What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played three games with various starters for Star Wars: Destiny after the 2-player sets were on sale for $10 on Amazon a while back. I know/knew I probably shouldn't because now I want/basically need a booster box to have a card/dice pool. I periodically look for some sort of CCG/LCG to sink into (money, time, thought), and this one's pretty good and the wife doesn't dislike it (though I had hoped it would be a bigger hit), and there's a reasonable level of store support for it, but I've been down this path before, as the pile of early-stage X-wing and, to a lesser extent, Armada and Doomtown: Reloaded will attest. I have this aspiration for getting involved at a basic level in organized play and meeting new people and all that, but I never quite make it work.

My wife and I have also played several games of Barker's Row. I can't strongly argue with the criticism that it basically plays itself, but my wife likes circus/freak themes, and there's at least a little to think about (e.g., in terms of whether to put down a card in a suit I want on the off-chance that I pull a 3 instead of a 1 or 2 when I think my opponent will want the suit next time).

SW: Destiny feels too abstract to me. I sat down with it and asked basic questions to myself like "who am I and what am I actually trying to do?" It just felt too gamey and abstract to be any fun.

I'd rather call my friend Joe and see if he still has Epic Duels.

Michael Barnes wrote: My first games writing job was at Boulder Games.

They were...interesting. You could actually go to Jim’s house in Lizella, GA and buy from him direct. He’s take you out to these sheds on his farm and they were packed full of games. At the time, he was able to get a hold of lots of crazy imports and obscure stuff. And they always sent old timely penny candy with your order.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss Boulder Games.

I still have Funkenshlag. The problem with it was that the crayon part of it - while fun - didn't really add much to the game. You almost always ended up just going straight to the next city. So the way that it was streamlined in PG didn't really change anything.

Since we don’t pay $400 a week to send our kids to the glorified day cares they call “summer camps” and get nothing but papercrafts in return, I have to entertain my kids through the summer. This week was kind of a landmark in terms of gameplayint because we have been just slamming through game after game and they keep wanting more. Played:

Ticket to Ride: New York x4
Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger x2
Zooloretto x3
Grimm Forest x1
Kingdomino x1
Azul x5
Bunny Kingdom x2
Wildlife Adventure x1
Animals on Board x3
Sorry Sliders x1
Power Grid x1
Ogre x1
Pharaohs Gulo Gulo c1
Survive! X1
Ice Cool x1
Jamaica x1
Monopoly Gamer x1
Gaslands x1
Medici x1

I don’t know if I’ver ever played so many games in a week...and my son is asking for a 40k game AM vs. Tyranids for tonight.

Introduced my kids to Cosmic Encounter today. It was going okay until one son attempted to play a flare as an encounter card, and I didn’t realize he had other cards. I tried to fix the encounter but he got creamed and used it as an excuse to pretty much quit engaging. My other son liked it more. I think they would both play it again.

The most important thing is that I won.

We played but didn't finish a game of The Republic of Rome. We played the late Republic scenario, which I had never played before and it was great but not so much by the time we called it. It's a rich, mean scenario with many ways to screw other players or to deny them of something important. Unlike the Middle Republic, it's high stakes and you can feel the pressure. I actually got a very nice lead, with 6 senators, 3 of them high-influence and the Pontifex Maximus (Free Veto) but I also screwed up.

I and another played had more than half of the votes so we made a power grab. Normally this is a bad move because it leaves the other players with no choice but murder and they'll team up to knock you down a peg. However, I could see myself not taking the brunt of the punishment and went ahead. A couple minutes later my partner got killed in a trial and I walked away mostly intact. Sure, all but one of my Senators were sent away to provinces, but I could make money there and come back a few turns down the line.

However, I fucked up. I misunderstood the rebellion rules and though I could launch an attack from my provinces. And, well, you can but ONLY if you have "real" troops on them to lead the charge. I had killed my Pontifex in an unnecessary assassination attempt and no longer had any Senators in Rome so I thought I was out of the game. I got a bit frustrated and since it was late and I thought I wouldn't play for a couple turns I conceded. This was wrong. First, I was very much not out of the game (I mean, 5 Senators including one with 19 influence? Yeaah). And, second, even if I was, I shouldn't have gotten upset even if it was just a bit.

(We kept playing a bit and then we called it a day because one guy had to go in half an hour and my last train was leaving in one. That was a bit of a shame and I feel bad for the experience ending on a low note, but is otherwise unrelated to the previous bit)

--

Here's the thing: It is completely normal for me to get emotionally involved, specially in The Republic of Rome. This is, in my opinion, one of the most thematic, involving games ever created and it's very easy to become immersed in the game to a high degree. . Time is also a factor, too. When you have been dealing, scheming, manipulating for four, five hours, the game becomes much more real because you have put much more into it.

