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

Jpat,

I've never played Runewars with two but I think it's one of the best with three or four. Thing is it can take a few plays before you are suddenly hit by that beam of light descending from the clouds and suddenly you see just how fine a game it is. Stick with it and get a couple more players.

Today I got in my first full game of Andean Abyss with four players. This is a great game with many aspects I find the most enjoyable. It's a heartburn generator in the best of senses in that each turn seems tense, each decision seems very important and no matter what you do you want...no you NEED...to be able to do more.

Yes it's by GMT and they do market it as a wargame but it isn't. It's sort of an area control game...kind of...but not really. I think it's very much it's own thing sort of straddling but not really falling into any category.

I played the Drug Cartels and almost won but was beat out on the last turn when the government launched an air strike against one of my farms and cleared the way for a FARC victory.

I highly recommend trying this. Don't let the "war game" label throw you.

repoman wrote:
Today I got in my first full game of Andean Abyss with four players. This is a great game with many aspects I find the most enjoyable. It's a heartburn generator in the best of senses in that each turn seems tense, each decision seems very important and no matter what you do you want...no you NEED...to be able to do more.

Yes it's by GMT and they do market it as a wargame but it isn't. It's sort of an area control game...kind of...but not really. I think it's very much it's own thing sort of straddling but not really falling into any category.

Written by a CIA analyst and it shows -- it's confrontational but not necessarily combative in nature.

S.

I've always been intrigued by Andean Abyss and the other COIN games. I think I'm going to dive in with Fire on the Lake, as 'Nam is more my thing.

Played a 5 player game of Modern Art last night. Everyone got into a bidding frenzy after the first round, so I used that to my advantage and sold, but never bought any paintings. Ended up winning the match by 100 chips or so.

Really enjoy the game, and always look forward to getting it out on the table. It usually takes everyone a game for it to 'click' but once it does, there's definitely a layer of strategy.

Last night:

Played Castle Panic, and on the LAST MONSTER we lost. Salty.
Played TTR with the 12YO, who soundly whooped me. 152-114.
Played Stratego with her too - she whooped me.

TL;DR: I suck at games.

Android - Another 4 player game. Even with most of us having played before it still took forever. I think I'll only play this with 3 from now on. We all focused on the conspiracy early this game so we were done with the puzzle at the end of the first week. I got my guilty hunch, but lost by two points.
I think the dark cards are way too conditional and that whole mechanic could have been done better. Even trying to draw multiple for each other player, most turns I was unable to play them and others at the table felt the same way. Unless its only requirement was it be played at the start of that players turn, it was better to discard it to help pay for a light card.

It's probably deliberate design that the black cards tend to be overly specific in usage, to protect players from a severe beatdown from take-that cards. Personally, I wish that the conspiracy puzzle took longer to solve, because early knowledge of conspiracy puzzle payoffs can get players chasing after less thematic VP gains, like say collecting labor tokens.

Played my first few games of the LORD OF THE RINGS DECKBUILDING GAME (I don't know the official name).

Now remember, this is from a guy who really hates Dominion, I despise that game. But I really loved this deck building game. You totally feel the theme way more than Dominion. I mean, it's no War of the Ring but nothing is, really. You get a feel for the corruption that using the ring has or the decisions Boromir faces. You actually feel like you're coming up against these small and large minions on your path. Grabbing a ton of allies and/or artifacts to make the quest easier. I played 2 four-player games and came in 2nd in both but loved it. I knew I was making some sub-optimal decisions but I didn't care. It's actually fun to play.


Also played my first game of Monopoly for at least twenty years now. We were four. I had to go last which is death in that game. I only was able to buy up 5 properties. I held one of the yellows and convinced a guy to trade me his two yellows for my 4 other properties straight up (one of them made him light purple set) and I included a railroad. He wanted money and many rotations went by when I refused to give him any money. Finally he saw that his main competitor (not me) was starting to build houses so he knew he had no choice (I told him repeatedly I'd rather just lose the game than trade him properties AND my money, I would then just bleed dry. He kept telling me, "but you're going to lose if you don't make this trade! You have no choice!" I kept explaining that I can choose how I lose and it's like he's saying, "I'll make this trade if you let me dip my dick in red paint and give you a clown face", I mean I don't have to take that deal, I can just lose. This insane analogy made him understand and he made the trade.

The two of us then took our one person each and were head's up. He had all the first three sets, I had oranges (yay), yellows and the dark blues. Houses all over yellow and orange. We kept going back and forth and it felt like a stalemate so we called it a draw in the end.

There were tons of fights but they were hilarious. I dunno, the game is okay. We combined two Monopoly sets so there were WAY too many houses. I had 3 houses on everything and normally that would shut down house production but there was basically almost an infinite supply of houses so that didn't work.

