What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

A week ago I attended a Delaware gaming weekend with some FATties (Sag, Griff) and 20 friendly strangers.

A full list of games played (by me): Android, Evolution, Thunder Alley x2, LOTR coop board game x2, Surf's Up Dude!, Boomtown, Napoleon's Triumph, Nuclear Escalation, Bucket King, Mansions of Madness, Survive!, Star Trek VCR game, Ring-o Flamingo, Batman Love Letter, Galaxy Trucker, Railways of the World (England map, no stocks).

Highlights:

Teaching games to people who were excited to learn them. It was especially fun to introduce Evolution and Mansions of Madness to a group of twenty-year-old gamers. Despite their loss, they thought MoM was awesome and wanted to play again immediately, but I didn't have the energy.

Bucket King (w/ appropriate variants) remains brutish and short and is still a top 10 game for me. A 3-D version will be released in the states soon...

I taught Napoleon's Triumph as a learning game: we allowed takebacks, I gave strategy tips, etc. (Sag and Griff played against me as the Allies as a single learning team; they were allowed to freely discuss whatever they wanted.) I'm embarrassed to say how many consecutive games of NT I've won, including this one, but that isn't difficult when you continually face off against brand new players. People who don't know the rules are guaranteed to get crushed, and that's OK as long as you tell them that ahead of time. It physically hurt when I reminded my opponents that ONLY the blocks in an approach can defend, and that units in the reserve (when defending blocks are in the approach) cannot counterattack. That pretty much blew the game for them right there, and it didn't help that I had my French Guard unit ready to pounce.

The Star Trek VCR game is a total ripoff of Nightmare, yet not nearly as funny. Though it did come with insignia stickers to wear while playing.

Thunder Alley naysayers can suck exhaust fumes. TA is still my favorite racing game, and I've now won four straight 4-player races. In the last race, my cars landed in the top 3 spots. Sweet!

Android was my final game. It was a 3-player session and lasted a full 5.5 hours due to teaching and the fact that we savored each and every line of flavor text. We managed to kill off 2 of the 4 suspects, which somehow left me free to score my surviving guilty/innocent picks. But I still lost due to an opponent getting tons of Conspiracy points, and the fact that my Raymond storyline ended disastrously (-9 pts). Simply a great way to end the weekend.

*** Random follow-up ***

Last night I played Power Grid: First Sparks and Fallen. A quick review of Fallen:

A good first play, but I don't need to own a copy - particularly since "experience" games are universally better with more players to share the fun. It's sorta like role-playing with only two people. Who does that?

Still, if unveiled once or twice a year in the proper "dive in and see what happens" spirit, it'll be worth someone's money. Just not mine.

My rating is high because my introductory session was enhanced by four things: (1) I played as the hero, so I got to make all of the adventure decisions; (2) other gaming buddies were nearby to overhear my poor choices and giggle at my flavor text; (3) the game came down to the very last die roll, with both of us tied at two Final Battle cards apiece; and (4) I won the last Battle (and the game) by a single sword.

Strikes against: I don't think I'd play in an isolated, quiet room with just my opponent in residence, as that's what wargames are for. It's also unclear whether playing as the Dungeon Lord would be very appealing, though I wouldn't mind testing that theory in three months after the euphoria has settled and the system is fresh again.

Had a big boardgame and drinks day yesterday at a friend's house to celebrate his birthday. He was really craving some Battlestar Galactica so we obliged with a 6 player game. We decided to try out the no sympathizer variant, since we've never liked the effect it has on the game. I began as a human Tom Zarek and right from the beginning we were up against a wall, with a series of no-jump crises and cylon fleet spawns. We jumped out early and avoided the -3 population hit, and from there until the midgame it was pretty smooth sailing, which led me to believe there was either no cylons present or they were lying low. At the midgame I turned out to be a cylon and galactica was being swarmed again, so I decided to reveal myself to shoot Adama, played by my fiancee, in the head and skedaddle. Unfortunately she had also just received her cylon card, so in hindsight that was a poor choice. However it didn't end up mattering that much, as the humans expended most of their skill cards on my super crisis and a few other nasty crises, so they weren't able to hold off a final cylon swarm that killed lots of civilian ships. Great game, and I enjoyed playing with no sympathizer variant.

