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[StoOgE]

So tell me about Dominion Alchemy.. why is it so hated on? Is it really that bad? Does it have cards that are worth it while dropping/ignoring the bad?

The game has some fine cards. In fact some that I like a good deal.

It has one really really awful card that you should never play a game with unless you want a turn to take about 10 minutes.

The real problem is the potion requirements. it's another currency you have to buy that makes it harder to aquire the alchemy cards, that are often not necessarily better than cards that don't require a potion to purchase.

Basically in order to have the math work out where it is of value to by a potion card you have to have a lot of alchemy cards in the kingdom deck that require a potion.. and theres only a handful of them, so there is much less variety to a game of Alchemy.

Cornucopia has this to some extent (only worth going for a "variety" based strategy if there are several cards in the deck that play off of that).

 

[fenners]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/essen-spiel-2011-boardgamegeek

BGG live Essen feed - watch game pubs/developers demo their new Essen games live on the Geek feed... Very cool, great way to see new games & get a feel for them ahead of BGG.Con & next year's inevitable US releases.

 

[AstroLad]

Anyone play Memoir 44 online? My name is arotator on there, currently a first lieutenant. Add me as a buddy, looking for people to play with.

AstroLad same name on Steam so ping me if you see me on. Happy to play any time.

It's live play only right? Lame as hell if so. The implementation itself is fine (and exciting -- I quite like M44), but lack of async play and the stupid ingot system are so misguided it's not even funny. What would be wrong with just releasing a $10-15 game and then selling the xpacs for $5 each? You still get plenty of bang for your buck with the tabletop versions and all their figs so it's not like you'd be cannibalizing that market. Oh the top-level UI is absolutely fucking horrendous too.

/rant

 

[Neverfade]

So tell me about Dominion Alchemy.. why is it so hated on? Is it really that bad? Does it have cards that are worth it while dropping/ignoring the bad?

Yes, it's that bad. As was explained, buying potions is worthless, and thus cards that require potions are worthless. There's two cards I think I didn't hate in that set. Not worth price of admission though. Seaside's worst card is still better than Alchemy's best.

 

[narcosis219]

AstroLad same name on Steam so ping me if you see me on. Happy to play any time.

It's live play only right? Lame as hell if so. The implementation itself is fine (and exciting -- I quite like M44), but lack of async play and the stupid ingot system are so misguided it's not even funny. What would be wrong with just releasing a $10-15 game and then selling the xpacs for $5 each? You still get plenty of bang for your buck with the tabletop versions and all their figs so it's not like you'd be cannibalizing that market. Oh the top-level UI is absolutely fucking horrendous too.

/rant

Days of Wonder stuff always seemed overpriced to me. I wasn't surprised at all.

For some reason, digitalized versions of the game are at least 50% less fun than their physical counterparts. I tried so many and end up not enjoying it no where near as much. =(

 

[StoOgE]

Yes, it's that bad. As was explained, buying potions is worthless, and thus cards that require potions are worthless. There's two cards I think I didn't hate in that set. Not worth price of admission though. Seaside's worst card is still better than Alchemy's best.

I think the best solution to this problem would have been an introduction of "x potions *or* x amount of gold, and use that on certain cards in future decks. That way the potions become a sort of risk/reward thing for certain powerful cards where it might reduce the "cost" of the card.

Or just not have introduced a silly mechanic like that at all. FWIW, I kind of hate all of the "variety" cards in cornucopia just as much.

 

[XShagrath]

I played my first game of Dominion with a lot of Seaside cards yesterday. Just a two player game, and we had a "Smuggler train" going in the beginning where we were each Smuggling a gold for like 3 turns in a row. The card says "gain a card up to (6) that the player to your right gained on their previous turn", so I would play Smuggler and say, take a gold that my friend took on his previous turn. Then it would be his turn again, and he'd play a Smuggler as well. Since I gained a gold from Smuggler, he'd get to take another gold as well.

It seems pretty busted, especially with only a cost of 3. However, we saw how they bogged down our decks later on in the game and didn't really have a way to trash all these semi-useless cards. Was pretty awesome in the opening turns though!

