What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

san il defanso wrote: I played Mega Civilization this weekend, and I lived to tell about it. I wrote a huge session report over on my blog for those who would like to read it.

I enjoyed your roundup. Being unable to rate the experience positive or negative really resonated with me---when I experience something that is just totally overwhelming and exhausting, at some point I lose the ability to evaluate anything about it other than it is done and I finished it.

Dogs of War - The shame of this game is were it not a $60 MSRP game from CMoN with over production and KS Exclusives I'd highly recommend it. The board and minis could have all been easily scrapped and packaged like and fit along side any of the FFG small square box games.

There's four rounds of tug of war between the six warring houses that are paired up each turn. You play as a mercenary committing your captains and troops to the battle receiving payment from the house on a first come first served basis. The winning house moves up on house track and captains on the winning side can score additional VPs and possibly the battle reward.

The house track is the more interesting element because over the course of the game you'll obtain Influence Tokens from the various houses as rewards, those are worth a number of VPs at the end equal to how far the house banner was able to progress up the house track. So a stack of five VPs could be -5, 5 or 20 or more. It also adds that layer for the players because in the later rounds you'll get a sense of which player is backing which house or houses heavier than the others so making sure that house doesn't advance could be a substantial VP swing for a player.

If you can find the game on clearance I'd recommend it, at MSRP, find someone's copy to play.

RE: Dogs of War

That game is pretty great. Not enough folks sing its praises, but personally I dig the mini's quite a bit. My only gripe is that after their Kickstarter ended, the 4 added factions, extra cards and orders of battle were unavailable. Knowing that, the game feels permanently incomplete.

The quality surprised me...Well perhaps not, CMoN keeps hitting this sweet spot for me.

As far as the factions go, the best solution I could come up with would be creating a deck of cards that have the 9 faction powers on them and then deal one out randomly to each player ignoring the ones printed placing the card on your screen so everyone knows what you have. That's a pretty quick workaround.

The Order of Battle Cards I don't think are a huge loss, the regular rewards on the Order of Battle Tiles were taken more than any of the extra bonus ones. This missing Tactics Cards kind of sucks though. Only one of the three I thought was good though (Bannerman) and the other two were alright.

I've been digging into MERCS: Recon, and it's not surprising me that the same story as Myth is playing out here.

The rulebook is much better here than Myth and everyone can easily figure out how to play it, however, there are inconsistencies in printed material and many edge cases which are difficult to define. Many questions on the rules forums and an FAQ is sorely needed.

I'm also not surprised that I really like the game. Like Myth, their designs really allow creativity and an evolving narrative that changes with each play. In my last game, my Keizai Waza strike team was infiltrating the Kemvar office and zip-tieing employees left and right to keep the alarm down.

Suddenly a several Security teams converged on me at once (some appearing from the stairs unexpectedly and others from nearby hallways) and I was pinned down a long hallway. The firefight intensified to the point I was taking wounds left and right, their shotguns breaching my armor.

Unfortunately their shotguns also dealt large degrees of collateral damage which can damage the building itself. One area I was holding down with 3 members of my team took so much fire that it was literally destroyed, punching a huge hole in the space and making it impassible. My team leapt for cover in the adjacent bathroom but was stuck and I couldn't continue the mission.

Weird shit like that unexpectedly happens in every game. In four solo plays so far nothing has turned out exactly identical.

In my first play I found my objective (a robotic arm I needed to destroy) right near my deployment from the elevator on the floor. I got into the office room on the third turn of the game and executed a Breach & Clear.

The Breach & Clear is a mini-game where you move your miniatures to a separate tile and have a sort of back and forth dice off trading attacks with the SecFor. Having a loose grasp on the game at the time I failed and outright lost the mission as everyone of my South American Kemvar troopers were killed.

This B&C mini game could be very divisive as you can have a 60 minute mission culminate with a loss due to this mini game.

I've really enjoyed this game thus far and would wholeheartedly recommend it with the caveat that you will probably need to just decide stuff on the fly if you're unsure or spend some time on the BGG forums. The minis also require assembly but they slot right in and none are over 3 pieces. Very simple stuff.

Printed components aren't exceptional but they're ok. Artwork and graphic design is great.

Our Mega Civilization game was only 9 players, so I think ours resembled a game more than an event. I've never played old-school Civ or Advance Civ before, so this was completely new to me. I really enjoyed it.

