Isn't it about time for Cthulhu-themed games to wane gibbous?
The stars are right for the marketplace to eloign itself towards some alternate and equally antique and venerable personage.
The trouble is there isn't one with as long a shadow, other than Tolkein. Michael Moorcock or Robert Howard or maybe William Gibson, maybe, but they get their due already.
Frank Herbert?
Probably in the same league as Howard. Same issue.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Isn't it about time for Cthulhu-themed games to wane gibbous?
The stars are right for the marketplace to eloign itself towards some alternate and equally antique and venerable personage.
The trouble is there isn't one with as long a shadow, other than Tolkein. Michael Moorcock or Robert Howard or maybe William Gibson, maybe, but they get their due already.
Lovecraft is in the public domain, which is part of the reason for the ubiquity of Cthulu games.
So, despite the Cthulhu burn-out in here, I figure this is worth a mention.
Apparently tomorrow there'll be a KS launching for a game called Mythos Tales, which looks to be essentially Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, but taking place in Arkham. And hopefully without case-ruining typos.
Isn't it about time for Cthulhu-themed games to wane gibbous?
The stars are right for the marketplace to eloign itself towards some alternate and equally antique and venerable personage.
The trouble is there isn't one with as long a shadow, other than Tolkein. Michael Moorcock or Robert Howard or maybe William Gibson, maybe, but they get their due already.
you guys know why there's all this Cthulhu stuff in the last few years right? It's just starting to come out of copyright.
Michael Moorcock is still alive so we have at least 70 years before we get flooded with Tanelorn Monopoly and Hawkwind Muchkin.
Frank Herbert's stuff will be 2056. 2043 at the earliest for Tolkiens stuff (keeping in mind Christopher should hold the copyright on Silmarillian and other post LOTR works given how much work he put into them).
Robert Howards books went out of copyright in 2006 (remember Age of Conan launched in 2008 and figure a couple years of dev)
So, despite the Cthulhu burn-out in here, I figure this is worth a mention.
Apparently tomorrow there'll be a KS launching for a game called Mythos Tales, which looks to be essentially Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, but taking place in Arkham. And hopefully without case-ruining typos.
The previous iteration of mythos tales was called 'Arkham Investigator'. At least a few of the cases from 'arkham investigator' were made available as free print-and-play by the creator.
I think those are still linked from the 'arkham investigator' bgg page if anyone is interested.
Had an all day event yesterday at our friend's game cafe. First game was Viticulture: Essential Edition, first time playing and it was really great. Then be opened up our copy of Risk Legacy at 2PM and didn't stop playing until 9PM. Risk is still a bad game (I was able to win a game from only holding one territory on one turn because of lucky rolls), but the legacy stuff is super fun and the more that was added the better it was.
I like Love Letter as a filler, and don't mind Pandemic (but would play a handful of other co-ops ahead of it).
My favourite games are probably Archipelago, Netrunner, Keyflower and Seasons. Fields of Arle and Mottainai will probably be up there after more plays, too.
My most common reason for disliking a game is it not being heavy enough.
I like Love Letter as a filler, and don't mind Pandemic (but would play a handful of other co-ops ahead of it).
My favourite games are probably Archipelago, Netrunner, Keyflower and Seasons. Fields of Arle and Mottainai will probably be up there after more plays, too.
My most common reason for disliking a game is it not being heavy enough.
Isn't it about time for Cthulhu-themed games to wane gibbous?
The stars are right for the marketplace to eloign itself towards some alternate and equally antique and venerable personage.
The trouble is there isn't one with as long a shadow, other than Tolkein. Michael Moorcock or Robert Howard or maybe William Gibson, maybe, but they get their due already.
you guys know why there's all this Cthulhu stuff in the last few years right? It's just starting to come out of copyright.
No? Cthulhu was never copyrighted. Lovecraft wanted everyone to expand on what he had written. Some of the other authors trademarked their stuff but the reason there's lots of Cthulhu stuff is A: it's fucking awesome and B: lots of people buy it and continue buying it.
Frank Herbert's stuff will be 2056. 2043 at the earliest for Tolkiens stuff (keeping in mind Christopher should hold the copyright on Silmarillian and other post LOTR works given how much work he put into them).
This is assuming disney is prevented from extending copyright indefinitely. Which I would not necessarily count on.
Frank Herbert's stuff will be 2056. 2043 at the earliest for Tolkiens stuff (keeping in mind Christopher should hold the copyright on Silmarillian and other post LOTR works given how much work he put into them).
This is assuming disney is prevented from extending copyright indefinitely. Which I would not necessarily count on.
