What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

This last week:
Gears of War x2
The Great Heartland Hauling Company x9
Polis (solo run to get the rules down)
Apex Therapod x5

Black Barney wrote: from the movie Alien?? There's a thematic board game around that? Can i has it?

Yes, Barney. It's great. Legendary: Encounters is what it's called.

Predator version is coming this year, apparently.

aaxiom wrote: The Great Heartland Hauling Company x9
/quote]

I guess the "x9" answers this, but how is Heartland Hauling? I've thought about adding that into an order a few times.

I introduced Chicago Express to my buddies and they liked it so much we ended up playing three games of it in a row and we would have played more if we had had more time (Mark of a great game for sure). Even better, one of the players told me that he liked the game but he wished it had more building and running your company and the other one is also kind of a builder so I'm going to take 1825 with me next, I think they'll love it

Sadly, I only own 1825 Unit 2 and other units are impossible to find. But hey, at worst I can get some other cube train games (German Railways, Continental Divide, Silverton?) and I know I'll be able to play them.


I also went to a local Netrunner tournament with an Industrial Genomics deck, which is a Jinteki identity that increases trash costs of all cards (installed or not) by the amount of facedown cards in archives. It seems fun, right? Well, it isn't, it's an extremely powerful deck and I flatlined all Runners but one because they ran out of cards. I went undefeated and by a wide margin at that. I didn't expect that at all, I ran it practically untested and thought it was just a funny Tier 3 deck or something.

Haven't been able to play too many games lately because my dissertation is ramping up, so it's mostly been a two-player game of Clash of Cultures or Sekigehara with my wife. But in a rare occurrence, someone other than me purchased a new game and invited me over to play it, and I had a total blast: Conquest of the Empire. We played with the revamped Martin Wallace-ified rules, and I really enjoyed it. Lots of above-the-board dealing and alliance changes and backstabbing. I won the game with only three units left on the board, more or less by holding Italy and Narbo unopposed for most of the game. I'm interested in coming back to it with the older rules, because it looks like it will be a little more important to hold territories rather than just the specific point-giving provinces. It was a 4-hour learning game for all of us, but the time flew by and I can't wait to play again. Can't think of a higher compliment than that, to be honest!

Man, do I need to play my expansion for Clash of Cultures. Fuuuck.

What's up with that Apex Therapod deckbuilder Phil? Does it do anything interesting/different than its peers?

I also went to a local Netrunner tournament with an Industrial Genomics deck, which is a Jinteki identity that increases trash costs of all cards (installed or not) by the amount of facedown cards in archives. It seems fun, right? Well, it isn't, it's an extremely powerful deck and I flatlined all Runners but one because they ran out of cards. I went undefeated and by a wide margin at that. I didn't expect that at all, I ran it practically untested and thought it was just a funny Tier 3 deck or something.

I just lost all desire to get into Netrunner.

craniac wrote: I just lost all desire to get into Netrunner.

Haha, dont' worry, the meta will adapt just like it adapted to all my other weird decks

It's a deceptively simple pickup-and-deliver game that is quick and "thinky". It's not a simulation, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting title for me and the family, certainly.

It's fun... in a small box with wood bits and cards. Probably one of the better small format games I've encountered, the other being the Space Hulk Death Angel title. If I were to travel, I think this game goes along. It solos pretty well, and it's an interesting challenge with others.

Hope that helps... feel free to ask for further thoughts or clarification.

charlest wrote: What's up with that Apex Therapod deckbuilder Phil? Does it do anything interesting/different than its peers?

It's a deckbuilder with a few different twists. The aspect of the game I am enjoying is that -- for me -- it drips theme far more than I expected. It's also possible to ramp up the difficulty or ease up on that difficulty very easily. It's also an excellent solitaire title, and when it's not out for a 2p or 3p game, it has the same feel solo -- which I enjoy, actually.

