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Boardgame-Age
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AstroLad said:
I own the game.. and it can be a lot of fun.. but I find it just far to contrived and gamey. Which I know sounds stupid because all board games are contrived and gamey.. just something about the order issuance based on the 3 sides of the board.
Plus, I felt the game is far too luck based. Luck of the draw on the cards and luck of the roll on dice.
Not to mention, the game is intentionally imbalanced which I guess is a war game thing (and this is a very light war game. I don't really care if the allies had a decided air advantage or not, the air raid for the allies makes the game unfair.
I don't think I really regret the game, and it is my best 2 player game probably because most of my other games don't scale very well at all to two players... but it has joined RoboRally on my "very special circumstance for playing" list.
BomberMouse
Member
Played Lost Cities for the first time this weekend, I wasn't too convinced after reading the rules but after a couple of rounds it clicked. The theme seems a bit pasted on but it's a fun fast-paced game. I can really see myself playing it for a quick fix in the future. 
Yeah it's a fun quickie game, though I much prefer Battle Line for 2p. I really hate the aesthetics of Lost Cities for some reason though, the card quality, stock, art, etc. just really doesn't jibe with me.BomberMouse said:Played Lost Cities for the first time this weekend, I wasn't too convinced after reading the rules but after a couple of rounds it clicked. The theme seems a bit pasted on but it's a fun fast-paced game. I can really see myself playing it for a quick fix in the future.
AstroLad said:
Yes, I can see that being a problem :lol Not only is the game pretty daunting you can't really even strategist very well until you know what cards are coming. Too many of them undo what you've been doing on the board.
M44 isn't a bad game, it just isn't my cup of tea.
divisionbyzorro
Member
StoOgE said:
There's certainly a fair bit of "the dice/cards screwed me" factor, which usually turns me off, but for some reason I always enjoyed Memoir '44 and Battle Cry. I have always been a sucker for pretty bits, so that might be it :lol
In board gaming there is definitely a skill vs. luck argument that most people typically lean towards one side or the other. Personally I lean towards the luck side. I'm not at all a sore loser, but there is nothing worse than falling behind early in a game and having a near impossible time catching up. On the other side of that, winning by a huge margin is always exciting, but IMHO even more exciting is winning by a large margin and luck bringing someone else into contention for the win. I won't lie.. having luck against you in a game and getting slammed all session sucks, but to me it's a minor payoff to the upsides.
Games based more on skill are great also, but I tend to avoid them when you know someone in the group is EXTREMELY good at the game, to a much larger degree than everyone else..
Games based more on skill are great also, but I tend to avoid them when you know someone in the group is EXTREMELY good at the game, to a much larger degree than everyone else..
Who all here is going to BGG.con? Don't remember specifically but thought there were one or two. Wife and I are going with two friends, so since tickets are running out consider this post encouragement to other gaffers to go!
Yeah, that's pretty much where I fall in the spectrum too, mostly owing to the fact that I play with a lot of people who are new to board gaming. Just from a social standpoint too, much like Knizia once said I enjoy letting the losers have the opportunity to say "it wasn't in the cards" and the winners have the humility to realize they were blessed by a little luck, even when there is less truth to those statements. Just makes it so much easier to dive right into the next game with a casual crowd, at least in my experience.borghe said:
to use video game fighters as an example.. throw in a game of street fighter or tekken and after getting your ass beat handidly for a match or three in a row most people are ready to call it a night.. and that's only what...? 10 minutes tops? Compare that to luck slanted board games and we've already had sessions where someone doesn't win for the WHOLE night in like 3-4 games, and they are still up for another round of the SAME game! Skill based games are great. There's nothing quite like beating that evenly matched opponent in chess and knowing that you deserved that win. But in most cases, the groups we end up with are way too varied in skill level, determination, or just interest for that to happen regularly.
