What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

repoman wrote:

Josh Look wrote: Last time I played I got completely trounced by Chaos and I'm not sure I could have done anything about it, so who knows.

Sounds like an outbreak of "Josh Look's Poopy Pants"

I let the guy I was playing off with a broken nose and I only punched one hole through the wall this time, so I'd say I took it in stride.

Jeeze, my solo game of Warriors of God is as close as it can get with one turn (a shortened one) to play. The French came out of the gate stomping, the English have been clawing their way back, but at the beginning of the final turn the French are up four, the English will gain four if no territories change hands. Essentially a tie with one round of battles left. But -- Burgundy is already in battle-mode and Joan is right next to it. If the French pick up Normandy it's over, unless the English can figure out a way to really make changes on other parts of the board. I've never had a game come down to the wire as close as this one, essentially a dead heat with six lengths to the finish.

What a great game.

S.

Clash of Cultures tonight, 2p. My opponent is an incredibly bloodthirsty, combative 2p civ game opponent, but this game has a tipping point. If you defend yourself with soldiers and match an offensive civ with techs, you can squeeze 2-3 non-combat techs ahead of them. If you do and hold on till like... the 4th set of turns, you will pull out ahead. I ended up winning a fairly straightforward 21-19 win, primarily because while he was threatening me and moving into place I managed to grab barter, currency, and trade routes while he was using move actions. Once I had that income coming in it was unlikely he was going to beat me.

So I wouldn't say that 2p doesn't incentivize war, it does. But on the other hand, it's a high risk strategy. If your opponent copes they can pull out ahead an beat you comfortably on points.

Man, I <3 the game and want to play it with others than my current opponent.

Gary Sax wrote: Clash of Cultures

How long does it take? It's on Vassal.

Sagrilarus wrote: Jeeze, my solo game of Warriors of God is as close as it can get with one turn (a shortened one) to play. The French came out of the gate stomping, the English have been clawing their way back, but at the beginning of the final turn the French are up four, the English will gain four if no territories change hands. Essentially a tie with one round of battles left. But -- Burgundy is already in battle-mode and Joan is right next to it. If the French pick up Normandy it's over, unless the English can figure out a way to really make changes on other parts of the board. I've never had a game come down to the wire as close as this one, essentially a dead heat with six lengths to the finish.

What a great game.

S.

Anymore news about when the reprint will be available? I wonder why they don't have a preorder for this one?

Sagrilarus wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Clash of Cultures

How long does it take? It's on Vassal.

Longish evening (3-4 hours to be safe). Played it with Stonecutter once.

stoic wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Jeeze, my solo game of Warriors of God is as close as it can get with one turn (a shortened one) to play. The French came out of the gate stomping, the English have been clawing their way back, but at the beginning of the final turn the French are up four, the English will gain four if no territories change hands. Essentially a tie with one round of battles left. But -- Burgundy is already in battle-mode and Joan is right next to it. If the French pick up Normandy it's over, unless the English can figure out a way to really make changes on other parts of the board. I've never had a game come down to the wire as close as this one, essentially a dead heat with six lengths to the finish.

What a great game.

S.

Anymore news about when the reprint will be available? I wonder why they don't have a preorder for this one?

TOOK THE GAME TO TWELVE TURNS AND IT ENDED IN A DRAW!!!

Holy crap, I've never seen that happen before. In the last two turns there was a huge pile of deaths, both from disease and from three really outrageous rolls on retreats that killed off leaders, one with four guys covering him. The final turn was all about jockeying to roll over Burgundy and claim or dislodge a final few controls, each one critical given how close the game was. In the end each grabbed two more, a push, that resulted in a perfect tie at the end of the game.

Damn.

Henry VI (three stars) failed to control Aquitaine for three turns. That could have swung the game as much as six points, but even four or two would have made the difference. He's kind of a putz in battle so I left him there, and he booted it.


Reprint -- I was in the office a week ago and they told me they had not received any of the parts for it yet. So it may still be a while. They don't have it up on preorder, leading me to believe it may be direct to the retailers? I'll be curious to see, and see how it does.

I'll tell you what, if they had opted to print a deluxe version, with full-inch chits on wood and a cloth map for $150, I'd have jumped at it.

S.

So more solo sessions with Band of Brothers: Ghost Panzers. It takes a while to get the modifiers internalized, but I keep checking whether I've done everything because the game's so simple.

Russian tanks are so drastically different from German. They usually have superiority in number, but are just hopeless in firing after moving. Meanwhile, the German *can* somewhat move and fire. While this reduces their reliability by 50%, they forces the Russians to operate at even lower effectiveness.

Played Runebound with the Avatars of Kelnov ending (we play with all of the adventure and market card expansions, as well as the house rules for the market from BGG.) Avatars is probably the least interesting of the small expansions, because it essentially trades the Dragonlords for Avatars and doesn't even have a "final battle" sequence like Scepter does with the giants. It was Spiritspeaker Elga vs. Runemaker Tara vs. Arvel Worldwalker. Arvel got a slow start and then died in her first fight with a blue, so she never really threatened in the game (this was the lone new player and it showed.) Meanwhile, Elga and Tara basically crushed all before them and were neck and neck on Avatars until Elga (me) finally triumphed over her third who happened to be the All-Father himself. Good dice with the Arrowhounds which I picked up for free thanks to one of the Avatars encounter cards really gave me the edge throughout the game. I've also noticed that the Mists of Zanaga characters definitely have an edge in overall power when compared to the other expansions' heroes (about on par with the promotional heroes.)

Then we shifted to Tribune. I drew a hand that let me take over both the Senators and the Vestal Virgins on turn 1 and neither of the other players had the cards to take either from me on turn 2, which means that I was able to snag both tribune and permanent favor of the gods in the first two turns and really only had to coast from there to get 4 victory conditions (money and laurels) and actually finished with 5.

The new player said he liked both games, so we decided to try a fusion of them (mostly because neither of them had played it and wanted to) and played Lords of Waterdeep for the final game of the evening. The Silverstars and Piergeiron Paladinson prevailed over the City Guard and Nymara Scheiron by only 3 points, while the Red Sashes and Sammereza Sulphontis finished considerably behind. There was a lot of action in Cliffwatch Inn, as all three of us were running out of quests pretty regularly.

Another game day.

I played only three games, because we have to leave early.

The usual Takenoko. Always pleasant.

Then we played Five Tribes. I don't like it. It's surprising that I have such strong feeling toward it. It has nothing to do with the slave card though. The theme/mechanic connection comes up blank to me. Even with Carcassonne and Kingdom Builder I have explanation for their theme/mechanic connection. Then there's this strange paradox about the game, in which you have gazillion of choices at first, and then the number of choices dwindles toward the end of the game. It's also extremely tactical (which is not always a negative). The dynamic is somewhat random, and the starting state of the game can fluctuates greatly, depending on map set up, merchandise and available djinn. But unlike Kingdom Builder, the change of dynamic caused by these variables feel very chaotic.

This is a game that I will probably like with repeat play, because it rewards familiarity (especially on recognizing patterns), but I'm not sure if I can muster the will to play it again.

Then there's Nuns on the Run. Very fun game, very thematic, and a theme I completely adore. The game has one glaring weakness though, that it's very fragile. It depends on players' total understanding on the rules of the game. You can track whether someone make a mistake/cheat during a game, but that wouldn't be very fun...