It was Descent 2nd since I had so much and never used it but it's swiftly becoming Cthulhu Wars. I'm very disappointed I gave those assholes money.
Sorry if you've recounted this before, but what's the story here? I just played Cthulhu Wars for the first time yesterday (friend's copy) and really enjoyed it. He's planning on Kickstarting more.
My biggest purchase regret is probably impulse buying Forbidden Stars and Fury of Dracula when the GW/FFG split happened. I've played Forbidden Stars once and doubt I will ever again. Fury of Dracula's still in shrink.
My biggest purchase regret is probably impulse buying Forbidden Stars and Fury of Dracula when the GW/FFG split happened. I've played Forbidden Stars once and doubt I will ever again. Fury of Dracula's still in shrink.
Don't regret those ones, wait 6-18 months and Ebay 'em.
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
I would say Smallworld, in that I've only ever played it maybe twice, but I got it at a super discount at a white elephant sale (like, $5) and it was very nearly new in box, so.
Actually, you know what, actually at least I want to play those games. I backed the Kickstarter deluxe version of Leaders of Euphoria and had completely lost all interest by the time it arrived (also the box is stupidly big for a game that light). I might sell/trade it without even having played it.
Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun. By a wide margin, with the caveats being that it was at least memorably difficult to figure out what was going on and I think the central mechanic of allocating variable amounts of time to actions is a clever idea I haven't seen elsewhere.
E: Kind of in Tokaido come to think of it, but it's a pretty different take on a similar idea.
Having never played Exalted I don't actually know if it's the same but Jenseits von Theben (possibly my all-time favorite boardgame) uses a time track for determining turn order and when going on an expedition (thematically you're an archaeologist going around the world preparing for, executing, and then bragging about digs) you allocate a number of weeks at your discretion, with the number picked and the amount of research you did ahead of time determining how many chances you have at pulling VP tokens out of a bag.
That sounds similar, yes, but in Exalted to my recollection it's about getting enough done in the time available despite variable time allotments.
Battlelore. I went all in on it (all the armies) because a friend talked it up. That was 3 years ago. Still in shrink.
It's only redeeming quality is one of the skeletons makes a fantastic stand in for the Reanimate token in Descent 2nd.
I bought the Game of Thrones-themed Battlelore/C&C game for my friend's birthday and we played it once, went "this is broken in a really shitty way" and never played it again.
Imagine if Chess replaced the checkmate the king win condition with dozens of arbitrary conditions like "get 4 pawns to the other half of the board" or "capture both enemy rooks without losing any of your bishops", and you never knew which one your opponent had every match.
In terms of editing Chess, I played a really neat small-press version of it called For The Crown which is basically Dominion + Chess starting with a single king, and you trash cards to get new pieces to deploy, bughouse-style as "instead of a move".
Neat concept, but you kind of need to be playing against someone you're on par with in both halves of the game.
In other news I finally opened, punched and organized Gloomhaven. I have 1 willing participant to play with on a regular basis. Could really use 1 more. But the kids go back to school next week for both of us and time will be tight.
There's a fun topic, what is everyone's biggest boardgame purchasing regret?
I'm going to go for the unpopular opinion of Dominant Species, which I really just don't enjoy.
Every euro game I own. Especially Caylus, which we played half of once and then everyone quit. Agricola, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, etc.--they're all pretty boring and only indirectly interactive. At least I played some of those a few times though.
Archipelago is interesting but I will never play it.
It was Descent 2nd since I had so much and never used it but it's swiftly becoming Cthulhu Wars. I'm very disappointed I gave those assholes money.
Sorry if you've recounted this before, but what's the story here? I just played Cthulhu Wars for the first time yesterday (friend's copy) and really enjoyed it. He's planning on Kickstarting more.
The game is very good. The people who make it are not and their quality is dropping sharply the more projects they do.
They have some very archaic ideas on what women "should be" and "are good for" as well.
There's a fun topic, what is everyone's biggest boardgame purchasing regret?
I'm going to go for the unpopular opinion of Dominant Species, which I really just don't enjoy.
Talisman 4e. I thought maybe they'd fix it!
How do you fix Talisman? Even if everything were balanced it would still be a roll and move....
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
The kickstarter for the CMON GoT war game is closing in about 24 hours. I'm still on the fence about it; I wish more units were stretch goals rather than addons you have to pay for, but maybe that's just me being greedy. $150 is a lot for something I'm on the edge for, though. Any final thoughts on it?
