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New Board Gaming |OT2| On Tables, Off Topic

Noaloha

Member
As a tangent...

The box for Terminal Directive is large. Like completely, ludicrously, and unnecessarily large.

Ha, my eyes certainly widened a little at this photo from the SUSD write-up.

IMG_1916.jpg
 
I love mecha so this just caught my eye, not sure on the game itself yet, but do find it interesting how they are doing it. Selling the game base and playable for cheaper price, while making all the miniatures a separate set and optional. Think this is kind of neat, can see people being turned off by the idea that it's not one complete box even though price ends up being pretty much same as other games with tons of minis. But like so many KS games, the minis are not even needed, really wouldn't mind seeing more games take this approach of making the miniatures an optional purchase to save some money: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...rfare-in-a-dark-future?ref=PolyhedronCollider
 

Keasar

Member
I love mecha so this just caught my eye, not sure on the game itself yet, but do find it interesting how they are doing it. Selling the game base and playable for cheaper price, while making all the miniatures a separate set and optional. Think this is kind of neat, can see people being turned off by the idea that it's not one complete box even though price ends up being pretty much same as other games with tons of minis. But like so many KS games, the minis are not even needed, really wouldn't mind seeing more games take this approach of making the miniatures an optional purchase to save some money: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...rfare-in-a-dark-future?ref=PolyhedronCollider

They did that with Anachrony as well, selling a miniature pack on the side so you could just get a base package. The only sad thing being that the miniatures actually have a neat function with a tiny slot on the head that you could equip your workers into.

Maybe something that start to pick up with more companies?

Ha, my eyes certainly widened a little at this photo from the SUSD write-up.

Should be a crime in board games. Meanwhile I think the Arkham Horror Card Game box is way too small to hold cards and stuff if you start getting the expansions.
 
Should be a crime in board games. Meanwhile I think the Arkham Horror Card Game box is way too small to hold cards and stuff if you start getting the expansions.
For a box that size, Terminal Directive could have at least included a vacuum formed organizer tray to store a ton of cards. Only problem being that half the people would want it to fit sleeved cards and the other half unsleeved cards.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
FFG has the worst damn boxes and organizers bar none. I'd say they were actively messing w/ me but realistically I know they're just being cheap and reusing stuff all over the place without any consideration for usability. For Arkham, I got a card box the hold all the stuff and then I just use the base box for chits and manual. For everything else, I have custom solutions for the most part.
 
Legend 5 of Legends of Andor is some bullshit. Not a great way to spend a few hours on Tabletop Day. >:| I really like aspects of the game but this has been the last straw. The fixed amount of rounds just doesn't work well in addition to the variables affected by luck. In the beginning I had three Gor and 2 Skral in the castle. In hindsight that was a death sentence.

The board started ripping as I was folding it up. A sign that I am done with this game. Also Kosmos' production quality is not good.
 

chifanpoe

Member
Played my first game of Glory to Rome on Friday, what a cool game. Did some searching trying to find an affordable copy for my self. Is $60 an ok deal for an I.V edition? Everything else I was finding was in the $110-200 range.
 

Karkador

Banned
Played my first game of Glory to Rome on Friday, what a cool game. Did some searching trying to find an affordable copy for my self. Is $60 an ok deal for an I.V edition? Everything else I was finding was in the $110-200 range.

IV edition is still the classic, colorful, ugly one that comes in a clamshell case. The ones for $110-200 are most likely the Black Box edition with nice artwork. I definitely wouldn't pay $60 for the old one.

Maybe check out Uchronia or Mottanai? They are reimplementations of the same game, and much cheaper.
 

chifanpoe

Member
IV edition is still the classic, colorful, ugly one that comes in a clamshell case. The ones for $110-200 are most likely the Black Box edition with nice artwork. I definitely wouldn't pay $60 for the old one.

Maybe check out Uchronia or Mottanai? They are reimplementations of the same game, and much cheaper.

Thanks for the info. I watched both the Unchronia and Mottanai videos from Rahdo. It looks like he was not a fan of Uchronia but did like Mottanai (just not a much as GtR). Mottanai is pretty cheap so I may grab it. The "ugly" art work from the earlier GtR does not bother me nor does the spartan art in the black box version.
 

