What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I haven't played much lately. I haven't really been in a gaming -- or, more precisely, socializing -- head space lately. Yesterday I emailed pals to have a game day here at my place and then cancelled it two hours later because I just couldn't deal with it.

Anyhow, in trying to get past that, I finally addressed some overdue ratings on my New to Me list. I broke from rating everything because much of that stuff I played once and either want to give it another go (Battle for Souls, Tiny Epic Kingdoms) or haven't thought about at all since (most of the other unrated ones). I threw some heavy shade on a couple of Kickstarter bullshits because I'm really resenting the amount of wasted time there.

Anyhow, these are the new ratings, should you care. There are still too many 7s, but at least, since I'm not rating stuff for the sake of giving it a rating, most are actually 7s and not, "I dunno, it was okay."

Star Realms - 6
Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion - 7 (same as CIA/KGB)
Cypher - 7
The Battle at Kemble's Cascade - 5
Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game - 3
Thunder Alley - 8
King's Forge - 3
Valley of the Kings - 9
Quantum - 7
Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game - 3
Yedo - 6
Impulse - 9
Rails of New England - 7
Chaos & Alchemy - 3
Pairs - 6
Pandemic: The Cure - 7
Evolution - 7
Uruk II: Die Entwicklung Geht Weiter - 5

Played my first game of Archipelago the other day. It's interesting but one play is really not enough to get a feel for it. I can say it didn't thrill me.

Also got in a good playtest of my latest prototype and it is really getting close.

Played a 3 player CUBA LIBRE on Wednesday. I played the Batista government (since I was barely the most experienced player) and 2 new players who played 26July and Directorio. We AIed the Syndicate. Overall, it was close game. I hung around 16 - 18 Support and kept the cities at or near Active Support but I couldn't make up any ground outside the cities. In the end 26July slowly build momentum won 0, to my -2, to Directorio -4. Both new players enjoyed the game and were happy they finally got a chance to play since one player owned Cuba Libre and the other owned a Distant Plain.

It isn't difficult to teach the rules of a Coin games because the rules aren't difficult but the learning curve on strategy is steep for new players.

I soloed the 26July today and got hammered. The Syndicate won during the the 3rd propaganda phase. I guess I should have been targeting the Syndicate cash and casinos a little more.

Thanks Flimflam for selling me Cuba Libre for $35 and warm beer.

DukeofChutney wrote: BloodBowl TM with Foul Play and Sudden Death expansions. As more stuff gets added, on one hand there is more colour, but it is sort of going FFGward in the traditional fashion. The game is more chaotic and bloated.
...
I continue to enjoy BBTM but wonder whether its worth choosing which expansion material to use rather than chucking it all in.

I've never played with some of the elements like the magic balls, or the stadiums. I got the expansions for the extra teams. I like the...damn, my mind is blanking, the contracts? The hidden points at the end, I like them because it distinctiveness counting points and just trying to maximize things. That is the only one that I've played with (though I am leaning towards adding fouling into the games).

Personally, I'd honestly be happy with just a new set of teams without adding anything else in it. I don't know if FFG feels obligated to add more stuff in, if that's what they feel people expect, or what but most of that stuff I just don't care to use.

The toddler was sleeping, the daughter at her dad's and my wife dinning with an old friend...So what do I do with this time? Pull out DungeonQuest. Two runs, two deaths.

The first was that sorceress and little dragon pet looking thing, she was dodging traps left and right, I think at least five arrow/spear/pointy-thing traps triggered on her. Then she had the storied draw of a Bottomless Pit being the first room she draws, but managed to avoid. What did her in though was the Chamber of Darkness. On her fourth attempt she managed to get going on the right track, by this time though her day was half gone and she was stranded in the middle, ended up with a Rotating Room turning her into a dungeon wall but happened to have an entrance to the Catacombs...Where she eventually died when the sun went down...Unable to use the three Unstable Potions she found from three different decks.

