What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Jackwraith wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: Now, I know I may be wrong about that, because if you ask anyone, Red is overpowered. Or Green. Just google it.

In my experience, though, most people will play a game once or twice, form an opinion, and if they detect a perceived problem, they will be first to run their gums. Like I’m doing now, except I’ve played it maybe 15 times. Probably a little more.

A common complaint is that there’s way too much shit going on, mechanically, like it’s Aquasphere,

Interestingly, I've seen (and experienced) both these reactions about Root. I felt like the Vagabond was OP; many other people say the Woodland Alliance is; a few others think the Eyrie is since so many card combos can push them way out of reach. Everyone says that you'll get things wrong the first 3 or 4 times you'll play, since there's so much going on. I think that's the very definition of a "hobbyist" game, since how many people other than those like us will be willing to play a game 4 times before getting it right?

Been playing a whole bunch of Root. My tier list probably looks something like this:

Tier 1: Mice, Birds
Tier 2: Trash panda, Otters
Tier 3: Cats
Tier Lizard: Lizards

By Cole's own admission in an interview Lizards are intentionally weak. He likes playing underdog factions.

My gang hadn’t even played with the expansion yet- we are getting so much mileage out of the base I’ve held it back.

My OP vote is for WA- especially if you have someone at the table that doesn’t quite get how utterly explosive they can be, and a WA player that smells weakness.

A good Eyrie player can run it too though...

One of the many great things about the game is that the balance isn’t hardwired in the rules...it comes from how the factions are played, who’s playing them, and the game state. It’s wild, volatile, and maybe even procedurally generated.

I've played games with and without the expansion since I don't own it, but know someone who does. Waiting on a pre-order for it. It's worth having even though the lizards aren't very good. They're still fun.

You nailed it though. Root is a political/social game. The strength of your faction is largely determined in how you interact with the other players. That's a major part of why I enjoy it so much.

At the club:

Still lots of Essen stuff floating around, still a very mixed bag.

Crime Hotel remains good, we had four this time which changes the dynamic. With more players there are fewer clues at the start and more being added each round so the pace at which information is being revealed is very different than with three. This actually makes it harder and you have to be more random and less calculating in your guesses, so I’m going to go out on a limb despite only half a dozen games and say that playing with three is a better experience than with four. I screwed the pooch twice, first of all by moving one of my investigators out of the correct room when I lost confidence in my initial guess and the second time was when one player had a hand full of first floor cards and the rest of us failed to pick up on the fact that no-one else could match a trick he started on that floor. Unsurprisingly he came from behind in that final round and maxed out with all three possible deduction spots at the same time. Despite getting the most wooden of spoons this time around I am looking forward to playing this again.

Then we broke out Holding On: the troubled life of Billy Kerr where the provocative idea of coaxing the life story out of a dying man and reuniting him with his family hangs like a flaccid pair of scrubs over the rigid coat-hanger of insipid gameplay.

The idea behind this game is great. You are nurses at a hospital caring for a patient who is at death’s door and inbetween dealing with his failing heart you get to know Billy and he gradually opens up to you with his life story, culminating in one very deep and dark confession that he wants to make. That at least is the intention.

Gameplay revolves around pulling event cards that will mainly give you the option of helping Billy to get better or ignoring his choking gasps while grilling him for information like he’s been tied to a chair in a Tarantino movie. Sometimes he will have a cardiac arrest which is short form for the game shafting you with a task that will either drain all your resources or take a big chunk off the timeclock for the game. Letting Billy slowly die seems a touch out of theme but it’s mechanically necessary in order to pick up “memory” cards that solve the scenario goal and Care Tokens which are the currency in the game.
There are a limited number of pawns that can be placed to take actions so in true fashion for co-op puzzles there are never quite enough to go around. You have the option of reusing them by spending either a Care Token or a Memory Card to hang an angry red hoop of stress over the pawn. When you collect too many hoops then you have to skip a turn having been sent home for the day as your constant freak-outs are a liability for the hospital’s insurance policy. This requires you to make some risky trade-offs knowing that stress is inevitable and that you might end up not having Care Tokens available for when mandatory Medical Care actions get drawn.

It’s also really a three player game as there are fudges required to accommodate two or four. In fact the four player game is much harder as the lead player is frozen out for the round so you have the extra consideration of trying not to load them up with Care Tokens just before they go on duty as shift manager.

The story element is played out across a series of scenarios. The aim of each scenario is to define a pattern of some sort in the mosaic tableau of Billy’s memories. This is a 5x6 grid of cards that you first of all need to draw out of a deck of blurry memories, where the artwork only clearly features Billy. Once you’ve done that you can start drawing cards from the clear memories deck that has full artwork, however you can only keep those cards if you have the matching blurry memory already in play. Your goal might be to find a number of clear memories that feature a particular character or the less scintillating task of getting one in each row, but in any case you are stuck in the same routine of mining one deck to increase your chances of success when you switch to mining the other.

As it’s unlikely that I’ll play this again I decided to read ahead to the end; I won’t spoil anything about the story itself and will spoiler tag my thoughts on the narrative part of the game so as not to interfere with anyone hoping to discover this on their own.



We finished off with Wildlands, what a great design but the terrible graphic choices make it a really messy muddle to play. It’s blatantly apparent even at a glance that colour coding the cards to the teams would have been a good idea and the game would be so much easier to play with standees than miniatures as it would enable you to be able to see the character symbols in position on the map instead of constantly cross checking and referring back to the cards. It also has that indecipherable blue/green palette choice that is a problem in Cryptid.

