I wasn't talking about an emperor harkonnen alliance. The game breaking alliance was between somebody whose power involved free transfer of funds somehow, and the guy who gets paid when other people buy cards. The broken combo was emperor funds being given away, used to buy cards, and thus going back to the emperor.
Sounds like there's nothing like that in the original?
You're talking about the same faction. The Emperor/Lazax can both freely give money and receives all auction money. In Dune, all factions could conduct a single money transfer at the end of a turn. Rex fucked it up by taking that away, massively strengthening the Lazax and massively nerfing Hacan (Guild).
Lazax + Xxcha (BG) were the two cornerstones of an unstoppable alliance. Lazax ensures they're amply funded, Xxcha ensures they always win a battle. Throw in a variable 3rd faction, anyone but Hacan. They get an absolute lockdown on all cards and battles. There's no reason for Lazax to ever not ally with Xxcha and vice versa; they're just too overpowering together. Someone could theoretically backstab, but why risk an almost guaranteed victory by sticking with the original 3 way alliance?
They wanted to streamline it and make it quicker, so they shrunk the map and doubled the base movement.
But that weakened the factions who relied on movement advantages (Hacan, Sol, and Jol-Nar+Letnev's starting space port), and nothing was added to compensate for that. Then they made the Emperor even stronger by giving him the sole ability to donate money. Harkonen and Atredis were weakened by doing away with blank cards (another attempt to streamline without compensating how it affected balance). Then they let the Emperor keep his super unit while taking away the Fremen's for...reasons?
I guess it wouldn't be a proper Twilight Imperium property if the races were balanced.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I don't remember the details as you can see but we were mystified that we couldn't find confirmation online that the balance was borked. Very helpful for you guys to confirm :biggrin:
So I was getting up from the game I was trying out at PAXU just now to leave and did a double take and was like... yes that is the SU&SD crew at the next table over. OMG I have seen people who are internet famous.
Also City of the Big Shoulders is a game I am going to Kickstart and then never play because it is a 3 hour economy game.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Pax Unplugged thoughts:
Way less crammed than last year in the main hall, due to moving all the tournament people to the lower hall. Good call.
I got to demo Evolution: Climate (an improvement on the original game), Coma Ward (from what I saw, since we basically only played the pre-scenario phase, a streamlined Betrayal at House on the Hill that is allegedly R-rated for some of its content), Hero Realms (improves on Star Realms, bought in pretty heavily due to local interest in co-op games generally), Maximum Apocalypse (a co-op scenario-driven game that takes some cues from other, worse-designed ones by having a variety of different enemy sets and things - clearly influenced by Legendary, but pretty fun!), and a space-sim game that uses Machi Koro's dice numbers-trigger-things mechanics a bit differently, and to solid effect.
Got to play some of the new Dice Throne Season 2, stuff - the Tactician is great, and a definite go-to for me if I play any more of it - due to a friend's grabbing it. I also took a look at a ton of other games, including a couple-minute over the shoulder glimpse of Prime War,
Didn't make it to any of the terrain classes, but I got there kind of late Saturday due to car issues. The wife and I had a great time, much better than last year.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Most popular game in open gaming that I saw was ROOT, even more than KEYFORGE, which surprised me.
Most popular game in open gaming that I saw was ROOT, even more than KEYFORGE, which surprised me.
I think all the Keyforge people were just there to check it out; their kiosk was mobbed every time I went by. A friend's brother was demoing but never got a chance to show it off to me, sadly.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Anyone got any suggestions for good looking Victory Point tokens? I'm really not feeling the ones Notre Dame (great game!) has.
Really cool was one of the AEG guys gave us those two copies of Trainmaker today after my kids tried out Cat Lady.
Also, Sam Heeley gave us the pirate dice tower just before the expo hall closed. Asked "pirates or vikings" and then when answered handed over the tower.
Can't wait to spring all these during Christmas break on the family! Three are actually Christmas presents.
So unless something changes, looks like our game concept is going to be a boardgame first and maybe a digital game later. We'll do as much as we can before starting up a Kickstarter to finish it up. Still a ways down the road, but pretty exciting none the less!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I'd agree that maybe the concepts in Brass are easier to grasp, actually, but it's a much harder game to play well. GWT is a lot more solitaire in execution than Brass, so you're pretty likely to get steamrolled if you don't quite get it.
