 (isolation #63) » Sun Jan 26, 2020 3:40 pm

Post by Vi »

Galaxy Trucker - hito (69) vs. implo (58) vs. Vi (33) vs. Equinox (32) vs. Eps (29)

Shared Schadenfreude: The Game. You can tell who survived either of the first two rounds. (Tbh I scored 1 in the first round and -1 in the second round.) I drew Advertiser A in the third round, called a total party kill, and then everyone made it through.

Letter Jam - Mixed results

Delayed-result Codenames. I thought I was a genius on clues and secure in my ability to take care of myself for 80% of the game, and then in the last 20% found out that everything was in fact FUBAR.
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Post Post #3562 (isolation #64) » Tue Jan 28, 2020 6:56 pm

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Innovation - Vi (6, me) vs. Equinox (3)
Still a very silly game. E didn't appreciate it until the discovery of hordes of pirates to raid my score pile. I got like three of the early extra achievement cards and used two of them, which made it feel kind of idk.

The Game - Success
It's The Mind, but sold at Target.

Argent: The Consortium - Exhufern (7, me) vs. Byron (4) vs. Monad (1)
Influence scarcity + Staff B. hito drew Most Marks as their first voter and proceeded to call Equinox out for having drawn it. This was almost certainly the saddest Round 5 I've ever played considering Library was locked, Training Fields were locked, Council Chamber was locked, Vault was locked, and Atelier had been wiped off the map. There's only so much to be done with Infirmary, Golem Lab, and Adventuring (even if it was the cool Adventuring side).
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Post Post #3568 (isolation #65) » Wed Jan 29, 2020 3:54 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3563, Equinox wrote:
In post 3562, Vi wrote:E didn't appreciate it until the discovery of hordes of pirates to raid my score pile.
wow i am sorry i gave off the impression that i don't enjoy games unless i'm winning?
Innovation is a game that's sort of like a plastic baseball bat getting passed around and you can hit everyone else with it. It's hard to see why anyone would play this kind of game until you get a chance with the bat.

...is what I want to say, but I understand how you came to the conclusion you did and I'm mortified. I apologize deeply.
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Post Post #3570 (isolation #66) » Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:32 pm

Post by Vi »

Argent: The Consortium - Riflam (4, me) vs. Burman (3) vs. Byron (2) vs. Exhufern (2) vs. Lavanina (1)
+Festival of Masks module
+Summer Break module

I've never played a five-player game before. It was more or less as I was expecting - there's so much time in between your turns and so few uncontested votes that you basically have to roll as hard as you can on a few votes you're willing to commit to and hope no one notices until it's too late (or just deviously outplay them). I got more or less shut down during the first half of the game (thanks Summer Break), and pretty much only got into it again because I pulled as many Supporters as I could. Like my votes were Supporters, Nat.Magic, Technomancy, and Collection - so, basically trying to take the entire Supporter pile and pull it into my play area, with a few spells to load down in the right colors. Most Mana and Most Intelligence were both in the game, and by the end the supply ran out of Intelligence tokens(!) and also all the 5-mana pieces (the winner had like 29 and the runner-up had like 27).

It was a valid game because I used Bend Time at least once. It's just not me if I can't find a way to do four things in one turn.

Despite being intended as a newbie-friendly scenario by the dev, Summer Break does not make the game any easier or shorter. It is a cute twist on things though.
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Post Post #3571 (isolation #67) » Thu Feb 06, 2020 1:34 pm

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Senators - A (8 [11]) vs. D (8 [7]) vs. L (8 [F]) vs. S (6) vs Vi (2)

Positive Feedback: The Game. Going first suuuuucks when you have less money than everyone else and then lose half of it immediately. Should probably see if I can find something better than the blinds provided for hiding money so people don't have to politely pretend not to notice how poor I am. Having no money in this game means having no power. I'm willing to bet this game is better with fewer players...

