-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
New Board Gaming |OT2| On Tables, Off Topic
- Thread starter Karkador
- Start date
"Pirates of the 7 Seas" and "Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot."
Libertalia remains one of my favorite games, with a nice blend of strategy, luck, and balance. Every game is different since only 21 out of 30 cards get used.
But yes, many games will result in you leaning on the rail of your pirate ship's deck, miserably, regretting your decisions in life. Your brilliant plan will have completely fallen apart by one or two cards, by your neighbor deciding to backstab you, and by you simply overlooking a possibility.
If your group ENJOYS those sorts of shenanigans, and 3+ people happening to play a beggar on the same turn so one person loses a bunch of money, and me having like -16 points in curses passed onto me as a nearly last-place person on the very last turn of the game, then by all means go for it.
By the way, I don't think I ever posted my collected Libertalia rule clarification notes. These are hopefully pulled from forum posts, official clarifications, and so forth. One of the game's few downsides is that the rules may not be as explicitly clear as one would like in some cases.
Notes on Libertalia rules, from boardgamegeek.com, rule clarification guides, etc.:
Cook = draw from the day's booty, NOT the bag.
Preacher = discard from own den.
Recruiter = you end up with more cards than other players (and this is okay in this case).
Merchant = you HAVE to use the ability if you can (and yes this can hurt you).
Parrot = replacement card gets sorted into the right slot so you can grab better treasure.
Parrot = you end up with fewer cards than other players (and this is okay in this case).
Spy = discard to bag, THEN draw (so yes, there is a chance you get the same tokens back).
Waitress = can only turn in ONE map per night.
Topman = if there is a tie, NO ONE gets a reward.
Brute = discards himself if he is the highest rank on the ship.
Gunner = must pay doubloons even if there is no one to shoot.
Gunner = if player has 0, 1, or 2 doubloons, they pay what they can, and the gunner still shoots.
Mutineer = if there are no more cards in the den to discard, does NOT earn doubloons.
4 maps = only scores as 3 for set bonus (unless you get 6 maps for 2 sets).
Leftover booty tokens = discard to bag.
Any time a booty token is discarded = it goes to the bag immediately.
antiquegamer
Member
We had a small get together for our anniversary and these were some of the games I was planning to get to the table, but turn out they just want to keep playing Dead of Winter and Firefly. We did play Splendor and Machi Koro and a bit of the New Science in between as filler but mostly everyone just want to get in on long thematic games.
I was surprise everyone love playing this game. On paper it just seems terribly boring and almost solitaire like game play of pick-up and delivery. I think the theme is very strong and we all love Firefly, if anything it's one of the better licensed game for sure.
Another big hit this weekend, though I find the game to be a bit easy without traitor. We played four game of this and not one of them did we have a betrayer. Still it was very fun time especially every time my brother-in-law moved his character they just seems to drop dead from bites.
I was surprise everyone love playing this game. On paper it just seems terribly boring and almost solitaire like game play of pick-up and delivery. I think the theme is very strong and we all love Firefly, if anything it's one of the better licensed game for sure.
Another big hit this weekend, though I find the game to be a bit easy without traitor. We played four game of this and not one of them did we have a betrayer. Still it was very fun time especially every time my brother-in-law moved his character they just seems to drop dead from bites.
antiquegamer
Member
I went looking to see the price and didn't realize how many expansions there are for this game. I bought Ascension at PAX may be 3-4 years ago and while we enjoyed it a lot, it now rarely hit the table. I have the Fallen expansion (bought it at the show as a bundle with all the promo cards) but I find the with expansion there were just too many cards in the draw deck. I assume price shoot up because it's out of print. I wonder if they are going to re-release everything with new design later.
I don't combine my expansions that I have but merely play them as single sets. From the app it's clear most of the sets don't actually play well with each other. They have themes that in general work best alone. Beyond that some of them break each other with card combos.
Holy shit i just saw this. Man, glad i got it cheap when i first started gaming.
Related, me and my bro love Ascension, i just bought Battlecon, but how is Star Realms? Seems cool
I haven't played star realms personally, but the app is free for the base game on googleplay if I recall right and I am pretty sure IOS has an app as well. not sure if Pc does. if you want to give it a try.
antiquegamer
Member
Star Realms is our current go to deck building game. We play mostly with the app however, because it's easier to get a few games in and tracking points is sort of a pain with analog version. Game is on PC but it hasn't been update with new expansion as far as I know.
