What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Andi Lennon wrote:

trif wrote:

Andi Lennon wrote: in addition to that my FLGS recently shut down (another victim of covid) and i managed to grab Journey:Wrath of Demons, Memoir 44 and The Boldest for ridiculously cheap.

Was that the Burwood Good Games?

It certainly was. Such a shame they closed down.

My mrs still gives me shit about the smell we encountered there more than 10 years ago (hang on, you're not going out gaming like that, are you, you had a shower this morning, etc etc); after that if I was going to pop in she waited outside, often sending me up the stairs with a choice comment.

(not intended as a good riddance, any store closure is a sad thing, and they were a decent one).

This book of learning you linked is fucking amazing.

Gary Sax wrote: This book of learning you linked is fucking amazing.

I downloaded a variety of useful aids and summaries for Magic Realm last spring, and printed off everything but The Book of Learning to help me prepare for my first game. I somehow managed to struggle through a full 28-turn six-player game by myself, without reference to The Book of Learning. But once I've gotten through The Book of Learning, my next game will go a lot smoother. I plan on putting together a few more cheatsheets for myself by copying segments of page scans that do a great job of explaining certain rules. For example, The Book of Learning does a great job in the first chapter of succinctly covering the Rest action, with respect to both wounds and fatigue and how the number of asterisks on a given counter will affect the process.

After hearing So Very Wrong About Games praising Cthulhu: Death May Die I went out and bought a used copy of seasons 1 and 2 plus the kickstarter box. Tried the game solo for the first time yesterday and so far it's pretty good.

The basic premise of the game is that you play the final battle in a game of Arkham Horror. You have to disrupt the ritual that awakens a GOO, and by doing it the god becomes vulnerable for a short time, which enables you to, basically, shoot Cthulhu in the face with a shotgun.

So I did that and the game literally hinged on the final dice roll. My last remaining investigator was almost dead from both wounds and insanity, but thanks to my marksman-skill I had a chance of blasting Cthulhu with, not a shotgun, but a Browning. I managed to roll precisely enough successes and it was a very fitting ending to a very cinematic game.

It looks great and I love how the tension ramps up as you play. The great old one is a true menace when it wakes up, and as you get more insane you improve your skills and roll more dice. It seems to have a very obvious story curve, and I love that.

However, I hope that another scenario (I began with story 2 from the core set since SVWAG advised against beginning with story 1) will see med using more of the boards. Also, a lot of the monsters never really mattered since they just stood in parts of the board I had no intention of visiting. Also, while the scenario system is pretty great (you mix a great old one with a story box which for instance creates a unique mythos deck), there wasn't all that much storytelling. I did find some cool stuff and had encounters with allies I could meet, but I feel much more connected with my allies in a game of Arkham Horror than in this.

Definitely going to play it more, though, and I think it's also simple enough for the big kids (8 and 11) to play along.

I was really intrigued by their review too, mads, thanks for reporting back.

I love Death May Die, one of the best releases of 2019.

Had my first game of Jaws with my two sons, aged 14. The one son who always likes to cause chaos chose to be Jaws, of course.

Act 1 went okay, with Jaws only playing one power token, and we were able to easily determine not only what token it was, but where he was. We managed to leverage that information to get the second barrel attached to him, but he did manage to eat 6 swimmers.

That put him in very good position in the second act, with 7 ability cards. We had enough gear to outfit each crew member with 4 pieces of equipment. Jaws made a grievous error in not deciding to play any ability cards until a few rounds in.... he had 7 of them to burn and had he just dug in, probably would have won. As it was, he had the boat about 45% sunk. Quint was floating in the water and a flare was attached to the shark. We had a decent chance at killing him if we rolled well, and we did in fact roll well, killing Jaws with a devastating machete attack.

We all liked it, I think a second game would go much better now that everyone is clear on the proceedings, and how the shark needs to behave. I think a REALLY clever shark player could really fuck with people.

Played another stupid (not in a bad way) game of Cthulhu: Death May Die. I was Elizabeth while my son (8) once again had Rasputin who had the ability to die. We were up against Hastur and had to realign some mirrors in a research station in order to capture moonlight and disrupt the ritual. I never really levelled up, but managed to move the moonbeams into the right space just as Hastur woke up. That meant we could harm him, so my son did just that.

He had focused on getting mad to level up, something that was even more important to him because he had the pathology which made him deal out insane amounts of damage every time he went insane. So the turn after Hastur woke up, he moved all the cultist to its space and then killed. them. all. It was wonderful. And once again the game hinged on the very last dice roll. If he was to roll just a single madness symbol he would die, but he still had some damage to deal out. He somehow managed and not only killed Hastur, but also lived to fight another day.

I have now tried three scenarios from the base game and one from The Unspeakable Box (Kickstarter extras), and they are pretty good. Also, the discovery cards actually do give you the sense of meeting people and finding stuff, just like more of the map has been in play in the latest games.

My screen time is way up lately because of work, so I've been trying to do more solo board gaming in my down time instead of playing computer games, which is my normal way of letting out the steam after the workday ends. I decided to clear off a spot on my desk for a game to sit permanently set up so that I can just play a turn here or there.

Recently, it's been Fields of Fire. I bought it in February ago in a fit of optimism, and apart from clipping the counters and a deflating read through the rulebook, it has sat unopened. Although there have been a LOT of rules searches in the books and on the internet —way, way more than I would have ever thought possible before starting—I've been finally getting the hang of it. I think if I were to sit down and play through an entire mission in one sitting it would feel pretty draining, but taken in chunks it's not so bad. And the stories that it tells are really engaging.

