What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Yeah, I'm in for the 2nd edition because it sounds pretty good fun. It also seems to have some staying power---people still talking about it pretty long after release which is a pretty good sign.

Yesterday I got quite a lot of gaming in...
First I played Deadzone with my son. He was the Enforcers, I was the Marauders. He wiped me out. I have yet to see anything be able to deal with the Enforcer's leader. He's a walking tank with a jump pack.

Next was the first game of Dungeon Fighter, with both sons. We had a great time, and of course lost. I really like the way this game works.

Last night my friends came over for a 3 player test of City of Lycans. I'm doing last-minute changes in preparation for Origins. It went pretty well.
We finished the night with a game of Dungeon Fighter. This time we almost made it to the final boss, but we all died. Looking at the boss, there is no way we would have survived. I think this game is definitely about the experience, and not about winning.

Bought Takenoko prior to me going up to Stormseeker75's house.

Played Hoodrats with him and his GF, they loved it and had some incredible input which I immediately implemented. Board is now 18x24 and I got rid of like 50 tokens (and a shitload of fidlliness).

Got home and Takenoko'ed it up. Wife rage quit big as fuck because she had to move the Panda to make it eat. Restarted 2P with eldest kid and it was awesome.

Played some Arkham Horror. Actually ended up being a pretty thrilling, down to wire, game where the terror level hit 10. We didn't play it super seriously which I think is its sweet spot. I remember some posts by ubarose about the game and I think she captured its proper environment better than anyone else has.

It was kind of like revisiting an old friend, you pick it right back up.

Fire and Axe which was long and painful Pick up & Deliver stuff. I rolled badly almost every time, losing a lot of options. I finished dead last (after what felt like far too long).

Zombicide: Black Plague + Wolfsburg which I'm calling now as not as good as Rue Morgue or Prison Outbreak. I don't care about plastic character sheets. I think mostly it's the setting, and the increased tend towards munchkinism with some of the weapon level requirements which hurts players lower in XP removing one of the nice catch-up options in the older sets. Also, even with the expansion there just aren't interesting zombies. Wolfs (dogs) just have more activations. It feels like the same problems original Zombicide (Season 1) suffered from- no tactical variety in the mobs. I really appreciate the berserker and toxics for the situational puzzles they offer. Nothing in this set like that. I know there are other types from the Kickstarter, but I wish they had put more interesting zombies in the first big-box expansion. Not my game, and I don't feel so bad about not owning it*.

Star Realms, four games of. Not much to say about it, it's just a solid game.

Risk Star Wars Edition Two games, one on one. In the first game I played as the Empire. The rebels tried to hunt my Executor, but were failing. Meanwhile I was using Death Star every chance I got, while spawning Ties when I ran out of DS cards. I got all the Ties on the board. The rebels made no progress on the track (it's viable, if you eliminate the Empire from space to get a conceded victory I think). He conceded after I wiped most of his ships.

We turned it around for the second game. I pushed the track from the outset, using usually at least two of every three cards on it. Most of the space fighting was up on my left flank as the Executor (badly positioned IMO) spawned ties there. Eventually he realized he needed to block the Death Star but too late. I was down to three B wings and the Aluminum Falcon. I was able to skip the Falcon between Tie sectors and rolled a six on the first shot. It was closer than I'd have liked but if the Empire had spent actions sealing off paths to the Death Star, they would have spent fewer actions wiping rebel ships.

Still a fun game, worth $15 for sure.

Shadows of Brimstone which was our first adventure with the City of the Ancients set. I have not mixed the sets together so we were playing pure CotA (excepting that we have the Preacher and Law Man). These enemies are... much easier to deal with than the Swamps of Death monsters. Spiders die easily (Restless Dead in SoD have high defence ratings and cause horror hits every turn), Stranglers seemed easier to deal with than Hell Bats (again, no added horror hits) and Night Terrors swing and miss 2/3 of the time. All those forum posts about how easy the game gets, I understand now. We did not "win" the adventure mostly due to a Darkness card that penalized our Hold Back the Darkness rolls (which cost 4-5 moves on the track). We saw we were out of time, and bailed. Still, we made over 500xp each in mob kills and about as much in cash. Swamps of Death is just harder all around.

