What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

dysjunct wrote: Played ROOT again and I think I’m a believer. My first play (over in the “let’s talk about Root” thread) I thought it was cleverness for its own sake, but now I am pretty sure it all has a larger point.

Dan Thurot agrees with you that Root has a larger point. He’s in the midst of an essay series arguing for it as a demonstration of Foucault’s understanding of power. I think he’s overstating his case a bit, but I wouldn’t say he’s agree. It’s worth a look and a serious analysis I’d love for more people to model in discussions in our little hobby.

dysjunct wrote: Also played FORT; I am less of a believer. It’s fine I guess, but is just another deck builder with a few tweaks. And there’s a lot of those out there.

Agreed, FORT was the pinnacle of fine. I'm a Grant Rodiek and Leder fan, but that's a game that does very little for me.



I had a big birthday game day yesterday (turned 37 last week), which I used to do annually but of course got derailed by COVID. I tried to not invite quite as many people as in years past, and there was one guy I would have loved to see but last I heard he wasn't vaccinated and I wasn't bold enough to straight up question him on it, so I just left him off.

I usually use this sort of thing to force people to play games we don't normally play. Nothing anyone hates but I try to avoid playing games with my group if a player or two dislikes the game.

We played:

Wings of Glory x2 (WW2 version) - Been awhile since we've played. Added altitude rules for the first time. Repeated the same mission with a BF110 trying to drop a payload of bombs on an airfield. Unfortunately, our bomber needed more days in flight school and missed his target in both games.

I shot down a Spitfire with my 109 in one of the plays, but was otherwise pretty ineffective. I was running for the exit in our second game and was chased down by a Hurricane and torn apart. Fun times and I wish I got to play this more.

Finger Guns - This is such a great alternative to Bang! Great play of it.

Cosmic Frog - Decent play of this. Two people who had never played before thought it was just alright. I'm a huge fan of this game but I'm having a hard time finding a group of people I can play with who share that appreciation.

Cosmic Encounter - I was the Observer, we had the Warrior and some other aliens I can't recall their name. We were trounced in the last act by the alien whose strength is bolstered by ships in the warp. He was involved in the destiny draw four encounters in a row and we just couldn't crack him.

Camp Grizzly - Great play of this. We struggled greatly after starting off hot. I picked up the keys and we had all of the items as a group to hit the Van finale, but an event made me drop the keys and placed them across the board. Then everything went south.

Late game I drew a Survival card from an event and it was an expansion card (I have all expansions mixed in) that said I could reveal and control Otis - I was the killer all along. I revealed this and they basically had no chance. We fought it out till the end. There was a hilarious moment where I played a "Hush" card on another player and he was no longer allowed to talk. If he talked then I was able to move to his space and strike him.

He was very good about keeping quiet but accidentally said something near the final moments. I arrived and gutted him.

Marvel Crisis Protocol - I finally got the core set painted. We typically game at a friend's house now, so it's harder to get miniatures games to the table with terrain. I don't want to lug it around.

So, this was a learning game for two people in my group. We did a 2v2 team game. I played so poorly and we did not utilize the synergies of our squad (Spider Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, and Captain America). Ultron tore us up. We knocked Captain Marvel out, but they just smoked us at a bottleneck. We called it after Doc Oc just obliterated Black Widow.

They all really liked the game though. Enough to pick up some of the expansion boxes I had on a shelf and start looking through the additional characters. Clear sign they were hooked.

Condottiere - Love this game and rarely get to play it.

Radlands - Been playing this a lot lately. Really want to track down my own copy.

Wings of Glory --

I was running for the exit in our second game and was chased down by a Hurricane and torn apart. Fun times and I wish I got to play this more.

Don't violate Boelcke's rules. He knew what he was doing!

I was digging through my stuff two nights ago because in theory I'm trading my FW-190 for a He.111. I haven't played since the new house, so it's been a while. Couldn't find the FW-190, instead found that at some point I picked up a used He.111 at the local game store! So I had to apologize to the guy. I'm still looking, but I think I've screwed up my inventory badly enough that I don't have the plane I think I do.

Love the game though. Glad to hear you played altitude, as it really augments the game.

A friend decided to resume hosting small, limited-seat, first-to-reply-is-in game nights every couple weeks. I went over last week and 3 of us played Abyss (plus Kraken expansion) and Res Arcana--both new to me.

Abyss is a well-dressed VP salad, but moved right along and it was OK. Only one of us ended up trying the Loot deck and that was what swung it. Of the two games, Res Arcana is one I'd give another couple tries--the "here's your cards, make an engine out of it before the other players figure out theirs" challenge was more interesting.

