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[Neverfade]

Chalk me up for another positive take on SW:LCG.

I'll agree with Astro that if you're deep into Netrunner then you might not need another LCG, but I prefer the block deck-building to piece by piece, partially due to BM's reasoning, partially because ain't nobody got time for that!

I wish I had someone to regularly play with. Investing past a core set isn't really feasible until that happens.

 

[joelseph]

How is the OCTGN plug for SW? Db0 made both yes?

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Having played a ton of Netrunner and a little SW I think they are quite different and both have their merits. Netrunner is more asymmetrical than SW and more fresh/novel in the sense of the win conditions for the Runner in particular. Netrunner gives you a bit more of a rush of the unexpected and has more ambush/trap/surprise-attack elements. SW meanwhile has this awesome core mechanic -- I really like the way resources are generated in that game and how you generate your economy. My first game I was kind of meh on it but I think that was just because I hadn't grokked the complexity (imo SW is slightly more complex than NR with all the different elements it has), but since then I really appreciate that it feels like you're building up this fleet and infrastructure and sending it into battle.

They're both really good games, making me wish I had the time to commit to two LCGs but sadly I don't. SW really makes me wish they would release a non-LCG version with like six factions that you could play sans deckbuilding.

Yea im not very familiar with netrunner, only read about it so not sure. I think there is a good amount of traps and such in SW due to the Fate battles mechanice, but perhaps it comes out more of a gambling like element. It introduces lot of bluffing and surprises into the battles that can quickly turn a losing battle completely around.

Chalk me up for another positive take on SW:LCG.

I'll agree with Astro that if you're deep into Netrunner then you might not need another LCG, but I prefer the block deck-building to piece by piece, partially due to BM's reasoning, partially because ain't nobody got time for that!

I wish I had someone to regularly play with. Investing past a core set isn't really feasible until that happens.

Thanks guys. Maybe if I find a cheap core set I'll get that and try it out. Yeah, Netrunner has my dollars and time as LCGs go and there is very few of both to devote to two games at once.

 

[Karkador]

It's rather cute how every LCG has a very loyal community that wants you to play their game. I have a friend who loves the LOTR LCG (he's also a Tolkien fanatic), but I'd never see him playing any of the others. He's convinced me to try playing it with him sometime...it is pretty neat that it's a co-op game.

I didn't know the Star Wars LCG had this "block deckbuilding". Do decks in that game not have a lot of different cards, or are the decks huge?

 

[BattleMonkey]

It's rather cute how every LCG has a very loyal community that wants you to play their game. I have a friend who loves the LOTR LCG (he's also a Tolkien fanatic), but I'd never see him playing any of the others. He's convinced me to try playing it with him sometime...it is pretty neat that it's a co-op game.

I didn't know the Star Wars LCG had this "block deckbuilding". Do decks in that game not have a lot of different cards, or are the decks huge?

When you build a deck you build by taking objective sets. Each set is one objective card, and 5 regular play cards. They are themed and you have to put them in the deck as a set. When you build a deck for standard play you have to have a minimum of 10 objective sets in a deck. The objective cards are all put aside in an objective deck and these are revealed three at a time to play, and are what you basically fight over. This is part of how the game tries to keep the card themes to be thematic as while you for example are fighting a battle of hoth objective, you will for sure have hoth related cards to that objective in that deck. So at minimum you will have the 10 card objective deck, and then the remaining 50 play cards, though you can add as many objective sets you want in a deck, it's just not optimal build.

The starter comes with 4 premade decks out of the 6 factions, they are small decks of about 7-8 objective sets each I believe, but the starter does come with extras and neutrals that can be mixed in to make legal decks if you wish to play beyond the starter sized games. The Edge of Darkness expansion added 2 more prebuilt decks for the last two factions.

I play quite a few card games, like LOTR, Warhammer, and Star Wars, but because of that I'm trying to not take on anymore LCG's so i've not touched Netrunner.

 

[Karkador]

So does the objective deck have a mix of both player's objectives? Is that one deck, or two decks with 3 coming out of each at a time?

