What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

A few games with the family this weekend. I played another game of Doctor Who with my son. This time we put in the Dalek-marked cards and dilemmas, and promptly lost in like three rounds. I actually think the lack of arc in the game is one of its big weaknesses.

Got some two-player games with my wife as well. We played Qwirkle, which is one of those games I've come to appreciate as it becomes harder to play more in depth stuff. I started out just destroying her, but she made a comeback and very nearly won in the last few rounds. I was able to hold on for the win.

We also played a game of Patchwork, which continues to impress me with its design. It's not a super-deep game, but I feel like it's full of interesting decisions that haven't become too obvious with experience. I really like the tension between filling your board and getting lots of income quickly. It's resolutely abstract, but sometimes all a game needs to be appealing is to be "cute," which Patchwork definitely is. This time I wasn't able to hold on to an early lead. My wife filled her board more efficiently and I took heavy losses for empty spots.

Friday night we tored into the first 2 (out of 5) chapters of Ultimate Werewolf Legacy. I'm not the biggest fan of straight Werewolf - much prefer One Night, Resistance, Secret Hitler - but this was pretty fun. I moderated and had the joy of stickering shit all throughout the night. Some fun props and things going on too. We'll be meeting back up to finish it in November.

Saturday night I was at an adult Halloween party and to my surprise, my wife and I got worked in Time's Up. I was drunk at that point and my wife's clues were unusually difficult. Love the game but belting out Don't Stop Believing during Karaoke later in the night was more fun.

After receiving a beatdown in my first campaign game of Necromunda: Underhive, I left my friends to go play a game of Root. I was the Vagabond and since I had a tea and a sack crafting card in my opening hand, I went with the Tinker. I pretty much jumped out ahead in points right off the bat and was the point leader for the rest of the game, winning in the end. The cats made a play for a 3-clearing dominance card but were easily thwarted. I had 3 swords and a crossbow and was raking in the points mowing down cats and mice. Yet no one stopped me. Even very early on, the bird player commented that I was going to be a problem with how many items I already had, but he never made a move against me, and no one else did either. In both my IRL games, the birds haven’t done much of anything. I’m guessing they are being played wrong. The players being timid and overly concerned about not collapsing, and just doing random battles to fulfill the decree. (Though in the most recent player’s defense he had 24 points at game end.) Birds are the only faction I haven’t played and I’m curious to see if I would do any better.

charlest wrote: Friday night we tored into the first 2 (out of 5) chapters of Ultimate Werewolf Legacy. I'm not the biggest fan of straight Werewolf - much prefer One Night, Resistance, Secret Hitler - but this was pretty fun. I moderated and had the joy of stickering shit all throughout the night. Some fun props and things going on too. We'll be meeting back up to finish it in November.

Saturday night I was at an adult Halloween party and to my surprise, my wife and I got worked in Time's Up. I was drunk at that point and my wife's clues were unusually difficult. Love the game but belting out Don't Stop Believing during Karaoke later in the night was more fun.

On a related note, Picked up Werewords on your quote as it being your go to party game. After the initial disappointment of the lack of actual items in the box, we downloaded the app and, wow, smash hit. My biggest complaint with resistance is there isn't really a game outside of being the traitor. This wholly addresses this, even if it is twenty questions at is core. Great mechanism with the werewolf and the seer.

WadeMonnig wrote:

charlest wrote: Friday night we tored into the first 2 (out of 5) chapters of Ultimate Werewolf Legacy. I'm not the biggest fan of straight Werewolf - much prefer One Night, Resistance, Secret Hitler - but this was pretty fun. I moderated and had the joy of stickering shit all throughout the night. Some fun props and things going on too. We'll be meeting back up to finish it in November.

Saturday night I was at an adult Halloween party and to my surprise, my wife and I got worked in Time's Up. I was drunk at that point and my wife's clues were unusually difficult. Love the game but belting out Don't Stop Believing during Karaoke later in the night was more fun.

