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Post by thehug0naut on Jan 19, 2017 13:09:13 GMT 1
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu ... ...It was a lot of fun... ...Very easy rules and concise gameplay... ...The game went really well...It seemed that we got quite lucky though... All in all, I really liked how well destilled this cooperative experience was. It was a bit abstract, but still felt like a Cthulhu game. Easy rules and not much busywork made for a really quick and fluid gameplay. I pretty much agree entirely with your post. Panthulu (as it has come to be known) is my pick for a) best variant of pandemic and b) best all round mythos game Having played a lot of pandemic I think the characters are often slightly too powerful - even with the difficulty ramped up we tend to find we can cooperate well enough to keep those pesky germs at bay. Panthulu by contrast is harder from the ground up. The characters are weaker, they become *even weaker* if they become sufficiently damaged, moving around the board is generally harder, and the whole progression of the game is like a terrible noose slowly tightening around you. All in all it hits the exact spot of feels that a mythos game should do, and doesn't take 8 FUCKING HOURS to play. That said my group does still have a soft spot for Arkham horror despite its flaws, its juts very hard to put a game of that length on the table with any regularity. Basically if you like pandemic and/or you like mythos you should try Panthulu.
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Post by scymrian on Jan 19, 2017 16:44:23 GMT 1
Yesterday, my best friend and I sat down with Traders of Osaka, which we had never played before. The rulebook is laid out so poorly that she tried to read through it, got frustrated, looked at me and said "I don't want to play this anymore," and we put the box away. Maybe another time.
We wound up playing Android: Mainframe, instead, which is pretty light and easy enough for me to teach her.
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Post by scymrian on Feb 3, 2017 20:33:25 GMT 1
Last week, I played Splendor for the first time, which I greatly enjoyed. Economy/drafting game. Good fun. My partner enjoyed it less. Eh.
There are tiles of "nobles" that are all portraits of European nobility. When I specifically referred to the one as "Machiavelli," one of my friends just stared at me blankly with no idea who Machiavelli was, which was a personal disappointment. But that's adjacent to the actual game experience.
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Post by Plum on Feb 6, 2017 11:25:01 GMT 1
Well I just wrote a whole post that seems to have vanished... It will forever be the post that got away. I bet it was amazing too
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Post by Plum on Feb 6, 2017 11:41:37 GMT 1
Yesterday, my best friend and I sat down with Traders of Osaka, which we had never played before. The rulebook is laid out so poorly that she tried to read through it, got frustrated, looked at me and said "I don't want to play this anymore," and we put the box away. Maybe another time. You should persevere, Traders of Osaka is an excellent game that gives a very Jaipur-for-Four feeling. The main things that cause confusion are: 1. Buying multiple cards - you can TAKE one card into your hand, or you can buy ALL (and it MUST be all) of the available cards by paying cards from your hand, adding the bought cards to your display. This doesn't include cards that players have reserved, so in reserving a card you make it easier for other players to buy the rest. For each colour bought, boop the matching boats along by one or two spaces. 2. Insurance - when a boat sinks, if you're about lose cards of that colour, you can insure them by discard cards from your hand. Generally low money value cards have higher insurance values, so they are handy to keep around. Turn each card that you protect with insurance sideways because once a card has been insured it is protected forever more. All insured cards are lost when the boat of that colour sinks in a storm space. Boats in the storm spaces sink (and return to the last harbour they passed) whenever some other boat reaches Osaka. This is a huge source of dickmovery within the game. 3. Scoring - when a boat reaches Osaka, players can add cards of that colour to their score pile. The number of cards they can add is (number of cards of that colour + number of tokens of that colour) x highest card value in that colour, then divide by 5 (rounding up). So if you have one red token, a red 2, a red 2 and a red 4, then when red scores, you can add (3 + 1) * 4 = 16, divide by 5 rounding up = 4. You can add four cards to your pile for end game points - the three red cards that you have, plus one randomly taken from the draw pile. Note that these cards are now out of the game and won't reappear. For every colour that you score, you gain a token in that colour, making it easier to score that colour again next time. When someone has 8(?) tokens, the game ends and the winner is the one that banked the most cards (tie break is number of tokens). Cards still in your display are worthless.