Awesome that's them. Trying to decide which one will be better is difficult at this early stage!
I've got three sets so far, and it's always base game + one expansion at most. I played one game with all three and the themes/engine potential ends up too diluted.
re: Star Realms, I really enjoy it. I picked up two other base sets recently so we could play it more than head-to-head but it's fun 1v1 for sure. It's very similar to Ascension mechanically.
We just don't use the cards to track points. Quite literally any other method is friendlier than the cards.
Preordered it today - first time I preordered a boardgame. I must be mad....
-ly in love with the concept of this game.
Gaming Truth
Member
Had 3 game nights during the past month, which will probably be some of my last ones.
First Night
Survive: This was an interesting five player game, with 3 new players. I targeted the other non-new player since he beat me both times we played it before. Others helped in making sure he doesn't win, except that they switched over to me afterwards and I ended up with only one meeple scored.
Fiasco: I realized how much the group matters for such a game, one player couldn't come up with any story and another had ridiculously cartoony plot ("mafia boss ate the gun").
It was even less satisfying than my 3 player playthrough. I guess it's gonna be tough to organize a good Fiasco game.
Dixit: The only player I knew well enough was the one winning so I didn't want to give him any points, ended up making the most ridiculous references ("Ocarina!" *plays a card with a windmill on it).
Second Night
Airlines Europe: Finally got more people to agree to play it and they enjoyed it a lot. 4 of the 5 players were within 5 points from each other. I think I ended up in 2nd place.
Paperback: For people who don't know the game it's Scrabble meets Dominion. My copy finally arrived after ordering it in January!
It was fun but I had some bad AP moments. This is the first deck builder I own and I still have no idea how to play them (as in when to start going for VPs).
Room 25: This was a surprise, a game that I don't think I've heard of before. It's a semi-coop Forbidden Desert with hidden identity and programmable actions. You can peek beneath hidden tiles, move, push someone, or slide a row/column. Good guys' goal is to find Room 25 (a hidden tile), enter it and slide it out of the corner.
I was one of the two guards/bad guys/traitors and I had a hunch about the other guy. I wasn't aware of the tempo of the game so I missed an awesome chance of pushing someone into a room of fiery death (because I didn't wanna reveal my identity early). The other guard/bad guy/traitor killed me instead and we lost.
This was pretty fun and most people wanted to try it again straight away, except it was pretty late.
Third Night
After having neighbors that are in my gaming group for a (school) year we finally had a game night. It was with the specific purpose of playing new games I haven't played before.
Royals: This was a pretty fun game, simple and fast enough yet fairly engaging. I won by focusing on France as well as getting 3 royals.
Five Tribes: I'm not sure how to feel about this, probably because I did very bad. I didn't really have a strategy throughout the game and I had a hard time trying to get my camels on the board. Also it feels bad when I set someone up to get 40 points in one turn.
I was worried about facing AP each round and ruining the game for everyone else, but it wasn't as bad as I thought (except for the two times I backtracked my mancala action).
Roll for the Galaxy: This game I didn't want to try because I felt intimidated. I didn't have the best experiences with Race for the Galaxy. I was pleasantly surprised.
Having played Race before I quickly got most of the rules. I had good starting tiles. I ended up focusing too much on the early tiles I got and never really expanded. It didn't help that I missed the fact that the tiles are where the bulk of score came from!
I would like to try it again now that I know how it works.
Cosmic Encounter: We ended up the night with an Epic game. We usually play Cosmic with only the rewards deck expansion (and the Aliens I guess). This time we did hazards, technology, and two aliens one hidden one revealed!
I had the Genius (draw cards instead of getting colonies, win with 20 cards) and Prophet (predict encounter outcome get colony). They weren't exactly the best combination, but that didn't last long. Soon enough I was very close to winning. So one player decides to play a card that makes me discard my alien and choose a new one. Since we were playing with two aliens I discarded the Prophet since I wasn't using it anyway. Which alien do I end up getting? Kamikaze (sacrifice your ships to draw cards)!