More detail here:
mega-Mega-MEGA CIV ((…iv…iv…iv…))

I would have to think long and hard about playing another full game like that. In the end I felt like it was mostly AWESOME because of how BIG it was. In other words, it was basically huge for its own sake. I'd be much more willing to play on half a board, and fitting cleanly into a day. I could see playing that 3-4 times a year.

I played Dune with 6 other all new players last night (one buddy showed up unannounced so we just had him team up with a player that wanted to leave a little early). None of these guys are gamers at all, but they love Spartacus and are slowing getting into trying new games. It took a while to get rolling, as being non-gamer types rules explanation is far more difficult and this group doesn't always pay the closest attention to rules intricacies despite me attempting to emphasize. I was BG and actually played pretty poorly, in hindsight I realize I didn't focus that much on myself and was more helping everyone learn... should've let them all take a faction and just been GM to teach when the extra player showed up. All that being said I still got to play Dune with 6 people and had a blast.

The game saw an early worm and quickly paired up to Fremen/Emperor, Hark/Guild, and BG/Atreides. I feel due to economic standing Emperor is a good option for new players and it seemed to play out that way. The Fremen got a weapon and shield quickly after alliance and the two did quite a lot of damage as players were anxious to get into battles (I explained post game to the group that this was prolly way too combat heavy, but in my experienced group we had the same type of meta till we played more). After some shuffling and costly battles both Harkonnen and Atreides ended up spice starved and in pretty weak positions due to their inexperienced controllers and the Guild was down to a single unit not in reserves. The Frem/Emp alliance looked pretty strong by comparison and when a turn 6 worm came up I broke alliance as my best chance was to only hold 3 strongholds and use the voice. I rebuked co-existence and had a small presence in 4 of 5 strongholds. Lost first against pretty unwinnable odds, won next two... game came down to a fairly even fight with Emperor however he used a Karama to cancel my voice and won the day. With BG now added to the ranks of the depleted, it took two more turns for the Frem/Emp to take 4 Strongholds.

I was happy that this group seemed to take to the game and even players who really got stomped found fun with things like Lasgun + Shield or saving troops from storm with weather control. Its one of my three favorite games and I would say of those three it is the best design, I always appreciate that as much as the fun I have playing. It will be great to mix in with Spartacus with these guys when they want just a little more strategy. The one thing that they actually brought up and I agree with is how brutally high stakes the game is and how devastated a failed ploy can be. If you overextend and screw yourself Dune has no issue letting you feel that pain for 5 to 6 turns as you slowly rebuild and scramble to even be a minor factor. Interesting that modern games seem to try and reduce this sort of gameplay or "player elimination" and yet here is a group of non-gamers buying into hobby games with that as a major factor of their enjoyment (also why they love twisting the knife in Sparatcus and watching each other squirm).

Just played 2 two player games of Theseus. This was the premier of the Hunters expansion. Both of us were experienced Theseus players.

Game 1, I was the Hunters vs. the Xenos. I employed a single use trap called Pliers, which causes the trapped unit 5 damage if it moves. It can get free if another of its faction stops in that sector. That trap didn't end up doing any damage, but it did put one unit out of commission for many turns. I managed a narrow win.

Game 2, my opponent took the Hunters and I took my favorite faction, the Scientists. Disaster struck! The Hunters have a card called Attachment. They can pay 1 data point to make use of any enemy card adjacent to the attachment card. I had a fully upgraded Camcorders trap. He got his Attachment card installed next to it. He was able to fall into the trap, thus pushing the data point track all the way to 6, then pay 1 data point to collect the 6 points, netting him 5 data points every time he did it. He completely destroyed me.

My assessment of the Hunters after only two plays is that they have a lot of very case-specific cards. If certain situations don't present themselves, a lot of their cards aren't that great. But when they can manage a combo or two, they are a force. Their units are also very flexible, being able to collect data or do damage, once upgraded. They can even collect data through walls, which is pretty cool.

Game night recently with four friends. We started with Spyfall, which they took to pretty quickly and liked. We also tried out Codenames, which has been a hit in every single group I've tried it with. Even my parents enjoyed it and all they like to play is Scrabble.

Finally we played Sons of Anarchy with the two new gang expansions. It was a tight game, and there was quite a bit of conflict right from the beginning. Near the end two of the guys realized that they weren't going to win so they teamed up to take me down. I had knocked over my screen like a dunce and revealed my large stacks of cash. Up to that point I had stayed out of fights, often by bribing people to leave spaces I wanted with a promise of part of the profits I was about to receive.

