What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

DukeofChutney wrote: 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.

I have to tell my wife that I hate Mexican Train dominoes, or I'd be playing nothing but that. In actuality you're right. It's fine.

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My company's Christmas party was yesterday, and the tradition we've settled into is to have lunch, play some HR-friendly office games (don't look at me, ain't my idea), get a little bit tipsy, and play boardgames (some of us, anyway). We split into two groups - one played Dixit, and the one I was in played Wingspan. The choice of Wingspan narrowly beat out Tyrants of the Underdark, due to a couple of folks swearing that they were too buzzed to learn a new game. All of us were playing under pretty much equal celebratory handicaps.

My fourth game Wingspan strategery: at this point, I don't think you can go all-in on eggs, because you need to have ways to get a decent amount of food and a decent amount of cards. However, if you ignore the eggs you're going to lose. The game also has a million-card Terraforming Mars thing going on, but my eyesight won't let me read those bird cards from across the table. After a few more plays I might recognize the heavy-hitting bird cards, if such things exist.

Games that I brought that didn't get played - What Do You Meme and Cockroach Poker. What Do You Meme is Cards Against Humanity, but with meme images as the subject in play. Cockroach Poker didn't get played because the gameplayers seemed fine with splitting up.

Glad Tainted Grail is panning out! Lot of people went in on that one around here iirc.

Tainted Grail is coming to PC...

More gaming. Last night was a possible board game club night, but my daughter didn't want to accompany me. We stayed home and played a couple of games of Last Night on Earth. The first one was the recommended introductory scenario, where you kill 15 zombies. My daughter and her boyfriend played Heroes, and I played Zombies. I swung at them for a while, then ran off to hide, hopefully for the win. But my daughter ran the Jock into a building I was hiding in, and played the card that let him blow up his dynamite in a suicide run. That killed the four they needed to win.

The second one wasn't nearly as exciting. The boyfriend wanted to play Zombies, and we got the 'save four townsfolk' scenario. He got all the possible Zombies on the board by turn 2, we didn't get shit for weapons save some gasoline that only killed two Zombies, and he killed Hero #2 four turns from the end.

Side note: the first miniatures I ever painted (model airplanes don't count) were those guys, and I thought they didn't come out too horrible. They have a base coat with craft paints, no highlights (what's that?), a Polyshades wash, and a spray of Dulcote. Better than bare plastic, anyway. One problem though, that I don't remember having when I painted them, was that I cleaned some of them with Simple Green for some reason (a repaint, cleaning, whatever). Those minis still reek of Simple Green, and it's a smell that I find mildly nauseating. I like diesel smoke and skunk stink better than I like Simple Green.

Got in a 4p game of Space Empires 4x last night which was pretty rad. I didn't get spun up fast enough, and someone went for the kill in round 6 while I was still diddling. I did get slowed down by threats on both of my borders in round 2, which necessitated my investing heavily into defense tech and ships instead of economy at a time when it's critical to get your economy up and running asap. U think next time just sending some debit fleets out would be enough to deter the threat, but that's a gamble so who knows. It was a learning game for 2/4 and the two newbies seemed to enjoy it. One definitely wanted to try it again, the other wasnt chomping at the bit but looked trying it out. They both feel they would rather be playing a PC game given the bookkeeping and whatnot, which... Fine. I personally like all that stuff, but I get it if you don't. I do think stripping out the advanced ships makes it a little one dimensional of a game, but also cuts 20-30 minutes of rules off so for the first time through it's probably the way to go. We got through it in 4 hours which seems reasonable.

Hipster boardgame night last night. Hot holiday punch with whiskey was good. 10 players, and probably half were non-hobby gamers, which is usual for this group.

I was skeptical of the idea, but Werewords was moderately fun as a cross between Werewolf and Twenty Questions. Thematically it was practically an abstract, but the business about guessing the werewolf or seer at the end was a clever way of keeping the game balanced. We played four games in a row, which took less than an hour.

Then we played two games of Secret Hitler. Again, I was skeptical because my one previous play was a dud, with a seven-player table. But that game was an extreme outlier, because somehow all six of the liberal policies ended up high in the draw deck. This time around was really good, with one of our two hosts really stoking the paranoia in the first game. I personally caused the loss in the first game, as a clueless liberal president who picked Hitler for chancellor.

