What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I bought a copy of Alan Moon's Black Spy at Trollune in Amsterdam, which is a great store. It was a perfectly fine game for playing on the train to Nice, and my sons were excited to play because the batteries ran out on their tablets and devices.

Little Man's been napping for the past two hours (he's stirring around now so lunch is just around the corner) but it allowed me time to pull out Friday and play a pair of games. I first got the game a few months back and played a half dozen times or so and it didn't wow me. But today after a few month's hiatus I was able to look at the game with some fresh eyes and it still isn't wowing me, but I'm coming away more favorable towards it.

My first game I got only half way through before Robinson lost all his life points and died against wild animals which mimicked my earlier games. Wondering what I was not doing right I hopped onto BGG just to get a few tips on how to better manage my life points and a few posts gave me better ideas on how to use the cards that add to life and just how important using life to draw extra cards was.

So my second game went a lot better and I reached and blew through the game much better than I ever had before. Things started to click and how to accurately and effectively use the actions on the cards which I also wasn't doing. I'm starting to get a little more excited to play this game and start to progress through the difficulty levels. But before I can do that, Little Man is fussing and it's time to eat some lunch.

I played the new Carcassonne: South Seas the other day. I'm a huge Carc fan and this one is a really nice change of pace from the base game. I don't know that it's simpler, but it's definitely less confrontational since meeples no longer get stranded permanently. I do like how you're collecting goods to buy point tiles as opposed to just playing stuff to score points. It's definitely awesome to look at as well.

I'm hoping they do more in this line.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Josh Look wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote:

wadenels wrote: Played Mini Car Wars. Not impressed. There's some ideas that could translate to a good game, but in this case that didn't happen. This really feels like a game I would have designed on graph paper in 7th grade, and that ain't a compliment.

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68504/outrider

We have the technology.

I'm getting a review copy, I'll let you know how it goes. They are KSing it (shocker) and it looks outstanding. Might even back it if it doesn't suck.

I have the PNP of Outrider. It blows. Granted, I only have what was in the base game, if you can call it that, but I was entirely unimpressed (and I really get into the Mad Max car chase shit). The base game gave me no incentive to buy/print more stuff out for it.

Shit.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm always amazed how under-developed this genre is. I mean, we have Thunder Road, and that's about it. If you don't mind a little more complexity, try Wastelands 3: Total Meltdown, which is a miniatures game at its core, but has vehicle rules. Another GREAT one, and really simple, is Warlords of the Wastelands: www.skankgame.com/Downloads/Warlord2085Game.pdf

I can think of quite a few games in this genre...all of which I prefer over Thunder Road.

Road Kill (AH)
BattleCars (GW)
Dark Future (GW)

Dark Future is still the king daddy in this field. Its got everything a minis gamer could want. Cool backstory, cheap minis (hot wheels) to customize, campaign system, etc.

Looks like some of my old paint jobs are still up on the Future Highways site. futurehighways.roll2dice.com/paint/jeff_white.html

Stan Johansen's site is still kicking around as well. Great place for 'on foot' minis in the Road Warrior line (look for Snake Plissken...I thought he was dead!) as well as bits to customize your autos.
www.stanjohansenminiatures.com

I'm trying to go to the Netrunner Nationals or, at least, considering doing so. This means I need new, nasty decks that can surprise my opponents in the tournament.

The great thing about Netrunner is that it's a very psychological game and the bigger the tournament is, the more powerful uncommon choices become. For example, Aggressive Secretary isn't really that common of a card, most people run GRNDL Refinery in its place which doesn't really damage the runner but is far more reliable. But...will you count on that when you are in such a big tournament? And what about other cards? What if they have Caprice or Corporate Troubleshooter? Would you run on that? And the fear of Aggressive Secretary, Corporate Troubleshooter and Caprice is worse than anything those cards can do on their own.

Last nationals we had a guy running only 6 pieces of ICE, three of them Archer and he got to quarterfinals. It would be a terrible deck to run normally, but in Nationals? Where everyone is scared? He didn't need ICE, just facedown cards and a lot of money because as long as he could scare you into not doing anything he wouldn't need any other defense.


This has led me to rework a GRNDL deck that has won me several playmats I call "House of Cards" because it starts incredibly strong but crumbled if the Runner could slow you down. Hence it basic premise was to hit so hard that the Runner either died in a risky moved or you scored behind normally flimsy defenses.

The problem with the deck was that sometimes you had to spend your money and inevitably struggled to hit hard. You rely on Punitive Counterstrike and Corporate Troubleshooter which are powerful but expensive and often I found myself running out of money just because I scored agendas too fast. I needed a way to keep the money going.

