What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Chaz wrote: How did assassinating a Loyalist trigger the end of the game in Emerald?

Meant to say "restorationist." I was a loyalist.

dragonstout wrote:

jeb wrote: I spent some time going over the rules for ROBINSON CRUSOE, and they are a clusterfuck. I just went to a let's play video on Youtube (even there, the guy has patched in a bunch of comments of how he screwed up rules as he played). Seen there, it looks doable, but these rules read like ASL backwards.

Someone made some rules explanation thing in the form of a comic book, and I think it's on Z-Man Games' site. Go there first to understand how to play and explain the game, and then you can read the rules to pick up the missing details.

LOL. I also tried to go through the first scenario yesterday (purchased in Zev's recent sale) to learn the rules and was left bewildered. Luckily I stumbled upon said 26 page "Quick Start" comic and 61 page FAQ which helped clear up the vagaries. So CGE/Z-MAN, uh.... yeah.... good job guys?

I thought the game was simple enough that it wasn't a problem, though the rulebook was the product of someone with a really different learning style than myself.

As someone who quite likes Phil Eklund and 1.3.2.a wargame-style rules, I agree that different learning styles are often the case but I also think that the above documents and their forums show that it goes beyond that. For example over half the thread about RC are rules questions. The few similarly weighted and dated games I looked at were around a quarter. Anyway once you get the piece/card/token movement the game is simple as you as say.

The only games I've had a harder time learning than Robinson are RftG, which is an issue of it's iconography, and Imperial, which I think is an issue of translation and an issue of me trying to learn before I had ever played another stock market/heavy econ game.

I actually think Robinson is really easy to play, and I've taught about a dozen people how to play it (I've probably played the first scenario a dozen times) but getting through those rules the first time was a huge slog.

Got a Firefly rules question for the crew here. Can Zoe, Inara, and Kaylee use their re-roll abilites during a showdown? The rules state that a showdown is a special type of skill test, and since you get to pick which skill your crew uses I am not certain if their abilities apply. A showdown is not specifically a Fight, Tech, or Negotiate test so my thought is that their abilities will not help during a showdown. What is the consensus here?

I would think a "showdown" is equivalent to any other skill test. The only difference being that the players can choose which skill to use. All mods would be in effect. The exclusion of the word showdown from the text of those characters, I would think, is because there were no showdowns when they were printed.

It's just a ho-down when Inara is there.

Shellhead wrote: It's just a ho-down when Inara is there.

repoman wrote: I would think a "showdown" is equivalent to any other skill test. The only difference being that the players can choose which skill to use. All mods would be in effect. The exclusion of the word showdown from the text of those characters, I would think, is because there were no showdowns when they were printed.

Yeah, I'd prefer to play it that way but those abilities seemed WAY too useful to allow during a showdown. After all, Kaylee and Inara could re-roll for the boarding test and re-roll during the showdown, right? If that's true then their stock just went through the roof.