That sounds about right, especially your mention of the "I would just roll a die and pass" thing. That's probably my least favorite thing about the game, when you occasionally get stuck in the cycle of doing NOTHING for a few turns because there aren't even cheap cards out.
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New Board Gaming |OT2| On Tables, Off Topic
- Thread starter Karkador
- Start date
BlewHedgehog
Member
I doubt my group is ever playing vanilla again. The games start in an advanced state, so games end quicker and that's more time for more games of Cyclades as far as I'm concerned. Just know that combat is more frequent, so if the somewhat stalled, defensive feel was something you enjoyed about the base game, there may be reason to go back.
I've never played either Cyclades nor Kemet with just 2, so I can't necessarily speak for that scenario.
Probably because I'm used to choosing? I don't know, it has always felt like one side was better than the other.
I wonder if other people here also choose sides randomly (in 7 Wonders)?
Only for deck builder for ease of shuffling, I'm terrible at shuffling.
The card sleeve issue is a personal one I feel. Card quality is the main factor. Victory Point Games are almost a necessity because of lack of coating.
Other factors for me are coloured border edges, amount of shuffling required etc.
I sleeved Race formula 90 because of flimsy stock, coloured borders and amount of handling time. Had to I get specific sleeves because of non standard sizes too. Card stack is huge though because of amount of cards so there are downsides.
One other benifit though is if expansions are added. Older well played cards will stick out when mixed in with new expansion cards so there's that to think about too.
Now about counter clipping.........
Other factors for me are coloured border edges, amount of shuffling required etc.
I sleeved Race formula 90 because of flimsy stock, coloured borders and amount of handling time. Had to I get specific sleeves because of non standard sizes too. Card stack is huge though because of amount of cards so there are downsides.
One other benifit though is if expansions are added. Older well played cards will stick out when mixed in with new expansion cards so there's that to think about too.
Now about counter clipping.........
It really depends on the game. I have sleeved all the cards in Mage Knight because they are of really poor quality and you need to shuffle them alot. But then you have a game like Core Worlds, which is a deckbuilder so naturally you shuffle alot, but the quality of the cardstock is so insanely high that you dont need to sleeve.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
My biggest gripe with sleeving my cards is that once I do, there's never any space in my boxes anymore. I have to remove that convenient vacuum formed storage thingy inside the game boxes. I should just start making my own custom inserts with foam or something.
Gaming Truth
Member
Or your biggest gripe should be that they design inserts without sleeving in mind.
Example:
Exploding Kittens NSFW box can hold both decks sleeved, but the cool original box cannot.
p.s., anyone know how the surprise triggers in the original box? It's not light or motion-triggered, but if it's hinged to the box, I don't see the normal tether that's usually found on the bottom-side of the device.
I need more friends with this attitude. Such a hard sell for some reason. All I want to do is play it 1000 more times!
Gaming Truth
Member
Ha, complete opposite for me. I love Innovation and Red7, so I finally found a window of time to try out Mottainai at GenCon and it was horrible.
The instruction booklet was a complete mess. It wasn't demoed at the Dealers' Hall and no one at the Asmadi room wanted to teach us. Turn two, one of the players wiped the floor because a card allowed him to do so and we didn't realize the ramifications.
Very confusing for my friends and I was the only one who started getting it. I swear Chudyk is too deep for my casual gaming friends.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
That's a losing gripe, ha. But I do agree.
It's soooooo good! I was really, really worried that my group wouldn't get into it. Even with getting a few rules wrong (kinda forgot how to pick first player and how important that is for the game) they were suprisingly patient and enjoyed it. Hopefully gonna play it again next week!