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Post by scymrian on Feb 6, 2017 15:14:59 GMT 1
Yeah, I'm sure it's easy enough if you actually sit down and work through the rules. The layout is just so bad. That was the wrong night.
I adore Jaipur, though!
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Post by Plum on Feb 8, 2017 10:25:25 GMT 1
Picked up Bloodborne because I'm an Eric Lang junky. A quick test play later and it looks like a modern spin on Cutthroat Caverns - a bit more push your luck as the enemies deal variable amounts of damage, which makes it harder to plan but also rewards more thoughtful play. I'm looking forward to getting it to the table against actual humons.
Also grabbed Snow Tails last week as I have a weakness for racing games (I kid you not, the Fast & Furious board game is great!). This is super fun and I've already played it a bunch. You all have three cards - your left speed, your right speed and your brake. You can only play one card per turn, from your hand of five, but if you have multiples of a given card then you can play two or three copies of it. Your forward speed is left + right - brake, and you must take X sideways steps, where X is the difference between your left and right speeds, which might force you into a wall, tree or other racer, at which point you ding your sled and lose a card making control even harder for the rest of the race. And oh lord it's fun and tense and dumb and brilliant. Last time we played, one of the guys just pinballed his way around the entire track and eventually was reduced to a single card. His refusal to brake and his use of walls to get around sharp corners meant that he was out in front, but as he headed down the home straight he was veering drunkenly from side to side as the rest of us were lining up and shooting forwards like arrows. It was a very close, tense finish!
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Post by mysticjuicer on Feb 8, 2017 15:49:07 GMT 1
holy shit that sledding game sounds amazing!!!
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Post by scymrian on Feb 9, 2017 17:41:34 GMT 1
IN the vein of racing games, I've been meaning to play Crazy Karts when I get the chance, I just haven't yet.
6 years late, I finally played Elder Sign for the first time last night, and we loved it! Messed some things up the way everyone does the first time they play any co-op, but hey. I played Arkham Horror exactly one time before (and I own it!) and the payoff just wasn't worth it to me. Elder Sign is so much simpler for the same basic payoff, to me, I can see myself playing it many more times.
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Post by mysticjuicer on Feb 9, 2017 22:35:56 GMT 1
Yeah my enthusiasm to play Arkham Horror always dies exactly an hour before the game is finally over.
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Post by Zejety on Feb 10, 2017 9:40:18 GMT 1
Play Eldritch Horror then! I never managed to like Arkham Horror - it was just too fiddly and long, but Eldritch Horror is one of my favorite coops.
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Post by CarpeGuitarrem on Feb 28, 2017 14:52:34 GMT 1
We're 5 or so games into RISK: Legacy. It's an absolute blast watching my play group discover this game, and it's pretty fun seeing their reaction to the different packets being opened. The North African Corridor has become a deadlock, and Australia has become an impenetrable fortress. Also, more spoilery things have happened.
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Post by scymrian on Feb 28, 2017 15:36:05 GMT 1
I just played a game of Classic Risk for the first time in a while last night - 1 on 1, random country start, with a friend who I only see about once a month, so she was joking "yeah, we'll probably have to keep the board set up for a couple months." I laughed and said, in my experience, most 1v1 games of Classic Risk only go about 6 turns - longer games do happen, but a smaller percentage of the time. She was incredulous.
I beat her on turn 5 and felt slightly bad about it.
