/bgg/ Board Game General - back to basics edition

I believe there are flammengooken

well this was fun

Are there any GOOD diceless combat systems? It seems like such a lame cliche and I personally feel like it's lazy design at this point when we have games like Kemet. Let's discuss some good diceless combat that isn't just dry garbage.

>what's been hitting the table lately?
>Fleets: Pleiades Conflict
>Summoner Wars
>Talon
>TI4

Do you fucking understand my frustration with the leading paragraph now? Excepting TI4, all those games have really bad dice combat.

>Something new that you can review for anons here?
TI4 is an improvement on TI3 in every single way. I can't find a single flaw with the changes and all of them were necessary. The races are much better balanced now so that any of them can win, not just like Yssaril, Hacan, and Sol. The components are prettier (though the hexes do seem to bend?) and the techs are much more streamlined. Board placement is far more important. Public/secret objectives were overhauled to make more sense. They got rid of the 400 optional variants that are only fun once and just slow the game down afterward. My only complaint is that ship techs don't count as any color, even the weak ship techs.

>Something old that you need to find a replacement for?
Old-ass Cry Havoc. Fun game but I want something with a similar divisional defense system and GOOD CRT like this game but with better rules and a more coherent scenario system. But not modern military themed.

I was typing a long blogpost, then realized I don't really have a point to make.
Soooo
Yay, boardgames n' shit.

Graphic description of why I hate chits.

StarCraft. Like Kemet it's card-driven but the cards have a correspondence with some units (and some cards don't have correspondence with others) which adds a layer of hand management to the game.

Is that game even possible to buy anymore?

thin your paints

>TI4 is an improvement on TI3 in every single way.
Disagree, moving politics to a dedicated phase and refreshing planets before and after politics was not a good change.
Also the new graphic design, while better in a lot of areas, looks a little too clean. TI takes place in a tired, worn out setting, I want that wear visible in the art. Compare the race reference sheets for an example of what I'm talking about.
And like you mentioned, the cardboard isn't as sturdy.

But I really like the trade overhaul, really like the changes to the promissory notes, and really like the tech cloud - though it's WAY too narrow right now.
Also I want leaders, shock troops, and mechanized units back.

>Are there any GOOD diceless combat systems?

Sons of Anarchy. The single d6 only influences if you keep the space, combat and injuries are based on dudes + guns you bring.

Totally disagree about politics. Making it occur randomly inside the game made it more difficult to set yourself up a reputation for the upcoming politics phase.

Now, since you absolutely know it's happening at the end, you can prepare yourself for it by doing favors for people beforehand in the hopes they vote your way. Not to mention, one of the most common house rules is using influence without expending during politics, because otherwise everyone completely ignores the phase and it goes down like a wet fart.

Now politics is actually interesting. On top of the fact that simply adding a second agenda (where you DON'T refresh) makes the first phase absolutely insane and cutthroat depending on what's drawn. I've seen victory point agendas get awarded for 1 vote because of bizarre shenanigans and it's always a riot. The second phase also makes the Nekro Virus actually playable (and in fact won our first game).

The blue hex tiles are more accurate to the history of the game. Watching the making of TI4 and you'll understand exactly why they went back to blue. As for the clean sheets, TI3 is the only version of the game that looks rusty and gritty. It's a good look but that design is over now that we've moved out of the 2000s.

Trade and promissory notes are pretty amazing. However, the definition of "neighbor" got misunderstood in our first game and we all thought it meant physical neighbor at the table. This actually opened up really interesting political trade decisions for the Primary ability. When we realized what the rules meant by neighbor, it essentially blew all the interest down the toilet since just about everyone could trade with everyone else.

Shock troops / Leaders / MUs were really cool but they were all horrifically unbalanced. MUs were basically required for ground invasion because they create a terrible arms race for invasion combat. Shock troops are lucksack, almost never spawn, and can spawn DEAD. Techs are better for improving GFs.

Only used or if you sell your first born.

Have you guys played the Eclipse?

Which is better: Twilight Imperium, or Eclipse?

They're not even similar. Eclipse is an economics expansion game. TI3/4 is a diplomacy and secrecy grand strategy.

>This space empire builder is not similar to that space empire builder.

Thanks, now I know.

Theme is not the same as mechanics. In Twilight Imperium, most of what you're doing is grabbing bargaining chips so you can make deals and argue, then decide later if you want to backstab, make alliances, and so forth.

