What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I played Impulse last night too...WTF...it does remind me of Innovation in the sense that game was an impressionist version of a civ game. Impulse is an impressionist version of a space 4x game. It is SOOOO stripped down...there aren't even names for the techs, and they're just standard actions for your use only anyway. No planets to invade/exploit at all...no planets at all. Yet the game functions just like Eclipse, TI3, etc...zero fat, zero fluff, zero filler. But the THEMES are totally there.

Fascinating game...not quite sure if it's fun yet, but I'm really impressed at how avant garde it is.

The impulse mechanic is brilliant.

The circle things in the middle of the cards are planets

Oh yeah...duh.

Well, they are "barely" planets!

Michael Barnes wrote: I played Impulse last night too...WTF...it does remind me of Innovation in the sense that game was an impressionist version of a civ game. Impulse is an impressionist version of a space 4x game. It is SOOOO stripped down...there aren't even names for the techs, and they're just standard actions for your use only anyway. No planets to invade/exploit at all...no planets at all. Yet the game functions just like Eclipse, TI3, etc...zero fat, zero fluff, zero filler. But the THEMES are totally there.

Fascinating game...not quite sure if it's fun yet, but I'm really impressed at how avant garde it is.

The impulse mechanic is brilliant.

I feel the same way. I'm not sure if it's fun yet, but it's damn intriguing. It's going to take me quite a few plays to develop a meaningful feeling about Impulse.

ROBINSON CRUSOE again! Friday was dead by Day 3 and the explorer/cook ate shit on Day 7 when I rolled three rain clouds and we all died a horrible horrible death. I think my dice are broken because this whole "fail 1/6 or 1/3" is bullshit. I fail about 7/6. I rolled a good 14 times I guess--probably failed half of them. Game's good though, can't wait to get destroyed again.

CITIES & KNIGHTS OF CATAN with Sivan and my wife. My wife's first game of this expansion, and Sivan's second. I was lagging along, 10-9-6, but in two consecutive turns got four points and then three for the in. I think I traded an ore away for sheep to pull off the last one (seemed innocent!). I had two factories on a "10" Forest, and two settlements on a "10" Field, so, when that 10 hit, I got two woods, two papers, and two wheat; and that 10 hit a LOT. I got four points by stealing the Green Metropolis away, getting to 5 papers, and I also built a 4-cloth Yellow Metropolis that turn. With both of my cities as Metropolises, I didn't have to feed my knights, because who cared about defending Catan as long as they don't blow up my shit. I played a couple resource monopolies and used a one-turn-only 2-1 power from Commercial Harbor to build a settlement and two roads for Longest the next turn and get the last three.

Buckeye Game Fest was/is this weekend, and I met a friend there that I hadn't seen in a while. We ended up playing several games together. Most, if not all of them, were Euros, but I had a pretty good time anyway. I played:

Spendor - I ended up playing entirely too much Splendor. My friend loved it, and for me it's okay. It plays fast, and is fun. Definitely a lightweight family Euro sort of game.

Lewis and Clark - it was described to me as "Stone Age without dice," but it's quite a bit more complicated than that. It's a deckbuilder + race game. I'd ended up playing it twice, and liked it enough to play again. I might have to brainwash one of coworkers into buying a copy.

Castles of Burgundy - I'm blaming my friend at this point for all the Euro madness. I screwed up and bought animals way too early as an experiment. This made me lose miserably, because you need to maximize actions on your turn early, not mess around with points.

Love Letter - it's Love Letter. Killed a few minutes while another friend had lunch.

Trains - It's Dominion with a board. but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The board gives you a little bit of strategy to worry about above and beyond beating the other guy's card engine.

Caverna - Agricola without cards. The rules literally say, "If you know how to play Agricola, you only need to pay attention to the brown sections of the rules, because those are the differences." I liked it more than I like Agricola. Caverna removes the possibility of shitty card draws, and relaxes the PITA of trying to feed your family. It's still a problem, but it's easier to deal with it in Caverna. I lost because of stupidity, but in general I had a handle on what I was trying to do, and liked it. It's a pretty good 'million choices' sort of Euro.

