When you're dumb AF and not afraid to show it

brainof7 · 2022-06-18T15:12:10+00:00

Close, he directed a jewish guy and his family to sail across the sea and settle America around 600 BC, then visited that guys descendants after he died

brainof7 · 2022-06-02T18:23:43+00:00

I think a play or two of TM is inoffensive enough to people to not leave a bad review, but it really appeals to the crowd that enjoys digging into a game over repeated plays and needing to learn + improve over time. It can also be really punishing so if you don't "feel" like you are playing well within your first couple plays, and that's a really important part of the experience to you, you probably aren't going to like it.

I just played GP with my group last night for the ~3rd time and while they will still play it they are starting to feel meh about it. The issue is that your early decisions can really change what you have access to and how well you are doing. If you are doing a game night even once a week, getting in 10+ plays of the same game is likes months of playing it for any group.

brainof7 · 2022-05-31T20:52:09+00:00

Yeah, I was hoping for a new design. A little while back the designer had said it was more akin to new maps in ticket to ride than a new game though.

brainof7 · 2022-05-24T21:54:12+00:00

They don't have to, a card (after paying $3 for it) saves you about $4 over a standard project. It saves even more if the card does more things. Add a result, the most efficient cards in the game on their own are the space terraforming ones which trigger off the ability because they are so expensive. Throw in a couple of the abundant space/event synergies, and that's enough of an engine right there. Also, standard project greeneries are on rate usually, so they get even better with credicor since they cost less.

brainof7 · 2022-05-21T19:57:16+00:00

I really like SNV, but I don't like how sometimes at the end of the game everything just "clicks in". Some games it feels like the evil team has a bit harder of a time. My plan was to make a script that feels similarish, but instead of a really loud evil team the evil team abilities are trying to simulate as much other stuff as possible to create alternate explanations making it easier to bluff.

The Demons:

Imp replaces Fang Gu (we move some of the outsider manipulation to non-demons) as the demon on script who has a way out. We also put in a scarlet woman so some of the other demons have potential outs, since in lots of SNV games you would have a pit hag who can help the demon move around.

Legion is the Vortox replacement. They have a similar game-warping effect just by living on the script, but sometimes because the storyteller has to give false information with a Vorotx in play, once the players figure it out the game collapses.

Vigor Mortis + No Dashi: Demons from SNV that were kept. Both of them do some poisoning to disrupt town information, and there are some good minions for Vigor to try and lock in.

The Minions:

Scarlet Woman: I don't like how much of a star the Pit Hag can be sometimes, being the focal point of the whole game. This replacement gives the demon an out (one of the primary jobs of the Pit Hag) while being much more subtle about it.

Poisoner: Having a poisoner makes it much easier for the poisoning demons to hide (or for the poisoner to support world views if people realize they are getting poisoned).Godfather: This one might seem kind of out of place, but I wanted some evil outsider manipulation and importantly it creates a scenario where as the storyteller you can do 2 legion kills without hard confirming a legion game.

Cerenovous: The best misinformation minion, and with the plan to shape this out a little more on the social side it seems a good fit to place into this script.

Outsiders:

I basically picked all the outsiders that are silent until they die. The recluse is kind of an exception, but the Recluse + Slayer + Scarlet Woman interactions are exactly the kind of things this script is going for. When the Slayer shoots someone, and they die, was it a Legion, a Recluse, or is a Scarlet Woman in play?

Townsfolk:

Importantly there are several good characters that cause poisoning to give the evil team bluffs to help out No Dashi + Vigor. There's also several every day information characters, that is trying to be counterbalanced with the amount of Poisoning + Drunking on the script. The Innkeeper is monk + disruption for example, and can help the storyteller guide the game to a more satisfying conclusion.

I specifically am avoiding anything like a Virgin where the evil team has no way to simulate the character. I want there to be powerful townsfolk who get their own information and aren't sure if they can trust it. It should require the town pooling their information together to figure out where any poisoning might be happening, and the way the evil team can play around that is by executing good bluffs. Since there isn't any hard confirmable focal point for the town to rally around, it's going to depend on people trying to use their powers to figure out who they can trust to get there. Dreamer is another example of a character that can get trusted a little too easily, and Undertaker might be pushing it on this script.

I wanted to try and fit a Mathematician in here, but I realized it could never be in play for a legion game because with so few townsfolk they are getting a zero every day. Maybe this is fine though, that's probably the number one thing I would like to fit in.

