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

If you continue to enjoy it and have the interest for some longer exploration, Stalingrad is amazing. It's a head to head campaign with unlockable content, a map that permanently changes as you destroy buildings, and unit losses which carry forward forever. One of the best wargaming experiences I've had.

Yeah, that looks amazing and, historically, the Eastern front is probably the most interesting/continually dramatic of the theaters in the war. I know that Quinns assessed that similarly ("best wargaming experiences I've had.") The real draw for me was 2200 but I figured I'd start smaller with Normandy and see how it worked, but I might be tempted to go whole hog (which I really, really shouldn't do, given the recent idea was to reduce the size of the pile that now has to be moved...)

Jackwraith wrote: The real draw for me was 2200

Exactly the same for me. WWII doesn't really draw me to a game, so the future setting speaks more to me. I am interested in Battle of Britain because i have a hold over love of WWII planes because I grew up watching Baa Baa black sheep with my Dad and went down a Pappy Boyington rabbit hole as a kid. Besides, planes models were easier to put together than car models.

Played Mystery of the Abbey for the first time in probably 20 years. It's a decent Clue-like game and a great social game, so appropriate for the Alehouse. We seemed to be having a lot more fun than the other groups playing V-Wars and Santa's Workshop. I got picked on a bit at first because was the one in the easily-accessible Confessional, but I also managed to make it to the Parlor first to draw one of the unselected cards and then in the next round ended up in the Library, the card from which let me draw three Scriptorium cards. I had to play the first one right away which let me draw two cards from two players' hands and then return them switched. But I kept the other two, one of which let me move an extra step to get to a Confessional and then another which I played in our last round which forced someone to answer me when they'd taken the vow of silence. That question cleared up one of the two monks that I had no marks on whatsoever, which basically confirmed the killer for me. Combined with the one successful Revelation that I'd made earlier, I won 5-1-0--2. I'd play again over some more beers but, in the end, as fun as it is it's still basically Clue.

charlest wrote: If you continue to enjoy it and have the interest for some longer exploration, Stalingrad is amazing. It's a head to head campaign with unlockable content, a map that permanently changes as you destroy buildings, and unit losses which carry forward forever. One of the best wargaming experiences I've had.

I picked this up in a Math Trade on BGG a month or two ago and will be starting it this weekend with a mate. I'm interested in the light deck-building but with the hard choices/effects of permanently losing your named troops plus its simple, but seemingly accurate/balanced, mechanics. I do like campaign games, and legacy stuff, while the lighter side of this will make a nice change to the campaigns of Etherfields and Oathsworn I have on other days of the week. Also saw a video where the designer explained how, because as the campaign branches certain ways one side will get weaker, they introduced balancing every few scenarios down every campaign branch to make up for the simple mechanics skewing the lengthy campaign as it progressed.

I've actually had Undaunted: North Africa on the shelf for a year or so now, got it over Normandy because it featured the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group) that was initially comprised of New Zealand troops, but being a 2-player light game I just haven't had a chance to get it on the table with the glut of heavy and long games I need to get through. It will be interesting to see if I just consider it too short and simple after finishing Stalingrad.

Tad and Piper are back home for Holiday break. We played a game of Power Grid Recharged. I had an issue with remembering the pre-recharged rules and only breezing over the manual before beginning. So, I ended up playing the "Buy a Power Plant" phase wrong, with me only refilling it at the end of a round. Luckily, that didn't break the game and we had a good time with it, since Tad had never played it before. But, now I have that itch I get when I play something wrong and I want to get it back out to rectify the situation.
Tad requested some card games (a.k.a. something he can play while taking an edible and not feel disadvantaged) So we played Hot Streak with Hurley doing Hurley things and it was it's normal complete blast to play. A few games of Don't LLAMMA Dice which I think is actually better than Don't LLAMMA. I did my normal horrible risk taking and went out first.
We played a four player game of Mooncolony Bloodbath and we almost got to the final card (The Instruction Manual) before Piper lost all of her colonist. I had a nice Restock engine going but "lost" by one Colonist to Quentin.

