Yea Ra is an all time great for sure. Medici too. I really need to try Modern Art sometime to round out the trilogy.
They both have super light rules complexity, but super interesting/tricky choices and potential for messing with other players in fun ways. The speed that new players get past the floundering around and into the fun stuff is impressive, even for boardgame neophytes. Combine that with being interesting enough to sustain interest for people who have played them a ton and you've got some real winners.
Medici is one of the most evil game designs ever, and I mean that as a compliment. Every decision is agonizing, even among hardened vets.
Why are you assuming that you are incapable of learning the games enough to win, or to contribute? Every player is at a disadvantage the first time they play through a new game, that doesn't mean that disadvantage continues on forever.
edit:: I think it's also completely valid to have 'teaching' games, where it's understood that someone is not likely to have a chance to win, but is there for them to learn more about the rules and strategies. You can play in such a way that the learning is accelerated, but it does require the knowledgeable people there be willing to 'teach' while playing.
I'm also not sure what you mean by an incentive to meaningfully participate. Presumably the incentive to meaningfully participate is the fun of playing? Can you clarify this?
Because the only coop I've encountered this issue with is Pandemic, I'm going to specifically speak to my experiences and feelings about Pandemic here.
By an incentive to meaningfully participate, I mean some kind of personal need or desire which is satisfied by playing the game. So, for me, stuff like: being a valued member of the team (in a coop game), improving my teams odds of winning the game, doing something I find interesting, etc.
I don't assume I'm incapable of learning Pandemic enough to win or contribute, but from the limited amount of time I've played/thought about the game, the main skill seems to be card memorization (knowing which cities are reshuffled after an epidemic/outbreak/whatever card is revealed), and I don't find improving at that skill super interesting. As a result, the game fails for me on two fronts (1) I have very little impact on our odds of winning the game because a single good player can effectively identify the best course of action on any given turn without my input, and (2) playing the game isn't very interesting to me, and is handled by other people who enjoy it and are already good at it. Pandemic therefore neither gives me an extrinsic motivation (winning the game) or intrinsic motivation (enjoying the act of playing the game, engaging with its systems) to play it when there is an experienced player participating.
That said, I can actually imagine a world where I enjoy playing Pandemic, and that's where I am teaching the game to players less experienced than me. Without a more experienced player to rely on, I would now have a relatively significant impact on our team's odds of winning the game. While it's still true that I don't particularly care for practicing card memorization, I do enjoy teaching people how to play games, so that would supply some amount of intrinsic motivation as well. Once one of those new players improved enough that this was no longer true, I would probably lose interest in the game again.
So, reflecting on this, it's not that quarterbacking in and of itself ruins my experience with Pandemic, but the combination of quarterbacking and the things in my own psychology that I seek to satisfy in gaming. If everything about Pandemic was the same, but nobody could talk during someone else's turn, I would enjoy Pandemic more because again, my team's odds of success would be meaningfully impacted by my decision making; something I enjoy. Would I volunteer to bring Pandemic to the table in this hypothetical world? Probably not. But I would be happier to play it if someone else brought it out.
My YouTube Channel! Featuring silly little Guilty Gear Strive videos and other stuff!
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Pandemic is more about estimating risk than it is card counting (particularly as the infection discard can be looked through at any point), and then figuring out the most economical way to achieve your goals.
I have 4 boxes of Pandemics on the shelves here, so I feel like I should protect the honour of Pandemic here or something. But uhh, I think I don't play it enough with people who are so much more better at the game than me that I ever ran into problems of someone telling everyone else what they need to do.
My boss told me he dislikes boardgames and Carcassonne in particular because he tried it once with an acquaintance who kept telling him what to do. I told him that he needs better humans to play games with. Honestly: rule one of any and all "thinking" games is that no one else should tell you what you should do. This has been true since fucking chess.
Yes, in co-op you can discuss your moves and together decide on the best course of action, but if someone is quarterbacking then that says more about their character traits than anything else.
I would say that there is card counting in Pandemic like there is card counting in Bridge. It's there, but it's just step 1, basically just gathering data. Step 2 is deciding how to use that data, figuring odds, looking at paths, weighing the value of cards in your hand for travel vs. cures, thinking about timing between the players.
I will admit that Pandemic is much more straightforward and puzzley than a lot of other coops, so some of those decisions are simpler - and easier for people to tell you what to do. But to me this is kind of why it's a gateway type of coop, easy for beginners to get into.
