What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Hosted my annual New Year's Day board gaming event. As my social circle gets older, attendance gets better. This time we had a peak of seven players. As usual, it was a science-fiction theme, which seemed especially appropriate for the futuristic-sounding year of 2020.

Two people showed up slightly early, so I figured they would be suitable victims to test Coma Ward, which likely was playtested under the name Betrayal at Mental Institution on the Hill. In all seriousness, I doubt that Coma Ward got much playtesting. The errata is nearly twice as long as the rule book, even though the rules are relatively simple. Or they would be simple, if the rulebook was better organized and had been edited at least once. A fourth player showed up during setup, so we pulled him in despite his bad attitude about his previous play of the game. Coma Ward has terrific atmosphere, and our scenario involved lost souls seeking redemption before being swept off to the afterlife by the Grim Reaper. But Coma Ward is frustrating because you will fail a lot. Challenges are resolved by rolling d6s, where only a 5 or 6 is successful. A 4 is immediately re-rolled with an additional die, which is suspenseful but tends to produce more failure. Failures tend to reduce your stats, leading to more failure. By the time the haunting, er phenomenon starts, your character is likely already a pathetic wretch, though finding equipment can help.

Next we played Paranoia Mandatory Bonus Fun! Card Game, which is indeed fun. As game owner, I had the privilege to start as team leader and also one higher security clearance. One of our players was a gullible teenager, so I managed to convince him that completing missions was important. With his help and some lucky cards, we quickly succeeded at the first five missions, catapulting me up to Violet security clearance before the whole table turned against me. I managed to hang in there, despite dropping to Blue. One hilarious mission saw one of our team members shoot himself with a laser pistol and then play Double Cross on himself so he could more readily infiltrate the Commies. Three more players showed up late in the game, and we dealt them in with Red security clearance (the lowest). On the final mission, nearly half the team got executed as traitors during debriefing, but one of them tied with me for the win at Blue.

Two players left early, leaving five to play two games in a row of Cosmic Encounter. I forgot how I had stuff organized in the box, with the flare cards all shuffled and the over-sized alien cards alphabetized. For a quick start, people get two random draws from the flare deck and then I quickly pull their alien cards out the alphabetized stack. Instead, I dealt the last ten races from the end of the alphabet, so we got races like Vulch, Void, Zombie, Xenophile, etc. By the second game, I remembered the system, so we got a more normal random draw. Both games were fun, even though our resident Shadowfist expert won both games handily due to the similar nature of the games. The first game went so fast that our fifth player didn't get a turn, but the second game went nearly three times around the table before the win.

Finally, we played a five-player game of Escape from 1,000,000 B.C. on medium/low difficulty. Though we had unusual difficulty with herbivores early on, we got our teamwork and strategy working smoothly and won. It was a little bit tense because we went back despite leaving behind one castaway (paradox 1) and seven item cards, but we only picked up 3 extra paradox and were fine. We did accidentally bring back a pair of velociraptors, but decided it was probably fine because there was a 50% chance of being a same-sex pair.

I was invited to a FRIENDMAS by one of my regular attendees, Trish. So, I bagged up the Tub of Pain... and 17 people in attendance.

Ultimately, the ToP was hardly used, as goers split into two groups, one played Elder Sign (8p) and the other Robo Rally (6p).

I like Elder Sign, but but I had the tub full of new games and ones that were maxed for the most amount of players. Nope, the group decided to play to giant time sinks. While The Boy and I cooled our heels, eventually the RR game ended after 2+ hours, So, with attendance dwindling I pulled out several sets of quick, low player count games.

First was Heat. After explaining how the drafting works, we went on. The other players were having a little difficulty, with one not fully grokking how to play until the very end. There were several bank heists that happened simultaneously, which netted no monies. I was in the lead for the most of the game, but I attracted too much Heat. When we had to pay off, it was $4 a pop and I had 5 Heat. So, my grand total was $10 at the end. My nemesis, ended up with only $3. Trish had 15, but Mr. Grok had $16.

