What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Sagrilarus wrote: What would have been normal bullshit across a game board with my buddies had apparently been too brusque and the guy the comment was aimed at was looking like I had put a knife on the table beside me.

One time in my early 20s, I had some guys over to play boardgames, and one of them actually brought big freaking knives. We were playing a four-player game of Nuclear War/Escalation. The guy on my left was an old friend (H) who did a speedball sometime before the game. The guy across the table was another old friend (M) who was a pretty cool guy except for driving like a complete homicidal maniac when we carpooled to school. The guy on my right (X) was unknown except that he and the guy across the table worked together in a hotel kitchen.

We were playing the drinking rules that night. At one point early on in the second game, I put down some big megaton cards in my Deterrent Force slots, while we were still doing propaganda cards. After an explanation about Deterrent Force, X opened up the toolbox that he brought in and got out a large butcher knife. Then he began sharpening it while sitting at the table. I was amused, but H got edgy after that. Later, he switched to another knife and resumed sharpening.

Late in the second game, M hit me with a Saturn with a 100 megaton payload. We had another house rule that said that a single hit (not delivered by an MX missile) with a 100 megaton called for a spin on the old Nuclear War spinner, and a result of "Explodes a nuclear stockpile, triple the yield" meant instant game over. With the drinking rules, that also meant that everybody still in the game at that moment had to shotgun a beer.

As I went to the fridge to grab the beers, H flipped the card table while shouting about "bastards laughing about the end of the world." M quietly helped X pack away the knife collection while I got H to calm down. That's when H told me about the speedball. Six months later, we became roommates, but by then he was only smoking pot.

Shellhead wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: What would have been normal bullshit across a game board with my buddies had apparently been too brusque and the guy the comment was aimed at was looking like I had put a knife on the table beside me.

One time in my early 20s, I had some guys over to play boardgames, and one of them actually brought big freaking knives. We were playing a four-player game of Nuclear War/Escalation. The guy on my left was an old friend (H) who did a speedball sometime before the game. The guy across the table was another old friend (M) who was a pretty cool guy except for driving like a complete homicidal maniac when we carpooled to school. The guy on my right (X) was unknown except that he and the guy across the table worked together in a hotel kitchen.

We were playing the drinking rules that night. At one point early on in the second game, I put down some big megaton cards in my Deterrent Force slots, while we were still doing propaganda cards. After an explanation about Deterrent Force, X opened up the toolbox that he brought in and got out a large butcher knife. Then he began sharpening it while sitting at the table. I was amused, but H got edgy after that. Later, he switched to another knife and resumed sharpening.

Late in the second game, M hit me with a Saturn with a 100 megaton payload. We had another house rule that said that a single hit (not delivered by an MX missile) with a 100 megaton called for a spin on the old Nuclear War spinner, and a result of "Explodes a nuclear stockpile, triple the yield" meant instant game over. With the drinking rules, that also meant that everybody still in the game at that moment had to shotgun a beer.

As I went to the fridge to grab the beers, H flipped the card table while shouting about "bastards laughing about the end of the world." M quietly helped X pack away the knife collection while I got H to calm down. That's when H told me about the speedball. Six months later, we became roommates, but by then he was only smoking pot.

Same damn thing happened to me at Panera this past week playing Small World.

Pathfinder ACG: Skull & Shackles

I tried RotR a few times last year and was intrigued by the system, but was put off by the huge FAQ/errata page that went along with it (any system like this is going to have rulings/errata, but even more so in the first iteration). Knowing that the plan was to adapt the system to different adventure paths each year I chose to wait that first round out (plus I can play it on the ipad in a few months).

ffwd a year and thanks to a nice BF deal on Amazon, S&S is scattered across my table. And it's pretty awesome! I do understand a lot of the complaints that I heard about the first one, but a whole lot of the pros for the game were dead on, too. Simply put, this game is addictive!

