In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I'm pretty excited for it too.
Have you tried other games with your wife?
Anything competitive is flat out, but I've tried some co-op stuff. She didn't like Dark Souls because it was too complicated - which I think is a fair assessment really, for a game based around combat it should be a ton faster. I have a bunch of players v. DM games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but she's not a fan of those cause we're not 'playing together' since I run the bad guys.
Oh, she did like the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters Games which was nice since all the monsters are automated.
I don't know if you want some suggestions but you could try Pandemic.
Round two of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 tonight! Our group is salty that we ended with our first loss on Friday night and we have sworn vengeance! We'll be taking our second crack at March, and I'm super excited to see what future months bring.
Already this game feels a lot more inventing and intriguing then Season 1, I hope it lives up to my expectations
Oh boy. Played The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 (ugh) last night and it's real good. I was really expecting it to be mediocre at best, but it might be my new favourite BSG-like game, surpassing Dark Moon and Dead of Winter. It's pretty breezy, and the rules are a bit wonky at times (still not entirely sure exactly how one or two small things work) but I had a really great time with it. We weren't timing, but it seemed to play cleanly in under 2 hours with 6 players, which already puts it ahead of BSG/Dead of Winter, and it's a bit less fluffy than Dark Moon. Looking forward to playing more of it.
Oh boy. Played The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 (ugh) last night and it's real good. I was really expecting it to be mediocre at best, but it might be my new favourite BSG-like game, surpassing Dark Moon and Dead of Winter. It's pretty breezy, and the rules are a bit wonky at times (still not entirely sure exactly how one or two small things work) but I had a really great time with it. We weren't timing, but it seemed to play cleanly in under 2 hours with 6 players, which already puts it ahead of BSG/Dead of Winter, and it's a bit less fluffy than Dark Moon. Looking forward to playing more of it.
First I've heard of this one. I backed 'Who Goes There?' and hope it will turn out as well for me as this did for you.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I'm pretty excited for it too.
Have you tried other games with your wife?
Anything competitive is flat out, but I've tried some co-op stuff. She didn't like Dark Souls because it was too complicated - which I think is a fair assessment really, for a game based around combat it should be a ton faster. I have a bunch of players v. DM games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but she's not a fan of those cause we're not 'playing together' since I run the bad guys.
Oh, she did like the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters Games which was nice since all the monsters are automated.
Through the Ages has possibly the best game design of any boardgame of all time. It's definitely in the top few if not at the very top. And I can't think of anything offhand that comes close besides perhaps Go. There is a depth and subtlety there that is near perfect.
One side effect of that is if two people of differing skill levels play the lower skill player is going to get stomped. EG: all of the "problems" that ham mentioned aren't problems if everyone is making mistakes of comparable severity. But if you have one player who isn't making such simple mistakes then yeah they are going to utterly crush the other players.
So it's not a party game. And it's not a game where randomness is going to let someone win despite worse plays. And there is a bit of an issue in that it is a game that can just break people with analyses paralyses. Such people can ruin many games but especially this one.
The difference is that in Go that is because there is a lot of strategic depth. In TtA it's because they don't know that you need to keep an unused pop ready because there might be a development event. That is a straight up awfully designed event and it's not like it would be that hard to make it not such a newbie trap. That is the most egregious example really, but that sort of design permeates the game. It seems to fundamentally be more interested in punishing bad play than rewarding good play. There are far more events that hurt the weakest player than that help the strongest. It's a spiteful, tedious experience.
Like.. if you need to use the Market actions in Feast for Odin to be able to feed it probably means you screwed up and the loss of efficiency will set you back, but it doesn't bring your game to a screeching halt.
As for "possibly the best game design of any boardgame of all time"... it is not even in the same league as Inis to name literally one example.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
0
Options
FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Ben Hull and I will be at Pax Unplugged on Friday and Saturday, playtesting Ramillies from the upcoming Bayonet & Musket series, the follow-up to Musket & Pike from GMT. We'll be in open gaming somewhere, look for the two middle-aged guys hunched over a very green map covered in counters. I'm the giant-sized one.
It's a game that you need to work at to learn. Hey you missed that free warriors/Temple event once, next time try to have am idle worker through age A. Etc etc etc. That's why it's extremely important to play with people of your skill level and all learn together. Assuming you want to try to learn it at all, which it doesn't seem like you do. It is definitely a punishing game if you fall off the knifes edge you need to walk, and if that doesn't appeal it just doesn't appeal.
