What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Gary Sax wrote: Is there a new expansion to that? I saw frohike and a bunch of other people playing it on Instagram and was wondering if new content hit or something.

Blacklist Games ran another KS campaign for the Aftershock expansion + reprint of the core game (& the first KS adjuncts). It’s been shipping to backers recently.

Gary Sax wrote: Is there a new expansion to that? I saw frohike and a bunch of other people playing it on Instagram and was wondering if new content hit or something.

"Aftershock" KS pledges have shipped and many, including myself, have already received them.

Reavers of Midgard, aka Worker Placement with Dice: The Dice Game.

Seriously though, I quite enjoyed my first play of this. While Chamipons was essentially like someone playing Lord of Waterdeep and saying, “No, no, no, THIS is how you fight monsters,” this is a much more original design. The dice play has more in common with Roll For the Galaxy than it’s predecessor, as one person taking an action then opens things up for the other players to follow if they have the appropriate resources and dice. It’s a much more open game than Champions was as well, which had a definite gameplay loop of preparing, adventuring, and preparing again. This is by far less restricted which at first is overwhelming but as you play you see how everything feeds into each other and you want to do all of it but can’t. I’m sure some fans of Champions will miss that satisfying loop, but I still enjoy the more reactive gameplay it trades it in for.

Can’t wait to play some more, I feel like there’s quite a bit of game to dig into.

I also finally played Blitz Bowl, which I’ve owned for a year but haven’t been able to play until now. RIP all other sports games. This might just be the best board game Games Workshop has ever published. Loved it so much more than I thought I would.

Last night we had 4 true ameritrash fans for a good post-Halloween game night. First up was Nemesis. Two of us had played once before, and two first-timers. We all split up, exploring the ship. I knew I wanted to find the Laboratory, since my secret objective was to research two intruder weaknesses. I killed a larva early on, and was carrying its corpse with me.

My chaotic-evil friend, who blew up the entire ship in our first game of Nemesis, discovered the Fire Control Room. This allows you to seal off any yellow room (rooms have 4 different colors that define what can be found in them) and vent all of the oxygen from it, killing anything inside. He took great care in learning how this room operated....

Many rooms that we discovered were malfunctioning, and we actually came within 3 malfunctions of the entire ship blowing up. Luckily one player repaired a room which gave us some breathing room. Chaotic Evil discovered the entrance to one of the escape pods, but all of the pods were still locked.

There is a room that is not always in the game that can lock / unlock the pods, but they always unlock the moment that the first player dies. Chaotic Evil noted that the Scientist was in a yellow room across the ship. They had just finished checking the status of one of the ship's engines. I was in an adjacent room, beset by an adult Intruder. My revolver was not cooperating at all with my attempts to dispatch my foe.

Chaotic Evil triggered the fire control room and sealed off the Scientist. Unless someone could open an adjoining door before the end of the player phase, the Scientist would immediately die. I was the ONLY one who could save him, and I only had one card left. This card would not help in any way, so the Scientist died. This unlocked the escape pods, and Chaotic Evil got in one and took off, saying "see you suckers!!!!!"

The Scientist player took over the role of the Intruders. This changes the game dramatically but lets the intruder player single people out in an attempt to speed up the end of the game and to make everyone lose. Unfortunately, the one player who he really wanted to kill had already left the ship. I died soon after, and the remaining survivor hung on for a few rounds, but ultimately, his only chance at survival was so thin that he just couldn't make it.

Chaotic Evil is 2 for 2 in this game. Now that I have played twice, I think it is definitely one to be played for the experience, rolling with the ride that the game can force upon you. Achieving victory relies a lot on luck. You might get bad die rolls, you might not find an important room until late in the game, someone else just may straight up murder you. Lots of things can happen. I also think that the dynamic of the game dramatically changes the moment someone openly flips the switch of "by the way, I'm not on your side." It turns it into a race, which ramps up tension a bit because you are forced to take chances, but it also reduces strategy since you can't play it as safe anymore.

I think the next time, I will suggest that we split up into random parties of two players each; traveling to a room that is occupied doesn't force a "noise" roll, so there will be less intruders showing up. I think people could get more objectives done, in spite of a slower method of discovery.