Still, I'm not sure if I'm actually having fun while I'm playing, though. It might be just barely on the wrong side of my tolerance threshold for games that feel like bookkeeping. I'm going to give it a few more missions to see for sure, but I don't see why some less demanding solo game might not be a better choice for what I'm looking for. I have Shadows of Malice on the way, so maybe that will fit the bill better?

I've spent the past few weeks attempting Fields of Fire also. It sat in my want list for years, then I finally nabbed a first edition copy w/second edition upgrade kit for cheap in a local auction last year. Then it sat on my shelf. Finally busted it out at the beginning of August and attempted the walkthroughs.

My god, those rules are a mess. There's definitely a coherent and potentially brilliant system in there. Somewhere. But it kind of seems like a whole lot of overhead and fiddliness to come up with some basic numbers and info that gets resolved with an elaborate, yet chaotic, RNG/card system and lots of chart lookups. As a simulator, pretty cool. As a game, I'm not sure what to think.

Part of me feels that some serious development effort could refine this into a grokable game. But I also know that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. Oh well, back on the shelf for now. I'll read the rules again and pull it back down in a month or two or for another go.

I don't find the core flow to be difficult, it's just some mechanisms that should have been shaved off (eg signals) that provide a lot of the bookkeeping etc.

I find the content in, say, mission 1 pretty simple.

Gary Sax wrote: I don't find the core flow to be difficult, it's just some mechanisms that should have been shaved off (eg signals) that provide a lot of the bookkeeping etc.

I find the content in, say, mission 1 pretty simple.

You're right on that point. The turn sequence makes sense, works well, and is easy to accomplish. The basic game of managing your commands and deciding how best to give orders is good.

My beef is more that the instructions for how sniper VOF counters work (e.g.) is spread across…three different sections of the rules. And there's no index, so anytime I wonder how something works—like how point blank combat on the same card w/r/t pre-existing VOF—I have to go searching on google. And it was only after I had played the entire first mission that I discovered that enemy PDF markers that shoot through an enemy card cause intervening PC markers to disappear. Maybe you could blame me for not reading the 8 paragraphs on enemy placement closely enough, but…

I wonder whether the rules would have been more manageable and better fitting if he had released a WW2 edition, and then worked on Vietnam and Korea as expansions. So many rules established in the WW2 missions are modified heavily by VC/Korea packages. Lots of exceptions to remember.

Played some Blackstone Fortress yesterday. It had been over a year since the last time I played, and that was with a group that included Delobius of F:AT. We were playing his set, so he did all the setup and shepherded us through the turns. So I had to carefully follow the setup rules yesterday and do a quick review of the rules to get up to speed. I took a break and watched Prometheus, then returned to play a few turns of the first combat.

Blackstone Fortress is a refined version of Silver Tower. The core mechanic of rolling 4d6 and spending those dice to take actions remains the same, along with 0 to 5 bonus dice for your whole team to use each turn. Various other mechanics are improvements. There are now grievous wounds that can't be healed during combat. Instead of target numbers for attack roles, you roll a specific type of polyhedral die depending on the quality of your attack, and the type of die can vary depending on range. Instead of a hero turn followed by an enemy turn, you shuffle a small deck of initiative cards to determine who goes next, and there are a couple of ways that heroes can try to manipulate the initiative order. Instead of giving enemies just a few random combat options, there is now a more nuanced table for each enemy type, with columns for specific tactical situations like 'hidden' or 'adjacent to a hero,' allowing for better combat.

The presentation of Blackstone Fortress is also great. The hex based map tiles are nearly as attractive as Silver Tower, and nicely convey a science-fiction feel. The dice colors also convey the setting a bit, with icy pastels and gray and white. The card layouts are very useful. The miniature sculpts are fantastic, to the point where I almost regret buying a cheap stripped (no minis) copy of the game on eBay. But if I had bought a full set with the minis, I still wouldn't have them painted yet, more than 2 years after getting the game.

I did run into one minor issue due to my stripped copy. I made tokens for all the characters and enemies, but my rogue trooper tokens failed to take into account that some are wielding different weapons and one is a sergeant. I will need to find out the weapons distribution for the troopers and then use a fine-point sharpie to write in abbreviations on the trooper tokens. For this first combat, I assumed that there was one sergeant and four troopers with blasters.

Shellhead, have you played any of the other popular non-GW dungeon crawlers from the past few years? Gloomhaven, Shadows of Brimstone, etc? I'm wondering how they all stack up in a sort of "I only want to get one" sort of way.

Had a wacky and long game of Catan last night where both Grain and Clay were in short supply simply by virtue of the numbers on the board.

My dad had the best Ore spot and the only good Clay spot (a 9, while 2 and 3 were the other clay spots). In the later part of the game, I was still only showing 6 points on the board and looked to be in dead last, while my parents shared a 10- grain spot, each with a city on it. Every chance I got a 7 or played a knight to block that 10-grain because I knew that was the bottleneck for their scoring.

My dad had longest road and was sitting on 9 points, while my mom had 8 and built a settlement on her last turn (when building two more roads would have actually won it for her, but she tends not to think too much about longest road). I managed to play my 3rd Knight, build a settlement, and reveal a development card worth a point for the win while my dad would have built a city and won on his following turn.

It was a weird and brutal game with lots of seemingly unplayable hands while we waited for clay and grain to come up and numerous 7's ruining us before we got to hand in our 4-ofs for the valuable resources. I had kind of a mediocre position with lots of sheep and a mildly useful grain port (I had grain on 4 and 11), but ultimately I just laid low long enough to not get the robber on me most of the game. Heh, Catan is still a "20 years later game" at least for us.