I also finally got to play Among the Stars - once with the base game, and once with the expansions (mixing in the extra cards, leaving out the optional rules). You can use the expansions to add variety without adding rules, which is always an easy sell.
What did you think of Among the Stars? I was hoping that it would replace 7 Wonders, because I like the drafting mechanic and the positional aspect of the spacestatoin components, but after playing it, it just felt kind of... blah. Unlike 7 Wonders, there was almost no player interaction in terms of resources or combat, and the game just felt flat to me. Granted, I've only played it twice, and we didn't use the ambassadors, but for a game I was very excited about, I'm now pretty disappointed.
I haven't checked online reviews to see if I'm alone in this or other people feel the same way as I do.
For me, there was 'enough' player interaction in the card effects and competition for objectives. You could add more "take that" effects with conflicts, but it works fine without them (for my taste, at least).
It definitely felt like a race to solve the puzzle. It was a puzzle that changed based on how everyone else worked their puzzle. There was still room to be a dick, it's just that sometimes no one knew you were being a dick.
How can it be witchest when it's not even witchy? Wasn't really for me, either, but it was competent. If I cared about The Witcher I'd at least play a full game once.
The game is pretty much a really lame racing game with lots of flavor text. Better off playing Formula D for racing or Tales of the Arabian Nights for flavor text.
The app doesn't have the extra fun of brinksmanship. Convincing other people to waste turns playing catastropies for you is just too good to leave out of the experience.
Downloaded the Tigris and Euphrates app. Learnt the basics, lost a bunch to the lowest AIs, looked at Rym and Scott teaching it, lost another one.
This game makes me feel like a fool so far. I'm sure I'll start to get it eventually.
The app makes you feel silly if you are a new player but as soon as you get the basic strategies, it is trivial to beat the AI at the higher levels.
Also don't play against humans like you would the app because humans will usually try and bait you into bad moves or into conflicts that don't favour you.
I also finally got to play Among the Stars - once with the base game, and once with the expansions (mixing in the extra cards, leaving out the optional rules). You can use the expansions to add variety without adding rules, which is always an easy sell.
What did you think of Among the Stars? I was hoping that it would replace 7 Wonders, because I like the drafting mechanic and the positional aspect of the spacestatoin components, but after playing it, it just felt kind of... blah. Unlike 7 Wonders, there was almost no player interaction in terms of resources or combat, and the game just felt flat to me.
The second printing, which was the base set Pence was playing with, contained Dispute cards. 1 credit and if you have more X than another player you gain up to a maximum of 3 points and they lose a maximum of 3 points. 3 cards per player and you shuffle them in at the beginning of the 2nd year and deal out 7 cards per player.
Does the T&E app work ok on a phone? Say 4 inches?
My screen is 4.6 inches and it seems fine to me.
I won one last night. It felt like I was in control a lot of the time. I initiated wars that I could win separating their kingdom in ways that benefited my war. There was still a revolt in which my powerful-feeling black leader got taken out trivially when I had no red in my hand.
I identify a region as being "mine" but it feels like that's a bad habit.
I tried listening to some board game podcasts again. Ugh. Why do they all suck so damn much? I unwisely chose to listen to another episode of the "gold standard" in board game podcasts, The Dice Tower:
- After a wonderful segment from a contributor explaining how poor tournament design (using the old soccer examples) can lead to unexpected player behavior (and defending those players as playing to win, however strangely), host Tom completely contradicted the segment, saying the contributor was wrong, and that players should abide by the "spirit of the game," not play to win. Ready to throw my phone out of the car already.
- Co-host Eric then goes on to sharply criticize a very small publisher for having a game labeled 13 & up, when it is clearly suitable for younger children. I cannot fathom how he can be a host of such an influential show for so many years, and not understand some basic business principles of the toy and game industry. In this case, the fact that products must undergo rather expensive testing to be legally sold with certain age range labels. Small publishers often forego this, and just slap 13 & up on the box.
