I played some merchants and pirates type game yesterday. And that's about what I thought of it.
Merchants & Marauders? I've given that game way too many chances. It's complete shit. Avoid at all costs. It will suck you in with its theme and potential for cool stuff, but a weak rules set leaves waaaaaaay too many opportunities for people to play the game "improperly" (while still playing according to the rules), created awful long and boring games, huge blowouts, etc.
Manhattan Project was a worker placement game that I thought I would like, but was a big disappointment. There can be significant downtime during turns, as players might be placing a whole army of workers on a single turn, and will need to work out all the mental gymnastics to have them combo off of each other.
Also, the game heavily uses private worker placement spaces, but there is a single espionage space that allows you to use everyone else's spaces. This is an automatic "you must do this immediately if the space is open or you are a fool." Having the obvious decision forced on you in a complex game is now fun. Having someone else come and screw with your machine directly in a euro is not fun. Manhattan Project is not fun.
It sounds like Manhattan Project suffers from many of the same problems of Viva Java and Ground Floor.
I've been getting a similar vibe from a large number of recent popular tabletop games, and it hasn't been a good one. They look and act like the older "German" games that we enjoy, but don't provide the same deep level of engagement. They use the same basic mechanics and constructs, but try to be clever in ways that just add confusion and obfuscation.
They seem to lack care of design and extensive playtesting. I can't imagine how a game like Ground Floor would make it through significant play from different groups of gamers without a common set of negative feedback. Did the designers play only amongst themselves? Have they not played every other respected, great game in their medium?
Are modern tabletop games going through the same basic woes that the anime industry did when multiple generations of fans ended up being the next set of designers?
Speaking of Viva Java the creator of the game is going to be doing demos at a local game store in the future. Anyone have a question/compliant I should relay to him?
Tell him to mail my Kickstarter rewards! It's pretty frustrating seeing him tweet about stuff and he sent me a message saying he'll take care of it. That was a few weeks ago.
Kidding. I'll be handling that on my own.
Tell him the red beans are a bit too similar to the brown beans. I had to repaint mine.
Luckily we still have plenty of quality German folk still making these types of games. See: Castles of Burgundy, Village. There are some other common factors with the Ground Floor/VivaJava/Manhattan Project games: They are all Kickstarter games. They aim to take the old German-style play, give it a cool theme, and complement it with stronger graphic design and artwork.
Kickstarter and a focus on artwork is a proven link (backer surveys rank it as #1 factor when evaluating a game, as it sets the first impression). Now this conjures up the debate about whether Kickstarter is allowing poor game designs to go further than they should.
In theory I would say no, since it's just money in the end. There are clear examples over the past few years of established publishers releasing crap, and Kickstarter publishers creating gems. However, in practice, I see a circle of up-and-coming designers/publishers that also have a voice in the sparse world of board game media via their blogs and podcasts. This leads to a lot of them doing reviews/previews of these games in prototype form, pre-funding, and basically jerking each other off with positive buzz. An eager Kickstarter audience arrives, sees positive buzz, and all of a sudden the game is published.
Speaking of Viva Java the creator of the game is going to be doing demos at a local game store in the future. Anyone have a question/compliant I should relay to him?
Tell TC that Matt thinks VivaJava would be improved if you could enlist the services of a local child. He'll know what I mean.
Viva Java and Ground Floor bother me with their complex and counter-intuitive stacking token mechanic for precedence, coupled with the necessity of strict orders of operations at almost all junctures in the game.
7 Wonders: Wonder Pack includes new wonders for use with the 7 Wonders base game, with the wonders in question being:
~The Great Wall of China, with the owner being able to build the stages of this wonder in any order (since the wall is, of course, a long horizontal wonder and not a primarily vertical one)
~Stonehenge, with the amount of stone you have being important during its construction
~Abu Simbel, in which leaders can be buried and mummified for bonus points
~Manneken Pis, which is a revised version of the 7 Wonders: Manneken Pis wonder first released as a promotional item at Spiel 2010
Finally got to play Puzzle Strike, which I found very enjoyable. I was impressed by how well it handles free-for-all multiplayer where you can directly attack anyone at the table. The game ends immediately when someone gets taken out, and the player with the fewest gems wins, but you can block on behalf of other people. Because blocking sometimes (but not always) puts you in a better position, you'll often see people jump in the way of gems just to keep the game from ending if they're not in a winning position.
