What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

Ugh, had the worst game of Merchants and Marauders last night. Just could not get anything going. My Captain had a 4 seamanship and nothing else. Tried pirating with him, he could never see anything. Tried merchanting with him and couldn't get goods working. Couldn't get a rumor to save my life, and when I finally did it was a rumor to get a specialist. My Glory cards were also specialists. Another player killed two Captains in ill-advised attacks and STILL had 2 more points than me.

I love the game but it just went way wrong for me. Need to play again soon.

Hah, we played MERCHANTS & MAURAUDERS too this weekend. I also had a crummy captain, with 4 maneuverability, but at least had 3 Scouting and 3 Seamanship and was able to start pirating right away. Make sure you stock up on Special Weapons for the first raid, as you might need them to keep your cannons from getting blown to shit.

I was able to upgrade to a tricked out Frigate at a decent pace and a English Letter of Marque came in handy to keep at least one navy at bay. I made it back to port and banked 50 in the stash to get me up to 12 points for the crushing victory. My opponent went strictly merchant and lost too much time to storms--I think we drew five of them!

Had a great 4 player session of City of Thieves last night. We started around midnight and didn't finish until 2 so I'm pretty sure we weren't all operating at an optimal level by the end but it was still an awesome game.

We played the zombie mission where everyone places one a turn. Man that mission gets crazy--it's impressive that the board really is filled with zombies by the end even if people kill a few off.

Every team of thieves had at least one casualty by the end. My sister, as she often does, just played the spoiler aiming to do nothing more than fuck with everyone else and cause chaos.

I somehow pulled out the win, my first time with the game. I was the green team, who I actually found quite good. Iris is just a house in combat, and Harid's ability to cycle through arcana cards really keeps you with lots of options.

Played Impulse for the first time last night. They were selling pre-release POD copies of this at BGG.con and I had a friend pick one up for me. This is the new game by Carl Chudyk, who made Glory to Rome and Innovation, and it somehow manages to do the 4X thing pretty well with only 108 cards. If you like his kind of games, you'll probably love this. And as with the others, there is some wrapping your head around the rules to begin with, and then once you have the rules down, trying to figure out how to be successful is the next challenge (at which I utterly failed in our game).

Like his other games, each card has multiple functions, but the unique hook on this one is you can power up the cards that you activate by having mined gems of the card's color, and/or your transport ships on the card, in order to get extra stuff. For example, a yellow card might say, "build (1) cruiser," but if you have enough yellow gems you might end up being able to build 2 or 3 or 4 cruisers with that same card activation. I was skeptical when they say 15 minutes per player, but our 4p game wasn't much more than an hour, and that was the first time any of us had played. The 4X-ness of it is a little bit basic and abstracted (combat is a simple card draw with some possible bluffing), but it's all there, and the decisions and planning are pretty meaty for a game of its length. I always loved Innovation but it seemed to be more of a hit-or-miss thing with people, and I was surprised it wasn't more successful, like Glory to Rome. I think this game will be more difficult, but possibly have a wider appeal than Innovation.

Other recent games include a couple more plays of Kemet, which is still a big favorite of mine; more plays of Pandemic with the new Lab expansion; and Smash Up (I skipped the Cthulhu expansion, but still like this game a lot).

I also picked up Space Cadets: Dice Duel and debuted it at a game night last week, but we had 7 people there, so I opted to watch and be the rules guy. Can't wait to get in a game, myself, though. Speaking of being hit-or-miss, though, there were two guys who specifically said they would come later to my next game night (last night) if we were going to be playing that again, so they would miss that (and unfortunately we only had 3 total people other than them, so we didn't play that game, anyway). It's definitely not for everyone, including the weak of heart or the speed challenged. But I think most of the people in the original game liked it, and my 8 yo daughter was happy to be the engineer for the winning team and is eager to play more. It's too bad it's not designed to work well with 1 on 1, but I guess we could try a simplified version without the tractor beams or something and see if that works. Goeff, if you catch this, what's your word on that? Did you ever try 1 on 1 in a way that might work?

Some casual games with the family on Thanksgiving were a big hit... Dixit, Wits & Wagers, Bandu, Love Letter, etc.

Played games of both Space Cadets and Space Alert

we used one of the spare rooms in the uni, set the tables up in a horse shoe, and got the old windows starfield screen save running on the head projector. Only because the uni pcs are so old it kept pausing at convenient moments in the game.

Space Cadets; I was the helms man. imo this is the best job. I used sprint and othe emergency manoeuvres a lot despite the protesting of the rest of the crew. I now consider myself the best pilot ever to grace the command panel. I got us right on top of two of the crystals for tractor beaming, got us into nebula on three occasions to lose the locks from our hull, and generally burned around like a crazy fool. Our core failed however before we got the third. Two many laser blasts on the starboard side. This is my second playing of the game, and damn is it hard. Takes practice i guess. With a full compliment of players (6 i think) one or two might not have much to do some rounds, but the entertainment of watching others panic is fun enough.

Space Alert; we frikking beat this twice, with scores of 12 and 19. My previous two games of this had been wipe outs. Once you get organised, the game becomes winable, but i wouldn't say easy. You do really need a captain giving our orders though. One of the key things is not to fire all your guns prematurely, but actually get the timing right.


