6381

Speaking of Android and card games, I just picked up Netrunner with a couple of those expansion packs. I’ve been in love with its design for a long time, and I’m a sucker for the whole Android universe.

Where should I begin with this beast? I’ve watched some tournaments and read up on the rules, so I feel confident in the mechanics behind the game. But the whole deck building aspect kind of scares me, and the only thing I have at the moment, is a box full of (more or less) unsorted cards. HALP!

6382

If you have people to play with, play at least a few games with the starter decks (outlined in the manual). Even if you feel comfortable with the mechanics, I think Netrunner places more of an emphasis on in-game decisions then many deck-builders. Or at least, I find the decisions more difficult then I’m used to. So getting used to thinking about the game should be your first priority. And the starter decks help with that immensely.

Once you feel comfortable with the game, you should try making a few decks based on ideas you got from play. My experience with this was that it’s not as hard as some deck-builders because there are a lot of constraints on what you can put in your deck, as well as suggested proportions of types of cards. And yet, if you’re like me, you’ll still mess it up plenty.

I settled on a runner deck I liked quite a bit and have been slowly tweaking it from repeat plays. I’ve had a lot more trouble with building corporation decks. Something that helped me after trying (and failing) a few times was to build a deck explicitly outlined on a deckbuilder website (you can find links to them on the bgg page). The biggest problem with this is you might not own all the cards the deck calls for, but if you look at what the card does, you can usually find an analog with a slightly different focus. My experience with this is that it’s hard to run some of these high-end decks because their construction doesn’t necessarily speak to how they’re played. So read the notes on that. That helped me a bunch with thinking out how to effectively build a corp deck.

Anyway, that’s the route I suggest. I’m definitely no expert, but it has allowed me a few wins against my much better playing friend, which works for me.

6383

It’s actually a great game (at least I enjoyed my first game a couple of weeks ago). It’s not difficult but there once you start playing but the rule book is not very helpful.
Some notes for you:

  1. Make sure you know that this isn’t a who done it. It’s a who do you want to have done it.
  2. For the first game have everyone read the rules and or at least the how to play video on the Bgg (one guy did a 3 part one which is great) also Universal Head has a summary of the game that helps too.
    3.The game is brutally unforgiving. Make sure everyone knows that. Example the last turn of the game. I played a card which made it so one player lost his turn. It cost him the game.
  3. The first game is long and fiddly. Took us 4 hours to play the first game with 4 players. Lots of bits and cards. Makes sure you give players a chance to react when you perform a move.

If that doesn’t scare you off you are in for a fantastic story filled game. I cannot wait to try it again.

6384

Thanks. Followed your suggestion, and put together two decks based on the stuff from the manual. All ready to go. Now to find people to play it with! :)

6385

Rampage just showed up at my game supplier’s website! DROOL! Early review here.

6386

Debrief and vital statistics of first Android case:

[I]Yeah, I tried solving the murder, tried and failed. I was the only cop represented, which struck me as odd. I guess two megacorps could send their mascots to play homicide cop. So it was me, some robocop who was always thumbing his rosary, and River Tam, looking like she just got out of the monastery for the first time. I was the only one that bothered checking out the crime scene, so apparently no one taught them about investigative procedure. On the other hand, they blew by me as if I was fresh from the police academy, so maybe they had the right idea.

Suspects? There were a couple of scumbags we thought had most to do with the murder. I was sure it was this smarmy rich kid, but there was also a criminal lowlife, a hacker, and a walking talking blowup doll. While I was thinking the hacker had his hands clean on this one, I actually helped pull some strings for the fembot, especially after one of her johns made it worth my while. The monsignor owed me a favor after that one. In the end, it turned out all my hunches were wrong. I was so sure the hacker had nothing to do with it, and the rich kid was guilty, but it was the reverse. Apparently. I ate some crow at the station house over that one.

I probably was distracted. My wife was going to leave me, but I spent plenty of time that first week making sure that didn’t happen. Then, I was so happy when she told me she was actually expecting that I kind of took my eyes off the case. I was aware that Robochristian and Krazy Klone kept tweeting about some big conspiracy and how it connected many movers and shakers to the case, but I never dug into that. Don’t know why, exactly, I thought I was just busy beating the bushes looking for evidence for the murder, and a slugger like me was no good at seeing the big picture. Lord knows, I’m not that bright. Not to mention that last day. I was all set, I had lined up a whole bunch of interviews that surely would have turned the tide my way. I was the only one on the moon that day, after all. But I had been suckered into taking a call that prevented me from following up any of them.

