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

The woman I have been dating (though it is drifting into the friend zone now, due to my affliction) invited me over to celebrate her birthday with a couple of her closest friends. These are the same non-gamers that I played Rock Hard 1977 with last month. They wanted to play again, especially since I was bringing a boom box and bespoke music mixes, but one person was feeling exhausted, so we played two lighter games that I brought.

Kill Dr. Lucky is always a hit with non-gamers. Even though I shuffled the deck well, we drew more weapons, move cards, and room cards than usual, and fewer failure cards. That made for a shorter game, and the exhausted guy won after maybe 45 mintues, with the old poke in the eye.

Exhausted guy couldn't handle a second game, and was soon snoring on the couch, so we played a three-player game of This Game is Killer. I would love to get a bigger game going sometime, but so far it has always been three-player games, the bare minimum IMO. This one went fast. The xenomorph killed me on turn one, and another player went into a cold hibernation capsule. Three turns later, the cold capsule occupant froze to death because she couldn't guess the xenomorph's location. On turn five, my friend easily defeated the xeno with a card effect that only works when there is only one human left. (She riddled it with bullets.)

My kids and I busted out kill Dr. Lucky the other day. The OLD cheap-ass edition.

Do you require story telling when you play? We also go into detail on how exactly the killing attempt is performed and why it failed.

" I come up behind him and smash him in the head with the big red hammer."

' You forgot that it is a NERF hammer."

At the start of the game, I always ask each player why they want to kill Dr. Lucky. And my copy is still the first edition cheapass version. Oddly enough, non-gamers like the map anyway, 8 sections and all. I think the font does a nice job of conveying a bit of an art deco feel to the map.

We used to call the poke the Nanto Secret Eye Poking Technique.

Played a game of The Great Wall with gunpowder expansion. I got that off a guy getting rid of some of his large KS games for a decent deal. I enjoy the game quite a bit and the production while over the top, is stunning on the table.

After that we got into playing a few games of Arcs base and now in middle of a campaign. I like the game so far, not love it. Some fates (characters) seem to have a better path to win, but I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how best to use the powers of my chosen fate.

Hosted another group and we played 7 Wonders and Colosseum (Days of Wonder ver) and I really loved that one. Very clever, and the slow build of my colosseum and planning and putting on better and better shows.

My one and only game of coliseum was years and years ago. The whole game came down to a final dice roll, and I had been eating homemade chili all day, and as soon as the dice hit the table I emitted a thunderous fart that shook the table. Everyone pretended not to hear it and I started laughing. I knew then that these people would only every be gaming pals, and not actual friends.

Haven't posted in here for a good few months but have been getting enough gaming in, I do short after action reports in my BGG account and these days that's about all I can manage writing about games - playing yep, typing about the plays not so much.
Have been carrying on with campaign games that have been queuing up but also getting some normal play sessions in as well.

My BGG stats say for this year so far:
Arkham Horror: The Card Game - played the core scenarios and the Dunwich Horror campaign thru twice. It was fun but not enough for any of us to spend money on additional campaigns.
Etherfields - finally got this out (after two years) with two others who wanted to try it and it is a brilliant game, all of us having a great experience. It does help that I have a spare table I can set it up on to save breaking it down each week.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - slowly getting thru this, two of the guys have had very unreliable work and life situations so it is going slowly, second time thru for me and still loving it while the other three don't want to stop.
Sword & Sorcery - this has been dropped though, for the same reasons as above. Three of the five just kept not making it so it wasn't worth playing only once every 4-6 weeks. A great game but that's the problem when you start a campaign with four other people.
Machina Arcana - some more plays with two different mates, really fun mechanics and we don't mind the hours it takes to get thru a scenario ... or not on the odd occasion.
The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth - played the first campaign (two of us with a 3rd hero shared) and neither of us were that enthralled with it, just a bit too abstracted for us and the repetition of tests everywhere. On the sale pile.
Dungeons & Dragons: Trials of Tempus - got a copy on sale a few months back and this is a pretty fun game. Have only played it 2-player with two heroes each but everyone I've played it with (admittedly all three of them play D&D) has also liked it, and most of the games have been quite close - two ending with us on the same score and the winner coming from who killed the Boss.
Firefly Adventures: Brigands and Browncoats - new to me and after a couple of plays we all decided it was good so it's staying for the moment.
Silverton - an old favourite of mine and told a couple of the lads I'd introduce them to a proper Train game (i.e. Not Ticket to Ride). It went down well and they both want to play it again. Playing it with the automated spreadsheet (that someone created for it) on a laptop for the market prices adds a lot to the game.
World of Warcraft: The Boardgame - picked up a mint copy for a good price last year so had to give it a run out, just some good old early FFG coffin game fun.

