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Okay /bgg/ let's here what you suggest to people, what's your gateway recommendation? Your favorite to play with tiny people? 2p? Groups? What's your next step game after introducing new gamers to the hobby? What's your favorite game to go full-STEEV on, crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of the women?
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2 Players: Odin's Ravens and Jaipur are my calls for being obligate 2p games that aren't a straight-up face-punching from the more experienced player, while more closely resembling modern board games than "Fairy Chess" (Onitama and The Duke are good games, but not great gateways as well). For games that can take higher player counts, I've had a lot of luck with getting peripheral or non gamers into Tsuro, Tokaido, Takenoko, and Forbidden Island. Of those, Tsuro and Forbidden Island are pretty basic while Tokaido and especially Takenoko are more a second step since you have to be able to at least think a little more like a board gamer. King of Tokyo also plays well with newbs since it's basically yhatzee with a "fun" theme but I don't know what changed with the new edition.
I mentioned this last thread, but while I don't yet have enough experience with the game to really recommend it as a gateway (It's pretty new), Sentient looks like it has a lot of potential. It'll play in under an hour and features at least "baby's first" level elements of card drafting, set collection, area control, worker placement, and dice manipulation which is a lot of "intro to X" to get out of a game.
Monarch has been weirdly popular with kids I've played it with. Broom Service too. Honestly pick a game that's not a fresh hell of complexity and has a theme the kid in question likes to hold their attention.
If I want to DESTROY my opponents and leave their spirits broken, I play Mystic Vale. With my common gaming group, normally a very competent lot, I have literally never lost, nor has it even been close. But Mystic Vale isn't really a STEEV game, if we're talking a more literal crushing of enemies the answer is TI3 (though that's now/soon to be defunct in the face of TI4), Kemet, or Red Dragon Inn for (much) lighter fare (beign a card brawler rather than dudes on a map)
7wonders since you can reshuffle age 1 after 1 round so they can play the game at full capacity, rather than having to just guess what works. Also its reasonably short so you can do a replay if they are psyched from getting how the game functions.
Also hanabi, it can be kinda finicky at first since it is really different but it is reasonably short and once people understand the concept they are pretty taken by it.
1v1 would be 7wonders duel since all info is shown, this makes it very easy to tell them all their choices, the game also doesnt have some setup issues where at the start you have to tell them to do X and Y because of reasons they do not understand yet. Also after doing age 1 you can ask them if they want to redo the age knowing how it is played. Also the game is short enough to be able to play it multiple times. That way after playing it once you can quickly reset the game and let them capitalize on their newfound knowledge. People like it a lot more if they can play the game completely through on their own. Rather than locking them in a game for 2 hours, and then either continuing till deep in the night, or play another time.
If they take a liking for boardgames you get to take a seat at your game group, lube them up with a game of hanabi, then throw them in the shark tank with whatever game your group feels like playing. Unless its some hardcore euro game where not managing perfectly from day 1 will fuck you up permanently it is an easy test to see if they fit the group and have endurance.
With groups, whether groups including kids or groups of adults, I've always had success introducing The Resistance: Avalon. Every now and then you'll get the new player who forgets to raise their thumb in setup or something but it's pretty easy to get players into the swing of it, and the more hardcore players don't have to feel dumb playing it.
Not my go to for new players but anytime I have a group of 2-4 interested in gaming I'll suggest Inis because it's elegant enough to learn and has usually gotten good responses.
>gateway recommendation?
Carcassonne
>Your favourite to play with tiny people?
Shave A Sheep, maybe Gemblo
>2p?
Ankh Morpork
>Groups?
ONUW, maybe Shadow Hunters
>next step game after introducing new gamers to the hobby?
Viticulture
>crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of the women?
I don't really have anything like that in my collection. I mean, there's Fleet Captains, but I still haven't found enough people to play it with...
Miniature Market's sale is next Tuesday and I'm trying to figure out what I should buy and I'm looking for any recommendations to round out my collection.
So far this is what I'm considering:
Forbidden Stars
Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game
Last Night on Earth 10th (if it's below $40)
Dark Moon
Dark Souls
Cutthroat Caverns: Death Incarnate
Drakon (if it's cheaper than $10)
Escape: Curse of the Temple (if it's stupid cheap)
I dislike worker placement euro passive-aggressive blocking like agricola and people gave me viticulture as birthday present.
