What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

wkover wrote: Lots of Space Cadets: Away Missions in these parts. But we keep screwing up rules that make the game impossible to win. E.g., we thought that war thralls appeared with a brain-in-a-jar already in their possession, which - it turns out - makes scenario #3 insanely difficult.

Yep -- that would radically increase the deadliness of that Alien token and likely turn an easy 2-player mission into a nightmare. At least you discovered your error...!

Hopefully your self-imposed extra difficulty level won't discourage you from continuing the campaign -- we're dying to read some reports about the later scenarios.

Either way, posts like this make me wonder how else we might have communicated the rules to avoid such confusion from such experienced gamers.

My latest On the Table post talks about all the games I played last week while I was in Illinois on business. I lived there for 10 years before moving here, and I stayed with my friend Dave, who is also a gamer. The games mentioned:

Codenames, Nexus Ops, Imperial Settlers, Eminent Domain: Microcosm, Theseus, RESISTOR_, Cthulhu Realms, Omen, Welcome to the Dungeon, Tiny Epic Defenders, Lost Legacy: The Starship, and Zeppelin Attack.

I also mention that Chaos in the Old World game I talked about before, and the player aid that was suggested here:

My alma mater! I miss C-U.

Dutch wrote: Either way, posts like this make me wonder how else we might have communicated the rules to avoid such confusion from such experienced gamers.

First off, there's no arguing that I am getting older and dumber. That doesn't help.

The issue, I think, is that we tend to rely on the reference cards rather than look in the actual rulebook. That has hurt us more than once. For instance, with the sonic repulsor, it wasn't until our 3rd or 4th game that we understood that pushing "away" could mean diagonally; we always thought 'away' meant in a straight line. (This is clear in the rulebook, but not necessarily on the card itself.)

I don't have the enemy reference cards in front of me, but in the case of the war thrall the text says something like "starts turn with brain-in-a-jar, which it immediately picks up". (The text is actually not this misleading. I just don't have the card in front of me.)

What you meant, obviously, was that IF the war thrall begins its activation in the same space as a brain-in-a-jar, it picks it up. We interpreted 'starts' as 'the war thrall starts with a brain-in-a-jar during initial placement". It probably didn't help that, conceptually, it made sense to us that war thralls were primarily designed to serve as brain vehicles - so why not start with one?

So really, the fault was mostly ours. But changing the grammar a bit on the reference card (and in the rules?) couldn't hurt. But hey, if we were the only group out of 150 game owners to make this mistake, it's clearly our fault.

Big update here to cover a couple of weeks.

Two games of Cave Evil, different groups. The 4 player game was a total failure. It went about 4.5 hours and had little fighting. The 3 player game was a huge success, it took 2.5 hours and had an awesome finale. I can't get this game to work with 4 people. Every time there is so little incentive to go out in the middle area and try to deal with 3 potential enemies and so much time is spent constantly looking at the opponent's stacks. With 3 I can come up with a plan to deal with my 2 opponents. I ran into the middle and had a gas bomb and a killer stack, so each opponent could be pinned down. 4 is just too much. The finale of the 3 player game with the jump-into-the-Pit win condition had my necro and two killer stacks standing right next to the pit before it activated. I used my gas bomb on one guy and only rolled a 1 on a D4; the gas would only prevent him from leaving his lair for one turn - this is a problem because his necro is uber-buffed and could destroy me (Psychomancer of Fire dude). Then the other guy walked almost right up to my necro and used the spell Chaotic Collapse and my necro was stuck under a cave in. And then the Pit was active. I had to play kingmaker since my necro couldn't dig out in time and sent my armies against the jackass that collapsed me in and killed him. The following turn my other opponent ran next to my necro and used his Psychomancer ability and destroyed me - we ruled it still killed me even though I'm under rubble and couldn't attack. Fun game.

Couple more games of Cthulhu Wars. I'm still a fan and am likely to back the new KS at the full level. Unique factions really gets me, although with only the 4 base factions I'm seeing alot more things scripted as I destroy different groups of noobs I teach the game too. Another game where the person most familiar with it has a huge advantage.

