What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

So we've been playing some more direct conflict games such as Wiz-War and Cosmic Encounter to go along with our normal family games. Even got on to play a couple turns of War of the Ring after watching Lord of the Rings one weekend.

It's not the rules complexity that really gets to them, it's sitting still for 3 hours. Which is rough for a 40 year old, I understand a 10 year old having issues sitting still that long. Well, we have space in the basement now to leave stuff setup, so we are playing RuneWars, a year or so a night.



First couple years have been slow, with normal expansion...alittle neutral diplomacy, some easy questing. Then in the fall there's a wizard council which had me place Dragon Runes in the other three kingdoms. So naturally I placed them in areas next door to their neighbors.

and you can see it click in their minds all at once. No direct conflict between them yet...but it's coming soon.

The oldest boy makes a sprint to "control an area next to an enemy home area" to get a dragon rune. Now we are in a sort of cold war, with the Uthuk and the Elves building strongholds next door to each other and planning on building armies.

Proud member of PetSmart, owner of zero pets. The new narrative for Warcry is set in Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, and I couldn't resist this massive skeleton piece. It's a reptile hide - I like the reptile decor because they normally have basking platforms and flat surfaces. According to Des, "Many epic battles will be fought in its eyeholes."



I also rediscovered a clipped and cleaned set of Kill Team 2019 terrain I had set aside ages ago and decided that it would be a waste to not give it a quick coat of paint and incorporate it into our Warcry games. I glued metal gears from Michael's over all the servo-skulls to bring down the sci-fi a bit.

My girlfriend's oldest brother is visiting from the East coast next weekend, so my first goal is to use the Kill Team stuff for a cool one-off WC scenario. It's going to be Kharadron Overlords defending a floating sky-port from a sudden onslaught of Tzeentchian Horrors and Screamers, with a special Ability allowing any attacking daemon to spend a double to light scenery features on fire. (Maybe I'm in the minority? I dig the steampunk dwarves.)



I plan to cover the dirt/earth area of the board with cotton to make it look like clouds, and then it will be a multi-level map using the printed walkways on the board and an upper level of platforms spanning the entire cloud area. It's pretty ambitious to hope I'll have it all done by the 8th, but the process I used on the first batch of pieces isn't too complex.

Love the foot.

I don't have toes, I have 20 fingers.

Played three games of Nexus Ops with the 10yo this weekend. I have had the original since it came out in 2005, and honestly I'd forgotten just how solid it is. Lots of tactical decisions to make, lots of different ways to build your army and get that win. I'm hoping to persuade other parts of the family to join us for a 4 player team game which I've never tried before.

I keep bringing The Others, but so far the Monday group has been picking other things. Tonight they decided on Blood Bowl: Team Manager, which I've had in the stack a few times before but didn't get selected, so maybe that's why they opted for it. It was the Vampire Counts (I warned him they were difficult) vs Chaos vs Goblins vs my beloved Skaven. We didn't use Penalties, the Stadia, or the Corrupt Ref, but we always use Contracts by default because all of the Highlights with them are already mixed in and I don't feel like separating them. The Goblins player is my friend, Mike, who is always eager to just blow shit up with most of the games we play (he also played Goblins in one of our recent games of Heroes of Land, Air and Sea) and engaged the little bastards with gusto, just as I'd hoped. The Vampire player was stalled by difficult draws as frequently seems to be the case with them. They're the one faction that I've considered house ruling just because they are so difficult to execute properly. The Goblins ended up with their best team upgrade, which allows them to gain fans equal to the number of Cheating tokens at any one matchup. Considering the factions in play, there were a ton of them all over the table at almost every one. I taught all of them to hate Gutter Runners very quickly, as does everyone who faces my dear ratmen. I thought I was rolling there for a bit, but the Goblins took almost every opportunity to Foul me, which cost me a number of good cards, and I didn't get many chances at Star Players, although the Skaven, like the Dark Elves, are one of the factions that don't really need them either. In the end, it was VC 30, Skaven 41, Goblins 46, and Chaos 47, winning because she drew the Staff Upgrade that gives you fans for every upgrade you have in the last round. They were all eager to play again and try out other races, so that's four hits in a row now (The Others, Pan Am, Jaws, BB: TM.) Definitely will try to bring this one back next week and see about adding in a couple more options, like the Stadia, which I haven't used in a long time because I keep teaching it to new players.

