Kicked off Pandemic Legacy: S2 on Sunday evening. We won January on our first go, but only thanks to a very timely One Quiet Night draw. That allowed us to freeze the Incident Tracker at 7 long enough for me to build the final Supply Center and win. Phew!
Question regarding what you wrote:
So you were in a position to do both the Supply Center AND the recon in one turn? Jeez, that's a LOT of cards. I guess you could do it if you had the char with 4 to build and a complete hand of 7 blues, but.. jeez. That's what we screwed up - not realizing you couldn't recon without a supply center.
In other news:
FFG has learned yet another way to print money, it seems.
Mansions of Madness gets its third expansion in a year and a half! $30, 2 scenarios, 2 adventurers, and 1 monster (need clarification if it is one monster model or one monster)
I actually don't mind this strategy. There's not a ton of meat there, but it's a $30 expansion which is on the cheaper side - especially compared to the 1st edition Print on Demands which were $15 for a single scenario.
Well dang, I'll buy that just to get the mini with the Crane kung fu pose.
Kicked off Pandemic Legacy: S2 on Sunday evening. We won January on our first go, but only thanks to a very timely One Quiet Night draw. That allowed us to freeze the Incident Tracker at 7 long enough for me to build the final Supply Center and win. Phew!
Question regarding what you wrote:
So you were in a position to do both the Supply Center AND the recon in one turn? Jeez, that's a LOT of cards. I guess you could do it if you had the char with 4 to build and a complete hand of 7 blues, but.. jeez. That's what we screwed up - not realizing you couldn't recon without a supply center.
You know the last supply center doesn't need to be the one you use for the other objective, right?
Indeed.
Our first priority was to have the Laborer build a Supply Center in Washington, and a little later in Lagos. Meanwhile, I had enough Blue cards to recon NA, and then worked with the instructor to get enough black cards to build a Center in Cairo (which had some plague cubes that we wanted to counter).
Of course we didn't need to build a Center in each color, but it worked out that way.
Currently Playing:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
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Iron WeaselDillon!You son of a bitch!Registered Userregular
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
Currently Playing:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
Never? As in never engage in combat unless you have enough tokens to outright kill them with those? There's always way too much going on for us to stock up like that, or budda everything, or use the sorceress to kill stuff. Our rule of thumb is never rely on rolling more than 1 of the color you need, and even then we're screwed by roles.
We've found the difficulty is affected a LOT by village tile setup. Something that's always beneficial to visit (budda, herbalist, tea house) being in the center is a huge help vs something that's rarely used (graveyard, wind priestess).
Even after years of playing we only beat Initiate 20% of the time.
Kicked off Pandemic Legacy: S2 on Sunday evening. We won January on our first go, but only thanks to a very timely One Quiet Night draw. That allowed us to freeze the Incident Tracker at 7 long enough for me to build the final Supply Center and win. Phew!
Question regarding what you wrote:
So you were in a position to do both the Supply Center AND the recon in one turn? Jeez, that's a LOT of cards. I guess you could do it if you had the char with 4 to build and a complete hand of 7 blues, but.. jeez. That's what we screwed up - not realizing you couldn't recon without a supply center.
In other news:
FFG has learned yet another way to print money, it seems.
Mansions of Madness gets its third expansion in a year and a half! $30, 2 scenarios, 2 adventurers, and 1 monster (need clarification if it is one monster model or one monster)
I actually don't mind this strategy. There's not a ton of meat there, but it's a $30 expansion which is on the cheaper side - especially compared to the 1st edition Print on Demands which were $15 for a single scenario.
Well dang, I'll buy that just to get the mini with the Crane kung fu pose.
I wish they would do more of the $5 DLC scenarios. New scenarios are what I'm interested in the most. Less crazy about collecting more and more tiles, cards, and plastic crap all to support only 2 scenarios.
Just finished both scenarios in Beyond the Threshold, and they're really fun! One is literally a murder mystery dinner party, and the other is trying to find your way out of Monster House.
Played the Bloodbourne game again at work, now with 5 people.