BattleMonkey
Member
StoOgE said:
Playing historicals can be annoying as it often just turns into a big history buff knowledge fest. A history dick measuring contest. I dunno, it's just my experience any time I would get involved in a historical game with the old beardy types.
borghe said:
I seem to enjoy when games are more strategy based, but do have a small luck factor included. Straight up strategy games can be a little to heavy on the analysis paralysis, and can drag at times. It's also guaranteed to be no fun for first timers playing with people familiar with a game. When everyone is about equal in skill level, it makes for fun, exciting games. Playing as a new player against people familiar with the rules and strategies can feel like golfing against tiger woods, or playing one-on-one with LeBron James. It's no fun to get destroyed. It's actually not that satisfying to destroy someone either.
It's also fun sometimes to have a exciting dice roll, card draw determine someone's fate.
Just think of how exciting seeing the river is in a all in hand of Texas hold-em. Obviously that's a game of strategy, but the little bit of luck is what makes the game exciting.
I feel like pure strategy games can add stress to the experience, which makes the game feel more like work. With a little luck involved, it makes the game lighter, takes some of the pressure off you and each decision, and allows you to sit back and just have fun to some extent.
Also, being a competitive person, it's probably healthier for me to play luck based games, where I can feel losing wasn't completely all on me. Getting beaten in a strategy game is a lot harder for me to take then getting beat in a luck based game.
divisionbyzorro
Member
Drey1082 said:
See, I don't mind getting beaten by someone better than me. But I hate playing at the top of my game and getting beaten because of dice (see my Marvel Heroes review from back in the day). This isn't a hard and fast rule - there certainly are a few games that I should hate, but don't (Risk 2210 being the most obvious example).
BattleMonkey
Member
Cards are just as luck based as dice generally.
It's how the game uses dice that determines luck more than anything. If you have no such thing as dice modifiers or other variable dice calculations involved like with many wargames, it becomes purely luck based.
Memoir is very luck based because it's dice system is so simplified and also the mixing of cards for activation. Have lost lot of Memoir games due never getting to activate a specific side of the board for multiple turns out of shitty draws. The dice system is pretty luck based, though it does get modified slightly based on various game variables such as being in cover.
It's how the game uses dice that determines luck more than anything. If you have no such thing as dice modifiers or other variable dice calculations involved like with many wargames, it becomes purely luck based.
Memoir is very luck based because it's dice system is so simplified and also the mixing of cards for activation. Have lost lot of Memoir games due never getting to activate a specific side of the board for multiple turns out of shitty draws. The dice system is pretty luck based, though it does get modified slightly based on various game variables such as being in cover.
I wasn't making an argument to that effect, I just don't like dice. :lol
Cards have pretty pictures, words, etc. etc. Way better than boring old dice even if they're fancified and frilly like my Arkham Horror dice. Also even all things being equal, cards give a much better illusion of control, much like video poker.
Cards have pretty pictures, words, etc. etc. Way better than boring old dice even if they're fancified and frilly like my Arkham Horror dice. Also even all things being equal, cards give a much better illusion of control, much like video poker.
BattleMonkey
Member
Well I guess I'm opposite. Dice mechanics generally are easy to break down in games to percentages and levels of success that can be predicted, while with cards it's much more random luck of the draw.
BattleMonkey
Member
I have moved beyond the need for popomatic bubbles.
*shakes iphone dice*
*shakes iphone dice*
platypotamus
Member
BattleMonkey said:
The probability of both are purely calculable, assuming you know the composition of the deck.
In fact, cards can give you a more rigidly controlled probability result, since potential results are removed from the pool as cards are drawn, whereas with dice, you can roll two twelves in a row, even though it doesn't occur often.
It's really tough to generalize yeah. Like hardcore Cataners play with that deck of dice rolls. Personally in that situation I would prefer dice to cards, but that is because of my pro-luck mentality and the fact that the cards are just versions of the boring dice rather than insanely cool masterpieces like the RFTG cards.
