Lurker > SeabassDebeste

whew. cleared doors 5 and 6.

this game has done an incredible job of instilling dread. we keep alluding to how michel hurts giselle. while it hurts us as a viewer seeing michel and giselle split up and murdered by the angry mob, there's some actual relief in knowing that their death isn't because of betrayal.

door 6 sells the descent of giselle to maid to witch morgana. the fact that she's entirely conscious for the whole thousand years with no one but the witch as company is mind-boggling. i really like the brief look we get at the three vignettes from the maid's POV and the reason that the WHG's name has been obscured until now. could see it coming, but it didn't make it any less satisfying.

the bad end (#4) at the end of door 6 is also really clever. there's only one dialogue choice, but i'm pretty sure that you get the "hesitation" death by bringing up the menu to save there, right? if so, that's a really cool meta element. (if it was literally just counting the seconds, then that's a lot lamer.)

anyway yeah, here comes the witch of course. this is probably the least interesting way to get us to continue, but i'm still interested. who is michel's ex? (he mentions past love.) who is that girl in the painting? who is the man in the talking painting? and why/how did michel unleash the witch to begin with?

all this, next time!

bulbasaur

heracross is cool but should not have beaten haunter

Emeraldegg posted...

To be fair, it's not sarver's fault they didn't get it done past 2 years. Sometimes what you have just ain't enough. But like they do have CP3 for another couple years, booker should hang around, suns aren't out of it just yet even if CP declines some.

hard to say for sure, but there is a lot of chatter that poor chemistry did in the suns - and a lot of that poor chemistry/bad locker room presence came from ayton, presumably unhappy he didn't get his contract

yeah, tzolk'in might be worth a shot on BGA - but i'd also suggest learning/playing it IRL, because when you're forced to do things by hand, 1. you get to spin the awesome gear manually and 2. you'll understand better how the numbers are calculated.

T&E is a scramble. it's a weird experience that feels totally different from most contemporary eurogames. but it's also pretty brilliant, and even if it doesn't become a favorite, i think it's worth appreciating what T&E actually is. just don't get too attached to thinking anything is "yours," even if you lay the tiles yourself!

37. Tigris and Euphrates

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42/tigris-euphrates

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60-90 minutes
First played: 2019
Experience: 5-8 plays with 2-4 players

In Tigris and Euphrates, you control one of four civilizations, competing to have the best-rounded civilization in four spheres, represented by four different colored tiles and leaders: religion, trade, agriculture, and military. You score these points by laying tiles and controlling leaders in the corresponding colors. Conflicts will arise when two leaders of the same type are in the same kingdom, either by having one leader deposited into another's kingdom (revolt) or by having their kingdoms joined (war). These result in leaders and tiles being removed from the board and other scoring opportunities. Your final score is the number of points you scored in the weakest of your four categories.

This is one of the oldest (designer) games on this list - released in 1997 by the venerable Dr. Reiner Knizia. It is often cited as one of his absolute best designs and once sat atop the boardgamegeek Top 100.

This is possibly the single game on this list that would jump the most if I created it today versus at the end of last year. I've since played it a few more times at meetups and with friends, and plus gotten in some more reps online.

Tigris and Euphrates is beautifully elegantly designed. Each of the four colors has a unique gameplay purpose, which infuses the seemingly abstract game with more theme than you might expect - the religious temples anchor leaders, who need to have the support of the church in order to maintain their influence; the Trader, when spanning across kingdoms with treasures, will collect the treasures; farms and only farms can cross rivers; and the king of the military will collect points in all colors in which a specialist leader does not exist.

I haven't particularly made strategy breakthroughs in this game. It strikes me as highly tactical - because there is no engine-building, and because of the random nature of the tile-draw, and because you can't control who your opponents choose to attack, to me it feels like you can rarely make big plans beyond a couple of turns and maybe setting up one big-time war or revolt.

For me, this game is just about kind of seeing how the board develops - the initial race to unite the base temples with their treasures, the clusters of tiles that fill up the board, the monuments that may or may not crop up, the reversals of fortune that come when people cut apart a kingdom with catastrophe tiles, the drastic effect of a revolt that allows a leader to steal the support of an established leader, the wars that reshape the board entirely by eliminating the opponent's supporters and blowing their leader off the board. Each player plays all four colors; you are delineated only by your leaders, who are distinguished not by color but by sigils representing your clan (bull, archer, potter, and lion). Again, without much flavor text, art, or chrome, this sort of ebb and flow of the board state can evoke the actual rise and fall of civilizations.

