What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

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

Ha! I had the same problem with the wagons in TE Defenders. There were no instructions, so I just kind of sussed it out, but one of the insert tabs got crushed on the way in and it's a little wonky. Not good when they're supposed to be hidden info.

Speaking of inserts, though, the time of miracles has indeed arrived, since I have discovered ANOTHER INSERT THAT WORKS. 878 Vikings arrived yesterday (traded Wingspan) and, even with the expansion and KS materials, the insert not only fits everything, but does so in a useful manner, so you don't need a bunch of bags for all the little dudes and their associated cards. The one weird point was that it came with a half-dozen plastic sheets that were folded at the edges and I simply couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be. One visit to BGG later and I find that they were intended to be covers for the sections of the insert, so that everything would stay contained even if the box were inverted. But they made them too large. So, insert still works, but not quite as intended.

charlest wrote: 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.

I saw this in the local FLGS a couple months ago. I'd never heard of it and it looked kinda cool in a fairly hyperbolic way (imagine 40K if all of those decorative skulls actually meant you traveled through the Warp faster) but I couldn't really tell what the game was from the box. I'm looking at BGG while in the store and I still really can't figure out what the game does. So, I go home and pull up a couple looks on Youtube and immediately get turned off. The reviewers are relatively positive about it, but the description of the mechanics still sounds like it doesn't do much; as in, there ain't much game there for all the fancy pieces. Glad to know it wasn't just me.

Jackwraith wrote: I saw this in the local FLGS a couple months ago. I'd never heard of it and it looked kinda cool in a fairly hyperbolic way (imagine 40K if all of those decorative skulls actually meant you traveled through the Warp faster) but I couldn't really tell what the game was from the box. I'm looking at BGG while in the store and I still really can't figure out what the game does.

Ha ha ha, this exact thing happened to me when I was over at a friend's house a month ago and this game was on his counter (still in shrink). I looked at the box and had no friggin clue what it was about. Asked my friend and he didn't have a good explanation. Went to BGG, read the summary and was still lost. These are rarely good signs, and it sounds like my wariness was well founded.

Tried out Space Empires 4x last night which was really fun. Played the 2p small map, called it after our first big wave of combat as the learning was making it run pretty long. But man this game. It really captures the fun of an RTS, building up your base and churning out units to go smash the other guy. 4p is obviously going to be the way, but that would take some doing with the people I know. Looking forward to playing it again soon with the advanced units, as they really add variety besides "the numbers go up". The tech choices are hard, the positioning and lead up to things kicking off is tense and fun, the hidden information makes things that much more tense... It's just really fun. And the rules are very easy to pick up and smooth when you're playing.

Also I've got the expansions, which seem to bolt on approximately everything your could ever imagine. We'll see how far down that road we end up going, though I'm pretty sure Death Stars need to get into the mix asap.

Guess what I’m playing? Aeon’s End, of course.

I am totally taken with it. It is definitely my favorite deckbuilder of all time. It feels more like a CCG- the kinds of decisions you make are more in line with Magic than Dominion. Choosing between progressing on the mana (well, aether) curve or increasing damage potential, mitigating next-turn attacks, sacking powerful spells to remove threats instead of damaging face (Nemesis)...it’s definitely not the usual increase production routine.

I’ve got everything up through the War Eternal wave other than Legacy and New Age is coming tomorrow. I’ve been playing game 1 in a solo session versus a Nemesis with full random everything and game 2 or 3 with some chosen adjustments to counter specific problems. It’s so freaking good. Yes, I am playing it as much as 3x in a sitting.

There are definitely imbalances all over the place, but there again it’s more like a CCG. I have come up with unwinnable combinations, but there is a challenge in working out what needs to be fixed in the market or mages to win. Unlike the LOTR LCG, for example, I never feel like winning or losing has to do with how the cards are stacked in a deck or what I’ve drawn. You can get totally hammered if you get a couple of back to back Nemesis turns and can’t stop it’s cards from going off, but there are ways to fix that.

For about a minute I thought about trying the Marvel LCG but then New Age went into the cart instead.

Ermahgerd! Just played the best game of Neuroshima Hex in quite some time. I took Death's Breath against a friend who's an old hand at Vegas. A few people I know think DB is OP, but I keep telling them that they're pretty dependent on the tile draw to make real use of their revival ability. If you get Reappearance at the right time and can place a key unit, you can potentially snowball into a real advantage by doing damage to your opponent. But, if not, you can find yourself with not a lot to do on the board.

