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03 Dec 2018 16:19 - 03 Dec 2018 19:33 #287352 by Josh Look
Went to PAX Unplugged over the weekend, first time going to a con that big and I had a great time. Played lots of stuff, some of it weird and likely of no interest to folks here, but here’s a few standouts.

Magic: The Gathering - Heroes of Dominaria - I’m putting on top because I feel it’s important to get the word out on this one. This was easily the WORST game I played all weekend, and while I’d like to report that that’s an indication of how good the rest of the game I played were, that’s not the case. This is a bad game and I’m not sure how it was ever approved to see the light of day. It’s pretty short, but the pacing still feels glacial, rivaling that of Scythe. Its largely a game about building things, building things is done with mana that pops up around the board each turn. If you are able to build something, all satisfaction of doing so is undone by how long it takes to gather the mana to build something again. There’s no real engine to ever get more. You do have the ability to get more actions, but you’re restricted to collecting mana once per turn, which leaves you with nothing meaningful to do on most of your turns (which you only get 9 of in a 4 player game). The last few turns can be really slow, as everyone has more actions and wants to math out how they can get the most points. There really isn’t any enjoyable moments here, no interesting ideas or mechanics, just a completely drab, boring, lifeless experience. Where the D&D games have succeeded in giving D&D players a glimpse into the board gaming world and board gamers a look at some memorable D&D settings, this game does neither and will leave both sides with nothing more than a sour taste. A truly horrible, garbage game.

Yellow & Yangtze - It may be more accessible and forgiving than T&E, but I don’t care, I like it more. I could not get enough of this game all weekend long, LOVE IT.

Black Hole Council - Really enjoyed this one, too, but it really couldn’t be anymore in my wheelhouse. It’s a negotiation game where everyone is voting on what to do with a lineup of planets each turn, each person with their own secret agenda. Very different kind of game in this genre, hope I get to play it again soon.
Last edit: 03 Dec 2018 19:33 by Josh Look.
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03 Dec 2018 16:32 #287355 by Black Barney
thanks for the warning on Dominaria. I would have been all over that game I think if I still played them.

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04 Dec 2018 09:12 #287408 by charlest
Yeah, the MtG game is pretty bland and boring as hell. We played it a month ago (I think I mentioned it briefly here), and I don't even want to look at it again.

Josh - have you played Tiefe Taschen? It's another game like Black Hole Council but a step above in my opinion.



I've gotten in a couple of solo games with the new Firefly Adventures: Brigands and Browncoats expansions. River is an undeniable badass (appropriately) and I really enjoy how you need Simon to get her to calm down and go back to casual.

Book and Inara are interesting, but the biggest add here is 3 new scenarios in each set. They all seem very interesting as well, including one where you don't actually use the board sections and just explore room to room kind of like a dungeon crawl. Pretty wild and entertaining.
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04 Dec 2018 09:59 - 04 Dec 2018 10:14 #287415 by Vysetron
Condottiere is good. Real good. We played the "classic" ruleset where priests end the fight and spring never comes. I'm not sure I even want to try the modern rule set but I probably will eventually. Every fight was tense and there were several laugh out loud moments, particularly when said priests reared their ugly heads.

Xenon Profiteer got played with the same folks as Condottiere. This is one we've been playing since it came out, and it's still my favorite or second favorite deckbuilder depending on when you ask me. One of our players was a chemical engineer who was already familiar with the game, and he broke down how good of a job the game does at portraying real science. Phenomenal design. Definitely TC's best work. Deserves to be better known, though I'm not sure how available it is at this point.

We played more Monster Slaughter, this time with more players. It's...ok, look. It's real dumb. Intentionally dumb. You chuck dice and yell at miniatures. There isn't any hidden depth to this thing and it leans on its theme ridiculously hard, but dammit it's still fun. Probably wouldn't be if it was a longer game and/or less pretty.

More Keyforge. So much Keyforge. I think I've finally fully grokked the deck I've been focusing on and it's disgusting. I've only found one true counter to what it does, and it isn't an auto-loss so much as a problem that the deck isn't really equipped to handle, but can if pressed. Much fun.

