What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

After no game night for quite a while, we got a 4 person game of Nemesis: Lockdown going last night. One person was new. Setup took a long time as I was pretty out of practice. Then the teach, which really wasn't too bad.

I was the Sentry, and we had the Survivor, Xenobiologist, and the Hacker. My objective was to send the signal and set the Alarm sequence. Luckily for me, both of my conditions were very close to each other, and the Isolation Chamber wasn't too far from me either. My plan was to trigger the alarm sequence and then Isolate. The only thing that could still fuck me then was the Contingency Plan (a corporate failsafe that is randomly in play each game; you are supposed to do various things during the game to deduce exactly what plan is in place, but I ignored it).

Once things started popping off, the Hacker ran afoul of several xenos, including the Queen. They tried to escape, but the Queen nailed them with a serious wound, and a special effect due to darkness that killed them if they had 2 serious wounds, which they did. First casualty, and it was on turn 3... so they sat around a bit.

Things went pretty easily for me, and I got cozy in the isolation chamber around turn 8. Turn 12 was to be the end of the game thanks to my Alarm. The xenobiologist also got killed, and the Survivor made it to the isolation chamber as well. They almost went for a CSS pod, and they were glad they didn't, because it didn't launch and they would have died.

The Contingency plan was to kill anyone with less than 4 knowledge; I had 1, and the Survivor had 5. So after surviving all the way to the end, I was still murdered by the Corporation, and the Survivor won. It was a pretty great game of Nemesis.

3p game day yesterday.

TIGER & DRAGON x2. I won both times but it was close.

PAX PAMIR 2e. First time playing this in person. There's a lot going on but it's really fun. I think it would be even better with a full 5p.

TRIO x2. Won one, lost one. For "Go Fish, plus Memory" it's shockingly fun.

STARTUPS x2. Won one, lost one.

Also had a few "chaiders," cider with chai-style spices. Local brewery (cidery?) makes them as a seasonal special. Really good although too sweet to be a regular choice.

Yesterday was an oddly full day of gaming. My Vampire: Chapters crew was coming over in the afternoon, but my gaming table was covered with a half-finished solitaire four-hero game of Marvel Champions. I was playing slightly tuned decks for Cable/leadership, Domino/justice, Angel/protection, and Deadpool/'pool, against Stryfe, who is an evil Cable. So I finished my solitaire game (and won) and put it away before noon.

Vampire: Chapters was okay. The first two chapters were side-bar solo adventures for the newly-unlocked Lasombra character. They weren't especially interesting chapters, but there was a nice surprise ending in the second one. We are now 60% of the way through the campaign, and very engaged with the story despite the mediocre combat systems and the frustrating errors that were missed by the designers.

I went to a very odd birthday party in the evening, and the invite encouraged people to bring board games. The setting was a shoestring startup basement-level mead hall called Bumbling Fools (for the bumble bee reference). The mead was excellent. The bar area was so small that it felt a little crowded with a dozen people, but it was nicely decorated with bee-themed art and a yellow and black color scheme. They also had a party room that was several steps below a dive bar in ambience, but there was music and good lighting for board games. About 35 people showed up.

Although I spent most of the evening talking with goths and goth-adjacent folk at the party, I did get in a four-player game of Kill Doctor Lucky. Fun game, and multiple bystanders wanted to know more about the game afterwards. There was also a dwarf watching us play, and he had leaned hard into a Tyrion Lannister resemblance. At one point, I jokingly referred to the Lancaster Room as the Lannister Room, and he genuinely appreciated the reference.

For a change of scene, Nathan invited me and Eddie over to his house to play the brainburner Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition. After agreeing to go and my drive to his house, I thought... "This is going to suck. But, he is my friend." I hadn't played TI in over 12 years, and that was without the expansions, making it a slog. Even Nathan joked about it, "Scott, while driving to my house, 'FUCK! Why did I agree to this? Maybe I can flip my car again.'" I told him the truth that yeah, I was thinking I made a mistake, but I did commit to play. So, here I am.

Eddie came late, and after a long explanation of the rules, we began in earnest. I was the Diplomatic Space Turtles, Nathan was Kajit Have Wares if You Have Coin, and Eddie was Imperial March Themed race.

