The Amarice guy answering questions is a fucking TROOPER. They answered questions for the past 5 years and kept hope alive for one of my kickstarters I had all but written off. Last thing was finally delivered to me before the lockdown this year. That guy has some endurance.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Wow, that worked surprisingly well!
My friend and I just got to start another mission of Aftermath, after a month off thanks to the lockdown. We each own a copy, which is in sync, and we set up a shared play space in TableTop Simulator. What's more, we were able to save it mid-game because I had to get to bed for work! So we can pick it up here in a day or two.
The biggest laugh I got all session, though, was when I accidentally unlocked the game board... and because physics was weird on it, it started falling. And falling. And falling. Faster and faster. So here I was, trying to click on something dropping like a ROCK. Eventually we decided to reload the game.
We have been playing Charterstone during the quarantine. I liked the idea of a Legacy style worker placement game, but this game has some major issues.
#1 there are a lot of printing issues and you are supposed to check the website to see them all. That is super annoying.
#2 Card luck is too impactful. You get cards that let you build structures. After a game, some of the structures related to your charter are put back in a community deck. My wife lucked out and has 3 of the 4 best engine building structures in her territory. You can use other player's buildings, but it is best to have them. We are 7 games in and she has won 5. The last 2 games, she was 20+ points over second place.
#3 the legacy part is undervalued. My son and I like changing our buildings up and opening crates (they contain more buildings and other goodies). The buildings have numbers under them that I thought were the main scoring for the game. My wife can win the most battles, but my son or I could win the war right?
After game 7, the game finally tells you how campaign scoring works.
I am pretty sure my wife has already won the campaign.
I think the biggest problem is the game can't decide if it wants to be cutthroat or cooperative. Doing something for the good of everyone seems thematically the right thing to do, but you can be a huge dick and
unlock the best minions, never build their factory, and keep 1 for your exclusive use.
I tossed around the idea of getting Charterstone, but I've heard way too many negatives about the legacy component. What you're describing matches a lot of what people have said, even those that still enjoyed the game.
To boil it down, it feels like by the time you really understand what's going on (3 or 4 games in), someone (either through luck or skill) has already won the campaign, and there's zero ability for anyone to equalize the board once a person gets a lead on their engine. And unfortunately, as you have described, once you get a head, you're essentially guaranteed to win every game beyond that. And that means everyone else gets to spend the next 6-8 games losing...and not only losing, but starting each game knowing that it's essentially impossible to win.
So yes, not to take anything away from a good player, but thanks to some early luck:
there are a lot of printing issues and you are supposed to check the website to see them all.
I wasn't aware of lots of printing issues. Perhaps we have been playing some things incorrectly according to misprints? It didn't seem to have much impact on the game if so.
After a game, some of the structures related to your charter are put back in a community deck.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see players having is thinking of buildings as "belonging to a charter" before they are built. The game doesn't do itself any favors in this regard, doing things like basing persona art on the character related to the initial charter. The entire game is way more interesting when things get mixed up and not siloed.
In our second campaign, we altered the setup by first putting out basic building down, then passing all our cards to the left. That means that to "fuel" your tier-2 buildings, you need to go to your neighbor's charter. This makes many of the later guideposts much more impactful and forces interaction.
The buildings have numbers under them that I thought were the main scoring for the game.
They are the single biggest source of points, but everyone is getting them to some degree so other things become much more important. This should not have been a surprise, however, since the point ranges for everything (victories, capacity, etc.) are printed right on the charter box.
unlock the best minions, never build their factory, and keep 1 for your exclusive use.
I agree that feels really bad when it happens, though the card should be flowing back into the supply for someone else to build it. You can also get around this by focusing on the corresponding glory bonus (but it might be a little late to shift gears if you don't anticipate this need early on).
So in our game, which is on game 7(? maybe), we didn't realize you couldn't keep more than 1 of each type of card. So our charters are absolutely siloed for the first 3-4 crates worth of buildings. It's become a problem, and I love JonBob's idea to mix things up.
