What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Had a local game day/mini convention today, played a pile of good stuff

Xia
Just One
High Society
Illusion
Hoity Toity
Babylonia

I've played Xia every day since getting it Thursday, so safe to say I'm enjoying that one. Taught it to 2 new players and we played for 2 hours, which wasnt enough time to finish a game to 10 (I capped at 6), but that was the time the other players had and it's not a game that really suffers from playing for a set amount of time rather than finishing out the points. Both players really took to it, and I think we're going to get a full game in together sometime soon. For me, I have thus far really been digging the freedom to tactically exploit whatever the board spits out at you, and just kind of exploring the different options. I haven't specced fully into pvp from the jump yet, which seems like it would be hard to make work. I've gone hunting players in the end game to cash out for the win, but before that it seems hard to bring enough firepower to bear to make it worthwhile over other more lucrative ventures. The game gives me a lot of what I enjoy from adventure games, without a lot of flavor text/encounter cards etc. The narrative emerges from how you engage with the various mechanics available to you.

Babylonia continues to be great. Highly recommend. Also I play Hoity Toity about every other week in my regular game group these days, and I'm here for it. Love that game, and almost everyone I've played it with has loved it as well.

I don't remember if you have the expansion, but I think you kind of need it before you seriously explore PvP (piercers).

A treat, more Theseus! Two games, Marines-Grays and Scientists-Bots. Bots seem super lethal but some of their cards don't help them much against squads just trying to grab data points off them



Still think this is as underappreciated as games get.

I have had an amazing month of boardgames. Since January I've played:

4x Cosmic Encounter
3x Roads & Boats
1870: Railroading across the Trans Mississippi
Bios Megafauna
Dominion
Samurai
Tigris & Euphrates
Brass

plus a bunch of other games that were neat but not worth mentioning. And lots of Legend of the Five Rings, of course. Most importantly, I haven't been stuck playing mediocre or dull games. Sure, I just played two games of Android: Infiltration and replayed Blood Rage after my review was done, but quality has been very high. So I'm happy. It's how I wish all my gaming time looked like.

I'm more than tempted to buy the Tigris & Euphrates app. I was really impressed by that game. I guess I should also play Through the Desert. Unlike most of you guys, I haven't actually played the top Knizia games, I've only played his fillers.

I taught a couple guys to play 1870 and it went superwell. In fact, one has been so impressed he has been looking for more info about the series and is thinking about buying one. We would play it again next week but I'm busy. I hope we can get a regular group going!

I dislike the current "Tier 1" deck for the Lion Clan in L5R so I've been trying some pure-value, no-frills, all-play decks. I don't think they are the best choice, and they certainly are not the best choice for me but I feel like I'm learning a lot.

Gary Sax wrote: A treat, more Theseus! Two games, Marines-Grays and Scientists-Bots. Bots seem super lethal but some of their cards don't help them much against squads just trying to grab data points off them



Still think this is as underappreciated as games get.

Do you have the expansions? I think I have an extra of one of them — yours if you want it

I do! Bots and the Hunters.

Reforge.

Worst fucking game ever. Should be renamed to Refuse.

Cock-blocked by a Kicksharter title. No good gaming tonight.

I'm telling you, the key to game night is to show up late. You don't get stuck playing some crap game that invariably shows up each week.

got Flotilla to the table.

4 players, 2 couples. the guys both liked it, the gals, not so much. We had setup on a previous night and started teaching, and so got through a couple turns then. on that playthrough I was doing really well on delve rolls and had started to expand my little diving empire with extra boats and such.

This time, not really. lots of toxicity and not many resources coming in. So I made the quick jump to skyside. My wife was digging through the 'trader' card stack, and "the dealer" popped up. I jumped on that boy immediately.

and well....it's a broken card. I went through several turns of putzing around on the sky side, doing research ( I had a couple delver/research cards) which generate a decent amount of money. the sink siders had sold enough red resources that it was sitting at 1 cost. Initially I was just going to buy 15 or so resources to have enough to build a couple tiles. But then i realized that I could basically turn money directly into points at a 1:2 ratio. So.....I bought Red. Lots and lots of red. the 'dealer' says make infinite transactions. It only takes around 14 buys to max out a resource on the track. every one after that is 2 points.

and then guess what? use your captain, get some cards (and money) back. then turn around and sell those red resources at 8 a pop. as many times as you want. So, I won by buying 300+ of the 400 points in the pool. I just stopped doing anything else.

First, this card has been errata'd . It's limited to 12, which is much more reasonable. but annoying that it's a fairly glaring error. secondly, there's ways to combat this. since you can only play the dealer every other turn at best, there's time for someone else to buy/sell at the appropriate time to keep it from happening. even buying enough to drive the price up to 5 would slow this down a lot. but you have to jump on that pretty quickly, or the amount of resources/money just overwhelms anything you can do to response. again, errata'd card, so it's all a moot point.

