What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

My six year old really wanted to play a game last night, about 30 minutes before bedtime and came up the stairs with Agricola. I convinced her to play Quicksand instead and my 11 year old joined us.

It is not a great game, but fun enough that I demanded them play again after the first time. REally a pretty good way to waste 20 min. with my children.

Lord of the Rings LCG

Took this back off the shelf and started the Khazad-Dum expansion. I had a pretty good rhythm going with this game when I finished The Hunt for Golem but it would seem my time away has left me woefully rusty. I started with a team of Dwarves that were instantly slaughtered.

Ok, out with Gloin who generates money when he takes damage and in with Dunhere who attacks foes in the staging area. Sacrificing the all dwarf theme but I'll have to live with the loss of style points.

Result: Numerous bloody repulses and gruesome death.

Ok, Dunhere is out and Gloin is back. Bifur, that useless jerk is out and Bilbo, who gives an extra card to the start player, is in. A bit more theme with the horse rider gone.

Result: Numerous bloody repulses and gruesome death.

Back to the drawing board. That very first quest card , East Gate, that is immune to card effects and blocks enemies from leaving the staging area is a bitch. Until you get the 7 progress tokens on it the orcs just keep building up until you finally explore it and it's like a damn bursting and suddenly you are engaged with four or five orcs at once. Devote all your guys to exploring it right away and all it takes is one pit trap card which instantly destroys a questing character to totally derail your program.

I really enjoy this game but it isn't easy.

The Dain is your friend, repo!


We decided to try mono sphere, quasi-secrecy, hobbitsy decks. We blew through like 4 adventures until we realized we both had a Pippin hero. So that saga will always be known as The Two Pippins. Fixed that by adding Samwise which meant a slight rebuild and loss of pure mono.

Overall, the low threat decks worked out really well. Lots of rangers and playing traps to the stage and engagement avoidance. Then stuff that does direct damage to the stage and Anborn who can recycle traps from the discard. Pippin really helps by making enemies' engagement values +2. My partner can selectively engage and slay a goblin at a time this way.

Low threat enemies at setup or very early can be fucked up though. Cave trolls immune to attatchments are also difficult (as they should be). And of course the designer was smart and put in this annoying gob that engages the last player when revealed. Thanks for that, asshole! =D

We got as far as Shadow and Flame before hitting a wall. These decks just don't have the big damage output needed to keep the Balrog at bay. Tactics sphere is a must and we don't have any.

VonTush wrote:

Egg Shen wrote: Feudality - This Tom Wham game is still one of my absolute favorite light weight games.

This is one that I keep meaning to look at more and potentially grab before it is gone because I have a feeling that once it is gone, its gone. What appeals most is it almost seems like a parody of the heavier Rosenberg games.

If you go in with the correct expectations (i.e. looking for a light, humorous game) then it's totally worth it. I really enjoy it because it gives you that feel of building your own little kingdom and there is practically zero downtime. After an hour or so you can look at your fiefdom board and it will usually feel like your own.

I will say that if you plan on buying this you need to get the small Essen released expansion. It adds maybe 25 new tiles to the game, but many of them give you direct ways to screw with other players...something missing in the base game. I think Fun Again still has it for sale...it's only like $5 and it really helps make the game better.

What STORAGE SOLUTION(s) have you been employing?

That's incredibly nerdy. I love it.

Played Mystery of the Templars the other day. I went in with high expectations but came away disappointed. It's basically a very slow logistics game. I knew it had a long playtime going in, but I expected that the playtime reflected the large chunk of history (~200 years) the game represents. It doesn't, at least not in an interesting way.

Basically all players control a Templar faction. Players don't really interact with each other much, other than the blind-bid bluffing aspect of selecting Missions. There are also limited buildings on the board available for purchase, so there's some jockeying for position there. The meat of the game is finding Relics in the holy land (Acre/Jerusalem), moving them back to your Chapels in Europe, and putting them on display for victory points.

You also get VP for buying buildings and doing Missions. Once players have done the whole blind-bidding thing on Mission Cards they are revealed and resolved, with either a reward for success or a penalty for failure. That's the end of Missions in the game, so they aren't particularly exciting. When you succeed in a Mission you either get money, VP, or a Relic (or some combination). Getting that stuff is worthwhile, but you don't get to use the items you get on the turn you get them. They go in a staging area, which has a tenuous connection to the theme and really just slows down an already slow game.

You spend most your time moving Goods and Relics around so you can sell the Goods for money or display the Relics for VP. There are transports that move to stations that players put on the board when they load stuff on the transport, so that's sort of neat, but again not particularly interesting in the grand scheme of things. You mostly use them to load up stuff and then wait for them to reach their destinations so you can offload your stuff. They may encounter bandits along the way, but there's not really any awesome combat mechanic. You either have the knights to defend the transport or you don't. If you don't you typically don't lose much. It's usually one random counter down the drain, so load a bunch of crappy 1-value coins up with your Relic on a transport and the odds are you lose nothing of significance.

