What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

sornars wrote: Before the pandemic I never played games solo and I never would've imagined playing multi handed solo but I've played a few games of my physical copy three handed and the game has managed to surprise me despite being open information. Massive last ditch attacks and reversals of fortune have happened and the stories generated by my play and recorded in the chronicle are still entertaining. I look forward to my physical copy accruing its own weird personality in its World Deck, I have no intention of resetting it even if I have to teach any newcomers.

I can relate to this. I tend to like games with a tons of systems, and watching the gears grind against each other in this game when you play multihanded solo is soothing for me. I did it a lot during the pandemic, but I suspect I'll do it a lot when I get my physical copy with the added attraction of the more aesthetic joys of the physical production.

Gary Sax wrote: Yes, I think you really need to observe closely what routes your opponent is planning on fulfilling in Merchant. The supply is not unlimited and getting halfway through a route and having the resources go out of stock is an absolute killer.

Merchant of Venus was a game WAY ahead of its time IMO. I was kind of surprised the reprint didn't resonate more with players; then again by the time it came out it was when the market started to become glutted with so much crap. I wonder if it had been redone when the reprint era was in its infancy with grails like TITAN and HANNIBAL being reprinted if it would have had more staying power.

I think that Merchant may have run across some perception issues. The original game is kind of the basis of PU&D. I don't recall many older games that really exercised that theme in the way Merchant did. So the beauty of the gameplay is almost entirely in its mechanics. Fast forward 25 years and you have Fantasy Flight, well known for their narrative/AT-type games reprinting a game that very much doesn't reflect the majority of their audience. Yes, there are higher mechanical concepts in things like Twilight Imperium, but always with a ton of story and chrome attached. Merchant was not that. It was an Avalon Hill game, which meant that production values took second (third; maybe fourth) place to mechanics. So, stereotypical FFG fan of 2012 sees a new FFG game about spaceflight and gets... an Avalon Hill game.

And, of course, in our little corner of the gaming universe, all I can remember is people getting in a twist about the fact that FFG had the audacity to include a second, different ruleset and defile the sanctity that was MERCHANT OF VENUS(!!!) So, I remember it getting talked down in a lot of corners because you could play the game differently, even though you could play with the original rules, as well, which is pretty close to the pinnacle of snobby, elitist bullshit in the gamer world.

In short, it's a nice system game and it has real quality if your expectations either aren't shaped by a quarter-century of development or you already understand its quality and are OK with some of the effects of time. Very few games have the quality that will stand that test of time (CE, Dune, most classic abstracts) and a lot of people consider Merchant to be one of them. But it's possible that the audience response was indicative that it doesn't.

sornars wrote:
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective This game is absolutely brilliant and does a wonderful job of capturing how insufferable it would've been to work alongside Holmes. Some cases were better than others but I've never felt a solution to be obtuse or unfair. I do find reading and remembering the newspapers to be a bit tedious though. I endeavour to minimise pointless trips but I don't feel too bad about my terrible scores, if I can correctly solve the mystery then I'm happy to consider that a partial win.

Yep, it's great. Maybe a couple of times a year we do a case, only a few left now, but I've forgotten the details of the earlier ones.

I am currently running a game with about 7 groups of my high school students. They email me their moves and I snip the clues from a pdf and email them back. Great fun to see their different paths. They are very prone to following the red herrings. I ran one last year during a covid lockdown and when we were all back at school I held a solution reveal and had prizes and stuff.

mc wrote:

sornars wrote: I am currently running a game with about 7 groups of my high school students. They email me their moves and I snip the clues from a pdf and email them back. Great fun to see their different paths. They are very prone to following the red herrings. I ran one last year during a covid lockdown and when we were all back at school I held a solution reveal and had prizes and stuff.

I love this..

My girlfriend and I also love Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. We are terrible sleuths. We were in a game store over the weekend and discovered that there are 4 different sets of this game, which should be enough cases to take us into 2060 if we pick them up.

san il defanso wrote: Out: Quadropolis
In: Civlization: A New Dawn

Quardopolis is fine, but I think I'd want a city planning game that feels more like it's trying to emulate actual city planning. Anyway, I'm a big fan of Civ VI (and Civ V before it) and I've heard enough good stuff about A New Dawn from folks around here that I'm interested in it. I also think my son would be into it, since he likes Civ V a lot and it's a shorter entry into the series. I'm especially interested to see how it abstracts stuff in a genre that is normally so process-heavy.

I stole this from the "Trading" thread. I like Urban Sprawl in the city planner genre, but it has its flaws. My experience has been that you can't really plan (pun not intended) your turn very far ahead of time, because the board state can get changed pretty drastically between your turns. So it runs a little long; 3 hours or so was my experience, even if you know the rules.

