admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Root is a messy, intricate, fragile game that I love.
I highly recommend it but I don't think I can recommend dropping $150 without any first-hand experience, because it's a divisive game. Though if you're comfortable selling boardgames I'd expect it to hold its value reasonably well.
I've being playing Root repeatedly since I got it a month or so ago with the expansion.
With experienced players it plays quickly and the balance between factions is usually close enough that things are exciting.
It's only real problem is that the ending can often feel anti-climatic with the Vagabond just scoring 8 points from combat that people can't really stop. Though I've certainly had more dramatic end games as well.
I've being playing Root repeatedly since I got it a month or so ago with the expansion.
With experienced players it plays quickly and the balance between factions is usually close enough that things are exciting.
It's only real problem is that the ending can often feel anti-climatic with the Vagabond just scoring 8 points from combat that people can't really stop. Though I've certainly had more dramatic end games as well.
Is that with the amended scoring rules for Vagabond?
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Every time I want to pick up Root I look at Vast sitting on my shelf and sigh.
Root is 10000x easier to get to the table than Vast. Playing root was what got me to sell my copy of Vast. There is no excuse to have rules like that these days.
I've being playing Root repeatedly since I got it a month or so ago with the expansion.
With experienced players it plays quickly and the balance between factions is usually close enough that things are exciting.
It's only real problem is that the ending can often feel anti-climatic with the Vagabond just scoring 8 points from combat that people can't really stop. Though I've certainly had more dramatic end games as well.
Is that with the amended scoring rules for Vagabond?
Where they only score points if they start the fight? Yeah.
Three/four sword Vagabonds are still explosive in ways that are very hard to deal with.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Every time I want to pick up Root I look at Vast sitting on my shelf and sigh.
While I only played Vast once and would likely never play it again*, I can appreciate this sentiment because it's absolutely the more interesting of the two games. It's just not made player-friendly at all, and could probably use something of an update and a much better distribution of player aid info.
*I'd be interested in trying Vast if they did make it more approachable.
It begins. Behold POWERCULTURE. The Pikachu and wineglass are first turn markers for each game. No seats, no time for sitting. Dizziness and AP may occur.
Excluding setup and break down, total game time was 1:30.
Not much down time between turns, the faster nature of the Viticulture turns filling up the space with the longer Power Grid turns. Auctions were fun, bids often yelled out while doing other things.
Power Grid finished after 1:14 with Purple being the winner. Green misplayed the penultimate turn, meaning that purple had better power generation, and more cities. Focus shifted to Viticulture, with most players being over 10 vp. In the last round green misplayed again, choosing the bonus harvest instead of the bonus winter harvest. Purple and Orange on 20 VP, but purple won the tie-break.
We played both games in the time it normally takes us to do one. The general vibe was to act quickly so as not to hold up the games, so AP didn't end up being a problem.
Was great fun, but probably something we only do on the longer games day. There is currently some crown shopping going on as Purple won both games. Sadly, purple was not me.
Played Arkham Horror 2e for the first time tonight. 2p, base game only (with various things from expansions mixed in ie injury, madness, personal stories, relationships), 2 investigators each. It was great fun, though our unfamiliarity with the rules made it take 4 hours before we called it for time. I'm pretty sure we were going to get murdered by a giant ghost elephant before too much longer though. I learned a couple things, chiefly that Arkham Horror is too big for my table. More than 2p definitely wouldn't fit, let alone once you start adding expansions. Going to need a side table next time for all the card decks.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Played food chain magnate at 5. First time playing and it was pretty not-fun? I went for a fast strategy and so did two other people, but I was the only one chucking a hundred into the reserve! Two people went for a first turn trainer and got the -$20 to salaries, which they used to hire Gurus and a whole HR empire before they made any money, which was both thematically strange and irritating to try to play against since none of their moves affected anything for 4 turns or so. Plus, obviously, upon the bank breaking I knew I'd lost but there were hours left to go.
Eternal marketing seemed a much worse milestone than I anticipated, since radio towers hit most of the board with low priority. By midgame almost no demand could happen via other mechanisms.
