Some of those War of Whisper points are fair enough personal preferences (I like big powerful card effects and am happy being surprised by them as I know it will go both ways) and the readability of the icons on the map is indeed drek, but I have a few mechanical rebuttals:
- Yes you can swap loyalties, but it has to be a 1 for 1 swap so you can rarely craft the exact order you want. If you want to move your 4th place loyalty deal into 1st place, you have to move your 1st place loyalty deal into 4th place, and then it is locked there. Plus tiebreakers go to least loyalty swaps, so the player who got the world as per their original plan will beat the player who switched up their loyalties to match how things are turning out. Plus swapping exposes your intentions. Plus, plus, plus with 5 loyalties and the need for 1 for 1 swaps, one of your loyalties has to remain unchanged.
- Cards be powerful, but drawing them comes at the cost of reinforcing leaving that colour open to being invaded. Cards are no good without armies to back them up. I found you really only want to draw cards from factions you want to lose, syphoning their resources to other factions.
- Yellow faction starts with a whole bunch of cities, and less attack actions means more raising armies. They're meant to be the turtlers of the asymmetric factions.
- An empty space belongs to its board colour so yes the forts still work and you'd need two armies to invade.
- Those card backs are clearly green, red and yellow to me from colour palette?
None of which changes the massive selling points to me of really easy to teach, really quick to play, and nobody gets their faction stomped down to insignificance early on but is forced to stay in the game.
I hadn't played with the agents as cities option, but I can see your issue with it. Though I will say, with the cards nowhere is really safe.
Staaaahp I don't need more games
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
I'm a bit behind. My copy of Concordia finally came into the FLGS. They got me for 69$ which seems crazy to me, but my store credit makes me a captive audience. Oh well its been between printings for months so feels good to finally get a copy. Why did they decide to make the box this weird size though? Its the longest thinnest box I have, longer than Inis and El Grande.
After hearing a lot of good things here, I finally got to play Parks. In Parks you walk down a randomized trail 4 times with 2 hikers per player. You can go as far as you want but you can not move backwards. Being the first to reach most spaces gives you a bonus resource. Stopping on the same spot as another player forces you to use your campfire. In order to stop on the same spot as another player again you need to advance one of your hikers to the end of the trail. When all but one hikers have reached the end of the trail, the slowpoke must advance to the end of the trail with their next move. So if you go slow you can get more turns in, but if you go too slow you can lose your actions.
You are collecting resource tokens and using them to reserve or travel to parks, which are cards with gorgeous art that reward victory points. At the start of the game you pick a bonus like in Wingspan or several other games. So you are collecting resources to spend on parks and you may also buy equipment to help you get the parks by giving discounts, converting to wilds or other such things. After everyone's hikers finish the trail the tiles are randomized with a new one added. Then the next season begins. The game goes for one year or four seasons/walks.
I have to say the components are all beautiful wooden tokens, water, mountain, forest, sun, and wild. Wilds are wild animals in a variety of shapes.
I love hiking and board gaming, a board game about hiking seems like something I should like. And... it is. It is a light game, but its hard to imagine disliking it. If you are looking for a game to play with someone who is newer to the hobby you could do much worse.
Also played World's Fair 1893. This is a set collection game. You take turns picking up all the cards that are randomly dealt in one of the sections of the board. While you do this you drop a supporter on that area. If you have the most tickets during scoring and a card for that area, you exchange up to 3 exhibit cards for tokens. These tokens are the sets you are collecting to get large points at game end.
The cards are tickets which give you a VP and advance the game towards end of round scoring, there are exhibit cards which you need to change into tokens to win, and there are fancy people who let you place or move more supporters.
At the end of every scoring round everyone loses half of all their supporters on each section rounded down. So you want to have an odd number of supporters. You want to get tickets for VP, exhibits to trade for chips, and people to take the lead in an area to get tokens. The trick is that when you remove all cards from an area, it takes a few turns to fill back up. So you need to balance getting a lot of cards with getting your supporters where you need them. I only played it once but it seemed very hard to stop a runaway leader. We all identified the likely winner before the last round but could not catch up or stop them.
There is an expansion and spinoff for PARKS currently on Kickstarter if you need to get the last few National Parks that didn’t make it into the base game.
- Those card backs are clearly green, red and yellow to me from colour palette?
The elephant one was mistaken as blue by several people. The ground is more green, but the background is more blue. IF you put it side by side with the actual blue cards it's obvious, but when looking across the table at other player's hands? It would have been SO easy to make it more obvious.
