Board Game General /bgg/

Honestly you are wrong if you think they are not getting dumbed down and becoming more casual

Tigris & euphrates at 43€ but never tried a heavy game
What would you do guys

if you like the look of the game and thats a good deal to you go for it. its a fun game and it has a lot of rules but it is honestly not hard to play. if someone can sit through ten minutes of you teaching it they'll be able to enjoy it

Maybe you could somehow back your claim? Some examples? I mean even if that is the case, how many complex games can you buy and play every year? How many do you need? Afaik designer amd publisher of heavy and complex games usually have some kind of cult following so it's easy for them to keep doing what they do. Gimmicky plastic pushers have always been there, you're deluded if you think otherewise. Take off the nostalgia goggles, stop caring for memes and enjoy the good games

its not nostalgia goggles its the fact that people think games like blood rage are medium weight. that game is insanely light. the fact that people rate it higher than that means its becoming more casualised of a hobby. inis is rated nearly 3 on weight somehow.

>bgg ratings
Of course this rating goes up the more new people get into the hobby. It's simply not the same audience, like some years ago. Most of my friends don't even know heavier stuff than monopoly or catan exists. It doesn't mean that all games get dumbed down though. Also what is stopping you from playing heavier games or games you like in general? Does your group rely on bgg ratings that much?

Im in love with middle east ancient history

How it is a 2p count?
Would it be playable for casuals?

as far as "even if that is the case" goes, i play twilight imperium minimum of once a month and its a 5 or more hour long game. people can play heavy games all the time if they want to. they don't want to so we see the hobby become casual. secret hitler is nothing but a shout at your friends fest and people love it because they don't want to think strategically. can you back your claim that the hobby is not becoming more casual? you seem to have decent thoughts so I'm legitimately interested in continuing this conversation with you if you're still around

its good with 2 and like i said if you can get them to sit through no more than ten minutes of explanation they can handle it

so your friends who don't know more aren't in the hobby, its a different crowd and maybe thats why were disagreeing

>In the end it comes down to the people.
>These fucking people want to buy this slag. And we can't change that.

I'll take "What is 'Educating people in a friendly and enthusiastic manner' for $1000 Alex Trebeck."

Define 'weight'. There's at least three orthogonal metrics:

a) Having lots of illogical, special-cased fiddly rules.
b) Having a decision tree that's both very wide and very deep.
c) Having lots of complex component and a long playing time.

Nobody knows which of the three they meant when they were voting.

I agree, that the proprotion of casual grew while the hobby as a whole grew. I think that the absolute number of heavy games didn't shrink so dramatucally that boardgames are fucked though. I could even see some kind of danger that the heavy games shrink in numbers, as designers try to appeal the huge casual crowd. But still the hobby is very far away from being fucked imho. Also to answer the question on how to unfuck it or better 'counter the casualization': make heavy games (even) more accessible. Most people don't want to put the effort into learning complex rules and most never wanted. They are not gainst strategic thinking though. I 'tought' my gfs family caracssone, they owned it for years but never bothered to get into it, instead they played some childrens or party games or fucking monopoly. Now they cant stop playing carcassone, they LOVE the strategical thinking and competitiveness. My next step is teaching them caverna, because girls love animals and comfyness mostly.
So bottom line (got to go now), if you want to play heavy games with casual, make them very easily accessible.

this is a good point and i would like to hear why you think inis is rated as a 3/5 on the weight scale. again, really want to know what you think and I'm not trolling sucks i have to make this clear but this board has been volatile

'Heavy' and 'casual' aren't opposites, you nitwit. Is Go a 'heavy' or a 'casual'??

i agree with basically everything you said. i personally think part of the problem is people rely on "gateway" games. I have taught kemet to no less than thirty people who never played anything past monopoly and they were all able to figure it out and all of them have now played heavier things. i think if board gamers stopped underestimating people in general we would have an easier time making publishers publish heavier games

I don't know, I never played Inis.

not him but go is a casual game with lots of depth to be found if someone wants to, just like chess. those aren't the games we are generally speaking about. we are mainly discussing modern games here. i get where you're coming from but i think if you bring go into the equation we are talking about different topics

ok, blood rage then. why is it rated above 2/5? just because you can upgrade things? its not a hard concept to grasp as even monopoly has upgrade mechanics

I'm pretty sure almost everyone agrees that Go is 'heavy' game. (It's rated 4 on BGG.)

It seems like for you 'heaviness' is having lots of braindead ameritrash mechanics, in which case I say good riddance and I sincerely hope such """heavy""" games die a quick and painful death.

