Board Games!

[Andrius]

One of my really good friends bought Dead of Winter and Betrayal at the House on the Hill during some store's 3for2 sale. I'm excited to starting playing stuff again... Was gone all winter!

Played Dead of Winter last night, with the "get to the colony" main objective. Is the general plan to maximize searching then rush for the objective? I felt like we ran out of resources pretty quickly once we started moving people in.

I'm assuming its the scenario I'm thinking of.
Never played that one because I don't like that scenario.
I don't like most of the scenarios that The Long Night added, but that's just me.

I imagine you rush-searching as hard as you can and then move everyone back to the colony at the same time.
Otherwise it consumes too many resources over many days.

[xRECKONERx]

Okay, played patchwork for the first time. Do you have to fill up the 7x7 perfectly to get the bonus tile? Do you put the bonus tile on your quilt board? Do you count the Leather Patches as squares when you're moving? Do you count the buttons as squares?

yes

[xRECKONERx]

wait what do you mean do you count the buttons as squares

they're squares

[implosion]

@panzer
The leather patches and buttons aren't squares on the track that you stop on, they're rewards that you get when you move from one square that they border to the other square that they border.

You don't put the 7x7 on the quilt board. You do have to fill up a perfect 7x7 area of your quilt to get it, but it can be any 7x7 area.

Iirc I've seen scores in the 10-30ish range?

[PJ.]

Okay one person said they are points you stop and the other said no. Which is it?

[Equinox]

But wow, the game you talked about sounds and looks awesome. Tell us more!

Come to think of it, this might be up your alley. There's plenty of historical detail in the game.

It's designed for two to four players; however, it plays best with four because you then have two teams of two. You're not allowed to communicate strategy with your counterpart and in fact are encouraged to betray them if they are too far ahead of you. It behooves you and your counterpart to work together where possible to gain territory for your side, though, because that gets you points at the end of each turn. Anyway, the object of the game is to gain the most victory points by the end of the wars, and you do that by controlling territory each turn.

Each turn represents ten years of the Wars of the Roses. To start, players take turns -- based on turn order, which is in turn determined by how well you are doing in the game -- picking cards drawn from the deck. Each card is either a person (e.g., Bishop of Exeter, House of Tudor, Ship of Plymouth) or locale (e.g., London). Some cards provide income each turn, and others don't. You spend your income on one or more of (1) bribes of personae to either keep them on your side or take them away from an opponent, (2) armies to defend or attack a locale, and (3) a bribe to the Captain of Calais to gain additional power in a southeastern county.

Each item you own in a county represents the amount of control you have in that county. If your side controls the majority of the county, then all of that county's Parliament votes are given to your side; if your side controls the majority of Parliament votes, then your side is said to have won that decade. Some items (particularly personae) can be moved to different counties to help you gain control in other areas.

There's loads more detail, but that's the gist of the game. What is nice about it is that the only random factor is which cards get drawn each turn. Everything else is determined by players, so you win or lose by how good you are at strategy and reading your opponents. Good tactics can get you a lot of points but won't do much if you don't plan for the future.

[PJ.]

What is a "eurogame"?

[chamber]

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.

[Vi]

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.

[chamber]

I don't think a euro game needs to be heavy. Like I think Catan qualifies and it's almost closer to the pop-o-matic you described rather than the Eurogame you described.

[Vi]

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.

[Sudo_Nym]

Don't know what you're talking about; I taught Catan to my family last Christmas, they had no trouble at all. Except for my aunt getting unreasonably excited whenever she rolled a resource.

[Vi]

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.

[mykonian]

Thanks so much, Equinox. From that description, yes, that'd have been something I would have kept my eye on. Maybe I'll run into it secondhand someday.


As for the eurogame talk, I think chamber has it. I think you could add that those games try to turn the dial towards player influence in stead of luck (not to say they eliminate it).

[xRECKONERx]

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.

I think that's all fairly accurate?

I would also say that in Ameritrash game, the "theme" wins out over the mechanics.

Like, Betrayal At House on the Hill... Ameritrash. Heavily themed, and the theme is most of the charm. Same with Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica, Cosmic Encounter.

Eurogames are way more "strategic". I don't even think Eurogames have to be particularly complex, it's more that they're all about the tactics/strategy and less about the journey.

