What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played Card City and Small City recently. Here's my comprehensive review of the two games: One is an abstract card placement activity, and the other is a VP-engine exercise with a spacial aspect.

Also played the new Game of Thrones Risk. The concept is solid and it's a pretty good take on Risk with several ways to play, but USAopoly seriously needs to step up their component quality for the price their asking. They've been around long enough to have figured out how to properly mount a board, and there's no excuse for square-cut glossy cardstock cards in a product like this.

Last year, I received Bios Megafauna for Father's Day. I haven't broken the seal yet. I fall asleep every time that I try to wade through the rules. They're sitting next to my bed. And, I want to play this game based upon my love for Pax Porfiriana.

Started game night by playing The Game - a cooperative card game about playing cards in order from either 100 -> 1 or 1 -> 100. Uhh. filler....

Ended the night with One Night Ultimate Vampire. I'm a pretty big fan of One Night Ultimate Werewolf and this is just the same thing but slightly different. Apparently there are rules to combine the sets and play 3 team games... this thing is pretty group dependent but I find with the right people I can play for hours on end. So ONUV is probably a good pick up for anyone that likes ONUW...

In between I got in my 2nd play of Argent: The Consortium. It was a learning game for 2 of the players so I set it up with the recommended A-side stuff, I just changed up the order of the buildings a bit and took the B-side of the purple mage to start(Fast Action, Move someone to a Shadow spot. Turned out to be mostly useless for me.) Still think it's the only good worker placement game. I'm looking forward to mixing in different buildings and B-sides of things. I'm guessing that when the green and blue mages aren't super protected from wounds that it probably turns the game pretty nasty.

stoic wrote: Last year, I received Bios Megafauna for Father's Day. I haven't broken the seal yet. I fall asleep every time that I try to wade through the rules. They're sitting next to my bed. And, I want to play this game based upon my love for Pax Porfiriana.

Some dude did a walkthrough on youtube. It's also a little dry but you might get a feel for the play. The game pretty much boils down to 6 or so actions you can choose from for your turn. The problem is that two of the actions are a little daunting. A good player aid would fix that easily. I suppose figuring out what to do at first is kind of confusing as well. But once you grok it it's pretty cool.

wadenels wrote: Played Card City and Small City recently. Here's my comprehensive review of the two games: One is an abstract card placement activity, and the other is a VP-engine exercise with a spacial aspect.

Those are descriptions, not reviews. Did you like either one of them?

I ran the sentence through a codebreaker app I've been working on and it came back with "meh". Pretty good considering I don't know how to make apps.

ratpfink wrote: Still think it's the only good worker placement game.

I loled. I need to get my copy to the table!

Somehow I managed to have an amazing week with three days of gaming in a row. Already talked about Clockwork Wars and Mottainai which I played Tuesday.

Wednesday I squeezed in a game of Mysterium, which I very much enjoyed. I'm glad I got to try it as I liked it, but I definitely don't feel the need to own it. Very interesting extension of that dixit-system though.

I coerced a group of 6 to play Mafia de Cuba so I could give the expansion another spin, a little overdue on a review on that one but I like it as much as the base game.

More The Grizzled afterwards, which I think is shaping up to be my 2nd favorite game of the year.

Yesterday I took a day off and got in some gaming with a buddy who was also off. We started off with Rum and Bones, which was pretty fun. I had high expectations and it mostly delivered. I did think moving all of the deckhands was a bit fiddly. Otherwise fun and unique. I'm a big League of Legends fan so I'm glad we finally have a MOBA game.

We then had a short game of Nature of the Beast, a CCG-like game with no collectible aspect where players take up armies of animals joining together to fight each other. Very cool and unique. This company is going out of business and currently clearancing off all of their sets for a ridiculous price. I'd already have ordered if I didn't have too many games and not enough 2 player time.

Final game before lunch was Tides of Time. Best microgame in existence IMO and a steal for the price.

