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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata »

Mord wrote:You are describing a great game of subtle interactions, but not the rules as written. Long necks straight up pull food from the bag, so they are at less risk of being shut down by limiting the food available on the board. Burrowing doesn't disincentivize attacks or make them more difficult, it forbids them when the conditions are met.
Lol, I am describing the rules as written. You just don't seem to realize that your strategy is even more awful than I even originally imagined.

Burrowing prevents all attacks on species if they had eaten enough food to equal the population. Before then they are still fair game, and if a carnivore is ahead of them in the turn order they can get eaten. This is in fact worse than many other defenses like Climbing, which outright forbids attack on the species unless the carnivore also happens to have Climbing (meaning you have to be lucky enough to actually draw Climbing). There is also the Intelligence card which can cancel any defense and ignores any "forbid" clauses.

Now, long necks have a synergy with burrowing because it gives you a free feed before the carnivores get to act, so you are theoretically safe from any attack if your population is 1.

The problem is that you are exposed to attack once you increase your population, and you can only ever collect food equal to your population. This means that your 3-card species will be stuck with only 1 population to remain "safe" and just collect 1 food per turn! That's an absolutely awful return on your investment.

Compare your strategy instead to this: I will instead use the Burrowing and Long Neck cards to create two additional species, each of which has zero abilities. That will give me 3 species (1 starting, 2 new), each of which has 1 population and can collect 1 food apiece per turn. So instead of collecting 1 food per turn, I'm collecting 3.

On top of that, three additional species gives you three extra card draws per turn - meaning more chances to spawn population, body size, or new species - while the long neck burrower is stuck with one.

In short, your "broken" combination only gives you a "safe" source of +1 food points and +1 card per turn that has no effect or denial ability on the board. By contrast you can take the exact same resources and give yourself an engine that generates +3 food points and +3 cards per turn.

Which again points back to the meta issue that you ignored. The cards are not broken and comparing them with one another is mostly pointless. Each card is instead highly situational, and even cards that are weak for a particular board have outlets in the form of population increase, body size increase, or species generation - all of which are always useful. The real issue therefore is understanding the board state and knowing which cards are good, and whether it's time to pump up population, body size, or new species.

If there are many carnivores on the board or a lack of vegetables for herbivores then the 3 vanilla species would certainly be the weaker play, because these vanilla species might be killed and stop generating +3 food/cards.

But if your only opponent started turtling with long-neck burrowers then 3 vanilla species would absolutely crush that strategy and lap it 3 times over. They could collect food with impunity since the long neck doesn't even compete with them, and there are no carnivores to kill them.

In short, Evolution is a great game of subtle interactions. The problem is that you lacked the imagination and strategic insight to go beyond simplistic card vs card comparisons.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Jan 21, 2016 6:30 am, edited 7 times in total.
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Mord wrote:
Zinegata wrote:Indeed, highly efficient herbivores are especially vulnerable to predation because of the 3-card limit on each species. If you are already a long neck and a digger then you can only have 1 additional defense card. An alpha predator with multiple attack cards can thus easily overcome these defenses. Or better yet deploy two or more predators with only a few basic attack cards to munch on the same high-efficiency herbivore (especially when they increase in size).
You are describing a great game of subtle interactions, but not the rules as written. Long necks straight up pull food from the bag, so they are at less risk of being shut down by limiting the food available on the board. Burrowing doesn't disincentivize attacks or make them more difficult, it forbids them when the conditions are met.
Disclaimer #1: I have actually played this game only twice, so your general complaint about there being optimal sets of synergistic combos may very well stand, and I just haven't played the game enough to find them yet.

Disclaimer #2: I am loathe to agree with Zinegata on anything.