*I may change my tune on that when Massive Darkness lets you use everything from Black Plague.

I played Terra Mystica for the first time with my wife and one of her coworkers. He just moved to town for this job and wants to make friends, and likes boardgames, so we told him to come over and bring a game. Apologies in advance to anyone who likes it, because you probably won't want to read my shitty first-take impressions that follow:

Based on what I know and have read, I expected that I wasn't going to like it very much, but what a hot fucking mess. It's got systems on systems on systems that all lead to things that might get you some victory points. The explanation for how to play took half an hour, and that was just to make sure we understood what all of the different sections of the player board and main board did. Look, I like eurogames. Puerto Rico is one of my favorite games. But this isn't an "elegant mechanics that yield exciting gameplay" eurogame, this was a "disguise play options by giving too many decisions with opaque outcomes" eurogame. There is definitely strategy involved, and I didn't understand most of it until I got through the game the first time, but I did come to see how I could have played better. At least I got to play as the "chaos magicians,"which could just as easily have been any other two-word phrase.

I don't know if we can play with this dude again, because I said that I like to play fun games with a lot of dice chucking and he said "If a game didn't make me think really hard like this, I wouldn't even want to play it." No fuckin thanks dude, I do my thinking hard in the work hours.

Edit: ALSO, why the shit isn't there way to rearrange or strategically deploy the main board when the colors of the hexes matter so much?! Doesn't that just leads to there being one "obviously best" starting spot for each faction?

There are obviously best starting spots. To the point that you can download "heat maps" off BGG that show the optimal start points for every race. I poked about with the online vs AI, never wanted to sit down and play the game, mostly because of the people who want to play it.

Man, I'm dying to play my unplayed Terra Mystica but this sounds awful

Played a few runs of Kingdom Death. I joking sent a link to the game to a friend who is really into minis and told him to buy it and he did! So we have been playing around with it, the only issue is he is a terrible rules reader and tends to just make up on the fly-rules rather then looking things up (he did do a knock-up job of putting together the minis). King Death has some confusing and in depth rules, so I feel like we are doing some things wrong. Anyone know if the rules are online somewhere. I have not been able to find them.

Also X-wing because it is still my favorite. Lost by one hit point to a Jumpmaster with that damn droid that lets them roll an attack dice when you attack. He had one hit point left and managed to dodge all of Vader's incoming fire and then rolls a hit on Vader (who also had one left) BOOM!

Black Barney wrote: Man, I'm dying to play my unplayed Terra Mystica but this sounds awful

Barney you should definitely play it and see for yourself. It's really highly rated on BGG, which means that a lot of people do like it. I just think it wasn't to my taste. I wasn't expecting to get as worked up as I did, but i guess writing that post helped me see how much I didn't like it. There is definitely a strategy game in there, it's just a lot of layers deep, and it is diametrically opposed to my gaming priorities. But it is definitely not such a bad game that it shouldn't be tried, so absolutely find a way to play it!

Thanks to my long-running D&D campaign and work on my Amber game, I have done very little boardgaming in recent months. However, Camp Grizzly keeps hitting the table because it's an easy sell: 1-6 players, 60+ minutes, easy to teach, easy to play, and very thematic. This time around, we played a 3-player game on the highest difficulty level. The big challenge at this level is the availability of keys, and our starting location. Unlike all the other scenarios, the keys are a one-shot item. The two spare keys are discarded from the game after usage, while the regular keys get moved to a random nature trail after each use. And all the players start in the barn, which is an inconvenient spot in the corner. We lost big, as the slasher picked us off one by one, in 30 minutes.

So we had to play again immediately, and this time we dialed it down to the regular hard setting. I found a chainsaw early on, and the slasher kept coming after me. Fortunately, I never ran out of gas (by rolling a one), and beat him nearly every time. We put together a set of items for an escape via the ranger tower, but the escape went wrong and we ended up in final battle anyway. Chainsaw for the win!

