What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Your cobbled is not my cobbled! Looks great.

echoing other posts, thats a hott pnp you got there man. great job

My friend is still stuck in town, unable to return to L.A. until he has sold the family home. So he came over for board games again yesterday. First, we played The Vesuvius Incident, which is moderately heavy ameritrash game that is loosely based on Aliens. It hasn't been that long since my last solitaire game of Vesuvius, so I still remembered most of the rules. And that was a great game, so I was hoping for another good one. Sadly, the dice kept coming up 3s or 6s, making for rough encounter due to 3 tile draws, plus the xeno claws kept eviscerating our marines with 6s. We had already lost nearly half our men when a random event caused the ship drive to fire up. One turn later, a completely separate event caused the ship drive to overload, with a small chance of exploding each turn. One more turn passed, then the whole ship exploded.

After a break, we put Escape from One Million B.C. on the table. After the Vesuvius Debacle, I suggested that we play Escape on the easiest difficulty level. This time, the dice smiled on both of us. We quickly acquired weapons, and managed to drive off most dinosaurs instead of killing them and creating paradox. The only hitch was that the map tiles conspired to deny us access to nearly 20% of the map. Even so, we managed to find all six pieces of the time machine and made an escape while the paradox was merely 7. According to the victory table at the end of the rules, we returned to our time only to face an adoring media from even farther in the future. Our successful journey ensured a happy future for the whole human race, so these future journalists traveled back in time to celebrate our triumphant return. It reminded me of the way the Planetary comic ended, in a good way.

Since we've moved to Kenya, we are limited to games we could fit in our suitcases. So far that has meant we've played...

Forbidden Desert - My son bought this with some Christmas money before we left, and we played a five-player game of it with my in-laws. We lost that game very badly, to the point that winning didn't seem possible. But I recalled that Pandemic also got a lot easier at lower player counts, so my son and I played a two-player game this week. As I suspected, it's an easier game with fewer players. We ended up winning it without too much stress.

As for the game itself, it's pretty good without wowing me. I don't think I ever need to play Pandemic again, and Forbidden Island was a pleasant game that I thought was a bit too similar to Pandemic for my tastes. This one distinguishes itself from the original Leacock design a bit better. I like Forbidden Desert better as a result, though I'm not sure it's the sort of game I would personally spend my money on. But my son enjoys it, and I think it's a good presence in a family-focused game collection.

Ticket to Ride: London - This was a gift from my sister-in-law, and we've played several times now. I like plain ol' Ticket to Ride quite a bit, especially in electronic form. I've ended up playing the original game more in physical form now that my sons can enjoy it. The London version is so short that both my kids are into it, and we can play a couple games in a row. As the many variations of Ticket To Ride go, making the game smaller and shorter is, to me, a more fruitful direction than adding complexity as many of the other versions want to do. I still like Europe best of all the various iterations, but having a version you can play in 15 minutes certainly has its charms too.

Lots of games this weekend:

Rallyman GT - friend and I read the rules and played on BGA. I really liked it and would love to play more. My regular group don't like race games, so I'll probably just be playing this on BGA.

Azul: Summer Pavilion - I talked at length on BGG about this game and other "cozy" games of this ilk (Century Spice Road, Sagrada, Splendor). Generally they don't do much for me but nor do they turn me off. They seem to be designed to be as anodyne as possible, and I guess it works except there also isn't a lot pulling me back to them. They're just there. Summer Pavilion is fine, if a little rules-fussy.

Startups - this is one of those small Oink games, about collecting stocks. Plays in about 20 minutes, except what you'll get after 20 minutes is an unsatisfying game. I really think you need to go several rounds of this in order to smooth out some of the swinginess and rough spots. But then, I'm not sure how that will shake out either. Hopefully others will be up for trying it again to see if it's a keeper.

Animal Upon Animal - Kids' dexterity game which is equally fun for a group of undextrous adults. Stack animals on top of each other, as God intended. Then the game steps aside and lets you do it instead of trying to game it up more. Brilliant and fun.