Fun game, but it's good that it's pretty cheap. It needs another little...SOMETHING. I reckon that expansion pack they keep talking about will help, add some new dimensions.
We've played with 3 before but with 5 it gets pretty cutthroat as you try to juggle damage from monsters and whatever bullshit your fellow hunters start throwing your way with upgraded weapons. It was good!
A revised edition of Agricola came out earlier this year.
Does anyone else remember hearing they were going to release the updated cards/boards/whatever for people who had the first edition to buy as their own separate thing, too?
I swear that was something they announced, but I can't seem to find any information on a release date for it.
Played the Bloodbourne game again at work, now with 5 people.
Fun game, but it's good that it's pretty cheap. It needs another little...SOMETHING. I reckon that expansion pack they keep talking about will help, add some new dimensions.
We've played with 3 before but with 5 it gets pretty cutthroat as you try to juggle damage from monsters and whatever bullshit your fellow hunters start throwing your way with upgraded weapons. It was good!
I like the game too. But it did feel like it needed something, and I could never place it.
But I think a lot of it is the ongoing final boss effect. They designed a neat little game, but the ongoing effect from the final bosses messes with it, and not in a good way. The perma-death one isn't fun. Healing 1 health every turn removes the tension of risk. The -2 max health one goes too far in the other direction and makes it boring by forcing everyone to pick hunter's dream every other turn.
I'm thinking the game would be more enjoyable by flat out removing the final boss effects.
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
Never? As in never engage in combat unless you have enough tokens to outright kill them with those? There's always way too much going on for us to stock up like that, or budda everything, or use the sorceress to kill stuff. Our rule of thumb is never rely on rolling more than 1 of the color you need, and even then we're screwed by roles.
It's an aim to aspire to, but doesn't always work out when shit hits the fan.
Our team squeaked into the top scoring bracket by 4 points, but we did it!
Going to need some time to process to assess the game properly. I'd say I enjoyed it a good bit more than Season 1 but it still has some pretty decent issues, but not as bad as the first Season. Overall very enjoyable.
My group beats ghost stories plus expansion pretty much 100% of the time on normal and most of the time on the difficulty above that but it’s always a tight run thing.
You reaaaaally need to focus on tunr efficiency in that game.
How do you mitigate for bad die rolls that leave you with turns on which you do literally nothing?
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
Never? As in never engage in combat unless you have enough tokens to outright kill them with those? There's always way too much going on for us to stock up like that, or budda everything, or use the sorceress to kill stuff. Our rule of thumb is never rely on rolling more than 1 of the color you need, and even then we're screwed by roles.
It's an aim to aspire to, but doesn't always work out when shit hits the fan.
I always thought it was worth it every time to take the tea house. You get a token and a qi, then a ghost spawns, but you can automatically kill any ghost on the board using a qi with the sorceress, so you get a net gain of a token while burning through another ghost card. It almost seemed more valuable than going for a budda statue because you had more control over the target and got a token out of it (although the statue did prevent immediate spawn effects from going off).
But yeah it was a hard rule to never go for a combat that required 2 favorable die results. Unless it was a do or die situation, or you were the green monk or blue monk with double rolls.
Speaking of rolling in board games, there's this game on Steam called Nyheim that's like a solo boardgame take on flash games like Rebuild.
It kind of uses the Elder Sign die system where you have to roll certain symbols to beat challenges.
But they make the mistake of not making the dice the same so you often run into situation where you're up against challenges that requires symbols you simply don't have on your dice. Then you're screwed and the mulligan mechanic is woefully inadequate (what good are rerolls when you don't have the symbols on the dice at all?).
Shame because the game looks good and is polished. The difficulty is unfairly insane though. You regularly are screwed from turn 1 and have to restart.
When someone who enjoys playing Ghost Stories says your solo/co-op game is too hard, you overdid it.
Had my first game night in a while earlier this week, with some people I hadn't seen much of recently. Got in a 3p game of Pandemic, and afterward the host mentioned that Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is on his Christmas list, so that bodes well for me getting to play more games, I think.
