I've only played Rex once and quite enjoyed it. Endless space turtles and all that jazz.
Alliances raising the victory requirements is a nice feature. I do dimly remember something about a prisoner's dilemma thing at the end which sort of invalidates the game, but I don't recall the specifics.
The game we played saw French Girl and Kalkino on the winning team, and French Girl enthusiastically stabbing Kalkino in the back as soon as the option was offered.
You basically have a card given to you at the beginning of the game with a number and a victory requirement on it. If you pass the requirement you can play this card to try and grab an alliance victory for yourself. Other members of the alliance can play their card if they've passed their victory requirement, and the highest number wins.
I think the key to enjoying Rex is understanding that it was done by the same guys who did Cosmic Encounter. It's not a deep strategy game. It's a fun little game full of surprises, twists and mind games. I think if you approach it like that, you'll have a great time.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
I bought REX a few months ago, but haven't managed to get it to the table yet.
Not for lack of willingness, though. Reading the rules makes it sound like someone decided to build a game that tickled every one of my pleasure centres, and put it on the table just for me. It's possible when I actually get to sitting down with a group of friends and attempting to all politically and militarily betray one another it won't actually live up to my hopes, but it is possibly the most excited I've ever been after reading a rulebook but before I've actually played the game. I'm fully aware of all the possibilities for let down, but I am hopeful.
I've been sitting on it for a few months to put it on the table in the right circumstances with the right players, but since getting it the stars haven't quite aligned. There's certainly some players I wouldn't put it down in front of, but for those whose tastes are similar to my own... I find the possibilities very intriguing indeed.
So, my LGS has a couple of copies of Betrayal at the House on the Hill left. Worth buying?
Sure. It is quite fun and can lead to some very enjoyable stories to tell. But you have to see it as a dumb B-movie style horror game, and not be too competitive, because most of the time the senarios are so lopsided that it is near impossible to win depending on who gets to be the Betrayer.
Another big thing is the need for the betrayer to go and read special rules alone in a seperate room. This is at the same time the best and the worst part of the game, because it is pretty awesome, but requires that everyone is capable of reading and understanding rules that can somethimes be a little finicky.
Also I tried out Jaipur with my fiancee last night and it was an instant smash hit. Seems likely to topple star realms, ascension, and lost cities as our go to quick game fix.
PincheGamesOwner/Tabletop Game DeveloperSan Antonio, TXRegistered Usernew member
It is a great thing to have PAX here in San Antonio. We can't wait to get over there and run our games with tons of people that have never seen it. We may even try to debut a game that we have on Kickstarter right now.
I got my Coup Reformation this morning. Boy, there's a lot of cards. I mean, a LOT of cards. They may have messed up and dumped twice as many cards in the box, since I appear to have doubles of everything (I think). I don't think it's supposed to have 70 cards.
I really like the new Alliance and Inquisitor rules. They are easy to implement/remember. I also REALLY like the character art.
Yeah, between all the extra cards with the original kickstarter, and the extra cards with the expansion kickstarter, I think I have like 5 full sets of Coup.
Yeah, between all the extra cards with the original kickstarter, and the extra cards with the expansion kickstarter, I think I have like 5 full sets of Coup.
Yep, most are alternate atwork but indeed, you do get multiple copies to play with. I sleeved all of them because I have young kids (8 and 10) and I sleeves everything because I want to keep the game for a while but considering all of these extra, I could have probably skipped sleeving them but I happen to have some extra sleeves from my 7 wonders game that fit perfectly with Coup.
We played our first round of King of Tokyo last night. We really liked it, although some of the cards took a few readings to really get, and there was one where you bank energy and gain it back each round that we actually avoided because the game hadn't really clicked yet. Probably if we play again though it would make more sense.
Overall though we found it really fun. My son ended up winning after killing my monster when I was two points away from victory. Perfect length of game too.
Wings. Always buy them. Jetpack is pretty sweet too. Parasitic tentacles is pretty fun, especially if you have the one that lets you buy cards at 1 less, since it allows you to buy everyone's cards for cheap. It's funny.
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
We played our first round of King of Tokyo last night. We really liked it, although some of the cards took a few readings to really get, and there was one where you bank energy and gain it back each round that we actually avoided because the game hadn't really clicked yet. Probably if we play again though it would make more sense.
Overall though we found it really fun. My son ended up winning after killing my monster when I was two points away from victory. Perfect length of game too.
Wings. Always buy them. Jetpack is pretty sweet too. Parasitic tentacles is pretty fun, especially if you have the one that lets you buy cards at 1 less, since it allows you to buy everyone's cards for cheap. It's funny.
