What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I taught my mom and my wife Cat in the Box this weekend and I found it pretty amusing. We started with a practice round and I didn’t bother explaining the importance of the experiment board just to simplify things (until the scoring phase). During the teach, when I broke suit to play a trump to steal the trick from my wife, who is a life-long traditional card player, called it bullshit and cheating since I could have definitely played the led color. She was not happy, but continued on. Then during scoring, when I said that there was no score penalty for not meeting your predicted tricks, she got irritated again, “What is even the point then?!” And some other choice words.
Me: “Hold on, let me finish explaining.” I then explain the bonus points for the experiments board and see her lightbulb go on.
Her: “…”
“Ok, I like this.”

Not a gift but Marvel United arrived from a trade the day before leaving to visit family for Christmas, so I guess it counts. Big hit with the boys. Even I’m pleasantly surprised. Clearly a descendant of Pandemic that has honed the essentials to an edge in the intermediary generations. Not a huge fan of how the chibi art, but it is a reasonable match for the game’s tone. Much less a fan of the expansion bloat. I could see picking up a few more enemies for variety, but the design space for heroes is pretty limited. Fifty-odd Kickstarter exclusive heroes (in just the first of three seasons) is bonkers. Great game at $40. $500 is a total waste of money and space.

Did gift the boys the first two crisis expansions to the DC Deck-Building Game. Now the eldest is asking me if Nekron could beat Darkseid or the Anti-Monitor. The cooperative mode sounds overly long and only marginally tested (what a surprise), but there is some decent stuff in the new player cards. Running a hero combination of Saint Walker and Star Sapphire (already going there?) at least made me feel like I was making decisions that weren’t buy the obviously best possible card.

The boys have also been getting into chess and checkers. They’re not very good at them. Fortunately my dad isn’t either, so their games together weren’t total stompings.

Got in two games of PTO Combat Commander Random Scenario Generator today with James Terry. As usual the generator produced good close scenarios. The first started with James attacking and me only having 1 VP as a Japanese defender. I slowly built up a lead, barfed in my mouth when the CW Winslow Hero showed up, then held onto for a win before that Winslow bastard could run into an empty VP hex.

Second scenario saw my numerous American Marine company attack a Japanese detachment guarding a village in the center of the map . James started with 15 VP. I sent a small force on a flanking maneuver around the Japanese left flank. James advanced into Melee and with a +2 advantage plus Initiative should have won. Alas, fate was unkind and 2 Japanese squads and a leader died. My victorious Americans then moved to exit the map since exit VP were increased by +1. That stack ran into FOUR mines/Wire hexes played by James and was whittled down to a leader and half squad. By this time I had a small VP advantage and an Event forced James to adopt Banzai posture. He attempted to run a squad off my map edge but I was barely able to kill him; due to the Banzai rules in the next Time Trigger he showed up in Melee with the beleaguered American stack trying to exit, killing them in Melee before they could score 8 VP. However by then my numbers began to overwhelm and I was able to exit 4 units off the other flank for 12 VP. That was followed by numerous fire attacks to eat up time for the win .

On Christmas, I got The Boy to sit down and play Return to Dark Tower with me. We played Raise a Rebel Army and the big bad was the Empress of Shade. I recommended he play the Warlord, for obvious reasons, and I played the spymaster. The minions were Brigands, Frost trolls, and the Mormo.

I was useless, and The Boy was a warrior attracting god. He easily got the 100 requisite warriors and drew the undead bitch out. Accompanied by Metallica's Master of Puppets album, he trounced her good.

