1861

Puerto Rico is on sale at Tanga.com for the day. That’s a nice price for a great game.

1862

Twlight Imperium and Descent might be the right theme for the group as well, but it would suck to drop that kind of cash and have people not like the game.

5 players is quite a few and finding one that everyone enjoys could be a feat.

1863

Don’t tease him with Fire & Axe. It’s not around anymore. Man I wish I had bought a copy

1864

Played Agricola again tonight. Went into it looking at a hand full of minor improvements and occupations of mostly dubious value (so far as I could tell, anyway) and nearly zero synergy. Somehow emerged the victor with 41 points, my family of five still living in the two room wooden hut I started the game with. I had the Lover occupation, which causes you to immediately acquire a new family member regardless of room, at the cost of four extra food over the usual occupation card cost, and the Sleeping Corner minor improvement, which allows you to use any family growth action whether or not it’s already been used that turn. I was particularly fond of my Lover play, as I also had a minor improvement that let me do a bake bread action whenever I played an occupation out. So, after someone else plowed a field, I also “plowed a field” and then I “put a bun in the oven.” To much groaning.

1865

The Lover doesn’t need any synergy to make you win, as it’s far and away the most broken card in Agricola. ;-)

That’s one of the reasons they “optional rule” nerfed it in the expansion, and even then it’s still pretty good.

1866

They did? checking rulebook. I’ll try to remember mentioning that next time we play, not sure if my group was aware of that. Thanks!

1867

Has anyone here tried Isla Dorada?

This looks like an entertaining game that doesn’t last too long. Light on rules as well. Thinking it might be a nice one to play with the family between Christmas and New Year.

My mum loves board games and likes to try a new one every year. I’ve introduced her to Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan these past 2 years. This one looks like a potential candidate.

Any other suggestions?

Wendelius

1868

I dunno. It’s obviously good to have an extra person early on, but you’ll have to build a room to house that extra person -and- another room to get to use regular family growth spaces, and you’ve got to feed that extra person through more harvest than usual on top of the substantial food cost of the card. That is, it’s worth it, and I’d call it reasonably potent, but it’s not a game winner on its own and it didn’t notably accelerate my play. In fact, the same turn I got it out another player family grew the normal way. And other people had four or even five family members loooong before I did.

I had no idea there was an expansion, though. I’ll have to check that out.

1869

Just wanted to voice my first impressions with High Frontier and Earth Reborn.

Unfortunately, I can’t really recommend High Frontier at this point, especially as a 2 player game (and good luck finding 3-4 other people who are geeky enough to like the theme). It’s much too complicated for me and I generally love complicated games. The biggest problem is teaching one person, let alone more than one person, all of the intricacies of the rules, mechanics, and ways to win without handing them the rulebook and forcing them to read it (which is as about as dry as they come).

High Frontier doesn’t seem difficult to play at first glance, deceptively so, but I found myself constantly referring back to the rules about small, niggling details like, can I switch to this thruster to blast off and then switch to this one to move or what’s the difference between your LEO stack and rocket stack? Again, while you may understand the wider picture in terms of game play, it’s the smattering of details that you’re constantly referencing that make playing it so frustrating. You also feel lost as to what’s the best thing to do on a given turn because the game is so wide open. It reminded me a lot of Android.

If you’re willing to slug it through and play 5 or 10 games to get over this initial learning curve and can find more than two people interested in the theme, then it might be worth looking into. It has a really beautiful board, nice tech-savvy looking cards, an expanded game that is even more complicated that takes you to the reaches of Saturn and Jupiter, and plenty of background rocket science that’s kind of fun reading about. I do wish there were separate pieces for freighters and outposts, and the clear discs representing water tanks are sometimes not easy to see, but they’re serviceable.

I’ll probably keep High Frontier in the hopes of trying it out another day when there is more material/variants out there to make it easier to get into and play, but it’ll be heading to the shelf for now.

I got the chance to play the first scenario from Earth Reborn yesterday and am liking it so far. Unfortunately, the scenarios are very shallow at this point because they act like tutorials, only allowing you to get a taste of what the game offers. I did read through about half the rulebook and am very much looking forward to trying out more mechanics as they sound like a lot of fun (especially searching and missions). Will report back later.