You beat me!
I've come to accept that anything copyrighted after Mickey Mouse will never enter the public domain.
Upgraded some components for Shadows of Brimstone.
Awesome money cards from printerstudio, some nice clay poker chips for XP, some nifty little dollhouse bibles to replace Faith tokens, a little lantern to better show who has the Old Lantern, and some dollhouse wine bottles re-purposed into Whiskey!
Also picked up some small dollhouse jars to replace the other saddlebag items, but haven't finished with those yet.
Aaand, clear bases got here from Litko. Super-nice upgrade there.
I have never pimped a board game this much in my life. Usually its just sleeves, or springing for a deluxe edition. On the bright side, I haven't bought any new games since I started upgrading Brimstone, so, that's something, I guess. :P
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
That happened. @Vyolynce and others who've tried Villains: the new Plague Rat is very entertaining.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Girlfriend bought me 7 Wonders Duel yesterday as part of my Valentines Day gift when I was picking up the latest Netrunner data pack.
We played about four games and I won three of them. It's a fun little game, although I took to it much faster than she did, which is like a first in our relationship. She always does pretty solid with new games. (In fact, I'd think her win rate is overall higher than mine although I would love to see if there's some app that grabs this kind of data from my BGG plays data).
Anyways, it does give you a pretty solid 7 Wonders feel for two players. It offers a lot of challenges where you are like "Okay, if I go here, that gives them access to these two cards, but I know they want that one, so I shouldn't take that card covering them, but I don't want this other card so much..." The military victory is pretty hard to do, I only performed it once by basically forcing her into a scenario where she couldn't get out of it. She had to spend much of the final round pitching military cards for money to prevent me from getting them since she couldn't build them. I ended up completing my wonder to build a card out of the discard which got me across the line. After that she put a lot more effort to keep me well away from that.
While I think that 99% of games will NOT end in military victories (since you have to be in deep trouble to get that far behind and/or asleep at the wheel), having it be a thing is really nice. You can force your opponent to play suboptimally to either keep you from getting the cards and stall, or to actually build them to get breathing room. During this time, you can be scooping up good cards to shore up your point count.
The science victory, however, is basically impossible to do. I think someone got within two symbols one game. There don't seem to be enough symbols overall to really make it a threat. I think maybe if there was a fourth age it might accumulate enough. The technologies can be totally game changing though. They're very strong.
My only real complaint is that it is a little, tiny bit mean. I don't think it's TOO mean overall, but there was one game where I got to destroy one of her resource producing cards and it basically locked her out of it the rest of the game. Also, the game already needs an expansion. I feel like even over the four games we saw basically every card, wonder, and technology. I think they could safely double everything.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
My wife and I have really enjoyed 7 Wonders Duel, for many of the reasons you mention. (We also agree that the wonders which let you destroy one of your opponent's resource cards are probably the most game changing.) I agree with you that science and military victories are difficult, and science more so than military: if even three of the nine cards left in the box over the course of the game are science cards, then a science victory is often mathematically impossible. The only caveat to this is that the Philosophy progress token with the seventh science symbol can enable some entirely unforeseen science victories -- such as if that progress token is among those left in the box and you build the wonder which lets you pull a progress token from the box.
The closest I've ever gotten to a science victory was during my very first game with my wife. IIRC, I hit five science symbols on my first play of the third age (thanks to the progress token), and she was forced to play suboptimally through the whole third age to deny me the sixth token. (She probably would have won a military victory that game had she not been forced to ignore military cards in order to deny me the last science symbol.)
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
My wife and I have really enjoyed 7 Wonders Duel, for many of the reasons you mention. (We also agree that the wonders which let you destroy one of your opponent's resource cards are probably the most game changing.) I agree with you that science and military victories are difficult, and science more so than military: if even three of the nine cards left in the box over the course of the game are science cards, then a science victory is often mathematically impossible. The only caveat to this is that the Philosophy progress token with the seventh science symbol can enable some entirely unforeseen science victories -- such as if that progress token is among those left in the box and you build the wonder which lets you pull a progress token from the box.
The closest I've ever gotten to a science victory was during my very first game with my wife. IIRC, I hit five science symbols on my first play of the third age (thanks to the progress token), and she was forced to play suboptimally through the whole third age to deny me the sixth token. (She probably would have won a military victory that game had she not been forced to ignore military cards in order to deny me the last science symbol.)
Your second paragraph is a good example of why those win conditions matter even if they'll never go off. They do add a lot of tension to the game. I especially like the little mini game in the military track where you're trying to wait to cross the lines to get rid of their coins until they have enough coins to make it work. Not so much with the first level, but five coins? Sometimes she's danced around 3 or 4 coins whenever a military card was available to me making me really consider if I wanted to wait and get a little more bang for the buck.
