What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

That bit with QE would make me kind of mad, Erik. The bid game sounds like it is kind of obviously made to be balanced by the table?

Gary Sax wrote: That bit with QE would make me kind of mad, Erik. The bid game sounds like it is kind of obviously made to be balanced by the table?

I must admit it was a bit infuriating, yeah. They looked at me like I was dumb and I actually stopped for a second, got serious and asked them to start over if the game had indeed been ruined :/

But yeah, if you have plyed High Society, this is more or less the same except you have infinite money and only one player knows what you bid. It's a really simple game. Victory points go on sale with one player setting a minimun, you write down how much you want to bid on a piece of paper and turn it in, whoever bids highest takes it. If you are the player who spent the most, you lose.

This means that, like in High Society, the value of everything is relative. The only thing that matters is not being the player who spends the most. Spending ten billions on one victory point is fine as long as someone else spent ten billions plus one. Hence the name of the game "Quantitative easing".

Erik Twice wrote: 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.

I love QE and this is definitely something to be wary of. In our most recent game, I won the first auction with a bid of 11. Yawn. The next auction, the opening bid was $14,000,000. Now, the other two players and I could easily have stuck this guy with that tile and $14M of debt. It's a risky move. I wanted to encourage this, however because I see no point in having a game with unlimited money where you just nickel and dime the whole time. I won the tile with $14,000,002.

Now I could easily be the goat. I had the next tile to auction, and I knew it was appealing to one of the other players, so I started it at $9,000,000. My reasoning was: Ron wants this, $9M is still less than the $14M he knows I've spent, he'll spend it knowing he's still below me. He took the bait, and from there we went into the millions. It was great!

I ended up not spending the most, but came in second on points.

Were I in your place I'd say, "Okay, I'll lose then." and keep up-bidding tiles. They want a tile, they gotta work for it. By telling me I'm going to lose because no one will outbid me, you're telling me I have nothing to lose by doing so. QE is about high-rolling.

I played Halloween last night, which has to be one of the strangest Euro games I’ve played, possibly ever. The setup is that you’re all demon lords and you’re using ghosts to wreck all kinds of havoc on Halloween night. I don’t know if that was the game’s original intended theme, but given how out there it is, I’m giving it a pass because I love that stuff and I would have liked the gameplay regardless.

Speaking of gameplay, that part is kind of weird, too. It initially seems like it’s a weird area control-ish thing where players share what ghosts are on the board while you try to get points for yourself and screw everyone else out of them. You have a player board that dictates what actions you can take with which kind of ghosts and you’re trying to upgrade what actions you can take while timing the reset action to clear your board and refresh your options again. That stuff all works really well and the game would be pretty fun with just that. But about a quarter of the way in, you realize that this is actually an engine building game that happens to have a fairly interactive spatial element to it. There are randomized cards dealt out to the board that you can claim after accumulating resources that power up what you can do significantly. Even that has an interactive angle to it, as you can take one someone else already has but you give them a significant reward.

The game doesn’t have the best reputation on TOS and I can see why. It’s on the interactive side of the Euro scales, and I don’t think that crowd still goes for that. Aside from the theme not being all that important to the gameplay (which again, I welcomed with open arms regardless), I really enjoyed the game. It’s unlike anything else I’ve played and while those unique experiences often lead to mixed feelings, the individual elements themselves aren’t so unfamiliar that game comes across as a gimmick. Taken piece by piece, it’s all straightforward, it’s the way it’s mixed together that makes it stand out as it’s own thing.

EDIT-There’s an advanced game, which usually indicates the version of the game as it was meant to be played. It appears that this advanced game was added to appease the Euro crowd who would shy away from the random elements. It removes the engine building cards and dice rolling. It’s clear that the advanced game should have been called “The Trunk or Treat variant” because it can fuck right off.

I finally played Root, with a group that normally goes for the Euros. The owner taught it really well, and we experienced the first game confusion of not quite knowing what each faction was doing, so the Trash Bandit Vagabond snuck off with a win.

I had the "rule over three rabbit territories" victory condition dominance card, but brought it out too late, because I'm a coward. I also filled up all of my spaces with saw mills and had a wood glut at the end because I wasn't aggressively claiming more territory. On the last turn I inadvertently played kingmaker by attacking the Trash Bandit in a vain attempt to slow him down, but he somehow eked two points out of the transaction.

The Woodland Alliance player then showed how he could have possibly eked out a win by executing three clever actions.

At some point earlier in the game the bird player blew up and got reduced to nothing in the second to last turn. But the good thing is that this group was laughing more than I had ever seen them in the past. We're going to play again in two weeks with the same factions. Also, everyone is much more interested in playing Pendragon now. Pendragon, with its built-in decay and decline (as noted by Dan Thurot) seems like a depressing "First Reformed" of video games (yes, I know that's a tenuous connection).

There was some concern that the game might not have staying power, but if you play every faction a couple of times, that's about 50 hours of play time.

I really like the art. Not only do I like the style, but I appreciate that the designers tried to do something other than crappy, garish fantasy art.

KeyForge is solid. The core mechanism of choose one of the three houses of your Archon and you can only play/discard those cards is the fuel for all decisions. It's simple enough and I appreciate that it's not another game where you simply attack the opponent.

I've only played with the two starter decks and then two random decks, with four more random decks sitting waiting to be opened. I already have some thoughts on this unique games gimmick, but I think I need to toss them around a bit and formulate them some more.

