What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

After a week in Italy, I'm back at the gaming table. Last night my pal and I fired up Healthy Heart Hospital.

I'd heard a lot of good things about this one, and have been on something of a co-op kick lately, so I was pleased to pick it up in a math trade.

I don't know if we were playing a significant rule wrong or what, but after an initial hump and two pretty dire turns in a row, we then sailed fairly easily to a major victory (our final score was 115). That seems like it should be unlikely. I need to go through the rules again and see if I overlooked something. We built the clinic and break room right away, hired the HR person and the person who gave extra admin tokens, we used Pinchpenny to move patients into the clinic easily. The red ward had the "upgrade" where you ignored black cubes but needed two red cubes to heal and it was great for getting black cubes out of the cup. I think we had five patient deaths, but we still had few problems. We never bought the ER.

I like the game, but it went on a bit long considering we weren't feeling much of a challenge. Are we just gifted healers?

How eager am I to play again? Yeah, I want to see if this happens again.

Is this something I'd like to own? Already do, but is it a keeper?

Rating after first play? Hard to say. If we were doing everything right then not much over a 5.

Got some weekend gaming in, which hadn't happened for way too long.

Saturday I met with the coworkers. While we waited for one (who turned out to have way overslept), we played a three-player game of Takenoko. I forced the ending at 34 points. The next player got the chance to pull two cards and pulled a 5-point card to get him to 35. The final player pulled a 4-point card to get him to 37. That sort of ending isn't all that crazy for Takenoko.

Then since we hadn't heard from our fourth player, we did a three-player game of Dead of Winter. One player had played once, and two of us had never played it before. Our mission was "kill all but three zombies in the outer areas". Nobody was a betrayer, but we died to morale loss nonetheless. During the course of the game, our fourth player let us know that he had just rolled out of bed, and would be there shortly.

One of the first threesome had to leave, but the fourth showed up, and we liked Dead of Winter so much that we played it again. I got the betrayer mission to get 6 food with 0 morale. I laid low and just let us die while hoarding food and bitching about not being able to pull cards we needed. I had the chance to win, but couldn't pull that 6th food, so I had to throw one in to make it to the next round with 1 morale. In that turn, the player before me rolled a Bite during a movement check, and that was game. By the end of that second game, we had fixed the few rules that we had gotten wrong, and I'm definitely up to playing that again.

Sunday, my brother and sister-in-law came over, for the more family sort of games. The first game was Bohnanza, and I got the win without buying a 3rd bean field. We played a few games of Love Letter, which we hadn't played in a while, which was fun. The main event was Acquire, which my wife won going away. Acquire isn't supposed to be all that beholden to tile draws, but I had some really useless tiles and finished last, and I'm sticking to that story.

I played my recently acquired, Barnes-approved version of Entdecker with the family (thanks, Michael!). We liked it, but it ran juuuuust a bit on the long side. The artwork is nice, and the map looks great as it slowly develops. I was surprised that most of the conflict ended up happening on the jungle paths, rather than over ownership of the islands.

Then yesterday I tried Dungeon! with my kids. My older son (playing the Cleric) ran away with the victory. It wasn't even close. I played the Rogue and was so far behind, I thought I was ahead. It seems like a fun, lightweight game that doesn't overstay its welcome. I just wish there more interesting treasures and equipment to be found to help you "level up" and tackle the tougher rooms. As the Rogue, I was getting CRUSHED by the level 3 monsters! I found myself trapped in a hallway between two rooms, each of which had a Green Slime in it. I needed to roll a 12 to beat that fucker, and I just couldn't do it, despite multiple attempts. Fun game though, even if the Rogue sucks.

I love Dungeon!

The past week was pretty busy, but I managed to get some older stuff to the table. Sekigahara is still quite incredible. It's less epic than Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, but better than every other two player game I've ever played by quite a margin. I'm spreading the gospel until it's back in print this summer.

I tried Age of Empires III for the first time (not the deluxe reprint) and was pretty impressed. I was a bit worried given the similarity of components to Francis Drake, but the game played out as a mean-spirited little worker placement game (like Argent, but without the total disregard for playing space and opaque game state). I'll probably pick it up.

Pax Pamir made it to the table for the first time in months. This game is cumbersome to teach, but I think that there are some very slick mechanics underneath. Despite that, it has never really culminated in a fun play experience. Does anyone else have the experience of liking a game that they've never actually enjoyed playing? It's back on the shelf; too good to part with but not quite fun enough to play.

