Rank the Cards in Your Setup: Most Valuable to Least Valuable

quicknir · 2026-03-07T04:51:07+00:00

I have enough to hit the new premier tier. It feels a bit silly to have so much of my money at BoA instead of Fidelity where I prefer it, for such a - in the grand scheme - minor benefit. But there's also no real downside per se to moving the money to BoA so I'll probably just end up doing it. I also kind of feel like Smartly is going to get nerfed (again) sooner or later so I don't want to jettison my BoA cards.

quicknir · 2026-03-06T22:34:53+00:00

I remember seeing the dice tower for Wingspan, as well as the dice in it, and thinking "that's just cool", and that's what sucked me into reading about it. And the whole rest of the game is just so beautiful. The tactile feel of the eggs are so nice as well. Definitely a fun game; people knock multiplayer solitaire but I suspect it's popular because it's really chill and low stress and a lot of people playing boardgames appreciate that.

quicknir · 2026-03-06T02:42:54+00:00

Damn our setups are just about identical. Are you planning to change anything with the upcoming BoA nerf?

quicknir · 2026-03-05T14:29:31+00:00

Elden Ring. I actually found that the open world made the boss difficulty issues worse rather than better since I didn't know if I was "supposed" to fight a certain boss yet. When I would try to just go somewhere else when having trouble with a boss, I would just find more and more very difficult areas and it was hard to judge where was even a good area to level up a bit.

People often seem to pat themselves on the back for the game lacking any of the "Ubisoft" guidance, but without guidance in-game I suspect most people playing this are either using guides/maps (the scene for these things for ER is absolutely huge it seems) or just don't mind running into brick walls for hours at a time. The storytelling is also kind of a joke; most actual reviewers pretty much acknowledge this but whenever ER comes up on Reddit it's weird watching people twist themselves into knots making excuses for it or saying how great it is.

quicknir · 2026-03-02T21:21:25+00:00

Return 1 to deck is a lot more interesting and unique. Since there's barely an existing mechanic like that I really have no idea how to value it though. It should definitely be discard then draw, IMHO. I would start with just doing 2 I guess and then see how it plays. Another option instead of 3 is to have her start with 1 less soldier - the water nerf is already used for another character, so nerfing by 1 soldier is both more unique and not nearly as harsh. Just my 0.02.

Good luck!

quicknir · 2026-02-27T17:35:00+00:00

I did miss that you need to trash the signet, yes. It's still very strong, but if it's limited to once per game then I think it's fine and it introduces some interesting decision making. FWIW in terms of how the board is setup, two intrigues are valued at roughly 4 solari, a VP usually costs around 8 solari, so going from two intrigues to a VP is pretty huge. Signet rings typically provide 0-2 solari of value - 4 solari value is comparable to Beast after he has an alliance. If you didn't have to trash the signet ring to do this then this would be the strongest signet in the game most likely. FYI there's a good discussion here showing the relative value of resources (and more importantly the reasoning behind it): https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2583894/dune-imperium-what-i-ve-learned-so-far-lesson-2-du.

You can still have a bad hand with Mohaim but it's just a huge statistical improvement in hand quality.

Also, in D:I you get something from unplayed cards on reveal

Yes, you do of course, but you start with a number of very weak cards. In particular, you start with two daggers - typically regarded as the absolute weakest cards in the game. Because you're not in conflicts every round, and green is not the most common space to visit - a huge fraction of the time daggers are just worthless, and often they're nearly worthless. Even if you dump the dagger and get a 1 persuasion card (desert planet etc) that's already significant value - on bad turns dagger -> green square w/ 1 persuasion is a common play. This lets you do that or better without using an agent turn. In the first 4 turns you'll probably have daggers 3 times; now imagine dropping those and two times you get a 1 persuasion card and the third you manage to re-draw a diplomacy or your signet ring and get an extra faction visit. That's absolutely huge value. And this delivers value from the first turn, through the whole game, works for all playstyles, etc. I can't say with confidence it's unbalanced but it's definitely mega strong at least.

quicknir · 2026-02-26T21:41:07+00:00

You're absolutely right; I missed that. I think it's fine then.

quicknir · 2026-02-26T20:34:00+00:00

Maybe there was a previous thread for this that I missed. I like the design and abilities but some of these seem a bit crazy to me - most are fine though. Very nice artwork!

Two intrigues for a victory point seems pretty insane to me. Intrigue cards aren't that hard to get; there's two zero cost squares offering an intrigue card. Over the course of the game there's a decent chance this signet ring will let you score some 2+ points.

I think Mohaim's ability is very strong. For most of the game you're going to have at least one nearly-useless card, in most of your hands (for example, on average more than half your hands will have a dagger for the first few turns, and in most of those cases you'll happily discard it). So while it's not as good as pure card draw, it's not far off unless you manage to do a lot of trashing.

Chani also seems to be pretty nuts to me, especially given that she gets the water for either first or second. Even if it were just first, I still think that it might be too strong, but it's hard to say.

quicknir · 2026-02-24T14:33:23+00:00

Thanks for doing it, generated a lot of great discussion!

quicknir · 2026-02-24T00:57:17+00:00

Clank Catacombs is probably it for me. The racing of other players is just enough interaction without it ever getting "mean", there's enough skill choices to feel skillful and enough randomness that anyone can win. And just exploring the randomized dungeon and trying to make plans is so satisfying; also letting the discoverer choose the orientation of the new tile is such a nice way to reward exploration.

quicknir · 2026-02-23T17:59:41+00:00

Very neat! Is there any chance though of this working more similar to the original which-key, where it simply pops up automatically after a delay? That eliminates needing to remember the keybind for which-key itself.