At the end of it all, I had my wife, but the Sino-Japanese Mafia goons that had their thumb on me were out of the picture. Robochristian’s gears were seriously starting to seize up, especially after it murdered someone that was going to kill its Father Confessor. Krazy Klone’s therapy and boy-toy kept her reasonably sane. Sane enough to pin the job on the hacker patsy.[/I]

Final Score: Me (the bipolar crooked cop): 17 points, the Dame (the robocop): 25, my Wife (Caprice the insane clone): 50. Clearly, my wife kicked our asses. Time spent: started roughly at 12:30, ended at 9 ish, but that included setup, explaining rules, and breaks (including food ordering). None of us had played before, though we were veterans of epic games of other too-long FFG games like Arkham and Battlestar. Was it worth 8ish hours? Yeah. The next game will go much faster, and we were all having a good time. I wonder if the plots will start feeling too familiar after a while, but the mechanics for each character are pretty different from each other, so that will help. It will probably be too long and taking up too much table space for the benefit of too few players for a general game night, but the three of us definitely want to play it again. There were plenty of times we had to dive back into the rulebook, and even then the rulebook was cagey on simple things like hand limits and when is it okay to exceed a hand limit and what happens if you draw more than your hand limit. On the other hand, all the other material provided plenty of tips on how to proceed. Too bad I couldn’t quite capitalize on that advice. From the incredible spread of reviews and comments (just the last page of this thread had (paraphrased) “fantastic underrated gem”, “boring and pointless”, “cool setting but too over-designed and fiddly”, and “great design but execrable setting and writing”), I was surprised that we three players had roughly the same conclusion about the game. And since I had dropped the money on it, I was happy that, in our eyes, it didn’t suck.

6387

AAA would read again.

6388

I played Castles of Burgundy yesterday. I have to say I didn’t care for it.

I like Euros and I particularly like worker placement games, but I’m coming to the conclusion that I just really don’t like games where dice limit your actions. I’m not opposed to dice or other random factors affecting outcomes once I choose actions, but I don’t like games like this or Alien Frontiers where you roll dice to determine what you can do this turn. Even though you can use Workers to get around this in Castles of Burgundy, it still makes the game feel terribly arbitrary to me.

I also feel like the “goods” aspect of the game feels almost tacked on. You can play the entire game and win without ever collecting or selling a single good. They just aren’t a vital part of the primary engine, which is collect tiles -> place tiles on your estate. Yes, they’re an alternate scoring mechanism, one that seems lucrative if you regularly make a point of collecting 3 goods of a color before selling them for points, but it’s a far cry from being central to the game as in Puerto Rico.

6389

I bought this awhile back because I kept hearing rave reviews, but haven’t gotten it to the table yet for two reasons: it looks like pretty much the most boring game ever–even for a eurogame–and after reading the rules I can’t really visualize the gameplay, so it will be a bit of a slog to get it moving. I need to just play a simulated small game by myself to get the gist probably. Disappointed to hear it not getting another rave review, but perhaps I’ll enjoy it more considering that Kingsburg is just about my favorite boardgame ever.

I got Manhattan Project for Christmas and played it last night. I’ll have to report on it later, but my impressions were pretty good. Anyone else familiar with it?

6390

The basic cycle of gameplay is that you take a tile from the central board and put it in your supply, and then use another action to place the tile on your estate. You do this over and over, more or less. The two other actions, Sell Goods and Take Workers, are relatively rare.

Largely what informs your decisions is trying to score the most points in the fewest actions, and the limits of the dice, since you can only take tiles that are in the area that matches your current die, and can only place tiles in locations that match your current die and which touch existing tiles.

Efficient scoring is mostly about placing animal tiles of the same type and finishing groups. You get a lot of points for finishing a group early, particularly round 1, so there’s an incentive to finish the 1-tile groups ASAP. You get a lot of points for finishing a big group, and you get a lot of points for adding 2-3 animal tiles of size 3-4, both of which are later game tactics.

City tiles mostly give you a free action. I.e. a Carpenter lets you take another City tile from the board, or the City Hall lets you place a tile from your supply on your estate. Castle tiles are the ultimate form of this, giving you any free action, not just a specific one. Since placing a tile involves two actions - take from board, place on estate - you’re essentially cutting the action cost in half, so city and castle groups are the easiest to finish early.

Take ship from board -> Place ship -> sell goods is another scoring engine, but one that yields few points per action unless you get a lot of goods with each ship action. If other players are over-enthusiastic about placing ships, as they were in my game, you may never see enough goods at once to make it worthwhile.