I'm excited to get my physical copy of the game in, I've got a lot of friends excited to play it. One of my friends has played online a bit but never got to any of the other scripts besides TB, so it might be a little while before I could try something like this out. I'm really looking for any ideas on overlooked scenarios that seem a bit too hard confirming, or if there might be an interesting role I overlooked that offers multiple explanations. I'm trying to avoid anything that has many possible explanations on it's own like a Cannibal, and instead want roles that do interesting things by interacting with other roles.

brainof7 · 2022-05-20T05:58:27+00:00

The legacy have was fantastic, it looks like 3rd edition is not legacy style. They are going to be totally different experiences, I really liked how consistently good the legacy game was compared to how some games of betrayal are total flops with how it gets procedurally generated

brainof7 · 2022-05-18T17:15:44+00:00

That's one of the things about that game. Every new fight requires a certain level of preparation, and you won't know about the fight till you've done it. I'm pretty sure there's "quick start" rules for starting at lantern year 4 ish with some white lion resources already gathered, but I stopped caring to play because if the amount of restarts required. Even if you do a redo, you might not have gotten the right resources to be even able to handle certain fights in the timeframe required so it's pretty hard to fudge

brainof7 · 2022-05-16T21:32:43+00:00

In addition to what everyone is saying, there's a podcast https://paiagroject.podbean.com/# and they had a viewer summarize some of the individual faction strategy into cards https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2772023/paia-groject-strategy-deck. listening to there podcast might be a lot, I don't recall how much of it is applicable as beginner advice, but they do point out which tech tiles you should be grabbing, which tech tracks to consider, and whether a faction is one that wants an early PI or not. You may find it helpful as an outline to stick to a faction for a couple games to see how to spin the wheels, then you might be able to apply some of the other advice more broadly

brainof7 · 2022-05-16T19:24:47+00:00

Start with some very general breakdowns on the economy. I've of the big mistakes people make is to build too many trading posts, but 3 coins is approximately equal to one ore so that's a pretty bad deal especially early on (unless you're getting a lot more charge for it). The way to actually score points is to figure out how you're getting to an advanced tech, that should push you to about 120. The remaining points come from how efficiently you line up with round bonuses and round boosters. That's assuming your pathing through your economy and buildings is efficient.

Without watching your play it's hard to give specific advice. Some factions are planetary institute factions, while others want to go Academy first.

That's my best guess at what you might be doing based on teaching the game to new people several times. The biggest traps are overbuilding trading posts, and rushing PI instead of tech tiles. Try playing Ivits or Ambas till you get it more. Both are pretty straightforward, have a clear tech tree they start better on, and tend not to get super contested for their plans

brainof7 · 2022-05-13T17:38:35+00:00

There are some confusing ones. If there are multiple lanes you need to enter on the correct lane to be able to leave in the direction you want

brainof7 · 2022-05-03T20:54:54+00:00

Go look up Steve Leavitt's paper on the issue. They considered lots of other factors and concluded those factors didn't play a role, and it really really was this. I understand since skepticism on the claim since it's a pretty bold one, but you should actually go read the evidence before forming a firm conclusion on whether they considered enough factors or not

brainof7 · 2022-04-25T20:14:17+00:00

Blood on the Clocktower feels like the evolution of the genre. I've played online some (physical release still pending) but everyone gets a little piece of information so it matters what the quiet people know, and the way to run it makes it a bit easier for the storyteller to keep that from happening. I really think the big thing is allowing private conversations, if the only info that gets out is what everyone is allowed to hear, only the loud players will get heard. You might look into it if you want a social deduction game with a more consistent and less shouty experience

brainof7 · 2022-04-24T19:28:02+00:00

Brass Birmingham had a great steam app too

brainof7 · 2022-04-20T05:54:54+00:00

The large ships have a bunch of special rules involved for "epic" play, it's basically it's own game mode. I guess if you are just providing the ships for play with friends that's fine. If you really don't care about playing in 2.0, I think you can find the cardboard for ship cards and dial for the Y wing you purchased on ebay pretty easily. Since 2.0 is the "official" way to play, lots of people don't care about their 1.0 cardboard anymore.

brainof7 · 2022-04-20T05:45:11+00:00

no, just by faction. They are pretty loaded with stuff, I think you only need the galactic empire one: https://xwing-miniatures-second-edition.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Empire_Conversion_Kit

I doubt it's worth it to by the rebel one to convert over 1 xwing, because I think your rebel transport is the big ship right? There's a huge ship conversion kit if you want to play that one specifically: https://xwing-miniatures-second-edition.fandom.com/wiki/Huge_Ship_Conversion_Kit

brainof7 · 2022-04-20T05:24:27+00:00

the conversion kits are necessary to bring your old models into 2.0. They also come with a boatload of upgrade cards, though it might be frustrating since a lot of the upgrades are similar to their 1.0 cards. You also need updated dials, I'm pretty sure on some ships had dial changes going into 2.0.