Kieli

Member
Yeah it was more of a general point and then I just dropped in that slur for Gloomhaven specifically. And honestly I don't mind edgelordy stuff at all just that it limits playerbase for me at least.

pic2686662_md.jpg

Yeah, the use of that word had me really confused and I went to google if "Edgelord board games" were actually subgenre of board games LOL.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I did that as well and picked up one of these: http://www.meeplerealty.com/store/p75/Millennium_Highrise_(compatible_with_MILLENNIUM_BLADES™).html

Makes it much easier to setup and tear-down. The market tower helps a ton with sleeved cards.
Thanks! The tower looks like a neat idea, but I'm not sure the rest would be necessary, especially without card separators. I guess I could just add my own.

I saw someone suggest using 10 stacks in the store area instead of 1 big stack. That would help the stacking issue and be almost equivalent, but it would mean it's not really feasible to clear the store between rounds. I guess people could also potentially see the colors of cards underneath and focus on buying those stacks even more than they already can with the big stack. What I did ingame even before sleeving cards was just put a decent store stack on the table, and later pull more out of the box when I started running low.

Here's my final box result with Set Rotation but no promos:
sleeves20auvd.jpg
 
Anyone else been messing with Tabletop Simulator now that they've added scripting? I've been wanting to learn Lua for a bit, so this is helping mutual goals.
 

Emarv

Member
I saw Tabletop Simulator was on sale, too. Gonna pick it up because I heard people play things like Star Wars Destiny on there.

What other Tabletop Simulator mods/games do you guys recommend trying on there?
 
I saw Tabletop Simulator was on sale, too. Gonna pick it up because I heard people play things like Star Wars Destiny on there.

What other Tabletop Simulator mods/games do you guys recommend trying on there?

If you look on the Steam Workshop, there's a mod for just about every game out there. Me and a friend have actually used it to demo games we were considering purchasing before.
 

chifanpoe

Member
Thanks! The tower looks like a neat idea, but I'm not sure the rest would be necessary, especially without card separators. I guess I could just add my own.

Looks good, nice work!

The meeple reality came with 18 wooden card dividers but I still printed out labels to slide in-front of them.
 

zulux21

Member
I saw Tabletop Simulator was on sale, too. Gonna pick it up because I heard people play things like Star Wars Destiny on there.

What other Tabletop Simulator mods/games do you guys recommend trying on there?

until you get used to how tabletop simulator works I highly recommend sticking to shorter games without a lot of things you have to do.

games like love letter work great, games like betrayal are alright but can be a pain, a game like robonsin Crusoe is a huge pain in the ass.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
My parents are in town so I've had the chance to play a ton of stuff I might otherwise not, which is always fun.

Finally got around to Tokaido, which I've owned since forever but just hadn't properly bothered to learn until the app came out. Really buy that this is just a relaxing and gorgeous game where you can kind of turn off your brain for 30m. We played the base though I have the Collector's Edition and I'm kind of interested about the expansions as I could see their being absolutely necessary once you've played 5-10 games of base, though also kind of antithetical to the gateway/breezy feel of the base game. Anyone have thoughts on the expansions? They seem a bit fiddly in terms of I'd probably never want to teach someone from scratch with them. I also don't really like the thing where instead of drawing random cards you get to choose from a big set what you want (my least favorite part of some of the abilities in 7 Wonders Duel).

It's probably been almost two years since I played Legendary: Marvel, but man as long as you don't mind the setup and teardown and have an experienced group that game is borderline magical with how you can just have all these random pieces and yet somehow it just works. I think you need expansions probably up through Secret Wars to really make it sing, but after a grueling back and forth with the Mastermind we managed to win the turn before we would have lost and it doesn't get much better than that for a co-op. Just get yourself a good randomizer. :D

Looking forward to trying out Codenames Pictures tonight. While I don't usually like Codenames with 4-5 (prefer 6+ so people can actually talk), I think the pictures and smaller grid will loosen it up a bit to make it OK.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
If you look on the Steam Workshop, there's a mod for just about every game out there. Me and a friend have actually used it to demo games we were considering purchasing before.

