What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I used to run official GW tournaments for a local con. In addition to the normal prizes (tournament winner, best painted, best sport, etc.), they would always send us some prerelease model for promoting the game, so we gave it to the person who was just dead last in consideration for the other prizes.

In my continuing testing before I start writing, my 2-player compatriot and I sat down to another round of games today. In Unmatched, we began with Bloody Mary vs Yennenga on the Raptor map. It was pure ranged offense against pure melee offense and Yennenga used the map's (almost literally) central conceit well, in that you can enter the Raptor pen a number of ways, but only exit in one direction. She repeatedly moved herself and her archers around the perimeter, usually blocking me (Mary) with one of the latter to try to forestall my more ferocious attacks. I tend to play Mary as a SuiBlack (M: TG term) character, since she doesn't have a sidekick or any other way to distract the opponent's hero and really just has to pile in and do as much damage as possible. What attracts me to her is the hand management thing, wherein you get three actions in a turn if you begin said turn with three cards in hand. I was able to pull that off or use one of her Schemes a number of times to get the extra action, but it wasn't enough, as I fell with Yennenga still on a relatively comfortable 5 life.

We followed up with a single box effort, pitting Little Red against Beowulf on the Beowulf map (the one with the doors.) Little Red, in contrast, is discard pile management, which still involves some degree of hand management to try to take actions in an order that maximizes your icon involvement. Speaking of sidekick distractions, I knew that Beowulf is one of the best at that, using Wiglaf as a blocker to keep people in place for one of the hero's Rage-infused hammer blows, so I used Red and the Huntsman to take Wiglaf out early and then kept circling around Beowulf, looking for openings. He did launch in and deal 8 damage, which I defended with a What's in My Basket? for 4, and which reduced Red to 1 health, but I then was able to retreat and drew my healing Scheme, A Grimm Tale, which heals for 2 or 4 if you have wolfsbane on top of the discard, which I did, bringing me back to 5 and basically nullifying that huge attack. Then it was just a matter of drawing a 4 attack and putting the 4 health Beowulf out of commission, since he had no defense cards in hand.

Then we switched to Funkoverse, playing Territory on the Squid Game map. He took Alice, Hagrid, and Peter Pan, while I went with Invisible Man, Masked Manager, and Batgirl. I was heavy on grays and blues (2 and 3, respectively) but had no yellows and only one red, so my offense and assistance were going to be sparing, but I had all kinds of movement and wonkiness available. This Territory map leaves a pretty wide open space in the middle, with no obstructions around it, but the scoring markers are kind of secreted from each other, with two of them only being approachable from the center of the map. Masked Manager got started early, taking out Alice, but I spent my gray tokens early, which are crucial for Invisible Man's impact, and I so I had to wait a couple rounds before he was really useful again. Meanwhile, Peter Pan used Codfish on a String to good effect, supported by Hagrid, and later Alice with Grow Larger. She had taken the Pink Flamingo Mallet, which did decent work, but I had taken the Invitation, which I thought might be helpful in retrieving people from the starting area to the scoring area, but Batgirl couldn't stay conscious long enough to make any use of it. Despite having an 8-5 lead, my opponent caught up and then passed me in the final round, winning 10-9.

Had a great round of Fox in the Forest yesterday. Traded some 6-0 rounds, but my opponent was generally getting the better of me. However, thanks to winning most of the Treasures and their extra points I was only behind 18-20 going into the fifth hand. Felt confident I would lose halfway through but took both of his Treasures in the last two tricks to pull ahead for the victory. Tight, wonderful game.

Then our third arrived, and we played Through the Desert. Just a masterclass of design. Taught the rules and finished two games in under 90. No one needed to double check the rule book because everything just makes sense. First game was pretty gentle as we felt out the strategies and points, but the second was vicious with hard blocks of entire caravans and cutting off oasis access. I need to play more of Knizia’s tile layers, but I’d put this ahead of Samurai and behind Tigris and Euphrates for now.