But,...
.... your specifics are so crazily far off, that I have to wonder if we are talking about the same game. There was the Evolution : Origin of Species published in 2010 that was revised an updated into Evoltion published in 2014, and I think it likely that you are talking about the 2010 version. I mean you go so far as to not merely misrepresent what a trait does, but you actually call it by the wrong name. Rulebook for Reference. The Burrowing trait means that a species cannot be attacked once it has food equal to its population. The Long Neck trait provides 1, count them one, that is I single food before the normal feeding phase - meaning that such a creature is only guaranteed to be safe from carnivores if it stays at a population size of 1, and at any larger population size it will depend on turn order whether it is safe or not. A population size 1 Herbivore that gets guaranteed food every turn is good, but hardly so game breaking that it cannot be out-competed. For instance, a Population 6 Defensive Herding species is similarly invulnerable to predation, and gets to claim 6 times the food per turn. And of course, even those guarantees of safety are theoretically vulnerable to an Intelligent Carnivore.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Thu Jan 21, 2016 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Zinegata »

Disclaimer #2: I am loathe to agree with Zinegata on anything.
Pfft. This is such a bitter board.
There was the Evolution : Origin of Species published in 2010 that was revised an updated into Evoltion published in 2014, and I think it likely that you are talking about the 2010 version.
Long Necked isn't even in the 2010 game. Only "Burrowing" is. (edit- wrong trait that was missing)

Long Neck first appears in the 2014 game and is present in both the 1st and 2nd ed of the new Evolution. And yes the two have some differences more specifically in watering hole food count and a few other cards (Pack Hunting being the most important one) but the Long-neck/Burrowing "combo" is still the same in both.

Highly defensive species are in fact rather overrated in this game; because every defense trait keeps you from getting other traits that improve gathering efficiency instead.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Jan 21, 2016 8:50 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by Mord »

Zinegata wrote:In short, your "broken" combination only gives you a "safe" source of +1 food points and +1 card per turn that has no effect or denial ability on the board. By contrast you can take the exact same resources and give yourself an engine that generates +3 food points and +3 cards per turn.
... and those zero-trait species get fucking eaten immediately. Do you only play 2-player by any chance? Because I can't imagine a 4 or 6 player table where one guy has three 1 pop 1 body species lying around and no carnivores take the free lunch. That's not just a bad opening move, it's positively suicidal.
Zinegata wrote:Which again points back to the meta issue that you ignored. The cards are not broken and comparing them with one another is mostly pointless. Each card is instead highly situational, and even cards that are weak for a particular board have outlets in the form of population increase, body size increase, or species generation - all of which are always useful. The real issue therefore is understanding the board state and knowing which cards are good, and whether it's time to pump up population, body size, or new species.
Yes, understanding board state is useful and every card theoretically has a use. That said, some traits are useful in a broader variety of scenarios, either by themselves or paired with some other specific card or cards.

There are limited combinations of traits that even make any sense to play together on a species, leading to very predictable builds interspersed with people playing suboptimally who are going to lose. If you've played Burrowing at all, grats, you've completely eliminated a pile of the traits in the game from consideration as being Traits #2 and #3, which means you can burn those on your other species or buff body size on your burrower so you can use it as the anchor for Symbiosis (or drop a Warning Call on it).

Your point about high efficiency gathering is true enough, but you're best off having some number of your species defending the rest, whether those rest are carnivores themselves or food-hoover herbivores.
Josh_Kablack wrote:.... your specifics are so crazily far off, that I have to wonder if we are talking about the same game. There was the Evolution : Origin of Species published in 2010 that was revised an updated into Evoltion published in 2014, and I think it likely that you are talking about the 2010 version. I mean you go so far as to not merely misrepresent what a trait does, but you actually call it by the wrong name.
I misremembered "Burrowing" as "Digging;" I must be crazy. Call the men in white coats. :roll:
Josh_Kablack wrote:For instance, a Population 6 Defensive Herding species is similarly invulnerable to predation...
No, pop 6 defensive herd is attackable by any carnivore with Intelligence or Pack Hunting. Since carnivorism is compatible with fewer traits than herbivorism, carnivore species that aren't specialized to go after Warning Call (with Ambush) and Climbing species (with Climbing) are very likely to pick them up. If you could just drop a species with pop 6 you'd have a point, but the time it takes to build one up means that other, better power combos are coming out in the endgame.

