What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

3pm EST works for me either saturday or sunday

Ah_Pook wrote: Played Castles of Burgundy solo tonight. It's a solo specific board with some special rules that are really neat, and also very low overhead. You win by filling in the entire board, points only get you bonus actions. Took about 45 minutes, felt like COB but tighter and faster. Was a lot of fun I thought. I ended up at 34/37 tiles, not bad for a first try.

Followed up with a game of Aeons End, first time I've played it in a while. I got deep into Marvel Champions the last however many months, and they fill a similar game space yknow. But! I went up against Burrower, the hardest Nemesis from the Outcasts content, for the first time. He puts trap cards in the supply, and then destroys cards out of the supply. If he reveals traps bad stuff happens (either 5 dmg to Gravehold or 4 dmg to a player). It was BRUTAL, and very fun. Ended up with Gravehold at 9hp, one mage exhausted, and the other mage at 1hp... But the turn order deck was on our side and we won. If the Nemesis had gone one more time we lose. Such a great game.

captured for posterity, if anyone wants to get some vicarious Aeon's End thrills. this game was really really good. Also, the first 30 minutes are me setting everything up and rambling about the game, the actual game starts at like 29:30.

Gaia Project has on been on my list to play, so I'd try to be in for it too.

It cracks me up that this game literally fills the frame 100%. My camera is as high up at it goes. It's the theoretical max, and it's still going to be a struggle to fit everyone's cards and stuff on the table.

Jexik wrote: We've perhaps interpreted the "when ambiguous, the players pick" rule to do things that are generally advantageous to us. But when it is the line between finishing a scenario and going, "whelp, I guess we have to do it all over again," I don't feel too bad about doing it. So far we did start scenario 7 over once.

This was also a clue to me that Gloomhaven's got problems, and indeed a general clue to pay attention to for campaign games: I noticed after losing an (original) Gloomhaven scenario that I was absolutely DREADING replaying it (that was with 4 players, 2 players it happened and wasn't so bad).

When I think to my favorite games with scenarios, I LOVE replaying the same scenario! Exploring it, mastering it. If I'm dreading replaying a scenario...that's likely to imply that what I really like about the game is the "what's coming NEXT??!?" novelty, seeing more STUFF, rather than the actual play of the game.

dragonstout wrote: This was also a clue to me that Gloomhaven's got problems, and indeed a general clue to pay attention to for campaign games: I noticed after losing an (original) Gloomhaven scenario that I was absolutely DREADING replaying it (that was with 4 players, 2 players it happened and wasn't so bad)

God this is so, so true. Thank you for writing this. Crystalized some things for me about campaign games.

Weirdly, I do *not* have this reaction to replaying Arkham LCG scenarios which speaks to the richness of its mechanics and deckbuilding options.

Yeah, 2p Gloomhaven: JotL has been pretty fun so far. I like our class makeup of Red Guard/ Hatchet. I glanced at the Voidwarden's deck a day or two ago, and I'm very glad that my girlfriend picked the Red Guard instead - much easier to wrap your head around that character. Did our first non-boss battle in awhile last night and we kinda thought, "that was kinda easy..." but I hit level 5 at the end of it so the game recommends we bump the monsters up a notch again after that.

I've lacked a little self control lately and I picked up the X Wing 2.0 starter set to see how the rules have changed. (I formerly owned a $250ish collection a year or two ago which I gave to a friend pre-Covid). Aside from some usability issues (they changed the tokens for target locks and made it so you can see all of your available maneuvers on your dial at once), I can't see much of a difference so far, except they lowered the maximum pilot skill that some pilots have. I'm guessing there are other balance changes that won't be as obvious to me as a casual player. After our first game with just the starter ships and basic rules using no actions, my girlfriend remarked, "This is fun. I like this better than Gloomhaven, but I do still like Gloomhaven."

So out of curiosity, I had her go through some of the games we've played in the last several months and rate them somewhat similar to BGG's rating system, where 10 is "OMG I could play this every day" to 1 is "I'd like to gouge my eyes out."

10 Twice as Clever (we do play this nearly every day)
10 Kingdomino (played only a few times but she has now expressed strong interest in playing more)
9 That's Pretty Clever (we used to play nearly every day but the sequel has replaced it as being a little more challenging)
9 Hanabi
8.5 Unmatched
8.5 Fort (we were hot on it for awhile, but "the dice game" has taken over)
7.5 X-Wing
7 Gloomhaven: JotL
6.5 Root (admittedly not the best 2p game)

This was rather informative to me. When you take the list as a whole, My favorites are actually pretty low... and Twice as Clever is starting to feel more like a 7 to me. If we split the difference, we'd just play Unmatched all the time, but I kinda feel like alternating between our own 10s (I'd easily put X-Wing as a 9.5 for myself) might bring us more total enjoyment.

She hadn't played many games outside of Yahtzee when we started gaming back in September, and she really has appreciated me opening her eyes to more stuff. Gaming in these times is weird. That's around when I fell off of playing stuff on TTS with you guys too. My dad died that month as well, so I stopped playing Kingdomino with him, and Catan with my parents.

Just looking around a bit, it seems like there's a solid TTS mod for X-Wing? Part of me wants to just buy up the conversion kits and play with proxies after acquiring 5-10 bases for ships... That CMON thread reminded me that I really don't NEED the minis for these games to be fun for me.

dragonstout wrote: When I think to my favorite games with scenarios, I LOVE replaying the same scenario! Exploring it, mastering it. If I'm dreading replaying a scenario...that's likely to imply that what I really like about the game is the "what's coming NEXT??!?" novelty, seeing more STUFF, rather than the actual play of the game.