My group bans Wings and Jetpack from games. Both cards are way out of balance. Even if Wings cost 12, it would probably be too strong.
Got to play a few more rounds of Arctic Scavengers last night. It just really doesn't do it for me. I find it to be a clumsy, unbalanced skin of Dominion.
The tribal leaders do not seem to be balanced at all. The butcher was chosen in each game and whoever had it won each game. The ability to purchase characters like the Engineer and Scout on turn 1 and 2 allow that player to just snowball the game immediately.
By the fifth or sixth turn the junkyard has gotten so bogged down with trashed cards and most of the good stuff has been sifted out to the point where its very unattractive to dig. Each turn becomes a simple, binary decision of "Do I think I have a decent chance of winning the Skirmish? If yes, keep all five cards, if no, hunt for the best card I can afford"
I've not played Arctic Scavngers with the tribal leaders but I enjoy it with 3 people. When you move up to 4 or more I think it just takes a bit too long.
We did a 5 player game with 1 new player and it ended up at nearly 2 hours. Some of that was due to some AP issues but still way longer than I would want to play for.
Got to play a few more rounds of Arctic Scavengers last night. It just really doesn't do it for me. I find it to be a clumsy, unbalanced skin of Dominion.
The tribal leaders do not seem to be balanced at all. The butcher was chosen in each game and whoever had it won each game. The ability to purchase characters like the Engineer and Scout on turn 1 and 2 allow that player to just snowball the game immediately.
By the fifth or sixth turn the junkyard has gotten so bogged down with trashed cards and most of the good stuff has been sifted out to the point where its very unattractive to dig. Each turn becomes a simple, binary decision of "Do I think I have a decent chance of winning the Skirmish? If yes, keep all five cards, if no, hunt for the best card I can afford"
I've never seen the Butcher win, actually. You sacrifice a ton of points. And I've won several games because I ignored the Skirmish the last couple of rounds and did nothing but dig.
However, if you remove the leaders (which are meant to be added once you know the game, as they are an expansion), I'm not sure how the game could be unbalanced--everyone has access to the same cards.
That said, I understand how people might not like it, and I don't begrudge you that. The thing is, the game is the Poker of deck builders, it's all about gambling and risk, which sometimes don't pay off.
Origin for Dragon Age: Inquisition Shenanigans: Inksplat776
Yeah, Arctic Scavengers really didn't do well for us either. The decisions in the game just don't feel very meaningful. Though the thing that killed it (like I said previously) is the horrid manual. We played through half a game before we realized that you could only do one action per round. The game also has very little combo-ing, which was supposedly the intention of the designer, and results in few "a-ha!" moments. I'm going to try playing this a couple more times before passing final judgement, but my first couple games weren't super great.
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Got to play a few more rounds of Arctic Scavengers last night. It just really doesn't do it for me. I find it to be a clumsy, unbalanced skin of Dominion.
The tribal leaders do not seem to be balanced at all. The butcher was chosen in each game and whoever had it won each game. The ability to purchase characters like the Engineer and Scout on turn 1 and 2 allow that player to just snowball the game immediately.
By the fifth or sixth turn the junkyard has gotten so bogged down with trashed cards and most of the good stuff has been sifted out to the point where its very unattractive to dig. Each turn becomes a simple, binary decision of "Do I think I have a decent chance of winning the Skirmish? If yes, keep all five cards, if no, hunt for the best card I can afford"
I've never seen the Butcher win, actually. You sacrifice a ton of points. And I've won several games because I ignored the Skirmish the last couple of rounds and did nothing but dig.
However, if you remove the leaders (which are meant to be added once you know the game, as they are an expansion), I'm not sure how the game could be unbalanced--everyone has access to the same cards.
That said, I understand how people might not like it, and I don't begrudge you that. The thing is, the game is the Poker of deck builders, it's all about gambling and risk, which sometimes don't pay off.
The butcher in my games only came into play in the first several turns killing Refugees which would have just been trashed anyway.
The problems I have with balance beyond the leaders though, is the availability and acquisition of Medkits. If you're not fortunate enough to fish a couple medkits out of the junkyard early, you're kind of shit out of luck for acquiring mercenaries to actually make your deck competitive.
A pick up of Field Crew on early skirmishes carries way too much weight throughout the rest of the game. Likewise, an early 3-man Tribal Family on the first skirmish or two can really mess up your game assuming you committed resources to winning that skirmish.
I can appreciate an element of risk-taking. But with this, you're gambling on a mystery prize compounding the luck element.
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
Maybe I'm still not understanding this- it's just an additional chance to move or recruit and that's really good because you normally can have only 2 move actions, right?
