What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Yes, that's crazy talk. Maybe because I said "fleet"? It's much simpler and shorter than M&M.

It is first and foremost a hybrid of a worker placement and a DoaM game with a touch of PU&D. It really is like Deadwood Advanced.

Man, I need a copy of merchants and marauders.

Michael Barnes wrote: Yes, that's crazy talk. Maybe because I said "fleet"? It's much simpler and shorter than M&M.

It is first and foremost a hybrid of a worker placement and a DoaM game with a touch of PU&D. It really is like Deadwood Advanced.

I'd really like to see a biker game that is more on the one percenter side, sort of a biker-gang After Pablo or Banditos.

Gary Sax wrote: Man, I need a copy of merchants and marauders.

I think the next printing should be back in stock within a couple of months.

Josh Look wrote:

wadenels wrote: Got Batman: Gotham City Strategy Game for $15 at Barnes & Noble clearance. Seems pretty decent after one 2P game. The rules are strangely worded and make the game sound more difficult than it is, which is pretty typical for Wizkids. I like how most things in the game are multi-purpose; money for leveling & hiring, info for moving & leveling, henchman for control & fighting & leveling, etc. It manages to give you a good amount to think about but still be a pretty rules-light game.

I like the artwork.

I think I'll keep this one around, at least for now. My only concern is the game length, so I was thinking that with 4P we'd only play to level 8 instead of 10 or something like that. I read through all the suggested variants on BGG (designer's and others') and none of them seem to keep the things I like about the game intact.

Check this variant out.

Players starting with an ability really is optional (I don't use it), but setting the deck up like this is the only way I'll play it. I haven't found the length to be an issue with 4 players. Anyone who is having a problem is probably playing something wrong (don't forget that more than one player can control a block is a 3-4 player game).

What about that variant makes the game for you? It looks like the deck variant makes all the board locations about equal, which seems less interesting than having some locations with more payout cards than others.

Legomancer wrote: I like Pret-a-Porter a lot. I think I'm going to do a rules rewrite and card manifest for it. It deserves more love. Unfortunately the fact that it's about the fashion industry means many gamers won't play it because it will make them gay.

Another play tonight and I don't think I will keep it. There's a lot to like about it, despite it being basically a pretty standard euro in many ways, the theme is very cool and works well here, but it's NOT a 2P game I don't think, I can imagine it's much, much better with 4 players, but then I think an auction would have worked better for grabbing the cards, being randomly in first turn position when certain specific cards come up seems like its a pretty big factor in pushing you up and the whole thing can quickly snowball. We called a game when it was clear after the wife won EVERY 1st place in the 2nd shows, mainly due to card combos and a bad mistake on my part. I know the tightness is there for a reason to represent the difficulty in getting a business going but it does constrain a bit of the fun because realistically you just don't have enough actions or time to go for really outlandish strategies. Also you need to play a lot so the cards are well known rather than being rule book lookups but it does flow pretty easily, the BGG files help quite a bit, but the card descriptions really leave a lot of grey area

It also feels a bit fiddly, slightly too much book keeping and moving tiny cards and tokens around compared to actually doing stuff, at the end of the day it's not going to displace our 2P favourites which is a shame becaue its one of the best themes ever.

A mate of mine has it so I will probably try to play it again at 4P but on balance I just wonder if the competition for cards and items in different places combined with the low number of actual actions everyone gets just makes it a bit too knife edged but without feeling like you can necessarily influence it enough. Probably very true to life in a general business sense I guess but as a game, just not quite there I think. Bit similar to Myrmes in the lack of scope, with just 2 prep rounds per fashion show, thats only SIX actions, so without the help of extra cards you need to take materials at least once, if not twice, probably an extra design card, so you're left with 3 or 4 actions making sure you don't miss out on the better contracts, buildings and employees, you can get shafted early on by not getting the best ones there, then you probably need to force an action or two not to lose all the categories in the show, if you get shafted out of a card or token there just isn't the room in the game, not enough actions of time to be able to "have a flexible strategy" which seems like it would have been quite fun, there's just so little breathing room not to be committing to a very coherent plan and its so easily disrupted or see you fall behind from which its really hard to recover. I'm sure 2P exacerbates all of this, because at 4P everyone is scrabbling, you're probably not sending many clothes to show, and the stars are unlikely to all end up on one persons card.

