What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Vassal to the rescue again.

www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Die_Macher

Last night we played two games of Wiz-War. Damn, that's a fun game!

Friday Thanksgiving gaming got in a couple of games of King of New York and a couple of games of Fortune 500.

Just from the two games of KoNY and the few powers I saw there seems to be more interactions between the powers. All in all seems like a nice edition of Godzilla Yahtzee.

Fortune 500 was interesting. You play as different corporations, many of which I'm pretty sure no longer exist. It is a roll and move game that my friend described as "Monopoly on steroids". The first track lets you take loans, buy consulting or advertising services or insurance. The next side lets you buy bonds or controlling interest in the companies that populate the fourth side. The third side is a repeat of the first with a different bank supplying the loans and the advertising and consulting services being cheaper. The fourth side is split into two tracks, one which lets you buy items (energy, raw materials, and factories) of which you need one of each to make a finished product. The other track is transportation companies you use to sell your finished products. The object is to play to a time limit and see who has the most money or to be the first to triple your starting assets. You get to decide whether to roll one die or two for your movement which helps control movement a little but all in all a strange combination of design elemets.

Met up at the game store and played City of Thieves. With four players, so 18 minis on the board, the game was congested...In a good way though. It really causes you to be aggressive and attack often since there isn't a plethora of loot kicking around. The scenario we were playing was the first one and The Duke's treasure pile was available for looting. If a militiaman attacks and beats you he steals your loot and throws it into The Duke's treasury. I was the only one completing missions for The Guild, so the only one with money meaning I stocked the treasury quite a bit.

One opponent made an attempt at stealing from The Duke, but was caught and thrown in the clink. As I realized I was falling behind I tried a Hail Mary and got caught as well. The next turn the rest of my gang exited the district and counting up points I came in second. It had been a while since I played this and I forgot just how nice and straight forward the game is without tons of bullshit bogging things down. What I really admire about CoT is that there's enough game there to execute some short term strategy that emerges over a few turns as well as tactical game play as far as positioning. Collectively we didn't take advantage of the Missions until a few turns in and once everyone was paying attention to them the game got even more dynamic.

All those positives said though, I couldn't really get a good read from the other players and it didn't carry the excitement you'd expect. The winner liked the game, one guy seemed "Meh" towards it and the last felt four was too many and would rather play with three. Well I'll keep bringing it though as I'd like to try some of the other scenarios. I think it is something special and underrated but a little opaque at first and unintuitive because of the Euro elements it incorporates. It very much is like all the other Dust Games that I've played where it is a solid game but seems to lack that "it" factor that elevates it to an amazing game.

After the game one of the guys from CoT and I broke off and played some D&D: Attack Wing. We played the first mission from the Green Dragon booster pack kicking off a campaign. The scenario sets up with the Named Green Dragon guarding a stash of loot and the other player putting together a band to raid and steal that loot. 9 tokens are placed face down on the map - Three are traps that attack fliers, three are traps that attack ground units and three that are the loot. The looters need to find two of the loot and run off the board, or destroy the Green Dragon.

We played the scenario twice swapping sides and both games saw the Green Dragon successfully defending his stash. What's funny is we pre-made our forces in the days leading up to the game and for the looters we both picked the exact same force! What I've found with Star Trek Attack Wing is that the scenarios aren't always balanced until a few waves are released and that trend seems to have continued. After we both got whooped we tried to brainstorm a few builds to complete the looter's objective and we weren't able to come up with things that we were confident with. But we'll chug along and maybe once some more stuff comes out we'll revisit the scenario.

With each game I'm starting to feel that this is the best iteration of the Flight Path System. The slight rule changes, the small additions and the different "levels" of ground and flight really adds a level of depth to the game that really separates it from earlier versions. But it is WizKids so I'm cautiously optimistic...Because I'm sure it is only a matter of time before they break the game through their own incompetence.

Played a game of War of the Ring with Engineer Al. I was the Freeps and he the Shadow. things looked grim for the Freeps with Al steamrolling Lorien, The Shire and The Gray Havens. In the end the Hobbits made it yo Mount Doom. They were three spaces away with 11 corruption and Al had 8 vps and was attacking The Woodland Realm.

I had no choice but to push me on up that hill. Then through the most unlikely of tile draws, Al pulled four blue (good) tiles from the bag in a row which allowed me to get to the end of the track and destroy the ring.

It was one of those "stand up and cheer" moments when he pulled that last blue tile out of a bag of evil eyes.

Love this game.

repoman wrote: In the end the Hobbits made it yo Mount Doom.

Not sure that's proper usage of yo, which typically replaces a proper noun in a sentence. Can someone under 20 back me up on this?

repoman wrote: Played a game of War of the Ring with Engineer Al. I was the Freeps and he the Shadow. things looked grim for the Freeps with Al steamrolling Lorien, The Shire and The Gray Havens. In the end the Hobbits made it yo Mount Doom. They were three spaces away with 11 corruption and Al had 8 vps and was attacking The Woodland Realm.

I had no choice but to push me on up that hill. Then through the most unlikely of tile draws, Al pulled four blue (good) tiles from the bag in a row which allowed me to get to the end of the track and destroy the ring.

It was one of those "stand up and cheer" moments when he pulled that last blue tile out of a bag of evil eyes.

Love this game.

"The Shire? Nobody ever attacks the Shire. I don't know why they even put the Shire on the map." Quote from other people I've played WotR with. My answer, It's the same reason Spain, Sweden, Switerland, Scotland, the Shire and ever other S place is on ever WW2 map. It because they belong there and evil Nazis and Nazguls could go there if they so desire.