I take bad card draws much more personally than I do bad dice rolls (I can't believe I am in this conversation now 
) A bad die roll is luck, nothing more to it. You either have it for that roll or you don't.
Cards it could be luck, could be a shitty shuffle (we've ALL had our fair share of those), could be the order you happen to draw in (if ONLY I had drawn next or not been skipped!!), the two people before you got to draw multiple cards, etc.
Yes I realize it's psychological, but with cards it seems very easy to feel someone else screwed you over, whereas dice there is no one else. heh..
) A bad die roll is luck, nothing more to it. You either have it for that roll or you don't.Cards it could be luck, could be a shitty shuffle (we've ALL had our fair share of those), could be the order you happen to draw in (if ONLY I had drawn next or not been skipped!!), the two people before you got to draw multiple cards, etc.
Yes I realize it's psychological, but with cards it seems very easy to feel someone else screwed you over, whereas dice there is no one else. heh..
BattleMonkey
Member
platypotamus said:
It's highly dependent on the game mechanics and not just whether it's cards or dice. Some card based games are far more luck based than others that require the holding of cards and thinking, while with dice you get similar results depending on how dice are interpreted.
When your dealing with a deck of 60+ cards, you usually have a wider range of probability than a single 6 sided dice, but how any of this really is used game wise varies so much.
divisionbyzorro
Member
Cards just make it so that you can guarantee that certain outcomes come up as often as the statistics say they should. The Catan example was perfect. Ever played a game of Catan where the six came up three times as often as the eight? A "dice deck" eliminates that.
Of course, that's half the fun of Catan - not knowing what'll happen. A dice deck would eliminate the need for half of the wheeling and dealing that makes the game what it is! :lol
Of course, that's half the fun of Catan - not knowing what'll happen. A dice deck would eliminate the need for half of the wheeling and dealing that makes the game what it is! :lol
Cyan said:
right, the reason the hard core cataners play with the deck of dice rolls is because it ensures that the 6 and 8 come up more often than a 3 or 4. It takes the "luck" almost completely out of the game (though card order could still cause 3's and 4's to come up in critical parts of the game).
I like luck in games so long as it can be managed or planned for. Play the odds (like poker) so to speak.
Catan is a great example... you might still get a really bad run of luck and lose, but 9 times out of 10 if you pick the strategically smart move you will win. the 1 out of 10 that luck doesn't fall your way is what makes the games fun and interesting.
I also like games like Carcassonne, TTR, Pandemic and Small World where there is a certain amount of luck of the draw, but your ability to think on your feet and change your gameplan to the cards you have allows your skill to greatly offset the luck factor, though sometimes you just don't get what you need regarless of how maleable your plans are.
I own very few games that have no luck factor at all. I suppose Dominion, Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy have an extremely minimal amount of luck involved to the point where the better player will win 99.999 times out of 100.
divisionbyzorro
Member
I'm reminded of the Knizia "tile-laying trilogy." The game with the most luck of the draw, Tigris and Euphrates, is the best of the set, while the game with the least luck, Through the Desert, is the least interesting. Samurai comes in the middle. It all comes down to how the designer deals with random elements in the game.
StoOgE said:
When playing with the Catan deck, you're supposed to take some cards out of the deck each shuffle, to randomize it slightly. It does make the deck a little more interesting to play with. Also the point of the cards is the bonuses they provide, otherwise, i'd prefer the dice every time hands down.
platypotamus
Member
divisionbyzorro said:
It might be time to try to break our BGG Tigris curse around here...
divisionbyzorro
Member
platypotamus said:
They still host online T&E games? I played a couple of games through them back in the day; haven't even looked at that in a while though.
platypotamus
Member
Played Munchkin for the first time tonight, and it's a hoot.
Plan for some more board gaming tomorrow, though nothing picked yet.
Plan for some more board gaming tomorrow, though nothing picked yet.
