CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
As the father of an 8 y.o. girl who is fully on board with boardgames, I can tell you it's worth the wait. There is a certain stage where they are into anything you are, so you get to rope them into all sorts of new games.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
As the father of an 8 y.o. girl who is fully on board with boardgames, I can tell you it's worth the wait. There is a certain stage where they are into anything you are, so you get to rope them into all sorts of new games.
When I was a child my mother got me into board games and reading
So going to kindergarten where the other kids are playing ants in the pants or chutes and ladders I asked can we play mastermind to a shocked and confused teacher
I know this is a whole different era than then when it comes to boardgames and other gaming systems
The FLGS person who helped with the rules explainer mentioned there was some take that which made me really leery since while my wife and I aren't Rahdo levels of carebear, it's not too far from it. I couldn't see anything that was really that bad. I mean I guess you could discard a tile you know somebody wants but that's not so bad.
It is if it leaves them with 4+ tiles they can't complete. I've only played one game but denying someone a given suite seemed like a key counterbalance to high risk high point play. Especially toward the end of the game.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
We had our second game of Root last night, another 4 player one with the base factions. This time I was the vagabond. We had a new player who was playing the Eyrie, everyone else had played before. The Eyrie ended up winning a turn before I did as the vagabond, but it was extremely close. He needed a couple of extra victory points that he got through crafting and by finding random buildings on the map to destroy. Very close game!
Unfortunately, our Marquise de Cat player did not have a good game. He went too hard on the economy engine in the early game and didn't realize how forcefully the birds were going to invade the board. He lost almost all of his board position except for 2 or 3 clearings for the whole game. I think he had 13 VPs before trying to go for a Dominance card. We made sure that he didn't get the Dominance win, but I think he just didn't enjoy the aggressiveness of how the cats have to play. Yes, they WANT to go full economy, but they can't because they'll get wiped off the map by the Eyrie. Oh, well. I guess if I play with this particular person again, he's going to have to play either the Vagabond or the Otters. I think he just doesn't like war games.
Edit: I'd also like to mention for anyone hopping on the hype train for Root, be warned: this is absolutely a WAR GAME. If you don't like being aggressive, rolling dice for combat, or the inherent kingmaking nature of dudes-on-a-map games, you will not enjoy this game. Don't let the theme fool you, this game is brutal and you have to be a dick to your friends to win.
As the father of an 8 y.o. girl who is fully on board with boardgames, I can tell you it's worth the wait. There is a certain stage where they are into anything you are, so you get to rope them into all sorts of new games.
I don't have kids but I teach math and I feel young kids getting into board games like these will do wonders for their logic development!
As the father of an 8 y.o. girl who is fully on board with boardgames, I can tell you it's worth the wait. There is a certain stage where they are into anything you are, so you get to rope them into all sorts of new games.
I don't have kids but I teach math and I feel young kids getting into board games like these will do wonders for their logic development!
Some people break out copies of Mastermind at programming interviews to test how someone logics through a problem and optimization.
Hoity Toity was super good. Just exactly my style of game. It won the SdJ in 1990, and was designed by Klaus Teuber who also designed Catan. My understanding is that it is the game that introduced simultaneous action selection (though I haven't researched that to see if it is the case). Basically you play as antique collectors trying to make the best antique collection for points (by fair means or foul).
Each round everyone simultaneously selects to either go to the auction to get more cards for their collection, or go to the castle to show off their collection (which is where you score points).
Then the people who went to the auction all select a card to try to buy a face up card for their collection. Whoever plays the highest valued money card gets to buy the thing, but! Whoever plays the highest valued thief card gets to steal the highest money card that got played and put it into their hand for use later (after the person who played it buys their thing).
Then the people who went to the castle choose to show their collection, try to steal, or try to catch thieves. Whoever chose to show shows cards and the largest and second largest shown sets score points, then anyone who played a thief gets to steal a card from every shown collection, then anyone who played a detective scores points and sends all played thieves to jail.
Continue until someone hits the end of the score track, at which point there is one final collection showing for a bunch of points.
Not sure how much sense that makes? But man it was so so good. Lots of double thinking and trying to outguess your opponents, and lots of fun moments where everyone who went to the auction played a thief or everyone who went to the castle played a detective or what have you. If you like highly interactive old style euros You gotta play this. I would buy a copy today, but I think you only really want to play it with 5-6 and if I'm in the position to do that I'll have access to the copy I played last night so yknow. Anyway it's GREAT.
