What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

We led off last night with a 4 player game of a prototype I'm working on. I'm calling it "The Dragon Spine" at the moment, it's a Fantasy game where the players are representatives from a tribe assembled to climb an ancient spire that reaches far into the sky at an annual event. It's basically a fantasy rock climbing game with combat and some light dexterity elements. Playtest went well, came away with a couple of things to refine and validated much of it worked well. Players had fun and it hit the appropriate length I was looking for.

We then pulled out Sidibaba, which I've had for a long time but never had a chance to get to the table. It was fun and strange and pretty much what I hoped for. The players thought it was interesting so for now it's staying in the keep pile.

Followed that up with a game of Escape: The Curse of the Temple. We play with everything from the Illusions and Quests expansions and I feel like the game has reached its tipping point. It takes longer to setup and is more difficult to explain and I think I'm done with expanding this game. One nice benefit of combining all of these expansions is the increased difficulty. We typically destroy the game and have to add extra gems, but with all of the extra rooms added in it makes you have to explore more which eats up time. We ended up just barely losing in the final room.

Two players had to leave shortly after that so we got in two excellent games of One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I won both games and was able to deduce who was what so it was pretty satisfying. The first game was particularly interesting as it came down to two players claiming Villager (in a 1 Villager game). I figured out at the last second which was the Wolf and which was the Tanner. We hung the Wolf.

There were three of us left at this point so we played about 20 hands of Lost Legacy: The Starship. This is the sequel to Love Letter and it's a bit more focused on deduction and I liked it. One player literally won 11 games in a row, which was a bit frustrating, but it's an enjoyable game that's slightly less accessible than Love Letter.

Played three prototypes last night. Two of them were Rob Daviau's (not SeaFall or Pandemic Legacy, but both of those will be available for playtest at GenCon) and I can't say much about them. The third one was from a guy I met at ConnCon, a game about coal mining in Pennsylvania. I enjoyed it when I played it at ConnCon, and offered to playtest it, but it really fell flat for everyone this time, including myself. I think I didn't explain it well and gave the wrong impression. It's an economic game, but it's Martin Wallacey in the fact that you're going to be taking loans and in debt at the beginning, but then you'll hopefully get a big payday and things will turn around. Unfortunately the payday doesn't come until the game's half over. It needs some work, but I think we got some good impressions of it and ideas to send on.

That's my buddy Geof's game. Glad to see it's making the rounds.

Disgustipater wrote: 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.

If you know that no one's lying...why challenge everything? Hopefully it's clear that's really foolish?

We played a couple games of Coup last night too (not our first games), and we were talking about how one thing we love about it is how it develops a metagame: one way is like the above, where not lying leads to less challenges which leads to lying being more profitable etc. Another way is that the powers that are "harmful" get challenged more (like Assassin), whereas the powers that are not explicitly hurting anyone (like Ambassador) get challenged less. This leads of course to the less harmful powers getting used more and the more harmful powers getting used less. It reaches a kind of market equilibrium.

Four players is GREAT for Coup, by the way; it's my favorite player number. Second favorite would be three. Six is definitely not as fun. It's DEFINITELY a game that requires a bunch of play to get the hang of, though, despite its simple rules. I think it's pretty natural to initially tell the truth most of the time, because you figure "I've got powers I can use safely! Sweet!" Understanding power combos to bluff, and understanding ahead of time who has inevitability if no one is bluffing, is essential. Last night we JUST discovered how completely devastating a called Ambassador bluff is.

Coup is absolutely the best 15-20-minute game I've ever played (unless Space Alert counts).

We also played Beowulf: the Legend last night for the first time. It was fun, but: I want to call bullshit on the people claiming it's well-themed, no matter what sense of the word "theme" you're talking about. Please explain. I get that there are "risks" and risk is the whole theme. But what is entirely unthematic, connected to the risks, is that the point in the game where taking "risks" is actually MOST risk-free? The freaking fight against the dragon! Anyone with a number of scratches other than 2 has zero downside for failing a risk.

dragonstout wrote:

Disgustipater wrote: 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.

