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[Board Games] Cardboard Action at a Distance

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  • JonBobJonBob Registered User regular
    They did a great job with the theme, and it’s a solid co-op. There are lots of good ones out there now, though, and it can’t compete mechanically with, say, any Leacock game. If the theme does nothing for you I’d really hesitate to recommend it.

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  • VyolynceVyolynce Registered User regular
    Played Caverna for the first time in forever last night, with two others who had never played/maybe played once. Scores were tight (66-71-73 IIRC). Game would probably hit the table more often were setup/tear down not a nightmare.

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    AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
  • MrBodyMrBody Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Tried Cataclysm: A Second World War yesterday.
    Well, we “tried” in the sense we parsed the (30 page) rulebook, spent half an hour setting up, and another 90 minutes going through a single turn. This thing is Twilight Imperium level of commitment, where it’s a requirement for everyone to read the rules ahead of time and set aside an entire day (4-10 hours).

    So it’s an economic/diplomatic/war WWII grand strategy game. The twist is that it starts in 1930, when the name of the game is diplomatic developments and the conversion from a peaceful to wartime economy. War production and offensives become easier the higher level of war readiness your economy gets, but you get increasing penalties to internal unrest checks that could lead to the collapse of your government, which you have to offset with more and more effort spent to keeping the propaganda train going. You can even push your economy to a final “exhausted” state which makes costs and offensives even lower, but permanently lowers the maximum size of your military, a last ditch effort as your nation starts throwing cheap designs, synthetic fuels, and child soldiers into the fray.

    So it mostly becomes a tightrope act as the Axis and Russians balance keeping up peaceful pretenses while trying to time when and how often they switch into higher gear. The democracies (US/UK/France) are severely limited in actions until the other players begin turning on the war machine, sort of like the forces of good in War of the Ring. The “baddies” have to decide if ramping up right now is worth the increased alarm from the West (Japan even starts off receiving extra production from U.S. scrap metal & oil shipments which get cut off as they become aggressive).

    I could see this being a very interesting system, but good god does it demand commitment. It is NOT simple or intuitive (like Twilight Imperium 4ed. quickly becomes). It’s one of those games where one person is constantly asking “what’s the rule for…” while another flips through the 30 page rules trying to find the answer. It makes a lot of design fumbles for ease of play like no well designed individual player aid sheets (there are some, but they’re very hard to understand unless you already know the rules). The worst is that several essential to know nation conditions are all kept track of on a single separate sheet, not on your own. Want to know your own nation’s stability level? Alliances? THE CURRENT TURN? None of this is on your sheet or even on the board. Crane your neck and peer over the table as you squint to find your marker on the small, hard to read spaces of the separate sheet that keeps track of all this.

    There are crazy rules about adjacency, supply lines, special one time historical powers for each nations, FIVE different kinds of attacks and half a dozen die modifiers for each one, and so on. I was getting BAD flashbacks to another horrendously unintuitive WWII game, Hitler’s Reich, trying to make sense of them. It definitely looks better than the mess of HR once you learn it, but the hurdle is just as big, if not bigger.

    On the plus side it’s fairly cheap (chits + paper sheet board) for usually under $50. You do need one damn committed group of 3 (other player variants look lame and tacked on) if you’re going to go at it though.

    MrBody on
  • Ah_PookAh_Pook Registered User regular
    Cataclysm is pretty smooth for a grand strategic WW2 game I think. The counters don't have combat factors on them and the stacking limits are super low, to keep things simple. If you're going to get into a full scale WW2 game this one is real easy. I mean it's definitely relative, but try jumping into World In Flames or something ;)

    Also you should probably start with some smaller 2p scenarios to learn the rules, that's why they exist. Run through Day of Decision (I think that's what the first one is called?) once each with your other two players and you should be ready to roll for the big show.

    Also, I don't understand your complaint about the status board. That stuff needs to be in a central location, it would be a nightmare if it was spread across everyone's player boards.

  • MrBodyMrBody Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    For something that's central, not on the board, and vital to reference from across the table, they could have made it a heck of a lot more readable.

    I'd rather they just double the size of each player sheet to include the full picture for everyone individually than what they went with.

    MrBody on
  • jergarmarjergarmar hollow man crew goes pew pew pewRegistered User regular
    Hey, I'm on the lookout for a recent (i.e. past few years) abstract in the vein of Azul. So I guess quick to learn, clever, and has some meaningful interaction between players. I'm probably already familiar with (or already own) older abstracts.

