Lurker > SeabassDebeste

...

what the fuck is this sneaking section

i have no idea what to do here other than avoid being caught, but i can't find where i'm supposed to head

i'm going to sleep
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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

> Eat shit and die.
> Fuck you.
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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 fuck.

there's only one thing we can do.

max's dreams :(
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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

we can't NOT use that giant selfie as a flashback point!!!
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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

tell me chloe's not going to wind up dying to nathan's gunshot on monday again
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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 did it... I fixed everything.

... oh fuck. That's not good.
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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

63. King of Tokyo
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-tokyo

Genre/mechanics: Dice-rolling, player elimination, press-your-luck, player combat
Rules complexity: 2/10
Game length: 20-40 minutes
Player count: 2-6 players
Experience: 4-5 games with 4-6 players
First played: 2015

King of Tokyo is a dice-chucker where you control a classic monster (Godzilla, King Kong, the like) and try to be either the last man standing or the first to max out on victory points. Usually an attack die affects the players either in Tokyo (if the player is outside of Tokyo) or outside of Tokyo (if the player is in Tokyo).

Design - I love dice-rolling normally from a tactile standpoint, but I'm kind of surprised by how uncomfortable it is rolling massively oversized dice in this game. The giant player monster models are great. Otherwise, it's simple - it's hard to complain about the standard roll/re-roll mechanic, or about the cards, though perhaps a better drafting mechanism, where you pay more for the more recently revealed cards, would be a little fairer.

Enjoyment - The biggest problem I have is that what's most fun and thematic - being extremely violent - is often not the best solution (versus stocking up on cards and/or victory points) in terms of effectiveness, as the game is not zero-sum. Staying in Tokyo in a 5-6 player game is just not at all a viable strategy. And it can result in early player elimination if you try that route, while the more peaceful players can last another 20 minutes before game end.

Next play - No strong desire to play this again, but with the right crowd, it's a nice arena for some friendly trash talk.

Bonus question - How do you feel about dice-chucking games?

Hint for #62 - This French-themed game has one of my favorite board game puns on its cover
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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

bunch of boring euro solitaire players up ITT
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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

Season 2, Episode 13

Recap: It's a semi-bottle episode for Veronica, who's trapped at her school carnival because someone has stolen the money. Turns out, Weevil did. Meanwhile, Keith takes on Tess Thompson's dad's case, Wallace parades a white girl, and Tess Thompson gets into a bikini.

This episode unfortunately is kind of a microcosm for why I'm not super-into doing these writeups for this show. Logan is flirting with a girl and it's cute, but oh, he's using her - should know better than to expect something pleasant with no strings attached. Thumper gets busted, but it's Weevil who had the idea, and he entirely avoids justice since otherwsie, who's gonna be the cutting look at the gritty side of Neptune High? Terrence Cook is lying to Keith, but he eventually takes the case. There's just not a lot to be said about it. Introducing jerks - in this case some dude who's right behind Veronica for the Kane scholarship - and turning existing characters into racists (the uptight single-lady teacher) just for easy targets? Not my thing.

Mac and Beaver are pretty adorable together, so points for that. Also, Dick is a colossal douchebag and he's fantastic to watch. They're inconsequential figures, but really enjoyable on screen.

Not quite sure where the season is heading.
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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

64. Zombicide
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176189/zombicide-black-plague

Genre/mechanics: Cooperative, miniatures, dungeon-crawling
Rules complexity: 6/10
Game length: 60-180 minutes (depending on scenario)
Player count: 2-6
Experience: 1 tutorial game each of Black Plague and Season 2 (4-6 players)
First played: 2015

Zombicide features you and your party as zombie-hunters, or whatever. You're on a map getting infested with zombies and you need to accomplish some objectives - which usually involves killing some number of zombies, and/or escaping the zombie-zone. You mainly kill zombies by searching for and equipping weapon cards and then rolling dice to take them out.