The most Knizian part of this game is the way the final score is determined. You can try to specialize as much as you want - build up that giant military and try to steamroll all your opponents' black tiles and score up to twenty or more black points. But the final score mechanism is so punishing, because if you neglect placing any blue farms, then your score will literally be zero. The idea that in the end, you'll by judged by your weakest category, is incredibly Knizian. In this way, while you may have a "player who's specializing in scoring red" and the "player who's got all the green points," you're forced not to lean into this strength, but to scrape for the way to make up your weaknesses.

And because it remains opaque to me, in some ways I respect the design and experience of T&E more than the attempt to win. While players can get analysis paralysis in Tigris and Euphrates, overall, the game - especially at four players - can often feel almost too short. There's no engine to build, and your desperate attempts to draw into the right points will often leave you scrambling. It's hard to get stuff done, and in some games you won't actually get anything done. But as long as people are moving along, you'll get to be a bystander or victim in others' conquests. And that's part of the beauty of it.

38. Tzolk'in

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/126163/tzolk-mayan-calendar

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Worker placement, resource management, tableau-building, point salad
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 90-120 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 4-6 plays with 2-4 players (in person), 10+ plays online

Tzolk'in is a Mayan-themed worker placement eurogame. On your turn - of which you have twenty-four, representing one year - you either place or remove one or more workers from the board. You get the actions represented by your workers when you remove them. Between your turns, The worker placement spots are all located on gears, which rotate one tick each round, moving each worker one tick higher on the track. By pulling off your workers, you generally collect and trade a variety of resources, increase your technologies and workers, and purchase monuments for victory points.

The most important part about Tzolk'in is its board. The board is absolutely fantastic - those interlocking gears have an incredible table presence, and it's an ingenious idea to let all the workers "age" (i.e. become more potent in power) by moving a single gear in the center. The central gear also counts as the game timer; each quarter-circle is marked with a feeding phase, while the full revolution indicates that the game is over.

Playing Tzolk'in and identifying goals can feel opaque. The game feels point salad-y; you can score VP in all sorts of ways, from building monuments to advancing on tech tracks to advancing on god tracks (which also give you midgame rewards). There are five different gears that each have eight different steps, and you've got both a limited number of workers and a limited amount of corn (the primary currency of the game), and you need to pay more corn the more workers you place at once, or the higher on a gear you place them. Sometimes you'll be forced to pull workers you don't feel ready to place; sometimes you'll run out of corn and have to beg while placing, or starve during feeding.

I have heard that Tzolk'in can be broken. I believe there is some sort of big-resource strategy that is pretty dominant, though I've never been able to pull it off. Because of the opacity of the strategy and tactics, I can sometimes feel lost.

There's a lot of game to Tzolk'in. I'd really like to get actually decent at it, since it's very satisfying when you actually can get something done in the game. Just need more reps and perhaps a teacher who can explain situations to me. The game can hurt my head but I like it a lot as a mid-heavyweight eurogame.

poor suns fans. cheap ownership is the fucking worst.

the boob shots are probably the worst thing about this game and this route has had a lot of them.

that said this route is also really good so far. i'm no expert but it seems insanely hard to do a trauma victim character with this much care and humanity. in spite of the cleavage (which does belie it), the story is handling giselle beautifully.

just got through the moonlit night with the love confessions exchanged. waiting for the next door to drop... real hard.

well giselle's backstory was really rough to read.

pezzicle posted...

You've reached the point where the story finally picks up and moves for the next 10-15 hours. Enjoy

i am kinda glad to hear that.

i don't mind the deliberate pacing if i think interesting stuff is happening. like right now, we're definitely slow-burning "door 5," but it's far, far more compelling than the vignettes we've been down so far. but the interesting stuff that reveals mysteries has been super far and few between.

favorite moments thus far

- the fiancee merchant is the beast, revelation

- maria campanella laughing

- slow reveal that the maid, not WHG, is giselle

so with the "it ain't over" option, a red-lettered voice reallydoesn't want us to solve it. we're almost certainly the cursed figure (and not the WHG)... and we're now down that the maid is not the witch morgana but the girl giselle. this "reclaim yourself" option appearing over and over again reminds me a lot of the ending to danganronpa 2.

the maid herself is terrified of pushjing further. we are given the option to back out now, which results in an ending (3) very similar to the first ending, but more explicitly unsettled

finally delving into the good stuff now, though. this "door 5" story is told from both the maid and the cursed man's POV and it's way me engagingly written than any of the vignettes we've been shown so far. it doesn't hop timelines as much, it's deeply subjective, and while it covers many of the same scenes we've seen before, the details have drastically changed. giselle isn't a virgin mary sacrificial lamb type but more of a peppy archetype - and one with a real backstory.