How much am I going to dislike it?
it will be bearable at 3p or 5p you'll hate it with 2p,4p or 6p
solo is ok
Guess ill have to pretend
Diplomacy or bust.
>Shadow Hunters
We have a whole genre to non interactive games but what are good games with a lot of interaction?
munchkin
Depends on why you hate worker placement blocking.
If you hate it because you hate getting blocked, there's a chance you'll like it.
If you hate it because the interaction is not direct enough for you, you'll doubly hate it.
Viticulture manages to miss most of the FUCK YOU I WANTED THAT SPOT of most worker placements. I'd say it's actually pretty un-worker placement-y
Is this game actually any good? And is it fun to play for people who don't know anything about Warhammer 40k?
Also, does the Italian version differ from the English version in any way? I can get it pretty cheap, even if I have to buy the cards and rules in English separately.
I mostly hate living in mediocrity while picking suboptimal options to not get locked out of them. Then when your farm starts prospering and you get options the game ups in tempo and you squeeze out as many points as possible before the end.
Forbidden Stars is awesome. Drakon is not fun, and I'm a person who loves Cave Troll. Dark Moon is a shitty luckfest version of BSG. Dark Souls is fun if you don't mind grinding in a board game (I don't mind playing it solo for 4 hours but I think I'm in the minority).
Kemet, Twilight Imperium, Imperial, Theseus: The Dark Orbit, any COIN game, Forbidden Stars, The Great Zimbabwe
In viticulture you are never locked out of that one thing you want to do each round; each player has a "Grande" worker that can be placed in a location that has all of its spaces filled. On top of that most things that need done also have multiple ways for you to get it accomplished, either through worker spaces or visitor cards.
I definitely like Forbidden Stars - assuming you can find it at reasonable price. Personally my gaming group has had a lot of fun with Dark Moon, and I just picked up the expansion.
Anybody care about this one? It's a euro wargame where every faction plays completely diffrent.
Do they have a list of what's gonna on sale?
If you like worker-placement style games and want more interactivity Alien Frontiers and Argent: The Consortium have you covered. Argent just finished a kickstarter but retail copies will probably be available next year when the KS copies print.
>Argent just finished a kickstarter but retail copies will probably be available next year when the KS copies print.
they were also still doing Late Pledge/preorder last I checked.
>>If you like worker-placement style games
what makes you think I like them
>euro wargame
You could like the idea but dislike the disconnected interactivity, idk just throwing out ideas :o)
Not "care" exactly, but I've read there's some inspiration drawn from the COIN series, so hopefully it'll lead to more people getting into those. I'll probably end up looking a bit at Root myself but idk if it's for me or my group.
I looked at it and they are charging more than MSRP to backers. Why would I not wait until retail so I can see people playing the game/read finished rules and get the game cheaper?
It's not a complete list, but according to the video he's going to reveal between now and then.
Definitely picking up Forbidden Stars, but I'm going to pass on Dark Moon since I've already got Dead of Winter and BSG (it's heavily compared to both).
Also considering 7 Wonders, DOOM (2016), Twilight Struggle. Would still appreciate other suggestions.
A lot of people use euro to mean very little randomness regardless of interaction. I don't care to get in an argument about which definition is better, just telling you why someone would use that phrase.
Forbidden Stars is going on sale
oh shit it's like destiny
gonna have to keep my eyes peeled for when these sales go up
DOOM is cool if you like the theme and 1 v all games. I think TS is only rated so high because it's the only cdg most of the people rating it have played but that doesn't mean it's bad.
Also need opinions on 7 wonders. Is it worth it?Is it repetitive?
>I'm going to pass on Dark Moon since I've already got Dead of Winter and BSG (it's heavily compared to both).
Yeah, a lot of folks don't realize that Dark Moon originally started out as the 'BSG Express' print-n-play which was intended to simulate the BSG experience without the same long play times.
I honestly don't know, just putting together a very broad list of games that I can research later when I've got a bit more time.
Cause you get the expantion for free. It's less than MSRP for both together.
