What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

My taste includes both snails and oysters.

You don't find the eating of one to be moral, and the eating of the other to be immoral?

Played a couple solid two-players today. First was Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze. It's a co-op version of Unmatched set in a kind of 1950s-style time period. There are two big villains (Mothman or the Martian Invader), assisted by minions ranging from The Blob to the Ant Queen. The players play from 1 to 4 heroes trying to defeat the big bad before they accomplish their overall goal. We played Dr. Jill Trent and Nikolai Tesla (the other two are The Golden Bat and Annie Christmas) against Mothman, Skunk Ape, and Tarantula, trying to prevent Mothman from destroying all the local bridges. It's basically Unmatched but with a few more variables in play than the usual 1v1, like turn order being decided by a random draw for both villains and heroes. I enjoyed it overall. We ended up with a ridiculous string of bad luck at one point where I had sent my (Jill's) sidekick, Daisy, against the Tarantula which had one health remaining (I'd already knocked out Skunk Ape) and because of how one of Tarantula's cards works, where it being placed on the bottom of the initiative deck when there is no deck means it just takes another turn, Daisy died from two successive attacks when I had no cards to defend her with and the Tarantula escaped and lasted for several more rounds, during which I drew a succession of Daisy cards that I now couldn't use. Dr. Jill died to the Mothman and Tesla was on 2 life remaining, but put in the killing blow with his last card, after which he would've died for failing to draw from his deck. So, an exciting end and something that's definitely worth trying again, not least because you can use other Unmatched heroes in this system, as well as use these heroes in regular Unmatched games.

Then we went abstract and tried That Time You Killed Me, which I'd recently traded for. It's a very strange positioning game where you have three boards (Past, Present, Future) and can move around them and between them via time travel, while trying to push your opponent into walls or terrain to kill them. If at the end of a turn, one player isn't present on two of the three boards, the other player wins. One of the keys to the time travel is that if you travel into the past (Future -> Present or Present -> Past), you leave behind a copy of yourself, but don't do so for traveling into the future. You start with three pawns and can produce four more copies as you do that time traveling. But, if at any point you've spent your whole pool, you can't time travel backwards anymore; only forwards, because you can't produce any more copies. And you also only act on one board per turn and show which board you're heading to next with your Focus token. So there's a ton of future move planning on your part and attempted anticipation of the opponent's actions. There are four scenarios and we played the first, called Growth, where you can plant seeds in the past or present and they'll produce plants in the next time zone up the scale (either just shrubs in one step or a shrub and a tree in two steps.) Those create more terrain that has to be avoided and makes time travel more difficult (you can only travel to an unoccupied space.) It's brain-melting but really fascinating. I have four or five games in the review queue and this is one of them and it will be a cool journey getting to a better understanding of it so that I can actually write something coherent.

Sky Team, first three airports. A fun 2p coop. One person is the pilot, the other the copilot. You're trying to manage a bunch of things -- speed on the approach, radioing the tower to clear the approach, lowering flaps and landing gear, and keeping the plane level. You each have four dice but you roll them behind a screen and are not allowed to discuss anything. (You can discuss general strategy at the beginning of each round, but once dice are rolled, zip it.) A great little game of tension and trying to read what your partner is doing based on their dice placement.

Blood Bowl, round 6 of my regular league. My Dwarf team, Slowly but Surly, were down a few players this match. However, with the free inducement funds provided by the stadium, we were able to hire a couple of Star Players to even the score. Hence, the emergency painting of Cindy Piewhistle...

Anyway, in her debut game, she did not precisely cover herself in glory...


She had one too many pre-match drinks with the Dwarves (always a mistake), and fumbled her second throw, and stunned herself and a couple of team mates who were too close.

Luckily, after this initial mishap, she got back up and was able to continue lobbing piping hot pastries to great effect. We ended up winning 2-0, which for Dwarves, qualifies as a landslide!

U-Con is happening here in Ypsilanti, so I managed to clear some space to stop in yesterday and meet up with a couple friends I hadn't seen in quite a while. They're volunteers at the con and weren't signed up for any events, so we just headed for the "open play" area and decided to try a couple new things. The first was Iello's Cowboy Bebop that came out a couple years ago. We know a couple guys who are local reps for Iello, so one of them taught us how to play. It's a deckbuilder where you're playing the crew competing to get the most bounties before Vicious appears and ends the game by either being captured or escaping (as all of the bounties can do.) It's a solid effort and there are many ways to both combo your cards based on their color (e.g. if you played a blue card before this red one, you can draw another card, etc.) and purge your starting cards (designers of Dune: Imperium should see here) so that you can try to get to those combos. You capture bounties by either fighting or talking them down. The latter is a much rarer ability, but doesn't give you injury cards like fighting does, which will fill your hand and reduce your options when you draw them. I wasn't blown away, but it would be worth playing again.