The lion and horse cards in particular kept throwing people. Both are icons with pale yellow and brown. The lion card backs could be either pale yellow or brown. The horse empire having a guy riding a horse is not obvious because everyone is riding a horse in ancient warfare settings. The colors for the flag do not match the color of the emblems on the card back. The eagle on the flag is black, but on the soldier's chest it's gold. The lion on the flag is brown surrounded by pale yellow, but on the card it's pale yellow surrounded by brown. The horse flag is (nearly) pale yellow surrounded by brown.
I guess it wouldn't be much of an issue with a bunch of experienced players, but trying to teach this over the course of 3 games was a never ending stream of "What?", "Which is that again?", "THAT'S the brown/yellow card and not the other?", "Oh SHIT I thought this was the other color! There goes my plan."
Again, it would have been so easy to fix (just stick the same icons on the front to the back as well), and I can't believe the problem never came up in testing. It's obviously one of those cases where testing is only done by a core group of people who've played it dozens or hundreds of times, and not once did they ever bring in a fresh set of players to see how it comes across to new people.
(and this was coming from people with no color blindness issues. God help anyone who has even the slightest trouble distinguishing some colors)
Someone brought this out during one meetup. One girl hated it so much she had to ask, "We're not going to play World's Fair again, are we?" before accepting any future invite.
The same guy tried to bring out World's Fair again a month later. I could see her tense up, and I quickly stepped in to cast the deciding vote for something else (which didn't count as white knighting because dear lord I didn't want to play it again either). She was SO relieved we didn't have to play it again, that after the meetup she ran up and walked me to the T station. We ended up going on a date!
- Cards be powerful, but drawing them comes at the cost of reinforcing leaving that colour open to being invaded. Cards are no good without armies to back them up. I found you really only want to draw cards from factions you want to lose, syphoning their resources to other factions.
Plenty of cards are good without armies to back them up. Several of them create armies out of nothing. Several more deal solely with eliminating or disrupting enemy armies out of nothing. In fact I would say only 1/4th of them deal with attacks that you need pre-existing armies for.
Often the cards are far more useful than the other action you give up. Both in terms of flexibility and raw military power. Even when the raw power is less, the flexibility more than makes up for it. In fact, the players who stuck to recruiting armies conventionally came across as suckers because the players who focused on cards would just capitalize on the their work of getting armies on the board.
Someone brought this out during one meetup. One girl hated it so much she had to ask, "We're not going to play World's Fair again, are we?" before accepting any future invite.
My wife absolutely loves World's Fair 1893. I don't get her love for it. We have much better set collection games, with better art, and better themes. My son will play most of her other favorite games (Tokaido, Tokenoko, Pandemic, Mysterium, etc), but when she pulls out World's Fair he disappears.
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Someone brought this out during one meetup. One girl hated it so much she had to ask, "We're not going to play World's Fair again, are we?" before accepting any future invite.
My wife absolutely loves World's Fair 1893. I don't get her love for it. We have much better set collection games, with better art, and better themes. My son will play most of her other favorite games (Tokaido, Tokenoko, Pandemic, Mysterium, etc), but when she pulls out World's Fair he disappears.
Oh, my mistake. It was 1893 that was so bad it got me a date!
(I think I broke the ice with some kind of observation that the green card symbol looked a little like something else)
MrBody on
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Yeah I realized eventually that I typoed
Can’t imagine there is more than one version of that game.
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
It seems pretty hard to be reliant on others to really push your gameplan.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
The otters are definitely not the easiest, but I like playing them. What I've found effective is always watching everyone else's board state, so you know both what deal would be worth it for them at the start of the turn. Also manipulating things where possible so they have to make deals, like having them hire you out for a high price so they can make the moves they want to make. Birds are good 'customers' for this.
Just always be selling, every turn. Of course, it gets hard again when you have one of those turns that remind everyone what you can do with all the purchases they've made
Oh, come and shake me 'till I'm dry
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
It seems pretty hard to be reliant on others to really push your gameplan.
The secret is that all the factions are reliant on others, the Otters are just one of the few that can be actively helped.
Usually I'd play the Riverfolk as a lot more... conniving. I could suggest ways you could use my cards or services to make your actions more efficient or get a big advantage you didn't see, but with a new player it's difficult to do that without exploiting the experience power gap, so I just went with the blanket "I have these things you could use for X."
CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Just got my Root expansion delivery! Turns out I accidentally ordered 2 of the upgrade kits. Does anyone have base Root and is looking for an upgrade pack?
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
It seems pretty hard to be reliant on others to really push your gameplan.
See: Reasons why the lizard cult is brutally ineffective in any game where players aren't ALL ABOUT THAT WHEEL AND DEAL. :P
I got an invite from @admanb to play Root yesterday for the first time. He and his friends explained the game and I decided the Cats were the faction I’d start with.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
It seems pretty hard to be reliant on others to really push your gameplan.
See: Reasons why the lizard cult is brutally ineffective in any game where players aren't ALL ABOUT THAT WHEEL AND DEAL. :P
Yep. Much like the Vagabond is rough because it relies on immediate, selfless aggressive behavior, the Lizard Cult is rough because it relies on immediate, selfless charitable behavior.
I bought King's Dilemma halfway through the SUSD review
I have wanted a legacy political game for YEARS fuckin give it to me
If I could get a consistent group together of the same people every week I would too. Man it sounds so good. My wife overhearing the review said hey that sounds like crusader kings II the boardgame, you should get it.
I have Labyrinth: The War on Terror and A Distant Plain. I am not allowed to play labyrinth anymore because I do screwy things like making Iran my best friend or starting insurgencies in Africa or south east Asia
In distant in one game I both tricked and outmaneuvered both the Taliban and Afghan government. So my brother declared it will only be played with new people
I bought The Cave board game because of the SUSD review.
ordered Viticulture and its expansion after the thread gave me some recommendations was excited to sit down and play it at our game night tonight and...
Almost Everyone flaked!
Fortunately, I snagged a KeyForge 2 player starter on sale at target for $12. The “new” set is pretty neat! The Saurians have lots of cool little mechanics that make them feel very combo-ey in a way Mars never could.
I think this Richard Garfield guy is going places!
King's Dilemma seems like my jam but i just dont have the group for it 😢.
100%. Plenty of groups who’d have a fun night with it. But getting a consistent 4 or 5 players to regularly stick to one game for the length of time this seems to need? Doomed to disappointment.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I think this is why Pandemic Legacy did so well as that kind of game. It was pretty flexible to player count.
25 hours of the same 4/5 people is tough going. Luckily I have two kids and they just need to learn to read now.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Just got my Root expansion delivery! Turns out I accidentally ordered 2 of the upgrade kits. Does anyone have base Root and is looking for an upgrade pack?
I think I already ordered the upgrade pack but I don't remember. I'm still waiting for the expansion to arrive, but I'll let you know!
Just got my Root expansion delivery! Turns out I accidentally ordered 2 of the upgrade kits. Does anyone have base Root and is looking for an upgrade pack?
@CaptainPeacock I have the original Root and the Riverfolk expansion. What's in the upgrade pack?
I wonder how playable King’s Dilema is as an online/forum game. I thought about getting it when The Dice Tower reviewed it, but I’ve had a hard enough time getting my online DnD group together that I didn’t feel like wrangling cats for another game.
Just got my Root expansion delivery! Turns out I accidentally ordered 2 of the upgrade kits. Does anyone have base Root and is looking for an upgrade pack?
@CaptainPeacock I have the original Root and the Riverfolk expansion. What's in the upgrade pack?
It’s mostly the errata that came out a while back. Both on the boards and the rule book. I had printed it and glued on on my old boards so the new boards look much nicer. I think they might also be better quality? They also changes to rounded corners. Upgrade should be the 6 boards for the original factions plus the new rule book.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
The update pack also has boards for the Riverfolk Expansion factions. Not sure what was updated on those.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Someone I know heard I had a bunch of Exit games (that I didn't destroy). He contacted me that he's getting his girlfriend and some people together today and wants me to bring one down.
"She loves murder mysteries. The Orient Express one has that, right?"
"That's right."
"And that's the one with the big pouches holding more stuff?"
"Yes...but isn't today Valentine's Day?"
"Right, I need something to hide the ring in until the last puzzle"
Someone I know heard I had a bunch of Exit games (that I didn't destroy). He contacted me that he's getting his girlfriend and some people together today and wants me to bring one down.
"She loves murder mysteries. The Orient Express one has that, right?"
"That's right."
"And that's the one with the big pouches holding more stuff?"
"Yes...but isn't today Valentine's Day?"
