Yesterday was Kingsday over here, which means we have a big rommelmarkt (its a yard sale, but instead of a yard we haul our crap to a local mall or city centre and sell it on the street). Instead of selling crap I love to buy more crap, mostly toys for our boy (got a complete toy workstation for €6,50 woop woop), but I am always on the lookout for boardgames. This year's haul: children of Catan, Carcassonne and Medina. Total costs: €13. All three are in mint condition, they haven't been played at all.
Searching for interactive Euros like Great Western Trail, I picked up Le Havre today!
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
When I was a child, I had a fever... My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Same to you! I spent the afternoon working a booth at an event put on by a local game store, running demos of the game I have on Kickstarter in its final days. Then over to a friend's house for a full evening including Power Grid (still not a favorite) and Decrypto (amazing).
For board game day today, we played Scythe, King of Tokyo, and Inis
I won Scythe pretty handily. I was playing the not-Germans, and I had a tidy cycle going where I could produce 2 oil and then pay 2 oil to do an upgrade on the same action. I cleared my upgrades very early, then buildings, and cruised on to victory.
King of Tokyo I won, barely. It's just a roll and go of course.
Inis I had never heard of before. It's a Celtic themed drafting and territory control game I guess? You draft from the same set of 17 cards each round, so you get a feel for those really quick. They variously let you add clans, move those clans and attack others, build defense and victory point buildings. Some let you draw Red Epic Tale cards that have more unique or powerful abilities, which gives just enough variation that you can't math out every round based on who has the explore card, the counterspell, etc. It was fairly simple and I got close to winning, might have if I had understood a few minor rules better.
For board game day today, we played Scythe, King of Tokyo, and Inis
I won Scythe pretty handily. I was playing the not-Germans, and I had a tidy cycle going where I could produce 2 oil and then pay 2 oil to do an upgrade on the same action. I cleared my upgrades very early, then buildings, and cruised on to victory.
King of Tokyo I won, barely. It's just a roll and go of course.
Inis I had never heard of before. It's a Celtic themed drafting and territory control game I guess? You draft from the same set of 17 cards each round, so you get a feel for those really quick. They variously let you add clans, move those clans and attack others, build defense and victory point buildings. Some let you draw Red Epic Tale cards that have more unique or powerful abilities, which gives just enough variation that you can't math out every round based on who has the explore card, the counterspell, etc. It was fairly simple and I got close to winning, might have if I had understood a few minor rules better.
I had a glorious game of Inis on Thursday. My first red card read "everybody gives you a red card at random if able. Choose one to keep and discard the rest. Remove one of your clans from the board." I had one clan each in the salt mine and the stone table, and both yellow cards. First action every round I play the red card, removing the salt mine clan. Use the salt mine to steal somebody's random green card in trade for my crappiest green card. Use the stone table to remove the stone table clan, retaining the red card played. Now I have no clans on the board and come in for free with two clans at the start of my next turn! Repeatable red card stealing engine.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJQVMPUcMo
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
Cantido on
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I also tried to get into the "classic" Brass and don't see how anyone would have any actual fun with it.
The best thing i can say about it is the AI takes its turns instantly in the digital version, something I desperately wish were the case for Through the Ages.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJQVMPUcMo
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
You should play Caylus asap. A few other recs: Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJQVMPUcMo
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
You should play Caylus asap. A few other recs: Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica.
I haven't played El Grande, but can vouch for all other listed titles being much more enjoyable.
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
I played 12 games yesterday, of which 10 were first-timers for me. Full names and reviews later, maybe, but for now I'm gonna say the best one was probably Photosynthesis. It's one of those games where you're trying to think 4 turns ahead, along like 3 strategic axes. Everything is completely deterministic, though, so thinking ahead on that level is actually possible if you can keep all the information sorted in your head.
I played the 'Voracious Goddess' with two friends for about six hours yesterday and I don't think we even came close to winning.
1. Drowned on our first attempt to swim from the first island because we had no submarine parts. Reset the board.
2. Got to the second island, didn't have enough equipment to climb this huge mountain - went back to the first island. Reset the board.