Ben Hull and I will be at Pax Unplugged on Friday and Saturday, playtesting Ramillies from the upcoming Bayonet & Musket series, the follow-up to Musket & Pike from GMT. We'll be in open gaming somewhere, look for the two middle-aged guys hunched over a very green map covered in counters. I'm the giant-sized one.
Gah, I won't be able to make it but please give me all of the juicy details.
It's a game that you need to work at to learn. Hey you missed that free warriors/Temple event once, next time try to have am idle worker through age A. Etc etc etc. That's why it's extremely important to play with people of your skill level and all learn together. Assuming you want to try to learn it at all, which it doesn't seem like you do. It is definitely a punishing game if you fall off the knifes edge you need to walk, and if that doesn't appeal it just doesn't appeal.
This is frankly not a good excuse for having traps. There is a difference between say, learning through experience the relative value of each village space in Stone Age, and having mechanics screw you that you had no idea existed and could not have known.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
What mechanic screws you in TTA without you knowing it was coming? If you're mad about not knowing specific cards are coming the first couple times to play, then first off you gotta chill out during your learning games secondly you gotta learn the cards in the decks as you go. It's part of the learning curve of any card driven game like this if you want to play it well. Everything else is right there for you to see, mechanics wise.
Granted the implications of the mechanics are hard for beginners to forsee in a lot of cases, but that's what learning to play the game is.
mysticjuicer[he/him] I'm a muscle wizardand I cast P U N C HRegistered Userregular
There are games where you know the possibility space ahead of time and there are games where you don't. The latter might not be something you enjoy, but that axis is independent of whether a game is well designed or not, imo.
I agree that quality of design and knowledge of the game's possibility space beforehand are not directly linked. That being said, if there are random events which punish players for not having resources directly available to counter them, it's important to make that known beforehand.
"There are some cards in the deck that will screw you up if you don't have at least one of a certain resource available, so if you use your last one just know that's a risk."
If nobody at the table knows that then it's possible one player will be unfairly punished, since they were essentially chosen at random to be affected by the card.
It's pretty common for a rulebook to give a basic sense of what's in the deck in that way, but tbh I usually find random event decks to be mediocre design at best. Notable exceptions are games for which that deck is the primary mechanic, like BSG
I agree that quality of design and knowledge of the game's possibility space beforehand are not directly linked. That being said, if there are random events which punish players for not having resources directly available to counter them, it's important to make that known beforehand.
"There are some cards in the deck that will screw you up if you don't have at least one of a certain resource available, so if you use your last one just know that's a risk."
If nobody at the table knows that then it's possible one player will be unfairly punished, since they were essentially chosen at random to be affected by the card.
It's pretty common for a rulebook to give a basic sense of what's in the deck in that way, but tbh I usually find random event decks to be mediocre design at best. Notable exceptions are games for which that deck is the primary mechanic, like BSG
The specific event he is talking about doesn't punish you for not having a thing, it lets you do something for free if you have an idle worker. It is also specifically called out in the rulebook as a good idea to have an idle worker starting with round 3 if you can for precisely that reason. Also, learning the cards in a game like this is a huge part of learning to play the game. You need to know what's coming and plan ahead for the possibilities.
Edit: the beginning events are a known set of 10 possible things, all of which are good and of which a certain amount are seeded depending on player count. After that the event deck is comprised of what players seed into it, so knowing what is possible to be in there is important and looking at player's board positions and knowing what they are likely to have wanted to seed is important.
The specific event he is talking about doesn't punish you for not having a thing, it lets you do something for free if you have an idle worker. It is also specifically called out in the rulebook as a good idea to have an idle worker starting with round 3 if you can for precisely that reason. Also, learning the cards in a game like this is a huge part of learning to play the game. You need to know what's coming and plan ahead for the possibilities.
Punishing a player for not having a worker available and rewarding a player for having a worker available are functionally identical, both create a delta of some sort within the game. You can punish player action by creating a negative effect on that player or by creating a positive effect on that player's adversaries, both are the same.
That being said, a rulebook callout that you should leave a worker available, and the turn on which this becomes and stays relevant, is about as much as you can ask from the game. Hopefully that callout is easy to see, prominently posted etc, though there will always be some new players who don't get the memo, and their experience will be unfortunately worsened for it.
I mean one of my favorite boardgames of all time has a random event deck that punishes lack of knowledge, Twilight Struggle.
It does make it super tough to get to the table though
Yea I mean we're talking heavy complicated long games that are hard to learn here. TTA and TS both are games require a pretty serious level of investment from players if they want to play competently. That definitely limits the audience, but I wouldn't say that it makes them poorly designed at all.
