Destrin

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Posts posted by Destrin

  2. Posted

    Quite late to the party on this thread, but here are some suggestions for you, these are in a vague 'difficulty curve' order to aid in progression but are all 2 player recommended (some of them 2p only!), welcome to the hobby :):

    Battleship Galaxies - Don't be put off by the name, this is a great, fun reimagining of the original Battleship game that has some strategic depth. My only complaint is that the core game is a little unbalanced and it's in dire need of expansions. As new gamers you should easily get a lot of plays out of it before either of those things becomes an issue, though

    Khet - A bit of a 'boardgame nerds chess', I found this enjoyable for a few games, my GF refuses to play me now because she made a really embarrassing move once and she has now decided the game hates her!

    Ticket to Ride: The Card Game - A set collection game that can be brutal on your powers of recall. When playing this with my GF, we both get quieter and quieter as the game goes on as you have to 'card count' the piles you have scored that you aren't allowed to look at any more! Fun

    Agricola: All creatures great and small - the 2 player version of a great boardgame, I'd probably put this a bit further down the list, it's not very complicated but uses some mechanisms that might be tricky to get used to if you haven't played other, similar Euro style boardgames. One that might be best taught to you rather than reading from the rulebook maybe?

    A few acres of snow - Excellent 2 player, slightly abstract card driven wargame. Play this online at Yucata.de first and see what you think

    Washington's War - Very simple 'large scale' game representing the American War of Independence, I can't play this with my GF as the war theme doesn't interest her at all, but it's very well done.

    Twilight Struggle - One of the best two player strategy games there is, thoroughly enjoyable.

  3. Posted

    I've been as rubbish as others at trying to get around to my matches so in the interests of trying to keep things running, here are the outstanding matches still to play for Day 3:

    Div 1:

    Sacred Chilli v TJVS

    Div2:

    Riadsala v JammyJoker

    Archiel v CobraOB

    Div 4:

    Scamander v Majinmagics

    Sorbicol v Rollmeister

    Div 5:

    Orvidos v Destrin (:$)

    Orv, give me a shout here or on Steam with your user ID so we can fix up a game time!

  5. Posted

    San Juan, the Puerto Rico card game offshoot from Rio Grande Games, is live on the App Store for $7.99:

    http://itunes.apple....=8&ign-mpt=uo=4

    I would caution a buyer beware on this one. If you want to play San Juan against the AI, this is a very good port, nice clean graphics, nice interface, the only weirdness is they hide your hand away and you have to tap to bring it to the fore which is an odd UI choice but whatever.

    If you want to play multiplayer, don't bother. Pass and play is okay but suffers from the inherent issue that the game is hidden information, so works better on iphone pass and play than ipad where you want the view shared. Online multiplayer is realtime ONLY and requires gamecentre. If you lose connection mid game, tough, you will get dropped and replaced with an AI. I have yet to complete a game of this multiplayer, very disappointed :(

  6. Posted

    I know it's off at a slight tangent but I think the best unit customisation I've ever had the joy to partake in is that used in the board game Eclipse which uses a very simple system to control the customisation. You don't have much in the way of options but you are limited in how far you can customise as it takes an action to play with the ship components. I've seen some very varied ship designs crop up in that game despite the simplicity of the implementation.

  7. Posted

    Ah, thanks for the correction. It still seems strange that they would segment the application in that way, though, especially if they're only doing it for one "half" of the platform, so to speak.

    Yes, it's a very odd approach, they could easily have made the ipad app universal and shared it across the whole platform, and I certainly don't understand why they need two apps for TTR: Pocket, but hey ho.

  8. Posted

    I didn't realize this until now, but the iOS implementation of Ticket to Ride: Europe is actually a new standalone application, rather than IAP for the existing Ticket to Ride iOS app. It's currently priced at $1.99 at the App Store.

    Also, as reported by Pocket Tactics, there were weekend price reductions for Caylus ($2.99, Universal) and Civilization Revolution ($0.99).

