What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played a three-player Age of Conan game after (1) having had and traded the game away after it first came out and (2) receiving the old-stock base game from Ares through the Kickstarter for the expansion. As Stygia, I crowned Conan but ended up losing by two points to my wife, as my position was starting to deteriorate and I couldn't win on more than one resource set. (The other two would have been won by the third player, not my wife.) Anyway, I've bumped up my rating from 2009's kind-of-unfair 3 to a fairer 6; I suspect that will improve with the expansion, which seems likely to address some of the thematic issues with the game -- if not, sadly, its being too long for what it is and having too many similar-but-not-identical systems for handling conflict.

Been playing a three-player Churchill Vassal game PBEM with some gents from these parts. Too early to declare me the winner yet.

Of all the games I've sold recently, I probably most regret losing Age of Conan. It's not a great game, but for those of us who read all the old stories, it was great immersion in the Hyborian World. Just couldn't find anyone to play it regularly.

But what I can get an occasional game of is Battlelore, 2nd Ed., this time with the hordes of Waiqar the Undying. We decided to try our first game with the Undead vs. the Daqan, to have a rough good vs. evil matchup. Also, we wanted to start with the basics, so we were both planning on having infantry-heavy armies. Thankfully the scenarios played into that. It was the Daqan's Mustering the Militia (Citadel Guard cost 1 point less; gain 1 VP for every two buildings you occupy) vs. the Undead's The Dead of Night (After mustering, deploy any Graveyards on the opponent's side of the board; gain 1 VP if you have at least one unit in each sector on your opponent's side of the board.) We went lazy again and just used a couple of the standard armies: Defenders of Lore (Citadel Guard x 5(with the scenario bonus), Yeoman Archers x 3, Rune Golems x 2, Roc Warrior, Lore x 2) vs the Disciples of Zorath (Reanimates x 3, Bone Horrors x 4, Necromancers x 2, Barghests x 2, Graveyards x 2.)

Being able to deploy your Graveyards in the opponent's side of the board is a pretty big deal, since it doesn't matter where a Minion unit dies on the map. For the price of 1 Lore, they can appear there (once, since the Graveyard is discarded after that.) We both had a nice spread across the board with the Daqan placing the Roc and both Golems in the center and securing the wings with Guard and Archers, while I tried to keep a mix of Horrors and Reanimates across the sectors and deployed both Necromancers on hexes that shared sectors, so I'd be able to include them in Command cards for either sector. The dice were all over the place with the Daqan (thematically) rolling a ton of Lore results, including on a Runeblade card which was played on top of a Darkening the Skies command to try to push a Horror unit off a VP space. 4 rolls of 4, 3, 2, 1 dice came to 0 hits, 2 Heroics, 2 Lore. 2 more attacks (Darken the Skies and Double Shot) turned up one hit. Sad trombone. The Daqan jumped out to an early 6-3 VP lead, but after activating a couple Graveyards and with the Daqan generally unable to be aggressive in order to keep generating VP on their right side (occupying two buildings), I was able to pull ahead and finally win, 16-11, helped along by a key play of Morbid Grasp (6 Lore, pick two units after your opponent's Command step. Those units can't move this turn.) that prevented any attempt to get back into buildings and try to catch up in the VP race.

The Undead are Lore hungry. If you've played and bemoaned the number of Lore results you've rolled (as the Daqan did this game), bemoan no longer as the Undead, as you'll be using it constantly to activate Graveyards and, especially, move Bone Horrors. The fact that you can move them in addition to ordered units is amazing. Of course, unlike the Daqan's Ironbound (who have to be included in the ordered total), they can't attack. But ordering another unit in a good position off a VP space to attack and then spending one Lore to move a Horror unit onto that space to secure the point for the turn is great and "solves" one of the typical quandaries of the game in the Undead's favor. Also, I admit to being pretty doubtful about the viability of the Horrors, since they increase the chance of being damaged by 50% because they can't retreat. But even being reduced to one model, they always attack at full strength, since they can never be Weak. And, as a Minion unit, you can revive them at Graveyards or move them with the Lore card Raise Dead (3 Lore, play after an enemy unit is eliminated, remove a Minion unit from the board and place it in that space at full health) or move them with the Necromancers' Influence. OTOH, I was a little underwhelmed by the Barghests. Again, dice are random, yo, but they always seemed to lack real impact and they also don't have the durability of the Minion units. The only unit to suffer Panic during the game was the Roc and the Daqan dispelled it pretty easily with their large stockpile of Lore.

The new Undead scenarios seem to be pretty terrain-heavy. The downside of the Horrors was that, with their 1 movement, they had real trouble getting past rivers in the left and right sector and a triangle of hills and forest in the center. When combined with the Daqan scenario, there were a couple areas of one hex channels that would have been great for a defensive position and Barricade hexes, but my scenario called for aggression (i.e. I had to be in his half of the board), so I spent a bit more time trying to set up attacks for subsequent turns. Again, the Compelled ability helped compensate, but it still led to some turns where it seemed like actual progress on my part was less than it would have been with the other two armies (vagaries of dice and Command cards present, as always.) Next time, I'll play mostly units from Heralds of Dreadfall with greater inherent movement and see if it's any different.