Got together with my occasional two-player opponent to try a couple things. First, we went with Unmatched Adventures and decided to try heroes that didn't come with that box for the first time. I don't think that the four that are included were specifically designed for that kind of environment (co-op) but it's possible that some of their cards were designed with that framework in mind, since other characters have cards that specifically refer to "heroes" or "sidekicks" that can't respectively be applied to "villains" and "minions." In that respect, it may mean that some characters are simply OP in the Adventures setting like, say, King Arthur. We played the King and Alice and completely mopped the floor with the Mothman, Jersey Devil, and Loveland Frog. The Frog was dead in two turns and the Devil two turns after that and Mothman two or three turns after that. One of the main complaints about Arthur in the regular game is that the opponent can see when he's setting up one of his big swings, since he has to play both cards that he's using face down. Consequently, if you have a Feint in hand, you just play it then. But the game system that controls the enemies in Adventures can't see that, so if you load up and the card that the enemy turns over is for minimal defense, you're going to deliver some ferocious damage, which is what happened repeatedly. Alice is no slouch in that department, either, since she does +2 damage with every attack when she's Big. even though a couple of her Jabberwock cards would do even more damage if villains were treated as heroes in the regular game. But that would have made it even more of a slaughter, so it's probably a good thing that that's not the case. Anyway, next time we're going to try two ranged characters, as opposed to the two melee that we used, and see if it's still as much of a beatdown. We'll probably try the Martians, too, since they're generally tougher than the Mothman.

Then we tried a game that I don't remember even becoming interested in, but it somehow ended up on my trade list: Mantis Falls. Maybe it was Charlie or Dan Thurot who piqued my interest at some point? Because this is definitely not a game that I'd generally be inclined to check out. It's a 2-3 player game, wherein the players are either a Witness or an Assassin. The setting is that you've witnessed a murder and are trying to get across town to testify about said murder and the mob is trying to kill you before you get there; that is, if you're a Witness. If you're an Assassin, you're of course trying to kill the other player(s) but since it's a hidden role game, only the Assassin player will know that the others are Witnesses and there's a possibility that everyone is a Witness, but there's no way to know that until the end. If you're all Witnesses, everyone has to make it alive. If not, the one side or the other wins if the other dies. So it's a hidden role cooperative but maybe competitive game, which is weird, but it works. It's also pretty tough to try to complete the game. In our first attempt, I was a Witness and my opponent was an Assassin and he died halfway through the street map that determines the progress of the game, so I won by default (which means I didn't actually get across town, but we didn't want to keep playing with me alone to see if it happened. I'm not sure anyone would make it solo, anyway.) In the second, we were both Witnesses, but both died again at about that halfway point when we got stuck behind a damaged street for a few turns. We played just the base game which is pretty simple in terms of theme (both of us are Urbanites as characters, which have no traits other than a number of wounds), but there's an included expansion that adds different characters and several other story elements to it. There's also a further smaller expansion for "experienced players" that adds even more, plus an extra scenario for a different storyline, so there's a lot to delve into if we're inclined. I was kinda fascinated, even though I'm not normally a fan of co-ops.

Played The Great Wall as our main game of the night (4player). I was able to build two sections of the wall, but lost out on building soldiers a couple rounds as I could not get the resources I needed. One of the end game conditions was 7 points for every archer on the top section of the wall and one guy had 4 or 5. I've played it a handful of times now and still learning strategies so for now I'm just trying stuff. Want to start dipping into the expansions next to see how we like it.

After that game we played two shorter games. Space Base then Century Golem. I like Space Base a lot as I'm a fan of every roll, every player is doing something potentially.

Final game played of 2023 was several games of the Magic the Affliction Lord of the Rings. My friend brought over the Commander bundle - 4 preconsructed decks, no deck building required just unwrap and play. I randomly grabbed a Hobbit deck, he had a Rohan deck. I was pleasantly surprised at how thematic the decks were, relatively speaking. My deck was mostly hobbit themed cards, low power categories but with a mechanic to gain life via Food; they also had some powerful Ent cards. The Rohan deck had stronger characters, albeit more expensive to play. Our first game kind of sputtered due to my repeated drawing of Lands with no cards to I could play , let alone attack/defend with. Second game we both built up some good tableaus. Twice I playe spells to wipe out most of his characters. Then I got a deadly combo that allowed me to summon a ton of generic halfing characters ( 13 of the little bastards in one play ) and coupled with an evil bat blew him away. Final game I was doing OK, but he had a cleric that hampered my ability to eat Food for health and he ground me down.



