What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I have long struggled to find a game that my sister in law would get into, but LLAMA has brought the struggle to an end.

I am starting to see some meta - is it correct that a person could have a card in their hand that they could play, yet they might chose to still draw another card instead?

Yes. Played a game yesterday where I drew 12 cards in a row and ran the table.

Having not played it, how would you rank Orongo compared to Modern Art and Ra? I have those two, but the theme of Orongo intrigues me.

Played A war of whispers 4 players last night. Exactly what I hoped it would be. I tied for last with 37. More Ankh, going to have to review it. 4 players is where it's at so far but shockingly good at 2. Hellapigos with six. Horrible luck on the draws, but I had the fishing rod and a gun with a bullet. Some judious culling and 4 of us made it out on the Hurricane day. Yes, I shot two people. Pictionary where I guessed "Upside Down" in two seconds based on the shape of the guitar my son started drawing.

Tiny Epic Tactics on the original map. 3p, which turned into the standard 3p thing of two people bashing each other while the third coasted to victory. Still fun though.

Sunset Over Water, a light and inoffensive set collection game with an unusual action mechanism — you play cards to let you travel over a larger grid of pictures, and can pick up any pictures you move over.

Dice Realms. Was interested in trying out this new T. Lehman joint. It’s okay. Fiddly to set up, but plays fast. Like most recent Lehman games, it’s a bit of a snowball towards the end, and if you fall behind even a little bit, it’s almost impossible to catch up. But it’s a fun romp and has a lot of replayability with the different die faces available in each setup.

I really want to get TET back on the table. You're right that three-player becomes quite lopsided, although I've had much better results doing three with the free-for-all map on the opposite side. Last time we played, we also set up a system for drafting characters and starting spots, since the bottom spots on the original map have a slight disadvantage, positionally. It remains the most impressive design engineering feat of the series and one of them (like Quest) that would be so easy to expand that it almost begs for it, but Almes has different ideas (which you can't blame him for.)

charlest wrote: Yes. Played a game yesterday where I drew 12 cards in a row and ran the table.

I had a game where I started with 5 llamas, I drew six times in a row and the player ahead of me went out. I thought I was going to run the table lol

We played Betrayal at the House on the Hill (2nd Edition) at the request of my daughter. 5 players and it was pretty much the perfect game of Betrayal. It had a good and clear haunt. Only (ha!) a few things we had to look up (Daughter had a weapon that used Knowledge instead of might, Betrayer could only be hurt by might attacks. Could this weapon hurt them? Off to BGG we go!) By the time the haunt was triggered, everyone had about 3 items and a good house layout. Ran a bit long but was well worth it. Ended with two players surviving, which was satisfying for both the betrayer and the survivors.

More LLAMA which is always a good time. My wife won with a single point. Also did Keep it 100 which was ok/fine.

Warcry is now in its second edition! Built a map to test the new falling rules, but my goblins kept dying before they hit the ground.






Games Workshop has done a fabulous job with 2.0. Precious little has actually changed from the first edition apart from some quality of life tweaks to carrying treasure and falling off terrain. The big new wrinkle is Reactions.

Under specific circumstances, fighters can use a faction-specific Reaction ability during the opponent's turn - at the cost of a future action. When a Stormcast Eternal takes lethal damage, they can explode in a burst of lightning to damage nearby enemies. Seraphon units can stave off a bloody demise by using 'Starborn' to convert critical hits against them back into regular hits. The goblin mobs of the Gloomspite Gitz will literally 'Pile On' their foes: if an enemy figure lands within 3" of your Gitz figure, you can make a free Move with a different goblin as long as it brings them closer to the fray.

These abilities are by no means game-breaking and expand the decision space without mucking up the game's breezy flow. They're thematically fitting - the ones I've read, at least, as there are over 30 unique factions - and a smart addition to the system.

Point costs and Wound stats decreased across the board, so lists will be a bit more varied and combat a bit more dangerous. Goblins can now be run as a proper horde, as God intended, and the online community seems happy with the rest of the changes overall. We've certainly enjoyed it thus far.

If you missed Barnes' five-star review of the first edition, check it out: therewillbe.games/articles-boardgame-rev...ar-warcry-review/amp

Through the Ages. Just good game after game after game.

I'm pretty damn sure this is the best euro ever made. Really a stunningly good design.

Mantidman88 wrote: Having not played it, how would you rank Orongo compared to Modern Art and Ra? I have those two, but the theme of Orongo intrigues me.

Orongo has some nice stuff going for it but overall I think it depends on how much you like blind bidding.

I'd almost never turn down a game of Ra or Modern Art. For me, Orongo is a step behind the other two because I think the auctions are less interesting in Orongo. But I've only played twice.

I think it would pick up a step if everyone went out of their way to block token placements on the map, as that would ramp up the pressure to bid for 1st when you really needed it. I'm not sure how detrimental that would be to your overall performance to do that a lot. So if your group is just gonna collect whatever tokens you can and stay out of each others way, then this probably never shines.

On the other hand, I haven't tried, but I think Orongo might actually be ok with only 2 players.

