What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Yeah, I used to love Primordial Soup for all of those reasons. I finally got rid of it because games often lasted too long and it just wasn't getting played. Now I regret not having it just because it was so unique!

Wow, just listened to our post-game show recording and we sound pretty doggone good!

I just finished playing Resist! which arrived in the mail today. It's a solitaire game about the Spanish restistance against Franco, and it's pretty damn good.

The core gameplay is that you draw a hand of maquis (fighters) and use them to go on one of the available missions. Fighters have strength, and missions are defended by enemies. Fighters can either be played hidden and live to fight another day, or they can be played revealed and go to a different discard pile - most likely because they are in jail since defeating jailors can give them back to you.

Each round is a bit of a puzzle, and as such it doesn't feel that different from eg. Warp's Edge. But the puzzle is not that difficult to cipher, and as always there's a bit of uncertainty since enemies on a mission are face down as default. I like that. It's a nice loop, and having to decide if you want to reveal a maquis to get a high strength or a nice ability is an exciting decision to make. But that's not what makes the game shine.

No, the really ingenious thing is that at the end of each round, you can decide to simply end the resistance. You'll then tally your VPs on completed missions and compare to a chart in the rules to see how you fared. Or you can continue and possibly loose by having too many civilian casualties, by failing two missions total, or by drawing a hand full of spies. And that is brutal. You want to continue, because otherwise you get the real sense that all of this has been for nothing. The comrades in jail, the civilian casualties, the yearsh spent fighting - does it really matter if you're looking at only getting a small victory which - according to the rules - means you've liberated a few villages only to be defeated by Franco's forces later on?

I ended after clearing a mission that gave me a small victory, but only because I had so few people left that making it through one more mission would require a huge amount of luck. It wasn't worth it, but at the same time the victory felt hollow and underserved. I didn't manage to liberate Spain or even shorten Franco's regime. I - or my actions, rather - even caused a mother and her child to die because, yes, civilian casualties are tallied through cards with illustrations of the victims. I won, barely, but it felt like losing and I loved it.

Airship City

This is a really neat game that is saddled by a few problems. First, there's a big disconnect between the cute artwork and the heavy gameplay. Second, the rulebook is extremely bad. Third, it's distributed by CMON, which should never be allowed to touch non-minis games as they don't care about them.

It's a resource gathering game at its heart. There are four such resources, and you use them to fulfill contracts, build airships, buy VPs, and unlock abilities. You have two "workers" (also airships) that move on a 4x4 grid to perform actions. Movement is limited, but there are two things you can do: buy more workers (expensive, but gives you additional actions and movement abilities) or alter the board. You can pay a specific resource to push a row or column one space over and wrap the displaced tile to the other side. Multiple times, if you want. This is huge, and you never want to be without the resource that allows you to do this.

It looks very simple and clear, but there's a lot to consider. Almost all of us were doing a "little bit of everything" strategy that I think we might reconsider. Late in the game I saw paths I might opt to take instead in future plays. Some involved focusing on specific resources, some on specific actions.

Our game ended in a tiebreaker. One player focused heavily on contracts, one was doing a lot of shipbuilding. One of the tied players had bought an extra worker, no one else had.

We got a couple rules wrong, but nothing major. This rulebook may not be among the worst I've ever seen, but it's knocking on the door of that club. I will be doing a teaching/learning rewrite before I try and teach this to others. It'll involve getting clarification on things that are just handwaved in the rulebook.

