What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Black Barney wrote: I burned out on Race pretty quickly. I think the expansions ruined it for me. I much prefer playing heads up than multiway.

Yeah, 2p is best. 3p is kind of awkward because there are so few phases picked. 5 is weird for the opposite reason; you can usually count on leeching the phase that you kind of want. 2 >> 4 > 3 = 5.

I never played the third expansion, or any of the other story arcs. Maybe I'll AA or that Xeno thing at some point.

Well we had three of us for 5 hours today (football WC interfering) so I pulled out Defenders of the Last Stand as the main game with whatever filler for whatever time was left. Well we didn't need any fillers as in about four and a half hours we managed to play three full games, losing them all. First game all was quiet until Bama started moving to the Last Stand and none of us had any cards to stop him. Second game all seemed quiet and under control as well, no Leader movement, when suddenly two consecutive cards placed raiders adjacent tp the Last stand moved two in.
So two losses and we hadn't even had a fight. Third game started off exactly the same and then Bama quickly started moving, but I had sabotaged him and used a special artifact against him so he was down to 6 health, I passed over some dynamite to him as well so he had 13 dice to roll hiiting on 5s & 6s to get 6 hits ... he rolled none.Bramble also moved adjacent and even though we knew the game was over we attacked her as well to little effect, finally Bama moved in. It's a fun game but this shows how luck dependent it can be, more punishing than even Eldritch Horror.

Just two of us left after that (I just left the football on in the background) so we restarted the Descent: Road to Legend campaigns again with Kindred Fire. Our luck, well mine mainly, was shit again and we just crawled over the finish line of the first scenario with Morale at zero and my two heroes knocked down (my fighter, he was at the front the whole time, went dow three times) and my mate's two heroes on very low health. But it is great fun even though it had me moaning and ready to give up quite a few times, the best way to play Descent 2.

Roll FTG fails for me because it commits the cardinal sin for a dice game: being afraid of its own dice. It's a fucking dice game, let people roll the dice and have to deal with the consequences. There are far too many easy options to pretty much ignore anything on your dice. So what's the point? The expansion makes that even worse.

Legomancer wrote: Roll FTG fails for me because it commits the cardinal sin for a dice game: being afraid of its own dice. It's a fucking dice game, let people roll the dice and have to deal with the consequences. There are far too many easy options to pretty much ignore anything on your dice. So what's the point? The expansion makes that even worse.

Beware Roll Player then too!

Everyone should abandon Race and Roll and just play Jump Drive.

charlest wrote: Everyone should abandon Race and Roll and just play Jump Drive.

You sound like the guy who sneered at me when I was playing X-wing, telling me to play Armada instead, or the one who laughed at me for playing 2p 7 Wonders when Duel exists.

You both could be right. I'll definitely give Jump Drive or Duel a shot when I get a chance. Armada seems boring though.

Armada is boring, stick with X-Wing. I just like to take every chance I can to promote Jump Drive. 2-player Advanced Race is much more sophisticated, nuanced, and the better game, but Jump Drive is such a satisfying experience in 15 minutes that it's addictive.

Charlie growing into his F:AT provocateur role, I like it.

Hey, I liked armada enough to buy a bunch of it, play for 6 months, then sell it all.

For me, 6 months is like a lifetime when it comes to most games.

I actually like Armada so that was a bit of a joke, but I prefer X-Wing.

I usually play Soontir Fel, Inquisitor, and Carnor Jax; doing my best to avoid getting any good shots on me at all. I don't feel like Armada would have the same dog-fighty goodness.

It absolutely does not.

Jexik wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Roll FTG fails for me because it commits the cardinal sin for a dice game: being afraid of its own dice. It's a fucking dice game, let people roll the dice and have to deal with the consequences. There are far too many easy options to pretty much ignore anything on your dice. So what's the point? The expansion makes that even worse.

Beware Roll Player then too!

I actually enjoy Roll Player much more than Roll for the Galaxy. There's a lot less dice manipulation, and what there is comes at more of a cost.

game day yesterday!

QE - This is just such a wild game. We're still very cautious with it, so the bids haven't gone nuts yet. In fact, it's interesting that for an auction game in which there's literally no limit to the amount you can pay, we've kept the payments so small. Someone's going to break that mental barrier and the fun will really begin. Upgraded to an 8.

The Chameleon - Perfectly fine and entertaining social deduction game.

Powerships - Fairly straightforward race game that doesn't add in a bunch of dumb cruft or take too long.

Valley of the Kings: Afterlife - I like these deckbuilders but there isn't much reason to have more than one of them. I have the original VotK and that's fine.

Junk Orbit - Fun new pickup and deliver game with the Dave-friendly theme of picking up junk in space. You throw junk one way in order to fly the other way, so you need to figure out what you can lose in order to make those deliveries, or what you can c-c-c-combo. You also get to throw trash at other players, a very big plus!

Rajas of the Ganges - This is in a lot of ways the usual euro stuff, but there's some appeal to it. It uses dice as some kind of vague resources but, germane to another discussion here, you can't futz around with their values. (There's a single die-futzing ability -- Karma -- which allows you to flip a die to its opposite side. That's it, other than one space that lets you re-roll and hope for the best.) Sometimes you want some of that sweet sweet euro nonsense and you can do a lot worse than this one.

I got to play a face to face game of Advanced Squad Leader over the weekend. It's a very different experience than playing over Vassal I assure you. The speed of the game and the need to make on the spot decisions rather than mull them over to your hearts content makes it far more tense. The games still take a long time but in hours rather than months.

We played "Among the Ruins" which is a scenario set in 1944 in France. US soldiers along with three Sherman tanks are attempting to get across a partially destroyed city (exit 10 squads off the board) while the Germans make up for their numerical inferiority by having the ability to hide a few guys (secret placement written down on a piece of paper) as well as having an anti-aircraft gun re-purposed to fire at advancing infantry.

I had the Germans and at scenario start was able to place rubble throughout the city. I used this to block off road access on the right and left in order to channel the tanks down the middle into the face of the Gun. This wasn't so bad but my inexperience showed as the gun itself wasn't very effective at destroying armor. Too low a caliber although a massive rate of fire which if fired on infantry would have devastating results.

So after turn 1, where I had hit one of the Shermans and was able to attempt to blow it up four times (due to the high rate of fire) but accomplished zip (low caliber ammo bouncing off the armor) I decided to pack it up and move it rather than face inevitable destruction by the Sherman. Meanwhile my opponent advance numerous squads down the right, through the local graveyard which gave them adequate cover against any of my squads that weren't manning positions on the second floor of buildings which was most of them.

I did have a heavy machine gun high up in a tower but another of the Shermans kept pumping smoke rounds into his space and blinded him so that he wasn't worth much.

In the end, the American's succeeded at the victory condition though by a much smaller margin than I would have thought. I lost the scenario BUT I was able to ambush one of his tanks with my hidden squad equipped with a panzerschrek (a powerful German bazooka) and blew it up good! I count it a personal victory.