    When I was a child, I had a fever...
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  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    JonBob wrote: »
    They did a great job with the theme, and it’s a solid co-op. There are lots of good ones out there now, though, and it can’t compete mechanically with, say, any Leacock game. If the theme does nothing for you I’d really hesitate to recommend it.

    I saw it as being the kind of game I have at work for lunches, where the theme might resonate with others. I am curious about co-ops with better mechanics and such in the same vein.

    *checks what Leacock has done*

    Ahh, Pandemic. Already got all those. And Forbidden Sky. Awesome dude though! :)

    He/Him | "A boat is always safest in the harbor, but that’s not why we build boats." | "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." - Suletta Mercury, G-Witch
  • Ah_PookAh_Pook Registered User regular
    jergarmar wrote: »
    Hey, I'm on the lookout for a recent (i.e. past few years) abstract in the vein of Azul. So I guess quick to learn, clever, and has some meaningful interaction between players. I'm probably already familiar with (or already own) older abstracts.

    Spring Meadow is one of Uwe Rosenberg's Tetris series, and it sounds like it fits what you're looking for

  • JonBobJonBob Registered User regular
    jergarmar wrote: »
    Hey, I'm on the lookout for a recent (i.e. past few years) abstract in the vein of Azul. So I guess quick to learn, clever, and has some meaningful interaction between players. I'm probably already familiar with (or already own) older abstracts.

    From your example, I'm assuming "abstract" means "non-thematic and not economic" rather than "2-player deterministic."

    Sagrada: Thematically similar to Azul. Pretty dice, drafting, simple but meaningful powers, variable scoring criteria.

    Kingdomino: Super simple rules with emergent gameplay, and lots of predicting what actions others want in the table draft.

    Bärenpark: Polyomino-based with interesting timing twists and lots of mini-races between players to be most efficient.

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  • PMAversPMAvers Registered User regular
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  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    PMAvers wrote: »

    Good - get out of Asmodee before they run it into the ground.

  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    Do you like games that involve tricks like Spades? Well a good friend of mine worked on the team that is bringing The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine to North America.

    Basically, it plays like Spades where someone starts a round and players have to put out a card matching the suit. Highest suit takes the trick and starts the next round. Where it's different is that the game is actually co-op and has 50 different (repeatable) missions that the players need to complete.

    The Dice Tower review was quite glowing and does a good job of explaining the mission stuff and related mechanics more in-depth:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7efIcZFMp8

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  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    I'm glad to see the original owner of Plaid Hat take control of his company back. Also it sounds amicable, which is good.

    Of course the big bread and butter board games are staying with Asmodee (including Aftermath), so hopefully they can keep the quality up... but really the name is what I was beginning to trust, and I'm happy everyone is happy.

    Please announce more Aftermath characters?

    He/Him | "A boat is always safest in the harbor, but that’s not why we build boats." | "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." - Suletta Mercury, G-Witch
  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    MNC Dover wrote: »
    Do you like games that involve tricks like Spades? Well a good friend of mine worked on the team that is bringing The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine to North America.

    Basically, it plays like Spades where someone starts a round and players have to put out a card matching the suit. Highest suit takes the trick and starts the next round. Where it's different is that the game is actually co-op and has 50 different (repeatable) missions that the players need to complete.

    The Dice Tower review was quite glowing and does a good job of explaining the mission stuff and related mechanics more in-depth:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7efIcZFMp8
    I've played Die Crew and it was a good time. I'm completely baffled why the translation to English warranted an insane and needlessly verbose title switch, but fucking okay I guess?
    The game is certainly deceptive in how difficult the premise is. If I could hazard a guess, people who don't like The Mind because it's an activity and not a game will probably be more receptive to it. It didn't break enough new ground for me to feel like I needed it (the concept and rules are like 50% more to grasp than The Mind, and it's much less of a silly game), but I totally recommend other people try it. You do need to play into it a bit to really get to the meat, but that also shouldn't take more than an hour.

  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    Oh, in other FFG / Asmodee playing with my heart news, they posted their streaming schedule for the next month.

    And much to my happiness, on there is an announcement of an Arkham Horror 3rd edition expansion.

