Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Twilight Struggle - This was my second try at this, the first being almost two years ago. I squeaked out a US 1-point win in final scoring. I thought I was done for in mid-war. At one point, the USSR was up by 15 and played the card that allowed him to pre-order my cards for the round, and I had a mitt full of Soviet events and the Asia scoring card. I thought I was done for but somehow managed to come out of the round swinging the score back in my direction by a few points. I absolutely love the ebb and flow of this game -- it's like taking part in a dozen simultaneous tug of wars. I've played it infrequently, but it's my favourite game. I joined a TS league this year (this was my opening round) so I'll definitely get more regular plays of it in 2015.

More Gears of War, mission 3. I decided to skip mission 2 after winning mission 1 so I could play a more "normal" clobberin' time mission.

Got to the last part but Marcus Fenix was out of ammo on all 4 of his weapons so he was just running around like an idiot trying to chainsaw people while 2 AI cards popped off per turn. Which is not a great way to stay alive in GoW. If you've discarded that F-ing pistol for a power weapon and you run out of ammo, you are in some deep shit.

After some anxious moments -- would I get home from my work trip on time? (yes) would the blizzard hold off? (pretty much yes) -- I got in a first, five-player game of Twilight Imperium III. We had a pretty good group, and all but one had either played or read the rules as requested beforehand. For time's sake and given the experience level, we ended up playing pretty much strictly vanilla, including the Imperial SC, but with artifacts and a preset map and only 9 VP, and I think in retrospect that was a decent decision, as we finished in about six hours, before the worst of the weather and considering that one player was more or less being taught as we went. I was competitive (which is all I really hope for) with the Hacan but didn't win. There were some growing pains for sure, and most everyone wanted to switch up the SCs in the future, but I think everyone or most everyone would be up to play again, which was, as much as anything, the real goal.

Punched and played a partial game of I, Spy from Lost Boys Productions' Kickstarter. It ended up being partial because my younger daughter (13) hit some definite analysis paralysis and took very lengthy turns. The game is set in pre-Great War Europe, and the players must use various area-influence tactics to boost the influence and (eventually) power of the nation -- one of six -- that they're spying for. Your "alignment" is to stay secret the whole game, which makes thematic sense, but I'm not sure how it will play out or how much knowing another player's alignment will affect one's own moves directly (although there are a lot of ways to directly harm another spy). I definitely need a full game on this. This was around $40, and it's a really solid production for that -- with two fairly significant "howevers" from me. First, the box. It's lovely, with "scratched-in" code words and phrases on it, but it's frankly too small; that the publishers have posted a packing diagram is indicative of the problem. It'll all work, barely, but at best it's "snug." Second, there are many cardboard elements that have to remain secret, and the forty or so politician tiles are both edged in black and have control markers that have to be punched out of them, so it's pretty easy to have some marked tiles, which I do (and the tight packing required doesn't help matters any). Not sure whether it's a real problem or an OCD problem at this point, but I don't know why publishers can't learn the black-edging lesson.

Luchador: Mexican Wrestling Dice - expect a review. Holy shit is this game FUN. This has superflytnt written all over it, figuratively.

Recent plays include:

Cyclades Hades. Played with 4. Seems to be fairly long though, with four I'd say it was 2.5 hours total and the game ended with only 2 metropolises built. I suspect we need to do less fighting and more building/philosophizing.

Dogs of War. I like this game alot. Easy to teach, each faction has a tweak to the strategy, and plays in about 90 minutes with 5 players. Current favorite. I suspect some of the factions win more than others but so far of four games don't know yet; brown dude won 2 of them though.

Cosmic Encounter. Not much to add to the discussion of this one. Good game with a fair amount of randomness for sure.

Viticulture: Tuscany. 2 player game vs wife. Both of us like it alot even though she still hasn't won a game yet. Tuscany adds so many things to the base game and really sprawls the game out.

You know, I have Cosmic Encounter but I've only played it twice. Both 3 player and my wife pretty much says she hates the game... my guess is most of that was the 3 player version. But once something sucks, it sucks. It's hard to blame her when there are 20+ games she likes on our shelves...

I've only gotten 2 or 3 plays out of my copy of Cosmic, as well. Unfortunately it got play amongst my friends without me a few times, and there are many of them that hate the game and refuse to play it. The only time it sees play is usually around my birthday, as I have a rule that a person can force people to play the games they want on their birthday game-night.

Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle, second scenario. Won it on the first try, but it was pretty close. Will attempt the crazier third scenario sometime soon, hopefully.

Took the old gnomish sub Red November out for another spin and as luck would have it this one was struck by calamity, same as the previous one. Except this time I kept my gnomes good and drunk when possible and only had one pass out on me. Otherwise they managed to hold off long enough for rescue. One thing I noticed though is I forgot to adjust the asphyxiation track half way through the game (and none in the previous). It never really dawned on me that one track wasn't moving until about 1/3rd of the way through the game today and then I remembered that was supposed to move when fires break out...Oops!

And I just wrapped up a solo run through of Rune Age. I've only toyed with this one on occasion and my deck was too overwrought with fluff so just couldn't get my chain combos to work like I was hoping. I should pick up the expansion sooner rather than later and really start to learn the different races, that's where I'm weak at, just not sure how a race plays or what their strengths are.

Just got beat by my nearly nine year-old at Splendor, 17 points to 16. Very tight game and I was playing to the best of my ability. Dad is very proud although concerned for my chances at winning anything a few years from now.

I went over to a friend's house on Saturday for a game day. We started off light with three player game of Runewars, my first time playing the game. I chose the Uthuk dudes because they looked pretty ruthless. The game was slow going because of some nasty neutral units blocking key choke points. So sadly there wasn't any conflict between players. The game ended suddenly when one of the players got three runes in one turn. I really enjoyed it and look forward to playing it again, albeit more aggressively.

We then played a four player game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Again, my first try at the game. I enjoyed building my own castle, and setting prices of the castle tiles was quite fun. The scoring in the game wasn't too bad because the host had it down packed. A good game overall, I'd play it again.

After that, we played Vegas Showdown. I've never had so much fun building my own casino! I enjoyed the bidding phase, and how to best furnish the casino. I ended up completely filling in my casino, hoping I'd best some bonus points, but nope, no dice... I'd love to get a copy of this. A nice simple game where everyone can get into it.

We finished off the night with a game of Endeavor. You basically build trade routes and gain resources throughout the game. It was enjoyable enough, but I suck at these kinds of games, so I can never really develop a 'strategy'. I just kind of go with whatever I have and hope for the best.

I've been playing a lot of two player stuff with the wife lately.

Smash Up - I've been digging card games lately and I've recently gone back to this silly game. I've played four or five games of this recently and I really love the trickery you can pull off with the cards. Sometimes a good play is not readily apparent, but I've seen some very interesting stuff these past four games. I think Smash Up gets written off because of it's dumb theme/idea, but I actually think it's a pretty strong design. Note - don't ever play Steampunk/Wizards. You will get crushed. Badly.

Saint Malo - This is part of the Alea Medium Box series if I'm not mistaken. It's a Euro style game where you're building your own little village/city. Yeah it sounds boring as fuck, but it has two things to help differentiate it from the pack. First, you're rolling dice, Yahtzee style to figure out what you can do each turn. Second, instead of putting chits or tokens on your board you draw on it with a dry eraser maker. Totally gimmicky...but fuck it, I like it! It makes setup literal 15 seconds. Slap a couple boards on the table, give each player a marker and you're off. The game itself is tricky and it has a punishing 'pirate's attack" mechanic, but my wife loves it. Cool little Euro game with dice. Not something you see everyday.

Epic Spell Wars... - I've always loved this stupid little take that card game. The artwork is great and reminds me of Adventure Time...and the gameplay is surprisingly good. It has lots of smart little design choices that make it stand way above other card games in this genre. I didn't know if it would work well with two...but it does. Thanks to the cards that say attack stronger/est or weaker/est. You really need to figure out the timing of your spell and if it's going to hit your opponent. The game certainly plays better with more people, but I was pleasantly surprised this worked as well as it did with two. My wife loves it because the game lets you be an enormous asshole.

Lords of Waterdeep - Again, played this with 2. Certainly not the best number, but it works fine. I'm always pleased with just how goddamn clean this design is. They trimmed away all the fat and shit that makes most worker placement games suck and they added a slight screw you factor with the Intrigue deck. Also, when I play I insist on reading the dumb flavor text and calling the cubes, wizards/thieves/fighters/priests. Gotta soak up all that D&D flavor you sexy bitches! I still enjoy this game quite a bit and will gladly play it anytime. It's never going to be one of my all time favorites, but its earned it's spot on my forever shelf.

Nice game day yesterday.

Steam - we played with the Brussels Metro 3-player map from one of the expansions. It's a weird map with odd rules, but basically cubes and cities will be popping up regularly as track goes down. It's vary tight for space and money. If you have positive income and build, you go down a notch on the income track even if you have the cash. I was a little skeptical about it, but it was a great map for three.

Cockroach Poker - I was hosting, so my wife joined us for this. The newbie is a regular poker player and his first game went terrible, but the second game I did pretty poorly out of the gate and they all finished me off. Such a fun game.

Istanbul - I was neither blown away nor repulsed by this the first time around and that continued with a second play.

Nations - This game will forever be all over the place with me. After several good plays, this one was lousy. Bryan picked Rome and I stupidly picked Persia. Rome is all about military, Persia is about colonies -- which you get with military. The card reveal strongly favored military, but only one colony was coming out a turn, and Bryan could always get it ahead of me. He was quickly in the military feedback loop of the game (military strength determines player order) and there was little either of us other players could do about it. Eric was weakest on military and had to waste actions taking wars to keep from losing them. The military thing kicked in for Bryan so fast that I felt my situation was hopeless on round two. Not era two, round two. Of eight.

I like a lot about Nations but it still heavily favors a military strategy, like every other goddamn civ game out there, because the most important development in all of human history is how much we can kill each other. I need to abandon the idea that civ games are anything except wargames with scotch-taped-on tech trees. It wouldn't be so bad if there were other machines lurking within Nations to help out strategies other than military, but there isn't. Even the resource loss in sticking with military can often be easily offset with colonies and battles.

I'd like to see if anyone's tried changing player order to Books, which I think makes more sense, makes Books worth more, and blunts military a little (though when I've seen it floated on BGG they have a conniption because military should always be the best thing because yay military -- while simultaneously arguing that such a change would make military "useless" because it's otherwise so very weak).

Castles of Mad King Ludwig - This is a surprising amount of fun. The room names make for an amusing narrative (for a while my only room was the "Mold Room". Come into my castle, head straight for the Mold Room.) and honestly, we were all a little disappointed when it ended, not because we wanted more turns to put plans in place but just because picking rooms and building is fun. It's feather-light and heavily tilted more towards an optimization puzzle, but for some reason it clicks.

4-player Cthulhu Wars yesterday. We all thought it was really good. 4 player dynamic really makes the game shine as opposed to the awful 2 player experience I had last time.

Early on, we all kind of forgot you can easily create your own gates, and we spent way too much time and resources trying to take others' gates instead. The Black Goat player just kept to himself and kept building, and we stupidly ignored him until he was too powerful to stop. He ended up winning with 34 points while the rest of us all tied for second place at 23 points.

We're going to play a 3 player game tomorrow, so I'll see how it plays with three.

Catacombs: Wife liked, but said it was way too hard. Told her that it had everything to do with her not playing 2 characters. Daughter loved it, no excuses or complaints.

Beasty Bar: 20 plays in, still loving it. Best card game ever.

TransAmerica: Great game, period. Kids can't get enough, and honestly, I'm tiring of it but it beats watching shit TV.

Cathedral: Everyone loves this nasty little game.

Nuclear War: Still not very fun unless you have 10 players.

Agricola: Wife hates it now. I still love it but now I am certain to never get a 3-4p game in.

Stone Age: LOVE. LOVE. Still. 20+ plays at least and all I want to do is play it again.