Still, I got to play a game where "Extortion" is an action you can take, and really that's what I came for.
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Post Post #3575 (isolation #68) » Sat Feb 08, 2020 2:44 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3574, Chickadee wrote:So I got a Burgle Bros tattoo
Stupid but honest question: On your body, or...?

--
shaft.ed wrote:
In post 3572, popsofctown wrote:I'm jealous that Vi lives a life where they are playing board games multiple times a week while I play board games multiple times a year :(
#workingwithnerds
If it weren't for that I would have to cajole people at the local board game community events into playing my games instead of stuff like Pandemic or Trajan.
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Post Post #3672 (isolation #69) » Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:29 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3670, brassherald wrote:
In post 3669, PJ. wrote:
In post 3666, VP Baltar wrote:
In post 3665, PJ. wrote:I did not like root.
Why not? It's still on my to play list. Though I've heard people say the factions are unbalanced
It's a war game w/ unsatisfying combat.
What war games do you suggest in its place?
Argent :shifty:
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Post Post #3686 (isolation #70) » Tue Aug 25, 2020 5:59 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3685, Equinox wrote:
In post 3683, zoraster wrote:exactly what it needed?
Why settle for 10 hours when you can do 14?
the cheapest "lifestyle" game
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Post Post #3716 (isolation #71) » Tue Sep 01, 2020 1:12 pm

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I don't really understand the Carcassonne hate, although I suspect most of the expansions would reduce my enjoyment of the game.
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Post Post #3722 (isolation #72) » Tue Sep 01, 2020 7:50 pm

Post by Vi »

In post 3718, dramonic wrote:Oh wait I'm thinking of dominion
That's a game I won't defend.
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Post Post #3733 (isolation #73) » Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:06 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3728, VP Baltar wrote:The cards chosen tend to direct toward a clear winning strategy each game.
basically this
70% of the gameplay is in setup, so if nothing else it's a good game to
think about
playing
(the other 30% is player order and whoever gets the first good draw)
dramonic wrote:
In post 3730, chamber wrote:
In post 3718, dramonic wrote:Oh wait I'm thinking of dominion
I've played a fair number of deckbuilders. I don't think any come close to being as good as dominion is.
I find that very hard to believe
I don't; I may not like the genre but I'll acknowledge that it does its best to accommodate its target audience of reasonably serious strategists.
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Post Post #3904 (isolation #74) » Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:49 am

Post by Vi »

In post 3903, shaft.ed wrote:played Power Grid with my group
Seems like a fun enough game. I think with serious players, the constant calculations would be a slog and really slow down the gameplay.
The randomness of the powerplant deck kinda sucks though and plays a big role in the outcome
It's a game with a phase that's literally called Bureaucracy; the constant calculations are a core part of it.

I describe Power Grid as a 2-3 hour game where only the last turn or two matters, and it's only a little hyperbolic. It has strong rubber-banding built in, so you have to really screw up (e.g. buying the highest-ranked plant because it's the highest-ranked, esp. if it's wind-powered) to get knocked out of contention.
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Post Post #3906 (isolation #75) » Mon Mar 01, 2021 2:51 am

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In post 3905, shaft.ed wrote:although the last turn "can" be exciting, I don't think the hope of a good last turn is worth sitting through 2-3 hours of either doing endless predictive math. Or, better still, waiting for other people to finish doing endless predictive math
yep that's Power Grid

I wouldn't judge all heavy games by this one, I guess. (by which I mean "play more Argent")
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Post Post #3909 (isolation #76) » Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:19 am

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In post 3907, VP Baltar wrote:The other person works out the effects of all possible plays to the Nth degree on their turn.
I would express more agreement if this didn't describe me in the tournament I'm playing rn. I'm playing a game where I'm used to having, like, 90-second timers in a different implementation. Without the timers some of my turns have taken north of 15 minutes and I'm getting heckled for it :(

Part of the issue is that it's a simultaneous action game. In a sequential game, not working your strategy out on other players' turns seems inefficient for you on a strategic level, never mind a time-management level.
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