Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - junkers

Filter to certain boards:

Pages: [1] 2 3 4
1
Dominion General Discussion / Re: JSH's True Art Rankings
« on: September 29, 2016, 06:55:17 am »
I can't even bring myself to look at Intrigue.
Proof that JSH is a horrible liar and he already looked at the box art for Intrigue 2: Conspiratorial Boogaloo - quite a few people have already had the same reaction to Sir Silky Codpiece and Lady Gurnsalot.

2
Dominion General Discussion / Re: JSH's True Art Rankings
« on: September 22, 2016, 12:35:18 am »
I wonder if the girl in the Fairgrounds picture, disappointed by the drab carnival, got herself a face tattoo and a new set of clothes and went off to become the Young Witch. It would explain why random cheap baubles scare her so much.
Thanks for that more narrative-based interpretation, ConMan. Every time I see YW, all I can hear is the artist's daughter telling her she "doesn't want to be in another stupid portrait, mom, coz, like, you're just going to make me a fairy goddess or an ent or something dumb, and then it's going to get published in a stupid fantasy game for nerds, and then all these even bigger nerds are going to post it on the internet and talk about the colors and motivations and other dumb stuff. Gawd!"

To which her mother invariably replied, "That's nice, honey, now stay still".

Hamlet: I do wonder what the man in the foreground is planning to do with that pipe, though.
To keep the horse traders away, obviously. Shadier than the smugglers, them lot.

3
Other Games / Re: CIVILIZATION VI
« on: September 10, 2016, 02:21:18 am »
Gandhi revealed.

Nukes inbound, then.

Haven't been keeping up with it, but Japan's Meiji Restoration and Kamikaze abilities look interesting; and Tokimune was an interesting choice for leader.

4
Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires in other language
« on: September 10, 2016, 01:58:17 am »
I often do not know a foreign version is coming out until someone says they have it. I happen to know that Empires is coming in... Japanese though.
Thanks for that confirmation, at least. Hobby Japan have been suspiciously reticent about it. Finally emailed them when I realised it's September already and I still don't have a copy.

5
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 21, 2016, 05:16:49 am »
I think a system that rewarded developers for time spent playing would just push devs to needlessly pad their product with time-wasting non-content.
We're already there, though: look at how many games have pointless grinding "RPG features", often for purely cosmetic rewards. The natural progression of playing something for a bit, getting better at it, and unlocking neat stuff has already been subverted to horrible, horrible degrees.

And that's not to mention the inverse: games(/publishers) that can't imagine you have the attention span to unlock things and therefore slap them behind a paywall.

6
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.
« on: July 21, 2016, 05:14:11 am »
I would, but - and I can't stress this enough - it would be essential that sometimes it led people to dead bodies instead.
Why are you the only developer that cares enough to get kids up off the couch and visiting their grandparents in the local cemetery?

7
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 20, 2016, 04:35:59 am »
Well the only thing more absurd than rewarding a marketing/development strategy that encourages players to buy your game and launch it a single time is rewarding a marketing/development strategy that encourages players to buy your game and never launch it.  We currently have the latter.
Fair call. The kind of person that take advantage of the current situation is going to abuse your system likewise - at least you're trying to assist legit devs.

8
Other Games / Re: Spiel des Jahres
« on: July 20, 2016, 04:34:14 am »
Mystic Vale - This is a deck builder using a card sleeving mechanic to alter the cards in your deck. My friends liked this more.
The more I think about this one, the colder I grow on it when I remember how much I hated sleeving/unsleeving for MTG events. Having a game based around it sounds like a right pain.

Guilds of London... Not easy to learn due to all the symbols.
Are they at least reasonably logical? I feel that layer of abstraction is a pretty fine line for some games, regardless of the number of symbols they use; as if the designer and maybe the playtesters spent aeons with the game and had committed them to memory, but a new player just throws their hands up in the air and yells at all those mystical runes.


