MrBody
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Posts posted by MrBody
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Weird that Tommy is near the bottom, while...Daniela is at the very top???? o_O
We've always considered Daniela to generally be a flat out weaker version of Tommy.
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Some kind of randomization for the scenario objectives. I know they have to fit together as a narrative, but they could do something with it. Like have Acts I, III, and III for each ancient one, with like 3 possible cards for each act. Each act will generally fit with the others when placed in order. You don't quite know which one you will get each act.
Would massively bump up replayability which I think is the biggest issue right now.
(please dear god don't reintroduce overly-punishing encounters or skill impairments, or fifty different unique asset decks)
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On 3/26/2019 at 5:39 AM, tsuma534 said:Among the thing you mentioned I think power creep is the worst. I'd rather have half as many investigators, but for them to be at least somewhat balanced.
Well, the investigators are pretty all over the place power wise right now. Tommy/Calvin/Marie are hands down better than everyone else, while Rex/Dexter/Norman are hands down worse. Once we knew the scenario objectives, the only real challenge left to the game was trying to beat them using "the garbage three" investigators.
Maybe little expansion tweaks that balance out some of the more blatant original investigators (Calvin is just ridiculously good, Rex is ridiculously bad).
2nd edition especially had the power creep problem. The violinist (Patricia?) was ludicrous. You had unique items that blew all previous weapons away and gave the same (or better) benefits as spells but with zero of the risk or cost.
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I'm guessing people are mostly using Tommy for the harder scenarios, because no way should he be showing up on the bottom 3 win rates.
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Trends/bits from past expansions you hope won't show up in expansions?
Out of control unique assets decks- Eldritch got insane with its dozen different categories of unique asset decks that really didn't end up adding much beyond the simplicity of a single asset deck.
Flipping spells/items- This was a mechanic that sounded interesting at first, but after 5 years of it in Eldritch and Mansions, I'd be happy to never see it again. Just slows the game down.
Super long reckoning phases- No proliferation of reckoning effects to the point that they take 10 minutes to go through.
Power creep- Overpowered items/investigators from expansions that render older ones obsolete.
Skill impairments- Please, just don't. Getting impaired skills was often worse than death. Bumbling around with a crippled investigator was more punishing than just getting killed and starting with a new one. They were frustrating and not at all fun.
Overly punishing encounters- I like encounters exactly where they are right now. Make a check for a nice boost or fail for a reasonable penalty. I don't want past Arkham/Eldritch encounters of ridiculously punishing stuff. ESPECIALLY encounters that are all about avoiding punishment with no reward.
Clue encounters that do not give clues- Nothing was worse than the clue encounters in Eldritch that didn't give you the clue even if you passed the test, wasting an entire turn. It's hard to see how they could do this with the new AH3 clue system, but I hope to never see it again.
Encounters that don't do the thing the location says it gives- I love how 90% of the encounters right now actually do the thing the location says it will do, with each one having some little twists to make it different while still giving the thing to you (general store might let you buy all the items you want, or only one item but at half price, etc). I much prefer this to Eldritch having maybe a 25% chance of encounters doing the thing that the location space advertises.
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Wormhole Reconstruction (Law)
For: All systems that contain either an alpha or beta wormhole are adjacent to each other.
Against: Each player places a command token from his reinforcements in each system that contains a wormhole and 1 or more of his ships.This has to be some kind of oversight to not state that 'against' only counts for Alpha and Beta wormholes. The against condition is practically game over for a Creuss player. It seems blatantly unfair to lock out delta wormholes (even locking out the systems with the Creuss A&B wormhole generator tokens seems unfair).
Couldn't find an errata on the site. Is there one floating around that clarifies this? It seems like an oversight that Creuss are meant to be immune to any game effects that lock out wormholes, but the wording of that ability doesn't cover having a command counter put on the system. Wasn't their ability wording in TI3 that no wormhole laws affect them?
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By comparison, here's the Yin devotion ability that goes out of its way to say that it's the Yin player who chooses the target.
http://i.imgur.com/oJedG6U.jpg
I've read arguments that say it's because "hits" are an exception so the Yin ability had to list the exception.
QuoteThe Yin ability is a bit different. First, there is more room to write the ability than there is for Exotrireme II (which is already basically at capacity, text wise). Plus, the Yin ability is dealing hits, which normally is something the person who "hits" assigns to himself, so the text is more necessary.
There are no rules saying that "destroying" units is done the same way. The way the Exotrireme is worded, it looks to me like the N'orr player destroys his own unit, then destroys two opposing unit, which to me implies that the N'orr player chooses.
Thematically, I think it's somewhat represented by the N'orr player moving in and either crashing into another ship or exploding in close proximity to the affected ships. So he is choosing where he is going.I'm not sure I agree with that. My view is that it basically comes down to what I think is ambiguous wording that could go either way, coupled with the precedent of the Yin ability having to spell out that a auto hit/destroy player gets to pick the target.
