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

Played our first game of Molly House. Uh... woof. This is not an easy learn or teach and this was after me reading the rulebook multiple times AND watching Heavy Cardboard's three-hour teach + game of it. There are two different discard decks, Safe and Gossip, and there are so many different methods by which the three kinds of cards- Mollies, Threats, and Desires =go into those two different decks that it's hard to keep track of what mechanic you're exercising because the methods are so similar but the impact on the game is so different. And that is, of course, if those cards don't end up in your Reputation in the first place. The centerpiece of the game, the Festivities, is easy in execution. Everyone plays 0, 1, or 2 cards in the interest of having the best party possible, both for the community's Joy (essentially VP) and your own. The interplay in terms of declaring intent for a particular type of party and then perhaps having it reverted to a different type based on what's played and trying to get your cards scored in a Dance or Christening instead of your opponents' is all fascinating and will become even moreso once we get accustomed to, essentially, card counting based on what's in the Safe pile (which we can see) and remembering what went into the Gossip pile (which we can't.) That part of the game is really, really interesting. It's a Cole Wehrle-level interest. It's just the discarding part and all the things around that element which feel almost overburdened. Certainly, it will get easier the more we play, but I've rarely run into a game that's this difficult to simply explain. I hate having to teach things by just saying: "We have to start playing" because then people get in a twist about moves they could've made ("Well, if I'd known THAT...") Yeah, sorry, but with this game, it's probably just easier to start doing it, fuck it up 2 or 3 times, and then just move along.

In the end, we managed to screw up one rule about playing Threats (rogues and constables) into Festivities that thinned our deck more than it should have (people should have lost more Reputation (cards) than they did.) But we did manage to not only keep the Evidence against the four houses spread out well enough that only Miss Muff's had been raided by the time we reached the 5th and final week. We also managed to pull off two Surprise Balls in that 5th week which got our community Joy past the point we needed (30 points in a 4-player game.) But in doing the final End of Week sequence, Miss Muff's got raided again and we lost without anyone having been an informant (because we forgot to place Indictments after the first raid, anyway.) There's just so much happening in these secondary systems that is simply unintuitive. But the central one, the Festivities, is really fascinating. So, we'll definitely try again but I can't help but wonder if this one needed more time in the oven.

I have great respect for Cole Wehrle for designing games that are very different from the vast majority of the shovelware being published these days. However, I don't actually enjoy playing his games because there is a definite disconnect between subject matter and mechanics that makes the rules difficult to learn and the gameplay less immersive.

I think your second play is far far easier than your first in Molly House. I also found it much easier to teach after a play.

After a couple of plays, the card flow and different idiosyncrasies are actually pretty easy to recall and understand. It's almost like a completely different game from the first play.

Shellhead wrote: I have great respect for Cole Wehrle for designing games that are very different from the vast majority of the shovelware being published these days. However, I don't actually enjoy playing his games because there is a definite disconnect between subject matter and mechanics that makes the rules difficult to learn and the gameplay less immersive.

I'm different in that respects, as I don't feel that disconnect. In fact, in Molly House, you can easily tie each mechanism to the thematic element that inspired it. The other players would ask me something like "Why do Quiet Gatherings actually lose Joy?" And the answer is: Because the idea is that the community's expression of life was in having those big parties. A quiet gathering meant that they were hiding from the people who wanted to punish them for being who they were. They wanted to keep the community alive in the face of the oppression that it was receiving and the way to do that was to inspire more people to join their community by creating joy. Big parties do that. It all makes sense when you think about it for a bit and it's the same thing I felt when playing Pax Pamir. That genuinely is like a multi-faceted test of wills based on trying to convince different segments of society to join this or that faction. It's quite a subtle contest, both historically and in the game. Charlie's right in that, as with any game, just being familiar with the way it functions will make the next play better. Now that I think of it, I had a similar reaction to Root, in that much of the game was still opaque after the first play, but I was still intrigued by how all of the factions worked differently in the same space, so I kept playing. Same thing here, in that the dynamics of the Festivities are a real draw. It's just dealing with all of the accompanying stuff that makes those gears turn is the problem, at the moment.

The opacity is definitely part of what I am talking about. There is a definite disconnect between mechanics and subject matter in his games, because the complexity of the interlocking of the mechanics makes it difficult to discern why the proceedings represent the subject matter. The gold standard for what I like to see in a thematic game design is found in the early works of Gale Force 9. Even if you hadn't seen the specific tv show, you would hear a rule and immediately grasp how that rule delivered a thematic element. I played Root three times, a different faction each time, and I still didn't enjoy even the third game despite having a better overall understanding of the rules.