If you know that no one's lying...why challenge everything?

We challenge everything (not quite literally everything) because we think everyone is lying. No one trusts anyone, which forces us to not lie, otherwise we'll get caught.
Maybe we just need to play it more for it to iron itself out for our group.

Disgustipater wrote:

dragonstout wrote:

Disgustipater wrote: 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.

If you know that no one's lying...why challenge everything?

We challenge everything (not quite literally everything) because we think everyone is lying. No one trusts anyone, which forces us to not lie, otherwise we'll get caught.
Maybe we just need to play it more for it to iron itself out for our group.

Are you having people lose influence for challenges that are not correct? Making a challenge should be a tough decision because if you are wrong, you lose an influence.

If you are wrong on an assassin challenge against you- yikes.

Oh yes. Assassinations were not usually challenged, unless you only had 1 influence left, since you have nothing to lose except cycling out the assassin, but if I go out, that's none of my concern.

Played quite a few games over the past couple weeks. Lots of great stuff!

Gears of War: 2-player game with my friend, we've played through the first two missions. First one was tough, but a lucky grenade throw got us through the final mob. Bull in a China Shop was exciting, we were lucky to have lots of cards with the dual movement reaction so we were able to keep quite far ahead of the Berserker and all his buddies (lots of them got squished). In the final room we hit him with the Hammer and as Dom I ran up to his face and blew him away with the shotgun x2 wounds crit goodness. I enjoy the system, I really want to try out the game with 3 or 4.

Time's Up: Our go-to party title, never had a game go flat. Explaining Mark Felt (deepthroat) was... disturbing.

Hive (pocket): Tried this for the first time with different people, I don't usually play abstracts but this one was really neat.

Cosmic Encounter: Even playing only green aliens and without flare cards (half our group was new to the game) the game was excellent as usual. The game-winning play (with a triple-alliance vs 2) featured a Cosmic Zap, two successive card zaps then five different reinforcement cards.

Dungeon Fighter: This game is just pure silliness and our group loves it. We fit right in to the whole dungeon crawl aspect since we all RP together. We were SO close to killing the Grim Reaper final boss with 2 HP remaining, but we ran out of extra dice. Where we ran into major trouble was a monster beforehand that made you bank-shot but we were all AWFUL at it. Practice makes perfect! Excited to see what the expansions add to the game.

Sometimes it's kind of nice just to play with the green aliens, they have the most direct powers and you don't get into the wilds as much with them. We've done all greens every so often.

Best game ever published, regardless of how you season it.

I don't have any Cosmic expansions, and could use one to bump my player count. Even though many of the JERKS in my group don't like the game. Unbelievable, I know.

That said... what is the ONE expansion you'd buy if you could only get one?

Just had a play of Space Cadets: Away Missions and it painted quite a story. We seemed to really be wrapping things up when a few bad rolls of the dice really turned the tables on us. We had wrung out our options pretty thoroughly at this point so we were taking risks, but if things had gone a little differently we might have finished victorious.

Anybody reading this who things Sentinels of the Multiverse or Marvel Legendary are thematic and engaging should really give this one a try. Sets a very high bar for how cooperative games should work, and the dice rolling really makes you consider your decisions much more carefully.

S.

Did some Thunderstone last night after a long break. I really enjoy it, even though I never do great at it (and in fact got slaughtered last night, though I thought I was doing much better.) I dumped all my vanilla and am now 100% Advance and really prefer it because it introduces more uncertainty into the dungeon delving.

Excited to see what the final product of Away Missions looks like!

hotseatgames wrote: I don't have any Cosmic expansions, and could use one to bump my player count. Even though many of the JERKS in my group don't like the game. Unbelievable, I know.

That said... what is the ONE expansion you'd buy if you could only get one?

Cosmic Incursion is the correct answer. The Rewards Deck is the best of the variants, and the orange ships look awesome. Cosmic Conflict will do in a pinch.