What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Having just played my old copy over the weekend, you are not over-romanticizing it. The people lambasting you are probably too new to the hobby/too young to remember when you would open a German game and it was NICE with simple, hardy components. And not made in China with a bunch of over-elaborate frippery. The wooden castle is great, the big, chunky blocks are great...it's such a nice-looking and nice-feeling game.

The thing with the meeples in it just boils my blood though, that is literally like replacing all of the day glo figures in Nexus Ops with cubes.

Michael Barnes wrote: The thing with the meeples in it just boils my blood though, that is literally like replacing all of the day glo figures in Nexus Ops with cubes.

--- spits ---

Sagrilarus wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote: The thing with the meeples in it just boils my blood though, that is literally like replacing all of the day glo figures in Nexus Ops with cubes.

--- spits ---

With or without the stink?

I just wish Shadowrun: Crossfire could deliver a more consistent experience and not of the "welp shit, that card flip did us in" variety. There's some really neat stuff that happens in the Crossfire cards, like the one that heals everybody...and then a timebomb goes off. And you might find that 10, 15 Karma worth of upgrades is enough...or they may have almost no effect because of how the obstacles/crossfire went down during the game.

But it goes back to this grinding concept...which I think is really kind of ingenious because it makes your failures worth something. Contrast with Ghost Stories. You lose, you pack up the game and that's it. In this game, you get points to possibly spend for next time. This is a neat way to allow for the game to be difficult without just constantly hammering the players over the head with capriciously dealt losses. Like LOTR LCG, for example.

I don't know if it's necessarily sloppy design or a "fix" for balancing the harder missions so much as it is an idea that isn't quite fully realized in this game. In some ways, it is kind of like the fail states in Imperial Assault (or Descent 2nd, I assume) where you get SOMETHING for failing. But in this one, it's not a straight campaign really...because you go back and try the same mission again to try to get the awards. And then I like that there are additional challenge levels you can add so if your Karma level is at the point where a mission is easy, you can add on one or more of these modifiers.

Or you can, as Jem suggested, start out with 5, 10, 15 Karma. That really makes a lot of sense to do, I think, since the runners don't start with any special abilities and their traits are limited to deck composition, initial hand, and starting money. I think a 5 point upgrade on the first game is probably the way to go because it won't throw the balance out of whack, but it will give you at least something to leverage. You'll likely still lose the first few times, and probably quickly at that.

I would say it is still, regardless of my positive opinion on it, pretty iffy overall though. It's tentative in the areas where I wish it were more confident. Maybe if they expand it more it will smooth out some of the rougher areas.

Saturday was Talisman 3rd Edition with all the expansion. This is still probably my favorite edition of the game, and those of you complaining about what a slog Talisman can be probably (a) are fun murderers and (b) should give 3rd Edition a chance if you get to. Maybe I'll write an article about what 3rd Edition does differently, but we had a four-player game done in about 2 hours and it was a blast. My first character (Hafling) died almost immediately, and I drew the Assassin for my second character. I was getting good gear, picking up strength bonuses, and making a play for the Dragon King. My buddy made it to the Dragon's Tower before I did though so I had to make a mad dash to beat him to the top. He got hung up with an Undead Warrior or something that wouldn't let him pass until he killed it using Strength, which was his low stat. Then I got hung up one space ahead of him with a Puzzle Box I had to open using Craft, which was my low stat. I got it open, but on the way to the top I got the Wizard's Curse which cuts my next battle total in half. Naturally my next battle was the Dragon King, but I had an ace up my sleeve. Finger of Death spell, which works against the Dragon King for the win! Except it doesn't because my buddy in the tower Counterspelled it. He got to the top on the next turn and took the win. Bastard.

