|
MonsterUnderYourBed posted:Cyclades looks totally amazing. Is it?
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 15:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Is cyclades any good with two players?
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 15:51
|
|
|
systran posted:Is cyclades any good with two players? If someone her does have experience with the 2-player mode: Do priest affect each offering separately, or only the total? Pierzak fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Aug 11, 2012 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 16:00
|
|
|
systran posted:Is cyclades any good with two players? I don't think so. The best aspect of the game is the bidding and you need 4-5 for that to really shine and become competitive. I suppose you could probably "do the math" with 2 players a lot easier but that doesn't make it better, or good, in my opinion.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 16:02
|
|
|
Yeah that's kind of what I was afraid of =( Thanks. I need to find more people to play with.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 16:06
|
|
|
cyclades works great with two players, it feels a bit like a game of chess. make sure you implement the hades expansion and the hecate promo from the bbg store and jump right in. Honestly of my favourite games, it has EVERYTHING and scales well from two to five players
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 16:15
|
|
|
I heard the hades expansion makes everything too random and weird though
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2012 17:01
|
|
|
Just stopping by to promote the newly created board game trading thread -- get rid of those old games you don't play anymore, and get something you maybe want to play in return! Thanks for all the recommendations in this thread, I'm trying to get my hands on Space Alert... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3501008
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 03:08
|
|
|
I want to chime in with some more Castles of Burgundy love. My wife and I have played it a few times this past week and really enjoyed it. Another couple-friendly game! A little learning curve with the iconography of the buildings and knowledge tiles, but I printed out some cheat sheets, and we'll be good to go after a few more plays. I've never played any of Stefan Feld's other games, but now I'm looking forward to trying them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 11:00
|
|
|
So a couple of days ago I got my hands on Combat Commander: Europe, Fighting Formations: Grossdeutschland Motorized Infantry Division, and two Dungeon Command packs. I have yet to play Fighting Formations, but I did manage to get a play out of the other two and a half games. Combat Commander threw me off, but overall I enjoyed my first play. The two issues I had were that I kept feeling I messed up the rules because firing felt so ineffective and that the card play felt like it could stall because you can get so many duds in your hand. But soon the rules felt a little more under control, and the card play eventually developed a rhythm and play zoomed along. I dig the game, and the biggest compliment I can give to it is that play goes fast. Dungeon Command is to tactical miniature board games as the D&D Adventure Board Games are to dungeon crawls. In other words, Dungeon Command is a straightforward and light game, but still fairly enjoyable. It might not even pop up with that 'tilesets are boring as gently caress' problem that Ravenloft and others had. I like the diceless combat in that game; it makes play go faster and gives more room for each player to know their situation. So yeah, I've been enjoying both games, and look forward to seeing how Fighting Formations weird Order Matrix thing works out....
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 13:14
|
|
|
Fighting formations is pretty interesting and i'd love to try a game over vassal sometime, to try it out with a real opponent, if you're game, Trynant.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 14:09
|
|
|
I too have recently acquired the first two sets of Dungeon Command. I like the game quite a bit. It's very simple but has a nice bit of depth. The minis look excellent. I do wish the battle field played a more important role in the game but that's something that you can mess with later I suppose. I also picked up Infiltration and Sky Traders. Haven't gotten to play those yet, might get to play them tomorrow.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 17:32
|
|
|
Played Innovation last night for two games. Played it two player, seems like a more grown up Flux. I actually have to make informed decisions on any given turn, but you're still at the mercy of the cards. Might be better with three, probably terrible with 4.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 17:46
|
|
|
Innovation is more random with 3. Personally, I prefer it with 2. 4 is awful.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 17:50
|
|
|
OK so we played 2nd edition Descent. I was overlord, we played the first two quests (including both encounters of Fat Goblin). Everyone quite liked the game but as Overlord I felt there were some problems with the game. 1) So few cards. You start with number of players cards, then draw one at the start of each turn (and one if a hero gets knocked out etc). I ran into situations where I was down to zero cards and the one card I got each turn didn't give me anything useful. 