What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played Mind MGMT for the first time with my wife tonight going by the most basic rules. This is a hidden movement game set in the Mind MGMT comic where former spies (with psychic powers) are trying to take down the agency they used to work for. I thoroughly enjoyed the comic by Matt Kindt and the production really honors the artistic intent. I struggled to prep for the teach, having a hard time understanding how the basic mechanisms would provide much game. Pushing through parenting and Covid fatigue, we threw ourselves into it tonight and walked away satisfied. Fairly quickly, the potency of the actions made a lot more sense. It seems to be respectful of the players time, going by at a good clip. Some of my favorite games with her allow me to watch her mind work, and this certainly provided that. I am hoping to play the training mission again quite soon, reversing the roles before we flesh out the game with the additional mechanisms. Once the full game is active, one is supposed to give new abilities to the losing side so that they get an advantage for the next game. That can happen up to 8 times per side. At any point, one can then reset to the core game.

There is also a Mind MGMT app so you can play the training mode solo or cooperatively. The AI is always the recruiter.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

CranBerries wrote: With a premium site subscription you can insert photos:

Sag, when you quote somebody's post, you can see the codes they used to link images or whatever. The weird thing about CranBerries post here is that there is space right after his first "img" in brackets that would normally keep the image link from working. Not sure why that is working for him, and also not sure if that is what prevented you from doing it.

My submit button grays out when I try to add a file. My other option is to upload the image to an external web site and do a link from there. I used to throw to my BGG gallery but they change the urls on them on a regular basis. So I guess I have to find a new place to dump my junk.

Sorry for the hijinks. I just upload images to imgur.com and link to them

I've been playing Civilization: A New Dawn with the Terra Incognito expansion recently. I've played two games with my son. He's not amazing at the game, but it's enough to show me that it's a very good expansion.

Personally I thought the base game was quite good on its own. It did a great job at giving a fresh interpretation of the civ genre, even if it didn't meet all of the expectations that the license would imply. I know that the combat was very abstract, but I thought it felt like it was on the proper scale for the rest of the game. In other words a 90-minute game that seeks to recreate the Sid Meier's Civ experience can't focus too much on combat.

But the expansion definitely completes the whole game. If you were the type who needed something just a little more detailed, Terra Incognito gladly offers that. There are now armies you can use to move around the map, adding a couple of rules to the experience but actually creating a more intuitive military component. There's also exploration, probably the biggest thing missing from the original game. It also includes some flourishes that feel more like Civ VI, like districts and civ-specific focus cards. Finally, it has a completely new type of focus card, that I think serves to make the game just a touch longer, but in a way that gives the whole thing some room to breathe.

I don't want to overstate things, since I have only played a couple times. But my first impressions here are really positive. It adds all these things without derailing the focused original design or burdening it with too much chrome. At the same time, it feels richer and more well-realized. If A New Dawn was a near miss for you, this might make it something you really like. And if you already liked the original game, this will also really bump it up. It might be one of those rare expansions that is worth playing with right away.

It's certainly the prevailing view!

I'm a little more lukewarm to be honest - the main reason for me being that the upkeep rounds with those districts or whatever change the game from a really quite slick affair that flows really quickly and simply, into something that feels a lot more fiddly. It sounds like it shouldn't be a big deal, but it changed the feel for me quite a bit. You are absolutely right - I think this is now much more fully realised in terms of all the bits and pieces of a Civ game while staying pretty manageable - but I just did enjoy how much it did while staying so snappy.

And unfortunately it's not modular - you can't keep the exploration or just the armies or what have you - it's all or nothing (and a pain to swap between the versions once you've switched everything up).

We've only played with it a few times too - and to be fair it got a little better after the first one. But it's gone from the "okay, we've got an hour or so if we're quick, let's get started" to the "need to plan for it and remember how these things work again" pile.

Having said all that, I think the victory conditions are a bit better and push the players at each other a bit more. The exploration is good, the military is cooler. And I like what they did by giving each Civ a little more character.

