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Fun nerdy dice,card and board games Yes, a non-videogame thread

#41 User is offline   D'rek 

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Posted 19 September 2012 - 03:40 PM

View PostTapper, on 18 September 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

View PostMorgoth, on 18 September 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

View PostTapper, on 17 September 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

Is Eclipse like Twilight Imperium, or do I have my space war 4X board games mixed up?


Hm, the board is made up of similar pieces, but are placed as players explore outwards from their starting planet, rather than set before the start of the game proper. Additionally, the game is quicker and less complicated than TI.

They fill the same niche, so to speak, amd have several visual similarities. However, my experience is that they play very differently.

Actually, I read some boardgamegeek on it and the recommendations here and there were enough: I picked it up yesterday. Manual in Finnish, Czech, Polish and German :p. Hurray for picking up rule nuances, but at the least the board is in English and the signs are very intuitive. Oh well, I'm dating a Polish girl, she'll have a game tailored for her to lawyer on :p.


I'm sure you can get the manual online in other languages, right? And the game pieces are full of symbols and stuff so you should be able to match up the manual to symbol pieces without translating any other text.

View Postworrywort, on 14 September 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:

I kinda love it when D'rek unleashes her nerd wrath, as I knew she would here. Sorry innocent bystanders, but someone's gotta be the kindling.
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#42 User is offline   Tapper 

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Posted 19 September 2012 - 10:12 PM

View PostD, on 19 September 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

View PostTapper, on 18 September 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

View PostMorgoth, on 18 September 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

View PostTapper, on 17 September 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

Is Eclipse like Twilight Imperium, or do I have my space war 4X board games mixed up?


Hm, the board is made up of similar pieces, but are placed as players explore outwards from their starting planet, rather than set before the start of the game proper. Additionally, the game is quicker and less complicated than TI.

They fill the same niche, so to speak, amd have several visual similarities. However, my experience is that they play very differently.

Actually, I read some boardgamegeek on it and the recommendations here and there were enough: I picked it up yesterday. Manual in Finnish, Czech, Polish and German :p. Hurray for picking up rule nuances, but at the least the board is in English and the signs are very intuitive. Oh well, I'm dating a Polish girl, she'll have a game tailored for her to lawyer on :p.


I'm sure you can get the manual online in other languages, right? And the game pieces are full of symbols and stuff so you should be able to match up the manual to symbol pieces without translating any other text.

I have downloaded an english PDF. It is more that my regular play group consists of very lazy people who won't read it if I send it to them by mail (or will then become so alarmed at me having prepped where they haven't that they'd rather play something else... childish).
Ship design, dice et cetera are all self explanatory. The alien races are quite easily coded once you grasp the little figurines (although I had some trouble with the Draco ones, they become clear in the manual). The trick comes with Ambassadors and when you get to grab the influence disks and how and when you're refreshing tech et cetera isn't quite clear without a good through-read. A non-english manual or an english manual which is not at hand, printed out and with a glossary (which the Eclipse one lacks) is a bit of a deterrent. How I ever got them to play Axis and Allies, I still don't know :p
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#43 User is offline   Tapper 

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Posted 19 September 2012 - 10:13 PM

View PostMorgoth, on 18 September 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Hah, well if I finally manage to stagger into the Netherlands we'll have to play a round.

Challenge accepted. And our roads are quite good as long as you don't wear stiletto heels, so staggering only depends on the alcohol promillage in the blood.
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#44 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 20 September 2012 - 06:39 AM

View PostTapper, on 19 September 2012 - 10:13 PM, said:

View PostMorgoth, on 18 September 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Hah, well if I finally manage to stagger into the Netherlands we'll have to play a round.

Challenge accepted. And our roads are quite good as long as you don't wear stiletto heels, so staggering only depends on the alcohol promillage in the blood.


Challenge acccepted
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#45 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 06:49 AM

Anyways. I Aquired a copy of Small World for a ridiculously low sum at the local bookstore. I figured it would be a good war game for my brother's visite (the youngest of the brood. He's 15). Increadly easy set of rules, quite amusing gameplay. All in all a good family war game. Not something I would take out for a fully fledged boardgame night, but good for a quick battle.
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#46 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 08:20 AM

Has anyone here played Fluxx? It's a card game with a variety of card types that each player can potentially have in their hand, and when played have a variety of effects. The ones that give the game its name are Rules cards, which actually change the rules of the game as you play, and Goals cards, which change the conditions under which a player can win. There's other types that allow one to interact with other players' hands and such.