The minis are really confusing because they don’t even have the same poses as the art on the cards and with all four factions active at the same time the game was filled with WTF moments trying to figure out who was actually who on the board, slowing things down and resulting in silly mistakes being made. The owner is thinking of investing in some discs to stack under the characters as hit-points as it’s a really vital piece of information, but the bigger problem is in recognising which character is which in the first place. So much could have been better done and it’s a shame that the gameplay is so tight but then there is utter thoughtlessness in the look and functionality.

From a gameplay perspective though it is definitely a winner. Very straightforward goals and tough decisions in how you manage your cards. I went too heavy on interruptions to get an early kill and did a dumb thing by taking someone down to one HP and allowing someone else to finish them off, which is a really important consideration with more than two players. However, the poacher returned the favour to me on a later round as I was able to interrupt him during a fight to take a kill out of his hands, so things balanced out and we learnt lesson #2 which is not to start a fight in an area where a rival has a full hand of cards and is likely to step in on you.

I would play this again but until they do something to improve the awful graphic choices I think I’d prefer to stick to two player games where there is less to keep track of. Which means I would need to buy a copy to play at home, which I don’t think I want to do.

The thing with the Eyrie is that it can be knocked down by other players. Most notably, it's the only faction in the game that can lose victory points. This inherently makes them weaker than both Woodland Alliance and the Vagabond even if they have a higher "skill ceiling", so as to speak.

Erik Twice wrote: The thing with the Eyrie is that it can be knocked down by other players. Most notably, it's the only faction in the game that can lose victory points. This inherently makes them weaker than both Woodland Alliance and the Vagabond even if they have a higher "skill ceiling", so as to speak.

Every faction in Root is at least slightly reliant on not getting their sandcastle kicked. People can definitely try to avoid engaging with birds in the way they want, but no other faction gets the sheer action economy the birds do. In the same interview I referenced earlier Cole said the correct way to play them was to drop two cards whenever possible and not fear turmoil as long as it's on your terms. They're nuts when you stomp the gas and only go out on the late battles/builds. Plus because they rule on ties they're really good at getting to remote locations and smashing tokens for extra VPs.

By contrast the Vagabond really needs other players to craft for them, which can just...not happen. Often that's a choice on the part of the players, but sometimes crafting just isn't in the cards figuratively or literally. If teapots and coins come out early that's absolutely huge, but that's also deck dependent. Where Vagabond really excels is stealing wins with a massive VP leap at the end, often via murder.

I think we can all agree that mice are just insane. Eventually they WILL get board presence, it's just a matter of time. Splatting the rat is a group responsibility and if it doesn't happen early they're ridiculously strong.

The game is extremely meta knowledge dependent. If you don't like that for whatever reason (reasonable people disagree) I am seeing you will *hate* Root.

The designer just posted a rules revision nerfing the Vagabond and boosting the Lizards:

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2091456/towards...s-and-faction-parity

Different Vagabonds can occupy different places in the overpowered hierarchy as well. "Tinker" is pretty ridiculous, in that coping with it basically requires that other players cooperate to hide certain things in their hands forever. He can always fish the discard pile, and once he gets that third hammer, you're going to have a bad day. The forest is on his side at that point.

Vagabonds without the deck-fish ability have to cajole other people into crafting some things, or just flat get lucky. Neither is an assured path.

edit on preview:
Closing the repair loophole is very good idea. That was also an easy thing for Tinker to abuse for about five attacks per turn.
In the few games I've seen, the second issue never came up, but it also makes a lot of sense.

Lizards I'll just have to take his word for, because I haven't seen them in action yet.


(the Vassal module really needs two-sided item markers now, more than ever...)

Wow. WOW. I love these changes. Tinker was definitely the best Vagabond and this dings that and not much else. The Lizard changes though, especially the outcast buff, are going to speed them up dramatically. I can't wait to try these.

It's funny, he actually calls out Ranger as being the problem child there for Vagabond. Mainly for being forced into that strategy.

There is a really important followup question there, which is "does the Vagabond still turn hostile on defense"? I'm going to presume "yes", but there's some wiggle room about what's right to me.

Vysetron wrote: In the same interview I referenced earlier Cole said the correct way to play them was to drop two cards whenever possible and not fear turmoil as long as it's on your terms.

I listened to the same interview and I did exactly that and it worked out pretty well for me.

Edit

Not Sure wrote: There is a really important followup question there, which is "does the Vagabond still turn hostile on defense"? I'm going to presume "yes", but there's some wiggle room about what's right to me.

Last post in the thread (as of right now):

"The rules for how you shift into hostility would remain unchanged, so it is possible to shift a faction into hostility by attacking the Vagabond."

Got in a 3-player game of Theseus: The Dark Orbit. It was Aliens (me) vs Scientists and Greys. I upgraded all my dudes really quickly and was quickly reducing life points, such that both of them decided to eradicate my cards wherever they could. I think I only installed one, an Onslaught, for the entire game. I was tied with the Scientists when we hit the end, so it was one more round to determine a winner. I moved in to feast on both enemies one last time to drive the Scientists below my point total, but they had a camera set up that would have given them enough Data points to tie me again, except that the Greys moved into the one key sector that could block them from making it to the camera. I know that most people think this is best with two, but I think three-player games are still excellent. We might try a four-player tomorrow night.

I kind of can't imagine it with 4, I'll be curious to hear how it goes. What an overlooked masterpiece!

I don’t guess I’m breaking embargo by stating that Blackstone Fortress is SHIT HOT. Possibly better than Silver Tower. Probably better than Silver Tower.