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

Yeah, that sounds like more of a spectacular Quest pull than an issue with abilities? It also takes some doing to build up four Forge chips.

Jackwraith wrote: Yeah, that sounds like more of a spectacular Quest pull than an issue with abilities? It also takes some doing to build up four Forge chips.

Well, the claw tokens that +1 up the battle track and -1 to everyone else was making jabberwock daunting in battles. Still need more investigation into faction balance for sure... but it's an awesome trip to do so.

Played War of the Ring, The Card Game. It's as fascinating as it looks. I was playing with the Alehouse group, so we had four set to go, but one of them had to bail at the last minute, so I thought I was going to be stuck playing both Free Peoples decks instead of the teamwork arrangement that is the typical 4-player game. I don't have that many 2v2s and it's part of the reason I picked this up. At the last minute, someone had show up hoping for an opening in the game so he joined us. I was sitting across from my friend, John, whom I know is a very sharp player. Unfortunately, the other two both turned out to be the weaker players and both decided they wanted to play the Free Peoples, which strikes me as, if not the tougher side of the equation, at least the one that requires more willingness to take risk and sacrifice. John took Mordor, so I took the Isengard/Monsters/Southrons,

I came out pretty aggressively on the battlefield front, not least because John drew and played to his reserve no less than 5 of the 9 Nazgul in the first two rounds of the game. That meant we could divide up responsibilities between battlefields and paths pretty neatly. I also got Saruman onto the board in the first round, which meant I was drawing an extra card every round. I hooked him up with the Palantir, which also let me draw 3, eliminate 1, cycle (discard) 1 and add 1 to hand each round. So, we had some good card advantage, as well, aside from that already granted to the Shadow (4 cards drawn each round, as opposed to 3 for the Free Peoples.) And we got quite lucky in rounds 5 and 6, because I kept the Balrog in hand in the hopes that Path 5 would be Khazad-Dum... which it was and then kept the Corpses in hand in the hopes that Path 6 would be the Dead Marshes... which it was! So, that let us pile up the Corruption in those rounds with the Free People not having much to play in the way of characters to prevent it. We pushed the score at the end of round 6 to 19-9, which is an auto-win (10 point margin.)

The number of choices to make even in any one hand is remarkable for a game with this few cards and only 30-card decks. It can feel a bit mechanical at points, in that you're playing cards just for stats and not for their identity, but in other moments the theme shines through in almost irrefutable ways (like the Balrog on Khazad-Dum and a Nazgul showing up at Weathertop with a Morgul blade.) I can see spending a lot of time with this one.

Played a great game of Uprising yesterday on my table 2 handed. Ended up winning comfortably by like 10 but it had a few key moment mid-late game that things hung on. I had a battle where the red faction necromancer hero (Dugpa) pulled off a move against a horde we were losing to where her troll was the last unit standing, it fought and died, she used her special power to make it fight again after it died, she resurrected it by discarding a one time feat for another round of combat, then she made it fight again after it died to kill the horde. Fun stuff.

Spent the weekend at my second annual boardgame birthday retreat.

My in-laws own some 70 acres in rural Wisconsin, with some rustic hunting one-room cabins on it (no electricity, no plumbing - wood burning stoves) and then one large new 'shop' that also has a real bathroom and kitchen. About 10 of us took to the woods, for some games, beer and fellowship and a few cold walks. The snow fell lazily the whole weekend, and it was a relaxing and beautiful setting. Even saw some deer and a coyote. Last year I had some games I really wanted to play, this year I let others bring their wishes to the table.

Party games on Friday night- including Hot Streak, Cockroach Poker, and Wave Length.

Saturday saw some longer games and groups breaking up Apirary, The Duke, Sub Terra, a game of RoboRally (that refused to end- I managed to win it, but I think everyone was just glad it was over at one point the SPAM deck was completely empty), got a league game of Blood Bowl in. Ticket to Ride- Japan. I saw some people playing Top Gun which is just the most ridiculous awesome game and some pizza delivery with ghosts (?) game while I was making some pizzas in the pizza oven.

Saturday ran late so Sunday was mostly drinking coffee and talking politics. But we did get in a game of Deep Regrets, which was pretty awesome.

It was nice to spend a weekend with like-minded folks and away from reality.

Been a while, still only really painting and playing Warcry. I wrote a short campaign they used as an official event at Tabletop Scotland and earned a gold medal in what seems to have been the last in-store Armies on Parade - apparently it's going entirely online for 2026.

Haven't bought a new game in a couple years and I feel like I'm not missing much. I re-bought Hive, which I lost when my old collection was sold out from under me a long time ago.

Virabhadra wrote: ... which I lost when my old collection was sold out from under me a long time ago.

WHAT? I would be in prison for manslaughter right now if someone sold my game collection without my consent.

Gary Sax wrote: Played a great game of Uprising yesterday on my table 2 handed. Ended up winning comfortably by like 10 but it had a few key moment mid-late game that things hung on. I had a battle where the red faction necromancer hero (Dugpa) pulled off a move against a horde we were losing to where her troll was the last unit standing, it fought and died, she used her special power to make it fight again after it died, she resurrected it by discarding a one time feat for another round of combat, then she made it fight again after it died to kill the horde. Fun stuff.

Curse of the Last Emperor, right? I remember you writing a review on BGG but never looked past that.

