What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Sleeping Gods looks really neat, and the $70 kickstarter price seems like a real bargain. But now the Kickstarter is over, and the prices at BGG, eBay, and even Target are ranging from $200 to $285. The expansion was only $30 on Kickstarter, but you might pay as much as $400 now to get the base game plus expansion.

There will be a retail version in the near future which will be reasonably priced.

Played a couple of TTS games of Oath. I'll put this here rather than the Oath chatter, but im mirroring a bit of what people are saying there. Oath seems to be a really interesting story generator, I am not totally sure on its depth as a competitive strategy game.

Its a cute area control game with 8 randomly generated territories and a deck of cards that can upgrade those areas or upgrade your personal abilities and a resource engine that trades in two currencies. These and other variable victory conditions and the ability of players to change sides in a two+ sided conflict all mechanically interlock and are very clever etc. But its very short per game. A game might last 5 turns and take less than 1hour. And you can easily put yourself out of the running in turns 1-3.

Even a simple move like moving to the hinterlands, the territories with highest move costs to get out, could put you out of being able to contest that game.

First game I was the Chancellor (read king) at the start, and the victory condition was the standard area control. I mustered armies, picked up some good combat cards into my advisor slots and conquered most of the neutral territories. Both opponents failed in their combat roles and i won fairly easily. One player played a card announcing they were my long lost son and switched to my side to become a citizen at the end.

Second game I switched the victory condition to favour of the people (earn most money) and then went out to the hinterlands to use a cool card played out there in the previous game. And i got stuck. A balancing mechanism to another player being on my side if we get fewer actions due to mechanisms i am to lazy to explain. But in short neither of us could manoeuvre and earn enough to compete with the opposing player who coasted to a win.

Taken as a multi game narrative about the rise and fall of empires and dynasties it is pretty neat. With players swapping roles over time but the cards being semi persistent from one game to the next. It is a cool story teller. But individually each king of the hill war game is a bit hit and miss. There are moments on intrigue but lots of dead rubber situations where the main question is whether it will end this turn or next. At more than $100 i'm not sure it quite cuts it as a recommendation.

Also played a game of Glass Road. Man, I am not the boardgamer i were 10 years ago in some respects. I never figured i would be into resource conversion Euros but here I am. I liked this. It does avoid one problem I have with the genre that is arbitrary scoring. In Caverna or Agricola you get more points for varied animals, in Castles of Burgundy for monocultures of animals. This kind of scoring is complete nonsense. Why should i score more points for different types of animals or the same types? There is no thematic reasoning. In Glass Road i get rewarded for making glass and bricks, or building buildings. This makes sense. I hate it when i create something interesting for the designer to give it an F grade as it does not match their artistic interpretation.

Babylonia has also been played a few more times over the past week or so. This might be peak Knizia. Its not quite as good at making you feel clever as Tigris and Euphrates, but given it plays in about 10mins per player, has a 3minute rules explanation I can adjust my expectations.

charlest wrote: There will be a retail version in the near future which will be reasonably priced.

This?

www.target.com/p/sleeping-gods-board-game/-/A-82492395

$284.95 seems crazy high for a major retailer like Target.

EDIT: reading the fine print, Noble Knight actually has the game, and possibly just the one copy. That explains the big price, but it's also surprising that a huge retailer like Target has a relationship now with a solo shop like Noble Knight.

Nah, it's not listed yet. However there are separate BGG entries for the retail and Kickstarter edition.

Most of Red Raven's games are about $50-$60 from discount online shops.

^^^Oath does ask a significant amount of its players in terms of balancing the board. Would be a very tough sell if it came out at a game night or something

edit: how many did you play with? Not leading anywhere, just curious. I think I like 3 and 4 players best.

A long weekend isolated at a friends house with a small group allowed a solid several days of quality gaming:

DUNE IMPERIUM x2 . I was prepared not to like this game due to the usually dull mechanics of worker placement and deck builders. However after the first game I felt pulled back into playing it again and have come away fairly impressed. Sure it will never be as iconic as the original DUNE but the fact that it can be played at lower player counts and in a shorter time frame is a huge plus. Thematically it goes both ways - while it seems weird to play as Paul Atreides while a different player has your father, the abilities on the cards reflect their proper book counterpart. In my first came I quickly got an extra pawn per turn as the Swordaster was bought, but I neglected Diplomacy and came in last. The second game I went all in on Diplomacy and picked my conflict engagements more carefully; going into the 8th turn I had my entire garrison on the board as well as a deck ruthlessly pruned to about 11 cards, many of which gave me combat boosts . This allowed me to win by 2 points, mainly by virtue of maxing out two diplomatic tracks, allying on a third and scoring 1VP on the fourth.

Command and Colors Samurai Battles x3 . If you've played the other CC games this will be fairly easy to learn. The big twists here are two fold. First, each player has a pool of Honor tokens at the start of the scenario. You gain honor by rolling honor icons in combat. You can also choose to gain 2 honor at the end of your turn ( or draw a Dragon card, more on that shortly ) . You lose honor by units retreating, esp leaders. Leaders when faced with retreat can elect to commit seppeku ( suicide ) to avoid losing honor and giving the enemy a Dragon Card .

Dragon cards are basically Tactics cards, themed to the era of course . Some of the titles are fairly entertaining, like INSULT. Another card can force a unit to switch sides.. You can only play 1 Dragon card per turn, most of which have a cost in Honor Tokens. Managing Honor tokens is a big part of the game. The game comes with a whopping 40 scenarios.

LA RESISTANCE - a short dice action game set in WW2 France. Its a semi co op where each round you roll dice to try to defeat cards in a public pool. Some cards give points, some cards hurt you. Its basically a short filler game, not bad for what it is.

DECATHLON. This is an old school Avalon Hill game. I normally avoid sports games but decided to give it a try. Its a bit dry, but at the same time entertaining as well.

That's it for new games. We also got in games of ANGOLA ( x2 ), ATLANTIC STORM, WNGSPAN, BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES, FLAMME ROUGE, WARRIORS OF GOD, CAN'T STOP, SPACE BASE, LAS VEGAS, PAX PAMIR ( X2) , ECOS, and SPACE BASE.

Sounds like a damn good weekend.

That CC Samurai honor system both sounds weird mechanically and a little cringe.

Gary Sax wrote: Sounds like a damn good weekend.

That CC Samurai honor system both sounds weird mechanically and a little cringe.

It may be a bit over the top thematically, but given how many different iterations there are of the CC system, they need to throw in something different for each one I guess. Overall, the Honor system felt right -in other CC games you sometimes choose to accept a retreat you could otherwise ignore due to adjacent units or leaders. Here, choosing to retreat has a cost which I like.

Yes, that sounds very much like a "mechanically this is cool, thematically it's... uh..." system. Sounds like an excellent weekend, though. Totally jealous.

Gary Sax wrote: ^^^Oath does ask a significant amount of its players in terms of balancing the board. Would be a very tough sell if it came out at a game night or something

edit: how many did you play with? Not leading anywhere, just curious. I think I like 3 and 4 players best.

3 players. I've played with 2 as well which is ok. I tend to think games that are not very negotiation heavy tend to be best 3-4.

On Samurai Battles. The honour system was fun from memory and did make the game more distinct, if the cards met their criteria.

As with most C&C a lot depends on the scenario quality.

Re: Oath at 2p. I think including the bot with 2p would make the game a bit more interesting. If you don’t like knowing where the bot is going to go (and haven’t memorised the flow chart) then this companion app seems pretty useful: clockprince.seiyria.com/ . I’ve played solo with the bot a few times and enjoyed it, but the rules for it are not written particularly well.

My Tainted Grail pledge finally arrived this week (a bit battered) so I'll actually have something to play solo (the tutorial for it) that I like - I don't do solo games, I'm a gregarious gamer. Then it will be nothing for another three months plus before Lockdown eases enough that I will be allowed people to visit for gaming ... having someone else in my house will feel quite strange, visitors have been banned since the beginning of Nov 2020.

southernman wrote: My Tainted Grail pledge finally arrived this week (a bit battered) so I'll actually have something to play solo (the tutorial for it) that I like - I don't do solo games, I'm a gregarious gamer. Then it will be nothing for another three months plus before Lockdown eases enough that I will be allowed people to visit for gaming ... having someone else in my house will feel quite strange, visitors have been banned since the beginning of Nov 2020.

The artwork in Tainted Grail is absolutely stupendous (sleeves are mandatory) and when Etherfields arrives in Q3 I'll have a couple of games I could mount and display the cards from .

We played a TTS four player game of John Company, got a big chunk of time alloted for it... then crashed and burned the Company so bad it was over in an hour and a half. So we squeezed in a game of Oath after.