I played Suburbia a lot online when it first came out, but got burned out on it quickly. When the local game club opens up again I might have to borrow their copy and see if I like the cardboard version.

Today I played Diplomacy, which is an astounding game, but I didn't have the best time with it. To be honest, I felt frustrated and sad.

Like the last time we played, I felt there was nothing I could say to one or two players to make them negotiate with me. France and England were allied from the start and never showed any interest in anything beyond that. Even if it costed them nothing and they could make great gains, they would not consider my suggestions. They never tried to speak with me, England tried to backstab me the first time we talked and they went as far as reviving a dead Germany rather than working with me.

By the time of our lunch break I was the strongest player, having taken Russia to six supply zones and a wide range of potential moves. But I felt I was out of the game. I knew it didn't matter how well I played or what I tried to do if half of the table refused to hold me in consideration. Another player said I was exaggerating, that I could have made better moves or that I have made "an enemy of everyone". But I think it's all moot, slighty better moves wouldn't have changed the fact half of table didn't bother to come talk with me.

The fact that France could have moved into London but didn't because he "didn't want to eliminate another player so early" also supports my belief that things were out of my control.

It's not the first time this has happened to me, either. It's a common occurence. Last time we played Intrigue the newbie decided he wasn't going to many any deals with me. Still, I tried and he went out of his way to screw me over. The result was another player winning on his back, me not being able to do anything and the newbie not learning a thing because "at least Erik didn't win".

I might be a bit bitter. But this is sucking out all the fun I've had with negotiation games. They are one of my favourite genres but I no longer feel I'm playing. If the point of the game is to negotiate and third of the table refuses to do so, you are only playing 66% of the game. And there's this 33% that is just going to rain on your parade. It's not fun, it's not interesting and now I no longer want to play them again. I'm not going to put myself into another 7 hours of Diplomacy only to end up like this.

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On other news, I played Acquire again after playing it at least a decade ago. Brillant game and we ended up much closer than I thought we would be.

If you were the strongest player, then perhaps it was wise for England and France to have allied against you? Nothing in your description sounds out of line or unfair for a game of Diplomacy. You don't say how many players you had, but in a 7-player game, I expect at least two players to be openly antagonistic to me and not want to negotiate at all.

The situation you describe in Intrigue is a different matter though. If a player decides his goal is "make Erik lose", then you need to find someone else to play with. This is the most difficult move to make. I had to abandon a game group once when too many of its members took "make Greg lose" as a primary or secondary goal.

Played a game of Railroad Ink which, yeah, I'm fine with never playing this game or this style of game (roll and write) ever again. It was presented as a filler-type game, but lasted twice as long as those types of game usually do or should, and it's completely mechanical multiplayer solitaire. There's no interaction whatsoever, other than to grumble about what didn't come up on the dice. As is strangely normal with most games that I detest, I somehow won.

Then we got in a game of Spirit Island. Two players were mildly inexperienced, so while we used the Event deck, we didn't use an Adversary or a scenario. It was Volcano Looming High, Downpour Drenches the World, Bringer of Nightmares, and Lure of the Deep Wilderness, so we were pretty solid in most aspects (Fear, offense, map coverage.) I found Volcano to be kind of limited, since I was able to scour my board clean on a regular basis, but couldn't do a ton to assist the other players until I'd pulled a couple great Minors, including Elemental Boon. Next time, we do an Adversary for sure.

Greg Aleknevicus wrote: If you were the strongest player, then perhaps it was wise for England and France to have allied against you?

Nah, it was not an alliance against me. They simply got together on the first turn and never disentangled. I wouldn't become the "strongest" power at the board until much later and I felt like a dead man walking well before that point. Germany must have felt the same, but they bafflingly revived him to four supply centres despite Paris being one of those territories.

Nothing in your description sounds out of line or unfair for a game of Diplomacy. You don't say how many players you had, but in a 7-player game, I expect at least two players to be openly antagonistic to me and not want to negotiate at all.

Is it normal for so much of the table to never want to do anything with you? Why?

The situation you describe in Intrigue is a different matter though. If a player decides his goal is "make Erik lose", then you need to find someone else to play with. This is the most difficult move to make. I had to abandon a game group once when too many of its members took "make Greg lose" as a primary or secondary goal.

Sorry to hear that Greg. For me I feel it's a combination of inexperience and me having this reputation as the guy who writes strategy guides and will backstab everyone.

Most people at my club don't backstab or harm a previous ally. They feel it's unsafe to do so and hence with the same person for the whole game, or only do timid attempts towards others. For example, in Dune they are unlikely to look for other allies after a worm and whoever is left behind will see it as treachery of the highest sort. Given the games we are talking about, this distorts play completely.

As for my reputation. people seem to think I'm so good anything I propose is a trap and they simply refuse to collaborate. Even when they recognize my ideas are good, they don't want to "risk it". So I don't actually get to play much. In other games, they might hit me first with negative events or never invest in my companies.

Last time I played Food Chain Magnate with the England player, he gave up from very early on because "Erik is going to win". He started picking up waitresses, turning a three player game into a two-player one with a bigger board. And I didn't even win, because I'm not good at FCM and the newbie bothered to keep playing and beat me.

I feel like my enjoyment of anything that is not Terraforming Mars is going down the drain because of this.

Erik Twice wrote: Nah, it was not an alliance against me. They simply got together on the first turn and never disentangled.

I see that as a perfectly valid strategy in Diplomacy. It should, however, cause a ripple effect as the other players recognize its power and react accordingly (most obviously by forming strong alliances of their own).

Is it normal for so much of the table to never want to do anything with you? Why?

(I hope this isn't construed as picking on you, Erik, I mean it as simple analysis and it's obviously pure speculation since I wasn't there...)

I think the key is the statement that you "made an enemy of everyone". If true, it's no wonder no one wanted to negotiate with you. I've no idea how you might have done this, but a clue is in your statement that France could have eliminated England by taking control of London. You worded this in a way that makes it seem that France was foolish not to do so (i.e., that's what YOU would have done had you been in France's position). If other players perceive this as how you view an "alliance", it's no wonder they don't trust you.

I do understand your frustration though having experienced similar situations. Certainly there must be games besides Terraforming Mars that would work for you and your group?

Greg Aleknevicus wrote: You worded this in a way that makes it seem that France was foolish not to do so (i.e., that's what YOU would have done had you been in France's position). If other players perceive this as how you view an "alliance", it's no wonder they don't trust you.

Like I mentioned, the reason why France did not take over England was "I do not want to eliminate another player". I'm fine with him not doing so if he found it a poor move but he said it was the right one, he just didn't want to kick someone out.

Similarly, at some point I offered England to cooperate to fight the remnants of Germany. They waved off my suggestions by saying they (England) "weren't going to win anyways" so they were not interested in strategizing.

I agree this makes me "untrustworthy" in their eyes, which is what I find so frustrating. Blunty put, I think they are playing wrong and it tires me both to suffer it and to be responsible for it at the same time. Because it's not just Diplomacy, or Intrigue, it's every other game. And it's not even a "group", it's a huge club with 50 or more regular members.

I just feel my enjoyment of games is being undermined by stuff like this. I remember being excited to play Tresham's Civilization one day and now I just feel I would be refused any trades because I might pass a calamity to them.

I do understand your frustration though having experienced similar situations. Certainly there must be games besides Terraforming Mars that would work for you and your group?

There are. Just any game where you don't depend on other players would be fine. But the games I love tend to be the opposite.

I'm just venting so I appreciate it, Greg. I just wanted to have fun yesterday and ended up frustrated.

My buddy brought over his copy of Rambo again last night and we continued our campaign. We knocked out two missions, and both of them sucked. I don't know how much farther we will progress. There are a lot of things to like about the game, but it all comes off as so half-baked. The standard co-op "every round draw a card and bad things happen" is here in force, except that most of the road blocks come off as just lazy annoyances that reduce the fun more than they increase the challenge.

The game includes several versions of Rambo, two of which are labeled as "PROMO". These promos are overpowered, and last night I played as "Expendable Rambo", which is an odd name since at the bottom of the player board it says "You are not expendable." Anyway, no one should ever play with Expendable Rambo. He is so insanely powerful, the scenario was a joke. This particular scenario would have normally presented quite a challenge, but Expendable Rambo took it in stride, even killing 8 enemies in one turn. To put that in perspective, a "normal" turn might have you killing 2.

This same scenario also kept referring to a "drop zone". No drop zone is listed anywhere on the map diagram or fog of war cards. Proof reading....

Diplomacy doesn't offer much entertainment for the long play-time. There may be long stretches of the game where everyone is stalemated and repeating their turns over and over. You should play my speed variant for Diplomacy. Randomly assign the countries to the seven players. Each player is eliminated if they get kicked in the groin. The game starts off with Turkey getting a free kick at Austria-Hungary. The whole game will take just minutes, and most of the players will be just as unhappy afterwards as if they played the regular version for several hours.