The kickstarter for the CMON GoT war game is closing in about 24 hours. I'm still on the fence about it; I wish more units were stretch goals rather than addons you have to pay for, but maybe that's just me being greedy. $150 is a lot for something I'm on the edge for, though. Any final thoughts on it?
Yeah. If you aren't excited just by looking at the page, skip it. "On the fence" is not something you should dump 200$+ on.
Battlelore. I went all in on it (all the armies) because a friend talked it up. That was 3 years ago. Still in shrink.
It's only redeeming quality is one of the skeletons makes a fantastic stand in for the Reanimate token in Descent 2nd.
it has another redeeming quality of being a super fun game, if you ever get around to playing it.
also, we did a 3p learning game of Through The Ages today. called it after ~5 hours of playtime about 1/3 of the way into the 3rd age. That's with 1 nongamer (though he is super into Go, Chess and Bridge, just not typical modern boardgames i guess) and my dad who has been playing games with me somewhat regularly for the last 6 months or so but is slow picking up rules generally. All three of us really enjoyed it, and are actively looking forward to giving it another shot asap. Hopefully cutting the rules off the front and knowing vaguely whats going on will make it finishable next time around. Man I've never played a game that made time pass as quickly/effortlessly as that. So good. SO GOOD. My wife and I are going to play it 2p on Wednesday and I'm very excited to play it again.
my biggest game buying regret is Cave Evil. it was $100 and it looks SO COOL but man that game was not even a little fun for us. sadly I traded it away before it started commanding $400 used prices, or else it would be a little less of a regret
I'm still building my collection so I've been buying stuff that I know is good. But Secrets might be the first game that I want to get before it has come out. I've been trying to diversify the types of games I have but fact is that hidden identity games are the quickest and easiest games to get people playing. Asking a nongamer to play a hour long game (that will probably be even longer because they're new) vs a 15 minute social game, it's no contest. So I've been looking out for hidden role games that bring some variety.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Android: infiltration, hands down
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Watching a family dad turn down the shop assistant's recommendation of Pandemic because "he wasn't real keen on the idea of everyone winning or everyone losing" and wslking up to the counter 20 minutes later with copies of Cluedo and The Game of Life under his arm may be one of the most painful boardgaming experiences of recent memory.
Watching a family dad turn down the shop assistant's recommendation of Pandemic because "he wasn't real keen on the idea of everyone winning or everyone losing" and wslking up to the counter 20 minutes later with copies of Cluedo and The Game of Life under his arm may be one of the most painful boardgaming experiences of recent memory.
Not wanting a co-op game seems reasonable to me. Did the shop person have a second recommendation?
Watching a family dad turn down the shop assistant's recommendation of Pandemic because "he wasn't real keen on the idea of everyone winning or everyone losing" and wslking up to the counter 20 minutes later with copies of Cluedo and The Game of Life under his arm may be one of the most painful boardgaming experiences of recent memory.
Not wanting a co-op game seems reasonable to me. Did the shop person have a second recommendation?
Not at the time, because he picked it up and started walking around with it, so she went off to help someone else. From there, however, he started thinking for himself and things went tragically downhill.
I mean he didn't not want a co-op. He didn't even comprehend co-op. He couldn't fathom a game without a winner. Watching his ~7 year old son pick up Mysterium and other good games and as the dad found the Hasbro discount table... it was painful.
It was right after the big success of Zombicide, and I while I was originally leery of a few red flags (like "players will create their own stories" and the nickel and dining if you wanted any enemy variety), I ended up buying into the hype and not only purchased a copy with over a ton of addons, I bought two standard copies with the intention of selling them and recouping costs once the game got big.
And then the reviews came in.
And that's how Cantide spent over $500 on a game he doesn't intend to ever play.
The kickstarter for the CMON GoT war game is closing in about 24 hours. I'm still on the fence about it; I wish more units were stretch goals rather than addons you have to pay for, but maybe that's just me being greedy. $150 is a lot for something I'm on the edge for, though. Any final thoughts on it?
Yeah. If you aren't excited just by looking at the page, skip it. "On the fence" is not something you should dump 200$+ on.
I agree, even though I am still backing it. In total I'm getting the core set and extras and that new terrain pack with all the terrain they were making. There's no way I wanted to live without a Weirwood Tree that I don't have to sculpt.
Again, I'm bundling my different games together though so in my easily swayed mind it's worth it. I don't have much of a leg to stand on.
