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

but Runebound really won that race by a large distance,

Do what now?

Gawd, Runebound was awful...can we please stop talking about it, maybe it will go away.

It's really a shame Lineage II never really found any traction in the Runebound era...it's a light Talisman-y adventure game but it has a lot more going on...namely, Cosmic Encounter-like sieges with a HILARIOUS combat resolution- both sides roll d8, loser loses the difference in men from his side...which may mean that you send 1-7 of your allies off to the dead cart. You can do the whole one-man standoff thing against a massive army and win.

But yeah, playing games with kids is so very different. No one bitches. No one moans. No one comments about what fucking bullshit they read online about the game. They just get excited and have fun.

Double post

I don't think Runebound is better than the more recent games I mentioned, but it was totally better than Prophecy and Return of the Heroes...and Talisman.

Everyone will please stop dissing Runebound as I just spent a shitload getting all the expansions.

Cease and desist.

Runebound I always thought was a pretty darn good adventure game that just had a pacing that was off a little.

Runebound is great - especially if you do the quick levelling (1 XP per level, max 5) and skip player vs. player combat. Of course some of the cards are a bit weird (like how you can kill the evil necromancer Vorakesh quite early in the game, but still have to fight the dragon he was about to summon), but a lot of them fit together in cool ways.

I mostly play it solo, though, but with two or three players it's still good.

JoelCFC25 wrote: The writing's been on the wall for some time, but I just wrapped up a PBEM game of Washington's War in which KingPut's 'MURICANS wiped the floor with my British.

At the WBC they call the game in 1781 which I think is a good rule. They also give the British a free card draw if they have to play Ben Franklin or Dec of Independence. It becomes tougher and tougher on the British after 1781 and the last 2 years can start to drag.

Thanks for the game. I always love playing WWr.

Death of a Shelf Toad

I have owned Crusader Rex for ever. I'm taking years. And never played it. That was rectified last night when Jimbo came over and tried it out with me.

Looking at it. It seems like it should be great. An exciting and tense game with a theme I really dig. It turned out it didn't do much for me. Not a bad game to be sure, just dull. Perhaps it's because the game rewards timid play? Conserve your irreplaceable units, don't venture too far from your own towns lest you get hit by winter attrition, lots of sieges where it's better to starve them out than to assault.

Anyway, I didn't hate it but I sure didn't love it. Anybody wanna trade?

mads b. wrote: Runebound is great - especially if you do the quick levelling (1 XP per level, max 5) and skip player vs. player combat. Of course some of the cards are a bit weird (like how you can kill the evil necromancer Vorakesh quite early in the game, but still have to fight the dragon he was about to summon), but a lot of them fit together in cool ways.

I mostly play it solo, though, but with two or three players it's still good.

yeah, the faster leveling house rule is a must. PVP in adventure games is usually awful. I like interaction, but usually the price for losing a combat in these games only serve to make the game longer.

Played the SdJ nominee Splendor last night, twice. Hoo. This is what I wrote about it:

Let me be clear: there's nothing wrong with Splendor. It works, it's fine, it does a thing. But that's as far as it goes, or even seems to aim for. It's another item on the list of recent games that seem to be happy eliciting a response of, "Yep, that's a game, all right." We played two games in pretty much silence, doing the things you do in the game until someone won. Occasionally someone called someone else a jerk for taking a card the former person wanted. There's nothing here aggressively bad enough to make one dislike it, nor captivating enough to demand further play. It seems designed specifically to sit on a shelf as part of a "collection". If it wins the prize it's up for, that will be the only way anyone will be thinking about it next year.

The game has these great chunky poker chips in it for absolutely no reason but to drive the cost up, and I'd go so far as to say that if they had been cardboard tokens no one would give this a second look.

Finished out with Guildhall, which I really enjoy.

That matches my own assessment of Splendor almost exactly. It's a perfectly cromulent game, but that's about all it strives to.

San Il Defanso wrote: That matches my own assessment of Splendor almost exactly. It's a perfectly cromulent game, but that's about all it strives to.

Cosigned. Board gamers are such easy marks.

What do you want out of it? It's a light, casual game. The kind of thing you chit-chat over, but it is smartly designed enough to be interesting and mildly competitive.

Not everything has to be a head-down, hunkerathon.

Michael Barnes wrote: What do you want out of it? It's a light, casual game. The kind of thing you chit-chat over, but it is smartly designed enough to be interesting and mildly competitive.

Not everything has to be a head-down, hunkerathon.

I want a game where the experience of playing it is distinguishable from the experience of not playing it.