What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Talking of Fighting Fantasy books, I just acquired The Legion of Shadow, part of the DestinyQuest series. It's exactly like FF books except its 656 pages long, reads like a novel and is the first of a trilogy set. I'm quite enjoying it. There is levelling up and boss monsters and stuff, graded quests and maps in full colour included. The writing is not bad either.

Lots of fun, I could tell you of my adventures but it would spoil the fun for newcomers. Recommended.

Played a bunch of Shadowrun Crossfire this weekend, 2P and solo with 2 runners.

I really wanted to love it, based solely on the setting, but it's really hard. It's almost like it's designed to have you lose 10 games to level up so that you can start winning.

The best part is that it has these Legacy-type stickers you affix to the player boards to level them up permanently.

I'm going to continue playing a while before really accepting that I hate it, but it feels like I must be playing it wrong because there's just no real way to win because your hand never has more than 4-5 cards, which isn't generally enough to beat an enemy card

ThirstyMan wrote: Talking of Fighting Fantasy books, I just acquired The Legion of Shadow, part of the DestinyQuest series. It's exactly like FF books except its 656 pages long, reads like a novel and is the first of a trilogy set. I'm quite enjoying it. There is levelling up and boss monsters and stuff, graded quests and maps in full colour included. The writing is not bad either.

Lots of fun, I could tell you of my adventures but it would spoil the fun for newcomers. Recommended.

We touched on these a few years back, so good to see some positive follow-up.

fortressat.com/forum/17-other-types-of-games/86907-destinyquest

Also, that thread reminded me of Wizards, Warriors and You. I totally forgot about those. I feel like they may have been the cheesiest of the lines but it think they're actually the ones I read the most...

SuperflyTNT wrote: Played a bunch of Shadowrun Crossfire this weekend, 2P and solo with 2 runners.

I really wanted to love it, based solely on the setting, but it's really hard. It's almost like it's designed to have you lose 10 games to level up so that you can start winning.

The best part is that it has these Legacy-type stickers you affix to the player boards to level them up permanently.

I'm going to continue playing a while before really accepting that I hate it, but it feels like I must be playing it wrong because there's just no real way to win because your hand never has more than 4-5 cards, which isn't generally enough to beat an enemy card

I hate to say it, but this jives with my research on the game. I'm a big fan of the 90s shadowrun ccg, and hoped Crossfire would be great. I've been told the 90s game was better. I actually know someone with the game but I haven't pushed the issue because I fear playing a dud.

For our sake I hope what I've read is wrong because I'd love a decent shadowrun game.

wife and I had a great game of Arkham Horror. 4 investigators, first game with miskatonic mixed in, and first game with the dunwich herald. Just a very close ending, back and forth with how we felt the game was going the entire time. 1 investigator devoured, others with madness and injury cards, and managing to close gates just ahead of the GOO coming out. Terror level threatening to creep up, and therefore draw the Dunwich horror out....close a gate to stop the goo coming out, get a lucky Mythos draw and two investigators come out of otherworlds, lucky rolls and seal it for the win. We wanted to setup again and go, but life gets in the way.

Starwars Risk with my daughter. no words on the cards, so she was all over it. Rebels win with a coordinated strike. X-wings, cleared a path through the Tie Fighter Screen, and B-wings drove in to attack. 2nd try and boom goes the dynamite. She planned that strike herself after a few hiccups on earlier turns. not bad for a 5 year old.

My wife and I had another couple over for games on Saturday.

Started a game of Merchants & Maruders with a number of the expansions. We used New Captains/ships, Contraband, Wind, Special Weapons, NPC upgrades, Proper Slow Galleons, and Flexible Turns. We all liked the expansions, especially the wind and Flex Turns. My wife refused to play as one of the neckbeard captains. I really do hate the playtester portraits on the cards.

Dead of Winter was up next and it was a close run scenario that we lost at the last round due to a failed crisis since we could not find junk in the town. No betrayers. I seemed to have triggered a Crossroads card each turn. One of my guys was the truck driver who found the fuel truck, but it was too early to really need the fuel resource for the scenario, but he took the 'Beaver Inspector' trucker cap. He then found the nurse character who was enamored by his choice of headwear. He fell victim to a heart attack in a late round and we lost his sweet shotgun that was clearing out lots of zombies. RIP Beaver Inspector.