Design: Zombicide doesn't try to disguise what it is - a low-thought, high-violence smashfest. It's not particularly impressive from a design standpoint. There are actually some pretty neat mechanics guiding how the zombies move and how you can distract them - but then there are janky/time-consuming/boring mechanics where you search for equipment by drawing cards.

Enjoyment: I've only played this game twice, and different versions of it, but I think I get the picture. What I'd really like to do is experience a more involved scenario, which might be different. In any case, the miniature zombies are fantastic and it's really satisfying to knock them down. I'd lean toward Black Plague - in which you control paladins and sorcerers in a LOTR-style setting - being the better of the implementations that I tried. It probably has to do with the people I play with not being very thematically engrossed in general, but I don't think the game quite evoked any sort of "epic" struggle.

Future: I'd like to play a more interesting scenario and see if a greater game length will lead to a better in-game story-arc. Either way, it should solidify my opinion more.

Bonus question - What is your favorite (or least favorite) game with loads of miniatures?

Hint for #63 - Seems like a bad idea to stay in the war zone.
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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

ironically, i played TM yesterday with the same group of five people as well... and it took about as long as hardback

the gap in complexity between those two games is colossal, which makes it all the more mind-numbing that they could take a similar amount of time!

the difference, of course, is the way the endgame conditions scale. there is a finite number of improvements you can make to the board in TM, and it doesn't matter whether 2 people or 5 people are competing over those improvements
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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

it only takes one person (me) to pursue points! i always try to end the game as quickly as possible!

but yeah. uhh, not the best game with 5.

Simoun posted...

How does it compare to paperback?

there are things i like better and things that i thought i'd like better but might have been worse

the different genres of letters you can buy are a neat twist that lead to satisfying combo-ing and can add replay value (as the game encourages you to specialize)

the market is a dud. i recall paperback being dominion-esque with its markets. the genres only work if the market is moving, but this market isn't as nice

i thought i'd like the VP scoring track as it seemed to imply a more obvious "rush" strategy, but it wound up feeling kind of arbitrary as an endpoint. there's something much more climactic about forming a ten-letter word, as it's something you've built up to the entire game

unqualified success: the ink/white-out tokens (which let you draw extra letters, but with the restriction that you *must* use those letters in your word) and allowing you to use *any* card as a wild, provided that you play it face-down and don't get the benefit.

neither game will be on this list, but if i were to do it again, i might include the two together, given their similarities

Peridiam posted...

Have you played that Seabass? SMuffin, how do you like the game?

haven't even played regular 7W:D, so no comment on the expansion. glad it's working out for you 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

tomorrow!
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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

just finished a 2+ hour long game of hardback oh god
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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

right. that's always rubbed me wrong about 2-2. though the series definitely takes its cues from 2-2 after that.
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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

he's shaken by franziska's photo though

the channeling mythology doesn't seem fleshed out in aa1 yet. it doesn't occur to anyone that it's real until aa2 despite the evidence being so obvious

i also didn't realize til replay how much of a jerk phoenix is to maya in 1-4 about not being able to summon mia
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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

edgeworth's refusal to believe in channeling is pretty inexplicable. maybe he has face blindness.
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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

for my other big question - is it possible to save chloe from dying at the end of episode 4?
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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

And then things truly go True Detective. It's almost surreal to be handed this much plot that's solely plot, as opposed to a backdrop to Max and Chloe's extremely troubled relationship. It feels... impure, in a way, having the underlying menace become an explicit serial killer story. Like, what is there to say about something this gross and evil? We leave the evidence lying everywhere and head to the graveyard and boom. Yeah. There you go. Logical Chloe is lost forever - she ain't never letting go of that gun now. Even when we go to the party, she has no interest in the two fucking moons anymore - it's "Great. The end of the world. I don't give a shit."