Balance wise, getting to choose means guaranteed dead war suns, dreads, and carriers and coming out way ahead in material exchange (not to mention stranding infantry and fighters by blowing up carriers).
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The wording doesn't specify and it could go either way.
Looking at one ability that definitely lets the ability-owner choose is the Yin's devotion ability, and that makes it a point to explicitly point out that the Yin player chooses. "Produce 1 hit and assign it to one of your opponent's ships." If it had just said "produce one hit", I think most would assume that the target gets to choose. The Exotrireme ability is like if they left out the part about getting to assign it, but yet the wording is still ambiguous.
Official call on this? (personally I think the N'orr getting to pick would be a little crazy)
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Red bonuses can be useful, but it's often conditionally so. I just think they pale a LOT in comparison to what the other colors give you. I only ever get red techs for the prerequisites for other techs (mostly cruiser II and sometimes destroyer II, maybe war suns if I think I can swing it). I highly prize planets with a red tech specialty because it means I can just skip getting the reds I don't want anyway.
Barring prerequisites, then other techs like neural motivators, hyper metabolism, gravity drive, transit diodes, and integrated economy blow the reds out of the water.
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Red seems by far the weakest unless you're planning on war suns. All the most useful combat techs moved over to unit upgrades.
Plasma Scoring- Even less useful than anti-mass deflectors.
Magen- Honestly this seems like the most useful of the red techs. Why only tier 2?
Duranium Armor- "At the end of the second round of space combat, repair a single unit that was damaged on round one." A space battle would have to last 5 rounds for this tech to mean otherwise. How often does that happen? This is way less useful than Magen.
Assault Cannon- A useful bonus, but tier 4? The same tier as Integrated Economy and Light Wave Deflectors?
Then there's green techs. Am I the only one who thinks neural motivator is better than almost all the rest of them? It's without a doubt better than Dacxive animators (what are those going to get you, 2? 3 infantry over the whole game?). A good action card is better than a command token, so neural motivators is conditionally better than tier 3 hyper metabolism.
I'd say the all around best tech is cruiser II. Having units with capacity and greater than 1 movement is one of the strongest factors in Twilight Imperium. Cruiser II gets you movement three infantry carriers AND a combat boost! It's the TI3 hylar laser, type IV drive, and stasis capsules (one of the most useful TI3 techs) all in one single tech! Even the prereqs aren't bad! It's rare that cruiser II isn't my early go to tech.
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Yeah symbols with some relevance rather than arbitrary ones.
Who the heck goes by shape for tech icons rather than color? Just imagine explaining that to new player.
"Okay there's double triangle, circle with triangles, computer mouse with triangles for buttons, and capsule pill. Don't get those mixed up with the circle with smaller triangles, circle with a circle, and halo tiara even if they're all the same colors right next to each other."
"What means 'industrial' again?"
"THE GREEN DOUBLE CIRCLE! OH MY GOD IT'S SO OBVIOUS! This is why we never invited you to play TI3, Frank!"
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Seems like they're really screwed if they get stuck with a red system between them and Mecatol, especially a super nova.
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(never mind)
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They have red/blue/green vague symbols to denote planet type yet also use the same colors (with different, but still vague symbols) for planet tech specialty. The only real way to easily tell them apart is the planet type symbol is next to the planet name while tech symbol is next to the resource value. They really should have made it clearer. Either use different colors, have a colored letter 'T' for tech specialty, or something. Instead of colored symbols for planet type, use a picture of a factory for industrial, a city for culture, and a volcano for hazardous.
Constantly running into confusion with new players thinking the planet type icon is a tech specialty. It would be a welcome improvement if any eventual reprint addresses this.
allenkwest reacted to this -
The agenda change sounds good. It just wasn't worth bothering with political agenda 90% of the time in TI3. They were more a waste of time "eh, I guess" and distraction than a meaningful game mechanic.
The main things I'd like to see is simply cutting down on the disparity between races, secret objectives, and action cards. TI3 was getting to the point where you could almost call the winner right after setup.
Although to be honest, I'd rather they just did away with secret objectives all together. I've always hated random hidden victory condition mechanics. They always feel like the Cylon leader agendas in BSG: something that's random and hidden so you can't really block it so you just shrug your shoulders and hope they don't achieve it. That's not a very compelling mechanic for a strategy game. I'd rather it just went entirely off of public objectives.
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8 hours ago, Runko said:On one hand:
VERY strong investigators, very strong possessions, very strong Talents.
Basically the stuff you want to get like Assets are REALLY strong in this expansion.
On the other hand:
Certain Mythos Cards are ridiculously punishing without you having to do anything about it.
Atlach-Nacha is super difficult in low investigator count games. (somewhere around Yig's difficulty curve).
