What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Saturday at my usual weekly meet started with a Lords of Xidit five player game. I felt it was a good game, but there was too much going on for me with the board state with so many players. I would play it again with three players maybe, to see how that goes, but it wasn't my favourite.

Then I had food coming (we have a large group that meets in a pub) so I ducked out of the next game with that group, which would have been Sherrif of Nottingham. I had eaten my meal and they were still going through the rules, so I ended up playing Istanbul with two other guys. I felt a lot better about this game. It still has that turn by turn blockage going on, but I felt at the end of the game (I lost, obv.) that I knew what I should have been doing. I would definitely play that again.

After that, four of us set up a game of Red Dragon Inn, which used to be a staple of the group, and it was nice to get back into it, as it's the kind of game you can chat a lot while playing. I was playing one of the new decks (Ozrik) and found it pretty weak, though I survived enough to second place, mostly through the meta-game, (Hey everyone Chris is totally winning right now.)

Last game of the night for four of us was Red7, which I really enjoyed. It has enough interesting challenges in each hand to give a lot of game in 5-10 minutes.

Sunday was 7 Wonders, with every expansion and promo thrown in. Not the best way to learn a game, and I felt screwed through the whole game because neither of my neighbours generated resources (they had other ways to leech/gain them). I'm now 4 for 4 with Antoine Bauza games that leave me feeling either cold or utterly wretched. I think I'll just ignore him from now on.

The final game of the weekend was a four player session of Thunder Alley on the Super Speedway. Two of the players were new, but quickly grasped the concepts, and in fact the game came down to a fight between those two for the win. I looked strong with a front running pack with my four cars in it after two turns. Nobody believed me when I said that this wasn't as good as it looked, and sure enough I got passed around to finish a pretty distant third overall. Everyone enjoyed it, and even the new guys corrected a couple of spectators who were sneering at the "NASCAR game." I feel like the game would work if it were about a shoal of fish trying to out-swim a shark.

Had some family in this weekend from out of town including a 14 year old and an eight year old so it was family game armageddon here.

Schloss Schlotterstein
Micro Monsters
Coconuts x2
Click Clack Lumberjack x4
Sorry Sliders
Villa Paletti
Hey, That's My Fish
Rampage
Midnight Party
Niagara

And ample time spent with Mario Kart 8.

JEM wrote: . . . the new guys corrected a couple of spectators who were sneering at the "NASCAR game."

What part of the country are you in that people were sneering at a NASCAR theme?

S.

Atlanta, Georgia. Hah!

Atlanta is not a NASCAR town, Atlanta Motor Speedway notwithstanding. Jem lives ITP (in the perimeter), as opposed to OTP (out of the perimeter)...outside of the I-285 loop you get into the wilds and that's where you might find pockets of NASCAR fandom. But even still, it's not much of a big deal here.

Actually, Atlanta Motor Speedway is like 45 minutes out of Atlanta going south so it's not even in town.

Jem, you should really submit an application for a guest pass to the Hellfire Club. The screening process is quite rigorous, but it is the best gaming venue in Atlanta. Extremely exclusive, no random weirdos or smell-bads allowed.

I got in several two player games in this weekend with a friend who came over.

Doomtown Reloaded,Star Wars LCG,Marvel Dice Masters (I ended up seeing this later at Target and picked it up. Why not?, and Augustus with my son included. This game is great for his age (10). It's hard to tell if this, Felix, or Modern Art is his favorite. It's great seeing how excited he gets playing these.

The highlight for me though was my 3rd game of Pax Poriforiana or however you spell that sum bitch. I am really taking a liking to this game. I got stomped the first two games easily as I was focusing on building up resource producing buildings. This time I came really close to winning by getting a lot of outrage and revolution points built up and if I hadn't bought a market card I could have won when the next card coming out was a topple card which was all I needed but my turn was over. Such a cool game.

I saw a few mentions of Cyclades earlier. Coolstuff got the Hades expansion back in stock and I am thinking about picking it up but I'm really torn between that, the Clash of Cultures expansion or just pre-ordering Greenland, the new Eklund game (since I like Pax so much). It's a tight month so I can't afford them all. What do you all think? Is Hades worth it? I hardly play, but I really like the game when it does come out. I also think COC could use the expansion for a little more asymmetry.

Well, the groups I go to are OTP (Norcross/Duluth areas) but it's still not the wild outdoors or anything (oh the time I went to Dixie Speedway...)

I have not heard of this hellfire club. Apparently it's an Atlanta centre for sex-positive culture. I'm down with that, I don't know that I need to subscribe to their newsletter...

I played Doomtown Reloaded this past week as well, and I'd be interesting in your opinion on it. AEG's view on games was painted all over it -- rules on 20 cards all over the table, each one unique and most of the text is facing away from you. With my fading eyesight the game becomes a bit of a siege, where I review cards until I feel like I'm making everyone wait too long and then make the move based on the amount of information I've managed to get to. Needless to say I don't do well at these games, especially since my fellow players have more plays in on each of AEG's titles.

To its credit it's not trying to give each of its 35 concepts a symbol that I need to decipher in order to play, and the rules come with the cards in a specific order so that you can walk through your first game by playing the decks as they're ordered coming out of the cellophane. But I wasn't the first guy on the copy so that opportunity was lost.

I appreciate some games have hard rules, but AEG's seem to be more difficult to manage than the game deserves. If I was playing the same game week after week that would probably be less of an issue.

S.

I've played several games of it and it left me kind of lukewarm. When you peel off the western/vaguely sci fi theme, its pretty bland IMO. I think it requires players spend some time deck building as well as trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each faction. We found our games tended to devolve pretty quick into a massive shootout in the town square.

Glad I didn't pay for it.

Well, I can't tell you much in the way of comparison to other AEG games as I don't think I've played any, nor did I play the original Doomtown game. I've played a few times now and I don't own the game, although I would like to at least own a core set. I am a bit concerned about their ability to keep this game going because the core set has been out of stock locally for a while now and that's at a major place like Coolstuff. That being said, I found the game itself to be a lot more fun that Conquest from FFG, which was released around the same time if I'm not mistaken. In part, I think that is because I really enjoy the setting and I think it's much more fun mechanically.

I love that you are playing several different ways, which really affects the way you build your decks. There is the poker hand aspect, which you may definitely want to win in shootouts, but you may or may not want to win in the other phase determining initiative and who wins the ante. I forget what that phase is called. There is a lot to take in and it took me a while to realize that running out and getting into a quick shootout wasn't the right way to play necessarily. It feels a lot like a chess match with plenty of room for surprise card play at opportune moments. I think I've tried all the factions and like most of these types of games, they certainly aren't built to their strengths out of the box, but I can see a lot of room for improvement with some tweaks to the starting decks.

If I wasn't into several of these types of games already like Netrunner, Star Wars and LOTR this would be an insta-buy, assuming I could find people to play with. I think that's the most important thing. My friend and I play casually, but that could end any time if he moves on to something else. I'm going to be watching the local scene to see if this catches on, but even if it doesn't I will probably at least own a core set once it becomes available again. I think it's good enough to have as long as you can have one opponent to play with. I could see teaching being a bitch though.

I will admit I liked the theme and the art. The world could use a couple of good western shoot-out games.

Msample wrote: I've played several games of it and it left me kind of lukewarm. When you peel off the western/vaguely sci fi theme, its pretty bland IMO. I think it requires players spend some time deck building as well as trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each faction. We found our games tended to devolve pretty quick into a massive shootout in the town square.

Glad I didn't pay for it.

I think you could say that about most LCGs, ECGs, whatever you want to call them, but if getting to know the factions and doing some deckbuilding aren't appealing to you I think a lot of these games would be a bad fit.

Then again, I found Conquest boring and most guys around here in my area love it and seem to be lapping it up faster than they can print them. I wonder how much of that is the setting since 40K is so popular and well known vs. the generic steampunk/western theme in Doomtown.

Setting matters for sure, and the Western setting for me is not really appealing.

Msample wrote: Setting matters for sure, and the Western setting for me is not really appealing.

<checks out Msample's avatar> Come again?

Green Lantern wrote:

Msample wrote: Setting matters for sure, and the Western setting for me is not really appealing.

<checks out Msample's avatar> Come again?

Now that's funny! I so wish I had noticed that, but keen powers of observation are not obviously not my forte.

Edit: Grammar isn't one of my superpowers either.