What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Gurei-Ornery]

@Hahma and @Ranior

I think a few minor tweaks would make Seafall imminently more playable, the main one being removing windfall of Glory turns that quickly end a game when not even the person attempting the endeavor expects it. That seems the most deflating thing about this game to most, I know it is for us. The issue is you don't know it is a problem until it is too late. An example from our last game is I successfully Explored in a Tomb with an advisor that gave me an extra Glory for taking no damage and ended up finding an artifact that gave me 3-4 Glory (can't remember exactly), then happened to get the Milestone for finding artifacts that gives you 4 more Glory. So a 9-10 Glory turn in a game to 17 when the majority of turns nets an average of 0-2 Glory. I think it would have been better to have to have chosen which of the 2 big Glory bumps to take, limiting it to a max of 6 on this particular turn. I would have still gotten the Milestone in the historical records, which I believe effect the end game scoring, but it wouldn't have gotten out of hand in game. We have had that happen multiple times and it is always so game changing. Now to Ranior's point that luck is somehow the problem, the only luck in the scenario above was that I luckily picked the Tomb out of the book that led me to an artifact. Everything else was planned to mitigate the possibility of failure with the advisor I made active to the amount of Fortune tokens and dice I needed to insure success.

I have other ideas, but at this point it is too late to implement them for this particular play through. I have another copy that I plan to play with my kids and I will attempt to make it more balanced as Glory is attained.

[Gurei-Ornery]

@Hahma and @Ranior

I think a few minor tweaks would make Seafall imminently more playable, the main one being removing windfall of Glory turns that quickly end a game when not even the person attempting the endeavor expects it. That seems the most deflating thing about this game to most, I know it is for us. The issue is you don't know it is a problem until it is too late. An example from our last game is I successfully Explored in a Tomb with an advisor that gave me an extra Glory for taking no damage and ended up finding an artifact that gave me 3-4 Glory (can't remember exactly), then happened to get the Milestone for finding artifacts that gives you 4 more Glory. So a 9-10 Glory turn in a game to 17 when the majority of turns nets an average of 0-2 Glory. I think it would have been better to have to have chosen which of the 2 big Glory bumps to take, limiting it to a max of 6 on this particular turn. I would have still gotten the Milestone in the historical records, which I believe effect the end game scoring, but it wouldn't have gotten out of hand in game. We have had that happen multiple times and it is always so game changing. Now to Ranior's point that luck is somehow the problem, the only luck in the scenario above was that I luckily picked the Tomb out of the book that led me to an artifact. Everything else was planned to mitigate the possibility of failure with the advisor I made active to the amount of Fortune tokens and dice I needed to insure success.

I have other ideas, but at this point it is too late to implement them for this particular play through. I have another copy that I plan to play with my kids and I will attempt to make it more balanced as Glory is attained.

[Dad_Scaper]

I wonder what happened with that game. The buzz from people I trust was very positive, but then I heard there were late tweaks by someone other than Rob. I'm sure the rumors are all gathered somewhere on BGG.

Hey G-O, what are you doing on 3/18?

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Ranior

We quit our SeaFall campaign after around 6-7 games. I can't quite remember.

I was so hyped for that game and so excited for it. And the first couple games are good. But there are so many elements I do not like, namely the balance. I'm sure it has to be extremely hard to balance any legacy game, so I'll cut them some slack, but yeah. It seems most groups wind up realizing there are so many wild random swings in luck, or that prior decisions have you locked into such a place you couldn't have forseen....it just becomes not fun. When our group realized that our individual decisions mattered very little compared to the luck of this or that, well that's just not my type of game. There were so many promising parts of SeaFall too. There's real genius there that I can appreciate, while recognizing it is not a game for me (or many judging from the reviews). Yet at the same time I'm still very in love with many of the mechanics and ideas, so if they somehow want to make a SeaFall 2 and take a lot of this feedback in mind when making a fairly similar game, I'd probably give it another shot. But as is, I can't really recommend it for most unless you really don't care about winning competing and will be happy just taking it along for the ride. (Or I suppose if you just don't get hit by poor luck and are in first or near it then you'll probably still have fun).

Ah well. Just a few days ago I did finally open up the rest of the boxes and read through everything. Lots of cool ideas still but I can tell much of it would have frustrated me anyhow. I'm happy enough with what I did get out of SeaFall. Now to figure out what to do with this massive box. (Seems such a shame to just recycle it all, but that's probably all to be done with it. Ah well, that's the way these things go).

With all that being said heavy spoilers on this next thing:

Spoiler Alert!