We played for 5 hours and we had to call it at 7:00 p.m. Nathan was so far ahead, that he would have won in the following round, we just didn't have another 45 minutes to play it out. I did set Nathan's secret objective back when I turned Mecatrol Rex into a Holy Site, and he couldn't build anything there. Nathan had a standing fleet, but quickly retreated when Eddie cloned his ass off and I took the warfare strategy card that had a ton of bonus tokens on it. I moved my fleet on the opposite side of Eddie's fleet and used my flagship to soften up the Hacanese.

After a lot of dawdling, Nathan retreated. I then peacefully annexed the site with Diplomacy. I then let Eddie take it soon after. It was a good game, a lot less painful than the game I played over a decade ago.

I should sell my TI3 plus Shattered Empires. They are large shelf toads that I will likely never play. I have played a few games, with someone else's set, but mine remains unpunched. Every game ends the same way for me, with a loss and a brain sizzling like fresh bacon. I love the concept of the game, but wish there was a lot less open information on the table.

Shellhead wrote: I should sell my TI3 plus Shattered Empires. They are large shelf toads that I will likely never play. I have played a few games, with someone else's set, but mine remains unpunched. Every game ends the same way for me, with a loss and a brain sizzling like fresh bacon. I love the concept of the game, but wish there was a lot less open information on the table.

Yeah, WAY TOO MUCH shit to keep track of.

Slayed one of my shelf toads this week and got a game of Cosmic Frog in. Once you get over that initial hump of conveying the bizarre theme, the play is really snappy. My initial pitch to my friends was "set-collection Smash Bros. with a bonkers theme." The highlight was probably me having a full gullet and getting attacked five times in a row, while finally losing on the fifth time, and then the last two cards in the deck being mine. Painful, but in a hilarious way. This is one I could myself bringing to public events or for lighter gamers, with conveying the weird terms being what I anticipate being the main challenge. Also, sweet Jesus that art made me into an aesthetic I never realized I liked before.

COFFEE RUSH. Not sure how I feel about this. Players are baristas trying to fulfill drink orders as quickly as possible. Every time you complete an order, the next two people after you get a new order -- so as you rack up points, you are also making them get backed up. At the end of the turn, orders age one spot on your player board; after the fourth turn they dropped off your board and become negative points, as your customers leave in disgust. To collect the ingredients for the drinks, all players are moving around on a 4x4 grid, picking up things they pass over. Your meeples have little aprons on, so of course you should call them "bareeples," which is one of the ugliest words I have ever heard in the English language. The game is ridiculously overproduced; each ingredient is a little plastic piece -- a wee bar of chocolate, a drop of milk, a clear puff of steam (for the hot drinks), etc. It's kind of fun and has a very frantic feeling as more orders get slammed onto your queue -- very Diner Dash. However it's at heart an optimization exercise as you run around the board to get ingredients. I'd like the ingredient board better if it was a row, to better simulate actually being behind an espresso bar. The rarity of the ingredients is also weird; there are two spots where you can get milk and coffee, but only one where you can get chocolate, which is one of the most common drink ingredients. Maybe there's good gameplay reasons for it, but as a guy who slung a lot of coffee in his salad days, it just made me grouchy. 2/5, maybe 3/5? I'd play again.

POLLEN, a Knizia tile-laying game (but with cards). Classic pasted-on theme and kind of meandering. 2/5, would play again but I'd rather play something else.

Then stuff I've talked about upthread: Tiger & Dragon, Silver Screen, Pears.

So a recap of games played on my two week, 2 smallish game con road trip in which I drove 1875 miles. Other than the hellacious first day of driving 10 hours, half of which was thru a snowstorm it was a breeze. This is an aggregate of the two long weekends, one featuring five days of gaming and the other four.



ATLANTIC STORM x3 . All three games were played using the old AH edition; while the new LnL edition has some interesting card additions and changes, they fucked up the background on the cards graphically , which pisses us off olds . Also got in a play of PACIFIC TYPHOON .