Huh, weird. I bought it thinking it would be a simple game (HAHAHAHA) and after reading the rules I had to go their room on Saturday for a demo. Gave them a generic ticket and got right into a game. IMO the demoer sucked, but I got enough between the rules, the demo, and playing it to grasp the concept. The powers of the completed works can be pretty crazy, so just build some crazy ones of your own! :-D
Makes me happy to finally have found a board game thread. Newer member of NeoGAF here but a fairly long time board gamer 
https://boardgamegeek.com/user/chuggst3r
Look forward to contributing, and answering any questions people might have!
https://boardgamegeek.com/user/chuggst3r
Look forward to contributing, and answering any questions people might have!
Opinions of Takenoko?
The tabletop for it seemed good and my daughter seemed like she would dig it.
I haven't played it myself, but I know my wife and a few other people who like it a lot. The components are very nice and the art is great.
Opinions of Takenoko?
The tabletop for it seemed good and my daughter seemed like she would dig it.
Great game. It's a mid-weight game but it could be played very lightly with children if you change the rules a bit. It's more tactical and chess like when playing 2P, and more random when adding in more people. It's definitely cute as heck!
Opinions of Takenoko?
The tabletop for it seemed good and my daughter seemed like she would dig it.
Fun little game, definitely should be great for most ages since it's a very visual game. Should work out just fine, and Chibis just launched at GenCon if you're looking to expand the game in the future.
Ecto311
Member
So the chibi thing is an expansion and not a stand alone game? I know you can play smash up with just the expansions (2 player though) so I was wondering if it was possible with the chibi expansion. Ill probably end up with this and the one where you travel around japan - Tokaido.
Too bad we don't have a board game review or list showing approved gaf games in the OP. Could be nice so we can just glance at it and decide. Again BGG site is dogshit and I don't understand what is happening on that AOL era site.
BomberMouse
Member
Chibi is not stand alone.
You are better going over the bgg ratings than gaf approved games. You need to do some research, board gaming taste varies a lot.
Ecto311
Member
I get that and I do go there a lot but the site is so bad and archaic. Was looking to print a copy of the my little pony love letter variant and it's impossible since the art is garbage and no one links the full set. It takes me out 3 links to an eventual imgur site and still no good. But I am wading through the garbage on the site to get some good info for sure.
I asked on reddit about board gaming tables that people have built and there is a ton of them on bgg just really insane how to sort through them all.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
BGG takes some getting used to, that's all. It's clumsy and unorganized, but once it clicks, you sort of just "get used to it".
Regarding tables, I actually was doing very similar research and stumbled upon this:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1189223/first-time-working-wood-made-game-table
BomberMouse
Member
P&P is usually frowned on BGG. So no surprise you don't get the files easily.
it's a decent game but it's not one I pull out very often as it doesn't really fill a need that other games I own don't. beyond that I wish the components were just a bit better quality as the stacking of stuff is a nice feature but things don't stack super well.Opinions of Takenoko?
The tabletop for it seemed good and my daughter seemed like she would dig it.
I'd only ever use bgg ratings if you are a huge into eurogames, their ratings are utter rubbish for pretty much everything else. The comments from the ratings can be quite useful though and it's a great source of info, but yeah, i'd never trust their rankings to much.
"that game has an element of chance.... BURN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" >.>
BomberMouse
Member
I find rankings to be a good indicator, a well ranked game is usually better than a lower ranked one for me. That doesn't mean games all to the way to 2000 aren't good. I own a lot of games outside of the top 500.
i personally hate 4 of the top 11 games (Caverna: The Cave Farmers , Agricola , Eclipse, Power Grid ) on board game geek, haven't played 5 others (though I own one of them), find Puerto Rico to be okish but vastly prefer race to the galaxy, and didn't have a great experiance with Mage Knight but want to try that again.
I will say looking at the top games, they have changed quite a bit from a few years ago, a few years ago I hated like 60-70% of the top 100 games (of the ones I have played) but more games like crossroads dead of winter, Eldritch Horror, the resistance avalon creeping into the top games helps make the list look a lot better for me, but I still wouldn't trust them... but then again I am not a big fan of eurogames in general.
