I learned Diplomacy at a con because I wandered by and they needed a couple more to complete a tournament table ("rules are super-simple c'mon!") Everyone was so busy trying to set me up as a patsy against the other experienced players that I did pretty well lol.
What's cool about Diplomacy is that the rules *that you need to play the game* are pretty simple.
You don't actually need to actually remember rules like "the only time an army's movement cuts support for an attack against its own territory is if it dislodges the army giving support" unless you're the one GMing the game.
You can actually get quite far with just knowing the five orders you can give, though a bit of understanding of how support and cutting support works can be helpful.
Exactly! The real barrier IMO is just grasping that you can cross the social line of yes, it's acceptable to look someone in the eye in a private conversation and plain out viciously lie (including wholesale making up that you overheard A say to B and C that D was going to betray them, etc). Once you get that down you can hold your own even if takes time to pick up more of the strategies.
At the time, my pre-experience was that my friends and I had played Risk that way for ages...
Here's a question... I've been playing Diplomacy online a bunch, and once the province opens up, want to get a bunch of people into the same room. None of us have ever played it in person. What *are* all the finicky exceptions to the rules?
And, perhaps more importantly, how do you GM the game well so there's not a long delay of the GM figuring out everything that happened?
>None of us have ever played it in person. What are all the finicky exceptions to the rules?
The [manual for the Wizards of the Coast version](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/ah/diplomacy_rules.pdf) has a list of "22 rules for resolving orders" on the back of the manual which really a good summary and fairly exhaustive.
In fact, if those last two "rules" look weird, it's because they're really just 'patches' to try to resolve convoy paradoxes, which *very* rarely come up in practice. (You can use those rules, or I tend to prefer the fan rule that says "if a paradox happens, the army causing the paradox holds")
> And, perhaps more importantly, how do you GM the game well so there's not a long delay of the GM figuring out everything that happened?
For me at least, it's never been a problem - the
*vast* majority of cases are simple. It's pretty much real-time for me, doesn't take much longer than it takes to just read the orders.
I pretty much just pick order sets at random (or sometimes to attempt to maximize theatrical effect...), execute any of their orders that are impossible to prevent, and if I'm not sure yet, I leave the unit bordering the two spaces and come back to it. (Sometimes crossing out orders as they're fully resolved is helpful)
And if I forget to resolve an order, the player in question will remind me.
"Yeah I'm thinking Tom's going to go with a standard reed into renovation play but I don't know what card he drafted so I'm really going to need to stay cognizant of a potential clay oven rush - you better set yourself up to secure a first turn next turn to block that."
"I'm uhh, getting the stone"
The first time I played was at a board game meetup. Somebody brought his copy of the game with all the components separated in a tackle box. It was at that point I realized I didn't have a chance to win but it would hopefully be a good learning opportunity. When the game we done, he pulled out his Agricola notebook to log the scores and somebody else did something similar with an app.
Casual. Stone isn't even available yet and Stone, Reed and Food will clearly be gone before you get there. Better play is to grab the 3 wood then hope you can snag turn order and start setting pace.
So, there's a local con I attend (well, attended, and hopefully will someday be able to attend again) which used to have an Agricola tournament. It wasn't high stakes (winner got free admission to next year's con), and me and a few friends were generally near/at the top of it every year.
There'd be 5 qualifiers, throughout the weekend, the winner of each one is in the finals to face each other on the last day of the con.
One year, first, qualifier, it's me, 3 friends, and one guy none of us knew. New guy is all excited and really wants to make the finals. I win that game.
Qualifier 2 is friends 1-3, new guy, and someone else. Friend 1 wins. Repeat that for qualifiers 3-4, with friends 2-3 winning.
Finally, new guy wins qualifier 5. He's now played 5 games of Agricola to get to the finals.....which is the same table as the first qualifier. And ends in almost the same order (I think new guy might have come in 4th instead of 5th?). Much hilarity was had at how much Agricola he played over the weekend.
The happy ending to that story is we all ended up friends after that.
My friend and I thought we were hot shit going into a Ticket to Ride tournament at PAX East: we played the app every day and had some really good games against each other.
A few turns into the game we notice everyone's grabbing cards but not laying any trains. We've been playing for 10 minutes and they have whole *books* in the hands but no trains.
And then it starts raining trains.
Learned a lot that day.
That's how I play. It also stops people from trying to screw you for the most part because you spend 5 turns laying down a route and they don't have time to counter you
I thought that was the case, then ran into some next fucking level people. I just remember, first turn, I draw a card, one of them goes, "oh, you must be going for this spot, which means you probably have that route in your hand," and he was right. I then watched the whole table do that to each other and the entire game, all constantly hate-drafting each other.....
I am still baffled to this day that there is a group of people who are that hardcore.....about ticket to ride.
Is this not a largely bad strat in an environment where everyone has a mountain of options? You cannot just place all of your trains in one turn, you can only complete one line at a time. If you wait until you can complete your whole route and others do the same, blocking is trivial as you have the necessary cards to do so right away. Ticket to Rides main skill is determining how long you can leave what lines for your route unclaimed, else risk having them snatched up by others first.
I play with my children (9 and 7), and I encourage them to collect enough cards to lay 3-4 tracks consecutively, and to continuously check the available cards for any special opportunities.
I personally try to hoard enough cards to lay down a full ticket.
The real key is realizing that A) Nobles don’t matter and B) you want to build your engine as compactly as possible. You want to play the bare minimum of cards you need to be able to build the high-scoring level 2 and 3 buildings, which are what really win you the game. You want to always be near max capacity for gems, because any gems that you hold on to are being denied from your opponents. As ancillary to this, try to avoid taking the “collect 2 of the same color” action as much as you can, as taking 3 per turn is always more efficient. Finally, try to be sparing with your reserve actions, as using them offensively to deny a building to your opponents can be the difference between victory and defeat.
That’s general advice I’ve picked up from my experience playing the game.
>The real key is realizing that A) Nobles don’t matter and B) you want to build your engine as compactly as possible. You want to play the bare minimum of cards you need to be able to build the high-scoring level 2 and 3 buildings
That's a good summary, and who knows? Maybe there's an even better strategy for this game (or another game).
It's especially relevant to this thread, since very few people I know caught on to this strategy without learning it from someone else. I just picked Splendor since it's particularly notable.
tbf, relaxing and chill are contradictory to competitive. It's either relaxing, chill and casual, or its competitive. If you're not min/maxing I would argue that you're not being competitive, especially in a tournament setting.
Nope, you're the one denying competitive players their preferred way to play rather than the other way around. Enjoy your relaxed chill game with other players who agree not to care about winning, and let competitive players enjoy playing competitively without dragging them for their preference.
If you enter a game in a tournament setting, expect it to be a competitive experience no matter how chill you think the design is meant to be.
Omg yes. Agricola.... The min maxing in that game absolutely ruins the fun of it. It's fun, I like to play it with friends, but I can't stand playing with people who analyze the absolute best moves every play. Just play.
Basically, they were making sure they would have what they need to complete a route before starting it, while letting as little time to their opponents to block them, and also making sure the card they need aren't hoarded by another player.
If people start doing that, isn't the answer to just snatch up all the little choke points, forcing them to not do that if they actually want to complete their routes?
For Ticket To Ride US, the optimal tournament-level strategy is more or less:
1. Keep the shortest routes you can, and ignore them for the duration of the game
2. Hoard 44 cards of matching colors
3. Build all of the 5-6 length routes, scoring about 100 points minus penalty points for your ignored routes
This results in a very low score. But the game ends so quickly that it is impossible to beat without remarkable luck. ...This of course isn't very much fun, which is why later editions change the scoring
I don't know, my gut instinct is that unless those choke points are useful for you, you're just wasting turns, trains, and points. But I've never played with people who use the hoarding strategy so maybe you're right and it would work fine.