2) Lieutenants and master monsters feel really weak. Our heroes were the paladin, the halfling thief and the mage. Between the three of them they had two easy stuns, a ton of heals from the paladin and a blast with pierce on surges for every turn. All my big monsters just melted away. We tried to look up if they were less vulnerable to stuns or something, but doesn't look like that was the case. This was especially painful in The Fat Goblin II, where my Shadow Dragon was stunlocked to death while the goblin boss was busy interrogating farmers, then he ended up getting stunlocked to death as well. EDIT: reading on BGG indicates that we did in fact play this wrong. Clearing a stun isn't the only action you can take on your turn, it's just ONE action you have to do first. If true, that already is a HUGE loving gently caress-up on our part and would probably balance things out immensely. The card says "you can only take one action, that action is to discard this card" but BGG believes the condition ends when the card is removed, and you can then take whatever actions you have left normally It also seems the power scaling is kinda out of whack. When players get 1 xp each, they immediately get significantly more powerful as a group. The same XP only gives the overlord two new cards, which doesn't even come close to balancing it out. This all being said, we really liked the game. The rules are fast, easy to pick up and work quite well. The scenarios are fun and I really liked how the overlord has active goals in them instead of just trying to kill all players. It's entirely possible we missed some rules (I picked up the game late last night and didn't come close to grokking all the rules) and it's also possible the balancing may improve when we play more, but these are my immediate gut reactions based on ~three hours of play. But really, reflect on that. We played THREE QUESTS OF DESCENT IN THREE HOURS. That alone is a loving triumph for the books. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Aug 12, 2012 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 20:10
|
|
|
Rudy Riot posted:I want to chime in with some more Castles of Burgundy love. My wife and I have played it a few times this past week and really enjoyed it. Another couple-friendly game! A little learning curve with the iconography of the buildings and knowledge tiles, but I printed out some cheat sheets, and we'll be good to go after a few more plays. I've never played any of Stefan Feld's other games, but now I'm looking forward to trying them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 20:41
|
|
|
Der Shovel posted:OK so we played 2nd edition Descent. I was overlord, we played the first two quests (including both encounters of Fat Goblin). Everyone quite liked the game but as Overlord I felt there were some problems with the game. quote:EDIT: reading on BGG indicates that we did in fact play this wrong. Clearing a stun isn't the only action you can take on your turn, it's just ONE action you have to do first. If true, that already is a HUGE loving gently caress-up on our part and would probably balance things out immensely. The card says "you can only take one action, that action is to discard this card" but BGG believes the condition ends when the card is removed, and you can then take whatever actions you have left normally quote:It also seems the power scaling is kinda out of whack. When players get 1 xp each, they immediately get significantly more powerful as a group. The same XP only gives the overlord two new cards, which doesn't even come close to balancing it out.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 20:58
|
|
|
Pierzak posted:It is indeed the case. The first action you take can be only used to discard stun, then you get the rest. I hate to go all "FFG  " but that could've been worded better on the card. Also it turns out that all conditions, not just ones that explicitly say so, need you to push wounds through to work. So even the paladin's mace stun only works if you wound. Or that is the way I'd interpret the rulebook as written -- although then the question arises why some attacks specifically mention they only apply poison / stun if they wound. quote:What do you mean, two? Aren't they bought for XP cost, so 1 card maximum? Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that post, that's how we played it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:08
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:I thought my wife might like this one because the dice apparently limit the decision space, but how many different rules are there for the different tiles? (I didn't see the rulebook anywhere.) There's decision-making from the perspective of what kind of strategy you're using for placing the tiles, but also in maintaining the damage control of your opponent muscling for turn order, goods, and tiles, as well as unfortunate rolls if you haven't planned for them ahead of time. I've found it to be a surprisingly easy game to pick up and teach to casuals, and everyone I've played it with has enjoyed it- it's not the absolute crunchiest game in the world, but it's got enough to get people invested in what's going on with their own gamespace, and there's plenty of interesting decisions to make. I'd highly recommend it to just about anybody.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:34
|
|
|
Pierzak posted:Get the Unholy Ritual from Magus I, it really speeds things up. I grabbed this first as Overlord in the campaign we started as well. The other Magus 1 seems horrendous in comparison--all heroes make a might check, each hero that fails takes 1 wound. Am I missing something, or is that awful? I won Fat Goblin, so after First Blood, I've gotten to buy 3 OL cards--these are Unholy Ritual, the universal one that lets you heal a monster for 2 red dice, and a Warlord 1 that automatically grants two shields in defense. I thought about trying to focus on one school, but I'd picked Magus first, and didn't really want the Word of Pain (I think that's what it's called) described above, or a second Unholy Ritual, since a whole group of monsters losing an action isn't an insignificant cost to the awesomeness of drawing numerous cards, and I didn't like the possibility of having two Unholy Rituals in my deck before picking some better cards. Any suggestions for future card picks?