Any of the cards that play with numbers are a waste of time compared to the cards that shut down attacks completely. Intelligence is the all-purpose counter to those defense, yes, but you force your opponents to bleed cards to use it and Intelligence can shut down the number fuckery cards anyway.
Last edited by Mord on Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

... and those zero-trait species get fucking eaten immediately. Do you only play 2-player by any chance? Because I can't imagine a 4 or 6 player table where one guy has three 1 pop 1 body species lying around and no carnivores take the free lunch. That's not just a bad opening move, it's positively suicidal.
Way to completely ignore everything I said about board state just because you got humiliated on how I took your exact same hand and made it three times more productive for a particular board state. Maybe I should keep humiliating you based on some basic math about the game until you learn to fucking stop?

The 3 species opening is in fact a positively good move for most cases because you apparently forget that an opponent 1) Has to have the carnivore card, which is only 17 out of 129 cards in the entire deck (13%) and 2) Have size greater than your herbivore, unless you play Pack Hunter on top of Carnivore - both of which requires a second card play.

This means that creating a species costs only 1 card, whereas a carnivore requires the play of 2 cards on top of an existing species (if you don't have one, then it's three cards for a minimum carnivore). And each carnivore can only eat 1 species per population point, so your 2/3-card carnivore can only ever eat 1 species unless you spend cards to increase its population.

Moreover, you can in fact guess if there will be any carnivores on the board. If you play last and no one else increases to size 2 or adds a second trait to one species then you can in fact be reasonably sure there are no viable carnivores on the table and can deploy more species with impunity.

Indeed, if multiple players do this the value of carnivore predation is even weaker. If three of four players for instance do the 3-species opening then that's nine species on the board compared to 1 carnivore from the last player. The carnivore may eat 1-3 other species depending on its population, but the remainder will survive and get extra food and cards. Indeed, in this case the meta's real problem is the vegetable food supply, not the carnivores!

Yet your assertions is that the board is already full of carnivores on the first fucking turn despite only 17 out of 129 cards being carnivores; and each carnivore needs to spend another card before being viable. This isn't someone who's thinking clearly or knows the game. This is someone who's too scared of his own shadow and thinks turtling is an OP strategy.

The game is a subtle balance between greed and safety. If you dismiss strategies that are greedy because they aren't safe then you will lose every time to a greedy player who is willing to take mitigated risks.
No, pop 6 defensive herd is attackable by any carnivore with Intelligence or Pack Hunting. Since carnivorism is compatible with fewer traits than herbivorism, carnivore species that aren't specialized to go after Warning Call (with Ambush) and Climbing species (with Climbing) are very likely to pick them up. If you could just drop a species with pop 6 you'd have a point, but the time it takes to build one up means that other, better power combos are coming out in the endgame.
Carnivores are more likely to be Pack Hunters because it's "compatible with fewer traits"? Are you just that stupid?

You still have to draw Pack Hunter before you actually play it on top of Carnivore. So the real limitation to Pack Hunting is its frequency in the deck, not its "compatibility".

And for the record, since you are obviously clueless: There are only 7 copies of Pack Hunter in the entire deck, which is "countered" by exactly 7 copies of the Defensive Herder card. That means you have the same chance of drawing Pack Hunter to counter Defensive Herder. Gee, doesn't that sound balanced?

Indeed, that you need to have the Carnivore card on-hand in addition to Pack Hunter means you have a lower chance of having both Pack Hunter and Carnivore on hand to "counter" a Defensive Herder card. This is why the designer added an Intelligence Card - which has 7 copies - to give carnivores another "out" to begin with and balance it out.