Combine it with the increase in downtime and I think maybe it just plays badly at 5.
Overall it seems like an 18xx but lighter?
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
It's odd that this was directly denied when the license was picked up. The contract must not have been in place then
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
In other reprint news, Chinatown is finally getting a new edition. I've heard so much but I wonder how much of it was nostalgia.
And it sounds like FFG are going to be doing a new version of Forbidden Suns. Place bets now on whether it's in the Twilight Imperium or Android setting
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
Forbidden Stars?
I'd say the Twilight Imperium setting seems like an easier fit.
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I am unable to ever remember whether that game is Forbidden Stars or Forbidden Suns.
I'm not sure they'd go for the obvious choice as it might be too close to standard TI. Android would be an easy reskin to a hacking game
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
If they do go with Android I'd expect something like the Corps fielding mercenaries against each other in proxy/colony wars over the asteroid belt. Reskinning a dudes-on-a-map into a game about hacking seems drastic and non-intuitive.
Btw do you have a source for the news (rumour?). I've thought about picking up Forbidden Stars so I'm pretty curious about this.
If they do go with Android I'd expect something like the Corps fielding mercenaries against each other in proxy/colony wars over the asteroid belt. Reskinning a dudes-on-a-map into a game about hacking seems drastic and non-intuitive.
Btw do you have a source for the news (rumour?). I've thought about picking up Forbidden Stars so I'm pretty curious about this.
I think the racing around for objectives fits hacking super well. It would take more convoluted adaptation to do the asteroid belt thing. Mostly around the warp storms and the ground/air split. It's not impossible but it seems clumsy.
A lot of it depends on whether it's a simple reskin or if they are using some of the central mechanics (order stacks, combat, etc.) to do something else. I'd assumed it would be a reskin.
It was mentioned on the latest Heavy Cardboard but without a source.
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
Hm, yes, I suppose the warp storms could be ICE or something.
For a simpler re-skin though I'm still like 90% on Twilight Imperium setting. Orks to Sardakk'Norr, Ultramarines to Terrans. Chaos maybe Yin Brotherhood for the cultist/conversion themes? Don't know which TI race would be the most Eldar-like.
Hm, yes, I suppose the warp storms could be ICE or something.
For a simpler re-skin though I'm still like 90% on Twilight Imperium setting. Orks to Sardakk'Norr, Ultramarines to Terrans. Chaos maybe Yin Brotherhood for the cultist/conversion themes? Don't know which TI race would be the most Eldar-like.
Arborec could work for chaos given they bloody love budding off new units all the time. Or Terrans.
Ghosts are a decent fit for Eldar.
Ultramarines might work better as Xxcha given their whole gimmick is being indestructible.
There's no obvious Hacan, which is a problem as they are the recognisable race.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Played food chain magnate at 5. First time playing and it was pretty not-fun? I went for a fast strategy and so did two other people, but I was the only one chucking a hundred into the reserve! Two people went for a first turn trainer and got the -$20 to salaries, which they used to hire Gurus and a whole HR empire before they made any money, which was both thematically strange and irritating to try to play against since none of their moves affected anything for 4 turns or so. Plus, obviously, upon the bank breaking I knew I'd lost but there were hours left to go.
Eternal marketing seemed a much worse milestone than I anticipated, since radio towers hit most of the board with low priority. By midgame almost no demand could happen via other mechanisms.
Combine it with the increase in downtime and I think maybe it just plays badly at 5.
Overall it seems like an 18xx but lighter?
FCM is arguably not the best at 5, but I've heard only horror stories about the new-player experience at that count. But that being said, I've had pretty good success with new players, even people new to longer boardgames, at 2 and 3 players. It's a weird game that way.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Played food chain magnate at 5. First time playing and it was pretty not-fun? I went for a fast strategy and so did two other people, but I was the only one chucking a hundred into the reserve! Two people went for a first turn trainer and got the -$20 to salaries, which they used to hire Gurus and a whole HR empire before they made any money, which was both thematically strange and irritating to try to play against since none of their moves affected anything for 4 turns or so. Plus, obviously, upon the bank breaking I knew I'd lost but there were hours left to go.
