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Played Power Grid and Puerto Rico last night. Power Grid's instructions were extremely shitty so it took us a couple of rounds to figure out exactly how things are supposed to work. Once we did the game is really simple to understand. Not sure what happened with the instructions but they need to be re-written.

Puerto Rico is so damn good. It's one of those games where I don't play all the time but when I get it on the table I am instantly reminded why it's so good. I love trying to anticipate your opponents play and make a move accordingly. Just a really well designed game.

I should get Agricola tomorrow. Surprisingly out of the games I've bought over the last year Agricola is the one she is most excited about. So we should be stuck on that game for a while. Should be fun.
 
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
Played Power Grid and Puerto Rico last night. Power Grid's instructions were extremely shitty so it took us a couple of rounds to figure out exactly how things are supposed to work. Once we did the game is really simple to understand. Not sure what happened with the instructions but they need to be re-written.
That's true of several games - simple game rules obfuscated through bad manuals. That's why I almost always browse through a game's BGG entry in the files section to see if there are any better rule summaries or player aids available.
 
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
Played Power Grid and Puerto Rico last night. Power Grid's instructions were extremely shitty so it took us a couple of rounds to figure out exactly how things are supposed to work. Once we did the game is really simple to understand. Not sure what happened with the instructions but they need to be re-written.

Puerto Rico is so damn good. It's one of those games where I don't play all the time but when I get it on the table I am instantly reminded why it's so good. I love trying to anticipate your opponents play and make a move accordingly. Just a really well designed game.

I should get Agricola tomorrow. Surprisingly out of the games I've bought over the last year Agricola is the one she is most excited about. So we should be stuck on that game for a while. Should be fun.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE power grid :D It and Dominion are my two favorites right now. I want to buy some of the other boards for it.

I actually don't even read the manuals for games I buy. I find a youtube video, there are several people out there that put out really good how to play guides. Power Grid is not a hard game in rules, but if you explain it wrong it sure seems like it. There are really 3 things you do.

Auction stations, buy resources and then buy connections.

The book tries to explain the rules instead of the mechanics. If you start getting into turn order and the future market and all of that junk it is going to seem super complicated. Just show people the 3 things they are trying to do, and you explain turn order and the different phases of the game as you get to them. They will be at a disadvantage during the first playthrough, but it's a great way to learn it.

joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
I should get Agricola tomorrow. Surprisingly out of the games I've bought over the last year Agricola is the one she is most excited about. So we should be stuck on that game for a while. Should be fun.

Let me know what you think about that one, we seem to like pretty similar games. I'm on the fence about it. I've seen some videos and it looks like a slightly drier version of Puerto Rico with more chits. I know everyone says it is great so I want to try it, but my gut reaction after seeing the mechanics is 'meh'. And this is coming from a guy that thought the theme of power grid looked exciting.
 
StoOgE said:
I LOVE LOVE LOVE power grid :D It and Dominion are my two favorites right now. I want to buy some of the other boards for it.
Good man! Yeah, the alt boards are fun to mess around with, and the differences in replenishment make a surprising amount of difference (along with the obvious different maps and rule tweaks). But if you really want to change up the game, try the alternate power plant deck. Cheap and really changes things. I think I prefer the original set of plants, but it's fun to try the alternates nonetheless.

I actually don't even read the manuals for games I buy. I find a youtube video, there are several people out there that put out really good how to play guides.
This is an awesome idea. I think I'll try this for Dominion.
 
StoOgE said:
Let me know what you think about that one, we seem to like pretty similar games. I'm on the fence about it. I've seen some videos and it looks like a slightly drier version of Puerto Rico with more chits. I know everyone says it is great so I want to try it, but my gut reaction after seeing the mechanics is 'meh'. And this is coming from a guy that thought the theme of power grid looked exciting.

Both Agricola and Le Havre are awesome (same designer, and "harvest" theme). Agricola does a great job of capturing the pain of wanting to do more things than you can possibly do, and trying to figure out which actions are worth pursuing.
 
