What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Black Barney wrote: i'd like a review of your Red Robin experience too please. I hate that I don't have any of those near me

They have a killer Guinness milkshake. Don't kids eat free there or something?

Rliyen wrote: After eating our fill at Red Robin, we came back for the final game of the evening, Cults Across America. At the onset, Nathan had the CDC director. I had the President and the Marching Band. Trish had the Ambassador, and Eddie (being hella Catholic) had the Pope. I pushed Nathan out of DC, but he fired off a plague bomb, which cost me my High Priest and forced me out of the city. It didn't help, as the goddamn thing kept spreading to cities I occupied. Then, Eddie summoned Hastur. I was in the bathroom at the time and came back to the table; and was then informed that Eddie summoned The One That Should Not Be Named. Taking a line from Munchkin Cthulhu, I promptly blurted out, "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur." To which everyone at the table burst into hysterical laughter. You see, if you say the God's name out loud, you have to pay 2k to the controller. I picked up the card and read it aloud, saying the Elder God's name AGAIN on accident. 8k down the drain. For the rest of the evening, the other players poked fun at me and goaded me into saying Hastur's name again. To which I referred to the God as either "Godzilla" or "Booger".

Unfortunately, we had to call the game due to the late hour, but the joke was on them. I eked out a VP win of 2 points.

I haven't played Cults Across America in several years. The last time that we played, the winner pulled a surprise hands across america victory while the rest of us were obsessing over vp. Fun game, and I need to get it on the table again at some point.

wadenels wrote: After a long hiatus we finally got a couple games in last night.

End of the Line is a post-apoc nuclear family survival game. It's last man standing, which means there is player elimination. There are five lines - Water, Fuel, Food, Ammo, and Black Market - that you queue your five family members up in. The first person in line gets two of the good, the middle folks get one of the good, and the person in last gets nothing. One person in line is also the last person in line so they get nothing. One of your five family members is your dog, who always gets nothing, but can act as a buffer in a line to help your other family members get something. Why do you want goods? Because the game is packed with mean n' nasty cards. Lines can have Law cards played on them face-up or face-down. Laws permanently change how the line works, although sometimes they can be removed. On top of that there's the line resolution phase, where everyone in the line gets to play Event and Now (instant or interrupt) cards. To do so everybody in that line picks up their hand, organizes/programs what cards they want to play followed by their Pass cards, and puts their entire deck on the table. This way you can't tell who is actually playing cards or how many, because all hands are face-down on the table. A few Now cards can also be set aside as a defensive hand from which you can play interrupts, but there are a lot of cards that do bad things to defense cards. In player order players draw the top card from their deck and resolve it until they hit their Pass card. Then pick their hand back up.

Things that happened: A line had a Law that made it so dogs could collect goods also, so the line filled up with dogs. In the card play phase I played an Event that killed all the dogs in the line. A player who was second in line had an Event card programmed to kill the first player in a line, but before it resolved a different player had already killed that person so the second in line became first in line and their event killed their own family member. I got into a line that was full of the other players' family members so that I could play a card that would basically kill everybody in the line, but I kept a defense card to flee the line when I played it. Massacre. This stuff happens regularly.

As family members are killed they go on a side board, and for every four killed a line closes. We ran out of access to Fuel and Food about mid-game. That was bad, because the game has a Calamity card drawn every round that often requires Fuel or Food to keep your family alive. People started dropping like flies when those two lines closed.

This sounds pretty awesome. You should bring it along on the 3rd.

I played one over the weekend that I had never heard of before, but that I think a lot of you would dig.

Captain Sonar is a co-op competitive game where two teams pilot submarines against each other. Each team has four different stations with specific tasks they must do to keep the submarine running efficiently. Ideally you want to play with eight, but you could make six work if you had to.

Everybody has dry-erase boards for their station in front of them that they mark and erase during the course of the game.
The Captain charts the course of the sub on a map, calls out orders (like "Heading: North" or "Stop: Launch Torpedo"), and keeps the crew organized.
The First Mate (? not sure of real title) keeps track of what equipment is ready to be used, like sonar, mines, torpedoes, etc.
The Engineer is constantly fighting the wear and tear on the sub, and directs repairs.
The Radio Operator tries to figure out where the enemy ship and tries to chart their course by listening to the "Heading" orders issued by the opposing captain.
Each role sits side by side on a team, with the corresponding role on the other team directly across the table. Large folding screens divide the table and keep the information secret.

