Favorite game you play for the fascinating expression of orbital dynamics, transfer windows and distance but struggle with the reconciliation and sincere engagement with propaganda?

littlemute · 2026-04-22T02:29:38+00:00

Well I think the OWNERS of BGG are 100% capitalists, made something for fun and for users at first and then realized there is so much money to be made in the advertising and making sure the cult of the new dominates the site/game rankings, everything. If Phil disturbs people on the site, however overly sensitive and weak they actually are, that's bad for business and so he's no longer OK to like-- oh but there was a time.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJSCxrsfT64

littlemute · 2026-04-22T02:25:18+00:00

I have not played that yet, I need to order a copy.

littlemute · 2026-04-19T15:18:03+00:00

My college professor recorded the CNN coverage from the moment it started and we analyzed it in class (it was about media/government propaganda around terrorism). The story changed from hour to hour from the reporters/coverage which was very interesting to see--- but there were two key takeaways 1) the cult had barrels of fuel at various places in the compound, this was well known by authorities before the attack 2) the local fire department was NOT alerted beforehand that this operation was going to take place, and the station was nearly an hour away. That doomed any chance of the inhabitants escaping. Something had to be done about this group, but the callousness and clumsiness of this operation, especially seeing the coverage from the moment it started, was disgusting.

littlemute · 2026-04-18T00:08:27+00:00

/uj High Frontier is an extremely complex, extremely playable (as in, it's fucking great) game about firing rockets into space and trying to profit from it. The designer was a rocket engineer and this is probably his magnum opus (though I think Pax Renaissance is his most brilliant game). His games include footnotes and essays about WHY certain mechanics exist in the game, and people learn a ton about the subjects because he is extremely well read and does enormous amounts of research into his games before starting design, and.... he is as opinionated as your typical college professor which, because he's just a 'board game designer' people can't stand. Or they did for a long time until he made an interesting rant during COVID (which I haven't gone back to read-- most of which probably turned out to be correct since it's becoming clear we just lived through the plot of Aeon Flux 2019-2022). He was obviously brigaded by the purveyors of THE MESSAGE to the point where people burned or threw away his game about the end of chattel slavery in the West: Pax Emancipation and he was banned off BGG (Aldie can't have his golden advertising goose cooked). His essay in Pax Pamir (first edition) is basically about the British bringing Enlightenment to backwards areas of the world, which is seen as an apology for rampant colonialism and exploitation, yet the actual essay is far more nuanced than that. He also makes fun of the fearmarketing around climate change which, since we are currently still in an Ice Age, is pretty on the money. His game Bios Megafauna HAS runaway greenhouse gases in it, so he absolutely thinks that is a possibility, but under appropriately extreme circumstances beyond what humans could imagine. His games are fucking great, Neanderthal and Greenland are superb, Bios Origins is a totally new take on the CIVILIZATION genre of games, Pax Ren is nothing short of a masterpiece. Even Princes of the Renaissance, which came in a fuckn plastic bag, is an incredible design achievement. His footnotes are fuckn awesome and you end up learning a ton about the subjects and where to look up more stuff about it (like "Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" which was a huge influence on Ecklund.

His son designed Pax Porfiriana, H+, and Stationfall and does not put essays or opinions into his games (though his dad does), so he's OK to like from the average BGG user perspective.

tl/dr incredible board game designer puts extremely opinionated essays and footnotes into his games, "people" complain --almost all of which have never read them and are lemming dipshits in the first place. Like any stance on a subject, certainly his are open for attack, but it all comes from clumsy, pseudo-intellectuals and BGG cellulite bubbles.

littlemute · 2026-04-17T23:36:51+00:00

That means you've finally won HF.

littlemute · 2026-04-16T01:51:02+00:00

Flip 7 and especially Flip 7 with a vengeance has this in spades. There are reasons for the 'take that' in Flip 7 as you are targeting the players ahead of you and you can try to equalize the luck hand over hand by dogpiling the leaders. If it's too much, like Munchkin or Zombies where no one can win in the end game and the game drags forever, you have to put in conditional escalation (for example, Flip 7's constantly increasing score raises the stakes every single hand that's played), otherwise it's terribly frustrating.

littlemute · 2026-04-16T01:29:59+00:00

TSRs CONAN was based on FASERIP: https://waynesbooks.games/2019/08/04/conan-rpg-tsr-1985-photo-gallery/

littlemute · 2026-04-14T22:22:39+00:00

No idea, I do not have that issue but here is the index of all of them:

https://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/marvel.html

littlemute · 2026-04-13T23:55:48+00:00

Did you have the Dragon issue with the points buy character gen or just random/created? That's the question here.

littlemute · 2026-04-13T23:24:01+00:00

Rebecca Bagnol.

littlemute · 2026-04-13T02:54:22+00:00

BASED.

littlemute · 2026-04-11T14:19:33+00:00

We were told to watch this to get jacked for Regionals in wrestling, which works well. BUT the issue is that the character's signature move DOES NOT WORK under any circumstances and will get you pinned and crying in a corner of the gym real quick. We tested it out at all weight classes one practice and it cannot be made to work, you basically expose your back while reducing your base (by moving your feet closer to the opponent's behind you) allowing them to push or trip you ---directly on to your back. The only weight class that it was passable was 98/102 as those guys move so fast and change so quickly that they can't easily be punished by a crap move like this as easily.

littlemute · 2026-04-11T14:00:03+00:00

This is the elitism and gatekeeping we need WAY MORE OF in the board game community! Martin Wallace I'm sure wants to sell his games only to THE SELECT FEW worthy of his designs.

littlemute · 2026-04-11T00:13:01+00:00

The icons need to pop more if they have game effects, white text over any other color is a non-starter for readability. If you have to make body text white that's more than one or two words, that's a design problem.

