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AstroLad said:
Yeah if a casual can't get into TTR, just forget it. GAME OVER MAN
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Not necessarily - they might just want a game with more stuff to blow up. In which case you move to Memoir 44 or something.
 
Even aggressive casuals seem to get into TTR because you can block people and piss them off, which can actually be quite a bit more conflict-inducing than direct battle.
 
AstroLad said:
Yeah if a casual can't get into TTR, just forget it. GAME OVER MAN
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I have to agree with this. I own mostly "gateway" games. TTR is the most accessible one I own.
 
Well, I've got a certain individual in my group that kind of despises TTR. He still plays it but only with a lot of moaning. Then again he's really fond of Dominion and lately even Settlers of Catan Cities & Knights. Definitely someone who likes a direct confrontation and attack game. Any recommendations of games that are fit for 3-5 players feature a very direct and obvious player vs player mechanic and can be completed within 90 minutes?
 
RayStorm said:
Well, I've got a certain individual in my group that kind of despises TTR. He still plays it but only with a lot of moaning. Then again he's really fond of Dominion and lately even Settlers of Catan Cities & Knights. Definitely someone who likes a direct confrontation and attack game. Any recommendations of games that are fit for 3-5 players feature a very direct and obvious player vs player mechanic and can be completed within 90 minutes?
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Chaos in the Old World. Let him play as Khorne.
 
RayStorm said:
Well, I've got a certain individual in my group that kind of despises TTR. He still plays it but only with a lot of moaning. Then again he's really fond of Dominion and lately even Settlers of Catan Cities & Knights. Definitely someone who likes a direct confrontation and attack game. Any recommendations of games that are fit for 3-5 players feature a very direct and obvious player vs player mechanic and can be completed within 90 minutes?
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Small World. It's a wargame and so obviously centers on player versus player, it scales from 2 to 5, the rules are straightforward compared to other wargames (and certainly no more difficult than Catan Cities and Knights), and the longest game I've played was just slightly longer than an hour.
 
Thanks a lot for your recommendations I just ordered Ticket to Ride + 1910, Dominion, Stone Age and Alhambra Big Box. It came up to $248 with (international) shipping + %30 tax when they arrive. My wife is going to kill me :lol

There are so many good looking games, I hope some of my friends get into it so I can order arkham asylum or another more complex game later :P
 
Super solid set. I would start with TTR, then maybe move on to Dominion, then Stone Age (beautiful game). Been too long since I played Alhambra so I can't speak to that.
 
AstroLad said:
Super solid set. I would start with TTR, then maybe move on to Dominion, then Stone Age (beautiful game). Been too long since I played Alhambra so I can't speak to that.
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Second this, except that I've NEVER played Alhambra.

Really like the others though.

I'd actually suggest Stone Age before Dominion, because Dominion is like a virus, and it's really hard to play something else once it invades your system.
 
Neverfade said:
RoboRally is 36 bucks shipped on Tanga right now.

Don't think. Do it.
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This.

So we had a discussion today while playing Catan: Cities and Knights and I wanted to get your inputs. Basically I'm of the mind that the Sabatour card is bullshit and should be removed from the game. For those who don't know, the sabatour card is a progress card that destroys half of opponents resources.

Here is my thinking, the game is not really a game where you spite your neighbor. Especially when you may end up having to trade with these people. So having a card that doesn't really benefit the person who plays it seems just like a dick move. The other screw your neighbor cards at least let you net something. I'm at the point where I am thinking of removing the card from the game.

Thoughts? Am I crazy or not?
 
I think Catan has a balance of screw your neighbor and cooperation. Depending on the group I am playing with some of them refuse to trade with one another because it might help their opponents. Or they will only trade with players they think they are better than. Meaning, everyone plays screw StoOgE because I win 80% of our games.

Plus there is always the robber and the knight card in the base game. I think the game allows a certain number of attacks in the base game. I mean, the Sabateur card is just a card equivalent of rolling a 7 when someone has 8+ cards... it could certainly hurt, but I think a well placed robber is more devastating to someone gameplan.