1870

Conversely, my first experience with High Frontier yesterday was really enjoyable, and I think this might be the first game I play solo (using multiple roles, totally in violation of the spirit of competition) because the combination of easy setup/takedown and such incredible depth of choice within fast-moving turns is intrinsically fascinating to me. I think a key variable in that experience was relying on this walkthroughas my first exposure to the rules. It’s by far one of the most effective descriptions of a game that I’ve seen, and the enthusiasm and clarity with which he approaches his subject is infectious. Right now I have one guaranteed victim for it, but I am hoping to recruit more for January. I also would disagree with the hardcore Ameritrashers raving about how it’s a rebellion against streamlining and elegance, as every now and then I have to stop and just reflect on how much I just accomplished (or failed to, catastrophically) on a single turn, and how quickly the less essential turns fly by. Building my little moon base with the halfassed solar rocket I flung up there ASAP while my rival built the perfect plan to Mars was exhilarating, especially when the full magnitude of the upgraded patent I was able to produce sank in (15 thrust! .5 step per burn!), and even so his later triumph in surviving the aerobrake but wisely budgeting fuel for the other stops was no less of a huge moment. I love this game, and it is going to tentatively rank at third behind Hulk and Citadels pending more games.

Naturally, it targets a small audience relative to my other aborted play (thanks to other people showing up, not because I wanted to stop) which was Dominant Species. My brain was still pudding after Friday (learning High Frontier and 2 plays of Merchant and Marauders) so I stumbled through the teaching with the other two despite having it all clear in my head when I’d gone over it again the night before. We did not do the modified 3x2 animals rules although I would love to try them later on. I concur with the whining in that a simple switch in vocabulary for Dominate vs Dominance would have been a good idea, but the game is fantastic as is. When Reldan upset my perfect plan with the glaciated people’s (well, arachnid’s) elbow in the first turn, I knew it was going to be interesting. Very good game, excellent production values, and apart with the pain in the ass initial sort of pieces the setup and takedown is again very reasonable.

Merchants and Marauders, however, is a much more problematic outcome in the 1.5 games I played yesterday. At the end of the first half game, we had 3 players, downtime was virtually nonexistent, and the two merchants and the pirate were neck-a-neck in glory points. The follow up game (everyone excited, SURE let’s start again with the fourth guy) was not so successful, and I think there was some residual moodiness on the part of the former pirate who seemed to feel personally targeted when the rules of naval attention span made him the focus of NPC hostility in the first game (despite massive profits from the victories he eked out). I don’t think as a group we were on task enough with keeping people from wandering off in between their turns, and the downtime really made the game seemed sluggish.

I am interested in the variants people are putting up that try out more of a rock paper scissors Ancient Trader scheme. The events felt like an endless succession of variations on a hurricane and new naval/pirate ships, and I kind of expected a little more. I did not feel like there was much proportionality between how long turns take for different players even absent analysis paralysis…port actions especially may necessitate some house rule where they must be the last move you make and you keep doing them while the next person goes.

The trading was solid and the naval combat/raiding very engaging for how streamlined it is. I get an irresistible pirates’ gold vibe from it, and I am still sold on the concept even if I would be more selective about whom I play it with or at least the moods of everyone before we start…

1871

Yeah, I quite enjoyed the Dominant Species play we had. It reminded me a bit of Agricola in the sense that you’re trying to build up your own establishment and you’re doing it by taking turns selecting from a limited pool of actions. I’m very interested in getting through a full game.

Got a chance to get through a full game of Civ again today with 4 players. While I’m still enjoying it quite a bit, I’m interested in what kind of balancing rules variants there might be as I think that Egypt and America get the short stick when it comes to Civ powers and that Barracks are just flat out too powerful, especially given that they stack bonuses. Unlike the other two special starred buildings which don’t really empower your Civ much until later in the game, Barracks are flat out dominating from the start and only get better as the game progresses and you get more of them.

1872

Don’t do that, you’ll ruin it for me! Still, there is something in the way that the games are laid out that feels very different to me (in terms of actions) and obviously very different in terms of how the play space is shared. The analogy that sprang to mind was like a heavier Cyclades (in terms of the weight of decisions and the more automatic, guaranteed interactivity which makes planning more complex).

Got a chance to get through a full game of Civ again today with 4 players. While I’m still enjoying it quite a bit, I’m interested in what kind of balancing rules variants there might be as I think that Egypt and America get the short stick when it comes to Civ powers and that Barracks are just flat out too powerful, especially given that they stack bonuses. Unlike the other two special starred buildings which don’t really empower your Civ much until later in the game, Barracks are flat out dominating from the start and only get better as the game progresses and you get more of them.

I agree with your assessment, but I’m still mulling it over so I didn’t include it in my post. I think on the one hand I was not in the right frame of mind after too many aborted games in one 48 hour period, and on the other there is something about the way Civ is mapped out that makes it very difficult for me to stay focused. Either way, I really need to stop playing that second after learning a new game.

1873

Yeah. I forget what it is exactly; something like you can’t play it before turn 4 or 5? It’s mentioned in one of the side bars, IIRC.

