I don't disagree. Innovation is a game I keep playing because I really want to love it and I just keep hoping the next game of it I play will be the one where it clicks.
I think your take on it is accurate. The game benefits greatly from getting over the first few games and internalizing the threat level of different buildings, but it's not a game that has as much of a strategic focus as a tactical one after you have the basics down. And yes, that flowchart is puzzling but other than that everything looks great.
Well, I don't care how much people like the stupid board game, A Game of Thrones the Card Game is a billion times the Game of Thrones game that A Game of Thrones the Board Game is. Sure, in the board game you can like, tell someone you're not going to attack him and then, omg, you attack him. It's just like the books! Whatever. In the card game you screw everyone over with every card you play and then everyone is miserable and all of your friendships are ruined and everyone hates everyone else and then you kill each other. With dragons. Just like the books! <3 We hadn't played in a while before last night and we sort of forgot how the redirects work. So, I think I have this right. If you're the Kingsguard guy you can only redirect a military challenge to yourself after someone else has declared that they are not defending that challenge (and you are a legal target for the challenge). Since the attacker has already picked his attacking characters he doesn't get any chance to change who is attacking so you always know exactly what's coming at you (unless he plays an event card). But for the power guy title (crown regent?), do you redirect the challenge before or after attackers are declared? That's the part I couldn't remember. Does the attacker get a chance to add more people if he is being redirected to a player that is better equipped to defend against him? I took a quick look at the rules but I wasn't 100% sure.
I really need to dive into my AGoT cards and make some decks. Too many solitaire games sitting on the shelf...
After attackers are declared. Declaring the type of challenge, target of the challenge, and attackers for the challenge all occur within the same framework window. Crown Regent steps in immediately afterwards and says "Nuh-uh, pick someone else" but the target of the challenge is the only thing that changes - the type and attackers remain the same. Note that the Crown Regent must be used before the Player Actions window after declaring challenge/attackers begins. You can't wait to have them play some cards and then redirect after-the-fact. Lord Commander is an interesting exception to the rules as it is one of the only effects in the game that actually rewinds time a bit. Normally things go like this: 1. Declare Attackers 2. Player Actions 3. Declare Stealth Targets 4. Declare Defenders *This is the point at which Lord Commander kicks in if they say they aren't declaring defenders, but what then happens is the game goes BACK to "2. Player Actions" with the Lord Commander now defending, so that window to play actions and then declare stealth happens again. **If Lord Commander doesn't redirect and there are no defenders, this is where a Supporting title can declare defenders, note that unlike Lord Commander this doesn't go back in time or allow stealth to be declared again
OK thanks, I mostly understand that. I think our real problem with this game is that we're not very good at it so it takes us forever to play. That could also be because we're still using the crappy 2x core set decks I built a while back. This week I'm going to show everyone the prebuilt decks and strategies that come with the house expansions and have everyone pick one of those to start playing with, then we'll start tweaking from there.
I've only played AGoT LCG against one friend so I've yet to mess with the titles. I expect that'll be the bulk of the rules streamlining the HBO boxed Stark vs. Lannister set will contain, though hopefully not house keywords too (but I wouldn't be surprised if those go too). My wife is actually hinted that she *might* play that with me since she enjoys the show (I've got $10 she'll want to play the Lannisters 9/10x).
I hadn't heard about that. That's actually pretty exciting. There's no chance of my ever getting into the LCG due to just how sprawling it is by now and how few opportunities I'd have to play it. But a two player version? Given the theme I might even be able to talk my wife into playing it.
FFG has some pics of the new cards up and zooming in I see Renown on a few but no infamy or stalwart. Agendas are probably gone too.
That's probably fine - Stalwart can situationally be an actual negative to have on a card, and Infamy does practically nothing outside of a small number of combos (or Melee play) that won't exist in this box set. It's very difficult to explain to new players that their cards have abilities that can actively screw them (they view the card as being dumb) or that you rarely would ever want to use (also dumb). There's definitely zero need to have agendas murkying the waters of what should be a standalone/introduction to the game. They ought to be able to design two decks that can do a fair match against each other without needing agendas. "Ought to", because they've tried this Stark vs. Lannister thing before in the CCG with their Premium Starters and they've somehow never pulled it off.
So I have to make a card game for a class and would super duper love it if I didn't have to print a ton of cards just to prototype. Is there a good piece of software out there that allows for custom cards/make-your-own game types? I wouldn't necessarily need the program to enforce rules or anything, though that'd be nice.
My Netrunner core set showed up yesterday. That's some Netrunner-assed Netrunner. Almost makes me sad I got rid of my boxes of the CCG a few months ago. I like the added FFG mechanics of factions and influences. Not too sure I'm crazy about the different layouts for the different types of cards. That may be mitigated by the consistency of icons to explain the numbers. The rulebook is very good and explains timings and effects very well considering the complexity of the mechanics. Now to find someone to play against!
