What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Sagrilarus wrote: So it was up on my screen when I started up this morning and it's pretty clear at this point that the tuturial for the game is broken. It isn't slow, it just doesn't work at all.

Figuring out how to just start a game with two people is way more complicated than it should be, but I managed to finally finagle it. I kept getting errors that I had made a set of selections that don't work together. Pretty clunky.

I figured out that you can't move dice, only click on them, whether they're on the map or on the dashboard. You keep clicking on them until they eventually end up on the position you want them. Lesson learned. As best I can tell if you grab the wrong die you just start over from scratch.

Brake dice are supposedly placed automatically when needed, but I put a 2 in a corner requiring a 1 and the game just dinged me for doing it. Couldn't place a Red die. Don't know. I'll figure it out at some point. I've already invited friends to play so I guess I need to get this done.

Quicker this morning, but still not fast. What browser do you guys run in?

If you place a wrong die, you can click on the die until it disappears. Each click takes it to the next legal lane, or removes it once you click through all the legal lanes.

I run in Brave (Chrome variant) and have no issues.

I managed to play in hot-swap mode this morning, tonight it's telling me it's a premium feature.

Rallyman is friggin’ GREAT. Finally a race game that may be better than Speed Circuit. I bought it.

Weird couple of days of gaming...

Battlelore 2nd edition, Tiny Epic Zombies and Tiny Epic Defenders with my son.

Funkoverse...my daughter picked the T. Rex, Aggretsuko, and Batgirl. I went Kool Aid Man, Rick, and Harry Potter. What an unprecedented time to be alive.

Then Tikal with my son and daughter- they loved it. My son completely blew us away.

DCC on Roll20 last night got screwed up so me and a couple of longtime friends wound up on Brettspeielewelt. I didn’t even know it was still around. After an hour of futzing around with the antique interface. We wound up playing 3 games of San Juan.

Busted out some Fairy Tile...and just wrapped Wonder Woman where we lost by one point of damage.

Jungle Cruise this week, yay.

Tikal is an old favourite of mine; I've really been digging Mexica recently though. Great games.

I played Fresh Fish for the first time today. I knew pretty much what to expect. It has that Tigris & Euphrates thing - and actually I find it in Mexica as well - where it's like, okay, I know what the rules are, I know what I can do, but, WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO. And not in that "i can't tell what I'm supposed to do because of all the gizmos and I can't see the conversion chain". But in the "Where do I go?" way. Where if you ask "Where do I go?", even a seasoned player is going to shrug. Because there isn't a right answer; it's dependent on the players. All you can do is just plonk stuff down to get started and see where it goes.

Anyway the game is a little bit bonkers, I don't know if this ever hit the heights around here or not. You reserve plots of land to potentially build on - anywhere on the board. There are 4 industrial centres in the town - a Harbour, a Nuclear Power PLant, an Oil Refinery, and a Board Games Factory. You're reserving plots of land so that if you turn up and succesfully bid on an outlet for those things - a fishmonger, or a Nuclear Waste disposal facility, or anpetrol station, or a board game shop - you can try and get it as close to its depot as possible. And it has this terrifically whacko compulsory acquisition rule, whereby if placement causes there to be only one possible way for the store to be connected to its depot, then it gets filled in with road, no matter if anyone reserved it or not. BUt sometimes you just draw useless buildings, and you use those to screw people over and force those roads to be built in unhelpful ways. Where do I go? Who the hell knows. Plays quick, too.

Damn, you rolling us back to Fresh Fish!?!?!

I remember that game was a THING for a while but it was hard to get...it was Friedemann Friese’s first “hit”...the US version came along in the early 2000s and I finally got a hold of it and was like WTF...I -liked- it, but I felt like I never really understood it. It was always somewhat inscrutable.

