What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

A business trip back to the states allowed us to bring back two new games.

Through The Ages: A New Story of Civilization - I played the original game about five years ago, and I remembered liking it well enough, though it felt like about 70% of the game was moving cubes from one place to another. I finally played a game of the revised version, and while the cube-shifting criticism holds true it was very enjoyable.

As a piece of design, the use of yellow cubes as units or buildings, and the blue cubes as resources, is pretty nifty. It allows the player to easily see how increasing production and population will affect their prosperity, and therefore allows them to manipulate it. I also like how quickly the card line moves. While it's a long game, it doesn't feel like it bogs down with bad choices. Finally, I like the way it handles military. While not exactly elegant, it makes military into something you can't ignore without turning it into an elaborate wargame. I think it is also probably the least punishing Chvatil game not named Codenames, something I find appealing.

It was fun to revisit the game, and I found myself excited for another round of it. I've been in a civ kind of place lately, and so it's fun to play what is probably the biggest contribution to the genre from a Euro-style design.

The Mind - Played two games, one with my wife and one with my eight-year-old son. The game with my wife showed some of the potential here, and I look forward to dragging this one to game nights with other couples. The game with my son was a bit of a fiasco however, so it'll take some practice for him.

Got a couple old gamer friends over for the first time in about a year. They wanted to play all new things and I had plenty they'd never tried.

Started with Inis. My girlfriend and one of my friends aren't especially fond of DoaM games, but Inis is that only in the most peripheral sense; not least because you can simply agree to stop fighting. It remains a very cool game, though, and this one was as good as usual. I was one step away from winning, being in 5 territories and in 3 with a total of 5 sanctuaries. I only had 1 Deed token, though. My girlfriend, who was in 6 territories and chief of 5 tied me in conditions, but she was Brenn and I wasn't.

Then I grabbed something lighter off the shelf because we thought the pizza would be here by the time we finished (of course it wasn't.) We went with Downfall of Pompeii. We were only 2 or 3 cards from the bottom of the deck when the second AD 79 card showed up and the lava started flowing. I think they were too nice in tile placement, leaving opportunities for people to escape. I showed them how to be ruthless and then everyone followed suit. I won 8-7-6-6. Thankfully, I didn't get tied (I sealed the last feasible gate before someone could have) because I had the most guys in the volcano.

We finished the evening with Cthulhu Wars. I was Crawling Chaos and jumped out to an early lead in both Doom and spellbooks with the most gates leading to the most power. But Yellow Sign got the machine rolling with the King leading the undead parade and Black Goat started spamming stuff all over the board, while Cthulhu discovered the power of Dreams when people were leaving Cultists solo in territories with gates. Yellow Sign miscounted her Elder Signs and smashed through 30 power with only 5 spellbooks, leaving me as the only one with six and, of course, in second place on the Doom track for the win. Still wish I could find Opener of the Way for this game...

Nothing this week to match the milestone that was playing El Grande for the first time, but I have been playing Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. Think I’m going to have to go out on a limb here and declare it my favorite dice game.

So I played a bunch of rounds of Schummel Hummel this weekend and man it's a hoot. It's just unlike anything else I've played. As it turns out sleight of hand and busting people attempting sleight of hand are not skill checks I generally have to make in the games I play. The grasshoppers in between each player are maybe the funniest thing I've messed with in a while. Everyone is literally taking them at all times, since there's no penalty for getting caught. Just a constant assault of people stealing stuff from each other, and as soon as you let your focus wander for a second you get caught out. So good. I'm
honestly not sure the legs it'll have over time, but I think it's well worth the $13 import just to try something so bizzarre and funny.

*This is the overview I wrote before in another thread just for some context

Met up with the Starfinder group yesterday. Played Rock Paper Wizard, which is adorable but could use a bit more variability in the spell effects, then had our session which went great, but the reason I'm posting is we played Betrayal Legacy afterwards.