Moreover, your assertion that cards that play with numbers are a "waste of time" is completely stupid nonsense that again ignores the greed portion of the equation. Increasing population with defensive herder doesn't just make you immune to many attackers. You can also collect more food with higher population, and both food and population are converted to victory points on a 1:1 basis at the end of the game. A surviving species by contrast doesn't get any extra points no matter how many trait cards were played on it or how long it lived.

Josh already pointed this out and you ignored this because you're too busy hiding in the trees celebrating your 1 food, when the point of the game is to get the most food no matter how many of your guys end up dying in the process. A defensive herder is strong because it can collect up to six food per turn in addition to being safe to many predators. A Long neck burrower by contrast is stupid in all but the most apocalyptic of metas because it collects just one food per turn but can boast off an immunity to predators that may not even be on the board to begin with.
Last edited by Zinegata on Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:09 am, edited 8 times in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Zinegata wrote:Way to completely ignore everything I said about board state just because you got humiliated on how I took your exact same hand and made it three times more productive for a particular board state. Maybe I should keep humiliating you based on some basic math about the game until you learn to fucking stop?
No you didn't.

Look, I don't know or care about the balance of this game, but he specifically laid out a generic tactic and then you declared the board state to be "no carnivores exist"

That's not the same board state, and since his was obviously designed to avoid carnivores, your sample board state can't be the same as his.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

No, pop 6 defensive herd is attackable by any carnivore with Intelligence or Pack Hunting
Okay, now I am completely sure we played different editions of the game - as there are two different versions of Pack Hunting out there. But you are still wrong about that point.
rulebook linked above wrote: Defensive Herding
A species with Defensive Herding may not be attacked unless the attacking
Carnivore has a greater Population.
rulebook linked above wrote: Pack Hunting
Add 3 to this species’ Body Size when determining if it can
attack another species.
Card Text from version I played wrote: Pack Hunting
This species Body Size is equal to its population PLUS its body size when determining if it
can attack another species.
A species with a Population of
So a max size Carnivore with Pack Hunting has an effective Body Size of 9 (or maybe 6 + {a value between 1 and 6} ), which means that it is *bigger* than any potential prey. However, Defensive Herding doesn't much with the usual Body Size vs Body Size comparison - NO, it jolly adds another comparison, which is between Population and Population and does not give a shit about Body Size.

Since 6 is the MAXIMUM value without traits and since ZERO traits provide effective boosts above the maximum for population, a creature with Defensive Herding and Population 6 is only vulnerable if a Carnivore can shut down that trait via Intelligence.

*******************

Moving past the argument over a game I played twice and liked both times: Here's what I played this week

Game Night #1
1. Kingdom Builder - this is a game that exemplifies Donald X.'s design. You have simple mechanics that are given a whole lot of replayability by randomness in setup, available special powers moves and the scoring criteria. You also have a very real potential to get totally screwed by luck of the draw and there is little chance for comeback if you screw up your early decisions. Oh yeah, and there is a pasted-on medieval theme. It's still better than Dominion on both player interaction and having rules that are actually possible to interpret.

2. Worm Up! - This is a cute light kid's game I got recently. It's a good filler and it is the only game I have ever played that actually includes mechanics for shifting the goalposts.

3. The Game - A Co-Op of sorting your numeric cards into ascending and descending piles. Strategy really seems to be about stretching the fuzzy communication rules as far as you can, and the gameplay would probably benefit from more explicit limitations on what exactly is allowable communication. Rather than saying "you cannot mention exact numbers" it would be tighter to phrase things as "you can only say point to piles and say Good, Bad or Inbetween"


4. Valley of the Kings: Afterlife - An interesting Deckbuilder where all you choose each turn whether to play each card as money, for its action or to score it for points.

Game Night #2
1: Skull - A lite game about bidding on hidden information. Like an even simpler Liar's Dice. Really cool art.

2: Pandante (with Light and Dark expansion/update). David Sirlin's reworking of Texas Hold 'em. It does a bunch of things to make the game interesting, I especially like that it ditches player elimination in favor of a "you must be this rich to win"

3: Worm Up! - Again.

