What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

my two main gaming friends both got KS deliveries in recent weeks so i played two KS spawn.

Dreaming Spires: A euro about building a college at Oxford uni and recruiting famous scholars to improve your prestige. It has a tile placement puzzle, ability cards, and an auction round. I enjoyed it, but largely because the idea of building a college and its history appeals and the game pulls off this conceit reasonably well. It has a weird obtuse scoring system. You score four rounds, but the rewards for the first three are completely trival, and they mostly just serve to show you roughly how well you are doing for the final round. Also the last turn or so becomes very calculative because of the open information. I liked it, and will probably continue to do so, as long as i don't play it so often that the veneer crumbles away, as i don't think its a very clever game underneath.

Alien Uprising: Richard Lanius + Kickstarter = Rules mess. The play aids and the rule book give different die results and rules for the same thing and he can't seem to be consistent in his use of terms or pluralisation of terms. So its a game that requires house ruling and common sense to work. Its a Lanius coop game, ala Arkham or defenders of the realm. Your ship has crashed (looks very Vin Diesel Pitch Black esc) you, the crew, have to move around searching for stuff to repair it to either escape, or survive long enough for the rescue ship to arrive. Aliens pour in from all directions in a tower defence manner. Dreaming Spires used an assortment of euro mechanics, this uses an assortment of more AT/coop mechanics, all tried and tested. You start the round by playing Yahtzee to determine what action die results you get. Each player then spends dice to do actions like shoot aliens, move around, search, or repair stuff. The ship has loads of bits that you can find and repair that do fun stuff. Then aliens attack. Its sort of dumb, but sort of fun too. Imo, the KS stretch goal models are not really necessary and although they look good, they clutter the board and slow the game down.

Both games were decent enough but not outstanding. Both could probably have done with a developer.

I saw Alien Uprising at Origins and Gen Con. It looks really cool but I've not played it. Richard's a friend and we have the same tastes so I'd probably like it.

charlest wrote: One possible issue that seems to be cropping up in discussion of Dead of Winter is if it really works as a traitor game. It seems it is too easy to really tank the game as the traitor so you don't really have to undermine the colony's efforts until the very last turn in which case you can tank the whole thing.

Can't you play BSG like that, albeit traitors appear before the last turn?

I've played BSG twice, once as a Cylon and once as a human, and both times the traitor did nothing treacherous until the last possible moment - when they tried to tank the game with no warning. Before that point, there was no way of determining beyond a lucky guess who was the traitor (because they weren't acting treacherous). Playing the Cylon was also very very dull - I made one decision in the game (when to try to tank it).

Played a game of Wheedle tonight. For those that haven't heard of it, it's Knizia's take on a Pit-style turnless trading game. This just blows Pit away, which isn't really surprising given over 100+ years of game design Wheedle had to work with. It's even got a small stock element to it, I like it a lot and will probably lug it to most game days for a while.

veemonroe wrote:

charlest wrote: One possible issue that seems to be cropping up in discussion of Dead of Winter is if it really works as a traitor game. It seems it is too easy to really tank the game as the traitor so you don't really have to undermine the colony's efforts until the very last turn in which case you can tank the whole thing.

Can't you play BSG like that, albeit traitors appear before the last turn?

I've played BSG twice, once as a Cylon and once as a human, and both times the traitor did nothing treacherous until the last possible moment - when they tried to tank the game with no warning. Before that point, there was no way of determining beyond a lucky guess who was the traitor (because they weren't acting treacherous). Playing the Cylon was also very very dull - I made one decision in the game (when to try to tank it).

You will often lose as a Cylon if you do nothing to hurt the good guy until the final turn of the game before they get ready to jump and win. It's too late to stop them. You're usually better off sowing a bit of discord as you go, especially in the second half of the game as everyone knows there's a Cylon out there anyway.

In Dead of Winter there's no incentive to harm the Colony early because it seems very easy to drop Morale 2 points or so in the final turn.

I bought a copy of Alan Moon's Black Spy at Trollune in Amsterdam, which is a great store. It was a perfectly fine game for playing on the train to Nice, and my sons were excited to play because the batteries ran out on their tablets and devices.

Little Man's been napping for the past two hours (he's stirring around now so lunch is just around the corner) but it allowed me time to pull out Friday and play a pair of games. I first got the game a few months back and played a half dozen times or so and it didn't wow me. But today after a few month's hiatus I was able to look at the game with some fresh eyes and it still isn't wowing me, but I'm coming away more favorable towards it.

My first game I got only half way through before Robinson lost all his life points and died against wild animals which mimicked my earlier games. Wondering what I was not doing right I hopped onto BGG just to get a few tips on how to better manage my life points and a few posts gave me better ideas on how to use the cards that add to life and just how important using life to draw extra cards was.

So my second game went a lot better and I reached and blew through the game much better than I ever had before. Things started to click and how to accurately and effectively use the actions on the cards which I also wasn't doing. I'm starting to get a little more excited to play this game and start to progress through the difficulty levels. But before I can do that, Little Man is fussing and it's time to eat some lunch.

