What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Churchill looks strange to me, but it sounds like an interesting take.

Churchill by far was the most oft played game in the open gaming area, akin to last year's Thunder Alley ( which a year later seems to have disappeared ) . I suspect it may end up as a trial event next year due to its popularity.

repoman wrote: Played Storm Over Dien Bien Phu and enjoyed it quite a bit. It was quick, fast, and very dynamic. Came down to last play of last card. In a moment of weakness I failed to win.

I only played that one time but I think this game is clearly superior to What Price Glory.

How does this compare to the other Storm Over series games, if you have you played any others? I have Arnhem and Stalingrad and enjoy both a lot, but am wondering if I really need yet another area impulse game.

You do, it's called Warriors of Japan. Due to print this Fall.

S.

I haven't played the others so I cannot say. The thing I liked in Dien over What Price was the drawing of cards rather than selecting them. In What Price, an attack must be put together in a very formulaic way for it to succeed and I also felt that if the Germans didn't get enough VPs by turn 2, the rest of the game was pretty much a waste of time.

Dien, because the cards are random allows for more freedom of choice (which sounds counterintuitive) and the result is far less predictable.

Played 3 games of Argent over WBC enjoyed each one. The last was played with the expansion. It adds almost 0 rules overhead, which is pretty amazing and adds lots of stuff. Jay, Saul and I wanted to get a game in with scenarios but we just ran out of time. I love the game, glad to hear others are as well. It is most likely my favorite worker placement game ever. And it not being passive aggressive about it is very refreshing.

Also played BSG (sorta, Saul took over for me) Flickem Up, Robinson Crusoe, a disastrous game of Agents of Smersh , Pixel Tatics, and as always when it hits the table a fantastic game of Rune Wars. It was a fantastic Con.

I have almost completely burned out on board gaming. It's been really hard to make myself go to any game days. It's not like I have big other things I'm interested in doing; on Sunday I left early, came home, and ground in Diablo 3, a game I am sick of but my wife is enjoying, so I play along.

Still, I played two things on Sunday.

Artifacts, Inc - I backed this KS because I like 8ME: Legends (same designer) and it was inexpensive and looked nice. It's absolutely average. Nothing particularly interesting, novel, or compelling about it, but also nothing dreadful or off-putting. It's in the trade pile already after two plays.

Myrmes - This was pretty much new to all four of us, so when I made a bone-headed move in the first round, no one knew enough to say, "dude, you are on the express train to Being Fucked". It absolutely killed me and I was never able to recover. The game itself isn't bad, I like all the "being-an-ant" related actions and how they're tied together. Unfortunately someone then decided you might forget you're playing a game, so they put in this intrusive and stupid set of scoring tiles that give you points for random shit. Boo to that. I'll play it again, but I don't know that it's gonna wow me.

I know I diagnosed you with this like a year ago, Legomancer, but maybe it's time to just play old games? And not just for the rote reason of playing old games (e.g. your halt on buying new games till you played all your current ones), but actually playing old games that you really like exclusively for awhile?

Neh, it's not even old games I want. I brought some older stuff with me on Sunday to play, but even the idea of those didn't excite me and I ended up leaving early. It's ok, it'll pass.

i wound down my boardgame playing about half a year ago, it hasn't got quite back to where it was (and i doubt it ever will) but i enjoy the fewer times i play games now than the many times i did back then.

Just to reiterate- whoa buddy. Argent is REALLY fucking good.

It's a HARDCORE worker placement game, which will drive off Shellhead for sure, but it is a gleefully perverted take on that mechanic. Because it marries some more adventure game/American game concepts to this post-Agricola "complexity engine" chassis. So your workers have special abilities and can do things like wand another player's guy to the infirmary. Then there are tons of spells that all have different, mana-powered effects and that upgrade along a linear development tree. Each one upgrades. There are multiple currencies, magic items and rooms that have multiple, narratively cogent effects. There is none of the "oh dear, you placed your worker there before me" stuff...because there are all kinds of ways you can take that worker out or do crazy stuff like "shadow" that offending worker using spells or magic items.

It's also a point salad game, but you don't know what the ingredients are at the outset. Part of the game is finding out what the electors want, which almost becomes like secret objectives...that may or may not be shared with other players who don't have your knowledge.

It's very much like the designer took all of these Feld/Rosenberg ideas and said "I want to do this kind of game but with a strong setting and lots of actual interaction and conflict". And it totally works.

I'm kind of blown away by it after two plays, one three and one four player...almost sort of obsessed with it. It is kind of long and it is pretty complicated with lots to keep track of, but it's one of the ones that is worth the effort.

Next time I'm using the expansion, it doesn't add much rules-wise but it is going to increase the already tremendous variety and range of options.