That's a fair assessment. While the core loop is still very pronounced, it's definitely got more going on and takes longer. I think the rules additions are actually pretty simple to process, but I've only played a couple times.

I'm also willing to concede that playing with my 11-year-old ADHD son has probably given me a somewhat inaccurate view of what the time frame for this game would actually be, whether it's expanded or not.

Ha, given I'm playing with my son as well we are probably not the most useful playtesters I'm sure it's not as pronounced with more experienced players but we'll see. I still do think it's pretty damn good, and overall, with or without, this is definitely the Civ as board game package i didnt think was possible.

There's a regular convention in our area called U-Con, because it started at the University of Michigan and was always hosted at their student union. In recent years, the university's space costs have become outrageous, so U-Con lit out for a hotel in nearby Ypsilanti and has been held there for the past few years until, of course, last year. Everyone was looking forward to the resumption of the convention, but the U-Con board (it's a non-profit) decided that there were simply too many hurdles to undertake in too short a time to make sure that everyone attending was safe (COVID protocols, checking for vaccinations, etc.) so they reverted to last year's model, which is electronic only, which sucks, but that's the state of the world.

However, they have a large game library which travels to one of the local breweries once a month and allows anyone to pick things from the library to play in the large gathering space that the brewery has. We usually meet up there to play our own games, as well as the library's, and today was U-Con day. I met up there with two of my regulars (Nick and Leah) and a former regular whom I hadn't seen in almost two years(!) because of COVID and his existence as a severely overburdened public school teacher (John.) We pulled a popular selection from the library: The Crew. None of us had played before but were all eager to try, given its popularity. The rules explanation was a little lacking so it took a couple missions to really get the hang of it, but then we settled in and played about a half-dozen. We got stuck on one and failed to complete it a couple times, but everyone could see the possibilities of the game and it was perfect for that setting, as it's very social, even though you can't talk about your hand. I liked it and would definitely like to play more.

Since we had played a social game, I pulled out my copy of what may be my favorite Knizia: Modern Art. All three of them were first-timers, but it's very easy to understand and they dove right in. I think I overspent a bit in rounds 2 and 3 and didn't make enough back because people were actively playing double auctions to close the round out. Manuel ended up with 2nd place in the first three rounds and 1st in the fourth, which gave what I thought would be a significant edge to people who had won the double for him in the last round, but it turns out that people who'd been conservative with their cash took the day, as both John and Leah ended up with over $400, with Leah squeaking by with $17 more. Hopefully, I've snared them and we can play this more often (he says about almost every game he owns...)

Pusheen - this Ravensburger joint has some other more specific name but I can't recall it right now. It's a Pusheen-themed set collection game. You place 12 cards out in either Pusheen's house or the yard, but it doesn't matter because both locations are functionally identical. Based on where the first player places Pusheen, people can either take a card from the board or draw a card blindly. You are trying to gather the required cards to fulfill set requirements that are listed on large tarot-style cards from a different deck. Each set card is worth a certain amount of stars. At the end of each round if any player has hit 10 stars, they win.

There is actually a little bit of fuckery on some of these cards, much to my amusement. We only played once so I don't know how cut-throat it can get, and I also imagine it is more devious as the player count goes up. As it was, we both ended up winning at the same time, and it was a shared victory.

The King is Dead - I have always played this game at 3 players; it is the ultimate 3 player game. But we tried at two. This was also good, but loses a lot of the intensity that a third player adds. It went down to the wire, and I narrowly won, by a single cube of course. Great as always, I have literally never had a bad game of this.