There's airship combat, right? Boarding parties?

no

Airship City is super cheap at Ollies these days, and it felt like a game you would get super cheap at Ollies. the spatial puzzle of a given turn is pretty fun, but youre doing the same thing over and over again and it just feels samey after a while. plus since the whole board can change before your turn theres a lot of "okay its the beginning of my turn let me sit here for a couple minutes and figure some shit out since my plan doesnt work any more" happening. dunno, i would play it again if the guy i know who bought it super cheap at Ollies wanted to play it again but i wouldnt seek it out.

edit: strong agree about the rulebook, it made the game way harder than it should have been to grok.

for example, heres a rules question i asked after we played it that is still unresolved, and has pretty strong gameplay ramifications

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2724171/upgraded-crest-resource-timing

just posted this on the forums (Airship City):

I bought this used a few months ago and just got it played. Apparently I have the Analog Lunchbox version, which does include rules in English. However, that English language rulebook is one of the worst I've encountered, with rules scattered around randomly and many things not clarified. I was going to do a rules rewrite, so I grabbed the PDF of the rulebook from the CMON site for reference and holy cow, this is MUCH better. I am sorry I spoke ill of CMON before. Things make a lot more sense and are much clearer.

If you have the AL edition and are struggling, go here, scroll down, and get this rulebook instead.
www.cmon.com/product/airship-city/airship-city

(note: still doesn't clarify your question, Ah_Pook, but I'm okay with saying that the crest bonus happens after you take the action.)

Legomancer wrote: I am sorry I spoke ill of CMON before.

I wouldn't apologise, that's still a pretty popular thing to do around here.

I've been powering through Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders solo. I'm not sure how people play this with other people. Is someone just a designated note taker?

The games are great at evoking the feeling of being in a Sherlock Holmes story. I love getting to the reveal and hearing Holmes's leaps of deduction. Getting the answer makes you feel like all of the people that surround Holmes in his stories; simultaneously proud and irritated because he managed to get there so much more efficiently. Having said that, I'm not sure I'd rather play this or just read some classic Holmes stories instead.

Some of the cases have too many convoluted victims and players that I kind of lose interest and can't be bothered to try and map out the entire web; there's a sweet spot for me in terms of complexity where I can keep most of the case in my head (with the aid of some notes). I love and loathe the newspapers in equal measure. As a means of world building and immersing you in the setting they're fantastic; but it's kind of tedious to comb through them for clues even if you have an idea that what you're looking for is contained within them. The map of London is great; it's cool to actually apply my knowledge of the city in helping me work through certain cases slightly more efficiently. I'm currently on case 9 of the box.

sornars wrote: I've been powering through Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders solo. I'm not sure how people play this with other people. Is someone just a designated note taker?

We take turns reading the paragraphs and taking notes, and collectively decide on our course of action.

sornars wrote: I've been powering through Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders solo. I'm not sure how people play this with other people. Is someone just a designated note taker?

When we play normally I take notes, another player reads and a third is the "main newspaper reader". But all decisions are taken together and we bounce ideas off each other. The vast majority of the playtime is spent raising theories, asking each other questions and so on. For example, you might get some information and ask them, well, what reasons could someone have to murder a person and not hide the body? And we discuss that.

I know cases 8 or 9 have a bunch of victims and are very complex. They felt "a bit too much" even with a group! I can imagine them being too complex when playing solo. The newspapers do get tedious by the end because you have the 8 or 9 previous one and it's too much. Still, I remember case 9 being one of the very best in the series and the 10th, while not the grand finale it could have been, was also very good.

Feel free to hit me up with your thoughts on each case, I would love to hear what you thought of them!

I do them with my partner, and we just kind of organically take turns to do different stuff. I tend to be the reader, but the other stuff, it's like, I'll have a read of the paper while she's looking in the directory or the map or just thinking or reading one of the other papers or whatever it is. It's just a conversational thing.

Side note 1: I have organised a competition with this with school kids while we were remote learning. Worked a treat. I scanned the whole case and just snipped the clues as the kids asked me for them via email. It was great.