BomberMouse
Member
Just mentally filter the euro games out of the rankings then, or look at the thematic game ranking.
Might not be your cup of tea, but those are certainly good games (I don't like some of these games either).
But do you appreciate why other people might rate those 4 games so highly & a great chunk of people might rate them highly enough to consider them the best? BGG is quite clearly a eurogamer dominated site. I can't see that changing any time soon. You see their ratings through that eurogamer lens.
EYEL1NER
Member
Yeah, that shouldn't be so much a negative mark against BGG. I believe AEG themselves asked people to stop sharing Love Letter variants and the site said they would comply. My memory on that might be a bit fuzzy but I know Love Letter variants were a bit of a gray area for a while and then AEG wanted it stopped.
They did, Especially when the P&P variants also infringe on other IP, it makes it tough for a company to support. That they have so many licenced variants themselves now /and/ it's so easy to clone, I can see why they want to make it harder....
I might have once held that opinion of boardgamegeek ratings, but Goblin Breakfast, a silly-looking card game, is rated 7.78. That's probably higher than a few Euro worker games. So, I think it depends on the game. There are also some high-rated games that I'm just not interested in, like Terra Mystica, even having played it.
Kickstarter game. Its ratings will fall once it's actually out
It's actually a great example of the way ratings skew over time/style of game on BGG & how the algorithms are set up to ignore extreme ratings vs the size of ratings. For example, it's got a total of 47 ratings, of which 9 are 10, a number of which clearly haven't played it (which is fine by BGG standards).
BattleMonkey
Member
Got to always look at how many ratings something gets besides just what it's rated.
How are Fantasy Flight Games for replacement parts?
I wonder what the chances of getting replacement cards for the 2007 version of Colossal Arena are? Bought it new at their booth at Gen Con. Opened it last night and about 40 of the cards are miss cut and way off center. I've sent off a damaged component request tonight with a picture of the cards and a pic of the actual Gen Con receipt. I was surprised to see the game still listed in the drop down box in the request form actually so that's good news. If worse comes to worse I can sleeve them but they would not fit back into that box if I do.
I was gonna wait to open other games I got new at the Con but might as well do a check on all the components.
I wonder what the chances of getting replacement cards for the 2007 version of Colossal Arena are? Bought it new at their booth at Gen Con. Opened it last night and about 40 of the cards are miss cut and way off center. I've sent off a damaged component request tonight with a picture of the cards and a pic of the actual Gen Con receipt. I was surprised to see the game still listed in the drop down box in the request form actually so that's good news. If worse comes to worse I can sleeve them but they would not fit back into that box if I do.
I was gonna wait to open other games I got new at the Con but might as well do a check on all the components.
no i really don't, I can maybe see why people can enjoy power grid, but I haven't a clue why people would enjoy Caverna: The Cave Farmers , Agricola or Eclipse caverna and agricola just are boring to play, so many other worker placement games with better mechanics and themes (I mean in caverna you are dwarfs, why in the hell can't I just stay underground and be happy and not be punished for doing so :/), and eclipse is a game created by the devil to destroy gaming groups
and I do just adjust the ratings.
I basically do something like subtract 1 point if it is a euro game
add 1 point if it has an element of chance
add 1 point if it is co op
and a few others and the ratings fall a lot more in line with my thoughts
again I am not saying bgg is a bad site, it's a really great site with lots of great info and resources, i'm just saying the only way you can blindly trust their ratings is if you are a huge eurogame fan.
to be fair, you should never ever ever blindly trust ratings anyways, always read why people like games and make your own informed opinion if it is something you would enjoy
.edit: I suppose I should note that I know that eurogames tend to worry about mechanics first and then try to tie a theme to them but still it bugs me to no end in caverna that they punish you for providing for your entire colony underground.
BomberMouse
Member
¯\_(ツ_/¯ Agricola is my favorite game ever and I own almost all the expansions. I love the theme too.