After dinner we played lots of rounds of One Night Werewolf. This was our second time playing it, the first time being with 5 players. We enjoyed it but we felt its potential lay with an increased player count. With 9 players, and our particular crowd, the game was a huge hit, and there were some fantastic deceptions especially with the minion and the tanner. We played with three villagers, two werewolves, seer, hunter, robber, troublemaker, drunk, minion, and tanner. I loved what the minion and tanner brought to the game, as players who are usually not great at deception (like me!) could use their presence to our advantage. I received the minion card and decided to method-act like I was a werewolf, saying I was a villager but triying to not be over the top suspicious. It worked out and our side won! Unfortunately for most of the other games I was either a villager or hunter and lost as we often picked the minion or tanner. Overall a great success!

We finished off the night with Time's Up. There's nothing more to say about this one other than it's still one of the best party games out there that we've played.

Erik Twice wrote: Played some boardgames with my buddies yesterday

We also tried some new Netrunner decks because I'm trying to game the new metagame. With Astrobiotics gone, Runners have been able to build bigger rigs and play slower, beefier decks to compete against the slow decks I was playing so I'm trying to introduce a new, fast deck to punish them for it. Right now, the build I'm playing is one known as NEH Butcher Shop, because it's incredibly focused on killing: 3 Midseason Replacements, 3 Scorched Earth, 3 Traffic Accident and a singleton Reclamation Order to play all those Scorched Earth again.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a really cool deck because you play lots of Data Raven and a couple Gutenbergs. Easy to play too, so I hope it's popular enough to turn the metagame around.
we need a new deck to fight the new, slower meta. I was playing Industrial Genomics, which is the single slowest game in existance and it was bothering me how

Ugh..I was playing against that butcher shop build yesterday on OCTGN with a friend of mine with a Valencia deck I was trying. Butcher shop is tough to play against. I was always wondering if I was making the right move and of course got blown away with the Scorch..Traffic Accident combos.

Had a great game night last night.

First was 4 player Cthulhu Wars. I took another crack at the Black Goat, and only NARROWLY lost to Cthulhu. It came down to being beaten by 2 points, and he had drawn better Elder Signs than I had. That's a pretty crappy way to lose, frankly. Cthulhu has only lost one time in about 6 games. Still, a fun time. I look forward to the new content they are producing... hopefully some of it can temper Cthulhu's dominance, or at least give you the opportunity to leave him out.

Next was Wiz-War. Again 4 players, just the base game. This was only the second time we had broken this one out in my group, and it went over BIG this time. It was a total blast, and full of aggression from round 1. I ended up ordering Malefic Curses so I'm covered on 5 players in the future. I have a feeling this one will start hitting the table more.

We didn't get enough of wizard battling, so we ended with another game of Epic Spell Wars. It was okay, but at this point I'm ready to not play this one again until the expansion comes out.

airmarkus wrote: Ugh..I was playing against that butcher shop build yesterday on OCTGN with a friend of mine with a Valencia deck I was trying. Butcher shop is tough to play against. I was always wondering if I was making the right move and of course got blown away with the Scorch..Traffic Accident combos.

Always assume they have the combo in their hand because with 6 kill cards plus Jackson plus Daily Bussiness Show it's extremely likely they do. Generally, I feel Anarchs are very easy matchups because they don't have a way to get to 20 credits fast enough. If it bothers you, I would try to run Armitage or Liberated Accounts.

Last night I posted this in the wrong section.




We had time for one last game before my son's crunch time for exams. He chose Fortress America. We usually play this game once a year. I bought it for $2.95 at a thrift store--and, of course, little did I know at the time that it would be worth every penny and more--I even lucked into the edition with Saddam on the box cover. By the way, if I could purchase a poster of the box art, I'd frame it and hang it on the wall. My son played AMERICA (can you say: WOLVERINES!) and I played the OPFOR. Though my initial push on three Commie fronts seemed successful at first, the dice weren't rolling my way. A combination of America's Partisan Forces, Satellite Lasers of Death, and Detroit's ability to manufacturer hover tanks ended up taking me out. My son crowed wildly with a victory cry and then I told him to go to his room to study.

I just got Theseus, and I've played 2 solo games. First was Marines vs. Scientists, then Aliens vs. Grays. This game is fantastic, and I can't wait to play it against someone. I already ordered the Bots faction.

It seems that people pretty much universally hate it as a 3 or 4 player game, but I've also heard that 2 on 2 can be good. Has anyone played it that way?

Played Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit tonight for the first time. Being a trend setter, as I am, I try to keep on top of the new releases.