And do you draw cards that might be for objectives that havent come out yet?

I'd say that Netrunner is still worth it, as it's a very good game. At least, it seems that none of FFG's LCGs play the same way at all, though I don't know anything about Warhammer.

 

[BattleMonkey]

So does the objective deck have a mix of both player's objectives? Is that one deck, or two decks with 3 coming out of each at a time?

And do you draw cards that might be for objectives that havent come out yet?

I'd say that Netrunner is still worth it, as it's a very good game. At least, it seems that none of FFG's LCGs play the same way at all, though I don't know anything about Warhammer.

Each player has their own objective deck, the objectives are what your opponent attacks. So you attack your opponents, while he/she attacks yours. A player always draws out 3 objectives face up on table and when you initiate combat as an attacker, you choose which objective your going after as you are trying to destroy them. When an objective is lost, you draw a new one to replace it.

The cards are not specifically made for that objective outside of thematic elements, while some might have keywords that give benefits if a type of objective is in play. Like many in the Hoth cycle of card packs included bonus abilities if you control an objective that has the "hoth" keyword.

 

[AstroLad]

It's rather cute how every LCG has a very loyal community that wants you to play their game. I have a friend who loves the LOTR LCG (he's also a Tolkien fanatic), but I'd never see him playing any of the others. He's convinced me to try playing it with him sometime...it is pretty neat that it's a co-op game.

I didn't know the Star Wars LCG had this "block deckbuilding". Do decks in that game not have a lot of different cards, or are the decks huge?

Yeah thing is they are all quite good. But realistically if you have any responsibilities in your life at all you have time for 1 or 1.5 max.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I don't play any of them hardcore or in any competitive form. Mostly just collect and play with friends who want to play here and there. Also stuff like LOTR is easy because of the coop nature. Have harder time getting people to play any of the 2 player head to head games. Why I'm glad to see the MP mode stuff for Star Wars as that will go over better.

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Game night last night. Played Coup, The Adventures Temple of Chac, 7 Wonders, and Colonial: Europe's Empires Overseas. Coup was ok, not as good as the hype surrounding it, but it was over really quick so whatever. Adventurers was better than I remembered, but still too much set up time for so little game. 7 Wonders is a classic and it's been a really long time since I last played so that was fun. Colonial is an interesting game, it's sort of janky but it's fun.

 

[Neverfade]

I've been doing a fair bit of research, trying to decide if I should revisit Arkham Horror, and I came up with a question.

It seems the 'seal six gates' win clause is static? Wouldn't this be pretty easy with a large number of investigators and incredibly difficult with fewer? I know most people like to play solo/two player games with several investigators each, but I'm trying to wrap my head around a 6-gate seal in a 1 or 2 player game with only a single investigator each.

Say an AO with a doom track of 12 is up. Going into a gate and encountering, encountering the second half, and moving out to skill check and seal is 3 turns right? Even in a two player game that splits the job up with 3 gates a piece, that's 9 turns, leaving three to collect 15 tokens a piece for the actual sealing.

How?

 

[AstroLad]

Yeah that is why Arkham you really have to play with 3-4.

 

[Apenheul]

Arkham Horror doesn't scale well, I'd say AstroLad is correct that 3-4 players is the sweet spot when just playing the base game. I've got Dunwich horror which introduces gate-burst (some new Mythos cards have their gate location print in red) which opens a gate on that location even if the location is sealed. For Dunwich I feel the sweet spot is 4 or maybe 5.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Eldritch Horror I'm liking better as it scales better and not the same static goal each time.

 

[Smiley90]

Posting this one last time, in case anyone's interested:

I'm back in Europe, so if anyone wants me to bring a game over that's only available here and save on shipping, send me a PM!

 

[TumblingHippo]

Got to play Village for the first time this week. What a quaint and enjoyable game that everyone had a nice time playing.

Come home grandpa, I know you worked your whole life as a smithy, but if you could just come back to the farm for retirement

Spoiler

you can accidentally secure your spot in the book for 12 points.