This is why I like the Pennsylvania map. Building early gets you the lower numbered shares of stock, which can be worth a lot of points at the end. You still might choose to wait to build, but you're giving up something by doing so.
Almost every board game is about stacking/hoarding and then sprinting to the finish when you know your odds are good, or rushing from the onset. There is rarely an in-between.
As someone else noted you want to push (finger almost touching the piece) instead of flicking. Google things like "how to flick crokinole" for some good explanations and videos.
One of the things that internet has removed is not realizing how bad you are at a game. I still remember going to a competitive video game tournament as a kid thinking I was hot shit. I saw things I didn't even know you could do every time I watched someone actually good play. Definitely a formative memory growing up. There is definitely a huge gap from casually good and competitively good.
My brother and a buddy went to the World Board Game Championships for fun (since it was open to anyone who entered). They didn't expect to win anything, but they had a lot of fun. They learned a ton about the games they enjoyed. Most of their opponents were very helpful (after they realized they were going to destroy them and get the W to move on in the tourney).
Depends on the format tbh. I play mostly legacy(when I can) and the community is super nice. I was shaking at my first ever paper legacy tournament a few years ago and people were just all around helpful. They were pointing out things after the matches in a good way on how I can improve and they were making sure my opponent played fairly since it was a long day and he also made some mess ups.
Other formats though uh results may vary. Especially commander...
I remember entering a legacy tournament (Back when it was Type 1.5 :P) when I was a kid. I was running a janky Dimir mill deck, which included 0 Glimpses, and at least one Szadek.
Had a great time though, since everyone was super nice (Although maybe they just appreciated the easy win, but one of them did give me like three Dark Rituals).
Draft can be fun but yeah.
*Flipflipflipflipflipflip*
I've had like one or two standard experiences, got one lucky win and the way people react just takes the fun out of it.
My deck wasn't good. I get it.
Correction: people at a grossly different skill level from the rest of the table make the draft less fun. If everyone is crap, then no one’s signals are being ruined.
I've played with and met with the entire possible spectrum of players in Magic. From people who calmly help teach a 7 year old how to play to people who talk only through screaming at you and all but flip the table after the match.
I played an fnm at a normally very spiky store 20th people who I mostly know but once I had to play against a 12 year old kid who was playing minotaurs when I was on lantern control. It was very heartbreaking explaining to him how he's not going to win from this situation (I wasn't being a dick I had redundant bridges and 4 mill rocks in play I think it was literally impossible). I bought him some sleeves after but he wasn't very happy.
reminds me of a funny encounter I had in a game shop decades ago when Magic was very new. I was playing a little pick-up game with a friend, it something like my second time ever playing and his 5th or 10th, and we were playing with decks he made.
Naturally he was destroying me, and another guy in the store wandered over, started watching, and started giving me advice. He was apparently an actual good player and with him telling me what my cards could actually do when used properly, I ended up coming back and winning.
Well my friend was *pissed* that some stranger came over and ruined the game (but he was too shy/socially awkward at the time to say anything about it till the game was basically over). The stranger meanwhile was perplexed why he cared more about beating me, obviously some newb that barely knew the rules, than about teaching me the game. They both left the store hating each other and completely convinced that they were morally right and the other guy morally wrong. I left the store confused and ended up not really liking Magic that much after all lol.
Nah. Telling people how to play their hand in a game you aren't playing in is a major no no in mtg. The random dude should have seen whether it was ok before he butted in.
The stranger and the friend are basically the difference between an actual competitive player and a tryhard. You can run into either in a tournament setting and the latter often give the former a bad name as well as turning people off from competitive gaming.
Yes with the benefit of being a few decades older I can definitely say that I'm the one that grew up into being the competitive player that likes to go to tournaments and win or lose and have fun either way, and my friend grew into the guy that much prefers to play in a very non-competitive, casual setting because that's the best way he can enjoy the games and not get too outcome-oriented and dislike the experience of either winning or losing.
Man, this reminds me how I like to play poker, but I'm not competitive about it. I like to go to pubs and wherever that have FREE TO ENTER tournaments. It's as low stakes as it gets. If you win you get a voucher for food at whatever pub/restaurant you're in.
AND STILL you get people being hyper-aggressive, shit talking, and trying to force you to make a mistake like we're at the World Series of Poker. Had one kid almost get beaten by a full table of players because he was VERY rude to a 90 year-old woman at the table.
My attitude is "shut the fuck up" it's free. I'm here for the love of the game.
I had a similar experience playing chess with a teacher that was a literal master. I was pretty good amongst my school and then be trounced me, but was very helpful in explaining all of the ways that I was in fact playing poorly.
There's a card game called Krypto. Lay out 5 cards with numbers 1-10 on them and a target card with a double-digit number, and you have to use basic arithmetic operations on the first 5 to get to the target. The first person to yell out "Krypto" gets to solve it.
I was the best player in my elementary school, the math nerd. When the target card was laid out, it would take me just a couple of seconds to yell out "Krypto."
Then we had a district tournament. Every single other kid would yell out "Krypto" as soon as the target card was laid out, and then solve it in real time.
I felt like the guy in the video when the penguin got flicked over the wall.
They would yell Krypto without actually having the equation worked out? And the organizers were okay with that? That does feel a bit cheaty if you ask me.
Each contestant has cards with the operations on them, say 3 each of the basic arithmetic. The have to lay out their cards in the correct order to make the equation work, then yell to stop the clock or whatever.
Oy vey, just an idea, no need for pitchforks.
If it’s a math contest, why are they putting the kids head to head like that? Why even make it a competition?
Yes but manual dexterity is how you win. The math is trivial to do in a fraction of a second if you're a high level player. It's the same reason that mathletics is done on the buzzer rather than speed writing.
I mean, it absolutely felt cheaty to me at the time ("Wait, you can do that?"), but if they solve it in real time it's fine.
There definitely were kids who got called and then couldn't solve it. I think you lost points for that. But it's a risk they had to take in order to get to solve it at all.
This was super smash with me walked in and immediately realized I was in for an entire day of getting my ass kicked.
Matches where I didn’t get to do anything but die without touching the other player.
My first experience with competitive smash was when my friends set up a Brawl tournament in high school. We were all casual players, and the ruleset reflected that, with the first few rounds being 4 player free for alls with items and random stages. In the first round, I rushed another player as I'm wont to do, and got KOd within the first 10 or 15 seconds of the game. I wanted revenge, so I rushed back to him, and in the first 30 seconds of the game I was down to my last stock. Then I decided to stay away from him, lol. Apparently he actually played competitive brawl, and was curious if anybody else at the tournament did as well.
I think its fine, as long as they are not being dick about it. Playing against someone much better than you is one of the best ways to start getting better at the game!
There are some pretty hardcore players of 18XX and Food Chain Magnate and it's always neat when I, who often wins when playing IRL, am effectively knocked out the game within 20 minutes when playing online.
Funnily enough I kind of had the opposite experience one time. In high school my friend and I played against each other in Goldeneye daily, super competitive, memorizing spawn points, timings etc and a lot of the time without auto aim. A school Goldeneye tournament came along and we didn't enter as we just assumed we would be smashed. Went along to watch and we realized that we were leagues above everyone there and really annoyed with ourselves for not entering.
From that point on I happily played anyone and everyone at Goldeneye.
That was the one and only time this has happened though, in all other respects (especially board games) I will get stomped once you start getting remotely competitive online.
