What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

First, I played another game of Robinson Crusoe. Love the game, it is growing on me as I play. This time my wife and I used the Friday AND the dog and we cruised to a victory. It's really nice that there are basically "levels" in the game depending on whether you use the assists (Friday and/or the dog). Good design there, especially if you've designed a pretty hard game. Easily one of the top couple games of the last few years.

I dusted off Nations and played a solo game of it. I think it's an excellent design. Not sure it would set anybody's world on fire here, but the game has a great balance of making aggression and war something to think about but still pretty modern eurogame mild. This is another "flavor of the week" game that BGG has passed and left in the dust that is, in fact, an excellent design.

Legendary: Alien Blah Blah

Ok a brief digression. The True Believers have played this four or five times now. It seemed to us that there may be a scaling problem with the game. That is, with more than 3 players it becomes decidedly harder.

What we concluded was this: The enemies are moving relentlessly towards the combat zone. One space on each players turn. With 3 players or less you still have 2 full rounds before an enemy card enters the combat zone and MUST be dealt with. This gives you a chance to acquire a few cards from the offer and to reshuffle your deck before you must fight.

With more than three, at least one and possibly more players, have only had one turn before the aliens are in the combat zone. You are forced to fight a round early and thus not only are you deprived of a chance to boost your deck but others might not have had a chance to reshuffle so there will be no coordinate cards to help you.

The upshot is with more than three, the players seem to be a step behind all game. By the time your able to effectively deal with stage two monsters, the stage 3's are already appearing.

It seems a decent amount of people here have played it. Has anybody else played with 4+? Have you found the same issue?

The scaling thing was also an issue in the original Legendary. It's just much easier with 1-2 players compared to 4-5. Another reason for that is that with fewer players, you're churning through your decks faster and getting to your stronger cards faster... but still facing essentially the same obstacles and enemies (though there are more with more players). 4-5 players are dealing with everything using weaker decks that take longer (as a percentage of what's coming at you) to develop.

I played again last night through the second movie scenario, and won fairly easily, though it still felt pretty tense most of the time. The queen was about to hit the combat zone for the last few turns of the game, but I was able to kill it before it did any real damage. Unfortunately, I can't see managing more than 2 decks to play solo, so I'll probably have to implement some of the suggested difficulty tweaks.

Btw, I should mention that you can play solo with one deck, but I like using two because there are some things in the game that encourage cooperation. I think there's something called "coordinate" on some cards, where you can play it to the table on your turn (though it has no effect for you), redraw to replace that card, and then another player can make use of it on their turn.

Grudunza wrote: Btw, I should mention that you can play solo with one deck, but I like using two because there are some things in the game that encourage cooperation. I think there's something called "coordinate" on some cards, where you can play it to the table on your turn (though it has no effect for you), redraw to replace that card, and then another player can make use of it on their turn.

There is co-ordinate where you can play a card out of turn to help the active player but there is no redraw. You sacrifice it and weaken yourself to assist another.

repoman wrote: Legendary: Alien Blah Blah

Ok a brief digression. The True Believers have played this four or five times now. It seemed to us that there may be a scaling problem with the game. That is, with more than 3 players it becomes decidedly harder.

What we concluded was this: The enemies are moving relentlessly towards the combat zone. One space on each players turn. With 3 players or less you still have 2 full rounds before an enemy card enters the combat zone and MUST be dealt with. This gives you a chance to acquire a few cards from the offer and to reshuffle your deck before you must fight.

With more than three, at least one and possibly more players, have only had one turn before the aliens are in the combat zone. You are forced to fight a round early and thus not only are you deprived of a chance to boost your deck but others might not have had a chance to reshuffle so there will be no coordinate cards to help you.

The upshot is with more than three, the players seem to be a step behind all game. By the time your able to effectively deal with stage two monsters, the stage 3's are already appearing.

It seems a decent amount of people here have played it. Has anybody else played with 4+? Have you found the same issue?

