What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I picked up a copy of Richard Borg's Hera and Zeus. now that my son and I have learned how to play it's a lot more fun than it was initially as we know each other's tricks. It's the game of airbrushed Greek gods, fighting each other, with mechanics similar to Stratego (find the hostage) and special abilities you can drop (Here's Pythia--let's flip over every card in that column). You get the same number of action points as you have columns, so if someone takes out a column you suddenly have two actions per turn instead of three. Now that my son and I have learned how to play it's a lot more fun than it was initially as we know each other's tricks and can engage in layers of bluffing. "Oh, it looks like you played a Medusa, the character that is unbeatable except by a Hero. I'll just use Dionysius to move my hero over there and challenge you!" "Ah, that is a reasonable assumption, except that I've put Pandora there, and opening that box was a big mistake, because you lose every card in your entire column, and given that it's four cards deep I'm assuming you are hiding IO in the back, and...yep, there he is and I win for the first time in four games!"

It's a nearly perfect camping game, because my wife will have to play it, it doesn't take up much space, and it cost me $2.00 at the Deseret Industries thrift store in Sugarhouse, SLC.

I'd kind of like something similar with better art, better card quality, and just a tad more depth. But it's very fun once you are both onto each other's tricks and plan accordingly. Much like marriage.

Hera And Zeus was rereleased as Thunder and Lightning a few years back, with new art and more cards. Might be worth a look, but I haven't played them to be able to tell you the exact differences etc.

Hera and Zeus was originally designed as Stratego: The Card Game. It was re-themed when Hasbro (Milton Bradley?) rejected it as too complex.

Almost all the weird rules make sense when you "translate" the cards to their originals:

Medusa as a bomb.
Hero as miners.
Pegasus as spies.
Io as the flag.
etc.

So much so that I considered making a re-themed deck, but that was another project that went nowhere.

In any case, it's a good game although it takes a couple of plays to recognize the major avenues to victory.

Played another game of Cthulhu Wars last night. Y'all, be honest with me: is this game just really dumb?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. But the entire game boils down to filling out your faction's checklist, keeping control of your gates, and hoping your elder sign pulls are better than other people's. Last night's game made that transparently clear as the winner was decided by pulling a pair of 3s at the literal last minute.

Generally speaking I prefer when an asymmetric game has simple base rules and goes nuts with the characters, which this sort of does, but games like Cosmic Encounter or Mystery Wizard give you enough control over your destiny to feel like you've done something. CW just feels like a slightly-too-long and massively overproduced luckfest. The biggest of big dumb fun. Happy to play it, but glad I don't own it.

It is absolutely true that good Elder Sign pulls can win you the game. But it's also true that not capitalizing on your faction's strengths will absolutely lose you the game.

For me, this game hits a nice balance of luck and strategy, as well as being rewarding when everyone at the table knows what the hell they are doing.

Vysetron wrote: Played another game of Cthulhu Wars last night. Y'all, be honest with me: is this game just really dumb?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. But the entire game boils down to filling out your faction's checklist, keeping control of your gates, and hoping your elder sign pulls are better than other people's. Last night's game made that transparently clear as the winner was decided by pulling a pair of 3s at the literal last minute.

Generally speaking I prefer when an asymmetric game has simple base rules and goes nuts with the characters, which this sort of does, but games like Cosmic Encounter or Mystery Wizard give you enough control over your destiny to feel like you've done something. CW just feels like a slightly-too-long and massively overproduced luckfest. The biggest of big dumb fun. Happy to play it, but glad I don't own it.

People rarely win riding luck in our plays. You need to attack whoever is in the lead. Identifying who is in the lead - which goes beyond gate control and ties into the very arc of a faction - can be a challenge until you've gained more experience.

When playing with experienced players, you can identify who is on the path to victory as early as round 2, before they've even gained 10 or more Doom. At this stage of play, you get politicking and bickering, people convincing Cthulhu to attack Windwalker before they hit their mid-game stride, or someone cautioning Crawling Chaos and trying to get them to beat back Yellow Sign who is moving through their territory.