Terraforming Mars - Vanilla base game with Prelude. All the expansions just add dumb nonsense to a really good game. It was great to get back to just the regular game that I enjoy so much.

Under Falling Skies - I bought this both because I thought it would be fun to play and to try to adapt in Game Maker Studio. Played it last night on easy baby level and had a good time. My victory was not as smooth or assured as I'd hope from easy baby level.

I dumped all of the TM expansions, too. I kept the map expansion, but the others got sold.

Right now my box only has base, prelude, and the extra maps in it. Those are fine. The copy I played this weekend, he did similar except kept in cards from other expansions that don't reference anything in the expansion. I may do that as well.

Legomancer wrote: Right now my box only has base, prelude, and the extra maps in it. Those are fine. The copy I played this weekend, he did similar except kept in cards from other expansions that don't reference anything in the expansion. I may do that as well.

This is the way.

I've tried to talk the missus into stripping out Colonies, but her answer is, "No." So I guess I get to keep playing it with Colonies.

At least for two players, Colonies just slows the game down, and makes it harder to win through terraforming.

I happened into a complete set of Fireball Island with everything for like $50. Everything but the base game in shrink, looks like someone got the KS all in pledge, played the base game, and shelved it forever because it is practically new. The funny thing is my son was thinking about buying the Target edition and I told him to hold off on it. The next stop was Half Price Books and there it was. Destiny?

I was kind of down on the game a couple of years ago- I had a pretty shitty board in my copy and none of the marbles stayed put. The box was flimsy and the whole thing just felt jank as hell. But my kids did like it so I thought this would be worth it.

Over the long weekend we played it no less than 8 times and had a blast. They are a little older than before so they played smarter and didn’t have to be reminded of all the things that Restoration added. And the snake marbles mostly stayed put.

I enjoyed it more this time around myself, mainly because I just want to play dumb games where stupid shit happens right now and well, here it is. Absolutely worth $50, I’m not sure I’d feel that way at full retail.

The expansions are stupid as hell but fun. The snakes are still shaky. The boulder is a disaster that causes more laughs for how much it sucks than it does an actual gameplay effect. I told my kids that the tiger is going to be a 1 in 1000 hit but when it does. We are going to just go off. The bees are fun because they wreck the entire board and make a ton of noise. The ship is pretty much pointless but it looks amazing and you want to go there just because it’s cool. The treasure Trove is essential because it adds nasty take that elements. We saved the Spider thing for next weekend.

What I really like about playing it right now is that it’s zero stress. You don’t dwell about what to do. You just rub around and grab shit and then roll marbles and hope to hit someone. Winning is a “yay I won” kind of thing than some display of cleverness or forethought. Big dumb fun. Nothing more.

Except me - I cleverly win at Fireball Island

For the record, I don’t want big dumb fun in games right now, but thought MB did a good job of explaining himself.

I like those feel-clever moments. Shorter games like Codenames can deliver those.

We taught the 5 year old how to play Abandon All Artichokes and she likes it. They gang up on me by not sending me Onions or Beet-sharing.

The other night I played Liar's Dice with my kids, 17 and 22, and my wife who got booted pretty early. I had owned a copy before and traded it because we couldn't quite figure out the scoring track and never got into it but this time it was everything I imagined. Lots of laughing, risky bets, bluffing and recounting fun moments afterwards. Now I'm trying to find another copy of Can't Stop.

The hosts of my pre-pandemic hipster board game group went all in on the Fireball Island kickstarker, but we only played it once. Setup was a hassle, with unstable pieces constantly getting dislodged. Gameplay was roll-and-move crap. The highlight was when I got to use the Crouching Tiger piece and it nearly hit a pretentious hipster player in the eye. Fortunately, he did not knock over his snooty craft beer.

got the expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak in the mail today, tried a solo game, seems great. if you like the base game it seems like a no brainer. asymmetric player powers that are real fun, and then just more stuff (more cards, more exploration sites, more guardians, 2 new research tracks). doesnt add rules bloat, just adds more variety and cool stuff.