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donio

@ donio @feddit.de

Posts
12
Comments
123
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Archaeologist finds 500 year old board game in castle ruins

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  • Have any modern games try to use a similar mechanism? Kinda like how Trajan uses Mancala for action selection, Challengers and Tea for 2 are a bit like War and Nanga Parbat vs Tic-Tac-Toe.

    Micro Dojo 's action selection is vaguely similar to the second half of Nine Men's Morris in the way the moves are constrained but it uses shared pieces and a 3x3 board rather than the grid.

  • Top 15 Tile Placement Games - Bitewing Games

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  • Worth clicking through for his discussion of the picks though, especially if you are not familiar with all the games. The podcast version is a good listen too.

  • How to pick the next game in a friend group

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  • Everybody submits up to 3 games. Once all the votes are in everybody gets to veto a single game out of all the submissions. And then random pick from the remaining ones.

    Another way: everybody submits 3 games and then do an approval vote between all the options. This means that everybody can vote for as many games as they want (no ranking, just a list of games they approve of) and then simply count the approvals for each game.

  • Monday Recap Week 35 - what did you play last week?

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  • We got in a couple more plays since my previous comment, definitely a lot smoother now! Down to about 1-2 rulebook consultations per game :)

    BGA practice is helping a lot too with clarifying subtleties.

  • Monday Recap Week 35 - what did you play last week?

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  • The games from the Nerdz Day sale have finally arrived so we had lots of new stuff to get through.

    • Ark Nova: First play had a rough start because I haven't spent enough time with the rules beforehand so some of it didn't click until the second half of the play. The game really stuck with both of us though and we are very much looking forward to our next try. I think it will play a lot more smoothly once we are solid with the rules. Got in some BGA plays too since.
    • Orichalcum this is a fun one too, spatial puzzle combined with some light engine building. Only concern is that the 2p rules are a bit fiddly, might try some changes to streamline it a bit. It doesn't feel good to discard half of the card-tile (and sometimes monster) combos that we carefully assemble in the draft area and the turn-order check is very easy to forget.
    • Flamecraft fell a little flat, feels both too little and too much (table hog!) at the same time. Will have to see how it fares after a few more plays.
    • Mille Fiori is neat and looks really good on the table. Feels a bit like a roll & write but with nice tactile components. The shared board play reminded me of Faiyum a bit. We are planning another play soon with a 2p variant from BGG that tightens up the board.

    We also got some expansions that we've yet to try. And the biggest project to tackle is the LOTR LCG. Watched a bunch of videos and studied the rules so I think I am almost ready to dive in. Will try solo first, I want to make sure that I have a very solid understanding of it before we try the co-op.

    Edit: turns out we made a pretty big rules mistake in Orichalcum, we were refilling the draft board after every pick! I think it will be even better once we play it right :)

  • Wingspan publisher Stonemaier Games’ next board game is full of bees

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  • I am guessing that it may be referring to this. Note that the post is on the Stonemaier site so it's their side of the story. Some searching also turned up a later analysis in a BGG thread.

    In a hindsight given the extremely wide distribution, HUGE number of copies sold and many followup products all of this doesn't seem very relevant.

  • The 10 Most Complex Board Games

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  • To be fair I was expecting a lot worse from a videogame website. It may not be the absolute top 10 but it's a plausible list of some of the most complex games that the average boardgame player is likely to encounter.

    For comparison, BGG search for gameplay weight over 4 and at least 100 votes(which needs to be taken with a grain of salt too but it's what we've got)

  • Recap Monday Week 34 - which games made it to the table?

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  • Yes, we play at 2 and I like it a lot at this count. The main thing you miss out on is negotiating about moving the Provost but on the plus side you can keep a closer eye on your opponent's strategy and you can plan ahead more since things are a less chaotic.

  • Recap Monday Week 34 - which games made it to the table?

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  • We played a couple games of Caylus 1303. In the first game I went all in on bundling and milking point generation tiles and managed to win without building any residences or monuments. In the second one my partner stole it by grabbing the 20 point monument last turn.

    It's really cool that despite being one of the earliest worker placement games Caylus has held up so well. Still feels quite unique.

    On BGA I've been enjoying Knarr a lot. Simple rules but crunchy decisions. I love the way you can destroy part of your engine but get permanent upgrades or points.

  • Weekly Crowdfunding Roundup: September 3 2023

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  • This happens for a lot of physical products too, KS is very often used as a hype and pre-order tool rather than actually kickstarting projects.

  • How do you store your bigger games that don't fit your shelf?

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  • I went with wider shelves for this reason. The Kallax looks great but not necessarily the most practical way to store games.