9
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 19, 2016, 04:53:35 am »
Because it's directing attention away to something that is so incredibly simple that it shouldn't even need to be said. It's not a developer's fault if consumers are too stupid to buy things they patently don't need or even want. And why should developers be punished for that mentality?

If you decree that even a base RRP is tied to a single boot, developers are going to spend some of their time reminding players to launch their games - and, frankly, any amount of time doing that is just plain ridiculous. Why? Because it's taking their time away from actually creating games to babysit a bunch of morons.

10
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 18, 2016, 03:36:14 am »
I can kind of see where you're going with that: amount of time spent with a product commands a higher profit for the developer.

But it sounds like a horribly needless level of tracking, and where's the cut-off point? You might play Game A for six hours this week, Game B for three minutes. Within two weeks, you've got a yourself a weekend off and have sunk the majority of it into learning the complexity of Game B and clocked up thirty hours. Meanwhile, you've been idling in Game C for 400 hours for some idiotic reason. You'd have to create an subclass of Valve accountants just to monitor it all, and it would still be open to abuse.

I think games need a flat payment at their time of purchase. If you've spent so much time with it, you'll find a way to let the developer know how much they've touched you. Like with this macaroni necklace I'm making for Donald X. right now.

11
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 15, 2016, 06:08:58 am »
Not monetizing the games at all and using them to encourage meatworld sales would be a way more promising model, seems to me.
Marketing at its best, mate: why give it away for free when you can slap a (seemingly or actual) nominal fee on it and have people pick it up because it "looks cheap"?

Not because there's something inherently wrong with charging money, but because although I haven't tried tabletop simulators, I see no possible way they compete with actual physical board games and video games
They're not trying to: they're glorified match-making services with silly physics simulators bolted on. They're there for the sake of convenience: you can never get a game of Caylus going because your playing group is a bunch of punks, but now there's thousand of other players online at all hours.

This one in particular seems to be nothing other than a marketing opportunity at, as you pointed out, a questionable cost. It's stripping the potential for creativity from TTS. And without rules implementation, its got nothing on established services like BGA and yucata.de that aren't total resource hogs in the first place (inb4 java).

instead of guessing based on reviews and the back of the box and dropping half the games they buy after one play. 
But buying a tonne of stuff you don't even intend to play is what props Steam up!

12
Other Games / Re: Village
« on: July 14, 2016, 05:52:06 am »
It seems my initial estimates of it were pretty wrong. I had assumed that there was going to be one strategy per game (aim for the church this time; the market the next), but you really have to diversify and play off of whatever is best at the time. Locking yourself into one route seems not just sub-optimal - it's downright difficult.

I like how it feels as though you can't experience everything in one game, too. Due to the available resources, there's always a fork in the road where you have to make a decision; for example, commit to producing more tools to clean up at the market, or start offing family members to mop up the available victory points in the town chronicle. Like awaclus said, the number of viable strategies might not take a long time to uncover, but at least for the opening few games, each time feels like a new experience.

On another note, I like how tactile the game is. If it were just worker placement/resource taking, it might well have been generic. But you've got the seeding at the start of the round, where you draw resources from a bag randomly; and then the mass at the end, where you do the same with the clergy members. I feel like these elements, especially the latter, could've been represented with simple card draw or something; but they're turned into a kind of mini-game. It might seem a bit silly, but the I find the randomizer bags really quite endearing.

The base game itself is pretty neat, but I think the Tavern expansion with its "bonus point" cards is pretty close to essential. The downside is that some cards are much, much more powerful than others, and getting a lucky draw late in the game (when you've already completed the objectives) can feel a bit like you haven't earned it. But on the whole I personally like the benefits they provide and the extra depth they add to the game, as a change in the cards might cause you to consider another route you hadn't considered. Moreover, many of them encourage you to gamble on a certain strategy: you'll get a bigger pay off, but it might cause other players to try and dogpile your targets to prevent you from pulling it off. It's not quite Seaside level of, "is this still the same game?", but it does what a good expansion ought to: adds a lot of different paths to victory and replayability.