Either way, yeah, neither is exactly "introductory" for the great majority of people.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Also, Teotihuacan is more enjoyable than I was expecting it to be (which isn't to say I thought it would be bad or boring, just I didn't expect to have any strong feelings about it). Actually gave me very similar vibes to Gugong from last week, where it's a game that'll probably reward players who want to overthink things way more than I'm ever going to, but playing tactically with short-term strategy still seems effective in a pleasantly easygoing way. The one thing is that we completely forgot a rule where you advance the eclipse marker whenever a worked ascends, so that would've impacted the game a ton. I only realized this about 3 rounds before we hit the end of the game, so we figure we probably had a solid 40-60 more points than we should have. :P Another one I don't personally want to buy, but I'd be happy to play it again~ It's worth noting the game and production of it are a steal at the current market price. It's fucking hilarious that it costs a solid 65% of what Terraforming Mars does considering the component difference.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
playing nightmares was super fun but i dunno how to play them if you don't draw defends? only 1 of their starting 4 powers moves evildoers, and it's turtle speed. It's real scary to only have 2 energy and 2 card plays a turn
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
playing nightmares was super fun but i dunno how to play them if you don't draw defends? only 1 of their starting 4 powers moves evildoers, and it's turtle speed. It's real scary to only have 2 energy and 2 card plays a turn
2 card plays is potentially really good if you can fish out a decent 0-cost minor immediately, but the real answer is "on a team with some other spirit who can carry the early game." I remain consistently high on A Spread of Rampant Green's ability to slow down the settlers in the early going, but Shadows Flicker Like Flames and Strength of Rising Earth are pretty good at it as well, though there are associated costs. Thunderspeaker needs to scale up just a little bit to do a pretty good job buying time for anyone slower on your team, IME, as well.
E: The other thing is that the design intends for the settlers to get ahead in the first few turns before you're fully online and have pulled some good powers, which you probably thought of but is worth mentioning for those who haven't tried it yet.
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
playing nightmares was super fun but i dunno how to play them if you don't draw defends? only 1 of their starting 4 powers moves evildoers, and it's turtle speed. It's real scary to only have 2 energy and 2 card plays a turn
I almost never have more than 2 cards/turn as BoDaN, but IIRC its energy track spikes quickly. Been a while since I played, though.
We played spirit island for the first time on normal and won reasonably handily. Dang that game is cool and well themed. We showed those colonials what for! After all the nightmares and emotional torment, they reacted to the destruction of all their major cities by packing the fuck up and sailing home.
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
playing nightmares was super fun but i dunno how to play them if you don't draw defends? only 1 of their starting 4 powers moves evildoers, and it's turtle speed. It's real scary to only have 2 energy and 2 card plays a turn
I almost never have more than 2 cards/turn as BoDaN, but IIRC its energy track spikes quickly. Been a while since I played, though.
well, it's 2 -> 2 and an air -> 3 -> 3 and a moon and an air -> 4, I think. I dug hard for 3 cards/turn so I could play my 0s more often, but maybe that's not always wise and it only worked great because I got +2 energy on grow 2 or 3 times and pulled powerful 1-cost minor powers that granted defense. My draws were: Quicken the Earth's Struggles, Drift Down Into Slumber, Indomitable Claim, Gift of Constancy.
It felt like I needed to teleport a lot to prevent blighting, so I couldn't retrieve cards two often, so I needed to cooperate with other players to make Dread Apparitions do anything, which was cool. I only comboed it with Call on Midnight's Dreams once
Yeah that sounds right. The extra elements add up for your innates; that must have been what I was remembering. Still, it's a high-complexity spirit for a reason.
My biggest problem is that spooking explorers doesn't generate Fear. You need to find town-busting damage and that's hard if you want to keep to your elements.
Honestly though a lot of your action is going to come from Fear cards since you can crank that up, especially with lower player counts.
I like Kingdomino a lot, Queen is on sale today, and I'm looking at it and...I dunno
I love that Kingdomino is a very simple game and Queen seems to just bolt on a lot of shit I don't care about and seems like it would detract from the core kingdom building
Yeah that sounds right. The extra elements add up for your innates; that must have been what I was remembering. Still, it's a high-complexity spirit for a reason.
My biggest problem is that spooking explorers doesn't generate Fear. You need to find town-busting damage and that's hard if you want to keep to your elements.
Honestly though a lot of your action is going to come from Fear cards since you can crank that up, especially with lower player counts.