And then just various medium length fun games:
Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game
Maximum Apocalypse
Attack on Titan: Deck-Building Game
Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
Dark Venture

Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps - 3 players. My friend spent way too much on this and keeps wanting to get it to the table. Last night we used some expansion material, finally. The mission has Ripley and Newt starting out trapped in the med bay with no weapons and 2 face huggers.

Apone got the med bay opened and took care of the face huggers, and Ripley armed up with her plasma rifle / flame thrower combo.

We had 2 auto-turrets set up in the main corridor. These absolutely shred anything that comes their way, including players, and there is no way to turn them off, so you have to wait for them to run out of ammo before you can move past them. For this reason, placement is pretty crucial.

Starting at round 4, you roll a d10 to see if Bishop has come in with the drop ship. I rolled a 3, so our evac was ready to go. At that point, we had to wait a couple of turns for the turret to stop firing, and then we could start making our way to the drop ship. Vasquez had a very hard time building a barricade, but eventually got it, and started catching up to the group.

Burke, ironically, was quite hardy, surviving multiple alien attacks and actually taking several of them out with a well placed grenade. His combat skills are awful though, but he still managed to shoot a couple of them as well. Unfortunately he was not good at dodging Ripley's flame thrower, and fell to friendly fire in the literal sense. He deserved it; he was the one who locked her in the med bay.

Everyone got into the final corridor, and Vasquez barricaded the door behind, as a literal horde of xenos gave chase. The barricade held long enough to give people a chance to get closer to the exit, but then a tunnel popped up right next to Vasquez. Only one xeno showed up though.

Hudson went down, as did Frosty. Basically every "grunt" character died (characters have a "hero" side and a "grunt" side, with the grunt being less effective. Player count determines how many heroes and grunts you have.

Apone, Vasquez, Ripley, and Newt all made it to the drop ship, living to tell the tale.

This mission took almost 5 hours. It was not worth almost 5 hours. Some of this was due to looking up rule clarifications, but some of it is just that this game takes a long time. You manage this central deck of cards that represents actions people can take, and it gets damn tedious. I want to like this game a lot more than I actually do. It is squarely average. If it did not have the Aliens license, it would never see the table.

Been playing Captain's Chair solo and games of Uprising solo, work has been busy so I haven't either played too much with my partner or gotten any tts gaming in.

Captain's Chair is a weird one. I think it is a solid 2p game that is actually pretty mean and confrontational, which is the last thing anyone has ever said about Imperium. It also falls for some things I think are some of the only bad design I've seen from the team---there are some pretty hard counters in the common market deck which is annoying and there are a bunch of powers that have you search or scan whole decks looking for a trait, which is super annoying as a mechanic because what that's really saying is "memorize the decks for the best combo with this card and grab that." Not good.

Uprising remains a revelation for me, moving up now that I have an acutal copy. it's a vastly better game with the physical set. It has the look of a careless plastic vomit "pimped" kickstarter game but the physical design is actually quite thoughtful, it's obvious someone sat down with the game and tried multiple versions of the physical presentation until it was convenient. It also has a bit more depth to its systems than is immediately obvious... I tried a game with one of the characters focusing heavily on the questing mechanic, and their special feats related to quests meant it was a cool and powerful way to go about contributing to a winning game of Uprising. I also suffered a very dramatic loss where a strong horde character lost to a weak legion unexpectedly and ruined all my plans by allowing the Legion to run out to a victory because I had planned all around the horde (Oda The Fallen) stomping to a victory and then me dealing with him later.

I've been playing a bunch of smaller, simpler games with my group. Some oldies too.

