What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

The Steam version of Yomi is probably my most-played game. It's pricey at $14.99 plus another $14.99 for the expansions characters, although Sirlin regularly puts it on deep discount. The game supports two character modes: the normal character and its EX counterpart, which features a grossly overpowered version of the character's innate ability as well as adding an incredibly powerful Destiny move to their deck. Also, all the EX cards are gold and sparkly.

You can unlock an individual EX character for $0.99 in the store. On the other hand, if you can beat that character ten times on Hard difficulty and then beat their super-saiyan EX version ten times on Hard difficulty, you can unlock the EX version of that character for free.



At this point, I'm a Zane short of the whole collection. I've never played another board game version of a fighting game, I just keep coming back to this one.

Footage of Yomi 2 started showing up on YouTube a few months back. It looks like he went full maximalist on it. Decks are no longer tied to poker decks, and you can choose an orb before the match for additional abilities.

DarthJoJo wrote:

dysjunct wrote: I once narrated a dream scene of people chopping off and eating their own hands that I wouldn’t have done with strangers without The Veil.

There's a sentence I didn't anticipate reading today.

I introduced a friend to Theseus: The Dark Orbit last night, after having not played in quite some time. I kept it simple and excluded Hunters and Bots from the selection. He chose the Xenos, and I took the Scientists.

Once he got the hang of the turn structure, things went pretty well, and he was getting a lot of cards installed. I had cameras set up in the Corridors (the one that triggers an Onslaught), which is the sector that the xenos would most want to visit. He thwarted my efforts to study their alien biology by never stopping in the corridors.

This put him at a disadvantage, though, since my scientists had managed to score two points of damage against him. The game was almost over and he managed to do two points of damage to me, tying it up. Unfortunately for him, I had a Med Bay installed in my home sector and managed to stop there, healing 1 point, for the VICTORY. It was pretty great and he loved the game.

I wish I got to play this one more.

Still one of my all-time favorites. There's just so much going on in every turn and the play style for each faction is so different and yet still the same from a broad mechanical perspective. Definitely one that should be played more often.

Had a great "thinking" game night. First we pulled out Land and Freedom for its introduction after I'd picked up a copy a few months back on a Dan Thurot recommendation. It's about the Spanish Civil War and is designed for three players: Moderates, Communists, and Anarchists. There are three years of four rounds each. Each round starts with a Fascist event and then the three players each take a turn to play a card, either for action points or the event. Similarly to Watergate, if you play the latter, the card is removed from the game. If you play the former, it stays and becomes part of a tableau that you can then try to leverage with the icons printed on all of the cards. Each player is devoted to two of five tracks on the (canvas) board and derive advantages from the position of those tracks in order to try to drop their tokens into a bag at the end of each turn and each year that is drawn from at the end of each year in order to see who has the advantage in the inevitable victory over Franco and Co. But, of course, you have to cooperate to ensure that inevitability or you all lose.

We lost the first game at the very beginning of Year Two when the four armies in Madrid were pushed to 10 with the event card, which is a loss for any front, but losing Madrid is an auto-game loss. We made it farther into Year Two in the second game, but still lost when we lost both the Northern and Southern fronts. It's a really interesting set of choices on each card play. I think knowing how quickly the threat of the Fascists ramped up in Year Two would have helped us in the second game and perhaps trying to approach it as a full-on co-op would give us enough experience with the game to try competing with each other in a more direct fashion. Both of my opponents were really eager to try again.

