Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Been playing super magic realm. All my previous feelings on it returning. Singular game.

Also diving back deep into Arkham LCG. Return to Forgotten Age. Absolutely pure board gaming comfort food multiplayer and single player. Such a tragedy they stopped doing return to remix boxes! Fuck new Asmodee.

Played Tortuga 2199 again, which I never look forward to. But then I play and I enjoy it. Strange.

It's a deck builder, a very pretty one as my buddy has the neoprene mat for it with lots of color. Like last time I went after killing the monsters instead of fighting with other players because it feels like more fun to me. I'm the galaxy's exterminator, and when you kill the monsters you get big upgrades and you can cull them for points later in the game. I did that and won, again, while the other two players were establishing bases and beating on each other.

I imagine a more balanced approach is best for winning.

Likely won't play again for another year or two. But it was fun..

Sagrilarus wrote: Played Tortuga 2199 again, which I never look forward to. But then I play and I enjoy it. Strange.

Thanks for taking the hit on that one. You know I love a deck building moment, but I just can't seem to ever want to play that one, despite doing fairly decent the time or two that I played.

Tortuga 2199 --

It's pretty doggone simple. There's only a couple of ways to generate points and they're about as dependable as you can manage in a deck builder.

Feels like a solid effort from a first time designer to me. Don't know if that's true.

Puerto Rico for the first time since 2016. We were supposed to play San Juan but the host got confused and set up Puerto Rico before we got there. So we played.

And recorded, which was interesting because the game is showing its age and of course has a well-ripened aroma to its setting. It's a great game technically, but it's a product of the early 2000s. I raised the issue of its inherent racial clumsiness and there was some debate on how to speak to that in the recording. Don't know how that will resolve.

Good enough game to play once every seven years.

It’s been a long time for me, as well, but PR never gets old for me. It’s one of those games that will forever be in my collection. I still remember seeing it on the shelf at my flgs and wondering what it was about. I don’t remember, but it may have been researching it that lead me to BGG.

Sagrilarus wrote: Puerto Rico for the first time since 2016. We were supposed to play San Juan but the host got confused and set up Puerto Rico before we got there. So we played.

And recorded, which was interesting because the game is showing its age and of course has a well-ripened aroma to its setting. It's a great game technically, but it's a product of the early 2000s. I raised the issue of its inherent racial clumsiness and there was some debate on how to speak to that in the recording. Don't know how that will resolve.

Good enough game to play once every seven years.

I agree mostly, but you can listen to the episode for my tangents.

I find it fascinating that back in its heyday, PR was considered heavy fare. Now? I'd have a hard time calling it medium.

I think playing it every other year is the way to go. PR has a largely solved opening few rounds, and keeping plays infrequent keeps the game "fresh".

PR is kind of like multiplayer Scrabble, where the player to the left of the newbie wins.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an impromptu Game Day with two of my friends, Nathan and Eddie. I pulled out all the 4-5 player games that we'd not played before. However, the discussion prior to playing anything forced me to get The Asshole Game^TM from its shelf.

For those not aware, The Asshole Game^TM is Planet of the Apes. Nathan was like, "Sure, Eddie, let's show you how to lose this fucking game." Want to know the scary part? WE WON. We kept the SoL in the middle of the track and made sure there was a lot of the events cleared. We got to the end, and won. Nathan said, "That's it?!" I explained for the event, most times, the SoL would be closer to zero, so getting odd roles would have been bad. He shrugged and we moved onto

Run, Fight or Die! I picked up the Super Jumbo Deluxe version from Noble Knight that had all the expansions for $45. Since my friends were used to the dice rolling mechanic in Dragon Rampage, the game was old hat. They liked the Zombie Conveyor Belt o' Death. In the end, I won easily with the Farmer and had Infected Marge Simpson and several other survivors.

The last game we played was Hyperborea. I played the game several times, and was chomping at the bit to get it to the table. I played the Coral Throne, Eddie played the Emerald Kingdom, and Nathan played the Celestial Reign (aka NERDS!). For a Short Game, it took over an hour to finish. In the end, the NERDS won handily, Eddie second, and I a distant 3rd.

Please elaborate on that discussion if you feel like it. That sounds most interesting.
I was just about to post in another thread about Hyperborea, maybe I should.

Sag and I played Mosaic: a Story of Civilization along with its expansion, Mosaic: Wars and Disasters with our usual Monday night Games from the Cellar crew. We made a recording that will go live later in September, but here are my thoughts that I wrote on the other site:

"Never has an expansion added so much, while at the same time, adds so little"

You know, we often say we want expansions to our favorite games that don't change anything, but only give us more of what we like. And I am having a lot of mixed feelings about what Wars and Disasters actually does for Mosaic. So I think it best to break it down, piece by piece.

War Tiles - these were largely completely ignored. We all looked at them at various stages of the game, but none of us saw the value in actually using them. Some of them are so situational, it's absurd.

Naval Units - I can see where they could be useful, if you want to play to their strengths. My main issue here was the dilution of Port Cities (a requirement to build) that is a result of mixing in the two new town options (Amphitheaters & Garrisons - more on them later). Yes, I know you can build Ports without cards, but losing out on the 10 gold makes it a very suboptimal play.