Yeah I figured it's the kind of thing that people might have been interested in around here at some point. I don't know if I'll understand it myself, in the "how to win" sense, and that seems to be a common thread in discussions about it. For me, that's pretty great - not because I'm interested in unlocking the key and figuring out how to win, so much as, it means it's probably sort of chaotic, and hopefully a bit organic too, as in, drop a pebble in the pond, SOMETHING will happen, but it might not be what you expect. Couple that with simplicity of rules and play and I'm in a good place.

There was an updated version apparently with prettier components and less weird theming but I'm glad I got this one, the weirdness of trying to dump nuclear waste while selling boardgames near the fish market kind of fits with everything else.

I really like Fresh Fish, mostly because its "forced roads" is so unusual. I find it pretty easy to foresee the consequences of placing buildings in various spots so the game is an enjoyable puzzle for me. However, as you state, this is unusual and most of the people I played with were confused as to why a particular square HAD to be a road. Since this is the engine that drives the game, very few liked it.

It was never going to get played around here so I sold it on.

Today I taught my kids Nemesis. I have been wanting to have another go at it, especially with the new Kickstarter going. They enjoyed Lords of Hellas so I figured they were up to more Awaken Realms nonsense.

I was the Captain, one son was the Pilot, the other the Mechanic. I figured, oh good, we have the Mechanic, he can fix the ship up.

By the end of round 2, I was staring an adult alien in the face, and had 2 serious wounds (you get a third, you die). I managed to escape to an adjacent room and chuck a grenade behind me at the alien. It didn't die.

Nobody ever fixed a single thing on the ship.... it blew up.

They thought the game was fun and I fully expect they will ask for another tour aboard the Nemesis soon.

Two ways to play Nemesis:
1. Keep the ship intact, do your missions, try and win.
2. Tool up until the Intruders arrive and then fight them until one side is wiped out (there is usually only one side this happens to).



I'm close to being banned from playing the Soldier as my infamous dice rolls totally waste his weapons, ammo and abilities. In our first game, a co-op, I died early after failing to kill a larvae and was carried around by the Scientist (so he could revive me later) who was murdering anything in front of him ... until the ship blew up due to fire.

I'm up to chapter 7 in Aeons End Legacy , which is really good. Some friends and I played the first couple chapters 4p in the before times, and I've played 3-6 4 handed solo. I don't usually like playing that many hands solo, but that's how we started so whatever. It's more Aeons End, which is a game I love. It has fun legacy stuff, where you sticker enemy cards and they eventually evolve into stronger cards, and you sticker up your mages as they become more powerful. The story is whatever, but no one anywhere is playing AE for it's deep lore and story. I think it would be a really fun intro to AE, as is rolls out the mechanics gradually. You would need to buy another box afterwards so you could have some mages to play with that aren't your custom mages which is unfortunate for anyone coming in fresh, but aside from that I think it's a really great game. I've read some people having issues with the Evolve mechanic, which can punish you more the worse you're doing, but it hasn't played it that way for me.

With most of my friends comfortable using Tabletop Simulator I'm playing a lot more games now. Last month I logged about 30 games total, the shortest a 4p Dune game and longest was Maria.

Tried Dune out with 4 and 5 players for a few games. The 4p doesn't work great if you don't have the right mix of factions and if people aren't aware that whoever goes last turn 1 has a decent shot at a win automatically. I'd say 50% of my 4p Dune games were a success so far, with the best combo being Atriedes/Harkonen/Fremen/Emperor and a Emperor/Guild/Fremen/BG game being fun too. Using either Atriedes or Harkonen without the other didn't feel right and the proximity of their strongholds ended the game very early both times. I'm starting to change my belief in the advanced rules vs. basic rules too. Advanced has all kinds of flavor with Bene Gesserit co-existing as advisors, Spacing Guild taking their turn at any time, Fremen surviving storms, etc. But it has caused so many hours of arguments and clarifications and win-blocking that its tough to endorse it anymore. I've been playing basic rule 4p/5p games now for a bit and am enjoying how straightforward it is without any ambiguities. And the GF9 rules do not help; they have at several times given completely contradictory answers on how some specific parts of the advanced game work and make it impossible to teach the game to someone outside of my Dune group who hasn't played with us extensively and knows our house rules/rule interpretations.

