Played the Z-Man version of History of the World today with some friends. It took us around 5 hours to complete, though we weren’t really in a hurry (and one of the guys had serious AP). It’s a really great Risk-like, especially for history geeks. Its definitely a game where the mechanics create a narrative, as opposed to relying on flavor text or mobile apps. That said, it is definitely a beer-and-pretzels game, and its mechanics may be a bit out-dated compared to other modern games. It was still a lot of fun though, and will definitely hit the table again sometime soon.
It’s strongly reminding me of 7th Continent in the gameplay videos I’ve watched (albeit mostly in how scenes and such work - action resolution is fairly different). But supposedly the preview videos show it at a very basic stage of play and things get much more ambitious later.
The game should speed up with repeated plays, and the faster it is the more enjoyable it is.
What’s crazy is that the original was longer. I imagine it would have been a real slog to play.
Got to get both Villagers and Tiny Towns to the table tonight, and a good time was had with both.
Villagers went over particularly well! I had been slightly put off by some seeming fiddliness with the rules, but now I think it’s not a problem at all. The game is actually quite easy to explain. And the variety of directions players can go to score points makes it feel like you really are building your own little unique village. “Round here, we make carts and wine and do some mining on the side!” “Well we are a priestly town that makes beer and provides the other villages with blacksmithing services!” The game has that beautiful modern white-background look (like Tokaido) and super on-point packaging. Not sure if it’s at retail yet (I kickstarted it), but I’d recommend it!
Tiny Towns looks light and simple–and it’s certainly elegant as hell, which is why my designer-brain likes it! We also found it to be easy to screw yourself up and sometimes agonizing to decide what to do with your one resource block a turn. I ended up doing dismally because I made one or two mistakes early that just cascaded into more bad moves I couldn’t avoid. Others managed to do much better. I think the game really is a marvel of design; I just wonder if you can finish it feeling good about yourself, or if it leaves you with a catalog of your missed opportunities.
Tiny Town is the most brutal game since Agricola.
-Tom
I’m a big fan of Tiny Towns as well. Are you guys playing the “standard” way of each player gets to pick the resource in turn or using the deck for randomized and equal distribution? The former really lets you mess with other players if you are paying attention.
Yeah, we played the standard rules where the master builder chooses the resource, and there was definitely some consciousness of what everyone else was up to. But mostly we screwed ourselves! I need to play it more, but I could see the card version being a good alternative for when we want something a little more casual.
I have CO2 : Second chance sitting here collecting dust, but I just can’t understand the manual. I try to read it and get bored after 1 or 2 pages. I try and try but I cannot get to the interesting stuff.
Anyone else can sell me on CO2 ? Also, icons everywhere. Race to the galaxy is nothing compared to this. And then different stacks of cards, which differ only in some color shading. I cannot understand the manual without having the components in front of me.
I usually like reading the rules manual, but I can’t do it with CO2. I tried to watch some videos, but they are boring as well. Maybe the game is just a big bore …
Like a lot of Lacerda games, I don’t think you can really internalize what’s going on until you actually start playing. After that I think it’s a fantastic and super difficult puzzle.
I have that same problem with some games. The manual is dense or so full of verbage, I cant just get started to really understand. Then watch vids and just dont really grasp the essentials.
Bios:Megafauna is the one tripping me up right now.
I also get so used to easy to grok games, then when I get a deep one, I just kind of dread spending so much time trying to figure them out and just leave them on the shelf to collect dust…lots of those on my shelf right now.
I played Anachrony a second time yesterday and it went quite a bit better, now that I knew how to play, and we also clarified some rules that prevented some of the cheese I hated in the first game. (In our first game, we had not realized that to grab first player and also use one of the 3 main board actions like Construct, the 2 existing Construct slots need to be taken first, so we allowed the first player to basically hog first player all game which ruined it for me as last player with no chance to ever move up the order. Yesterday we played properly so turn order changed a number of times.)
However, what really impressed was my friend had the new Folded Space insert for the game, which was really very nice. Much lighter than Broken Token and very functional.
No, but I have a copy here I’d be willing to sell for cheap. :)
It feels super heavy, but also super abstract, and oddly punishing. None of the things I’m doing – planning and infrastructure for power plants, training scientists and sending them to conferences, cashing in favors from (?) lobbyists, managing an international market for carbon emissions – feels like the things I’m supposed to be doing, if that makes any sense. The map, inasmuch as you could call it a map, has no personality. Sometimes North America loves solar power, sometimes it prefers wind, sometimes it wants recycling plants. It’s just a random set of requirements that changes every game. Furthermore, there are all these arbitrary goals around the edges of the board that actually drive the gameplay, but they’re literally flipped up from a deck or drawn from a bag of chits. And they demand that you pay attention to them above all else, because they will scuttle your game if they don’t. So in one game, I absolutely must have two solar plants in South America, but in another game, I absolutely must get four scientists to the London climate talks, and in another game, I absolutely must max out my research into reforestation. If I don’t do these things, I will fail. I like how variable victory conditions can tweak a game, but I’m not sure how I feel about being straightjacketed by variable failstates.
