What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Cambyses wrote: 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.

I haven't played Gloomhaven or Shadows of Brimstone. I was invited to play Brimstone but it would have been a weekly commitment. None of my local gaming friends have Gloomhaven. From what I have heard, I suspect that the GW dungeon crawlers (Blackstone, Silver Tower, Hammerhal) are more visually appealing and easier to play, but lack the depth or stronger narrative of Gloomhaven or Brimstone.

I recently played two brand spanking new games that I would abridge all the way down to ‘delightful’ and, if pushed, I might even be inclined to also utter the word ‘charming’.

Santa Monica is a tiny game in an enormous box that my spouse describes as “not looking anything like a game”. A washed-out pastel view of seagulls soaring over a beachfront pier belies the tone of a surprisingly thinky puzzler – or not, as it’s the kind of game you can just toy around with casually as you build up a delightful beachfront scene and it responds equally well to either approach. Tourists begin to file in to town, represented by charming screenpainted meeple with cameras around their necks, a detail that adds a pseudo-nostalgic air of bygone days (or maybe the universal symbol for tourist hasn’t changed much despite the advent and acceleration of mobile technology). The locals, sporting hip sunglasses, also slouch around the beachfront, and the arrival and movement of these two breeds of wooden sun-lovers provides the interesting twist to the otherwise humdrum tableau building.

Depending on the ‘bonus tile’ mode that you are playing you will get some form of end of game penalty for milling crowds with nothing to do. They came to the beach to have fun after all, so you had better find some activities to keep them interested. Perhaps you will add a Volleyball game or a few deckchairs to your beach, or a handy information board, or a wide variety of other things. By shepherding visitors to these spots they find something to keep them occupied which both provide additional scoring opportunities as well as negating the endgame penalty. You also have a curiously blank looking VIP, we’ll graciously accept that their figurines are unpainted as they are trying to go about their day incognito, who will wander around and bestow their benevolence at every site that makes them happy. This is where the slight asymmetry comes into the game, just a tiny tease that ever so slightly skews the value of any given card into a different direction for each player.

Every time you place a card it is going to provide a varying mixture of scoring opportunities, an influx of new visitors, or allow you to move meeple around your burgeoning promenade. This can initially feel strongly like a puzzle and although there is outwardly some scope for min-maxing there is also a degree of chaos in what cards will be available to you on your next turn so best laid plans often dissipate into insubstantiality like sand running through your fingers. Equally gratifying results come from thinking about immediate needs rather than your longer-term plans.

It is however hideously overpriced – this is a twenty bucks game in a thirty bucks box and the unnecessarily oversized box is frustratingly wasteful – and the rules, despite being easy to read, miss out distinguishing the order of operation for a number of very obvious situations that can occur. We also refuse to use the term “sand dollar” for the awkwardly inserted faux currency that can be spent on taking special actions, preferring to refer to them as “sunny day” tokens which seems so much more thematic and optimistic. So an ice cream with flake for designer Josh Wood and a dropped cone sadly splattered on the pavement for publisher AEG.

Fort is a rehash of the mildly successful 2018 KickStarted game ‘SPQF’ that suffered from being a good game that looked butt-ugly and unwieldy, the reverse of typical crowd-funded fare. Leder Games have re-themed this to the delightful setting of kids larking about in the yard with their friends. No longer are you collecting anonymous resource cubes, you are grabbing slices of pizza and toys. No longer are cards suited to dry and tired concepts of soldiers and quarrymen, they are the far more fearsome squirtguns and gluesticks. The development process has also streamlined some of the jagged edges of the design which has simplified the process and flow of play; this is a very quick and easy game to pick up and play, and sensibly backloads complexity into interactions and decisions rather than the up front structure of the piece.

There is one particular thing in this design that was new to me and which I find fascinating and that is the concept of delayed discards. Every turn you will gather together a gang of friends to play with from your cards in hand, except there will always be someone on the periphery who is left out of the fun. Friends who don’t get to join in end up hanging around in your yard and they might end up enticed away to another player’s gang where they feel more wanted. This creates some really interesting challenges as you have to make sometimes tough decisions about what to do and who to include if you don’t want to risk losing a friend who you very much want to play with on a later turn.

There is also a ‘follow the leader’ mechanism where the activity that each player chooses to play can be copied by everyone else at the table. Mechanically you are discarding a card to do this which can also help with ensuring you keep kids occupied and not feeling left out in your yard. Interlocking pieces come together to create a depth of play and interaction that goes far beyond the joyful welcoming presentation, and this is before you even begin to build your titular fort or crew your treehouse lookout, let alone chase down the illustrious Macaroni sculpture of your dreams. The antagonistic side is quite mild, occasionally you will annoy someone by enticing away one of their friends and messing with their longer-term goals or by copying something clever they’ve just done for your own benefit, which creates a pleasant level of interaction without devolving into truly mean levels of treachery.