I've been dating someone new in recent weeks, but we were emailing a lot for six weeks before we met. She comes from a somewhat conservative culture, so intimacy isn't on the table until we are officially an exclusive couple, and she said that she needs at least a couple more dates to get to that stage. But she was happy to accept my invitation to come over for a board game and a movie on a rainy day. Since a large majority of my collection is AmeriTrash games with violent themes, I tried to pick something with a more positive setting, and uh, came up with Escape From One Million B.C. I wanted to see if she might like a co-op game, and also how well we could work together as a team.

(There was a study done many years ago where the researchers would give a married couple a cooperative activity, like a puzzle, and then observe their interaction. They were able to predict with 93.6% accuracy which couples would divorce. The couples that would divorce tended to exhibit four forms of negativity, often in this exact order: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.)

The game went great. We played on easy setting, and I gave her a brief rundown of the rules as I set up the game. As usual when I am playing a co-op with a new player, I explained her choices but never told her what to do. She is intelligent and highly educated, so she caught on after a few turns. We did an incredible job of managing the time rifts, and somehow managed to hold down the final paradox score to just 3. Finding the six time machine parts took a lot longer, and by late game, the board was starting to feel slightly crowded with seven dinosaurs on the loose. But we won, and won big, and it was a pleasant experience. She told me that she enjoyed the game, and our communication so far has been unusually open and honest, so I think she really did enjoy the game. My concern about her reaction to the simulated violence was unwarranted. She preferred to scare the dinosaurs off when she had the willpower, but during one difficult encounter, she was happy to finally end it by killing the dinosaur when she ran out of willpower.

Jackwraith wrote: I really want to get TET back on the table. You're right that three-player becomes quite lopsided, although I've had much better results doing three with the free-for-all map on the opposite side. Last time we played, we also set up a system for drafting characters and starting spots, since the bottom spots on the original map have a slight disadvantage, positionally.

This sounds interesting; how'd you do it?

It remains the most impressive design engineering feat of the series and one of them (like Quest) that would be so easy to expand that it almost begs for it, but Almes has different ideas (which you can't blame him for.)

I'm not sure how much more room exists in the system, though. It has the two maps, and the little Lanterns expansion. What more could be added? More characters, I guess, but there's already quite a few and I'm not sure how many more could be added before they start repeating existing ones. The monster deck for the solo/coop mode could be expanded I suppose; the one time I played coop it started feeling a bit repetitive. But I rarely play coop, and never play solo, so it wouldn't be high on my list.

Did you have any particular ideas for the direction expansion content could go? More terrain? Specific scenarios?

More Heroes of Land, Air and Sea last night. It was the Lizardfolk vs the Dwarves vs the Goblins vs the Humans (me.) I wanted to play the Humans as the last of the base game races that I hadn't tried. I think it's safe to say that their playstyle is probably not the best for me. As much as it's a viable strategy in the game to aim for the Expand (get all your dudes) approach, it seems like there are factions more directly pointed toward it, like the Lionkin and the Goblins. The Humans are meant to be the jack-of-all-trades, but their focus on Plains and Food makes recruitment something of a focus, but I think you really have to be aggressive in many spots, especially if you're going to make best use of the Paladin, who is typically considered the Humans' best hero.

Unfortunately, I was trailing in the aggression factor to the Goblins (surprise!) and was set back a couple times by them, including with a scribed Earthquake spell that just wrecked my pile of dudes ensconced around the portal to the Goblin continent... They were gathering resources, too, which meant my economy was crippled in the midgame. I swung back pretty hard and put the greenskins in their place for a while. But in the meantime, the Lizards uncovered nothing but positive exploration tokens (two pyramids and a village right by their city) and were allowed to progress largely unmolested as the Dwarf player got a slow start and isn't a particularly aggressive player. So, in the end, the Lizards ran away with it, but they were all new players and took the time to explore a lot of options, with multiple heroes and vehicles cruising around the map, which is always cool

dysjunct wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: I really want to get TET back on the table. You're right that three-player becomes quite lopsided, although I've had much better results doing three with the free-for-all map on the opposite side. Last time we played, we also set up a system for drafting characters and starting spots, since the bottom spots on the original map have a slight disadvantage, positionally.

This sounds interesting; how'd you do it?

We deal out four characters for each type and set it up so that taking the two bottom positions means that those players get first pick among the first two character types and at least second pick among the other two types. It means that they end up with at least one and usually two of the most mobile characters available, so that they can try to compensate for being one more space away from the control points than the other two are. If they want to forgo that mobility to put together a different kind of team, that's their option.

dysjunct wrote: I'm not sure how much more room exists in the system, though. It has the two maps, and the little Lanterns expansion. What more could be added? More characters, I guess, but there's already quite a few and I'm not sure how many more could be added before they start repeating existing ones. The monster deck for the solo/coop mode could be expanded I suppose; the one time I played coop it started feeling a bit repetitive. But I rarely play coop, and never play solo, so it wouldn't be high on my list.

Yeah, I have no interest in solo content, either. I was just thinking of more maps and more heroes. You'd think there's not much more than can be added, but then I play Funkoverse and the well seems to be almost bottomless for what they can come up with in both respects. It doesn't take much in terms of modification to really produce different results with both maps and characters. But, there's plenty of replayability already, so there's probably not a huge drive to expand it, either.