The key that makes the game so much fun is that all of this is happening in real time. So if your captain and crew are in sync, he can call out heading and weapons orders pretty quickly, while the other team scrambles to keep up. And yet, because the radio operators are tracking your moves, being fast isn't necessarily enough if they know where you are.

The game is actually pretty simple, but it feels more complicated when you first hear the rules and then when the pressure of the game forces you to act. I thought it was pretty great. It may end up being one of those games that you only ever play once a year, but when you do, you have an absolute blast.

Captain Sonar is the best game I've played this year. I gave it a five star review last week.

charlest wrote: Captain Sonar is the best game I've played this year. I gave it a five star review last week.

Sorry if I'm late to the party. I've kinda been off the internet for a week. I'm glad to see I wasn't alone in thinking it was great!

Captain Sonar sounds interesting, but I really dislike Space Cadets: Dice Duel. Is it the same kind of deal?

Gregarius wrote:

charlest wrote: Captain Sonar is the best game I've played this year. I gave it a five star review last week.

Sorry if I'm late to the party. I've kinda been off the internet for a week. I'm glad to see I wasn't alone in thinking it was great!

Sorry, I didn't mean that as in "why don't you know this?", I was more adding to your enthusiasm.


That's a tough one Dave. I think it's better. I do like Dice Duel quite a bit. It has a similar stress level. It's cleaner though and more interactive. It also feels quite a bit better when your coordination is pulled off. When you can line up that shot and guess the right coordinates it feels unbelievable because you earned it.

Not that DD doesn't have the same quality but by removing the enemy from the map it feels more visceral when actually get a bead of truth. There's a deductive teamwork aspect where everyone's firing in unison and a good deal of skill is involved. I was really surprised how much better we were at game 10 than we were at game 1.

But I don't really know about your answer. That's too subjective for me to really be sure of.

Black Barney wrote: i'd like a review of your Red Robin experience too please. I hate that I don't have any of those near me

I was first introduced to Red Robin a decade ago when my family temporarily relocated to Costa Mesa, CA after Katrina. It's good burger joint, lots of different types of burgers and some really good, limited run ones (oh, Red Ramen burger, how I miss you.). One of their gimmicks is never ending steak fry french fry basket. The one near my house just opened within the last year in a new shopping development.

They also have poutine, to put a stake through the Canadian heart.

I've had OK luck there. That said, my buddy and Circus member-for-life ended up destroying a Kohl's bathroom (like, didn't make it to the stall and shit on the walls, himself, etc) 20 minutes after eating at our local one. Luckily his wife was with him to buy him new socks, a shirt, pants, and a towel which he used to wash himself off.

Game night last night!

We started with a game of Costa Rica, which I'm reviewing for MM. This is my fourth game, and so far it's pretty forgettable, but on the positive side of that spectrum. It's a little press-your-luck exploration game, with a set collection that reminds me a bit of a less complex version of Ra. It's solid, and the way players claim tiles has some nice decision-making, but the press-your-luck elements fall pretty flat. It's the kind of game that is pleasant, but ultimately it feels a little one-note.

Followed up with a four-player game of Cosmic Encounter, using the Rewards deck and the Hazard Deck. The powers in the game were the Spiff, the Zombie, the Bride, and the Magician (me). I was dealt a hand with no attack cards, just a bunch of negotiates. Still, through a combination of alliances and a well-timed emotion control I was able to wring three colonies out of that hand. It helped that as the Magician, my opponents were required to pick two cards for the encounter, and I'd take one randomly and add it to my hand, requiring them to play the other card. A number of times people would pick an attack and a negotiate, and I'd almost always pick the attack through dumb luck. Also, the Bride "married" me, meaning he could jump into my encounter as an ally whenever he wanted to, and divorce me and take half of my cards whenever he liked. He tried to divorce me before my last winning encounter, but I Zapped his power, then he Zapped my Zap, and I zapped that one. Anyway, I kept my cards and won that last encounter on that little "pick the attack instead of the negotiate" trick. I had brought the Zombie along with me since I thought I might need the help, though it turns out I didn't. I ended up sharing the win with Zombie.

