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

MOON COLONY BLOODBATH is best viewed as a flexible ( in terms of player count ) filler, nothing more. For that role, it fits the bill.

KingPut wrote: 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?

Didn't we play it, and War of the Ring, in an Oxford pub when you were in the UK about .... 16 years (?) ago ?

It's a great, fun game and I only sold mine about 6 years ago when I had too many great, long campaign games that it wasn't getting played ... and I got offered a lot of money for it

southernman wrote:

KingPut wrote: 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?

Didn't we play it, and War of the Ring, in an Oxford pub when you were in the UK about .... 16 years (?) ago ?

It's a great, fun game and I only sold mine about 6 years ago when I had too many great, long campaign games that it wasn't getting played ... and I got offered a lot of money for it

You've BEST not have sold the SW: Risk I got for you many moons ago. Otherwise, I'll send Lord Vader to accept your apology.

Sitting in the shelves, still ... doesn't get much play due to the massive influx of kickstarters and campaign games of the last six years. It fared better though (it stayed) than the newer SW Risk that followed 10 years later and sits along side SW Rebellion, SW Epic Duels (although that gets played even less, especially with the Unmatched series with clearer rules), SW Outer Rim, and SW X-Wing (also unplayed for a long time but that may change soon).
Also have a few Star Trek games as well ...

Still have both SW: Risk and SW: Epic Duels, although it's been over 20 years since I played Epic Duels. Last time it was pulled out was at a Boy Scout function at The Boy's elementary school. The amount of kids that wanted to throw down as Vader and Jango Fett is still one of my favorite memories. All around were families playing basic games, like Operation and Monopoly. And here I am, board game crack dealer, issuing out light sabers and Power Ball. The amount of parents that asked me where I got them also makes me laugh.

Rliyen wrote: Still have both SW: Risk and SW: Epic Duels, although it's been over 20 years since I played Epic Duels. Last time it was pulled out was at a Boy Scout function at The Boy's elementary school. The amount of kids that wanted to throw down as Vader and Jango Fett is still one of my favorite memories. All around were families playing basic games, like Operation and Monopoly. And here I am, board game crack dealer, issuing out light sabers and Power Ball. The amount of parents that asked me where I got them also makes me laugh.

One of the problems with Epic Duels is that in multi-player games the players at the end of the turn order are often nearly out of the game when they finally get their turn but Unmatched has a rule for multi-player where in the first round a player can only attack the players who went before them or the next player after them - I'll see if I can try that if it ever gets out for a play again. Oh, and the total lack of rules included for the special cards of whether they are a free action or not

Wanted to link this Space-Biff review for a game I played at our May Getaway that got great reviews from all the players --

spacebiff.com/2026/05/04/voyages/

This is a print-n-play that I think was five dollars, and just a few bucks to print out on color paper. The game is really simple but really engaging, and it was likely my favorite purchase in 2025. Dan gives it the full treatment but I think he missed one of the ledes -- games don't have to be so damn expensive to be good, and they don't have to weigh nine pounds. This is what most games should look like. I appreciate the occasional coffin box is going to find its way in, but that shouldn't be the centerline of the industry. Kickstarter has done that to us.

Most of us in the first world don't appreciate how costly gaming is to much of the market. If you live in Chile or Malaysia or Azerbaijan a $40 game may come with a $75 shipping fee depending on which country you import it from. Print-n-Play fixes that, and a good game like this becomes reachable to a kid that mows lawns for his hobby money.

Given its $5 price tag more of us should buy games like this just to support the people working to bring them to the market. You could buy 800 of them for the cost of one wyrmwood table, with the added advantage of not being stuck with a wyrmwood table afterwards.

I get the urge to support small publishers by buying PnP.....but all due respect, I've put together probably a dozen playtest kits over the years and each time I tell myself its the last time. I am not into arts and crafts in order to play games.

Went to a boardgame meetup last night at my favorite brewery in all of Ohio, Warped Wing. My struggle to find local people to play actually good games continues. What I played, all of which was new to me:

Wavelength - over-produced party game that could cost half of what it does if they hadn't built an elaborate plastic scoring device. Eh.

Cartographers - I enjoyed the act of drawing in little parts of my map. What I didn't enjoy is the same thing I always don't enjoy about this kind of thing. No interaction. The ONLY thing you can do to someone is draw monsters on their map to impede their scoring. And you only potentially get to that to your neighbors, and only if said monster cards come up. I just don't see the appeal of the game ending and one person says "I got 80 points!" and someone else says "I got 83!" Bravo, I guess? Still... for a Euro, I've played much worse. I'd do it again.

Cubirds - this is an abominable set collection game. I don't mind the concept of set collection, but was not a fan of how it happens in this game. There is also zero setting. It's pictures of birds. Period. Could have been pictures of cheese and would play the same.

It sounds like I had a miserable time, but I really didn't. I will go again, continuing to hope I can find some like-minded gamers. And worst case scenario, I'm at my favorite brewery.

hotseatgames wrote:
It sounds like I had a miserable time, but I really didn't. I will go again, continuing to hope I can find some like-minded gamers. And worst case scenario, I'm at my favorite brewery.

This has been the majority of my experiences with going out to game meet-ups. We end up playing games that are perfectly okay but I usually end up thinking "That was fine but I could have done that at home with casual family game night."
I have been exceptionally lucky that a couple of co-workers and my kid's (and their significant other's) have been hard core gamer's that share my taste in games....even if they didn't know it until they started playing at our game nights.

When I mention the names of classic good games like Cosmic Encounter or Wiz-War, I can see people's eyes glaze over. They have never heard of them and pretty much only know whatever is in front of their face at Meijer. MAYBE they have heard of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Maybe they would like better games if they ever played them.