The party is actually beautifully drawn. Despite muddled visuals, it's this big ol' mess. Everyone's there, and it's nice getting to see them in a slightly different environment. My favorite might be "Settle For Me" Brooke using Daniel for Miyazaki museum points, but then there's Taylor loving life, and Courtney letting us in as Alpha Bitch (I wonder how we're supposed to get by if we never talk to Courtney). Hayden's wasted, Dana's loving the new bf, Taylor's a sweetheart, and we actually take a second to choose the YOU SUCK option for Victoria before warning her (successfully) about Nathan.

Mr. Jefferson accosts us just as we leave, which seems absurdly significant. Chloe pays no mind and is literally threatening Nathan out loud as she heads into the junkyard - literally stomping on the moon as she goes.

And then it's over for her.

Is there any way I could have saved Chloe? Could I have cleaned up more evidence? Could I have been nicer (meaner) to Jefferson/Nathan? They have to be involved, since Nathan is normally the drugger. What about the apocalypse about to hit Arcadia Bay? Is there any good outcome for Chloe?

I have to hope that Episode 5 lets us do a serious rewind.

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* The visual darkness of this segment is kind of annoying to deal with - very hard to make out what's going on in the barn and the party. As in, I fell off the platform because I couldn't see where it was.

* The Prescotts: assholes since 1903!

*

eggs - 0.14
bacon - 0.70
sugar - 0.50
coffee - 1.00
cocaine - 2.00
tobacco - 0.75
milk - 0.60

* Chloe: "He is so fucking in love with you." / Max: *facepalm* "I know..." Max's diary describes Warren explicitly as a white knight, but it also makes a joke about having Warren GO APE (the movie he's wanted to see).

* Chloe is a bulldog in the records. This makes me happy.

* Some of these dialogue trees have some funny segues. After picking the "you suck" option with Victoria - utterly tearing her apart with her work and her attempts at cozying up to the teacher - she ends with "we don't have to be friends." We then pick the nice option, and Max acts all friendly to Victoria.

* "Give it up for Brother Warren!"

* Warren: "I got a B MINUS on my chem test!!! How did this happen?" / Max: "I don't know. Who is this?" MAX SO GOOD. Meanwhile Warren can totally see Max X Chloe happening...

* Gotta love "fuck your selfie" graffiti at the party!

* "_______ metrosexuals who don't appreciate you or your service for this country" - ugh. Also, I'm not even allowed to use that word. "Lib-" whatever.

* The party girl being already passed out, with no one caring for her, made me really angry.

* The records are purged, but can someone vouch for me that I totally called Mr. Jefferson as a bad, bad guy? I think I called it officially in Episode 2, and it says here that that's the reason I avoided blaming him at the end of Episode 2.
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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

Sloppy, heavily parenthetical/bulletpointed recap. Will need more time to process, but wanted to get this out so I can maybe start Episode 5 later tonight.

We're back to reality, and is it wrong for me to be slightly disappointed? The William-lives timeline is so powerfully drawn. We cheer as David leaves the cast and grab the records he left behind. Creepy, but useful.

According to our messages, Chloe apologized for freaking out about Rachel and Frank ("hey man / i suck again / sorry i got in your face today and took out my bullshit rage on my best friend ...that is your one get out of emoji jail free card"). Then when we visit Kate at the hospital (I love the way Max's eyes light up when she hugs Kate), Chloe also apologizes for flipping out about when we took that phone call. In short, the volatile, clingy Chloe is starting to stabilize toward Max... and instead begins directing her anger at the Prescotts. It's easy to say in hindsight, but I did feel it at the time - there is a sense that Chloe and Max's relationship is done developing, and it's time to get into plot mode.

It's terrifying, but we absolutely let Warren beat the shit out of Nathan Prescott. Bastard's got a real creepfest of a room. It also sets a disturbing precedent in which we 1. ignore Warren's ability to help us out and 2. keep leaving incriminating evidence lying around. (Is it my fault I didn't rewind a bunch of sequences, to keep the files on the shelves later, or to fix Nathan's lock?)

