Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote: Also tried the EXIT Haunted Roller Coaster which sucked. This just reinforced my thoughts that Unlock is much better than EXIT.

I preferred Exit to Unlock!, but of the last six Exit games only two have been good (Sinister Mansion and the series-best Catacombs of Horror). Sunken Treasure, House of Riddles and Haunted Roller Coaster are bad and Mysterious Museum is merely okay. They are very easy, super linear, and have weak themes/puzzle integration.

Unlock! has been steadily improving as they incorporate new elements and move beyond their initial structure.

I still have Catacombs of Horror and House of Riddles on deck. My takeaway last night was that I'd rather then spend the entirety of their efforts on the Adventure Series which is much more interesting.

What's with the attempt at developing a setting but handling it completely awkwardly. Like, "You open the door and a skull pops out, spitting card A at you!"

It reinforces that this system is overly mechanical flipping through all of the puzzle and solution cards. It made me miss Unlock's app and Machines.


Also - I'm with you Paul. Love the game despite some of those issues and your observations are spot on.

charlest wrote: I still have Catacombs of Horror and House of Riddles on deck. My takeaway last night was that I'd rather then spend the entirety of their efforts on the Adventure Series which is much more interesting.

What's with the attempt at developing a setting but handling it completely awkwardly. Like, "You open the door and a skull pops out, spitting card A at you!"

It reinforces that this system is overly mechanical flipping through all of the puzzle and solution cards. It made me miss Unlock's app and Machines.

Well, House of Riddles is worse at the flipping Card A stuff than Haunted Roller Coaster is. House of Riddles is literally about solving escape room puzzles. The early Unlock! games also felt very mechanical to me as they were very reliant on the Card X + Card Y = Card Z style puzzle solutions.

My initial preference for Exit was because the puzzle design was just a lot better than Unlock, but they have been doing a lot of linear designs that point you at a specific puzzle and have you solve it before getting another puzzle. Catacombs of Horror has a lot of great and challenging puzzles. While the theme integration is not as strong as Unlock! it certainly does a better job than most Exit games.

We are only part of the way in the Adventure Games: Dungeon and have enjoyed it so far. My wife commented very early that she enjoyed the game, which she usually saves until after we have finished a game.

I played Rising Sun tonight and had a pretty miserable time. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to take 5 hours even for everyone's first time, and also for one guy to have read a bunch of strategy articles beforehand so he could come in and double everything else's score in a learning game. Seems like a weird way to approach a game to me I dunno. The game was 100% all the way decided after the second round (strategy guy literally having more points than everyone else in game combined at that point), and if I was hosting I would have suggested just calling it there instead of dragging it out for another hour and a half. As it was I did suggest that people take faster turns because the game was already decided, but that didn't go over that well. Anyway, just a little venting I guess. The game seemed okay. I would have enjoyed it alright if it was 2.5 hours. Probably not one of my favorite DOAM games even then. At 5 hours... No thanks.

5 hours is ridiculous. We average 2 hours for 4 player and 2.5 for 5-6.

Ah_Pook wrote: ...I guess I just wasn't expecting it to take 5 hours even for everyone's first time, and also for one guy to have read a bunch of strategy articles beforehand so he could come in and double everything else's score in a learning game.

My boss did that to us in our first game of Urban Sprawl. He watched a bunch of YouTube videos and squished us like grapes.

I’ve seen Rising Sun games go over 7 hours. I haven’t played in them, mind you, I wouldn’t play Rising Sun because I was so underwhelmed by my 2 hour game, but I have seen them.

I don't think any of our admittedly few Rising Sun games have gone much past 2.5 hours.

I thought about requesting to play that the other day. Then I thought that in the same request I could instead ask to play Cthulhu Wars, so sorry, Rising Sun.

I think the playing time of Rising Sun functions similarly to the playing time of games like Diplomacy and Dune. If you have people that don't know how to negotiate or aren't willing to make deals, the game can drag because tactical options will be lessened and/or it will take so long to hammer out deals that you've just added a great deal of time to the game. Rising Sun, like most negotiating games, is definitely an "audience particular" game. You have to know whom you're playing with before you put it on the table.