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Post by mysticjuicer on Feb 28, 2017 16:13:02 GMT 1
1v1 is best mode
I hate the politics of multiplayer games with direct aggression of the Risk/MtG/Codex variety
So much "why are you attacking meeeeee!" that you have to justify so that people don't allow someone to just run away with the game
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Post by scymrian on Feb 28, 2017 16:23:49 GMT 1
yeah I completely agree. I've played EDH in Magic a few times but it's kinda a chore
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Post by flagrantangles on Mar 6, 2017 18:23:07 GMT 1
I got to play some Terra Mystica last night and it was glorious. I went in to the game thinking, "Maybe play something other than Chaos Magicians. Look at the round bonuses and find a faction that is best suited to capitalizing on that." The round bonuses were as follows: - 2 VP for Dwellings; 4 power for every 4 in the fire cult
- 5 VP for Sanctuaries and Strongholds; 1 worker for every 2 in the fire cult
- 2 VP for every Terraform; 1 gold for every 1 in the earth cult
- 3 VP for every Trading Post; 1 terraform for every 4 in the air cult
- 3 VP for every Trading Post; 1 terraform for every 4 in the water cult
- 5 VP for each City constructed; last round bonus doesn't matter.
After looking at those, it turns out that the Chaos Magicians were an excellent faction to start with, especially since my opponents were playing Mermaids and Witches and I would not be fighting over terrain with them. Even more conveniently, the Mermaids decided to play next to me so I got to reap a lot of power from them AND building my TP's was much cheaper. I was able to super leverage the end of the round cult bonuses to have an excellent economy and keep building shit. Near the end, I was a little bit behind the Witches because of my trading VP for power, but since I had 1st place in all of the cults and the largest connected area, I was able to win. FELT PRETTY GOOD. Afterward we played some Nevermore and my friend won pretty quickly in about 3-4 rounds. If the resolution tokens had been in a different order, I could have prevented it, but alas. Finally, we ended the night with some Love Letter and bourbon. I was able to win that game despite the 3 times I was checkmated by having the Baron and King in my hand against an opponent with the Princess. It was a good night. We're also going to play through the Pathfinder Adventure Card game again so I'm pretty excited.
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Post by Plum on Mar 7, 2017 12:22:49 GMT 1
Why would having Baron and King be a checkmate against an opponent with Princess? You could swap out your Baron for their Princess, giving them a card that they can never use against you. Unless I'm confusing the powers?
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Post by scymrian on Mar 22, 2017 14:12:31 GMT 1
I kickstarted the digital version of Epic Card Game, which I greatly enjoy but can never get anyone to play with me. Got my alpha key today, so looking forward to that after work, although I'll definitely be logging more hours when the beta hits and we have real-time play instead of just asynch.
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Post by mysticjuicer on Mar 23, 2017 14:33:59 GMT 1
I kickstarted the digital version of Epic Card Game, which I greatly enjoy but can never get anyone to play with me. Got my alpha key today, so looking forward to that after work, although I'll definitely be logging more hours when the beta hits and we have real-time play instead of just asynch. Very cool! If we're ever in the same area, we should bust out some Epic. Really like that game, as a lighter/faster MtG/Codex style Wizard Dueler.
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Post by scymrian on Mar 23, 2017 14:39:10 GMT 1
Hell yeah! It really kind of incorporates a lot of what I like about the Battle Box/Danger Room format of MtG - very flat power, gameplay consisting largely of jockeying for slim edges. But, quick like.
Referring to the limited, of course. I haven't played Constructed too much yet. But Epic is a game about Limited, so I feel fine about that.
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Post by Southpaw Hare on Mar 23, 2017 14:47:03 GMT 1
I absolutely love Millennium Blades, which I've had opportunity to play recently and likely will continue to have in the coming weeks. For those not familiar, it's a Yu-gi-oh! parody game (though still very solid mechanically) that is a "CCG Simulator" - in other words, you play a card game about playing a card game, without actually playing that second card game itself.
It has a ton of references to all things video games and anime. Each game is played with a subset of card sets based on things like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Mega Man, etc. and then played in multiple seasons of two parts each - a real-time (though still fairly relaxed) collection phase, and then a tournament phase.
In the collection phase, you "open packs" to get new cards - the packs are shown on the back, and then you flip it over to find the one good card in the pack that is of any real value (assumed that you just chuck the commons over your shoulder). Amusingly, the money you use to buy stuff in this game are actually stacks of money; when assembling the game, you stack together 10 copies of a type of bill, bundle it together, and that's one instance of that money, such that you buy everything with huge wads. Aside from being hilarious, they're actually easier to handle.
