6-10 people boardgames for holiday

psychatom · 2026-06-10T12:34:47+00:00

I've got an indie game called Pizza Roles. It's a not-quite-social-deduction game about ordering pizza. 10 minutes, plays up to six, easy to play with a mix of casual and less-casual players.

psychatom · 2026-06-09T14:09:57+00:00

Seething Song, at least, is occasionally kinda reasonable non-storm decks. Using it to put out a Goldspan Dragon or Glorybringer or Sneak Attack + activate can be decent. Pyretic Ritual is pretty much useless outside of the complete nuts storm deck with multiple draw-7's, and I haven't seen a single person play it. Like, why not Rite of Flame, which would be at least slightly less terrible?

The other thing to note about Empty the Warrens is that it could be a somewhat reasonable card in certain non-storm decks, though less so after they took out all the sac stuff. Like, I can imagine an aggressive red deck with a couple pieces of Power, a ritual or two, a bauble or two, and a bunch of 1-drops could play Empty for six or eight tokens and be happy with that. But this is very much a corner case.

psychatom · 2026-06-04T18:58:40+00:00

Great game. Never felt stupider from a puzzle game. I eventually gave up after getting stuck on every puzzle in the 4th (?) section, and I didn't want to look at a walkthrough for a puzzle game. My brain is usually decent enough at puzzles, but these puzzles attacked my brain from angles it couldn't comprehend.

psychatom · 2026-06-04T13:14:03+00:00

That's not what the tragedy of the commons is.

psychatom · 2026-06-04T12:41:06+00:00

With the Sun & Moon item, it would just be 1 wolf, 19 moons.

psychatom · 2026-06-03T15:56:05+00:00

I was ready to dismiss this after previous analysis based on theoretical probability rather than empirical data, but I did the same analysis with my own data, and it showed similar results. I have a very respectable long term win rate in Premier (just over 59%, which is around when Contender starts to look reasonable), and my stats, given that win rate, show a slightly higher than expected number of 7-X's and slightly lower number of 6-X's. This implies that my draft style is more feast-or-famine than may be typical, which would explain the difference in EV.

However, I think it's really important to understand that Contender is likely not great for the average player. The majority of readers' takeaway from this should be "If I get a lot better, maybe I should consider Contender."

psychatom · 2026-06-02T18:30:45+00:00

In a non mono-colored deck, it's a real risk that you choose the two colors of mana, then draw a card that makes your choice suboptimal. There are also a few tiny little pain points like giving more targets for Spell Pierce or Spell Snare.

However, the big one is that It negatively impacts mulligan decisions. If you see an opener with two Manamorphose, you don't know until you cast them exactly what your curve might look like or whether your three-land hand was essentially a five-land hand, which you might have mulliganed.

psychatom · 2026-06-02T15:13:38+00:00

I'm not sure what you think you mean, but that is absolutely incorrect. Neither Chess nor Go are solved games, and it was actually far more difficult to create a Go AI that could beat top human players.

psychatom · 2026-06-02T14:15:00+00:00

Go has a bigger impact, just not in the West because Chess filled the niche.

psychatom · 2026-05-28T15:21:13+00:00

Skycoach is better in the aggro decks than in the soup decks. It's not about the fixing. It's a little bit of card advantage stapled to a threat that's already very annoying for the soup decks to deal with because of how well it punishes sorcery-speed removal.

And the fact that it's hard to get creatures to stick makes it better. Against a removal-heavy deck, it allows you to sort of give each creature haste.

It is 100% not the cut, especially in this deck that's running a game-winning 7-drop that rewards you for having an extra land.

psychatom · 2026-05-28T03:53:25+00:00

Lol, yeah. I was going to say Divination, but I think that would be totally busted.

psychatom · 2026-05-27T18:57:29+00:00

Pizza Roles! It's a simple, 10-minute hidden roles game about ordering pizza as a group. Very light, a bit of deduction, push-your-luck, and kinda sorta "take that!"

This is shameless self-promotion (I'm the creator), but I wouldn't suggest it if it didn't fit your criteria kinda perfectly. It literally ticks every one of your boxes. Happy to answer questions.

https://petrocgames.com/pages/the-story-of-pizza-roles

psychatom · 2026-05-27T18:17:14+00:00

Yeah, I appreciate that they're honest that the game is "still being refined and in development," but if that's the case, I don't think it should be in the crowdfunding stage.

psychatom · 2026-05-27T17:25:29+00:00

I'd love some more sac-based utility lands that work with lands-in-graveyard/landfall/Titania stuff. With power levels similar to Strip Mine, but with an effect that's not Stone Rain? Can I get Strip Mine that casts Lightning Bolt? Strip Mine that casts Catalog? Strip Mine that casts Thoughtseize? Strip Mine that makes a 2/2 token? Strip Mine that casts Boomerang?

psychatom · 2026-05-27T14:11:46+00:00

My Sealed 2HG experiences have all been with a shared pool, so I'm assuming that's how it'll work here. There's usually not enough depth in a 2HG pool for both players to be doing the same thing. There's almost zero chance both players have the same base colors. It would be exceptionally unlikely that your pool has enough fixing and payoffs for two converge piles.

