What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Wife is out of town, time for Saturday Burgers, Brats, Beer and Boardgames (and watermelon too) -

Specter Ops - 3 player as we waited for a guy to show up. Gun, Beast vs Spider. First time playing, and everyone loved it. but wth just three players, we felt there wasn't enough information to properly track the agent. The gun/beast are more combat focused, and maybe we would have done better with one of the prophet/puppet as a character. still, a great game. I think its different enough from Fury of Dracula to have both. 4th guy showed, and wanted to play, but I had a hankering for a 4 player specific game.

going back over the agents moves after the game was almost as much fun as playing. Agent flips an objective, two hunters are convinced he leaves and went to another objective. Turns out he sat still for a turn to wait for the hunters to walk away. Or towards the end, the gun hunter was 1 space away and went down the wrong hallway.

Chaos in the Old World for the first time. we screwed up placement rules, ignoring the rule where you have to place people adjacent to locations where you already had dudes. so alot of appearing in random spots, and it really weakened tzeentch, that seems to be a large part of his schtick. still...everyone really enjoyed the game. my nurglings spread plague and decay through the center of the empire to come in a close 2nd.

Starcraft - its been years since we've place, and most of those plays were without the broodwar expansion. I might have played expansion once before trading the whole set away. Well, its back, and the leadership cards from the expansion are freaking awesome. every leadership card picked (4 players, Raynor, Mengsk, Overmind, Aldaris) seemed wild and insanely powerful. but everyone's was powerful. This game showed how important the map creation is in this game. We ended up with 1 'australia'. the z-axis connectors all ended up tieing three of the players together. the australia spot was far enough away that no-one thought it a danger. Mengsk has a leadership card that allows him to place 2 extra 'conquest' markers. So he placed them in australia, (avernus station) started gaining tons of conquest, and just held his fronts.



Sunday - couple of friends wanted an impromptu pizza and games after church, so of course we obliged.
My wife doesn't play a lot of my games anymore, though she's still a big fan of Arkham. I thought Specter Ops had enough teamwork that she'd enjoy it.

4 players, I was the agent this time. We forgot the extra rules for 4 player, so I ended up with 3 equipment cards and without the extra hp. I was the Blue Jay, and she adds quite a bit of sneakiness, between being able to activate objective markers from further away, and throwing out the Holo Decoy to lead the hunters away. Got caught in the southwest corner and just couldn't get away. 1 more equipment card and I probably would have made it to the third objective and possibly away. "not my favorite game, but I enjoyed it" "frustrating, but some of that was just from being a first game"

Race for the Galaxy w/gathering storm- we had played their copy of eminent domain last weekend, and it screams Race to me, so i wanted to show them where some of the ideas came from. Race is a bitch to teach sometimes, the iconography is annoying to teach, but if people can grasp the roles and how they interlock with the other players, the cards themselves fall into place.

Damn good weekend of gaming. That first day would be fuuuuucking awesome.

Finally broke the post third kid gaming drought in a big way: TI3

Five players on a built map with trade goods compensating those closer. It was Nekro, Mentak, Saar, Jolnar and Ghosts(me)

We did a pick 1 of 3 races dealt and I should have tried out Embers for the first time instead of repeating Ghosts. Never got to utilize a lot of their good stuff being so far away from wormholes all game. That coupled with an overly aggressive start that could have won me the game if I'd shifted gears back into defensive much sooner. Instead my two main fleets died needlessly without enough backup to prevent our first ever genocide in a game. I had no pieces left on the board. My game was digging out Imperium Rex after quickly scoring my Mecatol Rex secret objective, but I just couldnt last after wasting my fleets. Painful lesson learned.

After that I got in a game of 7 Wonders with 4, winning with Civics (blues). Introduced to an admitted nongamer, who was into the Civ computer game and classics in general so he dug it.

After that we saved the world Pandemic-style where he again was introduced to the game. All had a great time and I still love this one. Looking forward to the Legacy version like woah.

Next day we played a 6 player 7 Wonders and I cleaned up with Science (green) by getting 3 full sets (49 pts)! Having so many additional science cards with that many players coupled with my wonder (the one starting with paper), allowed my strategy of low resources (only got 1 in age 1 and supplemented with 3 yellow trading) to actually work in grand fashion!

Final game was our first of Machi Koro! Great fun and I can see this becoming a go-to light game and will be looking into expansions soon.

Had a gaming day on Saturday, very low key.

SMALL WORLD
Haven't played this for years. I must have burned out on it cuz I couldn't understand why I didn't play it more before. It's a fun tactical game. I made some pretty bad sub-optimal choices early on (went for some expansion race where your exiled (I forget the term) race tokens create unconquerable spots. I didn't go into exile fast enough and lost a turn worth of points. Fun game.

