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[GendoIkari]

Fun stuff. A very basic Dominion clone, but adds its own uniqueness. It's interesting how villages work; there are 4 separate "types" of actions, and a +1 action might allow you to play any action, or it might only allow you to play 1 of the 4 types. It's harder to chain actions in general because of this... the only "village" I saw was actually a vanilla "+2 actions"... for $5! But because chaining actions is more difficult, it's worth it. (And the costs are mostly comparable to Dominion costs, Copper, Silver, Gold cost $1, $3, $5 respectively.)

There does seem to be one seriously imbalanced thing though... so there's different characters that a person can choose from, your character defines 3 of your starting chips (out of 10). These are chips that can't be bought or gained during the game; so kind of like Shelters, if each player got a different set of 3 Shelters. Well anyway... on of the character's Shelters is a non-terminal Sea Hag. Yes.... in a setup where there was no Curser in the Kingdom, one player (me), started with a non-terminal Sea Hag in his deck. Needless to say, I won without much effort at all. I'm can't imagine how something like that got past playtesting... I didn't see any errata or anything for it.

Also, there's a super-Cutpurse... each opponent reveals his hand and discards his highest-valued treasure. It costs $2.

Hmmm, just now Googled and saw some images from the game that had different text than we had... I guess there have been errata. The starting Sea Hag now gives players the ability to discard 2 Curses as a Bane, and it removes a separate part of the attack that it had. Still doesn't seem nearly enough to stop it from being completely unbalanced, though...

[Ratsia]

I guess there have been errata.

The whole game has a bunch of different editions; I guess the latest is 3rd but 4th one is apparently coming.

I suffered one game through, just to be able to say that I've tried. It's not just the horrible balance, but already in that single game there were other clear design problems too, such as actions that are of the slowest possible kind ("go through the discard") without actually doing anything interesting. Also, with more than two players it's all about kingmaking due to the way the point system works. In other words, all kinds of issues that make the game opposite of fun, at least for me.

[GendoIkari]

I guess there have been errata.

The whole game has a bunch of different editions; I guess the latest is 3rd but 4th one is apparently coming.

I suffered one game through, just to be able to say that I've tried. It's not just the horrible balance, but already in that single game there were other clear design problems too, such as actions that are of the slowest possible kind ("go through the discard") without actually doing anything interesting. Also, with more than two players it's all about kingmaking due to the way the point system works. In other words, all kinds of issues that make the game opposite of fun, at least for me.

I agree with the specific criticisms, but I still had a lot of fun playing it. (I only played 2 games, both with the recommended "first 10" set). Indeed, there was an action that let me pull a specific type of chip from my bag... definitely not fun to dig through all the chips in your bag looking for 1... a lot harder than it would have been looking through a deck of cards. Also, there were several "Counting House" type issues... I had an ability that required my to pull something from my bag (worthless if my bag was empty), and another that pulled from my discard (worthless if my discard was empty).

[rrenaud]

You should hear theory rant about Puzzle Strike and Sirlin.

[theory]

There's a lot of reasons to dislike Sirlin or his games.  Vis-a-vis Puzzle Strike, here's one of them.

[Tables]

Sirlin's got one or two good games. My favourite is Flash Duel, and that's supposedly a rip off of En Garde by Renier Knizia.

Edit: Just to clarify, I dislike Sirlin's 'borrowing' of game ideas from other companies and designers. I haven't bought any of his games and don't intent to, but if others are playing them, I won't object to playing. Perhaps if I looked into him a little more, I might.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I had a former roommate who was really into Puzzle Strike.  I played it a ton and grew to hate it, honestly my hatred of Puzzle Strike is a large part of why it took me so long to get into Dominion.  (Yes, I know Dominion came first, but I played Puzzle Strike first and wasn't buying unplayed boardgames from BGG recommendations until a year or two ago.)

I've been trying to figure out what exactly it is that put me off Puzzle Strike, given that Dominion is probably my favorite game at present.  I think it might be the "attack the player to your left" mechanic that makes the end of multiplayer games seem like a cascade of unfairness based on seating.  That and the balance issues, I know I didn't play the most recent version.

