It is interesting how that game changes from 2 players to 3 or 4. At two it is very cutthroat, and if the other player knows what they are doing, picking from the discard can be falling for bait, or limiting your options. I’d say when playing head to head, unless a card discarded is really, really good for my set up, I tend to pick mainly blind ones.
On 3 to 4 players things change. I think the amount of times you can pick against the cards that are revealed on discard change the game mechanics, and I have occasionally even picked twice from the discard in order to either distract opponents of my intentions, or to pick up a really good card that was buried under another.
Hence why I think Arboretum is such a good game, you nearly have two different games in one depending on the number of players.
Acquire - still enjoy it. First time using the Iron Clays 200 which is enough to replace the paper money in this game.
Bites finally get to play this. It’s a commodity speculation game disguised with cute lovely ants and the food bits are thick cardboard. You pick up food bits as you race the ants through the food trail. You then score pts on your collected food bits based on which ant finish first, second, and so on.
Not sure if I prefer this over Wildlife Safari, but I still love it. Will keep it for now. Bites is a reimplementation of an old game called Big Points.
I haven’t played many >2 player games, but based on my experience at 2, I guess it goes:
in a 2 player game, if you’re both taking from the draw pile an equal amount you’ll end up with a 50/50 chance of getting each useful card. Pretty good odds, and not worth compromising on unless there’s a card that’s really useful for your strategy.
in a 3-4 player game, if everyone is taking from the draw pile you’ve got a 33% or 25% chance to get each useful card. Not great, so drawing from others’ discards doesn’t spoil good odds. Since you’re unlikely to get the cards you want, compromising on the discard piles is probably sensible more often than a 2-player game.
in a 2 player game, you absolutely need to stay focused on what cards your opponent is using and needs. Taking the cards they don’t want when you could pick up their favourite colour is usually not the way forward.
but with 3-4 players you often end up fighting with 2 or 3 other players over a single colour unless you can take advantage of the colours that other people are ignoring. If you can find a less-disputed colour it might secure you the win.
You’re right that the strategy becomes very different once more players are involved. I’d love to get more experience with 3-4 player games to see what differences between 3 and 4 players exist as well.
Happens more at 3 player level than at 4 in my experience. At 4 players, you all fend for yourselves, and it is nearly even more led by luck.
The few games I had at 4 players I nearly always went with what eventually started happening after several draws, while at smaller numbers I could have more of an idea from the start hand. But I have played at 4 only a few times, so probably is not the best comparison, but picking from the deck less often means that you kind of have to roll with cards more and nearly improvise all the time.
That’s interesting to hear
I’ll have to try out 3 and 4 some more and see how it plays. More improvising sounds intriguing, and trying to spot the other players’ patterns in the chaos of 4. Interesting point about waiting until further into the game to develop a strategy, that definitely makes sense since it’s harder to know what your opponents might have going in. Thanks for the insight!
I have a copy of the Netrunner base game at home that a friend lent me in exchange for my Arkham Horror card game and the other day I played against myself to learn the game next up: playing my partner.
I’m also still playing Spirit Island vs Sweden with varying spirits and difficulty levels (4 was best so far)
We received our kickstarter-backed second expansion for Spirit Island last night so we played a plain game + events for the first time in over a year (too many games, not enough time!) with two of the new spirits. We probably should have done more than glance at the rule book and think “sure, we remember how to play” as we kept really remembering things at various points in the game when things just weren’t quite feeling right. Some of our errors made it a little easier on us but a couple made it significantly harder. We still won several rounds before we would run out of time, so maybe after an actual reread of the rule book to make sure we really do have everything right this time we’ll reintroduce scenarios and adversaries.
I am so jealous I am nearly incoherent Mine is still out there somewhere. I’ll probably receive Obsession and Spirit Island sometime next week as far as I can tell from the updates. Arrgh… the waaait!
I’m also waiting for Spirit Island expansion. Now it’s close the wait feels harder to bear.
I don’t think I reported my game of Starcadia Quest. I liked it, I generally like the Arcadia Quest vibe for some silliness and Starcadia manages to do some really good stuff about streamlining while keeping the overall feel of the game in tact. Well done indeed to those who did the steam lining. It’s not changed the game much, so still silly, petty, antagonistic dice rolling gonzo times. Sometimes that’s a nice change of pace though.