_/¯ Agricola is my favorite game ever and I own almost all the expansions. I love the theme too.¯\_(ツ
and there is nothing wrong with that.
Just like I know someone who plays a number of board games and their favorite board game and favorite theme is... Monopoly lol.
and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone has different tastes and likes.
I find agricola akin to watching paint dry, you find it to be something much more fun. (personally I love how vastly different likes can be as if everyone liked the same thing we likely wouldn't ever get really odd interesting games that just takes everyone by surprise)
to be fair I in general don't really enjoy worker placement games. They are fundamentally sound, but boring (I typically come in first or second when I play one and am not going for some random goal I set to make things more interesting such as playing all of my building tokens in waterdeep lol). I also find chess boring even though when I focus on it I am pretty decent at it. I just can't maintain interest and winning in general brings me very little joy as most of the time my opponent is bitter they lost which doesn't bring me joy. Thus a lot of the games I own are co op, goofy, or short enough that even though they are competitive it's not bad.
I mean aside from me having more fun experimenting than always taking the optimal path, there are multiple reasons why I find them tedious. First off is there is always that person who takes forever on their turn trying to figure out the optimal path. They typically do well or win in the end so it's not like it's completely unjustified but given as soon as I understand a game I typically take no more than 30 seconds on a turn it's so boring waiting on someone else to take a few minutes.
beyond that, and this is the main reason eclipse was made by the devil (as it takes forever to play), these games tend to take hours to play (not calling eclipse a worker placement, it's not but it falls into this trap) and a few bad moves early on (in general but especially when learning) makes it feel impossible to come back and win (and in most cases when you have someone who knows the game and is taking optimal turns this is absolutely true) if 30 minutes in to a 120 minute game you already feel like you can't win in general those last 90 minutes aren't very fun at all. It's why I prefer an element of chance/luck in my games, as at least then you have a shot to run into good luck while the person who is winning runs into bad luck.
I would likely enjoy worker placement more if A. I played with players more like myself, able to see an optimal route and a few other choices with in seconds and thus play quickly and B. if my gaming group wasn't constantly 4+ there are very few worker placement games that are even remotely enjoyable with 5 players, it just takes to long to get back to your turn, it's likely why there isn't a ton of them out there.
That all being said... I hope more of them come to android tablets as playing some of them against CPU that play instantly with 3-4 players in a fraction of time since the game does all the point tracking and what not could be decent. I mean while I don't hate ticket to ride as a board game, I didn't find it very interesting, but I actually enjoy the PC version quite a bit as it takes a fraction of the time.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
I tend to use geek lists over general ratings. Those tend to have more obscure titles that don't crack the top 100 all the time.
Unrelated...My adventure of assembling all the minis from Shadows of Brimstone is quite time consuming. I want to play this game so damn bad, but I still have a ton of shit to put together. I started reading the rules but stopped after realizing how long it would be before I got to play. I stead, I'm slowly working my way through the Mage Knight starting scenario read through. I have so much game to learn there, wow...
Unrelated...My adventure of assembling all the minis from Shadows of Brimstone is quite time consuming. I want to play this game so damn bad, but I still have a ton of shit to put together. I started reading the rules but stopped after realizing how long it would be before I got to play. I stead, I'm slowly working my way through the Mage Knight starting scenario read through. I have so much game to learn there, wow...
mage knight was time consuming to learn when I tried it at a convention.... I really wish I had managed to find a player who knew it.
In general anymore if a game has a play time over 30 minutes I rarely open the actual rules before I either find better rules on board game geek or do something like watch a dice tower review for the basics of play.
youtube is so great for learning new board games, and boardgamegeek is a must for any game with stuff to keep track of as reference sheets and quick rules are amazing @_@.
