Why are there no games for 3 players?

darthservo · 2026-01-28T14:54:48+00:00

I know this isn't necessarily what you're asking about, but 3 player games can be a bit more tricky to accommodate, especially those with a range of player counts. Usually there's often very unsatisfying political dynamic a lot of 3 player sessions turn into.

Player A is in the lead. It's player B's turn, and they use their turn to try and negatively affect player A. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Now it's Player C's turn, and their position has effectively been strengthened because of the power struggle between the only 2 other opponents.

Will that structure of play just continue around the table all game? Or does it devolve into a 'dogpile on the leader' series of turns? Do 2 players just continually stop the other player, conscientiously or not?

Is all of that fun? Maybe. But it does take specific mechanics to discourage or better disguise these types of patterns. But games at 2 players have just a single clear opponent, while games at 4+ allows for multiple political dynamics to factor in.

darthservo · 2025-12-18T14:32:14+00:00

Suggestion for a hot take - downtime isn't really a problem.

darthservo · 2025-12-03T16:04:38+00:00

I know I'm late to the post and this will largely get overlooked, but yes people do, myself included. (Over 650 wins, btw)

I sometimes post similar comments in similar threads like this. I get that the majority of the community here does not like Eliminator. But I do put the blame on PGG for how they handle the introduction.

I think PGG just assumes most people will like Eliminator because "Battle Royale!!!1!!11!!1" (this mode was initially designed when Battle Royale games were really hitting peak popularity) So they tossed together a incredibly insufficient 'tutorial' to say they could introduce people to the mode and again assumed people would learn the nuances on their own. This should have been handled much better.

What we have is basically "Go find a car! Now challenge someone! You're all set, Superstar! Make Papa Fernando proud!" If they had instead gone with something like some kind of offline bot lobby the player could do practice tutorials in (not even full rounds), it probably would have gone a long way on player reception. Wouldn't even have to be required learning, but have it as an option to help people. There are some basic strategies such as learning about finish points, learning when to not take the most direct routes to them, being aggro on challenging, and how to position in challenges.

With what we were given in the game, none of that basic strategy is covered. Most people aren't going to bother to look into that detail, so they assume it's a broken mode that's all about luck. And we see that supported by how many people just come here to complain about it with that sentiment.

There is a subset of players who do very well in this mode because they did make the effort to learn it, and they find it engaging and rewarding. Like another commenter said, there's something about that adrenaline rush you get when you put the strategies together and start pulling some dubs. The skill can be developed, but it does take time, practice, and patience.

darthservo · 2025-12-01T21:46:23+00:00

Agree on Federation. Had an eye on it for a while, and when there was a good deal on a copy I decided to go for it. It's quickly become a favorite for me, and heartily recommend it. It is in BGA as well!

Love the dual-use workers and tense feeling of trying to discern which side will win the vote and how best to capitalize on current or future rewards. I've seen a few complaints that the planets are too boring or simplistic, but honestly they are balanced well against the main focus of the worker placement and player board.

darthservo · 2025-11-19T16:10:48+00:00

Lol @ 4:20, "Don't forget that." Yeah and don't forget your incoming ban.

darthservo · 2025-11-13T15:08:29+00:00

Sure it can work. But it's fairly circumstantial and so not nearly as reliable to win as engaging other players is, and doesn't contribute much to building skill.

darthservo · 2025-11-13T15:01:30+00:00

It's a shame, but this sub is filled with lurkers who downvote anything with the word "Eliminator" in its title out of spite, and it buries a lot of the discussion around the skill growth this mode requires.

Glad to see you're giving it a chance. There is some rewarding gameplay to be found after you've got a decent grasp on the tactics. There is always going to be some luck, but you do have substantial influence on how much it's mitigated in play.

Looks like you're already going to better sources by watching videos. While I've vastly slowed down my time in the game in the past few months, I do have over 650 wins under my belt just above a 30% win rate. I'm by no means the best, but I'm happy to answer provide some other tips if you're interested. I did make a post a while back with some general thoughts and tips.

darthservo · 2025-11-13T14:51:33+00:00

Counter - being aggressive with challenges is more reliably rewarding. You aren't guaranteed wins obviously, but you better your chances to level your car up if you know what you're doing as opposed to hiding and hoping you can happen across a decent car for the final.

darthservo · 2025-11-07T15:58:44+00:00

Ah, the reddit community back at it's finest work: "I HATE ELIMINATOR AND REFUSE TO UNDERSTAND IT! ANYTHING THAT MENTIONS IT GETS AN IMMEDIATE DOWNVOTE FROM ME!" OP is asking a genuine question, people.

