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

Tangential to the thread, but it's good to hear that you are finally making the move! Hopefully it puts us near enough on the globe that we can find a way to hang out again sometime.

You will be only an hours drive from Leiria which hosts a well regarded gaming convention every March

leiriacon.pt/

Yes! Definitely! We seem to be about an hour away from everything, since Coimbra is about an hour or so on the train to both Porto and Lisbon, as well. Also, flights from Lisbon to London are just another hour, so we will definitely be heading your way in the near future.

Thanks for the link to the con. That's cool. Was kinda hoping to make it to Essen next year, too.

Also, not sure how this post disappeared, but I did meet up with the Alehouse crew on Tuesday to play a game of Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done. This is another game that I discovered from that Reddit poll and I'm an unabashed fan of that era/cultural moment. The Marxist in me is always fascinated by religious extremism and there are few better examples of that surrounding Christianity than the Crusades. My favorite block wargame is Crusader Rex, for example (even though it didn't survive the purge.) So, this was an easy pickup while I was ostensibly trying to reduce the number of games in the house...

Anyway, my wife and I sat down with the two Johns who have been regulars with me in our games of Weimar. One John had Santiago, the other had Montesa, my wife had Teutonic, and I had Alcantara. I started out hopping down to the Iberian peninsula to pick up a couple open building slots but realized I had kind of cornered myself, so started moving out along the Mediterranean with Santiago (kind of historically appropriate, given the origin of both our orders.) Likewise historically appropriate, my wife started moved her Teutons along the North and Baltic Seas, while the Montesa moved into the British Isles. But Montesa really kind of cornered themselves by doing that, as a lot of spaces in northern and central Europe were already occupied by buildings when they moved back (there can only ever be one building- castle, church, barn, bank -in each space, so if someone got there fustest with the mostest, that's the way it stays for the rest of the game.) Just like with Coimbra, I had long-term goals in mind and if you build your fourth castle, you can score 4 points for each complete set of enemies (Prussians, Slavs, Saracens) you rack up. You also get bonuses for having crusaded against the most or second-most of each type of enemy, too. So I was aiming in that direction and managed to get my fourth castle built by defeating a Saracen in ~Serbia, but I also focused on building churches to get the Influence (VP) bonuses they provide. You only get those from taking Influence actions, which seem like the weakest leg of the table (other actions are Travel (move), Build, Muster, and Crusade) because Influence doesn't affect the board. But it does affect your final score and since the action system is based on a rondel (six wedges with 1 or 2 actions on them) and a mancala system (every time you take an action(s) you spread your tokens out to the subsequent (clockwise) wedges, one each), you can end up with a fair amount of tokens piled on those "useless" Influence action wedges. But if your position otherwise is already secure, you might as well score some points, yo. The endgame is triggered by the pool of Influence running out and I was scoring 8 points a shot from a couple of those actions, so it worked out. I ended up winning 95-80-75-63.

I like it. It has a sticking point where you feel like you're gimped by having too many tokens piled on a wedge of actions you don't really want to take and you realize it will take a couple rounds to get enough tokens piled on, say, a Crusade action which is what you really want to do before someone else gets there, but that's part of the central tension of the game. Plus, you can always affect your actions by building because each space you uncover gives you additional strength (the equivalent of a token) in particular actions so it's a weird mesh of "long-term" planning with immediate availability not really like most of my other games. I'd really like to try the expansion because the common thought is that it increases player interaction but it's out of print and absurdly expensive. And, from my one game, I thought there was plenty of interaction already, since you're often trying to decide where to move your knights based on who else might be in range and have the tokens to both get to X spot AND build there before you can and/or take out the enemy that you might want, which you have to do before you build, anyway, which means that they could get there and knock out those Slavs but you can walk in and build on that spot, since they won't be able to do both. This is definitely something I'd like to play more of and it looks like the expansion might be easier to find across the pond, too.

Jackwraith wrote: Yes! Definitely! We seem to be about an hour away from everything, since Coimbra is about an hour or so on the train to both Porto and Lisbon, as well. Also, flights from Lisbon to London are just another hour, so we will definitely be heading your way in the near future.

Thanks for the link to the con. That's cool. Was kinda hoping to make it to Essen next year, too.

I can kind of vouch for Leiriacon, I have a buddy who goes every year and loves it and I was planning to go next year as well.

10 days since the last post. You'd think nobody plays games around here...

Played for probably the last time with my regular 2-player partner, pending his ability to visit in Portugal or our ability to come back to the States (residency card being a big thing there; you can only leave and reenter the EU so many times before getting it and no telling how long that might take.) We played a couple games of ORC. My wife didn't really like that one but she doesn't like things that involve a lot of direct confrontation, which ORC absolutely does, since you're trying to be there the fustest with the mostest. He won the first game 9-8 and I won the second 13-10.