I managed to get my first party of three up to the last scenario of the Plunder and Peril pre-adventure before being totally wiped out. My next party of four is slowly working their way back through, but it's already been iffy a few times. I have the character pack coming and I'm thinking of creating 6 characters and trying to work through the whole arc using various combinations of 3.

Anyways, there's a good bit of fun in this box. The question is whether I'll burn out on it in days, weeks, or months.

So, have any of you who played RotR also played S&S? Is it better? Worse? Too much of the same? How did you guys treat death? Straight up new characters (as per the rules) or a slight downgrade of the existing character? I've got a long ways to go with this game, but at least it has my attention in the right ways.

If it were me, I'd go character death=draw a character. Gives a game that can have a bit too little tension a lot more tension. One issue is that this can cause you to act very conservatively, so you need to think about how to make sure that doesn't happen. There's no punishment for losing a scenario but retrying it, so you could easily get into a situation where you're just pushing yourself a little bit, getting some more loot, but not going for it. That would cut out the tension that is in the game.

Yeah, that's how I'll probably play it. I think being able to loot the corpse for the handful of useful/valuable items should help a lot.

^That's a good idea/compromise.

The other thing I've heard people do here is that once someone dies, they are out for good. So that means that you have a limited (but generous, if you have the character pack) number of tries based on the number of characters you have in the deck.

We played through the entire RotR adventure path without a single character death, just a couple of close calls; we didn't need to replay a single scenario either except for one of the intro ones (call it inexperience - we ran out of time). Altogether we thought it was pretty easy, maybe too much? Reading the upcoming scenarios I always felt like we'd be hard pressed, but nope, we were apparently always up to the challenge.

Dying late in the campaign would have been really tough though, we were always assuming that a new character would have to start from scratch, and then that one really wouldn't be able to keep up, so either they'd have to play the earlier scenarios solo or with the help of the experienced survivors (who obviously wouldn't get the rewards a second time).

I feel like we are overpowered in our RotR campaign. By the third or fourth adventure deck we have a pretty good set of skills and items and would need to really fuck up to blow a scenario. It's still nice, and the kids dig it, but I personally am looking forward to a reboot.

Other than dreadfleet I played another game of Hellenes, and Blood Bowl TM with the newest expansion stuff.


BloodBowl TM with Foul Play and Sudden Death expansions. As more stuff gets added, on one hand there is more colour, but it is sort of going FFGward in the traditional fashion. The game is more chaotic and bloated. I am not sure this is necessarily bad but there might be a balance somewhere in what additions you use. Sudden death added randomised end game bonus points, Foul play adds random minus points sometimes when you foul, stadiums that impose limitations on what cards you can play but add extra bonus rewards and the usual extra teams. I played goblins and narrowly beat the Chaos Dwarves. The gobbos are pretty interesting, lots of crappy 1 strength cards but with cool but very chaotic abilities. I continue to enjoy BBTM but wonder whether its worth choosing which expansion material to use rather than chucking it all in.

Hellenes. Athens have been having a rough time of it until we worked out their strategy. Atm it looks like there are only a couple of really legitimate options for Athens and they require some hand management and clever card play as much as moving armies around the board. Need to play this more to see how much variety there is actually in the game.

Just ran through a couple plays of Archipelago solo (scenario 3). Got bronze first try and silver the second. Apparently gold is only possible with a lucky draw (you have to get one of two or three evolution cards that allow for extra explores or more turns). It's a still a fun little puzzle and I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of the deck.

Up next solo though is either LotR card game or perhaps trying to muddle through Myth.

I also go the chance to play Lagoon w/ a buddy at the last game night. Really goofy terminology/mythos, but lovely art and quite fun gameplay. And I played Kamisado w/ my son. Extremely simple to teach and easy for him to understand, but lots of depth and nice chunky pieces. I think we played about 7 or 8 games back-to-back

I haven't played much lately. I haven't really been in a gaming -- or, more precisely, socializing -- head space lately. Yesterday I emailed pals to have a game day here at my place and then cancelled it two hours later because I just couldn't deal with it.

