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20 Jul 2018 00:37 #277946 by hotseatgames
The Baldur's Gate version runs more smoothly, but doesn't have that "heart."

Tonight I got my first play in of Deathwatch Overkill. I let my friend take the Deathwatch, while I ran the Genestealer Cult. As is expected in mission 1, he completely decimated me. I wounded a single marine, 1 time. His next turn, he healed immediately.

The game is cool and is just "lean" in all the right ways.
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20 Jul 2018 01:30 #277947 by san il defanso

Shellhead wrote:

Erik Twice wrote: It is undeniable, though, that the game has clear development issues. There's just way too much jank that adds little to the decision space of the game. For example, you can obtain followers. Which are just like one-use items except bought in a different way. And you have spells which are just like permanent items (note the distiction) except spells can be upgraded so you can play a different action when you tap the card. Oh, and there are epic spells too. Don't ask me what they do, I never played them.

You also have a flurry of resources. You have books and scrolls, both mana and money. You also have hidden scoring and assymetrical player powers. It is one of those games were you have to check every turn to see what all the cards do and where you have to get up and check all the crap on your opponent's table and then check the guide to see what scores for the end game and what doesn't. It feels like playing a game with half a dozen expansions throw in, which is not a positive. I'm also unsure that the "cool stuff" is actually what makes you win the game, you often collect garbage just to get points because it's not worth spending actions using them.

The theming is ok. I like that the game is not another medieval merchant euro but this kind of anime designs where you make characters "cool" by giving them lots of accessories and clothing is not great. Would prefer a more consistent theme or message from the game's setting. (Tragedy Looper is a much more concious use of anime tropes, for example)

Still, I'm coming across as being very negative. I would like to try again and see how it goes.


I think these are valid concerns. Argent doesn't interest me because it looks a big mess of information overload on the table, due to redundant jank. And the particular style of manga artwork on the cards is busy and contributes to the information overload.


Argent is a lot of things (and it's become a favorite of mine) but one thing it is not is disciplined. It's definitely an enormous game splat on the table, and you have to be okay with that if you are ever going to get into it.

I think that every corner of the design has purpose one some level, but not everything is vital in every game. The nature of the Consortium is such that the need for different kinds of resources in different sessions is really varied. I think that's part of the game's charm, but there are definitely situations where there is a sort of sad trombone when you've invested really heavily in, say, gold, and it turns out it doesn't matter.

I've never had the issue of someone dominating turn order to that level, or at least I've never had people who dominate it RIGHT AWAY. Turn order is kind of always a design bugaboo with worker placement though, and I haven't yet found a game that deals with it really well. My favorite method is the one favored by Argent and Agricola, of letting players take turn order as an action. But even that is imperfect with situations you stated.

It's definitely my favorite strategy game of about the last five years or so, but it took a couple sessions before it got there. There is so much info and variability up front that my admiration for the design had to wait about 3-4 games.

Then again, I am pretty forgiving to big ambitious games that are kind of a mess. (I like Zimby Mojo and Shadows of Malice too.) Argent definitely falls in that category.
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20 Jul 2018 06:33 #277949 by Erik Twice
Hoped you would chime in San Il Defanso :)

san il defanso wrote:
Argent is a lot of things (and it's become a favorite of mine) but one thing it is not is disciplined. It's definitely an enormous game splat on the table, and you have to be okay with that if you are ever going to get into it.

Yeah, for me it's not much of an issue on a personal level, more of a design one. It just seems the game could have been streamlined a bit to no loss.

I've never had the issue of someone dominating turn order to that level, or at least I've never had people who dominate it RIGHT AWAY. Turn order is kind of always a design bugaboo with worker placement though, and I haven't yet found a game that deals with it really well. My favorite method is the one favored by Argent and Agricola, of letting players take turn order as an action. But even that is imperfect with situations you stated.

The guys I've played it with have a few games under their belt so they probably knew how to.

I think the issue is not so much turn order as it is the way the turn ends. There's not really a big benefit to going first, because there's value in being reactive and some actions (Ghosting, Red Wizards) only work if you go after your opponent. But there's a lot of power in being able to control when the round ends. In most worker placement games, you might not get the actions you want because of turn order, but you are assured the same number of actions. Here you don't, because the round end is player-controlled.

I was reminded of March of the Ants which is a game that works fantastically well with 3 but becomes wonky with 4 because the turn ends when two players pass.

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20 Jul 2018 08:47 - 20 Jul 2018 08:48 #277951 by charlest
I've been playing a lot of Kill Team, as discussed in the appropriate thread. But I also wanted to mention a recent play of Who Goes There?.

