What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I went over to a friend's house on Saturday for a game day. We started off light with three player game of Runewars, my first time playing the game. I chose the Uthuk dudes because they looked pretty ruthless. The game was slow going because of some nasty neutral units blocking key choke points. So sadly there wasn't any conflict between players. The game ended suddenly when one of the players got three runes in one turn. I really enjoyed it and look forward to playing it again, albeit more aggressively.

We then played a four player game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Again, my first try at the game. I enjoyed building my own castle, and setting prices of the castle tiles was quite fun. The scoring in the game wasn't too bad because the host had it down packed. A good game overall, I'd play it again.

After that, we played Vegas Showdown. I've never had so much fun building my own casino! I enjoyed the bidding phase, and how to best furnish the casino. I ended up completely filling in my casino, hoping I'd best some bonus points, but nope, no dice... I'd love to get a copy of this. A nice simple game where everyone can get into it.

We finished off the night with a game of Endeavor. You basically build trade routes and gain resources throughout the game. It was enjoyable enough, but I suck at these kinds of games, so I can never really develop a 'strategy'. I just kind of go with whatever I have and hope for the best.

I've been playing a lot of two player stuff with the wife lately.

Smash Up - I've been digging card games lately and I've recently gone back to this silly game. I've played four or five games of this recently and I really love the trickery you can pull off with the cards. Sometimes a good play is not readily apparent, but I've seen some very interesting stuff these past four games. I think Smash Up gets written off because of it's dumb theme/idea, but I actually think it's a pretty strong design. Note - don't ever play Steampunk/Wizards. You will get crushed. Badly.

Saint Malo - This is part of the Alea Medium Box series if I'm not mistaken. It's a Euro style game where you're building your own little village/city. Yeah it sounds boring as fuck, but it has two things to help differentiate it from the pack. First, you're rolling dice, Yahtzee style to figure out what you can do each turn. Second, instead of putting chits or tokens on your board you draw on it with a dry eraser maker. Totally gimmicky...but fuck it, I like it! It makes setup literal 15 seconds. Slap a couple boards on the table, give each player a marker and you're off. The game itself is tricky and it has a punishing 'pirate's attack" mechanic, but my wife loves it. Cool little Euro game with dice. Not something you see everyday.

Epic Spell Wars... - I've always loved this stupid little take that card game. The artwork is great and reminds me of Adventure Time...and the gameplay is surprisingly good. It has lots of smart little design choices that make it stand way above other card games in this genre. I didn't know if it would work well with two...but it does. Thanks to the cards that say attack stronger/est or weaker/est. You really need to figure out the timing of your spell and if it's going to hit your opponent. The game certainly plays better with more people, but I was pleasantly surprised this worked as well as it did with two. My wife loves it because the game lets you be an enormous asshole.

Lords of Waterdeep - Again, played this with 2. Certainly not the best number, but it works fine. I'm always pleased with just how goddamn clean this design is. They trimmed away all the fat and shit that makes most worker placement games suck and they added a slight screw you factor with the Intrigue deck. Also, when I play I insist on reading the dumb flavor text and calling the cubes, wizards/thieves/fighters/priests. Gotta soak up all that D&D flavor you sexy bitches! I still enjoy this game quite a bit and will gladly play it anytime. It's never going to be one of my all time favorites, but its earned it's spot on my forever shelf.

Nice game day yesterday.

Steam - we played with the Brussels Metro 3-player map from one of the expansions. It's a weird map with odd rules, but basically cubes and cities will be popping up regularly as track goes down. It's vary tight for space and money. If you have positive income and build, you go down a notch on the income track even if you have the cash. I was a little skeptical about it, but it was a great map for three.

Cockroach Poker - I was hosting, so my wife joined us for this. The newbie is a regular poker player and his first game went terrible, but the second game I did pretty poorly out of the gate and they all finished me off. Such a fun game.

Istanbul - I was neither blown away nor repulsed by this the first time around and that continued with a second play.

Nations - This game will forever be all over the place with me. After several good plays, this one was lousy. Bryan picked Rome and I stupidly picked Persia. Rome is all about military, Persia is about colonies -- which you get with military. The card reveal strongly favored military, but only one colony was coming out a turn, and Bryan could always get it ahead of me. He was quickly in the military feedback loop of the game (military strength determines player order) and there was little either of us other players could do about it. Eric was weakest on military and had to waste actions taking wars to keep from losing them. The military thing kicked in for Bryan so fast that I felt my situation was hopeless on round two. Not era two, round two. Of eight.

I like a lot about Nations but it still heavily favors a military strategy, like every other goddamn civ game out there, because the most important development in all of human history is how much we can kill each other. I need to abandon the idea that civ games are anything except wargames with scotch-taped-on tech trees. It wouldn't be so bad if there were other machines lurking within Nations to help out strategies other than military, but there isn't. Even the resource loss in sticking with military can often be easily offset with colonies and battles.

I'd like to see if anyone's tried changing player order to Books, which I think makes more sense, makes Books worth more, and blunts military a little (though when I've seen it floated on BGG they have a conniption because military should always be the best thing because yay military -- while simultaneously arguing that such a change would make military "useless" because it's otherwise so very weak).