There should be an FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) near you. If you're looking for a store to buy that specific game, I'd start at store locator on the publisher's web site.Einbroch said:
http://www.riograndegames.com/stores.html
If you're looking for game stores in general, this site is useful as well.
http://gamestoredb.com
I have my first board game night in a while tomorrow. They are completely new players outside of Catan experience on XBLA.
I figure we will start with Catan and wind up playing Small World/Dominion/TTR as the night goes on. They are a really nerdy group of friends, so I have high hopes I will work them up to RFTG/Puerto Rico/Power Grid.
I figure we will start with Catan and wind up playing Small World/Dominion/TTR as the night goes on. They are a really nerdy group of friends, so I have high hopes I will work them up to RFTG/Puerto Rico/Power Grid.
platypotamus
Member
Need to add Stone Age to your newb-gaming rotation, it's really fun!
AstroLad said:
I think Catan is a bit more complicated than Small World.. but really, any of them can be grasped pretty quickly by people of moderate intelligence.
I might throw in some pandemic as a more complicated game at the end of the night.
PR/RFTG/PG will be for another time with them after they are hopefully hooked tomm.
CSI has both Small World expansions in stock.
Sadly, they have gotten into the price gouging game and are charging 30 bucks a pop for them. Disapointing.. last time they got it in stock they were only charging 15 each.
I wish DoW would do another printing of the expansions.
Sadly, they have gotten into the price gouging game and are charging 30 bucks a pop for them. Disapointing.. last time they got it in stock they were only charging 15 each.
I wish DoW would do another printing of the expansions.
uggh.. hemming and hawing on this... on the one hand, 100% markup over MSRP sucks. On the other hand, this is still $15-20 each cheaper than most are selling them for on ebay and Amazon..... they're in my cart right now, I just need to convince myself that a dozen or two race/power cards are worth $60 :\
BomberMouse
Member
ultron87 said:
Great idea, unless you have a cat. Beacuse of it I can no longer make jigsaw puzzles :lol
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Playing Chrononauts for the first time tonight. Besides the hilariously twisted alternate history aspect, I'm pretty pumped for such a low footprint game in terms of space and packaging.
spikydavid
Member
platypotamus said:
Seconded - I'm not a huge fan of the game, but it's fun to play, and very gateway friendly
In other news, bought Horus Heresy & Dungeon Lords this week. HH is great, really enjoyable, and way less overwhelming than it first appears. DL is also fantastic fun, really atmospheric, very, very enjoyable, even if I think we broke more rules than we actually followed in the first run-through
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Chrononauts;
The basic premise of the game is that you have cards laid out representing major events in American history from Abraham Lincoln's Assassination to Columbine. Each player gets a character id. Your character ID describes the reality that you come from. Maybe you come from an alternate universe where WW1 never occurred and neither did the Great Depression.
Your objective is to play cards to change certain pivotal events (lynchpins). When you change these, the impacts ripple through history and create paradoxes, wherein subsequent events never happen. You can then "patch" the paradoxes to create alternate outcomes for those events. Of course, further cards can nullify the patches, flip the lynchpins back to the historically accurate outcome, etc. You win by creating the timeline as your character card lists it.
Some of the patches / alternate histories are hilarious. You can make John Lennon survive the assassination attempt, become a US senator, and pass a constitutional amendment banning gun ownership in America. You can assassinate Hitler at the '36 Olympics. You can end up with Martin Luther King being Nixon's VP and be elevated to the Presidency when Nixon resigns. The author of the game offers some attempt at rationalizing the impact of events on subsequent events on the website, but it's basically a bunch of baloney.
Besides that, you get a mission card. The mission card describes 3-4 artifacts you need to gather. One example is three major religious artifacts; the crown of thorns, a video tape showing the creation of the universe, etc. Artifacts are included in the deck. Other cards let you steal, sell, or discard artifacts. You can also win the game by satisfying the requirements on your mission card, rather than your character ID.