Sons of Anarchy - We played a three-player base game. I came in second. I was doing okay until I lost a big throwdown about halfway through the game. I still like it a lot, though. For me, it's a worker placement with some character. My friend confessed to being uncomfortable with being a drug dealer. That seemed kind of weird to me at first, because murder, genocide, etc are staples of a lot of gaming, both board and video. But I guess I'd feel uncomfortable with a game about producing kiddie porn. "Roll 2d6 to find out what grade your newest star is in." I tried to accomodate him (and mess with him simultaneously), though, and called it "Fake Donna Karan," and "Fake Nike gear" as much as I could. Neither of my friends liked the game all that much. Their loss.

As a side note to the games played, I'd recommend Buckeye Game Fest to anyone within a humane driving distance. The hotel is pretty nice - much, much nicer than I expected with it being within walking distance of Columbus hooker hotel central. CABS's game library is really nice, with seven or eight wall lockers full of games. It's not really aimed at RPGs, CCGs, or miniatures, although there was a little bit of it there. If boardgames are your thing, this is worth attending.

Caught up with an old friend of mine who had some of the new hotness (and I had Impulse.)

Impulse This is my 2014 game of the year so far (but then I don't play many new games so it can still be supplanted.) This was really a learning game for Bastien - he hadn't played it before and isn't into Chudyk games the way I am. Despite me soundly thrashing him, he liked the game and would happily play it again.

This is my fifth play and I'm thinking it's the most fragile of Chudyk's games. There are too many permutations of cards to make every game competitive for every player (though the impulse mechanism does mitigate against that.) I still think it's an astonishing game but it's possible for new players to have a negative experience with their first game and not want to return to it.

Dead of Winter And speaking of negative experiences... first turn of the game, I rolled a fang on my exposure die and lost a character (and also the character next to him.) Found a replacement character but lost another one (another fang.) Then we starved (as we just couldn't find enough food.) Bastien won - his secret goal was the serial killer and he basically didn't have to do anything, just let us kill ourselves. The main problem, though, was not the game itself, it was just that his son was playing it begrudgingly (being distracted by a DVD of Frozen playing in the next room - though at least it was thematic.) Bastien still prefers BSG to Dead of Winter - I haven't played enough of either to make that call, though I think Dead of Winter is more random (but saved by the narrative construction.)

Legendary: Encounters We played the Alien scenario and was almost there (the airlock had finally come up) before we all died horribly. I have to say I was more impressed with this implementation of the Legendary system than I was by the Marvel game. A good tense cooperative deckbuilder. Not sure you need both, I would probably pick Encounters over Marvel despite preferring superheroes. I think a lot more thought has gone into Encounters.

Friday was dead by Day 3

What the shit?! The Europeans survived longer than the lone native? That's some Naked Prey bullshit right there.

8 Minute Empire: I was pleasantly surprised by this. We played the fantasy themed version. It's an area control game where every turn you buy a card off the "conveyor belt" offer and that dictates what action you can take as well as possibly granting a minor ability for the rest of the game. My first play was pretty darn fun and if you are looking for a game to play over lunch break or a similar time frame, you could do worse than this.

Mage Knight: Played this three times over the last couple days. Twice with one other player and once solo. This game still delivers. You can argue about whether it creates a story or is thematic or too deterministic if you like but every game totally engrosses me, challenges me, and leaves me mentally exhausted (in a good way). I have never regretted my purchase of this game.

I did have to re-sleeve the game after the great card sleeve purge at WBC. The expansion cards are of a different card stock than the original cards so they look and feel different. It annoyed me enough to put them back in sleeves.

1 game Robinson Crusoe. We played with three players, which is my first play with more than 2. Different numbers of players don't change the overall difficulty very much, but it does change the tenor of the game. Different things become important and challenging with more players. It also starts to introduce hunting as being extra critical.

1 game Galaxy Trucker. It worked, was fun. New player seemed to enjoy it but it is definitely an unconventional enough game that the first game is bewildering.

2 games Magical Athlete. I don't think this game is really at its best with 4 players. I think it should be a mandatory 5 players. We had some laughs, but without the extra power on the board and in play, it led to some boring races with virtually no powers going off. The 5th player makes the board just crowded enough and amps up the possibilities of janky power combinations... which is the whole point of Magical Athlete to my mind.