The Dominion manual is really good though. Doesn't add any unnecessary complexity or implement any weird organization (ahem CGE).
 
So Z-Man, WotC, Compleat Strategist, and Star City Games will be there. Interesting to check out Z-Man; nice of them to make it out.

Tourneys are pretty fresh even my wife is excited about them.

For gaming I'll be going for Peggle, Puzzle Fighter, and Lumines Live.
For tabletop Dominion and RoboRally.

Still hoping work doesn't destroy our dream. Just joined up to help out on a big project that is closing around that time so I'd put my chanced at about 75% right now.
 
Why is it that everytime I order a new set of games that I start putting together my next purchase before I even get the last one? :/

Speaking of, despite owning Catan for a while now I've never played any of the expansions (unless you count fishermen, which I like since it adds some value to the non port seaside areas).

What are the thoughts on them? Seafarers looks like it might be fun without really changing the core mechanic of the game too much. Does it add enough to it to make it a substantially better/more fun experience than vanilla settlers? Cities and Knights looks like it changes the game fundamentally.. possibly too much to the point where it loses it's simplicity.
 
On the one hand, I think Cities and Knights is a lot more interesting to play, on the other, it's kind of a pain in the ass sometimes (particularly, remembering the rewards you've unlocked from your various trade resources), and it lengthens the game considerably. I think the various cards in the colored decks are more interesting than the ones in the base development deck too.
 
StoOgE said:
Let me know what you think about that one, we seem to like pretty similar games. I'm on the fence about it. I've seen some videos and it looks like a slightly drier version of Puerto Rico with more chits. I know everyone says it is great so I want to try it, but my gut reaction after seeing the mechanics is 'meh'. And this is coming from a guy that thought the theme of power grid looked exciting.

I love puerto rico, but I'm really luke warm on agricola. The amount of upkeep you have to do between rounds sucks, and we inevitably forget to stock one of squares. Setting it up and putting it away is a damn hassle too. Luckily I picked up dominion the week after, and it's pretty much dominated the scene since.
 
StoOgE said:
What are the thoughts on them? Seafarers looks like it might be fun without really changing the core mechanic of the game too much. Does it add enough to it to make it a substantially better/more fun experience than vanilla settlers? Cities and Knights looks like it changes the game fundamentally.. possibly too much to the point where it loses it's simplicity.

Seafarers adds two simple mechanics to the main game - boats and gold - and in the process does a lot to open the game up. If you're getting tired of seeing the same sort of placement strategies, Seafarers is the expansion for you. Longest road battles become more complex, there's a race to reach islands first, there's generally a race to get to a gold production space, and there's the mystery of playing with boards where part of the tiles are face down. At the same time, Seafarers is dead simple to integrate with regular Catan and the new mechanics are very intuitive. If you have a group that likes to play Catan regularly but wants to mix it up a bit, I think Seafarers is a safe bet.

On the other hand, you have Cities and Knights. C&K isn't terribly complicated, mind you, but it does add enough in the way of fiddly detail to slow down the game substantially. Now, all the new mechanics work very nicely and do a damn fine job of making Catan more complicated without radically altering the base gameplay. At the same time, I rarely find myself thinking that I'd like to play a more complex version of Catan. I enjoy Cities and Knights whenever I play it, but it's broken out fairly rarely among my group. When all is said and done, I think the main thing C&K adds to Catan is about an hour of playtime, and I'd usually rather play a fast game of regular Catan (with or without Seafarers).

FnordChan
 
AstroLad said:
So Z-Man, WotC, Compleat Strategist, and Star City Games will be there. Interesting to check out Z-Man; nice of them to make it out.

Tourneys are pretty fresh even my wife is excited about them.

For gaming I'll be going for Peggle, Puzzle Fighter, and Lumines Live.
For tabletop Dominion and RoboRally.

Still hoping work doesn't destroy our dream. Just joined up to help out on a big project that is closing around that time so I'd put my chanced at about 75% right now.
Days of Wonder games will be demoed there. At least I assume it's Days of Wonder who's going to be running the demos.

