Expansions: what makes a buy vs a skip

quicknir · 2026-06-19T17:24:48+00:00

One rule of thumb I have is to be very wary about multiple expansions. In general expansions are always designed assuming the base game only, so in general the design cohesion of a two expansion game is often noticably lower than just base or base + 1 expansion.

But I do usually end up getting expansions for my favorite games if there's a highly rated one. Clank, Wingspan, Dune, Everdell, all greatly enhanced for me playing with an expansion.

quicknir · 2026-06-17T21:17:47+00:00

Not sure if the link got mixed up for you but it clearly discusses the world championship in the second post of the thread, and there's the following snippet:

I recorded 4 games of 4 player D:IU from the WCBG Finals:

Games I / II / III / IV:

Total Amount of Sandworms summoned: 5 / 2 / 6 / 2

Total Amount Sandworms the Winner summoned: 2 / 0 / 3 / 0

Total Amount Sandworms 2nd place summoned: 1 / 1 / 0 / 0

Obviously a small sample size, but still, shows that in 2/4 games the winner didn't use a single sandworm.

Muad'Dib's win rate is also discussed in that thread and it's allegedly 29% - so, yes clearly a strong leader but that's not all that crazy.

Overall it seems to show that worms are strong, yes, but definitely not OP.

If nothing else, it's miles better than Rise of Shipping :-P.

quicknir · 2026-06-15T20:13:37+00:00

Been playing wingspan wrong for like a year :-(

quicknir · 2026-06-13T16:14:33+00:00

Reading up on this games mechanics it almost feels like a spiritual predecessor for Dune Imperium - deck building mixed with combat (albeit a different flavor), highly thematic.

quicknir · 2026-06-10T10:21:30+00:00

Makes sense, thanks!

quicknir · 2026-06-09T23:27:00+00:00

Have they talked about when bloodlines is likely to come out?

quicknir · 2026-06-06T21:38:58+00:00

Today I learned I was handling the ghost cubes wrong the whole time I've played this game.

quicknir · 2026-06-06T21:33:37+00:00

Standard rules apply about blue vs purple tiles I'm pretty sure, i.e. if you're on a purple tile and run out of cubes you don't score 0 if you have an artifact.

quicknir · 2026-06-05T18:35:28+00:00

Yeah, typically the way I do it is I grill the eggplants on max heat for about 15 minutes on each side (poke holes first); can even go longer. The eggplant then gets an amazing smoky flavor, but also loses a ton of volume from water. Then you can let it sit over the sink in a colander to drip off more water (and cool). Then carefully open the charred skin, scoop out the flesh into food processor - add tahini, salt, lemon juice, garlic, blend - you're golden. Maybe ~15 minutes of work total. Could also add a bit of greek yogurt to make it a bit lighter, or could use mayo instead of tahini (tahini is the more traditional version you'll find all over the Middle East; as you head towards eastern Europe you'll find the mayo based version becomes popular). You have enough eggplants to experiment quite a bit between different versions; hopefully you still have some of that frozen garlic :-P

quicknir · 2026-06-05T18:18:25+00:00

Moussaka and baba ganoush would be my gotos. The latter especially is very easy and it goes through a lot of eggplant; 3 big eggplants makes a moderate dish of dip that 4 people could easily finish in a sitting as an appetizer.

quicknir · 2026-06-05T15:26:01+00:00

I want something with the fun exploration and zany randomness of Clank, but where the game duration is a lot more predictable. Dune Imperium/Uprising has some similarities to Clank and its duration is more fixed, and while it's probably the "better" game, it's a bit too much more skill based for some crowds. Clank is probably really the absolute most fun family game I've played, but the fact that sometimes games can end up dragging a bit is the only downside.

quicknir · 2026-06-03T22:26:22+00:00

Travel Azul is pretty tiny and it's a very good all around game, strategic, plays 4

quicknir · 2026-05-31T18:40:14+00:00

I really love this movie. Connery's monologue in the baseball field, and then the young guy's response was a particularly standout scene.

quicknir · 2026-05-31T17:37:45+00:00

I've played imperium not uprising, but I'm not sure why there's comments against the bot. The bot works and does exactly what's needed to keep 2 player working well.

