Your covid games

I had this weird realization that several games in my collection have just been a tremendous balm through the absolute nightmare that is our covid ~year and a half. Whether they're one player, couples, or more player games. Mine are pretty obvious since I post on this website all of the time. So you know it.

1) Oath. I played this a lot on tabletop simulator and have done a lot of solo play (~40 plays everything together), meant a lot for me. Played a lot of this with new online friends---I don't know that I would have played such a wonderful game as Oath as much with other live people *without* covid, so that's like a small positive. I miss our regular games of this because it is so bite size, plays in less than two hours usually and plays SO big in terms of experience.

2) Arkham Horror LCG. This game is the ultimate covid game. Huge, varied (AND EXPENSIVE) and perfect for solo strategy play two handed. I have gotten so much joy and 70+ plays one player and two player. A weird thing I got out of this one is that two player via tabletop simulator is way more fun than I thought; having another player and their non-perfect coordination and different ideas with you really elevated this one.

So I'm genuinely curious to hear yours, its circumstances, and how it helped you get through this nightmare.

This is a great thread idea:

- Clank! has been a boon for us while we were still in the Philippines. It was one of those rare games that more than one other member of our family enjoyed, so we played a number of times with at least my wife and older son, and I think at least once with our younger son. That's the rarest of games, let me tell you. It's exactly the kind of thing I want in a deck-builder, and in managing the cards and risk-taking it also functions as a pretty good dungeon crawl in the very light weight class.

- Disney Villainous is one we got into after getting back in the US, and I think it's one of my favorite asymmetrical games out there. I love how just about every character feels viable, though I admit to not really understanding how to win with Mother Gothel. It's a great Disney game, a great card game, and one that I've loved exploring.

- Mascarade is not one I've played a whole bunch during Covid necessarily, but it's been one we've gone to many times whenever we have been able to get together with people. That is due both to its brevity, and also to how well it allows a lot of people to play at one time. It represents togetherness in a weird way to me.

All of my Covid games are cooperative games (or potentially co-op in the case of Magic Realm) that work just as well as solitaire games. I am not adverse to playing non-solitaire games as solitaire, but after a while, that kind of gaming just makes me miss face to face gaming with friends.

1. Magic Realm. I have not actually played a lot of Magic Realm during this pandemic, but I happened to order it before lockdown, and spent a great deal of time last year reading the rules and some helpful guides. It was a good time to tune things out and focus on something with vast depth. I will probably spend some time playing it solitaire this winter. Magic Realm is infamously complex, but offers an oddly controlled outdoor dungeon crawl.

2. Blackstone Fortress. I played a few games of this with a couple of friends in 2019. Then the pandemic arrived and I had my own copy of Blackstone Fortress, so I played the whole base set campaign. I had the first major expansion ready to go, but felt a bit burned out on Blackstone Fortress at that point. Blackstone Fortress is part of the bleak Warhammer 40K setting, but functions as a highly tactical dungeon crawler with just enough variety in opponents and room layouts to sustain interest, but can still lead to burnout after enough games.

3. Marvel Champions. For decades, I have been hoping to find a good board game or card game simulation of comic book superhero action. Marvel Champions is a very solid game that hits a lot of thematic notes. Every hero deck plays differently, and if I ever got bored with the default decks, I could engage with the deckbuilding aspect of the game. There are not as many villain scenarios as I might like, but most of them play differently as well, leading to massive replay value. I am starting to burn out a little on what I have, but that is after 10 months of playing almost nothing else. Actually, I would probably be enjoying the recent expansions, especially the Thanos one, if not for the massive shipping delays keeping them off the coast of California.

Through the Ages. Earlier on it was Rallyman and I played the heck out of it on Board Game Arena. But these days I have a game of Through the Ages and a game of Talon more or less running full time.

The COVID era has probably contained the most solid block of gaming I have ever had. It helps that my kids have reached an age - especially my youngest - where they can handle themselves. But working from home for different stretches has actually meant I am around in the afternoons to just hang out and play some games.

I was trying to think if there were specific games that have been played more than others as a result of that - I don't think so, it's just been more across the board.

The only thing I can think of is relatively recent (here in NSW though that means during the longest lockdown of the whole Covid thing). We've been playing Chronicles of Crime all together which has been really great. While overall the gaming has increased these last couple of years, everyone playing together is still a bit rarer. So that"s been a fun one.