This a complex subject here. I generally don't condone violence as a form of "redemption" for a character. Warren is Mr. Friendzone (and he's been called a beta by Nathan), but if this alone is enough for us to root for Warren to pound Nathan's face in, it's disgusting. But when you remember the photo of Nathan beating on Warren, and the fact that Nathan fucking shot Chloe and drugged so many different people... it's terrifying, but I'm all for it. It helps that Max herself is pretty cool with it after the fact - describing it as an "epic beatdown" at the EOTW party. It also helps that Warren seems to struggle with what he's done - he seems wasted at the EOTW party, possibly grappling with his "ultraviolence."

I'm really glad I managed to save Frank there (even though it's not super-believable that Chloe overpowered him - if we hadn't seen her helpless over and over, maybe.) He's obnoxious, but I found myself enjoying his character. The dialogue tree is pretty damn impressive, and it's shockingly touching at the end when Frank chokes out that he doesn't miss Rachel's hotness, but rather her voice... and her laugh. Damn.

The next step has us linking together clues in really satisfying, Ace Attorney Investigations sort of way. Frank's decoder shows us what times he's met up with Nathan; David's stalking and photos let us link Nathan's vehicle to GPS coordinates; Nathan's birthday (?!) lets us unlock his phone. From there, we further Logic our way into figuring out exactly where Nathan went on the night of the party where Kate got hammered last week - a creepy barn.

To the barn we go, and we have a third straight neat puzzle - using some gravity to leverage open an underground vault, and then breaking in with the code. How nuts is it that we have no record of Nathan's doodlings when we have to break in here? I actually remembered "523" being the only three-digit combination and immediately went to enter it, but it was actually "542." Thankfully Max's internal monologue tells us to check the faded buttons, so I tried 524 and finally 542.
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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

65. Machi Koro
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro

Genre/mechanics: Tableau-building, engine-building, resource management
Rules complexity: 4/10
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Player count: 2-4
Experience: 1 play alone, 1 play with Harbor expansion
First played: 2015

Machi Koro has you gaining resources via dice rolls, both on your turn and your opponents' turn. With those resources, you buy more lands that can give you further resources. And then you get victory points.

Experience - For me, Machi Koro scratched 90% of the appealing itch of Catan - it feels good when an opponent rolls a die, and you wind up getting resources as a result. The engine-building is fun - the longer the game goes, the more likely you are to benefit from a dice-roll.

Unlike Catan, the stealing mechanisms are way less punishing, there's no thief, and and there's no being boxed in. With no map, you don't need to accumulate resources to build roads. Instead, you can go straight into purchasing the properties that most interest you. This results in a far less cutthroat, rather pleasant experience.

Design - I'm not sure Machi Koro has anything notable here. I do like the art. I guess it's kind of fun to see why each property type behaves like it does, thematically. Overall, the game seems to be designed slightly shallowly, but with maximum opportunity for feel-good and minimum for feel-bad interaction.

The Harbor expansion, it should be noted, is a miserable slog that severely limits your buying options, in addition to introducing mechanics that can lead to longer downtime. It might make the game slightly more strategic, but at the expense of the free-flowing simplicity which is in fact Machi Koro's biggest strength. (When I ranked the games separately two years ago, Harbor expansion ranked very low, while MK had a middling rank as it does here.)

Future - It's a fast, fun game that requires little thought but has tactile payoff from rolling a die. Yeah, I'm in.

Bonus question - What is game that strips away from the game(s) that inspired it? Does the reduction in complexity work?

Hint for #64 - Probably the purest Ameritrash on the list yet, with a theme that just won't stop coming back from the dead
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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

CherryCokes posted...

LeBron should get more Executive of the Year Awards for that ASG team than Koby Altman should for the Cavs

if you got to be the better captain and pick first in a non-snake draft you'd win too
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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

WOW.

i didn't scroll all the way to the right, but it looks like you can get way further than i had so far by giving him money and trying to be compliant

thanks!
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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

dumb question but how many outcomes are there to the frank conversation

(i've had frank shot and had him stabbed in the knee (chloe overpowered him? really???))
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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

Menji posted...