After that he brought out Valley of the Kings with the brief summary of "it's a light deckbuilder." Ha ha that description is hilariously incorrect, like holy crap that game will Analysis Paralyze people starting on turn 1. You start with four different kinds of action cards in your deck, which all have actions of non-obvious value, and then there's an ever-shifting market where the placement of individual cards in the market matters, and there are at most two copies of any individual card in the market deck, and to score victory points you not only have to buy new cards but you also have to trash them back out of your deck, and there are cards that screw with a targeted opponent, and...
There's kind of a lot going on. I enjoyed it! But yeah, I don't think I could bring that game out for people who weren't intimately familiar with Dominion et al and expect them to have a good time.
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mysticjuicer[he/him] I'm a muscle wizardand I cast P U N C HRegistered Userregular
After that he brought out Valley of the Kings with the brief summary of "it's a light deckbuilder." Ha ha that description is hilariously incorrect, like holy crap that game will Analysis Paralyze people starting on turn 1. You start with four different kinds of action cards in your deck, which all have actions of non-obvious value, and then there's an ever-shifting market where the placement of individual cards in the market matters, and there are at most two copies of any individual card in the market deck, and to score victory points you not only have to buy new cards but you also have to trash them back out of your deck, and there are cards that screw with a targeted opponent, and...
My YouTube Channel! Featuring silly little Guilty Gear Strive videos and other stuff!
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Any tips on teaching Concordia? I think I got the majority of the rules committed to memory, and recognize the need to point out the significance of cards re: your final score (and why we need to do intermediary scoring). Are there any no nos I mustn't do lest I confuse my players?
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Having just played Concordia for the first time with friends last week, I followed the method put forward in the SU&SD review: give the people their hand of cards and explain each one. It seemed to work well.
Highlight the 'take money' part of the Mercator, because it's easy to forget. You tend to play it for the resource trade, and in all buying and selling and multiplying a pittance of coins is easily overlooked.
Finally got around to watching the Season 2 review for Pandemic Legacy from Shut Up and Sit Down.
Obviously not going to get into spoilers but I liked it more than Season 1.
But then again, watching the review, they seem to like Pandemic in general way more than I do. I think Pandemic is a perfectly okay game to pass the time, but I don't think it's a particularly great or amazing game. So I guess I didn't really mind that it changed so much from the tried and true (and in my opinion now kind of boring and worn out) Pandemic formula. I also did not go into the game with nearly the amount of hype that he did. Pandemic is okay, Season 1 was good, it was fun, Season 2 was also good, and fun. It hit all of my expectations, which is an okay game with a neat campaign mechanic. I mean, Legacy games by their design are going to be unbalanced hunks of junk that barely function, they are never going to be tight, perfectly crafted experiences.
I find it particularly odd that he mentioned balance, especially mentioning difficulty. Season 1 was a cakewalk, Season 2 was also easy, but actually had the occasional tough moment unlike season 1. Season 1 had some horribly broken mechanics and huge oversights in terms of balance, imho. Both of them had garbage stories, personally, so I'm surprised that's a thing worth comparing.
Following a post about how easy Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is, I would like to say Season 2 is kicking our ass.
Just did February 2, and March 1 and lost both. February was close, with an unfortunate draw ending the game before what would have been the winning turn. March 1 wasn't even close, 2 objectives met, but only one supply station built. And now with extra epidemic cards I can't see us not scratching the scratch panel of shame
Wife got me Kingdomino for my birthday. Seems real good after a couple quick plays. We both like spatial puzzle kinda games, and this is a real solid quick one.
Resources are different, you always collect three resources at the start of your turn and you no longer have to match the resources from a hero’s sphere to the card you’re playing. Spheres are more of a deck-building restriction now, and cards have a level to them. Level 1 cards require one hero of that sphere in your line-up to be included in your deck, level 2 require 2 of that sphere, and level 3 requires all three to be the same.
Sauron and the enemies have a actual AI attached to it instead of being a deck of cards.
Combat and some keywords seem to be different as well.