When electric company went up for auction, it was really funny. No one wanted it. I ended up grabbing it for a hundred bucks and it wasn't worth it at all. I insta-mortgaged it for money.

anyway, that lord of the rings game was really fun

I played a few games this weekend, most notably, Firefly and Frank's Zoo.

Frank's Zoo is a really quirky ladder-climbing card game (think Tichu or Haggis), the gimmick is that there's a near cyclical hierarchy, and every hand after the first the game is a partnership game but the partners are assigned per hand based on standings. It's really fun, easy to play, and very clever. I played it with 6 and it was kind of boring, then we played 2 games with 5 and it was so much better.

Firefly is the best spawn of Talisman there's ever been. It's like Talisman if Talisman gooned around with Arkham Horror and Merchant of Venus. The way travel was handled was very fun, the way good were just boiled down to gerneric goods was a great choice, and overall it played fairly quick. We had 4, played the scenario the book recommended, which I've since heard is NOT recommended, it took us 3-3.5 hours, which for 4 first time players seems totally reasonable. 3 of us were in a nail biter for the finish, there's a lot to like here, want to play some more.

Broke out my new copy of Tomorrow last week, with five players. We had a blast!

It's a deliciously evil take-that kind of game where you *must* kill off huge numbers of population or else everyone loses. It's quite fun to say, "Ooh, sorry, but it's for the good of the planet" while you're playing some horrific disease on another player.

There are problems, though. I know there's a FAQ, but unfortunately I didn't read it before playing. The rules are clear enough, but not organized very well. They over-emphasized the negative aspects of playing Nukes, so most of us were way too gun-shy with those. They also under-emphasized the positive aspects of the strategy cards, so not enough of us were working to get those. Generally, though, those are typical mistakes for a first time play, and we're all eager to give it another go.

repoman wrote: Jpat,

I've never played Runewars with two but I think it's one of the best with three or four. Thing is it can take a few plays before you are suddenly hit by that beam of light descending from the clouds and suddenly you see just how fine a game it is. Stick with it and get a couple more players.

I'll bring it with me to Geekway and see whether Jenn and I can pull together a 3- or 4-player, time, of course, permitting. I think Jenn and I generally both get it now, but I still think the game is at or near the break-even point for me between rules overhead and entertainment value.

Did, in fact, play Thunderstone Advance: Worlds Collide. I'm not sure when the rules changed, maybe with Numenera, but now torches and longspears are much fewer in number. There are also no familiars in the base set and no allowance for them in the rules (unless I missed it), which is not a big deal but a little odd. (Now Advance has three or three and a half base sets and two expansions, which also seems strange.) The cards in Worlds Collide that we played with were pretty fun and relatively simple (as, I believe, was intentional). Also played Legendary, which is seeming increasingly flat to me.

Yesterday I got Nations played, this time with all the correct rules and only three players. Unlike the previous time, which was dire, this was a lot of fun. I tried a completely non-military strategy and lost by a huge margin, but only part of that is eschewing military; the rest was me not grabbing what I needed to get to make up for lack of military. I also think that while you don't have to madly race to not suffer the war penalties, you have to have some kind of military to take advantage of colonies and battles. I think that kind of sucks, but it's manageable. Most importantly, we all enjoyed it. So I'm feeling a lot better about this one.

Then was Tigris and Euphrates, which is just a great three-player game. I was sloppy and should have been utterly destroyed, but the guy trying to stop me kept making the wrong moves and he never really prevented me from getting a lot of easy cubes (My black leader was alone in a city with two monuments.) That's one I always forget about for too long.

Castle Panic again. This time, the orc scourge was crushed handily. I think the fun in the game is never knowing how it will play out, and more important, the stories that are told.

We got hammered early on, but pulled "Rotate Clockwise", then "All Red Monsters Move", but the red monsters were all moved, so we dodged that. Last two tiles pulled were "Giant Boulder" which took out like 3 monsters (one a boss, full health, at Knight) that would've caused us trouble, and then a "Draw X tiles" which was null and void.

Kid loves the game. It teaches her prediction, which is cool.

Pete - Have you played the Justice League Axis of Villains (or something like that)? It is a Castle Panic style game (eight pie shaped areas with Super Villains coming towards the HQ Space Station). You run around with Batman, The Flash, Superman and Green Lantern fighting them off. It also requires a bit of teamwork to beat some of the higher power enemies. It is a pretty neat game, but has some flaws in that not all the questions you have about the game will be answered by the rules. But the answers you come up with in house will also allow some tailoring of the difficulty. Not a bad little game for $25 or so.

Good lookin' out!! It's worth the price just to get the little figurines!

Totally going to get this.

EDIT: Fuck. That was a BGG image that someone kitbashed using Heroclix dudes.

Fuck. Hopes=Dashed.