What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

One of the Opinionated Gamers was over from Australia for the PAX-East Event in Boston and she stopped down to meet and greet the F:AT Thursday crowd. Well some of us at least. Her handle on BGG is Melissa and she blogs using OMG Essen.

What a nice and interesting lady. Really super. She brought us Tim-Tams, a chocolate coated cookie, and Vegemite, a horrible paste like substance that you apparently spread on crackers. I brought her some Yellow Tail wine as a gift not because I know a damn thing about wine but it has a kangaroo on the bottle and you know...Australia has Kangaroos.

Anyway, we hung out for a while while she told us interesting stories of her adventure to PAX and then we played Dread Curse. I was able to pull out a victory in this by focusing more on the cards than the coins. And because I won I had a great time.

Then I lost all judgement and agreed to play a horrible game called Rococo. A game allegedly about making garments for a bunch of snooty elites going to some ball at Versailles. I say allegedly because what it really is is another dry as dust worker placement/efficiency game where you turn one resource into another and then turn that into points or money. It suffers all the pitfalls of every game of this genre not the least of which is the last few turns dragging horribly as people calculate and recalculate how to squeeze just one more point out of their possible moves.

Holy Moses, I HATE games like this. Let's put in 50 different ways to earn victory points to camouflage the fact that this is just an exercise in mental math.

Anyway, dispensing with mental exertion, I went for the "Shiny Bauble/Pretty Color" strategy. I lost. I didn't care.

When asked if she liked it, Uba said "It's about making dresses!"

She likes to make dresses.

Jackwraith wrote: wadenels, you definitely want to track down BoA. It's the best of the three, in my opinion. I have all three and will never part with them. That time was just about the pinnacle of GW's design skillz (Warrior Knights, Fury of Dracula, etc.)

But do you have Chaos Attack...the BfA EXPANSION???? Hmmm?!?!?!???

BFA (main game): www.box.net/shared/m8zmvpch1n
Chaos Attack Expansion: www.box.net/shared/uz3pr6ki85

wadenels wrote: I'm surprised with all the Games Workshop reprints FFG has been doing that this hasn't been done in a Silverline-style format.

Total nonsense. This needs a coffin box! Imagine the miniatures!

Finally did some gaming for the first time in ages. Started out with Origin, which is a gorgeous little tactical game that I think has a lot of potential. Really beautiful game and surprisingly cheap considering how much wood is in it.

Then we played Wiraqocha, which went the way all my games of it have gone: okay, but seemingly missing something. It's on the trade pile.

Stonecutter wrote: I have always loved Stratego. I still think it's the best of all of the classic games. Better than Risk, even.

Stratego was probably my most-played game as a kid. Others included Survive!, Dungeon Dice, Mastermind, NFL Quarterback, Superstar Baseball (ancients version w/ Babe Ruth cover), and Risk.

My favorite Stratego memory:

While I was in a grad school, one of my grad colleagues bragged that he had never lost a game of Stratego. Like, ever. So he brought his copy down the next day and I brutally massacred him in 15 minutes over lunch. Ah, good times.

Also, we never played again (his choice).

I tried Hapsburg Eclipse last night. It's a solo wargame from Victory Point Games, and companion to Ottoman Sunset.

I don't know if I missed a rule or just had great rolls, but I killed it on my first try. Strategic Victory (although I think I miscounted and actually got the Supreme Victory). I know that the cards came out in an almost ideal order, which helped immensely.

I like Ottoman Sunset quite a bit, but I've never won it. This one felt like it had less going on and the decisions didn't seem as interesting. These are the only two States of Siege games I've played, but they felt rather similar. Are all of them pretty much the same?

Last night only Keith (of Ask Keith Anything fame) showed up to game night, so we busted out his first 2 player game of Pax Porfiriana. My entry for 2013 Game of the Year didn't disappoint, Keith built a series of mines and established himself as a rail baron. At one point he was pulling in 18 gold per turn. I had 1 plantation which he extorted but I made some money buying and selling cards as well as through speculation.

A military topple came up and Keith was sitting pretty at 2 command points, 1 from an extorting troop. I played a black card that allowed be to take my lone enterprise back into my hand (giving me 1 Revolution point) thus forcing him to decide what to do with his troops. He decided to flip his hacendado and keep the troops at his ranch, preserving the 2 points (damn!).

Another troop with a command point popped up which he quickly bought, now putting him in the contention to win as the regime was in Martial Law (Command point victory)and the topple would reduce Diaz's influence by 1 point.

On my turn, I was forced to spend 16 gold to trigger the topple which fizzled spectacularly. I prevented his win but I only had 3 gold left.

I built up some cash over a few turns, bought a couple of key cards and had a troop with a Revolution point extorting one of his mines. When the next topple appeared I was able to send some bandits to one of is mines which turned the regime to Anarchy, published an Anarchist Newspaper (1 Rev. point) and triggered the topple for the win!

Next up was a game of Catacombs with the Cavern of Soloth expansion. Keith was the Overseer and I went in with the Witch Hunter (build specific items with kills), Elf (w/bow and 2 arrows), the Barbarian (4 melee rage attack) and the Sorceress (missile attacks, teleportation and shrink abilities). I'm pretty aggressive playing this game but it cost me my barbarian by the third room and met complete death by the penultimate room. Super fun, I really love this game.

I am super pleased to hear that Pax Porfiriana plays well with only 2!

Lego, I found that it's less chaotic (which is moot for me) and by simply having Diaz's Prestige increased by 1 point scales the game perfectly for 2.

Tomorrow IS HERE.

Now, I just need to get 6 people of higher intelligence together in order to make this happen.