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15 Nov 2016 09:17 #238432 by Jackwraith

Colorcrayons wrote: I've never won by capturing toyotomi. I miss this game a lot. You really need an opponent that is into Japanese history to make this shine though, so I had to sadly let this one go.


Yeah, I was really surprised when he moved away from Osaka and I had a substantial Kame force with the Red Devils 4 spaces away. Like I said, he forgot about Forced March and had a snowball of Mori and Kobayakawa rolling down the highway, trying to press the issue with Tokugawa and perhaps branch out to press the castle issue in the center, since the extra card gained by castle advantage was pressing on his mind, since he'd been dumping them to bring the Mori into play early.

My friend's job situation has cleared up a lot (he's become a regular 9-to-5er, rather than being on call all the time), so I'm thinking about getting back into a lot of 2-player wargames that I've been neglecting in recent years, which means blocks and card-driven stuff like Paths of Glory. It also means I have to reacquire Crusader Rex and maybe Hammer of the Scots...
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15 Nov 2016 15:39 #238498 by san il defanso
Last night was my final full-on game night with my friends in Texas, and we played Champions of Midgard. All I really knew about it was "pretty good" and "like Lords of Waterdeep". I was surprised to find that I liked it quite a bit more than Lords of Waterdeep. Most worker placement games revolve around efficiency and building an engine, but the bulk of Midgard is about risk-taking, which I find immensely appealing. I really liked that everything built toward getting more dice to fighting more monsters, and that sometimes it just doesn't go your way. It also forces players in the lead to keep on risking, because leads aren't safe unless you are pushing forward. I was quite impressed by it, and if I get a couple more chances to play I might try to find a copy of my own. All of my worker placement games are kind of big, so having something more low-key and approachable would be good.

I've also been playing Exceed from Level 99. I just reviewed it with Dan Thurot on MM, and I've unfortunately not been able to hit it up as much as I'd like. But the short version is that it's my new favorite two-player fighting game (which isn't saying much, since the only other one I've played is Yomi). It's quite approachable and much less cerebral than Sirlin's game. I love the emphasis on hand-management, and how quickly it gets into the action. Definitely worth a look, and it has sneakily become one of my favorite games of the year.
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16 Nov 2016 14:22 #238579 by Rliyen
Had my friends over for Game Day this past Sunday. I’m trying to put into rotation games that we haven’t played yet, so I can get a feeling on whether or not they would like to play it again. We only were able to play three, though.

First one up was The Hunt. This one took the longest because the players had to make their Hunters for the game. That took about 30 minutes. The actual game was 90 minutes. Trish’s Hunter’s name was Deadeye. Nathan’s was Showdown. And Eddie was Striker. After liberally sprinkling Prey and Game Animals in the Arena, I announced the Fox with the theme from Highlander. They all groaned when I put down Michael Gallagher from SOTC into the arena as the Highlander - a HTH Fox.

The game began and Trish was gunning down Game Animals as quickly as they would come around a turn. Nathan was having difficulty with the Wolves and their concussion grenades. He lost two turns in a row being banged about because of them. Eddie was also popping Game Animals, but at a slower rate. Highlander issued a challenge to the Hunters, which none of them took seriously or even acknowledged. Pissed, he went after the nearest Hunter, which was Nathan. At which point, Nathan crapped his pants and kept screaming, “NOT THE FACE! NOT THE FACE!”

Highlander proved to be a minimally effective Fox, as he had to close with the Hunters to hurt them. They all, on the other hand, had guns. Near the end of the game, Nathan tried to make a play for top spot by trying to kill Trish’s Hunter. He was about to fire off another shot from his pistol when the timer rang. Trish won, as she had over 26,000 points from bagging Game Animals and various other bonuses. Nathan had around 15,000 and Eddie only had 9,000. They were all bloodied, but not seriously. The next Fox they go up against will be tougher and a ranged fighter to boot.

The next game we played was The Walking Dead: The Board Game. I was Rick, Trish was Shane, Eddie was Dale, and Nathan was Glenn. Trish got eaten quickly, leaving only the three of us. Nathan had Otis and his Boomstick of Boominess. The game was readily won by Nathan, who was surrounded by a kabajillion walkers in the Gun Shop in Atlanta at the end.

The last game was my personal favorite, Princess Ryan’s Star Marines. I essentially told my friends, “It’s like the mean game (LOTR), but you have a chance of winning.” They all got into the game, even as much as Trish used the jagged piece of metal to joog her CO. They got to the princess with time to spare, and although no one guessed her location, Eddie won as he had the largest combat factor in the final battle.
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16 Nov 2016 14:26 #238583 by Mr. White

Rliyen wrote: The last game was my personal favorite, Princess Ryan’s Star Marines. I essentially told my friends, “It’s like the mean game (LOTR), but you have a chance of winning.” They all got into the game, even as much as Trish used the jagged piece of metal to joog her CO. They got to the princess with time to spare, and although no one guessed her location, Eddie won as he had the largest combat factor in the final battle.


