What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Chaz wrote: Was it me, or was that rule book more convoluted than it actually needed to be. Game's pretty simple, but it sure didn't seem like it from the book.

Rulebooks shouldn't be written like crappy procedural programs with "GOTO" statements all over the place. The Death Angel rulebook is definitely guilty of this.

ThirstyMan wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:
Blah blah blah

S.

Passing equipment between stacks of chits, is something you are not going to have time to do. While you are messing around trying to get your squads in the same place to actually do this. . .

Who said anything about that?

Just finished playing Chaos in the Old World via Vassal with some buddies. I've played it twice before, but it's been a few years, and I hadn't played Tzeentch before. I got my first upgrade, and neglected to pick up the cultist upgrade. Turns out that cost me the game. I dig the game in general, but I kinda hate that all the powers have a mandatory upgrade, and either not realizing it, or trying something else will basically knock you completely out of the running.

Yeah, supposedly that's what Horned Rat fixes...

Well, Horned Rat has new upgrades but some of those are mandatory as well. That's the one big flaw in Chaos that certain upgrade paths are required for victory.

Sagrilarus wrote:

ThirstyMan wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:
Blah blah blah

S.

Passing equipment between stacks of chits, is something you are not going to have time to do. While you are messing around trying to get your squads in the same place to actually do this. . .

Who said anything about that?

I assume this is what you mean by hidden chits and not knowing who holds what or where it is. Appreciate the respect though.

charlest wrote: Well, Horned Rat has new upgrades but some of those are mandatory as well. That's the one big flaw in Chaos that certain upgrade paths are required for victory.

I had wondered about this, which upgrade is it for which faction?

I almost always upgrade my number of actions or my cultists stats.

I haven't played in probably a year and a half or two years but I distinctly remember a necessary upgrade for Khorne and Nurgle.

I played Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage a couple of times this week. I've owned it for about seven years but never got around to playing it before. Fantastic game. The game last night had incredible ebb and flow. It finally came down to counting provincial control in the final turn, which came up an 8-8 tie. I won the tie-breaker due to my Carthaginian awesomeness.

Hannibal himself had a weird, meandering adventure: he spent the first few years withstanding several attritions and defending himself from repeated Roman attacks while trying to subjugate a stubborn tribe in the northern Alps for absolutely no reason. He then got stuck in Africa after chasing off a conquering Scipio Africanus who had nearly finished a successful siege of Carthage. Then, in the final year, Hannibal crossed the sea to Italy and paraded his three elephants along the eastern coast, winning over the adoring Italians and securing a Carthage victory.

My opponent (who was playing the game for the first time) had a few chances to win but never had quite the right cards to pull the trigger.

I also tried Mythotopia. Meh.

Based on the 10 or so plays of Chaos in the Old World I've had in the last 6 months or so it does seem like some of the upgrades aren't really that optional. With the base game Khorne will want to add an attack to his cultist, Nurgle wants 3VP for every ruined region, and Slaanesh wants better defense on his cultists. I forget what Tzeentch's is, probably not that great than. The other ones aren't even much of an option for first upgrade.

I checked out Horned Rat before playing and read it over after a first play. More variety on the upgrades I'd say. Khorne either goes for more dice or goes for VP on kills. Nurgle can do more corruption when placing one token or a few other decent things, Tzeentch can place a third card or can summon horrors for free, and Rat has some fun stuff with making regions adjacent or moving figures after corruption is scored. I thought the upgrades gave more options than the base game.

Played Hannibal RvC again recently, second play in about a week. Still loving the game alot and losing alot. I enjoy the card driven events compared to Twilight Struggle where I have to keep in mind most of the cards and potential cards with bad events that haven't been played. Hannibal is easier on a noob in that sense that I don't have to memorize the deck.

Scott_F wrote: Based on the 10 or so plays of Chaos in the Old World I've had in the last 6 months or so it does seem like some of the upgrades aren't really that optional. With the base game Khorne will want to add an attack to his cultist, Nurgle wants 3VP for every ruined region, and Slaanesh wants better defense on his cultists. I forget what Tzeentch's is, probably not that great than. The other ones aren't even much of an option for first upgrade.

The Tzeentch one lets his cultists bring a warpstone with them when they're summoned from one region to another. Turns out that's basically required, otherwise he's stuck having to go to the regions with one warpstone and hoping he can get down a card with a second magic symbol on it and then drop two corruption so he can get a dial counter.

Another two round of Elder Sign - Gates of Arkham last night. Azathoth wiped us out in short order, mostly thanks to getting four doom on the first midnight, and every midnight/mythos effect added more doom. After resetting we faced Yigg-Tsill, who causes sanity or stamina loss every time you use a clue. My wife currently likes playing Patrice, who can get extra clues and allow other investigators to use them, so it wasn't the easiest GoO to battle. I chose the guy (I forget, he's one of the four or so wearing a brown fedora) who gets to pick the result when he rolls the yellow die.