Space Empires! First play of my copy with 2 players. I liked this alot. It definitely needs some flavor and unique-ness to each side through the race cards in the expansions otherwise it feels a little too vanilla for my taste. Offense won easily in the two games I've played and thats a big selling point to me - no turtling in space. The rules aren't bad and make sense for the most part but the game could really use a summary sheet and I haven't found anything great on BGG either.

Forbidden Stars. My third time playing it and this is another one I like alot. The rules are kind of a beast and arbitrary at times, like limiting the amount of tokens you can have and planet troop/build limits, but it does make sense from a gameplay perspective and helps move the game along. The warp storms are really irritating if one person jumps ahead and the other two just pin down his sectors though, but meh. Combat takes long but I enjoy it. One of the guys I taught didn't like the game much, the other one was a fan. Disliked it because it was too confrontational and had too much of a spatial element, so it just wasn't the type of game he would ever like. 3 player game took maybe 2.5 hours and both opponents were noobs. It will take more than a couple plays of this with the same group for everyone to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each faction's combat cards, which is both good and bad. Bad because nothing ever gets routine play for me but good because there is something new in the strategy to learn after each play. I wish I knew more people that liked this game.

Twilight Struggle and the US dominated. My first hand was mostly 3 and 4 value ops cards. By the start of the mid-war the score was 0 and the US was dominating ME, Europe, and it was even in Asia with the US already controlling some battlegrounds in the Americas and Africa. The game ended on round 9 and I had one bad hand the whole game as the US. I failed maybe 1-2 coup rolls and my opponent couldn't roll for shit either on coups, realignments, or space race. Close to the most lopsided game of TS I've played against an equally experienced opponent. By turn 6-7 the US maintained a double digit score.

Omen: Reign of War. A short 2 player filler game with awesome artwork and some hand management. I like this game alot too. It is confrontational and more strategic than something like Star Realms because you actually get to play cards from your hand rather than straight deckbuild and flip. The Omega Deluxe version includes classy metal coins too for all the suckers out there like me.

Cyclades with Titans last night. I've played this only once and was very unhappy with it when we used the entire expansion, including the items. I excluded the items for this game. Titans improves the game alot for me by giving everyone with a Titan a way of moving. I'm not sure if I favor the continent map over the island map though, I felt very disconnected from the other continent as opposed to the island map where most things are a couple of boats away. Boats are still critical though in Titans as a way of capturing another metropolis and the bidding for both Kronos and Poseiden(sp) was high for most of the game. Titans really shortened the length of the game too by automatically placing free buildings on the map every time Kronos came up. Took about 2 hours to play. I don't think everyone enjoyed the game, but some people will always complain when they miss a possible move and get taken advantage of in this type of game.

was your TS game using the updated deck where the USSR is less powerful?

Dutch wrote: Hopefully your self-imposed extra difficulty level won't discourage you from continuing the campaign -- we're dying to read some reports about the later scenarios.

There's a LOT of ground to cover to reach those scenarios.

Last time I played a few weeks ago during the (Canadian) Thanksgiving long weekend, at my brother's place:
Played scenarios 1-3 (my first time on 3, so choosing between LOTS of Rocketeer Equipment cards) with my brothers and my dad, victory on all 3. Failure on my part for spilling a glass of port all over my scenario book.
Next evening, my brother calls over a couple of neighbours for another game night, so I set up scenario 5 (first for 5-6 players), lots of preparation, then teach the googly-eyed newbies the rules telling them not to worry, things are simple, and choosing the cards before having ever played the game was probably the hardest thing for them to do. They really LOVED the game, and it wasn't as overwhelming as they thought it would be with everything layed out on the table. One of them even took a picture with his phone to show another of his gamer friends who allegedly buys many games.

Red Alert stage was a huge concern though as enemies were piling up on the escape elevator (with 6 players you really scan those tiles pretty quickly), we had some really close calls with near-deaths, but we managed to research that schematic which lets you choose any Rocketeer card, so we grabbed some of those stun pellets (and even rescued the harmonica guy so had another option) to clear the room and make our escape. Game was looong (my brother even left for about 30 minutes to put his youngest to bed, came back wondering about what he'd miss, was surprised to find out he didn't even miss a single turn), as we'd discuss what was best (so many options with 6 players), but exciting none-the-less and didn't FEEL long. Maybe 3 hours of game time, outside of set up and clean up.

