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

Last week, my regular 2-player partner and I got into Fellowship of the Ring Trick-taking Game with my wife and played the first three chapters at kind of a halting pace, since neither of them had ever played a co-op trick-taker before (Somehow, they had both escaped The Crew phase from a few years back.) They wanted to keep going this week, so I pulled it out and we jammed through chapters 4-11 in a couple hours, which included a couple replays when we couldn't make the cards work. I know that Chapter 9: Flight to the Ford is often a challenge for players because of Glorfindel (must win all 8 Shadow cards) but we slipped right through that one. Next week, hopefully we can get through 12-18 so we can move on to the Two Towers, which I have yet to play...

Tuesday night at the Alehouse again and I brought two trick-takers with a group of 4. First was Joraku, one of the stranger trick-takers that I've played, since you're leading a suit, but the highest card of any suit wins the trick. Unless someone played a 6 and then a ninja wins. And if there's a tie, the latest card wins. And each card does something to the board (either adds dudes or gives action points for moving or removing opponents.) It's just a weird way of thinking how tricks ("skirmishes") work out and you spend a ton of time looking at the board and playing cards to it, rather than simply playing against other cards, which is a good thing. But it also means that the strategy of what to play from hand is somewhat less than in similar games, but the fact that you pass two of your opening hand to your left (and receive two from your right) means that you could end up in a much better (or worse) position than you thought. I was completely outclassed in the right-most territories that score the most in round three, so I was trying to pick up all three of the other high scores, but I got sabotaged at the last minute by another player trying to improve his score. Regardless, no one was going to beat my wife, who won Kyoto and would've had a 5 point lead on me even if I was able to maximize my score.

Then we played Mori for the first time. It's another kind of odd trick-taker in that the high cards are actually worth negative points at the end of the hand, so you can win them, but the real object is to win early and then take as many dice as possible so that you can save the small cards in your hands and a) not give them to other people because b) they're worth actual points. In the first two rounds, I had a grip on the game and scored 11 and 12 to my opponents' range of -2 to 4. But in the third round, I had a hand full of high cards, so all I could do was try to minimize the damage and ended up with -4, putting the scores at 9, 13, 15 and 19 (me) entering the last round. But in that one I was able to follow my earlier pattern, preserving three cards (a 2, and 2 1s) in my hand that gave me the edge in the final score, 28-25-15-9. It's a bit of a brain-burner early on, but if you recognize that the idea is to win early and then dump dice and Rot cards into later hands (especially if people don't quite understand the game are trying to score late) so you can preserve your best scoring cards, you'll do well.

Alehouse action. I had posted that I'd be running a game of Root a few weeks back and it took some time for people to sign up and I thought it might be because I'd said that we'd be using the Mountain map and a landmark and probably Hirelings, too, if people were cool with it. I talked my friend, Alistair, who is my regular 2-player partner (who has been 1 of 3 in recent weeks, as we've played our way through all of the Fellowship Trick-taker and are moving on to Two Towers) into skipping one of his night at the dojo and showing up at the bar. But then I discovered that the two other regulars of the group that had signed up had never played Root... So, that was the end of the Hireling inclusion, since it was going to be difficult teaching them to use the two factions they'd picked (Duchy and Vagabond (Tinker)) while trying to run the faction that I'd only played once before (Keepers.) Also in trying to keep things simple (and maybe slightly accelerated), I stuck with the Tower as our landmark.

The Duchy player spent a lot of time being fascinated by the cards he could craft and not enough time getting extra actions with ministers to be the offensive force that he could've been. Meanwhile, Alistair as the Cats made good use of Field Hospitals for all of the times I had to battle him in order to delve and had a steady crowd of orange surrounding the Tower, gaining a point a turn, plus whatever he could build for. In the end, the Tinker won (tell me you're surprised) with two last minute quests, just beating the cats who'd made it to 28. The Duchy was a few points back and didn't even make it to 15, since couldn't keep enough cards in the Retinue to make any progress in terms of reclaiming. Next time I play Keepers, it's Winter map, for sure.

Had a game day last weekend.