I misunderstood what main player meant and missed an opportunity to win. They allowed me to draw the cards to win and I almost did it but then thought it was too anticlimactic and decided to continue the game. So everyone wouldn't let me ally with them because I'll win if I get more cards, thus I had to wait for someone to draw my color from the encounter deck. At this point I was getting cocky and sacrificed way too many ship to get a huge hand to make sure I can block any artifacts, as well as having lost a couple encounters just to get cards.
When someone finally drew my encounter card everyone was one point (or successful encounter) away from winning. I planned to lose a negotiate so I can draw cards and win. Now I realized a problem: if I lost one more planet I would lose my powers! And if I negotiate successfully my opponent would win. I had no way of getting out of it. Finally I gave up, laughed at myself for wasting that opportunity to win, and let them get their colony.
Out of nowhere one player reveals themselves as Filth (kicks other players colonies out of planets they have colonies on) making the winning player not winning anymore, and since it was the start of a turn it meant I won.
Now technically Filth is mandatory so it should've been revealed the moment anyone gained a colony, but that player had no idea and it worked out in my favor
First Night
Survive: This was an interesting five player game, with 3 new players. I targeted the other non-new player since he beat me both times we played it before. Others helped in making sure he doesn't win, except that they switched over to me afterwards and I ended up with only one meeple scored.
Fiasco: I realized how much the group matters for such a game, one player couldn't come up with any story and another had ridiculously cartoony plot ("mafia boss ate the gun").
It was even less satisfying than my 3 player playthrough. I guess it's gonna be tough to organize a good Fiasco game.
Dixit: The only player I knew well enough was the one winning so I didn't want to give him any points, ended up making the most ridiculous references ("Ocarina!" *plays a card with a windmill on it).
Second Night
Airlines Europe: Finally got more people to agree to play it and they enjoyed it a lot. 4 of the 5 players were within 5 points from each other. I think I ended up in 2nd place.
Paperback: For people who don't know the game it's Scrabble meets Dominion. My copy finally arrived after ordering it in January!
It was fun but I had some bad AP moments. This is the first deck builder I own and I still have no idea how to play them (as in when to start going for VPs).
Room 25: This was a surprise, a game that I don't think I've heard of before. It's a semi-coop Forbidden Desert with hidden identity and programmable actions. You can peek beneath hidden tiles, move, push someone, or slide a row/column. Good guys' goal is to find Room 25 (a hidden tile), enter it and slide it out of the corner.
I was one of the two guards/bad guys/traitors and I had a hunch about the other guy. I wasn't aware of the tempo of the game so I missed an awesome chance of pushing someone into a room of fiery death (because I didn't wanna reveal my identity early). The other guard/bad guy/traitor killed me instead and we lost.
This was pretty fun and most people wanted to try it again straight away, except it was pretty late.
Third Night
After having neighbors that are in my gaming group for a (school) year we finally had a game night. It was with the specific purpose of playing new games I haven't played before.
Royals: This was a pretty fun game, simple and fast enough yet fairly engaging. I won by focusing on France as well as getting 3 royals.
Five Tribes: I'm not sure how to feel about this, probably because I did very bad. I didn't really have a strategy throughout the game and I had a hard time trying to get my camels on the board. Also it feels bad when I set someone up to get 40 points in one turn.
I was worried about facing AP each round and ruining the game for everyone else, but it wasn't as bad as I thought (except for the two times I backtracked my mancala action).
Roll for the Galaxy: This game I didn't want to try because I felt intimidated. I didn't have the best experiences with Race for the Galaxy. I was pleasantly surprised.
Having played Race before I quickly got most of the rules. I had good starting tiles. I ended up focusing too much on the early tiles I got and never really expanded. It didn't help that I missed the fact that the tiles are where the bulk of score came from!
I would like to try it again now that I know how it works.
Cosmic Encounter: We ended up the night with an Epic game. We usually play Cosmic with only the rewards deck expansion (and the Aliens I guess). This time we did hazards, technology, and two aliens one hidden one revealed!
