What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

hotseatgames wrote: Biggest game of Cthulhu Wars I've been in was 4 players. 7 does sound like a slog.

Yeah. And the game's owner can't wait to get the 8th faction (Tcho-tcho) so we can can play and 8 player game, with all neutral monsters, neutral Great Old Ones, and neutral spellbooks in play. Kill me now. Seems to me that this is one of those games that doesn't really benefit from all the extra shit they've added, and the base game (+/- extra factions) is where the sweet spot is. I am interested in trying out the Yuggoth map, if only to see the Watcher of the Green Pyramid in play. Too bad he's super tiny and only monster-sized.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I can't see it being a slog at 8 because the turns are so fast...

Not if you have at least one AP person taking forever, also since the Crawling Chaos player gets to decide where pained models flee, he had 6 other players simultaneously telling him where the best place to put each model was, causing indecision. It adds up.

Played two games I hadn't played in a while last night.

Blood Bowl Team Manager - Four years later and I finally got in another play of this, with 3. In the meantime there has been an explosion of games using the "play units on either side of a central card to claim it" (need a term for this) mechanism, with varying success. For me, the current one to beat has been Omen: A Reign of War. But this is a great addition to the genre, as the theme is fun and skillfully done, it plays more than two, and it's pretty easy to get started with. Still at a 7 for now, but with more plays this could go up. Hopefully they'll happen before 2020.

Greed - Finally played this a second time. I didn't think much of it the first time around, but I kept hearing from folks that it was pretty good, so I wanted to try it again. I think the first time around we had a really weird distribution of cards that stonewalled the action in the game. That that can happen is unfortunate, but the game plays quickly. This time things went much better and there were some real choices to be made. Sushi Go is still probably the one to beat here, but this is better than I thought. Raising to a 6.

I think it's appropriate that instead of watching the GOP playground fight, we played Blood Bowl and Greed.

Man, playing Sleeper in a big game sucks too. Lethargy-ing a lot means you have to wait like 45 minutes in between big turns.

charlest wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: So.... the game about vikings fighting... you won by not fighting. This is the thing I hate about DOAMs; when the best strategy involves playing like a coward.

I wasn't a coward, you can't exactly hide in Blood Rage. The player with the Sea Serpent could have gone into the Fjord I had locked down and kicked my ass.

But yes, I didn't fight and won. And it felt very good and tense as several things had to coalesce for that to happen. Players could have thwarted me but they didn't.

You can win in Cyclades without winning many fights too. Doesn't change how enjoyable it is.

Same with Chaos in the Old World. I've seen plenty of games with non-Khorne races winning no fights or killing almost nothing.

I also won my last game of Cthulhu Wars as Yellow Sign without winning one fight. It was great.

It's something I'm struggling with right now in my own design. In City of Lycans, the factions are Werewolf, Werebear, Wereboar, and Wererat. The last 2 are not nearly as good at fighting as the first two, so they need other powers to balance things out. But ultimately what it will probably mean is that those two will win by avoiding combat. It's not something I am crazy about but can't really justify it any other way thematically.

hotseatgames wrote:

charlest wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: So.... the game about vikings fighting... you won by not fighting. This is the thing I hate about DOAMs; when the best strategy involves playing like a coward.

I wasn't a coward, you can't exactly hide in Blood Rage. The player with the Sea Serpent could have gone into the Fjord I had locked down and kicked my ass.

But yes, I didn't fight and won. And it felt very good and tense as several things had to coalesce for that to happen. Players could have thwarted me but they didn't.

You can win in Cyclades without winning many fights too. Doesn't change how enjoyable it is.

Same with Chaos in the Old World. I've seen plenty of games with non-Khorne races winning no fights or killing almost nothing.

I also won my last game of Cthulhu Wars as Yellow Sign without winning one fight. It was great.

It's something I'm struggling with right now in my own design. In City of Lycans, the factions are Werewolf, Werebear, Wereboar, and Wererat. The last 2 are not nearly as good at fighting as the first two, so they need other powers to balance things out. But ultimately what it will probably mean is that those two will win by avoiding combat. It's not something I am crazy about but can't really justify it any other way thematically.

I think in an asymmetrical DOAM game you need to differentiate factions and how they interact with combat. From a high level you either differentiate how they engage with combat strategically (i.e. some avoid, some thrive on it, some are good hit and run, etc.) or you differentiate their capabilities within combat.

Forbidden Stars leans more on different capabilities in combat but that's only possible because the combat system is so nuanced with three rounds and custom built decks with unique faction and unit abilities. Most DOAM games have much simpler combat (such as Chaos in the Old World and Blood Rage), so the flavor of factions is more in how you approach the situation of combat relative to the map and your goals, etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this isn't a problem for your design and I think you need to learn to live with that hang-up. The fact that I can have a game of Blood Rage where I win by not fighting or dying a lot, or I can win by fighting a lot means play is different and my tactics have to shift and compensate. This is more interesting than simply everyone beating up on each other in my opinion.

I dumped my Cthulhu Wars 6-8 player map pledges after playing one 5 player game. More players makes the game so much more swingy and longer, I didn't even like it as much with 5. I can't imagine playing with 7 or 8 - talk about a frustrating four hours. Thats just fucking stupid to play that game with so many players. Nobody can keep track of what all the factions are capable of doing; its hard enough in a 4 player game to have everyone familiar with the factions in use. On that note I think Blood Rage also is awful with 5 players for the same reason. Too much chaos from other people's plans and upgrades to keep track of makes your individual strategy less effective.

hotseatgames wrote: It's something I'm struggling with right now in my own design. In City of Lycans, the factions are Werewolf, Werebear, Wereboar, and Wererat. The last 2 are not nearly as good at fighting as the first two, so they need other powers to balance things out. But ultimately what it will probably mean is that those two will win by avoiding combat. It's not something I am crazy about but can't really justify it any other way thematically.

