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Post Post #2400 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:56 am

Post by GreyICE »

Don't think of either Five Tribes or Agricola as lightly interactive. Agricola is the game of strategic jackassery. Like "Aloha, I see you're building pastures. Let me take these three sheep and drop them into my firepit." Or the wonderful dance on home expansion and family growth. Or "yep, day before harvest, lemme snag first player then sow/bake bread. Now go build an oven or something if you want to not starve".

Race you get mildly rewarded if you anticipate what your opponent will do, but you can never get badly punished. I admit it's the key to winning the game, but that's almost by default - in a symmetrical game the only thing that can decide the winner (once you're all equally adept at manipulating the game variables) is either player interaction or random chance, and in Race player interaction edges out random chance, usually.

But compared to Five Tribes? First, player ordering is way more interactive and punishing than RFTG. You can actually lose moves. Worse, you can lose moves
incidentally
. A good player doesn't even have to take your move in order to screw you out of it - just dropping a meeple on that space negates the move entirely. So you have an incentive to bid high to get what you want, but bidding high costs you Victory Points (whereas just calling the phase you need in Race costs you nothing). That's an interesting tension. The Yellow set collection meeples are an interesting tension, because they're almost worthless EXCEPT for edging out your opponents. 1 point/meeple is the worst (even vanilla priests give you 2 and that's the worst use of priests) but the 20 point swing when you edge someone out in the yellow leaderboards is unbelievable. So that's interactive. Hell, even the market is interactive, I've sandbagged a 0 bid because I wanted something at the far end of the market and figured another player would take some market cards and drop it down into fishing range with a 2/6 space. Compare that to race where you're drawing face down cards - your opponent drawing before you means nothing because the deck contents are random and there's no interaction potential.

I think race is about as close to solitaire as a game can be.
Last edited by GreyICE on Wed Oct 05, 2016 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #2401 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 6:04 am

Post by TheButtonmen »

Speaking of interactivity in board gaming does anyone have any suggestions for good highly interactive games. Right now my gold standard for that is 3 player Puerto Rico which really can feel like a knife fight in a phone booth, you can't do anything without touching everyone else and a single mistake generally gets you cut deep.

It's not the most complex or deep game but it easily sits in my top board games list solely because of the sheer interactivity of it.
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Post Post #2402 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 6:19 am

Post by hitogoroshi »

Codex, Kemet, El Grande are all good examples of games where you spend a LOT of brainpower trying to anticipate your opponents moves.

Dungeon Lords is actually a funny one, because it's like...solitaire except when it very isn't. Sometimes you're just doing your own thing and letting chips fall where they may, but then sometimes you have to mastermind the entire draft and anticipate everyone to pull it off. It's very strange.
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Post Post #2403 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 6:27 am

Post by GreyICE »

Argent - the Consortium
- remember how I said Agricola is a knife fight for certain spaces? Argent is a knife fight where everyone brought a gun. And flamethrowers. And nukes. My elevator pitch is "Imagine Hogwarts if Voldemort was a rather unremarkable teacher. The headmaster just announced he's stepping down and one of you will replace him." There's 12 different voters (2 revealed, 10 hidden), and you have to win the majority over to your side in order to win the game. There's different rooms in the university, and you can send your mages to them, so standard worker placement stuff, but the catch is that your spells and even your own mages (workers) can do things. Do you want a space someone else took? Send a pyromancer there and burn your opponents mage (who has to go to the infirmary) and take it for yourself. But beware the nature mage, who can just use strength of earth and boot your guy to a different space and take it for herself. And that's just things you can do in round 1. By round 5 you'll be nuking entire rooms, playing your mages in a shadow dimension, and breaking the laws of time and space for fun and profit.

Oh and the Voldemort thing? Candidates include an 1100 year old Lich with a grudge against practically everyone, an eldritch abomination who is teaching classes for fun, and a red dragon.

Cutthroat Caverns
-
Without cooperation you won't survive. Without treachery you won't win.
That's what's printed on the game box. A "cooperative" dungeon crawl where only the last person hitting a monster gets the glory. So you sit there. It's got 180 HP, and you do have a critical hit 100 and are going 4th, so you might kill it, but... what if the person going first just pokes it with a stick (0 damage)? I think of it as Munchkin done right, because it has similar levels of "Take That", but with two important changes. First you have HP, and when you die you're just dead. No glory for the dead. And second, the monsters are weird and can change the entire game. Like, the Wereboar. If he bites you you get an "are you a wereboar" card. 5 say "no", one says "yes". And at the end of the game you flip it, and if you're a wereboar the party gets to fight the Wereboar again (you win if you kill them all). Or the minecart racing, where you're just racing each other through mineshafts and screw the fighting monsters stuff. Or summoner, who is going to add a new monster to the deck every round he's alive, so suddenly screwing your neighbors comes with a caveat of "but will you actually survive the newer, longer dungeon?"

Less Euro than Argent, but a ton of fun.


Obviously Secret Hitler, Resistance, Mafia, etc. but I figure you know those.
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Post Post #2404 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 7:48 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

In post 2402, hitogoroshi wrote:Codex, Kemet, El Grande are all good examples of games where you spend a LOT of brainpower trying to anticipate your opponents moves.
god, Kemet is
so fucking good
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Post Post #2405 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 7:54 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

@TBM: Kemet or Cyclades. They're similar games by the same publisher.
Kemet is more like a fast-paced brawl. You're constantly skirmishing and then regrouping and running out to attack again, all while trying to build your engine. Kemet encourages people to start punching each other in the face as early as the first turn, and incentivizes repeat assaults and bloodshed. It's bananas. You win by attacking, by defending, or by going for a risky economic only route.

