What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Saw some old friends. Codenames and One Night Ultimate Werewolf were great as always.

Finally got my first chance to play Dungeonquest 3E. We decided to restart as new characters if our first ones died. From what I'd read on FAT I was expecting an untimely death or two. It was a bloodbath.

Some highlights:

- First turn: Friend A walks into a room. A swinging blade trap flies towards him. He dies.

- First turn: I walk into a room. I attempt to jump over a bottomless pit. I die.

- Second turn: Friend A walks into a room with his new character. A swinging blade trap flies towards him. He dies.

- Friend B and C descend into the catacombs early on and are attacked by vampires, giant spiders and bat swarms. They wander for many turns before being finished off by explosions and an angry ogre, respectively. They die.

- Friend A finally emerges from the catacombs with his third character of the game only to encounter a giant Demon right before the treasure room. He dies.

- With 70 gold and a character near the start, I retreated from the dungeon as we called it quits halfway through the game.

Overall we had a blast and everyone was excited to try it again in the future. Preferably with some sort of drinking game attached.

Played another game of Rebellion yesterday as Imperials. I was playing an experienced player who played way more aggressively as Rebels than I was used to. He almost never held a leader back early game and acquired a sizable fleet with 3 Mon Cal cruisers by mid-game.

I spread like a mofo and did about half as many missions as my opponent. I found his base (Ilum) on turn 8 and it was literally the final planet (everywhere else was eliminated at that point). Luckily I had a Star Destroyer nearby and I seized the initiative to attack his 1 X, and 2 Y's. Close battle and cards almost decided it, but I came away due to blocking some damage. Great, tense game.

There was an awesome moment in the late mid game where he charged my Death Star with a large fleet and killed everything but the huge battlestation. I had performed some surgical strikes earlier in the game on spaces containing loose groupings of fighters (catching him off guard) as I wanted to whittle away at his fighter supply. I think this saved me as he only had three fighters in the Death Star assault which kept him from taking me out.

Oh, and I froze Jan Dodonna in Carbonite and blew up Kashyyyk.

I played 0.2% of 504 last night. Here's what I wrote about it:

This is a tough one to talk about, as 504 isn't so much a game but a game system. Talking about the one we played, 231, is only of marginal usefulness, but it's a starting point. 231 is a race game where you're trying to be the first to drive to various cities. You can build factories in the cities you've visited in order to earn money that you can use to bid on special power cards. There isn't a whole lot to game 231, but although I was the first to reach all 10 target cities I lost by one point because the winning player was able to buy VPs in the card auction. That's worth noting for later. Would I play 231 again? Eh, I wouldn't clamor for it. But that's not really the question.

The question isn't how good 231 is, but how good 504 is. On the surface it seems like something that's more to appreciate for the sheer scope of ambition than for what it actually produces. Like a Rube Goldberg device or intricate marble run, judging it solely on its end result -- moving a marble from point A to point B -- misses the entire purpose. The amazing thing about 504 isn't game 231 but that it was able to produce game 231. Game 231 worked. Three elements, chosen randomly, combined to create a game that made sense, had understandable rules, and even had strategy decisions, such as focusing on the auctions instead of trying to power ahead with speed. It's also interesting that Friese doesn't just go with the most vanilla applications of each element in order to make it work better; he takes these basic elements and adds some novelty to their use and they still seem to mesh pretty well.

504 is a strange beast because while the games it produces seems like they're fairly light and short and not very exciting to hardcore gamers, the system itself and how well it works makes it a gamer's game. It's like watching a master chef make pop-tarts, and I have no idea what to think about that.

It sounds like a strange product.

It sounds to me like 504 is really kind of like one of those X-in-1 game sets you get at Wal Mart that has Checkers, Chess, Backgammon, Chinese Checkers, Dominoes, and a deck of cards....except it has rules for a shitload of random games in it.

Neat concept.

The real question is if someone will realize that 100$ got them 500 games.....and if people will play 504 more than 5 or 6 times before putting it away on the shelf forever, like they do with virtually every other game.

SuperflyTNT wrote: It sounds to me like 504 is really kind of like one of those X-in-1 game sets you get at Wal Mart that has Checkers, Chess, Backgammon, Chinese Checkers, Dominoes, and a deck of cards....except it has rules for a shitload of random games in it.

Neat concept.

The real question is if someone will realize that 100$ got them 500 games.....and if people will play 504 more than 5 or 6 times before putting it away on the shelf forever, like they do with virtually every other game.

I don't think it's really like those 5-in-1 games or whatever they're called. The physical output roughly is, but 504 isn't a set of 504 rules on how to use the mess of components for different games.