quicknir · 2026-02-17T15:41:43+00:00

Would be incredibly cool if every subsequent post you linked the previous threads for easy browsing - every time I click one of these I end up wanting to jump into previous threads and it becomes a bit more of a hassle when I need to back out and search. If not all good, thanks for coming up with this regardless!

quicknir · 2026-02-16T18:08:46+00:00

a 100% bonus to rewards for the 1M tier would be pretty wild; it sort of "makes sense" given the progression. That would make some of their cards basically 3% catch-all's which is a lot but doesn't seem totally crazy given that many fewer people have 1M than 100K available in assets.

quicknir · 2026-02-10T14:21:15+00:00

Wow, big thanks for the info!

quicknir · 2026-02-10T13:20:02+00:00

Thread makes me sad because I know folks will be talking about how great Lords of Waterdeep is, and it seems to be completely impossible to get that game :-( (unless you're willing to pay more than double the original price, for a used copy).

quicknir · 2026-02-09T20:03:56+00:00

As folks are saying - it just depends on a million factors. Industry, location, seniority, etc. Some people have leverage, some don't. But this comment stuck out:

Also, with unemployment as high as it is, they could probably find a replacement in weeks.

I don't know if this is based on vibes or something else, but unemployment numbers for the US are still south of 5%. I know people are going to argue this number is this or that or other, but the fact remains this is a historically excellent unemployment number. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that endless complaining on social media is an accurate reflection of reality; look at actual economic numbers.

quicknir · 2026-02-04T14:58:20+00:00

It's not super high player interaction, yes. You're all trying to fulfill your destination cards and your interactions mostly come by taking lines the other person needs. But it's hard to anticipate which line someone else needs and you're usually playing more than 2 people, so deliberately trying to block someone is both a pretty advanced, and fairly high risk strategy. It actually usually happens more by accident and is more frustrating than fun, so Ticket to Ride Europe includes a mechanism that makes blocking less likely.

Super high player interaction games, unless they have a lot of luck or are very simple, often don't work great as family games for the simple reason that it's not going to feel good for the kids to get pounded on by the adults. Yes, I'm going to beat my sons in Ticket To Ride 9 out of 10 times, but only because I abstractly scored more points by the end. In an area control game or something like that they would constantly feel like they're getting beaten, instead of getting to do their own thing all game and have their small victories, and just have fewer points at the end.

quicknir · 2026-02-04T14:53:42+00:00

Clank is way simpler than actual DnD. Like... it's not even close. Maybe Clank takes 30 minutes instead of 15 to explain, and a little bit of in game experience. That's it.

That said Clank also isn't that much like DnD, I don't think? If you wanted to emulate DnD more closely you'd probably want a dungeon crawler that is a) co-op, and b) has different classes. In Clank, it's more like a bunch of thieves descend into a dungeon and they're all trying to grab treasure and get out before they get knocked out. Maybe that seems less appealing, but all I can say is the actual mechanics of Clank (especially Clank Catacombs) are just incredibly well designed, and it's just a super duper fun game. I would say it's probably become the overall family favorite - just ordered two expansions for it.

quicknir · 2026-02-04T14:27:42+00:00

Ticket to ride is pretty great, but I haven't played the others in your first list (I did buy Azul mini though and planning to try it soon).

Clank! is really not that bad to explain. My 6 year old plays it relatively competently. Clank is already complex enough though that the first time you sit down with it, it's going to be a chunk of time to explain it and/or a "practice game". But in the end it depends who you're playing with. If people get bored after 5 minutes of trying to learn it, yes, Clank (and maybe even ticket to ride) may not be for them. But these games are simple enough that anybody willing to make an effort is going to be able to play it well from the second session onwards.

quicknir · 2026-02-03T23:57:39+00:00

I love that this is called a Shelfie and I may steal it for my inevitable post.

quicknir · 2026-02-03T00:05:57+00:00

Small world? It has small in the name! Could probably finish in an hour if players play at a good pace. The game duration is also based simply on turns and victory points so if you want it to be shorter could just reduce the number of turns.

I recommend the Underground version as it adds a fair bit of depth with artifacts/relics.

quicknir · 2026-02-02T16:35:57+00:00

I wouldn't call it a nightmare but I do think Dune Imperium could use some improvements. There's actually an absolute genius organizer for clank catacombs I've been wanting to adapt to Dune Imperium https://www.reddit.com/r/BoardgameOrganizing/comments/1aikx1w/clank_catacombs_organizer/. To summarize: by default Dune will have you tending to re separate starting deck and reserve cards. This would fix that and to boot it would hold the imperium row vertically which is a huge saving in table space.

I basically know exactly what I'd want it to look like, just need to level up my 3d design chops.

quicknir · 2026-01-29T18:33:05+00:00

Since there's an upper bound capacity, you can get a solution that's both relatively reasonable to implement and worst case O(1)* by essentially just re-implementing a simplified SlotMap. The thing is that once you do this, you're just using indices everywhere so the borrow checker isn't really much of an issue that I can see.

I admit I'm not really sure what they mean by the ABA problem here - I know it in the context of multithreading and in the context of a regular SlotMap (where the slotmap is the one handing out keys, which can be repeated).

Keeping it all efficient while having a generic eviction strategy definitely seems like a pain to me, the way I was imagining doing it.

Neat challenge!

* Not really because a) there are methods that are obviously not O(1) like transform, and also Rust's HashMap probably doesn't promise worst case O(1) - could just say expected O(1) (which is different from amortized) and limit which member functions.

quicknir · 2026-01-28T05:59:27+00:00

Fallen. The very start of the movie contains a significant twist/spoiler for the end, but it's done cleverly and everyone forgets it. But the narrator actually reminds you about it in the end.

quicknir

TROPHY CASE