What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played Chaos in the Old World last night for the first time in years. (Enough people in my group don't like it that it's hard to get the required 4-player count.)

Unfortunately it wasn't a great game. The Khorne player was new, and I guess we didn't impress upon him that he doesn't care about domination and corruption, he wants to kill things. He should be killing early and often. So he basically turtled, which allowed the rest of us to kind of do our own thing. When he finally came out swinging, he went after blue, even though green and purple (me) were leading. Green managed to be unstoppable in The Empire and took a huge lead there. Then Bretonnia ruined and Green and Blue shared that (but blue was already way behind). I was set to catch up, but Red threw down cards to prevent me from corrupting two regions I was going to score big in. This gave green an unchallenged lead and when he did th upgrade that gave him VPs when an area ruins, it was over, as that was the only way I'd catch up.

Without Khorne pissing in everyone's Cheerios and chasing people out of regions, the game doesn't work nearly as well, and it showed. Fortunately the Khorne player is willing to give it another go, so hopefully that will go better.

Legomancer wrote: Without Khorne pissing in everyone's Cheerios and chasing people out of regions, the game doesn't work nearly as well, and it showed. Fortunately the Khorne player is willing to give it another go, so hopefully that will go better.

You should give him a strategy guide that is simply a piece of paper with the words: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

Ochobee wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Without Khorne pissing in everyone's Cheerios and chasing people out of regions, the game doesn't work nearly as well, and it showed. Fortunately the Khorne player is willing to give it another go, so hopefully that will go better.

You should give him a strategy guide that is simply a piece of paper with the words: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

Back when I was still actively playing Shadowfist and attempting to recruit new players, I made a bunch of competitive decks for new players to use. Inside each deck box, I would include an elevator pitch of that deck's strategy, on a fortune cookie fortune-sized piece of paper.

Amid a hellish work schedule I managed to get in some gaming Wednesday night. I played two games of Pandemic Legacy with some friends. I'm not the biggest fan of regular Pandemic but adding the Legacy formula to the game made it much cooler. I liked it quite a bit and so did everyone else so we are getting together Saturday to continue. There is a lot of anticipation as to what could be next.

I sent the Rocketeers on a Moon Assault Action once again in SPACE CADETS: AWAY MISSIONS , and once again The Professor, The First Officer, and The Captain himself failed to complete the mission. It's a great mission because it requires you to do a lot of different things in order to survive. They came close with one rescued thrall and two completed schematics, but not finding the elevator until the final tile made things difficult. I could maybe have prolonged things with the teleporter, but with three sentinels on the board and almost no oxygen, it was only a matter of time.

But something good came from this playthrough: looking through the rules to see if there's a limit on the number of items a rocketeer can carry (there isn't) I learnt that they can each bring four items when starting the game. Four. Not three. That is a huge difference and most likely explains why I've lost all the times I've played. With three items you bring a weapon, the character specific items, and then what you need for the mission (like the extra IQ-items for the moon assault). And that leaves little room for healing powers and - more importantly - the powerful one shot items such as the common cold, the stun grenades, and the bug spray. While those items are not important enough to bring if you only have three slots, they are perfect for getting you out of tight spots. So next time, SCAM, next time I'll be deadly serious next time.

3 games of 3 player Splendor. It is a game I play and it... is. I'm pretty good at it and tend to dominate my friends but I don't take particular pleasure in it. More of an activity than a game, but still good for that.

mads b. wrote: But something good came from this playthrough: looking through the rules to see if there's a limit on the number of items a rocketeer can carry (there isn't) I learnt that they can each bring four items when starting the game. Four. Not three. That is a huge difference and most likely explains why I've lost all the times I've played.

Pretty funny -- and I'm impressed you got as far as you did with only 3 items! That's such a significant handicap we didn't even consider it as a way to adjust the difficulty...

Went to a small(70ish people)long running semi-annual local con on Saturday. It's a fundraiser for american cancer society so I always try to go to support it. It tends to be super Cult of the New-y. So I was pretty happy when a con-regular was setting up Puerto Rico. It kind of trips me out to think that this game is almost 15 years old. To me, this always feels like the Bruce Lee of eurogames:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

I haven't played Puerto Rico hundreds of times so maybe I'm wrong, but I know a lot of people go in with set building/shipping/whatever strategies and it always feels wrong to me. I want to react to what my opponents are doing with every decision I make in this game. Either way, it's a game I'm playing against other people and not against a game. We got in two games of this using a different variety of expansion buildings each time.

After that there wasn't a lot starting, so my wife roped me into learning Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia. Cool idea for a setting, but put into an average worker placement game. Get basic resource, upgrade to tier 2 resource, turn those into VPs. Dice for worker placement. There's 3 almost totally symmetrical areas on the board where you can do all of your resource manipulation. Those 3 almost identical areas are supposed to model 3 distinct factions in the game or something. Then there's a 4th area that is quite a bit different and I later found out was added because of a stretch goal on a Kickstarter. Fuck. A JASE.

