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Lorini posted:Nope, I explicitly warned against that. What we did was like this. Assume there's a white one on the board. We would then say to a player with the white 2, "You have three whites". Then the next player would say "You have 1 two". So they'd play the 1 two. Now if that's breaking the rules I guess we broke them, but I didn't see any rule against this. It WAS group think for sure, we knew without saying that we would only point out stuff that was relevant. Oh no, that's fine. But how did you have enough hints? There's only so many hint chips. Discarding comes with the risk that you're discarding a card you'll need.
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Jan 11, 2013 17:54
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silvergoose posted:Oh no, that's fine. But how did you have enough hints? There's only so many hint chips. Discarding comes with the risk that you're discarding a card you'll need. OK we also read into what we didn't say. So if I had a card that had not been pointed to for two rounds, I assumed it was safe to discard, otherwise they would have pointed to it.
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Jan 11, 2013 17:57
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Yeah, you'd run out of chips and have to take risks. It's especially risky to not point out 5s, since people might discard them.
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Jan 11, 2013 17:57
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Also I've only ever played the game with 4 people: it becomes much more difficult with more players and I enjoy it more than 3 player.
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Jan 11, 2013 18:00
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Tekopo posted:Also I've only ever played the game with 4 people: it becomes much more difficult with more players and I enjoy it more than 3 player. Yeah I could see that. But with four I'm playing Code 777 over this every time. It's simply a much better deduction game to me.
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Jan 11, 2013 18:03
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quote:OK we also read into what we didn't say. So if I had a card that had not been pointed to for two rounds, I assumed it was safe to discard, otherwise they would have pointed to it. I play with a group of computer programmers. We do the same obvious stuff you do - we also have a whole bunch of predefined understandings like: "if I don't have a clear play, I'll discard the card I know nothing about that is rightmost in my hand". Those allow previous players to plan out when they need to stop you from a key discard. We hold cards at different, set orientations and positions to signal (and remember) what we know about cards. By the end of the game, I'm remembering 30 things about my hand - stuff like "this card is not blue or red, and isn't a 3". We still normally score 20-22, only a few points better than our first plays with only basic strategies - but it's satisfying. The only 25 I've ever seen was 2 new players. They didn't mean to, but they cheated like crazy with intonation. All our hints are as straight faced as we can - "a man has 2 threes, cards 4 and 5", and we don't discuss anything related to the game during play. You have to be super careful about cheating; it's not a matter of "we're not trying to cheat", it's more like "we're maybe not trying hard enough not to cheat". Anyway, maybe you're just very lucky. Or you're using techniques far, far beyond those you're describing. We'd play it more except it's too tiring.
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Jan 11, 2013 18:17
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I think if I were ever to play it again with three, we'd just deal out four cards instead of the five cards that the rules said to deal out. That would help as well. We also could have been very lucky as well.
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Jan 11, 2013 18:27
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Lorini posted:I think if I were ever to play it again with three, we'd just deal out four cards instead of the five cards that the rules said to deal out. That would help as well. We also could have been very lucky as well.
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Jan 11, 2013 18:53
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What game would you recommend to someone as a substitute for Small World? A friend asked, since he likes SW but the group already has it, and I'm wracking my brain.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:36
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Maybe Lords of Waterdeep? Similar theme, similar complexity, different game but around the same difficulty in my albeit limited experience.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:47
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At the risk of stating the obvious, SW Underworld?
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Jan 11, 2013 21:56
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quote:What game would you recommend to someone as a substitute for Small World? A friend asked, since he likes SW but the group already has it, and I'm wracking my brain. Evo is by the same designer and has a lot of similarities. I prefer Evo to Small World, it's a fair bit less political (combat isn't as central) and the bidding for powers is more explicit/fair. Perhaps it might have a problem of being too similar, though.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:57
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Excerpt, chief of security's logbook, Space Alert advanced tutorial mission: quote:Mission Log 005. Soon after arrival at the scan location, a slime teleported onto the lower red deck. I immediately head down there to order the battlebots into action. However, I wasn't instructed clearly on how the 'bots worked, so as the mission progressed, I followed the spreading slime around the lower decks, frantically pressing the battlebot control buttons and watching them fail to do anything at all. Eventually, the slime spanned the entire bottom of the ship, and the entire crew was slipping in it, making it extremely difficult to combat both the enemy troops in our missile bay and the psionic satellite outside it. The troopers disabled our missile bay and teleported offship as the orb knocked us all unconscious. I'm endlessly amused that a mission that went totally off the rails in phase 7 or so still ended up a 'success.' cbirdsong fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 21:57
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Galaxy Trucker - why? My FLGS has the Anniversary Edition.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:07
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Jedit posted:Galaxy Trucker - why? My FLGS has the Anniversary Edition. Why what?
