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07 Aug 2016 07:54 #231532 by Gary Sax
Played a great game of 3 player Argent! There was almost no mana or gold on the board to be had simply, so I ended up swapping for a red mage and dropping it on room where your payoff varies depending on the type of mage you put down (red generates mana). My wife did that and also dropped green mages in that room to generate money. I've never had that room take such a vital role in my strategy.
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07 Aug 2016 18:46 #231546 by bryce0lynch
We finally played Dominoin, at GenCon!

I think we all enjoyed the "Watching paint dry" game more.
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08 Aug 2016 08:26 #231563 by charlest
Gen Con was strange for me this year. I fully expected to play some heavy games, and try some hotness. While I did get to play Cry Havoc (Grant Rodiek was kind enough to teach us after hours), I didn't play much else on the hot games list.

What we did do was play at least five hours of Captain Sonar. If you were in Hall C near the blue tables I'm sure you heard us. We were yelling, throwing high fives, and cursing the other team out. One player showed up from his hotel room with a brick of gummy bears and we were tossing those over the screen while the other team was trying to trace lines on the engineer mat to finish their surface action.

This game is nuts. We just kept playing it. I think it's best with 8 though which makes it hard to get to the table in a non-convention setting.

We also played several hours of Secret Hitler, which I wasn't even up for and was totally surprised. This is like a refined version of Resistance Avalon. I liked it so much we kept playing and I bought myself a copy. Great game.
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08 Aug 2016 08:28 #231564 by JEM
It was a quieter day this week, with GenCon going on. Apparently a couple of our regulars were there having won regional tournaments in some games, which is pretty cool. One of the gang who had just gone all in on Star Realms really wanted to try out the Emperor mode (3 vs 3 teams) so we did that with a couple of people who know the game, and a couple of new players. I wasn't optimistic about the idea, and it proved to be pretty lacking as an experience. Star Realms is still at its best as a dueling game.

Two of us then poked around with Pixel Tactics which was the first time I got to play the game for real. My opponent took a leader that had low health, and made all his heroes have only two health, but each could only take one wound from any damage. That obviously changed a lot of the cards I was playing with +attack power options, etc. I really enjoyed the game, we had a lot of back and forth, playing orders that stifled each other in various ways, agonizing over where to play the Necromancer for the best effect, etc. In the end, I focused on a strong back row of ranged attackers and throwing some meat shields in front. I was able to chip away at his leader and pull the win. We played with #3, I have #2 and #4 sitting around, so I'll be glad to play this some more.

Zombicide: Prison Outbreak in which we played a Rue Morgue mission (the Z:PO owner has the RM tile set). It was labeled as an easy mission for six players. It transpired that this equates to a really tough mission for five players with berserkers and dogz in the mix. I spent most of the game kiting the abomination round a corner of the board, which helped in terms of it not mashing up the group, but also effectively reduced the team to four characters. Everyone was messily devoured for their sweet, sweet, skull meat. I still really enjoyed the game, I always feel engaged with it whatever the outcome. I might take my set next time, and get some toxic zombie missions going.

Lord of the Rings Deck Building Game: Return of the King which, this time took less time to play than it does to read out the title. Three of us in this game, and I managed to point out the part in the setup that explains we should only have eight, not all twelve archenemies in the deck. I had my siege engine running again (this card lets you stack starter cards under it to use against an arch enemy) which is a nice strategy, as it takes starters out of your active deck, while giving you the boost you need to defeat the bosses. I saved those all game, and used them to defeat the Eye of Sauron, after another player destroyed the ring. I won with over 60 points, and enough that whoever killed Sauron wouldn't have mattered. Not too shabby.

Don't Turn Your Back which I convinced three others to give a try. This game is very easy to teach, the only gotchas were people not parsing the District 13 laws precisely, leading to some iffy moves. The winner lapped the board with over 50 points, but I was beginning to see (way too late) the potential for strategy in the game. It also played really fast with very little downtime. I'd like to play this one again for sure.
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08 Aug 2016 13:37 #231584 by SuperflyPete
This weekend was awesome.

Played Zcide: Black Plague and I think I may still have a hard on. It's Z2.0. So much better than vanilla Zcide.