Played several other games too including Hammer of the Scots. I got hosed by a 15yr old as Scotland. I over stocked an area and had to send wallace south for the winter as a consequence. He then got caught and killed (we played scenario 1). This is tough as scotland. You really do have to plan your turns with the wintering phase in mind. The game has gone up in my opinion. I think this is probably better than Richard III, or Pax Baltica, or pretty much any columbia block came sans Rommel in the Desert.

Thanks for the review Grudunza. I adore Innovation even though I don't get many opportunities to play it.

Eh, I guess I may have overstated that Innovation isn't as successful as Glory to Rome. The BGG stats tell another story... Considering Innovation came out 5 years later, it's doing better in sales, relatively speaking, and the ratings are almost the same. It's just that I perceive GtR as being this classic and highly-revered game, and Innovation as being more hot and cold, and not the big hit I thought it might be. To me, it was the coolest new and unique card game since Dominion.

But anyway, as far as Impulse, it's not just a "card game," like the others, which is why I think it may have a greater appeal. There's a map that you explore, and ships that move around and can attack each other and activate sectors and such. You gain resources and research techs. So it definitely seems like more of a thematic board game in that sense. But everything is tracked and structured through card play, and actions are all generated from the cards, so it still feels very much like the style of GtR and Innovation, though also unique.

Glory to Rome

Rank 73
Num Ratings 7570
Average Rating 7.56
Num Owned 9267
Prev. Owned 740
For Trade 225
Want in Trade 572
Year Published 2005


Innovation

Rank 158
Num Ratings 6373
Average Rating 7.35
Num Owned 7714
Prev. Owned 533
For Trade 187
Want in Trade 435
Year Published 2010

Grudunza wrote: It's too bad it's not designed to work well with 1 on 1, but I guess we could try a simplified version without the tractor beams or something and see if that works. Goeff, if you catch this, what's your word on that? Did you ever try 1 on 1 in a way that might work?

I've never tried it 1 v 1, although I know those who have, and say it's a bit overwhelming but certainly playable. But we designed it to be a team game, and I think that's part of the fun, so honestly we never felt compelled to play it with only two. Of course YMMV.

However, we are finishing up the design on the expansion and that will definitely include a way to play 1 v 1 which is a lot of fun. But it involves a new ship type - as part of the expansion we're adding single-man fighters which can be normally be launched from the main ship (and one player jumps on board), but also work really well as a 1 fighter vs 1 fighter experience. It also makes it possible to play with odd numbers.

Been soloing a bit of Mice and Mystics which I got for my birthday. Won the first scenario on my third try (the one where I finally played everything right and for instance moved the game end counter when done in the kitchen and not the hour glass). I feared that it was gonna be a fiddly dungeon crawler, but I like how the tactics are fairly simple and that time/cheese management is quite important. Also setup is super easy which is an extra plus with a game I'm probably mostly gonna play solo since it's a bit too complicated for the almost five year old.

And then I finally got to play my kickstarted version of A Study In Emerald. Somebody on TOS described it as kind of a sandbox game and I can see how that applies. You have a lot of freedom to pursue different goals and strategies which all are closely connected to the story. I did get the feeling that actual board movement was somewhat limited or rather that you didn't have much reason to move your agents around, but that can be because I was overly cautious. One brillant thing about the game is that you play in teams, but all against each other and if one of your teammates have the least VPs, you all lose. That can make for some fun maneouvering in the end game, I think.

Played Navajo Wars and Police Precinct over the weekend, two games of each. Both are good. PP is a LOT of fun and the more people you add, the better it gets. Hands down my favorite coop right now. It's VERY well balanced and tough to beat but not Ghost Story's tough and the gameplay is FUN.

Now that we've all learned the rules we're going to start adding the Dirty Cop. (You need at least four players for it to work and it will obviously ramp up the difficulty considerably but I'm looking forward to seeing what it does to the game. I think it's going to elevate it to a whole new level.

Navajo Wars is like chess except solo. It's just a beautiful experience game. It's not really War in the traditional sense. Your People the Dine (Dih-nay)(Navajo) are trying to prevent their subjugation at the hands of the Spanish, the Mexicans and finally the Americans. Each historical scenario is progressively harder to beat and each is three to four hours long so there's a lot of game.

But it's very playable and plays a little like a chess match. Rarely do you outright fight. In fact raising your Military, lowers your Culture but it's the only way to win. If both Military and Culture fall to zero you lose. The key to the game is ducking Enemy Raids which lowers their Morale by retreating deep into the Dinetah then re-emerging to raid them for horses and sheep.

If at the tend of the game your Military exceeds enemy Morale, you win. You must fight Drought to feed your people, flourish by getting six families on the board (man, woman and child), raid enemy Outposts to preserve your Culture, manage your elders to manipulate your Military and Culture and to activate Families (each Family can't activate without an Elder. But every time you take a Passage of Time action to create more people your elders have a chance of dying depending on how much they were used.

I play it while my wife reads her book. In the right setting with a glass of wine (or Scotch) and a little music playing in the background it's pretty nice