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What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

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10 Nov 2015 15:04 #214684 by SuperflyPete
NEW GAME TOPIC:

Got in a 3P game of Hyperborea this afternoon over a long lunch. LONG lunch. Loooooong.

Neat little game, like the 4X-iness of it, like the bag building (I think it's way more interesting than deck building or dice building), like the art mostly.

HATE the fact that the cities tend to be concentric circles of buildings mostly but the ruins are all sort of square-ish. Makes no sense to me. Did the new culture realize that circles>squares or something?

Don't like all the icons. Not at all. I get that they need to have something, but I just don't like the board all muddied up.

Maybe it'll grow on me. I think it's a very solid game, but it seems a bit dry and repetitive. I don't like the "if you have less than 3 minis on the board, you get more free". That's bullshit. I hate catch-up bullshit. No, you should have to give up cubes to buy them back or something.

Anyhow, neat game, might be really good, but as of my first tinkering with it, I'm thinking it's a but underwhel-meh-ng.

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10 Nov 2015 19:47 #214706 by wadenels
Yggdrasil did bag building a long time ago... Does Hyperborea do it differently and/or better?

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10 Nov 2015 23:55 #214740 by hotseatgames
Played a round of Incursion tonight. I was the Reich. I made a grievous error not realizing until it was too late that I could pay CP to kill an opponent's card at any time, and he had a seriously buffed character wipe the floor with me. Cost me the game, really.

That aside, we played mission 4 (Twitcher) which involves the 8 VP tokens on the board, each of which can become a hostile (to both sides) zombie. It was really cool and the most fun I've had with the game so far. I continue to like it.
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11 Nov 2015 00:01 - 11 Nov 2015 00:02 #214741 by Dutch
A buddy of mine and I have started a tradition of playing a game of Star Wars: Epic Duels after every RPG session at my place. What an amazing game -- every match-up is fresh and surprising.

Two-player is really the only way to play it, though. It seems like the game would scale perfectly, but playing with four always seems to increase the play time from a sharp 15 minutes to a bloody, dragged out hour...
Last edit: 11 Nov 2015 00:02 by Dutch.
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11 Nov 2015 06:57 #214748 by chris@everythingepic.us
Chaos in the Old World is Good stuff!

It can be played 5 Fine... the Rat Player is Neat to play.... if you have a good group it works

Cthulhu Wars is Very Similar but a little less complex... Anyone play it yet?

I've played my copy about 3 times so far... pretty fun achievement Spellbook system.

-Chris
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11 Nov 2015 09:08 - 11 Nov 2015 09:08 #214761 by charlest
My daughter (2 on Thursday) started sleeping in an actual bed a couple weeks ago and has done very well for the most part. However, I usually put her to bed and last week when I was gone at Game Night she really struggled. Wife doesn't have the patience and struggling with it. Anyway, this means I had to move my weekly group meetups back to my place, which is what happened last night.

Best part about this is we can play on the pool table again instead of on a crappy plastic folding one that can't fit large games.

Anyway, first play was my current version of Shiv which is very close to being ready to show to the publisher. I don't know if they will end up going for it but I think I've taken it about as far as I can. It did work very well and was enjoyed. No changes came out of the playtest which is a good sign it's wrapping up.

Then we played four player Cthulhu Wars. I was Black Goat and Cthulhu and I built a second gate on first turn. Yellow Sign got desecration on and for some reason Crawling Chaos just wanted to harass me and threaten my cultists. This wasted too much of his time/attention and he took too long getting more power, which probably cost him the game.

Yellow Sign appeared to be dominating early, getting tons of desecration and monsters out. I slowly built up acquiring my spellbooks in what felt like the most efficient order. I hovered around second in Doom points for awhile.

Cthulhu was being played by an inexperienced gamer who I haven't met before. He made some suboptimal moves but eventually got the strategy and started suicide running Cthulhu, which is very scary when you unlock all six spellbooks and have unlimited combat.

I took a little long to get my Dark Young out onto the board but my Rituals of Annihilation were perfectly timed and I held 3 gates for most of the game. Late game it started to turn against me but it was too late. Yellow Sign was pushing on me, CC was catching up and controlling five gates to my two, and Cthulhu was stomping around. I was able to seal the deal due to my cultist sacrifice ability to draw an Elder sign and I ended up with two 3's amongst my 6 elder signs.

Everyone loved it.