So you spend the game getting buildings, getting money, getting goods, getting knights, and getting/displaying Relics. The rules around a lot of that stuff are clunky and timing issues aren't satisfactorily addressed in the rulebook. That can be frustrating, and we consistently house-ruled in favor of what the player wanted to do so the game would move along quicker.

There are Event Cards, which work, but they aren't "fun" events that I like. They do things like allow you to buy buildings (you can't do that at the start of the game, and you can only do that when the proper Event comes up), put enemies on the board, open areas of the board (much of the board is just dead space to move through at the start (fun!)), and put novices or goods out there for the getting.

The one interesting thematic thing the game does is the Persecution of the Knights Templar in 1307. The game completely shifts and the normal game round sequence is thrown out. Once the Persecution starts each player is assigned a safe haven where they have to get as much of their stuff as they can, primarily their Relics, into for that stuff to count at the end. While this is happening the game board incrementally closes off as the abilities of the Knights Templar are reduced. This is pretty neat, but is really a very small part of the game. So the first 2 hours of the game are really just setup for a mad dash at the end.

If you like big logistics-heavy Euro games then Mystery of the Templars is probably worth looking into. I have no interest in playing it again. I like the mystery, lore, and history behind the Knights Templar, not the every day logistics of managing resources, transports, and money. While the logistical prowess the Knights Templar exhibited is interesting to read about, it isn't much fun to play.

Played some;

Space Hulk (3rd ed), we did the mission where the marines have to revive half their squad and then make a break for it. Tough mission, the aliens won each way. I made some bad decisions though, I could have had a better shot.


Rampage; a good riot. Not a serious game on any level. Throwing cars is probably my favourite mechanic. THis game really brings you back to being a 3 year old throwing legos at massive towers and watching things smash. It is good but i doubt it will be as much fun on the replay. This game feels like a novelty experience to me. Its a good experience but it will wear thin fast.

Hammer of the Scots. Another English victory, but it did take longer than usual. The Scots risked a big battle on turn 4 which turned sour for them.

Got in a fantastic three player game of Starcraft The Boardgame last night. Sometimes I forget why that game is in my top 10 of all time and then I play it. I was Terran, another experienced player was 'Toss, and a complete newbie to the game was Zerg. The other experienced player and myself (about 20 games each) hadn't played in a couple years but we still remembered most rules. We played with Brood War which certainly made it a bit more complicated for the new player but we love it too much to axe it out.

I went Stim Packs and Spider Mines early and held a 2 Control Point mission planet for much of the game. I pushed early against an adjacent planet to the 'Toss player and while I lost the battle (just Marines), I slowed him down considerably. Meanwhile, the Zerg player expanded to two decent planets but his lack of experience caused some strategic issues in not upgrading his buildings in a decisive fashion.

I shifted focus to the Zerg player and was able to crush him as I acquired Siege tanks and pushed the attack hard. I ended up taking it with 15 VP about turn 6 or so.

So jealous, I've had Starcraft on my forever shelf for *years* and not gotten to play it. Talk about coming into a lot of mechanics way before they were "cool." The deck building in it is a great example.

Gary Sax wrote: So jealous, I've had Starcraft on my forever shelf for *years* and not gotten to play it. Talk about coming into a lot of mechanics way before they were "cool." The deck building in it is a great example.

The deck building before deck building was a thing is certainly good. The order mechanic though is what makes the game truly shine. So many cool little strategic decisions in how you place orders and blocking people. Especially when you play with Brood War and the Yellow Protoss player takes his second Leadership card that lets him move one order from the bottom of the stack to the top. It has such a unique tempo due to the order system and trying to outwit your opponents. Fascinating really.

My problem is that it is so innovative (and complex, yes) that teaching it is incredibly difficult.

Gary Sax wrote: So jealous, I've had Starcraft on my forever shelf for *years* and not gotten to play it. Talk about coming into a lot of mechanics way before they were "cool." The deck building in it is a great example.

Sax,

Trashfest...this WILL happen. So let it be written. So let it be done.

That's a great idea, I'm totally in. I'll reread the rules before I arrive...

Gary Sax wrote: My problem is that it is so innovative (and complex, yes) that teaching it is incredibly difficult.

Definitely a good point. It is the hardest game to teach that I've encountered. Once you play it's not bad at all getting back in, but understanding all of your units/techs/buildings/modules in addition to the unintuitive Order system is difficult. People always fuck up the orders and place a Research on a planet where they don't have a base or accidentally mix up the order of things (Moving before Building). I usually teach by telling them to ignore certain things and to just focus on getting Command Points (VP). As a Zerg or Terran player you want to build lots of cheap units and fight early before the Protoss get strong. You also should decide what expensive unit you're going to upgrade your buildings to get, the game doesn't afford you the time to explore and try building all kinds of different things. Go for one badass thing and make it work.

Also, ignore support units if you've never played before. Most of the time they're shitty or difficult to employ well.

You should build every single turn at least once, and you should probably Research at least once every turn. Use your other two orders to figure out who or where you want to attack/move to, or if you need a second build. Ignore the Defense order (Brood War) unless your base is threatened.