I was more thinking of the VP based, do X actions per turn aspect of euros, though only the cats fit that second part that well.
I thought it was boring. Pick a card, it does some little thing and/or gives you points, rinse repeat. The entire "strategy" is just to hate draft so if someone sucks ass at the game the person next to them will win.
I kind of hate drafting as a mechanic in general though so lots of bias in this post.
You're right, when I looked at it I read it as you have to pledge 100 for both. My mistake.
It has very little interaction, trying to hatedraft other people hurts you pretty quickly. If people dont pay attention you can score insanely hard on science, good players however know how to read the board properly and play appropriately. This however can get lost if you play with more people since people feel less inclined to bother other people and it is harder to read the game. Also 5+ players in general tends to be more disconnected. In 3 players you get your hand back multiple times, this can allow you to read what others buried under their wonder and you can decide to pass less wanted cards around for a round and get them back. Meanwhile with 5+ players you only get your hand back once, if at all. So at that point you just constantly pick whats best for your right then without considering whether it will pass back to you.
If you have 3 players that are willing to think there is some fun strategy and you get a pure drafting experience. If you dislike soltaire or play with larger groups its probably not as fun.
That makes sense too. My group and I generally use euro to refer to the amount of randomness in a game as opposed to anything else, so we'd describe something like Kemet as a euro game (pls no bully, euro elitists).
My group has enjoyed it on multiple occasions. The base game is fairly straight forward to teach. You just have to make sure that you explain to new players that tech combos don't just add points - they multiple their victory points. You can definitely impair your neighbors by burying cards they desperately need while building your wonder. After the base game you have expansions like 'Leaders' that add even more interesting choices to the game.
Thanks for the answers. Is there any satisfaction to building a tableau? Or does it feel like collecting generic +1, +2 bonus cards
No, you dont build up anything with a bunch of wood and shit. Its just putting down cards. The cards do have pretty artwork, but that is kinda lost when you stack them on top of eachother so you dont eat up the entire table.
>Also hanabi
I have this but haven't taken to game night, is it actually decent with normies?
Faustian Pact Status: Complete
The tableau building in that game is very lackluster. described it really well, just more resources and stuff. No interesting abilities or anything like that.
>lost when you stack them on top of each other so you dont eat up the entire table
I keep looking for a tableau variant of engine building I like but haven't found one yet. The Networks came close and didn't have the problem of covering up art, but something with it didn't quite click for me.
I think anyone can enjoy Hanabi.
If youre super serious you get annoyed. But if youre laid back its fine. It can be a lot of fun when things start to go wrong and you can see everyone starting to understand what the fuck is going on and getting tense when someone with valueable cards has to do the right thing. The fact you have to communicate with others with limited hints means you get these fun situations where you have to try and tell someone what to do while being bound to them. Normies love communicating so them having to be creative with it makes them enjoy it. Its like a threelegged race, the fun is not in winning, but in figuring out how to cooperate when crippled.
>Drakon is not fun, and I'm a person who loves Cave Troll.
Fug. Guess which is in the mail rite now. What makes it not fun? Cave troll looked less fun but I was guessing and nobody had any input besides morality lectures.
>morality lectures
lolwut?
>Drakon
It sometimes takes a long time for someone (meaning any player) to draw a meaningful tile. Eventually someone makes a very profitable path and exploits it unless someone else who was closer to winning steals the path and exploits it first. It's not bad as a gateway I suppose since people who don't play modern games expect board games to be grindy, but I'd probably not play it again unless I was gaming with children.
Who knows, maybe you'll like it or your group will find a way to make it more fun.
You're the one who was arbitrarily unclear about what the fuck your problem is with "euros". Racist.
Very nicely put, especially that you need to not be serious about it with first timers, you're going to lose, and there's going to be accidental table talk, let it go and the second/third and beyond games will start to get really good
It's a staple, great for noobs, gets old. Someone mentioning ascention(?) last thread as a alternative 7 player (check thread I'm on phone)
Please include knife pics while opening.
(I dropped a $100 too but damn son)
You've gripped the hand of the devil, how did it feel?
Do you have to play a game to get it? My group has played one round of games like fluxx and said ok what's next?