Blood Rage has lots of components and takes a long time to play. (For what it does.) For many people that makes it a 'medium heavy'.

go is heavy in that there is a lot of strategy but not heavy in that you can teach someone the rules quickly. no reason to get angry, were actually having good discussion here.

go has like how many, ten rules maybe? thats not heavy. its heavy because of the strategy. ive played many games and if someone told me go was hard then taught it to me i would laugh. i would lose to them, but i would laugh that they thought it was a heavy game.

to me a heavy game is one hard to teach/learn if you know literally nothing about it. i could teach my mom to play go in ten minutes or less. i could not teach her twilight imperium in less than a half hour. to me that defines heaviness and if you have a different definition i would love to hear it because it will give me insight into how different people think.

if time is equal to weight then the hobby is becoming casual in my opinion. do you disagree? if so why?

consider how long monopoly takes. would you consider it heavy?

Am I the only one who actually likes Skulls & Roses? I think it's a fun game.

>i could teach my mom to play go in ten minutes or less.
I doubt that. Go has counter-intuitive scoring rules. They're simple, but hard to wrap your head around.

>i could not teach her twilight imperium in less than a half hour. to me that defines heaviness and if you have a different definition i would love to hear it
There's at least three different definitions, see here: >consider how long monopoly takes. would you consider it heavy?
Personally I don't use a 'heavy' vs 'light' distinction and I couldn't care less if a game is considered 'heavy' or not.

That said, yes, if monopoly came with a box full of minis, different-colored chits and cards with icons on them then it would be considered a 'heavy' game by many people.

Overpriced, but yeah, it's great fun for an ultra lightweight bluffing game

don't doubt it. go is easy man. have you actually played it? being good is hard but playing is simple. how would monopoly be harder/heavier if it came with more?

>don't doubt it. go is easy man. have you actually played it? being good is hard but playing is simple
The scoring in Go goes something like 'the spots that would be definitely captured if you keep on playing are considered captured', which is a very weird way to score. (Playing to the end would take forever, so you're forced to play the rest of the game in your head and anticipate what the score would end up being.)

It's a lot simpler when aided by a computer.

>how would monopoly be harder/heavier if it came with more?
For many people 'heavy' means 'lots of stuff in the box' and isn't related to being hard to play.

scoring is not that hard imo, but maybe its not easy for everyone so i guess maybe first game it could be tricky?

>heavy means stuff in box
right, so you agree its all becoming more casual

> scoring is not that hard imo
Yes it is. For one, there's lots of different algorithms that are mostly equivalent but not quite the same. For two, many of them require complex procedures. (Rules like "at the end of the game, stones which both players agree could inevitably be captured are dead; stones that cannot be captured are alive", for example.)

See: senseis.xmp.net/?Scoring or senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseCountingExample

> right, so you agree its all becoming more casual
No, I'm trying to say that 'heavy' and 'casual' are meaningless terms and you should be ashamed for using them.

alright man obviously you're not trying to have a real discussion. the scoring in go is incredibly intuitive if you've played more than once. have fun succeeding in getting yous for being contrition, its easy here, but i won't be contributing to yours anymore.

if you actually wanna discuss something I'm here, lurking

>the scoring in go is incredibly intuitive
senseis.xmp.net/?JapaneseCountingExample
senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseCountingExample

Doesn't look intuitive to me. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of a game with more convoluted scoring mechanisms.

Is this the thread to talk about cardgames?
I recently got into Netrunner and I really like that non-random aspect of buying cards. What is the best deck building game in your opinion? I heard good things about the LotR one.

then you don't play many games, which is fine

Anybody heard about this game? It looks good, but I'm not sure if it's worth backing or not.
kickstarter.com/projects/2038926808/heroes-of-the-great-war-limanowa-1914/description

>claims to be historically accurate
>provides modular board
isn't that enough to tell you that the designers are full of shit?

also
>uses the word dices
are they illiterate?

Dunno, that's why I asked here first.

>board is made of 4 boards
>each board has it's own small scenario
>can be made into one board for a big one
Yeah that can still be historically accurate. It probably isn't, but that isn't proof.

it really is. show me any area of the globe that could be designed like that and make sense. ill wait

obviously not counting giant oceans or a zoomed in mountain range. it couldn't happen. they are just jerking people around with "grognards and casuals will like it"

don't be dumb enough to believe it

>separate package for minis or not with barely any price difference
holy shit, next level faggotry there

The components look well crafted, and they give backers the option of skipping the plastic minis which is nice. The real issue is a lack of a rules PDF. Even with the play through it isn't always possible to get a good feel for the quality of the rules.