On a related note, Picked up Werewords on your quote as it being your go to party game. After the initial disappointment of the lack of actual items in the box, we downloaded the app and, wow, smash hit. My biggest complaint with resistance is there isn't really a game outside of being the traitor. This wholly addresses this, even if it is twenty questions at is core. Great mechanism with the werewolf and the seer.

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it!

san il defanso wrote: Got some two-player games with my wife as well. We played Qwirkle, which is one of those games I've come to appreciate as it becomes harder to play more in depth stuff. I started out just destroying her, but she made a comeback and very nearly won in the last few rounds. I was able to hold on for the win.

Qwirkle is an underrated abstract game. It's accessible to all ages. It's easy to teach. It's fun to play. It's quick. The heavy wooden tiles are satisfying to manipulate and slap onto the table. For some reason, I always encounter this game at the thrift store--most copies are unplayed, they probably were gifts. I've given away four copies of Qwirkle after teaching people how to play. I also have a thrifted copy of Qwirkle Cubes, but I haven't played it yet.

Re: Disgustipater, I think the birds take far more careful calculation than any other Root faction... I could see that being a big IRL problem in a game played at a solid, casual pace.

As a first time player my biggest issue is just understanding the other factions, what they can do, and what impacts I could have on them as the birds. I'd ideally prefer IRL so I could see that and chat about it, because that's the bit that gives me the most difficulty.

I haven't found it too hard to calculate those decrees generally even when hamstrung by having 1 card per turn (non birds!), like i was early on. And once it's in, it's in. But, it's when you eventually get a choice that you have to understand the longer term repurcussions of, say, a battle, and you truly understand that laying down a card 4 turns ago has pegged you in.

And of course, everyone seeing what your moves have to be doesn't help.

I get the feeling that tanking the decree at exactly the right time could be pretty crucial for playing them right. And getting birds at good times.

Also having a pal for a bit who's happy to jump in and take out an abandoned roost or a couple of warriors to keep things running.

Yeah, I get the feeling that it is nearly impossible to just theorize about the right way to play them without seeing the situation on the board.

mc wrote: I haven't found it too hard to calculate those decrees generally even when hamstrung by having 1 card per turn (non birds!)

I can see this meaning one of two things, and I'll assume I'm choosing the wrong version, but you can always play two cards into your decree. They just can't both be bird cards.

Disgustipater wrote: After receiving a beatdown in my first campaign game of Necromunda: Underhive, I left my friends to go play a game of Root. I was the Vagabond and since I had a tea and a sack crafting card in my opening hand, I went with the Tinker. I pretty much jumped out ahead in points right off the bat and was the point leader for the rest of the game, winning in the end. The cats made a play for a 3-clearing dominance card but were easily thwarted. I had 3 swords and a crossbow and was raking in the points mowing down cats and mice. Yet no one stopped me. Even very early on, the bird player commented that I was going to be a problem with how many items I already had, but he never made a move against me, and no one else did either. In both my IRL games, the birds haven’t done much of anything. I’m guessing they are being played wrong. The players being timid and overly concerned about not collapsing, and just doing random battles to fulfill the decree. (Though in the most recent player’s defense he had 24 points at game end.) Birds are the only faction I haven’t played and I’m curious to see if I would do any better.

My conclusion about the birds is that they have to be played for a Dominance victory. Any other victory outside of a 2P game seems beyond their reach.

I don't agree with that. Birds can explode for points easily if they get 3-4 Roosts down.

The Eyrie are the scariest faction if they get a big decree built up. They perform many more actions than their competitors and accrue points every single turn for their placed Roosts.

You do lose points when you go into decline, but only 1vp per bird card.

charlest wrote: I don't agree with that. Birds can explode for points easily if they get 3-4 Roosts down.

The Eyrie are the scariest faction if they get a big decree built up. They perform many more actions than their competitors and accrue points every single turn for their placed Roosts.

You do lose points when you go into decline, but only 1vp per bird card.

