What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Dead of Winter is a perfect example of a game that was instantly hailed a classic and over time is beginning to lose some of it's luster. When the game dropped people lost their minds over it. I think the hype coupled with the fact that it was nigh impossible to get was the perfect storm. Hell, the game is still hard to find.

Dead of Winter is a good game. It's got a lot of nifty elements, plays pretty smoothly and feels satisfying for a zombie game. The problem seems to be that it doesn't hold up to extended plays because it's a story based game. Dead of Winter has been out for a year and there are exactly zero expansions for it. No small deck of more crossroad cards. No small expansion of new survivors. Nada. Any game that relies on story cards, flavor texts or paragraphs will eventually play out. Plaid Hat has shown zero signs of supporting the game and I wouldn't be surprised if it never gets expanded. Having it be self contained is certainly not a bad thing, but it does put a sort expiration date on the thing. Once you've seen all it's tricks you're gonna have a hard time coming back to it.

TL: DR - It's a good game that might need some expansion support.

I thought DOW was a boring, repetitive game that was getting by on hype from the moment I first played it. If your idea of a game creating a story or narrative relies on having little blocks of pre-written text handed to you, then maybe that element is being oversold.

I've played Barony and it doesn't appeal to me. To dry, to "chess"-y for me. Marc André did made a good game with Splendor. Matagot published a great game with Cyclades. But combining a good author and a good publisher is not apparantly not a succes-formula for me.
Maybe some other people will be happy with "Barony". I'm not.
Creating a semi-abstract medieval game with knights and castles, a brand new idea? Knizia did it years ago with "Löwenherz"

Still running a year long campaign with.... (drumsticks ruffling) Heroscape. Spend over the years some 750 euro's on it. Best game-investment ever.10 players with each an army. Everbody plays with my stuff.
They are fighting a civil war on a fantasy world. They can conquer land, earn money and expand their army. That 's a meta-game-experience, oh boy.
We don't play every week, but bi-monthly. So many things happening in our club, Tin Solders of Antwerp. Don't glue players every week on the same game. They loose interest.
Star Trek Attack Wing, X wing, Imperial Assault, ....
Also running a Galaxy Defender-campaign. A very good system in my opinion. Read the Imperial Assault-campaign. Dropped it at once. The skirmish game on the other hand, I love it.

After a long hiatus from everything do to work, we got a few games in:

Ladies & Gentleman -- we played with my best friend and his wife and thought it was a quite good team game. The men have to make money in the stock market while the ladies purchase outfits for the ball. At the end, the Lady with the most elegant outfit wins. it is interesting in that the men never know what the lady is going to try and buy, and the ladies never know how much money the men have (who have to approve every purchase).

Magic the Gathering: The Arena: -- we played a couple of games of this. I just don't think it has enough in it right now to make it very interesting. This will probably change with the first expansion, where it appeared that one of the new planeswalkers was dual colored. I won one game with Red and then lost to white with Blue.

Also, played the three Dragonlance board games quite a few times -- probably will write up a comprehensive review of those.

SuperflyTNT wrote: You should add a "Gray Matters" section where a mutual friend and yourself talk about how a certain other mutual friend complains about bad games, or better yet, co-ops.

I don't play there anymore.

I think the main flaw of Dead of Winter is that its main mechanics (Shifting through cards, zombie overflow, crossroad choices, using items) are easily optimized. It's not a very deep game in that regard, the real meat of the game is not knowing what to do, it's in getting away with it. I'm not really bothered by the thematic elements, I think the themes of the game work on a mechanical level, the card text is just a bonus.

Personally, I think its main advantage compared to other pseudo-cooperative Ameritrash-y games is that it plays fast and has easy rules, you can play it along a couple euros one day and have fun, while you need to book a game of Galactica or The Republic of Rome in advance.

There is an expansion for Dead of Winter in the works.

CaptainTwietie wrote: Still running a year long campaign with.... (drumsticks ruffling) Heroscape. Spend over the years some 750 euro's on it. Best game-investment ever.10 players with each an army. Everbody plays with my stuff.
They are fighting a civil war on a fantasy world. They can conquer land, earn money and expand their army. That 's a meta-game-experience, oh boy.