My friend taught in Coup that anyone could block a steal or assassination the first time we played, which wasn't a problem really with 2-3 players. Reading the rules again when we had 6 players made that change the game completely.
Yeah, Arctic Scavengers really didn't do well for us either. The decisions in the game just don't feel very meaningful. Though the thing that killed it (like I said previously) is the horrid manual. We played through half a game before we realized that you could only do one action per round. The game also has very little combo-ing, which was supposedly the intention of the designer, and results in few "a-ha!" moments. I'm going to try playing this a couple more times before passing final judgement, but my first couple games weren't super great.
The manual is indeed absolutely awful. But you were playing correctly originally -- you can do multiple actions per round (send some cards to Dig and others to Hunt/Recruit, for instance). Rio Grande Games actually has this on their main Arctic Scavengers page, just because it's such an egregious rules error:
Please note: Kyle has discovered an error he made in the rules. Under Key Concepts on page 6, the first point should read: A player may take multiple actions in a round. We apologize for any confusion this may cause. The downloadable rules are correct.
If you restrict yourself to a single action per round, I'd think the game would be over before you could really make a meaningful deck.
Hedgethorn on
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
We played Galaxy Trucker with the "rule" that you had to have one hand behind your back when building your ship. I blame Shut Up & Sit Down for that.
Took us a few months before we realized it wasn't a rule.
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
We played Galaxy Trucker with the "rule" that you had to have one hand behind your back when building your ship. I blame Shut Up & Sit Down for that.
Took us a few months before we realized it wasn't a rule.
That's not an actual rule, haha? Definitely been sitting on a hand for years now.
Their most recent video with Archipelago has firmly taught me to not trust their rules interpretations of games. They did almost everything wrong in that.
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
You can only build with one hand, but you don't have to sit on the other one or put it behind your back
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
We played Galaxy Trucker with the "rule" that you had to have one hand behind your back when building your ship. I blame Shut Up & Sit Down for that.
Took us a few months before we realized it wasn't a rule.
That's not an actual rule, haha? Definitely been sitting on a hand for years now.
Their most recent video with Archipelago has firmly taught me to not trust their rules interpretations of games. They did almost everything wrong in that.
I mean... it's not, but I'm 99% sure there's a rule that you can only use one hand.
Yeah, Arctic Scavengers really didn't do well for us either. The decisions in the game just don't feel very meaningful. Though the thing that killed it (like I said previously) is the horrid manual. We played through half a game before we realized that you could only do one action per round. The game also has very little combo-ing, which was supposedly the intention of the designer, and results in few "a-ha!" moments. I'm going to try playing this a couple more times before passing final judgement, but my first couple games weren't super great.
The manual is indeed absolutely awful. But you were playing correctly originally -- you can do multiple actions per round (send some cards to Dig and others to Hunt/Recruit, for instance). Rio Grande Games actually has this on their main Arctic Scavengers page, just because it's such an egregious rules error:
Please note: Kyle has discovered an error he made in the rules. Under Key Concepts on page 6, the first point should read: A player may take multiple actions in a round. We apologize for any confusion this may cause. The downloadable rules are correct.
If you restrict yourself to a single action per round, I'd think the game would be over before you could really make a meaningful deck.
Wow, yeah, might have to give the game another shot then. Thats a big mistake!
So this is funny. I've played Ingenious probably close to 100 times. It was one of the first board games I purchased. I was teaching it to someone again last night, and took a look at the rules for the first time in forever.
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
Maybe I'm still not understanding this- it's just an additional chance to move or recruit and that's really good because you normally can have only 2 move actions, right?
I think I explained that badly.
Our initial reading of the rulebook, with some misgivings as it seemed to make the gold tile 100% worse than the silver tiles, was that it was simply an extra action token that you had to place in the 3rd tier of the pyramid - but you still had to obey the rule that you couldn't double-place. This is obviously worse than a silver action token, which can still not break that rule but at least it can go anywhere on the pyramid you want it to go.
In fact (according to various bgg threads and links I found) the gold tile creates a whole new imaginary 4th tier for itself which is basically a copy of the 3rd (or simply breaks the rules if you want to think of it that way): it can be a second recruit or a second 3rd tier move action (in other words, 2 recruits or 3 moves max in a turn) - which the silver tokens definitely can't do. The rulebook really wasn't clear on that IMO, so we had to confirm when we started wondering what the hell was the whole point of buying the gold token.
Reading around bgg it's clear we weren't the only ones.
We played our first round of King of Tokyo last night. We really liked it, although some of the cards took a few readings to really get, and there was one where you bank energy and gain it back each round that we actually avoided because the game hadn't really clicked yet. Probably if we play again though it would make more sense.
