Interactive editionPrevious Thread: >>98106986Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/h8Tz2ze8*A BIT STALE* survey results: https://pastebin.com/scAkFdTvTQ:A player you've gamed with before drops a new game on the table, starts punching it out while reading the rulebook to your table, page for page. What do you do?
How many players are too much for the optimal way to have fun playing/teaching root?
>>981394221 furfag is already too much
>>98139422>have fun>teaching rootpick one
>>98139422If you have to play Root, cap at 4. Any more and it's a shitty kind of hell because the map isn't designed for it.But honestly, play anything else. Root isn't even that good it's way too complicated for what it's really trying to do.Any other good suggestions for anons who keep pushing Root?
>>98139601>complicatedIt's literally a 2D RTS anon?
>>98135580a few other options for you to shit on large player anon>Eclipse 2nd ed.Plays up to 6, gives most of the Gal Civ 4x feels in 3-4 hours, the ship building is kino too>Cosmic FrogPlays up to 6, best played as a 3v3 team game, solid components out of the box too>Rising SunNeeds the Daimyo edition for 6 players, but it's a beautiful production and is the best of Lang's area control trilogy
Is there a way to stop my friends from taking the moves I want to take? I'm tired of being screwed over and ending up in last place.
>>98139683The amount of shit rule cases that pop up during every play is hell, it's genuinely frustrating to play.I have played much more complicated games but they're worth the squeeze.
>>98139918try reverse psychology, works on uncreatives all the time
>>98139891>BAMBOO>>AUT SUM>>>PLUM
>>98139413>A player you've gamed with before drops a new game on the table, starts punching it out while reading the rulebook to your table, page for page. What do you do?remember that I *can* still have erections. a new game where they don't the rulebook at me is pizza delivery tier porn where I'm the girl who gets fucked AND gets to eat pizza.
>>98139918git gud
>>98140122Why are people shitposting shug
>>98139891if we're doing 6 I'll add:Sons of Anarachy w/ expansion (don't let the IP fool you it's good)Evolution: the beginning (I've played 7p it gets a little long but the deck drains fast it's not worse than other non-party games for big groups)NefariousRavine (co-op PEAK)Fairy Tale (add expert card and reshuffle to support 6)Oh Hell (standard deck game still good at 7)
>>98139891haha thanks, keep em coming
>>98140133
>>98140177I know the game anon I'm asking WHY
>>98140183a few select people can't handle how much the rest of us love it
>>98140183go back 2 threads and ctrl-f "SHUG"
>>98140133it's the least interesting kind of divisive. some people think the art sucks and the gameplay concept is meh, others are intrigued by both. it's like skub but you can actually understand why people think each way, even when they're obviously wrong.
>>98140236>some people think the art sucks >you can actually understand why people think each waythey weren't cool enough to ever be offered drugs, and now they're resentful?
>>98140260>narcotics are le kewl!and this is why the USA are falling apart from the inside, folks.
>>98140295who said anything about narcotics?i'm not talking about gross hillbilly drugs
>>98140329not drugs, shugs
>>98140548doing shugs with my shuggas before we SHUG
Do people play on TTS here? Does anyone have an updated mod for KDM and Final Girl?The latest save that I could grab for Final Girl is here >>98140555
Friend brought over picrel. I'm always up to try something out without spending the obscene amounts of cash required for all the kikestarter rubbish.On the surface, the game has all kinds of mechanics that I like. Unique factions, recruitin', upgradin', fightin', everything that would perk my ears up about a game. And yet, it fell very flat. The game tries to be thematic, but only on a very surface level. Things from the books, locations from the books, characters from the books, etc. But the mechanics don't feel well integrated at all with it, and they don't feel like they naturally link together either. The worst offender by far is the core of the game, which is the actual fighting and area majority stuff. In each battleground you put physical troop pieces, but that's not really who does the fighting. You can recruit wonderlanders to help fight, but they don't go on the map, they just go in a bag to get pulled out for a +3 in the combat phase. So troops are not really troops but your "health", and if you pull enough shit tokens from the bag they just die and you lose.Not a fan of the combat aside from that either. The insanity tokens and the fact that each wonderlander token also comes with a unique ability makes it way too chaotic and unpredictable.Verdict: slop. Give me El Grande for area majority and give me a Lang game for the recruit monsters shenanigans, and give me any dice roller for better combat.What do fellow fa/tg/uys think about it?
>>98114502>>98134406Friedemann Friese's Fische Fluppen Frikadellen is a midweight commodity speculation game for 2 to 15 players. The play time does not change dramatically with the player count.
>>98139413>starts punching it out while reading the rulebook to your tableI commend them on their multitasking, then ask them what we're actually going to play.
