What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote:
For sure their next game is Black Sails, the Starz Pirate show. I'm excited but I love Merchants and Marauders so much I hope it's pretty different.

No way! I just started watching that show last weekend. I'm four episodes in, and ... it's not great. It clearly wants to be "Deadwood But With Pirates," but it doesn't have anyone even CLOSE to the Swearingen or Bullock characters.

So far, the show has been more political scheming than any piratey adventures. I'll be curious to see if the boardgame is more of a negotiation style game, and less of a conflict-driven one. I think one interesting thing the show has done is depict the rather ... tenuous ... nature of being a pirate captain. If your crew feels you're not bringing in enough money, you can get your ass voted out of office in a quick and brutal fashion. I could see that concept porting over to a boardgame, where you're constantly having to deal with the real threat of mutiny if you're not earning enough.

Been there, done that, lj. It SUCKED. Next time I will have multiple print-outs. Probably in color. It's worth it. not sure why they didn't just print extras.

Erik Twice wrote:

Black Barney wrote: So Monopoly Deal is decent then? That's good to know, I've been itching to try it.

You know I'm not one to say this kind of stuff so here it goes: There's not just an optimal strategy, it's so incredibly obvious and the game is so beyond shallow that it's impossible not to follow it. Seriously, there's no meaningful decision because the cards are stuff like "Draw 3 cards", "Get money" but there's no limitation to how many you can play in a turn. Imagine Dominion with Uno cards, it's exactly like that.

Seriously, I don't think the game deserves a pass because somehow it's above the expected Monopoly standard. Don't waste your time.

Um. You can only play three cards per turn. EG "Pass GO" to draw two more cards- this card you're deciding whether to waste one of your three actions hoping for a better set in your hand. The sets you're aiming for may relate to the RENT cards you have available, so you might choose to play one of the steal/deal cards on player B instead of player C in order to get the colour you need. I am in no way saying it's anything beyond a basic game, but you're talking total bollocks. It's as if you've never played it.

Played CLASH OF CULTURES with my eldest as a learning game. Undecided on this so far. I like the Advances board and the the whole happiness/culture interactions, but the board itself is a little wonky. By the end game I found myself with too much stuff to put on some of these hexes. If you have a size-4 city, a Wonder, and some dudes on there--it's a cramped and messy pile. Worse if someone else comes calling.

Also, the settlements are so small compared to the other buildings that it can get confusing once cultural influence cranks up and you have jumbles of buildings of various colors. I would have vastly preferred if the settlements were discs that the other buildings slotted into or just sat on. I might homebrew those, because I think owning the hex should be the most prominent feature displayed on it.

Has the same problem as all games with rich tech trees in that it's hard to remember everything you "do." My daughter had some Advance that gave her an idea when she collected from certain settlements and forgot more than she remembered. It took me a while to figure out how much stuff to hold back before attacking because of all the ways I could spend stuff to make things break my way. I think some of this goes away with experience.

I think one of Clash's bigger weaknesses is the last turn, because you're chaining together a huge number of powers and it slows down and gets confusing. Especially if you don't play with the variable end, because then you start doing all kinds of min-maxing on VPs. Still my favorite game, but a definite problem.

Fading Glory is da bomb. Makes sense for GMT to drop it though, it is one of VPGs major title lines and GMT editions are still better value for money.

The variable end of game variant is a MUST in CoC.

Gary Sax wrote: I think one of Clash's bigger weaknesses is the last turn, because you're chaining together a huge number of powers and it slows down and gets confusing. Especially if you don't play with the variable end, because then you start doing all kinds of min-maxing on VPs. Still my favorite game, but a definite problem.

We played variable end and it was still an issue because you end up min-maxing every turn of every round instead of "knowing" when the game ends. It was really swingy. I ended up losing 39.5 to 40.5, but it was probably ±6 points in the turns previous.

I've been playing a lot, lately. Kind of re-inspired me to write again after the demise of the Circus Group as a "regular meetup thing". Anyhow, I've been playing...

Ghost Stories: Still like granite on Viagra.

Journey to the Center of the Earth: Still think this is one of the neatest games I've played in a long time. Very, very different in a cool sort of way. Basically, you don't control a "character", but rather "all of the characters" in a very Heimlich and Co./Top Secret Spies kind of way. It's much more subtle and there's the usual Euro passive-aggressive fuckery that I've come to appreciate.

Tiny Epic Kingdoms: Not sure what to say here. I want to like it, and I think it's a smart game, but it just seems to be lacking in some ways. Maybe I'll come around, maybe it was just the "first play" kind of rough experience trying to figure it out.

Cathedral: I've never had so much fun with my hands on some dark wood. Really love it. It's area control distilled down to an abstract level and it's brilliant.

Conquest of Planet Earth: I first played this with the Esteemed Mr. Launius the first time, and at the last Trashfest Atlanta, to boot. It was an excellent experience. I was hoping to recapture some of that with getting "the home game" but without Richard there, it's not nearly as much fun. Still fun, and I still want to play it some more, especially in the Co-Op mode since it's SO MUCH BETTER, but it's still missing something.

I re-used my San Juan post and put it on my blog, along with some pics and slight revisions.

San Juan: The Game So Nice I Bought It Thrice

The production things I talked about before are not accurate. The cardstock and cardboard are the same.