What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Got a few games of A.E.G.I.S. in last night. I refuse to type it as an acronym for the rest of this post.

It's Legally-Distinct-From-Voltron the Skirmish Game. The designers outright said that Advance Wars and stuff like Ogre were direct inspirations and you can absolutely tell. You zip your mechs around on a hex map, combine them to terrifying effect, and chuck D6s at each other. Last one standing/able to produce enough energy to compete wins. 2p matches are like 20-25 minutes.

This thing is crazy ambitious for a new publisher and they pulled it off. I like just about everything about it. The production is perfect for what it is - the box basically has no air and the art looks fantastic. It's definitely simple but between team comp and tactical choices there's enough crunch to make plumbing its depths worth it, at least so far. We haven't played with all 100 robots but so far no two of them have felt interchangeable.

And yet I'm hesitating on writing a proper review. Hence why I'm here. Besides needing to play it more I'm having trouble deciding whether or not I'd recommend it. I REALLY like it, but it's a very basic game in its genre and I just don't know who's looking for that these days. Is it the best mech combining game? Yeah. Is it the only one? Probably not, but there's not much competition.

I have long wanted a truly great mech game that has just the right weight to it. I almost bought the new Battletech beginner box last weekend, it's only $20. But I have so many unplayed games, I am really trying to avoid that. I'd be better served just buying the recent Battletech video game, and it's on sale right now for $24 so I'm sure I'll end up doing just that.

BUT... I still want a cool mech board game. Abaddon sure wasn't it. Heavy Hitters looks way too light, Battletech is probably too heavy....

GKR: Heavy Hitters is neat but it's way too damn long. It's over 2 hours and the game just ain't there. I really want an X-Wing like game in this category where you can transform or combine and there are different minis for each form with different stats.

Checking out AEGIS, saw it briefly pop up awhile ago and dismissed it.

I would highly recommend that PC Battletech game. I’ve put maybe 30 hours into it during the last month - I haven’t done that with a PC game in some time. It’s been fun for me going in completely new and figuring out the finer points of the tactics.

I've heard the expansion is really good, BillyBob. It adds a mercenary sim mode that doesn't have any big payout "story" missions, which is an interesting way to expand your narrative campaign into a more perpetual thing.

I miss having some cardboard crack in my life so I decided to try out Legend of the Five Rings LCG and see how it goes. Many ex-Netrunner players play it and it's very popular in Spain so I decided to give it a try.

This game is hard. It's very complex, with many phases, two decks and an alternating turn sequence that makes decisions non-obvious. The gist of the game is that you play characters and assign them to the 4 conflicts that come up per turn. The trick being that if you spend all your resources in one battle, you won't have them for the next.

I'm 10 games in and I've lost all of them and all but 1 or two were a stomp. Here's hoping I slowly learn hahaha

After I wrapped up with Netrunner I was actually really excited for new L5R. I may have been taught it poorly and I'm not a particularly smart man, but it felt like a convoluted mess. Seems to really work for some people though.

L5R is odd, It is a really simple game, that is hard to play well. The worst part is it can be hard to figure out what your pivotal mistake is, as it can be as simple as over or under putting fate on a character.

I went from Netrunner to L5R as well, and really enjoy both, but there is not a lot in common between them. I would netdeck the hell out of it for a bit while finding your footing though.

edit: So as not to sound like too big a dick, and dismissive of how folks learn games.
As far as card game mechanics go I feel it is a simple game and can be taught to card game veterans quite quickly. It is really hard to spot where you loose though as it may have been something you did 3 turns ago and is therefore hard to improve play sometimes.

In a moment of weakness I bought a copy of L5R for myself, for my birthday last summer. I need to beg my brother/nephew to play sometime.

I do remember the storyline tournaments for the CCG from way back when, which I thought was pretty cool. The card designers would do new cards for the set based on how the last tournament played out.