 

[Karkador]

I played Village and thought the death mechanic was interesting (if not grim), but something about that game put me off, like it was just kind of half-finished or something. It was odd how cubes were distributed randomly and it was odd how only some things aged your people and there wasn't much of a sense of consistency in things that take time/aging.

 

[One Foul Note]

Just finished my fourth game of Netrunner but my first one that I felt constantly in proper control and full understanding of the rules, and it was glorious. I think my favourite moment was one where the Runner spent his entire turn burning through resources and cards to amass a vast amount of credits, forgetting that he was tagged and I was NBN. His criminals woke up the next morning to find their bank accounts closed and their resources trashed. Very enjoyably game, although I still think Jinteki are my favourite corp, I love the mindgames with them.

 

[AcridMeat]

Played Kingdom Builder this week. It took me until we were almost finished to realize I had watched the SU&SD review. Also took until about the end of the game to know exactly what I had to be doing to score points.

Spoiler

came in second out of 4

 

[TheExodu5]

Played some more Avalon last night. It was fun, but kind of a shitty night considering 3 people were being introduced to the game. During several games a regular loyalist just happened to pick exactly the right teams. Most of the games ended at 4 rounds. I'm not sure if it was just luck or not...usually most of my games have always gone 5 rounds. We were playing with 8-9 people. I was hoping for a better impression for their first time. Oh well.

I will admit though that 8+ does feel a bit chaotic. Playable, but not as good as 5-7 players. 7 players is really the sweetspot, IMO.

 

[Slacker]

Had a short game night this week with Power Grid: Japan and Ticket to Ride: Nederlands, both with five players. Power Grid is always great no matter what map we use. The new Ticket to Ride map is interesting, in that you have to pay tolls to build every route on the board. You pay the bank if you're building a solo route or the first side of a double route, or another player if you're building the second side of a double-route. The tokens matter in a big way because at the end of the game the player with the most gets an enormous bonus (55 points). Second, third, etc all get progressively lower bonuses as well. This was only my third time playing the new map, so I'm still waiting to see if that bonus is so high that it breaks the game, but it seems to be working ok so far. I was the lucky winner of the 55 points last game but found myself losing by one point (199 to 198).

Overall appears to be a solid add-on for the TTR fans out there.

 

[TumblingHippo]

I played Village and thought the death mechanic was interesting (if not grim), but something about that game put me off, like it was just kind of half-finished or something. It was odd how cubes were distributed randomly and it was odd how only some things aged your people and there wasn't much of a sense of consistency in things that take time/aging.

Perhaps Village Inn fixes that for you, but for me, I've played so many games that rely on cards, that it's just nice for once to play a pure board game.

Hmm, thinking of that, are there many favored games that don't use cards at all? I'm thinking of Tahiti and Eclipse. Also, I don't mind cards used for just resources (money/goods) so probably why I gravitate to many of Feld's games.

 

[Karkador]

what's new in Village Inn?

 

[IllumiNate]

My friend has a kickstarter for a new board game he's made called The Goods. He's very creative and has made a bunch of other games. Check it out http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/103405605/the-goods

 

[TumblingHippo]

what's new in Village Inn?

You get a brewery craft section which overlays the graveyard, and a village inn to overlay the chronicle. You can brew beer, and then spend beer at the inn (or money) to get these cards which represent different visitors to the inn. Some of them have powerful one-time abilities, others give you bonus points at the end of the game (have a bunch of green cubes left over? well now they're worth bonus points).

You also get all the material necessary to add a fifth player to the game. You also get separate graveyard and chronicle boards since those were covered up.

I dunno. I suppose if you got tired of Village or wanted to add another level with it, but I sort of adore the simplicity of just the board and pieces.

 

[TheExodu5]

Mascarade is fantastic. Only got to play it with 5 and 6 players, but it was a blast. Definitely one of my favorite games.

 

[Karkador]

Mascarade is fantastic. Only got to play it with 5 and 6 players, but it was a blast. Definitely one of my favorite games.

Cool, I played that tonight, too, and also had a good time with it.