Which leads to another possible reason that I am not enjoying Cole's games: “We're not trying to make fun games. We're trying to make good games.” Cole said that five years ago in an interview for Dicebreaker, and I believe that is still true.

www.dicebreaker.com/companies/wehrlegig-...-oath-root-pax-pamir

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe Molly House represents a new, fun, thematic direction for Leder Games. I would be willing to try Molly House, but won't buy it without having played it first. None of my local gaming friends have it, as far as I know.

No. I totally understand. I think the adjoining comment that he made with Patrick Leder at one point was: "We're trying to make someone's favorite game, not everyone's." That definitely means that they'll often be aiming for niche audiences in an already niche segment of entertainment and it doesn't even mean that people who are Wehrle fans will "get" everything that he does. Gary Sax is a huge fan of Oath, but Arcs fell flat for him. If his style doesn't work for you, then it doesn't.

I'm thankful when a game is bold enough to know that it doesn't have to please everyone, but that with a little more specificity it can please a few people a LOT. Not every game needs to be that way, but at the same point not every game needs mass appeal either.

On topic, due credit to Becca Scott. This is the best teach I've seen yet about the game and only takes 20 minutes (unlike the hour of Heavy Cardboard, for example):



She even reminded me of a rule I forgot, which is that if you roll a discard symbol on the dice, you can move 0 (i.e. stay where you are.), We only rolled discard symbols like 2 or 3 times in our 5 weeks of play (and never rolled doubles to get the Handsome Gentleman in a Carriage) so it didn't really affect our game, but it's good to know, especially if you'd like to stay put and Cruise again or something like that.

Got together with my most infrequent group (that I sometimes see members of in other situations; Brad, my most regular two-player partner is one of this group.) We played Versailles 1919 because another member, Erin, owned it and wanted to try it out and was encouraged by the fact that two of us had played it already, so the teach would be easier. This time for me and John (the other one who had played before) was 4-player, instead of 3-player, so that was a different perspective, as well. There's still A LOT going on in this game in terms of that long-term/short-term tussle that I posted about before. I was Italy and they strike me as very much a junior partner in all of this, which is historically appropriate. I was lagging well behind after a few rounds and my two issues that I'd won were both in the Balkans, which is also the only region that had unrest, which means that I was the only one at risk of having my issues Unsettled. So I spent a couple rounds bidding everything I had in terms of both military and influence to hold on to one of my two piddling issues, while everyone else had four. They kind of went easy on me in the second round of that and eventually I was able to push the unrest in the Middle East much higher (it sat at a roll of 1+ to take effect for much of the game) and settled some issues and generally got into the game. In the end, I was able to score a large Reparations issue (Rebuilding) and a couple other sizable ones in Europe, such that I was neck-and-neck with the leader, France. I made a deal with him that he wouldn't go for one of my issues On The Table if I'd agree to settle it and then put the endgame issue (Rush to the Finish) in play, which he then won. We tallied up the scores and it was UK 32, US 37, France 43... and Italy 45. My Strategy card, Reparations, matching France's for Happiness bonus (the two of us and the US were all tied on that track) and my couple of tokens on Rebuilding put me over the top. I think it's a cool game, but Brad found it to be too much of a brain burner, at least on the first play.

Then we got our first play of Power Vacuum in. Again, I'm a huge fan of Mal's studio, based solely on Roll, Camera! but I'm already fond of this one, too. It's a trick-taker and the person who wins the trick gets a point and the person who plays the lowest card to the trick gets to manipulate the Power board, which affects the Agenda cards that people have which are going to end up being most of the points they score, if they can score them. Like CDennett said, I think there's an argument that simply revealing your agenda and working toward it to score the most possible points (8 if you get either the appliance with the most power or least power, 16 if you get both) has some merit. But I think there is a play to keeping it secret so that, if you're in the lead, it's more difficult for people to work against you. I scored a number of tricks with hands full of Violence (red, which is trump) but also played into the magic moment of not only winning the trick with a 1 or 2 of Violence but also getting to manipulate the board with the lowest number. You turn in 10 points to get pieces of a statue celebrating your rise to power and, despite John making a huge push at the end with 29 points, that left him one short of tying me for a completed statue when I got the 10 I needed to finish mine. When I told her the results of the games, my girlfriend was like: "They're gonna stop inviting you."

My favorite miniatures game is Frostgrave. I used to play it a lot with one of the guys in my old group, but when Covid happened, he turned out to be an anti-vaxxer and I cut ties. In 2021 Stargrave came out, and I immediately picked it up.

Fast forward to last night, myself and another friend finally played Stargrave for the first time. I had built my crew in advance. After teaching him the rules and making his crew, we played a first mission. I'd say all of that took about 5 hours, which is quite a long time for a game of Stargrave, but we had to look some stuff up, and he tends to play in weird ways, fixating on pulling off some stunt as opposed to actively trying to win.

It was pretty bloody, with both sides losing most of their forces. He ended up leaving the board with 3 of the 5 loot tokens, and I got the other two. We will save all of the post game stuff for next time.

