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

Shellhead wrote: Best Buy sells a Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D printer for $219.99, and it seems to have a lot of favorable reviews, but I will resist the temptation. I am actually looking forward to my baking soda/super glue experiment this weekend. If that doesn't work, I might try a toothpaste/super glue mix.

I got around to attempting to fix that Firefly ship with baking soda and super glue. Because of previous failed attempts with various glues and epoxies, I donned vinyl gloves and proceeded cautiously. The first attempt only failed because mixing the baking soda into the super glue caused a really fast chemical reaction. It heated up and turned rock solid faster than I could get a paint brush into the mix.

Second attempt, I dusted the two pieces of the ship with baking soda, then applied some superglue with the brush, then quickly pushed the two pieces together. Within a few seconds, the two pieces were solidly attached, despite the small size of the point of contact. To ensure a solid fit, I dusted the top of the connection with baking soda and dribbled a little more glue there. A minute later, I rolled it over and repeated that procedure with the underside of the connection. Then I blew off the excess baking soda.

After waiting a few minutes, I picked the ship up to see if it was still solid. Two problems. First, the ship was stuck to the paper towel that I had placed it on. Second, the ship was now also stuck to the fingertips of my glove. I was able to gently pull the ship away from both without messing up the repair. A little later, I touched the connection with my fingertip to make sure that it was dry, even though the chemical reaction was quick. It was not quite dry, so I got superglue on my fingertip. Fortunately, the bond wasn't strong, and I was able to wash off my finger with normal dish soap.

The repair was a success, better than I could have imagined. The point of breakage was so small I couldn't even pin it during previous attempts. But baking soda and superglue did an amazing job.

Shellhead wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Yeah, I always found that those suggested play times were as inaccurate as 90% of what's on the market these days. We almost never finished a Firefly game in less than three hours unless someone got a really good streak of luck with jobs.

Good point, it's most games that underestimate play times. I liked Rock Hard 1977 enough that I hung out in the BGG forum for it for a while. But when I called out the wildly optimistic play time of 45-90 minutes, a bunch of lying cultists jumped me. Apparently the only correct way to play a board game is really quickly and with laser focus and zero chit chat at the table. Fuck that, I play games with my friends to have fun, not to rush through every game so we can squeeze in one more game.

I recently saw Rock Hard at 2nd and Charles recently. How is it?

Had a Game Day on Sunday after last month's was unexpectedly cancelled due to my wife's ankle fracture (Friday the 13th is real guys). It was me, my wife and Nate. And we had just started Evil Intent, which is Evil Genius the Board Game. I was playing Pennyworth, Nate was playing Lizzy (with her fucking 3+ AS to disregard Thwart cards played against her), and the wife played Temu Poison Ivy-Plyra. Each of us took account of our EVILE!!! Schemes (I had Temu Arc of the Covenant), and we began to play. 3 minutes in, the doorbell rings....

A NEW EVIL GENIUS HAS ENTERED THE CHAT. It was my friend, Kelly! Was surprised that she showed up, as she didn't confirm she was coming in the chat. Regardless, she sat down and took 3L-337 and picked her schemey scheme.

And, of course, I had the Evil Genius soundtrack playing on our Bose speaker while we played.

The game went rather quickly. I picked up just enough resources to start WORLD DOMINATION!!!!! so, at Round 4, I revealed my scheme to start taking over the world. Kelly revealed Mind Control Slugs, so we started talking about the scenes from Star Trek I & II that squicked us out (transporter accident, slugs inside the helmets, and suicide by phaser). Later on, my wife started her scheme (GIANT PLANTS), which is a more difficult scheme to pull off, but spreads quicker that either mine or Kelly's scheme. By Round 8, Nate FINALLY reveals his, WEATHER SATELLITES. Not 4 rounds later, NATE WINS..... yaaaay.....