>mfw tangled yarns KS isn't up yetWhat's the hold up???
>>98141190the welsh have stolen all the art references
>>98139422>get up>leave table>take a shit>do laundry>make dinner>take a nap>wake up>still not back to your turn yet
>>98140564
>>98141491
What are some games that got meta'd so hard that it killed the game? Bonus points for the designer giving up trying to errata it.
>>98139413>A player you've gamed with before drops a new game on the table, starts punching it out while reading the rulebook to your table, page for page. What do you do?I handle the punching out so he can focus on the rulebook, or viceversa
Slop cover for a slop game>>98139413>TQUhhhh it probably depends on the game and also the circumstances? Weird TQ desu>>98139918Be the first player>>98141641Dominion without the expansions
>>98141641puerto rico IIRC where the brown cubes were retconned to be good instead of free workers
>>98139413>A player you've gamed with before drops a new game on the table, starts punching it out while reading the rulebook to your table, page for page. What do you do?if i like the person, i think i'm going to like the game, the game is under 2 hours long, AND it's under roughly a 3.20 weight....then i helpif any of those conditions aren't met - i probably laugh at them and tell them that's not how it works
>>98139422Anything greater than 0
>>98139413GODDAMN what a sexy OP pic
>>98139413name a better game than OP'sbet you can't
>>98141190I'm still waiting on the Cult of the Lamb board game KS to launch so I can hopefully look at a rulebook and see if it will be any good. I finally found someone who took some pics of the demo at UKGE and it at least looks good component-wise.
how's Sol: Last Days of a Star?
What's the first game that made you hate yourself?
>>98143175citadels
If I stop showering I can get rid of my towels and fit in another 5-10 games, any suggestions?Or if I want to get down to two shelves, what games could go? I have a few in mind, and have already parted with ~10 this year.
>>98143692Just re-orient and stack the boxes on your middle shelf and you can instantly unlock 30% more space.
>>98143175Dune. I fucked up so hard as Bene Gesserit with my brain farts. First I forced a wrong card and lost my masterfully maneuvered prediction. Then I forced a wrong card and lost an alliance victory. Took a good couple of years to live it down.
>>98143792Nice try, but I'm not into dudes. I don't care how much more space you say it will give me.
>>98143792I don't like storing games horizontally and stacking them that way. I also have to consider weight, since most of them have extra stuff (3d inserts, sleeved cards, maybe expansions).
>>98140782>give me a Lang gameThe only thing you should be getting is a bullet to the head.
>>98140824>Fische Fluppen FrikadellenGerman is not a real language.
>>98143864bit rude innit?
>>98143896
>>98141190they realized co-ops that are fully open information are just solo games that you have to watch other people fuck up 3/4 of the turns
>>98140782I did feel somewhat similarly about it. It was fun as a novelty, but the battles soon became somewhat of a chore. As you say, the game tries to do a ton of different things (to its detriment) mechanically and didn't really feel connected to the theme. The tea party phase easily was the most fun part, and even that felt flawed to me as the penalty of doing a lap wasn't as harsh as I'd like, I want to make hard decisions, not go yeah that card clearly is the best for me so lets go there. The battles were a bit too much administration than I'd have liked, counting strength and health/minions plus referencing what chit does what this game etc. Initially it seemed pretty cool but I don't think we had a single battle that was close in the whole 2 games I've played it. Usually it went to 'guess I'm not gonna win so I guess I'll stop at the smithy(?) space'I'm glad I only borrowed the game; it's the exact kind of okay but unique you don't want to get rid of, combined with the sunk cost and long-ish playtime it's very likely to end up gathering dust on a shelf. Now that I think about it, I'd say the game would be pretty cool if the fat was trimmed and compressed into a 60 min experience, in retrospect it felt just like that. A 1h game bloated up to twice its size
>>98143949Very true; the only coops worth playing are ones where information access or communication is limited.
>>98143019Lot of planning. Your things are moving around in an orbit, and you need to know where they are and what you will do in 2, 3 or 4+ turns from now. Graphics are lame, board is just a blazing fiery sun. It's definitely a game. Played twice. Could play more, seems playble, though it didn't grab me. Fairly easy game mechanics. But if you just yolo without future plans, you get a low score. Mid as in "mid", not bad.
Should I buy the Terra Mystica big box? Is it organized well? My lgs doesn't have the original game on its own
>>98139422I probably hate Root even more than any of the other posters who are roasting it and you, but I will give a serious answer anyway.Play without the Vagabond. I know it seems like the most creative and best part of the game, but its really the worst. Apparently the most recent expansion added a replacement faction for the vagabond, but you probably don't own that expansion (and I don't recommend buying it).This means if you have the core set only, you should play with 3 players, using the other three factions. If you have any expansions then you can play with 3 or 4, and you can play without the Vagabond or the Cats. Cole has no sense of balance (he has publicly stated that he does not care about it) and those factions are obscenely imbalanced. The rest of the factions are at least not trivially obvious.