As far as other deckbuilders, I don't think (for me) it's doing the "same things" as others... there are common elements, sure, but there's enough different as well.

Legomancer wrote:

aaxiom wrote: The Great Heartland Hauling Company x9

I guess the "x9" answers this, but how is Heartland Hauling? I've thought about adding that into an order a few times.

It's a deceptively simple pickup-and-deliver game that is quick (20-30 minutes for me/us) and "thinky". It's not a simulation, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting title for me and the family, certainly.

It's fun... in a small box with wood bits and cards. Probably one of the better small format games I've encountered, the other being the Space Hulk Death Angel title. If I were to travel, I think this game goes along. It solos pretty well, and it's an interesting challenge with others.

Hope that helps... feel free to ask for further thoughts or clarification.

Shadows of Malice: My first time playing this. It was fun and interesting. Things looked good for about five minutes and then took a precipitous nose dive. Both mine and Josh's Avatars died and shadows broke free. It was over soon after. The minimalist art did not affect me one way or the other. You can see both genius and novice in this game. The rule book is bad. Some of the nomenclature is more confusing than it needs to be. 2d* vs 2d2? Overall the gameplay itself was fairly smooth and familiarity with the "language" of the game would allay my gripes.

Star Realms is a quick playing game that had me saying "one more time" more than once. Everything you could want in a deck builder at a price a fifth of what most others cost. Only plays 2 but worth getting.

Archipelago - medium game. we didn't play with the separatist/pacifist last time, so added them in. had a crisis come around, and needed someone to pay using their explore tokens. One guy convinced the group that "oh, there's a ton of space between the rebels and our population, we're ok letting the rebellion grow" 13 spaces. He was the separatist. he won. last time we do that. Still really enjoyed it.

Alien Frontiers - we played a couple games of this. last time we played, we had the looong drawn out end game, where people could not do anything, and were struggling to get their last colony or two. not this time. colony constructor and terraforming station were both used from the outset. great game, I may have to pick up one or two of the expansions

X-wing - I've got a Ten Numb/Keyan/Stress Y-wing build I'm thinking of playing in the reddit vassal league coming up. casual game with a guy at game night, I put together a quick Soontir Full + howlrunner miniswarm. PS 10 Ten Numb with a mangler cannon is a decent counter to Soontir, but 5 Tie Fighters is a counter to B-wings and Y-wings. I killed Soontir and an Academy, and had both Bs burned down quickly. Then it was the stressed out y-wing, who cannot turn, and since I took the title to allow him to double stress stuff, he couldn't shoot behind him. This guy vs 4 Ties. Hilariously one of the Ties had the crit that did damage when he bumped....who then immediately bumped my Y and died. also another Tie got aggressive and landed on an asteroid and blew up. Still, slow and lumbering Y-wing is not match for the maneuverability of the Ties.

Lots of damage output, little defense, I might need to swap out the y-wing for someone like Hobbie Klivian, to give it some more maneuverability while keeping the stressbot.

Pandemic Dice game - I liked this, probably more than regular pandemic. working together to trade samples is much easier than giving cards was in the regular game. it doesn't have the clever card thing, where places that have had infections are more likely to show up again.

Finally played my Omen: A Reign of War Omega Edition I kickstarted. I now have a number of games like this (Battle Line, Battle for Souls, Draco Magi) but this might be the one I like best. More interesting than Battle Line, more tightly packed than Battle for Souls, and less tedious and dumb than Draco Magi. We played the first game vanilla (though we included the Heroes and Spirits) and enjoyed it, though the rulebook has some fairly important gaps and contradictions in it. For the second game we used the Challenges, and that worked well, though we snapped them up fairly quickly and, as a result, the game seemed to end way too fast. I think using them as an addition endgame condition may need to be tweaked. The Relics and Whims didn't seem too interesting, but we'll give them a try.

Great art, easy to get going with, and matches are pretty fast and engaging. I backed this one because folks here talked up the original version, so thanks for that!