What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

This is going to sound like heresy around here, but until the other day I had never played Fury of Dracula, any version. Always wanted to, but no one I knew had a copy and I wasn't going to drop $150-$200 for the out of print 2nd edition. Glad FFG re-released it, because it was a blast.

None of us had played before, I went as Drac against 3 others as the hunters. I gallivanted around the Balkans for the start of the game until Mina caught some brain waves from me straying into Austro-Hungaria and the hunters descended. I led them around before jumping into the Black Sea and heading east to Spain. Unfortunately for me, they played the Consecrated Ground event just as I landed, blocking me in and limiting me to move either directly into Godalming's city, or Madrid. I flew off into the night the turn after he got his rifle back, hilariously right after Dr John exclaimed "Don't play it right away again!!", silly hunters, but not after being knocked down to 5 health.
I didn't have too many places to flee to, as the hunters were all well placed in France, so I took a risk and went right next to Madrid. After a couple turns of heated "no he couldn't have done that" from the hunters, they found nothing and had to admit they were played like fiddles. I managed to evade them by using some well placed road blocks and moving hunters via bats into fogged cities, getting to a port to head to the Mediterranean, only for Dr John to play the event that pulls an ally out of the discard pile - and he pulled the one that does 2 damage per sea move. Great. Luckily (or, as I like to call it, well placed deception), the hunters guessed I was going north, but I sailed to Italy, managing to land and get the rest of the influence needed through Fury before they got down.

We finished at 12:30am on a Monday night, and I was tired as hell the next morning at work, but god damn was it worth it. Can't wait to play again.

(Wings for the Baron)

sagrilarus wrote: I think my review for this one is now half written.

I sat down this evening to get the review started by cutting and pasting my prior post into Word. I figured I'd just break the ice to get things started.

Two hours later the first draft is done. Really liking the game and spending the time to gather my thoughts on it in a coherent way added to the overall impression. This is really a good game. Surprised it's not getting more attention. F:At will get firsties but I intend to publish on BGG and the Aerodrome as well, where I think it will get a lot of attention simply due to the thematic apects of it.

Michael Barnes wrote: Does it "feel" like WHQ? Yeah, pretty much, as much as Death Angel feels like Space Hulk at least. But I think this is definitely better than Death Angel.

Damn. That is some high praise. Death Angel is a freakin' masterpiece in that tiny box.

I don't think he's as big of a fan of Death Angel as many of us.


Played world 782 (504) last night, which was much better than 123 and slightly better than 456. 782 is a medium/light Euro where you all start in the middle of this huge map and need to spread out immediately. You're trying to settle the most of different types of tiles and there's scoring rounds at three points in the game (although their timing is slightly random so you can't count on them scoring at a specific time).

So whoever has the most Cities settles gets 10 VPs, the most Forests 9 VP and so on. Coming in second is worth somewhat less.

The second module you use in 504 dictates how money is earned, which is used exclusively to buy more Residents (people used to move about the map and settle). In module 8 it's from goods production. So in addition to spreading out and settling, you can use Residents to build Plants that produce goods depending on the type of tile they're on. The trick here is that there's only one plant allowed per tile so there's a bit of a hurry up feel to get to places and build plants before your opponent.

The final module was the Race module, which in position 3 just adds additional VPs to whoever reaches 1 and 2 settlements in ALL of the tile types first.

It seemed deceptively simple at first but became pretty thinky as income ballooned. I enjoyed it. Nothing amazing or special but solid and the strategy definitely felt like something you can continue to perfect as this world would stand up to a great deal of plays (much like 456).

I don't see myself keeping 504 long term but I'm definitely appreciative of it.

We then moved on to Survive: Space Attack! where too many people got into the habit of just dicking each other over and I was able to float some dudes to safety. I ended up winning pretty handily and it was a good time.

We wrapped up the night with Safe Breaker, a sweet deduction game I reviewed months ago, and Coconuts which is always a favorite.

Michael Barnes wrote: Replayability may be an issue, and I think if you play solo or with two you could easily knock out all five campaign quests in an evening.

This. My brother would have bought a new edition eyes closed, and I thought this game was in the bag and I'd play his copy. Nope, he's not buying it yet, waiting for a bit longer and opinions to stew a bit. His biggest fear is the low replayability of the base set (a 5th hero would have added dramatically to it).

We played Arkham again this week, against that weird mummy-wizard (Quanchil Uttaus?!?) stalking the investigators in order to devour them. Well he managed to devour the spy, but we still locked him out of our universe, and doom token progress was really slow (lots of monster surges, 2 elder signs used, and a couple of double-gates that don't add doom) so he was only half-way here before we closed all the gates. The Lurker herald is fun. This time there was a smattering of activity in Innsmouth (2 gates), but not much else.

Last night I reread the rules to Archipelago and tried a solo scenario, hit the silver award, in hindsight could have gone gold. Still learning. I might try teaching it tonight.