I had the exact opposite reaction/experience to/with them. I really like Abyss but haven't ever found the Loot deck to be one of the better aspects of Kraken. FWIW, Leviathan is probably the better expansion of the two. In contrast, Res Arcana was just way too random in our games. Too many times someone would end up with an unstoppable combo and the rest of us would just be waiting for the game to end so we could do something else. I ended up trading it.

I played RES ARCANA a couple times and I found it utterly forgettable - I can't tell you a thing about it .

About the only thing I've played recently is Eclipse 2e. I quite liked the first edition, though I didn't play it enough to justify getting the second edition, which ... I did anyway. I can't really argue in good faith that it's so much better that one should upgrade, but there are so many quality-of-life improvements, especially in terms of organization, that it's not the worst money I've spent.

jpat wrote: About the only thing I've played recently is Eclipse 2e. I quite liked the first edition, though I didn't play it enough to justify getting the second edition, which ... I did anyway. I can't really argue in good faith that it's so much better that one should upgrade, but there are so many quality-of-life improvements, especially in terms of organization, that it's not the worst money I've spent.

I just played it Monday night, the basic package only, and I agree with you. Exceptional ergonomic design. I was very impressed and I’m picky about that kind of thing.

I sold my first edition in anticipation of second’s retail release. I feel that has been just too difficult to get a copy and now I’m kind of soured on it because of that.

n815e wrote: I sold my first edition in anticipation of second’s retail release. I feel that has been just too difficult to get a copy and now I’m kind of soured on it because of that.

This is where I was.

I lucked into a ridiculous trade though about a month ago and was able to land it. Only played it one time thus far, really eager to dig into it.

The last couple of months have seen us working through Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, it's our Sunday afternoon campaign so we do take out time with breaks but we are about 62 hours into it and at chapter 13 of 15 - probably 5-10 hours left. This has been a remarkable experience, author Krzysztof Piskorski has written an incredible story that is underneath the game but then they have put a quite amazing game and mechanics on top of it - two mighty efforts.
And then I have two more full campaigns plus a half one after this ... it must be the most gameplay for cost game I have ever bought.

And the Friday night sessions have seen me working through various games in the (too big) collection (so I can move some of them on):
- The World of SMOG: Rise of Moloch, finished the campaign but it was a bit under-developed and unbalanced so it was traded out for a Deep Madness KS set.
- Mansions of Madness 2E, generally well accepted.
- Lords of Hellas, need to get more plays of this in, it's a great game plus it's the only one I've ever full painted (basic dry-brushing only, better than looking at grey minis).
- Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords, some fun and light rpg card playing.
- Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game, lots of fun, experimenting with game modes to make it both fun and more challenging.
- Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game, got to be brought down to earth every now and then and mercilessly ravaged by a game.

Might be the kick in the pants I needed to finish painting the last four Heroes for F&G. They've just been sitting there since September.

Turns out I had no reason to worry about the mixed response on ToS - Flying Frog is three for three now with LNoE, AToE, and now Fortune & Glory. Did you play with the original or revised temple rules?

Virabhadra wrote: ... Did you play with the original or revised temple rules?

Original rules, they didn't seem at all complicated. We're just trying to make it more difficult in co-op mode as that works best, competitive mode doesn't work, but the villains aren't much of a challenge so we are going to try competitive teams mode (against each other running two adventurers each) but also in co-op mode against the villain.
There are other tweaks we can also add like using the Nazi Enemy deck for all Nazi enemies and adjusting how each of the Villain team works, with the nuclear option of running more than one Villain team against us.
And I did say previously that Lords of Hellas was the only game I've ever fully painted, after that (this year) I started on F&G (simple dry-brushing again) but got bored after just doing the Nazis and Zeppelin - but at least the Nazis look pretty evil now with my unskilled brushwork .

Yeah, at a certain point I could only justify putting so much effort into painting Nazis. The expansions introduce a lot of cool stuff without affecting the game's overhead much. I like the Ports and the Major City Epic Events in particular.

I'm trying to remember what house rules we used... I know we played that a KO'd character moves to the closest Major City instead of their home City, and that you could only complete one personal mission per game.

For FANG (F&G), I've never played the in-box rules and only used the "complete" rules on BGG.

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/79862/complet...ok-fortune-and-glory

I don't remember the exact terminology, but the gist is that this rulebook focuses on either a competitive or a cooperative game always against a Vile Organization. (I think the base-game competitive rules don't necessarily do that.) It's good work, as a fan-made manual, with some additional FAQ-type additions integrated along with the rules for the expansions, which is handy.