Arkham Horror is long on flavor and experience, but short on strategy. In Magic terms, it's for Timmy, not Spike. There is too much randomness in the events for you to do much planning or tactical thinking. You just sort of explore the town and hope for the best.
This is of course not necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being Timmy. And it has a special value in a cooperative game, firstly because your fellow players can revel with your successes and commiserate with your failures along with you, and secondly because there are no obvious "right moves" that more experienced players will keep pointing out to less experienced players. Feeling like it would be better if somebody else was playing for you is the death of a cooperative game.
Besides Arkham Horror, I also play a lot of Cosmic Encounter, Smallworld, and Illuminati!, about which more later.
Arkham has some pretty complex strategy once you get into it - even just in which locations which sorts of characters should visit. there is a lot of risk/reward in it. The base game you should be able to win nearly always after you've played it a handful of times. It is a good fun game to play, as long as all the players are paying the same amount of attention.
I've also played their "arkham world" game (Eldritch horror, I think). Eldritch is even longer on flavour - each great old one has their own decks of events and some of the encounters, so it is dripping flavour from every oozing pore. But the gameplay is in some ways less fun.
Anyway, other games:
Continuing the cthullu theme, Study in Emerald is a fun game - it's a sort of deck building game and sort of not. Has a few issues (The default score needed to win with each number of players is about 6 points too low; game is much more fun when it is slightly streched) but is a good, complex strategy game.
I'm going to throw this out there. You should all check out Dead of Winter, a game designed by two of my good friends. It's currently the top of the hotness chart on Board Game Geek, and was voted one of the most anticipated games of the year. I finally had a chance to play the finished game a week ago, and it was fantastic. It does an amazing job at blending storytelling into the game, something that way too many games either ignore, or focus on so heavily that it becomes a detriment.
So I went ahead and pre-ordered it after reading the description. I figure it's time to give a new game a shot and I've been looking for another 'players have secret objectives' games since I got sick of Battlestar Galactica (mostly because it's such a huge time sink, and there is always that one person who can't make a decision to save their lives).
So read over a lot of the game you guys play but I can't really tell what exactly would appeal to me. I'm that type of guy who is into more complex game I play Arkham Horror a lot (with all the expansions), Zombicide (With all the expansions) and a few others. Do you guys know of any games out there that have the complexity and/or number of awesome pieces as these two games?
Oh and if your watching kickstarter and like Zombicide, Season 3 is doing its thing. I kinda want to get in on it just to get a House and Gordon Ramsey figure to massacre zombies with.
I supported Season 3 already, but honestly it's mostly so I'll have all this stuff on the off chance we actually play it again any time soon.
I wouldn't really call Zombicide all that complex, but Arkham Horror is. If you're looking for similar levels of complexity, there is Battlestar Galactica, or Defenders of the Realm (which is a more complex, fantasy-based version of Pandemic).
See I find Zombicide Easy enough to play so in that respect it is not complex, but from a strategic counterpoint of working with a group and the design elements of dealing with the various types of zombies it can get very detailed at times. Also making your own missions doesn't hurt necessarily nor does leaning less on the OP elements of that game if I can help it. That and any game where I can lose the first mission right out of the box so many times wins me over quite a bit. I still haven't beat mission one from Season 1. I think I'm like 0-9 versus that one.
I guess in many ways I equate a game with a mass quantity of pieces, potential for in depth storyline/play, and a few more intangible concepts as basis for complexity.
I have found though I am way to into co-op games right now and need a few vs. games to throw into it.
By the way has anyone played the Heroes of Normady game? I think I may order the Shadows over Normady game because it sounds like it could be a blast but wanted a little feedback first. Also a few of you have mentioned Eclipse. How exactly does it play. I have seen it quite a few times now (and the expansions) but I don't have much to go off of for system.
