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What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?
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Still having lots of fun with Overkill, when we roll enough successes.
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Chapel wrote: I will suggest a game that I think would be a hit for some folks here. It was for me. It's called Ponzi Scheme, and it's deliciously evil. Played it over the weekend.
Dude, we prefer to call it multi-level marketing. I have a great business opportunity that I'd like to discuss with you. It could change your life!
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One thing I continue to have a hard time with is remembering to adjust the sliders during and after each player turn. I don't know if I've played another game that involves so much administrative work (well, maybe Twilight Imperium...).
I took part in three games of Bomb Squad, which is pretty much combines Space Alert with Hanabi. Players work together to operate a bomb-diffusing robot to move, open doors, rescue hostages, and diffuse bombs, all against a real-time clock (the game uses an app). Each player has a handful of cards that enable these actions, but they're held face out so your fellow players need to provide you with clues as to what cards you're holding (ala Hanabi) before you can assist in programming the bot. There's nothing really innovative about the game, but the clever choice to fuse these game mechanics, the constant countdown to detonation, and the unique theme make it a fun play. The game comes with multiple scenarios -- I think we were playing one of the easier ones. We finally won on our third attempt.
The wife and I also blew the dust off Agricola after about a five-year hiatus. Part of the reason it sat on the shelf for so long is that I HATE the rule book. It makes the game seem so much more complex than it really is. We punched through two games in about 90 minutes. I didn't remember the game being so quick, but I always played with more than 2 players before. We each won once. She was fairly ho-hum on it so I may decide to find it a new home in the near future.
I was glad to try CO² again. I think it's a very unique game -- mechanically, aesthetically, thematically, and I'd even say in terms of utilizing game play to express an artistic / political statement. The designer obviously believes that energy industries need to widen their narrow focus on profits and be more collaborative in terms of developing innovative green technologies. But you can also tell he's cynical that this will actually happen as the world's reliance on energy inexorably increases. I think he thinks we're screwed.
As for the session we played, the four of us managed to not pollute the earth (pssh... so much for his cynicism) and ended up with very tight scores, ranging from 46 to 49. We got a few rules wrong, but we've scheduled another session in a few days, this time with five players, so we'll see how impactful those misplayed rules were.
I took part in the first attempt at the scenario that comes with T.I.M.E Stories. This is a hard game to describe, in part because pretty much any description of the session would include story spoilers and in part because there really isn't a comparable tabletop game that I can think of... the closest analogues I can think of are Nintendo DS puzzle games like Professor Layton or Phoenix Wright mixed with the movie Groundhog Day and TV show Quantum Leap ("Oh, boy..."). Basically, the game comes with a single story scenario that players will play through, again and again until they get it right in the time allotted. Some clues you learn become consistent changes in the scenario, though, so it's not like you're just playing the exact thing over and over. It's incredibly unique and innovative, and full of great characters and loads of style. Once you've finished a scenario, though, there doesn't look like there's any replayability (worse than Mansions of Madness), so those future expansions providing all new scenarios will be essential for fans.
I have two critiques (besides the finite number of times you can play it). One is that it's over-produced. It has a superfluous board and seems to have more tokens than necessary. For a game with such low replayability that necessarily puts you on the expansion treadmill, it'd be nice if they made the package smaller and with a lower price tag. The other is that it has this awkward and, as far as I can tell, unnecessary rule that players can't read out the clue cards they get to access to other players who aren't in the same space of the room, but can describe the gist of it. What's the difference?
"If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the Fury Road!"
Okay, the trashy classic that is Thunder Road was released almost 30 years before the amazing spectacle that is Mad Max: Fury Road, but the quote applies very well to this game. (Milton Bradley's 1986 release was an obvious love letter to The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.) Each player controls three vehicles and a helicopter racing down a highway trough a post-apocalyptic wasteland. What is the prize for this race... a tanker of gasoline? An oasis of water? Avoiding being pasted across the hot asphalt? Whatever the prize, there is a sense that your survival depends on you leaving your competitors as mangled wrecks far in your rear-view mirror as you speed down the infinite highway to nowhere.
Great fun with many laughs, cheers, and groans of despair. This is what simple beer and pretzel games should aspire to.
My copy has the weirdest frigging print mistake, though. The board was printed upside down on one of the boards, so the "puzzle piece" board connectors don't line up the road properly. To describe it in a way that Barney will understand, the male bits bump against each other instead of slotting into the female bits. I had to overlap the edge of the boards rather than connect them. A little awkward, but workable.
