What board games are you BUYING?

I got Fireball Island for the kids...trying to not open it before Christmas!

Pokemon...take a look at the Elite Trainer boxes. They do two for each main block. It’s kind of like the MTG Deckbuilder’s Toolkit. I think is like 8 boosters, a bunch of energy cards, counters, a nice box and some other starter type stuff. $25-$35. If you pair this up with a couple of ready to play theme decks ($12) or the learn to play starter deck pack ($10) it’s a good start.

I picked up Axis & Allies: Zombies. Should be able to get it played over the Holiday break when the eldest son comes back from college. First view through the additional "zombie" rules makes it appear to be a fun one.

Mantidman wrote: I picked up Axis & Allies: Zombies. Should be able to get it played over the Holiday break when the eldest son comes back from college. First view through the additional "zombie" rules makes it appear to be a fun one.

I pointed my cousin towards this, hopefully it appears around the holidays so we can play it.

So, my oldest daughters boyfriend has been playing games with us the last few months. Kemet, Shogun, King of Tokyo, Century Spice Road, etc. Yesterday, he says "So, what is your opinion of Dark Souls; The Board Game?" I mentioned I thought it was one of those games that hard for the sake of being hard, much like the video game. Said I didn't have a very positive opinion of it, which I think was mostly the KS fiasco around it. Turns out he found it online and picked it up. His first legit boardgame outside of D&D. I'm kinda proud of him LOL.

Picked up a couple things on Amazon because they were basically at cost: Battle for Rokugan and In the Year of the Dragon.

I've always liked the world behind L5R, but never got into the card game because I was too busy with other things. Battle for Rokugan strikes me the same way it does many others: a stripped down version of FFG's Game of Thrones. I appreciate the quicker nature of it, though. Like Matt said in his review, I think it might benefit from simply stripping out the secret objectives, but I'll see what I think after a couple plays. I also like the fact that I now have a half-dozen of FFG's small box games (Rokugan, Infiltration, Heroes of Terrinoth, Rune Age, Warhammer Diskwars, Blood Bowl Team Manager) that are pretty diverse in their style but can all be set up and played quite quickly.

In the Year of the Dragon was on my trade for list for a couple years, but then I went through a period where I was clearing things off the shelves and decided to purge my trade list of all non-essentials, too, and Year went away. But when I saw it for $20, I figured I'd swipe a copy, especially since it's the type of game (Euro with chrome) that my girlfriend can get into.

Wade, now you get the pleasure of telling him he bought one of the worst games of the past 10 years.

My Christmas games will be SpaceCorp and Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles. Both will be no charge to me due to consignment profits at one of my local game stores. That's about $100 worth of games even with online discounts, ($142 MSRP) at no charge to me. I have over $100 in store credit remaining after that.

That Battlestar summary sounds great.

As I mentioned in it's game specific thread, I bought a copy of Rayguns and Rocketships off Amazon for $24 and change.

It came today. Presentation looks first rate. The art team deserves a gold star. The minis are so good they tempt me to bust open my painting kit for the first time in years. The space ships are great.

Hopefully get a chance to play it this weekend to see if the game is worthy of the components.

Michael Barnes wrote: Wade, now you get the pleasure of telling him he bought one of the worst games of the past 10 years.

It’s a perfectly great game scrub, you just need to get gud

Wait wait- he is talking about the Dark Souls board game. Not the video game,which is one of the best ever made.

Michael Barnes wrote: Wait wait- he is talking about the Dark Souls board game. Not the video game,which is one of the best ever made.

Get. gud.

No U

7 Winders: Duel. The wife and I picked this up at a discount and have put about 30 games in over the last two months. And after all those hours, I don’t even know what to say about this game.

It’s perfecfly accessible, balanced, lightly engaging without any of the stress or tension that could slow down conversation. An idle, fairly automatic experience whose depth is mostly explored after ten plays. There are just enough fiddly combos and interactions that appear over time to provide the sense of depth, but these rarely provide any break from the tried and true arc: Gather resources, build engine, run engine. I’ve seen it a hundred times, sometimes better and sometimes worse.

I can’t remember the specifics of most games aside from a few outlier moments. And that’s the biggest problem of this game. It’s perfectly well designed and perfectly bland. I can’t see a reason to recommend this over many other two player games, some better, some worse. But I can’t fault it for anything specific.

Perhaps I just don’t see the need for “filler” games that some other people do. I’d rather spend my time with something more captivating. Or should I want something that fades into the background, something that crosses the boundary from a contemplative, rarely confrontational game to something genuinely interactive.

I'm with you on 7WD. We played it a bunch, then passed it along and felt nothing. It's not an engaging game to focus on but not braindead enough to chat during. Not a fan.

I've found the medium-ish euro I'll be gambling on. Architects of the West Kingdom is looking like a pretty interesting stab at worker placement. The worker capture mechanism and morality meter are some nifty twists on an otherwise pretty normal framework, and I generally prefer games where there isn't a dedicated recall/recovery phase. Fast turns please me. Non-wasteful boxes also please me. Here's hoping it lands.