 

[AstroLad]

Cornucopia is waaaaay better than Alchemy imo. I like that they try to force variety and push people out of their usual boring Dominion strategy of finding two cards that work well together and hoping to get lucky enough on their draws to outpoint anyone else who solved the deck.

 

[Cathcart]

So who has some suggestions for Halloween themed game night next week? As much as I like Arkham I think we're going to have at least six people and Arkham isn't great with that. We might play Elder Sign, though. Might not be perfect, but at least it's some quick easy to teach Cthulhu for a bunch of people.

After that I'm kinda short on scary games. I was thinking maybe one of the Zombies games? I hear they're not great but I figured we could give it a try and if it's no good I'll just return it the next day. Anyone like the Zombies game have one in particular you'd recommend? I've also got an unplayed copy of the Buffy game and a lot of my friends like Buffy so I might break that out.

If we somehow get a lot of people (like 10+ if everyone shows up), I was thinking Ultimate Werewolf.

So that's what I've got. I think I'm not great at scary games, give me some suggestions.

 

[Evlar]

So who has some suggestions for Halloween themed game night next week? As much as I like Arkham I think we're going to have at least six people and Arkham isn't great with that. We might play Elder Sign, though. Might not be perfect, but at least it's some quick easy to teach Cthulhu for a bunch of people.

After that I'm kinda short on scary games. I was thinking maybe one of the Zombies games? I hear they're not great but I figured we could give it a try and if it's no good I'll just return it the next day. Anyone like the Zombies game have one in particular you'd recommend? I've also got an unplayed copy of the Buffy game and a lot of my friends like Buffy so I might break that out.

If we somehow get a lot of people (like 10+ if everyone shows up), I was thinking Ultimate Werewolf.

So that's what I've got. I think I'm not great at scary games, give me some suggestions.

I intend to break out Mansions of Madness sometime over Halloween. Got the new witch-themed mini-expansion and haven't had a chance to play it yet.

 

[BattleMonkey]

So who has some suggestions for Halloween themed game night next week? As much as I like Arkham I think we're going to have at least six people and Arkham isn't great with that. We might play Elder Sign, though. Might not be perfect, but at least it's some quick easy to teach Cthulhu for a bunch of people.

After that I'm kinda short on scary games. I was thinking maybe one of the Zombies games? I hear they're not great but I figured we could give it a try and if it's no good I'll just return it the next day. Anyone like the Zombies game have one in particular you'd recommend? I've also got an unplayed copy of the Buffy game and a lot of my friends like Buffy so I might break that out.

If we somehow get a lot of people (like 10+ if everyone shows up), I was thinking Ultimate Werewolf.

So that's what I've got. I think I'm not great at scary games, give me some suggestions.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a good one for the whole traitor aspect, especially with a bunch of more casual folks at a big party.

 

[AstroLad]

Last Night on Earth is quite good imo. Also not that hard to teach and awesome implementation of theme into game design and aesthetics.

 

[Cathcart]

How is LNoE with six? Also, what's the play time like with six?

 

[StoOgE]

How is LNoE with six? Also, what's the play time like with six?

5 is probably ideal. You just split the zombie player into 2 people instead of 1 with 6, so not a big deal. Playtime isn't impacted much.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Speed in LNOE is generally dependent on how well the heroes do or badly they strategize. Worst thing players do is turtle and then realize they dont got enough time to succeed.

 

[AstroLad]

Some people don't like 2 zombie players but I find it fun to have a co-conspirator. Start out with a simple and quick scenario though even the base one.

 

[SillyEskimo]

The Zombies!!! base game is cheap and fun. It's also easy as hell to explain and play, which is great for people that don't have experience with any games that do not have "Hasbro" written on the box. It's simplicity is also it's downfall for some people, but for a casual themed get together I cannot think of a better game. The game has some "screw your neighbor" elements that really gets people into it.

