Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

This sounds like a description of the Knizia cooperative LOTR game, which was surely the main inspiration for Pandemc?
Culture is becoming bizarrely circular!

Had my annual house con. It ruled.

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/359576

dysjunct wrote: Had my annual house con. It ruled.

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/359576

I have my eye on Hot Streak but already have Ready, Set, Bet. Does Hot Streak also require a player to "run" the game? Because if so I don't really want it. I was hoping it would be like RSB but without the need for an app in order for everyone to play.

No, Hot Streak by default has everyone playing. If you have 9+ players, then you switch from “grabbing a betting ticket on your turn” to “secretly writing down your bet on a post-it.”

I didn’t want to do that, so I facilitated so that the rest of the crew could grab tickets. I think that’s a marginally better experience, but realistically this is not a game you play for the hardcore strategy.

Okay thanks, it gets to stay on the want list. I can't even imagine the scenario in which I have 9+ players so I think I'm good.

Hot Streak is a hoot. I think it works better with a bigger crowd (at least five or six) because having more people swapping a card in the pool creates a lot more uncertainty and chaos which is exactly what this thrives on.

There is enough information to be able to hedge your bets with some degree of confidence, but not enough so that you don't run the risk of ending up totally screwed.

Went to a small con of various friends over a long weekend. A mix of old classics and some newer stuff. 


CONGRESS OF VIENNA. If you know/like CHURCHILL, consider this an upgrade. Players familiar with the latter can digest the 10 page quick start guide and set aside the 50 page rulebook and use it for reference. The improvements over the original are:

- players conduct combat against one another instead of a bot. .Combat is also a bit less abstract ( although we are talking about wooden cubes here ) and many of the leader cards double as influences on combat. Basically after you play cards to advance issues, you can play leftover cards as combat DRMs . So there is an interesting dynamic of choosing what cards to hold back. 

- there is now an option to trade cards during the diplomacy phase. Players can offer another player's leader card ( w/o stating which one it is ) in exchange for one of their own side's leader cards . Players can decline. The main use is for the 3 players fighting France to help each other out. But France has the unique power of being able to force such a trade if the other player has one of their cards. 

- The VP/end game scoring is a little more intuitive than Churchill. That being said, there is a lot to keep track of . Mid game you might look to be out of it, then in the end game you'll catch up. At one point during final scoring all four of us were within 1 VP, then Britain pulled ahead by about 5 VP to clinch it. 

The game still demands a fairly long playing time. The full 10 turn campaign, you're probably looking at half a day or more, esp for new players. I think the full campaign is where the best game play will be at, as just like in Churchill the shorter scenarios feature a partially locked in situation. 


ANGOLA - I wish I had kept track of which side has been winning; I'm guessing it's the 3rd/4th straight communist victory. All experienced players, we don't feel the need to re-tweak the balance as the games have been close and more importantly very interesting. 


WAR OF THE RING (x2 ) with the newest expansion, KINGS OF MIDDLE EARTH. It's similar in scope to LORDS OF MIDDLE EARTH in that it adds one possible die to each side, a half dozen new or modified event cards and a new mechanic whereas the Shadow can try to corrupt the ruler of each of the five Free Peoples Nations. The FP can try to "Awaken" them before they get corrupted. In order to corrupt, the Shadow can use an Eye from the Hunt Box to draw a Hunt Tile; if it has a number he places it face down next to that ruler's box to track . Some rulers are easier to corrupt than others. If they fall, it helps the Shadow conquer their nation. If they are Awakened, they boost the defense. 

The Corruption mechanic has an interesting side game in that the more numbered tiles that are drawn towards leader corruption, the more the Hunt pool is "thinned" down to just Eyes for the FP when they get to Mordor. It also gives the SP something to do if they roll a lot of Eye dice, especially early. They can burn an Eye as a sort of pass action. 

We both liked it and will definitely play this expansion again. 


COMBAT COMMANDER PACIFIC ( x2 ). Playtested two scenarios from the upcoming Island Hopping Battlepack. The first was one I'd played before, a Night Banzai attack vs some lightly armed Americans on a palm tree board with some scattered level 1 hillocks. We traded blows for a while, but as my losses mounted I had to be wary of surrender levels. Sure enough, he caught a stack with a leader in Objective 5 and Advanced into Melee armed with several Ambush actions; the resulting loss of a team ,squad, and leader pushed me over my Surrender threshold despite holding a VP lead. 


The second scenario featured a US force on Okinawa trying to take a building on top of the steep hill at night. It is long at 10 turns, with an SSR that allows the player who triggers Time the option to roll on the Support table for reinforcements. I was the defending Japanese and managed to hold out while gaining some more units via Infiltration. However I was not able to inflict many casualties on the Americans; an attempt to Melee a US mortar in the rear was stymied by a reinforcing unit due to a Time Trigger. However the US could not get near the VP building til late; he advanced a squad and leader into one hex but the squad merely Advanced out; I came back a few rounds later with overwhelming force and wiped out the intruders and hung onto the win. 


