Previous Thread --- Map
>zeemaps.com
Pastebin
>pastebin.com
> What's on your board game 'Wish list' this holiday season? (And have you been naughty or nice?)
> Have you ever played in a 'board game' tournament? If not, would you if the opportunity arose, and what game would you be most interested in playing in a tournament?
> What is your preferred 'player count' when board gaming? And what was the largest player count game that you have enjoyed?
>> What's on your board game 'Wish list' this holiday season? (And have you been naughty or nice?)
Hoping I get the 'Atlas' expansion for Mare Nostrum.
>> Have you ever played in a 'board game' tournament? If not, would you if the opportunity arose, and what game would you be most interested in playing in a tournament?
I have not played in a 'board gaming' tournament of any sort. I've seen Catan and Puerto Rico run as tournaments, but I have no interest in Catan.
>> What is your preferred 'player count' when board gaming? And what was the largest player count game that you have enjoyed?
I really like 3 - 4 player games, but I've enjoyed 7 - 10 player games like 7 Wonders, Dark Moon, or 'The Resistance'.
Like I corrected myself here:
I know. I was thinking of board games and I cannot find examples of board games that are zero sum. The closes one is poker.
Why play count has everything to do with it - by definition of zero sum games each 1v1 game will be zero sum if there's a clear {WIN = 1, LOSE = -1, TIE = 0} condition.
It doesn't matter that the individual moves aren't zero sum as long as the game is.
If you add another player it's very hard to create a game that will preserve this aspect.
Forgive my ignorance, but aren't 'victory points' style games 'zero sum' games regardless of player count? One player wins and all others 'lose' by definition?
Only if they sum up to zero (regardless of player count) or there's a wining condition that sums up to zero. That's why poker is a good example of a multiplayer zs (=zero sum) game and it's hard to find examples of other games. Like I wrote 1v1 games are trivially zs, coop games are non zs, and multiplayer games are usually nzs. I don't understand why the other user singled out euros for nzs games but I guess that's beside the point.
>Outcomes of an action are +X, Y, and Z, where X, Y, and Z have different values
>Sum is 0.
*if they sum up to zero or there's another winning condition that sums up to zero.
e.g "who can click faster in 60s" is a zero sum game even when the VPs (number of clicks) doesn't.
Is Cave Evil Warcults still available for purchase? I can't find it anywhere.
Reposting for opinions because these threads warm the cockles of my heart.
Bought Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Odin's Ravens yesterday for the waifu and I. What are we in for? Look like a cosy pair of fun after dinner games.
Also
> Mathematically speaking, a zero-sum game is a game where, if two opponents with infinite computational power are playing, it makes no sense for them to make deals and commit betrayals.
You're very wrong. In a multiplayer game it totally makes sense for 2 people to gang up on another one because it increases it utility function. In poker it's not allowed for player to communicate for instance but two players might form an alliance against other people to get more money.
> by definition of zero sum games each 1v1 game will be zero sum if there's a clear {WIN = 1, LOSE = -1, TIE = 0} condition.
> Like I wrote 1v1 games are trivially zs
You're using a meme layman definition of "zero sum" that has nothing to do with game theory.
Under game theory games like chess or Agricola are so-called "sequential games", a series of "subgames", where each individual move is analyzed as a game. A sequential game is zero sum by induction, if the individual moves are themselves zero sum.
Zero sum games in game theory are not about "winning" and "losing". (Game theory doesn't reason about "wining" at all.) Zero sum games are games where a gain in utility for one player is equal to the loss of utility for the other players.
Realistically, calculating "utility" is pretty much impossible, even for games with VP's like Agricola. (And doubly impossible for games without VP's like chess.)
However, what we *do* know is that zero sum games are games where the minimax solution is equal to the maximin solution, and also equal to the Nash equilibrium.
Translating that to plain English: zero sum games are games where you don't need to know the other player's strategy to solve the game.
("Solving the game" means knowing how to play it in the best possible way under all circumstances.)
From this it follows that there are non-zero-sum games where you need to cooperate and/or betray to play optimally. There are no such zero sum games.
>In a multiplayer game it totally makes sense for 2 people to gang up on another one because it increases it utility function.
