All of my desire to play Kingsburg

I don't understand the hate towards Settlers sometimes.

The guys here have been pinging on it recently. It's the difference between a "German" game and a "Euro" game and I think that's a great distinction to start making in the forums. Were that to happen I think "Euro" would lose a big chunk of its foundation. Without the legacy German titles it becomes a very thin slice of gaming flavors.

Anything with unpredictability is out, and in Settlers case that includes the resource generator and oddly enough the bargaining. Apparently bargaining is too uncontrollable. Bidding is in for some reason, very popular with euro titles. To me bargaining is essentially freeform bidding, so I'm not exactly sure how that happened.

Here's the comic panel I want to see -- Eugene throwing a copy of Settlers overboard from a ship with a "Euro Cruise" banner above his head, and the name S.S. Catan written on the stern beneath him.

Sag.

ozjesting wrote:

Did any of you actually read the WHOLE list?!?

The expansion has added some fun new ideas...not just the "neutered battle chits" (and even there you are missing some vital facts about game impact...but as you all will never play it is of no use to explain it here)

Oh I'll play it again, in fact I've been pushing to get it to the table with little success. We have a glut of new games right now and good titles aren't making it to the tables often enough.

At its heart I think Kingsburg is a good game and I told the designer that directly. That was in the link that I included in my post. He seems like a good guy that fully understands exactly what he's trying to do and is accomplishing it -- he's building a game to appeal to mainstream gamers and hopes to land the Ticket to Ride market. I think he's got it. I think if the game were marketed better he might end up with T2R sales numbers and I wished him luck with it.

But, for my tastes, I think making the battles at the end of the year more "impactful" would make the game better, especially if their variability is increased. That increases the stakes, gives more options to gain (or lose) ground quickly and in my opinion increases the feelings of ownership that the more intense play would generate. I'm in disagreement with the mainstream gaming audience on that -- they prefer more predictable results, hence the introduction of the "neutered battle chits" which I will henceforth refer to as NBCs. Kingsburg is actually a more sedate game than Ticket to Ride. T2R gives you the opportunity to go for broke with the destination tickets late in the game. I think Kingsburg could use a bit more of that.

I have not gotten the opportunity to play with the expansion and cannot comment directly on the remainder of it. I know it allows you to swap out building paths and that seems like a fine idea in principle at any rate. My buddy (the Kingsburg owner) has not purchased it yet and may not, so I might not ever see it.

Seeing Settlers thrown overboard when it's been such a seminal title for the genre is just perplexing. I think it really throws a lot of us off our game. So to speak.

Sag.

ozjesting wrote:

Did any of you actually read the WHOLE list?!?

You guys are making out like the Kingsburg designers shit all over your baby! If you just look at his first comment under the first box you are all losing your mind over, you will see he says everything you are saying here. Great game that is indeed a classic.

I disagree. Here's his clarification of the "Settlers done right" comment:

Just to clarify, because "Settlers, done right" could be perceived as an oltrageous [sic] remark for Settlers of Catan: I have a deep respect and a huge debt for this game that originated the whole "german" games category. Settlers is a great game, and it's already a classic. Of course, the game suffers a bit for being the very first, and whoever game come next (including Kingsburg) could use the experience of previously released games. I don't remember who said "we're dwarves sitting on giants shoulders", but that was the meaning of my remark.

I interpret this to mean "CATAN was the first game of its kind, so we should recognize it as a classic even though we now know how to design better games."

Some guy with a beard then posted this response:

Settlers is like Monopoly. It was great in its time, because it was all there was. Both are seriously flawed in two respects: The dice can kill you early, and the game is too long.

The bearded man then goes on to explain how he once lost the game -- after attempting a really stupid strategy -- and how that proves that Settlers is a poor game by contemporary standards. Oh, and he has a Game Designer badge for something that he posted on the web for free.

The distinction between German Games and Eurogames is useful because it explains the phenomenon of Eurogamers slagging truly great games like Settlers while arguing that contemporary games have improved on the classics by protecting players from their own idiotic strategies.

Juniper wrote:

I
Matt: though I respect your opinion, I have to say that YSPAHAN is a terrible game. It has dice, but uses them for evil, not good.