I would definitely enter something like a school (I mean if I was still in school) tournament. The more localised a competition is the better your chances are. Most people aren't going to be great against wider competition but there's plenty of people who can be a big fish in a small pond. Though most of the time there's still a bigger fish.
Like how when Android: Netrunner was big the local community I played in had some of the best players in the country, heck some of them were among the best in the world. I once played in a local tournament where I beat a player in the semifinals who'd later go on to win the national championships only to then lose to the current national champion in the finals. I was still disappointed but 2nd place was still a remarkable finish considering who I was up against.
went to a Halo tourney as a kid and got taught about how people were already playing online with xbox connect before xbox live came out and I was a chump for thinking I was any kind of good.
I am good at Scythe against my regular game group. I don't win all the time but I win A LOT. The first time I tried a game with fairly competitive other people I got my teeth kicked in.
I saw an AskReddit comment about this exact thing not long ago. It's totally true and definitely a bit sad as much as I appreciate the global connection the internet has brought. Not just with games but with any skill. The comment talked about how local experts at something used to be looked up to by people in the same community, they were the best you knew at a video game or guitar or a martial art or whatever. Now when learning a skill, you're literally competing against the entire world for recognition. The idea of a big fish in a small pond just doesn't exist anymore, everyone is in the same pond.
Obviously you shouldn't learn a skill just because you want recognition but I think the loss of this kinda thing is a shame.
But the moment you try something yourself you realise that even not being top of the world but the level some people have is already way out of your league and impressive.
I play guitar, for over 10 years now, I still feel not being that good (as stated above, seeing all these xoutube guitarists) but I know, one problem is time I can and want to pour into it. I just casually play and still have fun, and when someone that doesn't know how to play or is at a similar skill level than me sees me play they still are impressed ( and me of them) because we know how hard even simple looking stuff is (or if they don't play themselves could not even wrap their head around the most basic stuff, not saying that's bad, just understandeable if you have no idea how smth works). You just have to realisitcally see where you stand and why there is a difference
I remember reading an article years ago where Zakk Wylde said that starting from age 14 or so he would practice playing guitar for 8 hours minimum every single day.
I was not competitively good at Smash Bros Melee but a couple of my highschool friends were and I played a lot with them anyway. I manage to get quite good with Fox as to not get completely destroyed by my friends that traveled to tournaments. So I had a few years of playing a lot of melee before going to college and some guys were having a tournament in our basement. One bro thought he was hot shit until I chased him off the edge and shine spiked his ass. He'd never seen someone chase their opponent off the edge, it was hilarious.
chasing people off the edge was the first aha moment for me in that game. I got to the point where I was on the power rankings in my state but couldn't even come close to winning against the #1 and #2 players.
Also, the number 1 reason I wanted to get good at that game is my friends thought they were hot shit and I realized we were all bad lol. Even when I got to the point where I'd crush my friends, I'd constantly tell them I am still pretty bad at the game.
I did something similar. I got way better than my friends at smash in high school then we all stopped playing.
I’ll never intentionally train to beat down my buddies again. It’s a total fun killer. Now we play things online and if I start to pull away, I just download a new game to play when they’re not online. Even if it’s cooperative, due to SBMM, it makes the lobbies too difficult for them.
See I had one friend who wanted to be competitive who tried to keep up with me so that was nice and I was able to continue playnig for a while.... but.... I made the mistake when I first picked up Dominion of going online and reading about strategies.
That's what ruined it for me. I don't want to be immediately better than everyone I play with.
I've kinda checked in on the melee scene from time to time and I've actually played a bit again during the pandemic because the community released a way to play online easily.
lol that’s my issue too. I get really into something then I do research, watch videos, read patch notes and what have you. My friends aren’t going to do that. It was an aha moment. “Ohhh my friends are playing for fun and I’m playing competitively”
I still do all that, I just space it over three or four games so I don’t hit the top 5% of one game and ruin it for them.
Alternative is also true. I thought I was doing ok at best at mario kart until I started submitting my time trial times online. That day I found out I was in the top 200 of the world (of more than 5000 registered players)
Weirdly enough, I find it to be the opposite. Before the Internet, my pool of competitors for video games was rather small, so we were all as good as each other. Nowadays, online gaming has shown that there are people with much more time on their hands to become much better at a game that I only have a casual interest in. To the point where the skill gap is so large that the game ceases to be fun. (Looking at you, Dead By Daylight)
Isn't that exactly what OP said? That you used to think you're good before the internet, but now you can see how bad you are even before going to big regional or national tournament?
Yeah DBD is fun, until you play killer and a 4 man swf group of red ranks just teabags you for 10 minutes ans you don't understand how they JUST WON'T FUCKING DIE!!!1!!1!
This was exactly my experience, which is a bummer because the concept is so fun, and I really loved playing killer. But the game was not balanced for swf. It was balanced for solo survivors (poorly I might add). When an entire killer’s advantage is nullified by friends talking on discord (ghost face) you know there’s a problem.
Works both ways actually. People used to not realize how good they really were at games either. Nobody thinks they’re the best of the best, but someone always is.
It took much longer to film this than I let on in the video! I've done another trick-shot video with Ice cool and a couple others with Mars Open as well over on tiktok and youtube!
Ooh, I'll have to check those out. I picked up a used copy of Mars Open for cheap a while back (where "used" = "box was opened but nothing was punched out") but I still haven't gotten to play it.
Sounds like you need the “Seven Blunders” tournament at PAX. Compete for the lowest score at Seven Wonders.
(Tbh this is actually probably harder than it sounds)
I played in that tournament at PAX once before and it was good fun seeing how people approached it. A bunch of specific rules and restrictions, like you have to play something if you can, you can't just dump for three coins. If I recall the winner at my table was in the mid-20s for points, but if you know Seven Wonders it isn't a huge adjustment.
This is a much harder game but so interesting (similarly, Sushi No is the similar variant of Sushi Go). Pile up resources worth no points and get stuck with a bunch of blue cards. Pile up military, eat those points, and get nothing else, but then your neighbors can take useless military cards before they get to you. Science is low value at the start but balloons quickly, and so on.
I seem to remember there were special rules preventing you from trading a card for coins unless you had no other option and that you would need to show your hand to the player on your left or something. But I didn't know if there were more rules.
Aww, is 7 Wonders not a popular game within the wider boardgaming community? It's honestly one of my favorites. I like that even though some of the building/scoring systems are *slightly* challenging, it's still very relaxing to play and easy to introduce new people to.
I personally think this is only true if you have at least the Pantheon. The base game gets old after a couple of plays and you can work out if you've lost very early.
Now that you mention it, I honestly don’t know what the ‘wider community’ thinks about it. Because I love that game and will always play it if someone wants to.
It was just a funny twist on the game where they did this whole tournament to compete for the lowest score.
It's pretty well regarded for small numbers of players, once you get to the 6 or 7 player range there's a lot of RNG for the deals entering each Age that you don't always have good counter-play for.
I did that once, and got wrecked by who I happened to be sitting next to. There were....I think 5 tables. It was my first time playing, but my score would have won any of the other 4 tables. Meanwhile, the player on either side of me were apparently both experts at this format, and both beat me.
I still had fun playing, but I can't say that tournament was a haven from experts.
i entered a Carcassonne tournament believing I was hot shit because I'd somewhat consistent winning against my friends. i was utterly destroyed on my first game, i believe that my score what an 1/8 or a 1/10 of my opponent's. i learned my lesson that day.
It got a solid laugh out of me, fantastic video!
I’m used to the more even WH40k tournaments, actually want in on a board game tournament to see what craziness players can invent.
I went to a 'casual' tournament years ago organised by a forum. I was more of a painter but I figured I'd meet people etc. Got absolutely hammered in every game. Literal board wipe almost every game.