[Andrius]

I would also say that in Ameritrash game, the "theme" wins out over the mechanics.Like, Betrayal At House on the Hill... Ameritrash. Heavily themed, and the theme is most of the charm. Same with Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica, Cosmic Encounter.Eurogames are way more "strategic". I don't even think Eurogames have to be particularly complex, it's more that they're all about the tactics/strategy and less about the journey.

I agree with most of this.

Ameritrash and strategic are not mutually exclusive - ameritrash game mechanics serve the theme, and the theme is a key selling point.

Eurotrash is almost more like having a setting than a theme. Most Eurogames have similar mechanics such as worker placement or area control which are more in a setting - you play a worker placement game in a medieval village/prehistoric tribe/castle under siege.

I definitely tend to favor Ameritrash games but the occasional Euro is also good. Personally, I get minimal enjoyment out of playing a game to master a mechanic, rather than tell a story even if I'm bad at the game itself.

[xRECKONERx]

My thing is I don't like games with zero player interaction.

I like having interaction, even if it's not directly. Five Tribes is kind of my ideal board game for that very reason.

[Andrius]

My thing is I don't like games with zero player interaction.

This so much.
And I prefer direct interaction to no interaction; I don't get anything from Agricola, for example.

Backstabbing people in something like Shadows over Camelot or Dead of Winter is more my jam.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

My thing is I don't like games with zero player interaction.

I like having interaction, even if it's not directly. Five Tribes is kind of my ideal board game for that very reason.

I agree 100% with this, and one of the joke saying GreyICE and I have is "Every game is a social deception game".

Because as long as a game has some measure of interactive nature, and isn't entirely zero sum, you can always wheel and deal with people, convincing them to make subpar moves.

So I despise games where you spend your whole time looking down at the board and planning your move because it doesn't matter what other people do. I even hate the ones that try to fake "interaction" like Stone Age, where spots on the board are limited but you're still just doing your own thing.

Five Tribes is brilliant because the Mancala mechanic allows for people to make moves that screw people over, and the bidding mechanic on turn order allows for further diplomacy.

So yeah, I'm a big fan of games where talking is encouraged. Not a big fan of games or players who try to limit that, as a general rule.

[Sudo_Nym]

I love games like Agricola and Le Havre, where the interaction is based more around blocking sites and anticipating your opponent's strategy. It's like playing chess and a competitive puzzle all at once.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I love games like Agricola and Le Havre, where the interaction is based more around blocking sites and anticipating your opponent's strategy. It's like playing chess and a competitive puzzle all at once.

Ok but there are games that have that mechanic and don't limit your ability to interact otherwise.

Like Lords of Waterdeep.

[mykonian]

chess wouldn't be very good if you could talk your opponent into giving you a pawn. That'd just make it lame. Social games are fine, but you'll run into a popularity contest of sorts, and it'll actually detract from the game itself. Like you said, doesn't matter which game you play, you'll play the same people. I wouldn't want to do that every time, it's nice to have some variety.

[zoraster]

My thing is I don't like games with zero player interaction.

I like having interaction, even if it's not directly. Five Tribes is kind of my ideal board game for that very reason.

I'm a big fan of five tribes, but have one major complaint: a game that has five in it only allows four players. which is sad.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

chess wouldn't be very good if you could talk your opponent into giving you a pawn. That'd just make it lame. Social games are fine, but you'll run into a popularity contest of sorts, and it'll actually detract from the game itself. Like you said, doesn't matter which game you play, you'll play the same people. I wouldn't want to do that every time, it's nice to have some variety.

My thing is I don't like games with zero player interaction.

I like having interaction, even if it's not directly. Five Tribes is kind of my ideal board game for that very reason.

I agree 100% with this, and one of the joke saying GreyICE and I have is "Every game is a social deception game".

Because as long as a game has some measure of interactive nature,

and isn't entirely zero sum,

you can always wheel and deal with people, convincing them to make subpar moves.

So I despise games where you spend your whole time looking down at the board and planning your move because it doesn't matter what other people do. I even hate the ones that try to fake "interaction" like Stone Age, where spots on the board are limited but you're still just doing your own thing.

Five Tribes is brilliant because the Mancala mechanic allows for people to make moves that screw people over, and the bidding mechanic on turn order allows for further diplomacy.

So yeah, I'm a big fan of games where talking is encouraged. Not a big fan of games or players who try to limit that, as a general rule.

See the bolded Myko? I already talked about Zero Sum games.

[PJ.]

Has anyone played Rococo?