We played two games of Pandemic Legacy last night, and I could have played two more. I was already in a place where I never needed to play the original game again, but this is one I'm totally on board with. We'll see how I feel in a few more games, but for right now it looks legit.

Dug into Clockwork Wars last night, another fantasy-ish (Steampunk) Euro/AT hybrid game in the vein of Hyperborea, Kemet, Eclipse, and Cyclades. I actually wasn't expecting much and was thinking we'd get through a play and I can learn it before teaching it to my normal group just so we could get enough plays in that I could review it. Wow, was I wrong.

This game is great. Somehow, in this quickly becoming crowded genre, it maintains a unique atmosphere. First of all much of the game is simultaneous. You collect workers that can be turned into units via simultaneous deployment with writing down orders. Yes, you actually write down where you're deploying to.

Everyone then reveals and any spaces that are contested results in a deterministic battle where units kill 1 for 1. It's a little more nuanced in that nearby citadels can supply reinforcements and there's take that card play via a deck of Espionage cards. To play these Espionage cards you need units in the "Court" which is a separate area you can deploy to off the board.

The tech tree-ish element is these Discovery tiles that are randomly drawn at the start of the game and you only use 25% of the total each game, which boosts replayability immensely. There's only 9 out there so they're more impactful and less incremental than most tech advancement games. I saved the entire game to get the Cataclysm, which didn't open until the third age (last three turns of 7), and I was blowing up hexes with a giant leviathan worm. I literally removed 1 hex from the map each turn, killing everything on it. Crazy shit.

I really loved it. The simultaneous deployment combined with the Espionage card added a great deal of drama to a deterministic combat system, loved the modularity of the map/discoveries. All kinds of good stuff going on. I even came in last place (out of 3) but still heavily enjoyed it. It also worked very well with 3 due to the map setup with no one really able to be ignored.

After we were finished one of the guys said he liked it more than Hyperborea as it seemed like it would be vastly different with each play due to the randomized setup and the deployment system. I initially balked but after contemplating for awhile, I think I did enjoy it much more than Hyperborea. It's also somewhat faster as it took us only 2 hours with teaching on our first game. Crazy for how meaty and full it felt.

Think Hyperborea will end up on my trade/sell pile.

Afterwards we did a 2 player teaching game of Mottainai. It was my 5th play and I'm still not totally comfortable with the game in terms of remember what each task does and the like. Still very interesting though.

Last night I got to try Volt for the first time. It's a programmed movement game where robots run around like RoboRally, except with more control and emphasis on fighting. Rather than get dealt random cards, everyone has three dice and a screen. But you don't roll the dice. You place them on a sheet (depicting movement and shooting) on the die face of your choice. Your red die happens first, then your white, then your blue. You can move in the 4 cardinal directions, and/or shoot in 8 directions (diagonals and 4 main). The way the dice placement works also means that you can't move or shoot in the same direction twice. Also unlike RoboRally, the movement and shooting is always relative to the way you're looking from your side of the board. So it's less confusing for people who don't think that way or like driving remote control cards.

So back to the dice. The faces on the die determine both your priority and the strength of the action. Lower dice do less, but are enacted first. So we all do our Red die first, but it goes in the order of 1, 2, 3, etc. on up to 6. If two people picked the same number, movement happens first. If there's still a tie, the sum of the pips on your dice determines the order (again lowest going first). For movement, the die value is how many spaces you move in that direction. For shooting, all dice do one point of damage, and robots have three hit points. But the faces affect robots in different ways- 1's just do damage but are the fastest, 2's and 3's hit the other robots "arms" and mess up their shot for the rest of the round, rotating them 45 degrees left or right, 4's and 5's hit the treads so they rotate the entire body 90 degrees one way or the other, and 6's are a one space knockback. So there's definitely some RoboRally-esque chaos thrown in by the way the shooting works.

First to 5 points. You get points by ending a round on a specific space on the board, or killing each other. Killing can be done by getting the third hit, or by pushing people into holes. If someone drives into a pit on their own, no one gets a point. I won by pushing people into holes a lot. I'll definitely play this one again; it's a neat take on the concept.

Then I played a ton of Coup G54. I'm still really enjoying the new Coup. Played a bit with the Missionary* last night in a 4 player game, and that was just a lot of fun. It made for a much more aggressive game where people were throwing out challenges left and right, because they could just claim that their lost card was a Missionary. I had double missionary one game so I started claiming that I had all kinds of roles. I really like some of the more interactive roles that foster bluffing and challenges more often, like the Capitalist- take 4 money, then give 1 to each other "Capitalist."

