What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

We finally got my spouse to play WINGSPAN and they totally dug it, as suspected. They also posted an 86 on their first game, so I think learning the rules is a doable thing for non-hobbyists, as it were.

My youngest and I played ROBINSON CRUSOE, using Friday and Dog because we’re wimps and this game is hella hard. We won handily, and it makes me think about the other times I have played and just been shellacked by this thing. You can miss a couple times and really struggle. He loved it though, wanted to play again right away.

hotseatgames wrote: 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 agree with the second statement because of the first. I think Phase 1 is a better game because it's actually absent the chrome that comes with the various special abilities/weapons in Phase 2. That's a weird thing for me to say, because normally I'm a huge fan of chrome for the variety and curveballs that it introduces and that was clearly the intent here. I think I might be stuck on the logic problem, given that the absolute last thing that any of them wanted to do in the film was go into the water, where they were basically helpless against the man-eating monster, but here it's still a viable approach because, like you say, it was probably a balance problem.

This kind of goes back to my initial reluctance when I saw the announcement for the game, in that I felt it was going to be difficult to properly represent the story of an excellent film in board game terms. I still think that, despite enjoying the game and recognizing its quality.

2nd and 3rd games of ANGOLA recently. (3rd game came up because the 2nd wrapped up halfway through the evening. "Should we just change sides and restart?" "YES!") FAPLA/MPLA factions have won all 3 of our games, so we're not figuring out successful FNLA play mostly, I think, since we've had some interesting successes by UNITA. I think we've mostly got rules right but there's 1 or 2 minor things I know we've screwed up at least once. The game certainly isn't complicated, but does have maybe a fair amount of flavor, sorry I mean rules exceptions.

Anyway, this game is so great, have the ideas in ANGOLA been ripped off in other good games? They should be... it's not like we are swimming in truly excellent multiplayer wargames. Instead we are subjected to COIN garbage over and over?!

I think our game night will go back on the shelf soon due to covid risk tolerance, so I am looking forward to revisiting this next year.

FNLA : build up Death Star stack, take Cabinda. Don’t attack towards Cabinda Turn 1. Take all your reinforcements, trade in inf for Brigades, then attack. You have the biggest force pool and your reinforcement units start much nearer the action than UNITA.

Jackwraith wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: 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 agree with the second statement because of the first. I think Phase 1 is a better game because it's actually absent the chrome that comes with the various special abilities/weapons in Phase 2. That's a weird thing for me to say, because normally I'm a huge fan of chrome for the variety and curveballs that it introduces and that was clearly the intent here. I think I might be stuck on the logic problem, given that the absolute last thing that any of them wanted to do in the film was go into the water, where they were basically helpless against the man-eating monster, but here it's still a viable approach because, like you say, it was probably a balance problem.

This kind of goes back to my initial reluctance when I saw the announcement for the game, in that I felt it was going to be difficult to properly represent the story of an excellent film in board game terms. I still think that, despite enjoying the game and recognizing its quality.

It's been a few months since I've had Jaws out but, if I recall, we played it that you could do one attack once you hit the water (imagining a panic firing of a harpoon, etc) but then you HAD to make your way back into the boat. Not sure if that was a rule or just the way we thought it should play out.

The rules make no distinction regarding humans attacking from solid... boat.

As detailed elsewhere, I played Spirit Island and Oath today and just had such a good fucking time. I love good gaming with good people so much, just a great day honestly.

A friend's of mine came over today and I did my first in person gaming in... 7 months I guess? Man I can't even tell you how much I have missed in person gaming. I don't know how often I'll feel up to meeting up in person through the winter, but I needed some mental health and I know this guy has been being conscientious so.

Anyway we played through the entire Rise of Red Skull campaign box of Marvel Champions and it was a fucking blast. 5 games, 5 wins, took about 6 hours all told. I'm going to post significantly more detailed impressions in the Champions thread, but the short of it was all 5 villains were really fun and felt different. The campaign mechanics we light but were just enough to feel impactful and fun.

My brother and sister in law are buying an RV and hitting the road for the foreseeable future... so he's sending me his copy of High Frontier 3rd edition with EVERYTHING. I told him he could probably get some real money for it but he said 4th edition has driven the prices down.

Join your fellow toads, buddy.

My 9yo made a scenario for ROBINSON CRUSOE and I think I can retire now as the world's great board gamer dad, thanks, it's been great.

