What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Got in another game night with the same folks +1. While waiting for our 4th we got in a game of Race for the Galaxy. I really don't get to play this enough. One player ran away with it, I came in dead last with 21 points.

After this we dived into a 4p learning game of Planet Steam. I'd read the rules previously, and I was really confidant this sort of heavy economic market game would work with these folks, but it REALLY took a minute to get going. This is a heavy game with a lot of stuff going on. Generally I prefer to learn a game through playing it, I can usually grasp how it plays and basic strategy after a round, in this game it took me 3 (of 5) turns to get my head around it. Despite this we were having a fun time joking about how we were bumbling through this game, and my score of 675 was bested by 20 freakin dollars! Pretty fun ending and by the end of the game we were enjoying it. I'm really looking forward to going at this again now that these folks know the rules. If you're into heavy economic games you might want to grab it from the FFG sale, if you're not into that sort of game you should absolutely pass.

That took a good chunk of the night, to unwind a bit we played a few games of The Hobbit The Card Game by Martin Wallace and FFG. This is a trick taking game that's played in one or two hands. It's in the all vs one format, with 4 (imo the best number) the players are Bilbo, Ghandalf, Thorin, and Smaug. There are several ways each side can win, it's a really unique trick taking game. It almost always ends on the first hand, so it literally takes 5 mins to play and I find it to be way more fun than stuff like Love Letter. We played three games and I was the only Smaug victory!

We finished the night with one game of Good Cop, Bad Cop. This is a new hidden role game that crosses Bang with Cash & Guns while playing in ten minutes. Four is the minimum player count so I wasn't sure how it'd go but it seemed fine. The concept is you have three loyalty cards and whichever side you have majority in determine if you're the good cop or the bad cop. You can look at people's cards, reveal your cards to draw action cards, and point guns at people. I'm going to need a bunch more plays of this to figure it out, but the first few plays at four and five have been good.

Movie playlist included Hell Comes to Frogtown, Escape From The Bronx, and 1990: The Bronx Warriors.

Played a 4 and then a 3 player game of my prototype last night, which highlighted many things needing improvement, so it was very productive. It's also a fun game, which is of course great.

Then had a 3 player game of Neuroshima Hex!, with Neo Jungle vs. Hegemony vs. New York. I was Hegemony (my favorite army) and had a very poor shuffle early on. Ultimately the game was boring because we had bad mixes of units coming out and I think when you have too many melee-based units the game suffers. I think ideally you should only have one melee-focused army in a 2 or 3 player game, increasing that to two in a 4 player game.

clash of cultures: civilizations 2 player Vikings vs Phoenicians. Does the expansion hugely change the game? Not really, but the civs definitely add some great flavor. Vikes and Phoenicians both get a special start tile with water on it, and the Vikings have a tech that allows them to change land units to boats and vice versa. Combine that with their leader "Erik the red". Who allows land units on board ships to land as a free action and there was no safety along the coasts. My normal habit of leaving a couple units in the rear for emergencies while the rest of the army is out campaigning didn't really work. He was able to pretty consistently threaten my home cities, and escape from my armies enough times that I ended up having to station large armies in all my cities to defend from random Viking incursions.

Elephants and cavalry are nice, and a good way of injecting some strength with the small stacking limit, but are fairly minor compared to the civs. The civs do increase the difficulty of teaching the game to new people, just with different rules/ability interactions with each civ specific advance.

It was funny that for a turn or two the barbarians had the most 'advanced' armies on the field, with cav and elephants vs our infantry only armies.


Must buy if you love clash, not if you don't.

Got in a 2-player game of Relic, Callidus Assassin vs Ogryn. We played with Corruptis, the demon lord who makes you draw Corruption whenever you have an Omen symbol on a Threat card and have less than 4 Corruption cards. The Callidus decided to jump right up to the Inner level and try to finish her mission, counting on her auto-evasion to get her through. That didn't work so well, as the Ogryn jumped ahead in terms of level and gear quite quickly. However, the assassin made good progress later in the game and finishing that early Mission led to both of them scoring a relic at the same time and entering the top level on top of each other. However, the Ogryn was better prepared and skipped three spaces while the Callidus started from the bottom. Failing the Willpower space and getting two more Corruption ended the game for the assassin and handed it to the Ogryn.

We followed that with two games of Confusion, which is still one of the best two players I own. I won the first game by letting my opponent carry the briefcase right to my back row... with the Double Agent. I think I put up just enough of a fight to not raise suspicions. I won the second game on a quick "queening" of my 4-move guy and could then wreak havoc on the side of his board where all of his diagonal-only moving pieces were.

Confusion is an amazing game. Pure brilliance. It's pretty much overlooked though.

Thanks for the clash of cultures expansion thoughts... I'm over the top excited to get the expansion.

So I went to visit my nephew, I don't get a chance to go see him much. I was really excited to maybe sneak in a game of Dungeon with him and my brother. He's a bit young, so some of it would have been over his head, but it would be super cool to introduce him to a boardgame. Next time.

I got to play my new (thank you, Mr Barnes) copy of Sons of Anarchy on Saturday. The four of us laughed like twats the whole time. Brilliant stuff.

