What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Another game of Arkham tonight, and this time I was essentially a spectator. Cursed on first turn because my starting money wasn't enough to purchase my way out of it. We did win on gates though, and with room to spare. It seemed like plenty fell our way.

Ascending Empires was next. A solid but not stunning game. Understays its welcome.

S.

Ascending Empires is a fantastic game that is crippled by the board. Played on a custom board that is flat and the game is one of the best.

Scott_F wrote: Played my first game of Sekigahara tonight. Has anyone played this much? We struggled for most of the game trying to put together meaningful moves. Seems like the rules that force you to play a card to move units and then discard half your hand at the end of the round really inhibit you from attacking in any meaningful way. Instead it felt like a game of destroying a few meaningless units for each of us and ending the game in a tie. Hopefully I'm wrong since this was only the first play, I want to like the game.

I love the game, but I haven't played it nearly enough to be able to offer any sort of advice. For being a pretty easy game rules-wise, how to work proficiently within those rules to make the most of your limited turns and resources was not apparent to me.

My brother-in-law taught me how to play Tarock, a trick-taking game played with a truncated tarot deck. Really interesting and odd with bonkers scoring, but I started to get the hang of it after a few hands. I even won, thanks to a wildly lucky hand I was dealt. We were playing with 3, which isn't quite as good; 4 is the usual, and that does sound like more fun.

Wife: Hey, you want to play a game or something?

Me: Wait...WHAT?

Wife: Do you want to play a game?

Me: Sure.

And so it was we played two games of Lost Cities, a game that gets a lot of sneering derision but which I find pleasant.

I totally crushed her both games which will teach her a valuable lesson about trying to match me in board gaming skills! HA! The nerve! My ruthless taunting was a good motivator I think as was throwing all the cards up in the air at the end as I declared "Loser cleans up!" Next time she'll try harder.

Wonder how long before she asks again?

Lost Cities is way better than it gets credit for. The theme is really thin, but as a straight abstract, there's a fair amount going on. The scoring isn't even bad when you figure out that it's just "you score points once you hit 20 in a color. Anything below 20 is negative points."

I know I should like when my wife asks to play a game (which is pretty rare, really). Still, since it's always kind of out of the blue, and usually "let's play one right now", it means that we wind up playing one of the games she already knows instead of something new. Something new would mean that I probably haven't played it either, so I'd need to re-read the rules, since it's probably been ages since I read them the last time. I mean, I like Waterdeep and Tzolk'in, but I've got so many others I'd like to play too.

Scott_F wrote: Played my first game of Sekigahara tonight. Has anyone played this much? We struggled for most of the game trying to put together meaningful moves. Seems like the rules that force you to play a card to move units and then discard half your hand at the end of the round really inhibit you from attacking in any meaningful way. Instead it felt like a game of destroying a few meaningless units for each of us and ending the game in a tie. Hopefully I'm wrong since this was only the first play, I want to like the game.

I've played more than a dozen games of this. It does take some getting used to. I usually expect to fight 2-6 big battles in a game. I've seen one game won on points, most ending by death of the General or the Boy King.

Remember that sieges pay the loser cards. Remember that owning more castles get you one extra card a turn, and remember you don't have to blow any cards if you only make one move on your turn. Don't discard 3 to make infinite moves unless you really need to. You want card advantage. Also remember that mons of the same type stack in terms of damage in combat. Typically i make a couple of moves on the first turn, but then try to take one move turns and build a couple of big stacks to push the objectives im going for.

edit, also remember you redraw any cards you spend in a battle

People get so balled up about whether or not a game has what they call a "theme" or not or if the game is telling some kind of story that they often forget that fun games often require neither.

The problem with "Ameritrash" dogma is that it throws the baby out with the bathwater. Too much focus on what games you're not supposed to like because of designer, box art, online reputation, components and so forth.

Good games are good games, period. Lost Cities is a good game.