Played March of The Ants Evolved Deluxe Edition Turbo XXL. which I got in a trade.
4x with ants, which is a great concept. Played it two player. Learning game and a blocker type AI colony since it was 2 player. Very tight economy and, with the reaction benefit (take X as a reaction with another player takes Y as an action) it would play better at higher player counts. Definitely going to play the "Epic" Game next time (5 rounds instead of 4) because (while I know I'm just learning the game) it really felt like we were just getting rolling when it ended...which is usually the way with engine builders but not so much 4x games. Very punishing combat and freaking Centipedes being a real pain in the ass. I'm in a weird Eisner/Trembley bubble with the last few games I have played (Wroth/Wonderland's War/Madcala/20 strong/Tidal Blades 2).
Lost the game to my wife by 3 Colony Points but I'm sure I got a few scoring conditions wrong that I will double check next game (Started the game at about 11 pm and proceeded to talk and drink, so it took a bit.)

The brevity of the game is what turned me against it. As you say, it always felt like the evolution game was just getting started when suddenly things were done. It was even worse in the original version, since the standard game was only three rounds and the "epic" game was 4. There are still ways to short circuit it, too, since someone can fulfill one of the round-ending conditions fairly easily while other players still have plenty to do. That's a tactical choice that you have to be aware of, but it just kind of rubs salt in the wound that is the game's (IMO) misplaced brevity to begin with. It's disappointing because I enjoy many of the mechanisms and love the theme, but I think their attempt at keeping the game from dragging in the later stages went too far and left it with less actual game than I wanted.

Jackwraith wrote: The brevity of the game is what turned me against it. As you say, it always felt like the evolution game was just getting started when suddenly things were done. It was even worse in the original version, since the standard game was only three rounds and the "epic" game was 4. There are still ways to short circuit it, too, since someone can fulfill one of the round-ending conditions fairly easily while other players still have plenty to do. That's a tactical choice that you have to be aware of, but it just kind of rubs salt in the wound that is the game's (IMO) misplaced brevity to begin with. It's disappointing because I enjoy many of the mechanisms and love the theme, but I think their attempt at keeping the game from dragging in the later stages went too far and left it with less actual game than I wanted.

Did you play the Evolved version? I think they addressed the round ending early with having the rest action tiles (one per player +1) and if someone takes a rest action, they take a tile and can ONLY take a rest action after that (aka take another tile). The round ends when the tiles are gone So, if someone is rushing the end, you still have a heads up of a few turns before it happens. Only one game in do far, so who knows how it will fluff out but my wife liked it, so it will be head of the "to play" list for awhile. (I can see "a attacking b and c profiting" issue.)

Yeah, the last time I played (October) I did. All my other times were with the old version. Even with the Evolved version, once someone starts resting, the game accelerates. I don't remember how because they changed it since the original, but once one tile is taken, the rest of them come off faster. In that game, I wanted to take one more turn to get in a couple evolutions and got caught out by someone resting for precisely that reason (i.e. to stop me being able to actually play the game) because by the time the turn sequence got back around to me, all the tiles were gone. Right there is when I decided that it just wasn't for me any longer. There is a little bit of that "Let's you and him fight!" issue, but it's not as bad as you'd think, since fights only happen when someone is in the margins and there's no guarantee that people fighting will resolve things in the non-targeted person's favor. I think the combat is a solid system in that respect.

And, hey, you don't have to justify anything to me. If you and your wife like it, it's all good. I just don't like mechanisms that cut you off from playing the game in a game that I already think is shorter than it should be and for what feels like a Euro-y "games shouldn't be too long" motivation.

Jackwraith wrote: And, hey, you don't have to justify anything to me. If you and your wife like it, it's all good. I just don't like mechanisms that cut you off from playing the game in a game that I already think is shorter than it should be and for what feels like a Euro-y "games shouldn't be too long" motivation.

I was just legit interested if your concerns were addressed with the Evolved version. I always like hearing other peoples experiences with a game, especially if its a negative I haven't encountered...or have not encountered yet. This was just a "Let's play the Ant game even if it's just at two player to check it out."
It, for sure, is prioritizing brevity. Maybe at the cost of the playability.
I'm only one game in, I'm not even sure if I "like it" yet other than I am interested in giving it a few more plays at various player counts.

Played China's War for the first time tonight. It's a COIN game, so it follows the same essential systems as the rest of them. This one is a little closer to Gandhi, though, since the Japanese are interested in controlling the LOCs (lines of communication) in the same way that the Raj is interested in controlling the train lines (which are also LOCs in this game) and the resistance is interested in blocking them or blowing them up (same thing here with the few guerrillas operated by the Nationalists.) I decided I wanted to be the guy doing his own thing in this COIN game, so I took the Communists. Man, the cards did not flow my way. I was second-to-last or last on every card in the first half-dozen, which meant I took only one full operation (with special activity) and right before I was going to be first in turn order so I could take a full turn the first Propaganda (scoring) card was turned over, which means we reset the board! All of the progress I'd done in spreading out and with which I was about to drop down a couple bases (I only score via placing bases and turning province to Opposition) and change some provincial attitudes got wiped out and I never really recovered. I managed to make it to double digits (12; I needed 20 to win) but everyone else was far ahead of me. When the fourth Propaganda card was turned over, both the Japanese and the Warlords had reached their scoring requirement (41 and 26, respectively) and the tie-breaker order goes Communist, Warlords, Nationalists,, Japanese, so the Warlord player won it. It's the first COIN game I've played where one faction can simply get completely screwed with little way to climb out of it, but I think the Nationalists did spend a lot more time blocking me than attacking the Japanese, so that may have contributed to it. I'd be willing to play again, but it was definitely a less-than-thrilling experience.

And that sums up my dislike for COIN - I don't mind chaos in games, but in COIN there is so much outside your control it just fails for me. The fact that you have no cards in hand means any sort of planning goes right out the window. You know what you WANT to do, but you've got to wait for cards to flop in your favor, and it almost always takes several actions to really move the ball forward so to speak. And in between those actions, it can all be undone with little you can do about it.