@VictorViper you really bigged this up when you first started playing, so i assume you’ve moved it on. Where do you stand in it now?
I mainly have it as a painting project and the minis are an improvement on previous AQ’s just for being harder plastic. I’m expecting this winter to be shit as a result of covid and this is pegged as my main distraction from the horrors of existence so really pleased to see the superior quality with regards paintability
Starcadia Quest only moved on because my partner wasn’t keen on it. It’s a big box, and those games don’t last long when I know they won’t get played. Other than that, it’s fast and silly, with some satisfying mayhem basically lurking around every corner. If you can get a third or fourth to play, I think you’ll be in for a good time.
Oh and I love the campaign format for it: 3 stages to beef up for a boss round, then reset.
Via Zoom we got a game of El Grande last night. My wife and I in the room and the other two players gave instructions remotely. They came 1st and 2nd so obviously it was no hindrance! The colour scheme combined with out lighting made the yellow caballeros harder to see but it worked.
I got this on eBay during lockdown, so I think it was our 4th play. I’m awful at it, but its really good. Lots of good decisions, easy rule set to teach and learn.
I’ve not played a lot of area control to compare this to, but I can see why it is such a highly regarded game, can’t wait ti play again.
I haven’t even gotten a ship notification on Jagged Earth, but I believe I added on the storage crate, so I imagine they’re doing the easy orders first. (Or alphabetically by last name, which always screws me as mine starts with a W.) That said, the mod we’re using for Tabletop Simulator has fully added all the content, and I won’t be playing the physical version for months, so oh well.
Speaking of, last night we continued our online game of Spirit Island against level 1 England. We’ve had some very good turns - events have occasionally dashed our plans to destroy certain invaders, but on average the token parts of those cards have put us well ahead of how much the invader part has screwed us over, and we now have an entire board (the southeastern one) with no invaders at all (or anyway, it didn’t until a couple explorers popped up during Explore) and big swathes of the rest of the board also clear. Honestly, we’re doing a little bit of clearing, but corralling invaders with defended Dahan, beasts, disease and so on has done the majority of it. That and our immense Fear generation. We’re averaging 20-25 Fear a turn I think. As Bringer of Fear and Nightmares I’ve gotten almost no chance to do my special “destruction” Fear, but there’s been a lot of raw Fear from cards and innate so oh well.
Perpetual offer to help anybody who wants to run nets. Monday to Thursday evenings UK time I can actively play games, pretty much all week I will help in other ways, though.
It’ll take a little longer, but I have every expectation that it will be at retail soon enough. And they may have stock of the promo spirits on their webstore if you want those. (Though there’s apparently nearly a thousand people waiting on reprints of the first Kickstarter’s promos, according to their store, so…we’ll see. I also pledged for those in the Jagged Earth KS so I wouldn’t have to worry about that.)
Dungeon Raiders, one of Phil Walker-Hardings early games. You fight your way thru a dungeon, with each round consisting of five cards, some of which are face down, so you cant plan. Most cards are monsters, which have a hit value and a penalty. The players have five fight cards, numbered from one thru five. You all select a card, then show them simultaneously. If your combined total is greater than or equal to the monsters hit value, you defeat it. Otherwise, whoever played the lowest card loses health. Lose all your health, and you’re out. Other dungeon cards can be treasures, vaults (where you buy equipment), and traps. I remember playing this a lot way back, and thinking it was pretty good. I’d probably rate it a bit less now. Its still a bit of fun. There is a newer edition (which I have), but I havent played it.
Forgotten Waters, finished off scenario 5 with a win!
Junk Art, havent played this for a while, but I’m a sucker for balancing/stacking games. Plenty of variety with this, as you select 3 random cities and play thru them. Each city is like a mini game, with its own rules. Had a great time with this, theres always a few moments of “No way will that balance!”.
Pictures, loving this. Our biggest problem is that our last 2 games have been ties. I thought I was doing ok, but the last round let me down. Its always interesting to see how people represent their card with the tools they have.
The Crew
Mysterium, probably not the best at 3p, but we gave it a go. I was the ghost, it was a struggle to find decent cards. We played it out, even though we actually ran out of time.
next up: playing my partner.
Mine is still out there somewhere. I’ll probably receive Obsession and Spirit Island sometime next week as far as I can tell from the updates. Arrgh… the waaait!