JOHN COMPANY x3. I came nowhere close to winning any of them, but I still enjoy the game. The first, a five player game went an amazing six turns before the company collapsed and the deregulation vote failed as people seemed confident in the company which of course proved sadly misplaced. One turn we had I think 42 revenue, which resulted in multiple dividend payouts even. Then we got 4 events in India and the elephant ran amok. The second game with four players saw the company flounder pretty early on, with the company failing on turn 3 due to some inauspicious trade rolls. Since the collapse only took like 90 minutes, we reset, thinking we'd learn from our mistakes. I found myself in charge of the company and set up the first turns trading and military in what I thought was an ideal position. We had 3 key die rolls we needed to make, all of them 80% to succeed. I think we hit one of them. The second turn we regrouped and tried again and we missed two more and that was that. I wish we had kept exact track of the cascade of shite luck, it was truly epic .


PLUM ISLAND HORROR x3. I think I've cracked the code on the game in terms of winning on the normal difficulty; there are certainly ways to ratchet it up. The expansion looks like it will add a fair amount of both variety and difficulty. I've got a half dozen total plays out of it and don't even own it ( I borrowed a friends copy for the road trip ) . It will solitaire easy...but I don't see myself getting a copy. Six plays out of any game these days is good. I'd certainly play it again in the absence of any other game that a group of four could agree on .


WAR OF THE RING CARD GAME x3. This game gets better and better. I've logged 9 plays total, but between how differently each of the four factions plays as well as the variety due to how each players cards come out its still got very long legs. The last of the three games was probably the most interesting. Playing the Elves/Dunadain, my Hobbit partner and I drew the cards that directed us towards a "ring rush" strategy where we activated either adjacent or following paths mid round . So while there are a possible 9 rounds ( for 9 paths ) the game only went 6. The Shadow players were starting to fall behind points wise, but had some good stuff in reserve. And due to an early game draw on my part of all the Hobbit items ( Lembas, Elven Cloak, Mithril Coat ) with no Hobbits showing up to wield them, I gradually had to get rid of them . The final path saw the Shadow players dump like 6 Corruption in a desperate attempt to catch up, but each time we were able to match it with the previously discarded items coming back out. The path ended in a tie, which we scored and I think the final score was like 21-15. I can't wait for the 5/6 player expansion due out later this year. Which leads to....


DUNE IMPERIUM UPRISING x2 . One play was the usual 4 player ( my first time FtF for UPRISING ) . The second play was the 6 player version. Basically, there are four normal players , two per team. Then the 5th/6th players are commanders - one Emperor and one Paul Atreides. They place sort of pseudo agents - they go to spaces, but they can't get troops, they recruit them for one of their allies. They can use the influence gained by either ally to access spaces with faction requirements, as well as give combat effects . It's also a bit more thematic - each commander has their own alliance track that only they can use. Emperor players can't use sandworms, Atreides players can't use the Mentat space. While the 6p board has a few more spaces, with a minimum 4 more agents placed per turn, blocking puts more emphasis on timing and spies. We thought the Atreides side would run away with the game with being the only side able to play worms, but I got my allies into position to win the late game conflicts and the initial final scoring was a tie til one Atreides player had an end game VP Intrigue card. I really like the 6P version and look forward to playing it again. That said base 4P Uprising is clearly superior to base OG DUNE IMPERIUM, content wise it feels more like a base plus mini expansion and the factions have been smoothed out so that each has something to offer instead of some being clearly better than others from a board space access point. Spies allow both card draw as well as infiltration opportunities.


7 WONDERS ARCHITECTS x2 Simple, fast , can be entertaining when you screw either player adjacent to you . Don't overthink it and you'll be fine.


ANGOLA x 2 One game I was Yellow ( commies ) the other I was Blue ( rabble rousing interlopers ? ) . Lost as the commies, won as Blue. The Blue game saw a slow methodical approach where all my initial locations were concentrated; I formed a large kill stack and cleared Novo Lisboa after a long grinding siege. The coup de grace saw my South African Air force carpet bomb a defending stack stripping away the last of its supporting infantry; the resulting combat eliminated several brigades and a tank unit, after which the red faction had like 8 units on the entire map and we called it around turn 8.


HEAT PEDAL TO THE MEDAL x2. One game was the base game since we had a couple new players ; the other base but drafting three cards to add to your deck. Given the choice, I'd never go back to base as the additional cards add some nice variety as well as reduce the sameness of everyones deck being the exact same composition. I still think the tracks aren't quite as interesting as Formula De, but given the gameplay is FAR superior ( instead of just rolling dice ) I think it has fired the older game in terms of fast light racing games. Just don't play with plodding overthinking AP prone fun murderers.