    He/Him | "A boat is always safest in the harbor, but that’s not why we build boats." | "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." - Suletta Mercury, G-Witch
  • Ah_PookAh_Pook Registered User regular
    MNC Dover wrote: »
    Do you like games that involve tricks like Spades? Well a good friend of mine worked on the team that is bringing The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine to North America.

    Basically, it plays like Spades where someone starts a round and players have to put out a card matching the suit. Highest suit takes the trick and starts the next round. Where it's different is that the game is actually co-op and has 50 different (repeatable) missions that the players need to complete.

    The Dice Tower review was quite glowing and does a good job of explaining the mission stuff and related mechanics more in-depth:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7efIcZFMp8

    I've had this pre-ordered for months. It looks just great.

  • antheremantherem Registered User regular
    Played Isle of Cats which is a neat drafting/tetris game, mixes a few different elements together without any of them feeling out of place, but the rulebook could probably have used another pass. We accidentally played it as this brutally swingy cutthroat game by not realizing that "discard any two (thing)s" means strictly from your board...

  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    antherem wrote: »
    Played Isle of Cats which is a neat drafting/tetris game, mixes a few different elements together without any of them feeling out of place, but the rulebook could probably have used another pass. We accidentally played it as this brutally swingy cutthroat game by not realizing that "discard any two (thing)s" means strictly from your board...
    Same thing happened with us, though only for the first two cards played that did that, because it was like "No, this doesn't make sense."
    Things are pretty straightforward - it's really just a few poor choices in grammar. Excellent game though (as I mentioned when I wrote about it a while back), and so very pretty~

  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Got to play Rune Stones tonight after a nailbiting session of Aftermath, but I don't wanna bore you folks with that.

    So.. Rune Stones was sold to me as a step-up game from Splendor. A bit more crunchy, but still fairly light. I believe I agree with this assessment, and I do like the game, but I don't think I played it in an ideal way... and I didn't grok a strategy early enough, so my opponent ran away with it.

    The basic idea is that you are playing a druid trying to gain points. The highest points win, with the end of the game getting signaled at 65 points.

    You start with 5 gemstones (red, green, blue, yellow, and white - which acts as a wild). You also start with a personalized deck of 8 cards, of which you draw 4.

    The board is constructed with 7 creatures to summon, 6 artifacts to buy, and 8 types of rune stones to forge.

    Each card has 2 elements to it, which I'll explain below as I explain the 3 actions you can take during a turn.

    Action 1: Summon a creature. The creatures on the board have costs ranging from 1 to 4 mana points to summon. You may play as many cards as you wish from your hand for their mana points, which is indicated at the top of the card (the cards are symmetrical so that they can be fanned either way). Cards generally generate 1-3 mana points. All the cards you play must have the same color, but it doesn't have to match what you are summoning - and there are some cards that grant all colors. After you generate a mana pool, you summon the cards you want and they go into your discard pile. The remaining summon options get cheaper and the new replenishments are added to the most expensive slots. You then discard all the cards you used to summon and draw back up to 4.

    Action 2: Use abilities. If you use this action, you MUST spend two cards from your hand and gain the abilities on them. The abilities include gaining more gem stones of various colors, gaining victory points, gaining cards, gaining ore, or rolling a die for a special effect. The rub of the game, however, comes here. See, every card in the game has a numerical value on it. And when you use the card's abilities, you MUST discard the higher valued card of the two you used. If it's a summoned creature, it goes to a creature discard. If it's one of your starting cards, it is removed from the game. Your starting cards are numbed 100-107, and all other cards in the game are lower than that, so your starting hand will auto-remove itself from the game as you go on. The other card that you played goes into your discard, to be used later. \

    Action 3: Forge artifacts. Artifacts come in colors matching the gems. To forge an artifact, you must use gemstones of the matching color -- except for white/wild artifacts, which you can use any color for. You may only forge 2 artifacts on your turn. Also, if you have 3 ore, you can use that to forge an artifact of any color. The artifacts costs 2-4 gemstones to forge, except for the wild artifact which costs 4. If you pay for the more expensive artifacts, there are bonuses with them - gain an ore, roll the dice, or gain 3 victory points. You don't get these bonuses if you use ore though. Once you've forged an artifact, you add it to a tracker on your board. There are 2 "rows" of the 5 colors and you must place the artifact on a matching color (again, white is wild, but there is a slot for white artifacts). These rows will come into play here in a second.