Cyclades is a bit more strategic. Still fairly fast paced for a "war game" (more like area control game) but a little more chaotic w/ dice rolls in combat (not highly random dice rolls though). A lot more base building/engine building, with fighting being less common. Still highly interactive. More options and paths to victory than direct confrontation/combat, if that's your thing.

Also if theme matters, Kemet is Egyptian and Cyclades is Greek.
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Post Post #2406 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:07 am

Post by TheButtonmen »

Kemet is now sitting on my shelf, hopefully I'll get a chance to play a game or two this week.

Cutthroat Caverns sounds pretty perfect for a couple of my friends though, we've had a blast with Welcome to the Dungeon and it sounds like it should hit a lot of the same notes.
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Post Post #2407 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:19 am

Post by Vi »

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 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:26 am

Post by Vi »

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!
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Post Post #2409 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:45 am

Post by BROseidon »

Tbh Pret-a-Porter is like the best game ever
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Post Post #2410 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:45 am

Post by BROseidon »

Actually it's Arkham Horror (lol)
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Post Post #2411 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 10:46 am

Post by GreyICE »

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. 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?
GOLEM LAB IS THE BEST THING EVER

No really, it's the cheatiest of the cheaty. Can you banish or move mages? Then boot them off the golem lab. It's like any instant action that way, only instead of a lousy half action like you get on most immediates its a full real action. There's a reason you only get one golem, and that's because banishing then replacing is insane. Try putting a Grey mage there as a bonus placement with a spell, then banishing it with a spell next turn and immediately replaying it. It's like cheating, only... no, it honestly feels like cheating. Its shenanigans the university tile.

It's kind of crap if you're playing legit, but when is Argent ever won by people like legitimately putting down one mage a turn? Golem lab is an enabler for silly bullshit. Seriously, remember the golem stays even if the mage goes somewhere else, then start counting all the ways you can abuse this. It's an interesting exercise, isn't it? Quite a few powers even on the basic abilities there, then imagine using a technomancy research to get a spell that does it turn 1...

Synthesis chamber... I'm still super eh about. We haven't played with it yet because its a whole brick of rules and decisions that lands on your lap, and it starts in the mage draft. I want to get it to the table at some point, but the synthesis items don't look super strong and anything that's that hard to acquire needs a really good effect. I wonder if it's actually too much work for the sake of novelty (I feel a bit similar about the Archmage's staff).
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Post Post #2412 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 12:20 pm

Post by Vi »

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 #2413 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 4:09 pm

Post by GreyICE »

Side B Archmage is a nightmare that I can't imagine. Am serious. Side A is just nice.

But really with the immediate effects, they're all weak. Side B adventuring is the classic, but all of them are just kind of meh. So you can get 3 mana immediately, but then it costs you usually 1 mana to bounce/move the mage (at least) so it feels like you got 2 mana for an action which is really fair. Golem lab is get a real placement. Real placements are just so much more valuable... it feels really really good when you can make it work. Into a fucking shadow slot no less, you're NEVER getting that thing out of there. Just super duper good. Getting Key was super nice with lab and I'd always grab it first placement to ship a temporary mage to a shadow space using a fast/grey placement then maybe get my guy back too... bahroken.

Also hyper constricts the board because it's not really a room (every placement there is a placement somewhere else) and can lock other rooms, so those placements are premium as fuck.
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Post Post #2414 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:05 pm

Post by Lady Lambdadelta »

If you're thinking about getting the expansion, get it for the different scenarios. The different events that can occur during each round in the different scenarios make the game so interesting.

Like the Assassins scenario, where you can basically pay to kill off voters.
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Post Post #2415 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:06 pm

Post by Lady Lambdadelta »

In post 2408, Vi wrote: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!
Code of Nine also super fun!
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Post Post #2416 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:07 pm

Post by Lady Lambdadelta »

@Buttons:
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Post Post #2417 (ISO) » Wed Oct 05, 2016 11:51 pm

Post by Vi »

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 #2418 (ISO) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 3:42 am

Post by Sudo_Nym »

Side B Archmage is the name of my Rush cover band.
One time, back in 'nam, Sudo was set upon by an entire squadron of charlies. He challenged them all to a game of Pictionary, which he won resoundingly. The charlies were forced to not only surrender the skirmish, but also their world-famous chili recipe, which Sudo sold to Texas for a hefty profit. Sudo is a master of diplomacy.
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Post Post #2419 (ISO) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 4:39 am

Post by Titus »

Argent is fun.

Although, I don't know a single spell that effects shafowed mages.

I also take awhile. I generally play the two player variant which is awesome.
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Post Post #2420 (ISO) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 6:00 am

Post by Vi »

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 #2421 (ISO) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 9:09 am

Post by Something_Smart »

ego
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Post Post #2422 (ISO) » Sat Oct 08, 2016 8:19 am

Post by theplague42 »

I got 2v1'd in a 3 person Small World game last night. I had a super strong first two races so my two friends ganged up on me for basically the whole game. Still only lost by 3 points. :D
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Post Post #2423 (ISO) » Sun Oct 09, 2016 10:03 pm

Post by BBmolla »

A lot of winning small world has to do with convincing the other players you are losing and are not a threat
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Post Post #2424 (ISO) » Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:47 am

Post by theplague42 »

Yeah I started warning them about turn 7 that I wasn't nearly as far ahead as they thought I was.
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