The Actual Table

[biffpow]

I haven’t played AH since AH1, and I enjoyed the atmosphere and the location exploration, but me and my entire group all hated the combat. Has it become (a lot) more streamlined? and a lot less constant? I think the consensus was that we just wanted to run around Arkham exploring places and combating once in a while.

Amazon benefits from our preconceived ideas about physical stores–one location, the same people handle your stuff each time, you have a “cart”, etc. And none of that is true, of course, and–cruel irony–amazon is putting lots of physical stores out of business. I don’t know how to reconcile that either and feel a slight pang of guilt when I place orders for pens or whatever, when I should just go over to the local stationary store and get some there. But, that said, I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt over making amazon work harder to fulfill what they’ve promised with Prime. It’s the only way to keep them honest.

Hopefully, they will get broken up as a monopoly.

[rinelk]

I’m finding that we tend to have one combat-focused character and one who isn’t. But the fun exploration happens in a separate phase. During the investigator phase, you pretty much cope with bad stuff, which is monsters and “doom” that get placed around. Then, after the monsters do their thing, you get an encounter unless you’re still fighting. It’s a little weird, because, for example, you can’t just go to the store and buy an item; you have to end your turn there and hope that the encounter that comes up will let you buy an item. Usually it does, but sometimes weird stuff happens in stores in Arkham.

What sucks is that encounters are also how you get clues, which are needed to make good things happen in the story. So, if you’re the person who’s really good at doing stuff with clues, you can go to the neighborhoods where they’re more plentiful, but you can’t get encounters more often than anyone else. So progress on clue acquisition is capped at a pretty low rate about which you can’t do much, which feels frustrating.

It’s also, like most other narrative games in my experience, not particularly fussed about balance. You can choose characters to make things easier or harder on yourself, and some of the curveballs you’ll be randomly thrown are much less forgiving than others. I’m good with that—if you’re not expecting fairness, but are looking for interesting and dramatic events, it’s perfect. Increases the variance pleasantly. But I do think Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Files are pulp dressed in horror, rather than horror, so picking up a submachine gun and gunning down scary monsters is more likely than being creeped out by incomprehensible horrors.

[biffpow]

Ok, they’ve changed the mechanics about some things, but it doesn’t sound as though they’ve made it more streamlined. I think what our issue came down to was that we wanted to be able to control what our characters were doing rather than be reactive to stuff that was randomly happening to them and often keeping them from doing something that seemed very basic (like buying an item). It doesn’t sound like that has changed.

I don’t think we minded the idea of “unbalanced” because, AIR, there were things you could to do to offset that (like becoming the Sheriff, for example). I think we minded the seemingly constant and random interfering in what you were trying to do with your character.

Also, I meant to say congrats on your vaccination! I got my first on Thursday and was overjoyed.

[rinelk]

Combat’s typically just a roll, so resolution is pretty quick, and the new system is a bit clearer and simpler. It also feels to me like enemy health is effectively lower than it used to be, so, where I often felt trapped in AH2, struggling turn after turn, in AH3 enemies are usually killed in a single attack. That might be more a factor of my tendency to avoid combat with non-combat-focused characters, though. But I’m often rolling six dice, looking for 5s or 6s and needing only one or two, and able to spend clues or focus tokens to get rerolls or use items for other helpful effects.

So, to me, it feels streamlined, both because of the system and because, with enemies dying faster, there’s less inter-turn bookkeeping. Might be worth trying out for you, though I doubt I’d want to buy it without trying it first.

[OhBollox]

This is the Vietnam Game You're Looking For, Part 1 - Inside GMT blog

I just want to play the campaign again, even if it does take eighty hours. Is that too much to ask?

[Mirefox]

That’s nothing. I’d do that in a night with my buddies.

[Snotty128]

I’ve had the chance to play Thomas Spitzers coal trilogy. The series deals chronologically with the development of the coal industry in Germany, starting with small scale mining, the transport of coal on the Ruhr, and finally the consolidation of coal fields.

The first game, Haspelknecht (or Shaft Master, according to my often juvenile sense of humour) is somewhat of a mid weight euro game with little player interaction. The winning player got there by simply building buildings and not mining any coal. Opinions were mixed, but most agreed they’d probably play it again.

The second game covers the transport of coal on the Ruhr, and is thusly called “The Ruhr”. No one had a good time with this one. The tech tree was quite limited, and a series of random events in the mid game further restricted our options, until we all ended up basically doing the same thing. This game was also won by building buildings, and not necessarily transporting coal.

Finally we had Kohl and Kolonie, which covers large scale mining across Germany. Kohl had lots of interesting mechanical ideas, allowed us to pursue divergent strategies, and was a stand out in the series because it was not won by the player building buildings, instead it was won by the player building lots of trains. There were a number of core mechanics on Kohl that didn’t see any play, namely the disasters and the coal trust, as these mechanics were entirely neutered by careful play. An interesting game we’d play again, though it’s a shame that there is little incentive to invite disaster when it’s so easy to play around.

[OhBollox]

The first game, Haspelknecht (or Shaft Master,

/sniggers forever

[OhBollox]

Playing games, started yesterday, and playing for most of today.

Just pouring cards over my head. Handfuls of dice splashing into my face.

[OhBollox]

Advancing Game Proposals – Zenobia Award

[OhBollox]

Tim (dog_blink)

[OhBollox]

Seeing as 3rd edition is coming out.