MAGIC MAZE. This is a fast-paced co-op game. Players as a group control four characters in a dungeon ( actually it's a mall w/escalators )  whose goal is to find each character's loot space, then escape. The catch is that each player has one tile that shows an arrow - they can only move a character in that one direction. In addition, there is a Search ability ( putting down a new tile color coded to a particular character ) , an escalator, and a teleport function. The real catch is that there is a 3 minute sand timer, which is only reset when you find a new timer. If time runs out, the table loses. Oh yeah the biggest one - NO TALKING other than when the timer resets - but then you can only talk, not do actions. Once you start moving again, no talking. There is a large wooden pawn you can place - or more likely, thump the table loudly in front of the person you think should be doing something. We found all the objectives, but ran out of time. This game is probably best played late at night with a few beers and does a nice job avoiding the usual alpha player problem that can scuttle many co-op games. 


STUDY IN EMERALD. A five player game; I drew Restorationist loyalty so set about destroying the monsters. I recruited Sherlock Holmes early on and started blowing up Old ones. Unfortunately I drew 2 Madness counters, which while Holmes is immune to , still count towards the 3 max allowed per player. By this time I figured out 3 of the remaining 4 players' loyalty and decided to go for broke, killing another Old one and drawing the 3rd madness counter and forcing the game to end. I squeaked out a win. This game still rocks and moves about smartly. Huge amount of replayability due to the distribution of cards and agents. 


ATLANTIC STORM. A popular fallback game for large player counts, I think I set a new personal record for high score with 51 points for a win. 

HEAT PEDAL TO THE MEDAL. Started in 2nd, finished in third. 

PROJECT L : This is a fast-paced puzzle game; you're basically trying to complete small puzzles of various blocks/shapes a la Tetris that score VP and add new blocks to your building library. Not my cup of tea but I can see the appeal if you have a half hour to kill . 


WEIMAR FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY. Three of us had played and we recruited Ralph as our fourth and he caught on quickly. He was the communist/KPD, I was the far right/DNVP, Jeromey was the Zentrum, and Andy Maly was the SPD. From the start Andy/Jeromey as the government did a decent job keeping the DR box relatively free of threats although the streets of Germany soon became overrun with opposition party bases - from about the midpoint of the game on, the SPD had virtually no party bases ANYWHERE, and Berlin was a hotbed of communist troops, party bases and for awhile, a Council. However SPD kept racking up VP over the rest of us via Foreign Affairs rolls and card play. On Turn 5 I started playing Nazi cards and triggered a Regime placement that also placed a game ending marker in the DR box. But even after deducting the 8 VP on both government parties, the SPD held on for a narrow win. 

I LOVE Weimar. I think it's a brilliant design and has been great fun every time we've played. My one complaint is close to what you mention in your game: the government parties can sometimes win just by crashing the government that they're intended to protect. That's what happened in our last game, where DNVP and KPD were making serious inroads and the SPD player noticed that they could simply do a Political move that would add a 7th token to the DR box and, even with the 8 point deduction, take the win. I think that's an argument for having hidden VPs, honestly, even though the designer has stressed on BGG that that's not intended (i.e. he's spoken against it, even though he's acknowledged the advantages and has, of course, said people can play how they want.)

Three players last night, we started with Dark Tower. My friend went all-in, spending quite a lot of money. This was my second time playing. It was fun, but the app stuff feels so arbitrary. None of the "decisions" you make are based on anything. Go left or go right? Which of these combat card backs will you choose, based on zero information?

We were doing pretty well at handling the main quest, while side quests went mostly ignored, but then I ended up getting smacked with a third corruption card, ending the game immediately. Corruption cards SUCK. They can do all sorts of bad stuff to you, and you can't have more than two. I had two but did not really have an opportunity to get rid of them (you can clear them at a building, I don't remember what type).

After that we set up Worms. This was my first time getting to play with more than 2. It's a more the merrier game, and I'd love to try it at 4+. It's very chaotic and random, but if you just go with the flow it's a great time. Weapons are insane and sometimes take a bit of time to resolve, particularly when chain reactions get set off. But the carnage is swift and plentiful.

Within the first two rounds I think 3 of my 4 worms had been eliminated, thus forcing me to play pretty cautiously for the rest of the game. One player set up a sentry that was seriously restricting my movement. We had forgotten for part of the game that you can in fact destroy sentries, but it's tough to give up a chance to try to kill a worm. Even having only one worm left, I managed to not be the first team eliminated, but it was very obvious that I was not going to be the victor, so I decided to attempt to go out in a blaze of glory by blowing up a Priceless Ming Vase as near to my foe as I could get. He got lucky and the resulting explosions completely missed him. He won handily, and everyone had fun.

It's weird because people were so hot on the updated Dark Tower, even on BGG. I wonder if it's just because it wasn't the most dire kind of nostalgia ripoff and the bar was low?

It's a neat game, and I enjoy it, but I would rather play Relic or Runebound.

