5901

Played one game of City of Remnants 2-player, I was the green and my opponent was the blue. He basically charged up the middle right away, winning a few key battles (green’s units are crap in comparison) and captured my starting location. I resigned. We felt it didn’t make a very good 2-player game since whoever wins the first few battles and controls the center has a huge advantage. Since I can never get more than one other person to the table I’m trading it.

5902

I love Terra Mystica, but then again it feels like it was custom designed to fit my gaming preferences (prejudices?). A perfect information, no random elements, asymmetric multiplayer game? With no direct conflict, but strong direct interaction? By the designer of one of my top 5 games? I think it’s the only game I ever pre-ordered over 5 years of visiting the Essen games fair.

And luckily it turned out to also have kind of an optimal mix of early strategic planning, needing to adjust the plan based on what other players do, and small scale tactical problems. I’ve played it about 50 times, and can easily see getting 100+ plays out of it before getting bored. (And by then the expansion should be out). Of course it’s not a perfect game, and I can see how it wouldn’t work at all for some people. But in the game groups that I infrequently play at, it’s rather universally loved.

From a a game design standpoint, what I find fascinating is how they managed to make the game work like a Skinner box, without actually having a real random element in there. The randomized setup should be irrelevant, but combined with the strongly asymmetric factions they somehow achieve randomized positive reinforcement while making it non-obvious that’s what’s happening. “Ha, now I know how to play the Alchemists properly. I’ll get you next time!”. And then next time that method of playing the Alchemists might or might not work :-)

Re: analysis paralysis, it’s only been a problem one time for me, and that was purely down to the player. Everything else I played with her was also pure waffling-back-and-forth-refusing-to-take-the-obvious-action torture. Even so, 4p might be a sweetspot for duration, even if 5p is a more interesting game. Luckily that’s not an issue for online games.

5903

I just purchased Terra Mystica yesterday. I think I won’t have a chance to play it till next weekend, but I’m looking forward to it. It seems right up my alley. My current favorite board game is Steam. It’s also got a highly randomized setup but afterwards is perfect information and no randomness for the rest of the game. And similarly, Steam has strange mechanics where being near opponents can benefit you. That’s a pretty interesting mechanic when you’re playing with at least 3 players.

I’ve read the rules and am a bit nervous. The theme-ing does seem pretty light. There also appears to be a ton of currencies in the game (workers, priests, cash, power, spades…). It doesn’t appear to be as elegant as something like Steam from a first glance. However, good asymmetric Euro games are hard to find, so I’m hopeful.

I recently backed A Study in Emerald and Coup on Kickstarter. Martin Wallace is my favorite board game designer, so I was in that “compelled to back whatever he puts out” state for A Study in Emerald. It looks like it’ll turn into a pretty neat, overly complicated deck-builder that busts my brain open (like his game A Few Acres of Snow).

Coup is the exact opposite. It looks like a game I can play with my family or coworkers. It’s supposed to play in 15-30 minutes! I don’t own any games that play that quick except The Resistance. But The Resistance really hits its stride in the higher player numbers, whereas Coup is supposed to be good in the 3-5 player range. It really looks like a game to keep your eye on for casual gamers who like bluffing. Who doesn’t like bluffing?

5904

Me. I don’t like bluffing. It makes me uncomfortable to take a risk beyond my estimate of the odds.

Hey, you asked!

5905

I forgot to mention the theme for A Study in Emerald: Sherlock vs. Cthulhu. Apparently it’s the premise of a Neil Gaiman short story.

5906

Someone in our game made a poor decision in the opening turn, like you describe, and was treated to 2.5 hours of complete boredom. We should have restarted the game for her sake but didn’t know it would be that tedious.

Your description bolded above is exactly how I experienced the game. I came in 2nd but would have come in 1st had I understood one rule better, so I didn’t do poorly, but I just couldn’t wait for the game to be over. I’m glad that others here can vouch for the game. It’s simply not my cup of tea.

5907

That makes sense. I tend to like games that encourage and benefit lying well. I don’t feel like I get many opportunities in normal life to lie, and any board game that encourages that behavior has me excited. Actually typing that out makes me feel like a terrible person.

