Lurker > SeabassDebeste

XIII_rocks posted...

You don't think what he would actually do with the m60 was planned when they shot the m60 scene?

it's confirmed by interviews that it wasn't.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

cave of two lovers is a top 15 episode for me

it's one of the funniest in the show's run, tell, a sweet tale, and really gets the show kicking properly
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

ozymandias is incredible.

felina is good. i guess i never really wanted walt to redeem himself since he got more and more evil as the show went on, but it was nice to see him getting revenge for the viewers' sake, at least. it did feel like fanservice a bit, being a coda.

granite state is the shitty part that was needed solely to grease those wheels. it played way too hard into grimness and made the uncharismatic nazis way too competent. the writers wrote themselves into a corner with that m60 flashforward.

that said, the final 3 min of granite state are about as good as the show has ever been.

overall a 3. if this were rabid dog-touhajilee-ozymandias it'd be a 4.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

GANON1025 posted...

I really like that now that Gon has punched Hisoka and returned the tag, he and Killua just kinda leave. They don't care about the arena, we don't even SEE a floor master. That's awesome!

That fight was cool too!!

the way hxh abruptly ends arcs is really interesting, and definitely one of its defining characteristics!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

yesss
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

stannis is a popular character and is not going to do that particularly soon. the book-readers acting like it's a blasphemous idea that it would happen are deluded.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i'll probably never really be over it. i think the final good episode of the show's run was the dragon battle in 7x04.

what sucks even more is that the storyline was obviously hitting some of the right checkmarks, but doing so in abominable ways that showed just how little the showrunners understood and cared about getting it right.

it also just really felt like it suffered from a lack of creativity and/or intelligence. i feel like the showrunners were given an enormous amount of agency to go from point A to point B and parlayed it into simplistic, dull, stupid, and controversial choices.

jaime choosing cersei in the end is almost certainly going to happen in the books. so is dany roasting king's landing and even stannis burning shireen. but the execution of it, the buildup, is so lazy and poor.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

yeah, even for a small purchase, i use credit card. the risk of a debit card is just greater, and it doesn't have a reward.

Leonhart4 posted...

It was mostly just our families in attendance. We had the wedding at a camp just outside of Louisville where she worked as a secretary. We were planning to take a trip to Europe for our honeymoon, but that got postponed, obviously, so now we're going in October. For our mini moon, we rented an Airbnb in Indianapolis. We're also having a second ceremony in September so everyone who couldn't come this time can come to that one.

that's awesome, glad you could have it somewhere relatively safe too. my friends' weddings in the UK (where she's from) and thailand have been postponed until at least 2021.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i'm late, but congrats on the wedding! who was in attendance/where did you have it? and what's the plan for the mini honeymoon?
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

undertale
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

still no weights but i went to the pullup bar (which has been pulled open against the city's regulations) in the park yesterday for 25, 15, 17, 15, 15, 13, 10, 10, and 10. huuuuuge rest time between + some dips
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

mass effect
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

vysee
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

sonic
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

congratulations!! gonna peek at other topic!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

this shall continue
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

tag, i loved this show. there was a moment in it that wrecked me.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

first thought was magus

rip 2003 xstats
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

LeonhartFour posted...

So in other words, don't give the correct answers!

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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Snrkiko posted...

wow episode 9

i don't think i've ever felt that kind of tension from a tv show ever

that was a good scene...

now watch it again.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Black_Hydras posted...

I bought Spirit Island after reading your write-up and only got to play one round of it before lock down with close friends, but it was a lot of fun and we can't wait to play more. It'll be a lot of fun showing my less game savvy crew the game lol

oh awesome, glad i could be of help! SI is great and i really wish i had people dedicated enough to play with where i could play some of the less beginner-y levels and spirits!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

And finally, there's the challenges phase. As I've already alluded to, the fact that one player's challenges immediately follow another's is unique to AGOT. But what's even more interesting is that you can initiate three different types of challenges each round: military, intrigue, and power. Each character has icons that indicate which type of challenge it can participate in. A challenge is defined by the rewards for winning it, the claim. In a military challenge, the closest analog to a game like Magic, winning a military challenge means the opponent has to lose a character. The cool thing about this is that the loser gets to choose which character(s) to kill when a challenge is resolved, and whether you win a challenge by 10 points or in a tie (since attackers win ties), the claim is the same, because there are no life points to lose. An intrigue challenge lets the winner discard a card from the loser's hand at random, preventing this from being a safe area - it does not affect the board state. And finally, the power challenge lets you steal power from your opponents. Since power is the win condition, this is obviously an important challenge - but since it affects neither the board state nor the opponent's hand, it can be weaker early on. The reward for winning a challenge unopposed is gaining a power, so there's plenty of incentive to try to wreck your opponent's board state.