My wife and I finally opened and played Arkham Horror: Final Hour. It seems like an OK game, mostly an Arkham Pandemic, but it's hard to believe that it's such a UI/UX failure, having been released in 2019. Paths that the monsters travel on are marked by red and blue arrows that often blend into and obscure the player paths between buildings, marked as cobblestone paths. The manual helpfully includes a monochrome map, but the fact that it's needed suggests the problem was recognized and not addressed. My visual impairment makes mine a nonrepresentative perspective, but my wife also struggled with it. Not only that, but the item cards, which admittedly are not a big part of the game, are the small-size cards with tiny black text on a green background and are unnecessarily difficult to read. The icons for the monster traits on the monster tiles are sometimes difficult to pick up, especially because the tiles can appear at all sorts of angles owing to the board art. Maybe worst of all, the icons for the three gate types are meaningless black-and-white scribbles and are very hard to both pick up and distinguish, which is important because subsequent gate tokens can appear on top of the existing tokens and because monsters spawn at those gates. I'll try it again, but so far it's evoked more frustration and questions ("Which gate is this?") than entertainment.

Imperial Struggle and VASSAL notes

Last night Pete Stein and I finished a VASSAL game of IMPERIAL STRUGGLE we started last week. I've got about six games under my belt now and this was the first one that not only went to Final Scoring, but was in doubt til the very end. Past games either ended in Auto Win or "it's hopeless, let's stop" for one side or the other.

The scoring was fairly tight from turn to turn. I think there were a few times one side or the other got to maybe 5 points either side of 15. No Wars ended in blowouts - I think only 3 Territories got taken via Conquest the entire game - I took Hudson Bay, Asiento and one of the British Territories in India. The VASSAL module set up defaults to the Spanish option and we missed the rule that gives the opponent a Shift in Spain when a Spanish Territory is taken via Conquest. That only happened once anyways.

The more critical rules oversight was that Minor Actions may NOT remove a Control Marker or Squadron unless under a Conflict Marker ( and those can't be on Squadrons ) . Pete noticed this in our second session on Turn 5 I think. We estimated we both violated it about the same handful of times and it's not like we could undo it anyways.

When we got to Turn 5 we both went all in on the American Revolution. While I had the Advantage in Military Chits and Forts/Squadrons in North America, Pete's diplomatic efforts in Europe resulted in the AmRev being a Draw , which we both thought was basically a victory for the Brits. After the dust settled from Turn 5 and the War scoring, headed into Turn 6 the score was at virtually a tie.

The Investment Tile draw for the Final turn was very odd - only TWO Event card tiles. Luckily, I had a Minister that allowed an Event Card play w/o the card symbol as long as the Icon Type mattered. So knowing I would get two cards to Pete's single card play I let him go first so I would have the final action. Pete had the Caribbean and Europe in good shape, but both Caribbean and N America required winning by two control markers. So I was able to make both of them non scoring. I was in good shape in India and most importantly, the relative dearth of Military Actions meant that by taking the single Military Major Action tile and using some Debt, I knocked out both his European Fleets in the Prestige spaces and locked up the 2 VP for European Prestige as well as the Final Scoring Prestige ( since the American Prestige spaces didn't enter play due to the AmRev tie ). That coupled with a 3VP event for most Forts/Squadrons in India were enough for the win.

Some notes on the excellent VASSAL mod

First, the fact that it auto tracks spaces for both Trade Goods and Theatre/Prestige Rewards is HUGE and an upgrade over the physical version.

Second and related to the first - there is a note on the VASSAL Module page that warns you NOT to drag fleets but to right click them to move them. Otherwise this can result in the aforementioned space counts being off. We noticed this a few times and after we saw the note, stopped dragging fleets and right clicked them instead.

Third - war tile chit draws are a bit funky - we had some issues hitting the draw button for bonus tiles, but right clicking and dragging them from the Play mat to the war card worked every time.

All in all, my rating for this game remains quite high and I like it a lot better than TWILIGHT STRUGGLE. Blasphemy to some I know. But I find it a more interesting subject and the game play less dependent on card management and avoiding huge swings due to having to play opponents' event cards.

Thanks for the Imperial Struggle comments. I really want to play more of it. I played a lot of it when it first came out, had mixed feelings but overall pretty positive, and haven't played it since.

