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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:Back in February, Treefrog Games announced that A Few Acres of Snow: 2nd Edition would be out in May/June. Has there been any information since then? I'm getting impatient here! It just fixes a couple of typos. If you're wondering whether or not they patched the game-breaking British automatic victory, Martin Wallace has gone on record saying the game is "by design, unfixable." I guess that's what happens when you make a deckbuilding game and you don't have any Dominion or Magic players do any of your playtesting!
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 18:37 |
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# ? Mar 30, 2024 00:53 |
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Redacted
Indolent Bastard fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 19, 2013 |
# ? Jul 4, 2012 18:43 |
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I haven't picked up Virgin Queen because it will be hard to find a gaming group for it. I only know a few people that really play CDGs and it was a struggle to even play Here I Stand, so I'd rather save my money for stuff I know I will get to play.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 19:12 |
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SUMMONER WARS APP IS OUT I'm 2-0 already
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 20:27 |
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PaybackJack posted:SUMMONER WARS APP IS OUT It says it no longer available
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 20:49 |
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Raspberry Bang posted:It says it no longer available Everyone is having that problem, something about Apple's server propagation. I don't know, it's never happened to me on any other app. As far as A Few Acres of Snow, it seems like the only reason it is "by design, unfixable" is because to fix it would be to destroy its historical accuracy. Not that I give a poo poo about that, personally.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 20:53 |
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Kiranamos posted:As far as A Few Acres of Snow, it seems like the only reason it is "by design, unfixable" is because to fix it would be to destroy its historical accuracy. Not that I give a poo poo about that, personally. Many Commands and Colours scenarios have the same problem with historical imbalance. The usual way to handle it is for each player to play both sides once, and the winner is the person with the best overall record.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 21:50 |
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But the problem is not that the British are too good, but that a single - unexpected by the designer - thing they can do is too good. I don't think that historical accuracy is a problem at all, it has more to do with that excepting some major component changes or adding convoluted rule exceptions all you can do is pretend a portion of the map does not exist.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 22:06 |
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I thought the problem with A Few Acres of Snow was that the British could get money a lot faster and quicker than the French and quickly build up and overwhelm them before they can get moving since the French get their money through trading furs. Is there actually an imbalance with the map too? I've played both sides and won as both, but I wasn't playing against someone super serious or hardcore. I liked the game and didn't perceive any imbalances except the money thing which we agreed would probably be fixed by just lowering the 3s down to 2s. Where's the map imbalance?
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 22:54 |
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I really liked Afaos when I played it first and I even bought it but I got burned out of it pretty quickly, especially when the imbalance became apparent. Both me and my friends play pretty competitively so the game lost its lustre after the breaking strategy was found.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 22:56 |
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PaybackJack posted:I thought the problem with A Few Acres of Snow was that the British could get money a lot faster and quicker than the French and quickly build up and overwhelm them before they can get moving since the French get their money through trading furs. I mean, that's thematically the point, the French are supposed to win by spamming colonies.