I really liked being able to choose when to switch engines. there's definitely a flow to sending your boats out and selling resources. and while I was the only skysider, resources were cheap and life was good. then my wife joined and we started fighting for those same resources. How things on the sinksiders affect skysider decisions (guild dials/artifacts) and vice versa (sonar efficiency) is neat.

Katie ran into the 'what do I do?' question, which can happen with some of these more open-ended games.

oh and we played Treasure Island. LJS lost, but this time only inches (miles) away from the treasure. Asmodee has said they are out of replacement pieces for this, which is really annoying with how shitty the compass is. other than frustration with the compass, this is a really great game.

Treasure Island and Flotilla in the same night sounds amazing.

I've been lucky recently. Gillette is a small town, with not much of a gaming scene. I've found a couple that

A) like to game (with us)
B ) like to try games I want to try (and enjoy a lot of the same things)
C) have kids that like to play with my kids, so it's a family thing when we all get together
D) are willing to express opinions on what games they like/dislike and are actively involved in planning game days for us together.

Successfully taught my daughter Root this weekend--her cats beat my birds 30-25, with me realizing towards the end that I needed to be more aggressive early on to stop her building so much and banking 2 and 3 points at a time. It's only my 2nd play, so there's a bit yet to absorb with the factions that are new to me.

Now we've re-racked War of the Ring again, but I couldn't convince her to try playing as the Free People for the first time. Probably over the course of a week or so we'll be able to play it through, since there's not much time on school nights.

Games played this past weekend at Niagara Boardgaming Weekend

ANGOLA: the recently added fourth balancing provision of making the jungle Hacking #6 coming out of Cabinda seems to have finally solved the balance issue. In this game. the RAW would have still given the Commies a victory as they started off with an already consolidated position in the center of the board and between VP markers and some bidding wins on Covert Aid, rolled out to a commanding 13 to 18 lead over the western backed forces.

By this time my FNLA forces had used all four major units and had to roll TWICE on the dreaded Crisis Table. The first roll merely removed one Major, but the second roll cost two more AND made the remaining one immobile . At this point myself and my ostensible ally Pete resigned an obviously hopeless situation to Rob and Jeromey. 

GLORY TO ROME. I won both games I played; in one I had a particularly nasty combo of an 11 card hand as well as the capability to Legionnaire other players Clients directly into my Vault. I cleaned out Petes entire five Clients and then the game ended. He was not amused. 

COMMAND and COLORS MEDIEVAL  . Pete and I played a largish scenario where I had no less than five leaders. It was wide open terrain and I had a slight edge in that my cavalry was all bow equipped whereas his was mostly not so . Still, he had several Ambushes and First Strikes that kept the game very close, despite his forces melting away; the scenario VC demanded 9 flags, meaning it was going to be a bloodbath. Finally it was down to the final few flags and Pete made a  desperate lunge with his last leader/Heavy Cav combo. If it failed, he was going to be exposed and definitely would lose. However he blew away two more of my units for the win. I still prefer Ancients but based on my very limited experience I'd rate this above Napoleanics if only because its shorter and less prone to turtling/plinking away with artillery. It does seem to be rather Cavalry centric. 

WINGSPAN, 3 games.  I had never played before .  In short its an engine builder for when you want something shorter than TERRAFORMING MARS. I liked it better than I thought it would. Its long enough to let the engine build and do some cool stuff, but short enough it doesn't wear out its welcome. Cleverly, in later turns players have less actions, so the end game doesn't drag like in other tableau games. Theme integration is pretty good for this type of game. I can see why its so popular. Is it an awesome game I'd play at the drop of a hat ? No. I'd say I saw about as many games of this as TM in the Euro open gaming area during the course of the convention. 

NEMESIS, 2 games. Both were semi co-op, as in, lets screw over the other players if we can, mode. First game I was the Scout and had as my goal to escape the ship with one other player. One of the easier goals, made somewhat harder by there being no way to unlock the Escape pods other than waiting for someone to die. Heideman's Captain obliged, followed by Winslow's Mechanic being clawed to deck while lugging his 7 Items needing to fulfull his own quest. In the end me and Jeromey's Pilot got off leaving Michael's valiant soldier stuck on the wrong side of the ship from the remaining Escape pods. He blew up when the ship hit too many Fire markers. 