This is the other Thing game and it's substantially different. This one feels more like a full-blown survival coop a la Dead of Winter. You're struggling against the elements, rabid dogs, and The Thing while trying to eat and not get infected.

I love the way that taking risks and failing to properly prepare (eating or sleeping alone) means you draw from the vulnerability deck. The vulnerability deck has one card which infects you. No one starts infected or with any vulnerability cards.

The game thus, has a strong arc of no suspicion which scales all the way up to full blown paranoia if the deck runs dry. An imitation can infect other players in a couple of key moments - when trading items or bunking together. This is fantastic as it places risk and suspicion around mechanisms in the game that are needed in order to avoid other bad shit happening.

Trading happens somewhat frequently because the game has a huge crafting element. I love this so much, especially in combination with its XP and character development.

You gain experience by going outside and having encounters, which are risky yet necessary to get these oddly abstracted helicopter points needed for the end game. You can then spend XP to unlock certain abilities, an asymmetrical action die, and more stamina and equipment slots. It's all absolutely gnarly.

It's a long game, going about 2 hours for three players and probably 3 hours for four. It's less a social deduction game and more a survival, as I said.

Up until the end game this was shaping up to be one of my favorites in the genre, it was just so damn interesting and had everything I want out of a game like this, but the end game has issues.

So you're collecting helicopter points the entire game - which works because it gives you direction and something to keep in mind as an objective while trying to also survive - and you end up needing 6 points per human character. Any infected are taken out of this total threshold.

So in a three player game, if we end with 1 infected we need 12 helicopter points.

The captain (determined purely by character selection) chooses who boards the chopper. You can't vote it down, although due to incentives it makes room for a mechanism where the captain can choose to step down and pass the captainship to another player if everyone dislikes their selection. This is odd because a player can wreck the game if they're captain and don't care if everyone loses, this can only really happen if the captain is the one infected and he's a dick, but it's a weird possibility.

So the captain chooses people and then we reveal. Any humans on board count their discovered helicopter points throghout the game towards the total, any left behind do not. Any infected on board count their helicopter points against the total.

Lastly, everyone rolls a 6-sider and adds this to their personal total.

It's a bit confusing for what it is, but it does work from an incentive structure. The good guys want good guys on and the infected want infected on.

The trick is that for the infected to win, they need to have at least one of them make it on the chopper and they also need at least one human aboard.

Ok, that fixes issues around infected tanking the game or outright attacking people, I can dig it.

The huge problem is that the captain needs to determine who boards the chopper with possibly 0 information. There is no incentive for the infected players to sabotage during the game, instead they're trying to blend in (which...kind of makes sense). So all you can go on is body language and trying to read people.

Worse yet, someone can get infected in maybe the last round so it doesn't matter if you read them well the entire game.

This means the helicopter selection is either based purely on the number of vulnerable cards a player has, or on body language/reading a person, and it feels like a complete random crapshoot. You choose wrong and it can cost you the game.

I don't know entirely how to fix this problem as you don't want to make discovering the infected player(s) too easy. Then you can just exclude them from the chopper and they can't win the game in any way. I think it is fixable, and I'm particularly vested in finding a way for this game to work because the rest of it is so damn good.

As is, it feels like a game you simlpy play for the experience and dig into from a narrative perspective, as you can't be entirely invested in that conclusion.

With that being said, this is based on one 3 player game. I'm committed to at least two more plays with rules as is before my review. The next two should be four player count games.
Last edit: 20 Jul 2018 08:48 by charlest.
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20 Jul 2018 09:17 #277952 by Legomancer
Argent is one of those games I like, but I understand why others don't. I briefly had the base set and could not sell my main group on it, as even just the base feels like we're playing with several expansions that don't all work great together. The game needed another round of development and a big red pen.

It's overwhelming at first, even to seasoned gamers and it's very easy to feel that there isn't enough there to make it worth getting over that hump.

And frankly, even though I like it and don't mind playing it, I can't say it's "essential". I think you can easily get by without it.
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20 Jul 2018 09:18 - 20 Jul 2018 09:20 #277953 by Black Barney
Charlest, is there anyway for infected to know who else is infected?

Doesn’t sound like a great game cuz of the traitor mechanics, which I’ve grown sick of. Everything else sounds really cool.

It would be neat if these games had a suicide mechanic for newly infected to « do the right thing » before they turn completely. Maybe st players would opt to not do that since they want to keep playing but would be a fun thematic thing
Last edit: 20 Jul 2018 09:20 by Black Barney.

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20 Jul 2018 09:58 #277955 by hotseatgames
It sounds quite a bit heavier than Infection at Outpost 31.

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20 Jul 2018 10:01 - 20 Jul 2018 10:03 #277956 by charlest

Black Barney wrote: Charlest, is there anyway for infected to know who else is infected?