After some delicious Pad Thai we metup with some other people at the FLGS and finally Blood Rage hit the table again. Most of you know I'm the #1 BR fan around here, and this play continued where our relationship left off at Gen Con. Fantastic. Very close game with tons of back and forth and dramatic swings. We also tried the KS exclusive monsters and I have to tell you - pickup this game retail. Didn't think any of these monsters were that special and the variety isn't really needed. I may keep mine sealed up and sell them off eventually, we'll see.

Final game of the day was Quartermaster General, which was fun. I dig the only being able to perform actions allotted to you randomly thing like we see in Earth Reborn so I didn't mind the card-driven play of this one. It's not a game that I loved or would buy but it was good and the perfect length.

We stormed ahead as the axis in early midgame and Italy almost took Moscow. Unfortunately our economic deficiencies caught up with us and Germany couldn't keep spreading. US got into the war with an invasion through Scandinavia and they slowly choked us off. Japan also was uprooted from China and could never quite have an impact.

Last night I had some free time and solo'd a game of Warfighter as well. I'm reviewing Wave 2 and man, that Footlocker box expansion is amazing. So many cool extras in there including this fantastic scenario book that tells you your setup and has some special rules for the mission.

I ended up taking on a drug cartel in South America, infiltrating a village via river and then making my way to an airstrip where I was ambushed. I suppressed the ambushing force and snuck Giocomelli to a vantage point where he took down the departing drug plane with a Stinger missile.

I soloed my first game of Psycho Raiders tonight in preparation for a 6 player game tomorrow night. I'm glad I did because I was looking up all sorts of things just to make sure I was doing things properly. I believe I can properly answer most anything that will come up tomorrow but we shall see. As for how it went, I was very impressed at how easily a narrative unfolded over the course of the game. I was also pleased that the campers held out decently despite things looking pretty grim, pretty quickly.

On the first turn, the campers all stayed in the truck, and were greeted with a flat tire right out of the gate. They drove down the road until the dangerous curve section, only to have the psycho raiders barrel into their rear. The truck took some damage, but otherwise was okay. They made it farther down the road until they got near the woods, at which point Ginger and Dawn jumped out and headed around the trees, hiding. The raiders smashed the back end of the truck again, and all but Spud disembarked.

The truck wasn't feeling so hot, so Randy got out and ran west across the open grass. This was not a great idea but he didn't have a lot of options. He did, however, search in the grass and find a nice rock. Spud caught up to him and started whittling him down. The other raiders started heading for the woods. Randy kept yelling towards the mechanic, but he just wasn't hearing it. The girls were closer but they were too afraid to give away their positions to yell.

Fast forwarding a bit, Randy is now in real trouble, having been grabbed by Spud while Beau goes to work on him with a blowtorch (but not a set of pliers). Ginger got surprised around the side of the garage by Torch, who magically appeared in her hex despite having been quite far away before (That is quite a powerful one use ability!). The mechanic finally turned off the tv long enough to hear the commotion and grabbed a pistol and some other gear before heading outside.

Dawn made it to the fixer upper and broke in, but before she could hot wire it, Fluke smashed the engine completely with his battle mace. The car was ruined. She continued on foot, managing to rouse the town drunk and the sheriff. At this point it's important to point out that I was not using any sinister townsfolk since it was just me playing.

Randy, in his weakened state, never had a chance to escape the clutches of Spud. He ultimately succumbed to Beau's blowtorch. RIP

Ginger, despite a last ditch effort at hiding, and the inept intervention of the mechanic, who incidentally brought a gun to a knife fight and still got stabbed, managed to get herself torched by... Torch. RIP

Dawn managed to hide around the corner of the sheriff's office and actually made it to safety while the drunk failed to grab Fluke. A victory of sorts for the Campers!

Went to campus boardgame night with my teen son. We played Codenames which was great fun, Skyfall which was pretty good, and then when we realized that the guy who was coming late was not going to show up, we played a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Although I can see how it has been replaced by Eldritch Horror, and have heard it is broken, our session went off seamlessly. I got to be the traitor due to my low "Might" score, the guy that taught it had played thirteen times and the rules took five minutes to explain, and the heroes barely squeaked out a win as they played chess against Death. Pretty cool.

