What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Over the long weekend I got to play some Uno and Disney Clue with my kids and some nieces and nephews and those are always fun. The best part was introducing some of the younger non-gamers to The Hunger Games: Training Days, a game no one was familiar with and one that I haven't played in years. It's a fun mix of strategy, bidding, and bluffing and everyone that played had a good time, especially fans of the books and movies.

A couple of days later I hung out with a buddy and our families and we played some Yahtzee since my kids had never tried it. After that I got to try my first play of Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan. It's a hidden movement game and I've never played one like it except for Fury of Dracula. It took a bit to learn the rules but once we got into the flow of things it seemed to play much faster and I suspect repeated plays could get rather competitive with skilled players. Of course, you will need honest players as much of the game relies on the placement and movement of hidden items and characters and I suspect that could be abused. I think the game would be best suited for three players, one for the ninja and one player controlling the other traitorous intruder, while the third player controls all the Lion guards. It was an okay two-player game but we should have used the Lone Wolf Variant to cut down on the bookkeeping for the ninja player. All told I liked it and want to play again.

Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan is highly underrated. Very thematic, fun, and probably the best ninja game. Plus it's perpetually on clearance.

The power of theme. My wife told me she wanted to play A Study in Emerald yesterday (Sherlock Holmes is like her favorite). I told her it was pretty complex and I thought it would be best to wait until a weekend when we weren't burned out from work. Lo and behold today I'm rereading the rules and she's just like... I want to play this game. now I'm like "uh, ok, I've only barely got the rules down but let us give it a shot and blunder through." My wife likes games but sometimes the eyes glaze over when there is too much random shit/mechanics in a game. Her least favorite part of boardgames are learning them.

A Study in Emerald has got to be one of the most infuriating games to teach of all time... lots of little ticky tack bullshit rules you only remember when you get there. Like the fucking rules for when you are "known to the world." Wut? Or the 4 ways the game ends, which is unconnected to who won. Does my wife give a shit when I keep tossing these wrenches in the works? No. We plow through the two player game, she kicks my ass because she drew restoratationist, got Sherlock Holmes and stocked up on bomb cards whilst I didn't not realize how important assassinating restorationist agents is. Done. She really enjoyed the game.

I'll put more specific thoughts about the game in a Study thread in a couple minutes.

Time for me to weigh in on Imperial Assault.

I like it. I like it a whole lot. I like the campaign game. I like the skirmish game.

That's all I've got for you for now.

I have a deep abiding love of BSG (base game). But the dirty secret about it is that it is never a contest when ANY new players are involved. Cylons win. We had a game this evening that proved that point again. Humans are not impossible, but any player I have played with in the last 5-7 games THINKS it is. Even though if they had played 2-3 games with the same players they would see where the humans have significant advantages with revealed Cylons. It's really one of these "You have to play multiple times" anti-BGG games.

We got the Blue Sun expansion for Firefly this week, so we had a game of this. With two of us it was still over in just over an hour. My own game was a comedy of errors while my wife kept pulling Misbehave cards that suited her crew and/or gave her free loot. She won with just over $14,000 and I ended the game with $1,300 and we laughed that I'd have been better off not even playing. It's a full table now with the extra board and cards, but still good fun. I didn't get to the new shopping planet, though I did get to do a job for Harrow- it's pretty far out there in terms of travel, though it does link up nicely with jobs out in the Georgia, etc systems.

The best aspect of the expansion is something you can do even with the base game- the "patrol tokens" that the reaver and alliance ships drop when they move start to fill up areas. You roll <= the number of tokens when you move into that space and the ship comes to you.

Another game night...another night of games not called 'Condottiere' sitting on a shelf.

I don't know why I don't sell off a few more games and buy the Eurogames edition for kicks. I'm going to at least need to get a new copy of the FFG one. These cards are really in bad shape.

Finally played another game of Earth Reborn. One of those games that makes me wish I was 15 and it was summer break, so many options and rules, that I have to relearn the whole game every time I play it, but awesome, so I wish I had endlesstime to explore and play this great game.

I need to find a regular opponent also, I taught a buddy who is a big Necromunda player, so we started at scenario three. That's the one where Kendall has to get the deadly virus to the lad and the Norad player learns to shoot him.

