What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

KingPut wrote: Next up a 6 player Axis and Allies. We played through 3 turns. The Axis came close to victory by taking India, some of Russia cities but the tide is turning. I'm thinking the Allies will pull it off. Allies have researched Jets and cheap ships and Allied economy is rolling. We'll finish it up next week.

Which version? I played the hell out of the old one from the 90s and always wanted to update with one that plays a little smoother/quicker than taking over everything.

Would love to hear any comparisons or mini-review on it from someone.

Yeah must be a new version, I don’t remember India being a thing

The Brits have pieces that start in India or Burma. I remember a Japanese tactic is to roll through China and India to put mainland pressure on the Russians in assistance of Germany.

SuperflyTNT wrote: With regards to Wiz War, I played it at GenCon with 4 or so players and found it wholly lacking. There was certainly the oft-overused "Knife Fight In A Phone Booth" vibe but it just seemed kind of awkward and very old-school, and not in a good way. I'm kind of glad I never picked it up. I'd be willing to give it a few more plays but at the end of the day, I think Dungeon Twister is a vastly superior game that does the same thing.

Wiz-War is great because it's crazy and unrestrained. Creativity is really fostered and allowed to flourish.

The first time you see someone throw up a wall to seal themselves into a corridor and then switch places with another player - epic. Or rotate a tile when a player's just about to get off. Or someone throw down a bunch of tacks and rosebushes and then get forcefully moved through their own shit.

I do think you need to play with the old rules found as variants in the back. I also removed a bunch of counter-spells from the game as there's too many when you combine all the decks together.

For that kind of "race in an ever-changing dungeon" game, Dungeon Twister does it better. For a "chaos, funny combos, cool spells", Epic Spell Wars does it better. Maybe there's something to be said for combining the two, but my feeling is that I'd rather play two really good games that do what they do well than one game that mashes up the two things and does it sort-of-well.

The players had fun, no doubt, especially Mr. HotSeatGames, but I was sitting there with my dick in my hand wondering what the fuck the fuss was about, and what really made it tick. Maybe I'm being overanalytical....I've been writing massive amounts of VBA code lately, so maybe I'm just on AP mode.

...and with Dungeon Twister, there's zero luck.

Not that I have anything against luck, but that's one aspect of that title I find works very well.

But Wiz-Wars sees its time around here too. Good points by all. Enjoyed it!

I love Wiz War. It's one of my all time favs.
I love Dungeon Twister. It's one of my all time favs.

At no point do I ever think of those games being similar in any fashion beyond the fantasy theme. Wiz War is the only game that has ever gotten what it would feel like to be a crazy powerful wizard. You can just do crazy stuff, all the time. It's amazing. Like Charlie said, the game really opens up when you realize how creative you can be. Just flat out insane some of the stuff you can do. A very emotional game with lots of laughs, fits of rage and grudges.

Dungeon Twister is all about using each character like a chess piece. You need to think two or three moves ahead. Plan out tactics...hope your opponent doesn't figure out what you're up to etc... It's tense and tight and delivers a completely different experience. It's so far removed from the chaotic wizard battles in Wiz War that I really don't think comparing them makes much sense. If you want to do something DT, you can pretty much do it. In Wiz War, who the hell knows what is gonna happen. Dungeon Twister is a very taxing, thinky game. The experience is so drastically different from Wiz War.

All that being said, both are great games and I'll gladly play either of them anytime.

Wiz-War is HUGELY dependent on what happens in the game. I think on BGG 10 years ago or so I said that some sessions I'd rate a 10, some I'd rate a 1. In fact, I remember selling off my full 5th edition set in the early 2000s because I had a couple of bad games with it. And I actually HATED it the first time I played it because I didn't have it sorted out yet that it really is all about creativity, improvisation and sometimes not doing what is "best" but what is "funniest".

Most folks that love the game have had some kind of lightbulb moment where you do something like lock someone up in a 1x1 square room with a wall card. And they get stuck trying to PUNCH out of it. Or you put them in a room with a monster. Or you pick up a treasure and then use a card to throw it at somebody, pick it up, and win on the next turn.