Yeah, but this has nothing to do with whether it's a zero-sum game or not.
Admittedly, I'm not sure multiplayer zero-sum games really exist. They're theoretically possible, of course (e.g., you can play Go with four colors if you really wanted to), just not a thing that we humans commonly play.
Maybe Blokus is a counterexample.
> You're using a meme layman definition of "zero sum" that has nothing to do with game theory.
No I'm using the correct
definition:
cs.stanford.edu
Either:
1) you're conflating sequential games with zero sum games:
Rock, Paper, Scissors is a non sequential game which is zero sum: cs.stanford.edu
or 2) you don't understand that if you prove by induction that chess is zero-sum because each move is zero-sum is the thing you're proving is that the entire game is zero-sum. But this isn't a iff condition there are games which are not sequential and are zero sum.
Calculating the utility for checkers was a solved problem even when I was a student, calculating the approximate utility for chess is close to perfect for all practical purposes.
>Zero sum games in game theory are not about "winning" and "losing". (Game theory doesn't reason about "wining" at all.) Zero sum games are games where a gain in utility for one player is equal to the loss of utility for the other players.
That's why I assigned {1, 0, -1} weights to the games - and you're really nitpicking.
>you're conflating sequential games with zero sum games
Are you literally retarded? Please take a remedial reading class and read again what I wrote.
Also, read the page you linked to. It says:
> So, in a two-player zero-sum game, whatever one player wins, the other loses.
Key word here: "whatever". Game theory isn't about victors and losers. It's about utility.
> calculating the approximate utility for chess is close to perfect for all practical purposes
This isn't true.
> But this isn't a iff condition there are games which are not sequential and are zero sum.
So? Again, reading comprehension problems abound. Sequential games are analyzed as a series of non-sequential games.
Chess is a series of games where each game is the individual move you make.
Well I'm not going to argue with you further because you're fucking retarded.
But
> by definition of zero sum games each 1v1 game will be zero sum if there's a clear {WIN = 1, LOSE = -1, TIE = 0} condition.
> Key word here: "whatever". Game theory isn't about victors and losers. It's about utility.
Holy fucking shit I fucking wrote explicitly that any 1v1 games with WIN = 1, TIE = 0, LOSE = -1 as your utility function you have a zero sum game. You fucking twat.
> Are you literally retarded?
Apparently you are.
agricola is comfy
>Have you ever played in a 'board game' tournament? If not, would you if the opportunity arose, and what game would you be most interested in playing in a tournament?
Played in a 12 player Star Realms tournament if that counts.
thanks senpai, I know what my Christmas bonus is buying me
Found War of the Ring for 20bucks, what did i win?
>Holy fucking shit I fucking wrote explicitly that any 1v1 games with WIN = 1, TIE = 0, LOSE = -1 as your utility function you have a zero sum game.
Read again. Chess is a sequence of games where each game is a moved piece, and the utility function is the probability of a checkmate.
This is the *only* way you can analyze chess game-theoretically.
What you wrote is meme bullshit unrelated to game theory.
P.S. If you follow chess or programming news, you know about Google's AlphaZero that BTFO Stockfish. AlphaZero is so successful because it manages to estimate a chess utility function directly, as a probability. Other chess engines use heuristic proxies (like material advantage or whatever) as utility functions. This obviously sucks to various degrees, of course, since you don't win in chess by having more pieces, you win by checkmating your opponent.
You won War of the Ring for the cost of a 20 dollar entry fee into the competition.
What board games feature alcohol in them either as a minor thing or a full blown mechanic? All I got right now is Clans of Caledonia.
Oh yeah I also got Viticulture as well. Forgot about that.
Red Dragon Inn
Coconuts
>captcha: alchohol ausfahrt
Bootleggers
...
Brew Crafters
Vinhos,
I think wine is one of the goods in Concordia
Ora & Labora lets you choose between beer or wine.
Problem is, it's a rather obvious testing ground for mechanics implemented more gracefully in basically any later Rosenburg. Still fun tho.
Opinions on blood rage?