Eternal marketing seemed a much worse milestone than I anticipated, since radio towers hit most of the board with low priority. By midgame almost no demand could happen via other mechanisms.
Combine it with the increase in downtime and I think maybe it just plays badly at 5.
Overall it seems like an 18xx but lighter?
FCM is arguably not the best at 5, but I've heard only horror stories about the new-player experience at that count. But that being said, I've had pretty good success with new players, even people new to longer boardgames, at 2 and 3 players. It's a weird game that way.
That is crazy to me. I can't imagine the HR empire strategy losing against new players, and it seemed like something people new to boardgaming might see as cheater bullshit. I didn't mind it too much, but it and double radio effectiveness made the game seem very unforgiving. I'm already ready to houserule marketing priority reversal. The first radio tower locks up the game unpleasantly.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
It's been a while since I played ... Can you remind us how the marketing priority works? It seems crazy to me that you want to house rule a splotter game after one play. They're kinda renowned for being games that reward knowing how to play them, and players having to play well or get absolutely stomped.
It's been a while since I played ... Can you remind us how the marketing priority works? It seems crazy to me that you want to house rule a splotter game after one play. They're kinda renowned for being games that reward knowing how to play them, and players having to play well or get absolutely stomped.
The deeper items in the marketing tree dump demand on greater sections of the board, but also target the houses first. So if you raced for radio:
Hire a trainer
Hire a mgmt trainee and promote to jr. VP
Hire a recruiting girl and promote JVP to a VP.
Hire a kitchen trainee, promote VP to Guru, hire a mgmt trainee.
Hire a marketing trainee, Guru to a brand director. Promote KT to burger cook (unless burger or pizza milestone still out, then take it and promote to a chef)
Turn 6 you put out a double radio in the middle of the board for burgers, and for the rest of the game 2/3 of all demand on 9 tiles is burgers. If you hire another brand director, you can move that to 3/3, and 4/5 of gardens. That isn't imbalanced in the sense that it's too good, but it's poor fun management, or so it seemed. I'd flip it so that other things can act first and the demand isn't frozen in that way.
I am quick to houserule in general (we houserule all once-public info to be permanently public on all games even when we first play them) and don't often defer to the original rules until I'm sure. I'm especially unwilling to do that for long games. I don't know exactly what a splotter game is, but I suspect I just hate the genre, unless they're short or I can resign once I've screwed up and am now doomed to a stomping. I'm open to heavy games in that I don't mind longer games or complicated mechanics and rules explanations per se, but I'm a visiting dignitary from the land of lighter fare and culturally offended by these "you lost but you have to keep playing for a long time" customs.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited March 2019
Introducing players who’ve never played FCM before by dropping radio towers on them seems a bit... dickish.
There are plenty of plays against that strategy but if no one knows what’s coming they are absolutely not gonna have any fun.
Introducing players who’ve never played FCM before by dropping radio towers on them seems a bit... dickish.
There are plenty of plays against that strategy but if no one knows what’s coming they are absolutely not gonna have any fun.
Yeah maybe this is the X factor! We did not get any training wheels at all so maybe I am not at the expected mechanics level after one game. Certainly if the experts (people who had played once before) didn't rush Gurus and fight each other hard, we wouldn't have been so thoroughly hosed for so long. Possibly if they'd warned us they could have had their fun without ruining ours, but I don't understand the metagame enough to see how. If I were to play 5p again I would expect literally everyone to train second turn and get the free salary. The game's too slow and the competing bonuses too weak for any other first turn to make sense to me.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Splotter games are just games published by Splotter. While most are long and heavy, not all are (Bus is actually quite short, easily being with an hour, and The Great Zimbabwe can also swing hard into early wins if people don't understand what other people are doing), but they do universally share traits of: pretty limited actions, some very-opaque-but-really-good-flow-once-you-play-a-bit core gameplay, and a general lack of compensation or catch-up mechanics. The first page of the rulebook for Antiquity says new players should play without pollution because there's a very good chance you'd all wind up in permanent decline and nobody could win.