If you don't like it, just yank it out. I don't think it really adds all that much to the game other than another card that doesn't help you score VPs. I guess if nothing else it does add a card that other players can't gameplan for. Keeping more than 7 cards is a calculated risk.. with this card you could fuck someone who is trying to play conservative.
 
Alright, just about to place my next order. This really will be the last one for a while. If nothing else I am running out of room to store the damn things. In fact, a few of them might get booted to the closet as it is. Hrmph.

Race for the Galaxy
Small World
Carcassonne - Builders and Farmers
Carcassonne - Inn and Cathedrals
Dominion - Seaside

One of my friend has the Carcassonne expansions already, but I only own the base game + River II expansion and it is getting pretty stale to the point that it doesn't come out all that often.

For the record this thread is now responsible for my purchasing:

Dominion + 1 expansion
Pandemic + 1 expansion
Catan - 1 expansion (can I count Fishermen of Catan?).. this one might be XBLA fault.
Carcassonne - 3 expansions (again, partly XBLA fault).
Ticket to Ride + 1 expansion
Puerto Rico
Robo Rally
Memoir 44
Power Grid
Race for the Galaxy
Small World
Twilight Struggle
Hive
Battle Line

With the exception of Catan, Puerto Rico and Carcasonne I think the rest of these are all in the last month. Don't know whether to thank you guys or hate you. If nothing else I think I have a pretty solid collection of games now and a nice mix of entry level games and more hardcore games depending on who is playing.
 
I'm a massive boardgame fan. Don't have too many people near me to play with at the moment, but my girlfriend really likes the ones I own too so it's not too bad. The only one I can't play is my favourite Chaos In The Old World. If you've never heard of it here's an awesome video review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-avA52300

It's insanely good, very cutthroat and very immersive.

Other ones I enjoy are Doom and it's progeny Descent. Very fun mechanics in those and a lot of tension in Doom. It's why I enjoy Fantasy Flight games so much in general, that light roleplaying element a lot of them have. Arkham Horror is great in that regard, really feels like a proper adventure every time. Can be unwieldy with more than a few players, but having someone act as a GM type to read out cards and keep things flowing solves that easily enough. Ditto Runebound which reminds me of a fantasy spin on Arkham.

FF also do their own variant on trading card games, removing the collectible/random aspect and adding a strong element of boardgaming to them. I own two of the core games Warhammer Invasion and Call Of Cthulhu. Warhammer Invasion is *fantastic*. It's like playing an RTS with cards. Cthulhu is much more of a...build up an army type game, but does some neat things with the Lovecraft theme that tie in to the game. You don'y fight your opponent directly, for one, instead committing characters to "stories" which play out in Lovecraftian fashion (i.e. people go insane, try and fight, madly try spells and then try and sift through the remains). Both games have a very unique element in that each card is usable as a resource to pay for other cards, or with its printed abilities and stats. This lends a great depth to it as turn to turn you have many tough decisions on what to keep in your hand, and why.

The other company I'm big on is Flying Frog Productions. They only have two games out at the moment, Last Night On Earth and A Touch Of Evil, but both are very unique and creative, and a lot of fun, especially with a large group. Good, simple crowd pleasers.
 
I do have to agree, the Limited Card Games seem more balanced than the collectible variety. I know people who are crazy into Magic: the gathering, but it's always seemed a lot of your success playing has to do with how good of a deck you've built.. which can be greatly affected by how much money you are willing to spend to build said deck.

I've been interested in their Game of Thrones LCG for a while. I was hesitant of 100% card games, but Dominion changed that... if race for the galaxy goes well I may move to the Game of Thrones card game.

That said, FFG scares me a bit. All of their games are everything that I don't like. Long set ups, lots of pieces, complicated rules. I've only played a few of them, and I know a lot of people swear by them.. but they just all seem like too much work to me. I never got into Heroscape for the exact same reasons. Just too much.
 
Well they're certainly not the type of games you play to just dick around. They're very much the Personas of the boardgame world, something to really sink your teeth in to and immerse yourself in. For some people it works, for some it doesn't. It really does help to think of them as roleplaying without the book keeping in my opinion.

CITOW is different though. It's more focused on strategy, playing like an RPG Risk. Short set up time too. A cool mix of luck, bluffing, diplomacy and backstabbing too. Pretty much my favourite game at the moment.