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Jan 11, 2013 22:15
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jmzero posted:Evo is by the same designer and has a lot of similarities. I prefer Evo to Small World, it's a fair bit less political (combat isn't as central) and the bidding for powers is more explicit/fair. Do you mind saying a bit more about what makes it better/less political? I think it might have even been an earlier post by you that crystallized my own feelings about "political" games like Catan and Small World.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:24
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quote:Do you mind saying a bit more about what makes it better/less political? I think it might have even been an earlier post by you that crystallized my own feelings about "political" games like Catan and Small World. A game (with more than 2 players or teams) is political to the extent that players can choose to hurt or help specific other opponents. Small World ends up very political because of the sheer number of political decisions - you're perpetually deciding where to attack, and often "who I'd rather attack" ends up the deciding factor. Evo has attacking, but it has much less of it, and when you're attacking there's often either no choice of who to attack, or there's other factors that are more important in your decision (unless you've given up and are just trying to drag someone down). I'm hesitant to say that makes the game uniformly "better". Lots of people like political games and the kinds of interactions that come with them, stuff like "staying under the radar" or "taking you down with me" or just "screw you". I don't like those kind of things too much, so Evo works better for me - but pretty much all multiplayer games are going to have some level of politics (assuming they're reasonably interactive). Richard Garfield spends a lot of time talking about politics in his design book, and Donald X has written a lot about it too. There's definitely pluses and minuses.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:48
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jmzero posted:Small World ends up very political because of the sheer number of political decisions
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Jan 11, 2013 22:54
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PerniciousKnid posted:What game would you recommend to someone as a substitute for Small World? A friend asked, since he likes SW but the group already has it, and I'm wracking my brain. I looked up Area Control on BGG, and sorted by rank. How about El Grande?
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Jan 11, 2013 23:00
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Crackbone posted:Why what? 
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Jan 11, 2013 23:21
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Crackbone posted:Why what? Why should one truck galaxies?
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Jan 11, 2013 23:21
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Jedit posted:Why should one truck galaxies? Because its a lot of fun?
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Jan 11, 2013 23:22
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Jedit posted:Galaxy Trucker - why? My FLGS has the Anniversary Edition. Are you asking for reasons to buy it? So Galaxy Trucker has elements of strategy, dexterity, timing, memory and of course luck. You have an initial round where you build a ship under a time limit, but the time limit is essentially set by the players turning over a minute glass when they decide to. So during this round, you are trying to build the best ship that has the most of each part (from a shared pool of parts), you are trying to do this quickly so that you can put pressure on your opponents, but you are trying to do this carefully so you don't build the ship improperly and lose pieces or forget key components; you are also trying to look through the adventure deck to try and figure out what stuff you need for the road ahead, but you also don't want to take too much attention from the pile of ship parts in case someone grabs that same stuff you are trying to decide on getting; you want to finish first to get a better starting position, but you can't turn over the timer for the final time unless you are completely finished which means your opponents have another full minute to build. This whole round is fun and frantic and full of those contradictions, there is definitely strategy here but you have to think and act quickly and every decision and action you take gets in the way of you doing something else which could've put you in a better position. At the end of this round there is an unspoken sub-round where everyone spot checks everyone else's ships to make sure they conform to the rules, but more importantly you are looking at everyone's ships an making fun of each other for the ridiculous bits of scrap you've puzzled together. Then you go through an actual adventure round where you draw cards to decide what happens to these ships. They can just cruise through open space, stop at planets to pick up cargo, be hit by meteors, be caught in the middle of a space battle, find derelict ships and space stations, be attacked by pirates, etc. This is where the decisions you made during that frantic first round might come back to bite you are save you. If you saw lots of planets when you were peaking at the adventure cards you might have built lots of cargo space to store the goods you pick up on those planets, BUT your friend who had his ship built first gets first pick of the cargo and ends up dumping most of it into space while you take the crappier stuff, BUT your other friend who spent more time building an efficient ship is better prepared to fight off the space pirates who come and rob you and your other friends, AND your fourth friend gets hit by a meteor in the center of his ship and ends up cruising across the finish line with a ship composed entirely of a single engine, some connector pipes and crew quarters hanging off the side. So it's great if you want a lighthearted game in which a bunch of wacky stuff happens, but there is still an opportunity for people with different sets of skills to have a chance to shine, or at least fail in a way that is hilarious to everyone. If you are looking for something "deeper" then getting hit with an ill timed cannon blast is probably going to be more frustrating than hilarious.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:25