Also, weird as it is, I like Dominion's theme better! I'd rather rationalize Upgrading my Chapel into a Tunnel for some reason.  Maybe I just dislike fighting games too much...

[shMerker]

Puzzle Strike isn't exactly based on a fighting game. It's based on a puzzle game that's based on a fighting game*.

With Dominion it's not hard to explain the theme pretty succinctly. You are expanding a kingdom. With Puzzle Strike there are multiple layers of abstraction in explaining what it's even supposed to be. And when you get down to it you're pretending to play a video game.

Honestly that's the main reason I've never even given Puzzle Strike a shot. I already play a lot of video games and when I want the fun of video games I just play them for real.

[Grujah]

I found Yomi quite fun, for a while.

[popsofctown]

Fun stuff. A very basic Dominion clone, but adds its own uniqueness. It's interesting how villages work; there are 4 separate "types" of actions, and a +1 action might allow you to play any action, or it might only allow you to play 1 of the 4 types. It's harder to chain actions in general because of this... the only "village" I saw was actually a vanilla "+2 actions"... for $5! But because chaining actions is more difficult, it's worth it. (And the costs are mostly comparable to Dominion costs, Copper, Silver, Gold cost $1, $3, $5 respectively.)

There does seem to be one seriously imbalanced thing though... so there's different characters that a person can choose from, your character defines 3 of your starting chips (out of 10). These are chips that can't be bought or gained during the game; so kind of like Shelters, if each player got a different set of 3 Shelters. Well anyway... on of the character's Shelters is a non-terminal Sea Hag. Yes.... in a setup where there was no Curser in the Kingdom, one player (me), started with a non-terminal Sea Hag in his deck. Needless to say, I won without much effort at all. I'm can't imagine how something like that got past playtesting... I didn't see any errata or anything for it.

Also, there's a super-Cutpurse... each opponent reveals his hand and discards his highest-valued treasure. It costs $2.

Hmmm, just now Googled and saw some images from the game that had different text than we had... I guess there have been errata. The starting Sea Hag now gives players the ability to discard 2 Curses as a Bane, and it removes a separate part of the attack that it had. Still doesn't seem nearly enough to stop it from being completely unbalanced, though...

You're probably playing first edition.  If I recall correctly, curser guy is low tier in that game, he's one of the worst characters.  Cursing has a different value in such a different game.

I'm all for hurling valid criticisms at Sirlin's crappy work, but you should at least play a game long enough to figure out whether the balance you see on the surface is truly what happens at an expert level.

Try playing Valerie, the best character in first edition.

(not sure if you were referring to 3+ player Puzzle Strike... I strongly recommend against trying that)

[Ozle]

There's a lot of reasons to dislike Sirlin or his games.  Vis-a-vis Puzzle Strike, here's one of them.

Heres another one!

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/854583/david-sirlin-asks-solforge-ccg-supporters-to-leave/page/1

[popsofctown]

There's a lot of reasons to dislike Sirlin or his games.  Vis-a-vis Puzzle Strike, here's one of them.

Heres another one!

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/854583/david-sirlin-asks-solforge-ccg-supporters-to-leave/page/1

This is a riot.  It costs 5$ per character to play Puzzle Strike online. Pay to win only offends him when it's not associated with his paypal account.

[Grujah]

It is same for Yomi, it actually has the same system as LoL, you have rotating decks that you can use each 3 day, others you need to play (dunno if you can grind them). At least it was when I played last time.

[popsofctown]

It is same for Yomi, it actually has the same system as LoL, you have rotating decks that you can use each 3 day, others you need to play (dunno if you can grind them). At least it was when I played last time.

You can grind them in Puzzle Strike, probably the same in Yomi.

I'm sure he would say the difference is that buying runes is a big thing in LoL, and you have to buy runes to play free week champs at their full power.  Thing is, having the ability to practice one character and play it repeatedly is huge advantage, every bit as big as the power offered by rares or runes.  Especially in Yomi.