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 - pacovf

Filter to certain boards:

Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8] 9 10 ... 182
176
The first print run in English will come with a download code for getting a year of this or a similar-sized expansion free on Shuffle IT.

There have been similar promotions between Stef and Altenburger for German versions of the main set and maybe something else.

I assume I won't get an answer to this, but I would be curious to hear how that works financially for ShIT, or if this is just a publicity stunt for them.

177
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: August 07, 2018, 05:16:22 pm »
I actually managed to beat it first try with one shot left. It's not too difficult, but the challenge to try to do it on your first try is what ups the stakes, because you aren't sure whether you still have time to figure out the solution, or if the yeti is about to kill you.

You do need to shoot at least two times    to beat the game. I managed to "perfect" it on my second try, was fun :)

178
General Discussion / Re: TV shows
« on: July 26, 2018, 12:47:59 pm »
I think the series picks up after the first season or so, and for sure the best part is with Gus, but if you absolutely hated the first two episodes, then it might just not be for you. I do find Walter’s extended family kind of (really) annoying at first, though only Marie stayed that way throughout the series, and I loathed any scene with her in it.

Still, the most enjoyable part of the show is when Walter is dealing with a criminal underworld he barely understands, yet for some reason he keeps going deeper and deeper into it instead of quitting when he’s ahead, and the first season just doesn’t show it that much.

179
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Grey makes a boring card now and then.
« on: July 17, 2018, 03:33:28 pm »
OK. Slight further tweak. How about:

Each other player discards a card and draws a card. If they did not discard an Action or Treasure, they gain a Copper.

That means you can always keep four of the cards in your hand by repeatedly cycling the fifth. Apart from the Copper gaining, that's more benign than discarding down to four.

I think what LFN doesn't like is that the other players will have to keep doing stuff (and making decisions) as you play them, slowing down the game. It's better when attacks either don't stack or don't require decisions.

180
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: July 13, 2018, 09:30:52 pm »
I think you want some mechanic that gives long-term repercussions to tile placement, right now it sounds like where you place a tile is not important, as long as you actually placed it.

Can you place a tile partially covering other tiles? It’s not going to lat flat on the board if some of the spaces it’s covering already have a tile on them, while others don’t.

I am terrible at bidding games, so nothing to add there.

Blokus is an interesting tile placement game, if you haven’t heard of it.

EDIT: if I was making the game, I would do away with the bidding, and do something like:

6x6 board
A common pool of grey tiles, each being 2- or 3-spaces large. Three are available at any time, they get replenished as they are used.
Each player has a private pool of 4-space large tiles in their colour (think Tetris)

Each turn, a player places a grey tile, then they may place one of their own coloured tiles. Tiles can only be placed if all the spaces they cover are the same “height”. Grey tiles can only cover other grey tiles, or tiles from the active player. Player tiles can cover any colour, but they may not perfectly overlap another player’s tile.

Game ends when a player cannot place a grey tile during their turn or grey tile pool is exhausted. Players get one point per space covered by a tile in their colour.

181
Was horatio83 not the same person?

Using a proxy isn’t rocket science.

I think it had more to do with the patterns the previous accounts had, and that weren’t exhibited by Horatio83. But meh.

182
Was horatio83 not the same person?

No. Awaclus kept pushing that, but I think theory disproved it with some IP technomagic.

183
at this point we really should just rename RSP to Religion Sex Politics and Grammar because I’m sure I’m not the only person off put by 20+ posts of descriptivism vs prescriptivism, and every one of these garbage tangents ends up there anyway

Didn’t you know? RSP stands for Rhetoric, Semantics and Punctuation.

(Also, before this thread got to page 2, you should already have got an idea of whether reading this thread was going to produce happiness)

184
I am confused by what this thread is becoming.

185
Other Games / Re: Slay the Spire
« on: June 15, 2018, 06:14:56 pm »
I've played v0.7. It's definitely fun and worth a try. One thing it does nicely is to keep play moving along. It doesn't drag much.