We ended up making jokes along the lines of, "What are we doing? Oh, there's a store? Let's rob it!"

The next game was Beneath Nexus. Trish and Mr. Grok played as the Heroes, with yours truly playing the Blight Lord Apep.

The first room they picked was the Slave Pens, which hurts you every time the Heroes play an Ability card. I also had two monsters that complemented each other. One could heal and hurt anyone who attacked it. The other had a bunch of HP, with a charge up ability to take 1/3 of HP from a hero.

The first round, the Heroes were floundering. Trish kept me at bay with her Hero, temporarily nullifying my Ability cards and casting cantrips just for breathing. Mr. Grok played Toa, a Wolverine-esque Hero. I pulled my punches, with much regret, and they beat the Pens.

It all went downhill from there. After choosing Relics that further confounded my chances to hurt them, they picked the Hidden Shrine, which was the OPPOSITE of the Pens, they had the option to Heal. Trish kept snapping her Infinity Gauntlet cantrips and saying, "NO!" to my attempts to harm them. They rolled over the second encounter.

The last encounter was with The Dread Blight Lord Apep Who Screamed Not the Face at the End. They had Relics that messed me up something fierce and I didn't get a lick on them.

Next time, Gadget, next time.

Elder Sign with 8 players? No thanks.

hotseatgames wrote: Elder Sign with 8 players? No thanks.

Ya think?

I despise RR. Hate it with the passion of a thousand War Suns. Playing 4 is pushing it, but 6? Especially with new players? NOOOOOOOOOOO!

I like Robo Rally but it should only be played with a short sand-timer. Otherwise, players with even a little AP will drag the pace down to a crawl. Robo Rally is only fun if everybody plays fast and loose.

Holidays recap:

Hellapagos - 6 plays. Several of these were awesome as my MIL totally got into it despite generally only being a fan of very light stuff or party games. However, one of the games was disastrous as we brought in some other family members who compared its complexity to Terraforming Mars implying Hellapagos was completely unfathomable to them.

Tattoo Stories - 3 plays. A fun party game where you draw a collection of judge decided cards. My mini-human loved this one and she came up with all kinds of insane tattoo ideas that were competitive against the adults.

Trapwords - 2 plays. A twist on Taboo that is worth the very low price of admission ($20). It's easy to teach, reworks the core concept ever so slightly (opposing team picks what you cannot say), and adds a little randomness with the curses and boss to make each play a little different.

Chronicles of Crime - 2 plays. We were giving our copy with expansions to my SIL/MIL for them to play and we taught them the game using two DLC mysteries that we had not yet played. They were both pretty good although the "Easy" DLC mission is certainly more complex than we anticipated based on the assigned difficulty (not a great teaching mystery). Overall, I think the core game is better than either expansion and the DLC mysteries are better than anything in the core game. I'm eager to see what the next wave of this series looks like. I hope they lean more into the odd mechanics of the two expansions, but up the quality of the scenarios.

barrowdown wrote: Chronicles of Crime - 2 plays. We were giving our copy with expansions to my SIL/MIL for them to play and we taught them the game using two DLC mysteries that we had not yet played. They were both pretty good although the "Easy" DLC mission is certainly more complex than we anticipated based on the assigned difficulty (not a great teaching mystery). Overall, I think the core game is better than either expansion and the DLC mysteries are better than anything in the core game. I'm eager to see what the next wave of this series looks like. I hope they lean more into the odd mechanics of the two expansions, but up the quality of the scenarios.

Which two DLCs did you do?

Legomancer wrote:

barrowdown wrote: Chronicles of Crime - 2 plays. We were giving our copy with expansions to my SIL/MIL for them to play and we taught them the game using two DLC mysteries that we had not yet played. They were both pretty good although the "Easy" DLC mission is certainly more complex than we anticipated based on the assigned difficulty (not a great teaching mystery). Overall, I think the core game is better than either expansion and the DLC mysteries are better than anything in the core game. I'm eager to see what the next wave of this series looks like. I hope they lean more into the odd mechanics of the two expansions, but up the quality of the scenarios.

