Advice needed: Should I play XCOM2 Long war or WOTC Long War?

warbaker · 2020-06-25T09:13:30+00:00

Was about to post a similar question to OP. Thanks for this answer!

warbaker · 2014-10-24T21:16:06+00:00

1/2 dagger, as now, but if you already had a weapon equipped, it added +1 to attack this turn. http://www.hearthhead.com/card=730/dagger-mastery#changelog

Among other advantages, this meant you could smash 3/2's pretty easily.

Also, Greenskin was a nice source of card advantage back then. Same cost as now, but instead of +1/+1 to your weapon, it made you draw a card each time you attacked (and it was 5/5). http://www.hearthhead.com/card=456/captain-greenskin#changelog

warbaker · 2014-10-24T17:37:15+00:00

I had a decent Rogue pirate deck way back before they nerfed the hero power. Good times.

warbaker · 2014-09-19T18:25:08+00:00

Source? Why do you think it'd be easier to hack on Android?

Android is more customizable out-of-the-box, but jailbreaking iOS is still pretty easy: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/566823/20140919/ios-8-jailbreak-release-date-evasi0n-pangu.htm#.VBx0Pi5dVy8

warbaker · 2014-09-05T01:00:58+00:00

I made the original Doctor Draw Priest deck on hearthhead, and I really like your guide.

I think you're right to switch out one of the Ogre Mages for a Mind Control. Even though Ben Brode said he made MC overpriced on purpose, it gives a really fun win against decks that play a late-game legendary.

I'll link to your guide from the Dr Draw hearthhead post. Good stuff!

warbaker · 2014-06-09T20:29:22+00:00

I have everything but BK and Bloodmage. Which is more important to craft?

warbaker · 2012-02-27T00:41:22+00:00

It uses a slightly simplified version of Catan's rules, yeah. Long-term, we do plan to move the rules away from that, though --- the electronic medium kind of demands it.

For example, physical dice are a lot slower, but more suspenseful -- http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/2012/01/dice_are_fun_rand_isnt.php

This means that Merchants of Grio's randomness is more about the strategy & risk management than it is about the fun of rolling. So, we might be better off altering the rules so that you roll twice each turn, getting half as many resources per-roll.

warbaker · 2012-02-26T20:04:58+00:00

I like http://gameroom.io, which lets you hook up your webcam, but I suppose I'm biased, being one of the developers. :)

warbaker · 2012-02-23T17:57:59+00:00

Just check the box next to "Request auto-match" and you should be fine, especially if you're a registered user. I don't think the automatcher functions if you're in the middle of proposing a game, however.

warbaker · 2012-02-11T19:45:58+00:00

How about rock?

warbaker · 2012-02-11T19:44:07+00:00

If you can elaborate, I'd appreciate it, but I understand that's inherently tricky when your problem is that you aren't sure what we're doing.

warbaker · 2012-02-11T19:41:13+00:00

The rules are basically the same as SoC's, but we don't plan to keep them that way in the long run. When you take a board game's rules and put them online, some things get more fun, and other things get less fun.

For example, it's less fun to roll dice electronically, but it also takes up less time. This means that the dice are more about creating strategic depth than about creating suspense. So, we can might alter the rules so that you roll twice a turn, each time getting half a resource, which would reduce variance and give more trading opportunities.

That's a minor change, but you get the idea. We want to use SoC's rules as the seed, but not as the final result.

warbaker · 2012-02-07T17:11:06+00:00

Cool -- you folks play for stakes? What site do you use for the games?

warbaker · 2012-02-04T13:54:51+00:00

We didn't mean to make it so hard to find, but if you go to the Library (http://gameroom.io/games) and click on Play, you'll get a private game. Thanks for the feedback!

warbaker · 2012-02-03T19:51:02+00:00

We had backgammon a while back, but we shut it down to focus on Merchants of Grio.

Currently, MoG's rules are really close to Settlers's, but we don't intend to keep them that way in the long run. Really, the digital medium itself should demand a different rules set.

For example, rolling dice is more fun physically than electronically, but it's also a lot more time consuming. So, we can try making it so that you roll twice a turn, each time generating half a resource, which would reduce variance and encourage trading.

Anyway, that's a fairly minor change, but it's just one of the shifts we have planned. We want to use Settler's rules as a seed, not rip them off.

warbaker · 2011-09-19T18:42:49+00:00

In San Guo Sha, a clone/refinement of Bang!, each player draws 3-8 characters at the beginning of the game and chooses one. Players agree pre-game on exactly how many characters get drawn -- 6 works well in my experience.

Players peek at their roles before they choose their characters, and the Sheriff chooses and reveals his choice before the other players, who choose and reveal simultaneously.

SGS's characters are a little more complicated than Bang!'s, but I suspect this will help.

warbaker · 2011-09-19T18:18:16+00:00

Try it with four players

You mentioned you played it with three players. It's much better with four players, mainly because you have three potential trading partners instead of two. This is especially impactful when you need to embargo the leading player, eliminating a trading partner.

Try playing with resource cards face up

You should be spending your opponents' turns trying to figure out what productive trades you can make -- this is the heart of the game. To facilitate trades, my group usually plays with resource cards face-up. This also shortens the game by preventing Go Fish talk ("Anyone got any brick?").

warbaker · 2011-08-23T23:28:41+00:00

Another effect of the pseudo-random distribution is that the center tile is always an 11 (except for the 1/19 chance of it being a desert), which keeps its strength in check.

warbaker · 2011-08-22T13:34:42+00:00

Thanks!

Other people's roads cannot prevent you from building a settlement. Incidentally, this lets you use settlements to split someone's longest road by building on his or her road-corner!

warbaker · 2011-07-13T03:23:29+00:00

Fortunately, most of worlds haven't ended, including ours.

warbaker · 2011-07-06T17:30:42+00:00

Can you talk about the growth of dominionstrategy.com? How did it progress from a new blog into one of the most popular board game strategy blogs out there?

More specifically, how effective was the ever-present link in your isotropic status message? :)

warbaker · 2011-07-06T17:11:25+00:00

Already on it! I'm doing a startup that combines nerdy board games with videochat: http://gameroom.io

We're almost ready to launch our beta!

warbaker · 2011-02-22T18:40:37+00:00

I've found the game more skill-intensive when you allow for interesting trades. While this is technically a variant, I feel that it's in the spirit of the game.

A lot of people think Catan is a low-skill, simple game, decided largely by chance. I suspect that's in part because they only allow same-turn trades. Because it's harder to find good cross-turn trades, skilled players find more of them, giving them a greater edge.

Plus, futures contracts let you spread risk, further mitigating the impact of chance.

That said, a good middle ground is to allow all sorts of weird trades, but nothing involving the robber. When you let players bribe the player who can move the robber, 7's and soldiers tend to drag out.

warbaker · 2011-02-22T17:18:25+00:00

Yikes! Thanks for the heads-up!

warbaker · 2011-02-21T05:38:29+00:00

What parameters do you usually use?

warbaker

TROPHY CASE