I think it's a much more euro design than TS and it is intentionally built to be a bit more difficult to "solve," which isn't a bad thing. The updating scoring track is absolutely vital, it would be hard to play in person without it (the TTS module has it too).

Had a friend over last night and we played Terminator: Genysis, for the first time in a LONG time. Luckily this game is pretty easy to get back into. But boy, did the setup really drag this time. Placing lots of little terrain hexes is a drag and they often don't really mean all that much.

I picked up the wrong scenario book so we ended up playing the third mission from the expansion instead of the third mission from the base game. It didn't really matter, we still had a great time, and of course reading all of the paragraphs in cinematic style is required.

A great time as always, but I broke one of the drone minis. Some super glue will do the trick. The minis in this game.... well they aren't so great.

To celebrate my wife’s birthday we divided the children amongst the grandparents and set for the city. Outside of brief forays outside to eat or catch a concert or comedian or escape room, we spent all of our time at the hotel playing games. A lot of it I would call “comfort food” gaming, long-time favorites that we only needed to check the rules to confirm opening handsizes. It was a good time.

Some highlights:

I think I’m done with Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age. I have played it an awful lot and think I’ve seen everything the game has to offer. However, it is one of my wife’s absolute favorites, one of the very few she regularly specifically asks to play, doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to play and has some wonderfully chunky dice, so I’ll keep on keeping on.

We cracked Summoner Wars Second Edition for a classic match of Vanguards and Cave Goblins. It’s the only newish game we played as first edition was one of our early favorites, but the updates to the rules are very mild. I got absolutely rolled. I decided to build a Gate for magic on my second turn and never summoned another unit after that. My wife swarmed my starting gate, destroyed it, dropped a Gate of her own on my side and chased Sera for the rest of the game. Good times.

Seven Wonders is another of my wife’s favorites to request. I’m rarely excited to play it, but I always feel satisfied at the end. The two-player variant remains great as the dummy player offers opportunities to undercut my wife’s military game or shovel money into my coffers as they buy all my resources. Still, it’s a weirdly opaque game. Drafting is a great and simple mechanic, but to play Seven Wonders well requires knowing what resources you’ll need for the big buys in the third age. Poor drafts in the first two ages can absolutely give you nothing to do in the third round as I discovered when I was cash and stone poor in our first match. I’m not sure whom I’d suggest it to. I’d sooner suggest Greed to casual players as you can still stumble into something good on a first play, but I don’t think there’s enough meat in Seven Wonders for people used to something heavier.

I wrote about my first experience with the Broad Peak expansion to K2 under Oliver’s review, but suffice to say, I was rolled once again as both my climbers succumbed while my wife’s spent the last three days back at base camp. It made sense in the moment for my first climber to abandon his tent to get below an incoming storm, but in retrospect, the hypothermia had already broken his brain.

It could have been our first game where both of us made runs of eight in Lost Cities, but I miscounted the remaining cards in the deck, only got seven down and was rolled.

Other games included Hanabi, Fox in the Forest Duet, Jaipur, Combo Fighter and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Good times.

Tried out Nidavellir with my wife last night, which I thought was really good. It's a set collection card drafting game. You have 5 bidding coins, and everyone starts with the same value coins. Each round you fill up 3 locations with cards, and everyone places a coin facedown for each location. The value of the coins at each location determines the order players draft the cards from that location in. The twist is if you bid 0 a somewhere you can upgrade the higher of the two coins you didn't bid with to be the sum of the two coins you didn't bid with. So basically you get big scores by getting a lot of a single suit, but you also get bonuses for each complete set of all 5 suits you have. You draft a bunch of cards and add up at the end, plus you get points for the sum of all your coins at the end.

So yea, if you like card drafting and bidding it's a win. The bidding with fixed tiles kinda reminded me of Ra, but it's a blind bid so it felt pretty different on the end. The coin upgrading is the twist, and it's quite fun.