The second game of Secret Hitler was interesting because two of the players abruptly underwent major personality changes, which I interpreted as a sign that they were both playing fascists instead of liberals this game. One of them went from very talkative to almost completely silent, while the other went from laid back to very argumentative and pushy. I was right about the guy who went silent, though he claimed it was because he just doesn't enjoy this kind of game. Anyway, I again made the decisive play in game two. This time I was in the position to choose the winning liberal policy. I was there because the other liberal players trusted me enough after I had previously passed two other liberal policies. Oddly enough, a fascist player passed me both a liberal and a fascist policy on the first turn because he wanted to know which I was, and also because he was playing the long con.

Finally, we played Cards Against Humanity for an hour, and it was a typical game. Some people had to leave by midnight, so the guy with three black cards won. There was some talk about starting up a game of Heroquest, but too many people left so we called it a night. Wish I could get some meatier games on the table, but we had too many light gamers present.

Two games of Santorini with my wife this morning. She won both, one by working into a position I couldn’t block, the second because I was dumb and missed her obvious winning play.

Kind of intimidating as it is definitely a game you can lose in setup against a veteran, but I do wish we played this and Hive more. A nice, intense brain burn in 15 minutes and great table presence.

Tried Taverns of Tiefenthal. Which is essentially a deckbuilder with lots of attached widgets including drafting dice. It's very gamey and packed with Euroglyphics, but still kind of cohesive and fun. It's the type of game with light decision-making but would look super daunting to anyone who hasn't played these kinds of games. Power Grid, this is not. I won with 121 points, with the next highest at 118... a rounding error.

Then I played Root, which I mentioned in its dedicated thread. I like Root. A guy at another table said his second expansion juuust came in from Kickstarter. When I pressed him for details, he pointed out that it has a new board, and two factions, but he hadn't gotten a chance to crack it open yet.

Next up was my first play of That's Pretty Clever, which is some kind of weird Yahtzee Bingo Set Collection extravaganza. It was pretty fun if you like math exercises and feeling pretty clever. I scored 203, which got me 4th place. The winner had 234, and they had all played before. Same group as Root.

Last up was an unpublished prototype that was so outside the box that I'm not sure how I feel about it. It wasn't particularly fun.

Played Cthulhu Wars for the first time this friday. Four player game, I had Crawling Chaos, but The Yellow Sign ended up with the win. I can see why people like it, and we had a lot of fun. Especially because we didn't know the powers, so it was pretty much a game of "you can do what now?"

I'm looking forward to playing it again since I can now see not only what I can do with a given faction, but also how you can stop The Yellow Sign. But while I appreciate that the game can be relatively short (we ended up playing for 3,5 hours, but it didn't feel long), I'm not sure it's in any way better than Chaos in the Old World. I didn't feel invested in the story which was partly because of the insane powers which meant you could pretty much do whatever on your turn. And nothing much in the game supported the idea of it being in a post-apocalyptic version of our world - in CitOW the people of the Old World are actually represented in the game. And while it's too early to say, it also feels like the first couple of turns can end up being a bit scripted since the board never changes. That is, of course, unless I buy an expensive expansion.

Still, I liked it. Even if it would be both cheaper and more functional with minis two thirds of the size.

Had my first play of 51st State with my girlfriend. We both really liked it. It's relatively easy to teach, and it's clear that there is a lot of depth to explore in the game. She beat me by 4 points... largely due to my intentions on razing some of her locations being shut down by her passing to end her turn. Note to self: if you intend to raze a location, do it sooner, rather than later.

You can end up with a lot of options on your turn. I can see this being insufferable with AP-prone players, or perhaps even with the full complement of 4 players.

Regarding the components- the art is great, the wooden tokens are great, and all of the colors / iconography makes sense and aids learning. A minor nitpick, but the cardboard tokens could stand to be a bit thicker. The rule book is easy to read and is well laid out, although it is unfortunately not done in A4 format. My only real complaint with it is that it is written with this "snarky humor" tone that, for me, fell flat. It's a rule book, not open-mic night.

Ha! I kind of enjoyed the rulebook tone. Yes, they overdid it, but I thought it was kind of a humorous departure from the usual boilerplate approach.