My bad, I didn't notice it had so few ratings and wasn't out for wide release.Kickstarter game. Its ratings will fall once it's actually out
For example, it's got a total of 47 ratings, of which 9 are 10, a number of which clearly haven't played it (which is fine by BGG standards).
*edit*
I agree with you about Eclipse taking forever (I won, and had a funny story to tell, but it took maybe 5 hours and I felt like I lost just by going through that exhausting experience). But, it's a good thing you don't play with me. I don't like people taking a long time on their turns, but I feel like I'm just not smart enough to figure out strategies, especially to figure them out quickly, so I tend not to even win worker placement games. Odd as it sounds, maybe you are just too smart to enjoy certain genres? :/
For the record I think I was afraid Agricola would be boring, but since then I've played it a time or two and it wasn't bad.
The Xtortionist
Member
Does anyone here play UFS? I'm just wondering how it's still around. My playgroup was really into the game when it launched, but honestly it was one of the worst-designed games I've ever played, with two decks that were broken as shit right off the bat (Soulcalibur's Cassandra and Zasalamel). Two of my friends and I actually built and playtested the Cassandra deck that won the first world championship; we couldn't make it to Gencon so we lent the deck to our acquaintance Wess Victory, who breezed through the whole thing with that broken piece of garbage (it only used like 3 or 4 attack cards and the entire rest of the deck was devoted to making sure your opponent was literally unable to play the UFS Collectable Card Game). I'd be interested to know how the game recovered from that and lasted this long.
It likely has a lot to do how I live my life day to day. I am constantly attempting to see every possible route I can take, expect the worst logical route, but aim for the optimal route. It's not something I can really help but do and the end result is I am very quick to figure out what to do in almost any given situation and rarely get surprised by things, it can also be quite tiresome as I can't turn it off even when I am trying to sleep, thus I have to drown my brain out with tv or what not at night in order to be able to sleep, even with sleeping meds as I rarely ever can fall asleep to complete silence, my brain won't stop worrying about things or trying to figure out what it needs to do next. It's likely why I find stuff like that so boring, I do it all the time in life, when I am playing I would rather take a break from that and just have fun.
In general I am good at pattern recognition, but not amazing at absorbing a manual. It's why I use videos of most games as seeing the game in action allows me to learn it and figure out logically how most things work (as most games have similar mechanics to at least one other game I have played), and then I can go through the rules and correct what I guessed wrong. Winter Tales though... man I just don't get that one lol.
As for playing with me... well despite all this I am rather easy going, I prefer experimenting with sub-optimal things and having fun over winning. The point of a game is for everyone to have fun. Even if I can recognize the optimal path and take it, and just dominate a game it's not really fun for anyone. I get bored because no one can do anything and everyone else get pissed that they can't do anything :/ It's way more fun to play a game find a path someone hasn't taken and try to make that path work. People tend to not mind getting dominated as much if you are doing something they haven't seen before, though that can lead to a rather sad chain... where if you play with the same group with the same game a number of times they tend to try to follow the last route they saw dominate a game, which means if that route has a weakness you can typically show them a new route to follow (assuming the game has enough flexibility to do this) I did this with seasons... no one will play seasons with me anymore (which is a shame because it has just enough randomness to it that playing an optimal route isn't to boring.)
also for the record I don't mind people taking a while on more complicated turns, it only drives me crazy when there is only one real route to take, and they should easily be able to see it but take a while to see it because they were distracted by their tablet or phone instead of paying attention to what others do. This is partially my fault in my group. I started playing games while waiting for others to take their turns, but I can do two things at once unlike some of my gaming group ><;
anyways I will stop rambling about that (and hope I made some sort of sense as it's late) and instead just ask about the 12th ranked board game on board game geek, a worker placement game in fact. what are people's thoughts on the robinson crusoe board game?
While it's worker placement the game has interested me quite a bit due to it's co op nature. Is it a game where it really feels like you are working together, or is it a game where one person is likely to come up with a plan for everyone? not that the later thing is a horrible thing.
