What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played the Pac man board game. It was good fun! Pac man makes the sound you want and it is over in 5-10 minutes. Only mild bummer is resetting requires getting under the board and popping the pegs up again. Was impressed, overall, with what was a throwaway game my spouse put under the tree.

Could make a good late night con or drinking game imho.

Did a solo run through of NEMESIS yesterday in co-op mode. Wow. This is some good stuff. More to write up later. I only wish I had backed the KS to get the extra stuff. But even the base game has tons of replayability/options.

Lots of fairly lightweight games over the holidays. Thursday night the family played two games of Wingspan. Both games I won off of points from tucked cards and bonus cards. They all liked the game.

Then Friday, my coworkers and I had our traditional Christmas gaming day. We ended up with six players, which wasn't quite enough to split into two groups. So we played a couple of games of Evolution: Climate, which will play six. I had played Evolution a while back, but needed a serious refresher. Evolution: Climate is Evolution plus, you guessed it, a climate. Bad things happen if it gets too hot or too cold, but there are traits to mitigate that, like heavy fur or frills. Evolution will play six, but with that many players the game ends about the time it gets rolling. My experience didn't help, and I ended up in the middle of the pack.

Afterwards, one player begged off and we played a 5-player game of Wingspan. I tried to make lots of cards and few eggs work, but that failed. I ended up in the middle of the pack

After I went home from the coworkers game day, the family and I all played some lightweight games. We played a few games of The Mind, a Christmas gift for my daughter, and we didn't win a game. Then we played Cockroach Poker, Perudo, and Love Letter.

Finally, yesterday afternoon my daughter and I went to the local game club. While we were waiting on my brother, I taught my daughter Lost Cities, a game I own, but hadn't played in 10+ years. These days I'm not sure what niche it fills at my house, since if it's just my wife and I we'll just play what we were going to play. But it was perfect for a filler while we waited at the game club.

Then the three of us played Tyrants of the Underdark. We taught my brother, who sat upstream of me and got every good card I wanted. I think there were ways to make the cards available work, but I was evidently too inexperienced to figure it out.

We wrapped up by teaching ourselves Jaws. My brother was the shark and my daughter and I were the heroes. Act 1 ended with six eaten swimmers, which I thought was okay. Act 2 was close, but the shark won. I liked the game, but the adjacency rules are a little opaque. This is a problem, since they're key for playing Act 2. Even at the end we weren't sure if we were playing the adjacency rules correctly. If you want to play it, I'd recommend watching a video first to save yourself some annoyance. That aside, it was fun.

Today I played a miserable game of 1830. We had six players, most of which were newbies. This is not a good combination. While you can play 1830 at six players, it's not really how the game is supposed to work because you don't have enough money to create your own company.

And, in fact, the two players to my left refused to cooperate. Hence I got quickly stuck into this situation where I couldn't do anything. What is worse, one of the newbies decided to "save" and not spend money buying shares or opening companies, which meant there was absolutely nothing to buy and no reason for the rest of the players to bulge. It was miserable. There were 3 sold-out companies and nothing else to invest in because I couldn't open them alone.

I bought into tbe B&O and the owner thought I was unreasonable because "he would have to sell everything" to open it. He prefered to have 300$ in dead money out of a starting 400$ just not to sell. He simply didn't trust me, and neither did the other guy down the line. If you have ever played a negotiation game where half of the table refuses to even speak with you, you'll understand my frustrations.

The guy who invited me to the game also got a shitty deal. He invested into a company with another player who then proceeded to not pay any dividends for two turns. Fantastic.

I actually got upset. The prospect of being forced to sit for hours doing nothing because they didn't want to cooperate pissed me off. Before joining the game I asked if people were already experienced with the game, because 6 players was too much and I got a positive answer. C'mon.

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I've also been playing Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. The game is not perfect, but I'm increasingly certain that most complains about it are wrong. It seems to me many people have the wrong expectations or don't take follow the clues carefully enough.

I've started writing my thoughts on each case, which could be interesting.

Played a 3-player game of 51st State tonight; me and two new players. One of the many, many things that I love about this game is how easy it is to teach. Five minutes of rule explanation (Red tokens do this, blue tokens do that, etc.) and you're up and running. It was me as the Merchant's Guild, whom I rarely play, vs University and Mutants Union. So, two dealmakers and one razer, the latter being played by the least confrontational of the three players.

