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The New Board Game Thread (Newcomer Friendly)

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AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Ascension app really does spoil you. Not only is the shuffling a bit tricky but then depending on what sets you want to play you might have to sort the cards etc. The game is my favorite deckbuilder though, especially with all the new mechanics the expansions introduce (though I don't like just blending them all as it dilutes the game too much).
 

joelseph

Member
Ascension app really does spoil you. Not only is the shuffling a bit tricky but then depending on what sets you want to play you might have to sort the cards etc. The game is my favorite deckbuilder though, especially with all the new mechanics the expansions introduce (though I don't like just blending them all as it dilutes the game too much).

I prefer my deckbuilders not have buy tracks. How many expansions for Ascension are there and how do they address the randomness of the buy track? I have only played one expansion.
 

Musan

Member
Through the ages ain't bad, but i much prefer playing it online now at boardgaming online, especially with the card expansions. The presentation of the physical version isn't much to look at.
 
Bought Avalon: The Resistance over the weekend and played one round of it with 5 people. Pure, unadulterated fun. A friend and I were minions and sitting between us would be the Merlin player. He was far too sketchy and actually came off as a minion to the other players. We make it to the 5th round and my friend sitting to my left is leader. He considers himself quite a smart guy (with good reason) and so he choses himself, me and another friend (the other minion) as a team. It gets voted on and we give him the shuffled deck to reveal the outcome. Fail. Half the table is shocked. Success. Makes sense to have his one, right? Fail. My friend's face at this moment was priceless. Absolutely hilarious. Minions won the round 3-2. It was glorious. Not only did he take one minion on the team, he took both. Immediately made the game worth the €22 I spent on it.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
I prefer my deckbuilders not have buy tracks. How many expansions for Ascension are there and how do they address the randomness of the buy track? I have only played one expansion.

It doesn't really. Honestly this is the key distinguishing feature of Ascension, so yes it's definitely not the game for you. It's a deckbuilder with randomness which is what I like because honestly with games like Dominion it literally comes down to the first two turns 99% of the time with experienced players.
 

fenners

Member
Would that be such a bad decision? (I haven't purchased anything yet)

Neverfade is not a fan of Through The Ages. Everyone else on the planet is ;)

Honestly, I've said this before, I love the game but I'd rather play the online async version than the actual board game.
 

Apenheul

Member
Neverfade is not a fan of Through The Ages. Everyone else on the planet is ;)

Honestly, I've said this before, I love the game but I'd rather play the online async version than the actual board game.
It looks incredibly fun to me, still I went to the store today and got myself Agricola for now. On the shelf next to Agricola were Ora et Labora, Le Havre, and Loyang and the store owner personally preferred Ora et Labora over the rest but I went with Agricola in the end because I did more research on it than on the rest and it seemed like a game I would like.

Btw, I didn't know the same designer made Bohnanza, I love that game.
 

Neverfade

Member
Shoulda went with Le Havre. You done fucked up. :p



In other news, I don't get Team Manager to the table nearly enough, so I rectified that last nite. Although I lost by a few points (thanks to some cheating orcs!), I had great fun with a certain star player combo. The Reaver passer that has Dump off and the Dwarf with Stand Firm. The tackle-heavy orcs were not pleased, haha.
 
In other news, I don't get Team Manager to the table nearly enough, so I rectified that last nite. Although I lost by a few points (thanks to some cheating orcs!), I had great fun with a certain star player combo. The Reaver passer that has Dump off and the Dwarf with Stand Firm. The tackle-heavy orcs were not pleased, haha.
Ah, game is so good. No idea why people are all hot on Smash Up when this game is clearly a superior experience.
 

Keasar

Member
Got my Terra Mystica box yesterday, so much pretty wooden stuff in it. And while the rules -looks- complex they actually so far are not so bad, it all just comes togheter nicely and makes kinda sense, shouldn't be too hard to teach over the table. This seems like a hell lot of fun and some of the guys here at the office are very interested to play.
 