I took Kendall and his troops gave the new guy Norad. There was a bit of a learning curve on the interrupts for him. Turn two he marched Woo around the corner of the building, planning to shot a grenade into Jessica. I interrupted and shot Woo in the face then ran into the building- leaving him with no shot. On my activation I walked Jessica back out and finished the job.

Kept Kendall back and let the zombies and Jessica deal with the Vasquez and Bolter. I made a dash to the building (Kendall has a move of 3 so a very slow dash) after Vasquez and Jack Saw were dead and Bolter was injured. Bolter slowed Kendall down to 2 movement points by injuring him.

Bolter shot Kendall in the back and finished him right as he entered the lab and grabbed the virus, but he needed to leave the board to win. Jessica coldly put a bullet into his head for the win.

I love this game.

Also recieved the AEG Black box for Christmas so played Guildhall: Seven Seas and Maximum Throwdown. Oh and X-wing, lots of X-wing.

Played my new favorite game. Dogs of War.. Had a 5 player game with everyone new to it, took a bit over 2 hours I'd estimate. Worker placement but directly competitive, not just blocking spaces. And each faction has a tweak to their own strategy that can drive behavior somewhat. Too bad the kickstarter version included 3-4 extra factions and is now being hoarded, otherwise the game sells for around $45.

I tried King of New York for the first time. It was okay, but I feel like they tried to bolt too much "stuff" onto the King of Tokyo chassis. There's now a spatial element, where you can freely move between different city burroughs. And now there are little building chits, which you can destroy and get a small bonus, but the chit flips over to an army token that can attack you later. So, the more you destroy, the more army guys that show up.

The board is way too small to hold all the huge monster figures, and all the building/army tokens. We had six players, so the board was just a fucking mess. I also feel like the cards are a lot more complicated than in Tokyo.

It still had that King of Tokyo vibe, but just felt overly complicated in ways that King of Tokyo never does.

I'm sticking with King of Tokyo.

charlest wrote: Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan is highly underrated. Very thematic, fun, and probably the best ninja game. Plus it's perpetually on clearance.

superflycircus.com/2011/09/ninja-legend-...-based-on-deception/

I wasn't keen on it primarily because the one sidedness of the turn durations.

Gary Sax wrote: I have a deep abiding love of BSG (base game). But the dirty secret about it is that it is never a contest when ANY new players are involved. Cylons win. We had a game this evening that proved that point again. Humans are not impossible, but any player I have played with in the last 5-7 games THINKS it is. Even though if they had played 2-3 games with the same players they would see where the humans have significant advantages with revealed Cylons. It's really one of these "You have to play multiple times" anti-BGG games.

The hallmark of a good game design is that no matter the outcome, you still had a blast, irrespective of the people you played with. That's why I love BSG, personally. I have a "workaround" that is still thematic, although it tips the game balance a hair:

When playing with new player(s), do this: Split the loyalty decks into several stacks: The "rookies" will be the only stack that has Cylons in it. This ensures that the veteran players aren't cylons until later in the game, so it stacks the odds in favor of the humans. It also lets the rookie players be "the bad guy" more often, and because they're new to the game, it's a counterbalance toward the veterans knowing they're cylons for sure, immediately, because they don't have the game down and therefore might just be playing poorly. The trick is that you CANNOT provide advice to the new players with any level of insistence. More like, if they ask, lay out all the options and then shut the fuck up.

It works pretty well.

When I learned BSG it was with the same basic pool of people, right around the time the game came out. The problem we encountered down the stretch with new players is that the humans lost won almost every time. If the new player was a Cylon, the vets were too experienced at being humans to let them get away with much. If the new player was Human they could mostly just sit back and let the experienced players figure things out, which was easier because we all knew each other very well.

I'm interested to try it again now that I've moved to a new group. I bet it'd have a whole different dynamic.

*edit* I mean that the humans WON almost every time. I changed the post.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

charlest wrote: Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan is highly underrated. Very thematic, fun, and probably the best ninja game. Plus it's perpetually on clearance.

superflycircus.com/2011/09/ninja-legend-...-based-on-deception/

I wasn't keen on it primarily because the one sidedness of the turn durations.

Nice review and explanation of the game, Pete. I wish I'd read this before my first game as deciphering some of the rules was tricky.

It's your own damned fault. I've got like 120 reviews on my site, and nobody ever reads them!