4. Letter Tycoon - I mentioned this in a prior post. I am still really digging it. I managed to pull a pretty convincing win using the J patent's "double-score words that are at least half vowels " on a 7-letter word and then a 6-letter word in my final two turns
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Fri Jan 22, 2016 7:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Zinegata »

Kaelik wrote: Look, I don't know or care about the balance of this game, but he specifically laid out a generic tactic and then you declared the board state to be "no carnivores exist"
Oh shut your lying trap up. You're still a childish moron relying on posturing because your actual intellectual honesty (or originality even) is non-existent. This is why you've never been able to hack it outside of this tiny little safe corner of the Internet.

I didn't declare the board state that "no carnivores exist". That is just your fanfiction. My argument is that board state determines strength of specific strategies. This is why I said "The key to Evolution really is to spot the table meta and work it to your advantage." This is why I specifically explained when and where the 3 species opening is good or bad in addition to the strategy itself, as I explained below:
If there are many carnivores on the board or a lack of vegetables for herbivores then the 3 vanilla species would certainly be the weaker play, because these vanilla species might be killed and stop generating +3 food/cards.
Emphasis mine.

Mord, being a dishonest shit just like you, ignored that and basically said the exact same thing to pretend that the strategy is always bad:
and those zero-trait species get fucking eaten immediately.
Gee, didn't I just say that they *could* be eaten if there are many carnivores on the board? Where the fuck is the value-add in that above comment then? The answer is none - he instead wants to pretend the board is always full of carnivores; which you tried to twist into me wanting to pretend that the board has no carnivores despite my explicit acknowledgement of the carnivore issue.

The problem is that he is as ignorant of the game just like you and didn't realize that only 13% of the deck was Carnivore cards to begin with. Having carnivores on the board is not a given but he keeps basing his card evaluations based only on how to stave off the threat of carnivores while ignoring that doesn't win the game - food collection efficiency (greed) balanced against being able to keep those mechanisms safe. This is why Josh's Defensive Herding example is easily better in most metas and yet Mord keeps pretending it's dumb.

So really, fuck off because you're still carrying old vendettas. You were always a moron driven by your insecurity of other people's intelligence which is why you were never more than a glorified Internet bouncer.
Last edited by Zinegata on Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:25 am, edited 12 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Josh_Kablack wrote:4. Letter Tycoon - I mentioned this in a prior post. I am still really digging it. I managed to pull a pretty convincing win using the J patent's "double-score words that are at least half vowels " on a 7-letter word and then a 6-letter word in my final two turns
If you really like word games that much you should play Codenames, whenever they manage to bloody restock that game anyway.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Actually, what happened is I misread this quote that I quoted:
Zinegata wrote:Way to completely ignore everything I said about board state just because you got humiliated on how I took your exact same hand and made it three times more productive for a particular board state. Maybe I should keep humiliating you based on some basic math about the game until you learn to fucking stop?
as saying "for the same board state" Not sure why, but that's what actually happened. Which you could have proven wrong by using the specific thing I did quote, instead of some other thing somewhere else, since obviously saying two contradictory things would not absolve you of saying the second thing, so even infinity quotes from not what I was quoting wouldn't prove me wrong.

You could even tell that I misread it if you read my actual post where I repeatedly made reference to the "same board state."

But hey:
Zinegata wrote:Oh shut the fuck up. You're still a childish lying moron relying on posturing because your actual intellectual honesty (or originality even) is non-existent. This is why you've never been able to hack it outside of this tiny little safe corner of the Internet.

...

Mord, being a dishonest shit just like you, ignored that and basically said the exact same thing to pretend that the strategy is always bad:

...

