What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played War of the Ring for the first time just now, and it seems pretty rad. Took just over 4 hours to set up and play, and that includes basically learning how to play up front. The first couple turns were kinda grueling just wrt wrapping our heads around the options available and how they worked, but beyond that things flowed pretty smoothly along to a crushing shadow military victory. I really want to try the free people now, and luckily we have another game scheduled for Thursday. Learning the decks seems probably important, but that's a problem for another day.

Card knowledge is pretty important, but if everyone's on basically the same level of mastery it isn't a problem.

Today I played 1856: Railroading in Upper Canada and it was very fun. I played with people who might not be experienced 18XX players but who played well and engaged in all the mechanics. It ran long (they weren't fond of the idea of using computer assistance) but I'm glad I played it.

I got both 1856 and 1870 on my birthday last year and I've played them 3 and 2 times, respectively. So I'm actually playing them, even if it's not as much as I would like to.

Legend of the Five Rings is improving with repeated play. The game is more fun when you know how to play it decently and the three expansions released since I started playing have both opened the game and helped balance the factions. They have also introduced power level errata on a couple cards, which I think is cowardly and awful, but will benefit the game more than inaction. I just wish the "mainstream gaming community" didn't have such strong prejudices towards banning cards, because it's clear that it influences FFG decisions even when the game in question has little mainstream appeal.

The closed beta for the expansion of Through The Ages started today and I've been putting in some work. Balance changes on old cards, new military cards (events, tactics, pacts, aggressions, wars, everything), and a full new set of leaders and wonders. You can either play just the expansion stuff (replacing all the original leaders and wonders), or the real way to play is a random mix of original leaders and wonders and new ones. I can't comment on the balance or competitive viability of the new stuff yet, but I can say that it's SUPER FUN. the new stuff is straight bonkers. I'd spoil some of the real crazy stuff but they've asked testers not to so I guess the actual information here isn't much. I'm just real excited about this expansion and wanted to ramble about how fun it is I guess. Get on this ASAP whenever it actually releases if you're a TTA fan.

Played 51st State: Master Set last night and got dang I love this game. My fave tableau/engine builder. My pal Tim had an insane Deals engine going, which I was trying to do, but as Texas, I was hampered (the other three players were new, so I played Texas to hobble myself). I still prefer the older New Era version with Winter, but this one still rocks, and I'm psyched about the new expansion.

Legomancer wrote: Played 51st State: Master Set last night and got dang I love this game. My fave tableau/engine builder. My pal Tim had an insane Deals engine going, which I was trying to do, but as Texas, I was hampered (the other three players were new, so I played Texas to hobble myself). I still prefer the older New Era version with Winter, but this one still rocks, and I'm psyched about the new expansion.

Is Texas that bad? Their conversion math seemed iffy and having a person as their extra resource is weak, but I've only played them once so I'm not sure.

Either way, 51st State is -the- convert-stuff-into-stuff-into-points tableau builder. It's got interactivity, it's got an amazing look, it's great. Accept no substitutes.

Texas isn't good at anything (1-1 on all three ) but can use one twice. big whoop. And they don't produce resources out the gate. It takes them a lot longer to get something going, unless a lot of open production gets played.

Res Arcana - wrote a paragraph in the review thread. Kind of boring, but would give it another spin to see if clicks. The opposite experience of Race for the Galaxy which I loved in my first play.

Orongo - Knizia auction game from 2014. It's a race to play Moais on the map. Do well in a closed-bid auction to claim spots on the map, if you connect the right spots you place a Moai. Currency leaves the game because it's used to mark your claimed/used spots on the map. So it's all about the auction. Seems like its best to get 2nd a lot, because you get your bid back and often placing your tokens 2nd is fine. It's maybe a 45 minute game tops, so worth some repeated plays to explore the auction, but not sure it's better than, say, any of his classic auction games. It feels like the kind of game that would have been a decent success in the pre-cube converter days of euros.

Yellow & Yangtze - The Tigris & Euphrates re-implementation. So, I rate T&E a 10 and have long considered it the best euro - there's just so much game in the hour it's on the table. I'm 3 plays in on Y&Y and am pretty sure it's a better game. I don't know if it's different enough for people that don't like T&E to take a 2nd look. Not sure what else to say. It's obviously the game of the decade.

Just got a round of Space Hulk in for the fist time since 2009! I'M BACK IN THE GAME BABY!

Just had a fantastic game night, despite nothing going according to plan. Originally I was trying to get 3 people to show up so I could play my new copy of Brook City, the latest Sadler brothers joint. I am quite enamored with this game, and have even been working on a modification for it that I will reveal at a later date.

Anyway, I wound up with 6 total players, and one of them was a first timer so I was not about to have people sit and watch.

We started with The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31. Six players is the ideal number for this game, in my opinion. Unfortunately for the Thing in this case, the Infected member was outed fairly early. He had to sit on his hands for a few turns. Unfortunately for us humans, we bungled the missions and the combat so poorly that we ended up losing before making it to stage 2! Not the greatest session of The Thing, but it was still fun.

