What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Went to the UK board wargamers meet up in scouse land today and played me some war games, and games like that, it was awesome;

Storm over Dien Bien Phu; 2nd game, this still rocks it. If it had plastics and space rangers in it people would be declaring that its the dice chuckin amertrash GOTY. i played the Vietminh this time and fought out a game that was close in the middle to end up dropping it on the last turn pretty hard. The game is very back and form, just entertaining. I do think the balance favours the french quite a bit, which is a bit different from the history. The 'advance rules' recommend bidding for the french side with how many vp areas you want to defend. Definitely do this. The default is for the Vietminh to capture and hold 7 out of 8. In both games I've played they managed 3, but could have easily been 4 or maybe 5. 6 or 7 seems hard.

Pax Porfirana; 2 player game. I actually won this unlike most of the other games I played. Still, i've played maybe 15 games or more now so the experience is starting to pay off. A lead the revolution on the 3rd topple card.

Field of Glory the card game; this is Martin Wallace, child of battle line type game. It has a drafting mechanic for you to build your deck, you then play a much more deadly game of battle line with a bunch of extra detailed rules. Its decent enough, it feels like if SPQR had a very simple card game made on it. Probably worth £10, but Bloodbowl Team Manager is a better child of Battle Line, and whilst its quite different if i'm going to line up cards and fight em, i'd play Ares Project.

Napoleonic 20, Waterloo 20; This is actually really good. I expected it to be very mediocre. I were wrong. I've generally been less than frilled with the simpler hex and counters. Unless they are very big (It Never Snows) it tend to find them a bit pedestrian. This game is awesome. Using your victory points/ lose condition, as a critical resource is a great gambling/ tension builder, as are the event cards. The game is really simple, but the map design and balance just lends it to a really solid operational game. Might pick fading glory up, or might wait until Rising Glory releases (although that looks like its a year away).

Anyone here played either of the Fast Action Battle block games. I had a look in FAB the bulges box and it looked interesting. Is it worth a shake? There's a copy of FAB Sicily going for £24 on bgg which seems like a steal. Also one of the UK online retailers is offering FFG's Android for £25.

I'm not a fan of FAB Sicily, not because of the system but the battle itself is dull. The British beat their heads against the side of Mount Aetna in the East while the Americans race around the western side. Germans are bound to lose the only question is how badly.

Not very much user input, if you get my drift.

Snap up Android, I really like it and it's definitely worth it if only for not paying ridiculous international postage rates.

I love FAB Bulge, I think the system is awesome. It lets you move units around, but more importantly it lets two identical attacks at the operational level have completely different levels of support from higher echelon---the kinds of choices that I feel like characterise what actual operational command is really about. It's not necessarily about putting more troops on the field in a given frontage, but it's about supporting some of those troops with a lot more ammo, artillery, and air support that can make the difference. I have but have not played FAB: Sicily. I may buy FAB: Golan but I'm not preordering it. It actually sounds like it might be a better *game* than Sicily, I just don't care for any system that could introduce the "invincible Israeli army" factor, so I avoid them.

I put a review up on BGG about it in the forums. Do note that it is a not a fast game like a C+C Ancients, but it does tend to play a lot faster at the operational level than what it's supposed to be being compared to via the title, something like an OCS treatment or whatever.

Tonight was The Collective Month 3 event for Star Trek: Attack Wing - The last of this series of three. This series of three events has been interesting with each involving a Borg Cube in the center of the table. In the first event you tried to kill your opponent's ships while a Cube moved around randomly blasting what was around. The second you couldn't attack your opponent but charged ahead with them from the same board edge and tried to cause more damage in total to a stationary Cube.

The event tonight had a Cube that started in the center and the players alternated controlling the Cube and what direction it moved and who it shot at - Player couldn't attack one another. Once there was 25 damage on the Cube it blew up and a Borg Sphere shot out of it and proceeded to jet for the furthest board edge, the player's goal was to destroy.

Going into the event this was the first time in all 11 events I've done where I just felt lost and not sure what to do. A player needed high maneuverability to be able to adjust to the Borg's movement, high attack because the more damage the Borg took the better the defense became, but also high defense and high ability to take damage because the Borg could hit really dang hard. Putting together a build that met that was a challenge, and tonight there was a wide variety of builds as people tried to combat this monster.

What I ended up fielding was a Tactical Cube with Picard and a bunch of Borg upgrades that gave me the firepower, maneuverability and ability to soak up damage that I wanted. My first match was up against a kitted out Voyager - And also one of my top competitors, he and I kick build ideas off each other via email and we also meet up early before the events to play a few pickup games. Both he and I had no idea how this scenario was going to play out. In the end he killed the Cube and I the Sphere so neither of us received the bonus points available for killing both.