Reinsert my comment about not respecting people's time being actively hostile and not innocuous and value-free.

I will say it's a tough situation and I feel for you. I played with a guy who was like this and I didn't mind him personally, he played hobby games and was willing to learn rules, but his turns and calculation were just endless. We played some flaccid BSG games, a game whose main weakness is that it's about one jump to long already. I mostly stopped playing with him. It was just too a big negative.

But I wasn't going to like confront him on it. Maybe I should have. It's tricky.

I played a four-player game of Rising Sun once, and it took less than 3 hours. It became apparent early on that the big monsters were like expensive balloons that were easily popped. There were some moderately interesting decisions, but less negotiation than what the designer probably envisioned. It wasn't an unpleasant game to play, but there are other DOAM that I would rather play.

Gary Sax wrote: Reinsert my comment about not respecting people's time being actively hostile and not innocuous and value-free.

I will say it's a tough situation and I feel for you. I played with a guy who was like this and I didn't mind him personally, he played hobby games and was willing to learn rules, but his turns and calculation were just endless. We played some flaccid BSG games, a game whose main weakness is that it's about one jump to long already. I mostly stopped playing with him. It was just too a big negative.

But I wasn't going to like confront him on it. Maybe I should have. It's tricky.

Life is too short for playing games with Analysis Paralysis Guy. I don't know what motivates these people... fear of failure? Excessive competitiveness? Lack of empathy? Doesn't matter anymore, I just won't play with AP Guy once it becomes obvious. I can understand someone new to the hobby playing slow, or even someone who is struggling with first play of a complex game, but if the AP continues beyond that point, I move on.

Ah_Pook wrote: ... and also for one guy to have read a bunch of strategy articles beforehand so he could come in and double everything else's score in a learning game.

One of my friends is Strategy Guy, and it kind of backfires on him. He buys a new game, reads every available strategy article, soundly thumps the rest of us, then wonders why people sometimes lack enthusiasm for playing the game again at a later date. It doesn't bother me, because I would rather lose at a good game than win at a bad game.

EDIT: By the way, Strategy Guy is the guy in our group who bought Rising Sun. It has been gathering dust since that one play.

Shellhead wrote: Life is too short for playing games with Analysis Paralysis Guy. I don't know what motivates these people... fear of failure? Excessive competitiveness? Lack of empathy? Doesn't matter anymore, I just won't play with AP Guy once it becomes obvious. I can understand someone new to the hobby playing slow, or even someone who is struggling with first play of a complex game, but if the AP continues beyond that point, I move on.

I have an AP guy in my group. I would fire him in a heartbeat but we have a pretty bad attendance issue and he is reliable. I think his AP stems from him taking games FAR too seriously and he always has to make the "best" play he can. He values winning over everything and if he loses at a game the first time he plays, he generally "doesn't like" that game.

Shellhead wrote:

Ah_Pook wrote: ... and also for one guy to have read a bunch of strategy articles beforehand so he could come in and double everything else's score in a learning game.

One of my friends is Strategy Guy, and it kind of backfires on him. He buys a new game, reads every available strategy article, soundly thumps the rest of us, then wonders why people sometimes lack enthusiasm for playing the game again at a later date. It doesn't bother me, because I would rather lose at a good game than win at a bad game.

EDIT: By the way, Strategy Guy is the guy in our group who bought Rising Sun. It has been gathering dust since that one play.

I go into most games expecting to lose, it's not a thing that bothers me especially. If I was coming into a group of sharks and playing a game for my first time and I got destroyed then whatever yknow. But I just don't get why you would want to do that in a learning game where everyone is playing it for the first time. All is going to do is make people not want to play the game with you ever again I think. You're skipping the entire fun exploring the design phase of that game also, which I personally get a lot of enjoyment from.