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03 May 2016 08:09 #226818 by JEM
There is a fair bit more to the game than rolling the dice and seeing what happens, and choices to be made before and during the rolling part that are not purely about which dice to keep. I mean, there's more to it than Risk Express (the game the core mechanic is based on).

Prioritizing adventures, based on available resources, or need for them (elder signs yet? or do we need clues, or items?) midnight effects? Do we even want elder signs? Or do we want to load up to tackle the GOO?
What to spend trophies on?
Should I add the red and/or yellow dice to this attempt? Should I roll just the greens to begin then add those later? Should I spend that clue?
Should I deliberately choose to fail this task, so I can focus the die that completes it, and use the remaining attempts to keep rolling the red die to see if I can lock the wild result on a spell card, then finally complete the task?

Maybe you experienced those game elements and just didn't like them.

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03 May 2016 08:20 #226820 by hotseatgames
Agreed, Elder Sign has more going on than may appear at first. And it's easy to miss rules since the book is not great. You might like the streets of Arkham expansion. That's not the real name of it but I can't remember what it is at the moment.

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03 May 2016 08:23 #226821 by Legomancer
Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.

Every game with dice is not themed Yahtzee.
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03 May 2016 08:40 #226823 by Gary Sax
Oh come on. Elder Sign is a little bit like Yahtzee on steroids. Locking in dice? Trying to get runs and combinations of dice? Yes, there is more to it than that, but that's similar enough to make the comparison.
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03 May 2016 09:23 #226824 by JEM
Comparison, sure. Dismissal, no.

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03 May 2016 11:38 #226834 by jpat
I really like Elder Sign--which reminds me, I need to get Gates of Arkham played--but I agree that the rules are messy, and even though we've played maybe a dozen times it's like as not that we'll screw something fairly serious up, like forgetting terror effects or, hell, even forgetting the final battle :p.

It does have Yahtzee mechanics, but I neither consider that a full description of the game nor a problem.

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03 May 2016 12:21 #226844 by Ska_baron
Played Elder Sign with an expansion once with the owner of the game and 3 other non-gamer types. I thought it was just going to be the base game and therefore was SELLING it as themed yahtzee. Alas I was wrong. But luckily the owner acted somewhat as the GM and I worked hard to ham it up for everyone to get in the right spirit. It helped that we won (barely) to go down as a good 2-3 hours, but I don't think I'd get them to play it again. I am not turned on by all things Arkham, so could take or leave another game of it.

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03 May 2016 16:46 #226861 by Michael Barnes
Mostly in support of Josh Look's assessment of Apex Theropod. It is kind of a hot mess, but it is DINOSAWAS as you like them, no doubt. It is very much like Legendary, but I think there's a better, more interesting game here amidst all of the fiddle-faddle going on with hatching eggs, setting up ambushes, hunts, viruses, droughts, alerts, defensive stances, ten different decks, etc. etc.

I just soloed it, but reading the MP rules...it certainly seems like solo design with MP shoehorned into it. Mainly because it is kind built on a co-op chassis, but it's competitive. See, hot mess.

But gosh, it has some COOL things going on it. Like how you can set those ambushes, but they may trigger an alert that causes certain dinos in the hunt trail to run away. The boss might show up early, so you can either fight or flee...but if you flee, you might not have TIME to beat him before the asteroid strikes. Hatching cards from your personal Apex deck is a neat concept. The evolution angle is handled well too with some powerful cards. Love the way the wounds work, if you get severe trauma it can wind up hurting you over and over again.

It looks a hot mess too. The illustrations are really good...but every card is full art with horrible photoshop lensflares and gradients on the numbers. Overall, better looking than Legendary regardless. Rulebook? Hot mess too. Setup? Yep? Hot mess.

I might love it, not sure yet.

I also got in Fireteam Zero. Wow, is this game pedestrian. Virtually nothing particularly compelling or distinguishing about it. Big, $100 box of Kickstarter minis in an overproduced package (so you get the printed box inside the box for the mini trays). I just did the first scenario, which may or may not be indicative of more complexity later on, but it was simple to the point of boring. Every single attack against the "Corrupted Animals" was a landslide, felt like zero tension. The scenario was stupid- find fuel and a propeller out of a random deck of search cards. Whoopee. It felt like a super slimmed-down version of Gears of War and Last Night on Earth with a bunch of uninspired, copycat mechanics. I've got some more playing to do with it and I need to play it with live bodies too but so far I think it is one of the least interesting/impressive games I've seen this year. Very emblematic of a Kickstarter project from top to bottom.
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03 May 2016 21:02 #226876 by Egg Shen
Speaking of dinosaurs I recently picked up a copy of this oldie:



I haven't played it yet, but I'm excited to give it a whirl. Looks like dumb fun.
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04 May 2016 00:07 - 04 May 2016 00:09 #226878 by Grudunza
Next stop on my recent medium-heavy-thematic-ish Euro trip is Trickerion. Major points for theme/setting and presentation, with turn of the 20th century magicians competing for fame and wealth. Great art and graphic design style. The game is pretty good, too. Worker placement yet again, but with an interesting take on it with each type of person (magician, apprentice, assistant, engineer, manager) having 1-3 action points, and actions on the board having a different cost, with some options to boost actions. So there is a fight for spaces as usual, but you also assign every character to a location at once ahead of time, and then one at a time in turn order send them there, so there ends up being some good decisions about which things to do and when.