1. Marvel Champions - I was a skeptic when it came out. Ended up jumping in just before the campaign box. It is everything the 12 year old boy in me was looking for in a super hero game. I have everything released so far - It has been a sanity saver, being able to set up a world threatening problem, and cleverly solving it in about an hour or so most nights.

2. Quacks of Qedlingwhatever - We probably played 30+ games after dinner this last year

3. UNO - The 5 year old is quite the Uno shark.

4. Terraforming Mars - Ares Expansion - When my wife says "go get one of your games" I usually get this ....She likes it better than Castles of Burgundy and Roll for the Galaxy, and I like them all about the same - Added bonus - The solo mode is a fun little time waster.

boothwah wrote: 1. Marvel Champions - I was a skeptic when it came out. Ended up jumping in just before the campaign box. It is everything the 12 year old boy in me was looking for in a super hero game. I have everything released so far - It has been a sanity saver, being able to set up a world threatening problem, and cleverly solving it in about an hour or so most nights.

Great articulation of what is great about these co-op LCGs, thank you.

I actually got the Steam version of the Lord of the Rings LCG. I might have to jump into it some with all our moves coming up.

san il defanso wrote: I actually got the Steam version of the Lord of the Rings LCG. I might have to jump into it some with all our moves coming up.

Doesn’t it use a system more akin to HEARTHSTONE vs the physical LCG?

First of all, you're welcome. While all of you are sitting in your warm dry houses, I am defending the Earth from alien invasion. This is Scenario 12, Defense of Earth, and only the first round of battle.



I'm the blue ships and I managed to time my fighter attack just right, a chance to punch that monster battleship in front of them square in the nose. His front shield has been shredded, and I managed to bang him up on the insides as well. Just a bit. He has to move before he's allowed to return fire, so three of those four squadrons are out of reach of his monster front gun. A lucky break, my opponent is a good player, doesn't offer that kind of opportunity very often.

The light cruiser beside him is down a shield as well. In retrospect I should have held my last squadron's fire for the biggie, it likely will have a close enough shot down that broken shield in the next impulse. But given the array of weaponry pointed at them they would have likely lost the chance to fire the old fashioned way.

On the left I took a long shot with my wave motion gun (cue the Starblazers theme) and made it pay. That was risky, but the first ship to get hit has much lower chances of survival. That's his other battlewagon with the big fusion gun that now has a hole in its side. I have shorter range weapons to bear still, and given the situation I'm going straight at them, taking my hits on the front and firing through downed shields if I can. He has to turn away, and that's not to his advantage while I have weapons charged. Let's see if I can get a second volley in.

Talon is about timing. There are ways to mess with the turn order, and ways to take moves out of order. If you can make those rules work you can get an edge on your opponent. Considering how short these battles can be one good wiggle can be the difference between winning and losing. I just got a good wiggle, let's see if my opponent can get one back.

Msample wrote:

san il defanso wrote: I actually got the Steam version of the Lord of the Rings LCG. I might have to jump into it some with all our moves coming up.

Doesn’t it use a system more akin to HEARTHSTONE vs the physical LCG?

It's been a while since I've played the LCG, but it's pretty close to what I remember of that one. It's definitely a better way to play that game, since you can see feedback loops on decks much quicker on the computer game. It's pretty good.

I forgot one game that I played a lot last year around lockdown time: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. I've had it for years, and had already played 7 out of 8 of the missions with a group. Instead of just replaying the missions, I had an idea for a sort of tournament/free-for-all format that could be fun at a big convention. I have the expansions with the extra heroes and extra monsters, plus I picked up a second set cheap on eBay due to the lack of minis. So I ran 8 random groups of heroes through the first 8 missions. One group had a total party kill, so I randomly through together a 9th team to replay that mission.

Survivors of each team then all proceed to one huge game. Each starts in a random room of Silver Tower, and advances to another random room from the deck of room cards as they go, picking up rooms already explored once they have more than three connected room cards on the table. If a team draws a room card for a room that is already in play, their linked rooms connect to that room, allowing them to meet up with another team. If a team has less than four members, they can potentially merge with another small team (as long as the new team has four or less members, and the two teams share at least two keyword traits). Imitating Black Fortress, I made a deck of initiative cards for all the heroes and all the monster groups. Play continued until one team collected all 8 maguffins from the 8 original missions.

It took a long time to play out, but I had plenty of free time during lockdown. I learned that the Knights of Sigmar tend to be over-powered compared to most of the other heroes, and that the expansion monsters tend to be more powerful than the ones in the base game. To make this fit in a convention format, I would skip the first part with the original missions and just throw all the teams into the second part from the start.