AGOT, at least early on, also did a great job making the decisions in the challenge phase the most important part of the game. For one thing, most event cards, unlike Spells or Sorceries in other games, usually do not do anything super-impressive alone. You can't just play an Event card and suddenly have a huge dude on the board, or suddenly kill your opponents' dudes. Events interact with the game generally in the challenge phase; you can stop a character's defense or attack with an event, or you can get targeted kill on an opponent's character if you win a challenge. There are also lots of other ways the game rewards winning challenges through characters' innate abilities; a character who has the common Renown keyword gains power on itself when it wins a challenge. And losing a character matters; you can have multiple copies of Tywin Lannister, but if he dies in a challenge, you can no longer play those extra copies of him - he's dead!

If there's a downside to AGOT, it's that not every game is guaranteed to be fun. It's very possible to experience NPE (negative player experience) in the game; losing a key dude can often mean you're on your way to defeat, but defeat can be slow and agonizing - a rush deck will win quickly while seemingly not damaging you too much; an aggro deck will obliterate your board but still win relatively quickly; but a control deck can take ten plots to sink in an inexorable kill. There's tremendous variance in how a game plays out, and many decks de-emphasize the challenge phase, which to me can feel disappointing. (One example is the Shadows mechanic, introduce almost three years into the game's run; many cards can enter play outside of the marshaling phase, and when they do, they can do something ridiculous.) Power creep can also devalue interesting strategies in favor of degenerate combos.

That said, with the right matched decks, AGOT is strategic, dramatic, tactical, thematic and beautiful. Highly recommended.

Future - Between COVID-19 shutting down in-person tournaments, the difficulty of buying and organizing cards, and the game no longer being supported by Fantasy Flight Games, it's hard for me to recommend making AGOT your lifestyle game at this point. However, it's well supported on theironthrone.net and by the playerbase on Facebook, and if you just want to play casually, you can still buy starter decks or used sets pretty easily. One of these days I'll get around to doing that more. 'Til then, I actually played in a tournament online at the start of the quarantine and had a decent time doing it. It's not the same as in person, but it did give me access to all the cards, and I didn't have to leave home to do it. As I get more and more reps in other games, I imagine AGOT LCG will drop more and more, but it had an almost unmatched run for me.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

5. A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2nd Edition) (2015)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Collectible card game, tableau-builder, player combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 30-60 minutes
Experience: 100+ plays with 2 players, 2-4 plays with 3-4 players, incl online (2015-2020)
Previous ranks: 3/100 (2016), 3/80 (2018)

Description - AGOT:TCG is a LCG (Living Card Game) that finished its run early in 2020. Like Magic the Gathering, it was expandable and put the impetus on you to build your own deck out of a large set of cards, and you played your deck against others. In the game, you control one of eight factions in the ASOIAF universe. Each round is split into subphases, the most important of which consist of a simultaneous plot card reveal, drawing cards, using cards to build a tableau of characters and locations, and using your characters to attack your opponents or to defend from your opponent's attacks. The goal of the game is to win 15 Power, which can be accumulated by a wealth of card effects, or by winning challenges.

Experience - After my initial foray into the world of ASOIAF with AGOT:TBG, I decided to get into the LCG, since it appeared to allow you to play a smaller number of players. The game came out in the fall of 2015, which was perfect timing, and I got in by November or so. Problem was, you needed more than just a single copy of the base core set to field any fun decks; the pre-built suggestions were inconsistent and unfun. I delved into what it would take to make the game fun and discovered that it had a dedicated fanbase from the first iteration of the game, mostly on CardgameDB, Reddit, and Facebook.