That's an interesting reaction. I don't think I've played a game with scenarios since Descent, which was another dungeon crawler, of course, and we used to replay those all the time. I have a game like that in TMNT: Shadows of the Past. I wonder if our willingness to replay Descent was because it was a many-vs-one, rather than a full co-op like Gloomhaven and whether I'll have the same reaction to replaying when I finally get around to playing scenarios in TMNT?

The games are different, in that there seems to be a lot more to discover and explore in Gloomhaven, as dragonstout said, whereas TMNT is more of a combat game. Does replaying a fight that might turn out differently have more or less appeal than going through a dungeon where discovery is part of the whole package?

Jexik wrote: Just looking around a bit, it seems like there's a solid TTS mod for X-Wing? Part of me wants to just buy up the conversion kits and play with proxies after acquiring 5-10 bases for ships... That CMON thread reminded me that I really don't NEED the minis for these games to be fun for me.

That's a good attitude which will serve you well, I think. I got out of X-Wing because it was collectible and because I have difficulty getting the same enjoyment out of minis games by using proxies. When I was a dedicated GW gamer, I didn't even like playing with unpainted models. I grew to dislike painting before I stopped playing, which ended up being sort of a quandary. And then I realized I just didn't want to do the collectible thing anymore, which is why I stopped that, too. Lack of a regular playing group takes the shine off a lot of things these days, as well. That's really cool that she's become so enthusiastic about the stuff you like playing regularly. I'd give a lot for that.

Heh, my old Eldar army (I was 12) was half painted. I played almost exclusively against my one friend who had half painted space marines. When my other friend got Imperial Guard, I was woefully ill-equipped to deal with his forces. (I used to do stuff like run Fire Dragons at the marine player's infantry).

When we found Heroscape nearly a decade later it won us all over, largely because it was pre-painted. I'm one of the few people out there who was more in love with the simple rules and situations they created than the aesthetics and toy factor of Heroscape. X-Wing is a similar-feeling game to me.

There are some significant changes in X-Wing 2nd edition, but they're not super obvious. Most of the changes rebalances all of the ships and moved the point values off the physical cards to a PDF they can update.

The most noticeable change though are the new Force abilities.

Interesting. For game balance I can appreciate the PDF concept, but for usability at home and on a casual level, I'd prefer the old way. I can be a little resistant to change, heh.

I'll have to read the rulebook and figure out what this force stuff is about. I was wondering what was going on on Luke's card...

EDIT: Just read the quick build rules and like the concept. Great compromise there. I retract my earlier reservation (but leave it for posterity)

dragonstout wrote: When I think to my favorite games with scenarios, I LOVE replaying the same scenario! Exploring it, mastering it.

That is an interesting attitude. I think I am the opposite, always wanting the new thing. As it would happen, today I calculated the *current* number of unique setups that the mission generator will produce in the upcoming Phantom Division. Now, I'm not going to tell you that every one of these setups would seem like a totally different experience, because they wouldn't, but from a strictly mathematical perspective, if you played 24 games of Phantom Division every day, it would take 274,000 years to play them all.

As an aside, I will get to post some pictures of Phantom Division on Twitter, very soon. It is looking GOOD.

came out on top last night in a 4 handed game of Arkham Horror 2e w/ the Dunwich Horror board ( youtube link if you want to watch for yourself ). went up against Cthulhu, seemed like the thing to do. i dont think i got any rules wrong enough to have changed the outcome, though I did forget that partial successes in combat don't do anything for like 3/4 of the game. probably plenty of other little details along the way, as there are many little details.

that said, i do quite like AH2e, but it feels like a game that is at odds with itself. probably talked about this here before, but the game gives you all this wacky/fun stuff you can do, but then what you actually need to do is ignore all the weird/fun stuff and just get clues and seal gates as quickly and efficiently as possible. its still fun and i enjoy it, but it is a bit of a bummer that it punishes you harshly for trying to play with the options it gives you.

Some more Splendor. I think we’re up to six games or so now. It’s fine. I’m not going to refuse to play it, but I don’t think I’ll be suggesting it often either. It feels good to see your tableau grow and grab cards without dipping into the token pool, but it’s missing something to really grab me.

Some more Vengeance. Little Gudrun just barely missed fulfilling her vengeance because some mook was hiding out in the pastor’s office in the chapel. That’s okay though because I had enough upgrades that I could pretty consistently pump out five damage per roll. If I were to introduce the game to someone, I would probably steer them toward Gudrun, Lea or Kaja because they play the game the way you want to: roll up and murder everyone. No subtlety.

My first game of SEAL Team Flix after buying it two years back. Got pinned on one corner for way too many turns because every tango spawned at the end of the adjoining hallway. I was trying a sneaky build with a suppressor on my sub-machine gun, but the pile of bodies probably should have tipped someone off that I was right there. Did find the hard drive on a single health. On to Mombasa.

The big news, though, is PitchCar. My eldest found Flix and was enamored. I persuaded him that race cars were a little more his speed. Him, the middle and I ended up playing six or so races on six different tracks. There was a minimum of cheating, they took turns reasonably well and they nailed some dumb long shots. Now I’m keeping the box upstairs, so I remember to pull it out more. What else can a father ask for?