There are also, besides the main game, thoroughly-crafted theme packs: Zombie Fluxx includes both zombie cards and weapons -- keep in mind this game is nothing like MTG or anything in that genre -- wherein it's possible that the generally malignant zombie cards themselves "win" and so everybody playing loses. I have Eco Fluxx, which has environmental themes and includes compatible card combos for winning but also natural disasters that harm players. There are Back to the Future and MP's Holy Grail sets that require knowledge of the films to win.

It's hard to describe the gameplay without doing it yourself, but basically each player starts with a hand, and the Rules start as Draw One card Play One card with no set Goal yet. It runs 2-5 players, but I'd say 4 or 5 is ideal.

http://www.looneylabs.com/games/fluxx
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#47 User is offline   Tapper 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 08:46 AM

Fluxx sounds pretty awesome.

EDIT: acquired Dominion: prosperity. It's a high impact set, without question. Not sold on the Trade Route mechanic with tokens, but who am I to complain about complicated additions to a simple basic game?*

* blatant mafia reference

This post has been edited by Tapper: 01 October 2012 - 08:52 AM

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#48 User is offline   Obdigore 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 09:06 AM

View PostTapper, on 01 October 2012 - 08:46 AM, said:

Fluxx sounds pretty awesome.

EDIT: acquired Dominion: prosperity. It's a high impact set, without question. Not sold on the Trade Route mechanic with tokens, but who am I to complain about complicated additions to a simple basic game?*

* blatant mafia reference


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#49 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 01:05 PM

View PostTapper, on 01 October 2012 - 08:46 AM, said:

Fluxx sounds pretty awesome.

EDIT: acquired Dominion: prosperity. It's a high impact set, without question. Not sold on the Trade Route mechanic with tokens, but who am I to complain about complicated additions to a simple basic game?*

* blatant mafia reference


Sarah and I play way too much Dominion. Perhaps Prosperity might be a good new expansion.
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#50 User is offline   Gust Hubb 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 02:09 PM

View Postworrywort, on 01 October 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

Has anyone here played Fluxx? It's a card game with a variety of card types that each player can potentially have in their hand, and when played have a variety of effects. The ones that give the game its name are Rules cards, which actually change the rules of the game as you play, and Goals cards, which change the conditions under which a player can win. There's other types that allow one to interact with other players' hands and such.

There are also, besides the main game, thoroughly-crafted theme packs: Zombie Fluxx includes both zombie cards and weapons -- keep in mind this game is nothing like MTG or anything in that genre -- wherein it's possible that the generally malignant zombie cards themselves "win" and so everybody playing loses. I have Eco Fluxx, which has environmental themes and includes compatible card combos for winning but also natural disasters that harm players. There are Back to the Future and MP's Holy Grail sets that require knowledge of the films to win.

It's hard to describe the gameplay without doing it yourself, but basically each player starts with a hand, and the Rules start as Draw One card Play One card with no set Goal yet. It runs 2-5 players, but I'd say 4 or 5 is ideal.

http://www.looneylabs.com/games/fluxx


Yeah, was given fluxx as a gift about a year back. Still not sure how I feel about the game. Plus, no one wants to play it with me. It's definitely worth trying given how different it is.
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#51 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

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Posted 01 October 2012 - 06:32 PM

View PostMorgoth, on 01 October 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

Anyways. I Aquired a copy of Small World for a ridiculously low sum at the local bookstore. I figured it would be a good war game for my brother's visite (the youngest of the brood. He's 15). Increadly easy set of rules, quite amusing gameplay. All in all a good family war game. Not something I would take out for a fully fledged boardgame night, but good for a quick battle.


I got introduced to Small World recently and I really enjoyed it. It felt to me like you got a lot of the same thrills you'd get from a game of Risk, but in a much better balanced and coherent format. I'm looking to buy a copy.

