What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Earth Reborn fell completely flat with me. Too long set up time, and very gamey action mechanics. Really dislike the small action tokens and the currency.

Played Survive for the first time yesterday. Really fun game. Lots of laugh, and I played with a bunch of great people who take things in stride. Definitely need more games like this.

Tried Caverna for two turns, 2 players, by myself. Not really know what to say. Have to play a full game with 3 people. All in all, actions are much faster. For example, in a single action I can get a food, a grain, and plow fields. This would have taken 3 actions in Agricola. The furnitures are a bit of information overload to me, and at a glance I can't reall know what they're good for, unless I'm hovering for 5 minutes above them.

Had brother in law and his girlfriend over for dinner and games. We played castle panic w/o the expansion and lost. It's an ok game, but decent enough for light weight gaming. Then I brought out glory to Rome. I'm have never beat my wife in this game. Every time she gets some merchant combo and slides in for the win. I ended up with a crazy architect text combo. I could use any card to lead/follow architect, use materials from the middle pool instead of my stockpile, and use rubble for any building. Plus I was able to use the bar and had 11 clients, of which 5 were architects. And a 9 card handsize. So whenever my turn came around or anyone played architect, I was rolling in buildings. But I by the time I was trying to finish the game, I could not start a concrete building, no grey cards ever were in my hand. So my wife had the building that allowed you to draw cards from the deck when merchant-ing. So the deck ran out(first for us) and she beat me by 6 points, or the two bonuses for the vault she got. Despite losing, it was an awesome combo

Saturday I had a couple friends with over, and excited about scum and villainy release we played xwing. One new player, who is a former warhammer player....really enjoyed it and wanted to play again.

150 pts - buzz saw shuttle, vessery defender plus some tie fighters with targeting computers to pull target locks for vessery. Vs 4 b wings and 2 y wings. Defender is always fun but it seems to die faster than a tie interceptor which sucks when you pour 40+ points in. Buzz saw shuttle was the hero of the day, with the empire winning with two ties left.

2nd game was 200 points and at least one large ship on each side. He took the empire, 8 academy ties and 3 alpha interceptors and Chiraneau in the Decimator. I took fat Han, keyan far lander with push the limit and jan ors, some cheap a wings and a loaded corran horn. I never play with these expensive ships, they just feel like a waste in smaller games. But in this target rich environment they did great. Han would roll three hits every turn. Keyan burned through 6 ties by himself. Great time, even if every one was burned out by the end of the day. I can't wait for the raider and huge ship battles.

Earth Reborn

Yeah, but the minis. And the exclusives. What a game!

S.

Pax Porfiriana - seems like I've played this 2p more than anything else. I was trying to gather Outrage but I was too damn slow and lost on the first topple against Revolution. Man, I can't wait to see the Afghanistan or deluxe version. I'd love for this game to have decent art and rulebook.

Started Zeppelin Attack, which I think is goofy fun, but bagged it when the third player arrived.

Hyperborea - My friend's daughter picked red for me, and if I'd thought about it I would have reconsidered, because last time I played I went for a Blood for the Blood God strategy and I wanted to do something else. Ended up doing something else anyway because I was absolutely hosed by terrain, with a swamp and a forest blocking the way out of my home section. I stupidly didn't buy a tech that would let me handle this until far too late. Came in third, but surprisingly not as far behind as I was afraid I'd be. I really like this one.

Imperial Settlers - Sadly, one player was new to this so we didn't get to play with the expansion. I pounced on that the second it came out and still haven't had a chance to actually play it. (You can play with 2p, but I think it's not as good as with 3 or 4.) The Japanese player got hosed by not getting some of the basic faction cards he needed to get that engine going, which I admit is a weak point in this game. I was the Barbarians but Rome was the one razing everyone's stuff and I mostly just generated VPs, as I didn't get the Barbarians razing-engine buildings. Got the win only because the guy playing Rome was the new guy. Still, a pretty tight game.

Finally got to play Twilight Imperium 3 and it was an exciting yet exhausting experience. There were 6 of us lined up, all new players who had read the rules, but unfortunately one dropped out at the last moment so we went ahead with a 5 player game. We used the preset map to set up the galaxy, and the base game Strategy cards (including normal Imperial). I explained the general strategy of always picking Imperial for 2 points, and the next person should always pick Initiative so they could take Imperial the next time. After that we picked our races randomly and got right into it.