Any forum-goers in California? I work in the spa for the hoity-toity Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and couldn't request off the actual day of my birthday, so when my shift wraps at 5pm on the 14th, my girlfriend and I are going to take over one of the huge tables in the lobby/wine bar and freak out normies with a good Halloween- or horror-themed boardgame. Possibly Cave Evil or Camp Grizzly. Maybe my painted A Touch of Evil.

We don't have quite the same luxury of space at home and didn't meet anyone during the pandemic who wanted to do anything other than smoke our weed, so I'll be happy if it's just me and Des, but I'll be curious to see whether we draw any current, former, or future nerds out of the woodwork. I eat on my 10-minute breaks and clean miniatures on my half-hour break; I have Plano tray and an X-Acto in my backpack at most times, which is how I find space in the day to make hobby progress. Most of our staff have either seen me working or approached me about it at this point - the variety of people I've met that are familiar specifically with the tabletop hobby is gob-smacking - and my co-workers know that every Saturday is "Nerd Night" at home... I just don't know who's free that Friday.

Mostly lifestyle games right now. Lots of Summoner Wars 2e online. It’s in a cool place now with 12 factions and even amounts of deckbuilding for all factions. Also playing Magic at a couple different LGS’s, commander format. My current pet deck is Vhal, Candlekeep Researcher with Raised by Giants as a background. It uses cards from all over, but the commander is from the recent D&D themed set. Basically this deck makes stupid amounts of mana, but I need to jump through hoops to actually use it. It’s entertaining and people like seeing what it does. There are only like 60 decks with this combo on EDHREC, compared to over 10k for some popular commanders.

finished up the RuneWars game.

In the 1st edition, you win Instantly when you get to the target number of runes.

in revised and expansion, you announce you have the runes, then have to survive a year holding those runes.

Well, while explaining the rules to this, I just said...whoever gets to 6 runes first wins! So the Uthuk player, was able to slide in and nab both runes from the Elves. and grabbed an additional from a quest, so summer of that year was at 6 runes. He was waaaay over extended due to the rush to the elven territory, but since I had explained it that way, he earned that win.

They want to play it again.

I think the instant win is probably better than the game that never ends while people try to stop you from winning... I get that the instant win can feel unsatisfying but still the alternative seems worse.

Been doing a lot of gaming, but almost all digital.

An asynch Oath game has been great, it is a game that works really well PBEM if you have an active chat set up between the players. Still probably my favorite Wehrle game, with John Company a close 2nd.

Our Almoravid game has been briefly on hold due to a stressful week but I've gained a lot of respect for the game, especially its pace of play which is really strong once you have done the heavy lifting of the "levy" phase each phase.

Been playing a lot of Food Chain Magnate and I just do not have what it takes in terms of attention to detail when I play asynch, you need to do a lot of minor sums and calculation to play well and I just do not seem to be up to it. Incredible game though.

Finally, started playing Fields of Fire again on my physical tabletop. I know a lot of people have personal preferences against playing games digitally, it just doesn't click for them. I think I have that same restriction for solo games if at all possible---I want to play solo games with my physical pieces or cards, because I'm not getting the zen of moving things around and sitting at my table dedicated only to that thing if I'm futzing around with a computer getting interrupted or going back and forth. That's a big part of the draw in addition to the genuine qualities of the game for solo play. Fields of Fire with the new draft rules is an incredible game but the concentration at a table is an important part of the other reasons I would do it to destress.

mads b. wrote: Played three games of Nexus Ops with the 10yo this weekend. I have had the original since it came out in 2005, and honestly I'd forgotten just how solid it is. Lots of tactical decisions to make, lots of different ways to build your army and get that win. I'm hoping to persuade other parts of the family to join us for a 4 player team game which I've never tried before.

I played AH Nexus ops just this week too! One guy botched his start, so the game ended quickly, but it was still fun to play. Something like 12-4-1.

Spent the weekend at Jim Felli's Gaming Compound (tm). We started with a 4 player game of JAWS. I was the only one who had played before, but Jim decided to try their hand at the Shark. I took the weakest role, Brody. He never gets anything fun to do since he has to ferry barrels all over the place.

