What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Same. Was pretty sure I typed it that way the first time I looked at the post.

About a year ago my son wanted to learn Wiz-War, and in the name of simplifying the game I started doing the deck construction like it says in the FFG instructions. I actually enjoyed it a lot, and I think it got me to the point where I was really excited to play again after a long break.

I hope Steve Jackson's new edition of the game solidifies the ruleset. Companies rarely do that, but I hope for it. Dune was a huge missed opportunity,

Our rules:
- combine all the cards into the one deck. I understand the wisdom of the cancel card removal but my son freaking loves playing those on me so they stay.
- winner is last wizard standing. Wizards die when both of their treasures are removed to other sectors
- a spell cast does not count towards hand size.
- objects stay on the board and aren't maintained/owned by players
- all walls connect to another wall and all openings connect to somewhere. I can thus "here's Johnny" off one side of the board through a wall to the opposite side on someone else's board.

I don't even know what a school or a cantrip is.

We sadly only have Bestial Forces. What happened there to the other one?

My father-in-law taught my wife and me three-handed cribbage. After she went to bed, we split a pair of two-handed games. I still don’t think it’s a particularly good game with a bit too much luck, arcane scoring and a significant first-player advantage. However, he and I don’t have a great relationship, so it was nice to do something together after dinner rather than ignore him as he went downstairs to watch the news.

Erik Twice wrote: I hope Steve Jackson's new edition of the game solidifies the ruleset. Companies rarely do that, but I hope for it. Dune was a huge missed opportunity,

I had no idea they were making a 9th edition until your post. That new cover art is a...departure from 8th, to say the least.

Thanks so much for all of the responses re:Wiz War! I'm a big fan of standard set of rules but it stands to reason that a chaotic game like Wiz War would also have a chaotic mix of preferred rules. Despite that, it looks like merging the decks through some system is the way to go and removing cancels, and possibly cantrips, seems to be broadly agreed upon.

One game I started playing with other people is Pandemic Legacy: Season 1: I've played through this game up to the beginning of May and have some mixed thoughts on it. The game is approximately the same as the base Pandemic at the beginning and reminded me why I stopped playing the base game originally. Despite being eye opening for me as to what could be done through board games, Pandemic quickly wore out its welcome in my circle. It's not so much the alpha dog problem which has been well documented elsewhere, but rather a consequence of the design such that in acknowledgement of the potential problem, I will selectively hold back my opinions so as to not oversteer the table which ultimately leads to me not being invested in the outcome. I know that Pandemic Legacy has been widely heralded for its innovation but so far I haven't been blown away by what it has added to the base game. Still, I'm not even half way through yet so maybe the game will surprise me yet. I'm sure I'll play it to the end if only to have a good reason to continue catching up with with friends but I think I was more invested in my plays of Risk Legacy.

I tried to introduce Oath to this group and while we got to a good place play time wise after three games, I don't think they were as enamoured with it as I am and so that has been put on the back burner for now.

One month countdown now - then finally able to have visitors around and gaming can re-start again ... just a six and a half month (boring) hiatus .

In the continuing saga of "two player games my wife would never play but now my son is old enough to enjoy" I found my old print-and-play copy of Yomi that I didn't bring with me to the Philippines. My kids are both big fans of fighting games, particularly Smash Bros. and Street Fighter, so it was an obvious game to try out with them. The younger one is not much of a gamer, but he's very interested in trying this one out too.

In case anyone forgot, Yomi is a very good game. And this is with the first edition, which I'm sure is unbalanced in a way that is only obvious to someone who plays much more than I do.

Have a few games of Hallertau under my belt, and I think its Alright. its largely what you would expect from a big box Uwe Rosenberg game farming game. the worker placement mechanic has a cool twist, where spots arent necessarily blocked just more expensive. the way the crop rotation works is cool. my main issue with it is the cards, and the luck they introduce. there are tons of cards, and you get them by drawing blindly. if you happen to get cards in your starting hand that synergize together or are easily accomplished that will snowball, especially if you get early cards that let you draw more cards and the cards you draw are also good for you. if you draw point cards that could easily be a 10-15 point action or a zero point action, depending on if you draw things that align with what youve been doing. basically it feels like there should be face up markets of cards, or some mechanism other than just top decking stuff that is good for you... especially since the cards are so central to the game. if nothing else there should definitely be some recompense for dead cards, like a worker placement spot that lets you trade them for something or something like that. all that said, i think its fun solo. then if you get cards that shit in your face thats part of the puzzle of trying to maximize your points in the solo game. multiplayer if im drawing dead cards and another player is playing like 5 cards a turn with no extra effort and the game is showering him with free stuff constantly... that feels quite bad.

So Very Wrong About Games brought this issue up in their most recent pod, you're not alone apparently.

DarthJoJo wrote: My father-in-law taught my wife and me three-handed cribbage. After she went to bed, we split a pair of two-handed games. I still don’t think it’s a particularly good game with a bit too much luck, arcane scoring and a significant first-player advantage. However, he and I don’t have a great relationship, so it was nice to do something together after dinner rather than ignore him as he went downstairs to watch the news.

that’s great. I have to pretend to care about EU football to connect with my FIL, and have to shout because he’s very hard of hearing and too stubborn to get hearing aids. His card game of choice is Sxuba, which is kind of bad Casino. Very luck-oriented, much more than Casino, even, and less interesting.

The reason the scoring in Cribbage is so arcane is because it probably the most fair two-player card game. There is basically no first player advantage in a proper game to 121, and across multiples. Hand for hand, the player with the crib gets more points, but that all washes out by the non-crib player scoring first and via pegging.

Like, I understand runs and pairs and flushes and whatever. They’re weird, but they’re an artifact of the 52-card deck. They pop up in poker and everywhere. It’s knobs and turn-up jacks that get me. No one bothers pointing those out in their initial rules explanations, and it absolutely sounds like they’re making it up on the spot when they do come up.

And I see what you’re saying about balance. When we split our two-player games, both were won by the player getting across the finish line before the other’s hand and crib could be scored.

I think CRIBBAGE was designed by some inveterate gentleman gamblers as a consummate test of skill constrained by still using a standard lower tarot. Especially in the long run, the more skilled player will win more, and even in a single game, the first-player luck is minimized by all those dumb rules. Knobs, Heels, cribbed flush only counts if 5 cards, 1-for-go-but-2-for-31, &c. It's annoyingly detailed.

Cribbage is on my list of games I've always wanted to learn. You can try to teach yourself classic card games from a book or list of rules, but it's always so much easier for me to learn them from someone else. Even Canasta (probably my favorite game with a deck of playing cards) I only learned because we have a branded deck from Hasbro that didn't force me to memorize all the ways the various 3s behave. I think that trying to go through Pagat to learn Cribbage has kind of bounced off of me.