An interesting combination of Anarchy cards on the final turn led to a race to get down to 0 Heat to gain 4 cash, which was huge. There were only two ways to do this: an opportunity card (Charity Drive) that dropped a big two Heat, and the standard Police action to lose 1 Heat. I went to the opportunity but both guys followed, and I knew they had tons of guns and no qualms about using them. The other two players were heading to the Police Station. Knowing I couldn't beat all the guns, I hightailed it for the station to take my chances with no guns. The two of them ended up blasting each other away, sending 8 or 9 dudes to the hospital. The charity drive didn't know what hit them. And at the police station we had a gigantic three way battle royale which I lost by a hair to the player I was neck and neck with. However he didn't actually get the 4 cash, since he had too much heat, which let me squeak by with the win. SoA is definitely still a favourite with our group.

hotseatgames wrote: Just played 2 two player games of Theseus. This was the premier of the Hunters expansion. Both of us were experienced Theseus players.

Game 1, I was the Hunters vs. the Xenos. I employed a single use trap called Pliers, which causes the trapped unit 5 damage if it moves. It can get free if another of its faction stops in that sector. That trap didn't end up doing any damage, but it did put one unit out of commission for many turns. I managed a narrow win.

Game 2, my opponent took the Hunters and I took my favorite faction, the Scientists. Disaster struck! The Hunters have a card called Attachment. They can pay 1 data point to make use of any enemy card adjacent to the attachment card. I had a fully upgraded Camcorders trap. He got his Attachment card installed next to it. He was able to fall into the trap, thus pushing the data point track all the way to 6, then pay 1 data point to collect the 6 points, netting him 5 data points every time he did it. He completely destroyed me.

My assessment of the Hunters after only two plays is that they have a lot of very case-specific cards. If certain situations don't present themselves, a lot of their cards aren't that great. But when they can manage a combo or two, they are a force. Their units are also very flexible, being able to collect data or do damage, once upgraded. They can even collect data through walls, which is pretty cool.

I've only played marines-aliens (like 5-8 games), though I bought Bots, so I'm very excited to play the other factions.

Gary Sax wrote: I've only played marines-aliens (like 5-8 games), though I bought Bots, so I'm very excited to play the other factions.

It's crazy how your tactics need to change based on what faction you are up against. We will probably try to set up a 3 player game soon so that we can finally check out Pandora. I skimmed the Pandora rules and they seem crazy.

Brent Spivey is a miniatures ruleset designer that I've followed for awhile. He designed Havoc: Tactical Miniature Warfare which is my favorite skirmish game (think Song of Blade and Heroes but much more interesting and flavor), as well as a contemporary RTS-like minis game called Battlegrounds, which I playtested about 8 years ago.

Anyway, his rules tend to be pretty imaginative and unique while full of character. When he contacted me in December saying he was going to launch a Kickstarter in 2016 for his first board game I was pretty excited. He asked if I'd review a pre-production copy and I said hell yes. When he told me it was an American Football game I was a bit shocked. This is a dude who designed Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Contemporary miniature battle games and his first board game is a football game?

It's called Techno Bowl and is basically a tabletop version of Tecmo Bowl. It's 8-bit graphic design is beyond awesome and little things like using a brown cube for the football and cubes for time on the score board really work well visually.

I sat down last night to play my first half solo and give it a run through before finding a live opponent. This featured the Monsters vs. The Pit Bulls.

Monsters started with the ball on their 20. Very first play I didn't really know what I was doing and the Pit Bull blitz was at full throttle. Using the unique activation system I was able to chain together a couple of actions and really get in fast on the Monster QB.

Monster QB responded by scrambling out of the pocket to his right, all the way to the sidelines. There was some jostling at the O-line (and probably poor defensive play on my part) while the receiver in front of the Monster QB booked it straight down field, losing his man to man coverage. Throw, catch, and a gain of 40 yards before being brought down.

2nd down would result in a running play. I intended to go right, avoiding the cluster around the Center but had to adjust and run up the middle with some well timed blocks to push the D-line out of the way. Made it all the way up to the goal-line.

Third down was a short pass off the snap to the ride side again. The receiver caught the ball but was facing defensive pressure in his face. I had lined up a power receiver/tight end right behind him who took the handoff and ran the ball in with a Adjustment (a special mechanism in the game).

Things were clicking and the creativity of the system was shining. Loving the action/dice system.

These four plays ate up much of the time of the half so the Pit Bulls only had a couple of downs to try and even the score. My first play was wild as the QB floated to the side and went for a short pass as I was hoping the Wide receiver would be able to run it down field and break past his coverage. However, I failed the throw and as the pass was off and flying through the air.

