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Thread: Indulgence:: General:: New microbadge available


Reply: Risk Legacy:: General:: Re: Can this be played with the "no limit on number of attacking soldiers"-home rule?

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by iswearihaveajob

Faithtoken wrote:

Is that the official rules?


Page 11 in the R:L rulebook, under "If defender still has troops in the territory"

Reply: SeaFall:: Reviews:: Re: Seafall Review: No Spoilers, 7 Games in, 4 Players

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by Lowden025

DaviddesJ wrote:

I like M&M and like the legacy idea but I don't particularly like SeaFall. I feel that M&M did a much better job with careful development and rules writing. It's more clear and more balanced.


David, I see you currently rate SeaFall a "9". Has that changed?

Reply: Risk Legacy:: General:: Re: Can this be played with the "no limit on number of attacking soldiers"-home rule?

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by klurejr

Faithtoken wrote:

That each roll of the dice is its own separate battle.


Yep! Makes no difference how many troops you have in the starting territory, the battle is technically happening on the border, you are only committing troops for each dice roll.

Reply: Heroscape Master Set: Rise of the Valkyrie:: General:: Re: Join "the League of Extraordinary Heroscapers"! A society for venerable elderly ´Scapers

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by jtspecial

Hi guys!
I write this with blurred vision from total sugar rush... You know I have a weekly, Thursday night game group, and each year, just before Christmas we have a cake,cookie, and candy orgy, where everybody brings something, and we just pile it all on the table... Tonight we played Shadows over Camelot, an old favourite of many of the regulars, and the loyal knights won a narrow, but decisive victory, when I, aherm, made a brilliant counter to the traitor's desperate last chance move to grasp a victory... Good times...:)

Reply: SeaFall:: Sessions:: Re: Game 5 (Box 3 unlocked) [spoilers tagged]

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by lactamaeon

Having been in the Prince position for five straight games (plus the prologue!) I totally understand your desire to back off and let someone else have a turn.

Your Lord seems likely to achieve an early win next time based on the spoiler stuff, which is probably going to feel well-earned.

Nice report!

Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Sessions:: Re: August Playthrough -- Toledo Tuesdays Gaming Club [spoilers]

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by rmsgrey

chiefsachem wrote:

rmsgrey wrote:

One small point: the July win bonus is intended to only give you one new military base (but makes it permanent) - the reason it says to place a building as well as the sticker is that by the time you apply the bonus (step 9 of setup) you've already passed the step of placing starting structures (way back in step 2) so if it just gave you the sticker, you wouldn't have a military base there that game...



Good point. We spent a lot of time quibbling on that small detail and finally agreed that the bonus only applied to one military structure.

On a similar note, were there any bonuses between Jan and August that permitted you to build a research station anywhere on the board, including rioting cities?

We noticed in August that one of our rioting city still had a research station on it. We can't remember for the life of us if there was a previous bonus action that allowed us to override this restriction. Half of us said yes, the other two players said no.

We couldn't check our bonus cards to verify because they wee all destroyed during the course of the season.


There's a piece of equipment that lets you put up a temporary Research Station on any city, but there's nothing else that comes to mind that lets you put a Research Station in a Rioting (or higher) city - and definitely no way (through August) to have a starting Research Station in a rioting city.

Thread: SeaFall:: Rules:: Rule # 10

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by Windship2Mars

[o]you may only hire society advisors if you Have a ship at arados....So how do I know they are society advisors?[/o]

Reply: SeaFall:: Rules:: Re: Rule # 10

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by reshurc

[o]Uh, they are grey back with a nifty symbol on them that have numbers printed on them that you don't use the Light of Truth on.[/o]

Reply: SeaFall:: Rules:: Re: Rule # 10

Thread: SeaFall:: General:: In defense of "slow" turns.

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by dcwoodbury

Each turn of Seafall is a puzzle if you want it to be.
The decision tree is nominally: pick 1 (treasure/adviser/nothing), pick 1(adviser choice), pick 1 (soldier/merchant/explorer/builder), pick 2 in order (three available actions)

Buy and sail, how hard is that? Use that lady that gives a buy discount. She's right there in your council room.
Sail and tax, even easier.

My decision tree is more typically:
What milestone (or other glory chunk) should I be trying for?
What is my plan for fulfilling that milestone? [Review my position/golds/goods/buildings/upgrades as well as the available goods/buildings/upgrades/treasures]
Based on what other people are doing, how many turns to do I have to complete my plan? [Review everyone else's advisers/position/golds/goods/buildings/upgrades/treasures/glory track/other available milestones]
Can someone impede that plan via raiding or buying something if they see what I am trying to do?
[Review everyone else's ship position, permanent upgrades, etc.]
Can I speed up that plan with an available adviser, either used this turn or a couple turns later? OR Can I slow down someone else's play for the milestone by taking an adviser that would help them? OR Can I take the adviser that someone could use to stop me?
[review the 5 available advisers].

I'd guess that this is part of why going from 4 to 5 players stretches downtime so much. The combined complexity of my opponents' positions determines how hard it is to figure out what to do.

I'm working on those questions all game long, constantly updating the plan and how many turns I have to complete it. Sometimes these questions can all be answered before my turn starts, but that's typically only true if the turns before mine have gone slowly, if I can't afford advisers, or if no advisers were bought. If the previous couple turns were under 30 seconds, like (buy adviser, sail, tax) or (buy adviser, repair, sail), then just the change in the adviser state (who bought what, what's now available?) can be enough to make me reconsider a fair amount, especially if the advisers that have shown up are brand new.

Even after all that, I'll have to go through the "active" part of my turn, potentially figuring out my dice, rolling them to see what happened, taking damage or flipping upgrades, possibly reading the book.
[o]Plus: which research I should use, do I get to pull an uncharted waters card, am I picking a room in a tomb, should I use relic or tablet, should I pay a rep to use a region power[/o]

God forbid I have an Observatory. Or a Library. Or the Foreman. Or the Wise appellation. Or the GUILD HALL.

Each of these decisions can take milliseconds or seconds or longer if a couple particularly delicious advisers pop up. Regardless, the time adds up and if I'm not regularly considering these things I'm missing out on milestones, and throwing away points.
I guess you can call this AP, but without this analysis the game seems mostly about racing to the nearest/best explore site, being bolder/luckier than the next player, and seeing what the dice and booke say. A lot of people seem to enjoy that game. Probably some of the people at your table will. They might question why your turn that ended up consisting of [Sail, Sell 2 goods] took 3 minutes. They won't question why the researching, exploring, dice-rolling, damage-applying, booke-reading, rules-reading, FAQ-searching turn took 10 minutes.

Chess isn't typically played quickly. But there is speed chess and blitz chess and tournament chess, all with timed turns. Games are over quickly, you can learn from your mistakes and play again. Seafall is not going to be over quickly. You can learn from some general mistakes, but most of the game states are unique and it will be many months before you can feasibly play a new game of Seafall again. Don't rush your turns, especially your early ones. Unless you're going first in a game, there will be significant paths for you that open or close on turn one, based on who buys which building, raids which dock, hires which advisers. Try to have a set of possible openings planned out prior to the game starting, but be open to an unexpected adviser/event combo that could lead to an early advantage.

Reply: SeaFall:: Rules:: Re: Rule # 10

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by GregF

[o]Patmos advisors were in box 4 and have the octopus icon instead of a reputation cost. Public society members were in box 5 and have the Society icon instead of a reputation cost. (Rule 10 doesn't apply to advisors who are secretly Society members.[/o]

Reply: SeaFall:: Rules:: Re: Rule # 10

Obligatory “What I Played In…” Post Part XVII: November 2016

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by Aaron Rohrer

This post was originally written on my blog "Late To The Table..." on December 8th, 2016 and can be found in it's original (including the original pictures) at the following link:

http://alittlelatetothetable.blogspot.com/2016/12/obligatory...

What follows is the text of the post:

And we’re back with another of my “What I Played In…” series. This one will be the games that we played and obtained in November. This was a pretty light month in the way of total number of games played but we played a fair amount of longer games. It’s all good though…any games played are fun for us! Okay, on to the statistics and then to the plays!

Statistics:
Total plays in November 2016 – 22
Total unique games played in November 2016 – 14
New games played in November 2016 – 3
New games acquired in November 2016 – 1
New expansions acquired in November 2016 – 1
Most plays of a single game in November 2016 – 3

Mechs Vs. Minions

Designer – Stone Librande/Chris Cantrell/Rick Ernst/Prashant Saraswat/Nathan Tiras
Publisher – Riot Games
Last play before November 2016 – 10/28/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 3

Em and I got in three more plays of this wonderfully produced and super-fun co-operative, programming game this past month. This game was announced so quickly and they did such an incredible job with the production of it that it was easy for me to pull the trigger when it went up for order. I am so glad that I decided to get the game as it has been an absolutely amazing game and my wife and I have loved every minute of it. If you have the money or are able to play a copy then I’d highly recommend you do so as the game is great!

Roll Player

Designer – Keith Matejka
Publisher – Thunderworks Games
New to me
First play – 11/7/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 3

We have had this game on pre-order for quite a while and it finally made it to us earlier this month! This is a really fun dice-rolling and dice-placement game where you are acting as though you are rolling up an RPG character. I love all of the classic fantasy tropes that are in this game. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who just wants a good dice-placement game…you don’t even have to care about RPG’s…although that does help!

Ticket to Ride

Designer – Alan R. Moon
Publisher – Days of Wonder
Last play before November 2016 – 10/26/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 3

We got in another three plays of Ticket to Ride this past month and one of them we were even able to teach Em’s sister Molly how to play. It was a blast and she really enjoyed it! We still love this game and it is one that won’t ever leave the collection. This month we played on the Pennsylvania, Switzerland, and India maps. We have almost 30 plays of this game this year and I expect we’ll get at least 2 more before the end of the year!

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords

Designer – Mike Selinker/Chad Brown/Tanis O’Connor/Paul Peterson/Gaby Weidling
Publisher – Paizo Publishing
Last play before November 2016 – 9/5/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 2

Em and I got in a couple more plays of this one with the Sins of the Saviors adventure deck. We are almost done with this box then we’ll probably move on to the Skull & Shackles box and have fun slowly working our way through that one!

SeaFall

Designer – Rob Daviau
Publisher – Plaid Hat Games
Last play before November 2016 – 10/31/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 2

Em, Josh and I got in two plays of this fun Legacy game with past month. This game has just been an absolute blast! I still think I prefer Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 if I were pressed into choosing one over the other…but that being said, this is an awesome experience!

7 Wonders: Duel (w/ Pantheon)

Designer – Antoine Bauza/Bruno Cathala
Publisher – Repos Production
Last play before November 2016 – 10/5/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

We got in a play of this two-player gem with past month with our new copy of the expansion, Pantheon. Wow, this expansion is awesome! It does exactly the type of thing I love for expansions to do. It brings in some new cards, some slight tweaks to the game, and some great new art! These things make this an awesome expansion for those who love the game as it gives just enough new decision points to make the game feel totally fresh. This is a great game and I would also highly recommend the expansion for those who like it.

Eldritch Horror

Designer – Corey Konieczka/Nikki Valens
Publisher – Fantasy Flight Games
New to me
First play – 11/4/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

Josh taught me and a few other guys this game this past month. I was pretty pumped to try it out as I always thought that I would enjoy it. I was right! This game was very enjoyable as we fought against Cthulhu and just barely kept him from rising from the deeps. It was an incredibly thematic experience and we walked away from it with some cool memories of some of the games happenings. I look forward to more plays of this one.

Exoplanets

Designer – Przemysław Świerczyński
Publisher – Board&Dice/Greater Than Games/Fabled Nexus
Last play before November 2016 – 10/5/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

Em and I got this in a trade for Medieval Academy and man do I ever think we got the better end of this deal! We are really enjoying this simple-to-teach but rich-in-decision game! I also love the “curb appeal” of this game and it just looks great on the table as you are playing. I want to teach a couple other people this game as I think it’d go over really well!

Guilds of London

Designer – Tony Boydell
Publisher – Tasty Minstrel Games
Last play before November 2016 – 9/20/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

We got in a single play of this game and it made me really happy! This game combines so many different things I love in games! It is a card game, has multi-use cards, uses combos effectively, and has a large decision set…all I which I completely adore! I don’t think Em is as thrilled about this game as I am but hopefully she’ll come around to it eventually!

Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King

Designer – Alexander Pfister/Andreas Pelikan
Publisher – Lookout Games/Mayfair Games
Last play before November 2016 – 8/5/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

We got in a single play of this Kennerspiel des Jahres winner this past month. This is one of those games that I think everyone should try. It has a very simple rule set but comes chock full of some interesting choices which is why I love the game so much. Pfister is on a roll and I am really looking forward to what his plans are for the coming years.

Lords of Waterdeep (w/ Scoundrels of Skullport)

Designer – Peter Lee/Rodney Thompson
Publisher – Wizards of the Coast
New to me
First play – 11/24/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

Josh came over for Thanksgiving to hang out with Em and I, eat some delicious food, and play some fun games! One of the games he brought along was this well received worker-placement game. Man, I really enjoyed this one! Worker-placement is actually one of my favorite game mechanisms and this game does it really well! I would highly recommend this one and think it would be easy to teach anyone who is used to games.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Designer – Chuck D. Yager/Matt Leacock
Publisher – Z-Man Games
Last play before November 2016 – 10/30/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

This was the second month in a row that we taught some friends this game! I guess this is becoming our go-to, gateway-ish, co-operative game to teach to friends! I have no qualms about that previous statement! This game is totally great and a wonderful, thematic experience. I think that Yager did a great job in making this game feel like the original Pandemic but also create an entirely new experience! Oh, and on a side note, this was our third loss in a row…on our last card draw! Brutal!

Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

Designer – Ignacy Trzewiczek
Publisher – Portal Games
Last play before November 2016 – 3/28/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

It had been a while since we’d played this game so we pulled it out and taught Molly one night when she came over. She really enjoyed it and wants to play again sometime soon with Dustin. I still really enjoy this game…it is just simple, raucous fun!

Rolling America

Designer – Hisashi Hayashi
Publisher – Gamewright
Last play before November 2016 – 5/30/16
Total plays in November 2016 – 1

Em and I wanted something really quick to end a night and I found this one in our cabinet of smaller games. We hadn’t played this fun little multiplayer solitaire dice roller in a while and so we decided to pull it out. We both had excellent plays but I ended up winning with my best score ever!

New game acquisitions in November 2016:
Roll Player

New expansion acquisitions in November 2016:
7 Wonders: Duel: Pantheon

And there you have it everyone, our plays during the month of November. Again, it was a light month but I don’t regret it as we were really able to get some quality plays during the month. I’m probably going to work on our top 10 lists next which will be really fun. After that I’m going to make my “End of 2016” series. As always, thanks so much for reading! Until next time, game on!

Reply: SeaFall:: General:: Re: In defense of "slow" turns.

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by Osuniev

Hey, sure. I'd say : enjoy the ride, don't fret too much, pick one option that seems good and roll with it. Sure you might be losing on some points, but the campaign will be over 200 points, and if you fall behind there are catch up mechanisms.

Unlike chess, this game has really high (luck-related) variance, so spending 10 minutes instead of 1 to figure out what to do during your turn will only bring you a small advantage.

Reply: SeaFall:: General:: Re: In defense of "slow" turns.

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by lactamaeon

@Osuniev You played 2-player, right? I think there's a lot more reason to think sometimes in 5-player. For one, more things can change between your turns.

@OP, I do most of my "planning" before the game even starts. I've often mapped out several possible sources of glory and their distances apart, etc, so I have a pretty good idea of which things I might be interested in pursuing. That way, if the right advisor pops up at the right time (or event card, or whatever) I'm able to shift gears easily. Likewise, if some terrible confluence of events happens I have a decent idea of what to do next.

(I take pictures of all the boards and player carryover stuff and share it with my group to make this sort of thing easier).

Thread: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: November/Box 7 Question (Spoilers)

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by AggroMD

Does the objective "Vaccinate 6 Faded Cities" mean that all 6 Faded cities need to be vaccinated in the same game, or that a total of 6 Faded cities need to have vaccine stickers?

If it's the former, I'm kinda bummed out that we vaccinated a few Faded cities in October, since we could've saved them and made our lives easier in November.

Reply: SeaFall:: Sessions:: Re: Game 5 (Box 3 unlocked) [spoilers tagged]

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by Dustinjjohnson

It's great you've been willing to shoulder so much of the work chronicling the campaign. Thank you.

My apologies if I seemed manipulative when we discussed the resolution of the damage to your ship. You had acknowledged your defeat gracefully once I rolled, and without you drawing the damage cards it was unclear how much emnity you were expecting me to pay for it. Top marks for sportsmanship, by the way.

I'm not sure how I feel about not having the lead to get those bonuses. Being the prince did hurt the most when easy milestones came out as both Eric and I can attest, but I've tried to focus on the big picture of campaign glory total. I'd like to see the spread among the players shrink overall to keep myself from being too big of a target, but most of us have acknowledged the tension keeps rising game to game. As it was at the end of last game the rest of the table wanted me to take Eric's glory through a ship raid to extend the game, but emnity and my colonial ambitions ruled it out.

Unless you're counting the mistreatment of the natives, Eric and I by far have the bloodiest hands. I'm excited to see what the game will feel like if more of us start playing in a more cut throat fashion.

Reply: SeaFall:: General:: Re: In defense of "slow" turns.

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by countertorque

I tend to be the slowest in my group. It's work for me to think more than 1 turn ahead in any game I play. In Seafall, it seems like playing well depends on planning 2-3 turns ahead. And the game state changes significantly every turn. Just because there's a lot of dice doesn't mean that a good plan is worthless. In fact, I find the number of dice makes it more essential to have a good plan with a couple of branches. If I'm not going to try my hardest to win, why am I playing?

One thing that does confuse me though is people who complain about reading the Booke as downtime. If listening to the new stuff is so boring that you'd literally prefer it never happened, I think you're playing the wrong game.

Reply: SeaFall:: General:: Re: How mant winters do you get?

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by jonsonite

Our games rarely go to the first winter after setup. We just finished game 10, I think, and of our last 5 games only one made it that far. Typical length: 5-6 turns.

It's pretty frustrating.
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