By 'mod' you mean pirated version of the game that the creator and owner gets no money for.

TTS is selling a 20 dollar piracy platform, and force me to do DMCA takedown requests to remove content and neither they nor Valvle will do shit about the fact that all of the content on steamworks amounts to Napster. For board games. And once someone has scanned the art it takes them about 30 seconds to reupload the content after the takedown and Valve again will do nothing about user accounts who repeatedly upload copyrighted material.

Believe me, I feel really good when I see 20k dollars worth of artwork that I am busting my ass to get a paid digital version of created is scanned and uploaded so it can be played for free.

At least BGG banned the guy selling PNP Machi Koro for a month.
 

Blizzard

Banned
By 'mod' you mean pirated version of the game that the creator and owner gets no money for.

TTS is selling a 20 dollar piracy platform, and force me to do DMCA takedown requests to remove content and neither they nor Valvle will do shit about the fact that all of the content on steamworks amounts to Napster. For board games. And once someone has scanned the art it takes them about 30 seconds to reupload the content after the takedown and Valve again will do nothing about user accounts who repeatedly upload copyrighted material.

Believe me, I feel really good when I see 20k dollars worth of artwork that I am busting my ass to get a paid digital version of created is scanned and uploaded so it can be played for free.

At least BGG banned the guy selling PNP Machi Koro for a month.
I think of you when people mention Tabletop. It's really sad they only bother with copyright if a company sells paid DLC on their platform, and even sadder that Valve won't do anything about it. I wonder if any legal action can be taken.
 

zulux21

Member
By 'mod' you mean pirated version of the game that the creator and owner gets no money for.

TTS is selling a 20 dollar piracy platform, and force me to do DMCA takedown requests to remove content and neither they nor Valvle will do shit about the fact that all of the content on steamworks amounts to Napster. For board games. And once someone has scanned the art it takes them about 30 seconds to reupload the content after the takedown and Valve again will do nothing about user accounts who repeatedly upload copyrighted material.

Believe me, I feel really good when I see 20k dollars worth of artwork that I am busting my ass to get a paid digital version of created is scanned and uploaded so it can be played for free.

At least BGG banned the guy selling PNP Machi Koro for a month.

I can understand the frustration from a creator point of view, and it really should be something TTS and valve take seriously with take down request. I mean it's always felt questionable that valve allows fans to upload games like that. I would understand if you had to use a third party site, but steam workshop stuff means valve should be monitoring it.

Personally I will only use it to play games I actually own, but I doubt that really feels to much better to someone like you who sees your hard work stolen and uploaded for free.. The vast majority of my use of TTS has been playing fan reworks of games such as love letter redone with like steven universe stuff and what not, or playing beta versions of parts of games and giving feedback to the creators. It has allowed me to play some of my favorite games with my friends who are far away. If there was a dedicated app to any given game that i could do the same I would buy that instead but a lot of my favorite games don't have dedicated apps for them.

Though I suppose this brings up a curiosity question for me. Do you harbor any ill will towards those who use TTS to play your games, or do you merely harbor ill will towards the ones that upload the stuff and towards TTS/valve who should be making sure the people who upload such things have the legal rights to do so?
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
I think of you when people mention Tabletop. It's really sad they only bother with copyright if a company sells paid DLC on their platform, and even sadder that Valve won't do anything about it. I wonder if any legal action can be taken.

That's the best part. If TTS might lose money on a workshop game they make damn sure there is no pirated version.

I won't do business with them because their business amounts to a gun to my head 'put your game on our platform officially and we'll police pirated versions. Otherwise we won't do shit'

Which means they have the ability to do something about it (tools, etc) and choose to allow it to happen if they have no skin in the game.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
I can understand the frustration from a creator point of view, and it really should be something TTS and valve take seriously with take down request. I mean it's always felt questionable that valve allows fans to upload games like that. I would understand if you had to use a third party site, but steam workshop stuff means valve should be monitoring it.

Personally I will only use it to play games I actually own, but I doubt that really feels to much better to someone like you who sees your hard work stolen and uploaded for free.. The vast majority of my use of TTS has been playing fan reworks of games such as love letter redone with like steven universe stuff and what not, or playing beta versions of parts of games and giving feedback to the creators. It has allowed me to play some of my favorite games with my friends who are far away. If there was a dedicated app to any given game that i could do the same I would buy that instead but a lot of my favorite games don't have dedicated apps for them.