Next was everyone's first try at Sea Evil. This game belongs to my Chaotic Evil player, and he prepared during the week, but not so much that he was totally familiar. We were all getting tired by this point and after a lengthy setup, we only played a couple of rounds. No one really figured out what was going on before quitting. A giant whale smashed into the side of our boat, we patched a leak, tried to bail some water, and a siren made two crew jump ship. We quit before they could succumb to the frozen depths. Hopefully we will revisit and try again.

I wouldn't say it too loud or fight for it or anything but man... Wingspan. Completely, completely innocuous and my spouse likes it. I'm not going to turn it down or anything.

In some ways it is the most cynical fucking hobby game I've ever played. You know the way that we used to get all mad about drawing a bunch of people in armor and swords and three paragraphs of text and calling it thematic? This is the euro version of that and it is so, so cynical. It bears no real relation to anything bird related. It's fucking beautiful, don't get me wrong. But it's just a total veneer. For some reason it kind of gets my goat.

The play is very easy, has the appearance of having depth due to the number of cards for comboing and is utterly, utterly without even single moment or hint of drama. It's just a resource machine game that operates until the game ends with somewhat related bird pictures.

I know I shouldn't feel strongly about it but maybe that's why I do---it is a game that is intended to be nothing more than a smooth art delivery system and that annoys me. It is *DAMNING* of the production, kickstarter, online anticipation and review process that this game had a ton of discourse and buzz around it this year on BGG etc.

Yeah, it's a well-designed game; visually and systemically. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's just not that interesting and nowhere near the level of hype that it generated (which, in the end, was mostly because it looked pretty, it was Stonemaier (see: Scythe), and they had major distribution problems because so many people wanted it.) Everyone is raving about Tapestry now. Having watched a couple "how to play" videos, it seems like nothing more than bog-standard civ building.

And, check that, I will say there is one thing wrong with Wingspan that the expansion is attempting to fix: you can't go wrong with eggs. All three of the games I've played have been won, by some margin, by the player who was able to get an egg engine going. All of the other winning routes are conditional or have a cost attached. Eggs count for points and can be used by every, single card in the game and are, in fact, a resource themselves. Plus, almost all of the round goals are egg-related. It's not "broken", such that there is only one way to win. But you basically can't go wrong by focusing your entire strategy on egg production in every game.

I'm probably going to trade mine. I've become much more cynical about the industry as a whole, based largely on Kickstarter and various marketing machines. and Wingspan was kind of the final nail in that coffin.

I wouldn't keep it if it was "mine" tbqh. We played the far, far superior Roll for the Galaxy this morning too. I've got the 2nd "expert" expansion coming and I'm excited about it. Very funny in that it is an equal weight game to Wingspan but has more drama and focal points in only the action selection mechanic than Wingspan has in total in its whole design.

And speaking of cynicism: arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/essen-spi...est-board-game-show/

I look over that list and am not inspired by any of it, along with some of it being actively repellent (the first two in the list, for example; I am neither a Mysterium nor Pandemic fan.) Maybe I'm just in a cycle where I'm not the target audience for major producers?

I did actually sign on to a Kickstarter a couple weeks ago, but it was for Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, made by a producer whose games I own and enjoy and, thus, trust, and which doesn't have "exclusives" in its KS approach. In fact, you can get all of the stretch goals for any of its games at any point in the future simply by ordering direct from Gamelyn, rather than through Amazon or another vendor.

Played a game from 2013 this weekend called Citrus. It came out during a glut so there's no need to remember it, and there's nothing spectacular about it but it was notable to me because it's a very old school tile laying-and-scoring design without all the bullshit that would be baked into it these days. And it's a fairly recent design. No dumb tracks to modify everything and weirdo mechanisms on top of weirdo mechanisms just to be convoluted for its own sake. Just a straightforward 60 minute euro that's pretty easy to teach and learn.

No need to rush out and find a copy. It's not that great. But it shows it CAN be done, but the price is that it'll be overlooked because it lacks "depth" (tell that to Through the Desert or T&E).