But you have to be willing to sometimes be that dude acting out the Cask of Amontillado in the middle of the game, drawing cards ineffectually each turn, punching the wall in vain.

SuperflyTNT wrote: The players had fun, no doubt, especially Mr. HotSeatGames, but I was sitting there with my dick in my hand

Ahh..... I remember wondering where you had found a tiny mushroom in the convention center.

Wiz-War has been a hit so far. I turned my buddy and his kids onto it and they already went and got all the expansions for it before I even got any.

I soloed the first 2 missions of Space Cadets: Away Missions, using 3 characters for both. The first mission was an introductory mission where the objective was to kill the Sentinel. My team was Yeoman Cookie Hannah, Chief Lance Desoto and Professor Russell Pelham. The layout of the map ended up being fairly open and it had me nervous for when the Sentinel finally showed up but as luck would have it, one of the tiles ended up having hatches on every accessible side so were able to keep it at bay and kill it within a couple turns.

For the second mission (Escape from the Slave Saucer) I swapped out Lance for Captain Ben Riggs. First the Professor scanned the only adjacent tile with 2 Rocketeer Item tokens and found the Tools and the Reference Book. He moved over, picked up both, and successfully Subdued and Rescued a Thrall who turned out to be the Bus Driver (+2 O₂). Since he went first and was safe from attack, I sent him clockwise around the ring's inner map and Cookie and Ben went counter-clockwise. The inner ring was unusually devoid of hatches so this initial exploration phase where I picked up all the Rocketeer items went rather quickly.

Cookie rolled 2 successes on 3 dice when subduing her first Thrall and she rescued the Boy (once per turn, pick up one item for free from an adjacent tile within LOS). This card is amazing and so, so useful. On the next couple of turns she picked up the Ionoscope (+1 to any IQ test, use before rolling) and rescued another Thrall (Scientist: +1 success to any successful IQ roll) before getting the Force Field Belt. I spent an action to research it with her IQ so I used the Ionoscope to guarantee it would be automatically researched, then I used the Scientist to add a success, and then I rolled and got another success, resulting in +2 charges on the Belt to go with its base charge of 3 for a total of 5.

I'd been concentrating on rescuing Thralls (to get the required 6) such that the aliens I hadn't been attacking built up. Then Cookie (who went last, making her the aliens' target on their next activation) scanned a tile that had Time Distortion, so every alien got a free move. Before she took any actions she had 4 Saucermen, 4 Bugs, and a Leech on her tile, but then she went absolutely bonkers. She killed 2 Saucermen, rolled enough Overkills to stun 2 others, killed 2 Bugs, and rolled yet more Overkills to stun one of the remaining Bugs and the lone Leech. She was able to roll multiple successes at least once per turn after that, guaranteeing that the most dangerous aliens would be stunned. Not only that, but she also sent out the Boy to pick up the Mentality Helmet (prevents Panic or Mind Control, 2 charges) to keep the Saucermen from messing up her plans to get to the just-discovered elevator. It was a cakewalk after that and I won the mission with one unscanned tile on the board. It helped matters greatly that one of the inner ring tiles was a Sentinel (since the first alien on each inner ring tile is replaced by a Thrall), and the other two Sentinels didn't appear until well after the mission was well out of reach of the aliens.

It ended up being yet another mostly-open map layout such that the Professor's ability didn't come into play too often. Captain Lance's AP-granting personal ability was really useful and I was able to use it several times but the MVP was clearly Cookie and her alien-stunning Sway ability.

Another great time last night with Uba, Al, and Egg Shen. We played Cthulhu Wars and CV.

