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Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games https://gladerebooted.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9634	Page 1 of 1

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Okay, I've been on a board and card gaming kick recently. Say, the last six months or so. I know some other Gladers have talked about their non video/RP gaming on occasion, but there haven't really been any regular discussion on the subject outside of two or three threads where, say, Foamy's talked about a specific boardgame or two, or Nitefox and LK have brought up their rediscovery of Magic: the Gathering. So let's open this thread as a place to share our current loves, maybe? I've been playing a lot of Android: Netrunner from Fantasy Flight Games, Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games, Disaster Looms which was Kickstarted by Break From Reality Games. I finally took a deep breath and dove into Space Alert! from Czech Games Edition, and have found that to be a blast (a really stressful blast, but still a blast), too. Oh, and to round out a top 5 recent games, I suppose, I'll throw in the X-Wing Miniatures Game from Fantasy Flight, as well. So, now that I've tossed out some titles, I figure it's only fair to give a brief rundown of what each game is so my fellow gamers can decide if it's up their respective alleys. I've already made a thread about Android: Netrunner, but it's come out with the first two packs in the first expansion cycle now, so it's worth adding that they've been very canny and creative in expanding the Core set. They've done an admirable job steering clear of power creep, while offering additional options to help you make more tightly themed decks and new/expanded combinations for you to build around. I've seen that decks I've played against and talked about have gotten much more diverse very quickly, and I haven't seen any runaway decks that MUST be countered in construction etc. I was looking forward to the evolution of the game before, and I'm even more excited now that it's gotten off to a good start. Moving on, Puerto Rico is a game that's been around for several years, now, but I only got exposure to at DragonCon last year. It's a Eurogame through and through, with an abstracted theme that dresses up what are essentially economic gameplay elements and little direct competition until it comes time to score up points. The premise of the game sets you up as the manager of a small colonial agricultural empire whose goal is to exploit the New World's natural resources and ship goods off to Europe. Each turn is broken into multiple phases, and for each phase, each player takes his turn before everybody moves on to the next phase. The catch is that the phases have no specific order, nor will all of them be used in a turn. Instead, players take turns choosing which phase to do next in the turn, gaining extra efficiency in that phase for being the one to choose it. The phases are, briefly, the Settler phase (in which you choose a new type of field to plant in your plantation), the Builder's phase (in which you may purchase buildings for your village -- these are processing facilities that allow your fields to be productive, or other buildings that offer bonuses or special abilities), the Craftsman phase (in which your fields that have a matching processing building produce usable crops), the Trader phase (in which you may sell crops for money), the Captain phase (in which you may ship crops off to Europe for victory points), the Mayor phase (in which you may ship in colonists to work in fields and buildings to make them productive), and the Prospector phase (in which the person who chose it may earn a token amount of cash and nobody else does anything). The game becomes very interesting as you plan whether to focus on monopolizing one of the five crops (corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee) and using your massive production of that crop to block other people from making a profit off it, or to diversify in order to be more flexible, and then gaming the player order and strategic choices of phase to ensure you profit most. Disaster Looms!* is an excellent game hampered by a rather lacking rulebook. Once you figure out how it's meant to play, however, it becomes a fun game of exploration, hoarded technological licensing (no, really, this is fun!), and occasional hostile takeovers to steal your competitors' colonies out from under them. The premise of the game is that each player heads a big profit-motivated corporation that seeks to take advantage of the recent discovery that Earth is ecologically/cosmically doomed to leverage profit and a continued future for the company by attracting customers to evacuate and populate new colonies on the corporations' behalf. The game uses a hex-based tile exploration mechanic and demands that you research new technologies to give your spaceships new actions and capabilities, then forces you to choose whether to hold onto that technology (garnering either exclusive free access to the technology and the profit any license fees it attracts will gain if others want to make use of YOUR technology) or sell it off into the public domain (where anybody can make use of the technology for free) in order to reduce further research costs. Since these technologies are often more powerful exploration options, whether to research, license, or sell off technology becomes an important and fun decision. This was actually the first physical product I've received from a project I Kickstarted, and I couldn't be happier with the final result. The games often come out close when it comes time to score it up, and everybody I've introduced it to has had a good time. Space Alert! is easily the most bizarre game I've ever played. And it's loads of fun for its uniqueness. It's more than a little bit intimidating, which is why it sat on my shelf for a year before I got brave enough to try it out. It's also not going to be a game that everybody will have the patience to learn. It's a cooperative game, and practice makes perfect. Once you decide to try it out and learn it, though, it does have a pretty good set of introductory missions that do a great job of introducing the complexity one or two layers at a time, ramping up to the full game. The way it works is like this: You and your friends are the crew on a spaceship. When you come out of hyperspace, it takes 10 minutes for the computer to calculate a new jump. In those ten minutes, you must manage your