Evil High Priest is up and... well it looks pretty bog standard really. Pick a spot, get some resources, spend those resources on another spot etc. I don't see it really doing anything particularly interesting. I don't even think there's asymmetric cult powers (not that that's a requirement).
+1
Options
mysticjuicer[he/him] I'm a muscle wizardand I cast P U N C HRegistered Userregular
TS and TTA are definitely similar in that way where card knowledge is everything.
"You're gonna want to leave a idle worker available in the early game, trust me."
On the other hand, if you already have a clear strategy based on your 1st turn selection and the way the "river" looks by 2nd turn, you might want (or need) to ignore some of the "free farm/mine/temple/warrior" events. General you, btw, not addressing you specifically, Darric. :biggrin: Which I think is rad! It speaks to the play space in the game, in terms of the room for great decision making that is possible on any given turn. It does come at the cost of also having room for really terrible decisions, but that's a design choice, not necessarily a design flaw.
Remove the random Age A events and you actually have an even more punishing game. If you don't have a free person on the turn that the "assign a free person to X" event comes up, then that also means you've had one more worker doing something during [number between 0 and 4] turns than other people in the game. Which means your valuation of the river cards was different too - maybe you're now desperate for more food, or you have too much of it, so you're going to grab more events that give you rock, or something. [edit - I didn't complete this thought.] That different valuation means that your opponents are going to have an easier time picking up cards that you don't value as much (because you have X more of Y resource), which acts as a nice little catch-up mechanic.
I think it really comes down to personal taste whether TTA is going to be something you enjoy. If you can't tolerate a certain amount of randomness, it's going to turn you off. And you have to be willing to play "blind" a couple of times before you'd encounter certain cards, or combos, just through play (rather than looking through the cards thoroughly). So definitely a more pleasant experience if everyone is learning the game together, at the same time.
I'm still going to stand by "the design decisions in TTA are purposefully chosen to create exactly the play experience that TTA offers."
...it's just that StarCraft: Civilization War isn't everyone's cup of build-order-flavoured tea.
The specific event he is talking about doesn't punish you for not having a thing, it lets you do something for free if you have an idle worker. It is also specifically called out in the rulebook as a good idea to have an idle worker starting with round 3 if you can for precisely that reason. Also, learning the cards in a game like this is a huge part of learning to play the game. You need to know what's coming and plan ahead for the possibilities.
Punishing a player for not having a worker available and rewarding a player for having a worker available are functionally identical, both create a delta of some sort within the game. You can punish player action by creating a negative effect on that player or by creating a positive effect on that player's adversaries, both are the same.
That being said, a rulebook callout that you should leave a worker available, and the turn on which this becomes and stays relevant, is about as much as you can ask from the game. Hopefully that callout is easy to see, prominently posted etc, though there will always be some new players who don't get the memo, and their experience will be unfortunately worsened for it.
one thing about this mechanic in TTA is that, even if it s your first game, the game gives you a big heads up that this kind of thing can happen before it does. You start with a set of events for the first part of the game that is always the same and has no "gotchas". IE: you can't screw up with those. Then players get handed event cards and choose which ones they want to add to the deck. So they know for a fact what the cards they put in say and they've seen several more cards (the ones they chose from) so know what kind of stuff could happen. There is plenty of signaling for someone paying attention. They are not "traps".
On the opposite end of the spectrum from TTA, we've been enjoying Ex Libris recently. Man is light though. It's basically Top Decking Cards: The Worker Placement Game. It almost feels like they had a card game fully developed and then decided to bolt a worker placement game on it to drive getting/playing the cards in a more interesting way than whatever they had. That sounds more negative than I mean it to, as it is quite fun if you go in with the right expectation. It just feels different than I was originally expecting I guess.
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited November 2017
After spending a little time with Codenames Duet, I have assembled this handy list of pros and cons.
Pros:
-more words. Nom nom words good
-if you want to play Codenames with only two players, this is your jam. Cool!
-if your play group gets way too competive over team Codenames, this may solve that? I dunno, that’s not my group.
-as usual the production is good.
Cons:
-the game is simply timed wrong, IMO—you have to guess 15 words and are given 9 turns in which to do so, meaning you can give all “[clue], 2” clues and never run out of time. When competing we’re driven to find 3s or even 4s, which are more challenging/satisfying. Next time we play this we’ll probably drop the time limit down to 7 or 8 turns.