Jim's hubris got his shark twice-barreled almost immediately, so we went into the second Act with some additional equipment. It was a close match, and had Hooper not been bitten in half early on, the humans may have survived, but ultimately the Shark won with only 1 HP left, I think.

We then moved on to Nexus Ops, and again I was the only veteran. Teaching this game is pretty easy, although I completely forgot that losers get an Energize card until several rounds had gone by. I kind of don't like that rule since it lessens the appeal of the Monolith a bit.

Anyway, it was a pitched battle, and I think if I had been sitting on 3 new copies in shrink I would have sold them all. Everyone loved it. We had to call it early, with one player having 7 VPs. Jim thinks it might be worth just trying to end the game at 7 and I can't disagree as it went on for quite a bit with 4 players.

I was at SPIEL in Essen for the first time this weekend. It was pretty overwhelming, but I did manage to play some good games both at the convention and at the hotel where a lot af Danish geeks and/or game designers were staying. Some of the highlights were:

Council of Shadows - a eurostyle 3X (no eXtermination) where the core concept is that you have to make you points (energy) meet your accumulated spending which is basically the points you spend on actions each turn. If they meet, you gain a level and when a player reaches level 3, the game ends. It's a neat dynamic, and it seems like both spending a lot to gain splash turns and going slow and steady with low spending can be viable strategies. It didn't really feel like Terraforming Mars, but the two experiences are not quite dissimilar and not just because of the space setting. But definitely less engine building here, and I can see map presence being quite important in some games.

Twilight Inscription - I tried the demo and a full game later on. The chalk pens are awesome, and even though it's very much a head down euro, I quite liked it. Finding combos is fun, and the sheet aren't as daunting as they look first. We played with factions, but I think there is an extra way of adding variability to the game which would be nice. Also, while I think battles and arms race is incorporated into the game in a good way, the vote cards we saw were pretty boring. Usually the different outcomes weren't different enough for either of us to warrant a big spending of votes. Would definitely play again.

3000 Scoundrels - The new game from Corey Konieczka about tech stealing cowboys. The game is fun and the different cards you create as you play by combining cards in a sleeve is no small part of this. I think the bluffing part of the game will increase as you play it more times, and that will be good. I liked it and will play it some more, but I wasn't immediately blown away as I have been by other CK-designs.

Challengers - The story is some flimsy nonsense about different people from all over the world and times that meet up for a capture the flag contests. The game is basically War, which means that during the 7 rounds of heads up matches, you just flip over the top card of your deck and resolve it. Between rounds there is some light deck building, and some cards will also have you make a small choice as you reveal them. It sounds dumb, but simply flipping a card and hoping for the best is surprisingly fun, and you can definitely build your deck and go for synergies. We played with eight and even though a lot of the game is simultaneous, it ended up feeling a bit long.

Go Nuts - It's a small memory game and it's an absolute blast. You have a grid of 3x3 forrest cards with three different symbols in three different colours. The cards are double sided, and to get your squirrel to the other side and collect nuts, you have to remember either colours or shapes of the backs of the three cards in front of you. This is for some reason extremely difficult because you constantly flip the cards. And it gets worse by the fact that when a player gains a nut, all the other players must flip their squirrel cards and now have to guess colours rather than shapes or the other way around. The illustrations are also cool which is a nice plus.

I also had a few meetings with publishers, but not as many as I had hoped. Did leave a prototype with one of them, though, and another wanted to see the rules for one of my games. So there's a slim chance of something happening.

mads b. wrote: ITwilight Inscription - I tried the demo and a full game later on. The chalk pens are awesome, and even though it's very much a head down euro, I quite liked it. Finding combos is fun, and the sheet aren't as daunting as they look first. We played with factions, but I think there is an extra way of adding variability to the game which would be nice. Also, while I think battles and arms race is incorporated into the game in a good way, the vote cards we saw were pretty boring. Usually the different outcomes weren't different enough for either of us to warrant a big spending of votes. Would definitely play again.

This is the same thing that everyone on Tom Vasel's crew and MB said and is the same problem that dogged all three editions of TI until the latest one: the political phase/votes are boring and superfluous. Not sure why multiple designers have been so reluctant to incorporate politicking and significant scenario changes into a game that's already such a sprawl, but you'd think that a version that plays as relatively quickly as Inscription would be the ideal place to push the envelope.