Purple charter - pumpkin
My charter has felt pretty useless the whole game. The only time anyone uses it is if they need a pumpkin for a building, and now that a certain minion is out, they don't even necessary need to do it then either.
6 player market deck (or whatever it's called) gets pretty huge too as things unlock. So buildings that are buried in there tend to stay there. It was a miracle one came up in the last game, as I think I hadn't seen it in 3 games prior after putting it in there. There's just too much in the deck. I feel like it should have been split into smaller decks.
Mixing things up would be a good idea.
We are silo'd too. We almost never go to each other's charters.
The inactive charters are filled with crappy buildings no one uses. My wife has the best coal and silver related buildings. Those seem like the best 2 charters to pick.
Like idiots, we just picked our charters on color preference. It ain't easy being green. One of the card mistakes is a green building that gives 2 VP whereas the corresponding building in other charters gets 4!
What you're describing matches a lot of what people have said, even those that still enjoyed the game.
None of us like the game. My wife realizes she is winning, but her points engines are not really fun. Her turns are spent doing the same things over and over to get VPs. My son liked building structures, but it seems like the best ones came out early on and the newer ones are pretty pointless. The game he won involved a great resource trade combo that blew us a way, but like a fool he covered up one of the buildings he needed.
Ohh well. Not sure we will finish this one. I am 100% happy we didn't buy the recharge pack.
Oh man this game. So as a refresher, the things happen in September. One: If you haven't already found it, you are given the map sticker for the haven in the Indian Ocean. We hadn't found it yet, so that gives us task 1 to do. Two: If you haven't reconned East Asia, it's now a mandatory objective. Remember that when you reveal Kolkata, it says you don't know how to recon from here yet. So that gives us task 2. Three: They change the setup rule for starting infections to include three hollow men placements.
So we start this month with a haven we need to get to, a region to explore but we don't know how, and the starting hollow men placement puts one in Cairo where our supply center and radio tower is located and is also our only link to cities further east, and one in Kolkata, the city we know we're going to need to recon from.
So right off the bat this game is looking like it will cause a lot of exposures if we need either of those cities. So one of our players chooses to use a character we've never used before: the one who can turn in two player cards for a single discarded player card.
Round 1 (four players so we consider each set of four a round) we determine we can extend supply lines through Africa to connect the haven (we had completely ignored Africa), then one person can move onto it so we open the bonus and get +15 supply cubes. However, this doesn't inform us how to recon. It does give that person 4 additional actions, which we use to connect the haven to India next to Kolkata to allow us to get around Cairo, and actions to get to a radio tower and monitor the hollow men frequencies. This pulled the first epidemic from the deck and discarded it! We also had 1 left on the list of frequencies we knew hollow men used, so we scratch that off. Recon East Asia!
So now we know we need 5 unique black city cards, and I'm holding two and my friend is holding two. His wife gives him a third and uses up a limited produce supplies to drop our new found supply cubes across the board on havens and supply centers. Unfortunately she also pulls an epidemic. This is when the incidents start getting pretty bad. I think we had 3 at this point. We start discussing just making things work long enough to get this region reconned, so it would count towards the second half of the month. That's when my friend pulls two more unique black city cards. He has four, and I have two, but I need mine to put the supply center there so he can recon. Our player who can recon for one less has none, and it will take too long to get them to her or take an exposure since the hollow men are at our black radio tower.
However, he has a special power. Trade two cards for a black, and we just put a new black city card in the discard pile this game. So we just need one more round. I go into Kolkata and make the supply center. The others drop some cubes on some empty cities that are likely being drawn soon. Friends turn, he trades in two blues he had gotten and picks out the fifth black. Moves to Kolkata. Recon!
Wow! So much more mapped! This also gives us shelters! Which is great because my friend and I are now in Kolkata with a hollow man. I tell him if he stays in the city I can make a shelter on my turn. So we make a shelter and are able to leave without exposure. In the meantime I've gotten enough yellow for a supply center. However, that's only two and we need three to win. It's looking like we won't because we now have 7 incidents.