What I first did was to ditch the small agendas and run only big 5/3 because they require less advances than two-pointers and, in practise, you only need to score two because a Hostile Takeover can take you to seven points. This allowed me to change The Cleaners, which was almost blank, for Priority Resquisition which can and will give you free Curtain Walls giving you a lot of stability. Goverment Contracts comes handy too because it assures you cannot get stuck but nowhere as much as other agendas do.

Still, this just helps not to put yourself into a hole but it doesn't give you extra power. What improved the deck so much was the release of Targeted Marketing which has the Corp naming a card and gaining 10 credits when such a card is played. Since you are extremely fast, often Runner can't play around it and are forced to rely on obvious plays like Corroder or Test Run which gives you enough cash to finish them off or block their entrance with extremely expensive ICE.

So far, I think it's one of the strongest decks and nobody will play it because it's my own brew. In fact, people will play GRNDL decks that are much slower and pack Snare! and the confusion between the two will almost surely net me some kills.


The problem comes, however, on the Runner side because I don't have a killer deck here. I'm thinking of taking Noise, which is very fun and positions himself well against the field but I don't really have enough experience. My other alternative is my old Parasite Kit which won't have it easy against the flood of NBN the guys from Barcelona are sure to play but which I'm a very profficient pilot of.

Guess testing will decide!

Managed to get in a pair of A Study in Emerald plays, and I really enjoyed both. Both were 4 players, with one being a 3v1 (3 restorationists against me as the lone loyalist) and the other a 2v2. I nearly pulled out the lone loyalist win, but could only manage to tie the lowest scoring restorationist- and ties go to the good guys.

In the 2v2 game, I had built a nice engine of deck burning with 2 Freemason cards combined with the Zombies card, but realized too late that the last place player was my fellow Elder God worker bee, and could find a good way to catch him up, despite having a strong point lead myself.

I think one of the things that I really enjoy about the game is the velocity that kicks in once points start to be scored. The early game has mostly been cautious as people grab cards and agents, and then once scoring starts and people are exposed to assassinations, things go crazy.

Solid, solid game.

Had a really long gameday yesterday, and have a couple games to write about.

First was Star Trek Fleet Captains. This was released a few years ago from WizKids, but this was my first play. This game is massive, hundreds of cards and tokens, and two dozen clix minis. This might lead you to believe it's a long game, but this was both of our first game (it's a 2p game with 4p team option) and we finished in just a hair over an hour in a really close game that ended 10-9. This game borrows heavily from Runebound style encounters, check a stat, roll a die, play a card, compare to challenge, but there's much more than that. First is the was this game handles power management. Basically at any time on your turn, once per ship, you can adjust your power to help with what you're doing that turn (exploring, combat, missions). Next, because it's a 2p game, and one team is the Klingons, conflict is HIGH. I played the Klingons and just started blasting ships as soon as I could and I destroyed two, including Enterprise E! This is a game that looks like it's a bear but when you get going you realise it's more like a kitten. Most things are straightforward and make sense, and if you're familiar with the Trek mythos, you can basically do anything you think you should be able to do. Very cool game.

Another game was Lords of Xidit. This is a reworking of the decade old game, Himalaya. This is a programing game that has you programming 6 moves per turn, traveling around Xidit collecting people to help you and then feeding them to monsters for two of the three types of VPs. Now I guess that sounds rather mechanical, and maybe it is, but this game is a lot of fun. Often I'm cautious of praising euros after one or two plays, but I was pretty impressed with this game and don't feel it'll fade. The biggest trick is the scoring, as I said there are 3 different VPs, at the end of the game you total up VP1 and the player who's in last place for VP1 is out of the game, then the remaining players total VP2 and again the lowest is eliminated, then of the remaining players, the highest with VP3 wins. It was really clever and like nothing Id seen before. There is a negative that two of the three VPs are public information, which make it maybe a bit too calculable toward the end, but I didn't see this happen in my game. This game also plays fast. Four players, one with very heavy AP, got this done in 90 minutes. I'm not sure this is for everyone, but I think members of the ERP should take a look at this one.

5p game of A Study in Emerald yesterday. I came in second for the third time in a row (out of three games), and could have won but for an unlucky sanity draw... One of my fellow restorationists had two Mad sanity counters already, and a loyalist gained the Cthulhu card (mostly to prevent me from getting it and destroying his Bismarcked city where he was able to gain both Holmes and Moriarty, uncontested, for one influence cube each). So Cthulhu destroys a city, which also causes everyone to draw another sanity counter. If my restorationist opponent had drawn a third Mad counter, the game would have ended immediately and I've have squeaked out a victory, but alas, that one was Sane, and he was able to later eke out an extra two points at game end for the win.