Another thing I neglected to mention was how much I liked the subtlety of yellow cards. The fact that they have a little perk AND increase the amount of money you earn when discarding cards is so nice. Sometimes the early yellow cards, the reserves that let you pay a coin to get more of a resource instead of the regular cost, seem expensive at 3 gold up front, but they can be a life saver when you're building a wonder that needs three of that resource and your opponent scooped up a couple of those symbols. They can also pay you back that three gold by enabling you to pitch cards for a lot of money back. I really really like the commerce cards that give you money straight up. They can be a real shot in the arm and then they keep paying you back down the road. It takes out some of the sting of just pitching a card to deny it to your opponent. You're at least getting a couple points in the process, or at least setting up later moves.
Lastly, I really like the way that buying up resources works. There isn't really enough to go around so that makes it viable to look at your opponents wonders and buy them up to make their life more difficult, and give them kind of a double pinch: they won't have access to as much, and then on top of it they have to pay MORE. This also really offsets the drafting at the beginning: sure you could just take Wonders that utilize the same resources but then you're more vulnerable to getting hosed out of one resource. On the other hand, you could get wonders with a variety of resource requirements, but then you're really reducing the chance that you could complete more than a couple.
I've been playing a lot of Sky Scraper and The Sentinels. We had a really good time with the Vengeance villain set doing our best to make Fright Train beat up all the other bad guys via Writhe, and we've gotten some really dumb environment-guy-controlled-by-Aggression Modulator things going. Notably among those, the Angry Mob in Court of Blood on Saturday; it just sat there beating up Apostate and destroying the vampires' set-up cards until one finally showed up at like 5 rounds deep.
Didn't get to try Bugbear yet. We ran Fright Train, Greazer, Ambuscade, Plague Rat, and Hammer & Anvil (who play much too slowly to be a real threat from what I saw) on Saturday, and although the Greazer's hair mechanic is pretty neat I didn't see anything that dangerous / impressive. Also got majorly let down by Chokepoint's deck being negligible danger-wise.
Haven't given Chokepoint a run yet, but we have gone through all 10 Villains enemies at least once. We've actually gone up against Hammer and Anvil three times now and they've never been a factor unless the Bastion position shows up.
our zombie disease was black, and our original draw gave us two 3 cube cities in black, and then an epidemic on player 2's turn led to one of them out breaking. later we got a double outbreak - and then the faded showed up.
we lost soon after that with 8 outbreaks, and four rioting cities.
it was real bad.
at least we have funding 2 for the next stab at April....
our zombie disease was black, and our original draw gave us two 3 cube cities in black, and then an epidemic on player 2's turn led to one of them out breaking. later we got a double outbreak - and then the faded showed up.
we lost soon after that with 8 outbreaks, and four rioting cities.
it was real bad.
at least we have funding 2 for the next stab at April....
I personally find the Faded way more horrifying than zombies.
So Codex is up on Kickstarter by David Sirlin. Any thoughts? I know he's widely regarded as an unapologetic plagiarist and it is another dang CCG but it looks kind of neat.
So Codex is up on Kickstarter by David Sirlin. Any thoughts? I know he's widely regarded as an unapologetic plagiarist and it is another dang CCG but it looks kind of neat.
Looks pretty neat, but I don't like the idea being forced to go into red vs. green for the core set. If they had a level where i could pick any of the two factions I might go in on it.
So Codex is up on Kickstarter by David Sirlin. Any thoughts? I know he's widely regarded as an unapologetic plagiarist and it is another dang CCG but it looks kind of neat.
It's really neat, and I say this as someone who got his ass handed to him in every single game of it that he played. lol
The "deck building as you play" mechanic is really slick and interesting. So you can come up with your basic build order ahead of the game, but as your opponent reveals the approach they're taking, you both start "teching" to counter and exploit each other.
I backed the core set ($45). I'll buy into more of it later, either online or through my LGS if I get really into it.
Dave Sirlin making a ccg is kinda funny considering one of his big selling points for Yomi was how every deck was complete and competitive with no need to buy a ton of stuff.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Dave Sirlin making a ccg is kinda funny considering one of his big selling points for Yomi was how every deck was complete and competitive with no need to buy a ton of stuff.
I don't know that the two are necessarily exclusive directions for a designer. There are people who clearly like collecting cards, and some that don't.
