What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

It's hard to recommend a game that can lead to a deep $$$ rabbit hole. On the other hand, it's ripe for home-brewing, there's a lot of fan-made stuff on BGG etc so with the Swamps set at around $70 on Amazon it might be worth it.

Why Swamps over the other one? They both look to be about $70 from Amazon.

Yeah, I _really_ don't need another money sink minis game. I'm trying to let the high counter count be what stops me. I prefer fewer to no counters which is why Silver Tower is more my speed.

Still...that wild west setting...

There's a hell of a lot of game in that Swamps set alone. There is plenty of material out there to blow more cash on but it's not necessary at all. I was amazed at how much game was in the one box. I'm tempted to get the cities base set as well but I've been holding off because it's really not needed.

Mr. White wrote: Why Swamps over the other one? They both look to be about $70 from Amazon.

Yeah, I _really_ don't need another money sink minis game. I'm trying to let the high counter count be what stops me. I prefer fewer to no counters which is why Silver Tower is more my speed.

Still...that wild west setting...

I slightly prefer the Targa Plateau other-world setting to the Swamps of Jargono, BUT: The Swamps of Death player characters are a better mix. You have the Preacher, which is essentially a cleric class with spells to cast, and it's a whole extra thing that the other set does not have.

Also, I replaced all the "threat" card decks with DXX tables, so it's fairly easy to add more enemies, including home-brews.

90% of the counters in my game stay in the plano boxes. Wound and sanity tokens, and exploration tokens are about the only ones used. Anything else including side bag items we are noting on Letter size character sheets.

Tonight I played the first scenario of Conan, solo. In this scenario, the heroes (Conan, magic dude, and thief dude) had to get into the Pict village, find the princess in one of 8 huts, and kill the village leader, claiming his head. They have 8 rounds to leave the map with the princess and the head. The Overlord just has to stop them.

The princess was discovered pretty quickly, and Conan dragged her to the edge of the village, dropping his shield to lighten his load. He then trudged into the center of the village to crack some skulls, while magic dude escorted the princess off of the map, thus ending his involvement in the fight.

Thief man went after the village leader, but was thwarted when a Giant Snake smashed through the wall of a hut and attacked him! The village leader eventually joined in, and thief man was killed. It was all up to Conan.... he waded into the hotly contested area and easily killed the village leader, claiming his head as trophy. But could he make it out of the village in time? He only had 2 rounds left, and the snake had an ability that would not allow Conan to freely exit the space.

Sadly, the answer was no. Conan ran out of time, although he valiantly chopped away most of the snake's life. Victory: Overlord.

So... the best thing about this mission was that, despite playing both sides, as the Overlord, I really had to TRY to win. I pulled no punches. I will say that in terms of threats, Conan is about 10x more powerful than his cohorts. I suppose that is as it should be, but I worry that anyone not playing as him will not have as much fun. I'm eager to try it with real opponents.

I finally got my copy of the Betrayal expansion (Widow's Walk) to the table. Nice expansion, but they skimped on the one thing that was sorely needed: more event cards. With the base game, the events started to grow familiar after a handful of plays, and the addition of only 11 new events might not be enough to freshen the atmosphere. I was hoping that Widow's Walk would double the size of the event deck, but no such luck.

On the tile side, the dumbwaiters make it much easier to move around the house (good or bad? not sure), and there seem to be more items in play. The chainsaw is an auditory delight, if you're lucky enough to draw it.

Each new haunt seems to be crafted by a different game designer/fan/intern. This same approach was adopted with the Descent Quest Compendium, but that turned out to be a disaster due to a lack of testing. The Widow's Walk haunts appear to be sound (if not safe), so kudos to Wizards of the Coast for their due diligence.

Overall, this expansion was worth my $16 (online cheap-o price), even if I only play Betrayal 20 times over the next 20 years. Which sounds about right.

We've also been playing the Hogwarts Deck-Building game, which my family enjoys (and has gotten us to rewatch all of the movies), as well as Legendary: Guardians of the Galaxy. I just received Legendary Deadpool in the mail, which is sufficiently silly that even the Legendary haters in my game group might grudgingly like it.

I will eventually play Hands in the Sea when the designers send out the replacement cards (a few typos, missing symbols, etc.) and I can talk my wargaming neighbor into playing.

Yeah dude!

Gary Sax wrote: Yeah dude!

I think starting next week, my son and I are going to campaign through all of the Swarm of the Marrow scenarios in order. We actually haven't played those...

some games were played this weekend - this is what i though of them;

Forbidden Stars - Was a mite disappointed in this but not entirely sure why. Its very pretty to look at and is a refinement of most of FFGs lessons in dudes on a map games but it felt a little lackluster in the final analysis, at least in this first game. The combat system felt a little over cooked and not that interesting but the rest of the game is smart. I think perhaps in taking out most of the harsh consequences of wargames they have sort of clipped its wings. Troops don't often die in battle, you are not trying to exterminate each other, just briefly hold victory locations and its relatively easy to rebuild. This makes the game rather forgiving but it also lowers the stakes. Only played once though, so I want to get a few more games in before calling judgement.

