Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

My second was trading Pokémon cards on the bus, so I picked up the Battle Academy box to teach him what all those numbers mattered for. Pretty impressive as a product. The decks are ordered with accompanying booklets that describe your every move for the first four or five turns to ease the complete initiates into the TCG space. Power curve is absolutely bonkers. In any other game ‘Draw three’ with no cost would be absolutely broken. Here it’s just of three draw options (‘Draw two, and draw two more if you flip a coin ‘heads,’’ “Discard your hand to draw five’) along with some incredibly generous tutors. Winning comes down to drawing your single V Pokémon first because those things are incredibly hard to kill. Makes my boy happy because he keeps drawing his first.

In a similar vein, I finally got in David Sirlin’s Codex. It’s an odd one, straddling the line between TCG and Dominion-style deckbuilder and offering a Warcraft III-type experience. You’re trying to get your opponent’s base down to zero health from 20 through unit and spell attacks. Those are the only standard things about it. Your three starting heroes determine your starting deck and upgrade choices. At the end of every turn you can effectively trash a card by turning it into a worker, you secretly add two upgraded cards to your deck from your titular codex and you discard your entire hand but draw the number of cards discarded plus two. You can burn out everything for a massive turn, but you better take a decisive lead then. You won’t have a full hand for three turns afterward. You also can’t build your best cards until you build the appropriate tech buildings. Very much has its own rhythm that I’m nowhere near understanding, but it’s intriguing enough for a few more tries.

Codex is a really cool game. It will take a lot of plays to explore all that it has to offer, and it's not terribly friendly to new players.

Played ARKHAM HORROR 3E for the first time yesterday. I played the original way back in the day a few times. Missed 2E; played one campaign of the LCG. While some parts felt more streamlined than the old game, it still seems to run long for what it is. And unlike the LCG, its harder to see what your end goal will be, you’re kind of flying blind. I’m not a huge fan of the Arkham universe, but it was either this or Quartermaster General, which I loathe .

2x SCHADENFREUDE, 3x with the wife and kid. Pick up on either Dan or Charlie's review, can't remember. They are not the same person but they might as well be, in terms of piquing my interest. This is expensive for what it is, because it's imported, but I've already gotten more enjoyment per dollar out of the handful of games I've played, compared to others. Anyway, trick taking game but you win the trick if you come in second. Then you get points, but once someone gets over 40 points, the game ends and the closest to 40 without going over wins. Full of fuckery.

1x THAT'S NOT A HAT. Amazing to watch nerds who hate hidden trackable information have fun with this despite their stated preferences. Literally all it is is hidden trackable information but it is so fun watching people screw up. Or then they claim it's something it's not, and you start doubting yourself. Then it's down a rabbit hole of uncertainty and you just forget everything you tried to memorize.

Thunder Road: Vendetta. My son and daughter were both visiting and we had four players. I put on the Furiosa soundtrack. Halfway through the high winds caused a power outage so I took the LED lanterns out of the camper van and we continued. My daughter was complaining about the turn length and whenever we attacked her. She’s very competitive. We ate ice cream. It should have been the perfect gaming night with my adult kids. I even won. But something was lacking. Maybe I am too stressed right now. It felt like there were some interesting choices to make with the dice that ultimately were in the service of pure chaos. Fortunately I checked it out of the library and own the original. It’s still a good game. Maybe we would enjoy a second play more.

Base game is insufficient. Recommendations are to add $120 worth of expansions.

This is not a $200 game.

—Sag

“This is not a $200 game.”

I’m not sure what a $200 game is, anymore.

I've played Thunder Road a few more times with Sag, and we've warmed up to it quite a bit. He can speak to it more if he likes, but I think they just didn't have a good experience on the first playthrough (I wasn't there for the first play). We have even coined the term "the Thunder Road Effect" to describe the phenomenon.

I have three logged games, and I feel like there is still a lot of fun to be had with just the base game. I'd probably be content with another 10 plays, easily, without having to add expansion content.

Sag's comments about the base game being insufficient and the necessity of it being essentially a 200$ game were bore from a bad first play experience.

I'm sure his views have changed since then.

I just have the base game, and while I've never played with any expansion content, I just don't think this is the kind of game that needs additional "strategy".

Thunder Road Vendetta Strategy Guide:

Roll dice gooder.

It's not a game designed for strategy. It may be the most aptly named game on the market.

It's slightly more serious Magical Athlete.

hotseatgames wrote: I just have the base game, and while I've never played with any expansion content, I just don't think this is the kind of game that needs additional "strategy".

It does, however, benefit by adding some more ways to laugh at your opponents when they blow up in ever more ridiculous ways. (And of course, for them to laugh at you.)

charlest wrote: It's slightly more serious Magical Athlete.

Which is a fantastic game, so I'm not sure how this is a bad thing...?

Jackwraith wrote:

charlest wrote: It's slightly more serious Magical Athlete.

Which is a fantastic game, so I'm not sure how this is a bad thing...?

It's not.

My reign of terror in limited Star Wars Unlimited finally came to an end. Built a pretty basic Red Boba that took its first three games, but I finally lost the last two in some very close matches. Either of us could have won given just another turn or two, but I just could not crack The Ghost.

The big news, however, is that my eldest came along. I wasn’t sure until it started whether I would let him play, but there were only four of us drafting and I knew three of us would be fine to play with him. He needed a lot of help in picking cards for his deck, (I had to work very hard to convince him that drafting Vader was the right choice) but he pretty much made all of his own play decisions. Lost his first match and got borderline when he realized it would happen but rallied. Won his next two. Call it an unqualified success. The long plan of having children to play games with is finally paying off.