What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

Ken B. wrote:

mikecl wrote: I found Ravenloft so boring and predictable (and I played it a lot) I never even tried the others and eventually traded it away.

One of the biggest things Ashardalon added over Ravenloft were the creatures that would "sound the alarm" and purposefully explore and/or bring new creatures into play, generally every round. It really did a lot to remove some of the "move to next tile, monster spawns, he swings at me, I swing at him" that Ravenloft could devolve into. Games where even one or two of those sentry-type creatures were drawn, suddenly the dungeon feels very dynamic and alive as you need to chase down the loudmouth who is bringing more creatures into play--and you helplessly watch as your carefully laid plans of inching forward, nuke the monster, repeat fall completely to pieces as you're suddenly surrounded.

It makes a HUGE difference.

Christ Ken now you've gone and done it. I'm always in the mood for a good dungeon crawl particularly after having sold off Descent 1st ed and ALL its expansions. I originally picked up Ravenloft because it promised that in a fraction of the time.

I liked the game system. I just didn't think it was particularly well implemented. I even helped playtest BGG user Barkam's variant, probably the best working variant ever developed for the game to make the monster spawns less predictable but it ultimately all became too cumbersome and clunky and I just gave up. (Scroll down and you'll see my name on just about every page of that three year old thread).

IF I were to try this system out again, what would you recommend, Ashardalon or Drizzt? And why?

mikecl wrote:
IF I were to try this system out again, what would you recommend, Ashardalon or Drizzt? And why?

Like I said previously, Drizzt is an awesome character, I'm a big fan, so LoD gets points in the flavor department. But strictly on gameplay and scenarios? I'd choose Ashardalon every time.

I finally got to play War of the Ring last week. I crushed the free peoples. We were both new players, and maybe that's why it felt very balanced in favor of the shadow peoples. I'm guessing my opponent should have moved the ring faster (corruption was 4 at the end and he was on first step of Mordor track). It took a LONG time -- at one point I started rolling my action dice instead of my combat dice... whoops.


I like the game and am going to get it out again this week. Thanks for the recommendation, various F:AT people.

It takes a few plays to get a grip on the Free People side so it may seem a bit unbalanced at first. Give it a few more plays and both will be competitive. It's a great freaking game.

Had some guests over yesterday who are boardgame-friendly (though I think more along the lines of Descent/Munchkin -- stuff that is close to the RPGs they normally play.)

Started out with Galaxy Trucker, since they like Robo-Rally. They had a good time with it, even though they didn't really get a chance to see all the mayhem that can happen. Then a quick game of Love Letter that they got into, and finally Lords of Waterdeep with the Undermountain expansion. They liked all three and it was nice to play these games with folks who were just seeing them for the first time.

Played a 5-man game of Chaos in the Old World. I had the rats. We had one totally new person to the game, so we gave him Khorne, as that's usually the easiest god to play because it's the most direct. We had one other who had only played once and, by random draw, he ended up with Tzeentch which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as he made some fundamental mistakes about the rules and didn't reveal his confusion until halfway through the game (mostly about what the bird needs to do to score dial advancements.) Tzeentch really needs a careful player who knows the game situation to excel. The Slaanesh player had played 3 times and then I and the Nurgle player had played dozens of games so, like usual, we were kind of eying each other and encouraging everyone else to screw up each others' plans. We were playing with the old card set, which I've always seen as a bit of a handicap for the Skaven, since the greater combat focus for Khorne and the presence of cards like Tzeentch's teleport makes keeping Clanrats in the right spots more difficult than it is with the new card set.

I was narrowly leading in VPs throughout the game, as I'd been able to place a number of Skaven tokens and spread out my attempts at dominance. Nurgle was close and then got hit by the Grail is Found, wiping out all his corruption in Brettonia and Estalia. I was at 46 and one tick away on the dial on turn 5 and everyone turned on me, trying to keep me from winning, but some failed combat rolls in Norsca let me get the last tick. Slaanesh and Khorne would also have gotten the last tick, but I won the tiebreaker on VPs.

We then switched over to Blood Bowl: Team Manager. I was playing Chaos against Dwarves, Orcs, and Wood Elves. The other three were all new players and I tried to stress the edge that Contracts give you, but I ended up winning the majority of those highlights and won 44-40-33-27.

Met a coworker at work on Black Friday, and played a couple of games. We first played The Great Heartland Hauling Co., a relatively simple pick-up-and-deliver game. I'd play it again.

Then the coworker was looking for revenge in Castles of Burgundy. He's still waiting.

I've been playing a lot of Firefly lately. Love the game but I'm thinking it's slightly too long. I've limited the game to 2-3 players but I'm thinking of starting everyone with $4000 or maybe $4500 to prime the pump a little bit. That way people can grab some good crew and equipment early on in the game.

I even played a game of Firefly with the wife and spawn last week. The spawn ended up with Malcolm as captain and the potent but unpredictable crew of River and Simon Tam but after a couple of bad rolls she could keep up with Companion Nandi and my killer crew of Wash, Shepard and Keylee with Pink Fancy Duds. How many games can you say that about?

So Pete, is this Merchants of Venus Lite? We recently played that and really liked it.

stormseeker75 wrote: So Pete, is this Merchants of Venus Lite? We recently played that and really liked it.

Yes, kind of Merchants of Venus slightly lighter (but not Lite), kind of Merchants and Marauders in space. I like all 3 games a lot. Merchants of Venus is more of an economic, pick up and delivery game. Firefly is more about doing missions or jobs and getting the right crew together to do the jobs, making skill checks.

Time to play (2-3 players): MoV 3.5 hr > FF 2.5 hr > M&M 2 hr
Complexity among the games is pretty close but: M&M > MoV > FF
Ameritrash to Euro: M&M (attacking other players) > FF > MoV > M&M (Euro Merchant)

You should give it a try, your wife may like if she like Merchants of Venus and if she doesn't mind some luck in a game. If you don't like it, you should be able to trade it away easily. If you haven't watched the show Firefly, I'd at least watch the 2 hour pilot of the show and maybe the 2nd episode (you don't have to watch the movie Serenity). In the 2 hour pilot, you'll get the feel and theme of the show, learn about Reavers and meet all the major characters as well as some of the other characters from the game like Badger and Patience.

FYI, Gale Force is working on Sons of Anarchy board game .