What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I finally got to play Flick em Up today (thanks Sag, for pointing it out to me).. awesome game. Fast, thematic, well packaged. The whole thing looks incredible set up on the table and it really feels like a gun fight in the old west. Much more so than any other game I've played. I never would have thought that this simple flicking mechanism would be so great for so many different titles (Catacombs, Rampage, Flick em Up, Pitchcar) but here we are in 2015 and it's still being used. Everything in Flick em Up is top notch. There are so many little clever design choices. The clock in town that marks turns and lets you know who goes next, the double sided cowboy hats, the rifle system, the dynamite mechanic, the individual boxes for each team with all you need stored right there, the buildings, duels... beautiful game and I can't wait to get more plays in and start to learn more about it.

I was slightly worried that this game would step on Catacombs toes... not so. Both games will stay in my collection since they feel very different from one another. In fact I'm keeping all my flicking titles. Paradise for me since it's one of my favorite things to do in a game.

Last night got a game of Theseus in. It was my opponent's first game, and my greys wiped the floor with his xenos.

Next was my first time playing The Awful Green Things from Outer Space. I liked the random weapon effects aspect of the game. I was the monsters, and most of the weapon effects played out in my favor, so I ended up winning. It was okay but not something I'd really desire to play again.

Played some games at Look Manor as Josh had people over for his Birthday Extravaganza.

Played Code Names, the newish game from Vladda Chavatil (sp?). This is a very light game and I found it mildly amusing. A good party game. You know, a game for family gatherings or after dinner with non gaming friends. Not best in class or anything but ok.

Played the new edition of Fury of Dracula as well. I am pleased to announce that every change was for the better from 2nd edition. Combat has been vastly improved by the elimination of initiative numbers and the die roll. Now I love dice so for me to say that you know the new system has got to be leaps and bounds above the old. Simpler, faster, more intuitive and maintains the same feel.

The elimination of encounter chits and replacing them with full size cards that have the effects clearly spelled out on them is also great.

Dracula getting stronger the longer the game goes is a great change and acts as a sort of game timer. If that clock goes around three full times, Dracula is going to win, or so it seems.

The elimination of "resolve" and "teleport" events are positive changes. That card that allowed Dracula to get away by teleportation always seemed lame to me and hunter resolve always seemed a tacked on system to aid balance and tension in the late game.

There are some other changes as well. Dracula takes more damage at sea but the clock doesn't stop running anymore, the hunters turn is split into two segments which I think gives the hunters a better chance to react, allows for more combat (hunters and Dracula can fight at the end of each segment), when pulling cards hunters MUST take an event card which aids Dracula by preventing the "card starve" strategy often used by hunters in the late game to weaken Draculas fighting ability. Scoring is different but the same things that used to score still do for the most part.

Lastly, the art, barring that image on the cover, is actually good to ok depending on which card your looking at. The card backs look better and the board is well laid out as well. I love the sepia tone of the old version but this blood red version is good looking too.

If you are wondering if the new edition is worth getting even if you have the old, I would say absolutely it is.

Hey, I played Codenames last night too! I really liked it, but I'm a fan of word games. I might try to nab a copy at BGG.Con.

I am supposed to be getting a copy of Fury of Dracula to review. I am so excited, it sounds terrific.

It kills me that I've been punching out reviews for six or seven years or so and I have to bloody beg for reviews.

It's pretty clear that I suck at reviews LOL

Played two games of Arena of the Planeswalkers, liked it. I like that it's so fast.

Hey when can Green cast Fog? Before or after the die roll for attack?

Played as Nissa and won both. It was fun

A while back I did some Kickstarter backing, just for the hell of it. Some of those choices were good, many not so good. These days I don't even look at KS anymore. But the final one came in this weekend, Burgle Bros. It's a cooperative heist game where you're infiltrating an office building looking for safes and avoiding guards. It's cleverly done. Hoping to write more on my blog this week, and I'll bring it to Trashfest NE, but here's what I wrote on BGG:

played on 11/8, 4 players

On the one hand, I have to sort of bite my tongue on Kickstarter stuff, at least for a day or so. Burgle Bros was the final remaining game I backed on KS before realizing that many of my backs were pointless and I was better off ignoring it. Burgle Bros got backed because it looked nice and I really liked the heist theme.