It’s a good expansion, mostly since it makes the opening few turns rather less cut and dried, and dampens the benefit of family growth.

The benefit of a cheap extra person early on, that you don’t have to race with others for resources to get (in particular you don’t have to wrestle over trying to get 2 reed for one action, or who goes first when Family Growth /might/ flip up), gives you a 50% boost that you can easily feed into paying for it’s cost. Having to feed the extra mouth and enlarge your house to 4 to grow further is easily overcome with the increased labor. You come out ahead immediately, and this snowballs into even greater long term gains.

I’ve played Agricola probably over a hundred times now (my Mom’s become an addict!), and the half dozen times the Lover was played (before we banned it) that person won every time. One time in particular we just quit early as I was probably on track to clear 70pts – yeah, that’s right, 70.

This isn’t like the kind of synergy that can make Occupations like the Wood Distributor really good either – the Lover kicks ass of its own accord. I rather suspect this is why it’s nerfed in the Moors expansion.

1874

Some really good deals on boardgames @ Amazon. $19.99 Pandemic, Betrayal, Heroscape, etc. Check the Hot Deals forum @ BGG for specifics.

1875

I noticed the price on Betrayal at House on the Hill last night, but couldn’t pull the trigger due to the shoddy components. I don’t want to have to deal with complaining to Avalon Hill about the warped boards until I (maybe) receive flat ones (that stay flat). Otherwise, it would have been an instant buy. I did purchase Dominion: Seaside on Amazon this morning, which is currently being offered for $20.99 ($27.99 on CSI).

Also, is Pandemic really that good? Do most consider it one that needs to be in every board gamer’s collection? Is it the best of that type of game?

1876

Pandemic is an amazing and frustrating game. I’ve probably played it 40+ times. It’s a default “at least once” game whenever we have people over.

1877

I think it’s the best of the co-op games out there (ignoring hidden traitors); it’s a bit puzzley, yes, but the core mechanic rocks, there’s just the right amount of luck to keep you on your toes, and it plays really quickly. I love it, wish I could play it more often.

1878

Even at the height of my coop fervor, Pandemic got 2.5 plays and a trip to the storage unit. It’s well regarded and seems to work for many, but the theme felt thin, the core mechanics are not that interesting, and there were never interesting group or individual decisions (and no reason for them to ever be anything but the former, which is fine for us but in many groups results in a lot of telling people what to do). I would much rather play Death Angel or Space Alert, myself, as they are both rich in theme and make every decision count, as well as adding a “chain of command” aspect that ensures everyone has a role to play.

I understand it gets a lot more interesting with the expansion, but I try to stick to not looking to “fix” games I don’t like via expansions.

1879

I think Pandemic is okay, but no, I wouldn’t call it the best coop game out there, not by a long shot. Like Lizard_King says, the theme is pretty thin and the decisions aren’t really that interesting most of the time and are definitely group decisions. Also, I’ve played the expansion, and as far as I could tell it doesn’t actually add that much to the experience. If you needed Pandemic to be harder (I don’t - winning is rare enough as is), it offers a couple of optional rules that kill you faster, and a handful of new character roles that seemed less generally useful than the originals but do, I suppose, add some variety.

Frankly, if you’ve got the time, Arkham Horror is my go-to cooperative game, with Ghost Stories providing a less weighty but arguably more challenging alternative. I’ve not played Death Angel or Space Alert yet, mind you.

1880

I agree with Lizard King on this 100%. My wife and I were really looking forward to this, based on how much positive press it had. We played it a couple of times and really did not understand the incredibly positive reviews. It felt very much like a relatively simple effort in maximization, with little real feeling or flavor to the game.

Out of full disclosure, however, we have not liked many (any?) co-op games, other than very notably Arkham Horror, which we both love. Fundamentally, we do not like co-op games where the other person frankly isn’t necessary, and rules are made up to require the co-op players not share certain information or not talk to each other in order to create what we believe to be some false tenseness. Of recent co-op games we tried, for example, we really didn’t care for Space Hulk: The Card Game. I don’t think it is a terrible game in itself, but the co-op component adds nothing to it; we both realized that the second player was basically just a hindrance to what is fundamentally a solitaire game.

Essentially, I think most co-op games really seem to be solitaire games where the “co-op” player is just thrown in for the ride. Admittedly, Arkham Horror does this as well, but it is pretty richly themed and the second player really does make our favor level (two players each playing two characters) manageable.

Also, I do not generally solo game, so that could have something to do with it as well. I know a lot of solo gamers who play over and over to try to beat a past score or to win with a self-imposed handicap. That really doesn’t do much for me.