What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

How good is 3rd Edition? I have everything for 2nd Edition, so it would be quite the overhaul -- as is, I am thinking of just keeping 2nd Edition.

I finally came to understand how good Cthulhu Wars is. I played with my two daughters about a week ago, with the older taking Black Goat, younger Cthulhu and me Crawling Chaos. The older daughter didn't understand how to play the Goat and clumped together, and the younger one raised Cthulhu and wiped out my Nyalothotep just after I raised him, and romped to victory.

A few days later a friend came over and we played the same factions with him replacing my younger daughter on Cthulhu and the same thing happened. I kept saying to my daughter that she needed to spread out more but she just didn't get it. After discussing the Yellow Sign faction and the fact that we hadn't played them because they were very different, she decided she liked the idea of wandering around desecrating areas (or pooping on them as she decided to call it), and so we immediately played another game with her as Yellow Sign and me switching to the Black Goat as I have never quite got Crawling Chaos. IN the end the game was brilliant as she used her faction appropriately, and I was more able to utilize the Black Goats strengths. I won with a score of 36 to my daughter's 33 and my friend's 30, and this was because my daughter had chosen me to receive the 3 doom points for her spell book. If she had chosen my friend we would all have tied on 33 points.

When you have all players using their factions appropriately it is a thing of beauty in its asymmetry, yet simplicity. Now the second wave of expansions can't arrive soon enough so I can play this 5 player.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: I finally came to understand how good Cthulhu Wars is. I played with my two daughters about a week ago, with the older taking Black Goat, younger Cthulhu and me Crawling Chaos. The older daughter didn't understand how to play the Goat and clumped together, and the younger one raised Cthulhu and wiped out my Nyalothotep just after I raised him, and romped to victory.

A few days later a friend came over and we played the same factions with him replacing my younger daughter on Cthulhu and the same thing happened. I kept saying to my daughter that she needed to spread out more but she just didn't get it. After discussing the Yellow Sign faction and the fact that we hadn't played them because they were very different, she decided she liked the idea of wandering around desecrating areas (or pooping on them as she decided to call it), and so we immediately played another game with her as Yellow Sign and me switching to the Black Goat as I have never quite got Crawling Chaos. IN the end the game was brilliant as she used her faction appropriately, and I was more able to utilize the Black Goats strengths. I won with a score of 36 to my daughter's 33 and my friend's 30, and this was because my daughter had chosen me to receive the 3 doom points for her spell book. If she had chosen my friend we would all have tied on 33 points.

When you have all players using their factions appropriately it is a thing of beauty in its asymmetry, yet simplicity. Now the second wave of expansions can't arrive soon enough so I can play this 5 player.

It's less fragile with four as well. I think the more players you have the better it is, although it can take quite a bit longer with 5 than 3.

Space Ghost wrote: How good is 3rd Edition? I have everything for 2nd Edition, so it would be quite the overhaul -- as is, I am thinking of just keeping 2nd Edition.

There is a lot to chew on in that 3rd Edition box, but so far what I've played has been damn good. Though I will admit that this wasn't a game that I immediately liked. In fact, my first two plays I was convinced I hated the game. For some reason I kept trudging on and the game kept revealing its secrets to the point where I'm sort of in love with it.

I'm a big fan of Runebound 2nd Edition. I have no plans on getting rid of my 2nd edition stuff at this point. Thankfully these games barely share the same DNA. If FFG decided to release this under a different name instead of Runebound...nobody would have complained. Honestly, this new edition shares more in common with Firefly or Merchants and Marauders than it does with it's own namesake. I think both games can safely co-exist in your collection as they each scratch a very different itch. One is a trashy adventure dice chucker. The other is smartly designed, high fantasy, hero simulator that happens to use Runebound's movement dice and a variant of its gem system.

It's also a bit unfair to properly compare them since 2nd Edition got so much better with all of it's expansion content. I will confindently say that if you were comparing the base game of each edition...hands down 3rd Edition is the better designed game. Once you add in all the cool shit from Runebound's expansions though...it's a different story. I think after FFG releases expansion conent for 3rd edition it will make more sense to compare the two properly. As for now I'd recommend keeping 2nd edition and see where 3rd edition goes.

