What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I played most of the gold rush 1st and 2nd gen CCG's - There was so much trash (Conan, Spellfire, Battlelords, Shadowrun Iluminati, etc.) but there are a few gems in the mess - Netrunner. Jyhad. L5R. SWCCG. Doomtown's rolling thunder release schedule and storytelling aspects were a precursor to the LCG model. L5R took the evolving story line a step further.

If i had to pick out of my 25 years of cracking open booster packs, I would say hands down UDE's Vs System was my favorite CCG - great theme, great art, they fixed the problem of resources being in the deck by making every card available as a resource - The games ramps really quick and there are meaningful decisions to be made from placement to formation in every single turn after the first couple. Because of the exponential ramp on the card values the game has a natural clock. It played well in draft in sealed. Hunting down the last 3 or 4 sets on the cheap is my great white whale.

Vs. was HUGE at my store- it actually outperformed MTG. We had big events- 50+ would show up. I really liked it because for whatever reason, it tended to attract a lot of black players and I especially enjoyed having a more diverse crowd. I played it very briefly, really just to participate with customers. Had what was at the time considered to be a really strong Green Lantern deck.

We had a big Wars turnout for a while...it attracted these really hardcore CCG dudes. I did not enjoy playing with them or the attitude they brought to the store. They were a few like, top level Star Wars CCG players in that group.

One of my MTG dudes (and board gamer) turned out to be one of the top Netrunner players...I lost track of him and saw him in some Netrunner video or something and was like WTF. Pacer Stringfellow.

While waiting for Jyhad/V:tes players to show up last night, we started a three-player game of Death Angel. We were at the FFG Event Center, so the Death Angel set was just the base game. I have played quite a few games of Death Angel over the years, but only once in the last two years, so I was rusty. Another player had played several games in the past, and the third player had played once but remembered nothing. I don't like coaching people heavily, so a couple of mistakes were made early on. By the fourth turn, we had already lost 5 out of 12 marines, and had just reached the second room (1A). Just then a fourth player showed up for Jyhad and the other two guys were delighted to put Death Angel away immediately. Death Angel is a great game, but it is unforgiving.

Three-player Guildhall this time. With one more target, you have the aggression of two-player mixed with the variety of four-player. My opponents made the mistake of killing my 4th Farmer a couple times, giving me the opportunity to draw into and play another one to the point where I had six coins. Assassins were used more than in any of our prior games, but people still haven't quite gotten the hang of Weavers. Except me, that is, since I used one to finish one more chapter at 17 points while keeping one opponent at 18 at two Farmers to prevent an auto-win, while my other opponent at 17 tried to build into something with one turn left and didn't succeed. Victory.

Then we moved on to Theseus: The Dark Orbit, where it was Marines vs. Aliens vs. Greys. The Aliens built up an impressive snowball in the Corridors, where they could activate a Habitat to upgrade their Hidden card in the Tech Bay and then trigger an Onslaught card in the Corridors alongside the regular Onslaught... Things got bloody fast. But the Greys had set up a Probe that lasted for the whole game that gave them a steady stream of data and we got into that movement pattern where multiple lesser onslaughts get triggered. Meanwhile, both Aliens and Greys had focused on the Marines because they're an early threat, since they can shoot without being upgrade and because, well... I'm me. So if I had moved a different unit, the Aliens could have triggered their Hidden on the Greys to do 16(!) damage and won the game, but I didn't so the Greys won with a combined score of 25 to the Aliens 8 and my 6.

Not sure I've ever seen 16 damage

Gary Sax wrote: Not sure I've ever seen 16 damage

It was crazy. The Hidden had already been upgrade twice, so he would have moved to the Corridors, activated the Habitat to upgrade it again so it would do 4 damage with each Onslaught to each Grey in the Tech Bay, of which there were two. Then he would trigger his Onslaught card for 8 and the regular Onslaught for 8 more. We got a LOT more cards installed in this game than we ever have before. I think all but two slots on the board were filled and the Greys had used Annihilation twice to clear slots. It was pretty wild. Such an awesome game. Next time, I'm breaking out Pandora to see how that works.

That is crazy. The good thing is, if people are paying attention, they can stop someone from getting so much stuff out. That kind of combo only happens when players are asleep at the wheel.

I've played Keyforge 20 times this past week, and everyone I've played with has been into it, from 10yo nephew to ex MTG tour player. Beyond the unique hook it's just a fun game to play. Lots of interesting decisions and shenanigans to explore.

