On Sunday I managed to attend a lovely, small “Infinity” tournament run by a friend. He hosted at his house (we usually play there on Mondays), and there were 6 of us total.
I did very badly. But that’s okay! It was just really lovely to be “normal” for a while… and, in my third game (which I lost) I got to use perhaps the single greatest application of the rule “Climbing Plus” I’ve ever had a chance to use…
That, my friends, is a Zeta TAG sitting about 24" above the table. From that glorious vantage point I was able to rain fire down on my opponent’s Puppetmaster and Clockmaker, as well as mildly annoying his Zondnautica before retreating back down the side of the tower and to “safety”.
Sadly, my opponent managed to toss a Repeater close to my TAG, possess it, and then climb right back up that tower to shoot my own Lieutenant off the table, as well as putting a significant amount of hurt on my remaining attack pieces. I managed to wrestle control of it back on my final turn, but by then the damage had been done and it was destroyed by a link team of Hollow Men with missile launchers.
I had fun! It was just… pleasantly normal. For a few hours I got to forget about (gestures around in all directions) and just play a game.
I am happy for you! I hope we are all getting back a few of our game nights, meeting a few people and encounter a sense of normalcy. I hope everyone here gets to have more of those moments and hours in the coming weeks and months
I (purple) played a round of Beyond the Sun on BGA with 3 “localish” friends the other day. 2 (orange, blue) of them didn’t know the game yet. Red has played a few times. We produced the wildest tech tree ever:
I messed up early in the game in resource production because I decided to “experiment” and started with “Narrow Beam Lasers” which I rarely do. And so I couldn’t do a lot of research (I somehow made it to a level 4 tech despite that but barely). The other players decided most of the tech in the tree and chose to go with LOTS of “jump” tech. And there was jumping like I have rarely seen and ships… so many ships. In the end everyone was scrambling for the 2 spots that allowed colonization. It was definitely weird.
One person (orange) wanted to use “Android Destroyers” but ended up not using the UI correctly and didn’t get to do their jumps somehow and that cost them a valuable turn and so they moped for the rest of the game. And I must say not having the ability (on BGA) to go back on something that is a technical error can be debilitating in a game as tight as BtS.
I also notice a marked difference when playing with people from the forums vs my local friends. The locals play a lot more take that moves just to piss off another player. “Gain points for myself or block someone? What should I choose? Clearly, I should block someone.”
PS: The extra achievements were all level 2 tech and the weird one with control 6 matching locations.
It’s also frustrating. My attitude to boardgames is generally casual – if someone has made an error and it hasn’t affected too much, I’ll pretty much always say “eh, fix it, you ought to have that many thingies”. BGA feels like having to play every game with That Guy who insists that every time you wave your hand near a piece you have finalised your move.
First time back in person at Local Games Club last night, playing Tavern Masters, which I might have liked better if, for three out of what turned out to be five rounds, card luck had not left me with nothing to do and no decisions to make; also the art gets kind of boobtastic in places. Then on to Shamans, which I hadn’t fully internalised, but I think I’ll be able to teach it better next time; and people still enjoyed it. (Colours on the reflective board don’t show up too well in fashionably low lighting, mind.)
While I am not “casual” - I am the kind of person who tries to ensure that everyone is following the rules exactly - under normal circumstances I can warn about mistakes or correct them as they are made. Or even correct them sometime later. No undo function is a major problem with BGA. No override to correct the game state is another. (Both are reasons I prefer Vassal.)
Absolutely, but even among my technologically less challenged friends Vassal is a hard sell.
A lot of them have TTS which allows for all kinds of shenanigans (I have disabled the flip table function when I host for good reason) but recently I have avoided TTS because it needs a rules enforcer for most modules and I am already game proposer, game teacher and IT-girl (yeah, the kind that explains to people why they can no longer see the table or how to center their player board so they can see it. I play boardgames with people who have never in their life played a computer game). So recently I have preferred to let BGA do the rules enforcing and some automation so I have a bit of an easier time. Lazy me.
But I do wish that a group on BGA could vote to let the game host undo a turn and return to a previous game state (it shouldn’t be impossible, the log has all the information and the replay-from-here ability shows that it is easily possible to rewind.) Without having checked any information on BGA redarding this, I suspect that the reasons for not having such a function are less technological but more social.
I am a reasonably technical chap and I have not yet got any version of Vassal actually running to the point of being able to host or join a game; always some sort of random Java error. To be honest I haven’t put huge effort into it, because my experience with Java desktop software has been universally unpleasant.
I didn’t mean “I don’t want to play by the rules”, but rather “if someone messed up let’s be friendly about it”, especially in a longer game.
My own experience is that TTS doesn’t need a rules-enforcer any more than a physical table does, but I’ve played mostly with people I already know quite well who won’t muck about.
Not when you have people who are reasonably adept with the whole 3D environment and won’t accidentally mess up the game state. A person can put a meeple back where they took it from and it is unllikely they took it in the first place. Someone asking me how to “turn around” in TTS is able to do anything they never meant to do–while at the same time they are unable to do what they want to do.
Does your perl have a java allergy?
I mean I just downloaded java and vassal and installed both and it works. Obviously, on a Linux machine that is almost as easy these days, unless… that person is an IT admin who is not running some kind of Ubuntu Desktop with package management that my dad might even understand (no, I joke, he wouldn’t) but something altogether more complicated
Straight boring Debian. Next time I try it I’ll paste the error here and people can try to work out what it might mean. (Having said that, next time I try it it’ll work perfectly.)
Very much that bad, IMO. It’s a beautiful little production, and the underlying game is sound (it’s still basically the original game, which I loved). But almost literally everything else that was added to it feels untested, absurdly bloated, terribly paced, and plain un-fun. If I had to guess, it’ll also run well over 2 hours.
@Marx, might as well give it a go if you punched it, I guess. But keep those pieces pristine in case you feel the same as me.
So to get game play #1000 logged, I played a single spirit solo with Shroud of Silent Mist in Spirit Island without even an adversary (I’ve been a bit under the weather and just needed more comfort gaming). I think setup and tear down together may have taken as long as play. That big wooden insert+box is not always making things easier. In 5 turns I had turned away the invaders with my fearsome mists… I do not remember playing this Spirit before, I really like the way it flows across the island and generates fear fear fear… then I synced the games and it turns out I am at #1001. So that Beyond the Sun game I talked about up there was #1000. Fine by me, I love them both.
Played as the Bri’ish in 1775: Rebellion. Crushed the rebel scums, but the game could have gone badly at some points of the late game, which would lead a narrow win for the US. But the odds were stacked against them.
Terra Nova introduced 2 people to the game. Very abstract, but it was more old school German instead of a pure abstract. Been one of my faves lately and can be played comfortably from 2 to 4.
Finally got the final summer purchase to the table last night: a solo game of Le Havre. Really impressed with this, although it did take at least two hours to get through the first game to check I was doing everything correctly. Quite a lot of resources and economic options to juggle with but I can already see how the Special Buildings can guide the players each game so a world of possibilities for each solo run.
I never really got into Steel or Coke this game but made good value of the Leather Industry (Special Building) in latter rounds and only built three ships (one Wooden, one Iron and one Steel) but the Shipping Line came in handy too. I finished with 248 points which doesn’t seem bad for a first play.