However, she adapted to it quickly, once she realized that the only way to really generate resources for the Mutants is to blow stuff up, including stuff from her own hand. She quickly jumped out to a lead, while the University was creating a ridiculous number of deals. But deals are prone to giving you a ton of stuff while not generating a lot of points unless you have Actions to produce them. I tried to tread the middle path with the Merchants, since I wasn't finding a ton of great deals in my cards. They both had the light bulb moment about Development that all new players have, too. "Wait. For one brick and NO tokens, you can put a new location down AND get a point?" Yes. Yes, you can.

On the second-to-last round, I played Eight Mile (one of the promo cards) which lets you trade in a worker, oil, brick, and iron for 3 points and you can do it twice. I had a couple deals giving me VP and a couple giving me ammo, plus some good production, so I was able to put that to full effect for two rounds. The Mutants crossed the 25 point threshold early in the sixth round and everyone went gangbusters for points at the end. When we'd finished play, the score was Mutants 31, University 30, and Guild 30. But then we tallied locations: Mutants 7, University 8, Guild 9. Final score: Ugly Freaks 38, Naive Students 38, Noble Merchants 39. Victory.

Played part of a game of Fallout with my boys. It was always my intent to just play for a bit and then quit, since a full game takes a ridiculous amount of time.

We did one of the expansion scenarios that builds a giant map. The factions were Brotherhood vs. Unity. One son sided with the Brotherhood, the other, and myself, sided with Unity. We all went about our business, but only one of us ever wound up with any good gear. I am pretty sure he would have eventually won, despite us being tied when we stopped playing. I had a ton of combat in my immediate future, and I highly doubt I would have survived it.

It was fun, although nothing very notable happened during this session. I still really like the game, despite its flaws. I also think it's amusing that every time I play it, I discover a rule that I had previously implemented incorrectly. At this rate, I should be 100% on the rules by 2025.

We've been trialing OUTER RIM here and it's what folks are saying it is—a nice mix of ARKHAM card-based storytelling, MERCHANT & MARAUDERS scalawagerry and patrol-dodging, and you get to be Boba Fett flying a Millennium Falcon. The kid thinks it's good too, and they handle skill-tests a lot better (always 2d8, more faces work as you get more skilled). Gorgeous components too, as you'd expect from FFG.

Really excited for a game of Galaxy Trucker at open play. Was just beginning to teach the rules when I figured out that I put the flight cards in an expansion box instead of with all the core components. That was annoying. We ended up playing two games of Dominion with Intrigue, Seaside and Prosperity. I won the first by going heavy money and pivoting into victory cards early when my opponents both picked up multiple Goons and I realized I would rarely have more than three cards in my hand anyway. Handily lost the second when my strategy of Great Halls and Estates couldn't keep up with people who bought Provinces. I guess six points is more than one.

Also played two games of Draftosaurus. It's a light thing, barely more than a wisp. You're drafting dino-meeples and placing them in a park according to restrictions set by a die roll. It has a nice table presence but never really grabbed me. I don't know how it could possibly have four credited designers unless every playtester got their name on the box.

Galaxy Trucker is still a complete classic.

Held my third annual All Day Game Day yesterday, and this one was the biggest ever, with 11 of us at one point. Two tables ran the entire day, and I played board games for about 11 hours.

Started with Wiz-War, 5 players. Three were new but people picked it up quickly. One was erroneously eliminated while I was answering the door, because someone powered a spell with multiple energy cards and killed him. You can only use one energy card. Later he tried this with another player and I caught it, but the damage was done. Anyway, another player kept casting spells to make me drop his treasure before I could get it back to my base. I spent several turns literally picking up and dropping a treasure, since picking one up ends your movement. I eventually got it back home, but by that point, he had won by stealing one treasure from another wizard and killing one other one. The game was a success but I had a fairly shitty session since I never even attacked a single person. My entire game was ferrying a treasure from one board to another board.

Next up was Nemesis, 5 players. Two players were new. Setup takes a long damn time for this one, but we finally got going and it was eerily quiet on the ship. Noise rolls went our way, the bag development stage went our way, etc. No intruders showed up until round 3, I think. My secret mission was to chart a course for Mars instead of Earth, and I made my way forward to make that happen, while everyone else explored the rear of the ship. I was the psychologist (we included a few of the expansion characters this time) and by trudging off alone I was not capitalizing on my ability to control other players. I felt this was prudent since I had no intention of getting the ship back to Earth.

