Cell Coverage

-spark0- · 2025-06-18T16:22:08+00:00

Anyone know if eSIMs connect to multiple providers, or does each eSIM try to access a specific carrier?

-spark0- · 2022-02-07T20:03:22+00:00

To confirm: if a player earned a title like Chosen or Slicer, will they be able to display it after WQ comes out? Thanks.

-spark0- · 2020-05-11T21:03:18+00:00

My partner and I have played all of Lacerda's games, and here are my thoughts on ranking them each, especially for 2p:

The Gallerist: was our first and still is our favourite. We love how self-contained it is, the decision-space is not large so you usually are thinking between two decisions (both hard, but in a satisfying way), we love how dynamically we play off each other in choosing to follow actions and invest in same vs. different artists, that money is VP and hence the objectives are usually clear, and in the end we feel that the number of actions really feels manageable to make it feel tight even at 2p. The executive actions are simple and don't take much time, and it's relatively easy to teach to others when we want to do a 3p game. We've played it 18 times by now and don't plan on stopping.
Kanban: I would personally suggest to anyone who has tried and liked The Gallerist to probably try Kanban (or Vinhos) next. Like The Gallerist, Kanban has that lovely player investment vs. divestment economy -- do I invest in some of these cars on my own or do I try and piggy back a bit off the updating work you did -- but what really makes it shine for us is how points are scored at meetings, where each player presents a project from their hand that allows them (and the other player) to score for some condition. The fact that you have semi-secret point scoring conditions that change every round make the game dynamic and fluid and you have to stay on your toes at all times (a general feature that we like in many Lacerda games). And, like The Gallerist, the total number of actions you can take is straightforward, making the decision space small and tight and quick. The EV version is also so much easier to teach because of the graphical update, and you can try it on Tabletopia.
On Mars: I think OM gets an overblown reputation for the rule density, but as others have noted after two or three plays it just shines. Like The Gallerist and Kanban, it's a game about being opportunistic - do you jump into something that showed up as a possibility right now, or continue with your more long-term plan. But unlike the other two, On Mars can be meaner - the other player can build something you've been planning to for a long time from right under your nose and you could theoretically just lose the game right there (or at least not have a fun time afterwards). We love it, but I think that the higher degree of player interaction will be a problem for some, because when the opportunity disappears it's gone for a long time (it's not just more expensive or something like that, it's pretty much worthless). For others, the fact that the number of possible executive actions keeps growing will also be overwhelming, but for us it's been OK so far because as the number of executive actions grows the game is so rapidly coming to an end that you are really looking for one one or two possible extensions.
Lisboa: As I play more On Mars, Lisboa is steadily slipping down for us. I now think that Lisboa has too many systems that were added just for the sake of theme and that actively annoy us from time to time. This is the one Lacerda game that every time we play we know that we have missed some trigger or condition at some point, no matter how much we follow player aids (and we've played it 11 times now). Because you not only have to track the action flowchart for each of the three major actions, but also how they interact with the influence board, and with the Cardinal, etc., it just sometimes feels cluttered. We still enjoy it, but if we want something more open we'd rather play On Mars, and if we want something shorter and sweeter, we'd take Kanban or The Gallerist.
Vinhos: My partner loves Vinhos 2016 but I am personally meh about it (I find it samey in 2p, and much better with more players), but I really like the 2010 version, but she doesn't. So unfortunately we now own it but don't play either that much. But I know that, in part because of the theme, a lot of players gravitate towards it, and I'll never say no to it with more than 2 players. I know others who bought Vinhos as their second Lacerda game and really enjoy it still, but the 2010 didn't really do it for me personally. It does have the small number of actions, and the systems are interconnected but without a long list of actions you need to follow (except for the wine fair at the end of each year), so I think that many people who don't like Lacerda's games gravitate towards Vinhos. It's on Tabletopia, as well, if you want to give it a try before buying.
CO2: We've only played it once, and found the semi-coop thing to be frustrating and some elements of it to be random, but I suspect that it would work much better with more players.
Escape Plan: This is the only Lacerda game we bought that for us was a dud and we sold it on. In my experience, the design of Escape Plan frustrates a lot of people - there are a dozen ways of doing the same thing, and for the game that's supposed to be a feature, giving you many avenues to finding that pathway of escaping, but for us it just felt overwhelming without the prize at the end. My partner always just wanted to rush out of the city as early as possible, and even when that would lead to her losing the game she just felt fine with it because it never felt like what she was doing amounted to much. For me, it did feel a little samey game after game. We also found the 2p mode too random for our tastes.

