What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

It turns out that Rebel Transports are good for repeatedly ramming Raiders. Both ships get a face-up damage card, and the Transport has more hull points than the Raider.

Booth, you still got that Ogre gif?

Just played Armada for the first time, the intro setup. Dang. It is really good. X-Wing is the Lamborghini, Armada is the Rolls-Royce. Too early to tell if it's better, but I think it is definitely a more refined design. Love all the custom engineered components. Love the defense and squadron mechanics.

Good thing I didn't blow $300 on a clunker. But now I'm already thinking I should have got two raiders and one more of each fighter pack. And another playmat. GOODBYE MONIES

I don't like to compare it to X-Wing because they both do what they do well without stepping on each other's toes. Unlearning X-Wing was the first obstacle I had to overcome to grok Armada. Just wait til you try 400 points. It's insane.

What all did you get?

Michael Barnes wrote: Just played Armada for the first time, the intro setup. Dang. It is really good. X-Wing is the Lamborghini, Armada is the Rolls-Royce. Too early to tell if it's better, but I think it is definitely a more refined design. Love all the custom engineered components. Love the defense and squadron mechanics.

Good thing I didn't blow $300 on a clunker. But now I'm already thinking I should have got two raiders and one more of each fighter pack. And another playmat. GOODBYE MONIES

I think I'm going to revive our Armada thread, I'd like to hear more.

I finally set up a game to learn the rules and mess around with my copy of Kaosball I picked up at Trashfest. Overall I was pretty pleased with how it plays. It LOOKS like it's gonna be a big ol trashy dice fest, but it's really not. It's really tactical with a nice card based system for combat, tackling, and stealing. A single die is used to break ties. The game is sort of a king of the hill, control an area, competitive videogame, simulator instead of being based on anything that resembles a real sport. I played with the Demons and Ogres and each side played very differently thanks to their varying stats and special team power. Luck of the draw seems to play into things a bit, but the card system really has lots of neat tricks hidden to discover.

I'm really impressed and I'm looking forward to diving into a full game soon.

Hex, I got one of everything, down the line, including the individual ships from the core. After seeing how squadrons work, I want more because I think they will be more impactful in larger numbers. And it just looks bad ass with swarms of fighters out there. I'm getting another Imperial Raider because it feels like, looking at the ships, they need at least one more not gigantic, not lumbering ship.

Probably another dice set and a tool, the done thing is to make an extra one shorter.

HUGE bonus- everything fits in the core box.

^wow, really re:storage? That is a huge plus for me.

I picked up both Star Wars Risk and Arena of the Planeswalkers with some gift cards. I've only played one two player game of AotP, but I really enjoyed it. I might even like it a little more than Heroscape, though I have yet to play Heroscape with someone besides my five-year-old.

I've played a BUNCH of Star Wars Risk. Five games, all Rebel victories. One guy I played against didn't think the Imperials even had a chance. He has a history of declaring balance problems very quickly, but it sure looks tough for the Empire on this one. It seems like the best strategy is to mob the Deathstar and create a TIE-Fighter shield, then not let the Rebels get close. I am using the clarified rules from the designers on BGG, which do help. I still really enjoy it though. I was expecting something closer to Queen's Gambit, but this is actually way lighter. My favorite Star Wars games tend to be the lighter ones, as much as I like FFG's work on the license. Stuff like Epic Duels and Star Wars Risk seems more appropriate to the license to me. It helps that it's SO short and easy to pick up.

It has the marks of a game that will be worth some money someday too, since it seems to be hard to find in the wild.

san il defanso wrote: I picked up both Star Wars Risk and Arena of the Planeswalkers with some gift cards. I've only played one two player game of AotP, but I really enjoyed it. I might even like it a little more than Heroscape, though I have yet to play Heroscape with someone besides my five-year-old.

I've played a BUNCH of Star Wars Risk. Five games, all Rebel victories. One guy I played against didn't think the Imperials even had a chance. He has a history of declaring balance problems very quickly, but it sure looks tough for the Empire on this one. It seems like the best strategy is to mob the Deathstar and create a TIE-Fighter shield, then not let the Rebels get close. I am using the clarified rules from the designers on BGG, which do help. I still really enjoy it though. I was expecting something closer to Queen's Gambit, but this is actually way lighter. My favorite Star Wars games tend to be the lighter ones, as much as I like FFG's work on the license. Stuff like Epic Duels and Star Wars Risk seems more appropriate to the license to me. It helps that it's SO short and easy to pick up.

It has the marks of a game that will be worth some money someday too, since it seems to be hard to find in the wild.

More people seem to be coming out and agreeing with the perception that the Empire is favored. All you need to do is move the Executor up and then endlessly spawn TIEs, attacking with five dice each time. If you spend an action on the duel or Endor you're wasting time.

Played Psycho Raiders last night -- I was the Raiders and my buddy was the Campers.