So really, fuck off because you're still carrying old vendettas. You were always a moron driven by your insecurity of other people's intelligence.
I think it's pretty clear that one person is carrying old vendettas... But you might be wrong about who.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Zinegata »

Kaelik wrote:Actually, what happened is I misread this quote that I quoted:
Wow, Kaelik actually acknowledges he can have some fault now. Hell must have frozen over.
as saying "for the same board state" Not sure why, but that's what actually happened. Which you could have proven wrong by using the specific thing I did quote, instead of some other thing somewhere else, since obviously saying two contradictory things would not absolve you of saying the second thing, so even infinity quotes from not what I was quoting wouldn't prove me wrong.
... And then comes the long bullshit self-rationalization to pawn off the issue to someone else.

If you had actually read the entire post - like say the portions I quoted - instead of jumping on a single portion out-of context, then it would readily apparent that the words "a particular board state" had always been there.

You didn't. You instead jumped on a portion of the post because you thought it was an easy way to declare victory. Any and all of your self-rationalization doesn't change that.
Last edited by Zinegata on Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Zinegata wrote:... And then comes the long bullshit self-rationalization to pawn off the issue to someone else.
Actually, pointing out that someone else is wrong about something doesn't magically make you right, so when I point out that someone else is wrong at the same time I admit fault, it doesn't mean I'm magically perfect again.

This is something everyone but you already knows.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Zinegata »

Kaelik wrote:Actually, pointing out that someone else is wrong about something doesn't magically make you right, so when I point out that someone else is wrong at the same time I admit fault, it doesn't mean I'm magically perfect again.

This is something everyone but you already knows.
We are not talking about ethereal concepts or right, wrong, or perfection. That's just a buttload of bullshit self-rationalization that would be laughed at anywhere else on the Internet and in real life.

You jumped in on a conversation. You clearly did not get the gist of what I was saying and commented based on your misconception. This had always been your problem, and that you felt the need to comment despite admitting you didn't even know the game shows who's the one picking a fight.

Moreover, lecturing me on how I corrected the misconception has nothing to do with right or wrong. You're just posturing. You naturally got embarrassed by your mistake and are trying to prove you're not some dumb hick who didn't even bother to read carefully the portion he quoted.

Which shows that you still don't understand that nobody gives a shit if you feel embarrassed or if you're wrong; and that you shouldn't too.

Instead like some needy puppy you're going to cling to my leg and beg for attention and validation. I don't have time to waste playing your stupid games. Find some other chew toy to play with.
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Post by hyzmarca »

I've recently discovered that legacy boardgames are a thing.

Apparantly, there are actual games in which, during the normal course of play, you're expected to physically destroy playing pieces and cards, or permanently deface the board. The idea being that every time you play, the game will be different, since it carries the marks of your previous games.

Of course, there's also the fact that you have to pay like $75 for a new set every time you want to play a fresh game. Which I'm sure the manufacturers like.
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Post by Kaelik »

Zinegata wrote:That's just a buttload of bullshit self-rationalization that would be laughed at anywhere else on the Internet and in real life.
"I misread something" is not a buttload of rationalization. Since nothing else I said had anything to do with why I was wrong, it couldn't possibly be rationalization.
Zinegata wrote:are trying to prove you're not some dumb hick who didn't even bother to read carefully the portion he quoted.
Weird that I specifically said that I'm some dumb hick who didn't even bother to read carefully the portion I quoted then, isn't it? Quite a masterplan to hide it!
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by OgreBattle »

hyzmarca wrote:I've recently discovered that legacy boardgames are a thing.

Apparantly, there are actual games in which, during the normal course of play, you're expected to physically destroy playing pieces and cards, or permanently deface the board. The idea being that every time you play, the game will be different, since it carries the marks of your previous games.

Of course, there's also the fact that you have to pay like $75 for a new set every time you want to play a fresh game. Which I'm sure the manufacturers like.
That was a good episode of Always Sunny
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Well the idea of a Legacy game is that every play is affected by the future so you have all sorts of memories and just inside jokes. Buying a second game kind of defeats the purpose.