I've played through all three scenarios in Hellboy's first retail expansion, "The Wild Hunt", and it was pretty excellent. Giants, Arthurian warriors, little Imps that want to carve your heart out. The culminating adventure has you wandering through a castle which is breaking down into hellfire and following doves so that you can find an artifact and repel the invaders.

I think Gary is totally right about Wingspan. All my plays of it have been spent wishing I was just talking with the other people at the table instead. Not even playing another game, just not having to spend time and effort playing it.

Because I didn't care about it. It's yet another worker placement game except this time the board is not shared so your decisions are even less interesting than usual. It's simply not an interesting game and your actual decisions, actions and experiences with it are dull. You have three spaces that give the game's resources (food, eggs, cards) and one to get more of the former. That's it.

Wingspan reminds of Roll and Writes. Nobody minds them, but nobody likes them, either. They move in this space of comfort where you don't have to outplay your opponents, or pay attention or care. It's playing games without anything of what makes it worthwhile.

I don't see any reason for the average boardgamer to buy Wingspan. They already have better, more interesting games they like more. They could dedicate their Wingspan time to play Agricola or Pipeline or Lignum or whatever their favourite game in the genre is. Yet they all bought it. Perhaps the barrage of free publicity was too much. After all, no other game has had a major news publication talk about how "scientifically accurate" it is.

Anyways, I just find it dull. And even then, spamming eggs is too good and too simple of an strategy.

Anyways, I played another game of Dune. It's my third play in two weeks.

It was a teaching game with two new players (Guild, Harkonnen). I took the Bene Gesserit as I'm the player with the most experience. My girlfriend took Fremen as did the other two regulars. I think it was the third of fourth game for them all, so it was a great group.

I got a weapon and a shield on the first turn and played aggressively. I spent most of my spice bringing more troops to the board, getting most of my spice from leaders. By the mid-game,I had a dominating position on the board and got very close to winning with Atreides by turn 5.

However, turn 6 saw another worm and I found myself abandoned! For whatever reason, the Guild didn't want to ally with me and while we were talking Atreides betrayed me for the Emperor. This left me with the now-destroyed Harkonnen, an awful pairing that not only extended the game, but meant the poor guy was truly done for. A shame, because the Emperor-Harkonnen alliance (which they actually had before) would have benefited them more than any other pairing.

From there on I found myself lacking in numbers. While the BG are scary in combat, they have a hard time closing the deal. You just can't beat high numbers of troops, your leaders are predictable and your mobility, low. The game escaped my grasp as my plan to use Harkonnen's traitors proved unfesaible: He had no meaningful traitors and, in fact, had two of my faction.

I could attempt some power moves, like using the voice on the Fremen and her lasergun but I was too low on troops. In the end, the Fremen/Guild alliance won on turn 10.

I felt bad for the Harkonnen player who did not have a great time. It was something I feared when I gave him the power, as Harkonnen has a tendence to overextend. On the other hand, I'm glad Guild enjoyed the game as he was a bit out of his element.

Wingspan --

I'd like to remind all of you that you owe it to your fellow gamers to support Kickstarters. If not you're a freeloader and should be ashamed.

So is this game designed for hobby gamers? When I see games like this getting mainstream media I assume they're targeted at the light gamer audience. Given no player conflict that seemed reasonable. This is a Target title, right?

Erik Twice wrote: They move in this space of comfort where you don't have to outplay your opponents, or pay attention or care. It's playing games without anything of what makes it worthwhile.

Yes, precisely.

I just got asked something on Instagram about isn't this a good game that is playable by newbies, isn't that good? My initial reaction is like, it's good at a dinner party to pass time. But what about this draws anyone to want to play games again other than a polite way to pass time? The are no dramatic moments. Nor is there, to me, a palpable sense of building something, like a solo-ey Rosenberg, because all the cards come randomly out of a deck w/resource cost 1-3 and there's no hierarchically designed experience. Nor is it thematic in any way.

This may be a casual game, but I cannot even conceive of it as a gateway game. If you want your guests to tolerate a game, or pass time comfortably, I guess this is good.

I got just as much mileage out of playing a rather mean game of Carcassonne, which ended up spawning a game group. Gateway <> milquetoast.