What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

ubarose wrote: I'm going to be playing Heroes of Land, Air and Sea tonight. We played a flail through on Saturday.

Man, I love this game. It may become my most favorite 4x game. But we need to play it a few more times to determine that.

It's a fantastic game. The expansion factions are a ton of fun too.

I thought I had often seen comments of it being overly long. It does look neat.

Never even heard of it, but just reading the description at BGG makes me think: "This is Warcraft 2." It sounds just like it, except that Dwarves and Elves are fully playable factions.

At home:

Back to back game nights, Tyrants of the Underdark, Root and Res Arcana with one of my buds and two mutual friends then Bohnanza, Root and Spirit Island with the kids at home.

Tyrants of the Underdark – we were playing with the Undead expansion deck and something else that made heavy use of the Insane Acolyte (i.e. waste) cards. I started off by going fairly cash heavy and my neighbour decided that would make for a good opportunity to bully me out of the way so that he could secure the North. He hasn’t played with me often. He didn’t know what would happen next. My bud exclaimed that he was glad it wasn’t him on the receiving end for a change. I declared all-out war in response to his foolish excursions which he didn’t take seriously at first until he realised that I was ploughing every resource into hammering him back into his hole.

My Mushroom Men were driving him insane both literally and figuratively by clogging up his early game deck with acolytes and I used my big spending power to focus on swords and exploding spies so that I could lever my way into his stronghold and then begin to cut him out piece by piece. He tried to fight back but by this point a second front had been opened up on his other flank by another opportunist so it was all a bit half-hearted. Having had enough direct attention he wanted to call a truce with our presence balanced and neither of us in full control. The thing is, once you commit to a course of action in this game you really need to see it through or you will never get the benefit of your efforts. So I just kept the hammer going down until he capitulated and gave up trying to stop me dominating the city at the heart of our conflict.

I was fairly battered and in a weak position however there were large swathes of untouched territory and I now had two cities under my uncontested power. With the high sword generation I had bought I very quickly began to fill up the open area, building for a big endgame score. It was all ultimately a lost cause though as my bud had been largely left to his own devices in the South and had built a crazy engine that was enabling him to dominate three locations including the centre position along with pulling in a handful of VP tokens based on his expanding kills. With my new-found power I did what I could to disrupt him but he was already on a runaway train and was as far ahead of me in the final score as I was ahead of our rivals.

Root – In the first game with my friends I was grateful to have a chance to play the Vagabond which I usually have to defer to one of my kids. I chose to be the Thief as I had a feeling that I would be denied teapots but then I regretted not having a hammer immediately to hand after I drew all crafting cards. My noble critter was up against the arrogant Birds, meddling Alliance and filthy Otters. The Birds rather predictably built up very quickly and unopposed into a big decree and were spreading throughout the forest. The player with the Otters was having a hard time with them and couldn’t get into the concept of pushing his wares; he was also wary of the Birds going after him for kills so was too conservative with putting his trading posts and warriors into places where he could encourage others to hire them.

Somehow I managed to end up with a crossbow and three swords so it fell incumbent upon me to rescue us all from the Avian menace. My motives were of course totally pure and I was not at all angling for all the VPs available from turning the blue boys into endless chicken kebabs. The Bird player couldn’t keep up with my attacks and after I had erased him from three different clearings his decree collapsed two turns in a row and he was out of the running. The Alliance dropped two bases which I also took apart to prevent them gathering any momentum and I pretty much strolled into the win from that point, a lone maniac murdering his way into power like a King of old.

The following night the shoe was on the other foot – I took on the Birds myself and was doing quite well when daughter decides to nuke me with an Alliance base which stopped me dead. I tried to restart but then she goes ahead and nukes me again which killed my ability to get back into the game. My son however, the great manipulator, quested his Vagabond to victory while encouraging sis to spend all her efforts on bringing me down. Is it wrong to be proud of how devious your kids are getting to be?


At the club:

It was another tenth-year celebration night and this time around it was the magical year of 2012 which was a high watermark with some really well-regarded games made within every genre. We could probably spend the rest of the month just playing stuff from that year and the table was piled high with an overwhelming selection.

Despite all of this we still somehow ended up with Res Arcana on the table again. I was pleased to get a chance to play it twice in quick succession as I really wasn’t sure about it after the first game where we used set cards with a random draw which made for some messy decks. I ended up with a creature-based setup that didn’t have any creatures which was… rubbish. It wasn’t fun to grind through for what were just pity points and no chance of actually competing.