Also Bunny Kingdom was fine? It's cute and fast but it didn't do much for me I dunno. Your draft cards, you put stuff on the board, you score points, ehhhh. I'd play it again if it was the thing being played but I wouldn't ask for it.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Yeaaaaaah, Hoity Toity!
This was acquired by friends of ours because one of them was often described as hoity toity so it was more a joke. But some 5 years after they got it we played, and it was a delight given its age. I can't say for sure we fell for the gameplay of it, but let me tell you how great it is when you embrace the characater of the game and all the guys exclusively talk in high pitched voices with their best 18th-century accents. And then spend most of the game raving about assorted underpants and how desperately they need them for their collection.
Also Bunny Kingdom was fine? It's cute and fast but it didn't do much for me I dunno. Your draft cards, you put stuff on the board, you score points, ehhhh. I'd play it again if it was the thing being played but I wouldn't ask for it.
Yeah I had the same impression. It mostly seemed like King Domino with a preset board and drafting...and a much longer playing time. The entire time I was playing it I was thinking, "I could have just gotten four games of King Domino in." I don't think any of the increased depth was enough to justify the playtime increase.
Of course, I'm the guy who also thinks the same "Why aren't I just playing King Domino instead?" when playing Castles of Burgundy, so take that for what you will.
Troyes is not an easy game to teach. My group did not take to it at all. They were frustrated and muted the whole time. Instead, I kept being told how Lorenzo is a much better game.
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
I defeated the wife in Mint Delivery today at lunch. 2-0 baby!
I must say though that any game we play should add 30-60 minutes to the “average game length” timer. Because damn does my wife over analyze the shit out of everything during her turn. OMG, just take your turn already!!
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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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Picked up Unlock the sausage one for $5 today. First escape the room type game. Any good? For $5, figured it was worth the flier.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
I really want The Study in Emerald because it's loosely based on my favorite Zelazny short story but I have not heard encouraging things about the game itself.
I really want The Study in Emerald because it's loosely based on my favorite Zelazny short story but I have not heard encouraging things about the game itself.
It's gaiman isn't it? I thought the game was supposed to be real cool, but I dunno. I haven't played it myself and don't have a group that would play it so.
I really want The Study in Emerald because it's loosely based on my favorite Zelazny short story but I have not heard encouraging things about the game itself.
It's gaiman isn't it? I thought the game was supposed to be real cool, but I dunno. I haven't played it myself and don't have a group that would play it so.
First edition was apparently a complete mess. Second edition retooled it into more or less a completely distinct game
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
In a rare turn of events I got not one but two of my giant pile of unopened games to the table yesterday.
Battle of Britain was pretty great. I ended up rules adjudicating for my brothers but I really like that game. The PSC reprint was near top of my "must haves" at GenCon. The Brits had an amazing first two turns, shooting down an absurd amount of German planes. The last two turns of the game however saw much raining destruction upon the British people. From a victory point perspective however those first few turns worth of kills was enough to keep the edge in the hands of the RAF.
Rebellion: only got a few turns in before it was super late, but I really like what was going on there. I can see really needing to learn the various mission and action decks before you can really feel comfortable and not get terribly surprised, kind of like Twilight Struggle where not knowing certain cards exist on the other side can make or break your game.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
I really want The Study in Emerald because it's loosely based on my favorite Zelazny short story but I have not heard encouraging things about the game itself.
It's gaiman isn't it? I thought the game was supposed to be real cool, but I dunno. I haven't played it myself and don't have a group that would play it so.
First edition was apparently a complete mess. Second edition retooled it into more or less a completely distinct game
Yes, Neil Gaiman. The story is maybe three pages long ? and easily findable online.
The first edition rulebook could use some re-organizing, yes, but no matter what you do, STUDY IN EMERALD is definitely a game that you requires you to sacrifice your first one or two plays to learn and understand. Cthulhu would demand nothing less, and indeed a great deal more.
Any thoughts on 1st vs 2nd edition Study in Emerald?
Haven't played either, but 2nd looks a little easier to learn and understand, but also a lot of theme seems to have been sucked out. The faction tracks are more generic, and they seemed to have neutered the interesting "every player in your faction is eliminated if one of you has the lowest score at the end" rule, which sounded like a neat way of setting up a competitive cooperative game. The 2nd edition changed this to just -5 VP instead of elimination, which seems like it would make people just totally ditch cooperation and just concentrate even harder on personal gain to offset the -5.