Met up with my regular 2-player partner these days (Brad for Dreadball, etc.) and one of his friends that I met at their personal mini-con (Jen Con) a couple months ago, John. I think we may be veering toward a regular thing between the three of us, If we can snag one or two more, this could be a real event. We had originally planned to play at one of the best local bars for regular gaming, but there was an event happening there, so we ended up switching to my place, which is just down the road. I had suggested a couple things that are great with three (Theseus and Land & Freedom) and they had also suggested a couple things. We opted for one of Brad's suggestions because I had never played Brass: Birmingham or any of the Brass games. Why? Because I'm not really a train gamer. I find them to often be too programmed, especially when played against seriously experienced players, which both Brad and John are. The closest I get to train games these days is Pan Am, because I like the random events and the fact that there's a game element (aka Pan Am) that promptly destroys the networks that you've spent time building, so you have to really roll with the punches. Brass, while being a more interesting train game, is really still just a train game, and if you miss your opportunities early on, you will never, ever get them back. I mean, it was OK, but not something I would ever suggest to play. Brad kind of crushed us, 154 to 126 to 107 (me.)

It took a while to get through it and we were all wearing down, so I suggested Blood Bowl: Team Manager, which Brad had been wanting to play, but we'd never gotten around to it (John had played before.) It was Grudgebearers vs Nurgle's Rotters vs The Lowdown Rats. Brad, for a first-time player, played the Dwarves really well and I had an awful series of hands and rolls with the Rotters. Meanwhile, John took off running with the Goblins, getting Staff and Team upgrades AND a star player in the first round and then just snowballing from there. By the end of the game, he had multiple upgrades of both types and a half-dozen contracts. He won 47-39-31 (me.) So, a genuine hiding in both games, but that's fine. I'm just geeked that we might be creating a weekly meetup, which would be awesome, especially since John is a Cole Wehrle fan, too.

Does Krosmaster Arena deserve a seat at the table when it comes to these light skirmish games? It has a similar toy factor and several waves of figures but I've never heard much chatter about it. One entry on ToS gives a rating of "2.7" with the comment "2.67", which feels like peak BGG.

STAR WARS DECKBUILDING GAME

Got in 3 plays this afternoon - and the third one will likely be the last play. 




If you know STAR REALMS, you know the rules to this game. However there are some thematic differences as well as some slight rules differences. The biggest is that the market row cards are divided into 3 categories - Rebel, Empire, and Neutral. In our 3 games,as the Rebel I had 2 games where the market row was almost entirely Empire/Neutral cards, so not much was worth buying. Worse, the Neutral cards couldn't be killed off for bonuses, and even the Empire ones that were had buying points as a reward, which were often useless w/o something worth buying. Its not terrible, but its basically a Star Wars themed filler. If you get good cards in the market, you'll have fun. If its shitty/no cards, you're just grinding out the game til one side wins. 

Introduced some friends to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. In two hours we only made it to the fifth mission. I can’t remember the last game that either made me feel like a total genius that could see every card in every hand or an absolute dunce that was lucky to hold all the cards at the same time. There was no in between. Brilliant stratagems or playing trump on someone else’s task.

They liked it, at least.

UNFORGIVEN. An interesting 2p game about a then-massive, now-somewhat-obscure event in American history, the trial of Mary Surratt. Surratt ran a boarding house where the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln was planned. She was arrested and tried as a co-conspirator, found guilty by the slimmest of margins, and executed by hanging. She was the first woman executed by the United States. Historians today are very evenly split on whether or not she was actually guilty.

The game is a bit like 7 Wonders Duel. There's cards laid out in a pattern, some face up and some face down. You take turns drafting them, which represents recruiting various witnesses, evidence, and rhetoric to your argument. Some cards go into your tableau, and make it cheaper to acquire other cards later. In 7WD, there's three ways to win: military, science, and points. In this, the equivalents are reasonable doubt (getting it all the way to your end of the track is an auto-win), jurors (if you get a majority of the jurors on your side then it's auto-win), and points (if the trial wraps up with no auto-win, then whoever has the most "trial points" wins).