- SETI, 3p, some of the expansion content. Fun and crunchy Euro. It's true that most of the interaction is "Muahaha! I got the thing you wanted first!" but I find the rest of the game compelling enough that I don't mind the inherent efficiency engine puzzle. I came in 2nd. I am bad at this game.

- QE, 4p. Always a fun time. Came in 2nd again. The total of all my bids was less than the loser's single highest bid, so I had way more room to bid aggressively.

- Unfathomable, 5p plus expansion. I had a great time the first time I played this; this time I added the expansion content and liked it a little less. Also the first time I had someone else teaching, this time it was on me and I probably should have taken more time to familiarize myself with the game. Nostalgic feels (not in a good way) of classic FFG as I spent so much time trying to find things in rulebooks for weird edge cases.

- No Loose Ends, 3p. This is becoming one of my favorite trick takers. There's a great mix of public information as people lay down the cards they want to cover -- well, Billy laid down a red 3, so he probably has a high red card, or a 3 of trump... I won; clearly balanced and a finely honed test of strategic acumen.

- Combos, 3p. I won. This is a fun filler and has a nice mix of screwage and push your luck.

- Bottle Imp, 3p. This is the new version that allegedly supports up to 6, but I have a hard time imagining playing this with other than 3. (It might be fine but for medium-short games that support 6p, there's a lot out there.). I won again. It seems very hard to win if someone passes you the 1. At one point, the guy with the 1 decided that the best thing he could do is to remove as many points from the economy, so at least the other two players don't get too far ahead. And then hope that next round he doesn't get the 1, and can catch up.

I've found the Unfathomable expansion does not add to the experience, rather, it increases upkeep and maintenance. After using it twice, we now keep it in the box.

Yeah, I think the expansion, like so many FFG expansions of yore, is one of those that's for the truly hardcore Unfathomable players that really need either more challenges for the human players(!) or more variation in order to keep playing. If you're only going to play it a couple times a year, it's probably not worth it. I picked it up because we've played so many times without a human victory that adding in the Allies felt like it was a needed thing to bring things back to more of an (ahem) even keel.

Speaking of Root, Alistair has decided to join me in playing some async games on Dire Wolf's app so that he can become more familiar with it. We're playing as Eyrie (him) and Lizard Cult (me) vs a Thief Vagabond and the Keepers. Standard map, so I'm in mostly the NE and have spread out decently with my Gardens on my first turn to try to start scoring next turn. The Keepers move four dudes into my Mouse clearing on the eastern edge where I have three of the Lizard god's favored. I've already crafted Saboteurs. They attack, figuring their numbers will at least get them to a position where they can try to push me out so they can delve. I toss a Bird Ambush at them, so now it's 2 vs 3. They roll a 3-2, which would've been perfect for them, but for the Ambush and play Brutal Tactics so I toss the Saboteurs to ignore 2 of their hits and my remaining dude holds the clearing. On the very next turn, I have two Acolytes and a Hated Outcast, so I convert their guy in the Bunny clearing south of me and then destroy their defenseless Waystation, build another Garden in the Bunny clearing and end my turn. 0 to 4 points and wiped out a major threat in one go. If I had been playing Seekers, I'd have been fuming.

Played through the first six chapters of The Two Towers Trick-taking Game. We got up to Helm's Deep before our third had to go. It's different enough from Fellowship to make it interesting, in that there are now two trump cards, the White Tower and the Black Tower, instead of simply the One Ring. The missions can be fairly challenging, not least because of their description (deciphering Treebeard's function in The Fangorn Forest took a few minutes) but one thing we noticed was that the tower cards ended up being fairly irrelevant to the proceedings a lot of the time. By that I mean we were completing everyone's goals with just the deck as dealt, rather than needing the trumps. That was true of Fellowship, as well, in which Frodo rarely had to use the 1 of Rings except to complete his own goal, but here it seems to stand out more because there are two trumps, but neither of them ever seems to be particularly crucial and they often end up getting held until the last trick where they're played into each other after everyone has already completed their goals. That's not to say that the game lacks challenge, as there were a couple chapters that we had to play twice to get past, but it stuck out to me even more because of the superfluous tower tokens. In Fellowship, the Ring token being flipped to its colored side is at least an indicator of the ability to lead with Rings. But having the tower tokens on the board after their respective tower has been played doesn't seem to serve any purpose. Even at four players, it would be pretty easy to know that the towers had been played. With Aragorn's base goal of needing the majority of tricks in combination with the Black Tower player, I suppose that serves some purpose to remind everyone who that player was, but it still seems like more chrome than the game needed. Just like Fellowship, it is a nice production, though.