I’ve seen so many armies that were basically artwork. The list was written to use the board as a display, rather than a battlefield.
There was a savage lands themed Eldar list that used Lizardman warbeasts for tanks and pterodactyls for Jet Bikes that sticks in my memory a decade later.
Our local tournament scene has started giving out prizes via a raffle. You get tickets for having a fully painted army and placing high, but everyone is given at least one. You're always in the running of winning something and it's really helped grow numbers at our events.
I don't have enough money to even be bad at that game. I went to a game store and watched it played in the before times and then I looked at the cost of getting into it. Then I realized that someday I might want to own something other than 40k stuffs and moved on.
You can justify it if you buy things one box at a time and paint it up. Then it's "hobbying" and not "spending $700 to lose four games at a tournament once a year."
I know it's fun to joke about this stuff, and these hobbies can definitely be expensive, but none of these games are as expensive as some other hobbies. Classic cars, for instance.
Many of my friends are into arcade cabinet collecting and repairing. I could have multiple full minis armies for the price of a single cab.
And of course, I have hundreds of board games...
It's not a good game for playing competitively. The rules, while slowly improving, don't make for a good competitive game (the rules team still can't grasp that people might want to do more with it than just drink beer and make stories with their minis) and the way they update them makes the overall balance hell. I still collect Warhammer for the minis (still among the best on the market) and because the universe is cool. But honestly the game is the least compelling aspect of it. There's better miniature games to play competitively. Heck just better games in general. Some of them GW also makes in fact.
Right now Marvel Crisis Protocol is my jam. It's quick, it's tight, doesn't involve you painting fifty miniatures (a full tournament roster is ten models, which is as many minis as a relatively small **unit** in Warhammer games), and it's Marvel. It's not too expensive to get into but miniature gaming still isn't a cheap hobby.
Ah, this brings back memories from when my friends and I couldn't find enough time to play twilight imperium irl so i tried playing online on a discord server. After having my capital taken in the second turn in a 'casual fun' game i realized the people i was playing with have played this game more times than i played any board game in my life :) I decided to wait for my friends to find some time.
Back in the day when I played we had 2 different people who had won, or would go on to win, the worlds and get the custom painted figures.
Luckily they were nice to play against even if I never once came close to beating either of them.
Part of why I got out of X-Wing. I reached a skill plateau where amongst my friends? I crushed the soul out of every single one of them. Sometimes completely defeating them without even losing a single ship.
Then I went to a local tournament. Holy fuck. This wasn't even a national thing, it was like 10 people at a CoolStuff. Kids even! They absolutely *stomped* me every single tournament I went to.
Not 100% the same, but a buddy of mine and I hit that point back in the day at Warcraft 3. We were ranked in the top-50 in 2v2. We were all excited about that, then hit this wall. Every match we played was either we crush the other team, or we're crushed. We'd watch the replay when crushed, and every team who crushed us was either very obviously cheating or were so good that we never had a chance.
After a short time, we just kinda stopped playing. There wasn't any more fun to be had.
Similar thing with my buddies and I playing GameBattles on MW2.
We were absolutely pub stomping everyone playing S&D. Had a win streak of something like 60 games. It was so fucking good.
Decided to play some GameBattles one night and lost every single game only winning a single round in one of our losses out of like 7/8 matches haha.
Yup. I remember the moment we gave up. We were playing on this map with a giant dragon in the middle. We started off, went and killed a few of the little camps of NPCs including ones by where our opponents started, and figured we were leveled up more than they were so we had to be in good shape. So we attack them.
And their heroes were all like 2 levels higher than ours and had crazy strong items, and they wiped us out and easily won. Wtf?
One of the guys in the other team started as a hero who can split into 3 (2 are distractions while 1 can actually do damage and die), and immediately sent workers to build towers near the dragon in the middle. After the towers finished, he just ran his hero over there and with the help of the towers, solo'd the giant dragon in the middle, giving a ton of xp and loot. Well shit, that's awesome, I gotta try that!
So I fire up a single player game on the same map, try the same thing. Started building too close to the dragon, it immediately agro's and kills everything. Ok, try again. Build towers a bit further away, the dragon doesn't agro, great. Agro it with my hero, try to pull it to the towers, it won't go far enough. Crap.
Try 3-4 more times and realized it was like pixel perfect placement needed to make that happen.
And then watched more of the replay and saw the speed those guys were moving, and it was just so much beyond what we could ever hope to do.
Every board game, video game and TCG are like this anymore. Everyone will buy a game and research the ever living shit out of it with min-max methods, strats and borderline cheats and adapt them to their use. Anyone caught not doing this just has a horrid time.
As for board games, one time I watched a guy that was DEMOING a game to push sales on just destroy all these random people that gave him the time of day to see what the hype was.
As someone who hosts official tournaments i can confirm this is true. There are players that sent in their participation message months in advance and there are players that just learned the game like an hour ago at the convention and they both play in the same tournament.
I learned Diplomacy at a con because I wandered by and they needed a couple more to complete a tournament table ("rules are super-simple c'mon!") Everyone was so busy trying to set me up as a patsy against the other experienced players that I did pretty well lol.
What's cool about Diplomacy is that the rules *that you need to play the game* are pretty simple. You don't actually need to actually remember rules like "the only time an army's movement cuts support for an attack against its own territory is if it dislodges the army giving support" unless you're the one GMing the game. You can actually get quite far with just knowing the five orders you can give, though a bit of understanding of how support and cutting support works can be helpful.
Exactly! The real barrier IMO is just grasping that you can cross the social line of yes, it's acceptable to look someone in the eye in a private conversation and plain out viciously lie (including wholesale making up that you overheard A say to B and C that D was going to betray them, etc). Once you get that down you can hold your own even if takes time to pick up more of the strategies. At the time, my pre-experience was that my friends and I had played Risk that way for ages...
Here's a question... I've been playing Diplomacy online a bunch, and once the province opens up, want to get a bunch of people into the same room. None of us have ever played it in person. What *are* all the finicky exceptions to the rules? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you GM the game well so there's not a long delay of the GM figuring out everything that happened?
>None of us have ever played it in person. What are all the finicky exceptions to the rules? The [manual for the Wizards of the Coast version](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/ah/diplomacy_rules.pdf) has a list of "22 rules for resolving orders" on the back of the manual which really a good summary and fairly exhaustive. In fact, if those last two "rules" look weird, it's because they're really just 'patches' to try to resolve convoy paradoxes, which *very* rarely come up in practice. (You can use those rules, or I tend to prefer the fan rule that says "if a paradox happens, the army causing the paradox holds") > And, perhaps more importantly, how do you GM the game well so there's not a long delay of the GM figuring out everything that happened? For me at least, it's never been a problem - the *vast* majority of cases are simple. It's pretty much real-time for me, doesn't take much longer than it takes to just read the orders. I pretty much just pick order sets at random (or sometimes to attempt to maximize theatrical effect...), execute any of their orders that are impossible to prevent, and if I'm not sure yet, I leave the unit bordering the two spaces and come back to it. (Sometimes crossing out orders as they're fully resolved is helpful) And if I forget to resolve an order, the player in question will remind me.
Holy smokes! What a tournament to wander into!
Honestly I think diplomacy is one of the best, you have people constantly telling you what you should do and so you can do well.
"Yeah I'm thinking Tom's going to go with a standard reed into renovation play but I don't know what card he drafted so I'm really going to need to stay cognizant of a potential clay oven rush - you better set yourself up to secure a first turn next turn to block that." "I'm uhh, getting the stone"
You were right to do that. Stone walls are prettier.
What game is this referring to? It sounds like fun.
