What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Jeff White wrote: I hate to say it, but some of it could be working with GMT. That may not be the best place, for example, for a basketball game to originate. Aside from that, sports are DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAADDDDDD subject matter for games, sadly. I don't care much for sports IRL, but I actually really like sports board games and I'd love to see that basketball one.

He might be better suited with VPG, for example.

Totally based on anecdotal evidence, but I'd guess that GMT is as good a home as any for the basketball game. [/quote]

GMT would be a good choice for a sports game. Sure they don't have much other than a few racing games. However, Andy Lewis is a HUGE sports game fan, so if he thinks its good, it'll get GMT's attention.

Funny how well THUNDER ALLEY is being received. I was at GMT East several years ago when the first proto was played and it was uniformly booed as pretty boring. However the next year a new version was tested and was given a much warmer reception.

Played Thunder Alley last night with three of my "semi-gamer" friends (read: will come over and play in exchange for food and drink).

I really don't want to jump the gun and call it the best racing game I've ever played...

We did the Verghn's Grove track, which has these crazy three-become-one lanes. The yellow team pretty much dominated the first half of the first lap and managed to get two cars into first and second with some pretty smart team movement including a lead move that put them ahead of the queue. But that pushed one of yellow's cars to the brink, and after just the first turn...boom, car #11 (second place) blows the engine thanks to an event card. Eliminated!

Black had two cars right up front, two almost in dead last so he sort of focused on the leaders and burned less useful cards on the stragglers. He managed to lead a couple of laps and had his leaders in a great position for almost the whole race.

Green couldn't really get the hang of the game, his cars were struggling in the middle third of the pack for most of the game, dropping back and catching up occassional. He kind of stupidly pitted all of his cars at one point, which really set him back. We did get a yellow flag, which helped him get back into the race.

Team Pink (Me) completely blundered around for the first couple of turns, but I somehow managed to get all of my cars bunched together. So I drafted, pushed and lead them all the damn way up to the front by the back stretch of the second (and final) lap. I could REALLY see how the teamwork operates, especially when you've got cars incurring penalties from damage. You need your "well" cars to help them to move. I was really pushing it on the last lap- I wasn't pitting cars with three damage on them (-3 to your movement card). You could practically smell cars burning up and groaning in agony.

Anyway, by the very end of the race, shit was CRAZY. We pulled a Rain event, which means that if you draw another Rain event the race automatically ends if one lap has been completed. The track has some really tight two lane areas so taking advantage of lateral movement was tough. Black put a car over, Yellow came in second, and I had a third. Virtually every car in the race was under penalties so it was like this painful push to get over the line. Cars on fire, we drew what would be the last event card. of course it was Rain. So we ended in place and divided out the points.

Black wound up winning, he had several lap leader points and his finishings put him up around 160. I actually managed second, something like 140 points.

One thing I really like about it is that it scales so well because of the teams. You don't need a full table of seven to get the feel of a full race. Unlike other race games where everybody has one contestant, you've got (in a four player game) four cars so there's 16 cars on the field.

This game is so, so good.

Michael Barnes wrote: I really don't want to jump the gun and call it the best racing game I've ever played...

But you really do, don't you?


Meanwhile I played Agricola last night (really wanted to play 5-player BB:TM with Sudden Death, but was outvoted) with the Interactive deck, not bad all in all. Scores were 41-28-28-25-24 or something, the winner totally wrecked us and had good cards to keep him fed such as a Slaughterhouse.

About 5 players for Team Manager, there aren't any extra rules for a 5th player (just the cardboard counter in the next expansion), but IMO it's probably better balanced with 5 since every player will get exactly 1 turn to start.

Thunder Alley

My first game I had a car that was more or less the rolling-dead. But it was in the middle of a big draft line and the race was half done, so I just let it go for the ride, with the healthy cars on either side taking the additional damage instead. Everyone was beat up crossing the line but most of the cars didn't even Pit once.

