What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game and instead got to finally tear the shrink off my copy of Sekigahara. I've played a few times in the past, but always someone else's copy. I played Tokugawa in a real bloody game. I mopped up in the north as usual, was getting creamed in the south. Pretty standard stuff. Then I managed to get my Tokugawa stack of 8 blocks a force march away from the big stack that may have had Ishida in it. I hadn't seen that leader yet, so wasn't sure. But it was a stack of 7 blocks and if everything went ok I could destroy 6 blocks, so everything but Ishida... I drew a hand of cards where I could activate all 8 blocks in the stack AND had a loyalty challenge. So I went for it. I won the battle, but it was costly as I lost 4 blocks myself, and a loyalty challenge on my last block meant I didn't do one more damage but instead had one more done to me. A 2-block flip! Ouch...and it turned out Ishida wasn't there anyway. The next turn I lost initiative, didn't draw any cards that could activate the stack and that was it for Tokugawa. We both hadn't played in awhile so I think that's part of why the cat and mouse game I usually expect didn't happen at all. We also seemed to draw hands such that directly attacking seemed to be the best, obvious move. I definitely overextended and just should have consolidated my side of the map. I just couldn't pass up the attack after I drew the perfect hand of cards.

After Sekigahara, no other games were wrapping up, and I still had my nestor games version of Amazons sitting nearby. So I had my revenge by outmanoeuvring on the tiny board. I'm finding it interesting how the games play out so differently. Typically what I'm doing, and my opponents, is moving a piece right next to an enemy piece, and then placing a stone to block a path also next to the same piece. At least in the early game. My opponent instead parked his pieces a few spaces away, but in a square that would interfere with open movement of at least 2 of my pieces. And then shot a stone next to a different piece altogether. Really frustrating! Luckily he overcommitted to trying to trap one of my pieces that I managed to escape at the last moment, while I walled off two of his pieces.

Finished up the night with a game of Crokinole with same opponent. He had never played before and wanted to see what it was about. I think we had 4 tie rounds so it was pretty close.

Ended the night by agreeing to trade 4 of my wargames I'll never get to the table(Unhappy King Charles, Fading Glory, Stalin's War, Halls of Montezuma) for El Grande, La Citta and Tikal. Pretty much a great game night all around!

I was able to get Star Trek: Ascendancy to the table after a week of it taunting me from the shelf. I'm a huge fan of TNG and casual of all the other series so that is where any of my Trek bias will come from.

Overall I loved it. I was Klingons and forgot all game about my racial advantage (doh!). Despite that I managed to get 5 Ascendancy 1 turn before the others, but it left me over extended and Advanced cloaking Romulans managed to take Kronos to prevent the win. The turn after both other civs hit 5 Ascendancy, but the Feds had managed to boost up to level 3 shields and were invulnerable to the Romulans and I could only hit on 6s due to the starting tech. The feds sent their super shielded ships and 3 of them took out my fleet of 8... death before dishonor. I went last and could have had a very outside shot to take some Fed systems and kingmake the Romulans or at least force a tie. I obviously ignored that plan and took back Kronos, giving the Feds their deserved win and ensuring the Klingon empire would not be some pathetic Romulan vassal.

I thought the warp movement and galaxy building mechanisms were fantastic. We got some rules wrong and basically just opened the game and played without looking at anything so no one really had any good idea of strategy before hand. What else stood out was how fluid the shift in player power could happen and the response to that being player generated balancing of chasing down a leader happening quickly and forcing constant re-evaluation of player strategy. I greatly look forward to my second game with what I drew from the first and playing with the corrected rules errors.

Someone here called this GF9's finest effort to date. I would have to disagree as Spartacus still holds that honor for me. That is granted comparing 1 play vs like 50, but this is a strong runner up. Both other players also said they preferred it after that one play over Runewars, Starcraft, etc. and the other types of that style game when we don't have the numbers for TI or Dune. Also I'd say they can do a lot with expansions for this game, I know they are introducing an Ally mechanic with the Ferengi and it will interesting to see how much chrome they try to add. It is easy to imagine captain tokens, dangerous star lanes, and similar types of additional stuff that could alter how the game plays quite a bit. Not sure if it will benefit from getting more complicated in this game's case, we'll have to see how it rolls out.

My friend Matt and I have decided on a combined 10x10 challenge, the 10x10x2. We took turns picking games that can be played with 2, that both of us wouldn't mind playing several times, and that were realistically feasible to play 10 times in a year (so, short-ish). Here's the list. Matt picked first, and then we alternate:

Mottainai
Neuroshima Hex
Impulse
51st State
Tash-Kalar
Theseus
13 Days
Blood Bowl Team Manager
2 de Mayo
Space Hulk: Death Angel

Last night we kicked it off with Mottainai and BBTM (which we both had to re-learn). Tracking our status here:

www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/217131/ma...ves-10-x-10-x-2-list

If you figure out how a player can get better at Theseus please let me know.

Da Bid Dabid wrote: If you figure out how a player can get better at Theseus please let me know.

Indeed. I have won a few times, but I don't think I've ever won against the Hunters.

I played Captain Sonar twice last Saturday.

You need 6-8 people, and the rules are pretty easy to screw up and cause some disagreements, but man... this game is amazing. It's easily my favorite new game that I've played this year. Fury of Battleship Alert. I'd stay away if you don't like working as a team or a game with lots of tension and yelling. When I compare it to something like Castles of Burgundy... No contest! It's a brilliant and original game, despite the fact that you can find most of the mechanics or ideas in other games, they've never been put together like this.

It's kind of funny because I often rail against "individual player boards" in games like Castles of Burgundy or Power Grid: Factory Manager, and everyone has their own board here! But... the boards are different depending on your role, and you're still directly affecting what your team and the other team is able to do.

You should try it one on one, in turn-based mode. It's better than you'd think.

ratpfink wrote: Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game

So... Maria next week?

Unicron wrote:

ratpfink wrote: Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game

So... Maria next week?

I think so. Todd really wants to play Friedrich too. So... one of those for sure!

Adrenaline, y'all. It's amazing. Played a short 4 kill game at TOS.con and can't wait to play a longer one tomorrow and/or Saturday. (If anyone from F:AT is here, let me know and I'll play it with you.)

It's a first-person shooter skirmish, but done as an area majority game, where the player's damage is the area that scores the points, if that makes sense. Awesome weapons, simple to learn, powerful, tactical and super-thematic stuff that happens with kill shots and overkills and power-ups and attacks of opportunity. Love it.