Yeah! Just sold Eclipse with expansion and Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed on Craigslist for $220! Makes me feel better about buying TWIMP 4 and kickstarting Eclipse 2nd.
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Eight or so games in, I can confirm the popular view that the Harry Potter Deckbuilder is a fantastically themed game with a hot pile of trash for rules. (It's from USAopoly, so that probably shouldn't be a huge surprise.). So much of the game is done so right, from the card art to the heroes' special powers to the specific card abilities* to the quasi-legacy style gameplay of unlocking better cards and rules changes over the course of seven games, such as (game 7 spoilers)
The horcrux deck is an especially clever addition.
Unfortunately, the basic gameplay loop is just broken: the majority of the time, either you lose in the first twenty minutes because the villians deck overwhelms you before you can add any good cards to your deck, or else it's utterly obvious at that point that you're going to win, which would be fine except it takes about two hours to win games 4-7 (maybe even a bit longer than that for game 7). The game ramps up in difficulty only when you're doing poorly, so if you start to lose early, you will get curb stomped, but if you're doing well enough to win you can usually prevent the game from ever progressing to the difficult part, so then you spend 90 minutes just going through the motions to your inevitable victory.
It says a lot that a sizeable percenatge of all the threads for the game on BGG's forums are in the Varients subforum; lots of people want to love the game, but it seems it needs a healthy helping of house rules to produce anything like a balanced challenge where both victory and defeat remain possible through the entire 2-hour playtime.
*My favorite is Gilderoy Lockhart, whose on-play ability is actually worse than nothing (play Lockhart to draw one card and discard one card, which leaves you with one fewer card in hand than if you hadn't bought him at all), except that he is the best card to discard to bad events (when you discard Lockhart, you draw another card to replace him): that's right, the only good thing you can do with Lockhart is to get rid of him.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
(All that said, it is of course my 8-year-old's favorite game, even though she admits that "it does get a bit boring when you know you are going to win and have to keep playing anyway".)
Any thoughts on 1st vs 2nd edition Study in Emerald?
Haven't played either, but 2nd looks a little easier to learn and understand, but also a lot of theme seems to have been sucked out. The faction tracks are more generic, and they seemed to have neutered the interesting "every player in your faction is eliminated if one of you has the lowest score at the end" rule, which sounded like a neat way of setting up a competitive cooperative game. The 2nd edition changed this to just -5 VP instead of elimination, which seems like it would make people just totally ditch cooperation and just concentrate even harder on personal gain to offset the -5.
I've played, own and like the first edition. I've never played the second edition but I've also never seen a reason to switch away from the first edition.
Played a couple f games of Disney's Villainous tonight.
Actually a pretty good fun game! Certainly deeper than its branding might lead you to believe.
A few of the Villains are going to be pretty luck based on where their key cards get hidden in their deck though.
We've gotten 6 plays of it so far and love it. I've played with every villain except the Queen of Hearts and Ursula, but I've seen both of them played by other players twice.
I can't get over how well they nailed the feel of each villain. The Queen of Hearts realm + fate deck is maddening and seems like its designed to make you want to yell "Off with their head!" at literally everyone and everything. Ursula is all about manipulation. Prince John just wants to rule and if you let him, he will take over. Jafar uses trickery and items/sorcery to accomplish his goals. Maleficent is about slow controlling her realm with precision, planning, and ruthlessness often using other villains to do her bidding. Captain Hook feels like captain hook, you get the realm set up to fight and take down peter pan only for all the lost boys and peter pan to cause massive issues and UGH the croc.
As far as the luck based component goes, the only ones really based on luck are Jafar, Ursula, and Captain Hook and those three all have lots of hand cycling and deck searching in order to find what you need if you focus on it.
Its definitely deeper than we expected it to be. You've gotta be able to plan at least 2-3 turns in advance in regards to your wincon, keep tabs on all the other villains and plan for how best to hurt them, while simultaneously having a plan to deal with any unforseen pesky heroes that will be thrown your way once you get too close to winning. We've had multiple games where people are 1-2 turns from winning only for the fate deck to throw a massive wrench and set them back. Last night, for instance, I was Maleficent and was 1 turn from getting my realm full of curses. I got fated by another player and in came King Stefan, perfectly played to wipe my entire realm of curses (he doesn't get rid of any curses by himself, but he was played in such a way to get rid of 2). Then I got my realm back under my control and full of curses in such a way that I should've been completely safe. I made it through a single fating from one player but the second player's fating of me knocked out a curse and due to the way some of the curses work really set me back. I ended up winning that game after a few more turns of being on the verge of winning.
