What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Friday the 13th turned out not to be the goretrash Amerifest you might think, though the cartoon cat on the small box was a clue, I suppose. It's a set non-collection game, where you want the most of a suit, or as few as possible. You play cards to stacks until the stacks bust on total face value, then collect the stack. It seemed to work OK with three. With six, one player seemed able to dodge taking any cards at all and easily won (because 0 is a score you can't beat). I can't help but think there are traditional card games out there that work better.

1775 in which I broke my losing streak, though it doesn't really count as my usual opponent was off playing Scoville. We actually did a good job of surrounding Connecticut and Massachusetts with some strong lines. It looked more like a war game than a spilled LEGO bucket this time.

Zombicide: Prison Outbreak in which the mission was to flip the switches and get all the Xs. Two guys let everyone convince them to drive their car through a small horde. The zombies got an extra activation and the survivors were torn apart with the A/C still running. Brutal loss, but I found it kind of funny.

Pax Porfiriana which maybe/definitely took too long at around three hours. Much grousing over the (lack of) graphic design on the cards. I think the cards make sense once you know them- more than that, it's easy to see which troops are on which faction by the colour, stuff like that. At least one other player saw the potential in the game though (another guy who likes COIN games also, so there's at least three of us in this group of 30+ now). Nobody was able to win by toppling so I think we were all playing very badly which coloured the experience. Anyway, there's always the solo game...

Valley of the Kings: Afterlife was my wind-down game of the night. I forgot how fast the game runs with four players and should have entombed more (I try for every turn, but sometimes skip to buy a good card), I still won by ten points or so. I really like this game. Maybe the original set more than this second set, but both are really the best deck-builders for the size and time they take to play.

Among other things, played Space Hulk: Death Angel yesterday. Got DAMN that's a fun game. I need to get that one played more often. Hard as hell, not just whack-a-mole, actually legitimately cooperative game. Two players, and we actually won, but not before red squadron was completely eliminated. In fact, only three marines made it to the end. I have three of the expansions and haven't messed with them because we haven't exactly exhausted the main set. I couldn't care less about regular Space Hulk (I played the 3rd edition like once or twice) but I raised my rating on the card game from 7 to 8.

It's quite good. The extra marines in the expansions are great and I like the Tyranid one that mixes up the enemies IIRC.

Unfortunately, one of the expansions just gives you fucking garbage marines, as if the game wasn't hard enough.

Argent 2 player again. Interesting board, there was gold everywhere but it was all about how to convert that gold into all the other resources. It's cool when you get rare resources on the board and you have to come up with creative ways to generate them, like getting vault cards or supporters to make them.

Played a game of Merchants and Marauders. I wanted to revist this one after not playing it in quite a few years.

Overall, the game still holds up nicely, but in the year 2016 some of its design choices are starting to show some liver spots.

Tonight we saw no player pirates in the first 3/4 of the game. When there are no pirates and everyone is just playing the merchant role the game really doesn't shine. At that point it's a fairly standard pick up and delivery game set in the beautiful Caribbean.

Players went from port to port avoiding any NPC pirates and buying up cargo to sell at other ports where they were in demand. Rumour cards were acquired and a few missions were attempted. Plenty of gold was stashed. Still for a game that claims to be the ultimate pirate adventure this first 3/4 was pretty Goddamn tame. Sure, one of us could have retired in hopes of drawing a captain more suitable to pirating, but we didn't. It's one of my main gripes is that you really don't have a choice in whether or not to be a pirate. You either have a captain that is clearly a pirate or one that is clearly a merchant. If you try to fit the round peg into the square hole you'll wind up in Davy Jones' Locker sooner rather than later.

The other massive bugaboo in this game is the combat. Holy shit, I remember it being bad, but this is some show stopper type stuff. It's just too fucking convoluted for what it is. For a game that still whistles along pretty smoothly the combat certainly shows its 2010 era game design heritage. This is just an unwieldy mess of little rules and things to remember. Yes it's very thematic, but it's not something that I would call enjoyable. In a way it reminds me of Fury of Dracula 2nd Edition combat rules. Very cool, but ultimately not worth the effort for the end result. These things could be streamlined. It's a shame that the designer didn't try to address this with a combat module in the expansion.