    After you have taken any of these actions, you have an opportunity to exchange your artifacts for rune stones. You pick one of your two rows of artifacts, and exchange 2-5 artifacts in one go. This gets you a rune stone (if you have room for them), and points as follows: 2 artifacts = 3 points, 3>5, 4>10, 5>15. So the more artifacts you turn in, the more points you get -- and this is the main point scoring engine.

    The rune stones are unique abilities that boost the game. There are 8 of them, and the supply has 1 fewer than the number of players. These have some pretty big effects: swap an ore for a non-white gem (or vice versa) on your turn, have a hand size of 6, get 2 any-color mana when summoning, play 3 cards for abilities instead of 2 (discarding the 2 highest cards), gain +1 victory point when you use a victory point gaining ability, treat a set color of gemstone as wild, roll the dice twice whenever you gain a dice roll as an ability, and treat any "or" decisions in abilities as "And" decisions. These basically let you supercharge your engines.

    Finally, you draw up to your hand limit of 4, then play passes to the left. Everyone gets an equal number of turns, so once the end of the game is signaled by someone getting 65 points, you continue play around.

    Too Long, didn't read

    I liked the game, but I don't know if I love it. I think there were two core problems:

    1. I wasn't sure how to navigate what I was doing and turn it into a goal. In Splendor, you very much see how you gain gems and from there get bigger and badder things, with more gems stacking up. That doesn't really exist in this. Seeing how a summoned card is worthwhile may not instantly be apparent, because you have to consider its cost versus whether it is going to be discarded and the like. I was probably way too conservative on that front. I also didn't play with a lean deck. In essence, I feel I need to play the game a few times before I can really get a handle on navigating through to building an engine.

    2. I don't think this game plays well at 2 players. I may be mistaken, as in the back half we definitely were moving quicker and were more sure of what we were doing. But with 2 players, there's no real break as people mess up your plans on grabbing artifacts, or grabbing summoned creatures you want. So your engine is much less likely to be disrupted. I'd like to play it at a full four players.

    i should note that the game is visually stunning. The board is very elaborate, moreso than it needs to be. This does slow down understanding the components a bit, but again I think after a while you can ignore that and just press forward.

    Also, while I owned the Nocturnal Creatures expansion, I didn't play with that. I think it would've added complexity more than anything else, and I wanted to experience the base game.

    So, final thoughts:

    Need to play it more, need to play it in a 4 player game. Probably not going to be a lunch game as it takes too long.

    Athenor on
    He/Him | "A boat is always safest in the harbor, but that’s not why we build boats." | "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." - Suletta Mercury, G-Witch
  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    Finally got the one-vs-many expansion for Ghost Stories to the table, and after a pretty painful rifling through various rulebooks and reference sheets, and a kind of clunky initial setup, it actually integrates really well into the main game and we all had an interesting time. It's a strange concept for an expansion, to take a co-op game that's famously difficult and hand the reins for the bad guys to an actual human brain who can make lethal decisions, but it actually encourages the bad guy to make decisions that are often less immediately dangerous for the Taoists, and also gives the Taoist team a couple of extra tools to help bust the ghosts, so the end result is a much more multilayered experience.

    We Taoists still lost all by our damn selves, forgetting to look after haunted tiles until that fatal third tile was flipped. It was kind of hilariously anticlimactic.

    "look we just freed up all these options, two demons were just banished, you can go here and do this or use your ability to- oh we lost nevermind."

  • Mojo_JojoMojo_Jojo We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourse Registered User regular
    Played Decrypto the other night. The rulebook is really quite bad. It took two people reading it before somebody broke and found a 3minute how to play video.

    Excellent fun, but the sequencing (giving clues, the two teams debating and guessing, etc) didn't feel very natural and we kept getting out of sequence with both teams trying to sort out their own codes and so on

    Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
  • JonBobJonBob Registered User regular
    Mojo_Jojo wrote: »
    Excellent fun, but the sequencing (giving clues, the two teams debating and guessing, etc) didn't feel very natural and we kept getting out of sequence with both teams trying to sort out their own codes and so on
    It's not bad at all once you get the flow, but the rulebook does not help you in this regard.

    A round:
    1. Both cluegivers figure out and write down their three clues.
    2. One cluegiver reads out their clues. Both teams try to guess the code.
    3. The other cluegiver reads out their clues. Both teams try to guess the code.

