What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

The supply and demand system is the best one I've ever played... with almost no overhead.

Msample wrote:

San Il Defanso wrote: Last night we played Merchant of Venus using FFG's version with the classic rules. Even though I was teaching some folks, I thought we'd play to 3000 credits to give the infrastructure a chance to breathe a little. The guy who won was able to take advantage of demand tokens to really make a killing. I tried to pursue a freighter strategy, but I think I started a little too late to really make it work. I hadn't played in over a year, and it's been even longer since I've played the classic game. Merchant of Venus is such a terrific game, and it was good to get back to it.

While I think the FFG edition is a little over cluttered graphically ( if only they had used the artwork on BGG from Dardekasomeone ) I like what they did. I haven't played the FFG "new" rules , at first glance they look more random and prone to runaway leaders.

The game was ahead of its time in a lot of ways; it doesn't seem to have gained much of a wider audience despite the new edition.

I really like the redesigned version, but it definitely scratches a different itch than the classic version. It's much more in line with something like Merchants & Marauders, though not as sharp as that design. It's a lot more woolly and long-winded, probably less satisfying for people who really loved the strategy of the original. Still, it allows for more ship customization and detail, and it emphasizes the aspects of the original design that I loved. It'd be a shame if that were the only version available, but since the classic game is in there too it works as a really good complement I think.

I didn't think that I'd like Exploding Kittens, but man is it terrible. It plays like a late 90s/ early 2000s take that game. It features art from a popular webcomic artist (The Oatmeal?). But the art is bad, and the jokes aren't funny, unless you think seeing a cat shaped like a beard or taco is funny. The Taco Cat even proclaims, "I'm a palindrome!" Woo. This is one of those games like Fluxx where you just kind of play it until it's over, and no one feels particularly invested. It'd be utterly forgettable if it didn't somehow make a stupid amount of money on Kickstarter.

I liked it, to be honest. It's fun to play with kids and it's even more fun to play when you're pretty solidly buzzed. YMMV. Agree on the comedic value..it's shitty....but I like the art. It's quirky. Again, YMMV.

I've been playing some Machi Koro of late. Man, what a surprise. Really enjoy it, and it's WAY more Ameritrashy than I ever thought. Really a solid little game.

That was my reaction to CW too. "I'm surprised that I like this".

I also can't help but compare it to Chaos in the Old World (which I view less favorably than CW). Theme is important. When a Great One is placed on the board, it should feel like an event and require two hands to place it there. In my experience with Chaos, Khorne is the only one I enjoy playing.

That's exactly my take on it- I'm surprised by it. If you look at the early stuff they put out for it, if you look at the rules...it doesn't seem like there's much there. But when you play it, this really tight editorial design sense comes out of it. When you put Cthulhu on the board, it's a big deal. Not just because he's a hoss-ass eight inch tall figurine, but also because he's got incredible abilities. Not just extra combat dice.

The spellbooks are really where the genius of the game lies, I think. Their powers are OBNOXIOUS. Every one of them is OP. Every one of them is unfair. But they are the powers of a GOD, so it makes sense. And instead of having a deck of 30,40, 50 special ability or faction event cards, whatever, you only have six. But those six are very "curated" and serve to illustrate the concept of that god. Nyarlathotep has a lot of interaction with gates. Cthulhu can submerge and spring up anywhere on the board with an entourage of Star-Spawn and Shoggoths. The Black Goat lets you flood the board with monsters and rewards spreading out. Hastur and the King In Yellow spread corruption.

Other than "you are an evil god that sends out cultists and monsters" and having this sort of achievement system for advancement, that's about where the similarities to CitOW end for me.

Let's stop talking about it so that I won't go over to the Kickstarter page and look at the expansions, please.

Thunderbirds is pretty neat...I've never been a big fan of the show (I like Captain Scarlet better), but Leacock has done some cool things with this design. And it's impossible to not enjoy loading up cool vehicles on Thunderbird 2 and carting them around the map. If you know the show really well, this is one that I think will benefit from being a fan quite a bit.

