What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote: I miss Arkham Horror. Great reading your writeup Gary.

Our favorite house rule was that no one was allowed to flip up a monster token and read its stats/powers on the back of the token until they fought it. We didn't play often enough to memorize them so this added a nice tension of uncertainty.

Our group tried something similar, except that we allowed a Lore role if the player was in an adjacent space to the monster.

Played the first scenario of Kings Dilemma last night, which was interesting. It's a legacy game where you play members of the kings council on a fantasy kingdom. Each game represents a king's reign, and basically you vote on a bunch of dilemmas that affect various sliders for your kingdom (money, morale, etc). Lots of bribing each other to vote certain ways and negotiating and stuff, which is fun. So far it feels stuck in a weird place between a boardgame and a roleplaying/storytelling game. Mostly you're trying to have the sliders end up in certain positions to satisfy your end game scoring card, so you don't really care that you're voting yay/nay on whether to abolish sexual slavery in your kingdom you care about if you want to move the money slider up or down to hopefully get some points later. I get wanting to have a game framework to drive the action, but it kind of hamstrings the whole concept. That said, we're only one game in so we'll see. I'm happy to play more of it.

Started a new Oath campaign with TWBGers today, we had a good time and got beat by a dominant empire. Was neat to see a whole slew of new cards since we did a random start instead of the fixed setup. I was running what was essentially a death cult sacrificing my warriors to gain secrets to take the darkest secret.

Since the big sales swing from the SUSD review, there have been all kind of disgruntled people trying Oath and hating it. I have to laugh because there's this BGG thread that the four of us all separately read about how a game of Oath is just each player taking the Oath in succession every turn, ultimate kingmaker style. Like, what the fuck? By the end of the game sornars was in such a dominant position there was nothing any of us could do at all, despite a close call in midgame where sornars misperceived how easy it would be to knock down Not Sure's Oath victory and had to rely on a nonbinding citizenship offer prevent the win.

In and out with a 4p game on tabletop simulator in an hour and a half, that sort of speed means this game goes down really smooth.

I’ve been playing different stuff week over week here, THE INITIATIVE is a solid (easy) title for families that want a mild legacy game with some tame, almost 80s style codebreaking mechanics. We had a cool moment last week that had us all agog, so that alone was worth it.

I played KEYFORGE today, it’s still good. There’s a nice 2p starter kit for the latest release, DARK TIDINGS, that plays really well. I think this is a good intro game for kids graduating from board game basics. Cool art, a cool idea, and lots of rook for different experiences even in the same deck.

The game I have played most often the last few weeks is RIICHI MAHJONG, the Japanese version of MAHJONG. Its RUMMY with 100 years worth of extra rules and scoring tacked on. You build a good hand of sets and runs, and it needs to be good enough in some cool way or you literally aren’t allowed to win. I have a printed out sheet that tells me how to score a hand and it’s still incredibly complicated. My brother in law is super into this, so he’s bought a sweet set of tiles a d nice mat and we all have a good time.

Gary Sax wrote: I have to laugh because there's this BGG thread that the four of us all separately read about how a game of Oath is just each player taking the Oath in succession every turn, ultimate kingmaker style. Like, what the fuck?

I saw that thread, too. The opinions expressed on BGG have been getting progressively worse as the board game audience has grown, as you might expect. Threads like that are becoming much more frequent, as someone decides that they've discovered the game's fatal flaw that, somehow, its thousands (millions?) of other fans weren't able to see or are deliberately ignoring because of their "cult-like" devotion to the designer. I almost strictly use BGG as a news site now; occasionally jumping in when someone has a rules question that I know the answer to.

I don’t remember the last time I saw an “opinion” on BGG with which I agreed.

It's not that there isn't a kingmaking argument for why you wouldn't personally like it, it's just that you're showing your group's whole entire ass if that is literally the way you're playing it... which is what they say!

As for BGG, just another casualty in the argument that discourse related social behavior doesn't scale usefully. Twitter is great for news, views etc, but who is having fun two way interactions on it without a limited audience?

Got my copy of SPACECORP: VENTURES this week and took the new solo corporations out for a test spin. For veterans of the base game, the expansion has very few new rules, but you should pay attention to the play aids and the new corporation boards, as they have all the info you need. Some corporations have different abilities spelled out in their turn sequence as well as abilities during the action round itself. Also each new corporation has an alternate final scoring option they can choose when the second Starfarers contract is scored.

First off the solo AI has been beefed up. Specifically, the first three steps in Starfarers in the original game often led to the AI "stalling" if it could not complete a site action due to the player having beaten them there, or the AI already having built out the site. Now, when the AI is faced with such a situation it either draws a new card, or scores Colony points for that site if it already has a Colony there. This makes a bug difference in Starfarers.