Lastly, a story. I'm not sure it's entirely on topic but it was at the same game night we played Condottiere at. During, in fact. If this is out of place I'll move/delete it, but it stuck with me for some reason and I kind of want to put it in text form.

My wife and I don't make it to the local game night we used to frequent as much as we like. We've moved further from it, work schedules are tricky, etc., so when we do it's a treat. We were just about done with what ended up being our last battle in a 4p game of Condottiere when an unfamiliar face inserted herself into our game and asked "HEY DOES ANYONE WANT TO PLAY A GAME WITH ME?" Caps are intentional, she was very loud.

Of course I said "Sure! We're almost done with this one, we'll get you in on something in just a bit." To which she demanded a time estimate, which was should have been a red flag. She then slammed a copy of fucking Who Goes There on a neighboring table and began setting it up with an unsettling mix of speed and component-abuse. The 4 of us looked at each other with total confusion. This was a public evening game night at a store that closes at a reasonable hour. We had work in the morning, kids to get back to, life obligations, etc. No one was here to commit to that mess.

I clarified that we were happy to play A game, but that I knew WGT was a 3-ish hour game and the store would be closing by the time that came to pass, especially with rules. She claimed she could shorten it somehow (is that a thing? I don't know if that's a thing). We offered to get her in on other games as promised. Her eyes were visibly twitching as we spoke. This led to a rant about how she spent her whole day writing essays, that this was the only game she brought or even owned, and a bunch of things nobody at the table understood. She yelled at each of us individually, but eventually pissed off after we repeated our alternative offers for the umpteenth time.

It did not end there.

We wrap up our game/discussion and I walk off to the restroom while they set up Xenon. There's a wait, so I'm standing outside the two doors. WGT lady accosts me and tries to get my phone number, under the pretense of arranging a game in the future. I decline. I end up declining 3 separate attempts. She then goes on about how she deleted her Facebook but kept her Tumblr and wouldn't want the stuff she does there being associated with her real name, so she understands my hesitance (?????). Cindy (my wife) walks over and attempts to distract her. It doesn't work. Eventually a bathroom vacates and I'm free of her for 5 minutes.

In those 5 minutes she has rope-a-doped enough other people to play her game, and shouts this information at me from max line of sight. I congratulate her as I pass to play something else with someone, anyone else. Upon returning to the table I learned that in those 5 minutes she basically went on a recruitment drive supplemented with guilt trips and, if met with a no, more bizarre attacks. We ended up leaving after Xenon and some socializing while their game was still very much in progress.

I fear for the well-being of those poor, patient souls.
Last edit: 04 Dec 2018 10:14 by Vysetron. Reason: Formatting.
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04 Dec 2018 10:46 #287420 by Josh Look
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04 Dec 2018 10:56 #287421 by Black Barney
Vsetron, you gotta take some ownership for getting yourself into that mess. When a rando inserts themself into your game and speaks loudly about a game, you NEVER accept it. I did this once with a Munchkin-type game and the guy would laugh at every card that was played like it was the funniest thing ever. My ex-wife and I looked at each other in horror realizing what we've got ourselves into. And at the end, we recognized it was our own fault for not seeing the red flags and warning signs. Gotta just play with friends.

I almost never go to gaming shops anymore but I'm openly negative now when I get approached by big fellas eating out of tin foil baking dishes asking me if I want a rousing game of Magic or Talisman. Yeah, no thanks.

great story tho! Always share that kind of stuff here. We LOVE this stuff :)
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04 Dec 2018 11:12 - 04 Dec 2018 11:30 #287424 by stoic

Vysetron wrote: Condottiere is good. Real good. We played the "classic" ruleset where priests end the fight and spring never comes. I'm not sure I even want to try the modern rule set but I probably will eventually. Every fight was tense and there were several laugh out loud moments, particularly when said priests reared their ugly heads.