Ice Cool - a flicking game about penguin school kids stealing fish. Quite fun, the main thing this has going for it is that the rather than flicking disks you are flicking weighted wood bits that behave a bit like spinning tops. So the physics are a little different to most other dexterity games giving the game a different feel.

Celestia - cute push your luck game. I always hang on to long in push your luck and thus lost. Its quite pretty.

Escape from the Aliens in Outa space - Great hidden movement game. We only played with 3 which is probably sub-optimal but i really dig this game. It is just calling numbers and scratching at pads of paper but by allowing you to occasionally lie about your position and guess your opponents intentions its a great bit of cat and mouse. Best game of the weekend.

Mansions of Madness 2 - we played the Innsmouth scenario and it was fun. I quite like just exploring the board and fighting monsters though i think there are some issues with the scenario design. Mostly that you often have to find a specific person or item hiding somewhere on the map, if you head the wrong direction at the start you perhaps have already lost. As an experience it doesn't really bother me as in my view you shouldn't really win Lovecraft games.

Legendary Encounters Firefly - we played through the first three episodes. Reminds me of Ascension in that most of the mechanics are the same but instead of being pvp you are coop against an event and enemies deck. As a deck builder i'm not sure there is much there. There are only two resources, attack and money and each turn i just drafted whatever gave me most and then attacked what was most dangerous. There were a few card combos but for the most part i didn't face any really taxing decisions. It was rather painless though and enjoyable as a light coop game.

I played a bunch of Gorechosen with the kids and GF this weekend.
Except I made a board with 3" hexes, and plopped monsterpocalypse kaiju on the map, along with buildings as obstructions and hazardous waste sites as pits in the usual proscribed places as seen on the gorechosen arena.

We even came up with a good randomization for these bits. Roll a D6 for each red framed hex. On a 1-2, place a hazardous waste site (pit), on a 3-6, place a building (obstruction that causes D3 wounds).

For a bit of flavor, we used the usual suspects for buildings on the hazardous waste sites. Nuclear power plants, oil refinery, sewage plant, etc. These were counted as obstructions until a kaiju was pushed into it, destroying the building and doing D3 damage to the kaiju. The building being immediately replaced by a hazardous waste site token that acted as a pit thereafter.

I felt cheeky, and counted the monpoc cathedral as one of the hazard types, replacing it with the gateway to hell token the lords of cthul use. XD

The map is just blank poster board, but I'll hit up Photoshop soon and fix that with a good print done on dye sublimated neoprene (mouse pad) for the game board.

I can't get over how decent the design for gorechosen is. For once, the actual game design eclipses the miniatures. This is most unusual for GW. Such a good arena engine.

I'll be selling my copy of gorechosen soon, since I think the kaiju retheme is leagues better than the GW IP. The kids love the hell out of the monpoc figs, and the theme is far more accessible to them.

I want a copy of MonPocChosen!


Haven't played, but am preparing to, Attack! Deluxe. They did a Kickstarter for a new Deluxe expansion with a pretty nice box, new cards, more players, more pieces, and a new Attack! Deluxe Expansion rulebook. The rulebook is quite literally a failure. It contains: references to abilities that have no definition, no explanation of the values of things for scoring points, passages that questionably contradict the player aids, and a lot of very poor wording. Attack! and Attack! Deluxe are two significantly different games, and the issue was not that I could have found any clarification from the base game's manual. I ended up making a reference doc that fills the gaps through my tracking down a PDF of the original Deluxe expansion, looking these things up, and hoping that there are no changes or rebalancing in the new rulebook because if there was supposed to be they forgot to actually put that information in also.

Game looks fun though, now that I've got it figured out. Anyone looking for my summary can find it at the usual place .

wadenels wrote: I want a copy of MonPoc Hosen!

FTFY

"Make me a pair of kaiju pants worthy of Gojira himself!"

"Pants for the pants god! Socks for his toes!"

I think Gorechosen is among the best pieces of game design GW has ever produced. Like, up there with Space Hulk.

I like the Khorne theme fine, the over the top blood and skulls thing works for it. But the mechanics don't necessarily have to be Khorne, I can see it working for Kaiju, sure.

Playing The Others and Grand Prix tonight...

Friday night, I played 2p Eldritch Horror (2 investigators) and Saturday night I played 2p Arkham Horror (4 investigators). This was the first time I had played Arkham Horror in several years, and I think I prefer it over Eldritch Horror. I know I'm probably in the minority here. I can't put my finger on it, perhaps it's because I have simply played Arkham Horror longer. I think that I listened to the internet too much and wanted to believe that Eldritch replaced Arkham. But for me, the two games can co-exist. I think I will be more inclined to solo Eldritch and play Arkham with others.