Which is all to say they're not the most beginner friendly and take numerous plays to piece together how things tend to click in very subtle ways. I played Bus for the first time last month, and one of my friends (a guy much smarter than myself) finished the game with 0 points, no expansion to his route, and a full third of his action cubes unplayed. It's not hard to play a Splotter game really badly the first few times.
Played food chain magnate at 5. First time playing and it was pretty not-fun? I went for a fast strategy and so did two other people, but I was the only one chucking a hundred into the reserve! Two people went for a first turn trainer and got the -$20 to salaries, which they used to hire Gurus and a whole HR empire before they made any money, which was both thematically strange and irritating to try to play against since none of their moves affected anything for 4 turns or so. Plus, obviously, upon the bank breaking I knew I'd lost but there were hours left to go.
Eternal marketing seemed a much worse milestone than I anticipated, since radio towers hit most of the board with low priority. By midgame almost no demand could happen via other mechanisms.
Combine it with the increase in downtime and I think maybe it just plays badly at 5.
Overall it seems like an 18xx but lighter?
FCM is arguably not the best at 5, but I've heard only horror stories about the new-player experience at that count. But that being said, I've had pretty good success with new players, even people new to longer boardgames, at 2 and 3 players. It's a weird game that way.
That is crazy to me. I can't imagine the HR empire strategy losing against new players, and it seemed like something people new to boardgaming might see as cheater bullshit. I didn't mind it too much, but it and double radio effectiveness made the game seem very unforgiving. I'm already ready to houserule marketing priority reversal. The first radio tower locks up the game unpleasantly.
One of my favorite parts of FCM is the crazy shenanigans you can pull off with the right Milestones. But the unpredictable game length (and by extension having people functionally out of the game for over an hour) is a problem for newbies, no question.
In general I'm loath to houserule a game "in the details", but for FCM I don't mind a bit of "high-level" adjustment, so I'm really stingy about including the $300 Reserve cards. After some experience with them, I treat them as the "advanced game" that can be included only if everybody has played the game a couple times, AND if everybody is prepared for a game that runs long. I actually have a couple of other games that I chop off a round or two, until everybody is quite familiar with the game, for similar reasons.
Personally, I think that one issue with FCM is that Splotter seems to be very concerned to convince you that this is a "serious game for serious gamers". The marketing material is full of that kind of language. I appreciate and even enjoy their idiosyncratic vision for games, but it definitely keeps new/casual gamers away unnecessarily. Even the SU&SD guys remarked that FCM was "much less heavy than we were led to believe", and easier to learn than similar-length games, considering complexity and/or difficulty in learning it. There's even a fairly strong consensus around the new-player experience, that rather than removing the Milestone cards (as the rulebook suggests), the game runs more enjoyably and smoothly with SOME kind of limit on the amount of money in the bank (such as my Reserve card suggestion, but other solutions exist). Or shoot, even discouraging a 5-player game with new players would be a good move. I think Splotter could do more to smooth out the early experience with the game.
It's still one of my favorite recent games, and I've found a way to introduce it and play it in such a way that people want to play it again, but obviously take this with a grain of salt. Opinions are opinions.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Splotter games are just games published by Splotter. While most are long and heavy, not all are (Bus is actually quite short, easily being with an hour, and The Great Zimbabwe can also swing hard into early wins if people don't understand what other people are doing), but they do universally share traits of: pretty limited actions, some very-opaque-but-really-good-flow-once-you-play-a-bit core gameplay, and a general lack of compensation or catch-up mechanics. The first page of the rulebook for Antiquity says new players should play without pollution because there's a very good chance you'd all wind up in permanent decline and nobody could win.
Which is all to say they're not the most beginner friendly and take numerous plays to piece together how things tend to click in very subtle ways. I played Bus for the first time last month, and one of my friends (a guy much smarter than myself) finished the game with 0 points, no expansion to his route, and a full third of his action cubes unplayed. It's not hard to play a Splotter game really badly the first few times.