That's part of the push-pull in this one -- do you drag yourself across the line slowly (and risk events that knock you out of the race) or do you lose position with a Pit Stop and get back on the course fast? My one buddy will Pit every car for sure (I haven't played with him yet but I know him -- he'll Pit and run fast all day). I'm more of a drive-broken, stick-my-tongue-out-at-the-line kind of guy and in that first race I managed to pull it off. But if the wrong event cards had come up I could have lost two lead cars in the final half lap. You takes your chances.

S.

Played some games;

Beowulf the Legend: still impressed with this. It always gets people laughing for some reason. Probably because the auctions are so light.

Merchant of Venus; still prefer the classic version. I ran the clipper and delivered people to a 2nd place finish.

Epic Death; My friend has a new kickstarter game. Its not that great. Imagine munchkin if you will, but with DICE and a 'Clever' twist. Or don't and just avoid this game.

Even besides the lame art and jokes, and the take that, the design is very uninspiring. The cards you can play on each other often have rather dull repetitive effects like lose x amount of dice. And most of the random events get you to roll a whole ton of dice for the sake of it to then give something really imaginative out such as + or - 500 points. The clever twist is that only dead heros score points at the end. So when you change adventure decks in the mid game you try and get yourselves killed. The originality wares off pretty quick.

One day I will be remembered as the man that saved Beowulf: The Legend from obscurity.

Michael Barnes wrote: One day I will be remembered as the man that saved Beowulf: The Legend from obscurity.

I remember Steve Weeks championing this years ago... but no one listened until you brought it up. In fact most of his game preferences have become much more common around here since he's been gone. Back then everyone seemed to like longer more chrome filled games but he always championed short and simple. That man was, in some ways, ahead of his time.

He was also an asshole which made it easy to miss the few nuggets of wisdom in his heaping mountains of bullshit.

I do have to admit that I had a lot in common with him from a game preference perspective. His podcast was good as well. He just had a tendency to drop his pants here at FortressAt, which was pretty embarrassing for everyone.

S.

repoman wrote: He was also an .nimwit which made it easy to miss the few nuggets of wisdom in his heaping mountains of bull.poo.

This is what my multiple profanity browser plugins do to that sentence.

The other day I played Settlers of Catan with my wife and a friend of hers who wanted to try it out. I know it's currently la mode to talk about how awful and random that game is, but man, it stands up. I placed last and poorly -- I could see my mistake 3 seconds after I put down my second house an sure enough, I got hemmed in and denied stuff. I got to a 3 harbor but not fast enough and the newbie had a sheep engine and sheep port going very quickly. My wife won with uncontested longest road, biggest army, and some point cards (cards were going to be the only thing that saved me but my sheep numbers were terrible.) Newbie ended up with 6 points to my 5, which shows how badly I did.

It's still a great game and the hell with the haters.

Who hates Catan? The game is great. Put in little Enterprises and call it Star Trek Catan and it's even better.

My sense is there aren't too many people around here who dislike Catan, but I agree, it's popular to dislike it at BGG.

Legomancer wrote: The other day I played Settlers of Catan with my wife and a friend of hers who wanted to try it out. I know it's currently la mode to talk about how awful and random that game is, but man, it stands up. I placed last and poorly -- I could see my mistake 3 seconds after I put down my second house an sure enough, I got hemmed in and denied stuff. I got to a 3 harbor but not fast enough and the newbie had a sheep engine and sheep port going very quickly. My wife won with uncontested longest road, biggest army, and some point cards (cards were going to be the only thing that saved me but my sheep numbers were terrible.) Newbie ended up with 6 points to my 5, which shows how badly I did.

It's still a great game and the hell with the haters.

Yeah, not here it aint. Catan is and always will be the shit. Use the resource deck instead of dice if you want to be a total ninny, but really, there's nothing that game does that isn't significantly improved upon by adding Cities and Knights. It makes every turn matter. Just never play with any number other than 4 and you're golden.

Catan is now regarded like how Talisman was 10 years ago.