Like has been said, it's not really that a player comes in and assumes direct control; there's a scale of quarterback-ness, and it's more about feeling like I'm contributing in some way, or at least that I could. Keeping things just a little fuzzy, where you know roughly what other players are up to without just seeing their hand, seems to be well in the comfort zone for most people.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited February 2018
Finally opened up The Ravens of Thri Sahashri today. Look past the slightly anime-romance exterior and the silly name, and you’ll find a very unique and rewarding experience. Ravens is a two player asymmetric cooperative puzzle card game about two young lovers trying to recover the girl’s memory from her dreams while on the run in Japan. The materials are really excellent, from the gorgeous art and design to the large, textured cards and even a surprisingly solid box (not the normal cardboard you’d find with other little card games like Fluxx). But the real gem is the gameplay, which lives up to the unique mix of descriptors I listed above.
During the game, one player plays Ren, the girl with lost memories, and the other plays Ferth, the boy trying to help her regain them. Each turn, Ferth draws a number of cards, or memories, and sets them out in a tabletop lattice for Ren to choose from. On her turn, she selects one card based on its color and score, hoping to build rows of a certain point value (inspired by a kind of Japanese poem similar to a haiku) that match the Heart memories she’s been dealt. As the players do better at matching and shifting memories, they gain more information about the cards in Ren’s heart and thereby have an easier time uncovering her lost moments—because other than their actions in drawing, placing, and selecting cards, neither player may communicate with the other.
The result is a game of focus, deduction, and willed telepathy, as both players seek to silently align their separate efforts before time—or the deck of memories, or the thought-stealing ravens that lurk within—brings that night’s dream to an unhappy close. Miss out on the memory reconstruction and you’ll both lose. Do it right, though, and the game will up the ante with a mysterious set of envelopes that continue the story and up the stakes.
A small but beautifully constructed game, The Ravens of Thri Sahashri isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever played. Richly rewarding and recommended for anyone who wishes to tap into the deeper intimacy and even romance of this unique shared experience.
Gloom's communication rules are just there to stop quarterbacking. There's a lot of co-ops with perfect information that devolve into the sharpest player telling everyone else what to do, which is a lot harder when you don't have specific numbers. Battle goals are the same; players may decide that fulfilling their goal is more important than playing optimally to beat the scenario, which adds a bit of chaos.
The rules include a variant for open information if people want that, but personally, I end up feeling like someone else's meeple. The base rules suit me better.
but it's the laziest, crappiest way for a designer to try (and usually fail) to prevent quarterbacking. It's the designer saying "my game has a serious problem and I have no fucking clue how to fix it".
I don't think its quarterbacking so much as trying to immerse you in the idea of the game world. I know my group loves to rag on the poor little vermling that is consistantly outdamaging their sorry asses...(me).
Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Like has been said, it's not really that a player comes in and assumes direct control; there's a scale of quarterback-ness, and it's more about feeling like I'm contributing in some way, or at least that I could. Keeping things just a little fuzzy, where you know roughly what other players are up to without just seeing their hand, seems to be well in the comfort zone for most people.
I'm probably in a very small minority of people in saying this (but maybe not, around here): I'm the quarterback out of my group, usually, and I find it's a relief that the rules are designed to fence everyone's individual decisions off from one another. There's a tendency on the internet to write about "quarterbacking," is if it were some kind of personal idiosyncrasy that becomes pathological if game designers aren't ever-vigilant against it. In my experience - and maybe I just don't have it quite as bad as others, but I doubt it - it's closer to an emergent phenomenon that the other people at the table share some responsibility for. People who are perfectly competent to make decisions that affect primarily themselves in competitive games sometimes haven't developed a mental scheme for dealing with "other people are also doing things and we need those things to add up to something," that works, and they'll prefer to defer to someone who seems like they're on the ball. Fear of doing "the wrong thing," can get magnified to the point of being a problem, someone may not be on the same page as everyone else, and so on. Whatever's going on comes across in body language, long pauses and a thousand other small ways, and it's silly to imagine a game (or courtesy) should insist that you not intervene if so - it's not actually right to let people twist in the wind with that kind of feeling.
Well-formed secrecy rules operate to give people permission to make decisions the other people at the table might not love or otherwise take care of whatever anxieties or hangups they have that are getting in the way of playing the game. This also takes some of the cognitive and emotional load off the quarterback, if they've been doing that job in a well-intentioned way, and that's a plus for them as well. Gloomhaven makes pretty good choices about what people should and shouldn't be telling one another in a general way, but the specifics of how people negotiate those constraints does lead to some weird adaptations.