I played as the Barony, and the other players were the Mentak, Jol-Nar, Sol and the L1Z1X. My secret objective was to control Mecatol Rex with 6 ground troops and a space dock. After some initial expansion I decided to push quickly to Mecatol with upgraded carriers, ground troops, fighters and some cruisers and destroyers. We were playing with the Custodians of Mecatol mod so I knew I had to bring some decent firepower to take them on. I was lucky in that, as I learned at the end of the game, no one else had a secret objective focusing on Mecatol so I was able to be king of the hill first.

All around the map the other players skirmished for territory. My neighbour (and fiancee) the Mentak made a first turn fleet push with cruisers to take the planet right beside my home hex, which alarmed me greatly. We ended up making a peace deal because I had the L1Z1X as my other neighbour and I didn't want to get involved in a war at the start of the game. That ended up working well because the Mentak then pushed towards the Jol-Nar to take the system besides their home planet. At the end of the game we learned that she had the secret objective to take two systems adjacent to two other players' home systems, which explained her uncharacteristic hyper aggressive behaviour.

On the other side of the galaxy Sol made a surprising push for L1Z1X territory that initiated a war lasting for the rest of the game. In the meantime I was able to build up my forces on Mecatol and home hex, as well as building technologies and taking in trade goods to snag all the public objectives. The final turn of the game was very intense, as everyone had very large fleets and realized that I was very close to winning, alongside the Jol-Nar player. I was able to Diplomacy the Sol player to hold him off for a turn, as he had gathered huge fleets within striking distance of Mecatol. Holding on to it's 6 influence proved to be the deciding factor, as the first Stage II objective revealed at the very end of that turn was to have more influence than both your neighbours combined. With Mecatol I was able to claim the three points and win the game.

Overall everyone enjoyed the game and said they would love to play again. We started at noon and finished at around 10 pm, but the overall playing time was much less when breaks, dinner and set up time were taken out. One player wasn't happy with the Imperial and Initiative cards and how you were required to take them, but I was happy knowing that there was a game clock. At some point I would like to try out the other strategy cards, as well as a full 6 player game.

As a final aside, has anyone ever used the Litko fleet stands? We found that the pegs were really shoddily made and only a small percentage actually fit into the plastic hexagons. There weren't enough correctly made pegs to actually assemble all the stands. Otherwise the stands were very useful for all the massive fleets that started popping up later in the game.

scrumpyjack wrote: As a final aside, has anyone ever used the Litko fleet stands?

I use them every time we play and I have something like 18 of them. I find them invaluable. Some of the pegs were a problem, but I just tried loose pegs in different holes until it fit better, and used an xacto knife to shave the ends of the ones that were too big.

Disgustipater wrote:

scrumpyjack wrote: As a final aside, has anyone ever used the Litko fleet stands?

I use them every time we play and I have something like 18 of them. I find them invaluable. Some of the pegs were a problem, but I just tried loose pegs in different holes until it fit better, and used an xacto knife to shave the ends of the ones that were too big.

Thanks I'll try that out tonight!

I've been really digging Shadows of Malice lately. It's like Mage Knight without all of the bullshit mechanical focus (although I do like Mage Knight). Very old school D&D feel and I love that it does away with typical fantasy tropes. No Dwarves, Elves, Orcs.

We also have played with the new Sons Of Anarchy mini expansion for the Grim Bastards and loving it. Played an epic 5 player game yesterday that lasted 3 hours and featured deal cutting and back stabbing every single turn. We had players extorting the shit out of each other and I won by only $4 despite trailing early.

Went to a mini con of sorts in Walla Walla for our local game group, and had a great time. We're actually an hour away in the Tri-Cities, WA area, but figured if we were going to do a full weekend gaming thing that we'd have to at least leave town and commit to a hotel somewhere else. As it was, we had about 25 people come, which was great, considering that we usually get about that many at any given game night in town.

Russian Railroads, Abyss, Five Tribes: Fairly standard Euro fare, though Abyss, which I hadn't played before, was at least a little different in style, and I appreciated Five Tribes better this time after feeling pretty meh the first time I played it.

Rogue Agent: Sounded pretty cool during the first half of the explanation, but then the rules kept going on with various little fiddly things, and the play through itself was pretty tedious. By comparison for a game with a very similar general theme...