Friday - Small World, Mystery Express, Ticket to Ride (2PM -10PM)
Saturday - Small World, Mystery Express, Ticket to Ride, Memoir '44 (10AM - 8PM)
Sunday - Small World, Mystery Express, Ticket to Ride, Memoir '44 (10AM - 6PM)
 
Pretty much finalized that I can sneak out of here for PAX, so I'll see you dudes there. :D

Anyone up for some Thursday night light gaming by any chance? At the Colonnade (right by convention center). Maybe some . . . I dunno . . . Dominion (complete)?
 
GDJustin said:
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.


Buy the Big Box and use all of the tiles. Also, seperate the tiles into stacks for each person beforehand. This allows you to look at your next tile before your turn.
 
AstroLad said:
Pretty much finalized that I can sneak out of here for PAX, so I'll see you dudes there. :D

Anyone up for some Thursday night light gaming by any chance? At the Colonnade (right by convention center). Maybe some . . . I dunno . . . Dominion (complete)?


Yeah. We should privately construct a little contact info for all of ourselves, to facilitate in the location of each other, should this and other emergency gaming sessions arise. :)
 
Neverfade said:
Yeah. We should privately construct a little contact info for all of ourselves, to facilitate in the location of each other, should this and other emergency gaming sessions arise. :)
Good idea. I'm going to create a private Google group and put up my info there. I have Flynn's so I will invite him to the group. PM me your e-mail and I'll send you an invite too.
 
Hey, could any of you guys at Pax keep an eye out for the Puerto Rico expansion or the Dominion promo cards.

BGG store has been sold out of the promo cards for a while, and I understand the Puerto Rico expansion is only available at trade shows.

These should be pretty cheap (5 bucks or less?) if they are there and I'd be willing to pay for shipping and the cost (plus a bit for your trouble).
 
sure stooge i'll take a look.

i gotta say between all the tournaments, classic console freeplay, etc. it seems like it will be pretty amazing and action-packed. my only concern is that it will just be chaotic and a free for all. as long as i have a place to set up my boardgames i'll be happy

really pleasantly suprised by how awesome their game tournament selection is (peggle, lumines, puzzle fighter, although i know people will cheese puzzle fighter). and on the bg side, robo rally. if they threw in rftg it would be perfect
 
Alright sent you guys invites. Dunno if Google Groups is the way to go and we just want to post contact info there or whatever or if anyone has another suggestion I'm cool with that. Just three of us right now+companions so it's not a huge group or anything. Figure as long as we have e-mail addresses+cell #s we are good.
 
How have I missed this boardgame thread. One of my PAX friends from 09 has boardgame nights every now and then and it's always good fun to go over there. One of the craziest ones was a 4 hour long game of Battlestar Galactica which came down to the very last turn of the game. Guy who was on the Bridge and able to initiate the very last jump turned out to be a Cylon and killed us all on a morale hit. The cursing and yelling was heard for miles I'm sure.

Anyway, the most recent one last weekend we ended off the night with a game of Cosmic Encounter. It actually turned out really well. We were using only the green-level alien cards, so I'm looking forward to the next play of it where we can maybe break out the yellow or red level aliens. I don't know if you guys have played this one before but it's basically about trying to lay down 5 colonies on the other players planets.

As we were leaving we decided that we would try out the Starcraft game next time. I can only imagine that it will be madness.
 
GDJustin said:
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.

Yikes! Yea, turns take forever with more players. We ended up taking a 1 minute timer from another game like Pictionary and using it to give everyone a limit. It worked pretty well. :)
 
StoOgE said:
I would suggest not opening the box if you have any deadlines to achieve of an anniversary of any sort.
Should've listened to you. ;) Got way behind on my CFA studying last night.

On the other hand, now I'm excited to try the game.
 
Magicked said:
Yikes! Yea, turns take forever with more players. We ended up taking a 1 minute timer from another game like Pictionary and using it to give everyone a limit. It worked pretty well. :)
Every game needs time limits! Analysis paralysis is brutal. Time limits make Mr. Jack way more fun, just off the top of my head.
 