Gary Sax wrote: How'd like you Forbidden Stars and Fief, Southern? A very good game... any more thoughts?

Fief:1429
I enjoyed the game as I enjoy similar types - Warrior Knights, old school Blood Royale and Kingmaker, Game of Thrones - but it was just our first game trying out the rules and two of the four of us, who still really enjoyed it, are probably more euro orientated (well more than me) took a bit longer to understand it so took a bit longer. But I feel that when future games have players affected by some of the very random and very punishing disaster cards it may temper some peoples current opinion.
In the end it is just a area control fight game, as the 3VPs you need will come from grabbing 3 of the 6 fiefdoms, with a bit of diplomacy possible as two people ally to get an extra VP as King or Pope for a joint win - but I find that this, seemingly direct, import from Dune (controlling 3 objectives or 4 for a team) does not feel like it fits.
I think, apart from the random disasters/fortunes, that the week part of the game is the VP victory requirement as they have this voting system for Titles assigned to nobles but then it is all for just 1VP for the King or the Pope - it just seems a waste of two mechanics, they could have added more political content to make the Titles and votes a bit more varied to earn a VP a few different ways or just removed VPs entirely and have the win on a combination of Titles or similar.
But need to play it a few more times to make any of these comments justified.

Forbidden Stars
We had a great 3-player game of this and I managed to pinch the win in the 8th round by grabbing two planets (with the help of strategically placed Warp storms) after one player who started fast got blocked going for his 3rd objective and the other was also blocked but he had not managed to bring enough units up.
We play many similar games including Runewars and the other two do Warhammer minis so it went down very well. The order system from Starcraft took a while to get used to and was often frustrating but we enjoyed the combined dice/card combat system (attack/defence dice mechanic from many similar games, combat cards from games like AGoT and Horus Heresy, and Morale to win the combat as an upgrade to the similar strength count used in Runewars) and I think having just the four Order types (and with Upgrade cards beefing them up) as opposed to eight in Runewars makes the game flow a bit better. The only moan from my mates was that Ships were a bit of over-rated since they couldn't be involved in land combat, I just pointed out that they were still required to provide bridges (and blocks) between planets as in AGoT and also if you coordinate you can play two Advances to Orbital Strike first and then invade next hopefully with less defenders.
All in all a very positive response from all of us, possibly FFGs best explore & fight boardgame yet.

Finally got some gaming in for 2016. I've had the Atlanteans expansion for Imperial Settlers for a while now, but hadn't used them because the rules for them implied you have to do some kind of deck construction for the other factions if Atlantis is included, and ain't nobody, especially me, interested in that. The faction is interesting, but I wasn't sure it was worth the rigmarole. Here's what I said about it it on BGG:

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I like Imperial Settlers although I prefer to just take the training wheels off and play The New Era (sorry, I still have difficulty viewing IS as a game of its own.) This new faction adds technology as a resource and I'm not really sold on it yet. The Atlantis faction cards are cheap and powerful, but this is balanced by the fact that they score zero points at the end.

It comes not only with an Atlanteans deck, but with additional Common cards and cards for the other factions. If you include those cards in the faction decks, those factions' main engines get diluted with some stuff they may not get to take much advantage of. In addition, if, in the next game, no one wants to be Atlantis, you have to take the cards OUT of all the decks, which is a pain, as their main identifier is a microscopic symbol, even smaller than the already-too-small card text. What they want you to do is construct a faction deck but is there anyone that wants to take the time to do that? So the integration into the main set is not great. I want something like Neuroshima Hex or, dare I say, The New Era, where I don't have to rejigger the entire game based on whether or not a single faction is playing. And as neat as the Atlantis stuff is, I don't know yet if it's worth the overhead involved.