That blacklight is pretty cool. I mean to think you've been playing and using cards that had hidden text on them the entire time and you can only later find out through the blacklight. That was a big surprise and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they somehow work that into Pandemic Legacy Season 2.

Anyhow, as for me lately I've been playing a lot of Hive Pocket. I know I'm at least a decade behind to the bandwagon, but Hive is a great two player game. Having lots of fun with it.

Else I'm still playing A Feast for Odin fairly often, including solo. The weekly solo challenge that is run over at BGG really keeps me playing too so I'm thankful for the organizer and the community there. I'm in full love with that game and think it probably is my favorite of all time. It goes right alongside Caverna/Agricola for Rosenberg's best in my mind. I strongly suggest everyone to give it a try if you ever get a chance. It's a standout game in my opinion.

You hit the nail on the head with regards to Seafall. At this point (well for the last several games) I have given up on winning or even being in the top 3, I just want it to end. But, I will stick it out through the end because I know that the top 3 players are having fun. I can't speak for the other player I'm tied with, but I'm sure he's not loving it and may not be liking it much anymore. We have our biweekly game of it tonight, so at least that will be one more done. It's not a total loss though, as I do enjoy the people I'm playing this with, 2 of which I had only gamed with occasionally, so it's nice to get closer to them. One of them played high school football with Donovan McNabb in Chicago, and the other is in a 6 payer Star Wars Armada campaign that I'm also in and will finally get going thus coming Saturday.

As for A Feast for Odin, I'd like to try that sometime. Though since Seafall is eating up my every other game night, it's hard to get many other games in. At least my daughters and I are on September for Pandemic Legacy, so once we knock that out, I want to start Gloomhaven with them. But I might not be able to wait

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Gurei-Ornery

@Hahma and @Ranior

I think a few minor tweaks would make Seafall imminently more playable, the main one being removing windfall of Glory turns that quickly end a game when not even the person attempting the endeavor expects it. That seems the most deflating thing about this game to most, I know it is for us. The issue is you don't know it is a problem until it is too late. An example from our last game is I successfully Explored in a Tomb with an advisor that gave me an extra Glory for taking no damage and ended up finding an artifact that gave me 3-4 Glory (can't remember exactly), then happened to get the Milestone for finding artifacts that gives you 4 more Glory. So a 9-10 Glory turn in a game to 17 when the majority of turns nets an average of 0-2 Glory. I think it would have been better to have to have chosen which of the 2 big Glory bumps to take, limiting it to a max of 6 on this particular turn. I would have still gotten the Milestone in the historical records, which I believe effect the end game scoring, but it wouldn't have gotten out of hand in game. We have had that happen multiple times and it is always so game changing. Now to Ranior's point that luck is somehow the problem, the only luck in the scenario above was that I luckily picked the Tomb out of the book that led me to an artifact. Everything else was planned to mitigate the possibility of failure with the advisor I made active to the amount of Fortune tokens and dice I needed to insure success.

I have other ideas, but at this point it is too late to implement them for this particular play through. I have another copy that I plan to play with my kids and I will attempt to make it more balanced as Glory is attained.

Sure, some luck can be mitigated to a degree, but there have been windfalls in our game like you had. By luck of the dice, a perfect roll that nets no damage and then finding more goodies and then a milestone to boot. Or choosing the right book entry that nets a player a tonof gold and it allows them to get a milestone for gold. Or one player drawing a better card when exploring a sea space and gettingsomething good, while another just keeps getting dangerous water stickers. Or the luck of the research cards one gets. Or the luck of the Advisor card flop that gets a player just the right one they need for their plan.

I don't think we got to a second winter since game 1. So when you only have 4 or 5 turns in the game and at a point where you are kind of stuck, it's hard to ever gain ground because you couldn't plan for it several games earlier. I might not have wasted time building 2 colonies if I knew there was no way I could get the 5 building milestone I had planned for. I even have the advisor that let's me build 2 buildings in a turn and has a huge discount on one of them and an upgrade. But if the game only last 4 or 5 turns, there no way I can build 5 buildings, even though my colonies are close to the provinces.

Tonight, I might just do nothing but sail out to a newer island way out there and explore and likely get sunk. But at least it will be more fun having some kind of action. I usually can squeak out 9 Glory in a game, but maybe end up with 5 tonight

[Gurei-Ornery]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

I wonder what happened with that game. The buzz from people I trust was very positive, but then I heard there were late tweaks by someone other than Rob. I'm sure the rumors are all gathered somewhere on BGG.

