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

2 games of Battlelore, 2nd Ed.: I played Daqan for the first time, as I'd been the demon-lovers for my first three games. Won the River scenario where I have to keep him out of the towns vs. him having to occupy three different types of terrain. I was swimming in Lore and got both Assault and Runeblade off in the same turn and just crushed the board there and broke open what had been a tense game, winning 16-12. Second game was my Barrow Mounds vs. his Cursed Glade, so I needed to keep one unit type on a hill and he needed to occupy three different forests. I'd won both of his scenarios with the Uthuk before, so the game strikes me as really dependent on list design. He went heavy on Rippers and Obscenes and didn't have enough boots on the ground to fill his VP condition. He also kept forgetting to advance into won hexes. I won 16-10.

Then we played 3 games of Blue Moon, which I haven't pulled out in ages. I won with Pillar vs. Aqua, but then lost with Khind vs. Aqua and Buka vs. Mimix. He played the Mimix Shaman cards perfectly and always had a pair of 10 or 12 to knock me over. Meanwhile, I still think the Buka are way too draw-dependent if you don't have an opponent willing to engage you on the bluffs or you have a deck like the Mimix which you really can't stall against in order to fill your ships. It's a fun idea for a deck, but needs more ways to manipulate it.

Played the latest version of City of Lycans last night, and I've finally got the playtime down to 90 minutes, which is fantastic. It still needs some extra work though, which I'm putting in tonight.

Then we played a round of King of Tokyo. I couldn't roll claws to save my life, and I think that game really kind of sucks once it gets down to 2 players. Which it did, quickly, and then drug on and on.

Played Wings of Glory with the Hanriot DH.1 that I got for my birthday yesterday. I hadn't purchased an Italian plane and this one has a great little maneuver deck. Great S turns, very good turning circle in either direction.

I got shot down by my son's Aviatik but it was a good time either way.

S.

It was an afternoon of fillers today.

A game of Cheaty Mages. Fun game but a very math guy was playing and drug the game out because he kept running numbers. Last round it took him a very long time knowing that I placed one bet and then running all the calculations on how payouts could resolve. Going into the last round I had an awesome combo planned, but the person in the lead played a card that busted it and I came in second. I like the game but so far I'm zero for two with the groups I played it with. Both drug it out causing it to overstay its welcome, for me at least.

There were two games of Love Letter which of course were inoffensive.

Then a handful of games of Bang: The Dice Game. We played a game with 3, 4, 5 and 6 as people filtered in and dropped out. Had Bang not already been fired for being a game I greatly dislike The Dice Game would have fired it. This ranks up there as a top tier dice game for me.

Had a great game day yesterday, partly because it was at my place instead of the regular place and the main table toad wasn't there. It was also fewer people, which I think helped.

Nations, with three players. We are now playing this 100% correctly and it's finally really clicking for me. My initial concerns about it have diminished. I'll probably write about it today on my blog and will repost as a topic here if people want to talk about it.

Clash of Cultures (3p). Only my second time playing this and I'm just not sure how best to approach it. This play felt very gamey, where I was doing things that I didn't otherwise care about just to score objective cards. There was no PVP, not even cultural, which is okay with me somewhat, but there wasn't much of anything else. I came in close second, I had four cities, and none of them ever got above size 2. It just felt kind of hollow to me. I think there's something here, though, and I'm looking forward to more plays.

Acquire (4p). Always a great time, even if I did super shitty. I just didn't focus enough on anything, spread myself around too much, and ended up always being behind everyone else as a result. We played on my really crappy AH edition which I love the artwork on but the components are just embarrassing. I need to inventory the old AH box version I have and make that my playing copy.

Steam with California: 2090 (From Map Expansion 2) (3p). I adore Steam, and I finally pulled out the expansion maps I've had for a while. We were absolutely not prepared for how tight it was , economically and geographically. But we all clawed out of that hole soon enough. I enjoyed the map a lot and it added a great dimension to the game.

You just can't beat Acquire...that's as good as it gets. One of the few games that I think is absolutely perfect. I have the hoss-ass plastic buildings version and will never sell or trade it.

Played a couple of rounds of MDMAVX...make Quarriors look like a shitty beta. It may be really, really good. Need some more time with it, but it's got a rare spark.

First booster I opened- super rare Green Goblin. $45 on ebay already. That's another booster box.

With this past weekend being a Magic release weekend, the FLGS was off limits for board games (they never specifically kick us out, but the handful of us that show up on Saturdays all have a keen awareness that the wall of games and the space provided to us doesn't exist without the money Magic brings in, and so we don't like to eat up seats) given this, we decided to crash the bi-weekly Euro meetup at a bar a couple of miles away.

And so I played Bora Bora.

It's only my second experience with a Feld game, and Jesus Christ is this guy good at coming up with clever mechanisms that don't tie into theme or each other at all. Bora Bora has you rolling dice and using them as actions (I like this mechanism) the twist is that the higher the roll the better the action pays off, but only lower dice can subsequently be placed on the same action in the same round. Three ones almost guarantees you the three spots you want, three sixes will give you more options early but cut down on your options late.

There are fudge tokens that let you bump the rolls up or down one when you roll doubles, there are cards that can break all of the placement rules. There's about... six different tracks where you can score points for allocating actions. There's four different types of chits you can acquire which... score you points. There's a mini area control game off to the side that gets you resource cylinders which lets you move chits around your player board to.... score points. (Aside, lamest area control game ever, you cannot "lose" the spaces you take, you just lose one of the two benefits of the spaces when you're bumped, you can never bump back once you're out of a given space.)