...Android was really great. It was the first time for all four of us playing this... well no, one guy had played it 3-4 years prior but didn't remember enough to help as far as rules explanation... so it was a bit of a slog at first to learn it all. But once we got into a couple of turns it really flowed well, and I loved it. A lot of things going on, but also very clever with many interesting details. I can see why the game wasn't a big hit, but I can also see why it has its fans. In our game, I played as Louis and was able to complete my best plots and also was the only one to identify my suspect, but we had all left our friend, Tim, alone to do too much of the conspiracy on his own, so he got some major points for that and ended up beating me by a few points. We all agreed that the way to best appreciate this game, and also to do better at it in terms of gameplay, is probably to embrace the RPG nature of it, and be in close touch with the story elements of the characters, which really do factor into certain game elements. For example, Tim's character was a drunk, and his strategy sheet warned him about going to the nightlife locations, and sure enough, when he went there we dinged him a couple times with dark cards that played into that storyline and cost him several actions. Being more aware of that, he'd have planned ahead and visited those locations last in his turn (for a nightcap), where it wouldn't have affected him as much. I really like how the game has so much character depth in those kind of ways and rewards the more you engage that. We're all planning to play again soon, and I think it will be even better.

Hadn't played Kemet in a while, but it rocked as usual.

Pandemic: Contagion is a competitive game where you play as the diseases trying to infect cities. A little bit like Smash Up where you're trying to break the thresholds of goal cards in order to claim their points. Not bad, but also felt a little too lightweight and was over too quickly. I prefer Smash Up for that kind of thing.

Fische Fluppen Frikadellen is a Friedemann Friese game where you are moving around the board trying to collect various combinations of goods in order to claim a "fetish" from a dealer, hoping to take best advantage of the prices for the goods as they rise and fall. It's pretty fun as it is, but the gimmick for a larger event is that you can play it with 15 people over three different tables... Once you collect a fetish on your first table, you move to the right of the current player on another table, and play there until you get that fetish, and then move to the third table. It's really fun that way, but you can't take it too seriously, as it can be pretty dependent on what the particulars of your table are (if you start at a table with a slow player or two, you're probably not going to have a chance). Last time I played this, I had just the right factors of timing and things lined up that I cruised to victory, but this time I didn't really have a chance.

I've been so bored with my library lately. Maybe it's burnout. The only thing that gets me hyped is X-Wing and the upcoming Armada. Bored bored bored bored bored. It's all good.

I played 3 or 4 games of Impulse.

I love it! but it is sort of like trying to coach a psychopath. You can try various approaches and use various actions but the results can often have unexpected and rather violent consequences. Also you can create infinite loops which is bizarre and happened in my first game. I am really intrigued by it but it won't be a game for everyone, your control over what is happening is a bit tenuous at times. It's a very unique experience which i really value in the modern cookie cutter game train.

Also played out a complete 2 player game of High Frontier with the expanded rules. I hammered my opponent. I claimed some S asteroids first, built a factory and flipped a really good rocket card, then sped out to the moons of Jupiter and built factoried them all. I also got my crew to a site and back first. The big sticking point is can you make a rocket fit for purpose. My opponent had the idea of going to mercury and got there and back the first time easy, but the second he cut down his rocket and left with out enough fuel to land. The rules, whilst difficult to first learn, are not that complex but you can easily shoot yourself in the foot if you are not paying attention.

Played a few games over the weekend.

Shadows Over Camelot - We managed to get 6 people for this game. I've always been a fan of this game and I still enjoy playing it. The mechanics themselves are dry and pointless....you're playing poker hands. However, that ease of rules and abstraction lets you get to core of the game. Which is finding out which one of the players is a filthy traitor. I was Sir Gawain. I was also the traitor. Playing the traitor in this game is much more subtle than something like BSG. You need to appear helpful and agreeable...but in actuality you need to be worthless and full of bad ideas. It is less in your actions and more in your words that will help you win. Convincing another knight to place a siege engine or go down to 1 health is just as important as throwing away merlin cards in the quest for Excalibur. About halfway through the game one knight died thanks to a Morgan card I pulled that cost each Knight a life. The grail could only save one of the two dying men. Such a pity. Towards the end there were roughly 9 white swords and only 1 black sword. The knights were confident in victory. I saw that the board was filled with siege engines. More than they could possible handle. It was only a matter of time. Eventually a couple more Knights died...and then the last siege engine was placed by Arthur himself. Everyone was dishearten at their loss. Except for me who flipped over the traitor card and said, "I win bitches!" One other knight had suspected me and was going to accuse me on his next turn. It never got to that point and I don't think it would have matter. I really enjoy this game and think it's such a clean design. There is no extraneous bullshit. Just simple rules and then it's up to the players. The game's themes of loyalty, trust and sacrifice for the greater good all shine brightly. It feels very Arthurian in that regard. Does one perform one last heroic act and leave the game or selfishly press on? Most people don't choose to die even when it's the best play. They'd rather stay alive and try to fight that way instead. I still think it's one of the best semi co-op games out there.

