What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

It's been a good few weeks of gaming. I roped my younger brother into an existing online group of friends to get him started on Pax Porfiriana, and 4 of us knocked out a couple of highly entertaining games on Yucata.

I played some Wiz-War and Space Base with my kids. The pastor at our church lives close by and is a fisherman and a gamer, so we're good friends--he came over this week and I taught him Star Wars: Rebellion.

On other weeknights a friend in Florida and I have been playing Watergate live on VASSAL. In PBEM world, on the VASSAL Discord channel we wrapped a full 5 turn game of Here I Stand this week after 70 days of play, which is a cracking pace compared to any ACTS game I ever participated in. I'm also embroiled in a Virgin Queen game on that channel that is in the midst of Turn 5 and we're only on day 59.

JoelCFC25 wrote: On other weeknights a friend in Florida and I have been playing Watergate live on VASSAL. In PBEM world, on the VASSAL Discord channel we wrapped a full 5 turn game of Here I Stand this week after 70 days of play, which is a cracking pace compared to any ACTS game I ever participated in. I'm also embroiled in a Virgin Queen game on that channel that is in the midst of Turn 5 and we're only on day 59.

Who won? Was it close?

England ran out winners in HIS with a Turn 5 Iberian adventure. After being rebuffed at Navarre by Charles V, they shifted gears and landed in Seville, bagging it with Treachery! that he'd been holding since Turn 2. I still had a slim chance to win as France by also getting to 25 if Roberval could discover the Amazon (courtesy of Turn 4 score edge as tiebreaker), but Chancellor beat me to it and England got to 27. Papacy finished with 24, France with 23.

The VQ game is in need of a joint effort to drag back England, who entered Turn 5 on 23 and seems almost certain to hit 25. I strongly suspect they have a way to resolve Scotland's status and they already have Drake out pirating. About the only thing I can do as France is try to Gain Intel and run him out of cards, as I have Protestantism bottled up in France as much as possible. They have too big of a navy and a card edge for me to have contemplated invasion. Spain isn't really helping as they haven't lifted a finger to convert in England or place Jesuits, and the Armada is for some reason sitting in.....Taranto, Italy.

Had a nice game of Carcassonne with my wife. She beat me by six points or so only after scoring a 42-point city and literally stealing the last piece from my hands to connect her last farmer to tie on a 30-point farm.

I know it was once a part of the holy trinity of gateway games with Catan and Ticket to Ride, but it’s still under appreciated. It’s great as a casual family game that’s little more than a puzzle with points, or it can be the most cutthroat, bloody game this side of Modern Art with blocking and stealing. It’s a unicorn.

Fucking ruthless game.

Last night we attempted a 5 person game of Nemesis via TTS. Technically, we succeeded. I will start by saying that the TTS implementation is very good. You get access to everything.

We were hindered by the following: a few TTS newcomers, and the AP player in my group showed up. Every one of his turns took longer than it should have. I also suspect he cheated by not discarding his second secret objective when he was supposed to.

But... things were going pretty well aboard the Nemesis. I was the Scout, and I dutifully checked the ship's coordinates. We were headed to Mars, so I corrected that and pointed us to Earth. Someone else checked all of the engines. Every one was reported as being broken. Distrust started flying. One person claimed to have fixed two of the engines. Another person then very suspiciously headed to "check" on one of the engines that was supposedly now working.

The AP player headed to the front and changed the damn ship coordinates. I publicly called him out as trying to kill everyone, and he tried to say I was lying but no one believed him.

One person made it to an escape pod but stupidly didn't take off. While he waited, an intruder eviscerated him. Ironically, his death unlocked all of the other pods, giving us a chance. It was getting late. One player hibernated, despite me telling him he would be a dead man.

The mechanic used the technical corridors to try to get to an escape pod. He got jumped by an intruder and died soon after. Now it was down to me, and the AP player. I was at the brink of death, he was feeling fine and armed to the teeth.

We both sat at the escape pod, with an intruder keeping us from boarding. The AP player took advantage of a gamey rule that says if an intruder is in a room with multiple occupants, the occupant with the least # of cards is attacked. He kept passing while I got chewed up. After I was dead, he calmly killed the intruder and escaped. It was the LAST turn, he was the only survivor, and the game took FIVE HOURS AND 40 MINUTES.

I would say in real life this would have been no more than 3 hours.

I was SO close to victory. I never win this game, and I really thought I might get it this time. Oh well.... it really is a fun game. This one makes memorable events.

In an odd coincidence, I always forget to invite AP players when I host boardgames.

Yeah... I tried that. Unfortunately one of the other players works with him.

My four-year-old beat my wife and me in Loopin’ Chewie last night. How many times could Chewie float right over his line of stormtroopers and not tap a single one?

You need to analyze your tapping strategy and work the angles, man. You can't just expect to hammer the button and win, that is a highly sophisticated game that demands a lot out of you if you want to reach peak skill levels.

I really just kind of want to play card games right now. I ordered the Crew from the UK but it's en route. Taught the kids how to play Skull King and they are turning into trick-taking monsters. My daughter is preternaturally good at it and is sharking us like every game. River still hasn't gotten the hang of trick bidding...he's way too aggressive/optimistic and hasn't learned to properly evaluate his hand. So still a few years off from Tichu, I think.

