What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I will be reviewing it on my site in a week or two, so at least three more people will hear about it.

Thanks for the recommendation Sag, I never would have checked this out without your praise.

I am pretty sure Zeus is only able to cycle monsters. Heroes cannot be cycled with Zeus’ power.

jeb wrote:

barrowdown wrote: I have the Monuments expansion in the box, but I have never played it. The rules look simple enough. Is it recommended that we wait a few plays before introducing it or should I dump it in next time?

I would hold off on it. You should see a few ways to win in the regular game first. I've seen folks take Zeus to cycle Heroes until the Philosopher-stealer shows up, folks saving their hash with Polyphemus boat pushing, folks take some relatively undefended island, buy the chimera to make a building converter and snag a Metropolis. All kinds of craziness. There's a lot of game in there.

Played our first game of Gaslands last night. 5 players using 25 points each, so one car for each of us. It was a pretty great time.

Right out of the gate (literally) there were collisions everywhere. I started behind the other cars on the line, which let me do a hard turn immediately to avoid the quagmire. Then I hit my Nitro Booster and blasted out into the lead. One person sort of caught up, but in trying the stay in front of them, I ended up pushing too hard and wiped out. Of course my neighboring driver pointed me straight backward at my pursuer. Not a problem. The wipeout left me in Gear 1 so I just threw it in reverse, backed up, then fired up my minigun and riddled my pursuer with bullets.

At this point, people were starting to get the hang of it and extricating themselves from the starting gate pile-up, and another car was right up next to the bastard I had just fired upon. Time for me to throw it in reverse again. I grab the short straight template and place it, only to realize that in my bloodlust, I forgot that I had shifted up to Gear 3 and the Short was not permitted in Gear 3. As I was pointed right at the car behind me, my helpful neighbor made me drive straight into him in a head-on collision. So here I am, hitting the gas pedal to back up to shoot some more and not realizing I am not in reverse, go full bore into another driver. My roll is good and I do enough damage to wreck him, and he explodes. The movement from the explosion slams him back into me and does massive damage to my car and and causes *me* to explode. Both explosions are enough to wreck the third car near us and cause *him* to explode. 3 of the 5 players are out by the first gate. The other two people pull out ahead, the 3 of our charred corpses respawn and immediately start ramming and shooting each other. We all end up getting wrecked again. All without getting very far from the first gate. At this point we realize that unless we put aside our differences and focus on the leaders, we wont even have a shot. So from here on out it basically just becomes a race game and while we never made it back to the front, it was fun to watch the two leaders drift around corners fighting for first while we were spending audience votes to fuck with them.

Great game. I’ve been 3D printing a ton of terrain and modding cars. Should have quite the table here pretty soon.

I meant monsters. The cycling thing Zeus does. Here's the downside of expansions: vocab. Haha.

Played the new version of Endeavor last night and sure enough, it's been 2017ed. By that I mean that a pretty decent game got a bunch of junk added into it to add "depth" to it. Here's what I had to say:

I have the original Endeavor rated an 8, so surely this should be at least that? Sort of. I like the tweaks they made to the base rules (most of them), but I really dislike the "exploits", side missions that come into play when areas open up and just complicate the game. They take a pretty streamlined game and add an unnecessary layer of "hang on, what does that do again? how does it work? I have to be where?" to the proceedings. And they can't really be ignored, either. To me it's another instance of adding more faff to a good game (looking at you, Terraforming Mars) until it collapses from the weight.

As for the tweaks to the base game, most are pretty good, but I don't know about being able to buy cards before an area opens. While this makes card buying more attractive, it also eliminates a lot of the "arc" of the game. Exploring, colonizing, exploiting. It just becomes a relatively undifferentiated mishmash. I suppose that opens up different approaches to winning, but it does come at a cost.

Without the exploits, this is still an 8, but with them, for me, it plummets down. The length and fussiness they add take away from an otherwise attractive design.

Holy shit. Lords of Hellas is the real deal. I waited 2 fucking years for that Kickstarter to deliver. Awaken Realms fucked up all sorts of things along the way. There is a single player part and a one vs. many part that may be totally worthless. I don't know. But regardless....

The core multiplayer experience is phenomenal, and admittedly that is based on one play of a 3 player game. But I can see the gears turning and can see how it would change with higher player counts. I've read through the various heroes. There are several different God monuments to erect. Tons of game play variety to add.