Doesn’t sound like a great game cuz of the traitor mechanics, which I’ve grown sick of. Everything else sounds really cool.

It would be neat if these games had a suicide mechanic for newly infected to « do the right thing » before they turn completely. Maybe st players would opt to not do that since they want to keep playing but would be a fun thematic thing


You should know the other infected because you only become infected from another player. Now, you may not know if that player has infected someone else in a larger game, but since you need a human on the chopper at the end those who are infected need to be conservative. Infecting someone else is a conscious decision and you can choose not to if they bunk with you or trade with you.

I really dig the traitor mechanism throughout the game, as this has a huge risk/reward element coupled with paranoia. If I want to build the flamethrower or a coat and you have the supplies needed but you also have 4 of the 12 vulnerability cards, do I trade with you and risk being infected?

The arguments and discussions ("We should all just bunk alone and keep to ourselves to minimize the risk of it spreading") do feel similar to the film - this is based on the original short story but I haven't read that.



Edit - it is heavier for sure Mark. It's not what we'd call a heavy game, more ilke a medium one, but it's not the light sort of social deduction game that Outpost 31 is.

There's an action point system, you can search multiple decks, different effects depending on if you're inside or outside, an event every turn, different decks for different stages of the game outside, asymmetrical characters with personal decks and upgrades, and an end game that requires a bit of thought to get your head around.
Last edit: 20 Jul 2018 10:03 by charlest.
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20 Jul 2018 10:11 #277958 by Shellhead
Who Goes There? is a great story. The original version of The Thing was an incompetent interpretation of the story, but John Carpenter got it right.

Read it here:

www.goldenageofscifi.info/ebook/Who_Goes_There.pdf
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20 Jul 2018 11:34 #277959 by Brewmiester
You can also read or listen to a version from the aliens point of view by Peter Watts

The Things
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20 Jul 2018 14:34 #277984 by Shellhead
Who Goes There? sounds like a game that I definitely want to play. Unfortunately it was a kickstarter, and the only copies I found for sale was an expensive deluxe edition at Miniature Market.

When I was googling for a images of the game components, I found this delightful surprise:

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20 Jul 2018 14:42 #277987 by charlest
Miniature Market has the regular edition for $60 as well (which is what I'm playing with). I may eventually buy the character expansions, will have to suss out the end game a bit more.

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20 Jul 2018 16:44 #278000 by Michael Barnes
Another mad week of gaming:

King of Tokyo x3
Ethnos x1 (first full 6p game- 75 minutes!)
Azul x2
Quest for El Dorado x2
Missile Command
Centipede x5 (not sure why)
Mechs vs. Minions x2
Tutankhamen x1
Las Vegas x2
Power Grid (France map) x1
Downforce x1
The Hobbit x1
Spookies x1
Sword & Sorcery x2 (solo)
Shadespire x2
Animals on Board x1

Kids are wearing me out.
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20 Jul 2018 17:19 #278001 by repoman
I was able to join The True Believers in the Secret Lair for F:AT Thursday for the first time in a long time. I suppose with our new upscale image the game night might need to change it's name to T.W.A.T. (There Will Be Ameri-Trash) Having typed that I picture all the lights in Superfly's house dimming to red emergency lighting and a klaxon sounding in order that he can chime in on it.

Anyway, we played Eldritch Horror. Surprisingly, considering my complete hatred for all things Cthulu, I thought it was pretty fun. Of course much of that probably goes to the amount of whiskey consumed and the fact that Uba and Josh took care of all the dull mechanical shit such as generating spawns and clues and gates and blah blah blah. Which left me to just travel the globe with my attractive Chinese martial artist in the red silk dress. She was kicking ass and taking names. Collecting artifacts and using her lucky rabbit's foot to great effect. We were doing pretty well, I think, when I had to bail after a couple hours due to needing to get up for work early. The rest continued on after I left but I've no idea if they won or not. Doesn't really matter because it was a good time.

Man is this game less painful than Arkham Horror. The narrative is also a bit more cohesive which is fun and the status cards are pretty cool in the way they are triggered and flipped. Josh has mentioned on several occasions that he thinks the game would have been great if they went with Pulp Adventure for a theme/setting instead of the tired Mythos and I agree with him one hundred percent.

I'm not going to rush right out and get a copy of it but I'd be happy to play it again.

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20 Jul 2018 17:19 #278002 by Black Barney
Treasure Hunt with Dora (snakes and ladders) x1 - Emily crushed me and I was on the top row when she was not even 25% up the map yet

Funkelschatz x1 - I won 34-24 and Emily cried

Should have stuck with Disney Infinity or swimming in the lake

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