It Came From the Tabletop! - Tyrants of the Underdark and High Society

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Another great episode. Josh may be holding to his 5 new games but he keeps adding games to my list!

Thanks, Wade! Yeah, these are two truly great games. I already added High Society to my collection. I mean, it was only like $17!

And I STILL say there is no way Josh is going to limit himself to five games this year!

I've been played Quo Vadis a bit the last couple of weeks, it's this quite old Knizia game. I don't know how easy it is to get hold of a copy but it just came to mind because of what Josh said about Intrigue.

So, in it, you have to get your Roman senators up through these different committees to the very top of the tree kind of thing. There are 5 places at the top, and if you don't get any senators in there, you are automatically out, can't win. Of those who make it, it's down to who has picked up the most influence. So - High Society-esque. Thing is, to get your dudes up there, you have to get votes from other players before you can move a dude from one committee to another. Which you do by bribing them with your influence or with promises to vote for them later. So it's got a similar kind of feel - not spending too much in those bribes, but, you have to get there somehow otherwise you've got no chance. And how much can you extract from others when they need your vote. Good times. I've been playing with teenagers who just eat this kind of stuff up (HIgh Society has also been a hit).

mc wrote: I've been played Quo Vadis a bit the last couple of weeks . . .

Wow, this sounds incredibly cool. Unfortunately, it seems like it's hard to find a reasonably priced copy out there. I'm going to keep my eyes open for this one. . .

Quo Vadis is great, but better with five players than with fewer. (The entirety of the game is making deals with others and this works much better with more players. It also makes the "elimination" rule more meaningful.)

It's also a very "pure" game in that it distills negotiation games down to the bare minimum. (To me, it's similar to how TransAmerica is a very "pure" track-laying game.) However, this does have the effect that each turn is very much like every other turn and so can feel monotonous. (It helps to play quickly.)

The components are simple enough that you could fashion a home-made version if you'd like to try it before you search for a real copy.

Yep, well said Greg, that's pretty much my take.
Like I think I said I've been playing it with teenagers, who get into the spirit of things very quickly - our games are quick and shouty. i think they've all been 5 players and we smash through it in half an hour easily.
There's only so much you can negotiate with it's true, but there's enough there to have kept things interesting so far - a little bit of meta developing (don't trust him!), a bit of a feeling for how much a vote might be worth depending on the situation.
There are optional rules but they didn't look so great, will have to look a little closer though.

I wanted to support you for $5 a month, but I'd need two friends of Al to go in with me.

I'm listening to your Downforce episode right now and I got a beef with racing games that aren't really racing games. Games with betting and bidding and the like strike me as having more in common with Cosmic Encounter and Coup than "legit" racing games.

I understood what Downforce was before you guys got into the details so this wasn't a surprise. I've learned to put a jaundiced eye on titles with the setting before getting excited.

So yeah, there's racing in it. But, I can hear Al's excitement in other games that maybe have more focus on the go-fast aspect of the genre. That's more what I'm looking for.

So I'll throw the question out to the crowd -- what's the best game that's about making a car go fast? I have a couple of candidates (that I own) but I'd like to hear what else is out there. I really like the setting.