Yes, you have to work together well to win, so half the fun is getting better and better. Its fairly short so propose another round and if they say no then its too bad.
>Asmodee is bad wrong business do not buy.
was the gist, but I was too busy putting sale items in my cart
>children
I have these so I suppose all is not lost, then again people in my group unironically like games like cosmic encounters so you never know.
So what makes cave troll better? I mean part of my goal was minis and ct had no useable ones so that kind of pushed me toward drakon in the first place.
I saw the talk about halo fleet battles last thread and I got to researching about it. I found a copy online for $65 but I can't find a listing of the game's MSRP, anyone know if $65 is a good price? And if anyone has experience with the game, how does it play and what's the longevity of it?
7 wonders is $5 in app store finally, anyone know if it's any good? I played some knock of version and it was too much trouble to check the ai tableau and the ai was so uninspired you didn't really need to.
So, real thing, anybody tried it?
Oh I never even thought about that, got mine at a half price books. Previous owner had sleeved everything as well, cool find.
Cave troll is less random (while still relying on draws) and has more/more meaningful interaction. Both games are best at max player counts, and having more players does make drakon a lot better. The models in drakon are admittedly worth the price alone if you got it cheap and play anything else that needs the models.
I really like the art and it seems cute enough. A COIN lite with a good theme. Listening to the designer talk about it seems to be a guy who seems to know what he's doing.
Backing it but it's hard to recommend it. $60 plus shipping is not the kinda discount you expect for the risk and the expansion that makes it worth it is really vague right now. Still I'm backing it. What I played was fun and with some polish could definitely see a good deal of play. A second Vagabond sounds like a decently fun way to up the player count while not over complicating things, but I'm wondering what the Otters are going to do and it sounds like the designers are wondering that too.
This isn't the answer you want but since it's OOP anything you think is a good price is a good price. You might find it at a better price tomorrow or it might be the best price you ever see in your life so if you want it and can afford it I'd say go for it.
I've never played the game so can't comment on that but what I've said is how you should tackle prices on OOP games, especially ones that are almost guaranteed to not be reprinted.
There has already been discussion on 7 wonders in this exact thread, pal
Yeah $10 plus I bought base Conan. Seemed like a can't lose.
Pics or the unboxing didn't happen! ;)
Place bets now on whether or not STEEV uses a 'Cold Steel' Tanto or an axe to open his loot!
Found this crazy looking game on kickstarter.
kickstarter.com
First I thought this was just some stupid game with way to many miniatures, but after reading the rules it sounds like a ok gateway game.
Some sort of killing Mr.Lucky with monsters.
I wouldn't even buy the game without the expansion since that's the only way to play solo and that was part of the appeal of COIN to me.
Pretty cool. I was really close to buying base Conan but I have two games plus KDM incoming around christmas so I passed.
>Monster Slaughter
Was it made by a thirteen year old boy who still isn't allowed to watch R rated movies?
I think he is enquiring about the quality of the app version
Is it just me or are there way too many "big boxes full of miniatures" board games already flooding LGS shelves? I'm sure Monster Slaughter is a great game, but... ugh, I'm just sick of 'em. Gimme wooden cubes or thick cardstock tokens or even meeples.
And mind you, I play tabletop war games and paint miniatures in my spare time.
>he's never seen a STEEV unboxing
Knifes are for pussies and table spats, real men use semi-automatics to unbox
In my place, all the FLGS' have these big boxes of miniatures boardgames just taking up space. I doubt they move any of those units, if at all.
Yeah, my shop has an aisle of 'em. Ironically, I'm actually waiting for them to just liquidate their stock so I can snag the biggest fuckin' box they have for like $20--I might hate just how many keep getting released or how much room they physically take up, but I still kinda want to paint 'em.
I was just talking about this with a friend.
Why does do all new games have miniatures?
Are they just way easier to produce right now or is it because it draws people to the game?
I wouldnt be surprised if they are easier to produce right now. But I think the main cause is that kickstarter is big now. You dont make a lot of money of a lot of people buying your game for slightly more than the production costs, you make a lot more money having a couple of whales giving you thousands of bucks for some plastic.