The second game was the dwarf who blew into the dungeon and smashed the skull of a skeleton early on. The theme here were Cave-Ins - One from the tiles and four from the cards. With pathetic agility I spent more turns trying to get out of Cave-Ins than actually moving it felt. He also fell of the bridge, into the Catacombs where once again the sun went down and my character was eaten.

The games tonight were an exercise in excess and death in the catacombs.

Two solo plays of Seasons. Just rolled two dice and picked one, no bots or anything. Used two of the premade hands for beginners from the rulebook. No loss conditions, purely a high-score exercise.

Both scores were in the mid-200s, which seems pretty high. Still a ton of fun, very reminiscent of Suburbia and (oddly) Quixx. Like Quixx, you generally want to draw the game out as long as possible to maximize your score, where in a real game you'll often try to force the end if you're winning.

This was a great way to refresh myself on the rules before the next game night. And I'll be playing solo again, I'm sure. I'm thinking I could try something like - draw 18 cards, make two hands, play both (solo game of this only takes maybe 20 minutes), then average the scores. Again, just for high score and giggles. There are a couple of decent bots out, but it seems unnecesary in this case.

With our 3 year old packed off to Grandma's house for an overnight, I was able to host my final game night before baby brother arrives in early January. The game was of course Dune. I decided to play with doubled spice blows for the first time (but not advanced combat). This opened up the economy a bit but also resulted in more alliance windows. We did a max of 10 turns instead of 15, which is pretty common these days. The Guild player--brand new to the game--figured things out fairly quickly and cagily engineered a run-out-the-clock victory while allied with the Emperor. The Emperor had earlier averted a Harkonnen-Atreides alliance win by using Atomics on the Shield Wall at exactly the right moment, which resulted in large stacks in Arrakeen and Carthag getting pulverized by the Storm.

The full 10 turns went around 4 hours, and everyone seemed to agree it didn't feel that long at all--a couple called it the best Dune game yet that we've played.

We tore some shit up yesterday as I had a big gaming event for my birthday. We started around noon and played until about 2 in the morning. Had people coming and going and about 10 people total.

Cypher - This is an AEG microgame where you're trying to assemble a team of hackers and influential to take down a insidious AI deity of sorts in a cyberpunk future. It's a bit Love Letterish and I had no hopes. I threw it into a black Friday order because it was $4 and I was pleasantly surprised when we played it. It has the play cards to the table looking for the highest total value by the end thing Love Letter has, but it has an odd quirky draft mechanic at its center. You play 1 of three cards from your hand, then you draw a card. Out of the three in your hand now, you pass one card to the player on your left and one card to the player on your right, then play passes clockwise. It's interesting although it's a microgame filler and nothing spectacular. I was expecting to put it on the trade block but I think I'll keep it. Slightly more interesting than Love Letter and some interesting interactions with the faux draft thing as you pass players cards and then try to keep tabs on what you passed as certain cards affect other specific cards and that knowledge helps.

Lost Legacy: Flying Garden - I've played LL: The Starship and thought it was fine. We played this right after Cypher as we were waiting for a couple more people to show so we can play a proper game. This was ok but a bit less interesting than The Starship set as less player elimination and interaction.

Cosmic Encounter - We broke this out with 6 and had a blast. I hadn't played it in a couple years and I recently won a cheap copy with Cosmic Incursion. The new Defense Rewards deck in Cosmic Incursion is awesome. We also played with the variant where each player was dealt two Races and they chose one of these races to keep and place face-up. The other race they placed face-down and could activate whenever the power would take effect. So we basically each had two races with one hidden.

It was a back and forth game and I had the Pacifists and Tick-Tocks which was an awesome combination. I was getting hammered hard though early as people were afraid of my Tick-Tock timer power giving me the auto-win. I didn't have a single colony for the first 45 minutes. Later I would storm back into it and we had some help with two planets being blown up and the leaders being drug back a bit. I finished in second with two other players claiming a shared victory. I would have easily won on my turn (which was next) if these two players didn't pull off a win. Great game.