504 really is a set of modules that combine in interesting ways. The fantastic part of it is not the metaphysical ruleset in our heads that is the result, it's that physical book and how you translate those different flip pages into a coherent whole via priority structure and if/then logic. Almost like working through logical psuedo-code if you're a developer. This is why I took what seems like a gimmicky approach on my review, jumbling my paragraphs up and referencing a priority in how you should read them-as it strikes right to the heart of the matter and has you experience a small sliver of what makes the game brilliant.

Dave's description nails it though. That master chef analogy is great.

After I finish my current project, whether or not it gets published, I think I am done with game design. I will have made my best effort at creating my grail game, and it will or will not get published by the one publisher with both the interest and the relevant license to an approximation of my game.

But if I were to travel back in time to a younger version of myself, I would tell him to buy the following games and items to assemble a game designers kit:

Risk (for the world map)
Zombies (for the huge quantity of cheap figures, and the city map tiles)
several different colors of card sleeves, in at least 50-packs
several very cheap decks of conventional cards
a small "brick" of d6s
a handful of polyhedral dice

and 504 (for the various components and the meta-structure for the 504 combinations of mechanics)

If 504 really contained 504 entertaining games, everybody could dispose of their collections and storage boxes/shelving. But that's too tall an order for a single box of games with a finite quantity of pieces inside. But I really think it looks like a crucial tool box for an aspiring game designer.

It does seem like an all-in-one kit that has universal components and rules...the checkers board is used for chess, checkers, and the checkers are used for checkers and backgammon.

It just seems like a slick system that reuses components and allows for a shitload of games based on how you flip the book. Totally clever, but it seems like the ultimate compromise. You get a lot of decent games in one box but I'd guess that there's no spectacular games.

So, basically, it's most people's collections in one box

Last night was Talisman + The Cataclysm + The City. This was an epic four-hour game, so prepare for a suitably epic session report here...

So the main changes in the Cataclysm board...most of it is pretty much the same, especially in the outer and middle regions. The big changes are twofold is that there are cards left over from "before the cataclysm," basically really good items (or monsters) that no one sees until they land there. The second is the cooler one, the denizens. These are NPCs, including old ones from the base game like the Mystic and the Enchantress, who now are drawn from a deck and are tied to various places like the city and the tavern. They accumulate as the game goes on, and end up bringing lots more variety to the board.

The four adventurers who set out were the Mutant, the Barbarian, the Scavenger, and the Black Knight, who in the Cataclysm is no longer a space on the board, but a character who can hassle people all over the board. The Mutant, who looks like a refugee from Cosmic Encounter and plays kind of like it, was the first one to kick the bucket after some unfortunate encounters. He was replaced by the Scion, another new character who seems to be made of spells. The Barbarian was loaded with strength, but in typical Talisman fashion only ever seemed to find encounters that used Craft. Both of these guys were the first to go to the City board to buy some weapons and items. I made my way to the City as well, and came away with my pet dragon Singe, and the flail. (I had to shovel some poop to make the money, but I'm not above hard work.) The Scavenger, who can dig around for objects in the discard if she rolls a 1, spent the whole game loaded down with items and objects, but had some bad luck pushing into the Inner region, as we'll see. She also managed to get a flail, which is a ridiculous weapon.

This was a fun game because everyone was pushing at roughly the same pace. An early card gave everyone a Warlock's Quest, and we all succeeded and got our Talisman. The Scavenger and I both got a regular talisman, as did the Mutant. But then the Mutant died and the Scion took his place, so he needed to do it the hard way. The Barbarian got a Talisman as well, but since Cataclysm adds a deck of different Talisman types, he ended up with one that was cursed and basically didn't work. So he had to get another quest, one of those hapless processes where he circled for close to an hour around the Warlock's Cave to get another. I did not have this problem, as I ended up competing four quests, and got a lot of handy quest rewards (from Sacred Pool) as a result. When the Barbarian finally got his Talisman, it was a nice one that prevented a loss of more than 1 life in the Inner Region. At this point I mostly just needed a little more insurance in the Inner Region, so at my first opportunity I attacked him and took it from him with my mighty flail, and we all laughed at him.

At this point I'm ready to make my push, so I enter the Inner Region. The Inner Region on the Cataclysm board seems designed to drain life faster, making that Talisman I "borrowed" very valuable. But just as I entered the Plain of Peril, the Scavenger cast a spell on me that transmuted my flail and shield into wood. No big deal I thought, I only have one fight against the Snowbeast, and that'll come down to a die roll. I made it through the Mines and the Tower easily enough, but then when I got to the Snowbeast I lost on two straight turns. Without any Fate, I was forced to double back and leave the Inner Region. By this time both the Scion and the Barbarian were in the Inner Region. The Scavenger was also making a push, but was having a hard time getting by the Crypt, having failed that roll at least three times.