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Maybe a little off-topic right now, but I just want to gush about Legendary - Marvel Deck Building Game a little bit. Pretty much every gamer or non-gamer I've introduced it to has become totally hooked. The mechanics are easy enough for a Monopoly player to get, and flexible enough that a serious deck building player can consider it a break from the rules of other games (I can buy or fight as much as I want in whatever order? Nice!). Everyone loves the theme and typically before we start, the newbie looks at everything and goes "Have you ever lost this? This looks super easy!" and if we do win it'll be by the skin of our teeth. Repeat plays with a group get easier for sure as people can strategize decks better, but it's still not a runaway depending on the Scheme and hero/villain composition. My only bitch is the setup/breakdown time but my Deck Randomizer web app at least speeds the up the "What do I need again?" part by a ton (http://legendary.seven2.net ). So just taking the cards out, putting them away is kind of a pain but not a big deal. Anyway, if anyone is looking for a easy-to-learn deck builder where Dominion and the like might scare someone off I can't recommend it enough.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:25
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Galaxy Trucker is Space Alert canon. Capitalism gone wild in Vlaada's cynical post-Eastern Bloc Future. The game consists of 3 rounds with 2 phases each. The first phase is Real Time Head to Head One-Handed Pipe Dream but it's also a race and you literally need every part from a "warehouse" in the middle of the table that is "shared with" (fought viciously over with) the other players. The second phase is kind of like flipping Encounter cards from Arkham Horror repeatedly except they hit everybody at once and damage to your ship is physically modeled to the ship you built in the first phase which gets terrifying fast when a comet literally bisects your ship and the game asks, "Which half of your ship would you like to keep?" also you're still racing but this time it's turn-based and pirates and slavers and smugglers keep firing at you and kidnapping your crew members and stealing your poo poo while you're attempting to navigate a labyrinth of meteors and space junk. Rounds 2 and 3 repeat this, except each time your ship gets bigger and more complex, the events get more destructive and unforgiving, and if you have any money at all at the end of Round 3 you win. That is all you need to know.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:43
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I don't understand how any game with split resources could be less complicated than Dominion.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:44
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Campbell posted:So just taking the cards out, putting them away is kind of a pain but not a big deal. Really, the game is just screaming for a full blown iPad app or something. Dominion posted:I don't understand how any game with split resources could be less complicated than Dominion.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:47
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Broken Loose posted:Galaxy Trucker is Space Alert canon. Capitalism gone wild in Vlaada's cynical post-Eastern Bloc Future. Galaxy Trucker also has a special round added to the game if you just decide "no way, I don't want to stop after three rounds" that looks like the Enterprise where you almost feel like it is your goddamn responsibility to build a ship so misshaped that you're forced to do an impromptu saucer separation mid-flight in order to get past some pirates. I love Galaxy Trucker.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:51
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Whalley posted:Galaxy Trucker also has a special round added to the game if you just decide "no way, I don't want to stop after three rounds" that looks like the Enterprise where you almost feel like it is your goddamn responsibility to build a ship so misshaped that you're forced to do an impromptu saucer separation mid-flight in order to get past some pirates. That's actually an alternate Round 3 ship! The first expansion includes alternate ships for Rounds 1 and 2, as well. Expansion 2 includes Round 4's ships, which are so huge they take up 2 boards. The alternate ships are always available, but they can't be insured so you pay for any damage out of pocket.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:53
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Yea, it's like what Impact said, the Coop w/ a meta competitive aspect (count personal victory points in end to see who gets MVP) that makes it very open and easy to teach. In Dominion, the official way to play is "A) play action cards, B) Buy stuff, C) Cleanup." In Legendary, it's A) play cards to try and make chain effects then add up your Attack and Buying power and dole them out however you want and in whatever order, B) cleanup." In reality, the turn mechanics in both games end up playing very very similar, but in my experience board game beginners haven't gotten stuck on "Ok, what phase of my turn is it again? how much can I do?" part and just play. That and the coop aspect makes it a gateway kind of deck-building game, in my opinion. That said, I own all but 2 Dominion expansions and we love it. But we love this one too.
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Jan 11, 2013 23:58
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Campbell posted:Maybe a little off-topic right now, but I just want to gush about Legendary - Marvel Deck Building Game a little bit. Oh man, did I hate this game. Was it just the random setup that resulted in a game where we were getting cursed multiple times per round or is this just something the game is supposed to be doing? The endgame was especially stupid. "Loki's out of twists and there's only one hero in the deck, so we lose this deckbuilding game if we do any more deckbuilding, or if a villain escapes. Somebody please get 10 attack to end this." I had the least focused deck because the hero draft hated me, but the most points despite never fighting the Big Bad because the villain draft loved me.