I think you should just hedge your bets and back the next $300 kickstarter game.

Ha! Probably so!

I think it actually makes a big difference that Sandy Petersen is the designer here...that dude has been around games for decades, he's been involved in making some of the foundational pillars of PC gaming and tabletop gaming alike. This is not some dude that always dreamed of making a zombie dungeoncrawl worker placement game with over 100 beautiful miniatures and an exploding cats concept. This is a very seasoned, very experienced designer. It totally shows in the outcome...and it does feel just a little "outsider", which I love. Other than the faint similarities to CitOW, this game sort of exists outside of external influences other than really core designs like Risk.

My one play of Cthulhu Wars was kind of upsetting. I had been making all these plans to do stuff by what I thought were the rules of the game, and then BAM random overpowered god stuff happens and fouls up turns of preparation. I don't care enough about the game to learn all 6 powers for every god. I was the Black Goat and everyone thought I was winning because I had the most guys, so they all fought me. I ended up in dead last. The price tag means I have no interest in getting it either. I'd rather have another DoaM game and $150.

Kingdom Death was different enough that I was getting interested and thinking about it days later. I also looked up the prices of 3DS's and the latest Monster Hunter game. I'm not that into putting together models.

TIME Stories last night. Exactly what I expected from my demo at Gen Con and we loved it. Full of laughs, strong dark atmosphere, excellent artwork, and surprisingly good writing/story (don't expect literature though). Loved some of the twists and unexpected surprises.

However, the damn thing only took 2.5 hours for us to complete. It feels like it still has some teething to go through but this concept has ENORMOUS potential. If the base game would have came with three cases and if they could have cut down a tiny bit of repetition (it's not egregious) this could be one of my favorites of all time. I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves with the expansions.

Also played a prototype of mine and we nearly won a five player game of The Grizzled.

I traded for CW, and I knew I'd love it long before I played it. It's EXACTLY my kind of game. It's just $150.00, which is absurd. Even with all the plastic, it's absurd. The man probably made a half mil on it, and good on him, I say. My Defenders of the Realm and Catacombs collection will be missed, but I think that the 20 pound box of awesome will help soothe my conscience.

Played Hoodrats again. The more I play it, the more I am thinking I need to kickstart it or something. No publisher would touch it, but man alive, this game just begs to be played.

Netrunner keeps surprising me over and over again.

The last big box just came out and we tried one of the new runners: Apex. He's nothing like any other identity, he's this weird, semiconcious digital anomaly that feeds itself data and that can destroy every single card on the board by playing a card. He doesn't even use normal breakers, he has only one called "Endless Hunger" that eats other cards to break subroutines.

I can't even being to describe how much it turns the game on its head. Huge pieces of ICE that stonewall other runners like Tollbooth or Cutrain Wall are not even a nuissance to him but he suffers a lot when it comes to dealing with random jank like Engima, Turing and the newly-released Resistor. It's really fun to play for that reason.

Really, what a game. And I'm already salivating over other stuff that comes in the box, the design is really amazing.

Nothing better than expansions that actually have the creativity level and design work that went into the original game put into them. I'm honestly trying to think about how many of those there even ARE.

I got to try Bomb Squad, which is somewhere between RoboRally, Hanabi, and Flash Point... and maybe Doom? Heh. I hate it when people describe games in terms of other games, but this one definitely doesn't hide where its inspirations come from. It's a coop game and you've got cards that you're facing away from yourself like in Hanabi. There are three colors (which are also tiers) and then different actions. Move, open a door, rescue a hostage, or defuse a bomb. The move cards are tiered- Red moves 1, Yellow 2, and Blue 3. The bombs and hostages will appear in color order- in our first mission there wasn't even a third bomb so the open/defuse/rescue cards in blue were discard fodder. Like in Hanabi, you can give people clues about their number or type of card, and have to point out all that qualify. Another action you can take is put a card from your hand into the program. In the introductory game, we put them face up, but eventually you're supposed to put them face down! You can also use your turn to execute the program, where you take all the cards played to the program, put them in the order of your choice and discard 1 if you want. So it's not nearly as brutal as RoboRally. There's also no turning; you just pick a direction for your bomb-defusing cooperative robot to go. Every time a card is played from a program, it takes up 1 point of battery. Discarding cards from your hand recharges the battery, but with a wrinkle: you have to say what color and type of card you think you are discarding. You get 1 energy back for each thing you got right. So if you really have no idea, it doesn't help. The biggest difference to Hanabi is that rather than worry about the cards running out, you lose based on a timer, which I think is really cool, and certainly suits the setting very well.