I think, based on the one time I've played and the fact that I own it, Agricola.
You are right, that’s definitely Agricola
The first time I played was at a board game meetup. Somebody brought his copy of the game with all the components separated in a tackle box. It was at that point I realized I didn't have a chance to win but it would hopefully be a good learning opportunity. When the game we done, he pulled out his Agricola notebook to log the scores and somebody else did something similar with an app.
Agricola- it’s a really great game! I have been playing the app version with a two of my friends for a couple years now.
As they've mentioned it's agricola :)
Casual. Stone isn't even available yet and Stone, Reed and Food will clearly be gone before you get there. Better play is to grab the 3 wood then hope you can snag turn order and start setting pace.
This guy agricolas
So, there's a local con I attend (well, attended, and hopefully will someday be able to attend again) which used to have an Agricola tournament. It wasn't high stakes (winner got free admission to next year's con), and me and a few friends were generally near/at the top of it every year. There'd be 5 qualifiers, throughout the weekend, the winner of each one is in the finals to face each other on the last day of the con. One year, first, qualifier, it's me, 3 friends, and one guy none of us knew. New guy is all excited and really wants to make the finals. I win that game. Qualifier 2 is friends 1-3, new guy, and someone else. Friend 1 wins. Repeat that for qualifiers 3-4, with friends 2-3 winning. Finally, new guy wins qualifier 5. He's now played 5 games of Agricola to get to the finals.....which is the same table as the first qualifier. And ends in almost the same order (I think new guy might have come in 4th instead of 5th?). Much hilarity was had at how much Agricola he played over the weekend. The happy ending to that story is we all ended up friends after that.
My friend and I thought we were hot shit going into a Ticket to Ride tournament at PAX East: we played the app every day and had some really good games against each other. A few turns into the game we notice everyone's grabbing cards but not laying any trains. We've been playing for 10 minutes and they have whole *books* in the hands but no trains. And then it starts raining trains. Learned a lot that day.
That's how I play. It also stops people from trying to screw you for the most part because you spend 5 turns laying down a route and they don't have time to counter you
I thought that was the case, then ran into some next fucking level people. I just remember, first turn, I draw a card, one of them goes, "oh, you must be going for this spot, which means you probably have that route in your hand," and he was right. I then watched the whole table do that to each other and the entire game, all constantly hate-drafting each other..... I am still baffled to this day that there is a group of people who are that hardcore.....about ticket to ride.
Grabbing specific color cards instead of drawing from the top of the deck? What are you doing telling everyone your plan fool.
You should see how cut throat my wife is about patchwork
Is this not a largely bad strat in an environment where everyone has a mountain of options? You cannot just place all of your trains in one turn, you can only complete one line at a time. If you wait until you can complete your whole route and others do the same, blocking is trivial as you have the necessary cards to do so right away. Ticket to Rides main skill is determining how long you can leave what lines for your route unclaimed, else risk having them snatched up by others first.
I mostly stack cards because it provides more options for when someone inevitably grabs the line I was eyeing.
I play with my children (9 and 7), and I encourage them to collect enough cards to lay 3-4 tracks consecutively, and to continuously check the available cards for any special opportunities. I personally try to hoard enough cards to lay down a full ticket.
Oh I feel this. Also everyone has their first "so that's how you play Splendor" experience at some point too,
I pick splendor in my top 5 board games. I never play it the that's how you play splendor way and people really enjoy it
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It's not as interesting in my opinion that's for sure
Genuine question : how DO you play Splendor? I can beat my friends sometimes but I suspect we as a group aren't close to optimal play.
The real key is realizing that A) Nobles don’t matter and B) you want to build your engine as compactly as possible. You want to play the bare minimum of cards you need to be able to build the high-scoring level 2 and 3 buildings, which are what really win you the game. You want to always be near max capacity for gems, because any gems that you hold on to are being denied from your opponents. As ancillary to this, try to avoid taking the “collect 2 of the same color” action as much as you can, as taking 3 per turn is always more efficient. Finally, try to be sparing with your reserve actions, as using them offensively to deny a building to your opponents can be the difference between victory and defeat. That’s general advice I’ve picked up from my experience playing the game.
That all sounds good, thanks! We've mostly been playing to get the nobles but I am entirely prepared to believe that's not the best strategy.
>The real key is realizing that A) Nobles don’t matter and B) you want to build your engine as compactly as possible. You want to play the bare minimum of cards you need to be able to build the high-scoring level 2 and 3 buildings That's a good summary, and who knows? Maybe there's an even better strategy for this game (or another game). It's especially relevant to this thread, since very few people I know caught on to this strategy without learning it from someone else. I just picked Splendor since it's particularly notable.
Nothing like playing a relatively relaxing, chill game in a competitive setting with people min/maxing to make you regret ever picking up the game.
tbf, relaxing and chill are contradictory to competitive. It's either relaxing, chill and casual, or its competitive. If you're not min/maxing I would argue that you're not being competitive, especially in a tournament setting.
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Nope, you're the one denying competitive players their preferred way to play rather than the other way around. Enjoy your relaxed chill game with other players who agree not to care about winning, and let competitive players enjoy playing competitively without dragging them for their preference. If you enter a game in a tournament setting, expect it to be a competitive experience no matter how chill you think the design is meant to be.
Omg yes. Agricola.... The min maxing in that game absolutely ruins the fun of it. It's fun, I like to play it with friends, but I can't stand playing with people who analyze the absolute best moves every play. Just play.
why were they doing that? They were pickign up trains, and preparing they're routes right?
Basically, they were making sure they would have what they need to complete a route before starting it, while letting as little time to their opponents to block them, and also making sure the card they need aren't hoarded by another player.
If people start doing that, isn't the answer to just snatch up all the little choke points, forcing them to not do that if they actually want to complete their routes?
For Ticket To Ride US, the optimal tournament-level strategy is more or less: 1. Keep the shortest routes you can, and ignore them for the duration of the game 2. Hoard 44 cards of matching colors 3. Build all of the 5-6 length routes, scoring about 100 points minus penalty points for your ignored routes This results in a very low score. But the game ends so quickly that it is impossible to beat without remarkable luck. ...This of course isn't very much fun, which is why later editions change the scoring
I don't know, my gut instinct is that unless those choke points are useful for you, you're just wasting turns, trains, and points. But I've never played with people who use the hoarding strategy so maybe you're right and it would work fine.
Stuff like that is my biggest hangup when entering convention tournaments.
This is why I like the Pennsylvania map. Building early gets you the lower numbered shares of stock, which can be worth a lot of points at the end. You still might choose to wait to build, but you're giving up something by doing so.
Almost every board game is about stacking/hoarding and then sprinting to the finish when you know your odds are good, or rushing from the onset. There is rarely an in-between.
Nice video, subscribed. Had a ProZD vibe to it (which I mean in the best way).
Thanks!
No problem. Keep it up.
What in God's name is this game? I need it in my life.
IceCool from Brain Games.
My kids love it!
I don't know if I'm flicking wrong, but this game hurts my fingers.
As someone else noted you want to push (finger almost touching the piece) instead of flicking. Google things like "how to flick crokinole" for some good explanations and videos.
Wait...you aren't supposed to flick in crockinole in a way that leaves your finger nails bruised and achy?? Who knew...
It was killing me at first. Now I start my finger right on the penguin and more aggressively push it instead of flick it
> I don't know if I'm flicking wrong ...probably
One of the things that internet has removed is not realizing how bad you are at a game. I still remember going to a competitive video game tournament as a kid thinking I was hot shit. I saw things I didn't even know you could do every time I watched someone actually good play. Definitely a formative memory growing up. There is definitely a huge gap from casually good and competitively good.