 

[Karkador]

By the way, isn't it about time we update the OP? I think a fair amount of new people come in and read the op for information, but almost all the image links are broken and it's from 2010

 

[dragonlife]

I had never heard of deck building games until a few days ago when I was looking at a friend's Amazon wishlist and he had a Resident Evil card game in it. I was very curious about it and immediately wanted it because I love RE and I just wanted the cards, but after looking it up and watching a review on it on YouTube, I decided I was really interested in the gameplay and that just opened me up to a genre of card games I had never heard of.

And apparently the RE DBG is pretty fun to boot, from what I read. I bought it with the intention of playing it with my family during Christmas, so I'm really excited to see how it goes.

Anyone here play it? I bought the base set and will probably get the other expansions later because, well... more RE.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I had never heard of deck building games until a few days ago when I was looking at a friend's Amazon wishlist and he had a Resident Evil card game in it. I was very curious about it and immediately wanted it because I love RE and I just wanted the cards, but after looking it up and watching a review on it on YouTube, I decided I was really interested in the gameplay and that just opened me up to a genre of card games I had never heard of.

And apparently the RE DBG is pretty fun to boot, from what I read. I bought it with the intention of playing it with my family during Christmas, so I'm really excited to see how it goes.

Anyone here play it? I bought the base set and will probably get the other expansions later because, well... more RE.

It's ok game, one of the issues with it is that the game has a slow build up as players are essentially forced to stock up on money and ammo cards to buy better weapons and helpful cards, before you can really venture into the mansion to fight enemies. Reason being is that the mansion deck is extremely random, you can flip over the first card and end up fighting the game's boss card or some other huge bad BOW that you can't beat so early in game. And since it involves essentially two currencies, the game has a bit of a slow start. You need gold to buy new cards with, and your weapons need ammo to actually use them.

The game has tons of options though and one of the neat things they did with it was with every set, added one or several new ways to play the game. The various modes they introduce can be fun, like the Partner mode where you have two characters you control helps speed up the game and reduces some of the randomness by letting you hold weapons in play essentially permanently.

The last set they came out with, Mercenaries is also stand alone, and was designed with taking in lot of the player feedback. They essentially upgraded all the game's base cards abilities and numbers to create a better flowing game.

 

[Mr. Lemming]

The Outbreak expansion for REBG helps alleviate the slow build-up somewhat as you gain infection cards if you do not explore the mansion. Once you obtain 10 infection cards you die and turn into a zombie. This makes exploring important in the early game, even when you are not prepared to defeat all of the monsters in the mansion.

With just the core set just be prepared to handle a bit of randomness. You can have the perfect setup, ready to do more than enough damage to kill the boss and then you flip over... a yellow herb.

 

[Karkador]

I'm not a huge RE fan or anything, but those games did seem pretty interesting if only because it looked like a deck-building game with a good theme.

 

[platypotamus]

By the way, isn't it about time we update the OP? I think a fair amount of new people come in and read the op for information, but almost all the image links are broken and it's from 2010

We're also nearing the page limit, aren't we? Maybe we do a new thread for 2014. If AstroLad doesn't want to do up the OP again, I can, but he set the bar pretty high...

 

[Karkador]

I can do stuff as far as graphic design/presentation is concerned. I would leave the content and suggestions up to others, though

 

[Neverfade]

We're also nearing the page limit, aren't we? Maybe we do a new thread for 2014. If AstroLad doesn't want to do up the OP again, I can, but he set the bar pretty high...

I'll start writing the Kemet section now.




Anyone played Amerigo? I've enjoyed Bora Bora and Bruges a good bit this year. Rialto doesn't really look to interest me, but I might as well continue with the point salad at this point, right?. Plus, cube tower!

 

[AstroLad]

We're also nearing the page limit, aren't we? Maybe we do a new thread for 2014. If AstroLad doesn't want to do up the OP again, I can, but he set the bar pretty high...

Woo hoo go for it! I've been wanting to update this one but it's pretty time-consuming. Definitely feel free to take content from it though.

In unrelated news, I just took the plunge on Eldritch (CSI sale) and Rampage (just right up my alley even though reviews are mixed).