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:39
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:I thought my wife might like this one because the dice apparently limit the decision space, but how many different rules are there for the different tiles? (I didn't see the rulebook anywhere.) Check out this cheat sheet from BGG someone made that's really helpful: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/64999/castles-of-burgundy-tile-play-aid-v1-0 Whiles it's true there are only 4 basic actions you can take on your turn, the different buildings and tiles you place all have different effects, so there's a bit of a learning curve. Once you've played once or twice though, you'll see that it's not very complicated at all. My wife and I usually play pretty casual stuff like Stone Age, Carc, and Ticket to Ride. She was a little intimidated by this one when she saw it setup but really loved it after our first play.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:40
|
|
|
Der Shovel posted:The card says "you can only take one action, that action is to discard this card" but BGG believes the condition ends when the card is removed, and you can then take whatever actions you have left normally  Actually, the card says quote:Action Symbol: Discard this card or token. This is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token. Italics mine. If you discard the card, you no longer have the card. Therefore the "only action" part no longer applies and you can use the 2nd action for whatever you want. If it makes you feel better my day job is getting paid to read/write stuff like this for software guys so don't feel too bad about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:48
|
|
|
Played 1861 today, based in Russia and very different from any other 18XX I tried before. The main differences is that you start only with minor companies, than can then merge into big companies if you want, but if you find yourself ever in a position when a minor company doesn't have a train once the first 4 is bought, it immediately gets swooped up by the big state railroad, which is actually run by the game and no one can have shares in (thus making it just a system to speed up the game). Apart from that it's a pretty partial capitalisation game with very little stock market action, since only the president depreciates the price of a share when he sells. End game pictures as per usual, I had some pretty good routes by the end but I had less trains than other people and thus ended up last. I owned the SW (purple) and MKV (light green):  Although the game is a clusterfuck at the start (14 minor companies are present, each one needing to operate), it does become easier as it progresses and I would gladly play it again. Also played surprisingly fast with 3.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 21:49
|
|
|
nelson posted:If you discard the card, you no longer have the card. Therefore the "only action" part no longer applies and you can use the 2nd action for whatever you want. Wow, that's a really poorly-written card. Perhaps, "You must spend your first action this turn discarding this card" would have been better?
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 22:42
|
|
|
Gort posted:Wow, that's a really poorly-written card. Perhaps, "You must spend your first action this turn discarding this card" would have been better? Maybe you should learn english  FFG has a reputation to keep up, it must be intentional by this point.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 23:07
|
|
|
Just won an auction today for 1861, looking forward to getting it to the table.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 23:08
|
|
|
I played Dungeon Command on Friday, using one each of the two available sets and without any sort of customization. Out of the box, it is a pretty basic game that lacked all of the tactical crunch of actual D&D. As the drow, about 90% of the Order cards either increased the damage my dudes dealt or prevented damage being dealt, and I think the other player's cards were pretty similar. It is like playing through a D&D battle if everyone just had basic attacks and their encounter/daily abilities just did more damage. It is really kind of boring, and somehow the Order cards made it feel more luck-based than a dice-based system. Maybe the game will improve with expansions and customizability and all that, but my initial impression was very tepid. As far as light tactical kinda games go, I much prefer Summoner Wars. I guess if you were playing D&D on the side, having a handful of minis is a mild benefit. I also played a game of Battlecon, which I think would be a lot better (for newbies) if you played with open hands or I guess another copy of the game, since knowing exactly what your opponent's Styles and Unique base does alleviates a LOT of the learning curve. Simple rules, but since each character has a bunch of unique stuff, it makes it a bit of a bother to remember the specifics, namely how fast a dude can attack. I like it despite that, though, especially as a light 15min filler.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2012 23:32
|
|
|