Then we tried a new one among the Perplext pile which is RUM. It's a set builder, where you're drawing either face down cards from either the Shipwreck or the Beach or face up cards from the Beach. You're trying to play the biggest sets of the six different colors in order to control the captain card of that color turned to the number of the size of your set (2-8), which gives you points. When someone hits the points goal of your number of players (2: 21, 3: 18, 4: 15), they win. You take captain cards from either other players or from the board by playing a larger set than its current value. You can also play a "rum trio", which is three single bottles of a single color to steal a captain card no matter its value. If you draw the Parrot from the Shipwreck or he shows up on the beach, players end up discarding cards and the Castaway Clock advances. The other way the game ends is if the clock hits the pirate ship (i.e. the clock has advanced/parrot has appeared eight times.) It's a solid set builder, but would probably be better at more than two players.

Then we played DIG, which is essentially a PU&D where you're dogs trying to dig up bones and drop them with one of the five dog bowls in the yard of different colors. You score points based on how close each bowl is to the doghouse (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) and you have 3 actions in a turn, which may be any combination of move, dig, and drop. As you dig up bones, creating empty spaces, cards move from the end of the row to fill those spaces, so you can try to manipulate which bowls ends up closer and are therefore worth more at the end. But your movement gets limited by the number of bones in your hand (move is 4, you can carry up to the 3 bones, so your movement drops from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1, based on what you're packing.) Each bone card has two scents that are colored on its back so you have a general idea of which bones are buried where and how you can get them to the appropriate bowls. It takes some thinking, not only in mapping out each turn (how far you can move with the bones you want to carry, how and when the bowls might get closer, etc.) and is, like the rest of them, a pretty slick game for its size. I won the first game 35-23 and the second 32-20. The second one I won on the strength of having all four green bones (there are only four of each color) and the green bowl ending up closest to the doghouse.

Your description of DIG makes it sound like it has a lot in common with Cosmic Frog, actually.

It is, really. I think it's a similar principle in a different "stage" of the game. In CF, you're uncovering the various terrain types and then collecting them in a specific order for when you "disgorge", whereas in DIG, you're trying to time your moment of "disgorging" (Dropping) based on how far you can move because of what you're carrying and the order of the drop matters based on your movement, rather than how it's tossed into the vault. So, yeah, pretty similar.

Last time with the Alehouse crew. Almost all of my stuff is packed, so I signed up for Santiago run by a semi-regular. Robin. It's one of the most Euro-est of Euros that I've played in a while, but is still a really good time because of how flexible it is (i.e. not burdened by rules like things like Brass, IMO.) The premise is that you're building a canal network upon which to base your plantations. You open the game by bidding on tiles that represent those plantations (peppers, coconuts, grapes, bananas, melons) and the number of farmers (cubes) that will accompany them when placed (1 or 2.) The first person to pass on this bid becomes the overseer. Anyone who passes gets 1 less farmer on their tile when they place it (down to 0.) Then there's a round of bidding to bribe the overseer to place a canal on the board where you'd like it. Your plantations, of course, dry out and eventually turn to desert without water, losing one farmer per round that they're not watered. At the end of the game, you score points per farmer in plantations of the same type. So if you have 1 farmer in a grapes tile that's not connected to any other grapes, you get 1 point. If you have two farmers in a connected area of 6 bananas, you score 12 points and so on. My friend, John, jumped out heavy on bananas and my wife built a strong position in coconut farming along the top of the board. I couldn't really establish myself anywhere so decided on a strategy of being 2nd place in a lot of places, dropping two farmers into larger areas to at least generate significant points from as many places as possible. My wife won, 67-63-61 (me)-59-52. John somehow came in last as he apparently didn't have the muscle of Dole in the 50s. I appreciate the heavy auction nature of it and there is a huge amount of interaction as a result, which I appreciate, although it strikes me that the game could feel a bit same-y after a few plays.

We had finished a little early, so Robin pulled out a Knizia, Whale Riders. This is one that I'd never played, so I was eager to try it. You're riding whales (or at least larger porpoises) of varying types (I was on a narwhal) and heading out on the water to collect... things. Some were obvious slabs of salmon and what resembled amphorae. Others were clumps of seaweed and possible shells of some type. You have two actions per turn of: move, buy an item (for 0 to 3 gold), gain 1 gold, discard any number of contracts and draw back up to 3, and fulfill as many contracts as you can. Every time someone picks up a tile from the board, it leaves an empty space which is then filled by a draw from the bag. Most of the time they're the aforementioned items in numbers of 1-3, including wilds that count as any item, or pearls that count as VP. But storms are also drawn that then remain on the board permanently, making the market harder to navigate. The contracts are usual X number of specific items, but sometimes any type of icon and/or a number of tiles of any type. Each contract fulfilled gets you VPs and gold. You're able to make one run down the board and one run back and then you're done. You don't have to go all the way back but at the home base are several pearl tiles that can be bought, many of which cost only 1 gold and since you can gain 1 gold as an action, you can sit there and buy your way through all of them if you have enough time. You can see where this is going, I'm sure, since I ran down the board and back, fulfilling several contracts and then sat in the home base and bought up pearls. As soon as those tiles are gone, the game is over. I won 24-23-21-21-18. It certainly has Knizia elements but the theme is kinda weird and I think this is one that tried to incorporate too many concepts and still keep them simple and ended up sacrificing the depth that is so notable among many of his best. Still a decent time.