3. Got killed by curses. Reset the board.
I played the 'Voracious Goddess' with two friends for about six hours yesterday and I don't think we even came close to winning.
1. Drowned on our first attempt to swim from the first island because we had no submarine parts. Reset the board.
2. Got to the second island, didn't have enough equipment to climb this huge mountain - went back to the first island. Reset the board.
3. Got killed by curses. Reset the board.
Is that like the hardest curse or something?
I ran into this problem in my first solo game, what I ended up finding out was hunting is incredibly important and you should be doing it often so your action deck is constantly as close to full as possible so that once you hit a stretch where no hunting spot is available you are at least covered for a bit.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJQVMPUcMo
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
You should play Caylus asap. A few other recs: Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica.
I haven't played El Grande, but can vouch for all other listed titles being much more enjoyable.
I haven't played le Havre so I can't comment on it or these games in relation to it. Caylus specifically has some things in common with GWT re players building buildings etc and is also very interactive. The other ones are just some more nasty interactive classic euros that are really good.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJQVMPUcMo
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
You should play Caylus asap. A few other recs: Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica.
I haven't played El Grande, but can vouch for all other listed titles being much more enjoyable.
I haven't played le Havre so I can't comment on it or these games in relation to it. Caylus specifically has some things in common with GWT re players building buildings etc and is also very interactive. The other ones are just some more nasty interactive classic euros that are really good.
Yeah, I like the comparison. I like the cattle-deck in GWT, but the rest falls rather flat for me. Despite being quite similar, I like Caylus fine. There's some internal reflection I need to do about that, apparently ... At a very basic level, I appreciate that you're building from a common pool of buildings and everyone is using them, so it's just inherently more interesting and interactive.
... Hmmm.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television.
To be fair that's a low bar. Age of steam is the one board game I would refuse to ever play again because I experienced that in my play of it. Who thought that hard eliminating someone fifteen minutes into a two hour strategy game would be ok????
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
I played the game a couple of times many years ago, so I can't claim to remember it in any particular detail to have a proper discussion about it. What I do remember was in all games someone at the table acquired a collection of cards that you could look at compared to everyone else and say "They are going to win. We are done." I encourage you to counter and write about the positive aspects of the game as you see it.
(We exclusively played 3 player games. I can't say much of anything about player counts.)
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
I played the game a couple of times many years ago, so I can't claim to remember it in any particular detail to have a proper discussion about it. What I do remember was in all games someone at the table acquired a collection of cards that you could look at compared to everyone else and say "They are going to win. We are done." I encourage you to counter and write about the positive aspects of the game as you see it.
(We exclusively played 3 player games. I can't say much of anything about player counts.)
Le Havre is an early type of accumulator game like Agricola or Caverna where resources tick up on spaces until they're collected. On your turn you can either use an unoccupied building or pull stuff off of an accumulator space, and then everybody else gets a turn before you go again. One of the focal activities of the game is building ships to ship goods off for money; another is constructing buildings out of those same goods, and those buildings are worth money at the end of the game. So if you have a bunch of buildings, you don't have a bunch of goods. If somebody's bouncing around using buildings (to construct ships, ship goods, build buildings, whatever), there's a steadily growing pile of free stuff just waiting for someone to pick it up.
I mean, there are ways you can mess up, mostly by being inefficient, only getting a couple things off an accumulator or going to a building that'll process any number of things when you only have one or two. But unless you can count your number of turns on one hand, there's always the potential to grab a giant pile of something and go crazy on it.
Though in my playgroup I'm often kind of Johnny-style, focusing less on straight winning or losing than on pulling off some crazy super combo, so that kind of colors things a little.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
I played the game a couple of times many years ago, so I can't claim to remember it in any particular detail to have a proper discussion about it. What I do remember was in all games someone at the table acquired a collection of cards that you could look at compared to everyone else and say "They are going to win. We are done." I encourage you to counter and write about the positive aspects of the game as you see it.
(We exclusively played 3 player games. I can't say much of anything about player counts.)