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# ? Jul 4, 2012 23:19 |
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The route via the coast allows British to really blitz it: - They've got a shitload of ships, meaning the turn you grab a frontier port you're ready to go. Also you can add them to sieges for an extra oomph. - It's just Halifax/Port Royale - Louisburg - Tadoussac and suddenly you're a step away from Quebec. - In addition to that this is the safest route into French territory in terms of raiding possibilities. If pushing through mainland, you have a longer route (both in terms of locations to travel and beginning with one or two - can't remember - bateaux), giving your opponent time to grab some fortifications, soldiers and raiders (with many more possible staging grounds). Inability to throw ships into sieges helps attempts at stalling you, I guess. Honestly, the real problem lies in the British money engine - in that the starting colonies are so good and self-sufficient, that further expansion actually hinders your economy. When you literally have all the logistical support you need, all that is left to do is churning out soldiers and pushing. With no mechanic to artificially delay adopting this route, there's little to no reason to do anything else, leading to a "why didn't they just build the Trojan Horse at the very beginning and get it over with" situation. It's pretty hard to think up a good rule fix, because even if you take out some obviously powergamey stuff (like instantly dumping less-wealthy starting locations into reserve so as to achieve even leaner pure money, ships and guns deck) it's still very powerful just by pushing your factional advantages (cash and fleet) to the fullest. And it's the part that really sours the experience - how much should you delay concquering the VP-rich coast before you're powergaming? How much useless stuff should you put in your deck before you're abusing? And so on. The 'historical accuracy' thing about the coastal route is like saying "these Nazis turned out too tough, so they'll play without tanks". It's supposed to be powerful, but it's the other broken stuff that elevates it to complete crazyness.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 00:04 |
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Not to mention the issue that anybody who's even remotely good at deckbuilding games clearly knows the power of a thin deck. The British can get their deck thinner, faster, and even ignoring Halifax have at least 1/2 other ways to gently caress up the French. Of course, you can't remove trashing from the game without breaking it, and you can't remove British trashing without breaking it. They managed to get through playtesting without using a Chapel strategy. The proposed solution? Make the French deck slightly smaller at the beginning of the game. This doesn't solve any of the problems at all, of course. The map is still broken and attempts to defend against the Halifax Hammer actually make things easier on the British because of the effects of sieges.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 01:48 |
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My offline gaming friends and I were complaining about co-op games, mostly about how they could as easily be solo games. Hidden traitors alleviate this to some extent, but I had the idea of a game with a structure similar to the tabletop RPG Paranoia- you've got your own goals that you want to accomplish, but you can't do it alone and need to work with everybody else to accomplish either your goals or a set public goal and then also your own person goal. Is there anything like that out there?
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 02:02 |
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Doesn't Mage Knight have a scenario or something that's effectively co-op, but with competitive scoring at the end? Edit- I've actually always thought games like Pandemic would be drastically improved with some sort of scoring mechanic for individual players, but of course that'd change the game quite a bit. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jul 5, 2012 |
# ? Jul 5, 2012 02:07 |
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Pope Guilty posted:My offline gaming friends and I were complaining about co-op games, mostly about how they could as easily be solo games. Hidden traitors alleviate this to some extent, but I had the idea of a game with a structure similar to the tabletop RPG Paranoia- you've got your own goals that you want to accomplish, but you can't do it alone and need to work with everybody else to accomplish either your goals or a set public goal and then also your own person goal. Is there anything like that out there? You're looking for Cutthroat Caverns, a rather light card game in which everybody is in a single D&D party fighting eldritch horrors that require teamwork, but the credit for each kill goes to whoever got the killing blow. It's not bad, but I wouldn't really recommend it outside of this particular instance. Also, Space Alert does away with the "could as easily be solo" problem.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 02:24 |
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Paradoxish posted:Doesn't Mage Knight have a scenario or something that's effectively co-op, but with competitive scoring at the end? They tried that with Castle Panic, but it basically was meaningless and stupid.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 02:26 |
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Broken Loose posted:Not to mention the issue that anybody who's even remotely good at deckbuilding games clearly knows the power of a thin deck. The British can get their deck thinner, faster, and even ignoring Halifax have at least 1/2 other ways to gently caress up the French. I think an asymmetric two-player deckbuilding game is one of the hardest things you could possibly aspire to make. Most Dominion setups are kind of broken, but the point is that they're broken a different way each time and both players have equal access to the cards, so it's about (a) spotting the breaking strategy and (b) if your opponent does too, executing it just a little better in terms of the fine details. I mean, just as an exercise, try to pick two different ten-kingdom-card Dominion sets such that, if one player can only buy from one set and the other can only buy from the other, after a few dozen games: 1) Equally skilled players are achieving a 60/40 win ratio or better (closer to 50/50). 2) Each card is being used in at least 10% of games, i.e. you haven't just given each player one or two super cards and filled the rest of their setup with stuff they'll never buy.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 04:53 |
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xopods posted:I think an asymmetric two-player deckbuilding game is one of the hardest things you could possibly aspire to make. Most Dominion setups are kind of broken, but the point is that they're broken a different way each time and both players have equal access to the cards, so it's about (a) spotting the breaking strategy and (b) if your opponent does too, executing it just a little better in terms of the fine details. There have been efforts to design really awesome kingdoms, and, as a few people who've hung out in #boardgoons can attest, the best games of Dominion are the ones where multiple strategies counter each other on the board. I agree that it would be difficult to make an asymmetric deckbuilder, but I also think that Dominion has been out long enough for there to be experts on the matter worth consulting. If the right people put their heads together, you could make an awesome and relatively balanced game. Of course, if you ignore the established experts in the genre, then you end up with a terribly broken game (see also: Puzzle Strike).