-the game has a campaign mode, which is neat; we haven’t tried it yet. But I did notice that half the campaign variation is built around how many neutral cards you’re allowed to choose mistakenly, which is a pretty rare occurence in our games—once per game, if that.
-this version doesn’t come with an hourglass, but pushing each other to give clues or guess faster is still important to keep the pace up in a cooperative game. This isn’t that bad though, since the Codenames app is pretty robust as a timer.
-they decided for this version that multi-word proper name clues aren’t allowed, which I disagree with. (For example Washington versus George Washington.)
-the biggest issue besides the default turn limit is that the grid cards that tell you what words to give clues for simply give you too much information. You know from your card that some of your greens are also the other side’s, and that some of your neutrals are their greens and vice versa, and that of your three blacks, one of them is green, one black, and one neutral on the other side. In practice this means that it’s sometimes easier for you to make guesses based on how the game has proceeded—if for example you are prompted to choose one of your blacks, you know the other two shouldn’t ever be guessed.
Overall the game is designed in such a way that it’s easier, less intense, and for me at least, less satisfying as a result than normal Codenames.
If you find yourself wanting to play a more relaxed version, or a two player version, then Duet is worth playing. Otherwise, just add in those tasty new words to the original set and keep on playing regular old team vs team Codenames.
This TTA discussion reminds me about my problems with boardgames in general, I like boardgames, I like complex boardgames. But the people I play games with, either my family or my friends, who also like boardgames, is so infrequent, that we never buy new games, and get them and learn them together. Especially complex games.
There's this tension, where you need to grok the game on the first play-through, and enjoy yourself with it, for it to make it to the table a second time.
Complex games, with multiple mechanics, vying for headspace, and learning curves and cluttered messy boards is a deathbane to my groups for learning new games. We play so infrequently that their just isn't room for learning. The only game my friends really took to heart was Game of Thrones, through multiple play throughs, I really like that game, but introducing it to my family was a mess, due to the learning curve itself. Kicking each other of the board is great. They want to do that, but there's a certain amount of frustration that comes with needing multiple play throughs to see what a game really can be.
And When you're on limited time, and limited games, you just take the good games that you liked to the table. Which to my personal frustration, I have to play fucking risk (80s edition) at least once every year to appease my brother and father. Or Catan still hits the table more often than i'd like because my mother loves building boats and roads and going for the longest route while always losing.
I had my family down for playing a game of Caverna - and man you could just see the frustration rising - I get that, the board is extremely cluttered, there's so much stuff lying in piles besides the board, and theres all the buildings, and you really need to figure out what buildings are important and what they do. But at its core its just a worker-placer mechanic. We know that stuff, you like cuba, come on guys and girls. Place your man, do your action, plan your turn. But getting onto a strategy, and figuring out what works and what is important just leads to that frustration and boredom, that they start talking when other people are thinking. So that game will never hit the table again at least not with 5 people. If we feel like playing something like that, Every single time, my parents will just ask me: Bring Lords of Waterdeep. Same general mechanic, a lot less clutter. But grokkable on the first playthrough. So they can actually start thinking about strategy and optimizing their placements on follow up play throughs.
Saying you just don't get the game, is why you don't like it is both an insult and a failure to understand that this is exactly the problem why people can't get into it. Saying you have to play a game multiple times before you can grok it, is like the worst design in my opinion. I understand that this also requires a certain amount of experience.
However Arguing with people pointing out the flaws in a game as the reason why they didn't like it, with: You just don't get it. Play it more times to fully understand That isn't a flaw, it is why the game is great! Is like saying:
I don't like walking in the rain, because I get wet.
Man you don't get it! You need to walk into rain more often, Getting soaked is the entire goal, you just have to get wet before you get soaked.
There's a disconnect there. You have to be able to understand: Some people don't like the things I like, playing more often doesn't fix that.
Id guess the duet title is supposed to be a clue to the essentially 2p nature of the new rules. Its a more interesting game than the 2p variant in base codenames for sure.
This TTA discussion reminds me about my problems with boardgames in general, I like boardgames, I like complex boardgames. But the people I play games with, either my family or my friends, who also like boardgames, is so infrequent, that we never buy new games, and get them and learn them together. Especially complex games.
There's this tension, where you need to grok the game on the first play-through, and enjoy yourself with it, for it to make it to the table a second time.