5908

You are. [i]You are.[/i]

Seriously, bluffing has very different connotations from other forms of lying, since there’s no expectation of trust, no betrayal involved, no agreement you’re breaking. So go ahead and wallow in it.

5909

And on this note, I don’t know if anyone else here has seen it, but there’s a dude on BGG that is doing a full Cthulhu retheme of Consulting Detective: Arkham Investigator. He’s got the base rules and one Investigation out now, as a free PnP download, and hopes to add another (paid, $3-4) scenario every other month or so until he can get it printed as a real game with a dozen or so, some previously released, some new. It looks nearly professional-quality, and reports that the first scenario is well-made, but kind of easy. I’m excited to see where it goes.

5910

I’m with you Dave. That has got to be the least inspiring game description I’ve ever read and so many Euros are really just that.

5911

Well, I wrote that, but now I sort of wish I hadn’t? As you say, a lot of Euros come down to that. If you’re sick of near-themeless Euros (which, who could blame you) then you probably won’t like Terra Mystica, but (as jsnell said earlier) I think it does have a good blend of medium-term planning and adjusting for your opponent’s actions. And the tension of wanting to be near other players and NOT wanting to be near other players generates some interesting situations too. There’s some good strategy in there, is what I’m trying to say.

5912

Snowdonia: Thoughts? Thoughts compared to Agricola (which is my touchstone for worker placement games)?

(There’s a new Kickstarter for a 2nd edition & expansion w/ early bird pricing until it funds.)

5913

The Amazon free app of the day is Blokish, which appears to be some sort of Blokus clone:

Amazon Appstore main page: http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011
Blokish App page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AAQWMB4

5914

I finally got to play Terra Mystica last night and was super anticipating the experience. We got to play two games (one with the basic first-game setup and a subsequent full game following the normal setup rules). I wanted to come back here and reassess Dave Perkins complaints afterwards, and I’m really surprised to find that I agree with him. I found it remarkably boring. I’ll quote his complaints…

This feels like a game that was so heavily balanced, they rounded off every interesting corner that could have possibly existed in it. The upgrades are especially boring. The bonus tiles provide a good chunk of your income which makes the upgrades feel unimportant in comparison to Through the Ages (which seems like a good comparison point for many reasons). Plus, the upgrade system that actually downgrades production in previous fields feels like it’s only there to keep the game in check so it doesn’t actually get dynamic and interesting. Also, why do I need a trade house to build a temple? How does that upgrade path make any sense? I didn’t think I cared about theme in board games much, but Terra Mystica cares about it so little it makes me realize how much that stuff does matter to me.

The level of interaction in this game is so small, I feel it’s competing with Dominion in this regard. Usually that doesn’t bother me, but there’s nothing else to keep the game interesting. At least Dominion has a shuffled deck I have to contend with. In Terra Mystica, most of the game feels decided by the time you choose your faction and starting locations (and maybe a turn or two of opening gambits). The rest of the game is just playing out series of obvious choices and rolling with momentum until someone wins. I think this is all due to how little dynamism there is in the game. There’s no interesting way to change to board or interact with players other than just placing permanent pieces on it that give minor economic bonuses. I want to play cities down like in Steam, completely changing the focal point of the maps and links. Or drop cards on locations, like in Chaos in the Old world, changing the rules on how that location plays out. I certainly don’t need open conflict or war. Just something, anything, to keep the game from just being this slow obvious trudge to its conclusion.

I thought I’d at least be a big fan of the asymmetric nature of the game, but that also disappointed me. While I can ultimately tell that playing different factions does lead to dramatically different boards, playing them doesn’t feel very different at all. The abilities feel like minor changes overall and if they could lead to big differences, the game isn’t long enough to express them. Nothing as crazy as Starcraft or Puzzle Strike or Cosmic Encounter or Small World or any other asymmetric game I own. In those games, playing as a different species / person / faction completely changes the experience of the game. I think a big part of why this doesn’t work for me is the low level of interaction. Different factions become interesting in how they relate to each other rather than just how they relate to the bonus tiles and scoring tiles.