But it being more real or having a large amount of emotional energy doesn't mean you should get upset. What it means is that you need more maturity both as a person and as a player to cope with that energy and recontextualize it. They are games that are more difficult to play, not because of rules but simply because they require more of you as a person.

It's a bit odd to say that you should take all the positive emotions from a game and disregard or recontextualize all the negative ones, but I think it's how things should be.

--


Then I played Shards of Infinity. It's a Star Realms clone and I came away thinking it got some serious balance and development problems. There are way, way too many cards that draw you more cards and they are all cheap compared to dealing damage. I won by drawing my whole deck twice in a row despite not having any previous experience with the game. That's not a good look.

I normally hate semi-coops with an 'everyone loses' condition - but for some reason I just adore Republic of Rome. It is so incredibly thematic that the Rome Falls condition just works for me for some reason. I'm happy to play this one anywhere, anytime.

Four player Room 25 tonight, the first time ever getting to try suspicion mode. It was my girlfriend’s first time playing, and she was the traitor. None of us knew this of course, because my one son who can be described as Chaotic Evil, kept shoving my other son around, under the guise that he thought he was the traitor. I call bullshit on that, he just wanted to throw monkey wrenches.

Time was rapidly running out and we *thought* we knew where Room 25 was. I made a mad dash and ended up in a mortal chamber, so that was it for me. Time ran out, guards won. Great game, was universally liked.

hotseatgames wrote: Introduced my kids to Cosmic Encounter today. It was going okay until one son attempted to play a flare as an encounter card, and I didn’t realize he had other cards. I tried to fix the encounter but he got creamed and used it as an excuse to pretty much quit engaging. My other son liked it more. I think they would both play it again.

The most important thing is that I won.

I don't use flares at all with new players.

I've never played without at least one new player at the table so...

Thronewatch- I played a few scenarios over the weekend. This is a PAX inspired “graphic novel” adventure game- all vs 1. It was Kickstarted over 2 years ago and heavily playtested at PAX events. I come to it without any baggage. My brother paid for it and I did not ever get a chance to play it at PAX East.
The board is layed out in a fashion similar to Last Night On Earth. Large center square and L shaped boards around it. Other scenarios have boards that lay on top of the center square and/ or on the outside of the L shaped boards. It is supposed to look like comic book panels. I like it art work, it is a funky, dark, and surreal. This is not your typical generic fantasy world. The game’s setting is the Eyrewood- a fey haunted woods. You will not find orcs, trolls or dragons here- instead there are spiders made of sticks, evil tree men and a witch(in the scenario we played) Nor are the heroes the standard fighters, thieves, and wizards- the Greenheart, Sage and Warden will do battle with the evil denizens of the Eyrewood. Each hero has special abilities and their own action deck. Each scenario has some flavor text (we had to rescue human babies kidnapped by the witch) and some special scenario rules.
On your turn you draw a hand of 5 action cards and slot them on your player board to power actions, you then get to move and then take those powered actions- attack, cast a spell, search, ect. Any cards not played that round are then discarded, and a new hand of 5 is drawn at the end of your turn. This made it hard to plan for upcoming turns as you never knew what actions you were going to draw. The “DM” then moves and attacks with the monsters.
No revolutionary, or cutting edge mechanics to be found here. However, I thought the game was fun and the scenario challenging. There was some internet bitching about the component quality, but I thought they were fine. I never got the “graphic novel” feeling the game was supposed to convey. I don’t think this is going to replace any of the other top tier dungeon crawl games, but if you are tired of stomping goblins and zombies, this might be a nice change of pace.

Hadik wrote: While $30 is ridiculously cheap compared to a real miniatures army, it feels a tad overpriced. At the end of the day you really would rather be playing with minis. Plopping down $30 on a deck puts you further away from that goal.

Also the system is a real game system with rules for morale checks, LOS, unit facing, wheeling, charging and more. Another investment - of time - that might be a bit high if you want to just move guys and chuck dice for a couple of hours.

These investments may be why the game was never as big as it could have been. It is neither a Bud Light nor a hazy IPA with notes of pine and citrus. It’s sort of a Killians Red.

As for me and the kid, we’re eager to play again, but will think twice about growing our armies. 40K and other board games are higher priority.

I used to have a number of decks and was subscribed to the rules revision email list. Something about playtesting just destroys games for me. Especially with BGFW there was a grognardian level of rules fussing and complaining that I foolishly exposed myself to that left the game feeling broken when in fact it was fine. It was also too heavy for my sons at the time, and now it feels too expensive.

It cracks me up that over a decade later the Dark Elves are still selling for twice as much! It looks like there are some $15 decks on Ebay and at Your Move Games, with various amounts of shipping.

update: I just checked out the forums and so much of the discussion consists of modding units so that they're not "broken" or have more balance. I think the metagame of BGFW is tweaking the units, since they don't have anything to paint.