I’ve only played about four times. It’s funny how vulnerable to groupthink this game becomes. You tap any group, they’ve all got different conclusions.

We’ve found that, while it takes a concerted effort to stop the WA and the Vagabond, it’s easy to see what would topple the Eyrie and then to stop them in their tracks by doing whatever it is you were going to do anyway. Eyrie loses big in every game we’ve played, but that’s probably just because we’ve all decided that’s true. It’s a fascinating game.

@Disgustipater
Yes I wasn't particularly clear there. What I meant was, early on, the Eyrie draw only one card. If they don't have birds in hand, that especially limits options in the decree (especially for building).

Just played my first game this weekend and won with the Eyrie. Everyone at the table was new to the game, though.

I never went into turmoil, but it was *very* close the last three turns. I was using the leader who grants double piece recruit which let me constantly fill the board with birds that I could battle with and have die.

I still almost ran out of troops to put on the board a couple times but was helped by the fact that I was able to craft the card that let me remove a warrior for a card once per round.

I was also *greatly* helped by the fact that the Vagabond decided to give me cards several times when I desperately needed it. He really wanted those satchels I had crafted along with the points on the relationship track.

I barely pulled out a victory by taking out a single Cat building with my final battle plus my roost points. If I had attacked the WA sympathy token in that location instead, I would have been hit with an Ambush card and not been able to get the last point!

If I hadn't won on that turn, the Vagabond was going to be able to hand me enough cards to get the VPs he needed to win. And if he hadn't won then, the Alliance certainly would have finished exploding for points on their turn.

Awesomely close game. The cats were the only ones that weren't a turn away from winning, because the cat player made the mistake at the beginning of the game of consolidating his troops to defend what he'd already built rather than continuing to expand.

Can't wait to try it again, both to try a different faction or to try the birds again. Don't care, want to play.

Another evening of games:

The big game of the vening was Vast: The Crystal Caverns. It was a learning and, hence, very slow game but it's very well designed and I think it will quickly settle in the hour/hour and a half range. And it was fun, even for me, despite the Thief seeming the less interesting role.

I truly respect the development and design effort that has gone into this game. It's very well made, with no real superflous parts, very thematic, quite interactive and profoundly modern in ways I cannot fully describe. Regardless of what one may think of the game, that's undeniable.

Anyways, on the actual game: I liked it but I'm not sure of how much strategy and depth there actually is. It seems to me that there's a lot of interesting interplay between powers but they are all somewhat straightfoward. It's, at its core, a family game or at least looks like it. Playing the Thief may have colored by impression of it, though, since he's pretty much about optimizing paths.


Then we played Q.E. This is an auction game in which you bid the amount you want but whoever spends the most during the course of the game loses. I got a bit annoyed because the other players accussed me of distortioning the game. Basically, we had one or two bids with a starting point of 100 and then I opened a bit at 400. They told me I was basically out of the game because they would never bid as high.

And look, I've only played once but I don't see how this can be the case. High bids should not cause low bids, they should cause even higher bids because there's more room to spend without losing. Sure, playing in a conservative manner ensures I'll lose, but it also ensures someone a third place they could avoid by bidding slighty less than what I spent. So, if say, I bid 999 Million, players should start bidding in the millions, not, like twelve. I won a bid for 42, which I don't think should happen.


The ending game for the night was Kingdom Builder. Not much to say, it's not really a game that causes a strong impression. But you know, I would rather play this kind of games than the Roccoco euros of today. I think it delivers a similar experience, but is more fun and has a far smaller rules overload.


I've also been playing some Netrunner online. I built a Biotech deck which plays agendas and traps facedown and it's tense and a lot of fun but since it's heavily psychological it also has the curious problem of losing to opponent's mistakes. Like, you can lose because the opponent doesn't realize that taking 4 brain damage means they'll be killed next turn. Of course, you also win games because your opponent just runs your centrals and bleeds to death. Personally, I think these kind of bluffs at best when they are heavily constrained and you can force the opponent to gamble while you don't.