Anywho, eventually someone got sunk by Blackbeard and came back as a pirate. That's when things got interesting. Doing the merchant raiding and pirate-y shit is way more fun than just doing the pick up and delivery stuff. We both managed to get 10 glory points on the same turn, but I lost due to being lower on the glory track (prior to adding the stash).

Overall, I think the game holds up pretty well. I love that it feels like a grand pirate adventure. I love the rumour cards, the missions and the random events. Those are way more interesting than the pretty generic pick up and delivery portion. Still there is some fun to be had in that. I like how there are tons of different ways to earn glory points too. You always feel like you have some short term goal that you can accomplish. I don't love that the game has so many tiny little rules to remember. Yes, they all add to the experience, but I always feel like I'm buried in that massive cheatsheet or the rulebook making sure I'm not fucking anything up. The combat is also really dated and that's a bummer. With how popular revised editions and 2.0 games are right now, I think Merchants and Marauders would be a great game to get a little face lift or tummy tuck. It's still fun, but it's starting to show it's age.

I think the way that the combat is INSANELY deadly is such a throwback. It's something I don't necessarily expect out of the game when I pick it up. It feels like a 70s AH game in some ways which is odd on the relatively euro chassis.

Galleons sunk by frigates isn't such a rare occurrence. The dice gods sure are fickle. Hopefully you don't get sunk with dozens of doubloons on board, otherwise those dice will get what's coming to them.

In my last game, a nearly destroyed Black Beard narrowly escaped my wrath, only to catch me on my way out of port next turn. Every hit I could land was so evenly distributed that he finally had the better of me through boarding (even if his ship was once again almost sunk).

I've been playing and learning Dawn of the Zeds since receiving the 3rd edition Kickstarter a few weeks ago. I haven't played previous editions of DotZ, any of Victory Point Games' other state of siege games, or tower defense games in general, so it's all new to me. So far I'm really enjoying it. Dawn of the Zeds is not a game about a zombie outbreak, it's a game about a MOVIE about a zombie outbreak. Mechanics-wise, that distinction doesn't really matter, but it has a major impact on the flavor of the game (heavy on X-Files style conspiracy), the events that take place (a mine explosion and nuclear reactor meltdown back-to-back--what are the odds?), and the many colorful heroes.

The game uses a clever "level" approach to ramping up the game complexity. You assemble the events deck, enemies, and heroes according to the level that you are playing. When I first opened the game box I felt like the game had a modest number of heroes and heroic civilian groups, but by learning it in this phased approach I'm appreciating just how varied the player units actually are. The graphic design and components are solid. The art is a bit dark in places, but the iconography and game text are very clear. The rules are organized in a way that I'm still trying to appreciate, heh. It has FIVE rulebooks:

• The rules for the basic game, which introduce new players to the core game concepts.
• The "level up" rules, which introduce new rules for the post-Basic levels of the game.
• A master rulebook that contains all of the rules in one place.
• A book containing detailed descriptions and rules clarifications for all of the units and effects in the game.
• A book laying out the game setup for each level of the game, with deck construction rules for solo, co-op, and versus games of various lengths.

I am perfectly fine with this multiple-book approach, and each book has great content and fits its role well. My main complaint is that the master rulebook organizes the rules by "level" just like the "level up" book does. This means that if you have to look up a rule about, say, healing your units, you may have to look at the Healing rule in three different spots in the same book. That's clumsy.


It's a fun game--unforgiving and in fact brutal, but fun. I'll be playing it more over the next few weeks before introducing it to my game group. Of course as a state of siege game it's quite suitable to solo play, but the multi-player cooperative mode looks like it is simple to introduce. I doubt if the "versus" mode (one player as the evil zombie-creating scientist vs. one or more heroic players) will appeal to my game group though.

