What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

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.

The license thing is really funny. I love the video game franchise so the way the handle everything with the mechanics is bang on with the game. On the other hand, it makes me laugh because I can TOTALLY see if you didn't like the franchise like I do the whole thing would be like "who the fuck is this guy? He doesn't look any different from the guy with the bow." Whereas I look at the little mini from a distance and my thought is "shit, watch out for that Theron guard! He's got a torque bow and different armor! "

Robinson last night, the cannibal villages scenario. We got our asses easily handed to us twice in a row (so many wounds! so unlucky! - we couldn't roll successes to build anything, even with the carpenter's rerolls), but third time was the charm and we ended up with 12 weapon strength or so. The soldier's defensive plan was essential to our strategy: he'd clean up the camp every turn and use those tokens to increase our weapons by 1 and shore up morale as well, worked pretty well. We were still pretty near death all three of us.

Gary Sax wrote: The license thing is really funny. I love the video game franchise so the way the handle everything with the mechanics is bang on with the game. On the other hand, it makes me laugh because I can TOTALLY see if you didn't like the franchise like I do the whole thing would be like "who the fuck is this guy? He doesn't look any different from the guy with the bow." Whereas I look at the little mini from a distance and my thought is "shit, watch out for that Theron guard! He's got a torque bow and different armor! "

Yeah, familiarity with the franchise is a bonus. Even with it I had a time trying to make out which mini represent what. On that note I give you...

[url=

]Gears Minis[/url]

Sorry if the image is wonky and for the quality. This is my first attempt at posting an image here.

Looks really good! The only minis even I have trouble with are Dom and Baird.

Scoville
Roll for the Galaxy
Valley of the Kings

I can tell you a funny story about Valley of the Kings.

S.

Last night I got to play my first game of Rex, and hopefully it won't be my last. We had 6 players and it was a lot of fun. I've never played Dune, so perhaps that would change my opinion, but I really liked the interactions of the different races.

charlest wrote:
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.

I am very happy with how Cthulhu Wars is turning out -- it is one of those things where it is hard not to be biased, since I sunk resources into kickstarting it. But, it is a good game. And, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't get reprinted at that cost. Also, they are going to break down their retail copies to replace broken pieces (I was lucky and didn't have any issues)...so it might not be available for long. I would say get it when you can, if you like it (if you can stomach the $200).

Gary Sax wrote: The license thing is really funny. I love the video game franchise so the way the handle everything with the mechanics is bang on with the game. On the other hand, it makes me laugh because I can TOTALLY see if you didn't like the franchise like I do the whole thing would be like "who the fuck is this guy? He doesn't look any different from the guy with the bow." Whereas I look at the little mini from a distance and my thought is "shit, watch out for that Theron guard! He's got a torque bow and different armor! "

I knew nothing about the Gears of War franchise or video game, but, I still found the game fun. To figure out which characters were which, I put colored dots on the bases and like colored dots on the sleeved cards.

Played Hyperborea the other night with 4. I'd only played once before, with two, so we were eager to get a bigger game going.

It's a lot of fun and there's more to it than it appears. I had read somewhere people complaining about your faction hemming you in to a strategy but I went against my faction's strength and won (admittedly probably because of the two rookie players.) I was blue, which specializes in tech, but I started with the Alchemy tech and never got another. I pretty much ignored the right side of the player mat, focusing on churning out dudes and killing. (And I'm usually the pacifist!) I didn't add a lot of cubes so I was resetting often and taking advantage of the cities to get me benefits. When I didn't have the cube I needed, Alchemy let me change, and again the constant resetting meant it was often available.

I'm liking this one a lot and can't wait to get more plays in.

Tonight I got to play Cthulhu Wars, and I am VERY pleasantly surprised. It looks amazing, and is such a ridiculously over the top production... really a spectacle. It plays very similarly to Chaos in the Old World, but I think it's actually a bit easier to digest and moves quicker. I'm not willing to say it is better yet, of course. But damn is it a fine looking board game.