Then we tried Potion Explosion, from the Or Not section of CMON. You pick marbles from a rack and try to get similar colors (blue, black, yellow, red) to come together to make explosions, which means that you get to take all of those marbles of that color that exploded. You take those marbles to fill slots in the potions in front of you, which not only score you points but also have abilities that you can use for things like putting marbles of any color in slots rather than the required ones or stealing marbles from an opponent's supply (you can keep up to to three at the end of any turn; the rest all go back to the rack.) It's a pretty standard Euro and whoever has the most points in potions and/or awards (for getting a potion of each type or three of a kind and so forth) wins. It's definitely not my normal style of game and I could see this one getting repetitive rather quickly, but I was fine with it on a first play. Heading back today to both try some other new ones and teach them the glories of Cat in the Box.

Well, I brought a pile to the last day at U-Con and as soon as I opened the bag my friend, Leah, said: "Ooo! Tiny Epic Crimes!". So that was the choice, In contrast to most of the other times we've played, we didn't have any trouble with mobsters, as we rolled either a 6 or a 3-3 the first half dozen times we had to do a roll. It was to the point where it was difficult to apprehend informants or witnesses because we just didn't have gangsters in town. But it evened out some over later turns and we really started to compete over the various evidence envelopes and trying to complete Events so that we could see things that we were missing. In the end, one person got the suspect right and two others were off by one crucial bit of evidence, which is thematically appropriate. I think it's review-ready now.

Then the fourth person we were playing with, whom my friends knew but I didn't, pulled out what was doubtlessly his favorite game: Woodcraft. I say that because he was wearing a sweatshirt that announced: "Woodworking isn't a hobby. It's an addiction." So, why wouldn't a game about woodworking be his favorite? Both of my friends had played at least once before and the owner was, as you might expect, fully experienced. As the only newb at the table, I kind of expected a detailed explanation of how the fairly process-heavy game works. That didn't happen. In fact, I barely got any explanation until we were a couple rounds in and I held my hand up to say that it might be a better idea if I just stepped away and let them play because I had zero idea how to keep up with them. Then my friends pointed out a bunch of key things and made suggestions(!) about how to proceed. Even then, I hated it. No, I mean HATED it. I look at my shelf and I have a dozen Knizias and things like Shakespeare and Imhotep and Tribune, all of which I really like (which is why they're still here.) It's not a huge segment of my pile, but it's there. I don't actively dislike Euros. But, JFC, I detest the type of Euros that are made up of these pinwheels and doohickeys and processes that are almost solely exercises in creating points without what feels like any grounding in theme. I mean, most games use points. Ra uses points and it's brilliant. Root uses points and it's brilliant. I also don't mind process games. I love John Company. But the mechanically faceless stuff that is the modern Euro game seems to be something that not only I don't care for but actively repels me. I just don't want anything to do with the genre. In the end, my girlfriend was pinging me to ask if I could help her with something and I gladly took the out, leaving at the beginning of the seventh round of what was going to be an agonizing thirteen.

So, yeah. A bad ending, I guess. I'd really hoped to get in a few more (tolerable) games, but whatevs. Hopefully, I can get another play of The Barracks Emperors in with the Monday group (Review incoming on that shortly, too.)

Played OBSESSION for the first time today. Mechanically its sort of worker placement ; you use servant meeples to activate room/activity tiles to play "Gentry" card - family and society cards - to get money, prestige, and recruit more cards to use. Thematically it takes place in Victorian England. You are trying to rack up VP via cards, tiles, courting rich people - its your typical point salad end game scoring.

This sort of game doesn't usually catch my interest, but I had heard enough people whose tastes align with mine like it so we gave it a whirl 2P. Its def a game to be played casually and NOT with AP fun murderers. I could see initial turns by noobs become torture sessions. The rules while not terrible are a bit scattered probably a bit longer than they need to be. But with the right group I can see it def being entertaining. Some of the Gentry cards have interesting point/reward values that can invite humorous speculation over the rationale . "Hmm, Lady So and So gets money. but has negative VP " or male gentry with negative VP labeled as "cads". Some cards have no redeeming value and serve to punish blind draws and drive you to trash them using certain tiles. There is def some luck of the draw literally.

There are several expansions as well as a deep pool of character cards and tiles to give a wide range of playability.

I have a buddy who likes games that have one-hour Youtube instructional videos. The last time we played I think the game explanation took 90 minutes. He has blood cancer, but has been stable. He just found out his liver has the worst kind of cirrhosis (he doesn't drink--I think it's related to his illness) so now I'm wondering how many gaming sessions he has left. We are going to play Dune Imperium with the new expansion today. I kind of don't have time, but I have a lot more time than he has.

I wrote a week or two back that my sons, especially the eldest, love the DC Deck-Building Game. I undersold that love. We’re playing four or five evenings per week, and when we’re not playing, the eldest is creating hypotheticals about how quickly he can beat the first super-villain or what the strongest hand with two vulnerabilities is. When the cousins arrived for Thanksgiving, he immediately started teaching them the rules. He’s even legitimately beating me when I’m thinning my deck and not pulling punches.

He’s a monster, and I can only assume I was worse at that age because I was into Star Wars CCG.

