What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Oh wow, I am really digging getting back to Battletech...it’s funny, it is really a clean design despite what you might think. We were playing this morning. Four mechs on a paper map, a couple of dice, some clipboards with record sheets, and PENCILS. No fancy tracking chits, tracks, or cards- no custom anything. Granted we aren’t playing with the more detailed/advanced rules but the tidiness of this game is refreshing. I know it gets way more complex once you bring in Battletroops, vehicles and so forth but the mech v. Mech game is very accessible.

Kids were both thrilled that they could blow off arms and legs. They destroyed me, we each had two mechs (a Locust and a Griffin or Wolverine each). They blasted the shit out of my Griffin on the third turn so I surprised them with a reinforcement. We deployed it by dropping the standee from the light over the table. They still blasted the shit out of me- I didn’t do anything, whiffing LRM and PPC (“pee pee cannon”) shots every damn turn.

What I think a lot of folks don’t realize about Battletech is that it is really kind of an evolution of Ogre. As such, it’s really more of an old fashioned war game than might be expected, but you put in pilots, heat management, and more details specific to the setting.

Thinking I might be getting into this again...25 years after the miniatures I had have been long gone...I may still have the 2nd Edition box in the basement though.

Once again, returning to the classic hobby games yields happiness and satisfaction that most modern games can’t deliver.

I just got the PC game, and am really enjoying it. My favorite thing to do is jump jet onto a vehicle and smash the shit out of it. I don't care if I overheat, jump jets are too fun.

These new sets have dry erase mech boards, don't they? How is the quality of the standees? How much would one spend to replace them with minis?

My spouse set up Arkham Horror before I came home for the weekend and we played after a morning snowshoe. It was great, two early rumors hit hard but we won.

Been playing more Legends of the Five Rings.

I admit that I'm having a rough time with the game because I'm playing online. It's a complex game, a punishing one to boot and the competition are people who have played for a minimun of a year. It's a bad environment for learning and I feel like I lose games to myself half of the time because I make a big mistake but my opponent never does. And since it's not in person I don't have someone across the table to tell me "No, don't do that, that's a bad move".

The beginner box has 8 pre filled sheets- I copied them, I didn’t even think they might be dry erase but they may be.

You get two miniatures in that box but lots of good standees (two piece). You can totally run a 4 vs. 4 game with unique MechWarrior pilots. Yeah, you can play a big game with a $15 street starter. It’s true that it’s not the full rules but for many players, this may be all you want from it. Hats off to Catalyst for making this one of the best values on the market.

If you get the $50 box, you add 8 miniatures, more standees, two more maps, and the full core Battletech rules. It’s definitely worth getting both.

Okay, so the $20 and $50 boxes don't have any content in common? I didn't realize that.

Played some Yugioh Speed Duels because Barnes won't shut up about it. Holy shit this game is dumb. Truly, irredeemably dumb. That is not a negative.

The decks being a svelte 20 cards means that each is built to fire off one, maybe two combos. Tops. The trick is finding as many ways to make your stack of bullshit work as well as possible as often as possible. Bad draws mean you just lose. Turn 3 losses are a -thing-. Normally this would be the death of a game, but rounds are literally 5 minutes at the most. It's insane.

You can tell this originates from a mobile game because it just wants to hammer your dopamine receptors as much as possible. Draw cards, do combo, win, brain squirts the good chemical, shuffle and go again. It's bizarre. I'm a bit afraid of it. I would think that when the boosters drop it would become a degenerate mess, but a cursory google regarding the app's balance seems to suggest the opposite. I dunno man.

Still gonna play it. Fuck me up Konami, I'm ready.

this weekend's boardgames:
Fleet: The Dice Game - a good dice game that actually acknowledges other people are playing. look out, Ra: The Dice Game, this one's up there

Jump Drive - I like this quickie. May go in for that KS of The City, the game this is sort of taken from.

Bunny Kingdom - Always a good time.