This is not to say that there aren't domineering jerks in the world, just that I don't think they're responsible for the majority of cases in board games where one person at the table has their hand on the tiller. Looking at the issue as if it occurred in only that one set of circumstances makes it harder to find good solutions to it.
Played Gloomhaven for the first time on Friday, 4 player.
My group loved it. I think this ties into the quarterbacking discussion a bit, but we actually all actively liked the no-table talking rule of it. Partly because we're all fairly experienced D&Ders, so it gave us an opportunity to roleplay our characters a little bit more. Basically in the heat of combat there's no time to jointly make decisions, you have to decide yourself what you're going to do based on the enemies in your face, and the tools you have available to you. So the in-combat conversation became more like 'I've got the guy on the left, don't get in my way!' more than anything else, and it led to some really great experiences, both in terms of your plan being foiled by other players AND by being pleasantly surprised by another player's creativity and the options that it opened up to you for the next round.
Unfortunately we ran out of time to finish the first scenario, and so we took some pictures with a plan to pick it up next time, but based on availability that might not be until March 24
One thing gloomhaven definately did was encourage people to meet more often (In my group at least).
Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Random heads up - Nations and its expansion Dynasties are no longer being printed by Lautapelit.fi, so it's homeless for the time being. If you enjoyed the game but never grabbed it, you might want to consider it.
Coincidentally, if anyone has Dynasties and doesn't want it, you should reach out to me. A friend and I were both trying to get copies (had it on order before Christmas) and that's where this news is coming from.
Played Wasteland Express Delivery Service for the second time last night with two other players, and I gotta say that the game impressesme with how close it has been both times.
In each game, between two and three players were within 1 turn of winning when the game ended. Last night I pulled off a win with a last minute teleport to the last Raider enclave that I needed to kill, with both other players racing for their last objectives.
Funny thing is that the early parts of the game are a little frustrating, because the goals seem so distant, but after a certain point you're knocking over the victory conditions like dominos. I went from having no VPs to winning in two rounds because I had gathered up resources, built up my truck, and planned my move carefully.
Last day of the Nemesis KS. Damn, now I'm thinking about upping my pledge to all in for the pre-shaded minis cause they look pretty good in that photo. I have not been able to put much time into my KDM minis lately so i really cant think about painting more stuff right now and thats kinda a decent investment since it includes the base game and all the expansions getting shaded.
EDIT: I'm a sucker. but I'm a sucker with yet more painted plastic.
Managed two scenarios this time. First was against the Bandit Commander in his spooky crypt lair, which wasn't too bad after we realized he was going to keep siccing corpses on us unless we rushed him down. A 14 damage crit from the Brute certainly helped with that.
Second mission was a sidequest in a toxic bog, which was much harder. Poisonous creatures everywhere, trap damage if you enter the water (which was also everywhere), and a timer in the background of a sacred tree being burnt down by horny drakes. Spellweaver eventually had to take one for the team by sprinting for the door and aggroing all of the drakes, and yet they somehow survived despite being made of actual glass. Cleared it with one turn to go. Good times all around.
December defeated us twice. We needed two more actions to get the cure to JADE, but those actions had to survive three infection steps and we did not get there.
That last mission is a giant pain in the ass. With optimal pathing, it takes two full turns for the carrier to reach JADE (8 cities, including one haven). We actually had one more city in the path than we should have (we determined the shortest route after the fact) but had the benefit of three extra actions in one turn to mostly make up for that. We had the cards we needed (thanks to character abilities) but not the time. 30 supply cubes to cover all your bases is simply not enough and starting with multiple plague cubes on the board (As we did both games) is a recipe for death.
We ultimately left three available cities off the grid: Tokyo, Ho Chi Min, and Riyadh.
Score discussion:
Finished with a score of 644 despite that, partly because we rescued the two cities that became Forsaken in the final game before they penalized us. Delivering the cure would have bumped us up one ending bracket.
The scoring was certainly more fair than last time, we felt. Population is important throughout the game.
After we ended we opened up everything we had left and scratched off everything we hadn't already, just because. Were surprised by one thing we found, and were perhaps more surprised by what we did not find.
If you find all four labs you will reveal the entire available map one way or the other. There's nothing hidden in, say, the Amazon or any way to cross the Indian Ocean.
