4681

I enjoy Kingdom Builder. It plays fast too, as long as you don’t play with players who want to take way too long over what’s a relatively simple game. There’s some strategy in it as well, just nothing that deep.

4682

RftG is definitely about pursuing the most effective strategy (or leaving your options open to pursue multiple potential strategies depending on how the game develops) with the cards you are dealt. Is that what you mean? I wouldn’t use the term “min-max” to describe it because “min-max” (to me at least) intimates a wider range of strategies and the need to pick something 0.05% more efficient even though it’s less interesting.

Again, if it’s not your cup of tea I’m not trying to talk you into liking the game. Just trying to understand your issue with it.

4683

Just did our first run through. Was quite a long game, and got totally smoked in Mirkwood with the Lore deck. But excellent game, and the turns move at a pretty decent clip once you know the mechanics. If it wasn’t for the Watch It Played videos, I’d question if this game could really be won :) And to think Mirkwood is the easiest of the scenarios… holy cow.

4684

Yeah, LotR: LCG definitely hates you, that’s for sure. It almost has to be the way for a coop/SP game to be any fun though. Elder Sign is a good example of what happens when a game has all the viscousness of a kitten licking your hand. Total bore (the game, not the kittens. I rather like kittens.)

4685

Yeah, I used the term “maximization,” which doesn’t tell the whole story. I think it is really about synergy. But my point about maximization is that it is really about creating maximum synergy, in a way that leaves me cold.

For me, my 4-5 plays have left me cold. Again, it just feels like I’m playing a math game with some random names tacked on. There’s nothing wrong with the game, but there’s not much there if you like a lot of theme and a story. (By story, I mean, “And then we landed on Alpha Centauri and pushed them out.” I don’t mean, “So then I played my widget card, which adds +3 to all existing foozle trade good cards, which, when combined with my whatchamajigger strength cards, was enough to put me over the top.”)

A lot of people love it. Unlike some other games that I just think are bad games, I don’t think Reach for the Stars is a bad game. It’s just that so far, it hasn’t charmed me personally.

4686

I think you just outlined the reason why it too left me with a cold feeling that I couldn’t understand since I love space themes.

4687

Yeah, I think that’s ultimately the best way to describe it.

I think I was using the wrong term when I said “min-maxing;” it’s more the sense of playing with abstract numbers instead of making thematic decisions. Even after reading all the strategy suggestions offered here and in those BGG threads, I still feel as if I’m getting swept up in a machine that I don’t quite understand, instead of making meaningful productive decisions.

(And I think a big part of that is simply how the cards are presented. The Trade $/Trade VP thing has always been a chore to try to explain to people, mostly because I still have to keep reminding myself what it means exactly. And the over-abundance of icons instead of plain text descriptions on the cards are more efficient, but contribute to the feeling of not knowing what’s going on).

The reason I haven’t played in forever is that my boyfriend hates the game, and he’d said that it was because of choosing roles; it made him feel that he was being presented choices without having enough information to make an intelligent choice. But he finally agreed to play and liked Eminent Domain and San Juan, so it’s not the role selection. I think it might just be RftG.

4688

I see. That makes sense. If the disconnect you feel between the theme and the gameplay is the core problem, I don’t think that will get any better. But if the bigger issue is feeling you are being swept up in a machine, and feeling like you don’t have the ability to influence your fate or the outcome of the game, that will undoubtedly get better as you learn the cards and see the different strategies come to successful and unsuccessful ends.

4689

Lorini, can you sell me on Olympus? I could read a batch of reviews over on BGG, but I’d rather see what a QT3er thinks. Or direct me to a post where you’ve already gushed?

Thanks.

4690

As mentioned, Olympus is a perfect information game. What I like about it is that it is pretty interactive and if you try to play without paying attention to what other players are doing, you’ll get hit by the plague or attacked militarily. Some players are put off because they want to optimize their engine, but instead they have to pay attention to their military. Also if someone chooses the plague, the other players have to as well, otherwise they suffer significant consequences. The thing is everyone knows the plague is there and they have to play with the expectation that someone will plague.

The rest of the game is worker placement. I like the worker placement in this game because you don’t have many workers so you have to really think about how to use them. If someone chooses a space that gives resources or whatever you can follow them and get less of what you want or keep your worker and get more of what you may not need as much, tough choice.

