What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I just looked at the whiteboard, the backlash is scheduled for 2Q2020 so there is still time.

The game will have been out for four years by then. What's taking you backlashing types so long? This isn't world politics. We're not supposed to be waiting on blowback.

I don't hate the game. I just couldn't get into it. If other people enjoy it, hey, terraform yourselves into ecstasy. I'm not stopping you.

Played Cataclysm: A Second World War with my wargaming friend. We did the East Front scenario, which looked like a good one to learn the game with. Don't have to worry about the naval rules, and the situation in the board is pretty straightforward to jump into the action straight away. It was a lot of fun, though it mostly left both of us wanting to play the full war scenario. The system is solid, but it seems much more suited to the freeform global war sandbox of the full war scenario than a focused slugfest where you don't have to worry about multiple fronts etc. I was Russia, and my planned triumphant counter offensive through to Berlin hit a brick wall in Poland. I was rolling 3 dice to his 1 (thanks to air superiority and armor superiority) and he outrolled me for 6 straight battles. By the time I finally broke through and too Poland my force was so diminished I couldn't finish the job before D-Day hit and ended the scenario with a Fascist win.

Played some games with the kids this weekend. The (almost) 11-year-old and I played Imperial Settlers Roll and Write and Penny Papers. None of the games are all that exciting, but they are a nice way to spend some time together. I wanted placement and "exploration" to be a bigger part of PP, but it really isn't. I rarely feel like my actions impact the game in either way, but I did end up beating her in both games, so maybe I'm wrong.

With the 7-year-old I played a game of Star Realms which is always pretty great. He's grasping the value of thinning your deck, but will often commit to too many colours. Nonetheless it was a pretty tight game I only barely one. Then he proceeded to kick my ass in LotR: The Confrontation. Gandalf and the Witch King died early on which gave Saruman an opportunity to roam free. I moved Frodo forward recklessly hoping for him to make a mistake, but he didn't. Such a great game.

Finally we played the original LotR coop game by dr. Knizia. We made it to the final board in pretty good speed, but at the cost of a lot of corruption. I had the ring as Sam and Frodo moved us to the final space. If he could just survive two rolls without moving two spaces, we would be good. But on the very first roll he got the eye result and moved Sauron to my space losing us the game.

After we are done reading Harry Potter to him in a few weeks The Lord of the Rings are next in line. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Had a big game day Saturday and played the following:

Sovereign's Chain - still digging it.

Condottiere - one of my favorites

Finger Guns - this game is getting almost no buzz besides Wade and myself talking about it. So great though.

Hellapagos - five player game where four of us made it to the hurricane but only two rafts. Dude with the club and Crystal ball controlled the vote and I couldn't convince the rest of the group to stand against him. Great play though.

Wavelength - wow this is amazing. This is the next big party game on par with Just One, Codenames, and Decrypto.

Basically there's a scoring wedge randomized on this big plastic wheel thing. The wedge itself is viewed by a clue giver and then covered. The clue giver selects a card that lists two extremes and then gives a clue. Their team must then argue about where the clue falls on the spectrum between those extremes, hopefully selecting a position that falls in the scoring wedge.

It's brilliant and feels so good when you're on the money. It has this fabricated sense of telepathy similar to The Mind that works wonderfully. The bulk of the game though is in the group discussion where brilliant things happen.

For instance, buddy had a car with the extremes of bad person and good person, he gave a clue of Bill Clinton.

We argued for around 7 or 8 minutes.

"I mean, sure he got a blowie and lied but Hitler would be the worst person possible and he's not even close."

Other person pointed out that he still ordered drone strikes and generally someone of wealth likely performed some bad acts along the way.

I argued that if you place our guess halfway to the extreme end of bad, it leaves so little nuance for murderers and genocide and the like. Lots of discussion about morality and similar things going on.

I really thought Aaron was going for a straight middle of the road, not good or bad but I was overruled.

We reveal and the scoring section was actually on the good half of the spectrum.

"I like Bill Clinton, he played the saxophone and wasn't a bad guy."

Thanks Aaron.

What's neat is that the closer to the middle of the scoring wedge you land the more points you get. The other team gets a chance to earn a point by predicting whether the 4 point center is to the left or right of the active team's guess as well.

Game is just excellent and going to blow up when it's released. Two people playing went online and pre ordered immediately.