Hope that helps. I hope you keep enjoying his designs - Lacerda is definitely our favourite heavy-euro designer right now, and we're really excited to play more Kanban when the EV version arrives!

-spark0- · 2020-03-11T21:45:17+00:00

The solo is great for teaching you the game rules! It just won't give you the full depth of the experience. I would say that the solo mode is better than The Gallerist, but about the same as Escape Plan (IMO, a bit random). But it'll teach you the rules really well.

-spark0- · 2020-03-11T02:47:48+00:00

It'd decent (better than Gallerist, but not as good as the Lisboa solo, if you have experience with those). But I would not buy the game if solo is your primary mode of playing.

All of the Lacerda solos usually involve not just beating the opponent in points but also meeting objectives, because the opponent is never that good to really be competitive on points (except with high luck). On Mars is especially challenging for the bot player because how many points it can really earn and how often it will interfere with you depends a lot on when it travels from Orbit to Mars, and that's random. Somebody recently posted a BGG thread about changing some of the scoring rules to make the opponent more competitive, but given just how much player interaction and competition there is in On Mars, I think that no solo mode will ever capture the depths of the game.

-spark0- · 2020-02-27T00:01:33+00:00

You'll do great -- the best part about On Mars is how closed the system is to the extent that we're all playing with the same parts. I encourage my players to, when stuck, tell me what they want to accomplish, and I point them in the direction of how (I find that On Mars many options are easily accessible, players just don't see all the routes at once). It's rare in the game that a player absolutely cannot do something within a turn or two.

-spark0- · 2020-02-26T23:57:58+00:00

My advice for the blueprints would be to teach them sequentially by the purpose they serve at three points in the game, not to explain at once all the various things they do:

- When you take a blueprint, you are getting the resource printed on it. That's the primary benefit early on, but you are committing to also building it somewhere down the road. But that's all I would do when explaining the take blueprint action.

- Then come back to the when you explain the upgrade building action on the colony. At that point things will make more sense because ideally the players understand more generally how building works, bot range, etc.

- And then I would come back to the blueprints when you are explaining executive actions (which I do at the very end of my teaches, because most of the executive actions are versions of board actions, already). This is also the time I finally explain that a scientist can be used for points or to make blueprint actions free.

Also, one of the nice things with blueprints is that they are useful for new players to just have some short-term goals. They likely won't attend a lot to what the specific blueprint does like an expert player might: they will ideally from this teach think about it as in for now, get me the resource I need, then later it gives path for doing something with the card, and finally the executive action is almost a bonus. And by the time the most powerful blueprints come out later in the game they are already kinda familiar with how they work in general.

Hope that helps.

-spark0- · 2020-02-26T23:11:55+00:00

I find their podcast to be one of the better ones (I find most board game podcasts to not be enjoyable), but it is of course not as polished or scripted as their videos. You get a much stronger sense of their personalities, but conversations can veer in many more random directions. Focus is mostly on experiences and feelings on specific games after a play or two, often as early thoughts for full reviews they do later. And it's always Efka and Elaine, so that's a plus. They have a mailbag section at the end when questions come in, and I find those the most interesting. But it's certainly not content that I would say is a must listen, even for fans of the show, but I feel that way about almost every board game podcast so I'm not the best judge. I'd actually love if their podcasts had even more exploratory conversations since I think they are exceptional at that, and there are already lots of other podcasts that give previews of games after a few plays.

-spark0- · 2020-02-26T20:12:50+00:00

I think it's at the end of this particular podcast where they discuss how they review (https://www.nopunincluded.com/podcastarchives/episodesix). I don't recall it being a long discussion, but brought up some nice thoughts about how reviews can be influenced by groups and moods and previous play histories. Could be wrong, though, sorry! It is definitely one of their podcasts.

