What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

hotseatgames wrote: I like 3 in Nexus Ops since it's such a small area and conflict is so encouraged.

Nexus Ops is a classic 3 player DOAM - the objectives *generally* encourage people not to dogpile.

Although Root has a "problem," I got a lot of good games in at 3 with it as well. 5-6 is where is starts to feel a little less good. Two is kinda weird and just good for exploring individual faction imbalances and finishing in like 30 minutes.

I've only played Cthulhu Wars once. I did not enjoy it or desire to own it afterwards. It felt like an overpriced pile of crap. One thing that I really didn't like very much is how the factions changed during play because of those spellbooks or whatever. At least for my first go. I'd much rather play something with the cute woodland animals than big pieces of plastic with names like SHUB NIGGURATH, the BLACK GOAT.

I've continued my stint on light dice games, Kingdomino, and Catan. I've come to the conclusion that all paths lead through Grain in the latter, and that the 2p 7x7 Kingdomino game is very countable like traditional card games.

Jexik wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: I've only played Cthulhu Wars once. I did not enjoy it or desire to own it afterwards. It felt like an overpriced pile of crap. One thing that I really didn't like very much is how the factions changed during play because of those spellbooks or whatever. At least for my first go. I'd much rather play something with the cute woodland animals than big pieces of plastic with names like SHUB NIGGURATH, the BLACK GOAT.

Friend of mine nailed my thoughts on CW best - "A $50 game in a $200 box ".

I have been having an absolute BLAST with Bullet <3. Once you get the hang of it, playing with the 3-minute timer synced to the soundtrack is wonderfully thematic and intense. Some of the songs are real earworms, but it really just puts you in the right mindset for the game and brings the whole experience to another level.

I've only been able to play 2-player standard mode, and I'm not sure you'd get much more out of playing with 3 or 4, but it's such a pleasant experience I am really eager to pull it out and play a few rounds when friends can visit again.

I do feel bad for anyone who didn't get the deluxe edition; pulling out those chunky wooden discs from the bags is satisfying and simple, I feel like the cardboard version would be less enjoyable from a tactile and gameplay perspective.

I really think L99 has another winner on their hands, but it remains to be seen if people can get past the girl anime theme. To be honest, I think the game has solid, vibrant art that doesn't feel overly sexualized, and my girlfriend was pumped about the all-female cast. I would have no problem showing this to friends & family.

However, I just saw the recently announced expansion with characters from a universe called "Orange Juice" and it's all 14 and 16- year old girls which gives me pause to say the least. Although the base cast of Bullet skews younger, the majority are over 18 and look more like adults than children. I don't know anything about these new characters or what the Orange Juice property is about, but I'm definitely less comfortable playing a game with 14-year-old girls in incredibly short skirts.

L99 ran into this same problem with Exceed. Their first season was based off of a licensed property that was just straight-up offensive regarding it's female representation ( just look at this box cover ). Season 2, which featured all original characters, was MUCH better with a very diverse cast of characters that weren't defined solely by their sexuality, though it wasn't perfect. Then, they partnered with Street Fighter with season 3 and the art on some of the female fighters is just absurd .

I digress...

Point is, Bullet <3 is a great game, system, and production. I just hope the theme that they went with doesn't continue to align them with some very strange and problematic art choices as has happened in the past when they partner with third-parties. If they continue to churn out new characters with the a similar style to the 8 in this core box, I'll likely buy those and continue to tell my friends about it - but I do feel less confident about it knowing this other expansion exclusively featuring 14- and 16-year old girls in short skirts are also being released.

*YT here: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwvhJFemd...BVZmbQN9iPguECgjyHRw but you can also find it on Spotify, Google Music, etc.

I've got Bullet on tap for tonight myself. I played it on TTS a decent amount a while back and thought it was super fun. Not sure if I need an expansion, but we'll see how much they want for it I guess. I got the regular cardboard version, and it seems fine. I'm not generally one to get all worked up about deluxified components though. I was fine with the player boards in Terraforming Mars and the cardboard tokens in Quacks of Quedlinberg, I'm sure these will work fine too.

I'll always say that, in addition to being a great game, the tactile sensation of manipulating the heavy coins of War Chest is an essential part of the experience of that game. I totally understand why people would want the more elaborate stuff for Bullet.

I liked Bullet, I believe Ah_Pook taught it to me on TTS? Might have been someone else, Orlok or hotseat? Thought it was a really smart, compact game.

