What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

At home:

We’ve been almost exclusively playing Champions of Midgard for the past couple of weeks, first with Valhalla added in then latterly with Dark Mountains as well. The spawn were a little wary at first but after convincing them to give it a go they really got into it and we have had several games at two and three player count.

What I admire in this one is the balance between the core elements of gameplay – the gentle humdrum of resource gathering, the strategic growth of capabilities, and the tactical dice-chuckin’ monster-fightin’. Although it features worker placement as one of the mechanisms its really quite a subdued element; there are always enough spots to gather resources or to go into combat so very little downside if you don’t land on your preferred spot, almost to the point where I wonder why the workers are even there in the game in the first place as it could have easily been structured without them. The plethora of available options that each turn allows can sometimes be a touch overwhelming however everything moves at such a free-flowing pace that you don’t feel the need to dither over min-maxing point scoring or rueful about sub-optimal choices.

I do feel that the Valhalla expansion is absolutely vital in fuelling this opinion though. In the base game combat is a high risk endeavour and you want to avoid going on a quest to slay a monster without first building the odds on your side. It requires an investment of several of your precious few actions to gather warriors and to stockpile food for long voyages so losing them all in battle with nothing to show for it means that you have burnt through what is likely an entire game round or more for no return. That can be enough to end your competition and leads to situations where everyone is being a bit cagey about engaging in what is the most fun element of the game, or someone romps to a blistering victory through sheer ballsy luck. What Valhalla does is it gives you something back when warriors die, which makes battle far more attractive and the balance of the game shifts to one with less resource gathering and more monster-hunting; this all feels very appropriate for a game about Vikings charged with protecting their village from the many rampaging mythical beasts that surround it on all sides. Even moreso in fact, as the rewards on offer on the Valhalla board are so provocative that there are times when you will send a lone warrior to take on one of those pesky creatures, not concerned with whether they return on their shield the subject of a glorious posthumous ballad or ending up as an ignominious sticky patch underneath a Troll’s club. This then means that there is less demand on some of the resource-gathering action spaces on the board, after all why send warriors hunting when they are far more eager to find good old Viking glory in the heat of battle? From a mechanical perspective you can turn dead warriors into Valhallan rewards that gift you with the most powerful dice and additional resources, so churning warriors in combat becomes a viable way to keep your engine ticking over with less lean on sourcing these items directly.

This is where Dark Mountains rounds the game off nicely, firstly by providing yet more places to fight but also by adding archer dice to the game that encourage you to go hunting and Land Journey cards that put on onus on having coin in reserve before attempting to challenge the Giants in the valley. It’s just enough nuance to stimulate interest in action spaces that are otherwise largely redundant after the introduction of Valhalla. Having the two additional creatures also adds to the feeling of a Norse village surrounded by mythical monsters literally everywhere and fighting them off as a natural part of Viking life. Champions of Midgard with expansions is a very different game than without; I would say that Valhalla is essential as it lowers the profile of resource gathering through worker placement and makes the tactical elements more pronounced, and although Dark Mountains can be skipped it really helps to better integrate Valhalla into the game; so much so that I actually don’t get why they felt the need to split them into two products when it would have been better as a single expansion pack, especially as it would have been neater to have just one additional sideboard rather than the array of odd-shaped bits.

Also played this with some friends who came over for game night yesterday. The three of us rarely get a chance to meet altogether at the same time so it was a fantastic evening and Midgard was the perfect game which we could gently dip in and out of while shooting the breeze. Unsurprisingly given the recent intense play I stood way out ahead in victory with a focus on monster-slaying and Valhallan glory, up against a Troll-hunting merchant who must have been trying to keep his supply lines protected through the valley pass and a Berserker who seemed unusually timid in battle (or maybe it was just the amount of blanks he kept rolling). I popped into the Sage’s hut quite often which accumulated some end-game scoring bonuses that meshed nicely together. Something that the other guys were doing was pouncing on plump resource spaces with their first move that was stockpiling things that they didn’t really need. I think it highlights inexperience with the game as some of the less enticing spots often give you a bigger boost by giving you just the right type of warrior you need in order to then swag a Valkyrie card, or picking up Runes or Sage cards that give you bonus points and far better control of random chance.