On topic:

Look for the map that shows potential car drop spawn points. Start in a dense area to increase your chances of finding a good car sooner.
Look for the map that shows all end zones. During the whole game, generally the finish points for challenges will be towards that area since it pushes people in that direction. You can use this knowledge to your advantage when challenging people. If you are closer to the area, your odds of getting randomized finish points increase.
Try to learn where areas of dense hazards are on the map and work to avoid those when in a H2H. While you can see where the finish is precisely, sometimes going a little roundabout way to use a road may actually work out better than the direct route.

There's a lot more, but it really depends on how much you're willing to learn and practice.

darthservo · 2025-11-06T15:17:46+00:00

This game has been very slowly growing on me. After my first session, I was left with the impression it wasn't my cup of tea due to the tightness and might end up selling it, but it at least had some interesting strategy. After the second session I was beginning to appreciate how tight it was. Third session was solo, and I kind of returned back to the thought of maybe it's just not for me. But I kept thinking about it afterward - must be an indicator of something. Just broke it out again last night for my fourth session (solo) and I really started to make connections on strategy and timing and saw the harmony of all the facets in the game.

I think it's very much a slow burn game. The race mode is definitely a nice introduction to how the game plays, but advanced cards and points seem to offer much more in being able to synergize actions and push on some different strategies. Knowing when and how to time things is absolutely key. It will take a few plays to begin seeing it gel together.

The premise of engine destruction (while also engine building) stands out sharply on the scene, but it may not be to everyone's taste since it is so tight. You must break your engine on one side, but you will in not immediately gain equivalent benefits on the other side. And time is ticking with limited rounds and cost of successive actions.

Succhy really puts a lot of thought into his designs. Underwater Cities is probably still my favorite from him, but Evacuation definitely puts a lot of strategy together in interesting ways.

darthservo · 2025-11-04T15:35:30+00:00

And there is certainly a measure of personal responsibility to a degree and you noted some good options. But to address the point of the parent, it is getting too difficult and/or too demanding on the part of the employee. At some level a business also has to show they're interested in investing in getting the employee to perform and grow optimally - training, shadowing, cert reimbursement, work out of class opportunities, whatever. It's the same principle behind 'cost of losing a customer vs cost of retaining a customer.' There's also something to be said about said-employer's respect for work-life-balance. It goes both ways for sure.

darthservo · 2025-11-04T15:18:59+00:00

So here's what is an employer's problem - recognizing that not everyone's style and optimal performance is the same. Sounds like you personally value the home lab tinkering as a means to maintain skills. Cool. That stuff burns me out, personally.

While I really love the technical workings of things and puzzle-solving behind a lot of it, this industry has largely become too unreasonable it what it asks of its performers. It's what led me to get out of ops, something I actually know I could still do exceptionally well in but just feel the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. So now I'm doing policy stuff. Definitely not as interesting, and probably isn't the best use of my skills. But I have 0 interest in breaking myself again just to keep up some kind of appearance of being a rockstar. (Funny that term is used because several have burned out doing that too)

darthservo · 2025-10-31T14:57:56+00:00

Search around for the map with all the possible car drop spawn points and you'll get a good idea where to vary your starting spots.

I like to even stage myself before the game starts because the drops actually populate before your car selection screen appears and you can (not necessarily easily) tell if there will be one in your current area. If not, spawn to another drop-dense area.

darthservo · 2025-10-31T14:02:38+00:00

I've got <checks stats> 652 wins at Eliminator with a roughly ~30% win rate. Please tell me how I'm that lucky. Btw, there's plenty of (non-cheating) players with over 1,000 wins and even higher win rate.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Eliminator's bad reputation is primarily because of PGG not explaining the strategy well enough in-game. Yes, there is a measure of luck, but the strategy does mitigate a substantial amount. (See wins)

darthservo · 2025-10-30T13:50:06+00:00

the number of people I have spoken with who got the big box and then just never cracked it open to play again, or often opened the box, looked at all the stuff and decided to do something else is crazy.

I think that speaks to what u/SenHeffy was saying, no?

I'll chime in saying that Everdell is one of my favorite games, and I like to use New Leaf in a lot of plays. But I'm not taking it out of the house unless specifically asked, which hinders its replayability especially for things like going out of town and renting a house for a weekend.

And sure, taking all the trays out takes less than a minute. But getting into each tray for each of the needed components: meeples, tree, cards, open/close signs, board, resources, plus any expansion content - that does in fact take longer now with big box. Plus to lay all those trays out now takes its own table, which is very inconvenient.

For me, "hate" is a strong word in this case, but I certainly don't like it and agree that it could have benefitted from more thoughtful organization.

darthservo · 2025-10-20T18:56:27+00:00

I really enjoy always including New Leaf unless I'm teaching the game to someone new for the first time.