I, too, would love an answer to James Johnson 's question above, as I just got Sentinels of the Multiverse and want to mod it into being DC and Marvel heroes and villains.
I just found Octgn. Looks like they've got a lot of card systems I there to play online. I'm looking at setting up Netrunner if anyone is interested. Here's the forum for the plugin to play Netrunner: http://octgn.gamersjudgement.com/viewforum.php?f=52
For simple prototyping Nandeck is what most people use. It's ugly, but great for a making lot of adjustments easily. If you want cards to be pretty instead of just functional, you need something like Magic Set Editor. That link goes to a list of templates, and it's possible someone has cooked up a Sentinels of the Multiverse one or something similar you could modify. There might be newer and better options available. Run a Geeklist search at boardgamegeek if you haven't as they often yield a gold mine. EDIT: Here are some links that might be useful: A thread about a program called Card Creator A recent thread about making prototype cards An awesome list of DIY links
Did someone mention the online version of Dominion? No? Then I am! http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html
I donno about anyone else, but I didn't mention it because Goko's launch was a disaster, their app is a piece of shit and I'm frankly a little annoyed that they have the RftG license so any iOS version of it is going to be garbage.
GoKo can SUCK IT. They hoovered up dozens of incredible licenses and are crapping all over them. It's like the grab-and-smash version of a smash-and-grab. Today is the first time I was even able to get that Dominion page to load and they launched it months ago.
I find Dominion to be dull as shit Goko's implementation to be shitty as extra-shitty shit, but were you unaware that Dominion has been playable online for some time? And offline? And on your phone?
Yeah, Androminion sucks, the Dominion game has bugs galore and the guy never fixed the bug I notified him about. That isotropic is nifty looking though, thanks. Truthfully though I don't know if I care about playing with live people. I like the vs. computer play in the Goko thing, and honestly I find the UI to be way better than the jatill's version.
I've never sleeved my cards, but this past weekend when I played Dominion: Dark Ages and Glory to Rome the guy who owned them sleeved all of the cards. I always assumed they'd be clunky and get in the way, but at least the sleeves he used (I think they were Topps) were really quite nice. My biggest concern was that shuffling would be a nightmare, but since sleeves are slick you don't need to do a bridge shuffle (and in fact considering the purpose of sleeve a bridge shuffle would probably be unwelcome) you just split the deck and then push the two decks together and the sleeves mean they slide right together into one shuffled deck. It was downright relaxing! I think ... I think I'm a sleeving guy now. If nothing else, I'll definitely be picking up sleeves for Biblios. Those cards are goddam nightmarish to shuffle. I'll probably also sleeve the next two player card game I buy in a bid to trick my wife into gaming. C'mon, FFG. Give me a delivery date for the Game of Thrones card game! I want my dumbed down non-LCG casual version!
Just recognize that sleeves can add a not insubstantial cost (when compared to the base price of the game) to each game you buy. I sleeve most of mine, but I'm starting to reconsider that decision in the opposite direction, in fact.
There are lots of sleeve sales if you aren't too particular. Tanga blows out Mayday sleeves regularly, so I just snag twenty or thirty packs when they're down to about a buck a pack. I hate Mayday as a company, but their sleeves have worked fairly well for me.
At least as a beginner Card/Board gamer I'm not too worried about card damage at this point, I figure if they get too bad I'll just buy another copy rather than go to the trouble of sleeving everything. For intensive shuffling I use a shuffler: http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Game-.../B005RBVE84/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1352753428 It's fun
Those cheap shufflers are fun until they bend or rip a card. Not a big deal with a Bicycle deck, but I'd never trust my board game cards to them.
I actually picked up a couple of different sleeves. 200 Ultra Pro standard sleeves and 200 Dragon Shields. I'm now getting another ten packs of Ultra Pro sleeves and will probably go ahead and auction off my Dragon Shields next time I decide to do an ebay auction. The Ultra Pros are the perfect stiffness and thickness* so they still stack well and don't interfere with play. The Dragon Shields were goddam unwieldy. It doesn't help that I was using them to sleeve Biblios, a game that's already got cards that are just too damn thick to shuffle, but even so they took a game with about an inch and a half of cards and turned it into a game with around three and a half inches of cards. I ended up having to take out the insert and they still barely fit. The Ultra Pros are great, though. I sleeved up LotRTCG and it makes playing the game feel downright classy to slip shuffle your cards together and then deal them out. I'm a fan. *lol
I'll throw my support in for Ultra-Pro sleeves as well. Used them for probably 12 years now and I still think they're the best for most any card game.
KMC "Perfect Size" sleeves are my favorite and the best I've ever used. Plus, they're manufactured to tight tolerances.