Ultimately, you're learning and developing tricks, getting materials to be able to prepare them, and then performing them. The performing is pretty abstract, but has some good dynamics about who goes first and what venue your tricks will be performed in, and some important jockeying and timing going on in order to maximize your point/fame/money yield. Played 2p with my daughter and it was good, but I think 3p would probably be the sweet spot. FWIW, there is a basic game and advanced "Dark Alley" expansion included in the box, and we jumped right in with the expansion and it was fine. I wouldn't think the base game alone would be as interesting without that.
Last edit: 04 May 2016 00:09 by Grudunza.
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04 May 2016 08:58 #226882 by san il defanso
We played another game of Talismam: The Cataclysm, this time with the Woodlands and the Firelands. I had one of those games where just about everything goes right. Plus, I was the Dervish, who can attack with two weapons at once, which would have been great if I could get a second weapon.

The best was the saga of the Spider Queen, who braved the treachery of the Middle and Inner Regions, defied the much stronger Dervish, and survived a failed Toadify spell, only to be kicked back out to the City because of a bad roll in the mines. In the city he met an apprentice healer. This seemed like the perfect thing, since through all of his adventures he had been reduced down to one life. So he rolled, and rolled a 1. Since this particular healer is just an apprentice, he lost a life and died. It was the kind of poetry that only Talisman can generate.
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05 May 2016 11:43 #227031 by Unicron
Earlier this week, I finally test drove Star Wars:Rebellion. There is a lot to like about it, but the combat system is as bad as advertised. It felt clunky and chaotic. I'd have preferred to just roll dice(ed. you have no idea how hard that statement was to type) and use the leader's tactic ratings to re-roll based on their rating. The tactic cards don't add anything.

Tuesday, we played a three player game of Liberte. I hadn't played it in almost a year. Another group I used to play with regulary favored a similar game, Tammany Hall over it. I like both, but I think Liberte is the deeper game, with more interesting play. Liberte is an area control game where players wrest political control of provinces within revolution era France over 4 rounds. Whomever has the most influence in the ruling government gets a large victory point award, but 2nd most influence in the ruling gov't and most influence in the minority government also award points. If you fall behind, you alternatively can create paths to an end game where those victory points won't count, but instead will be determined by either a radical revolt or monarchist counter revolution. This forces the leaders in points to divert their efforts from just pulling farther away and stomp these uprisings, while players trailing in points can then try to steal provinces and close the gap.

Last night, we introduced a new player to Churchill. As first games go, it was very close. We did not defeat the Axis, but we played the tournament scenario (5 conferences), so it's pretty difficult to close out with that setup. I prefer the full campaign (10 conferences). It typically only plays out 8 conferences, and the Axis is defeated almost every time. It's not much longer than tournament, which played last night in about 150 minutes with a rules explanation.

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07 May 2016 23:53 #227192 by Disgustipater
We started a Pandemic Legacy campaign today.

We lost our first game in January. I guess we were rusty on Pandemic. We remembered we needed to really focus on getting the right cards to the right people, so we managed to win our January retry. Since we eradicated one of the diseases, one of the upgrades we chose was a Positive Mutation that makes curing that disease easier. We then won our February game. We used both our upgrades on the first two Positive Mutations on different color we eradicated. We then won March. Since we eradicated another different color, again, we used both upgrades to take two Positive Mutations. Seems like you should definitely take those if you qualify. They definitely made things easier for us. February wasn't too much of a problem, except for the one worst case outbreak scenario actually happening that got us up to 7 outbreaks right before we won, but we still won. March was pretty easy, even with only 2 funding. Not a lot happened. We'll have to wait for our next session to see how a zero funded April goes.

Overall, I really like the Legacy format. I really want to play Risk Legacy now. Maybe I'll buy it so it will be easier to convince people to play since it wont be a hypothetical. As for Pandemic, it's still Pandemic, so I find it kind of lackluster. But the novelty of progression and new surprise mechanics makes me want to see it through to the end.

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08 May 2016 01:15 #227195 by SuperflyPete

Egg Shen wrote: Speaking of dinosaurs I recently picked up a copy of this oldie:



I haven't played it yet, but I'm excited to give it a whirl. Looks like dumb fun.


It's better than people give it credit for. The rules are kind of poorly written. I did a review at Superflycircus.com if you're interested in a douche's opinion on how you should feel about it LOL
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08 May 2016 01:16 #227196 by SuperflyPete
Oh, and Elder Sign is awesome fun, but only when played in iOS format

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