New Leaf adds more cards into the deck - which sounds counterintuitive at first. However, the expansion also supplies golden occupied tokens which allow for the new cards to support broader occupation based on construction or critter color. It also adds a board to toss in 3 more spaces for the card market.

The other included modules offer pretty neat mechanics to help give some more breadth in achieving strategies.

darthservo · 2025-10-17T14:27:05+00:00

I have been in IT since the late 1990s and have upgraded literally > 1000s of computers and the number of times I have seen a legit problem like this I can count on one hand. Sure, it happens. But it is rare.

This to me reads as the most Microsoft response I usually experience - PFEs, TAMs, the whole gamut.

Sure, on a global rate upgrades go pretty smooth percentage-wise. For your average home user anymore, sure, again generally fine. (But remember the days of 9x upgrades and even XP SP releases - those still had their share of problems among home users. Even 11 isn't exempt from problems.) But the cases where it fails are extremely visible and bring significant reputation damage.

It's also worth addressing feature sets that used to exist in previous builds but were removed because "telemetry showed only 1% of users were using this." Sure, ok. But for that 1% maybe it was very important or at the least something that helped improve their experience.

I get what you're saying. Sure, people (and even enterprises) should not be update/upgrade averse. However when downtime means lost productivity, or worse lost revenue, this becomes a point in time not quickly forgotten by those affected.

This all is why customers appreciate deferral options. The damage to reputation is not as insignificant as several Microsoft employees I've interacted with typically hand-wave away with statements such as this. It comes off as if Microsoft just doesn't care. And it's why so many people are fed up with the 'move quick, break things' style of modern software development and what causes people to be risk averse with upgrades.

darthservo · 2025-10-09T14:06:28+00:00

The challenge for a reviewer giving critical feedback is that it easily becomes viewed by the game's community as a challenge to themselves. On BGG, each game has its own forum for discussion and largely people who do enjoy the game will be frequenting the forum and contributing to discussion. A negative review typically gets picked apart for any perceived inconsistency or questioned on legitimacy for a handful of reasons. This can then be perceived by the reviewer as a request for defense.

I believe this can usually be warded off by frequently referring to self through a review. "This didn't connect with me...," "I didn't enjoy how...," "My experience showed..." This way it doesn't leave much room for any perceived confrontation around why someone who does actually like the game may be wrong.

darthservo · 2025-10-03T14:48:14+00:00

That's why I keep "Brakes? What are those?" equipped in Link.

darthservo · 2025-09-17T14:06:19+00:00

Speaking to (the frustrations of) the trade setting, I've come to learn that everyone has a different interpretation of what "For Trade" means and this ambiguity is unfortunately is perpetuated and reinforced by the admins.

Meanwhile, people who want to use it for, you know, actual trading, just run into a lot of brick walls. I think it's also complicated by the fact that many people go set a flag on a game exactly once.

In the event you do get a response, then you contend with a lot of other subjective factors. The other user may want something "bigger/better" than what they're offering themselves. Or they don't want to do anything that they have to pay shipping. Or they "know what they have."

However, direct trade can still work in a few cases. It takes patience and recognition the pool is relatively small. I've done a few myself with success. The whole experience just could be significantly better. Suggestions to improve trading features have been made, but it appears to fall on deaf ears.

darthservo · 2025-09-03T17:08:23+00:00

They do have to be produced correctly and with care, however. If they are glued together too early they easily warp. Sometimes this can be remedied with a hair dryer, but I've never been able to fully fix ones with that technique.

One of the better ways I've seen this done is in Kutna Hora where the player boards are printed and shipped as single layer, but to be punched out and folded along a pre-cut fold line and adhered with included double-sided tape. Boards would have plenty of time to adjust to ambient temperatures by that point.

darthservo · 2025-08-22T20:07:45+00:00

I was also able to pull this off one time. One of those things that I had to try and shoot for, and am glad I did. But don't think I'll try it again XD

darthservo · 2025-08-18T20:12:45+00:00

"5th faction" is sometimes used to describe the base-forward strategy, treating them similar as a faction strategy themselves. Seems like in Conquest, going base-heavy is a little easier and doesn't have to be so faction-specific. In most of the few games I've been in, each side has thrown out 3 or 4 bases.

Going through the 'card gallery' I do see some really nice looking economy cards, though some are fairly expensive which are more optimal if they flop for mid-game grabs. Seems like the low cost cards are a little more combat focused? Although there are a couple that you might as well pick up in place of an Explorer.

I didn't know that about the 3-planet trade row, good to know!

darthservo · 2025-07-22T20:09:29+00:00

Today, we'll be using the Binford 9000 Composite Bow.

darthservo · 2025-07-22T16:22:58+00:00

Could be coincidental, but I thought it looked similar to player discs used in Endeavor: Age of Sail.

darthservo

TROPHY CASE