I played the new Carcassonne: South Seas the other day. I'm a huge Carc fan and this one is a really nice change of pace from the base game. I don't know that it's simpler, but it's definitely less confrontational since meeples no longer get stranded permanently. I do like how you're collecting goods to buy point tiles as opposed to just playing stuff to score points. It's definitely awesome to look at as well.

I'm hoping they do more in this line.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Josh Look wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote:

wadenels wrote: Played Mini Car Wars. Not impressed. There's some ideas that could translate to a good game, but in this case that didn't happen. This really feels like a game I would have designed on graph paper in 7th grade, and that ain't a compliment.

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68504/outrider

We have the technology.

I'm getting a review copy, I'll let you know how it goes. They are KSing it (shocker) and it looks outstanding. Might even back it if it doesn't suck.

I have the PNP of Outrider. It blows. Granted, I only have what was in the base game, if you can call it that, but I was entirely unimpressed (and I really get into the Mad Max car chase shit). The base game gave me no incentive to buy/print more stuff out for it.

Shit.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm always amazed how under-developed this genre is. I mean, we have Thunder Road, and that's about it. If you don't mind a little more complexity, try Wastelands 3: Total Meltdown, which is a miniatures game at its core, but has vehicle rules. Another GREAT one, and really simple, is Warlords of the Wastelands: www.skankgame.com/Downloads/Warlord2085Game.pdf

I can think of quite a few games in this genre...all of which I prefer over Thunder Road.

Road Kill (AH)
BattleCars (GW)
Dark Future (GW)

Dark Future is still the king daddy in this field. Its got everything a minis gamer could want. Cool backstory, cheap minis (hot wheels) to customize, campaign system, etc.

Looks like some of my old paint jobs are still up on the Future Highways site. futurehighways.roll2dice.com/paint/jeff_white.html

Stan Johansen's site is still kicking around as well. Great place for 'on foot' minis in the Road Warrior line (look for Snake Plissken...I thought he was dead!) as well as bits to customize your autos.
www.stanjohansenminiatures.com

I'm trying to go to the Netrunner Nationals or, at least, considering doing so. This means I need new, nasty decks that can surprise my opponents in the tournament.

The great thing about Netrunner is that it's a very psychological game and the bigger the tournament is, the more powerful uncommon choices become. For example, Aggressive Secretary isn't really that common of a card, most people run GRNDL Refinery in its place which doesn't really damage the runner but is far more reliable. But...will you count on that when you are in such a big tournament? And what about other cards? What if they have Caprice or Corporate Troubleshooter? Would you run on that? And the fear of Aggressive Secretary, Corporate Troubleshooter and Caprice is worse than anything those cards can do on their own.

Last nationals we had a guy running only 6 pieces of ICE, three of them Archer and he got to quarterfinals. It would be a terrible deck to run normally, but in Nationals? Where everyone is scared? He didn't need ICE, just facedown cards and a lot of money because as long as he could scare you into not doing anything he wouldn't need any other defense.


This has led me to rework a GRNDL deck that has won me several playmats I call "House of Cards" because it starts incredibly strong but crumbled if the Runner could slow you down. Hence it basic premise was to hit so hard that the Runner either died in a risky moved or you scored behind normally flimsy defenses.

The problem with the deck was that sometimes you had to spend your money and inevitably struggled to hit hard. You rely on Punitive Counterstrike and Corporate Troubleshooter which are powerful but expensive and often I found myself running out of money just because I scored agendas too fast. I needed a way to keep the money going.

What I first did was to ditch the small agendas and run only big 5/3 because they require less advances than two-pointers and, in practise, you only need to score two because a Hostile Takeover can take you to seven points. This allowed me to change The Cleaners, which was almost blank, for Priority Resquisition which can and will give you free Curtain Walls giving you a lot of stability. Goverment Contracts comes handy too because it assures you cannot get stuck but nowhere as much as other agendas do.

Still, this just helps not to put yourself into a hole but it doesn't give you extra power. What improved the deck so much was the release of Targeted Marketing which has the Corp naming a card and gaining 10 credits when such a card is played. Since you are extremely fast, often Runner can't play around it and are forced to rely on obvious plays like Corroder or Test Run which gives you enough cash to finish them off or block their entrance with extremely expensive ICE.

So far, I think it's one of the strongest decks and nobody will play it because it's my own brew. In fact, people will play GRNDL decks that are much slower and pack Snare! and the confusion between the two will almost surely net me some kills.


The problem comes, however, on the Runner side because I don't have a killer deck here. I'm thinking of taking Noise, which is very fun and positions himself well against the field but I don't really have enough experience. My other alternative is my old Parasite Kit which won't have it easy against the flood of NBN the guys from Barcelona are sure to play but which I'm a very profficient pilot of.

Guess testing will decide!