I really like chaos but when I learned it I was playing with an experienced group and I lost at least ten times in a row
When I hate on Root I'm only about 10% sure it's any worse than this other game I love in any of the ways I'm hating on it for.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
We removed $300 partway through, so we had $900 for five players. It was still long enough that turn 2 train seemed mandatory, but I'm not sure that's a problem if you either don't play with 5 and new people or you just tell everyone to take that first turn and why.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
We removed $300 partway through, so we had $900 for five players. It was still long enough that turn 2 train seemed mandatory, but I'm not sure that's a problem if you either don't play with 5 and new people or you just tell everyone to take that first turn and why.
Holy cow! So $1200 originally, is that right? You said you had put in $100, which means the ONLY possibility is that the others put in 3 $300 and 1 $200 reserve cards.
Welcome to Food Chain Magnate, noob!
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
We removed $300 partway through, so we had $900 for five players. It was still long enough that turn 2 train seemed mandatory, but I'm not sure that's a problem if you either don't play with 5 and new people or you just tell everyone to take that first turn and why.
Holy cow! So $1200 originally, is that right? You said you had put in $100, which means the ONLY possibility is that the others put in 3 $300 and 1 $200 reserve cards.
Welcome to Food Chain Magnate, noob!
2 of them were new! They decided randomly to put in $200 and $300 and then tried to compete with me for early dosh!
I thought about it and was like hmmm a fast game seems good for my first time and then WHOOPS EVERYBODY DISAGREED
:mad:
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
The first time I played it with 4 other new players, that was also what happened, and I remember when the cards were revealed I looked up and said, "Guys, I wanted to finish playing this game tonight ..."
Mercifully, we were saved when the power went out and had to pack it in. :P
jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
edited March 2019
Ugh, it's really a shame. Because of the nature of FCM, it's likely that people are playing their first game at some kind of monthly game meetup, or even at a convention, with strangers, perhaps experienced strangers, at a full player count. But at 3 players, for example, with people you know well enough to trash talk or threaten, who won't get their feelings easily hurt, it's just SO much fun, and easily fits into an evening play session.
I might have mentioned this before, but I've introduced FCM as "Tigris & Euphrates turned up to 11", with all that that implies.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I really disliked both T&E and Kemet. I'm much more on board with FCM so far.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
First sentence I want to fite u, but second sentence we r frends agan.
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Thanks for the input, all - I've decided I'll hop into the Root kickstarter and get the most recent print of the base game and the additional bot rules they are formalizing based on a BGG variant.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I really disliked both T&E and Kemet. I'm much more on board with FCM so far.
I'm surprised by both of those dislikes
Your board game preferences seem randomized
Or do you just hate antiquity as a concept
man when I tried Kemet it was new! I'm just more concerned with managing fun across the time of a board game night than mercilessly proving my intellect superior to those of the poor souls i duped into spending time with me. I assume your favorite game is Go, you draft-hating, theme-ignoring automaton?!?
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I highly recommend it but I don't think I can recommend dropping $150 without any first-hand experience, because it's a divisive game. Though if you're comfortable selling boardgames I'd expect it to hold its value reasonably well.
With experienced players it plays quickly and the balance between factions is usually close enough that things are exciting.
It's only real problem is that the ending can often feel anti-climatic with the Vagabond just scoring 8 points from combat that people can't really stop. Though I've certainly had more dramatic end games as well.
Is that with the amended scoring rules for Vagabond?
Root is 10000x easier to get to the table than Vast. Playing root was what got me to sell my copy of Vast. There is no excuse to have rules like that these days.
Where they only score points if they start the fight? Yeah.
Three/four sword Vagabonds are still explosive in ways that are very hard to deal with.
*I'd be interested in trying Vast if they did make it more approachable.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Not much down time between turns, the faster nature of the Viticulture turns filling up the space with the longer Power Grid turns. Auctions were fun, bids often yelled out while doing other things.