Le Havre is an early type of accumulator game like Agricola or Caverna where resources tick up on spaces until they're collected. On your turn you can either use an unoccupied building or pull stuff off of an accumulator space, and then everybody else gets a turn before you go again. One of the focal activities of the game is building ships to ship goods off for money; another is constructing buildings out of those same goods, and those buildings are worth money at the end of the game. So if you have a bunch of buildings, you don't have a bunch of goods. If somebody's bouncing around using buildings (to construct ships, ship goods, build buildings, whatever), there's a steadily growing pile of free stuff just waiting for someone to pick it up.
I mean, there are ways you can mess up, mostly by being inefficient, only getting a couple things off an accumulator or going to a building that'll process any number of things when you only have one or two. But unless you can count your number of turns on one hand, there's always the potential to grab a giant pile of something and go crazy on it.
Though in my playgroup I'm often kind of Johnny-style, focusing less on straight winning or losing than on pulling off some crazy super combo, so that kind of colors things a little.
Also, how is Power Grid [Deluxe]? SUDS and Dice Tower's possee seem to enjoy it.
Le Havre is supposed to be a real classic, but Jesus Christ have I never had even a little fun with it. I hope it pans out better for you and your group.
Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
I played the game a couple of times many years ago, so I can't claim to remember it in any particular detail to have a proper discussion about it. What I do remember was in all games someone at the table acquired a collection of cards that you could look at compared to everyone else and say "They are going to win. We are done." I encourage you to counter and write about the positive aspects of the game as you see it.
(We exclusively played 3 player games. I can't say much of anything about player counts.)
Le Havre is an early type of accumulator game like Agricola or Caverna where resources tick up on spaces until they're collected. On your turn you can either use an unoccupied building or pull stuff off of an accumulator space, and then everybody else gets a turn before you go again. One of the focal activities of the game is building ships to ship goods off for money; another is constructing buildings out of those same goods, and those buildings are worth money at the end of the game. So if you have a bunch of buildings, you don't have a bunch of goods. If somebody's bouncing around using buildings (to construct ships, ship goods, build buildings, whatever), there's a steadily growing pile of free stuff just waiting for someone to pick it up.
I mean, there are ways you can mess up, mostly by being inefficient, only getting a couple things off an accumulator or going to a building that'll process any number of things when you only have one or two. But unless you can count your number of turns on one hand, there's always the potential to grab a giant pile of something and go crazy on it.
Though in my playgroup I'm often kind of Johnny-style, focusing less on straight winning or losing than on pulling off some crazy super combo, so that kind of colors things a little.
Also, how is Power Grid [Deluxe]? SUDS and Dice Tower's possee seem to enjoy it.
Power Grid, deluxe or otherwise, is one of my favorite auction games. I tend to prefer it with the max of 6 people, because the network building gets to be more intense trying to beat your neighbors to different cities and you have to adjust your power plant plans more based on which resources are being used the most and therefore likely to cost you the most.
My whole group likes it, except for the guy who owned it first and is just tired of losing to me :P
As a dissenting opinion, Power Grid is the least fun math test I've ever taken. And I enjoy me some math.
That said, I do own and like The First Sparks so there are decent ideas in the Power Grid engine, but the original just has too many aspects to balance.
I'm on team "Power Grid Good". If I wanna play it on game night I can always find people to join me. My complaint is that you can usually math it out, and work out who's going to win on the penultimate turn, which can be an anticlimatic way to end a game. Having said that, I almost never win. Stupid Power Grid.
First Sparks is great. Boils the game down to a reasonable length and complexity for me.
I think my problem is having an important auction in a game that is not completely an auction game. Power Grid requires that you get the auctions "right" but there's very little information you can use to evaluate how good the power plants are unless you just have experience with the game, and it's not a problem that is personally interesting to me to solve. Put the auction in a smaller package, like in Modern Art or For Sale, and I love it.
Speaking of auctions, Heavy Cardboard did a really good playthrough of Neue Heimat/The Estates a bit ago, if anyone's in the fence on the reprint kickstarter.
I've only played Power Grid once but I really liked it. The cost/value proposition of the various power plants seemed pretty straightforward to me personally. I enjoyed the way the various fuel markets simulated supply and demand to the benefit of players who paid attention to what everyone at the table was doing.