I played Thunderspeaker + my partner played Nightmare. It seemed to be a pretty solid pairing. We are playing the "easy" game, though, with no Blighted/Healthy Island card, and no adversaries. We were down to the last few blight tokens, but we managed to get both of our balls rolling. Mine, a literal ball of dahan that was capable of defending 10+ and dealing 15+ damage, and her creating massive amounts of fear, shoving invaders, villages and cities into my dahan murder ball. We won via fear level 3, having wiped out all cities and villages right as we unlocked terror level 3.
Spirit Island rules.
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
I like Kingdomino a lot, Queen is on sale today, and I'm looking at it and...I dunno
I love that Kingdomino is a very simple game and Queen seems to just bolt on a lot of shit I don't care about and seems like it would detract from the core kingdom building
I have not played it but everyone who has that I have talked with said what you did, that it added stuff and they don't know that the stuff made the game any better.
Won Twighlight Imperium again. It wasn't a great victory as some kingmaking went on. But it was tied at 8/9 all around and the game was ending at the end of the round regardless. I shamed my friend into keeping his agreement of Support for the Throne for passing on the Technology card.
I'd agree that maybe the concepts in Brass are easier to grasp, actually, but it's a much harder game to play well. GWT is a lot more solitaire in execution than Brass, so you're pretty likely to get steamrolled if you don't quite get it.
Either way, yeah, neither is exactly "introductory" for the great majority of people.
Hmm, true. Brass Lacanshire is so free flowing I never know why I win or lose yet. Helping other players nets you money, but selling goods out gets points. I usually end in high income but not quite winning points.
Clank! is getting a PA themed Legacy game: Clank Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated!
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
As much as I'm down on Clank! and that initially made me sigh a little, reflecting on it Clank's whole design is something that's more suited to a legacy game. Games should start sweet and simple as you pillage near the surface and represent shitty thieves, and escalate in depth and danger the more the dungeon is looted and you all (hopefully) evade death. Now I guess we'll cross some fingers something like that is actually what comes of this? :P
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You're talking about the same faction. The Emperor/Lazax can both freely give money and receives all auction money. In Dune, all factions could conduct a single money transfer at the end of a turn. Rex fucked it up by taking that away, massively strengthening the Lazax and massively nerfing Hacan (Guild).
Lazax + Xxcha (BG) were the two cornerstones of an unstoppable alliance. Lazax ensures they're amply funded, Xxcha ensures they always win a battle. Throw in a variable 3rd faction, anyone but Hacan. They get an absolute lockdown on all cards and battles. There's no reason for Lazax to ever not ally with Xxcha and vice versa; they're just too overpowering together. Someone could theoretically backstab, but why risk an almost guaranteed victory by sticking with the original 3 way alliance?
Especially sad given that there is essentially a wealth of players and data for balancing Dune out there.
But that weakened the factions who relied on movement advantages (Hacan, Sol, and Jol-Nar+Letnev's starting space port), and nothing was added to compensate for that. Then they made the Emperor even stronger by giving him the sole ability to donate money. Harkonen and Atredis were weakened by doing away with blank cards (another attempt to streamline without compensating how it affected balance). Then they let the Emperor keep his super unit while taking away the Fremen's for...reasons?
I guess it wouldn't be a proper Twilight Imperium property if the races were balanced.
Also City of the Big Shoulders is a game I am going to Kickstart and then never play because it is a 3 hour economy game.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Heh, saw them sitting down to breakfast at the Market this morning.
PAX Unplugged at 10:00 AM Friday morning:
PAX Unplugged at 5:00 PM Friday evening:
Welcome To feels like it's just a little TOO hard to keep track of, but Railroad Ink is basically perfect
Get the app
But that sounds lovely!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Way less crammed than last year in the main hall, due to moving all the tournament people to the lower hall. Good call.
I got to demo Evolution: Climate (an improvement on the original game), Coma Ward (from what I saw, since we basically only played the pre-scenario phase, a streamlined Betrayal at House on the Hill that is allegedly R-rated for some of its content), Hero Realms (improves on Star Realms, bought in pretty heavily due to local interest in co-op games generally), Maximum Apocalypse (a co-op scenario-driven game that takes some cues from other, worse-designed ones by having a variety of different enemy sets and things - clearly influenced by Legendary, but pretty fun!), and a space-sim game that uses Machi Koro's dice numbers-trigger-things mechanics a bit differently, and to solid effect.
Got to play some of the new Dice Throne Season 2, stuff - the Tactician is great, and a definite go-to for me if I play any more of it - due to a friend's grabbing it. I also took a look at a ton of other games, including a couple-minute over the shoulder glimpse of Prime War,
Didn't make it to any of the terrain classes, but I got there kind of late Saturday due to car issues. The wife and I had a great time, much better than last year.