Though I suppose this brings up a curiosity question for me. Do you harbor any ill will towards those who use TTS to play your games, or do you merely harbor ill will towards the ones that upload the stuff and towards TTS/valve who should be making sure the people who upload such things have the legal rights to do so?

Most of my ire is directed at TTS. But for example Wasteland Express cost me up front almost 200k dollars to print and produce artwork for.

I will barely break even on the first print run. It really pisses me off to see that amount of our money stolen and uploaded.

It's not that it is costing me money necessarily because I'm not sure it is. It's that TTS is selling access to pirated software and they are directly profiting off of other people's time and money.
 

fenners

Member
That's the best part. If TTS might lose money on a workshop game they make damn sure there is no pirated version.

I won't do business with them because their business amounts to a gun to my head 'put your game on our platform officially and we'll police pirated versions. Otherwise we won't do shit'

Which means they have the ability to do something about it (tools, etc) and choose to allow it to happen if they have no skin in the game.

This. You're on the money with this, and you're not the only publisher to mention it. That they're happy to only police & patrol games/IP that pay into their platform show their mentality & direction on how they want to work with companies.

I think you're right though that that active plays on TTS aren't costing you money to any noticeable amount, but it's a publicity thing that puts your company between a rock & a hard place.

BTW any way to late back Dinosaur Island? ;)


Not much gaming this weekend. We had a successful Austin math trade, where I got the Adventure Time card game that my son's been desperate to play and a freebie. One play of them, where I went easy & let him win, to make sure he kept interest - it's a straightforward MTG/Pokemon clone, with some dumb written rules. And three games of Zooloretto, the first in years, where my daughter thoroughly kicked my arse. The PC game has taught her well - no holding back in this one, she knew exactly to do to dominate.
 

Emarv

Member
Thanks for the TTS info, guys. That all does seem pretty shady. Hadn't dug into this world before. Is Tabletopia a more legit alternative? This whole world seems like a bit of a Wild West.
 
I can't believe that anybody would play games with TTS. I own it and have downloaded a few mods and went "huh" and promptly deleted it.

Beyond piracy, the interface is a mess, it is clunky as fuck and misses the entire point of board games imo.
 

zulux21

Member
I can't believe that anybody would play games with TTS. I own it and have downloaded a few mods and went "huh" and promptly deleted it.

Beyond piracy, the interface is a mess, it is clunky as fuck and misses the entire point of board games imo.

any serious game I couldn't imagine playing.

but if you want to play something like love letter it works well enough once you learn the short cuts.

it also was pretty useful for beta testing the new characters of red dragon inn to give feedback to them since someone took the time to put the print and play characters in there to test.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
any serious game I couldn't imagine playing.

but if you want to play something like love letter it works well enough once you learn the short cuts.

it also was pretty useful for beta testing the new characters of red dragon inn to give feedback to them since someone took the time to put the print and play characters in there to test.

It's actually almost the opposite at least in terms of one of its more popular games -- Star Wars: Destiny -- where it's pretty much a prerequisite for high-level players. It may be slightly clunky (though not too bad once you get the hang of it), but just being able to crank out games against a variety of players changing your decks on the fly at pretty much any time of day is something even RL can't compete with. The availability of digital play creates a really interesting dynamic for competitive games. I'd almost go so far as to say it helped destroy Netrunner (or at least casual tournament Netrunner) because the gulf between people who train online and people who don't gets really big over time, especially when there are spoiled cards in the mix that RL players can't play with very conveniently (if you think TTS sucks...try making a deck full of proxies :/).
 
There's a lot of friends I have that I can't exactly play corporeal board games, so TTS makes connecting with friends easy. Also it's a great place to demo your own projects you're working on without spending the money on printing new test "builds".

I picked up the Cosmic Encounter DLC, and that is some quality stuff. I'm hoping to use what I've learned with Lua to make setup a breeze.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
I can't believe that anybody would play games with TTS. I own it and have downloaded a few mods and went "huh" and promptly deleted it.