Jackwraith wrote: I LOVE Weimar. I think it's a brilliant design and has been great fun every time we've played. My one complaint is close to what you mention in your game: the government parties can sometimes win just by crashing the government that they're intended to protect. That's what happened in our last game, where DNVP and KPD were making serious inroads and the SPD player noticed that they could simply do a Political move that would add a 7th token to the DR box and, even with the 8 point deduction, take the win. I think that's an argument for having hidden VPs, honestly, even though the designer has stressed on BGG that that's not intended (i.e. he's spoken against it, even though he's acknowledged the advantages and has, of course, said people can play how they want.)

While its true that the government can win even if the government fails, off the top of my head they can't "crash" the government position other than certain Timeline cards ( which are going to get played as they are mandatory events ) . Their own faction core events can't trigger another crisis in the DR box. Now late in the game they can certainly use Nazis ( as I did in our game ) to do so .

I do agree on your comment about hidden VP and in our game, while I knew the SPD had a lot of VP, I didn't actually ask for a VP count before doing my turn; had I done so I would have known ahead of time that even with the 8 VP penalty I would not have won. The VP min/maxing is the one bit of minor tedium in the endgame I don't like. I wonder if a range of VP loss ( via DR or something ) would make it a bit less of an issue.

In our case, it wasn't a card play. It was the fourth treaty after Versailles (the name of which I can't remember at the moment.) He just had to take that political action, succeed on the roll to enact the agreement, and then another Unstable State was added to the DR box and that was the game. It was probably our fault for letting him build up that many points in earlier turns, but there's not a lot of ways to keep the government parties from accumulating VPs, since that's the way they're supposed to win in the first place. It's not a huge letdown. It just strikes me as odd, both gameplay-wise and historical sim-wise.

Good point about the Foreign Affairs cards; that indeed was where the SPD player got a good chunk of VP - in fact the reason he had so few ( or in some cases, NO ) party bases as the game progressed was that he used the end of turn option of burning a party base to roll for the FA card. There were one or two turns where we had the chance to form a different coalition government, but I declined as DNVP because other than FA cards, I didn't see many ways to score VP due to the amount of Unrest, etc in the cities and I didn't want to lose the 4 VP per turn I was getting for having Regimes. The Zentrum player in government didn't make nearly as many FA card rolls and that may have been a tactical error.

But overall the game is quite good and I'll be happy to play it again.

ChromeHaven aka FROSTHAVEN

So yesterday after our 18th scenario we threw in the towel. We were each playing 2 characters and all had leveled up to level 5. My frustration had been building for awhile. What finally pushed me over the edge was that my friend Aaron was trying to figure out if one of his characters was eligible to retire. As we had just finished the most recent scenario, I offered to start clean up while he looked up the rules and yet another quest to BGG to see if he could divine the answer. 10 minutes later all he could say is "Um, I think so?" . WTF. I said I'm done. This was the final capper in a game that had all the good will built up based on its predecessor, but threw it all away. The old game, you got a retirement goal card, you finished it, you retired. This one - the card you get is only like the first part, and its not entirely clear how to resolve the subsequent cards.

I am not going to go into any of the PC/woke/whatever bullshit because frankly, I didn't notice it. Both because I don't really pay much attention to the lore and narrative - I just wanna go into dungeons, kill shit, buy cool stuff, and go back to kill more stuff . But FROSTHAVEN takes everything from GH and lards on extra shite that frankly just turns into tedium. So any time I could have theoretically spent immersing myself in the lore was instead spent on looking shit up.

Like terrain for instance. Despite each box containing several reams of paper, they couldn't be bothered to provide a simple terrain effects chart . So 2 hours into a scenario you find yourself looking in the rulebook section that covers terrain to see what a particular tile does. To boot , the various terrain tiles in the rulebook are color coded - obstacles are green bordered ( can only jump/fly ) or purple bordered ( 1 extra MP ) . But the actual terrain tiles are not. Almost every scenario has mulitple tiles of each type, so first you have to look at what tile it actually is, then look back to the set up to see whether its an obstacle or difficult terrain. Whether its a crate, bookshelf, or table its terrain effect is the same - why not just color code the fucking tile ?

Oh yeah, buying shit. Well that's WAY more convoluted too. Instead of every monster dropping gold, now they drop a Loot token. Which when you pick it up , means you draw a Loot CARD. The card might be gold - or wood, metal, hides, or one of a half dozen weeds/herbs/whatever that you then get to craft buildings, potions, whatever. You very rarely find items - certainly less than in the original - and to boot, sometimes its just the blueprint - which requires yet another item you need to actually craft it. In the old game, you could finish a scenario, then reset and go again pretty quickly. Now there is a whole separate town phase where you buy maintain buildings, craft shit, possibly fend off attacks, brew potions. FML. Oh yeah the Loot cards - each scenario has a deck you must construct.

The characters are much different than the base game and I get that - over time it became apparent some were very OP. The new ones are def nerfed - for instance at level 5 I don't think anyone has Stun capability, whereas the Brute had it at like Level 1. But the learning/usage curve for the new ones is much higher. And the characters that you may finally get are even more involved -the cards are an overload of icons, text and whatnot.

There is a beta up on Steam that certainly eases some of the overhead burden. But even then I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.