Winson_Paine posted:On a related note, this just looks ridiculously sexy to me but I have poor judgement when it comes to eye candy games and also it is spendy as hell. From last page, sorry! But Fleet Captains is a great two-player game. I find it be a fun mix of strategy and tactics and the event cards add a pretty thematic random element to things. I like the gimmick of the clickable twisty bases to keep track of damage, much better than keeping track on a player aid with tokens or whatever. The models themselves are really well done, the random board layout is good, I dunno man, I love this game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 07:20
|
|
|
nelson posted:
Yep, it's still pretty ambiguously worded IMO. Would it have killed them to put in a line about then being able to act normally? Of course for example the rule for "Standing Up" in the rulebook specifically mentions you lose the rest of your turn when you do it so I guess it's consistent. But kinda confusing. Edit; typos, drat iPad touchscreen. EDIT 2: "While you have this card, the first action you take on your turn must be to clear it. You may then take the rest of your actions normally" would be so much better. Hell, you could even knock off the "while you have this card" because it's kinda implied by you having to have a card for it to affect you. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Aug 13, 2012 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 07:21
|
|
|
orphean posted:From last page, sorry! But Fleet Captains is a great two-player game. I find it be a fun mix of strategy and tactics and the event cards add a pretty thematic random element to things. I like the gimmick of the clickable twisty bases to keep track of damage, much better than keeping track on a player aid with tokens or whatever. You're not the only one. I love Fleet Captains as well. A lot of people bitch about the components quality but i dont think its a major issue at all. Aside from the tiles only the cards are weak and once sleeved its not a problem. I will also plug my variant on BGG which balances out the missions and forces some interaction for the Federation. Really looking forward to the Romulans. Hoping we get some more Klingons and Federation ships as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 08:14
|
|
|
Yeah, the only weak thing about Fleet Captains is that the components feel really cheap. The cards are like one micron thick (which is particularly annoying given you use hex cards to assemble the board) and a fair few of the ships wouldn't "clix" out of the box - I had to open them up and get busy with a Stanley knife and sandpaper before they would work properly. Still, if you can get past that, it's a fun game - the balance is probably pretty questionable in the sense that you can get really easy missions that let you walk home to victory very quickly (EG: Science missions as the Federation if you have a lot of small ships - Federation small ships are excellent at science), or you can keep drawing monstrously difficult ones that aren't worth the effort. (EG: Control a line of hexes that goes all the way to the Klingon side of the board) That said, if you can keep yourself from taking the game too seriously, it's a Trek nerd's dream. PS: PaybackJack - do you sleeve the hexes? Those are the most annoying component to me now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 10:26
|
|
|
Gort posted:PS: PaybackJack - do you sleeve the hexes? Those are the most annoying component to me now. I haven't done anything with the hexes. I really like everything fitting in the box and I haven't gotten rid of the insert yet. I have cut it to allow the sleeved cards to fit, but I'll have to toss the hex part of it once I figure out what to do with those. What I think I will most likely end up doing is having my local print store just print a giant sheet of black paper that's about double the thickness, maybe triple, of a magic card. You can request an extra set, or replacement set of tiles from Wizkids for like $5.00. So I'll get an extra set of tiles and then put the thick card stock between them and glue together. The card stock will be flimly enough to still allow shuffling but give each one a bit more thickness without going beyond the height of the box. This involves measuring though, so I haven't gotten to it yet. I thought about lamination but the local print shop I use needs thicker paper to laminate onto because they use super thick laminate. I considered using a normal store lamination machine like you'd use at school but deemed that too thick and didn't want to have to send all those tiles through the machine. My other thought was to do a giant scan of both sides of all the tiles and then just straight reprint them. However I can never seem to get stuff to scan perfectly evenly and I don't know of a store locally where I can get stuff scanned, scanners don't seem to be so common here(I live in Taiwan), but I haven't looked into the matter too much. This would probably be the best way to go though because then I could have the file for each tile to play around with as well. My final thought on the subject was to take all the tiles and turn their "information" into a deck of cards. Then just make a giant double sided map with blank empty space hexes. When you move into a tile you draw from the deck to see what's there and the card contains all the information that would have been on the tile. Then have a pile of large tokens for the various planets and nebulae. The problems with this is that 1) it adds a large map that's not modular 2) I'm turning a single component(hexes) into three different components (tokens, cards and a map), and 3)I would also need to have some type of token to mark explored vs. unexplored. A cool idea but not very practical, a lot of work, and not a whole lot of reward. As you can see I've put quite a bit of thought into what to do with these hexes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 12:07