I love the concept, however, of fighting against the downward pressure on the score track as a way to represent climate change. But, ugh, the combination of density and arbitrariness is just too much for me. Thumbs down on CO2, and I’m not at all kidding if anyone is interested in buying my copy.
-Tom
Oh, hey, I have a good topic for meta-board-gaming discussion: gaming sportspersonship (yes I made that word up, you like?) and pointing out when someone is about to make a huge unforced error. In yesterday’s Anachrony game near the end, I started to place my last Mech worker on a spot that would have precluded me from doing the Evacuation action which I had been setting up all game for a large amount of bonus points. As I was doing that, another player pointed out the mistake so I stopped what I was doing and did an Evacatuion, and ended up winning. (I had forgotten you need a Mech to evacuate, I thought i could just do it with any worker.) If the other guy had not pointed out my error, he would have won.
I feel he showed good sportsmanship and I generally try to play that way myself. It’s a slippery slope though and I know some people strongly believe in “survival of fittest” or “you break it you lose it”.
What do you folks think? Should people point out glaring mistakes and allow people to correct them, or should we all go full Darwin and devil take the hindmost?
Hate hate hate Tiny Town. The only other game I hate (and own) is Root. Brutal both.
Excellent question! For me, it depends mostly on the player. If it’s someone new, or casual, or who hasn’t played a game very often, there’s no harm in pointing out errors or missed opportunities, even if it means losing a game. But it can become a problem if this turns into the other player basically playing their turn for them, explaining how they should do A and B instead of X and Y. Experimenting and making mistakes can be an important part of learning a game, and there’s usually no harm in helping them avoid those mistakes. But sometimes corrections turn into quarterbacking.
I also feel uniquely guilty when someone makes a mistake, because most of the time, I’m the person who taught them how to play. If I’d taught them better, they wouldn’t have made that mistake.
For you, @sharpe, I’m not sure if I would point it out if you were to make a mistake. Maybe if it was your first play of a game. But for the second time and each time thereafter, you’re one of those guys I expect has already wrapped his machine brain around the rules. Your mistakes might be my only hope of winning!
Now let’s talk about players who explain how they would have won if they hadn’t made a mistake, often several turns ago. I know it’s not intended as such, but I find that pretty poor sportsmanship when it’s a habit. The implication is that the person who won only won because of the other guy’s mistake. I’ve played with some people who do that every single time they don’t win. They then proceed to explain their oversight, and how they would have won if they had corrected their mistake. This precludes any congratulations or compliment to the winner, because the implication is that their win was an accident.
-Tom
Right? I mean, I’m happy to play it, but I know it will leave me brutally defeated, demoralized, and exhausted. Even if I win.
-Tom
I would correct rules errors, but I feel like people should be allowed to find strategies for themselves.
For me I think this more or less depends on relative skill and experience between the two of us. The first time I played Champions of Midgard, I won because the person in second place didn’t realize he could trade his money in for Favor on his last turn, so I did it instead. Everyone playing was new to the game, so I figured he had the same odds as me of seeing it, and I didn’t say anything.
When I’m playing chess or something else with which my opponent and I have lots of experience, I will usually make a judgement call between them doing something dumb and them making a mistake. If they do something dumb, then I’ll tell them to take it back, but if they just make a reasonable misjudgement or mistake, I will exploit that.
And of course, if I’m way more experienced than somebody else, I will tell them if they make an obvious error. It can be hard to avoid being controlling, though. I know that’s a weakness to which I’m prone, so I try to be really conscious of it.
I think this, too, largely comes down to relative experience. I certainly don’t think an “if only I had gotten to that thing before you!” is out of place among sportsmen, and I think “ugh, if I had done A instead of B in that second to last turn, I think I would have won” is fine, too. But it’s also definitely possible that the people I play with think I’m an asshole. I wouldn’t rule that out, as much as I would like to.
I’m with you on Root. Haven’t played Tiny Town yet, but probably will eventually.
The only time I don’t do this is when it’s a third player who would either gain or lose by the mistake and therefore I’m kind of kingmaking. But generally, my group will always remind you to take your gold or whatever at the end of the turn if you forgot, and even let you roll back a move if the game hasn’t proceeded so far it is infeasible to do, and if it won’t directly harm another player. I’d rather have everyone at the table enjoying the game without regret. We might sometimes be more generous to new players, but even experienced players get a break.
Oh yeah, for sure. This is just arrogance. “It was always my game to lose.”
On the other hand, I love post-game analyzing how things turned out the way they did, what the pivotal moves were, etc.