Glad you liked the game, though. You're spot on about razing others' locations. If it looks like a good target and you have the red tokens AND there's nothing else in your hand that might give you better immediate rewards, do it. 51st State pretty much demands that you interact with your opponents to keep them from winning and razing is the best way to do that, so you might as well take advantage of it.

I've had many 4-player games and only the most AP prone people seem to have trouble with it. The slowest point is usually the draft if people aren't familiar with the game. Once they are, even that moves along pretty rapidly, especially if you use the Winter or New Era cards, some of which can easily be enticing (Now, whether they're good picks is something else entirely...) I'll be most interested to hear what your reactions are to the different factions. My long-time assertion is that New York is the weakest of the base 4 because the other three all have something they're good at, while New York isn't especially good at anything. But people tend to have their favorites, just like in NH.

I see that the rules indicate that you should only use one expansion at a time. Is this mainly to avoid diluting card synergies? Seems kind of a pain to separate out expansion material each time you want to change it up.

They also give zero indication as to what each expansion even brings to the table.

Yes, it's mostly to avoid draws/drafts that make it difficult to have the resources to keep the game moving. The base set is fairly Production-heavy, so if you put in too many of the other sets, you might end up with some players having to pass to quickly for lack of things to do, simply because they won't have enough workers/materials to make progress. I've never run into that, but I can see the possibility.

I'm OK with card sorting, personally. The expansion titles are on each card, so it's pretty easy to weed them out. I do the same thing for games like Tyrants of the Underdark, so I'm probably just used to it.

You're right that they're not labeled well as far as theme. IIRC, New Era pushes Raze, Deal, and Development mechanics a bit more, especially on Features, while Winter is more slanted toward "Spend X resource and get X different resource."

Mezo first impressions. KS game dudes on a map with Mayan theme that started shipping recently. Its not what I thought it would be. My first play impressions are that its a cross between El Grande and Blood Rage.

Tried it with 3 people, another guy has a copy so both of us dealt with the rules pretty accurately I think. The rulebook is pretty disorganized and isn't always clear on how to resolve things. And the game lacks any kind of round summary or player aids which is really surprising for a game of any complexity.

The theme comes through very well with the smiting and unique gods and sacrificing units. Each god, and there are many gods to choose from, has a special strength in some area of the game. There are something like 12 gods to choose from. There are 4/5 areas of the map that will be used depending on 3/4 players. Areas are randomly resolved and each person will play a card to resolve the actions on the card. Every god has 5 cards in their god deck that are kinda similar to the other gods. The cards have 3 actions on them. Resolve an action in turn order and then do it again. Then compare strength and winner gets the reward, normally 5-8 vp. There are 2 unit types, squares and circles. Whoever has the most in the region of each gets to choose a special action and get a couple of vps. After the fight all units in that region are removed and go back to your supply. You can add units to the region later in the round through some tricky card play. At the top of the round everyone can deploy up to 3 units to each territory. Thats kinda it with a few more mechanics.

The card actions are all pretty straightforward, like summon a guy or destroy enemy units or move a unit to another region. There are no surprises once the cards are revealed, it should be kinda clear who has most strength, who has the circle units, who has the square units. Really gives it a euro feel and hence my calling of units squares/circles instead of warriors/shaman.

I liked it, didn't love it. I knew Rising Sun was amazing when I first played it but wasn't sure about Lords of Hellas so I'll give this a few more plays for sure. I'm normally the person who likes aggressive/strategic games and while the theme was good the fights were a little dry for my taste. The euro guy in the group loved it. Supposedly I will get another chance to play it later this week again. It is a pretty unique game but it sorta feels like a convoluted El Grande with theme. Maybe that is enough given I always enjoy playing El Grande and then forget about it after because it doesn't leave any lasting impressions.

Roll for the Galaxy this morning, Arkham the card game this evening. My spouse took Jenny Barnes this time and it made all the difference. She drew her pistols early and loaded them up and then just piled on resources---this is a good thing if you're wary of the game, because it gives you a feeling of being able to accomplish tons of stuff and play lots of cards. We barely beat the first scenario by Jenny blowing herself and the boss up with some dynamite, she barely survived but the boss did not.