Then we switched to Pax Pamir, which remains probably my favorite Cole Wehrle game and one of my favorites overall. With two Afghan patriots in the opening market, one of my opponents decided to go with the locals and with a British patriot present and nothing Russian, the other opponent decided to go pink. But with nothing Russian, I decided to play the long game and wait for the yellow dudes to show up. However, the Britain player got access to a free Build action when we couldn't get out of Economic suit and soon the board was covered with English blocks. When the first Dominance check showed up, it sat in the Market for a while while the Afghan player switched to Britain and the two of them maneuvered for control. Eventually, one won out when another check showed up and both of them got removed together and they scored their 5 and 3 and I was sitting with nothing. However, I grabbed Alexander Griboyev (Don't pay for Russian patriots) and started racking up those guys, plus a prize I got from an opponent, so I was firmly in control in that respect if I could manage to get some blocks down on the empty map. But then another Dominance check showed up while I had the most tribes and spies out, so I just bought it, giving me three points. We went another couple rounds and the final Dominance check showed up while we were still in the same position (me with the only three tribes out and still with the most spies), so I just bought that one, too and won the game, 6-5-3. It was a bit anti-climactic in that respect, but I wasn't complaining because, again, I'd played the long game and it had paid off. I really need to play Pamir again soon. I've played for years and each time is still enthralling.

PAX PAMIR has an excellent online implementation at the Rally the Troops website.

A friend invited me to a game night where he wanted to play Root (one of my favorites), but also asked me to bring some other games along just in case. I grabbed Root, Chaos in the Old World, Cyclades, Condottiere, and El Grande. One of the other guys there started gushing about Cyclades and wanted to play it, so we did. Everyone really enjoyed it, and I ended up winning, mostly due to chance as the player I invaded and took the second metropolis from was going to do the same to me (before my turn) but a player before him inadvertently blocked him from doing so in TWO different ways. It's still a really fun game. I'm pretty happy I didn't go in on the new version on Kickstarter. It might be a slightly better version, but the one I have is still pretty good.

Everyone was still interested in playing a game so we played Root. We ended up with The Eyrie, Vagabond, Lizards, Corvids, and Moles. I was the Eyrie and did the standard play of using the Recruiting leader to flood the board with warriors and place most of my roosts before going into turmoil. This was made easier by the moles player being on the other side of the board and misreading the Dig action, thinking it required one of his warriors in the space to dig. Everyone seemed to mostly leave each other alone until the moles, eyrie, and corvids started getting up to around 20 points. This meant the Lizards were down at around 3 points, and the vagabond was 10. The three players out front started slowing down. Then, as completely expected, not surprising at all, and commented upon at the start of (and during) the game, the Vagabond just rocketed past us and won the game. I mean, I know it is going to happen because it usually happens, but I have such an aversion to hitting the vagabond early/mid game when he is just doing nothing and wandering around and minding his own business, even though I know it's a requirement. I need to get over that shit.

Yeah, it's a really frustrating thing about the vagabond. It feels like really punitive play since it happens before any of their points but the surge is usually so strong.

One thing I point out to anyone whom I'm teaching or is only playing their second or third time: the Vagabond is the clock. It's the device that keeps the game from dragging on with a bunch of militant factions deadlocked. If you don't deal with the Vagabond, the clock will run out and you will all lose. If you don't take risks, the clock will run out and you will all lose.

Jackwraith wrote: One thing I point out to anyone whom I'm teaching or is only playing their second or third time: the Vagabond is the clock.

That's a good way to explain it to everyone at the beginning of the game. I'll have to try to remember that. I also think at the beginning I will very explicitly tell the vagabond player that at some point I am going to (try to) attack them for no specific reason other than to slow down that clock. Nothing personal.

My ex got married today, so one of my female friends came over to hang out and make sure I was okay. After lunch, we played Camp Grizzly, which doesn't play well with two players unless you play two characters each. I drew Tracy the Scream Queen and Kevin, the lifeguard who is also into "water sports." She got Becky the B-Queen and Jackson aka the guy with the bib overalls in Dazed and Confused.

The game started out slightly weird, with Kevin's doppleganger showing up in the tool shed on turn one, only to be immediately dispatched by Otis, who was also in the shed. Then the usual running and screaming occured, but we quickly picked up the required components for a boat escape. We all started heading towards the boat, but a couple of characters were slow from getting wounded, so the odds didn't look good.

Then Kevin declared a game of strip poker, which moved all counselors to the game room, conveniently near the boat. He must have been using a marked deck, because he won big and looted cards from the other counselors. Unfortunately, the ensuing Tempt Fate (9) brought Otis, and we still didn't have any weapons. He killed Becky and seriously wounded everybody else, but the panic move plus our regular moves got Jackson and Tracy to the boat, and they were the ones with the boat items. Blaming Kevin for this mess, they left him behind.