Next I got to play my first game of Argent: The Consortium and this is actually a good worker placement game. Thanks Barnes! I watched the tutorial video referenced from the rulebook the night before, so I was mostly ready to teach it. The rulebook is a bit of a mess and you definitely have to go with some things that just make sense. I'm looking forward to playing this again and will probably try to get it out at Wednesday game night.

Tried One Night Revolution which we got a few days ago. I'm a pretty big fan of One Night Ultimate Werewolf but this one fell totally flat for me. I'm sure there's some aspect that doesn't reveal itself right away that I'm missing but I don't know why I'd play it instead of ONUW at this point.

The Puerto Rico guy set up Amun-Re somewhere in here, so I got in a 4 player game of that. It's been at least a few years since I've played. It's probably one of Knizia's more complex titles, which strikes me because it's really simple compared to what I see people play for these cult of the new worker placement/resource manipulation games. Am I wrong, or were games like Amun-Re and Tigris & Euphrates considered more towards the "heavy" end of the spectrum at one point?

Ended the day with a 6 player Betrayal at House on the Hill. The haunt was really delayed so we explored quite a bit of the mansion. This ended up helping us since we had to find items in particular rooms and most of the rooms were already explored. We ended up killing the traitor for the victory vs the other way because we found the only item that could harm him locked in a safe. Guess he shouldn't have kept it there, who can resist a locked safe?

No one should be going into Puerto Rico with a set strategy. It's entirely a tactical game. Your seat often makes certain victory paths easier but not always

Back from my first solo run with the big rig, I headed on over to the home of Earth's Coldest Beer® for a few games of Marvel Dice Masters.

Yes, I know our very own Thirstyman hates this game but I do love it. So much fun. Are Al and I the only ones who still play it. Considering the number of sets out there now I would think it would get more attention then it does. You've got three sets of Marvel Stuff, DC Stuff, D&D stuff, and Yu-Gi-Oh(?).

Anyway, it was a blast as usual. Al went heavy villain while I went scattershot in building our teams and he won each and every time though once with only one hit point remaining.

Edit: Looking on BGG, I see there is also a "Spiderman" set featuring some more obscure heroes and villains. Must be something going on to support all these sets.

We just got into Dice Masters with only the DnD stuff. It's good. I'm not much of a deck builder, which is why I never get into CCGs and never got all that excited about the various LCGs FFG has done outside of Warhammer Invasion.. The pool of cards we've got by sticking to the DnD stuff has a nice self-limiting effect. We'll probably start picking up the new DnD Dice Masters sets that are supposed to come out in February, which should be more than enough material to last a long time.

It feels like Quarriors, of which I haven't played the latest expansions, was the prototype for a truly good game. Dice Masters is that game.

I just saw an Avengers-themed one at Walgreen's for 20 bucks. Waiting until it doesn't sell and picking it up for 10$. I give it 2 months.

repoman wrote: Back from my first solo run with the big rig, I headed on over to the home of Earth's Coldest Beer® for a few games of Marvel Dice Masters.

Yes, I know our very own Thirstyman hates this game but I do love it. So much fun. Are Al and I the only ones who still play it. Considering the number of sets out there now I would think it would get more attention then it does. You've got three sets of Marvel Stuff, DC Stuff, D&D stuff, and Yu-Gi-Oh(?).

Anyway, it was a blast as usual. Al went heavy villain while I went scattershot in building our teams and he won each and every time though once with only one hit point remaining.

Edit: Looking on BGG, I see there is also a "Spiderman" set featuring some more obscure heroes and villains. Must be something going on to support all these sets.

mads b. wrote: looking through the rules to see if there's a limit on the number of items a rocketeer can carry (there isn't) I learnt that they can each bring four items when starting the game. Four. Not three.

Hilarious.

engineer Al wrote:

mads b. wrote: looking through the rules to see if there's a limit on the number of items a rocketeer can carry (there isn't) I learnt that they can each bring four items when starting the game. Four. Not three.

Hilarious.

Hilarious for you, maybe. But not for the poor souls who are still enslaved by the devious saucermen because of a sloppy briefing by Mission Control.

mads b. wrote:

engineer Al wrote:

mads b. wrote: looking through the rules to see if there's a limit on the number of items a rocketeer can carry (there isn't) I learnt that they can each bring four items when starting the game. Four. Not three.

Hilarious.

Hilarious for you, maybe. But not for the poor souls who are still enslaved by the devious saucermen because of a sloppy briefing by Mission Control.

Sloppy briefing? Don't blame high command if you're sleeping off a hangover during mission instructions, Rocketeer!