On a completely unrelated note, I bought Macao alongside Terra Mystica. I’ve been digging Stefan Feld games lately (Trajan and The Castles of Burgundy were big hits with my friends and family), so I thought I’d check out his earlier stuff. It’s a pretty interesting game, though of the three of his I own, it probably has the weakest themeing. All the same, it has those features I love in other Feld games mixed up in a new way. His games always reward a good planner, but similarly require the player to be on their feet. I love that Macao has a big group of face-up cards plus a face down deck that ultimately comprise the cards that are drafted every turn. There’s enough open information for the planner part of my brain to go to town while never being able to rely on it completely due to the randomized card deck and VP purchase track. Trajan is still my favorite Feld game, but I can see Macao getting a bunch more tableplay as well, especially with more players (I’ve only played 2-player 3 times so far).

5915

I still haven’t played TM, but you guys are reinforcing my general opinion after watching a few games played. Looks like one I’ll continue avoiding.

Played a couple of Friedemann Friese games, the newly-released Copycat and the slightly older Black Friday. First, the bad, or at least the mediocre: Copycat. I’d heard good things- He took the core mechanics from the most popular games (at the time), and welded them into one ring that should rule them all. Unfortunately, it just comes across as exactly the sum of its parts- no more, no less. Deck Building ala Dominion, Worker Placement/Actions ala Agricola, new cards/costing mechanic out of Through the Ages. You now know exactly how the game plays. Meh.

Black Friday, on the other hand, was a hoot. It really modeled the boom/bust cycles of a stock market and the groupthink involved in all that really, really well. I’m not saying it was the best game ever or anything, but it was fun participating and watching it all happen- why did that stock drop? Because we all made the same calculation and decided to get out of it. If we had stayed in, would it have kept going up? Probably. Maybe me and my group are just weird, but once we figured out how it all worked, we were giggling like schoolchildren the whole time.

5916

I’ve only tried a couple of Victory Point Game’s solitaire games, and I didn’t expect to find another one as good as Nemo’s War. But I did! Man, Dawn of the Zeds is really good. So this is how their state of siege series is supposed to play. Am I the only one who’s played it?

Also, it’s so nice to see them putting some money into production values for a change.

-Tom
5917

I played Levee en Mass on my iPad and couldn’t get it. So I got less excited about Dawn of the Zeds being in the same series. I take it this is better? Or was I just not fair enough to Levee?

Tom M

5918

The series structure for State of Siege is generally the same, but the development is by different people. The Zulu game is probably a bit better than Levee en Masse (in my opinion, the iPad version didn’t really do it for me either and I’ve heard that the Zulu iPad game is very buggy). Dawn of the Zeds (2nd ed.) has some fairly different mechanics I believe and is somewhat different in a number of ways.

VPG is interesting; they’re definitely putting a lot more into their production, considering they now have the capability of doing boxed games, mounted game boards, thick laser-cut counters and all sorts of other craziness like third-party publishing. It’s a good sign for the company at least, and hopefully they are making money and spending wisely.

Some of their series are quite good, like No Retreat (which GMT re-publishes in large-scale editions). I have In Magnificent Style (a game of Pickett’s Charge), which is another solitaire game system that has some interesting mechanics but haven’t had a chance to give it a try yet.

— Alan

5919

Tom, Dawn of the Zeds is way better than the Levee en Masse. Check out the review I linked in my earlier post.

In Magnificent Style is also by Hermann Luttmann, the designer of Dawn of the Zeds. Be sure to let us know how it is when you’ve spent some time with it!

  -Tom
5920

I was browsing BGG’s most anticipated games of 2013 when Kingdom Death: Monster caught my eye. And then I found the kickstarter: they only needed $35k to get funded and ended up raising over $2m! There are so many updates and information on their kickstarter page that I’m finding it hard to comprehend. What the hell is this game that has garnered so much interest!?

The BGG description reads as follows:

Kingdom Death: Monster is a cooperative tabletop miniatures game for 1-6 players. Set in a unique nightmarish world devoid of most natural resources, you control a settlement at the dawn of its existence. Fight monsters, craft weapons and gear, and develop your settlement to ensure your survival from generation to generation.

It sounds really interesting and the generational mechanic reminds me of Double Fine’s Massive Chalice. Has anyone been following this? Maybe something to get excited about?