The boat wouldn't start. Jackson and Tracy jumped in the lake and started swimming. Otis caught up with Tracy and drowned her, but Jackson made it all the way across and reached safety. Otis got tangled in weeds and apparently drowned, so Kevin also survived. Fun game, as always. If this session had been a movie, I would enjoy watching it.

Disgustipater wrote: I also think at the beginning I will very explicitly tell the vagabond player that at some point I am going to (try to) attack them for no specific reason other than to slow down that clock. Nothing personal.

Exactly right. Root is a game about emphasizing advantages and the opposition trying to impede those advantages. One of the ways to do that to the Vagabond is to make them regularly have to skip a turn to repair stuff. One of the ways the Vagabond does that to everyone else is to make them waste precious, precious actions hitting the Vagabond. It's all about finding that balance between doing what you want and doing what you have to. Kinda like life.

Had a rare occurrence of 6 players the other night. I pulled out Duhr: The Lesser Houses because I thought it was a good group for it. We had a couple of players who had played Bemused before.

Teaching this game is a bear, as is teaching any Felli game, really. I think in the future I'd be better off simply playing a sample round to show what can be done, then start all over. Once people understood their possible actions, they got into it and enjoyed it. There was a lot of screwing people over, as you want. I ended up a Villain twice, and was only able to create one other villain so we lost. But we didn't come in last.

Next up was my Walmart acquisition, Squid Game. This was only the second time playing for me, and the first game was with 3 players. The game plays 3 to 6. I can tell you that it is MUCH better with 6.

Only two people had not seen the show, but now that they have played, they pledged to watch it. The game was a huge hit. As in the show, you play all 6 of the games. Each game has its own mechanics, but they are simple enough that you just teach them as you go. The only game that is a real dud is the marble game, which is game 4. I may try to figure out how to approximate the deaths that would occur in it and skip it in the future. Nobody liked it.

The peak is the glass bridge. People fuck each other so badly in that game, it's hilarious. If you have the right group, you could do a lot worse with $20.

Had a my birthday get together yesterday, but several of my friends had to bail due to emergencies (completely understandable). Nathan was able to make it, and his gift to me, "I did not bring Elder Sign." Good enough for me. So, I pulled out his favorite, Return to Dark Tower. My wife joined us on this excursion, and was her first time playing. She played the Relic Hunter, who has a potion addiction. I played Spy Master, who BAMFs around the kingdom I'm in. Nathan played his favorite, Brutal Warlord. And thank Christ he did.

The main adversary was Ashstrider (which we kept referring to as Ass Rider, because that's what he absolutely did to us). The Main Quest was delve the Three Dungeons to break down the wards to the Tower. The first dungeon was in my kingdom and was Stealth related, so I thought, what the heck and went there.

Anyone remember the beginning of the D&D module, Ghost Tower of Inverness? You know, the Duke's Seer who goes to the Tower, gets his ass kicked, and then get schlebs to investigate for him? Yeah, that's what happened to me. I got three rooms in, and got two Corruption levels and had to retreat.

And it was a portent of things to come, we were so busy putting out LITERAL fires, that the months slipped by and we were failing Adversary Quests left and right. It was in the last month, when the Adversary was nigh, that we met up at the Citadel in the West Kingdom, and Jo and I gave all our resources, to Nathan. Once he broached the last dungeon, Ashstrider came out to play.

Nathan, 119 warriors and 4 spirit strong, went to face him. It was not as nearly as bad as anticipated, but we ended up winning after 3 hours of playing. Nathan, in the end, had 85 warriors left, and one level of Corruption. The board was battered pretty badly, the Southern Kingdom, had no buildings left, and the other Kingdoms fared a little better.


We ended things with Heat, with The Boy switching in for my wife. Noah picked up on the game remarkably fast, and was in the front spot, but generated too much Heat, as did Nathan. Nathan did that intentionally, letting me win. But, I was too far ahead even without that.

All in all a great day.