Goods and mines yield money, which is essentially another way of taking free actions. 2 silver lumps = 1 marketplace tile, which means you’re skipping a “take tile from board” action. Mines are a lot less attractive than you might think, since it takes two full phases (10 turns) to gain a free action, vs. getting the free action right away with a city tile.

The game also features “knowledge” tiles, which act like technologies, giving you additional abilities. Many are action savers, though it can be difficult to estimate their value. For example, “get 1 worker every time you sell goods” saves you “take workers” actions. But you must be expecting to sell at least 2 goods to save a full action, since “take workers” yields 2 workers. Many are points bonuses, where the value of the bonus can be high if you specifically play for that, but will usually be low with more normal play.

6391

I have that as well. I like it. You get right into the meaty part of engine building and the theme is interesting. The spy and air strike mechanisms keeps players invested in what the other players are doing.

All that makes me wonder why I don’t like it more. It sits as good but not great for me. It might be just because the last game of it I played was pretty sedate and possibly I’ll get more excited if I bring it out again.

Tom M

6392

Got my Star Realms kickstarter and have been enjoying the few games I’ve played. It is basically Ascension, but instead of seeing who can get the most honor by the end of the game, you are directly fighting with your opponent to destroy their ‘Authority’ (life points). Not bad, and I like the options for 3+ player play aside from the standard Free for all. 15 bucks for a two player pack, and you buy more depending on how many players you want to support (4 players - two packs needed, Six players - three packs needed.)

6393

So, Manhattan Project. First of all, I love the theme. Historical themes are great, but most of the ones you see are long in the tooth, so it’s awesome to explore an underrepresented period like the 40s-50s (non-WWII). Also, worker placement are among my favorite genres, so I’m pretty predisposed to a game like this. Finally, my game was a full five-player game; I’m sure the dynamics change with fewer players.

Overall, I liked it, although there are some weak spots in the design. Also, I played it very poorly, but I don’t hold that against the game. :) The engine building aspect is very powerful, which wasn’t quite what I expected—because of restrictions on the shared board locations, the stuff you choose to build yourself is really the key. Seems obvious in retrospect, but my first game really drove it home. While it takes time to construct, it seems like the ideal you’re working toward is being able to drop all your workers in one turn to generate the useful stuff you need, then retrieve them all next turn, and wash, rinse, repeat.

I think the resources in play operate nicely. We found generating money to be a challenge, which was a little frustrating for some, but mostly was interesting. The yellowcake -> uranium -> plutonium chain is tricky but fun to work with. So far, so good worker placement game.

What I think makes Manhattan Project stand out are some of the options for whacking your opponents. That involves espionage, which lets you use (and then block) others’ buildings, and air strikes, which let you incapacitate their buildings. I should say, the latter description is a theory of mine, because no one actually bombed anyone else’s buildings. I think there are a few reasons for this: 1) my friends tend to be not terribly cutthroat players, 2) to wear down an opponent’s air force, you have to wear down your own just as much, so the cost of going on the offensive is steep and makes you vulnerable, 3) we tended to build up defensively so we could (hopefully) dissuade attacks and just concentrate on other things.

Espionage was a pretty big factor in our game, but it’s also quite limited because there’s only one space on the board for it (which locks it up for a couple of your turns, most likely) and the cost is pretty substantial. You can’t depend on espionage to fill gaps in your engine because it’s usually been grabbed by someone else or you don’t have the money. But when it works out, you can really benefit. I would expect espionage has a larger effect in a game with fewer players.

Okay, so to cover the stuff that I thought didn’t work so well: the actual bomb building, which is the scoring method. Basically, you use your researchers and engineers and some fissile material (uranium and plutonium) to make bombs that are worth VPs. That part is alright, but getting access to the bombs is just kinda unsatisfying: one player uses workers to “Invent Bombs” and then grabs a set of bomb cards with different costs/VP values and takes one and passes it around. Thematically, I find it weird: Everyone suddenly up and invents a specific bomb design at the same time, basically for no cost. And the choice of what to take in the bomb draft is not very nuanced. Maybe it’s just me, but it reminded me of huts in Stone Age, which become available based on an arbitrary system, generate victory points because, well, something has to, and kinda break the whole drama of hunting, gathering, and survival with a purely mechanical, nonsensical solution with little meaning to the theme. Yeah, I don’t like that part of Stone Age, and I don’t like this.

