What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

i grabbed DD on the cheap for $10 and it has been well received. my family liked it a lot, and the game group enjoyed it but havent clamored for more. i think its a lot of fun personally. the shared card mechanic is really interesting. i do still want to play Hab & Gut to see another implementation of it, though its even harder to justify the import price on it now that i own DD.

@Wade: So, when you play Champions, it's with ALL of both Mountains and Valhalla? Because I've read a couple opinions that everything Valhalla brings is teh awesome, but Mountains brings in some unnecessary stuff that makes a slow endgame even slower. True? (knowing what you know about what I like in terms of elaborate games...)

Jackwraith wrote: @Wade: So, when you play Champions, it's with ALL of both Mountains and Valhalla? Because I've read a couple opinions that everything Valhalla brings is teh awesome, but Mountains brings in some unnecessary stuff that makes a slow endgame even slower. True? (knowing what you know about what I like in terms of elaborate games...)

I really like Dark Mountains with EVERYTHING else because it gives you a couple more options on where to place workers and that some of the cards included in Valhalla require Archer "Souls" that means that players who would not normally go there will now be tempted to. However, honestly, it is more because I don't want to sort out the cards you need to remove to play without Dark Mountains. I don't think it slows down End Game (not sure what it would slow down in end game...maybe the end of each round because that could be an extra two battles that need to be resolved). Also, some cards are just MADE for exploiting Dark Mountains. I will say my wife asked if we NEEDED to have Dark Mountains included last night, so I guess that might be a vote against it.
As I said in my review of the expansions, I really would suggest the Jarl edition that includes all expansion and upgraded components if you haven't already bought the game. I wish I would have went that route, if only because it would put everything into one box. By itself, Dark Mountains is just Meh, included with Valhalla, it's more than worthy. Check out my review of Dark Mountains here if you haven't, I (hopefully) explain why I recommend it.

I remember your reviews. I remember the one about Dark Mountains being almost completely negative (mostly bad stuff on the land travel, fighting the Mountain Giants not really being worth it, Archers met with a resounding "meh"), but being kinda saved by adding in Valhalla. But what I mean by the endgame being slow is the opinion that things slow down as everyone nears the victory conditions and beating the Trolls becomes too easy and it's more a case of going through the motions until someone gets the win. The Dark Mountains adding in more stuff would seem to add to that problem, right?

I noticed that Grey Fox still offers the Jarl edition for around the same cost as the base game, which seems kinda crazy. I'm still just wondering if I need yet another worker placement game.

My 2c on Midgard - the archers feel like a blatant fix for the hunting action which becomes largely irrelevant as there are enough ways to get food as a by-product of other actions not to bother with it. Even so I think I've still only ever hunted once in a few handfuls of games. I like having them as a unit though as they have a high hit rate and Valhalla means that you actively want your troops to die, so they are great for throwing into suicide missions where you need just the one hit to slay a monster. I also like having the Giants as they are extra targets and without the monster fights the game is a tedious exercise in resource gathering. Personally, I think that both expansions in tandem make the game superb and I don't regret getting them together. It isn't a difficult game to play so the additional overhead is minimal.


At home:

Had a game night with a friend who was keen to introduce me to Imperial Settlers of the North, the latest in Ignacy Trewicek’s evolution of 51st State. If you’ve played any of the previous (I want to say four?) iterations then it all feels very familiar yet it has enough uniqueness to stand as a separate game in it’s own right. The main difference is that there is no production phase and the only way to gain resources is to play cards or to take a specific harvesting action which is one of a set of five that you can choose from. You have only two pawns that allow you to activate these core actions, although you can also spend a resource to re-use each of them once per round. Many of the cards that you pick up are only playable when you take one of these actions so you need to plan your order of operations well in order to get as many freebies as possible whilst focusing on getting the critical things done that make your faction work to its strengths. Each faction has a unique deck of cards so there is no common pool to draw from which keeps your strategy in a fairly narrow area of focus. You can however conquer or pillage a selection of four islands, something which kind of jams together the traditional ‘lookout’ phase with the solo variant pillaging from Imperial Settlers. This conquering action is the only interactive part of the game, although by interaction you are simply trying to get in first like a worker-placement action. There is literally zero player interaction, you could just play through your turns silently for all the difference that it makes.

All of this is ultimately problematic. In order to do well you need to play your faction at optimum strategy and doing so requires you to exploit the free actions as well as doing things in a sometimes very specific order. However, if your exploit cards are all at the bottom of your deck then you won’t be on the same level as if you magically picked up exactly what you need. Because quite a bit of the game involves multiplying card effects the speed of your progress is largely dependent on the cards that you draw and falling behind means that your opponents will be racing ahead of you to the endgame. As there is absolutely no antagonism you cannot even try to peg them back by breaking their stuff, it’s just a straightforward engine-building VP race.