New Towns - Amphitheaters & Garrisons - While I like the idea of these two towns in theory, the dilution of the existing Build Deck is troublesome. I don't think Amphitheaters or Garrisons are good enough to replace Cities, Ports, or Projects.

New Wonders, Achievements, Leaders, Government - these are fine. The Wonders are neat, and are probably the best addition in this category. The achievements are also fine. The Ceremonial Civilization seems too easy for 6 points, but the Golden Civilization seems good. Admiral seems good, especially with the starting Port, but the reduced population seems tough to come back from. I love Confederation as a government.

New Technology Cards - these are also fine. Technology cards in general never seemed to make huge impacts (with a few certain exceptions), but I like a lot of the ones introduced in Wars and Disasters. I especially liked the "take two work action" techs, but they fall into the luck of the draw category, as they are the best move on the table 99% of the time. I would always play with the technology cards, even if I played with nothing else from the expansion.

Disasters - cool idea, but they don't have bite. You can see them coming (per rules) and only effect the player in the worst position. We posited that if either were blind draw, or effected everyone not in the best position, they would have more bite, and thus add more tension to the game.

Overall, it's a bunch of parts that probably don't add to the sum of the whole package. A couple of near-misses and a couple of best-to-ignore. The tech cards are the best part, followed by the disasters once house rules to be meaner. It does virtually nothing to change the experience of base Mosaic, which if we all remember, got a solid 7 from the crew.

DRACULA vs VAN HELSING on BGA. Physical copy is getting a release real soon.

This is a fun little 2p dueling game. Has bluffing and area control elements. It's from the same studio as JECKYLL V HYDE, but feels more polished. The premise is that you're fighting over five districts in London, each of which has four citizens in it. You have a card played to each district; at the end of the round whoever has the highest card wins the district. If Dracula wins, he turns a citizen into a vampire. If he ever has four vampires in a district, he immediately wins. If Van Helsing wins a district, then Dracula loses one of his 12 HP. If he loses his last HP, then Van Helsing immediately wins. Dracula also wins if he survives until the end of the fifth round.

There's 32 cards, 1-8 in four suits. The suits have tokens that indicate their strength, for situations when two cards of the same rank are in a district. The highest one is trump.

The twist is that each of the eight ranks has an effect when it goes to the discard. On your turn you draw a card, and choose either to discard it (triggering its effect) or replace one of your district cards with it (and then the old district triggers its effect, as it went to the discard). The effects are things like:
- flip over one of your cards
- flip over one of your opponent's cards
- swap two of your district cards
- swap one of your district cards with the opponent's card in the same district.
- choose a new trump suit; the old trump suit is now the weakest and all the rest move up in strength.

Like in Love Letter, the better effects are on the higher cards, so you are forced to choose between a strong card and a strong effect. As the round progresses, you get more information about your opponent's cards, and as Dracula gets more vampires in a district, it changes the payoffs and the incentives for playing there. Dracula certainly wants more vampires there, but maybe that's what he wants you to think! Maybe he'll get you to waste your best card there while he runs roughshod elsewhere....

Fun little game. Lightweight, breezy, but has some nerve-wracking points.

Got in a relatively short session today. Started with 3-person Tiny Epic Dungeons. We had Uliessa, Dwarven cleric; Zezili, Human monk; and Zui Xiong, Pandakin brewmaster. So we were all very end-of-the-alphabet. We made a fast start, uncovering the Ooze and killing it quickly, followed soon by the Vampiric Imp. But then we started to struggle, as the damage inflicted on the Imp by our not-especially-damaging-party was healed by it during his attacks and the torch started running out (Indy!) We did find pieces of the Lion, Panther, Phoenix, and Bear sets, but probably should have invested in some spells to try to clear things a bit faster. In the end, the darkness closed in and we lost again. I'm starting to think that it's just not worth it unless we have a full complement of players (4) because we really need the extra set of abilities to move even faster.

Then, since a whole pile of plastic came in a couple weeks ago, we turned to Cthulhu Wars and added a player. However, since all three of the people other than me were playing for only their second (two of them) or third (the other one) time, I didn't add in any of the pile of extra stuff I now have sitting on the shelf. We went with Sleeper (me), Windwalker, Opener, and Yellow Sign. I was the first one to summon my GOO, putting the big toad on the board and beginning to abduct people's monsters. That allowed me to remain first player for a couple rounds, but I was hoping that Windwalker would do more bashing around with his awesome late-game combat abilities and instead he spent time Hibernating, rather than combatting. So, in the end, we let Opener get too far ahead with his multiplicity of gates and he closed the game out at 31 points after using Dragon Descending. I was right behind with 28, with Windwalker at 26 and Yellow Sign at 19. Next time, I think we'll try the Primeval map and a couple Terrors...

RobertB wrote: PR is kind of like multiplayer Scrabble, where the player to the left of the newbie wins.

Is there a solo option?

Went to a friend's house and he pulled out some classics. First was 4 player Dead of Winter. It was pretty easy to get into since two of us knew how to play, and we were all so skilled that it only took us 4 rounds to lose all of our morale, and the game. Good stuff. I did get to sacrifice my mall Santa to gain 1 morale, and I was happy to do it.

Then we played Lords of Waterdeep, a game I "like" but it's not like it's exciting at all. I came in last. Big deal.