We foolishly dumped a gate on an adventure with an open monster task on it. In came a monster and locked a green die. The next monster out... locked a green die, and the yellow die was locked by another adventure. Neither of us had red dice to use. What we had was a bag full of clues. So we had to navigate a path through the adventures we could feasibly achieve, to get the items/memberships, etc we needed to take down one of the monsters to get a die back, then tackle the Other World event to seal the gate, then the Silver Twilight membership to ignore/discard the monster task locking the other die, and it all came together. After that it was a tense game of managing stat losses and midnight effects, and we eventually got all our elder signs with only two doom tokens. This was less a game about the doom, more about the attrition on our characters. Some of our success definitely came down to 1 in 6 rolls on the last dice. All the yellow items I got didn't add yellow dice, so my investigator power was useless, but we had a pile of clues and the trophies to heal after using them. This is such a great game for us right now.

The 10th anniversary of the St. Louis meetup group was last night so I hit that up and skipped my weekly group on Wednesday.

It was getting crowded (40+ people showed) so I claimed a table and setup Spartacus which I hadn't played in long while. I introduced it to two new players and had a buddy who had played it before. We ended up playing two games because the first kind of ended much quicker than we wanted. Very enjoyable as always and the second game ended up with a Primus which was stellar. I ended up only keeping my starting gladiator the entire game but he won his first two fights and was bulked up with a Helmet and Axe. Me and my teammate were beat down in the Primus though.

Next I tried Roll for the Galaxy which was decent but not nearly as good as Race in my opinion. I dislike that I'm stuck only developing/settling the top tile in my stack as I was dealt the 6 point military tile in the beginning which I really wanted to hang onto but it would have hamstrung me if I kept it. I also don't like the lack of being able to leech off other player's actions because actions are mostly decided by rolls. I would still play it again though.

We were trying to get 6 together for Homeland but it didn't happen due to it getting too late. Instead I played Coup: Guatemala for the second time, which as I said before is much better than standard Coup. Overall though Coup is getting a bit stale and I'm beginning to hate the thing where there's three players left and the player with the most money loses. Kind of aggravating even though I wasn't even involved in the game at that point.

A Fistful Of Dinero arrived in town Wednesday so we busted it open and I taught a group. First play on a final production copy was a bit surreal. I'm also quickly learning that watching other people play my game or react to it is extremely stressful. Not so much that I'm worried about criticism but I'm more worried that I'm letting people down, especially people who threw money at it. I feel this way when people tell me they picked up a game based on one of my reviews in which case I dread their response after the playing hoping to god it didn't disappoint them. Probably some deep rooted psychology issues there I should blame my parents for. Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy Dinero so it was all good.

We closed out the night with an oddball social deduction game I had never heard of, which is extremely rare, called Moriarty's Maschinations. Apparently the backstory is Travis from IB&C sued the publisher because it's so close to Avalon. After playing, I would say Travis is absolutely right as it's pretty much Avalon with a couple of tweaks. With that being said, I thought it was pretty enjoyable and am eager to play it again sometime. I really dig the bit in the rules that forces the team leader to describe the heist (mission) the players are going to go on. Some people do this in Resistance but most don't. So we had stuff like "Tear the heads off parking meters", "Breaking in to steal the Star Citizen current build", and a 4 man job to "Swipe a purse off the first grandma we see walking down the street." Entertaining and the game worked, although it seemed slightly clunky.

charlest wrote: Next I tried Roll for the Galaxy . . . I also don't like the lack of being able to leech off other player's actions because actions are mostly decided by rolls. I would still play it again though.

One of us appears to be playing the rules incorrectly. It may be me. We play that any action anyone takes is available to all, and that you can place one die of any side as your action selector, more or less giving you full choice of what action you choose. I have learned from someone else, so without eyes in the rulebook I can't tell you if I'm correct or not. I'm interested to hear second opinions at this point, as that would really change the game.

S.

charlest wrote: A Fistful Of Dinero arrived in town Wednesday so we busted it open and I taught a group. First play on a final production copy was a bit surreal. I'm also quickly learning that watching other people play my game or react to it is extremely stressful. Not so much that I'm worried about criticism but I'm more worried that I'm letting people down, especially people who threw money at it. I feel this way when people tell me they picked up a game based on one of my reviews in which case I dread their response after the playing hoping to god it didn't disappoint them. Probably some deep rooted psychology issues there I should blame my parents for. Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy Dinero so it was all good.

Congrats on your game! It must have been so cool to see it in its final form!