What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Ok, I'll bite.... how much is this thing and what do you get in the box?

Brace yourself.

$160.

You get two warbands and their cards (these will cost $50 each separately), the other scenario cards and bits, two sets of neutral monsters (not sure on price but somewhere around $20-40 I'd imagine separately), the rulebook ($40 separately), and a huge swathe of post-apocalyptic terrain that's excellent. The terrain would likely go for around $100 if sold separately.

Basically they're giving you the terrain for free which makes it a good (GW) value. Due to the value here, I fully expect this to be a limited run starter box like Kill Team. Six months from now you won't be able to get it and will have to just buy a rulebook and warband separately.

You get more terrain in this set than anything they’ve ever done. You actually get MORE than enough. It’s not like “enough to get you going for three games”. When you figure in the combinations possible with the scenario generator and how deployment works, this is more of a complete purchase than you might expect. It’s not like their other Boxes that fee like they are winding you up to buy more. That is there (I’m getting all the warbands by god), but this is a full set.

I think it’s actually $170. Which is horrifying. But here we are.

A buddy is moving across the country, so he and another friend did a game day on Saturday.

Flamme Rouge x2. Quickly becoming my new-to-me GOTY. The criticisms of the opacity of the decisions are valid, and there's a lot of variance, but it feels like a bike race. My favorite racing game (which is not a genre I especially like) and on top of that, I don't even care much for bike racing as a sport. We played twice and I lost twice. I started doing a semi-solo grand tour using the companion app. ("Semi-solo" because my 4yo is playing.)

The Mind x2. We got to level 6 in the first game and level 8 in the second. There were some crazy and thrilling plays -- at the end of level 2, I held the 99, other guy held the 100, I successfully deduced it and it felt like magic. The game was nominated for a Diana Jones Award, which is causing no end of gnashing of teeth by the usual suspects over at the BGG news blog.

Hellapagos x1. Not great as a 3p but still clever enough. I don't think I successfully stressed that it's a brutal game. At the end of the 4th round I was leader, murdered everyone else, and sailed alone back to civilization.

Sid Meier's Civilization: New Dawn x0.8. We called it early because it was getting late and they had a drive back home. It was okay but has a lot of weird exceptions and fiddly rules. I really like the central engine of the game with the focus row and how actions get more powerful the more you delay taking them. But then it takes that slick, streamlined core and bolts a bunch of random stuff on it. Really needs a second edition.

We also smoked cigars and drank too much scotch so it was pretty perfect.

The best Hellapagos stories involve people getting murdered purely for sport.

So it’s also a sports game then?

Ticket to Ride: First Journey. I have realized two things: (1) Most games will eventually be available new on Amazon for $15 or less; (2) $15 is about my point where I'll just buy anything that's even slightly interesting.

So I got this for the spawn. I think it's a little abstract for her. She keeps wanting to move the trains around, and doesn't really understand the concept of claiming a route.

I haven't played TTR in years but this has pretty much everything. There's no "draw tickets and choose some" -- you get two random tickets and when you complete one you get another random one. But other than that, it's TTR. The routes are a little shorter.

Fine for kids, but (sadly?) not much different than regular TTR. It's still simple and themeless. Eventually she'll be old enough for Railways of the World.

I just played Tentacle Town with my kids, Monster Fight Club’s first board game from the old GF9 Dill/Kovaleski team. Totally not what you’d expect from the Spartacus/ST:A group. It’s a light family Euro with some Survive-like nastiness. It was really fun- some simple majority stuff, resource conversions, harpoon making, throwing harpoons at tentacles...a unique setting and cool concept.

This is an advance copy, I think they are Kickstartering it. It’s a good one. Full review soon.

Glad to hear it's quality (I'd expect nothing less). I got it in the mail yesterday but only briefly looked at the awesome tentacle bits.

dysjunct wrote: A buddy is moving across the country, so he and another friend did a game day on Saturday.

Flamme Rouge x2. Quickly becoming my new-to-me GOTY. The criticisms of the opacity of the decisions are valid, and there's a lot of variance, but it feels like a bike race. My favorite racing game (which is not a genre I especially like) and on top of that, I don't even care much for bike racing as a sport. We played twice and I lost twice. I started doing a semi-solo grand tour using the companion app. ("Semi-solo" because my 4yo is playing.)

The Mind x2. We got to level 6 in the first game and level 8 in the second. There were some crazy and thrilling plays -- at the end of level 2, I held the 99, other guy held the 100, I successfully deduced it and it felt like magic. The game was nominated for a Diana Jones Award, which is causing no end of gnashing of teeth by the usual suspects over at the BGG news blog.

Hellapagos x1. Not great as a 3p but still clever enough. I don't think I successfully stressed that it's a brutal game. At the end of the 4th round I was leader, murdered everyone else, and sailed alone back to civilization.

Sid Meier's Civilization: New Dawn x0.8. We called it early because it was getting late and they had a drive back home. It was okay but has a lot of weird exceptions and fiddly rules. I really like the central engine of the game with the focus row and how actions get more powerful the more you delay taking them. But then it takes that slick, streamlined core and bolts a bunch of random stuff on it. Really needs a second edition.

We also smoked cigars and drank too much scotch so it was pretty perfect.

Forgot one! Colt Express x1. Including the Stagecoach expansion (but we just used the horses). I ran away with it. It's pretty fun but I am undecided if playing the game was more fun than assembling the little train cars.

dysjunct wrote:

dysjunct wrote: A buddy is moving across the country, so he and another friend did a game day on Saturday.