Well, our 7-gameweek Blood Bowl season finally came to its conclusion last night. It took us almost 2 years to play 7 games. More importantly though, I was crowned champion! My plucky little human team really turned itself around in the second half of the season. With the addition of some catchers I managed 3 straight victories over necromantics, chaos dwarves and orcs. I played the orcs again last night for the championship, and with some stodgy defense I managed to win 1-0. Also, my ogre Razzogut the Titanic killed my opponents troll. He killed him so hard he failed his regeneration roll and the team apothecary couldn't even revive him. In the previous match my ogre badly hurt the troll and took him out of that game too. He really had his number.

In honor of my victory, Jeff White gave me a nice little framed certificate and a copy of Ogre (the $2.95 version, not the massive deluxe edition). A fitting reward for my star player ogre.

I played three 2 player games of King of New York last night. I think it's more dynamic than Tokyo but it really calls for more players than two.

I think it also plays faster as players can get points, energy cubes and give damage more easily.

Nexus Ops, and it was magnificent AGAIN. Damn that's a well designed game. This time I played with two of my sons and both loved it, asking to play again tomorrow.

I don't know why this game isn't in the top 50. It's in my top ten.

S.

The Nexus Ops rematch had all three kids playing with me last night. Killer team play, we played to 16 because of a late start and I took a shot at the finish with a four-point battle (that I won) and a long shot one-pointer that I lost. Didn't help that my oldest boy pointed out a rule that I had never noticed before at just that moment. At that point we were up 15-13, and the next player found a way to pick off three little battles to slide in under the tag. Great game overall, and both of my 11 year olds were spun up in no time. The rules are very straightforward.

Just a great game.

S.

So, just had a gathering day. It's 2AM in the morning but I want to jot things down ASAP.

First I got the chance to try Warhammer 40,000 Conquest. I have a copy on the way actually. Really fascinating game. Really. There's a lot to decide here. You have to choose your deployment and your battle carefully. You can absolutely plan ahead. There's both tactical and strategic play here. For example, when you deploy, not only you have to choose which to deploy, but also the location of the deployment, how its additional effects work, how do you want to respond to enemy deployment, and finally how this deployment work with your long-term plan. Cards are good. I mean, really good. I really feel empowered here. Rarely a card feels useless. I can feel the punch (and that's why considering additional effects are important, because they're good).

Then Takenoko. As I observed before: can be too luck dependent, but still fun to play and great for kids. In fact, I did not play. I taught this to two new players, and the other 2 players are elementary school kids. One of the kids won.

I read the rulebook on Sushi Go!, then we play it (later at midnight we played it several times more). Game is played for 3 rounds. In each round your receive 7 cards if playing with 5 players. You keep one card by putting it face down on the table, reveal that card simultaneously, and then pass the rest of the cards to the player on your left. A round if finished is when all the cards from players' hands are on the table and they're scored. Scoring is various with pairs, threes, combination, and owner of most, depending on the type of sushi. After three rounds, the player with the most pudding gets bonus point, and the player with least pudding gets penalty. Surprisingly thematic.

Next was two games of Dead of Winter. I think it's too clunky for what it is. I mean, the game is supposedly to be simple and streamlined... but the rules feel too complex. In streamlining the game, they've made it somewhat complex. There is a lot too watch here. You need to watch your food level, the current crisis, the game goal, the zombies, and your personal goal. Then your character's special rules (at one time I had 5 characters, and 3 of them had equipments). It's a bit too much. Inventory rules are odd. Unless for equipments, they're all in your hand. And any of your characters (which may be in various places) can use them, and even use them on someone else who's in the same place as one of your characters. Not sure about this one. There's way too much to watch. Some of the Betrayer's objectives are WAY too hard.

And then there's this contradiction. It's supposed to be a co-op game. We're supposed to discuss things right? The problem is, when the player on your left is taking his turn, you draw a Crossroad Card. This card is secret, and the player's action/game condition may trigger the effect written within. So you have to discuss, while withholding the Crossroad Card's trigger, which may lead to good or bad effect. You can't say "Don't go to the groceries, bad thing will happen..." because you know bad shits are going to happen due to the crossroad card in your hand.

Then Eldritch Horror, 3 players. All new players (including me). I teach the game. Both other players (all girls) are more casual inclined, but they're doing great. We lost at the last moment. I read all the encounters myself, translating them to Indonesian on the go. The result was pretty funny. I usually don't care about flavor text, but here I think they work. At least for the first go. We depleted the city deck quickly and on the second go I didn't bother to read. But it was a really funny game, for a horror game. Anyone seeking horror shouldn't play this game. We got mad multiple times, drown in debt, made pact with the devil... crazy stuff. The most hilarious thing was when my character was slammed to a ship's deck during sea travel, broke her back, and every now and then dropped an item due to her hand shaking from nerve damage on the spine. We laughed for like 5 minutes. The great thing about conditions is one condition may lead to another. I once was insane, and had to borrow money to pay a psychiatrist. Thus I was in debt. Fortunately I managed to shrug off the debt before anything happen. Fun game. A little bit too long.

I finished putting together my new dining room table and I was struck at how I picked a table that is too small to really play boardgames on.

I think I've turned a corner

www.boardgamegeek.com/article/17598025#17598025

Man, does this BGG report make me want to play my copy of Die Macher. I've played it 3-4 times, but not with the full 5. Awesome game that I don't get enough time for... glad I got that ancient Valley Games reprint.

Do you guys know if there's a way to play Die Macher online?