What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Brother in law swung through and we had a full day game day till the evening. I haven't done that in like 5 years or more.

We played two games of Pax Pamir 2nd edition and a game of Pax Renaissance. What masterpieces, I'm not sure there are boxes with more to explore in them at that size and price in gaming. Two player in these games is just an absolute street fight; they lose the interesting table balancing and knowing how hard to press until you've done enough angle but playing the games 2p with so many avenues in which to hold other players down makes for a very intense experience. And, if you're losing, they make for some painful losses you might want to resign from. Both our games came down to two things: money and spies. Not Sure has always maintained that keeping a lot of money on hand is basically the prerequisite to winning in Pax Pamir and I think I'm coming around to that view. It doesn't mean you're going to win, but you cannot win if your opponent can keep you away from the river of cards and just hold you down via taxation. I lost the first game because I surged ahead on first domination but didn't fall back after those points and rebuild my position and finances, I tried to push for the win. It was brutal. Second game I was more mindful of the money and made sure I kept 3-4 coins on hand at all times if possible, even being willing to lose a little board position to do so. I ended up just drowning him in spies, murdering his spies and once in awhile his cards continuously because I had one of those spy regenerating cards. Overall, I do not like those spy regenerating cards in Pamir, I think they're too overpowered. I don't think there's a thing which should enter the board in Pamir and just automatically be a 5 alarm emergency that you must use all your resources to defeat in most situations; Pamir cards just don't feel like they should work that way.

Then we played Renaissance... it is still my favorite Pax game even with the nightmare rules scrawl straight from Eklund's dark inner thoughts. And not even his horrid liner notes, push that aside, but his rules are just so bad he shouldn't be allowed near a rulebook. A developer should be left to write every piece, every word, of the rules themselves. For me what sets Renaissance apart is the income system. Pamir is a great game, but I don't find its general economic structure very creative---the taxing cards and shelters provide some neat money flow but that's about it. Compare to the way that the trade fair system is the vital beating heart of Renaissance. It sets the tempo of that game, organically altering the value of different regions while still being completely integrated with the mechanics. Chef's kiss.

My spouse and our guest also played Merchant of Venus, which after the intial skeptical period every Online Gamer has with it melted an ice cold roll and move grinch heart, as usual. What a game it is, the economic system just looks like almost nothing mechanically for the most part but the way it has supply and demand through simple bag pulls, the roll and move along with the nodes create risky opportunities and safe options for routes, and it even a sense of letting your money work for you by investing excess capital in factories and spaceports in mid to late game... it's very good.

Its biggest drawback, constant accounting (esp with space station commissions) was significantly mitigated by me pulling out the poker chips. I bought some of the iron clay kickstarter chips on a whim while they were absolutely blowing them of retail stores for cheap last year and I must say it greatly eased our transactions and improved the game.

That’s about as solid a line up of multi player games in one day as you’re gonna get. Reminds me I need to dust off MoV for an upcoming long weekend gathering, it’s the perfect candidate.

Merchant of Venus just came up in my ga,e group last week. We’re due for a play.

Finally played Planet of the Apes last night. Holy crap, it's a mash up of a stripped down version of Knizia's Mean Game (aka LOTR) and Richard Launius' Elder Sign. Just like LOTR you're enacting scenes from the 1968 movie, both minor and major. You have the dreaded Eye of Sauron Statue of Liberty breathing down your neck and the ES clock time dial issuing out Mythos POTA cards every midnight Sunrise.

Granted, I did not play the full four personality complement, but in my opinion using all four would have made things worse, as the time dial gets advanced after every player completes their turn, and there's only 3 time phases instead of 4. As hard as the game is, I'd see this getting more play at my game days as opposed to LOTR, primarily because a lot of mechanics were stripped away, making it more playable and faster (e.g. I can't get get AH to the table nowadays as ES scratches the same itch, and boils it down to a somewhat quicker game).

I had no idea this game even existed. Scant price history in the BGG marketplace but looks like it can be had pretty cheap. If I ever stumbled across it in a flea market I'd probably snag it.

I picked it up for $20 at Ollie's. If I ever see it again, do you want me to snag it for you?

Nah, I’m good, thanks.

Just played IMPERIUM CLASSICS today for the first time. Meaty deck tableau/deck builder with various ancient civ powers, each with a unique core deck that you augment with cards from a common market. Cool, will def play again. Rules look more complex than they actually are. Its pretty much a heads down multi player solitaire, although some cards let you fuck with other players; you can also manipulate the market row to a certain degree to bury cards you want to deny your opponent. About the only downside is the play/down time is such that anything above 3 players would likely incite violence or narcolepsy. 2 of us ( my opponent had played vs the bot several times ) took about 2.5 hours to finish. I don't think it would go much faster than maybe 1.5-2 hours ? Mayne some civs are faster than others. But between the LEGENDS and CLASSICS box you get 16 very different civs, its fairly cheap ( $40 per I think ? ) so a lot of replayability. 