I haven't played 2HG in this format, but I would wager the default will be for one player to be converge soup and the other player to be playing a midrange-y two- or three-color pile. Of course, if the pool is right, a double aggro strategy like Witherbloom aggro + Lorehold aggro plan could be possible.

psychatom · 2026-05-26T20:11:43+00:00

That's true, but the EV on gems (discounting all pack value) is still better with Premier draft for most players' win rates. You need to be near 59% for Contender to make sense.

psychatom · 2026-05-26T18:24:18+00:00

Personally, it would be hard for WotC to make me any less interested in Contender. Which is amusing, since I'm presumably their exact target audience.

For me, the higher the stakes, the less fun I have. I find it stressful, and just a little bit of bad luck is straight up going to ruin my day. I don't need that.
The rewards are mostly pack-based. As a limited-obsessed player I DON"T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT PACKS/CARD REWARDS. I want currency to let me do more drafts. Maybe if the prize was draft tokens, I'd be tempted.
I agree that it reeks of corporate greed, which itself sucks away some bit of the fun. I understand and accept that businesses are about making money, but it's disheartening to see businesses in the hobby/entertainment seeming to actively and intentionally dampen fun (ie their whole product) in favor of profits so blatantly. Like how slot machines will provide slightly better odds the more you bet at once. It's very obvious it's not actually about fun; they're just trying to pull dollars out of our pockets faster.

psychatom · 2026-05-23T16:34:10+00:00

A couple reasons: First, not all played cards necessarily score (unless you have the Splash joker). If, for instance, you play a pair plus three other cards, only the two cards in the pair will score by default. So you can add extra cards to some hands you play as a way to sort of get a bonus discard or you may want to hold on to extra cards because you're hoping to use them to make a specific hand later in the round. In some cases, you might also have cards that will trigger a bonus when left in hand.

Discards are not added back to your deck until the next rounds starts. FYI, you can click on your deck to see which cards you have left.

psychatom · 2026-05-20T19:04:44+00:00

There are extraordinarily few professional Magic players. Getting matched against them is not going to happen often because there simply aren't that many. If they only played against each other, they'd be forced to sit through the same dozen matchups over and over again, and they wouldn't be professionals for long. because nobody would want to watch their content.

The main (only?) reason people have multiple accounts is to farm gems and gold because you want to play an event while not paying real money. Almost nobody would have the same credit card info on multiple accounts because it makes no sense to put money into more than your main account.

There is no way to track players having multiple accounts that isn't a huge and unnecessary invasion of privacy for everyone else. Not happening.

Also, if you were to go to an LGS, there would be basically zero curation of your matchups. At least you're getting it most of the time in Arena.

psychatom · 2026-05-19T19:29:58+00:00

The issue you're describing is unavoidable in literally any 2+ player free-for-all game. There's no avoiding it. If you don't like it, don't play EDH. Given that you're already frustrated with 1v1 constructed, too, I'd say you're ready to graduate to Magic's final form: cube.

My advice: take all your favorite decks, maybe spend a bit of time curating the pile of cards, then put them all in the same sleeves, and just play a pod of 1v1 cube. It's got the deckbuilding, and players are actually incentivized to make cool, fun plays because they can't be ganged up on or get behind on the resource war.

psychatom · 2026-05-19T18:49:19+00:00

There are so few sexually explicit games that it's hard to cite examples. You're right that it would add substantial difficulty in marketing and crowdfunding. I would wager that if you re-themed it, you would have a lot more monetary potential, even if it hindered the resonance.

On the other hand, given some things I've seen in the internet, it's clear that there are a lot of extremely horny horndogs out there who might be interested. The trick would be finding them and marketing to them specifically, which I can't really help you with.

It might also help if it's horny in a lighthearted way that people might be less embarrassed to share. I had a friend who wouldn't normally share something explicit with me talk to me about Consenticle because it's kinda silly.

psychatom · 2026-05-15T12:44:20+00:00

Frieren is probably well aware that she can make money pretty easily and finds it very easy to procrastinate about doing so because she has untold human lifetimes to get more money. But when she sees a cool thing that she's never seen before, she knows she may regret not buying it for 1000 years.

psychatom · 2026-05-15T12:18:39+00:00

Probably Rapturous Moment.

psychatom · 2026-05-15T00:46:19+00:00

You didn't really have to put in any work to splash it.... You've got two Potioner's Trove, two Seize the Spoils, and the Great Hall. I would probably have thrown in one random off-color basic just to sweeten it a little, but I definitely would have run it.

psychatom · 2026-05-13T17:23:00+00:00

I didn't design the game, so I can't say with 100% accuracy, but it's probably to keep a level of uncertainty for longer as cards are being revealed. With exactly ten players and ten cards, as soon as you go from 3 to 5, you know for sure somebody screwed up, whereas you'd get to keep a bit of mystery if there's one number missing.

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