 

[platypotamus]

Ok, I'll start thinking about it and write something up probably near the new year. Karkador, I'll probably PM you a couple banner requests if you really want to do some. I may also solicit the thread in general for pictures of games that I want to mention but don't own, because I probably shouldn't blatantly steal them from BGG.

 

[Slacker]

Anyone play Suburbia in real life? Is it hard to keep up with the pluses and minuses every turn? Seems pretty complicated even playing the app version where it does all the math for you.

 

[AstroLad]

Anyone play Suburbia in real life? Is it hard to keep up with the pluses and minuses every turn? Seems pretty complicated even playing the app version where it does all the math for you.

A little but not too bad because you just reflect it all instantly on the Income/Rep tracker. And there are like five tiles that are interactive across boards, so if you have one of those you just remember. In terms of accounting where games like Love Letter and well the majority of games are Light and stuff like Arkham and well most FFG games are Heavy, I'd put Suburbia solidly at Medium.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Anyone play Suburbia in real life? Is it hard to keep up with the pluses and minuses every turn? Seems pretty complicated even playing the app version where it does all the math for you.

Since you keep track of the +/- bits with markers as you add new tiles, it's not really that bad.

An another note, my copy of Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia that I backed through Kickstarter should arrive this week.

 

[mercviper]

Anyone play Suburbia in real life? Is it hard to keep up with the pluses and minuses every turn? Seems pretty complicated even playing the app version where it does all the math for you.

Keeping track isn't that hard. It's mostly simple because if at any point you exceed the min/max or -5/+15 on income/reputation the bonuses are flat out lost, so really you only do calculations when buildings are played. Just keep an eye out on buildings that affect income/rep/money for every type of a building played.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Anyone play Suburbia in real life? Is it hard to keep up with the pluses and minuses every turn? Seems pretty complicated even playing the app version where it does all the math for you.

It's easy since any changes made in game you do immediately. You shouldn't have to do any counting every turn, it's already been updated and posted on the tracker board.

 

[Karkador]

Ok, I'll start thinking about it and write something up probably near the new year. Karkador, I'll probably PM you a couple banner requests if you really want to do some. I may also solicit the thread in general for pictures of games that I want to mention but don't own, because I probably shouldn't blatantly steal them from BGG.

Yeah, sure thing. I'd love to make it look good and consistent. I can also give some ideas for what kind of sections there should be, but I felt like it should be a community effort since there are different things that people like & know about that should probably be represented, right?

 

[AstroLad]

I think people got a lot of value out of the recommendations for different types of games. 2p/wife/husband games, party games, etc. It's just such a common question and it was nice to be able to point to the OP on. The one thing I think you probably don't need is any sort of news updates and the like.

 

[platypotamus]

Yeah, the closest thing I think I'd have to a news updates section would be a section highlighting cool recent games and one highlighting cool upcoming games (and then over the course of the year I'll just move some from the second section into the first)

 

[JLG-]

I was at my local target and found Wits & Wagers on clearance for $3.84!! Score!

 

[piratepwnsninja]

Man, going to BGG is a terrible, terrible idea. Money just vanishes into the nether whenever I go there, because I inevitably:

a) read about a game I've never heard of that I must have
b) find out a game I had been interested in has been released
c) find out a game I'd written off is actually really great

In other news, I'll have around give new games to play next week....

 

[JetBlackPanda]

Just like that new game smell I can't wait for new thread smell!!

Best place on GAF!

 

[Angst]

I think people got a lot of value out of the recommendations for different types of games. 2p/wife/husband games, party games, etc. It's just such a common question and it was nice to be able to point to the OP on. The one thing I think you probably don't need is any sort of news updates and the like.

Yeah I found the recommendations in the OP really useful. Update the recommended games and make sure the pictures work. IMO the OP's main purpose is to be informative for new players.

 

[Karkador]

agreed. so you think it would be easiest/friendliest to categorize by player #s? or strategy/casual/abstract/party/etc? those genres tend to have certain player #s anyway, and some of those genres can either be vague or off-putting?