What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

SuperflyTNT wrote: EH is far better than AH in my opinion.

I agree with Pete. As an immersive experience, AH is better, but as a *game* there's no contest, EH is the clear winner. AH has some legitimate issues.

AH... the game you guys kept pushing over the top in every thrashdome. What happened?

"But how the world turns. One day, cock of the walk. Next, a feather duster."

"You guys" must refer to someone else

I fell out of love with it loooooooooooong before the arrival of EH.

Weekend of boardgaming, its been a while.

On friday night we played out a full game of Falling Sky. I won as the belgians on the third winter card after about 3.5 hours of play. I really dug this game and I think this might sit next to Fire in the Lake as my favourite of the COIN series, mostly because it has a lot of manouvre and its not to hard to come back from a heavy defeat. I also really like how the different factions play.

War of the Ring - I lost as the freeps on the mordor track. I was kicking it in the military game having only lost Rohan and moving toward military superiority in the Gondor area thanks to a massive recruitment push and some bad sieges for the orcs but Frodo and Sam just couldn't shake that corruption. My bad really I should probably have let them have a breather but im a sucker for push your luck mechanics. Over the years this game has slowly gone up in my estimation, I enjoy it quite a lot more now than i did three years ago. I think its because I really like the amount of separation there is between the two victory conditions. In most wargames the different victory conditions are just variants of the same idea, capture their capital or take most spots when the clock runs out for instance. In War of the Ring you have to actually choose between dedicating your resources to one of two distinct paths. This gives you a really difficult balancing act to solve but also gives you a shot at victory even if one part of the game is going really badly. It compensates for the game being a bit flabbier than the CDGs or block games.

Also played Mansions of Madness 2nd edition, posted more in Barnes article thread, I like it more than Mike but agree with most of his criticisms. Its the first game i've played that felt more like an app with physical components, those i don't necessarily think this is bad of its self.

Oh, the joys of introducing Cosmic Encounter to new players! Last night, we played a six-player game of Cosmic Encounter with a group of four adults, all who have played the game before, and two newbie teenagers, my 15-year-old son and his friend. I got the usual teenage angst from my 15 year old son: "Dad, not another of your board games, sigh..." He glanced, smirking, over to his friend, who was also trying to look cool--both were texting away on their cellphones to what I call their "ITG's" (ITG's=Instant Text Girlfriends; girls with whom they never appear to have had actual live conversations outside of texting). I explained the rules to the two teenagers and then we proceeded to play. Chuckles, wide grins, and shouts of "Awesome!" from my son and his friend soon appeared as the craziness of Cosmic Encounter unfolded. I couldn't believe my luck, however, because the game reached its absolute appex and the ultimate high golden moment in any new player's experience with Cosmic Encounter when my son's friend caught me stealing cards from the discard pile while I was using the Filch Flare card (classic) from my hand of cards. The look on his face was priceless: it was a combination of wide-eyed disbelief, betrayal, and WTF, Dude, how could you cheat! The game really clicked for both of them at that moment and they instantly demanded that we play the game again.

^nice! Your big smart move was starting a new-to-CE game with a lot of players. I made the mistake of doing it with, I think, 3 or 4 which was a disaster.

I love War of the Ring. Sadly, nobody here will play it with me so I traded it.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I love War of the Ring. Sadly, nobody here will play it with me so I traded it.

Yep, giant toad on my shelf but for now it remains on my shelf because it's super cool. My regular 2 player opponent wasn't super fond of it even though he loves Tolkien. He tends to not like games that embed tons of rules on cards. Took him a bit to warm to Twilight Struggle.

War of the Ring may not get many plays, but it's on the Forever Shelf because it's just that damn good. I'm hoping that one day, my boy gets into board games, and I get to pull down this massive, dusty box and say "The time has come, my son. Let me show you something."

I still get it played once or twice a year, the main obstacle for me is the box size since i use public transport to get around I can't fit it in my packpac like I would a GMT title. So if i take it a friends in the next city I have to lug around a carrier bag. I'm quite fortunate in that all of the people i commonly play games with can stomach and even enjoy a 4 hour two player game. A couple of years back I did consider flipping it as for a long time a viewed Sekigahara and Hannibal Rome vs Carthage as dealing out the same medicine in a cleaner rule set. I didn't mostly because of the art and component quality and now i might end up preferring it to those titles.

2 players, 4 hours is basically one of the best game niches. I feel like BGG people who only play game night miss out on a LOT of great gaming.

Gary Sax wrote: 2 players, 4 hours is basically one of the best game niches. I feel like BGG people who only play game night miss out on a LOT of great gaming.

Well-put. The sense of feeling VESTED as well as the MEMORIES generated and NARRATIVE provided by the gaming experience are best-served with a longer game over a series of shorter ones.

One of the reasons this site exists in the first place!!!

A bunch of Shadows of Brimstone again this week, which I will go on about more over in that topic.

Saturday gaming was the usual mixed bag. The first game was City of Horrors with four of us. I didn't enjoy it that much, partly due to one of the players, but also possibly because of the game. I'm not sure- someone was able to drop two of his characters in the hospital during setup and nobody moved out of there for the whole game. That meant that playing the hospital card just meant ending up in the streets. It also meant that the players there could just use the location action to farm antidotes all game, and both came in 1st/2nd. There was some fun card play, but for the most part it wasn't a great experience.

We played Risk: Star Wars Edition next, which was a welcome relief. Our team got the rebel track almost to the end before the Empire wiped us out.

Rallyman next with just one special stage, but a good mix of tarmac and snow on it. We were pushing each other to roll all dice simultaneously and each spun out at least three times. I won by around 30 seconds in the end and we all had a great time with it.

Blood Bowl Team Manager was the final game of the night for me. I was trying to make the vampires work- they rely heavily on injuries to really work, which makes them less effective at playing on multiple match-ups. You end up feeling over-committed on the ones you play to, because you just boosted the strength of a player after also removing an opponent, leading to strong wins in few match-ups. going into the final round I was over 10 points behind the leader (Goblins using shenanigans to good effect) and surprised myself by finishing only five points behind to the Gobbos (who also won the Blood Bowl). Good times, many whifs on the dice, some self-tackling and the usual upsets. Great game.