My biggest regrets have to do with games I never get to play. Space Hulk and Dreadfleet probably top that list just because of how expensive they are, though I love the dreadfleet models and concept so much I might have bought it even if I never play it. Formula D almost never gets played and Duel in the Dark is in the same boat. Though for Formula D it's because if I have 6-10 people ready to play a game, we'll probably play a party game, and I rarely have just two people for Duel.
The kickstarter for the CMON GoT war game is closing in about 24 hours. I'm still on the fence about it; I wish more units were stretch goals rather than addons you have to pay for, but maybe that's just me being greedy. $150 is a lot for something I'm on the edge for, though. Any final thoughts on it?
It looks very weak mechanically, won't have pretty minis based on previous delivery of campaigns and is very unlikely to see any additional factions or support down the line.
Backing those types of wargames is always risky due to the inevitable lack of support but this one seems like a fairly cynical license cash in
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Yup. I maintain that the main thing holding TI back were those dumb secret objectives. Even putting aside how wildly imbalanced they are, they were dumb pointless things. There's no reason that all the VP couldn't come from public objectives alone. Secret objectives didn't add "intrigue" and "mystery", just hidden arbitrary crap that suddenly catapulted someone into the lead. The one thing that should not be hidden in a strategy game is the win condition. It's the difference between a standard victory in Battlestar Galactica (Cylons win if humans lose) and those dumb Cylon leader agendas (Cylon leader wins if humans win with less than 4 food, 4 morale, and 2 locations damaged).
Imagine if Chess replaced the checkmate the king win condition with dozens of arbitrary conditions like "get 4 pawns to the other half of the board" or "capture both enemy rooks without losing any of your bishops", and you never knew which one your opponent had every match.
Hmm, I've my own thoughts about this, mostly from the way the Chess analogy was made.The thing about VPs from Secret Objectives in Twilight Imperium is that it will probably only represent one objective of perhaps six or so that will make up a winning player's final tableau. It's not an end-all goal like replacing Chess's checkmate with a single, hidden objective, it's a supplement to the overall goal. Then again, it's pretty hard to come up with a winning amount of VPs without one's Secret Objective: those 2 VPs are quite a lot. It'smore impactful than a secret objective like in something like Scythe, despite the fact that the achievement star in Scythe is one sixth the endgame trigger, similar to in Twilight Imperium. That is because in Scythe, every achievement is equally weighted, rather than the secret objective being twice as valuable as most other public objectives in Twilight Imperium. It looks like Twilight Imperium 4e is taking some steps to decrease the swinginess of victory based on tough Secret Objectives by making them 1 VP each instead (assumed from images from FFG). More work will be needed to make a significant impact through Secret Objectives here, but the random drawn Objective could still be a nice edge to have. And in any game with secret objectives for VPs (and not as a total win condition), you can know if it's something you want to go after early on, and then build your game plan around that decision.
Going back to Chess for a moment, if you want to have a more appropriate analogy for a two-player abstract where secret objectives could be a consideration, let's think about what happens to Tash-Kalar if each player started the game with a secret 1- or 2-point Task from a special deck? OK, yeah, it would probably make the game a bit weaker strategically since a Secret Task would be much more impactful than the hidden Flares (caveat: I've never played Tash-Kalar), but it would provide some additional spice. The same conclusions as Chess with hidden goals, but we actually have a better analogy since we started with a VP-based game. Sometimes secret objectives provide that variability and surprise that feeds into a game well, and other times they don't. Personally, I like the idea of the hidden objective as a supplement to public objectives, but I can see now how hard they can be worked into a design and still feel fair and fun.
I think Eclipse is straight up a bad game. It's built to encourage non-interaction, and to make it exceptionally difficult to force interaction, and so the victory almost always seems to boil down to simple tile draws. We played it a dozen times and the person with the best tile draws almost always won. It might have been literally every time. If an isolationist species got good tiles and was able to close themselves off, it was essentially pointless. It's a bad engine builder with a thin veneer of theme.
I think TI is far, far too long and bloated, but it had more worthwhile decision making, at least. Though I still feel that BOTH are games that are, in many plays, basically fake. They make you feel like you're making relevant decisions but the real machinery that determines victory is either random or unknowable and largely unguessable hidden information.