Apologies for length and all that.

13
Other Games / Re: Let's Play Board Games on Youtube
« on: July 14, 2016, 05:20:57 am »
In just the first few minutes, you had highlighted enough of Kashgar for me to want to play it. In fact, I was preparing to watch your whole vid when I got a spare hour, in preparation for playing it in German on yucata; but it looks like there's an English version of it online. So if your goal was to get people into new games: mission completed, my good man!

1.) that I have not many games, especially not new ones as I mainly play with my wife and we can't afford to buy always the newest games...
and 3.) that my games are in German and I want to make videos in English.
How related are these two points? I mean, do you only have old German games for which an English translation doesn't exist? That still might be mildly entertaining. But if the games exist in English in some form, don't let that stop you.

2.) I don't have a good camera only my smartphone (I mean rahdo started with his iPhone as well, but I'm not sure if I could do that)
Don't let that stop you, either. You already admitted that rahdo started that way, so the only thing holding you back is you. Of course, this online recording thing seems to be working pretty well, too...

I can't necessarily explain why rahdo's vids are so popular, but for me personally, the general style of his presentation is key. He gives us all the information we need. He doesn't bang on about (too much) unrelated stuff. He keeps his run-time relatively short. LP's are a different bag than reviews, obviously, but keep those points in mind anyway.

14
Other Games / Re: Tabletopia
« on: July 14, 2016, 05:01:43 am »
It's basically Tabletop Simulator with "legal" content.
So...VASSAL (again)? But in 3D (again)?

If designers want to use it generate more awareness of their games, then that's a good thing. More players means more people are likely to pick up the cardboard versions, right? Something something first impressions on Adventures circa June this year.

But like with Steam itself in general, it appears to be an attempt to make one official hangout, to hell with everything else - especially unofficial versions and mods. Say what you will about TTS, but at least it had the potential for user-generated content.

Quote
Paying apparently gives you access to "premium games" whatever that means
That sounds like it's going to kill it pretty quick. What kind of games are they going to lock behind a paywall? Only stuff from big publishers? 

Quote
"private gaming rooms" whatever that means.
Presumably invite only sessions, perhaps restricting it to people on your friend list or whatever. Might stop players joining your game with the intent to shit it up. Although if the game doesn't come with TTS' ability to hurl components about, I suspect that kind of person would stay away in the first place.

15
Other Games / Re: Village
« on: July 08, 2016, 06:54:43 am »
I have only played like 4 games, I don't really have any idea what I'm doing yet.
You're talking to someone who completely forgot the wishing well was a thing for the opening couple of games...

16
Other Games / Re: Caverna vs. Agricola
« on: July 07, 2016, 08:31:00 am »
@junkers if you'd played the same way in Agricola, you might have ended up deeply in the negatives. :P
And that was based on quickly realizing how badly I'd screwed up and seeking to get back on track. I'm guessing that Agricola would've afforded me with far fewer opportunities to even attempt to pull myself out of that particular pit.

For those with Caverna - what storage solutions have you opted for? I think I'll go with tackle/bead boxes, maybe knock up some tuck boxes if I can be bothered. Usually when I get a game, I want to pull it out as often as possible to get my head around things before I teach it to the group; but I simply don't feel like dragging this behemoth out again without anything in place to minimize set up and tear down.

17
Other Games / Re: Caverna vs. Agricola
« on: July 06, 2016, 02:02:22 am »
Necrobump from a curious new player. I opted for Caverna over Caverna 0.5 because of my perception that it simply offered more. Having only played a couple of games, and having never touched Agricola, I can't say that I made the right choice.

One thing stood out for me, though. A lot of people claim that Agricola is "harsher", but I nearly ended up in negative points during my first run because I didn't concentrate on feeding my dorfs. At least for a first time player, it seems like Caverna is equally capable of slapping you about with its country-grown vegetables if you don't recognize what you're doing and don't decide on a strategy straight away.

