What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

dysjunct wrote: ...Chris Farrell is a great geekbuddy to have...

In this capacity, I'd also recommend Patrick Brennan ( boardgamegeek.com/user/PBrennan ). His comments on the 'Geek are concise but descriptive enough that I get a pretty good idea if I want to investigate a game further.

dysjunct wrote: I can't be bothered to Instragram, but Chris Farrell is a great geekbuddy to have. His comments on games are always very well-done and insightful, even though my tastes don't exactly line up with his. Good critiques are a rare bird.

I know I’m getting old because I remember being a big fan of Chris until he said he didn’t like War of the Ring, in 2004.

I find him quite mercurial sometimes... like he is so fucking hard on lots of games for being even slightly chromey or clunky but he loves ASL as his tactical wargame. But I don't consider it a bad thing. Compared to how on the money someone like charlest is to my taste it's noticeable though.

I don't always agree with Farrell's conclusions but he articulates his opinons well and in a concise manner.

Took a ponderous first solo round and a lot of double checking the rule book for the difference between acquire, break through, take and develop or discard, abandon, recall and exile, but I’ve been grooving with Imperium: Classics. I haven’t tried anyone too crazy yet, just Rome against Carthage and Macedonia against Scythia, but Imperium is a highly satisfying game. The tension between building the deck and tableau while also reining it and figuring which cards can be dumped is delicious. It hasn’t felt it’s ninety minute playtime since that first try.

Despite a goodly number of cards like Conquer, Advance, Prosperity and Glory common to many cultures, they have their own flavors without feeling straitjacketed to a single win condition.

Great art.

It’s the complete package. Easy recommend for anyone willing to struggle through the terminology of that first game.

We played a ton of two player; maybe I'll go back and try the solo bot. Once you get the hang of the mechanics, its a pretty straightforward game, process wise. There is a huge variety among the different faction decks; you can also mix and match the common cards between LEGENDS and CLASSICS for even more variety. The only real downside is that its a bit long for a deck builder IMO.

An internet outage led one of my sons to actually take me up on my offer to play a board game. He wanted cooperative, so Terminator Genysis came off the shelf.

While this game is easy to get into, set up can be a chore, requiring you to find which of the board tiles are necessary to assemble the map, then place a bunch of hexagonal tokens representing supplies or cover.

Once that was out of the way, we were on. I was controlling the "Guardian", aka Arnold. Things went south fairly quickly, with several T-800s and HK drones swarming me, and of course a T-800 armed with a flame thrower showed up. I was down to one wound left, and luckily my son's character not only was a medic but had a grenade. He came over, healed me up, then proceeded to throw a grenade that blew up 3 enemies, including the flame thrower endoskeleton.

We had to stop for the night but hopefully we can continue the mission today, in spite of the fact that the internet is back up, after being down for around 12 hours.

n815e wrote: I know I’m getting old because I remember being a big fan of Chris until he said he didn’t like War of the Ring, in 2004.

He lost me when he argued that Food Chain Magnate was set in an idealized version of the United States. When people pointed out that the game is heavily satirical using the consumerism and fire-at-will ,mechanics as examples, he claimed that they were "reaching" and that Splotter were just white Dutch guys that didn't know what they were doing.

I had no heart to disagree so I just unfollowed him on Twitter.

I enjoyed him more with wargames and, when I was able to play those more than now, his opinions were more relevant to me.

I think Farrell's comments are the best on BGG. Like others, I often don't agree with his conclusions, but he puts more thought into those comments than most reviewers put into their reviews.

Jackwraith wrote: I've been playing nothing but GIPF Project games...

That's pretty fucking awesome. I've been on the abstract wagon for a while just cuz they're so free of bs. I think I like LYNGK and TZARR the best, but they're all really good.

I did get to play some bs tonight. CHURCHILL - shorter(5 turn) scenario. What a shitty setup, what the fuck Mark Herman. It always astounds me when I play a "2nd half" scenario of a game I've played quite a bit, and in the 2nd half scenario apparently no one did anything the first half of the game or else did some really bizarre stuff. It seems to come up a lot where the 2nd half scenario is a game state that never ever comes up when playing the full thing. It's like if I made a game called Cannonball Run and offered a shorter version where you start halfway through the race, you know, in Minneapolis.

Also got in a first time at COSMIC FROG. Mistakes were made, but it's a good game.

You're on board with Vysetron there. After YINSH, his favorite is TZAAR. At the moment, my ranking is:
1. YINSH
2. PUNCT
3. ZERTZ
4. GIPF
5. TZAAR
6. DVONN

Although, honestly, DVONN may be moving up after the last couple plays, now that we've become better at placing the red discs in some kind of strategic fashion. Whether it actually makes a difference is anyone's guess. Haven't played LYNGK yet, but scored a relatively cheap copy recently and it's en route.

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition. Probably the best 4x/Civ game IMO. Can go long, but has a simple core engine that gradually ramps up in complexity as your civ advances. I was the Celts, B. was the Greeks, and J. was the Phoenicians. I eked out a win, mostly by looking tough enough to get the others to leave me alone.

Bites. A set-collection abstract with a random setup but then deterministic after that. Has a nice theme (ants!), chunky wooden and cardboard bits, and random cards (as part of the setup) that change point values of things. I leaned hard into collecting apples and wine, which synergized well together for the goals. Won by one point.

Sag, is that The Decembrists' Illimat? I was a huge fan of the band back in the day and I've seen them a bunch of times but I was always a little skeptical that Illimat would more a piece of memorabilia than a fun game to play. Sounds like it deserves a spot next to The Quest for Shangri-La.

I still have ZERTZ mainly because no board means it travels well in a pouch. Tossed the box years ago. Good for picnic tables because water, wind, and levelness not really an issue.