What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Got my Barnes-warn-in copy of Apex Theropod the other day and played four solo games yesterday. Pretty good, but also kind of disappointingly short. I was hoping for something a little meatier for an experience. (Definitely challenging, though... I got my dino ass kicked every time.) I think as more straight-forward deck-builders go, I'm not really going to be interested in anything other than the Legendary: Encounters (Alien) type of model, which has some really nice sense of narrative and build-up to it. This is pretty close to that kind of thing, but overall not as good. Anyway, I was glad to try it, but I'll be passing it onward.

It's not as clean as Alien, but I think the game is better overall. I liked Alien, but it felt really repetitive after a while. I especially like how in AT that the hunt path is very "alive"- predators will come and wipe out your food supply, some animals will fight back and wound you, others will run off at the first sign of an ambush. It's all really neat stuff that in the hands of a more talented and assured designer (and development team) could have been really great.

We're on the third game of Heroscape this summer (which started Friday here). Last night was a corker, my daughter fell asleep and River and I fought down to the last Airborne (his) and Gorillanator. This little dude that pretty much hid behind a tree the whole time showed up right at the end and wound up the sole survivor. My last Gorillanator whiffed three attacks in a row on this guy and from high ground at that. And then he flopped his last defense roll.

They want to try Space Crusade tonight, I'm thinking about it...I guess I have to be the bad guys on it.

Had a nice bachelor evening. 2 3-2-1 (tequila, cointreau, lime juice) margaritas and Gears of War.

I was all about to come on here and rant and rave about how it is the best game of all time. My first game with it, 2 players solo on the first scenario... maybe the best action boardgame experience I've ever had? What a game. Down to my last card twice and a grenade in my own area finished the rest of the enemies off.

Then I busted out the horde scenario, which I've never done. Not all that much fun, but not the worst game ever. It's too long and moreover, the objective is to wipe the enemy and the AI cards make that extremely gamey. So I don't recommend the horde scenario---but I wish I could because it has the nice characteristic of throwing out lots of different TYPES of enemies at you.

Had 3 tables at our game night last night. So I got to avoid the "light and party game" table and the "worker placement" table and instead play MEGACORPS. Great negotiation game, probably better than INTRIGE for me. Asymmetric, "unbalanced' starting positions so you have to work together because if you play it like a multiplayer solitaire eurogame then certain starting positions would be out of it. You can negotiate pretty much everything so ideally ends up with trying to get a piece of every action. We only played 4, but is much better with 5 or 6 because the board fills up more. I really think it's underrated... one of the regular items on Tanga back in the day that are actually good games, just like MAGICAL ATHLETE.

Also played EXPEDITION: NORTHWEST PASSAGE which is a nice tile laying/racing/set collection euro where we're going after the Franklin expedition, finding evidence of their cannibalism and maybe even discovering the Northwest Passage ourselves. It's a few years old, but it's one of those games where it feels like it could have come out in the early 2000s and fit right in at that time too.

God damn it Sax, you keep making me think about getting Gears of War again...I just really, really, really want them to do either a Star Wars or 40k remake of it.

Michael Barnes wrote: God damn it Sax, you keep making me think about getting Gears of War again...I just really, really, really want them to do either a Star Wars or 40k remake of it.

The Space Marine motif works with that quite well, I'm thinking. Star Wars? I don't think it's a fit, personally. But yeah... 40K, no doubt about it. It's more intense too... Something about Star Wars isn't that... serious? I think that's the word I'm looking for.

Yeah, I get what you are saying Paul...nobody bleeds out in SW.

I finally got around to playing Blood Rage last night, and I liked it quite a bit. Strangely enough, the game it reminded me the most of was El Grande, just with fighting for position.

The clan upgrades seem to make or break that game. I know the card drafting helps mitigate the luck of the draw, but it doesn't eliminate it. The guy who won our game just ran away with it, beating the second-place finisher by almost 100 points. We played with five, and three of us were grouped fairly closely in the middle, with the last player quite a bit behind us.

Definitely a good game that I look forward to trying out again. The sculpts are awesome, but I can't help but think this game might find a wider audience with a less Ameritrash setting and little wooden cubes. But who cares? We can enjoy it just fine with the rest of the game community not knowing what they're missing.

(apologies if this has all been said before, as I haven't paid a lot of attention to the Blood Rage posts)

Played a round of Dungeon Fighter with my boys tonight. One of them got eliminated a few rooms before the rest of us got killed, and he was publicly shamed. I like this game so much, I ordered the Earth magic expansion. I think it's called Rock and Roll. The elemental expansions are fairly inexpensive; I'll probably grab them all over time if we continue to play.

Last night we had a 3 player game of City of Lycans; the last test I'll run before Origins. I've got several publisher appointments to demo it this time. Hopefully it goes well.

Then we played Sons of Anarchy. It was decent... but I think the game lacks excitement. For a game about running drugs and guns, I just feel like I'm doing a math problem.

Made a surprise visit to a friend's board game cafe, and tried Quadropolis & Blood Rage.