My turn I move to Jacksonville and put a supply center. My wife's turn she goes to Paris and we take a 50/50 chance of drawing a city that will end the game with incidents. It doesn't!
My friends wife takes her turn and gives me the third blue I need to make the third supply center. She then goes to Kolkata and Delhi and drops a cube because we know it's getting drawn, but there are still three cities without supplies that could get drawn. We draw Delhi and a hollow man!
My friends turn, and he's got three cities empty and can only fill one. He picks Istanbul and then draws an epidemic. We look at the infection discard and 5 of the 9 city cards would end the game. However, there are now 7 hollow men cards in there too. We have the unfunded event to discard an epidemic. Do we do it, and chance drawing one of the two cities, or allow the epidemic and take our chances that hollow men would get pulled instead. We'd be drawing three cities after the epidemic. We choose to destroy the unfunded event and discard the epidemic. It's got the better odds. London, no problem, it has 4 cubes. Kolkata, it has a cube!
My turn, make supplies, go to Paris, build supply center, we win!
Whew. It was quite the emotional roller coaster of bad, not good, let's at least recon, we could do this, we're not gonna do this, we did this!
When I explained how we could win if we got back to my turn, my friend sent me the Hawkeye quote from Endgame, "Don't give me hope..."
So now we go into October needing to connect east Asia, befriend a hollow man, and find our way into utopia. Looking forward to seeing the next bits of story.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Is there a way to filter boardgamearena by the games I have in my BGG collection?
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited April 2020
Has anyone heard of a board game called MonstroCity? It appears to be a co-op game from Kickstarter that is essentially like Rampage.
Our store just got in 4 copies and I am tempted.
Edit: Hmmm. might've been the FOMO speaking, as looking over the actual kickstarter I get a feeling of having a lot of flash but I am not sure about the gameplay underneath.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Weirdly, the best I can tell you is that it's a game spun off of a property of a local mobile game studio, created by a local designer and produced by his company. And I know nothing about the actual game. >_>
Looking at the comments on BGG, I know the 10 is from another local guy who has games (all the Dwar7s games) published through that company, and operamang is a friend of mine. I can reach out to the latter to see about more details, if there was anything specific you wanted asked?
Weirdly, the best I can tell you is that it's a game spun off of a property of a local mobile game studio, created by a local designer and produced by his company. And I know nothing about the actual game. >_>
Looking at the comments on BGG, I know the 10 is from another local guy who has games (all the Dwar7s games) published through that company, and operamang is a friend of mine. I can reach out to the latter to see about more details, if there was anything specific you wanted asked?
Just looking for impressions, is all. the store said they got in 4 copies and the store owner was thinking of picking up one, and $65 seemed really cheap given the size/quality of the minis and the # of components, so it sounded like it might be a loss leader of a project.
Has anyone heard of a board game called MonstroCity? It appears to be a co-op game from Kickstarter that is essentially like Rampage.
Our store just got in 4 copies and I am tempted.
Edit: Hmmm. might've been the FOMO speaking, as looking over the actual kickstarter I get a feeling of having a lot of flash but I am not sure about the gameplay underneath.
I got to play digital Evolution with two friends who adore the game. It was so good. Playing with humans makes all the difference in the world when you're describing your pack-hunting turtles.
We're going to play Oceans when this virus dies down.
I bought the Nemesis Voidseekers/Aftermath and Canomorph expansions (both sundropped) for way too much on the aftermarket not that long ago. That hurts. But this new campaign looks like a good chance to pick up the terrain pack and neoprene map, at least. God I'm such a whore.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
I was idly looking at the Frosthaven KS (not that I need it, we're still using original characters in our Gloomhaven campaign) and the shipping rates are awful. Doing the math, it works out at about 50% more than I paid for Gloomhaven store bought.
I was idly looking at the Frosthaven KS (not that I need it, we're still using original characters in our Gloomhaven campaign) and the shipping rates are awful. Doing the math, it works out at about 50% more than I paid for Gloomhaven store bought.