The second game with drafting felt like I had more control and I had what I thought was a neat combo with the Tooth putting two Dragons into play and my Druid being able to untap my Sea Serpent for double-bubble carnage. However it was a big dull dud as the life loss was too easy for my opponents to brush aside so it wasn’t as remotely impressive as it seemed. Gaining resources and buying stuff seems to be a much more effective route to getting points than trying to attack.

What I noted was that one player had an unstoppable combo in his deck that just went crazy with multiple re-taps allowing him to eventually generate six gold per turn along with everything else he was doing. Sure it’s only two games, but it feels like the game is decided in the drafting and everything after that is almost procedural in running through the mechanisms that have been put together. Although I ended up on nine points, which sounds an impressive sliver away from target, the reality is that I had no way of ending the game and the crazy combo whaled in at thirteen; he could have gone higher with a bit more effort but just didn’t feel it worth the bother. I really don’t know about this one – maybe there is something in the meta of the card drafting that we haven’t yet been able to get to grips with but I’m just not finding it interesting so far.

The main event for me was my top 2012 pick of Pax Porfiriana. One of the players was completely new to it and the other hadn’t played for many years so there was only one way the game was ultimately going to go. In fairness though I did make an effort to point out the dangers of what I was doing (“Don’t let me buy any more of those orange cards… oh, you let me buy them… you really ought to put some Outrage on each other or I’ll get ahead… okay, you bought some land instead… somebody should really buy that topple card… no? anyone?”) and I even pointed out opportunities where they could blow up bits of my tableau to peg me back from making it a total whitewash.

Those of you who know this game will understand that the topple victories are opportunistic and when you are still green they seem to come out of nowhere. It was too easy for me to throw some more Outrage onto one of my Enterprises, send in some American troops to start US intervention and then buy the topple and flip my Hacendado for the win. Even when I was pointing out the danger it just didn’t click for them, but that’s the learning curve I guess. I could have bought Teddy to expedite victory if I wanted to but it’s always nice to keep another learning in your back pocket for future plays. I love love love this game and although it blew their minds a little I got the impression that I might have made some new converts.

ubarose wrote: I'm going to be playing Heroes of Land, Air and Sea tonight. We played a flail through on Saturday.

Man, I love this game. It may become my most favorite 4x game. But we need to play it a few more times to determine that.

This is absolutely a game where I'm glad TWBG and people I trust/know game tastes exist, because it is so ugly and generic on first glance that I immediately dismissed it.

ubarose wrote: I'm going to be playing Heroes of Land, Air and Sea tonight. We played a flail through on Saturday.

Man, I love this game. It may become my most favorite 4x game. But we need to play it a few more times to determine that.

I'm thinking we (gruff fighty gamers) might like it as well but probably finding one at a price I can justify (especially with my recent KSer splurges) and then fit it on a UK-size table may be constraining factors. What size are the boards ?

I just got my order too --- haven't had a chance to play it yet. Heading to NYC for spring break with the wife next week, so April is going to be the earliest we get to play it.

Have to say that I'm pretty excited -- Uba's original post about it last year was what got me interested in the first place.

I've been on a King of Tokyo and King of New York jag the last few weeks. The new Anubis character pack (review incoming) has been a blast to play. Broke down and just used the Power-up cards for Rob with my Lollybot promo character. Iello needs to 1.) put out the damn KONY power-up cards for the KOT monsters and 2.) Put character specific Power-up cards in their promos.

Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea is really, really good. I also think it looks good when it’s all setup in front of you, and for something with a generic fantasy theme, that’s kind of saying something. The system it runs on it so smooth, turns go by quick, and I’m always a fan of the “follow an action” mechanic which keeps you engaged when it’s not your turn. I really like that exploring each of the 4 Xs brings rewards and that the game does not seem to lean in one direction over the others (though this is also my biggest problem with it, more later). It’s just fun, there’s no way around it.