QE - bids got into the 1000s so that was nice. Two new players, both of whom enjoyed it and got into it.

Hyperborea - been a while on this and I managed to actually FOCUS and find success

Welcome To... - One of the better "roll" and writes. Goes on a leeeetle long and mostly solitaire but still pretty good.

The Staufer Dynasty - not my thing. usual euro mechanisms-first design based around some vague european nobility theme, yawn

I hit the fourth (penultimate) case in Detective this weekend. I play this with my Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective group, which is not my regular collection of misfit gamers.

I really dig this one. The third case was probably the high point but the overall story is really coming together now and it's solid. It has a vibe that kind of reminds me of classic thrillers like Three Days of the Condor.

I think linking all of the cases together in the background and telling an overall conspiracy was a fantastic approach and really propels it beyond those others in the genre. Excited to finish it up and finally write about it.

My four year old son has developed two out-of-left-field obsessions: Pac-man and NASCAR. He is all in on both. I dug out my copy of the old Pac-Man game, and we have been playing that. Everyone controls their own pac-man and there are two community controlled ghosts -- the game is really just a race to see who can get the most marbles with a small bit of strategy thrown in on attacking with the ghosts, seems about right for a 4 year old. We also have played a bit of Fun City, which my 6 year old daughter loves; the high point for my son being putting the S.L.O.G. (sweet little old grandma) on the bank and watching her shoot into the air when the alarm goes off. To get used to the notion of racing games, we started off with some Thunder Road over Christmas -- he likes it, but is not so keen on getting shot at -- so I instituted a die roll where I have to roll a 6 to shoot at him.

The game taking the house by storm has been Daytona 500, which I outfitted with little 1:144 NASCAR's from the Racing Championship series when I was 12 back in 1990 when it came out. He's too young to play with the cards (which are very similar to Thunder Alley), so we just roll dice to move our cars around. I introduced two rules: (a) exploding 6's, so you can keep rolling until you don't get a six, and (b) no passing on the corners. He is now reading dice like a boxman from a Craps Table, so we might introduce two dice and some more advanced rules for pit stops, etc. into the game. He forces the whole family (wife and 6 year old sister) to play with us -- really gets fired up. We have been also using the tracks from Thunder Alley and expansions, but there is more we can do with other games -- likely going to introduce the Daytona Challenge soon.

As for me, the American West has been one of my favorite movie/game settings for quite some time. After some kickstarter mix-ups, I finally got my copy of Western Legends a few weeks ago -- we have played it numerous times. While I like it, I have to admit to being disappointed as I think the western aspects are really superficial -- the game doesn't seem grounded in the west. The gameplay is smooth and the mechanics interlock nicely -- its very pleasant to play. The setting is nice, but overall it definitely isn't the final word on western games. This has inspired a deeper exploration of Western games among our group -- we started with some old ones this past week: Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, and Have Gun Will Travel. Each are what you would expect from games from the 50s, but they all have small twists that make them enjoyable -- especially in a exploring the early structure of board games kind of way. This week we are jumping back to the modern era wtih Great Western Trail. Several more games to go after this, probably culminating in some minis games with Gunfighter's Ball and Legends of the Old West, with the latter being a GW game. I might put together a series of articles talking about these.

I’ve been travelling quite extensively for the last couple of weeks so apologies for the long post, I just had more than expected to write about in one go after being silent for a while.

At Home:

There was lots of family gaming as always, rather unusually my son declined to play anything as he had other things to do so I had some Daddy-Daughter time with Barenpark and Dice Hospital instead, then we also found time to crank out Bohnanza which is one of the few games that Mum will get involved in. The main fixation though was on Xia which landed from the skies one afternoon and completely took over our game time… right up to the point that Root arrived a few days later having just gone on general release. Xia has still stayed up as one of my son’s favourites and he asks for it a lot, it just keeps getting bumped for Root if daughter also wants to play. It’s also been the first time in months that I’ve been motivated to play a game solo and it works really well in that mode with the rules supplied in the expansion. Nice to be reminded how pleasant it can be to turn away from any screens and lose oneself in a boardgame for the evening.

