What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Took the eldest along for open play of Star Wars Unlimited. No one else showed due to gorgeous weather, but we got some games in with the owner. The boy won both of his games against me but lost to the owner by a single point. Pretty proud of him. He was clearly upset at losing but took a break to check puzzles on the spinner rack and came back when he felt better. Losing graciously has been a learning process, but he’s getting better.

Then the owner pulled out Pikit before we left. Featherweight game of collecting cards based on die rolls with a smattering of special powers. Charming mech and kaiju art. You could do a lot worse for a twenty-minute game with teach.

Had a Game Day yesterday and, although only one of my friends was able to make it, it was a blast.

First off was Zombie Dice with the School Bus expansion. We hadn't played this game in a while since (I thought) I lost one of the green dice. Turns out that wasn't the case, and my wife gave me shit about it (it's one of her favorite games).

The Boy joined us for this game only, but he enjoyed it. My friend, Kelly, kept either a) getting run over by the school bus or b) kept getting on the bus in Texas (all the shotguns on the die). In the end, my wife won the game.

Next up was Shark Island. However, my wife told Kelly about Jaws and I explained SI is Jaws without the license. So, we played Jaws. I was the Shark. Kelly played Brody and Quint. My wife played Hooper. Unlike my wife's first attempt at being the shark, I got luck in the first round when the Event Michael Brody's birthday came up and he was placed in south beach, which was my starting location. I used feeding frenzy to eat Brody's son and another swimmer then took off to the deep sea. Kelly was making judicious use of beach closings and both she and my wife were taking away my protein (pulling swimmers out the water). In the end, I ate around 7 swimmers.

Act 2 kinda sucked. The resurface cards were initially bunched around 2 areas, as opposed to 3. Kelly used Quint's Flare, and I was taking damage at the end of the round. Instead of shaking it off at the first opportunity, I decided to risk it. That was a fuck up of monumental proportions on my part. I ended up eating Brody and destroyed 3 parts of the boat and damaged a fourth. However, getting brained by baseball bats and hammers messed me up something fierce. The last round had me getting brained by a hammer, and then the FLARE did me in.

Kelly picked the next game Masterpiece, a game I'd had several times in my childhood. Both my wife and Kelly turned into the Art Harpies. buying up artworks, selling them, and working in concert to deny me Nighthawks (my favorite piece). Despite Kelly's concern that the game was going to be too long, we finished it up in about 30 minutes. I bought the last painting and I spent 400k on a forgery. Kelly ended up again winning.

The last game we played was Dragon's Gold, Kelly was appreciative of the nod towards the dragon art of 1e Monster Manual. The game flew by quickly, with only one dragon horde being lost due to not coming to an agreement. Kelly won, again, with 83 points, while I had 73. I'll call for another game day next month when we will not be so busy.

Rliyen wrote: Had a Game Day yesterday and, although only one of my friends was able to make it, it was a blast.

Unlike my wife's first attempt at being the shark, I got luck in the first round when the Event Michael Brody's birthday came up and he was placed in south beach, which was my starting location. I used feeding frenzy to eat Brody's son and another swimmer then took off to the deep sea. Kelly was making judicious use of beach closings and both she and my wife were taking away my protein (pulling swimmers out the water). In the end, I ate around 7 swimmers.

I love everything about this recap.

Had a game night last weekend with a friend who runs a comic store and three of his friends. We first played my copy of Cutthroat Caverns, which was my first run of the game. I can see myself playing this more in the future as I love the backstabbing potential in some of the cards alongside how crazy some of the monsters can get. It probably isn't for every group though as all of us played too passively, so no one died which feels like a team win in Cosmic Encounter. It still feels nice, but c'mon, you wish you got all the glory.

Next up was my friend's copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I recently got the game myself so I was pretty familiar with the rules, which was good as my friend is the "we'll figure it out as we play" kind of person (I am the opposite)... I like the amount of thematic depth for it being relatively simple and really cheap, even if I died first as a trespasser. The Old Man went after me first, gave me two injuries in a string of strikes. Next turn I dashed out of the house, through a horror tile which led to my third injury. While the Old Man went upstairs to hack some other pour souls, I limped to the garage to try and find some escape vehicles. I found the Orange Car...and a pile of scrap which led me to making enough noise to trigger the Sawyer's card that builds panic. From that, the Hitchhiker spawned right outside, came in the garage, and, well, my body added to the scrap pile.

