What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Michael Barnes wrote: I never in a million years expected to see either of those games listed in a post made here today.

Michael, you know me well enough.

I love weird games that nobody really likes.

And the sad part? My friends love them.

I'm an enabler.

Legomancer wrote: played a bunch over the long weekend. here are some quick hits:

Fallout (with New California)
This is fun but it's criminal that you can play for 2 hours and neither player ever get a single gun. That's not Fallout, and I'm working on a mod for that. The endgame also can be a problem, but usually you're okay with it ending anyhow. This still needs a fix or two to really compete with Xia on anything but theme.

A house rule I use to speed things along when doing the co-op scenario is to always move your faction forward, regardless of what card is drawn, as opposed to moving the enemy faction backwards. It just makes it go forever, otherwise.

Hell yeah charlest. My KS copy of Pamir is showing up soon! I'm delighted that the Wehrle did a significant rules overhaul, I already have Porfiriana and Renaissance (which I also think are great the) so I'm into Wehrle leaning into making it more distinct!

At home:

The most amusing three player game of Hellapagos – “let’s all work co-operatively and see if we can all get off the island!” so the first player throws down the plank to get the raft started. I then reveal that my opening card draw contains the gun and two bullets, shoot the other players and immediately leave the island on the first turn. After that in subsequent games they kept bumping me off at the first possible opportunity for some reason.

51st State – Allies arrived along with the two new factions, University and Mississippi, and I also threw in the Cities promo tiles which looked fun. Allies adds a whole new layer of complexity to the game as you can use tokens matching the three ally groups to play those cards and so it’s like juggling a mirror version of the game within itself. There are a fair few conflict elements introduced by the cards so it is far more interactive than the scavengers deck, although it’s a similar kind of conflict to that found in New Era where you take or break stuff uncontested but your victim gets a little something in return so it isn’t that bad. It’s not my favourite form of interaction but I do think it’s important for the game to be able to shut down the fulcrum of another player’s combo as experienced players can otherwise get out of hand with the engines they build. Because of the additional layer of complexity I’d only recommend this deck to people who are very familiar with the base game and want an experience similar to the New Era deck but with a bit more opportunity for exploiting the cards into sprawling builds.

The new factions are really great and highly recommended though. Mississippi are similar to the Applachians with the difference that they turn cogs into settlements arrows and gain a ruin when they trade guns; the latter is enormously important as ruins can be upgraded into any card regardless of distance and ruins feature prominently in both Allies and Scavengers. University struggle with their trade options but have a great production bonus of drawing two cards instead of one which can be both a massive kick-start as well as fuel in future rounds. They really do need to pounce on the red and blue cards though or to drill into the deck looking for anything that gives them those precious arrow tokens. Allies is unsurprisingly the easiest deck for them to work with as gaining ally tokens isn’t hard and they can use their card advantage to good effect with little effort.

The Three Cities promo tiles are a really neat addition and worth picking up for anyone into this game. Players can make a deal with each of the cities and gain workers, ammo, or card draw production in return or alternatively they can raid them to swag the accumulated resources that are added each round. With two resources starting on each city and the average game running for four or five rounds it makes for a set of very tempting targets in latter rounds. The only downside is that they are usually more provocative than going after other players and because they are costly in the amount of raid tokens required it slightly dials down aggression between players. Even so we’ll quite happily include them in all our future games.

Star Wars Rebellion keeps on being the Star Wars game that I’ve always wanted to play. I had my first run out as the Imperials and went for a very methodical approach of holding the Death Star on Dantooine whilst I spread out into the corners to ensure that the rebels would ultimately be caught with having to relocate to the centre of the board when finally exposed. I pushed on probes where possible which helpfully told me that the top right of the board was completely void with the possible exception of Tattooine, and frequently allowed missions to go unopposed in order to focus on keeping my fleets moving. The Rebels were making a big show of protecting Mon Calamari which I felt was a clumsy ruse to divert my forces so I sent my main force spreading up towards Nal Hutta with the option of quickly dropping some Stormtroopers on Tattooine, more to prevent the Rebels re-spawning there than any other reason. I had become convinced that they were really on Endor because I had taken a captured Mon Mothma to Bespin and they were doing everything they could to put thorny missions there in order to force my hand into pinning my carriers. Han Solo in the Millenium Falcon was particularly favoured as it guaranteed the release of the captured leader so I felt compelled to step in every time.