the game has gone like an hour-plus without showing the title card which usually marks my save points, so i finally quit during the actual flashback, where we see why giselle slept with the master of the house...

i miss my childhood dub and "hercule"

anyway yeah if we go with the sensible ranking that kid buu < super buu, then gohan at any amount of strength signs have been able to waste him in like seconds

i caught like one instance of red text halfway through and a few random comments - but that one scene in the observatory apparently has it every other line

anyway, two endings have apparently added up two very little - but "the work is not finished" is almost certainly going to explain more

michel in ending 2 (reject the maid) certainly seems to imply that there's something to the red text, saying that he should have taken WHG's hand...

wow, did not expect to be at do or die already.

have saved - going for accept the proposition first!

wait what that is a LOT of red text i missed

are the xxxxxx's supposed to tell me something is a lie on the memory as has been hinted?

had to double check what that flash of red text said. literally a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment

i started noticing this without even the tip. this dude's dialogue blocks out "curse." thought i was going insane at first, but it also seems to block out many of his references to himself!

so far, so coy though!

oh, here we go, last door.

going to get some answers here!

well maria was very enjoyable as a villainess! shame she failed to kill jacopo.

this next segment has way more freedom than i'd anticipated this game having after like 10 hours!

the white-haired girl being explicitly a new character/reincarnation for part 3 makes me feel a little less disoriented about part 2/the beast.

the music in this section is a step up from the previous sections, where it was evocative but not very enjoyable. the track with our magnate is a banger and i really like the song that played during WHG's flashback

that said, haven't seen much from the flashback that indicated this actually was likable. citation still needed there.

okay, so the mansion appears to be continent-going in this next section?

okay that was a cool twist on the beast storyline. did feel pretty dragged out though.

i've since extended my hand and am being plunged healing into another flashback

"i am dedicated to bringing a title to northeast massachusetts"

does seem like the pauline parts aren't being told by the maid though? she indicates that the player character is "starting into the distance" after those segments

okay fuck these flashing lights on a big tv. hate that shit.

this beast storyline is creepy but not really gripping at all

pauline is interesting in that she feels like she comes from another genre entirely

he/him

gotten a lot more used to referring to cisgendered or unknown people (i.e. strangers online) as "they" though

did someone teach you the game, or did you try to learn it from a rulebook? i think wingspan isn't the hardest game to learn to play, but learning any game straight from the rulebook can be a 30+ minute affair even for just one person - 80% of the time, for me eurogames that take 60+ min to play, i would advise against trying to learn it without a rules teacher right before trying to play it

not much time for gaming lately!

anyone doing squardle? probably my favorite wordle variant atm (though i loved dordle when it came out)

oh and also, i fucking hate that it had to be at our expense, but i love steph curry and i'm glad he got by far his most meaningful ring

yeah, i think tatum is not physically right - i trashed him for how he acted at the end of game 3 vs miami, but it looks like he really did hurt his shoulder then. but even then, he still committed a lot of mental errors offensively. part of that is physical i think - injury and just an insane amount of fatigue. but i'm sure there's an element of frustration to it, and probably holes in his game. he is admittedly streaky, but usually is best late in the season - often starts seasons off without any touch and then goes crazy around 2/3 of the way in - and was following that pattern this year until essentially that miami series.

tatum loves holding the ball, sizing up an opponent, getting into his bag, then making the right move or countermove or pass or whatever. but against the warriors and miami, he needed way more decisiveness upon catching it - attack immediately, go up strong, fire it up right away, or dish it before surveying the defense. when he was able to make decisions quickly, no matter what it was, things were way better for the celtics. when he deliberated, sometimes we'd get something reasonable, but he very rarely managed to cook his defender and score in true isolation and pnr.

part of the blame probably falls on coaching as well as the bad habits that developed during the 2019 through 2021 seasons. as a rookie tatum wasn't allowed to handle the rock as much, and when he caught it he was basically expected to move it, drive it right away, or put up a three (and he shot insanely well that year). in 2019 the roles were more mixed with all the egos on contract year guys and kyrie. in 2020 though, kemba got hurt and tatum was forced to become the engine of the offense. he exploded in efficiency taking sidestep 3s, and then the pandemic happened and we ran out of gas against miami. since then, he has been able to go off against some softer defenses, but the hands and IQ of the heat and warriors really took it out of him.

still love the guy though. his defense didn't suffer whatsoever this series due to his shooting woes (other than when he didn't get back in transition because he was bitching at the refs). the guy needs a long, long break from basketball.