I had a zombie themed Halloween party several years back and 7 of us played Zombies!!! while Night of the Living Dead played on the big screen in black and white. As soon as the game was over, everyone immediately wanted to play again. We played 4 games in a row that night and watched 2 more zombie movies. Lots of close calls and laughter!

 

[Cathcart]

Awesome. Lots of great replies. Thanks, guys.

 

[platypotamus]

Sea Hag. hate Hate HATE HATE

Pirate Ship is far worse.

 

[Neverfade]

Pirate Ship is far worse.

herewego.gif

 

[Flynn]

Played a couple hands of Eminent Domain today. Not bad. Like a light, light mix of Race For the Galaxy and Ascension.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Played some more Quarriors, we like the game but really... fuck Quake Dragon

 

[arotator]

AstroLad same name on Steam so ping me if you see me on. Happy to play any time.

It's live play only right? Lame as hell if so. The implementation itself is fine (and exciting -- I quite like M44), but lack of async play and the stupid ingot system are so misguided it's not even funny. What would be wrong with just releasing a $10-15 game and then selling the xpacs for $5 each? You still get plenty of bang for your buck with the tabletop versions and all their figs so it's not like you'd be cannibalizing that market. Oh the top-level UI is absolutely fucking horrendous too.

/rant

I'll look you up through Steam, as I think we'd have to be on at the same time to add you otherwise. Not sure what async is, as this is the first time I've heard it, but I'm assuming by "live play" you mean that you actually have to sit through the entire game and can't leave? That's right, and does suck.

The Ingot system is also really, really lame. At least give people the chance to spend $30 or whatever discounted price you want to sell it at, and actually purchase the game so you can play as much as you want - like the physical game itself. Instead, you can purchase upwards of $100 worth of Ingots and still have to buy more at some point down the road (maybe years, but still...). At least you can play two of the maps without using Ingots.

UI is pretty bad, but its functional. AI is unfair. But aside from all this I still enjoy playing it. I just won't be purchasing Ingots with the current system.

Days of Wonder stuff always seemed overpriced to me. I wasn't surprised at all.

For some reason, digitalized versions of the game are at least 50% less fun than their physical counterparts. I tried so many and end up not enjoying it no where near as much. =(

I still don't have the physical game. Just now got a friend who would be willing to play it with me, and we've been playing online. I'll probably get it for Christmas. A couple nice things about playing online: you don't have to remember the minutiae of all the rules or look them up when you're unsure (do tanks lose one dice roll or two when shooting bunkers?) and you don't actually have to set up the board. Both of those would get easier with experience so I'm not sure those are very big perks for vets of the game. But they're good for me.

 

[AstroLad]

I still don't have the physical game. Just now got a friend who would be willing to play it with me, and we've been playing online. I'll probably get it for Christmas. A couple nice things about playing online: you don't have to remember the minutiae of all the rules or look them up when you're unsure (do tanks lose one dice roll or two when shooting bunkers?) and you don't actually have to set up the board. Both of those would get easier with experience so I'm not sure those are very big perks for vets of the game. But they're good for me.

Yeah, I think when most people talk about online implementations they're not literally discussing the situation where you have four people ready to play the game in the room. It's more about letting you play asynchronously (ideally), quickly, and with people you otherwise wouldn't be able to play with. Carcassonne is still the gold standard for this.

 

[StoOgE]

Pirate Ship is far worse.

It's like I don't even know you

 

[Emerson]

Just got done reading the Game of Thrones rules for the second time and I fully understand the game pretty much now. Damn I really need this game.

 

[Neverfade]

Order placed for Eminent Domain, Belfort, and Ninjato.

Gotta go place another for Urban Sprawl! Too many games!

 

[Cathcart]

Man, I'd love to try Urban Sprawl but we still never played Dominant Species. Gotta make that happen soon.

Grabbed A Few Acres today and a copy of Zombies!!! for next week's Halloween game night. Some of the other suggested games sounded great but this seemed pretty light and handles more people. I've got two friends coming in from Chicago so there's probably going to be a lot of chatter and more players than usual. I figure some light mindless zombie killing should work well.

