What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote: We also played The Dragon & Flagon which was a lot of fun. I tend to enjoy the Engelstein games and this is perhaps my favorite of theirs thus far. It's procedural, which seems to be an Engelstein trait, but doesn't leave out the fun.

What's so great about it is the narrative that emerges. First few turns of the game I leaped up on a table, shot the Monk with my pistol, then was knocked over by the Swashbuckler who shoved my table and pelted in the head with a mug by the paladin. Swinging from the chandeliers, taunting, tossing chairs. Awesome stuff.

We had five players and I'm not sure I'd want to do the 3 or 4 player control two characters route. You have a large hand of cards to program actions from, which can cause some downtime, but I can see this becoming much faster with repeated plays since most of the actions are common in each deck. Very cool and unique game.

Thanks for giving it a whirl. FWIW, I've had tons of groups play for the first time controlling two characters each, and it works really well. Really doesn't slow things down.

Geoff

Played a 2 deck solo game of Labyrinth. Enjoyed it immensely, though the solo opponent makes some strange decisions and, especially, has some frustrating random "powers" given to it by a special solo only rule called radicalization. I won, but it came down to the solo AI rolling 2 dice to get a 1 against the Gulf States in the final round.

I will say that like Twilight Struggle the game has gotcha cards that you'd need to know about in key countries. It's even worse in some ways because getting countries governance up is so agonizingly dicey. So, like, if you decide to try to turn Somalia Islamist, you need to know that there is just a card in the deck called "Ethiopia Invades" which would just undo that regime and leave it as an unstable poor country awaiting another major jihad. Not a huge deal, because presumably it would be easy to retake it, but the type of thing that could really fuck you over. Several others are like this---like, under no circumstances should you let cells hang around in Pakistan or Afghanistan if you're trying to fight or make those good governance countries---there are some BRUTAL events that trigger if you do. Or if you're the islamists, you probably shouldn't put too much effort into Turkey because it can all be undone by an event play that has the Turkish military bring it back up to "Fair Ally."

Taught my girlfriend how to play Neuroshima Hex! today. I gave her the Outpost while I took Borgo. I explained how things worked, and told her I'd probably crush her badly, but it was no big deal because it was a learning game.

I gave her sound tactical advice throughout, and for a long time I was beating her pretty badly. Then she started getting some good tile draws, and I kept giving her good advice, and.... I got beat by 8 points. It was fun, I had not played this favorite game of mine in a long time.

I got to play my shiny new copy of Ginkgopolis on Saturday, and I really enjoyed it. It's a pretty abstract tile laying game about area control/majority. There's a nice balance in choices between developing for your end-game score, or for immediate benefits (resources etc) or for on-going benefits (developing a tableau of increasing bonus rewards for actions taken). It's also fairly tactical, as you're passing the cards you don't use to the left each turn. I suppose I generally like area control games, because as abstract and euro-y as this is, I really dig it.

Roll for it got a couple of plays while eating dinner. It's very fast, very light, and maybe the definition of "filler", but I liked it enough. Not as much as Wurfel Bohnanza, but it takes up a lot less time.

I got called in to another game of City of Iron after one player bailed after turn one. I didn't have much chance in this one- one player had a nice military machine running with no real contention for the towns, though he only won by a single point in the end vs another player who focused on exploring to one of the higher level islands to score majority in the exotic (high value) goods. I still enjoyed the game, puzzling out how to make my turns work, and I made a decent score.

Survive! with five players. Was a bloodbath. I scored two points with one swimmer saved. Hilarious.

Dixit which was Dixit.

engelstein wrote:

charlest wrote: We also played The Dragon & Flagon which was a lot of fun. I tend to enjoy the Engelstein games and this is perhaps my favorite of theirs thus far. It's procedural, which seems to be an Engelstein trait, but doesn't leave out the fun.

What's so great about it is the narrative that emerges. First few turns of the game I leaped up on a table, shot the Monk with my pistol, then was knocked over by the Swashbuckler who shoved my table and pelted in the head with a mug by the paladin. Swinging from the chandeliers, taunting, tossing chairs. Awesome stuff.

We had five players and I'm not sure I'd want to do the 3 or 4 player control two characters route. You have a large hand of cards to program actions from, which can cause some downtime, but I can see this becoming much faster with repeated plays since most of the actions are common in each deck. Very cool and unique game.

Thanks for giving it a whirl. FWIW, I've had tons of groups play for the first time controlling two characters each, and it works really well. Really doesn't slow things down.

Geoff

I will give it a shot, thanks.

An Invitation for a birthday of Gaming, and three games I never played before. Who could say no? Everyone who has a life but four players were able to make it.
We started out with Britannia (first ed.) which is plain awesome. Took us about 8 hours, but very much like with Civilization I wasn't bored at any time. True, that doesn't apply to the dude who got the Romans and who taught; he had a bit of a slow phase in the middle due to his Scots not getting anything done, but that time flew. About 300 dice rolls per player, which is a plus. Also noticeable how clean and nice the look of the game is. All information at one glance. I guess that the reprint is an eyesore after 20 minutes, this looked not bland at all, just functional. I tied with another player for 120 Points, that was also nice because he hated me for it. Everyone should try this game at least once.
Then a learning game and a real game of Dominion which nobody had played before. Obvious in the first round how this was Spiel des Jahres material. Also, tense but ultimately not satisfying. It's got that nice 'just another round, the next one will be the one where it all comes together' thing where the next round truly is the round you notice how you bloated your deck with VPs too early and crippled yourself. Probably goes away with exercise. Some nice levers of how to time what to do when, and you have to watch your opponents, because you can't fall behind. Most boring theme since doing the dishes. I am not that interested in games where the real action happens before play (like putting together a deck) and this one seems like a missing link between that and a family game. Nice for drinking and relaxing after the real event.
Rounded off with some rounds of Beasty Bar. With the group moving into the area of intoxication, this is another recommendation. Everyone has the same 10 cards, and there is a rule for every card and only for that card. Once you have those down though, expect laughs. And pure hatred. Takes a couple of minutes to play and is an amazing amount of fun in a very short time. If you can take a horrible beating and smile because you know they have it coming, this one might be for you.