Through these resources (and about a dozen different game-devoted podcasts), I discovered that in fact, you needed three copies, and expansions were beginning to come out already. In order to make any interesting decisions, you really had to give your deck meaning. But then, as I fell into the rabbit hole, I started identifying more with the AGOT community instead of my board gaming friends. I wanted to participate in their tournaments, and soon the nicely assembled beginner-friendly decks gave way to a single constructed deck that I fruitlessly attempted to parlay into tournament victories. The community in my city isn't as robust as you might hope for as big of a city it is, but Thrones became a weekly appointment, and many weekend days - including multiple Gen Cons - were devoted to traveling around the city or even out of state to other tournaments. I've got several memorable losses, some memorable wins, and enough plays to forget about many of them as well.

I've fallen out of the community in the last two years or so, but the community really made it - I'm still able to follow along on Facebook threads at the game-memes, and when it does come time for a tournament, if I'm willing to travel, I'm almost always able to find someone friendly enough not just to provide me a deck, but to recommend and construct a good one for me to play there. And I still have fun playing it.

Design - If you've ever played Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!, you know what you're getting into here. You build up a set of dudes and play some cards to empower them, then start sending those dudes after your opponent's dudes, and get some help from special effects. AGOT has these qualities, of course, but it deepens it with several different layers.

There are three primary differences between AGOT and the other games I've mentioned. The first is the round structure. In many card games, the gameplay is relatively uninterrupted. I draw my card, then I play my dudes, then I attack your dudes (and you perhaps get the opportunity to react), then maybe I play a few more cards, and then I pass. Then you do the exact same set of steps. AGOT takes more of a round structure, where we both draw our cards at the same time. Then you play your dudes, then I play my dudes. Then you make your attacks, then I make my attacks. This tactical element means that the ability to bust out combos that depend on playing and then immediately using cards/guys is significantly weakened - theoretically, your opponent will always have the ability to react and adapt (unless of course they have no answers). AGOT co-opts Magic's "tapping" system as "kneeling"; i.e. turning a card sideways to indicate usage. Due to the system of the challenge phase, deciding which characters to leave standing for defense and which to commit to attacking provides great tradeoffs.

The next is the plot deck. AGOT has a simultaneous action selection plot phase, during which each player selects a card from a separate deck, known as a plot deck, and simultaneously reveals it. This is the beginning to each round, and a plot card can have not only a powerful immediate effect (such as killing all characters, or letting you draw cards, or letting you kneel characters, and more), but it also has ongoing conditions that determine how the round goes. Some some state that certain challenge types cannot be made; some give extra strength to characters; some reduce the gold cost of cards you play. The plot cards also give you the stats that help you determine who is first player, how much money to collect during the plot phase, and how potent your successful challenges will be. The simultaneous nature of the plot phase feels utterly unique to Thrones; among high-level players with evenly matched decks, the plot phase can win or lose games.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

thanks! more to come!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

great game!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

this is all interesting, but in the end i think that "each round is the same" is just a lot more intuitive. having your score go down because others picked the same as you isn't fun.

i think it'd be a fun variant for the guru contest since it encourages you to take risks, but since guru brackets are open, it puts you at a disadvantage to submit early, which i also don't like! i'm in favor of more frequent/aggressive second chance brackets, though, because that was interesting.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

sorry, that really sucks
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

tell it again.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

The train game is a little bizarre, but I do get it done and of course have to kill a zombie thingy. Realizing that the real president wants to make a national TV broadcast (the first in seventeen years?!) we are then tasked with hijacking that broadcast. During this time we observe the silly huddle of Watts/Zone/Rinoa as they present the SeeD contract, which states that we're on the hook til Timber is independent. Well yeesh. Rinoa finally joins the party and replaces Zell in junctioning.

We wander around town for quite a while. Though the locals love Rinoa, the guards are out for us (and we kill a bunch in random encounters and a few in non-random encounters). We can't sleep at the inn, annoyingly, and I'm utterly confused until I realize there's another branch. There, we find Tim Mani, a comic book store, of which Squall has read several issues of their most popular mag. The editor there bores the bajesus out of Squall every time we try to talk to him. Not very nice - I was interested! Maybe I'm too old to be playing this game.