Next game we played was City of Remnants, which was a bit of a slog, due to us trying to remember which action did what. One of the actions is called Production >>> Development. Wherein certain businesses can produce widgets that can be sold on a later action. Kelly declared that action one time and said "PRODUCTION!" in the most school marmy, Dalek-esque voice that we all laughed and it became a running joke whenever anyone took that particular action.

Nate had what I called the Orks, because they were the best at combat and the Gang Leader could destroy businesses. He made the lead early, but Kelly moved to the center of the board and made her mark there. It got so bad, that Nate was forced to attack and successfully took over her business.... And then set it on fire. It's not about the money..... It's about sending a message.

My wife tried to broaden her businesses, but Nate put a stop to that and arsoned the crap out of a brand new one she had set up.

Me? Admittedly, I succumbed to my negative feelings for a bit, and I was internally pouting; because I wasn't having any fun at all. I was dead last, and the other players weren't even trying to stop Nate. Then, I just bitch slapped the negative Nancy in my head and told it IT WAS JUST A GAME, GET OVER IT, and I did.

In the end, I did a backstabby move to Kelly when she was on the ropes after Nate attacked her and took over one of her Heights businesses. The game ended when Nate pulled his Renown scoring and the Renown pool was emptied. Nate was first with 89, Kelley was 86, JoAnn was third (can't recall her score), and I was at 23.

I then stood up and joking declared that Nate was hereby exiled and not allowed to return! Anyway, we really had a good time and good chili.

2 unplayed games down, 97 more to go.

Rliyen wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Yeah, I always found that those suggested play times were as inaccurate as 90% of what's on the market these days. We almost never finished a Firefly game in less than three hours unless someone got a really good streak of luck with jobs.

Good point, it's most games that underestimate play times. I liked Rock Hard 1977 enough that I hung out in the BGG forum for it for a while. But when I called out the wildly optimistic play time of 45-90 minutes, a bunch of lying cultists jumped me. Apparently the only correct way to play a board game is really quickly and with laser focus and zero chit chat at the table. Fuck that, I play games with my friends to have fun, not to rush through every game so we can squeeze in one more game.

I recently saw Rock Hard at 2nd and Charles recently. How is it?

I don't like worker placement games, but I do like Rock Hard 1977 despite it being a worker placement game. Really, you only have one worker, but you are doing placement and resolution for that one worker at least three times per turn. The game is enjoyable because the mechanics and the components do a great job of delivering both theme and a sense of narrative. The game designer really knows the subject matter, because she started out as an actual rock musician in the '70s and later became an entertainment attorney who represents other musicians.

Played **Tatsumi** for the first time last night. Basic rules and two player. It was good fun but I feel like my wife triggered the end game too early to take advantage of the rings she had stored. Excited to play more.

Shellhead wrote:

Rliyen wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Yeah, I always found that those suggested play times were as inaccurate as 90% of what's on the market these days. We almost never finished a Firefly game in less than three hours unless someone got a really good streak of luck with jobs.

Good point, it's most games that underestimate play times. I liked Rock Hard 1977 enough that I hung out in the BGG forum for it for a while. But when I called out the wildly optimistic play time of 45-90 minutes, a bunch of lying cultists jumped me. Apparently the only correct way to play a board game is really quickly and with laser focus and zero chit chat at the table. Fuck that, I play games with my friends to have fun, not to rush through every game so we can squeeze in one more game.

I recently saw Rock Hard at 2nd and Charles recently. How is it?

I don't like worker placement games, but I do like Rock Hard 1977 despite it being a worker placement game. Really, you only have one worker, but you are doing placement and resolution for that one worker at least three times per turn. The game is enjoyable because the mechanics and the components do a great job of delivering both theme and a sense of narrative. The game designer really knows the subject matter, because she started out as an actual rock musician in the '70s and later became an entertainment attorney who represents other musicians.

