Daniel Solis... Do I know that name from somewhere? Should I?
yup, RPG, card game, and board game designer. He's doing quite well for himself as a full-time game designer, mostly selling direct through web shops/print on demand. We were roommates at BGG.CON, and he's getting more into pitching retail boardgames.
Charlie Hall, the man who heaped praise upon the Ghostbusters board game over on Polygon, has now reviewed Star Wars: Rebellion. He had trouble understanding the rules.
Charlie Hall, the man who heaped praise upon the Ghostbusters board game over on Polygon, has now reviewed Star Wars: Rebellion. He had trouble understanding the rules.
I believe both things can be true. It's most likely that the rulebook is awful AND Charlie Hall is not a super smart board game nerd type person.
The way he described it was pretty run-of-the-mill for recent FFG releases. They include a "Learn to Play" and a "Rules Reference." If you haven't thoroughly read the first book, it can give you real trouble, flipping back and forth between the two. But once you have a play or two under your belt, it's better than most rulebooks. The FFG rules reference books have been pretty solid.
I'm all for knocking a game if it is hard to get started. But having learned similar games, I suspect it is not the case here. If the split book design does make it hard to get started, it more than makes up for it by making future plays easier, when you only need the rules reference.
You're ignoring the TONS of collectible card games, and all the ones that integrate with video games. There are also plenty of video games from all those countries that may as well be board games. Let's also not forget all their word games that are pretty much impossible for us. And, of course, plenty of social games that don't involve boards or bits. I've learned many of these from watching variety shows.
There are sooooooo many Japanese tabletop games. This well is seriously fucking deep.
This guy on Twitter is some dude from the UK who has made it his personal quest to document all Japanese-designed games on BGG. He makes trips to Japan for Tokyo game market, and has crafted Japanese BGG instructions, as well as forms in the native language that designers can fill out, and will be translated and input into BGG.
He's been working on that game for a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
I have 100% faith that it will be a good game. But what I really hope is that the incredible length of development here will let him avoid the Sirlin Curse, putting out a solid game, but then realizing there are some high-level play flaws, and later releasing v2.0, v3.0, etc.
All his games so far are just that, good. They aren't great. Yomi lasted a few days. Puzzle Strike lasted two seconds. Pandante lasted one PAX. Maybe this thing will last a week?
Two weeks worth of game highlights, but mostly PAX South, because the week prior was cut short by snow. Funny you should mention it, Sirlin even makes an appearance at the start of the list.
Collection Played in 2016: 14%. 118 games to go. Added this week: Mamma Mia, maskmen.
Yomi - Russ's copy. Mine is on the trade pile - I'm happy to just play the second edition once in a while.
Favor of the Pharaoh - The winning roll was a truly terrifying 14 of a kind. The game went long with some new players, so quite a lot of potential energy built up.
Codenames - The inaugural game played at PAX South - this is the first time I've used the "unlimited" clue. Favorite clue: "Dracula" for "bat" and "novel".
Saint Petersburg - I haven't played four-player St Pete in a while. Took a turn 1 observatory (even with the increased cost from the New Society expansion) and eked out a win.
Wizard Extreme(new to me) - I like the way the Saboteur/Schwarzmagier adds one player that doesn't care about making their bid, and is free to hurt the rest of the table. I'm phenomenally inconsistent at bidding in this game.
6 Nimmt! - We had a table of 7 people that all wanted to game together, and since the PAX TT library didn't have any copies of Bohnanza (and we didn't have time for Outpost), this did the trick.
Long Shot(new to me) - A horse racing game with some thematically strange options (you can claim ownership of a horse during the race). For a similar feel, I'd rather play Speculation.
Concordia - First time I've gotten all my colonists on the board, plus all but one colonist card. It worked remarkably well.
Dominion - The only game all weekend that attracted a stranger to play with us. Dominion is eight years old this year, and there's another expansion coming in a few months, which also speaks to its popularity.