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
This sounds very different from the physical game. Changing the way that resources work is a big change, but the biggest is changing the encounter deck, and the way combat works. It's not even clear if it still includes locations or treacheries at all. It's also not clear how questing has been merged with the combat phase or how that affects having to commit your heroes/allies.
Wife got me Kingdomino for my birthday. Seems real good after a couple quick plays. We both like spatial puzzle kinda games, and this is a real solid quick one.
If playing 2 players, make the 7x7 grid. We enjoy that a lot more than the 5x5.
Wife got me Kingdomino for my birthday. Seems real good after a couple quick plays. We both like spatial puzzle kinda games, and this is a real solid quick one.
If playing 2 players, make the 7x7 grid. We enjoy that a lot more than the 5x5.
Yea we're definitely going to try that next time we play, it seems like it would make a way better 2p game that way. Didn't have time to really dig into it this afternoon though.
Having just played Concordia for the first time with friends last week, I followed the method put forward in the SU&SD review: give the people their hand of cards and explain each one. It seemed to work well.
Highlight the 'take money' part of the Mercator, because it's easy to forget. You tend to play it for the resource trade, and in all buying and selling and multiplying a pittance of coins is easily overlooked.
The mechanics of play are definitely easy to teach. I found the person I played it with having difficulty figuring out why they were doing what they were doing, though. They didn't understand the end goal. So I guess I'd stress you basically want more of, well, everything, since it all adds up in the end and with your cards serving as multipliers.
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
We played Concordia! I was last place! This game sucks!
My gaming group pretty much picked up the whole shebang (scoring importance included) from the get go, although I had to officiate the scoring proper. I've pretty much identified why I lost - plenty of inefficiencies in my game, plus missing out on both Cloth and Wine cities until later really hampered my engine. Overall, they loved it.
Pandemic Legacy 2 night tonight. We won February pretty handily, though
we didn't explore anywhere and focused on city connections instead. We've doubled up on our labourer, giving him Architect, and we've stacked the deck with the counts-as-2 upgrades.
It really helped speed along the supply center objective, and making them permanent will be hugely useful in keeping populations up.
It was still starting to go wrong at the end, so we didn't feel like we steamrolled it. The dropping number of cubes is worrisome, so I'm really curious how they'll pivot mechanically to make cities self sustaining or something after a period of difficulty I assume will smash into us mid-year.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Is it possible to play Concorida 5 player with the Italia side of the map, the one reccommended for 2-4? Would it be just be more cutthroat/cramped, or will it be unfun?
Is it possible to play Concorida 5 player with the Italia side of the map, the one reccommended for 2-4? Would it be just be more cutthroat/cramped, or will it be unfun?
I suspect that game would be very frustrating for at least one person at the table, as one player could easily get priced out of building very quickly. That map already feels cramped with four players.
New game update! Azul is really very good. So pretty, and so painful once you dig yourself into the worst possible hole and have no one to blame but yourself. If you like a good puzzly game you gotta get in this one. Plan B Games is on fire in my book, between this and Century Spice Road. I hear they're bringing Heaven & Ale out in the US soon as well, which looks cool in a totally different crunchy euro way.
This discussion of fallout and the agenda cards/scoring/win conditions has really cooled me on fallout... It sounds like a pretty fatal flaw in the design I dunno.
Depends if you want a eurogame, or a game about making cool stories with your friends that start like "Remember when you shot that supermutant with the fatboy?"
This discussion of fallout and the agenda cards/scoring/win conditions has really cooled me on fallout... It sounds like a pretty fatal flaw in the design I dunno.
Depends if you want a eurogame, or a game about making cool stories with your friends that start like "Remember when you shot that supermutant with the fatboy?"
To be clear, I'm fine with games that are lucky or games that are all luck and nonsense. I love Talisman and Dungeonquest for example. But wanting a thematic game to be mechanically sound isn't asking for too much is it? Not wanting a 3 hour game to boil down to who was lucky enough to randomly draw an objective card that wins them the game after playing for 3 hours doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and it doesn't equate to some false euro/thematic dichotomy.
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Well dang, I'll buy that just to get the mini with the Crane kung fu pose.