There's dice, which are a welcome addition. You can draft dice to give one-time resources for acquiring cards. Instead of money there's "sway tokens" which can be spent for a variety of things.

Overall I think it is vastly superior to 7WD. The dice and extra currencies let you mitigate a lot of the card luck, but there's still the tension of not wanting to uncover a card your opponent needs.

Each card has a photo of its subject, with flavor text describing the historical relevance. It's very well done and completely fascinating. I'm as reasonably informed on American history as your average American nerd, but as a left coaster, the Civil War was always something that happened on the other side of the country. So I never got that into the history.

This was apparently a Kickstarter project that was a modest success but not an overwhelming one. Really a model crowdfunding project to be honest -- a passion project that probably wouldn't have made it to market. It doesn't have any of the underbaked feel of many Kickstarters either, so big kudos to the designer and publishers.

Also I won, so it's a finely balanced test of skill and mental acumen etc. etc.

ON THE ROCKS. Mix drinks to be the best bartender. It's Potion Explosion, the adult beverage version, but the marbles go into little jiggers in a mancala fashion. The recipes are drafted from different decks according to serving glass. So there's the highball glass deck, the old fashioned glass deck, the hurricane glass deck, and the martini glass deck. Turns out I have had most of the drinks from the old fashioned deck, and very few from the others, which probably means I'm a curmudgeonly drinker. Fuck your chocolate espressotini, Karen.

Light, colorful, great art, plays in about an hour. I came in second.

THAT'S NOT LEMONADE. Finished with a quick round of this crowd-pleaser. The red mini solo cups are great, but I think it really needs a Button Shy card wallet treatment -- replace the plastic cups with cup cards. It's so light and quick and fun, it would be a no-brainer to carry it everywhere. But the box is pretty small already, so it's not a big deal.

I lost. Total luckfest.

Played a 3 player game of Squid Game: Let the Games Begin with my two sons tonight. Everyone had seen the show. While certainly not required, having seen it already gives an understanding of the games and enhances the experience nicely. I lost, quite often as a result of ganging up on dad, but whatever. Thoughts on each of the games:

1. Red Light Green Light: this starts things off in a bloody way. I think we each managed 3 survivors and 4 casualties. You can push someone to their demise if they are close to you. How fast you move is directly tied to how much of a chance you want to take that you will get spotted.

2. Dalgona: distribute your team across the 4 cookie shapes, knowing that it takes more steps to complete a complicated shape. If you draw the CRACK card, well it's lights out. Fairly low stakes on this one.

3. Tug of War: teams distribute among 3 different tug of war battles. You can even end up competing with yourself if you are not careful. This one has mind games, as you try to predict if one side will try to "take 3 steps forward". I came out of this one with my team severely depleted.

4. Marbles: The weakest of the bunch. Players pair off, with one of them declaring odds / evens, or "closest to the line". There are 2 cardboard marbles that wobble. You hold one or two in your hand and the other player guesses. A right answer survives. OR you each throw a marble toward a red line on a board. Closest survives. Go off the board, you die.

5. Glass Bridge: For me, this is the high point. Teams queue up to cross a glass bridge, sometimes having to pick right or left to determine their fate. You can also come from behind and push someone to their fate....

6. Squid Game: The final battle. I went into this with only a single teammate, as did one son. The other son had three, giving a strong advantage. This one comes down to a rock paper scissors kind of card play, in which you can try to shove someone out of bounds, stab them, block, or move. It's fairly brutal. In the end, I got out-guessed and lost.

This is light fun, and I think fans of the show would enjoy it. It won't set the world on fire but is fine for what it is.

Saturday my son and a friend played three games. Catan Starfarers, Cyclades and War of Whispers.

Starfarers played fairly quickly with 3 players and a lot of fun. I like the way you physically add pieces to the rocket ship for lasers, shipping pods and booster for use in attacking pirates or claiming planets, colonizing trade stations and increased movement. Getting the encounter cards and the choices you get was my favorite part of the game.