We found time as well for Crime Hotel which continues to be a delight. Before playing we had a conversation about how one of the guys rarely plays at all any more as not only are his opportunities slender but he also tires of having to spend so much time and energy learning a new and complex game just for a limited number of plays or even to only play once. So it was great to have a game that can be taught in just a minute or so and has immediately accessible and evolving gameplay. The most complex part of it is the action spaces on the sideboard but, as he put it, they all make perfect sense in the context of the game and there are no parts of it that feel like a forced fix or extraneously adding complexity.


At the club:

Played Unfair which I largely dislike but still had a good time with due to a) great company at the table and b) not giving a shit and deliberately going all-out to mess with the other player’s parks. One of my opponents targeted me early on and turned my opening game into a stump when I wasn’t even the biggest threat so I spent the rest of the game grinding him down in revenge at every opportunity. I had some Ninja ride that allowed me to break stuff as well as staff that were also stealing and breaking, and I took a disproportionate amount of actions delving into Event cards to up the nastiness even further. I kept lopping the top off another player’s roller coaster which he would then build up again before I chopped it back down on the following round. But hey, it’s called Unfair for a reason right? That is the whole point of the game apparently. Not a winning strategy though as I came dead last by some margin and the player who I chose to leave alone (and who was complaining about never winning games with us) took the win by a giant margin. I still hate this game purely on merit but we all enjoyed ourselves nonetheless.

Cockroach Poker followed, which is surely now in the territory of being a timeless classic, followed by Skull & Roses and Nanuk so lots of light, fun, highly interactive games which is exactly what I think I needed.

Having a good time with Next War: India-Pakistan solo. Played the Kashmir scenario again. It's a solid little solo scenario to learn the rules. The Indian player probably has just enough to do to make the scenario fun for a 2-player experience but it's close.

The thing I'm happiest about is that the standard rules are pretty good by themselves! Vs. the very detailed "advanced rules" that add a bunch of HQ, air and cruise missile stuff which I'm not sure I'll ever get around to learning. This was a real wildcard buy last year and it really has given me a lot of fun even if I miss a rule here and there.

The advanced rules really slow the game down. I do like the rules for cruise missiles and special forces but the air force stuff slows the game to an absolute grind, though it is sort of interesting.

Ugh. Went to a local monthly game gathering and played a game of Villainous, which is fine, as I still enjoy it, but I'd really prefer to play something else these days and that was kind of my fallback "more than 4" game. It was Maleficent vs Dr Fusilier vs Capt. Hook vs Hades vs Ursuala (me.) As is typical, the game came down to the end with multiple players on the verge of success. I had the Trident in Ursula's Lair and had the Crown in hand, but had to throw myself on my trident to try to stop Maleficent. Unfortunately, ALL of her higher-strength heroes were at the bottom of her Fate deck and we couldn't clear one. We also had 5 players, which means using the Fate token, which slows down the ability to hammer the leader quite a bit.

Then I got talked into trying Scepter of Zavandor. The guy who owned it considers it his favorite game and wasn't especially willing to slow down and explain a lot of the mechanics or their relative importance. The typeface on many of the cards and icons is also very small and, in his copy, very faded from extensive plays, so I was utterly unaware of the importance of a lot of things and was also playing with four other people who had played the game multiple times.

When I'm teaching a game, I'm playing slowly and explaining every move. It doesn't matter that it seems pedantic to others. I'm also stopping between others' turns to explain why they did things and what relevance it has to the game as a whole. I want people to understand what's happening around them because I think that's important to their enjoyment of the game. No such consideration was taken in this case, with people breezing through their turns and me being oblivious to what was happening, In addition to the fact that Scepter is simply not my type of game (a mathematical Euro with a theme pasted on, at best), I felt like I was basically going through the motions and not actually playing, since I had nowhere near the grasp of the game's strategy as others did. In the end, it came down to a rush for Sentinels to get bonus points, which means that the game's entire "engine" is simply building up a huge hoard of cash to win at the end with a couple big auctions that others may or may not be able to compete with. Halfway through the "game", I just wanted it to end. I came in third. Someone else pipped the owner by one point. Yay. Never again.