Played with 5 and we beat it, played again with 4 and went 1-1. It never seemed like a problem, but I love tense, brutal games. You HAVE TO buy attack cards early because you CAN'T not have 3 dmg to shoot a facehugger.

repoman wrote:

Grudunza wrote: Btw, I should mention that you can play solo with one deck, but I like using two because there are some things in the game that encourage cooperation. I think there's something called "coordinate" on some cards, where you can play it to the table on your turn (though it has no effect for you), redraw to replace that card, and then another player can make use of it on their turn.

There is co-ordinate where you can play a card out of turn to help the active player but there is no redraw. You sacrifice it and weaken yourself to assist another.

Per the rules: "During another player’s turn you can Coordinate with them like this: Set aside a Coordinate card in your hand face up, and then immediately draw a new card to replace it... When you Coordinate a card to a player, they can choose not to play a copy of it. Either way you still draw a replacement card."

It does occur on the other player's turn, though, and not something you play out of your current hand on your turn, so I had that wrong.

Btw, I played the 3rd and 4th movie scenarios this morning. Beat the 3rd one, though again it was pretty close, and lost to the 4th. It's strange when I feel good about losing, but with my history of Legendary it's been so rare. I want it to be more of a challenge. This version definitely feels tighter, though, as 2 of the 3 wins I've had were nail biters. Most Marvel games I coasted to victory.

Giving a shot to Rick Heli's Founding Fathers.

So far, it's an interesting design, but seems pretty flawed in terms
of generating anything like historically accurate play.

Of course, I felt that way about La Revolution Francaise, but that looked
more like it MIGHT just be capable of it. Who knows, maybe the flaws here
will make this one as much a favorite.

Grudunza wrote:

repoman wrote:

Grudunza wrote:
Per the rules: "During another player’s turn you can Coordinate with them like this: Set aside a Coordinate card in your hand face up, and then immediately draw a new card to replace it...

Oops.

/hides

This is what happens when you let Josh read the rules. Well no wonder we were having such a hard time.

Played Lineage II the other day. I really like it, so I guess this is a "Barnes was right" post, because I'd have never heard of it without his promoting it.

It's got a bit of a Talisman vibe. You roll to move, run around the board, try to do stuff, and build up your character. It's a fight-the-monsters adventure game and is pretty straightforward. That's about where the similarities end.

The board uses hex-shaped spaces with either silver or gold borders. The spaces that create a ring on the outside of the board are silver, which means you must always move clockwise around the board. The center of the board has gold-bordered spaces which allow you to move clockwise or counter-clockwise. The gold-bordered interior spaces are arranged in such a way that you can run around in the middle of the board, use them as a shortcut across the board, and do other such things to mitigate the restrictions of the roll-and-move mechanic. It works well and you have more movement freedom than in Talisman.

The space you land on determines what sort of encounter you're in for. Empty spaces are Monster Hunting Grounds. There are three stacks of Monsters that sit face-up, so you can always see which Monsters are available for fighting. Each stack is a different difficulty (easy-medium-hard) and defeating the Monsters provides rewards that scale in kind. Combat with Monsters is a simple roll a bunch of dice and get the right colors affair. If you lose you just drop some coin and return to the nearest village. Not crippling, and if you don't mind the coin loss then fighting a Monster that's out of your league is a good (albeit not thematic) way to get back to a Village.

There is no direct PvP in Lineage II, instead there are Castles. When a player controls a Castle he adds a Prestige chip to it each turn, and then collects coin equal to the amount of Prestige present. The real value in Castles is the occasional VP payout. When the 8th Prestige chip would be added the player removes all the Prestige chips and collects a VP instead of a coin payout, then the cycle repeats.

Players can Siege other players' Castles, which is the only real PvP option in the game. Timing is a big deal, but the roll and move means you might not get to the Castle you wanted to get to when you wanted to get to it. Prestige chips are not reset when a Castle is Sieged, so if you can pull it off you can Siege a Castle and hopefully hold onto it for the VP next turn.