Which two DLCs did you do?

We played Secret Report and Blood in the Fog. My wife and I have played all of the DLC missions and they are consistently very good. I would say Alice in London-Land is probably the best of the lot. The only official mission we have not played is from Welcome to Redview - The Monsters of Review, Chapter 4 - The Ghost because we were growing tired of that expansions incredibly convoluted plots that never felt resolved even though we solved them.

Shellhead wrote: I like Robo Rally but it should only be played with a short sand-timer. Otherwise, players with even a little AP will drag the pace down to a crawl. Robo Rally is only fun if everybody plays fast and loose.

This times a thousand.

Played my copy of a feast for odin for the first time. My first impression is that the tetris is a fun, bizarre puzzle but there's a little bit of jumping the shark compared to something like Fields of Arle. The action options require a lot of explanation, which is Not Good.

That said, I have increasingly come to believe that doing this sort of game is not simple---Rosenberg isn't just early into this design space, but he's really, really good at it in a way most people are not. Ages ago on this site, I think I would have disagreed and piled on that this is an easy type of game to do just as well as anyone else, but I don't think that any more. Getting the pacing and reward structure right to tingle the reward centers of player brains is harder than you'd think.

I prefer Barenpark for ease and speed over the complexity of Odin.

Feast was a little too overwrought for me personally. I hear the expansion makes it better along ever axis, but I've never tried it. Among many other things it adds scaling action selection boards by player count.

For Uwe Tetris I really really like Spring Meadow personally.

I played my copy of Roads & Boats for the first time. I just really like this game. It's like Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon in boardgame form and better in many ways. We played a beginner scenario that is very large so it wasn't the most tense but it was fun.

We also played Dominion. Playing it again served as a reminder of how much better it is than Star Realms and more other "Dominion-killer" deckbuilders.

Last night we started with Antiquity Quest where I got chastised for playing into other peoples hands and fouling up their "perfect" sets. I won. We moved on to Divinity Derby where a few late game, desperate hyper-risk bets paid off and I managed to get Pegasus (who I didn't have a bet on) disqualified, cementing my win. Once again I was chastised for being an ass. We then played Barenpark. I just don't have the proper mind process for it, My cousin pointed out when I was taking a particular piece saying "that's a mistake, you'll never fit it." I never did get that piece to the board but ended up tied for 2nd place with my cousin winning with 80pts (no goal cards in this time). I always feel like I'm just faking it in Barenpark because while it looks like my plans on working out, I think it is more of a "Use the Force" strategy and I just get lucky that it works out....then again, I rarely win, so...

Dark Venture is coooooooool. The art is fucking nuts- it’s a total appendix N/Dying Earth/Gamma World/Urth of the New Sun kind of thing. It’s a little fussy and weird, lots of people will hate it, but it does some really neat things. It’s an adventure card game with CYOA/Gamebook text.

Sanctum is...I dunno. It’s got a great Diablo scoot-and-loot concept. You squish monsters and flip them over so that they become gear. Then you level up these gems to unlock skills and actually pay for your gear. That all works really well, but the core of the game is one of those “dice but the rolls don’t matter” things. So you roll but there’s umpty jillion ways to post-fudge the rolls. I don’t like that. Sort of 50/50 on it right now.

Outer Rim is great. It is now my gold standard for the PU&D adventure game. It’s more of an adventure than an economic game but that works for me. The SW stuff is fun, I mean, you can be Bossk for Christ’s sake. Also, Doctor Aphra, which is awesome. It’s also one of Corey K’s tightest and most succinct designs.

Not BGs, but I’m playing all the B/X I possibly can right now. It’s like 1981 all over again but with much better books (Old School Essentials). I’m actually collecting vintage modules now. Thinking about running either Isle of Dread or The Lost City soon.

Playing low/no prep B/X had really made me wonder why I was fussing around with more complicated and cumbersome dungeon crawl board games instead doing that all these years.