Author Topic: Other tile laying games thread.  (Read 68449 times)

Offline Decar

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #120 on: May 01, 2017, 01:06:33 PM »
Merit from me - thanks for sharing jungleboy!

Offline Decar

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #121 on: May 02, 2017, 12:28:37 AM »
This game needs some more love.  Rhado's usual confusion is uncomfortable to sit through and the BGG coverage from 2013 is awkward too. Jungleboy you have a civic duty to review this game  :(y)

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #122 on: May 06, 2017, 01:34:19 PM »
Castles of Caladale

We purchased King Domino from the FLGS.  Right next to it they had the demo of Castles of Caladale.  CoC is just like King Domino without the draft.  Players can pick tiles to build their castles without much in the way of player interaction.  The tiles are square like on Carcassonne, but with stone, Earth, Wood, and Sky as possible sides.  We plan to try it next time, but with twice the price point and similarity to King Domino, I don't think we will pick it up.   I must say it was weird seeing 2 tile laying game demos going at the same time.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2017, 01:38:41 PM by dirk2112 »

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #123 on: May 06, 2017, 01:43:59 PM »
Castles of Caladale

We purchased King Domino from the FLGS.  Right next to it they had the demo of Castles of Caladale.  CoC is just like King Domino without the draft.  Players can pick tiles to build their castles without much in the way of player interaction.  The tiles are square like on Carcassonne, but with stone, Earth, Wood, and Sky as possible sides.  We plan to try it next time, but with twice the price point and similarity to King Domino, I don't think we will pick it up.   I must say it was weird seeing 2 tile laying game demos going at the same time.

I don't know CoC but the draft is the whole point of Kingdomino, so if you take that out there wouldn't seem to be much of a game left.

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #124 on: May 06, 2017, 02:12:08 PM »
In CoC, there are 9 tiles face up on the table.  On your turn you can take 1 of those or a face down tile.  So players just take turns taking tiles.  You don't have to worry about which tile you take like KD.

When you get a chanice watch Tom Vasel's review

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #125 on: May 07, 2017, 07:38:27 AM »
Keeping the castle in the middle of Kingdomino is paramount.   Our games are within 2 or 3 points each other without the bonus.

My wife won this one because of the bonus.  Even if I filled my 7x7, I would have lost.

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #126 on: May 07, 2017, 08:14:14 AM »
In CoC, there are 9 tiles face up on the table.  On your turn you can take 1 of those or a face down tile.  So players just take turns taking tiles.  You don't have to worry about which tile you take like KD.

When you get a chanice watch Tom Vasel's review

It looks kinda cool but I can't see it getting played much around these parts. From what I saw, I prefer Kingdomino and I'm not sure there's room for both of them. But it could be good for Chooselife, danisthirty and their families. Kind of a simple Kodoma/Kingdomino/Carcassonne hybrid?

Offline franks

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #127 on: May 07, 2017, 02:02:39 PM »
We had our first plays of Kingdomino this morning. I've had been impressed by the reviews and game play impressions (including jungleboy) and thought this would be a nice filler for home and my mid week game-lunch group at the office.

Under the absolute simplicity of the game there is some good decision making. We found it very enjoyable. Right off the bat we played the full 2 player optional game on a 7x7 grid and included the bonuses for the Castle placement (10 bonus points if your starting castle ends in the centre of the board) and a complete grid (5 bonus points). Playing with these bonuses adds another nice layer of choice to your tile placements.


I scored 105 and won the first game, (including the bonus for a complete grid).


My wife upstaged me in the second game scoring 132 puts, including the bonus for having her castle dead centre! (I scored 116 in this second game.)

Keeper!
Franks

Wanna play Carc? Can we add just one more expansion?

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #128 on: May 07, 2017, 03:51:52 PM »
My musings on Isle of Skye over in the Top 10 - Poll #4 thread got me thinking about tile-laying games. It's easy to lump all tile-laying games into the same category, but one thing that I've been thinking about lately is the method of tile acquisition, how that differs from one game to another, and how that impacts the overall game. I thought I would flush out some thoughts here.

Our beloved Carcassonne is the standard when it comes to tile-laying games. It makes me smile to watch video reviews of new tile-laying games and always have Carcassonne be referenced, almost as though it is an unwritten rule of talking about tile-laying games that you need to mention Carcassonne. For all the great things about Carcassonne, the draw-and-place mechanism is tile-laying at its most basic. This puts off some people (though not me) because of the luck involved. Other tile-laying games, like Cacao and Lanterns, and many others I'm sure, follow this draw-and-place mechanic, although Lanterns has a three-tile hand.

Recently, tile-laying games have sought to offer new ways to acquire tiles as a way of offering a fresh take on tile-laying. Here are a few examples of tile acquisition that I know, and my thoughts on them:

Isle of Skye - the bidding mechanic. Each player draws three tiles, displays them face up, and secretly chooses one to eliminate and secretly places a value on the other two, which can be purchased at that price by other players or, if not, are to be purchased by you for that price. Some people really like this, and it's definitely a deep mechanic that requires a good deal of thought, although I think it's a bit clunky.

Kingdomino - tile drafting with a value placed on each tile by way of a number on the back (ranking the tiles objectively), whereby taking a higher numbered ('better') tile in one round means you will draft later in the next round. Simple, clean, elegant, brilliant.

Citrus - tiles are purchased by taking an entire row or column from a market (the dynamics of which keep changing based on previous selections), where you pay for each tile you take. I really like this because there's a lot to think about regarding which row/column suits you best based on the number of tiles it contains and the type of tiles it contains, considering how much money you have and how many workers you have in the field.

