What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played the late 90s 'German' game Elfenland with my euro group last night, this is what what euro games used to be like ( along with Catan and El Grande etc...) before VP pointsalads and elegant mechanics and reskinned mechanics took over in the mid-noughties. It's a pretty fun game although the owner introduced the Elfengold expansion that brought bidding into it ... and the blasted Wizard card that allows you to pay to be teleported (magic carpet) to any city if you get stuck, sounds a good idea but since they come out randomly (and the ironic thing is this group hates random stuff in games ) they can really change the game. Over the six rounds I didn't get a Wizard once so was blocked a few times, every one else did with the eventual winner drawing two in the last round so leap-frogging himself for the win.

Played a 4 hour plus quest in Sword & Sorcery: Immortal Souls (brilliant game) plus Eldritch Horror (another loss), Sub Terra, and Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords with my usual AT group.

southernman wrote: Played the late 90s 'German' game Elfenland with my euro group last night...

Sounds like you had a great game night! But man, Elfenland! That game brings back so many memories for me, from great times to family arguments. Such a great classic game, gotta get that one back on the table...

Ah_Pook wrote: 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.

My group is a little over halfway through this (we assume). It never really stops expecting you to treat it as an RPG-like experience while just being about adjusting sliders. It's one of those games where I feel I can't decide if it's a good game until it's done, and I see where they're going with it. It's an interesting experience to be sure.

We bailed on it roughly halfway through. Curious to see if you all make it to the end.

charlest wrote: We bailed on it roughly halfway through. Curious to see if you all make it to the end.

I see that a follow-up has just been announced, The Queen's Dilemma where it will involve more of keeping your lands (on a map/board) stable.. Just found a website:
"Most of the gameplay of The Queen’s Dilemma™ will be focused on a big world map, where players will take direct control of different regions and manage them. There will be several resources to gather, with different uses, and players will be able to spend and exchange them to construct buildings and personal improvements.

The Queen’s Dilemma™ will still feature the tense voting sessions and tough decisions to make that made The King’s Dilemma such a huge success, but there will be more than resource tracks going up and down this time. Also, event cards will have more varied effects, having an impact on specific regions."
www.horribleguild.com/the-queens-dilemma/

I have been intrigued whenever I read about the original but the fact the game is just talking and conspiring/assisting to move markers always stops me for the price it is asking, I like (need) a bit of content and aesthetic tactility in a game usually, but maybe the sequel will be more suited to me.

A Gentle Rain - It's been raining here for weeks now so this game seemed appropriate. A very light abstract tile-layer designed by Kevin Wilson. Solo only even if the box claims otherwise as you'd just take turns playing the solo game. It's a pleasant, relaxing distraction with pretty components and that's all it tries to be.

Could have been the players or not being familiar with the rules, but I remember Elfenland being L O N G. As in three hours long.

RobertB wrote: Could have been the players or not being familiar with the rules, but I remember Elfenland being L O N G. As in three hours long.

Ours was 2.5 hours for five players, the bidding on the tiles introduced by the expansion definitely adds a bit of time (10 tiles to bid on in each of the six rounds). But it's probably been 15 years since we played it last and I can't remember how long the vanilla game took.

Played a five player game of TI4 last night. We did not use the PoK expansion because most of us hadn't played in at least two years.

To save time we used the prebuilt map and I was randomly dealt L1Z1X.

I ended up in a protracted battle for Mecatol during round 3 I believe (it could have been 4). The Barony got there first but I pushed them back as I used my racial tech to jump to War Suns quickly.

The round after the Barony fucker attacked me with his own War Sun lead fleet and I lost everything while he only lost a single fighter. I should have brought more fighters with me, but still, my rolls were trash and his were juiced ( he had two fighter kills from his destroyer's anti-fighter barrage, ugh).

I retook it a couple of turns later but my empire was sparse and the Pirate dudes pressed my left flank. Meanwhile, the Lions smartly pushed the Barony's border to delay his shift towards them and also score a private objective.

The Plant people were kind of doing their own thing and not causing too much of a ruckus.

The Cats would win as we realized too late they were cemented in a great position.

I remembered why I love this game. I also remembered how much I hate advanced PDS' and their ability to absolutely slow the game down. I also remembered how much I miss Eclipse.

It was great overall though and I'm looking forward to playing with the PoK expansion next time.

charlest wrote: I remembered why I love this game. I also remembered how much I hate advanced PDS' and their ability to absolutely slow the game down. I also remembered how much I miss Eclipse.

The first time I played TI4 me and my friend had fun until advanced PDS entered the picture. Then our fun plummeted and never recovered.

It's very close to being punished "for playing".

ubarose wrote:

RobertB wrote: Could have been the players or not being familiar with the rules, but I remember Elfenland being L O N G. As in three hours long.

I don't recall it being long. We played it a couple of months ago, and it didn't feel long. Although we don't have the bidding expansion. However, trash talking each other, hate draft and blocking threats, and general swearing and recriminations does add a bit of time to the game.

It's been so long since I played it that the length could have been due to anything; AP, calls from work, plague of locusts, whatever. But it definitely stuck in my mind as being insultingly longer than the playing time on the box.

I got to try something really interesting yesterday which was the The ghost in the attic escape room box from The Mystery Agency, and which has the wonderful meta of using an actual boardgame as the puzzle-solving device.

My friend has invested heavily in a slew of play-at-home escape rooms which are wildly different from the board/card game based titles that commonly crop up in discussion here. These vary from simple document-based files with app support to full-fledged mystery boxes containing all manner of physical props. The Mystery Agency boxes are by far the most appealing and well-made of the ones he showed me.

Without going into spoilers, you open the packaging to find a QA code and a newspaper clipping that sets the puzzle in motion and a boardgame that is held shut by an actual padlock and chain - find the code to unlock the padlock, open the box, and continue. After we got the first chain off we were delighted to find a fully working and well produced game inside the box (albeit a fairly straightforward roll & move with some chance cards - but the story here is that this is an antique from the '50s and if anything it looks over-produced for that era). Although you could play the game it's purpose is as a device that holds clues to the solution, and the game components are utilised in unlocking various stages of the puzzle whilst the story evolves along the way.

The individual stages were all well designed, and although we became stumped once or twice the resolution was always logically determinable and staring us in the face. Toward the end we thought we had figured something out that went beyond the final unlock, which is a good sign that we were hungry to have more of the same! Really well made and a huge step above the exit/unlock series, having the physical elements really added something to the experience. The only downside is that they aren't particularly cheap, although £40 for a couple of hours fun is I suppose on a par with real life escape room prices and the quality rises to those kind of levels. There are apparently some active Facebook groups trading and selling these boxes so they can be enjoyed on the cheap for those willing to recycle and re-use.

Played Parks with the wife and daughter last night. This feels like a reimplemented Tokkaido. I think there's some strategery there WRT positioning your hikers, when to switch from gaining abilities to scoring points, and when to fight over the Camera. Once you get the rules down it would be about 15-20 minutes per player.

It fits in that Prospero Hill niche, with slightly better bits at a slightly higher price. The family likes it, and I like it.