What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I want to play Dune. I made a hand-crafted copy of the Illya Art Deco version with wooden playing pieces, a framed playing board, and printed card decks. Soon...soon...

This weekend my family and I played Wiz-war and Nexus ops. My son likes the necromancer skull head figure from the Malefic Curses expansion.

Saturday gaming started with Abyss which we stretched to breaking point with five players, running out of cards in the deck (monster fishing only for several rounds.) I did better than the last time, within a bad location draw of winning even, so that was good.

We were waiting for a couple of friends to show up, so I agreed to give Dominion another shot. Ironically, the friends arrived before the first turn had ended. We were obliged to play on, so one joined in as last player to make a four player game. I knew my game would be a fail within three turns, so the rest of the time was just waiting to die. I still don't like the game at all.

The big game for the night was five player Firefly. It took some time with setting up and explaining the rules. I went with the interceptor as generally bounty hunting has not been a way to win for me, and I wanted the others to get to play the game without me crushing them. We were playing the very basic $12,000 game. My "strategy" was "finish what starting missions I can, then get crew/gear, then bounty hunt," which I thought would give the other players time to do more fun stuff and one of them would probably win. There was altogether too much moseying on their part, so even with sitting at planets "shopping" for bounties five/six turns at a time, I ended up closing out the game with $15,000, after four hours (including setup). There were several cries of disdain at how OP bounty hunting is. Hmph. For a simple game, it does ask the players to put some thought into optimizing income/turn.

After that, I chatted about a roleplaying game some of us are starting up, and decided I'd had enough of board games for the night. None of the games were bad per se, just a bit of a flat afternoon/evening in the end. Fire in the Lake is coming this week, so I will have another option to be a hermit with, I suppose.

Saturday I played my first game of Rex, and it was awesome. I've never played Dune, but two players at the table had and nothing jumped out at them as being very different. It was a 5p game and on t1 an alliance card came up. No one really knew how to approach this so I just started talking to people, I asked one player and she replied she wanted to see how things played out, to which I offered an alliance that excluded her that was accepted immediately. That's how it's gonna play out. My alliance was between the humans, the race that gets the money from deployment, and the race that gets extra cards. We were kind of hopeful that we could win on turn 1, but since I didn't understand my race totally it didn't happen. On t3 we had the win but a combination of cards caused that space to explode, but we locked it down on t4. Took about 2 hours and we were being pokey because of all the noobs. I really want to play this game more.

Bull Nakano wrote: I asked one player and she replied she wanted to see how things played out, to which I offered an alliance that excluded her that was accepted immediately. That's how it's gonna play out.

I want to play in your group.

JEM wrote: The big game for the night was five player Firefly. It took some time with setting up and explaining the rules. I went with the interceptor as generally bounty hunting has not been a way to win for me, and I wanted the others to get to play the game without me crushing them. We were playing the very basic $12,000 game. My "strategy" was "finish what starting missions I can, then get crew/gear, then bounty hunt," which I thought would give the other players time to do more fun stuff and one of them would probably win. There was altogether too much moseying on their part, so even with sitting at planets "shopping" for bounties five/six turns at a time, I ended up closing out the game with $15,000, after four hours (including setup). There were several cries of disdain at how OP bounty hunting is. Hmph. For a simple game, it does ask the players to put some thought into optimizing income/turn.

I suspect the problem is less with bounty hunting, which anyone can do at any time so not OP in our games, and more with the Intercepter being so damned fast. You get someplace in 1 turn where it can take others 2-3 turns and if I recall you don't even need fuel.

I literally camped on Osiris for five full turns doing nothing but "shop" for bounties. No other planet had an open bounty on it, either. Even when Persephone showed up for all three bounties, it took four turns of digging to find one of them. Well, Simon Tam came up, but I skipped him on account of having too many moral crew.

Ship speed wasn't the problem. I think I failed to express just how much moseying and making work along the way sucks compared to getting places and Doing Stuff.

Mad Dog wrote: I suspect the problem is less with bounty hunting, which anyone can do at any time so not OP in our games, and more with the Intercepter being so damned fast. You get someplace in 1 turn where it can take others 2-3 turns and if I recall you don't even need fuel.

True, but the Interceptor has only 4 cargo slots which might not seem like much of a drawback when bounty hunting but it can kill you when you need that extra fuel or spare part to keep flying. Also, the ship's speed is reduced every time you upgrade it, so taking those nifty ship upgrades slows it down, and when it comes time to defend your bounty from other ships you will usually be outnumbered. It's cramped on that tiny little vessel.

Last night my wife and I played a couple rounds of Dungeonquest, using the revised rules from FFG, which I think are a really good redo even if they will be too late for a lot of people to give their version a second chance. It makes searching tougher and reinstates the original combat system. I like that FFG made it pretty easy to update those of us who held on to their third edition.

In our first game I kept running into cave-ins and spider webs. My wife meanwhile was able to get to the treasure chamber easily, but only through a couple of rotating passages that meant she wouldn't be able to get back the way she came. We both were able to land some treasure from the dragon's chamber, but we had problems with our return. I had to come out through a different way, as did my wife, and the tiles were stubborn in their refusal to let us actually get to the exit cleanly. We kept running into dead ends right by the entrance until the dungeon collapsed and we both died on the adjacent squares to our respective exits.

In our second game my wife met a vicious monster on turn two that reduced her health down to five right away. I was able to rush to the treasure chamber pretty quickly, but like the first game it involved a lot of rotating chambers that blocked my return. My wife eventually succumbed to her wounds with a scorpion sting in the catacombs, but I was able to make my way to a different exit and get out. I got to sign out box!

Man, that REALLY makes me want to buy Dungeonquest. You know what, fuck, I think I'll get it from CSI with my next gift certificate order.

My girlfriend has been eyeing it on the shelf since I played it with Jack Wraith and Da Bid Dabid so I'm going to bust it out, too. Maybe I'll do a little write up.