What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

blarknob wrote:

Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition: this thing is great

I wish I was an A&A fan just so I'd have an excuse to buy this. Its one of those things where I want to play it just because it looks so awesome. But the price tag doesn't match the single play I'd be lucky to get out of it.

Mad Dog wrote:

blarknob wrote:

Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition: this thing is great

I wish I was an A&A fan just so I'd have an excuse to buy this. Its one of those things where I want to play it just because it looks so awesome. But the price tag doesn't match the single play I'd be lucky to get out of it.

I'm pretty sure it was a smallish print run and it is/will be OOP, but I'm hoping for Christmas for this baby...

Prophecy was pretty fun, but damn does that game take way too long to play. We had to wrap it up after 4 hours, without a single astral gate being challenged.

Well, I was going to say play with the Branham "two artifact" variant, but no astral gate challenged? WTF? You gotta go balls out man, take a chance. I've seen games like this where people waited and waited to go up there. That's a mistake, and it does make the game take WAY too long. I guess it's a kind of board game "grinding".

Michael Barnes wrote:
"I do think LNoE is a great game for kids, and I definitely recommend it for them. I stand by that recommendation, but after 15 games or so I think I'm pretty much at the end of the line with it. I would definitely play it again with kids, that'd probably be a lot of fun in spite of the game itself."
Cue the obligatory Eugenesque 'you need to play it more to truly understand why this is the deepest and most challenging game in the universe' etc etc.

Latest plays: Last Night on Earth (blows raspberry at Barnes), Race for the Galaxy, Hermagor (almost three hours of unrelenting horror!!! (yes, it should take half that, we should bring back hanging for APers)), and Snow Tails (gotta love a game that has awful puns, e.g. the start player is the one with the huskiest voice). Now I'm flipping over to XP for some Left4dead.

Been camping the last week---but my son and I did play quite a bit of Ace of Aces: Handy Rotary. A great game for car trips and/or camping---nothing to lose, can lounge back and play. Can't remember how many times we played.

Week before last, I was able to break out War of the Ring with my son and one of my students that is working for me for the summer. We played the three person variant--my son and my student were the shadow forces and I was the Fellowship side. I lost as I wound up getting corrupted while in Moria. I was probably too rash entering Moria--should have waited longer in Minas Tirith to heal up ( but got impatient)...we had been playing 3.5 hours and it was getting late for my son. My one strategy was to break off nearly everyone in Minas Tirith as leaders to help fight off the hordes--and it worked. It was great to break out that game again.

Shellhead wrote:

For a fast version of Diplomacy, get your six of your friends together and take turns kicking each other in the groin for several minutes. The animosity after that will be a reasonable facsimile of having just played Diplomacy.

Amateur hour.

For the proper Diplomacy-as-groin-kicking experience, everybody *writes down* who they're going to kick in the groin, then do the reveals simultaneously. Then commence kicking. Igo-ugo just doesn't work here.

I would suggest not being the one who brought the game, unless you also brought a cup.

Sadly, I've been playing jack shit on the home front. HiS PBEM is my only game right now.

For a fast version of Diplomacy, get your six of your friends together and take turns kicking each other in the groin for several minutes. The animosity after that will be a reasonable facsimile of having just played Diplomacy.

Or you could just play INTRIGE and dispense with all the game elements, leaving behind only the raw look-me-in-the-eye screwage.

I just got involved in a game of online ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS here at F:AT. It rox.

With just the boys: It was going to be Conquest of the Empire until I forgot the playing pieces. So we settled on Risk: Godstorm with rules variants. The game really rocked.


With the girls and boys: Somehow Partini has ruled this roost twice in a row.

We added expansions and the game can be fun at times...especially with "bouncers"... but I need a game with some more meat and potatoes on it.

Like... A Dog's Life (LOL)

Just remember kids.... Frank B. likes it. ; )

Last Night on Earth with the boys. It rocked. Barnes knows nothing.

Fury of Dracula with my Wife. We've played a couple of times now and I've been Drac each time. My Wife can't seem to track me down in a hurry and when she does, I'm able to slip away just as easy. I usually end up hunting the heroes down and attacking just to speed the game up. I'd like to try this game with more players as I don't think it should be as easy for Drac as I'm finding it.

BSG PBEM. Good times.

I've been playing a lot of ASL. I'm heading to the Texas ASL tournament in Austin later this month so I'm trying to brush up on the rules. I'll still suck but hopefully I'll suck less.