Overall though we found it really fun. My son ended up winning after killing my monster when I was two points away from victory. Perfect length of game too.
Wings. Always buy them. Jetpack is pretty sweet too. Parasitic tentacles is pretty fun, especially if you have the one that lets you buy cards at 1 less, since it allows you to buy everyone's cards for cheap. It's funny.
My group bans Wings and Jetpack from games. Both cards are way out of balance. Even if Wings cost 12, it would probably be too strong.
Wait, no Jetpack is the one to always get. Wings is good, but because of the energy cost not nearly as.
I feel like both cards are fine, given the randomness of the game anyway, plus you can mitigate against in various ways. Often times the guys with wings get dogpiled. Or you can reset the cards if you know it is up, but you cant buy it before someone else.
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Went to Board Game night at the new-to-me FLGS, finally, after weeks of having to work Saturdays.
Got to try String Railway, which was a neat little game, and play some Takenoko and get just crushed by the tile placement of the other players.
Then BattleCON came out and I got to teach some people that. I'm getting good at Lesandra, I think, so I may have to pick someone new to play against people learning the game. Suggestions, from the other BattleCONians?
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The game we played saw French Girl and Kalkino on the winning team, and French Girl enthusiastically stabbing Kalkino in the back as soon as the option was offered.
You basically have a card given to you at the beginning of the game with a number and a victory requirement on it. If you pass the requirement you can play this card to try and grab an alliance victory for yourself. Other members of the alliance can play their card if they've passed their victory requirement, and the highest number wins.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
"We win!"
"Actually, sorry, but I win because of my alliance card."
"Well if you're going to be like that, here's my alliance card and it's higher than yours."
"ABUHBUHBUH. I predicted you would win the whole time and was working to ensure it. Which means I win."
Then I envision some sort of comical Benny Hill chase scene.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Not for lack of willingness, though. Reading the rules makes it sound like someone decided to build a game that tickled every one of my pleasure centres, and put it on the table just for me. It's possible when I actually get to sitting down with a group of friends and attempting to all politically and militarily betray one another it won't actually live up to my hopes, but it is possibly the most excited I've ever been after reading a rulebook but before I've actually played the game. I'm fully aware of all the possibilities for let down, but I am hopeful.
I've been sitting on it for a few months to put it on the table in the right circumstances with the right players, but since getting it the stars haven't quite aligned. There's certainly some players I wouldn't put it down in front of, but for those whose tastes are similar to my own... I find the possibilities very intriguing indeed.
Sure. It is quite fun and can lead to some very enjoyable stories to tell. But you have to see it as a dumb B-movie style horror game, and not be too competitive, because most of the time the senarios are so lopsided that it is near impossible to win depending on who gets to be the Betrayer.
Another big thing is the need for the betrayer to go and read special rules alone in a seperate room. This is at the same time the best and the worst part of the game, because it is pretty awesome, but requires that everyone is capable of reading and understanding rules that can somethimes be a little finicky.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1222169/tragedy-looper-99-spoiler-free-review
Also I tried out Jaipur with my fiancee last night and it was an instant smash hit. Seems likely to topple star realms, ascension, and lost cities as our go to quick game fix.
I really like the new Alliance and Inquisitor rules. They are easy to implement/remember. I also REALLY like the character art.
It was me!
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Yep, most are alternate atwork but indeed, you do get multiple copies to play with. I sleeved all of them because I have young kids (8 and 10) and I sleeves everything because I want to keep the game for a while but considering all of these extra, I could have probably skipped sleeving them but I happen to have some extra sleeves from my 7 wonders game that fit perfectly with Coup.
PSN: Guibs25 | XboxLive: Guibs | Steam: Guibsx | Twitch: Guibsx
My thunder may be stolen but I feel very gratified that people of quality agree with me.
Wings. Always buy them. Jetpack is pretty sweet too. Parasitic tentacles is pretty fun, especially if you have the one that lets you buy cards at 1 less, since it allows you to buy everyone's cards for cheap. It's funny.
but they're listening to every word I say
My group bans Wings and Jetpack from games. Both cards are way out of balance. Even if Wings cost 12, it would probably be too strong.
The tribal leaders do not seem to be balanced at all. The butcher was chosen in each game and whoever had it won each game. The ability to purchase characters like the Engineer and Scout on turn 1 and 2 allow that player to just snowball the game immediately.