Kemet does the area control better and Inis does the drafting better. If you want both in one game I'm sure there are better ones than BR out there but I haven't found any.
For the most part it's a euro game masquerading as Ameritrash.
Tanto Cuore: Oktoberfest
Everything wrong with boardgames today.
It's missing a tacked-on Legacy cash-in but otherwise I agree.
A poorly advertised Euro drafting game with miniatures and theme tacked on to give it an Ameritrash facade. Not as shitty a game as this general makes it out to be, but certainly not the beacon of modern board game design that most others claim it to be.
I won't mind playing when somebody brings it up (especially if properly painted) but I wouldn't buy it myself.
>Wish List
Family has gotten me a couple of games already for my December birthday, so out of what's left I'm hoping to get Tigris and Euphrates, Modern Art, Valley of the Kings, RftG, and
>Tournament
I would love to, given the opportunity. Maybe if I ever make it to Gen Con. Of course a lot of my favorites probably don't have tournaments. I'd definitely have fun competing in Inis, Tigris and Euphrates, Dominion, or Quantum.
>Player count
I really enjoy a good 1v1 when possible, but otherwise 3-5 is fun with the right games. Social deduction usually gets better at higher counts though, like the Resistance at 6-9.
Gets a lot of shit for the hype it caused earlier. Just nothing special, I do not know where all the extreme opinions on both ends of the spectrum stem from.
The best boardgame still is the one you like most
How is it that boardgaming has gotten so good in the past 3 years?
A bad version of Inis
Cult of the New. The only 2015+ game out of that top 10 that's potentially deserving of the place is Through the Ages. 7 Wonders Duel is also good but not top 10 material (then, TTA probably isn't either).
>How is it that boardgaming has gotten so popular in the past 3 years?
The answer is normies even finally accepted that the vidya industry is horse shit and that interacting with people irl can be fun if they give it a chance.
I'm still pissed the Puerto Rico dropped from top ten.
Then again it was my first real game.
Which itself would be immeasurably better had they balanced the red cards properly.
What board game best replicates the feeling of watching the sun set over the Sava in the café on the evening she left me?
I've got Lords of Vegas + expansion, Odin's Ravens, and Loopin Chewie on my wishlist (I've bought everything else myself). I'm usually pretty nice ;)
The closest I've come to a board game tournament was an x wing store tourney I did back in July. I'd love to do it again if my schedule would allow it
I guess I'd prefer 3-5 players just so there's more people there to enjoy the game with, I do love 2 player games though. The most I've ever played with and enjoyed the experience was 5
It's not really like Inis IMO. That's a comparison of theme (mythic celtic warriors fighting to be high king vs. mythic viking warriors fighting to die gloriously in ragnarok) but in actual gameplay they aren't too alike.
I don't feel the red cards are unbalanced (or not more so than the green cards), the problem is just their specialized uses sometimes render them useless for a particular player. But there are generic cards or yellow cards that'll let you discard and redraw, so...
Scythe is 100% not the 8th best board game ever. And Gloomhaven is straight up the emperor's new clothes.
>Wish list
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong so I can have another game my family will play when they aren't in the mood for something heavy but that isn't a trivia game. I recently got KDM and me and my gf have been playing that almost every single night so I'm not wanting for anything else atm.
>ever played in a tourney
No, and I doubt I ever will. I am not patient when playing with strangers and waiting for some smell sperg to math out his four minute combo in his head for ten minutes sounds like something I will never sign up for. I would consider doing a mini wargaming tourney like x wing or warhammer if I ever get back into those though.
>Player count
Just depends on the game. I know it's a lame answer, but I will say I will play any game with 2 no matter how different it may be from the intended experience. Largest I've ever enjoyed was a 12 player game of Decpetion. It's a good game for a bunch of strangers because unlike something like Secret Hitler people aren't accusing each other directly, they are accusing pieces of evidence. This means people don't have to try to be polite and soft people are less likely to get butthurt.
1e or 2e?
You didn't "won" but paid for a pretty excellent and thematic game at the third of its usual price so congrats.
BGG needs a geekrating update, the amount of dummy ratings and how they're weighted worked much better before the site redux.