Zimby Mojo - This was an eight player game, and we were unprepared for how long it would take. We bailed after about four hours because a thug had captured the crown and only had a single stack between them and the blood mist, bringing back the king. I honestly felt kind of bad roping everyone into a game that was much longer than we expected, but after some discussion last night it became obvious that we all had a lot of fun, and that there were a ton of memorable moments that made it a great session. I wish we could have finished, and I wish I had properly prepared myself and others for how long it could be. But this might be a special game, one of those that creates the best kind of gaming moments.

The Dragon & Flagon - Also with eight players, this was a lot of fun. I love how the programmed actions tie to specific things, like grabbing a mug or flipping over a table. Programming movement has the potential to make the game bog down, but it only ever has you place a card or two, and after a few rounds it becomes easier to plan that out. It also was obvious that the characters are more unique than it seems at first. The barbarian plays very differently from the druid, for example. That means it's important to use those special moves, or grab the Dragon Flagon and get your Dragon move. With eight players I suspect there will be a couple players who will get banged up a lot. We had one guy who spent the whole second half of the game lying prone. But on the whole I was really impressed.

The Others - A friend got his KS copy of this, and it was pretty good. Eric Lang is always a solid designer, and this is no different. It honestly reminded me the most of Last Night on Earth, though it feels much more refined and consistent. I especially like the corruption mechanic. Choosing to bump up your correction can give you a ton of bonuses, but if you are required to take corruption and don't have any room on the track it registers as wounds. This was a really neat bit of design, because it encouraged the players to take on big risks, especially as the game went on. It got so that taking on more corruption was about the only way to beat some of those later monsters. I'm not sure it'd rise above the level of "pretty good" for me, but a lot of people here would probably like it, and I did too.

So is Dragon & Flagon basically a descendant of the old AH Gunslinger?

Hosted gaming yesterday for the regular Sunday crowd. I feared it would be awkward and mopey, so soon after James' death, but we had a good time.

Started out with For Sale, a regular for us when raindancing (waiting for another to arrive). then Mysterium. We played with the English edition but not by the dumb English rules. I think the game is fine in its original version and doesn't need a bunch of junk added in. I was the ghost and we actually won. I have that one rated a six because I like it, but it's not something I want to play regularly.

We split after that. One group played Grand Austrian Hotel and then Macao. My group started with Tiny Epic Galaxies, but we bagged it when it seemed like it was going to take a while and another person showed up. None of us were too crazy about it, though we found out we had omitted what is probably a key rule. Gonna give it another chance, but nobody was wowed.

Instead we played less tiny epic galaxies, Ad Astra. This one almost went on the trade pile not long ago, but has since seen a couple of good plays. I like it a bunch.

Followed that with Lords of Waterdeep, without expansions. We needed something 5 player that wouldn't take too long and that fit the bill. Hadn't played at all in a while and without the expansions in even longer. That's just a nice, solid game.

A bunch left after that and the four remaining finished out with San Juan. I was all geared up with production buildings and never saw a single Guild Hall, despite selling tons of Silver. Still, a great game.

So it was a bittersweet time.

dontbecruel wrote: So is Dragon & Flagon basically a descendant of the old AH Gunslinger?

There are similarities, but it's actually a re-imagining/updating of Swashbuckler.

Plays out a bit like a modern Gunslinger with a Fantasy/Swashbuckling theme.

I really liked Gunslinger, but that was back in the 80's. It would take a good bit of time to set up, and it could get bloody in a hurry. I still have a copy, though.

I played it with a Eurogamer fan one time, way back when. I tried to warn him in advance that this was old-school, but he didn't appreciate it until he caught a bullet in the head before he got a turn.

Your game group plays some awesome games, San.

They do like a lot of really great games, and I am also lucky that I play with mostly the same people. There's a little bit of cross-pollination with the larger board gaming community in DFW, but mostly if I'm planning a game night there's a pool of roughly 10 people who I can count on to play stuff. They are game for a lot of new stuff too, which helps when I need to write reviews.

Imperial Assault - we played 3 missions in succession with me as the Imps in the base campaign. I quite like it despite not being a fan of Descent 2.0 and despite that this is descent but with different minis. I sort of wish there was a bit more star-wars in it and perhaps a bit more tension to the game but its a simple quick package and they seem to have scraped as much variation out of the mission structure as possible.

We did the September game of Pandemic Legacy (we are now in real time!), a big plot reveal and i guess its probably the last major one. we predicted it back in May (both in the game and out).

Then we played some Relic to commiserate the GW FFG divorce proceedings. My Terminator stormed to the win.

dontbecruel wrote: So is Dragon & Flagon basically a descendant of the old AH Gunslinger?

I was wondering if it was based on Yaquinto's Swashbuckler, which I always thought could do with programmed card movement (instead of writing your moves down on an order sheet.)

And in the two hours it took me to post this I've found CharlesST has already answered.