We never had an opportunity to assist, but I’m not sure what is tricky about focusing or spells. This threadactually suggests that I was making things slightly harder for myself by deciding to cast spells before rolling rather than after I could see my dice, but that rule “correction” seems dodgy to me.
GMT is a class act, and I love their games. The only problem is that I mostly don’t get to play them as the gamers I see most are more into RPGs and eurogames. :-(
-Jasper
Try Urban Sprawl and Dominant Species. Very Eurogame in feel.
Vesper
3904
One thing I was initially doing wrong was using the ‘focus’ power multiple times throughout an encounter. After allocating it to something, moving the die onto the objective rather than letting it sit.
I’m just surprised people think the game is easy when you have encounters with 6+ magnifying glasses in one step, 3 steps into a process. Granted, not all of them are that hard.
That doesn’t sound like being a dick. The zombie player isn’t a GM, he’s playing a boardgame, and presumably playing to win. It’s like wondering about how generous the genestealer player is feeling in a game of Space Hulk. Sure, you’re playing the monsters, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat the humans if you get a chance.
Yeah, it may have been the wrong choice of words, the intent though was just to note that since it is a one vs. many, the zombie player does a lot to control the play experience for the humans. An aggressive zombie player leads to some interesting choices and tense moments for the humans, a mellow zombie player can lead to a one-sided shooting gallery.
As a board game (which is what it is) the idea of the Zombie Guy being versus Everyone Else makes sense. It’s not hard to imagine that anyone coming from an RPG background though is going to see the Zombie Guy (or the Keeper in MoM or the Overlord in Descent) as being the person tasked with (especially in the case of running a game for new players) making sure everyone has fun.
With a game like Space Hulk or Claustrophobia that goes away since it’s one on one, but I can see how someone could perceive a one vs many adventure-style thematic game as being just one step removed from an RPG. When I finally start playing MoM with my group I’m definitely going to be pretty nice at first.
I suppose it depends a lot on your initial draws. We drew characters randomly, but the Magician, the Scientist woman, and the Private Detective seemed to be tremendously useful in terms of their abilities, particularly the Scientist’s monster nullifying. Also, there was only one time I can recall where the red die was freed up and almost immediately relocked by the next mission, so we had access to it throughout, and the rest was probably just consistently going all in on abilities/items when the risk-reward was most clear.
It’s also entirely possible we missed an important rule along the way that would change everything, so I’d like to be wrong and see a more balanced experience next time.
I’m definitely looking forward to picking up Dominant Species for Christmas!
There’s a limit to how much you can do that, though. Some cards have to be played in certain situations (when there are two or more people together on a square, for instance), and you can only discard 1 (2?) card(s) per turn.
A bit of shaggy design, btw, is that the game plays very differently if you have 5 or 6 people – with 6, you have two zombie players, and the rules aren’t very clean about it, so you can discard twice as many cards, and some other things that end up making it easier that way.
Yeah, I’ve got the focus thing down. As for the harder cards I just make sure to cast a spell and use an item or two. Problem solved. Not sure on the official rule, but I definitely play that you have to cast a spell prior to a die roll.
I was thinking about this game at work a bit today, and I think I am going to try to come up with a way for cards that have been on the table for a bit to start adding doom tokens. What this game is missing is that kind of pressure to do something tht might not be your favorite option, bevause you just have to.
I was thinking that everytime the clock hits 12, any card that was on the table last time the clock struck twelve would adda doom token. Maybe by putting a marker on the cards up at 12, and for every marked card still in play you get a doom token at 12.
I doubt that’s the right balance, but hopefully I can work it out. This game really needs somthing to put your feet to the fire like Arkham does, so hopefully I can figure something.
I bet speeding up the clock would help, but I like that AH forces you into making decisions that are risky, and I think that ES needs the same thing. Not just more mythos cards.
Reldan
3912
There are some adventures that have an “At Midnight” ability already, but those simply are good targets to tackle early.
The rewards seem to be such that you can afford to pop items each adventure because you’ll get them back when you win, especially since you know exactly what you’re going to get before you even start. It’s like if you played AH but the top encounter card for each location was always visible.
The math is wrong with the yahtzee task-dice mechanic as well. I think we failed 1 encounter in our entire game. You always know exactly how hard any mission will be before you attempt it, so it’s incredibly easy to game the system with even a simpleton’s knowledge of dice probabilities.
Here’s my armchair design thoughts to “fix” things as they are in the box:
1) Reduce the number of available adventures to 4 from 6. You shouldn’t always have so many options and it would make the monster mechanic actually scary.
2) Normal adventures refresh at midnight, not as soon as you complete them. At midnight discard all normal adventures, add a doom token for each discarded this way, and refresh the board with 4 new ones.
3) Do not move the clock on any turn where an investigator completes an “other-world” adventure - instead the investigator completing such an adventure can take a free action on the Museum Entrance at the end of their turn
This is theorycraft at the moment. Possible tweaks if this made the game too hard would be to allow investigators to choose to “save” one normal adventure at each stroke of midnight and not discard or add the doom token for that adventure.
If the game were still too easy with these changes I’d add an additional doom token for each monster discarded as well.
Wouldn’t discarding adventures be a cheap way to get rid of monsters. I like the idea of them refreshing at midnight, but I think it might be better to leave them on and just take a doom token for each adventure still in play at midnight.
Anyway I think I might give that a try and see if it adds anything to the game.
Just read the rules for this, and am quite impressed. Lots of innovative mechanics, and if it actually plays that fast…
Definitely picking it up, though I might wind up waiting until Christmas.
Beginner rules pretty consistently remove the actually fun parts of board games in my experience. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of a game where you wouldn’t be better off just launching right in, being forgiving of rules mistakes, and agreeing that the first game or two doesn’t -really- count in the grand scheme of things.
I am keeping an eye on Eclipse as well. If the first few post-release reviews match the existing reviews then I am in. It sounds almost too good to be true. That mechanic where you remove a marker from your board to increase upkeep/resource/whatever sounds brilliant.
I’m in for Eclipse. I hadn’t realized it was being published by Asmodee.
Don’t bother, guys! Hans is losing like a little bitch.
Geez guys I was just kidding lol. Okay? Someone say something.
JM1
3920
So Eclipse and Blood Bowl: Team Manager sound awesome. Fuck. I can’t afford any more games!