I _need_ to see the rules for this!!

A couple games of X-Wing with wave 7.

First game I was scum using Bossk kitted up with a Mangler cannon, Hound's Tooth title, and a couple other small things.

A Black Sun Ace (new Khiraxz fighter) with inertial dampeners and veteran instincts

N'dru the Z-95 pilot that wants to Lone Wolf it, with Cluster Missiles.

Opponent was running an HLC B-Wing, fully loaded generic K-Wing, and two Chardaan A-Wings.

My Z-95 hit the B-Wing hard but fell to repeated shots while Bossk flanked on the right with the Khiraxz. The Khiraxz worked out pretty well and kind of felt like flying an X-Wing, he tore up the K-Wing.

I completely had a brain fart flying Bossk and hit an asteroid, then was blocked by the screening A-Wings and hit the asteroid again. This did me in although we played out several more turns. I could still have won as I dropped the B-Wing and the K-Wing was hurting, but those damn A-Wings just tore Bossk up, staying at range 1 and eating away at his 1 agility.

I do really like the Hounds Tooth and Bossk's ability is very neat.

Second game I gave Rebels a spin fielding the most expensive K-Wing pilot with Flechette Torps, Concussion Missiles, Extra Munitions, and Seismic Charges. Also had Keyan Farlander and Biggs to help protect the K-Wing.

I was going up against two hugely loaded Punishers and a new TIE Advanced pilot.

The new TIE advanced dish upgrade is crazy. Combined with this new pilot's ability to flip up damage cards by spending his target lock, that little TIE Adv tore me up. I did pretty well with Keyan clawing into a TIE punisher and the K-Wing did solid on the other one, but my lack of coherent flying and a horrible third turn led to my demise. Biggs fell far too quickly as well.

The K-Wing is totally not my style in turns of maneuvering, but I like ordnance. It doesn't have a K-Turn and the SLAM action is really neat, partially making up for that, but it undermines the K-Wings turret as you can't shoot the round you SLAM. I think this is a difficult ship to fly as getting back into the fight after the first pass is rough.

The Punisher on the other hand has the ability to boost and K-Turn which is more forgiving. I think I'd rather have that in a bomber than a SLAM and turret action.

Interesting ships though and they certainly feel unique and different. Man those TIE advanceds are going to be tearing it up. Scary.

Rum & Bones: This is a recent CoolMiniorNot game about pirates trying to board each other's ships. Each ship has a generic set of deckhands and bosuns that just march forward and attack. The two crews are differentiated by a set of 5 unique pirate heroes, with there own special abilities. The game itself feels like an old GW game with just the right mix of luck and strategy. The luck can be brutal. Last night the Kraken was summoned (he is summoned by an accumulation of "Kraken" tokens that are generated by card plays from each player -- it is a collective pool). Anyway, you roll to for his hit with a +1 to hit and +1 damage to the player who contributed the most tokens. The attack effects both 2/3 of each ship. One would expect it to effect both crews fairly equally. HOWEVER, last night we rolled triple 2's, where the to hit was a 3. So my opponent escaped damage, and my dudes all got hit for double-damage. The Kraken literally killed my entire crew and 2 heroes, leaving one hero at the stern. I conceded, but I loved it.

Yeah for those familiar with MOBAs, it's the first MOBA board game we've seen. It looks interesting but a shit-ton of Kickstarter exclusives has kept me away.

That looks like someone played Broadsides and Boarding Parties and said, "Let's make this, but with more stuff, and a little more meat"!

Space Ghost wrote: Rum & Bones...The attack effects both 2/3 of each ship. One would expect it to effect both crews fairly equally. HOWEVER, last night we rolled triple 2's, where the to hit was a 3. So my opponent escaped damage, and my dudes all got hit for double-damage. The Kraken literally killed my entire crew and 2 heroes, leaving one hero at the stern. I conceded, but I loved it.

Played on Sunday myself and loved it as well.
Something sounds off with your Kraken roll though. Did you roll for each zone? Because a Triple-2 roll would just leave one zone safe for your opponent. But the rest should have still suffered.

charlest wrote: I am being sent to the F:AT re-education center for not posting this in the dedicated Star Wars gaming thread.