Wasn't this game supposed to have defense?

it looked like they were playing defense for the first 3-4 possessions per team!
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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

Future: I never overplayed Catan, and I think that under the right circumstances - with people who will make quick decisions and are good sports - I'd definitely play again. I'd even be willing to play with slower players in a 3-player game, since the board is more open and you get to go more frequently. It's not exactly going to be the centerpiece of my game nights, though.

Bonus question - What games have you given a second chance to, that you were happy you did? What games had a steep learning curve for you?

Hint for #65 - Catan without the board
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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

Enjoyable Non-centerpieces, Part 1

66. Settlers of Catan
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/catan

Genre/mechanics: Area control, resource management, negotiation, engine-building
Rules complexity: 5/10
Game length: 45-90 minutes
Player count: 3-4
Experience: 10+ times with 2, 3, 4 players
First played: 2011

Settlers of Catan (now rebranded to just "Catan") is, as far as I'm able to tell, the jumping-off point for the mainstream "hobby" tabletop game, worldwide. In it, you race to 10 victory points on a board of adjoining hexagons, primarily by building settlements at intersections of the hexes. Each settlement pays you resources per specific dice roll, and they also cost resources to build. Players can trade resources with a bank or with one another.

Experience: My first time playing Catan was one of my worst board gaming experiences ever, despite playing with three friends. It took at least half an hour to explain and lay out, and trying to wrap my head around all the synergies - "you have to look at this chart to tell you what resources you need to build these things; you have to memorize what resources these land types correspond to." Even after grappling with the rules, I struggled hard in the game, feeling definitively out of the running quite early on while others spent most of the two hours negotiating and boxing me in and getting ahead and gloating, and still suffered from "Take that!" plays. It made me very cautious about the hobby.

It took years after that before I played Catan again, and I approached it again wary of getting burned. However, I had a far better grasp on the rules and could decipher the mappings intuitively without working at all. My brain was just better programmed to grok board gaming convention, and Catan's annoying exceptions - this is how a Knight works, these are the costs - took me only seconds to read and internalize. Games could still feel a little long, but playing a bit of two-player with no negotiation went faster. In general, the four-player game is probably most competitive, but three-player is pleasant and more spacious.

Design: Catan is probably the oldest (1994) eurogame I've played, but it's got even more staples in it than Ticket to Ride. To start with, its theme is of settling a land, and the resources you collect are classic euro fare: wood, brick, wheat, sheep, ore (with "wood for sheep" being a classic joke among gamers). Competitively, you can't blow up anyone's settlements, but you can build your roads to interfere with their ability to build out further. And you win using that mysterious factor, victory points. Catan is also the first engine-builder to appear on this list - you have to spend resources to build settlements and gain victory points, but those settlements will also produce resources, so you get a sense of acceleration as the game goes on.

But there are also some meaner elements, and I have to assume that contributes both to Catan's success as a "gateway" game and to some of the issues I have with it. The dice-roll mechanic is awesome when it's working, but so brutal when it's not. The fact that you can have literally zero options on your turn is especially painful. The discard-when-you-roll-a-7 rule is a nice anti-hoard mechanic, so I can get behind it - but the stealing a card and blocking off production is brutal. Making it worse: it can affect people who aren't the intended "target" as well, punishing someone who's already doing badly. Catan is not fun to be boxed-into, because you literally get to play less when losing. And that's before the explicit "take that!" Monopoly card.
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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

Day 4 opens differently from every other day so far - not with solitude but with a conversation. The dead birds and fish seem literally like small fry in comparison to the latest WTF that's hit Arcadia Bay - the beaching of the whales.

From a bigger picture perspective, we get to see what has and hasn't changed. Rachel Amber is still missing, despite that Chloe never became friends with her. The crazy apocalyptic weather events don't seem to have changed, either. Which means that when it comes to evaluating the impact of the timeline, we'll focus entirely on characters.