Wasn't me, I have not played it.

it was me @Gary

I played 5 games of Bullet solo on stream tonight and it was super fun. made it to lvl5 once, level 6 3 times, and lvl 7 once. someone from lvl99 was hanging out in chat, which was hype. the publisher person said only 1 person on their official leaderboard had a lvl 7 solo score recorded so far, so that feels good. anyway, this game is GREAT. really looking forward to trying out the bosses and stuff, and im pretty into the concept of the expansion now that ive got some games under my belt.

My playing has picked up tremendously the past few months. I've put more effort into playing online (including several games via webcam out of necessity for reviews), but I've also hit the solo table harder. Getting excited to resume a small weekly game night with vaccinated friends in the future.

It's been a long time since I've posted to this thread, but here's some recent hits:

Forgotten Waters
I adore this game. It should feel bloated with the number of mechanisms and subsystems they've thrown in, but it all hangs together so damn well that the seams are nearly invisible. It's a narrative adventure game but it synthesizes scripted narrative with emergent narrative extremely well.

I hear the new DLC scenario may be the best. I plan on buying it eventually.

I played a bunch of Unmatched a couple of months ago. Dove deep back into that one. Cobble & Fog is the best release in the series in my opinion.

The Crew is special. Played a bunch of that on BGA over the past few months. Want to play it more every chance I get. I love how it re-popularized trick taking with hobbyists. I know Sticheln and others still see play, but there hasn't been a big hit trick taking game that everyone communally has enjoyed in...forever?

I already talked about my taking to Vampire: The Eternal Struggle 5th Edition in the appropriate thread here. Playing this online was a pain in the ass but I absolutely ate this game up.

Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace is better than it has any right to be. I posted a link to my review in the "What Reviews are you Writing" thread. I really like this game but I don't see myself hanging on to it for long. Just not grand enough to justify my limited shelf space.

Sleeping Gods is a timesuck. It's the type of game you sit down to play and then realize a couple of hours have passed and you really need to get to bed. Very hard to turn down just one more turn.

I'm most interested in comparing SG to Tainted Grail, which both are of the same cloth. Tainted Grail is much more grindy, it's very stark. Sleeping Gods is breezy in comparison and very free. There is still resource management, and more notably fatigue and health management of your nine character crew, but those tasks involved to keep progressing are much easier. By lowering the amount of work required it's just much easier and lighter to engage with. It's kind of rereshing.

However, there is not really an overarching narrative. It's more like a whole bunch of sidequests. A lot of them. I find Tainted Grail's core narrative much more interesting, personally, but some of it is down to really loving that setting. It's grim as opposed to the Laukat fluffy fairy tale stuff.

This may be a bit too "you kids get off my lawn", but the notion of DLC for a board game makes me cringe.

hotseatgames wrote: This may be a bit too "you kids get off my lawn", but the notion of DLC for a board game makes me cringe.

Oh certainly, I hate the notion of DLC as well. However, this type of content is really similar to a new scenario pack for the Arkham LCG, or how they used to publish the small blister expansions for the first edition of Mansions of Madness.

FFG did similar DLC for MoM 2nd Edition, and those scenarios were very good.

What won me over with this type of electronic expansion content is that it's actually a very lean addition to the game. I don't necessarily want more tokens or boards or cards to worry about storing. If the game already has components you can use in a multitude of ways, actually take advantage of that and offer me new scenarios like this.

Now, it does get a little harder to cough up $10 for something that is only electronic and only a single scenario. It's part of the reason why it wasn't an instant purchase for me. I don't think that price is crazy, however, considering Plaid Hat paid for top-notch voice acting and the DLC also adds 100 scripted events spread across the existing scenarios (when you hit a certain numbered space the app will randomize what event triggers from a small pool, this expands that pool).

I half want to purchase it right now just to give them the indicator this type of content is desired, by me at least.

hotseatgames wrote: This may be a bit too "you kids get off my lawn", but the notion of DLC for a board game makes me cringe.

I think Fantasy Flight has actually done some great work in this arena for Arkham Horror through the free release of parallel investigators. I think it was inspired by the content drought in the early pandemic, but they published new takes on the core investigators, new deck building and abilities that can be mixed and matched with their original incarnation, and their signature cards. They also came with new scenarios to specifically test their new versions. It’s only a pdf, but none of the cards really need to be shuffled and real effort was put in. It was a simple release that garnered a lot of goodwill and excitement in the community for a low cost. At the same time, I don’t think it would have worked as a commercial product because there’s so little to it (about 10 cards total and some rules) while also requiring a bit more experience from the player.

Marvel also got a modular Ronan the Accuser set, but I know less about it.