>>98144150Pandemic and its consequences have been a disaster for the Gamer race.
>>98144482As someone who owns the big box, let me rant a little bit. I'm starting to really hate expansions for the simple fact that they come with separate pieces and separate rules that are not integrated into the box and ruleset in any kind of intuitive way. If everything is just thrown into one box (as it is for TM Big Box), just setting up the game has an extra step of sorting out which pieces you do and don't need.I understand that you can't do this with normal games and expansions, but big box releases should do better with integrating and separating things in a convenient way. Also the box itself is really fucking annoying and tall, the whole storage aspect is the worst part about TM same as it is about Caverna. tl;dr no it's not organised well, everything is just shoved in one box, best you can do with it is separate (some) expansion content into baggiesThis is really a minor complaint though, just an annoyance that keeps rearing its ugly head across time and games. The game itself is great, though veterans seem to prefer Gaia Project or Age of Innovation.
>>98141641Chess. Advanced Squad Leader except that the publisher hasn't given up rebalancing. However the more they change the worse it will get.Most 18xx games, but the community pretends they are still good even though the rules were originally designed for a different style of play.
>>98144521ok I probably won't buy it then because it's $145 and the only reason to get a big box for a game you haven't played imo is so you have more room to store the game.
>>98144534>Advanced Squad Leader except that the publisher hasn't given up rebalancing. However the more they change the worse it will get.QRD?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mindmgmt/grendel-the-game-of-crime-and-mayhemas a fan of the comic this looks really boring and I'm starting to tire of people using semi-obscure comics in money laundering projects like what happened with the french Elric board game that went nowhere.
>>98144561>the only reason to get a big box for a game you haven't played imo is so you have more room to store the gameThe box is, ironically, small for the amount of shit included in it.
>>98143692on the one hand there's very little tthat I would keepotoh there's even less that I would addI think you're trying to accommodate too many player counts and appease too many autistsobvious first cuts are blood rage, arcs, wonderland war, rebellion, tzolkin, hansa, yellow & yangtze, 7 wonders duel, and whichever 3-5 jobby euros hit the table leastobvious adds;captain sonara dexterity game or two.
>>98144886>I think you're trying to accommodate too many player counts...What? Don't be outright retarded, nirvana poster.
>>98143692If it's not stuffed into the base game's box already, you should get QE: Commodities.
>>98144930Don't ask me to make promises that I can't keep
>>98141641I'd argue that Food Chain Magnate is at the very least a solved openings game
>>98144930>...What?Anon probably read 5-10 games as 5-10 players. Someone was asking for recommendations for that slot last thread.
>>98144985Image was meant for >>98143870
>>98144985those are parenthesis dumbfuck, brackets are square. you'd think a fucking german would be a little more [precise]
>>98145027I'm going to chalk that up to an ESL translation.
>>98143847>weightIt's paper, cardstock, cardboard and wood, how the fuck are you concerned about weight? You can make a 8ft tall stack without concern. If your boxes are smashed its because you smash them down, put them into gym bags to transport them, store them in open sewage, or put them into a trash compactor.
>>98144985no it's just that I no longer believe player count 4 or 5 can ever be worth playing or designing forsolo is questionable 2-3 ideal6-8 is fine4 and 5 player games are almost always miserable
Root sucks
>>981452764 or 5 players is ideal, although 5 eliminates about half my collection. 3p is tolerable, 6+ gets miserable quickly. I will fight you on this as I am perpetually stuck with 3p and would give my left nut to have 4p regularly.
>>98145377>I will fight you on this as I am perpetually stuck with 3pDamn I have been on a 3p kick lately and got to say, I've yet to play a Splotter game that hasnt sung at 3.
>>98145276>I no longer believe player count 4 or 5Hegemony, FCM, COIN, Terra Mystica, Clash of Cultures, Power Grid, Modern Art, Fury of Dracula, and many more would like to talk to you. I have more games for 4 than I do for 3 and 5, and even there there's still some good stuff.
not looking for a fight; let me rephrase that as a question. what does going from player count 3 to player count 4 or 5 add to your game? more downtime, less player agency, more opportunities for kingmaking and other NPE/bad group dynamics. 6+ is different because the designs for that space are usually much snappier, lighter, social & party game fare.
>>98141635kek saved
>>98145621None of those anons. 2 or 4player is just more likely to come together with my gaming groups than 3 and by the time the 5th becomes viable due to being older one of the original 4 will be dead so we're back to 4 again. Which is a pain because The King Is Dead is a great game when you have 3 players but sucks with 4.