Followed it up with Talisman 2nd Edition, again with all the expansions. Even Timescape. There was a lot of running around and terrible Events early on and it was pretty rough for a while. My buddy in the City started getting low on health but found a Dungeon Door; he decided to dive into the Dungeon than deal with the baddies that were all round him in the City. He made a pretty quick run to the Dungeon's Treasure Chamber, where rolling a 6 sends you straight to the Crown of Command. Of course he rolled a six. The hidden ending was Pandora's Box, which makes you draw Spells and Adventure cards and use them only on other characters until they're all dead. My wife was running around as the Knight Templar and held on the longest, but she was sure to go down when Mr Pandora's Box had to cast the Black Lotus on her. The Black Lotus transforms the target into the Mystic, which is a special super-powerful character, and it teleports the target to the location where the spell was cast. Straight to the Crown of Command with her, where she easily killed Mr Pandora's Box in combat.

TL;DR: Talisman is awesome.

Michael Barnes wrote: Having just played my old copy over the weekend, you are not over-romanticizing it. The people lambasting you are probably too new to the hobby/too young to remember when you would open a German game and it was NICE with simple, hardy components. And not made in China with a bunch of over-elaborate frippery. The wooden castle is great, the big, chunky blocks are great...it's such a nice-looking and nice-feeling game.

The thing with the meeples in it just boils my blood though, that is literally like replacing all of the day glo figures in Nexus Ops with cubes.

Nexus Ops would totally work as a coloured cube euro with solid colour hex tiles. Actually it would be a valid swap to accept the cubes if you got rid of the shit ugly abomination tiles that look like a children drew and then puked on them, as part of a revamp. Have to agree that EG big box is an abomination in every way, meeples retarded, boxsize retarded, price retarded, castillo retarded, stupid weird clipart flags on the box art retarded. Did they even get rid of the butt plug?

JEM wrote: I guess I enthuse a lot about Crossfire now because initially I felt exactly the way you guys are writing now. It was frustrating and difficult, and I was arguing hard with Rahdo on BGG about how random and unfair it is. Then the developers got involved with a community vs dev play by play, and it showed the kinds of mistakes everyone was making, with input about why move X or Y is the wrong call even if it looks right.

The new, easier scenarios are less about fixing the difficulty as fixing the lack of a stepping stone to the right difficulty. Still, nobody is going to call the board gaming police if you hand yourselves some karma upgrades. It's your box of cards, after all.

It's not too difficult, it's maybe too opaque. But I find it fascinating, and exciting, and highly thematic.

Hey, I'm glad you found something you love. I just can't envision how. I'm going to have to check out the community vs dev play by play because it would probably be instructive as to just what the hell they were thinking. I can't get past how crazy swingy it is. It's one thing to be difficult, it's another to clear the first scene with one guy down to one or two life and the others down by one or two, with shit cards to boot.

I just can't see the path.

Edit:
boardgamegeek.com/thread/1309331/sample-2-player-game

Now I see what you mean about opaque. Holy Christ. Basically, the only way to play this is to plan shit out like the scene in Ronin where they're all going over their parts, and then hope for the best cards. I can see how you might see that as thematic, but I view that as min-maxing like a muhvuggah, and AP-prone. That takes all the fun out, IMHO.

Maybe this is why I dislike almost all deckbuilding games. Too much about creating engines and too little about creating memories.

Legomancer wrote: I'm being told over on BGG that I'm full of shit about this edition of El grande, so maybe I'm just mis-remembering and over-romanticizing the old one.

I've owned the Decennial edition since it came out. I saw the new version last night.

No, you're not. This new version is lame as fuck, and meeples really aren't good for the game because they don't stack/fit well, and when you get 3 people contesting Valencia you end up with a shitload of little meeps all over thefucking place.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Maybe this is why I dislike almost all deckbuilding games. Too much about creating engines and too little about creating memories.

If you haven't tried it, Baseball Highlights: 2045 is a lot of fun - particularly in the 5-8 player tournament format. Great memories of each tourney so far.