Had an excellent game of Pax Pamir where the winner betrayed their own card to jump loyalty and end the game with second most influence to eke out a win by a couple points. Pamir is great once you can read the board state, but that takes a while.

Cosmic Frog has been awesome with every play on TTS and new players love it too. The mod is excellent and the game doesn't stick around longer than it needs to. Great mix of luck and tactically using the random abilities of your frog and opportunistically taking advantage of other players when they are weak.

I created a mod for TTS for the game Mezo that came out late last year, a Clowdus game. Will likely upload it soon. I was lukewarm on Mezo at the start but the more I play it the more I like it. As an area majority game there is no buildup or waiting for cool things to happen and thats great, every turn resolves a conflict with a strange mix of action selection and auction with variable player powers that all players are invested in. It can run long as always with AP players.

Barrage and Brass Birmingham dominate my euro plays. Barrage has a really good mod but the mods for Brass Birmingham were all removed a while ago so only people with saved files can access them. I'm surprised I like Barrage as much as I do but its a really rewarding mix of worker placement, area control, and engine building. Some games you may be more incentivized to go for short term rewards and score things quicker while other games maybe you build for the first 2 rounds and then go for points. The theme really works for me here unlike every other heavy euro I've tried with trash themes and low interaction (looking at you Terra Mystica).

Cthulhu Wars has an excellent mod with everything imaginable as an option. Its less and less a game I love to play though, I don't feel like I'm learning anything new or seeing different strategies. And playing online misses out on the massive minis.

Root is great but still remains a huge learning curve game. As someone who has played all of the factions at least 3/4 times each its hard for me to not tell other players new to a faction how to play and why the move they just made was awful. I can either tell them, or show them by taking advantage of the mistake and knocking them out for a few turns and guaranteeing they lose. Thats pretty rough with people who have played the game enough to know the general rules but don't know the specifics of their faction.

TTS really is excellent and whenever we are able to play games again in person I don't anticipate abandoning games on TTS. Some games that are heavy on negotiation or have cool shiny things in them are better in person, like Dune and Cthulhu Wars. But other games are just as fun in a virtual setting, like Pamir/Root/Barrage/Study in Emerald/Brass.

I've been checked out of TTS the last week or two for work reasons but I hope to continue playing when things go back to normal. There's shit I can't play with my local players and playing with people I've known online forever has been great. I am sorry for ghosting on some people I'd been hoping to plan something with (SORRY SAN IL DEFANSO).

Scott_F wrote: Had an excellent game of Pax Pamir where the winner betrayed their own card to jump loyalty and end the game with second most influence to eke out a win by a couple points. Pamir is great once you can read the board state, but that takes a while.

I also played a game of Pax Pamir, teaching two of my friends. Both of them were Afghan and I was British. Not a single Russian patriot card came out until after the 3rd Dominance card was resolved. Anyway, at one point the Conflict Fatigue event was out that only required 2 more blocks for Dominance, which kicked off an army building race where I had Nation Building that doubled the blocks I built, and one of the other guys had a card that gave an extra block when building, so both our coalitions ended up with all 12 blocks on the board, and by the end, no roads to move them and fight, so we knew the dominance check was going to be unsuccessful, so then we switched our race to cylinders. I came in last, but it was still fun. And I suspect an unusual board state due to our noobness.

IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD. Astonishingly, my wife actually likes it. Not enough to play it every day but she thinks it’s fun and she gets the strategy of starting with cheap stuff that let you build more expensive stuff.

I covet thy Maria.

Got Rallyman GT in with my buddies on boardgamearena.com and we had a great time in a Zoom session at the same time. The game is kinda strange and wonky, but it works and we had fun being in each others' way. As best I can tell the gears don't mean much of anything, at least not anything like actual gears, but that's ok.