What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

There is an app version of Puzzle Strike. I haven’t played it, but the Yomi implementation was pretty solid and allowed live play. I’d hope Puzzle Strike was of similar quality.

Played a solo game of Faiyum on stream last night, scored 420 points. My previous best was 289. Kind of broke the game open on that one.

Managed to play some games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend;

Played Dutch Blitz with another couple on friday, im bad at reaction games but always surprise myself by not coming last.

Played some Counter Piquet with the lady on saturday. This is the 1500s card game Piquet with a bid attached which makes it a significantly better trad card game. Still not the cream of the crop for 2 but a solid entry. I lost by 100pts in a short game in the end despite winning the first three hands. You bid for both the number of tricks you will take, but also the number of cards you will leave in the talon for your opponent to exchange, and then multipy the two numbers for your score if you meet your bid. Piquet also has a hand scoring round and is generally quite antiquated in a similar vein to cribbage but in an endearing way.

Today I played Eastfront, the summer 43 scenario. Probably still my favourite wargame. This was a bit of an attritional game along the front as early on neither of us took risk. However my opponent over reached at a half gap and allowed me to encircle a large chunk of his armour. Craig besinques block games tend to snow ball if one side gets a moderate lead in units and Eastfront is no different. It doesn't have any real catchup mechanism and lacks the chaos of some CDGs. So i turned my material advantage in a few areas in to an advance, and managed to grab moscow.

Played some Spirit Island on TTS with our discord crew. The TTS module is a little bit janky but mainly really nice.

I've never played with any number in Spirit Island but 2 so playing 3 was interesting.

I wanted to keep the kids from watching TV on a rainy Sunday afternoon so I went and grabbed my old box of Magic: The Gathering cards from the garage. They're both far too young to actually play the game (6 & 3) but I figured it might be fun to look through the card art with them.

I set up a big stack of cards facedown on the floor and had them takes turns drawing one. We started off rating cards, using some mysterious kid metric I had no hope of understanding, before sorting them into three piles - thumbs up, thumbs sideways and thumbs down. After a few rounds I changed things up and said they could put the cards they drew into their own deck. That got them really excited and quickly after that I introduced the concept of trading so they could get the cards they wanted for their "Kingdoms".

Soon enough they were wheeling and dealing and laying out the cards on the floor into a narrative of the terrible events that would happen to you if you were to venture into the kingdom to steal their treasure. When the stack ran out they then would tell their kingdom's full story: "You cross the mountains and then this ogre gets you with his lava hammer and if you get past him the blue dragon attacks you on this island and then the elephant and the tiger jump at you in the field and if you beat them then.. etc etc etc".

It was a surprise hit, pretty fun and made for a decent break from playing Uno Jr... Also gotta say that having an IPA while looking at old Magic cards wasn't a terrible way to spend a rainy Sunday arvo.

Later, when they were in bed, I completed my third run through the Rise of Red Skull campaign in Marvel Champions, with Iron-Man and Spidey romping home to victory.

I’ve been trying for awhile to find a game to play with my five-year-old. Every time he shows the slightest interest, I’ll buy it and post about our play here. Turns out the answer was Guess Who all along. He played it a lot at school and will climb a chair to get it off the shelf and ask for a round at least once a day since we bought it. He takes turns well and generally gets the rules right except he will every time dig through the cards for a woman as his mystery character because he never drew one at school. Fortunately his three-year-old brother doesn’t yet understand the advantage this gives him.

It’s so weird. It’s the exact same cast as my edition three decades ago but with slightly new art. Everyone is still white, and women are fewer than a quarter of the characters, but is this a game you really want to be more inclusive? Do you want kids looking at a passport picture and trying to figure out if their character is American Indian or Pacific Islander or non-binary? It’s a game for teaching kids all the questions and assumptions you don’t want them asking and making in polite society.

I enjoy the tactility. That’s one good thing I can say. The clack of flipping down an eliminated character feels so good.

Erik Twice wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: So how much of this do you think is driven by people with a financial stake in the industry?

I think it's part of it, but not the root of the problem.

For me the core of the issue is that the people aren't exposed to alternatives. You have no shortage of people that tell you how good miniatures are, why you need more content and why this new game that isn't released yet isn't awesome. But you barely see any that have the different views. Hence, these standard not only sets in gaming culture, it goes unchallenged. And this has the side effect of making the few challenges that could arise easier to write off.

So when people see these games, how are they not going to have a negative reaction to them? After all, they do not have any of the features they've heard are important like novelty or deluxe components or making it high into the Boardgamegeek hotness. And they have natural reasons to believe these games are outdated, just like Monopoly was. If you say Marvel United is the best purchase you can make, that's going to put games that are not like it in a different.