Silver is really fun. It's kind of a memory game, sort of a nerded up version of the classic card game Golf. It has a werewolf theme, but the werewolves are just numbers on a card (Scarlett- "this really doesn't have anything to do with werewolves"). We got the first two sets and they are seeing daily play.

Citadels has been a hit and it works pretty well for 3, which I seem to remember not being the case before. But whatever, we are enjoying it. I was thinking there was no need to upgrade from the Silver Line 2006 edition to the newer one but then Scarlett pointed out that there are no girls and no POC on the cards. WTF. Wasn't that long ago that nobody noticed that kind of exclusion in hobby games. So I think we'll get the updated version that does have non-white, non-male characters.

Bohnanza has been brought out a couple of times. Timeless classic. I forget that I have a couple of expansions that I have never even punched. What's the point. I think it's High Bohn and Bohnaparte. that we have, but who needs 'em.

Really digging Burgle Bros. too...such a fun design and it looks amazing with superior graphic design. It's also in a small box. I am just about ready to get rid of anything that is in a box bigger than the standard square and I am actively not buying things in big boxes any more. So it's nice to have a robust, full game in such a little package. This is also why I went to the Tiny Epic games.

Played a game of Dominion with two newbies, too. Smithy, Festival and Chapel were all in the kingdom, so I could have finished the game in ten minutes. Doesn’t seem terribly fun for the new guys, though, especially as they both went the classic beginner strategy of “buy a card or two of everything.” Ended up winning by three points by Remodeling Curses and Coppers into Estates and Remodels into Duchies. A single Scout was my key late game buy as it drew four Estates to clear the way for my winning hand.

Michael Barnes wrote: Bohnanza has been brought out a couple of times. Timeless classic. I forget that I have a couple of expansions that I have never even punched. What's the point. I think it's High Bohn and Bohnaparte. that we have, but who needs 'em.

High Bohn actually has some pretty good stuff in it. The Orders cards start at the back of your hand and work their way forward until they're discarded then you draw a new one to the back. There is no downside to having them as they just give a bonus point if you can fulfill the order and get completely ignored otherwise. The Buildings you buy with your points and are always worth at least that number of points so you don't lose anything buying them. They do give neat effects like you get a free bean field but only for one type of bean, etc. Still the same game just with some new ways to score points. Never played Bohnaparte or used any of the other mini-expansions in High Bohn.

Solo'd another 4 character game of NEMESIS. The objectives were get to Earth, Bring a body to Lab, Kill the Queen, Destroy the Nest. The last two had an alternate condition of destroy the ship, but that would nullify the getting to Earth part, so killing shit was the order of the day.

Early on it seemed every other room Exploration token resulted in the door closing behind the character. Good news is Fires and Malfunctions were relatively few and far between. Item counts were also pretty low, so every discovered room was picked clean pretty fast. A third of the way in, the Captain ran out of cards then got attacked by a Larva. The following turn, the dreaded Occlusion event resulted in his death, as the Surgery Room was on the other side of the ship from his location.

The Scout and Mechanic soon got Contamination cards gumming up their decks as well. Only the Soldier remained unharmed, other than some Slime dripping off his uniform. While the Mechanic got two engines working, the Scout grabbed the corpse to drag into the Lab. After fixing the engines, the Mechanic made an impromptu incendiary device and left it behind in the Nest, muttering "eat that you little fuckers" as he moved out to the sound of burning alien eggs. As a bonus, two wandering Adult intruders stumbled into the inferno and got cooked as well.

At this point the turn clock was winding down. The Contamination cards of the two characters ( Mechanic had two of them ) slowed down their actions . Finally the Queen came out and she was a tough out - the Soldier emptied the better part of three clips into her before she went down with 12 damage. The Scout meanwhile had gotten the corpse to the Lab, but the path between that and the Hibernation room was blocked by an Intruder and she , like the other two characters, was out of Ammo. On the second to last turn, the Mechanic made it into Hibernation. On the last turn, the Soldier had exactly enough cards to move in then try, but his Noise roll caused an Adult to show up, blocking both him and the Scout from entering stasis. As the ship accelerated to light speed and vaporized the two crew outside the pods, they yelled to the sleeping Mechanic to tell Earth what had happened.

Months later, the ship arrives at Earth. As the Mechanics pod opens, the medics notice a rippling effect o his chest...then it explodes ( one of his two Contamination cards was Infected ).

Game over man !

God I like this game. Need to try the other alien races as well as the expansion characters.

Uncharacteristically, it's been all GW at my place recently.

I've been kicking it old-school with some OG Dungeonquest 85 (review submitted) and Warhammer Quest 95 (review to follow). Please don't ask what i paid for these things- my buyers remorse is duelling with my collectors pride and it's a pitched battle.

Also been getting in more sessions of Warcry and it grows on me with every game. Never thought i'd be a warhammer guy but the skirmish level stuff is quite manageable and really fun.

Warcry is really, really great. It is easily the best set of miniatures rules GW has ever produced. It’s so smart, so smooth, so exciting.

Collecting GW will kill you. I did for about 4 years and I just quit cold turkey last summer. Warcry is actually what did me in. I started getting everything released for it and then the cost of it all finally hit me. Shelves and shelves of stuff. Tons of unpainted models. $150 kits not even built. So I let most of it go and it was like the sun coming out. I love Warhammer but I don’t have to own it I loved collecting it, building it, painting it, playing with it...but I felt like I wanted to get out from under it.

So beware!