None of us want to spend the time to fiddle with custom decks; I'd play a different game if I wanted to do that. Adding the Atlantean cards to the other faction decks without removing any seems to dilute them (in our game the Barbarian player didn't get his big raze-boosting cards because he was pulling tech cards he didn't much care about.) And I don't really want to have to go through the common or faction decks with a jeweler's loupe to figure out which cards to remove if no one's playing Atlantis (Portal, you need to quit assigning ants to your English localization and design team; your card text is absurdly small.)

So it seems that the easiest answer is to simply not play with Atlantis and hope that future expansion factions play more well with the base game.
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Fortunately others have said that you can just play with the Atlantis faction cards and not add any of the others and it works fine. I'll give that a try.

Also finally replayed Burgle Bros and had a really fun time with it. It's a great little co-op with a different feel to it. The key is realizing the Event cards are BAD and need to be AVOIDED if possible. A handful of them are beneficial, but most are bad, and the ones that are good aren't nearly as helpful as the ones that are bad are harmful. I don't know if this was intentionally part of the design (it seems to be, yet it's often easy enough to burn actions if you don't want to take one) but that's how you need to play it.

^Youch, that sounds ROUGH.

So, I won a Netrunner tournament and tied for first place in another. Guess my dry spell is over! The problem is that we haven't had a new data pack in a very long time so I don't know what to build next., specially on the Corp side.

Deception: Murder In Hong Kong is very interesting. It's part social deduction part clue interpretation. Think Mysterium (or Codenames) meets Resistance. You're detective trying to solve a murder via visual clue cards with things like Knife, Glue, Fiber Optic Wire, Teddy Bear, etc. and one player takes on the Forensic Scientist.

They place tokens on cards in different categories to try and narrow down the obvious clues so players can select the right card.

The catch is one of the detectives is the murderer so he's trying to sow deceit and misinterpret clues, shying the group away from the clue cards in front of him. There's optional roles that function like Avalon's Merlin/Assassin with 6 or more players that really work well in this context.

We loved it. Very fun, exciting, and the asymmetrical aspect works great. I liked Mysterium but I like this much more as the traitor adds great tension.

I then played an epic game of X-Wing fielding Imps with the new TIE/FO and Gozanti Cruiser. This was a close game and my strategy of hauling a TIE bomber in the Gozanti and dropping it out the back as we passed through each other worked - unfortunately I didn't have the heavy firepower to deal with a souped up Millenium Falcon or Dash Rendar.

I did blow up BB8 though so that should give me something, right?

Went to visit Engineer Al and Uba last night for the first time in a while. Josh Look brought Arcadia Quest and we dove in. I think on the very first turn of the game Josh attacked an Orc and I got to roll for it's counterattack...which resulted in the death of Josh's character. I declared the game fantastic right then and there!

Seriously though, this is an awesome fucking game. It's got easy to grasp rules, it's confrontational, plays in a short amount of time, has BEAUTIFUL miniatures and is just genuinely fun to play.

Last night Josh mentioned that the game reminded him of HeroQuest and it does. But it also reminds me alot of FFG's ill-fated Cadwallon City of Thieves game. Both games have simple rulesets, different scenarios, player vs player confrontation, scenario specific goals, and an emphasis on trying to get coins. Arcadia Quest is a much cleaner design, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it played similarly to Cadwallon. I'll have to revisit that game to confirm my suspicions.

Anywho, I had a blast playing the game and hanging out with friends. After the hectic holiday schedule it was nice to be able to see everyone. Now I can't wait to crack open and play the copy of Arcadia Quest my wife got me for Xmas!

Kingsburg. I had a good time, and the game had some interesting and tough choices even if they were of the "which advisor to influence" kind of choices. But the game is soulless as hell and butt-ugly.

Last night I played Post Human, which was sort of a survival/adventure game where you can turn into a mutant and have to manage resources like ammo, food, and various equipment. You travel around and get into encounters, which are largely combat. Some will be against Humans, and other Mutants. Mutants can give you mutation scar cards that go face down, and once you get enough of them (3-4) you have the option of turning into a mutant, and once you get a lot (5+) you have to turn. When I first heard the premise, it sounded eerily like Panic Station, although no one starts as a bad guy. If you become a mutant, your stats change based on all the weird mutations you have accumulated, and you lose all of your gear, and your hit points don’t really matter either. You just mess with the other players to try to prevent them from winning. I was behind the leader and was running out of food, so I took a risk early trying to push to the next camping site, but it ended with me turning into a mutant. In the end we all lost, but maybe we won together?

