What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

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Gary Sax wrote: ...
Played a game of Arkham Horror, my wife's favorite game. We won in a battle against one of the easy GOOs (ice guy) by just gunning him down. We had a great time overall, as usual, despite the big investment of setup. Obviously, that end game being too easy is a problem they fixed later. One thing that I never get used to, though, is how I really do not like the rumors. I think it's actually the biggest problem with the design. You get no preparation for them and even though they put the pressure on they're just kind of unfun spendathons for the most part. I know it's been ages since anyone played here, but did anyone ever come to any good house rules on rumors? Part of me just feels like pitching all of them.

Cry, sulk, then say 'that's life' and prepare to die a glorious death.

They are even nastier in Eldritch Horror, they can basically end the game directly or from using so much resources to sort (so you don't finish instantly) that you have no chance of winning (or getting to flip the GOO card to try and win). AH is like EH with training wheels

I've been playing a lot of Andor: The Family Fantasy Game. It very much is what is promised in the title, and it's also rock solid. I didn't care much for the orginal Andor which became too much of an optimization puzzle, but I've been having a blast playing this with the 5-year-old.

The story is a bit silly at first hand. You have to rescue some wolf cubs from a mine before the dragon comes and requires the heroes' attention. But before you can do that, you have to finish some missions like finding the secret letters, cleaning the wells, repairing the bridge or some such. They all require moving to specific spaces or searching the board's fog tokens for stuff, but the fact that you are looking for different tokens on different parts of the game make a huge difference. You also get to roll dice, and all four characters can be played as either female or male which is a nice touch.

It's not a gamer's game, but it's fun, has a good length, and scratches that adventure game itch which so few games for kids do.

My house rule for rumors in Arkham Horror is a maximum of one rumor per game. And even then I have been tempted to just remove most of the rumors from the mythos deck.

That's a good rule of thumb, Shellhead. I was tempted to pitch them this last game.

I think the Rumors were from an earlier perspective on game design; specifically the "Games Workshop approach", wherein Jervis Johnson used to insist that dying in the second turn of Dungeonquest was "part of the fun!" Yay...?

On the one hand, you could see it as a replayability mechanic, in that you were so close to beating Yog-Sothoth if not for that Rumor that completely wrecked your game-! But, then, one card draw also completely wrecked your game, so it's hard to see that as an interesting aspect to the design. As Southernman says, that is kind of in the HPL wheelhouse, where most of the tellers of his tales faced a far more grisly or demoralizing end than those who've somehow managed to defeat an alien space god with a shotgun and a crucifix (another color to Arkham Horror that never sat right with me; we usually just ended the game if the GOO awakened.) So, if you wanted to stick to canon, the fact that this overwhelming Rumor eventually ground you all down and you died horribly is just status quo. But it sticks out horribly when assessing the game's overall function, certainly. For that matter, so does camping out at the magick shoppe until you find an Elder Sign, but these are the difficulties of IP translation.

I played several more games of Masters of the Night over the weekend, and feel ready to talk about it at length. However, it is a kickstarter game, so I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to do a big formal review of a game that is generally unavailable. And maybe even a dedicated thread would be too much since almost nobody would have much to say about it. So I am thinking of maybe just doing a long post in this thread. It is a game that deserves some attention, especially since there is an ongoing flood of mediocre games getting published.

There are at least a couple of Rumors that I like in Arkham Horror. One of them involved a serial killer on the loose, and another one threatened to make modern equipment into non-functional anachronisms.

Played a quick game of Nusfjord to try out a different deck. The mackerel deck exacerbated an issue I had with the previous deck. I didn't even want any of the buildings. They all seemed like a waste of resources for little benefit. Also in solo I always pull the same few Elders so far. I imagine its better with other players competing for stuff but I'm only going solo. It's a solid game engine but I'm not sure it'll hold up if I don't start enjoying the village-building part of it more.

Also set up and played a few turns of Fields of Arle to learn the game. Was expecting an overload of options but I was not expecting it to be so sandbox-y, in a good way. Got too late last night so called it but will set up again sometime this week and play a whole game. I have a good feeling that I'm going to really like this game.

I'd be really interested in your take on Masters of the Night, Shellhead. I impulse-backed it at the last minute and kind of regretted it. Then I forgot about it until it showed up on my doorstep this past weekend. The few comments on BGG seem to vary wildly, with a couple claiming it is utterly broken and boring.

Shellhead wrote: I played several more games of Masters of the Night over the weekend, and feel ready to talk about it at length. However, it is a kickstarter game, so I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to do a big formal review of a game that is generally unavailable. And maybe even a dedicated thread would be too much since almost nobody would have much to say about it. So I am thinking of maybe just doing a long post in this thread. It is a game that deserves some attention, especially since there is an ongoing flood of mediocre games getting published.

I think the broader factors of the way this game was sold, delivered, and now is essentially unavailable via its MSRP in the traditional delivery channel promotes it to something deserving of an article. Whether someone should be chasing this in the aftermarket is a good reason to put your opinions into a "bigger" delivery package.

Yeah I really want Fields of Arle but it seems to have fallen into that “$20 over MSRP everywhere” thing. I really want to check out how int plays as a sandbox, FFO has that too and I’ve been loving it. Now I’m worried it’s going to be hard to come by.

I get what you are saying about Nusfjord but by the same token what I am really digging is how concise it is. Yeah, I’m not like high giving myself for building the Wet Storage or for hitting the 12 catch, but I think the tight time pressure and range of options, coupled with the potential for puzzle-y combos, makes it really well suited for low key solo. I played the mini campaign last night and went 31,
17, 33 (81 out of 100) and it was interesting to see different plans emerge out of each set of available buildings. I’ve not felt like there was ever an obvious play or must do...in that 33 point game I was heading for another disaster like the second game but I hit on a plan to reforest, leverage buildings and elders that impacted that, and then make the Forest Castle. I doubled my score in two rounds. So that was really neat to work out but I still failed!

I think Fields of Arle is Uwe's best of the sandboxy less cutthroat ones. It being two players specifically from the jump (expansion adds a third, never tried) I think let him really tighten the screws on it.

Having finally figured out what the hell is going on in Terra Mystica by playing the app, I decided that Gaia Project would be my next outing in my exploration of heavy solo Eurogames.

WOW. That is a really great game. It is definitely TM’s superior. It kind of takes that Knizia “want to do three things but you have two actions thing but makes it where you want to do three things, need to do six, should do two, and have to do one. It’s pretty complex, working out how to create score, and the Automa deck is pretty easy to run. It doesn’t really play against you, it just simulates the obstruction of other players.

For about a minute I was like “well that sucks these 14 alien species have no backstory or description”. Then I realized “I do not fucking care.” It is pretty cool that it is specially described as a PEACEFUL game of expansion and development. You don’t fight anyone or take anything away. Again, befitting a solo game.

Even though I love it, I hope that I never ever play it with someone else. It is absolutely not the kind of game I want to play in a group. Let alone teach Le deal with players who don’t get it.this is what I’m finding in these games...they excel solo, which supports that whole “multiplayer solitaire” assumption.

Next up: Underwater Cities, Paladins of the West Kingdom, and a return to Spirit Island.

TWBGers were trying to figure out a good Gaia Project time for TTS, we'll have to get back to that sometime.

You playing base Spirit Island or do you have Branch and Claw?