I had the Genius (draw cards instead of getting colonies, win with 20 cards) and Prophet (predict encounter outcome get colony). They weren't exactly the best combination, but that didn't last long. Soon enough I was very close to winning. So one player decides to play a card that makes me discard my alien and choose a new one. Since we were playing with two aliens I discarded the Prophet since I wasn't using it anyway. Which alien do I end up getting? Kamikaze (sacrifice your ships to draw cards)!
I misunderstood what main player meant and missed an opportunity to win. They allowed me to draw the cards to win and I almost did it but then thought it was too anticlimactic and decided to continue the game. So everyone wouldn't let me ally with them because I'll win if I get more cards, thus I had to wait for someone to draw my color from the encounter deck. At this point I was getting cocky and sacrificed way too many ship to get a huge hand to make sure I can block any artifacts, as well as having lost a couple encounters just to get cards.
When someone finally drew my encounter card everyone was one point (or successful encounter) away from winning. I planned to lose a negotiate so I can draw cards and win. Now I realized a problem: if I lost one more planet I would lose my powers! And if I negotiate successfully my opponent would win. I had no way of getting out of it. Finally I gave up, laughed at myself for wasting that opportunity to win, and let them get their colony.
Out of nowhere one player reveals themselves as Filth (kicks other players colonies out of planets they have colonies on) making the winning player not winning anymore, and since it was the start of a turn it meant I won.
Now technically Filth is mandatory so it should've been revealed the moment anyone gained a colony, but that player had no idea and it worked out in my favor
May I ask why they're probably some of your last nighs?
Nothing ominous, just moving back home. I have to organize a gaming group on my own back there, besides the couple times a year I get to hold one with my cousins.
Played Dead of Winter for the first time this weekend and enjoyed it. One question: Does the betrayer make a little more impact when everyone knows the game a little better? We had a betrayer during our first game but he didn't make that much of an impact. Certainly not like the Cylon stuff in BSG.
In a few cloth bags that say "Kroger" on the side.
In a few cloth bags that say "Kroger" on the side.
I've got a duffle bag with wheels. Useful when transporting a bunch of heavy stuff.
Affeinvasion
Member
Less than 4 (which is almost always): I just carry them in a stack.
More than 4: Use giant Trains bag from GenCon that can hold like 10 (probably more) games.
For "shopping" cons I roll with cloth grocery bags. They hold 3 medium sized games. You can attach one full to the top of your suitcase and bring a few extra empty ones for your pickups.
For "gaming" cons I pack a laundry basket. Holds quite a bit and has comfy handles.
Definitely cloth grocery bags. Used to carry my whole collection around in a duffle but I have a pretty fair idea of what types of games I need to bring to any get together now and can get all I need to bring in 2 bags max.
I... should really start doing this. Been lugging around a big duffel bag for ages, but my collection has grown to the point where I really should just be bringing ones I'm reasonably sure we're going to actually play instead of packing tons of stuff. We usually have way too much choice as it is since everyone does this, lol.
Two years ago the Paizo booth was giving out really nice "oversized" cloth grocery bags with purchase of Pathfinder products, specifically their Adventure Card Game which was new at the time. Had a nice Pathfinder Adventure Card Game logo on the side. You could fit a few more games into it then your average cloth grocery bag. I have looked and looked for mine but can no longer find it. =(
Picked up a few new games recently
Viticulture- played once enjoyed it quite a bit. Really like how your grapes and wine age and only being able to place 1 worker per year. So i start wondering what i need to save when winter comes around and maybe i should hold a worker back. Cant imagine playing without the grande worker.
Splendor- played this like 5 times back to back. Just so quick and fast paced. Love how things ramp up towards the end after you have a bunch of mines. And like everyone else love the poker chips
Specter ops- 2-5 player hidden movement game. My first one. This is the first one that sounded really fun for 2 player. The agent is hidden and must complete 3 objectives while avoiding the genetically engineered hunters the other player is using. As an agent picking when to use your equipment like flashbangs and holo decoys is crucial. The hunters can use a motion sensor and a few other abilities to try and find you. A wolfman can try and sniff you out if you are close to him. At 5 players it gains a hidden traitir mechanic.
Roll for the galaxy- nice and quick. Love all the dice and the tile sack. Enough tiles to have a different game everytimd with a different way to play.
Agricola- only going to say there is a lot to do in this game and not enough time or workers to do it. Which leaves me wanting to play more to see thr different ways for me to play the game.