I like the freeform nature of how the game is set up but really I find that you have to gravitate to some sort of strategy in order to be effective. Our first couple of games were fairly aimless but as soon as one person begins to aim for FPs then the jig is up and it hardens the other players to be more focussed and competitive. Now that we’ve played a few times we go straight into it from the frost round. Having the expansion really helps as it gives a few other things to do other than trading or shooting, one thing that doesn’t appear to pay off in any way though is pvp combat as it’s just too easy for the target to escape and repair even if they are struggling with some mining or NPC related damage. I did get to ram a space pirate once, so it still gets a big thumbs up on space explosions.

I was a little surprised with how quickly the kids picked up Root. They immediately fell in love with the art style as soon as they saw the box but for some reason I had formed the impression that the game itself, which I had only played under someone else’s tutelage, might be too complex. Having it all in front of us with the rulebook to hand it really isn’t difficult at all, the basic rules are so simple and the individual factions are easy to get going as everything you need is right in front of you. Some of the strategy is a little deep though, for example my son’s first forays into the Riverfolk and Lizard Cult stalled out as he couldn’t cut through the immediate satisfaction of taking actions that have physical impact on the board to see the benefits of using non-intuitive tactics to build his score and solidify his future capability. They both picked up the Vagabond real quick though and it’s their favourite faction by far, they’ve both kicked some butt with it so we’ll probably try a double-Vagabond game with me as the hapless Cats or whatnot caught in the crossfire.

It’s the first time I’ve played either expansion faction myself and I’m really digging both of them; the Riverfolk are maybe going to fare better in bigger games where they have more customers as they can really sneak up on you if they are given too many slaves, whereas the Lizards love a low opposition warrior count so that they can spam out gardens without immediate threat. One of my tactics with the Riverfolk was to break down one of my opponents and then offer my services to them to help them get back into the game against our mutual foe, really fun to see a big pout coming at you from across the table. You have to hustle quite a bit though, and daughter has adopted a strategy of simply refusing to have any dealings with filthy Otters which creates an uphill struggle. I find the Lizards to be quite tricky to handle in that they can provide some easy opportunities for opponents to blow up gardens for VP while at the same time they can move very quickly for big scores if allowed to prosper. I get the feeling that one way or another their actions are often going to be pivotal in some big swings in the score and timing things by holding back acolytes is really important.


At the Club:

It was an interesting week, not so much for the actual games but for some thought-provoking stimulation.

Met up with a friend and we dived into some Tabletop Curling as a warm-up, he hadn’t played before but took to it very naturally so we had a tense game with lots of blocking and nudging. Going into the final round the scores were hanging within a point of each other with everything to play for. I started well with good control around the house when he sent a beautiful arcing shot that swung around and bullied all of my stones out of the way. I had to recover but fluffed the angle on my next stone and ended up making my own position worse with a shell of three opposing stones now blocking the inner ring. I had no way of creating cover on my attempts to regain control of the centre and this resulted in the need to take increasingly panicky draw and takeout shots in an attempt to break the game. It was all too easy for him to bat me out of the way and it ended with a humiliating four-nil defeat to give him the match by some margin.

We were then talked into a game of Unfair which I’ve played a couple of times but tend to avoid because although I like the idea behind it I always end up feeling a little salty with the experience. The problem for me isn’t the crazy combos or take-that elements, both of which are things that I am happily comfortable with, my struggle is with the capricious balance of the game. It’s crazy that an ‘impossible’ blueprint can land in my hand on the first turn and I just happen to have all the ingredients in hand so it lands me half the points I need to win without even bothering to make an effort. It’s not quite the same as the gamble of digging for routes in Ticket to Ride because the elements needed to resolve the blueprint are not anchored to board position or strategy, and in any case you can just ditch the card with no downside risk if you aren’t confident in completing it. It feels like there is a lack of agency over the imbalance in the game which would be fine if it was a quick filler, I’d just expect a little more control for a longer form game like this. It is fun to build a theme park though and the turns roll over pretty quickly so it’s okay if you don’t give any credibility to the VP count-up at the end.