There were a few different times during our game that I thought the game was about to end. I myself was *this* close to clinching it a few times. But the game state changed and the game went on. It actually ran longer than expected... probably 2 1/2 hours, but it was a first time. Standard turns are actually extremely quick. Battles extend things but they don't happen all the time.

The coolest thing about this game is that there are 4 different ways to win, and you absolutely don't have to dedicate yourself to one of them. I myself pursued 3 different victory conditions during the game. I lost, so maybe that's not a great endorsement. But again, I was *this* close.

I think this one is a winner.

I need to sit down and finish my lords of hellas review but I'm in total agreement with everything you said. I'm a few more plays into than you (but lacking all the KS extras) but, damn I'm impressed every time I play.

We've been playing the reprint of Fury of Dracula. I really enjoyed it, and I am very keen to get it to the table again. Beautiful and intense.

I did struggle with the colour pallette though which meant I messed up quite a bit as Dracula. I struggle with the sharpness of colours since having laser eye surgery so couldn't tell where the area regions blend together, accidently sending the hunters on a wild goose chase - wh00ps!

- Charlotte

Played Twilight Imperium with four players last night. Goddamn, this game is crazy stupid epic, and I love it. My glorious Fish Empire nearly managed to spread its intellectual snobbery across the galaxy, but we over-extended, and stalled on that last victory point. And then got our home system stomped on. And then the person in last place, who had Political Secrets on all three of us, passed the Ixthian Artifact directive unopposed and blew up the centre of the galaxy (where everyone but her had serious vested interest, and lots of units).

Fantastic fun, wish I had more time and opportunities to play it more frequently!

UnluckyFrogGaming wrote: We've been playing the reprint of Fury of Dracula. I really enjoyed it, and I am very keen to get it to the table again. Beautiful and intense.

I did struggle with the colour pallette though which meant I messed up quite a bit as Dracula. I struggle with the sharpness of colours since having laser eye surgery so couldn't tell where the area regions blend together, accidently sending the hunters on a wild goose chase - wh00ps!

- Charlotte

Wow, whoa, wait -- laser eye surgery messed with your color sight? Is it just Fury of Dracula's palette, or is it affecting you in other games?

We played Mille Bornes with our kids last night, who were more interested in wrecking other peoples' cars than they were actually finishing the game. Good times. (Slight note of sarcasm...)

Finally played Pax Pamir 2e. As someone who couldn't figure out the first edition and ended up selling it, I'm glad I resisted the Kickstarter here. Beautiful production, fine game, but definitely not for me and it would never get played. I only started to figure out what was happening towards the end and it didn't make me hungry for more.

Destroyed my family at Banangrams and then lost a tight match of Thebes to my mom because I did not contest her at all in conferences. I would have preferred a higher player count to force more pressure on the decision making, but Thebes is really under appreciated. It should be right up there with Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne as a modern classic. There’s the tactility of digging for chips in the excavation bags, and the central turn order mechanic creates stressful decisions without complexity.

Yeah, it's not so bad really - my eyesight was terrible before.

I think the issue with Fury of Dracula is it's all muted browns/reds almost sepia tone that blend together. I had to improvise by using the Jack the Ripper screen from Letters From Whitechapel and the elephant Meeple from Micro Brew - check it out below. There are actually 6 distinct colour coded regions on the map but they all blend together along the borders....

Dracula Strikes again

Sagrilarus wrote:

UnluckyFrogGaming wrote: We've been playing the reprint of Fury of Dracula. I really enjoyed it, and I am very keen to get it to the table again. Beautiful and intense.

I did struggle with the colour pallette though which meant I messed up quite a bit as Dracula. I struggle with the sharpness of colours since having laser eye surgery so couldn't tell where the area regions blend together, accidently sending the hunters on a wild goose chase - wh00ps!

- Charlotte

Wow, whoa, wait -- laser eye surgery messed with your color sight? Is it just Fury of Dracula's palette, or is it affecting you in other games?

Yeah, it's not so bad really - my eyesight was terrible before.

I think the issue with Fury of Dracula is it's all muted browns/reds almost sepia tone that blend together. I had to improvise by using the Jack the Ripper screen from Letters From Whitechapel and the elephant Meeple from Micro Brew - check it out below. There are actually 6 distinct colour coded regions on the map but they all blend together along the borders....

Dracula Strikes Again...