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Cartographers is great! I found Racoon Tycoon to be very accessible for newcomers but it runs the risk of running a bit long (two decks have to run out for the game to end) and the best part (the auction) is somewhat half-baked: you always know the exact composition of the deck and you can keep calling for auctions as long as you don't win one; once the deck runs out, the game just... keeps going but there's no more auctions ever
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May 17, 2024 11:07
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| # ? May 18, 2024 19:59 |
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Azran posted:you can keep calling for auctions as long as you don't win one; once the deck runs out, the game just... keeps going but there's no more auctions ever Yeah our plays of it devolved into this by like the second game and never changed. Overly long and too simple for that length sadly.
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May 17, 2024 11:11
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Redundant posted:I appreciate the Splotter advice people provided. It looks like I will stick to my guns and get Bus at some point when it's back in stock. I don't strictly need more games but maybe I splurge on Bus and Through The Desert and consider myself settled again! I have had to constantly had to fight down my internal urge to buy Food Chain Magnate (the original, not that overpriced KS version), I decided on Bus as well. I know Splotter games can be merciless if you mess up early. I am just not sure how it will go with my normal boardgame group. Bus seems at least a bit more approachable. And hey, good news, GameNerdz has the new printing up for preorder if you are into that sort of thing. Nothing terribly exciting recently in my group. Just a lot of Root and Spirit Island. Root we have stuck with the base game so far, but will be adding in the first expansion the next time we play it. I appreciate the variety of tools that are built into that game to teach it to new players, but whew, that can still take a chunk of time. There is still one regular in our group who hasn't played it, but I am going to introduce it to him through the Steam version which was recently on sale. Spirit Island I think is probably my favorite board game at this point. All of our group appreciates it, but there is one other who is about as obsessed with it as me. We have started to get together at least once a week separate from everyone else just to play 2 player versions of it. Between the amount of Spirits, adversaries, and scenarios (which we haven't even touched), there is just so much variety. Right now we are between on focusing on a few spirits and starting to push the level 5 and 6 versions of some of the adversaries and just continuing to try new spirit combinations at lower levels. An old game, but new to us, has been Flamme Rouge. I knew going in that it was going to have a lot of similarities to Heat, having the same designers. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but don't think I would ever choose to play it over Heat if we have at least 4 players. The exhaustion mechanic I don't think works quite as well as heat does in Heat, even if it is serving the same basic purpose. I am wondering if the Peloton and Meteo expansions would help with some of this, but they don't seem available right now in the US. I guess we also played Mythic Mischief for the first time last weekend. For those who haven't heard of it, you are a team of... mythic creatures (vampires, zombies, witches, ghosts, etc) at a magical high school. You are trying to get your rival gangs captured by the librarian by either adjusting the path he is taking to pickup tombs of books, or by adjusting the position of your opponents. All factions have certain abilities that are the same, but then several that are similar, but asymmetric. I only played two games of it, but definitely see the potential with the various factions. But yikes at the usual IV Studios pricing for their games. Luckily I wasn't the one who paid for it.
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May 17, 2024 12:00
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Screaming_Gremlin posted:I have had to constantly had to fight down my internal urge to buy Food Chain Magnate (the original, not that overpriced KS version), I decided on Bus as well. I know Splotter games can be merciless if you mess up early. I am just not sure how it will go with my normal boardgame group. Bus seems at least a bit more approachable. And hey, good news, GameNerdz has the new printing up for preorder if you are into that sort of thing. I love Flamme Rouge. I would say it was probably my gateway game. Whilst the exhaustion and heat have similar uses I really like the approach to a race being to stay in 2nd place for as long as possible before rushing off. It introduced a different limitation to the race pattern which I can absolutely get behind. I think I actually prefer Flamme Rouge to Heat, but some of that may be nostalgia and we haven't broken out the car parts yet in Heat so maybe that will swing it.
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May 17, 2024 13:16
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Redundant posted:I love Flamme Rouge. I would say it was probably my gateway game. Whilst the exhaustion and heat have similar uses I really like the approach to a race being to stay in 2nd place for as long as possible before rushing off. It introduced a different limitation to the race pattern which I can absolutely get behind. I think I actually prefer Flamme Rouge to Heat, but some of that may be nostalgia and we haven't broken out the car parts yet in Heat so maybe that will swing it. I definitely want to play more Flamme Rouge. We only did two races, so obviously my impressions are pretty early. Especially compared to Heat, where I have more experience. Like you mentioned, I did like the mechanic where you really are trying to stay just out of the lead of the pack to avoid taking exhaustion. It does add quite a bit of strategy on when the optimum moment to break away (with a bit of luck that you pull the right hand of cards for the moment). Elevation also definitely helped as well, which we waited for the second game to introduce. If nothing else, I think Flamme Rouge will be preferred racing game at the 2 - 3 player mark. Heat definitely gets more interesting once you add in card drafting and not just using the default deck for each player. I still want to try a Championship mode, but that pretty much would dedicate an entire night to just that game. I sort of want to do that once I have a chance to get a 5 or even 6 player game night going. Of course when if I can actually wrangle our group together for that, I also want to try out Zoo Vadis, so not sure we would have time for both. Also forgot that I played Ghost Stories for the first time a few weeks ago. Talk about a game designed to kick your teeth in. We definitely are going to need to work on our strategy if we ever want to have a chance of beating it. Thankfully, everyone seemed to have fun regardless, so it is more of when we play it again and not if.
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May 17, 2024 13:44
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| # ? May 18, 2024 19:59 |
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Tried Fliptown the other evening. It's from the same designer as Sprawlopolis/Agropolis and it is great. Probably quite easily the best X'n'Write I've played. It's easy to understand but there is a ton to do. Great art too (& the artist is related to Pancho Villa, interestingly enough). Better balanced than Fleet The Dice Game and way more thematic than Welcome to... or Ganz schön Clever. Plus solo play was super easy and fun. I guess the only other bingo-game that comes near this would be Cartographers, but that one I've already played to death.
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May 17, 2024 13:49
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