Oh no, so it's the power creep syndrome that plagued the later Arkham expansions? Powerful new items/investigators, but stronger AO's/mythos/monsters that made them necessary, rendering the original weapons/investigators somewhat obsolete?
I picked it up yesterday because I saw there was a KITTY ally card and couldn't refuse. Now I'm regretting it if the power creep is true.
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Cthulhu & Shub are the 2 where their theme best carries over into mechanics (waves of madness and monsters overrunning).
I like how Yig encourages you to actually visit expeditions.
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I wasn't a big fan of Remnants. It added a mechanic that was the exact same thing as expeditions in all but name, so you just have 2 expedition decks going at once. We were kind of floored by the redundancy.
There's no order I'd really put on the expansions after Forsaken.
Forsaken -> Everything else -> Strange Remnants
It would just depend on which investigators/AOs/locations you were most interested in.
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Our group isn't that hardcore and we've been a little wary of expansions since they all seem to add increasing difficulty to the game, which I guess is fine for large hardcore groups but for casual 2-3 player groups not so much.
For example, everyone curses the base game "shuffle a solved mystery back into the deck unless you spend clues" mythos card, but there are cards a lot nastier in the expansions. "The End is Nigh" and the one that makes everyone impair their highest skill 4 times come to mind, and you can't even avoid those with clues! A lot of the newer expansion preludes seem B.S. as well (The King in Yellow in particular; you start with an extra rumor in play that does damage before it's solved and all you get is just enough clues to solve it?).
How is Dreamlands in this regard? We were considering getting it but not if it skyrockets the difficulty again with cheap shot mythos/encounter cards.
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No need to be snarky.
I'm asking if I missed something in scenario rules that meant there wasn't a legal "I win" button. As far as I can tell, making the burned house choice allows you to skip the 2nd scenario entirely then just sit in the starting location in the 3rd scenario building up until the 3rd agenda card where you automatically win.
It seems to be a design oversight if that's true.
I appreciate your contribution telling me to keep it to myself in my mom's basement.
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There are some things that caused clues to be dropped. Being defeated, and in some scenarios I think the stone tablet chaos token makes you lose a clue on the location.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but upon completing the campaign for only the first time, I spotted a way to effortlessly blitz through and win the whole thing while skipping or ignoring mechanics.
major campaign spoilers obviously
1st scenario- A cakewalk. Should have no trouble getting through it. At the end, choose to burn down the house. Get Lita ally card in the deck.
2nd scenario- Resign immediately (or at the first sign of things going bad if you wanted to play a little just for some experience points)
3rd scenario- Sit on main path the entire time, drawing cards until you get Lita. You WANT the doom to advance to the final agenda, which will make the ritual site appear without needing to gather clues from the woods. You do NOT want to gather any clues, since advancing Act 1 will spawn all the surviving unique cultists on the main path. Get to Agenda 3 without advancing the act deck, and you get the ritual site without spawning the cultists. This means you don't have to defeat any of them in the 2nd scenario (bonus it will start the doom already close to Agenda 2 at the beginning of 3rd Scenario). Move to ritual site, immediately use action to toss Lita to the ancient one. Win.
There are two things about the scenarios that seem like oversights:
1. The 3rd scenario act/agenda deck. It's a BAD thing to advance the Act deck with clues while it's a GOOD thing to advance the agenda deck with doom tokens. You need to advance the act deck to be able to defeat the ancient one with clues, but you could always just sacrifice Lita.
2. The choice at the end of scenario 1 is insanely lopsided. Getting the house location in scenario 2 vs. getting a great ally card and an auto-win button for the final scenario. You can even skip the 2nd scenario entirely! I mean, I guess you could say sacrificing your house to stop the mythos is a clear narrative choice, we were hoping for reasonably close outcomes for game purposes.
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Since a lot of the appeal was the surprises that popped up during scenarios, there could stand to be some tweaks to preserve that.
Right now, the person setting up the encounter deck has to look at the cards to find the symbols. He'll also see the artwork, title, and maybe a bit of the description, so he has some idea what's coming. Future expansions could go with a Risk Legacy setup and separate the cards into sealed packs based on scenario; all you'd have to do is open them and shuffle them without looking. Or they could simply move the encounter cards' category icon to the very bottom or corner, so that you could glance at them without seeing the rest of the card.
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Improvement based investigators like Lola and Lily are tricky in that they can be shut down if improvement cities are blocked by tough monsters, or if you draw them as replacements mid way through a game and don't have time to go improve skills.
Although it is satisfying to get Lily to the Antartica board and meditate on top the mountain until she has +2 in everything.
Are we having fun yet?
in Arkham Horror
Posted
I enjoyed my time with it, but after playing all the scenarios 3-4 times each we're mostly done with it until expansions come out. It just doesn't have the variable setup and unfolding that Eldritch did.