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 06:38 |
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Paradoxish posted:Doesn't Mage Knight have a scenario or something that's effectively co-op, but with competitive scoring at the end? Competition in a cooperative games scares the poo poo out of me. After playing the Golden Spike map in Age of Steam and being a part of that wretched experience I have no desire to ever repeat it. It leads to an even nastier backstabbing game than Intrigue or Diplomacy, and it's a constant headache.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 07:26 |
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I had the chance to play the new edition of Descent yesterday. I thought it was really good, a much better experience than the D&D co-op games. They stripped out a lot of the rules that were annoying in the old edition, like readying actions and the DM spawning monsters any place that the PCs don't have line of sight. The components are improved too; the new map tiles in particular have really pretty art. Campaign mode looks like it's going to be fun to do.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 14:12 |
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Unfit For Space posted:I had the chance to play the new edition of Descent yesterday. I thought it was really good, a much better experience than the D&D co-op games. They stripped out a lot of the rules that were annoying in the old edition, like readying actions and the DM spawning monsters any place that the PCs don't have line of sight. The components are improved too; the new map tiles in particular have really pretty art. Campaign mode looks like it's going to be fun to do. Oh crap, is that out? I don't see it on Amazon. My main complaints with Descent were: 1. Obscene set-up time 2. No way to protect more vulnerable party members so the DM just wailed on them constantly 3. Campaign mode worked by giving the side that was winning more stuff, so it was a death spiral Are those fixed? I'd love to play a good Warhammer Quest type game again. Gort fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jul 5, 2012 |
# ? Jul 5, 2012 15:04 |
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Unfit For Space posted:I had the chance to play the new edition of Descent yesterday. I thought it was really good, a much better experience than the D&D co-op games. They stripped out a lot of the rules that were annoying in the old edition, like readying actions and the DM spawning monsters any place that the PCs don't have line of sight. The components are improved too; the new map tiles in particular have really pretty art. Campaign mode looks like it's going to be fun to do. Gort: 1 and 3 are fixed. Pierzak fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jul 5, 2012 |
# ? Jul 5, 2012 15:50 |
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How did they go about fixing them?
