Board Games

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Rylinks
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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:53 am

i appreciate your posting about it pterrus because it meant i knew about permadeath in order to bully everyone into taking that option

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Sat Dec 14, 2019 1:06 pm

Rylinks wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:53 am i appreciate your posting about it pterrus because it meant i knew about permadeath in order to bully everyone into taking that option
Nice. It really does make for better stories. I will warn you though, the game's difficulty is randomly spiky so be careful with cranking up the difficulty unless you really like re-rolling. How are you liking it so far?

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Sat Dec 14, 2019 1:22 pm

it's good! definitely a good idea to grab one of the helmets before anyone else looked at the item pool lol

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Re: Board Games

Post by drk » Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:05 pm

pterrus wrote:
Rylinks wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:53 am i appreciate your posting about it pterrus because it meant i knew about permadeath in order to bully everyone into taking that option
Nice. It really does make for better stories. I will warn you though, the game's difficulty is randomly spiky so be careful with cranking up the difficulty unless you really like re-rolling. How are you liking it so far?
How do you handle the personal achievement that requires you to become exhausted 6 or so times?

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:05 pm

you can become exhausted without dying, you only die if your health drops to zero

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Re: Board Games

Post by drk » Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:08 pm

Oh that's way easier than I thought, ok!

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:13 pm

there is one rule change though: you stay on the board when you're exhausted, so you can still be targeted by attacks

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:24 pm

One guy in our group loves to make yolo plays and has more than once exhausted himself in a bad place, and then we have to make the meta decision to save his (possibly loaded) character's life or sacrifice him and play for the scenario goal. It's great.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Skeletor » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:37 am

If there was a board or card game called "Maybe Ants?" and the cover is a cartoon drawing of a toddler scratching his head, what do you think the game would be
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:40 am

there's a 50% chance the box contains a bunch of ants

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Re: Board Games

Post by Skeletor » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:45 am

Good. What's in it the other 50% of the time
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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Re: Board Games

Post by Juri » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:46 am

Well it's probably not ants
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Re: Board Games

Post by Ashenai » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:47 am

itchy toddlers?

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Re: Board Games

Post by Ashenai » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:47 am

you're gonna need a bigger box

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Re: Board Games

Post by alright » Wed Dec 18, 2019 12:25 pm

Skeletor wrote:Good. What's in it the other 50% of the time
aunts

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Thu Dec 19, 2019 4:09 pm

my gloomhaven group played #69 and i got to kick a wraith into a pillar and then slam dunk a doll into a well while everyone else was exhausted, fun times

also i have a rules quesion: in permadeath if everyone is exhausted does everyone die or does the party just fail the scenario

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Thu Dec 19, 2019 4:22 pm

Rylinks wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2019 4:09 pm my gloomhaven group played #69 and i got to kick a wraith into a pillar and then slam dunk a doll into a well while everyone else was exhausted, fun times

also i have a rules quesion: in permadeath if everyone is exhausted does everyone die or does the party just fail the scenario
The official ruling from the FAQ is that if there are no monsters remaining and no way to die, it's a fail and you escape. Otherwise, if there are monsters remaining, they are assumed to play out their turns and kill you all. Some monsters actually have a chance of killing themselves so you might have to actually play it out if all that's left are oozes or something.

A consequence of these rules is that there is such a thing as a tactical abort. If you are in a mission where there are no visible monsters left and the heroes are on fumes, technically nobody is forcing you to open the next door. You can just loot the map and exhaust safely, chalking it up as a fail. This isn't an option for a lot of missions, of course.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Thu Dec 19, 2019 5:53 pm

wait the FAQ (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/189776 ... ons-please) says
How does failing a scenario interact with the permanent death variant?
With the permanent death variant, whenever a scenario is failed through any condition, the scenario doesn't end until the end of the round in which it was failed. At this time, if any of the characters are still alive (possibly exhausted but not dead), then they would still survive.
is failing due to "any condition" different from failing due to exhaustion?

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Thu Dec 19, 2019 6:08 pm

I believe the fail condition associated with the party exhausting is overridden by the permanent death variant, which has you stay on the board instead. Other fail conditions apply though and some of these are gameable, especially scenarios which are instant fails if anyone exhausts.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Rylinks » Thu Dec 19, 2019 6:09 pm

oh i see, so it's not that you fail and then you die, it's that you dont' fail until everyone is dead

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Thu Dec 19, 2019 6:12 pm

Right that's how we've been playing but RAW actually aren't super clear on this, I just checked.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Doug » Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:10 pm

We played Edge of Darkness on Saturday, and it is pretty amazing

The components are sick, and there's so much going on
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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:21 am

We finally beat the last boss of Gloomhaven. It took us almost exactly a year.