Viticulture- played once enjoyed it quite a bit. Really like how your grapes and wine age and only being able to place 1 worker per year. So i start wondering what i need to save when winter comes around and maybe i should hold a worker back. Cant imagine playing without the grande worker.
Splendor- played this like 5 times back to back. Just so quick and fast paced. Love how things ramp up towards the end after you have a bunch of mines. And like everyone else love the poker chips
Specter ops- 2-5 player hidden movement game. My first one. This is the first one that sounded really fun for 2 player. The agent is hidden and must complete 3 objectives while avoiding the genetically engineered hunters the other player is using. As an agent picking when to use your equipment like flashbangs and holo decoys is crucial. The hunters can use a motion sensor and a few other abilities to try and find you. A wolfman can try and sniff you out if you are close to him. At 5 players it gains a hidden traitir mechanic.
Roll for the galaxy- nice and quick. Love all the dice and the tile sack. Enough tiles to have a different game everytimd with a different way to play.
Agricola- only going to say there is a lot to do in this game and not enough time or workers to do it. Which leaves me wanting to play more to see thr different ways for me to play the game.
Gaming Truth
Member
I'm definitely looking forward to getting this out again. I have Tuscany too and have unlocked two of the (12?) expansions for Viticulture:
- Mamas & Papas: Randomizes the starting resources for each player. It was good and definitely caused players to diversify how they approached the game
- Patronage: Ick. It creates a free starting wine order, which is okay I guess, but the conditions on the back are so varied in difficulty (but offer the same reward in victory points). It's not making it back out
For our next game, I will either introduce the rest of Phase I (more visitors, something else), or go into Phase II
antiquegamer
Member
How is Imperial Setters for more casual board gamer (i.e. only play game like Tickets to Ride, Dominion and Catan)? Is it simple enough I can teach in 10-15 mins and get the game going? I have another family get together and when we play games like Eldritch, Dead of Winter, those less "geeky" seems to be left out so I want to get something new that they would like. (They pretty much play Ticket to Ride to death many years ago).
pluginbaby121
Member
Played 3 games of San Juan and loved it. Once we got it down it was a blast. The library can go to hell though.
It is fairly easy to learn, IMO. You don't quite get the deeper strategy until you played more though. Only downside is it's a game where a turn doesn't end until all players have run out of actions. If someone catches on fast and gets a good combo, it can lead to some players passing their turn, then waiting for someone else to take 2-3 more.
I think it's somewhat easy to teach but there's a lot of gears going on there. If they can't handle something as mainstream as Dead of Winter, I'd steer clear of it if you're just basing the purchase on getting something for them to play.
Nice. This is on my list to get to play with my wife. My hope is that we learn the mechanics well enough to graduate to Roll to the Galaxy which admittedly looks pretty intense to me.
It's not that bad to learn. The instructions are decent and your knowledge of the iconography and the planet-produce-ship workflow will speed up the process.
There are a few things to learn like the reassign function and the way colored dice score on colored planets but they are both easy to retain.
Won a copy at Geekway and it's quickly becoming my go to for all groups.
It's an odd pet peeve, but I hate that the screen isn't really big enough to hide your dice very well from the sides.
It's a fun game. Although I've played it once so can't really comment on anything else.
It's also hard to get muggles to go to their screens for help. It's all there but the small size can make all those icons daunting.
I like it. There are two good expansions for it too. Is it the game of forever? No, but it is a solid game with good mechanics and my wife likes it too.
Awesome. Yeah I haven't really read much negative about it.
I've recently introduced my wife to worker placement games and we started with Agricola: All Creatures Big And Small which she wound up playing a few times and then got really bored of it quickly. She would basically just use the same strategy every game and I think that contributed to her getting bored of it (she beat me every game too so that's why she never bothered switching it up).
Conversely, something like Rivals for Catan she loves since there's more variability in the board setup so each game isn't quite the same.
My fear is that because the board is fixed in Village that it will get stale for her quickly but the game is way meatier than Agricola: ACBAS so maybe that will keep her interest.
Gaming Truth
Member
I would say no to Village based on this. There is randomization in the cubes placed per year and the market, but I would classify Village as a solid game, not necessarily a fun game.