My son is a big Civilization fan on PC. Two years ago I got him Civilization - A New Dawn from FFG. He never even cracked the shrink wrap, he was that disinterested. Fast forward to yesterday, my sons visit my new house for the first time ever. My son said he wanted to play a board game, so we were looking around the shelves for a nice two player option, and there was Civilization, still in shrink. We opened it, punched the tokens, skimmed the rules and went at it.

Each player gets 5 "Focus" cards that are placed on a track in front of them (your standard river). Actions taken farther down the track are more powerful, but once you take an action it goes to the first slot and the other cards shift down. Your turn literally just consists of picking one of these cards, executing it, and that's it. You might end up also placing some tokens, or having a battle, or upgrading your cards based on your own personal "Tech" dial. It's all very simple and very smooth.

The game comes with a few victory condition cards, each of which has two victory conditions on it. Three cards are chosen randomly each game, and you win by completing one condition per card. I was first to do this by completing two military wonders, but my son got all of his cities out on the board, and conquered two city-states for the win.

This game is fun! Not my normal style of game, for sure, but I enjoyed it. He did too, and I think he regrets never examining it sooner.

Another Game Day was concluded yesterday and we were able to play and were able to play Senior Citizen Signal! Elder Sign.

But prior to that, we played a quick game of Dungeon Roll, I played the Crusader, Nathan played the Mercenary, and my wife played the Viking. It went pretty quickly and I ended up winning, despite my wife scaring off the dragon once, and then killing it when it came up again during a delve.

Elder Sign... welll... We were not so lucky. We played with the Gates of Arkham expansion. Nathan laid out all the GOOs and I pulled...... Katchoolu. facepalm. It was truly an exercise in futility, as just as we'd remove a Doom token or add an Elder sign, some bullshit Mythos or failed adventure would remove the Signs and add the Doom token back. Multiple times, I asked if we wanted to call it, and both Nate and my wife said in unison, "NO!" So, the punching to our nether regions continued. Midway through the game, an adventure locked the red die and a gate opened to an Other World ..... That led to the Planet of the Gugs, with impossible fricken requirements. We never got the red die back.

Of course, Mayor McSquidface woke up and we "fought" him with about as much chance as winning the lotto... 3x. In the end, he had human sushi and we had knocked him down to six Doom tokens.

As a consolation prize, I was able to transfer Elder Sign: Omens to Nathan's phone, so he too can experience more kicks to the balls, but on his phone!

I'm totally bummed that Elder Sign won't work on my Pixel 8.

Had a couple games with sornars this weekend.

Tried Leviathan Wilds. I think it's really well designed and clever. It is also very thematic for climbing, you need to carefully plan your climbs and your stops, etc. It didn't bowl me over to MUST HAVE for some reasons kind of idiosyncratic to me but if I saw it used at a bookstore or something I'd definitely pick it up.

Specifically, my "issues" insofar as they are issues mostly relate to how no bullshit and straight to the point it is. It really has no arc, you are just In It and you have like 5 rounds of a couple turns to get it all done. I guess I'm just at my heart a much heavier gamer. It's also a bit puzzly; in retrospect I wish we had spent considerably more time mapping our route a little with the two players to decide which crystal to punch each. We kind of winged it and that was a reason we failed. I think my final issues, and I'm still not sure where I am on this as I'd need to play again, is that the 3 card hand feels very artificial as a way to limit your choices and not AP you. But I think it loses a little bit because it's like "I know this fucking blue damage prevention is in this stack but I only get a hand of 3 so...?" Good game.