At a higher level it becomes about checking off your boxes and acquiring gates yes, but much of it is timing and maneuvering within the lanes of others that will rip out your throat if you're perceived to be winning. There's a certain level of skill and nuance in staying near the top and within striking distance while not being overt. How early you go for a third gate or summon your Great Old One, whether you ever attempt to grab a fourth gate, when can you afford to Ritual, etc.

I think it's a far more subtle game than you realize, weighted equally on a social dynamic/player behavior, as well as the different ways powers and abilities conflict.

Here's a simple way to show that, which admittedly ignores much of the nuance, any player in your game that did not come within striking distance of winning (i.e. if it wasn't a 1-3 point win) objectively played poorly. They should have been trying to steer the outcome by attacking/influencing others long before that. This would have created ripples and further interactions and the game would have been completely different.

Also - only play it at 4 player, maybe 5 if you have the time. 3 player is very weak and 2 is not worth even thinking about.

6+ is crazy as it will take you 4+ hours.

Yesterday's game was 4p: Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Nyarlathotep, Hastur. Also had the evil high priest expansion pieces which everyone was pretty indifferent towards.

The game was leader bashy the whole way through, as is inevitable. 6 rounds total. 3 point spread for everyone but Tsathoggua, who was about 6 points behind and down a book. Oddly that was the owner of the game who's played dozens of times.

Gates changed hands often. Hastur ran around and pissed everywhere. Nyar owned Asia, built several gates, and violently fought anyone who touched her. My Cthulhu slapped early gates down then zoomed around dunking on people. Poor Tsathoggua got bludgeoned into submission by Hastur around round 3 so he could piss all over North America and never managed to recover. The other players, myself included, played a really tight game that was entirely determined by our elder signs. Specifically, that Hastur managed to pull a pair of 3s on his endgame ritual.

I want to reiterate that this isn't a game killer for me. I like plenty of games with variable score chits. Smallworld, Jaipur, etc, and I like CW too. What throws me off is how massive this light and fluffy game is because, I mean, look at it.

Ah, that is a different impression than I got with your first post. I was picturing you all just building 3 gates and sitting there doing very little.

For what it's worth, we love the high priest expansion. I summon a high priest turn one about 70% of the time. The ability to come back into a round if you go out early (or for protection against lethargy) is priceless.

Yep. Beyond question, I recommend High Priests to anyone thinking about expanding beyond the base game. They're so versatile in terms of power economy and are also Cultists (but not Acolyte Cultists!), which means they can be targeted by a number of powers in the game and do things that regular hooded dudes do (maintain gates, etc.)

Got back from a gaming road trip last night . Got some good gaming in :

2 games of Combat Commander. Bryan and I played two from the Stalingrad pack. Besides having fun playing the game and having dogs poke their heads under my arms for scritches, our conversation frequently turned to Chad and Kai. For those that don't know, Chad ( CC designer ) is in the terminal stage of stage 4 cancer and has been given only a few weeks left. Fucking sucks.

Saturday saw one of the better ANGOLA games in recent memory. Bryan and I faced off against Rob Eno and John Emory's communists. Besides the usual 3 balance provisions, we made the Cabinda exit # a 6 instead of 5.

We took Cabinda on turn 2 but I had trouble clearing the south of commies with my UNITA forces despite building up a good death star. Rob did an excellent job stalling and it took me about til turn 4-5 to get up to Nova Lisboa/Benguela. I took the latter and it caused the Commies to draw Major Units...then the fucking rockets showed up. Til then John's dice had been a bit above average, esp on air and arty. After that though it become borderline ridiculous. Those rockets must have killed 20 units, all of them FNLA. We took it til turn 9 and we resigned at the end; a rare late game Commie win.

Fucking rockets man....

