What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

DarthJoJo wrote: Reading your overview, I’m glad I didn’t back the new Claustrophobia and kept my original edition , but it sounds like they could have done the changes to the player boards (the only significant change) in a $20 expansion instead of redoing everything.

Yes that definitely could have happened. I do think they put a lot of love into this game, but I think they missed the boat on the design functionality. It's hard to determine how they missed so badly on stuff like the icon/number size. Most of the other decisions I understand and can follow the reasoning, but to make the font size so small on the demon board and dice is just a little baffling.

charlest wrote:

DarthJoJo wrote: Reading your overview, I’m glad I didn’t back the new Claustrophobia and kept my original edition , but it sounds like they could have done the changes to the player boards (the only significant change) in a $20 expansion instead of redoing everything.

Yes that definitely could have happened. I do think they put a lot of love into this game, but I think they missed the boat on the design functionality. It's hard to determine how they missed so badly on stuff like the icon/number size. Most of the other decisions I understand and can follow the reasoning, but to make the font size so small on the demon board and dice is just a little baffling.

You're just getting old...

I have had to use a magnifying glass while reading the rule books for Mage Knight. The worst offender is Shades of Tezla. I'm not sure they intended this book to be read by humans.

hotseatgames wrote: I have had to use a magnifying glass while reading the rule books for Mage Knight. The worst offender is Shades of Tezla. I'm not sure they intended this book to be read by humans.

*Insert Joke about trying to read the Seal Team Flix Sentry Positions here.*

Yeah, those sentry positions. That was a real screw-up. I hope you found the PDF that displays them as intended.

hotseatgames wrote: Yeah, those sentry positions. That was a real screw-up. I hope you found the PDF that displays them as intended.

Yes, I found them with no issues. I actually used a sharpie to write "2,3,4" on all the positions on the board for the player count they become active. Now it's a point of conversation every time I get it out lol

Shellhead wrote: I should give the FFG version of L5R a chance. I love the Rokugan setting, and I ran an L5R rpg campaign that lasted 3.5 years. I liked the card game, too, but not enough to keep up with the expensive churn of expansions, base sets, and editions. The new version looks like more of a tactical game than deck designing game, which I find appealing.

It is indeed very tactical. Extremely so.

Here's the thing. You start with 7 "fate" each turn. That's all you have to get your guys onto the board and to play your cards over 4 conflicts. The more fate you spend on a guy, the more turns he sticks around for. And you make that choice right at the beginning of the turn.

People say it's kind like an eurogame in that sense. And it's true. The kind of fun you have is much closer to something like Brass than it is to Magic. Now that I understand the game a bit better, the game feels very tense.

There's depth to the deckbuilding, but the card pool is very small and the faction design is quite restrictive . It uses Android: Netrunner's influence system (Which is great) but the majority of cards are faction-locked and you only have 10 base influence instead of 15. This means that clans have very few cards to choose from. You have like 60 cards per side, which is not alot.

I can't say if you would like it. It's by far the game that is taking me the longest to reach a solid opinion on. I'm like 50 games in and I still don't know if I could review it.

In the absence of live players, I pulled the Automa rules and cards for Techno Bowl into Tabletop Simulator and was trying them out. The rules work pretty well and where the scripted activations would not be the best play, I adjust it accordingly.

Back to Theseus. We introduced a new player to the game and handed him the Marines, as one of the more direct factions, so it was Marines vs Greys vs Hunters, as I was eager to see how the latter worked between the polar opposites (exclusively damage and exclusively data.) My movement capabilities would also serve me well against the Greys' Control and the Marines' desire to have everyone in the same room for parties. However, I didn't deal myself either of the pods, so I didn't get to hop around as much as I wanted. The Greys' were actually about a turn away from maxing out their data and slinking away with the game, but the Marines got one more Onslaught in and killed them off, winning with 14 points to my combined 13.

DarthJoJo wrote: Reading your overview, I’m glad I didn’t back the new Claustrophobia and kept my original edition , but it sounds like they could have done the changes to the player boards (the only significant change) in a $20 expansion instead of redoing everything.

Just got this in trade for painting it after selling my first edition a few years ago. At first I was furious about how poorly the rules were written. I mean, they’re so bad I seriously think people should collectively act to try to at least get a new rule book, or to demand a refund. They actively thwart learning the game.

But after printing a fan-made rules reference and playing, I find the game much improved. I may have groused about the minis in a previous post, but I think they painted up okay in the end.

Three players tonight, since I can't get people to show up. Despite the low play count, we started with Cthulhu Wars. Bad idea, really. The game was over in no time at all, and there was only ONE fight, and it was a lame affair.

With 3 players, there's just too much time to build spell books and generally ignore each other until everyone is ready to go. By the time that point came, Cthulhu had enough points to win the game.

We then moved on to Millennium Blades. This was my 3rd time playing, another player's second, and another player's first time. It was also my first time playing with more than 2 players. It's a much more interesting game with more than 2. I really enjoyed it, despite really feeling the pressure during the timed phases, and making a HOST of mistakes. We decided that the winner would probably be the one who fucked up the least. Surprisingly, that ended up being me, claiming my first victory. The new player claimed to not like it, but I think he was just having an off night.

Played Arkham Horror for the first time since 2012

And it was a damn good time. We had been round several pubs in the sunny afternoon trying local beers then we came back and made tacos.

4 investigators, base board only, but quite a few cards from Miskatonic, we drew Yig as the slumbering beast, and we won. Got 6 gate seals down after around 10 turns. There was a pivot in the mid game where it looked like everything might fall to bits but then we got enough gate seals down to reach a critical threshold hardly any new gates opened slowing the doom clock. We had a violinist character who allowed us use her clues which made the game a lot easier.