    The iPhone application is separate. TTR: Europe has been available on the iPad TTR as an in app purchase since it released

  13. Posted

    I'll remember civ5 as the great strategy game that lasted only a few weeks (literally, since steam's forced patching will never let us play the original game)

    And yet Civ 5 multiplayer was largely unplayable at launch, I'm a multiplayer only guy, I don't view Civ as a single player game at all, haven't done so since Civ 3 Play the World was released. Civ 5 had so many issues with synch errors in multi crashing game, you also couldn't save a game that was in progress. I'm amazed anyone made it through a game in this state pre-patches. I've enjoyed it thoroughly for good games since then.

  14. Posted

    Seriously?

    The fast micromanage is the only way I can seem to win anything above normal difficult. I just grab every piece of stellar real estate I can find until the AI tries to rush me.

    I never manage any of my ships abilities in combat in Sins, just have them all set to auto use and I can fairly regularly steamroller the AI. I accept this is a different state of affairs playing against real people!

  15. Posted

    Would Alpha Centauri or Sins of the Solar Empire be too much for a Civ "chieftain"?

    It sounds to me that you would definitely enjoy Alpha Centauri, and there is no excuse not to get it given how cheap it is on gog.com.

    Sins is realtime but it's 'slow' realtime, you will rarely gain much, if anything, in that game form being a fast micromanager, especially playing AI. I would recommend trying it, although sadly I'm not sure there is a demo available, which is a shame :(

    One other Realtime game which DOES have a demo is AI Wars, which I can thoroughly recommend, it's pausable and you can also control the time pace. If you set the combat to 'slow' and slow the time right down you have enough time to consider your actions.

    Consider those recommendations on how you might find a realtime game that you enjoy :)

  16. Posted

    I don't know if this is the case on iOS, but the PC/console versions of Duels of the Planeswalker can usually turn many of the slowing down frills of the game off. For example the auto-zoom-in on new cards and combat animations are two things I know can definitely be turned off in other versions.

    Yes, you can turn the combat animations off, most of the animations I'm not finding TOO tough. The phase timers are kind of necessary, the worst that could happen in Magic is you pass priority and miss the opportunity for that last second spell or ability that will change the combat, so they are a little irritating but I'm not sure how you could change them?

    The dice animation for Planechase though? Fuck. That. Thing. Planechase is a clusterfuck of unplayability with that thing taking about 5 seconds to roll every time, especially with the amount the AIs use it.

  19. Posted

    I know it's not a strategy game but my go to relaxation game is any of the Dynasty Warriors games. There is something about churning through hordes of soldiers that is just so satisfying.

    For relaxing strategy, I'd probably go with any 'long form' strategy game (AI Wars, Civilization) but played on one of the lower difficulty settings so that I can just stomp my opponents without thinking too much.

  20. Posted

    Yeah. Sorry it's been taking so long. Sorbicol (who's in the outstanding match) has a 4 month old baby daughter, has been looking (and starting) a new job, etc. He's a (virtual) friend though, so I'm happy to wait for him. I think the game should (touchwood) be played next weekend as he's away for the long weekend.

    Then hopefully we can get through the next round of matches a little faster before the holiday season kicks in. But if not, we'll get there in the end. :)

    As reasons go, they are about as valid as they get :)

  22. Posted

    They also seemed relatively easy to use compared to the gazillion steps needed to fire a matchlock. Didn't they have certain mechanisms for pulling back the drawstring so the user's strength wasn't an issue?

    Even with the compound winch fired crossbows, loading and firing a matchlock is considerably easier and requires less strength. I suspect minimal training was key amongst the many reasons given in the previous posts.

    Fun fact: Muskets are legally classes as shotguns under UK law nowadays. If you see a re-enactment battle where people are firing muskets, they will almost certainly all be licensed to own a shotgun. Also you need an explosives license to acquire the black powder. It still astounds me that the UK police force considered me responsible enough to grant me both of these licenses for the 8 years I was a re-enactor.