What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I have a Malifaux game set up for tomorrow.
Couple of months ago, I played all of the scenarios in the starter set and one complete game, with bigger teams.
Initially, I liked it a lot, but my enthusiasm started to wane after the big game, because it took us like 3,5 hours to get through it. Also, it kind of started to remind me of Earth Reborn in terms of disparity between actual mechanics and what they're supposed to represent. In Earth Reborn, I was more concerned with my bits&chits than the miniatures and their positioning. In Malifaux, I spent a lot more time playing cards than moving my guys and making pew-pew sounds.
Nevertheless, I'm going to give it another shot with the same opponent and the same teams.
Does anyone here has any experience with it? Should it take that much time or we're dumb?

I looked at Malifaux. Then I saw there were no dice. The end.

hotseatgames wrote: I looked at Malifaux. Then I saw there were no dice. The end.

Obviously, you are not a golfer.

After initially playing Tuesday there was enough desire for more Star Trek: Ascendancy that I got it back to the table last night. We had one new player who wasn't in the first game, no one was playing the race they played last time.

I won as Romulans by maximizing blocking and advanced cloaking. The turn Klingons and I got to 5 Ascendancy the Klingons had gone first and were holding 5 systems, I had 4. Two fleets advanced warped into Klingon worlds and razed them, and a web of blocking ships prevented the Feds from interfering with my victory. The map was way different than the first time we played, we actually got all the system on the table. 3 of my initial warp lanes went to phenomena and I struggled all game to hold more than 2 research nodes. I think the Fed player, who was the rookie, was a bit less focused due to never playing and kinda learning the mechanics as they played. He had a ridiculous amount of research and had he played before instead of going all projects we would've had formidable Fed warships to deal with.

Can't wait till try the Feds now, it'll prolly never happen cause we go random and I want to try them out.

Finally got to try Commands and Colors: Ancients with a friend of mine. He's really into Classical history and warfare so I figured it would be a good starting place for us before we try out some of my heavier war games. After I briefly explained how the command cards worked we jumped right in to the tutorial battle and figured stuff out. The player aids were very handy and by the end we felt that we had a pretty good handle on the rules. We learned the importance of leaders and keeping units together, and I found the card management aspect of the game fascinating. Overall he said he really enjoyed it and we're both excited to try out more of the complex scenarios.

I played boardgames this weekend and they were fun!

Imperial Assault - we played a raid on a spice den scenario, the rebels won largely due to my incompetence.

San Juan - picked this up in a trade, its great, definitely prefer it to Race, possibly to Glory to Rome. It's a really satisfying game to play and much better than the boardgame that inspired it. I tried to build a coffee empire and came in second.

The Networks - this is a satirical light euro game about running a TV network like HBO, you spend money each round to buy shows, hire stars and place adverts. It has comical art and cynical names for its shows etc. I really dug this game , mostly because of the humour but the euro underneath is pretty solid and not very complex. I mostly hosted bad comedies on my sports channel and came in last.

Codex - This is a David Sirlin game. I generally dislike Mr Sirlins games because he seems to spend his time trying to prove hes better than other game designers by redoing their games 'fixing' them. However, despite codex being Sirlins attempt to one up magic, it's excellent mostly because it is magic. You have the buy cards when you want em mechanic from mage wars to deck build on the fly, and then you have a few new things. You can upgrade your tech allowing you to buy higher tech cards, you have three sub factions within each faction and you have to focus on one, you have heros and buildings and generally quite a few options for each turn on top of your usual magic fare. I'm told its quite similar to magic EDH. Unlike most of the FFG attempts at CCGs/LCGs Sirlin has retained magics resource ramp and so the tempo and build up of the game. Mostly what made the game good was the factions, one game was won by a rampaging land octopus, and one faction has a fantasy traffic cop and a tax collector for units.

A coworker was really dying to play a game of Salem , a deduction game that works best with seven. After much effort he got his seven players, and we played it this afternoon.

Salem lasts four turns, and each turn you get to pick which jailed townsfolk are actually witches, using the clues that each player gives out during the turn. Wrong guesses penalize you, and the player with the fewest penalty points wins the game. However, the early turns are based on little more than guesswork. By the third turn you should be pretty close to solving the game's puzzle, and by the last turn you will have solved it. The problem is that if your early guesses are wrong, you'll lose, and AFAICT there is no way to avoid guessing on the early turns. The winner guessed pretty close at the start, and got two penalty points. Last place guessed poorly, and got twelve points. I don't mind (too much, anyway) games that punish you for stupid moves at the start. This game punishes you for wrong guesses at the start, and you can't recover from it. I'd play it again, because I like Sudoku in small doses, and my friend likes the game a lot. But I wouldn't ask to play it.

Afterwards we played three games of Unspeakable Words. It's a press-your-luck word game, with a Cthulhu theme, that plays pretty fast. I'd buy a copy, if the thought of buying a $50 filler game didn't freak me out,

RobertB wrote: Afterwards we played three games of Unspeakable Words. It's a press-your-luck word game, with a Cthulhu theme, that plays pretty fast. I'd buy a copy, if the thought of buying a $50 filler game didn't freak me out,

I have a copy of the original edition sans figures that I'd let go for cheap if you really want a copy.

barrowdown wrote:

I have a copy of the original edition sans figures that I'd let go for cheap if you really want a copy.

The friend who owns the game has a couple of extra copies as well, and I could cadge one off of him. But I appreciate the offer!

I've been playing a few games of Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I just have the core set and I've only played the first story in the campaign, but so far I like it. I've tried with both two investigators and just one, and so far I prefer the latter. Maybe I just chose the wrong dudes (m/f) for synergi (Ronald and Agnes), but for me it was simply easier to focus on the story with just one investigator. (Obviously this wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't soloing).

The game packs a lot of narrative, a few nasty surprises (yes, some of them even work if you know they're coming) and I've had two very tight endings with the entire game being down to one roll of the dice ... or rather, one draw from the chaos bag. I have yet to see how much impact deck building during the campaign will have, but with a deck of only 30-something cards, I guess that even adding a few cards can make quite a difference.