In Eclipse you just calculate the best move given your current standing and all the current information, then try to take it and hope you still can by the time it's your turn. Not that it's bad, it's just a completely different style of gameplay. There's basically zero diplomacy, just like there aren't custom ships in TI.

There's diplomacy in my Eclipse games. Maybe your group just plays it differently?

Watch and learn.

Eclipse is way better than Twilight Imperium though.

>No custom ships
Good. The last thing that overcomplicated space opera needs is more rules.
But I'm sure they'll fix that with more expansions.

Well they slimmed it down a ton in TI4. You might like it.

Exactly, TI4 has no expansions... yet.
TI3 played with all options from base game +expansions was epic for all the wrong reasons.

>Making it occur randomly
>Randomly
Making something happen exactly when and only when a player chooses for it to happen it the antithesis of random.

>One of the most common house rules is using influence without expending it.
I disagree with this assertion. Only one person I know does this, and while I generally respect her opinions, I don't think removing most opportunity cost from politics is a good move.
Yes, there's still some present in the second agenda - and I like making players split votes, that's good. But think the second agenda being blind does a lot to undermine that. It makes the value of holding on to your votes both random and unknown to all but the player who took politics - and not even to him if he moved one or both cards to the bottom of the deck. It hides information from players in a way that does not contribute to interesting decisions and encourages players to memorize the political deck's composition and discards in order to better estimate the expected value of the second agenda. Do not like.

>Blue hex tiles
With you there, like them.

>Trading only with physical player location neighbors
What. I can't imagine any way in which this would be better than having to trade with players you share a border with. One of the big issues with trade in TI3 was that you'd just exchange TAs with the player farthest away from you at the first opportunity because you had little reason to conflict with him/her over any resources. Dealing with the people you actually want to contest things with means that deals should be much more hotly negotiated, and more frequently broken when the opportunity arises. It's a great change to inject more schadenfreude.

>Shock troops / Leaders / MUs were really cool but they were all horrifically unbalanced.
I too have some issues with their vanilla implementation, but in Shattered Ascension I really like having them present.

>quoting myself instead of the person I'm responding to.
Classy.

Ok I was finally able to try Red Dragon Inn with some of the people from my other group earlier and I have to say it went great! One guy was even ecstatic about it, which is surprising because he typically doesn't like every other game I've seen him play. He even mentioned he wants his own copy now. Next time, I'll be able to bust out some of the more advanced characters with those guys!

Now my only problem is replacing the sleeves with FFG sleeves which, as we all know, are slightly longer than sleeves from most other brands, because the current sleeves I have on are almost the same length as the cards.

>chits bigger than the hex spaces
Why do people do this?

Fucking finally.

>the walrus looks like it's fucking the eskimo doggystyle

>Neuroshima: Hex on my phone
There are literally dozens of better board games for the phone than Neuroshima. No disrespect against N:Hex, but seriously.

My top2:

Twilight Struggle
Le Havre
Brass

I've been reading up on the rules to Broom Service since an user last thread said the rulebook was shit. However, I was hoping someone could help clarify a couple of scenarios for me to make sure I understand how things work.

>1
Say there's four players: A, B, C, and D. A goes first and chooses to play the forrest witch card with the brave action. Players B, C, and D also have chosen the forrest witch for that turn so I know that they will have to play that card as well with the option to use the brave action instead of A. Say that players B and C decide to not use the brave action but D does. So D will perform the brave action, A gets shafted and performs no action, but do B and C perform the cowardly action for the forrest witch instead? And if so, does this when the declined using the brave action?

>2
Same scenario but this time B and C did not choose the forrest witch for that round. After A chooses the brave action, I'm guessing that it skips to D who will do the brave action but what happens to B and C? They'll now have one more card than A and D so do they go next?

>still meming that Twilight Struggle is a good game

A.- Correct, only the player who chose brave and got trumped loses the action. Cowardly actions take place immediately, brave action goes last and starts the next round of role selection.

B.- If D chooses brave action, he's the only player to perform any action this round and starts role selection next round. All players have the same number of roles/actions for every round, not all players will take an action every round. If for some reason someone does not show a role card that has already been played in a subsequent round, that action is forfeit and has no effect.

correction
If someone shows a card that has already been played in a subsequent round**
write are deficalt

There's copies up on BGG for $70-100, that's not much different from the original MSRP

Don't be sad. There's also Vietnam '65, Race for the Galaxy, Galaxy Trucker and tons of Knizia games.

