What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

Jeff White wrote: IMO, this is the version to own (cardboard standees, correct?). Small footprint, thin box, great late 80's/ early 90's art and doesn't mix so well with all of the expansions. It's very self contained, but you get all the Ogre fix one needs.

Yes, that's the one. I think it's the right choice for my Ogre needs, but I do wonder how I can integrate G.E.V. and Shockwave if I ever get around to buying those ones on the aftermarket. It looks like they were never released in the same edition. I mean, I COULD just use the little box versions with tons of chits, but it wouldn't look quite as cool.

Glad that it is getting some play San! It was just sitting lonely in my basement, and got very jealous when the Deluxe Ed showed up.

I played a game of X-Wing. I build a two B-Wing and one Y-Wing Proton Torpedo build against a five Tie Swarm and Vader. Overall I should have done a lot worse, but the guy I was playing against still isn't used to maneuvering the swarm, so after the first pass he got my Y-Wing down a bit but then the swarm scattered and lost its efficiency. I was able to move around, get shots here and there to pick off the Ties and then Vader managed to kamikaze into an asteroid which helped a lot.

Then we played Pandemic, and I think I like the game as a solo puzzle to play every so often, but with a group it is alright at best. We feel one action short if one player had five instead of four we would have won. But we lost due to black cube exhaustion. I honestly took a very passive approach to the game and just did my thing as the medic and I think everyone just let black go by the wayside.

We wrapped up with Hanabi. I was not sold on it...Very "Oh, so that's the game. Ok."

all the Ogre fix one needs.

I swear, Jeff White is like the puritan of game. His moderation is almost infuriating.

Heh. The essence of Ogre is one bad@$$ tank vs an army. You start shuffling in expansions like GEV with multiple units on a side and you're moving into a straight up conventional wargame with a sci-fi theme, of which you could be playing anything at that point.

THIS IS OGRE!


EDIT: For those new to Ogre, we're referring to the 'Deluxe Edition' from the late 80's. The one with the awesome nuke cover. Buy it if you can find it!

We played two games of Ghost Stories Saturday. That bit in the rules about "Don't be surprised if you lose the first few games," is no lie. As in, you die pretty quickly. I bought the iOS version, and can now die quickly in the privacy of my own home.

Growing up with Ogre, the new "Designer's Edition" truly is a sight to behold. It really does show what an experienced company can do with Kickstarter (I would say that Flying Frog has a lot to live up to) -- and, it doesn't seem that Kickstarter was out of place since it was his vanity project. It is all just very well done.

RobertB wrote: We played two games of Ghost Stories Saturday. That bit in the rules about "Don't be surprised if you lose the first few games," is no lie. As in, you die pretty quickly. I bought the iOS version, and can now die quickly in the privacy of my own home.

A few months ago I've had a bit of a renaissance with Ghost Stories. I began practicing it on the iPad and playing the actual game a bit. Needless to say, after getting my ass handed to me a SHITLOAD of times...I managed to figure out a few keys to success.

First - If possible manage to keep all Haunting ghosts in check. Makes these a priority. If they're going to haunt an important tile it might be necessary to use the sorceress and take em out.

Use the Temple of the Wind alot! This village space lets you move ghosts as well as one other monk. It can be invaluable to winning.

Grab them Buddha statues whenever you can. Don't play dumb or base the entire game around them...but they're handy for a free kill. Too bad you don't rewards from said kills.

Ying Yang tokens - Use them. Often. If it will help you out of tight spot use it. If you're ready to kill a Ghost that will give a Ying Yang back after you kill it...USE THE YING YANG first! This is crazy important to winning if you ask me.

Use multiple Monks to tag team harder ghosts or wipe out a couple corner ghosts.

Don't waste turns trying to exorcise a ghost if you need a hail mary to do so (2+ on the dice roll). Go in prepared and at most needing maybe 1 successful color to hit.

Early in the game before shit gets hectic I try to grab a bunch of tao tokens.

Don't freak out if a Monk's board is full of Ghosts. Losing one life might be better than placing another ghost.

Finally - don't panic. Most of my real sessions tend to fall apart when people think shit is out of control. If you keep your cool sometimes you're able to climb back into a manageable position...AND THEN LOSE!

The game is still hard as balls...and I'm no expert. But my number of wins has increased quite a bit over the past couple months. I went from 1 win in 3+ years to now have 4 or 5 wins in the past few months. Progress lol....

My wife and I had a couple of friends over to play games last weekend. We started with Catan: Germany, which is a nice, streamlined version of Catan. The board is pre-printed, so set up is a breeze. I won after playing from behind for most of the game.

Then we busted out Survive! and it was a vicious, fucking bloodbath. I managed to save only two dudes. I think everyone had it in for me since I may have been gloating just a tiny bit about my Catan victory. The final scores were 14-13-7-7. I love Survive, even when I get crushed.

We wrapped up the evening with King of Tokyo. My daughter joined us, so there were five. My wife always ignores the cards. She was flush with cubes, so I encouraged her not to overlook the cards. Mostly to humor me and get me to shut up about it, she bought one ("Spiked Tail" I think) that does one damage to her neighbors each time she does damage. I was in Tokyo, and she rolled four claws. And of course I was sitting next to her, so I took an extra hit from her Spiked Tail. And yes, I had five life left. Oh, how she laughed and laughed.

Down to the end of the game, my daughter had 18 VP and my buddy Mike had 19. Mike was in Tokyo, so all he had to do was survive to his turn and pick up the two VP bonus. My daughter had to win on her turn. She rolled a '2' and a bunch of garbage. She kept the '2' and rerolled everything else ... she picked up two more 2's, game over. Great, great game.