Man, that experience with Terra Mystica sounds pretty close to how I felt about it. I don't care if the game is rated highly on BGG or not. I can safely say that it's a piece of shit. It's wheels withing wheels for the sake of it, not because any of it makes sense or is fun. There wasn't a single moment during my entire time with it where I thought, "Oh, this is kinda of cool." Or, "Ah, this will do that and then I can do that...sweet!" I'll also put in the disclaimer that, yes, I like Euro games...but I have zero tolerance for this type of stuff.

If someone set that game up on the table or gave me the option to swallow a heaping spoonful of cinnamon...well I'd run out of the room with my arms flailing. But in my mind as I was booking ass outta there I would be thinking how it would be easier to endure the deadly tablespoon of spice instead of that dreadful game.

Had not the most intensive possible Geekway this past week but a pretty good one.

After opening on Thursday with a game of Village with my wife, I played in part of a learning game of Fire in the Lake, which went slowly but fairly well. The experience level at the table--including from me--was pretty low with FitL in particular and COIN in general, and FitL is probably not the optimal starting place in the series owing to the number and variety of units and the conditional nature of many of the ops and activities, but I'd definitely play again and am still up to trying the simpler/faster Cuba Libre. Jenn and I met back up again to play a quick, previously scheduled game of Conquest of Speros with the designer; we both enjoyed it. We finished up Thursday with a 2p Star Wars: Rebellion, my second game total of it, which I ended up losing but only by a tuft of hair as I did find the Rebel base on the last possible turn but didn't have enough to take it out.

Friday morning featured our annual Battlestar Galactica game with some guys we've met up with for the last three years now. Unlike the last two times (and as discussed on this board some), we played with Pegasus, a Cylon Leader (me, as Cavil), and the Cylon Fleet Board (plus the expansion Skill Check cards). I enjoyed being the Cylon Leader quite a bit, and more than I had thought I might, but people did think I was less engaged in the game than in past years because my identity was already known. The unrevealed Cylon ended up making a beautiful move by attempting (failing, but still attempting) to nuke the civilian ships in one sector (possible with an alternate Admiral card); while I missed that move (darn call of nature), I'm told the humans' shift from incredulity to despair as the move unfolded was something to behold. (Cavil also won because the humans had to get 6 distance before losing.) Jenn and I also got in another game of Village and a tune-up on Commands and Colors: Ancients in partial preparation for our mostly annual Epic game.

On Saturday we played 1775: Rebellion on a large, homemade terrain board with very small painted miniatures. Jenn and I both struggled to see the pieces, and we ended up being forced to play the British/loyalist truce cards on turns 1 and 3--and might still have won had we been able to go last rather than second-to-last as the loyalists, as the American/Patriot side was able to eke out a one-colony victory. We also played a game of Thunderstone Advance: Numenera; we'd never played that set before, but we have played lots of Thunderstone Advance. It was enjoyable, but I'm sure I probably missed some rules nuances; now I'm kind of wishing I'd gotten that set before it got fairly high priced, just for the additional variety. Later in the day, Jenn and I tried Above and Below, which we both liked, I think, except for the fact that the lighting was poor in the hotel bar area where we were playing owing to the crowd size. Saturday ended with our Commands and Colors: Epic Ancients game, which our side (in a six-player game) managed to win--barely--15 banners to 13 (and with a 2-banner-margin minimum needed to avoid a draw). It was a seesaw affair: in this Successors-era battle, our Successor side was up by as many as 4 banners and behind by at least 1 or 2 at other points. The right and, to a lesser extent, the center helped carry the day, while the left got some banners and at the very least wore down the opposition.

Sunday we wrapped up--before heading to the ballgame--with a 2p Firefly. This was Jenn's second game and my third, and we played the "First Time in the Captain's Chair" scenario again for time's sake and as a rules refresher. We ended up moving it along pretty briskly, getting down in about 90 minutes. We were disappointed not to meet up with the other couple we'd planned to for this, but the silver lining was that we were able to get to Ballpark Village and eat before the Cardinals game started.

Geekway 2016 was this past weekend and I played a ton of stuff. This is my wrap-up post.


