What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

For the first time in over a year, I got to play Lords of Hellas again. It was a 3 player game (my two sons and I). Everyone knew the game, just needed a quick rules refresher.

Because there are 4 ways to win this game, I have kept a log of every time it's been played, who won, and how. This was the 9th game ever, and 7 of those have been won by controlling two lands. The other two were monster killing victories.

This game started out with each son fairly quickly claiming one land. I immediately started questing. I eventually built up enough stats and killed a monster. Using the glory token from that kill, I ended up claiming my first land.

I formulated a plan for a monster killing win, but unfortunately, the round before I could do it, one son managed to claim two lands for the win. It was a close, engaging game that left one son crowing about his victory and the other son practically rage quitting. Such a cool, fun game. I love how it gives you options, and you can pivot if necessary, to a degree.

That's pretty wild. I haven't taken notes, but in about 15 plays I'd guess our plays roughly break down to 40% monument victories, 25% two lands, 25% monster hunting, and 10% temples.

We saw no temple victories until the latter half of our plays.

We see so many monument victories because it feels like the hail mary move. If you see your position slipping you can hold a monument and rush the end game by repeatedly building it. It's such an easy way to force the ending that it's taken often.

Interesting seeing other people's experiences.

Yeah, that's interesting, since the common thought elsewhere on the Interwebs seems to be that killing monsters is the "sure" way to victory. I think SU&SD said something similar when they looked at it. Sounds like a balanced game...

I would not be surprised if there is a “common” victory method for each player count.

edit- Another interesting note is that I almost never take the "build monument" action because someone always does it before me. Perhaps not inconsequentially, I have never won this game.

The big thing about build monument is that you gain priests for each temple you control. That's huge and a big part of our play. Deploying priests to Hermes for instance can be decisive due to the big movement.

I think monster hunting is often viewed as the easiest because there's no direct aggressive counter. The only ways to counter it is to kill the monster first (leading you to pursue the same win condition), or build monuments so you can roll the monster die and move them away from players wanting to kill them. This is another benefit you're likely missing Mark by never building monument as your special action.

What happens in our game is that if someone has killed one monster and is moving towards a second one, someone will invariably push the timer along by rushing a monument.

As that is occurring someone will start to rush temple control or two lands knowing the clock is winding down.

Monster hunters still win sometimes but if someone is rushing monuments then they are also trying to spread monsters out to make the monster hunter player take longer.

Different player counts may likely matter. I've played about 75% of my games at four and the rest at three. You have to be on your toes at three player because the map is less crowded and there's fewer players to beat down a leader.

Oh to have gaming again - been 11 months since our last LoH game and even then we've only squeezed 5 games in since I've owned it, too many other great games to squeeze in (campaign games did take a lot of our sessions in 2019/2020), with wins coming from; Monsters x2, Lands x2, Temples x1.
It is a great game for competitive gaming (we have a LOT of great co-op games so squeezing competitive games in is also hard) and I need to implement some of the expansion bits in.

Biggest problem is new kickstarters are starting to arrive (Waste Knights already and Tainted Grail expected) so when I'm finally allowed people to visit me (March ?) there will be games queued up ... and queueing up as more arrive during the year ... .

Thanks to the generosity of Gary Sax my wife and I are a few games into Wingspan. It's basically Terraforming Mars without the board. IE it's set up to be an engine building card game, but it's entirely beholden to luck of the draw whether you can actually get an engine going or if you just sort of play cards that are good but have no synergy and sputter along. It does have a few big leg ups over TM, in that it's got really nice bird art and it's short and snappy vs TM's turgid neverending slog. As a 45 minute light 2p game it's nice and pleasant, and I'm happy to play it, but nothing I would rave over or clamor to play over other games yknow.

Ah_Pook wrote: As a 45 minute light 2p game it's nice and pleasant, and I'm happy to play it, but nothing I would rave over or clamor to play over other games yknow.

This could be its tagline from most of the people I've known who've played it, including me.

Killing monsters is fun in LOH. So, inevitably, the first few games skew toward monster kill wins. And if a group stops playing after a few games, they will say it skews toward that. It's when you get a few games under your belt that the nuances Charlie talks about take hold. At least that is my experience.
Won my first game of Wingspan last night. Fully stand behind my review, I did nothing different than my previous plays, my luck of the draw just synergized better this time. I'll take TM over it most days using 1.) Prelude and 2.) First player advances either temp, oxygen or ocean every generation but gets no reward for it.

This weekend we played:
ACQUIRE (four player): Swear to God, I am going to make "DO NOT GET CASH POOR IN ACQUIRE" t-shirts. Fucking best sellers; I will be a several-hundredaire. In game, I crushed the weak. My son was so snotty during this one, wow! He lost by $10k, did not think about the endgame.

AGRICOLA (4p): My wife just deMOLISHed us. It was a laugher. She is a savant. I think it was 42 to 28 to less than that. I have too many memories of past losses, so I panic buy Cattle or Vegetables and meanwhile there will never be Wood again.

BABEL (2p): One of the old 2p classic Euros. Pretty mean, and rewards being clever. Rosenberg design using a pasted on ancient civilizations theme, but the game play is really swingy and interesting.

SCHOTTEN-TOTTEN (2p): Knizia, right? Fun little area control game. Game 1 came down to me playing a 2 instead of a 4 and costing myself the game, because I needed the 4 as evidence I couldn't lose. I just got lucky and steamrolled in Game 2. I should note I don't actually own this game, it's played out of a RAGE deck, a bad WHIST game they used to sell at Target. It has 6 suits of 0-16, with extra cards. You can make so many games with this.

My daughter discovered Dominion the other day, and has dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of online Dominion. Since it had literally been years since I've played it, there were some new cards. But since we played "Base Games Only", all the new cards are similar to the old ones.

The most fun I had was showing her what the Chapel was for. "Why are you throwing your points away?" "I'm going to show you why in a minute". Culling FTW.

My favorite Dominion strategy is Turbo Gardens* which I used once on my wife way back in like 2009. She was so irritated by it that she made me promise never to use it again.

*This involves buying nothing but Workshops, Gardens, and Coppers. If you have 4 coins or a Workshop, get a Gardens. If you have 3 coins, buy another Workshop. Otherwise buy a Copper. It's one of the ugliest versions of Dominion, the equivalent of winning an American football game 6-4.

I've been playing Through the Ages on BGA with the other two guys from my group who don't think BLM is responsible for the storming of the Capitol.

Every turn I need 8 resources, every turn I have 7. Hate this game.

Sounds like a good eurogame!

RobertB wrote: My daughter discovered Dominion the other day, and has dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of online Dominion. Since it had literally been years since I've played it, there were some new cards. But since we played "Base Games Only", all the new cards are similar to the old ones.

What's the interface for online Dominion these days? I remember playing a ton on Isotropic back when that was around and free. It kinda killed all desire I had to play face to face though... you could finish like 10 games in an hour on it.