Anyway, we spend a bunch of time walking around a lady's house and looking out the back window, then through to empty train steps, getting stuck because it's unclear where you're supposed to get up and leave... and finally finding an off-ramp somewhere that takes me to a pub. I hand a card to a drunkard and off we go to the back route. Realizing that the president will likely have a guard around him, Squall presses Rinoa to make a decision... and this results in some conflict. Rinoa is distressed that we're not taking the Owls seriously, and she runs off.

As the broadcast comes on, the president informs us that he wants no peace... but that there is still unrest. So effectively, he tells us nothing with that. He also says he wants to bring into power a sorceress, who is quite obviously going to be key to the plot. At that moment, SURPRISE SEIFER AND QUISTIS. Honestly, to me it's extremely unclear what their motivation is, and what Rinoa's relationship to Seifer is, at this point. Like, what. We (Squall, Selphie, Zell) charge up and Zell spills the beans about our being SeeD, and the president laughs, pointing out that if he's harmed then Garden will be no more.

More confusion happens when the sorceress appears in the flesh and speaks somewhat seductively to Seifer and abducts him. Rinoa rejoins, and we hide out in the mom with the background alley (she once defeated many Gibaldian soldiers with strength, cooking, and seduction.) We're then bound for the East Station and the Gibaldian Garden.

I take the train and accidentally don't stop at East Station out of curiosity... which lands me at the end of the track. Fortunately, it's simple to follow the track back to East Station and the forest. During this time, I encounter a pterodactyl enemy from which I can Draw the Float ability, and that's a pause for now.

What a weird section. It felt like there were a lot of zones, but they were kind of empty and it was unclear what they added. I feel bad when I don't explore, but this time, the exploration just felt pointless. I assembled a party and got to use Rinoa for the first time, but there were no bosses to speak of, and Rinoa split during the big plot event, which the main party didn't even participate in. This isn't that atypical of early-game FF; diasporas and plans blowing up in the heroes' faces is pretty standard fare... but this feels particularly egregious because so much stuff happens and I barely did anything except walk around? I also feel like it's confusing and I'm only getting half the story for now, and it's weird that Rinoa had this storm-off and is now back and no one has really addressed anything yet.

Well, I expect things will get more interesting at the Gibaldian Garden,

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* One small characteristic I always enjoy is watching enemy soldiers when they're on their own. Star Wars doesn't have this, but (e.g.) Avatar The Last Airbender does. FFVIII enters that space, with soldiers who complain about how they're getting docked so much pay they can't even get engaged. Sigh.

* The characters' bouncing fighting animations, especially Selphie and Rinoa's, are just so goofy. Charming. But goofy.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

s5 is by far the best season!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i got caught twice. squall gives you the option to retry with a longer clock, i think.

the red/blue distinction was insignificant
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

oh, i saved before fighting fake boss

fake president beated again, it seemed to take longer this time because i wasted time drawing and therefore needed to keep drawing because i gave him chances to hit me with status effects instead of using GFs to raze him immediately

wasn't able to pull that many off him unfortunately
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Rolycoly posted...

Are you talking about internet-wide GotY polls? Witcher 3 barely beat Fallout 4 in GameFAQs' GotY.

i'm almost certain it was gamefaqs's GOTY poll. i just double-checked and TW3 put up 55%, and i was shocked because 1. i thought fallout was on the same tier as TES and 2. i'd never heard of witcher before
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

pjbasis posted...

Why not? Didnt it get within like 2% of the match it lost?

i mean "because it was right" isn't really a good answer! people believe in things that are wrong a lot too. will admit i didn't look at 2019 GOTY results though.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

hmm, got it. the only high-leverage upset i got was witcher 3 > skyrim. i remember basically never having heard of witcher 3 and then watching it dominate in the GOTY polls and wondering what the hell i'd missed.

also god of war/resident evil 2 being named the way they are is super-confusing for me, that's a 1998 and 2005 game as far as i'm concerned!
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

so i didn't pay attention to any contest discussion, really. i'm looking at my guru bracket, and i took 14 risks (red) and only 3 of them paid off. (my stupidest call was easily taking red dead redemption over SSBU...) some of my questions:

1. why did people believe in resident evil 2 at all?