Honest assessment: It's a good fun game. If I was 12 years old it would blow my mind. It does look totally fantastic when set up. Before X Wing I have no trouble believing this was the best Star Wars game out there. Also, that it was a mass market game is fairly remarkable. However, I don't think it is worth anywhere near the asking price that this game currently demands. I'm tempted, at the risk of committing sacrilege, to say it's a bit over rated.

Still, I'd be happy to play it again.

repoman wrote: Played Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit tonight for the first time. Being a trend setter, as I am, I try to keep on top of the new releases.

Honest assessment: It's a good fun game. If I was 12 years old it would blow my mind. It does look totally fantastic when set up. Before X Wing I have no trouble believing this was the best Star Wars game out there. Also, that it was a mass market game is fairly remarkable. However, I don't think it is worth anywhere near the asking price that this game currently demands. I'm tempted, at the risk of committing sacrilege, to say it's a bit over rated.

Still, I'd be happy to play it again.

When a 30$ game sells for 400$ everything is going to be overrated. Still, if it was in print I'd buy it for sure. I also played my first ever game of it just a week ago and I loved it. I thought it was really amazing and would love to play again soon. I like it about the same as X-Wing or Imperial Assault.

So I was the opposite player in Repo's Queen's Gambit game tonight, and it was also my first time playing.

My sentiments echo JJ's. This is a very good game for sure, certainly delivering in terms of quality and ambition that far outreaches that of other mass market games. How the four separate battles affect each other is rather remarkable, as you very frequently have to give up something that might put you ahead on one front in lieu of preventing the opponent from getting too much of an edge on another. I also really love how much focusing heavily on front truly does leave you with some limited options on the next turn. There's alot of smart design for a game that runs on a pretty simple set of rules. I don't love the game, but I do really like it and I am quite eager to play it again. Not only do I have a better idea on what I should be doing, I feel that my expectations will be much more reasonable.

More games this week!

We played some more Chicago Express and taught one of my budies a lesson: Never let a player gain full control of the Penn Railroad (Red). He allowed it to happen and the other guy just went straight to Chicago and kept cashing in checks of 26$ or more per round. Woops! The second game was, however, incredibly tense. I was too destructive and ended up in a position in which I could not gain any important advantage over the other players without buying stock.

Then we played Dead of Winter a bit and I won as the (Exiled) traitor in the "too many mouths to feed" scenario. I gambled on turn one on the crisis, one of them didn't add anything so I was outed very quickly. Still, the difficulty of the scenario and some tactical play allowed me to kill enough people to win. They still survived, though, but one couldn't fulfill his objective.

I think the game will settle in the "3 star" range for me: Good and fun, simply not a classic. The game's main flaw is that it grows from fairly spartan mechanics, it's better than the sum of parts, sure, but they are still some unimpressive parts. There are also some minor things to dislike, like how killing another character relies almost completely on turn order. I'm also not fond of the Crossroad cards: Most of the time, they don't trigger and when they do, the amount of "Nothing happens" or outright positive options means they barely impact the game.

We also tested some new Netrunner decks. Haley Kaplan is fun, she really is fast at building her position on the board, but the build we tested is brutally murdered by Butcher shop, she simply has no cash to compete.

Geekway was four days of balls to the wall gaming this year. I was much more efficient with my time as opposed to last year, not wandering around looking for a table that was playing something desirable. I made shit happen this year and gamed mostly with people I already knew. I did meet up with a buddy from BGG who was very cool.

Over four days:

Two Rooms and a Boom x6 plays
Greed x5
Shiv x5
Bling Bling Gemstone x5
Ghost Blitz x2
Luchador! x2
News @ 11 x2
Cave Evil
Coconuts
Eclipse
Fief
Homeland
Hyperborea
Merchants and Marauders w/ Seas of Glory
Resistance with Expansions
Sons of Anarchy
Vivajava Dice Game

Nearly every game was dramatic and exciting. So many memorable moments from being completely dicked over in our 8AM game of SOA, to bribing my way into a marriage in Fief to squeak out the win, despite being a rather weak noble family at the time. Eclipse was awesome and I only lost by 2 points, despite kicking ass as the Orion Hegemony and hanging onto the middle for the entire game.

The M&M expansion is excellent and I was able to introduce Isaac Childres to the game, designer of Forge War. Also introduced him to Homeland. Taught new people Hyperborea and Luchador! and they really liked it, so that was cool. We introduced the BGG guy to Cave Evil and he said it was one of his new favorite games.

Greed, Vivajava, and Ghost Blitz were the only games that were new to me that I played. Greed was the best and is a very good little game that's just easy to play and very satisfying. Ghost Blitz is interesting too, like it a bit better than Jungle Speed.