- Most egregiously, one of the contributors runs a segment where he reviews game stores around the country as he visits them during his day job business travel. Half of the segment on this episode was a massive correction, because Dice Tower had previously aired a long scathing review, throughout which he identified it as THE WRONG STORE.
The Ludology podcast is the best thing on the Dice Tower network, listen to it if you like Geoff's segments. Start with the Eric Zimmerman interview (episode 79), the Rob Daviau interview (Risk Legacy, episode 70), or the "most influential games" episodes (74, 76, 78).
I use Dice Tower as background noise. The Secret Cabal is rowdier background noise. Still the only places I know for 'people talking about tabletop game news in audio format', which is what I think Ro wanted.
I've called them out a few times, but it never gets much traction. They have an awful lot of defenders. It's troubling to me only because they are now one of the few examples of "professional media" in the tabletop realm. At least the main individual, Tom, has quit his day job, and pays his bills 100% on the backs of his gaming activities. Yet there has been zero evolution beyond being "fan media." No increase in professionalism now that he is a professional.
Sadly, this is what most people want. There is an account on Twitter that leads a weekly discussion (@Boardgamehour), and yesterday's topic was media. The majority of people in that convo were saying, in so many words, that they want media to be fan service. They just want a bunch of cheerleaders to get them pumped up to go buy some new releases.
There's a reason I consume basically zero gaming media: I create it.
Becoming a creator a few years back definitely opened my eyes up. I see the flaws in all of it now. Makes it hard to consume. I consume a sum greater than zero, but it's mostly just Twitter for staying informed these days.
I only listen to OnBoardGames from the DTN, but lately the other up and commers are the Chalk and Party Game Cast. There was an idea me and Lordkat talked about doing if there was a gurth of money we could solve the problem.
I don't remember the situation, because it was well over a year ago, but I had multiple "almost threw my phone out of the car" moments due to statements from Dennis on OnBoardGames. This has also happened with Darrell Louder on The State of Games. I also gave The D6 Generation a shot for a while and unsubscribed due to plain old misinformation flowing into their convos.
It's just another example of people forming a community based upon a false premise. Two people are both fans of Star Wars. So they both join the Star Wars community. In reality they have nothing in common because one is mostly interested in 501st style cosplay while the other is obsessed with expanded universe lore. They actually have nothing in common.
We self identify as board gamers and try to join the tabletop gaming community. Yet really we have almost nothing in common with others who do. That community has quite a few different groups within it that have very little in common. There are those who are consumption based, collecting games. There are those like us who are actually trying to win and interested in mechanics. There are those who are theme based and love Munchkin and any game with Zombies or Cthulhu on the box. And many more that I can't be bothered to type.
While any individual person is not be 100% entrenched into one bucket, I have never met someone who isn't mostly focused in one area. There might be someone who likes theme and also collects, but if you talk to them you can tell that one is more important to them than the other.
The fact is that the type of tabletop gamer that we are, the type of anime fan that we are, the type of geeks that we are, are among the less common varieties. And that is one of the things that GeekNights is for. We will probably never be huge because there are not a lot of people like us. But without here, where would us few be? Would we be feeling out of place on major sites like ANN or BGG forums? Would we be assimilated or converted to other groups? Would we be alone?
One other side problem that is somewhat specific to board gaming. Let's say I quit my job and made a high production value tabletop media empire for our kind of gamer. It would be bad. Even if I covered every single game that came out, it would be hella lame.
"This game is a worker placement with a space theme. Not even as good as Agricola. Ingore it."
"This is a drafting game that takes too long. Just play 7 Wonders."
"This new expansion for Carcassonne is better than the Catapult, but it's no Inns & Cathedrals."
"This is just like a deck building game, but instead of building a deck of cards, or a pool of dice like Quarriors, you build an army of miniatures. If you have time and space for a miniatures game, play this."
Rubin, should do podcast reviews that are 15 minutes of opening music, followed by one of those one sentences reviews, followed by 15 minutes of closing music.
Rubin, should do podcast reviews that are 15 minutes of opening music, followed by one of those one sentences reviews, followed by 15 minutes of closing music.