Also got in a game of WWE Superstar Showdown...it's really fun. I think I like it better than Luchador. I have no idea who Big E or Big Show are. It was John Cena (me) versus Daniel Bryant (my friend). I picked John Cena because I had heard of him before. It was pretty neat, the game really captures the flow of a wrestling match. I was just completely beating Daniel Bryant down...threw his ass out of the ring, jumped off the turnbuckle on him, he was just throwing cards away and whittling his deck down. but then he got the hang of it and started setting up reversals on me so he had this kind of heroic, epic comeback in the last third of the match. I still won by running his deck out (no pin), but it got kind of hairy there. Probably still a little too complicated for the mass market crowd, which is kind of sad since it is essentially a rock-paper-scissors card game with very light tactical movement on a grid. But fear not, the GF9 boys have done it again.

Michael Barnes wrote: Just to reiterate- whoa buddy. Argent is REALLY fucking good.

It's a HARDCORE worker placement game, which will drive off Shellhead for sure, but it is a gleefully perverted take on that mechanic. Because it marries some more adventure game/American game concepts to this post-Agricola "complexity engine" chassis. So your workers have special abilities and can do things like wand another player's guy to the infirmary. Then there are tons of spells that all have different, mana-powered effects and that upgrade along a linear development tree. Each one upgrades. There are multiple currencies, magic items and rooms that have multiple, narratively cogent effects. There is none of the "oh dear, you placed your worker there before me" stuff...because there are all kinds of ways you can take that worker out or do crazy stuff like "shadow" that offending worker using spells or magic items.

You're killing me, man. This sounds like it is right up my alley, but my gaming group seems to have an aversion to a certain type of complexity. They're fine with strategic decision making like in Forbidden Stars, and they can handle stat-heavy game systems like Duel of Ages 2, because while those types of games appear to be complicated the actual number of different actions and decisions that you must make is actually fairly small. On the other hand I have yet to be able to get Dungeon Petz to the table. I thought sure that the cute premise and simple(-ish) scoring would be fine, but when I showed them the board and the different worker placement options a couple of my buddies locked up like Captain Kirk had just told them to divide by zero or something. I guess that means that Argent is right out of the picture, at least for the time being, and that sucks because it just looks delicious.

The only knocks against the game that I have seen pop up again and again are the "there are just too many notes" Amadeus criticism and, strangely enough, that Argent requires too much table space. Would you agree with those?

Michael Barnes wrote: It's a HARDCORE worker placement game, which will drive off Shellhead for sure, but it is a gleefully perverted take on that mechanic. Because it marries some more adventure game/American game concepts to this post-Agricola "complexity engine" chassis. So your workers have special abilities and can do things like wand another player's guy to the infirmary. Then there are tons of spells that all have different, mana-powered effects and that upgrade along a linear development tree. Each one upgrades. There are multiple currencies, magic items and rooms that have multiple, narratively cogent effects. There is none of the "oh dear, you placed your worker there before me" stuff...because there are all kinds of ways you can take that worker out or do crazy stuff like "shadow" that offending worker using spells or magic items.

It's also a point salad game, but you don't know what the ingredients are at the outset. Part of the game is finding out what the electors want, which almost becomes like secret objectives...that may or may not be shared with other players who don't have your knowledge.

Actually, I am a big fan of Sons of Anarchy,an AmeriTrash worker placement game. It sounds like there are elements of Argent that I would like (sending opposing workers to the infirmary) and elements that I would hate (victory point salad).

The way the salad works is really cool though...you know two of the electors will give you a vote for most supporters (cards that give you special actions) and most influence (which earns you Merit badges that you need to get into the top spots in each room). The other 10 are face down, and you look at them when you do something that gives you a Mark. So you might go through the game with knowledge of five or six of them, and that will guide your strategy. And they give their votes for all kinds of different things.

The "too many notes" criticism...the thing is, the rules and process are pretty easy, not much more complex than Waterdeep. On your turn, you either place a worker, do something on an action card, or take a bell tower card (the "I'm done with my turn" action). Then each room resolves in order. Where it gets complex is in how many different "things" you might have to consider at any given moment while you're juggling actions to get those voters to go your way. I actually think it is less complicated than, say, Aquasphere. Everything in the game works on an internal logic that makes everything sensible and intuitive.

The "too much table space" criticism...yeah, it's pretty big. All full-size cards, none of those FFG style mini cards. BIG spell cards, BIG character cards. A huge score-keeping board. And a big array of room tiles. Everybody's "office" area sprawls. It does take up a of space, but I wouldn't call it unmanageable or anything like that.

Played dead of winter, fun little zombie game. I'm getting really tired of all these games putting in a traitor mechanic just cuz. I think it’s why I preferred last night on earth. One bad guy and everyone knows who he is. I prefer that.

Also played some dice game with comic book chara, it was ok.

Also played smash up? A game with a bunch of factions, you pick two and play the deck accordingly. It was ok. One random player in the group and it sort of ruins it but I guess that's true for most games