As far as Flash Point and Doom go, you're rescuing stuff, and anytime I read that you need a Red, Yellow, and Blue key I laugh a little. When I first saw Descent, I was not at all surprised to learn that it was originally DOOM.

Bomb Squad gets a thumbs up from me.

More Coup.

... and Evolution with Flight. It seems like you almost always want to take to the skies. Some people did some interesting stuff where their birds would cooperate with their land species so they could keep eating even when the watering hole dries up. Flying is also a little bit worse as a defense than say... climbing because someone can pick it whenever they want. I almost always try to get a pack-hunting carnivorous bird because of their limited body size (birds can only go up to 3 rather than 6, and you have to have a larger body size to prey on other species... pack hunting subverts that).

Played one of the more recent versions of Puzzle Strike for the first time in awhile. I still like it, but then I really like Dominion, and it strays the least far from Dominion despite all of its thematic trappings. Both games are about creating action chains, getting money (the main resource), and then buying the chips that make you win. In Dominion they're points that do nothing but clog your deck. In Puzzle Strike they're crash gems that get rid of the stuff on your "screen" and send it to others.

There are two main families of deck builders.

There's Dominion, with its open market allowing you to buy whatever you want, and working towards a single resource to acquire things: Coins. It's also about maximizing your actions and the order in which you play your cards to some extent. Making a deck do a certain thing is the fun part of Dominion, if you're into that. Puzzle Strike also does this well, and the characters kind of nudge you towards different strategies. I like these the best, perhaps because I played Dominion first.

The other main strain is Ascension, with its conveyor belt of cards that you draft and replace as they're purchased, you get some points for every card, there's no action limit (you vomit your hand), and there are two main resources: Money and Fighting. (I think they're actually called Runes and Power, but whatever). Your decks feel a lot less cohesive in Ascension, and if you've ever played against the hard AI on the app, eventually you just start buying Mechana Constructs because they're A) worth the most points, by far you probably won't draw them again anyway even if they have absolutely nothing to do with your strategy. Maybe expansions fix this, I don't know. Star Realms is definitely in this category, and it has space ships and a bit more interaction, kind of.

Many other deckbuilders are in some weird limbo, where you can buy whatever you want, like Dominion, but you're trying to do something more interesting so you're trying to build for two resources like in Ascension. Thunderstone, Resident Evil, and those Legendary games apply here. I like these the least. It always feels like you have 2/3 of the hand you want. There's no sense of deck construction, or I just haven't played them enough to find it.

Then there's Nightfall which is basically a platypus or virus or something. I didn't play it enough to get a handle on it. I seem to remember Ken B. and Matt Drake liking them when they were still talking about games, but it's about as outsider as you can get within this deckbuilding nonsense with its targeted attacks and bizarre chaining mechanism.

Lots of stuff in the past weeks...