    That's all there is to it. It helps if you make the cluegivers keep their clues secret even from their own team until it is time to read them aloud, so that nobody gets distracted from the task at hand.

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  • GlaziusGlazius Registered User regular
    Vyolynce wrote: »
    Played Caverna for the first time in forever last night, with two others who had never played/maybe played once. Scores were tight (66-71-73 IIRC). Game would probably hit the table more often were setup/tear down not a nightmare.

    Disregard setup, acquire Planos.

    (Planos may overflow box.)

  • VyolynceVyolynce Registered User regular
    Glazius wrote: »
    Vyolynce wrote: »
    Played Caverna for the first time in forever last night, with two others who had never played/maybe played once. Scores were tight (66-71-73 IIRC). Game would probably hit the table more often were setup/tear down not a nightmare.

    Disregard setup, acquire Planos.

    (Planos may overflow box.)

    We were playing the store's demo copy. I think my personal copy is better organized but still a mass of bags; I also have the first Stonemaier Games box of realistic resource tokens, which helps a little.

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  • Ah_PookAh_Pook Registered User regular
    Speaking of, I played Fields of Arle today and boy it's a doozy. It's Uwe Rosenberg's monster farming worker placement game that got so sprawling that he made it 2p only, to reduce play time and table space. It's... Wow. The basic concepts are very straightforward, there's just so much stuff that it makes your head spin. Lots of forward planning and timing issues to contend with, and tooooons of different ways to go to score points. Just parsing your available options at any given time is insane, as the available action spaces alternate round to round (but you have the option to take an off season action if you give up first player in the next round). So yea. If you ever played Caverna and said "Like this, but way more!", And you have a singular game playing partner who feels the same way, I think it's really cool. Not sure how often I'll actually get it to the table, or if I'll every crack the seal on the expansion stuff, but yknow. I also liked it significantly more than AFFO, based on limited plays of each. Something about the Tetris in AAFO never clicked for me, though I never did try Odin with the expansion, which I heard was a much better game.

  • HedgethornHedgethorn Associate Professor of Historical Hobby Horses In the Lions' DenRegistered User regular
    Ah_Pook wrote: »
    Speaking of, I played Fields of Arle today and boy it's a doozy. It's Uwe Rosenberg's monster farming worker placement game that got so sprawling that he made it 2p only, to reduce play time and table space. It's... Wow. The basic concepts are very straightforward, there's just so much stuff that it makes your head spin. Lots of forward planning and timing issues to contend with, and tooooons of different ways to go to score points. Just parsing your available options at any given time is insane, as the available action spaces alternate round to round (but you have the option to take an off season action if you give up first player in the next round). So yea. If you ever played Caverna and said "Like this, but way more!", And you have a singular game playing partner who feels the same way, I think it's really cool. Not sure how often I'll actually get it to the table, or if I'll every crack the seal on the expansion stuff, but yknow. I also liked it significantly more than AFFO, based on limited plays of each. Something about the Tetris in AAFO never clicked for me, though I never did try Odin with the expansion, which I heard was a much better game.

    I really like Arle (though I've only played it once with another human being, in addition to several solo plays). I think it's actually significantly less rules-heavy and easier to teach than Feast for Odin because there's nothing like Odin's Tetris minigame or the slightly different rules for hunting vs. pillaging, but the decision space is probably quite a bit larger. Trying to figure out the rythym of "I have to do this summer action now so I can do that winter action next round so I can do that other summer action in the following round" is a tough mental puzzle, given the very limited number of workers and rounds. I'd love to see what it's like with a third player (added in the expansion), but I don't know if that will ever happen.

  • PMAversPMAvers Registered User regular
    http://lonesharkgames.com/2020/02/26/lords-of-vegas-5-accessory-frenzy-and-more-maze-of-games-audio

    Oh HECK YES

    Lone Shark Games got the rights for Lords of Vegas back, and are planning a 10’th Anniversary Kickstarter to bring it, the Up! Expansion, and the new Underworld expansion to print.

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  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Finally got Betrayal at the House on the Hill to the table yesterday and today. Wow that is a swingy game.

    Our first haunt was 24.
    Bat's attack and you have to get the organ working and play it, then defeat any attached one's to win.
    Traitor had no hope of winning that game. We were near the room and won on the third round.