I suppose I should give examples.
Sentinals of the multiverse - while the idea of who to attack and when can be decided by one person there are way to many unknowns for a given person to be able to plot out what any given player should do aside from themselves. The best you can do is say we need to focus our attacks here and do this, but you can't easily know if anyone can do that without talking to them.
Pandemic - This one is more of a single player can decide everything type of game. I like the game, but that doesn't change the fact that at any given time I can see what would be in the best interest for a player to do on their turn.
I am expecting robinson crusoe to be more in line with pandemic, that it is possible for one person to basically take the leader role and tell everyone else what to do, but I haven't had a chance to play it yet, and thus haven't looked super deep into it as I wouldn't buy a worker placement game without playing it first no matter how fun it looked in the videos (though to be fair I can't really think of any game I thought looked fun in videos that wasn't actually fun... but it's more of if my wife would enjoy it and thus I have to play it with her first.)
I'm just gonna shut up now lol.
They set the gold standard. You're in good hands.
You'll be just fine. My brother just found a copy of Starcraft: The Board Game in stores, bought it and found a whole bunch of broken minis. They've replaced everything that was damaged in the game, plus some. (They tend to replace more than what was requested. I requested a replacement for 12 tokens on a copy of GoT that I received that looked to have been chewed, and they sent me an entire shrink wrapped set of tokens for the entire game...)
Thanks guys. Good to hear. So far I've had good experiences with replacement parts. Only had to do it twice before. Once with Portal Games and dice for Robinson Crusoe and Arcane Wonders for a missing player board in Sherrif of Nothingham.
Good idea. I'm for making lists of recommendations.
Although there's generally some merit to the game rankings on BGG, I think a curated list makes more sense for finding games that you're personally going to like. Twilight Struggle may be the #1 rated game on BGG, but some people actually have no opportunity, time, or interest in the subject to play it - so it makes no sense as a recommendation for them.
Likewise, I can acknowledge that enough people like Caverna for it to be #3, but I don't personally really care to play it again.
When the top 1000-2000 games on BGG are considered "good", it's still a list of stuff that needs to be narrowed down by a more personalized criteria.
Let me start out by saying that it doesn't really feel like a worker placement game. Since it's co-op, it doesn't have that primary conflict of "you took my spot", which is what makes the genre what it is.
Here's a rundown of my thoughts:
I started out playing the game in solo mode, in order to learn the game and all that. I lost every time. I'm not the best gamer, but as far as solo board games go, I've won games of Death Angel, Friday, and come very close in Urbion. This game comparatively feels even more punishing in solo mode.
So then I tried playing it with my girlfriend. We won on our first try. She's probably a better gamer than me, and that second player gives you a very substantial advantage in being able to accomplish more.
I enjoyed the game a lot with my girlfriend, because it really felt more open-ended and collaborative than other co-op games we've played. You don't take turns assigning actions, and actions aren't even 'blocked' (you can even team up on actions), so you're free to just discuss together. plan for different outcomes, and move things around. There isn't this mandate, like Pandemic, where it comes down to "you have to do this on your turn, so that my turn works out well" - I think that drives a fair amount of the "quarterbacking" that I didn't feel in Robinson Crusoe.
thanks for the response. That sounds decently different from what I had expected given the idea of a woker placement co op game. I had expected more of a you have to assign people to collect resources for your entire team to survive/grow stronger type vibe.
piratepwnsninja
Member
So this on your mobile phone + any types of cards (Card Against Humanity, MtG, etc.) = instant Codenames.
http://cn.retrobox.eu/
http://cn.retrobox.eu/
It does have a "we need to collect resources to survive" thing to it (you're trying to survive on a hellhole of an island), but it's also deciding what tools and protections you'll choose to build. Everything is useful, of course, but you can't build it all - so the theme of the discussions between players is often "what's the most important things to do"
Aw yiss. Been waiting for this.