If I had a complaint, it would maybe be the map; it did the job well enough, but it lacked for interesting distinctions and was maybe slightly too large compared to the player count. Like yeah it's an efficiency puzzle and you can eke out a tiny bit more by planning your expansion smartly but for the most part all that matters is that you have SOMEWHERE to expand to and you almost always will. I may just be a map snob.
I will say my positive opinion may be slightly colored by the fact that I cleverly managed a win by ending the game a turn earlier than everyone was expecting. At least one and possibly both of my opponents would have passed me but I bet heavy on rushing and it paid off
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I joined a boardgame meetup and it went really well. They had a meeting at a boardgame shop that charged $5 to play for the night, but the money went to store credit. Seems fair.
The first game we played was Tribes which was a bizarre dexterity game where you had to hang ornaments on figures, but they can't touch the ground or other ornaments of the same color. Fun game but the rules were very complicated for a dexterity game. There were dice and blind draws and scoring was bizarre.
Next we played a game imported from Japan essentially you received a route card with a subway map, a card flipped over and you could fill in that many boxes on any subway route you had. I'm not really explaining it well, but I don't know the name of it anyways so. Really interesting game though.
Next we played The Mind which is a co-op card game for 2-4. It starts on Level 1, everyone gets 1 card (1-100). You can play whenever you want, but the cards have to come down in numerical order or you lose a life per skipped card. Level 2 everyone gets 2 cards, etc. You earn extra lives at certain levels. Very simple to teach, very fun to play. Apparently not sold in the US yet, but I was able to order one on Amazon.de for ~14$ so we will see how that goes. Never ordered from amazon.not us.
Then we played Walnut Grove which is a worker placement starve to death kind of game. I think my only other worker placement game was Lords of Waterdeep so this was a pretty big change. It had 8 years and each year has 4 seasons, but it moved really quickly. In the spring you picked new fields and placed them, in the summer you harvested your fields, in the fall you wander around town buying buildings or workers or paying taxes and then in the winter you starve to death/freeze to death. You got more resources for every tile you connect that has the same resource type. You also score one point in the end game for each fenced enclosure you make. I opted to go for the terrible farmer lots of fences strategy and managed to tie for the most points even with -2 points for starving a worker to death.
Finally we played Pueblo which is a bizarre Tetris like affair where you try and block your blocks from the point of view of the Governor who moves around the outside of the map giving penalty points to each block of your color he can see.
Next we played The Mind which is a co-op card game for 2-4. It starts on Level 1, everyone gets 1 card (1-100). You can play whenever you want, but the cards have to come down in numerical order or you lose a life per skipped card. Level 2 everyone gets 2 cards, etc. You earn extra lives at certain levels. Very simple to teach, very fun to play. Apparently not sold in the US yet, but I was able to order one on Amazon.de for ~14$ so we will see how that goes. Never ordered from amazon.not us.
The Mind had been a pretty big hit for me so far. I really like it, and it has gone over extremely well. One clarification, if a card is played out of order you lose one life and all cards lower than the card played are discarded. You don't lose one life per card.
Edit: also since you didn't mention it, the hook is that you can't talk while you play. It's all about timing and nonverbal communication. Anyone who likes unique games or has a place in their collection for a really good little filler should definitely check it out.
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited May 2018
I had a lot more fun playing it than Hanabi. It feels a lot easier to learn/figure out than Hanabi where you have to kind of know not just what is in your hand but how many of each card are in the deck. Full disclosure I've only played either once. We didn't realize that there was only one 5 of each color (even though my friends had played it before) and so locked ourselves out of the best score.
Next we played The Mind which is a co-op card game for 2-4. It starts on Level 1, everyone gets 1 card (1-100). You can play whenever you want, but the cards have to come down in numerical order or you lose a life per skipped card. Level 2 everyone gets 2 cards, etc. You earn extra lives at certain levels. Very simple to teach, very fun to play. Apparently not sold in the US yet, but I was able to order one on Amazon.de for ~14$ so we will see how that goes. Never ordered from amazon.not us.
