What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Had a truly great boardgaming day yesterday. We had agreed to play Steam and we even had 7 people to play it but we ended up playing other games instead.

Terraforming Mars. Fun, like always. The skill-ceiling keeps bothering me but it's fun. I'm glad my review keeps being accurate, money is indeed paradoxially tighter with Prelude.

Azul: I did not care much about this game, though it turned out more interesting after the first round than I first thought. At its core it's a drafting game and it flows very well. I would not mind playing it again and giving it a second chance, even though it's a point-salady optimization excercise it is very simple and hence I don't mind it.

Startups: Cute drafting game with a stocks theme. The idea of the game is that you score bsed on how many more stocks do you have in comparison to other people who own some of those stocks. So if you have 3 Green stocks and someone has 1 he must "pay" you 2 coins. I like hand management so this was fun.

Sticheln: I don't understand this game. I barely understand the rules (which are actually super simple!) and I don't understand the strategy. I always end up with high numbers that I don't know how to get rid of. I can understand, on some level, that this is a great trick-taking game but I don't understand the genre.

Chicago Express: Taught the game again because we needed a small, medium-weight game. The game was very unusual in that they played a very buildy-game, which is a newbie mistake, but then something clicked and they played much better, burning actions, blocking railroads and issuing stock just to water it down. My "cheapstake" strategy didn't pay off since the game went long but the other two players ended up with fairly close scores.

Cosmic Encounter: I had one of the best matches I've had in a while. There were four of us: Pacifist, Triplicator, Merchant and me, Sorcerer. The game went long, with several successful defenses, a couple colony recaptures and few allies. I managed to support on the defense twice, giving me the negotiations and other good cards I needed to push forward. I don't think I've ever played this well, I nailed the vast majority of my Sorcerer "trades", I managed my hand extremely-well and made the push to the finish line with two cards in hand: A 23 and a 40.

I knew I could win. Even if they all went on the defense I still had a fairly respectable edge (+9, as it turned out) and Emotional Control was just played the previous turn. I had no power, but didn't need it, I just had to make sure and hence told Pacifist to come with me for the win.

But he didn't want to. I had screwed him the whole game, he had a negotiation in hand, he didn't see me winning this battle. Triplicator made a passionate speech, arguing to not come with me. I countered back, calling him "Triloser" and promising him to conquer the galaxy together. Triplicator argued back, arguing I was evil and that he could win alone. Finally, I told Pacifist "What will you choose? Your loser friends? Or showing the galaxy the power of Negotiation?". And that did it to him, because he couldn't abandon his friends. He went to the other side.

And lost, because my 40 beat the crap out of him. As I showed the card I said "YOU LOSEEE" and we all laughed.

Beyond the awesome story, I really enjoyd how much skill was involved in this game. I kept getting Netrunner flashbacks with the hand management and how tight everything was. I'm increasingly convinced that the game is best with 4-5 because you are assured to go through 2, perhaps 3 hands and allies aren't overpowering. Wouldn't mind playing with 6 with expert players, though.

For me, 4 players is a bare minimum for Cosmic. This is one of those rare "the more, the merrier" games.

4-6 is the sweet spot for cosmic, I find. I will play with any of those numbers, but I think 5 may be best. More than 6 and turns are too infrequent. I’ve had an 8 player game where most players had a single turn lol

Got the copy of Spirit Island I ordered and set it up. It does some super smart things, I think the game does an excellent job tutorializing for what is a relatively complicated game. I think, in general, it also makes your enemy at its base very simple (but dangerous) and gives *you* the player all the cool powers and fancy combos, which is a smart move. Sometimes I feel like coops can focus more on the fancy weird ways your enemy will fuck you over which is kind of like ugh from a player agency perspective.

I will say it has that kind of overwhelming Argent thing of "here are a thousand ways to play this game in a thousands different combinations." But it gives *very* clear instructions how you should be playing as a new player and, overall, I tend to like the "simple base game, hundred ways to tweak future games" approach. I can see where that would be unappealing, though. Like let's see... scenarios, player powers, enemy countries, island type can all be mixed and matched...

Picked up a copy of The Game at Target to play The Mind with it.

Anyone that thinks The Mind is not a game is not qualified to offer a definition of what a game is.

Absolutely brilliant.

Steve I think you are really going to like Spirit Island.