What I think makes this such a great game from an AT point of view, are two things... emergent gameplay, which this is practically off the chart on, and being interactive. This is the opposite of multiplayer solitaire... you need to be very aware of everything each other player is doing, and there are numerous types of conflict throughout, and ample opportunities for screwage.

Damn, you guys are making it really hard to not pick up a copy of this before it vanishes. Don't know if I can hide an $80 purchase from the wife though. But Amazon's got it, so it'll just show up as an $80 Amazon charge...

Hanging out in TX while my Mom gets better. Been doing some solo stuff.

ELDRITCH HORROR: A very tidied-up ARKHAM HORROR experience. Maybe too much? I fought Azathoth and lost, but there doesn't seem to be a sense of swashbuckling going on here like I find from ARKHAM. I don't think you interact with your character sheet enough to really feel like you are the Musician or Astronomer or whatever trying to make sense of all this madness. You're just some person playing a game that wants to get to Tunguska without hitting that crazy goat thing in The Himalayas. It is way, WAY easier to learn though. Man.

MAGE KNIGHT: Still in the beginning of this one. The dummy player lucked out and burned through his hand this first round, so all I was able to to do was take out a Mage Tower. Having the worst luck with bad guys though, a Werewolf hit from that Mage Tower put four wounds in my level 1 hand. Blerg. I will be spending all Night getting that squared.

Heh. I checked how much it would cost to ship A Study in Emerald from Amazon to me up here in Saskatchewan: $78!! (And that's before currency conversion, I think, so it'd be closer to $100.)

Chaz wrote: Damn, you guys are making it really hard to not pick up a copy of this before it vanishes. Don't know if I can hide an $80 purchase from the wife though. But Amazon's got it, so it'll just show up as an $80 Amazon charge...

MW said he will reprint it probably but not before 2015.

Chaz wrote: Damn, you guys are making it really hard to not pick up a copy of this before it vanishes. Don't know if I can hide an $80 purchase from the wife though. But Amazon's got it, so it'll just show up as an $80 Amazon charge...

Just tell her no more nookie until she buys it for you.

Yesterday I decided to do another run through of Friday and the cards just refused to show up at the time that I needed them. It was frustrating and I kept doing what I could but it just didn't work. I went for Destroy Cards too soon and perhaps focused too much on the Life Cards and not enough on the Copy and Double Cards. I'm really warming up to it more and more as a quick 20-30 minute time waster from start to finish.

Today was game day and we started out with Through the Desert as a shout out to the ERP. It was three people and everyone had a bit of a caravan lock where matching colors were within striking distance which limited options. I managed to strike early blocking off a pretty good area, it should have been bigger but another player shot a caravan down causing me to cut it short. In the meantime another player was setting up a pair of sizable areas that we didn't notice until it was too late and in the end not only did he isolate a big area he also scored the longest caravans for those colors. The final score saw me and the other guy in the 70's while the winner settled a little over 100. TtD is a great game I just have a hard time getting it to the table because it is a bit dry and thinky for people's tastes.

We then moved on to Shadowrun: Crossfire from Catalyst games which was pitched as "Pathfinder the cardgame but sets up in only five minutes instead of 30", I wasn't excited. We then proceeded to play a resource management card game which all came down to a maximization puzzle with occasional roadblocks thrown into the way. I was a dwarf using all sorts of cyber-punkish items which if it weren't for the pictures I never would have known. I actually thought Through the Desert had a better sense of theme and setting than Shadowrun: Crossfire did. I have no desire to ever play the game again.

Thankfully I was able to talk some people in to Blood Bowl: Team Manger to get back on track. The teams drawn were Humans, Dark Elves, Chaos and myself with the Vampires. This was the Dark Elf player's first game so that was a rough draw having to learn the game and then deal with the finesse of that team. The Human player got into the role really quick and was winning quite a few matches and tournaments. Chaos was also holding his own but I think focused a bit too much on the tournaments at times. My big break came in drawing a Staff card that allowed me to pick a match at the start of the scoring phase and score a fan per cheat token at that match...Since the combo of Chaos, Dark Elves and my Star Player Hack Enslash were dropping cheat tokens all over the place - That one card is what won me the game giving me about 10 fans. I pass over this game way too much when loading up my game bag and I need to fix that error.

I have two games of Ticket to Ride Europe under my belt. My opponent is my 8 year old daughter. Its a good game for us to play but with only two players some of the tension is gone. She's probably not up for Study in Emerald. I have to look that up now...