>>33514
As it stands the plan is still to meet up at 1PM EST tomorrow - in 24h - to play Sub Terra, though that might change depending on how many players we'll have. Please try to be there at least 5 minutes in advance if possible.

I watched the first episode and it was more or less what I expected, maybe a little plain but warm and also a little depressing.
It made me remember Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-chan (I really liked that one) for some reason the "cute girls doing boy hobbies" always work for me in a similar way.

>>33518
I'm not going to be there because I don't feel comfortable in social situations, even if on-line, but I wish you luck. If it wasn't for this thread I probably wouldn't have noticed there was a boardgame series this season.

>>33519
>also a little depressing.
I'm glad someone else thought the same.
Personally, I thought it was depressing because it reminded me of my life's dullness. I want to be a cute JK.

>>33521
Don't we all?
You could say anime, and particularly SOL, is escapism but most of the time it's more like a bittersweet taste with some touches of despair. But you have to embrace that. I wonder how the japanese feel about it, maybe it's the same.
This season we will have High Score Girl S2 too, that series gave me the highest of those feelings. I even cried with most episodes for no apparent reason.

I found this strangely relatable. I've always struggled with what normal people find fun and enjoyable, as well as figuring that out for myself. I might find things Interesting sure, or even on occasion impressive. But fun? feels like an alien concept to me. All too often I find myself doing what I decided I should find fun and just pretending to enjoy it, or vicariously having fun while watching other people enjoy themselves like in SoL for example.

The first ep had some amazing production values for an anime of this sort, but by ep 2 the drop in quality is noticeable.

God damn girls like this are the best.

How there's people so horrible to harm such a precious creature?

>>33645
I know right? That whole bullying thing with what's her face acting like it's her own fault just pissed me off.

Man, life's a bitch, can't believe it's been 3 weeks since I managed to post something.

So, in ep 2 we had a simple bluffing game, Kakerlakenpoker. Since it's possible to play it with a standard deck of cards some of you might've done so, under one of many names - cheat, bullshit, bluff, valepaska.

Ep 3 was interesting beause for the first time we started to deviate from the manga, kind of. Until then it was a frame by frame adaptation. Ep 3 is a mix of chapters 3 and 13 from the manga. In chapter 3 Miki meets Aya's sister and helps her with the cat. After that they visit Aya's house but they play a board game named Viva Topo!, which ties into the cat story as it's a cat and mouse game.
Chapter 13 is Miki's flashback to the bully accident; after she wakes up and takes a shower she head over to Aya's. The rest is as you saw in the anime - Kyouko shows up and they play Diamant.
Diamant (also known as Incan Gold) is a simple push-your-luck game. It remains probably the most popular game with similar rule set, though there are a similar games (some older), most notably Celestia/Cloud 9. Rules simplicity makes it a popular family game. Amusingly even though they teamed up in the anime to play as essentially 4 players games such as this are usually better at higher player counts - you can play Diamant with up to 8 players.

Ep 4 adapts chapters 4 and 19. I think this will become the norm to keep all the important character interactions and stick to 1 game per ep formula. In unrelated news skipping material like that seems to indicate my prediction that they'll adapt the Christmas dates chapter for ep 12 (closest to actual Christmas) might come true.
They play an old classic, 6 Nimmt!. Card games such as this (Coloretto, Turn the Tide, Bohnanza, Phase 10, Citadels, Uno) - cheap, simple games that consist solely of a non standard deck of cards - used to be popular but they gradually lost traction and few people care about them nowadays.
As for Japanese board games designers Hayashi Hisashi deserves a mention. Two of his games - Trains and Yokohama - managed to break into mainstream. There's also Emerson Matsuuchi, who has a lot of popular games to his name (one of which we have even played with the TTS group - Century: Spice Road), but he's US born, with Japanese ancestry. Last there's saashi; his games (co designed with his wife I think, published as saashi & saashi) aren't very popular but he has a small following among Japanophiles. Coffee Roaster is one of his games, and it's an excellent solo (you can only play it with 1 player) bag builder.

