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

We had a brief game session tonight. Played two turns of Archipelago with 4 so now I can actually understand what the rule book says. Seems like lots is going on at once, could be good, jury still out.

Had a truly epic game of GW DungeonQuest with both expansions after. There was a turn 1 amulet kill, a player giving up and attempting to block the leader from escaping (failed), I managed to never get to the treasure room and got out toward the end with 40 G. The ninja managed to quickly get to the center chamber and collect until only two dragon tiles remained, with 5 turns left and 6 spaces away managed to draw a straight corridor on the last empty tile space on his path, and leave the dungeon on the last possible turn with our all time high score 11,920. It was recorded on a notepad with the winner's caption "Corridor, bitches."

Played two quick games of A: Netrunner with the last straggler and both times runner won.

It was fun playing games, first time I'd done so in quite some time.

Da Bid Dabid wrote: Had a truly epic game of GW DungeonQuest with both expansions after. There was a turn 1 amulet kill, a player giving up and attempting to block the leader from escaping (failed), I managed to never get to the treasure room and got out toward the end with 40 G. The ninja managed to quickly get to the center chamber and collect until only two dragon tiles remained, with 5 turns left and 6 spaces away managed to draw a straight corridor on the last empty tile space on his path, and leave the dungeon on the last possible turn with our all time high score 11,920. It was recorded on a notepad with the winner's caption "Corridor, bitches."

That is awesome.

played some games;

Fleet with the Arctic bounty expansion. Fleet remains a pretty good auction game where few actual auctions take place. We tend to not have enough money for any real bidding wars, so its more of a card engine game for the first half. This expansion adds a load of extra cards. It adds variety but little more.

The Castles of Burgundy. This is the first Feld game i've played. Its alright. You get points for pretty much everything bar barfing on the board. Its basically a game of putting coloured tiles on hexes on your board and trying to fill in areas. Its about as thematic as the contents of the Tate Modern. But it is sort of fun in the watching your actions engine, and mini empire grow in that way that some euros have.

Yomi, I don't like Yomi.

TALISMAN with the FIRELANDS expansion. My favorite part of it is the new terrain cards. Some events/spells/other cards can change a space into a different space. For example, an Ifrit attack can change the village space into a ruins space, or the Devout Builders follower can turn a space into a Chapel space. Pretty cool.

Fairy Tale - played the newer version that added cards. The new cards were alright, nothing needed but don't detract from it either. This game has seen regular play in every group I've been in since its release.

Lords of Waterdeep - played with the expansions for the first time. I really liked the corruption stuff and wouldn't want to play without it now. I lost, but it was a close game. Didn't seem much building happening because of the expansion boards.

Tigris & Euphrates - haven't gotten to play this in a while. Still one of my favorite games. I won via the tie-breaker.

7 Wonders - Got to try some of the expansion wonders with me as the Great Wall. I won by a lot.

I was at Geekway, a large gaming convention in St. Louis, the past four days and got in lots of gaming.

Notables:

Exodus: Proxima Centauri - My first play, it was a 4 player game that lasted about 3 hours. I enjoyed it, very TI3 light. I liked the Political System and any game that lets you launch WMD's is special. With that being said, I'm not sure I'd ever want to own it. I like Eclipse more and if I want a TI3 light, I'd rather just setup a game of TI3. Still, I'd play it again.

Earth Reborn - This is my number 1 game of all time and I had not gotten to play it in a couple of years. Played a team game and my team ended up barely winning. I really enjoyed this and the new players liked it. Amazing game that I wish was quicker to setup.

Eldritch Horror - My first play, was a bit too long with 4 players. Was a very difficult game (which I didn't mind), but it just felt plodding. Not exciting or strategic enough for the time commitment and I'd probably avoid playing it again in the future.

Kemet - 2 plays of this (my first time) and really enjoyed it. I'm a huge Cyclades fan so that's surprising. Would definitely play this more, although I think I prefer Cyclades.

La Boca - Liked this odd spatial perspective game. Might pick it up as unique games really speak to me.

Legend of the Cipher: The Game of Hip-Hop - I brought this to the convention as it's perfect for that type of atmosphere. I've reviewed this game in the past and I'm a fan. It's not the slickest of designs but sitting around a table and rapping with 3 other white gamers is hilarious. Most laughs I had at the con.

Eclipse - 4 player game with 1 newbie, and two people who had played once before and played wrong. I came in 2nd by 1 point, ugh. If I would have researched 1 more time in the last turn I could have won.

Last night I got to play a pre-production version of Dead of Winter. We had 5 players, and the designer, Jonathan Gilmour, taught us how to play and sat and read all the crossroads cards as they came up.

Literally the first move of the first turn, someone died. It set the stage for what turned out to be a fantastic experience. Each player having a secret objective that may or may not coincide with the goals of the group makes for a lot of tension and scrutinizing players' actions. We ended up losing, but it was fairly close. One of the players had been hoarding medicine because he turned out to be a junkie. Screwed us all, basically, but it was thematic.

Then we playtested City of Lycans again. Tweaks continue but people seem to like it.

hotseatgames wrote: Last night I got to play a pre-production version of Dead of Winter. We had 5 players, and the designer, Jonathan Gilmour, taught us how to play and sat and read all the crossroads cards as they came up.

Literally the first move of the first turn, someone died. It set the stage for what turned out to be a fantastic experience. Each player having a secret objective that may or may not coincide with the goals of the group makes for a lot of tension and scrutinizing players' actions. We ended up losing, but it was fairly close. One of the players had been hoarding medicine because he turned out to be a junkie. Screwed us all, basically, but it was thematic.

Then we playtested City of Lycans again. Tweaks continue but people seem to like it.

Is it possible Dead of Winter could replace BSG? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

I played a solo game of Nations, this time playing with the actual solo rules.

I was shocked at how good the solo game is, given that it sort of seems like an afterthought in the box. It certainly wasn't why I bought it. It's random, yes, but like the rest of the game the randomness is telegraphed so you have time to prepare.

My previous critique of the game stands---by the industrial age there is way too much math on the board and it's very easy to screw something up just because of basic math miscalculation. It really invites lots of sitting at the table brow furrowing. I think the homebrew +/- tracks that legomancer mentioned are a must.

charlest wrote: Is it possible Dead of Winter could replace BSG? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Well it's certainly faster to play and less convoluted. One difference is that there isn't a guarantee of a traitor each game. But, in our game last night, we didn't technically have a traitor, just someone who had goals counter to the group.

Even myself... I was not a traitor, but one of my goals required that there be at least 2 helpless survivors in the camp. Helpless survivors are dead weight; they suck up food and attract zombies but don't help at all. Anyway, at one point a crossroads card had a flatbed truck pull up with some survivors (both good ones and helpless ones). Two people wanted to turn them away, but myself and another person voted them in since we both had benefits to be gained by helpless survivors. Of course, the other people didn't know that at the time, so they were just like 'what are you doing!!!??' It was funny. I told them that I had to sleep with a clear conscience. Incidentally, the reason this 2 against 2 vote didn't end up a stalemate is that the other person voting with me was the 1st player that round. 1st player can break ties.

Long story short... I don't believe that Dead of Winter "replaces" BSG. But I'd never pick BSG over it.

Pretty good game day yesterday!

Triumvirate - While we waited for others, me and James played this unique 2-player trick-taking game. It's an interesting game because you aren't necessarily looking to win tricks, but to shift the victory on to one of three colors, as you're making bets on which color will win. It's subtle and crafty. Had a limited print run, so it's hard to get hold of. I eventually paid $25 for it, which is probably too much, but hey.

Pax Porfiriana - We started this thinking we had an hour and a half before another person arrived. I'd never played it 2-player, so I was eager to see it in action. The other guy showed up only about 30 minutes later, so we bagged it. I really want to get in more plays of it. I was happy to see that it seems to do well with only two (looks like the only change is Diaz starting with 3 pts instead of 2 during a Topple?)

Antike - Haven't played this in ages. It's really good as a 3p game. I started out strong but waited too long to pump out troops and ended up trying to catch up. Towards the end I was trailing and could either let one guy sack a temple of mine for the win or keep slapping him away and let the other player win. I opted to let the temple go.

Nations - I've gone from thinking that this purchase was a huge mistake to now being worried that it's getting overplayed, though we still haven't broken out the B-sides of the boards, since someone is always new to it. Extremely tight game. Not only did I lose, I knew exactly the point where I screwed myself over.

BSG Express. Seriously. It works remarkably well, especially considering it started life as a Print-and-Play.

S.

Really looking forward to Stronghold's "real" edition of it, Dark Moon. I love BSG, but at this point the excitement and interest level in the theme is low. I'm glad that it's a more general John Carpenter-ish setting.

If they pull it off, it could pretty much bury BSG apart from the diehards.

BSG Express is pretty good. The new Dark Moon game apparently has some changes and is more developed from what I've read, so I'm really excited to see what's been changed. BSG Express is really the only good BSG-lite game out there. The Resistance and Werewolf+variants are very different games. Keeping a close eye on Dark Moon and waiting for Dead of Winter to arrive.

I've created a thread for the 'Express Games' to keep it going.

I'm really interested in seeing how these work out.