>>98145621What a weird question, you might say the same from 2 to 3 . I mean I agree that as a rule of thumb, mid-heavy euros tend to be better at 3 than 4 but that is by no means universal. What I do agree is that 5 is the cursed player count, a select few games NEED 5 and the rest is either way worse with 5 or straight up doesn't support it. It's the twilight zone between board- and partygames.
>>981456211. using the full board and all the cards2. more options for seating besides A-B-C and C-B-A3. one more different strategy at the table
>>98145276>4-5 is miserable>6-8 is fine
>>98145377>>98145667if you ever find yourself at 5 just play the greatest 5 player game ever created Hansa Teutonica
>>98144534As someone new to 18XX, what is the "current meta" and what was the intended style of play? I assume "everyone keeps to themselves and maybe buys 1 share of the opponent companies to mess with the turn order and siphon some dividends" is the meta solution to the company-dump tactic that punishes 2+ share investments in opponent companies, but i'm probably wrong.
>>98145975There is no current meta, 18xx is played by ragtag bands of shut-ins and weirdos and is completely resistant to that sort of thing. Anyone who answers "Chess" to>>98141641 is just a troll blowing smoke out of their ass anyway
>>98145088It's a question of shelf capacity. I've already added supports, and added screws on the back that actually go into the studs. Lots of those boxes are 4-7 pounds.
>>98144934Commodities is in there, but haven't had a chance to play with it yet
>>98144886Appreciate the input-Arcs and wonderlands war are candidates for removal, not sure yet-Blood rage is good for what it is-Rebellion could be better. The expansion improves the combat, but that aspect still isn't great. But overall I like it for the asymetry.- tzolkin and 7 wonders duel are fine, but wouldn't be upset if they went- Hansa isn't going anywhere, it's a top 10 for me- yellow and yangtze is underrated I think. Maybe tigris is better, but it's closer than I expected
>>98143692I'd like to play games with you
>>98143692I will personally come to your house, remove 1/3 of those and build you a better ikea solution on my own dime but I get to choose the games.
>>98146659you can but it's blood rage
>>98143692Web of Power (or a reimplementation)Tower of BabelAcquireFaiyumSantiagoCargo NoirRobo Rally (the Renegade Studios one)
>>98146737I like having them out of sight in the closet, the last thing I want is to have a room visually dominated by board games. I guess it would be okay if the furniture had solid doors
>>98145621>more downtimeI don't really care, as long as tracking what people do is interesting and of itself, turns are fast, or downtime equals time for planning your own shit. So in most cases.>less player agencyLess chance to win is not the same thing as less agency.>more opportunities for kingmakingOnly had one egregious case of it happen ever. It doesn't matter if you have a good group and the design doesn't make it overt or incentivise it, a la Root.>and other NPE/bad group dynamicsNo idea what that is, but the only bad group dynamics in my group are that some people become deadset against some hames.Basically, none of that shit matters as much as you think it does. As for a positive case for more players>design calls for it explicitly>board gets filled out better>more different strategies employed>less chance of a (single) runaway winner>more bantsI play a bunch of 2p with my bro, and I love those games in and of themselves, but a 2p game night is nothing compared to a 4+ game night. You guys hate Power Grid, and it is absolutely everything people say it is, but with a good group it's a fucking blast.
>>98145621Some games simply shines at 5p, like el grande
>>98144964I like fcm openings because they're more like templates than builds. You still have to react to what other players do and tweak with how much greed you can get away with
>>98146855Doors it is. We are gonna remove the shelves and put the ikea in your closet anyway. What's your address?
>>98141641Mtg, I suppose. It's one of the examples of interconnectivity and public info actually huring a game; or rather the discovery process.I'd say stronghold undead but ignacy is such a hack that it is insanely imbalanced out of the box and that is just IF you manage to get through the extremely bad rulebookAn argument can be made for TM I suppose, but vp penalizing stronger races does work quite elegantly. Not that it would ever make me play eg. giants but it's cool.Fury of Dracula is absolutely ruined by someone wanting to win enough to do what people have come to call 'pirate dracula'
>>98147023Do you know where Springfield is? I'm on evergreen terrace
>>98146840Is web of power similar to el grande?Faiyum is one I remember looking at, not sure it fills a niche since I have power grid and some other old school euro designs, but warrants another look
>>98145027>>98145042>>98144985In British English, we call the rounded ones brackets and the squared ones square brackets.
>>98147157Faiyum is good and tight. Working the active pile or whatever they call it is a treat and provides interesting opportunities you don't get in a other games. It is nothing like power grid, if anything it's closer to Century Spice Road as you play the cards you want in the order you want, but you have to pay to pick up too many when resting so order can be crucial.
