What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

DarthJoJo wrote: Only more frustrated about it as I brought SEAL Team Flix, had read the rules through twice beforehand and couldn’t get anyone interested. So it goes.

I've been there. Prior to the game's USA release, I had one of a handful of copies out on the street. Took it to a game club that is loaded with Eurogamers. Not a single person wanted to try it.

I was pretty bothered, but gave them another shot last Spring, trying to get them to test my latest game. Again, no one wanted to try it since it featured icky dice.

I quit the club.

Legend of the Five Rings gets better and more fun with each day. With the most questionable cards gone the metagame has grown healthier and less punishing. I no longer feel my games are over because of some little mistake. More cards have also been released so there are more tools to build decks and the gap between clans is no longer as large.

I also get the feeling the game is normalizing. There are less decks that only use very large characters or that focus on dueling above everything else. Now decks have more play and work on several levels.

I'm very happy with the game and have a big tournament this Saturday. Wish me luck!

Taught a friend Mythic Battles last night. I won due to a rules mistake but I think he still enjoyed it. I really love this game.

My wife picked the games for Friday night. We started with two games of SONAR with the girl team taking the win first and the guys winning the second game. I thought I was pulling some spicy moves in the first game and ending up surfacing only to be torpedeoed. At least we died with the sun on our faces.
Then we played Cash n Guns and my sister in law ran away with the game by getting Art virtually unchecked.
Then two games of Anominia, I came in last then first. There is a review in this game somewhere about being polite.
Then Divinity Derby made an appearance which was followed by cool down games of roll for it and various other "non thinking" games.

Had 4 players last night and started with Root. One player was new and was really keen to try it. I have played a couple of times, and the other two players had played one time each.

One player, who had played one time, and won as the birds by literally never going into Turmoil, actively doesn't care for the game. I don't know why he doesn't like it, but that's how he feels. He got there last and had the choice of Vagabond, River folk, and Woodland Alliance. He chose River folk. He was bored out of his head for most of the game. I don't blame him, that faction is a slow starter.

I was Lizard Cult, which is my favorite faction in the game, not that I exactly have them figured out. The new player was the Eyrie, and while I warned him profusely about how turmoil works, he didn't quite get how limiting it can be and ended up going into turmoil 3 times. He came in last.

I was keeping pace with the lead until late game. For 3 entire rounds I had no cards that could score on gardens. I was pretty annoyed at how the lizard cult can literally be shut out of scoring simply due to not drawing the right cards. I'm not saying there aren't ways to mitigate this, but in my game, I wasn't drawing the right cards and as a result I wound up in the middle of the score board for far too long.

The cats and river folk were enjoying a decent lead and pretty much staying neck and neck with each other. The river folk had an explosive turn in which they gained around 10 points. At one point the river folk player was actively asking the cat player what he needed and I was like "why are you helping him, he is going to win?" and the reply was "so this game can end." He was king making, meanwhile he was neck and neck for victory. It kind of ruined it. The cats ended up winning with river folk 2 points behind.

I will probably try to not have Root hit the table when that player is over in the future.

Next up was a surprise hit for my group, Terminator Genysis: Rise of the Resistance. Charlie put this one on my radar, and I am glad he did. We played scenario 2, and won relatively easily, but it was a lengthy fight. The balance tuning on this one feels really good. We are looking forward to the next mission, and I went ahead and ordered the expansion, mainly because I think it will disappear. Nice work, Josh Derksen!

I played Dune with six players:

Two newcomers to both the game and my club, playing as Emperor and Atreides. The latter of which was talking about old games, as in "games released in 2016" and probably didn't know the game he was about to play was released in 1979.

A club regular, as Harkonnen

Another regular, with one play under this belt as the Bene Gesserit.

My girlfriend, who had already played twice and was playing as Fremen

And me, as the illustrous Guild.

Everyone loved it so much and had such a great time that despite not stopping for lunch and playing for hours they instantly arranged another game and everyone signed up. I didn't say anything, they just went ahead said "let's play again on Friday" and everyone did. We had people laughing out loud while bidding! It was that great.

It was an unusual game, though, because worms never came up. Yeah, one of the core mechanics of the game never came up and it was still great. The game started with a very strong Fremen either taking or denying spice and threatening and early win, but she did not overplay her hand and kept her strong position through the game.

From there I mostly kept the game in check, trying to make myself a home in an increasingly dangerous map. I resided on the right side of the board for a while, before fleeing when the BG came knocking on the door. Sadly, buying information on the storm's movement did not prevent Fremen from wiping out 12 of my troops, plus 5 of Emperor's and a couple BGs with Weather Control. I trudged along and lost battles, mostly using my cash as a cushion for my poor play.

But the game went on and on without a single worm in sight. We were all craving an alliance. I wanted either Fremen or BG and I could offer my taxi to the latter. Atreides was getting strong and needed an ally while the Emperor needed friends with actual presence on the board. But none came. I spent the last two turns twarting Fremen's and Atreides' attempts and won the game on a default win.