Complex games, with multiple mechanics, vying for headspace, and learning curves and cluttered messy boards is a deathbane to my groups for learning new games. We play so infrequently that their just isn't room for learning. The only game my friends really took to heart was Game of Thrones, through multiple play throughs, I really like that game, but introducing it to my family was a mess, due to the learning curve itself. Kicking each other of the board is great. They want to do that, but there's a certain amount of frustration that comes with needing multiple play throughs to see what a game really can be.
And When you're on limited time, and limited games, you just take the good games that you liked to the table. Which to my personal frustration, I have to play fucking risk (80s edition) at least once every year to appease my brother and father. Or Catan still hits the table more often than i'd like because my mother loves building boats and roads and going for the longest route while always losing.
I had my family down for playing a game of Caverna - and man you could just see the frustration rising - I get that, the board is extremely cluttered, there's so much stuff lying in piles besides the board, and theres all the buildings, and you really need to figure out what buildings are important and what they do. But at its core its just a worker-placer mechanic. We know that stuff, you like cuba, come on guys and girls. Place your man, do your action, plan your turn. But getting onto a strategy, and figuring out what works and what is important just leads to that frustration and boredom, that they start talking when other people are thinking. So that game will never hit the table again at least not with 5 people. If we feel like playing something like that, Every single time, my parents will just ask me: Bring Lords of Waterdeep. Same general mechanic, a lot less clutter. But grokkable on the first playthrough. So they can actually start thinking about strategy and optimizing their placements on follow up play throughs.
Saying you just don't get the game, is why you don't like it is both an insult and a failure to understand that this is exactly the problem why people can't get into it. Saying you have to play a game multiple times before you can grok it, is like the worst design in my opinion. I understand that this also requires a certain amount of experience.
However Arguing with people pointing out the flaws in a game as the reason why they didn't like it, with: You just don't get it. Play it more times to fully understand That isn't a flaw, it is why the game is great! Is like saying:
I don't like walking in the rain, because I get wet.
Man you don't get it! You need to walk into rain more often, Getting soaked is the entire goal, you just have to get wet before you get soaked.
There's a disconnect there. You have to be able to understand: Some people don't like the things I like, playing more often doesn't fix that.
At work so in brief, the flip side is also true. Not liking a thing is not the same as it being poorly designed, and if you were to come and say that Caverna is an awfully designed game because it is more complicated than Lords of Waterdeep you would probably get some replies disagreeing with you. I also fundamentally disagree with your premise that a game requiring multiple plays and investment from the player is bad design.
If getting soaked is the goal and you don't like getting soaked that does not make getting soaked a bad thing.
Not every boardgame is going to be a good fit for every group, but that doesn’t make them poorly designed games.
My group tends to play any game multiple times, sometimes in the same evening. If we can fully grok a game the first time we play it we are likely to lose interest in that game very quickly and shelve it.
That makes it a bad game for our group, but it doesn’t make it a bad game in general.
We had another long run of Kingdom Death last night with a new player who most likely will not be joining again also. RRR
Anyway, Apollo got his arms torn off and died instantly, Bathsheba was disemboweled and held her innards inside with an axe for the rest of the fight, Bianca got a warped pelvis AGAIN (drama queen) we decided on Graves and (barf) Raising our Children with Love, managed to produce 2 bebbehs and have made two Bone Axes, a Bone Dagger, three Rawhide Vests, a Rawhide Headband and the King's Spear.
Also Cassie fell in a tarpit and lost her Cloth so she had to fight the White Lion with her vajayjay out and proud.
We had another long run of Kingdom Death last night with a new player who most likely will not be joining again also. RRR
Anyway, Apollo got his arms torn off and died instantly, Bathsheba was disemboweled and held her innards inside with an axe for the rest of the fight, Bianca got a warped pelvis AGAIN (drama queen) we decided on Graves and (barf) Raising our Children with Love, managed to produce 2 bebbehs and have made two Bone Axes, a Bone Dagger, three Rawhide Vests, a Rawhide Headband and the King's Spear.
Also Cassie fell in a tarpit and lost her Cloth so she had to fight the White Lion with her vajayjay out and proud.
This is an odd game.
On the one occasion I managed to get a settlement rolling I had my entire group nearly die of frostbite on my way to fight the Antelope, which finished off the people who hadn't frozen to death.
We had another long run of Kingdom Death last night with a new player who most likely will not be joining again also. RRR
Anyway, Apollo got his arms torn off and died instantly, Bathsheba was disemboweled and held her innards inside with an axe for the rest of the fight, Bianca got a warped pelvis AGAIN (drama queen) we decided on Graves and (barf) Raising our Children with Love, managed to produce 2 bebbehs and have made two Bone Axes, a Bone Dagger, three Rawhide Vests, a Rawhide Headband and the King's Spear.