sad finish but it always is. what a postseason for the celtics.

god, help al on defense. he's guarding curry well but there's just no one at the rim protecting him

22 celtic turnovers

when a dude just grabs someone at half court to stop the game and prevent a fast break

yeah, i absolutely hate take fouls. celtics are always taking 1-2 in the first quarter.

anyway, the defense looks like it's finally breaking this game.

zach zarba has been the worst ref for the celtics this postseason. 1-4 with him reffing. they're always called awfully too.

changmas posted...

i think getting christian wood and giving up basically nothing is much better for your title odds than gutting your team for gobert. reportedly utah wants a young star-upside player, salary filler, and 2-3 first round picks.

compared to more or less just the 26th pick and salary filler for christian wood who is miles more talented than gobert on offense.

even though gobert is legitimately in another world than wood on defense, dallas has a good team defensive scheme that worked well for them this year and i don't forsee wood singlehandedly ruining that.

if dallas can snag a cheap big man with good defense in free agency or on the market to pair with wood they should be in great shape moving forward.

i think i'm with you here yeah. haven't watched wood but based on everything i've heard, this is great value in a trade

gobert is definitely not useless in the playoffs

okay then

the spirit bomb has never succeeded

yeah, i think long dramatic parties are kind of part and parcel with these VNs. with like AA or danganronpa i can be content to play them out and let the text scroll, since they're often saying more enjoyable/sharp writing. here the wordiness is such that i'm mostly just clicking quickly through

LeonhartFour posted...

Dragon Ball Z Episode 281 complete!

Wow, the rare instance where a time limit doesn't expand beyond one episode!

Also, I wonder if anyone's tallied how many times Buu gets blown up throughout this saga just to demonstrate how cheap of a gimmick instant regeneration is for a bad guy to have.

yeah, it got really tiresome for sure. cell only total-regens once and it leads to a climactic showdown. buu does it over and over z starting super-early on. yawn.

got to the end of the first door last night.

this game is giving me major higurashi vibes with the way it flashes blood and the insane cackles from nellie. i felt genuinely creeped when the switch vibrated n my hands.

while like so many other japanese-translated visual novels, the dramatic writing can result in super awkward sentence structure, the overall wistful, mournful tone of the narrator manages to come through in enough interludes to be incredibly effective, melancholy, and foreboding..

i definitely didn't see where that story was headed - mell's finally snapping was dismal; nellie's undoing extremely creepy; and the twist on WHG's identity satisfying and unsettling. we're supposed to be grossed out by the brother-sister obsession, making it more understandable.

why can't we stay young forever?

looks like we're skipping a hundred years forward for our next chapter...

doesn't look like we're breaking 90 tonight

no one's getting calls on drives - that part is actually pretty consistent, and something you can accept in a playoff game as long as it stays relatively consistent imo

yeah, bad timing on me making that post. jinxed it, tony brothers went off like immediately afterward

this game is the first where it's felt to me like the warriors might actually be the better team

curry's not going off, celtics seem to be playing to maximum effort, the refs aren't one-sided, and we're getting our asses beat

need to pull it together here

i legitimately feel entirely the reverse. it's incredibly rare that i'm compelled by the drama (largely because it seems to rely on a lot of coincidence and plot armor and "what needs to happen so that this character can get their Acting Ability moment?" plotting), but the stupid, absurd comedy (it's bill hader, of course it's got stupid comedy) cracks me up all the time

the beignet guy was actually a bit of a miss for me in terms of humor, but yeah everything about the bomb, the theater people, etc. all hit for me. i laugh literally any time noho hank says... basically anything. i think sally might be intended to be a character we sympathize with, but i don't at all and still enjoy a lot of her scenes because they're so absurd/awful, even though the moments have dramatic consequences for her.

(edit) i should probably amend that - i actually thought the drama was reasonably interesting in season 1. i was holding my breath when barry decided to kill his friend, which was dramatically really satisfying. but that point was also where i realized barry was irredeemable, after which i found it difficult to get invested in any of the characters for drama anymore.

(edit 2) not entirely true about the drama - a lot of those storylines miss, but i was invested in sally leaving barry, even though i didn't like her. that was great.

i remember dropping it for a while after watching S2E1. my fiancee and i just weren't that into the show. i think having long layoffs and being rather bleak/unlikable narrows your audience

i'm listening to the hader podcasts (honestly, one of the reasons i decided to catch up with the show) - and apparently hader's going to direct every episode of season 4. guy really is invested in directing.