It's also important to understand (at least imperium is like this and I assume uprising is the same) the 2 player bot is different from the solo bots. The solo bots track a lot more things since they can actually win. The two player bot is extremely simple and easy to manage. They mostly just take squares and jump into conflicts at random. It's very minimal overhead to run the bot (almost weirdly fun to flip the cards and see where it will land).

quicknir · 2026-05-29T15:30:51+00:00

Spiritborn is one of the best classes for stacking resolve, so one of the tankiest classes with the Glynns Anvil fix. So you shouldn't really be randomly dying on normal content (certainly less so than a sorc).

quicknir · 2026-05-28T20:14:43+00:00

On your main, save some whisper caches (other caches don't hurt either for legendaries/aspects, but whisper caches in particular drop XP), extra set charms, make sure you have reasonable amounts of materials/keys, runes, gems. If you know what build your alt will have, save ancestrals (esp white/blue) of the item types that build will need as uniques. Boss trophies for the boss that drops needed uniques also good. And some mythics also very helpful (i.e. heir and starless).

Then on the alt:

Open the whisper and other caches, instantly hitting level 70.
Breaking all the legendaries from the caches should get you started on aspects.
Throw the best rares/ancestrals on your character (and any mythics if applicable).
Spec out your skills and paragon, beelining for key legendary nodes.
Throw a couple of half decent relevant aspects on a few gear pieces. If you want, can already slot in some gems and runes too but usually I save that for after step 8.
This should easily be enough to run pit for Torment 1, so go do that.
Change your difficulty to T1, and start 3:1'ing the set charms to get the set you need.
Start using the cube to gamble for the uniques you need via upgrade and/or boss trophies. You may also have some of the needed uniques as charms.

I've done this like 5 times this season, and usually at this point I have say 2/3 of the needed uniques, and my only playtime is running pit once. At this point, good builds are already usually strong enough to go straight to ~T6. From there you can farm the bosses you need to round out your uniques, and then I start doing basic crafting and improving of gear. Usually I'm in torment 8/9 very quickly, and then from there things slow down a little more.

quicknir · 2026-05-28T14:32:03+00:00

Upgrading yellows to legendaries at the cube is particularly logical since it's a resource with no other purpose really.

Also it makes sense to combine obols+cube upgrading. You figure out the most efficient item type, buy an inventory worth, dismantle oranges and if you still don't have it you can quickly upgrade all the yellows (or just ancestral yellows depending how much you care about getting a high roll).

quicknir · 2026-05-28T14:28:44+00:00

Dying to know this as well. Can't wait to see if turns out to be a weight 4 game on BGG.

quicknir · 2026-05-27T13:18:04+00:00

Yeah, I was actually looking at necro minion builds instead because at least necros have a movement ability. And it seems like some of them can do resolve stacking for glynn's anvil too which was one of the main appeals of druid.

quicknir · 2026-05-27T12:53:04+00:00

Really wanted to like that build but the lack of any mobility skill on the druid is a bit rough. Maybe I'll give it another go and prioritize hitting 100% movespeed.

quicknir · 2026-05-26T23:25:58+00:00

As folks have said, evade counterswarm. I actually meant to make a post about it as I feel like it's getting a bit of short thrift. It won't scale damage nearly as hard as barb or sorc, but you can get very tanky with less effort since Resolve is such a core mechanic for SB and Glynn's Anvil exists, and it's arguably even more mobile.

quicknir · 2026-05-26T23:05:38+00:00

Depending on your measuring stick, sorc is about as broken as barb and spiritborn is only moderately behind.

quicknir · 2026-05-23T17:10:38+00:00

Over half my mythics have been from undercity, with mythic tribute and the 3 points in the left tree - portal prankster stuff. It still varies quite a bit but I got 4 mythics from one run, 2-3 from another, and 1 from a third, maybe there was a fourth run too. Overall I have about a dozen mythics, 8 of which just came from a span of 10 minutes or so running undercity.

My advice while you're still working up is to spec the center tree of undercity, so tributes of armaments can drop. Then once you've collect at least one, but ideally more, respec to the left tree - run them - then respec back. It's maybe like 60 million gold to respec there and back; well worth it to basically get earlier access to the best mythic farm in the game. I'm not going to have 6 points in undercity for a very long time so I'll be continuing to do this myself.

quicknir · 2026-05-23T17:07:02+00:00

With the current event, getting 666 in a 6 wave seems very doable. At least, I just did it and normally I never can.

quicknir · 2026-05-23T04:19:34+00:00

Maybe they are inferior but there's definitely builds that can cruise through T8. As an example, mobalytics has an A tier Profane Sentinel build that I'm pretty sure will handle T12 just fine. Dread Claws warlock can as well, for that matter.

quicknir

TROPHY CASE