We then followed it up with Blood Rage. Playing both of these back to back was amazing, one of the best weeknight sessions of my life. I introduced all 3 to the game and beat the living hell out of them. I felt kind of bad but one of the guys who played wins more than his fair share so I wasn't going to put the training wheels on. I ended up with a score of 195(!), I've never seen anyone get close to that before. Think second place had 120ish.

Extremely fun though and I utilized a strategy of pillaging the lowest hanging fruit and biding time until I could make a move for Yggdrasil late each age. My quest placements were near perfect and I won the battles I needed to while losing the others that helped (8 glory for losing ships).

I had one crazy battle where I triggered a pillage with my ship hoping to lose. I was way outnumbered and did in fact get destroyed but it was in a highly contested area near the top of the map. I received 8 glory for losing my ship, 9 glory for playing a battle card which had everyone discard their battle cards and award me glory equal to the total, and then another 2 glory from my next played battle card (stole from the winner). 19 glory from losing a single battle is insane.
Last edit: 11 Nov 2015 09:08 by charlest.
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11 Nov 2015 09:26 #214764 by Gary Sax
No doubt---for a weeknight that is some pretty meaty stuff.

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11 Nov 2015 09:29 #214765 by SuperflyPete

charlest wrote: Best part about this is we can play on the pool table again instead of on a crappy plastic folding one that can't fit large games.

Putting anything but balls and chalk on a pool table is a crime, or should be.

Anyway, first play was my current version of Shiv which is very close to being ready to show to the publisher. I don't know if they will end up going for it but I think I've taken it about as far as I can. It did work very well and was enjoyed. No changes came out of the playtest which is a good sign it's wrapping up.

I'm still awaiting my proto copy....

@Wade: I never played it, sadly. I think I'd have liked it based on what I've read (co-op, smart...) but I just never got the opportunity.

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11 Nov 2015 09:50 #214766 by charlest

SuperflyTNT wrote:

charlest wrote: Best part about this is we can play on the pool table again instead of on a crappy plastic folding one that can't fit large games.

Putting anything but balls and chalk on a pool table is a crime, or should be.


Nah man it's perfect. Pool tables were doing that recessed hand rail stuff before Geek Chic left its mother's womb.

I just put a couple layers of felt sheets over it to prevent the actual felt surface from getting messed up.
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11 Nov 2015 11:56 #214775 by Scott_F
I'll add to the Argent praise. First game I was kinda meh because I couldn't use my fireball spell since everyone had items that prevented it and I was annoyed. Second game I grabbed some items and better spell options and had a good time after realizing how many items can prevent damage and how many spell combos can alter the board. Plays a little long but is a fun game for sure. Dogs of War is still the best worker placement game I've played though.

First try of Napoleon's Triumph after reading the rules a couple of times. The game didn't work for me. I see the strategy and appeal to it but I didn't have fun. The steep learning curve and lack of opponents makes this game a non-starter for me too. Little flavor to the game, and I felt like it was chess with hidden strengths. I've always hated chess and have never found anything exciting about it. Same feeling here. Moving pieces into tactical positions each round and taking advantage of your opponent is it. In theory it sounded fun but it wasn't. I instantly loved playing Hannibal Rome v. Carthage and Maria but with my neutrality on this game maybe I'm not that into wargames.

Couple more games of Cthulhu Wars. Its still a great game albeit the base game has clearly scripted openings. Its a luxury good for sure but with so many games out and available I don't have a problem with that. You can only spend your time on one game, why not make it an amazing looking fun experience. Also listened to the interview by CharlesT of Sandy and one thing really stuck out from what he said. He wanted to make it an awesome, fun experience from the start. No slow buildup wait for fun. The game definitely accomplishes that and I really appreciate that. Good interview too.

First game of Nations. I didn't like it. I haven't played many civ games outside of the computer versions, which I love. I hate games that force you into certain behavior or you suffer penalties - like Agricola, possibly my most hated game behind Terra Mystica. Nations felt like that. The winner used golden age cards to buy points. We had one military unit come out in the first three rounds, and no more than 1 engineer per turn. I can't help comparing this to Sandy's statement above about making a fun experience for the players. This was not fun. I felt like I had to make half of my moves a certain way or suffer large negatives, and the wonders rarely were built. And it took 3 hours with 4 players, three of us being noobs. Military leads to going first and sadly the first player of the game remained that way for half of the game thanks to lack of military cards. This also felt kinda like 7 Wonders with military being a neighbor vs. neighbor thing and not directly attacking, also in the way you build your civ. But I like 7 Wonders and had fun for the hour it takes to play with 6-7 people; I get to do cool moves that other people couldn't. In Nations I didn't get that same feeling of making cool moves on my turn. I also haven't played Through the Ages either or Clash of Cultures. Maybe I'd like those more.
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11 Nov 2015 15:03 #214808 by Gregarius
Your concerns about Nations will apply even more to Through the Ages. Some argue the same is true with Clash of Cultures, but I disagree. Clash is definitely the best of the bunch.