By the fifth or sixth turn the junkyard has gotten so bogged down with trashed cards and most of the good stuff has been sifted out to the point where its very unattractive to dig. Each turn becomes a simple, binary decision of "Do I think I have a decent chance of winning the Skirmish? If yes, keep all five cards, if no, hunt for the best card I can afford"
We did a 5 player game with 1 new player and it ended up at nearly 2 hours. Some of that was due to some AP issues but still way longer than I would want to play for.
I've never seen the Butcher win, actually. You sacrifice a ton of points. And I've won several games because I ignored the Skirmish the last couple of rounds and did nothing but dig.
However, if you remove the leaders (which are meant to be added once you know the game, as they are an expansion), I'm not sure how the game could be unbalanced--everyone has access to the same cards.
That said, I understand how people might not like it, and I don't begrudge you that. The thing is, the game is the Poker of deck builders, it's all about gambling and risk, which sometimes don't pay off.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
I noticed a new rule. WTF?! How can there be a rule I didn't notice before? It's the rule where for the first round only, everyone must play to a different corner of the board. Thankfully not a big deal. But I definitely had one of those "MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE!" moments.
The butcher in my games only came into play in the first several turns killing Refugees which would have just been trashed anyway.
The problems I have with balance beyond the leaders though, is the availability and acquisition of Medkits. If you're not fortunate enough to fish a couple medkits out of the junkyard early, you're kind of shit out of luck for acquiring mercenaries to actually make your deck competitive.
A pick up of Field Crew on early skirmishes carries way too much weight throughout the rest of the game. Likewise, an early 3-man Tribal Family on the first skirmish or two can really mess up your game assuming you committed resources to winning that skirmish.
I can appreciate an element of risk-taking. But with this, you're gambling on a mystery prize compounding the luck element.
Everytime I play Kemet.
Seriously, maybe 10 or 12 plays at this point and I manage to find something that was done wrong after each game.
I'm amazed it still works, despite the English translation clearly being some sort of sly French joke at the expense of Anglophones.
How long did it take you to figure out the double-action gold upgrade? Our first playthrough we couldn't figure out why it was meant to be better than the silver upgrades unless you wanted to recruit and move twice in one turn. Then we finally realised it was meant to be a whole extra tier to the action-pyramid and wow, that was different.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Maybe I'm still not understanding this- it's just an additional chance to move or recruit and that's really good because you normally can have only 2 move actions, right?
The manual is indeed absolutely awful. But you were playing correctly originally -- you can do multiple actions per round (send some cards to Dig and others to Hunt/Recruit, for instance). Rio Grande Games actually has this on their main Arctic Scavengers page, just because it's such an egregious rules error:
If you restrict yourself to a single action per round, I'd think the game would be over before you could really make a meaningful deck.
We played Galaxy Trucker with the "rule" that you had to have one hand behind your back when building your ship. I blame Shut Up & Sit Down for that.
Took us a few months before we realized it wasn't a rule.
That's not an actual rule, haha? Definitely been sitting on a hand for years now.
Their most recent video with Archipelago has firmly taught me to not trust their rules interpretations of games. They did almost everything wrong in that.
I mean... it's not, but I'm 99% sure there's a rule that you can only use one hand.
Wow, yeah, might have to give the game another shot then. Thats a big mistake!
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I think I explained that badly.
Our initial reading of the rulebook, with some misgivings as it seemed to make the gold tile 100% worse than the silver tiles, was that it was simply an extra action token that you had to place in the 3rd tier of the pyramid - but you still had to obey the rule that you couldn't double-place. This is obviously worse than a silver action token, which can still not break that rule but at least it can go anywhere on the pyramid you want it to go.
In fact (according to various bgg threads and links I found) the gold tile creates a whole new imaginary 4th tier for itself which is basically a copy of the 3rd (or simply breaks the rules if you want to think of it that way): it can be a second recruit or a second 3rd tier move action (in other words, 2 recruits or 3 moves max in a turn) - which the silver tokens definitely can't do. The rulebook really wasn't clear on that IMO, so we had to confirm when we started wondering what the hell was the whole point of buying the gold token.
Reading around bgg it's clear we weren't the only ones.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Wait, no Jetpack is the one to always get. Wings is good, but because of the energy cost not nearly as.
I feel like both cards are fine, given the randomness of the game anyway, plus you can mitigate against in various ways. Often times the guys with wings get dogpiled. Or you can reset the cards if you know it is up, but you cant buy it before someone else.
but they're listening to every word I say
That is the correct move!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Got to try String Railway, which was a neat little game, and play some Takenoko and get just crushed by the tile placement of the other players.
Then BattleCON came out and I got to teach some people that. I'm getting good at Lesandra, I think, so I may have to pick someone new to play against people learning the game. Suggestions, from the other BattleCONians?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar