Got a very nice Go set for Christmas. Played a match with my wife and the Yunzu stones are very striking.
My brother got me a copy of Imperial Settlers, looking forward to playing that eventually when the ol’ revolving door settles back in.
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Oh hey, I played Tokaido yesterday while waiting for the rest of the D&D group to assemble. Nice game! The art and components are lovely, and I guess as far as set collection goes I don’t hate it. Need to work on my strategies, though.
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I’ve definitely "I promise this will be fun"d with heavy games like Argent: the Consortium but only when teaching to people who are extremely bad at learning the rules of a game and I have to repeat myself like 40 times in an hour for every single rule
I do worry when I am teaching less patient people how to play a heavier game, but for the most part I am pretty lucky to have people that bear with me and all the mistakes that I make in teaching a game.
My brother and me got together to learn Panamax, it took almost an hour just to get everything down and we even didn’t get a chance to actually play it but we watched Rhado just to make sure we smoothed everything out before we do play it. I am a very patient person but my brother was starting to get frustrated by how long it was taking to sort out the rules. I didn’t bust out the “promise it will be fun” deal as he is a fellow board gamer, but I did say we will be glad we did all this preparation before we get down to the trading business of this here canal.
Jaipur’s pretty fun, and pretty, but I don’t think there’s much depth there.
Reading about Race For The Galaxy, it almost sounds like a stripped-down take on Twilight Imperium 3E. Y/N?
other way around, kind of. The strategy phase of TI3 is kind of just taking the San Juan mechanics and putting them into a bigger game (OK so the designer notes say that TI3’s taking the mechanic from Citadels but Citadels doesn’t have the role sharing thing at all). Race for the Galaxy and San Juan kind of have a shared design ancestor from Tom Lehmann.
Aside from theme and the role/strategy selection mechanic, there’s not a significant amount of resemblance.
Jaipur is about as deep as a 15 minute game can get: IE not very deep even with card counting but satisfying as a way to pass time playing a 15 minute game.
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Yeah, that’s about right! I like it. Not much to say.
Thanks for the pedigree lesson, too. Gonna look up San Juan next, I guess!
San Juan is kind of a historical artifact. It’s a good game but Race for the Galaxy all but replaces it unless you are for some reason very attached to the Caribbean Island theme.
If you want to try out RftG, http://www.keldon.net/rftg/ is a good way to do so. Just a warning: though simplistic, the AI’s strategy is generally very effective. I’ve actually picked up a few key tactics from watching the AI.
There’s also Roll for the Galaxy, which is a kind of dice based re-implementation of Race. I’ve only played it once but it is interesting and different enough that it may be worth checking out.
fair warning that if like me you super dislike “discard two things to do one” mechanics like me you will not love it, and it’s pretty dry (overbalanced if anything) despite the good setting
I love the multi-use cards in Race for the Galaxy and other role selection games (lol I have a semi-finished draft of a Souls esque combat system that uses multi use cards: your hand is your stamina gauge AND the moves you can do)
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noooooooooooooooooooooo
vlaada has never used this mechanic so I feel like I can justify my general feeling that it’s not fun
I’m down on role selection and worker placement these days in general
it’s just resource allocation. You have to spend a civil action AND food in order to get another worker in Through the Ages. Vlaada has thus used that mechanic
(vlaada also has had TWO(three if we’re also counting through the ages as a WP) worker placement games)
edit: @Felix did your most recent food chain magnate thread get eaten? I have the free time to do that now.
further edit: I can understand being down on WP if all you ever play is Uwe Rosenberg games. A Feast For Odin looks like the most boring inventory tetris
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I agree with this 100%. No interest in this game.
I picked up a copy of Kingsburg and it was a huge hit with a group of buds that I play games with from time to time but not my core group. When I get together with my usual play group we have been playing Blood Rage and Inis. Inis was very impressive, I don’t know if I would say it is better than Blood Rage but it is damn close and super interesting.
My wife is very interested in playing TIME Stories, so I pickup up a copy to give that a whirl. Has anyone played TIME Stories? I am excited but I have heard very mixed reviews on it.
can you say more about inis??
I was pretty disappointed in kemet and it’s more $$$ than I expected but I’m still interested in that…
also I will recreate my “play FCM online” thread pretty soon
I only played the first mission. I had fun with it, but I was glad I got to play someone else’s copy rather than buying the game myself. It’s quite an investment for something you can’t play twice (without buying more modules).
I got to play Scythe for the third time the other night. I’m still enjoying it and would like to try a 5+ player game at some point to see how that goes.
Soooo Inis. Where to start…
Inis is a very tightly designed area control game with multiple victory conditions. The board expands as you play the game.
First mechanic to talk about is the drafting system. All of the actions you do in Inis are determined by the action cards that you draft. Whether you are able to move, attack, resupply clans, or build buildings is dependent on the cards that you draft that allow you do said actions. The drafting is very tight, you get 4 cards after everything is said and done from a pool of 13 if you are playing 3 player and 17 if you are playing with 4. (You become quickly and very acquainted with the cards that are being drafted. How you draft is also a bit different: Instead of drafting a card at a time until you have 4, you pick a card and then when cards are passed you reintroduce the chosen card into the hand and then pick 2. So you are not locked into any decision and can pivot as the draft continues.
All of this means is that the drafting is very enjoyable and makes it very fun to try and peer into the minds of your opponents and suspect what the heck their decisions are going to be. Hate drafting, passing signals and board presence makes drafting in this game just awesome.
After that, you play out your round. All actions are done with the cards, and if you play a card that moves your clans into a territory with enemy clans present, you initiate a battle or “clash” as it is called in this game. Battling is great, no dice! No variance! You simply choose an opponent to attack, and they choose to either remove a clan piece from the territory or discard one of their precious action cards. Then the opponent gets to do the same. You keep going until everyone agrees to end the clash or there is only one players clans present in the territory.
Once a victory condition is met, you spend a turn claiming a “pretender” token and if you make it to the end of the round with one or more of the victory conditions, you win!
Victory Conditions…
Have at least one clan in six territories.
Have control over a total of six enemy clans. (You have more clans in a territory than your opponents, thus becoming Chief of that territory over your opponents clans.)
Have control over six Sanctuaries.
I am omitting some rules but there are not a lot of rules to learn here. The game is all about how you draft and deny certain actions for yourself and other players and then creatively move your clans about. It is a fantastic puzzle with a great take on drafting. Super interactive as well obviously being area control.
When you want a very direct and tight drafting/area control game, I recommend Blood Rage. If you want the more wacky and dare I say creative version of drafting/area control play Inis. I really enjoy both games, and I have not played Inis enough to say that it is “better” than Blood Rage but it made a hell of an impression and I like it a lot.
Oh and the art is awesome.
OK, this is pretty strong feedback, thanks!
I didn’t even know you could do this online so please do so