So better than I thought it would be. At $50 per preconstructed deck or $180 for all 5....eh I'll probably skip it. My buddy who bought it from Amazon said when it was delivered, he actually got a code texted to him and he had to sign for it from the driver, I guess they've had issues with fraud, LOL.



If it had old Ted Naismith art I'd be all over it. The new art is not bad, but it doesn't really grab me. It looks too....modern if that makes any sense.

Spent New Year’s with friends and their families with kids of similar ages. Two of the kids asked unbidden for games I had brought to other gatherings, which warmed my heart. Unfortunately I did not bring those games.

Instead we made two new fans of the DC Deck-Building Game. A girl in her second game beat my eldest’s Green Lantern with Swamp Thing. Said girl asked my son for another round which he turned down. If he remembers that in ten years, he will rue it.

Played a round of Sentinels of the Multiverse too. It’s such a strange game. It’s one of the most blatantly mechanical spreadsheet games I’ve ever seen. Play one card. Use one power. Add this modifier. Suffer this other modifier. But I still got a thrill when the police backup nearly put the finishing blow on Baron Blade. The game just makes stories. Definitive edition is an absolute upgrade. I love the idea of representing all eras of a character’s publication history, and the hero and villain variants are tasty.

Played Wavelength after all the kids finally went down. Really solid party game. Good toy factor with the screen, and right guesses are as worthy of a cheer as bad guesses.

Last game of 2023 and the first game of 2024 was Galaxy Hunters, a worker placement game that seamlessly melds with the SF theme. People with AP should refrain from playing this game, as the options to do anything is overwhelming. You're collecting DNA by battling kaiju, landing on planets to obtain elements to purchase upgrades for your pilot and mech. It was a blast.

The slight downsides, rules aren't very clear on a lot of things. Lastly, when I was playing this game and looking over the names of the elements, I kept humming this.

10 days off from work (and New Years Eve Gameday) means lots of games.

First year in a long time where I got minimal boardgame stuff, and I didn't get anything board-game related for the kids either. They were...disappointed? Which surprised me.

As the kids have gotten older, we've been able to home in on things they like and don't like in games.

Firstly, sadly...DOAM games are at the bottom of the list. but it's been fun walking through some older games and figuring out what clicks with who.

Bunny Kingdom is surprisingly good, but the first round or two of playing can be difficult for people to understand how the board is coming together. In General drafting kind of turns me off, but something about the map interactions makes it work here. The kids hate the multiplication.

Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game is very light but was just enough Star Wars flavor for the younger boys to enjoy.

Warhammer: Invasion This is a go-to when it's just me and the oldest boy. I have a number of pre-made decks, so we pick decks for each other, play a round then swap.

Spirit Island Daughter, eldest son and I played this. Ocean, Fire...and the serpent under the island. I told him that the snake was difficult. That it took power from other spirits and needed to knuckle under until it powered up. This was a rough one. big loss. But he's itching to play again. We probably need to stick with this for a couple plays to get comfortable with how everything works together.

Cosmic Encounter was a surprise hit, we played it 5 times over break. We've fallen into alittle bit of a rut with shared wins. Meta gaming is happening, as the last two games were 4! way shared victories. They are realizing that playing for a shared victory like that kind of makes the whole game pointless. and being overfly friendly with everyone until they are at 4 points is asking something sneaky to happen. Still, one of the big, shared victories was all the kids allying up to make sure the parents lost. That was legitimate fun.

Can't Stop was the light game of the week, 6 plays, and 4 players every time. My wife has decided that every time I start the "roll the dice" chant.... it's time for her to stop rolling.

Robo Rally My wife hates robo rally. It's one of the first games I ever bought. I have great memories of playing it late (early morning?) at AvalonCon, with several expansions and 8 players, with robots bouncing off each other and sliding around. But since Katies hates it, we haven't played much of it in years. Just that same copy following me as I've moved around. I'm fully aware that it's very frustrating at times, and a lot of people bounce off it.

So, I decided to introduce it to the kids...and realized I was missing half of it. All the boards were in my Armed & Dangerous Box...and everything else was in some box somewhere, possibly in storage. No big deal, plenty of else to play.