2 games of TAPESTRY. This is a newish game from the same people as the execrable SCYTHE. This is better, but that is damning with great praise. This is a civ building game of the point salad variety. There is a rather abstract game board with four tracks around it, each one you can elect to progress up by spending the corresponding resources. The weird thing is that as you advance, it becomes more expensive to do basic stuff. You've also got your own capiral board you build on. Military aggression is pretty minimal. The tracks are basically worker placement; you get bonuses for being the first to cross into new eras, etc. Each player also gets a unique civilization that grants special bonuses. Overall its OK, but I can't see myself playing again. There are some real head scratches, the biggest one being that each player is basically in their own turn sequence - its entirely possible for one player to be in era 4 while the others are in era 3 ( there are 5 ). So one player might finish 45 minutes early. The other is that you get anywhere from 4-10 Tapestry cards over the course of the game, but you can only play 3, discarding the rest for points if you choose certain action. I can see how it appeals to the Euro weenies, but the lack of military depth and the whacky turn structure make it a pass. Playing time is 2-3 hours. I could see this being an excruciating WBC tourney given the relative lack of hidden info and each player having to manage their own dashboard, their capital map, the main map, and the four action tracks.

Got in some Terraforming Mars, two games.

Some Space Base, 3 games.

ECOS; THE FIRST CONTINENT two plays. Surprisingly decent; its basically BIOS MEGAFAUNA meets bingo. Hard to explain, but basically you draw tiles out of a bag and cover symbols on an array of cards you start with; once a card is filled, you can activate the power on the card. Some cards only have a few symbols, others take a lot more but are more powerful. As you finish them off, you play new ones. Cards let you place new terrain, place new animals, score VP, etc. Plays fast, an hour or so. Would play again.

YOKOHAMA - a worker placement game with a theme kind of like LE HAVRE - you're gathering resources and making/shipping shit. Meh.

PANDEMIC FALL OF ROME. I like this derivative of the original game. We got off to a decent start in a four player game, allying with four tribes by the late game, but lost when some revolts in southern France got out of control.

Monday night a bunch of us saw MIDWAY. It won't win any awards but considering it was Roland Emmerich, it could have been a lot worse. Not nearly as bad as the trailers made it to be. I'd say 6 out of 10 ? It probably tries to do too much - starting with Pearl Harbor, squeezing in Doolittle and mentioning Coral Sea and a Marshalls carrier raid scene.

On the way home from Greenville stopped in Cary NC to game with Wray and Scott and locals Tuesday . This was preceded by dinner at DANNYS BBQ, a non Carolina style BBQ place that looks totally unassuming from the outside but delivers up surprisingly good Texas style BBQ . Got brisket and ribs and they were very good. Check it out if you're in the area. Good call Scott.

Started off with KEMET. Having heard good things about it I was eager to try. Your basic dudes on the map game it has has some clever mechanics that force the game end to come to a head once a player gets close to winning - it won't drag out. I got off to a decent start, but didn't realize that moving your armies up to the sacrificial altar spaces is basically a one way trip - so my monster leader ( Scorpion I think ) sort of got stuck up there. Jeremy won with 10 VP to Wrays 10 ( Jeromy got there first ) . I was at 9 and Scott was.....um he was less than that.

We finished up the night with Bargain Quest, where each player runs a shop selling weapons to adventurers who go fight monsters. You get VP for collecting money form them and if your customer survives the battle with the monster. Fast, light and entertaining.

Left 6AM Wednesday from Cary and got home to NH around 8PM. That's one long ass drive but I had a lot of fun beforehand so it was worth it.

BTW, Chinaboy Taco in Staunton VA - fucking awesome. Hit it for lunch when I drove down last week.

Wow, I had no idea Chad's cancer had gone so badly. That's awful.

Gary Sax wrote: Wow, I had no idea Chad's cancer had gone so badly. That's awful.

Yeah, Kai posted yesterday they turned off his food pump,, it’s only a matter of time, sadly.