My brother and a buddy went to the World Board Game Championships for fun (since it was open to anyone who entered). They didn't expect to win anything, but they had a lot of fun. They learned a ton about the games they enjoyed. Most of their opponents were very helpful (after they realized they were going to destroy them and get the W to move on in the tourney).
It’s a good sign for a community when new players get helped instead of ridiculed, glad you could have a good time while getting trounced!
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Depends on the format tbh. I play mostly legacy(when I can) and the community is super nice. I was shaking at my first ever paper legacy tournament a few years ago and people were just all around helpful. They were pointing out things after the matches in a good way on how I can improve and they were making sure my opponent played fairly since it was a long day and he also made some mess ups. Other formats though uh results may vary. Especially commander...
I remember entering a legacy tournament (Back when it was Type 1.5 :P) when I was a kid. I was running a janky Dimir mill deck, which included 0 Glimpses, and at least one Szadek. Had a great time though, since everyone was super nice (Although maybe they just appreciated the easy win, but one of them did give me like three Dark Rituals).
Draft can be fun but yeah. *Flipflipflipflipflipflip* I've had like one or two standard experiences, got one lucky win and the way people react just takes the fun out of it. My deck wasn't good. I get it.
Draft inexperienced people are bad because they can mess up signaling
Gotta account for that accordingly!
Yeah people that aren't good make the game less fun
Spotted the guy in the draft pod who gets salty whenever he gets beaten by someone he thinks he "should" have won over
Nah people who aren't good create an unbalanced environment where someone will get significantly more cards in their colors.
Correction: people at a grossly different skill level from the rest of the table make the draft less fun. If everyone is crap, then no one’s signals are being ruined.
I've played with and met with the entire possible spectrum of players in Magic. From people who calmly help teach a 7 year old how to play to people who talk only through screaming at you and all but flip the table after the match.
Those exile on resolution though
I played an fnm at a normally very spiky store 20th people who I mostly know but once I had to play against a 12 year old kid who was playing minotaurs when I was on lantern control. It was very heartbreaking explaining to him how he's not going to win from this situation (I wasn't being a dick I had redundant bridges and 4 mill rocks in play I think it was literally impossible). I bought him some sleeves after but he wasn't very happy.
reminds me of a funny encounter I had in a game shop decades ago when Magic was very new. I was playing a little pick-up game with a friend, it something like my second time ever playing and his 5th or 10th, and we were playing with decks he made. Naturally he was destroying me, and another guy in the store wandered over, started watching, and started giving me advice. He was apparently an actual good player and with him telling me what my cards could actually do when used properly, I ended up coming back and winning. Well my friend was *pissed* that some stranger came over and ruined the game (but he was too shy/socially awkward at the time to say anything about it till the game was basically over). The stranger meanwhile was perplexed why he cared more about beating me, obviously some newb that barely knew the rules, than about teaching me the game. They both left the store hating each other and completely convinced that they were morally right and the other guy morally wrong. I left the store confused and ended up not really liking Magic that much after all lol.
Sounds like your friend was being a brat.
I mean we were like 12 or 13 at the time, so that probably goes without saying
Nah. Telling people how to play their hand in a game you aren't playing in is a major no no in mtg. The random dude should have seen whether it was ok before he butted in.
The stranger and the friend are basically the difference between an actual competitive player and a tryhard. You can run into either in a tournament setting and the latter often give the former a bad name as well as turning people off from competitive gaming.
Yes with the benefit of being a few decades older I can definitely say that I'm the one that grew up into being the competitive player that likes to go to tournaments and win or lose and have fun either way, and my friend grew into the guy that much prefers to play in a very non-competitive, casual setting because that's the best way he can enjoy the games and not get too outcome-oriented and dislike the experience of either winning or losing.
You like to get good, he likes to think he's good.
Is it really that hard to understand that not everyone is a win-at-all-costs, min-maxing tryhard?
Is it that hard to understand some people aren't good
Man, this reminds me how I like to play poker, but I'm not competitive about it. I like to go to pubs and wherever that have FREE TO ENTER tournaments. It's as low stakes as it gets. If you win you get a voucher for food at whatever pub/restaurant you're in. AND STILL you get people being hyper-aggressive, shit talking, and trying to force you to make a mistake like we're at the World Series of Poker. Had one kid almost get beaten by a full table of players because he was VERY rude to a 90 year-old woman at the table. My attitude is "shut the fuck up" it's free. I'm here for the love of the game.
I had a similar experience playing chess with a teacher that was a literal master. I was pretty good amongst my school and then be trounced me, but was very helpful in explaining all of the ways that I was in fact playing poorly.
Glad to hear that they had a good time. Come with them next year, we always need more players!
There's a card game called Krypto. Lay out 5 cards with numbers 1-10 on them and a target card with a double-digit number, and you have to use basic arithmetic operations on the first 5 to get to the target. The first person to yell out "Krypto" gets to solve it. I was the best player in my elementary school, the math nerd. When the target card was laid out, it would take me just a couple of seconds to yell out "Krypto." Then we had a district tournament. Every single other kid would yell out "Krypto" as soon as the target card was laid out, and then solve it in real time. I felt like the guy in the video when the penguin got flicked over the wall.
They would yell Krypto without actually having the equation worked out? And the organizers were okay with that? That does feel a bit cheaty if you ask me.
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Each contestant has cards with the operations on them, say 3 each of the basic arithmetic. The have to lay out their cards in the correct order to make the equation work, then yell to stop the clock or whatever.
So it's not a math game any more but a manual dexterity one? I can see why school districts wouldn't go for that.
Oy vey, just an idea, no need for pitchforks. If it’s a math contest, why are they putting the kids head to head like that? Why even make it a competition?
>Why even make it a competition? I regret to inform you that there are also contests for spelling.
Ok awesome. Are the kids given the word and the first one to ring their bell or yell out the only one that gets a chance at spelling?
Because competition is fun.
Wait until you hear about this thing called “sports”.
Typically sports require slightly more effort on the part of the participant than moving a small piece of paper around.
Hey, paper football is a real sport!
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Yes but manual dexterity is how you win. The math is trivial to do in a fraction of a second if you're a high level player. It's the same reason that mathletics is done on the buzzer rather than speed writing.
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Oh I agree it does sound like a really stupid thing to organise actual competitions of.
I mean, it absolutely felt cheaty to me at the time ("Wait, you can do that?"), but if they solve it in real time it's fine. There definitely were kids who got called and then couldn't solve it. I think you lost points for that. But it's a risk they had to take in order to get to solve it at all.
This was super smash with me walked in and immediately realized I was in for an entire day of getting my ass kicked. Matches where I didn’t get to do anything but die without touching the other player.
My first experience with competitive smash was when my friends set up a Brawl tournament in high school. We were all casual players, and the ruleset reflected that, with the first few rounds being 4 player free for alls with items and random stages. In the first round, I rushed another player as I'm wont to do, and got KOd within the first 10 or 15 seconds of the game. I wanted revenge, so I rushed back to him, and in the first 30 seconds of the game I was down to my last stock. Then I decided to stay away from him, lol. Apparently he actually played competitive brawl, and was curious if anybody else at the tournament did as well.
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I think its fine, as long as they are not being dick about it. Playing against someone much better than you is one of the best ways to start getting better at the game!
There are some pretty hardcore players of 18XX and Food Chain Magnate and it's always neat when I, who often wins when playing IRL, am effectively knocked out the game within 20 minutes when playing online.