We also checked each character card to see if anyone could theoretically die on their first exposure.
There is not, mercifully. Although you can have blank results after a scar. We didn't check to see how many "hits" each character could take.
Overall I think we enjoyed this more than Season 1. Exploring the world felt great, and the story was deeper than the somewhat rote first season. I hate hate hate scratching off the silver boxes, though; that shit gets everywhere and it's like the game is repeatedly glitter-bombing you. There has to be a better way, although I'm honestly not sure I can think of one that wouldn't add a bunch more doors/panels.
We made it far enough in Gloomhaven last night to unlock enhancements (those are in the rulebook so this isn't a spoiler). Timing was perfect - I had just started to be happy with my character's gear and to feel like I could burn money on fripperies like donations for Bless cards when suddenly I'm crunched for cash all over again.
My group has been using the bless cards a lot, we opened the envelope for it last time we played. however i think i need to start saving some gold. One thing that i really want to houserule is the rule that you cant pick up uncollected money after you finish the scenario. Thats kinda a stupid rule and its not like we are rolling in gold...at all.. unless the rewards really start improving, enhancements are *really* expensive.
Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
My group has been using the bless cards a lot, we opened the envelope for it last time we played. however i think i need to start saving some gold. One thing that i really want to houserule is the rule that you cant pick up uncollected money after you finish the scenario. Thats kinda a stupid rule and its not like we are rolling in gold...at all.. unless the rewards really start improving, enhancements are *really* expensive.
I think that's meant more to make picking up loot have an opportunity cost than to slow you down. Bear in mind that the value of each coin scales up with the scenario level.
We were also tearing through the buy-able blessings until our current round of personal quests, two of which are based on buying a bunch of stuff. I think it's stalled at "we could open this if we wanted to," count-wise.
My group has been using the bless cards a lot, we opened the envelope for it last time we played. however i think i need to start saving some gold. One thing that i really want to houserule is the rule that you cant pick up uncollected money after you finish the scenario. Thats kinda a stupid rule and its not like we are rolling in gold...at all.. unless the rewards really start improving, enhancements are *really* expensive.
I think that's meant more to make picking up loot have an opportunity cost than to slow you down. Bear in mind that the value of each coin scales up with the scenario level.
We were also tearing through the buy-able blessings until our current round of personal quests, two of which are based on buying a bunch of stuff. I think it's stalled at "we could open this if we wanted to," count-wise.
without spoiling anything the result is not a super immediate effect, while still worth doing. so you shouldnt feel like you have to rush it really, while not letting it fall by the wayside.
Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
My group has been using the bless cards a lot, we opened the envelope for it last time we played. however i think i need to start saving some gold. One thing that i really want to houserule is the rule that you cant pick up uncollected money after you finish the scenario. Thats kinda a stupid rule and its not like we are rolling in gold...at all.. unless the rewards really start improving, enhancements are *really* expensive.
I think that's meant more to make picking up loot have an opportunity cost than to slow you down. Bear in mind that the value of each coin scales up with the scenario level.
We were also tearing through the buy-able blessings until our current round of personal quests, two of which are based on buying a bunch of stuff. I think it's stalled at "we could open this if we wanted to," count-wise.
without spoiling anything the result is not a super immediate effect, while still worth doing. so you shouldnt feel like you have to rush it really, while not letting it fall by the wayside.
Noted! I think the basic thought was that we should save that for the next mission we felt threatened by... and those have been in short supply lately, though there are a couple bosses left it might be worth it on.
My group has been using the bless cards a lot, we opened the envelope for it last time we played.
I should add that buying blessings paid dividends last night as I managed to pull all three in one fight at dramatically appropriate times. Nothing like throwing up a big attack on a shield 4 target, wincing as you reach for the card, and then seeing it obliterate the foe.
Also depends on how you have been handling your perks. I removed 4 -1's and 4 +0's from the deck, along with the -2, so i have a short deck of mostly pluses, which means blesses have a higher chance of showing up. A low damage person like a healer may not see the benefit as often.
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Get the brutes ability to ignore armor penalties first, imo
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Getting rid of the negative numbers seems like the way I want to go in Gloomhaven, just so I know (barring the critical fail, of course) that I'm going to be getting a minimum of 3 damage (or whatever) out of my attack.
The bad part of trimming the -1s out of your deck is that the critical fail does come up more often. But so does the critical hit...
edit: can we please not do "not to spoil anything specific, but here's an unmarked spoiler"?