Of course we didn't need to build a Center in each color, but it worked out that way.
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
You should be aiming to never rely on dice rolls for exorcisms in the first place.
Double-exorcisms where applicable tho.
Never? As in never engage in combat unless you have enough tokens to outright kill them with those? There's always way too much going on for us to stock up like that, or budda everything, or use the sorceress to kill stuff. Our rule of thumb is never rely on rolling more than 1 of the color you need, and even then we're screwed by roles.
We've found the difficulty is affected a LOT by village tile setup. Something that's always beneficial to visit (budda, herbalist, tea house) being in the center is a huge help vs something that's rarely used (graveyard, wind priestess).
Even after years of playing we only beat Initiate 20% of the time.
I wish they would do more of the $5 DLC scenarios. New scenarios are what I'm interested in the most. Less crazy about collecting more and more tiles, cards, and plastic crap all to support only 2 scenarios.
Just finished both scenarios in Beyond the Threshold, and they're really fun! One is literally a murder mystery dinner party, and the other is trying to find your way out of Monster House.
(we will never touch Rising Tides ever again)
Fun game, but it's good that it's pretty cheap. It needs another little...SOMETHING. I reckon that expansion pack they keep talking about will help, add some new dimensions.
We've played with 3 before but with 5 it gets pretty cutthroat as you try to juggle damage from monsters and whatever bullshit your fellow hunters start throwing your way with upgraded weapons. It was good!
A revised edition of Agricola came out earlier this year.
Does anyone else remember hearing they were going to release the updated cards/boards/whatever for people who had the first edition to buy as their own separate thing, too?
I swear that was something they announced, but I can't seem to find any information on a release date for it.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I like the game too. But it did feel like it needed something, and I could never place it.
But I think a lot of it is the ongoing final boss effect. They designed a neat little game, but the ongoing effect from the final bosses messes with it, and not in a good way. The perma-death one isn't fun. Healing 1 health every turn removes the tension of risk. The -2 max health one goes too far in the other direction and makes it boring by forcing everyone to pick hunter's dream every other turn.
I'm thinking the game would be more enjoyable by flat out removing the final boss effects.
It's an aim to aspire to, but doesn't always work out when shit hits the fan.
Our team squeaked into the top scoring bracket by 4 points, but we did it!
Going to need some time to process to assess the game properly. I'd say I enjoyed it a good bit more than Season 1 but it still has some pretty decent issues, but not as bad as the first Season. Overall very enjoyable.
I always thought it was worth it every time to take the tea house. You get a token and a qi, then a ghost spawns, but you can automatically kill any ghost on the board using a qi with the sorceress, so you get a net gain of a token while burning through another ghost card. It almost seemed more valuable than going for a budda statue because you had more control over the target and got a token out of it (although the statue did prevent immediate spawn effects from going off).
But yeah it was a hard rule to never go for a combat that required 2 favorable die results. Unless it was a do or die situation, or you were the green monk or blue monk with double rolls.
It kind of uses the Elder Sign die system where you have to roll certain symbols to beat challenges.
But they make the mistake of not making the dice the same so you often run into situation where you're up against challenges that requires symbols you simply don't have on your dice. Then you're screwed and the mulligan mechanic is woefully inadequate (what good are rerolls when you don't have the symbols on the dice at all?).
Shame because the game looks good and is polished. The difficulty is unfairly insane though. You regularly are screwed from turn 1 and have to restart.
When someone who enjoys playing Ghost Stories says your solo/co-op game is too hard, you overdid it.
After that he brought out Valley of the Kings with the brief summary of "it's a light deckbuilder." Ha ha that description is hilariously incorrect, like holy crap that game will Analysis Paralyze people starting on turn 1. You start with four different kinds of action cards in your deck, which all have actions of non-obvious value, and then there's an ever-shifting market where the placement of individual cards in the market matters, and there are at most two copies of any individual card in the market deck, and to score victory points you not only have to buy new cards but you also have to trash them back out of your deck, and there are cards that screw with a targeted opponent, and...