Once someone else got the axe, we played some Klask while the rest kept playing. God, Klask is great. The noises people make when playing is just unmatched. After the Sawyer player won, we all took turns playing Klask to end the night. Good stuff.

This weekend is the 45th anniversary of the movie Alien, and the local AMC theaters were celebrating by showing it again. A friend easily talked me into going, and we went to the oldest AMC theater in town because it looked like a movie theater from 1979, complete with the movie marquee sign jutting out into the night. Also, it was just across the river from downtown Minneapolis, so a nice area for walking before the movie.

Before heading to the movie, my friend assumed that we would play some Marvel Champions, but I surprised him by instead getting out my old Intruder game from 1980. Despite the cheap paper map and cardboard chits, Intruder is the best board game simulation of Alien. We were lucky and enjoyed a relatively easy game. The xenomorph did evolve all the way to life stage 5 (of 6) and got clones, but we picked off the clones one by one and only lost one character (of 9). We were lucky because the xenomorph only got one of the weapon immunities (against the flamethrowers). The simplicity of the game design allows the game to flow at a good pace, which helped build the tension.

The movie was great of course, but there was one interesting twist. After a few previews but before the movie, there was a special feature. Alien director Ridley Scott was interviewed by Fede Alvarez, the director of the upcoming movie Alien: Romulus.

Last night we had 4 players, and my one friend had really been wanting to try his Rambo Kickstarter with 4. We had played it a lot with just two. So much so that I never wanted to see it again, but here it was. We just played the intro mission, which is a total breeze. My biggest issue with Rambo is that there is a ton of potential that is wasted with some poor design choices. The most egregious example is how it handles wounds. Each round you choose one of 4 "stances", which control your actions for the round. They are pivotal in getting things done, and you can't take the same stance two rounds in a row. If you get a wound, you have to cover up a stance. Almost nothing will remove a wound, so it is likely to be that way for the entire mission.

You can get wounded by taking too much damage... and that's fine. But you can also get wounded by an arbitrary flip of an event card. And that is literally what happened to all of us on the first turn of the game. So right off the bat, before ANYONE had done anything, we lost 25% of our player agency. For the entire game. Later on we actually lost a second one! Fuck that shit. If I ever have to play this game again, I'm house ruling that wounds hang around for 2 rounds and then magically heal.

After that we got to the good stuff, as Cosmic Frog made its triumphant return to the table. After a very long time. We only had one new player, but this was also the first time using the Find Muck expansion, so I had to explain mental combat and muck lands. Muck lands never actually came into play since no one ever ended up in the outer dimensions. Highlights were a multi-round battle between myself and another player, during which several land tiles were passed back and forth to our gullets, getting slimier every time. What was extra funny was that we fought so long, the game ended and no one ever got to deposit the lands in their vault.

While that was going on, one player managed to pack his vault with so much land, he ended up with a score of 34 while the rest of us all tied at 25. Great stuff.

2p game day with Kuhrusty.

TRICK SHOT 2e. For a long time I poo-poohed sports games. Sports are an abstraction of combat, and board games are an abstraction of whatever their subject is, so playing a sports board game just seemed like an abstraction of an abstraction. I'd rather just play a game directly about blowing things up or murdering people etc.

The counterargument being that none of that matters as long as the game is fun. Which Trick Shot is. The game has a bit of a chess-like or abstract feel to it; you can only move/pass in straight lines, orthogonally or diagonally. So you have to position yourself around to set up plays. There's a Blood Bowl similarity to the activation system, where you can keep moving people until you fail a roll.

The full game has a few dozen different teams, which gives each position a special ability -- maybe your center can pass through occupied squares, etc. Each team also has its own arena, which has another special exception to mix up the game. We were playing in San Jose, which makes it so that failed rolls after moving cannot be rerolled. Normally they can be, at the cost of a Stamina token. Since failed rolls end your turn, this made things very slow and low-scoring, since the clock ticks down at the end of every turn.