Yup. I maintain that the main thing holding TI back were those dumb secret objectives. Even putting aside how wildly imbalanced they are, they were dumb pointless things. There's no reason that all the VP couldn't come from public objectives alone. Secret objectives didn't add "intrigue" and "mystery", just hidden arbitrary crap that suddenly catapulted someone into the lead. The one thing that should not be hidden in a strategy game is the win condition. It's the difference between a standard victory in Battlestar Galactica (Cylons win if humans lose) and those dumb Cylon leader agendas (Cylon leader wins if humans win with less than 4 food, 4 morale, and 2 locations damaged).
Imagine if Chess replaced the checkmate the king win condition with dozens of arbitrary conditions like "get 4 pawns to the other half of the board" or "capture both enemy rooks without losing any of your bishops", and you never knew which one your opponent had every match.
I disagree. TI strategy is basically a straight line deal--you go for a certain kind of play and then 9 hours later you get to see if it worked. If everybody knew everybody else's motivations those 9 hours would be very different and probably a lot less interesting.
Also part of the game is figuring out your opponent's goals from their behavior (or convincing them to show you through diplomacy/scheming). The aspects of the game that go beyond the mechanics of econ and combat are greatly emhanced by hidden goals.
I really don't think it would affect player strategy. How much TI3 strategizing does everyone really do thinking about stopping the secret objective of others? (beyond the obvious mecatol rex ones). I've never seen a game where someone's strategy for the secret objectives of others went beyond "keep them from directly hindering me, then do my own thing and just cross my fingers and hope they don't pop one".
But if objectives were public it would be much easier to block another player from completing her objective, since she wouldn't have the lead time she gets while you deduce her motives from her choices.
The only thing removing SOs would do is prevent people getting eliminated right at setup and sudden surprise 2 VP swings that you couldn't see coming. I really do think it's like having hidden goals in Chess. Would that give a great variety of outcomes in Chess? Technically, yes, but it would make a much weaker strategy game.
TI is not meant to be a perfect strategy game--after all, you could just as easily argue that Chess would be a weaker game if it included individual races with their own proficiencies and special abilities, but those are important to TI too. Hidden information is crucial to the political/alliance/negotiation aspects of the game. Chess doesn't have those.
So I had a question about the D&D board games like Assault of the Giants and Temple of Elemental Evil
Do they also work like the ones that came out a few years ago Wrath of Ashardalon/Castle of Ravenloft and the misadventures of Drizzt?
Also the Tyrants of the Underdark was the game I saw but it looked like a land grab, court intrigue kind of game?
Biggest regret was spending 3euro on "the quick card game of Catan" thinking it was the cardgame for 2 players. The quick game is like tic-tac-toe and we figured out the solution in 5 minutes of playing.
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I can pick up Hansa for 10euro, I have read mixed reviews, but is it worth getting at this price point?
I don't think there's any board game I want to play for nine hours straight.
I feel like that kind of long term experience is best done in the form of campaigns, with multiple shorter games with persistent or partially persistent board states.
Blood Royale
Easily do 9 hours for a full game and probably more? Played quite a few weekened Blood Royale game as a teenager.
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Sorry if you've recounted this before, but what's the story here? I just played Cthulhu Wars for the first time yesterday (friend's copy) and really enjoyed it. He's planning on Kickstarting more.
Don't regret those ones, wait 6-18 months and Ebay 'em.
That sounds similar, yes, but in Exalted to my recollection it's about getting enough done in the time available despite variable time allotments.
It's only redeeming quality is one of the skeletons makes a fantastic stand in for the Reanimate token in Descent 2nd.
So weird how long into the print cycle for that it took to get skeletons. So weird.
I bought the Game of Thrones-themed Battlelore/C&C game for my friend's birthday and we played it once, went "this is broken in a really shitty way" and never played it again.
In terms of editing Chess, I played a really neat small-press version of it called For The Crown which is basically Dominion + Chess starting with a single king, and you trash cards to get new pieces to deploy, bughouse-style as "instead of a move".
Neat concept, but you kind of need to be playing against someone you're on par with in both halves of the game.
Every euro game I own. Especially Caylus, which we played half of once and then everyone quit. Agricola, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, etc.--they're all pretty boring and only indirectly interactive. At least I played some of those a few times though.
Archipelago is interesting but I will never play it.
Talisman 4e. I thought maybe they'd fix it!
The game is very good. The people who make it are not and their quality is dropping sharply the more projects they do.
They have some very archaic ideas on what women "should be" and "are good for" as well.
How do you fix Talisman? Even if everything were balanced it would still be a roll and move....