It’s all quite fun to play. You might even say that it’s completely charming.

I watched Rodney Smith's video on Fort a couple months ago and found it kind of intriguing for a couple reasons: 1. It's a Leder games thing, which means that it's probably pretty sound. 2. The lead designer is Grant Rodiek, who was also the lead on Cry Havoc, one of the better DoaMs that I've played in recent years. Unlike you, I can't say that I am particularly swayed by the theme. It's not off-putting, but maybe I'm just stodgy enough that I would have been more swayed by the Roman theme because Rome? I think someone in our now-dispersed group has it, though, so maybe I'll get a chance to try it in the next few months.

Yeah, I hear you. I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective of accessibility for the family always being an important part of the sales pitch for me. I can sell my kids on this the same way they fell in love with Root, but neither game would get a second look if they were steeped in historical empire-building. SPQF went with anthropomorphic critters in togas and a big old jumble of euro-glyphs but it didn't have anywhere close to the dangerously cute appeal of Kyle Ferrin's artwork and was still quite a stark presentation despite the occasional image of a Badger.

I would however go a bit further in this case by saying that the Yard where unused cards can be taken away from you makes far more sense this way - you didn't play with your friend so they went and had fun with someone else. They might still come back if they just end up hanging around somewhere else. It just doesn't scan as well if someone takes your Ballista or Blacksmith or whatever because it went unused. I think that SPQF, despite having the grounding of being a perfectly fine game, just wasn't that great at giving the scale and scope of a generational empire-builder and conceptually works better this way than going down a less flippant route of historicity.

Played through the new Aeons End Outcasts expedition mode. Will add more specifics later when I've got time, but it was good stuff. If you're a fan of AE there's lots to like. If you're not a fan, well... It's more AE yknow.

That Santa Monica game seems surreal to me, because I have recently been playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines on PC, and the early part of the game takes place entirely in Santa Monica. In fact, there is a mutilated body hanging from a lamppost on that pier at the start of the game. And since it's a game about vampires, Santa Monica is a moonlit city in a world of darkness that occasionally features big splashes of blood.

That made me chuckle. Wasn’t The Lost Boys set in Santa Monica but they had to change the name to Santa Clara in order to get the filming permit?

It was Santa Cruz i'm pretty sure (i have a friend who grew up there and remembers the filming).

Either way though, please tell me Santa Monica has a buff shirtless sax player with a pony tail.

Some awesome games on TTS over the past month.

First up and most excited about is...Pax Viking! Pax game with an actual board and rules that take about a dozen pages with no footnotes or massive glossary. Focus of the game is about 200 cards and each game will use about 30/40 of them. 4 victory conditions, first one to meet one and trigger the victory check wins. You have 4 actions to do on your turns and it always feels like you need more. I won't go into the rules much but after playing it with two groups, 3 of 6 people went out and ordered a copy. Game takes about 2 hours and is definitely not a "family" pax game, whatever that means, as it is marketed and has a number of plates spinning all the time. Only played it twice but am very excited to keep trying it.

Clash of Cultures has 2 recent plays with me. I didn't care for it much a while back when I first played it but I think most of that is from a bad teach and not understanding the mechanics of the game. Liked this one a lot now and have ordered the new edition. Some of the objectives are definitely easier to accomplish than others but I really like how most of them have an option for immediate military goals and should encourage players to get out there and fight each other. I'm still figuring out the tech trees and what combos well. So far I've mainly played peacefully which is not my normal style, maybe next game I'll have reason to try an autocracy and flood the board with units.

Dominant Species is excellent and really not that difficult to learn. Tried it a couple months back and was impressed how easy the rules were and non ambiguous. Upkeep on the board can be a burden at times and playtimes are pretty long with 5-6 players. Actually only played with 4/5 player count and I don't think the extra time in a 6p game would be worth it, kinda feel like this is a 4p game for me. That way its about 2-2.5 hours or so. The worker placement spots are so competitive. Dominance cards are pretty swingy and reward going early in the turn order. Hope Dominant Species: Marine makes it out this year.

Empyreal: Magic Trains is still a winner with me. That one I want 4-5 players with for the increased traffic on the board and competition for the rewards. I love the variety in the factions and rewards that force you to adjust your plans.

I think I'm done with Root. BGG stats are telling me I'm 25 games in and I'm not excited to continue playing it. The huge difference in the factions kept me busy learning the game for a while but now that I've gone through most of them 3-4 times the games play very similar. With everyone familiar with it its fine to take out and spend a couple hours on but isn't something I'd ever ask for again. 25 games seems like a lot though, looking over everything I've played not many games make it that far. Cthulhu Wars, Study in Emerald, Glory to Rome, Rising Sun, and Blood Rage have more plays. Not bad company, but all of those I still own whereas Root is going out the door soon ish. Plus I absolutely despise crafting cards for points, its such a not fun thing to do but essential for many factions.