Well, I’m definitely going to play it again. It makes an interesting counterpoint to 1969, which I reported on earlier. Both are worker placement games with modern scientific themes. 1969 is lighter and quicker, which is generally a positive in my book. Interestingly, I find both a little unsatisfying when you get to the end of the production chain and are trying to get those lovely victory points. Both have espionage, but present them very differently. Neither is a masterpiece, but I’m keeping both in my collection for the foreseeable future.

6394

My group also had the issue where no one wanted to bomb anyone else. There is a thread somewhere on BGG where the designer says something along the lines of “All you whiny Americans who are saying my game is broken, you’re playing it wrong. You need to proactively bomb the shit out of anyone who looks like they are going to win. When I play with my macho friends the game takes 3 hours because everyone is always bombing everyone else.”

I don’t much care for the game.

6395

I fall the exact opposite way on that. I love Castles of Burgundy because I love the way dice makes the game tactical, incentivizing players to explore different playstyles over multiple games. I similarly hate how arbitrary something like Stone Age feels, where how efficient my choices are is up to randomness. I’d rather dice present options then decide for me how useful my actions are.

I don’t intend to try to change your opinion on it, but I think you might be underestimating how useful goods can be. For one thing, they give you a useful action to perform on a die value you may not be able to use otherwise. Having your goods stocked means you have more opportunities to avoid the “Take Worker” action, which is usually the worst thing you can do. Plus of course it’s a great way to make silverlings. Silverlings are great because buying tiles is a free action. Since actions are really the most important currency in the game, getting extra actions is fantastic. And having silverlings in store gives you more die opportunities since you can buy a tile, then place it immediately with one of your die. Finally, if you’re playing a four player game, it’s important to play for one or multiple scoring knowledge tiles to stay competitive.

I do think it’s one of the worst themed games Stefan Feld has made (Bora Bora is, surprisingly, even WORSE on themeing)… I similarly thought it seemed extremely boring when I read the rules as well, but the action choosing mechanic, and filling out your tableau just feels extremely satisfying for me. I can see why you’d compare it to Puerto Rico, but I think it’s quite different. It’s way more multiplayer solitaire. Watching your opponents helps, but isn’t really that important. Because of that, it’s not my favorite game (though it completely changed my opinion on how randomness should be used in games). But it’s a pretty easy game to teach, has satisfying play dynamics, and interesting decisions every turn, so it’s one of my favorite Level 2 gateway games, after something like Ticket to Ride or Carcassone.

6396

And Kingsburg, I hope! Thanks for the additional opinion. I need to get Castles to the table and try it for myself.

6397

That’s a fair point. It is still a very poor use of an action, but sometimes it is the only thing you have left short of taking workers. Which of course is what I don’t like, that the dice force me into taking poor actions, not the board position or other players.

I am aware that the silverling you get from selling is half an action, and I mentioned that in my last post. Half an action is not much out of three actions. Animals typically score 4-6 points for 2 actions, so you need 2-3 goods per ship and per sale to compete in a 3 player game.

6398

I haven’t played Kingsburg, but it and Alien Frontiers are on my “Should check out” list. Both sound a lot like Troyes, which is one of my favorite Euros.

Good point. Selling goods isn’t a great primary strategy unless you get both the sold goods scoring knowledge tiles.

6399

I have finally jumped into board/card gaming with some Christmas gifts. Played one solo game of sentinels of the multiverse. Used three Heroes vs Barron Blade and lost horribly but it was still great. I look forward to playing many more games of it and I am already looking to buy the expansions since the extra decks look like they add so many more options to ply with.

6400

I received the Lord of the Rings card game for Christmas, and have mixed feelings. I like the mechanics of the game, and it presents a nice mix of strategy and luck.

But it often seems horribly unbalanced. For example, I’ve mostly been playing the starter quest (Mirkwood), which the rulebook laughs off as difficulty level one. Yet, if you get the Caught in a Web card early it’s basically game over since it either completely incapacitates one of your heroes, or else deprives you of the ability to meaningfully generate resource tokens. And there’s no way to get rid of it if you have the wrong deck (e.g. Leadership). And then there’s Hummerhorns, who almost always insta-kills one of your heroes. And if you shuffle the cards wrong, you have to defeat the end boss (Ungoliant’s Spawn) twice! Furthermore, I haven’t even tried playing Tactics heroes, and that’s supposed to be even harder due to the lack of questing power. I don’t mind a difficult game, but these kinds of obstacles are pretty frustrating.

Have I just not played enough games? Is playing solo too difficult? Will building my own deck solve these problems? Do I need to buy expansions to round things out (if so, which ones)? If so, I’ll continue. However, it seems like the game should be balanced and simple with only the core decks and rules, and that hasn’t been my experience so far.