I don't really like Betrayal. I like the concept a lot, but I've had far more mediocre-bad sessions than good ones. I also don't like any legacy game I've played, including Pandemic Legacy. Most of them just chop up expansion materials and distribute them over several games, then string it all together with a poorly written story. So when I say that we played 3 sessions of BL and are VERY much looking forward to getting back to it, that should carry some weight.

I'm gonna spoil some stuff because there's no other way to meaningfully describe games like this. Prepare for a bigass block of spoiler text.

Had 6 players for a big game night last night. Most of the crowd were not "hardcore" gamers. We started with Hellapagos. I was dealt a handgun and the fishing rod. I immediately played the fishing rod and started getting us a lot of food. Another player revealed the flask, while another had the axe. This put us in good shape to gather supplies, but I knew that we would never get 6 rafts built. This was proven by the fact that literally no one ever succeeded with obtaining more than 1 piece of wood from the jungle without getting bitten by snakes.

I revealed my handgun, knowing I had no bullets. My friend next to me immediately said he had a bullet for me, provided that I shoot someone who was not him. His wife revealed a handgun as well. Unbeknownst to the group, I had obtained the final handgun from the wreckage, so I was now in a very good position. We managed to get 3 rafts built, and we knew the storm was on its way....

My friend gave me the bullet, and I said I'd shoot whoever he wanted. He chose his wife, deeming her to be the biggest threat. I shot her and claimed her stuff. Now I had all of the guns, and she had a bullet as well. I then shot another player who had the club, which gives him double votes. I obtained a bullet from him. The storm came; I shot his wife, since she had the crystal ball and could vote last. Now there were three of us, and we revealed enough supplies to happily sail away to freedom. I straight-up murdered half of the players, and I feel great about it.

Next up was Betrayal at House on the Hill. Hmm.... it started out pretty well, as it always does. But then the haunt threw it right off the rails. As it almost always does. This particular haunt has you completely undo the entire fucking house exploration! In other words, hey, remember the first half hour? None of that meant anything!

The traitor did not fully realize how he was supposed to stop us, and we readily stomped him. It was boring. I still love this game, but I feel like I should go online and find a list of all of the haunts that I should just refuse to play. I think I'd rather play 15 good haunts over and over than risk wasting my time with the other 85.

Next was a great game of Room 25. I was a guard, and ended up revealing myself as such a little too early when I discovered Room 25 and lied that it was a red room. I had failed to realize that someone else had already peaked the room and neglected to tell anyone of its color. I then proceeded to use the Control and Push actions to keep people out of Room 25 and move it away from them; they accidentally killed themselves, granting me (and my guard girlfriend) the victory.

We ended the night with 2 games of New York Slice. This is a great casual set collection game, with fantastic production values. People caught on quickly and were eager to have a second game right after the first. I got beat by 1 point, both times.

hotseatgames wrote:
Next up was Betrayal at House on the Hill. Hmm.... it started out pretty well, as it always does. But then the haunt threw it right off the rails. As it almost always does. This particular haunt has you completely undo the entire fucking house exploration! In other words, hey, remember the first half hour? None of that meant anything!

The traitor did not fully realize how he was supposed to stop us, and we readily stomped him. It was boring. I still love this game, but I feel like I should go online and find a list of all of the haunts that I should just refuse to play. I think I'd rather play 15 good haunts over and over than risk wasting my time with the other 85.

Every.Game. Ever. of Betrayal at the house on the hill. Copy this, paste this and put it up as a review. The only other thing you can count on is that no one will actually call the game by it's actual name. House on betray hill, The last house on the hill, Haunting at Hill house and somebody get's betrayed.

Perhaps I will start a thread in which everyone can contribute what haunts are to be avoided. Or we can make a shorter thread and put in the ones that should be played.

Some haunts work fine some of the time, but get too unbalanced in favor of one side if the haunts appears too soon or too late in the game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is an aggressively stupid game sometimes, and I kind of love it. I even love it when it goes pear-shaped and basically stops working. It's hard to define why, but I probably played more of it in my last year in the states than any other game.