They've done a fantastic job of balancing (outside of Prince John probably being a bit too easy) and the more I play the more genius the realm boards become. They put a ton of thought into the placement of actions, theme, villain deck balance, wincon variety, and hero abilities. The game plays great as a result.
I just hope they come out with more villains soon. I'll be buying every expansion pack they release for this game.
Played a couple f games of Disney's Villainous tonight.
Actually a pretty good fun game! Certainly deeper than its branding might lead you to believe.
A few of the Villains are going to be pretty luck based on where their key cards get hidden in their deck though.
We've gotten 6 plays of it so far and love it. I've played with every villain except the Queen of Hearts and Ursula, but I've seen both of them played by other players twice.
I can't get over how well they nailed the feel of each villain. The Queen of Hearts realm + fate deck is maddening and seems like its designed to make you want to yell "Off with their head!" at literally everyone and everything. Ursula is all about manipulation. Prince John just wants to rule and if you let him, he will take over. Jafar uses trickery and items/sorcery to accomplish his goals. Maleficent is about slow controlling her realm with precision, planning, and ruthlessness often using other villains to do her bidding. Captain Hook feels like captain hook, you get the realm set up to fight and take down peter pan only for all the lost boys and peter pan to cause massive issues and UGH the croc.
As far as the luck based component goes, the only ones really based on luck are Jafar, Ursula, and Captain Hook and those three all have lots of hand cycling and deck searching in order to find what you need if you focus on it.
Its definitely deeper than we expected it to be. You've gotta be able to plan at least 2-3 turns in advance in regards to your wincon, keep tabs on all the other villains and plan for how best to hurt them, while simultaneously having a plan to deal with any unforseen pesky heroes that will be thrown your way once you get too close to winning. We've had multiple games where people are 1-2 turns from winning only for the fate deck to throw a massive wrench and set them back. Last night, for instance, I was Maleficent and was 1 turn from getting my realm full of curses. I got fated by another player and in came King Stefan, perfectly played to wipe my entire realm of curses (he doesn't get rid of any curses by himself, but he was played in such a way to get rid of 2). Then I got my realm back under my control and full of curses in such a way that I should've been completely safe. I made it through a single fating from one player but the second player's fating of me knocked out a curse and due to the way some of the curses work really set me back. I ended up winning that game after a few more turns of being on the verge of winning.
They've done a fantastic job of balancing (outside of Prince John probably being a bit too easy) and the more I play the more genius the realm boards become. They put a ton of thought into the placement of actions, theme, villain deck balance, wincon variety, and hero abilities. The game plays great as a result.
I just hope they come out with more villains soon. I'll be buying every expansion pack they release for this game.
How many players did you play with? I feel like its a much different game at <4 vs 5+. At 5 the person who gets fated cannot be messed with until someone else is fated, and we couldn't keep Maleficent down.
Played a couple f games of Disney's Villainous tonight.
Actually a pretty good fun game! Certainly deeper than its branding might lead you to believe.
A few of the Villains are going to be pretty luck based on where their key cards get hidden in their deck though.
We've gotten 6 plays of it so far and love it. I've played with every villain except the Queen of Hearts and Ursula, but I've seen both of them played by other players twice.
I can't get over how well they nailed the feel of each villain. The Queen of Hearts realm + fate deck is maddening and seems like its designed to make you want to yell "Off with their head!" at literally everyone and everything. Ursula is all about manipulation. Prince John just wants to rule and if you let him, he will take over. Jafar uses trickery and items/sorcery to accomplish his goals. Maleficent is about slow controlling her realm with precision, planning, and ruthlessness often using other villains to do her bidding. Captain Hook feels like captain hook, you get the realm set up to fight and take down peter pan only for all the lost boys and peter pan to cause massive issues and UGH the croc.
As far as the luck based component goes, the only ones really based on luck are Jafar, Ursula, and Captain Hook and those three all have lots of hand cycling and deck searching in order to find what you need if you focus on it.