And of course, she bought me a copy of the new 2023 release for Christmas. We played and the kids all liked it, she said, 'it's not as bad as the old version' So that's a win?

big differences: individual decks for programming, instead of the big, shared deck, so there's less likelihood of a completely useless hand. Damage is different, with damage cards getting put into the deck and filling your hand with junk. Damage can also generate 'haywire' cards that get placed into your program, with some of them being really helpful.

So overall it's less swingy and less mean? but still lots of frustration at times. Katie ended up circling the final flag 2 times trying to land on it, and one of the boys sprinted from the other side of the board (he was able to move 8! due to a haywire) and grab the race from under her nose.

lj1983 wrote:
Bunny Kingdom is surprisingly good, but the first round or two of playing can be difficult for people to understand how the board is coming together. In General drafting kind of turns me off, but something about the map interactions makes it work here. The kids hate the multiplication.

My kids love Bunny Kingdom, which means it's probably my most-played game of the past few years, including a game over the holidays. I've long suspected that special resources are overpowered and the key to victory, but my son won this latest game without any special resources. He beat my daughter by ONE point, and I trailed her by TWO points. Easily the closest game we've ever had.

I also got to break out City of Iron (first edition) for the first time ever. I bought the game used a while ago, and just never managed to get it played until now. As with all Red Raven games, it looks amazing, with terrific art. There's some definite overlap of concepts and mechanics from other Red Raven games (most notably The Ancient World), but the really unique bit is the two sets of parallel decks for deckbuilding. You have a deck of "civilian" cards and another deck of "military" cards, and choosing which deck to invest in makes for a lot of interesting decisions. That ended up being my favorite part. A few minor complaints -- I would have liked more variety in the building cards, and the bidding mechanism for turn order ended up being a total non-factor, as no one ever saw an urgent need to bid heavy to go first. There's always lots to do, so I never cared what my position was in the turn order. Overall, I liked it a lot though.

Had a friend over to try out Masters of the Universe. I was the Controller, running Skeletor, Trap Jaw, and Tri-klops. He had He-Man, Orko, Man at Arms, and Ram Man.

We did the first scenario, in which the good guys have to find a missing member of royalty and escort them off the board. This is a big ask, it turns out. My friend only uncovered one of the four objective tokens before I achieved my win condition of killing heroes 3 times.

He definitely could have played a bit smarter, but it was his first time, so that's to be expected. But the objective does seem very hard for the heroes.

My friend really enjoys co-ops, so we joined forces against the AI for our second game. This mission involves a series of one on one fights, with every group divided by impassable rock walls. One of the fights is a series of minions vs. one of the heroes, and we placed Ram Man in it, because he has 2 armor, making him almost invulnerable to the minions since they are lucky to even do 2 damage.

We won that scenario pretty handily; I don't think the AI is particularly well suited for its unique setup.

Overall my friend liked the game, but it is clear to me that the adversarial mode is the way to go. Hopefully it sees more table time.

He had four characters to your three. Is that because Orko only counts as half a character or a companion? Or was it the (acknowledged) difficulty of the scenario?

The Controller always has 3 characters plus minions. There are scalable rules for the other side to have anywhere from 1 to 4 characters. I've only tried with 4 though.

But as for Orko, until he levels up a bit, he does suck pretty hard. He only has 6 health.

Each character can gain up to 3 skills over the course of a scenario. I love that it's not a campaign game.

Got back from visiting my mom and brothers over New Year's.

THAT'S NOT LEMONADE. Classic push your luck silliness; mom would've been mortified if she'd realized it was about piss.

TURBO KIDZ. A big hit with the nephews and nieces. Extremely fun and silly. My brother and his wife are going to pick up a copy for the pre-marital counseling class they teach at their church. I predict it will prevent divorce by causing couples not to get married in the first place.

JUST ONE. Not much to say about this stone cold classic. It'd be nice if there were more cards. Also each card should have six options on it, and the game should include a d6. Seems to have a lot of repeats with people gravitating towards their favorite numbers.