She was in the freaking Runaways with Lita Ford and Joan Jett. Don't bury the lead;)

Kind of amazing how with a half-dozen different services and their blizzard of offerings, there's rarely anything on TV that's actually worth watching... which is why I was able to talk my wife into trying out a few of Perplext's mini games (because almost everything else is packed.) We started with ORC, since that's a definitive 2-player (and I didn't think she'd like the poker-ish nature of TKO or the mind-bendiness of BOG.) ORC is essentially a lane battler, where everyone has cards in hand that have 1 orc on one end and 2 orcs on the other, each of a different color. Then there are three territories in the middle of the board, each representing 2 of the 6 colors (other orc cards, in other words.) Then there are stacks of 4 more cards, face down, next to each color of each territory. You play cards from your hand to try to conquer territories, the only prohibitions being that it can't be the same color as the territory and once you start with 1 color, you have to stick to it. So if I played a blue orc at the white territory, I can't play anything but blue orcs there until it's decided. When you play a card, if you play 1 orc, you can draw 2 from any of the stacks. If you play 2 orcs, you can draw 1. When a stack next to a territory runs out, that territory is decided and whoever has the most orcs wins it, turning one of their cards over with the spear pointing towards them. At game end, you gain points for the number of orcs you conquered (1 or 2 per territory) but the wrinkle is that you also gain points for having orcs of that color still in your hand, 1 or 2 per orc, depending on the card. It's not a tremendously deep game and, like most of them, plays quite quickly, but it's not bad for a lane battler. I lost 16-13.

Then we tried BOO. Like ORC, it's specifically a 2-player. You set up a grid of white and black ghosts around a cemetery gate. You each have 12 cards to play with white and/or black ghosts on one side (up to three), as well as tombstones. You're trying to end the game with the most ghosts of your color showing on the board. When you play a card, you trace a line forward from the eyes of each ghost of your color. When the line hits a ghost of the opposite color that's facing you or a tombstone, it stops. If it hits an opposing ghost that's not facing you, you scare it and the card flips over. You place cards so that at least one "square" side of a card is in touch with another (including ends, as some ghosts are facing up) and you can potentially flip multiple cards with one play, but only the played card scares any ghosts (i.e. there is no chain reaction with each flip.) Once each player plays all 12 cards, the game is over and you count ghosts. I lost this one, 41-31, as my wife spent more time analyzing placement than I did.

Finally, we tried HUE. There are 3 starting cards broken up into stripes/segments of 5 colors. Each player starts with a poison card and 5 regular cards. What you're trying to do is create the largest contiguous area of each color on your scoring card. That scoring card is the last card left in your hand once you've played the other 5, even if it's a poison card. You have to make contact with one full square of whatever is on the table (so no diagonal placement) and you can cover up to one third of another card currently placed (i.e. one square or three small rectangles/segments.) When you play a poison card, it negates the points you would score for that color that the poison symbol touches. So, you had a card with the skull-and-crossbones on yellow and played that card touching a yellow area, all of the points for that area would be reduced to 0. At the end of the game, you score 1 point per segment and 3 points per square in the largest contiguous area of each color. On your scoring card, you score double for the middle square or the middle stripe of segments, depending on the card. This one would be much better with more than 2 players (plays up to 6), but it still plays OK at 2. We both had been angling for red and green, so the amounts we scored there (24 and 7) didn't matter, but my wife had 7 in purple where I only had 4 in yellow, so she won again.

I played marauders monopoly...I mean Pirate King last night and it was really fun. Went to BGG right after and saw the variant rules and can't wait to play with those. Was a Three Player game but took us about 2 1/2 hours to teach and play.

Went to a local mini-con last weekend. Was late on Saturday due to going to the No Kings Rally (I dressed in full revolutionary patriot regalia, which was hot but I got a lot of photo requests).

Saturday:

- Tiger & Dragon, 2p, then 3p, then 4p, while waiting for some other people. This was supposed to be War of the Ring the card game, but only one person had expressed interest and he was tied up in another game that was running long. So I played this with one other guy and then some other people trickled in. This is a great filler and better with more people than at 2p.