Legacy board games are a lot of fun. I particularly like We Didn't Playtest This At All: Legacies.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
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Post by SlyJohnny »

hyzmarca wrote:Of course, there's also the fact that you have to pay like $75 for a new set every time you want to play a fresh game. Which I'm sure the manufacturers like.
Nah, the game still "works" once you've completed a run, it's just a permanently customized version. There's no expectation that you buy a fresh copy every ten games...

You'll permanently remove cards from play, or be called upon to open new packs and permanently add cards to play. "Defacing" the board normally amounts to putting a new sticker over an existing label.
Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata »

hyzmarca wrote:I've recently discovered that legacy boardgames are a thing.

Apparantly, there are actual games in which, during the normal course of play, you're expected to physically destroy playing pieces and cards, or permanently deface the board. The idea being that every time you play, the game will be different, since it carries the marks of your previous games.

Of course, there's also the fact that you have to pay like $75 for a new set every time you want to play a fresh game. Which I'm sure the manufacturers like.
Risk Legacy doesn't work. The concept of having an evolving Risk battlefield may be appealing to some Risk players, but in practice there is very little sense of continuity because only terrain changes persist - not the size and location of your respective empires. So your empire of murder robots may conquer the continental United States in one game but then suddenly start somewhere in Australia in the next game.

Don't buy it. It is fail.

Pandemic Legacy however does work and is a ground-breaking game. There was certainly massive controversy in the boardgame community when the $75 price tag came out, but these were eventually muted because of how good the campaign turned out to be.

But first, let's go over the box economics. The game will last between 12 to 24 play sessions. So at $75 you're paying $6 to $12 per session, which is only $1-$3 per player if you have a regular group of 4!

While this is expensive if you compare it to other boardgames that can be played forever, the stark reality is that most boardgames of the complexity level of Pandemic will not even get played that much. I have many games in my collection that have only been played once or not at all, so in this sense Pandemic Legacy is not "expensive".

Moreover, Legacy gave some real life to the game from a story-telling perspective. Pandemic is a well-regarded game, but it's a dry game with a very sterile theme unless you happen to like the movie Contagion. The Legacy version by and large fixes it by giving the game an actual story, with some really gut-punching plot twists.

In essence, Pandemic Legacy replaced the good but bland virtual GM who had good rules but no story to tell. Instead it gave the game a good virtual GM with an actual interesting story to tell on top of solidly balanced rules.

The persistence of the upgrades also made much more sense than Risk. Cities that collapsed because of your previous failures stay collapsed; whereas infrastructure and capabilities you built can persist from mission to mission. It creates a real sense of ownership because you know the board state can't be blamed on anyone but yourselves.

Indeed, it is very easy to get attached to specific characters that you keep playing (our African-American looking "Operations Manager" was henceforth named Nick Fury after he got wounded multiple times and we drew an eyepatch on him), or to feel invested in "defending" a location that had persisted and helped you fight off the pandemics. In my game for instance we started calling ourselves "Team Istanbul" due to the sheer bloody-minded refusal to give up that city and how instrumental it turned out to be to saving the world time and time again.

That said, I expect a huge slew of Legacy games next year trying to cash in on the same gravy train; and I don't think it will be easy to replicate Pandemic Legacy's lovely story campaign and plot twists. That's for the future though and in the meantime I would really recommend that people try the Season 1 of Pandemic Legacy to at least see how to do the system right.
Last edited by Zinegata on Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:52 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by RobbyPants »

Zinegata wrote: To end the game one player needs to score 15 points. The maximum point value of a tier 3 card is 5 points, so you can theoretically win with just three 5-point cards.

That said it takes at least 10 gems to buy a 5-point card. So it's more common to aim for a four card win using several 4-point cards, especially those costing only 7 gems apiece to win. That's theoretically just 28 gems to score 16 points.

...