There's kind of a lot going on. I enjoyed it! But yeah, I don't think I could bring that game out for people who weren't intimately familiar with Dominion et al and expect them to have a good time.
Highlight the 'take money' part of the Mercator, because it's easy to forget. You tend to play it for the resource trade, and in all buying and selling and multiplying a pittance of coins is easily overlooked.
Obviously not going to get into spoilers but I liked it more than Season 1.
But then again, watching the review, they seem to like Pandemic in general way more than I do. I think Pandemic is a perfectly okay game to pass the time, but I don't think it's a particularly great or amazing game. So I guess I didn't really mind that it changed so much from the tried and true (and in my opinion now kind of boring and worn out) Pandemic formula. I also did not go into the game with nearly the amount of hype that he did. Pandemic is okay, Season 1 was good, it was fun, Season 2 was also good, and fun. It hit all of my expectations, which is an okay game with a neat campaign mechanic. I mean, Legacy games by their design are going to be unbalanced hunks of junk that barely function, they are never going to be tight, perfectly crafted experiences.
I find it particularly odd that he mentioned balance, especially mentioning difficulty. Season 1 was a cakewalk, Season 2 was also easy, but actually had the occasional tough moment unlike season 1. Season 1 had some horribly broken mechanics and huge oversights in terms of balance, imho. Both of them had garbage stories, personally, so I'm surprised that's a thing worth comparing.
Huh, that's weird. Wonder what they're announcing?
EDIT: they’re showing Interactive’s first project at the LOTR Fellowship event
LOTR LCG on Steam
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
The basics, but it sounds like they’re leveraging the digital-ness and how it’s a co-op game for changes.
Overview: (it’s going up in Early Access THIS MONTH)
http://www.fantasyflightinteractive.com/announcing-the-lord-of-the-rings-living-card-game.html
Changes:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/3000/1/1/new-journeys-in-middle-earth/
Resources are different, you always collect three resources at the start of your turn and you no longer have to match the resources from a hero’s sphere to the card you’re playing. Spheres are more of a deck-building restriction now, and cards have a level to them. Level 1 cards require one hero of that sphere in your line-up to be included in your deck, level 2 require 2 of that sphere, and level 3 requires all three to be the same.
Sauron and the enemies have a actual AI attached to it instead of being a deck of cards.
Combat and some keywords seem to be different as well.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
If playing 2 players, make the 7x7 grid. We enjoy that a lot more than the 5x5.
Yea we're definitely going to try that next time we play, it seems like it would make a way better 2p game that way. Didn't have time to really dig into it this afternoon though.
The mechanics of play are definitely easy to teach. I found the person I played it with having difficulty figuring out why they were doing what they were doing, though. They didn't understand the end goal. So I guess I'd stress you basically want more of, well, everything, since it all adds up in the end and with your cards serving as multipliers.
My gaming group pretty much picked up the whole shebang (scoring importance included) from the get go, although I had to officiate the scoring proper. I've pretty much identified why I lost - plenty of inefficiencies in my game, plus missing out on both Cloth and Wine cities until later really hampered my engine. Overall, they loved it.
It really helped speed along the supply center objective, and making them permanent will be hugely useful in keeping populations up.
It was still starting to go wrong at the end, so we didn't feel like we steamrolled it. The dropping number of cubes is worrisome, so I'm really curious how they'll pivot mechanically to make cities self sustaining or something after a period of difficulty I assume will smash into us mid-year.
I suspect that game would be very frustrating for at least one person at the table, as one player could easily get priced out of building very quickly. That map already feels cramped with four players.
Depends if you want a eurogame, or a game about making cool stories with your friends that start like "Remember when you shot that supermutant with the fatboy?"
To be clear, I'm fine with games that are lucky or games that are all luck and nonsense. I love Talisman and Dungeonquest for example. But wanting a thematic game to be mechanically sound isn't asking for too much is it? Not wanting a 3 hour game to boil down to who was lucky enough to randomly draw an objective card that wins them the game after playing for 3 hours doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and it doesn't equate to some false euro/thematic dichotomy.
I didn't like the dice.