Wow...hadn't that about that game in decades. I bought it for my brother as a gift one year...

...we never did play it.

Fun Elmore cover though!


Can you tell me a little more why it's a favorite?

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16 Nov 2016 18:01 #238615 by Rliyen

Mr. White wrote:

Rliyen wrote: The last game was my personal favorite, Princess Ryan’s Star Marines. I essentially told my friends, “It’s like the mean game (LOTR), but you have a chance of winning.” They all got into the game, even as much as Trish used the jagged piece of metal to joog her CO. They got to the princess with time to spare, and although no one guessed her location, Eddie won as he had the largest combat factor in the final battle.


Wow...hadn't that about that game in decades. I bought it for my brother as a gift one year...

...we never did play it.

Fun Elmore cover though!


Can you tell me a little more why it's a favorite?


Oh, because playing solo or with friends it's a fun little game; despite the poor rule book. Several years ago, I convinced two friends at Averyfest to play it with me, despite them having tried to play it in the past and failing. They were skeptical of the game, but I dispelled them of that about halfway in. And then they really started to get into it. Once I explained to them how the game actually works, they jumped in with both feet. And that game, like the one on Sunday, marked a win for the Marines, despite the fact that neither of them didn't correctly guess for the sole win.

Sunday's game was more of a cakewalk for them, because they got into a situation that halved the Guard's power and I could to little to rectify it. Next time, they won't be so lucky.
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17 Nov 2016 00:57 #238626 by ratpfink
Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game and instead got to finally tear the shrink off my copy of Sekigahara. I've played a few times in the past, but always someone else's copy. I played Tokugawa in a real bloody game. I mopped up in the north as usual, was getting creamed in the south. Pretty standard stuff. Then I managed to get my Tokugawa stack of 8 blocks a force march away from the big stack that may have had Ishida in it. I hadn't seen that leader yet, so wasn't sure. But it was a stack of 7 blocks and if everything went ok I could destroy 6 blocks, so everything but Ishida... I drew a hand of cards where I could activate all 8 blocks in the stack AND had a loyalty challenge. So I went for it. I won the battle, but it was costly as I lost 4 blocks myself, and a loyalty challenge on my last block meant I didn't do one more damage but instead had one more done to me. A 2-block flip! Ouch...and it turned out Ishida wasn't there anyway. The next turn I lost initiative, didn't draw any cards that could activate the stack and that was it for Tokugawa. We both hadn't played in awhile so I think that's part of why the cat and mouse game I usually expect didn't happen at all. We also seemed to draw hands such that directly attacking seemed to be the best, obvious move. I definitely overextended and just should have consolidated my side of the map. I just couldn't pass up the attack after I drew the perfect hand of cards.

After Sekigahara, no other games were wrapping up, and I still had my nestor games version of Amazons sitting nearby. So I had my revenge by outmanoeuvring on the tiny board. I'm finding it interesting how the games play out so differently. Typically what I'm doing, and my opponents, is moving a piece right next to an enemy piece, and then placing a stone to block a path also next to the same piece. At least in the early game. My opponent instead parked his pieces a few spaces away, but in a square that would interfere with open movement of at least 2 of my pieces. And then shot a stone next to a different piece altogether. Really frustrating! Luckily he overcommitted to trying to trap one of my pieces that I managed to escape at the last moment, while I walled off two of his pieces.

Finished up the night with a game of Crokinole with same opponent. He had never played before and wanted to see what it was about. I think we had 4 tie rounds so it was pretty close.

Ended the night by agreeing to trade 4 of my wargames I'll never get to the table(Unhappy King Charles, Fading Glory, Stalin's War, Halls of Montezuma) for El Grande, La Citta and Tikal. Pretty much a great game night all around!
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17 Nov 2016 09:51 #238640 by Da Bid Dabid
I was able to get Star Trek: Ascendancy to the table after a week of it taunting me from the shelf. I'm a huge fan of TNG and casual of all the other series so that is where any of my Trek bias will come from.