>>98147357great, the only stupider english is aussie english. thanks for chiming in gov'na.
Thoughts on this game?
>>98147408>"Sweet Lands is a heavyweight Euro-style"I'm in. No further reading needed.
>>98147379Anon who rustled your jimmies to such an extreme?
>>98143692this is a nicely curated collection. i'd get rid of Wonderland's War and....i'm having trouble after that. maybe Blood Rage. (haven't played either, just from what i hear)what are YOUR least favorite 3? favorite 3?do your friends/gaming group like the same stuff you do? it's fairly narrow taste, but damn good taste.add Santiago + Pueblo. maybe Race for the Galaxy. i'd game with you so hard. maybe the closest to my tastes i've ever seen on someone else's shelves.
>>98145276>I no longer believe player count 4 or 5 can ever be worth playing or designing for
>>981456214 is the best player count because it's 2 couplesyou can wife swap after the gamecutthroat games sometimes need the board full for maximum tensionplus the wife swapping
>>98145975I am not good enough at most of the games to specifically describe their metagames, my apologies. To illustrate my position instead I will describe a common pattern of behavior in 18xx groups, one that I witnessed many times at a club with one of the top 5 18xx players worldwide, and many other top tier tournament players. This pattern is also described on public forums, usually as a positive.A game is started, and the players discuss the strategies of all the positions for the first several rounds, after about 6 hours, the game is about to enter the third or fourth turn(about 1/2 or 1/3 of the way through), and the players decide a winner by acclaim, based on their understanding of the endgame meta. I have heard of some groups declaring the winner after starting auctions, but I have not had the misfortune of witnessing this. The practice is self-evidently odious for many reasons, which i can describe in more detail later in the day if anyone is interested.>>98146052Now that opening theory is largely solved, Chess can only be played competitively after studying the literature and effectively memorizing a range of openings. Whether that has "killed" the game is subjective, but it has killed it for me, so it is my answer to the question.For 18xx there are certainly many social problems in the community, but it is unwarranted to write them all off as "shut-ins and weirdos". It seems that you think that a game not being solved is the same as not having a metagame.
>>98144568For any given scenario there is a generally correct set-up of forces, perhaps with 2 major variations which come down to the location of a key piece of equipment between two high visibility positions. The attacker probes forward with tiny increments of force so as not to be very vulnerable to defensive fire. Once the forces are close they trade fire until a key position breaks at which point they are overwhelmed with a breakthough. The scenario design is so precise and the time limits so exact that there is not room for much variation of tactics, basically just priority of fire and a bit of decoy bluffing. The only thing that matters is which side gets a bad break first, or for a large scenario, more bad breaks.In conclusion most choices are forced by the scenario design and it is just dice rolls that determines who wins. The game is played for the entertainment of historical simulation more than for the specific tactics.I won't even go into all the commonly practiced rules exploits except to say that they ruin the historical aspect.
>>98141641Terra mystica for a few of my friends.They didnt't like that in majority of the cases its only correct to go for temple/dwelling opener into brown one.
>>98147729>Whether that has "killed" the game is subjective,Sure, I guess, but youre stretching subjectivity about as far as it can go. The fact that it looks fucking boring is what killed SETI for me, but I can't honestly tell anyone it's a dead game.>It seems that you think that a game not being solved is the same as not having a metagame.I mean that it's played by such disparate groups that there isn't a current meta. You could take your top 5 player and he would founder in a game with the bozos who played every Friday at my LGS because he isn't familiar with their hyperlocal meta. Also, calling a game early isn't a quirk of 18xx by any means, it arises naturally in any game where the players are autistic enough to play it into the ground. Tons of wargames end because player A has x full strength units and has captured city y on turn z and both players can see that B has no road back to victory.
>>98147379I'm not going to put Indian English and Australian English on a scale, but putting British English beneath Indian English is a crazy take.
>>98147647I don't really have a top or bottom 3, although a handful haven't been tabled yet, so reserving judgement on those. The games I don't enjoy or I don't see myself playing anymore I move on from pretty quickly, so everything there I like or haven't played enough to make a judgement. Some I consider closer to 'good' than 'great', but I like having them around because of the theme or variety they offer. Like GAH is a dice game that I can play with 2, and it's a very different atmosphere than Troyes at 2.
what is the exploding kittens of eurogames
>>98144500>Cole has no sense of balance (he has publicly stated that he does not care about it)Absolutely hate this zoomer mindset that balance isn't important or somehow bad. I've seen so many people especially in video games express this opinion.
>>98148260Wingspan.