The more people you add to Cosmic Encounter, the more the game becomes a party game. That is not a problem, but it's important to adjust expectations. You can really see the strategic possibilities with 4 or 5, but once you have more than 6, the game starts to go bonkers. I like both versions, and I think you can find a bit of both with a 6-player game. Ergo, that's my favorite player count.

Yeah, I still think the sweet spot is 5 with CE. If you go past that, you really need experienced players. I'm not sure how the other things (satellites, hazards, rewards) start to bend with more players past 5, but we've found that both the base game and the added stuff tends to work best at that player count.

Hosted my annual Oktoberfest boardgame day, featuring horror-themed games all day. My gaming area in the basement is set up to comfortably fit 8 players around one long table under a long flourescent light fixture. There is a secondary area in the big L-shaped room that can readily fit another four players around a card table beneath a smaller light fixture, but I have never needed it so far. So I was nervous when 8 people said they were definitely coming and another 7 said they might be coming. Plus two of the definites usually bring their girlfriend along, so there was a risk that we would need the dining room table on the main floor for another six players. In reality, we only had 8, which included 2 young kids who wanted to play games on their phones instead.

A couple of people requested Arkham Horror, so I set up the classic big game setup. We tried a new house rule where Kingsport also generates clue tokens each time one of those location chits is flipped. Nyogtha was the big bad, and we didn't use any heralds, allies or other extras. Nyogtha is plenty tough, because all random encounters with non-wandering monsters become encounters with Nyogtha's tentacle. Things went badly. A very tough monster camped out in the middle of the Arkham streets on the west side of town, and on the following turn, a special moving gate camped out right across the way, effectively trapping some of us in the south side of town. Some other bad stuff followed, including a fresh gate every turn. A couple of players were making a misguided attempt to win by closing, which only works if everybody commits relentlessly to closing gates and we get some non-gate mythos cards. So final battle came too soon, and only half the party was able to put up a decent fight. We knocked Nyogtha down from 48 hit points to 20 hit points before we were all devoured.

I was hoping to play a few more games that day, but my friends are growing old and weak. Only three beers were consumed all afternoon. We played a five-player game of Camp Grizzly that started out with a vicious flurry of attacks. Otis was relatively weak, but only one of us could fight. We were playing the hard scenario, which makes it difficult to get to the keys via a lengthy spiraling path around locked doors, with Otis starting near us. Aside from one early death, we managed to hang on for a long time, but discovered that our initial set of objective tokens didn't include a winning combo. Shortly after that, two of us died. My badly injured swimmer died in a senseless random accident while lost in the woods. Our two most selfish players managed to hang on a little longer, but got forced into final battle with Otis at the campfire, when the bodycount hit 13. They had scavenged good weapons off the dead characters and won the final battle easily. And that was it. Only 5:30 PM, but everybody was ready to leave. Except that four of us ended up just hanging out and talking for another hour.

Been playing Spirit Island again. Still my favorite co-op of all time. It needs the Invaders and or scenarios if the game is going to have any longevity for you. When you start out the base game is hard, for some friends of mine really hard. Once you have a dew games though it is really not. The girlfriend and I have knocked out a base game in 22min. At a certain point you will really want the expansion for the Event cards. I think all of the expansion is great although I have yet to play the scenarios, but after some plays the game really needs the extra random that the events provide.

Last night we had two 3-player games of Street Masters. This game is great, but the game length climbs dramatically as you add fighters. I think if anyone suggests a 4 player game again, I'll politely decline. Three players took long enough.

Anyway, the first game was set in a Japanese garden of sorts, and we were tasked with essentially being martial artists / fire fighters. Fires crop up in various spaces, and if 10 of them ever get on the board, it's game over. And that's exactly what happened, and we had not taken a single point of damage off of the boss, Ah Long.

Next we decided to continue fighting Ah Long, but in a simpler stage, Sudden Death. This is a cage match in which rookie NPC fighters are "helping" us in taking down the enemies. If 3 of them ever get killed, we lose. This time we were much more prepared and had a functional plan. I played as the Chinese Cop, I think her name is Yin Hwei... or something close to that. She is also in the upcoming Brook City. She is really cool, and has a kick that is essentially Johnny Cage's shadow kick. I used this to great effect, and we eventually had Ah Long down to 14 health. Only one NPC fighter had been eliminated at that point. We were literally about to win.... and some card came out that did enough damage to one of our fighters that he died. Game Over.