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To your comment a few pages and weeks ago, Eclipse is far far better than Twilight Imperium. I've played both, and I will never play Twilight Imperium again. The game simply takes too long and gets too political, but the main problem that I have with it is halfway through the game, you can see who is most likely going to win, but you still have a long long time to go until game end. Eclipse keeps it fun till the very end, and is shorter, and has better mechanics I think, etc....
To those Euro gamers who read this, my group just got Terra Mystica, and it is a great, great game. We are salivating at the end of the game to play it again! The 14 or 16 races or however many it is really adds some nice replay value.
Ugh. I actually hate playing Munchkin. I used to be a huge fan as a kid, but the more I've played it, the more I realize:
1) The optimal strategy is generally to not interact unless somebody is about to win
2) The above means that whoever tries to win second or third probably does
3) The game is HUGELY luck based. If you kick down low level monsters early, you do well. If you kick down blanks, well, good luck with ever accomplishing anything.
4) There's a ton of cards, which is great, except when it becomes impossible to shuffle the decks in any kind of meaningful way.
5) It's really, really complicated for newcomers and people who aren't big gaming buffs
If you like D&D-parody humor and want a game that can be played in quickly, is great for large groups, is great for casual gamers, and actually involves constant player interaction, check out Red Dragon Inn.
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Hi guys, any Seasons player here? Just wanna pop in to ask a few things about Seasons including all its expansions.
With 180 cards (90 distinct, 2 copies each), some once-per-game privileges, and global enchantments, I wonder if anyone has tried playing the full game with alternate rules not found in the game rules, and if yes, how fun those may be. For example:
1) Singleton (1 copy per card in the game). This would mean each card matters even more seeing that passing a card would highly mean you'll never see the card again. Especially hazardous when we're worrying about sacrificial cards and resource-gathering cards (like the water Potions/Amulets)
2) Multiple priviliges in one game. Normally each privilige (such as "Spy your opponent's hand and gain 9 crystal at end of game) is given to one player (so one player, one privilige), and their effect is once per game, but what if we play with more? Like one privilige per year?
3) Multiple enchantments. Aside from the Prelude enchantments (the first three from Enchanted Kingdoms) and the two Die of Destiny enchantments, the enchantments all feel rather mutually exclusive to one another, so playing with multiple of them doesn't feel like they'll clash with each other. And for the Prelude enchantments, even they can be included/paired in the fun.
I own the base game + the 2 expansions. Unfortunately, I rarely get Seasons to the table, so I'm not very knowledgeable of synergies, combos, or, really, any particularly good strategic lines of play at this point. I do however have a friend that plays Seasons all the time on boardgamearena.com, and I'm hoping to pick his brain sometime on a refining a good, 100-card custom set. My preference is NOT strict adherence to single or doubleton, so I'm looking forward to a mix of one-of 'interesting/powerful/archetype-defining' cards, and an assortment of two-of utility cards.
Just a random funny thing about that game: I also played it at Boardgamearena.com, but either because I was just unlucky or something someone was conspiring against me, I found out that the site robbed me of a few things:
1) In the web version, I have yet to play a game with the priviliges and enchantments, so those components end up being totally new to me now that I've bought the entire set.
2) Some cards never seem to show up in the online games (Dragonsoul and Winter Staff comes to mind, or should I say, about half of the Path of Destiny cards are all missing from the online version)
I just played Seasons last week at my friend's store. I'd played a few times previously last year.
The friend in question was one of the four players, and it was his first game. He spent the entire game at <10 crystals and complaining about getting badly stomped.
Then, the very last turn of the game, he gained over 200 points.
He had a fairly large board, mostly of Magic Items.
One of them let him store 3 extra energy
One of them reduced the energy costs of cards by 1
One of them gave him +1 crystal per each transmute
He went into the turn with most if not all of his ten energy slots full.
He used the bonus track transmute to get the ability to transmute plus an extra +1.
The season was Autumn, so Water energies were worth a base 3 points, so 5 each after both bonuses applied. Most of his energies were Water.
