What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

VonTush wrote: Played MdC myself on Sunday. I liked it for what it is, and I am typically not a fan of Werewolf, The Resistance, Coup...etc...etc.
For me I think it is the more tactile elements to MdC. And like Gregarius mentioned, that the player gets to chose how to interact with the game rather than being given a role to play.

Question though: Why would the Godfather not take 5 to begin with? Therefore leaving fewer diamonds to find overall.

Fewer diamonds to find overall doesn't really matter. The thief with the most amount of diamonds wins if he makes it through to the end.

I wouldn't want to get stuck in a consistent behavior as the godfather as it could be used against you. Knowing how many diamonds are left at certain points in the game is much of the strategy and helpful in the social jockeying. If everyone knows there's only 10 left until the first thief I think that would help them.

The whole point of the godfather removing diamonds is so that subsequent players are uncertain if others took them.

I've been trying to make sure there aren't any easily moveable clunkers on my game shelf since they are just about full. I pulled out Nations and gave it a spin solo.

It's still a solid game that definitely offers something a bit different than most takes on civ. It's euro, yes. It's also derivative of Through the Ages, with plenty of accounting. What it does nicely, however, is emphasize the non-military aspects of civ without removing the "fuck you" from the game entirely. The wars system is pretty tightly balanced to be damaging but not crippling---though I have not played the game enough to see just how fine the balance is. It does a nice job of something that Legomancer (IIRC) complains about a bit, which is enabling non-military strategies. Thematically, that means you can be a civ that doesn't invest much in military and takes their licks in that area while still winning the game by building wonders, strength of culture, etc. It certainly enables the real life equivalent of the Greeks---only a fleeting period of military dominance but a lasting cultural hegemony in most of Europe. In a lot of civ games, if the other civ beats your civ in a war not only have they gotten some sort of leg up materially, but it's as if they managed to steal all your culture and resources. Which actually isn't very thematic---there are plenty of conquerer civs in history that we don't give much thought to, and plenty of frequent losers whom we consider grand and memorable.

That said, it has clear minuses that come straight from its euro-ness. In particular, it can be very tactical, the accounting is heavy, and advances are not of the "GAME CHANGER" variety but instead incremental as hell.

Stays on my shelf. I'd like to play it some more with friends, my wife and I played it and she liked it but then we had one of those board-flip experiences related to me holding military dominance for a few turns and stinging her with wars. It's nice that it's short for this sort of game and pretty straightforward rules-wise.

Leaving Earth came in the mail about a week back and I was able to give it a try yesterday.

Let me start out by saying that for a company that isn't primarily devoted to making games, I think the production is pretty top notch. Sure the cards are a bit thin and "chip" on the edges if you aren't careful picking them up off the table but the art is just so cool. Very evocative of "The Space Age". The wooden tokens cut into the shapes of famous space craft are pretty neat too. Also the rule book, often the thing that the big game makers often do so terribly, is quite good. A complex game explained rather well. Through playing, we came across some fringe questions, mainly regarding the probe, but we went old school, took our best guess and carried on. Also the rule book is flavored with cool quotes from the pioneers of space travel and the second half of the booklet is a mini history course on Space flight with explanations for why the designer chose to do things the way he did.

"Alright, but how did it play?" you ask.

Very very mathy. I mean it. Bring a calculator. Not joking. The one with the big buttons.

Now normally that would be a turn off for me but where a lot of games make you do "mental math" with calculations done in your head, Leaving Earth makes no pretense about what is up. Scratch paper, pencils, calcularors...bring 'em. It even gives you a chart, of dubious utility, on the play mat to aid you in calculations. So, you aren't forced to remember, or like me forget and have to refigure over and over, the result or formula you want.

Another normal turn off would be a game with a clear "solution". That would seem to be the case here. Once you've figured out the optimal configuation of your rocket for a particular mission, the game would seem to be solved. This is offset with a good bit of manageable randomness. When you use a component there is a chance it could fail and damage or destroy that beautiful spacecraft of yours. The game offers ways to mitigate that risk but pulling the card to see if the Apollo mission goes up in a ball of flame was the most tense part.

There is a good deal of multiplayer solitaire here. You can help other players and cooperate as well but you cannot hinder their program. So if you are looking to sabotage or ruin somebody with bad press or nationalistic zeal, you are in the wrong place.

In our game, Josh as the hated Soviets, got off to a good and historical start by putting Sputnik into orbit very quickly. Meanwhile, I as the heroic team at NASA, spent some time blowing up some astronauts and some very expensive equipment by having my rockets fail on the launch pad. However, by the later portion of the game, NASA was gaining ground as our rockets had been perfected while Komrade Slapdash and his cobbled together ships of chicken wire and bubble gum was encountering trouble with his critical failures in deep space. In the end we were in a race to get a man or probe on to Venus first. Josh-uska, with his manned mission in their ship of tinfoil managed somehow not to blow up, and got their ahead of my unmanned mission.