Hustled some friends for 16$ playing 9-ball after that. Dumb asses should've never bet on pool against me in a 9-ball ring game.

Then played some Euchre and won 5$.

Then played some "In Between" and won 8:

Played with a standard deck of cards, you first drink 2 shots and then everyone puts 50 cents in the middle. Dealer flips up two cards with a space between them and the player can pass or bet if the next card will be between the two cards. First round, max bet 0.25$ but after the dealer gets their turn it's no max. If the first card is an ace, the bettor chooses high or low but if the second card is an ace it's always high. If a pair is drawn it gets split like Blackjack.

Stupid, simple game that drunk people can play (and that was me this weekend) and win or lose.

There were so many upsets where Ace Low/ King where people would bet 3$ and get an Ace. The pot was like 18$ at one point. It's the perfect Ameritrash card game, really.


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08 Aug 2016 14:05 #231590 by Black Barney
in-between was my first poker game. Played it in 1986 in Carnac, France, and would hustle the crap out of my cousin (who's in jail now I think). Never stopped playing poker after that. Gonna play in a $500k guarantee Grand Prix on Labour Day weekend. It's fun remembering how we started in certain hobbies.

love that picture, btw. that beard does you a ton of good. Sure look happy :)

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08 Aug 2016 14:45 #231593 by Michael Barnes
Poker is not a board game.

Yeah, I am actually kind of shocked at the longevity Black Plague has had with me and my friends. Between solo and with people, I've played almost all of the scenarios in the base and Wulfsburg. I actually started painting them...man, the figures SUCK for painting. They have way too much shallow-cut detail, blobby/indiscernible stuff, giant fat capes...

I wonder when Gary Sax will come in here and say "hey guys, I played ANOTHER game!"
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08 Aug 2016 15:08 #231596 by Legomancer
Pretty good game day yesterday: Dark Moon, Ad Astra, American Rails. Finished with Snowdonia.

I'd played that last one once before and rated it a 5. After last night's game it went down to a 4. It's a pretty standard worker placement resource shuffling thing that I'm already tired of. But on top of that it has this thing where there are events that can come up and gobble up board spaces. Like, you're planning on digging out a space but the game itself clears it out instead. So for me, on top of just figuring out the damn game and having to plan each move 6 turns ahead as is the fashion these days, there's this stupid timing stuff built in as well.

There's also an element that I've come to dislike in WP games in general. One action you can do is buy trains. They give you some coal and a special ability, but most importantly they allow you to get an extra worker. I was last to get a train and when it came time for me to think about picking one, the remaining THREE were just garbage. They were objectively worse than the ones that have already been taken. No tradeoff, no angle to them, just "welp, shoulda got here sooner, chump". So on top of not getting to grab my other worker, I also didn't have any of the decent special abilities others had.

Okay, that's me playing shitty. But it's a problem I have with many WP games. In theory, the idea should be that you're choosing a path among different options. But if one option is clearly better than all the others, there's no choice, just a race. And in many WP games, it's always better to have more workers, period. Maybe some token attempt is made to have for "feed" them or whatever, but the guy with 5 dudes will always do better than the guy with 4 or 3 dudes. Which means the rest of the game is secondary to the dude-getting portion. Worst offender I recall was a KS game (surprise) called Artifacts, Inc, in which it started with everyone grabbing for the extra dice (workers) and then once those were gone, you pretty much just play out the rest of the game, with the guy who got more doing better. On the other hand, Ground Floor handled it well, with the decision to add another worker being one you have to weigh carefully.

I'm shitty at games, so losing isn't anything new or upsetting to me, but I've gotten bored with these post-Agricola games in which the "game" is basically just a maze and you need to tease out the solution path from a bunch of pointless obfuscation, which is what Snowdonia felt like. It felt like although there was competition between the players, it was pretty much just who could figure out the board faster. (Having the actual game be able to steal spots away didn't help this feeling.)

Like, I did shitty in Ad Astra as well, but I felt like I did poorly because I just didn't make very good decisions. I didn't feel like I failed to find the golden path to victory that was hidden among a bunch of distracting junk.
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08 Aug 2016 15:22 - 08 Aug 2016 15:30 #231598 by Gary Sax
Ha, yeah, I suppose my single game reports of Argent one at a time are a bit thin compared to the smorgasbords people are having around here...