Every turn involves drawing one card and playing one card. To play, you can either actually play the card or just discard it. If you choose to discard, you can further discard a second card and take another draw. As such, your hand size stays constant. There are a few exceptions. When you patch a paradox, you get a free draw (increasing your hand size by one). Also, there's a card that allows you to interrupt actions taken by other players, and because you play that outside your turn it has the impact of reducing your hand size by one. You can win the game if you get 10 cards of any kind in your hand.
There are a number of zany cards, for example you can swap hands with opponents, swap missions with opponents, force opponents to discard their character ID and be assigned a new one, etc. Particularly the character ID card seems to take away from the game. I forced my girlfriend to draw a new character ID and it actually triggered her victory immediately. On the other hand, it could easily take someone who is one turn away from victory and put them back to square one.
The game seems a little random. Because you can be forced to discard your hand, have your move immediately cancelled by a bad card, have your victory conditions shift randomly, etc. you basically have to go for all three victory conditions simultaneously. As a result, you have a lot of turns where just about any move seems to offer just about the same net gain. Discarding ends up being pretty common because any move that doesn't directly help you has a pretty good chance of directly helping an opponent.
We played at two players and I feel like the game would have more checks and bounds with 4 players. In a 2 player game, both of us were pretty much focused relentlessly on achieving our objectives as opposed to actually clashing with each other. It felt a little like 2 player Ticket to Ride, where the cost of actually obstructing an opponent is so high most of the time that you only really end up doing it incidentally. With 4 players, the 10 card victory condition seems like it'd be a lot more plausible as each player would be undoing other players timeline/artifact progress.
One other note; it's possible for everyone to lose the game if 13 paradoxes open on the board. I'm not entirely sure if this is a risk, though. We peaked at 10 paradoxes, but one card flip of a lynchpin can easily close 3. Unless you had a suicidal player bent on screwing people over, I'm not sure why anyone would be stupid enough to make the final move that triggers the 13th paradox; again, discarding a card is always an option so it makes no sense to play an actively bad move.
The game comes with a variant for younger children and a solitaire variant. Both seem pretty secondary to the main game.
The card stock is adequate although not thick. The manual is one accordion-folded sheet and has no obvious spelling or coherence issues (we own Mall World which is unplayable with the default instructions, so this is an issue for us). The cards are slightly smaller than playing cards and the overall box ends up being about the size of two decks of playing cards, so it is very very portable. Games ranged from around 10 minutes to around 30. We played three times.
Other observations... we played a few more group games of Bohnanza, and the more we play the more everyone agrees that we have no idea if we're doing well or poorly. The sum total of strategy we've discovered right now has been basic bargaining acumen. Players who donate generally get boned, players who drive a hard bargain generally win. In terms of bean type decisions, we generally end up discussing as a group how many cards of a given type are on the board / the discard pile, so no one has a card counting advantage. It's fun, but we really haven't figured out the deeper level of play. We also tried playing a quicker variant (2 coin 3rd fields, go through the deck twice instead of 3 times) and we agreed that while the reduced cost for the 3rd field is fine, you really need to go through the deck at least 3 times to have a satisfying flow to the game.
We're going to pick up Mystery Express today if at all possible.
The basic premise of the game is that you have cards laid out representing major events in American history from Abraham Lincoln's Assassination to Columbine. Each player gets a character id. Your character ID describes the reality that you come from. Maybe you come from an alternate universe where WW1 never occurred and neither did the Great Depression.
Your objective is to play cards to change certain pivotal events (lynchpins). When you change these, the impacts ripple through history and create paradoxes, wherein subsequent events never happen. You can then "patch" the paradoxes to create alternate outcomes for those events. Of course, further cards can nullify the patches, flip the lynchpins back to the historically accurate outcome, etc. You win by creating the timeline as your character card lists it.