I guess the two of us winning both games of our last night with this gang was a suitable send off.

I've been playtesting Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit on TTS. This is a retheme of 2000's Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit. I've never played the original; it came out when I was more into RPGs and not paying attention to hobby boardgaming. Plus the episode 1 theme killed any latent interest.

I've played two iterations of TKG. It's ... okay. There's four boards you compete on:

1. Mordor. Frodo and Sam marching to Mt. Doom. If they succeed then the Free People automatically win; if Frodo's will is reduced to zero, then the Shadow automatically wins. Frodo has to choose various paths (shorter ones are riskier) and the Shadow can put various traps to increase risk.
2. Minas Tirith. Orcs and some catapults vs. Gondorians and Gandalf. If the orcs get to the top level of Minas Tirith, then Shadow automatically wins. There is no way for Free Peoples to win on this board; all they do is prevent the Shadow from winning.
3. Pelennor Fields. Rohan (and Eowyn, Eomer, and Theoden) plus some Gondorian archers, vs. orcs, mumakil, some catapults, and the Witch King. This is the inverse of Minas Tirith -- if the Free People destroy all three of the Shadow people's camps then they auto-win; Shadow cannot win but can only prevent a loss. There's also ways for each side to move units to the Minas Tirith board.
4. The Great Port. Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn vs. southron corsairs and Mumakil. Wiping out the enemy on this board gives a bonus to many future actions.

It's card-driven. You lay out four cards in advance and alternate revealing them, then doing their action. The cards have an upper half action and a lower half one, and you choose which one you do when you reveal. There's also objective cards which you can reveal when you complete them for a small bonus. The objectives give nice hidden incentives and a bit of paranoia similar to Twilight Struggle -- is he going for that because of an objective? How many resources should I devote to countering it?

Mechanically it's pretty good. There's been some changes on the Mordor board; it seems hard to balance its importance with the rest of the boards. The last playtest didn't seem to have much agency for either side; I was Shadow and pretty much ignored it. But the rest of it is fun. There is a ton of randomness -- six decks of cards (three per side) plus three types of offense dice and three defense dice in combat, and then chit draws every time Frodo moves. Luckily there's so much randomness that it kinds of evens out -- but it still has critical moments where a bad roll/draw can kill you. It's not for the casual crowd at all; it's heavier than Fate of the Fellowship for example.

Themewise I think it is a mess. The Great Port (which canonically saw nothing more than a fighting retreat by Faramir's garrison) has Aragorn et al. as fantasy superheroes. In the movies, Legolas kills one mumak and it's this big dramatic scene. In the game, they are mowing through multiple mumakil, plus two dozen units of corsairs. All the heroes are very hard to kill; you can throw wave after wave of units at them, and maybe you grind them down a little. On Minas Tirith, there's a walls between each level with alternating gates at opposite ends (accurate) so invading orcs have to fight back and forth as they try to get to the top. But then the wall on the first level doesn't matter; orc units summoned there can start anywhere on the first level and don't have to go through the gate. Maybe the wall is destroyed and they are coming in through the gaps? But then why have a wall on the board?

So as is right now, it's a pass for me. I think lots of people will probably like it, and to reiterate, the mechanics are shaping up well. Even in its unpolished state it's still fun. But for a Tolkien fanatic like me, the thematic weirdness kills it. I have (too many) other LOTR games that are thematically faithful while still allowing freedom to rewrite the story based on the players' choices. But if you're not a sad well ackshully Tolkien nerd like me, you should check it out when it's released.

