What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

The voyage continues in Aeon Trespass: Odyssey. We lost our first fight in the second of our 3 in a short span. This was an ok outcome. We were close to winning but a bad card draw doomed us. Now we are onto the third fight.

About to embark on a weekend of different games so no more of Aeon Trespass: Odyssey for a week and change.

Had my first game night of 2023 last night. We had 3 players. Started with Pan Am. One person, who happened to win, loved it. The other, who happened to come in last, was lukewarm, but it's not really his style of game. The winner got to sell several routes to Pan Am in the late game, which enabled him to buy a ton of stock. He beat me by 5 shares. This game teaches so easy, and really is just so smooth.

Next we headed back to the original Nemesis, having not visited it since Nemesis Lockdown came out. We did that because we were trying out the Carnomorphs, and I wanted to use them for the first time on the board for which they were designed. Years ago we tried the Void Seeders once, and they were not a hit.

These monsters work very differently than the standard Intruders, and I have to say I like how they play. It is true that a source of frustration is that the tiny form of them, the metagorgers, constantly spawn on you if you are carrying heavy objects (including your weapons). After we all ran out of ammo, we decided to try a radical strategy of just dropping our gear. We were punching aliens from then on. I think this strategy could actually break the game if you used it from the start, as the only place a metagorger could spawn would be on the crew corpse that starts out in the Hibernatorium. Even still, you'd get an alien carcass, something we amassed quite a pile of....

And then much to our surprise, an event card turned ALL of the alien carcasses into the next stage of Carnomorph evolution. At that point all hell broke loose. One player attempted to check the engine status, but another played an Interrupt on him to stop him. In retaliation, said player threw a grenade IN their room. The evil player limped away and would die the next round due to injuries. I was across the map and managed to get into an escape pod, see you later, suckers!

I had amassed 5 contamination cards. Somehow, my contamination card deck has a bow to it or something, and the cards do not integrate well with the regular action cards. For this reason, when I shuffled my entire deck at the end to see if I would live or die, all of my contamination cards stayed at the top of the deck and I died. I still consider it a win.

Bernie wrote: More Aeon Trespass: Odyssey getting played...I'm really jazzed about it still. Can't wait to hear your thoughts Charles.

I'm about 10 hours in right now. I forget which day on the timeline, but somewhere around 18. I've had six fights thus far - three against the Hekaton, two against the Labyrinthauros, and one against the Temenos. Oh god, the Temenos.

The game is just incredible. I half want to declare it game of the year, but that would be irresponsible and somewhat of an emotional reaction. I need to let it sit much longer and for the honeymoon period to subside. Then, after I complete the first cycle, I will probably review it.

I happened to play Oathsworn this past week, the other big 2022 boss battler that is compared to ATO, and while that is a very solid game I hope to play more of, I did not envelope me in the same way Aeon Trespass has.

In Aeon Trespass: Odyssey we are on day 13. So you are a bit ahead of us. We have e yet to fight the Temenos, but did have a run in with the Persuer. That’s a wild fight.

The game has so much going on. But it works. It’s fantastic. The tech and an awesome diversion from fights and exploring.

I can’t wait to get back to it. But it will be a bit.

So. Big day of gaming so far. First up was Flamecraft. A solid worker placement game where the activation spaces get more and more awesome. We played at five players and it was a hit. I hope it hits the table again. Extremely easy to teach. The complexity comes as you play.

Next was the Atlas Games version of Mare Nostrum. I have never played this version but have played the older. It’s a great game. We played at 5. Shelly ultimately won. I was one turn away from victory when Al stomped me. I never quite recovered.

Next we dove into Shadow Hunters. I can’t comment more because the game is ongoing.

Just got back from WINTER OFFENSIVE , a long weekend con put on by Multiman Publishing.

Thursday Friday I played two games of CROWN AND CRESCENT ( ANGOLA meets AmRev in South Carolina , designed by alleged historical archivist Bryan Collars ) . These were playtests. The game plays much smoother than earlier iterations, I think it's a few UX tweaks from being ready to go. In my second game, I was the Tories. I had my entire force pool on the map; they raised hell and prevented the Americans from building up much political control . Between that and some truly horrendous die rolling on their part ( I swear they had 4-5 combats in the mid to late game where they were on the wrong end of a 1-6 split on DR ) we won auto victory on turn 6.


Also on Thursday//Friday I played two games of the tentatively titled DANGER FORWARD, a 3 player CDG on the Sicily campaign from Ken Dunn. This is still in the earlier stages of design; it uses the PoG CDG engine as a baseline. While the American and British players are on the same side, they score VP separately - highest single VP score among the 3 players wins. A 3 player is unusual so I think once this gets some wrinkles ironed out it will fill an underfilled niche in being a 3P game. No, there is no fucking solo bot you fucking self entitled whining BGG posters.