Junta: Viva la Presidente - This game is not what one would technically call a good design. It's all about cardplay and rolling dice and random shit. This is all stuff that one of the four players took glee in pointing out. Yes mechnically this game is nothing groundbreaking or even good. The rules though, are very simple and this is one of those games that is meant to 'rise above the table' so to speak. The one guy complaining would bitch whenever an assassination card was played on his militia. "See this game is just pure random." Yet nobody was really talking except for me, and I was the Presidente. This is a game where is behooves the player to say things like, "If you attack me I'm going to assassinate your ass!" Everything in this game is about the conversations and interactions of the players. If all you do is quietly give a card to each player and then you all silently select dice and reveal who you're attacking...fuck almighty you're missing the entire game! The stupid little rule set is actually quite clever and with the right people this game could really shine. The guy complaining was still fun to play with and he was more poking fun at the design instead of being a buzz kill. While playing he was very much into it and trying his damn hardest to win. Which is admirable considering how much he hated the game. However, his argument that the game was random and shit mechanically is bogus to me. The game isn't about the mechanics. It's about the interactions. Being the Presidente and placating idiots to due your bidding...using the aid of the Presidente to buy militia that you will take him out with next turn...making one person your faithful ally by giving him lots of cash, only to stab him in the back. I think it's alot of fun and there are tons of dickish things you can do. I also won this game by being the shadiest bastard at the table.

Colt Express - I ended the night with a three player game of Colt Express. This game has a great 'toy factor' and I love the way it looks on the table. Your enjoyment will really depend upon how much you like programmable games and if your memory isn't shit. I'm a sucker for a good western game and this game was plenty enjoyable. It's about the same level as something like Dice Town or Pony Express. Though I don't think it's as good as either of those games. Of the three games I played this was the least enjoyable for me. It lacks teeth or perhaps soul. It has that Euro quality where you're allowed to attack, but it doesn't feel satisfying. I'm having trouble putting it into words, but something about it felt slightly off. I think I'd much rather play this with family or my wife's non gamer friends. In that setting I think it would really shine. Also, playing with only 3 seemed to be less than ideal I'd like to try it again. It's neat, but nothing special.

DukeofChutney wrote: I played 3 or 4 games of Impulse.

I love it! but it is sort of like trying to coach a psychopath. You can try various approaches and use various actions but the results can often have unexpected and rather violent consequences. Also you can create infinite loops which is bizarre and happened in my first game.

How did you manage the infinite loop? When I thought I found an exploding/infinite turn, it turned out that I'd missed the rule that states each command movement can only have one destination. So I'm curious what other triggers might be in there.

Saturday was a varied selection. First was DC Comics Deck Building Game : Forever Evil which is still hard to grok, and may be actually kind of broken. One player crushed the rest of us with 57 points, though I am not 100% sure he was interpreting cards correctly. Ho hum.

Then we played Tigris and Euphrates which I'm getting a bit more familiar with. I think the game was essentially thrown by poor choices of conflicts handing many cubes to one of the players, who dominated with a score of 13. I thought I did OK with 7, thanks to getting a good amount of treasures.

Finally got to play Chaos in the Old World with some of the group. I spent some time talking about the balance, and what we all need to look out for. Slaanesh won on turn five on the dial. Mostly because people saw Nurgle (me) on 38 points on turn four... I think everyone enjoyed the game, even so. With experience comes balance.

Red Dragon Inn in which I played the new P&P character from #5. Not that strong a deck as it turns out. Still, it's a fun game and really easy to teach to new players, which was part of the reason we were playing.

Flash Point Fire Rescue with three of us. They wanted to play veteran level. We got our asses kicked, then they immediately wanted to play again, and we lost even worse. We all really enjoyed the game, though.

The whole thing where you have to have a conversation about the balance beforehand, because you are unlikely to just play 10 times with the same people, stinks. I hate doing it but it has to be done lest someone is just like "hey we should never play this again it's broken" instead of "let's keep playing, I want to do better and know what to look out for now."

The guy who played Tzeench got crushed, but he enjoyed the game, and I think saw the potential. If I'd had everything my way, I'd have chosen to play Tzeench, but there were some logistics involved around food (it is a diner) and whatnot.