What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

DarthJoJo wrote: The eldest also continues to death march me through every new DC Deck-Building Game variant. We tried the multiverse mode which offers a more interesting way to use your entire collection instead of one big pile with multiple, rotating line-ups and new cards that encourage buying from multiple sets. There are some interesting ideas in multiple victory conditions and direct attacks made by controlling super villains, but it’s so clunky. You’re constantly shuffling and switching between 100+ size decks just to play a single card. That’s a big problem for a game whose greatest asset was its speed and ease of play. Sometimes I want to give the designers credit for doing the best they could by innovating on a basic system. Then I see the incredible solo and co-op modes for Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn and Fantasy Flight’s Legend of the Five Rings LCG. These are much more interesting and fun and built on way more complex foundations. Like every iteration of the DC Deck-Building Game I’ve played, the multiverse just feels lazy. It feels like no one cared about it. It was just a work assignment.

It's too bad that your eldest latched on to the DC characters, because Marvel Champions is a very good game.

Tomorrow, I have 3 or 4 friends coming over to play Android. This will probably be the first time I have played since 2010. I soured on the game slightly because one of my smartest friends found a way to break the game the last time we played. He focused on the conspiracy puzzle, stockpiled political favors, and managed to connect all four sides of the conspiracy to City Hall, for a big VP haul. Somebody else solved the murder, but earned less VP and therefore lost the game.

Anyway, I'm psyched to play again. The smart guy lives across the country, and I won't be telling the other players about his broken strategy. We first planned to play this game four years ago, but the Covid lockdown got in the way and then we were all spooked for a long time afterwards. I like to burn music mixes for my favorite games, so I spent some time during the first year of the pandemic putting together music mixes for an Android game of up to six hours. The Blade Runner theme, of course, and then a lot of synthpop and synthwave.

Shellhead wrote: ...Android...

I've never played this one. I know that a lot of people really loved it, and FFG obviously never gave it a version 2.0 treatment, but did any other game ever really represent an update of any variety?

Forsaken, an upcoming Travis Chance game that funded on Kickstarter last year, looks to be the closest thing. At least from the perspective of heavily character driven narrative adventure game.

There is a fan-made complete rewrite of Android's rules that some have argued completely missed the designers' intentions. I haven't tried it.

Perfect record in competitive, limited Star Wars Unlimited is maintained. Another 6-0 at a draft today. Built a Yellow Iden that kept the board under control with Death Troopers, Scout Bikes and assorted removal until the six-drops could finish the work. Only one rare in the deck beside Iden herself.

Only the last game saw me end with more than ten damage on my base. His out-of-aspect Han was doing work, but I played a chunky sentinel at the very right time to stall him at 26.

Absolutely crazy box. I kept a hyperspace Command even though there was no way I could play it, the player to my right kept a unit Boba Fett and two other legendaries (one foil), and I saw at least one more down the table.

The more I play, the more I admire every aspect of the game. Gameplay is solid, fast and engaging. Drafting is clean. Opening packs is fun. Hyperspace borders and foils make even dopey commons exciting.

I picked up Ready, Set, Bet!, the AEG horse racing game. The game concept is really great; one person calls the race while up to 8 others place bets in real time. There is also an app that calls the race for you.

While I primarily got this for those rare opportunities when I have a lot of players, my girlfriend and I tried it out in 2 player mode this weekend, using the app. The app does a great job, and the only real annoyance was my phone continually wanting to go dark. I am sure there is a setting on my phone to get it to not do that, but I didn't look into it.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I am certain that more players = more fun with this one.

DarthJoJo wrote: Perfect record in competitive, limited Star Wars Unlimited is maintained. Another 6-0 at a draft today. Built a Yellow Iden that kept the board under control with Death Troopers, Scout Bikes and assorted removal until the six-drops could finish the work. Only one rare in the deck beside Iden herself.

Only the last game saw me end with more than ten damage on my base. His out-of-aspect Han was doing work, but I played a chunky sentinel at the very right time to stall him at 26.

Absolutely crazy box. I kept a hyperspace Command even though there was no way I could play it, the player to my right kept a unit Boba Fett and two other legendaries (one foil), and I saw at least one more down the table.