Played another game of LotR LCG. Bleh. Got screwed over early and ended up with two tough enemies in my face that I just couldn't deal with. It was a frustrating slog to an early death and then I watched
my friend try to finish the game. In fact, I still am. omg this game goes forever and he's not even close. Kill me now.

 

[StoOgE]

Just got done reading the Game of Thrones rules for the second time and I fully understand the game pretty much now. Damn I really need this game.

It's a very straightforward game.

 

[Emerson]

It's a very straightforward game.

Compared to what? Monopoly? Arkham Horror? Seems relatively complex to me but then I'm not a board game expert or anything. Not sure what the point of this response was.

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Order placed for Eminent Domain, Belfort, and Ninjato.

Gotta go place another for Urban Sprawl! Too many games!

Got my copy last night. So pumped for that game.

I played Revolution! last night at my game group, what a shit load of fuck. The object of the game is to get the most points by out bidding your opponents using various different "currencies". The bidding is all blind so you don't know where exactly people are putting their bids. Here is the major problem I have with the game. If one person spams the hell out of "force" and "blackmail" (Force is the strongest form of currency and Blackmail is the second strongest. Yes the game is like a long rock, paper, scissors) early enough in the game there is nothing you can do to stop them. The shitty part is if you attempt to stop a player from doing that you are essentially killing your own game because you are focused on stopping someone else. It's a horribly boring game as well. Very little choices to make and none of them are interesting in the slightest. The only positive thing I can say is that the game only lasted an hour.

On a positive note, one guy in our group downloaded and printed off some pieces from the new Alien Frontiers expansion. We got to play with a couple of the new races and Alien Tech cards. It was a nice preview of what is to come. The race abilities seemed pretty good and the extra spaces were situational so there was still competition for spots on the board.

 

[jason10mm]

GOT is pretty straightforward. There is a fixed sequence of events and in each phase you only have a certain range of actions. GOT is challenging to learn because it has a TON of mechanics from auctions to hidden order placement to card combat modifiers to simultaneous movement to card based environment modifiers. But they all work together really well and after 2 turns it is pretty simple. GOT is one of my favorite games, but it is brutal, practically forces backstabbing, and needs the max number of players. This limits it a lot in my game group where the indirect aggression euro games (oh noes, you blocked me from getting 2 wood!) have a firm grip.

AH has a lot of mechanics as well but they don't interlock as well, there is always stuff you forgot to do, track, or modify.

I haven't seen it mentioned here but the new Blood Bowl:Team Manager game is AWESOME! Finally a highly competitive card game, no multiplayer solitaire here. The mechanics are really simple once folks understand the drafting bit, I'd say it is about as complex as Ascension, certainly easier to conceptualize than Dominion, 7 Wonders, or Thunderstone. The end game can get a bit complex as you can have a fair number of modifier cards to keep track of, but nothing that is too hard and you can explain them on the fly. I'm kinda surprised it wasn't licensed as a NFL football game, I think it could have been a break out hit (though I suppose every gamer football fan already knows about blood bowl and every non-gamer football fan couldn't care less about a card game).

 

[Neverfade]

Cancelled the CSI order, eminent domain and belfort were in stock at boardsandbits so I nabbed it there so I'd have something to play on my days off next week.

Joeyjoejoe: you P500 Urban Sprawl?

Jason: yeah, blood blow TM is being enjoyed by most, but FUCK those dwarves. Need a boost.

 

[AstroLad]

Wait BBTM is a Dominionlike?

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Joeyjoejoe: you P500 Urban Sprawl?

Nope. Luckily, I was able to order it late last week at the p500 price from GMT. I must have got in just in time to get out with the P500 shipping.

 

[Neverfade]

Well you certainly wouldn't confuse the two. Mechanically the only things I can think of are deck shuffling and drawing cards, and one of the rewards for matchups is to draw and pick a more powerful card which is shuffled into your deck later.