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Jan 12, 2013 00:08
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The game varies a TON based on your Hero and Villain drafts and even more based on the Mastermind and Scheme in play. It gives each session the potential to totally destroy you especially if you chain draw Scheme Twists or something like that. The game itself is about trying to hit an equilibrium as quick as possible and most times your group can do it if they work together while sometimes you just can't. Today our game had us with no more escaped villains allowed (if 1 more got away we lose) and only 3 heroes left in the deck and we basically had to stop buying for fear of heroes getting absorbed into the Villain pool (Skrull Shapeshifter Invasion). We barely managed to eek out a win. It's not a coop game that will just hand you a win but it's absolutely not Pandemic either.
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Jan 12, 2013 00:23
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Poopy Palpy posted:Oh man, did I hate this game. Was it just the random setup that resulted in a game where we were getting cursed multiple times per round or is this just something the game is supposed to be doing? The endgame was especially stupid. "Loki's out of twists and there's only one hero in the deck, so we lose this deckbuilding game if we do any more deckbuilding, or if a villain escapes. Somebody please get 10 attack to end this." It could have been weird shuffling if the Twists all came out in a close clump, which is entirely possible with a starting deck as big as Legendary's villain deck. Also, if you ran out of Heroes and you weren't playing the Civil War Scheme, then you did something very, very wrong. In a four player game, we might get through 3/4 of the deck, in 2 player it's usually barely half. My group and I really like this game (even my wife loves it, which is nice). One thing I noticed and really like is the fact that the more people playing, the more you HAVE to coop, at least in the beginning. Two rounds in and people better have their poo poo together and their roles defined or villains will be overrunning you fast. On higher difficulties, we don't even count each players Victory points, we have a collective pool to see who we beat (if we even win). In two player, however, we barely coop. It can get kind of cut throat.
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Jan 12, 2013 01:48
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Busted out Coup for the first time with my regular group + wife. Wife normally doesn't play since she doesn't like long games. It was pretty fun and popular. Pros: quick, rules fit on a card, bluffing is fun Cons: player elimination. Wife totally owned us all the first game, had everybody convinced as to what he last card was, then turned out it was an assassin and finished off the other last player. Played Kingsburg for the first time. The main elements are dice placement, resource gathering, building on a tech tree, predicting other players, and an orcs attack mechanic. The dice placement is pretty well done, it's balanced so that higher roles are generally better, but not WAY better, except rolls that let you use the queen seem very strong. Each advisor has a number 1-18 and you use one or more dice that add up to their number to use them, then other people can't use the same guy. There are some building that give you a bit more flexibility. The battle mechanics is pretty crappy, mostly because it is too random. The orcs will have strength like 1-3 on the first turn, and the king gives everybody strength 1-6. So The king can as much as double how much you need to beat the orcs. In every turn except the last the king was strong enough that everybody beat the orcs wether or not they invested anything. Then everybody lost against the orcs in the last turn despite lots of people heavily investing in battle. We have an expansion that has a better battle system, but we didn't use it in the first game.
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Jan 12, 2013 02:36
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jmzero posted:Richard Garfield spends a lot of time talking about politics in his design book, and Donald X has written a lot about it too. There's definitely pluses and minuses.
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Jan 12, 2013 03:16
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Jedit posted:Galaxy Trucker - why? My FLGS has the Anniversary Edition. You play pipe dream and then ride the pipes into space to play oregon trail. What more motivation could you need?
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Jan 12, 2013 03:17
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quote:I know Garfield has a book and a blog/podcast that never updates, but what writings does Donald X have? Donald writes a fair bit on BoardGameGeek - he made a little hub of articles on his secret history page that has a lot of content about his design process and ideas. He's got all sorts of interviews and small articles scattered around on places like DominionStrategy. This thread will be happy to know that when someone asks about designers whose games he wants to try, he always says Vlaada.
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Jan 12, 2013 05:09
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If anyone likes Descent Second Edition from FFG, check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_6mNQjhw8E That is honestly pretty drat awesome.
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Jan 12, 2013 05:36
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LumberingTroll posted:If anyone likes Descent Second Edition from FFG, check this out. That is pretty neat.
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Jan 12, 2013 05:55
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PerniciousKnid posted:What game would you recommend to someone as a substitute for Small World? A friend asked, since he likes SW but the group already has it, and I'm wracking my brain. What does your group like about Small World? I'm not saying this in a dickish way to suggest Smallworld is bad, but knowing why it ticks will give a better idea of what to suggest. There's the metagame part of deciding who the leader (or threat) is and forging temporary alliances which shift as the game takes shape. This part of the game works in Smallworld through the special abilities of each race which changes the balance fairly often. The classic example of this type of game is Cosmic Encounter, but just about any diplomacy type of game with unique abilities creates a similar feel (Dune, Game of Thrones). There's the tactical part of the game, which leads to just about any wargame. Area control games also give a similar feel while being far lighter, so you could look at anything from Dominant Species, Nexus Ops or even Kingdom Builder. El Grande was mentioned earlier, and it's still one of the best area control games out there.
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Jan 12, 2013 06:32
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