In the second game I was the Soldier , tasked by Weyland Yutani to discover an Alien carcass weakness and Send the Signal. The latter was accomplished by someone else who had the same objective . As for the former, given that I was the soldier , first thing was to create an Alien carcass. I created no less than FIVE. I was a killing machine. Equipped with an Extended mag, cries of LETS ROCK echoed throughout the ship as I piled the decks with alien carcasses, the first of which was the evil Queen herself .  Four more Adults fell to my withering fire. Alas I took two Serious Wounds in the process and had to burn precious time healing as well as lug one of the carcasses to the Lab, which took  good chunk of time.
Meanwhile Burdett's Captain, who didn't give a shit about making Noise, used a Key he found to escape in a Pod after completing his objective. Jeromey and Michael soon followed , leaving Derek's Scientist and my Solider. Derek, bruised by two Wounds, locked into a Hibernation pod and hoped for the best. My Soldier basically ran out of time, as the remaining pods were across the ship , blocked by too many intrruders, no ammo, and several Fires. Ungrateful bastards left me behind. Next time...

I've been reading the expansion content. Def going to try the new characters next go around.

ATLANTIC STORM, new edition. Six player game. I like the card and gameplay tweaks, but fucking LnL really screwed up by making the card backgrounds hard to distinguish Atlantic from Arctic. 

WAR OF THE RING . A random dr pitted my Fellowship against Michael's Shadow player. Game started slowly, a lot of Muster results and between Eyes placed in the Hunt and eyes rolled, not a ton of action. In fact, by game end I'd have every FP military unit play save some Northerns and a few Dwarves. With Gondor and Rohan fully mustered, he bypassed them and focused on the Elves first, knocking down the walls of Rivendell, then Lorien. This took time; despite the heavy Hunt box dice, I usually moved at least once per turn to keep the pressure up and he seemingly had Steve Wonder leading the Hunt as I got to Lorien with zero corruption.

Shortly thereafter Gandalf took one for the team. But I was able to resurrect him and crown Aragorn not long after . Several turns I had more dice than the Shadow to use given how many were in the Hunt Box. After beating up the Elves, he sent the Southrons to Dol Amroth via Corsairs and after a long siege took it. Lead by the Witch King, they turned north towards Minas Tirith, which was stacked to the gills . However before he got there he was set upon by the Army of the Dead and the Witch King bit the dust along with 3 units and 4 other Nazgul. By this time the Fellowship was inside Mordor with about 4 Corruption. A few dead Hobbits later and the survivors hucked the Ring into Mt Doom for the win as Gollum looked on. 

COMBAT COMMANDER : Michael and I squared off again,  in an action set in Norway 1940 where my lightly equipped Germans attack some Brits across the edge of a plateau ( Board 56 I think ) with Mud limiting movement of their best asset, a 10 FP Infantry gun. I got the gun into a good firing position but spent a lot of time getting my forces up on his lightly guarded flank to try to get those juicy doubled Exit points. A firefight in the center killed his unit carrying the annoying light mortar, but I couldn't dent his other units, which kept my flanking forces at bay til game end. 


TERRAFORMING MARS: we just used Prelude with an expansion map. I think this is the sweet spot as far as variety w/o adding too much overhead. I got Prelude cards that subtracted $6, but added $6 Production per turn plus a Titanium production. By mid game my $$ Production was up to like $21 . Coupled with the placement of Cities getting me bonuses, I was swimming in cash . I got two Milestones and funded a couple Awards to hold on for the win . 


HORRIFIED. This is a light co-op with some nice comic style artwork. Players work to defeat 3 randomly chosen monsters ( out of a possible 6 choices I think ) . Each monster has a unique way it must be defeated. Players must also prevent villagers from dying. Each time one dies, or a player gets hit by a Monster, the timer track clicks, too many and you all lose, a la Pandemic. Its quick, fun, and very easy to learn to play. This is by Prospero Hall, the same folks who did JAWS. Worth checking out Takes probably an hour  .


NEVSKY. Rob and I played , again I was the Teutons. We played the campaign of course. Having a better grasp of the rules I managed to not permanently lose a single lord, but did have several go home due to expired terms of service. The game was pretty close for most of the time; I was able to keep Alexandros out of reach to prevent the Rus from gaining VP . However the Black Sea trade kept the Rus leaders well funded. I did manage several coastal raids to keep him off balance. However by late game I was losing the VP count and could not make enough headway. In retrospect, I think my flaw was keeping too many lords in play - with an average of 5 activations per turn, if you have four/five lords you spend too much time taxing and feeding and not enough actually doing stuff. This game remains an interesting puzzle to solve. 

I'm pretty sure YOU have to send your own signal. It doesn't matter if someone else does it.

From the FAQ " but the objective gets fulfilled for
everyone, even though only one player gets the token ".

ah... I have never read the FAQ. Thanks