Some of the patches / alternate histories are hilarious. You can make John Lennon survive the assassination attempt, become a US senator, and pass a constitutional amendment banning gun ownership in America. You can assassinate Hitler at the '36 Olympics. You can end up with Martin Luther King being Nixon's VP and be elevated to the Presidency when Nixon resigns. The author of the game offers some attempt at rationalizing the impact of events on subsequent events on the website, but it's basically a bunch of baloney.
Besides that, you get a mission card. The mission card describes 3-4 artifacts you need to gather. One example is three major religious artifacts; the crown of thorns, a video tape showing the creation of the universe, etc. Artifacts are included in the deck. Other cards let you steal, sell, or discard artifacts. You can also win the game by satisfying the requirements on your mission card, rather than your character ID.
Every turn involves drawing one card and playing one card. To play, you can either actually play the card or just discard it. If you choose to discard, you can further discard a second card and take another draw. As such, your hand size stays constant. There are a few exceptions. When you patch a paradox, you get a free draw (increasing your hand size by one). Also, there's a card that allows you to interrupt actions taken by other players, and because you play that outside your turn it has the impact of reducing your hand size by one. You can win the game if you get 10 cards of any kind in your hand.
There are a number of zany cards, for example you can swap hands with opponents, swap missions with opponents, force opponents to discard their character ID and be assigned a new one, etc. Particularly the character ID card seems to take away from the game. I forced my girlfriend to draw a new character ID and it actually triggered her victory immediately. On the other hand, it could easily take someone who is one turn away from victory and put them back to square one.
The game seems a little random. Because you can be forced to discard your hand, have your move immediately cancelled by a bad card, have your victory conditions shift randomly, etc. you basically have to go for all three victory conditions simultaneously. As a result, you have a lot of turns where just about any move seems to offer just about the same net gain. Discarding ends up being pretty common because any move that doesn't directly help you has a pretty good chance of directly helping an opponent.
We played at two players and I feel like the game would have more checks and bounds with 4 players. In a 2 player game, both of us were pretty much focused relentlessly on achieving our objectives as opposed to actually clashing with each other. It felt a little like 2 player Ticket to Ride, where the cost of actually obstructing an opponent is so high most of the time that you only really end up doing it incidentally. With 4 players, the 10 card victory condition seems like it'd be a lot more plausible as each player would be undoing other players timeline/artifact progress.
One other note; it's possible for everyone to lose the game if 13 paradoxes open on the board. I'm not entirely sure if this is a risk, though. We peaked at 10 paradoxes, but one card flip of a lynchpin can easily close 3. Unless you had a suicidal player bent on screwing people over, I'm not sure why anyone would be stupid enough to make the final move that triggers the 13th paradox; again, discarding a card is always an option so it makes no sense to play an actively bad move.
The game comes with a variant for younger children and a solitaire variant. Both seem pretty secondary to the main game.
The card stock is adequate although not thick. The manual is one accordion-folded sheet and has no obvious spelling or coherence issues (we own Mall World which is unplayable with the default instructions, so this is an issue for us). The cards are slightly smaller than playing cards and the overall box ends up being about the size of two decks of playing cards, so it is very very portable. Games ranged from around 10 minutes to around 30. We played three times.
Other observations... we played a few more group games of Bohnanza, and the more we play the more everyone agrees that we have no idea if we're doing well or poorly. The sum total of strategy we've discovered right now has been basic bargaining acumen. Players who donate generally get boned, players who drive a hard bargain generally win. In terms of bean type decisions, we generally end up discussing as a group how many cards of a given type are on the board / the discard pile, so no one has a card counting advantage. It's fun, but we really haven't figured out the deeper level of play. We also tried playing a quicker variant (2 coin 3rd fields, go through the deck twice instead of 3 times) and we agreed that while the reduced cost for the 3rd field is fine, you really need to go through the deck at least 3 times to have a satisfying flow to the game.
We're going to pick up Mystery Express today if at all possible.
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