Nemesis - my second play and much better than the first. We found the nest early so I was able to secure and analyze an egg for my corporate objective without issue. Unfortunately midway through we drew the coolant leak card, and of course we had discovered the generator room and never repaired it so the countdown for self destruct started on own.

The escape pod entry was not close to me and it was damaged. I eventually made it there, mowed down a few adult aliens in the way, and repaired the room all by myself to escape and secure victory. Two other players also escaped in pods elsewhere and the fourth was cut off by the Queen near the engines and cut apart. Fantastic play.

Cthulhu Death May Die is killer. We played two 5 player games, losing both times. Someone on BGG said this was Lovecraft's works written by Robert E. Howard and that is so true. High adrenaline, extremely streamlined, fantastic core systems. Really loving this one.

Second play of Western Legends with Ante Up and we tried the long game to 25 legendary points. Ended with everyone within 3 of victory and it was great.

I was a longtime outlaw wanted for killing a couple of men, was jailed twice, and then turned into an honorable duelist hunting others down and challenging them. Couldn't shake my past though as I relented and robbed a miner before he could get back to town near the end of play.

Also six plays of Zoo Ball, Imhotep, Tiefe Taschen (I won by 1 million!). Might be forgetting something else.

Played a bit of Era: Medieval Age. It's exactly what you think it is, and that's not an insult. We're trying to nail down a house rule for a slightly longer game for 2 players than the as published version without fucking the core game up.

One of the guys in my group hosts an annual all-day gaming event right before Christmas, so that happened on Saturday. After a delayed arrival, I spent my day playing:

PULSAR 2849: Components sprawled all across the table, this one has dice drafting combined with race-style exploration and a technology tree. As is very typical for games like this, my brain just isn't wired to see how to be maximally efficient with a limited number of actions and pursue a strategy, so I pulled various levers along the way and fumbled my way to a very distant 3rd place out of 4.

HANNIBAL: ROME VS CARTHAGE: A rare opportunity to break away for 2P game at a large event, and it was with an experienced wargamer who had recently played Washington's War *and* coincidentally been brushing up on Hannibal's rules, so we breezed through a 10 minute refresher and were off to the races. I lost on Turn 4 when Marcellus sacked Carthage--with a hand of low ops cards Hanno had been stuck inside unable to respond. Kind of a bummer because I had Hannibal over the Alps pronto and he'd converted 2 northern provinces in Italy.

CAMEL UP: We played twice--this one was the 2nd edition, which I guess added 2 crazy camels that run backwards around the track and can pick up the regular ones and carry them the wrong way. I thought it was pretty fun, actually.

charlest wrote: ...six plays of Zoo Ball

I’d never heard of this and had to go look it up. Great. I’m out $8 now.

Josh Look wrote:

charlest wrote: ...six plays of Zoo Ball

I’d never heard of this and had to go look it up. Great. I’m out $8 now.

It's excellent, although I think it's much better at 4 than 2 players. I've played it 32 times over the past couple of years and foresee many more in the coming years.

charlest wrote:

Josh Look wrote:

charlest wrote: ...six plays of Zoo Ball

I’d never heard of this and had to go look it up. Great. I’m out $8 now.

It's excellent, although I think it's much better at 4 than 2 players. I've played it 32 times over the past couple of years and foresee many more in the coming years.

I read arguments for both 2 and 4 players. I have an audience for either player count, so I figured I’d be happy either way. It’s only $8 on Amazon !

been a while since i last posted. I've played a few games in the past week or so, a rare occurance;

Mexican Train dominoes - played this with seven at a casual games evening after carol services. This is a very low effort game which is great for sitting around getting warm and talking. It has just enough playing the odds and hand evaluation to make it interesting.

Hannibal Rome vs Carthage - played this with my house mate and got a close run with as Hannibal. It went bad early for me (as it always seems to) when I lost the first major battle in italy to bad die rolls. Fortunately my house mates inexperience allowed me to sneak back into contention down the straight. I still enjoy this and think it is one of the best CDGs but man the battles can be annoying. I don't mind the card mechanics but it is fairly random and in the mid to early game a terrible result can seem like a game ender even if it is not quite.

London 2nd Ed - this is might most recent purchase and i've played it with 3, some 4 times. Its not really a tableau builder but an efficiency engine game wherein the challenge is to balance hand size vs money vs poverty for each time you activate your short lived tableau. Osprey have done a good job of the aesthetics. It is more focused than a lot of engine games and the negative points you get from poverty to help the game feel unique and a market in flood but i wonder if my interest will wain after another 4 or so plays as i get a few strategies nailed down.