Also Cassie fell in a tarpit and lost her Cloth so she had to fight the White Lion with her vajayjay out and proud.
This is an odd game.
On the one occasion I managed to get a settlement rolling I had my entire group nearly die of frostbite on my way to fight the Antelope, which finished off the people who hadn't frozen to death.
We got hit with a Green Mist that made everyone we've had out so far have to miss the next fight. So we have to send out all the babies.
This looks like an absolute disaster of a Kickstarter
I eagerly await the reviews and anger around a sad box of misprinted cardboard and towers of Hanoi puzzles
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
We had another long run of Kingdom Death last night with a new player who most likely will not be joining again also. RRR
Anyway, Apollo got his arms torn off and died instantly, Bathsheba was disemboweled and held her innards inside with an axe for the rest of the fight, Bianca got a warped pelvis AGAIN (drama queen) we decided on Graves and (barf) Raising our Children with Love, managed to produce 2 bebbehs and have made two Bone Axes, a Bone Dagger, three Rawhide Vests, a Rawhide Headband and the King's Spear.
Also Cassie fell in a tarpit and lost her Cloth so she had to fight the White Lion with her vajayjay out and proud.
This is an odd game.
On the one occasion I managed to get a settlement rolling I had my entire group nearly die of frostbite on my way to fight the Antelope, which finished off the people who hadn't frozen to death.
We got hit with a Green Mist that made everyone we've had out so far have to miss the next fight. So we have to send out all the babies.
GONNA BE A HELL OF A HUNT
Auntie Bianca will be there with the kiddos. It'll be fine! Her warped pelvis only gives her -1 Luck. I don't even know what Luck does!
Posts
I don't know if you want some suggestions but you could try Pandemic.
Already this game feels a lot more inventing and intriguing then Season 1, I hope it lives up to my expectations
the D&D boardgames are nice in that they don't need a DM. They can be a bit hard though. There's a series of em such as this: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/66356/dungeons-dragons-wrath-ashardalon-board-game
The difference is that in Go that is because there is a lot of strategic depth. In TtA it's because they don't know that you need to keep an unused pop ready because there might be a development event. That is a straight up awfully designed event and it's not like it would be that hard to make it not such a newbie trap. That is the most egregious example really, but that sort of design permeates the game. It seems to fundamentally be more interested in punishing bad play than rewarding good play. There are far more events that hurt the weakest player than that help the strongest. It's a spiteful, tedious experience.
Like.. if you need to use the Market actions in Feast for Odin to be able to feed it probably means you screwed up and the loss of efficiency will set you back, but it doesn't bring your game to a screeching halt.
As for "possibly the best game design of any boardgame of all time"... it is not even in the same league as Inis to name literally one example.
Gah, I won't be able to make it but please give me all of the juicy details.
This is frankly not a good excuse for having traps. There is a difference between say, learning through experience the relative value of each village space in Stone Age, and having mechanics screw you that you had no idea existed and could not have known.
Granted the implications of the mechanics are hard for beginners to forsee in a lot of cases, but that's what learning to play the game is.
"There are some cards in the deck that will screw you up if you don't have at least one of a certain resource available, so if you use your last one just know that's a risk."
If nobody at the table knows that then it's possible one player will be unfairly punished, since they were essentially chosen at random to be affected by the card.
It's pretty common for a rulebook to give a basic sense of what's in the deck in that way, but tbh I usually find random event decks to be mediocre design at best. Notable exceptions are games for which that deck is the primary mechanic, like BSG
It does make it super tough to get to the table though
The specific event he is talking about doesn't punish you for not having a thing, it lets you do something for free if you have an idle worker. It is also specifically called out in the rulebook as a good idea to have an idle worker starting with round 3 if you can for precisely that reason. Also, learning the cards in a game like this is a huge part of learning to play the game. You need to know what's coming and plan ahead for the possibilities.
Edit: the beginning events are a known set of 10 possible things, all of which are good and of which a certain amount are seeded depending on player count. After that the event deck is comprised of what players seed into it, so knowing what is possible to be in there is important and looking at player's board positions and knowing what they are likely to have wanted to seed is important.
Punishing a player for not having a worker available and rewarding a player for having a worker available are functionally identical, both create a delta of some sort within the game. You can punish player action by creating a negative effect on that player or by creating a positive effect on that player's adversaries, both are the same.