Getting rid of the negative numbers seems like the way I want to go in Gloomhaven, just so I know (barring the critical fail, of course) that I'm going to be getting a minimum of 3 damage (or whatever) out of my attack.
The bad part of trimming the -1s out of your deck is that the critical fail does come up more often. But so does the critical hit...
There is even odds of drawing either and resetting your deck so it’s a wash, get all the bad shit out ASAP and hop RNG doesn’t fuck you on the miss/crit coinflip.
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Not to spoil anything specific, but as you guys open boxes you're going to find that considerations (and options) vary somewhat more between the later characters than the original 6.
Yeah let’s not do this tip toeing around spoilers bullshit, we have spoiler tags for a reason.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Not to spoil anything specific, but as you guys open boxes you're going to find that considerations (and options) vary somewhat more between the later characters than the original 6.
Yeah let’s not do this tip toeing around spoilers bullshit, we have spoiler tags for a reason.
Clearly my sense of what is and isn't appropriate differs from yours.
I'm tired of this, so I just concede the point and stop posting about Gloomhaven at all.
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Not to spoil anything specific, but as you guys open boxes you're going to find that considerations (and options) vary somewhat more between the later characters than the original 6.
Yeah let’s not do this tip toeing around spoilers bullshit, we have spoiler tags for a reason.
Yeah, like... "later characters are different" is not a spoiler. That's half of why I bought the game! I'd be quite disappointed if there was an obvious perk path for every character, to be honest. Since we only have the original six unlocked at the moment in our group, that's all I've been talking about, but I'll definitely be tagging anything outside the starters once we get there.
Yeah, as tempting as something like the Brute's +3 or the pierces are, old CCG instincts pretty much require me to trim the fat from my deck before I start adding the good stuff in.
Not to spoil anything specific, but as you guys open boxes you're going to find that considerations (and options) vary somewhat more between the later characters than the original 6.
Yeah let’s not do this tip toeing around spoilers bullshit, we have spoiler tags for a reason.
Clearly my sense of what is and isn't appropriate differs from yours.
I'm tired of this, so I just concede the point and stop posting about Gloomhaven at all.
I think using spoiler tags or making a dedicated thread makes a lot more sense than not talking about it at all. We have features for a reason!
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Medici is one of the most evil game designs ever, and I mean that as a compliment. Every decision is agonizing, even among hardened vets.
Because the only coop I've encountered this issue with is Pandemic, I'm going to specifically speak to my experiences and feelings about Pandemic here.
By an incentive to meaningfully participate, I mean some kind of personal need or desire which is satisfied by playing the game. So, for me, stuff like: being a valued member of the team (in a coop game), improving my teams odds of winning the game, doing something I find interesting, etc.
I don't assume I'm incapable of learning Pandemic enough to win or contribute, but from the limited amount of time I've played/thought about the game, the main skill seems to be card memorization (knowing which cities are reshuffled after an epidemic/outbreak/whatever card is revealed), and I don't find improving at that skill super interesting. As a result, the game fails for me on two fronts (1) I have very little impact on our odds of winning the game because a single good player can effectively identify the best course of action on any given turn without my input, and (2) playing the game isn't very interesting to me, and is handled by other people who enjoy it and are already good at it. Pandemic therefore neither gives me an extrinsic motivation (winning the game) or intrinsic motivation (enjoying the act of playing the game, engaging with its systems) to play it when there is an experienced player participating.
That said, I can actually imagine a world where I enjoy playing Pandemic, and that's where I am teaching the game to players less experienced than me. Without a more experienced player to rely on, I would now have a relatively significant impact on our team's odds of winning the game. While it's still true that I don't particularly care for practicing card memorization, I do enjoy teaching people how to play games, so that would supply some amount of intrinsic motivation as well. Once one of those new players improved enough that this was no longer true, I would probably lose interest in the game again.
So, reflecting on this, it's not that quarterbacking in and of itself ruins my experience with Pandemic, but the combination of quarterbacking and the things in my own psychology that I seek to satisfy in gaming. If everything about Pandemic was the same, but nobody could talk during someone else's turn, I would enjoy Pandemic more because again, my team's odds of success would be meaningfully impacted by my decision making; something I enjoy. Would I volunteer to bring Pandemic to the table in this hypothetical world? Probably not. But I would be happier to play it if someone else brought it out.