The more I play, the more I admire every aspect of the game. Gameplay is solid, fast and engaging. Drafting is clean. Opening packs is fun. Hyperspace borders and foils make even dopey commons exciting.

I haven't played any organized play, but I have picked about a booster box and a half and the starter decks.

My intent is to build 4 Twin Suns decks that are relatively close in power, and use the rest of the cards to fill out a cube.

I've opened two Boba units and a hyperspace foil Force Lightning. They are currently on eBay to further fund either another SoR booster box, or whatever the second upcoming set is.

I've also been clearing out shit from my folks house, and found my old Star Wars CCG cards. That is a nostalgia punch that hits hard. I'm currently building out two sets of decks for it, one an Attack Run Light Side vs. Commence Primary Ignition Dark Side, and the other matched pair will be Echo Base Operations Light Side vs. Target the Main Generators Dark Side.

Add this to my already fairly extensive list of "Ready to Play" CCGs.

Virabhadra wrote: There is a fan-made complete rewrite of Android's rules that some have argued completely missed the designers' intentions. I haven't tried it.

I saw that way back in the day, and decided to disregard it as arrogant dumbassing by an ignorant BGGer. He was obsessed with the idea that the game should have been a real whodunit, and he completely failed to understand the cyberpunk setting.

We played a four-player game of Android on Saturday, but four things went wrong that undermined our enjoyment of the game. First, we only had five hours to play, including teaching the game. The whole point of setting aside a dedicated day for this game was to have enough time to play it, but one guy announced at the start that he need to leave early because his girlfriend had changed their plans for the evening. Second, one of our four players unexpectedly succumbed to analysis paralysis, despite a pre-game discussion about how we had to play efficiently if we were going to finish within five hours. Third, I totally messed up a rule about the conspiracy puzzle pieces with clue symbols. So we treated them as extra clues to resolve, when we should have treated them as opportunities to move a clue. Fourth, one player wasn't paying attention during the rules explanation and thought that the lowest scoring suspect would be the murderer. So he was putting negative clue tokens on his preferred suspect, and positive clues tokens on his innocent hunch.

We drew the case that involved a mass murder at the observatory, which meant that guilty hunches were worth +5 VP. So we all ignored the conspiracy puzzle and only engaged in moderate twilight cardplay, and worked the case really hard. By midgame, we had placed every possible clue token on a suspect, just in time to get an event card that took away that +5 VP for guilty. Then we all worked the conspiracy puzzle obsessively, and that went too fast due to my error about the clue symbols on the puzzle pieces.

Then we ran out of time, at the end of the 9th turn (out of 12), and just scored everything early. One player won big, because he was getting unexpected help from the guy who was confused about negative evidence. And the AP guy screwed himself out of the story points, because he was playing the character with one long personal story instead of two shorter ones.

Despite all that, we did enjoy the game. My music mixes were well-received. On the very first action of first turn of the game, my corrupt cop beat a mob enforcer to death with a steel pipe, which really set the tone for the game. The snitch later died just after I met with him, so the other players joked about how there should be a suspect sheet for my character. I also really enjoyed the moment where I played the dark card "Sir, We Have a Dress Code" on the scruffy private investigator as he tried to enter a ritzy location. Another player was amused to notice that the sexbot was hanging out at all the religious establishments.

Is Android a good game? I think so. It is definitely an innovative board game that mixes in a great deal of theme and setting into a point salad with three major ingredients. Make sure that players read their cards out loud as they play them, so that theme isn't lost. Our group suspects that the game might be more enjoyable the next time we play, as the AP will be reduced and we won't repeat the rules errors involving the clues.

DarthJoJo wrote: The more I play, the more I admire every aspect of the game. Gameplay is solid, fast and engaging. Drafting is clean. Opening packs is fun. Hyperspace borders and foils make even dopey commons exciting.

100%. I begrudgingly agreed to play it with my friends and now I'm completely sold. Also appreciate that most of those dopey commons are actually really good cards.

We played Twin Suns last week with 4 players and it was a total blast. That might actually be my preferred format right now, even with the limited card pool.