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- Michael Barnes
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The expansion stuff seems like kind of a mixed bag, which is fine because it's modular. We didn't do Favor, Crew Loyalty, or the special locations. That all seemed kind of iffy to me, just adding more text to keep track of. Although the Crew Loyalty module looks pretty fun- you can make dudes walk the plank and all. The new cards were all fine and added variety but were mostly unnecessary, the Treasure Galleon ruled, we liked the low maneuverability galleon and brig choices. Contraband was great, I really liked that it added a nuance without piling on rules. Weather/wind was kind of dumb and we kept forgetting about it anyway. The rules are sort of shaky, especially since there typically aren't eight directions for it to move in. It was more of a nuisance than anything.
Glad to get that modern classic back on the table. It's not as complicated as I kind of remembered it, but it is quite detailed. Still definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best pirate game ever made. I do think that in terms of the kind of game it is ("open world-adventure-commerce-PU&D") I might like Xia and Merchant of Venus a little more. But I do probably like it over Firefly.
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- engineer Al
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Columbob wrote: We tried it again with the same Cadets (still had to setup, reshuffle and redistribute all the Aliens and Discovery tokens which is frankly the worst part of the game IMO).
Here's a little trick for when you want to retry a scenario after a failed attempt: You don't have to reset the map. Just flip the scanned tiles back over and and change the orientation of the starting tile. This changes the direction of ALL the tiles as you play and produces a completely different map.
Glad to hear that you are having fun!
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engineer Al wrote: Here's a little trick for when you want to retry a scenario after a failed attempt: You don't have to reset the map. Just flip the scanned tiles back over and and change the orientation of the starting tile. This changes the direction of ALL the tiles as you play and produces a completely different map.
Oh, that's freakin' BRILLIANT! Thanks for sharing that, Al!
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Ew. I've been curious about TtA for a long time but after trying to watch a tutorial and falling asleep and now hearing this... I might just pass.bfkiller wrote: One thing I continue to have a hard time with is remembering to adjust the sliders during and after each player turn. I don't know if I've played another game that involves so much administrative work
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- Michael Barnes
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aaxiom wrote: Michael, do you think the expansion is a must-have for M&M? I enjoy the base just fine, but does it really add any significant butt-tonnage to what's already there?
I dunno, that's hard to say after a play and without using the more extensive modules. I would say that the new stuff adds some extra flavor and detail, but I wouldn't call any of it essential. From what I read in the rules, some of the stuff we didn't use makes the game noticeably harder, so that may be something you do or do not want.
Through the Ages...that is a game I have never once said, in like six or seven years, "I'd like to go back and play that again".
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Michael Barnes wrote: Through the Ages...that is a game I have never once said, in like six or seven years, "I'd like to go back and play that again".
I still dig it quite a bit. I prefer it to Nations because I like the higher potential for conflict and I think the elements of your tableau do a better job of "simulating" your civilization. But there are definitely a LOT of moving parts, both figuratively (which is arguably a positive or a negative, depending on taste) as well as literally (which is definitely a negative, but one I can put up with).
But getting through that rule book to re-learn it... Possibly the worst one I've ever taken the time to learn from. (Well, maybe Pax Porfiriana's...)
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Michael Barnes wrote:
Through the Ages...that is a game I have never once said, in like six or seven years, "I'd like to go back and play that again".
Well, I've clocked in 250ish plays in the last seven years, so I took up your slack....Best game ever!
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We also played Spyfall, Coconuts, and Wits and Wagers but it's hard to fling poo or ask questions when everyone's still talking about TIME Stories.
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Epic Spell Wars x 1
Historia x 2
Magical Athlete x 1
This crew LOVES Wiz-War, so we'll probably start throwing cards this morning. Yesterday however, we committed ourselves to Historia. Previously, only my wife and I played. A two player game is fine, though it requires the maintenance of at least 2 "CivBots." Playing Historia with FIVE HUMANS is infinitely better. It's a fun 4x. With the exception of my wife, the other players agreed: Historia is a good, slightly abstracted, 2.5 hour Civ game. But it would be better with a little more "screw you" moments. Any opportunities for player interaction is really "passive," i.e. I'm buying this Wonder before you, I'm contesting this territory before you score more points, etc. I guess that's Euro for ya.
Happy Turkey Day y'all.
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