It was fun playing something like this again. Hopefully it moves more swiftly next time.

Glad to hear others play StarGrave!
A buddy and I played through the Stargrave Quarantine 37 (Space Zombie Missions) last year. Pretty big accomplishment with kids, work and all the things that get in the why these days.

I like that the game has uses for all the stupid bit of scenery I have laying around and provides an excuse to make new stuff and that there is always some sort of extra crazy going on, like your two bands are fighting but then there are zombies, and loot, and exploding bins, and ...

I always forget to use my captain / firstmate powers and d20 rolls can be brutal.

LORDS OF MF'IN BASEBALL.

What a hit. Home run.

If you like..:
- Mathy Economic Engines
- Power Grid-ish with a large dose of luck
- Early USA Baseball
- Multiple paths to win
- Killer scaling 1-8p games
...then you may love this game.

I don't give two shirs about sports but this is a management game at its heart, with an extremely good dose of setting and theme which is exceptionally well integrated into the gameplay.

The info aid card is arguably Universal-Head level or better, you can play the whole game off of it.

Seriously, best game I've played in years. I played FOUR HOURS of it, and I wasn't done.

Ha. Awesome. Sounds like Club Stories: The Baseball version. Club Stories is about managing a football club in the same fashion. I really like games like that, which is probably my affection that carried over to my one experience of Strat-O-Matic baseball, where we had a set group of teams, held a draft, and played a league season of something like 30 or 40 games over the course of a school year. But this is about managing the franchise, improving the stadium, and all the other stuff that goes into games like Club Stories.

Played a couple more Cthulhu: DMD episodes today. "We're" still continuing through season 1 and I say "we're" because I've been the lone common player in all of our plays (twice in episode 1 and once through episode 2.) So, I'm tired of waiting and decided to start today with Episode 3. I picked Ithaqua as our GOO because I'm fond of him as a character and wanted to try him out. We've been playing different GOOs for all three of our plays before this (Cthulhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth) so I figured I'd just keep to that variety, even though it's kind of a weird story element, if you're thinking about the episodes as one part of a series (Why would the fire cult in the first episode be worshipping Cthulhu and then switch to Hastur in the second? I dunno. It's my world and welcome to it.)

So, we did the Danse Macabre (episode 3) with Adelia, Ian, and Leon. I played the latter so we'd have at least one Marksman character, since the other two were Brawlers. I wasn't too impressed with his signature ability (Show-off) because it was kind of contrary to Marksman, since you wanted to be in the same room as another investigator to get the bonus die, but you get two bonus dice if you stay outside the room where they're grappling with the GOO (among other things) and you've boosted Marksman by one level. We did pretty well in the process of deduction in terms of figuring out where the Sorcerers were hiding among the dancers. Plus, Ithaqua seems to be among the less difficult of the GOOs, since most of his threat is centered around the Blizzard token, which is only one token. Also, the Shantak aren't that threatening. It's more that they just take a long time to kill. However, Ian did go insane before we managed to finish off Ithaqua and move on to the next scenario.

Our Adelia player decided to stick with her, but Ian and Leon were replaced by Gary and John, respectively. Since we were playing episode 4, Eldritch Idols, I decided to shift to my favorite of Lovercraft's creations, Azathoth. It just seemed appropriate to be running around the weird museum of the blind, idiot god and trying to make the chaos work for us. We got arrested a couple times by the Guards, but managed to clear enough space of Cultists and Dancers that we were able to halt the ritual and summon him. We were less pressed for health and sanity than in the previous episode but Gary did end up dying at the hands of two Dancers and three Cosmic Cultists before I stepped up outside the door (playing the Marksman character again) and shot the Daemon Sultan, winning the day for us. I was disappointed that we killed the Shoggoth as basically our first action of the game and then never drew the episode card to summon it back to the table (no Byakhee, either.) I was much more enthusiastic about John's Leadership skill, since it allowed us to set up the key combination to disrupt the ritual, when I took actions on behalf of Adelia on my turn to get us in place for the next time the GOO advanced on the track.

Since we're talking about cultists, I'm pretty certain I now have two new converts to DMD, at least.

Played a little Vijayanagara on the rally the troops. It was fine; it was snappy and not to involved, which is to its credit. Rather play it than COIN but it doesn't MOVE ME so I won't be looking more deeply into it.

Been playing a lot of Arkham recently, not too much to say there other than the new campaign is solid and, finally, is less involved and breezy compared to the last 3-4 campaigns. Nothing special but it got me back into an Arkham kick solo as well.

Still playing more Uprising. Total gem. Been trying to figure out the traitor legion faction, their starting resource allocation is wildly awkward for how their stuff is priced so you are behind the 8 ball t1. I'm starting to think they might not be supposed to fight a horde/legion the first turn? Not sure. They definitely seem like a "carry" faction in the parlance of a MOBA.