Thursday afternoon Bryan, Andy Maly and myself played TERRAFORMING MARS, base game with Elysium map. Andy jumped out to a significant TR lead by focusing on Events and paying 3TR for another bump ( whatever corp that is ) . I had Mining along with both blue cards that shoot steel into space for $$. Bryan - can't remember what he had other than a huge array of blue cards and his ever present cup of Fireball liquor . When the dust settled, Andy's TR lead was barely enough to retain the lead; I think he had 82 and I was 2-3 behind after getting a bunch of late game linked Jovian tags worth a bundle of points.


Saturday Bob Sohn showed up surprisingly early ( for Bob anyway ) and ready to game. We started with a 5 player SPACE BASE . Can't remember who won - Wray I think ?


Next it was NEMESIS LOCKDOWN, the long awaited grudge match between Wray and Bob - last time they played Bob lured three Aliens into a room where a previously unscathed Wray was reduced to a shredded corpse when the claws came out. It was a fairly quiet game - I got jumped by an alien larva early on but only a light wound - Wray saw the Queen but was able to run away by dropping his rifle to distract her . She then proceeded to hang out near the nest for a while before going back into the Air vents. Meanwhile Bob, in some karmic payback for his last game was dogged by several Aliens, suffering a Serious Wounds and several Light wounds. He managed multiple escapes w/o being attacked. Both he and Wray got space suits to protect themselves from the multiple Fires breaking out . Perhaps we should have focused on PUTTING OUT the fires because about turn 10 we came up short on fire tokens and the facility blew up. I had achieved my Objective ( fully explore Floors 1/3 and activate Knowledge ) but was too far from an exit when the place blew.


Gary, Bob and I then played PAX PAMIR . Used to the online version we sort of stumbled a bit playing the physical version, LOL. There was only one Tribe ( mine ) in play for about the first third of the game; however Bob got a Kabul Spy card that protected him from being killed in battle and another that spawned Herat spies. He got the first double Dominance card triggered cylinder victory; Gary then set up a tax base and proceeded to drain Bob's treasury . I was far behind, as my cards were overrun with Bob's spies. Gary eventually cornered most of the money, bought 2 gifts to get the Influence lead ( all 3 of us were on Russia at that point ) . I even killed one of my own cards as a Prize in a desperate bid to stall but Gary won.


I got my revenge in the next game, BRASS BIRMINGHAM. We were all a bit rusty and missed a few small things early on. I developed off my Level 1 coal and Steel tiles then went on a mineral heavy build and built out all my mines . Gary went into Mills; Bob did a little bit of everything. We all did some beer breweries. When the dust settled I was ahead of the other 2 by about 15 points I think; I scored a ton of Connection points in the rail era and I think that was the difference.


After dinner, Bob, myself , Wray, and Bryan did DUNE IMPERIUM with both expansions. I explained IMMORTALITY to the others who hadn't played and we were off. Unlike the snowflakes on BGG triggered by IMMORTALITY ( honest to god some were freaking out over cloning/gene manipulation themes ) FrankenBob fully embraced the concepts and ended up maxing out both the Research and Bene Tlleixau tracks , which got him 3 VP among other things. I was Baron Harkonnen, Bryan was some chick, Wray was another chick. The lead switched hands several times but Wray pulled ahead at the final turn with the revelation of an endgame Intrigue card worth 2 VP due to several Worms he had bought and some other conditions . He had 12 VP while the three of us had 10 VP. I think we ended on turn 8. While Ix may be a bit much for some, I like what it adds esp the starting card that Trashes stuff. I don't think IMMORTALITY is as dramatic an improvement as IX but I think everyone liked IMMORTALITY . The Specimen cards allow some interesting combos to be played and the two tracks allow for some divergent strategies as Bob showed.

Continuing with the weekend of games I played Sabotage . This was a super neat little game with hidden movement. My team of evil masterminds jumped out to a big lead stungunning the shit out of the spies. Until we weren’t. We eeked out a win in the end. But it was much closer than I thought it would be.

After that was a six player game of Heat. Fun racing game. I played super cautious and was in great shape to control my final push to the finish line. I won handily on the France track. Would play this again for sure.

That was my last game for the night but we dove in the next day with Foundations of Rome. Simple game play wise but it’s a blast and quite the experience. I came in a distant second I think. Would also play this again.

Next was a 5 player Spirit Island No real difficulty bumps in this one aside from events as there were basically four new players. I think it went ok. It is a bit heavier than the rest of the stuff played this weekend.

Glamazons was out light filler game while a few people had things to. Solid goofy game. I ended the game with 4 belts. Still had a blast.