This just floated on to my horizon though and looks amazing. New game company, very unique game mechanics too. DO WANT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPali-2l7dQ
 
AstroLad said:
I can't believe even we have falled under the spell of Dominion. We used to break it out from time to time but Seaside has totally sucked us in.
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There's no escaping from it. And even if one can resist what's currently out there, one of the upcoming expansions will likely break them.
 
yup came back from dinner and played two more games of intrigue. they were the pre-built intrigue-only sets and they were actually really good and fast. game is some fucked up crack

edit: i'm sure it's been posted somewhere, but this dominion card picker is very fly--http://www.hiwiller.com/dominion/
 
PROTIP: Someone not paying attention can fuck up a boardgame as simple as Endeavor. Please put a goddamn bullet in my head. That was painful.
 
Played through my first game of Twilight Struggle and I got worked. The game is easy enough to learn but kind of a bitch to teach. Luckily my girlfriend was able to see what was going on by the middle of the first turn. We both really enjoyed ourselves. Good game is good, go figure.
 
Anyone ever been so into a game they didn't realize that someone had "won" close to 30 minuets earlier? Happened two nights ago playing Catan with some friends. Shit was getting vicious with me setting an empire up with towns only on sheep and wheat, but there happened to be 2:1 ports next to those tiles, and the tiles had 8/9 on them, so when either was rolled I basically got to choose 4+ cards of whatever I wanted. I lay down some road trying to go from 8 to 10, only to find I was one road short of the longest road. Only problem was the guy who had the longest road had never picked up the points card, so he had 10 points for 6 or 7 turns :lol We were all just so into the game, playing really quick, making tons of trades, ect to notice someone had won already
 
just played Settlers of Catan tonight for the first time with three friends, and it was pretty fun. will do again.
 
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
Played through my first game of Twilight Struggle and I got worked. The game is easy enough to learn but kind of a bitch to teach. Luckily my girlfriend was able to see what was going on by the middle of the first turn. We both really enjoyed ourselves. Good game is good, go figure.
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I've only played it once.. but it seems that you are going to fumble around in that game until you have the deck memorized.
 
radjago said:
My friend, my wife, and I will be taking the train to PAX East. It will be our first train trip and our first PAX. Any suggestions for games that would play well on a train? I'm guessing mostly card and dice games, but I'm open to any suggestions.

For reference, here's my meager collection.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/Radjago
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Hard to pick from that set. On plane rides I usually go with San Juan, Battle Line, or RftG. Lost Cities which you have would also work. Obviously BL and LC are two player though.
 
Qaz Kwaz said:
How's the WoW game? We're thinking of getting that or BS:G.
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The WoW boardgame or the miniture game?

I bought the board game and didn't much care for it. It takes 3-4 hours to play, set up takes a good 30 minutes on top of that. The rules are pretty confusing.. the gameplay is interesting in that it has a co-op and adversarial nature since you are playing with two teams of 3.

You basically grind against low-level enemies.. then you level up and can purchase skill upgrades. Not unlike wow.. but the upgrades are things like "roll two extra die", "automatically change one die to an 8 after you roll" and things like that. They are very welcome upgrades and you get a real sense of becoming a more powerful character as the game goes on.

You run around grinding for the first 2 hours or so of the game then you begin the hunt for the overlord for the map... it becomes a race for which team finds him/reaches him first. Then that team does battle with the overlord which can take up to 30 minutes if it goes well. If they succeed than they win. If they lose then the other team can move in and try and clean up the weakened overlord.

If neither team gets to the overlord in time it goes to a pvp battle which I found to be pretty bland. Seems like it was a tacked on "tie breaker" ending.

I have to stress, the idea of the game works much better than the actual game. The biggest problem is downtime. All 6 players take their turn in order and it will be 20 minutes before it gets back to you to make a move... and there really isn't all that much to consider when making your moves... so you probably figured out what you want to do 15+ minutes before you are allowed to do it. The game is really two seperate co-op games happening at the same time. The horde team playing one game and the alliance team playing another with very little interaction between the two sides save the occasional run in. There is no real need to pay attention to what the other side is up to which leads to long breaks in the action.

The game also allows each player to control their character individually.. but the game almost demands that you team up or risk death (which really really sets you back).. so if someone goes off on their own and dies your team is pretty well fucked when it comes to the fight against the overlord.

The map also gets littered with low level enemies by the end of it that you are forced to wade through. You get very little exp for fights against lower ranked enemies but can't avoid the fight. Massive waste of time as well.

I'm not into wargames in general so my opinion may not matter too much to you.. but aside from my general dislike for the genre this game in particular has entirely too much downtime. If a game is going to take 3-4 hours to play I better actually be doing something with my time.. but it really feels like you have no involvement for at least half of the game.

I've not played the BSG game, but I've heard great things and I have to imagine it is better than the WoW game.
 
So, question on Memoir 44. I am hoping my friend and I got the rule wrong.

The Air Raid card says that you select up to 4 enemy units that are adjacent to one another and then roll 2 die for each hex that they occupy if you are the allies and get to ignore all terrain effects (but only 1 die if you are playing axis.. what the hell is that about?)

What constitutes a unit? My friend had all 4 infantrymen in 2 units and 1 infantryman in all adjacent to one another in villages. Our understanding of the rules allowed me to roll 6 die.. and any die roll with a star (miss), grenade or infantry unit registers as a hit.. and I happened to hit on all 6 rolls.

It doesn't tell you how divy up the damage delt between the units... so I killed off the unit that was down to one man, took 3 off another and then 2 off the last.

I am really hoping the game means "plastic army guy" when it says unit and not the entire unit.. but everywhere else in the box it refers to the entire set of 4 infantry as a single unit.

Does the attacker get to pick which units are killed after dealing the damage? Or do you get to roll 2 die against each hex? So I should have rolled 2 die against hex 1 and settled damage, then rolled 2 die against hex 2 and settled damage, etc?

It really is very unclear what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing, but it seems way too powerful. Especially when my friend drew two of the artillery cards with no artillery on the map.

This game is fun, but the luck factor seems as high in this game as Monopoly or any of the other widely disparaged super popular games.
 
StoOgE said:
So I should have rolled 2 die against hex 1 and settled damage, then rolled 2 die against hex 2 and settled damage, etc?
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This is the correct answer.

Axis side only gets 1 die each to reflect the allies' air superiority.

The luck of the draw can suck sometimes, but using the game's terrain is the key to winning. Know how each hex effects your units and plan accordingly.
 
Thanks. After we played we thought about it and that makes more sense then what we did. Otherwise you are all but assured of wiping out at least one enemy unit.

I guess I need to think of this as a light war sim and not a balanced game.

I think we may play some of the objective variants since that seems to have more strategy to them...

the one that we played set her up with a giant army on the right side of the board with tanks, and a smaller army on the left side. Most of my guys were in the middle and she had a single unit in the front middle of the map. I just moved everyone over to the left side of the board after I took out the single unit in the center since I only needed 4 VP to win.

It also helps that she didn't have any cards that would let her move the forces on the right side of the board so she never got to engage me with her main force that could have easily swept through.

She had done a good job of moving into the cities for cover while I had one of my units on a hill with a sandbag blockade which made them pretty fucking hard to kill. The air raid ended the game, but we played that wrong. It should have only halved two of her forces and destroyed one. I most likely would have won still.
 
Neverfade said:
PROTIP: Someone not paying attention can fuck up a boardgame as simple as Endeavor. Please put a goddamn bullet in my head. That was painful.
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What happened? I just played it last night, and it went pretty well over here. Except that I didn't win :lol
 
Played Carcassonne with 6 for the first time last night. Two people had never played before. It was PAINFUL. Based on that one experience I'm almost of the opinion that the game just doesn't work with more than 4.

- There were only ~4 complete cities at the end of the game. With tiles split 6 ways it was very hard to complete your structures.
- A HUGE amount of time between turns. By the end we let people pre-draw tiles to cut down on this.
- Since people took far less turns no one came close to running out of meeples. Even I had a couple left at the end and I lay meeples super aggressively.

Part of the problem was with the friends of mine that hosted. There was no music on or anything, so we just sat there in silence between turns. We also didn't have a great play surface... played on an automan so a couple people were sitting on the floor, etc.