shields, power, and weapons to fend off any incoming threats as you sit otherwise helpless in the dangerous wilds of space. And it's all done in real-time. That's right. You play by starting up an audio track from the provided 2 CD's (or downloadable as .mp3's from the publisher's site), and listen to the voice of the computer sounding alerts about incoming threats (flip over a card from the appropriate shuffled deck!), counting off the passing time, and notifying you of time-limited opportunities to do things like trade cards or draw new ones. Then, each player has a board with 12 spaces on it in front of them. Each of those spaces represents the time it takes to do one action or move one space around the ship. Your cards list actions and movement that you have available (one movement and one action per card). The ship is divided into 3 sections, each with an upper and lower deck. Each of the resulting six rooms has a weapon, which is fired with the "A" action, each of the 3 rooms on the upper deck houses shields for that sector which can, by playing a "B" action, draw energy from that sector's reactor, each of the 3 rooms on the lower deck houses said reactor, and playing "B" actions there will manage the power flow between the reactors. The "C" action varies by room, and then finally, there are "Battlebot" actions that control the use and deployment of defense robots that can help combat internal threats and invaders. So as time ticks by, you and your fellow players seek to coordinate your actions to destroy, neutralize, or simply survive the incoming threats. Timing is important, as energy is a limited resource, so you need to ensure that, for instance, the reactor has power available when you go to fire the associated weapon, or else you'll click the "A" button, as it were, and nothing will happen. Similarly, coordinating attacks from multiple rooms upon the same enemy is more efficient as it minimizes the impact of the enemy's shields... Then, once the 10 minute audio track is over, each player is finished playing actions. At this point, you reset the board state to the initial starting setup, and walk through the player's actions and game events in the strict order in which they must occur. Here is where any timing slip-ups or miscommunications come to light, and things often go disasterously wrong as you discover whether the actions you took successfully staved off death in the cold void of space, or resulted in your ship's destruction in a fiery explosion before it could escape into hyperspace. This game is amazing. I've never played a board game like it; it captures the frenetic decision-making of multiplayer video games and creates all kinds of tension as the time ticks away and more and more enemies are being thrown at you, soaring ever closer and firing upon you with each passing action as you realize you're on the opposite end of the ship from where you need to be, and don't have the right movement cards to get there. You and a crewmate are frantically trying to figure out what you can do from where you are or can be, then the voice of the computer calls a data transfer, allowing you to trade or gift cards to each other, and a third crew member saves your bacon because they had that move you need. You frenetically slap down 4 different actions, counting out the turns it'll take you to be where you need to be to do what you need to do, checking with everybody to make sure that you'll be restoring power before they need it, and then breathing a sigh of relief. And then realizing, halfway through the resolution phase, that you have no idea if there will be any fuel left to pump that power into the system. The biggest downside to this game, however, is that it's very hard to introduce a new player into the more complex missions. So unless you plan to play it with the same people every time, you may find yourself playing the first several introductory missions long after you've grasped what's going on in them, until you get all your gaming friends up to speed on the game. The X-Wing Miniatures Game, to cap this off before opening the thread up to others' favorites and such, is another home run for Fantasy Flight Games. It's a great wargame-lite for board gamers. In it, you typically control 3-8 starfighters from the Star Wars universe (currently, X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE Fighters, and TIE Advanced) against another player doing the same. At its most basic, you will simply run a deathmatch-style dogfight. Each turn, both players plot movement for their ships in secret, then reveal the movement and perform the movements on the table with their pieces. Then, ships take turns shooting each other before each side plans movement again. The component quality is pretty impressive. The detail on the models is excellent, and the pre-painted paint jobs are more than passable. They're an attractive size, and are, for a change, to scale with each other. FFG's cardboard tokens are, as always, the best in the business. Each ship has different types of movement options available. Those movement options are represented and measured by way of 17 movement templates which are quite intuitively labelled. Each ship has a movement dial, which depicts the dozen or so of those templates that are available to that ship -- in this way, fast, maneuverable ships perform different from those which are less so. In addition, there are actions, which give consumable bonuses to dice rolls or special end-of-movement maneuvers that can help tweak your final position or facing a bit. When it comes to attacks, the game comes with custom d8's that you roll to determine hits and evasions. Roll more hits than your target rolls evasions, and you score damage equal to the difference, essentially. The game is very approachable, which is why I call it a "gateway wargame." It doesn't involve tape measures, and the stats for each ship are boiled down to a playing card size easy reference, which have 5 numbers and some icons on them. Each ship comes with multiple pilots, who have different points values assigned which are used in creating forces of comparable power. My only gripe about this game is that I wish the single ship expansion packs were about 20% cheaper. This is, for the most part, remedied by ordering online, however. It's still way cheaper than any wargame I've seen, and provides a lot of fun and a surprising amount of tactical depth. So, what about the rest of you? Who else loves board games, and what are your guys' most recent discoveries, or current go-tos?