Xenon Profiteer got played with the same folks as Condottiere. This is one we've been playing since it came out, and it's still my favorite or second favorite deckbuilder depending on when you ask me. One of our players was a chemical engineer who was already familiar with the game, and he broke down how good of a job the game does at portraying real science. Phenomenal design. Definitely TC's best work. Deserves to be better known, though I'm not sure how available it is at this point.

We played more Monster Slaughter, this time with more players. It's...ok, look. It's real dumb. Intentionally dumb. You chuck dice and yell at miniatures. There isn't any hidden depth to this thing and it leans on its theme ridiculously hard, but dammit it's still fun. Probably wouldn't be if it was a longer game and/or less pretty.

More Keyforge. So much Keyforge. I think I've finally fully grokked the deck I've been focusing on and it's disgusting. I've only found one true counter to what it does, and it isn't an auto-loss so much as a problem that the deck isn't really equipped to handle, but can if pressed. Much fun.

Lastly, a story. I'm not sure it's entirely on topic but it was at the same game night we played Condottiere at. During, in fact. If this is out of place I'll move/delete it, but it stuck with me for some reason and I kind of want to put it in text form.

My wife and I don't make it to the local game night we used to frequent as much as we like. We've moved further from it, work schedules are tricky, etc., so when we do it's a treat. We were just about done with what ended up being our last battle in a 4p game of Condottiere when an unfamiliar face inserted herself into our game and asked "HEY DOES ANYONE WANT TO PLAY A GAME WITH ME?" Caps are intentional, she was very loud.

Of course I said "Sure! We're almost done with this one, we'll get you in on something in just a bit." To which she demanded a time estimate, which was should have been a red flag. She then slammed a copy of fucking Who Goes There on a neighboring table and began setting it up with an unsettling mix of speed and component-abuse. The 4 of us looked at each other with total confusion. This was a public evening game night at a store that closes at a reasonable hour. We had work in the morning, kids to get back to, life obligations, etc. No one was here to commit to that mess.

I clarified that we were happy to play A game, but that I knew WGT was a 3-ish hour game and the store would be closing by the time that came to pass, especially with rules. She claimed she could shorten it somehow (is that a thing? I don't know if that's a thing). We offered to get her in on other games as promised. Her eyes were visibly twitching as we spoke. This led to a rant about how she spent her whole day writing essays, that this was the only game she brought or even owned, and a bunch of things nobody at the table understood. She yelled at each of us individually, but eventually pissed off after we repeated our alternative offers for the umpteenth time.

It did not end there.

We wrap up our game/discussion and I walk off to the restroom while they set up Xenon. There's a wait, so I'm standing outside the two doors. WGT lady accosts me and tries to get my phone number, under the pretense of arranging a game in the future. I decline. I end up declining 3 separate attempts. She then goes on about how she deleted her Facebook but kept her Tumblr and wouldn't want the stuff she does there being associated with her real name, so she understands my hesitance (?????). Cindy (my wife) walks over and attempts to distract her. It doesn't work. Eventually a bathroom vacates and I'm free of her for 5 minutes.

In those 5 minutes she has rope-a-doped enough other people to play her game, and shouts this information at me from max line of sight. I congratulate her as I pass to play something else with someone, anyone else. Upon returning to the table I learned that in those 5 minutes she basically went on a recruitment drive supplemented with guilt trips and, if met with a no, more bizarre attacks. We ended up leaving after Xenon and some socializing while their game was still very much in progress.

I fear for the well-being of those poor, patient souls.


What you're telling us is that a paranoid woman who has an apparently disturbed mind infected by some sort of host, wanted to recruit you to play a board game whereby you play through a scenario involving paranoia and being infected by a host? That "Who Goes There" game is a contagion!
Last edit: 04 Dec 2018 11:30 by stoic.
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04 Dec 2018 11:29 #287427 by Vysetron

Black Barney wrote: Vsetron, you gotta take some ownership for getting yourself into that mess. When a rando inserts themself into your game and speaks loudly about a game, you NEVER accept it. I did this once with a Munchkin-type game and the guy would laugh at every card that was played like it was the funniest thing ever. My ex-wife and I looked at each other in horror realizing what we've got ourselves into. And at the end, we recognized it was our own fault for not seeing the red flags and warning signs. Gotta just play with friends.