Beyond piracy, the interface is a mess, it is clunky as fuck and misses the entire point of board games imo.

Can agree with none of this. Me an my friends play everything from King of Tokyo to Food Chain Magnate on TTS with little to no issue. After a few hours playing games the interface becomes 2nd nature.
 
It's actually almost the opposite at least in terms of one of its more popular games -- Star Wars: Destiny -- where it's pretty much a prerequisite for high-level players. It may be slightly clunky (though not too bad once you get the hang of it), but just being able to crank out games against a variety of players changing your decks on the fly at pretty much any time of day is something even RL can't compete with. The availability of digital play creates a really interesting dynamic for competitive games. I'd almost go so far as to say it helped destroy Netrunner (or at least casual tournament Netrunner) because the gulf between people who train online and people who don't gets really big over time, especially when there are spoiled cards in the mix that RL players can't play with very conveniently (if you think TTS sucks...try making a deck full of proxies :/).

It makes sense that playing online has advantages, but why not just through a web interface/app that is specifically designed for it?

The answer would be "because there isn't one", but that doesn't mean TTS is a good way to play games and almost certainly means it is getting away with something that other people don't want to put their name to.
 

mercviper

Member
I can't believe that anybody would play games with TTS. I own it and have downloaded a few mods and went "huh" and promptly deleted it.

Beyond piracy, the interface is a mess, it is clunky as fuck and misses the entire point of board games imo.

Yeah nobody would ever use it because their friends moved away. /s

It's definitely not my first choice of platform but anything I play on it will not get played any other way so what am I going to do?
 
Yeah nobody would ever use it because their friends moved away. /s

It's definitely not my first choice of platform but anything I play on it will not get played any other way so what am I going to do?

Ask the publisher of the game to create a proper digital equivalent.

I have as many problems playing locally as anyone, but I don't believe TTS is the answer.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I think several of us may understand that TTS can be useful for playing games remotely.

However, hopefully we can agree that people shouldn't use it to pirate games rather than buying them.

Hopefully we can also agree that the developer shouldn't refuse to do proper legal monitoring of user content before being paid off by a game designer.
 

mercviper

Member
Ask the publisher of the game to create a proper digital equivalent.

I have as many problems playing locally as anyone, but I don't believe TTS is the answer.
'Proper digital equivalent'. By far the most I play on this is Pathfinder ACG. Paizo has a digital version that took like 3 years to make (exaggeration yes but it definitely took a year+), is SP only, doesn't include current content and I also bought but now has a dead forum, the last thread of which is asking for when, if ever, multiplayer or another update will be available. Realistically I don't think there's enough market to justify the headache of a new program for every game and TTS is something available now, whereas even if my vote were to prompt the start a new project for digital MP I still wouldn't see it for a year. I'm not saying that TTS is the right answer, because really, if a publisher made a specialty app catered for the particular game I want to play, then yes I would use it instead, but as you said, "There isn't one."
I think several of us may understand that TTS can be useful for playing games remotely.

However, hopefully we can agree that people shouldn't use it to pirate games rather than buying them.

Hopefully we can also agree that the developer shouldn't refuse to do proper legal monitoring of user content before being paid off by a game designer.
I agree with everything here.
 

Blizzard

Banned
It's not mutually exclusive either. The Scythe developers made paid DLC that they presumably make money from. If I recall correctly it looks nice, has a custom room, and includes the expansion for free.

So that seems great, were it not for the whole "We won't take down scanned and posted UNLESS you make paid DLC for our platform, even if the same user keeps reposting scanned and DMCA-reported games" thing. Because of that, I can totally understand a perspective like Stooge's where you'd prefer not to even do business with them.
 

nicoga3000

Saint Nic
Alright - backed Gloomhaven again (since I sold my last copy). No rush as I am still swamped with things to do. I DID talk to some friends and found a group that would be willing to meet regularly to play it, so that will work out great.
 

Ryuukan

Member
hi boardgame gaf
I played some of the more popular boardgames back in college and enjoyed them (catan, munchkin, some eagle ones that I forget the name of) and now I'm trying to get back into some since my older son is old enough to play. I played hero realms with him and he really enjoyed it, still wanting to play after 3 games even. Also bought Clank and the expansion but haven't opened it yet.