Apenheul

Member
Shoulda went with Le Havre. You done fucked up. :p
The main reason why I went with Agricola instead of Le Havre is because the store owner told me that it scaled better with different amounts of players. Personally Le Havre appealed to me more but in the context of my playing group I think Agricola would be played more often.
 

Neverfade

Member
The main reason why I went with Agricola instead of Le Havre is because the store owner told me that it scaled better with different amounts of players. Personally Le Havre appealed to me more but in the context of my playing group I think Agricola would be played more often.

I like Agricola with 3-5 and Le Havre with 1-3, so I can understand that.
 
Agricola was my most played game with my wife. Don't have my copy with me anymore and the 2p game, while good, is not a replacement.

Is the iOS version good?
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Agricola was my most played game with my wife. Don't have my copy with me anymore and the 2p game, while good, is not a replacement.

Is the iOS version good?

Yes, very good. Only has E deck for starters, but they're doing the other decks as IAPs in the near future.
 

Apenheul

Member
Agricola was a very good choice, we played with 5 people and everyone loved it. We were all noobs of course and our scores varied between 15 and 24, maintaining a food supply is a must if you want to do anything meaningful during the last couple of rounds as one of us found out. I ended up second last, one of my occupations afforded me a nice strategy for gaining VP which involved buying many improvements but I only ended up with 4. Additionally I had 9 empty spaces at the end of the game which hurt.

All in all a great game, I expect to play it quite often and for the moment it's my favorite game in the 'euro' category. I can see why some people prefer a game like Puerto Rico though, things like getting all your resources on the ships in such a way that you gain a lot of VP while the others have to discard most of their resources has much more impact than any choice I've seen in Agricola so far. But I like the idea that if someone blocks your action of preference that you can work on something else for the moment.

Tomorrow my second game of Arkham Horror will take place, hopefully it won't take 7 hours again this time.

*EDIT: No AH tomorrow, but another round of Agricola (4 players this time) today.
 

sneaky77

Member
Got City of Remnants to the table last night, took a while to get it going smoothly but all 3 of us loved it, you couldn't really tell at all who was on the lead. Somehow it ended in a 3 way tie even after the tie break which was sort of epic.
Great game though.
 
Damn, the wife did not enjoy netrunner. She asked for something "more like agricola, but different".

Oh well, castles of burgandy is in the mail. Fingers crossed.
 

Neverfade

Member
Damn, the wife did not enjoy netrunner. She asked for something "more like agricola, but different".
.

Le Havre. Do it.

j6M4mU7.gif
 
I think I got to take a tough stance and hold off on getting a new game for a while. I really want to play the ones I got more, and really get into the strategy and learning.

It's nice to play a game and be confident in the rules instead of having my nose in the rulebook the whole time.

And certainly has nothing to do with saving up for some upcoming video games.
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
That feeling when you introduce a new game to somebody and after playing it once, they instantly want to replay it several times.

Bliss.
 
That feeling when you introduce a new game to somebody and after playing it once, they instantly want to replay it several times.

Bliss.
Far better than the soul crushing feeling of when they don't and you just question whether you've wasted your money on a new game. Hopefully all it takes is wearing them down and the possibility that they'll grow to love it as much as you.

If you have young kids like me, it's the thought that in 10-12 years, they'll play with me.
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
Far better than the soul crushing feeling of when they don't and you just question whether you've wasted your money on a new game. Hopefully all it takes is wearing them down and the possibility that they'll grow to love it as much as you.

Well yeah, that's how it often goes, which is why when the game DOES click it feels so much better. I know the rejection of new games far too well.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Damn, the wife did not enjoy netrunner. She asked for something "more like agricola, but different".

Oh well, castles of burgandy is in the mail. Fingers crossed.

Hahah yeah. As much as I love Netrunner, I would not consider it a couples game really unless your SO is super into cyberpunk or an experienced CCG/LCG player.
 