I will say that I'm not sure KeyForge would have staying power without that gimmick. It's a very solid game, but it's not remarkable and wouldn't have the swagger to stand out amongst headier competition. For instance, Codex is a much better CCG-like game in terms of pure gameplay. But, we can't talk about or evaluate or opine on KeyForge without factoring in that unique aspect, which surprisingly heightens its effectiveness in my eyes.

I think that aspect of uniqueness is more significant in KeyForge than it is in Discovery: Lands Unknown, in terms of how important it is to the overall experience.

Speaking of Discovery, I unboxed that last night. Wow, there's a lot of chits. The tiles also looked very plain/boring (I have snowy mountains and valley). I was hoping to get two copies from Asmodee, play through both and write about my experience, but that ended up not working out. The value of a review on playing a single version of this game seems hollow.

I also recently played Wizkids' new Magic the Gathering: Heroes of Dominaria game. It's a tremendously bland Euro-style adventure game that will have an audience, but it ain't people around here. My hybrid loving self wasn't even down with it.

Finally, broke out Deep Madness, a sci-fi Cthulhu-esque dungeon crawl where you're exploring an underwater station where shit went wrong. It was interesting with some cool mechanisms (such as an oxygen dial that burns down in spaces underwater), but it wasn't worth the setup time and it wasn't anything special overall. Sold it the next day.

Playing a mix of KeyForge, Discover: Lands Unknown, Arkham Horror 3e, and Fallout: Wasteland Warfare over the next week or two.

Charlie, I’m really interested to hear your impression of Fallout:Wasteland Warfare. Just picked up the starter kit.

First impression: I hate the sheer number of tokens and conditions. I think I like the dice. I love the activation system, and the fact that there’s a very robust AI included with the game. Still exploring it, but my overall impression is mixed-to-favorable.

charlest wrote: Speaking of Discovery, I unboxed that last night. Wow, there's a lot of chits. The tiles also looked very plain/boring (I have snowy mountains and valley). I was hoping to get two copies from Asmodee, play through both and write about my experience, but that ended up not working out. The value of a review on playing a single version of this game seems hollow.

This is exactly my point about this game. The special significance it's touting makes no difference to 90% of the people who are going to play it. My first copy of Catan had player colors of black, white, orange, and purple, and I later found out that this was because they wanted to have versions that could be combined with the RBGY versions to seat up to 8 or whatever. Discovery seems the same to me. I just don't get this, but hey, I'm not a savvy big name publisher.

Legomancer wrote:

charlest wrote: Speaking of Discovery, I unboxed that last night. Wow, there's a lot of chits. The tiles also looked very plain/boring (I have snowy mountains and valley). I was hoping to get two copies from Asmodee, play through both and write about my experience, but that ended up not working out. The value of a review on playing a single version of this game seems hollow.

This is exactly my point about this game. The special significance it's touting makes no difference to 90% of the people who are going to play it. My first copy of Catan had player colors of black, white, orange, and purple, and I later found out that this was because they wanted to have versions that could be combined with the RBGY versions to seat up to 8 or whatever. Discovery seems the same to me. I just don't get this, but hey, I'm not a savvy big name publisher.

Totally agree. The unique game gimmick is something that has no actual bearing upon play (at least, for the most part). It's an aspect of the game that is only relevant for discussion and psychological factors.

I don't know if that makes it something we should shun or deride, however. It's interesting and dicussing disparate experiences has some value, but I'm still wrestling with that.

This is also why I think it works much better with KeyForge, because a deck is $8. So players will buy a few and the unique factor is more relevant.

Charlie, I’m really interested to hear your impression of Fallout:Wasteland Warfare. Just picked up the starter kit.

First impression: I hate the sheer number of tokens and conditions. I think I like the dice. I love the activation system, and the fact that there’s a very robust AI included with the game. Still exploring it, but my overall impression is mixed-to-favorable.

Heh, I'm glad you value my opinion and it's nice to see someone else mention it here. I'm in agreement on the AI and dice and the way too many tokens. I haven't played yet but I will be getting in some solo games soon, and then opening up the experience with other players. The sheer variety of modes and depth of content is very appealing.

Looking forward to seeing more impressions of discovery. It breaks my heart that it may not work well as the theme and exploration focused stuff are so completely welcome in my house.

Here you go Gary

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2082222/ive-pla...own-once-solo-and-im

THread also says the rules are now apparently available at FF website

mc wrote: Here you go Gary

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2082222/ive-pla...own-once-solo-and-im

THread also says the rules are now apparently available at FF website

Raf shared his impressions too:

www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/9rl...wn_first_impressions

Thanks, I appreciate it, I don't do Reddit.

Played Tales of the Arabian Nights last night. 3.5 hours of absolute random decisions with absolute random outcomes. "But Dave, the story!" Yes, I started out on the run, having to be careful of not being caught and sent back to Baghdad. At some point I got imprisoned on a ship, which "solved" that quest as I proceeded to do nothing but try and get out of prison for three turns. And then I had a lost love or something which never happened because someone else mercifully won, by being crippled.

Christ, never again.

Legomancer wrote: Played Tales of the Arabian Nights last night. 3.5 hours of absolute random decisions with absolute random outcomes. "But Dave, the story!" Yes, I started out on the run, having to be careful of not being caught and sent back to Baghdad. At some point I got imprisoned on a ship, which "solved" that quest as I proceeded to do nothing but try and get out of prison for three turns. And then I had a lost love or something which never happened because someone else mercifully won, by being crippled.

Christ, never again.

It’s a Bethesda game made cardboard. Wide, but shallow.