Pan Am:
I got this for David Ausloos but the shipping was so much he decided to forget about it. I gave it to my buddy thinking I had no interest. What a huge mistake, because it is one of my favorite games of the last 10 years. Such a tight game. I think it's up there with Catan as far as games everyone should own.

Quadropolis:
I still am on the fence. I like it enough to want to play it and I think it's smart enough to deserve a place at the table but it just seems like a rushed design, and it isn't super compelling. It's fun-ish, but with little player interaction it's kind of multiplayer solitaire.

Dragonwood:
Yet another mostly multiplayer solitaire race game, but it's cute and fast. Good for kids, too.

Kero:
Still one of the best games I've ever played. I got a 3D printer and I'm going to make some new truck caps so I can buy a series of sand timers to find two within a few seconds of one another. My two sets are wildly different.

Harmonies:
This is an interesting game. Again, multiplayer solitaire but it's so hard to not kind of like it. Endearing and hard. Reminds me of Takenoko but I like this more and it's faster.

I've been trying to figure out what makes Pan Am distinct from other train games that I've tried (and generally disliked.) Is it because it seems to be in that happy medium between something like base TTR and something with far more angles like the Brass series? I've never played any of the 18xx series because I generally don't like train games. I'm assuming that many of them have random events akin to the ones in Pan Am? I've realized that that's one of the features that I really like, since it changes the parameters of each game without seeming like artificial obstacles like so many Event decks do in other games. Is it because you're actually not building routes that are going to be permanent, but are instead building toward a more oblique goal of selling those routes and then having to make the choice of converting your resources directly into VPs (shares) or instead holding on to them to try to build again? That's far from unique among games and probably isn't among train games, either.

SuperflyPete wrote: IQuadropolis:
I still am on the fence. I like it enough to want to play it and I think it's smart enough to deserve a place at the table but it just seems like a rushed design, and it isn't super compelling. It's fun-ish, but with little player interaction it's kind of multiplayer solitaire.

There is no better description for Quadropolis than fun-ish. It's a deeply adequate game.

My biggest obsession has been Spirit Island, having found a used copy for $25 last fall. It's not an easy one to get played because of how much it gives the player to chew on. But I've been able to find a number of people to play with semi-regularly, and it has lodged itself in my brain. I love how its complexity is entirely in the decision-making space, not in necessarily wrestling with the rules. That's backwards to how most games do it. In a fit of tariff-related panic I bought all of the expansions well before I needed them. No regrets though, I've enjoyed it enough to know that I would like the whole enchilada.

Some friends of mine do a regular Ark Nova league on BGA, and I joined in this year. I've played a number of times in person and I really enjoy it. I don't begrudge anyone not being into it, because it's extremely Euro, and a complicated one at that. But it does a good job at giving you a shallow part of the pool to play in, where you can splash around and make a happy zoo, while everyone else destroys you. It reminds me a little of how I felt when I learned Agricola, in that it provides a sort of themey-ness that isn't entirely thematic but is thematic enough. I am not very good, and playing on BGA makes me even worse. But it's still fun to play and to learn more about it.

Every game night I have been to lately will feature at least one game of The Gang, and that's fine with me. I have read a fair bit about a game that compares it to The Mind, which sure, I can see that. But it also really underrates how much is happening above the table in The Gang. It feels like less game than it is, because it doesn't have a whole lot of mechanical levers to pull. But that doesn't mean there isn't something very interesting happening there. I don't think it is quite as brilliant as The Crew, but it is working for me better in its own way.

Speaking of the Crew, The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game is a lot like it, but less interesting and with much nicer cards. I've only played a few hands so maybe it becomes more nuanced the deeper you go. I'm doubtful though.

Endeavor Deep Sea was a raffle prize from a local con, and a good one. I would not have spent money on it if I was left to my own devices, because I remember bouncing off the original Endeavor waaaaaayyy back in 2010 or whenever it was. But I'm glad I ended up with a copy, because it's fun! It's very much a Euro design where every action locks like a gear into every other action, but the deep sea exploration theme comes through reasonably well, and the different scenarios appear to take it in lots of cool directions. I have just played once, so I look forward to taking another bite at the apple, so to speak.