I think all the Keyforge people were just there to check it out; their kiosk was mobbed every time I went by. A friend's brother was demoing but never got a chance to show it off to me, sadly.
Really cool was one of the AEG guys gave us those two copies of Trainmaker today after my kids tried out Cat Lady.
Also, Sam Heeley gave us the pirate dice tower just before the expo hall closed. Asked "pirates or vikings" and then when answered handed over the tower.
Can't wait to spring all these during Christmas break on the family! Three are actually Christmas presents.
It's not going to be good. I'm hoping "so bad it's good", but probably just plain "bad".
I should have done Brass first. Just because GWT has building property and a rondel doesn't mean its the easier game to teach.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Either way, yeah, neither is exactly "introductory" for the great majority of people.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
It's worth noting the game and production of it are a steal at the current market price. It's fucking hilarious that it costs a solid 65% of what Terraforming Mars does considering the component difference.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
We had strength of the rising earth, lightning's Swift strike, nightmare bringer, and the grasping ocean. Got some lucky power draws - a range two nuke for the ocean, who normally struggles to reach inland, and multiple short range defend 10 defend 20 stalls for the nightmare bringer, who can quickly establish presence wherever he needs to target things
At that price tag I might as well buy some power tools and learn carpentry by building a gaming table.
Nightmares and Ocean is a fun combo. "Watch this: I'm gonna scare these jerks so bad they'll run into the sea and drown."
playing nightmares was super fun but i dunno how to play them if you don't draw defends? only 1 of their starting 4 powers moves evildoers, and it's turtle speed. It's real scary to only have 2 energy and 2 card plays a turn
2 card plays is potentially really good if you can fish out a decent 0-cost minor immediately, but the real answer is "on a team with some other spirit who can carry the early game." I remain consistently high on A Spread of Rampant Green's ability to slow down the settlers in the early going, but Shadows Flicker Like Flames and Strength of Rising Earth are pretty good at it as well, though there are associated costs. Thunderspeaker needs to scale up just a little bit to do a pretty good job buying time for anyone slower on your team, IME, as well.
E: The other thing is that the design intends for the settlers to get ahead in the first few turns before you're fully online and have pulled some good powers, which you probably thought of but is worth mentioning for those who haven't tried it yet.
I almost never have more than 2 cards/turn as BoDaN, but IIRC its energy track spikes quickly. Been a while since I played, though.
well, it's 2 -> 2 and an air -> 3 -> 3 and a moon and an air -> 4, I think. I dug hard for 3 cards/turn so I could play my 0s more often, but maybe that's not always wise and it only worked great because I got +2 energy on grow 2 or 3 times and pulled powerful 1-cost minor powers that granted defense. My draws were: Quicken the Earth's Struggles, Drift Down Into Slumber, Indomitable Claim, Gift of Constancy.
It felt like I needed to teleport a lot to prevent blighting, so I couldn't retrieve cards two often, so I needed to cooperate with other players to make Dread Apparitions do anything, which was cool. I only comboed it with Call on Midnight's Dreams once
edit: I really liked this game you guys
My biggest problem is that spooking explorers doesn't generate Fear. You need to find town-busting damage and that's hard if you want to keep to your elements.
Honestly though a lot of your action is going to come from Fear cards since you can crank that up, especially with lower player counts.
I like Kingdomino a lot, Queen is on sale today, and I'm looking at it and...I dunno
I love that Kingdomino is a very simple game and Queen seems to just bolt on a lot of shit I don't care about and seems like it would detract from the core kingdom building
I played Thunderspeaker + my partner played Nightmare. It seemed to be a pretty solid pairing. We are playing the "easy" game, though, with no Blighted/Healthy Island card, and no adversaries. We were down to the last few blight tokens, but we managed to get both of our balls rolling. Mine, a literal ball of dahan that was capable of defending 10+ and dealing 15+ damage, and her creating massive amounts of fear, shoving invaders, villages and cities into my dahan murder ball. We won via fear level 3, having wiped out all cities and villages right as we unlocked terror level 3.
Spirit Island rules.
I have not played it but everyone who has that I have talked with said what you did, that it added stuff and they don't know that the stuff made the game any better.
Hmm, true. Brass Lacanshire is so free flowing I never know why I win or lose yet. Helping other players nets you money, but selling goods out gets points. I usually end in high income but not quite winning points.
Clank! is getting a PA themed Legacy game:
Clank Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated!
Now I guess we'll cross some fingers something like that is actually what comes of this? :P
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?