Max struggles with some of the obvious questions that are raised - Chloe can barely move her neck, but she's peaceful and her family is intact. Is it worth it? Or more accurately, does Max even have the right to have created this timeline?

Despite her outward serenity, the paralyzed Chloe is still as passionate and scarily overbearing as always - she's been isolated from her friends (notably a 'Megan' instead of Rachel), but she seems scared to be bitter now. She hits Max with a passive-aggressive comment early on about how writing is easier than visiting, but quickly retracts it. (Max lets her know that "you deserve the best parchment" which is adorable.) The dive into "Chloe and Max FOREVER" happens even faster this time. Girl's scary.

This segment is unfortunately limited - alas, I could see it coming - but it's fantastic. The game refuses to shy away from the brutal reality of Chloe's existence. It's not her dislike of "hella" that really catches me; it's the fact that she wants to leave the beach where she was once a pirate because "My nose is getting cold." Fuck. She's constantly fighting the pain. You can see on her computer she's still a punk rocker at heart, but she can only chat with people online now. Anonymously. (What ever happened to chat rooms?) She wishes she could have sex. You can see it in the tear-jerking landscape of her former room - the discarded crutches are among the saddest images.

The worst part isn't seeing Chloe like that, though. It's how much it's affecting her family. Family members have already lent as much money as they could; bills pile up everywhere. It's sticker-shock to see actual numbers printed - the $8,000 invoice here; the $12,000 overdue mortgage payment there. William is stated to be everyone's hero, but he's a nervous wreck trying to juggle these. Joyce, working for the Prescotts and smoking to deal with stress, openly states she doesn't give a shit about anything outside of this household. How can she?

But there's no resentment toward what they've given up on Chloe's behalf. One of my favorite microcosmic details that Max observes: the flashy HDTV sits in Chloe's room, while an ancient tube TV occupies the real estate in the living room.

When Chloe tells us to fetch the photo album and have a flashback (Chloe u so meta!), we try telling her no, and the bitterness finally boils to the surface. Once it becomes clear that the time reversal is happening all too soon, we finally do her in. And then it's time to burn the photo and get on with reality.

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* After reading Chloe's transcript and the comment from Blackwell... I'm so glad we stole that money!

* The family finally made their way to France. :(

* The changes about Max are all amazing. Different texts, different journal entries, different relationships... even different clothes. BTW, is there any better clue that Victoria's secretly OK than her concern over Max?

* "Joyce is a food coupon boss." Meanwhile, no money to go around for a change jar - it's back to a cookie jar.

* "A podcast? I am a pod in a cast."

* "I'm sorry Bongo Kitty, but you died before I changed this reality."
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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

stop convincing yourself not to watch good place and play more oot
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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

played a bit more! results to come
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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

TGP had me from the jump! I thought it got better but the nature of the show never changed.
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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 personally loved S1, haven't seen S2 yet. However:

Peridiam posted...

It reminds me of Kimmi Schmidt, another show I didnt enjoy. It feels like the writing has almost no subtlety.

I don't know if it's worth your time.

(edit) though in fairness, don't know that P&R was exactly "subtle" - no Ron Swanson here though, that's for sure
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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

alright, so duncan bailed with his dead girlfriend's lovechild, but for some reason he's still in the opening credits.

i'll start doing recaps again soon, but haven't felt up for it in a while.
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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

the first adult link temple may be the best in the game. very eagerly awaiting.
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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

Simoun posted...

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177478/iki

this looks really pretty!

Alanna82 posted...

There is a two player version of Ticket to Ride. I have the Nordic countries version and its only 2-3 players.

i have heard of this, yes. the giant maps i played on were probably better for 4+.