>>98148260terraforming mars
>>98139413Any good digitizations come out in the past 6 months or so? I really like Through the Ages for reference.
>>98148319I think the rationale is that imbalance and huge swings make for more memorable moments and a wider range of emotions and a stronger emergent narrative. Now I can see the truth in that, but I don't need a narrative in my games; I want well thought out, balanced mechanics and, most of all, a challenge. This trend of loosey goosey narrative experiences is kinda weird to me, it is similar to the attempts of (non-emergent) storytelling in boardgames: most of them do not work at all because it's just not the right medium if you ask me. On one side there's tons of rpgs that give you a way easier time to get your narrative without the hassle of mechanics and mental math. I feel the attempt to make a narratively driven boardgame is pressing square shapes through round holes; to me mechanics only get in the way of a narrative experience, and boardgames are mostly "just" a pile of mechanics.
>>98147157Web of Power is an area majority game but the similarities end there. It's a 3 player game where the value of areas is based on their occupancy. Your pieces in an area increase the payout for first place and the place one spot beneath your own.Placement is driven by hand management. The hands are mostly random but if a spot is important you can mitigate the randomness at the cost of action efficiency or by telegraphing what you are going to do.Tower of Babel is also an area majority game. It works at every player count on the box and the piece placement is driven by a moderated negotiation.The player on turn proposes an area to place in, a number of pieces to place there, and a type of resource to burn for placement. Everyone offers to place pieces. The player on turn accepts a working combination of offers and then everyone gets a resource.The payout for areas depend on timing, with some areas not paying out at all. Timing can be a big factor in whether or not a proposal succeeds. You also get points when your offer is rejected, which has interesting implications.>>98147157>Faiyum is one I remember looking at, not sure it fills a niche since I have power gridThe closest game I can think of to Faiyum is Concordia, but Faiyum and Concordia are very different games.
>>98148319It's not a zoomer mindset, cosmic encounter does the same thing, to an extreme degree, and it's up to the table to recognize it and play with it in mind
>>98148260Are you talking about the game or the publisher?
>>98148386>I think the rationale is that imbalance and huge swingsI totally get that huge swings can make for great moments, but people incorrectly think that big, powerful abilities and big swings need to be tied to imbalance, because they don't understand what balance means.People think that e.g. a "balanced" game is one where faction A has 100 atk 100 def and faction B has 90 atk and 110 def, and an "imbalanced" game is one where faction A has 190 atk 10 def, faction B is the opposite.But in fact both types of game can be balanced. You can make your different game choices hugely different and swingy, as long as you make sure there is something to compensate.A truly imbalanced game is where some choices have great upsides with negligible downsides, and some choices have irrelevant upsides and huge downsides.Imbalance actually just tends to lead to the same result happening every time. For example the Raven in Wingspan is just a free win if you draw it. It pretty much invalidates the rest of the game. It results in a predictable outcome that actually makes the game less swingy (other than who is lucky enough to draw it).That's why game balance is important. (Still no fucking idea how that card got out the door)>>98148463As I understand (I haven't played Cosmic Encounter but would like to) it is lucky enough to have two natural balancing mechanics: player negotiation and alliances/joint victories.In this way a "weak" player can still ally up for a win.Not all games have this benefit, especially ones with a single winner.
Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? The campaign for north africa of space games
>>98149503The designer and publisher are right there on the cover, God bless them.
>>98149503I'm sad you got filtered by such kino.
>>98149503it's fucking amazingthere's immense amounts of depth and options and shit, but never too complexthe expansions are actually good and feel really really great to use
>>98149503Excellent game, ion game design are fucking niggers and should never be ordered from direct though. Communication is fucking dreadful and you have to find the CEO's email and constantly pester her if you actually want your shit mailed out.
>>98139413No fucking way I'm listening to a dumbass reading a whole rule set. If I come to your place at the very least you gotta know the game
>>98139413>TQAfter insulting him for essentially stealing precious game time from us, I'll try to find a useful rules video, jon, rodney or paul if possible. Because, sure I'll pay a new game. Then, everytime some rules question comes up I'll passively aggressively announce something like 'oh no whatever shall we do, if only someone had read the fucking rules beforehand'. Other players join in and it makes the responsible person seethe, but rightfully so. In my experience, bullying sadly is a way more effective method than an earnest 'look anon, our game time is really limited and coming unprepared takes unnecessarily clips off a portion of that, next time please learn the rules beforehand or just tell us what game you'll bring'. You'd think we are all adults and would respect that time is the bottleneck at this point, but fat chance.
>>98149957If you're good friends light bullying comes naturally and shouldn't offend anyone. People tend to take the hints.
>>98143692I love Barony, what are your thoughts on it? I don't see it discussed much here.
