What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I'll join in on bashing Scythe. I played it once before I moved to Seattle when it first came out and felt it was average with no real positive or negative impressions. For some fucking reason everyone at meetups here in town loves to play Scythe, to the point where they will play two 6 player games back to back. Eventually I caved and played it again. For the first two hours of the entire 5 player game each of us stared at our own boards and moved resources and cubes on tracks in conjunction with making small moves on a board that passes for interaction. Every round I'm waiting 10 minutes for my next turn and what everyone else did made virtually no impact on my own decisions. In the last hour every player had a single fight to get a combat star. I would've gladly tried to attack everyone all game, but my popularity was very low right until the end and it was too punishing to take that kind of a hit. I noticed one faction could load up on stars from combat - maybe if I could play them every game I'd be happier. The end game scores were all politely clumped together with nobody exceeding the next lowest score by more than 5 points so no one felt bad about their performance.

I really despise this game because it is so popular. Don't give me that shit that this is interactive. Its a euro with a map and typical euro tracks and turning x resource into y resource to move up a track so you can do one action a little bit better next turn and punishments for attacking too much or building too many workers. Even the scores themselves were just wrong for me. I didn't play optimally; I didn't care half the game, yet I still had a score within a few points of first who owns the game and has played far more than me. Give me Blood Rage scores of 160 to 144 to 90 to 70; you know you fucked up with 70 points and got schooled.

Looks like my hot take that all games in the last 5 years are trash turned out to be true

I was ok on Scythe. But I took it more as a resource management, light economic Euro with a Cold War backdrop. A little too much engine building for my tastes, but I’d sit down to a game again. Unless it was a teaching game.

I went to a little neighborhood game get together a couple of weeks ago and it was a little weird. All anyone wanted to play was Scythe. I brought Root and it didn’t get played. I guess because everyone just knows Scythe and it gives a good, full experience without anyone having to learn it?

There were 4 copies and only like 11 people there.

I think Scythe came out at a really perfect time where gaming was blowing up into normal circles. It shows. It doesn't surprise me that folks like that haven't moved into 100 new games immediately---that doesn't come naturally to folks who don't consider learning new games a hobby in and of itself.

Also, very happy to have you posting regularly Mezike.

Sag on Scythe tilt, btw.

That’s a really great point. It would make sense that it is, in a fashion, this generation’s Catan- an entry point. People are playing like how I remember people playing Catan back in the 90s- hell, it’s how I played Catan back in the 90s. We switched over from Magic every Sunday night to Catan (well, Settlers we called it) every Sunday.

It’s a pretty heavy, big game for an entry point though.

Michael Barnes wrote: We switched over from Magic every Sunday night to Catan (well, Settlers we called it) every Sunday.

I miss calling it Settlers. It's really a weird brand now. Game of Thrones Catan? The game works, but the name is gibberish.

Michael Barnes wrote: That’s a really great point. It would make sense that it is, in a fashion, this generation’s Catan- an entry point. People are playing like how I remember people playing Catan back in the 90s- hell, it’s how I played Catan back in the 90s. We switched over from Magic every Sunday night to Catan (well, Settlers we called it) every Sunday.

It’s a pretty heavy, big game for an entry point though.

With how popular video games are, I’m not surprised the market is latching on to something complicated and engaging. The circle of hardcore gamers often underestimate the “casual”’s ability to grasp new games, or overestimate their own talent at picking up complex rule sets.

I wouldn’t drop something like 18xx in front of a beginner, but neither will I force in a requisite number of BGG approved Gateway Games before moving on to interesting stuff.

Power Grid is among my favorites that needs no real "introduction to the hobby," before playing it. It has been my most successful game with college friends who had previously only played monopoly, poker, and video games.

Jexik wrote: Power Grid is among my favorites that needs no real "introduction to the hobby," before playing it. It has been my most successful game with college friends who had previously only played monopoly, poker, and video games.

One of mine as well. The theme of the game does a great job implying the rules and strategy, and it has enough depth to hold interest. I just explain the initiative track as companies manipulating government subsidies for corporate welfare.

Gary Sax wrote: It doesn't surprise me that folks like that haven't moved into 100 new games immediately---that doesn't come naturally to folks who don't consider learning new games a hobby in and of itself.

This is an article begging to be written, make it so

Power Grid really is one of the top games- in that elite class with El Grande, T&E, Settlers, etc. I’ve played it quite a bit this year and it just gets better and better every time. I love the expansion maps, I love playing it with 2-6, I love the economy in particular.

It is actually a pretty easy one to teach- everything is really logical and the progress of the game just makes sense.

Still haven’t played with the deluxe edition, just the old timey RGG edition with the clipboard man.

I'm going to state the obvious about Scythe, only because nobody else has said it here yet.

Scythe has cool artwork.