Legomancer wrote: Also finally replayed Burgle Bros and had a really fun time with it. It's a great little co-op with a different feel to it. The key is realizing the Event cards are BAD and need to be AVOIDED if possible. A handful of them are beneficial, but most are bad, and the ones that are good aren't nearly as helpful as the ones that are bad are harmful. I don't know if this was intentionally part of the design (it seems to be, yet it's often easy enough to burn actions if you don't want to take one) but that's how you need to play it.

I like this one too. I’m impressed with how much game is packed into that box. I saw that it made Frank’s short list for the year.

charlest wrote: Deception: Murder In Hong Kong is very interesting. It's part social deduction part clue interpretation. Think Mysterium (or Codenames) meets Resistance. You're detective trying to solve a murder via visual clue cards with things like Knife, Glue, Fiber Optic Wire, Teddy Bear, etc. and one player takes on the Forensic Scientist.

...

We loved it. Very fun, exciting, and the asymmetrical aspect works great. I liked Mysterium but I like this much more as the traitor adds great tension.

I dug this one too, and also thought it was like a quicker and slightly less confusing Mysterium, although I really want to get Mysterium. The one thing that was a little annoying sometimes was how the cards the Forensic Scientist gets can make something much easier or harder than you’d think. One time the murderer picked Perfume for one of their two cards, and some card came up that said the two people involved were lovers. Game over. Other times you get stuff that is just really hard to make a choice on, so people end up following some really misleading clues.

mads b. wrote: Kingsburg. I had a good time, and the game had some interesting and tough choices even if they were of the "which advisor to influence" kind of choices. But the game is soulless as hell and butt-ugly.

I prefer this one to Stone Age. You roll then pick your actions, and there are lots of opportunities to block other players. I like the simple tech tree on the buildings. We played it a lot for a few months a couple years ago but then I grew tired of it. I heard that the expansion is very good, although I’ve never played it myself.

Jexik wrote:

charlest wrote: Deception: Murder In Hong Kong is very interesting. It's part social deduction part clue interpretation. Think Mysterium (or Codenames) meets Resistance. You're detective trying to solve a murder via visual clue cards with things like Knife, Glue, Fiber Optic Wire, Teddy Bear, etc. and one player takes on the Forensic Scientist.

...

We loved it. Very fun, exciting, and the asymmetrical aspect works great. I liked Mysterium but I like this much more as the traitor adds great tension.

I dug this one too, and also thought it was like a quicker and slightly less confusing Mysterium, although I really want to get Mysterium. The one thing that was a little annoying sometimes was how the cards the Forensic Scientist gets can make something much easier or harder than you’d think. One time the murderer picked Perfume for one of their two cards, and some card came up that said the two people involved were lovers. Game over. Other times you get stuff that is just really hard to make a choice on, so people end up following some really misleading clues.

Definitely possible, but that's why it's more important to choose clues that are similar to other players. I would never choose perfume probably unless flowers or something similar with scent and beauty was out there.

Kingsburg

Jexik wrote: I heard that the expansion is very good, although I’ve never played it myself.

We used the new battle variant where you each pick one of your six numbered tokens each battle instead of rolling the dice and I can't imagine preferring the dice. Then we each had a character with a special ability which added variety and finally we used the new buildings. They are probably great if you've played the game a lot, but for a first timer it only meant extra buildings to read.

I wouldn't mind playing it again and I like how it uses the dice to shake things up, but I quess it's just the "impress a king"-vibe that makes it soulless to me.

I prefer the dice. Adds a gambling aspect.

The last time we played we pulled the nastiest guy for each battle. I had always complained that the battles weren't tough enough to add sufficient pressure, but in this game, wow. Two of us got to peek in the last round, both of us put on a show about how hard it was, and the other players thought we were working them! They got crushed. That was entertaining as hell.