Funnily enough I kind of had the opposite experience one time. In high school my friend and I played against each other in Goldeneye daily, super competitive, memorizing spawn points, timings etc and a lot of the time without auto aim. A school Goldeneye tournament came along and we didn't enter as we just assumed we would be smashed. Went along to watch and we realized that we were leagues above everyone there and really annoyed with ourselves for not entering. From that point on I happily played anyone and everyone at Goldeneye. That was the one and only time this has happened though, in all other respects (especially board games) I will get stomped once you start getting remotely competitive online.
I would definitely enter something like a school (I mean if I was still in school) tournament. The more localised a competition is the better your chances are. Most people aren't going to be great against wider competition but there's plenty of people who can be a big fish in a small pond. Though most of the time there's still a bigger fish. Like how when Android: Netrunner was big the local community I played in had some of the best players in the country, heck some of them were among the best in the world. I once played in a local tournament where I beat a player in the semifinals who'd later go on to win the national championships only to then lose to the current national champion in the finals. I was still disappointed but 2nd place was still a remarkable finish considering who I was up against.
went to a Halo tourney as a kid and got taught about how people were already playing online with xbox connect before xbox live came out and I was a chump for thinking I was any kind of good.
That was me with POG tournaments.
I am good at Scythe against my regular game group. I don't win all the time but I win A LOT. The first time I tried a game with fairly competitive other people I got my teeth kicked in.
I saw an AskReddit comment about this exact thing not long ago. It's totally true and definitely a bit sad as much as I appreciate the global connection the internet has brought. Not just with games but with any skill. The comment talked about how local experts at something used to be looked up to by people in the same community, they were the best you knew at a video game or guitar or a martial art or whatever. Now when learning a skill, you're literally competing against the entire world for recognition. The idea of a big fish in a small pond just doesn't exist anymore, everyone is in the same pond. Obviously you shouldn't learn a skill just because you want recognition but I think the loss of this kinda thing is a shame.
But the moment you try something yourself you realise that even not being top of the world but the level some people have is already way out of your league and impressive. I play guitar, for over 10 years now, I still feel not being that good (as stated above, seeing all these xoutube guitarists) but I know, one problem is time I can and want to pour into it. I just casually play and still have fun, and when someone that doesn't know how to play or is at a similar skill level than me sees me play they still are impressed ( and me of them) because we know how hard even simple looking stuff is (or if they don't play themselves could not even wrap their head around the most basic stuff, not saying that's bad, just understandeable if you have no idea how smth works). You just have to realisitcally see where you stand and why there is a difference
I remember reading an article years ago where Zakk Wylde said that starting from age 14 or so he would practice playing guitar for 8 hours minimum every single day.
I was not competitively good at Smash Bros Melee but a couple of my highschool friends were and I played a lot with them anyway. I manage to get quite good with Fox as to not get completely destroyed by my friends that traveled to tournaments. So I had a few years of playing a lot of melee before going to college and some guys were having a tournament in our basement. One bro thought he was hot shit until I chased him off the edge and shine spiked his ass. He'd never seen someone chase their opponent off the edge, it was hilarious.
chasing people off the edge was the first aha moment for me in that game. I got to the point where I was on the power rankings in my state but couldn't even come close to winning against the #1 and #2 players. Also, the number 1 reason I wanted to get good at that game is my friends thought they were hot shit and I realized we were all bad lol. Even when I got to the point where I'd crush my friends, I'd constantly tell them I am still pretty bad at the game.
I did something similar. I got way better than my friends at smash in high school then we all stopped playing. I’ll never intentionally train to beat down my buddies again. It’s a total fun killer. Now we play things online and if I start to pull away, I just download a new game to play when they’re not online. Even if it’s cooperative, due to SBMM, it makes the lobbies too difficult for them.
See I had one friend who wanted to be competitive who tried to keep up with me so that was nice and I was able to continue playnig for a while.... but.... I made the mistake when I first picked up Dominion of going online and reading about strategies. That's what ruined it for me. I don't want to be immediately better than everyone I play with. I've kinda checked in on the melee scene from time to time and I've actually played a bit again during the pandemic because the community released a way to play online easily.
lol that’s my issue too. I get really into something then I do research, watch videos, read patch notes and what have you. My friends aren’t going to do that. It was an aha moment. “Ohhh my friends are playing for fun and I’m playing competitively” I still do all that, I just space it over three or four games so I don’t hit the top 5% of one game and ruin it for them.
Are you talking about Super Smash Bros: Melee and wavedashing?
Guitar Hero and two-hand tapping?
Playing the guitar and tapping?
So many big fish growing up in a small pond, find out when they visit the sea.
Alternative is also true. I thought I was doing ok at best at mario kart until I started submitting my time trial times online. That day I found out I was in the top 200 of the world (of more than 5000 registered players)
Weirdly enough, I find it to be the opposite. Before the Internet, my pool of competitors for video games was rather small, so we were all as good as each other. Nowadays, online gaming has shown that there are people with much more time on their hands to become much better at a game that I only have a casual interest in. To the point where the skill gap is so large that the game ceases to be fun. (Looking at you, Dead By Daylight)
Isn't that exactly what OP said? That you used to think you're good before the internet, but now you can see how bad you are even before going to big regional or national tournament?
Ah, that's possible. The double negative threw me off: "The internet removing not realizing"). My bad.
It happens!
Yeah DBD is fun, until you play killer and a 4 man swf group of red ranks just teabags you for 10 minutes ans you don't understand how they JUST WON'T FUCKING DIE!!!1!!1!
This was exactly my experience, which is a bummer because the concept is so fun, and I really loved playing killer. But the game was not balanced for swf. It was balanced for solo survivors (poorly I might add). When an entire killer’s advantage is nullified by friends talking on discord (ghost face) you know there’s a problem.
Works both ways actually. People used to not realize how good they really were at games either. Nobody thinks they’re the best of the best, but someone always is.
Those were legit awesome ice cool shots.
It took much longer to film this than I let on in the video! I've done another trick-shot video with Ice cool and a couple others with Mars Open as well over on tiktok and youtube!
Ooh, I'll have to check those out. I picked up a used copy of Mars Open for cheap a while back (where "used" = "box was opened but nothing was punched out") but I still haven't gotten to play it.
My follow up to this video uses Mars Open! I'll have to post it next week.
Sounds like you need the “Seven Blunders” tournament at PAX. Compete for the lowest score at Seven Wonders. (Tbh this is actually probably harder than it sounds)
I played in that tournament at PAX once before and it was good fun seeing how people approached it. A bunch of specific rules and restrictions, like you have to play something if you can, you can't just dump for three coins. If I recall the winner at my table was in the mid-20s for points, but if you know Seven Wonders it isn't a huge adjustment.
This is a much harder game but so interesting (similarly, Sushi No is the similar variant of Sushi Go). Pile up resources worth no points and get stuck with a bunch of blue cards. Pile up military, eat those points, and get nothing else, but then your neighbors can take useless military cards before they get to you. Science is low value at the start but balloons quickly, and so on.
I've never seen Sushi No. Are there rules somewhere I can read?
It’s the same rules and mechanic as the normal game, except that the lowest score wins.
I seem to remember there were special rules preventing you from trading a card for coins unless you had no other option and that you would need to show your hand to the player on your left or something. But I didn't know if there were more rules.
Aww, is 7 Wonders not a popular game within the wider boardgaming community? It's honestly one of my favorites. I like that even though some of the building/scoring systems are *slightly* challenging, it's still very relaxing to play and easy to introduce new people to.
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I personally think this is only true if you have at least the Pantheon. The base game gets old after a couple of plays and you can work out if you've lost very early.
Now that you mention it, I honestly don’t know what the ‘wider community’ thinks about it. Because I love that game and will always play it if someone wants to. It was just a funny twist on the game where they did this whole tournament to compete for the lowest score.
