I’m intrigued! How exactly do you use the d20s to resolve combat?
Since the fate deck is a constant thing, someone broke it down into hit, route, miss, and special percentages and simply applied those percentages to the dice. They work EXTREMELY well, in my opinion. Especially since the fate deck is actually NUMBERED… (ie: since there’s only 3 cards in the deck that are successes, as long as you know that numbers X,Y, and Z are successes, you know to never attempt certain things if they’ve come up). The fate deck is a neat mechanic, but it’s extremely open to card counting… Dice completely eliminate that chance. We started playing with dice a good 10 or so games ago… and I really haven’t looked back. It just feels right.
Here: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/58842/d20-fate-card-sheet
We got all the d20s we wanted (of course each faction has to have it’s own color!) from http://gamemasterdice.com/ They were awesome. Now we have 5 dice per faction, and 3 neutral dice, too! :D
If you’re ever interested in driving up to B-town for a day, we’d be happy to have you. :)
I concur, dice definitely elevates the excitement level of Runwars by a fair bit! Definitely give it a try Lutes, or as Gater said, come to B-town for some gaming goodness!
I have my own D20s now, guys. Maybe I can finally hit a special with the horsey with these ones.
Awesome, thanks for that. I will definitely give it a try the next time we play. And I’m not sure when I’ll get to Burlington next, but when I do I will hit you guys up!
You’d better! I’ve got a beer or two with your name on it/them, dude.
Syzygy
5088
Played a couple of two player games of “Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?” over the past couple of weeks over lunch. I bought it because I enjoyed a serious of games of Twilight Struggle when my boss brought it in a few years back, and I was intrigued the asymmetrical nature of the US-Jihidi struggle.
I didn’t realize there was an extremely solid solitaire option as well, so that’s all just icing on the cake.
Labyrinth has definitely lived up to my (high) expectations, but I started to remember what I’d forgotten about Twilight Struggle – that there is a high random factor coming from the combination of what cards you and your opponent are dealt combined with dice rolls to resolve anything. I find myself actively trying to turn off my competitive nature and play with a more zen-like detachment from the actual results, enjoying it as more of a simulation.
I benefited from luck in my first learning game with my opponent. Things weren’t looking great for my jihadis for several turns until I was able to pull a major jihad in Pakistan, convert it to an Islamist state and obtain their WMDs. Then the next turn received a “you win” card selection with the “Clean Operatives” card that let me place two cells directly in the US, as well as the Oil Price Spike which let me pull a previously played card that let me sacrifice a cell to place two terrorist plots. Of course I put down two WMDs. My US opponent was only able to remove one which meant an auto victory for me.
In the second game I was on the other side of luck playing the US. I had coverted to soft on round 2 due to an election but was using a nice +1 prestige modifier to war of ideas to convert Pakistan, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia to good. My opponent on the other hand was taking advantage of my inability to intervene directly and setting up islamist states in the countries that started out as hostile. Around round 6 he played a devastating “Axis of Evil” card on me that switch me to hard, and with a prestige check caused me to lose a very unlucky 5 prestige. So my war of ideas modifier went from +1 to -4 in a single card play, essentially crippling any diplomatic efforts and making it impossible to succeed on any rolls.
How do you use special abilities if you’re not using cards?
Perfect. Thanks for the link.
Special abilities are no different than a hit, a miss, or a route… it’s simply a value range on the dice. If I remember right, Special is 17-20 for triangle, Rectangle, and Hex, while special on circle is 13-20!
check the link I posted earlier.
Not sure exactly what this show is going to be about. But if we get to see actors and net celebrities play boardgames (badly?), it might be entertaining: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKQ3VgGN3o
Wendelius
I originally posted this in Qt3’s Civ V thread, but I thought board gamers might be interested, as well:
I found this via a post on BGG. Giant Multiplayer Robot (just entered open beta last week) is an application that allows you to play MP Civ V in hotseat fashion. Based on the video demo, it handles player passwords and hosts the save game files, so there’s no need to manually manipulate save game files. It looks pretty slick!
Also, there’s a Steam group for it.
Is there interest on Qt3 to try this?
RichVR
5094
Don’t know if this has been posted already: 5 Free Printable Board Games. Includes both Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who.
Lorini
5095
If only printing games was ‘free’.
RichVR
5096
Well it’s free if your office has a color printer.
Don’t think this has been posted yet:
Looks like a fun concept… that and I could make terrain out of Lego’s… and who doesn’t like playing with Lego’s???
How long until it gets pulled?
It’s also now Creative Commons, once it’s released. Very cool to see the devs doing this. One of the writers did Dogs in the Vineyard, which makes me very excited to see what this project looks like.
Manhattan Project.
Go play it now. It’s an awesome worker placement game with a theme that isn’t sci-fi or the middle ages. Plays up to 5 players in about 2 hours.
It has a touch of Agricola and Le Havre without the too much of the burnt brain cells and you can bomb your neighbors or spy on their buildings. Good times.
I’m really enjoying it.