Sorry that I'm being retarded but in scenario 2, both players A and D will play and use up one of their role cards (D getting the brave action while A doesn't get anything) but if B and C don't have that role card selected, they won't play a role card and so they'll have one extra card in their hand. So does the round continue playing normally until at the end when A and D run out of role cards before B and C so B and C continue playing role cards until they run out?

Gonna try and get Mare Nostrum Empires to the table soon. Hopefully teaching it won't be too hard.
Broom Service and Alien Frontiers were a hit with my family at Thanksgiving, so that was a nice break from the constant CaH clones and TtR.

I'm , how was teaching Broom Service to your family? Any tips or things you would have done differently?

I'm waiting on Mare Nostrum to arrive after grabbing it during the miniature market sale. Should be coming in tomorrow so I'm super excited about that.

I almost pulled the trigger on that but being tight on money and knowing that I won't have a chance to play it anytime soon stopped me

Teaching was a little rocky at first, partly my fault and partly because the rulebook was lacking some crucial details. After we restarted on the right side of the board for the basic game, and in the right stating positions, and had the delivering mechanics sussed out we had a blast playing. One tip is do a practice round, but that's really general and I try to do that with every game I teach.

I wasn't going to buy it, but I was able to sell a game shortly before the sale went up so I went for it. Another reason is the two guys I play the most board games with are stuck in their dungeon crawling ways. That is all they want to play and it is starting to get old so I'm hoping introducing them to something else might get them to branch out.

I don't suppose there is a reference list or image for "Recommended" board games? I've got quite a few ranging from Zombiecide to Tokaido to XCom to that map-building one with the meeples.

Been tempted by Ticket to Ride or Smallworld but just looking around at the moment with no solid idea where to start.

Do you guys ever play music or ambience sounds on the background of gaming sessions? I've tried it with Betrayal and Mysterium but I felt like it just got in the way

try melodice.org

>Ticket to Ride
popular is not good. TtR is a horrible broken game. Avoid Dominion and Catan for similar reasons.

>Smallworld
It's bad. It's all about superior race combos which requires experience so you'll trounce anybody new for a few games. beyond that it's not even a decent game.

There are plenty of better entry level games:
Roll for the Galaxy
7 Wonders
Clank!

And there are plenty of guides, just hang around until comic sans user posts pictures.

no but my kids asked for "pirate music" the other day and there is a shitton of ambient music that would be great for this or D&D (and they all have like full cinematic videos to go with them it seems)

What do you think about Fresco or World's Fair 1893 as Christmas family games?

Got to test out World's Fair a couple games back at WYC in April, haven't bought it yet but might be the new gateway/intro I use for area control. Thematically it's dry and pasted on, but it's quick to teach/play and games seemed pretty tight.

Clank! looks really fun.

>no but my kids asked for "pirate music"
My favorite part of this game was the shanties, there's like thirty-five of them.

Don't.

Music just makes it slightly harder to hear other people talk, and slightly harder to focus. If your group has any people on the ADD or Autism spectrum (lets be honest, there's probably at least one), it's even harder for that player.

I have tried using music for breaks or "intermissions" (both in RPGs and board games), but the problem is that it encourages other people. You play 1 song, and suddenly everyone else wants to plug-in their phone to play the LOTR/Skyrim/Final Fantasy soundtrack.

We need a good flowchart like pic related. Anyone have a favorite "top 100 board games" list?

How do I git gud at Munchkins?

W E W

It can be good, but like anons have said you have to be careful that it doesn't distract from the game.
But I'll throw on atmospheric background stuff like link related for twilight imperium, with the volume low.

youtube.com/watch?v=f5ddAAYasgM

Blowtorch the game, the box, and anyone who complains when you do the first two.

Here's a decent guide.
TTR and Catan are not horrible or broken by any means. Dominion definitely has the same issues as Smallworld, tho: new players will absolutely get destroyed by any player who has learned the proper combos and deck ratios.

beat me to it

If we filter some garbage off of it, BGG's top 100 list used to be pretty good. I'm sure the good stuff is still near the top.

It's more useful to sort by # of votes, because that pulls some of the cult of the new games out. Before he moved and stopped doing videos Whitleypedia did a decent run-down of TDT people's top 100 vs BGG top 100 vs BGG top 100 by vote #. Think it was last year, but I really don't want to sort through all those BGB videos to find it

>Cosmic Encounter
Burn it down and start over. Dominion and Hanabi also have serious screeching > Recs issues, but I haven't heard honest praise for Cosmic from anyone but Vasel, certainly not any anons.

Yeah cosmic encounter is bad.