2. why was skyrim so highly estimated?

3. why the overestimation of fire emblem compared to xenoblade et al?

4. why was god of war so highly estimated? it wound up living up to that, but i'm unsure why it was favored over dark souls 3

what were some of the bigger surprises among stats people? and do you have intuitive explanations for some of these?
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

netflix release day!

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/5/15/21259676/avatar-last-airbender-netflix

grinding through S3 of korra atm. its villain is fantastic, but in terms of grand concepts, it's probably one of the least complex arcs of any season, due to there being no overarching societal movement. it's probably the only season where the villains are the underdogs.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

wuigee posted...

I tried playing MM a few times. I never continued playing past the part where you are a deku character. I always found it so boring.

Do people who love MM like this part too? Are the other characters that you play as more fun?

that part only lasts about 2 hours, but it's tough because you essentially need to play it continuously

but yeah, it gets insanely better after that
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

I'm a bit surprised to see MM getting hammered! Which of these would have your vote?
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

goodbye kobe
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

yeah, that's fair! i'm guessing it's painfully zero-sum. screwing someone in a multiplayer KF game is rare but satisfying (a friend once waited until a round was almost over to outbid my lone green meeple with two), whereas i feel like it'd be every other move in 2p.

cyko posted...

Another excellent choice! Keyflower is another one of my all time favorites. It's an incredibly interactive euro-style game and it scales really well at different player counts - even all the way up to six players.

agreed!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

44 (zelda vs dq), 45 (me2 vs re), 45 (ssbu vssmo)

but i also have two 0s from picking persona 4 over xb and dark souls over skyrim
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i think keyflower's blend of mechanics surpasses most "good euros." that said, i want to play it a lot more to test that belief...!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

puppetmaster too low! the traumas of the bloodbender are great. love that one-off villain.

team avatar trashing the dai li is one of my least favorite parts of s2 though.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i think a fair comparison might be a CYOA book, which i wouldn't call a game. or maybe like that black mirror episode (which to be fair i haven't watched myself) - is that a video game?

(edit) looks like someone mentioned BM, but in a different topic!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

6. Keyflower (2012)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Bidding, worker placement, tableau-building, tile-laying
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 25-30 minutes per player
Experience: 6-8 plays with 3, 5, 6 players (2016-2018)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), 6/80 (2018)

Description - Over the course of four seasons, each player builds a village of hexes. During each season, a set of hexes become available for players to bid on. On a player's turn, they either bid using their personal supply of colored meeples, or place meeples on a hex (in the market, in their village, or in someone else's village) to activate that hex's ability. While any meeple can be used to bid on/activate a hex, all subsequent bids or activations on that hex must be of the same color as the first. Most hexes have abilities that generate or convert resources, while some give victory points and others are used to upgrade your tiles to make them more powerful and be worth more points.

Design - Keyflower unites many of my favorite game design elements to become the second-highest-ranking eurogame on my list. Bidding and auctions are inherently fun. Building your own little village tableau is inherently fun. And worker placement in general is inherently fun. Keyflower has all of these, and each of these little steps is executed to near-perfection.

Unlike many other auctions, Keyflower dumps the entire market at you at once, and all of it is fair game. Allocating workers to one bid means that you pass up a turn in which you could be setting the color on another tile. You're able to divest out of a losing bid, but sensibly not out of a winning bid; however, getting into losing bids is dangerous because those meeples you place there must move somewhere else together, and they have to go somewhere that their color is allowed. The green meeples are a brilliant addition as well; you start the game with a random collection of red, yellow, and blue meeples, which you can replenish essentially once per round. However, certain hexes allow you to get green meeples - and if you corner the green meeple market, you can dominate bids with considerably fewer resources - as long as no one else gets the green as well. The color system is really what drives this aspect.