>>33646
To me it felt like Kyouko was giving her advice rather than bullying her: 'if you keep acting like this it'll keep happening'. She wasn't really wrong about it either, though whether her method of getting the message across was right or not is debatable.

>>33654
So basically she was telling a poor little girl to "man up"?
I'm not saying it was wrong or not but the whole thing felt weird and slightly uncomfortable to me.

>>33655
That depends on what we're even talking about now. I thought >>33646 was talking about Kyouko offering Miki "advice" during the game. I don't know if I would call a 16 year old a 'poor little girl'.
You can easily make the case for how coddling her won't do her any good long term, while trying to get her to show some courage will at very worst result in upholding status quo - she'll keep being timid.
In the end the point of this chapter/ep was Miki taking the plunge and overcoming her doubts and fears and deciding to explore further: a decision in the game signified her mental breakthrough.

Last week we played Goita, a very old shedding game (the goal is to get rid of all of your cards; most of you have probably at least heard of Uno) that originally used shogi pieces but has since gotten its own sets, both with wooden pieces as well as standard cards.
I'm not all that knowledgeable about traditional games so I'm not entirely sure about the potential origins of Goita. At first I thought it was probably influenced by some western shedding partnership game - canasta being the most well known one I think. But the ones I looked up were supposedly designed after Goita so that didn't add up. Of course the concept of shedding games is extremely old - if you look at Goita it was probably strongly influenced by dominoes, where you have to match something laid out by another player and then lay out another card to let somebody else continue the chain - but I couldn't quite find a point based shedding parternship game older than Goita. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, as I didn't spend all that much time researching it. I can't exclude the possibility of Goita being a canasta precursor either but that's the least likely scenario.
The most interesting theory is that the games were developed independently. Such is apparently the case with nine men's morris. It's history dates back at least 2000 years, and possibly over 3000. The game was known to and played by people in places like modern Egypt, Sri Lanka, South America thousands of years ago, where there was no communication of any sort between those places. The road from nothing to creating nine men's morris is pretty long. The road from knowing dominoes to creating a parternship shedding game isn't.

Since Goita uses 2 Kings/Rooks/Bishops, 4 Golds/Silvers/Knights/Lances and 10 Pawns you can play it with a standard deck of cards, using something among the lines of 2 Kings/Queens/Jacks, 4 10s/9s/8s/7s, and 10 remaining lower value cards (for example 4s 3s and 2s).

This week focused on a game designed by Midori, One Room. It's a very simple set collection game. If you take into account both theme and mechanics the closest IRL equivalent I can think of is Dream Home, pic related. The sole difference is that here you're collecting sets to design your entire home, as opposed to just the room.

Next week we'll talk a bit about modern word games.

Miki-chan is so cute! She even looks great in a bikini.

>>33645
The bullying was a test to see if she had any potential as a magical girl, I'm sure.

>>33679
>The game was known to and played by people in places like modern Egypt, Sri Lanka, South America thousands of years ago, where there was no communication of any sort between those places.
Aliens, my friend, aliens. Not only did they build the pyramids, they disseminated this game.
Seriously though, I appreciate your posts.

Forgot my image.

Last episode made me feel uncomfortable about Midori. She had some reactions that made her look like an unstable crazy bitch. I thought she was the serious, responsible type but now I don't think I can see her with the same eyes.

>>33686
>The bullying was a test to see if she had any potential as a magical girl, I'm sure.
Magical girl spree shooter deconstruction soon

>>33688
I can see where you're coming from with this, but she's only human and this is something she's very deeply invested in. It was certainly a bit much though and did seem like she could have used a chill pill for a minute there.

Alright, as promised first a note about word games. In a broader sense the genre has hit a bit of a Renaissance period lately. It was getting bad rep among people invested in the hobby for years (decades even), thanks to how tired everybody is of hearing about Scrabble, Taboo and Boggle but all of the sudden many new word games got designed and published, to a warm welcome.