--

I feel my victory was a bit undeserved because I played poorly and having no-alliances made my default victory attempts much more likely. I was, however, in a good position to ally and had plenty to offer to others. I didn't think I was good enough for Fremen but she wanted the planet-wide reach only my shipping would provide. BG needed movement and I needed actual battle power so they were the pick I was gunning for. Sadly, no worms.

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The Guild blew my away. I had taken them for granted as Dune's least interesting faction. And they are not. First, their combat weakness is real. You can and will slap down 15 troops at the best possible time but that's partly because you cannot do with less. I lost my strenght-5 leader in the midgame and wow, does playing with 3s suck! You also get in very few fights, which is both a blessing and a curse. You need to keep buying cards to get guns and you cannot buy cards if you are already full.

Having a lot of spice and not much of a pressing need to use it (unlike Emperor) also means you can do more deals and buy more information normal. Taking your turn at will is a huge, but surprisingly subtle advantage. It's generally better to go last but you often want to go early just to force others to take the bullet for you.

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The more I play Dune, the more I'm convinced this is one of the best games ever made. I'm itching for my copy to come so I can upload my review and tell everyone how happy I am to play it.

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I think I overplayed its difficulty a bit, though. While I'm a large influence in how games play out, I think people have a much easier time grasping Dune than they do with the games it's often grouped with.

As an aside, I think new gamers are far, far more capable than we give them credit for. Most of the talk about "gateway games" and "easy to play" are heavily rooted on stereotypes. The average gamer, new or not, can play most games we play and won't require much more effort to do so. After all, people get introduced to gaming by Warhammer and many of the "hardcore games" used to be seen as gateway titles such as Civilization or Dungeons and Dragons.

Take my girlfriend. She's a geek, but not a gamer. Her whole boardgaming experience has been like this:

Terraforming Mars
Cosmic Encounter
Food Chain Magnate
Dune
Tragedy Looper

I bet most people wouldn't think that list is appropiate for a new gamer. And yet, she hasn't had any issues. The biggest has been that she found TM to be boring and I play mean. And while she's smart and having me on the table is a huge advantage, I don't think she's so out of the norm that others can't replicate her.

On a less serious aside, I do want to brag a bit about how my girlfriend plays frickin' Dune with me. I'm living the life, suckers.

*Flips the bird from the Guild's taxi and leaves*

hotseatgames wrote: The cats and river folk were enjoying a decent lead and pretty much staying neck and neck with each other. The river folk had an explosive turn in which they gained around 10 points. At one point the river folk player was actively asking the cat player what he needed and I was like "why are you helping him, he is going to win?" and the reply was "so this game can end." He was king making, meanwhile he was neck and neck for victory. It kind of ruined it. The cats ended up winning with river folk 2 points behind.

This sort of bullshit is in my like top 3 least favorite game behaviors. Maybe my least favorite.

Gary Sax wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: The cats and river folk were enjoying a decent lead and pretty much staying neck and neck with each other. The river folk had an explosive turn in which they gained around 10 points. At one point the river folk player was actively asking the cat player what he needed and I was like "why are you helping him, he is going to win?" and the reply was "so this game can end." He was king making, meanwhile he was neck and neck for victory. It kind of ruined it. The cats ended up winning with river folk 2 points behind.

This sort of bullshit is in my like top 3 least favorite game behaviors. Maybe my least favorite.

Root is a long game?

Sagrilarus wrote: Root is a long game?

Every game is a long in the right/wrong hands. My gaming group is living proof of that...

played a great game of Twilight Struggle. We normally end the game, one or another, by the late Mid-War. This one went to final scoring. We ran into a little lull at the end of Mid-War where all the scoring cards had come out, and there was alittle feeling of "what do I do?". but then the late war cards came in, and it was like drunken boxers, big splashy plays, where we didn't quite know the out come of things. Great to get some play with the late war stuff though.

Throughout the whole game points swayed between +5 US to + 4 USSR. Final scoring rolled around with the US jumping way ahead (with some great scoring in Asia and Africa) to take it to 13? I think US. A combination of cards made the last play USSR instead of US, which I used to coup Angola (I was behind on military ops) and this changed Africa from US Domination to USSR domination. that ended up swinging the game through final scoring. I'm really looking forward to Imperial Struggle, when it finally prints.

The Quest for El Dorado What a hit with the family. A little screwage with blocking to be fun, but not so direct as to feel really mean. My son, who loves the idea of games but is easily overwhelmed, really took to this one. There's just enough puzzle on each turn to get him going, without the complex combos that happen in some other deck builders. He won for the first time last night, and with it being 100% him, really was elated. This was a great rec from here.

We played one game of Spy Club, which seemed alright. We were testing it out to see if we could make it work with my 6-year-old mini-human and it is probably beyond her at this point. She could probably handle the mechanics, but would not have any idea why or when to do anything. It was nice overall and definitely a good buy off of my FLGS super-discount section (it has a undamaged cover).