You start with 3-4 actions in your deck, and you have to use your actions to manage the gem board minigame to keep your health up. At the same time, you must buy something on every turn, and you get dead cards if you can't afford anything. So the game forces you to manage two resources at once without the annoying solution of using multiple currencies (Ascension, Penny Arcade, Miskatonic School for Girls)
Also, the names of the cards aren't exactly flavorful, but they are funny; how can you not like Degenerate Trasher? It's the first deckbuilder that has grabbed me like Dominion (noting that I haven't played most of the well-regarded deckbuilders).
Quick review of X-wing; very nice use of the license, played Han in the Falcon and Luke in the X-wing against Vader and four of his cronies in bombers and figters. Never have I been so jazzed up before the game even started. However, a coupleof major flaws revealed themselves.
1) No snowball mechanism. Games can and do drag on due to very balanced mechanics. I would much rather have more blowouts and a 15min game time. Most people will play this game because of the theme not because it is a "good" game (which it -- or Tiny Wings -- isn't by german boardgame standards).
2) No space appropriate movements. The movement schme is from Tiny Wings and thematically totally inappropriate for space flight. Again top reason to play this game is the flavor, so add some cray cray moves.
3) Everything is milktoast. Vader can't force choke other ships, the Falcon can only have _one_ missile? That ship is huge!!, etc. etc. Again, for the third time, game balance be damned.
TL;DR - Make the game much more asymmetric with flashier special abilities and theme appropriate normal abilities even if it could mess up game balance. Game balance for tournent use can be restored by pricing errata later. E.g. I think the Han Solo Falcon is worth 30 points tops not 46 as it is.
I am a Star Wars fan (used to be a huge one in my youth, not so much anymore), but I wouldn't have stuck with X-Wing if it wasn't for the balance. Everything you said about mechanics and balance taking precedence over theme is 100% true, but it hasn't bothered me at all.
Don't think I would be a fan of 15min games though. We play 50-60 minute timed games and declare winner on points (it's almost always a foregone conclusion who will win at that point). Once you get into the tactics of flying different formations and actually maintaining them in the face or enemies/obstacles, and pulling off the maneuvers to change formations, you can pull off some really cool moments and chaining of abilities that wouldn't get to play out in 15min.
I forgot to mention one more big flaw; the amount of busy work over interesting atoms of play. Basically the only time you are making intersting decisions is when selecting the next move, and even in a situation tht requires coordination with team mates that takes all of half a minute. Then you have to wade throgh one to two minutes per participating ship for mechanistic / obvious decision tree parsing tedium.
What I'm basically saying is that you need to be inebriated or have an iPad nearby to play ;-).
Bought a bunch of games at Auctions, but played one new game.
Ad-astra - This game is Catan in the resource gathering and building of things, but has action cards which need to be played such as construction, trading, and exploring to be set on a track. No dice involved, and I managed to win "the hard way" buy not building spaceships and simply going for colonies, factories and terraforming stations.
Bought a bunch of games at Auctions, but played one new game.
Ad-astra - This game is Catan in the resource gathering and building of things, but has action cards which need to be played such as construction, trading, and exploring to be set on a track. No dice involved, and I managed to win "the hard way" buy not building spaceships and simply going for colonies, factories and terraforming stations.
Just don't get your yoyodium and zozodium confused
Bought a bunch of games at Auctions, but played one new game.
Ad-astra - This game is Catan in the resource gathering and building of things, but has action cards which need to be played such as construction, trading, and exploring to be set on a track. No dice involved, and I managed to win "the hard way" buy not building spaceships and simply going for colonies, factories and terraforming stations.
Just don't get your yoyodium and zozodium confused
We simply used the common "Gold, red rocks, rainbow rocks" to avoid the confusion.
Also have a dilemma I can go to either a local game store and learn Viva Java from the creator OR go to south Jersey to participate in a larger than usual unpub event and play indie games. Anyone going to either one?
Yes, I only had to drive about 40 miles each way (my car gets about 30-35mpg on the highway) and probably about 45 min each way. I wasn't doing much anyways, so my time was essentially free.
Yes. It was like maybe $10 in gas. So $35 for Eclipse.
Yes, I only had to drive about 40 miles each way (my car gets about 30-35mpg on the highway) and probably about 45 min each way. I wasn't doing much anyways, so my time was essentially free.
Comments
Also, the game heavily uses private worker placement spaces, but there is a single espionage space that allows you to use everyone else's spaces. This is an automatic "you must do this immediately if the space is open or you are a fool." Having the obvious decision forced on you in a complex game is now fun. Having someone else come and screw with your machine directly in a euro is not fun. Manhattan Project is not fun.