Cosmic Encounter has the reputation for being kind of bonkers, which is certainly earned, but with four or five players there's a good bit of strategic play that goes into it. I'm pretty proud that I could get a few colonies from a hand of negotiates, though I was helped by some early artifacts. Still, it was fun to play a more nuanced game. I usually end up with big groups, so a more manageable session was a nice change.

We ended with Quadropolis which I like pretty well, though after a few games I think I might have overrated it just a little in my MM review. However that works last night I was BAD, and I came in last place.

Two new(ish)-to-me games last night:

Mottainai

Every game of Glory to Rome I've ever played was a learning (or re-learning) game for someone, usually me. I liked it okay but it always seemed to go on forever. I liked the idea of it (tableau-building with multi-use cards? yes, please!) but it always overwhelmed and underengaged. I later tried Uchronia, the next attempt to use this engine and found it similarly annoying. It's the game that prompted my theory that if you have a rule where you can trade in a number of cards of type A to get one of type B, then you have too many types.

Still thinking there was a "there" there but not quite finding it, Mottainai was tempting, but I found the theme weird. I'm a Buddhist monk trying to make the most money?

This may be the one that finally works. It's still a monster to get your head around at first, but it clicks before too long. There are only five different main types of cards, so that business is kept in check. There are still some odd complexities to it and it could probably still do with some editing, but it actually still works okay. And it doesn't take forever to play.

I don't always completely roll with his stuff, but I believe Carl Chudyk is one of the most interesting designers to keep an eye on.

Patchwork

FINE, THIS ISN'T REALLY NEW TO ME.

I have this on the iPad. Grabbed it to try out, and liked it enough to put it on my Amazon wish list. One birthday later and here we are.

Rosenberg is best known for games in which you have to build a farm by first gathering enough quanta to assemble an atom, then making atoms into elements, and so on, until you have a pig or a rock. But once he made games like Bohnanza and Klunker.

Patchwork is a game that can be as casual or cutthroat as you want (within reason -- it's not Diplomacy or anything). At first it seems like you don't have enough buttons to even make decisions, but before long you have options to weigh, and can even get tricky about it. A good time, and a welcome change of pace.

Legomancer wrote: Two new(ish)-to-me games last night:

Mottainai

Every game of Glory to Rome I've ever played was a learning (or re-learning) game for someone, usually me. I liked it okay but it always seemed to go on forever. I liked the idea of it (tableau-building with multi-use cards? yes, please!) but it always overwhelmed and underengaged. I later tried Uchronia, the next attempt to use this engine and found it similarly annoying. It's the game that prompted my theory that if you have a rule where you can trade in a number of cards of type A to get one of type B, then you have too many types.

Still thinking there was a "there" there but not quite finding it, Mottainai was tempting, but I found the theme weird. I'm a Buddhist monk trying to make the most money?

This may be the one that finally works. It's still a monster to get your head around at first, but it clicks before too long. There are only five different main types of cards, so that business is kept in check. There are still some odd complexities to it and it could probably still do with some editing, but it actually still works okay. And it doesn't take forever to play.

I don't always completely roll with his stuff, but I believe Carl Chudyk is one of the most interesting designers to keep an eye on.

Agreed on Chudyk.

I recently learned Innovation, which pre dated Glory to Rome. It has some similarities in that its a card/tableau game where you basically try to build an engine that causes the most distorted bending of the base rules to gain VP aka the Vault on GtR. What's interesting is that unlike GtR or Impulse, each of the 100 cards are unique; to boot, each game 10 of them ( one from each era ) is randomly used as just a scoring card so its unavailable. Results in a play of replayability.

Great game, and one I'll pick up once the current clusterfuck of the Kickstarter hits retail.

I actually liked Innovation despite not liking those kinds of games at the time that I played it.

I love Innovation. It's easily one of my favorite card games. My only problem is that I don't have many good opponents here, ones who can deal with a lot of card text at once and will tolerate strong swings during a game.