The reason I'm necrobumping, but, is because I'd like to hear if any of you still feel the same way you did a couple of years back. Did the initial fascination with having more things to do wear off in time, and make you feel nostalgic for the more limited options that encouraged strategic adjustment every game? Or did you keep on with Caverna, and houserule it to make it a bit more stabby?

18
Other Games / Re: Village
« on: July 06, 2016, 01:49:21 am »
Has the honeymoon worn off yet, or are you still at least finding new strategies?

Curious because I picked it up recently myself due to the aforementioned reduced price. Still haven't played it because I strained my back lifting the package it came in with Caverna.

19
Other Games / Re: BGA, Yucata, and others... (with usernames)
« on: June 23, 2016, 05:50:56 am »
Why not both?

That might require me to not be lazy.

20
Other Games / Re: BGA, Yucata, and others... (with usernames)
« on: June 20, 2016, 08:02:06 am »
both have an impressive selection if you haven't used them before.
Which I haven't, so thanks for making this thread.

Still deciding which to go with, and BGA is in the lead because Caylus.

21
Other Games / Re: Mystic Vale
« on: June 13, 2016, 06:48:53 am »
I recently got introduced to Gloom and was pretty enamored with the translucent card format, so I'm going to do a bit more research on this one. I am a bit worried to hear about the lack of player interaction, though I'll reserve judgement on that for when I play it - quite a few folks shit on vanilla Dominion for the same reason, and that's never been a big enough deal to stop me from enjoying it.

Like eHal said, it might not be worth buying for the central mechanic alone, but it certainly warrants a play.

22
Other Games / Re: Village
« on: June 13, 2016, 06:32:28 am »
I feel like Dominion has ruined me in that regard - utterly prejudiced me against a base set that I'm not going to get several hundred plays out of. Village was recently a little cheaper out my way, but I went with Caylus instead for precisely that reason. I can still see it being a hassle to get to my table, if only because the people who do like resource management in the form of Waterdeep like Waterdeep a lot - anything more stabby and I feel like they're going to get upset...

23
Other Games / Re: Village
« on: June 12, 2016, 01:11:24 am »
I played one game and my first impressions are that it was very worth the 20€, but not necessarily the next game I'm going to get super excited about. It'll probably get a little bit more interesting after I play it a few more times.
What are the things that you feel hold it back, based on that one play?

24
I still don't see the crazy power in Castles, at least for 2p games. They can be a lot of points, true, but:
- the most expensive one costs a lot, and you absolutely want it, meaning that if you want to reliabily get it you'll have to build a good engine (able to field 19 coins or to field 10 and trash Small Castle on that turn), which is hard since you have to green early to secure a good Castle split, because...
- the low price of the first Castles makes them easy to pick up just to deny them to the opponent.
- the total value of the pile decreases significantly if you split them more evenly.
- emptying the pile doesn't end the game, giving a small edge to Provinces. (Royal castle might never be bought)

So, maybe I'm misunderstanding what people are saying, but I don't really see a "Castle strategy" happening to the same level as we see Duke, Gardens, Silk Road, and Vineyards strategies. Probably Castles will often be a game decider, and rarely left unbought, but I doubt they'll be the kind of alt-vp that "replaces provinces", because the opportunity cost of stopping them long before they get to God-power is so low.
I think you're on the money here - they seem very telegraphed. I think they're going to be very interesting in low-medium level games, but I don't see them making that seismic shift of Gardens or such; precisely because they're not game enders.

I'm still excited to play them (because my games are always low level), but.

25
Old idea i never got to finish, a deliberately political card:

Politician, $5, Action
Take 3 Coin Tokens.
Choose another player who may gain a Silver.
Maybe you're letting a third party play catch-up.

Maybe you're feeding the leader so you can hurt them further down the track.

I think I like this.

Pages: [1] 2 3 4

Page created in 0.061 seconds with 18 queries.