This was exactly what happened in our play; one of us was able to build up exciting combos that were steadily scoring VPs whilst the other had to keep dropping out early until finally managing to exhaust the draw pile and only then stepping on the gas while far too far behind to catch up. It was completely one-sided. The narrow strategy is a problem as it leaves little or no wiggle room if the cards you are drawing do not have natural synergy. The islands fail to offer a great deal of variety as the mechanism behind sailing to them is largely one of exchanging some resources for slightly more resources. I still found it fun to play but would put it well below both 51st State and Imperial Settlers, either of which I find far more fulfilling.

I then introduced him to Sweet Spot which went down well. We had a couple of tense moments however a bit of experience makes for a huge difference and I was able to continually squeeze him on stamina at the crunch points or pull him into setting me up for good returns, and took the set cleanly 3-0. I really like this game, it’s my personal find of the year so far.

We finished with our best Cloughie and Taylor impression with a co-operative play of Club Stories, which was surprisingly fun to play with company. We used our scouts and coaches in combination to make the most of our tactical positioning on the field which meant that we could more precisely focus on what we wanted to add to the club. Unfortunately the dice were conspiring against us and we kept failing to achieve much of anything, nobody wanted to sponsor us and players were staying away. As a result we missed out on a number of free skill upgrades and the lack of progress saw team morale and fan support driven into the ground. We also failed to play to a single full crowd, which was one of the secondary goals of the scenario.

Despite all this we were managing to win or at least draw many games and able to do enough fire fighting to prevent the club completely imploding under pressure. By the end of the game we had secured the team in a good league position with a group of superstars who were more than ready to dominate in the following season. However there was no money in the bank and the crowds were making up a new rude chant about us every week to yell from the terraces to vocalise their disgust. Perhaps inevitably we got the sack despite all our hard work in turning around the nose-dive of relegation doom into successful survival. Off to Brighton with us after all then.

I was also subjected to that exploding cats game which made me want to choke on a hairball.

The Midgard expansions should not have been treated as separate entities. After playing the game with everything, it’s pretty clear that that was the intended way to play.

Christ, why the fuck to publishers do this? Why give people options that lead to a subpar experience? FFS, put your best product forward, because if that’s someone’s first exposure to the game, chances are they’ll be less likely to come back.

Related: player counts that don’t actually work but are put on the box to sell more copies.

^agree, it's very weird in an environment where kickstarter supplies 50+ expansion boxes for a million dollars.

The dark mountains review is a review of JUST playing with DM added. Like everyone is saying, it should have been one expansion, not two. And yes, you do need this particular worker placement game because it isn't just worker placement. In my opinion.

Haven't been around these parts for a while, mostly because the 18 months of my life has been insane and mostly free of boardgames. But I have managed, in the last few of months, to play a bit:

Three plays of Triumph and Tragedy with the same opponents. We originally got together to try to work our way through the beautiful mess that is GMT's Pericles, but after three attempts we all agreed that we weren't leaving our 5+ hour sessions feeling like we had any fun at all. Three of us agreed to meet to play T&T, and it has been a MUCH more rewarding experience. I don't really think of myself as a wargamer, but each play of T&T has left me thinking about it weeks later. I guess I could write a bit more eloquently about it than I am right now, but I am eager to play again. Really, really great game.

The same group that tried to wade through Pericles also played two back-to-back games of Root. It was fine. I'm willing to believe that we would feel a lot happier about it if we all were more aware of how each faction ought to be played, and it was a fun enough way to pass the time. But honestly, I could do very well without playing ever again. Yet another award winning, game-of-the-year title that won't be brought up again 10 years from now, while Tigris and Euphrates, Twilight Struggle, Cosmic Encounter, etc. are still chugging a long.

Finally, on the advice of this esteemed website, I've picked up Escape the Dark Castle. This is my kind of shit, and the fact that Vasel hates it makes me even more eager to play.

Edge of Darkness by AEG. It's very AEGish. Has a bit of a Thunderstone feel but without so many cards. Instead you augment the cards as the game progresses with funky see-through sleeves and card bodies. That part is pretty neat.

Some of the rules are a little ungainly, and I think it needed more streamlining. There's kind of three currencies in the game including one that turns into another (sometimes) and there are mandatory rules that have exceptions, which make them . . . unmandatory? Some of the rules seemed to inflict collateral damage and seemed counter to theme, leading me to believe that the game's core concept got muddied in the tuning phase of design.