Betrayal is a great game! Some sessions can fall apart but more often it should succeed.

If board games were vehicles, Betrayal at House On The Hill is the only one that would randomly switch between a jalopy and an X-Wing.

Played some solo games of Thunderbirds by Matt Leacock - so far there's a lot to like. It's not entirely unlike Pandemic with action points that have to be spend to move characters (and vehicles) around the world in order to manage disasters and the evil schemes of The Hood. But the style is bright and pleasant and ... well, diffferent. It looks great and I like that in a game. And even though there's not a lot of story in the game - you could be doing anything with your action points, really - there is anyways because there's just enough flavour on the cards to envoke a feeling of daring rescue missions.

Also the game is easy to set up with very few moving parts which I like in games I play solo since it doesn't feel like that much of a commitment to set up and play.

On the flipside it's quite mathy and I can imagine it would be a chore to play with someone being a dick and wanting to control everything. On the other hand it has dice which means that sometimes you just have to trust your luck and go for it. So far that hasn't worked well for me, though, and I've lost all three games I've played.

Two solo games of Thunderbirds myself as well. I agree with all of what you say. For me it falls somewhere between Pandemic and Flash Point. My first game I realized after that I was closing the gap between Disasters. So needless to say that was one I won easily. My second game I played correctly and had one really tense moment where I had one chance at a disaster and if I failed I would have lost the game (unless the flip was a Move The Hood card). Passed it though and was able to stem the tide. Fixed a few more disasters then made an attempt at the last Scheme card and pulled it off with seven Disasters on the track. And this was on the Intro mode.

What I like is the logistical aspect of the game which separates it from Pandemic and Flash Point. That I think would do fairly well on the Barnes Thematic Scale. It does feel like you're heading up the logistical distribution of resources around the world in an international rescue outfit. I like the balance you have to strike to let the Disaster track grow a bit so you know what's coming up and how to efficiently distribute your resources, but how that's balanced with a few bad turns could be the end of the game. The Hood track is great in that it creates a dynamic game state. Hopefully after the kids go down I'll be able to get around round in. So far I've found Lady Penelope to be quite useful with her token swap ability. And I chucked as I read John's ability...Only useful when he's sitting there up in Thunderbird 5.

Did you go in for the expansions as well?

Big game night tonight....
First was a 6 player game of Psycho Raiders. Three of us controlled all 4 raiders, and the other 3 were the campers. Two of the camper players are really "I don't like luck / stacked odds" types, so I knew it was a gamble, but my thinking was that after they got slaughtered we would turn the tables and let them play the raiders. They didn't end up wanting to do that. Idiots. Anyway, we charged forth and once they started hiding, they started seeing that they had a shot. They managed to get the Mechanic to help them, although he really didn't manage much.

Randy should have been stabbed to death by Spud, but he drew a lucky KILL card and lived on. Meanwhile Dawn was well hidden and creeping northward. The raiders should have magically transported one of them to cut her off, and also should have alerted the Sheriff who was secretly in league with them. But instead they tried a hilarious move to blow up the gas station which would have put Ginger in a world of hurt. Unfortunately Torch was not taking his glaucoma medication and failed to ignite the gas pump.

Dawn escaped, and no campers died. The group was mixed on the game; I don't know if I'll get them to play it again; but we will see.

Next up was Cthulhu's Vault. The story telling portion was pretty fun, and we ended up telling a rather ridiculous tale of an expedition that involved many people shooting each other. Eventually some weird elder god awoke and murdered everyone. The battle portion was okay but not as fun as the story part.

We finished the night with Betrayal at House on the Hill. Cards were very generous to us and only one of the explorers got really injured pre-haunt. Once the haunt started, those of us who were not traitors were tasked with destroying a witch. We were lucky with regards to some item placement and after a couple of turns managed to kill the witch for an explorer victory.

Overall a strong night for the forces of good. Ugh.