If you want to jump in, our homebrew tournament rules can be found here . Start with the Super Deluxe set (contains all expansions) and then purchase 4 extra starter teams. (I recommend sets 5-8, as they don't duplicate the starter decks in the base set.) You'll be good to go as long as you print out extra player boards and get creative with any extra blue/red/white runner pawns that you might need.

I've been off F:AT for a while. Did BH2045 get much press? If not, it should.

wkover wrote: If you want to jump in, our homebrew tournament rules can be found here . Start with the Super Deluxe set (contains all expansions) and then purchase 4 extra starter teams. (I recommend sets 5-8, as they don't duplicate the starter decks in the base set.) You'll be good to go as long as you print out extra player boards and get creative with any extra blue/red/white runner pawns that you might need.
I've been off F:AT for a while. Did BH2045 get much press? If not, it should.

BH2045 is one of my favourite games currently.
I'm going to have to check out those 5-8 tournament rules...and find 3-5 more people to join in. How do the newer expansions (Big Fly, Errors) work in play? I was worried about the extra luck involved with all the "checks" that require you to flip over the top card of the FA deck. No one ever picks up the Gambler type hitters when they come up already.

SemiColon wrote: BH2045 is one of my favourite games currently.
I'm going to have to check out those 5-8 tournament rules...and find 3-5 more people to join in. How do the newer expansions (Big Fly, Errors) work in play? I was worried about the extra luck involved with all the "checks" that require you to flip over the top card of the FA deck. No one ever picks up the Gambler type hitters when they come up already.

One thing I like about our updated tourney rules is that (for balance reasons) the 10+ cost players can't be purchased until later in the season, so players are more likely to purchase multiple low-cost cards instead of one high-cost card. It mixes up the game a bit more, I think.

The tourney organizer has been reluctant to include some of the nuttier cards (bean card that permanently removes a card, e.g.), but we've used some of the gambler cards on occasion. Most of the guys in my group tend to play for the pure fun of it (winning/losing not a big deal), so the crazier the better in their eyes.

We've also toyed with the idea of using injuries. After each game, each player rolls 1d8. On a 1, one of the cards from the previous game is randomly removed (for good) and replaced with a random card of equal cost from the Free Agent Deck. (If a starter card is selected, replace it with a random starter that has been removed.)

I played in a 16-player Baseball Highlights tournament a few weeks ago (8 teams of 2). Lots of fun. My team stunk.

bfkiller wrote: I played in a 16-player Baseball Highlights tournament a few weeks ago (8 teams of 2). Lots of fun. My team stunk.

I want to play a side-by-side 4-player game of Baseball Highlights where each pairing plays a best-of-7 (with a mutual draft pool of 10-12 cards between games) and then the winning players on each side play a best-of-7 World Series, with no further buys. Maybe. Not decided on the further buys.

That may be the only thing I don't like about Baseball Highlights--the weird format for tournament play. What I like most about the game is getting a best-of-7 series in a tight timeframe.

Last night I got to play Shadows Over Normandie for the first time against a real opponent. He was the allies and I was the Deep Ones. This was his first time, and I easily beat him in both scenario 1 and 2.

After last night and having soloed it before, I'm convinced that nothing short of a miracle could ever allow the Allies to win scenario 2. It is not even close to balanced. Not only are the Allies severely out-manned, but they have to search up to 4 huts spread around the map, and they only have 6 turns to do it. My opponent got to search ONE hut, on the LAST turn. Of course it was the wrong hut.

hotseatgames wrote: Last night I got to play Shadows Over Normandie for the first time against a real opponent. He was the allies and I was the Deep Ones. This was his first time, and I easily beat him in both scenario 1 and 2.

After last night and having soloed it before, I'm convinced that nothing short of a miracle could ever allow the Allies to win scenario 2. It is not even close to balanced. Not only are the Allies severely out-manned, but they have to search up to 4 huts spread around the map, and they only have 6 turns to do it. My opponent got to search ONE hut, on the LAST turn. Of course it was the wrong hut.

Aside from that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?