It's even more difficult when you're facing factions with low unit counts... like Vegas, because they don't offer up a lot of opportunities to revive your guys. I jumped out to a huge lead, 20-10, and seemed to be cruising into victory, but in the last couple rounds, he got control of a couple of my key guys, including a revived Zombie, who started dishing out full damage on my HQ. He got us tied and then couldn't do anything on his last draw and I couldn't do anything on mine. We fought the "Final Battle", which was just our HQs pounding away on each other and had to settle for a draw at 9-9. I had DB's Castle tile in my last draw and kept trying to find a pair of his units that I could swap to some effect, but he had both of his other control modules out and most of my units were in my dead pool.

Needless to say, we're kind of geeked about the arrival of Sand Runners in a couple days.

And, as I type, Sand Runners shows up at the door. So cool. Double-sided HQ! Unique battle tiles! More combo modules and units! I really need to find another regular 2-player partner.

First off good call on Lords of Hellas everyone. I gave it a second try recently after playing it initially about a year ago. I'm not sure why I didn't like it in the first place, I think i felt it was too similar to Kemet and not as good, but the game is damn good. It provides many many clever moves that you can make during the game and a lot of things to watch for victory conditions. The comparison to Kemet is unfair too; Kemet is more about combos of tech tiles and winning fights. LoH has a small amount of that but seems more clever in the different ways you can win.

It was a learning game for all of us so it went pretty long with 4 as we figured things out. Maybe 2.5 hours I'd say. The later turns started getting kinda long but the majority of the game really moved fast and felt important. There was a sequence of actions where the entire table could've won had something different been done or had a monster attack not killed a last troop on a spot. In the end the monster hunter won but I don't see that path as being OP either. I and another player were a step away from 5 temples and the third player was a turn away from 2 lands.

What else. Got to try Root for the fourth time, but each game was maybe 6 months apart. Previously I was the Vagabond, Cats, and WA. Was the Birds this round and loved them and got to see the Lizards with the current buffs. Vagabond felt kinda shitty honestly but I liked the Cats and WA. Cool game, it did feel like a COIN light game and was perfect for me. COIN games are too long and convoluted but this was far more digestible. Lizards are badass.

Glorantha the Gods War. 4 player game and I loved it. Previous games were good as we selected random factions but this one I wanted the original 4 from the base game of Chaos, Sky, Storm, and Darkness. Very cool and everyone really liked it. I still have a problem with the fucking Great Compromise though. We all hate it but i'm not sure what to do about it; ignore it entirely or somehow modify it or nerf it. Going through the Great Compromise when the end game has already been triggered really soured the ending for the whole table. If it wasn't for this mechanic I'd rate God's War as a favorite dudes on a map game.

Black Rose Wars is shiny and new and seems legit still. I don't have a great game comparison for it, maybe Argent but instead of being worker placement you are one of the mage workers going around activating rooms and slinging spells. Still a game everyone is excited to play after 4 plays.

Cloudspire is also shiny and new too. I picked it up kinda randomly after seeing Joel Eddy love it and hearing from some friends that it was fun. I'm a sucker for 2 player skirmish type/base building games. As an aside Guards of Atlantis, also a MOBA/tower defense, did not work at all for me and I've heard really only works with 4 or 6 as a team game. Some very vocal negative reviews on it too, both the so-very-wrong-about-games podcast that I find kinda good and Space Biff. Cloudspire has a ton of keywords going on as a barrier to understanding and factoring in your decisions. And moving minions around the board doesn't give the players that many choices as minions have to use their entire movement and the leading minion has to move first - you can dance sideways during the movement, but have to make some progress on the enemy base. Anyways, Cloudspire. Your heroes are entirely under your control and can level up with kills. You decide whether to invest in tower defenses or to upgrade your base/units or decide to purchase different types of units. I've only played twice but I thought the game was fun and felt like my decisions had enough impact on how the game developed. I need to play it more for sure but I do like it so far.

Had a rough game of TI4 with some veteran players. I've now logged a dozen plays of 4th edition; the minimum number of plays by any other player was about double me while some people said they had close to 100 plays. The game was essentially a giant side conversation as everyone tried to manipulate the other players into doing things to their advantage and backstabbing those who they made agreements with for 8 hours. And I get that is possibly the way the game is designed to be played, as basically social manipulation with a small amount of strategy and piling on the leader opportunistically. For me thats not a fair trade for 8 hours of my time though and really makes me consider selling my own copy of the game. The ending score was like 10-9-9-8-8-8 with all six of us having potential ways to win the final round of the game. I'll have to think on this one for a bit but I believe I'll be selling my copy of the game. There is a lot of cool stuff going on here with the unique factions and choosing strategy cards and planning to use your tactic tokens and resources every round and the surprise of action cards. 8 hours though is too high of a cost for me. Thats like 2 games of Dune, a way better game 10 out of 10 times.

