Your game posse should come join us at Quarterstaff Games some Tuesday evening for board game night!
Also, Vermont’s the place to be: http://www.greenmountaingamers.com/
About Discworld Ankh-Morpork:
Then wait no more. I posted a summary of our first 2 games and some impressions on BGG (because I can link more than 4 pictures there): A report on our first 2 games and some impressions on the game
Considering how well the theme fits the gameplay and vice versa, your sister-in-law might love this one.
Hope it gives you a better view of what the game is like. Any questions, ask away.
Wendelius
Speaking of Discworld games, has anybody tried “Guards! Guards!”? They were doing the hard sell to get me to play it at PAX, but I didn’t have time to sit down for a game. It looked like including the Luggage was a nice twist, and it looked more like an “old-school” board game than anything I’ve played in a while. I’m curious how it is in practice.
(Also, unrelated: I’ve got an opened-but-never-played copy of Last Night on Earth I’m trying to get rid of. PM me if interested, or if I broke a forum rule).
On the boardgame lifestyle from the Financial Times:
“There are two schools of thought as to why the Germans love board games,” says Martin Wallace of Warfrog. “The Germans are of the opinion that it’s down to their superior education system. We English are of the opinion that it’s because German TV is shite.”
This does shed some light on the differences: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/697456/ankh-morpork-vs-guards-guards-a-first-comparison
Wendelius
So some of you may remember (probably not!) that I run a monthly game night at my house in Baltimore.
Well, a friend just brought Race to the Galaxy. Sit down, Carcassonne; off to the side, Resistance and Dominion. Race is the new hotness.
So my question is as follows: Any of the expansions worthwhile? I hear that one of them expands greatly the 7s, which seems nice.
How long should we expect the Race to the Galaxy crazy to last?
We played a LOT of Race for the Galaxy a couple of years ago. And then since the last expansion was released, everyone became very cold to it; not just with the expansion, but in any form. When you get very, very familiar with the game, you can almost always tell who is going to win early on and it has a lot to do with your draws. Whoever gets dealt a solid strategy will win, once they’re experienced enough to not mess it up. The score gap between beginners and experts becomes huge.
That said, we more than got our money’s worth from it and it’s a fantastic game. How many games can hold up to hundreds of plays? I would recommend the earlier expansions, but I’m a bit more ambivalent about the latest. The Prestige system is just a tad more complicated than I’d like it to be and I can never quite remember how to play it properly.
Syzygy
3390
I most highly recommend the first expansion, Gathering Storm, as it adds Settlers of Catan-style goals to the game. I personally would pick that up fairly quickly once you learn the game. The second expansion, Rebels vs. Imperium adds a takeover mechanic which may help if you feel you want more interaction between player tableus, but you can also play with takeovers off and just basically add the RvI cards and new goals to the existing ruleset.
The third expansion, Brink of War, is quite complicated so I would only add it once you’ve played the first two a lot, feel you’ve sucked the marrow out of that experience, and want more. I think I’ve played about 30 games with Brink of War and I’m still on the learning curve both with regards to the prestige mechanic and also the ideal time to use your search/supercharged prestige turn.
I disagree with Nightgaunt that you can always tell who can win early on. That’s not my experience at all. It’s a card game so you definitely will have those games in which nothing goes your way and games in which amazing plays happen to fall into your lap. But those cases are at the edges and the interesting play comes in between. A lot of the strategy for RftG is keeping your options open for potential multiple paths in the early and early-mid games. If players haven’t played enough to realize this, they may think that it’s all luck.
SamF7
3391
For you Race for the Galaxy Fans (or anyone interested in the game):
A nigh-near perfect PC implementation of the game.
Since installing this beauty, I haven’t played a game of solitaire or minesweeper since on my PC.
The AI is brutal.
SamF7
mkozlows
3392
The expansions add stuff, but I grew to hate them over time. The problem is that RFTG is a really fun game precisely because of its simplicity, and adding in prestige points and invasions and goals just ups the complexity level to the point where now the game is this big heavyweight thing, and it’s not as fun.
FWIW, the designer is creating a second wave of expansions that are designed to be played with the original game and without the existing expansions; might be worth seeing if those turn out any good.
Syzygy
3393
Kozlows you’re the first person I’ve heard from who hated the goals.
I second the recommendation on Keldon’s, but if discovering the game and being at same skill level with your friends is important to you, then you might want to hold off on downloading it. Easy to play a few dozen games and you’ll definitely move up the skill curve.
It’s too bad the flex board game implementation seems to have never been fixed. We had some good Qt3 games going there at one time.
Anybody know if that works on the new Mac OS (Lion). I wonder, since it hasn’t been updated since March.
How would this version be for someone trying to learn the game from scratch?
It’s great for learning because 50% of the learning curve is memorizing the symbols and 50% is learning the cards. As Syzygy mentioned, though, the AI is good enough and the games play so quickly that you’ll surpass your friends in skill relatively quickly, so be careful of that.
Anyone here recommend Rune Age? I wasn’t looking for another deck building game, but I like Corey’s other games and and I’ve heard that it’s actually really good although it takes a few games to find the nuances. How is compared to the other games, Ascension/Dominion/Thunderstone/LCGs?
mkozlows
3397
I don’t hate the goals specifically, I just hate the pile of complexity that got added to the game, and think that it’s a game that thrives on simplicity.
Reldan
3398
I have similar feelings about Saboteur and Saboteur 2. Saboteur was a very simple game that took almost no time to explain, but depending on how the cards played out it could either be a fun nail-biter or a complete yawn-fest with practically no meaningful deception or competition.
Saboteur 2 makes the game about three times more complicated and five times harder to explain, but it does result in a larger percentage of interesting games.
I don’t hate the changes with Saboteur 2 and I think they make it a better “game”, but I deeply lament that the cost in terms of complexity was so deep that it’s not a game I’d casually pull out like the original.
ElGuapo
3399
Anybody played Tide of Iron? Just played my first game tonight. We went to the store to get Memoir '44 but the giant awesome box persuaded us. We liked it, but the first game took 4 hours, and serious game fatigue started to set in. I’m assuming it gets a bit more streamlined as you learn the rules.
Tried it and hated it. For WWII at that scale I vastly prefer the Conflict of Heroes series.