I almost never go to gaming shops anymore but I'm openly negative now when I get approached by big fellas eating out of tin foil baking dishes asking me if I want a rousing game of Magic or Talisman. Yeah, no thanks.

great story tho! Always share that kind of stuff here. We LOVE this stuff :)


Oh I absolutely set myself up for it. A lot of the folks who go to that particular game night are pretty insular so I try to be welcoming and bring newbies into group games. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This one didn't.

stoic wrote: What you're telling us is that a paranoid woman who has an apparently disturbed mind infected by some sort of host, wanted you to recruit you to play a board game whereby you play through a scenario involving paranoia and being infected by a host? That "Who Goes There" game is a contagion!


You're more right than you know. The publisher of that one goes by Certifiable Studios. I didn't realize they were describing their customer base.
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04 Dec 2018 11:40 #287430 by stoic
I honestly don't know how you guys play at game stores with the random public. I have one or two friends with whom I play with at a game store, but, it's only once a month or every other month deal. The other times, we play at home. The game store's location is a convenient location to us. We intentionally play in the middle of the week though, from about lunchtime to about 3 p.m., when there's absolutely no one at the game store. That's why we choose to play there, but, we've also encountered quite a few quacks who randomly walk in and comment about our games or cause general havoc to the poor game store owner! Good grief! I'd be open to playing with random folks but there has to be some sort of mental health screening first, or, we have to have common bond; e.g., perhaps, the same fraternity, social club, church, charity groups, etc?
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04 Dec 2018 12:12 #287433 by Gary Sax

stoic wrote: I honestly don't know how you guys play at game stores with the random public.


Same. I respect it, not doing it has totally ruined the amount of gaming I do, but that bad apple risk factor is too oppressive for me.
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04 Dec 2018 12:50 #287437 by Jexik
I've made some solid long term friends by joining a local game night. It wasn't at a store, but like a clubhouse. Haven't been able to make it as often anymore, but I've kept the friends. Were there some regulars that I'd rather not spend much time with at all? For sure.
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04 Dec 2018 14:00 #287446 by edulis
I have some good gaming buddies who started out as randoms at the FLGS, but one needs to be careful and pick short games until you know people.

I got stuck in a game of Android once with a one of the game store regulars. Guy only wears black -never smiles and has some serious dandruff. We were all new to the game and trying to figure out the rules. I think there were 5 of us playing and kid-in-black and I were sitting across from each other, with next to no interaction.

About an hour in, he asked a question about wording on a card and I explained how I thought it worked (calmly), as I had looked up a similar question in the rules a few minutes before. the guy stands up and yells at me (I don't recall the exact words he spewed something about not wanting to hear from me),literally raised his voice and demanded the rule book. The card had nothing to do with an interaction between the two of us and the whole thing felt very out of nowhere. I thought about bailing right there, but I stuck it out for a 2 more awkward hours.

I played a game of SW: Legions this Friday at my house. My rebels got pretty run over by a Boba Fett / General Veers team with lots of foot soldiers and some seriously deadly snipers.

We played a scenario where one side had to blow up some water vaporizers and other had to repair them. I really like how the command system works. Command cards and leaders work to buff the troops, but only if your leader is played first. But you don't want to play your leader because these troops need to move, but damn it I drew the speeder chit.

Fett is a beast wiping out a whole squad of fleet troopers except the leader, in one blow of his flame thrower.

I know I am the only one playing this around here, but you guys should really give it another try.
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04 Dec 2018 15:01 #287451 by Michael Barnes
Everyone is waiting for Holiday Sale ‘19.
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04 Dec 2018 15:24 #287454 by SaMoKo
If I ever find myself in Vysetron’s city, remind me to pack a copy of Die Macher and not shower for 3 weeks before going to a game store.
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04 Dec 2018 15:30 #287457 by Gary Sax
Hmmm, we got 20 minutes left, do you want the CDU/CSU or Die Linke?

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