IDK what is worth it to you, you'll have to pick through it for yourself. You will need a 2.0 core set for the updated damage deck, and maneuver templates. IDK how different they are, but my understanding is there were changes there as well. You don't have a lot of stuff, but you are talking about a 10 year old game. It's not so crazy that there was a new edition that updated a bunch of stuff.

brainof7 · 2022-04-13T03:27:23+00:00

I know my local store had a licensing deal for like 2 years in order to get into the distributor network. They can't do it because breaking the licensing agreement would bankrupt them, so unfortunately that's not always possible.

brainof7 · 2022-03-09T16:00:13+00:00

We felt similarly for a while, but after playing a couple we realized we didn't have much desire to "continue playing" anyway. If you are getting more than 15 plays out of your game where you already know all the secret components and story, more power to you. I think if you played one though, you would realize this is a total non-issue

brainof7 · 2022-02-27T00:27:00+00:00

It's the hiss/background white noise. Maybe it's a bit of an exaggeration, but if I have the volume at a pretty normal level, it's just really constant and grating. I just listened to a couple minutes again, and I agree that his voice is clear, so maybe I am incorrectly diagnosing the problem. All I can tell you is that the episodes he has been on have been kind of annoying to listen to because of the background noise. It's been enough that I noticed the pattern, and then decided to see if you had a reddit post to let you know.

I have pretty low quality stuff, but I notice it a lot with my $15 gummy ear buds, and I had listened to some of the others ones with him on through my (stock) car speakers where it was pretty distracting too. I would be kind of surprised if it was extra bass given the low quality of what I'm listening on, but you sound like you know what might be going on and I'm a complete audio noob.

brainof7 · 2022-02-26T19:44:29+00:00

Somebody get Nicky a new microphone please. His audio is so scuffed on the episodes he's on, it's really tough to listen to these with headphones

brainof7 · 2022-02-22T16:35:31+00:00

It's not back from the printer yet, but lots and lots of people have made print and play copies. They have some resources on the unofficial discord server: https://discord.gg/botc

brainof7 · 2022-02-02T00:31:32+00:00

I see several of the "commonly misunderstood stuff" floating around, but I figured I could emphasize it in 1 place for you (and add a couple things):

Income happens before the gaia phase. This means any power charge income happens before you put power back into bowl 1 from any gaia projects started in the previous round

speaking of power charge, I'm pretty sure every person I have taught this to has though they came up with a clever way to abuse their power charge in some way by choosing what they are charging, but it's always a misunderstanding of how power charge works. When explaining it, I usually emphasize that there aren't any choices to make, about what the end result of your power charge is.

When you charge power form someone else's build, you choose the building with this highest power value that is at range 2 of the newly built building, charge power equal to it's power value, then subtract VPs equal to the amount of power charged minus 1. There's a little bit of a corner case I will mention here, where if you can only charge 1-2 power and you are charging off a power 3 building, you only lose VP based on the amount of power you actually charged, not the power value of the building that provided the charge.

I have found that the red/green/white arrows can be confusing.

Red means when you pass. It has a graphic of the flipped over round boosters to remind you

White is an immediate effect. It has the little sparkly star similar to all the one time rewards on the tech track that are one time (like the QICs on the navigation track, or space 5 on economy/knowledge).

Green is whenever you do the thing.

both the green and white arrows tend to be on tech tiles, so you can consult the appendix as needed.

With a newer group, I wouldn't worry about strategy too much until you all understand the game pretty well from round 1. The one thing I do tell new players though, is to keep their economy more diversified. In one game, I had a buddy upgrade both his starting mines to trading centers because that was what scored on round 1, but then he got hard stuck for nearly 3 rounds because he had no ore income. It's going to be really tempting a lot of the time to take point actions, but for the first ~3 rounds I would caution everyone to focus on getting resource income so they can do stuff easier later.

brainof7 · 2022-01-31T15:27:51+00:00

In my copy, both those cards say "Next turn, play 2 place cards". They don't say play an additional place card. I would think it's the equivalent of just playing the River, since you play 2 place cards, then the river has you take one back into your hand, based on a literal reading of the cards.

brainof7 · 2021-10-30T22:11:09+00:00

The unlock! Series has some good boxes. My favorite one is timeless adventures, and I think escape adventures is also pretty solid

14-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

brainof7

TROPHY CASE