Meanwhile, two Mon Calamari cruisers supported by a Nebulon B had dropped into Saluecami which was right on the doorstep of both the Death Star and my neighbouring reserve fleet. It was clear that they were going to take out my reserve fleet and then move in to assault the Death Star, a move which even in failure would hold my forces back from being able to reach Mon Calamari and Yavin. Even though I was sure they were not located in that region I couldn’t risk not being within easy striking distance and with Saw Gerrera sitting on a probe card there was also the risk that they would suddenly jump behind my depleted lines to an unreachable position. With this in mind I decided to take the initiative by committing everything into a direct assault. Unbeknownst to my enemy I had some shenanigans up my sleeve with Admiral Piet able to use an action card to take out one of the Mon Cals before the battle even began. The Death Star tactic card saw the end of the other one and there was more than enough damage on the dice to finish off the Rebel fleet in that one show of shocking destructive might; the loss of a Star Destroyer and most of my Tie support was an acceptable price as I would soon respawn some support now that the system was subjugated.

However, revenge came swiftly – I had quizzed my opponent on why they hadn’t committed a leader to the battle and the reason why became apparent when Luke then flew in with a contingent of small craft. My lack of black dice meant that I couldn’t hit them all and of course the One in a Million and Death Star Plans cards came out to ensure that he aced my battle station on its maiden outing, seizing triumph from ruin albeit at great cost; I can’t think of ever having a more Star Wars moment in a game before. The game had now been radically shortened and I only had a couple of turns to find the base. Endor was still a problem and a careful choice of missions by the Rebels had stalled my attempt to land some boots on Ilum. If the base was at either of those locations, as I was now so convinced, then it was game over for me unless I could find a way to discredit the rebels in order to buy one more round. This would allow me to spawn a Super Star Destroyer in range to take enough ground troops to make for an effective battle, but I really didn’t fancy my chances.

Preparing to turn my main fleet away from Nal Hutta I quickly sent a transport with a single Stormtrooper onto Tattooine just to tick it off my list and bam! They walked straight into the Rebel base. I had the option to send the rest of the fleet in but the odds were in favour of the rebels. Seeing as they had neglected to play the relocation card I knew that I could attack on the following turn instead which would give me enough time to bring some more units into range as well as spawning through production. I knew that the Rebels would shorten the tier again and it would make for a climactic final battle on the final round of the game which felt so appropriate that it just had to happen. It was pretty spectacular as my opponent had been withdrawing units into the base for most of the game, but the short delay and massing of Imperial forces was enough to give me the edge despite one hairy moment where it looked like I might fluff the space battle and leave a sole transport in orbit that would be enough to prevent the win. In fairness though, the Rebels only had to have remembered to play the relocation card and they would likely have slipped out of my reach or forced me into a battle where they would have been odds-on to win.

A friend popped over and we tried a couple of new things. My son absolutely loved Gizmos which is a fairly straightforward engine building tableau game (yes, another one) where you pick one of four actions – file a card for later use, pick some marbles (resources) from a dispensing chute, build a card (either from the market or from your file), or dig through one of the draw piles and either file or build one of the cards. As you add more to your engine it gives you bonuses when you take certain actions, keep going until someone hits the tableau limit and then score up points on cards and bonus tokens. It’s very straightforward in that there is one very direct way to do well which is to maximise the free stuff on actions before you take them - for instance I very rarely used the pick action because I instead made sure that I was getting marbles for free when filing and building. It’s particularly powerful to misuse the fourth ‘research’ action because you can dig into the most valuable third tier deck and, if you’ve made sure to have your engine setup correctly, get back everything you spend to build one of the most valuable cards and then spam the same action twice more to quickly end the game with a sizeable score. Although I don’t feel there is much of interest to discover by mining with repeat play my son enjoyed it so much that I’ve sought out a trade so will doubtless be playing it some more. I've come to realise that this sort of tableau/engine building game, although I wouldn't necessarily describe it as my favourite genre, is about as much in my wheelhouse as I'm ever going to get. I should really have contributed to the recent discussion on Tableau builders but every time I started it began to turn into a huge essay.