My friend, Brad, brought another minis skirmish game back from Adepticon back in March in the form of Bloodfields. Like most of them, it's dice-driven, but with special dice that add to the immersion in both the lore and the play of the game. You pick a team (typically of 8 but we played an intro game of 4 each, since he'd only ever played a demo at the con) and then slug it out in whatever terrain you have available. It was his Beastmen against my Witch Hunters. The dice have one skull (a success), one blank (a failure), and a mix of combat results (showing a crossed blade, bow, and staff) and Inspiration banners. The former are successes if you actually have Mastery in melee, ranged, or magic combat, respectively. The latter can be successes IF you have Inspiration tokens for the character that's committing the attack. Said tokens are distributed to your team before each round of the game (5 rounds for at least the intro game that we played) so there's some risk that you might get a really good roll on a character that has no tokens to take advantage of, so it's kind of a risk assessment each turn, which is an interesting system. You gain points for controlling points on the board, as well as killing off your opponent's team. Brad won the game, 80-70.

Then we switched to Neuroshima Hex. I continued my neverending quest to make Uranopolis work and I suggested that he take Steel Police, since he's still relatively new to the game (had only played a couple times before.) I thought I had established a decent firebase, but my Ravager came out as a very early draw, meaning that he basically just denied space until he was killed off in the first battle. Then he got two Judges down, backed up by two Officers, and I just couldn't get a position to remove them. Every time I tried, they'd just spin around, bounce my attacks back for a turn, and then turn and start blasting again. I ran my HQ around with Uranopolis' excellent modules and took a six point lead, but then got blown down to 2 in the final battle, with him still at 10. The quest continues...

Back to back con weekends, two weeks ago GMT East, this past weekend Stack Academie in Montreal . 

GMT East

Held at the same place as last year, the Proctor Theater in downtown Schenectady. A bit of an odd location, but it works. And we had a better room than last year. Attendance was a touch under 70 , a bit above last year and that was despite a handful of Canadians deciding not to attend . Andy doesn't sell on site per se ( the venue requires a 25% sales commission, fuck that) but takes pre orders and delivers them to the con, which the venue has no problem with. He's already got dates for next year , April 16-19th. 

Found one good new place to eat ( GRANO, like two doors down from the theater ) and one place with OK food but comically bad service ( Center St Pub, avoid at all costs ) . The Italian place across the street, Johnnys is good. Heard good things about a dive bar behind the hotel as well. 
Games played, in no particular order:

HEAT PEDAL TO THE METAL. Now getting more play , it's a good light semi filler when you have a lot of people . We played with the bots for two cars. I spun in an early corner and spent the rest of the race catching up to no avail. 

PACIFIC TYPHOON - the original late night classic. REPLUSE and all. 

GALACTIC CRUISE. Andy Lewis brought this; an engine builder that came out recently and is riding the BGG hotness. Which means it's....OK I guess ? I am certainly not rushing out to buy it . Its worker placement where you are building space ships to appeal to tourists. Stein played in a separate game; it's probably in play at CABS I am guessing. 

CC SAMURAI BATTLES.  Stein and I  played some scenario that saw the usual back and forth where after an early lead, Pete came back and almost snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. But as we edge closer to WBC we know how this ends...he lost. 

ANGOLA.. My green FNLA and Pete's blue UNITA vs Jeff Burdetts yellow  and Andy ( from Crotchester ) played red . Our early game started off pretty well - despite losing the first turn, I got the green major 8 strength brigade. Along with the turn 1 reinforcements and the usual death star formation, I had a 22 point stack that overran the Cabinda forces and captured it on turn 2. Not only that, but I rolled a 6 on my first machete roll. The communist players were demoralized but Pete and I were both like....keep playing.  But after that, the tide of communist units with combat mods was too much; my FNLA forces gradually got whittled down to the point where I had like 2 total missile/mine counters on the whole map and very few modifier units. We conceded around turn 8 IIRC with the VP marker at like 13. 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL. My second time playing this, we set up the 1942 scenario. We spent most of Saturday playing this. We got to the end of the war...but the game had started to wear us down. It certainly has some interesting elements, but afterwards we were a bit conflicted on our verdict on the game . I skimmed through the various card decks after I got home . As Burdett and I discussed, there is not much of a sandbox to play in , relatively speaking. Even the early war cards seem to be focused on a largely historical path. I am not advocating for the possibility of building Amerika bombers or other Hurray for Herrenvolk stuff, but it seems hard to even replicate what they did historically from a tech standpoint for instance. And the decks seem somewhat limited in variety. Then again, you've only got a fairly finite number of spaces that see significant action. Even once you get the hang of things, the 1939 start means you're looking at a full day and then some to complete the entire war.