I had a light board game night tonight, we played a couple games of 7 Wonders and tried out the cities expansion, it seemed alright I guess, I dont know if it makes it better, but it adds more stuff, haha.

But then we moved onto a game I picked up while actually looking for and english version San Guo Sha (Legends of the Three Kingdoms), Samurai Sword.

Samurai Sword is fucking awesome, its like gun, but its Samurai's, Ninjas, a Ronin and a Shogun. Its so much fun, we played 3 matches, and definitely after the first game it became very hard to figure out who was who. Absolutely hilarious to play though, and completely fucks with your mind when that Ninja you have been trying to kill all game turns out to be the Samurai who is there to help protect you, haha.


Great fun.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
I really like 7W with Cities + Leaders. The debt and spy mechanics in Cities can really change the course of a game. Only problem with the expansions is that they make it absolutely brutal to teach new players for how light of a game 7W is/should be.
 
I really like 7W with Cities + Leaders. The debt and spy mechanics in Cities can really change the course of a game. Only problem with the expansions is that they make it absolutely brutal to teach new players for how light of a game 7W is/should be.

This was probably the big issue for me. We didnt use Leaders and I hadnt played 7 wonders in months and when I did it was just the base game.

Cities seemed like it was just the black cards or something, I felt like I was missing something while playing, since I was mostly just used to playing with the old rules.

I will try it again the next time my friend brings it by, I hope he bring all the expansions so I can see how they work together, and I will make sure to pay more attention when they are explaining the rules. haha.


It just seems weird to play a game I like with an added expansion and feel like the game is worse off from the expansion, that just seems fucked up. haha
 

Flynn

Member
7 Wonders has a Race For The Galaxy iconography problem now.

You have to pass around rulebooks or printouts so people know what their cards do.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
7 Wonders has a Race For The Galaxy iconography problem now.

You have to pass around rulebooks or printouts so people know what their cards do.

iPad app is really good too. Has a handy menu with every symbol, and also Wonder randomization and stat tracking (persistent). Makes me wish every game I loved had something like that; it's super impressive.

I like 7W better with the expansions. Base game is good but too vanilla for me now like most gateways.
 
7 Wonders has a Race For The Galaxy iconography problem now.

You have to pass around rulebooks or printouts so people know what their cards do.

Haha, yeah just about!!


iPad app is really good too. Has a handy menu with every symbol, and also Wonder randomization and stat tracking (persistent). Makes me wish every game I loved had something like that; it's super impressive.

I like 7W better with the expansions. Base game is good but too vanilla for me now like most gateways.

I wish I was the one who owned 7 Wonders so I could justify the app (its only 2 bucks, but I dont play 7 wonders enough yet :p), I love apps that help with board games. The Zombicide one is really cool and helpful.

I spent the cash on the board game score tracker, and its amazing. I Havent been tracking everything but I still have 33 sessions saved in there, spread across 16 games. Its really nice to track how people do in games and just over all. I used to be way ahead of all my friends in wins, but ive had horrible luck in the last 10ish games weve played, haha. I need to play more Eclipse and Le Havre, thats where I get my wins :p
 
What score tracker is that?

Edit: Aw crap, you just mentioned it one post before this one! Oh well, leaving it here for other people.

I think he's talking about the official 7W Companion app. On top of the free variants that had come out before (player/score tracking history), it comes with its own exclusive wonder (Cupertino).

I used a free one before getting this one, so I don't know how many of these features exist elsewhere:

  • Player name entry (and you can track their scores over a history of games)
  • Game randomization setup (you can make it assign everyone a Civ randomly)
  • In-game science calculator (to help newbies figure out their optimal scoring with pictures and a touch-interface instead of nagging)
  • Spin-wheel scoring (others have this too, but this is very well polished)
  • It's kept up-to-date fairly well. It updated for Cities and the Wonders pack (it came out after Leaders I think) within a few weeks
 
7 Wonders has a Race For The Galaxy iconography problem now.

You have to pass around rulebooks or printouts so people know what their cards do.