The Mind had been a pretty big hit for me so far. I really like it, and it has gone over extremely well. One clarification, if a card is played out of order you lose one life and all cards lower than the card played are discarded. You don't lose one life per card.
Edit: also since you didn't mention it, the hook is that you can't talk while you play. It's all about timing and nonverbal communication. Anyone who likes unique games or has a place in their collection for a really good little filler should definitely check it out.
So can you just blink in morse code "my lowest card is a twenty-three"?
edit: Actually, even easier than that, just make an audible drumbeat on the table, when the table has been tapped ten times, play the ten. So there has to be some rule that makes the game not just an exercise in non-verbal communication. What are the actual rules to the game?
Fry on
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
You don't really have the time? The longer everyone else waits the more likely you are to play since if they are waiting their cards surely must be higher. I only really picked it up after I had lost us a life.
The Mind is fine, but it's a party trick. There's really only one skill involved, and it is implicitly agreeing on how much time a card is worth. I played it and enjoyed my time, but I would be perfectly content never playing again. There's no staying power, unlike other simple co-ops such as The Game or Hanabi.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Hey all. I'm looking to cull a few games and I thought I'd give first dibs to anyone from the community here before trying Reddit or something.
Here's the list. A lot of this I'll give away pretty cheaply (or for the cost of shipping) so just PM me if you're interested in anything.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I'm curious how everyone hears about these non English games in other countries. Unless you happen to be there I suppose.
BoardGameGeek, Shut Up & Sit Down, various podcasts, forums, and word of mouth from friends. With the hobby grown as much as it is, word travels fast when there's a new interesting game.
15+ years ago, you had to be much more devoted, since many games never got translations. Lots of people in the US subscribed to Spielbox magazine and learned enough "gamer German" to get by.
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Hope everyone had a nice tabletop day.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I'm actually looking at some older euro "classics"... is it just dry for you or what?
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
I won Scythe pretty handily. I was playing the not-Germans, and I had a tidy cycle going where I could produce 2 oil and then pay 2 oil to do an upgrade on the same action. I cleared my upgrades very early, then buildings, and cruised on to victory.
King of Tokyo I won, barely. It's just a roll and go of course.
Inis I had never heard of before. It's a Celtic themed drafting and territory control game I guess? You draft from the same set of 17 cards each round, so you get a feel for those really quick. They variously let you add clans, move those clans and attack others, build defense and victory point buildings. Some let you draw Red Epic Tale cards that have more unique or powerful abilities, which gives just enough variation that you can't math out every round based on who has the explore card, the counterspell, etc. It was fairly simple and I got close to winning, might have if I had understood a few minor rules better.
I had a glorious game of Inis on Thursday. My first red card read "everybody gives you a red card at random if able. Choose one to keep and discard the rest. Remove one of your clans from the board." I had one clan each in the salt mine and the stone table, and both yellow cards. First action every round I play the red card, removing the salt mine clan. Use the salt mine to steal somebody's random green card in trade for my crappiest green card. Use the stone table to remove the stone table clan, retaining the red card played. Now I have no clans on the board and come in for free with two clans at the start of my next turn! Repeatable red card stealing engine.
Indeed, I'm deliberately looking for middleweight euros where players don't have their heads down staring at their tableaus, and I heard Le Harve was what I was looking for. Players will always be watching their friends' moves. And unlike GWT, my absolute favorite Euro, players can pay to use opponents' buildings. They aren't just tollbooths.
I ordered some bit containers that I can set on all those resource spots to reduce the fiddliness.
My experience was that someone would always happen to pick up the best engine at the table by the half way point in the game, and there are the better part of zero options for other players to actually slow them down or catch up, so the game is - essentially - already over, but it wants you to play another hour anyway.
Spoiler alert: We never did.
The shame is that there are interesting elements in there, and I can understand why it was once revered. It's probably worth trying to see what you can get out of it. I would never play it again.
Less an ordeal, but I also don't enjoy that the game features an ever-increasing tax you have to pay. While it never happened to us, it's entirely possible for someone to get completely fucked out of the game if they make a mistake, and unlike a lot of other games where this can technically happen, you're just strapped for real options and don't get much of an opportunity to learn the game better from the rest of the experience. It's the most blatant mark of its age and the sort of game it is, I think. YMMV
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
The best thing i can say about it is the AI takes its turns instantly in the digital version, something I desperately wish were the case for Through the Ages.