In the Shadow of Protest – Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game – Turn Order

Understanding Bloc by Bloc - A Game about Protests & Police Brutality

[OhBollox]

Now to look at it for a few months until everyone’s vaccinated.

[Mirefox]

One year of being relatively anti-social and I am suddenly out of the loop. I didn’t even know Oath was a thing and it looks great. I feel like my tabletop knowledge is stuck in 2019 still…

[whovian223]

I have bought so many games during this pandemic. It’s a good thing we have money.

Ostensibly to play with my wife but some of them don’t play well with 2 players. I think I am kind of in a collector’s mindset, along with preparing for post-COVID life.

[Natus]

You lucky lucky gamer. Waiting impatiently for mine.

[Mirefox]

Sometimes it is nice to dust off your old games and see how they compare to what is considered hot these days. My family has been enjoying deck builders lately, so we played both Puzzle Strike and Quarriors this weekend. Both games are excellent and still stack up against any pure deck builder. Puzzle Strike also did the whole “use deck building to change the board state” thing years before more recent games started doing it, but the game seems to be more or less forgotten at this point. Quarriors isn’t as good as the collectible Dice Masters follow up, but it is at least a compete game rather than a collectible game with glaring gaps in a collection. I would love to see the design come full circle with a superhero-themed Quarriors, but that is undoubtedly a pipe dream.

[JammaTal]

i miss the Quarriors app. we need a Quarriors 2.0 app relaunch.

[Mirefox]

Indeed.

[OhBollox]

I’ve been able to get some Oath played. Still in the early stages, but it’s quite good. 3P only so far (thank you vaccines) but that’s been a comfortable number to teach and fit the game in under three hours. Briefly, the main tension of the game is between the Chancellor, at the head of an empire, and the Exiles, who are outsiders trying to become insiders, if not take control outright. Exiles can become Citizens by nefarious or honest means, more or less allies of the Chancellor, with a shared force pool. There are multiple ways to win for all involved. Everyone is stuck with a fairly restrictive list of actions, and the way to grow more powerful is find cards which grant you advantages, buffs, and outright new powers.

Chancellor (that’s-a me) does a little Searching, a little Traveling, a short Campaign against bandits to bring another site under his rule (my win condition being most sites under my rule). They bravely roll one shield.

I’d explain battling here but I think you know five swords beats one shield. I place a warband on the site, Search again, and place Nomad Horse Archers at this site, a battle plan offering me a one-time advantage of plus or minus three attack dice in battle. Very secure.

White starts in the Provinces, the middle region between the Chancellor’s Cradle and Black’s Hinterlands. He travels to another site, The Tribunal, which allows him to make binding deals with anyone. No-one, on their first turn, wants to make a deal. He can’t afford the Relic at that site either, a whopping three Favour, when he has one. He Searches, brings out Welcoming Party for the one Favour it will bring him, and moves on to the next site.

Another site, another Relic he can’t afford. I can testify his face resembled his pawn at this point, a pale annoyed blur, like a man’s thigh that’s been punched.

Black makes a series of rapid moves I will call ‘annoying’ for lack of a better term. He leaves the Hinterlands and joins White. He then targets the site, campaigns and wins versus the bandits, establishes rule, and recovers the Relic there, sacrificing a Secret to do so.

Supply is your action points, essentially, and he immediately buries the Map back in the Relic deck to restore four points, and plays Great Herd, and Martial Culture. Great Herd exchanges places with any other Nomad card, so Black takes Horse Archers. From my fucking site. He then battles White, and with the help of Horse Archers, wins easily.

He becomes a Citizen off the back of this victory. I now have to deal with a fox in the henhouse. He trades his warbands for ours and plans his next turn. I hate him.

I can’t afford to Exile him, because it costs me too much Favour. Although his victory has helped me rule more sites, it’s also given him access to the Successor victory condition now he is a Citizen: gain more relics and banners. This aggression will not stand. I travel and explore the Hinterlands.

I sacrifice a Secret to grab the Relic there, and scoop up the Obsidian Cage, allowing me to hold defeated warbands hostage. I also Search and turn up Faithful Friend for more Supply, allowing me to leave.

I move to the Tribunal, and make a deal with White in order to try and redress the balance. A Relic from the Imperial Reliquary, for general good relations and a black eye for Black? White agrees too quickly. He gets the Cursed Cauldron, letting him transform killed warbands into his own warbands. That could be a problem.

White searches, and pulls a Vision, another kind of win condition, and…does not reveal it?

He then travels back into the Hinterlands, exploring the only unexplored site, the Ancient City.

And grabs another Relic.

He peeks at the World deck, and does so every turn, tapping the card and saying “Pig.” every time. Hate this game, and hate him.

Black escapes back to the Hinterland, and Searches, digging up a Keep.

That’s two extra defence dice as long as he’s there. Super. Didn’t want to fight him anyway.

The rest of the game was an undignified scuffle for relics, as White thought the best thing to do was to rob me, revealing the Conspiracy, a false vision which allows a player to steal from another, and Black promptly picked on White to steal another, different relic, which meant when it was time to roll the game-ending die, I rolled a win. Except I was deposed by my Successor, Black, who was sitting in his Keep with three Relics and the Banner of the Darkest Secret. Such unholy power wot man should not have, etc.

A vaguely disappointing performance from me, and next game Black gets to be Chancellor, and I will be a Citizen (maybe) or an Exile (probably). Still getting to grips with the intricacies, but it’s an amazing game, which can be absolutely brutal.