Next up was Hellapagos. Three players were new. Rules are easy, this game is easy to teach, and we were off. I gave a bullet to a gun holder, on the condition that he shoot a particular person. The motherfucker shot me instead. Some other chicanery involved another person getting shot, and then one person starving to death, and yet another victim of gun violence. Two people sailed off to freedom. Dicks.

We ended the night with a risky game... Duhr: The Lesser Houses, by my good friend Jim Felli. I don't consider this game easy to teach. There are a lot of conditions and game states that need to be understood. I took it in phases and decided to not fully explain what happens when someone is vilified or disfavored until it was actually about to happen. I think this proved to be the way to go; this game was a HIT. We had so much dealing, back-stabbing, trade agreements, etc. It was awesome and everyone was laughing. Hellapagos was fun, but I think this was the star of the show tonight. Highly recommended if you have the right group. I might suggest that the way to play this game with new people is to explain at the outset that you will play one game as a learning game. Fully grasping it can be difficult, but once everyone understands, the gloves will come off and it gets brutal. Great stuff. Honestly, I like Bemused too, but I don't think I'd bring out Bemused now that I also have Duhr. Bemused is simpler, but Duhr delivers more moments since it has the addition of event cards.

We just finished year 5 in Hogwarts Battle. Years 1 and 2 didn't even feel like a game. Year 3 kicked our butts. Years 4 and 5 have started tense but ended with us still on the first location with only 0 and 1 threat token.

This game has made me interested in playing the Arkham Horror LCG with this group. If anyone is burning out on their copy and looking to sell, please let me know. The Dunwitch cycle is between printings and hard to find.

I had a weekend away where in we played a lot of boardgames to for my friends birthday. Here are the games from best to worst with an interesting comment or two;

Ares Project - Still ace. My opponent played a rule wrong as the space wizard people. I was marines twice, first time I carpet bombed him to oblivion and quite liked my strategy, all in on airforce. The second game i was rubbish but still won because of the rules error.

Brass Birmingham - The reprint and new map for this have given it a sort of renaissance. I love it, a good balance of route building and industry development but I am surprised the modern lovers of shorter games with 'elegant' mechanics like it, because this is neither. It does however have more artistic vision and commitment to its conceit than the average euro.

Sakura - A Knizia riff with programmed movement and hand management. This is ace, and very simple. You conga line behind the emperor trying to be in the best position when he hits a scoring spot. Game play is trying to move yourself and the emperor with cards with turn order mis-calculations throwing your plans into chaos.

Rail Road Ink - quite satisfying roll and write game. Building a network is far more interesting than playing with numbers or filling boxes that most roll and writes work on.

Dice Hospital - I won this by going all in on red dice. I tend to dislike games when maxing out on X is a good strategy. Running a hospital is good fun and this game is sort of convincing but I wonder whether there is much under the cute hood.

Pandemic Fall of Rome - Better than Pandemic, as is every Pandemic variant, it has dice combat and vestal virgins.


City Council - Semi coop that i found more interesting about 5 years ago.


V- Commandos - This sucked. The idea is a good one, create the Commandos video game series as a coop game. The main issue is the stealth system generates zero tension. Its very simple and playable but feels completely arbitrary. In simple terms if you move slow on small board bits you stay stealth, if you move fast or enter a bit board bit, you get seen, period. Enemies walk in random card driven directions leading to occasional disappointment.

that's too bad about V-Commandos. I've been interested in it since seeing it in the last couple big math trades.

had a couple over after church -

Root - new players played the Eyrie and the Marquise. I had the Woodland Alliance and my wife picked River Company. The Cats made a major move against the Eyrie that really set the tone for most of the game. She built in the one clearing that the eyrie needed to build in. The birds came in and tried to fight, but didn't do enough damage to clear the build spot. So they collapsed fairly early and never really threatened the Cats militarily again. Before this, I had placed my first WA support in the corner farthest away from the cats industrial base(3/4 woodmills clustered in the corner)....so it took me forever to work my way close enough to threaten those woodmills.

The River company? flush with cash. just sat back, drew cards, crafted and spent other people's people like it was nothing. The eyrie really had a rough time of planning, so kept spending on the cards. The cats did to, just to grab those bird card from the River company.

So, before we knew it, the Cats were up in the 20+ pt range, with the rest of use down in the ~10s. that stirred everyone up, and we convinced the River Company to rise up and use their greater mobility to strike at that industrial base. Which they were glad to, for a price. So a grand alliance between the 3 other factions rose up to strike down the Cats. We stopped them at 28 pts. and lost to the River Company, who by that time could craft as they willed and had built all their trading posts.

Villainous - Prince John, Ursula, Jafar, Maleficent.

Game started fairly slow, as we all just felt out what we needed to do. then each person would realize that they were relatively close to finishing (John was easiest to see this) and just dumped on by 'fate' attacks. sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't....Maleficent ended up winning, after fighting through two rounds of everyone else dumping fate attacks on her.

I really didn't like this one...I felt the rules were alitte vague at times, and the game play itself was boring. the fate attacks were interesting, but they were pretty random. draw 2, play 1....it worked I guess. On to the trade pile.

Glory to Rome -
I finally won this. its been 10 years! I had to win on Tie breaker, since I "thought" on my last turn. I always love GTR.

That sounds like a great session of Root.