If this is all in the article then I’m the moron who only skimmed it then made a bunch of ill-informed statements…
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Given the state of journalism in the world today, that sounds about the right level of effort for a journalism thread
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Downloading now. Thanks for the heads up. Been waiting for this to drop.
I did a post about this (on my iPad so no link), but all expansions are there, at $5-10 a pop (as mentioned previously) . Lets you choose what you want. Base game free, though.
And they clarified that they do plan on doing expansions to some of their other games in the future. Hopefully that includes Shards, which really needs the expansion.
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Yeah, still waiting on the long ago promised Shards of Infinity expansion, but am so stoked to see Temple Gates on the case as I think IT Shuffle has done a fairly pathetic job with the license over the last few years.
Any chance on Roll for the Galaxy Wxpansions you think?
Didn’t say anything specifically. Just “plans” and “our other games.”
So one can hope, but who knows?
What’s the point of having an ai that can master cards that aren’t released yet if they aren’t going to be publishing new expansions?
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They are doing all of the expansions.
Are You Being Played? From a recent Australian gaming conference, the transcript is a little long, but it’s a good discussion on just how sophisticated games have become at extracting money from players via micro-transactions and reinforcing addictive behavior:
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/are-you-being-played/13327478?
Dominion beta sign up -
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PocketGamer is reporting that Railroad Ink is coming to iOS this summer.
I’m torn over roll and writes on my iPhone. On one hand, the physical games are usually pretty cheap and easy for me to get to the table, so why would I need a digital implementation. On the other hand, most of the digital roll and writes are massively addicting because they play fast and are great high-score-chasers.
Railroad Ink is a pretty good physical game and I look forward to the digital implementation. There are currently two versions of the game (red and blue) and each has different variants like lakes and volcanoes that change the way you build your routes and score your points. There are two more versions (green and yellow) that are either brand new or coming soon, so there could be some depth if they include these in the digital game.
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I see discussions about roll and write’s around here sometimes and think that might be fun, but then never buy one. What is the best Roll and Write for the iPhone in your opinion?
That’s a tough one.
Most of the BrettspielWelt games are pretty great games, but the apps are rough. My wife and I have had an ongoing high score battle in That’s Pretty Clever for about a year now. It really frustrates me, though, that this particular developer can’t figure out how to fix their profile login. The apps are also not flashy and very utilitarian.
The OD roll and write games are possibly some of the best packages, though Quixx seems to be off the App Store, sadly. The apps are vibrant, high score tracking works, and as a bonus you can use the app as a score pad for the tabletop games. We played a lot of Noch Mal a couple years ago. I think Hex Roller is good but my wife hasn’t learned it yet.
Imperial Settlers roll & write has a lot going for it, but I despise a single mechanic in the game and don’t play it often. In IS there is a worker die that you roll every round to see how many workers you get. Workers are essentially actions. I forget the range on the die, but let’s say 3-5. That means over the course of a 10-round game you are getting 30-50 actions, plus any abilities that you’ve picked up to alter that. I’m a game about high scores, I think it is ridiculous that available actions can be so varied. If you were playing at the table and all sharing the same amount of action and comparing scores for that game specifically, that’s fine, but it doesn’t work for an app where my game may be drastically different from a friend’s.
Cartographers is a very highly-regarded roll & write but I haven’t learned to play yet so I can’t comment.
I do not own On Tour but it exists. I don’t know how good of an app it is. It supposedly has multiplayer but it sounds like it may be a little rough.
TLDR:
I’ve played That’s Pretty Clever and Noch Mal the most and have enjoyed competing against my wife for high scores. TPC is a bit more thinky than Noch Mal.
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I agree with @Mirefox’s post on TPC/Noch Mal being the best roll & writes I’ve played but will add a couple of things:
I do like Cartographers; talked about it in this post after playing about 10 games: Stately Citizen Journalism I’ve played it intermittently since.
I played On Tour and deleted it after maybe 2 or 3 tries. Just didn’t grab me … the app looked pretty good but didn’t play all that well, from what I remember.
Railroad Ink looks awesome–I will probably buy that on release.
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@geigerm and @Mirefox cool, thanks for your thoughts. I am actually going on a trip next week for the first time in 15 months, on an plane and everything. I was looking for something new for my iPhone for while waiting for flights and stuff, so will pick up That’s Pretty Clever. thanks
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The game is very easy to play, but I may recommend finding a quick overview on YouTube because like everything else in the app, the rule book is a bit rough around the edges. And there is not a tutorial.
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Not to beat a dead horse, here, with the roll & write discussion, but one cool thing about That’s Pretty Clever is that if you like it, there are alternate pads and two sequels. The alternate pad takes the same exact rules and scoring and tweaks the dice placement enough that it is a pretty fresh challenge.
Twice as Clever uses the exact same gameplay but has you scoring each category differently with some interesting decisions to be made, especially with the silver die. This also had an alternate pad.
I haven’t played Clever Cubed yet simply because we are saving it for an upcoming vacation, but I expect more of the same, meaning addicting, fun, and different enough to feel unique from the original.
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I got 145 on my first game while trying to learn the rules. Seeing high scores in the 300s, I gather it’s not really a good game unless in the high 200s? (don’t give me tips, will be fun to figure out)
I enjoy the Clever series but find it so annoying you can’t pull up the rules as you’re playing since so many of the 3 games and variants’ rules are far from intuitive.