"Right, I need something to hide the ring in until the last puzzle"
Just got my Root expansion delivery! Turns out I accidentally ordered 2 of the upgrade kits. Does anyone have base Root and is looking for an upgrade pack?
@CaptainPeacock has anyone claimed the upgrade pack? I definitely don't have one and would love it
Although I assume I could print out the errata as well from somewhere
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Not claimed yet. Are you in the Seattle area?
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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BigPointyTeethrun away! run away!MinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I won my first game in well over a year with my gaming group when we played Root and I pulled out a win as the Vagabond just before the cats or crows could claim victory. I then paid the price for my victory by having my appendix malfunction. Still worth it.
And now my local shop has their own little cafe up and running. I've been looking forward to this since I've chatted them up before and their family was into catering before they decided to open up a gaming shop.
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
Played Dogs of War again tonight, first time in a while. We haven't played it that much but it felt like a game where everybody had some idea of what was going on, enough that there were more deals and negotiation than we've seen before.
Apart from me still being really crap at the game (as I am at anything similar with this particular kind of. . .area control auction??) a big takeaway was that Stormcrow's special ability seems far weaker than the other ones. Lady Macbeth's has seemed OP but this game backfired because everybody constantly tried to be on the other side of battles from the Lady Macbeth player. Consistent and conscious metagame is a kind of balancing I guess? As a fan of eg. CiTOW I guess I can't be too dismissive of that idea.
But anyway, is Stormcrow really as bad as it seems? Am I overvaluing the character abilities? How can I become even just ok at this kind of game, apart from being psychic and/or counting cards.
Played Dogs of War again tonight, first time in a while. We haven't played it that much but it felt like a game where everybody had some idea of what was going on, enough that there were more deals and negotiation than we've seen before.
Apart from me still being really crap at the game (as I am at anything similar with this particular kind of. . .area control auction??) a big takeaway was that Stormcrow's special ability seems far weaker than the other ones. Lady Macbeth's has seemed OP but this game backfired because everybody constantly tried to be on the other side of battles from the Lady Macbeth player. Consistent and conscious metagame is a kind of balancing I guess? As a fan of eg. CiTOW I guess I can't be too dismissive of that idea.
But anyway, is Stormcrow really as bad as it seems? Am I overvaluing the character abilities? How can I become even just ok at this kind of game, apart from being psychic and/or counting cards.
which is the stormcrow benefit? Tiebreaking? We've found that one to be pretty strong. I vaguely think we find the dollar for winning and the card for winning to be the weak ones. I don't remember our take on free retreats
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Staaaahp I don't need more games
After hearing a lot of good things here, I finally got to play Parks. In Parks you walk down a randomized trail 4 times with 2 hikers per player. You can go as far as you want but you can not move backwards. Being the first to reach most spaces gives you a bonus resource. Stopping on the same spot as another player forces you to use your campfire. In order to stop on the same spot as another player again you need to advance one of your hikers to the end of the trail. When all but one hikers have reached the end of the trail, the slowpoke must advance to the end of the trail with their next move. So if you go slow you can get more turns in, but if you go too slow you can lose your actions.
You are collecting resource tokens and using them to reserve or travel to parks, which are cards with gorgeous art that reward victory points. At the start of the game you pick a bonus like in Wingspan or several other games. So you are collecting resources to spend on parks and you may also buy equipment to help you get the parks by giving discounts, converting to wilds or other such things. After everyone's hikers finish the trail the tiles are randomized with a new one added. Then the next season begins. The game goes for one year or four seasons/walks.
I have to say the components are all beautiful wooden tokens, water, mountain, forest, sun, and wild. Wilds are wild animals in a variety of shapes.
I love hiking and board gaming, a board game about hiking seems like something I should like. And... it is. It is a light game, but its hard to imagine disliking it. If you are looking for a game to play with someone who is newer to the hobby you could do much worse.
Also played World's Fair 1893. This is a set collection game. You take turns picking up all the cards that are randomly dealt in one of the sections of the board. While you do this you drop a supporter on that area. If you have the most tickets during scoring and a card for that area, you exchange up to 3 exhibit cards for tokens. These tokens are the sets you are collecting to get large points at game end.
The cards are tickets which give you a VP and advance the game towards end of round scoring, there are exhibit cards which you need to change into tokens to win, and there are fancy people who let you place or move more supporters.
