What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Our second game of Forbidden Stars for the three of us. We tried making our own map this time and which resulted in two of us putting three of the four objective tokens for the third guy side by side AND WE DIDN'T NOTICE. That on top of me forgetting a couple of the basic rules and teh warp storms screwing the 2nd guy meant an easy win for the 3rd. He played it well but we were bloody asleep.

Followed up with a Fury of Dracula 2nd Ed where the same guy got a good win as teh count by picking on our mate's weaker two hunters while, apart from one fight where I took a line of health off him, with damn lucky draws of encounters (he stopped me five times with fog, bats and a saboteur) and then cancelled my event card to sail straight to his location. By the time I chased him down, as he was going to win by just hiding from us for a round, I was at four health and I died horribly to a knife wielding minion as my dice didn't seem to go above 3.

Forbidden Stars seems the game taht we all think is just right .... just need to learn how to play it a lot better.

Games where it's strategically important how the board gets built are tough (TI3, Runewars). It doesn't help that they tend to be long games that don't come out too often. Games can be decided before everyone warms their knowledge of the system back up.

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That looks wonderful. I wonder how much money is sitting on that table!

I played Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix for the first time with the kids. It was fun, and a little chaotic, and poop jokes were made about clogged and unclogged sections of the track. We even used the switch cards, and it wasn't the end of the world. After one race the money sits at:
teen son: $300,000 (one car, 2nd place)
11-year-old daughter: $280k, bid too much for two cars
Me and teen daughter, who worked on her art class homework during the game: $240k. She had two cars and I had one that only cost $20k.

I've got to find some cars to replace the stock pieces. The game has two circuits! And it's actually portable!

@DukeofChutney

I've been lobbying hard to get Churchill to the table, but it's been a difficult game to get other people into. I miss being at GMT West, when I could play it six times in three days against opponents familiar with it. It's a really great and unique game.

Played MAGE KNIGHT twice in the last week--such a cool game. A gamer's game. Even got my 8yo to try it out. She did great given how frigging confusing it all is. She won too! It was the "learn to play scenario" and she happened upon a temple on the last turn, cashed in 3 blue mana for 7 fame points and stomped us.

My 4yo is now online for card games, so there is a lot of UNO and SLEEPING QUEENS in this house. He's eyeballing LOVE LETTER and POKEMON, but can't read, so we've been able to hold him off those.

TTR:SWITZERLAND came out of retirement and we had a bloodbath over routs to Austria. So many bottlenecks on that tight map. I think vanilla TTR is a little weak unless you have 5 players, but I've never had a bad game on the Swiss map.

jeb wrote: TTR:SWITZERLAND came out of retirement and we had a bloodbath over routs to Austria. So many bottlenecks on that tight map. I think vanilla TTR is a little weak unless you have 5 players, but I've never had a bad game on the Swiss map.

The India map is full of very short, crucial routes that result in a lot of anger. It's pretty fun. And it has Switzerland on the back.

It finally arrived, and I tried the tutorial and first mission of the new WHQ card game, which I usually call WHQTACG.

Seems like a good game, but I need more games to internalize the mechanics. Card games have always felt procedural to me, but this one is much, much less so than the LOTR LCG. Some really clever things, like how an attack 1 Retreat Inflict Inflict creature means this is a (relatively) lethal archer that is weak in melee. Even with the absence of map, I found my characters trading enemies (and risk), which is more to say than most dungeon crawlers out there.

Another game of Fury of Dracula with my game group the other night, and another clear loss for Dracula. I keep seeing things on TOS about Dracula being overpowered and winning all the time, but in the 6 games I've played so far, he's only won once (I'll take some minor satisfaction in saying that the win was the only time I've played Drac). So I'm of the opposite persuasion at this point; that Drac could use some more help.

In this case, the Drac player really fooled us to begin with, preventing one player from moving to Paris and putting some sea storms over around Spain. I thought he might be bluffing, but regardless we were starting to move that direction when we were able to use an event to reveal the 5th space of the trail, which sure enough was Valona. So he had been farting around in Eastern Europe the whole time. But thanks to an extra movement event and fast horses, we were able to pretty quickly get back over there. His mistake, I think, was not to bolt to sea at some point while we were still unsure of where he was. We were able to surround him, and started a 2 on 1 fight, but he came out of that relatively unscathed while nearly defeating Seward. But still, at that point he couldn't escape our net, and couldn't make it to Castle Dracula, and we kept pounding on him, eventually killing him early in week 3.

Kingdom of Heaven (MMP) - Third Crusade scenario. The jury is still out for me on this title. Feels clunky and too siege driven. I can't get the hang of when/how to use 80% of the events. It may end up being one if those CDGs I can never win at (I'm looking at you Unhappy King Charles). But with or more play I might grow too like it we'll enough. I want to try the Muslims vs Mongols scenario.

I'm the Crusaders in this scenario and finally crossed over from being the hunted into "time to kick some ass" territory with two very large Crusader armies showing up. Now I get to claw back VPs. Shades of playing as the allies in a Battle of the Bulge game.

Do you mean Kingdom of Heaven from MMP? I was on the prepub list for that one for about two years and then gave up.