The tournament phase is something of an interactive puzzle game. You try to get your cards out on the field and score points using some kind of combo based on adjacency and flip effects. It's simple, but very engaging.
Overall, amazing game in terms of both laughs and mechanics.
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Post by scymrian on Mar 23, 2017 15:23:20 GMT 1
The only L99 game I've played is Pixel Tactics, but I'm a huge fan of it. I absolutely believe that some of their other games could be great.
Pixel Tactics is on Tabletopia now, I see. I'm still not a subscriber, but that's a pretty big push for it for me, between that and Codex.
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Post by Zejety on Mar 23, 2017 16:10:05 GMT 1
Millennium Blades looks amazing and I have been on the fence about buying it for a long time. However, the price is high enough, that I would really love to try it first, especially since I might want to immediately order one or two expansions to save on shipping...
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Post by Southpaw Hare on Mar 23, 2017 16:47:35 GMT 1
Millennium Blades looks amazing and I have been on the fence about buying it for a long time. However, the price is high enough, that I would really love to try it first, especially since I might want to immediately order one or two expansions to save on shipping... steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=885107618Looks like it's in TTS. Maybe we can play it online with some people sometime soon, if you'd like.
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Post by scymrian on Mar 23, 2017 17:39:45 GMT 1
I just saw two dudes playing some type of card game at my favorite lunch spot, so I had to ask what it was because I can't let myself not recognizing a game being played in such an unusual spot slide. It was One Deck Dungeon which I will now be researching during the last 20 minutes of my lunch break (and to be honest, probably some working time as well).
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Post by mysticjuicer on Mar 24, 2017 5:00:24 GMT 1
phrawger I've now played 3 games of Netrunner and am willing to play some more of it! What non-Skype chat program do you use, from among Google Hangouts and Discord, and would you like to play over Jinteki.net sometime?
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Post by mysticjuicer on Mar 24, 2017 14:43:46 GMT 1
That Netrunner offer is open to anyone, btw.
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Post by Kraetyz on Mar 25, 2017 10:23:55 GMT 1
I played Bandu yesterday. One of the most incredibly fun and silly party games I've experienced in a while. Turns out it's fucking HARD to find a copy of it for a decent price in EU stores. Out of stock like all hell. RIP. I also do really need to buy Smallworld one day. Such a dumb, great game.
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Post by Plum on Mar 28, 2017 16:23:10 GMT 1
Sorry I'm late to the party, I WAS SKIING IN THE ALPS FOR THREE DAYS, but I don't like to brag *ahem* Millenium Blades is excellent in its own right, full of interesting little mechanics, but if you're at all interested in CCGs then it absolutely shines. It's chock full of cute references and in-jokes that you'll enjoy BF has just picked up the expansion but we've yet to break that open. I've only played One Deck Dungeon once, as a 2p with my bf, but we really enjoyed it. I can absolutely seeing myself stealing it to play solitaire with when staying away for work. In the same vein, try looking up Karen and the Pirate Island
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Post by Southpaw Hare on Mar 28, 2017 18:14:53 GMT 1
Millenium Blades is excellent in its own right, full of interesting little mechanics, but if you're at all interested in CCGs then it absolutely shines. It's chock full of cute references and in-jokes that you'll enjoy Technically, I'd say that most of the jokes and references aren't specifics to TCGs or even Yu-gi-oh! specifically. A lot of them are for video games (Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy), anime (Gurren Lagann, Sailor Moon), roleplaying games (Mouse Guard), and everything else nerdy. Not to mention, certain topics bridge multiple mediums - it parodies Pokemon, which is an anime, video game, and card game! It even parodies sitcom TV shows with its Kickstarter Backer sets (Leave It To Backers, Backer Meets World, Everybody Loves Backers, etc). I think a pretty wide group of people can find at least some humor in it.
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