Its definitely deeper than we expected it to be. You've gotta be able to plan at least 2-3 turns in advance in regards to your wincon, keep tabs on all the other villains and plan for how best to hurt them, while simultaneously having a plan to deal with any unforseen pesky heroes that will be thrown your way once you get too close to winning. We've had multiple games where people are 1-2 turns from winning only for the fate deck to throw a massive wrench and set them back. Last night, for instance, I was Maleficent and was 1 turn from getting my realm full of curses. I got fated by another player and in came King Stefan, perfectly played to wipe my entire realm of curses (he doesn't get rid of any curses by himself, but he was played in such a way to get rid of 2). Then I got my realm back under my control and full of curses in such a way that I should've been completely safe. I made it through a single fating from one player but the second player's fating of me knocked out a curse and due to the way some of the curses work really set me back. I ended up winning that game after a few more turns of being on the verge of winning.
They've done a fantastic job of balancing (outside of Prince John probably being a bit too easy) and the more I play the more genius the realm boards become. They put a ton of thought into the placement of actions, theme, villain deck balance, wincon variety, and hero abilities. The game plays great as a result.
I just hope they come out with more villains soon. I'll be buying every expansion pack they release for this game.
How many players did you play with? I feel like its a much different game at <4 vs 5+. At 5 the person who gets fated cannot be messed with until someone else is fated, and we couldn't keep Maleficent down.
I've done games of either 2 or 3 players. Which meant I was being fated by 2 players at most per turn. And actually when I had a full board of curses, I regularly got fated by both players. With 5 players it would be the same? Maleficent sets up her curses, then she's fated, another villain fated, then Maleficent is fated again. No different pushback than a 3 player game.
She's also the only villain I've lost with. I won with Jafar v Queen of Hearts/Maleficent, Hook v Ursula, John v Urusula. Then I lost as Maleficent v John/Queen of Hearts, John won that game. I finally won last night as Maleficent v Jafar/Ursula. I feel like I only won that one because I had a really good knowledge of which curses to play. There are only three curses:
- Green Fire: Heroes can't be played to this location, this curse gets discarded if Maleficent moves to this location - This curse is great, but I can see players forgetting that they can't move there without discarding it. There isn't a single location that is great for this to be played but with the Raven out it makes it a bit easier to take that hit. King Stefan, though, can wreck this curse by force moving maleficent to any location where this curse is, taking it out.
- Thorn Thing: Heroes with less than 4 power can't be played here, if a hero of 4 or more power is played here, then discard this curse - This curse doesn't last that long through repeated fatings. There are plenty of strength 4 or more heroes out there that will make this go away.
- Sleep or whatever: Heroes get -2 strength, if an ally is played here discard this curse - This is the most sticky curse, but I think there are only two of them in the deck and all the other villains need to do is play cheap heros to this location and hamper the location, since now Maleficent has to play allies off the location and move them there, of which she has limited ability to do.
So outside of that last curse, any multiple fate draw should be able to take out the thorn curse and King Stefan will definitely take out the green fire. I won with 2x Green Fire and 2x Sleep, but even that exact setup got knocked out a few turns earlier when a hero got played that discarded all curses at that location to a sleep cursed location.
Played a couple f games of Disney's Villainous tonight.
Actually a pretty good fun game! Certainly deeper than its branding might lead you to believe.
A few of the Villains are going to be pretty luck based on where their key cards get hidden in their deck though.
We tried it on Saturday night. It didn't do it for us. I think the lady trying to sell us on it overhyped it too much.
Salelady: "First thing you do is pick your favorite Disney villain."
Me: "Zurg."
Saleslady: "No"
Me: "Randall from Monsters Inc".
Saleslady: "No, think older"
Me: "Oogie Boogie?"
Saleslady: "No"
Wife: "Ursula?"
Saleslady: "Yes"
Me: "Scar?"
Saleslady: "No. You get to be Jafar."
I'll be teaching a friend Twilight Struggle sometime this week. I'm a skilled novice at it, I know standard strategies and things to watch out for. What kind of handicap should we play with?
I was considering giving him U.S. with +3 influence and I'll play USSR. Most games where I'm teaching a new person end with them committing DEFCON suicide anyways, I don't expect a full game. Any ideas from people who have been in the same situation?
Played Spectaculum, a light Knizia stock market/route building game. Its a rare market game that works well 2p but this one does quite well. There's enough luck to keep it light, but enough stuff to think about to make it interesting. It would make sense with a train theme, but for some reason it has an insane theme about traveling circuses. I'm curious how it will play with more than 2... Seems likely to get more chaotic that way but probably still fun. Long story short, I got it at Ollie's for $6, and if there's an Ollie's near you and you think you might like a lighter stock market game it's worth taking a look for a copy. Going to try to get my nieces and nephews to give it a shot, seems like it would be a great family game.