I saw you say the more workers thing on twitter, legomancer, and I cannot nod my head enough at it. Agricola has this so bad. New workers make you better and they're worth a stupid amount of VP. It's really your only option to get more workers if they're there and you have any chance. If the action is a must take if it comes up for you then it is not a decision at all and is superfluous to the game IMHO. It's why I like Fields of Arle a lot better Agricola. It gives you 4 workers and there's no chance to get more so you don't have to waste these actions doing something you simply have to do.

I hate to bring up Argent again but it just kills it with the more workers issue. It is a really hard choice to waste a turn getting another worker and depending on if the rest of the players at the table are playing fast or if certain rooms are up it can be something you don't want to do.
Last edit: 08 Aug 2016 15:30 by Gary Sax.

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08 Aug 2016 15:48 #231602 by JEM
Argent isn't quite the solution. In our online game I saw it was effectively impossible for me to take (and hold, to gain the worker) the good dormitory spot due to the mage mix and player order. Once you have the extra worker, you can park a defensive worker on that spot for the rest of the game, netting +4 IP at the worst if you got it in the first round, even if you do nothing else with the additional worker. I was able to get one worker (having compromised a round to get the 1st player card so I could take the spot) before the player who was now 2nd in turn, decided to take 1st and put the two who had been 1/2 in order to 2/3 and dump me into last place again. With only five rounds in the game, there isn't any way to come back from a move like that.

Yedo was pretty good with the balance on workers, because you often had something else you really wanted to get, or could pass up, to get that worker or two early in the game- losing out on Geishas or Annexes could hurt enough that you might skip getting additional disciples in the first couple of rounds. There are 11 rounds in that game, though, which is enough time to get around to acquiring more, and you had the option of pushing the auction, or spending an action on the main board.

I remember Champions of Midgard being pretty terrible in that respect. And Above and Below had a similar situation with the starting buildings being grabbed up that effectively gave bonus workers. It doesn't surprise me to read that Artifacts Inc has similar problems.

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08 Aug 2016 16:04 #231604 by Chaz
Tzolk'in is the one WP game I can think of where more workers isn't strictly needed to do well. Maybe this is the group, but I've definitely seen people win with only the starting number of workers. I'm not sure what it is, but some combination of the same currency being used to feed workers and to buy things seems to balance it out so that you can get by with fewer dudes on the board.

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09 Aug 2016 07:49 #231633 by Mr. White
Considered a 'Tales of West Texas' thread but will bore you with these brief highlights:
* Slid down sand dunes
* Swam in the world’s largest spring-fed swimming pool
* Hiked/Trail Ran the Davis Mountains
* Watched a lightning storm roll in over the plains from atop said mountains
* Usually we camp, but this time stayed at a neat lodge near Fort Davis
* Saw the Marfa Lights (secretly recorded my son's theories on it - worth the trip alone)
* Kids made new pen pals

Oh, and we did play a game plenty:


Draw four, mofo!
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09 Aug 2016 08:45 #231638 by Gary Sax
Still haven't been to Fort Davis, need to go. We spend most of our time in Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains.

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09 Aug 2016 08:49 - 09 Aug 2016 08:54 #231640 by Mr. White
Yeah, Big Bend is one of our favorite places in the country. We almost went down there...again. Instead, decided on a 'b-list' tour of West Texas destinations. The Indian Lodge is a beautiful compound in the Davis Mountains. No hikes nearly as extensive as Big Bend, but it's a good time. Fort Davis is pretty neat too. I actually learn more at museums at such than I used to now that I have kids. Following along on their little scavenger hunts is a fun way to be guided through parks.

We're really trying to get the kids up to a two day hike in a cooler season. We'd like to do one of those over night hikes in Big Bend, then relax a few days at the Indian Lodge.
Last edit: 09 Aug 2016 08:54 by Mr. White.

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09 Aug 2016 08:53 #231641 by Gary Sax
We were in Big Bend camping in the backcountry earlier this summer... look who strolled into camp! It was cool.

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