I've stopped being invited to game night at my friend's place now because I purposely get shipped to the girlfriend table since they are more fun to play with. My buddy has absolutely had it with me hitting on his wife. I'm not really hitting on her....but I may be charming by accident, I can't help it

Well Shellie, if Lost Cities doesn't float your distaff boat, perhaps your husband will permit you to play Flowerpower or The Queen's Necklace while he pursues more gentlemanly fare.

My suspicion is that the majority of current Ameritrash Dogmatists are relatively newer gamers who weren't around for the late-90s/early-2000s heyday of the classic German game. So many of those games are simply undeniable. Instead, they're reacting to the more recent crop of Eurogames, and science tells us that the majority of new Eurogames fall somewhere within the qualitative spectrum between "mediocre" to "dogshit fucking terrible." So I can sympathize with their overly dogmatic stance.

Lost Cities is great, sure. Thanks to BSW back in the day, the now-delisted XBLA version, and the one that's presently out on iOS, I've probably played thousands of rounds over the past 12 or so years. Unfortunately those apps have also spoiled me by conveniently updating the point totals for each played suit in real time, so I'll probably never go back to the physical game. I'd rather play Battle Line anyway.

black inferno wrote: My suspicion is that the majority of current Ameritrash Dogmatists are relatively newer gamers who weren't around for the late-90s/early-2000s heyday of the classic German game. So many of those games are simply undeniable. Instead, they're reacting to the more recent crop of Eurogames, and science tells us that the majority of new Eurogames fall somewhere within the qualitative spectrum between "mediocre" to "dogshit fucking terrible." So I can sympathize with their overly dogmatic stance.

Lost Cities is great, sure. Thanks to BSW back in the day, the now-delisted XBLA version, and the one that's presently out on iOS, I've probably played thousands of rounds over the past 12 or so years. Unfortunately those apps have also spoiled me by conveniently updating the point totals for each played suit in real time, so I'll probably never go back to the physical game. I'd rather play Battle Line anyway.

Errr...I am not a newer gamer by any means. I cut my teeth on white box D&D and SPI wargames well before GW hit the streets. Lost Cities is not great. It is entirely unthematic, trivial and over in a heartbeat and that is not a game I would EVER think of playing again. Eurogames simply do NOTHING for me unless there is significant player interaction and a good story is being told and not just pasted onto the box.

So, meet a truly dogmatic ameritrasher who doesn't fit your cute categorisations.

Classic card games also don't float my boat either. Guess why? They don't tell a story and the sessions are not memorable or repeatable to a gamer buddy. They are puzzles and that's it. No problem if you like Scrabble, Go, Chess but they are not the same as AT games and that is exactly why I play something different.

It's not about liking or not liking Lost Cities or any other games...what Black Inferno is getting at is that generation gap I talked about a few weeks ago.

But you're more of a wargamer than an "Ameritrash" gamer anyway, Andy. Wargames have always had very strong stories, interaction and even themes.

What BI is talking about is these people that got into games around the same time that FFG started to take off (2004-2005). Just like how "gaming" for a lot of people means Games Workshop, "gaming" for these people means Fantasy Flight Games with maybe a couple of Asmodee and Z-Man titles thrown in there.

Which is fine, whatever, everybody comes into it at different times, in different eras, etc...but when you've got these people that are coming from this particular period and all they're doing is literally parrotting back the AT party line _from 2007_, it really shows a lack of perspective. And it is absolutely no different than the Eurogamers slagging Talisman and DoaMs back in 2002, 2003.

Don't like Lost Cities, that's cool. Don't like Eurogames, that's cool. But the old fashioned "all Eurogames/all Knizia games/all games with wooden cubes suck" dogma is fucking bullshit that should have disappeared years ago. Especially when it's being blabbered by people that haven't even played enough games outside of the post-FFG AT genre to make such general statements.

The thing with Lost Cities is that its a 20 minute light card game that's not really better than any decent 20 minute card game with a regular deck of cards. The board is completely unnecessary as is the exploration setting. Don't get me wrong, I like it well enough (although I prefer Keltis). I just don't see anything special about it.