I understand how you feel about TI4, Scott. I had a similar feeling: I enjoyed the game and did not feel like I wasted my time, but I did think "well, I would have rather played several games of X instead"

I wonder the role objectives have in this. They are very short-term which doesn't do it for me when a game is long.

Last night I played Dune for the first time. And I have thoughts....

No one had ever played before. I had read the rules twice, and a couple of others also had read the rule book. We had 6 players, random faction draw. I ended up as the Emperor.

Turn 2 saw our first Nexus. I tried to partner with Atreides but they jumped in with Fremen. Harkonnen and Space Guild had already partnered, so I paired with Bene Gesserit. The storm was destroying spice, keeping the Fremen poor. I was doing well with spice because of treachery card sales. The Space Guild was also doing well with all of the troop shipment fees.

Turn 4 was the second Nexus. As it happened, I had two strongholds and the Space Guild had 2 strongholds. He suggested that we break our alliances and form our own, winning on that turn. I said hell yes. I started mentally salivating, because the big opposition to my victory would be the Fremen, with a giant force right at my gates. I also knew that they would throw Stillgar at me, and he was my traitor! I thought this would be a hilarious way to end the game.

BUT... I forgot about his Atreides alliance, and I decided to hedge my bets against him not using Stillgar. I added a weapon to my battle plan. Atreides asked me if I was using a weapon, and I said yes. The Fremen promptly swapped out Stillgar for some scrub. HOPES DASHED.

The game drug on... two rounds in a row, it looked like the Harkonnen - Bene Gesserit union would prove fruitful, but we all managed to shut it down. Everyone was getting tired and more than a little surly.

After around 4 1/2 hours, we won by running out the clock. So, because I blew one battle, 2 1/2 hours was tacked onto a game that ended in the exact same result.

It was a learning game, and I was only one of 6 people who felt they made mistakes. That's how these games go. But I also think this game will be a rare event and is destined for shelf toad status. I like it, I think the factions are cool and there is a lot of nuance. It definitely is punishing of mistakes. I can't say I had 4 1/2 hours worth of fun.

If everyone is brand new to Dune that is going to be rough for sure. Did you play with all the advanced rules as listed in the GF9 directions? Advanced combat is kinda a pain to mentally calculate every time, but is worth it I think bc it guarantees there will be enough Nexus events to make the game fun. Without advanced combat you can go 5+ rounds without a Nexus and that is definitely not enjoyable. Since switching to advanced combat and the Fremen buff for combat, my group hasn't had a game go beyond 7 turns whereas previously we had several games go the distance for the default Spacing Guild win on turn 10.

Based on advice from here, which I hopefully didn't misinterpret, I cherry picked some advanced rules. We didn't do double spice blow, and didn't make people pay spice for combat. I think everything else was in play.

I have been soloing Commands and Colors Tricorne and find it to be very fun. It’s the first game I’ve played in the series. It is essentially a miniatures wargame on a hex grid, which is great because I don’t have the time like I used to to commit to painting and terrain building.

It seems to me beginner games of Dune tend to go longer because you are more likely to fail at closing the game and players don't focus enough on recovery and a latter win attempt and just try to grind it out, which doesn't work.

A similar thing happened to me recently where people not allying with the winning player caused the game to go to a long default victory.

I recently got VICTORIANA - a kickstarter that has been around three years coming. The premise is that you play these Victorian heroes trying to save the kingdom from a nefarious plot. I had Dr. Jekyll/mr Hyde and captain Nemo and we managed to uncover a cult that had planned to poison the London water supply with Hyde serum. Yeah, let's not ask too much about how they got it in the first place.

In the game you move around London to use location abilities and investigate leads before they grow cold. When you encounter a lead, you have to spend ressources in order to either learn more about the plot or about the villain and their henchmen. So no dice rolls or anything. From reading the rules it seemed pretty dry, but it ended up being a lot of fun to play. Since you don't know what ressources are required, investigation is a bit of a gamble. And your health is used for several extra actions that you really want to use to gain an edge, which creates even more uncertainty. Also, the villain has agents that can enter the game and cause havoc, but in this particular game they were easily defeated by mr Hyde.

Will definitely try this again, but not sure if it has legs.