LOTR DECKBUILDING GAME
Tried impossible mode for the first time which ends up making the game way too long. Love this game though. I had such a bad game that the amount of power I generated in my last turn of play was LESS than I did in my first turn of play! omg, what a disaster.

yay games

Two games of Eldritch Horror this weekend. My girlfriend really liked it. Turns out that story-telling games are totally her bag. Glad she liked it, despite the fact we got murdered, badly. She had all manner of physical problems: broken leg, back issues, hallucinations, two curses. Oh, and she couldn't roll a 5 or 6 to save her life. I did all the damned work and still got devoured.

Logged my 4000th game at BGG. I did Through the Desert for that one. Still love that game. I had sold it and then reacquired it during the ERP debacle. That was a wise choice.

Had a pretty awesome day of gaming yesterday. Started out with Gumshoe. This was our fifth session. There's so much to say about this game that I think I'm gonna have do some kind of write up when we finish the thing. It's bananas. Easily one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time as well as one of the most frustrating.

Gumshoe wrapped up way earlier than anticipated, so out came Wiz-War. We got two games in before half of our crew had to split, leaving two of us to set up Eldritch Horror. With two investigators, we wound up saving the world in just under two and a half hours, which was perfect. The game never had a chance to wear out its welcome. (Not that it usually does, but it's turned on us a time or two.)

Great day all told. Awesome balance between an 'event game' like Gumshoe, the fast, chaotic, and raucous fun of Wiz-War, and the 'epic' feeling of Eldritch. Also a great balance between the case of Shiner Ruby Redbird, the better part of a bottle of Makers Mark, and a whole mess of Corralejo tequila...good times!

I had a full day of gaming on Saturday, starting off with an X-wing tourney. I flew Oicunn and Jendon fully loaded with crew and modifications, thinking Jendon could stay back and Oicunn could ram his way through. Didn't work so well, took 3rd out of 4 people.

Followed this up with a 6 player game of Game of Thrones. My neighbor Daniel (playing Highgarden and my (Lanisters) ally , who is a very smart guy, but has a difficult time with the details of boardgames, spent the whole game asking me questions about what the order tokens did and how do you muster, and how do ships work, etc..
Everyone else was in engaged in little skirmishes I was banging heads hard with Greyjoy who was supported by the Starks. Martel and Barethon were battling it out with the Starks also joining in. Everyone basically ignoring Highgarden (although he clashed a bit with Martel). You guessed Daniel won on turn 5, did a march order to march into empty Harrenhall, The rest of us were getting ready for the consolidate power phase. When Daniel starts counting castles... wow sneaky git, none of us saw it coming.

Evolution was next with 5 players. Fun game, I think I want the expansion, does anyone have an opinion on it?

Love letter and FFG's take on the pub game Pairs finished the night off.

Good times.

Last week was a gaming vacation for me and the board gaming highlight goes to The Temple of Elemental Evil. We played it in between RPG sessions and managed to get in six adventures over the course of two days. It plays fast so that's a boon and at the same time I felt the game had a good blend of tactical decisions and cooperative play. All that on top of a pile of unpainted figs and very detailed tiles makes this one a nice addition to any fantasy gamer's collection.

We barely won an Eldritch Horror game with the Mountains of Madness collection, taking on Ithaqqua and battling culstists and constant hypothermia. We lost three investigators early but kept at it to pull off the win.

I played in a learning game of Dead of Winter so didn't really get an understanding of what's going on but still had fun. Looking forward to more.

Dropped into the meat grinder that is Gears of War and got our ass kicked three times. Damn locust.

The rest of our gaming time was dedicated to Shadowrun, Savage Worlds, and Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition. Good times all around.

Wow! How'd you get in a week of gaming? A convention?

Once or twice a year, when the wife and kids leave town, I'll organize a big weekend bash. They're tons of fun and a big highlight. The next one is in mid August and we're hoping to play a complete risk legacy campaign all at once.

Anyway, wow.

Also, what shadowrun edition and adventure?

Mr. White wrote: Wow! How'd you get in a week of gaming? A convention?

My buddies and I have started an annual tradition of taking a week of vacation to hang out and get some gaming in. We have friends come in from out of town so we combine it all into grilling, socializing and gaming.

Mr. White wrote: Also, what shadowrun edition and adventure?

5th edition and we ran a couple of missions. One was an original from our old high school Shadowrun GM and the other mission was GM'ed by a newer buddy and he took us through "The Mayan Cutter". I think it's a module he got from Catalyst. Both were good fun and my GM hat is off to them. 5th edition Shadowrun is rules intensive to put it mildly.

Mr. White wrote: Wow! How'd you get in a week of gaming? A convention?

Once or twice a year, when the wife and kids leave town, I'll organize a big weekend bash. They're tons of fun and a big highlight. The next one is in mid August and we're hoping to play a complete risk legacy campaign all at once.

And someday, we'll do the Campout!