Author:	Lenas [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:19 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Pretty much all of my non-video gaming revolves around: Sorry! Revenge Monopoly Deal Cards Against Humanity King's Cup Beer (and Ping) Pong Texas Hold 'em As one might guess, I enjoy cards and drinking.

Author:	DFK! [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:34 pm ]
Post subject:
Cards against Humanity is hilarious.

Author:	TheRiov [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:36 pm ]
Post subject:
My wife and I play Carccasone - For those not familiar, is a castle/land building Game Othello Mysterious Island - Collarborative game, find the treasure, escape the island before it sinks killing everyone. Unique in that each of the six possible players plays very differently Bananas - word building game, where you're constantly rearranging your own board to make sure you can spell a word with all your letters, while you continue to draw more and more. Settlers of Catan - hopefully most have played this by now, its another Eurogame mostly about resource gathering. Talisman - Fantasy boardgame. D&D Meets monopoly Order of the Stick - Still learning this one. its extremely time consuming (Think Axis & Allies time frames) would love to play with 6 players. Munchkin - older card game, basically D&D ultra-light Fluxx - card game where the victory conditions and rules are constantly changing. We play the Monty Python variant (draw extra card if you can sing a few bars of a Monty Python song, 2 extra cards if no one has used this song yet this game) Talking in ridiculous accents, or replacing all 3s with 5s. A little too focused on Holy Grail and Flying Circus.. would love to see more Life of Brian and Meaning of Life stuff thrown in.

Author:	Dalantia [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:59 pm ]
Post subject:
Cards Against Humanity demonstrates that we are all terrible human beings.

Author:	shuyung [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 2:15 pm ]
Post subject:
Coro is becoming more enamored of Talisman. We just played in a 6-player game a few weeks ago wherein he did not flip the table and leave abruptly. I don't know how many of you are aware of Felicia Day's YouTube channel "Geek & Sundry", but Wil Wheaton has a show called "TableTop" where he and three guests play a board or card game per episode. I picked up Ticket to Ride based off of the observed play. This should be the starting point of the playlist.

