What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Michael Barnes wrote: The Gothic Game: As expected, this was a lot of fun. One player died in the Iron Maiden. Another got bit by a venomous snake. I briefly became a vampire and swooped down upon Alex. Wade was stalked by the Grim Reaper, until he fell into the Oubliette and died, leaving me the winner.

Who's copy? I like keeping track of the, like, five copies in the world...

One of THE BEST games ever made. Not mechanically. In terms of FUN. You guys are always on about games where things happen that you rhapsodize about for years to come...I have NEVER played a single game of this that didn't have some kind of now-legendary event occur.

I had Death stalking me so if I landed on a green passage space he'd snatch me up and kill me outright. I got stuck with a movement roll that left me no options other than trembling between a green space and the Oubliette. All I had to do to stay alive was not roll a 1 for my movement. I rolled a freaking 1.

I got in three games of X-Wing and have to say I am looking forward to more. Since I was playing with two new players we started out with the basic scenario in the starter and then worked our way through mission 1 and 2, building 100 point squads for mission 2. The Rebels won each game but every match was even and could have gone either way. I'm hoping to get in mission 3 soon and then break out the Falcon and Slave I after that. Now for some questions:

1. The Determination pilot upgrade - this seems like an awesome deal for 1 point so I want to be clear we played it right. When it discards the face-up pilot damage card does that also mean the damage is ignored as well? In other words, if a pilot with Determination is hit with a critical pilot damage card he completely ignores it, and is immune to those cards for the match?

2. What's the skinny on Z-95 Headhunters? Are they worth picking up? They seem to be one of the harder ships to buy and was curious what's the story.

3. What do you guys use to store and transport your ships? Any suggestions on what to get for the job?

Played Key Market this weekend. Normally I would see something like it and just say, "Yeah, I'll do the other thing" (and the other thing was In the Year of the Dragon, an actual Stefan Feld game I like!) but it turns out this game sells for insane amounts. Like, there's a $300 copy on offer at BGG, and that's the low one. This was said:
me: "I cannot imagine paying $300 for a single boardgame"
someone: "have you played it?"
me: "makes no difference!"

So I had to see what a $300 boardgame was like.

It was standard Euro faff, producing goods, selling them, putting people in guilds, blah blah blah. Not only is this not worth $300, it's barely worth a standard $40 price tag (and apparently R&D charges $80 for these Key games.)

Different strokes and all that, I guess.

You've got to jazz your copy up a bit...find yourself a really tacky pewter Grim Reaper figure (preferably with faux ruby eyes) to put on the player that has Death after them.

Also, I strongly recommend that you institute a rule whereby a player MUST throw the die with the cup or they automatically die. It usually winds up being hilarious...because you'll get people doing things like passing JUST the die to the next player to try to trick them into dying.

That Oubliette, I swear...it's one freakin' space on the board...and somebody ALWAYS winds up in that damn thing.

I still think one of the most epic moments ever was when somebody actually escaped the stairs.

Green Lantern wrote: I got in three games of X-Wing and have to say I am looking forward to more. Since I was playing with two new players we started out with the basic scenario in the starter and then worked our way through mission 1 and 2, building 100 point squads for mission 2. The Rebels won each game but every match was even and could have gone either way. I'm hoping to get in mission 3 soon and then break out the Falcon and Slave I after that. Now for some questions:

1. The Determination pilot upgrade - this seems like an awesome deal for 1 point so I want to be clear we played it right. When it discards the face-up pilot damage card does that also mean the damage is ignored as well? In other words, if a pilot with Determination is hit with a critical pilot damage card he completely ignores it, and is immune to those cards for the match?

2. What's the skinny on Z-95 Headhunters? Are they worth picking up? They seem to be one of the harder ships to buy and was curious what's the story.