I'll be teaching a friend Twilight Struggle sometime this week. I'm a skilled novice at it, I know standard strategies and things to watch out for. What kind of handicap should we play with?
I was considering giving him U.S. with +3 influence and I'll play USSR. Most games where I'm teaching a new person end with them committing DEFCON suicide anyways, I don't expect a full game. Any ideas from people who have been in the same situation?
I think just stress that the game really evolves the more you learn and it's pretty likely you accidentally fuck yourself the first few games.
Like, 4 recent games of Labyrinth in and I don't think I'm any better a player. I lost the last game when I probably had a huge chunk of time to do something about that. :P
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When I was a child my mother got me into board games and reading
So going to kindergarten where the other kids are playing ants in the pants or chutes and ladders I asked can we play mastermind to a shocked and confused teacher
I know this is a whole different era than then when it comes to boardgames and other gaming systems
It is if it leaves them with 4+ tiles they can't complete. I've only played one game but denying someone a given suite seemed like a key counterbalance to high risk high point play. Especially toward the end of the game.
Unfortunately, our Marquise de Cat player did not have a good game. He went too hard on the economy engine in the early game and didn't realize how forcefully the birds were going to invade the board. He lost almost all of his board position except for 2 or 3 clearings for the whole game. I think he had 13 VPs before trying to go for a Dominance card. We made sure that he didn't get the Dominance win, but I think he just didn't enjoy the aggressiveness of how the cats have to play. Yes, they WANT to go full economy, but they can't because they'll get wiped off the map by the Eyrie. Oh, well. I guess if I play with this particular person again, he's going to have to play either the Vagabond or the Otters. I think he just doesn't like war games.
Edit: I'd also like to mention for anyone hopping on the hype train for Root, be warned: this is absolutely a WAR GAME. If you don't like being aggressive, rolling dice for combat, or the inherent kingmaking nature of dudes-on-a-map games, you will not enjoy this game. Don't let the theme fool you, this game is brutal and you have to be a dick to your friends to win.
I don't have kids but I teach math and I feel young kids getting into board games like these will do wonders for their logic development!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Some people break out copies of Mastermind at programming interviews to test how someone logics through a problem and optimization.
Hoity Toity was super good. Just exactly my style of game. It won the SdJ in 1990, and was designed by Klaus Teuber who also designed Catan. My understanding is that it is the game that introduced simultaneous action selection (though I haven't researched that to see if it is the case). Basically you play as antique collectors trying to make the best antique collection for points (by fair means or foul).
Each round everyone simultaneously selects to either go to the auction to get more cards for their collection, or go to the castle to show off their collection (which is where you score points).
Then the people who went to the auction all select a card to try to buy a face up card for their collection. Whoever plays the highest valued money card gets to buy the thing, but! Whoever plays the highest valued thief card gets to steal the highest money card that got played and put it into their hand for use later (after the person who played it buys their thing).
Then the people who went to the castle choose to show their collection, try to steal, or try to catch thieves. Whoever chose to show shows cards and the largest and second largest shown sets score points, then anyone who played a thief gets to steal a card from every shown collection, then anyone who played a detective scores points and sends all played thieves to jail.
Continue until someone hits the end of the score track, at which point there is one final collection showing for a bunch of points.
Not sure how much sense that makes? But man it was so so good. Lots of double thinking and trying to outguess your opponents, and lots of fun moments where everyone who went to the auction played a thief or everyone who went to the castle played a detective or what have you. If you like highly interactive old style euros You gotta play this. I would buy a copy today, but I think you only really want to play it with 5-6 and if I'm in the position to do that I'll have access to the copy I played last night so yknow. Anyway it's GREAT.
Also Bunny Kingdom was fine? It's cute and fast but it didn't do much for me I dunno. Your draft cards, you put stuff on the board, you score points, ehhhh. I'd play it again if it was the thing being played but I wouldn't ask for it.
This was acquired by friends of ours because one of them was often described as hoity toity so it was more a joke. But some 5 years after they got it we played, and it was a delight given its age. I can't say for sure we fell for the gameplay of it, but let me tell you how great it is when you embrace the characater of the game and all the guys exclusively talk in high pitched voices with their best 18th-century accents. And then spend most of the game raving about assorted underpants and how desperately they need them for their collection.