>both drafting games
>not alike in gameplay
Correction: both drafting games with area control bolted on.
Russian Roulette.
>implying they don't weigh things so newer games rise fast pushing sales until the next hot thing they want to shill comes out
Do you not live in a capitalist nation or are you just oblivious to how business is conducted? BGG makes money the more popular board games are and the appearance of a surge in quality games only leads to increased popularity. They will perpetuate this cycle until it no longer works.
Have you played both?
Good point- which makes them even more alike
I'm pretty sure boardgame publishers would much rather have evergreen whales of a game like Catan or Carcassonne than a tiny slice of the Kickstarter hype machine crazies market.
How does BGG make money off this?
Yes. They are drafting games in which the cards you draft dictate what you do with your plastic on the board. Have you played either?
BBG ranking favors new popular games, besides, there's little value to it without the number of voters also taken into account. The less the voters, the more chance that people with positive opinions are the ones bothering to poll.
Gloomhaven has five times less votes than TS for instance, half of those games don't even have more than 20000 votes.
I've heard that Odin's Ravens is a great 2p game
Evergreen games don't need the publicity though, and you're ignoring how many millions can be made off of one 30 day KS campaign in which you force the customer to front the cost and can create the illusion of more value before reviewers and consumers get their hands on it. There are a lot of benefits to KS for large companies that don't need to be using but do use it as a preorder system.
>what are ads and per click profits
So you don't live in a capitalist nation I take it?
>So you don't live in a capitalist nation I take it?
I completely forgot ads exist.
>Evergreen games don't need the publicity though
Yeah they do, and much much more of it than FOTM hype games. The market is still hugely untapped, 90% of normies still have no clue.
But they don't weight things that way, the new hotness breaking the top 100 started right after their redesign to a facebook type site. The old 90s UI kept those people away so games that were good also had a lot of ratings, now something with fewer 10s can top out.
Yeah, I've played both. There are absolutely distinct differences between Inis and Blood Rage and to me it's a meme comparison, so I'm not sure I believe you about playing both.
Like:
>set board which is reduced in size
>non-set board which expands in size
>no lead players
>primus inter pares 'lead player' (who dictates expansion)
>cards are supplements to list of actions you can take according to an action counter
>cards are your actions, to make an action you must have a card
>in battles you play cards are a supplement and winner takes all
>cards initiate battles, but battles are extremely costly to actually go through
>fight over resources which are consumed in each round
>fight for one or more of three victory conditions based on area control
Inis ironically has both a much stricter draft and is much more focused on area control than Blood Rage, which is really a points salad when it comes down to the finish. Blood Rage is also much more draft dependent, where you can play the draft pretty strategically in Inis round by round.
Like
>area control
>drafting
>mythic theme
Those are similar, and that means the games appear similar. But if you played Inis and Blood Rage you wouldn't recommend Inis as a game like Blood Rage, or vice versa.
You could argue they need publicity, but certainly not hype. No one can force hype to last for years. Plus most long term board game publicity is word of mouth anyway. I've never seen a commercial on TV or youtube for carcassonne.
>90%
Nothing to be gained from pulling numbers out of your ass. Unless you have a citation there's no reason to assume the number of people who haven't played a modern board game is that high.
That's exactly my point. They redesigned it to make it easier to reach the top with fewer reviews so that when something is hot it skyrockets up the charts until the next hot thing does the same. Aren't we just agreeing?
Wow that was a really try hard post that had to nitpick things to death to try to find any differences. Thanks for making my point for me.
>talking about the things that make the games distinct is tryhard
My point is literally that if you find someone who really likes Inis or really likes Blood Rage, and you tell them the other game is like the one they like, they're going to be disappointed. And if you'd really played both games I think you'd know that.
No one really like Blood Rage outside of Lang's sock puppets.
While I think Inis is a fantastic game, this gentleman really hit the nail on the head. Blood Rage is a drafting/area control/vicious brawl-in-a-box that is completely unlike anything else on the market! Besides that, the incredibly detailed and high-quality miniatures add quite a bit to the frenzied free-for-all gameplay. If you haven't given it a shot, I highly recommend you try Blood Rage at your next board game meet-up.