Yeah. If you aren't excited just by looking at the page, skip it. "On the fence" is not something you should dump 200$+ on.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
it has another redeeming quality of being a super fun game, if you ever get around to playing it.
also, we did a 3p learning game of Through The Ages today. called it after ~5 hours of playtime about 1/3 of the way into the 3rd age. That's with 1 nongamer (though he is super into Go, Chess and Bridge, just not typical modern boardgames i guess) and my dad who has been playing games with me somewhat regularly for the last 6 months or so but is slow picking up rules generally. All three of us really enjoyed it, and are actively looking forward to giving it another shot asap. Hopefully cutting the rules off the front and knowing vaguely whats going on will make it finishable next time around. Man I've never played a game that made time pass as quickly/effortlessly as that. So good. SO GOOD. My wife and I are going to play it 2p on Wednesday and I'm very excited to play it again.
my biggest game buying regret is Cave Evil. it was $100 and it looks SO COOL but man that game was not even a little fun for us. sadly I traded it away before it started commanding $400 used prices, or else it would be a little less of a regret
if you "fixed" Talisman it wouldn't be Talisman. either you like what it is or you don't.
Not wanting a co-op game seems reasonable to me. Did the shop person have a second recommendation?
Not at the time, because he picked it up and started walking around with it, so she went off to help someone else. From there, however, he started thinking for himself and things went tragically downhill.
I mean he didn't not want a co-op. He didn't even comprehend co-op. He couldn't fathom a game without a winner. Watching his ~7 year old son pick up Mysterium and other good games and as the dad found the Hasbro discount table... it was painful.
It was right after the big success of Zombicide, and I while I was originally leery of a few red flags (like "players will create their own stories" and the nickel and dining if you wanted any enemy variety), I ended up buying into the hype and not only purchased a copy with over a ton of addons, I bought two standard copies with the intention of selling them and recouping costs once the game got big.
And then the reviews came in.
And that's how Cantide spent over $500 on a game he doesn't intend to ever play.
I agree, even though I am still backing it. In total I'm getting the core set and extras and that new terrain pack with all the terrain they were making. There's no way I wanted to live without a Weirwood Tree that I don't have to sculpt.
Again, I'm bundling my different games together though so in my easily swayed mind it's worth it. I don't have much of a leg to stand on.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Cool models, though. I hope this new era of GW brings back Man O War.
I enjoy Small World well enough but god damn am I bad at it.
I'm not good at Small World by any means but the timing of going into decline is crucial.
It looks very weak mechanically, won't have pretty minis based on previous delivery of campaigns and is very unlikely to see any additional factions or support down the line.
Backing those types of wargames is always risky due to the inevitable lack of support but this one seems like a fairly cynical license cash in
Going back to Chess for a moment, if you want to have a more appropriate analogy for a two-player abstract where secret objectives could be a consideration, let's think about what happens to Tash-Kalar if each player started the game with a secret 1- or 2-point Task from a special deck? OK, yeah, it would probably make the game a bit weaker strategically since a Secret Task would be much more impactful than the hidden Flares (caveat: I've never played Tash-Kalar), but it would provide some additional spice. The same conclusions as Chess with hidden goals, but we actually have a better analogy since we started with a VP-based game. Sometimes secret objectives provide that variability and surprise that feeds into a game well, and other times they don't. Personally, I like the idea of the hidden objective as a supplement to public objectives, but I can see now how hard they can be worked into a design and still feel fair and fun.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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But if objectives were public it would be much easier to block another player from completing her objective, since she wouldn't have the lead time she gets while you deduce her motives from her choices.
TI is not meant to be a perfect strategy game--after all, you could just as easily argue that Chess would be a weaker game if it included individual races with their own proficiencies and special abilities, but those are important to TI too. Hidden information is crucial to the political/alliance/negotiation aspects of the game. Chess doesn't have those.
Do they also work like the ones that came out a few years ago Wrath of Ashardalon/Castle of Ravenloft and the misadventures of Drizzt?
Also the Tyrants of the Underdark was the game I saw but it looked like a land grab, court intrigue kind of game?
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I can pick up Hansa for 10euro, I have read mixed reviews, but is it worth getting at this price point?
Blood Royale
Easily do 9 hours for a full game and probably more? Played quite a few weekened Blood Royale game as a teenager.
Fantastic game.
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.
Android Infiltration is great! So much fuckery.
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.