I played a few games of L5R shortly after release, but it didn't grab me. I really respected some of the mechanics like placing additional fate on characters and the multiple paths to victory and the art design was pretty great, but it felt too much like the Game of Thrones LCG, which I was mainlining at the time. The variety of challenge types and different effects from winning those challenges were all present in Thrones, too, but with a much larger and more developed cardpool.

Despite me mocking it unmercilessly because of its name, I have really been enjoying The Qucks of Quidlinberg.
Also played a whole lot of Zombie Dice with my game design students (so they can understand how percentages and statistics work)
Played On Tour which is a pretty good roll n' write
Gugong, which despite a bumpy start wasn't bad
And a prototype of a friends which was a fun WP game

My son rode a kick scooter three miles from his apartment to our place to do laundry, and he read the rules to Theseus and we played it for an hour. I was the Alien aliens, and he played the data scientists. He set up several video cameras and I struggled to activate my dudes so they could attack, so he rolled to an easy win. I pretty much had the game basics figured out by the end of the game, and I can see that with the expansions and more complex cards that the game is going to get a lot more interesting and potentially cryptic as we go. It feels like it will be a good, meaty, 45-minute game once we have played a few times.

It's an awesome game. I wrote up an article on it recently: therewillbe.games/articles-analysis/6350...-design-with-theseus

I played a solo game each of Legendary Encounters: Alien and Legendary Encounters: Predator since apparently no one inside or outside the house will play games with me these days. Alien definitely feels more thematic, as they had a lot more material to work with and certainly had more iconic characters and scenes. Seriously, does any scene in Predator 2 actually resonate with you past the ending one in the ship where you see the xenomorph head? (Save me, jebus. If they'd only wrested control of AvP away from the studio and used the Dark Horse limited series...)

However, Predator is a LOT more appropriate to play solo, solely because of the Facehuggers. If you use all of your combat (Grunts) to scan a room and reveal a Facehugger which you then can't kill, getting you a Chestburster, the game is basically over, which is what happened to me. OTOH, I won the Predator game, even though it's less immersive. Not sure how a solo game of Aliens and Predators would work. Maybe I should just try Alien with all Ripley characters?

So at some point one of those well-meaning relatives got us Yahtzee.
At some point in the past I printed off a can't stop board and Reiner Knizia's decathlon, chucked in some extra dice and counters, and it's all
been sitting there ever since.
So when the boy goes, what's that, I want to play that, there was a nice surprise sitting in the box. We've been playing all three, chucking dice everywhere.

lj1983 wrote:
Argent: The Consortium - So, last time I played with this group, we did two things that really tone down the game. I played with a 4 player setup, with only 3 players (not purposely....) and we played the summer break scenario, which adds in mages over the 5 rounds. these two things make the board really open, and so you can see the game and what it can do....but the conflict just isn't there.

So I set it up right this time (always a plus!) and we taught another. so 4 players, and the first round I think 60% of the mages ended up in the infirmary. I ended up 'turtling' up, with 3 different spells/abilities that allowed me to react when one of my mages was banished/wounded. so by the end, I was the last target for all the fireballs and poisons and banishements being thrown around. I was the technomancy school, so I did not fight for those couple 'research' spots on the board, and just bought my research. by the end I was swimming in Mana and spells, and just gave up on supporters.

For the voter cards, for a while I've just been shuffling them all out and make all 12 random. one player requested that next time, we shuffle, but pick two to be face up. I think that's a good idea, it'll still reduce the impact of influence, while also allowing just a little bit more information out there.

Still my favorite Worker placement, and this specific game was a lot of fun. and this is still *usually* playing with the starting board set-up and all 'A' sides on the mages.

My main issue with this game is it can be played by someone having no clue what they are doing and still not lose. This implies to me, that the mechanics, however elegant they might seem, actually don't really work. I am witness to this as I was the player being very tired and probably drunk but still couldn't lose to save my life.