Mottainai(new to me) - First game, confused. Second game, I was able to accomplish the things I set out to do. I will probably pick up a copy.
Web of Power(new to me) - An older design, but one that really impressed me. I like the struggle for efficiency, timing, and value among the players, especially in a game that takes less than an hour.
Schnappchen Jagd - It occurs to me that this is in contention with Glass Road as my favorite Uwe Rosenberg game. And I just picked up a copy of Mamma Mia - yet another Rosenberg card game.
Wow, I thought I was the only person who had heard of or played Long Shot. A surprisingly fun horse betting game that's unfortunately out of print now.
Wow, I thought I was the only person who had heard of or played Long Shot. A surprisingly fun horse betting game that's unfortunately out of print now.
The first time we played Long Shot, years ago, wasn't it your copy?
Since it came up on the podcast - in defense of Mottainai, I love games where your hand of cards ebbs and flows, but every new card that enters your hand is unknown until you take a specific action to peel it off the deck. The more interesting the mechanism by which you get cards into your hand, the better. Race for the Galaxy, Innovation, and Netrunner share this quality.
Glory to Rome is good, but I enjoyed the changes in Mottainai. You have the additional decision of whether to allocate your influence to helpers or sales. The state of your hand doesn't actually update until the end of your turn (no hail marys - deal with the hand you have now). There's a bit of time compression: every turn is N turns, where N is the number of players. The turn structure facilitates clever planning (eg. This turn, I get a Potter, then a Monk... I will play a Monk/Stone so I can put stone in my work bench, get a Monk helper, then craft twice to finish two stone works).
After playing at PAX, I still suspect the 4-5 player game (with two decks shuffled together) is strictly worse than the 2-3 player game.
Its been a little while since I've played last but I like the 3 player set up for Mottainai more than 2 players, 2 players seemed to lag a bit at times whereas 3 players always seemed to be a good pace or even accelerated. The only times I didn't like playing is when the game didn't feel like it was moving towards the end crazy fast.
Codex: I'm conflicted. I dig the Fantasy Strike characters, but I'm not sure about the gameplay yet. Also, like Matt says, it's very possible that there could be a Codex 2.0 kickstarter.
Firefly: Ran a "Jail Break" scenario, instead of the usual "Get all of the money scenario". Managed to get 11 Guns in very short order by playing Marco (1/2 price guns) on Silverhold (The Gun Show). Did a job for Badger street sweeping (Paid per gun) and a Forced resettlement for Harken (Paid per gun), I also sold off a lot of Contraband to Badger so money wasn't a problem. At the end, the tricky part was getting past the Reavers, but I managed to get an upgrade that solved that issue. One thing I noticed was that with all of the Expansions you almost have to use the accelerated start rules to make sure there's a good mix of cards for sale. The goal that allows for the most varied gameplay seems to be "Make a whole bunch of money"
I'm considering de-expanding my copy of Machi Koro, because 80% of the people I used to play with (and the table at PAX South) dislike the Harbor changes. With the Harbor expansion, I found it preferable to control the setup, to keep the beginning of the game moving. (ie. at least two green or blue cards <7 per player in the initial display)
Comments
I'm all for knocking a game if it is hard to get started. But having learned similar games, I suspect it is not the case here. If the split book design does make it hard to get started, it more than makes up for it by making future plays easier, when you only need the rules reference.
BGG Tokyo Game Market video
BGG Tokyo Game Market Geeklist
Joe Huber's top 20 Japanese games list
Personally, the only designer whose games I am broadly familiar with is:
- Hisashi Hayashi (Trains, Sail to India, String Railway, Minerva)
I've got a passing familiarity with:- Gun-Hee Kim (Abraca... What?, Koryo)
- Jun Sasaki (Many of the Oink games)
- Susumu Kawasaki (Traders of Carthage/Osaka, R-Eco)
After Minerva, Hisashi Hiyashi is one of the designers whose name on the box will get my attention.This guy on Twitter is some dude from the UK who has made it his personal quest to document all Japanese-designed games on BGG. He makes trips to Japan for Tokyo game market, and has crafted Japanese BGG instructions, as well as forms in the native language that designers can fill out, and will be translated and input into BGG.