I think the key to this game is to immediately start putting pressure on the boss. If the boss gets to do his own thing, he just gets so powerful that when you finally turn your attention to him, it's too late. The sweet spot is probably two fighters; one to fight the boss, one to take care of the various other tasks.

Sticheln may be my favorite trick-taking game.

Played two more games of Western Legends this weekend. We played with six, in a crowd that likes theme-y, conflict-y games. I was okay with it when I first played it with 3 but man it comes alive with more. I wouldn't play it again with fewer than 4. Lots more action, lots more options. There are still some issues, but it's a really fun time. The group had so much fun we immediately played it again.

One notable difference between WL and Merchants and Marauders: I wouldn't play M&M with more than 3, wouldn't play WL with fewer than 4.

And played Yellow and Yangtze and holy cow. I need to settle my thoughts on it but will have more to say.

Played Photosynthesis for the first time. We had four, so all trees were represented. I'm... mixed on it. We were all first-timers, so there was the usual assortment of "trying this to see if it will work... oops, guess not." and the person who won not only went first but also, as a result, got a tree in the middle first. I'd read a bit on BGG about strategy difficulties based on getting to the center, growing a big tree, and leaving it there until the final round, which guarantees that you'll get the top points from the richest soil in the game and that you'll inhibit your opponents' sunlight in almost every turn thereafter. It's similar to another game I played recently, Shadows over Kyoto, where the person going first essentially dictates the path of the game from that point forward. Shadows has some additional rules/components that can be used to recover from the problem, but Photosynthesis doesn't unless it's the advanced rules, since one of the problems with the strategy I took that specifically didn't aim to take the center was that I didn't have enough time to grow the multiple trees in the more distant spaces that it would have taken to catch up. Another whole round would have opened up some doors, but I'm not sure it would have been enough, since everyone can participate in said round, which means that the points edge from taking the center would have still been present.

Not sure about this one.

Yellow and Yangtze

Tigris and Euphrates is a top 10 game for me. When I heard about Y&Y I knew I was going to get it.

Leaving T&E aside, this is a vicious game of conflict. You're laying tiles to collect points, based on where your leaders are, but placing tiles and moving your leaders around can cause fights. If you don't like high conflict games where you don't "own" anything on the board, just keep walking past this one. This is a game where you will start a fight with another person's leader just because it will get you a single cube. Or you can cause strife in a nation just to make others deal with it. It's not a gentle ride.

Comparing to T&E, you have a lot more options on your turn. Tiles have more uses now, leaders who are off the board are still in the game, and wars are very differently resolved. The pagodas that can be moved, stolen, or razed, are also interesting. All of this keeps the general feel on T&E while accelerating things somewhat. There's a lot more sense of control, though you still know you're playing a game based on the classic. Removing the "wild" cubes from known spaces on the board and introducing them as tiles also dramatically changes things.

I think this is easier to teach and grasp than T&E, and it smooths over some of the rough spots of the former game. I haven't played T&E in a while, and nostalgia and fanboyism may be carrying a lot of weight here but I think that one may barely edge out Y&Y. But if my copy of the original vanished forever, I'd be happy with the newer model.

How eager am I to play again? Absolutely

Is this something I'd like to own? Oh, I do

Rating after first play? 8

Fired up a solo 2 player of Root. This game is vastly simpler than I thought from The Discourse, though I did not play the Vagabond yet. I really don't see this being a tall order to teach? I dunno, I feel like maybe I'm not a great perspective on this given my wargame/heavy game past. More:



No idea if it's good or not, you would definitely have to play this a number of (fun! I enjoy learning games!) times.

Two more games of Fate of the Elder Gods. The first was cosmically appropriate: Hastur vs. Yog-Sothoth vs. Azathoth. Hastur won with a huge roll in Other Worlds and the Amulet of Nephren-Ka to help it along. The second, which was more Old Ones-oriented, with Ithaqua vs Dagon vs Atlach-Nacha, ended in the same way by the same player: a big roll in Other Worlds with the Magic Cane changing the last die to a tentacle and creating her second win of the evening. Annoying, but that's what the gods hand you sometimes. I didn't really get a chance to exploit Atlach-Nacha's very cool ability, which is kind of like Parasite from CE.