Other then ASL, we played Merchant of Venus last Saturday. Everyone at the table had some experience with the game so we played faster and more cut throat. Good times!

-Will

Bulwyf wrote:

I've been playing a lot of ASL. I'm heading to the Texas ASL tournament in Austin later this month so I'm trying to brush up on the rules. I'll still suck but hopefully I'll suck less.

ASL tournament? How is there even time for more than two games? Are there only 4 players in the tournament?

Two weeks ago the wife and I went to visit my brother and his prego wife. My bro and I got quite a bit of gaming in. We played ...

Race for the Galaxy: I've never played Puerto Rico nor San Juan. I was surprised by how much I liked it. There's a lot of combos to be worked in this game. The iconography is a bit crazy though. It felt more like a CCG than Dominion did.

Dominion: There really isn't much of a game here. It was OK fun the first two times we played it, but when we played four players with my bro's friends, it was like multiplayer, solitaire, deck building on crack. We played so fast. Not enough interaction, even in the "interaction" setup.

Marvel Heroes: One of our go-to gaming classics. I handed the Marvel Knights a swift defeat with the Avengers. Not the most fun session though, there weren't very many interested battles.

Kingsburg: Played this with my bro's friends. It's an OK game. I rolled pretty terrible though. It's got plenty of randomness with the dice rolling. Not something I need to own, but fun enough.

Chicago Express: I thought this would be a train game, but came to find out it's an auction game. I like any game that determines the winner by counting up your money at the end. Although, I think how many shares of stocks you own should count for something at the end though.

Lost Cities The Board Game: Much easier to keep track of score than the card game.

Call of Cthulu CCG: My brother had an old 2-player starter deck he picked up a while ago. It was OK. Nothing mind-blowing though.

Roll Through the Ages: Not as fun as I was expecting, but a pretty good dice game. It ends just as it's starting to feel cool though.

This past weekend played some Blue Moon City with some friends.

Was able to get Arkham Horror to the table with 5 other people who had never heard of the game. Yeah, Idaho isn't exactly a gaming Mecca! Ithaqua was the GOO and we were able to seal 4 gates before he burst on the scene, and we were able to get him down to 3 doom tokens before he devoured the last of us. The game strung us along and then squashed us, just how I love it, and everyone said they would love to play again. My most successful gaming pusher moment yet.

Other than that I've just been playing War for Edath with the GF, so easy to bust it out and kick the shit out of each other in less than an hour!

I've been playing a lot of Catan: Cities & Knights via the new PC version. At first I wasn't sure if the "more" of that equaled "better", but now I really love it. Eh, I'm still not sure it's really better than original Settlers in terms of design greatness, but once the original has been played out, then C&K really fits the bill.

I also played Last Night on Earth with the Mrs. last week, which is always a favorite, and a variety of games with my local game group last weekend... probably the favorite being Dice Town, which combines a press-your-luck Poker dice game with some role selection and a bit of negotiation. Unlike other games of this type which are essentially multiplayer solitaire, you really have to keep an eye on what everyone else is up to and sometimes act or react accordingly, and there is some measure of screwage possible, so there's a decent amount of interaction. Speaking of screwage, I'm also playing a few games of Yspahan and Mykerinos online at yucata.de and mabiweb.com. I think those are two of the better Euros in terms of the interaction, tactics and screwage involved.

Oh, and I'm one turn into a forum game of BSG on TOS, where I'm Helo and I already essentially revealed myself as one of the Cylons, before my first turn, even... the opportunity seemed good to take advantage of that as they can't brig me while I'm stranded.

Shellhead wrote:

Bulwyf wrote:

I've been playing a lot of ASL. I'm heading to the Texas ASL tournament in Austin later this month so I'm trying to brush up on the rules. I'll still suck but hopefully I'll suck less.

ASL tournament? How is there even time for more than two games? Are there only 4 players in the tournament?

Sure there is! You have to understand, that for the most part anyway, an ASL tournament is just an excuse for fans of the game to get together and roll some dice. The majority of the scenarios that get played fall within the 3-4 hour playing time so its not unusual for folks to get in two or three games a day. Multiply that out by the four days of the tournament and quite a bit of games get played.

My goal is to not suck, have a good time and meet some of my fellow ASLers. In the process of getting my butt kicked I hope to learn how to play better.


-Will