What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Twilight Struggle - This was my second try at this, the first being almost two years ago. I squeaked out a US 1-point win in final scoring. I thought I was done for in mid-war. At one point, the USSR was up by 15 and played the card that allowed him to pre-order my cards for the round, and I had a mitt full of Soviet events and the Asia scoring card. I thought I was done for but somehow managed to come out of the round swinging the score back in my direction by a few points. I absolutely love the ebb and flow of this game -- it's like taking part in a dozen simultaneous tug of wars. I've played it infrequently, but it's my favourite game. I joined a TS league this year (this was my opening round) so I'll definitely get more regular plays of it in 2015.

More Gears of War, mission 3. I decided to skip mission 2 after winning mission 1 so I could play a more "normal" clobberin' time mission.

Got to the last part but Marcus Fenix was out of ammo on all 4 of his weapons so he was just running around like an idiot trying to chainsaw people while 2 AI cards popped off per turn. Which is not a great way to stay alive in GoW. If you've discarded that F-ing pistol for a power weapon and you run out of ammo, you are in some deep shit.

After some anxious moments -- would I get home from my work trip on time? (yes) would the blizzard hold off? (pretty much yes) -- I got in a first, five-player game of Twilight Imperium III. We had a pretty good group, and all but one had either played or read the rules as requested beforehand. For time's sake and given the experience level, we ended up playing pretty much strictly vanilla, including the Imperial SC, but with artifacts and a preset map and only 9 VP, and I think in retrospect that was a decent decision, as we finished in about six hours, before the worst of the weather and considering that one player was more or less being taught as we went. I was competitive (which is all I really hope for) with the Hacan but didn't win. There were some growing pains for sure, and most everyone wanted to switch up the SCs in the future, but I think everyone or most everyone would be up to play again, which was, as much as anything, the real goal.

Punched and played a partial game of I, Spy from Lost Boys Productions' Kickstarter. It ended up being partial because my younger daughter (13) hit some definite analysis paralysis and took very lengthy turns. The game is set in pre-Great War Europe, and the players must use various area-influence tactics to boost the influence and (eventually) power of the nation -- one of six -- that they're spying for. Your "alignment" is to stay secret the whole game, which makes thematic sense, but I'm not sure how it will play out or how much knowing another player's alignment will affect one's own moves directly (although there are a lot of ways to directly harm another spy). I definitely need a full game on this. This was around $40, and it's a really solid production for that -- with two fairly significant "howevers" from me. First, the box. It's lovely, with "scratched-in" code words and phrases on it, but it's frankly too small; that the publishers have posted a packing diagram is indicative of the problem. It'll all work, barely, but at best it's "snug." Second, there are many cardboard elements that have to remain secret, and the forty or so politician tiles are both edged in black and have control markers that have to be punched out of them, so it's pretty easy to have some marked tiles, which I do (and the tight packing required doesn't help matters any). Not sure whether it's a real problem or an OCD problem at this point, but I don't know why publishers can't learn the black-edging lesson.

Luchador: Mexican Wrestling Dice - expect a review. Holy shit is this game FUN. This has superflytnt written all over it, figuratively.

Recent plays include:

Cyclades Hades. Played with 4. Seems to be fairly long though, with four I'd say it was 2.5 hours total and the game ended with only 2 metropolises built. I suspect we need to do less fighting and more building/philosophizing.

Dogs of War. I like this game alot. Easy to teach, each faction has a tweak to the strategy, and plays in about 90 minutes with 5 players. Current favorite. I suspect some of the factions win more than others but so far of four games don't know yet; brown dude won 2 of them though.

Cosmic Encounter. Not much to add to the discussion of this one. Good game with a fair amount of randomness for sure.

Viticulture: Tuscany. 2 player game vs wife. Both of us like it alot even though she still hasn't won a game yet. Tuscany adds so many things to the base game and really sprawls the game out.

You know, I have Cosmic Encounter but I've only played it twice. Both 3 player and my wife pretty much says she hates the game... my guess is most of that was the 3 player version. But once something sucks, it sucks. It's hard to blame her when there are 20+ games she likes on our shelves...

I've only gotten 2 or 3 plays out of my copy of Cosmic, as well. Unfortunately it got play amongst my friends without me a few times, and there are many of them that hate the game and refuse to play it. The only time it sees play is usually around my birthday, as I have a rule that a person can force people to play the games they want on their birthday game-night.

Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle, second scenario. Won it on the first try, but it was pretty close. Will attempt the crazier third scenario sometime soon, hopefully.

Took the old gnomish sub Red November out for another spin and as luck would have it this one was struck by calamity, same as the previous one. Except this time I kept my gnomes good and drunk when possible and only had one pass out on me. Otherwise they managed to hold off long enough for rescue. One thing I noticed though is I forgot to adjust the asphyxiation track half way through the game (and none in the previous). It never really dawned on me that one track wasn't moving until about 1/3rd of the way through the game today and then I remembered that was supposed to move when fires break out...Oops!

And I just wrapped up a solo run through of Rune Age. I've only toyed with this one on occasion and my deck was too overwrought with fluff so just couldn't get my chain combos to work like I was hoping. I should pick up the expansion sooner rather than later and really start to learn the different races, that's where I'm weak at, just not sure how a race plays or what their strengths are.

Just got beat by my nearly nine year-old at Splendor, 17 points to 16. Very tight game and I was playing to the best of my ability. Dad is very proud although concerned for my chances at winning anything a few years from now.