What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Dug out Epic Duels on the weekend and played a few games with my 7 year old. I've come home from work the last two nights and he has had it all set up on the coffee table ready to go again. Good times.

I've been wanting to talk about a couple games i played last weekend.

First is Carl Chyduk's new game, Red7. This is easily his most approachable design, it's some kind of mad mix of Fluxx, and a last man standing trick taker? Love letter? I'm not sure exactly, but this game really resonated with me. I highly recommend checking it out if you like curious card games.

Next is the FFG edition of Fury of Dracula. This was my second attempt at this game, but in the first game I botched the rules for combat and that was that. This time I mostly had the rules down, but the game was still flat. I somewhat attribute this to half the players at the table that weren't invested in the game or were complaining when I'd give them the slip, or how I'd murder them when their dumbasses tried to fight Dracula at night unarmed, but I'm not sure it was all their fault. I also found it kind of boring to be Dracula, which is odd since I usually like being the one in all vs one, but here I felt my turns would take thirty seconds and then five minutes later the game would come back to me. It's not that complex of a game, you just move, and if you don't have an encounter draw cards , or don't. I don't get it. Not on the trade like before another play, but I'm considering it. Has anyone else had trouble with this game?

The only problem that I have experienced with Fury of Dracula (FFG) is that my friends frequently want to play it, to the point where I am getting a little burned out on it.

Your players are making the game boring by not engaging fully with the game. If they are just moving about aimlessly and hoping to run into Dracula, they are playing wrong. They should be drawing cards every turn, in hopes of putting together a good set of weapons and drawing cards that will reveal Drac's trail. Once they are on the trail, they need to ease off on the cards and use logic and intuition to figure out where to catch up with Dracula. If they still have nothing after the first six turns, they should spend a point of resolve to at least flip a card in your trail. From then on, you should be feeling pressure as they are on the hunt.

If your players can't be bothered to think while they play, then they are not worthy of Fury of Dracula.

Holy shit, buttfucked again at Twilight Struggle, and am starting to wonder how the flying fuck the US is supposed to win. So far the games are going in the exact opposite way to my preconceptions, i.e. I'm managing to contain the early USSR onslaught pretty well, being in touch once, level once and even ahead once in the middle rounds, then expecting this "tide to turn" but the more I see of the later cards, the more I think its nonsense, theres as much red as white in the deck, there arent loads of cards that overpower the soviets, so how are the US supposed to win?

I figure I'm doing some general things wrong, maybe playing too many bad events to the space race (and not using the OP points and just dealing with the bad events), and probably even using too many events (though I dont think I did that just now), not ending up with enough influence on the board (though I struggle to see how I could have gotten that much more). Tonight after getting to 0 VP, he just dropped 2 scoring cards on me and I was down by 10 again basically, and in short order 14 and then 18 and then humped in Europe.


I even managed to keep some good influence in Middle East this time, but I could never get hold of Thailand and he got Pakistan and India early so Asia was a clusterfuck, I kept having to throw scoring cards in as damage limitation (Africa, Asia) where it led to 0 points as there was no way I could get ahead in those areas.


Still incredibly tense drama and awesome experience but to get into the late war 3 times and every time feel like the shit is getting worse rather than feeling like the cavalry is arriving is making me feel a bit lost.

It will be good to see in the VASSAL game I've got against KingPut (25 plays) how he handles the US, though admittedly against a self confessed buffoon in charge of the USSR

Fury of Dracula clicked for my group on the third try and I'm dying to play it again.
First time, we had a few people completely uninterested which killed it.
Second time, we lost those lame people and then screwed up mechanically, didn't clear the board when a new vampire matured. So Drac had three of them one after the other.
But the third time, it was great. I was Drac and managed to evade them pretty well when they finally cornered me in East Europe. I made it to Castle Dracula and all four hunters hit me pretty hard but I managed to get away. Threw up a road block that caught all but one of them and was one turn away from freedom. That one guy killed me right as night fell.
I was crushed but it was great fun. Sometimes those slow periods build up the tension for an amazing moment and this was it.

But I could see being a little pissed if you invest three hours and it's an anticlimactic ending.

Played a 6 player game of Cosmic Encounter that was fantastic! I shared a win with one other player.

Then played a 4 player game of Ascension. First time I'd played in a long time but handily crushed my opponents. A good night.

edit- I just remembered I also won a game of Coup. A night where I win every game is like catching an eagle, and it has a diamond in its mouth.