WAR OF THE RING CARD GAME, 6 player. I was the hobbit faction and saw ONE item card from my "allies" the entire game - Bill the Pony. One was a new player so I guess that's part of it. Despite that, the game ended with a tie score, which goes to the Shadow when tied. The Ruffian/Southron/Easterling player did a great job spamming actions to activate Shadow battlegrounds on the final round which was the deciding factor. That is the only faction I haven't played yet, so I resolved to play them next time. 

This past weekend was Stack Academie in Montreal, held at the downtown Novotel hotel. Once you park your car under the hotel, no need to use it as the mass transit is excellent and the city is very walkable.  The annual Au Pied Cochon dinner was moved to Thursday from its usual Fri/Sat slow due to some reservation mix up, but it ended up working so well we told Marc that's the day to hold it going forward . Less crowded and doesn't take away from gaming time as the con doesn't start til Friday morning. 




Mark and Ken Guerin spent a good chunk of the con playing ON HELLS HIGHWAY while I took a break and got in a variety of stuff. In no particular order:




COMBAT COMMANDER ( three games ) . Dominick Lauzon ranA a tournament with 12 players; I won my first 2, then lost a close match to Larry Sisson in Normandy scenarion featuring Canadians attacking SS . He had a huge VP lead, but I was two units away from forcing him to Surrender. I bought some 3D printed pimpage to bring home. Grenade ( initiative ), markers for the tracks and two ammo boxes to hold Smoke/Objective markers.  




Everything else was multi player. Micheal Kiefte had both sons attend this year, which made for high player counts. Had I known he had two spawn with him I would have brought CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD . 




A STUDY IN EMERALD ( two games ) . Both times played with Jeromey, Micheal Kiefte, and his two adult sons, Andrew and David. Hadn't played this in awhile other than a game at AdmiralCon, but this def needs to get back into the rotation. Even with five players, two of which who were somewhat new, the games are roughly an hour, maybe a touch longer. Both games had Vampires show up, but only the first time did they progress beyond biting the initial player. Second game saw Zombies, but Michael got them too late. I cost Jeromey the win in the second game by coming in last by 1 VP ; I got a slow start and was lugging around an Infernal Machine for too long, cramping card flow in my hand. If the game had gone another turn, I would have hidden a monster ( Loyalist ) and gotten enough points to at least get out of last. 




HEAT PEDAL TO THE MEDAL ( twice )  . Played with Weather and some corner random events which mixes things up. One race was on a long track which had several tunnels - the effect of them is that you can't discard cards if you end in a tunnel. This is another game that is starting to see action as a sort of filler/everyone can usually agree to play it and not take it seriously. 




BATTLESTAR GALACTICA . Played with a few new players base game only. One of the two newbs was a Cylon and long story short didn't do much . They switched with another more experienced player. I got dealt a Cylon card at the halfway point but by then the game had been such a cakewalk that despite revealing pretty soon after that I couldn't do much. This game was a prime exhibit why the Cylon Fleet board expansion was needed. The Pilots had nothing to shoot at the second half of the game. I think we had 2 Blue fleet cards the entire game. The humans won with the Resources still in the blue on all 4 dials. Still an entertaining game. We had 6 players, which should have had Sympathizer but I decided to skip it to keep things simple and that probably contributed, but the lacof blue cards and a high percentage of "player chooses " Crisis vs actual tests made the humans survival pretty easy. 




WAR OF THE RING  CARD GAME ( twice 4P and 6P ) . I got to play the Ruffians/South/Easterling faction finally. They do not have a leader that enables an extra card draw or a way to increase their card carryover limit. What they do have are a lot of interesting events, some early path villains, and a lot of thug armies that can stir shit up and activate new battlegrounds as well as allow armies to go places they normally can't go. This game still holds up extremely well.