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 16:27 |
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Broken Loose posted:There have been efforts to design really awesome kingdoms, and, as a few people who've hung out in #boardgoons can attest, the best games of Dominion are the ones where multiple strategies counter each other on the board. I agree that it would be difficult to make an asymmetric deckbuilder, but I also think that Dominion has been out long enough for there to be experts on the matter worth consulting. If the right people put their heads together, you could make an awesome and relatively balanced game. Right. I'm not saying you couldn't design two equally-matched kingdoms. I'm just saying it would be very hard. As you say, there are people who've been playing and analyzing Dominion for years as a symmetric game... I don't doubt those people (who include me) could do it if they set their minds to it. What I'm saying is that's what it would take to design a balanced, asymmetric deckbuilder; years of work, starting with a symmetric game and learning all the subtleties first, then carefully figuring out how to tease things apart and create asymmetries without giving one side or the other too much advantage or forcing either side into one specific strategy.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 18:13 |
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xopods posted:Right. I'm not saying you couldn't design two equally-matched kingdoms. I'm just saying it would be very hard. As you say, there are people who've been playing and analyzing Dominion for years as a symmetric game... I don't doubt those people (who include me) could do it if they set their minds to it. I really think you're overstating the problem. You don't have to construct two "equally matched" Kingdoms; just get them close enough that the advantage is roughly equivalent to the first-player advantage. If you want to get fancy, do some playtesting and assign the first-turn advantage to whoever has the weaker Kingdom. Shuffle luck should ensure it stays competitive. Balance doesn't have to be perfect; it never is. (And if anyone really wanted they could give a VP advantage; if it's good enough for Go players it's good enough for me.) But a single Dominion kingdom is a lot easier than making a whole game with enough strategic depth on both sides to yield real surprises, so definitely the latter isn't so easy.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 18:32 |
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I picked up a copy of Super Dungeon Explore last week, and after 2 bottles of super glue, some sore fingers and an evening down, I got all the minis constructed (to be fair they were very easy to put together but Im an experienced wargamer/modeller and I could see how non wargamers could struggle). The game itself is great. I bought it mainly so I could play with my 6 yr old son- I needed a not too deep or complex dungeon crawl type affair (OK its not really a dungeon crawl as such but its got monsters, heroes and loot so meh!) and so far hes got on with it famously. The figures, colourful dice and nice looking boards help hold his attention and the core gameplay is very simple. Saying that there does seem to be quite a surprising amount of depth to it and Im looking forward to seeing what my gaming group makes of it as Im obviously going very easy on my son and pretty much letting him win by lining up my bad guys for him to mow down. Here's my quick attempt at painting one of the minis. A bit different from my normal choice of miniatures (Im a terrible grognardy historical gamer usually)
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 19:16 |
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McNerd posted:I really think you're overstating the problem. You don't have to construct two "equally matched" Kingdoms; just get them close enough that the advantage is roughly equivalent to the first-player advantage. If you want to get fancy, do some playtesting and assign the first-turn advantage to whoever has the weaker Kingdom. Shuffle luck should ensure it stays competitive. Balance doesn't have to be perfect; it never is. (And if anyone really wanted they could give a VP advantage; if it's good enough for Go players it's good enough for me.) The thing about deck-building games is that the mechanic is intrinsically exponential. Good cards let you get other good cards faster than slightly less good cards let you get other slightly less good cards. That's what makes it hard to balance. I guess you could incorporate stabilizing mechanics, like some kind of tax every time a player shuffles, based on the highest valued card in the discard pile, to penalize players with an extremely thin deck of extremely valuable cards. Anyway, again, my point was that even taking a thoroughly tested, pre-balanced game like Dominion, with a wealth of player knowledge already established, it wouldn't be trivial to create an acceptably-balanced asymmetric setup (recall that I originally said 60/40 win rate or closer, I never insisted it has to be "perfectly" balanced). To create a new game from scratch that incorporates such mechanics (but isn't similar enough that you could just use what you know about Dominion to balance it) would be extremely hard.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 21:09 |
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Gort posted:Oh crap, is that out? I don't see it on Amazon. Preview events are this weekend, but I think the release proper is middle of the month-ish.
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 21:40 |
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Gort posted:How did they go about fixing them? As far as the campaign goes, the main flaw of the Descent 1 Advanced Campaign was its length, which made all the other imbalances unbearable. There's no Conquest now and the Overlord gains XP for progressing/winning scenarios (can't tell yet), which in turn allows him to customize the deck and choose classes (customizing is the new Treachery, classes allow you to focus on specific upgrades, e.g. traps). Also the win/loss of previous scenario determines the path in the campaign. Seems shorter, reasonably completable, not as epic as RTL but won't have such hellish problems because of that. Pierzak fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 5, 2012 |
# ? Jul 5, 2012 22:09 |
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Serotonin posted:Super Dungeon Explore My group's been enjoying this lately. It's light enough that it can be a 'hanging out' sort of game, but deep enough that there can be group discussion about tactics. I'm a little put off by all the rules included for the expansion (the GM has to choose several different things, but without an expansion, there's not actually a choice), but I plan to get the first expansion when it comes out in a month or so, so that'll solve itself. That's your quick effort? It looks great!