3. What do you guys use to store and transport your ships? Any suggestions on what to get for the job?

Determination - its a nice card, especially on something that has lots of hull. but yes, when you are dealt a Crit with Pilot, you discard that card, meaning that damage does not happen at all.

some problems with it -
opportunity cost - several EPTs are better
you have to be hit with a crit + you have to be dealt a Pilot crit. out of the 33 card damage deck, only...8? are pilot crits. when it affects the game, its a great buy for 1 pt. but there's a good chance it will be a wasted point in each game. still, if you've got extra pts its not bad.

2. Z95s are good buys for the pts. nothing fancy, but gave the rebels a good cheap fighter. according to some jousting math-wing that goes on over at the FFG forums, they are 'efficient' for the points, better than many of the other rebel fighters. still 2 attack is 2 attack, with the positives and negatives that entails. I have 2 rebel and 2 scum, but some have 7-8 so they can swarm with the Zs. the models can be used in either scum or rebel. Scum z95s have some more options, as they can take the 'illicit' upgrade.

3 - I use plano boxes for the ships and a 3-ring binder with card pages for the pilots and upgrades. the Plano 1374 is a common recommendation, i use two of the 3750 Planos and an organizer box i got from homedepot on a christmas sale.

Nice, thanks for helping me out lj! I'll have to check out the Plano boxes; they sell those at most retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, right?

Just get you a big ol' bucket from the Home Depot and toss the toys in. Keep the cards in old cigarette boxes.

I don't follow the meta, don't play in stores and all that so I don't know what the right way of thinking about X-Wing is, but I really like the Z-95s. Because I think it's a cool ship, not necessarily for how it compares to other builds or whatever. I kind of wish I had more, I only have two but I'll eventually get the S&V ones.

Green Lantern wrote: 3. What do you guys use to store and transport your ships? Any suggestions on what to get for the job?

This was discussed in this thread a bit, with several different examples:

fortressat.com/forum/10-ameritrash/19663...iany?start=30#199018

KingPut wrote: We didn't play with favors, loyalty or wind and weather.

We play with everything but loyalty which just makes the game a chore and takes all the fun out of it. Favors provide another way of evening our randomness. Weather works really well. We also play with the option that you need progressively larger amounts of treasure for Glory points which lengthens the game a tad but provides a much-needed money sink.

Locations are really useful once you get the hang of them, particularly Missions (Missionaries?) which let your drop troublesome bounties. Being able to use them while remaining at sea saves an all important move too. I think you'll find players using them a lot once they get used to them. We do.

I played a game of X-Wing last night and decided to try out the new Emperor crew upgrade . I just used one of the lists put forth in the article , which was a shuttle and two interceptors. I fought 4 blue squad B-Wings. I ended up winning by having my Interceptors dancing around the Bs and taking them out one by one. My dice were rolling well so I the emperor didn't really come into play much. Mostly to boost the shuttle's attack. He seems alright.

We followed it up with Cthulhu Wars. I've played this about 10 times now, and though I really enjoyed it the first few times I played, now it makes me really miss playing Chaos in the Old World. Cthulhu Wars has lost its luster and I've found it to be a little too straightforward? Streamlined? I don't know, but it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I'm just glad I didn't purchase it or decide to go in on the extra factions as a group buy.

Green Lantern wrote: I got in three games of X-Wing and have to say I am looking forward to more. Since I was playing with two new players we started out with the basic scenario in the starter and then worked our way through mission 1 and 2, building 100 point squads for mission 2. The Rebels won each game but every match was even and could have gone either way. I'm hoping to get in mission 3 soon and then break out the Falcon and Slave I after that. Now for some questions:

1. The Determination pilot upgrade - this seems like an awesome deal for 1 point so I want to be clear we played it right. When it discards the face-up pilot damage card does that also mean the damage is ignored as well? In other words, if a pilot with Determination is hit with a critical pilot damage card he completely ignores it, and is immune to those cards for the match?