The Yahtzee-style dice manipulation in particular is quite fun, but after I got used to that, I feel like the rest of the game isn't as interesting. In combat, it feels like you're usually trying to do the same thing every turn. Slay the Spire solves that with systems like showing enemy intents and combat with multiple enemies. I think that enemy intents might work even better in DD than they do in StS, because in DD you almost always have access to all your abilities every turn. (I haven't played much StS, though, mostly because of pacing.) Here's an article about the StS intents: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/19/why-revealing-all-is-the-secret-of-slay-the-spires-success/.

Pacing?



I've been playing some Slay the Spire. It's good, but does not necessarily scratch the rogue-like itch that much, kind of like FTL. Also kind of like FTL, a run takes one to two hours, so it's not nearly as much of a time commitment as, say, a DCSS run.

It does have fairly granular difficulty levels, which is good, because the basic difficulty is on the easier side. You might still die a bunch as you get used to the mechanics. There's currently three characters (with maybe more coming after launch as DLC?) which play very differently. I think some balance still has to be ironed out, but for an early access game it's already excellent.

I'm actually not enamored with the intent system. It's mostly there to make the existing defense system viable (pay energy for cards to block damage, with block expiring at the end of the turn), and I think StS would have been a better game with a different defense system altogether. Cards like Barricade, Blur, or heavy Ice sphere channeling somewhat break the game. But overall it gets the job done.

Something that I was a bit worried about at the beginning was the artstyle, but it's grown on me. The whole thing feels somewhat oniric and original. The newer assets look a lot better than the older ones, and the main characters have no animation (besides idling), but eh.

186
Other Games / Re: Dicey Dungeons
« on: June 15, 2018, 12:47:08 am »
Tried the warrior, was fun, has some good ideas.

...although now I have "Womanizer" stuck in my head.

187
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards
« on: May 28, 2018, 06:15:07 pm »
Any way to get a hold of the rules? I don’t have tabletop simulator. I probably won’t be able to playtest it, but can give some thoughts.

188
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 24, 2018, 05:40:46 pm »
...principal component analysis?

189
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 23, 2018, 01:39:42 am »
It’s funny when you are randomly browsing the internet and you recognize someone. Our favourite mod got comment of the week in a pretty well-known blog (don’t want to give more details in case that’s doxxing).

190
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 20, 2018, 09:39:37 pm »
As an instructor, I never heard the word tutor used for the speaker of record at an educational meeting. "Tutor" usually refers to somebody who works with a student one on one.

That said, if the question is "what should I call this person verbally to get their attention," then the answer is that if they do not have a PhD, you either say "professor" or "Mr./Mrs./MS. Name."

It depends where you are. Here in the UK, most people doing teaching are not correctly called professors, because "professor" is only the very top tier of the academic hierarchy, with readers, lecturers and research fellows below that (while still holding a PhD). If you address all of them "professor", you may just sound like you're trying to suck up, or are generally ignorant/unobservant. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks)

I'm assuming silver wanted to know for  fanfic-writing purposes, and I'm relatively sure that he leans towards US English for that, but on the off-chance his interest is academic, I figure it's worth covering all bases :-)

In my experience teaching undergrads and talking to people in confusing academic or administrative roles, whenever someone addresses us as “professor”, we just assume they are confused (which, to be honest, even actual professors don’t get it right). If they keep addressing us as “professor” after you’ve repeatedly signed your emails as, say, “Kevin”, THEN we assume they are sucking up.

We would only make fun of a student if they started an email as “hey professor Jim” or some such.

191
Game Reports / Re: the funniest game in the whole entire world
« on: May 12, 2018, 05:22:36 pm »
I am afraid this is unreadable. Could you describe what happened?

192
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing to lose?
« on: May 11, 2018, 01:52:26 pm »
You play board games to have fun. If the game rules or objectives lead to situations where trying to achieve those objectives isn’t fun, then you need to either change the rules or the objective. In multiplayer games, a player will often find themselves in a situation where they can’t get first place; in the absence of a secondary objective, they can’t have fun, so clearly you need to add something there. I find going for second place (etc) is a good secondary objective that allows that player to still have fun without impacting (too much?) the fun the other players are having. Other games than Dominion will allow “maximizing your score” as a good secondary objective (eg Agricola). Some games, by their structure, don’t allow for secondary objectives, and then I would expect players that can’t win to try to end the game faster, which is usually not fun for anyone involved; but I would say that’s a problem of the game, not of the group.