Author:	Lonedar [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 2:26 pm ]
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Games I play with the family: Forbidden Island (described by TheRiov as mysterious) The Adventurers! (get treasure and don't get squished by the rolling boulder, or fall in lava, or drown or get crushed, press your luck with common dice pool so choices matter game) Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts: (screw your family over to get your homework done game.) Defenders of the Realm: (Fantasy Pandemic, but not game) Game I play with buddy: Twilight Struggle (card driven Cold war game) Games I have that I want to play, but haven't found the time, or my kids aren't quite ready to grasp: War of the Ring + Lords of Middle Earth expansion: (Not Risk in Middle Earth game) Fortune and Glory: (Pulp themed press your luck game)

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:21 pm ]
Post subject:
Yup, Stathol, Tabletop is a fun program. I've yet to make a purchase based off a recommendation there, though they've covered several that were already in my collection (like Ticket to Ride) and I've been mulling over one or two purchases based on Tabletop episodes. I introduced Fortune and Glory to a new group of friends last week, Lonedar, it went over quite well. Talisman never quite grabbed me. I think it either lacks interesting enough strategic elements or ends up being just a little too random to keep my attention through what's a long game built around random "roll this" events and occasionally improving your character. I can certainly see the appeal for others, though. There was a new expansion that just came out for it, I think. Fluxx and Forbidden Island sound like games I'm not familiar with that might be worth looking into. I've heard good stuff about Twilight Struggle in the past...

Author:	FarSky [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:34 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Apples to Apples

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:37 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
FarSky wrote: Apples to Apples You're banished from my head from now on. Here. Order a copy of Wise and Otherwise and be cured of your bad party game affliction.

Author:	Numbuk [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:40 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Smallworld Lords of Waterdeep (If Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne had a baby, it would play similar to this) Dixit - Even friends who were very doubtful they'd like this game, found they really enjoyed it by the end. It's a very cerebral game. Red Dragon Inn - The game, plus it's add-ons, is quite fun. Easy to learn and play. Aye, Dark Overlord! - This simultaneously does and does not meet your non roleplaying requirement. This is a game where one player is the dark overlord, and everyone else is his goblin minions. A scheme got botched up, and it's up to each goblin to blame the others. Half playing cards, half quick-witted roleplaying wins the game here. I have more, but that should get people going.

Author:	Crimsonsun [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:42 pm ]
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I used to play a lot more board games when I worked at my Friendly Local Game Store... now all I do is RPG nights on Thursdays and Fridays

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:46 pm ]
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And, sorry, Farskeee. I hope that came off as light-heartedly as I meant it. Apples to Apples doesn't really thrill me, but I don't want to put down other peoples' tastes or selections. I was going for a twist on get out of my head, while simultaneously recommending Wise and Otherwise as an awesome large-group game.

Author:	Corolinth [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:48 pm ]
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That's because with six players, I didn't take as many turns as I otherwise would have. I would like to point out that I still lost every combat where I didn't possess a significant numeric advantage, and even those victories I obtained only occurred through the use of reroll mechanics. This, of course, was after abusing my class power to preview adventure cards and dump off all of the battles where I was at a disadvantage and pass them to the player to the left - a tactic which killed Brian rather effectively. No, Talisman is still a shitty game, and should be played only under duress. The next time I play Talisman, I hope Apophis lands on your house.