    Tonight's haunt was 21.
    Zombie Lord and a bunch of zombies attack. Now, the text says that they're powerful but slow. Our traitor, ironically the same as previously, was excited because the bats were so weak. This time they were way too powerful. He would roll incredibly well, too, meaning he would get 3-4 on his movement rolls and roll lots of hits with his 5 might. So they weren't slow, there were a ton of them right from the start, and we had no defense.
    Our heroes had one weapon between the three of us and our strongest player went down on the first monster turn. We really had no hope of winning that one.

    We had hopes for the second game to be better than the first, but between the difficulty in finding weapons and number of monsters it just was impossible. I felt bad for how easy the first haunt was to win, but after the second I have little hope to get this back to the table. I think everyone's fairly soured on it. :(

    I'd like to keep trying, and have ideas for house rules to make the haunts we've played more fair. I just don't know if I can get them to play much more. Is there a resource out there of good haunts or balancing ideas for haunts that can help fix the worst offenders?

    ArcSyn on
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  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    We played In The Hall Of The Mountain King last night. It's a real good game! A hell of a brain burner. Pity the production is kinds crappy.

  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    Betrayal at the House on the Hill has a fun conceit, but it's straight up a bad game IMO

    The scenario ideas are occasionally great, but the mechanics of play are trash, top to bottom. The experiences you described were very typical for us — swingy, luck-driven nonsense with outcomes often decided by starting positions

  • HedgethornHedgethorn Associate Professor of Historical Hobby Horses In the Lions' DenRegistered User regular
    Betrayal is an enjoyable group activity, even if not a good game. My group usually pulls it out only when we've got a couple of new people who have never played any modern board games at the table; the new players typically enjoy it because it's so much deeper and more thematic than what they're used to, but they don't see the lack of balance as such a downside because they're used to games being a bunch of random nonsense and then someone wins. (We usually fudge things a bit to make sure the new players don't end up as the traitor, though, because it's rarely fun for anyone to let the new person try to figure out the poorly-written rules on their own.)

    But almost every time we play it, it generates a new shared group memory. Even though we've been meeting-up multiple times a month for several years and play almost every kind of game under the sun, nearly all our oft-recounted stories have the form, "Remember that time in Betrayal when that crazy thing happened, and Joe was the traitor and he tried to do that horrific thing to the rest of us, but Jane rolled exactly what she needed to in order to win the scenario?"

  • MrBodyMrBody Registered User regular
    Our shared group memories are more along the lines of "Remember the last 3 games where the traitor missed one rule, couldn't ask others any questions, and it turns out it broke the scenario and rendered the whole thing a waste of time? Let's never play that again."

  • GlaziusGlazius Registered User regular
    Hedgethorn wrote: »
    Ah_Pook wrote: »
    Speaking of, I played Fields of Arle today and boy it's a doozy. It's Uwe Rosenberg's monster farming worker placement game that got so sprawling that he made it 2p only, to reduce play time and table space. It's... Wow. The basic concepts are very straightforward, there's just so much stuff that it makes your head spin. Lots of forward planning and timing issues to contend with, and tooooons of different ways to go to score points. Just parsing your available options at any given time is insane, as the available action spaces alternate round to round (but you have the option to take an off season action if you give up first player in the next round). So yea. If you ever played Caverna and said "Like this, but way more!", And you have a singular game playing partner who feels the same way, I think it's really cool. Not sure how often I'll actually get it to the table, or if I'll every crack the seal on the expansion stuff, but yknow. I also liked it significantly more than AFFO, based on limited plays of each. Something about the Tetris in AAFO never clicked for me, though I never did try Odin with the expansion, which I heard was a much better game.

    I really like Arle (though I've only played it once with another human being, in addition to several solo plays). I think it's actually significantly less rules-heavy and easier to teach than Feast for Odin because there's nothing like Odin's Tetris minigame or the slightly different rules for hunting vs. pillaging, but the decision space is probably quite a bit larger. Trying to figure out the rythym of "I have to do this summer action now so I can do that winter action next round so I can do that other summer action in the following round" is a tough mental puzzle, given the very limited number of workers and rounds. I'd love to see what it's like with a third player (added in the expansion), but I don't know if that will ever happen.

    With a third player, you really appreciate the per-player copy spaces.

    Also the game only goes 7 turns with a slightly beefier start position, so the rhythm's a little off.