Been getting in some plays of Dino Dunk with the 9 year old. He digs it and is pretty good at it. Still playing the Exhibition rules.

On Wednesday, we used the pieces to play Dino Dodge, a real-time dodge ball game. Basically you can flick any discs that are on your side, either balls or dinos. If a ball strikes an opponent's dino, it's out. Needs walls- we pause when things get flicked off the table. (If it's not clear, we totally made this game up).

Tried out Ghost Panzer last night with an opponent (thanks again Gary Sax!). We played the intro infantry scenario and it seems really neat. Much like Jim Krohn's other games I've played it had really nice steamlined rules that present you with interesting decisions with low overhead. This one really really emphasizes the importance of suppressing fire. Trying to cross open ground in LOS of unsuppressed enemy units is basically suicide. Seems like a really interesting system that I'm looking forward to exploring more.

Also played 3p Agricola last night, in which I okayed terribly and took 2 begging tokens in the second harvest. I turned it around and had a decent endgame board, but yea.

Also tried out some of the season 2 Dice Throne characters, who all seemed really fun. Early favorites: Artificer, who builds robots that give him special powers and has a lot more stuff to juggle than other characters. And the Cursed Pirate, who doesn't have upgrade cards but instead has a double sided player board. You have cursed doubloons, and once you run out your player board flips to the cursed side. You become a skeleton pirate, all your abilities become more powerful, but you take 4 dmg at the beginning of every round. Real fun stuff.

I was surprised a bit by A War of Whispers. It's a little Kickstarter area control game with a deluxe edition that elevates the thing to average components, but it has a compelling pitch - you don't play as the nations at war but as a Secret society in the background pulling strings and manipulating events.

It's pretty much worker placement as you utilize your Agents to perform actions. All of your actions though allow you to manipulate the board by deploying more troops, attacking, or grabbing swingy cards you can play when acting.

The nearest part about the thing is that player loyalties are hidden. You score 4x points for one faction, 3x, for another, 2x for another and so on. One faction will actually hurt you score.

Those multipliers are applied to cities the faction controls at end game. You can swap your loyalties at a couple of key points in the game, but this forces you to flip the tokens faceup and now everyone knows who you favor.

This is pretty intriguing as you feel like you're a puppeteer, manipulating events and with imperfect control. Overlapping loyalties result in an emergent board state that can have some nations battered down (yellow was all but wiped out in our play) and others soaring.

Cool game although it feels as though it's missing maybe a single element to really elevate it to something special.

We finished up the Adventure Games: The Dungeon point and click thing and it was enjoyable if not earth shattering. It had been a long time between sessions and some of the momentum was lost.

Been playing a ton more Cthulhu Death May Die. Solo and four player. Still haven't won after 8 plays. Scenario 3 was alone the best thus far. Really loving this one as the tempo is breakneck and it packs some interesting resource management decisions (sanity and stress) into a tight 60-90 minute game with barely any rules. It always climaxes in a big way too which feels absolutely wonderful.

My solo table is now permanently imprinted with Tainted Grail. I've finished the campaign and it took me somewhere around 20 hours. Wow.

Writing is excellent. The story is something I'd read and the setting is fantastic. It's definitely a game that wants you to listen to its story, but it affords enough branches and pathways that it does feel as though you're leaving a mark on someone else's world.

Honestly, the structure reminds me of a very traditional roleplaying campaign where the GM provides the story and allows you to alter events. You can't go completely off the rails but you can give it a huge nudge. There's some very interesting twists and you get a glimpse of all of the different outcomes and forks when viewing the fallout.

The game is incredible and would challenge for my top spot of the year if not for one big flaw. It's grindy as can be at times.

Particularly in the mid-game and a couple of specific chapters, it wants you to wander across the Island and backtrack quite a bit. The resource management aspect to light Menhirs is neat at times and woven wonderfully into the setting, but it gets old.

The fact that the game lead me to cheat and skip over some elongated travel says it all. This aspect of play is probably the only thing keeping me from restarting the whole thing with a new character and making different decisions.

Still, I'm game for the next two campaigns coming in wave 2. Apparently you keep your character sheet with all of the story boxes and flags marked as this will influence those. I'm pumped but I'm also welcoming a bit of a break as I pushed a little hard to complete this.

Would choose this over 7th Continent every single time. The story in that design simply did not provide enough reward for the grind, but here it does.