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# ? Jul 5, 2012 23:19 |
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flashdim posted:Preview events are this weekend, but I think the release proper is middle of the month-ish. Fantasy Flight was apparently selling copies of Descent 2 at their game center in the Twin Cities last weekend; I played it with a member of my regular gaming group who had gone up there for an event. The rules clearly state that LOS can be traced from any corner to any corner. They're up online, so I don't know why there would be any debate about it. As far as setup goes, there's way less crap to bring out on the table; PCs now have class decks to select starting powers and gear from similiar to how the D&D games play; and the dungeon is fully assembled before play starts. The three scenarios I played all had pretty compact maps; the game in total took up no more table space than Puerto Rico.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 01:35 |
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Unfit For Space posted:Fantasy Flight was apparently selling copies of Descent 2 at their game center in the Twin Cities last weekend; I played it with a member of my regular gaming group who had gone up there for an event. I haven't looked much into the new edition. I really like Descent but there was just so much poo poo slopped on top that needlessly complicated it. I can never get my group to play it. How fast does it go now? Myrmidongs fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jul 6, 2012 |
# ? Jul 6, 2012 01:40 |
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Rutkowski posted:Just finished another game of TI3(+ both expansions) and man, this was probably the best one so far. I love hearing TI trip reports! Letnev's flagship is tough since it repairs itself each combat round. But I feel the Lizix and Mentak are borderline broken. Dred and FS hits have to be taken on capital ships (Liz), and no sustained damage (Mentak), are crazy strong. Does your group do standard setups around the rim of the galaxy, or have you experimented with random setups and bidding? Nitis fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jul 6, 2012 |
# ? Jul 6, 2012 02:37 |
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Myrmidongs posted:I haven't looked much into the new edition. I really like Descent but there was just so much poo poo slopped on top that needlessly complicated it. I can never get my group to play it. How fast does it go now? Pretty fast. The quest we did was broken up into two encounters. I didn't time it but I'd guess both encounters total ran us maybe an hour and a half, and it was our first time playing the game.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 03:43 |
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Rutkowski posted:All in all, quite a great game. I also spent the entire game doing small things like Local Unrest and Sabotage just to gently caress with Ha'can because he blocked my trade proposal with the Yssaril tribes back in turn 1. This is one of my favorite parts about TI, the low level dickery that takes place in revenge for previous slights.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 04:28 |
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Nitis posted:I love hearing TI trip reports! We set up our starting positions pretty much freely(try to switch it up so someone doesn't always sit next to the same people) and then we divide the pile(55/5 hexes) and then just follow the regular placement order.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 07:00 |
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Played Blood Bowl: Team Manager for the first time and thought it was a really fun quick game after figuring out the rules. Expected more deckbuildiness, but was pleasantly surprised at how it handled adding players.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 16:26 |
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djfooboo posted:Played Blood Bowl: Team Manager for the first time and thought it was a really fun quick game after figuring out the rules. Expected more deckbuildiness, but was pleasantly surprised at how it handled adding players. Did you play with the No Salary Cap variant?? (chances are the answer is yes) Blood Bowl is fun but it's kind of ridiculous that FFG released errata that basically said "oh by the way don't play with these 7 cards that we included because they're broken"
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 16:36 |
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# ? Mar 30, 2024 00:53 |
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bobvonunheil posted:Did you play with the No Salary Cap variant?? (chances are the answer is yes) Yeah, we played no salary cap, didn't get FAQ beforehand. My strategy was to nickle and dime fans because I didn't realize that the staff upgrades were ridiculous. I only lost by 8 points. considering he had 3 of the broken cards I consider that pretty good.
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# ? Jul 6, 2012 16:48 |