At this point it's my favorite zombie board game. Although now that I think about it the only two other zombie games I've played have been Dead of Winter and Zombie Dice. But still! Favorite zombie game.

I finally busted out my copy of Defenders of the Last Stand the other day.

Overall impressions after the first play are pretty positive. The game is like a mixture of Defenders of the Realm with big sprawling adventure games like Runebound or Eldritch Horror. Then a generous dose of Mad Max and Gamma World is added to that gumbo. The result is something that is altogether familiar, but unique and satisfying at the same time.

One of the coolest parts is how versatile the "Defenders" cards are. These are the colored cards that you use to add dice to the boss battles. Much like in DoTR they can be discarded for other uses. Based on symbols on the cards they can be used to sabotage the leaders "reduce health by 1", blow up oil n ammo depots, obtain special cards and other things. You always feel like there is something cool to do with them.

On top of that there are mission and adventures to explore on the board, random events that pop up and mix things up and all sorts of items/cards to acquire. In my game one of my heroes was essentially the gyro pilot from The Road Warrior. He could fly around the map with ease and was effective at scavaging items in the harsh landscape. Then he got into a scuffle with a mutant monstrosity that caused him to mutate. After that encounter he got LASER EYES and basically became Cyclops from the X-Men. He flew around on his gyro copter and unleashed deadly eye beams on all the scum of the wasteland!

The narrative and adventure aspect is significantly ramped up from Defenders of the Realm. However, the "whack a mole", Pandemic style, co-op, shit is still there. Though with all the extra crazy stuff bolted onto the design, that portion doesn't feel as big/important as it did in Defenders of the Realm. You can't sleep on it because things can still go haywire at a moments notice, but it never felt smothering.

The minis smell like toxic death and hunching over the board for a couple of hours I felt like I was gonna get high. Besides that the game looks impressive with tons of minis, cards, tokens etc... It's a nice production. I'm looking forward to playing it again.

I have doubts with VPG's state of siege game since the one I played hinges on rolling 5 or 6s (or was it 1 and 2s?). Is it still the same with Dawn of the Dead?

Scythe was very enjoyable. It's definitely the most Euro of the hybrid designs, but it's pretty unique and managing my player mat and action synergies/efficiency appeals to the part of me that likes Eclipse.

The combat is actually very dramatic as well utilizing Kemet battle cards and the Dune bidding thing. Loser still loses everything they bid and we saw a player lose a ton of power (the resource you're bidding) in a fight they still lost.

Combat can be punitive though as you lose popularity (which can be very important) if you displace civilians with battle. This leads to players sometimes dragging farmers around with their mechs to use as a deterrent for violence. There's enough things pulling you in different directions though that this isn't a blanket strategy or always the best thing to do.

The middle hex also doesn't produce any resources but is worth a lot of points at the end of the game (and gets you a special power the first time your character moves in), and it drives action similar to Eclipse.

I don't think I'd reach for it over Eclipse, Cyclades (Titans), or Clockwork Wars, but it is appealing and feels distinct.

I really love the choose your own adventure encounter cards thing, and the interesting player mats. Those are the two big features IMO.

Portal's latest, Crazy Karts, which is like Mario Kart double dash the board game, completely bombed. Portal's penchant for imprecise wording and poor translations strikes again, and there were a couple of issues we had. The first race was won by a team (mine) running into a group of rocks near the finish line which cut our speed to 0, then we were able to draw more cards next round and win despite the team in second being very close by and driving much faster than us going into the final round. Wonky and weird.

Need more plays but I don'f foresee myself keeping this one.

charlest wrote: Portal's latest, Crazy Karts, which is like Mario Kart double dash the board game, completely bombed. Portal's penchant for imprecise wording and poor translations strikes again, and there were a couple of issues we had. The first race was won by a team (mine) running into a group of rocks near the finish line which cut our speed to 0, then we were able to draw more cards next round and win despite the team in second being very close by and driving much faster than us going into the final round. Wonky and weird

I feel like Portal is losing the grip it had and trying to do too much too fast. Not long ago I was down to at least try everything they put out, but these days I'm passing on a lot of it. Even Cry Havoc, which might be nice, I'm staying away from unless I hear some excellent things about it.