Secondly of course are all the new corporations. I got in three games yesterday, all clocking in around 2 hours apiece, using a different expansion corporation each time. Its important to read each board carefully, as they are each unique. For example, some start with no Time cards - in fact, Time cards overall are much less numerous than in the base game, as you also do NOT shuffle the extras into the deck. One big change is that each era has an 8th contract, drawn randomly from 3 possible choices in each era. This not only opens up more contract options, but also means that as the game progresses, there are more contracts with double or even triple points scoring opportunities if unfulfilled from prior eras.

For solo play, each corporation has a suggested AI corp to be matched against.

First game:

Me: Discover Prime . Their bonus is that they do not need bases for movement and they can upgrade Explore cards they play during their turn. In the later two eras, they score 1T per Discovery tile they place as well as relocate to another site in the region after Exploring.

AI DP Roberts ( pirates ) . If they land at a site with your team, you either lose 2T or relocate to one of your bases.
I didn't get "attacked" by pirates more than a few times during the game and kept the game close during the first two eras. However in Starfarers due to getting First Beyond the prior era, the AI really got the jump on me. Between that and being a bit rusty after not having played the game in awhile, I ended up losing 120-100.

Second game:

Me: InfraMaxx. I had played an earlier iteration of this at WBC several years ago and remember it being pretty fun so I gave it a try. They can play upgrade cards from their hand OR from the Offers, which can be more efficient . In the later two eras, they can do this TWICE per action round. In addition, they have a fourth Infra slot. The downside is that they can never fulfill Contract 6 ( Infra slot cards) . They can also discard one Upgrade eligible card for a Colony point in Starfarers.

AI : Stellar Security. They use the other color Secure bases as well as their own. Each time they draw a Secure base of one of the extra colors they score 2T.

This game got off to a VERY fast start. Mariners ended with only about 8 total teams on the board due to the draw pile draining rapidly. This also meant more double scoring contracts were available. Due toi a beefed up Infra, I was able to snag the First Beyond and get a head start on the Asteroid base contract, worth extra points from not being fulfilled the prior round. I then scored another double contract by placing 3 bases in the Mars region as well as having a good number of Progress cards headed into Starfarers. The last era also went fairly fast and I was able to almost reverse the prior game score, winning 119-102.

Third game I randomly picked Polaris. They can upgrade Build cards they play, and in the later two eras, can replace previously built bases with new ones, gaining the new base benefit as well.

AI: DP Roberts

This game started off poorly for me as the AI quickly got both Mars sites as well as First Beyond before I knew what hit me. Headed into Planeteers, I found myself "pirated" several times and chose to eat the 2T as I wanted to stay on the site . Unfortunately I found mostly rocks and non biological sites. So while I could Produce well, I was lacking the Genetics and Revelations necessary to gain Progress Cards. This came to a head in Starfarers, where for a period in the mid game I found myself Move paralyzed, as I had plenty of Move multiplier cards but without a Move number or Low Body Mass, could not move. I did get going again but by that point the AI was cruising, out in front by a good 30 points. I did end the game fulfilling a triple scoring contract for 9 points, and my alternate scoring option ( 1T for each different type of base and a 4T bonus if you have all 9 ) resulted in a huge end game surge, but I still fell short 137 to 133.

I look forward to playing this with real live opponents, the sheer number of combinations with so many new corporations and the variable 8th contract will really open up play variety. The new AI is also stronger than it was previously.

My wife gave me the weekend off, so I headed right out to take advantage. Spent the night with my old game group and got in some of our classics starting with two rounds of Donald X. Vaccarino’s Greed. Still solid, still hits all the beats it sets out for itself.

Finally played Bohnanza. I had been pushing for it for months at our weekly game night before I moved away, but they were understandably underwhelmed by bean farming. Then, after I move away, they pick up their own copy and start trading, planting and harvesting without me. Not surprisingly, I lose, in no small pat because I’m holding my cards a little too long, but we found out they changed the rules for a third bed between my second edition and their fifth. You can’t buy that third bed anymore. It’s a just a higher-player count variant now.

Followed that with some Star Trek Catan. The only notable change beside the window dressing of turning roads into starships and wheat into dilithium were the addition of original series characters who gave you some small benefits like forced trades or protection from Klingons. I think they help the game move along as they inject some more resources into the game, but then you don’t need to trade as much. That could have been due to the board layout which had both 8’s on water and both 10’s on tritanium. Trade doesn’t help as much if everyone is getting the same resources on the same rolls. I won after bursting five points in my last two turns and using the crew more aggressively than anyone else.

People started going to sleep and heading home by this point, so my friend and I finished the night off with some Star Realms. It’s inoffensive. It’s just a pure deckbuilder with the random marketplace. Nothing inspiring about it. It’s greatest innovation was a reasonably-sized box, which I’m disappointed never caught on in a big way.