Naye745 posted...

ticket to ride is pretty intensely okay, i have fun with it sometimes but it annoys me how it's 98% passive card drawing until one person gets screwed by a route being built and gets to be salty for the rest of the game. it's fine, but as far as euros go, or even gateway euros, it's pretty low on the list

pretty fair assessment!
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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

horford is like a shane battier who can guard centers and create for himself and others

lma is probably the only all star who can't really dribble from the perimeter?
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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

wait can you repost stats i missed 1-1 too
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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

plunging thru the net in the deku tree one of my fav moments!

stupid fucking owl tho lmao ruining hyrule field
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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

RIP valerie hawthorne
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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 okay so you just meantnot posting everything

i'm cool with that
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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

should probably be using excel to record these
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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

That's a wrap on tier 2! Quick recap:

Maybe I'll Pass
80. Secret Hitler
79. Mascarade
78. Sheriff of Nottingham
77. Good Cop, Bad Cop
76. Dead of Winter
75. Word on the Street
74. One Night Ultimate Werewolf

I'll Participate
73. Boss Monster
72. Colt Express
71. God's Gambit
70. Sushi Go
69. Qwirkle
68. Cosmic Encounter
67. Ticket to Ride
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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

so, my take on euros

haves:

- many euros are about managing resources, often in the form of cubes or carboard chits. these often represent stone, wood, food, or even workers who can get you more resources

- many euros are about building something - for example, in TTR you build train routes.

- many euros feature 'engine-building,' in which the structures you've previously built help you to accumulate resources/build new structures even faster

- many euros feature indirect conflict, in which you can often most strongly interact with your opponent by taking a resource/card/territory that they wanted first

- the luck in many eurogames limits your options, rather than your outcomes (i.e. you might draw bad cards in TTR, but you won't have an opponent play a "you lose three tracks" card)

- the goal of many eurogames is to score the most victory points

do not haves:

- euros usually do not have roll-dice-and-move-your-guy as a mechanic, even if they are about crossing the finish line first

- euros usually do not feature significant player-to-player combat

- related: euros often limit you from teaming up with another player to "bash" a common opponent

- euros are definitely not about reducing your opponent to zero as a win condition (monopoly, magic: the gathering, etc.)

- related: euros almost never outright eliminate a player from playing - even if you have no way to catch up with, the leader, you're still allowed to participate

the term comes from the fact that many early games in this genre came from germany (very notably, settlers of catan)
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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

67. Ticket to Ride
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride

Genre/mechanics: Set collection, route-building, area control
Rules complexity: 2/10
Game length: 45-75 minutes
Player count: 3-5
Experience: 4-5 games (including original, Europe, Africa) with 3, 5 players
First played: 2015

Ticket to Ride is one of the most famous "gateway" games, where you attempt to lay tracks across a country by drawing sets of appropriately colored cards - either from a public market or from the random deck. You've got secret route cards which give you variable points for connecting specific cities, and you also can score points for just laying tracks anywhere. Generally, each railway will only allow for one or two tracks of trains.

Enjoyment - TTR is one of my gateway games - it was played during my second board gaming session with my current crew. It's one of the most digestible ones early on, with simple, intuitive rules, clear objectives, and an appealing board and pieces. It was kind of long for my attention span at the time, though recent plays also have me wondering about it. The game ends when someone lays their final trains, which means drawing about 50 cards from the deck (25 turns) and laying track about 15 turns. Given that the game isn't tremendously deep, it can feel a bit lengthy. But if people play very quickly and the atmosphere is light, it's a pretty decent time.

My subsequent games were at meetups, when generally I'm trying to learn new games - definitely wasn't thrilled to be revistiing this. Fortunately, they were different versions of TTR, so I got to learn more about board gaming!

One thing that bothered me about my first games - and this has been fixed in subsequent releases - was that the cards were undersized. They were cramp-inducing to hold in my hands. Future releases have upped the size of the cards and this is no longer an issue.

The blocking in TTR can apparently get quite mean, but thankfully we didn't get too much into this territory.