I'd play it again. ;P
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Yeah I had the same impression. It mostly seemed like King Domino with a preset board and drafting...and a much longer playing time. The entire time I was playing it I was thinking, "I could have just gotten four games of King Domino in." I don't think any of the increased depth was enough to justify the playtime increase.
Of course, I'm the guy who also thinks the same "Why aren't I just playing King Domino instead?" when playing Castles of Burgundy, so take that for what you will.
I must say though that any game we play should add 30-60 minutes to the “average game length” timer. Because damn does my wife over analyze the shit out of everything during her turn. OMG, just take your turn already!!
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It's the best of the first three, if you don't enjoy it you probably wont need to bother with the rest.
Or put the cards in order to make searching easier. It's against the rules.
Pros: holy crap that Sif and artorious minis are amazing.
Cons: I don't even have the game.
I hear they did a new edition, so is it that one or the original Kickstarter one?
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It very much provides the desired quick silly fun in a nice compact package.
Recommend.
It's gaiman isn't it? I thought the game was supposed to be real cool, but I dunno. I haven't played it myself and don't have a group that would play it so.
First edition was apparently a complete mess. Second edition retooled it into more or less a completely distinct game
Battle of Britain was pretty great. I ended up rules adjudicating for my brothers but I really like that game. The PSC reprint was near top of my "must haves" at GenCon. The Brits had an amazing first two turns, shooting down an absurd amount of German planes. The last two turns of the game however saw much raining destruction upon the British people. From a victory point perspective however those first few turns worth of kills was enough to keep the edge in the hands of the RAF.
Rebellion: only got a few turns in before it was super late, but I really like what was going on there. I can see really needing to learn the various mission and action decks before you can really feel comfortable and not get terribly surprised, kind of like Twilight Struggle where not knowing certain cards exist on the other side can make or break your game.
Yes, Neil Gaiman. The story is maybe three pages long ? and easily findable online.
The first edition rulebook could use some re-organizing, yes, but no matter what you do, STUDY IN EMERALD is definitely a game that you requires you to sacrifice your first one or two plays to learn and understand. Cthulhu would demand nothing less, and indeed a great deal more.
Haven't played either, but 2nd looks a little easier to learn and understand, but also a lot of theme seems to have been sucked out. The faction tracks are more generic, and they seemed to have neutered the interesting "every player in your faction is eliminated if one of you has the lowest score at the end" rule, which sounded like a neat way of setting up a competitive cooperative game. The 2nd edition changed this to just -5 VP instead of elimination, which seems like it would make people just totally ditch cooperation and just concentrate even harder on personal gain to offset the -5.
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Unfortunately, the basic gameplay loop is just broken: the majority of the time, either you lose in the first twenty minutes because the villians deck overwhelms you before you can add any good cards to your deck, or else it's utterly obvious at that point that you're going to win, which would be fine except it takes about two hours to win games 4-7 (maybe even a bit longer than that for game 7). The game ramps up in difficulty only when you're doing poorly, so if you start to lose early, you will get curb stomped, but if you're doing well enough to win you can usually prevent the game from ever progressing to the difficult part, so then you spend 90 minutes just going through the motions to your inevitable victory.
It says a lot that a sizeable percenatge of all the threads for the game on BGG's forums are in the Varients subforum; lots of people want to love the game, but it seems it needs a healthy helping of house rules to produce anything like a balanced challenge where both victory and defeat remain possible through the entire 2-hour playtime.
*My favorite is Gilderoy Lockhart, whose on-play ability is actually worse than nothing (play Lockhart to draw one card and discard one card, which leaves you with one fewer card in hand than if you hadn't bought him at all), except that he is the best card to discard to bad events (when you discard Lockhart, you draw another card to replace him): that's right, the only good thing you can do with Lockhart is to get rid of him.
I've played, own and like the first edition. I've never played the second edition but I've also never seen a reason to switch away from the first edition.
We've gotten 6 plays of it so far and love it. I've played with every villain except the Queen of Hearts and Ursula, but I've seen both of them played by other players twice.
I can't get over how well they nailed the feel of each villain. The Queen of Hearts realm + fate deck is maddening and seems like its designed to make you want to yell "Off with their head!" at literally everyone and everything. Ursula is all about manipulation. Prince John just wants to rule and if you let him, he will take over. Jafar uses trickery and items/sorcery to accomplish his goals. Maleficent is about slow controlling her realm with precision, planning, and ruthlessness often using other villains to do her bidding. Captain Hook feels like captain hook, you get the realm set up to fight and take down peter pan only for all the lost boys and peter pan to cause massive issues and UGH the croc.
