What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

lj1983 wrote:

edulis wrote: Got rocked by a 6 A-wing swarm in a game of X-wing. Yes 6 of them. Good lord. Flown well with lots of blocking and lots and lots of shots. First time I've seen this this build.

I've seen it once or twice, and its definetely a high-skill build. I'd be interested to see what you were playing against them.

It has all the classic swarm pros/cons, just with alittle better durability and maneuverability at the cost of some damage. I've seen it with 4 prototypes and 2 PTL greens, or 6 prototypes, with 2 having proton rockets (I think the PTL version is alittle stronger). kills BBBBz, and most fat ships and really limits the effectiveness of control builds, whether stress or ion. Suffers against phantoms especially and (less so) against soontir. 2 dice attacks just have a hard time getting through 4 agility. But there is something terrifying looking across the table and being outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1.

I was flying Ramman decimator and Soontier w/ PTL and a stealth device and Mauler mithal with PTL and an engine upgrade (I call this a cheap man's interceptor)... anyway I set up poorly and bumped Mauler into Soontier and then Soontier into an A wing. He one shot both of them. 3 dice rolled 4 blanks. Then three dice rolled and 3 blanks.. Boom! then it was a matter of time to destroy the Decimator.

Played mother-frackin JACKS with my 12 year daughter last night for quarters. Despite being forced to play 'eggs in the basket' to her 'onesies' I still made enough for a doughtnut on the way to work this morning.

Also I now roll a D6 for damage.

Eldritch Horror with the wife. I love the changes to some of the mechanics (e.g. man have rumors improved), but it's slow going right now till I learn the icon soup and process. And I am crawling in every asset I ever wanted because of the Politician. Hopefully it will improve.

THESEUS: THE DARK ORBIT

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."—Plutarch, Theseus

Having recently purchased its Bots expansion, my son and I renewed our Theseus: The Dark Orbit contests. After first purchasing it last year, we initially played Theseus quite a bit, but, we set it aside to play other games--that was a mistake! Fortunately, for us, the Bots expansion gave us a ready excuse to bring Theseus back to our table. It's apparent on a second visit to this game that we shouldn't have left it in stasis. Adding to our mistake, we also hadn't played, but had purchased, its Space Station cards expansion, which adds another ten bonus cards to the game, adding to its alluring entropy of change.

With renewed gameplay, my opinion about this amazing game remains unchanged: it's amazing. Defining its nature is the classical Ship of Theseus Paradox. Game play evolves when you change only one or more of its elements--the sum of its new parts lends it an entirely new identity. Don't be fooled by surface appearances, the game just isn't the same once one of its parts is altered. Everything changes when you rearrange its parts: for example, when you: rearrange the order of the sector boards; swap out the bonus cards; and/or when you choose to play a different faction or oppose another.

Theseus's cycle of change and game mechanics create interesting decisions. Everything about its mechanics reenforces its theme of being trapped on a space station where you're both the predator and the prey engaged in a yen-yang contest to survive. Its primordial Mancala engine fuels the game's temporal orbit. Theseus feels like you're playing tag on a spinning space station where players orbit the game board while reacting to its ever changing Newtonian forces.

Despite its interesting array of decisions and constant entropy, gameplay is extremely satisfying. Tension builds to a climax once players run out of faction cards--once that happens, players desperately race to add points for a victory or act to stymy an opponent from doing the same. Theseus's end game arrives all too suddenly, it's almost a surprise. If you held on to your strategy just long enough before Theseus's centrifugal forces caused you to let loose your grip, then you'll win. It's the same fun feeling that you had when you were a kid on the playground and attempted to hold on to a merry-go-round/round-a-bout while your best friends were spinning it as fast as they could to eject you off of it! One pointer: if you find that game play is talking too long, then you've likely overlooked Theseus's essential rule in its Pending Card Phase requiring a player to replace an installed faction card with another of their factions card from their deck in the now vacated pending card slot on that sector board--this is Theseus's count-down timer--forgetting it removes an essential part from its sum that gives it its identity.

Bots adds a sixth faction to the base game. It includes some interesting new powers with its "Bots" faction cards. Of these, my favorites are: one faction card giving you a new hook/trapping action allowing you to wisk-away an enemy to another sector when you move on the start of your turn; another faction card offering you a force field shielding one of your units; a faction card giving you a missile launcher to damage an opponent in another sector; and, an incredibly powerful faction card providing you with a hidden hatch to eject an unlucky enemy unit into space if they land on it in a sector where its installed. I wouldn't say that the Bots expansion is essential to own, but, it does add to Theseus's paradox by giving you yet one more part with which to change its overall essence and vary gameplay in the Fourth Dimension. For now, Theseus: The Dark Orbit is on my forever shelf: I'll let you know when that changes.

Played Dead of Winter today. Three times in a row, actually. We lost two times and the other one the traitor got the best of us. I'm actually surprised at how well it worked with three players and my impression of the game was very positive: It's a well-designed game if a bit quirky at parts. It won't dethrone The Republic of Rome as king of not-quite-cooperatives, but it doesn't need to because it doesn't take six hours to play. I feel I could have played much better, which is a always a good sign, too.