(The Barbarian had spent the last hour trying to get another Talisman. This was particularly funny because there were like three lying around, and he was unable to land on any of them for a long time.)

Since you can only encounter another character in the Inner Region on the Crown or the Plain of Peril, I managed to get by the Scion without having to fight him. Then of course I met the Barbarian on the Plain of Peril. I would have been fine, except I no longer had my flail, so I ended up getting killed. I came back as the Amazon, and if I'd had her from the beginning I would have been off to a really good start. But as it turned out the Scion made it to the middle without much trouble.

One really neat change is a much more exciting Crown of Command. Instead of the normal Command Spell, someone is now going to lose life with every roll. If it's a low roll the caster will lose as well, but if it's a 6 the spell outright kills everyone who has the lowest health. It's a much tenser game, and it showed last night. The Scion kept hurting himself, and it looked like the Scavenger might actually make it up there and catch him. But it wasn't to be, and the Scion managed to end everyone with his Command Spell.

In the long list of Talisman expansions, the Cataclysm ranks in the top half I think. On the positive side, the Remnants and Denizens add cool stuff without too much extra rules hassle, which is always the challenge with Talisman expansions. On the other hand it didn't have as strong a post-apocolyptic setting as I'd hoped, especially after the portentous Harbinger expansion. But on balance it was one of the best games of Talisman I've played in a while.

So do you replace the big Adventure deck with the new one from Cataclysm to increase the feel of the new board?

---

Last night was our Spartacus rematch from last week, to give a chance to the newbie. I also got locked out of the arena so wanted to get back to the bloody action.
ATTENTION CHARLEST: The Thing from the Pit is actually from the base set and made an early appearance in our game. I cheered. But he never even made it to a fight 'cause Seppius also had the Dottore and preferred his kickassedness.

At some point all five of us were tied at 7 points, which was a pretty unique situation for us. Then my all-star gladiator who'd previously crushed an upstart under his mighty hammer so I boasted his reputation (can't remember his name, 5-4-3 and 6s win ties on attack EDIT: Magnetius!) fought the Dottore in a Primus where we were teamed up with a couple of startings, and the Dottore taught him a thing or two (or three - I rolled like shit, he rolled like a god of the arena), so I was back down to 5 and my hopes of a win were dashed. Who cares, this game's still fun.

Money flowed in this game, I'd never seen as much wealth on display, every player had regularly lots of cash. Maybe because the early turns had many slaves at the auction block for very few gladiators.
Our previous record for the Host auction was 19 sestercii. That record was smashed not once or twice, but FOUR times during this game (20-26-40-46). Late game, Battiatus (newbie's second game) had 11 points, Calavius 10, Glaber still stalled at 7, Tullius (me) at 6, and Seppius at 9 points. Seppius gambled all his fortune (40) for the host, in order to fight Battiatus' middle-class gladiator and crown the Dottore champion of the arena, thus giving him the win. I totally screwed those plans with a Primus where 2 houses face off with 1 slave and 1 gladiator. Problem was, Seppius and Calavius did NOT have any ready slaves so were locked out! Seppius' well-laid plans were laid to ruins to his great shame (and we laughed so hard at his misfortune)! I confronted Glaber's newly acquired Spartacus, but my gladiator put the Dottore's lessons to good use and I almost decapited the titular character with nary a scratch. That put me at 7 points.

Following turn, I sent my 9 (!) slaves to the mines, gained another point through a Scheme card, and come Auction time, I easily had the most cash to win the Host - 46 sestercii. I was also holding on to the Jupiter's Cock card from almost the very beginning so I felt pretty secure. I rebounded from last place to score 7 points in 2 turns for the WIN! Epic times.

Columbob wrote: So do you replace the big Adventure deck with the new one from Cataclysm to increase the feel of the new board?

This occurred to me, but there are only 47 Adventure cards in the Cataclysm deck. That's not as many as there are in most of the small box expansions. I thought it might be a little thin on its own, so it was combined with the original game's cards, and that's it. So that's just the base game and Cataclysm in the adventure deck.

As a result of bad life choices, I haven't played Spartacus in nearly two years.

Legomancer wrote: I played 0.2% of 504 last night...

That sums up 504 and nothing more needs to be said.

We played some Robinson Crusoe. Love that game. We play with the dog and Friday with 2, which makes the game reasonably easy. We played the attack of the cannibals scenario... we built the knife, spear, and sling which made life easy. I think a weakness of the scenario is that it is vastly easier if you have the soldier. If he gets his hands on inspiration he can singlehandedly pump your weapons pretty high over time to finish off the cannibal city.

We've been playing Robinson as well. Won the second scenario (the Cursed Island) last night. It was a nail biter, but it always is; the game makes you really work for each step. Our MVP was a treasure card that preserved our excess food, which was a godsend.