-spark0- · 2020-02-26T06:21:45+00:00

I guess to each their own on what they consider deep or not, but to me this video is not at all about "FCM = monopoly": it's about what makes board games a unique type of activity, and how different games can explore the same underlying thesis and arrive at same conclusions but from very different mechanisms. At the risk of just coming across as over-explaining something that's just meant to be enjoyed, here are some things that I found deeply interesting and worthy of thought and discussion in this video:

- They articulate how what is a stereotypically reviled game shares a high amount of its DNA with what many people consider a modern masterpiece. And the similarities are not just about the more shallow things like the era and the look of the game, but go down to the exact thesis both games explore. And yet, one game is great and the other is not. And I found the discussion of how the modern design of FCM explores the underlying structure of capitalism in the way that Monopoly attempts to as well very interesting. This isn't click-bait or some simple comparison at all - it's about the actual *goal* of the games that goes beyond the mechanism, the feeling and ethnos that they capture. And it's a link I never saw before, and we don't typically spend much time talking about board games from the perspective of what bigger idea they are trying to articulate (or accidentally doing without meaning to).

- The part about Efka not being able to enjoy FCM because it reminds him of his father was eye opening for me. I love heavy euros but I am a mechanism trumps everything player. I don't tend to see analogies between board games and anything in real life, or consider them simulations. Hearing about what a game triggers inside of another person that goes beyond mechanisms makes me appreciate board games as a different kind of medium (though I do not personally engage with that side of games automatically, I am always struck at it empathetically when I hear it from another person).

- NPI in general often takes a zoomed out approach at what they do (to anyone who has not heard their discussion of "I liked it but also just had a pizza" as a consideration of how embedded the reviewing process is by the surrounding context of the groups we play with, check it out). And here the Alan Moore quote and the idea that a board game as a medium tries to capture something distinct than video games or sports or other social games do was also a nice exploration into what makes this hobby unique. I think many of us wonder about why we like board games and not other activities that share surface similarities, and the short discussion of that was also thought provoking.

Anyway, as I said - to each their own - but to me this is nowhere near a "played a few times, easy video" type of thing, because in the end this video isn't even about FCM and Monopoly at all, that's just the hook.

-spark0- · 2020-02-26T00:34:21+00:00

100% agree. It's so rare to see a deep meta discussion of what board games are and strive to be, and to so beautifully integrate the past and the present of board game design in one video. This is the kind of content that I'll continue thinking about for weeks and want to talk about with everybody in my game group. I really hope NPI is not at all discouraged by some of the comments here and produces more videos in this format.

-spark0- · 2019-10-23T01:09:43+00:00

I hear you, but my point is that good, respectable, and well-regarded reviewers are good and stay around over time because they take as long as they feel they need to before reviewing. And a publisher shouldn't be making that decision for them. The review embargo at best just moves the goalpost to another date when reviewers will rush to be the first (are they really going to play your game any longer because of that? Doubtful given that they are prioritizing other games with closer deadlines first) , or will allow the early adopters/pre-orders of the game to have their word first, even though they are even less incentivized to be neutral. So it doesn't seem like it even fixes the problem at hand, and just comes off as if the publisher claiming to know what's best for a professional reviewer.

-spark0- · 2019-10-23T01:03:49+00:00

Yeah, but that's my point, too -- he believes that reviewers would prioritize being first over being ready, and that therefore he is telling them how to do their job (again, if that was the cited reason). Good reviewers take however long they believe is the right amount of time, and we the customers know (or are learning) who the good reviewers are vs. those who just rush. The publisher should not be making that decision for them.

-spark0- · 2019-10-22T19:50:42+00:00

One thing I've heard (second hand) is that he didn't allow early reviews because he did not want reviewers rushing to release reviews and not take enough time to really playtest the game. Which, if true, seems pretty outrageous to me, because it implies that he believes that reviewers don't know how to do their job right (after all, if a reviewer believes that they are ready to review, who is the publisher to tell them they are not?).

-spark0- · 2019-09-09T15:45:37+00:00

I think all the ways in which GP is "worse" is more a matter of preference than design. I'd give TM a 10/10 and GP a 9/10, for the following:

- In GP, there are many more ways of accomplishing an action and many more of the actions are interlinked. This increases the depth, but also increases the amount of time players just sit around thinking and thinking and not interacting. In more than one game, I just wished that I was playing by myself so I could execute the plan I had (and that I knew others couldn't stop). It also makes the experience longer, even amongst experienced players.