My wife loves Pandemic and Ticket to Ride so we had an evening with those games (in the case of TtR, we played the Africa map). She beat me by the 10pt bonus for most tickets on that one. It seemed a pretty cut-throat map even with two, as I got totally cut out of one of my ticket destinations on the coast. We didn't use the terrain scoring. As she was in a good mood, I convinced her to play a game of Elder Sign with me, after we've both had generally miserable experiences with Eldritch Horror this could have gone badly. It didn't. We both enjoyed the game a lot, and for me, it's probably fired EH.

My step-daughter always shied away from playing games with us (college age), but the three of us played The Witches, probably getting all kinds of rules wrong, but as a light game it went over well. I don't think my wife would ever choose it over Pandemic, though.

I got to play a few of my games at the Saturday group. First was Abyss, which I was happy to learn, so I'd know how to play the copy I got off Barnes here. I enjoyed it, but I think it's one of those games where the guy who really knows it (especially what lords are in the deck) will do best. Some of the finer points on lowest-card scoring were maybe not explained as well as they could have been, which hampered my game also.

After that, was a four player (2x2 team) game of Star Realms. We got the other team down to two authority before they hit back with a huge combo turn to end the game. Mostly through the game I stressed about the guy chinese-shuffling his cards.

I bought Oddville a while back, because it was $10, and for no better reason. Three of us played this and all enjoyed it. It's a lot of game in a small box. I got the most guys in the city, but failed to notice another player had much better scores set up, so he won that.

Next, someone brought Pandemic: the Cure, which is basically chucking dice while everyone else tells you what you should be doing. I dunno, I think I'd enjoy it with my wife, because we don't argue about moves. I have Elder Sign for dice-chucking, though.

I got recruited into Tichu because I was at a loose end while a couple of friends were still in a game. I wish some of these guys would get Chimera so they can just play three. I'm rubbish at Tichu.

Luckily someone else took over my spot and I was able to join my friends for some Discworld. Three of us had played a few times, but in the end it was the new player who won as Chrysophase with a tidy real estate empire. I was happy to have got 10 trouble markers onto the board and would have won on my turn (he was sat right of me) so it was a close game. This game gets better and better as players learn to see the victory conditions appearing for others. The others were too focused on shutting down trouble, gifting building ops to the new player.

repoman wrote: It was one of those "stand up and cheer" moments when he pulled that last blue tile out of a bag of evil eyes.

Reminds me of that time playing War of the Ring where I cheered and stuck my hand up...right into a spinning ceiling fan.

The kids and I played ELDRITCH HORROR this weekend and had a blast. Sorry you had such a downer experience--I love the lighter play compared to ARKHAM. ARKHAM is still my girl, but ELDRITCH is my thing on the side, ya dig?

I have been playing a lot of LE HAAVAVRVRRVEE recently. I like it--it's like a slightly looser AGRICOLA, with not as many people fucking your shit up. That counts big in our house--the wife does not like having her stuff messed with.

Fiddling with LORDS OF WATERDEEP on the iPad. What am I not liking about this? It seems... fine. Is there not enough there? The play seems so programmed somehow. Any expansions freshen this a little? I don't feel like I am doing enough.

Contrast with ELDER SIGNS on the iPad, which is fun as hell, and just pounds the crap out of me. I was doing OK, and then I missed a couple and whammo, dead 14-7 against Azathoth. You can't miss a beat in this game or you get knocked the fuck out.

jeb wrote: Contrast with ELDER SIGNS on the iPad, which is fun as hell, and just pounds the crap out of me. I was doing OK, and then I missed a couple and whammo, dead 14-7 against Azathoth. You can't miss a beat in this game or you get knocked the fuck out.

That really is a great app. I need to bust that out again. I haven't played it in a while.

I played Flash Point with my brother and dad over Thanksgiving. We cruised to an easy victory on the medium level difficulty. Thinking we were total fire-fighting bad asses, we flipped the board to the tougher map, and cranked up the difficulty. We got crushed. Twice. It wasn't even competitive. The fire was openly mocking us.

So, feeling utterly emasculated at this point, we tried once more. We had the seventh and final victim standing in the doorway, looking out at the ambulance. We had one "damaged wall" token left. All we needed was to NOT roll an explosion, and we would win. My brother rolled an explosion. And thus the building collapsed on top of us.

I really like this game. It's hard, and tense, and makes for some really fun moments. Like my brother racing into a burning room to rescue the person cowering in the far corner, only to find that it's the cat (my brother is NOT an animal person). But hey, to his credit, he saved that fucking cat. Or, my dad trying to carry a smoking hazmat token out the door, only to have it explode beneath him. Or me trying to fire that damned deck gun on the fire engine, only to completely miss every fire, and soak the crap out of the nice rug in the bedroom.

Visited family in south Florida for Thanksgiving. Did some boardgaming with them: Sushi Go!, Valley of the Kings, King of Tokyo, Small World. My nephew enjoys boardgames but his dad, my brother-in-law, was being a pill.

Game day was Sunday, but after 4 days of socializing I needed some cool down time, so no games for me.

On Saturday the nephew and I played King of New York and Blood Bowl: Team Manager then we fired up his XBOX 360 and had a few battles in Injustice: God Among Men and ran around GTA V for a bit.

That night we we had supper at my place and ended the evening watching Sharknado 2 :The Second One (utter shite) with the rest of the family.

It was a super fun day!

jeb wrote: Fiddling with LORDS OF WATERDEEP on the iPad. What am I not liking about this? It seems... fine. Is there not enough there? The play seems so programmed somehow. Any expansions freshen this a little? I don't feel like I am doing enough.

That's the takeaway I had from it as well. I've only played once so this isn't the most informed opinion, but I kind of felt like my lot was cast before I could do much about it. I felt like I was doing what the board told me to.

S.

The Game of Life, Monopoly and Clue (the detective board game)