At the Alehouse with a full five-player session of Ankh, including Pharaoh. It was Osiris (me) vs Isis vs Hathor vs Anubis vs Ptah,. I was determined to try to find a way to win with Osiris and took an early lead after taking advantage of the presence of the pharaoh, Amenhotep (+1 Devotion for Monument Majority, Domination, and winning battles.) People took heavy advantage of Sphinxes for their versatility and the Political cards didn't have a ton of impact. But Anubis was the one new player, which is why I kept the Guardians to relatively simple stuff (Nekhbet (moves any number of spaces), Khepri (when you Gain Followers, can be moved/summoned next to any monument on the board), and Babi (counts as an obelisk), since we were already adding the complexity of Pharaoh and the palace. In the end, Hathor got the sacrifice/summon engine going and we had some really effective Plagues because of the proliferation of Followers in response to that, but we couldn't keep up and the Love Goddess walked away with it again. I managed to get all three of my Underworld spaces out by the second conflict and they did allow me to access more areas, but I needed more move actions, since Underworld spaces don't count as Fertile or Desert, which means having dudes there doesn't help with two of my Battle cards. I still think Osiris is the most gimped of the original gods, not least because he has to take hits before having an actual ability.

And back to Weimar. I was on KPD this time and it was the worst showing for the government in the first round that I've seen in all of our plays. The DNVP played a party card that gave me three Uprisings (one step before the Councils that I need to win the game) which basically doubled the number of Threat markers on the board. Then the government kept trying the Foreign Affairs actions that they need to win but failing, which still fills the board with DNVP party bases. Then both Reichstag Elections cards got played, which allows those with two or more bases in each city to kick one of them up to the Reichstag. So, by the end of the first round, we not only didn't have all the seats filled because Zentrum and SPD were getting rekt by Crisis rolls, but DNVP was just short of having a majority. When that pattern persisted into round 2, both SPD and Zentrum got wiped out of the Reichstag and my seven seats were the only non-black pieces present, so DNVP won going away. In the second round! I've never seen so many things go wrong for the government that early. The combination of the DNVP and KPD party card draws and the miserable Timeline draws for the government basically created a powder keg. Which is lame because I wanted to play a 4 or 5 hour game and we got cut short before we'd even reached 3. Still a brilliant game.

Played a couple of games of Compile Main 2. I swear, I can't be trusted at a Game Store, I saw Compile and snatched it up and got home to realize it was Main 2 and not Main 1 (which Marc recently reviewed). Luckily, this edition is awesome as well. Personal favorite decks (so far) are War and Peace. Chaos is insane, we had a start of turn power from it that had you draw a card from your opponents deck and them drawing from yours. Real Chaos.

Also played Gravwell second edition which has you trying to escape a gravity well where the movement cards pull you toward the closest thing putting off gravity (other ships and floating space debris). It's also chaos where you'll end up moving in the wrong direction with the twist that there are also some repulsor cards where you push yourself AWAY from the nearest item putting off gravity.

Played a few of games for the first time on Saturday, 3/7, with some family. Players were oldest son and his wife, youngest son and his partner, a cousin, and myself. Played a recently-acquired, used copy of Mascarade with the beautiful artwork and it was a hit. Both sons like Citadels, but I like this one better! Two plays.
Played a recently-acquired, used copy of Grind House. It was a fun experience, but will be saving it for Halloween gaming. Two plays.
Played Pick & Packers by oink games a couple of times. Lots of fun, if you like the team dexterity aspect. Two plays.
The hit of the afternoon/evening was Zoo Vadis! I had picked up a used deluxe version recently and wow! Oldest son, wife, and I are educators, youngest son and partner are civil engineers, cousin is a graphic designer. We had a blast and the boys will most likely be getting copies for their respective friend groups. I was the Armadillos and came in third. Looking forward to more plays of this one and the production is gorgeous!