Then we played a game of Uprising at the difficulty I generally play at and it was absolute murder. We basically drew every card that could help one of your opponents (the legion) but not the other that we could and had some tile flips which did the same. We managed to stabilize but not before the Legion was so far out pointing us that it was irretrievable, we quit end of T2 (of 3). What's interesting about the game is that cranking the difficulty also adds the more interesting tiles which can also be swingier; the base game is very buttoned down and won't swing against you too hard. I felt bad for sornars as it's never fun to play a game that you probably never had a chance at in a coop game. Still a fun game if you can accept that possibility at high difficulties; I don't blame anyone who can't. Spirit Island actually suffers similar problems at really high difficulties, higher than I play at.

I might read up on Dead Reckoning's rules again, we played a game earlier this year and I liked it a lot. We considered playing it but I didn't have the mastery at hand so didn't feel like sitting around and muddling through together.

Not strictly a board game, but the Steam winter sale is on, and I picked up Neuroshima Hex! for less than $8. This comes with Moloch, Hegemony, Borgo, Outpost, Steel Police, Smart, Vegas, New York, Beasts, and Mississippi, plus DLC armies Neojungle, Sharrash, Uranopolis. They are adding Death Breath at some point.

I tried the Beasts yesterday for the first time (I don't own this army in cardboard), and discovered that there is a bug in which they never updated the army details with what the HQ ability is, so I had to look that up online.

The interface is pretty decent, and the AI is very challenging, even on Easy. My friend also got it but we have not connected to play each other yet. The one glaring thing they left out is that you can only play 1v1. I would love them to add support for 4 players, especially so my friend and I could gang up on the AI, but I won't be surprised if they never do.

Long story short, it's not the ultimate N Hex digital game, but pretty decent if picked up on sale.

Jackwraith wrote: I'm totally bummed that Elder Sign won't work on my Pixel 8.

Despite it saying it will not work on Nathan's phone, he somehow got it to work on his Samsung. He then proceeded to buy the two expansions.

He also complained on how the game fucking cheats, which I echoed. He said the game is worse than the tabletop version. I simply replied, "I warned you."

Now, my wife is bugging me to add it to her phone. Gladly, then she will never have to play ES tabletop again! It's a win for me!

hotseatgames wrote: Long story short, it's not the ultimate N Hex digital game, but pretty decent if picked up on sale.

Yeah, I like it, generally, but you're right in that the comp does not really have an 'easy' mode. It reminds me of the story of when the rest of the dev team at Portal thought that one of the armies (I think Neojungle?) needed an update because none of them could win consistently with it. Ignacy proceeded to sit down and win with it for like 5 games straight, stood up, and said: "Learn to play better " Pretty sure the game was designed with that perspective (Git gud!) It also may be the only Hex development for the foreseeable future, as they've already created at least one army that is electronic only and Ignacy just delivered a statement about how things like Imperial Settlers would no longer be produced because people "only want new games "

Edit: "He" being Ignacy, of course. Also, I may be proved wrong right away, since Wiremen are supposed to come out in 2026. They haven't yet confirmed if that's another comp-only army like Partisans or if it will be cardboard, too.

Played my first game of Magical Athlete last night! 3 players, and it was universally loved. Notable happenings involved the Lackey constantly moving 2 when the other player rolled a 6, which caused my Scoocher to constantly move 1. I had a decent lead going into the last race, but the MOUTH ate my Hypnotist and the other racer whom I've forgotten. The MOUTH owner took first place!

We had all the kiddos home for Christmas eve and Hot Steak was, of course, played. We had the full 8 players which was an amazing experience. From a gaming standpoint, it did have the flaw of "running out" of bet options in specific circumstances. For instance, in the final race the side bet was "Will a racer be DQed?" When the snake draft got back to the original draftee there was only a stack of NO bets left to choose from. It was a Christmas Miracle as Hurley actually won a race.
We played a couple of rounds of Flip 7 which I should have a review up shortly.
Finished up with family favorite Pictionary with our trusty 1970s version. Me and the wife were on a team which led to this hilarious exchange with my wife guessing "A trumpet? Yes. And a guitar? Yes. Band. no? quit circling them, that is not helping. Your still circling. Wind? Classical? Symphony? quit circling them all. It's just two fucking instruments!" Yes, the word was instruments lol.