LAS VEGAS x2


SPACE BASE x2


CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD. I had to look up my last play on BGG it was nearly 8 years ago. FAR too long. After a brief skimming to refresh myself with the rules ( we were all a bit rusty ) we were off. I was Slaneesh, so I was looking to ruin regions with Nobles and Heroes. Unfortunately while the game starts with Nobles on the map, but no Heroes ever came out. I still got 2 clicks on the first turn, but on Turn 2 Tzeentch hit me with forcing 2 Chaos cards to be discarded which really crippled me. Khorne, after whiffing early was not only racking up clicks, but racking up VP which I had told the table was unusual "Khorne usually wins on clicks", As it turned out, Khorne finished with 45 VP, narrowly losing to Tzeentch getting 50 VP on like the fifth turn. I am definitely gonna get this game back into my "bring to every con" kit . WBC for sure as I know I can get a game in there. What was also refreshing about the game is that it has a smallish footprint, sets up and tears down fast and the box is on the small side compared to the current crop of Ameritrash games. . A bit of a throwback in that regard these days. Hard to believe its 15 years old. The gaming world was a lot different back then.

DECATHLON : The traditional wrap up game on Sunday morning, we got a record 12 athetes vying for the title. To speed play we had two sets of dice and two record keepers. I randomly picked Dan O'Brien, whose good events are all on the first day. Unfortunately he suffered a serious injury on the third event, using up 2 of his 3 injury points . I was hobbled the rest of the day and his Day 2 events were not his strong suit. Amazingly not a single player was knocked out due to injury. Sean McCulloch repeated as champion; the accounting firm of Do-we Cheatem and Stein has been retained to audit the results to check for....irregularities.



DUNE IMPERIUM. Base game, as two players were fairly new. Its rather jarring to play the base game after mostly playing IX and IMMORTALITY. Interestingly right after the base game we played the 6P UPRISING and the new players did just fine - in fact one of them provided the game deciding tie breaker when he flipped over an end game Intrigue card giving his side the extra VP to win the game.


DOWNFALL CONQUEST OF THE THIRD REICH: Bryan and I had played a few turns over VASSAL the week prior to get him up to speed on the rules. We set up the campaign game, with him taking Soviet/Western Germans witrh me taking Allies/East Germans. The first several turns Bryan had horrendous die rolling. We're talking averaging I swear like a 5....on 2d6. Which if you've seen the DOWNFALL CRT, is not good if you're on the attack at low odds. He was definitely in the Stein zone. Finally on turn 3 or so I got some units pocketed - which mean they die and never come back. This forced me to pull back to the Dneipr in the south and back to the edge of the Pripyet marshes up north. Meanwhile I took my time clearing Africa, but managed to kill both German units that start down there, which meant I wouldn't face the elite unit later in France. I skipped over Sicily and landed at Taranto taking advantage of a gap in the Initiative Track. We stopped about halfway thru the game as other games like ANGOLA and DUNE IMPERIUM sucked us away. I think in following turns the Soviets would have really hammered the Germans in the east.

DUNE WAR FOR ARRAKIS. The shiny new KS from CMON hit the table. My opponent Jeff had only played once and I had only played the solo bot for a few turns. He took the Harkonnen and I took Atreides. From a design lineage standpoint, the parallels to WAR OF THE RING are very evident ( same designers) . You have one side ( Atreides ) with less action dice both trying to defend against a military takeover of their spaces also trying to achieve a quest - in this case satisfying a rotating set of cards that give points to allow Paul to ascend to Muad Dib status. However there are some notable differences as well. Here, the Atreides can pass when they have fewer dice, taking a Desert Power action. This allows either placing Worm tokens ( which when revealed may summon a worm ) or attacking with worms already on the map. The game starts with a fair number of Harkonnen forces, but between combat, worm attacks, and end of turn storm attrition, they'll get whittled down and be forced to burn dice to recuit more to keep up. As the Atreides I suffered from a lack of focusing on the questing part, spending my time reacting to Harkonnen moves and destroying spice harvesters - which can grant points towards achieving your goal b wasn't fast enough. If anything this game plays "faster" than WAR OF THE RING it seems. I think the Atreides will have a steeper learning curve as they have fewer action dice and while Desert Power can help slow down the Harkonnens, it still doesn't change the fact you only get four dice per turn, not counting one time use Bene Gesserit tokens. The game play flows nicely, rules seem clean and even as newbs doesn't take too long.