You should play Caylus asap. A few other recs: Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica.
I haven't played El Grande, but can vouch for all other listed titles being much more enjoyable.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Plus it's pretty. 9/10
I played the 'Voracious Goddess' with two friends for about six hours yesterday and I don't think we even came close to winning.
1. Drowned on our first attempt to swim from the first island because we had no submarine parts. Reset the board.
2. Got to the second island, didn't have enough equipment to climb this huge mountain - went back to the first island. Reset the board.
3. Got killed by curses. Reset the board.
Is that like the hardest curse or something?
I ran into this problem in my first solo game, what I ended up finding out was hunting is incredibly important and you should be doing it often so your action deck is constantly as close to full as possible so that once you hit a stretch where no hunting spot is available you are at least covered for a bit.
I haven't played le Havre so I can't comment on it or these games in relation to it. Caylus specifically has some things in common with GWT re players building buildings etc and is also very interactive. The other ones are just some more nasty interactive classic euros that are really good.
Yeah, I like the comparison. I like the cattle-deck in GWT, but the rest falls rather flat for me. Despite being quite similar, I like Caylus fine. There's some internal reflection I need to do about that, apparently ... At a very basic level, I appreciate that you're building from a common pool of buildings and everyone is using them, so it's just inherently more interesting and interactive.
... Hmmm.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I do not understand this as a criticism of Le Havre. You have no particular claim on any of your buildings. The "toll" is a couple of coins or food and then just anyone can use them. You can't even kick people out of your buildings if you want to use them. You just stand there and fume until they're gone. How is it possible in those circumstances to "build an engine"?
You also can't really be fucked out of the game, not in the Age of Steam sense where if you can't pay your shareholders you go watch television. If you can't feed people it's possible to sell your buildings or ships to get money to do it, but it's not required; you can just take loans to pay for the food instead. In fact it's probably better off for you since you get half value for your buildings or ships but pay back slightly less than twice the value of a loan. Sure there's "interest", but it's only 1 coin no matter how many loans you have, and if you're playing with a sufficient number of people there are buildings that just get rid of loans.
I will say that, unlike Caverna which gets a couple interesting new wrinkles at 5, Le Havre can technically go up to 5, but 4 is kind of pushing it and 5 is basically experts-only mode. I would heavily suggest starting to learn the game at 3.
To be fair that's a low bar. Age of steam is the one board game I would refuse to ever play again because I experienced that in my play of it. Who thought that hard eliminating someone fifteen minutes into a two hour strategy game would be ok????
I played the game a couple of times many years ago, so I can't claim to remember it in any particular detail to have a proper discussion about it. What I do remember was in all games someone at the table acquired a collection of cards that you could look at compared to everyone else and say "They are going to win. We are done." I encourage you to counter and write about the positive aspects of the game as you see it.
(We exclusively played 3 player games. I can't say much of anything about player counts.)
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Le Havre is an early type of accumulator game like Agricola or Caverna where resources tick up on spaces until they're collected. On your turn you can either use an unoccupied building or pull stuff off of an accumulator space, and then everybody else gets a turn before you go again. One of the focal activities of the game is building ships to ship goods off for money; another is constructing buildings out of those same goods, and those buildings are worth money at the end of the game. So if you have a bunch of buildings, you don't have a bunch of goods. If somebody's bouncing around using buildings (to construct ships, ship goods, build buildings, whatever), there's a steadily growing pile of free stuff just waiting for someone to pick it up.
I mean, there are ways you can mess up, mostly by being inefficient, only getting a couple things off an accumulator or going to a building that'll process any number of things when you only have one or two. But unless you can count your number of turns on one hand, there's always the potential to grab a giant pile of something and go crazy on it.
Though in my playgroup I'm often kind of Johnny-style, focusing less on straight winning or losing than on pulling off some crazy super combo, so that kind of colors things a little.
Also, how is Power Grid [Deluxe]? SUDS and Dice Tower's possee seem to enjoy it.