Yeah, I don't think it would be great with 2. I think I've only ever played with 3 or 4, and 4 is best.

Barnes, how did you play Sons of Anarchy solo and do you think it would work with two players?

I just ran three gangs and sort of "simulated" where certain deals (like selling a gang being attacked some last-minute guns or when a gang would be in a position to demand tribute, so to speak). It's pretty clear to see where those points are. It was actually really fun to solo, but you're definitely just estimating the interactions that can go on. Even with having to do that, the core mechanics, combat, and economics are in full play.

I would say that if you want to play with two, then be prepared to play with two gangs each and assume that they are allied and then do a combined money total for the winner. Three works fun except for the "let's you and him fight" thing. I'm playing two 4 player games this weekend and i think that's going to be where it needs to be. I think they'll go to five in the first expansion, the fifth gang is already in the box but no pieces for it.

Thanks, I may pick it up to play with two, playing two gangs each.

Played several rounds of Coup for the first time. I wasn't all that impressed. I guess this game is supposedly the new "hotness?" I don't know, it wasn't all that interesting. There were only 4 of us, so maybe it gets a bit better with 6, but I doubt it would be enough for me to be interested in playing it again.

Disgustipater wrote: Played several rounds of Coup for the first time. I wasn't all that impressed. I guess this game is supposedly the new "hotness?" I don't know, it wasn't all that interesting. There were only 4 of us, so maybe it gets a bit better with 6, but I doubt it would be enough for me to be interested in playing it again.

I think it was an interesting game. Were you lying? Have everyone play as Duke the first round .

There didn't seem to be much lying, mostly because we challenged almost everything. I'm sure that's not optimal, but with my group, it's how we work.

Tonight the wife prompted me for a game, so I couldn't turn it down. She's taken a fondness for Lost Cities and Epic Spell Wars but wanting something more than a card game I decided to introduce her to Dracula, from the Kosmos 2-player line, which I've been meaning to do for a while now.

The game is memory with little twists. One plays as Van Helsing and the other plays Dracula. Both players have a small deck of 12 cards consisting of Vampire Hunters/Vampires, Victims/Coffins, Cross/Amulet. Each side picks 6, they get shuffled together and placed face down on a 3x4 grid. Players then move their pawns around via action cards encountering their opponent's cards and potentially swapping out their cards.

The goal is to find your opponent's five victims/coffins or catch them without any of those on the board or kill them by taking four of their life points.

This is the first time I've pulled this game out in years and I've always felt "Meh" afterwards but always felt like there is promise which is why I've kept it around so long. Knowledge of what the action cards can do and how best to use them and developing a system to help remember where your cards, and by elimination your opponent's cards, are located, would have helped me out a lot.

I was Dracula and Van Helsing popped out to an early lead of two coffins, I then came back with two victims. By that point though I ran into the Crucifix twice and down to two of my four life points. While she was finding my third and fourth coffin I managed to find a vampire hunter that hit me for another point of damage. The coup de grâce was when she replaced what I knew was her Crucifix with...the Crucifix. I fell for her bluff and she had me beat six ways to Sunday.

Still after the game though I was left with a feeling of "Meh". There were bits where we both were asking "What's the point of that?" Specifically in regard to these little barriers that block movement between spaces which causes players to take longer paths to their targets, which I'm sure is something that will come with time. My hope is that she enjoyed it enough that she'd like to play it a few more times and hopefully I can find out if the game has legs or not which up until this point is something I've been unsuccessful with.

Oh and also in my basement I have Andean Abyss setup and I'm about 1/2-2/3rds of the way through the walkthrough. Very optimistic at this point. The game isn't hard, or I should say the individual systems and mechanics make sense, but there is a lot to take in and little nuances between the four factions that is going to form the bulk of the learning curve. So for me taking all these little bits and combining them into a whole and do something with them is going to be my challenge but at this point I'm not daunted by it and rather excited. I'm hoping to finish up the walkthrough portion before I stumble around on my own tomorrow night before family comes in town for the weekend.