I think I came across harder on Crhulhu Wars than I actually feel last night after playing it. I am very underwhelmed by it, but that's not to say that it's not a well developed, well executed game. It's clearly the work of a Chaos In the Old World fan, and I don't think the intent was to "make it better" (because really, you can't). I do like several of the differences, like how cultists give you power and you get power for capturing them, and I really like the "achievement" manner in which you get new spells. Like I said, the game runs fine, better than you'd expect, but it's very much missing something vital. I get no sense of tension, it doesn't really ratchet up as it goes along, and even though you get these new abilities as you play, it's very much the same game an hour in as the one you were playing when you started. What could have really saved it was a better sense of theme, because this game could have been about literary figures of the 1800s battling it out and I wouldn't have noticed much of a difference. I can't help but feel that the designer, clearly a smart guy, knew the short comings and decided to try to distract you with these awesome, giant miniatures. Yeah, this does sound like I'm being harsh on it but I don't dislike the game as much as it sounds. It's just the honest truth and I unfortunately think this is a case in which the positives do not outweigh the negatives, especially when the game it's referencing is almost perfect.

CV was cool. It's kinda weird. It's a decent enough game and we had some laughs over it. What more could you ask for?

Ska_baron wrote:

KingPut wrote: Next up a 6 player Axis and Allies. We played through 3 turns. The Axis came close to victory by taking India, some of Russia cities but the tide is turning. I'm thinking the Allies will pull it off. Allies have researched Jets and cheap ships and Allied economy is rolling. We'll finish it up next week.

Which version? I played the hell out of the old one from the 90s and always wanted to update with one that plays a little smoother/quicker than taking over everything.

Would love to hear any comparisons or mini-review on it from someone.

Anniversary Edition . I'm no expert on A and A but I've heard from some people this was best version. This version adds in Italy as a 6th player.

England starts with India. Japan can march through to India unless the USA player gets aggressive with Japan.

Got Lift Off back to the table again. This game occupies a weird space. It's like Survive! but the move and activate actions you take are generally less mean. Then there are cards that you can play that can be devastating. I played a particularly evil card at the right time and one of my buddies said, "Yep, that's a bag of dicks. You just swing that bag of dicks around."

It's also pretty simple and is one of those games that lends itself to table talk when it's not your turn, yet the mechanics are slightly Euro-y. It's like a blender of Beer-and-Pretzels, Euro, and Survive!, and the result is a bluish-grey goo that ends up being pretty enjoyable. But it's goo.

I've decided I like it quite a bit. The greatest criticism I can level against it is that it's almost not offensive enough. The game state changes frequently enough that you don't always get to threaten negotiate as much as I would like, but at the same time it's less stressful than Survive! so I guess there's that. It may be one of those games that was never the Next Big Thing and rarely gets requested, but when you play it you can't help but wonder why you don't play it more.

After sort of trying a month ago and suggesting we try Eldritch Horror this month, it hit the table. The guy running the game is in the institutional research department and has played it about twenty times, so he set it up quickly and got us started. However, rather than split into two groups, someone was feeling cumbaya and suggested a six player game, with one woman who said she could only stay for an hour. Game night started at 6:00, but we didn't actually start playing until 7:15, and one-hour-woman actually stayed for two hours (and played well). So the upshot is that when I left at 9:30, the end of the world track was at 12, with lots of gates open and only one mystery solved.

I played a lawyer, and my contribution was mostly getting people out of debt and saving up focus points so I could fudge my die rolls. The flavor text on the cards was great. The encounters were cool also. I just wish we had played a four player game that ended in three hours, so there would be a little more tension and paranoia. I'm not sure why, but the game felt a bit like cool RPG-ish elements wrapped up in a spreadsheet. I'd like to try it again with four, but don't know if it will happen. I found myself wondering if Duel of Ages II would have been a wee bit more fun. A little bummed I didn't have the life-changing, raucous Ameritrash grail experience I was hoping for, but maybe the act of wanting something defers its attainment. If I'm being honest with myself, something I try to avoid, I think I just don't like playing board games that much any more, and it really isn't a question of genre.

Edit: I think I was a little depressed for non-gaming reasons when I wrote this. After I left my friend sent me the following update:

I thought you might also find it humorous to know that your Dark Pact which you managed to avoid before you left, would have resulted in you being required to participate in an arcane ritual resulting in you being handed a magical dagger and being required to use it on one of your fellow investigators with lethal effects. So, we would have been down 2, with everything else going on. I think Azthoth had the upper hand.