Unicron wrote: too good to part with but not quite fun enough to play.

Isn't that the Sierra Madre Games motto?

You may be right. I would say the same of Pax Porfiriana too.

Sunday - Learned how to play Splendor at a dinner party with my wife and another gamer couple (Splendor is their fav). It's neat.
Monday - Started my DreadBall's 6th league. I lost my first match by ONE GOD DAMN POINT because of the Dice Gods. Fuck you Dice Gods.
Tuesday - Played Splendor again with my wife. We're learning the nuances and enjoying it. We need a few more sessions before casting final judgement, but we're interested enough to keep playing. I highly doubt it'll replace our go-to favorite; Qwirkle.
Wednesday - Opened up a big crate of CMON stuff. Zombicide's Black Plague (second shipment) arrived and there is a ton of stuff to play. I'm getting ramped up.

UPCOMING
Monday 6/13 - hosting a session of Cthulhu Wars. I currently have one seat available. If any of you F:ATties are in DC, touch base.

drewcula wrote: Monday - Started my DreadBall's 6th league. I lost my first match by ONE GOD DAMN POINT because of the Dice Gods. Fuck you Dice Gods.

What teams are being run this season and which is yours? My Dreadball league kicks off in July. I'm going to be posting about in within the next few weeks in the Fanatics page because I'm doing some new (to me) things with this league. Will be interested in feedback.

Oh, played a bunch of BB:TM last night. Great game. love the deathroller...*rumble!*, *rumble!*

My Ada Lorana lost to the "un nerfed" Judwan*. A tough match in principle since both teams are so bloody similar. I was AWAY, which I always think is a handicap. OTOH, my opponent sucks. At least, he usually sucks...

* We ruled last season that the Judwan speed would revert to speed 3+

TEAMS:
Judwan beat the
Ada Lorana

Tsudochan got seven pointed by the
Mutants

Hobgoblins lost by five to the
Rebels (however, the rebs did lose three lives thanks to the Hulk)

Did you keep that silly "Judawan don't get the bonus point" rule?

Why do you feel the away side is such a handicap?

"Long Arms"
Stays the same. Without it, those E.T. bastards would be seven pointing everybody before the 7th rush. I'll admit it's goofy, but the flavor text of the DGB makes it palatable. For a game mechanic, there's parity because of the extra throwing distance. I think the balance is fine, and this from a guy who lost three nights ago.

I've always had a hard time with AWAY. As important as playing a defensive game may be in DB, you win by scoring (99% of the time). When you're HOME and you score on your first rush, you opponent has to start playing catch up or they risk getting skunked in rush 3, 5, 7, etc...

Played a game of Gears solo. Roadblocks scenario. The first part is fun, it makes you feel smart by fighting tickers and is a little puzzle where you try to blow up multiple tickers on every turn and rush forward as quickly as possible to the second part. I could see it being incredibly hard with more than 2 player, but with 2 players it's pretty easy. Then it ramps up and is traditional gameplay again, normal fights against ticker/drone/boomer A/B/C combo. Which still just works.

Game plays quickly; I just don't feel like the setup is that bad though people complain about it? Main thing is sorting a couple decks since there are almost no tokens or minis to mess around with.

Yesterday I got the TMNT Dice Building Game from Miniature Market, and I trotted it out for a solo game. I'm not sure how this happened, but this was actually my first exposure to the Dice Masters system. I played Quarriors way back in 2011 when it came out and it didn't do much for me then, but I really enjoyed this a lot. That's probably because mechanically it's basically Magic with dice, which is more interesting that I remember Quarriors being.

I like that the new set is all self-contained, though they take great pains to point out that it's fully compatible with every other Dice Masters set. I do think I'd like to get into some other Dice Masters sets after this, since I can see them being a big hit with my kids when they get a little older. Guess I'll throw that in the pile of games I'd like to buy someday.

I got to try out Spurs last night, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

It's a relatively light sandbox sort of game set in the old West. Players move around the map having encounters with wild animals or outlaws, dig for gold or rustle cattle, all in pursuit of fame (victory points). We played with three, but I think four would be ideal as it would encourage more player interaction. We didn't have a single duel, which was my fault for pursuing a bear instead of going after a player (who won because of it).

Overall, it was very pleasant. Easy to get into, easy to joke around and role-play with bad Western slang, and pretty short as well. I might have to pick up a copy.