Author:	Kindralas [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:
In all fairness, I was attempting to kill myself, so everyone was happy. Anyway, Talisman is less a game than an experience, and it has a sort of "stately old man" reverence from 80's gamers. My history in gaming can bring up a list of games that would stun most of the people on the board. Some comments about other games referenced: Apples to Apples - The purpose of a party game is not to generate in-depth quality gameplay, but to generate discussion. Apples to Apples does this as effectively as many other games in the genre, including games like Fact or Crap, Scattergories, 25 Words, and the like. In almost every party game's case, not liking the game comes down to the players and not the game, because the game is just an excuse to sit around a table/living room and BS. For what a party game is supposed to be, Apples to Apples is as good as any other option. Carcassone - I have always hated Carcassone from the first time I played it. I can't really put into words why, other than the fact that I hate scoring track games, where the depth of strategy is simply figuring out the highest relative point swing you can manage each turn. Carcassone does a pretty good job of leveraging a little more depth because some of the better scoring plays require multiple turns (and are thus prone to being screwed over by opponents), which I suppose increases the depth, but has consistently annoyed me. It also has some serious issues with board clarity. Talisman (and similarly Dungeon, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and the like) - Much like your party games, the purpose of these games isn't to actually win, but just to have stuff happen, and as such, isn't for everyone. If the competition is the reason you play, these games are not for you. Fluxx - No one should ever play a version of Fluxx aside from the base version, which offers the Holy Grail of card game design: A game with no rules (which isn't entirely true). It's not really a game in the competitive sense, again, because things change so rapidly, but it is an enjoyable time waster if you're waiting for the rest of your gaming group to show up. Munchkin - Also not really much of a game, and not really anything that I would compare to anything else. The game is basically a joke riff on D&D tropes (as one would guess), and while that's amusing once, there's not enough of a game there to play more than once. Ticket to Ride - I was as interested in this as I am in most Eurogames, primarily due to it being another Euro-style game that I don't have the math down on perfectly yet, which really is the key to the Eurogame revolution. They're all exquisitely balanced, as they tend to be designed by people who have at least some understanding of higher forms of math. The problem with all of these games is that they're solvable to the point that the game becomes entirely reliant upon luck. I'm fine with games which do that, like Fluxx and Talisman, because there's never any real pretense of strategy. Most Eurogames are only strategic when the players have varying levels of expertise with the game. Netrunner, Ascension, and the like - The deckbuilding games have always baffled me. Chances are pretty good that just about anyone has a game store that runs Friday Night Magic nearby, and many, if not most, offer drafts. While the financial commitment is certainly higher than just buying a boxed set, the variation in an actual CCG draft is something that these games can't simulate. If you have any interest in these games at all, you should attend an FNM and play a draft or two.

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:23 pm ]
Post subject:
Kindralas, the point about CCG drafts is well taken. However, I'd posit that Netrunner offers a very different gameplay experience than Magic. Because its core actions do not, in fact, revolve around the cards in hand, it very much becomes a game whose play is engaging and interesting independent of the deckbuilding. Yes, playing constructed decks is more fun than pre-builts or some random guy's deck. But it's a game where you can genuinely sit the same two decks down across from each other and have NO idea how it's going to play out, because so much comes down to strategic decision in the game itself. So while I can understand (and often share) the desire for a good way to apply a draft format to a fixed distribution/box set deck building game, the game has other elements that keep the deck compositions played very unstable so it doesn't get stale quickly in a straight-up constructed format. Those elements are, in the case of Android: Netrunner, both inherent in the design of the game (as I alluded to above) and a factor of the frequent injection of small batches of new cards. I like it precisely because it's a deck construction game that can be engaging, interesting, and varied without requiring or promoting a draft format.

Author:	Kindralas [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:44 pm ]
Post subject:
Is this the part where I point out that Netrunner was a CCG?

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:54 pm ]
Post subject:	Re:
Kindralas wrote: Is this the part where I point out that Netrunner was a CCG? Sure. And FFG went and made it into a LCG that works very well, too. You'll note that I said I didn't play the original. The reason I didn't was because it was a CCG and I didn't care to dedicate my meager budget to competing in an environment with chase rares. Playing in a draft format is nearly as (or more, depending on frequency of play) expensive, and thus equally aversive to me.

Author:	Kindralas [ Thu Jan 31, 2013 8:28 pm ]
Post subject:
Well, bringing up the concept of chasing rares, when discussing a draft, is pointless. We could argue the merits of a CCG on a value-for-dollar basis, if you like, but the comparison being made is drafting, which doesn't involve chasing rares at all. Drafting isn't nearly as financially draining, especially if you don't care to play constructed. Many players on Magic Online subsist off of their drafting, and even come out a bit ahead, and if you draft in a place that offers singles and lets you bank packs, you can build up enough store credit to draft free, assuming you're good. And none of that takes into account the flat-out better environment that drafting Magic gives. The game is better than most deckbuilding games I've seen (though I admit my depth of knowledge on that genre is smaller than most), and the depth of card selection is an order of magnitude larger than you'd get with a deckbuilding game. In the past 3 years, I've drafted with over 2,000 unique cards, with another 280 or so cards being added to that this week. That's something deckbuilding games can't match. On top of that, if you have a local player who has a Cube, you can literally play Magic in the same format as a deckbuilding game. The sum argument, to me, is that deckbuilding games, as a whole, are a very minor subset of the CCG phenomenon as a whole, and I tend to judge the merits of a deckbuilding game against the merits of CCG's because of that. A huge part of the appeal of a CCG is the mutable card pool, something that deckbuilding games don't emulate particularly well.

Author:	Khross [ Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:35 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Are we limiting your observations to Limited Formats, or do Constructed Formats come into play?

Author:	Foamy [ Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:38 am ]
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Will post more when not on iPad, but I wanted to add this: Anyone who likes the co-op mechanic of Forbidden (or Mysterious) island, would be selling themselves short if they do not give Pandemic a try. Both it and the expansion, "On the Brink" are tons of coop fun. Oh, Hex Hex XL (think hot potato but you pass the potato (hex) with spells) is great stab-a-friend-in-the-back party game. EDIT - for the record, I'd have to say that Settlers of Catan has always been from the first I was introduced to it, my favorite game by a longshot.

Author:	Kindralas [ Sat Feb 02, 2013 3:03 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Non-Video (nor Roleplaying) Games
Khross wrote: Are we limiting your observations to Limited Formats, or do Constructed Formats come into play? I personally play Standard and EDH, in addition to semi-regular drafting. To me, the pure form of Magic is the Constructed aspect. There is a significant financial commitment that one needs to make, though that commitment is not as high as many detractors would have you believe. What I tell most people who are interested in the game is to pick up Duels of the Planeswalkers, which is an excellent introductory product to the game itself. If you enjoy that, then I'd recommend drafting, though going to draft, I would also recommend reading up on the set that you're drafting before actually going to a tournament. Doing so improves your decks quite a bit, in addition to not slowing down the draft by having to read every card that comes your way. Now is an excellent time to begin drafting, as a new set (Gatecrash) came out last week, so the draft format is pretty wide-open. In the course of drafting, you can effectively work on your Constructed deck as well, though doing so is much easier on MTGO, where you might be able to draft some of the older formats. But you can limit yourself to three colors or so while drafting, force it every draft, and eventually get some sort of Constructed deck that at least works, even if it isn't the most powerful deck out there. Almost anyone who has enjoyed an MMO at any point will find some very poignant comparisons between playing an MMO and Constructed CCG environments, with your characters as your decks, and the equivalent of the gear grind being picking up new cards, either by just flat buying them, drafting them, or winning them in tournaments. CCG's offer a gaming experience that is not exactly replicated by any other form of gaming. Magic, with its long history, offers a variation in gameplay which isn't matched by anything else, especially when you start including all of the various formats. We haven't even talked about Pack Wars or Winston and Winchester drafting, both two-player formats which are similar to drafting, or the bigger multiplayer formats like EDH, Emperor, and Two-Headed Giant. There's so many different ways to enjoy the game, that, despite what often ends up being a low-four-figure a year investment to play, it's hard not to get the value from the game that you expect for that investment.

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