It was probably for the best that his kosmonauts were killed by the excessive heat and pressure of the Venutian atmosphere for in true Commie fashion, he had made no provision for them to ever return. We called it after that as time was running out and neither of us could build a rocket and launch it in time.

In conclusion the game is fun if you don't mind a heavy dose of number crunching. I mean heavy. No lie. So it sure isn't for everybody. It's also not a game I'm going to play everyday. It was mentally exhausting. Also, the game can play five but I think three would be the most I'd attempt. Solo potential is high.

Played a few games yesterday.....
Cube Quest - several rounds, all of which were fun
WWE Superstar Showdown - Roman Reigns defeated Big Show handily...
Theseus - Introduced a new player; I had him be the Marines (I feel this is the best introductory faction) and I was the greys. He really dug it and we will definitely have more games.
Mansions of Madness - 5 players, second story in the base game. The Keeper is the owner of the game and this was his second time. Mine as well. Everyone was else was a virgin. Things went pretty well but I think he made a few mistakes that allowed us to win. It still wasn't an easy win, but we managed it. The game went over well, but in my opinion, story 2 was not as fun as story 1. Story 1 turned out to have more puzzles, while 2 was mainly combat. Maybe that was how he set it up, I don't know. But I am really not crazy about combat in this game. Monsters have tons of HP, and the combat cards often don't really make a lot of sense. Sometimes they hit the situation perfectly but when they miss, they really miss. Still, we will continue with this one.

^2p Theseus?

Yes, that was just a 2 player game. Marines vs. Greys.

I've yet to try with more than that, and if I did, it would be 2 normal factions and Pandora. I've not even investigated Pandora yet.

Gary Sax wrote: ^2p Theseus?

From what I've heard, that's the only way to play it. There might be a game there, but there is such a thematic disconnect I'd rather just play another 2-player game, of which I have plenty that never hit the table.

Wife and I finally sat down with Pandemic Legacy tonight, but since she may have played Pandemic once many years ago and it had been many years since I touched it, we played two regular games with 2 characters each to get warmed up. Lost the first one due to cascading outbreaks. Second one we really focused on controlling the outbreaks and generally got really lucky on the player card pulls (lots of color synergy) and won with 9 cards left in the deck. Really felt like we got lucky, but hopefully the extra 4 cards in the deck for the first game will give us an edge if we don't get that lucky...

Two games at the meet up this week; La Granja two player teaching game, which was a lot of fun, and a full five player session of Yedo which took over three hours I think, but was excellent as always.

Played Biblios Dice, Stephensons Rocket, and Coloretto yesterday, for a fun time.

Also played Hyperborea, which is a game I like but don't own (no real need to) and have only been taught by others. Unfortunately the owner of this copy learned from the rulebook, and this is a game that's been heavily erratad because the rules-as-written are easily abusable. I have only played by the "fixed" rules, but didn't remember them all, so we likely played with a mish-mash of old and new rules. We played a "medium" game (two victory conditions) and one person ended with eight techs and another with five (not counting starting techs). I've never seen that happen, and I suspect it's a result of wonky rules. (The eight-tech player was playing for the first time as well, though he's the type of player who immediately looks for exploitable holes in rules.) It's a shame that a good game (when it's working correctly) is so cattywampus right out of the box.

Played race two of a three-round series with Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix with my kids (11/14/16) yesterday. I paid $120k for two cars and went from tied for last place to 2nd place in the standings after taking first with my first car and fifth with my second. I had great cards for the second car but there was a bottle neck and we were burning cards like crazy. The11-year-old keeps trying to bluff and bid up cars, then getting stuck with them, and we realized that the last car gots for $10k to whoever hasn't purchased a car, so the next round of bidding should be fun. It was a loud game, which was fun, with deal making: Help me now, and I have some good orange cards I can play for you later. I'm wondering what the game would be like if we open it up to in-game bribes. Also wondering if Nascar drivers cut deals with each other.

Mid-game deals and bribes make nearly every game better.

Got around to Shadowlord! yesterday. There's a lot more meat on the bones rules- and depth-wise than I expected for a Parker Brothers game. Basically the game boils down to killing each other and being the last man standing... in space! The map and factions are symmetrical, the map has chokepoints, and there are a couple map spaces that provide benefits. Then off you go for maximum killing; be the last man standing and you win. Parker Brothers isn't interested in your misgivings about player elimination.

