What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Msample wrote: Podcast link ?

First few episodes are due to come up soon. My buddy is in the process of kicking it off now.

I can send a link to our first prototype on Primordial Soup, which is the absolute antithesis of Ark Nova. Tight, clean, the exposition perfectly meshes with the rules and presents information in an ultra-clear fashion. I have it up in dropbox somewhere.

Here's the prototype version -- www.dropbox.com/s/yz81hwsubkjuqe8/Primordial%20Soup.mp3?dl=0 I'd love feedback on content, but this version doesn't have bumpers or cleanup or the like, so expect the sound and form to be rough.

Edit -- web site is up, has our Thebes night on it. www.cellargames.com/ Did not expect that to be available today. nice timing!

Skewering bad boardgames, that sounds like something I'd want to hear.

Literally the only game my wife and I have played since half of Barnes’ collection arrived is Bullet Heart, so I picked up Bullet Star to mix up our options. It’s so much better than a guitar. I ran Vesta who likes to make fireworks by cascading exploding stars. I don’t if she’s that good, but it feels good to clear ten bullets off me pattern.

Tried Combo Fighter with my eldest. As far as fancy rock-paper-scissors go, it’s in a no man’s land between the immediacy of Pocket Paragons and the intricacy of Yomi, but the minimal text and simple symbology make it a better fit for a first grader. He enjoyed it as long as he was winning. Then it got rough, but you have to learn to lose eventually.

New podcast site is here -- www.cellargames.com/episodes

The Ark Nova episode is due up soon.

Sagrilarus wrote: New podcast site is here -- www.cellargames.com/episodes

The Ark Nova episode is due up soon.

Can't find you blokes on Google Podcasts - searching for "Games from the Cellar" gives nothing. Are there any plans to publish there/anywhere, or am I doing it wrong?

(Don't feel obliged, BTW, I'll happily listen from the website if that's all there is. I just wanted to know if I can wait for a slightly more convenient method of consumption.)

It takes a while to propagate. There's the rss link on the page if you want to subscribe.

www.cellargames.com/episodes?format=rss

Look at me being all trendy -- Planet Unknown, and Air Mail. Both just out of Essen.

Terraforming Mars - the wife and I hadn't played in a few months, so we dragged it back out. We both played the same strategy of points and income rather than TR, so the game dragged. She actually tried a couple of different things, but they didn't work out for her. Final score was 16*-13*, me.

I have a second copy (actually two other copies, not sure how I ended up with two extra copies, maybe drinking was involved), and I think one of them will just be used for guests or anyone else. Prelude is good, but Colonies just makes the game drag.

Prelude and the 2 expansion boards us the sweet spot IMO. 2 hour game at most. VENUS added too much IMO . Never even tried TURMOIL or COLONIES. Every time I see others use them it seems to just clog up the game.

Worked out a storage alternative to $400 Magna Racks . $22 for a 25-pack of adhesive magnetic vinyl sheets.



It doesn't have a MOLLE system for nonchalantly dangling my expensive electronics off the side, but I'll live.

Msample wrote: Prelude and the 2 expansion boards us the sweet spot IMO. 2 hour game at most. VENUS added too much IMO . Never even tried TURMOIL or COLONIES. Every time I see others use them it seems to just clog up the game.

Colonies is a lot more of what's in Venus Next, except without Venus.

There's a ginormous conversation on BGG, about how Colonies has pushed the two-player game firmly into point engines as the winning strategy. I'm not sure what the general consensus is these days, but I know that I can't beat my wife by terraforming unless I get a really good card draw and stay 100% focus on terraforming. Even then it's touch and go. Which on the one hand it's a shame because the game takes 3+ hours if you're both messing around with points. On the other, it's with my wife and there are worse fates than spending too long playing a game with someone you love.

WTF that copy of Schlact der Dinosaurier just casually laying there!

A Touch of Evil

The Hanbrooks were in league with the Devil the whole time! Doctor Manning was the sole survivor of the bloody affair, with all other Town Elders dead and the heroes KO'd simultaneously with the vampire.

We engaged the Fiend on three separate occasions: one to learn our lesson, two for the vastation of His foul retinue, and three to send Him back to Hell. The Blacksmith's wife was there, having given up haunting the windmill where gentlemen callers of means could cry out, "Whoever will grind my wheat?" on windless days and she would answer with Bathsheba's shimmy, ensourceling them against their will and emptying both coinpurses. Jack assumed she was only his until the meter ran out, but as the Fiend seized him by his breast and hair and bent him sideways to clamp his neck to the bones she inserted herself as if submitting to a kiss and met his eyes and lips even as the Fiend pierced her greater vessels and drank her face white and her eyes lightless. In fury Jack retaliated, heedless to the carnage of the manor's ballroom: the people dripping from the ceiling, rudely stuffed up chimneys, haphazardly arranged like torn puzzles that could never be solved whole again. With musket and pistol he blazed, and the Fiend leapt upon him through the smoke, knocking him to the floor and crunching into his neck to suck the heat of life from him—with his one good arm he pulled his last pistol and set the barrel to his own neck, blowing the ball through his spine and the Vampire's mouth and brains.

We finally had our somewhat-delayed Halloween game of Sea Evil. Six players and two plays, with sea shanties to start the day, and the Sea Evil soundtrack from the Emperors of Eternal Evil to set the mood. I ran the Sea Witch and her evil minions, and neither game turned out at all like my practice game.

In the first, with the wind at her back, the Ishara carried the Whalers quickly toward the lighthouse. I had the weirdest dice: I rolled 4 after 4 after 4 after 4. Nearly every Evil entered at the same location, astern of the Ishara. The hurricane blew in from astern. The tidal wave rolled in from astern. Having dispatched my giant crab and having driven off the great whale, the Whalers managed to get into ship's boats after the tidal wave capsized Ishara, and with a short way to row to the safety of the lighthouse, escaped the Sea Witch.

Emboldened by their easy victory, the foolish whalers took to the sea the next Halloween and, wouldn't you know, ran afoul of the Sea Witch again. This time the great whale's tail and the Sea Peoples took their toll on the whalers, and when the Ishara 2 also capsized in a tidal wave, they didn't do so well against the great white shark's pearly whites.

It's a fun story generator, and we had lots of laughs at my amazing string of 4s, at the Ishara's capsizing twice, at the Whaler's fantastic damage rolls -- and generally at just getting together again. It's only the third time we've had a game day since the start of COVID, and that's just not enough. It's great to see good friends, have good food, and play good games together.

She-Who-Dives and I had another play of Unmatched Cobble & Fog. I don't know... it's only our second play, but we're not feeling it yet. It's very thematic, and it's obvious that the designers worked hard to tie the heroes' schemes and effects to their original stories. As clever as the game is, we haven't found the magic. We'll definitely give it a few more tries. Afterwards, she said she'd rather have played Times Square, which seemed like an interesting comparison.

Sagrilarus wrote: New podcast site is here -- www.cellargames.com/episodes

The Ark Nova episode is due up soon.

Enjoying these early episodes and attention to older games. Hadn’t heard of Primordial Soup, but it sounds great.

Agree with everything you said about Thebes. I’m sure I’m repeating myself, but I consider it a perfect game. I may not always want to play it, but there’s nothing I could think to change about it.