Played a game of Splendor when visiting some friends' shop. It turned into an article. Wonder if I can submit this kind of article to F:AT?

sevej.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/why-id-ne...equest-for-splendor/

ratpfink wrote: First day of a local weekend con is in the books. It's a fundraiser for an American Cancer Society Relay for Life team so I always try to go and support it. Today I decided to be awesome and run all Nate Hayden games, so I taught and played San Quentin Kings, Cave Evil, Psycho Raiders, and Mushroom Eaters. It was glorious. Not sure much more needs to be said.

Au contraire, much needs to be said. Did everyone playing enjoy all games equally or was there a consensus as to what people preferred more?

A whole day of Nate's game? Yeah, that would be pretty glorious. Good on you for doing it.

I've been playing Mage Wars, myself as necromancer vs. my son as druid. Our builds both need some adjustment, and I think I need to mostly abandon the idea of a zombie zerg.

Also played Cutthroat Caverns this weekend because... 12 year olds.

I traded my extra copy of Clash of Cultures for a copy of Runebound and the Mists of Zanaga expansion. I had played once before and I played a game last night with two friends. As one of my friends put it, "Man this is great, I just get to have a big sword and go around and kill shit". It was fun even though I kept getting the crap kicked out of me.

I think this game will be our go-to beer and pretzels type game and I wish I'd have been in the hobby when all those expansions were still available. Maybe FFG will come out with a new edition one of these years.

doubles X-WING tournament. 4x4 playing area.

showed up and paired randomly with a guy i've played against a handfull of times, He loves his bombs.
several of the other teams had designed their lists to be played together, so we were at a slight disadvantage that way.

It wasn't a 200 pt list, it was two 100pt lists paired together, so there was at least 1 list with two 'Outrider' titles and other shenanigans like that.

mine:
Soontir Full (PTL, Autothrusters, Stealth, Royal Guard)
Turr Phennir (PTL, AT, Stealth, Royal Guard)
Shuttle - Omicron Group Pilot (Gunner, Fire Control, Rebel Captive)

His:
Emon Azzamen (andrasta, 3x Prox mines)
Guri (virago, Adv sensors, lonewolf, autothrusters)
Binayre Pirate + Feedback

Game 1:
vs Boba Fett, Kenkirk, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. so many big ships. so little damage done. only 1 ship died in a 90 minute game, that Boba Fett.
Our Emon was able to use his prox mines to funnel their giant convoy out of their comfort zone and into a bunch of asteroids. at one point the lambda shuttle was chasing kenkirk around the board. the shuttle can't turn around, but neither can the decimator.

Game 2:
2 x Blue Bwings, 1 x Tie Adv, 2 Obsidian TIE fighters, Kenkirk and Leebo in the outrider.
the shuttle has specific targets it wants to kill. knowing those smaller ingame matchups means alot. They set their Bs on one edge, I set the shuttle on the other. They set their Obsidians opposite the shuttle. I said thank you.
We lost 1 ship this game, the little Z95, while Emon did his thing, laid his mine field and was whittled down to 1 hull point left. we killed everything but the two b-wings. they ended up not getting to the fight until the very end.

Game 3:
Mangler Dash, HLC Dash (Double Dash!) 2x rookie X-wings, Ten Numb w/protons and a z95 Tala

we made a huge mistake, and it was mostly communication issues. I thought Emon was dropping a bomb in a spot, and he thought I was going to fly through there. So we ended up turning several ships away from HLC dash and leaving him to the end. HLC dash was also a lonewolf and was pretty rough to deal with. 4 dice is just killer.

killed everything but HLC dash. lost - Emon, z95 and shuttle.

We took first place, won some acrylic range rulers, PTL and Tycho alt cards.

Turr Phennir is still unfortunately screwed by the high PS turret meta. He's still a PTL interceptor, but probably 90% of the time I was just evade/focusing with him to turtle up, not worrying about his ability (it worked great to kill the Obsidian TIEs) most things just shot before he did, the Double Dash's had initiative on him.
Lone Wolf when you have 200 pts on a 4x4 board is hard to get off. especially in relatively short rounds. Guri could have used predator.

4 big ships is terrifying to face, but they had mostly defensive upgrades. seismic charges, Ysanne Isard, draw their fire rebel captive. but still it was only 4 ships. You've got to have some offensive upgrades to balance it out. Predator, gunner, PTL..something. Fat ships will outlast other people in shorter games, but we were able to concentrate and kill something.

We never faced a whisper/Soontir/tycho or other high PS arc dodger. I think we would have struggled. Lambda + rebel captive + gunner helps against them, but is too slow to consistently beat them. Prox Mines with Emon would work well, and the z95 with feedback is a nasty surprise. Also did not face vader crew or much else auto-damage. Vader on a decimator is mean against Soontir. Seismics in the first game never went off. Ten Numb with his protons was the first damage on Soontir, and only because of that auto-crit hit. and after his stealth was knocked off, he became much more vulnerable, and I ran away from the fight with him.

Still a fun day, I love that Buzzsaw shuttle.