The Monster defender got under the ball and intercepted it, pushing forward down the field and "trucking" the Pit Bull receiver who was now trying to take him down. I brought a stronger Monster player in to make the tackle and cut off the return interception, hitting the player with a bone crushing tackle and causing a fumble! The ball rolled maximum distance and right to the Pit Bull center who pushed a couple of yards forward before being brought down. Whew, would have been a terrible half for the 'Bulls.

I then ran a quick running play that gained no yardage and needed to call a timeout as the half was ending. Third down I was going all out. I had two chances for a hail mary and needed about 70 yards for the TD to tie the score for the Pit Bulls. I had the Monsters playing zone defense as all they needed to do was prevent a TD with two downs to go, not caring particularly about field position.

I scramble with the QB, get some huge blocks in with my center to chain into wide receiver actions and utilize an activation on my receiver to break away from his coverage with a substantial gap. My QB almost gets sacked but somehow avoids it and gets off the throw at nearly max distance.

The receiver caught the ball and then hauled down field all the way to the 10 yard line! But I couldn't activate him anymore conventionally because of how the system works so I was relying on chaining activations to get him into the end zone. Meanwhile a couple of Monster defenders were making their way back to him and closing in. Finally I got a huge block in on the O-line and rolled extremely well to give me the bonus activation and barely score the TD.

Wow. This is just solo and the game surprised the hell out of me as you constantly have new openings and a dynamic position on the field. The unexpected happens yet it doesn't feel random or arbitrary.

It's funny because there are a lot of rules to Techno Bowl and this definitely isn't Battleball. However, everything really internalizes quickly and I was off and running needing almost no reference to rules after my first down.

It doesn't have a BGG entry yet but there's a thread here with images and discussion from the creator.

We played Slaughterball last night, a four-player exhibition game. I'm surprised to not see much discussion around here of this one, since I think it'd appeal to a lot of folks around here. It's basically a four-player Blood Bowl-type of game. You get points both by scoring goals, and by injuring the other teams' players. Almost everything is resolved with skill checks based on the individual stats of each unit. Each player also has a hand of cards that allow them to buff skill checks, call penalties, get players back from an injury.

There are a couple of nice things at work here. First of all, the game has a really nice structure. When a goal is scored, the ball launches from somewhere else on the board, but the minis all stay where they are. That helps the flow immensely. The other thing I like is that you get more points based on how far you have to shoot the ball for a goal. You can take bigger risks to get bigger payoffs, and I like that.

A couple of issues I have with the game, though they might not be big issues going forward. One is that this game is absolute mayhem. In our first couple turns we had people falling down all over the place, missed shots that bounced the ball everywhere, and a couple of ticky-tacky penalties that ended up hobbling teams early. This I don't necessarily mind, but I did wonder if it might have crossed a line somewhere. The other thing is that you roll a TON of dice, which should surprise no one who has played Blood Bowl and stuff like that. The downside is that you are always checking on a stat, adding things up, comparing different stats, and it bogged us down just a little. It'd probably be better with experience though.

We jumped right to the exhibition game, which is a one-off experience but with all of the special powers associated with the four teams. I did this in the interest of seeing more of the game quicker, but at least two of us played our teams very poorly. We also made the big mistake of engaging with the team whose key strategy was injuring others, which had the net effect of giving that team a ton of points. A couple of the teams (mine especially, the Viking ladies) have a LOT of special abilities printed on the back of their card, and flipping back and forth to remember who could do what was pretty inelegant. A second full game would help with a lot of this stuff and clean up everything, though I do think there has to be a more efficient way to express those special abilities. There does seem to be a lot of depth in learning how best to use team powers, and I think that even just the base game will have a lot of legs for a long time.

I think a lot of people here would really enjoy it, especially those who like me enjoyed the idea of Blood Bowl but probably would never have the opportunity to play in a league. There's a league structure here, and I actually think it looks pretty neat, but I don't feel cheated by only really engaging with the exhibition game at this time. You can also play a skrimmage game with identical teams and no special powers, which is fun but lacks some of the depth of the other game. It definitely feels more polished than a lot of Kickstarter games, and with more teams on the way I think it has potential. I'll know more when I've had a chance to play a couple more games.

We also played a game of Acquire. We had two companies early on that looked like they might merge, and I bet on the wrong one. That means the other two players had a lot more money than I did a lot earlier than I did. It was probably my worst performance ever in a game of acquire.

charlest wrote: wall of awesomeness

I love Tecmo Bowl! This sounds very interesting.