That being said, a rulebook callout that you should leave a worker available, and the turn on which this becomes and stays relevant, is about as much as you can ask from the game. Hopefully that callout is easy to see, prominently posted etc, though there will always be some new players who don't get the memo, and their experience will be unfortunately worsened for it.
Yea I mean we're talking heavy complicated long games that are hard to learn here. TTA and TS both are games require a pretty serious level of investment from players if they want to play competently. That definitely limits the audience, but I wouldn't say that it makes them poorly designed at all.
"You're gonna want to leave a idle worker available in the early game, trust me."
On the other hand, if you already have a clear strategy based on your 1st turn selection and the way the "river" looks by 2nd turn, you might want (or need) to ignore some of the "free farm/mine/temple/warrior" events. General you, btw, not addressing you specifically, Darric. :biggrin: Which I think is rad! It speaks to the play space in the game, in terms of the room for great decision making that is possible on any given turn. It does come at the cost of also having room for really terrible decisions, but that's a design choice, not necessarily a design flaw.
Remove the random Age A events and you actually have an even more punishing game. If you don't have a free person on the turn that the "assign a free person to X" event comes up, then that also means you've had one more worker doing something during [number between 0 and 4] turns than other people in the game. Which means your valuation of the river cards was different too - maybe you're now desperate for more food, or you have too much of it, so you're going to grab more events that give you rock, or something. [edit - I didn't complete this thought.] That different valuation means that your opponents are going to have an easier time picking up cards that you don't value as much (because you have X more of Y resource), which acts as a nice little catch-up mechanic.
I think it really comes down to personal taste whether TTA is going to be something you enjoy. If you can't tolerate a certain amount of randomness, it's going to turn you off. And you have to be willing to play "blind" a couple of times before you'd encounter certain cards, or combos, just through play (rather than looking through the cards thoroughly). So definitely a more pleasant experience if everyone is learning the game together, at the same time.
I'm still going to stand by "the design decisions in TTA are purposefully chosen to create exactly the play experience that TTA offers."
...it's just that StarCraft: Civilization War isn't everyone's cup of build-order-flavoured tea.
one thing about this mechanic in TTA is that, even if it s your first game, the game gives you a big heads up that this kind of thing can happen before it does. You start with a set of events for the first part of the game that is always the same and has no "gotchas". IE: you can't screw up with those. Then players get handed event cards and choose which ones they want to add to the deck. So they know for a fact what the cards they put in say and they've seen several more cards (the ones they chose from) so know what kind of stuff could happen. There is plenty of signaling for someone paying attention. They are not "traps".
Pros:
-more words. Nom nom words good
-if you want to play Codenames with only two players, this is your jam. Cool!
-if your play group gets way too competive over team Codenames, this may solve that? I dunno, that’s not my group.
-as usual the production is good.
Cons:
-the game is simply timed wrong, IMO—you have to guess 15 words and are given 9 turns in which to do so, meaning you can give all “[clue], 2” clues and never run out of time. When competing we’re driven to find 3s or even 4s, which are more challenging/satisfying. Next time we play this we’ll probably drop the time limit down to 7 or 8 turns.
-the game has a campaign mode, which is neat; we haven’t tried it yet. But I did notice that half the campaign variation is built around how many neutral cards you’re allowed to choose mistakenly, which is a pretty rare occurence in our games—once per game, if that.
-this version doesn’t come with an hourglass, but pushing each other to give clues or guess faster is still important to keep the pace up in a cooperative game. This isn’t that bad though, since the Codenames app is pretty robust as a timer.
-they decided for this version that multi-word proper name clues aren’t allowed, which I disagree with. (For example Washington versus George Washington.)
-the biggest issue besides the default turn limit is that the grid cards that tell you what words to give clues for simply give you too much information. You know from your card that some of your greens are also the other side’s, and that some of your neutrals are their greens and vice versa, and that of your three blacks, one of them is green, one black, and one neutral on the other side. In practice this means that it’s sometimes easier for you to make guesses based on how the game has proceeded—if for example you are prompted to choose one of your blacks, you know the other two shouldn’t ever be guessed.
Overall the game is designed in such a way that it’s easier, less intense, and for me at least, less satisfying as a result than normal Codenames.
If you find yourself wanting to play a more relaxed version, or a two player version, then Duet is worth playing. Otherwise, just add in those tasty new words to the original set and keep on playing regular old team vs team Codenames.
There's this tension, where you need to grok the game on the first play-through, and enjoy yourself with it, for it to make it to the table a second time.
