6021

Yeah, Trent Ham hated DC Heroes for all the reasons you state, Chaplin, and it’s the reason I didn’t pick it up.

6022

I think I will have to take the plunge and grab Dark Legacy for Legendary. Sounds like an awesome addition.

As for Sentinels, I love it, but if you aren’t into co-op games, then I can see your reluctance to grab it. The only addition I will make is that I have a blast with the premade decks trying to run them as efficiently as possible. Similar to playing an MMO, the highest level play (Villians on Advance mode) versus 3 random heroes requires that you run all three heroes at their most effective. If you play all three yourself (solo) it can be quite a bit of fun.

If you like smashing someone else’s face in during game night…there are plenty of other games for that:)

6023

How is Core Worlds? I was thinking of trying this deckbuilder.

6024

I L.O.V.E Core Worlds…but I also bought the Galactic Orders expansion when I got it, and have never played a base game. But the game with the expansion? Superb game…It is strange, though…it feels so much like an actual boardgame…just a great game, that one.

6025

I’m new to Core Worlds (one game with me and my two sons) but really liked it. Just the base game. We’ll probably play one more base game and one game with the expansion before taking it on vacation to visit my brother who is a big board gamer.

We didn’t feel that deck building was such a big deal in Core Worlds. Its there of course but the fixed number of turns and the removal of the prior cards as you passed out of their regions made it feel much more like Saint Petersburg than Dominions or Race for the Galaxy. You build up an energy engine but, at least in our game, the action limits kept things from really snowballing.

6026

The following is simply my opinion and should be viewed as such:

I absolutely loathe the DC Deckbuilding Game and sold it at Origins a few weeks ago during an auction. Thematically it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s an incredibly simplistic game mechanic with a comic book theme haphazardly pasted on. And the minor villain/master villain mechanic is ridiculous. I’m going to beat Mr. Freeze…but then he’s going to help me defeat the Big Bad later. What the…?

It’s fun for two…maybe three plays…but that’s it. After that, I could never see myself playing it ever again. I was really ticked that they didn’t put more thought into the game and just took the basics from Ascension and dumbed them down even further.

Legendary is much, much better…and Sentinels (even though it’s a coop game) is like the rolls royce of superhero games.

As for Core Worlds, it’s fantastic. It feels like a real empire builder when you play. I’ve put in about a dozen games since it released and I still don’t feel like I’ve seen all there is to see in it. Get the Galactic Order expansion though as that fills in most of the holes I found in the base game…although there weren’t that many, to be honest.

6027

Core Worlds is my go to deck builder. Unlike in dominion the limited number of choices makes each addition very important. I can’t rely on a stack of 10 guild halls or whatever to sit safely and wait for me to have enough to buy it. If a laser tank or awesome ship comes up all of your opponents are going to notice and there’s not that many. Then you have the eponymous ‘Core Worlds’ themselves. It’s a deck builder with a stratigic goal to work towards as you see what options are in front of you.

Tom M

6028

My OH MY GOD game came in the other day…Duel of Ages 2, both Basic & Master Sets.

And…OH MY GOD…so much, so much…And, I believe it will be an incredible game to play. Going to find out this weekend, at any rate. With just the base game, you get more than needed, really. 48 Characters…but the Master Set adds another 144 Characters. So many items (in Common, Elite and Secret decks). Henchmen (their own deck). Just so much gaming goodness in those two boxes. Plus, the Master Set weighed in at around 8 or 9 lbs…

I was in gaming heaven when I opened up the boxes…

6029

Yeah, I’m excited about getting this in my next big order of board games. I traded the original years ago when #2 was announced and have been waiting ever since. Tom Vasel has already given it his seal of approval, so I’m no longer worried about any production or design issues.

6030

Fair enough, hepcat. And I don’t mean to imply DC Comics Deck-Building Game is the best thing since sliced bread. But I do like that it occupies a very specific niche with our gaming group and I furthermore it does a handful of things better than Ascension, contrary to your claim that they “dumbed down” the basics. For instance, it’s far more interactive than Ascension in terms of playing with other people. I hate Ascension with more than two players, because it’s a worst-case scenario for downtime. But there are important ways in DC Comics Deck-Building Game for players to interact with each other, given the attacks, defenses, some of the villain tricks, and super powers like X-Ray Vision, which let you choose among the top card of all the other players’ decks. I also like the asymmetry it introduces by having each player begin with a specific superhero, which makes it way more interesting than Ascension’s starting point. The arch-villain deck is a great variation on global events in Ascension, and I love how there’s constantly the threat of a new arch-villain attack, whereas you can go through an entire game of Ascension and never see a global event. And what you call “dumbing down” actually introduces some important streamlining. Unlike Ascension, there is only one resource and the line-up of cards doesn’t cycle during a player’s turn. This makes for a much snappier game, which means some of the trickier card gimmicks don’t bog things down. It also means games are quicker, so this is a great time filler if, say, you’re waiting for someone to show up or you just want a palate cleanser between heartier games.

