Good evening all,
I'm going to be playing the PACG this Friday, for the first time, with a few of my friends. (Better than enemies, eh?)
There's a lot to try and keep in mind as you play, so my question would be, what do you most wish you'd known or remembered as you play, that would have made things go easier? Or not forget critical rules? Anything that would help?
Thanks!
Csouth has a good point. That would be one of the things I would recommend. Another is not to ignore the blessings deck. Not only is it a timer but it can affect the play each turn possibly.
I would recommend having the rulebook and following the steps of "Your Turn", "Encountering A Card", "Attempting a Check", and "Encountering A Villain" sequences very slowly and very carefully.
I think the mistakes I made was assuming I understood those sequences too early when I didn't. If I had it to start over again and was playing for the first time by myself, I'd do a whole game with each time reading the step in the sequence that applied to what I was doing as I did it.
Yes, at the beginning of each turn, take a second to look over everything.
Things I've forgotten with regularity include - being able to use the abilities of the blessing on top of the blessings deck when playing a Blessing of the Gods, some of the special powers (Lem's beginning of turn card swap got me for awhile, and harsk and seelah's powers to look at the location deck cards are probably the biggest ones), and any card that can be used before exploring like Augury/Spyglass etc... I have a tendency to sometimes flip the Blessings deck and then flip the location without really thinking about that stuff.
Also in combat checks sometimes when I've got a "pretty good" roll I'll just pick up the dice and roll and once or twice I've had a fairly automatic Harsk or Lem bonus that I could have taken and failed a roll I could have probably made with that.
One trick with the blessings deck is doing the thing where you face whichever card you draw towards the current player, that way it's easy to see if you remembered to draw or not. However another option is to put a die on top of the deck and change it to the number of the current player - I kind of have to do that in my 6 player game as I'm really short on table space.
Also related to that, doing the die thing also really helped me with the villain in Here Comes the Flood. I moved the 6 sided die to on top of the villain card and each time I started a turn after rolling to see what cards the villain ate, I changed the number on the die to the current player. Otherwise I know I'd have trouble remembering if I did it or not each turn.
In some scenarios we've used dice to count how many of a particular card type were in a location. Local Heroes was the first time.
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In some scenarios we've used dice to count how many of a particular card type were in a location. Local Heroes was the first time.
You mean for strategy purposes? Like to know whether there are any allies left? I made a sheet to do the same thing:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98267/game-accessories-layout-guides-remo ve-from-game-wo
If you put hash marks in each box you can add to locations if something requires you to add another card (i.e. the Warrens). And then you put hash marks for what you've removed. I first came up with it to help leverage an approach where I wanted to Valeros to go wherever the most monsters were left or send Ezren wherever the most spells were left.
Try it out if you want, let me know what you think. I have "wet-erase" paper so I printed a copy on that and use a transparency marker and then wash it off and re-use it. Its labor intensive to track that kind of thing, but if there are more players than just one can be the "recorder" and that would let it go faster I think.
I usually make mechanical mistakes if I start moving too fast. My only advise is to give the scenario card and the 'at this location' rule for your character a look at the beginning of every single turn and whenever you change locations. Make it a habit. I would bet that the most common mistake people make is not applying a scenario or location rule every time they should.
Also, remember to let the cards tell you what they do. Don't bring any thematic preconceptions into the game. "A check" means any kind of check, made by anyone, at any location. "Your check" means only your check.
You can never resolve someone else's encounter. That means you can never play a card that "defeats" a bane, "acquires" a boon, "succeeds" at check, or "evades" an encounter for someone else.
I've removed from the game every single, solitary BotG for which I had opportunity to do so. For the first group I was in (4 characters) that got though Hook Mountain Massacre, that amounted to 2 BotGs being removed. For the second group (3 characters) it totaled to 0. They are rare to have banished, so they are rare to be removable. I figure I'll maybe get 10 removed total for the whole Adventure Path. That shouldn't create any risks with not having enough blessings and it also slightly increases my chances for encountering a "proper noun" blessings to acquire from locations.
But leaving them in for the auto-acquire/free explore is also a very valid strategy to employ.
Yep I'm removing them too.. hoping for more free recharges due to duplicate blessings which I don't seem to get very often.
I usually make mechanical mistakes if I start moving too fast. My only advise is to give the scenario card and the 'at this location' rule for your character a look at the beginning of every single turn and whenever you change locations. Make it a habit. I would bet that the most common mistake people make is not applying a scenario or location rule every time they should.
Also, remember to let the cards tell you what they do. Don't bring any thematic preconceptions into the game. "A check" means any kind of check, made by anyone, at any location. "Your check" means only your check.
You can never resolve someone else's encounter. That means you can never play a card that "defeats" a bane, "acquires" a boon, "succeeds" at check, or "evades" an encounter for someone else.
I've removed from the game every single, solitary BotG for which I had opportunity to do so. For the first group I was in (4 characters) that got though Hook Mountain Massacre, that amounted to 2 BotGs being removed. For the second group (3 characters) it totaled to 0. They are rare to have banished, so they are rare to be removable. I figure I'll maybe get 10 removed total for the whole Adventure Path. That shouldn't create any risks with not having enough blessings and it also slightly increases my chances for encountering a "proper noun" blessings to acquire from locations.
But leaving them in for the auto-acquire/free explore is also a very valid strategy to employ.
I think somehow I posted to the wrong thread. Oops!
My erroneous comment and Brainwave's reply (sorry I caused you to stumble too!) belong here. For this thread ignore what we said and carry own with more sound advice that new players will understand.