Sevej wrote: I have doubts with VPG's state of siege game since the one I played hinges on rolling 5 or 6s (or was it 1 and 2s?). Is it still the same with Dawn of the Dead?

Dawn of the Zeds doesn't have that "successes on 5s and 6s" mechanic. It does have lots of dice chucking, but most of the rolls are 2d6 so you get a bell curve. The fighting uses straightforward Combat Results Tables, one for hand-to-hand combat and one for gunfire. Here's how a typical fight might work:

Two zombie units are activated and move into a space that's occupied by Deputy Schmidt, a heroic player unit. This results in HTH combat, so we have to determine the ratio of player strength to zombie strength. Schmidt is strength 4 and the two zombies are strength 4 and 6. Since mobs of zombies combine their strengths, the zombies have at least twice the strength of Schmidt (10 to 4), but not three times his strength. The HTH CRT is broken out into columns: Zeds x3, Zeds x2, Zeds Advantage, Even, Human Advantage, Human x2, Human x3. So for this fight we start in the Zeds x2 column. Ah, but luckily for Deputy Schmidt he's defending in a location that gives him a 1-column terrain shift to the right, and his Eagle Scout trait gives him an intrinsic 1-column shift in HTH combat. Those two factors take us from Zeds x 2 to Even. We roll two dice and get a 3. That's a really bad roll so we use Schmidt's Martial Arts trait to reroll one time per HTH combat, this time getting a 7. The first thing we see on the CRT for that roll is that the zombies have lost and must retreat back to the space they attacked from. Next, each side takes 2 points of damage. The player gets to pick how to assign the damage to the zombies. Poor Deputy Schmidt can only take two points of damage, but luckily he is Tough, which gives him a 50/50 chance to ignore each incoming hit. We roll a couple of dice and successfully cancel one of the two points of damage, letting one get through. This is enough to flip Schmidt's marker to the half-strength side, and it's not going to look good the next time the zombies come knocking. We'll need to heal him, get him some support, or bust up that zombie mob with some gunfire.

There is other randomness in the game, but pretty typical for card-based games. Part of it is the "luck of the draw" aspect of deck construction and what cards appear when. Part is the "luck of the pouch" mechanic of drawing zombie units blindly when new units have to come into the game.

All in all, I'd say that while DotZ is sort of "puzzley" it has enough random elements to introduce Risk Mitigation as a gameplay element. It has both pre-luck (what cards you draw, for example, or what zombie units are generated) and post-luck (what you roll on those combat checks, for example). I have had very frustrating moments where a bad roll has overcome my careful planning. But I have also had exhilarating, "how in the hell did you do that, you magnificent bastard?" last stands as well.


TLDR: Ameritrash through and through, DotZ has pre- and post-luck all over the place but doesn't feel arbitrary.

Legomancer's post had me revisiting the copy of Space Hulk: Death Angel I got from Barnes with all the expansions. First couple games were frustrating and overly mechanical, took too long. Got to the last game I stacked the deck a bit in my favor by taking my favorite squads (Psyker with the skull cascade power, autocannon dude, and power sword counterattacker (what a wrecking ball that dude is) and it was a lot more fun, a win. The way the game essentially gives you one really special power per squad and asks you to work with it... solid. I started to grok the game when I realized it is really just a game of keeping your positioning and that the game starts with you in probably the worst possible positioning of 3 L 3 R.

Good game, probably moving my score up from 6. And I'll say it again, with almost no components. Like, it has maybe a slightly bigger footprint than solitaire but not much bigger. And it is a fully featured game. I still haven't played the expansions besides the extra squad expansion (guy with missile launcher IIRC).