This week was more or less a return to a normal schedule between conventions; Anthony and I even did some 2p gaming. In the effort to play (or let go of) every game in my collection, I'm down to mostly 'difficult' games - despite some interest, it's been hard to effect a game of Dungeon Lords or Rails of New England; and the enthusiasm isn't there for Le Havre or Caverna. But I have enough passion for those four games in particular that they're going to get played come hell or high water.
Collection Played in 2016: 71%. 47 games to go. Games added: Ricochet Robots, Spyrium. Trade pile: Coup, Friday.
Dale of Merchants(new to me) - A deckbuilder with the same elemental appeal of Dominion, optimizing a set of cards with no bullshit. Enjoyable.
Blue Moon - I ran the table in a 2p game with Anthony, so we traded decks, and I did the same thing in reverse. Some of it is knowing the cards, but there are some very basic concepts that aren't obvious, such as dealing with the last six cards in your deck. And like RftG, it's a matter of playing long enough to reach the gnosis. I've played somewhere between 100-200 games against AI at this point...
Ricochet Robots(new to me) - A game that's been on my list for a long time, and somehow a game was happening when I arrived on Friday, so of course I jumped in. And despite some concerns about production quality, I ended up with a copy that weekend.
The Networks(new to me) - A Rotisserie Draft game, flip a number of cards and prioritize the cards you want. Many 'showbiz' games are just shy of mediocre (my notable exceptions: Showmanager and Traumfabrik), so this one stands out. It helps that the art and design is excellent.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers - Anthony said it well: this is a 'balanced' Carcassonne. Roads, cities, and fields are all good sources of points. It's my favorite Carcassonne spinoff.
Elfenroads - Saved from the trade pile by another play. We only played Elfenland (no Elfengold expansion) but it still works even as a simple card game. Haven't tried Elfensea yet, but it seems like a good choice for a larger number of players because of the huge map.
Evolution - I had played this once before, but this time we enforced simultaneous turns and it was much faster. It changes the game, but that's a tradeoff I'll accept if it means I can play Evolution in 30 minutes.
Yokohama - I really like this game, and I feel like it will be broadly popular once TMG releases a cleaned-up version. It's in the same category of accessible/clever as Trajan, Tzolk'in, and Five Tribes. Some English player aids explaining how the majority scoring works wouldn't hurt, either.
The Builders: Antiquity(new to me) - Better Splendor; but I'm a little unsure of my own assessment. I'll see how I feel after five games or so.
This Star Wars Destiny thing looks so bad. Collectible cards and dice together in the same game. Star Wars. 5 cards and 1 die per pack. I can see it taking away from things like Dice Masters, but that's about it. They don't make enough Star Wars games already?
Also, I found it hard to believe there are people who play Dice Masters, but there they were at the store that one weekend. They were interested in Netrunner, but no Netrunners gave a flying fuck about their dice nonsense.
I like Star Wars, I like dice, and I like card games. So I dunno, I might see how much the baseline version is to check it out. But you're right, it does look bad, but it has me curious.
Played a partial game of Rebellion last night. Rebels lasted until turn 6 before having to call the game.
Important things to know:
I did find out if you have a dude on a mission and don't use it, the mission goes back to your hand if you pass instead of running the mission.
Keep 1 space unit at the rebel base to prevent an Imperial win with Planetary Assault. Keep at least 2 Space units at the base if Soontir Fel is in play.
Leaders become rescued if there are no imperial units in the system.
Keep Rebel Fleets to 5 units each, when possible, for use with Rapid mobilization.
Megakaruba: That's a fun idea, I would play Karuba in a (virtual) room full of people, just to see how high the maximum score gets over a large sample set. No indication of how they’re going to handle reaching temples after the first four scoring tiles are taken, though.
New Angeles: I don't mind games with shared incentives, but the way that game describes itself sets off some personal warning bells (ie. "everyone loses")... oh, I just noticed that if you tank the game, you win by getting in with the feds instead. I'm back on board with "would play it to see".
This week I got to play two card games that have sat on the shelf for a while - Pandante and Glory to Rome. Both games I don’t really like at the max player count, despite the fact that they’re often requested when there are 5-6 people looking for a game. I was able to argue my way down from a maxed-out Glory to Rome this time.
Collection Played in 2016: 72%. 47 games to go. Games added: Balloon Challenge, Take the "A" Chord.
Five Tribes - I almost played extraordinarily well… except I had to flush so many points away to act first every round, and I came in third.
Karuba - Finally went to a tiebreaker (which I lost). We nearly ran out the whole deck of tiles because we made such a criss-crossing arrangement of temples.