It plays in about an hour and a half or so. I’ve played it with all numbers except two (don’t know if it even plays with two) and have enjoyed all sessions. It’s really important though to warn people about the plague and continually warn them because some people will bitch and moan about something they could have stopped. This is boring :).

I like it a lot because it’s perfect information, worker placement, and highly interactive, all things I look for in a board game.

4691

This time I got both my kids to play LOTR LCG with me (daughter isn’t usually into these kinds of things - must be because I’m letting them stay up late for New Year’s). Same newbie Mirkwood quest, but this time with the Spirit deck instead of Lore. Totally different game - was a piece of cake. Got lucky on the 3rd quest phase doing the 10-point quest instead of the spider: had two guides out plus the hero with the +4 willpower and a +1 willpower attachment, and the big spider got tossed out as a shadow-effect card. Woo! I failed to accurately count the rounds to use the new scoring system, but I estimate it at 7 rounds, for a 102 total score.

What a great game. Still have two decks left to try (plus my own creations), two more scenarios plus the one from an expansion, and we haven’t even tried going two player yet.

4692

Just placed basically this same order with some xmas money (minus the Mirkwood packs, and instead got the first expansion for RftG and some card sleeves for MK). Can’t wait for MK, the more I read the more it seemed this game was tailor made for me. Can’t wait!

4693

Curious: what ages are your kids, what did they think of it? Did you play solo and they watched, or did one play as well?

4694

Troll & Toad has free shipping on everything today, so based on this post at BGG I picked up a ton of $.25 deck boxes to help manage all the LCGs i have: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/744182/random-deck-box-for-s0-25-or-a-random-pack-of-slee

4695

They are 11 and 12, so plenty old enough to play. Right now we are playing just single decks together as we learn the various cards and mechanics, but soon enough we’ll be able to do real 2 player (maybe even 3? only have the single core set though). My son loves it - the whole co-op thing I think is what makes it work because it removes the ‘Dad is always going to win’ factor. My daughter was ‘meh’, but boardgames in general are that way for her so that isn’t a comment on the game really. In fact, that she joined at all was quite a shock. If she gets to run her own deck, that might boost her enthusiasm.

4696

So for my delayed Xmas event this past weekend, I scored some new board game stuff. I got Space Alert, Claustrophobia De Profundis expansion, and BSG Exodus. Really looking forward to playing Space Alert after reading through the introduction handbook. Any advice for first plays with that game? The tutorial seems to want you to have a full set of 5 players, which I don’t think I’ll be able to swing. Might have to skip it I guess.

4697

Thanks for the heads up Tracy.

4698

Nice haul! I haven’t played Space Alert, but there’s a free Space Alert Mission Generator for iOS devices that you might want to grab if you have a device to run it.

4699

To answer my own question from earlier: Apparently Nefarious hasn’t been released in the US yet. As much as I love the theme (and the graphic design) on that game, I’m thinking it’s definitely one I want to try out myself before I consider buying it.

I unexpectedly got to play this last night, since a friend got a copy for Christmas. I really enjoyed it a lot. I was surprised by just how simple it was – I’d heard that it wasn’t very complex, but I had no idea that the rules were that simple. I’d say it’s even simpler than Carcassone, which is the game that it’s typically compared to.

Still, it was completely engaging, and it has enough randomization to it that I could see getting a lot of play out of it. We finished a two-player game, and I immediately wanted to try it again with four. (And I lost. Badly).

4700

Played Dixit on New Year’s with a couple of friends. Two observations:

1) I was skeptical, but the 3-player rules in Dixit Odyssey work quite well (draw to 7 cards, people other than the Storyteller contribute 2 cards for voting).

2) My friends found a way to totally game the Dixit system, which I thought was nigh-impossible. As the storyteller, they chose images that referred to lyrics of a song that they figured one person would know, but the other wouldn’t. Then, as their phrase, they used a DIFFERENT lyric from the same song – one that on the surface had nothing to do with the picture. That gave the in-the-know friend a much better chance of picking the right image, leaving the out-of-it friend with little more than a die roll.

Luckily, they grossly misjudged the other’s music knowledge, so I still skunked 'em. :-)