Anyhow, in trying to get past that, I finally addressed some overdue ratings on my New to Me list. I broke from rating everything because much of that stuff I played once and either want to give it another go (Battle for Souls, Tiny Epic Kingdoms) or haven't thought about at all since (most of the other unrated ones). I threw some heavy shade on a couple of Kickstarter bullshits because I'm really resenting the amount of wasted time there.

Anyhow, these are the new ratings, should you care. There are still too many 7s, but at least, since I'm not rating stuff for the sake of giving it a rating, most are actually 7s and not, "I dunno, it was okay."

Star Realms - 6
Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion - 7 (same as CIA/KGB)
Cypher - 7
The Battle at Kemble's Cascade - 5
Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game - 3
Thunder Alley - 8
King's Forge - 3
Valley of the Kings - 9
Quantum - 7
Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game - 3
Yedo - 6
Impulse - 9
Rails of New England - 7
Chaos & Alchemy - 3
Pairs - 6
Pandemic: The Cure - 7
Evolution - 7
Uruk II: Die Entwicklung Geht Weiter - 5

Played my first game of Archipelago the other day. It's interesting but one play is really not enough to get a feel for it. I can say it didn't thrill me.

Also got in a good playtest of my latest prototype and it is really getting close.

Played a 3 player CUBA LIBRE on Wednesday. I played the Batista government (since I was barely the most experienced player) and 2 new players who played 26July and Directorio. We AIed the Syndicate. Overall, it was close game. I hung around 16 - 18 Support and kept the cities at or near Active Support but I couldn't make up any ground outside the cities. In the end 26July slowly build momentum won 0, to my -2, to Directorio -4. Both new players enjoyed the game and were happy they finally got a chance to play since one player owned Cuba Libre and the other owned a Distant Plain.

It isn't difficult to teach the rules of a Coin games because the rules aren't difficult but the learning curve on strategy is steep for new players.

I soloed the 26July today and got hammered. The Syndicate won during the the 3rd propaganda phase. I guess I should have been targeting the Syndicate cash and casinos a little more.

Thanks Flimflam for selling me Cuba Libre for $35 and warm beer.

DukeofChutney wrote: BloodBowl TM with Foul Play and Sudden Death expansions. As more stuff gets added, on one hand there is more colour, but it is sort of going FFGward in the traditional fashion. The game is more chaotic and bloated.
...
I continue to enjoy BBTM but wonder whether its worth choosing which expansion material to use rather than chucking it all in.

I've never played with some of the elements like the magic balls, or the stadiums. I got the expansions for the extra teams. I like the...damn, my mind is blanking, the contracts? The hidden points at the end, I like them because it distinctiveness counting points and just trying to maximize things. That is the only one that I've played with (though I am leaning towards adding fouling into the games).

Personally, I'd honestly be happy with just a new set of teams without adding anything else in it. I don't know if FFG feels obligated to add more stuff in, if that's what they feel people expect, or what but most of that stuff I just don't care to use.

The toddler was sleeping, the daughter at her dad's and my wife dinning with an old friend...So what do I do with this time? Pull out DungeonQuest. Two runs, two deaths.

The first was that sorceress and little dragon pet looking thing, she was dodging traps left and right, I think at least five arrow/spear/pointy-thing traps triggered on her. Then she had the storied draw of a Bottomless Pit being the first room she draws, but managed to avoid. What did her in though was the Chamber of Darkness. On her fourth attempt she managed to get going on the right track, by this time though her day was half gone and she was stranded in the middle, ended up with a Rotating Room turning her into a dungeon wall but happened to have an entrance to the Catacombs...Where she eventually died when the sun went down...Unable to use the three Unstable Potions she found from three different decks.

The second game was the dwarf who blew into the dungeon and smashed the skull of a skeleton early on. The theme here were Cave-Ins - One from the tiles and four from the cards. With pathetic agility I spent more turns trying to get out of Cave-Ins than actually moving it felt. He also fell of the bridge, into the Catacombs where once again the sun went down and my character was eaten.

The games tonight were an exercise in excess and death in the catacombs.