Board Games!

[chamber]

We've invited you on that site juls. (Reck is writing up a quick explanation, I haven't played either).

[Juls]

How did you invite me?

[xRECKONERx]

Basics of Takenoko:

There are 3 ways to score points:
- Panda cards (move the Panda to eat the required amount of bamboo)
- Gardener cards (grow certain bamboo stalks to a certain height)
- Emperor cards (lay out the garden tiles in a certain pattern)

On your turn you get two actions to take from the following five options:
- Draw 3 garden tiles, and pick one to place
- Grab irrigation
- Move Gardener to grow bamboo
- Move Panda to eat bamboo
- Draw a new victory card (either Panda, Gardener, or Emperor card)

Free actions on each turn:
- Place irrigation
- Place powerups/modifiers
- Claim a victory card (if you complete a condition on a Panda/Gardener/Emperor card)

Tiles only grow bamboo if they're irrigated. Most victory points cards require the tiles being used to score to be irrigated as well.

Game continues until someone has claimed/revealed 9 victory cards, then there's one last round, then most points wins. Ezpz.

[xRECKONERx]

How did you invite me?

Is your username Juls? I just wrote that into one of the "reserve" slots.

[Juls]

Julcraft

[GreyICE]

I'm here and on.

if you want you can play panda simulator and I'll grab food, that game is a little meh for me

[xRECKONERx]

kk we'll get w/ you for seasons afterwards

Juls, try going to Takenoko now

[GreyICE]

what's you two's name (mine is easy to guess)

[chamber]

blargerer

[xRECKONERx]

reckonerX
blargerer

[xRECKONERx]

PS it won't actually take 33 mins, it took me like 10 earlier

[GreyICE]

okay, you're both added, hopefully I pop up

[GreyICE]

Okay, super fast write up of Seasons, begin!

Seasons is a game about gathering energy and casting spells in order to gain magical crystals. At the end of the game, whoever has the most magical crystals wins.

On your turn, there will be a number of dice you can pick from that will either do one of the following things (in BGA mouse over to see a breakdown):

- Give you Energy of one of the 4 types to cast spells
- Give you Crystals (VP)
- Give you Summoning Gage (star). Summoning gage lets you summon cards. You can never have more cards than summoning gage
- Let you transmute energy into crystals, based on season (I'll show you this)
- Let you draw a card from the deck

This is a card:



The symbols in the middle are the energy types you need to summon it. The purple number is how many crystals (VP) its worth at the end of the game. The effect does what it says it does.

The game is split into three years, and at the start you will get to divide 9 cards into 3 you get each year. Generally you want engine cards (cards that reward you for playing cards, or give you energy) early, and cards like Olaf's Blessed Statue above that only give you crystals or VP late.

There's a few details like bonuses (essentially cheating) and creatures vs. items that I've glossed over, but if we skype I can explain it, and it's not that difficult to pick up during the game. First game will be on apprentice mode (higher difficulties add drafting and complex engine-promoting cards)

[chamber]

Can you create the game and invite us grey?

nvm I got it.

[GreyICE]

is there a skype call?

Edit: I'm theoreticalstring on skype

[chamber]

reeeeck

[Chevre]

I am kittymaster9000 on BoardGameArena (also Chevre but I prefer to use KM9000.)

[xRECKONERx]

Seasons was fun! I'm still thinking about how I feel about it... it seems almost

too

random to be a solid engine-builder, but it was definitely fun to play.

[chamber]

It is fairly random, me and my friends don't like to pull it out too often for that reason, the drafting mechanic helps a bit.

[xRECKONERx]

Hmm. Might need to have a go with the drafting mechanic then, but it still felt like it was too reliant on the right dice rolls at the right time to make your engine go off... not that it's particularly egregious, it's just that the less randomness in a game, the more I like it. (It's why I love Terra Mystica so much, they've essentially made a game with no random factors in it.)

[chamber]

Every game has elements of luck, even Terra Mystica (the luck is just not as encoded in the game). For sufficiently skilled players I assume it mostly comes down to picking races/bonus tile things.

[GreyICE]

Drafting removes most of the randomness, to be honest.

The dice are random, but they're more random that you all have to deal with. I very much like randomness in options (as opposed to randomness in outcome)

[chamber]

The problem with the randomness in options(in seasons) is that people aren't given equal access. You just have to hope you roll what you need, or that someone else rolls a lot of what you need if its in high demand.

[GreyICE]

That can bite, but I still feel that it's more manageable than the randomness in something like M:tG. Certainly not as non-random as something like Dominion, but a very good game.

Then again, I tend to like luck-mitigation games a lot.

[GreyICE]

In any case, totally doing a game of

Spyrium

in about half an hour. Which has zero luck basically.