Also, I expect this is getting into some dangerous territory, but I'm not seeing much about Sirlin and plagiarism with a quick google search. Did he actually steal some shit, or were some people making a load of noise about borrowing mechanics?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
Probably in the same league as Howard. Same issue.
Lovecraft is in the public domain, which is part of the reason for the ubiquity of Cthulu games.
Antediluvian
Apparently tomorrow there'll be a KS launching for a game called Mythos Tales, which looks to be essentially Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, but taking place in Arkham. And hopefully without case-ruining typos.
you guys know why there's all this Cthulhu stuff in the last few years right? It's just starting to come out of copyright.
Michael Moorcock is still alive so we have at least 70 years before we get flooded with Tanelorn Monopoly and Hawkwind Muchkin.
Frank Herbert's stuff will be 2056. 2043 at the earliest for Tolkiens stuff (keeping in mind Christopher should hold the copyright on Silmarillian and other post LOTR works given how much work he put into them).
Robert Howards books went out of copyright in 2006 (remember Age of Conan launched in 2008 and figure a couple years of dev)
The previous iteration of mythos tales was called 'Arkham Investigator'. At least a few of the cases from 'arkham investigator' were made available as free print-and-play by the creator.
I think those are still linked from the 'arkham investigator' bgg page if anyone is interested.
That depends. Do you like The Resistance? Love Letter? Cosmic Encounter? Pandemic? Tales of Arabian Nights?
If you do, then no. You made a huge mistake.
My favourite games are probably Archipelago, Netrunner, Keyflower and Seasons. Fields of Arle and Mottainai will probably be up there after more plays, too.
My most common reason for disliking a game is it not being heavy enough.
You'll be just fine. :biggrin:
No? Cthulhu was never copyrighted. Lovecraft wanted everyone to expand on what he had written. Some of the other authors trademarked their stuff but the reason there's lots of Cthulhu stuff is A: it's fucking awesome and B: lots of people buy it and continue buying it.
http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft
No, because you didn't immediately mail your copy to meeeeeee!
This is assuming disney is prevented from extending copyright indefinitely. Which I would not necessarily count on.
I have four extra promos I do not need. Let me know if anyone wants one or more. I'm thinking 10$ plus shipping or somewhere in there.
TWO OF THESE Young Ogrest
Arthur Bine
Dark Vlad's Mount (you technically need Dark Vlad to use it but it does come with a new card)
You beat me!
I've come to accept that anything copyrighted after Mickey Mouse will never enter the public domain.
Awesome money cards from printerstudio, some nice clay poker chips for XP, some nifty little dollhouse bibles to replace Faith tokens, a little lantern to better show who has the Old Lantern, and some dollhouse wine bottles re-purposed into Whiskey!
Also picked up some small dollhouse jars to replace the other saddlebag items, but haven't finished with those yet.
Aaand, clear bases got here from Litko. Super-nice upgrade there.
I have never pimped a board game this much in my life. Usually its just sleeves, or springing for a deluxe edition. On the bright side, I haven't bought any new games since I started upgrading Brimstone, so, that's something, I guess. :P
That happened.
@Vyolynce and others who've tried Villains: the new Plague Rat is very entertaining.
He's certainly different, that's for sure.
Bugbear, on the other hand, is a damned nuisance.
We played about four games and I won three of them. It's a fun little game, although I took to it much faster than she did, which is like a first in our relationship. She always does pretty solid with new games. (In fact, I'd think her win rate is overall higher than mine although I would love to see if there's some app that grabs this kind of data from my BGG plays data).
Anyways, it does give you a pretty solid 7 Wonders feel for two players. It offers a lot of challenges where you are like "Okay, if I go here, that gives them access to these two cards, but I know they want that one, so I shouldn't take that card covering them, but I don't want this other card so much..." The military victory is pretty hard to do, I only performed it once by basically forcing her into a scenario where she couldn't get out of it. She had to spend much of the final round pitching military cards for money to prevent me from getting them since she couldn't build them. I ended up completing my wonder to build a card out of the discard which got me across the line. After that she put a lot more effort to keep me well away from that.
While I think that 99% of games will NOT end in military victories (since you have to be in deep trouble to get that far behind and/or asleep at the wheel), having it be a thing is really nice. You can force your opponent to play suboptimally to either keep you from getting the cards and stall, or to actually build them to get breathing room. During this time, you can be scooping up good cards to shore up your point count.
The science victory, however, is basically impossible to do. I think someone got within two symbols one game. There don't seem to be enough symbols overall to really make it a threat. I think maybe if there was a fourth age it might accumulate enough. The technologies can be totally game changing though. They're very strong.