Side note 2: My family recently played through a couple of Chronicles of Crime. I was prepared to be cynically critical but I enjoyed myself on the 1400 box (the original box was less good). Again, we just shared doing stuff around - no designations, just, okay, I might grab a look at this bit, or, "does anyone else want to read the next bit". The conversations you have with each other are where the good bit about playing with someone else is. It's app based so you can look at crime scenes and you don't get those weird moments like in SHCD where someone refers to something you haven't actually seen yet or whatever - it's a bit more dynamic. Once we pissed off a witness by revealing something to another witness through our line of questioning they weren't supposed to know, or like we went to visit someone and they weren't home but they were later, that kind of thing.

I play with my kids…it’s pretty fun but kind of stodgy and low key. They like trying to draw connections and we sort of take turns doing the paper, the directory and making decisions. Some of Holmes’ solutions are -quite- bullshitty. The Mythos one that came out a few years ago was quite excellent, it’s a shame it was based on racist pulp fiction though.

Actually played a few games at Dragon Con but hell no not in the open gaming area. My buddy had a suite and a lounge area so we went up there. Inonly brought light card games because there is no fucking way I’m going to be at a social event and hunker down over 1000 pieces in a 3 hour game and all that. Incan Gold is always a delight, it got played twice. It’s a masterpiece. Played some Oink stuff…Durian is an absolute wackadoo design about running a fruit stand managed by a family of gorillas. It comes with a little bell you ring to call the gorilla. It was much loved but the scoring is a disaster. Doesn’t really matter, it’s like 20 minutes and the main concept of the game is tattling to the boss so it’s big fun. Startups was good too, a very simple stonks thing where virtually everything but holding a stock certificate majority is abstracted. Deep Sea Adventure was neat, I love push your luck and this delivered. The shared air supply is great, it makes the greediest players directly culpable for failure. Then we did Mantis which is by the Exploding Kittens people BUT WAIT it’s actually really good. You get 4 cards, there are six colors. On the back of each card is three of the colors, one of which is actually the card’s color on the face. You get to either try to score or try to steal on your turn. You resolve by flipping the card and trying to match either one of the piles of cards in your area or in another players. Goal is to get 10 cards scored. There’s a lot of little nuances to the game- it’s absolutely not deep or thoughtful but it is totally big dumb fun. Lots of shit talk and vows of vengeance. A real crowd pleaser and perfect after a few Scorpions and Mai Tais.

I watched a friend play Foundations of Rome with a bunch of fawning dudes and I asked him if it was as good as Acquire. He said “nah”.

Played Ticket to Ride upon request. Did the mega game on the US map, I came in third. Followed up with Tournament at Avalon 4 players which is always a blast. Lost by 5 HP to my wife. Did "that thing" in Don't LLAMA where you keep drawing cards when you can actually play to take the win and "ruined the game for everyone" and finished up with No thanks and was admonished for "sending it around" when they knew I needed the card. You know, all the things that make the games annoying/ fun depending what side you are in. Finished up the weekend with Divinity Derby and eeked out a win with a 7 point disqualification bet.

So was at Dragoncon and got a whole whopping TWO games played! The first was Century:Golem which was pleaseant, and at least quick to teach. Might grab it for my kids as it has nice chunky bits, cool art, and easy rules.

Got in my con-game, this sites old namesake Fortress:America. As always, I start off SOOOOOO in love with how cool the game is with all this plastic, the neat combined arms, the anticipation of sky lasers, etc but daaaaaaamn, it is a slog when it only gets dusted off every few years. We played 2 player, which means the invader had all the heavy lifting, NOT the way to go for gameplay speed. Took us about 5 hours before I as the US was overwhelmed. Never could drive them back enough to recapture cities to drive the partisan card engine. I feel like we need to get a "fairly optimized" set up and reinforcement schedule to limit the downtime while the player decides on a hovertank, chopper, or that last bomber. Combat gets messy as well, I need to get more colors of 1d6s and 1d8s so we can differentiate units what roll the same dice but have different kill hierarchies.

Still, if it could be distilled down to a focused "speed chess" version that plays in less than 2 hours, it would be the king.