But if you’re hung up on the theming of The Green Lantern getting to buy and then use Aquaman’s Trident, it might not work for you. Also, I feel the need to correct you: Mr. Freeze isn’t in the game. That’s Captain Cold. He forces all the players to turn their hero cards upside down until he’s defeated, effectively freezing out inherent superpowers. Unless, of course, you use something like Super Speed, a Lasso of Truth, or Booster Gold to avoid him. Frankly, that all feels like pretty cool theming to me. :)

 -Tom
6031

I played Legendary last night for the first time, so I can speak semi-informedly (What?? I have an English degree: I can invent new words) about it in comparison with Sentinels. (Still have never even seen a copy of DC.)

It’s a good deckbuilder and a good game. I think it applies its many influences smartly:

  • Ascension’s drafting from a shared pool of cards: in a semi-coop game, this makes for interesting interactions where your friends are asking you not to buy that card that synergizes with their deck.
  • Pandemic’s semi-random deck of nastiness: you spend a lot of time worrying when the mastermind’s next attack will come out of the deck of minor henchmen
  • Dominion’s building structure: The mastermind’s hit points feel like the stack of Provinces, which seems unattainable until suddenly you draw those synergizing cards.

The theming is generally pretty good, although it just doesn’t feel as cool to be a disembodied SHIELD organizer (which is what I assume you are) than being an actual individual hero, like in Sentinels.

Some of the things I didn’t like might have been artifacts of the particular mastermind/villains/scheme we had. We had a lot of super-frustrating effects that stole ALL our good cards from our hands repeatedly. Mechanically, that’s fine, but I think emotionally it’s irritating in a way a co-op game probably wants to avoid. We ended up losing to Armageddon with a Skrull shapeshifting invasion scheme. I don’t know if these two cards are harder than others that are available, but there were only a couple of times where we felt like we weren’t getting totally crushed.

I wasn’t enamored of the chaining mechanics because they seem so scattershot and disorganized (we played with a random assortment of heroes), although I guess I used them to okay effect a few times. A lot of the hero card effects just seemed kind of boring, honestly. There were many turns where I was totally uninspired by any of the cards out there and just bought stuff for their basic purchase/combat capability. Say what you will about Dominion, but in the Dominion game I played just before Legendary it was way more interesting thinking about how the cards would interact. I still say Dominion’s the gold standard deckbuilder.

We were playing with the Dark City expansion, I guess, but I’m not sure what it has changed other than apparently adding special bystanders (rewards you “rescue” from villains) and of course new heroes and villains.

I’d definitely play again to see how other heroes and villains work, but I’m not rushing out to buy it.

I also played Smash-Up, a “shufflebuilding game” that I’m not sure has been talked about around here. The way it works is that there are a set of decks representing factions like pirates, ninjas, dinosaurs, zombies, aliens, robots, fairies, steampunk…ers?, ghosts, and a Russian bear cavalry (some of those are from the expansion). You pick two of the decks and shuffle them together at the start of the game. Half the cards roughly are minions and half are actions. You play minions on these shared Base cards which when they fill up with so many points of minions award victory points to those with the most minion points.

I was playing Steampunk Ghosts, which I probably should have known would be an awkward combination when up against Zombie Dinosaurs and the like. The Ghosts get powerful when your hand is small. The problem is that you draw 2 cards at the end of every turn, and most cards do stuff at 2 or less, so if you want to be powerful when it’s not your turn you need to use ALL your cards (and the most you can play is two, ONLY IF they’re one of each type, minion and action). The Steampunk faction is about adding improvements to the bases to make your guys stronger, and also about mobility (airships!). I got creamed; the Robot Carnivorous Plants snuck a victory out of the Zombie Dinos’ jaws.

It’s entertaining, but exceedingly random. There are also a ton of effects going on across the board all the time that you can easily lose track of. We assumed it would play quickly, but with four it wasn’t as quick and light as a goofy game like it should be. Fun concept, maybe could be executed slightly better, but it might be just the sort of filler that a certain type of game group is looking for.

6032

Based on what you’re appreciating about the DC deckbuilder, you might want to check out Puzzle Strike. Admittedly, I haven’t played the DC deckbuilder so I can’t compare them directly, but I do love Puzzle Strike for many of the reasons you’ve mentioned liking the DC game. It’s more like Dominion then Ascension however. In it, your deck starts with three cards from your chosen character where your estates would be in Dominion (with the other 7 cards being essentially generic econ cards). These chips are really powerful and extremely distinct, so different characters will change the way you play for the entire game. Unlike Dominion (and Ascension), your deck starts out with a punch so those first few turns don’t feel like filler. Similarly, the game will play in less turns then Dominion but still feel as meaty or meatier because of the quick power start from character cards.

