JAST (from BGG)

Oh, excuse me all to hell. It's another shorter, less random Risk-ish game.

EDIT: And though that "ish" is an important distinction, it wouldn't be as important if you hadn't deliberately altered my quote.

I don't think we really have that problem with AT games. Sure, there's been a recent slew of Space Hulk inspired games, but I've played them all, and I can say each one feels significantly different.

The reason why there's JASEs out there is on a very upfront, fundamental level. Euros tend to start with a mechanic, and all those mechanics come from a pretty limited, uninspired pool (work placement, bidding, economy machine, etc). The typical Euro's stagnant design is cemented by it's theme, and since almost any Euro designer will tell you that you don't want your game to turn anyone off with it's theme, the choice of themes can be limited down to farming, city building, trains, etc. I'm not kidding on that one, I once read in a book that Euro designers look poorly upon something like Knizia's Dracula because you might have a hard time convincing your grandmother to play it.

With AT games, we have games that start with a similar concept. The recent slew of Space Hulk type games is a good example. They all start with that asymmetrical, tactical battle in claustrophobic corridors, but the theme that the design is injected with helps set it apart. I can say that I've played all of these recent SH games, and I thought they all felt very different. Forlorn: Hope takes even more inspiration from Alien than SH did, with the aliens mutating, bursting out of people, etc. The characters and zombies (especially the exploding ones) in Incursion really help to set that one apart.

It's love people. We put love into this shit. It's just a whole lot of mental masturbation on the other side of the fence.

I gotta agree with MJ, Runewars really does feel soulless and at one point I felt like all the units were at their core, the same and that the differences were too minute to make them interesting. The variations are subtle so it felt dry to me at first, but all that goes out the window because my game group loves/loved this game. We've had countless kickass games with tons of combat, backstabbing, and at least one shouting match because of it. Pure ameritrash, if you ask me.

Yes, they streamlined it to hell, and some parts of it play like a Eurogame, but for our group it works, and that's that.

I found Risk 2010 boring as hell. I don't know if we did it wrong or something, but the very first game we played left such a bad taste in our mouths that I sold/traded it immediately after that one play. I remember after setting up the first player proceeded to roll for 15 or 20 consecutive battles while everyone else just watched. Then the second player rolled for like 10 battles, and the third for 5 or something and the last player was just left there holding his balls.

Titan felt like there was something going on there, but the abstract map movement went over our heads. We literally could not get to fighting each other, and whenever our stacks did meet, it was more of a "oooh I can actually reach you now, who cares if my stack is shit, I wanna see some dice rolling" than actually picking our battles. 30 minutes before you can start attacking each other is BS. Didn't feel any excitement or epicness, just a whole lot of dryness.

*insert angry rant about Battlelore here*

mjl1783 wrote:

Oh, excuse me all to hell. It's another shorter, less random Risk-ish game.

EDIT: And though that "ish" is an important distinction, it wouldn't be as important if you hadn't deliberately altered my quote.

No I shalln't excuse you all to hell.
Runewars is FAR more removed from Risk than Claustrophobia is from Space Hulk. You have to be on Cocain to think otherwise.

As far is "altering your quote" goes, is this the fucking newspaper? You're entire slab of text is in this thread for everyone to me, so don't excuse me at all for not expanding my textbox threefold by quoting it all.

Runewars is FAR more removed from Risk than Claustrophobia is from Space Hulk.

Well then, make your case. Tell me, specifically, what the games have in common gameplay-wise.

I'll spot you one: One side has a lot of weak guys, and the other has a few relatively strong ones. So, that's one thing. What else is there?

mjl1783 wrote:

Runewars is FAR more removed from Risk than Claustrophobia is from Space Hulk.

Well then, make your case. Tell me, specifically, what the games have in common gameplay-wise.

I'll spot you one: One side has a lot of weak guys, and the other has a few relatively strong ones. So, that's one thing. What else is there?

That's it. Which makes it closer to Space Hulk than Runewars is to Risk.

Only on Planet Skeletor.

Runewars is like Risk? Because it has armies?

I might go for Runewars is like Nexus Ops, as it is mini-objective-driven instead of just go beat on people. In fact Runewars is more like an advanced Nexus Ops than anything else.

As to actual soulless AT: Anything by Steve Jackson, which we've all practically relegated to the dustbin.

And the World of Warcraft Adventure Game. FFG's worst misstep in awhile.

Runewars is to Risk (both dudes on a map) as Claustrophobia is to Candyland (both move your dude along a map). Claustrophobia is a much more derivative design mechanics wise, since it's french/asmodee. Together with the theme that is paperthin and uninteresting in comparison to other games. (It reminds of the paperthin theme that was tied to Frontiers)

But by definition I would refrain from calling AT (apart from pseudo-AT) soulless since Ameritrash stands for theme, adventure, immersion. So any soulless AT should therefor be called pseudo-AT .

I think one reason why there hasn't been much in the way of repetition between AT games is because the AT paradigm encourages variants and modifications, additions and changes to a game. In a way it wants you, as the player, to tailor the game to suit your needs.

Euros I feel don't encourage much experimentation with rules because often it'll change the game engine at its core and likely create some wonky balance issues. So when someone sees a different way to play a game it will often be explored as a new title rather than some changes to an existing one.

moofrank wrote:

And the World of Warcraft Adventure Game. FFG's worst misstep in awhile.

I'm not sure why people are hesitant to break AT games into two basic categories: for adults, and for families/kids. (Some games span both categories, which is a bonus.)

WoW the Adventure Game is a great family game. I wouldn't pull it out for adults, but that's not why I bought it.

Same deal with Castle Ravenloft. It won't get a lot of adult play (not really its primary market, IMO), but my kids think it's awesome. That means I think it's awesome.

Return of the Heroes is also firmly in the "great for families" category. Without having played it, my guess is that Magical Athlete is too.

(I'll know tomorrow night, as KingPut is going to bring his Athlete to share.)