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11 Nov 2015 15:37 #214812 by Gary Sax
I like Nations pretty well but I think your experience and others I've read does argue for some balancing mechanism in the game re: types of cards that come out. You can get some corner case strange games (e.g. no military units coming out the whole game) because the decks are so huge. I'm willing to accept that chance and work with it, but it's a long game so i can see why it would rankle.

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11 Nov 2015 16:51 - 11 Nov 2015 22:25 #214821 by Josh Look
I really like Nations, I actually don't care for Through the Ages and as someone who playtested Clash of Cultures, I can say with the utmost certainty that you guys who are pining to play over in that other thread are better for it. The game has a "burnt out" point and it isn't that hard to find.

(Hyperborea is great, too, certainly better than Yggdrasil and a certain other Euro game in AT clothing that SUCKS OUT LOUD that will remain unnamed)

Anyways...

I've spent enough time with Fury of Dracula Third Edition to weigh in on it.

TL;DR version: This is as perfect of an iteration of this game as we could have hoped for and improved upon enough to justify replacing your old copy with.

The fact that they made such significant changes over second edition in so many areas and yet didn't spoil the spirit and feel of the game is truly remarkable. Some of it is very subtle and you won't realize it's an improvement until put into practice, such as the structure of the Hunter turns. How it's broken up into two separate phases, movement only possible during the first, is obvious, what isn't obvious is that, due to when combat with Dracula occurs, the hunters can now get a bead on him and have time to converge on that point. Another thing you don't get from reading the rules is how much of a beast Drac is in combat now. Dracula initiating combat is incentified but the game doesn't force you to play that way. As the game goes on, the reward for Dracula to kill one of the hunters becomes so tempting, almost as if his thirst for blood is becoming uncontrollable. The combat is diceless but feels essentially the same, yet deeper, and is more accessible to those who've never played. What counters what is clear on the cards. No more restrictions on what cards Dracula can use in combat based on the day/night cycle, instead some cards are just better. No more teleporting around the board for anyone, no more event cards that reveal Dracula on turn 1, no more wasting your entire turn trying to take a train, the list of things that remove frustration goes on and on. Then there's the really smart stuff that should have been there all along, like the encounters being on cards which explain what they do, the location cards showing what places Dracula can move to from that spot...

I think much of what makes this edition so good is just that, less frustration. Long periods of time without finding Dracula is still possible (though Mina's inherent ability helps), but you're not going to get around that without breaking something in this type of game. I love FoD, it's easily in my Top 5, but the truth is that there were always these random things you had zero control over and were just so much bullshit. Removing those elements, not to mention the dice entirely, could have easily pushed this edition into bone dry Letters From Whitechapel territory. Yet they didn't. FFG really pulled it off and made the game even more satisfying along the way, all without disrupting the balance, which is always the downfall of asymmetrical games. It's the same game you've always loved, but...yup, I'm saying it...perfected. The box cover is probably the only reasonable complaint I can lodge against it.
Last edit: 11 Nov 2015 22:25 by Josh Look.

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11 Nov 2015 17:16 #214824 by Grudunza
I've only played FoD (2nd ed) twice and liked it a lot, but there was one card that essentially put Drac on a reset after us hunters had almost found him, and that was a bit of a sour feeling. I can't remember what that card was... but I know it was an issue for many with the game. Josh, do you know what I'm talking about and is that still part of the game? I assume that might be what you mean by no more teleporting.

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11 Nov 2015 17:24 #214825 by san il defanso
That'd be the Evasion card, and yeah, it can be frustrating for the hunters. But in the late-game it's about the only lifeline Dracula gets, at least from the cards. By that time the hunters are so loaded with gear that they are much more dangerous than Dracula.

I have my copy on the way from MM. I'm really excited about it.

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