He transmuted the lot of them, leaving him with just two energies, then played the card that gives you an energy for each Magic item you have, giving him 8 waters and two other energies. Transmute those 8, play a second one of those Magic items for 10 water energies. Transmute those all and cash out.
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Apparently complaining about losing so badly was part of his strategy so that nobody messed him up.
And to be fair, it wasn't like, super obnoxious complaining, it was just like the occasional "Man, I have never lost a game this badly before, this game is hard"
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I picked up 7 Wonders and all the expansions last week and we have been enjoying it greatly so far. I highly appreciate how easy to pick up to play the game is, while still having a strategy level regarding how to build to both benefit yourself and try and deny your opponents what may benefit them more.
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“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
I'm really excited about King of New York, the sequel to King of Tokyo (designed by Magic's Richard Garfield). Comes out early next month.
In the mean time, I just got my friends into the Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG. I've had problems with them in RPGs before and I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but I now think that the more board game-y aspects of 3.5 D&D-based games had them playing with a board game mentality. Without the grids, they're a ton more creative in how they play, and they really roleplay better.
What do you like about the king of tokyo games? I am/was a collector of the monsterpocalypse game, and I love the kaiju genre, but I so rarely get monsterpocalypse on the table that I haven;t wanted to tempt myself by looking at KoT's system.
Well, from the first time I play it, the game feels like it has plenty of options, but for some reasons doesn't give itself time to explore those options. It's fun if someone starts gathering energy for cards, but then someone else starts collecting claws to boot everyone else out of the game, which thus makes the game strategy a bit confusing and too harried.
What do you like about the king of tokyo games? I am/was a collector of the monsterpocalypse game, and I love the kaiju genre, but I so rarely get monsterpocalypse on the table that I haven;t wanted to tempt myself by looking at KoT's system.
King of Toyko is more giant monster-themed than a true Giant Monster game. I'm a huge fan of Kaiju (I've got some Monsterpocalypse but never found anyone to play with), and I've also got the Godzilla board game (which sucks, BTW, don't get it) and I'm considering Rampage, but I feel like it's too messy for my OCD.
Anyway, King of Tokyo is a lot of fun. It's a dice-rolling game that's good for people inexperienced with board games in general, and it's a relatively quick game (never had a game go over 40 minutes), too, so you can usually fit a game into any game night. KoT is much a king-of-the-hill style game, where you get victory points for being in Tokyo, and can damage all the other monsters, but they can all damage you while you're there, but you can't heal. It's relatively simple, the dice have sides for points, energy, attack and health, and you get to keep your final roll. You can buy upgrade cards with energy that have fantastic art and do interesting things to the game. And the game is fast enough that you don't get bored easily. It's also small and easily portable for parties. There is a reason it's on most people's top 10 lists. The two expansions add two monsters each (great for larger games) and various other gameplay mechanics, but the base game is fun enough.
There are basically two ways to win: Get 20 points (you get two per turn you're in tokyo and can earn more through buying power-ups or rolling numbers on dice) or kill everyone else. It's usually about 1 in 3 or 4 games that is actually won through points, the rest come down to a monster brawl.
King of New York turns the game into an actual monster brawler with dice-rolling mechanics. It gets rid of the 'numbers' on the dice in exchange for other uses, and it allows you to move from borough to borough in New York duking it out with other monsters, while retaining an element of the king-of-the-hill mechanic with whoever controls Manhattan.
I recommend getting both, as one is good if you're playing with board game newbies or people who just want to have fun and not get competitive. KoNY is better for the Giant Monster experience, rather than just Giant Monster flavor, and you can use the characters between the two interchangeably.
I haven't played for a while but I am an old White Wolf standby who has moved on to the New World of Darkness now. Played a little off and on of Vampire the Requiem, Mage the Awakening, Changeling the Lost and trying to work up a game of Mummy the Curse.