Bull Nakano wrote: First is Carl Chyduk's new game, Red7. This is easily his most approachable design, it's some kind of mad mix of Fluxx, and a last man standing trick taker? Love letter? I'm not sure exactly, but this game really resonated with me. I highly recommend checking it out if you like curious card games.

Yeah, Red is pretty cool. It can be rough when you have a decent hand that just has no way to win now, and you're trying to figure out if there's any way you can swing it.

I played King of New York for the first time tonight. I'm not that impressed. Part of what makes the original charming is that it's so focused. Either you're in Tokyo, or you're not. You're either going for claws to try to smash people, or you're skulking in the corner healing and getting points. I give a bigger breakdown of the rules below, but it really feels like you're fighting against the board and managing little infantry units and risk rather than having a big monster throw down.

In King of New York, they replaced the 1's, 2's, and 3's with 3 entirely new symbols which sounds like it'll make the game more interesting by removing the boring sides of the dice. One of them is a star; if you get 3 stars you get a little trophy that sits by you until someone else gets 3 stars. You get one point for taking the trophy, and every star that you roll in future turns is worth 1 while you have it. There's also the ability to wreck stuff - there are buildings that take 1, 2, or 3 wrecking symbols to destroy, which will give you various bonuses (usually points for buildings, but some give you energy or health) based on the tiles you can remove from your borough. Every time you wreck a building, some infantry units show up (on the opposite side of the building tile). The infantry can also be destroyed, but are usually harder to destroy than the building that they replace. Destroying infantry usually gives energy or health. The third new symbol is the "ouch" side, where the infantry attack. If you roll 1 Ouch, you get hit by the infantry in your space at a rate of 1 wound per tile. If you roll 2 ouches, everyone in your space takes damage: 2 monsters can occupy the same borough. If you roll 3 or more ouches, all infantry attack the monsters in their spaces, and you get another trophy that gives you 3 points while you hold it. At the end of your turn you can go to a different borough to try to avoid the military presence that you've attracted.

Manhattan is the replacement for Tokyo. All claws rolled there affect the outside boroughs and vice versa. You can't roll hearts and use them. There are little buildings to destroy there too. There are three steps to it, where you ascend higher the longer you stick it out. (1 energy/1 point if you start in downtown, 1/2 for midtown, and 2/2 for uptown).

I'm not sure what I expected going into this, but it's pretty different from King of Tokyo. There are potentially different ways to try to win, such as crushing buildings or staying in Tokyo, or going for being the Star for awhile, but you're still at the mercy of the dice. In King of Tokyo when you get those extra numbers that you weren't trying to get, you can just set them aside and manage the damage/health/energy that you get on that last roll. In King of New York, you have to do the upkeep for each of the symbols. You have to destroy something if you can, you have to check who gets damage, etc. It's not that much more upkeep, but it made it feel clunkier to me.

played some games last night;

High Society; this is probably the best auction game I have played. IN part because it is short but also it achieves that fine balance between gambling and calculation. You can figure a few things out but ultimately the winner is the one who makes the right gamble at the right time. Awesome game. Two of us lost the 2nd game with 3mill left each.

Tichu; i taught a bunch of newbies Tichu then hammered the other team at it. Weirdly my partner did a lot of the hammering though despite being new to the game.

Bohnanza; I thought this was pretty good. Not quite as much trading in it as i would have liked. Little real haggling went on. Often people just traded if they had the cards available.

Storm over Dien Bien Phu; played this after everyone left bar one. I was enroute to a Vietminh victory but we finished early as it was late. Still probably my GOTY 2014 pick.

DukeofChutney wrote: Bohnanza; I thought this was pretty good. Not quite as much trading in it as i would have liked. Little real haggling went on. Often people just traded if they had the cards available.

Storm over Dien Bien Phu; played this after everyone left bar one. I was enroute to a Vietminh victory but we finished early as it was late. Still probably my GOTY 2014 pick.

Played Bohnanza myself this past week for the first time in years. This is a low-temperature game, as much a pasttime as competition. It would seem to me a great game for when you're meeting new people.

Storm Over Dien Bien Phu -- another Nakamura-inspired title. Haven't played yet. Is it on Vassal?

S.

Don't play Bohnanza with less than 5, there are too few opportunities to deal because there are so many types of beans there's no competition except for the very low numbered beans.

Not sure about low-temperature, we are constantly yelling and getting mad and cutting each other off and not coming through on future promises.