Design - TTR is from 2002, but it embodies a lot of the principles of modern board gaming. Take the way randomness is handled: it is all what gamers call "input" randomness, and not "output" randomness. You can choose to draw from the route deck, and you always get a choice on which route to discard. Your option of train cards is randomly drawn, but you're allowed to choose among them, and you can press your luck by diving into the deck. When you lay down your tracks, there's no dice role or "gotcha, you failed!" mechanic. Then there's the player interaction - the win condition is victory points, and there's no destroying opponents' trains or stealing their cards/tickets; you can only passive-aggressively deny them their secret routes by laying tracks you think will obstruct their path. Competitive TTR players say that the best strategy is to hoard cards - not laying any tracks until you've drawn out almost the entire deck, as there's no hand limit. Suffice it to say this isn't thrilling to me.

The expansions (different versions, really) of TTR have not only different maps (Europe is said to be the best one for balance, or so I've read) but some cool different rules. Europe allows you to use another player's blocking set of tracks as your own.

Future - TTR will not be a centerpiece game, and it's a little long to be pure 'filler.' But as a change of pace game in a bigger gaming session, I could see this hitting the table and my nodding.

Bonus question - What would you say was your gateway game? Or first eurogame? Do you still like it?

Hint for #66 - This game's name is more or less synonymous with hobby gaming in pop culture
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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

tagggg

and definitely play it on a console!
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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

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

A key element of Eurogames I forgot is a general lack of or reduction in randomness. I can't think of any Eurogame with dice-rolling, for example.

i can think of one

settlers of catan
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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

the next game i list will be the first eurogame on the list, so i'll get into it then if no one else answers your question first!
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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

tbh, i'd be more annoyed at being pissed on as a person than about the games!

Naye745 posted...

i dont mind games that are more silly filler but the problem with games like fluxx and exploding kittens is that there just isnt much game there once the novelty of discovering the different cards subsides.

yeah, there's just... not a lot of game to those.

Tom Bombadil posted...

Noooo. The less political a game is, the more I like it. "Competitive solitaire" is usually used as a dig but a lot of my favorite games fall into that category to some extent, and that's probably a big contributing factor.

watch out we got a badass eurogamer on our hands

banananor posted...

back in the day (childhood) i'd feel real umbrage when someone betrayed an alliance of mine. nowadays i simply trust all players to act in their own self-interest, and feel betrayals actually add to games by preventing runaway scenarios

if i can't *really* interact with my opponents and a game is purely about puttering around with your own machine i get bored

seems like you've grown, i appreciate this attitude - though i actually do enjoy a fair number of multiplayer solitaire games, i think
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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

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Dead of Winter near the bottom made me sad.

If the next game is Cosmic Encounter, I will be upset.

now the DOW fans are coming out of the woodwork! and there's more comin'

Peace___Frog posted...

The devs are also cool - when my girlfriend bought Party from them at PAX Unplugged, they included some newly designed cards for free.

I think game designer is probably just the right level of celebrity. Enough that the people you care about will recognize you, and you have the power to make them happy - but not so recognizable that you can't live a normal life and appreciate your fans.

azuarc posted...

And this is why I'll never be able to follow topics like these. Fluxx isn't my first go-to by a longshot, but it's enjoyable for a quick finisher, and Ticket to Ride is great. Next, you'll say Settlers is terrible because you're hipster like that. Meanwhile, Qwirkle is the first game on the list that I've so much as seen in a store, let alone played.

I guess most people wouldn't be thrilled about their favorite things, of any sort, being labeled bottom-of-the-barrel. That said, I don't think that preferring games that you can't get at Target (or wherever) makes you hipster. The "collector/hobbyist" part of the hobby still resides outside of general retail stores and a lot of these games have very limited print runs. Games like Sushi Go! or Secret Hitler are really easy to find if you go to the right type of store.

And besides, this is the bottom part of the list still!

banananor posted...

every game gets old eventually. overdosed on one night ultimate werewolf and lancaster in two different groups recently

I think there's over-playing, and then there's changing taste. Qwirkle dropped because of the latter. The over-playing is more likely to happen near the top of the list. (STAY TUNED)
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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

does this guy just create a new account every time he realizes that he's reached a critical mass on people's ignore lists?
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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