AstroLad said:
Every game needs time limits! Analysis paralysis is brutal. Time limits make Mr. Jack way more fun, just off the top of my head.
My group doesn't use time limits (except for Diplomacy, of course), but we did kind of stop inviting this one guy who always took forever to do anything, no matter what the game. It was annoying as hell and made things not fun.

He'd sit there trying to do all a bunch of calculations while we were bidding on plants in Power Grid... argh! Several games were simply unplayable if he was around.
 
Exactly, any game where there's a large but not infinite number of moves. It makes those games way less stressful too. Usually people suffer from AP because they're afraid to make a "dumb" move, and the more time they've exhausted the "smarter" they feel their move should be, so it's a vicious cycle. With time limits, you're expected and encouraged to make dumb moves!

One great way to implement time limits is instead of a bright line for everyone, just say X seconds from when the next to last person finishes (Robo Rally) or X seconds after the first person finishes (Galaxy Trucker).
 
Nice to see Dominion gain popularity here, since it's been my favorite game ever since last summer when I first played it. I think I have about 300 games played so far - probably the next played game is around 30 plays, max. :lol And I can't wait for Alchemy.
 
Hooray,

The Black Market and Envoy promo cards are back in stock for Dominion. They cost .01 plus shipping.

I haven't played with them but they seem interesting.

Black Market - You take the randomizers that were not chosen (i.e. the cards that stayed in the box(es) and you stick them in a pile that become the "black market". The card gives you +2 money and allows you to pick up the top 3 cards in the black market and buy up to one of them and place the other two on the bottom of the pile. It's a way to get cards not in use into the game through the card. Pretty cool. I could see using this and getting hosed (nothing worth buying comes up) or using it and finding a real advantage (witch!)

pic463006_md.jpg


Envoy - Is essentially a +4 card modifier with the twist that you draw the top 5 cards and the person to your left picks one for you to discard. So, it's a plus 4, but a good card is going to wind up on top of your discard pile. Probably won't get a lot of play if there is another card like library in your hand, but if it's the only card that lets you add a lot of cards to your hand it could get some use.

pic444364_md.jpg


http://store.boardgamegeek.com/component/virtuemart/?page=shop.browse&category_id=3

Still, if anyone at Pax can keep an eye out for the Puerto Rico expansion I'd appreciate it.
 
I WOULD get the Small World one but I'm not a huge fan of that game--not even bringing it to PAX! I'd love a Galaxy Trucker promo, would fit right into the goofiness of that game too.
 
AstroLad said:
I WOULD get the Small World one but I'm not a huge fan of that game--not even bringing it to PAX! I'd love a Galaxy Trucker promo, would fit right into the goofiness of that game too.

I went ahead and got that one as well. It cost an extra 2 dollars. I don't have the game yet, but I figured 2 bucks for an expansion (even a minor one) seems like a decent deal. Even if I hate the thing I can just not play with it.

It's the game that I ordered that I'm starting to regret a bit. I'm just hoping for a fun goofy simple game that I can play with more casual friends.. but the mechanics are starting to sound a bit boring the more I read about them. Initially I was attraced to their simplicity, but it's starting to sound too straightforward.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to RFTG and Seaside if nothing else.
 
StoOgE said:
Let me know what you think about that one, we seem to like pretty similar games. I'm on the fence about it. I've seen some videos and it looks like a slightly drier version of Puerto Rico with more chits. I know everyone says it is great so I want to try it, but my gut reaction after seeing the mechanics is 'meh'. And this is coming from a guy that thought the theme of power grid looked exciting.
I have to be honest and say that the idea of playing a 17th century farmer didn't really appeal to me at all but Agricola is a really good game. My girlfriend and I played two games back to back last night and could have done a third if I didn't have to go to bed. The first game was just my girlfriend and I and with the second game we called the roommate in to play with us. The game scaled really well with the three player game feeling a little bit tougher than the two player game which was too be expected. What's also neat is that Agricola also scales in complexity as well. We played with the "E" deck or basic deck but there are two other decks with varying levels of complexity. There is also the Family game which removes the cards completely. The rules weren't as complex as I thought they would be but it would have been nice if they included a player aid. Overall I'm glad I got it and gave it a try. If it wasn't for the trade I don't think I would have picked it up just based on the theme alone.

We did have a question when we were playing and that has to do with occupations. If you play the action which gives you one occupation, the first one if free and subsequent occupations for the rest of the game cost food, right?

EDIT: Actually big thumbs up to Z-Man games as well. I was missing the stables for one player. I emailed Z-Man and they are shipping out the stables to me.
 
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
EDIT: Actually big thumbs up to Z-Man games as well. I was missing the stables for one player. I emailed Z-Man and they are shipping out the stables to me.

Days of Wonder did the same thing for me and a missing point marker in TTR. No questions asked. Got it about a week after I emailed in.

Pretty awesome.
 
Considering picking up Tide of Iron. I'm not really a huge wargame fan. Axis and Allies is about as detailed as i get. With that being said this game sounds up my alley. any comments?
 
Got my games in today.

Always an exciting day :D

I knew what to expect with Dominion and the Carcassonne expansions of course since I have the base games.

Small World has lots of little bits but like my other two DoW games everything was just done exceptionally well. For 35 bucks it better be pretty nice.

Race for the Galaxy is a largeish deck of cards and that's basically it. I guess there isn't much you could do with it, but I wish they had built in space to keep your starting decks/worlds separated from the main deck.

Haven't got to play either one b/c of college bball, but I'm looking forward to playing them.. although, the symbols on RFTGG are really obtuse. I guess they allow a lot of info to be expressed with taking up very little space.. but I can already see that confusing people for a very long time before we can actually get to enjoying the game.

On a sad note, I am officially out of space for games. Seaside is in my closet and Twilight Struggle got the boot as well. I think I'm going to sell the latter one anyway since I got a friend to play it with me once and she hated it. None of my other friends will even consider the game.
 
rftg production quality is functional. it's not roborally bad but it definitely ain't AH or even dominion. enjoy!

bummer you have to sell TS.
 
I'm going to hang onto it for a bit and see if I can get any nibbles of interest. A few of my friends have started to come around to the harder games I own. Puerto Rico still intimidates most of them but they all really like Power Grid.

I find this largely amusing because I think Power Grid is a more complicated game than Puerto Rico.

Hopefully I can con one of them into giving it a whirl at some point. It was a pretty pricey game so I'm not willing to part ways just yet, but I may try and exchange it on BGG.
 
StoOgE said:
On a sad note, I am officially out of space for games. Seaside is in my closet and Twilight Struggle got the boot as well. I think I'm going to sell the latter one anyway since I got a friend to play it with me once and she hated it. None of my other friends will even consider the game.

I'm in the market for TS. How much you want for it? :)
 
Neverfade said:
I'm in the market for TS. How much you want for it? :)

Talk to me in a month when I've finally given up on it. I think I dropped about 45 on the thing and want to give it at least one more chance. I really liked it. I just need a partner in crime.
 
StoOgE said:
Talk to me in a month when I've finally given up on it. I think I dropped about 45 on the thing and want to give it at least one more chance. I really liked it. I just need a partner in crime.

Me waiting a month to purchase a readily available game I want is some far-off life goal. I'm not there yet. I'll be lucky if I don't break down and order it tonight haha.
 
Neverfade said:
Me waiting a month to purchase a readily available game I want is some far-off life goal. I'm not there yet. I'll be lucky if I don't break down and order it tonight haha.

I'll be lucky if I don't rearrange my built in shelf tomorrow to make room for more games.

Hell, I almost bought the two expansions for Small World at a bar tonight while watching basketball because I got an alert that they are in stock.. and they are out of print! I haven't even played the damn game and I almost dropped 30 bucks on expansions..

and of course, you can't just order 30 dollars worth of stuff. You have to order another 70 to save on the 8 dollars of shipping cost.

I mean.. it's only prudent right?
 
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