BLANK SLATE. Mom's copy. Did you ever want to play Just One, but were worried that it was too much fun? Then this is the game for you. USAopoly special. Cards have a word and a blank ("Door _____"). Everyone writes a word on their dry-erase card then simultaneously reveals. If your word matches exactly one person then you get three points. More than one, one point. Zero, zero points.

WINGS OF GLORY. 3-on-3 contest; my other brother now wants to pick up a copy but it looks like all the duel kits are OOP. I brought the Sag special of Walmart carriers with way too many planes, neoprene countryside mats, and the rules/accessories pack. Most of the points were from people accidentally flying off the edge of the map.

STARTUPS. Played a variety of times with a mix of player ranges. It's interesting but with the full complement (7p) you only get 2-3 turns, so there's not much room for screwups or inefficienies. Or, maybe it's just too random. One of my favorites though.

CAMEL UP. A hit due to the table presence with the palm tree and such. Fun and easy to play, although one of my nieces (11yo) had to be forbidden from getting near a stack of camels as they would mysteriously get knocked over any time she was within two feet of the board.

OBSESSION. Played an aborted learning game with my mom and kid. My mom likes Downtown Abbey so she was into the theme, but it's a little much for a non-gamer.

SKYJO. Unoffensive light drafting/push-your-luck game. You have 12 numeric cards (ranging from -2 to 12) in a tableau in front of you, mostly face-down. You want all of your cards to have the lowest sum. Either draw from the deck and replace a card (new card is face-up) or take the top discard and replace. If you get three identical numbers in a column then that column count as zero. A good family weight game.

HERSTORY. Family-weight engine builder, a bit like Splendor. Theme is researching important women in history to write a book. You gather "research tokens" which can be spent to pick up the cards with people on them. Some cards give you ongoing benefits, others give end-of-game bonuses, others just give points. Went over quite well with mom and the nieces. In case you were wondering if the boardgame community is worth saving from a fire, you'll be glad to know that this has already received a bunch of 1s on BGG from people who haven't played it, because women.

Also got together with some friends in the area for a few games:

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. A fun story-generator; if you are playing the cannibal family and aren't talking constantly in a hillbilly drawl, then you are doing it wrong. Not a super deep game but very fun. The core mechanic for the "trespassers" (non-cannibals) is figuring out how noisy to be on their turn -- all the good stuff (searching for items [needed to win the game], moving fast) is noisy. Very fun.

NA NA, apparently aka TRIO on BGA. Set collection plus memory, kind of. Another fun short game from the Japanese design scene. You must arrange cards in order in your hand, lowest to highest (ranging from 1-12). On your turn you can ask people to reveal either the highest or lowest card in their hand. You can ask up to three times, and you can ask yourself too. Or you can turn over cards from a small tableau in the center. If you make a set of three, then it goes in front of you. You win by either winning the set of sevens, OR by winning sets that add or subtract to seven -- e.g. fives and twos (since 5+2=7), or elevens and fours (11-4=7), etc.

Q.E.. 4p, went very weird. One player was so scared of getting too much money that she hardly won any tiles and came in dead last -- except for me, who busted. I kept trying to entice people to bid more with high opening bids when I was the auctioneer, but no dice.

STAR WARS EPIC DUELS. Friend is super into this system and has a bunch of custom stuff that the community made to address balance issues. I was Mace Windu (with backup clone troopers) vs. Han and Chewie, managed to win at the last second. A nice and breezy mix of tactics and terrain usage.

---

Yesterday with my normal group:

STIFLING DARK. One-vs-many horror game of hidden movement. The gimmick is that there's flashlight overlays you can put down at the end of your turn, and the bad guy has to consult his map and put anything visible onto the main board. You're trying to run around an abandoned sawmill looking for evidence, enough of which lets you learn how to exorcise the Freddy-like killer and put an end to him. The killer can't attack you if you're in the light, so there's a deductive element of tracking where he could have gone, using flashlights to cut off his movement, and so on. Overall it's okay, but the fiddliness keeps it from seriously competing with Fury of Dracula.

MONOLYTHS. Puzzly tower-builder with tetris pieces. Unoffensive.