We still haven't opened two envelopes and I get the impression from reddit that one of them is a mind fuck. Also there's a small expansion. So we will probably play at least a few more.

The endgame isn't balanced at all. Most missions are easy due to all the perks and items and stuff a late game party has access to but there are randomly some really hard ones in there so it's not like you can just increase the difficulty and call it a day, especially when playing with permadeath.

I think part of the problem is that specific scenario rules favor specific class compositions and you have no way to know that in advance. You might have a composition that trivializes the scenario, or you might have one that makes it hard to impossible. I'm starting to think this is a pretty big flaw with the game design. It would be one thing if you had some control over party composition but you mostly don't. Sometimes you just read a scenario and go, "Welp, my core class mechanic doesn't work here." Best case when that happens you're playing a 4 person scenario with effectively 3.5 people, worst case you're just dead like in the case of the the split-up scenario I talked about before.

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:40 am

We're at prosperity 7 so that means new characters are created at level 7. Which is kind of dumb. At character creation you have to make permanent spec decisions for 6 level-ups for a class you've never played before and possibly nobody at the table has played before. Also you're only 2 levels from max and many classes are basically gods at level 9 so, like, balance that.

The game actually has 9 prosperity levels with associated item unlocks. Aside from the obvious weirdness and brokenness with creating every new character as a level 9 god, it's not actually clear how you get to prosperity 9. We completed the game and are actually real far from prosperity 9; it's not linear. I don't know if it's even possible to get prosperity 9 after completing all the playable scenarios and all the personal quests in the box. Why did they even include those cards? :itisamystery:

I am pretty confident they didn't really do any serious playtesting with a late game party, they just kind of slapped together some outlandish level 9 cards and a big long prosperity track and called it a day.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Ashenai » Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:43 am

This is interesting, I don't think I've ever heard the perspective of someone who's completed the game. Would you still recommend it?

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Mon Dec 30, 2019 12:46 pm

Ashenai wrote: Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:43 am This is interesting, I don't think I've ever heard the perspective of someone who's completed the game. Would you still recommend it?
Yeah I think even if you light the game on fire at, oh, prosperity 4 there is enough game in the box to be worth the price tag.

The core gameplay is genius and the first half of the game is excellent. They just kind of didn't stick the landing. I think my criticisms above are kind of on par with the problems with MTG Alpha: yes the game balance is a little rough at the extremes but they still created a revolutionary game and it's nothing future editions can't fix. I guess it's a little different than Alpha in that the narrative experience they are selling you doesn't really pan out.

For a new player, Frosthaven might be worth waiting for. I'm not sure how hungry we'll be for more by the time it releases.

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Re: Board Games

Post by Juri » Mon Dec 30, 2019 12:57 pm

I'm going to play metalhaven before the other ones
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Re: Board Games

Post by drk » Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:15 pm

pterrus wrote:We're at prosperity 7 so that means new characters are created at level 7. Which is kind of dumb.
Well that's not required, you can start at any level up to 6. My first character I starred at prosperity 6 I went right to level 6, but I had a really bad time because I didn't understand the class interactions during character creation and chose the wrong cards, basically. Ever since then I've started all new characters on 2 or 3!

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Re: Board Games

Post by pterrus » Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:30 pm

drk wrote: Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:15 pm
pterrus wrote:We're at prosperity 7 so that means new characters are created at level 7. Which is kind of dumb.
Well that's not required, you can start at any level up to 6. My first character I starred at prosperity 6 I went right to level 6, but I had a really bad time because I didn't understand the class interactions during character creation and chose the wrong cards, basically. Ever since then I've started all new characters on 2 or 3!
Doesn't that exacerbate the balance issues though? I'm imagining a party with levels 2, 3, 3, 8. The 8 is pretty much required to carry with this comp, but what if the 8 gets hosed due to scenario rules, or if the 8 is a support class?

Not to mention, it's just kind of an ugly design if the best way to have fun with a class is to intentionally gimp yourself at character creation.

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Re: Board Games

Post by KingRamz » Mon Dec 30, 2019 5:02 pm

Juri wrote: Mon Dec 30, 2019 12:57 pm I'm going to play metalhaven before the other ones
:patriot:

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