We also played one of the myriad of escape room games, this one has a big plastic ‘computer’ that you insert plastic keys into in order to see if you got the codes right. The story was about a virus spilled in a lab and we had to find the antidote, overall it was pretty good in comparison to other games. I think I might prefer the later cases in the Unlock series after they got out of the over-reliance of hiding secret numbers in the artwork. I think the only issue we had with this one was one point where we actually had the right code and so had technically progressed to the next stage but didn’t realise it. We wasted ten minutes trying to figure out what was wrong and eventually checked the clues only to note that we had already succeeded in moving on – that’s more likely us just being a bunch of dumb-asses rather than anything with the game though. Also got some more surfing in with Tavarua which has gone unloved for the past few weeks.

Wow, that game of rebellion dude. Makes ME want to go out and get it.

Playing Smart Ass right now. What the hell is a Plimsall Line?

Sagrilarus wrote: Playing Smart Ass right now. What the hell is a Plimsall Line?

Lines on the ship hull that shows waterline/safe passage at various temps and water types. Or it's the thing you hold on to when you are plimsailing

WadeMonnig wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Playing Smart Ass right now. What the hell is a Plimsall Line?

Lines on the ship hull that shows waterline/safe passage at various temps and water types. Or it's the thing you hold on to when you are plimsailing

Oh yeah, like you knew that.

Had a friend over for some two player gaming tonight. I had set out some choices, and he immediately selected Monolith Arena because he was intrigued about Neuroshima Hex after reading my glowing recommendation of it in Tabletop Gaming Magazine (I wrote about it in the April issue). I explained how the game worked, and then proceeded to stomp him into dust. This was not surprising since it was his first time and I have been playing N Hex for 12 years. I did not use the Monoliths. I think of all the times I have played this game, I used the monoliths only once. This game is so perfect already... I just don't think it needs to be tweaked.

I thought we were going to play Brook City or possibly Theseus next... but he threw me a curve ball and requested Psycho Raiders!

We took a while setting up and refreshing on the rules. He chose the campers, I was the raiders. Unbeknownst to him, ALL of my sinister townsfolk rolls failed, so he was in really good shape. His strategy was to remain in the truck as long as possible. I slammed into his truck once with the van, but then a black cat crossed his path and he went off road.

He got back on the road, and Spud got out of the van and fucked up the truck to the point that it was immobile. The campers split up on foot, and the raiders went to work. Randy actually doubled back and tried to hot wire the Raiders van. He succeeded! But as he started the van, Beau and Spud beat him into oblivion, claiming the first casualty. His neck was "gushed".

Meanwhile, Ginger and (Becky?) managed to alert the mechanic, who called the Sheriff. The Sheriff called the farmer! The mechanic got into the fixer-upper, and the girls hopped in. The Sheriff got into his cruiser and headed towards the action.

Torch went to work on the fixer-upper, stopping it dead in its tracks. The campers fled, while the Mechanic stayed behind, desperately trying to help. He ultimately defeated Torch, but was unable to claim his flame thrower, because Beau swept in at the last moment and grabbed it. Beau then proceeded to turn the flame thrower on the Sheriff, cooking him into a smoldering husk.

Fluke was hot on the trail of the girls, but they were hidden and split up. He had pretty much no chance of stopping both of them, so he took his best shot at killing Ginger, and failed. The girls escaped, physically unharmed, but mentally.... well...

CATACLYSM, my 8th play yesterday, all of which have been 3P full campaign games. Our group rotates so we've all played each side multiple times now. We've still yet to crack the code on how to win as the Russians; they've only won once so far. We've gotten better at preventing from them from collapsing and triggering the end of the game though.

In the Pacific, the Japanese took most of China and the Central Pacific before turning on Australia and the British possessions. At the same time, they took the eastern Russian spaces . All this conspired to keep the Americans at bay on that map.

Meanwhile the German conquest of France was short lived as the Western Allies retook it by first converting Denmark and using that distraction to force themselves back into France and then enveloping Italy from both Southern France and Sicily. Meanwhile the Russians took Poland and Rumania, .However the Japanese by now had taken India and forced themselves into Southern Russia via the Caucasus and had they collapsed Russia , would have triggered the game end and likely won . This was not to be however and by virtue of first forcing Italy to surrender then Germany the Western Allies pulled out the win .