The tableau-building is also above average. Hexes are more fun than squares, and these have routes that you'll need to follow. Each tile in your tableau can be upgraded (flipped); most are not worth points otherwise. This is where Keyflower's entire resource and transportation minigame comes into play; like most eurogames, Keyflower has a standard array of resources you collect and spend throughout the game: wood, stone, metal, gold, and special tool tokens. What makes Keyflower unique is how you spend them. Instead of paying out of pocket, all of the wooden pieces of the board actually need to be on the location they're upgrading in order to perform the upgrade. Resources generated by local tiles appear on those hexes, while resources generated by your meeples on others' tiles go to your home tile. The same hex which grants the action to upgrade your hexes also allows you to push these resources between your hexes, so that they're available on the upgraded hex. It's a fantastic little mini-system that is the most abstracted from the core game of bidding and worker placement, but it makes the tableau-building that much more rewarding.

Then there's the worker placement. As with bidding, the color system makes the worker placement - a tile can be activated up to three times, if you use an increasing number of meeples (assuming you don't intentionally block it the first use by placing three meeples on it to start with). But, each activation requires you to use the same colored meeples that were used the first time. This can lead to competition from the green meeples once again, and monopolization of a tile if you have the best of its color. But the other coolest part of the worker placement is that you can place on any hex, not just ones in your village. You play a quarter of the game (Spring) with just a single hex in your village, and you only get additional hexes once the season is over. But you can still activate tiles - you just activate them directly in the marketplace. And later, you can get people's meeples into your own village when they place there... but it can feel rough when someone locks down your badass move/upgrade tile with a green meeple.

Even with each individual component popping, the blend of them actually elevates Keyflower beyond the sum of its parts. There is no divide between auction phase and activation phases; instead, on your turn, you either bid or activate. That gives each decision or action a massive opportunity cost. Keyflower constantly forces you to assign value to your actions. Auction and worker placement games have minimal confrontation, but because of the confluence of mechanics and the sheer number of potential contested battlegrounds, the board state will constantly be affected by others' decisions in a chaotic way. In the end, you can't math out everything, only determine which primary tradeoff you want to make, and hope that your opponents don't block you so you have no other options.

I haven't played Keyflower with 2 players or with 4 players, but for my money, it scales great between 3 and the 6-player full complement. The arc of the game remains the same: try to fetch the engine and powers in the first two seasons; finalize your engine and start planning victory points in autumn; and finally just focus on upgrading and gaining those potentially massive victory point tiles in winter. It leaves you wanting more but also gives a feeling of satisfaction.

Keyflower isn't the prettiest game. The tile art on the cardboard hexes is mostly functional, the meeples are standard grade, and the quality of the resources are pretty typical. The theme is laughably thin; I don't know the names of the majority of the tiles in the game, and the three basic resources of wood, stone, and iron are literally entirely symmetric. It's a game that succeeds based solely on the strength of its brilliant mechanics - and I have no qualms calling those mechanics brilliant.

Experience - I advised a friend buy Keyflower in 2016 without having played it. It was one of the earlier games I made it my responsibility to learn without being taught, and then teach myself. The sense of ownership (even though I didn't own the game itself) may have added to my enjoyment of it, and it definitely made me feel closer to the hobby overall. I've also generally done well at the game, which could definitely affect my opinion of it, in fairness, but I think as long as the game were played quickly, even a poor performance wouldn't cause me to think less of its excellence (contrast AGOT:TBG, where getting blown off the board as the Lannisters felt pretty bad).

Future - I'd really love to own Keyflower. The biggest fear is that it's a bit confrontational at two players (and you see fewer tiles, which makes planning more difficult). But as one of my favorite all-time euros (my favorite as of 2018), it is something I'd like in my collection at the very least.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

stuff like fate/stay night is closer to anime/manga than video games

phoenix wright slightly leans more toward game
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

cyko posted...

- the incredibly steep learning curve makes the barrier of entry very high for new players. I've had multiple people who tried the game and hated it because they felt like they didn't have a chance and had to suffer through a six hour game they knew was impossible to win.

i'd definitely make it a goal to take it easy on newcomers, especially with military

Naye745 posted...

i've heard the app (much like vlaada's other superstar, galaxy trucker) is fantastic

i still haven't played a full game of this though! it's longer than what i usually go for so i've never managed to actually make this happen with my friend who owns it

it takes 45-90 minutes to play alone on the app, so if you're ever interested...!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

oh... i thought i'd drawn from it already and only found cure, but i guess that was the preceding boss
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness