Octopus Overlords

EzeKieL wrote:About Mage Knight, does anyone actually use the Dummy Player? I just bought the game and I really don't like dummy player mechanics in general so I was wondering if it was really necessary.



I'm looking forward to playing it though... one day ;_;

The dummy player doesn't score points. He has no decisions to make.

Try it.

The dummy player acts solely as a clock, to keep the rounds progressing as they should. It doesn't impact your play in the game at all.

baelthazar wrote:Apparently there is an iOS version of Le Havre coming very soon (by next month)! I am so excited about this! I love the game, but my wife is not keen on the long playtime.

I'm hoping it's playable on an iPhone. if not I'm one more step closer to caving and buying iPad..

For those into Magic the Gathering, the new Planechase PreCon Decks are out! We tried 'em out tonight 4 players, mucho fun! First game took quite a while as we got used to the Planar decks again (the last Planechase came out in Sept 09)... but the second game was over within an hour.

Then we split off into pairs, as my buddy wanted revenge on my Blue Edh (commonly known amongst friends as ThatDamnedBlueDeck), while my son played 60 card casual with our other friend. Sadly for my opponent, the Blue Deck smoked him 2-0.

So then we broke out Stone Age and played 4 Player (without expansion). Final tally was 161, 150, 130, and 97. (I pulled out the win as second place failed to acquire the resources to build his building for the 14 points) my strategy was Tools and Civilization cards, ending with a set of the 8, 3x Tools, 2x Buildings, and 6x Meeples. Everyone loved the game, wishing we could stay up all night and keep playing.

freelunch wrote:

baelthazar wrote:Apparently there is an iOS version of Le Havre coming very soon (by next month)! I am so excited about this! I love the game, but my wife is not keen on the long playtime.

I'm hoping it's playable on an iPhone. if not I'm one more step closer to caving and buying iPad..

AFAIK, like the port of Puerto Rico, it will be iPad only. I will tell you one thing, my iPad has revolutionized my gaming experience. Often I want to play a board game but have no players - the iPad fixed that. I'm addicted to playing Imperial on it (and Small World). The AI for Imperial is a little wooden, but it still beats me!

Puerto Rico is nice because it lets my wife and I play when we don't have a third player around (also plays in 1/2 the time with the auto resolving).

IMHO, an iPad is a must-have for serious tabletop gamers.

Chaosraven wrote: So then we broke out Stone Age and played 4 Player (without expansion). Final tally was 161, 150, 130, and 97. (I pulled out the win as second place failed to acquire the resources to build his building for the 14 points) my strategy was Tools and Civilization cards, ending with a set of the 8, 3x Tools, 2x Buildings, and 6x Meeples. Everyone loved the game, wishing we could stay up all night and keep playing.

You guys are raving about this one so I picked up the base game and the expansion on sale for 40 bucks at Origins yesterday before I left.

Ground Floor blows past 75k on Kickstarter, with a day still left. All backers will now be receiving, as part of their delivery in October, a dice game called Skyline.

In Skyline, players are rolling dice and building skylines of a city to score points. It takes less than 15 minutes, supposedly. Here's an example of a player's ending city:



Free games are good.

hepcat wrote:

Chaosraven wrote: So then we broke out Stone Age and played 4 Player (without expansion). Final tally was 161, 150, 130, and 97. (I pulled out the win as second place failed to acquire the resources to build his building for the 14 points) my strategy was Tools and Civilization cards, ending with a set of the 8, 3x Tools, 2x Buildings, and 6x Meeples. Everyone loved the game, wishing we could stay up all night and keep playing.

You guys are raving about this one so I picked up the base game and the expansion on sale for 40 bucks at Origins yesterday before I left.

my friends said it reminded them a little of Alien Frontiers, and they want to know when we are playing again. My son wants his own copy.

This weekend I played:

Notre Dame for the first time. Wow, it's yet another good game from Feld.

Hanabi of course. It's the best game no one knows about, imo. Fantastic. It's one of those rare games with simple rules, and complex gameplay. It's amazing that the game gets *better* as all the players learn how to play.

We also did the "Druid Nights" scenario of Mage Knight. It's an awesome scenario where you "mark" magical glades during the day, and then summon brown enemies or dragons to fight at night.

But for me, it fucking sucked. Three times during the first day, another player beat me to a nearby monastery or village, and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. And of course, when the first player moved, the next player entered the monastery and grabbed the only other legal card. By the end of the first night, the 3 other players had 3 or more Advanced Actions, and were level 3 or higher, and I had 0 actions, and hadn't gained a single point of Fame.

So we're instituting a few house rules:

Two players can stand in the same village or monastery.

If you choose, you can reveal your hand as having no move cards, then discard any two cards to move 4.

If players get too far apart on the Fame track it can quickly turn against the player with less fame.

SpaceLord wrote: and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. .

Don't forget you can discard any amount of cards from your hand, turn them sidewise and then use each of them as move 1, influence 1, attack 1 (not ranged though) or block 1 instead of using their text. Technically, you're never UNable to move at any point in the game unless you're out of cards entirely.

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. .

Don't forget you can discard any amount of cards from your hand, turn them sidewise and then use each of them as move 1, influence 1, attack 1 (not ranged though) or block 1 instead of using their text. Technically, you're never UNable to move at any point in the game unless you're out of cards entirely.

On one side, i had a mountain. On the other side, I had two swamps. It's not worth discarding a hand full of Influence cards to move 1 space, in the wrong direction, when you need those cards to buy units or Actions later. Ugh.

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. .

Don't forget you can discard any amount of cards from your hand, turn them sidewise and then use each of them as move 1, influence 1, attack 1 (not ranged though) or block 1 instead of using their text. Technically, you're never UNable to move at any point in the game unless you're out of cards entirely.

On one side, i had a mountain. On the other side, I had two swamps. It's not worth discarding a hand full of Influence cards to move 1 space, in the wrong direction, when you need those cards to buy units or Actions later. Ugh.

Then dump them, get your attack cards, and kick the crap out of the guy sitting where you want to be. Bonus if he is higher level than you because then you get even more fame for giving him the smack down. Sorry to be blunt but it sounds like the game sucked because you got in a bad spot and did nothing to try and change it but wait and hope it changed on its own. Hell, if I'd have been the first guy there I'd have gotten what I could and burned the thing to the ground so you wouldn't have been able to get anything even after I left.

The fact that you can rase a monastery in MK is a selling point for some...

Remus West wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. .

Don't forget you can discard any amount of cards from your hand, turn them sidewise and then use each of them as move 1, influence 1, attack 1 (not ranged though) or block 1 instead of using their text. Technically, you're never UNable to move at any point in the game unless you're out of cards entirely.

On one side, i had a mountain. On the other side, I had two swamps. It's not worth discarding a hand full of Influence cards to move 1 space, in the wrong direction, when you need those cards to buy units or Actions later. Ugh.

Then dump them, get your attack cards, and kick the crap out of the guy sitting where you want to be. Bonus if he is higher level than you because then you get even more fame for giving him the smack down. Sorry to be blunt but it sounds like the game sucked because you got in a bad spot and did nothing to try and change it but wait and hope it changed on its own. Hell, if I'd have been the first guy there I'd have gotten what I could and burned the thing to the ground so you wouldn't have been able to get anything even after I left.

We were playing no-PVP rules. I ended up having fun, and wasn't 50 points behind by the end, like I feared. I believe I was 5th level, and they were 7th and 8th-ish.

On a side note, I was surprised to see quite a few copies of Mage Knight in play at Origins this year. Usually longer games like that are relegated to the miniatures area. But there were copies of MK in play in numerous areas.

SpaceLord wrote:

Remus West wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and I just had to stand there for several turns, because I was lacking the move cards to go around. .

Don't forget you can discard any amount of cards from your hand, turn them sidewise and then use each of them as move 1, influence 1, attack 1 (not ranged though) or block 1 instead of using their text. Technically, you're never UNable to move at any point in the game unless you're out of cards entirely.

On one side, i had a mountain. On the other side, I had two swamps. It's not worth discarding a hand full of Influence cards to move 1 space, in the wrong direction, when you need those cards to buy units or Actions later. Ugh.

Then dump them, get your attack cards, and kick the crap out of the guy sitting where you want to be. Bonus if he is higher level than you because then you get even more fame for giving him the smack down. Sorry to be blunt but it sounds like the game sucked because you got in a bad spot and did nothing to try and change it but wait and hope it changed on its own. Hell, if I'd have been the first guy there I'd have gotten what I could and burned the thing to the ground so you wouldn't have been able to get anything even after I left.

We were playing no-PVP rules. I ended up having fun, and wasn't 50 points behind by the end, like I feared. I believe I was 5th level, and they were 7th and 8th-ish.

So, call end round or simply dump the hand and get a new one that will allow you to do something productive. Sitting and waiting is usually not the best answer (sitting on a glade healing is the only time I can think of where I would expect it to be even vaguely useful).

Remus West wrote: So, call end round or simply dump the hand and get a new one that will allow you to do something productive. Sitting and waiting is usually not the best answer (sitting on a glade healing is the only time I can think of where I would expect it to be even vaguely useful).

I had less than 10 cards left in my deck. I had a single move card in those 10 cards, I had mainly attack cards to draw, with nothing I could reach to attack. It was pretty much the worst scenario possible, heh.

SpaceLord wrote:

Remus West wrote: So, call end round or simply dump the hand and get a new one that will allow you to do something productive. Sitting and waiting is usually not the best answer (sitting on a glade healing is the only time I can think of where I would expect it to be even vaguely useful).

I had less than 10 cards left in my deck. I had a single move card in those 10 cards, I had mainly attack cards to draw, with nothing I could reach to attack. It was pretty much the worst scenario possible, heh.

So end round. At least then you keep the others from making advancements while you sit for multiple turns. If you had already decided you were not going anywhere why give the others time to do so? You said you didn't want to dump the entire hand to move onto the swamp but why not? Then you have different options from where you are. Or move over the player to the other side of the Monastery. You are allowed to move through other players even when not doing PvP. You just can not stop on top of them. Anyway, I guess it just breaks down to how aggro you wish to be and I tend to be on the more side rather than the less.

Remus West wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:

Remus West wrote: So, call end round or simply dump the hand and get a new one that will allow you to do something productive. Sitting and waiting is usually not the best answer (sitting on a glade healing is the only time I can think of where I would expect it to be even vaguely useful).

I had less than 10 cards left in my deck. I had a single move card in those 10 cards, I had mainly attack cards to draw, with nothing I could reach to attack. It was pretty much the worst scenario possible, heh.

So end round. At least then you keep the others from making advancements while you sit for multiple turns. If you had already decided you were not going anywhere why give the others time to do so? You said you didn't want to dump the entire hand to move onto the swamp but why not? Then you have different options from where you are. Or move over the player to the other side of the Monastery. You are allowed to move through other players even when not doing PvP. You just can not stop on top of them. Anyway, I guess it just breaks down to how aggro you wish to be and I tend to be on the more side rather than the less.

None of that works. If I dump my hand to move 1 space, then dump my hand again to move another single space, I'm still too far away to attack the nearest Orc, and I'm out of cards to draw. The terrain other side of the player at the Monastery was empty, save for a Mage Tower I was laughably unprepared to attack.

That's my biggest fault with the game: sometimes the map or cards doesn't allow you to do what you want.

I don't think I know of any boardgames that allow you to do exactly what you want every turn. If they do, they would kind of suck.

The fun comes from figuring out WHAT you can do with what you're given.

hepcat wrote:I don't think I know of any boardgames that allow you to do exactly what you want every turn. If they do, they would kind of suck.

The fun comes from figuring out WHAT you can do with what you're given.

This. Although mostly for me it is LordMortis that gets in my way of doing what I want in games. Or Chaosraven. Or redrun, bb2112, etc......

hepcat wrote:I don't think I know of any boardgames that allow you to do exactly what you want every turn. If they do, they would kind of suck.

The fun comes from figuring out WHAT you can do with what you're given.

As illustrated: in my case, just stand there, no options worked. I can't attack anything, can't move anywhere that gets anything accomplished, and if I call end of round, it pisses off the other players who still need to prep for the summoning at night.

SpaceLord wrote:and if I call end of round, it pisses off the other players who still need to prep for the summoning at night.

So?

SpaceLord wrote: and if I call end of round, it pisses off the other players who still need to prep for the summoning at night.

It's a competitive scenario so I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing for you.

edit: d'oh, remus beat me to it.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but as Remus points out, you had options...just not the exact one you wanted. But that's just how boardgames work. I don't believe your house rules are actually necessary after reading about your predicament, to be honest.

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and if I call end of round, it pisses off the other players who still need to prep for the summoning at night.

It's a competitive scenario so I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing for you.

edit: d'oh, remus beat me to it.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but as Remus points out, you had options...just not the exact one you wanted. But that's just how boardgames work. I don't believe your house rules are actually necessary after reading about your predicament, to be honest.

What options? I could spend two entire rounds moving 2 spaces, and when i get there, have nothing to interact with? I had no options. The only interaction space I could reach was a rampaging orc spot, that was already empty.

I play a 5 hour game, and, due to freak circumstances, I essentially waste more than a hour of that time, and potentially the whole game because I'm so far behind and will never had the resources to fight my summoned opponents. In fact, because I was so far behind, the other players defeated 3-4 summonded enemies, and conquered several keeps and mage towers each, and I got zero, until the 2nd night, at game's end, when I was finally able to summon and defeat a dragon.

The house rule for co-occupying a village or monastery doesn't diminish the game in the slightest. It doesn't make turn order unimportant, because the first player to a location can grab what they want anyway.

SpaceLord wrote:
What options? I could spend two entire rounds moving 2 spaces, and when i get there, have nothing to interact with? I had no options.

Moving is an option. You're setting yourself up for later. Something almost every game has at one point or another. Ending the round to make the game harder for others to win is another option.

But at the end of the day it is your game, so house rule away if it means it's more fun for you.

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:

SpaceLord wrote: and if I call end of round, it pisses off the other players who still need to prep for the summoning at night.

It's a competitive scenario so I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing for you.

edit: d'oh, remus beat me to it.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but as Remus points out, you had options...just not the exact one you wanted. But that's just how boardgames work. I don't believe your house rules are actually necessary after reading about your predicament, to be honest.

What options?

1)Call round end.
2)Dump hand.
3)Use hand to move.

Just because you do not like the options (2 and 3 it seems) or want to annoy the other players by exercising it (1) doesn't mean they do not exist.

Still, if you folks like your house rule and it makes the game work for you then more power to you. For me it would be unneeded but then neither I nor Hepcat are you. You do not have to play to please us but rather yourself. House rule it up. We can happily continue to disagree as to whether or not it is an actual problem and you can go have fun playing.

Remus West wrote: Hell, if I'd have been the first guy there I'd have gotten what I could and burned the thing to the ground so you wouldn't have been able to get anything even after I left.

I concur on:

1) Play the game that makes you happy. If a house rule makes you happy then have at it.
2) I wouldn't like the house rule and think it takes away from the competitive play.
3) If players are that "uncooperative" then you attack them. If you are playing a non attacking game then you're finding the problem being "uncooperative" in cooperative environment.
4) If I felt I really had no good option, I'd end the round to cut my losses (and everyone else's gains). If that's the only way I can frustrate a player who is screwing then that's what I do.

And tactically, if you are at the beginning of the game with no extra mover cards then you have a 16 card deck (7 of which have a movement factor and one of which allows you to draw more cards)

http://unofficialmageknighttheboardgame ... rting_Deck" target="_blank

I had less than 10 cards left in my deck.

That will pretty much be the case after you take your first or second turn every in every game. If you suspect you have no movement left and you are stuck behind someone else after the first or second turn, you did something very very wrong, IMO. With nothing but movement, at the very least you should have taken "1st player" which no one ever takes.

The caveat to my line of thinking is that we have never played a 4 players game, so I don't know how crowded the board gets in 4 player game. I try not to crowd or be crowded by other players when possible. I'll even farm a dungeon to let others advance to be able to choose a different direction. And yeah getting stuck moving into swamps and lakes sucks, especially when you have no movement, but this generally doesn't happen until you hit the tan tiles, where hopefully you've found some advance action cards to aid you in your movement if plugging forward is your plan.

I really enjoy the game. I don't necessarily play it that well. I miss my own options continually as I try not to hold the game up and kick myself for stupid play. But I love that there is so much to put together and weigh against itself. I love you can substitute cards for other cards. I love how getting wounded and balancing those wounds against making your deck worthless is often the most viable strategy to get ahead as you panic to get those wounds back out of your deck before the game ends. I think the re-playability of this game is going to be huge. It's everything all of the FFG strategic over land games in the Descent universe should have been.

Played two games last night. First up was a fantastically fun game of Merchants & Marauders. I tried taking the merchant route early, to get some quick cash to upgrade my ship and then turn to piracy. I found a port with cheap goods and was on my way to fame and riches, when another player attacked and plundered my ship in the very first round of the game. Doh. Essentially all I had lost was my first turn, however, so I quickly restarted with a new captain on the other side of the board, and was able to jump right into piracy with several successes. Ended up winning the game after stashing 20 gold for my final two Glory points. I was having so much fun, I didn't want the game to end.

Second game of the night was the new Lord of the Rings: Nazgul semi-coop game. A good friend of mine played this over the weekend and was fairly enthusiastic about it, so I was excited to give it a try. It's cooperative in that the players are Nazgul attempting to complete three Campaign tracks - the conquests of Rohan, Gondor, and the capture of the Ringbearer. If all three Campaign tracks are "defeated" before the game ends, the players all win. Otherwise, they all lose. It's "semi" cooperative in that there are VP granted for defeating heroes or participtaing in successful victories, and the player with the most VPs is the overall winner in the case of a success.