After I passed on one suggestion and unenthusiastically agreed to join Unfair my friend pointed out that there was a time when I would literally play anything and everything and he was surprised that I had become so picky. We talked around it for a bit and what strikes me is that, over time, it’s inevitable that we accumulate an increasing amount of ‘forever shelf’ material. When I think about it we sometimes have a hard time choosing a game to play at home because we now have several favourites that are competing for attention. When I’m writing about Xia I feel – I don’t know, guilty? Sorry? Wistful? – about not having played Spirit Island, and then Root is jostling for attention, plus many others that we love. So I feel like I’ve fallen into this mode where there are so many great games that I just don’t want to spend time playing something that is just okay. This is, of course, all entirely subjective opinion which makes for an interesting clash on club nights where there are very different opinions on what constitutes a great or mediocre effort.

Of course we then followed up with the most requested game of the moment, which as no surprise is Hellapagos. We had six players, half of them playing for the first time. I was early in player order and took a peek in the wreckage, noting that the draw was starting with armour, gun and bullet. Hoo boy. Before even the first round was over one of the new players had picked up the gun and was excitably asking for bullets. By the second round he had shot his best friend dead even though we had enough resources to get through the day and when he then started offering to trade a second gun for bullets we all decided to steer clear of the damn maniac. Fortunately I had some armour so was happily stirring the pot and at one point I even gave him a bullet in order to take a futile pot-shot at one of my similarly armoured neighbours who had stiffed us on a promised water-collection.

What we realised was that we had previously overlooked that the holder of the gun gets to take all the cards from their victims rather than dispersing to neighbours in the normal way, an oversight that really changes making that decision to pull the trigger. Hoarding too many cards just makes you a target on the voting as people will assume that you are stockpiling food and water so you have to be really careful about taking that fatal step. This was exactly how it ended for the murderer in our midst, starved out of the game when he started to eschew teamwork by sifting through the wreckage for more ammunition.

Both guns ended up in the possession of one of his neighbours who then revealed no less than a third gun. At this point it was us two and one other and we figured out that we could get off the island if only we all drew water for the round and put in some food cards from hand. For some reason Yosemite Sam decides instead that it would be more fun to see if he can grab a bullet from the wreckage pile and there is much groaning and slapping of foreheads at our sudden and unexpected doom. Naturally we then have to also go dumpster diving as we’re worried that he is trying to starve us out and then use his stash to escape on his own. Given the huge stack of cards he was holding it was inevitable that we assumed he was hoarding and being uncooperative so we voted him not to drink only to discover that he had no spare water which left the two of us. Easy enough for me to drop in some food from hand for a getaway when our deceased gun-nut pipes up that since he just handed me the Charm I could force the other remaining survivor to gather water for me and then shoot him with the bullet that I had picked up in the previous round. It was either that or go fishing, but his suggestion sounded like a lot more fun. Somehow we went from three of us able to get away in happy friendship to a Reservoir Dogs style ending where everybody went to town on each other and the blood-stained survivor limped onto the raft with all the loot.

Here is the interesting thing about the gun in Hellapagos. At first you revel in the power and destruction – it is senseless violence that asserts your will on the group through an ultimate means of control. However, the result is that you accumulate cards which then turns the eye of suspicion on what you might be hoarding. Using the gun makes you the prime target for being voted against so it is mighty power that needs to be wielded carefully. You either need to be able to destroy all opposition as well as surviving without help, or you need to immediately redistribute any cards that you collect in order to redeem yourself for your sins. Surprisingly, there are many more layers to this seemingly simple game than one might first suspect and I believe that is a good sign of something that taps into the social interactions of the players far deeper than pointing fingers and posturing threats.