My house's boardgame night has become a regular thing over the last year or so. We've got a loose but large rota of games that consists of:

Railroad Tycoon - Pretty long and involved, but I do enjoy this. Played on possibly the biggest board for any board game I've every played. I tend to mess around and try and get the Western Link though, which never quite seems to pay off.
Priests of Ra - I really enjoy this game because of the value estimation elements involved. It feels like with enough study you could come up with a concrete strategy for it, but even just played casually it leads to a lot of interesting strategy and discussion in its own right. You're bidding on gaining sets of tiles to score points, but it's not always clear how much each tile is worth.
Ticket to Ride - Pretty light and fluffy like Morgoth says, but we need the change of pace sometimes. We found a random destination generator online that's quite useful for adding a bit of variety (otherwise you start to get to know the destinations a bit too well).
Agricola - Very entertaining game where you always feel like with one more turn you could do it all. Does take a few plays to get used to the general strategy though. It's one of those games with a bewildering array of resources that you have to somehow translate into points.
Caylus - Similar sort of game to Agricola (through various means translate resources into points), but has some entertaining "screw each other over" sorts of mechanics. Perhaps runs slightly too long sometimes, but I really like the game as a whole. Have had some very close finishes.
Settlers of Catan - Obviously a classic. We've got various expansions lying around too that we went through a phase of trying out. It's started to get left out more now though, I think we've played it enough to have seen most of the different permutations of game that can get thrown up.
Dominion - We've got the Intrigue expansion, which as Tapper mentioned up thread adds a lot of versatility to the game. Always a favourite standby when we've got an awkward number of people. Also not an easy game to get bored of, so it gets a lot of play time.
Torres - We've been playing this quite a bit recently. Interesting abstract strategy game, although occasionally suffers from everyone following the same strategy. Difficult game to explain in a few words, but the gist is that you're building towers and trying to get your men to the top of them. Problem is, that's what everyone else is trying to do as well.
Puerto Rico - another classic of the genre. I'm not such a huge fan of it myself, but the mechanics are interesting and you usually get a fun evening out of it.
Citadels - Card game where you pass cards around. There's a strong strategic element and a lot of trying to outthink your opponents. Way back in the depths of time I tried running a Mafia game using the core gameplay mechanic...didn't really work, but might be ripe for further experiementation.

Then there are few that have fallen out of the rotation due to various people not enjoying them (tragically, in my view):

Robo Rally - If you've got a group with reasonable attention spans, this can be great. You program robots to move around a course to try and reach various checkpoints. And you get to shoot at each other while you're doing it! The problem is that if one player gets out into the lead it can just be tedious for everyone else. I think it works better with a small number of players controlling two robots each - less chance of someone being stuck with no hope.
Junta: Viva El Presidente - This is a pretty lightweight game, but I enjoy the interactions it involves. The Presidente mechanic (in which the Presidente gets to deal out the cards to the other players in any way he likes in order to buy people's support) is fantastic and leads to a lot of fun gameplay. The major complaint against it is that some players feel like it is too difficult to assert any control over the game and as a result it feels a bit random. I disagree though.
Through The Ages - A proper heaviweight game. Mainly gets ruled out for being too long, but I've had several fun afternoons playing this one. Closest game I've played to Civilization in a box (although I've seen other attempts at the same thing that seemed even more
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#52 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 02 October 2012 - 07:42 AM

Roborally is a lot of fun. Sadly, the people I've played it with are all engineers, and typically crush me in the whole planning aspect of the game.

Got another game of Eclipse in a few days ago (I will buy it at some point but it's sooo expensive). It's still brilliant. Some people argue that plasma missiles are overpowered, but I disagree. They're excellent if you're doing poorly, but if you're in the lead there are much better weapon options. Or to say it differently, Plasma missilies are not ideal if you plan to use your fleet to conquer systems, but can be excellent for defence and hit and run attacks.

There's a new expansion coming soon too, which adds a few more races, more technologies and so on.
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#53 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

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Posted 02 October 2012 - 05:30 PM

One of my friends tells me that Robo Rally was the pride and joy of the developer who made it, but while he was trying to get it published he went and did a quick little project just for fun. He called it Magic: The Gathering...

