What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Dang man, y'all were really rocking it old school...Turfmaster? Bridges of Shangri-La?

Most of the Gipf games are really good. Apart from Gipf itself (which is good, just boring) and Punct (which I just did not like due to the mechanic. Zertz, Dvonn and Yinsh are probably the best abstract games since...I dunno, Twixt. They actually all have very strong themes (clue- look at the box art) that are expressed in the mechanics.

I tend to forget that I love those games...mainly because I don't have my man Peter around here in ATL to play them anymore. Guy is AMAZING at abstracts. I never win, but I love trying to beat him.

First game ever of Hannibal: Rome v. Carthage. After playing Twilight Struggle about 10 times the card events on this were much easier to handle. I loved the game and the differences between the two sides. Only problem is ideally I want to play this, Twilight Struggle, and Sekigahara all the time now and always have to pick just one of them. I wasn't that bothered by the dice rolls for naval combat or for attrition; seems like plenty of strategic moves to make even if you get some shit rolls to pull out a win.

I'd traded off Elder Sign a year or more ago... Liked the system, but it was just too easy, and the iOS version was so much better of a challenge and experience. But decided to get back into the cardboard version with the new Gates of Arkham expansion. And so far, it is more difficult... I lost badly twice so far. And some of the changes are nice, with more uncertainty about what you're up against, but also some nice things like skills that help you out in fun ways. Still, I don't see this really endearing me fully to this game again, so odds are I'll trade this off after playing a dozen times.

Just played (solo, 2 heroes) my first game of Gates of Arkham. I love the additions to the game, and the new adventures are really cool since it has a much greater sense of "place" with each adventure being tied to a specific location in Arkham.

A great game just got better.

I like Elder Sign on the phone, but it just seems to be a bit too fiddly to play as a board game. Or rather, it seems like I might as well play Eldritch Horror. But this expansion makes me want to buy it and you guys saying that it feels like a somewhat different game really encourages that decision.

We also played Gates of Arkham last night, defeating Yig though at the cost of one brave psychic. Elder Sign in general is about 15% as fiddly as Eldritch Horror. GoA adds a bit more, purely because there are a few more stacks of cards to put out, and those little gate standees to put together. We've been collecting a lot more "stuff" than in regular ES, if for no other reason than the only way to get Elder Signs is through the adventures, and often there aren't any out there. Time as an actual resource is a really nice alternative to pure trophy spending also.

Had a game night with my foreign student friends, introduced Cash and Guns and Cosmic Encounter which were both awesome times. People love pointing guns at each other, and my Hungarian friend loves jilting people in negotiations.

After everyone left my friend David and I stayed up to 3am playing; Ascending Empires, Star Borders Humanity and Secret Satans gift, Perry Rhodans Cosmic Hansa.

Star Borders Humanity is a space hex and counter style war game from Victory Point Games. Might write a review of it sooner or later. Its a point to point map rather than hexes but it plays pretty similar to GDW's Imperium. It doesn't have the character of the GDW games but has 7 scenarios, is shorter, easier and generally more accessible. We had a good time with it, I lost 6 planets to 7 on the last turn.

SS sent me Perry Rhodan's Cosmic League, i though it was pretty good actually. It's sort of a two player sorting exercise, sort of pick up and deliver like a more abstract version of Merchants of Venus. Its got some card play in it to give it a much needed strategic layer. The main thing that makes this game worthwhile is that it isn't a battle game which almost all 2 player card games are. It also feels like an older German design which appeals to me.

JEM wrote: Elder Sign in general is about 15% as fiddly as Eldritch Horror.

And yet, as much as I like ES, I find pretty much every game I play "broken" in one or more ways by rules errors.

Anyway, am very much interested in playing Gates of Arkham, though I have some trepidations based on early feedback that FFG may have gone a bit far in addressing the concerns about low difficulty.

Have played five recent games of Nexus Ops (AH edition) with the wife, who has recommended it several times. This is one that I've had for a long time, played once years ago, and have only drug out again in the last weeks -- and am I glad I did. I'd forgotten how good it was and how effective it is at streamlining without sacrificing the most critical elements of the genre.

Do not play Ghost Stories solo, with one Taoist.

Ever.

I lost in 4 turns.

jpat wrote:

JEM wrote: Elder Sign in general is about 15% as fiddly as Eldritch Horror.