It's a nice concept, but in the end the game feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. It became clear by the mid-game that we were falling behind, and really needed to work together to be successful. However, there are so many mechanics in the game that allow players to screw each other over, and often it's difficult to realize that what looks like a play that will personally benefit you will be disastrous for the group as a whole. Combat is resolved via placing cubes into a cup and then drawing X cubes out to deal damage to either side, which opens the game up to wild swings of luck, especially given how powerful the Heroes and Nazgul can become toward the end of the game. Without the "competition" in the game, treating the game like Pandemic or Flash Point in that the players either all win or all lose, it would be pretty good. Conversely, ignoring the co-op aspect and just having the players compete against each other in a purely competitive game would be pretty good too. Mixing the two just doesn't work.

Posted a wall of text on the Origins 2012 thread.

As an aside, tomorrow should see the new Quarriors expansion Quarmageddon starting to arrive in stores. I'll grab my copy this weekend most likely...

...ah hell, I'll be at the store tomorrow night and every night after that until I get it. Who am I kidding?

Ground Floor hits 116k! Good to see this for an excellent game company, Tasty Minstrel. And GF is a great game as well.

SpaceLord wrote:Ground Floor hits 116k! Good to see this for an excellent game company, Tasty Minstrel. And GF is a great game as well.

I'm pretty excited about it.

I also supported The Doom that Came to Atlantic City. Reverse Cthulhu Monopoly? Yes please!

Chaosraven wrote:

hepcat wrote:

Chaosraven wrote: So then we broke out Stone Age and played 4 Player (without expansion). Final tally was 161, 150, 130, and 97. (I pulled out the win as second place failed to acquire the resources to build his building for the 14 points) my strategy was Tools and Civilization cards, ending with a set of the 8, 3x Tools, 2x Buildings, and 6x Meeples. Everyone loved the game, wishing we could stay up all night and keep playing.

You guys are raving about this one so I picked up the base game and the expansion on sale for 40 bucks at Origins yesterday before I left.

my friends said it reminded them a little of Alien Frontiers, and they want to know when we are playing again. My son wants his own copy.

Does your copy have a Hans Glick logo on the side of the box? Mine does and it leads me to believe it's a first edition copy. I don't believe there's any difference between that and Rio Grande's second edition but I'm just curious.

Went to the local group last night and got to play Glory to Rome. I will either love this game or hate it based on how systemic completing buildings is to destroying the regular rules.

Then we played a game called Flower Fall that's all about card tossing and area connection that CW brought back from Origins. Then we played a game he's working on that attempts to replicate an RTS game. The balance didn't seem to be quite right for that one, as we lost two games in fairly short order.

I friggin' love Glory to Rome but it is NOT a game you go into with expectations of fair play and logical mechanics. It's meant to be a broken, chaotic mess of pure joy. Once you realize that and start playing it as such, it becomes incredibly fun and even hilarious at times. At the last octocon someone was able to build a combo engine that gave him a dozen straight plays instead of the normal one. In any other game players would just say, "screw this, the game's broken" but the way in which he went about it had us laughing our asses off in disbelief.

I got a couple good buildings deployed, but the flow of the game and cards in my hand were insufficient to allow me to take full advantage of them. I completed the one that lets you use Rubble as a material anywhere, then never had the cards to either pull it from the pile or "thought" my way into being able to use it from my hand.

But I was definitely intrigued, especially since one of the players was showing off his brand new edition fresh from Origins.

The new edition is nice, but I still prefer the goofy look of the original. The black, art deco look of the new edition doesn't really reflect the silliness inherent in the game, imho.

hepcat wrote:The new edition is nice, but I still prefer the goofy look of the original. The black, art deco look of the new edition doesn't really reflect the silliness inherent in the game, imho.

My thought exactly! I won't "upgrade." I love GtR because of the official rule - "if there is a question about game mechanics play it in the way that seems most imbalanced and broken!"

My best memory was me telling my friends, playing it for the first time, about the victory conditions. I said, "and there is the Forum, but it is extremely hard to get that one, so it is less of a worry." Being inexperienced, they let the game go on way too long (did not build sites). I was losing badly. Wouldn't you know it, after an hour or more of play, I popped out that forum and won! I thought they were going to murder me!

hepcat wrote:As an aside, tomorrow should see the new Quarriors expansion Quarmageddon starting to arrive in stores. I'll grab my copy this weekend most likely...

...ah hell, I'll be at the store tomorrow night and every night after that until I get it. Who am I kidding?

Well? For some reason I thought it didn't come out until July, but I'm down with an earlier release. While I'm excited for the new stuff, I'm going to miss the small container for the base game. It's so much harder to hide things when there are boxes involved.