My only real complaint is that it is a little, tiny bit mean. I don't think it's TOO mean overall, but there was one game where I got to destroy one of her resource producing cards and it basically locked her out of it the rest of the game. Also, the game already needs an expansion. I feel like even over the four games we saw basically every card, wonder, and technology. I think they could safely double everything.
The closest I've ever gotten to a science victory was during my very first game with my wife. IIRC, I hit five science symbols on my first play of the third age (thanks to the progress token), and she was forced to play suboptimally through the whole third age to deny me the sixth token. (She probably would have won a military victory that game had she not been forced to ignore military cards in order to deny me the last science symbol.)
Your second paragraph is a good example of why those win conditions matter even if they'll never go off. They do add a lot of tension to the game. I especially like the little mini game in the military track where you're trying to wait to cross the lines to get rid of their coins until they have enough coins to make it work. Not so much with the first level, but five coins? Sometimes she's danced around 3 or 4 coins whenever a military card was available to me making me really consider if I wanted to wait and get a little more bang for the buck.
Another thing I neglected to mention was how much I liked the subtlety of yellow cards. The fact that they have a little perk AND increase the amount of money you earn when discarding cards is so nice. Sometimes the early yellow cards, the reserves that let you pay a coin to get more of a resource instead of the regular cost, seem expensive at 3 gold up front, but they can be a life saver when you're building a wonder that needs three of that resource and your opponent scooped up a couple of those symbols. They can also pay you back that three gold by enabling you to pitch cards for a lot of money back. I really really like the commerce cards that give you money straight up. They can be a real shot in the arm and then they keep paying you back down the road. It takes out some of the sting of just pitching a card to deny it to your opponent. You're at least getting a couple points in the process, or at least setting up later moves.
Lastly, I really like the way that buying up resources works. There isn't really enough to go around so that makes it viable to look at your opponents wonders and buy them up to make their life more difficult, and give them kind of a double pinch: they won't have access to as much, and then on top of it they have to pay MORE. This also really offsets the drafting at the beginning: sure you could just take Wonders that utilize the same resources but then you're more vulnerable to getting hosed out of one resource. On the other hand, you could get wonders with a variety of resource requirements, but then you're really reducing the chance that you could complete more than a couple.
I've even got an ambient sound app with coughing, helicopters, and ekg sounds.
I've been playing a lot of Sky Scraper and The Sentinels. We had a really good time with the Vengeance villain set doing our best to make Fright Train beat up all the other bad guys via Writhe, and we've gotten some really dumb environment-guy-controlled-by-Aggression Modulator things going. Notably among those, the Angry Mob in Court of Blood on Saturday; it just sat there beating up Apostate and destroying the vampires' set-up cards until one finally showed up at like 5 rounds deep.
Didn't get to try Bugbear yet. We ran Fright Train, Greazer, Ambuscade, Plague Rat, and Hammer & Anvil (who play much too slowly to be a real threat from what I saw) on Saturday, and although the Greazer's hair mechanic is pretty neat I didn't see anything that dangerous / impressive. Also got majorly let down by Chokepoint's deck being negligible danger-wise.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
So far, yup. Here's the cards so people can decide if they actually want them
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Now to hope I can learn to use the software well enough to produce anything worthwhile!
oh... God no
Pandemic Legacy spoilers (April):
our zombie disease was black, and our original draw gave us two 3 cube cities in black, and then an epidemic on player 2's turn led to one of them out breaking. later we got a double outbreak - and then the faded showed up.
we lost soon after that with 8 outbreaks, and four rioting cities.
it was real bad.
at least we have funding 2 for the next stab at April....
March win! That was a fast game! Everything went our way!
Looks pretty neat, but I don't like the idea being forced to go into red vs. green for the core set. If they had a level where i could pick any of the two factions I might go in on it.
Edit: Also where is my main man, DeGray?
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
It's really neat, and I say this as someone who got his ass handed to him in every single game of it that he played. lol
The "deck building as you play" mechanic is really slick and interesting. So you can come up with your basic build order ahead of the game, but as your opponent reveals the approach they're taking, you both start "teching" to counter and exploit each other.
I backed the core set ($45). I'll buy into more of it later, either online or through my LGS if I get really into it.
Hopefully my January+ run goes smoothly tonight.
I don't know that the two are necessarily exclusive directions for a designer. There are people who clearly like collecting cards, and some that don't.
Also, I expect this is getting into some dangerous territory, but I'm not seeing much about Sirlin and plagiarism with a quick google search. Did he actually steal some shit, or were some people making a load of noise about borrowing mechanics?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
That's the most awesome sight in the whole history of awesome.