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[Board Games] Space Alert owns. Like, a lot.
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the VASSAL mod is really good, im down for a game basically whenever
I got Pandemic for Christmas yesterday and played a game with family. We had a lot of fun, but we got defeated pretty easily. Are all games of Pandemic difficult? I don't find it a flaw; if anything, it's rather welcoming.
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Way to completely miss the argument then.
What, in fact, was said was "if you make use of any historical setting whatsoever for a board game it will inevitably contain offensive themes".
Depending on exactly how the epidemics come up, it can be a bit easier or harder. Did you try just four epidemics first game, or jump straight to the normal difficulty? Also, the abilities you have in play can change the difficulty slightly, as some are a bit better than others. As you get better at the game, it will begin to feel easier.
The key to pandemic is discussing everyone's turn and the next few turns, then coordinating exactly. Sometimes you just get fucked though.
Forbidden Island
Arkham Horror
Carcassone
Ticket to Ride:1910 expansion
Settlers of Catan: Seafarers expansion
All given by different people, with no board game experience or knowledge, and not as a coordinated effort.
I also got FITS (Tetris the board game) in a trade.
I, also, got forbidden island and it's really good. one thing I'd like to try (in addition to cranking up the difficulty) is to institute a turn timer, so if you don't get in your three actions before time runs out then your turn just ends and the treasure/flood cards happen as normal. should make it more challenging and prevent the endless optimal-play-by-committee that you sometimes get in co-op games.
However, the replacement Cylon areas from Pegasus have some major differences compared to the base. Should I run with those instead? I guess they're made for balance purposes.
I like pegasus a lot but it's not really balanced at all
We went straight to normal. My room mate and I played last night... the first game, he was the Dispatcher and I was the Researcher. We played Normal and did pretty well - only had one outbreak, found all four cures on the second to last turn before the cards were going to run out.
We bumped it up to "Heroic" and had a different story. He drew Researcher and I drew Operations. We went to treat the red disease first, foolishly ignoring an outbreak in the west, thinking that, since we already had enough red cards, we could just get it out of the way. We ended up drawing two epidemics in three turns and caused a few chain reaction outbreaks. We ended up running out of blue cubes around the 6th outbreak. It was rough.
I absolutely love the game though. I'm madly addicted.
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It's a wonderful little time-eater for 1-3 people. If you haven't heard of it, it's like those little games you used to see in kids' magazines where you were given a 5-letter word and had to make as many other words as possible using those letters. The difference is that now there's a physical element involved, since you have to actually move the tiles around to form the words. It's nice, fast-paced, and feels good for your brain. Plus, there's just some child-like wonder at watching the tiles recognize their placement wirelessly and acknowledge that you just spelled a word.
Definitely get it if you need a time-filler.
But holy shit, the combat rules. I don't understand how they work, and I really don't understand the design decisions behind them. Surely something simpler could have been constructed.
Is it me or does Uwe Rosenberg seriously need to structure his rulebooks better? It took me forever to understand Agricola and just as long for Le Havre thanks to the really scattered layout of the rules. These are not games that are necessarily hard to understand after trying them, but dammit the rules make it look otherwise.
EDIT: Even with this complaining, the Agricola and Le Havre rules are ten times better than that of Horus Heresy's minutia.
Aces Wild is a pretty stellar game.
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I too am the residential rules guy for my group. Uwe's games I have always found it best to block off a time and play an entire game by myself with me controlling two players. I find there are a few too many changes from solo play to actual group play so always try and have a couple dummy people. I also tend to head over to bgg.com to check the forums on any game I am trying to learn as there is usually a post about 'often misplayed rules' for any of the games.
So you'll have "unit cards" (you start with 3 and can make more at your city). At the beginning of combat you and the opponent draw 3 cards from your stack of unit cards, randomly, plus whatever bonuses you get (mostly from having more than one flag-figure in the square.) That is your card hand. You also compare bonuses and one guy will have more than the other probably, they then get the appropriate bonus card on their side, but this doesn't do anything until the end of the combat.
Then starting with the defender each player puts a card down. The defender has no choice but to play a card into a new column. The attacker can then either put a card opposite the defender's card (making them fight) or in another new column. Then the defender places a card, either opposite one of the attacker's cards or in a new column. And so on until nobody has any cards left in their hand.
If you put a card opposite another card they fight, each card does its strength value in damage to the other card. If one card has RPS dominance (cavalry kills archers, archers kill footmen, footmen kill cavalry) they do first-strike damage. If at any point a card has at least as much damage as its strength value it dies and is discarded back to the market board. Cards still do full damage even if they have wounds.
Then both sides count up the strength of all their cards left on the table, and add the value on the bonus card if they have it, and whoever's result is higher wins.
How would you weigh Resident Evil against Ascension? That too has a fair amount of randomness in the way that Resident Evil appears to. The only really unique factor I remember, is the synergy between the different classes of cards, like the artifacts and the druidy/green cards etc, while Resident Evil has the characters and custom decks. It seems like one of the biggest complaints against RE, is a slow start, due to players being wary of the mansion deck since it can be so dangerous.