I somewhat enjoyed Blood Rage, but can't help thinking it's very much a game designed for certain impact. The map and units do very little. A lot of the game hinges on the cards. Drafting breaks up unless the players' understanding on the cards are on equal level, and it really breaks the pace of the game for me. The "3 ages" thingy also feel like a rinse and repeat. While new stuffs are introduced, it doesn't feel like a significant escalation of the conflict. It's like Sushi Go 3 rounds arrangement. The worst offending aspect of the game for me is that it is mathematical to me. The unit strength/rage ratio is precise (unless you get some deploy free cards), and it's one heck of a resource management game. I also strongly disliked the combat.

Quadroplis is suprisingly enjoyable. But it's too short and too long at the same time. Basically you get points based on placement, while balancing population and energy production/requirements. The tile picking mechanic though... very chaotic with more than 2 players. I think I'll like it more with just 2 players. It's too short because you only have the chance to pick 16 tiles. It's too long because it very AP-prone, in which your thinking process is dedicated to the game picking & placing mechanism instead of on the actual positioning. I really like how it simplifies city building aspects with its scoring, but really dislike how it complexify the game with some really gamey mechanisms.

Mythotopia again this week. I'm really enjoying this, no doubt because of the similarities to A Study in Emerald. While this game will never be the ultimate Black Raspberry Chocolate Chunk of games that Emerald is, it's a tasty coffee caramel.

Zombicide in which we chose a "hard" mission from the Rue Morgue book. We limited the zombie types to the skinners and toxics and used team orders in order to balance the difficulty. It turned out that the mission was actually easy so it didn't take so long, and I think only one, maybe two players advanced past blue xp.

Iota which is a small, abstract game about laying down rows of small square cards according to strict rules base on the colour, shape and number on the card. It took a few turns to start seeing the strategy- initially I felt it was another card game where if you're not dealt the cards you need, you're out of luck, but I saw some options open up for big scores as the game opens up. It felt a bit like an area control game. Pretty decent.

1775 in which the colonials got four consecutive turns and eliminated all of our reinforcement locations, sweeping the board 7-0.I don't mind at all, it's still a great game.

Oh, Codenames also but it doesn't really bear mentioning these days.

Shadows of Brimstone at home, in which we just did a run to town. I started organizing the contents of the two boxes together. It's kind of a nightmare in terms of packing everything together, but it's a puzzle to solve so I'll figure it out.

A 4 player game of Dungeon Fighter last night, only noteworthy because we actually WON. Granted, we had the easiest boss and were fortunate enough to go into the boss battle with 6 bonus dice. We killed the boss with only 1 bonus die remaining.

Then a game of Stronghold 2nd edition. Only our second game, and again I was the invader. This time I punked my opponent and beat him on the 3rd turn, practically by accident. I really enjoy the back and forth of this game.

Thanks to a last-minute no-show, our D&D group instead played boardgames. One player generally dislikes playing AmeriTrash, which rules out most of my collection, while the other two definitely wanted to play some AmeriTrash. We finally compromised on Spartacus for the first game.

Four players might be ideal for Spartacus, though I would live to try for a six- or seven-player game someday. Spartacus himself was the very first auction item, but in the end, the best buy of the day was the belt armor, which thwarts all unblocked attack rolls of less than 4. We had a couple of good, close fights during the game, plus one hilarious Primus featuring the Shadow of Death versus a pair of slaves. Two players tied for first at the end, and resolved the tie with an epic battle that went on for over 15 minutes and ended with a very close win.

One guy left, and the Euro guy expressed willingness to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as he found it moderately entertaining on a previous occasion, and also remembered that it's a good 3-player game. The other guy chose to play the evil Mayor and his minions, Bad Faith, Vamp X, and Mr. Trick. Euro guy played Xander and Oz, and I played Buffy and Willow.

Early game: Everyone raced to grab artifacts, and the bad guys soon had three of them, while Xander got the fourth. Xander got killed quickly by Mr. Trick, who then got torn up some as Oz turned werewolf. The Mayor used an artifact to turn himself into a giant snake. Willow cast a spell to bring back the full moon again, and then got killed by Vamp X. Oz the werewolf pounced on the Mayor and did some damage. Buffy chased down Faith and started beating on her.

Mid-game: Vamp X and Faith double-teamed Buffy, but Buffy managed to kill them both. Oz somehow managed to survive attacks from the Mayor in human form, and then the Mayor summoned a female werewolf. For a long time, the Mayor and Mr. Trick were fishing for evil cards while the two werewolves battled in and out of werewolf form. Buffy managed to chase down the Mayor and hit him once really hard, with help from Giles. With the help of some gay guy named Larry (I am not joking), Oz managed to kill the female werewolf while they were both in human form.

Late game: The Mayor summoned Angelus and Buffy's demonic college roommate. Oz as a werewolf managed to kill Mr. Trick and eventually the demon girl. Angelus had a hilarious run of terrible die rolls for movement, and was never a factor. Oz got really lucky with the full moon and got three consecutive turns in werewolf form, and managed to kill the Mayor for the win.

Summary: Spartacus was a solid four-player game, but this play of Buffy was epic as hell. It was the longest game of Buffy that I have ever played, clocking in at over two hours, and the good guys managed to kill the Big Bad and five of his six minions for the win, with Buffy killing two and Oz killing all of the rest.

Sounds like a great session, shellhead. It makes me really regret selling Buffy. That was a game I waffled back and forth a lot of about whether to sell or not.
I envy those who have a group to enjoy it with.