This right here is an excellent idea. Maybe a Youtube video with a long intro and outro, followed by a brief clip of Rubin saying "It sucks."
Comments
I haven't checked online reviews to see if I'm alone in this or other people feel the same way as I do.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5085
It was not witchy. Avoid.
http://frontrowcrew.com/geeknights/20110308/tales-of-the-arabian-nights/
This game makes me feel like a fool so far. I'm sure I'll start to get it eventually.
Also don't play against humans like you would the app because humans will usually try and bait you into bad moves or into conflicts that don't favour you.
I won one last night. It felt like I was in control a lot of the time. I initiated wars that I could win separating their kingdom in ways that benefited my war. There was still a revolt in which my powerful-feeling black leader got taken out trivially when I had no red in my hand.
I identify a region as being "mine" but it feels like that's a bad habit.
- After a wonderful segment from a contributor explaining how poor tournament design (using the old soccer examples) can lead to unexpected player behavior (and defending those players as playing to win, however strangely), host Tom completely contradicted the segment, saying the contributor was wrong, and that players should abide by the "spirit of the game," not play to win. Ready to throw my phone out of the car already.
- Co-host Eric then goes on to sharply criticize a very small publisher for having a game labeled 13 & up, when it is clearly suitable for younger children. I cannot fathom how he can be a host of such an influential show for so many years, and not understand some basic business principles of the toy and game industry. In this case, the fact that products must undergo rather expensive testing to be legally sold with certain age range labels. Small publishers often forego this, and just slap 13 & up on the box.
- Most egregiously, one of the contributors runs a segment where he reviews game stores around the country as he visits them during his day job business travel. Half of the segment on this episode was a massive correction, because Dice Tower had previously aired a long scathing review, throughout which he identified it as THE WRONG STORE.
I use Dice Tower as background noise. The Secret Cabal is rowdier background noise. Still the only places I know for 'people talking about tabletop game news in audio format', which is what I think Ro wanted.
Sadly, this is what most people want. There is an account on Twitter that leads a weekly discussion (@Boardgamehour), and yesterday's topic was media. The majority of people in that convo were saying, in so many words, that they want media to be fan service. They just want a bunch of cheerleaders to get them pumped up to go buy some new releases.
(If it could.)
1. Call out bad games as bad
2. Focus primarily an mechanics and ignore theme unless it stands out
3. Review games after only a few plays
I also was burned by Dice Tower. I gave them a few shots and then never looked at them again...
We self identify as board gamers and try to join the tabletop gaming community. Yet really we have almost nothing in common with others who do. That community has quite a few different groups within it that have very little in common. There are those who are consumption based, collecting games. There are those like us who are actually trying to win and interested in mechanics. There are those who are theme based and love Munchkin and any game with Zombies or Cthulhu on the box. And many more that I can't be bothered to type.
While any individual person is not be 100% entrenched into one bucket, I have never met someone who isn't mostly focused in one area. There might be someone who likes theme and also collects, but if you talk to them you can tell that one is more important to them than the other.
The fact is that the type of tabletop gamer that we are, the type of anime fan that we are, the type of geeks that we are, are among the less common varieties. And that is one of the things that GeekNights is for. We will probably never be huge because there are not a lot of people like us. But without here, where would us few be? Would we be feeling out of place on major sites like ANN or BGG forums? Would we be assimilated or converted to other groups? Would we be alone?
One other side problem that is somewhat specific to board gaming. Let's say I quit my job and made a high production value tabletop media empire for our kind of gamer. It would be bad. Even if I covered every single game that came out, it would be hella lame.
"This game is a worker placement with a space theme. Not even as good as Agricola. Ingore it."
"This is a drafting game that takes too long. Just play 7 Wonders."
"This new expansion for Carcassonne is better than the Catapult, but it's no Inns & Cathedrals."
"This is just like a deck building game, but instead of building a deck of cards, or a pool of dice like Quarriors, you build an army of miniatures. If you have time and space for a miniatures game, play this."
Yeah, you can have that genius idea for free.