And yet, as much as I like ES, I find pretty much every game I play "broken" in one or more ways by rules errors.

Anyway, am very much interested in playing Gates of Arkham, though I have some trepidations based on early feedback that FFG may have gone a bit far in addressing the concerns about low difficulty.

Focus/assist restrictions are the one we slip up on, as well as the -1 St/Sa penalty for assisting on a failed adventure. Richard Launius posted on BGG to suggest that you can/should do a mulligan if you get a bunch of difficult adventures at the start of GoA, which seems reasonable to me. Some Great Old Ones are harder to tackle, others are easier. (Gate spawning GOOs are harder, because more Midnight effects relate to gates in GoA). I think you can manage the difficulty yourself with the options available (including picking your team to suit.)

Playing a lot of VASSAL at the moment.

Three separate games of ASL with other players. Including Fighting Withdrawal (ASL1), The Commissar's House (ASL4) and Gavin Take (T1). Having fun with all of them and learning a lot. Double 1. My last best hope for victory.

One game of Combat Commander: Europe (Fat Lipki). Playing this as a break from ASL because it is like playing tic tac toe compared to chess so it gives my brain a rest.

One promising game of Andean Abyss, with a couple of FAT:ties and a solo game (playtest) of Labyrinth II which is Labyrinth with current up to date events and civil wars etc.

I also have a long running solo of A Distant Plain where I am struggling to keep the Coalition's head above water.

I think I may go to England, in the summer, for an ASL con and then on to the USA for WBC. Have to see if I have enough dosh for both. If not, it'll be WBC.

Better advice- do not play Ghost Stories.

It's time to realize that the game kind of sucks.

He's doing this on your old copy of the game (sans White Moon that I traded off a long time back).

Had some buddies over tonight for whiskey and XCOM...I have to say that all the hoopla over the app, lack of rulebook, future obsolescence, whether it does/doesn't model the game, when/if it's going to fail, is it really just a computer game, etc. has obscured that it's actually a pretty fun- and quite audacious- design. There's a lot of experimental qualities to it...some of it doesn't really work, some of it is flat out dumb, but some of it is actually quite brilliant.

The timed phase is really just a setup sequence with a budget and a procedurally generated turn sequence. The order in which things happen is where the tactical situations develop in terms of allocation. It feels like you are just following instructions at first, but you are actually reacting to an evolving game state. Then there's the resolution phase, which is really just a big ol' press your luck gambling game where you resolve the "bets" you placed by rolling dice. And there's a spoiler alien die that I swear is loaded to roll ones at the WORST time.

Definitely a must try of your gang likes to hoot and holler over dice rolling. My friends tonight are all more pc/video game minded but they loved it. Only one had not ever played XCOM, but he got right into the setting.

Definitely glad I had a chance to try it, definitely better than it seemed to be.

I had good times with X-Com thus far.


Played some Warhammer40k Conquest last night, about 4 games.

It is basically CCG meets Battleline and it suffers from some of the issues that plague FFG house card designs. They have this need to give every damn card a special ability, there are hardly any straight 1/1 or 3/4 unit (read creatures) cards in the deck. Everything has some text that you have to tirelessly read. Secondly FFG have to put most of the resources on the table at the start rather than allowing the players to draw them. This means that players start the game ready to drop high value cards and there is little to no build up. Thirdly the card visual design is a hot mess of icons most of which just relate to deck building rules, it is unclear which matter and which don't. I am not magic fan boy by any stretch but it always amazes me how FFG manage to keep taking ideas from magic and making them worse. Having said this, Conquest might be the best FFG in house design LCG to date. Because the key resource cards are in the middle of the table you can easily see what they do. The battle-line system has always been fun in each game that uses it and its given some neat twists here, rewards for winning certain battles and permanence of card position, that add an easily accessible strategy layer. Also whilst there are too many card effects most of them are not too heavily combo driven. There are some really harsh attack cards however. The space marines have one card that just allows you to kill every card on one planet when played for 3 res. If they don't have some ace up their sleeve to block it that could one shot you to victory. It can be a bit of a game of dropping crazy crap out of your hand which i'm not a fan of. I'm undecided on it at the moment. I enjoyed playing it enough and deck building was fairly easy but im not sure which way the play balance is going to go over its development. I tend to prefer card games where you can react to in game events rather than needing encyclopedic knowledge of your opponents deck before the game begins. Which way the game goes will depend on what cards they add down the line.