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/203678/euro-jpgames-bigger-heavier-longer
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/53197/japanese-dojin-games
Sirlin is at it again.
I have 100% faith that it will be a good game. But what I really hope is that the incredible length of development here will let him avoid the Sirlin Curse, putting out a solid game, but then realizing there are some high-level play flaws, and later releasing v2.0, v3.0, etc.
Also, his video for that project was pretty solid, and was very Sirlin
Collection Played in 2016: 14%. 118 games to go. Added this week: Mamma Mia, maskmen.
Yomi - Russ's copy. Mine is on the trade pile - I'm happy to just play the second edition once in a while.
Favor of the Pharaoh - The winning roll was a truly terrifying 14 of a kind. The game went long with some new players, so quite a lot of potential energy built up.
Codenames - The inaugural game played at PAX South - this is the first time I've used the "unlimited" clue. Favorite clue: "Dracula" for "bat" and "novel".
Saint Petersburg - I haven't played four-player St Pete in a while. Took a turn 1 observatory (even with the increased cost from the New Society expansion) and eked out a win.
Wizard Extreme (new to me) - I like the way the Saboteur/Schwarzmagier adds one player that doesn't care about making their bid, and is free to hurt the rest of the table. I'm phenomenally inconsistent at bidding in this game.
Jungle Speed - Ow my thumb.
Factory Fun - Multiple times at PAX, in fact.
6 Nimmt! - We had a table of 7 people that all wanted to game together, and since the PAX TT library didn't have any copies of Bohnanza (and we didn't have time for Outpost), this did the trick.
Long Shot (new to me) - A horse racing game with some thematically strange options (you can claim ownership of a horse during the race). For a similar feel, I'd rather play Speculation.
Grand Austria Hotel - Still holding up, even at the maximum player count.
Concordia - First time I've gotten all my colonists on the board, plus all but one colonist card. It worked remarkably well.
Dominion - The only game all weekend that attracted a stranger to play with us. Dominion is eight years old this year, and there's another expansion coming in a few months, which also speaks to its popularity.
Mottainai (new to me) - First game, confused. Second game, I was able to accomplish the things I set out to do. I will probably pick up a copy.
Web of Power (new to me) - An older design, but one that really impressed me. I like the struggle for efficiency, timing, and value among the players, especially in a game that takes less than an hour.
Schnappchen Jagd - It occurs to me that this is in contention with Glass Road as my favorite Uwe Rosenberg game. And I just picked up a copy of Mamma Mia - yet another Rosenberg card game.
Glory to Rome is good, but I enjoyed the changes in Mottainai. You have the additional decision of whether to allocate your influence to helpers or sales. The state of your hand doesn't actually update until the end of your turn (no hail marys - deal with the hand you have now). There's a bit of time compression: every turn is N turns, where N is the number of players. The turn structure facilitates clever planning (eg. This turn, I get a Potter, then a Monk... I will play a Monk/Stone so I can put stone in my work bench, get a Monk helper, then craft twice to finish two stone works).
After playing at PAX, I still suspect the 4-5 player game (with two decks shuffled together) is strictly worse than the 2-3 player game.
Firefly: Ran a "Jail Break" scenario, instead of the usual "Get all of the money scenario". Managed to get 11 Guns in very short order by playing Marco (1/2 price guns) on Silverhold (The Gun Show). Did a job for Badger street sweeping (Paid per gun) and a Forced resettlement for Harken (Paid per gun), I also sold off a lot of Contraband to Badger so money wasn't a problem. At the end, the tricky part was getting past the Reavers, but I managed to get an upgrade that solved that issue. One thing I noticed was that with all of the Expansions you almost have to use the accelerated start rules to make sure there's a good mix of cards for sale. The goal that allows for the most varied gameplay seems to be "Make a whole bunch of money"