@Joey damn. I missed it by one day. Was eyeballing it and about to purchase an fell asleep only for it to ship out the next day haha. Certainly not paying 70 + shipping for it

 

[AstroLad]

Cool that actually sounds fun. I thought it was similar to the OG Blood Bowl which was a bit of a slog at least for casuals.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Compared to what? Monopoly? Arkham Horror? Seems relatively complex to me but then I'm not a board game expert or anything. Not sure what the point of this response was.

It seems complex in rules but its simple once you get down to it.

 

[Neverfade]

Cool that actually sounds fun. I thought it was similar to the OG Blood Bowl which was a bit of a slog at least for casuals.

Not at all. This is super simple. I'd say it's more battleline than dominion.

 

[AstroLad]

I'm kinda surprised it wasn't licensed as a NFL football game, I think it could have been a break out hit (though I suppose every gamer football fan already knows about blood bowl and every non-gamer football fan couldn't care less about a card game).

There need to be more sports-themed games in general. Don't even have to have a license (which would draw in people but also alienate non-fans) but sports could make for some really interesting gameplay. Haven't tried out that JAB game but I'll check out reviews. Will probably throw in BBTM into my next CSI order.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Played some Rune Age. Fun game, though the rulebook is awful, and from the forum it's sad to see so much confusion still on rules when the games been out for a bit already and they just started working on the game's first faq?

Also hopefully gets expansions.

 

[AstroLad]

Played some Rune Age. Fun game, though the rulebook is awful, and from the forum it's sad to see so much confusion still on rules when the games been out for a bit already and they just started working on the game's first faq?

Also hopefully gets expansions.

ffg hahah. actually gives me pause on team manager. going to read the rules myself first this time before buying

 

[BattleMonkey]

Played Star Trek Deck builder game. Actually pretty decent game, you got common deck builder Dominion like set up except that instead of having piles of multiple cards, you got a deck you draw from randomly that generates a 3x3 row of cards. When a player buys a card you replace it with a new random card from the deck and you got many unique cards in the deck. Players also have a once per turn action that lets them discard a card in the purchase area to replace with a new random card.

Like the Resident Evil game you have another deck on the board which represents space that a player can explore which creates random events, missions, or starship encounters. Unlike RE though the exploration is not as random in the sense of it coming out and kicking your ass. There are some things that can pop out at random and wreck your day, but the penalty for failure is very minor and basically just ends someones turn and you get a crappy resource card added to your deck as punishment. Missions found will stay on the table and players can attempt them to score points and get other rewards. Missions being based on episodes of TNG.

Each player has a ship with basically no stats at the start, but all cards you play including resources (which are generic ensigns, lt, commanders) have stat bonuses that are added to your ship which are then used to meet mission requirements, or used to play out the simple combat. Players can encounter ships in space and with high enough diplomacy can potentially acquire new better ships.

Seems like a nice game that the group enjoyed, seems much less chaotic or random than Resident Evil. As mentioned before the only problem I have with it so far is the poor card design and quality of the images used on them. Only did the basic exploration game mode, it also has coop mode which involves a different included borg deck of cards, and then there is team vs mode which is the Klingon civil war which also has it's own deck.

 

[Flynn]

Apparently Splotter is re-printing Antiquity. CRAZY.

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Apparently Splotter is re-printing Antiquity. CRAZY.

Yep. They are selling at Essen but they said they will continue selling it on their website after the fair is over.

 

[Flynn]

Yep. They are selling at Essen but they said they will continue selling it on their website after the fair is over.

I'm on the waiting list for a vendor in the states who is carrying the reprint. I wonder how they intend to distribute. Obviously not via their website.

 

[AstroLad]

 

[roodiculous]

LOL that's too perfect.

 

[AstroLad]

whoops just made the mistake of reading the rules and checking out the rules forum for bbtm

ah ffg....

i honestly don't know why they have to layer so much complexity onto their games that the rules and implementations end up being a mess almost every single time. i love their art and production values, but their approach to mechanics and rules is starting to put me off the company entirely.

 

[Neverfade]

The rules forum for BBTM is a joke. BGG rules lawyers in full force. It's not rocket science. And it's certainly no worse than the Innovation forums.