I soloed Shadows of Brimstone a couple nights ago with three characters. I played the Blow the Mine mission but it didn't matter which mission it was because I got thoroughly trounced. The worst was that I got the Crack in Space Encounter (pass a Spirit 6+ test or take d8 Sanity damage with no save) on a map tile (the Vault, I believe) that's nearly impossible to traverse in one turn. My Indian Scout failed that Encounter twice in a row, took 10 Sanity damage, say goodbye to our only Revive token. The Lawman took 14 out of 16 Sanity damage, as well. I made it through a 9 Zombie ambush attack OK, but in the next room was a 6 Tentacle attack and I couldn't roll attacks for anything. After 2 successive Tentacles rolled two 6's and a 5 each (Tentacles do 3 damage, and when Tenatacles roll 6's their hits are unblockable, so that's 6 automatic wounds) I called it quits and failed the mission before someone got an Injury or Madness. I switched it up in this mission and drew for Initiative each fight. The Heroes' 3 Initiative values are 5, 4, and 2, so the first chit I drew would get Initiative 5, the next 4, and the last 2. I used a few of the extra numbered crate markers that came with the game to keep track on their character sheets during each fight, as well as an Initiative tracker I made out of a small magnetic dry erase board and magnetized Hero/Monster tokens. Between turns I just used each character's base Initiative for moving and exploring.

Last night I decided to solo the copy of Eldritch Horror I'd acquired in trade and had yet to play. I had a great time and I can't believe how streamlined it is without feeling too simple. There were several times where I paused because I kept thinking, "There has to be more to a turn than this." Nope. It's 2 actions, encounter, Mythos Phase. Pretty simple. I love the Indiana Jones-esque map and artwork and all of the Allies you can get to be in your party of adventurers. My first game was against Shub-Niggurath and I played 2 Investigators: Akachi Onyele the Shaman and Leo Anderson the Expedition Leader. I failed a few early tests with Akachi and it snowballed to the point where she was largely useless. She had Debt, Back Injury (caused her to lose the Mi-Go Brain Canister before she got a chance to use it), Amnesia x3, Paranoia x2 (caused her to lose her only Ally), Dark Pact, and Detained, all at the same time. She was also Detained again, later, for good measure. On the other hand, Leo was an all star. A bunch of Allies started out in the Reserve so I kept getting Allies with his hero power until he had: Hired Muscle (starting Ally, +1 Strength & reroll), Personal Assistant (+1 Influence & reroll), Arcane Scholar (+1 Lore & reroll), Blessed (he got double Blessed at one point to trigger the Nodens effect), Private Investigator (+1 Observation & reroll), Lodge Researcher (defeat monster in Combat to recover a Sanity and gain a Clue), Sword of St. Jerome Artifact, Dark Pact (from the Encounter where I got the sword), and Hallucinations.

Edit: Oops, it looks like I handled the Conditions completely wrong, but it was definitely funnier my way.

I solved one Mystery but kind of flailed around a bit after that. Akachi's detentions hurt a lot and I lost some time taking too long to deal with a couple Rumors. And then Akachi rolled a 1 on her Dark Pact and Leo got Devoured. I conceded the game at that point; there were only 4 Mythos cards left - I need to get used to the faster pace of this game in comparison to Arkham Horror - so there was no way I was going to win. I can't wait to play it again and I think I'm going to try it with my son. He has a budding fascination with the Mythos and I think he'd like the globe-trotting, stripped down nature of EH.

A lot of gaming over the past week.

I've now played five games of Specter Ops and have experienced it at all player counts. Last night I played in a tense two player game with a guy who had just played once before and it was his first time as the agent. I kind of nailed his location relatively early and closed the bear trap on him around the first objective, dealing a couple of wounds. He would only get two objectives done before perishing near the third.

It's only a matter of time before Aetherium makes it onto my top 10. Nothing I've played is really like this game besides some surface level comparisons of Necromunda, Wiz-War, and Netrunner. Thinking about making a big purchase of additional units from their web store.

Introduced a group of randoms to Spyfall and One Night Ultimate Werewolf last night. Those are rough to pick up and learn with an experienced set of players. I love watching people awkwardly stumble about that first game of Spyfall figuring out how to ask/answer questions.

A friend taught me Middle Earth Quest in a 3 player game. I was the Dwarf and the buddy's set includes painted LOTR Games Workshop minis for every single thing in the game (including the bad guys). Really enjoyed it and sad to see it's out of print. Kind of an LOTR Arkham Horror with many unique mechanics.

Flick 'Em Up is great. Feels so deluxe and shooting little discs at large meeple cowboys is satisfying. We play The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly soundtrack in the background.

Just looked up Flick 'Em Up. It's skipping my want list going right to the top of my need list. Looks like it's a rare breed of a Western game that's actually good and feels like a Western. Looks like it will replace Rampage for me.

Since I don't wax my dining table would that game ultimately scratch it all up?