Sieges are interesting and fun. There's the primary attacker and primary defender of course, but the kicker is that all players with Soldiers/Mercenaries must participate as well, even if the commit as little as one Soldier. Players secretly select which side they're supporting, how many Soldiers to commit to the side, and whether they're going to have a special card to play. Every player involved must also commit a VP chip. The primary attacker and defender roll D8s against each other and lose Soldiers equal to the difference. Special cards aside, they repeat until only one side has Soldiers left. The players on the winning side get their VP chips back, get +1VP from the Bank, and divvy up the losing side's chips. It's lucrative to be on the winning side, especially so if the losing side had more players who committed VP chips.

First player to 10VP wins, and that's about it. Run around, fight monsters, get stronger, hire Mercenaries, Siege Castles, make deals, get special cards, etc. We had a lot of fun with it, and it's definitely the sort of thing Talisman fans should enjoy.

If anyone already has or is thinking about getting Lineage II and is struggling with the weird layout of the various rules translations available on BGG, I wrote up complete rules based on the translations here .

Calandale wrote: Giving a shot to Rick Heli's Founding Fathers.

So far, it's an interesting design, but seems pretty flawed in terms
of generating anything like historically accurate play.

Of course, I felt that way about La Revolution Francaise, but that looked
more like it MIGHT just be capable of it. Who knows, maybe the flaws here
will make this one as much a favorite.

Is this the one that is supposed to be sort of like Republic of Rome, early US style?

Great work Wade! Lineage II is awesome, one of the best obscure games out...the sieges are so much fun between the alliances, picking casualties and those ruthless 2D8 differentials. Watching your last man take down seven of the enemy is so satisfying. That game really should have been given a less specific setting (IE not a Korean MMORPG) and made more widely available. It's kind of like Spartacus in a way, where you've got two big gameplay segments that are totally different yet codependent.

Played Five Tribes last night- absolutely loved it. It has that " everything gives you points" thing going on, but it works to make the game fast paced and accessible even though the tactical choices are really quite complicated. Killer production, a colorful setting and some great opportunities for that kind of "aha!" play that makes people feel clever and rewarded. Which means this game is going to be a smash hit. Deservedly so.

Behold, the Age of the New Eurogame is in full flower.

Michael Barnes wrote: Played Five Tribes last night- absolutely loved it. It has that " everything gives you points" thing going on, but it works to make the game fast paced and accessible even though the tactical choices are really quite complicated. Killer production, a colorful setting and some great opportunities for that kind of "aha!" play that makes people feel clever and rewarded. Which means this game is going to be a smash hit. Deservedly so.

I'm very surprised. It's a very thinky heads-down game that you must stay focused on to keep moving. I would have guessed you'd hate it.

Had a friend over, and we played a round of Battle Ball. It was fun but I was rolling horribly. At one point my running back was trying to tackle his running back. I rolled a 2 on a D20. He rolled a 1. And it went on like that.

Then we drug out Dungeon Command, which I had been wanting to play again for a long time. It was his first time. He played the drow box, I played the orcs. It was a long battle (I really do think the treasure bit needlessly prolongs the game; I may houserule that I just place a single treasure on each spot) and in the end it came down to a single poor choice on my part that turned victory to defeat. But I still feel good about it because he was beating me for the majority of the game and in one round I really beat his ass to bring it back in my favor. Great game.

Nations is fast becoming my solo game of choice. It's thinky enough that I need to sit for a minute and puzzle out my turn's strategy when the tableau is revealed, but short and tactical enough not to become a nuisance. The solo system they have set up works quite well out of the box, it throws annoying wrenches in the works just like another player could during a game. It's a bit arbitrary (especially their sky high military strength) but I still like it. If it wasn't *very* expensive, I'd say it's worth it just for the solo game. I'm incorporating the more advanced cards in my next game and I'll see what they add, the basic cards are interesting but very "+3/+2" without much in the way of special powers or anything unusual.

I'm really curious to play the game with someone else, because it is really growing on me. I'm interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the game, but that's probably for the dedicated Nations/civ thread. Legomancer's review encouraged me to get it, and I'm glad I did. It's a very slow burn, though, and it's very tactical and euro.