- Nemesis, 5p. I should have reviewed the rules on this more; I haven't played in a hot minute and I was very rusty, especially on the more fiddly aspects. And there's a lot of fiddly aspects. Luckily it was a good time and a great story engine, as always. I was the medic; we also had the scout, the captain, the soldier, and the pilot. The first half of the game was a cakewalk. Explored almost the entire ship. Fixed navigation so we were headed to Earth. Got lucky as all three engines were working. The only aliens we saw were a few larvae, which were easily dispatched. A bystander asked how it was going, and I replied "surprisingly easy!" Karma did not care for my flippant response and suddenly things went pear-shaped. Aliens pouring out of the ducts, the queen squatting in one of the escape pod control rooms, a third of the rooms malfunctioning, and another third on fire. Running out of ammo. The captain found the other escape pod room and hopped into one, launching immediately (so much for going down with the ship). The scout took another one. I was trying to wait for the cryosleep pods to reopen but got gutted and died. The soldier went full-auto to no effect and went down. The pilot was trying to do a slow retreat to the escape pod room, but the fire spread out of control and the ship blew up. VICTORY CHECK. We had two survivors; they had to pass the infection check and then reveal their secret objectives. They both survived the infection check. Captain's objective: Be the only survivor. FAIL. Scout's objective: bring the body of a dead crewmate back to earth for a proper burial. "Oops, I forgot to pick the body up." FAIL. Everybody lost! A good time.

Sunday:

- John Company, 4p. Brutal game, made harder by one player (the scout in Nemesis) getting bored halfway through and just kind of playing randomly. The Indian provinces were absolutely shellacking us, so during the Parliament phase when we had the chance to pass a law that would massively fund the military and let us all put family members into the officer training box for free, we took it. The regiments swept over the provinces, opening them up for glorious capitalism and looting them to the absolute bone. Then the bill for the regiments and officer corps came due, and all our loot was wiped out paying for everyone. With no money, the company standing dropped one space too far and the company failed on turn 4 of 5. I came in second due to power from passing laws (I was Prime Minister); the first place guy had a luxury but not as many shares as I did. Exhilarating game; we are trying to schedule a 6p game without that guy.

- Acquire, 5p. Never played this classic so was excited to give it a go. It was the same four of us from JoCo, plus the winner's mom. She brought their family copy from the 60s. Vintage! The same guy got bored halfway through again and started announcing that he wanted to throw the game to the majority shareholder of one of the companies. Another attendee came over and asked what we were playing next; I said "I think Flamme Rouge." That guy said "Oh I'll join that." I responded "hmm, maybe." He said, "What do you mean? Do you not like me?" That led to a conversation about how throwing a game on purpose is bad sportsmanship and I don't care to play with people like that. We continued the game and it turned out that he actually was the primary shareholder of the company he was talking about, so he was actually just lying for some reason about throwing the game. Mom won, I came in third, That Guy came in last.

- Flamme Rouge, 5p. Shoutout to Wade for turning me on to this all-time classic a few years ago. I let That Guy join since he wasn't actually throwing the game of Acquire. It was me, him, the JoCo winner, and two others. Fun and breezy game. I came in third.

- Scout, 4p. Not with That Guy, thankfully. We called it one round early because one player was way out in front and I was tired and my brain was fried from too many rules and teachings.