Possibly. But it's still better than Kingsburg.

Settlers is one of the best games ever. I'd rather play it than a great many of the AT "cannon" games and it's a game I know I'll still be playing decades from now. (Though I guess I hardly play vanilla settlers much anymore except on Live, so maybe I'm really talking about the whole series together as being so great)

I thought Kingsburg was pretty fun, but I'm a sucker for dice games. It's a bummer to see that some of my biggest problems with it were quite intentional and the result of outside pressure.

All that said, I'd happily design some boring ass brown games and get my payday.

I've played Kingsburg quite a few times. It's OK. It certainly isn't a "brown and beige" Euro game, before you comment you owe it to yourself to actually look at the box. The actual game piece are quite colorful and the game sports FFG's quality graphic design.

I like dice games a lot, too, but I agree the winter battles are pretty weak. I've rarely lost any and when I have, I've never really felt crippled by it. It's far from my favorite game, but for a Euro it's not bad. And I totally see it sitting in the same category as Ticket to Ride.

Stonecutter wrote:

It reads like a damn parody blog someone on this board would write!

My first thought too. It's like the quitessential Eurogame philosophy. "Trading in Settlers hurts peoples feelings, let's compeltely remove it so that no one can ever compete in MY game!". It really does read like a fucking parody. The designer should be ashamed of himself.



Secondly, WTF happened to your people's balls?

Kingsburg is not good. Not in any way, shape or form. It is shit. Pure, straight from the anus shit, packaged in a box (fyi - this is why most Euros are brown). Absolute and utter garbage and reading the designers blog, it's no wonder.

It's a no-interaction, boring efficiency engine game we've all seen before, except he threw in DICE so that you can't even plan a strategy now because the dice dictate your choices almost completely. The "pick a spot" mechanic fails completely because it's only an illusion of choice and risk mitigation. In actual fact, you've got few, if any, choices.

It's like he looked at Settlers and removed every single good idea the game had and replaced it with bland, shit-coloured Euro crap.

No one should ever even think about playing Kingsburg and the OP is better off for being warned away. It is the apotheosis of everything wrong with Eurogames and the designer should be punched in the balls repeatedly just for thinking of making the game.

Is Kingsburg a good game?
I don't know, as I wouldn't waste my time playing it, no matter who the publisher is.

Kingsburg: I played the Java version and liked that alright for a while (you don't miss the lack of real interaction that way)

Yspahan: much better, with some decent screwage involved and a peculiar but interesting mix of different elements

Settlers: brilliant, innovative (still), very interactive, classic, the best all-around board game of our time

Grudunza wrote:

Settlers: brilliant, innovative (still), very interactive, classic, the best all-around board game of our time

What is the best all a square board game?

::Dodging hurled objects::

Grudunza wrote:

Settlers: brilliant, innovative (still), very interactive, classic, the best all-around board game of our time

It's going to fall off of BGG's top 50 in less than a year, so even the Euro crowd there doesn't agree with you.

Shellhead wrote:

Grudunza wrote:

Settlers: brilliant, innovative (still), very interactive, classic, the best all-around board game of our time

It's going to fall off of BGG's top 50 in less than a year, so even the Euro crowd there doesn't agree with you.

The Settler's love fest is a bit much. If BSG, Space Hulk, Chaos in the Old World, Arkham Horror and Settlers were on 5 different tables, how many of you would actually sit down at the settlers table.


If you said "ME!" I'm calling you a wanker in advance.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

The Settler's love fest is a bit much. If BSG, Space Hulk, Chaos in the Old World, Arkham Horror and Settlers were on 5 different tables, how many of you would actually sit down at the settlers table.


If you said "ME!" I'm calling you a wanker in advance.

Which table has the hot chick?

Mr Skeletor wrote:

The Settler's love fest is a bit much. If BSG, Space Hulk, Chaos in the Old World, Arkham Horror and Settlers were on 5 different tables, how many of you would actually sit down at the settlers table.


If you said "ME!" I'm calling you a wanker in advance.

Quoted for the absolute truth. This is Fortress: AmeriTrash, not Fortress of Cataan.

Juniper wrote:

Which table has the hot chick?

AH would have the goth chick.