I got together with the spreadsheet gaming club and played Smartphones, INC this morning with five people. The winner was an internal auditor/accountant--in real life, not in the game. I think I was in last place, but eventually figured out the game and it was ok. Everyone was really nice, I'm just not a strategic thinker. They did ask me as I left early to bring Cosmic Frog to one of their regular get-togethers, because I think they realized that they threw me in the point salad spinner for three hours and that Smartphones, Inc. is not my jam. I'm at the point in my life where I can't throw away three hours on a game I don't especially enjoy.

I am the blue cube.

Just played one of the best Neuroshima Hex games ever. It was me with Moloch vs Hegemony. As usual, I tried to keep most of my Implants scattered around the edges of the board so that my opponent would have to spend time putting warriors out on the perimeter to get rid of my enhancements, instead of focusing on me, in the interior, bashing away at their HQ. I kept a Claw module out for the entire game and at one point had two down. I also took advantage of my Incubator and, once I got a Probe implant down, began using both Incubator and Battle implants to dish out heavy damage on the opponent. But finally those implants got destroyed and we were down to my second-to-last turn. where I was at 6 and my opponent at 1. There was nothing they could do to stop my 1 damage getting through (this is where the ability of Moloch to resist nets, other than losing initiative, comes in handy), but they did 5 to me. If the game would have lasted one turn longer, there would've been serious doubt about my ability to pull it off. Hegemony was being played by someone in only their second game ever. It remains one of the most versatile armies out there and, consequently, a tough hill for Moloch to climb but I got there. Barely.

6 more games of 7 Wonders: Duel today. I won most of the games, but my gf did manage to pull off a military victory. Got in a situation where even if I discarded the available military cards, she could use her Mausoleum wonder to fish through the discards. Checkmate.

She asked to play again after the win, so it wasn’t just to try to get a win. We basically just stopped when it was time to put the kid to bed, so I think this game’s a winner around here.

Jexik wrote: 6 more games of 7 Wonders: Duel today. I won most of the games, but my gf did manage to pull off a military victory. Got in a situation where even if I discarded the available military cards, she could use her Mausoleum wonder to fish through the discards. Checkmate.

She asked to play again after the win, so it wasn’t just to try to get a win. We basically just stopped when it was time to put the kid to bed, so I think this game’s a winner around here.

The iPad implementation is awesome, you can bang out a game in like 5 minutes.

Went over for a FATDOG evening at a friends house and the annual evening of Euro gaming, given most of the group are not hardcore gamers other than one Euroweenie prone to hardcore AP. We had six players and I own almost nothing at that player count other than Struggle of Empires, which wasn't going to happen since I lacked the mental fortitude to teach the game yet again . So one guy broke out VITACULTURE. While it didn't suck nearly as bad as the other Stegmaier designs TAPESTRY or SCYTHE, it was predictably bland. In retrospect I should have brought SPARTACUS with the 5-6 player expansion. At least the dacapitations would have been entertaining .

We had an old wargaming friend over yesterday. We've been continuing to be careful, but all vaxed and boosted, we felt comfortable getting together. Since my wife isn't really a fan of wargames, we chose a mix.

First off was a learning game of The Expanse (base game only). I'd picked it and the expansion up in a trade 6 or 9 months ago, and we were glad to finally see it on the table. It's a CDG through and through, and very tactical, even with the card drafting queue allowing for a little forward planning. We spent most of the game with the active player triggering the card Events rather than choosing the Action Points. We all thought the Events were usually strong enough -- and the fact that often all the other factions could use each Event -- that they outweighed the small benefit in numbers of actions in the AP. I wanted to see a little more tension in deciding whether to choose Events or AP, or maybe a mechanism to bury an Event that would benefit another player at some cost to the active player. We enjoyed the modest differences among the factions, and we all clearly took advantage those differences. As a learning game, we kept a pretty slow pace, unfortunately, but we all enjoyed it. In the end the scores were close, with MCRN winning on a tie-breaker.

I'd wanted to follow that with a learning game of Wings for the Baron, another trade find, but were slow enough through The Expanse that instead we chose Ark. The competing restrictions for loading animals into cabins on the ark create a good amount of player interaction, in a euro sort of way, and they make the game into a competitive logic puzzle. It's been a favorite of mine over the years.

We ended the evening with a quick game of Ingenious, an old favorite. On Thanksgiving we'd had a first-ever play of High Society. Such fantastic and painful torture it is trying to make the least-bad decision with each auction. I loved it, and my MIL and I had a great time torpedoing each other's chance at winning. Knizia does so much with so few rules.

Hopefully you get Wings for the Baron to the table soon, it's a great game.