It won’t let me click an open available seat. This is the first time I’ve hosted asynch.
You have to do it before you start the game.
BGA is great, but man the game lobby stuff is awful.
I found it anyways by looking for Great Western Trail and picking the QT3 game.
Well now I know for next time.
Joined that GWT game. It now looks full but the lobby says “searching for players to fit your table”. Perhaps we’re just waiting for someone to take the first turn.
Hmm it never came out of the “searching” mode and I had to cancel it. Let’s have somebody else try to host one. Or I can try again tomorrow. It’s too late for my brain to try right now.
Yeah, that’s weird, it should have just started if it filled up.
I’m enjoying messing around in BGA enough that I went ahead and did Premium for a month (which will likely become a yearly sub if I’m still enjoying it a month later). Which means I can start a game now! Anyone want to play some Earth?
Play Earth for free with me: • Board Game Arena
Earth is a tableau builder, where you build up an island of plants and terrain to attract animals and develop an ecosystem. I’ve only played myself a couple of times. I set this game for the slightly-less-complex beginner mode, so anyone interested in learning is welcome!
Brief comment on learning games digitally. I struggle with it and maybe will post more to general board game thread but I just came across this paragraph from Polygon’s review of Root on Switch and it hits some key points - applicable to Root and much less complicated games as well, I think (emphasis added):
The digital experience, by its very nature, is much more opaque. Play is smooth and speedy due to the automation of resource management, but it’s extremely difficult for someone who doesn’t have a firm grasp on the whole game to understand the decisions other players are making. It’s trying to convey a literal table’s worth of information on a single screen, after all. You can parse through it all via menus, but the sheer volume of information in Root’s digital adaptation can be overwhelming.
And of course now BGA appears to be down (at least for me). (Edit: nvm, back up)
And yeah, online games without detailed log histories are bad. BGA is mostly ok about this. Root is awful. Terraforming Mars (the other online game app I use regularly despite the fact that I don’t like the game that much) is middling.
Yep - I’ve been trying to teach a friend Memoir and they had a devil of a time for a few days before conceding just scenario 1, which is the training scenario.
I’m trying to learn Innovation with you and doing ok - but it is hard to get the whole context of the game.
Meanwhile Imhotep, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Isle of Cats, King of Tokyo… so nice and easy because of how well i know those games
Just to help with any confusion. I’m Cordonazo on BGA as I’m stuck in the middle of an identity crisis where I really wish I hadn’t used DantesWitness for 20 years but don’t know how to change it in certain places without really confusing people.
Seems to be working this time. And in case it hasn’t notified you, it’s waiting on you as first player.
Oh thanks - I had to turn off BGA this afternoon because i was too distracted with work. Will get on there in a bit
BGA says “dionisus1122 must select where to start the trail”.
For our Great Western Trail game, it’s quite a heavy game and if you don’t know how to play I recommend checking out some youtube or other videos.
Here is a quick primer from Geek & Sundry:
It won’t teach you the whole game but will give you the general idea.
Here is my one tip for this game: your turns are a resource, in addition to the money, cattle and other resources you may have. Spend your turns wisely.
I read the rules, and watched the first video presented in the Learn section. That video used BGA rather than an actual board so I thought it would be very useful, but instead I got more confused and ended up finding something that clicked for my brain searching on Youtube.
Yeah the BGA board is kinda small and cramped compared to the real board. If you have Table Top Sim, or the real game, it’s worth taking a look at the board and the pieces in full just to visualize the whole thing.
It’s a great game, but relatively heavy unless you are used to the heavier stuff.