Pandante - Lt. Chibi was visiting from out of town and wanted to play Pandante on Friday… and then Anthony and I rolled right into a second game on Saturday. We finally got to use the casino cards that came with the second edition, which I enjoyed. The game is much easier to teach, now.
Glory to Rome - This is one of the first hobby board games I played, and I finally hit 30 plays this week. We played Imperium, which I prefer to Republic.
Go da Cheese!(new to me) - Very cute art, and the game is fine. I think I'll keep it for now... but mostly for the art.
Trickerion: Legends of Illusion - Punishing game. I've played it twice as a 2p game and once as a 4p game, and I'm finally starting to understand what I’m doing. Also there was a rule we got wrong that makes the first turn more interesting.
Spyrium(new to me) - One 2p game, which was promising. A few ideas carried forward from Caylus, but not enough to make it a Caylus card game (ie. Magna Carta). “Doing a little bit of everything” was not a winning strategy. For a recent game by William Attia, this game seems oddly forgotten; everyone on BGG seems to like it but no one seems to love it.
New Angeles gives the impression that its like "Nothing Personal meet Big Business sim" with a Traitor mechanic. The way "Aligned with the Feds" is described, it reads like a secret objective that's randomly determined each game.
The game description sound like a Rand-ist wet dream: Build private business up as much as possible, but if the Federal Government has to intervene, (almost) everyone loses.
My radar was starting to lean towards "doesn't quite live up to the massive hype" (always a hard challenge), but upon my first actual play, I did enjoy Scythe. I'm really tossing it over in my head whether I prefer it to Eclipse. They seem to be in direct conflict to me, and I would not consider owning both, given how often I would get a big "dudes on a map" game out.
Anthony just bought Scythe and is handling the whole 'rules reading and teaching' thing, so we might play that tonight. Last night I managed to get pics of every game we played:
1. Watched our "Designing Game Rules" lecture 2. Changed the rules of his game based on the lecture 3. Made the game much better 4. Used the term "orthogonal" in his rules
Met another game designer who had been receiving feedback from us indirectly on a new game, but didn't know who we were. Finally made the connection.
I got really confused by some news I saw talking about a Bloodborne card game. I thought it was going to be a board game? Then I realize that the board game was Dark Souls. The Bloodborne card game is being designed by Eric Lang. He's had a few decent games, so here's hoping this will be good?
This game is called Agamemnon (leg of lamb-non), so it's already great. But the description of it sounds really great. Could compete with other 2 player games like Lost Cities and such.
This game is called Agamemnon (leg of lamb-non), so it's already great. But the description of it sounds really great. Could compete with other 2 player games like Lost Cities and such.
Reminds me of Aton, and also Kahuna (from the same designer). Abstract, two player majority game with input randomness.
I've set out to try all VR implementations of board games and do some blogging w/ my thoughts.
I played Love Letter and Boss Monster using AltspaceVR. It was pretty shitty.
Next up is Ascension VR on Steam. It came out 2 weeks ago and I've had my eye on it. Tycho putting his thoughts out there on it today gave me a bit more of an urge. Prob happen tonight.
After that it's tabletop simulator, which seems like a bit of a mess, but I'll give it an hour of my time to fiddle around with.
Any particular reasoning behind that? I'd think just for sheer desire of having enough players onboard, anyone in that space would want to have both Oculus and Vive versions, with cross-platform play.
Comments
Collection Played in 2016: 71%. 47 games to go. Games added: Ricochet Robots, Spyrium. Trade pile: Coup, Friday.
Dale of Merchants (new to me) - A deckbuilder with the same elemental appeal of Dominion, optimizing a set of cards with no bullshit. Enjoyable.
Blue Moon - I ran the table in a 2p game with Anthony, so we traded decks, and I did the same thing in reverse. Some of it is knowing the cards, but there are some very basic concepts that aren't obvious, such as dealing with the last six cards in your deck. And like RftG, it's a matter of playing long enough to reach the gnosis. I've played somewhere between 100-200 games against AI at this point...
Ricochet Robots (new to me) - A game that's been on my list for a long time, and somehow a game was happening when I arrived on Friday, so of course I jumped in. And despite some concerns about production quality, I ended up with a copy that weekend.
The Networks (new to me) - A Rotisserie Draft game, flip a number of cards and prioritize the cards you want. Many 'showbiz' games are just shy of mediocre (my notable exceptions: Showmanager and Traumfabrik), so this one stands out. It helps that the art and design is excellent.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers - Anthony said it well: this is a 'balanced' Carcassonne. Roads, cities, and fields are all good sources of points. It's my favorite Carcassonne spinoff.
Elfenroads - Saved from the trade pile by another play. We only played Elfenland (no Elfengold expansion) but it still works even as a simple card game. Haven't tried Elfensea yet, but it seems like a good choice for a larger number of players because of the huge map.
