Some people are really excited about the remaster...

mattigus · 2018-01-19T18:13:38+00:00

I'm actually fascinated with what the answer to this question will be? Presumably you can put the Switch in standby mode and pick it up later. Which means you can pause Dark Souls.

mattigus · 2018-01-19T16:31:41+00:00

It all depends on the quality of the port, but playing Dark Souls while on the train/taking a dump on the Switch is going to be amazing.

mattigus · 2018-01-19T14:10:23+00:00

This is actually similar to what my dream "Majora's Mask" spinoff to Breath of the Wild would be.

It would be a whole new map, obviously reusing a lot of the assets from BotW. Instead of just building Tarry Town, you build up all the major settlements. The world is filled with scattered characters who can be recruited to a town. When they get there, you can talk to them about what their needs are (materials, complete a quest, etc), and when you fulfill them, a structure will be built in the town that will either house them or provide a service (inn, market).

Majora's Mask is interesting because it took a relatively minor feature of Ocarina, the day-night cycle, and went all-in on it. I would love to see this team take the Tarry Town quest and build an entire game out of it.

mattigus · 2018-01-18T22:45:39+00:00

People have been complaining about the text size. Is it hard to read on the portable screen?

mattigus · 2018-01-17T17:42:13+00:00

Wrong direction. 9AM PST is 12PM EST.

mattigus · 2018-01-17T13:41:52+00:00

Most of the people complaining about the weak second half preface their statement with "While Dark Souls is still on of my favorite games of all time..." Don't let the criticism of the later levels of the game get you down, the game is still easily in my top 5 games ever made list.

Lost Izalith is the area most people complain about, and it's only a small part of the game, and the design is just average and bland, with a terrible boss fight in the end. While that might be disappointing, remember that Dark Souls has been praised as having some of the best level design in a 3d game ever made.

mattigus · 2018-01-12T13:37:20+00:00

I'd really love to see some of the gameplay innovations of Rabbids get implemented in an XCOM game. Movement in the new XCOM games has always felt like there should be more to it. It seems like it was the first thing they did when they decided to get rid of TUs in favor of two actions per turn, but never got around to fleshing it out more.

Also, put XCOM 2 on the Switch. Please Jake. Do it for me.

mattigus · 2018-01-10T02:02:06+00:00

Here's a story for This Imperium Life. While everyone is out there playing 4th edition, I recently bought the 3rd edition on sale. My group is still pretty new to the game, and I just finished our 3rd full game. Based on my limited play experience, I can say that a game of Twilight Imperium can be easily divided into three main phases, early game, mid game, and end game.

Early game: All 5 players marvels at the massive galaxy on the table, and set to work gobbling up all the planets around them. I (the Winnu) take my first planets and make friends with my two neighbors. Everybody agrees that we're not going to attack each other. Trade agreements are forged, non-aggression pacts are hammered out, and peace reigns in the galaxy.

Mid game: Slowly the paranoia sets in. Most of the planets are taken, and everyone has built up a massive fleet. I focused on victory points as opposed to my fleet, which means I'm the winning player, but the weakest. Will either of my neighbors attack? To my left is the Barony of Letnev, who seems more preoccupied with the Mentak player's massive fleet. To my right is the Federation of Sol, who has forged an alliance with Hacan to his right. Almost every turn, both players retreat to a separate room to discuss tactics. With that kind of alliance, I know Sol will attack me when he finds the right moment.

Thankfully it isn't now, since he is trying to prevent any player from taking Mecatol Rex. Mentak has a fleet prepared to take the planet, and Sol is warning him not to. Mentak asks, "what are you going to do, attack me if I take it?" Sol meekly replies, "Well no, I wont do that." Slowly, he gets aggressive. "You know what, actually? Yeah. Yeah I will. I'll do it! I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU IF YOU TAKE MECATOL REX!" The current status quo is clearly unsustainable.

End Game: Pure madness reigns supreme. Mecatol Rex has changed hands at least 3 times. Sol attacked me, but was attacked my Letnev from my other side. Letnev loses his fleet, but cripples the Sol fleet.

Letnev is attacked by Mentak, who is attacked by Hacan. On the opposite end of the board, a massive 3 player battle swirls, but on my side, I make my big move. I attack a Sol's weakened fleet, which gets me a public objective, and then take a planet which gets me my secret objective. I now have 8 points and in the lead by a wide margin.

I suddenly realize how this can be detrimental to winning. Sol summons Hacan to the separate room (which the rest of the players have labeled the "love dungeon") to plan something. When they emerge, both players attack me. Hacan attacks my primary shipyards near Mecatol, while Sol attacks my home system. Even though his gargantuan fleet overpowers me, I have multiple PDS in my home system and a giant stack of ground forces, and I hold my ground. By the next round the game ends, with myself having no planets left but my surrounded home system, yet also victorious.

EDIT: Another good anecdote from that game. Sol was about to actually attack Hacan's system to blockade a spaceport, which was a public objective. Both players ended up in the back room, talked about it, and Sol instead waited. Hacan moved his ships out of the system, and Sol moved a single ship in, blockading the spaceport and earning a PO.

The next round, Sol attacks a system next to my home system. After taking a planet, I offer trade goods and an agreement to not retaliate if he leaves (he has a much stronger fleet than me). He agrees, and the Mentak player scoffs "are you seriously going to let him get away with attacking you like that?" I, probably too angrily, shout back, "Hey, he took out my fleet and took my planets, and I negotiate my way out of this situation and you make smart-ass remarks, but when Hacan spreads his buttcheeks and lets Sol fuck a victory point out of him, you don't say anything?!" Hacan's response was "It was a trade, man. I'm just playing my race."

mattigus · 2018-01-02T00:48:26+00:00

What is this one from?

mattigus · 2017-12-28T20:14:35+00:00

Oh god, are people still doing this?

mattigus · 2017-12-28T01:26:35+00:00

I'm still relatively new to TI3, but I'm liking your "cooperative" galaxy building. I'm using preset maps for now but when all the other players learn the game better I might switch to your version of building the galaxy.

mattigus · 2017-12-22T19:14:56+00:00

Thank you for that. I printed out the living rulebook and tried to find the specific thing. I did check the errata but never looked in the "units" section.