Anyone got game recommendations that work over video chat with no player secrets and doesn't need TTS or everyone to own a copy? Looking at 6-8.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Would boardgamearena.com interest you with Keyflower? The site is getting hammered with the significant increase in traffic due to the quarantine, but my friends and I have had some success playing there. Some games need a premium account to access, though.
Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
@ArcSyn Welcome To... is always a good one. Everyone just needs their own sheet to write on (I think there's an app version to use?) and you just host the video with the card does each turn for selection.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Not alone on BGA might play 8 okay. Jackbox? Quiplash/Drawful/Fibbage? Double check the player count. Codenames and ONUW and secret hitler and pictionary all play 8 for free with no purchase but they arguably have player secrets...
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Coup is on BGA as well... You might just browse boardgamearena.com and yucata.de and netgames.io for 8 player games and see what pops ip
Thanks everyone. Somehow board game arena flew under my radar.
The issue with secrets is some people may share a screen and it just complicates things. We've done jackbox a few times but looking for something new.
ArcSyn on
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Not alone on BGA might play 8 okay. Jackbox? Quiplash/Drawful/Fibbage? Double check the player count. Codenames and ONUW and secret hitler and pictionary all play 8 for free with no purchase but they arguably have player secrets...
As someone that's been hosting remote Jackbox parties for over a month now, I can tell you that 85% of the Jackbox games (across all six current JackBox releases) support up to eight players. Less than a handful support more or less than eight.
The Wikipedia entry on the JackBox franchise has a full list, if you want to see specifics.
Nips on
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I think you mean fewer than 6? A good number of them are still playable with as few as 4, but there are plenty that don't require 8 players.
blah asmodee clamped down on all of the ffg game tabletop simulator mods after being quietly ok with them for years. nice of them to do when all of us are forbidden to go meet with friends to play games.
This settles it, french private equity groups are not human.
blah asmodee clamped down on all of the ffg game tabletop simulator mods after being quietly ok with them for years. nice of them to do when all of us are forbidden to go meet with friends to play games.
This settles it, french private equity groups are not human.
There is a way to backup and then locally download all the files from any TTS mods you want to keep around! I actually went and backed up a few myself this morning and it was pretty painless (you do have to sign up a free account on a website where the mod downloader is hosted).
Posts
...You know, it'd be amazing if they were able to pick up the Heroscape license somehow.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
The Amarice guy answering questions is a fucking TROOPER. They answered questions for the past 5 years and kept hope alive for one of my kickstarters I had all but written off. Last thing was finally delivered to me before the lockdown this year. That guy has some endurance.
My friend and I just got to start another mission of Aftermath, after a month off thanks to the lockdown. We each own a copy, which is in sync, and we set up a shared play space in TableTop Simulator. What's more, we were able to save it mid-game because I had to get to bed for work! So we can pick it up here in a day or two.
The biggest laugh I got all session, though, was when I accidentally unlocked the game board... and because physics was weird on it, it started falling. And falling. And falling. Faster and faster. So here I was, trying to click on something dropping like a ROCK. Eventually we decided to reload the game.
#1 there are a lot of printing issues and you are supposed to check the website to see them all. That is super annoying.
#2 Card luck is too impactful. You get cards that let you build structures. After a game, some of the structures related to your charter are put back in a community deck. My wife lucked out and has 3 of the 4 best engine building structures in her territory. You can use other player's buildings, but it is best to have them. We are 7 games in and she has won 5. The last 2 games, she was 20+ points over second place.
#3 the legacy part is undervalued. My son and I like changing our buildings up and opening crates (they contain more buildings and other goodies). The buildings have numbers under them that I thought were the main scoring for the game. My wife can win the most battles, but my son or I could win the war right?
