What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

My most recent plays are: Okko; Small World; Dwarf Stones and Ghost Stories.

Okko I made the mistake of trying to get a rules clarification on BGG...Got the answer but didn't need all the BS that went along with it...*sigh*

Small World was pretty good...In fact better than I expected, I just wish it had a different name. Otherwise the ol' Disney song goes off in my head for five mins every time I hear/type/read the name.

Dwarf Stones was an interesting abstract/AT type game. Luck is heavy because of the dice rolls. The game plays quick and is fun, but overall it lacks meat. B&P type game for sure.

Ghost Stories I thought was quite entertaining. I'm not sure about the rules for fewer than four players (we had two people playing two monks each).

LvT

Can you elaborate a bit on Small World? It's #21 on my list of games to get and I have a feeling I should move it up the list

I've been playing some SMALL WORLD myself. It's better than I expected too, the stupid fucking title, idiotic fantasy art, and unfunny humour almost derail it but it's a big improvement over VINCI. I think it's a good Eurogame, don't think for a second that it's AT anything. It's a pretty passive experience for a "light wargame", but the mechanics are good and the game is fairly fun to play as long as you don't play with overthinking assholes. Give it a try, just try to overlook that dildo-wielding hobbit.

What I like about Small World is the vast variety of race types combined with their their buffs. It creates a lot of variety in terms of how each race plays and how each game plays game to game. For me the real meat of the game is trying to decide when to send a race into decline and what race to take next. After that, the two player board at least, was open enough that there wasn't a whole lot of conflict with my opponent but enough to keep it interesting.

LvT

One thing I really like is that it has specific boards for numbers of players, so it scales smoothly without any kind of goofy crap. I like a three player game the best, I think. Best balance of friction and playtime.

Next week's Cracked LCD will probably be a full review. A pretty good one.

Actually, we started playing Small World last night, too, until the Starcraft guy showed up. Between the two Euro-style DOAM games, I actually might prefer Small World.

It's definitely not AT, barely qualifies as a DOAM game, and the artwork is kind of annoying. I don't have a problem with the cute-sy style necessarily (it is a family game, after all), but I need a little wit with my cute, and this game has none, unless you think skeletons with cowboy hats are hilarious.

Other than that, though, it's a fun game. It's pretty deterministic of course, but there's plenty of from-the-gut gameplay that I like, mostly when it comes to which races to take, when to go into decline, whether to get more points for yourself, or take them from someone else.

It's very much a player-dependent game, though. I can imagine it being a complete nightmare if you're playing with some asshole that's going to take it too seriously. If you catch someone picking up a notepad to record players scores, or anal-lyzing all the open power combos, do the table a favor and pack up the game.

generalpf wrote:

metalface13 wrote:

mjl1783 wrote:

It seems like it's mostly a matter of getting your best units on the board as quickly as possible, optimizing your combat deck to suit those units, locking in defensive positions that will fulfill your special victory conditions, and then waiting it out until phase III.

Isn't that basically how the PC game plays?

Yes, but on a PC it's happening in real time, and it's FUN. Unlike the board game.

I'm not a huge fan of RTS games on the PC, but I think generalpf's got a point. On the PC, you're basically juggling. If you don't do it well, you lose. In the board game, it's the same thing, only in slow motion, and the only way you can really drop something is by failing to accurately calculate the velocity and direction of the object you're trying to catch. You'll have plenty of time to do that, of course, except the game will take 4 hours and you'll spend it hunkered over your own little player board instead of conversing and having fun.

Well I can finally post in this thread that enough people turned up at our club that a non-euro boardgame got played - so I was able to stay. It looked dodgey as people started heading for Dominion starting on one table, but enough rpgers and minis players without games on were keen to hit my Battlestar Galactica again for a 6-player game.
So with one new guy, who managed to procrastinate over every skillcheck, we had a bloody excellent 3hr game - unfortunately the new guy screwed up his cylon reveal at the end and the humans snuck in, much to the annoyance of the other cylon who outed himself at the beginning.

But the new craze with the Bloodbowl and minis guys is the new Bloodbowl PC game just out - they play enough of the actual game and now they're going to be starting a video game league.

I've been playing the Armageddon Empires demo for the last three nights in a row. The first two games were a draw, but I won the third game in just 18 turns. I realize that it's technically a PC game, but the game play falls right between CCG and wargame, with a great AT theme and the best fog of war that I've seen. The AI opponent is pretty good, too. I think that I'm going to need to get off my wallet and buy the full game, especially now that there are two free expansions.

Shellhead wrote:

I've been playing the Armageddon Empires demo for the last three nights in a row...I think that I'm going to need to get off my wallet and buy the full game, especially now that there are two free expansions.

Buy it. It's worth every penny. The AI seems to be harder in the full game, BTW. I think it's because it has access to better decks. Oh, and there are no draws in the full game. It's victory or death.

I just got back from an ASL tournament in Austin, TX. Over four days I met a great bunch of guys and played a shitload of ASL. I had no idea that a convention where play only one game system could be that much fun. (Did I mention there was a lot of beer involved too?) If I can make the trip next year I'm definitely going back.


-Will

It had been some time since I last played (apart from a megagame three weeks ago: awesome!), but last Saturday three of us played Antiquity and Sunday a friend and I played a couple of turns of Pursuit of Glory to get to know the game.

Antiquity is a full euro, by the Splotter guys (I used to study history with one of them in university) with some interesting divergent victory conditions (no VP scoring!) and basically a double limited space puzzle as your cities get swamped in cemeteries and houses (which are inproductive), while the countryside is filled up with pollution and exhausted soil. It uses worker placement (although it's not in your face), where some workers are stuck in the same place until the surrounding countryside is fully exploited. The downside is that it is mostly multi player solo and leads to analysis paralysis. Also, the theme of antiquity is not very well developed, and the fact you are building cathedrals seems like it was first meant to be a medieval game. But it could have been a space game as well. Fun to try, but not eager to play again.

Pursuit of GLory is a follow up to Paths of Glory, taking WWI to the Middle East. Effectively it goes down one level of detail (armies to corps, corps to divisions), with lots of local detail. The cards seem to play more naturally, ie it is much easier to decide how to play them: the 2/2 events are no-brainers, while you need the 4/4s to rack up the war status. Surely a lot less anguish and analysis paralysis than in Paths.

While the mechanisms are still essentially the same, there is a lot more chrome to deal with: more troops types (irregulars, tribes) and nationalities. A small inset map of the Gallipoli area, railroads, revolts, the Russian Revolution and the Jihad. This makes the game much harder to take in than just another version of Paths. There's so much you need to *know* and more rules.

SO definitely something for the CDG minded who likes a new challenge, but a bit too much for somebody to start out with.

Looks like I'm trying Small WOrld this Saturday.

I have been playing Tiddly Winks with your mother. That's right, I'm talking about your mother.

she told me. she said you sucked at it

Whoa. We're getting into the "red zone" here boys. I'mma back out slowly and when I come back, I want to see this get back down to "R-rated" level.

so you don't want to know what game I played with Jimmy Choo?