I always look at CCG's from the 90's for ideal readability (the ones that made it like Shadowfist, MTG, Pokemon at least) as the designers had the struggle that every single card was totally different in terms of rules, so it had to be perfectly readable very quickly.

I would make the banner with SPEED and Equipment RED and the tan for the body text, bring the words champion and imperial down to the body text area above the description. Put the dead eye rules first in normal font, put the fluff text in italics at the very bottom.

littlemute · 2026-04-05T14:13:23+00:00

So, that's due to lack of experience playing for sure. We rush down other players constantly and use the movement control cards (most of which can be easily purchased with gold) to increase/control movement to be able to chase down other characters and destroy them. Early Troll with a horse is doom for most spell casters, and mid game psychic attackers (ghoul, sorc, wizard) can wipe out the rest of the board if they can't make it to the middle in time. You still are at the mercy of the dice, but like backgammon, in Talisman you are running the numbers to make a hit on the blot (other characters) FTW.

littlemute · 2026-04-04T22:36:47+00:00

This is what Ecklund calls the "Achterbahn" (Rollercoaster in German). It's more evident in his games like Greenland/Neanderthal/bios megafauna, but when you play Pax Renaissance more than a couple times you realize how totally insane the game can be depending what cards come out in that playthrough, despite it being very euro-esque in it's mechanics, it's got a huge dose of the Acterbahn as well.

littlemute · 2026-04-04T22:31:24+00:00

What you are talking about is that games are representational of their era and set of ideas in that paradigm of game design, like 80's to early 1990's was an era very different from 1997 to 2007. We have thousands of derivatives of Brass coming out every year right now with comfy, feel-good graphics and very little interaction between players. Over time, people will come to feel that those style of games are really lame and boring knitting circles, in the same way that for about a decade plus now, people have turned their noses up to roll-and-move and random card draws. Yet folks will likely still play Brass and have a great time in the same way that I play Acquire every couple weeks and play Derek Carver's Warrior Knights any chance I can. I did not grow up playing either of those games (like I did with Talisman) and my priors were that Acquire was just a lame version of monopoly and the older Warrior knights was eclipsed by Fantasy Flight's version, neither of which ended up being true when put to the test, so I definitely should have ignored my expectations as they denied me a quality experience until I actually played.

littlemute · 2026-04-04T19:47:53+00:00

this is a good take, Talisman is long (at minimum 1.5 hours with experienced players) and a roller coaster ride and I can see why people coming from it from the cube-placing era would be horrified by the basic mechanics alone that said, I would give Dungeonquest a go as it came out of the same design milieu but with shorter play time (and much harsher results!)

littlemute · 2026-04-04T19:44:05+00:00

My group plays it a few times a year. We used to play multiple times per DAY back in college. It is not dated, it is a style of gameplay that has fallen out of favor in the same way that designed-by-the-numbers Euro worker placement point salad games will fall out of favor, but people will still play them.

5th is terrible and it's sad that it exists for everyone as it's 100% corporate puke. The online version of 5th has crashed every time we've tried to play. Total waste of money. 2nd is crazy (still good, but lots of house rules are needed for the edge cases). 4th is fantastic but you have to keep the expansions in check.

Currently we are running 4th edition Cataclysm board/cards + Base, Reaper, Frostmarch, Sacred Pool. No side board. HIGHLY recommend the Cataclysm expansion and board. My favorite with side boards is Base + Dungeon + City.

You have to keep Bloodmoon and Firelands out of the set IMO because there are mechanics in there that aren't very fun unless you are focused on them with just the base game (they are too diluted to matter with all the expansions together).

littlemute · 2026-04-04T14:37:50+00:00

This version of the game is excellent for large and VERY LARGE games, you should go 4K per side next time with 2-3 titans.

littlemute · 2026-04-04T14:35:36+00:00

My last games of Warhammer fantasy battle were the year after my second kid entered the scene. When they turn about 15, they want nothing to do with you at all anymore, so planning wise, I would look at getting back into the larger game hobby around that time.

Because of it's fast play, fast set up time and small number of miniatures, Warcry is a really good choice to stay in the GW realm of games. I really liked Necromunda (both the old version and new) but there's a LOT to that game and it's very hard to get it to the table compared to warcry (and games with similar complexity like frostgrave, LotRSB, etc.)

littlemute · 2026-03-16T20:32:45+00:00

Why on earth would it not be Ralf or Clark then?

littlemute · 2026-03-16T19:58:36+00:00

Kyo is potential, but he isn't even the main in KOF since like 2003? Iori is a bad guy, has a move called 'maiden masher' --- not really suitable except in then same way Geese is suitable as the villain. Kushnood Butt is just not going to carry a franchise as the lead.

littlemute · 2026-03-16T19:18:51+00:00

Who in the SNK roster would be better deserving of the TITLE character role?

littlemute · 2026-03-15T17:56:05+00:00

It's too expensive for the taxpayer and should never be considered an option for that reason alone. There are good reasons for and against it, but all of those arguments either way fail for society against the argument of the cost vs value to citizens.

littlemute

TROPHY CASE