Overall I loved it. I was Klingons and forgot all game about my racial advantage (doh!). Despite that I managed to get 5 Ascendancy 1 turn before the others, but it left me over extended and Advanced cloaking Romulans managed to take Kronos to prevent the win. The turn after both other civs hit 5 Ascendancy, but the Feds had managed to boost up to level 3 shields and were invulnerable to the Romulans and I could only hit on 6s due to the starting tech. The feds sent their super shielded ships and 3 of them took out my fleet of 8... death before dishonor. I went last and could have had a very outside shot to take some Fed systems and kingmake the Romulans or at least force a tie. I obviously ignored that plan and took back Kronos, giving the Feds their deserved win and ensuring the Klingon empire would not be some pathetic Romulan vassal.

I thought the warp movement and galaxy building mechanisms were fantastic. We got some rules wrong and basically just opened the game and played without looking at anything so no one really had any good idea of strategy before hand. What else stood out was how fluid the shift in player power could happen and the response to that being player generated balancing of chasing down a leader happening quickly and forcing constant re-evaluation of player strategy. I greatly look forward to my second game with what I drew from the first and playing with the corrected rules errors.

Someone here called this GF9's finest effort to date. I would have to disagree as Spartacus still holds that honor for me. That is granted comparing 1 play vs like 50, but this is a strong runner up. Both other players also said they preferred it after that one play over Runewars, Starcraft, etc. and the other types of that style game when we don't have the numbers for TI or Dune. Also I'd say they can do a lot with expansions for this game, I know they are introducing an Ally mechanic with the Ferengi and it will interesting to see how much chrome they try to add. It is easy to imagine captain tokens, dangerous star lanes, and similar types of additional stuff that could alter how the game plays quite a bit. Not sure if it will benefit from getting more complicated in this game's case, we'll have to see how it rolls out.
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17 Nov 2016 09:57 #238641 by Legomancer
My friend Matt and I have decided on a combined 10x10 challenge, the 10x10x2. We took turns picking games that can be played with 2, that both of us wouldn't mind playing several times, and that were realistically feasible to play 10 times in a year (so, short-ish). Here's the list. Matt picked first, and then we alternate:

Mottainai
Neuroshima Hex
Impulse
51st State
Tash-Kalar
Theseus
13 Days
Blood Bowl Team Manager
2 de Mayo
Space Hulk: Death Angel

Last night we kicked it off with Mottainai and BBTM (which we both had to re-learn). Tracking our status here:

www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/217131/ma...ves-10-x-10-x-2-list
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17 Nov 2016 10:03 #238642 by Da Bid Dabid
If you figure out how a player can get better at Theseus please let me know.

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17 Nov 2016 10:32 #238643 by hotseatgames

Da Bid Dabid wrote: If you figure out how a player can get better at Theseus please let me know.

Indeed. I have won a few times, but I don't think I've ever won against the Hunters.

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17 Nov 2016 10:33 - 17 Nov 2016 10:39 #238644 by Jexik
I played Captain Sonar twice last Saturday.

You need 6-8 people, and the rules are pretty easy to screw up and cause some disagreements, but man... this game is amazing. It's easily my favorite new game that I've played this year. Fury of Battleship Alert. I'd stay away if you don't like working as a team or a game with lots of tension and yelling. When I compare it to something like Castles of Burgundy... No contest! It's a brilliant and original game, despite the fact that you can find most of the mechanics or ideas in other games, they've never been put together like this.

It's kind of funny because I often rail against "individual player boards" in games like Castles of Burgundy or Power Grid: Factory Manager, and everyone has their own board here! But... the boards are different depending on your role, and you're still directly affecting what your team and the other team is able to do.
Last edit: 17 Nov 2016 10:39 by Jexik.
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17 Nov 2016 11:04 #238645 by hotseatgames
You should try it one on one, in turn-based mode. It's better than you'd think.
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17 Nov 2016 16:44 #238683 by Unicron

ratpfink wrote: Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game


So... Maria next week?
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17 Nov 2016 20:29 - 17 Nov 2016 20:37 #238725 by ratpfink

Unicron wrote:

ratpfink wrote: Had 15 for game night, so managed to not get stuck in a worker placement game


So... Maria next week?

I think so. Todd really wants to play Friedrich too. So... one of those for sure!
Last edit: 17 Nov 2016 20:37 by ratpfink.

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17 Nov 2016 23:52 #238728 by Grudunza
Adrenaline, y'all. It's amazing. Played a short 4 kill game at TOS.con and can't wait to play a longer one tomorrow and/or Saturday. (If anyone from F:AT is here, let me know and I'll play it with you.)

It's a first-person shooter skirmish, but done as an area majority game, where the player's damage is the area that scores the points, if that makes sense. Awesome weapons, simple to learn, powerful, tactical and super-thematic stuff that happens with kill shots and overkills and power-ups and attacks of opportunity. Love it.
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