News@11 - I hung out with Jon Gilmour for much of the weekend and we kicked off the con with a live play of News@11 that we recorded for the podcast. This was with my cohost Raf and a friend of ours Charles Wright, who is a developer for Foxtrot games and who co-designed Ophir.

This was a great play with some funny quips that I think came across pretty well. We'll be posting this recording as a bonus episode tomorrow evening.

Millennium Blades - Was our 9AM first game of the con proper. This was with two experienced players and two newbies. As this game always goes, it was awesome. We had lots of trading going on in this game which is something you don't see with new players, so that was pretty satisfying. I did somewhat poor in the tournament phases but hoarded money, scored some friendship points, and had a couple of nice collections so came in second.

This is definitely one of the best games of 2016.

Fief - This was scheduled for immediately after lunch and it was an epic game with five players using the tactics expansion, noble attributes, and the Crusades (which we'd never used before).

Great game that lasted four hours where I became King, tried to assassinate the Queen but she escaped, we almost died in the Outremere. Joan of Arc (my lady), repelled a key siege and then my ally, the Crown Prince, led a huge siege that won us the game. Just fantastic, dramatic, and memorable.

Bear Valley - This is a new Chudyk push your luck exploration game that is solid but not spectacular. The rulebook is 40 pages though which is a bit crazy. It has two full playthroughs and it's small, but that's nuts. I did enjoy it and it's quite simple once someone knows how to play.

Animals On Board - This continues to be a success with everyone I play it with. I really dig it.

Lots of Codenames.

Blood Rage - I finally was able to try the Gods of Asgard expansion and it was better than I thought it'd be. One of our gods was Loki, who awards Glory to the loser of a battle. This was nuts because it's a possible huge influx of points without a cap (since you can start a pillage, lose, and the area can still be pillaged again).

I thought I was doing very well but I didn't take advantage of Loki and adapt my strategy. I really dug how the gods changed up the strategy space and made people adjust.

Cosmic Encounter - Jon jumped out to an early lead in this five player game while I was stuck near the back. I made some key deals, gained some sympathy, and catapulted forward, winning the game via negotiate with another player. Great times.

Cthulhu Wars - 3 player game using all expansion factions. Opener of the Way is kind of fucked in a three player game so I was kind of annoyed with that. You need 12 gates on the map to unlock a spellbook which required me actively wasting power spamming gates just to get it. Also, my GoO's combat was based on the number of enemy GoO's in play, which is weaker for 3 players.

I was in a commanding lead (due to gate spam) mid game and they ganged up on me and took me out. Sleeper ended up winning, mostly because Windwalker didn't pressure him and let him Lethargy nonstop.

Forbidden Stars - I laid the beat down in a two player game where I was Chaos Space Marines taking on the regular Space Marines. It took two heavy attacks on a key planet but I got the job done.

What I don't like about two player with this game is that it seems so rapid and quick. You get no time to tech up or acquire late game units. Still fun but not as enjoyable as a three player game in my opinion.

Giants - I let my friends pick a game out of the library and they picked this Matagot snoozefest of a Euro. We spent long turns haggling over where people should place their workers in order to not share VP with other players when that VP amounted to 1% of final scoring. Blah.

Spartacus - A 6 player game with some new players where we started at 7 Influence. Fun as hell and I kept having flashbacks to Pete and Mark when we played at Origins last year.

Lots of other little stuff Kodama, a shitty game of Hyperborea, some new Kickstarter game called Jack the Ripper, and a few of Jon's prototypes.

Non play related I had some mixed news on my current version of Shiv. The publisher is undergoing some changes and they told me they would have for sure published it before this re-org, but now it's a bit up in the air. They think it will happen but they have to get it down to a $20 MSRP game. So that was kind of blah.

I had my prototype of Red Meridian, my current game I'm working on which is in very early development. It was playable though so I showed them that as kind of a hail mary to rebound off the mixed news of Beta Clink and this went very well.

They liked it quite a bit and have some changes they requested, asking me to bring it to Gen Con and show them where it's at. They thought it has enormous potential and could see it blowing up on Kickstarter. Already started working on that the past couple of days.

That is a hell of a con list.