>find someone who really likes Blood Rage
I'd rather not.
Kinda, my point is they still use dummy ratings which pull a game towards 5.5 (iirc, someone on BGG once let their autism loose and figured it out with the site admins not confirming or denying) until it has enough to negate that. This means a game with something like 10K ratings can move up the charts while a game that only has the 200 KS backers praising it won't. The site redesign was about google referral visits being one click and then leaving the site due to it not looking like other SNS options, the top 100 was just hit in the crossfire.
My original statement was the backend needs a redesign along with the front UI. While they do care about ad rev, the top 100 isn't what's driving them so much as google referrals, so it's probably not at the top of their list, but could get fixed. During a lot of the beta feedback threads there were questions if/when it would be looked at
>incredibly detailed and high-quality miniatures
I still can't believe that people buy games for blobs of PVC.
Sam Healey posts on Veeky Forums now? I guess we really are a Christian board.
Please do not assume I know who your boardgame e-celebs are senpai.
Theoretically, having the hottest games at the top of the charts should help with google referrals. Games on top get mentioned more, people who visit the site see the game has lots of threads about it and spend time clicking/reading them.
But ya, I mostly agree with everything you're saying.
>note: blood rage may actually involve avoiding fights more than it involves having them
Sam Healey isn't Christian, he's dirty heretic scum.
>responding to the name
>claiming to not know who it is
SUSD plz leave- your dry euro humor injected into ameritrash reviews got old years ago
I'd agree if the top 100 was the driving google click, but that's expressly why they started with game pages and then are going to forums, then top 100, then front page. Aldie did a huge write up how someone would hear about a game, google it, BGG is the top suggestion, they'd click, see the modular page and run in horror.
Either way I don't use the top 100 anymore, it's better to look at # of ratings, find people who you either agree with or violently hate their taste and make them a geekbudy for checking against yourself. And of course I won't buy a game without playing a demo first anymore, even if it's just the app; made that mistake twice the first year back in the hobby and never again.
Which games?
sure thing pol. next you'll be telling me Lang isn't white
One drop rule, Lang is white.
He's a trve kvlt nvrsvmvn.
I bought Boss Monster at my second Gencon, and while it's definitely the turkey in my collection it still sees play on occasion (it is only 20 minutes wasted when someone thinks it's cute). I bought it from a charity shop so half the proceeds went to...... I think it was a kid's hospital that year, so it's not a total loss but still.
Other was Love Letter, but the L5R edition, I wanted one with a box so it'd be easier to keep on a shelf but hadn't seen the cards inside yet. The names are too hard for normals to pronounce so it's never seen play. Luckily it was 1/2 price because I'd already bought a bagged standard edition for my niece going to college, but it sits on my "nope shelf" waiting to be put into a charity auction or math trade as part of a huge small game bundle of free crap I've accumulated.
is terrforming mars worth a buy?
the reviews seem nice but I dont have enough experience to know if there are similar games that are better
A bad version of Inis.
But also, a good version of Small World.
Why are all the Blood Rage expansions overpriced miniatures and not ones that put more cards/strategies in the game? that seems like the most sensible way to expand and put enjoyable, long-lasting variety into it
How's Samurai Spirit? It's almost half off with Amazon's deal of the day.
I see, is Inis still fun to play if I have just 2 players?
Reviewers have formed a culture around giving an opinion on a game after playing it once or twice because they're reviewing too many games and need to move on to the next immediately. It's the only reason I can imagine games like Time Stories and 7th Continent and any legacy game has so much hype around it.
Similarly, Terraforming Mars makes a good first impression but the curtain is quickly pulled away once you realize just how much card draw determines everything.
Because no one fucking cares about BR after CMON got their sweet-ass KS dosh.
This is why I liked that hobbit on "All The Games You Like Are Bad" so much, he makes a point of giving a game like ten plays.
I was just making fun of the argument earlier m8, I haven't played Terraforming Mars.
Inis is alright with 2 players though. I would say it's like 4 > 2 > 3 because 3 lends itself to kingmaking a bit too easily. With 2 you know almost everything the opponent is capable of so the game is more predictable and more demanding.