I also finished my play of The Dark Valley's Operation Barbarossa scenario. I am either terrible as the Germans or really good as the Soviets because the Germans had no shot of winning when I called it one turn early (end of turn 7) when it would have required them to take 9 points on the final turn compared to the 7 points earned on the first seven turns. It was legitimately impossible for them to take Moscow, so the alternate condition of Moscow plus Kiev or Leningrad was off or the table. In hindsight, my June/July German turns were way too controlled as I focused on maintaining solid supply lines and interlocking ZOCs instead of sprinting for the east. Also, I stranded too many units in the Pripyat Marshes, which then were a non-factor for most of the game. By the end I had also managed to completely annihilate Army Group North, which was a major Soviet accomplishment.

Overall, I liked the game, but my one issue is the huge amount of special rules. I can deal with special rules, I like ASL. The Dark Valley has special rules for units, weather, activation, exceptions, alternate abilities, new concepts, terrain. Great! However, these also change by turn. So now I need to remember that the marsh hexes are treated this way on turns 1 and 2, outside of the weather changes that impact them. German mechanized units act a certain way early on, but shift later. 1st Panzer can also activate the Crimean units during turns 1-7 if it is below Row X and all units activated are below Row Y and west of Column B. Different CRTs are used depending on nationality and turn. This is definitely the hardest part for me to recommend as it makes learning the game a big issue.

Up next will probably be Holland 44, which I am currently clipping.

Today I played City of the Big Shoulders, which is sold as a hybrid between a modern worker placement euro and 18XX. The three people I sat down played it as if it were the former and I played it as if it were the later. The result wasn't great.

The were flabbergasted. They simply did not imagine one could buy stock just to drive it down. And they certainly didn't expect a player to do it repeatedly and at such low cost. The game owner spent most of the time checking the rules and another player went from happily working to feeling defeated. It's not that I ruined the game, per se, it's that I revealed it to be far from a "more accessible 18XX" or a nice game.

Truth to be told, it's an extremely complex game. It's more complex than any 18XX I've played, if simply because the simple track-laying part of the game is replaced with a worker-placement minigame. The companies themselves are much more complicated, with workers, upgrades, different products, cash flows and the like. The marketing, if not the design effort, is heavily misguided on that front.

I felt bad. The player who felt defeated clearly wasn't enjoying himself much anymore. He liked the game because he could grasp it, he could play it well. I blew the game opened and made it twice as large and difficult . Before I came in, stock rounds were mostly functional and stocks barely changed hands. With me on the table, stock rounds were 30 or 40 minutes long.

To be frank, I'm not sure if the game holds up. The game was headed in an ugly direction and I could see it busting at the seams. You can prevent companies from operating by buying all available resources and leaving 1 useless cube on each space. New companies seem much worse than investing in a company created by another player.

Most importantly, you can keep a company from ever seeing its stock value rise. Unlike most 18XX games with stock manipulation, the stock market only goes up and down. Any gain can be counteracted by selling stock and then selling again when the stock moves back up. In 18XX this is not possible because stocks move rightwards and selling moves them down.

This one-dimensional market also makes trashing stock incredible strong. In most 18XX games, the stock market narrows as values get higher. That is, a new company may see its value drop 6, 8 or 9 spaces but a company that has proven itself can only drop once or twice before hitting the floor. Established companies are not vulnerable to disruption.

But in CotBS they are. The higher you rise, the more spaces there are to fall. And the difference between space and space is much, much larger than they are in 18XX. Selling one well-performing share can cause a 40$ drop. That's massive. The biggest difference in 1830, for comparison, is 25 and only available extremely late in the game by a superbly performing company. You can buy two shares, sell them and make a player lose 480$. Given scores in our game were in the range of 2800-3200 that's no small amount.

It might seem premature for me to make such claims, but the game is so similar to certain 18XX titles (most notably 1856) and yet so lacking in its usual safeguards that I'm suspicious.

Other than that, the game seems overdesigned. The whole working of the game is heavier and more complex than 18XX, which is questionable given the design goals. There are last-turn "prizes" for being the first in certain categories which is a bit like giving you an award for "most wood" and "bigger family" in Stone Age. There's a space to trigger additional dividends and "salesmen" which increase the price you sell goods at, as well as automation, a worker market and lots of tiles. Not too fond of that, either.

Erik, I really enjoy your posts. Thank you.

barrowdown wrote: So now I need to remember that the marsh hexes are treated this way on turns 1 and 2, outside of the weather changes that impact them. German mechanized units act a certain way early on, but shift later. 1st Panzer can also activate the Crimean units during turns 1-7 if it is below Row X and all units activated are below Row Y and west of Column B. Different CRTs are used depending on nationality and turn. This is definitely the hardest part for me to recommend as it makes learning the game a big issue.

I can live with weather turn to turn changes to rules, but I cannot abide by turn to turn changes to actual men and material rules. It drives me crazy. It fundamentally breaks my internal model of how conflict works. Better design techniques have to exist than arbitrarily changing the rules on how something works or how well a unit functions. I'd rather see a new *system* to account for something like this than just changing turn to turn rules.

Gary Sax wrote: Erik, I really enjoy your posts. Thank you.

I truly appreciate it! I like sharing my thoughts here because I can use them as a springboard for an article and you guys always have interesting comments. So it means a lot to me.

Thanks!