Only specified Android big phone b/c that's what we used. Wasn't sure if the iOS app was iPad-only. Now that I look it up, it says it's available for iPhone as well. Go get your X-Com on. Just have one person be in charge of running the app. Everyone doesn't need to get their eyeballs and fingers in there.
A lazy weekend with a lot of new games (maybe too many new games):
First, we snuck in a few games at ScoJo's party; Spyfall is a clever social deduction game that I'll never be any good at. For me, there's too much "social" and not enough "system" compared to the borderliner games I'm more comfortable with, like Coup. (ie. "I can actually play this without having to read people")
The awkwardly-named Abraca... what? made for a good, lighthearted follow-up. The game uses the same "everyone can see your hand but you" mechanism as Hanabi, but turns it into a light, tactical deduction game with a fun theme. The deck has one 1, two 2s, three 3s, etc. Each number corresponds to a spell, but you have to cast blindly and hope that you actually have the fireball you're trying to throw at your friends. A given hand plays until someone dies or someone casts all of their spells, you tally up points, shuffle, and deal again. It's slightly more than just counting probabilities, because sometimes the writing is on the wall and you want to heal yourself so you can survive until the end of the round, and sometimes you need to bet on a long shot and try to summon the dragon.
Sunday, Anthony and I immediately followed up with a marathon run of two player games:
Cacao - Light tile-laying, actually quite enjoyable. Something about it is very satisfying even though the decisions are straightforward.
Isle of Trains - Revisiting the pay-with-cards mechanism from San Juan and Race for the Galaxy. Seems well done, and it's much more portable than San Juan/Race.
Valley of the Kings - Small-box deckbuilder with a tactical component. The early game felt very long, with a sudden transition to a similarly long late game. Really not sure about this one, worth another play.
Thurn and Taxis - I wasn't the biggest fan of this before, but I found myself enjoying it this time around. Maybe it was the two player game, and maybe it's because playing games with your SO is pleasant company, but they complemented each other well.
Finally, Anthony learned how to play Can't Stop, which we played twice. Can't Stop is still the best push-your-luck dice game I've ever played, despite being 30 years old.
On Sunday some friends and I got together and learned/played the Game of Thrones board game. It's a rather long game - it'll take a good hour to get through the rules if you haven't played before, and the game itself takes on the order of two hours, but it's solid - it's got Dune-esque combat mechanics and similar land-control objectives, but it doesn't have the formal diplomacy mechanics to make turns go faster. We played the five-player setup, which I think is slightly unbalanced in favor of the Baratheon and Tyrell sides, but at four or six players it's likely better. The rules are quite long and somewhat complicated (which means you can play the game wrong, and we had to reset the first turn because I read the rules and so noticed something the person who was supposed to be teaching us hadn't), so the first couple games will involve frequent trips back to the rulebook. I started as the Greyjoys, who are fairly luck-dependent (they can take a lot of land quickly, but are reliant on luck to actually consolidate it), but despite having pretty bad luck up until the last turn of the game I almost won thanks to very bad strategic decisions by the Lannister player. Would definitely play that again.
We also played Innovation, which has (as I believe has been mentioned previously) a spectacularly bad rulebook.
I saw some details about Viceroy when it was published in Russia. The card pyramid reminds me of Renaissance Man, another card game I've never played. Amazing box art, though:
I had a chance to play Viceroy a few weeks ago. It's quite good. I came second to a guy who owned it and had a chance to play it 5 times before me but I'd play it again in a snap.
On Sunday some friends and I got together and learned/played the Game of Thrones board game. It's a rather long game - it'll take a good hour to get through the rules if you haven't played before, and the game itself takes on the order of two hours, but it's solid - it's got Dune-esque combat mechanics and similar land-control objectives, but it doesn't have the formal diplomacy mechanics to make turns go faster. We played the five-player setup, which I think is slightly unbalanced in favor of the Baratheon and Tyrell sides, but at four or six players it's likely better. The rules are quite long and somewhat complicated (which means you can play the game wrong, and we had to reset the first turn because I read the rules and so noticed something the person who was supposed to be teaching us hadn't), so the first couple games will involve frequent trips back to the rulebook. I started as the Greyjoys, who are fairly luck-dependent (they can take a lot of land quickly, but are reliant on luck to actually consolidate it), but despite having pretty bad luck up until the last turn of the game I almost won thanks to very bad strategic decisions by the Lannister player. Would definitely play that again.
We also played Innovation, which has (as I believe has been mentioned previously) a spectacularly bad rulebook.
Next time if you get Greyjoys, force conflict easy as soon as possible, you can get a good stronghold and start destroying the Lannisters and pressure the Tyrells. Also bid for the sword dominance token and ally with someone high on the Kings Court track. If you are playing advanced players you can immediately start pressuring the Starks, I've taken Winterfell as Greyjoys by turn 5 or 6 by applying implied pressure on my first turn as Greyjoys.
I like the non-formal diplomacies as it there just comes a time when you need to stab someone in the back to grab the last 2 castles you need.
A game should take about 45 minutes or so if everyone or 5/6 people know the rules properly. Make sure to make sure the port rules are correct, I had that mess up in the first 2 games I played.
Each house also feels best with difference dominance tokens and track levels.
Game of Thrones is a really solid "dudes on a map" war game. I love the card battle system.
Caveats: Only play the second edition, which is the "complete" game - base plus the two expansions to complete the map of Westeros. Also: only play with 5, preferably 6 players. It is a shit 3 or 4 player game.
Am I missing something in the hate for Cryptozoic? The only game I've played by them is the PA Deckbuilder, and it was a pretty standard, fairly entertaining deckbuilder.
Am I missing something in the hate for Cryptozoic? The only game I've played by them is the PA Deckbuilder, and it was a pretty standard, fairly entertaining deckbuilder.
The closest I can come up with is that they are the LJN of board games. Always acquiring licenses to make average games.
I enjoy the PA deckbuilder, it's not a fantastic game though, and their other games are pretty hit or miss. None of them being that great. But yeah they're mostly about the licensing.
both were highly recommended to me by a friend whose taste I do not trust.
I have escape. It was enjoyable at first but gets kind of repetitive, I bought the big box edition which has lots of modules it isn't easy to combine as the depth of the deck and ratio of positive tiles to negative tiles really affects the balance. It's fun and I would recommend it just maybe borrow/second hand and only get the standard edition.
I haven't played Spyfall but I've heard good things about it.
The problem is that the publisher is supposed to do development work. A great publisher helps a quality design studio polish their product. Cryptozoic has exclusively published shit when you look at their in-house work. They have had some minor success taking outside designer's submissions.
Gravwell was their first good game in this area. Portal could be good or bad, but it'd be more likely to be good if it was with a publisher who'd help it be good, not just slap it in a box. Attack on Titan is being designed by Antoine Bauza and Ludovic Maublanc, so... holy crap that's a good team. But again it's all on their shoulders.
Am I missing something in the hate for Cryptozoic? The only game I've played by them is the PA Deckbuilder, and it was a pretty standard, fairly entertaining deckbuilder.
I have enjoyed most of the Cryptozoic games that I have played, but I do agree that they aren't very deep, and a lot of them feel the same (DC deck builder, Street Fighter deck builder and LotR deck builder all use the same mechanic for buying cards, and the same line up and have only a few variations from each other outside of theme, but I own all of them and enjoy them). They tend to get licenses (they are/were related to Blizzard) and then put out average games for them.
Played my first game of the Alchemists on Saturday. Absolutely great game with some really innovative mechanics. The whole mechanic of use an app to discover the alchemical formulas was great. While I didn't win the game, I took personal satisfaction in correctly figuring out the formulas to the various elements.
Has anyone played a lot of the "advanced" (flipside of the normal board) version of Tigris and Euphrates and if so what do you think of it for 2 and 3 players, any reason to play test this version more than the original? (I think this was introduced with the Mayfair games version)
Comments
First, we snuck in a few games at ScoJo's party; Spyfall is a clever social deduction game that I'll never be any good at. For me, there's too much "social" and not enough "system" compared to the borderliner games I'm more comfortable with, like Coup. (ie. "I can actually play this without having to read people")
The awkwardly-named Abraca... what? made for a good, lighthearted follow-up. The game uses the same "everyone can see your hand but you" mechanism as Hanabi, but turns it into a light, tactical deduction game with a fun theme. The deck has one 1, two 2s, three 3s, etc. Each number corresponds to a spell, but you have to cast blindly and hope that you actually have the fireball you're trying to throw at your friends. A given hand plays until someone dies or someone casts all of their spells, you tally up points, shuffle, and deal again. It's slightly more than just counting probabilities, because sometimes the writing is on the wall and you want to heal yourself so you can survive until the end of the round, and sometimes you need to bet on a long shot and try to summon the dragon.
Sunday, Anthony and I immediately followed up with a marathon run of two player games:
- Cacao - Light tile-laying, actually quite enjoyable. Something about it is very satisfying even though the decisions are straightforward.
- Isle of Trains - Revisiting the pay-with-cards mechanism from San Juan and Race for the Galaxy. Seems well done, and it's much more portable than San Juan/Race.
- Valley of the Kings - Small-box deckbuilder with a tactical component. The early game felt very long, with a sudden transition to a similarly long late game. Really not sure about this one, worth another play.
- Thurn and Taxis - I wasn't the biggest fan of this before, but I found myself enjoying it this time around. Maybe it was the two player game, and maybe it's because playing games with your SO is pleasant company, but they complemented each other well.
Finally, Anthony learned how to play Can't Stop, which we played twice. Can't Stop is still the best push-your-luck dice game I've ever played, despite being 30 years old.The rules are quite long and somewhat complicated (which means you can play the game wrong, and we had to reset the first turn because I read the rules and so noticed something the person who was supposed to be teaching us hadn't), so the first couple games will involve frequent trips back to the rulebook.
I started as the Greyjoys, who are fairly luck-dependent (they can take a lot of land quickly, but are reliant on luck to actually consolidate it), but despite having pretty bad luck up until the last turn of the game I almost won thanks to very bad strategic decisions by the Lannister player.
Would definitely play that again.
We also played Innovation, which has (as I believe has been mentioned previously) a spectacularly bad rulebook.
I played as House Baratheon. I won the game by round 6.
My friend again thought I'd played before but I hadn't.
That, and I can't help but be reminded of this guy every time I look at the cover:
If you are playing advanced players you can immediately start pressuring the Starks, I've taken Winterfell as Greyjoys by turn 5 or 6 by applying implied pressure on my first turn as Greyjoys.
I like the non-formal diplomacies as it there just comes a time when you need to stab someone in the back to grab the last 2 castles you need.
A game should take about 45 minutes or so if everyone or 5/6 people know the rules properly. Make sure to make sure the port rules are correct, I had that mess up in the first 2 games I played.
Each house also feels best with difference dominance tokens and track levels.
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&node=12027054011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=hero-quick-promo&pf_rd_r=0ZJT8CGNCC5A3FP33TGC&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=2152194702&pf_rd_i=0975277324&linkCode=sl2&tag=tomapa-20&linkId=3cf6ae53b16609a6d894669de90b2fd4
Escape
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/113294/escape-curse-temple
or with Spyfall
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/166384/spyfall
both were highly recommended to me by a friend whose taste I do not trust.
Caveats: Only play the second edition, which is the "complete" game - base plus the two expansions to complete the map of Westeros. Also: only play with 5, preferably 6 players. It is a shit 3 or 4 player game.
Bad news: It's made by Cryptozoic
Apparently they're also making some weird Attack on Titan board game too.
Correction: I guess Cryptozoic is mostly only publishing it.
I haven't played Spyfall but I've heard good things about it.
Gravwell was their first good game in this area. Portal could be good or bad, but it'd be more likely to be good if it was with a publisher who'd help it be good, not just slap it in a box. Attack on Titan is being designed by Antoine Bauza and Ludovic Maublanc, so... holy crap that's a good team. But again it's all on their shoulders.
(I think this was introduced with the Mayfair games version)