I've been getting a similar vibe from a large number of recent popular tabletop games, and it hasn't been a good one. They look and act like the older "German" games that we enjoy, but don't provide the same deep level of engagement. They use the same basic mechanics and constructs, but try to be clever in ways that just add confusion and obfuscation.
They seem to lack care of design and extensive playtesting. I can't imagine how a game like Ground Floor would make it through significant play from different groups of gamers without a common set of negative feedback. Did the designers play only amongst themselves? Have they not played every other respected, great game in their medium?
Are modern tabletop games going through the same basic woes that the anime industry did when multiple generations of fans ended up being the next set of designers?
Kidding. I'll be handling that on my own.
Tell him the red beans are a bit too similar to the brown beans. I had to repaint mine.
Kickstarter and a focus on artwork is a proven link (backer surveys rank it as #1 factor when evaluating a game, as it sets the first impression). Now this conjures up the debate about whether Kickstarter is allowing poor game designs to go further than they should.
In theory I would say no, since it's just money in the end. There are clear examples over the past few years of established publishers releasing crap, and Kickstarter publishers creating gems. However, in practice, I see a circle of up-and-coming designers/publishers that also have a voice in the sparse world of board game media via their blogs and podcasts. This leads to a lot of them doing reviews/previews of these games in prototype form, pre-funding, and basically jerking each other off with positive buzz. An eager Kickstarter audience arrives, sees positive buzz, and all of a sudden the game is published.
http://amzn.com/B00BYPG57W
7 Wonders: Wonder Pack includes new wonders for use with the 7 Wonders base game, with the wonders in question being:
~The Great Wall of China, with the owner being able to build the stages of this wonder in any order (since the wall is, of course, a long horizontal wonder and not a primarily vertical one)
~Stonehenge, with the amount of stone you have being important during its construction
~Abu Simbel, in which leaders can be buried and mummified for bonus points
~Manneken Pis, which is a revised version of the 7 Wonders: Manneken Pis wonder first released as a promotional item at Spiel 2010
You start with 3-4 actions in your deck, and you have to use your actions to manage the gem board minigame to keep your health up. At the same time, you must buy something on every turn, and you get dead cards if you can't afford anything. So the game forces you to manage two resources at once without the annoying solution of using multiple currencies (Ascension, Penny Arcade, Miskatonic School for Girls)
Also, the names of the cards aren't exactly flavorful, but they are funny; how can you not like Degenerate Trasher? It's the first deckbuilder that has grabbed me like Dominion (noting that I haven't played most of the well-regarded deckbuilders).
1) No snowball mechanism. Games can and do drag on due to very balanced mechanics. I would much rather have more blowouts and a 15min game time. Most people will play this game because of the theme not because it is a "good" game (which it -- or Tiny Wings -- isn't by german boardgame standards).
2) No space appropriate movements. The movement schme is from Tiny Wings and thematically totally inappropriate for space flight. Again top reason to play this game is the flavor, so add some cray cray moves.
3) Everything is milktoast. Vader can't force choke other ships, the Falcon can only have _one_ missile? That ship is huge!!, etc. etc. Again, for the third time, game balance be damned.
TL;DR - Make the game much more asymmetric with flashier special abilities and theme appropriate normal abilities even if it could mess up game balance. Game balance for tournent use can be restored by pricing errata later. E.g. I think the Han Solo Falcon is worth 30 points tops not 46 as it is.
Don't think I would be a fan of 15min games though. We play 50-60 minute timed games and declare winner on points (it's almost always a foregone conclusion who will win at that point). Once you get into the tactics of flying different formations and actually maintaining them in the face or enemies/obstacles, and pulling off the maneuvers to change formations, you can pull off some really cool moments and chaining of abilities that wouldn't get to play out in 15min.
I forgot to mention one more big flaw; the amount of busy work over interesting atoms of play. Basically the only time you are making intersting decisions is when selecting the next move, and even in a situation tht requires coordination with team mates that takes all of half a minute. Then you have to wade throgh one to two minutes per participating ship for mechanistic / obvious decision tree parsing tedium.
What I'm basically saying is that you need to be inebriated or have an iPad nearby to play ;-).
Ad-astra - This game is Catan in the resource gathering and building of things, but has action cards which need to be played such as construction, trading, and exploring to be set on a track. No dice involved, and I managed to win "the hard way" buy not building spaceships and simply going for colonies, factories and terraforming stations.
Also have a dilemma I can go to either a local game store and learn Viva Java from the creator OR go to south Jersey to participate in a larger than usual unpub event and play indie games. Anyone going to either one?