  • Weekly Crowdfunding Roundup: August 27 2023 | 19 ending soon (incl. Fool's Blade, Bear Mountain Camping Adventure) & 13 new this week (incl. Dungeon Kart, Guilty Gear: Strive – The Board Game)

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  • Mistwind looks neat but too expensive for me. And looking at the components I am not sure if there will be a cheaper retail version.

  • Monday Recap Week 33 - what did you play last week?

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  • If you are the dominant player then one way to handle it is to look at the other players' "mistakes" as part of the challenge. Let them make the mistakes and play well enough on your turn to win regardless.

  • Monday Recap Week 33 - what did you play last week?

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  • The highlight of the week for me was our two games of Tiletum. The game is all about the combos you get from bonus tiles, almost feels like a combo-tastic roll & write in that sense.

    We also played some more Taverns of Tiefenthal, Living Forest, Sea Salt & Paper.

    And finally two plays of a new new-to-us game, Carthago. Took a chance on this because of a ridiculously good sale earlier this week and it paid off, can't wait to explore it some more. The rules are slightly weird and there is some minor fiddliness to the way the action board works but overall it's a nice little small-ish box euro. Not too many of those out there.

  • what's your favourite short game?

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  • Was reading up on Race to the Raft just a few minutes ago. Didn't realize that it plays so quick, that's great to hear!

  • How quick are you to understand new game instructions?

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  • It depends, I get some games right away, others can be a struggle. It's such a great feeling when a difficult one finally "clicks" though!In general I try to take advantage of all available tools:

    • Rulebooks of course, both printed and PDFs. I have about 15GB of rulebook PDFs at this point. Being able to do a text search in the rulebook can be invaluable so when a PDF is image-only with no searchable text I run it through an OCR tool like ocrmypdf to (hopefully) fix it up.
    • How-to-play videos. We had a thread listing some good channels earlier.
    • A good digital implementation can be extremely helpful, especially the ones that preserve the "interface" of the game like BGA and Yucata usually do. When available I always try these even if I plan to play mostly in person because it's a great way to make sure that I got the rules right. With new games I take it slow and make sure that I understand everything that happes. When I want to experiment I sometimes play hotseat with myself.
    • That reminds me, playing a game against myself on the table can be very helpful too to make sure that I am solid before I try to teach it.
    • Also, this might sound obvious but just unboxing and organizing the game and getting familiar with the components can give a great headstart before getting started with the rules.
    • BGG forums for the game, especially the rules sub-forums. The Files section can have helpful extra material too like FAQs, teaching guides or player aids.
    • A good podcast episode like the Decision Space deep dives can be helpful too or at least get me excited about learning the game.
    • I sometimes make setup and rule summaries. Just writing these down can help to clear things up in my head. Wrote about this in another thread earlier today.

  • what's your favourite short game?

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  • I love small, short games, too many favorites to choose from! So instead of all of those I will mention Khôra which is not small but every time we play it surprises me how quickly it goes. The box says 75 minutes but it's more like 25 or maybe even less.

  • Do you make personalized setup and rules summaries?

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  • Example summary for Tiletum:

    setup

    • board:
      • populate action wheel with action tiles (optional) and bonus tiles
      • 3 bonus tiles for king track (no tile for last round)
      • bonus tiles for map spots based on player count
      • town and fair tiles on track, fair order marker on the picked towns
      • cathedral tiles and random build reqs. Remove unavail cathedral
      • contract and character markets
      • 10 dice in bag (2p)
    • players:
      • markers on score track, turn order track, king track (p1 on bottom!)
      • place houses and pillars on their spots. There should be 2 of each left for each player as their available supply
      • 1 of each resource
      • 1 gold for p1, 3 gold for p2

    play

    • prep: draw, roll and place 8 dice (2p)
    • action:
      • p1 flips and applies corruption token
      • dice values +/- for 2 gold. affects action and # resources
      • pick die, get bonus tile and resources, perform action
    • king: points, bonus tile, player order. bottom wins tie. from negative snap to 0 after
    • fair: merchant or house in town to qualify
    • cleanup: refill wheel tiles, rotate wheel

    Tasks (free actions) at any time:

    • gain a resource for 2 gold
    • fulfill contract
    • place crest (food cost). Apply bonuses
    • build cathedral (only 1 of each type!)
    • use helper tiles from storehouse

    Important:

    • many house spots are only for higher player counts. With 2p there is at most 1 spot in each city
    • some house spots have bonuses
    • players can only get 1 cathedral piece per type!

    (should add a section about scoring too)

  • My NerdzDay haul has arrived

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  • The app version is a good way to learn it too, it has a tutorial and various solo and multi-player modes.