What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played Memoir '44 on the weekend with my 7 year old. When I first bought it, it never really did anything for me so it sat on the shelf for years, but it really worked well for playing with my son and I'm glad I kept it. There's no initial information overload and a nice level of abstraction, which let him figure out some basic tactics while we went through the first few scenarios. It was interesting to see how he processes information - he thought tanks weren't very impressive until we started playing with them and he saw how far they could move and that their firepower wasn't reduced by range, then his infantry were hunkering down in the villages and getting out of line of sight.

Almalik wrote: Played Memoir '44

I just sat in on four Memoir boards reenacting a section of the Battle of the Bulge, so Memoir had a good run.

The mentor for the kids strategic gaming group used Memoir's core running gear but put his own spin on command structure, range and damage. Some parts worked, some parts didn't. American artillery tore up German armor at a great rate, far in excess of reality. It's his intention to revise the rules and use the system again to reenact other WWII battles with the system.

Memoir was there, but he had beefed it up a bit. He more or less makes rules as situations come up, and generally the kids are comfortable with it. His own son is the biggest complainer and I introduced a house rule of my own -- you're only allowed to work the referee between turns, not during. This kept his boy from getting rules bent in his own direction, a high school junior that is one of the two oldest kids there, in a field that reaches down to about at 12.

Quite the session.

Firefly, this time with the Saturday evening gamers (which overlaps my coworker gamers). Once again, four players with basic rules. This is my third try with this, and I think I've gotten the basic hang of it. We did "The King of Londinium" scenario, and I won it, in yet again a close game.

The thoughts of the new players afterwards wwere:

- "Dang, this game is long." 3 1/2 hours again, not counting going over the rules. Like I said last time, I think we can get it to 3 hours for 4 players, but not much more. These guys aren't afraid of long games, and now they know for sure how much time it should take. I'd say 45 minutes/player.

- "Wow, you can get hosed BAD!" One player got double Disgruntled before he could fix it, and lost _all_ of his crew. Somehow right afterwards, he managed to simultaneously get broke. And that was his game - no coming back from that.

- "I like the flavor of this." I know I did. I don't imagine I'm travelling across the 'verse and wear my Browncoat outfit to work, but the cards are worth a chuckle when you remember them from the show.

I'll nag them to play it again in a month or so.

VonTush wrote:

charlest wrote: I 100% agree on the D&DAS games being bland. I'm one of the few around here that doesn't like them.

Add me to the ranks of "doesn't like them".

Pile on!!

Bland is a great way to describe them.

iguanaDitty wrote:

VonTush wrote:

charlest wrote: I 100% agree on the D&DAS games being bland. I'm one of the few around here that doesn't like them.

Add me to the ranks of "doesn't like them".

Pile on!!

Bland is a great way to describe them.

It wasn't just me, then. I'm writing a blog entry about what D&DAS and Descent 2.0 got wrong that Dragon Quest did better 20 years ago.

iguanaDitty wrote:

VonTush wrote:

charlest wrote: I 100% agree on the D&DAS games being bland. I'm one of the few around here that doesn't like them.

Add me to the ranks of "doesn't like them".

Pile on!!

Bland is a great way to describe them.

I would agree with you that the components are bland. Plop one of the D&DAS game down next to, say, Mice & Mystics, and D&DAS looks terrible by comparison.

But the game itself still manages to win me over. I've played it a lot (mostly solo running 2 or 3 characters), it almost always delivers a tense, close game that comes down to a final desperate battle against the boss monster.

I've pimped my version out with a bunch of extra monsters from Dungeon Command (I highly recommend doing this, just to get some variety in the Monster deck) and some other painted minis. It helps a lot. More evocative artwork on the cards and tiles would have been nice. I do agree with the "bland" argument there.

Mice and Mystics is balls and the writing in it is embarrassing.

Joebot wrote:

iguanaDitty wrote:

VonTush wrote:

charlest wrote: I 100% agree on the D&DAS games being bland. I'm one of the few around here that doesn't like them.

Add me to the ranks of "doesn't like them".

Pile on!!

Bland is a great way to describe them.

I would agree with you that the components are bland. Plop one of the D&DAS game down next to, say, Mice & Mystics, and D&DAS looks terrible by comparison.

But the game itself still manages to win me over. I've played it a lot (mostly solo running 2 or 3 characters), it almost always delivers a tense, close game that comes down to a final desperate battle against the boss monster.

I've pimped my version out with a bunch of extra monsters from Dungeon Command (I highly recommend doing this, just to get some variety in the Monster deck) and some other painted minis. It helps a lot. More evocative artwork on the cards and tiles would have been nice. I do agree with the "bland" argument there.

It's not just the components, the mechanics are bland as well. Exploration doesn't matter, combat is dead simple without real tension, AI is non-existant. It's like a streamlined version of Shadows of Brimstone without all the exceptional leveling up/town visits/campaign play.

Hey everyone, you know what makes games of Gears of War virtually impossible? Playing 4 times without recognizing that the COGs have an innate defense die just like the monsters do in the corner of their character card.

Ouch. Gears of War is difficult enough without a defense penalty like that. Don't forget grab cover first!

Dropped the hammer on them in Emergence on my second try once I got the rules right.

There are a ton of things that make this game the best Dudes in a Corridor game I've played, I might post about it later, but one of the best is that the special weapons you pick up along the way fucking ROCK. You pick up a boomshot, or a couple extra grenades, and you can fuck dudes UP. You feel an appreciable (TEMPORARY) increase in power. And in this game, you need it.

Criminally underdiscussed game, now that I've played it.

Joebot wrote: . . . close game that comes down to a final desperate battle against the boss monster.

I'm playing just normal AD&D with my boys and I'm having a hard time explaining to them that there isn't generally a boss monster at the end of the evening. It's so ingrained in them.

To be fair, when I started playing in the 70s we asked when we got to kill the Dungeon Master. The name seemed to indicate he was in there somewhere.

Question -- do all of the D&D Adventure Series games end with a boss monster?

S.

Last night was excellent.

6 games of SafeBreaker, a fantastic and obscure microgame from this past year that had everyone clamoring for more.

2 games of Coconuts which continues to be a hit with adults.

2 games of Red7 which were enjoyable but I just found the game to be OK. A little too slow paced for me as players sit and try to go through all of their options.

Got in my 2nd play of Cyclades: Titans and it was fantastic. We all wanted to play again, except we couldn't because my buddy's copy of Cthulhu Wars was causing the table to buckle and we had to get it played.

So, I was hoping I wouldn't really like this game so that I could push it out of my thoughts and move on but jesus...the game is actually damn good beyond the gorgeous $200 MSRP bling. I think I'm going to do a full on article about it when I get another play or two in so I'm not going to say much, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Gary Sax wrote: There are a ton of things that make this game the best Dudes in a Corridor game I've played, I might post about it later, but one of the best is that the special weapons you pick up along the way fucking ROCK. You pick up a boomshot, or a couple extra grenades, and you can fuck dudes UP. You feel an appreciable (TEMPORARY) increase in power. And in this game, you need it.

I love the resource management when deciding to burn ammo for an overkill attack and whether or not to use those precious command cards (HIT POINTS!) to follow a buddy or rip into a locust as it moves. Those little touches add so much pressure to what could have otherwise been a pretty bland and vanilla move and shoot game.

I'll have to keep my eye on the weapons as they drop during missions as you suggest. In our mission we never saw them because we wasted too much time picking them up and didn't realize the Locust orders would remove them on occasion. Lesson learned.

Torque Bow is the best. Literally blow guys in half.