Despite us not quite figuring out the Russians yet this game continues to entertain,

Sounds great, Martin... How long was the game? Your reports and watching part of heavy cardboard play it put it on my list.

About 6-7 hours, game went til the 45 turn . Some games have ended earlier than that, I'd say 8 would be the max . Its pretty variable; if players make early game die rolls the game "speeds up" whereas conversely a slow early game will stretch things out. But it moves along and since the chit pull is so dynamic, I don't feel like the game drags at all. Once war breaks out , combat resolution is pretty fast, requiring at most two sets of die rolls .

I was travelling Friday-Sunday so not a lot of games happened, but one particularly important one did: Masterpiece. A Parker Brothers game that came out in the 70s. We played the 90s reprint.

Masterpiece is about auctions, bluffing, and roll and move. Every turn starts with a D6 roll to scoot around the board and trigger some kind of event. You're not trying to "get" anywhere on the board, it's just a means of randomizing what action/auction is going on. Many of the spaces involve acquiring gorgeous prints of classic paintings either by auctions (which are in real time and feature the painting on a little plastic easel) purchase, or if you're lucky a gift in the form of an "inheritance". Whenever you get a painting you also draw a secret value card and throw it under the painting. 1-10 million per card, with a slight chance of drawing a forgery that means the painting is garbage no matter how many value cards it has.

This is where the game goes from an auction activity to a terrifyingly sharp bluffing game, because the rest of the spaces fuel this engine. Spaces often offer your choice of liquid assets or additional value cards to add to whichever painting you wish. The latter is far more likely to return more money, and at the end of the game you total your cash and painting values so you very much want that, but it also means you could draw a forgery that will ruin one of your pieces. The twist is you can pile as many cards on a painting as you want, including on paintings that are already fake. When private auctions roll around and your opponents get to pick one of your paintings to auction off (paying you the money, of course), do they aim for your painting with 3 cards? That could be worth a game-shattering amount of money, but if it's trash...

Other spaces let you sell paintings to the bank for their value in cash for reinvestment purposes, or sell for a decent set value so you can shed your low/fake paintings, and a handful of other things, but you get the idea. Masterpiece is glorious. It's not a perfect game by any kind of modern standard, but it's just riotously good fun. I could write way more about why it's so great, but is there an audience about a game that people have to thrift sift for?

I think you just wrote the perfect 5 second review. I vote this should be posted on site as such.

Vysetron wrote: I was travelling Friday-Sunday so not a lot of games happened, but one particularly important one did: Masterpiece. A Parker Brothers game that came out in the 70s. We played the 90s reprint.

Masterpiece is about auctions, bluffing, and roll and move. Every turn starts with a D6 roll to scoot around the board and trigger some kind of event. You're not trying to "get" anywhere on the board, it's just a means of randomizing what action/auction is going on. Many of the spaces involve acquiring gorgeous prints of classic paintings either by auctions (which are in real time and feature the painting on a little plastic easel) purchase, or if you're lucky a gift in the form of an "inheritance". Whenever you get a painting you also draw a secret value card and throw it under the painting. 1-10 million per card, with a slight chance of drawing a forgery that means the painting is garbage no matter how many value cards it has.

This is where the game goes from an auction activity to a terrifyingly sharp bluffing game, because the rest of the spaces fuel this engine. Spaces often offer your choice of liquid assets or additional value cards to add to whichever painting you wish. The latter is far more likely to return more money, and at the end of the game you total your cash and painting values so you very much want that, but it also means you could draw a forgery that will ruin one of your pieces. The twist is you can pile as many cards on a painting as you want, including on paintings that are already fake. When private auctions roll around and your opponents get to pick one of your paintings to auction off (paying you the money, of course), do they aim for your painting with 3 cards? That could be worth a game-shattering amount of money, but if it's trash...

Other spaces let you sell paintings to the bank for their value in cash for reinvestment purposes, or sell for a decent set value so you can shed your low/fake paintings, and a handful of other things, but you get the idea. Masterpiece is glorious. It's not a perfect game by any kind of modern standard, but it's just riotously good fun. I could write way more about why it's so great, but is there an audience about a game that people have to thrift sift for?

Wow, I still have the 70s version. Sounds like they changed it up a bit.