Power Grid finished after 1:14 with Purple being the winner. Green misplayed the penultimate turn, meaning that purple had better power generation, and more cities. Focus shifted to Viticulture, with most players being over 10 vp. In the last round green misplayed again, choosing the bonus harvest instead of the bonus winter harvest. Purple and Orange on 20 VP, but purple won the tie-break.
We played both games in the time it normally takes us to do one. The general vibe was to act quickly so as not to hold up the games, so AP didn't end up being a problem.
Was great fun, but probably something we only do on the longer games day. There is currently some crown shopping going on as Purple won both games. Sadly, purple was not me.
https://therewillbe.games/news-new-and-upcoming-games/6530-sneak-peek-of-official-reprint-of-dune-from-gale-force-nine
Eternal marketing seemed a much worse milestone than I anticipated, since radio towers hit most of the board with low priority. By midgame almost no demand could happen via other mechanisms.
Combine it with the increase in downtime and I think maybe it just plays badly at 5.
Overall it seems like an 18xx but lighter?
It's odd that this was directly denied when the license was picked up. The contract must not have been in place then
And it sounds like FFG are going to be doing a new version of Forbidden Suns. Place bets now on whether it's in the Twilight Imperium or Android setting
I'd say the Twilight Imperium setting seems like an easier fit.
I'm not sure they'd go for the obvious choice as it might be too close to standard TI. Android would be an easy reskin to a hacking game
Btw do you have a source for the news (rumour?). I've thought about picking up Forbidden Stars so I'm pretty curious about this.
I think the racing around for objectives fits hacking super well. It would take more convoluted adaptation to do the asteroid belt thing. Mostly around the warp storms and the ground/air split. It's not impossible but it seems clumsy.
A lot of it depends on whether it's a simple reskin or if they are using some of the central mechanics (order stacks, combat, etc.) to do something else. I'd assumed it would be a reskin.
It was mentioned on the latest Heavy Cardboard but without a source.
For a simpler re-skin though I'm still like 90% on Twilight Imperium setting. Orks to Sardakk'Norr, Ultramarines to Terrans. Chaos maybe Yin Brotherhood for the cultist/conversion themes? Don't know which TI race would be the most Eldar-like.
Ghosts are a decent fit for Eldar.
Ultramarines might work better as Xxcha given their whole gimmick is being indestructible.
There's no obvious Hacan, which is a problem as they are the recognisable race.
FCM is arguably not the best at 5, but I've heard only horror stories about the new-player experience at that count. But that being said, I've had pretty good success with new players, even people new to longer boardgames, at 2 and 3 players. It's a weird game that way.
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That is crazy to me. I can't imagine the HR empire strategy losing against new players, and it seemed like something people new to boardgaming might see as cheater bullshit. I didn't mind it too much, but it and double radio effectiveness made the game seem very unforgiving. I'm already ready to houserule marketing priority reversal. The first radio tower locks up the game unpleasantly.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
The deeper items in the marketing tree dump demand on greater sections of the board, but also target the houses first. So if you raced for radio:
Hire a trainer
Hire a mgmt trainee and promote to jr. VP
Hire a recruiting girl and promote JVP to a VP.
Hire a kitchen trainee, promote VP to Guru, hire a mgmt trainee.
Hire a marketing trainee, Guru to a brand director. Promote KT to burger cook (unless burger or pizza milestone still out, then take it and promote to a chef)
Turn 6 you put out a double radio in the middle of the board for burgers, and for the rest of the game 2/3 of all demand on 9 tiles is burgers. If you hire another brand director, you can move that to 3/3, and 4/5 of gardens. That isn't imbalanced in the sense that it's too good, but it's poor fun management, or so it seemed. I'd flip it so that other things can act first and the demand isn't frozen in that way.