Soloed WQ:ACG last night. I rolled into the dungeon with the Ironbreaker and Warrior Priest. The Ironbreaker was for it's tank abilities and the Warrior Priest just because, it turned out to be the two with the highest health which was needed. By the end I was down to about 1 HP each and were it not for a few fortuitously timed Resting rolls and healing items I for sure would have lost. As it was, I just squeaked by.

But, I'm not confident in my win. The rules are a bit of a mess and as I was going through learning the synergies and the rules nuances I'm sure I missed little rules nuances and skipped/forgot things here and there. I love the rulebook split into the Learn to Play and Rules Reference books, but adding in a Tutorial Mission just made a bit of a cluster of things. That should have just been skipped.

There's no reason to have any fears about replayability. There's just too many points where the game gets randomized so the enemy mix will be different each game, the dungeon cards will be different and the items will be different. To me, it appears that you can run the same two heroes through the campaign six times and end up with six drastically different looking pairs heroes at the end of each one depending on the items drawn and when and what skills get upgraded and when. If you can play base Death Angel dozens of times, this gives even more variety than that. Replayability should not be a concern.

Isn't there also a random delve mission, aside from the specific campaign? Presumably, that one can be played repeatedly with different things coming up.

Thanks for the update about replayability. I definitely have my eye on WQ:ACG.

In the meantime, I finally got in my first game of Runebound 2nd ed, regular rules, two-fisted. I'm not going to have any problems getting in 10 plays of this thing for Kill the Cult 2016. I'm sorry I didn't get into this game sooner, but... no time like the present. Now to dig up the Mr. Skeletor solo variants.

I started this at 11:30 last night, so I skipped the campaign part and the delve mission part of the rules, I just wanted to plow into the first quest. So I'm not sure what goes into those portions of the game (tonight after the kids go down I'll figure out more).

What I feel the game is like are the scenarios from Robinson Crusoe.
I've played that first scenario quite a few times and never tired of it because the cards create a different narrative and challenge each time. I remember San once saying that the first scenario in Robinson would have been a great game on its own, but then the box contains five more scenarios making the entire package that much better.

EDIT: I should add though that having thicker decks to draw from would always be a welcome addition. RC is nice because the decks start out thick, here they're a bit thinner with lots of room to grow.

Michael Barnes wrote: Overall, at a first look, it was really fun and it feels very approachable. Replayability may be an issue, and I think if you play solo or with two you could easily knock out all five campaign quests in an evening. There are settlement phases in between each quest so you can visit the trainer, the smith and so forth so that's a cool touch. I just don't know how motivated I would be to go back through the scenarios with different heroes or whatever. But keep in mind that this is actually a very low cost title- I think it's like $25 or so, and I'm sure expansions are on the way. I think I'm onboard for them.

Thanks. There's a version of this (visit the smith, go back to the settlement) that could be elaborated extensively on and make this a really fun campaign game. Probably with lots of expansions.

This is definitely one I'll consider buying into for solo play, but only when a bunch of sets have come out... probably more of a used lot purchase in two years for me.

Played Mafia de Cuba at my game group! LOVED IT!

Anyone else play?

(I think this game is very Group Dependant ) But it was an awesome good time.

Also, played and really enjoyed Slap 45 ... anyone play a bit o that?

Chris

I'm a big Mafia de Cuba fan, it's even better with the expansion.

It does seem a bit fragile, like many of these games, in that the wrong group can just completely ruin it. When it works though it's exceptional fun.

Got both our asses handed to us TWICE in the Asteroid Belt mission in SC:AM last night. That one's pretty hard, especially if the dice aren't favourable. It's a combat-heavy mission where you need to clear out the map, but you only start with a Ray Gun, and the lower half of the map has Alert tokens as well as Aliens tokens.

I'll probably choose Lance DeSoto next time instead of random character selection. First mission with Captain and Doctor, we didn't even get a second Atomic Rifle (a random 2 Rocketeer tokens don't make it to the board), but we still got as far as scanning every tile. Second try with the two ladies, both rifles were way down the rocket ship and we died before reaching them, at about the halfway point (2/3 tiles scanned). Basing your plans on even a single needed Overkill isn't sound strategy, but we felt that was the only way to go here. It went poorly for us.

Win-loss ratio was 9-2, now 9-4.

Frohike wrote: Thanks for the update about replayability. I definitely have my eye on WQ:ACG.

In the meantime, I finally got in my first game of Runebound 2nd ed, regular rules, two-fisted. I'm not going to have any problems getting in 10 plays of this thing for Kill the Cult 2016. I'm sorry I didn't get into this game sooner, but... no time like the present. Now to dig up the Mr. Skeletor solo variants.

It's a damned masterpiece.

Got both our asses handed to us TWICE in the Asteroid Belt mission in SC:AM last night.

I think it's pretty apparent that the aliens are learning from your previous missions and adjusting to your tactics. Al said that is part of the design.