Turns out there were no sinister town folk, so I was going to try to finish him off early. The opening event was fog. He pushed the petal to the metal and flipped the pickup on the first square. Randy, Ginger, and Dawn hopped out. Ginger ran parallel to the road, while Dawn got lost in the fog and stumbled to the forest. Randy hopped out of the car with his tire iron and tried to follow Ginger. The Raiders, excited about the car flip, pulled up by Ginger and let Spud and Beau hop out -- Spud took his meat hook to Randy but got smacked in the head with a tire iron. Beau jumped from the van and landed on Ginger -- in the process he fumble-fucked around and dropped his sabre. Naturally, Ginger picked it up and took off at a sprint, seemingly undeterred by the fog. The other two Raiders circled around to the north side of the forest where they new Dawn was hiding. Just as Dawn was emerging, lighting flashed and exposed her position, so she ran back in to the forest. Torch decided to light the forest on fire and pin down where he thought Dawn was; however, she managed to slip out the southside and get back on the road.

In the meantime, Beau fired up his blowtorch and took after Randy, telling the much faster Spud to go get Ginger and get his damn sabre back. Beau and Randy grappled all the way up towards the old country store with intermittent blow torch blasts to Randy's head. Eventually, he went down when Torch showed up and used his flamethrower to finish him off. Spud didn't fare as well as Ginger wielded the sabre like a samurai master on a couple of turns and eventually split his head open and left him on the side of the road to die. Dawn got freaked out in the woods when she stumbled across a dead body, but the distant ringing of church bells emboldened the two girls. The joined up, attacked the van with the sabre and machete, slowing its speed. The fog lifted and they were able to make it to the woods and escape.

Review well is a little dried up at the moment so we had a relaxing game night with a bunch of lightweight stuff.

One Night Ultimate Vampire disappointed me. It was better than One Night Revolution but it's fiddly and overcomplicated compared to One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Pales in comparison to something like Deception which felt interesting and fresh.

Introduced some newbies to Rhino Hero, Codenames, and Skull which was a good time.

Got in a four player game of 6 nimmt! which was pretty good. I was riding the lead early but one player stormed back and I had a couple of bad plays where I was stuck with a bunch of bulls. One guy was doing so bad it seemed like he was trying to shoot the moon.

Wiz-War, with all expansions thrown in, was the highlight of the night and as meaty as we got. I summoned a Minotaur on the first turn, teleported a dude to me who was trying to steal my chest, and beat the hell out of him. He threw down a sandstorm right down a key hallway which kept dicking with me. The Minotaur got lost in the sandstorm and couldn't get out. Son of a bitch.

Meanwhile, the other two guys were messing with totems and picking away at treasure. One guy brought out the Genie which is scary as hell. It's basically a proxy for your wizard and lets you cast from it and attack twice in one turn.

I grabbed my neighbors chest after making it past the sandstorm then got stuck in a fight with the Genie summoner who turned into an Ogre. I had morphed into a Golem at that point but was beat up a bit. The Ogre dropped the Sandstorm player's chest on his rune and then pushed me into a Rosebush before finishing me off with a spell combo.

Great times.

Played Mafia de Cuba three times last night. It's a light, fun little alternative to One Night Werewolf.

One player is a Godfather with a box full of chips (roles) and diamonds. The box gets passed around, and the other players get to choose what they want to take (a chip for a role, any number of diamonds to be a thief). Then the Godfather asks questions, listens to accusations, and attempts to pick out the thieves.

I really like that each player gets to choose their role rather than have it forced upon them like Werewolf or other social deduction games. I worried that the game might not be as fun if you weren't playing as the Godfather, but at least in my case I didn't find that a problem at all. I do think that my group might have been slow to grasp some of the better strategies, since the Godfather won all three games. We probably should have jumped ahead of the questions more, or maybe had more people steal fewer diamonds each.

Anyway, it was a good game and I liked it quite a bit. It may grow old after a while, but for as cheap as it was I think I'll have gotten my money out of it by then.

Gregarius wrote: Played Mafia de Cuba three times last night. It's a light, fun little alternative to One Night Werewolf.

One player is a Godfather with a box full of chips (roles) and diamonds. The box gets passed around, and the other players get to choose what they want to take (a chip for a role, any number of diamonds to be a thief). Then the Godfather asks questions, listens to accusations, and attempts to pick out the thieves.

I really like that each player gets to choose their role rather than have it forced upon them like Werewolf or other social deduction games. I worried that the game might not be as fun if you weren't playing as the Godfather, but at least in my case I didn't find that a problem at all. I do think that my group might have been slow to grasp some of the better strategies, since the Godfather won all three games. We probably should have jumped ahead of the questions more, or maybe had more people steal fewer diamonds each.

Anyway, it was a good game and I liked it quite a bit. It may grow old after a while, but for as cheap as it was I think I'll have gotten my money out of it by then.

The expansion isn't mandatory but is pretty good, adding a lot of variety. Some really interesting roles mixed in and it's cheap too.

Played MdC myself on Sunday. I liked it for what it is, and I am typically not a fan of Werewolf, The Resistance, Coup...etc...etc.
For me I think it is the more tactile elements to MdC. And like Gregarius mentioned, that the player gets to chose how to interact with the game rather than being given a role to play.

Question though: Why would the Godfather not take 5 to begin with? Therefore leaving fewer diamonds to find overall.