But the real impetus for heading out was two days of Star Wars CCG tournaments. I got the bug back with all of my competitive games dying and a friend sent me his old collection, the best collection one could buy on a sixth grader’s allowance but definitely not tournament worthy. I got in touch with some guys to help me out with cards and played them for the first time at the tournaments, always a winning decision.

Saturday was a classic tournament, using only Decipher-printed cards. I was running a Light side deck of Wookiee Lumberjacks that tried to sneak in some Strangles and a basic Dark side that took captives and fed them to the rancor. It was an embarrassment. I built the lists with the cards I was familiar with, bouncing from the game between Death Star II and Tatooine introduced the Episode I characters due to declining interest and horror stories of the power surge in cards like pod racing and everything. Turns out everyone else was playing those late set cards. I didn’t stand a chance. My second game my opponent literally played only two characters the whole time, and I couldn’t crack either. The only highlight was a Wookiee strangling a whole Stormtrooper Garrison on a very lucky destiny draw. I even was ‘gifted’ a bye, the cruelest loss after a two-hour drive.

Sunday was much better. We could play virtual cards created by the Player’s Committee in the years since the license left Decipher. That leveled the playing field in that you didn’t have to pay for the real power cards anymore. It also helped that I played no part in building this deck. Someone just gave me a Light Side that brought in the Episode VII crew and a Dark deck that emphasized non-unique blasters, a horridly weak card type for basically the entirety of the game’s run. I still lost all my matches, but they were a whole lot more competitive. I might even have won one if it hadn’t gone to time. Highlight was definitely Padme chasing a terrified Vader around as she canceled his game text with her mere presence.

Had a good time. It was a good crew with some surprisingly young faces. The organizer ran an after school group that played the game, and he figured half the people that showed up this weekend were high school kids who learned the game from him. That’s cool.

Anyway, if anyone was interested in picking it back up, I was pleasantly surprised by the work put in by the Player’s Committee in card design. They were generally fun, interactive cards and themes that learned from some of Decipher’s worst decisions. It’s a painfully complex game with an enormous cardpool and requires an extensive knowledge of said cardpool and meta to make good decisions, but the bones of a fun game entirely unlike anything else are still there.

Played with my brother and nephews for the first time in about a year and a half. 'Nephews' sounds like towheaded boys, but the youngest of the two is 30. Damn, I'm old.

We played:

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition - this is the third time I've played, twice with my brother. He got a ton of card draw effects, and by the end was drawing eight cards and keeping four. That's sad. I think the game plays a lot like TM, but plays faster. As evidence, I've lost to my wife several times when she plays for cards and point engines, and lost to it again in TM: the Card Game. However, getting it done in 90 minutes when you have my brother, the World's Slowest Player, at the table is a good thing.

Cthulhu Wars - I had bought a copy of Dune: Imperium with a gift certificate birthday present, because I'm a sucker for stuff like that. But when we tried to decide what to play, it went like this:

Me: This new game I just bought?
Brother: No, don't want to mess with learning a new game. ST: Ascendency?
Me: Too long. Blood Rage?
Brother: The boys are scared of me and Blood Rage now. Cthulhu Wars?

Cthulhu Wars it was. But it turns out that the two times I had played it two years ago wasn't enough to make the rules stick, nor did they stick for anyone else. So we're learning a game after all. However, it did come back pretty quickly, and it moved along pretty well. At one point my brother decided he (Black Goat) was gonna fight someone, and his choice was Cthulhu or me. However, that gap between plays let him forget that Hastur assigns damage. Bye-bye Black Goat Guy. Our fighting didn't help our games though, and we came in 3rd and 4th.

RobertB wrote: 'Nephews' sounds like towheaded boys, but the youngest of the two is 30. Damn, I'm old.

You know, I picture everyone on this web site as 25 years old, including myself oddly enough. Then I remember that I'm five years from retirement.

Sagrilarus wrote: You know, I picture everyone on this web site as 25 years old, including myself oddly enough. Then I remember that I'm five years from retirement.

"Board games? Hmph. Those are for kids."

Sagrilarus wrote:

RobertB wrote: 'Nephews' sounds like towheaded boys, but the youngest of the two is 30. Damn, I'm old.

You know, I picture everyone on this web site as 25 years old, including myself oddly enough. Then I remember that I'm five years from retirement.

I still picture myself as 35 years old, which is why looking in the mirror has become so disappointing in recent years.

I just played Talon on boardgamearena with a guy in Sweden. It was excellent. Love this game.

I’m hoping they expand to more than two players.

Shellhead wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:

RobertB wrote: 'Nephews' sounds like towheaded boys, but the youngest of the two is 30. Damn, I'm old.

You know, I picture everyone on this web site as 25 years old, including myself oddly enough. Then I remember that I'm five years from retirement.

I still picture myself as 35 years old, which is why looking in the mirror has become so disappointing in recent years.

[stolen]
My mind still thinks I'm 22.
My body thinks my mind is a bloody idiot.