Reservation happens a lot in tournaments. The extra gold helps break hoarding monopolies and assures purchase of those precious 7-cost 4-point cards. The only way to slow it down is seemingly to do the same thing. Indeed, on tables where people tried to go Tier 1+nobles the game tended to end even faster in favor of the Tier 3 power buyers.
We taught my sister-in-law and her husband how to play last weekend. He innately adopted this strategy and kicked all of our asses, twice. I was trying to play this style side-by-side on my own to see how it paced, but it seems a lot harder in a two-player game (with just four gems of each color). With seven of each, plus the gold gems, he was able to effectively reserve and horde some 4-5 point cards. He won with around six cards each game.

RobbyPants wrote:
erik wrote:My 6 year old picked Splendor up fairly quickly. We were helping him at the start and then stopped helping him too late since his economy was a juggernaut. Only reason he didn't win was that he didn't make a plan for what top tier card or noble to pursue.
That's good. I have a seven-year-old I want to teach.
I taught my seven-year-old how to play, and she caught on really quickly. She actually beat be my one point. It will be fun for her to be able to play with my wife and me.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Couldn't you avoid permanently destroying things on the board by using magnets to affix and remove things?

Or maybe have slots and pegs. Or just take a photo with the camera in your pocket and set up the board the same way.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

OgreBattle wrote:Couldn't you avoid permanently destroying things on the board by using magnets to affix and remove things?

Or maybe have slots and pegs. Or just take a photo with the camera in your pocket and set up the board the same way.
I've heard people suggest lamenting the pieces, using a camera, and pretty much doing just that.

The only people I know who own the game are sort of purists and board game enthusiasts, so I could see them playing it straight on principle, alone. I'd be tempted to want to preserve the pieces, but from what I hear, there are some plot twists in the game that might not translate well into a second play-through. I could be wrong about this, though.
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Post by Emerald »

RobbyPants wrote:I'd be tempted to want to preserve the pieces, but from what I hear, there are some plot twists in the game that might not translate well into a second play-through. I could be wrong about this, though.
It's not so much that its plot twists don't work a second time ('cause the same applies to any sort of plot twist, really), it's that some of the changes that happen are so far-reaching, and events build on each other so much, that you can eventually end up with two or three stickers on pretty much every city on the board. By the time you'd be playing game 9 of 12 (or game 16 of 20 or 18 of 24 if your group sucks at the game or gets unlucky early on) setup could get pretty complicated and time-consuming unless you're playing two or three games at a time to avoid resetting things.

There are identical Red and Blue versions of the game to allow you to play through twice with different groups, so I'd suggest that if you think you might want to make a reusable version you could play through one version normally, and get the other one to de-sticker-ify once you see how things play out and determine whether it would be worth it.
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Post by Zinegata »

OgreBattle wrote:Couldn't you avoid permanently destroying things on the board by using magnets to affix and remove things?

Or maybe have slots and pegs. Or just take a photo with the camera in your pocket and set up the board the same way.
Nothing in Pandemic Legacy needs to be "destroyed", you could just set it aside to a "dead" pile. We didn't have to tear up any cards or game pieces.

There are stickers that need to be attached to the board, but if you really want to convert it back to a regular (basic) Pandemic game you can just peel the stickers off; but only after the campaign.

Also I really don't think that the Pandemic Legacy campaign is really "re-playable". You could do it all over again to get a better result, but by and large the plot twists and storyline are what make the game special and unique. There isn't as much incentive to play it all over again when you already know what's going to happen; and indeed my sense is that the game can get much, much easier if you're able to plan it out in advance.
Last edited by Zinegata on Tue Jan 26, 2016 3:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Emerald wrote:There are identical Red and Blue versions of the game to allow you to play through twice with different groups
I have to note though - since there's a lot of confusion regarding this - both the Red and Blue versions of the game have the exact same campaign and plot twists. The different color boxes were only to allow people to keep track if there happened to be two different play groups in the same household.

This is different from Risk Legacy, wherein each box had some slightly different mystery boxes which also added to the disastrous balance.
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