They had brought over Exploding Kittens and it was all that I knew it would be. It would be fun for a few games, but no more than that.

We finished up with a couple games of Red Dragon Inn. The last game had an epic showdown between Eve the illusionist and Gerki the Sneak. Both were dodging their opponent's attacks and discarding drinks. Gerki finally came out with the win.

It was good to play some games after a lengthy hiatus.

Got 2 games in last week of my new copy of Argent: The Consortium. I played it two player with a friend of mine both times and lost both times, but it is a really fun and deep game. I can't wait to play it with 3 or 4 players. Quite a table hog though. My friend instantly said he put this as his 1st or 2nd favorite game.

Saturday, a game night consisted of Acquire to start things off, City of Iron with the expansion in between, and Nations: The Dice Game to end the night. City of Iron has a lot of cool things going for it, but it's just too long and drawn out. It took 3 hours and we were ready for it to end at the 2 hour mark. I had played it once before and thought it was pretty good but this game soured me on it. I think it is definitely hitting the trade pile. Acquire was the best game of the night, and Nations was enjoyable.

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

'Three' Dragonlance board games? I was only aware of two. The big gamemaster style wargame and that Pente looking MageStones game. What's the third?

That dragon aerial combat game?

Columbob wrote: That dragon aerial combat game?

I think you and I are referring to the same game?

So, I was gonna take a pass on the new Star Wars Risk but the discussions here changed my mind, and boy am I glad I listened you you guys (again). It's so fast with just enough strategy in making decisions on what phase of the battle to support/defend. We tried out the four player variant and it worked great so no issues there either.

The games were tense. During our first game to shake out the rules we learned why you don't let the Executor hang around too long, especially after Vader delivers a beat down on Luke. Imperials took the first victory after those two errors on the part of the Rebels. Even so the Rebels still took down the shields and just missed sinking the Death Star.

Second game went great for the Rebels when Luke quickly redeemed Vader and the Rebels scrambled all fighters. The Falcon chased the Executor around the board with some Y-Wing support and blasted the star destroyer to put a stop to TIE reinforcements. The shield assault went swiimingly but the Rebels had to sweat a bit when Rogue squadron failed on their attack run. Next turn Lando and Nunb swoop in and take out the super weapon in thematic fashion.

I can't wait for more plays! Thanks again for all the early buzz here, folks/buddies/champs/aces and ma'ams.

Now for a couple of rules questions that came up:
1. Can TIEs deployed by the Executor attack on the turn they deploy? The rules read as though they can't but that didn't make sense to us. Thoughts?

2. If Luke destroys Vader, can the Emperor continue to use Force lighting? The rules seem to indicate this but I'm curious to see what the consensus is here at FAT.

That's the same game Mr. White, I wasn't sure if that was the one you were referring to.

Mr. White wrote:

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

'Three' Dragonlance board games? I was only aware of two. The big gamemaster style wargame and that Pente looking MageStones game. What's the third?

The third is Dragons of Glory (released in DL11). It is a war game that has some similarities (perhaps even legitimate precursors) to War of the Ring --- the biggest being that the different factions have to be activated before they can become engaged in the battle. Further, some of the neutral factions can be activated by both sides. Also, I would recommend using the Paths of the Lance (homemade) expansion on BGG. It adds event cards that give the game a more modern feel.

The other two games shouldn't be discounted. The Dragonlance DOAM game has variable player powers and you can play with advanced rules that allow for dragon breath attacks. The altitude business makes it a bit fiddly, but not too bad -- you can just glue some of those height disks together for a quick way to switch in and out.

Magestones is interesting. It can be thought of as Pente, only you are effectively playing it on a cylinder because the board "wraps" around.

charlest wrote: 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.

FWIW, I don't think that the game is lessened without the KS exclusives. Nothing there that is really necessary -- some of it is just novelty characters (like in Zombicide) that may or may not have out of balance powers.

Space Ghost wrote:

charlest wrote: 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.

FWIW, I don't think that the game is lessened without the KS exclusives. Nothing there that is really necessary -- some of it is just novelty characters (like in Zombicide) that may or may not have out of balance powers.

And since the minis are primary colors they are hard to differentiate at tabletop distance, and as you'll only have one of each color on your team in a game, it's easy to print out character cards and still have a red guy equal a different red guy or a yellow gal equal different yellow gal. This one is perhaps the easiest one to proxy the exclusive characters for from CMoN due to the color mapping.