Take the people at my club, for example. Lovely people, I love playing with them even if they don't want to be my friends in Diplomacy. We have new members join ocasionally and I've noticed a pattern in how they get into the hobby.

Most new members aren't very experienced. Most have only been at the hobby for only a few months and are looking to dig deeper and meet more people to play. The vast majority of them have played stuff like Catan, Ticket to Ride, perhaps Wingspan. So they join in, we offer them to play whatever they want and so on. And yet, they tend to be led towards that same small group of euros, because they are more similar to what they have played, they hear others talk about them and "weird stuff" like Cosmic Encounter seems challenging. The result is that, despite having the opportunity to try out every game, they are only truly exposed to a very few.

Because those newbies do read BGG and listen to podcasts and all that. They know all the releases coming out and even get into Kickstarter only a months in. But it can be a year and I still can't rope them into a game of Galactica or whatever. And it's not like they wouldn't like them or are opposed to the idea, they simply follow the path of least resistance and, by then, it's too late!

At the end of the day, all I want is more points of view, more diversity of opinions and people being able to make a choice based on information and not just the hype train.

Sorry for the late late response on this. A great observation, and one that I don't get to form an opinion on because I don't play in any public settings. So I don't see what you're seeing.

It appears you think it's more ground-up than top-down on the communications in the industry. I've always assumed the opposite, but that may be because that's the only half I have access to.

DarthJoJo wrote: Everyone is still white, and women are fewer than a quarter of the characters, but is this a game you really want to be more inclusive? Do you want kids looking at a passport picture and trying to figure out if their character is American Indian or Pacific Islander or non-binary?

Your kids won't care a bit or even notice. Put a woman with a beard in the game and they'll just work her into the bearded-people mix along with the others.

There's a Disney version of the game with the Disney characters from their cartoon movies. If the Internet is to be believed, they are rife with LGBTQ people on the down-low.

DarthJoJo wrote: Turns out the answer was Guess Who all along.... It’s the exact same cast as my edition three decades ago but with slightly new art. Everyone is still white, and women are fewer than a quarter of the characters, but is this a game you really want to be more inclusive?

The new card version of Guess Who has a diverse and representative cast, is cheaper and is the exact same game. Just instead of flicking characters down you turn your cards over. It was a good little stocking present at Christmas and my kids (6 & 3) both enjoy playing it.

Dinosaur Tea Party is also basically card based Guess Who, but with cool dinosaurs.

My Game Craftered Iron Helm showed up today. It’s really fun! Very OSR in tone and spirit. It’s super easy to set up to play and it’s only about 20-30 minutes so it fits into that sweet spot for light, end of the day solo gaming.

On the surface it’s extremely basic flip a card, roll dice at it kind of stuff. But the secret sauce is in two things. One is how you draw two dungeon cards and turn one over. You can do the top thing or take a chance on the second card BUT you do the worse/better thing on the bottom. So there’s a little push your luck/risk taking and you are never sure which cards have been tossed. The other is in managing food, energy, and resources. Theoretically you can only swing so many times based on your energy- each spent token is a D6 roll. You can do a 1 point attack for free but you won’t last long. Rations are always scarce, and you have to have at least one when you go to the next level.

So there are some solid decision points throughout and with high stakes on the line.

The big negative is that it is just too fucking expensive. I just went all in on it and it was like $150 shipped. Of course I got the unnecessary but cool neoprene mats though, but even without them it was still like $125.

But it’s actually pretty unique in its old school, OD&D style approach.

I've purchased a Foosball table, a small version. Reminds me of my childhood... Strange, but it was really hard to setup it, thx to the manual .

Game Crafter prices to produce a game are very high. It’s understandable, but makes it not very realistic for a proper game release.

Michael Barnes wrote: The big negative is that it is just too fucking expensive. I just went all in on it and it was like $150 shipped. Of course I got the unnecessary but cool neoprene mats though, but even without them it was still like $125.

It's $40 for the base game and another $6 for the base expansion. Still expensive but your post sounds like it's over $100 to get into the game and it's just not even close. The $40 of neoprene mats add nothing to gameplay. I'm still not convinced the campaign expansions are worthwhile, but they're $6 each and on-demand so no FOMO at least.

Yeah I should have been clearer about that- the base game is $40 plus shipping, but it is more of a $25 game based on components and quality. The little booster packs which come in these delightful foil packs are $5.99 each and there are seven of them. Six of those are “campaign” expansions. I really like the mats but They are definitely not essential. I I Ike the art and look of the game a lot and the mats reinforce the atmosphere.