Yea it's always something that needs to be out for everyone to look. I never teach 7 Wonders with any expansions, have to let folks learn the base and then introduce the expansions.
 
What score tracker is that?

Its called Boardgame Scorer, the guy who makes it makes a bunch of individual ones for a few games, but this one is kind of an all in one scorer (its missing RFTG though, which there is an individual app for). It has like 10 games built in, Eclipse, Le Havre, 7 Wonders, Agricola, Ora et Labora, Puerto Rico and a few others I dont use. All of the ones that are built in have a nice way to find out what scores you have by inputting all your different point things like in 7 Wonders inputting your Military points, and treasury points, and it even has a way of calculating what points you get from your Science.

Its an awesome app for the built in games, but its still really good for other games, since you can create your own scorer by naming it, taking a picture of the box, and applying the different points your game tracks. It wont do any cool calculator stuff in the custom ones, but its better than nothing. You can even link the game to BGG and the app to your BGG profile and upload all your scores to it.

You can then look and see old scores of everyone in all your games, and even track everyones win ratio. Really good app, well worth the 5 bucks, I would recommend checking out one of the free ones first to see if you like it.
 
Balance of the Force set coming for the Star Wars LCG in Q4. Adds two multiplayer modes to the game, 2 on 2 team play and 2 special decks to play a 3 on 1 semi coop variant. Sounds alot like the WoW TCG Raid Decks where one player plays and controls the powerful bad guy deck while the group must coop against him. Very cool option to have for the game, I do hope they keep supporting the multiplayer format and put out more opposition decks.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4247
 

Neverfade

Member
Might get some more play around here when that hits. Rarely have few enough gaming buddies for 2 player, and my fiance would turn her nose up if I hinted at playing SW, despite the fact that she likes SW.

Also: Traded for Terra Mystica. Can't wait to be disappointed.
 
I once had heard they were going to do a digital version of the Mage Knight board game, and other than the canceled kickstarter for the other version (not the Vlaada one) I'm beginning to think I might have heard wrong.

I kinda think it'd be cool to have a digital copy of Mage Knight for solo play.
 
So I just had a great game of Revolution with some of my friends, and I'm trying to pull them deeper into the hobby. I want the next step up in complexity/difficulty to that, but not something as complex as an Agricola or Race for the Galaxy. Any ideas?
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
So I just had a great game of Revolution with some of my friends, and I'm trying to pull them deeper into the hobby. I want the next step up in complexity/difficulty to that, but not something as complex as an Agricola or Race for the Galaxy. Any ideas?

7 Wonders?
 

fenners

Member
7 Wonders?

If they had fun with Revolution, they likely want an element of "screw you!" but are still noobs, but that game definitely has moment to moment tactical decisions... It'd be easy to go the route of Munchin etc, and they may enjoy that unfortunately, but I think 7 Wonders is a fair suggestion - easy to teach/pick up, quick to play, and you get to attack your neighbours.

My pick - King of Tokyo. Dice based for the randomness, definitely lots of "screw you!", but still has tactical decisions that matter for longer than your turn. Easy to teach & play too. I don't know if either are actually a step up in complexity mind...
 

Ohnonono

Member
Balance of the Force set coming for the Star Wars LCG in Q4. Adds two multiplayer modes to the game, 2 on 2 team play and 2 special decks to play a 3 on 1 semi coop variant. Sounds alot like the WoW TCG Raid Decks where one player plays and controls the powerful bad guy deck while the group must coop against him. Very cool option to have for the game, I do hope they keep supporting the multiplayer format and put out more opposition decks.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4247

So far this looks great. Most of the multiplayer mechanics seem uncosted and have a function in 1v1 play. Mara Jade card for instance looks like pure murder in 1v1 and just has an extra ability for multiplayer. Everything about the set looks great for playing the game with my casual gaming group who likes multiplayer games.

Now Edge of Darkness needs to get in stock :( I want more cards!
 
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