Overall a pretty good time. Two issues:

- That Guy. Something is clearly off with him. It's a combination of (armchair lay diagnosis) being on the autism spectrum, your typical nerd social awkwardness and weirdness, and probably poor parenting. He dresses like a slob (too-small shirts that let his belly hang out, sweatpants that show half his crack when he sits down, and flip-flops). He quotes geek stuff (although his referents are not ones I get; lots of anime I guess) and if people don't laugh or respond, then he keeps repeating the quote until he gets some kind of reaction. Then there's all the in-game behavior. To contrast, there was a gal there of similar age (early or mid 20s I think) who is way more obviously on the spectrum, as in stimming occasionally (flapping hands, rocking, vocalizing). But she is a much better person to play games with. She is enthusiastic, polite, plays to win, and is a good sport, win or lose. I asked my SPED-teacher wife about it; she said: (a) That Guy is almost certainly on the spectrum; apparently repeating things until people respond is a classic symptom; (b) every autistic person is different so it's hard to generalize; but (c) the difference between the two is almost certainly parenting, since they are both high-functioning. The woman's parents probably let her fail and then helped her figure things out. That Guy's parents probably didn't. "My poor disabled child! I must do everything for them because he is so vulnerable and the world is so cruel!" Leading to predictable results.

- The organization was okay but could have been better. The organizer was hoping for better attendance, but he didn't think to check what else was happening that weekend. In addition to No Kings, there was a local game night on Saturday and then a bigger con about two hours away for the whole weekend. The bigger con was free; this one was $12 for both days. He also bought a bunch of food, hoping to sell burgers and hot dogs, but had so much left over that he ended up giving it away and taking a loss on it. He also annoyed a bunch of potential attendees in the Discord channel about a month before via some trivial nerd drama, which was all pointless and easily avoidable, but in typical internet fashion, instead of quickly smoothing things over with a simple apology, he doubled down. He and I (and a few others) are supposed to have a post-con analysis over coffee soon; I'll make a few suggestions that hopefully make the next one a little more modest, with room to grow. The goal is to make this a spring and fall thing, which I think would be fun.

It's all fun and games till someone ruins a session that everyone knows is going to a long involved game. Rough.

I've been wanting to play Heat: Pedal to the Metal just to see how much it borrows from Flamme Rouge.

WadeMonnig wrote: I've been wanting to play Heat: Pedal to the Metal just to see how much it borrows from Flamme Rouge.

You can see some of the DNA but it's a pretty different game. The main difference is that cards are not removed from the game after you play them, since getting tired is not a thing for cars. Instead of fatigue cards, you have heat cards added to your deck if you take corners too fast or de/accelerate too hard. These are a catchall abstraction for wear on the engine, brakes, transmission, etc. Heat cards cannot be played or discarded; the only way to get rid of them is to end your turn in 1st or 2nd gear. (There are some optional modules with upgraded cards; some of those cards have other ways to get rid of heat.)

Corners are much more important. In FR, they are a way to keep the play area smaller; ruleswise they don't matter at all. In HEAT, each corner has a speed limit: go too fast and take heat cards; if you don't have enough heat cards then you spin out right before the corner.

They are both really good games and I plan on keeping them both. Heat is on BGA if you'd like to give it a spin. I'm happy to host a game if you don't want to play with randos. (Well, I'm kind of a rando too, but I'm a FATtie rando and we are a cut above.)

dysjunct wrote:

WadeMonnig wrote: I've been wanting to play Heat: Pedal to the Metal just to see how much it borrows from Flamme Rouge.

They are both really good games and I plan on keeping them both. Heat is on BGA if you'd like to give it a spin. I'm happy to host a game if you don't want to play with randos. (Well, I'm kind of a rando too, but I'm a FATtie rando and we are a cut above.)

I'd love that. Haven't played in BGA since the pandemic. My user name is wademonnig, would dig giving it a spin asynchronous.

I hosted my first game night at my new house since I moved in December. Ironically it was for all the people I used to play with in my old city, as I have still been unable to get a new group together.

We started with 5 player Magical Athlete, and this was great fun. The highlight was the Flip Flop continually switching places with the Copycat to take the lead, and then the Copycat would just take it back since it copies the power of the leader.