So with boardgames. I've been on a more or less binge rounding out my game list pretty completely. Added Formula D and Cards Against Humanity along with A Touch of Evil. Now I'm on the fence about having to order a game like Fireteam O (off the kickstarter) or picking up that hefty copy of Cthulhu Wars. Both Look pretty cool. By chance has anyone also played Police Precinct.
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Arkham has some pretty complex strategy once you get into it - even just in which locations which sorts of characters should visit. there is a lot of risk/reward in it. The base game you should be able to win nearly always after you've played it a handful of times. It is a good fun game to play, as long as all the players are paying the same amount of attention.
I've also played their "arkham world" game (Eldritch horror, I think). Eldritch is even longer on flavour - each great old one has their own decks of events and some of the encounters, so it is dripping flavour from every oozing pore. But the gameplay is in some ways less fun.
Anyway, other games:
Continuing the cthullu theme, Study in Emerald is a fun game - it's a sort of deck building game and sort of not. Has a few issues (The default score needed to win with each number of players is about 6 points too low; game is much more fun when it is slightly streched) but is a good, complex strategy game.
So I went ahead and pre-ordered it after reading the description. I figure it's time to give a new game a shot and I've been looking for another 'players have secret objectives' games since I got sick of Battlestar Galactica (mostly because it's such a huge time sink, and there is always that one person who can't make a decision to save their lives).
I supported Season 3 already, but honestly it's mostly so I'll have all this stuff on the off chance we actually play it again any time soon.
I wouldn't really call Zombicide all that complex, but Arkham Horror is. If you're looking for similar levels of complexity, there is Battlestar Galactica, or Defenders of the Realm (which is a more complex, fantasy-based version of Pandemic).
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[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
I guess in many ways I equate a game with a mass quantity of pieces, potential for in depth storyline/play, and a few more intangible concepts as basis for complexity.
I have found though I am way to into co-op games right now and need a few vs. games to throw into it.
By the way has anyone played the Heroes of Normady game? I think I may order the Shadows over Normady game because it sounds like it could be a blast but wanted a little feedback first. Also a few of you have mentioned Eclipse. How exactly does it play. I have seen it quite a few times now (and the expansions) but I don't have much to go off of for system.
To those Euro gamers who read this, my group just got Terra Mystica, and it is a great, great game. We are salivating at the end of the game to play it again! The 14 or 16 races or however many it is really adds some nice replay value.
1) The optimal strategy is generally to not interact unless somebody is about to win
2) The above means that whoever tries to win second or third probably does
3) The game is HUGELY luck based. If you kick down low level monsters early, you do well. If you kick down blanks, well, good luck with ever accomplishing anything.
4) There's a ton of cards, which is great, except when it becomes impossible to shuffle the decks in any kind of meaningful way.
5) It's really, really complicated for newcomers and people who aren't big gaming buffs
If you like D&D-parody humor and want a game that can be played in quickly, is great for large groups, is great for casual gamers, and actually involves constant player interaction, check out Red Dragon Inn.
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Island Surf!
Does anyone else here own or play any dexterity games? I've always wanted to buy or build my own crokinole board, but have never gotten around to it.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
With 180 cards (90 distinct, 2 copies each), some once-per-game privileges, and global enchantments, I wonder if anyone has tried playing the full game with alternate rules not found in the game rules, and if yes, how fun those may be. For example:
1) Singleton (1 copy per card in the game). This would mean each card matters even more seeing that passing a card would highly mean you'll never see the card again. Especially hazardous when we're worrying about sacrificial cards and resource-gathering cards (like the water Potions/Amulets)
2) Multiple priviliges in one game. Normally each privilige (such as "Spy your opponent's hand and gain 9 crystal at end of game) is given to one player (so one player, one privilige), and their effect is once per game, but what if we play with more? Like one privilige per year?