The second game was up against a Klingon build and a guy who was relatively new to the game. It allowed me to get the kill shot on both the Cube and Sphere which helped because the last game was against the other person that went 2-0 to that point. He had a crazy build on Voyager with two salvos of Transphasic Torpedoes which hit with a big handful of dice, a ton of crew and various Borg Tech.

Basically he got off to a rocky start pointing Voyager in a way that allowed me to keep the Cube out of his arc, then the next turn he was back on track but too close to use his Transphasic Torps, the next turn I had control of the Cube and rammed him. At this point the Cube was destroyed, the Sphere came out shooting off in the opposite direction he was going and I was able to finish everything off. I got both kill shots so that gave me first place which earned me The Stargazer prize ship as well as the Tournament Grand Prize of Target Prime which is the Enterprise-D Mirror Universe ship that is being assimilated by The Borg.

Going into the event I had no idea what to expect and didn't know what type of punishment the NPC Cube could take or give out. By the end of the night though this ranks up there as one of my favorite scenarios because there's a lot at play - At times I held back on my attack on the Cube as I considered who was next to activate as I tried to set it up where I'd get the kill shot, there were also times where I held back on the attack from the Cube because me taking out the Cube on my own would have been hard so I needed my opponent to also contribute some damage. There was a lot more to consider during the game than many of the other scenarios, so overall it was a very fun night and walking away with two prize ships was great as well.

So have you ever been tempted to sell off those prize ships? I feel like I would be...

Gary Sax wrote: I love FAB Bulge, I think the system is awesome.

I own the first two FAB games, but no plays yet. The problem is that, whenever I try to learn the system, my brain melts. I've tried twice and given up both times. I also hear that the game is longer than most, which doesn't help.

I had the same problem with Asia Engulfed. My small brain just gets smaller with time, apparently.

I would love to get some face-to-face instruction. (I'm not an online board gamer.)

This is my short list of "need to play" wargames: (all owned)

Danube 20
What Price Glory?
No Retreat (played once 3-4 years ago)
Strike of the Eagle
Ogre (uh, why did I buy the deluxe version again?)

I didn't like Asia Engulfed at ALL, but FAB worked for me.

Been lazy to set up big games so lots of Lord of the Rings LCG. After completing the entire series over the past X months we decided to start at the beginning with our Rohan decks.

Mirkwood: win in 1 attempt
Anduin: win in 4 attempts.
Dol Guldur: win in 1-2 attempts

Gollum: win in 1
Carrock: win in 3
Rhosgobel: loss, 3 (updated, win in 4)
Dead Marshes: win in 1
Emyn Muil: loss, 1

Got to play a couple Gen Con releases last night I was looking forward to.

First was two games of the somewhat mysterious title Tragedy Looper. I say this is mysterious because I haven't heard it articulated very well so let me attempt. To over simplify, this game reminds me of the Mr. Jack games. You play through a story and try to figure out who's who based on the actions the characters as directed by the storyteller (think GM). There's a lot of trial and error to it, as you'll play through the same story three or four times, but figuring out who's who can be exploited in ways that work for you/against the storyteller. It was a little hard to grasp at first, probably just because it's so different, but midway though the first story I mostly got it, and we (the protagonists) ended up winning both games we played (which took somewhere from 60-90m each). It's a very different approach to both the one vs. many and the deduction genres, I feel like this game needs to be played with 4 to be the real intended experience, but my group eats up deduction games and I can see us playing through the 8 other stories in no time.

Following this was a game I was clamoring for Aliens the deck building game or whatever it's called. I LOVE the first two films, and even though I typically hate deckbuilders, when I heard this game has scenarios for the four films I was very interested in playing it. As with many card games trying to tell a story there is a certain level of abstraction in how you execute your actions, but what you do with those actions is what counts and feels very right. This game addressed my biggest problem with deckbuilding games, which is when it's not your turn, another player is just puzzling out their cards, which is super boring. Aliens adds a mechanism called coordinate, which are cards you can play to support other players on their turns (and as a reward you get to draw another card), so on nearly every turn folks were asking for support and it kept everyone, and most importantly, me, engaged in the game. It was tough and we nearly lost players multiple times to both facehuggers and gnarly wounds (which reminds me that the art in this game is great), but in the end I blew the Xeno-Morph out the airlock with the "You Are My Lucky Star" card. Totally awesome first play, I'll likely never own the game because the box is absurd, but I really want to beat the other three films at least.