At the end of every scoring round everyone loses half of all their supporters on each section rounded down. So you want to have an odd number of supporters. You want to get tickets for VP, exhibits to trade for chips, and people to take the lead in an area to get tokens. The trick is that when you remove all cards from an area, it takes a few turns to fill back up. So you need to balance getting a lot of cards with getting your supporters where you need them. I only played it once but it seemed very hard to stop a runaway leader. We all identified the likely winner before the last round but could not catch up or stop them.
The elephant one was mistaken as blue by several people. The ground is more green, but the background is more blue. IF you put it side by side with the actual blue cards it's obvious, but when looking across the table at other player's hands? It would have been SO easy to make it more obvious.
The lion and horse cards in particular kept throwing people. Both are icons with pale yellow and brown. The lion card backs could be either pale yellow or brown. The horse empire having a guy riding a horse is not obvious because everyone is riding a horse in ancient warfare settings. The colors for the flag do not match the color of the emblems on the card back. The eagle on the flag is black, but on the soldier's chest it's gold. The lion on the flag is brown surrounded by pale yellow, but on the card it's pale yellow surrounded by brown. The horse flag is (nearly) pale yellow surrounded by brown.
I guess it wouldn't be much of an issue with a bunch of experienced players, but trying to teach this over the course of 3 games was a never ending stream of "What?", "Which is that again?", "THAT'S the brown/yellow card and not the other?", "Oh SHIT I thought this was the other color! There goes my plan."
Again, it would have been so easy to fix (just stick the same icons on the front to the back as well), and I can't believe the problem never came up in testing. It's obviously one of those cases where testing is only done by a core group of people who've played it dozens or hundreds of times, and not once did they ever bring in a fresh set of players to see how it comes across to new people.
(and this was coming from people with no color blindness issues. God help anyone who has even the slightest trouble distinguishing some colors)
Someone brought this out during one meetup. One girl hated it so much she had to ask, "We're not going to play World's Fair again, are we?" before accepting any future invite.
The same guy tried to bring out World's Fair again a month later. I could see her tense up, and I quickly stepped in to cast the deciding vote for something else (which didn't count as white knighting because dear lord I didn't want to play it again either). She was SO relieved we didn't have to play it again, that after the meetup she ran up and walked me to the T station. We ended up going on a date!
So, uhhh.....thanks, World's Fair?
Plenty of cards are good without armies to back them up. Several of them create armies out of nothing. Several more deal solely with eliminating or disrupting enemy armies out of nothing. In fact I would say only 1/4th of them deal with attacks that you need pre-existing armies for.
Often the cards are far more useful than the other action you give up. Both in terms of flexibility and raw military power. Even when the raw power is less, the flexibility more than makes up for it. In fact, the players who stuck to recruiting armies conventionally came across as suckers because the players who focused on cards would just capitalize on the their work of getting armies on the board.
My wife absolutely loves World's Fair 1893. I don't get her love for it. We have much better set collection games, with better art, and better themes. My son will play most of her other favorite games (Tokaido, Tokenoko, Pandemic, Mysterium, etc), but when she pulls out World's Fair he disappears.
It’s a fascinating game. I love that each faction plays completely different. Of course, that means as a new player, I had no idea what the other factions strengths and weakness were. But that’s to be expected in your first game.
The game actually came down to the wire, with me losing lots of territory and saying screw it I’m going to go for some dominance. I created 3 Warriors and marched everyone to the two corners I controlled, which had 11 in each.
The Woodland Creatures almost won on the next turn, but were 1 action short of the last two points they needed.
The Birds also fell just short of 30, but had the False Orders to move half my Warriors out of one corner. The following battle caused me to lose enough Warriors to relinquish my Rule of the area.
The Otters were too far behind to score 12 points, so the Woodland Creatures won the game.
Pretty cool game. I can see the appeal of replaying it a lot with the different factions. All the mechanics were unique and thematically appropriate.
Overall, great game...not that I have to tell any of you that. If only I had the time to play weekly with a group. Kids and responsibilities always getting in the way of gaming.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Oh, my mistake. It was 1893 that was so bad it got me a date!
(I think I broke the ice with some kind of observation that the green card symbol looked a little like something else)
Can’t imagine there is more than one version of that game.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's the closest I've seen someone come to a Dominance victory, and I think without the False Orders you were probably 60-70% to survive the Birds attacks and stay in control to win. Technically I could've knocked you out at that point, but I had no particular motivation to kingmake in that way. I actually considered spending my turn trying to give you back control of the corner, but I usually go for passive kingmaking unless I have strong motivation otherwise.