I ran Two Rooms and a Boom for the second straight year. I wasn't going to run it due to being busy but several friends coerced me into it. I'm glad I did as it was the most memorable session of the con.

Hung out with some awesome people, talked to Zev for awhile and he was friendly as always. Thought it was humorous that he mentioned he was still waiting on his copy of the M&M expansion.

Played two games of Battlestar Galactica on Saturday, at a BSG-themed get-together hosted by a friend. He was also doing a marathon viewing of BSG on the side. I brought my copy of just the base game, but it didn't see play. At any given time, roughly half of us were playing BSG or watching BSG. The rest were just hanging out talking or playing fun-murdering Euro-games because they wanted to play some games but can't handle AmeriTrash.

Both games, we played with the Pegasus board and characters, treachery cards, and the no-Sympathizer variant. Both games were close and tense, with the humans winning the first game and the cylons winning the second.

I haven't played BSG in several years, because my Call of Cthulhu group always wanted to play it, and people kept choosing the same characters. We had the married couple that always wanted to play Admiral Adama and President Roslin. And we had the guy who always wanted to play Boomer or one of the two guys doing Boomer. So I usually got stuck playing either Starbuck or Apollo. Oddly enough, when we played on Saturday, I actually wanted to play Apollo again for old times sake. He's a great character because he sees plenty of action fighting raiders, which makes for a good public profile when people start getting paranoid. And he has a broad skill set, so it's easy for him to play a very sneaky, low-key cylon.

Played a few games this weekend.

Dead of Winter - First time playing. Two people had played before, and all of us were semi-familiar with the rules. Overall I really enjoyed it. I really like how simplistic the game mechanics are. Everything sort of melts into the background and you can focus on the game. I was playing the construction worker gal and the Mother. The mother had this special abilities where you could spend a die and kill two zombies at the colony without rolling the red die O doom. After a few turns of this being a normal move for me....we started coming up with this story where she'd make breakfast for everyone. Have a cup of coffee and then go apeshit and kill some zombies before tending to the small children. She's a lovely woman...bit of a darkside...but she does wonders with cans of beans. The whole game is filled with little things like this. You actually feel like your character has some personality and oddly enough you get attached to playing them. I actually really like the crossroad cards. It gives you some uncertainty each turn and most of the story snippets are ridiculous. We laughed quite a bit while reading through some of the more fucked up ones. In the end we barely survived. There was a betrayer and he was played by a veteran...but he wasn't able to accomplish his goal. Me and another guy managed to win though. That was the other thing I enjoyed...I like how there is an overarching goal, but each person is out for themselves. Glad I finally got to play it. Looking forward to trying it again.

Pony Express - I was with my brother and his wife so I broke out this family friendly racer. It seems to have flown under the radar and got lost in the shuffle of another western style game with similar aesthetics, Dice Town. Both games use dice cups and poker dice...plus they both have cartoony artwork. Dicetown went on to become a pretty big hit, while Pony Express is almost never spoken of. Which is a damn shame, because it's a hilarious little time waster. The way you move is you secretly roll 6 poker dice and try to get the best poker hand. What you have is mostly secret...some of your dice get revealed. You then get to tell the truth or bluff about your hand. People close to you can call you on your bullshit. Add some cards...gun fights where you roll dice across the board in a dexterity mini game and then have a space that forces the player to get you a cold beer....yes sir I like it. Not really surprising since it's a Faidutti game and he rarely disappoints me. This isn't some great design by any stretch, but it is fun family style game. It plays quickly and we all laughed and had a good time.

I went to my gaming group on Saturday and we got in a few games. The day started out with Eminent Domain. We played with the scenario cards where we all start out with different decks and a starting technology. It seemed pretty cool, but for some reason I was kind of bored playing. Eminent Domain is weird like that for me. Sometimes I really enjoy it and other times I'm just going through the motions.

Next up was a game of Village. I played this around 2 years ago and this was my second play. The game standard worker placement fare with an ok theme. Nothing special. I'd play it again, but wouldn't request it.

Finally, 4 of us dived into an introductory scenario of Galaxy Defenders. I'd been wanting to try this for quite a while. We lost the game, but from what I experienced I think this could be pretty cool. I thought of it as X-Com meets the D&D Adventure system boardgames with better leveling mechanics. We plan to bring this out again in the near future. I'd like to try the campaign game to see if it holds up. I'm definitely hoping it doesn't disappoint.