One thing we were wondering: when you need to draw another Alien chit, do you put it back in the draw pile when you're done or must you wait until you go through the whole pile, then shuffle them back?

I'm not sure what the updated deck is. I've always played using my copy of TS with the optional cards and no Chinese Civil War variant. 2014 Deluxe edition.

Yeah, those optional cards bridge that gap. I think both sides are equally capable of winning with that now. I still play the heavily favoured USSR version since I need to handicap myself badly against the people I play.

I really need to get a new copy of that game.

wkover wrote: But changing the grammar a bit on the reference card (and in the rules?) couldn't hurt. But hey, if we were the only group out of 150 game owners to make this mistake, it's clearly our fault.

Yeah, there are a couple of post-pub tweaks that I would love to make to those Alien cards. We're generally pretty happy with the lack of errata (or any frequently asked questions), and so far it seems as if the rulebook itself is error-free. But we had the real estate on those luxuriously huge equipment cards to write more explicit notes.

Either way, I hope you stick with it. Al & I really need our friends to get good at the game so we can start playing more actively again (co-op games are already vulnerable to the "alpha gamer" syndrome -- nobody likes a loudmouth designer at the table!).

Glad to hear you're spreading the word up north! (Did you happen to notice where the little character bio says Captain Ben Riggs grew up?)

Columbob wrote: One thing we were wondering: when you need to draw another Alien chit, do you put it back in the draw pile when you're done or must you wait until you go through the whole pile, then shuffle them back?

During Red Alert, draw new Alien tokens from the unused ones. If you manage to run though all the spares, cycle them all back and make a new draw pile.

Chaz wrote: They already made a video game. It's called Monster Hunter. It's pretty cool. More killing dragons and dinosaurs, less grimdark though. This thing is absolutely an attempt to mix Monster Hunter and Dark Souls, and turn it into a board game.

Yeah, the guy who owned this mentioned that Monster Hunter existed. I looked up getting a 3DS and Monster Hunter... (IV?) and it came out to about $160. Much less than KD:M. But can you get Gobbled Up by a stomach-mouth? Probably not! I love all the little d10 resolution tables. Swingy as heck, but just fun.

My brother from out of town visited this weekend, and his stepson came to visit. While the rest of our family played Mexican Train dominoes, we played...

MtG: Arena of the Planeswalkers - I bought a copy a couple of months ago, and finally got to give it a try. There was a three-player scenario in there, and we played that. I was a little disappointed by it as a whole. I thought the manual kind of sucked, and the gameplay and figures were okay, not great.

Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery - Another one that I had bought earlier this year and never opened until last night. That one did not disappoint. I'm breaking that one out for the coworkers next time we have a gaming day.

Went over to the ex wife's who set up MtG Arena of the Planeswalkers for the first time. She had read the rules. I chose Nyssa, she chose Gideon. Then she stared at the board, then at me, then the rulebook, then at me before saying, ''i have no idea how to explain or teach this game''. Handed me the rulebook and I left with it' next Sunday I'm guessing we'll make another attempt.

Played Pandemic Legacy.

I don't like Pandemic, but i do like Legacy. Pandemic definitely becomes more interesting when you don't know whats going to happen at game end, or even halfway through. The designers have wielded Legacy to good effect and the game does have a solid narrative thread as new threats emerge, new abilities and new relationships between characters. However...

It is still Pandemic. We played the first three games, won first two, lost third. I felt a bit done by the third. Not sure how i feel about playing the next 9 months (max two games per month) out. That's a lot of games of Pandemic, gonna need some stamina as my friends want to play it through as a group. I will probably enjoy it if the sessions are spaced out well but it does feel a bit daunting.

Also played a 6 player game of Impulse which i won. A rarity. Then lots of TIchu, then Spyfall. Spyfall is definity better with more players, but it does require the player to be fairly familiar with locations.