IMPERIAL STRUGGLE. Been awhile since I played; a random roll gave me the French. The early game saw me gain ground in Europe, while losing ground ( and eventually conceding ) the Caribbean. I started to build up North America. My British opponent would tend to dominate the trade goods more often than not throughout the game. Throughough the first three turns, the VP score would end each turn tied at 15 after all the back and forth scoring for wars, regions, etc. My one saving grace was building up a steady advantage in India as well as North America. It would lead me to winning the American Revolution, which both knocked him out of the Carolinas and isolating many of his markets. He did take over one of my Caribbean territories but I didn't play a single OP down there after like Turn 2, so that was no surprise. On the final era, I got 3 VP for controlling more forts and squadrons in India and 3 more VP for having more available Debt. Given the final score was French/22, those 6 VP were almost my entire difference of victory. I really like this game.


QUACKS OF QUEDLINBURG


RA


WAR OF THE RING. I had hoped to play with the new KINGS OF MIDDLE EARTH expansion but that didn't happen. I did play Rob in a refresher game as he hadn't played in a while. My Shadow forces overwhelmed his FP while the Fellowship was dithering about in the wastes north of Dagorlad. He rolled a ton of muster dice and while this allowed him to buff up the Dwarves and North, I was able to overrun Rohan, Gondor, and Lorien fell for the 10th VP.


A STUDY IN EMERALD. First edition, natch, not that watered down shite second edition. Sean was new to the game as was Lisa but both pick up quick, so after a quick teach we were off. I was a Loyalist, and decided with Prof Moriarty available and strong opening hand allowing me to lock him up quickly, I made my Cthulu loyalty pretty open early on. Sean meanwhile started sacrificing agents to the evil ones so his Loyalist tendencies were obvious as well. Unforunately for him, it seemed every agent he recruited was working for someine else, as I think three different times he was double crossed ! Rob was playing it coy so people were reluctant to trigger the game end not knowing what side he was on. Finally Rob triggered game end I think, only to find that three of us were Loyalists; with Sean in last it meant the one lone Restorationist, Lisa, won ! This game is always a hoot, and like CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD deserves more play time. There is a third editon of sorts coming out this year, Cthulu Dark Providence, set in what looks to be the Arkham universe with what looks to be rules closer to this edition, but with less thematic artwork IMO. I'm def keeping this edition.

I tried out a group of strangers for potential of regular play and was introduced to their favourite game, called Lost Ruins of Arnak. It looked nice in that ‘I ate two pounds of cardboard and puked on the table’ kind of way of older FFG titles; except there is no map, just areas to put stuff. One look at the setup will tell you if it’s for you, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. One guy was so enthusiastic about it he was happy to sit at the sidelines because it only supports 4. I mentioned I had stuffed a very good game called Modern Art in my coat pocket that played five, but they had never heard of it and we were off to an ‘expedition’ in the ‘jungle’ including ‘fighting’ monsters to get ‘treasure’.

What that actually means is ‘get resources of one or another kind or get even more resources of a different kind’ to advance on a VP track that is basically a list spelling out the whole game for you: which resources you will need at what time to advance, no surprises’. Also no interaction, naturally. The most emotional moment in the following three hours was when I wanted to draw a certain card and didn’t, thas was actually slightly annoying. Overall, this is not what I consider a fun time.

It got a wee bit awkward when they asked me how I liked it and I told them. I tried my best to put it as nicely as possible, said it just wasn’t for me and when pressed that I prefer games with a narrative that evoke emotions. Judging by the look on their faces they found that to be quite strange.

Attended a Star Wars Unlimited prerelease this weekend. Built a Jyn Erso control deck that patiently emphasized a clear board until turn six when it could begin to build a hand and press the advantage. Deck only included three rare or legendary cards and never even played one of them. Won every match and went home with an extra ten booster packs. Those are the sorts of things that definitely sweeten one’s memories.