What are the official "Catan-but-better!" BGG approved games. I've played it before (and it sucked hard,) but I just watched the no rolls barred guys hate on it, justifiably, for 2hr. Space base? Lords of Vegas?
>>98150107Good observation, that does make me feel better about it.But seriously, why would you not learn the rules in advance. Of course, it's always the people who don't have kids that do this. I suppose this, like all life lessions, needs to be learned through experience. If you've got plenty of time for yourself, other peoples time probably also seems less valuable.
>>98150122It's the newest addition, haven't played it yet
>>98150129dominion is pretty much the first recognizable modern game to follow in catan footsteps but I wouldn't want to play that eitheryou could maybe make a case for ticket to ride or carcassonne
>>98150719>dominion is pretty much the first recognizable modern game to follow in catan footsteps
>>98150946He means it's the second hobbyist game he ever played.
>>98151000no retard>>98150946I am not going to explain a concept as simple as the parallels between catan and dominion. try breathing through your nose for a change
>>98151169Will you explain the parallels between Catan and Carcassonne then?
>>98140183Is Shug the new Jaipur? It obviously can't be Munchkin...
>>98151304Catan is to carcassonne as alligators are to nautilidae; they were relatively elegant designs two hundred million years ago which are somehow still alive
>>98151169>I am not going to explain a concept as simple as the parallels between catan and dominion.>They both come in a box.Yeah...
>>98150129Anon, here's a solid response from a decade ago, if not longer. The Anon in question did a solid job suggesting games with similar elements. Hope that helps.In the style of Scott Nicholson's video on Monopoly (another game that must be good because it's old and popular), I will recommend games that people would enjoy if they like certain aspects of Catan.(video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnXloqRfdA) [Embed]Now, as I do not like certain aspects of Catan and I'm only listing games I have played, my suggestions may be hazier in those areas. But I am still 100% certain that everyone can find a more enjoyable game than Catan. I will not describe each game in detail, as an exhaustive list of games better than Catan would stretch until it reaches the sun. If you like dice rolling that decides what actions you can do or gives you resources:- The Castles of Burgundy- Stone Age- Troyes- Macao- King of Tokyo- Bora Bora - Seasons- TakenokoIf you like a variable board that changes every game:- Dominant Species- Mage Knight- Sid Meier's Civilization- Antiquity- Targi- ArchipelagoIf you like building a connected network:- Terra Mystica- Power Grid- Brass- Keyflower- Hansa Teutonica - Ticket to Ride- Roads and Boats- Trains- Thurn and Taxis- Myrmes - Vegas Showdown- Hacienda - The Great Zimbabwe- Many, many train games.If you like trading/negotiation:- Civilization - Twilight Imperium - Archipelago - Diplomacy- Bohnanza- Santiago (bonus category: If you like being a dick...)- Werewolf, Two Rooms and a Boom, The Resistance, or any other social deduction game
>>98149503>Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
>>98147729I have heard of declaring the winner halfway through a heavy economic game like FCM when the runaway win is clearly visible, but this is the first time I hear of it happening in an 18XX. You'd think there's way more moves one can do to fuck over a company, like fiddling with the turn order via share sales, or preemptively blocking routes to make sure the first D train doesn't print infinite money. My condolences that your group is made up of the unfun kind of autists.
>>98150129on a technical level Chinatown might be the next direct step in the "Monopoly -> Settlers of Catan ->" evolution line. All three are about handling mostly-random shit with the primary means of trading and secondary means of getting lucky. Space base lacks trading to be on this evolution line, and Lords of Vegas feels to me like its too much luck on top of a similar foundation, so if your group is beer and pretzels enough you might like it better than Chinatown.but honestly you don't need "bad thing but better" when you can have "good thing" instead.
How did your month of May go, anons?
>>98151504>western legendsBased. Do you play with any expansions?
>>98151563Yeah I play with every darn thing lol, though I often like to step back and play base game only for a while. Recently I 3d printed a full insert that fits everything retail on it, it alone weights like 1 kilo, it's probably my heaviest box now. I play it with anons on /vm/ from time to time as well.I also forgot to mention, I'm really loving hidden movement games, they are so much fun. I'm getting a little obsessed with Nuns on the Run and Sniper Elite, I'll 100% have to PnP nuns but I think I could get Sniper somewhere since that one is more recent.
