Commands & Colors: Ancients is the best implementation of Richard Borg's card-driven hex wargame system. I'd give it a solid recommendation.
The others I don't know enough to say anything about (they don't appeal to me right away), other than I have heard the "Kemet is better than Cyclades" enough times to believe it.
I'm going to guess that your friend exclusively plays dudes on a map style games.
Actually, no. His favorites are Power grid and Race for the galaxy (but he refuses to let me teach him Puerto Rico because, as I said, he has no taste).
Trains has 30 "kingdom cards" in the box and you play with 8 of them every game. Dominion's greatest strength is that there are 200+ unique kingdom cards and you only play with 10 of them every game. Of course, that's after you add all the expansions.
Dominion is (still) my favorite deckbuilder, so take this with a grain of salt. As a 2 player game, I'll pick Dominion every time. As a 4 player game, it's a wash.
See, I'd rather play Trains over Dominion, because the board gives you something beyond just "Putting the 5+ point cards in your deck."
If you added a territory control aspect to Dominion I'd might be more interested in the game.
Trains has 30 "kingdom cards" in the box and you play with 8 of them every game. Dominion's greatest strength is that there are 200+ unique kingdom cards and you only play with 10 of them every game. Of course, that's after you add all the expansions.
Dominion is (still) my favorite deckbuilder, so take this with a grain of salt. As a 2 player game, I'll pick Dominion every time. As a 4 player game, it's a wash.
See, I'd rather play Trains over Dominion, because the board gives you something beyond just "Putting the 5+ point cards in your deck."
If you added a territory control aspect to Dominion I'd might be more interested in the game.
If you like deck building games, you should check out Core Worlds. It's a deck builder with actual theme (sci fi), amazing artwork, and a tableau where you play your forces to the board and leave them there until you use them, thereby thinning out your deck temporarily, and allowing you to build up massive armadas to conquor planets. Highly recommended and probably my favorite deck builder out there, especially with the expansion which adds a whole new element to the game.
If you like deck building games, you should check out Core Worlds. It's a deck builder with actual theme (sci fi), amazing artwork, and a tableau where you play your forces to the board and leave them there until you use them, thereby thinning out your deck temporarily, and allowing you to build up massive armadas to conquor planets. Highly recommended and probably my favorite deck builder out there, especially with the expansion which adds a whole new element to the game.
I've played Core Worlds and it's a decent enough game. I prefer Eminent Domain and Eclipse though. Core Worlds by comparison has a lot more fiddly bits that don't neccessarily make the game better, just longer.
I wouldn't mind playing it again at some point, but compared to EmDo and Eclipse it doesn't really grab me the same way.
I am in the same exact place as Jeremy. I've only played Core Worlds twice (one sitting) and it's one of the very rare instances where I disagree with Rym on a game. It was so long ago that I cannot even remember why, and now I want to play it again just to remember!
Rym played it once and with the expansion which I've heard actually makes the game worse. So he's not exactly educated on his experience :-p If you count one play as understanding a game....
Rym played it once and with the expansion which I've heard actually makes the game worse. So he's not exactly educated on his experience :-p If you count one play as understanding a game....
So he has more experience than a politician but less than a scientist?
Rym played it once and with the expansion which I've heard actually makes the game worse. So he's not exactly educated on his experience :-p If you count one play as understanding a game....
I read the rules for the base game. It's a boring, simple game in my opinion.
The expansion, however, adds computationally-annoying cruft atop that.
Rym played it once and with the expansion which I've heard actually makes the game worse. So he's not exactly educated on his experience :-p If you count one play as understanding a game....
I read the rules for the base game. It's a boring, simple game in my opinion.
The expansion, however, adds computationally-annoying cruft atop that.
Or, put another way, interesting and meaningful choices, but six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I can't speak to the particular game, but that isn't necessarily the case.
Suppose you have a game with two strategies: A and B. Furthermore, suppose that at first blush, they appear to yield approximately equal chances to win.
However, these strategies are not exactly equivalent. Perhaps A gives you a 52% chance to win. However, to discern this edge, you would have to calculate 100 digits of pi in your head. Possible? Yes. Worth it? Perhaps another matter entirely. Fuck that game? Maybe.
I don't know the circumstances under which Rym played the game so I can't speak to that, but I'm not even that good at math, besides basic stuff, and I have no trouble figuring out Core Worlds.
On a separate but somewhat related topic, it would be interesting to me to know, when Rym and Scott review a game, what are the conditions they're playing it under. Is it late at night and they're just playing it for the first time? Are they at a convention and have never played the game before? Are they reading the rules as they explain it or is there someone else there teaching the game?
All of these things could have an impact on someone's level of enjoyment. If I'm playing a game for the first time at a con, with a room full of people all around me talking loudly, and it's late at night, and I've never played the game before and I've never even read the rules, my impression of the game might be very different than if I was playing it at a friend's house, with him or her teaching me it, when it's not late at night. Again, I don't know under what conditions Rym played the game, but I think that is information that is important when reviewing a game, especially if I've never played it before.
As someone who has reviewed a ton of games, I can say it's likely that you are very much able to separate your impressions of a game from the circumstances in which you play it. This would normally not be the case, but when you go into every game knowing you will have to pull together your thoughts on it later, you just think differently. Forming an opinion does take some thought, and perhaps consulting the rules, at a later date.
As for that part about playing a game at the same time as reading the rules for the first time: never do that. You do it once, and you learn to never, ever do it again. I don't care how excited you are about your new game. Let's play something we have read the rules to already.
I'm pretty confident that I can review most tabletop games from a single reading of the rules alone at this point, and I would stand by a review made under such circumstances. Playing is mostly an exercise in confirmation.
I'm pretty confident that I can review most tabletop games from a single reading of the rules alone at this point, and I would stand by a review made under such circumstances. Playing is mostly an exercise in confirmation.
I'm pretty confident that I can review most tabletop games from a single reading of the rules alone at this point, and I would stand by a review made under such circumstances. Playing is mostly an exercise in confirmation.
Cribbage? Hearts?
What did you think about that Tichu game I sent you ;>)
I'm pretty confident that I can review most tabletop games from a single reading of the rules alone at this point, and I would stand by a review made under such circumstances. Playing is mostly an exercise in confirmation.
I think you should explain this theory to Luke Crane. I'd love to hear the following discussion. :P
It's a huge point of contention among the board game review crowd. I'm sure RPGs would be a much different discussion.
When I was doing the Boardroomers google hangout show, we had Tom Vasel on to debate the number of plays required to properly play a game. It got pretty heated. He was in the "0-1" camp, while others were claiming "3+" was required.
I'll be straight up here and say I was a pretty shitty board game reviewer, but I did try to play games 1-2 times before writing something up. MTV had me on assignment to post a full review every Friday afternoon, and after a while it just becomes impossible to have played a brand new game multiple times with different groups, EVERY WEEK. Didn't help that I had to write to a more casual audience, either, but I quickly learned to write reviews off of one, and occasionally zero, plays. It's not as crazy as it sounds. Once you've dissected a large number of games, you can easily pick out the distinctive features.
The one thing I would gain the most from multiple plays with varying groups was length feel. I could make my own assessment on the obviousness or complexity of in-game decisions, but I wasn't always the best estimate how others would approach the decisions. It was good to see which games turned into a slog with which groups.
Most of the work in reviewing was slicing hard between "is this game a B, a B-, a C+, etc." The true best games ALWAYS stood straight out, making the rest of the reviewing work feel a bit silly. With so many games and so little time, it was hard to not write "if it's not a A game, you might as well call it shit and avoid it. Only play the best."
I like Suburbia. I might even like it a lot! But I dunno about buying a whole organizer for it... even though it needs one, and it would be super useful.
Comments
The others I don't know enough to say anything about (they don't appeal to me right away), other than I have heard the "Kemet is better than Cyclades" enough times to believe it.
Also, to clarify, kemet is cyclades 2. Same rule set, but refined details and more stuff.
If you added a territory control aspect to Dominion I'd might be more interested in the game.
I wouldn't mind playing it again at some point, but compared to EmDo and Eclipse it doesn't really grab me the same way.
http://frontrowcrew.com/geeknights/20130108/magfest-11-and-three-board-games/
Also have never touched Eminent Domain.
The expansion, however, adds computationally-annoying cruft atop that.
Suppose you have a game with two strategies: A and B. Furthermore, suppose that at first blush, they appear to yield approximately equal chances to win.
However, these strategies are not exactly equivalent. Perhaps A gives you a 52% chance to win. However, to discern this edge, you would have to calculate 100 digits of pi in your head. Possible? Yes. Worth it? Perhaps another matter entirely. Fuck that game? Maybe.
I suspect this is what Rym is getting at.
On a separate but somewhat related topic, it would be interesting to me to know, when Rym and Scott review a game, what are the conditions they're playing it under. Is it late at night and they're just playing it for the first time? Are they at a convention and have never played the game before? Are they reading the rules as they explain it or is there someone else there teaching the game?
All of these things could have an impact on someone's level of enjoyment. If I'm playing a game for the first time at a con, with a room full of people all around me talking loudly, and it's late at night, and I've never played the game before and I've never even read the rules, my impression of the game might be very different than if I was playing it at a friend's house, with him or her teaching me it, when it's not late at night. Again, I don't know under what conditions Rym played the game, but I think that is information that is important when reviewing a game, especially if I've never played it before.
As for that part about playing a game at the same time as reading the rules for the first time: never do that. You do it once, and you learn to never, ever do it again. I don't care how excited you are about your new game. Let's play something we have read the rules to already.
Hearts?
When I was doing the Boardroomers google hangout show, we had Tom Vasel on to debate the number of plays required to properly play a game. It got pretty heated. He was in the "0-1" camp, while others were claiming "3+" was required.
I'll be straight up here and say I was a pretty shitty board game reviewer, but I did try to play games 1-2 times before writing something up. MTV had me on assignment to post a full review every Friday afternoon, and after a while it just becomes impossible to have played a brand new game multiple times with different groups, EVERY WEEK. Didn't help that I had to write to a more casual audience, either, but I quickly learned to write reviews off of one, and occasionally zero, plays. It's not as crazy as it sounds. Once you've dissected a large number of games, you can easily pick out the distinctive features.
The one thing I would gain the most from multiple plays with varying groups was length feel. I could make my own assessment on the obviousness or complexity of in-game decisions, but I wasn't always the best estimate how others would approach the decisions. It was good to see which games turned into a slog with which groups.
Most of the work in reviewing was slicing hard between "is this game a B, a B-, a C+, etc." The true best games ALWAYS stood straight out, making the rest of the reviewing work feel a bit silly. With so many games and so little time, it was hard to not write "if it's not a A game, you might as well call it shit and avoid it. Only play the best."
In hindsight I should have just done that.
10 plays - suggest strategy
http://www.thebrokentoken.com/
We've only purchased the DnDeeples for Lords Of Waterdeep so far. We are trying to just stick with that. FOR NOW