>Cosmic Encounter
>7 Wonders
>Half that shit being labeled as a "War Game"

Ttr and Catan are broken, I don't reeee about rng but you live or die by rng in these games, there is no real way to adapt to bad luck.

Dominion is broken because there is only one strategy (beat money) and you either follow it or lose.

> I haven't heard honest praise for Cosmic from anyone but Vasel, certainly not any anons.
Ekhm look at this:
Cosmic Encounter is basically Munchkin.

7 wonders is still a good gateway game though.

>is basically Munchkin.
Does that count as praise?

The round continues normally. When a player runs out of cards he takes no more actions. Order of play starts with the last player to use a brave action, but if he has no more cards to play then he's forced to pass and the next player clockwise gets to pick the role. This goes on until all players run out of cards, and there will be times where only the last player has a card to play, so he can pick the brave action without anyone contesting it.

>7 Wonders
>anything but babby tier bullshit
oh user...

Now we wait for the buttblasted anons defending CE

Don't think Vasel has time to post here these days

It's even worse. At least Munchkin is blunt about what it is, like Red Dragon Inn. They're take that games with with stupid themes that don't bog themselves down with anything but. Cosmic Encounter is a few games wrapped up in a game where take that is the only fuckin factor that determines victory.

Perfect, thank you for the help

Actually, 7 Wonders is a great wargame

Seven Wonders is a game about living Adonis-like statues who wear monsters as pants and hats and then get eaten by a flashlight-obsessed ghost.

out of curiosty, what was it selling for on MM during the sale?

$28

$28 before shipping.

...

Someone from my college gaming group left me a copy of munchkin after he graduated.

I sold it for 10 bucks at a used board game sale my local store had. 10/10 Great game, I would repeat this experience.

Izzat Titans?

>Dominion is broken because there is only one strategy (beat money)
This meme needs to die. Go play some games online without buying anything but money and report back with the state of your anus.

>Still no delivery notification from Happyshops for Gloomhaven
>"Should you panic? If you can't find your delivery notification in your spam folder and you don't hear anything in a week, e-mail us".

I've come to accept that I'm not going to get Gloomhaven before the holidays.

Not that guy but you're wrong. At least 50% of all possible kingdom set-ups will favour big money strats (not pure, but throwing a few helpful cards doesn't make it any less braindead).
An even bigger problem is that Dominion is too fucking fast for any kind of fun strategies to be ever applicable. Game's typically over by turn 12-15, so you either go for big shekels or the most straightforward engine. Balance is non-existent so best cards are obvious every time. Dominion may possibly be the worst designed game ever, I can't think of any other where 80% of components in any given set-up go untouched.

Fantastic, that means you still have the chance to get your money back and purchase several actually good games.

>At least 50% of all possible kingdom set-ups will favour big money strats (not pure, but throwing a few helpful cards doesn't make it any less braindead).
There's a big fucking jump between "there's only one strategy" and "there are setups in which the viable strategies are mostly big money".

>Best cards are obvious every time
They clearly aren't. Even the pros have difficulty telling at a glance what the winning strategy in a random kingdom is. The "best" cards depend on what kind of kingdom you've got and what kind of deck you're planning on running.

Really, any complaint about Dominion can be boiled down to "I bought a bunch of cards that have no synergy and I lost, game is crap".

Okay, explain to me how Gloomhaven is bad.

Without using ANY buzzwords.

>There's a big fucking jump between "there's only one strategy" and "there are setups in which the viable strategies are mostly big money".
Are you going to say that a game which devolves into braindead monotony 50% of time isn't broken? I mean sure you can go out of your way to include engine-friendly cards but it defeats the entire purpose of having hundreds of cards to randomize your game with.

I'm planning on getting Dungeon Petz + Expansions. Looks like a very thematic workerplacement game with good balance and replayability.
Any of you guys played it?

Where are you getting 50% from? Boards where Big Money is the dominant strategy are now much rarer than before because of all the expansions. Besides, it's very easy to rule out boring setups by requiring that there's always a +Buy and a +Action. Boom, you're not excluding any cards and you can have interesting kingdoms.

>you have to buy all the expansions to fix a fundamental flaw in the base set
>not realizing that most people who will play Dominion will only ever play or own the base set
The damage control is fucking real and hilarious

New art, maybe

Goddamn, that's pretty.

The "fundamental flaw" you speak of has mostly been resolved with the second edition that got rid of a whole lot of useless cards and replaced them with interesting new ones. I agree that base Dominion is a bit luckluster, but sure, feel free to pat yourself on the back because you can't be bothered to figure out how the game works.