Comparison with Kingdom Death? Interesting. I made a point of watching a few let’s plays of Pathfinder the Adventure Card game, and it seems to me as similar as Catan and Pandemic (which is, not at all)
The comparison I see is Townfolk Tussle, which I intend to someday buy for a faster/easier campaign.
Kingdom Death: Monster plays incredibly well solo, possibly better than any multiplayer variant except 4-player. It’s one of the reasons I bought it.
Eldrich Horror is on my to-buy list. My wife got really burned out on board games so I’ve leaned into my ultra-crunchy solo-friendly stuff, but she enjoyed Arkham horror for quite a while.
But yeah. Last time I played Catan I wanted it to stop by round 2. I have horrible dice-luck, so a game’s gotta be fun when I roll worst-case 5-10 rounds in a row. In Catan, it means I get all nerdy placing my towns on strategically sound intersections, and then watch everyone else play and I pass as numbers like 6 and 8 never roll for an entire game. My record is like the first half of the game getting no resources. Then getting one or two. Something about seeing the 3rd or 4th 2 roll give someone resources before you’ve gotten anything just makes you want to flip the table.
Interesting. Because you were doing too well? The only way KD:M gets a little boring to me is if I’m trying to min-max and only fighting the most appropriate monster for maximum return at each twist or turn. All those underleveled lions for 15 rounds, then all those antelopes, avoiding phoenix and any unique monsters, etc. I did a playthrough where I suicided extra population against most bosses instead of risking my better ones. Ok, that can get boring.
But throw all those in? Nothing quite like going for the overpowered unique phoenix and trying to land his death bonus on my character with Immortal disorder. Also nothing quite like that character making it, then constantly being targeted with “instead of damage, roll on critical injury table” and having to blow my party’s rerolls to save her. (For the record, no she didn’t make it to LY30)
But honestly, to each their own. I really enjoy it. And adding a few more hunt or showdown monsters (when you really “know” your base prey) is enough to keep an entire campaign fresh. And if not, PotSun and PotStars is a blast (said in Tabletop Simulator because I can’t afford all that)
I couldn’t agree more.
KD:M may have its imperfections, but I don’t think I’ve ever played another game quite so beautiful (if you’re into that existential dread type of beauty).
It’s incredible, and a blast. A full campaign (assuming you don’t lose halfway through) runs about 60 hours. So I get it :)
The digital version might be more accessible. I really wish they’d sell it without the minis. I just don’t have the time to paint minis, which means I don’t get the value worth in minis.
A lot of board game geeks hate Catan. I also hate Catan, but my reasons probably aren’t their reasons. So there’s that.
But I don’t entirely disagree. It’s complicated. I bought multiple games to find ones I’d love more. I find most people with board game obsession still have a favorite.
Like me, I’ve spent more time playing KD:M and Spirit Island than the next 5 combined.
For me, it’s board games. I figured a few good board games could last a while. I’m sure you are (incorrectly) guessing the next step, that I just bought too many.
No, I bought Kingdom Death: Monster. And now I want the expansion packs, which combine to nearly $3000.
I’ve never heard of them. Looks like the nearest one is 4 hours away from me, and there are zero in my home state or any state I like to visit.
Actually, a quick google seems to suggest Smoothie King primarily uses frozen fruit for their smoothies. They offer “nutritional add ins” that are protein powders. This is like Tropical Smoothie.
Maybe I wasn’t clear about Herbalife. The ENTIRE smoothie is protein powder. Here is a typical herbalife smoothie. The entire smoothie. Others are the same with artificial flavors. Then one freeze-dried strawberry dropped in lets them say there’s real fruit in it.
Here is a (genuinely random) sample from Smoothie King. A little protein added at the end, but primarily frozen fruit. This is reinforced by the fact that they sell fruit “smoothie bowls” for a comparable price. Herbalife has no fruit on hand to sell.
I’ve never in my life been to a smoothie place or shake that primarily used powders.
It’s always:
Last I saw, Tropical Smoothie Cafe (national chain) does fresh or frozen fruit exclusively for $5-6, and Herbalife does cheap flavored soy powders for $11
There is a massive quality difference. They don’t even advertise readily that there’s soy in in them; I had to look it up. Thankfully I’m not allergic. And that’s the thing. They sell fake shit and intentionally hide that fact.
Their Schtick is that people start Herbalife “franchises” under another name, but then serve Herbalife. I believe they are generally not supposed to use the word “Herbalife” anywhere on their merchandising.
Except, isn’t Herbalife something that’s never branded? My cup had some smallbiz-seeming name on it. Definitely not Herbalife.