'All of the sudden' is kind of off - it's largely the huge success of Codenames (for the record it appears in Houkago Saikoro Club but around volume 8 or so so I'm pretty sure we won't see it in the anime, aside from it being on the selves at store) that caused many similar games, such as Decrypto, Just One or When I Dream to pop up and find their own fans. Those are largely word association games though and not what I really wanted to talk about, because they are much less related to Monjirou from last ep.

Actual word building games like Scrabble were probably the most frowned upon word games for a bunch of reasons. Rather than getting into those I'll just jump straight to the game that revitalized that sub genre among board game enthusiasts. While Paperback never really reached the mainstream it's definitely successful, especially considering it was basically self published. The twist here is that it's a deck building game - each player starts with the same deck of basic letters, and draws x card from it every turn (typically 5) but you can buy new cards with new letters to customize your deck. Pic related.
The game was successful enough to get something of a sequel called Hardback, which has stronger focus on deck building. Since the players don't compete for spaces on the board directly, and each of them has their own hand of cards, the games even have a nice optional rule which allows players to lay out their hand on the table and come up with words with other players. Giving somebody a good word that will net them a lot of points might sound odd if you're taking the game very seriously and aiming to win but there's a small compensation if the player decides to use your suggestion.

Aside from those two I'd like to mention Word Domination. It has a tongue in cheek super villain theme which is rather tacked on but the illustrations are charming. It has a co-op mode - and that's the only way I played the game - in which all players aim to steal the Eiffel Tower. You create words based on the letters laid out on the table. A co-op word game certainly felt like a novel idea and it's pretty fun to play.

The game played in the second half is a classic. The Island, also known as Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, was first published all the way back in 1982. It's gotten many reprints since (and a rather unsuccesful sequel). A reimplemntation with a sci-fi theme called Survive: Space Attack! was published in 2015.

Next week Emilia will finally show up for real.

Last but not least, as some of you might've noticed a dedicated thread was made on /vg/, as per >>33513's suggestion. As such this will probably be the least time TTS gets mentioned in this thread.

>>33704
I think The Island has been the first game in the series that really attracts my attention to the point of make me want to buy it. Only problem is it seems to need four people to play.

Thank GOD she wasn't named Alice.

Miki-chan is perfection!

An immaculate beauty of mind and body

I wish I was her.

Oh boy, I sure have fallen behind terribly haven't I. Time to catch up.

I'll start with Elfenland, mostly because I don't have much to say about it, as I haven't played it and I'm not really familiar with the rules beyond what was explained in Houkago Saikoro Club. It's actually a redesign of an older game called Elfenroads and it won Spiel des Jahres - (Board) Game of the Year award, more on that in a bit - in 1998. Of note is the fact that it was designed by Alan Moon, and it shares the route building aspects with another, much more popular game designed by Moon - Ticket to Ride.

Coming back to Spiel des Jahres, Keltis won the award in 2008 (and just for the record, TTR won it in 2004). Spiel des Jahres is a German award for the best boardgame of the year. It's been around since the 70s and it's consider to be something comparable to a Grammy/Academy Award in board gaming world.

Now, I'm speaking from my limited perspective as somebody who has always liked board games but at the same time, since I had nobody I could really play them with, it wasn't a hobby I was -that- involved with. Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion based on the limited POV of mine but Keltis winning the award caused a lot of controversy. Keltis was called 'Lost Cities with a board', and that's kind of what it is. Lost Cities is an older, more popular game by the same designer, Reiner Knizia. Knizia was at the time one of the most notable modern German designers (arguably the most notable) but one way or another, despite all the acclaim his games got none them won the award. Some argued that Keltis won less on its own merit and it was more of a lifetime achievement award for Knizia. One way or another though it was another thing that seemingly dealt a blow to the award's waning prestige, followed by a couple of questionable choices in prior years. The biggest problem however was that over the years the award started to be given out only to family games with very simple rules, and people who were serious about the hobby just didn't care for the games that won. It's as if something like, uh, Plants vs Zombies? Stardew Valley? won a GotY award.