Played the new revised edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri last night. Overall, I think I liked it but everyone else didn't quite know what to make of it, which is a bummer. I think it is packed with a ton of great ideas, fixes just about everything I didn't like about Eclipse, but there's one huge problem with it: The movement system. It's simultaneous, which could be pretty cool, but holy hell is it fiddly. You've got to dig through a communal pile of tokens to program in which direction your ships go...really slows things down. The other problem is that since you earn VPs from blowing up enemy ships, you might want to, you know, blow up some ships. The only way you fight ships is if you end your movement there, but since everyone moves all at once, predicting where those enemy ships are going and getting to them is problematic. I can see house ruling the system out entirely and just going with turn order for moving ships. A damn shame as it really does hurt it both mechanically and in play time when I'm kind of really into everything else it does.

Make no mistake though. This is no 4X game. It might look like one and it might be inspired other games that pass themselves off as one, but this is very much a DoaM game. It's got a tech tree and a loose but fun political system bolted on, but there's a whole lot of extermination and no exploration to be found anywhere.

My sister and brother-in-law are staying with us for Thanksgiving, and they are some of our favorite people to game with. Last night we thought we'd play something after the kids were in bed, and my brother-in-law picked Wrath of Ashardalon.

The dungeon ended up being a long bowling alley of a map. It was made up of lots of corridors and plenty of tight corners until we finally found the dire chamber. One thing I've learned about that game is that you should never be too bashful with using the daily or utility powers, because the "perfect" moment often doesn't present itself. In this case we did a good job of managing everything, and we made it to the chamber without even using a healing surge. When we got there the chamber card said that we had found the Kobold Dragonlord, who is probably the easiest villain. So we lucked out a little, but a win's a win. We were able to take him out and conquer the dungeon.

You know, I wrote a review on here a while back about how those games had never really lived up to what I had hoped. I'd officially like to say that I've come around on them, and that they are basically all I want out of a dungeon crawl. I think a big part of the appeal is that they are dungeon-crawls first, and co-op games second. I've played with a bunch of people who have gotten hung up on the difficulty with no rerolls or a very capricious d20, and I don't think it really has as much for the puzzle-it-out crowd. But played as a very light dungeon-crawl it suddenly becomes obvious that it's one of the best there is. The game was a big hit with everyone, especially my brother-in-law, who I think would have played again right then and there if I didn't have work in the morning.

Played a two player game of AEG's Smash Up.

I'm always a fan of 'take that' card games. They're usually easy to play, don't take too long and bring plenty of laughs. I had always been curious about Smash Up and I recently took the plunge and picked it up. While I don't find the game's theme or cards to be all that humorous, the game itself is really fun.

We each took turns selecting factions. I ended up with Zombie-Wizards, while my opponent had Trickster-Ninjas. The game started off slowly as we each began to figure out how to utilize our decks. I quickly figured out that I could spam actions/minions with my Wizards and then pump minions out of the discard pile. It was really fun finding some cards that created really powerful combos. While they're fairly obvious in some cases, they're still fun to pull off. I also quickly realized that I had no way of attacking my opponent. This became apparent as their minions kept killing my minions or stopping my ongoing actions. Also those pesky ninjas come out of nowhere to meddle with your best laid plans!

Eventually things went back and forth and the game was tied 17 to 17. Next base that scored would determine the winner. With a big discard pile, my zombies were primed for a power combo. We each were going after a different base and I finally got the cards I was digging for. I unleased about 11 points worth of zombies on a base to break it for the win.

Thoughts on the game - It plays fast and I like how simple the rules are. I didn't care for how crazy long some of my turns were. I could see that aggravating a few people. The thematic nature of the decks was pretty interesting. The zombies start off slow, but can quickly over run a base. The ninja are sneaky and always popping out of the shadows to screw you. The Tricksters had some annoying effects that made them fun. The wizards felt the least thematic to me. They are more about spamming through your deck where I figured they'd have some powerful attack spells.

All in all, fun and silly card game. It's in the same category as something like Quarriors. Just set it up, shoot the shit and have a good time.

I think that's the first really good write-up I've ever heard about Smash Up. I always thought I was interested and now I know I am.

Egg Shen wrote: Played a two player game of AEG's Smash Up.

My son just killed me at this game playing the Leprochauns (I can't remember the other faction). He's a former Magic player and figured out the game and card synergies so well I wasn't even in it.
I sold it to him for half price. I mostly hate card games...hmmmm...except the occasional game of Race for the Galaxy (can't play it a lot either).

The only other card games I've really ever liked are Camelot Legends, Dungeoneer and Starship Catan. I might try Perry Rhodan. Not big on Android Netrunner either. I usually stick to board games.

stormseeker75 wrote: I think that's the first really good write-up I've ever heard about Smash Up. I always thought I was interested and now I know I am.

Thanks. I was always sort of 'eh' about the game. Based on reviews and whatnot I couldn't really tell if it was for me. However, it is currently only $20 on Amazon (free Prime shipping) and I figured I'd give it a shot.

See, I'm not good at games like Dominion or Magic...because the combos never jump out to me. Smash Up makes it very simple so you feel like you've pulled off something smart. Plus, I think it's neat how they've made the factions feel thematic and different in how they play. I'm eager to play it some more to see what the other decks play like. I'll also probably snatch up an expansion to give me more options.

I'm pleasantly surprised with this one.

Egg Shen wrote: See, I'm not good at games like Dominion or Magic...because the combos never jump out to me. Smash Up makes it very simple so you feel like you've pulled off something smart.

That's how I felt about it too after I played it with my wife...UNTIL I played it with my Magic loving son.