I subbed to an anti-MLM subreddit in the past, and that’s the exact shifty behavior they removeded about Herbalife having. I just hadn’t seen it.
Herbalife, fucking herbalife.
This weekend, I went into what looked like an indie smoothie shop and dropped an ungodly amount of money on a delicious sounding shake… only to watch the lady drop a scoops of powder and ONE freeze-dried strawberry into a cup with ice. Tasted like ass.
Yet they do have regulars to that shit, and nobody is taking them out of business. I want my fucking $11 back. So anyone reading this doing a class action against Herbalife, I want in…
But I doubt it, since it’s a scam that’s so normalized we don’t realize it’s a scam anymore.
Fair enough. I wasn’t trying to pass explicit judgement. His reputation is just a lot better now than it used to be, whether earned or not.
Oh absolutely. I totally agree, but I’ve seen/heard of situations where talking about illegal activity has been targetted by authorities as “empowering” or “enciting” it. Silly shit, though the authorities haven’t gone full nuclear on piracy like they did 20 years ago.
FOSS has always been about “free as in speech”,
If you’re being pedantic, then yes, because Stallman coined “Free Software” as a term and that rolled into the acronym “FOSS”. If you’re talking about what we actually thought, then no.
FOSS vs. proprietary is tangential to the discussion over filesharing, anyway, because it addresses different issues. FOSS isn’t good because it’s zero-cost, it’s good because it respects user freedoms.
From a totally different angle, it’s good because it does more to empower innovation and creative expression than IP ever did, yet innovation and creative expression were always the stated goals of IP. Because of that, it’s a lot less tengential a discussion than things like filesharing, which also empowers creative expression. Cost-free, unlimited access to art is the best way to get art in the hands of everyone. And that is “free as in Beer”.
It’s funny, I’ve never met anybody who’d have that kind of experience and use the word “hacker” in this meaning simultaneously.
I’m slightly too young to use “hacker” the traditional old-MIT way. Maybe only by 2-3 years. I was a stupid kid playing with linux in the mid-90’s and I hacked into a stupid municipal dialup BBS and got root, then neither did nor changed anything because it was “cool” to prove I could figure it out. Then “Hackers” came out and I ran that movie on repeat for a few weeks and then moved on to actually learning to code.
I remember exactly the opposite, people being much more acutely aware of the difference, and Stallman being much more popular than now.
There’s those of us who were avoiding Redhat for shittier distros (like Slackware back then imo) because we didn’t want to buy anyone else’s beer for us to contribute for free. Maybe we were fewer than it seemed. I was that ugy giving out Ubuntu Warty CD’s having this weird pipe-dream of the tech world all going free-as-in-beer (yeah, I know they’re a for-profit. A lot of people didn’t get that back then and just saw a better Debian). Maybe again it relates to the exact date?
Clarification? Movies about Steve Jobs excluded.
Mr. Gates started back when “hacker” didn’t mean “hacker” (as you point out). He would pick up freely-given tech early on, and was then one of the first to start crying IP complaints and asserting his ownership of his product. Wherever you stand on the opinion, Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists started his really terrible reputation, since many hobbyests accurately alleged he built his business on tech they were using/granting for free. I never knew the facts of the 1977 BASIC case where he was sued over ownership of BASIC and won, but then in the 80’s he notoriously started his attitude of embrace, extend, extinguish. Everything from his behavior related to DOS, his ripping off Lotus Notes, etc. One could simply say “he was a good businessman” and they’re allowed to feel that way. If you say “hey, you can have as much of my water as you want for free” and I drain your lake so you have to buy water back from me, technically what I’m doing is legal. That’s basically what many people felt Gates did.
EDIT: And I don’t have good references, but I remember some quotes from him as his reputation got bad, that the hobbyists shouldn’t have been giving software out for free anyway. That the real problem was that they should have been demanding money for their work and/or keeping their ownership. One could argue his behavior was some of what spearheaded the carefully-crafted OSS licensing in the 80’s.
deleted by creator
I agree re: coop. They seem to be the way of the future. Some people I game with get really frustrated being less competitive than the rest in games like Dominion, where taking your time and planning out your turns has huge return but makes everyone have to sit and wait (and don’t talk to me, I’m figuring out whether I’m going to play my Laboratory or my Sentry first!)
For some reason, though, Pandemic goes over like a dead weight to most people. So much so, I’ve never bought Pandemic Legacy as good as it looks. Arkham horror is too crunchy for some, but just right for others. Spirit Island, surprisingly, has been a sweet spot for some recently. It’s a little hard to get good at, but the sliding difficulty scale is really granular.