Concordia is $39.97 new sold by Amazon. Cheapest it's ever been on Amazon.
Power Grid, deluxe or otherwise, is one of my favorite auction games. I tend to prefer it with the max of 6 people, because the network building gets to be more intense trying to beat your neighbors to different cities and you have to adjust your power plant plans more based on which resources are being used the most and therefore likely to cost you the most.
My whole group likes it, except for the guy who owned it first and is just tired of losing to me :P
That said, I do own and like The First Sparks so there are decent ideas in the Power Grid engine, but the original just has too many aspects to balance.
I think my problem is having an important auction in a game that is not completely an auction game. Power Grid requires that you get the auctions "right" but there's very little information you can use to evaluate how good the power plants are unless you just have experience with the game, and it's not a problem that is personally interesting to me to solve. Put the auction in a smaller package, like in Modern Art or For Sale, and I love it.
If I had a complaint, it would maybe be the map; it did the job well enough, but it lacked for interesting distinctions and was maybe slightly too large compared to the player count. Like yeah it's an efficiency puzzle and you can eke out a tiny bit more by planning your expansion smartly but for the most part all that matters is that you have SOMEWHERE to expand to and you almost always will. I may just be a map snob.
I will say my positive opinion may be slightly colored by the fact that I cleverly managed a win by ending the game a turn earlier than everyone was expecting. At least one and possibly both of my opponents would have passed me but I bet heavy on rushing and it paid off
The first game we played was Tribes which was a bizarre dexterity game where you had to hang ornaments on figures, but they can't touch the ground or other ornaments of the same color. Fun game but the rules were very complicated for a dexterity game. There were dice and blind draws and scoring was bizarre.
Next we played a game imported from Japan essentially you received a route card with a subway map, a card flipped over and you could fill in that many boxes on any subway route you had. I'm not really explaining it well, but I don't know the name of it anyways so. Really interesting game though.
Next we played The Mind which is a co-op card game for 2-4. It starts on Level 1, everyone gets 1 card (1-100). You can play whenever you want, but the cards have to come down in numerical order or you lose a life per skipped card. Level 2 everyone gets 2 cards, etc. You earn extra lives at certain levels. Very simple to teach, very fun to play. Apparently not sold in the US yet, but I was able to order one on Amazon.de for ~14$ so we will see how that goes. Never ordered from amazon.not us.
Then we played Walnut Grove which is a worker placement starve to death kind of game. I think my only other worker placement game was Lords of Waterdeep so this was a pretty big change. It had 8 years and each year has 4 seasons, but it moved really quickly. In the spring you picked new fields and placed them, in the summer you harvested your fields, in the fall you wander around town buying buildings or workers or paying taxes and then in the winter you starve to death/freeze to death. You got more resources for every tile you connect that has the same resource type. You also score one point in the end game for each fenced enclosure you make. I opted to go for the terrible farmer lots of fences strategy and managed to tie for the most points even with -2 points for starving a worker to death.
Finally we played Pueblo which is a bizarre Tetris like affair where you try and block your blocks from the point of view of the Governor who moves around the outside of the map giving penalty points to each block of your color he can see.
The best part was everyone was very friendly.
The Mind had been a pretty big hit for me so far. I really like it, and it has gone over extremely well. One clarification, if a card is played out of order you lose one life and all cards lower than the card played are discarded. You don't lose one life per card.
Edit: also since you didn't mention it, the hook is that you can't talk while you play. It's all about timing and nonverbal communication. Anyone who likes unique games or has a place in their collection for a really good little filler should definitely check it out.
So can you just blink in morse code "my lowest card is a twenty-three"?
edit: Actually, even easier than that, just make an audible drumbeat on the table, when the table has been tapped ten times, play the ten. So there has to be some rule that makes the game not just an exercise in non-verbal communication. What are the actual rules to the game?
Here's the list. A lot of this I'll give away pretty cheaply (or for the cost of shipping) so just PM me if you're interested in anything.
15+ years ago, you had to be much more devoted, since many games never got translations. Lots of people in the US subscribed to Spielbox magazine and learned enough "gamer German" to get by.