Eventually shit went awry, as it does, and the ship started crawling with bugs. One player kept trying to hibernate but the room would always wind up occupied with an intruder. Three of us, including myself, got torn apart by aliens (excuse me, Intruders) and the remaining two worked together to make it off the ship successfully in an escape pod. The pods always go to Earth, so they won in spite of my treachery.

Next up was Spartacus with 6 players. Two were new. They picked up on things fairly easily and we got to backstabbing. One player paid a lot of money to purchase Spartacus himself, and I rewarded him by attempting to poison Spartacus' wine. A guard foiled my attempt. That same player over-extended himself and went broke, and quickly learned the error of his ways as two of us slammed down DESTITUTE! cards that saw him losing two influence. He was fucked from then on.

He started to fade and basically threw the victory my way by pushing me to 12 influence as we went into a Primus in which I was the host. We didn't even have the fight and I declared victory. The only victory I would have that day.

We ended our night with Gorechosen, 3 players. One fighter was an embarrasment to Khorne and ran around avoiding conflict while myself and the other player repeatedly pummeled each other. I killed my foe, but by that point I was so beat up that the coward felled me. Khorne was surely not pleased.

Games that were played at the other table:
Lords of Hellas
New York Slice
TMNT (yes, two games in which you eat pizza)

Good game night

Played some Ora et Labora, then our 2nd game of Arkham Horror of the year. Beat the tentacle guy in a close run thing, down to the last draw (MONSTER SURGE!). It's such a tremendous pain in the ass to set up, but I will be god damned if any game even comes close to the drama generated by AH. This many years down the road, and I have my doubts if there's a better coop game the AH, despite being rickety and inelegant in every way.

Happy New Year you bastards.

Played 4-player Vast: The Crystal Caverns, so no Thief. It was two people who had seen it explained before but not played, one newbie, and me. I took the Cave, since I had the most experience with it and that role is kind of the "GM" of the whole thing (treasures, events, laying out the board, etc.) The Knight powered through her first couple turns, even as a new player, and almost maxed out her Grit, and would later do so. However, she spent a lot of time not hassling the Dragon who, in turn, spent a fair amount of time hassling the Goblins. The latter did not have a good day. I think it's the most complicated of the five roles to play, since you have to handle three figures instead of one and they all have different abilities and so on. I probably should have taken the little monsters. In the end, the Dragon was very close to waking up, albeit on two health, while the Knight had only been wounded twice by the Goblins. The Dragon breathing and revealing a couple times allowed me to lay down a ridiculous amount of tiles, so the collapse began. The Knight swung into action to try to pound on the Dragon as fast as possible (doesn't have to use the Bomb with the collapse happening) but it was too late, as I swiftly burned through 5 crystal tiles and crushed everyone('s dreams.)

Then we switched to Tiny Epic Quest. Three of us had played with the same player as the newb. TEQ is such an abstraction that I often see people having a hard time grasping what's going on, especially with learning spells. I thought I was doing pretty well with two artifacts, a few goblins, and a number of quests, but I hadn't managed to get very far on spells and someone else had managed all three artifacts and ran away with it, with 39 points.

Finally got to try the Xia expansion and it delivered. Improved upon the game in every way.

That said, it was a bit of a frustrating play as I spent multiple turns excavating artifacts from a dead world and then rolled a 9, taking a tremendous amount of ice damage. Of course I rolled a 1 on my shield die and I had to jettison the artifact I had in the hold and limp back to a planet. Another player picked it up capitalizing on my hard work. Taking 10 damage from an asteroid later cemented my fate at the bottom of the score track.

Buddy asked me if I'd rate Xia or Western Legends higher and that's a tough call. I think Xia really competes with Merchants & Marauders with me, and I still definitely prefer M&M. Western Legends is somewhat different experience full of player interaction and excelling at higher player counts.

Then we played a game I hadn't gotten off the shelf in about 15 months - Big Trouble in Little China. I almost forgot how damn awesome this game is. Totally rad chasing down the lost dragon sword and forcing Thunder to explode in the streets surrounded by Wu-kong death squads. Of course we destroyed Lo Pan later.

Over new years I got in Just One with the family (they love this), and more Wavelength which is my favorite party game of the past five years or so. It took them a little while to understand it and we had a nailbiter of a game where we won 10-9.