I think the biggest problem is the game can't decide if it wants to be cutthroat or cooperative. Doing something for the good of everyone seems thematically the right thing to do, but you can be a huge dick and
To boil it down, it feels like by the time you really understand what's going on (3 or 4 games in), someone (either through luck or skill) has already won the campaign, and there's zero ability for anyone to equalize the board once a person gets a lead on their engine. And unfortunately, as you have described, once you get a head, you're essentially guaranteed to win every game beyond that. And that means everyone else gets to spend the next 6-8 games losing...and not only losing, but starting each game knowing that it's essentially impossible to win.
So yes, not to take anything away from a good player, but thanks to some early luck:
One of the biggest misconceptions I see players having is thinking of buildings as "belonging to a charter" before they are built. The game doesn't do itself any favors in this regard, doing things like basing persona art on the character related to the initial charter. The entire game is way more interesting when things get mixed up and not siloed.
In our second campaign, we altered the setup by first putting out basic building down, then passing all our cards to the left. That means that to "fuel" your tier-2 buildings, you need to go to your neighbor's charter. This makes many of the later guideposts much more impactful and forces interaction.
They are the single biggest source of points, but everyone is getting them to some degree so other things become much more important. This should not have been a surprise, however, since the point ranges for everything (victories, capacity, etc.) are printed right on the charter box.
I agree that feels really bad when it happens, though the card should be flowing back into the supply for someone else to build it. You can also get around this by focusing on the corresponding glory bonus (but it might be a little late to shift gears if you don't anticipate this need early on).
Purple charter - pumpkin
6 player market deck (or whatever it's called) gets pretty huge too as things unlock. So buildings that are buried in there tend to stay there. It was a miracle one came up in the last game, as I think I hadn't seen it in 3 games prior after putting it in there. There's just too much in the deck. I feel like it should have been split into smaller decks.
We are silo'd too. We almost never go to each other's charters.
The inactive charters are filled with crappy buildings no one uses. My wife has the best coal and silver related buildings. Those seem like the best 2 charters to pick.
Like idiots, we just picked our charters on color preference. It ain't easy being green. One of the card mistakes is a green building that gives 2 VP whereas the corresponding building in other charters gets 4!
None of us like the game. My wife realizes she is winning, but her points engines are not really fun. Her turns are spent doing the same things over and over to get VPs. My son liked building structures, but it seems like the best ones came out early on and the newer ones are pretty pointless. The game he won involved a great resource trade combo that blew us a way, but like a fool he covered up one of the buildings he needed.
Ohh well. Not sure we will finish this one. I am 100% happy we didn't buy the recharge pack.
So we start this month with a haven we need to get to, a region to explore but we don't know how, and the starting hollow men placement puts one in Cairo where our supply center and radio tower is located and is also our only link to cities further east, and one in Kolkata, the city we know we're going to need to recon from.
So right off the bat this game is looking like it will cause a lot of exposures if we need either of those cities. So one of our players chooses to use a character we've never used before: the one who can turn in two player cards for a single discarded player card.
Round 1 (four players so we consider each set of four a round) we determine we can extend supply lines through Africa to connect the haven (we had completely ignored Africa), then one person can move onto it so we open the bonus and get +15 supply cubes. However, this doesn't inform us how to recon. It does give that person 4 additional actions, which we use to connect the haven to India next to Kolkata to allow us to get around Cairo, and actions to get to a radio tower and monitor the hollow men frequencies. This pulled the first epidemic from the deck and discarded it! We also had 1 left on the list of frequencies we knew hollow men used, so we scratch that off. Recon East Asia!
So now we know we need 5 unique black city cards, and I'm holding two and my friend is holding two. His wife gives him a third and uses up a limited produce supplies to drop our new found supply cubes across the board on havens and supply centers. Unfortunately she also pulls an epidemic. This is when the incidents start getting pretty bad. I think we had 3 at this point. We start discussing just making things work long enough to get this region reconned, so it would count towards the second half of the month. That's when my friend pulls two more unique black city cards. He has four, and I have two, but I need mine to put the supply center there so he can recon. Our player who can recon for one less has none, and it will take too long to get them to her or take an exposure since the hollow men are at our black radio tower.