As far as the luck based component goes, the only ones really based on luck are Jafar, Ursula, and Captain Hook and those three all have lots of hand cycling and deck searching in order to find what you need if you focus on it.
Its definitely deeper than we expected it to be. You've gotta be able to plan at least 2-3 turns in advance in regards to your wincon, keep tabs on all the other villains and plan for how best to hurt them, while simultaneously having a plan to deal with any unforseen pesky heroes that will be thrown your way once you get too close to winning. We've had multiple games where people are 1-2 turns from winning only for the fate deck to throw a massive wrench and set them back. Last night, for instance, I was Maleficent and was 1 turn from getting my realm full of curses. I got fated by another player and in came King Stefan, perfectly played to wipe my entire realm of curses (he doesn't get rid of any curses by himself, but he was played in such a way to get rid of 2). Then I got my realm back under my control and full of curses in such a way that I should've been completely safe. I made it through a single fating from one player but the second player's fating of me knocked out a curse and due to the way some of the curses work really set me back. I ended up winning that game after a few more turns of being on the verge of winning.
They've done a fantastic job of balancing (outside of Prince John probably being a bit too easy) and the more I play the more genius the realm boards become. They put a ton of thought into the placement of actions, theme, villain deck balance, wincon variety, and hero abilities. The game plays great as a result.
I just hope they come out with more villains soon. I'll be buying every expansion pack they release for this game.
So, I can't tell if this is actually a good game or not from this. Has anyone played?
How many players did you play with? I feel like its a much different game at <4 vs 5+. At 5 the person who gets fated cannot be messed with until someone else is fated, and we couldn't keep Maleficent down.
I've done games of either 2 or 3 players. Which meant I was being fated by 2 players at most per turn. And actually when I had a full board of curses, I regularly got fated by both players. With 5 players it would be the same? Maleficent sets up her curses, then she's fated, another villain fated, then Maleficent is fated again. No different pushback than a 3 player game.
She's also the only villain I've lost with. I won with Jafar v Queen of Hearts/Maleficent, Hook v Ursula, John v Urusula. Then I lost as Maleficent v John/Queen of Hearts, John won that game. I finally won last night as Maleficent v Jafar/Ursula. I feel like I only won that one because I had a really good knowledge of which curses to play. There are only three curses:
- Green Fire: Heroes can't be played to this location, this curse gets discarded if Maleficent moves to this location - This curse is great, but I can see players forgetting that they can't move there without discarding it. There isn't a single location that is great for this to be played but with the Raven out it makes it a bit easier to take that hit. King Stefan, though, can wreck this curse by force moving maleficent to any location where this curse is, taking it out.
- Thorn Thing: Heroes with less than 4 power can't be played here, if a hero of 4 or more power is played here, then discard this curse - This curse doesn't last that long through repeated fatings. There are plenty of strength 4 or more heroes out there that will make this go away.
- Sleep or whatever: Heroes get -2 strength, if an ally is played here discard this curse - This is the most sticky curse, but I think there are only two of them in the deck and all the other villains need to do is play cheap heros to this location and hamper the location, since now Maleficent has to play allies off the location and move them there, of which she has limited ability to do.
So outside of that last curse, any multiple fate draw should be able to take out the thorn curse and King Stefan will definitely take out the green fire. I won with 2x Green Fire and 2x Sleep, but even that exact setup got knocked out a few turns earlier when a hero got played that discarded all curses at that location to a sleep cursed location.
We tried it on Saturday night. It didn't do it for us. I think the lady trying to sell us on it overhyped it too much.
Salelady: "First thing you do is pick your favorite Disney villain."
Me: "Zurg."
Saleslady: "No"
Me: "Randall from Monsters Inc".
Saleslady: "No, think older"
Me: "Oogie Boogie?"
Saleslady: "No"
Wife: "Ursula?"
Saleslady: "Yes"
Me: "Scar?"
Saleslady: "No. You get to be Jafar."
I was considering giving him U.S. with +3 influence and I'll play USSR. Most games where I'm teaching a new person end with them committing DEFCON suicide anyways, I don't expect a full game. Any ideas from people who have been in the same situation?
Have a proper game on Saturday
I think just stress that the game really evolves the more you learn and it's pretty likely you accidentally fuck yourself the first few games.
Like, 4 recent games of Labyrinth in and I don't think I'm any better a player. I lost the last game when I probably had a huge chunk of time to do something about that. :P
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