Finished off the night with Illusion which is by the same guy who designed The Mind. You have cards with a myriad of overlapping shapes in a decidedly colour-blind unfriendly pallet and have to add cards to a row in order of how much of a particular colour is used on that particular card, a bit like Timeline. The reverse of the cards has the percentage amounts by colour and if you believe a mistake has been made you can call out a challenge and flip over all the cards to check. If you are right then you score, if not then the preceding player scores, and you keep going until someone wins three points in this manner. The clever use of overlapping shapes makes it quite hard to properly ascertain how much colour is actually on the card and the sudden mental switching between different colours has a habit of short-fusing the brain. It’s another deceptively clever and unexpectedly playable game and although comparing it to The Mind is nonsense as it’s a totally different game, if I had to choose one to play it would be this one for preference I think.

mezike wrote: After I passed on one suggestion and unenthusiastically agreed to join Unfair my friend pointed out that there was a time when I would literally play anything and everything and he was surprised that I had become so picky. We talked around it for a bit and what strikes me is that, over time, it’s inevitable that we accumulate an increasing amount of ‘forever shelf’ material. When I think about it we sometimes have a hard time choosing a game to play at home because we now have several favourites that are competing for attention. When I’m writing about Xia I feel – I don’t know, guilty? Sorry? Wistful? – about not having played Spirit Island, and then Root is jostling for attention, plus many others that we love. So I feel like I’ve fallen into this mode where there are so many great games that I just don’t want to spend time playing something that is just okay. This is, of course, all entirely subjective opinion which makes for an interesting clash on club nights where there are very different opinions on what constitutes a great or mediocre effort.

I hear this. I don't want to play something just for the sake of playing something. If someone wants to play Milch und Gherkin then fine, I'm down for it, but I don't want to try the new hotness simply because it's the new hotness. I've been cultivating this taste and this library for so long, I'd like to actually use it instead of just going with whatever passes in front of my eyes at any given moment.

My 6yo and I broke out PATHFINDER: RUNES OF THE RUNESCAPE RUNES or whatever that big ass box is. I'd gotten this in some trade years ago, with all the Adventure decks, so it's juiced. We reset all the characters in there and started over with Brigandoom! He really wanted to be Lini, the Druid, who's kind of shitty, actually. And he wanted me to be Sajan, a Monk, so between the two of us we can't pick up Weapons. Not a recipe for success. We got killed. I suggested we play four characters to round ourselves out, and he's now Lini and Merisiel (Thief? Rogue?), and I retired Sajan for Exran (Wizard) and Amiri (Berserker). We rolled through the Perils scenarios, losing Ezran on some atrocious rolls against Black Fang. All ready to start on Burnt Offerings next Saturday.

I don't think I realized that the gun in Hellapagos lets you keep all the cards. Thanks!

jeb wrote: My 6yo and I broke out PATHFINDER: RUNES OF THE RUNESCAPE RUNES or whatever that big ass box is. I'd gotten this in some trade years ago, with all the Adventure decks, so it's juiced. We reset all the characters in there and started over with Brigandoom! He really wanted to be Lini, the Druid, who's kind of shitty, actually. And he wanted me to be Sajan, a Monk, so between the two of us we can't pick up Weapons. Not a recipe for success. We got killed. I suggested we play four characters to round ourselves out, and he's now Lini and Merisiel (Thief? Rogue?), and I retired Sajan for Exran (Wizard) and Amiri (Berserker). We rolled through the Perils scenarios, losing Ezran on some atrocious rolls against Black Fang. All ready to start on Burnt Offerings next Saturday.

Hey man, don't be throwin' shade on Sajan just 'cuz your Kung Fu is weak. Using his dex to attack and the ability to play as many blessings as he wants and recharge them rather than discard makes him a super bad ass.