And if you’re into player interaction, Puzzle Strike has that in spades. The goal of the game is to kill your opponent (rather than get victory points). The general engine building strategies are really similar to RTS strategies of Rush -> Boom -> Turtle. You’ll either try and get a powerful attack deck going quickly to kill your opponent before their econ allows them to invest in in the strongest cards, or you’ll try and out econ your opponent, or you’ll attempt to counter a rush by grabbing strong defensive cards to hold off an opponent until their glut of weak attack cards slow them down. Which route you should go depends on what character you’re playing, what character your opponent is playing, which cards are available to buy this round, what purchases your opponent has made, and normal deck building stuff such as when you’re going to cycle your discard back into your deck.

In my experience, when turns are long in the game, it’s usually due to analysis paralysis rather than annoying decks. I lose my mind in Dominion when someone builds a deck out of laboratories and I have to wait for them to draw their entire useless deck into their hand every turn (while inevitably being confused about how they lost with this strategy). I haven’t seen that sort of ultra long turn happen in Puzzle Strike before.

The biggest downside to Puzzle Strike is it’s really a 2-player game. It comes with rules for 3 or 4 players, but they’re not very good (and certainly don’t hold up to the 2-player version).

6033

If you want to try out Puzzle Strike, there’s what looks like a really sharp online implementation at the publisher’s site. (Along with a card-based fighting game simulation sort of thing called Yomi, and another game they do that I’m entirely unfamiliar with.) Playing against the AI is free, as is playing multiplayer with certain characters that rotate periodically.

6034

I haven’t played the online version much because I think you only have access to two characters unless you pay money. Seems like a good way to try before you buy, though. (The website is FantasyStrike.com by the way). The third game, Flash Duel, is not one I’d personally recommend. It’s a more interesting version of Reiner Knizia’s game En Garde. It’s got various character abilities and a few other changes to make the game more varied in each play, but I think whether you’ll like it or not will still depend largely one whether you like the base game En Garde. It just seems to random to me, with a focus on skills I don’t find fun like card counting and gauging probabilities based on those counts.

6035

Love Puzzle Strike. It’s a unique and fun take on deckbuilding.

And my diatribes against the DC deckbuilding games are probably made more vehement when I talk about it because I’m such a DC comics fanboy. I wanted it to be something special, and in my eyes it turned out to be a major letdown. But again, that’s my opinion only and god knows I love some games I’m sure others hate with as much passion.

Sunk WAY too much cash into both sets of Duel of Ages II. Played last night and I’m hopelessly hooked. What a fantastic game.

6036

Exactly how coop is Sentinels? I don’t mind coop but only if it isn’t like Pandemic where a single player make all the decisions without breaking any game rules. Space Cadets is a good example of a game that doesn’t have that problem because all players act simultaneously and in real time.

This was said about Sentinels:

Everyone either wins or loses, but at the end, someone “wins” more by having the most victory points in their pile.

There are games that are ruthlessly competitive, have a single winner, but also have a fail state where everyone loses. It can be a fun dynamic. Is this merely a matter of tone or framing in Sentinels where everyone ‘wins’ but a group of players can play it as a competitive game with a shared failed state?

6037

I think that was being said about legendary. Sentinels has no victory point value for cards. It’s purely coop.

And yes, one person can effectively run the game. A problem almost any coop game can have, to be fair though. But I try to avoid playing with that type of player. It’s a sad fact of gaming that even one poor sport at a table can ruin a game for everyone else.

6038

This might be technically true but it is much harder for one person to run the game in Sentinels than in Pandemic because there is a lot more going on.

6039

That and you simply aren’t looking at everyone’s hand of cards all the time. (We always played Pandemic with all cards showing, which I gathered is pretty common.)

6040

We only play “open hand” (everyone’s cards are visible) on coop games here when it is the first few games for teaching purposes. Otherwise I consider it part of the genre that the good guys are not omniscient and card communication has to be limited (ie verbal and not blunt). These are actually the rules for Lord of The Rings the card game. Sure, it is a weird rule that seems a bit role-playish, but often the negativity about coop games is that they are one player games. I think this is only true if you dump all options out into the open. A fog of war situation with hidden hands really adds to cooperative games. A “mistake” from not knowing all the cards in all the hands is part of the genre. Otherwise they are not only a fairly single player experience but they also become a competitive experience as personalities will compete until one person is playing everyone’s character/hand/whatever for them. In my opinion anyway.

Actually I am struggling with the forum SotM game as questions are coming up about what I would play exactly in a situation (I have x card that will do y to P and Q) when I am used to staying vague (I have a so so damage option that is better than nothing). Although in that game, the whole table is sort of blind so maybe that is different.