Flamme Rouge x2. Quickly becoming my new-to-me GOTY. The criticisms of the opacity of the decisions are valid, and there's a lot of variance, but it feels like a bike race. My favorite racing game (which is not a genre I especially like) and on top of that, I don't even care much for bike racing as a sport. We played twice and I lost twice. I started doing a semi-solo grand tour using the companion app. ("Semi-solo" because my 4yo is playing.)

The Mind x2. We got to level 6 in the first game and level 8 in the second. There were some crazy and thrilling plays -- at the end of level 2, I held the 99, other guy held the 100, I successfully deduced it and it felt like magic. The game was nominated for a Diana Jones Award, which is causing no end of gnashing of teeth by the usual suspects over at the BGG news blog.

Hellapagos x1. Not great as a 3p but still clever enough. I don't think I successfully stressed that it's a brutal game. At the end of the 4th round I was leader, murdered everyone else, and sailed alone back to civilization.

Sid Meier's Civilization: New Dawn x0.8. We called it early because it was getting late and they had a drive back home. It was okay but has a lot of weird exceptions and fiddly rules. I really like the central engine of the game with the focus row and how actions get more powerful the more you delay taking them. But then it takes that slick, streamlined core and bolts a bunch of random stuff on it. Really needs a second edition.

We also smoked cigars and drank too much scotch so it was pretty perfect.

Forgot one! Colt Express x1. Including the Stagecoach expansion (but we just used the horses). I ran away with it. It's pretty fun but I am undecided if playing the game was more fun than assembling the little train cars.

It's definitely more fun than trying to get the treasure tokens into the train carts with big, meaty man hands.

Played my second game of Time of Crisis last night. Two of the players played in last week's game and the fourth player was new to the game. I ended up coming in second again, about 10 points behind the leader. The eventual victor was the first to become emperor and immediately after taking the throne he absolutely wrecked me by taking out my nearest army that could threaten his empire and forced me into a three turn recovery cycle to build back up to take him on. The other two players were dealing with their own issues (both had very active barbarian tribes that kept stomping through their territories the entire game). Everyone seemed to really enjoy it again, so it might become a regular for the near future. It seems to do something well for each of the players' preferences.

The previous weekend I got a lot of games in when a friend was visiting from out of town. 3x Villainous, 3x Mountains of Madness, 1x Table Battles, 1x The Mind, and 1x Escape Tales: The Awakening. All pretty fun. My wife and I finished up one go through of Escape Tales and ended up with a negative ending. I'm not sure how many endings are in the game, but we will probably play through at least once more (we still had 10 puzzles unseen). The game overall is fairly good, but the theme is a bit disjointed at times as it is not as loose of a structure as Unlock! or Exit so missing parts or doing them slightly out of expected order creates odd gaps in the narrative.

Finally, I got two face-to-face plays of Red Winter in with my miniatures gaming opponent. It was his first experience with hex-and-counter wargames and he absolutely loved it (he immediately decided that we will try out my ASLSK stuff after looking around online). We played the tutorial scenario so he could get a feel for game flow and then played scenario 10, The Battle for Hirvasvaara. He defeated me 4-1 after my units could do absolutely nothing no matter how favorable I set up my attacks. I managed to inflict a single step loss in combat over the course of the game. His indirect fire units also were incredibly effective as his first barrage managed to land three 18s, which inflict a loss in addition to suppressing my units. I've given him the ASLSK 1 rulebook and hopefully we get it to the table this weekend.

Happy family game time this past week. Worked in AZUL, FREEDOM, and NOCTALUCA. The standout was FREEDOM... a perfect game for us over two sessions. We got very lucky with the random Slave Catcher rolls and didn’t have too many negative cards. Everyone had moments of heroism and flashes of brilliance and my wife was accused of being an alpha gamer. Good times as we won the standard 4 person version. I don’t think we will be so lucky next time.

AZUL and NOCTALUCA are very similar. I know that they don’t rank highly on the depth charts but they are a good fit for us. I probably like AZUL better because the scoring feels less contrived.

I just lost my first solo mission of Terminator Genisys: Rise of the Resistance. This game was designed by Josh Derksen. He did the graphic design work for SEAL Team Flix, and frankly I see a lot of STF in this game. If you wanted a game in the vein of STF but didn't want dexterity, have a look at this. It shares many mechanisms.

The key mechanic here is dice allocation. Roll 4 dice and use them to perform various actions on your turn. If you allocate to attack, you then roll separate custom attack dice. These can cause damage, but if you roll a T-800 head, it will trigger a defense action in whatever enemy you are attacking. It all works very well and is easy to understand.

You run around the map, uncovering random objectives that trigger small bits of story text when you reveal them. It's cool and can cause surprises.

Charlie is a fan, and I can see why. I will likely seek out the expansion in the future, which adds a scenario generator and components for a 5th player.

So... a couple of mentions regarding the components. The map tiles and tokens are great. They are nice and sturdy, with good artwork. The miniatures... they are passable. The bases are oddly thin. Still, they do the job. The dice are nice, but small. Larger ones would have been appreciated. And finally, the only real grievance, the cards. They are ridiculously thin. I don't know how many stretch goals this KS got, but the first one should have been a card quality upgrade.

Check this game out if you want a simple, fun cooperative action game. Plenty of dice to roll and terminators to... terminate.

It actually never funded on Kickstarter. It was published anyway.

How many characters are you playing solo? I like to run 2.

Wait until you get to mission 3. That's when shit hits the fan.