Starting with 2011 'Kennerspeil des Jahres' category was introduced, to accomodate the need for a more an award for more complex games. That was fine in theory, but in practice even Kennerspiel started being awarded to very simple games (ones that could have simply won regular Spiel des Jahres). Companies will still put the Spiel des Jahres seal on the box covers of games that won it but nowadays I think even stuff like Golden Geek Awards (awarded based on votes of users of boardgamegeek.com) is taken more seriously among boardgamers.

As for Keltis judging by the fact that it got two expansions, a pocket version, a card game version and a dice game (pic related; the latter two being very typical of German games - if something gets popular by all means expect a dice and/or card game edition of that - gotta milk the brand name) it seems to have at least been a commercial success. As for critical reception from boardgamers... Oh well.

Next, Dobble. Or Spot it!, since that's what the game seems to be called in USA, as I learned the other day. It's a so-called party game. Traditionally most of those used to be dexterity and/or reflex based. As I pointed out earlier however there was a sudden influx of word-based party games that rely on different skills. These games can usually be explain in a minute or two and are best avoided with less than 4 players (and often shine at twice the amount, if not more).
Dobble is a pretty popular games that has a lot of crossovers so if you wanna grab a Star Wars version, a Harry Potter version or a Chicago Cubs version (yes, really) then I've got good news for you.

Blokus is the exact opposite of that, it's a so called abstract strategy, meaning there's no hidden information or randomness. The most well known abstract strategy is obviously chess. As such this genre dates back quite a bit. For many years abstract strategies earned their abstract monicker due to them lacking any theme. In recent years however there's been an influx of abstract strategies that try to lure in customers (or basically, families) with pretty components and (somtimes) theme. Some of the most notable examples (and successful) examples include Santorini (pic related), Azul or Photosynthesis.

The only thing that seems to be left (since I can hardly comment on Midori's game besides the stuff I said last time) is Ladies & Gentlemen, but yet again I have little to say about it since I'm no familiar with it. One person I talk to about HSK seemed to be rather offput by how sexist it is but contrary to what you might think it's a very modern game designed in USA. The theme is simply very tongue-in-cheek which might not have been entirely obvious based on what you saw in the anime alone.

>In unrelated news skipping material like that seems to indicate my prediction that they'll adapt the Christmas dates chapter for ep 12 (closest to actual Christmas) might come true.
Turns out I was wrong. Curious, as it made perfect sense to do that and they even adapted the chapter. Can't say I understand why they didn't do it but well, they didn't.

More importantly I was actually slightly upset they didn't adapt the attached page at all pretty much. I was looking forward to that. Bummer.

>>33754
I see your Miki and I raise you a Nao-ssu!

What you thought about the end, OP?
For me it was the hardest episode to watch, for obvious reasons. Miki going nuts was quite brutal for such a lighthearted series, even if it ended well, it felt too close.

>>33764
Was there supposed to be more to it than what was shown?

This episode moved me to tears.

>>33771
As you said, it was brutal. And even if the episode ended on a high note, that kind of shit doesn't quickly go away or at all. At least she's a super cute JK with cute JK friends.
Static individuals in a dynamic world, constants in a continuous simulation.

This was a pretty okay show in an incredibly average season. I don’t regret watching it, but I don’t think I’ll remember it in 2 seasons or so.
Brown a best.

>>33771
I thought that it was a very good ending, not the same can be said for a lot of other anime.

Who's going to continue forth and read the manga?

>>33797
I haven't read any yet, but my impression from the show is that it's probably a lot better in written form. Unfortunately, I'm restricted to things that have translations, which leaves out most of this manga.

How the hell does that shop stay in business?

>>33798
>Unfortunately, I'm restricted to things that have translations, which leaves out most of this manga.
And the suffering begins anew.

>>33799

>>33801
Are you suggesting the owner is part of the yakuza or something?

I don't care if she does have occasional outbursts, I still like Midori.

>>33824
They share the same VA and he's well-known for his role as Kazuma Kiryu.