Cyclades I got sacked early and could never catch up. I'm usually pretty good with that game but with three I got rather ganged up on and made a bad decision. Which kind of sealed my fate.

War of whispers was the last one. I really like this game. It starts fast but slows down the latter part of the game as you try to influence the board and there are less actions you can take. You don't play as a faction, but rather you take actions to influence which factions do well and which ones do poorly. You secretly and randomly choose factions which score x4, x3, x,2, x0 and x(-1) by the number of cities each of the five factions control.. You influence by moving and attacking, using cards etc. Goal is to have your x4 faction have the most cities and -1 have the least. You can switch factions in scoring order but when you do you have to show everyone so they know. Plays in about hour to hour and a half.

Cyclades is a long-time favorite and probably my favorite of the mythological trio (Kemet, Inis.) It's true that you can fall behind and have trouble staying in it, but I find that to be more of a problem at a lower player count (as you say, you were outnumbered, 2-1.) I find that it plays best around 4 or 5 and, to help those struggling players, it's always best to include Monuments, if you have it. Hades can also provide some (ahem) monumental swing turns for those who can take advantage of him, too.

I've been kind of intrigued by War of Whispers for a long time but it got a torrent of bad reactions on BGG some time after its release and I never looked back into it.

I was really pleased with Cyclades, kind of played it to death and then fell behind the various expansions and moved on to other things. Always regretted it, and I was never able to get into any of the other games in the series.

So I'm pretty intrigued by the Legendary Edition coming out next year that will combine all the expansions and refine the rules.

One of the things I admire about the game -- relevant to my and Jackwraith's fandom of the Tiny Epic games -- is that it reminded me of the streamlined and logical rules of the early TE games. Like how Cyclades had things you could get with four philosophers, or four priests; that reminded me of Tiny Epic Kingdoms and how everything had a consistent cost across the games.

Yeah, Wade and I talked about that a few years back. My initial, and kind of lingering, reaction to Athena and the philosophers is that it felt kind of chintzy. Everyone else is developing these systems and competing on a practical level but you recruit these four old guys and suddenly you're halfway to winning or simply have a victory. But mechanically it represents an out for the player(s) who aren't cash rich enough to win the votes that they really want (Ares and Poseidon) and instead opt for the back-door approach, which also represents a constraint play against the leaders. Yes, they could keep marching across the world, but if they keep letting one player take Athena, then they're going to get outraced to the win, so they might have to change their bids to something that feels less optimal, but which slows down the pace of an opponent and also often gives them time to reset. The other option, of course, is Zeus for priests or being first to Apollo and getting the major revenue boost that he can provide.

I think the priests are often underrated by regular players. The ability to have more access to the monster deck can often be game-turning. That's occasionally what complicates the inclusion of the heroes, since they're not quite as impactful as the monsters, but can be great if you can afford to keep them around.

I played Anachrony a couple times and then went crazy and bought Barnes' Infinity copy last summer. A really intense year of work followed and my spouse hasn't been game for learning anything, but it just popped up on Board Game Arena.

I forgot its really positive qualities. It's quite deceptive---the hieroglphyics are insanely intense and it hits you like it's going to be one of these absolutely huge open ended Feast for Odin type games, which I enjoy but for different reasons than other games I play (more of an activity). But when you actually play Anachrony it's an insanely cutthroat, constrained space to place workers in. It's one of the few worker placement games that has me actually asking myself "do I plan to play alll my workers this turn? Will I even be able to?" And there are a lot of reasons not to do so, to be honest. It's an unusual game with a variable number of workers that really pushes hard against the default best worker placement strategy of getting more workers.

Anyway, it's such a kick in the balls to look at for the first time that I think it gives a weird impression that it's going to be like different games; this is a game that it always, foremost, about competition with other players while you try to accomplish your plans.

Someone told my eldest that it was Star Wars Day today. I’m not missing that opportunity to pull out Loopin’ Chewie. A good time was had by all.