3) Multiple enchantments. Aside from the Prelude enchantments (the first three from Enchanted Kingdoms) and the two Die of Destiny enchantments, the enchantments all feel rather mutually exclusive to one another, so playing with multiple of them doesn't feel like they'll clash with each other. And for the Prelude enchantments, even they can be included/paired in the fun.
What say you?
PS: And yes, I love that game.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
1) In the web version, I have yet to play a game with the priviliges and enchantments, so those components end up being totally new to me now that I've bought the entire set.
2) Some cards never seem to show up in the online games (Dragonsoul and Winter Staff comes to mind, or should I say, about half of the Path of Destiny cards are all missing from the online version)
Oh well... I guess I gotta test em myself first
The friend in question was one of the four players, and it was his first game. He spent the entire game at <10 crystals and complaining about getting badly stomped.
Then, the very last turn of the game, he gained over 200 points.
He had a fairly large board, mostly of Magic Items.
One of them let him store 3 extra energy
One of them reduced the energy costs of cards by 1
One of them gave him +1 crystal per each transmute
He went into the turn with most if not all of his ten energy slots full.
He used the bonus track transmute to get the ability to transmute plus an extra +1.
The season was Autumn, so Water energies were worth a base 3 points, so 5 each after both bonuses applied. Most of his energies were Water.
He transmuted the lot of them, leaving him with just two energies, then played the card that gives you an energy for each Magic item you have, giving him 8 waters and two other energies. Transmute those 8, play a second one of those Magic items for 10 water energies. Transmute those all and cash out.
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"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
And to be fair, it wasn't like, super obnoxious complaining, it was just like the occasional "Man, I have never lost a game this badly before, this game is hard"
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― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
In the mean time, I just got my friends into the Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG. I've had problems with them in RPGs before and I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but I now think that the more board game-y aspects of 3.5 D&D-based games had them playing with a board game mentality. Without the grids, they're a ton more creative in how they play, and they really roleplay better.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Nevertheless, I guess it's not a bad game.
King of Toyko is more giant monster-themed than a true Giant Monster game. I'm a huge fan of Kaiju (I've got some Monsterpocalypse but never found anyone to play with), and I've also got the Godzilla board game (which sucks, BTW, don't get it) and I'm considering Rampage, but I feel like it's too messy for my OCD.
Anyway, King of Tokyo is a lot of fun. It's a dice-rolling game that's good for people inexperienced with board games in general, and it's a relatively quick game (never had a game go over 40 minutes), too, so you can usually fit a game into any game night. KoT is much a king-of-the-hill style game, where you get victory points for being in Tokyo, and can damage all the other monsters, but they can all damage you while you're there, but you can't heal. It's relatively simple, the dice have sides for points, energy, attack and health, and you get to keep your final roll. You can buy upgrade cards with energy that have fantastic art and do interesting things to the game. And the game is fast enough that you don't get bored easily. It's also small and easily portable for parties. There is a reason it's on most people's top 10 lists. The two expansions add two monsters each (great for larger games) and various other gameplay mechanics, but the base game is fun enough.
There are basically two ways to win: Get 20 points (you get two per turn you're in tokyo and can earn more through buying power-ups or rolling numbers on dice) or kill everyone else. It's usually about 1 in 3 or 4 games that is actually won through points, the rest come down to a monster brawl.
King of New York turns the game into an actual monster brawler with dice-rolling mechanics. It gets rid of the 'numbers' on the dice in exchange for other uses, and it allows you to move from borough to borough in New York duking it out with other monsters, while retaining an element of the king-of-the-hill mechanic with whoever controls Manhattan.
I recommend getting both, as one is good if you're playing with board game newbies or people who just want to have fun and not get competitive. KoNY is better for the Giant Monster experience, rather than just Giant Monster flavor, and you can use the characters between the two interchangeably.
Here is the dice tower review.
The other dice game of note is BANG! The Dice Game. I like it a lot more than the card game.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath