What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

That is a hell of a lineup. You were busy! IIRC, Z-man spends most conventions doing business and seeing prototypes, so that's pretty normal.

How were Nations and Space Cadets: Dice Duel?

Gary Sax wrote: That is a hell of a lineup. You were busy! IIRC, Z-man spends most conventions doing business and seeing prototypes, so that's pretty normal.

Oh, I know. I had no expectations about Zev's availability. I'm totally joking about the exclusive luxury suite thing.

How were Nations and Space Cadets: Dice Duel?

I think I've already talked about those games before in this thread, which is why I didn't add any comments this time about those or some of the others. But I like them both a lot. This particular Dice Duel game wasn't ideal, though, because it was about 10 pm and Evee and I were really wanting to play that, so we set it up and put out a cone on our table (players wanted), but the only available table space was off in the side room where there was almost no traffic. We got one guy right away who joined us, but couldn't get another, so he offered to just try it all on his own. I gave him a handicap where we started with one damage, but the thing is, Evee and I have played that before a couple times and had a pretty good rhythm down, so we really clobbered him pretty badly. It's hard enough to do everything you want to with just two people on one side. As the box clearly indicates, it's really a 4-8 player game (not a 3 player game), and I think particularly best with the full 8. It was still fun, though, and our opponent could definitely appreciate the game. I really should have made that game a scheduled event for the con, in which case I'm sure we'd have had a full contingent of players.

Grudunza wrote: Rampage (as I suspected, this was really fun to play, especially in a convention environment, but not something I feel compelled to own)

Probably the game of the con for me (and my daughter), although I had the exact same reaction as you. We played the library copy early in the con; my daughter was cool to it at first, but ended up requesting a second play Sunday morning.

I feel the same way about Adventurers (my first play of Temple was with you ~3 years ago); I had my second play of Temple and first play of Pyramid, they were great, and I'm fine if I don't play them for another 3 years. No crime in that.

We always play in my house but yesterday we decided to go to a friend house, which gave us an excuse not to play Automobile again. But guess which game he just bought? Yep, Automobile.

I'm also fairly convinced right now that it's simply not great with three players. It works, but it's very easy to make a killing if you have a market all for yourself which means everyone must constantly hound all of them if you don't want a blowout, which makes the game less interesting.


I also tried Fortress Ameritrash's favourite punchbag: Stone Age! We didn't finish the game and I'm sure we got the rules wrong but...I don't look foward to playing it. It's not so much that it is multiplayer solitaire but that...well it's fairly dull.

It's dull, first, because it's very slow for what it is. The gist of the game is that you strategically place meeples and then roll for a random amount of resources. All fine and good except the rolling part takes five times longer than strategically placing the meeples. There's a single dice cup in the game when you should have one of each player and roll at the same time and it will still be slow that way.

I just don't like the dice here. In other dice euros (Yspahan, Alien Frontiers) you roll and then choose based on it, here you decide and then you get a random result. Which is just...okey I guess? And turn order is also based on a dice roll, not one of those smart euro mechanisms. It feels like the game loses the teeth it never had just based on this and that's kind of boring. I felt I was playing a watered down Le Havre and I really don't think highly of Le Havre.

So yeah, I didn't get a good first impression. I'll try the game again eventually and see if it improves later on

Grudunza---I always forget who makes comments on what. I do remember now we talked about Nations, I think I even asked you about it before.

Erik Twice wrote: In other dice euros (Yspahan, Alien Frontiers) you roll and then choose based on it, here you decide and then you get a random result. Which is just...okay I guess?

That's the one part that gives the game some life!

Tight worker placement means you choose from what's left, and that's not exactly uplifting. And I hate the symbols and the arrows on all of the pieces. I can never figure out which pieces do what (I only play once a year so I always have to relearn them) and you can't ask because that tips your hand. Invariably I'll make a choice at the end of the game and then when I'm adding up someone will say "oh no, you only get to do that once. So that's two points, not twelve. And you need to pay one of each resource for this, not your choice of one, so you don't get this piece at all." At that point I just stop caring.

As worker placement goes it seem more interesting than most but for me that's like calling it the thinnest kid at fat camp. A good, solid, above average game.

I play with Lazy Karl, one meeple that I lie on his side and give him a -1 on his die roll for resources. Adds a little flavor to an otherwise very brown game. I tried to do the same with Kolejka this past week but the one guy I was playing with kept setting him back up on his feet. Sleeping on line not allowed? I bet the guy got high marks for neatness in Elementary School.

S.

Had the most miserable game day yesterday. Started out with The New Era, which we only got through two of six rounds in in an hour and a half because nobody would make a fucking decision about anything. We bagged it when another player arrived.

Then we did Nations, which I just got, and it was a disaster. In my one play of it before I had thought it wasn't as military focused as it is, and the two guys who went all-out on military crushed everyone else, to the point where it didn't feel like it made much of a difference that anyone else was playing.

ASIDE #1: If I want to play a wargame, I'll play a wargame. I don't play wargames because I don't want to play wargames. Can I please get a civ type game that isn't just The Great Battles of History and Also Grain and Wonders? Everything in this game is tilted towards military and it's just tiresome.

One of the players decided he had no hope by turn three and pissed in my ear the rest of the time. "Anyone mind if I just resign?" "Oh like it makes any difference." "Well it's not like I wasn't going to lose this game anyway." Which didn't stop him from taking ages to make one of these apparently futile moves. Also he whipped out his phone and started playing other games on it. I was pissed off and losing and angry that I'd dropped $50 on this and didn't think it would ever hit the table again and another player said, "I'll give you ten bucks for it!" He was joking but boy was I not in the mood for it. The other guy then said, "I'll give you ten bucks just so I can burn it and never play it again." This is the same guy who gets sad if I don't turn cartwheels over his latest Stefan Feld dryapalooza.

Turns out we missed a rule which would have changed things a bit, but I don't think it would have been hugely different. I'd like to play it more, but I'm pretty sure there are now at least two people who will veto it if I mention it again. Which is actually not too bad, because I don't think you want to play with more than three, four tops.

ASIDE #2: Missing the key rule bugs me because it's the third time I've done this recently an I need to give up my teaching rights. Which is fine because I'm sick to fucking death of doing it with this group. I don't mean to be an asshole, but if I'm teaching a game, do not fucking interrupt me every three seconds to ask a question about something I haven't said yet. If you don't get what I just said, fine, ask me to clarify, but don't jump all around the goddamn rulebook and then get pissy that I forgot something because you had to know right the fuck then about something I was going to get to. And what's worse, don't barrage me with questions and then not listen to the answers. This particular group keeps getting worse and worse about it, and, as a friend said, they all seem to also want to show off how much they know about games and game design by anticipating whatever the rule will be. Just sit down and shut up and listen. And if you do otherwise, I REALLY don't want to hear, "Oh, I didn't know that rule!"

ASIDE #3: Actually this is a continuation of #2, but with an addition. I'm not trying to be Sergeant Tightass about rules, but yes, shut up and listen to them. Also, when we're playing (especially when we're playing for the first time), please do things in the right fucking order. At least two guys I play with do shit in whatever order pleases them and as a result they (a) never know what's going on because they don't know when anything is supposed to happen and (b) confuse themselves because they can't remember if they got their VP for this or not and wait where was this worker and oh it turns out I should have gotten three bricks and I only got two. If the game specifies that this phase takes place before that one, let's assume there's a reason and do it in that order. Maybe once we've played we'll discover it doesn't matter, but for the first game let's just play by the goddamn rules, okay?

Anyway, we completed the thing and it was one of those cases where packing up I felt like just shoving everything into the box because it's not like it was going to ever need to be sorted again. As I say, we got a rule wrong, and I think we haven't tweaked out the strategies, but I still felt like I'd wasted an evening and $50 and had nothing to show for it except being pissed off and made to feel like an asshole.

Angry Legomancer is new around here. I like it.

I've had games like the one you describe. No fun, makes you want to never play with the people involved. And I completely know where you're coming from on the teaching bit.

A friend who has played nearly everything in my collection asked to play one of my oldest games: Vampyre. It's from the short-lived TSR pocket game line circa 1980 or 1981. Vampyre is a moderately fun and light game in two parts, for 2-6 players.

Part I: roll-and-move about the rugged countryside of Transylvania (nicely depicted in a brown, grey and white map, trying to be the first player to find and destroy three of Dracula's coffins. The interesting part is the random encounters if you end your encounter outside a town or other major location. The open hexes are safe, but there are encounters in the woods, mountains, and areas that are "under evil influence." Combat is a quick d6 roll, and injury sends you back to start at Klausenberg.

Unfortunately, most of the rolled encounters are actually "no encounter." Even so, I managed to get bit by Dracula three in the first half, though I was able to get two bites healed at The Standing Stones, which looks like a low-budget Stonehenge. Though my opponent grabbed a pistol, a knife, and two holy hosts, I wrecked three coffins first, which allowed me to heal my third bite and pick an item. I chose the crucifix. Btw, if I had received a third unhealed bite in a row, I could have been turned into a nosferatu or werewolf for the rest of the game, unable to win but able to attack my opponent.


Part II: While Castle Dracula was simply one potential coffin storage site on the first map, in the second half, we go directly to Castle Dracula to directly confront the Count. This map, found on the reverse side of the Transylvania map, is done in minty green, grey, black and white. And yet it manages to convey a certain basic level of theme, with one distinctive feature in each map location. For example, the carriage house is just a slightly odd-shaped white space with dark walls, but it contains a simple yet evocative gothic carriage inside. Again, the base mechanic is roll-and-move with a simple combat system consisting of one d6 roll.

This part of the game feels like a simple dungeon crawl, along the lines of Dungeon!, but with a few neat twists. There is a clock that you must advance one hour at the start of your turn, or else lose your turn, and you get a +1 to fight supernatural threats during daylight hours. If you are defeated by a physical threat, or you encounter a supernatural threat, the trap or swarm of rats, that encounter gets placed in a space on the middle of the clock sheet. At midnight, all the undiscovered encounters on the board get remixed with the clock encounters, and then the castle locations are randomly restocked. Even if you kill all the physical threats, there will still be enough supernatural threats to keep the place challenging.

One exception is Dracula. He doesn't go away after an encounter, he stands his ground and fights. On the morning of the second day at Castle Dracula, I encountered him, while my opponent was in a distant part of the castle. First fight, Drac bites me. Second round, he bites me again. Sounds lame, but I needed to roll a 7 on 1d6 to beat him, or a 6 to avoid getting bitten, and I only had +2 on my roll. Third round, I destroyed Count Dracula and won the game. My opponent was slightly annoyed, because bad move rolls kept him from getting a shot at Dracula before I won. Overall, it was moderately enjoyable game. For comparison, I would rate Vampyre 5/10, compared to a 9/10 for Fury of Dracula.

(In response to Lego's post)


Holy Fish does it piss me off when somebody does that as those who were in the Republic of Rome game at WBC can attest to as my face must have been turning 50 shades of purple as I and one player were competing to explain the game. He as a player and I as host/teacher.

I often say when teaching a complex game "Then there is but we'll get to that later so don't worry about it now."

Mostly I teach the great F:AT squad and similar people who are all gamers so the jargon and common concepts are already there which makes it much easier.

I did try to teach my friend and his wife a game once (Innovation I think) and she was one of those types you refer to. Constant interruptions and declaring at one point that you could tell the game designer was male because the game "has no whimsey". I actually put the game away and said lets do something else.

I've given up on pre-digesting rules and then explaining. Now we learn together, because the old way was turning into a race-to-the-finish session because no one was patient enough to let the rules lay themselves out in a reasonable way. Explaining rules was becoming stressful as hell.

We've had games where a couple of us go after it first and then ease additional players in. 2030 was a watershed moment in our group's dynamic -- me and another guy played it to one side while others were playing a different game, and our positive impressions led to others looking to get in on it. Now it's a favorite for the people that generally don't sit long enough for solid rules explanations.

You're going to make mistakes in your first session and you have to look at it as a throw-away when you're done. (My wife and I received child-rearing advice in much the same line on our honeymoon but that's another story.) Second sessions are when you really get into the groove, and you can't judge a game's quality before then. Some players aren't patient enough to wait that long and in the past I've tried to convince them. Now I just move past them to folks who are patient enough, and my gaming experiences have been much better.


S.

Played a few new games this weekend.

First up was Tribune. This is a worker placement game set in Rome and I believe it's designed by same fellow who made Die Macher. The game is your fairly typical WP game in that you place pawns to acquire things...However the game is driven by the cards you get. Each card is part of a different faction and having several cards of the same faction allows you to take control of that faction (given you a special ability for the round). Perhaps the best part of the game is that you don't score VPs. Rather there is a list of 8 goals that everyone is trying to accomplish. Once someone finishes four of them they announce it and the last round is played. The game is VERY fast...it ended in 4 turns. It's nothing amazing, but for a WP it was pretty unique and something I would certainly play again. I enjoyed the setting, but wish there was some more interaction. Overall, fairly positive impressions of the game.

Augustus - Whew boy...I've heard this called Roman Bingo before and that is exactly what this is. Roman bingo. You have different goal cards with different symbols. Someone is holding a cloth bag filled with tokens of said symbols, pulling them out. When someone fills up there card they shout BING...Ave Caesar. Holy crap, this game blows. I get that it's meant to be light and easy to play, but it's just boring as all hell. The artwork is shit, it has typical Euroglypics, it's as unoffensive as a bowl of Cream of wheat...it lacks flavor...it lacks fun. I won and I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Just randomly filling cards, not putting much thought into anything. I'd rather just shoot the breeze for 35 mins than play this.

Battlestar Galactica - Finally got around to playing this game. It was just as good as I had hoped it would be. The game perfectly matches the theme of the first couple seasons of the show and it's not overly hard. The game was going super swell for the humans during the first half of the game. Almost every crisis was passed and the dials were all healthy as can be. During the sleeper phase I got dealt a Cylon...and I sucked at it! I didn't know the game well enough to be good at the role...and I guessed incorrectly at my other cylon teammate. In the end the humans strolled to an easy victory. This game is flat out great though. I love games that rise above the table and this does that in spades. Every move can be questioned and the tension gets unbearable at times. I was pleased with how simple the game actually is. It makes it easy to internalize the rules and focus on the game/players.

Castle - I broke out this simple card laying game from Serge Laget and Bruno Faidutti. It's one of my favorites. I had never played it with 5 before and things are much more chaotic with that number. Also, since every card/character has a special ability, it is one of the games where the strategies aren't readily apparently to a new player. Everyone seemed to love it though...it plays quick, has great classic fantasy art with a touch of humor and can be taught in 5 mins or less. I'd play this 100 times over some shit like Augustus. This might finally be coming back into print. Bruno Faidutti posted on his blog that they finally found a new publisher and were deciding whether or not to keep the old art. I think they should since it looks great and has great character to it. It's funny without being corny and dumb looking like Munchkin.

repoman wrote: I did try to teach my friend and his wife a game once (Innovation I think) and she was one of those types you refer to. Constant interruptions and declaring at one point that you could tell the game designer was male because the game "has no whimsey". I actually put the game away and said lets do something else.

I think packing up the game falls under the other definition of whimsical.

I find the resource collection the only interesting part of Stone Age. What you do with the resources you gather is boring.

Teaching rules is a pain the ass. The best people to teach rules to are MtG players -- they are so comfortable with procedure/rules that they almost always do things in the correct order.