Played 5-player Dune today after our 6th backed out at the last minute. One player wanted to try one of the expansion factions, so he played the Tleilaxu. They seemed pretty interesting and don't add much rules overhead. Unfortunately he did absolutely nothing during the game. We also added in the new Treachery cards, which added some interesting stuff, like weapons that count as both a poison and projectile weapon, or a poison item that could be used for attack or defense. The dual weapon kind of seems OP, but I used it to good effect, so who am I to complain? We also used the spice-supported combat, which I have never liked the idea of, and have never played. After playing it, I stand by my opinion. After removing the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild, we started. I was the Harkonnen and 3 of my 4 traitor cards were Atreides leaders, so I went hard against them, and got lucky with them choosing 2 leaders I had traitors for. With a turn 3 Nexus, the Fremen and I allied, and with both of us controlling two strongholds each, put us in a winning position. The Emperor/Atreides alliance came after us with the Emperor attacking me and the Atreides attacking the Fremen. I went first and managed to win my fight against the Emperor, and in the Atreides-Fremen fight, Atreides flipped Stilgar as a traitor, only for the table to erupt when I flipped Gurney as a traitor as well. The whole space was wiped, so no immediate win. Fremen reinforced the space the next turn, and was attacked by the Emperor, only for the Fremen to flip the Emperor's leader as a traitor, which secured us the win. I think there was only a single battle that didn't have a traitor involved. Pretty crazy.

Then we played Cat in a Box, my first time. It was pretty fun, though it took a few rounds to get the strategy down. I still don't have it down. Amazon has it for $17 currently, so I'll probably pick it up.

After that, two players left, so I forced Crokinole on the remaining players. We played for about an hour. I was much better than them, as has been the case of everyone I have introduced to it. I need to find some local Crokinole club for some players better than me or I'll never get to play this game again.

Introduced my friends to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the Funko one). I controlled the Sawyers, they each ran two Trespassers. Things started fairly slowly, with them searching a lot downstairs until they determined that all of the car keys were upstairs. I got some injuries on one of the trespassers with the Old Man, but they had depleted the downstairs item deck so much that it just kept getting healing items buried in it. They used this shit tactic to heal a lot! Also, my poor shuffle of the injury deck results in all of the feet injuries being bunched up. This caused me to not be able to kill people several times.

Things started swinging back my way when one of the trespassers got the final necessary item upstairs, and triumphantly played a Desperation card that allowed them to jump out the window, but they had to draw an Injury card. They drew a foot and promptly died on the yard. Another trespasser upstairs found themselves caught between the Old Man and Leatherface, and got chainsawed to bits.

By now, the last two trespassers got all of the items and made their way to the vehicle. The Hitchhiker was trying (and failing) to take them out before they could get it started. He had one last chance.... it was down to the flip of an injury card. If it was a foot, the Sawyer clan had a shot at victory. It was an arm. The trespasser rolled to escape, succeeded, and that was that. My opponent flipped the next Injury card out of curiousity. It was a foot.

Everyone loved the game.

@hotseat: That sounds excellent. I liked the idea of the game because all of the other Funko games I've played have been great, but I don't really need another game (in part because I already have a stack of Funko (and many, many others) that aren't getting played) and I don't know anyone who's a real fan of the TCM films.

@Disgustipater: That Dune game sounds excellent. The argument for spice combat is that it gives some advantage to the factions that are often rich in spice but have trouble keeping troops on the board, like the Guild. It also makes spice-rich territories even more of a draw, since people can't get a decent stash and then sit on a couple strongholds and wait everyone out. But, yeah, it does add a layer of complexity to the combat that it really doesn't need.

It certainly does take a few hands to get the hang of Cat in the Box, but I would promote the idea of picking that game up over almost any other these days. It works with all types of gamerz and has so many interesting quirks in the gameplay, rather than just in the rules like so many others.

TCM is the best Prospero Hall game yet. We have been playing it a lot.

Cranberries wrote: I have a buddy who likes games that have one-hour Youtube instructional videos. The last time we played I think the game explanation took 90 minutes. He has blood cancer, but has been stable. He just found out his liver has the worst kind of cirrhosis (he doesn't drink--I think it's related to his illness) so now I'm wondering how many gaming sessions he has left. We are going to play Dune Imperium with the new expansion today. I kind of don't have time, but I have a lot more time than he has.

Ok, so my son and I ended up playing Dune Imperium: Uprising (the spies version) and at first I thought it was going to be my typical Euro outing where I start understanding the rules too late to do anything interesting, but this was totally fun. I played as Paul Atreides and managed to achieve my personal goal of attacking with worms after the shields came down:


I actually attacked with two worms at one point but apparently forgot to take a picture.

We rented a tiny house/trailer thing at Antelope Island for Thanksgiving. I brought these games:



But we ended up only playing Liar's Dice, and had a good time.



My son rediscovered the game through some DnD podcast. We played with the "Pacifico" rule. If you are down to one dice then wild rolls are "ones" and you can't increase the die face while betting.

My oldest son is now rated at 1500 in chess, so he destroyed his younger brother.

Lately Thousand Year Old Vampire has been quietly saying my name.