>have to pay more for 1st player token
this is kickstarter

videos of some no name faggot (who they probably still had to play) reviewing it. and its their first project. i can't find one single reason to look at this page more than once

Mail time!

also "good faith" estimations of shipping, which is not included. do they not have any idea what they're doing? this is the poster child for kickstarters that should not exist

man, really hope to play this some day

kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/exceed-season-2-a-dueling-card-game

Anyone backing this?

thread renamed to kickstarter general when?

>www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/exceed-season-2-a-dueling-card-game
ya, a fuckload of asians

when people stop pretending Veeky Forums isn't just another facebook. or when Veeky Forums stops censoring racist slurs (which is slowly happening)

Some white people too

Is Ticket to Ride good for the max players or is it a 2 player game at heart?

I just can't get a non 2player board game i like.

calling out the Melbourne user who wanted me to check out House of War a few threads ago, you still around buddy?

it saddens me that I really want to see a new reprint of Divine Right, but the designer is too obnoxiously retarded to find a publisher that hasn't already fucked him over once and is doing so again
>AH-style rules formatting in the rulebook
>CRT for close combat
this tickles me in the right places, I still won't back it because I don't care too much about historical themed wargames
rulebook is there, it's a small image link that can be pretty easy to miss if you're skimming

So, proxy it with beer coasters. Get 1 set of 5 matching coasters of whatever beer brands you find, and have your artsy friend draw a skull on one side of a tile of each set. Or just use a marker to draw a big fat X on a side.
Boom, done.

>original board games rely on dice and chance popularizing non choice focused play.

>modern board games look more complicated than filing my taxes.

Yeah in this very short term instance it's getting simpler, in the long run? You're a fucking idiot.

TtR depends on what map you play on. There are 2p, 3p and 4p+. If you want to play a 2p TtR, get Nordic Countries.

Is Europe good for multiple players?

Forget that it's a redundant question.

I've asked this before but I didn't get a response. I'm tempted to get Zug um Zug Deutschland because i like Germany but my German is serviceable for a short holiday and no more. Does anyone know if it's easily playable for English speakers (is there English rules in the box).

Best with 5 if you like cutthroat games, best with 4 if you like a more relaxed one. Good for 3 too, but the double routes between some cities will have to be used as single routes. Better than USA map IMO.

>what is Civilization by Avalon Hill
>what is 1829/1830
>what is Acquire
>what is Magic Realm

why are you so wrong about "original" board games?

There's a translation of the rulebook on BGG, the game itself is not language-dependant.

Thank you.

In what world is acquire complicated?

It has fairly complex stratgies to make out of it but the core pieces are pretty simple.

Acquire is more of an example of a classic board game that is not reliant on dice or chance than one that is complicated

the rest of the examples I listed are both

Nah. Like battlecon it's the kind of game you need another person to heavily invest into it as well, not worth it unless you live in the mythical level 99 lands where people only play level 99 games games.

>loss indicator chits

That's a pretty intuitive basing setup, but I kind of think a spin-dial base ala Mageknight or Clix games would make more sense, even if only to show colors.

That said, I like that they give the option to buy either just the game, the miniatures, or the combined set. For someone who likes miniatures, this is a pretty good way to still get the sale for people disinterested in a game. It honestly tempts me, but money is kind of tight since I had to get some unexpected surgery. The guys are definitely into their product since the 3 minute Kickstarter video was pretty well-made. I'll definitely have to keep a watch on this one in case I can come up with a spare hundo in the next month. If I can afford it before it ends, I'll be picking it up. Thanks for posting that.

>kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/exceed-season-2-a-dueling-card-game

It looks cool, but it won't catch on where I live so I'm avoiding it. I just wish WIXOSS would come over here.

Yeah and just the same not all board games that are new fit your idea of overly simplistic. The trends back then were simple with obvious deviation but statistically speaking older board games were simpler. Also two of your examples might as well be the same source. Acquire and Civilization were both sold by AH before their buyout by hasbro and specifically marketed themselves as separate to the curve. Acquire originally being from the 3m bookshelf collection attempting to sell board games to businessmen, not exactly your average board game company.

That's how ASL does it. Are you saying that ASL is full of shit?

It's getting an English version reprint later this year; wait for that.