Halloween week game night I got to play Psycho Raiders. We played 2 vs 2, I was on the raider side. Everyone else was new to the game and I only did ok explaining since it's been a long time since I last played. I feel that while 90% of the rules are easy, the last 10% are a little messy but it usually ends up ok anyway. The only real weird situation was when a raider with a battle mace totals the half-damaged truck. Anyway, one of the campers didn't like it much because he felt there was no way to win. Which is exactly how it should be! Muhahahaha. I don't remember a ton of the narrative now, but they bailed out of the truck pretty early. We were going to try to run them down with the van but the first corner had us go offroad towards the woods, oops. So we're all in the woods, the campers are doing a good job of hiding and we're basically just un-doing their hides each turn. At some point they alert the mechanic through screaming, and he calls the sheriff. Those townies load up with some guns. As the raiders, we know we better do some serious damage quickly because those townies will slow us down and there are no sinister townfolk. The funny thing was that the camper players were so paranoid about sinister townfolk they decided to not alert any more. That probably turned out to be the decision that cost them the game. Eventually Dawn snuck around the chapel but there was nothing slowing down Spud, so he was able to catch up and finish her off. If they just had 1 or 2 more townsfolk to run interference on the raiders they probably would have pulled it off.

After that we capped the night off with a rousing game of Magical Athlete which is always a good time.

Following week game night we only had 3 including fellow FATtie ScottF, so we played Argent. I set up the board wrong as I mis-read how many rooms get set up. So we had 11 rooms instead of 8. Oops. I think we also played something else wrong but don't remember what that was. The too many rooms thing makes a big difference, obviously, so it was not the best game. After Argent, ScottF taught Cthulhu Wars. I was Nyarlathotep and crushed Cthulhu early, but made some mistakes later so Scott was able to win with the red pieces. Lovecraft setting does nothing for me, but it's a cool game. I just would never buy it. Admittedly this was only one play, but it felt like... Nexus Ops with asymmetrical factions. It is a good DOAM game but, ignoring the obnoxious minis, it's kind of halfway inbetween Nexus Ops and Cave Evil to me. Nexus Ops is the super stripped down fight, and Cave Evil is the "let's see what the hell happens in this game" so I'd rather play either on one of those two.

Saturday I went to an Extra Life gaming event for a few hours. I played several games of The Game as filler and a couple games of The Grizzled that crushed us. It was new to everyone so we were kind of figuring it out and playing very poorly. I'm looking forward to playing that one some more. It probably replaces Hanabi as the fast co-op du jour. ScottF was there as well so once we were both free at the same time we played another 3-player Argent and this one was really good since the rooms were set up correctly. No new players so we randomized rooms and A/B sides on everything. I went for the obnoxious spell combo, as I had grabbed both the "next spell, don't exhaust" and then "gain 1 mana and refresh a spell" spells, and also had spells that allowed me to place 3 mages as a reaction when the last bell tower card was played. It didn't really turn into a winning position though as I needed just a couple other "things" for the voters. Final score was ScottF 5 votes, me 4, other guy 3. It was close though, if I just could have scooped 1 more treasure on the last turn I would have grabbed that vote instead of Scott. This game was pretty great and I can't wait to play again. I picked up the expansion but think I'll just leave it aside for a few more plays. There's already so much in the box and each game plays a little differently based on what rooms are out.

Edit: Almost forgot somewhere in there was a good 5p game of Battlestar Galactica. I drew Cylon from the start and took a pilot. Turned out the other Cylon from the start was the other pilot. Early on I figured I would made a futile attempt to kill the basestar by piloting over there and wasting a bunch of high value red cards to make multiple attacks. I rolled really poorly and single handedly took out a basestar in one turn. Oops. So i decided to play it straight so that if someone did try to sabotage a mission I'd know there was another cylon out there... Humans jumped 3-2-3 or something. I revealed after the 2nd jump and threw a human in the brig. My cylon partner also revealed but it would have been better if he hadn't because we could have kept someone in the brig. Cylons were pretty hosed until a string of lucky crisis cards had no jump symbols. Eventually a base star and a bunch of raiders showed up and the humans had no pilots to deal so we started beating on galactica. They could have jumped and taken the pop loss except that FTL control was damaged and the only guy that could repair was in sickbay. Muhaha. Pretty good game. It's been a few years since I've played and I've been kind of lukewarm on it in the past.