In some respects I think Arkham has aged quite well, in others not. If you approach it as a light board b movie RPG its good, with the flow chart moving monsters around the board and the skills dials giving the game a little more life than a lot of other coops. On the other hand it took us 4 hours with is a little excessive. Whilst this is not an ancient game I do like games that are rougher on the edges often a lot more than the modern designs that are so streamlined i barely remember them sailing past. Gav has Eldrich Horror too so we might break that out next time for comparison.

More games of Merchant of Venus , which is just great. I haven't won a 4p game of it yet, but I'm having a blast trying. I'm good at spotting early routes, but I'm bad at spotting when I need to pivot off those early routes into something better to clinch the win. I tend to end around 1700 in a 4p short game, where if I had managed that pivot I probably could have won.

At home:

One of my friends decided to ditch their copy of Crime Hotel as it wasn't working with their group and so we gave it a very happy home. This was one of my favourites from last year and very hard to find so I was grateful to get a copy at cost especially as it gets played a lot.

More Root which has fast become our three-player go-to. I am really digging the Lizard Cult which just clicked with me instantly. I likt the way that they seem harmless enough but then sneak up on you; suddenly you have gardens on both sides and cannot move so you have to fight them off, but they keep sticking warriors down which are then martyred into Acolytes. They have a really heavy momentum behind them which has to be cut back before it gets out of control, right at the time when they appear to be harmless.

More Xia as well which my son is often happily playing in solo mode or running two ships to practice different stratgies. I like it well enough but often find myself wanting to pass it over for other stuff, I think it might just be a little too open-ended on the sandbox style of play for me.

Persuaded a friend to suffer through a couple of games of 51st State, both of which he pleaded to quit early on as it was clear a few rounds in that I was going to hammer him into oblivion. I think I may have hit the same point with this as I did with Imperial Settlers where no-one wants to play it with me anymore because it keeps ending up too one-sided. IS has a more fulfilling solo mode so I might have to banish this one to storage the next time I need to clear some space.

We've also got back into the habit of playing regular card games like Canasta and Rummy, which all feel strangely muted after playing games with decks of cards that have multiple users and strange interactions. My daughter taught us an unusual game she calls Piggy which is kind of a card-drafting take on Rummy. We managed to break it by getting into a drafting cycle that ensured no-one could win so I have no idea if there are some rules she didn't get right or if it's just one of those games that isn't going to work if you play with the intent to win.

At the club:

The highlight of the previous week was a great game of Flamme Rouge with five players and the Peloton bot on the map which is all cobblestones and no hills. We really missed not having any down slopes on which to burn exhaustion cards and with the weather effects added in the Cobblestone sections became pivotal in separating out the contenders. I tagged along at the back of the pack and enjoyed free ground through slipstreaming whilst everyone else was having their movement spoiled by contraction through the narrow sections. I started to power up the line when we reached the first open straight and the main pack was catching up with the breakaway and my Rouleur was first trough the most dangerous section of slippery cobblestones. My Sprinteur meanwhile behaved like a total git by getting into everyone's way and adding to the pile-up of crashed bicycles. Unless you have been at the head of the pack for a long time this particular track leaves you very tight on cards so it was easy for me to play my remaining six and seven from my Rouleur's deck despite picking up exhaustion in the last couple of rounds and I slipped past the line for a rare gold medal finish.

We followed up with Fields of Green of which I remember little other than it was all very pleasant farming fun and an amusing ending to Hellapagos where, in a moment of remorse, one of the players resurrected another just as he was about to finally leave the island and got booted off the raft as there wasn't enough food for everyone after all.

Last week was the continuation of our tenth year celebrations and we were playing games from 2011. I got into a game of Poseidon's Kingdom which is one of the ridiculously over-produced Lamont Brothers titles. It's a pretty straightforward game where you collect sets of dice from a pre-rolled pool to trade in Yahtzee-style for points but with some added elements such as building up a stack of tiles that give you improved capabilities within the game. You also have some beautiful doofy-looking painted minis that you move around the board to collect the dice whilst trying to avoid a hungry shark that gives the whole thing a wonderful sense of fun. Despite being simple to play it is however weirdly unintuitive so players were often hesitating and stalling on their turns as they wondered if that was really all that there was for them to do. With everyone switched on it could probably play out in less than an hour but in realiy went on for twice as long as it should have done. I had an easy win through focussing the easily-overlooked elements of the game which involve placing dice onto a big rocking wave and taking sneak-peaks at bonus scoring tiles, both of which gave me a bigger return than any points that I collected from building sets. Looks nice, simple and happy fun to play, but doesn't quite click so I wouldn't have a problem having to wait another eight years for the next game of it.

Then we took a trip forward in time and played Root where my naughty Lizards exploited the well-meaning Riverfolk into stymying the Birds just as they were on-point to take the victory and which opened the way clear for me to garden my way to dominance. Dig for victory!

Four player game of the Expanse with the new Expansion. The Expansion took an average area control game and really elevated to a new level. The new techs make each faction seem more unique. The new techs seem to balance the game more. In our game the UN or Earth won by 3 point and we had a 3 way tie for 2nd. The new Protomolecule rule added a some big risks and rewards. In our game Holden almost blew up Io with the protomolecule. The new event cards added some nice twists. The new resource rules, leaders, new ship counters and new board were totally unnecessary but I guess it was a way to justify the $27 price. Our group is looking forward to playing again.