Why make a game like catan or carcassone when you can make a plastic pusher wargame with a bunch of impressive minis. It markets a lot better and the profit margin is a lot higher.
what is /bgg/'s opinion on chess and chess variants?
this is the only chess variant I'll play
Miniatures are more visually impressive than cardboard punch-outs so they're in greater demand and draw greater profit margins.
>gateway recommendations
I think the idea of "one-size-fits-all gateways" are terrible in that more often than not I will play to someone's thematic/vidya interests, but if I'm playing with a group of non-gamers I will try any of these:
Survive: Escape From Atlantis
Lords of Vegas
Chicago Express
ONUW
Coup
Cosmic Encounter
>full-STEEV
Titan or Cave Evil(: Warcults)
hey cool I wasn't aware that was a new Cutthroat Caverns expansion out, thanks user
>WH:ACG
dumpster fire rulebooks, low replay value, avoid it
>Drakon
ehhhh, based on your collection I'd say go for it but it can drag on for longer than it should, Wiz-War is definitely the best Tom Jolly game
>other suggestions
Nevermore, Cave Evil: Warcults, Zimby Mojo, Argent: The Consortium
>Earth Reborn
>Warrior Knights
tell me more about these
interaction can mean a lot of things, and other than modern Euros which emphasize sitting in your corner masturbating to yourself you will find that most games have some degree of interaction
>Anybody care about this one?
I'm hype because I love Cole Wehrle's games
>a euro wargame
just because it's not a plastic pusher does not make it an euro in any way, try again
excessively boring at any player count other than 3P at which it becomes merely boring, I'm trying to sell my copy
Sounds good to me. It'll probably hold it's value at least.
Even though the game didn't sell so well Halo will have and maintain a strong Nostalgia value in the coming years.
>Drakon
It's okay for a first play. Subsequent plays get solved very quickly.
>Dark Souls
Has had a lot of criticism levied against it and is not worth the price point.
>Dark Moon
I've heard good things
What is this
how is EPIC?
Probably a bunch of shit games from the sale that no one in their right mind would buy at full price.
Depends on what you want out of it. I have the base game, Tyrants, Uprising, will be buying the new Pantheon set and even created my own custom set.
The game itself is pretty alright. The base set has a lot of value and good replay-ability in multiple different play formats.
The expansions are relatively pretty expensive. There's a lot of backlash at WWG right now because they keep doing these "pack" distribution models which quadruple the price for no good reason. However, they do add a lot of extra playability and new strategies.
Unfortunately Uprising kinda fucks it all up and WWG refuses to admit it. Down to making a dumb blog post claiming their "You Win The Game" is totally fine guys, really, now watch as we ban everything around it (while ignoring it). The controversy isn't just that the deck it enables is nigh-unbeatable unless your opponent is a drooling retard, but how they shit-talked the community and keep pretending the fact that a lifegain + stall oriented deck can be fun.
The WWG team itself keeps going downhill and having PR bed-shits one after another.
Buy the base game, try it out. If you like it, consider jumping into the deep end anyway.
There's a variable amount of campaigns for it. Kinda like Heroquest with Space Hulk?
Is there any reason to get TI3 at a discount instead of paying out the ass for TI4. No experience with TI btw.
Right now I think TI3+Expansions>TI4>TI3-Expansions. But we don't know what if any expansions we're going to see for TI4.
Not unless you can also get the expansions, really.
You guys ever have fun with Core Worlds?
What's Odin's Ravens like?
carrion meat
Alright its been out for like a month. Who has played it? How does it stack up to other solid card games like arboretum?
It's a racing game with many beautiful opportunities to dick over your rival both directly and indirectly while helping yourself.
Basic gameplay involves laying down a track of double ended "terrain" cards, which each player will have to make a full lap of, going in opposite directions. You move by playing single-image landscape cards that match the terrain in front of you, and move through all contiguous terrains of a particular type with one such play. When you draw your cards though, you get to choose between more movement cards and "Loki" cards which are what provide the dickery. Loki cards all have two uses and variously add, subtract, move, flip, or otherwise manipulate the path, letting you shorten or make easier the path you have to go through while lengthening or making harder your opponent's
I really like Core Worlds - it's one of my favorite deck-builders. There's a really nice 'mat' that was available for it via free download on the Board Game Geek site. I had one printed and laminated.