Evolution - I had played this once before, but this time we enforced simultaneous turns and it was much faster. It changes the game, but that's a tradeoff I'll accept if it means I can play Evolution in 30 minutes.
Yokohama - I really like this game, and I feel like it will be broadly popular once TMG releases a cleaned-up version. It's in the same category of accessible/clever as Trajan, Tzolk'in, and Five Tribes. Some English player aids explaining how the majority scoring works wouldn't hurt, either.
The Builders: Antiquity (new to me) - Better Splendor; but I'm a little unsure of my own assessment. I'll see how I feel after five games or so.
Also, I found it hard to believe there are people who play Dice Masters, but there they were at the store that one weekend. They were interested in Netrunner, but no Netrunners gave a flying fuck about their dice nonsense.
Important things to know:
I did find out if you have a dude on a mission and don't use it, the mission goes back to your hand if you pass instead of running the mission.
Keep 1 space unit at the rebel base to prevent an Imperial win with Planetary Assault. Keep at least 2 Space units at the base if Soontir Fel is in play.
Leaders become rescued if there are no imperial units in the system.
Keep Rebel Fleets to 5 units each, when possible, for use with Rapid mobilization.
Jedi Luke Skywalker can wreck Imperials up.
New Angeles: I don't mind games with shared incentives, but the way that game describes itself sets off some personal warning bells (ie. "everyone loses")... oh, I just noticed that if you tank the game, you win by getting in with the feds instead. I'm back on board with "would play it to see".
This week I got to play two card games that have sat on the shelf for a while - Pandante and Glory to Rome. Both games I don’t really like at the max player count, despite the fact that they’re often requested when there are 5-6 people looking for a game. I was able to argue my way down from a maxed-out Glory to Rome this time.
Collection Played in 2016: 72%. 47 games to go. Games added: Balloon Challenge, Take the "A" Chord.
Five Tribes - I almost played extraordinarily well… except I had to flush so many points away to act first every round, and I came in third.
Karuba - Finally went to a tiebreaker (which I lost). We nearly ran out the whole deck of tiles because we made such a criss-crossing arrangement of temples.
Pandante - Lt. Chibi was visiting from out of town and wanted to play Pandante on Friday… and then Anthony and I rolled right into a second game on Saturday. We finally got to use the casino cards that came with the second edition, which I enjoyed. The game is much easier to teach, now.
Glory to Rome - This is one of the first hobby board games I played, and I finally hit 30 plays this week. We played Imperium, which I prefer to Republic.
Go da Cheese! (new to me) - Very cute art, and the game is fine. I think I'll keep it for now... but mostly for the art.
Trickerion: Legends of Illusion - Punishing game. I've played it twice as a 2p game and once as a 4p game, and I'm finally starting to understand what I’m doing. Also there was a rule we got wrong that makes the first turn more interesting.
Star Wars: Rebellion - I like the team game in this. Still a solid 6/10 for me.
Spyrium (new to me) - One 2p game, which was promising. A few ideas carried forward from Caylus, but not enough to make it a Caylus card game (ie. Magna Carta). “Doing a little bit of everything” was not a winning strategy. For a recent game by William Attia, this game seems oddly forgotten; everyone on BGG seems to like it but no one seems to love it.
The game description sound like a Rand-ist wet dream: Build private business up as much as possible, but if the Federal Government has to intervene, (almost) everyone loses.
EDIT: More info: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/new-angeles/
EDIT: Eww CCG with Dice, no thanks
Balloon Challenge, King of Frontier
Russian Railroads, Gold West
1. Watched our "Designing Game Rules" lecture
2. Changed the rules of his game based on the lecture
3. Made the game much better
4. Used the term "orthogonal" in his rules
Met another game designer who had been receiving feedback from us indirectly on a new game, but didn't know who we were. Finally made the connection.
The Essen 2016 preview is up on BGG, but doesn't contain any of the 2F-Spiele games I'm looking forward to playing yet.
It also doesn't list the Race for the Galaxy card game (I know it's already a card game, but the name fits works)
This game is called Agamemnon (leg of lamb-non), so it's already great. But the description of it sounds really great. Could compete with other 2 player games like Lost Cities and such.
Many netrunners were had, much corn not being used to feed overworked Mayans.
It feels good to overindulge after a hiatus.
I played Love Letter and Boss Monster using AltspaceVR. It was pretty shitty.
Next up is Ascension VR on Steam. It came out 2 weeks ago and I've had my eye on it. Tycho putting his thoughts out there on it today gave me a bit more of an urge. Prob happen tonight.
After that it's tabletop simulator, which seems like a bit of a mess, but I'll give it an hour of my time to fiddle around with.