After that (I think I came in 4th), we played 4 player Dark Blood. It maxes out at 4 and is not the kind of game my girlfriend enjoys. This was the second play for 3 of us, and first play for one player. No one played the same cult they had played before. We fucked up a couple of rules that in my defense I don't think are very clearly worded in the rule book, which is quite a mess at times.

I think only one player was using his cult "properly", and they won by 5 points, with me taking second. The possibly concerning bit is that while we have only played twice, both times the Necromancers won. I had them the first time, and it's possible that their style just clicks with me. I don't have enough data to know yet, and at this rate, will never get enough data.

The game is very good and was universally liked. It is only marred by a subpar rule book and a couple of minor component issues (most notably one of the resources, bones, are way too small and would be easily lost).

A reprint is coming later this year on Gamefound and 3 new factions will be added. I'm sure I'll jump in.

As the few diehards among you have read here a time or two, we are on our way across the pond for the foreseeable future. It's been a combination of my wife burning out on her career (mechanical engineering in automotive) and recognizing an opportunity to do something different for the last stage(s) of our lives. The only way to relieve her and take advantage of that opportunity was to go somewhere that the cost of living is significantly lower and Portugal is it. The place we're landing is a city called Coimbra, which is about halfway between Porto and Lisbon and is home to the second-oldest university in Europe. We've lived in university towns for most of the last three decades, so we definitely wanted that dynamism that students bring to the local culture, which is part of why we picked it. As most of you know, I'm not much of a traditional "Euro" gamer, so I had no idea that Coimbra was also a game. In the course of following that poll on Reddit back in February and March, I discovered that it was and is pretty highly regarded on BGG. So, I took a chance and picked up a copy, despite knowing that it probably wasn't going to be my thing, but really might suit my wife, which is always a plus. In the end, I was also swayed by a central mechanism of the game, which is drafting.

When I was a hardcore MTG player, my favorite format was draft. I spent most of my time playing constructed in tournaments, but every Tuesday night I'd be drafting with people like Erik Taylor and Pat Chapin. So, I like drafting games because of the opportunity cost inherent to them and the tough choices that have cascading effects. (In that respect, it's kind of strange that my least favorite of Eric Lang's "mythic" trio is Blood Rage.) Coimbra uses dice drafting and the dice are used as a method of picking up cards for both immediate and long-term effects. You use higher dice to improve your order in the selection of cards but higher dice also cost more resources, which is a choice. Similarly, you pick specific cards to improve your status on the influence tracks but it's the color of the dice that you drafted that gain the rewards on those tracks. If you don't gain the right cards, you might not get the level of rewards you want, but if you don't pick the right color dice, you won't get those rewards in the first place. It's a lot of tough choices, among them long-term goals to work toward (voyages, ranking on influence tracks at the end of the game) and more complex goals that can have huge immediate effect but also long-term impact (the pilgrimage trail to different monasteries.) And you can forego cards with your dice to just pick royal court tiles for free and the benefits they provide, but those are short-term bursts and do almost nothing for your late game. Again, it's a lot of tough choices.

My friend, Alistair, went hard into cleric (purple) cards to keep moving his pilgrim on the monastery path and gain short- and long-term bonuses from them. The cleric cards also have the most deleterious impact on your opponents, offering several cards that drain points and/or one of the two currencies (gold or guards) from opponents. My wife, meanwhile, decided to take advantage of the court cards in the first two rounds because they were free... but it also left her short on cards and the long-term benefits they provide in the late game. So, while both of us lagged behind Alistair's early gains, I was building up a huge late game position, where I not only benefited from being first on the scholar (green) track (VP rewards) but also was second on all three of the rest (end game bonuses) AND was the only one to assemble all 5 scroll types on my cards. So I kept decently behind Alistair and then shot forward ahead of him at the end, winning 139-107-104. It's one of those games where you don't want to compete hard in too many areas, but you can feel safe coming in second in a lot, which is what I did. I like it. It's not an instant favorite, but I can see playing this a few times more and getting my money's worth out of it.