You could probably tell from my score that the Otters are rough when no one's really buying anything from them. I think the total of my sales was two cards at 2xwarriors to the Birds, but on two separate turns so I didn't even profit from it; I sold two more cards before my last turn but it was way too late at that point. I don't blame you for not buying anything from me, since you had enough to learn without also trying to track how well I was doing and what you could get out of the purchases. But I was rolling my eyes super hard at the Woodland player for continually warning people not to buy anything, even as I fell further and further behind.
I think I still could've stayed in the game if I hadn't been hit by two ambushes and a brutal 2-2 roll to wipe out my armies when I took it upon myself to slow down you and the Birds. The Riverfolk are a durable faction in a lot of ways, but they can't rebuild an army without income.
It seems pretty hard to be reliant on others to really push your gameplan.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Just always be selling, every turn. Of course, it gets hard again when you have one of those turns that remind everyone what you can do with all the purchases they've made
The secret is that all the factions are reliant on others, the Otters are just one of the few that can be actively helped.
Usually I'd play the Riverfolk as a lot more... conniving. I could suggest ways you could use my cards or services to make your actions more efficient or get a big advantage you didn't see, but with a new player it's difficult to do that without exploiting the experience power gap, so I just went with the blanket "I have these things you could use for X."
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I have wanted a legacy political game for YEARS fuckin give it to me
Yep. Much like the Vagabond is rough because it relies on immediate, selfless aggressive behavior, the Lizard Cult is rough because it relies on immediate, selfless charitable behavior.
If I could get a consistent group together of the same people every week I would too. Man it sounds so good. My wife overhearing the review said hey that sounds like crusader kings II the boardgame, you should get it.
Review in question
In distant in one game I both tricked and outmaneuvered both the Taliban and Afghan government. So my brother declared it will only be played with new people
I bought The Cave board game because of the SUSD review.
Almost Everyone flaked!
Fortunately, I snagged a KeyForge 2 player starter on sale at target for $12. The “new” set is pretty neat! The Saurians have lots of cool little mechanics that make them feel very combo-ey in a way Mars never could.
I think this Richard Garfield guy is going places!
100%. Plenty of groups who’d have a fun night with it. But getting a consistent 4 or 5 players to regularly stick to one game for the length of time this seems to need? Doomed to disappointment.
25 hours of the same 4/5 people is tough going. Luckily I have two kids and they just need to learn to read now.
I think I already ordered the upgrade pack but I don't remember. I'm still waiting for the expansion to arrive, but I'll let you know!
@CaptainPeacock I have the original Root and the Riverfolk expansion. What's in the upgrade pack?
It’s mostly the errata that came out a while back. Both on the boards and the rule book. I had printed it and glued on on my old boards so the new boards look much nicer. I think they might also be better quality? They also changes to rounded corners. Upgrade should be the 6 boards for the original factions plus the new rule book.
"She loves murder mysteries. The Orient Express one has that, right?"
"That's right."
"And that's the one with the big pouches holding more stuff?"
"Yes...but isn't today Valentine's Day?"
"Right, I need something to hide the ring in until the last puzzle"
oooooooh
The Lizards were buffed and I think the Riverfolk were unchanged, just reprinted to round the corners
@CaptainPeacock has anyone claimed the upgrade pack? I definitely don't have one and would love it
Although I assume I could print out the errata as well from somewhere
And now my local shop has their own little cafe up and running. I've been looking forward to this since I've chatted them up before and their family was into catering before they decided to open up a gaming shop.
Apart from me still being really crap at the game (as I am at anything similar with this particular kind of. . .area control auction??) a big takeaway was that Stormcrow's special ability seems far weaker than the other ones. Lady Macbeth's has seemed OP but this game backfired because everybody constantly tried to be on the other side of battles from the Lady Macbeth player. Consistent and conscious metagame is a kind of balancing I guess? As a fan of eg. CiTOW I guess I can't be too dismissive of that idea.
But anyway, is Stormcrow really as bad as it seems? Am I overvaluing the character abilities? How can I become even just ok at this kind of game, apart from being psychic and/or counting cards.
which is the stormcrow benefit? Tiebreaking? We've found that one to be pretty strong. I vaguely think we find the dollar for winning and the card for winning to be the weak ones. I don't remember our take on free retreats
Super not, I'm in Ottawa, Ontario
Probably easier for me to just buy or print it tbh, but thank you