Solid little game. There’s no single mechanic to point to and celebrate. It may even be the least exciting competitive card game to come out of Fantasy Flight. Game of Thrones had the plot deck. Netrunner had the asymmetry of corp and runner. Conquest had its lane battles.

They’re all dead, though, and Unlimited feels like it can go the distance. Those all had wild sparks of inspiration, but Fantasy Flight dumped the entire line on a single designer and left online deck builders to the community to build. This just feels complete as a product. The official deck builder is great, there are already draft and multiplayer rules, and the packs are generous in quantity and minimum one guaranteed chase card. Fantasy Flight as never moved particularly quick on bans and restrictions, but I actually trust them to make the right decisions when so much has already been so well thought out.

And yet I’m not sure if I’ll keep up with it. The local meta has to form first, but I don’t think it’s the right time in my life for a game like this. LCG’s have spoiled me. I don’t want to chase rares and legendaries to build my decks after I was able to have a complete collection with one purchase. I don’t have the time for full-day tournaments. If I did have the time for weekly meet-ups, I’d rather spend them on my board games.

We’ll see. Very much worth checking out if you do enjoy collectible games.

Just got done with my first game of Root in about 18 months. Happy to say I still enjoy the game! It was a 4 player game with the Riverfolk, Keepers of Iron, Woodland Alliance, and Lizard Cult. For one person, it was their first game ever and the rest of us tried factions we never played before. I was the Riverfolk and found it interesting how I had to think about my cards and anticipate things given anyone else would be able to snag them. Plus, it meant my whole hand was open information which meant I had to handle cards like ambushes very differently.

I misplayed early on when I went after the Keepers without leaving my trading posts protected. It feels like the Otters can truly snowball but that hinges on being able to protect your trading posts to avoid losing HALF of your funds. The Lizards struggled as the only faction that was truly aggressive were the Keepers, who don't have a large enough map presence to be forced to engage with the Lizards. The Alliance snowballed hard after a very quiet few rounds. I knew they could, but it looked so inconspicuous before the rest of us realized it was too late. The Keepers scored 15 in one round thanks to scoring several relics, so the rest of us focused on them, the Lizards mainly financing me as they had reserves to spare. As we focused on the Keepers, the Alliance built up enough officers so they came back for the win with a 12 point round, right before the Keepers would've won.

Even though I got last place, it was a great time and it makes me immediately want to play again. Even if I was a bad salesman whose main customer was a cult! XD

You can end your legendary Unlimited career with a W.

So my friend brought over the Starter Set for Star Wars Unlimited, the new FFG CCG .  I was leery given what I think is some god awful artwork. And we had just spent the last few sessions playing Magic Commander decks from the Lord of the Rings set last year so my impressions may be colored by that - I felt those decks conveyed a surprising amount of theme in them for a short duration card game. 


Game play is very straightforward, simpler than MTG ( at least for now ) .  We were playing within about five minutes. 

Did I mention the artwork is ugly AF?

I knew that going in the starter decks were both smaller ( 50-60 IIRC ) vs a Commander deck ( 100 cards ) . What was surprising was how many duplicate cards were in the decks. As the Empire I had multiple copies of relatively high cost cards like Tarkin ( 4 ) which is unique to boot. Now I know that in competitive Magic duplicate cards are used in constructed decks to increase the chance of getting key cards.  But FFS at one point I had 3 Vader's Lightsabers in my hand.  There were 3 copies of a 3 point event "I am your Father". I'd have liked to see more variety; tease a potential crack addict with different stuff so they'll buy more or so I would have thought. 


The artwork blows. 


I went 0-4 as the Empire; each game I seemed to start further in the hole while the Rebel scum seemed swimming in shields. The game also feels like it plays "fast" - I think all four games were over by like the 8th round. Not quite as fast as SW Destiny, but fast enough that I have a hard time seeing high cost cards ( I had a 9 cost spaceship I kept ditching/using for Resources ) get into play for any reasonable amount of time . I kept going back to the MTG Commander decks we had been playing which seemed to take more time to develop, stood up better thematically, and weren't god awful ugly .

In fairness to the starter decks, most of the triplicate cards are unique to the starter boxes. If they made them singles, you’d need to buy three for a full set. Which, of course, Fantasy Flight did with so many LCG starter boxes.

It certainly was a choice, though, to base the Han Solo leader art on the Holiday Special animation.