    Even playing 2 players with the expansion is neat, because tea can get pretty crazy.

  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    I tried a two player game of Root last night, as Woodland Alliance vs the Eyrie, a bit of a practice game with the gf

    I recommended that she not attack my sympathy tokens until she needed to, as sympathy tokens aren't really very useful on their own, to starve me of supporters

    It turns out this was very good advice and I had three or four turns where I could do literally nothing because the cards I was drawing were not matching up to let me build a base. I probably expanded too quickly — in a 2p game you basically just have to dump cards into your supporters until you can get an early base, unless you can hem them in and force them to give you supporters.

    She said this was an issue she had even in 4p games — people just weren't moving into her territory, and she was starved for cards

  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies drinking coffee in the mountain cabinRegistered User regular
    MrBody wrote: »
    Our shared group memories are more along the lines of "Remember the last 3 games where the traitor missed one rule, couldn't ask others any questions, and it turns out it broke the scenario and rendered the whole thing a waste of time? Let's never play that again."

    Yeah we played one game that lasted more than an hour and left someone without a decision post-haunt. We've never considered playing again really. Very poor fit for our group.

    sig.gif
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    Man you all suck at Betrayal! :P

    But seriously, that game is a blast. I've never had a bad instance of it. Some are certainly better than others but they've all been fun. It's easily one of my top 10 games.

    Magic Pink on
  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    I probably should have pushed to make myself the traitor, but my brother in law loved the idea so much he really enjoyed it being him. I probably would have dropped the monster number in half to make it more fun and possible to win.

    4dm3dwuxq302.png
  • JonBobJonBob Registered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    We played In The Hall Of The Mountain King last night. It's a real good game! A hell of a brain burner. Pity the production is kinds crappy.

    I haven't seen a finished copy, but the prototype I played was already pretty nice and the publisher has a good track record. What are the issues in the production version?

    jswidget.php?username=JonBob&numitems=10&header=1&text=none&images=small&show=recentplays&imagesonly=1&imagepos=right&inline=1&domains%5B%5D=boardgame&imagewidget=1
  • Ah_PookAh_Pook Registered User regular
    Glazius wrote: »
    Hedgethorn wrote: »
    Ah_Pook wrote: »
    Speaking of, I played Fields of Arle today and boy it's a doozy. It's Uwe Rosenberg's monster farming worker placement game that got so sprawling that he made it 2p only, to reduce play time and table space. It's... Wow. The basic concepts are very straightforward, there's just so much stuff that it makes your head spin. Lots of forward planning and timing issues to contend with, and tooooons of different ways to go to score points. Just parsing your available options at any given time is insane, as the available action spaces alternate round to round (but you have the option to take an off season action if you give up first player in the next round). So yea. If you ever played Caverna and said "Like this, but way more!", And you have a singular game playing partner who feels the same way, I think it's really cool. Not sure how often I'll actually get it to the table, or if I'll every crack the seal on the expansion stuff, but yknow. I also liked it significantly more than AFFO, based on limited plays of each. Something about the Tetris in AAFO never clicked for me, though I never did try Odin with the expansion, which I heard was a much better game.

    I really like Arle (though I've only played it once with another human being, in addition to several solo plays). I think it's actually significantly less rules-heavy and easier to teach than Feast for Odin because there's nothing like Odin's Tetris minigame or the slightly different rules for hunting vs. pillaging, but the decision space is probably quite a bit larger. Trying to figure out the rythym of "I have to do this summer action now so I can do that winter action next round so I can do that other summer action in the following round" is a tough mental puzzle, given the very limited number of workers and rounds. I'd love to see what it's like with a third player (added in the expansion), but I don't know if that will ever happen.

    With a third player, you really appreciate the per-player copy spaces.

    Also the game only goes 7 turns with a slightly beefier start position, so the rhythm's a little off.

    Even playing 2 players with the expansion is neat, because tea can get pretty crazy.

    I need to play the base game more before adding expansion stuff, but just reading the rules tea looks really crazy. Double actions would explode the decision space a lot.

  • MadpoetMadpoet Registered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Man you all suck at Betrayal! :P

    But seriously, that game is a blast. I've never had a bad instance of it. Some are certainly better than others but they've all been fun. It's easily one of my top 10 games.
    Betrayal is like Munchkin in that it's a terrible game that I have no trouble getting to the table because the experience is great even if the actual game is rubbish.

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