2P Carcassonne is great but a little unbalanced (no opportunity to cooperate, less incentive to finish someone's cities when playing with T&B). And 6 is clearly too many. Seems like 4 might be perfect.
 
platypotamus said:
What happened? I just played it last night, and it went pretty well over here. Except that I didn't win :lol
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Let's put it this way: on round 6 (of only 7), this motherfucker was asking how to complete the building, growth, and salary phases.

The same fucking way I showed you FIVE TIMES ALREADY.
 
Neverfade said:
Let's put it this way: on round 6 (of only 7), this motherfucker was asking how to complete the building, growth, and salary phases.

The same fucking way I showed you FIVE TIMES ALREADY.
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this is why I own Ticket to Ride.

You make trains with cards. DERP DERP DERP.

Nearly idiot proof.

I say nearly because one of my friends dates kept trying to lay down 5 of a kind to complete tracks. 5 of the wrong kind.
 
StoOgE said:
this is why I own Ticket to Ride.

You make trains with cards. DERP DERP DERP.

Nearly idiot proof.

I say nearly because one of my friends dates kept trying to lay down 5 of a kind to complete tracks. 5 of the wrong kind.
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Hve you played endeavor? Those three steps should take about 15 seconds combined. There's not even any words to indicate how many dudes you move. It's all pictures, like on a childrens book, because even children can count circles. So frustrating. :lol
 
GDJustin said:
2P Carcassonne is great but a little unbalanced (no opportunity to cooperate, less incentive to finish someone's cities when playing with T&B). And 6 is clearly too many. Seems like 4 might be perfect.
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How many expansions were you playing with?

We normally play base game + river + river 2 + T&B + I&C + that one expansion that is just 20 or so tiles that came in some mag and have played 6 players with some success. I prefer 3-4 players in general.. but I think you need a metric shitton of tiles to get away with more than 4 players.

Neverfade said:
Hve you played endeavor? Those three steps should take about 15 seconds combined. There's not even any words to indicate how many dudes you move. It's all pictures, like on a childrens book, because even children can count circles. So frustrating. :lol
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I haven't. I thought it might be somewhat complicated (see Catan or Carca).

I have figured out this new hobby of mine is a good way to figure out which of my friends are smart and which ones are not. I've started sizing up my friends "oh, that guy is Dominion smart" to "oh man, that girl is hot and she can play Power Grid"... and then there is "dude, your date is a retard she can't even match colors in TTR"
 
Cyan said:
Got Dominion! Probably have to wait until next weekend to try it out.
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I would suggest not opening the box if you have any deadlines to achieve of an anniversary of any sort.
 
Finally! Cambridge games comes back from hiatus to officially announce Glory to Rome reprint coming soon. There's a ton of talk about how this is the real Race for the Galaxy, and either way, Ill be securing a copy asap. I'm a pretty big fan of the Rome theme.

Speaking of, anyone played Tribune?

Also: Dominion iPhone app is so good.
 
AstroLad said:
Wow, there are TWO iphone Dominion Kingdom Card Picker apps. Definitely getting those for PAX.
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Stupid worthless blackberry and its stupid worthless app store.

Neverfade said:
Let's put it this way: on round 6 (of only 7), this motherfucker was asking how to complete the building, growth, and salary phases.

The same fucking way I showed you FIVE TIMES ALREADY.
Click to expand...


ouch. That is painful.
 
Massive board game buying spree.

Got the last 2 C&C:A expansions, the flying colors expansions, war galley, small world, men of iron, thunderstone, and federation commander: Klingon border.

Wargame itch SCRATCHED!

Played small world. Game is almost TOO simple, my friends were way overanalyzing the tactics and not focusing on picking good races, so my sister, split between the game and her baby, kicked our asses with ease.

Thunderstone. First solo play went well. I tenatively like it.

Played my b-in-laws copy of puerto Rico that got some breast milk spilt on it (from the bottle you pervs :) I told him to list it on eBay, bound to be a fetish crossover interest there :P

fed commander is supposed to be SFB-lite. This is LIGHT? still, gotta love a few federation cruisers ploughing through Klingon D-7s. Sigh, more minis to collect.....
 
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