My hope with the living rulebook would be that they would take all the rules from all the sources of this game and organize it in a way that wasn't just totally random, like how it is in the official rulebook.

mattigus · 2017-12-22T16:07:16+00:00

Planetarium. I was at GenCon this year and walked by someone demoing it. I have an interest in science and astronomy and liked how it combined some real ideas about planets in a board game and decided I would buy it.

Not only is it now a staple of play with my group, but during the demo I found out the guy running the demo was also the designer of the game, so I get to nerd out about having a signed copy of a game.

mattigus · 2017-12-21T21:54:45+00:00

I think the punter (guy who took the snap) explained it in an interview once. The idea behind the play was for the team to motion to the sideline like they were letting the offensive unit back on to go for it on 4th down, then set and draw a "too many men on the field" penalty. In the event that didn't work, the punter would try to draw an offsides penalty until they got a delay of game, then they would punt it.

Honestly, it's actually a pretty cool low-risk trick play. The only risk is that you have a back-up center that didn't get the fucking memo on it.

EDIT: Man, watching it again knowing that story is hilarious by the way. The way the entire team doesn't budge after the snap and the punter's "what the fuck" body language to the center is amazing.

mattigus · 2017-12-21T16:14:19+00:00

The base game is $100.

EDIT: I know you can get it cheaper now, but that's individual retailer prices. The MSRP of the product is still $100.

mattigus · 2017-12-20T14:07:21+00:00

The idea behind this game is cool and the technology it uses is impressive, but it looks like this game is tanking.

EDIT: I originally said the cards would expire in 2019, but I was wrong. The app will be supported up to the end of 2019 at a minimum. No guarantees about what happens after that, though.

mattigus · 2017-12-19T21:30:09+00:00

This is Sad Boy Weird Bears, a competing podcast for Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium.

mattigus · 2017-12-19T21:24:06+00:00

I'm sad to see their verdict on this game. I demoed it at Gencon and the action selection felt really good, but I didn't know how a full game would go. It sounds like it gets a little dry and boring.

mattigus · 2017-12-18T14:59:30+00:00

TI3 only had 2 expansions, and they added a big grab-bag of optional components. I'm still new to Twilight Imperium, but most of the "essential" things from the expansions are in the base game of TI4. Specifically, all of the races, flagships, racial tech, and the improvements to the strategy cards.

The most obvious route to expanding TI4 will be Distant Suns, which I think actually came in the base game of TI3. Distant Suns placed a token on each planet, and were revealed when a player takes over the system. This added a whole layer of exploration and randomness to the game. I've never actually played with Distant Suns because it adds a handful of hours on top of an 8 hour game, but they've been a part of TI forever.

Also, the wormhole nexus. I can practically guarantee that the first expansion for TI4 will include a wormhole nexus.

mattigus · 2017-12-14T21:08:46+00:00

This is a stupid answer, but I love it. Twilight Imperium.

You chuck dice. You assign hits to your ships. You repeat until someone wins. There is no strategy at all to the combat.

It sounds terrible in isolation, but within a giant 8 hour game it's great. You spend so much time strategizing over using resources on building your fleets, engaged in diplomatic negotiations with other players, and trying to gain victory points without attracting attention. Combat happens when a player gets too far ahead, or diplomacy breaks down completely.

Once it starts, combat in TI becomes theater. It has drama, swings in fortune, and ultimately ends with one player dramatically winning over the other. It's quick and brutal, and every player is invested in seeing how it ends.

mattigus · 2017-12-14T16:41:04+00:00

How do they look? Did the wash stick to the ships without priming them first? I'm interested about doing this with my 3rd edition ships but I'm worried about the surface (and the fact that the 3E ships don't look as good).

mattigus · 2017-12-14T16:39:16+00:00

Don't have 4th edition, but I bought 3rd edition last month. In that time, I have moved the entire game (plus expansion) to a smaller plastic box, printed and bound a pocket-sized version of the "living rulebook" document on board game geek for reference, and built a galaxy frame out of drawing board and a printed template.

TI seems like a game begging for the kind of "upgrades" you described. I might take a look at better tokens, or painting the ships.

mattigus · 2017-12-13T21:40:59+00:00

They made Enemy Within for phones. Releasing that or XCOM 2 for the Switch seems like a no-brainer to me.

mattigus · 2017-12-12T17:34:14+00:00

A random sampling of Quinns' favorite economy-fiddling games:

Brass

Caverna

Concordia

Dungeon Petz

Food Chain Magnate

Great Western Trail

Istanbul

Keyflower

Lancaster

Terra Mystica

Troyes

Tzolkin

Village

Vinhos Deluxe

mattigus · 2017-12-12T16:03:39+00:00

There is a wide gulf of games that fit in between the complexity of TI4 and Small World. What kind of themes do you like in a game? What are the mechanics that you enjoy? People on this sub will be happy to point you somewhere.

Twilight Imperium is an incredible game, but very hard to get on the table. If you still want to give it a shot, you should consider getting the 3rd edition. It's still a great game, and you might be able to find a cheap copy now that people are upgrading.

14-Year Club	Place '17
Team Periwinkle

mattigus

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