At a house con last week for four days with about a dozen people. Games played in no particular order:

CTHULU DARK PROVIDENCE ( x2 ) . As a fan of STUDY IN EMERALD ( first edition, not the lobotomized 2nd edition ) I was curious to see how this would stack up. And while the rules have some nips and tucks in places that make it a bit smoother ( ( no double agents, Known the Authorities is gone, replaced by once you're above 5 VP you're fair game) . They've introduced a new Dissident alignment - basically you can score points for both opening and closing gates, but don't get the end game 3 VP for not being revealed ( which is also new; this makes it a bit harder for good guys to deliberately go insane to trigger game end ) . I am not sure how some of those changes would work if ported back to 1st edition. 

 But man, did they utterly botch the presentation on this one.  Exhibit one, the character counters in the old game were 1" square, easy to read, and had the investigator/character name on them. You placed a colored wooden disc on the counter to show ownership. Now ? No name, smaller counter, and a color coded cardboard sled to tilt the counter on. What the actual fuck ?? Here's a picture. 

boardgamegeek.com/image/9434039/cthulhu-dark-providence

So when you start playing, you get your starting deck then have to sift through all the character counters and match the character portrait. Same goes for new characters you recruit from cities when they come into play. So stupid. Just put the names on the counters .
The icons on the cards and map are smaller and harder to read than the old game. Not to mention being much more sterile than the more evocative original. To boot, the movement connection lines are drawn from the box where the card decks sit, not from the box below this where the actual characters move from. But this isn't done consistently - some cities that appear to not be adjacent are IF you look at both the city box and the deck box. FFS .

Between this and the dragged out fulfilment of the Desert War Arrakis expansion, CMON can go fuck themselves AFAIC. Save your money. 

OK, venting over. Other games played:

ANGOLA. Duh . Me and Bruce vs Rob and Bryan's commies. A game that went 8 turns that was close til we took Luanda and the Commies folded. This was nice to see after what seemed to be a longish string of Commie victories. They even got the dreaded Russian rocket launchers ( 5 dice ) but they didn't do much damage. 

ATLANTIC STORM

LORD OF THE RINGS DUEL FOR MIDDLE EARTH ( x 2 ) . Taught this to Rob and he liked it. I played it again yesterday with the new expansion , which adds some neat twists with minimal rules overhead. 

SPACE BASE ( x2 ) 

DECATHLON. I came in 4th out of about 10 people, my best showing in my third or fourth time playing. 

DUNE IMPERIUM w/RISE OF IX. I've played this a lot on the iPad solitaire; I cruised to a somewhat comfortable win; only won by 1 VP but was ahead by 2 or more most of the game .

TERRAFORMING MARS w/Prelude expansion. Like D:I, a lot of iPad plays got me into a rhythm. Despite it being a 5 player game, I scored 2 Awards and 2 Milestones, good for 20 points which put me ahead of the rest, although not by much. I was Ecoline, who I normally avoid, but my opening hand had one of the big plant-killing asteroids, and the first turn I saw two more, so I felt safe. 

WILDERNESS WAR. I was the British and at one point was down 8 VP to the French. However I got Wolfe into play; got Louisbourg and then landed and forced Quebec to Surrender. To boot, on the field battle before the siege, Montcalm died. This all happened in Early 1759; by late season I had a 2 VP lead as the lack of Indians finally caught up to the French - he never got a single Raid VP. 

TERRAFORMING MARS DICE GAME. Meh - I prefer the original or especially the card game. This is just...meh. 

Is Terraforming Mars the most ported game currently in print? Usually popular games get either a card game or a dice game version, not both.

Race for the Galaxy has it beat.

Original game, shorter game (Jump Drive), dice game, and full blown board game (New Frontiers).