The One And The Twenty @rngesus_wept@mastodon.social

Oh, and #Emacs is the one true editor, M-x fight-me.

#Introduction Hi, I'm someone who plays too many #boardgames (BattleCON, Keyflower, Concordia, Modern Art, Great Zimbabwe). Show me #picturesofdogs pls. I listen primarily to #mashup music (Neil Cicierega is a genius). I mainly code in #Python but #Lisp is my favorite (can you tell?).

"... now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to Australian Mike Avenatti tap on index cards for twenty minutes."

Good-looking resource management game where each player has two dice whose faces swap out and upgrade over the course of the game. I won off of having denser VP-buying rounds than the other players, and otherwise focused on getting lots of extra Free Shit.

Interesting concept and the game plays well, so it's not just a once-for-the-novelty deal. Bears some resemblance to deck building, and in that vein I'd also expect to see expansion content to keep the game alive past 6-ish plays.

How the hell do we win this game? We led off with one round against the Wraithmonger with new players, lost after a protracted battle, and the new players realized oh crap, this game is actually hard and we dropped back to Umbra Titan. Still lost three more times.

I normally randomize character selection / market setup but might have to start picking with experience players, until we can at least get consistent results that way.

Still one of the few co-ops that holds my interest.

Won Tyrants 78-70-66-61, but only because I was last player and managed something like a 16 point swing on my last turn (roughly +9 control, +5 promote, +2 denying total control to my two closest opponents). It turns out having final say on the board state is super good in area control games, even if you're trailing for most of play!

Taught Azul to a group of 4 newbies. I had to do a little more hand-holding than usual, but one of the faster learners immediately asked where to buy.

#boardgames
1 x Tyrants of the Underdark (4P)
1 x Ganz schon clever (4P)
4 x Aeon's End (3P)
1 x Azul (4P)
1 x Dice Forge (3P)

Ganz schon clever works pretty well at 4P and maintains more weight than you'd expect in a roll-and-write. Went out to buy a properly colored and weighted set of dice, so I'll laminate some player sheets for reusability while I wait for the actual game to become available on the US market.

Ow, my game boxes, and also my elbow.

Also, tried out [Ganz schon clever] solo based on its recent SdJ nomination. Ended with a score of 221 (2.5 stars). Need to find better dice for my bootleg set; the blue die I pulled from Macao is weighted against the 3.

Gsc is definitely more involved than most roll and write games I've played. It has that free-action-combo feel that lots of people like Castles of Burgundy for. Plays pretty quick too, so I find myself favoring it even over some heavier games. 6/10

#boardgames

2nd out of 3P in Heaven and Ale. It plays much faster at 3 than at 4, esp. with players who've already played! I like it well enough but worry about replayability; nothing changes other than tile order, and it's not clear to me whether there are divergent play styles. 7.5/10

Finally got to crack out my new Exceed S2 copy. Teaching game against a new player (my Galdred vs his Minato) took 1.5 hours :-/ He was checking counters a lot. Can't wait to play more tomorrow!

Second try of Castell at 4P. Went smoother this time, though I still haven't figured out how to plan my pathing around the festival schedule. I unloaded my special actions too early and ended up losing tempo in the late game. I left with a better impression than after PAX East, though I'm still not sure I'd pick it up. 6.8/10

Lost 2P Innovation; got an early lead in achievements but got stuck at Age 6 while opponent spammed forcing moves at Age 9-10, finally winning on score.

Is anyone else getting weird cropped dimensions for uploaded photos? I'm trying to post pics with a phone aspect ratio (i.e. Snapchat exports) and I'm getting unexpected results. #mastodon

10th game of Great Zimbabwe (5P), which came down to a last-round fight between me and right hand opponent. Slow rolling continues to be very good when other people are eager to do the board development. I don't remember who won though, because after my turn the one other person in contention decided to do the 15 minute grind to ensure that he had no winning move (he was $1 short for all the obvious options). I checked out mentally and wouldn't have noticed if he'd actually done it wrong

#boardgames
1 x Great Zimbabwe
1 x Castell (pictured)
1 x Heaven and Ale
1 x Innovation
1 x Exceed Season 2

Session report in thread

Gave in and ordered a new video card my Linux install /might/ play better with. Let's see how long this takes to resolve...

#boardgames

Having never actually watched the Twilight Zone before I'm surprised at how so many of these are just straight up morality plays.

System configuration in Linux continues to be three hours of stacking components in various orders Just Right, followed by very carefully not touching it lest the whole thing implode.

Light #boardgames aren't my usual fare but here are the ones I recommend that tend to be very well received even by people new to the hobby:

Fox in the Forest (2 players)
Seikatsu (2-3)
Skull (3-6, max 8 if you're going to improvise extra components)
Las Vegas (2-4; sweet spot at 4; can improvise for 5, but raise the cash minimum per slot to $60K or maybe $70K)

Azul, Las Vegas, and Skull continue to be great easy-to-teach games that engage everyone effectively.

A friend and I finally beat [Aeon's End: WE]'s Umbra Titan for the first time, so at least one of us has learned something. We'll see if it sticks. Unfortunately I am already beginning to feel the card pool fatigue that I suspect is endemic to all deck-builders. But 5 plays off a single boss so far isn't bad, and if I can get 20 more from the content I own now that'll still be very good

For what it's worth, I did get the feeling that strategically managing the game end condition could be a thing if you played enough times. But until that point (as possibly even with it) there's an unstable equilibrium between stalling hell out of the game (crabs in a bucket) and accidentally handing someone a victory sequence. (The first round, which I sat out, ended after two table cycles.)

Quantum and Mare Nostrum both manage that kind of game ending better.

A vaguely area-controlly game where you're trying to spawn some cake onto the board and then trigger the end game. I got pretty tilted during this one -- being in the same region of the tiny board as someone meant their optimal move every turn was simply to lock me out of doing anything. Which is annoying, but only made worse when the rest of the time in the table cycle is spent expanding the mexican standoff game tree. Ugh.

As expected, it leans heavily on its IP.