It turns out it's a really fun game. It moves away from the direction of many co-ops, with a constant, tenacious threat instead of making you play whack-a-mole with pop-up disasters. The guards are just brutal, and not learning guard management fast will knock you out in no time. It's a tough game (a rule we messed up made it even tougher) but it's a lot of fun to play, and we got a lot of great "story" moments out of it. Like the other game I've seen from Time Fowers, it's got a great look to it. The art by Ryan Goldsberry is top-notch.

However, all is not fantastic here. There is a deck of "Event" cards you can draw from by sacrificing actions. I can't see ANY reason to do so. The events are sort of split between good and bad ones, but the good ones are only sort of okay and several bad ones that can be devastating. Considering you're giving up actions to get them, they are simply not worth it. Furthermore, the events resolve immediately, so even a lot of the "good" ones can be useless if they happen at the wrong time. In our game I went first and decided to grab an event (we had not looked at them in advance) just to see what we got and it was a horrible one that smacked us down right out of the gate. After seeing a few more, and after looking through them after our game (which we lost), I would rather spend actions doing NOTHING than risk that deck.

Second, when we opened our first safe, the loot we got was a Persian Cat, which had an "ability". I looked in the rulebook to understand the ability and there was no mention of it. Heading to BGG, I see this from Fower:

[q]cat is attracted to the nearest room with an alarm icon at the start of the turn of the player holding him. it does not take an action to pick the cat back up once you are in his tile.

Sorry, the loot was a stretch goal and I didn't clarify them in the rules more.[/q]

That is absolutely infuriating and one of my key problems with Kickstarter. You are producing a game, produce that game. I'm already not down with taking a supposedly finished and tested design and then throwing in a bunch of new additional stuff just because you got more cash, but when you don't even include rules about the new additional stuff? Because they were a last-minute addition? That's obnoxious, and does not add to my already shaky confidence in KS games to begin with.

(To be honest, the loot "abilities" can probably just be ignored, especially at first. They add unnecessary difficulty to an already tough task.)

Despite all that I still am glad to have a different kind of cooperative game at hand. Hopefully I can get my co-op-averse group to keep playing.

How eager am I to play again? I'd definitely be up for it.

Is this something I'd like to own? I do.

Rating after first play? If the event cards weren't such a waste, an 8. As is, a high 6.

Played Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!, the second edition kickstarter. Love the game, BUT I hate this new version. The plastic bits are too damned big, and the map too damned small. The colors of the heroes matched the colors of the soldiers, hard to tell them apart. Most of the big monster mini's had warped bases, they fall over.

Overall, I hate these miniatures! And I had to wait three years because of them.

Now to figure out how to trade this copy for the original.

Did I mention, LOVE THE GAME!

Yeah, Burgle Bros. is great. I played with my daughter the other day. The thing about the Events is not that you specifically give up actions to get them, it's that sometimes you will be stuck in a position where you can't move or it wouldn't be wise to do anything. So you might only take 1-2 actions instead of 4, but have to take a chance on the event. I think there's a character that can draw 2 events and choose 1. In that case, that character might want to specifically trigger events. But otherwise, not really.

Yes, the Loots can be ignored, and I think should be. They weren't part of the game when I played the PnP, and seem wonky and underdeveloped. The one I drew the other day was the tiara, which made it virtually impossible to move, so I ditched it.

Chapel wrote: Played Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!, the second edition kickstarter. Love the game, BUT I hate this new version. The plastic bits are too damned big, and the map too damned small. The colors of the heroes matched the colors of the soldiers, hard to tell them apart. Most of the big monster mini's had warped bases, they fall over.

Overall, I hate these miniatures! And I had to wait three years because of them.

Now to figure out how to trade this copy for the original.

Did I mention, LOVE THE GAME!

I bet you could find some sucker to do a straight up trade.

Grudunza wrote: Yeah, Burgle Bros. is great. I played with my daughter the other day. The thing about the Events is not that you specifically give up actions to get them, it's that sometimes you will be stuck in a position where you can't move or it wouldn't be wise to do anything. So you might only take 1-2 actions instead of 4, but have to take a chance on the event.

Have to? Because I would seriously rather do nothing and "waste" actions than draw from that deck.

Yes, drawing an Event is a requirement if you use less than 3 actions. I think it's a good balance for deciding to hole up on a turn. And some of those events are good.

Very few are good, and the good ones aren't nearly as good as the bad ones are disastrous. Also, the bad ones are almost always bad while the good ones can easily be useless given the current situation. Thinking of the event draw as a penalty makes more sense, but again, I would instead figure out janky ways to "use" or "waste" actions than draw from the deck.

Are we still on Burgle Brothers? I can never tell what game people are talking about in this thread.

^yes