Cave Evil - We split into two groups at this point and I rocked Cave Evil, introducing two new people to it and one guy who I've played it with before. I didn't do too well as I spent the majority of the game amassing a team of diggers that ended up with 4 dig and could immediately excavate. Problem though as I didn't have enough pure combat ability. I was the second Necromancer eliminated.

The ending was great (although kind of annoying to one player), as one guy was in a dominant position. The Awakened Evil was going to be the Statue that you have to destroy and then return its remains to your crystal. With two players left, the guy who was losing got a bit lucky and threw out a creature that could cause your squad to fight itself. He took a gamble and ran into the center of the map, sneaking around a unit and causing the Necromancer who was dominating to have to fight his own squad! The dude tore himself up, giving the win to the newbie who pulled off a lucky win (the guy who won wasn't satisfied as he felt his win was completely random). I loved it as a bystander and just chalked it up to Cave Evil doing what Cave Evil does best - generate great moments of pain and excitement.

X-Wing Epic Format - Next we did a 3 v 2 250 point X-Wing game. Rebels had the Rebel Transport with Slicer Tools, the YT-2400, E-Wing, B-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing. Imps had the Decimator, TIEs, Royal TIE Int, Defender, Phantom, and Shuttle.

Do to some poor deployment on the Imps side the Rebels took this game pretty easily. The Imperial players placed all 6 of their asteroids in the corner as they didn't want them in the way. I think this was a huge mistake as we placed ours in the center forming two outside lanes. We took the left lane with our entire Fleet, keeping everything together. Imps tried to flank through the asteroids and had trouble. We called this one only about 1.5 hours in due to Howlrunner and a couple other TIEs getting one shotted and things looking grim. It was probably the least exciting game of X-Wing I've ever played but I did like experiencing a few new ships (GR-75, Decimator, Outrider).

Resistance - Avalon I was a bad guy and it was an exciting game full of tension. Most people thought I was good but I couldn't do much to orchestrate a win as another one of the bad guys wasn't trusted at all by the table. We called Merlin wrong at the end too but it was a fun game.

Onward to Venus - This is a new one and we pulled this out to close out the day. We started around 12:30 and finished around 2, although we called the game early. I was surprised by how fast it moved with 5 players, although it still looks to be a 2 hour game at that count. It feels very active though as there's little downtime due to taking only a single action on your turn.

The mechanisms are pretty interesting. The game feels pretty unique and the theme is fantastic. Amazing artwork and solid gameplay. It's pretty simple from a mechanical perspective but there is definitely some strategy there. Some people are going to get aggravated with the fact you cannot attack other players unless the game lets you via random tiles that are placed but I'm a fan of Cyclades and other Euro/AT hybrids so I didn't mind this at all. You just have to roll with the narrative and play with the tools the game gives you. Definitely enjoyed this.

JoelCFC25 wrote: With our 3 year old packed off to Grandma's house for an overnight, I was able to host my final game night before baby brother arrives in early January. The game was of course Dune. I decided to play with doubled spice blows for the first time (but not advanced combat). This opened up the economy a bit but also resulted in more alliance windows. We did a max of 10 turns instead of 15, which is pretty common these days. The Guild player--brand new to the game--figured things out fairly quickly and cagily engineered a run-out-the-clock victory while allied with the Emperor. The Emperor had earlier averted a Harkonnen-Atreides alliance win by using Atomics on the Shield Wall at exactly the right moment, which resulted in large stacks in Arrakeen and Carthag getting pulverized by the Storm.

The full 10 turns went around 4 hours, and everyone seemed to agree it didn't feel that long at all--a couple called it the best Dune game yet that we've played.

and this is why I hate all you fucks that a) own Dune and b) know enough of each other who like it to play it
barstards, all of you

I have 2 distinct groups that I've played it with multiple times now, and there's been a little crossover between those groups at this point, so it's less of a chore to find 5 other players for it. Last night there was only 1 player who hadn't played it before, and we were able to dive right in after a ten minute intro for him.

That was my 10th play of Dune, which is a decent amount for a medium-to-long 6P game.