Castles of Mad King Ludwig - This is a surprising amount of fun. The room names make for an amusing narrative (for a while my only room was the "Mold Room". Come into my castle, head straight for the Mold Room.) and honestly, we were all a little disappointed when it ended, not because we wanted more turns to put plans in place but just because picking rooms and building is fun. It's feather-light and heavily tilted more towards an optimization puzzle, but for some reason it clicks.

4-player Cthulhu Wars yesterday. We all thought it was really good. 4 player dynamic really makes the game shine as opposed to the awful 2 player experience I had last time.

Early on, we all kind of forgot you can easily create your own gates, and we spent way too much time and resources trying to take others' gates instead. The Black Goat player just kept to himself and kept building, and we stupidly ignored him until he was too powerful to stop. He ended up winning with 34 points while the rest of us all tied for second place at 23 points.

We're going to play a 3 player game tomorrow, so I'll see how it plays with three.

Catacombs: Wife liked, but said it was way too hard. Told her that it had everything to do with her not playing 2 characters. Daughter loved it, no excuses or complaints.

Beasty Bar: 20 plays in, still loving it. Best card game ever.

TransAmerica: Great game, period. Kids can't get enough, and honestly, I'm tiring of it but it beats watching shit TV.

Cathedral: Everyone loves this nasty little game.

Nuclear War: Still not very fun unless you have 10 players.

Agricola: Wife hates it now. I still love it but now I am certain to never get a 3-4p game in.

Stone Age: LOVE. LOVE. Still. 20+ plays at least and all I want to do is play it again.

Tried again solo 2 COGs at Belly of the Beast (mission 3) in Gears of War. Epic game. EPIC. Ended the game huddling in the final room in the corner with a drone in my area, not a single ammo counter left but one grenade and down to 3 order cards between Dom and Marcus Fenix. What a great game, despite its AI card quirks. In the last bit (2 AI cards per turn) I fired off like 5 torque bow rounds I had been saving. What a weapon for using "Guard."

What saved me this game was pushing ahead even without all the enemy dead. Gotta use the Roadie Run and the Explore cards along with a follow. Didn't see how powerful the follow was... lots of the AI cards don't move the enemy very far, so if you dash by clumps of enemies (or retreat), it can take several turns for them to follow you into the next room while you take a breath. You can also gun them down with your guard cards more easily that way, as they file in a species at a time.

Barnes made an interesting comment that I sort of agree with about Corey K, that his games usually have tons of subsystems. I think this design is lean and mean. Do you like fucking up aliens? That's all this game is about. That's what makes it the best Dudes in a Corridor for me personally.

Today I had to take the dogs to the vet to get their shots caught up, so with the rest of my day off I did some solo gaming.

First up were two games of Gears of War, since all the cool kids are doing it. I ran Mission 1 and 2 with that dude who activates equipment and picks up weapons without using a card. Mission 1 was a breeze, and I was never really in any danger. Mission 2 though, that didn't go so well. Some very, very tense moments...Not once but twice I got myself down to 0 cards in my hand but managed to buy some time. At the second doorway though I stumbled in my dance with the Berserker. As I rushed to get The Hammer a Drone got in a wicked shot and dropped my guy.

Finding myself with some time I then pulled out Firefly which I received a week back from Pete. Mainly the goal was to get reacquainted with the game. The solo goal I picked was getting solid with five people. I got my missions all planned out, was doing well, then my contraband was confiscated. Then I fell flat on a mission for Niska...And my plan was shot. So I decided to pack it in early. The solo game for this was alright which surprised me considering how little interaction between players there was in this game. I wish the crew selection was a bit different, picking up to four that cost $1k or less just seems like an open door to seeing the same crew every single time.

The daughter had been saying for a few weeks now that she wanted to play some games, but as she was far behind in some reading assignments we've had to put those off until she was caught up. Tonight, she was caught up and asked to play some games, so we did. First was Hercules the Ant. A co-op HABA game where the goal is to create chains of ants to bring wood back to the anthill construction site and complete the anthill before Anthony the Anteater makes it to the end of his track and makes a meal out of you and your ant loved ones. The game is one about efficiency and making direct paths. I swear the dice is weighted because in the two times we've played this now, the Anthony face rarely pops up...Just twice tonight out of dozens of rolls. So the hill was completed without issue (outside of me realizing I need to better explain continuous and some other words to my daughter and better teach efficiency and planning - Which was very hard to do with a 2 year old picking up pieces, flipping tiles and generally causing confusion and delay).

We had time for a quick game of What's in Ned's Head? before bath time. We had my son yelling "Huzzah" to start the reaching into the head. He's throw his arm out quick, but then recoil in disgust at the bugs and other things that were planted in there. He was more interested in the cards, he couldn't wait to get his next card. We had a winner take all round...Which I won!

And to wrap up the night I just sat down for another game of Rune Age. Got stomped again...I need to read up some strategy articles or something for this game. Because I am just not good at it at this point.

5 Player Sons of Anarchy - Grim Bastards won by $1 at the end so a pretty good game. Didn't lose much jumping to 5 players from 4.

Played some Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice after reading about it in this thread like a day ago from Stormseeker (had some free time so checked out a local store hadn't been to and picked it up). Really enjoyed it, thanks for tip.

Is the 2nd edition of Luchador! out? It has the improved ring right?

The second edition is indeed out. I don't know much about the first edition, but the ring in this one is ACES!

I need to get more plays in so I can review this bad boy in the next week or two.