>>98151504> Merchants & Marauders>Sniper Elite>SekigaharaSo Jelly!>Citadels - 34 minutesThat's pure fantasy. Love the game, particularly at 5 - 7 players, but I've *NEVER* seen a game with that many players finish in under 45 minutes. Usually it's an hour plus.As for me, mostly it has been lighter stuff:Forest ShuffleTicket to RideSea Salt & PaperRoll for the GalaxyRoam
>>98151620>Nuns on the Run and Sniper Elite,qrd? I love the idea of hidden movement games but I often find them quite disappointing to play
>>98151627>CitadelsYeah I didn't expect it to be that quick, I set out at least 45 minutes during lunch time to play it with 5, but my group got the hang of it quickly, we played with the standard roles and due to a combination of the Warlord being often the first removed card and being assassinated at the right time, we managed to get it finished rather quickly, was still very competitive, one of our guys was getting so mad because the assassin was reading him like an open book lmao, and I could never get architect at the right time because people were eyeing me all the time with thief. What a fun little game.>Merchants & MaraudersMy last game was odd. Hadn't played it (irl) since December and it felt a bit too convoluted organizationally speaking, maybe I needed a bigger table but it's most likely that I got so used to how easy it is to play it on Tabletop Sim, I'd sometime just boot it up and play the Solo variant or multihand it and be done with it in about an hour, irl (with a new player that doesn't speak english) took us about 3 hours, and while it was pretty close overall, it didn't feel as great as before. I'm troubled by it, cuz it was my jam for a long while.
>>98141641As others have pointed out Dominion with a couple of optimal strategies that win out. As for Puerto Rico, IMO that game's biggest shortcoming is it's notoriously autistic player base that routinely has a fit if a newbie makes an non-optimized move while learning the game. There was the game where the goal was to grow a grove of trees (can't think of the name of it) that had one or two dominate strategies and the game quickly fizzled out once they became known. There was also the longer campaign game that Tom Vassel and the Dice Tower crew absolutely review-bombed and refused to finish due to how broken / imbalanced one aspect of the game was. But there's the opposite end of the spectrum as well. Years ago on the gulag (a.k.a. BGG), a player of a war game made a very well thought out post pointing out a game breaking problem with a particular unit / rule. The OP provided analysis and statistics to back up his argument, as well as a straight forward solution to repair the issue. Of course a couple dozen gulag posters immediately shit on the OP's post with garbage like: "Oh, you think you understand game balance better than the designer?" Or the ever helpful "You're wrong." The very next day the game designer replied: "OP, you are 100% correct in your analysis and I think your solution to the problem works elegantly. With your permission I'd like to include it in my next errata update." Of course all the shit-posters immediately when radio-silence after that.
>>98151649Nuns is a great Hide and Seek game, you are novices on a convent and you want to get a forbidden item and go back to your room without being caught (a slice of cake, some love letter, or the Necronomicon). All the while the headmaster nuns move around the map in search for troublemakers. Game is quite simple, you mark your end space secretly, still checking on each individual space if you get LOS to a headmaster in a very fiddly wargame-like straight line that I love, and then you roll a die to determine if you made enough noise to alert the nun, which can now move away from her chosen predetermined route to go look for you. Since there's more of you, even if you stay silent your novice friend may cause your demise, it's chaotic but at the same time it feels like you're Solid Snake taking chances. I love that's it's not cooperative, you care for yourself only. It's on the simpler side and it's not as interactive as it may sound but you'll always be into it and cackling at the misfortune of others all the way until the end of the game. I'd say the headmasters are a bit weak, but you have extra monks and stuff that give you a bit more area to cover.
>>98151649>>98151752Sniper Elite is more strategic, more streamlined game, you are this sniper fella that wants to reach 2 objectives within 10-ish turns (that reset between objectives). You can move, shoot, and you have a loadout to get out of tricky situations. The other player(s) control squads of 1 officer and 2 soldiers to try and track you down and either kill you, or block you for long enough you run out of time.It works great and I'm surprised at how balanced, tense and different each game has felt, even on the same map. The Line of Sight rules are also extremely simple to understand, and having a bag that you upgrade/downgrade based on your performance to take sniper shots is actually pretty brilliant. When you shoot you declare how many tokens you'll pull from the bag beforehand, each "aim" token gives you 1 range while there's also recoil and noise tokens, pull enough aim to reach your target and bam, they are dead and you earn an extra aim token for later. Pull 2 noise and you alert your position. Pull 5 recoil/noise and you also miss. What's cool about it is that you can overpull to keep the Germans guessing. "he pulled 8 tokens and got 4, he must have barely got his hit and is within 4 spaces of the dead body, spread out!" and meanwhile you're actually right in the same space of the guy you killed and now they are on a wild goose chase.I like how the squads can spend their entire 2 actions to gather intel and ask "are you in this particular area" so you can at least get an idea of where this sneaky bastard is. Great moments and replayability, the expansion seems to add even more little things you can add at will, so I'm looking forward to try it. Definitely recommend giving it a spin.Not qrd at all, sorry lol, it's just that I really love stealth.