And the problem there is, I don't think a lot of good games lend themselves to playing in a public place. I imagine dice falling off of the table and bouncing across the room, some asshole spilling a beer all over the board, etc. There's also the issue that a lot of games are HUGE. Can you imagine dragging Nemesis to a bar? I can't.

The usual suspects bellied up to the table this past Sunday. First game we played was City of Horror. I’d been trying to get it to the table, but would always wuss out because of the rules. Whelp, I’m a stupid schmuck for ever thinking that, because the rules weren’t difficult at all. We first started out relatively easy and it was only at 3:00 a.m. that shit went off the rails. Jo was the First Player for the majority of the game and her tie breaking ability was BULLSHIT!... Anyway, we did have funny moments-me, pointing at the Housewife who’d been at the Crossroads the entire game, and saying she caused the food truck accident. Both Nate and Jo’s kids mutually hiding from the zombies in the bank. Me moving The Geek to the Armory, yelling, “THIS IS NOT A GREAT PLAN!” When Nate’s Thief Character ran from there to the Hospital, leaving me to let the Geek get eaten. Nate had 13 points, I had 10, and Jo had 7.

Next game was HellRail. Easy to set up and explain. I’ve had this game for over 12 years (THANKS SATAN!) and wanted to play it; just so if I could decide whether to keep it or not. Nate stated once again, “Where in the Hell do you get these games?” Nate also falsely, FALSELY! accused me of buying more games when I told him I didn’t I have 97 unplayed to date, why would I buy more? When he tried looking back through the texts, he could not find where I did buy new stuff, and accepted defeat.

There was more defeat coming his way, as I was sending the damned souls to the various levels faster than a bullet train. The board started to look like Non-Euclidean geometry if you looked at it too long. Once I bagged enough points, I immediately started throwing down rails to end the game. Next card will reach the end of the table and no way back to the other circles? Rail. Patching in holes within the network that did not make sense? Rail. And you can bet I fanned the flames to take as many cards away from the draw pile. Nate grokked what I was doing and did the same. I won with 23 points, Nate had 20, and Jo had 7. Nate said he really liked the game, so I bagged it up and slid it over to him. He was wow! Are you sure? I told him it will probably get more play at his house than mine. I also said I was sure because I liked the game but didn’t love it.

Last game to be played was Zombie Dice, with Santa, the Hottie, and the Hunk riding on the School Bus. Fortunately, no zombies were run over. Nate reached 13 first, with Jo at 11, and me with 7.

2 down, 95 unplayed games to go. Next game day is going to be early June and Nate asked me if we could play Return to Dark Tower or BSG. I said, "Gladly!"

I haven't been playing board games recently, but this talk about playing games at meet-ups reminded me of a conversation with a friend last weekend about the same. My friend is retired and tries to fill much of his free time with board gaming. There are local venues that host open gaming seven days a week, and there are also occasional conventions or other formal gatherings, so he has done plenty of gaming with random people. Last weekend, he ran afoul of the dreaded Minnesota Nice even though he spent most of the first 40 years of his life living here in Minnesota.

Although Minnesota is sometimes stereotyped as a land of descendants of nordic immigrants, the largest ethnic group here is German-Americans, followed by Irish-Americans. Germans do have some qualities in common with the nordic folk, including an absence of warmth for strangers. Minnesota Nice is a pleasant agreeability and politeness that usually stops short of actual friendliness. I like the joke that Minnesotans are so nice that they will stop and give you directions to anywhere except their homes. So my friend showed up at a recent meetup just as four people were setting up a game. He expressed interest in playing and was informed that it was strictly a four-player game, and they weren't interested in dividing their table so that he could play something else with one or two of them. Another group of four showed up together and excluded him from their game. He finally found a couple of people to play with, but they soon bailed on the game when the first group finished their game and wanted to start something different.

Actually, I have been playing one board game lately, at least once a week on average: Marvel Champions. It's still a great game, and I have enough content for plenty of variety in replay. The friend that I got hooked on the game is back in town for the warm half of the year, and he is obsessed. We have been gradually battling our way through the Civil War scenarios, which means we have been fight heroes lately. Maybe it is just coincidence, but we have been having more trouble defeating the female heroes (She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Woman) than the male heroes (Vision, Captain America, and Iron Man).

He recently went to Con of Heroes, a small gaming convention that is focused on Marvel Champions, and brought me a shrink-wrapped stack of custom cards that features Civil War style scenario decks for Hawkeye and Spider-man. The artwork is a bit below average quality, but the Hawkeye and Spider-man decks are decent designs. However, the designer gave them too many hit points on expert level. Hawkeye is just a human being with amazing archery skill and some trick arrows, so he should not have 21 hit points per player even on his toughest stage. For contrast, Ultron has 22 hit points per player at stage 2, and he is made out of adamantium, a nearly indestructible alloy. There is a bunch of other jank in the cards, including 5 aspect cards for the four basic aspects, to be used as modular sets. And some other weirder cards, including overpowered minion cards representing the various hero scenarios in Civil War. They all have 5 hit points per player, which makes them weak for true solo but really tough for 3 or 4 players.

Just bought Maximum Apocalypse (1e) with a bunch of expansions from Noble Knight Games. I played a few games solo and was reminded how absolutely BRUTAL the game actually is... AND I LOVE IT!


Now, I have to find a way to put this into rotation, as Nate's accusation does have some weight behind it (buying new games). However, I used money I got by filling out surveys, so wifey can't be mad... much.

If anything happens to me... IT WAS THE WIFE!