What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Two game sessions this weekend:

Ground Floor: a meaty, long, economic worker placement game that I finally got to play my copy of. I'd been told that it was "mean" but I think a more apt description would be "competitive". Unlike too many WP games, there's more competition going on than "i took ur spot lol". Really looking forward to playing this one again.

Tiny Epic Kingdoms: a cute little KS thing that isn't terribly interesting. I Kickstarted a few things last year or so just to see what all the fuss was about and so far it hasn't much paid off. This might get another play, but really, Eight-Minute Empire does this better and there's no reason to spend more time on this.

Medici: I'm not normally a fan of pure auction games but this one really delivers.

Draco Magi: Another KS game, this time from the designer of Battle For Souls, which is just plain better. We may have been playing this one wrong, in which case we'll give it another chance, but even then it's hard to say why I'd pick this over Battle For Souls, Battle Line, or Cold War.

Eight-Minute Empire: Legends: Tiny Epic Kingdoms made me want to revisit this and yep, it's just more fun.

Gonzaga: This is a pretty neat Euro with a cool puzzle element to it. I thought it was okay the first time I played it, but this second time I enjoyed it more. It's got some cool and unique features to it.

Note to game companies (especially Asmodee)- please stop sending me games I want to keep. I have almost nothing to trade or sell right now. Please crank out some "meh" titles, would you?

Lords of Xidit, great. Sun Tzu, great (better than I remember Dynasties being). Hyperborea, great. Abyss, great. All really good examples of the New Eurogame.

Legomancer wrote: Medici: I'm not normally a fan of pure auction games but this one really delivers.

I really enjoyed my one play of it a few years ago. But man, was that one ugly board. I don't remember much about the game other than the good feels... and the board.

I had never heard of Sun Tzu (Dynasties) before, looked at my Geekbuddy comments and saw your score of 5 Barnes and was worried. It's definitely a keeper though, love the bluffing and room for clever play and outwitting.

A couple months ago I taught Medici to some guys (whom I didn't really know) and one of them complained that he thought the game might have a runaway leader problem.

Most impressive to be able to find serious issues with a game after one introductory session.

San Il Defanso wrote:

A couple months ago I taught Medici to some guys (whom I didn't really know) and one of them complained that he thought the game might have a runaway leader problem.

Most impressive to be able to find serious issues with a game after one introductory session.

I think I know that guy. The game usually only has a runaway leader problem when someone else is the runaway leader.

My wife was busy all afternoon, getting my daughter ready for her first Homecoming dance. I didn't want to be anywhere near that insanity, and college football bores me, so I rounded up the coworkers for another Saturday of gaming. We played:

Splendor - As I feared, I totally suck at that. We went from two players to three to four, as games showed up. I managed to lose at all numbers of players.

Forbidden Desert - I like that better than Forbidden Island. Like Pandemic and Forbidden Island, don't futz around on the board or you will lose. It's a steal at < $20.

Sons of Anarchy - We were down to three, and one of them who played it a month or so ago wanted to play it again. We did the base rules again, which I think will be the last time we use them. One of the other players and I got into a big throwdown. I won, but all my guys ended up in the hospital, so the site was empty. That turned out to be a $12 swing to the winner.

charlest wrote: I had never heard of Sun Tzu (Dynasties) before, looked at my Geekbuddy comments and saw your score of 5 Barnes and was worried. It's definitely a keeper though, love the bluffing and room for clever play and outwitting.

Yeah, I don't know, for whatever reason I'm responding better to it now than I did back then. It's a really neat one that almost qualifies as a microgame, but Matagot polished it up nice with figures, these neat little score displays, and a really nice visual style. I really enjoyed the two games I played so far, about 25 minutes a piece but a good, tense game both times with lots of drama and upsets. Extremely easy to "pull and play", which is definitely an asset these days.

Funny thing, it actually feels like a Matagot style game (Cyclades, Kemet) here in 2014. Maybe the game was just ahead of its time, I dunno.

I'd rate it a few points higher now, definitely.

Played a 4-player game of Conquest of Paradise last night. First time. I think I liked it, but it was a bit dry and it ended suddenly, just when it was getting interesting/exciting. I'd like to play again sometime; I think we'd have a better sense of how early to start getting aggressive with each other.

Also played a couple games of Court of the Medici. I appreciate it more each time I play it.

library game night last night.

love letter to start off. first time playing, interesting, but nothing to grab.

setup for 4 player Cosmic Encounter, then some new people showed up. offered to let them join, they instead wanted to play Cards Against Humanity. our 4th left to join them. we played 3 player Cosmic, which sucks.

3 player Wiz-war with malefic curses. green wizard forgot where he put a trap and killed himself. Yellow wizard killed me with a fireblast spell after i stole his treasure off his base. First time I've seen a win from last man standing. loved it.

Smash Up. Zombie Robots, Ninja Dinosaurs, Pirate fairies. zombie robots spammed 6 cards onto the mall base to finish scoring and win out. I am a fan

rest of the group ended up playing Cards against Humanity for 2 and a half hours. Not for me, but I'm glad they had fun.

Dying from your own trap is classic. More punishing than losing the game would be the constant heckling every time we pulled the game out again.

bfkiller wrote: Played a 4-player game of Conquest of Paradise last night. First time. I think I liked it, but it was a bit dry and it ended suddenly, just when it was getting interesting/exciting. I'd like to play again sometime; I think we'd have a better sense of how early to start getting aggressive with each other.

CoP looks so nice and pleasant, and I think that's part of the reason a lot of people don't build Warrior Bands & Canoes and put them to good use until it's too late. If everyone's just exploring and building the game isn't very exciting, and the person who lucks out finding the best islands will probably win. Players should get those Warriors going early & often. Combat is mostly a 50/50 proposition, which also seems to lead people to believe they need to move large numbers of Warriors to win a combat. Not necessarily false; but a lot of times a lot of smaller Warrior Band/Canoe stacks can really do more across the board damage and give you more tactical options.

I missed last weeks boardgame event as my wife was feeling ill after a couple of stressful weeks. I played nurse and house husband in addition to my usual role as cook while she watched Netflix. By the end of the day she was feeling much better but I missed out on the usual games and had to do some solo stuff.

Played through Scenario 19 - Metaxas Season in Combat Commander: Mediterranean, which is a German assault on a Greek hill defense and bunker complex. Ahistorically the Germans completely overran the Greeks. After the (Germans) second turn loss of their IG 18 gun, they then received a hero, a mortar team and a radio in short succession, which allowed them to bathe the area in smoke and move past all the mines and wire and assault the enemy defenses which swiftly crumbled. Time dragged during that assault and the Greek reinforcements didn't arrive until the Germans had secured the objectives with only a couple of poor Greeks trapped in a bunker and unable to make any headway thanks to the awfulness of the French deck.

I also tried a PnP version of the deduction microgame Dead Drop which sits somewhere between Love Letter and Sleuth, though closer to the former. Actually Mystery Express might be a better comparison as the cards do move between players. Still this is a very light deduction game with a hint of bluffing and simple mechanisms. There a number of different art styles on the BGG page and with minimal effort you can put them into suitable card template, which is great as the default art is less than appealing.
I'm reserving judgement until I've played it with more than two though I expect this will fall into the too little game to be worth taking it out the box category. It might be best used to teach youngsters how to deduce things on the fly as opposed to the more static deduction in Clue(do).

Finally I'm running through a game of 1889 in preparation for having to teach it.

Introduced my weekly group to Archipelago. I'm a huge fan and this went over very smoothly. One element that really works in this game is how quick and snappy game play is for such a complicated design. You're never sitting around long daydreaming or waiting for your turn. Since actions are all relatively quick and easy to implement, and you only perform one at a time, you can stay focused and participate. All of the other phases are also of importance to the entire table so that helps. I'm also perplexed why people think this is such a heavy and complicated game. I mean, it's certainly on the heavy side but I found it overall simpler than say Terra Mystica or Mage Knight (which I also think gets overblown in terms of difficulty to learn). Ludically always does a great job in using iconography and graphical reminders to keep you focused on the table. Only had to refer to the rules maybe 2 times.

I also got in a game of Sun Tzu and wow. I expected to enjoy this game but it may be my favorite <30 minute 2 player game. I completely don't have a need for "The Convoy" anymore, as this is just as meaty, quicker, and full of more clever play. Love it.

Among the Stars with the Ambassadors expansion to close out the night. This expansion is very good as it adds another option - discard a card to grab an Ambassador which can really change up the game. I also really dig the new location cards in the game, there's some very crazy effects and you can tell they felt less restrained than the base game, which features pretty basic cards for the most part. Lots of interaction and combos here.

I'm jealous, Archipelago sits on my shelf, unplayed. I keep it around because fuck you I'd love to play it. And that's ok with me.

I soloed a 2 player game of Clash of Cultures while my wife finished up a grant application last night. I think it's my favorite game. This was the first game I've ever played in where I saw how devastating the cultural approach to the game is via religion. You don't have to do shit other than get one big enough city on the front lines, get into the religious government track as early as possible and get Arts and Culture, and then literally just steal the other player's hard earned city points/pieces every turn. The "can't culturally influence" from a city with an opponent's piece in it is a really nice, mean as fuck, rule. It has a lot of gameplay implications I hadn't thought of that make cultural influence better than it initially appears.