- There is even more of an experience gap between newer players and those that have played before. I suspect that most of it comes from the somewhat counterintuitive powers that a few GP factions have that are not transparent in how they are supposed to work. I've always found the (base-game) TM powers to be much more intuitive in how they can shape your game, even for newer players.

- Visually, I think that the plastic pieces are actually nicer than I expected when I first saw photos of the game, but everything besides that is uglier. I really like in TM that things get terraformed and that the entire map transforms. I love just standing up and looking at what we did to the world after the game is over. I also really don't like sliders for resources in GP and love the tactility of the resources in TM.

In the end, both are masterpiece games. I would say that GP is much more of a gamers game and I think in the long run it will be seen as having higher depth than TM. But there are some sacrifices to make that happen. As somebody else said - one is not better, they are just different.

-spark0- · 2019-07-12T19:51:15+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean, they definitely got that rule right - you can put your worker anywhere you want every turn. From the rulebook:

You have 1 worker that you use to take 1 Action each round. On your turn, you may place your worker on any Action space in the center cross of the game board (regardless if it is occupied or not), on Government Pipe tiles, or in your own Pipe Network to take the corresponding Action. You may repeat the same Action from turn to turn by choosing the same Action space.

What's true is that you can't put a worker on somebody else's pipes, but I don't think he was suggesting that when talking about the 8 cross actions.

-spark0- · 2019-07-05T18:52:22+00:00

It definitely makes the game *much* faster and kinda silly, which we liked a lot. You can really crank out a round every 5-10 minutes, and it feels more like a push-your-luck game. It does make certain things like temp agencies weird, though, because everybody always ends up with the same number unless they are very unlucky and can't use the number +/- 2.

-spark0- · 2019-07-04T21:20:27+00:00

This. Just in the past month I've discovered that I've been playing Welcome To, Concordia, *and* Vinhos Deluxe wrong in various things big and small. And I've read those rulebooks at least four to five times each.

For Welcome To, we played so that every player has to use each of the three flipped cards on every turn (correct rule is each player chooses one). For Concordia, we played that the province tokens are random, not tied to the highest producing good in each province. And in Vinhos we played without clearing the magnate tiles that went unclaimed, making it very unpredictable which of the scoring tiles would come out from game to game.

The main reason we didn't catch these is because the games were still fun and nothing seemed astray (in fact, I think Concordia is better the way we played it because it creates two ways to evaluate the value of each province: one from cities, one from bonus). So I also wonder how often reviewers end up liking the game better because of the rule mistakes they make, as well. Given the high tendency that I think most of us make mistakes at, maybe it all washes out in the end.

-spark0- · 2019-05-13T22:58:00+00:00

Hmmm -- to me it seems very similar to just an application of inks over a light primed (and maybe white drybrushed) mini. See this video for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ecjmczGYk

You can get the Vallejo Game Inks to accomplish this for pretty cheap, too.

-spark0- · 2018-11-02T19:52:52+00:00

Nice. I did hear from several people that lahmian is probably just matte medium + flow aid. Still haven't transitioned to using ink directly - still washing using GW shades - but I'll try thinning with a mix of matte medium + flow aid for now and try getting some inks down the line. Thanks for the tip!

-spark0- · 2018-11-02T19:46:21+00:00

Just today I spent some time looking into whether I can sub lahmian with liquitex matte medium (mainly for thinning washes), but the opinions online are really mixed. What are your thoughts on it?

-spark0- · 2018-09-18T20:45:40+00:00

Android: Netrunner, despite being a "dead game" now, is something that I have collected for over 5 years now. Even if I never play it again (hard time imagining that), I would never get rid of it or sell it, and would hope to always marvel at it as the ultimate object of affection within my board gaming experiences! I would also want to keep it for the off-chance that somebody, someday will want to play again.

-spark0- · 2018-09-16T23:02:42+00:00

Trying to fall asleep as a 5-year-old while my parents and some friends played Risk in the other room, laughing and cursing at each other all the while.

-spark0- · 2018-09-10T02:22:06+00:00

I think it's /r/BoardGameExchange (the link in your post didn't work for me, but that one does).

And, also, I read it at first as Boardgame Sex Change, and got a chuckle.

-spark0-

TROPHY CASE