The FFG LCGs look interesting (I love the non-random card game thing). Arkham Horror sounds great but I don't care for Americana settings and was never a Lovecraft fan. Is that the only co-op one they offer?

This Machi Koro game looks like a good pick for family fun, the bright lights & city version is the one to buy?

Gloomhaven looks great but I fear its too intense of a game.
 

elyetis

Member
I can't believe that anybody would play games with TTS. I own it and have downloaded a few mods and went "huh" and promptly deleted it.

Beyond piracy, the interface is a mess, it is clunky as fuck and misses the entire point of board games imo.
I don't feel like it misses the entire point of board games more than online gaming misses the point of what was at that point only local multiplayer.
It doesn't give the same experience, but like roll20 for RP it give a nice alternative.
I also own stand alone app like ticket to ride or small world 2, but while it's easier to use, the only reason I would play one of them over a TTS version, would be to play against cpu. With my friends/family TTS feel much better ( and the VR integration work pretty well ) than an 2d official app where everything just goes too fast.

That being said there is some boardgame that I would only play 'IRL', games which give more of a party vibe. Like I own Mysterium and while I love the game I wouldn't see myself play it with their app or TTS.

Now that I think about it I have yet to try The Captain is Dead and Scythe DLC, I might be able to do that this week... with my brother who lives in another country.
 

sneaky77

Member
The FFG LCGs look interesting (I love the non-random card game thing). Arkham Horror sounds great but I don't care for Americana settings and was never a Lovecraft fan. Is that the only co-op one they offer?

.

there's also a LOTR one that just had the final expansion released or about to.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
It makes sense that playing online has advantages, but why not just through a web interface/app that is specifically designed for it?

The answer would be "because there isn't one", but that doesn't mean TTS is a good way to play games and almost certainly means it is getting away with something that other people don't want to put their name to.

So most people are dying for official digital implementations, and would dump TTS for them in a heartbeat if they were never made available. For Netrunner and Destiny that was just never going to happen (ironically perhaps that may be due to limitations on FFG's license). I don't generally browse TTS that much, but I think you'll see that most of the popular games there have no official implementations. So one solution to publishers etc. that see this as a problem might not be to cave to TTS's demands, but to make an official alternative (which I recognize can be incredibly costly too and just not worth it), which if it's of any quality will entirely supplant TTS (which even in the best case gets the job done but is still STRAIGHT JANK). That said, the TTS approach of policing infringements only for their partners sounds like an absolute nightmare fact pattern and I can't imagine it's tenable. If Asmodee or one of the heavy hitters ever gets annoyed enough I'd wager TTS would absolutely get obliterated.
 
FFG has the worst damn boxes and organizers bar none. I'd say they were actively messing w/ me but realistically I know they're just being cheap and reusing stuff all over the place without any consideration for usability. For Arkham, I got a card box the hold all the stuff and then I just use the base box for chits and manual. For everything else, I have custom solutions for the most part.
I saw that Netrunner campaign box at local store and it seems like they went the opposite direction of Arkham Horror card game expansion. The Arkham expansion really could use that big box. It's like now they are over compensating.
 

Mr E.

Member
Wow that has a frightening amount of cards

Just ordered Machi Koro Bright Lights and Sushi Go Party off amazon, hope the kids like them
How old are the kids? King of Tokyo is a great family Dice chucker.

On an irrational note I just ordered Notre Dame 10th anniversary just to get the expansion cards which are included in the new release.
I own the game but not the expansion which is hard to get so I guess that's the craziest thing I've done in the hobby so far.

My wife and I love this game and I've been after the expansion for ages. The anniversary edition offers a couple of extra cards too. Guess I'll be donating my old copy away.
 
Wow that has a frightening amount of cards

Just ordered Machi Koro Bright Lights and Sushi Go Party off amazon, hope the kids like them

How old are the kids? My girls have bern playing Machi Koro since 7&8 yrs old. There's a lot of math involved, just fyi. Also, it can get pretty cut throat. Some kids are better with that playstyle than others. Great game though. Easily a family top 3 for us!
 
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