Vikings - This is a tile-laying game that's quite different from the standard ones because there are only four different types of tiles in the game. But the way of acquiring your tiles and associated viking is really neat - a wheel that turns throughout the round, changing the cost of the tiles as it turns. It forces you to reassess the board every turn and I think it's very clever.

Palmyra - I haven't played this yet (my copy is in the post en route to postman Chooselife), but there's a very intriguing-looking mechanic whereby one of your two followers (the legionnaire) generates land (in the form of tiles) by the moves he makes. So the number of tiles you acquire and have at your disposal are generated by your previous turns. You essentially 'spend' tiles to earn more tiles (hopefully earning more than you spend!). This sounds really fascinating and not something I've come across in other tile-laying games.

Karuba / Limes - number calling. Both of these are multi-player solitaire type of games where each player has to place the same tile/card on their personal playerboard, so the point at the end is to see how different players went about their task under exactly the same conditions. I love Limes as a solo game (i.e. using draw-and-place and ignoring number calling altogether) but I don't love the number calling mechanic, to be honest.

The Little Prince - partially hidden tile draft (two players only). One player draws three tiles, looks at them, places two face up and one face down. The other player chooses either one of the two they can see or gambles with the one they can't see, leaving the first player to take whichever of the two remaining tiles they prefer. This works really well because the pre-draft decision of which tile to keep face down is itself an important decision before the draft has even started, so there's an extra layer there (even though it's a simple game). It's funny that I've been playing this with junglegirl for a couple of years now and I've only recently come to appreciate how great this simple mechanic is.

I'm sure there are plenty of other tile acquisition mechanics - feel free to add those that you know about.

So, what's the point of all this? Well, I wanted to look at a few different ways to acquire tiles in tile-laying games and see if that, in itself, is a way to categorise different games within the tile-laying category and to see how we, as Carcassonne fans, view tile acquisition. So, some questions to consider are:

Is the draw-and-place mechanic one of the reasons we like Carcassonne, and are we therefore drawn to other tile-laying games with the same mechanic? Do we like the luck aspect of draw-and-place and the feeling of joy or disappointment when you get or don't get the tile you need?

Or is the tile-laying aspect itself what we like about Carcassonne, with the way you acquire your tiles not seen as that important?

One of the main expansions for Carcassonne (Bridges, Castles and Bazaars) introduced a new way of acquiring tiles and it seems most fans don't like it (me included). Is this just because it's not a good mechanic or is it because it destroys the sanctity of draw-and-place that is so much a part of the game?

Sorry for the long post. If you made it this far, I look forward to seeing what you think!

Offline Paul

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #129 on: May 07, 2017, 09:35:40 PM »
So I'm supposed to sell of my board game collection, to a certain extent but found this game on sale in a local store when surfing, for just under 10 Euro, so I ordered it.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/139401/realm-heroes

It seems to have tiles in it so it might fit in here.

Img src: boardgamegeek.com
World record holder for a single game of Carcassonne using 10 007 tiles!

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #130 on: May 19, 2017, 09:21:55 AM »
The Karuba expansion that was in the advent calendar last year is now available on the BGG Store for $5.

I'm quite intrigued by it. The expansion consists of four volcano tiles (one per player), one of which goes on each player's board at the start of the game. Here's how it plays:

Quote
Volcano tiles do not have a path and cannot be accessed by adventurers. Whenever an adventurer moves to a tile that is horizontally or vertically (not diagonally) next to a volcano tile, he has to pay 2 movement points instead of one.

But the most interesting part, I think, is regarding the placement of the volcano tiles:

Quote
After initial placement of adventurers and temples, the youngest player starts and sets their volcano on one of their 12 jungle fields in the interior of their island. Continue clockwise except every player has to pick a different field on their island for their volcano.

This is completely at odds with how the rest of the game plays. In Karuba, each player has exactly the same conditions (i.e. the same adventurer/temple placement and the same tile order) and the point of the game is to see which player does the best with these exact same conditions. Having each player place their volcano tile on a different space in their jungle completely alters this. I'm not necessarily saying that that's a bad thing, and maybe the impact of the volcano is pretty minimal anyway, but I find it pretty interesting that they went down this path. Does this spoil the dynamic of the game or does it add an exciting bit of variability?

Offline franks

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #131 on: May 19, 2017, 09:32:10 PM »
Does this spoil the dynamic of the game or does it add an exciting bit of variability?

When I first heard about this promo I used some Litko flame markers that I had about as a proxy to try it out. I'm of two minds with this mini expansion. On one hand it adds a little life to the game with the obstacles that can also slow down the race. However on the other hand there have been many that have complained that there is an issue with the game of a default strategy of and outside route. So in the end this ends up feeding into that issue. Perhaps to mitigate this the Volcanoes could be placed on any tile other than an entrance or exit tile and it would be the same for every board. So each player could choose a spot and the volcano tiles would be placed on the identical spot on each board(?).

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #132 on: May 22, 2017, 11:15:52 AM »
Kingdomino has been nominated for Spiel Des Jahres.  It is up against Magic Maze and Race to El Dorado.

Offline franks

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Re: Other tile laying games thread.
« Reply #133 on: May 22, 2017, 05:41:19 PM »
Kingdomino has been nominated for Spiel Des Jahres.  It is up against Magic Maze and Race to El Dorado.

That's a good nomination with a great chance of winning!

Offline DaFees

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Re: I love the postman...
« Reply #134 on: May 28, 2017, 05:00:18 PM »
Quote
Merged from: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1205.msg49793#msg49793

Ooooh if you never played Lanterns before I think you'll really enjoy it. I had it and the expansion I definitely enjoy both!
« Last Edit: June 20, 2017, 04:13:54 AM by Decar »


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