Edit: I found two decks for five bucks apiece...

Last week I was watching my daughter and I scanned my shelves of kids games to find something age-appropriate to play with her. I settled on Break the Safe, a game from 2003 that I picked up for a couple bucks while thrifting several years ago.

It's a co-op where the players have to raid a corporate complex for the four keys to open the titular safe and escape with the macguffin. The twist is that there's a time limit (handled by a digital timer in the safe itself) based on the number of players - two players get 15 min., three get 22 min., and four get 30 min. - that determines how long you have to get the macguffin before the safe self-destructs. A giant d10 moves the players, but one side of it wakes up the guard dog, one side wakes up the security guard, and there's a side that unlocks the jail (if you roll to activate the guard or dog once they're already on patrol they're deactivated and sent back to their starting room).

Once the guard and/or dog are activated, the players also have to roll a d6 with custom values (0, 3, 8, 11, etc.) to move the guard/dog. There is a prescribed path on the board for moving the guard and dog (they move on the same path in opposite directions) but they catch you in different ways. If the guard can see you in a straight line down a hallway, you're captured and have to go to the jail. The dog has to be within 6 spaces to catch you, but it doesn't need line of sight. There's a one-use lockpick card that can allow the player to get out, or there are four security rooms on the board that unlock the cell when entered.

The board has the safe room in the center and the rest of the board is hallways connected to various rooms where the key might be located. There are 8 red-outlined rooms and in each one goes a face-down tile: four are keys, one is a blank, one is an electrical trap that makes you lose your turn, and two are secret passages that can be taken to any other secret passage on the board. On top of the tiles go a booby trap that need to be disarmed before the tile can be revealed. Each player gets a random hand of ability cards where each one either manipulates the guard or dog's movement or is a remedy for specific traps. So if the tile is protected by the poison gas, you need the gas mask; if the booby trap is bees, you need the bug spray, etc. There's even a Robot card where the players can use it to pass equipment back and forth on their turn. Two of the traps are special: one is a 500 lb. weight that can only be disarmed with two characters in the room and the other is the ring of fire that can only be disarmed with the robot but it doing so destroys it.

Once the players have all four keys they all have to get to the safe room, insert the key tiles into the safe and turn the lock to open it and stop the countdown.

My daughter loved it and at her insistence we played it five times that first night, going 2-3. I had my sons play it with her and they ended up requesting it last night so we played it twice and went 1-1. I like how the random setup of the rooms and booby traps require teamwork, the timer is a fun gimmick (especially how it beeps to mark minutes that elapse to remind you to hurry) and the guard/dog patrols add an extra layer of strategy and tension. It plays really smoothly and is much better than the horrid box art would indicate. Die rolls can screw you over, of course, but the timer will put you out of your misery if you're having an unlucky session. I'd say it's equivalent to something like The Omega Virus (while not as good) and definitely worth the few bucks I paid for it.

Thanks for the heads up on Break the Safe. I totally want to get that but nobody I knew/trusted had ever played it. My littlest little is getting to be 10 and she is more interested in games.

So, I played Kingdom Builder. I love that it’s short. I love that it’s a variable setup all the time. I love the little art touches. That said, I have and always will hate the final scoring. I’m sure you could keep moving your scoring pawn when you place a piece or move it, but I have never done that and I always do all the scoring at the end. Meh.

Playing a decent amount of Frontline: No Comrades with the family. We played a demo at Origins earlier in the summer and the boys immediately wanted to buy it.

It’s a well themed, chaotic, Take That game in which everyone is a member of a rag tag Soviet WW2 unit trying to avoid certain death through a wide array of incoming enemy fire. You have a hand of cards to mitigate disaster - mostly by screwing over your comrades or dodging your duty. Beware the Commisar! Things usuallly go a bit sideways depending on the turn order. Some times you eat the bear but more often it seems the bear eats you.

Celebrated our eighth anniversary this weekend with our first game of the Arkham Horror card game in about three months. We tried out the Stranger Things fan scenario with my wife as Nancy Wheeler and myself as the boys.

It was great. I found most of the clues and Eleven while the high school student ran with a .45 and murdered government agents. Got tight at the end as a third treachery dropped Dr. Brenner and his team of agents on top of me. Nancy had entered the Upside Down and had a single chance to find Will and win us the game before the agents knocked me out and took back Eleven. And she found him. Cheers.

I’ve tried a few fan creations now. One poorly edited, another uninspired, but this was tops. The integration on the Demogorgon, the original characters (even if Mancy might be a little overpowered and Jonathan weird) and even the treacheries. Could have been an official release.