The game ended, we totaled up our scores... and I had 148 points. 30 more than the next closest person. I absolutely destroyed everyone, and yet, I have no idea how I managed this or why my strategy was any better than anyone else's.

Perhaps it's a result of the lack of theme that makes your goals so opaque, but I don't think so, at least not completely. Plenty of Euros have thin themes yet the way to win is usually pretty clear (Lords of Waterdeep.) Perhaps it's the "victory point salad" that does it, but there are games that award VPs for all sorts of actions that don't leave you feeling this listless in the middle of the game (Terra Mystica.)

And yet I didn't hate the game, I just found my time with it very unsatisfying. Picking out actions and doing things and being rewarded for it was pleasant, but the game ended and I didn't have that sense of accomplishment I get from good Euros, nor the rush of tipping off a battle I get from a DOAM or Area Control game, or even the "Watch all this shit I can do with this combo" I get from a game as basic as Seasons or Dominion.

I think I've finally found a succinct definition of Soulless Euro.

Michael Barnes wrote: Played a couple of rounds of MDMAVX...make Quarriors look like a shitty beta. It may be really, really good. Need some more time with it, but it's got a rare spark.

First booster I opened- super rare Green Goblin. $45 on ebay already. That's another booster box.

Yeah, it does feel like Quarriors and LotR:The Dice Game were the Test Kitchen for MDMAVX. I still like the previous ones a lot, but now it feels like a cohesive game where you're putting together a team with a specific strategy and trying to execute and adapt to what your opponent throws at you.

I read a post from someone who was recording and providing some stats on what they opened out of a second box. Overall he felt that the dupes he had in his first box he would have been able to trade for the rest of the Uncommons the first box didn't provide. So the net effect of the second box was 8 more Rares and 1 Super Rare. So I'm debating myself is I'm interested in a second box or not, I'll see what the first one yields, which will be plenty of gameplay, and then I'll see what I feel like.

Legomancer wrote: Clash of Cultures (3p). Only my second time playing this and I'm just not sure how best to approach it. This play felt very gamey, where I was doing things that I didn't otherwise care about just to score objective cards. There was no PVP, not even cultural, which is okay with me somewhat, but there wasn't much of anything else. I came in close second, I had four cities, and none of them ever got above size 2. It just felt kind of hollow to me. I think there's something here, though, and I'm looking forward to more plays.

It would be very difficult to get anywhere with just size 2 cities, though there are a few build ups that might facilitate it (taxation and trade routes come to mind). I'm really surprised you came in second. I think the thing about Clash is that it's all about an economy of actions. Since that's true, one or more bigger cities is almost a requirement, because they are so efficient to activate action-wise.


Also, would love to read a topic about Nations, but don't have much to say on my end since I haven't played it.

Stonecutter wrote:
I think I've finally found a succinct definition of Soulless Euro.

For me it was an experience with the god awful Hansa Teutonica.

Gary Sax wrote:

Stonecutter wrote:
I think I've finally found a succinct definition of Soulless Euro.

For me it was an experience with the god awful Hansa Teutonica.

I hate Hansa Teutonica.

Is there any way to play that Marvel Dice Masters game with more than 2 players?

Officially no.

But, I think you could work something out like some of the multi-player ways to play Magic.

I can't remember the exact game that soured me on the hot euros, but Hansa Teutonica and The Speicherstadt were up there. Trajan really nailed the point home, and followed by Keyflower, Tzol'Kin, and a few others of that ilk I just couldn't take any more.

Australia, Goa, and Louis XIV were pretty much Waterloo for the soulless Euro for me. Then Thurn und Taxis came out, which made those games look heartfelt and passionate.

It seems like there's A LOT to building teams in MDMAVX...you've got a choice of three different versions of each character (essentially three variations on a power) and then you've got to work out how many of that die you want to bring versus what other character cards you've got and how many dice they have.

But yeah, it seems like they worked out what to actually do with the core concept. Making it a head to head game with CCG-style combat seems to have done the trick. There's a lot of really nice decision points, the die rolling is fun and really it's pretty simple even though the rulebook made me think it was incredibly complicated. Once we sorted out a couple of "huh?" points, we were whipping through it.

I do want more, but I'm thinking about being naughty and just copying/printing out the cards that I don't have for the characters that I have with maximum dice. I won't bat an eye about selling that Green Goblin- I have enough of his dice and I can just stick a copy of the card in a sleeve. I'm not ever going to play competitively or in a mixed environment where proxies won't be OK. The cards are actually what are rare, not the dice. Every die is effectively common.

My box seemed pretty much on par with what everyone is reporting. I did get a ton of Punisher for some reason, but only one Doc Ock and one Cyclops. I have max dice on several characters, and a few with all three cards and max dice which is what you want to happen. I think another box would top off everyone and just leave some rares and maybe a couple of uncommons unaccounted for. And the super rares, which I could give a flipping shit about. Especially since I can just proxy them easily. So yeah, if I sell Gobby, I'll get another box.

I really don't see why you couldn't play it mulitplayer just like you would Magic...it's definitely not really made to do that, but if you fudge some abilities that may be impacted I think it'd be fine.

Who else has mentioned getting a box?
Maybe we can setup a trade post to help round things out for people.

As far as team building, just with the starter set and five boosters I've bought, I'm already starting to see a lot of team building that can happen with a lot of things working together. By the end of the week I'll be rolling around in dice, cards and their wrappers like Scrooge McDuck.

I never got deep into Euros and no one game soured me on them, but it was the realization that I was playing the new ones to "experience" what was new, re-visioned or re-imagined rather than playing for fun. It was like a wine-tasting...Just sampling to see what was pleasant.