Complex games, with multiple mechanics, vying for headspace, and learning curves and cluttered messy boards is a deathbane to my groups for learning new games. We play so infrequently that their just isn't room for learning. The only game my friends really took to heart was Game of Thrones, through multiple play throughs, I really like that game, but introducing it to my family was a mess, due to the learning curve itself. Kicking each other of the board is great. They want to do that, but there's a certain amount of frustration that comes with needing multiple play throughs to see what a game really can be.
And When you're on limited time, and limited games, you just take the good games that you liked to the table. Which to my personal frustration, I have to play fucking risk (80s edition) at least once every year to appease my brother and father. Or Catan still hits the table more often than i'd like because my mother loves building boats and roads and going for the longest route while always losing.
I had my family down for playing a game of Caverna - and man you could just see the frustration rising - I get that, the board is extremely cluttered, there's so much stuff lying in piles besides the board, and theres all the buildings, and you really need to figure out what buildings are important and what they do. But at its core its just a worker-placer mechanic. We know that stuff, you like cuba, come on guys and girls. Place your man, do your action, plan your turn. But getting onto a strategy, and figuring out what works and what is important just leads to that frustration and boredom, that they start talking when other people are thinking. So that game will never hit the table again at least not with 5 people. If we feel like playing something like that, Every single time, my parents will just ask me: Bring Lords of Waterdeep. Same general mechanic, a lot less clutter. But grokkable on the first playthrough. So they can actually start thinking about strategy and optimizing their placements on follow up play throughs.
Saying you just don't get the game, is why you don't like it is both an insult and a failure to understand that this is exactly the problem why people can't get into it. Saying you have to play a game multiple times before you can grok it, is like the worst design in my opinion. I understand that this also requires a certain amount of experience.
However Arguing with people pointing out the flaws in a game as the reason why they didn't like it, with: You just don't get it. Play it more times to fully understand That isn't a flaw, it is why the game is great! Is like saying:
I don't like walking in the rain, because I get wet.
Man you don't get it! You need to walk into rain more often, Getting soaked is the entire goal, you just have to get wet before you get soaked.
There's a disconnect there. You have to be able to understand: Some people don't like the things I like, playing more often doesn't fix that.
Id guess the duet title is supposed to be a clue to the essentially 2p nature of the new rules. Its a more interesting game than the 2p variant in base codenames for sure.
At work so in brief, the flip side is also true. Not liking a thing is not the same as it being poorly designed, and if you were to come and say that Caverna is an awfully designed game because it is more complicated than Lords of Waterdeep you would probably get some replies disagreeing with you. I also fundamentally disagree with your premise that a game requiring multiple plays and investment from the player is bad design.
If getting soaked is the goal and you don't like getting soaked that does not make getting soaked a bad thing.
yeah i can do that myself!
My group tends to play any game multiple times, sometimes in the same evening. If we can fully grok a game the first time we play it we are likely to lose interest in that game very quickly and shelve it.
That makes it a bad game for our group, but it doesn’t make it a bad game in general.
Anyway, Apollo got his arms torn off and died instantly, Bathsheba was disemboweled and held her innards inside with an axe for the rest of the fight, Bianca got a warped pelvis AGAIN (drama queen) we decided on Graves and (barf) Raising our Children with Love, managed to produce 2 bebbehs and have made two Bone Axes, a Bone Dagger, three Rawhide Vests, a Rawhide Headband and the King's Spear.
Also Cassie fell in a tarpit and lost her Cloth so she had to fight the White Lion with her vajayjay out and proud.
This is an odd game.
Oh, my. It’s like they made something just for me. I’m seriously considering at least the basic package, since I do love me some puzzle.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Everything about that thing looks WE NEED SOME OF DAT HOT 7TH CONTINENT MONEY AND FAST
Burt it also seems pretty dang original
One of the pledge tiers straight up says "Are you sure you want to miss out?" Ugh.
On the one occasion I managed to get a settlement rolling I had my entire group nearly die of frostbite on my way to fight the Antelope, which finished off the people who hadn't frozen to death.
We got hit with a Green Mist that made everyone we've had out so far have to miss the next fight. So we have to send out all the babies.
GONNA BE A HELL OF A HUNT
It says something where I can wonder if they can actually make a profit on a £152 box set.
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.
This looks like an absolute disaster of a Kickstarter
I eagerly await the reviews and anger around a sad box of misprinted cardboard and towers of Hanoi puzzles
Auntie Bianca will be there with the kiddos. It'll be fine! Her warped pelvis only gives her -1 Luck. I don't even know what Luck does!