It's MINECRAFT themed (of course), and you have to build, explore, hunt, and gather 6 times with the ? cards automatically occurring. There are a certain set of items available, a zombie fight (from the discovery tokens) gives you food, &c. It's pretty amazing. We have too much wood, but that might be on theme, actually. I think we should compel a fight every night unless the palisade is level 2 or something to fix that part. Anyway, it's pretty great.

We played WINGSPAN during the fast, I am fare-to-middling now that my spouse is playing and she scores about 85 a game. She got 90 points in one game. That is a LOT. I'm over here wishing worms were fish and out of cards and she's got 10 birds, 5 cards, and needs coin rolls to track all her food. Sigh.

Minecraft is a great fit for Robinson Crusoe's mechanics.

With the move mostly done, I finally got my regular 2-player friend over to the new place. (He's kind of a recluse and isn't a COVID concern, thankfully.) But he'd just come from a late night at work, so we stuck to some shorter stuff. First was 13 Days. For those that aren't familiar, it's basically Twilight Struggle-lite. It uses many similar mechanics, but is over in three rounds. But the shorter length doesn't make the choice of card play any less agonizing, since you can easily have a handful of cards with events that wreck your strategy and/or enable your opponent to advance theirs. Our first game ended in a quick MAD (that's Mutual Assured Destruction for you young'uns,) so we played a second that went the full three rounds. I thought I was going to eke it out with a 1- or 2-point Prestige win, but I'd been dumping Soviet cards into the Aftermath stack that would have ruined me and he ended up with the most cubes in the stack, which gave him 2 points, bringing us to a tie... and he had the Personal Letter. Victory for the godless communists.

Then we shifted to Blue Moon. It had been forever since either of us had played, which is a shame, since it's still one of Knizia's best ever. But, uh, abandoning all humility for a moment here: I'm really good at Blue Moon. I spent many hours playing with a neo-tournament group and had some long discussions with Chris Dearlove (one of the lead playtesters) on BGG, so I know all of the decks backwards and forwards. (My girlfriend, who loves Knizias, won't play with me.)

First game was me as Hoax vs Aqua. The latter is a timing deck and you need to know when to lower the hammer, which means having the experience to know. My opponent doesn't have that experience. I won four straight fights, sticking mostly to Earth, and was in control the whole time. So, I switched to what a lot of people think is one of the more difficult decks: Khind vs his Terrah. But I know how to get the kids to work with me. He had 8 Earth staring at me at one point, all of which added up to 0 with three of the Top gang in play. Again, it was a straight line from game start to my pulling the mythical fourth dragon. Finally, I stuck with the "difficult" decks and played Mimix vs his Flit. He won our first fight with six cards down, taking two dragons. But I won the next four, including a six-card of my own. The Shamans can be used at somewhat later stages of a fight against Flit because the birdmen typically have such low strengths. That let me take advantage of their abilities more often than I would have against decks like Vulca. I got to play double Guardian twice (10 Earth, then 10 Fire...) and then Chosen of Nature (Leadership that makes us both shuffle our discard piles into our decks.) As a result, when I won the last fight, I had all four Shamans in hand, which meant I was probably going to retreat, but he couldn't match my last play. I really love that game.

I've mostly been playing Machina Arcana to playtest the new scenarios but I've also been on a big FEROX kick lately. Probably my favourite 2 player game right now, although my partner (who is less disposed to games about cannibalism) and I also enjoyed a few rounds of CAIRN- which is one of the rare abstracts in my collection. It's tight, focussed and engrossing and over quickly so plenty of room for rematches of an evening. I'm also wondering if anyone here has played ESCHATON or NEXUS INFERNUM by Archon Games? The theme of both are positively screaming to me but with postage being what it is right now it's going to run me a fortune to get them down here.

I thought Eschaton was decent but unspectacular. It had some neat ideas but was a little plodding and felt very much like a deck builder, which isn't really my thing.

Andi Lennon wrote: I also enjoyed a few rounds of CAIRN- which is one of the rare abstracts in my collection. It's tight, focussed and engrossing and over quickly so plenty of room for rematches of an evening.

Hah! I was wondering if any other Aussies had sourced a copy of this game. I assume you bought direct from Matagot? Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed it, I'm hoping it goes over as well with my inmates. Just need to finish painting these gorgeous Shaman miniatures...