Oh -- and the player aid card was written by someone that hasn't an ounce of organization skill in them.

But, I liked it. It was fun. The rules explanation (and the number of pieces on the board and the player aid card) made it sound huge and complicated to play, but it really wasn't. I did pretty well by killing a lot of things. Seemed enjoyable enough. And building out the cards was interesting. Comes in a completely unstorable box though so I'm glad my buddy picked this one up. $150 on Kickstarter.

Played Raccoon Tycoon for the first time at a local gathering the other day. I came in second, 1 point behind the winner. I triggered the end of the game by buying the last town and I did it for two reasons: 1. I could see a big Goods sale about to be made by the winner who was first player and I wanted to cut that off. I wasn't sure I was going to win, but I knew I'd be close. 2. I really wanted the game to end.

It's not a bad game. I've just kind of come to the conclusion that I really don't enjoy most modern Euros. I like most Knizia stuff and certainly the classification of "Euro" is almost meaningless these days, since most games employ what are traditionally thought of as "Euro" mechanics, including most games that I really enjoy. I guess I'm just not interested in what seem like the meaningless economy games that have a theme pasted on. I realize that's also the complaint long leveled against Knizia, but there's a difference between his more elegant designs and a lot of the modern stuff that are about basic market mechanics or trains or whatever. I'd much rather play something closer to Theseus or 51st State or Cry Havoc or many of the Tiny Epics. I've done enough number-crunching in the jobs that I detest. I don't really want to do it when I'm playing games. Or, if I am, let it be number-crunching that's drenched in theme, so I can at least think about that.

mezike wrote: Off to Brighton with us after all then.

Haha. Love it.

How much of this narrative is part of the game? Like, specifically is there a rude chant mechanism?

mc wrote:

mezike wrote: Off to Brighton with us after all then.

Haha. Love it.

How much of this narrative is part of the game? Like, specifically is there a rude chant mechanism?

I would say that the scenarios are good at setting the scene and often include some extra elements that make them unique and distinctive so not just a race for a single target. There isn't a specific mechanism for abuse from the terraces, however you do track how happy the fans are and there are events that will trigger if they are falling out of love with your regime which is where some of the detail and texture comes in. You also have to make choices over whether you run down player morale and fitness in order to do essential things at the club but by doing so run the risk of triggering negative events or missing out on positive ones. There are multiple strategies to play in this respect.

Beyond that you need to apply most of the narrative yourself, much like playing a PC football management sim as you’re not entirely in control of when and how things happen but can weave a coherent story out of what happens while you play. With a little imagination it comes to life quite well and I’m finding it to be a pretty unique experience. I really wish that there were a lot more scenarios for it though, especially if they were interlinked and providing divergent paths in a campaign setting.

As they just arrived in my FLGS and I cannot resist mystery/escape style games, I picked up the first wave of Undo. We played the first two: Undo: Cherry Blossom Festival and Undo: Blood in the Gutter. Overall, the game is interesting, but probably not worth even the $15 price of entry. There are less components than Exit or Unlocked, no app, no artwork, and really no puzzles or complex design work. It is a nice activity to play that fills up 30-45 minutes. The box says 45-90 minutes, which is either an outright lie or people really, really like to sit and stare at each other for most of the game. The idea is that you are trying to change past events to prevent the subject character's death. You start off with almost no knowledge, but still need to change events. Once you get later in the game, there is enough combined information to make some better choices. At the end of the game, you are scored based on the sum of your cards (positive means you made things better, negative means you made things worse). We still have the third one (Curse From the Past), but so far I think this series is kind of a dud. It's amusing, but I think all three should have been packaged together and sold for around $20. They are very slight by comparison to their competitors.

I also played four solo games of Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles: training scenario and first three real scenarios. I am undecided so far on the game. It works well and produces reasonable results, but it is not exactly fun or particularly interesting. It just kind of happens and does not lend itself to a narrative like other WWII tactical games I have played. I cannot think of a situation where I would choose it over a different game. Some of the weakness might be the similarity of the scenario design which has been: elite American airborne trying to eliminate an outnumbered crappy German force. Scenario 4 is the first one to include vehicles as well as the first one to completely change the victory conditions, so I will see if it is an improvement.

We played the third Undo game: Undo: Curse from the Past. It was similar gameplay to the other ones, but with the very odd choice that the subject character is not actually present within their own story. In the other two, the subject character is definitely a major part of their own history. I think overall the series is a definitely a pass. My wife enjoyed them a bit more than I did, but she still felt that the $15 cost of entry is way too high compared to Unlock! or Exit.

Edit: Just to clarify, they are enjoyable, but very, very slight. There just is not much there.