I am quick to houserule in general (we houserule all once-public info to be permanently public on all games even when we first play them) and don't often defer to the original rules until I'm sure. I'm especially unwilling to do that for long games. I don't know exactly what a splotter game is, but I suspect I just hate the genre, unless they're short or I can resign once I've screwed up and am now doomed to a stomping. I'm open to heavy games in that I don't mind longer games or complicated mechanics and rules explanations per se, but I'm a visiting dignitary from the land of lighter fare and culturally offended by these "you lost but you have to keep playing for a long time" customs.
There are plenty of plays against that strategy but if no one knows what’s coming they are absolutely not gonna have any fun.
Yeah maybe this is the X factor! We did not get any training wheels at all so maybe I am not at the expected mechanics level after one game. Certainly if the experts (people who had played once before) didn't rush Gurus and fight each other hard, we wouldn't have been so thoroughly hosed for so long. Possibly if they'd warned us they could have had their fun without ruining ours, but I don't understand the metagame enough to see how. If I were to play 5p again I would expect literally everyone to train second turn and get the free salary. The game's too slow and the competing bonuses too weak for any other first turn to make sense to me.
Which is all to say they're not the most beginner friendly and take numerous plays to piece together how things tend to click in very subtle ways. I played Bus for the first time last month, and one of my friends (a guy much smarter than myself) finished the game with 0 points, no expansion to his route, and a full third of his action cubes unplayed. It's not hard to play a Splotter game really badly the first few times.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
One of my favorite parts of FCM is the crazy shenanigans you can pull off with the right Milestones. But the unpredictable game length (and by extension having people functionally out of the game for over an hour) is a problem for newbies, no question.
In general I'm loath to houserule a game "in the details", but for FCM I don't mind a bit of "high-level" adjustment, so I'm really stingy about including the $300 Reserve cards. After some experience with them, I treat them as the "advanced game" that can be included only if everybody has played the game a couple times, AND if everybody is prepared for a game that runs long. I actually have a couple of other games that I chop off a round or two, until everybody is quite familiar with the game, for similar reasons.
Personally, I think that one issue with FCM is that Splotter seems to be very concerned to convince you that this is a "serious game for serious gamers". The marketing material is full of that kind of language. I appreciate and even enjoy their idiosyncratic vision for games, but it definitely keeps new/casual gamers away unnecessarily. Even the SU&SD guys remarked that FCM was "much less heavy than we were led to believe", and easier to learn than similar-length games, considering complexity and/or difficulty in learning it. There's even a fairly strong consensus around the new-player experience, that rather than removing the Milestone cards (as the rulebook suggests), the game runs more enjoyably and smoothly with SOME kind of limit on the amount of money in the bank (such as my Reserve card suggestion, but other solutions exist). Or shoot, even discouraging a 5-player game with new players would be a good move. I think Splotter could do more to smooth out the early experience with the game.
It's still one of my favorite recent games, and I've found a way to introduce it and play it in such a way that people want to play it again, but obviously take this with a grain of salt. Opinions are opinions.
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I really like chaos but when I learned it I was playing with an experienced group and I lost at least ten times in a row
When I hate on Root I'm only about 10% sure it's any worse than this other game I love in any of the ways I'm hating on it for.
Holy cow! So $1200 originally, is that right? You said you had put in $100, which means the ONLY possibility is that the others put in 3 $300 and 1 $200 reserve cards.
Welcome to Food Chain Magnate, noob!
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2 of them were new! They decided randomly to put in $200 and $300 and then tried to compete with me for early dosh!
I thought about it and was like hmmm a fast game seems good for my first time and then WHOOPS EVERYBODY DISAGREED
:mad:
Mercifully, we were saved when the power went out and had to pack it in. :P
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I might have mentioned this before, but I've introduced FCM as "Tigris & Euphrates turned up to 11", with all that that implies.
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Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
I'm surprised by both of those dislikes
Your board game preferences seem randomized
Or do you just hate antiquity as a concept
man when I tried Kemet it was new! I'm just more concerned with managing fun across the time of a board game night than mercilessly proving my intellect superior to those of the poor souls i duped into spending time with me. I assume your favorite game is Go, you draft-hating, theme-ignoring automaton?!?