However, he has a special power. Trade two cards for a black, and we just put a new black city card in the discard pile this game. So we just need one more round. I go into Kolkata and make the supply center. The others drop some cubes on some empty cities that are likely being drawn soon. Friends turn, he trades in two blues he had gotten and picks out the fifth black. Moves to Kolkata. Recon!
Wow! So much more mapped! This also gives us shelters! Which is great because my friend and I are now in Kolkata with a hollow man. I tell him if he stays in the city I can make a shelter on my turn. So we make a shelter and are able to leave without exposure. In the meantime I've gotten enough yellow for a supply center. However, that's only two and we need three to win. It's looking like we won't because we now have 7 incidents.
My turn I move to Jacksonville and put a supply center. My wife's turn she goes to Paris and we take a 50/50 chance of drawing a city that will end the game with incidents. It doesn't!
My friends wife takes her turn and gives me the third blue I need to make the third supply center. She then goes to Kolkata and Delhi and drops a cube because we know it's getting drawn, but there are still three cities without supplies that could get drawn. We draw Delhi and a hollow man!
My friends turn, and he's got three cities empty and can only fill one. He picks Istanbul and then draws an epidemic. We look at the infection discard and 5 of the 9 city cards would end the game. However, there are now 7 hollow men cards in there too. We have the unfunded event to discard an epidemic. Do we do it, and chance drawing one of the two cities, or allow the epidemic and take our chances that hollow men would get pulled instead. We'd be drawing three cities after the epidemic. We choose to destroy the unfunded event and discard the epidemic. It's got the better odds. London, no problem, it has 4 cubes. Kolkata, it has a cube!
My turn, make supplies, go to Paris, build supply center, we win!
Whew. It was quite the emotional roller coaster of bad, not good, let's at least recon, we could do this, we're not gonna do this, we did this!
When I explained how we could win if we got back to my turn, my friend sent me the Hawkeye quote from Endgame, "Don't give me hope..."
So now we go into October needing to connect east Asia, befriend a hollow man, and find our way into utopia. Looking forward to seeing the next bits of story.
Our store just got in 4 copies and I am tempted.
Edit: Hmmm. might've been the FOMO speaking, as looking over the actual kickstarter I get a feeling of having a lot of flash but I am not sure about the gameplay underneath.
Looking at the comments on BGG, I know the 10 is from another local guy who has games (all the Dwar7s games) published through that company, and operamang is a friend of mine. I can reach out to the latter to see about more details, if there was anything specific you wanted asked?
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Just looking for impressions, is all.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
All I can tell you is I passed on it so....
We're going to play Oceans when this virus dies down.
I bought the Nemesis Voidseekers/Aftermath and Canomorph expansions (both sundropped) for way too much on the aftermarket not that long ago. That hurts. But this new campaign looks like a good chance to pick up the terrain pack and neoprene map, at least. God I'm such a whore.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
No Tzimiscie, no this me, see?
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Think I'll wait for it to hit stores.
The story of almost all Kickstarters
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
They rebooted it?
What? it's been ongoing? I just remember the change from Jyhad to VTS and the grumbling of two people about replacing their cards
I’ve thrown together a rudimentary web app to facilitate Decrypto, if “no player secrets” isn’t a hard and fast rule.
The issue with secrets is some people may share a screen and it just complicates things. We've done jackbox a few times but looking for something new.
As someone that's been hosting remote Jackbox parties for over a month now, I can tell you that 85% of the Jackbox games (across all six current JackBox releases) support up to eight players. Less than a handful support more or less than eight.
The Wikipedia entry on the JackBox franchise has a full list, if you want to see specifics.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Yeah. "Less than a maximum of eight". Most of the games support 2/3-8 players. Very few allow more than eight max, and a few max up to six.
Words words words.
This settles it, french private equity groups are not human.
There is a way to backup and then locally download all the files from any TTS mods you want to keep around! I actually went and backed up a few myself this morning and it was pretty painless (you do have to sign up a free account on a website where the mod downloader is hosted).
Ya know, fair