Sleeves are dumb. So hey I finally built some decks using the AGoT house expansions. Each house expansion comes with a couple of suggested decks that can be built with the house expansion and one core set. I'm sure those decks aren't great for tournaments but I figured we could play a couple of games with those decks just to try out the new cards and see how things go. I showed my friends the descriptions and let them decide which deck they wanted. We've now played three games using the expansion decks and the game has gone from Like to Awesome. The biggest problem I had with the AGoT core decks (and I had been told this so it wasn't a huge surprise) is that each core deck may have things it is better at but is still a jack of all trades to some extent, which means that we all end up slowly slogging our way to 15 VPs until one person is able to power through at the end. I really enjoyed the cards, the mechanics, and all of the cool strategy behind the plot decks and title cards, but the game just took forever to play. Our four player 2x core set games were averaging a good 12-14 turns. I swear we went though the entire plot deck twice one time. In our three games with the expansion cards we have never gone though the full plot deck. I think in one game we got to the sixth turn but I'm pretty sure the other games were five turns each. With the expansion decks everyone gives up a little flexibility to become awesome at one aspect of the game (or maybe really good at 2 aspects) and then it's more of a race to the finish instead of a crawl. Now we see people grabbing 6 or more power in a single turn pretty regularly, which almost never happened before. In our old games people were actually planning their turns around winning dominance because they were sometimes having problems even earning one power in a turn, now dominance is just a nice bonus if you get it. Instead we're more focused on doing crazy bullshit like the Lannisters (me) issuing three intrigue challenges in a single turn, each of which results in the losing side killing a player. The new plot cards and the agendas are really cool and completely change the way we play the game. My friend who is playing Targarean used a plot that only gave him one challenge that turn and disallowed him from declaring defenders in any challenges but also had a claim value of three. He was trying to end the game in one shot but miscalculated and didn't quite make it (I think he was planning on getting the bonus point from attacking the title he opposes but somehow that wasn't an option when it came to challenge time). I then got to issue four undefended challenges against him (since my agenda lets me do two intrigues per turn) and ended up winning the game. Still, it was a close game and was much closer to what I think is the ideal length for a game like this (one hour for a four player game).
Melee as a format ought to take 3-6 turns for the game to end. It sounds like you guys were stuck with decks that were effectively getting into tickle-fights when "the only game that matters" ought to feel like you're swinging fucking sledgehammers at each other, win or die. Sadly as you've noted getting to the point where the game spices up is not a cheap proposition, even with the LCG format. But, it seems like you're over the hump so congrats! In the past month I've thrown together probably a dozen new decks with all sorts of different houses and agendas over at www.cardgamedb.com, all of which are competitive and fun to play. The field is pretty open - certainly there are some decks that tend to be more consistent than others (and hence tend to be favored for tournament play) but I don't think there's any house right now that you can't build a competitive deck around that couldn't take on any comers. PS. That plot is really bad. Just about any other 2 claim plot would be better. For melee purposes those plots where you can pick an opponent that can't challenge you (or you them) for a specific type of challenge AND has 2 claim would be much better. I especially like the one where you can make it so someone can't intrigue you (Mutual Blackmail?), especially in a targ deck that tends to not have good intrigue defense.
Yeah, I think tweaking the plot deck is going to be one of the first changes we make, but that was in the suggested deck for his house so we went for it. I guess it's good if you're three points away from winning but that seems like a pretty specific thing to be including in a 7 card deck. I don't remember the one you mentioned but I'll go back and look for it. I think you're right that it would fit his play style a lot more. Thanks.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, the dumbed down 2-player HBO version featuring art from the show and a 'streamlined' rule set is finally out. Can't wait for it to show up on Amazon.
Personally, I don't like sleeves, but some games' cards are starting to show a little bit of wear so I'm considering them. I have a lot of Dominion expansions, but I won't sleeve those because at 500 cards for about $30, it just isn't worth it. Right now I only have two games sleeved. First, Race for the Galaxy (<200 cards and >$20 for the base game, <50 cards >$15 for an expansion) because it's a lot more expensive per card so it seems reasonable. Second, The Resistance if any card has a mark a player's loyalty can be accidentally revealed.
I just picked up 1200 Ultra Pros for $28. My first four packs of Ultra Pros were $1.25 each, but the guy ran out. Playing Glory to Rome with sleeved cards makes a guy feel like he should be wearing tails and sipping cognac from a snifter whilst considering the latest ticker tape news about the market and exploring the latest developments in monocle technology.
I keep buying up sleeves with the intention of sleeving game cards, but end up using them to make print-and-play games (there's an Inception solitaire game I printed that is going to need a ton of them). I've always heard bad things about Ultra Pros, but you guys have me convinced otherwise. I'll start grabbing some.