|
|
|
Redacted
Indolent Bastard fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Apr 19, 2013 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 19:28
|
|
|
Indolent Bastard posted:Life boats exist everywhere, in space either on ships or space stations, in towns (or even single buildings) isolated by disasters either natural or supernatural, in the past where groups of people were pioneers and struck out into uncharted oceans and lands, really they are everywhere if you just look for them. Just my two cents. For some reason I'm now imagining a boardgame version of Airplane!, which could be an amazing experience.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 20:08
|
|
|
nimby posted:For some reason I'm now imagining a boardgame version of Airplane!, which could be an amazing experience. I'm imagining it to be something similar to Space Alert. It would be glorious.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 20:34
|
|
|
For anyone here who's a fan of or curious about my games, I've just made the official announcement for the first of two games of mine that are coming out this fall. http://www.benefactum.ca/?p=261 It's called Cash or Crash, and the one sentence explanation would be "A more cerebral version of Liar's Dice, but using cards." A more thorough explanation is available if you click the link above. If you like abstract games with hidden information and a strong bluffing element, it'll probably be right up your alley. It has player elimination, mind you, and I know a lot of people hate that... but it works very well as a two player game if that's an issue for you and honestly, it's a great spectator sport, so even once you're out, it's a lot of fun to sit and watch the fireworks. My publisher says it's been very well received at the trade shows he's brought it to. I think the pace of the game is such that it wouldn't work very well as Play-by-Post, but I could try to figure out a good way to run a demo over IRC if anyone's interested.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 20:34
|
|
|
So I am finally going to get to play Chaos in the Old World tonight. It is all four players first run through of it. Are there any really common rule misunderstandings we should look out for?
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 23:26
|
|
|
MonsterUnderYourBed posted:So I am finally going to get to play Chaos in the Old World tonight. It is all four players first run through of it. Woo! It's a really fun game. One of the big mistakes my group made on our first playthrough, partially because we read the rules fast and partially because the example they use in the rulebook isn't the best, involves the dial turns. The "dial advancement" tokens you accumulate on the dials don't directly correspond to the number of times you get to turn it. As long as you have at least one token, you get at least one turn, but any extra tokens past the first are only used to award a second dial turn to the person who has the most of them. We originally thought that one token = one turn, and had people turning the dial 3/4 times per turn, which ended the game pretty quickly. Also I'd take a quick look at the Errata sheet for the game. A number of the printed descriptions, either on the cards or in the rulebook, are incorrect. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/chaos_in_the_old_world/FAQ/CitOW_FAQ-v2_web.pdf
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 23:31
|
|
|
MonsterUnderYourBed posted:Are there any really common rule misunderstandings we should look out for? The one that gets me is that only players who add Corruption tokens during the Corruption Phase get the Ruiner bonus. This is relevant for both Slaanesh (one of the Chaos cards adds a Corruption token) and Nurgle (the Great Unclean One adds two Corruption tokens with the upgrade). The rest of the game is pretty straightforward. A bit of advice for Khorne: Try not to put a warrior or cultist as your first action, since Tzeentch has a tendency to be a dick and will Teleport you to some godforsaken corner, and that first round is pretty crucial to letting the blood flow. Also, focus on attacking the player in the lead. You might think this is somewhat self-evident, but you would be surprised. GrandpaPants fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Aug 13, 2012 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 23:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Slaanesh's sheet has a misprint - he/she requires two corruption tokens, not one, in a region with a hero or noble to get a dial advancement counter. I think it's mentioned in the actual rulebook. GrandpaPants posted:The one that gets me is that only players who add Corruption tokens during the Corruption Phase get the Ruiner bonus. This is relevant for both Slaanesh (one of the Chaos cards adds a Corruption token) and Nurgle (the Great Unclean One adds two Corruption tokens with the upgrade). This isn't true - it's corrected in the FAQ to be anyone who added corruption during that entire game round.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2012 23:51
|
|