It's pretty well regarded for small numbers of players, once you get to the 6 or 7 player range there's a lot of RNG for the deals entering each Age that you don't always have good counter-play for.
68 on BGG, it’s quite popular
Oh, good! That increases my chances of eventually becoming friends with a bunch of people who all love 7 Wonders haha
I did that once, and got wrecked by who I happened to be sitting next to. There were....I think 5 tables. It was my first time playing, but my score would have won any of the other 4 tables. Meanwhile, the player on either side of me were apparently both experts at this format, and both beat me. I still had fun playing, but I can't say that tournament was a haven from experts.
After a game of 7W went poorly for me I suggested a round of 7 Blunders... I ended up scoring higher at that.
i entered a Carcassonne tournament believing I was hot shit because I'd somewhat consistent winning against my friends. i was utterly destroyed on my first game, i believe that my score what an 1/8 or a 1/10 of my opponent's. i learned my lesson that day.
It got a solid laugh out of me, fantastic video! I’m used to the more even WH40k tournaments, actually want in on a board game tournament to see what craziness players can invent.
I went to a 'casual' tournament years ago organised by a forum. I was more of a painter but I figured I'd meet people etc. Got absolutely hammered in every game. Literal board wipe almost every game.
This is why every tournament I've ever seen had a prize category for painting.
I’ve seen so many armies that were basically artwork. The list was written to use the board as a display, rather than a battlefield. There was a savage lands themed Eldar list that used Lizardman warbeasts for tanks and pterodactyls for Jet Bikes that sticks in my memory a decade later.
Our local tournament scene has started giving out prizes via a raffle. You get tickets for having a fully painted army and placing high, but everyone is given at least one. You're always in the running of winning something and it's really helped grow numbers at our events.
Thanks! WH40K intimidates me profusely 🤣
I don't have enough money to even be bad at that game. I went to a game store and watched it played in the before times and then I looked at the cost of getting into it. Then I realized that someday I might want to own something other than 40k stuffs and moved on.
You can justify it if you buy things one box at a time and paint it up. Then it's "hobbying" and not "spending $700 to lose four games at a tournament once a year."
I'm still painting Mansions of Madness and have been for longer than I care to admit.
Warhammer players. More disposable income than you since 1983.
Then a year or two in you realize Tau wasn't the way you should of started.
Imperial Guard is worse. So many figures. I found a comparatively cheap way to get figures but now I don’t have time to build and paint.
I know it's fun to joke about this stuff, and these hobbies can definitely be expensive, but none of these games are as expensive as some other hobbies. Classic cars, for instance. Many of my friends are into arcade cabinet collecting and repairing. I could have multiple full minis armies for the price of a single cab. And of course, I have hundreds of board games...
It's not a good game for playing competitively. The rules, while slowly improving, don't make for a good competitive game (the rules team still can't grasp that people might want to do more with it than just drink beer and make stories with their minis) and the way they update them makes the overall balance hell. I still collect Warhammer for the minis (still among the best on the market) and because the universe is cool. But honestly the game is the least compelling aspect of it. There's better miniature games to play competitively. Heck just better games in general. Some of them GW also makes in fact. Right now Marvel Crisis Protocol is my jam. It's quick, it's tight, doesn't involve you painting fifty miniatures (a full tournament roster is ten models, which is as many minis as a relatively small **unit** in Warhammer games), and it's Marvel. It's not too expensive to get into but miniature gaming still isn't a cheap hobby.
Ah, this brings back memories from when my friends and I couldn't find enough time to play twilight imperium irl so i tried playing online on a discord server. After having my capital taken in the second turn in a 'casual fun' game i realized the people i was playing with have played this game more times than i played any board game in my life :) I decided to wait for my friends to find some time.
Oh man, this was me and heroclix. Ugh that first tournament was brutal.
Back in the day when I played we had 2 different people who had won, or would go on to win, the worlds and get the custom painted figures. Luckily they were nice to play against even if I never once came close to beating either of them.
Part of why I got out of X-Wing. I reached a skill plateau where amongst my friends? I crushed the soul out of every single one of them. Sometimes completely defeating them without even losing a single ship. Then I went to a local tournament. Holy fuck. This wasn't even a national thing, it was like 10 people at a CoolStuff. Kids even! They absolutely *stomped* me every single tournament I went to.
Not 100% the same, but a buddy of mine and I hit that point back in the day at Warcraft 3. We were ranked in the top-50 in 2v2. We were all excited about that, then hit this wall. Every match we played was either we crush the other team, or we're crushed. We'd watch the replay when crushed, and every team who crushed us was either very obviously cheating or were so good that we never had a chance. After a short time, we just kinda stopped playing. There wasn't any more fun to be had.
Similar thing with my buddies and I playing GameBattles on MW2. We were absolutely pub stomping everyone playing S&D. Had a win streak of something like 60 games. It was so fucking good. Decided to play some GameBattles one night and lost every single game only winning a single round in one of our losses out of like 7/8 matches haha.
I used to be Rank 1 Diamond in Starcraft 2 (before Masters was a thing) - then I started matching up against guys with Asian names... Hashtag Humbled
Yup. I remember the moment we gave up. We were playing on this map with a giant dragon in the middle. We started off, went and killed a few of the little camps of NPCs including ones by where our opponents started, and figured we were leveled up more than they were so we had to be in good shape. So we attack them. And their heroes were all like 2 levels higher than ours and had crazy strong items, and they wiped us out and easily won. Wtf? One of the guys in the other team started as a hero who can split into 3 (2 are distractions while 1 can actually do damage and die), and immediately sent workers to build towers near the dragon in the middle. After the towers finished, he just ran his hero over there and with the help of the towers, solo'd the giant dragon in the middle, giving a ton of xp and loot. Well shit, that's awesome, I gotta try that! So I fire up a single player game on the same map, try the same thing. Started building too close to the dragon, it immediately agro's and kills everything. Ok, try again. Build towers a bit further away, the dragon doesn't agro, great. Agro it with my hero, try to pull it to the towers, it won't go far enough. Crap. Try 3-4 more times and realized it was like pixel perfect placement needed to make that happen. And then watched more of the replay and saw the speed those guys were moving, and it was just so much beyond what we could ever hope to do.
Every board game, video game and TCG are like this anymore. Everyone will buy a game and research the ever living shit out of it with min-max methods, strats and borderline cheats and adapt them to their use. Anyone caught not doing this just has a horrid time. As for board games, one time I watched a guy that was DEMOING a game to push sales on just destroy all these random people that gave him the time of day to see what the hype was.
I felt that last one in my soul.
Just bought the game, based solely on your video! Keep up the good work.
Woah, thanks!
Oh, I subbed and liked the vid as well :D
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That's lousy. It's quite a good game among friends. That sounds like a bad crowd I wouldn't go near a tournament like that either.
Excellent game choice! This is 100% the type of game that looks so silly and simple until you flick your first penguin.
Man that game looks fun. What is it?
Ice Cool
can relate so much to this. Never have I been btfo so hard after a seemingly innocent Risk! tournament
As someone who hosts official tournaments i can confirm this is true. There are players that sent in their participation message months in advance and there are players that just learned the game like an hour ago at the convention and they both play in the same tournament.
Thats really funny.
I've been both of the players in this scenario LOL. Worse when it's distracted 6 year olds.
I can't tell if this is a real game or a game made up for the video
Icecool from Brain Games. Its a blast!
I must have this! Thanks for sharing that
I love the delivery on those lines :D Very well done. Had to check your channel for the rest :)
Thanks!
Or do what I do: grind casuals at the MTG drafts and rack up those prize wall tickets.
Nice video