My boss told me he dislikes boardgames and Carcassonne in particular because he tried it once with an acquaintance who kept telling him what to do. I told him that he needs better humans to play games with. Honestly: rule one of any and all "thinking" games is that no one else should tell you what you should do. This has been true since fucking chess.
Yes, in co-op you can discuss your moves and together decide on the best course of action, but if someone is quarterbacking then that says more about their character traits than anything else.
I will admit that Pandemic is much more straightforward and puzzley than a lot of other coops, so some of those decisions are simpler - and easier for people to tell you what to do. But to me this is kind of why it's a gateway type of coop, easy for beginners to get into.
During the game, one player plays Ren, the girl with lost memories, and the other plays Ferth, the boy trying to help her regain them. Each turn, Ferth draws a number of cards, or memories, and sets them out in a tabletop lattice for Ren to choose from. On her turn, she selects one card based on its color and score, hoping to build rows of a certain point value (inspired by a kind of Japanese poem similar to a haiku) that match the Heart memories she’s been dealt. As the players do better at matching and shifting memories, they gain more information about the cards in Ren’s heart and thereby have an easier time uncovering her lost moments—because other than their actions in drawing, placing, and selecting cards, neither player may communicate with the other.
The result is a game of focus, deduction, and willed telepathy, as both players seek to silently align their separate efforts before time—or the deck of memories, or the thought-stealing ravens that lurk within—brings that night’s dream to an unhappy close. Miss out on the memory reconstruction and you’ll both lose. Do it right, though, and the game will up the ante with a mysterious set of envelopes that continue the story and up the stakes.
A small but beautifully constructed game, The Ravens of Thri Sahashri isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever played. Richly rewarding and recommended for anyone who wishes to tap into the deeper intimacy and even romance of this unique shared experience.
I don't think its quarterbacking so much as trying to immerse you in the idea of the game world. I know my group loves to rag on the poor little vermling that is consistantly outdamaging their sorry asses...(me).
I'm probably in a very small minority of people in saying this (but maybe not, around here): I'm the quarterback out of my group, usually, and I find it's a relief that the rules are designed to fence everyone's individual decisions off from one another. There's a tendency on the internet to write about "quarterbacking," is if it were some kind of personal idiosyncrasy that becomes pathological if game designers aren't ever-vigilant against it. In my experience - and maybe I just don't have it quite as bad as others, but I doubt it - it's closer to an emergent phenomenon that the other people at the table share some responsibility for. People who are perfectly competent to make decisions that affect primarily themselves in competitive games sometimes haven't developed a mental scheme for dealing with "other people are also doing things and we need those things to add up to something," that works, and they'll prefer to defer to someone who seems like they're on the ball. Fear of doing "the wrong thing," can get magnified to the point of being a problem, someone may not be on the same page as everyone else, and so on. Whatever's going on comes across in body language, long pauses and a thousand other small ways, and it's silly to imagine a game (or courtesy) should insist that you not intervene if so - it's not actually right to let people twist in the wind with that kind of feeling.
Well-formed secrecy rules operate to give people permission to make decisions the other people at the table might not love or otherwise take care of whatever anxieties or hangups they have that are getting in the way of playing the game. This also takes some of the cognitive and emotional load off the quarterback, if they've been doing that job in a well-intentioned way, and that's a plus for them as well. Gloomhaven makes pretty good choices about what people should and shouldn't be telling one another in a general way, but the specifics of how people negotiate those constraints does lead to some weird adaptations.
This is not to say that there aren't domineering jerks in the world, just that I don't think they're responsible for the majority of cases in board games where one person at the table has their hand on the tiller. Looking at the issue as if it occurred in only that one set of circumstances makes it harder to find good solutions to it.
My group loved it. I think this ties into the quarterbacking discussion a bit, but we actually all actively liked the no-table talking rule of it. Partly because we're all fairly experienced D&Ders, so it gave us an opportunity to roleplay our characters a little bit more. Basically in the heat of combat there's no time to jointly make decisions, you have to decide yourself what you're going to do based on the enemies in your face, and the tools you have available to you. So the in-combat conversation became more like 'I've got the guy on the left, don't get in my way!' more than anything else, and it led to some really great experiences, both in terms of your plan being foiled by other players AND by being pleasantly surprised by another player's creativity and the options that it opened up to you for the next round.