At the end of the third period, it was a 0-0 tie, so we decided that the rink finally fixed their Zamboni and made the ice more skateable. We got rid of the arena card, which made things more dynamic. Kuhrusty won in sudden death.

I am not a hockey fan, but it seems to get the feel right. About the only thing that we didn't see were lots of banks off the walls, and behind the net play. Otherwise, very fun. Great looking cartoon minis, plays fast. A few fiddly rules but nothing too bad. My rating 8/10, his 6/10.

STAR WARS: UNLIMITED. The newest SW CCG. I swore off CCGs years ago, but a friend felt strongly enough about it that he gifted me a starter set ("Spark of Rebellion") and a bunch of commons.

Aside: I have a theory that there's an unwritten law that 90% of all Star Wars games are required to have some variation of either "Empire," "Rebellion," or "Force" in the title. Similar to my theory about how 90% of all Indian restaurants must have a variation of "Taj," "Palace," or "India" in their name.

Anyway it's pretty fun, definitely shows the years of design iteration behind the CCG genre -- everything is super clear and rigorously defined. It plays very snappily; you take a single action and then it's their turn; repeat until you both pass in succession. Then draw cards, untap everything, and start the next round. Like many (most?) modern deckbuilders, it doesn't have lands; rather you may play a card facedown during cleanup to turn it into a land -- getting rid of unplayable cards. There's a "ground" section of the table and a "space" one, and they can only attack each other. Besides that, the cards do about what you'd expect. Summon dudes to attack later, attach things to dudes to give them bonus to their attack or HP, heal people (damage is persistent across turns, unlike MtG), mess with your opponent's stuff, etc.

I think if I had found this 25 years ago I would have been blown away. As is, it's a fine game; maybe the best CCG I've played. But I am still down on the blind buy format enough that I won't be buying any more cards.

I was the Empire and he was the Rebellion. I couldn't get my expensive capital ships out fast enough and got killed right as I was about to actually start doing interesting things. Both of us gave it a 4/10. I think I'd rate it higher if I liked deckbuilding, but I'm no longer fascinated by the "lonely fun" of going through cards and looking for exploitable combos to try out later.

STAR WARS: THE DECKBUILDING GAME. I've played this a fair amount but he hadn't. Like the CCG, it's a well-designed game that isn't especially groundbreaking, but does pretty much everything well. And like our previous play, I was the Empire and couldn't get out my capital ships in time to avoid defeat. He gave it 5/10, I give it 7/10.

Overall I went 0/3 for the day, BROKEN. But I had fun.

dysjunct wrote: Aside: I have a theory that there's an unwritten law that 90% of all Star Wars games are required to have some variation of either "Empire," "Rebellion," or "Force" in the title. Similar to my theory about how 90% of all Indian restaurants must have a variation of "Taj," "Palace," or "India" in their name.

Your theory is basically correct. A few years back, we were talking about SW games and Josh wrote up a list of around a dozen of them, all of them using that formula in some respect, and one fake one he dropped in there just to test whether people could pick it out from among the list of games that were "Empire", "Rebellion" or "Force." Uba said that she had to check the site's archives every time she heard of a new one to see if she'd already announced it because she just couldn't keep track of all the George Foremans.

The more I read about (and pseudo- play) Star Wars: Unlimited, the more and more I find it similar to World of Warcraft: the Trading Card Game (Which I LOVED back in the day).

I have a few budget decks I've put together and I am hoping to convince someone to play with me this weekend at our annual games retreat.

I also have a few of the Disney Lorcana starter decks that I am going to try to inflict on someone, as well as a host of other dead CCGs that I keep around because I just can't let go.

Grid Iron Fantasy Football (Upper Decks very first foray into the gaming sphere, it's very Blood Bowl-esque), Star Trek CCG: 2E & Star Wars CCG (both from Decipher), MLB Showdown, and the afore mentioned World of Warcraft TCG.

I have a bunch of other titles, but I don't want to scare off any potential victims.

Magical Athlete remains one of the greatest games of all time. That is all.