Our current game is Yacht Race. I am ass at this one. I will be loosing horribly. Still good cause of the brutal random event cards that have been drummed out of todays design. No way is anyone including lose two turns in todays games.

I am one turn into Kanban EV. Pray for me.

Update: It took us about 90 minutes to set up the board and go over the rules, and 3.5 hours to get through the first term. It is a good looking game, and my euro buddy who loves Lisboa was excited to play it. Let me sum it up:

1. Select a role
2. Burn “shifts” to perform actions related to creating cars
3. Sandra the Supervisor will pop up and take away Performance Points from anyone who is undertrained or has not saved up enough “shifts” or action points

At one point your completed cars go onto a track and if they pass over the right square, a meeting is triggered. If you don’t have enough speech balloon tokens, you can get your butt kicked in the meeting.

As I was looking at all of the nasty things Sandra can do to underperforming employees, it reminded me of when our Dean passed out little graphic tables that showed us if we were underperforming in a particular student evaluation attribute compared to our peers. So you could have gotten 90 percent under the category “Appears knowledgeable” but if everyone else got 93%, then your dashboard was colored a deep RED to emphasize your failure, using septile rankings.

I actually liked the game once we got going, but we all had to take off after four hours. I’m trying to think when was the last time I had four hours to burn on.a game. I really like the two guys I was playing with, and we had some good conversation.

Broke out Blood Bowl: Team Manager tonight. It was the Chaos Dwarves (me) vs Wood Elves vs Dark Elves. It was only the second game for my two opponents, so we didn't use the magic balls, stadia, or corrupt ref. The Wood Elf player was the Vampire Counts player last time and he glommed right on to the Sprinting power of the WE. We also got the headline in the first round that let us draw two more cards. With a hand of eight, he basically cycled through his whole deck and landed three Contracts in that first round, which kind of sent him on his way. The Dark Elf player, OTOH, just didn't really find their niche. I think the DE are amazing, but they do take some careful play to really maximize their assets, as it were. He also had pretty awful luck with both Cheating tokens and the tackle dice, faceplanting a couple times with Witch Elves (to be fair, the WE did the same with Wardancers more than once.) Meanwhile, I stayed pretty steady with the High Hats and was able to pick up the Staff upgrade that lets you replace any one payout per round with three fans. But it wasn't enough to catch up to the WE's pile of contracts, so they won 51-39-22. This remains an excellent game and has a permanent place on the shelf.

Split the kids up between three households and took off with the wife for a weekend of gaming.

Dusted off some old favorites in Fox in the Forest Duet and Lost Cities. They’re great and always will be. Fit in three games of Kingdomino in a half hour. Claiming tiles and building the map is great, but it’s too slight at two player. There’s too much control on the 5x5 map and not enough tension. I need to play 7x7 if we run it two player again or just stick to three and four.

Saturday was the main event as I joined a cube draft of the second edition of the Game of Thrones LCG. I literally haven’t played since the Worlds tournament three years ago, and it was great to shuffle it up again. The organizer added in cards designed by the community since Fantasy Flight ended it, so I even got to be surprised by my draws. I was happy to go 1 and 2 because my deck was an unfocused mess.

And then we just kept playing. I took my first shot at Regicide. Whether through great luck or the honed card skill of a bunch of Thrones players, we beat that monarchy around pretty good. I introduced the group to Bullet with an eight-player competitive dive. Two of them were scouring the store for their own copy before we were done, and they had a blast reading the flavor text on World and QP’s patterns.

I was unimpressed by Crossfire after a few rounds. It’s a hidden role game with multiple victory conditions. Imperfect knowledge is delivered by checking, passing and shuffling role cards several times over. You can generally know where a role might be, but the game quickly devolves to baseless shouting and accusations. At least there’s a three-minute timer.

Pleasantly surprised by Marvel Remix. It’s a Marvel skin of Fantasy Realms but a huge improvement on that foundation. You’re still trying to build combos through blind draws or pulling from the discard, but instead of card-specific triggers, most points are scored through icon matching which is way more flexible. We played at least six rounds, and I was happy to be there for them.

I'm astounded to hear you beat Regicide on your first outing. That doesn't even seem possible to me, but maybe I'm just terrible at it.

We did get lucky on perfect scores. I think we grabbed two jacks, two queens and the king of clubs.

Out of curiosity, how much talking did you do?

This is a fuzzy part of the rules, but the difficulty tends to swing dramatically depending on how strict people are with communication.

The design intent is no talking at all about what's in your hand or the game state. I find it pretty much impossible to win when played this way.

No hand talk except for our one jester play from what I can recall.

We played with four. Are high player counts easier?

I'm not sure if the difficulty changes much based on player count. With more players, you are less likely to have no drawn cards of a specific suit, but you also need more card draw played to keep everyone topped off.