DukeofChutney wrote: The advanced rules really slow the game down. I do like the rules for cruise missiles and special forces but the air force stuff slows the game to an absolute grind, though it is sort of interesting.

I bought supplement one, which splits the difference between the advance and basic game in complexity by adding an alternative advanced air game. It gives each side air packages, which makes a lot more sense to me as the commander at this level of aggregation. We'll see.

Went to the local game club yesterday, and ended up teaching two people Terraforming Mars. I pared it down to the base game and we all played with Beginner Corporations. They caught on pretty quickly, and said they enjoyed it at the end. It was fun to play the pared-down deck for a change.

Played two games of my new prototype this weekend with my girlfriend. One game had the largest point spread I have seen, and the other had the smallest. This doesn’t really bother me because the game is not “high strategy”. It’s light and short, and has a death rate about like Dungeon Quest.

Played some Cthulhu Wars with my first time as Big Green himself and enjoyed my play with him (We had to call the game early due to one of the kid's needing to bail). I was thinking that Dreams and Submerge were a bit pricey Action Points wise THEN I found out they had Updated the rules since the Onslaught 2 version I have. Does everyone play with the rule "changes" (Dreams is 2 AP and Submerge doesn't cost to re-emerge), because I think I'm going to have to pick up some stickers and update my spellbooks with these new changes.

So they buffed him? I thought they nerfed him.

They found that Cthulhu wasn’t doing as well, statistically, so the made a couple of things cheaper to use.

I'm going by This on BGG. It hasn't been updated in years, so I'm not sure if the Onslaught 3 that is shipping has any additional changes. But, yea, they buffed Cthulhu and looks like a few other buffs to other factions and King in Yellow gets nerfed on his "Passion" power (One Action Point gained for one or MORE cultist lost, so he would only get 1 AP if he, say, lost 3 cultist in a single battle)

After I said that, I thought it was Charlie! Thanks.

I got my copy of Runebound and set it up for a solo game last night. I proceeded to play through the entire first Act before realizing that I had completely forgot to reveal any Story cards at all. So I will start over tonight.

So far I like it!

My wife was out of town, and you know what they say: I'm a sad bastard who plays a lot of board games.

Tues:

NEOM - this has really grown on me and I like the theme more than 7 Wonders.
Capital Lux - cool card game with great art.

Thurs:

Sentient
Shards of Infinity - finally played this and enjoyed it, ended up buying a copy on Sunday
QE
Strike (x2) - idiotic game of rolling dice into a little plastic arena. Dumb, random, and fun as hell. It's hard to get but it's basically just dice and a plastic bowl.

Fri
NEOM
Love Letter - revisited for my 10x10 challenge. I still like this, even though the trend it started wore me out quickly.

Sun
Istanbul
Gizmos - fun pure engine building game
Fire in the Library - gave it another try, now that questions on the cards have been answered on BGG. worked a LOT better, but Medici the Card Game does a similar thing all too well.
Ciub - the Tom Lehmann dice game I actually don't mind.

Played Divinity Derby Six players and it was a blast, per usual. It was my youngest son's first game and he won by a land slide. I was a distant second only because I nailed a few big point specific cards since I blew all three bets in round two.

Played Sangrada 4 player and I can see the appeal, it's visual and tons of dice but lord it's so luck based. I'm tempted to get the 5/6 player expansion solely to see if that fixes some of the issues.

Played the innsmouth board in Arkham Horror for the first time. Seemed keyed to really cause problems for me as monsters flooded the Innsmouth board, but 3 monster surges in a row plus fortuitous spawn locations/lack of monster movement towards vortexes let me close all the open Gates before things really got dire. Ended the game with 12 monsters prowling around downtown Innsmouth. Sister Mary and her blessed Tommy gun carried the day!