There's a handful of cool things that make the game truly interesting. Your main character is your StarMaster and if he gets killed you're dead and out of the game, no matter how powerful of an alliance you've built. That's tough, and it's how I lost; another player had set up a sneaky way to get a distant Warrior to my StarMaster that I didn't notice and I lost that battle. Battles are a matter of adding up your character's strength, space ships, and then you play a combat card and draw one from the deck. Your opponent does the same. Highest total wins. There's a significant combat card management factor. Drawn combat cards can go into your more versatile Attack Hand or to a specific character, and if the character is lost somehow the cards go with him. If you're defending though you can only use cards assigned to characters. Then there's the whole Allies option in combat that works sort of like Cosmic Encounter and puts a whole new angle on combat.

There's also the Shadowlord himself and his shadowy cohorts. During the game the shadow characters get released from the Lost Fortress and the players get to move them, including into battles with other players. Shadow characters are the bad guys and they're never part of your team, but they can be used to help you by weakening other players. Any player can move a shadow character that's on the board so you better know what you're doing when you initially place one. The game has random events, tight movement rules, several character types you'll recruit with different strengths, capturing others' characters, bribing, defecting, and the pretty awesome voting system. Basically any time, other than normal attacking, you attempt to do something "bad" to other player(s) all other players at the table vote to approve the action. A single "yes" vote is all it takes to approve the action. No majority, just one "yes". Once the game is down to the last two players voting is suspended and all things succeed.

There's some more little stuff I could go into, but there's one big thing I want to cover: The game timer. Each time the combat cards are reshuffled the timer moves a notch. If it hits the end of the track the Shadowlord wins and all the players lose. That means the game gets bloody and it gets there pretty quick.

I dig it.

I finally got to enjoy my Secret Satan gift, as we played a game of Talisman this weekend. We used the Woodlands and the Sacred Pool expansion, along with a couple other things like the Warlock's Quests. It was me and two other players, and they were the right people to play Talisman. They understood its swings and were able to roll with bad punches with a laugh and a shrug. One of them was turned into a toad twice, and both times we laughed a lot.

As for the expansions themselves, the Sacred Pool is mostly just more cards. The Woodlands has a lot of interesting stuff going for it, the best of which is getting to choose what "path" you follow when you enter. It also utilizes light fate and dark fate, and cards affect you differently based on how much light or dark fate you have. I like those for the most part, but like a lot of later expansions it can end up being an extra thing to track and manage, and Talisman doesn't need more stuff like that. But since this was the only expansion we were really playing with that had extra rules, it ended up being fine. I really like how it commits to its theme, which is also something later Talisman expansions have done well.

A Study in Emerald - After a very long wait I finally remembered to bring my copy of ASiE up to the shop to learn how to play, perhaps it was walking in to see the 2nd Ed sitting on the shelf for a few weeks now that finally made me remember to toss it into my bag. The first game was a bit rocky, it was the learning game and it took me about 3/4ers of the game and a Google search to find where the rules for the blocking discs were...Who'd have thunk that they'd be mixed into the rules for the cards? Not me.

Without really realizing that cities could bounce control back and forth, and without really grasping the structure of the game one player got into his typical mode of scoring VPs quickly meaning the game end happened fairly quick, with his teammate in last place dropping a victory in my lap. With the game ending quick I threw out the option of another game "since we had everything out" and surprisingly I received a lot of enthusiastic yeses. Usually the mood at the shop is to try something new rather than repeated plays. So we setup again, this time I let it be known that i was a Restorationist with an early Royal Assassination. Which after my Agent turning and then a Loyalist charging in to snuff me out, I realized the benefit of laying low for a bit rather than declaring early. BUT, as that triggered the end game scenario once again my side fell into a victory (with the other player edging me out on points) because the person that killed me was in last place.

So, a lot of early strategic blunders in the game, but also a lot learned. It surprises me that there's a 2nd edition of the game that streamlines because really the game isn't that complex mechanics-wise. I do have a few rules questions that I couldn't figure out after re-reading the rules that I'll have to do some digging on, specifically about when you move your VP marker and becoming Known to the Authorities. Otherwise I felt like the rules got out of the way very quickly and just a few turns in it was learning the game rather than the rules.

This one may be in the bag for many weeks to come considering after the game the four others I was playing with mentioned they'd be interested in playing more and two others that were doing something else came up to ask how the game was and that they've been interested in it.

cdennett wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: ^2p Theseus?

From what I've heard, that's the only way to play it. There might be a game there, but there is such a thematic disconnect I'd rather just play another 2-player game, of which I have plenty that never hit the table.

I played with 3 once, I think. It plays ok but is much less predictable. Since the game is premised on a very abstract game-like predictability, I think it does lose something.

Also, re: Study in Emerald. I think it is the ultimate type of game that does not play well on first or second play because the endgame is SO subtle. I'm not sure why the BGG one-play-then-a-new-game crowd would ever be into this game at all---the 2nd edition actually surprises me quite a bit.

I'm glad I have the first edition.