2. What's the skinny on Z-95 Headhunters? Are they worth picking up? They seem to be one of the harder ships to buy and was curious what's the story.

3. What do you guys use to store and transport your ships? Any suggestions on what to get for the job?

This is what I use to store X-wing. It holds the entire game, save the pilot cards. I have 3 starters, and probably 30 small ships, 3 large ships, all the bases/templates/tokens in it with room for a few more small ships. Pilot cards I just put in a small 3 ring binder. There's larger compartments underneath that you can put pluck foam in and that's how I store my Falcon/Firespray/Lambda. I can post pics later if you like.

www.amazon.com/Plano-Double-Cover-Tackle...=8-12&keywords=plano

Disgustipater wrote:
We followed it up with Cthulhu Wars. I've played this about 10 times now, and though I really enjoyed it the first few times I played, now it makes me really miss playing Chaos in the Old World. Cthulhu Wars has lost its luster and I've found it to be a little too straightforward? Streamlined? I don't know, but it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I'm just glad I didn't purchase it or decide to go in on the extra factions as a group buy.

I wouldn't call it streamlined as much as dumbed down. Played once, no way it replaces CitOW. I can see it appealing to players who haven't played CitOW or kids who love big ass sculpts.

Played a first, four-player Spartacus recently. It all went pretty well and was mostly a good balance between time and fun. I did see some suggestion--maybe from Charlie?--of keeping the "quick"-level span of Influence but changing the starting and finishing level. I started my group on the "standard" game out of reasonable concern that starting at 7 Influence would largely negate the need to cooperate on schemes.

I've played a couple of games of X-wing recently myself, both including the same people. X-wing's been collecting dust for a while, so I was glad of it. I was a little nervous about the first game because I was introducing a couple of nongamers to it, but I guess I or it did something right because they went out and bought a bunch of stuff for it and now go to a local game store to play.

Had a pretty good TI3 game at Geekway. It was with 6, my target, albeit not entirely with the same five I recruited. We used a preset map, which worked pretty well except that one person got fairly screwed with starting position. I . . . didn't finish last, anyway, but I just didn't do enough negotiating and talking. I had the race with the initial War Sun, which I knew would paint a target on me, but I should've done more to make friends; instead, I had no one, really. Anyway, still a good time, and we only took about 6 hours.

The other big Geekway game for me was Battlestar. My wife and I played with the same group of guys we played with last year. It was a lovely Cylon victory. I was Adama and "turned" at the sleeper phase. I revealed about 2/3 through and did get some licks in. I kind of keep coming back to the idea of expansion, and this was the first time that everyone had been experienced with BSG so it might've been the moment, but the base game still just "works" for me, and I'm not super-excited about getting the other two expansions I don't have and mixing and matching among them to make a balanced experience.

Oh, Lords of Scotland turned out to be a really good, quick card game. It's just out in a really nice looking new edition with new art and good-quality cards.

Stonecutter wrote: This is what I use to store X-wing. It holds the entire game, save the pilot cards. I have 3 starters, and probably 30 small ships, 3 large ships, all the bases/templates/tokens in it with room for a few more small ships. Pilot cards I just put in a small 3 ring binder. There's larger compartments underneath that you can put pluck foam in and that's how I store my Falcon/Firespray/Lambda. I can post pics later if you like.

www.amazon.com/Plano-Double-Cover-Tackle...=8-12&keywords=plano

What the pluck is "pluck foam"? Is that an add-on for the plano box or something else I can pick up from Amazon?

We tend to start at 6 or 7 influence in Spartacus. Some cards still require cooperating but it does negate part of that experience. Still, I tend to prefer it be a fast, brutal affair.

We also use the Speed variant found on BGG that should be official IMO. You basically compare highest die to highest die when checking for initiative, if tie go to next highest die. If a player doesn't have anymore die then the other player gets initiative. This boosts the math slightly so a guy with less speed isn't completely useless. Game still favors high speed but this feels a bit better.