Of course, this leaves some subjectivity in the hands of the player, since they have to decide when to stop trying to go for first place and focus on second place, etc, which is not present if the objective is “first or bust”, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.

193
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards
« on: May 10, 2018, 03:59:30 pm »
The problem is that you rarely want to pay 5$ for your villages. So the first two or so are really good buys, but afterwards you are paying a lot to enable your engine, assuming there are no other villages around.

That's a big assumption, though. If there are other villages around, Clifftop Village is a no-brainer, since it's a cantrip trasher that also functions as a village, and then remains a village afterward. Junk Dealer doesn't turn into a Peddler once you're done with it, and it's one of the strongest $5 cards in the game.

The difference is that the village part (of Cliffsde) is doing nothing at the beginning of the game, while the Peddler part (of Junk Dealer) is doing something. At the beginning of the game, Cliffside village is just a barely better 5$ ratcatcher.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not arguing that Cliffside shouldn’t cost 5$, I am arguing that I don’t think it needs an extra cost/disadvantage on gain.

194
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards
« on: May 10, 2018, 02:24:25 pm »
The problem is that you rarely want to pay 5$ for your villages. So the first two or so are really good buys, but afterwards you are paying a lot to enable your engine, assuming there are no other villages around.

195
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards
« on: May 09, 2018, 04:41:09 pm »
I decided to add an interactive clause to Mountain (er, I mean Cliffside) Village to have it be better balanced. My considerations were giving the other players a coin token on gain (much too strong) or letting them trash a card on gain (already has been there). Also I thought about allowing them to gain a cheaper card (reverse Border Village) or allowing to discard cards to draw cards (either on gain or play, but on play seemed too slow, also it was there already). And then I thought about allowing them to gain a Copper in hand, which they'll probably just use to buy another copy, trashing the Copper later... Maybe allow them to discard two cards to put a Silver in hand on gain? That bonus combos much more poorly with other Mountain (Cliffside!) Villages, as you can sift junk away and Silver isn't the worst card ever to have in your deck. Only problem is it kind of was there already, but it has a nice theme.

Any ideas? Is there one you guys like?
Personally I like the Silver one and the gaining of cheaper cards most right now, although both have some special implications I'm not sure I like that much...

I think trashing a card is too good for others. Gaining a silver to hand, discarding two cards, is arguably better than Explorer early on, since you only end up with one less card in hand than with Explorer, but it doesn’t cost an Action. I don’t think the Copper one would ever be taken, aside from weird boards. A free 4$ of their choice also seems like too much, maybe if they had to discard two cards for it. Is Cliffside village really *that* strong at 5$?


196
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards
« on: May 07, 2018, 01:52:39 pm »
Was going to comment, but can’t seem to find Mountain village in the OP, what does it currently do?

197
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 05, 2018, 06:55:55 pm »
I have seen Infinity War. Went in with low expectations, and was positively surprised. Although I don’t think Marvel studios knows how to do heavy scenes. I thought the opening scene was awkward and forced, and Thanos/Gamorra’s “sacrifice” was unearned.

I felt Starlord was jarring. They tried to keep the same tone with him and his crew than in their movies, but it simply didn’t work for me. Thor, on the other hand, managed to mostly keep the humour from Ragnarok without it feeling forced.

Any thoughts on Thanos motivation? In previous movies, it looked like they were actually going for the “court Death” plan, but finally he’s just some dude who actually thinks that killing half the population of the Universe would actually be a good thing for everyone. Which is ok, I guess, that way the movie gets the occasional scene where they try to make him relatable. But I would have preferred the original motivation, if they had found a way to make it work (I assumed they didn’t)

198
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Data Mining: Card Impact Factor
« on: April 29, 2018, 11:59:36 am »
Have you considered other normalizations for kingdom piles? How does this list change if you give them the same weight as for basic supply piles?

199
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: April 29, 2018, 08:25:11 am »
Well, I guess this thread is back to “don’t read till you watch X” status.

200
Even funnier, I think according to Council Room Curse/Curse was not the worst opening.


That literally does not make any sense. Maybe if I knew the kingdom it might make more sense.

Probably an artifact of low statistics.

Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8] 9 10 ... 182

Page created in 0.086 seconds with 19 queries.