There’s a couple of things I’m not sold on, one of which I need to see some more of the game to determine how much it bothers me and the other is unfortunately insurmountable. The one I’m iffy on is the combat. It tends to lead into a situation not unlike many area control games, where points are given to all participants and that somehow manages to manipulate the point gaps in ways that hurt the game if you don’t win. I said the turns go by quick, but let’s be clear, the pacing in this game is glacial. The RTS Warcraft games are a clear inspiration, but there’s such a thing as too much inspiration. Building units is really slow. Mounting a meaningful, sometimes necessary attack takes many rounds of preparation, which can and should be met with equal preparation in defense. There’s a good number of combat spell cards, some of which have the ALWAYS MISGUIDED “cancel” effect (I mean this, this is 100% always, always, ALWAYS a poor design choice, it sucks in Wiz-War and it sucks here, too), which can completely undo your 4-5 turns of prep, resources, travel time, etc. This is the only area where it’s noticiable that the designer is accustomed to much smaller games where a take that element is more at home and more acceptable. On top of that, it has a pseudo-Game of Thrones style card combat system, only you don’t have to cycle cards because instead you pay resources to use them. These cards grant points and the point spreads are really close. Attacker does get a single point for starting the battle, but all together, with combat cards and spells, the average gain between the attacker vs defender is 1 point, 2 at the most. The head game bit is also not as clever as it thinks it is. It’s very situational, each situation has 2 possible choices and one is clearly better than the other, the other is to fuck with someone but isn’t as good. If you win, great, that’s denying a point at the end of the game and if you take out some big units or towers, that’s more. But that’s all IF you win, and that’s where that take-that spell nonsense really sucks, as that’s where the win can be determined. If you lose, hoo boy. You’ve only maybe gained a point, you’ve wasted a bunch of turns, and if you’re the second place player, you’re really screwed people behind you for widening the game. TL;DR, the combat kind of doesn’t work, or it could have worked much better. Granted, this criticism is mostly of the bigger battles that target structures, which, yeah, should be tough. I still disagree with points for both sides, nobody needs that artificial inflation bullshit.

The big issue is that while it does give validity to every avenue of the 4Xs, everything you do has validity. This is something I think we started seeing around the time Eclipse came out and it breaks my heart that it’s a concept that’s still around. You have to try really, really hard to not do something that gets you points in this game. This leads to “artificial closeness” as I call it during the game and really throws the end game off with the points you don’t see. This can lead to anticlimatic victories, as the player making the biggest splash during the game with making memorable moments throughout can be defeated by the player who games the system better. Fuck that. Fuck that in every game and fuck that here. VP salad is one thing, but VP salad via participation trophies is garbage of the worst kind.

That sounds harsh, and it should, but I still really dig this game. There’s a lot to explore in such a smooth system and I want to explore more of it. I keep thinking about and keep thinking about ways I might be wrong about it’s flaws, and all of that is a very good sign.

hotseatgames wrote: I thought I had often seen comments of it being overly long. It does look neat.

In my experience, it is a little too long. I think the big problem is that there's no incentive to end the game unless you're the one winning. It doesn't quite naturally enough thump along towards end game, so players who aren't winning may be reluctant to get their last tower down or whatever. All of the scoring is also readily visible, but requires counting a ton of shit up so it's kind of annoying.

I really wish it had a turn limit like Eclipse which encouraged big end game gambits.

charlest wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: I thought I had often seen comments of it being overly long. It does look neat.

In my experience, it is a little too long. I think the big problem is that there's no incentive to end the game unless you're the one winning. It doesn't quite naturally enough thump along towards end game, so players who aren't winning may be reluctant to get their last tower down or whatever. All of the scoring is also readily visible, but requires counting a ton of shit up so it's kind of annoying.

I really wish it had a turn limit like Eclipse which encouraged big end game gambits.

I have to agree, it’s way too long. TI can get away with it for the sheer amount of table talk and other shit going on, but smaller, cleaner systems, not so much.

FWIW I had a single game of Heroes of LAS etc about 6 months ago. Played 3 player. It was ok, I wasn't excited about it. As Josh says my biggest problem was you get points for everything in the game in a non-interactive way. I don't think putting in a turn limit would fix it for me either - I hate Eclipse and one of the reasons is the tiny skirmishes and small battles until the final turn all out war (in addition to getting VP for technology that you may never use). So I just spent 2.5 hours doing little things in preparation of one actual big important turn, great. Thats not fun. My preference is almost always hidden scoring via Small World with a set VP limit that triggers game end, like first player to meet or exceed 30 points wins and we finish out the current round of actions.

The amount of effort to get your cool heroes upgraded and into an aggressive position was high too. I'll admit I'm going by an old memory here, but it seemed more efficient to do your own little VP euro upgrading stuff with only minor interaction. Thats a reason why I hate Scythe; it looks like you can attack each other but really you're upgrading your player board for efficiency engine points and only doing minor skirmishes. As opposed to a favorite of mine Kemet where VPs are from winning battles and holding territory.

A favorite game of mine, Time of Crisis, has that irritating issue near the end of the game where suddenly people calculate out points and start maximizing their move because it is the end and then the entire round takes excruciatingly long - hidden scoring gets rid of that and adds suspense.

All that said and I'd still like to play Heroes of etc again. That title is cumbersome as fuck too. But so far it hasn't earned a right on my gaming shelf.