I'm not disagreeing at all with all new games being overly simplistic. Most of my favourite games are medium-heavy/heavy weight games that have been released in this decade, even if some of them reject modern board game design (Cave Evil, Duel of Ages II, Shadows of Malice and Zimby Mojo being examples that reject modern design, while Argent: The Consortium, Merchants & Marauders and BattleCON embrace it)

Older board games being simpler really depends on whether you include wargame simulations or not, even then SPI was branching out to creating complex economic games (Star Trader being a notable example, though it was released in magazine format just before they were bought out by TSR) and it would have been interesting to see where board games in the 80s would have lead towards if SPI wasn't so poorly managed. That said, I don't disagree with you that board game design was generally simpler or clunkier in the past, I was mainly pointing out stupid generalisations that I was initially responding to.

Been interested in BattleCON since I saw a good deal for both Devastation and War, is it not worth it if you're playing it with people who can play it

It's a game that gets better the more you play it, but it might be worth picking up War Remastered for 30 or whatever.

So, I just need clarification for this ghost card in Ghost Stories.

As per the marking on the bottom left:
The card arrives with a figurine placed on Player 1's board (not on the card) and when it's Player 1's turn again the tile it's in front of is haunted and that figurine is placed back on the card--I think I've got that right.

However, I'm unsure of the middle bottom marking.

Do I place an additional figurine? Or does the card not arrive with a figurine and is only placed (the figurine) when it's Player 1's turn again?

I might be overthinking this, but I can't find any relevant forum post or FAQ regarding my question.

Do yourself a favour and get the app version first. It'll teach you the rules and you can decide if out want to splurge for the RL version.

Fair enough, my mistake I didn't consider war sims given my lack of knowledge of familiarity, I've seen a few around as fairly rare, but I haven't seen the genre as that common place.

The guy actually dropped it even further from $60 to $45 for both Devastation and War, wanted to wait until I had some cash but I might just jump on this soon for being too good a deal. Might reconsider if it's not as good without a long term playing partner though, was hoping it was good for dumping two characters at randoms and let them have at it.

Is that $45 for Devastation+War together, or are they $45 each? A bit steep for War, but fantastic for Devastation.
Try to PnP to get a feel for it, it's fairly easy to do.

I recently got Hanabi and there is one rule I'm not clear on.

Let's say I've got 1 (green), 1 (red) and 1 (yellow) already played on the table. The other player has 2 (red) in his hand. So I point out to him that he has number 2 card in his hand.

On his turn, he plays that 2. Now, since he (in this case) does not know the color of this 2, does this mean that he has to bluff and put it blindly on one of the three possible or that he pulls it out, looks at it and then calmly puts it above 1 (red)? It seems kinda easy that he can choose where to put it after he pulls it out to play it, but I cannot find anything in the rules regarding this situation.

Can anyone clarify this? I know the rules can be flexible but I'm wondering if there's an official stance on this.

it's a fantastic price, but I'd advise against dumping characters at random initially - I'd try lower difficulty characters (I like showing off Alexian vs Shekhtur from Devastation to new players, or Hikaru vs Vanaah from War) first to get an idea of the mechanics, then you'll be able to pick up after a few games

also recommend PnP idea from

Going down to my local game store. I have about $80. Any recommendations? I've thought about the following
>Mice and Mystics
>Catan
>Cosmic Encounter
>Libertalia

I'll dump some Battlecon PnP if you want to go for it.

What games do you have currently?

Sorry forgot to mention that this is my first other than shit like Monopoly.

Catan is pretty polarizing, but I like to recommend it since it offers a wide array of mechanics. You'll be able to see what you like and look for similar games.

Cosmic Encounter is a fun but shallow experience. What other interests do you have? Vidya, other games, themes, etc.

Libertalia look really cool but I've yet to play, have only read the rule book and watched some videos about it
Catan is a "classic" but honestly it's not that great.
Don't have any experience with the other 2 tho

How many people will you be playing with? What does everyone (including you) like? What don't you like?

Board games are like video games and movies, it's unlikely you're going to enjoy every single one in every single genre.

Marmalee and Welsie are my favorite characters in the game, but both are shit
Coincidence?

I'm pretty big into sci-fi/Space Operas and Monster/Horror movies. I don't play alot of Vidya. Was also thinking of Tokaido.
Not sure how many people will be playing with me. I do know plenty of people who would want to, but you make a good point.

Its $45 for both, second hand. And yeah giving randoms the beginner level fighters is the plan, though hopefully the more advanced fighters are advanced in terms of being more difficult to play instead of just being overpowered when up against the beginner fighters?

PnP testing is an option, but I don't know if I have the time. At the very least I think I have a good grasp of how it plays, and gameplay videos have been very intriguing, with the mind games predicting your opponent taking center point. Thanks for the PnP dump though!