Part 1 - Prezcon 2019
Just got back from a long weekend at Prezcon in Charlottesville, Virginia. The good thing about going to a gaming con in Charlottesville, Virginia is that it's a college town so there's good coffee and food. Revolutionary Soup is the fantastic. The Lamb Curry Soup and Vegan Thai Peanut soup were both mind blowing experiences. Other non-gaming things that were cool or weird about Prezcon was the Walmart's. I'm not from the south but we went to Walmart in Charlottesville to buy beer (FYI: buying beer at Walmart is mind a mind blowing experience for anyone from the mid-Atlantic or New England) but the only thing the guy in front us had to check out was beef jerky, ammo, beer and condoms. When I saw that I almost dropped to my knees and pulled a Wayne's World "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy" to the guy until I realized all I was checking out with was beer and planters mixed salty nuts (less than 50% peanuts). So instead I gave him a cool look like hey scary redneck guy from Virginia I'm not some carpet baggier educated geekie gamer guy from socialist liberal north, I'm just like you I have beer and salty nuts (less than 50% peanuts) on Walmart shopping belt.

The other thing that is great about Prezcon is that it is held at the Double Tree Hotel. Damn, the Double Tree Hotel has the best fraking lobby coffee in the world and their chocolate chip cookies have perfect ratio of chocolate chips, sugar, MSG, crack, pot, warmness or hotness, walnuts and love. I'm so addicted to Double Tree Hotel cookies that I'm already looking for my next fix. I'm planning my next vacation based on whether they have a Double Tree Hotel.

I'll post Prezcon part 2 on Monday where I might actually talk about board games.

As someone from the Midwest, I didn’t realize that not all Wal-Marts sold beer. I was aware that they are full of rednecks.

Man, you're almost making me miss Charlottesville. Grew up there. Such a weird town.

We finished up Ultimate Werewolf Legacy this weekend, powering through chapters 3-5. I'm not the biggest fan of this thing. We had fun, mostly due to the group, but it's Werewolf slightly defanged, attempting to make up for that by offering some new tricks.

I say it's softened because the game removes the ability (requirement) for a moderator to craft a roleset. It dictates this for you and attempts to balance things by including roles based on the previous chapter's number of villager wins. This did not always result in a balanced set, but it was good enough.

My main issue was that you can't alter the roleset to taste at all. This was especially prevalent in the final game which only had a couple of special roles and felt very anti-climactic.

Additionally, the legacy elements are not very satisfying. There are a couple of key points where the players need to make decisions, decisions which seem rather large and consequential. All they affect is the very next game, not the entirety of the campaign.

The roles/stickers/legacy elements will vary game to game due to those balancing quirks and players possibly making different decisions. The weight of your decisions is often unknown and the potency of the legacy mechanism doesn't feel quite there. I really wish your decisions built upon previous choices to form a final path that was very distinct and unique, but that doesn't happen at all.

It also was terribly challenging assembling a group of 10+ people for the 16 individual games, which we ended up doing in two different meetups.

Resident Evil 2: The Board Game is still garbage. Some neat ideas that help the gameplay reach a state of average, but the physical production is one of the worst I've seen from a game over $50. They want $110 MSRP for this thing.

This weekend's games were:

Fire in the Library: Very Kickstartery Kickstarter game which has no reason to be brought out if Medici: The Card Game is available instead. Already added to the Conn Con auction.

Pret-a-Porter: I don't play this often and every time I do I realize it's not nearly as hard to parse, teach, and learn as I think it is. There are definitely some oddly worded cards, but in general it's a great game and runs well. Looking forward to the new edition of it.

The Grizzled: This one is always hard as hell (and I've only played on baby level) but it was smoooooooth sailing this time. Everything came out exactly as you'd want it and we coasted to a victory. Which, honestly, was a nice change.

Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction: I like this little card game but it doesn't get played often so I passed it on to another member of my group. Maybe she'll have better luck getting it played.