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Last weekend I played a 5p game of John Company. This was my 3rd game (previously played 3p and 4p); all with the 1710 scenario. I love this game and it is amazing. I started with only one share in the company, no offices, but a bunch of money. I used the money to buy a bunch of factories, which (combined with my lack of shares) incentivized me to push for company failure. Not having offices for most of the game made it so I didn't have many decisions, but it was still really engaging to debate what the company should do. At the midpoint of the game I started getting writers into the presidencies and during the hiring phase of the last turn I managed to get the presidency of Bombay. The other provinces were having problems with locals shutting off trade, and the company was hurting a bit for money. But the army of Bombay could open up a bunch of trade options easily if I funded some local alliances. So the director of trade moved most of the writers to Bombay, and the shipping manager moved most of the ships into the West Indian sea. Then when it got to my turn, I did ... nothing. No local alliances, no trade. The company made zero dollars on its last turn. However the chairman was able to play the law that has the Crown cancel company debt, preventing it from failing. I had one final chance to score points -- if my president retired, I had enough money to buy the most lucrative estate. But another player spited me and played a blackmail card that removed my president without a chance to retire. I ended up coming in a three-way tie for last, but have rarely had so much fun losing.

In retrospect I should have pushed harder to become Prime Minister. I got it on the last turn, but if I had gotten it earlier, the votes from my factories would have let me bully everyone else around with laws that helped me and screwed them.

Queen's Gambit has been a once year game for me. I've had a blast playing it but the set up and clean up time time and the 80% win ratio for the rebels has limited it play. Any improvements on the original?

Attended our May Gameathon where one of the games specifically requested was Seal Team Flix. We've had it since it was released (years now) and I'd love to play it more but it never comes out.

When it was requested I gave a Hell Yes to the rec and we played really well on one of the early scenarios just to reacquaint with it. My character (who I think is named Sunflower, I picked her because of her hometown having a family connection) had an explosive charge she hadn't needed to use, so she just threw it in an open door as we were leaving. Guards showed up just as it went off! That amused me. Need to keep up on this one.

I put a snappie of each game as we played on Bluesky if anyone wants to play name-that-game. A fair number of less popular titles in there.

Sagrilarus wrote: I put a snappie of each game as we played on Bluesky if anyone wants to play name-that-game. A fair number of less popular titles in there.

Bring it!

Sagrilarus wrote: Attended our May Gameathon where one of the games specifically requested was Seal Team Flix. We've had it since it was released (years now) and I'd love to play it more but it never comes out.

It makes me so happy that people still enjoy STF. I hope they like Phantom Division even more. It's been such a long wait.

Had a fun game night tonight. Pretty casual stuff but it was a good time.

First up was two 6 player games of Hot Streak. This was a blast, and it really shined. Hurley is such a piece of shit.

Next was a Cyanide and Happiness game called The Trolley Problem or something like that. Basically, two teams compete to try to get the conductor to run over the other team's cards they have put on the tracks. It was mildly fun but not great.

After that was another Cyanide and Happiness game whose name I forget, in which a 3 panel comic is started by the judge, and the other players attempt to come up with the best last panel, Cards Against Humanity style, but without the racism. This was pretty amusing, mostly because some of the cards are very funny.

We ended with a 4 player game of Magical Athlete, and this was also a good time. Nothing too crazy happened during the game, but MOUTH did get to eat one player. I fucked myself out of second place in the last race as Legs, because I forgot to use my power which would have just had me cross the finish line. It would not have mattered, but still.

Hot Streak was the star of the show tonight.

No Loose Ends, 3p. One of my favorite trick-takers. Exact-bid where you take turns laying down cards as your bid. The goal is to cover up the cards in front of you, which you can do if the card you win with matches either the suit or rank of a bid card. The fun is seeing what other people have laid down, which lets you deduce a bit about their hand, and then you can hose them. I won pretty handily.

Moon Colony Bloodbath, 5p. I have one previous play of this at 2p; 5p is better. It's decently fun but there's not much there. Multiplayer solitaire, and the later rounds take a long time (especially with more players) because everyone's adding their special cards to the deck that gets gone through. The cards aren't interesting, just "player 1 gets 2 food" which takes time as everyone moves tokens around. However it is funny and has a good narrative arc as people's colonies go down the crapper. I came in 2nd.

Excalibur, 5p. This is one of the most stupidly overproduced games I've seen. It could be a standard-sized deck of cards. But instead it has a bunch of plastic chips, three chonky metal swords (used for nothing but dividing the pool of chips into thirds), and a metal crown to denote first player. The game itself is light and fun; it has similar vibes as Love Letter -- a bit of deduction, with some bluffing and memory. The goal is to be holding the Excalibur chip at the end of the game. Chips let you steal chips, draw chips, pass chips this way or that, demand that a player give you a sword if they have one, look at somebody's hand, return chips to the pool, and so on. (There's also a Cursed Sword [auto-lose if you have it] and a Squire's Sword [win if the player to your left wins with Excalibur.]) It plays from 2-8p, which is nice, and takes maybe 20 minutes. I don't think the collector's edition (with the metal swords) is worth it, but it sure is pretty. Played 2x; I won the second one. It's definitely better with more.