Seems like you could change HOW they fight. As opposed to brute strength, rats may seek to outnumber their enemies. And boars? I don't really know much about boars. Maybe they're kind of hit-and-run?

Disgustipater wrote: Not if you have at least one AP person taking forever, also since the Crawling Chaos player gets to decide where pained models flee, he had 6 other players simultaneously telling him where the best place to put each model was, causing indecision. It adds up.

See, this doesn't happen at my games. My rule is "If you play with me and treat it like Price is Right, yelling unsolicited advice to me like a cunt, I will absolutely pick the loudest or most insistent one of you, and target you." We all do this to a degree at my house, and so most turns are very quiet when it comes to advice.

Ask Charlie and HotSeat - we played a drunken game of Spartacus with like 8 people and when it was my turn (note: 2nd game ever) everyone turned into Ann Landers, dispensing heaps of advice that always seemed to favor themselves. I just basically listened to the loudest and always chose that guy to fuck over. I still say that was the single best gaming experience ever. "My Dear Friend BootyAnus, it appears that your wine has been tainted...tainted with my feces"

GOOD TIMES

Legomancer wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: It's something I'm struggling with right now in my own design. In City of Lycans, the factions are Werewolf, Werebear, Wereboar, and Wererat. The last 2 are not nearly as good at fighting as the first two, so they need other powers to balance things out. But ultimately what it will probably mean is that those two will win by avoiding combat. It's not something I am crazy about but can't really justify it any other way thematically.

Seems like you could change HOW they fight. As opposed to brute strength, rats may seek to outnumber their enemies. And boars? I don't really know much about boars. Maybe they're kind of hit-and-run?

If you attack boars head on, they're hard as fuck to kill, but if you come from the side or behind, they're no more dangerous than rabbits.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Disgustipater wrote: Not if you have at least one AP person taking forever, also since the Crawling Chaos player gets to decide where pained models flee, he had 6 other players simultaneously telling him where the best place to put each model was, causing indecision. It adds up.

See, this doesn't happen at my games. My rule is "If you play with me and treat it like Price is Right, yelling unsolicited advice to me like a cunt, I will absolutely pick the loudest or most insistent one of you, and target you." We all do this to a degree at my house, and so most turns are very quiet when it comes to advice.

Ask Charlie and HotSeat - we played a drunken game of Spartacus with like 8 people and when it was my turn (note: 2nd game ever) everyone turned into Ann Landers, dispensing heaps of advice that always seemed to favor themselves. I just basically listened to the loudest and always chose that guy to fuck over. I still say that was the single best gaming experience ever. "My Dear Friend BootyAnus, it appears that your wine has been tainted...tainted with my feces"

GOOD TIMES

That wasn't a game, it was an experience.

charlest wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Disgustipater wrote: Not if you have at least one AP person taking forever, also since the Crawling Chaos player gets to decide where pained models flee, he had 6 other players simultaneously telling him where the best place to put each model was, causing indecision. It adds up.

See, this doesn't happen at my games. My rule is "If you play with me and treat it like Price is Right, yelling unsolicited advice to me like a cunt, I will absolutely pick the loudest or most insistent one of you, and target you." We all do this to a degree at my house, and so most turns are very quiet when it comes to advice.

Ask Charlie and HotSeat - we played a drunken game of Spartacus with like 8 people and when it was my turn (note: 2nd game ever) everyone turned into Ann Landers, dispensing heaps of advice that always seemed to favor themselves. I just basically listened to the loudest and always chose that guy to fuck over. I still say that was the single best gaming experience ever. "My Dear Friend BootyAnus, it appears that your wine has been tainted...tainted with my feces"

GOOD TIMES

That wasn't a game, it was an experience.

The SuperflyTNT Experience (TM) (R)

LMAO, we have to make it a recurring Origins event.

We really need to play Hoodrats, too. It's SO much better now.

That 8 player Spartacus game was truly awesome. There's an example of a game that scales up gracefully. I've scheduled my days off. I'll bring my copy, that way we don't have to play on Charlie's unpainted trash like the homeless.

As it stands, combat in my game is not positional, and each unit provides a number of dice based on its strength. The rats only have a shot if they have greater numbers, which is their main benefit. I'll do some thinking on it.

I won't be at Origins this year. Going to Geekway/Gen Con/BGG Con.

Bummer. Was looking forward to hanging out with you again.

I played Caverna for the first time recently with my game group. I'm not a big fan of cock-blocking AKA worker placement games since I struggle with coming up with a long-term strategy. Especially when I'm usually the least-experienced player at the table and somebody took my spot and, oh great, now someone's bitching at me to hurry up. Anyway, I didn't know how scoring even worked the first game and after getting a ton of penalties for non-developed spaces I came in a distant fifth with 27 points. Anything over 70 is decent, so that was really, really low.

In the second game I came up with a semblance of a plan and came in third with 70 points but I'm still not that big of a fan. My game group is hyper-competitive and always looking to exploit, if not break, a game; and doing that with Caverna seems like more effort than it's worth.

Legomancer wrote: In the meantime there has been an explosion of games using the "play units on either side of a central card to claim it" (need a term for this) mechanism, with varying success.

Maybe Card Control, sort of like Area Control?