Tried out a minis game on TTS, The Edge: Dawnfall. Tough to say about a game like that in a virtual format. First match was pretty uneven as I inadvertently chose a super fast faction and my opponent took a very slow faction. Second match was Chapter v. Demons and worked much better, took about 90 minutes. Felt like cards and placement and resources were as important as dice rolls so thats a plus. Definitely need to play it more.

Random list of other games I've played recently on TTS:
Barrage - strategy euro focused on long term planning. Great fun when you pull off big turns.
Luna - first Stefan Feld game. I liked it, but a bit light on theme or why some actions get points.
Brass Lancashire - prefer this and the greater competition over the variety of Birmingham.
Founders of Gloomhaven - kinda a mess of mechanics that is better done by other games.
Pax Transhumanity - maybe the most abstract of the Pax games so far but I want to keep playing it, on the shorter side of a Pax game.
Rurik: Dawn of Kiev - did not like this. Also a combo of other games with a strong euro feel to it that did nothing new or well.
Wildcatters - its good not great, kinda feels like Brass but more interconnected.
El Grande - card selection every round is so great but at this point no theme in a game is kinda a deal breaker for me to want to revisit much.

mc wrote: It was Santa Cruz i'm pretty sure (i have a friend who grew up there and remembers the filming).

Either way though, please tell me Santa Monica has a buff shirtless sax player with a pony tail.

Lost Boys was Santa Cruz, renamed to “Santa Carla” (not Santa Clara, that’s a real place). I lived there for about three years in my salad days. Great punk scene and lots of surfing but horrifically overpriced.

I saw Lost Boys at the indie theater’s “midnight matinee” and it was nuts. All the locals were out, screaming at the screen and generally whooping it up. “SAY THE DAMN LINE!” everyone screamed at gramps after the deus ex machina.

I really like that Barrage game. I am always a sucker for the pick up and deliver shared board state. Shipping someone else's water through the pipes that they expected to turn into major points is super satisfying.

The rules on tabletopia are a mess, but in person it has been quite fun.

We play a lot of Love Letter and Lovecraft Letter at home, so when I saw Infinity Gauntlet: A Love Letter Game in a FLGS I sort of needed to have it. Played several games the last couple of games and it's really good.

You play in teams with one player being Thanos and the others teaming up against him. Teams have their own decks, but somewhat the same powers. The big exception is that Thanos has infinity stones with extra powerful abilities. Both teams can win by defeating the other team's cards in combat (comparing values on the hand - much like using the baron in the standard game), but Thanos can also win by having all six infinity stones played or on their hand. Oh, and Thanos has a hand of two cards and as usual draws one before playing one.

Some of the basic effects are like Love Letter, but it's very different - much more so than Lovecraft Letter. A big difference is that no players are eliminated, and all in all it's a very tense filler game. Also works with just two players where the hero player will get two turns in a row to balance things out. If you like Love Letter, this is a great evolution of the core game.

Finished my that combat scene in Blackstone Fortress. It's definitely an improvement over Silver Tower, but is still a little too easy. And thanks to the size and cost of the miniatures, there are only 8 types of enemies in the base game, so I dread the repetition. There are expansions to Blackstone Fortress, but I don't have them, and they tend to be overpriced for my purposes due to the minis included.

Shellhead wrote: Finished my that combat scene in Blackstone Fortress. It's definitely an improvement over Silver Tower, but is still a little too easy. And thanks to the size and cost of the miniatures, there are only 8 types of enemies in the base game, so I dread the repetition. There are expansions to Blackstone Fortress, but I don't have them, and they tend to be overpriced for my purposes due to the minis included.

Checked around during my lunch break and found a stripped (no minis) Escalation expansion for Blackstone Fortress on eBay. New heroes, new enemies, cards, tokens, etc, for just $40. Will receive it next week. I will continue playing the current mission with just the base set, then add in the new content with a fresh start.

Played Jaws with my two sons today; the second time any of us has played. The role of Jaws switched to a different son this time. He was crafty enough to eat 7 swimmers, which is pretty good, granting us only 5 gear cards for phase 2.

Unfortunately, he somehow misunderstood the concept of adjacency at a crucial moment and didn't have a huge power play that he was intending. We started really pummeling the shark, and he actually rage quit. I will be surprised if he ever plays the game again. Getting either of them to play a board game at all is a fairly rare occurrence, and Jaws is super cheap, so it's not a tragedy either way.

Logically, it's fairly dumb that humans can attack from the water, but I totally get why they had to do that for balance purposes.

Having now played twice, but not yet as Jaws, I enjoy phase 1 more than phase 2. I do really want to try this with all full grown adults who know how to be more devious. Out-thinking teenagers is not hard.