*If you lose a card to anything but a coup, you can set it aside face down as a "missionary" and get a new card to replace it. (Effectively not losing an influence at all). If you're called on it, and it's not a missionary, you just lose the game since you lose the card claimed as a missionary and then lose a card due to a successful challenge against you.

charlest wrote: Dug into Clockwork Wars last night

You made this game sound like a ton of fun, and I LOVE games where you have to write down your move ahead of time (Magic Ream and GW Warrior Knights are two of my faves). But I looked it up on CSI...70 bucks AFTER the CSI online-retailer discount? God damn, man. I'm not gonna pay 70 bucks on the hope that I'll like it.

Cambyses wrote:

charlest wrote: Dug into Clockwork Wars last night

You made this game sound like a ton of fun, and I LOVE games where you have to write down your move ahead of time (Magic Ream and GW Warrior Knights are two of my faves). But I looked it up on CSI...70 bucks AFTER the CSI online-retailer discount? God damn, man. I'm not gonna pay 70 bucks on the hope that I'll like it.

Stay far away from any Kingdom Death: Monster discussion.

Yeah, that's not something I'm into anyways. I already own Monster Hunter. Anyways, thanks for the play report, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for it!

Manoeuvre, again, for the first time in a couple of years. Just an enjoyable light wargame play.

I'm surprised they haven't published a nicer version as the components are cheap even by cheesy wargame standards. I'd likely buy the new version and offload the old one.

S.

It looks like the expansion, Distant Lands, may actually see the light of day next year...

However, what would you like to see improved on the components? The chits are as thick as most wargame chits and are a good size. Easy to read. the cards are perfect for what they are. The only thing that may be upgraded would be the boards, but you get so many, how much would it cost if they were mounted?

I really dig the compact size of the game. We set it up at a small bar table for our campaign games.

Excellent title.

Cthulhu Wars: The game was really fun, really spoke to my tastes, and the company could not possibly have been better.
Crokinole: Still love it, always will.
Pelopennes - The Card Game: Single most brutal game I've played in ages. Holy shit.
Dark Matter: Really interesting card game with really slick, novel mechanics. Really want to pick it up.

Mr. White wrote: It looks like the expansion, Distant Lands, may actually see the light of day next year...

However, what would you like to see improved on the components? The chits are as thick as most wargame chits and are a good size. Easy to read. the cards are perfect for what they are. The only thing that may be upgraded would be the boards, but you get so many, how much would it cost if they were mounted?

I really dig the compact size of the game. We set it up at a small bar table for our campaign games.

Excellent title.

The cards are a bugger to shuffle and the chits would be much nicer if they were thicker. The boards are prone to dishing. Going up one size on the boards would give the game a little more gravitas too. I always feel like I'm playing a cereal box game.

Love that you can play three games simultaneously with one copy.

Played a game of Alien Uprising yesterday and one more today. The fluff is that you're the crewmen from a stranded spaceship, and you have to repair your ship or call for help before the aliens overwhelm you. Both games was solo with three crewmembers, but today I played with some of Launius' suggested house rules that make the game a bit easier, but also a bit more fun.

The first game was horrible. There was far too much information (each crewmember has four pieces of equipment, three skill cards, and a special ability - that's just too much stuff to consider), alien movement seemed unintuitive, and it was just so very fiddly. I abandoned the game before finishing, but probably would have lost.

Then, today, I tried it again and it was much better. I felt like I knew what to do, that I could make a plan, and that managing the game was doable. Ended up losing the turn before I could have repaired the ship and made a run for it. As with Space Cadets: Away Missions I like how what to do on your turn is not obvious - you can usually choose from several options that will be equally good. I also like that you roll action dice to see what your dudes can do in a given game round, but I'm not sure it's perfect in a game with more players. When I solo I don't mind that one dude (m/f) gets a boring action, but if that was my only action this turn, I might.

So, playing the game was actually quite a lot of fun, but that being said it did feel a bit bland. The aliens have different abilities (which is cool), but they all look more or less the same no matter if you use minis or tiles. Also, the board gets so swamped by bad guys that I didn't really feel like they were aliens threatening my dudes, but more that they were and awful lot of bookkeeping I had to make. Not that mangaging the AI opponent was difficult (not in the second game at least), but it just didn't feel dangerous like it does in other coop games. Or, it didn't in this particular playthrough. Will play again soon and see if it changes.

Bios Megafauna My competition, the lizards, got landlocked in the south and weren't able to adapt and spread out while my mammals were populous and prospering. The lizards became amphibious at one point but global temperatures killed them off immediately. It was a weird game where there were NO cataclysms so we had some long strings that should have died but didn't. The following game went to fucking hothouse earth during the Jurassic. So it was like a 20 minute game. You just have to expect weird stuff like that to happen in the game. I don't play this all the time but I really like it a lot. It certainly is a difficult one to recommend though.

I love Bios Megafauna. If I had to make a short list of games that are just brilliant Bios Megafauna would be in for sure.

But I'm also completely OK with being along for the ride which, despite your best efforts, can definitely happen. Though when my amphibious duck-billed nut-eaters all freeze to death I'll hold them in high regard for how they kept a fitter species well-fed with their delicious sinew.