ST
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#54 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 03 October 2012 - 08:58 AM

Well I crushed my brother and Sarah in two games of Small World yesterday evening. Pillaging Skeletons, followed by Stout Ratmen and the final nail set by Swamp Halflings. It was glorious :p

Small World holds a surprising amount of depth considering how easy the rules are. And the artwork adds quite a bit of humour to the whole thing.
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#55 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 03 October 2012 - 11:38 AM

View Postworrywort, on 01 October 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

Has anyone here played Fluxx? It's a card game with a variety of card types that each player can potentially have in their hand, and when played have a variety of effects. The ones that give the game its name are Rules cards, which actually change the rules of the game as you play, and Goals cards, which change the conditions under which a player can win. There's other types that allow one to interact with other players' hands and such.

There are also, besides the main game, thoroughly-crafted theme packs: Zombie Fluxx includes both zombie cards and weapons -- keep in mind this game is nothing like MTG or anything in that genre -- wherein it's possible that the generally malignant zombie cards themselves "win" and so everybody playing loses. I have Eco Fluxx, which has environmental themes and includes compatible card combos for winning but also natural disasters that harm players. There are Back to the Future and MP's Holy Grail sets that require knowledge of the films to win.

It's hard to describe the gameplay without doing it yourself, but basically each player starts with a hand, and the Rules start as Draw One card Play One card with no set Goal yet. It runs 2-5 players, but I'd say 4 or 5 is ideal.

http://www.looneylabs.com/games/fluxx


I am going to get someone this for Christmas. One lucky family member. Then play it :p
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#56 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

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Posted 03 October 2012 - 12:56 PM

View PostMorgoth, on 03 October 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Well I crushed my brother and Sarah in two games of Small World yesterday evening. Pillaging Skeletons, followed by Stout Ratmen and the final nail set by Swamp Halflings. It was glorious :p

Small World holds a surprising amount of depth considering how easy the rules are. And the artwork adds quite a bit of humour to the whole thing.


Nice! I remember doing a lot of damage with my Commando Sorcerors in one of the games I played, that was a fun one. Although someone managed to get Spirit Ghouls, which was rather overpowered.

Following your lead, I also bought myself a copy of Small World...enjoyed it enough when I played it before to try and get it into our house rotation.

ST
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#57 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 04 October 2012 - 10:37 AM

Hmm, I was thinking that if I can figure out this Vassal thing I might be able to run a game of Eclipse on here. Since there are no secrets as such (no cards on hand and so on) it should be fairly easy to run while also playing I think.

However, Eclipse would require short and quick rounds, and wont go well if people take too long (more than 24 hours, ideally less).

What do you guys think?
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#58 User is offline   Tapper 

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Posted 04 October 2012 - 11:14 AM

View PostMorgoth, on 04 October 2012 - 10:37 AM, said:

Hmm, I was thinking that if I can figure out this Vassal thing I might be able to run a game of Eclipse on here. Since there are no secrets as such (no cards on hand and so on) it should be fairly easy to run while also playing I think.

However, Eclipse would require short and quick rounds, and wont go well if people take too long (more than 24 hours, ideally less).

What do you guys think?

I'd play. I think length of the game is mostly going to be hampered by people not announcing their actions on time. I guess we could do a rule where we research/build/upgrade first, then handle discovery/colonization and fleet movement? Because the first three could be done in one post (take 1 action to research, grab X, if X is taken, Y), take 1 action to upgrade ship Cruiser with X tech, take 1 action to build orbital on system Y)?
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#59 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 04 October 2012 - 11:36 AM

Well, you might want to upgrade and so on based on what other players build/research/upgrade, but we might find a system for allowing players to use several actions if they are not likely to impact other players. I guess research and upgrade might be allowed together.

Not build though. Needing to build ships in order to pin an potential advance from another player is a choice that prevents you from taking that early research.

We do manage a lot of posts a day in a regular mafia game, and though it wont be as fast we should be able to manage something more efficient than Diplomacy I think.
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#60 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

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Posted 05 October 2012 - 11:25 AM

I've never played Eclipse, but you all seem to think it's good fun, so I'm game for trying it out if you decide to run one.

ST
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