Hey G-O, what are you doing on 3/18?

I am keeping the tournament in mind, but it is possible it will coincide with completion of a "project" that you know about. The schedule has it done roughly around that time and I am unsure about how much time after completion that we have.

[Ranior]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Sure, some luck can be mitigated to a degree, but there have been windfalls in our game like you had. By luck of the dice, a perfect roll that nets no damage and then finding more goodies and then a milestone to boot. Or choosing the right book entry that nets a player a tonof gold and it allows them to get a milestone for gold. Or one player drawing a better card when exploring a sea space and gettingsomething good, while another just keeps getting dangerous water stickers. Or the luck of the research cards one gets. Or the luck of the Advisor card flop that gets a player just the right one they need for their plan.

I don't think we got to a second winter since game 1. So when you only have 4 or 5 turns in the game and at a point where you are kind of stuck, it's hard to ever gain ground because you couldn't plan for it several games earlier. I might not have wasted time building 2 colonies if I knew there was no way I could get the 5 building milestone I had planned for. I even have the advisor that let's me build 2 buildings in a turn and has a huge discount on one of them and an upgrade. But if the game only last 4 or 5 turns, there no way I can build 5 buildings, even though my colonies are close to the provinces.

Tonight, I might just do nothing but sail out to a newer island way out there and explore and likely get sunk. But at least it will be more fun having some kind of action. I usually can squeak out 9 Glory in a game, but maybe end up with 5 tonight

Yep, windfall glory is really the killer. In my 3 player games, both me and one other player had finally built up all the resources needed for a colony. Everything looked fine. But then suddenly the other player ended the game do unexpected glory gains that we really couldn't have foreseen. (As you said, exploring a tomb and getting another huge chunk of glory off of a tablet or something else).

We both wound up with relatively little to show for that game--a bit of glory but not a ton. Of course one more turn and we'd both have another 3-4 glory from founding colonies, plus we'd have the long term benefits of owning those colonies (well at least for awhile).

Instead, the game ended right then and there and we're left extremely dissatisfied.

I think Hahma makes excellent points about the luck, but he missed the other side of it that I also witnessed: When you do everything you can to plan for a good result and still get screwed. This happened to me in one of the very first games. I spent a good chunk of the game building up the resources to sink someone else's ship and so claim that milestone and glory that came with it. I got my big ship upgraded, I got a nice advisor, launched my attack.

And I rolled awful. Sure it was a low probability chance at that point but I did. And now I flat out sink, losing my ship upgrade and that glory. Someone else comes in and claims the milestone I was going to, earning the permanent upgrade and the chunk of glory. Therefore I had a huge glory swing even while planning everything I could.

Now in the long run you'd hope the luck would even out, but not the case in what I experienced. It wasn't very many games later that I set up to explore a new island--getting ship upgrades, finding an advisor that would really help, getting a chart or two. Yet another really bad roll and I sink, losing my upgrade and failing to claim the 3-4 glory for finding the new island--and my ship is sent all the way back to my harbor. Huge set back that is very hard to come back from, and only puts me further behind in the overall glory game.

The exact event that really turned me away though was the game when the first tomb was uncovered. None of us knew much about them, so I decided to try and really build up my resources, even getting an advisor that helped on all tomb encounters (we didn't really know or realize at this time you could essentially read the flavor text and know what type of endeavor you would have, so I was prepping for either a Raid or Explore). The turn before I'm going to make my move another player decides to just risk it and goes in--of course he is able to essentially pick what type of endeavor to have, manages to roll super well and claims the milestone right in front of me and the tomb closes, another thing I couldn't have known was about to happen. My efforts for the last two turns were wasted.

That just creates a frustrating game experience. I'm okay if they want some surprises and exploration of the unknown--but you can't have such massive wild swings in victory points hinging on the outcome of some of these things and still have a game that feels reasonably balanced. Instead I feel the winner of SeaFall will largely be whomever got the luckiest and had their plans work out rather than be screwed over. I suspect many who wind up behind get there not because they played poorly but because they had a few poor rolls or got beat out to key milestones by a turn, or had the wrong advisor/event flip when they were setting up for a big turn.

With all that being said--I still agree there are several things that probably could be done to make things better. Putting a glory cap on turns seems reasonable. Even better, just make the milestones grant less glory. You already get a permanent upgrade for completing them, helping you out in the long term--so why also give huge amounts of victory points too. Next, I'd also allow multiple players to at least get the glory from a milestone--that way if someone completes it just a turn in front of you you can at least try to do the same thing and get the same glory (or maybe a little less, still there has to be someway to implement these, even if you just have a 2nd place glory bonus printed on every card or something).