Forbidden Island, on the other hands, has been kicking our butts. I don't know why, its a family game and we find BSG to be too easy. We only play on novice, with 2-3 players, but we've only won one game out of four or so. Still quite fun however.
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Played a game of that last night. It was amazing. I am chomping at the bit for the next game. The whole slow build up then zombie, zombie, chaingun zombie is pretty great. Then, when you actually start using Shattered Memories to thin your deck back down, good stuff.
I heard Square Enix was working on a card game. Any idea if it is going to be CCG or all in one box like this? In this day and age, I think they'd be much better served releasing it in box form.
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Though, we house-ruled the traitor mechanic: instead of using the usual traitor or the Cylon leader, we use the usual traitor, but that person gets to pick a Cylon leader to become. It means that they don't get totally screwed like they normally would.
Good question, really.
I'd assume that it's going to be a Summer release (if it's not widely available, at least available early at the Con circuit) , so we might start hearing more about it in the spring.
...or, it could be hanging out with the Gears of War board game. o_O
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My friend hosted a board game convention at his home the last two days. Played a lot of games. Didn't play some games I really wanted to play though (Wok Star, Merchants and Marauders, Civilizations).
Bought Battles of Westeros about a week ago and just realized I need to glue the stuff together, so may need to make a trip out.
Played Puzzle Strike, it was fun but felt a bit fiddly, mainly because the gem tiles are also your money tiles so it's a bit confusing.
Played Alien Frontiers some more. Still fun.
I did play some games I own but haven't played too and enjoyed both (Last Night on Earth and Ghost Stories). We actually beat the manor house scenario without *any* deaths. We had a final standoff to ensure the zombie player couldn't win and got lucky enough that none of us would die. Sheriff, priest, and Jake were all at 2 wounds each, and Sally was at no wounds (but youth = healing). I was the sheriff and lost both my shotgun and revolver on the two turns prior to the last turn so I was fighting unarmed with full wounds. Priest was also at full wounds but had the card that let him roll an extra die and win ties plus the pitchfork for rerolling goodness. Jake came to my space so I wouldn't be overwhelmed by 4 zombies by myself. Jake took a wound, and I had it's just a scratch played on me so we both survived. Would've been thematic either way. The only thing that died was the pitchfork that lasted through the entire game until the very final blow.
Edit: YES THEY HAVE EXODUS! *goes out*
Edit2: Well, I should *really* wait a couple days though because then I can use my January coupon for effectively 20% off.
Edit3: Got it anyway after I went out to get some Plastic Glue for Battles of Westeros.
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I honestly just look at that and shrug. This is probably some culture clash thing since most of Asia didn't exactly get screwed by Nazis. Imperialism, on the other hand....
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It does depend. Resistance is more of a gamer's Werewolf. My experience with teaching Werewolf lovers The Resistance is that some of them *really* don't like the stronger logic/information aspect and not being able to bullshit their way out of an accusation like they can with Werewolf.
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The only negative I have with Dungeon Lords is that it plays best with exactly 4 players. But I would definitely much prefer playing that to Agricola.
But I'm also a fan of all his games (Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker)
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Is how you vote public or private?
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I've only played Ascension once, so I can't really weigh in on it, but all my friends who have Ascension and/or Thunderstone are mad that they bought them now that they've tried/bought Resident Evil. The general consensus in my group is that Resident Evil has pretty much replaced both Thunderstone and Ascension.
The mission proposal vote is simultaneous public vote.
The actual mission result is a secret vote.
Plot cards make a few minor changes. Opinion Maker makes it so the people who have it need to do their simultaneous public vote first, and then others do their simultaneous public vote after they see what they do.
In the Spotlight allows the user to force one player's mission card to be played face up before the other mission members pick their mission card.
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When you are voting to approve a team, voting is supposed to be simultaneous and public. (I've hosted a few games in IRC with public non-simultaneous voting, which also seems to work? Haven't played enough games to really say.) Of course, voting for mission failure or success is private.
Simultaneous makes it harder for spies as they're more likely to vote together against an all-resistance team, or all-pass a mission with a spy. With non-simulatenous voting, it weakens opinion maker and also makes it easier to just jump on a voting bandwagon.
BTW, some of us who've played a lot started to manipulate the metagame a bit. When we're spies, we hold up fingers to signal our sabotage priority during the time that spies look at each other. That way, even if several of us go on a mission, we can guarantee only one sabotage.
I think this is okay for our group because our group tends to have resistance win more often than the spies. If your group has spies win more often already, probably not a good idea to do this.
We also use a house rule for 9 player games, which we feel is much harder for the spies (same number of people on missions as 8 players, but we get an extra resistance member). If the resistance wins two missions before mission 4, then spies only need one sabotage to win that one.
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What happened in like the last 6 months?
As I now am into longer games in general too, the game now interests me.
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