Unfortunately we ran out of time to finish the first scenario, and so we took some pictures with a plan to pick it up next time, but based on availability that might not be until March 24
Coincidentally, if anyone has Dynasties and doesn't want it, you should reach out to me. A friend and I were both trying to get copies (had it on order before Christmas) and that's where this news is coming from.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
"Ra"!
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.
Hectore Blivand would be proud
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
In each game, between two and three players were within 1 turn of winning when the game ended. Last night I pulled off a win with a last minute teleport to the last Raider enclave that I needed to kill, with both other players racing for their last objectives.
Funny thing is that the early parts of the game are a little frustrating, because the goals seem so distant, but after a certain point you're knocking over the victory conditions like dominos. I went from having no VPs to winning in two rounds because I had gathered up resources, built up my truck, and planned my move carefully.
EDIT: I'm a sucker. but I'm a sucker with yet more painted plastic.
give that shit up already people
Second mission was a sidequest in a toxic bog, which was much harder. Poisonous creatures everywhere, trap damage if you enter the water (which was also everywhere), and a timer in the background of a sacred tree being burnt down by horny drakes. Spellweaver eventually had to take one for the team by sprinting for the door and aggroing all of the drakes, and yet they somehow survived despite being made of actual glass. Cleared it with one turn to go. Good times all around.
That last mission is a giant pain in the ass. With optimal pathing, it takes two full turns for the carrier to reach JADE (8 cities, including one haven). We actually had one more city in the path than we should have (we determined the shortest route after the fact) but had the benefit of three extra actions in one turn to mostly make up for that. We had the cards we needed (thanks to character abilities) but not the time. 30 supply cubes to cover all your bases is simply not enough and starting with multiple plague cubes on the board (As we did both games) is a recipe for death.
We ultimately left three available cities off the grid: Tokyo, Ho Chi Min, and Riyadh.
Score discussion:
The scoring was certainly more fair than last time, we felt. Population is important throughout the game.
After we ended we opened up everything we had left and scratched off everything we hadn't already, just because. Were surprised by one thing we found, and were perhaps more surprised by what we did not find.
We also checked each character card to see if anyone could theoretically die on their first exposure.
Overall I think we enjoyed this more than Season 1. Exploring the world felt great, and the story was deeper than the somewhat rote first season. I hate hate hate scratching off the silver boxes, though; that shit gets everywhere and it's like the game is repeatedly glitter-bombing you. There has to be a better way, although I'm honestly not sure I can think of one that wouldn't add a bunch more doors/panels.
I think that's meant more to make picking up loot have an opportunity cost than to slow you down. Bear in mind that the value of each coin scales up with the scenario level.
We were also tearing through the buy-able blessings until our current round of personal quests, two of which are based on buying a bunch of stuff. I think it's stalled at "we could open this if we wanted to," count-wise.
without spoiling anything the result is not a super immediate effect, while still worth doing. so you shouldnt feel like you have to rush it really, while not letting it fall by the wayside.
Noted! I think the basic thought was that we should save that for the next mission we felt threatened by... and those have been in short supply lately, though there are a couple bosses left it might be worth it on.
I should add that buying blessings paid dividends last night as I managed to pull all three in one fight at dramatically appropriate times. Nothing like throwing up a big attack on a shield 4 target, wincing as you reach for the card, and then seeing it obliterate the foe.
Get the brutes ability to ignore armor penalties first, imo
The bad part of trimming the -1s out of your deck is that the critical fail does come up more often. But so does the critical hit...
edit: can we please not do "not to spoil anything specific, but here's an unmarked spoiler"?
There is even odds of drawing either and resetting your deck so it’s a wash, get all the bad shit out ASAP and hop RNG doesn’t fuck you on the miss/crit coinflip.
Heavy steam- Looks like a fun mix of Battletech and Starfleet Battles?
ogre obj 218- A card game version of Ogre?
Mountains of madness- Co-op...race to a mountain top?
Mansion of Madness: Recurring Nightmares- Lets you play all the 1st edition scenarios using the 2nd edition app?
Heavy Steam has my interest based on that description.
Yeah let’s not do this tip toeing around spoilers bullshit, we have spoiler tags for a reason.
Clearly my sense of what is and isn't appropriate differs from yours.
I'm tired of this, so I just concede the point and stop posting about Gloomhaven at all.
No, it adds First Ed components into 2nd Ed scenarios (or has a chance to).
That's not a spoiler.
I think using spoiler tags or making a dedicated thread makes a lot more sense than not talking about it at all. We have features for a reason!