I also think some major changes should happen to tombs too as the truly wild back-breaking swings in the mid game of SeaFall seem almost entirely attributable to them. Once again really lowering the glory rewards of them would seem reasonable so that they aren't so massively important. I honestly didn't want to explore high defense sites in fear of revealing a tomb for my opponents to quickly gain off of it.

But I'm not a great designer so who knows. With all this being said, I wouldn't be at all shocked if you're exactly right @Dad_Scaper . I just have to think anyone that set this game up in front of numerous playtest groups would have gotten plenty enough feedback regarding the wild glory swings and the negative play experiences they created. I just can't imagine this current iteration of SeaFall got rigorously playtested as I'm sure these issues would have been revealed and hopefully resolved. And as I said I think there is real clear genius in many of the mechanics and the ideas present in the world of SeaFall....it just needs a little tweaking and I think it could be a really fantastic game.

But ah well. Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is supposed to be on its way in Q3 this year, and my group is super ready for that. I still love legacy games and will seek out exciting and interesting looking ones. And I'll slightly regret buying SeaFall, but at the same time how can you ever know if you'll like a game or not unless you get it and try it? So ah well. It was a clunker for me, and I can't trade/sell it cause that's not how Legacy games work, but oh well. There are always plenty of other games to play and enjoy, and in general I've been lucky to avoid getting any games I don't love in quite awhile.

[Dad_Scaper]

I think it was CVN who said that he didn't think that legacy games would become common, because they are so damned hard to design. I wonder if this wasn't a problem with last-minute fiddling, by whomever. That's kind of what it looks like, judging by the rumors & enthusiasm I heard during development compared with the precise nature of the complaints I'm seeing now.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

I think it was CVN who said that he didn't think that legacy games would become common, because they are so damned hard to design. I wonder if this wasn't a problem with last-minute fiddling, by whomever. That's kind of what it looks like, judging by the rumors & enthusiasm I heard during development compared with the precise nature of the complaints I'm seeing now.

Well I think the biggest challenge with Seafall, with regards to design, is that it's not based off an existing game like Risk and Pandemic Legacies were. I think that while there are some familiar mechanics, like buying and selling goods, getting buildings and upgrades etc, there is so much of the game that you don't know the rules for, but have to make decisions that will carry forward and either help or hurt you based on what the new rules dictate.

I can imagine how difficult it would be to design something like this, and wonder about the playtesting and how complete the design was when testing. Also, group size might make a difference, as well as how aggressive players are either in exploring risk or against each other.

I do look forward to seeing how Charterstone is, from Stonemeir Games.

[Dad_Scaper]

The cult of personality behind Stonemeier games gives me pause. Not fair to him, I am sure, but the way people talk about him & his games makes me cautious.

[Ranior]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

The cult of personality behind Stonemeier games gives me pause. Not fair to him, I am sure, but the way people talk about him & his games makes me cautious.

Oh good, so I'm not the only one.

With that being said, I too am interested in Charterstone, but merely because I pretty much am interested in any Legacy game.

But, as Hahma and many others have made clear, I've no doubt a great Legacy game is probably tortuously difficult to get right. I do sometimes wonder if years down the road I'm not going to have even more respect for the wonder that is Pandemic Legacy. I mean it's hard to get more appreciation than number one on BGG and I already rate it a 10, but that legacy experience is about perfect. Fantastic twists and turns, challenging, but the difficulty scales so well with the group and the game always seemed to make sure to introduce new mechanics and abilities just in the time you'd need them. It is pretty remarkable how well balanced and how smoothly that game goes.

So perhaps I'm not really a fan of legacy games at all, and I'm just a fan of really well designed games. Only time will tell I suppose.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

The cult of personality behind Stonemeier games gives me pause. Not fair to him, I am sure, but the way people talk about him & his games makes me cautious.

I had only played Euphoria and Viticulture once each and they seemed okay, not enough experience to say I loved or hated them. But I do love Scythe and have played that a lot. I splurged on the Collectors Edition.

As far as him or his personality, I don't know. He may have made some comments a few times out of frustration on BGG, but I don't hold game designers to any higher standard than anyone else. They are human and passionate about their work/creation, they have to hear negative stuff a lot, if they frequent BGG. Usually they have been thick skinned, but I don't begrudge them if they get frustrated on occasion. Some designers don't even bother to participate in public forums, so they may be jerks but fewer people would know about it.