Also Parade finally came back into print, so I completed the set (with archaeology and arboretum) and have played that a bunch with my wife recently. It's feather light rules wise, but the 2p game is really good. The fight not to take cards, and to try to secure majorities in the cards that you do end up taking is quite good 2p. I haven't tried it with more, but it seems like it would get more chaotic and lose the tense back and forth nature as you get higher into the player count. Not that that's necessarily bad, but it definitely looks like it would be way lighter with 5-6 and devolve into tactically playing whatever won't take your a card and hoping for the best.

hotseatgames wrote: That is crazy. The good thing is, if people are paying attention, they can stop someone from getting so much stuff out. That kind of combo only happens when players are asleep at the wheel.

I don't know. We had one new player, so we spent more time trying to get stuff installed, rather than discarding from pending slots. And sometimes the moves just worked out in a manner that enabled installation. I spent more time in the later game trying to disrupt the Greys, since they were significantly ahead, so the Aliens kind of had free reign, but only on one board. Sometimes that makes all the difference, but I was willing to risk it in order to try to stay in the game. It's funny to see the Greys maneuvering to trigger lesser onslaughts, though.

Edit: And just now I remember that we screwed up the Upgrade rule: 1 token for +1, 2 tokens for +2, etc. So, Hidden wouldn't have been doing that much damage and neither would Probe have. D'oh!

Michael Barnes wrote: It would be interesting to look back at past CCGs and see which of them might have been more successful as fixed, LCG style products.

It's hard to say, because it depends on how you measure success.

On one hand, I would say the LCG format would be better for all of them except Magic, Yu-gi-oh and Pokémon. Why? Because you need to be very successful and have a large community to support a secondary market. If your game becomes too small to support a trading community and easily get all the cards, it dies. It also raises the barrier of entry significantly because you need to spend a lot more money just to be able to participate in that community.

For example, I thinkt he failure of the original Netrunner can be traced to the need to build two different decks and how that was a big investment to ask for at a time where most CCGs died soon and Magic had just released Mirage.

On the other, I'm not going to pretend that peddling gambling to gamers and specially teens is not more profitable than a fixed product. Magic is the obvious example, if it were a LCG, WotC would make far less money and it wouldn't be the backbone of the brick and mortar industry if it weren't for the gambling and resale of packs. And not just Magic, my FLGS used to make a living by buying and selling L5R cards, they were the biggest dealer in Europe.

But, ultimately, this is kind of a ahistorical question. LCGs did not exist back then and the hobby looked very different. Big lifestyle games were common and people were willing to pay for them. Heartstone is free and reliant on gambling "whales", which couldn't have been the case in the 90s and so on.

Michael Barnes wrote: We had a big Wars turnout for a while...it attracted these really hardcore CCG dudes. I did not enjoy playing with them or the attitude they brought to the store. They were a few like, top level Star Wars CCG players in that group.

This kind of people makes me miss Netrunner very much. I can't help but realize that if I go to, say, a Magic draft, it won't be as fun because the people there won't have a good attitude. I don't have many good memories of playing Magic when I was a teen.

Space Ghost wrote: I agree with this. I think that one potential mistake is to assume that Garfield is trying other designs in an attempt to "fix" Magic. He might just be trying other stuff out. Evolution of game design principles doesn't necessarily imply improvement -- just difference, exploring the potential design space.

From what I've gathered, he did find the original system to be flawed but considers that every time he has tried to improve on it, he has gone two steps forward and one step back. For example, he consider the Netrunner economy to be better but also "too complex". I disagree, of course.

Erik Twice wrote: This kind of people makes me miss Netrunner very much. I can't help but realize that if I go to, say, a Magic draft, it won't be as fun because the people there won't have a good attitude. I don't have many good memories of playing Magic when I was a teen.

I quit playing Magic during Ice Age, because that was around the time that I noticed that Magic players were taking their game too seriously and it wasn't enjoyable to interact with them. I was already playing Jyhad, L5R, Shadowfist, and Mythos at the time, and people playing those games were more relaxed and happy.

i quit right after Ice Age too! Some guy picked up my deck and threw it across the room after losing to my trolling deck, "Walls and Balls" and that was it for me. Time to do better things with my free time.

Black Barney wrote: i quit right after Ice Age too! Some guy picked up my deck and threw it across the room after losing to my trolling deck, "Walls and Balls" and that was it for me. Time to do better things with my free time.

Dude, what? That's the actual best way to go out. You won Magic.

I quit Magic around the time of Exodus. Just couldn't afford new cards anymore. But I had a blast with it when I played.

I got into a LOT of the CCGs, but not too deep. Nothing, not even original Netrunner, stuck around for me, though I still have a bunch of Battletech cards.

A friend of mine got a knife pulled on him over a Magic-related issue and it was only the tip of the iceberg. I remember having to watch my opponent like a hawk, because cheating was widespread. People would stall in every single game, they would abuse the judge system to take longer and generally act like asshole. And better watch your decks because theft is rampant. People are dicks even in Magic Arena and that's a place where you have 5 phrases to choose from.

By far the worst community I've been part of.