Edit: Kai announced he passed away this afternoon.

Legend of the Five Rings is getting better and better. The new designer is great. Very involved in the community and very sharp about what to do add and what to put on the restricted list. I don't agree with everything, but I feel he has been a massive help to the game.

First, the game has much less dumb stuff in it. There are less decks that are oppresive or hopelessly negative. When you sit down, you can play and have a very nice game. Is the game still too punishing? Yes. Is it still possible to get lost in the massive tree of decisions? It is. But it's now more normalized, not a feature the game beat you over with because broken cards drove it.

The last few packs have helped the metagame massively. Lion has gone from being weak to being a strong contender. Unicorn is no longer as reliant on a high-roll and there are more tools to fight against the dominant strategies in the game. Towers (Characters with a dozen cards attached to them) are no longer in vogue. When I started, clans had one or two decks. Now you have the Courtier deck, the Bushi deck, the Commander deck with towers and the aggro weenie deck. Lots of variety.

A big part of that variety is that the "roles" are now open for all clans to play. Before each clan could only play 2 "roles" which changed from time to time and gave you a direciton in deckbuilding. For example, Seeker of Air allows you to have two air provinces and gave you economic options. Keeper of Water is a defensive role, with strong options to hold your ground. Now all clans can take all roles, meaning there are many, many more decks you can try. This has been a massive success.

When I first started playing L5R I wasn't sure I made the right choice. Now I think I have. I'm having fun and the community is very involved.

Looks at insert for general store in Western Legends... can't find assembly instructions...I wasnt informed there would be a test.

After playing Flotilla again Wednesday night and having a hell of a time, we had another game night last night which was lackluster.

First, my buddy had backed Court of the Dead: Mourner's Call and I had been somewhat eager to try it. I wasn't expecting it to floor me or anything, but a couple of the mechanisms sounded interesting and area control is my thing of course. Man, this kind of sucked.

First off, there's almost no legit conflict in the game. It's an area majority design but there's this track which punishes you once many figures have been recruited, possibly returning dudes from spaces at the end of the round if they're too overcrowded. So once many units have been recruited you can only have 1 or 2 guys in a space without risking your actions being wasted.

This is especially punishing because the action to place guys on the board costs your influence on one of these guild tracks, which each reward VP (in high amounts if you can push them) at end game if you stockpile it. So you're giving up VP earning power to deploy guys, then each have a 1/3 chance of just returning at the end of the round.

So we didn't contend much. Instead we spread out because the board is huge with many spaces.

There's a semi-cooperative bid thing (think Wildlinds in Game of Thrones or Chaos Rift in Gods War), there's rolling at the beginning of the round for an energy pool that the first player does an I split/you choose thing but it doesn't matter 75% of the time because the splits are even, there's random goal cards for the round which often don't align with your faction and what you're doing, a hidden end game goal, little tracks that give rewards based on recruiting the same type of unit over and over. It's a mess. Utter mess and I can't imagine spending the 90 minutes on it ever again by choice.

Then we played Merlin's Beast Hunt, a new Wizkids release where you place these semi-clear cards on their sides like fences. You stand them up between dice which players roll and position competitively. The idea is to complete your own fences by combining certain rolled faces with the types of fence (bamboo, thorns, storm, wave), and you can also capture beasts that move around for additional points.

It was fine. Novel as an idea but it's an idea which isn't too thrilling in practice and more of an optimization thing. It's light though and there is actual strategy, it's just another game that ate up some time and didn't really move the needle though. Going to play this one a couple more times very quickly so I can review it. Have a little higher hopes for OP Arena, another Wizkids release I have.

Masques, a small CMON import from a few years ago was probably the best game we've played, and it's one I'd rather a 6 (saying something about our game night). Kind of a puzzle-y area control thing with some interesting moments.

Closed on Nefarious which was again, alright. Made me want to play Wings for the Baron which does a similar thing but much better.