The game can go fuck itself, for being just another variation of the same tired euro design elements, but people are suckered by the artwork into thinking they are playing a better game. Gary has a great point, in that Scythe was probably the It Game of the moment at the time when a bunch of new people were getting into boardgames. Scythe is their Settlers (er, Catan), more or less.

(Scythe)

The featured art is quite good -- box cover, player sheets, cards, etc. The board is a bit of an ugly beast and the minis are pretty hokey. Not very pretty on the table though particular pieces of art are very nice.

Some more write-ups from the last couple of nights. I hope y’all are enjoying these as I hope to get back into a rhythm of regular session report writing.

At the club:

A bunch of guys go to Essen every year and come back with too many over-hyped impulse purchases, so I’ve got into the habit of avoiding going there for the first couple of weeks in November until they’ve got all the buyer’s remorse out of their system. However the Trick or Treating wrapped up early last night and the muted reactions to this year’s Essen made it feel pretty safe to attend. It was still all new and mostly Euro-ish stuff on offer, some typically awful with one or two interesting gems. I steered clear of the heavy Euro group and sat down in my usual place at the idiot table where we tend to play lighter and most importantly more fun games.

El Dorado is not a new game but there was an expansion at the fair that someone picked up and they were keen to try it out. Although I’ve seen it hit the tables on a few occasions it was my first time playing. It's an interesting blend of deck building and board movement where you spend your cards to move across different types of terrain or cash them in to buy better cards. There are some spots on the board where you can pick up bonus tiles but you generally have to go the less direct route to do so, and an expansion thing where you can take short cuts but get some negative effects as a penalty. The border between each board segment requires someone to spend some cards to cut down a barrier which is basically a catch-up mechanism if ever I saw one, however collecting these border tiles becomes a tie-breaker so there is at least a valid reason to still go after them.

As it was my first go at this I did the standard safe bet in deckbuilders by amassing money and looking for deck thinning in order to start cycling powerful cards. What I realised though is that you really don’t go through your deck many times so the cards you buy might only be seen two or three times in some cases. Deck thinning is not easy either. I also got shafted by a curse that allowed another player to push me into a really awkward spot stuck in the middle of a river that I couldn’t easily get out of, great fun all round as I watched with envy as everyone else streaked away to the final barrier whilst I was still paddling away two board lengths behind. One player had gone all out for rapid movement but when he got to the end his deck wasn’t good enough to meet the heightened challenges and he stalled whilst the rest caught up. I finally got out of my predicament and because I had been buying up strong cards whilst becalmed I very quickly also closed the gap. At the end of it one player reached the fabled city of gold and I was just one item short of also getting there, but would have lost on the tie in any case. The other two players were stuck in awkward places just out of reach. Pretty basic lightweight stuff to kick the evening off, it feels more like a game about collecting and spending icons on cards rather than exploring the jungle so I wouldn’t want to own it myself but would play it again.

Showtime with three. A game about seating people in a cinema. You put a card down and it either moves other cards around or gets an end of round scoring bonus. You fill up the tableau and then score points. Fill up the tableau three times, game done, chuck it back in the box and please stick it on eBay so I don’t have to sit through it again. Nothing of any interest here other than a way to pass time for a few minutes. It certainly isn’t very PC either, and there is one really uncomfortable character in the game that gets a bonus for being a ‘ladies man’ even when he is cosying up next to a nine year old girl – bleurgh.

Crime Hotel is apparently rare as hen’s teeth yet they managed to come back with three copies between them. It did however make the evening worthwhile and was the pick of the bunch for me. A very straightforward deduction game that is beautifully simple in leveraging the tension inherent in the ever-decreasing circle as the clues narrow down to the unique murder scene. You have a hand of the world’s smallest cards that are rooms in the titular hotel. One card is set aside as the scene of the murder, six cards dealt to every player, and the rest put on the board which isn’t a board but a cloth mat which is actually quite nice. I’ll use that as a stopping point to mention that the look of the game is very pretty and functionally clever. The room cards fit perfectly into the artwork on the board with the rooms lit up and the shadow of a detective rummaging around for clues which gives personality to the hotel as well as making it very clear where the dwindling options for the crime scene are.

Each round starts with simple trick taking, everyone has to match the floor of the first card played and then the cards are added to the board. Then in order from highest numbered to lowest numbered the players get to place one of their meeple either as a guess or to take an action. Only the middle players can take the actions and only the first and last players can make guesses so there is a bit of gamesmanship in choosing which cards and when to play as sometimes you want to be first and at others you definitely don’t. The actions allow you to peek at other players cards, manipulate your meeple on the board, or gain bonuses to any correct guesses that you make.

Placing as a guess can either be one of three floors or nine columns or a specific room. As only one player can hold any single guessing spot there is pressure on trying to get into first or last place at the time when you are ready to take a punt on it, and leaving it too late could allow enough information into the game to give somebody else the edge over you. For example in one of the rounds in our game I was certain that room 24 was the location but dithered over making a direct guess and went for the column instead. The next player to guess went straight into that room and got a sixteen point swing on me because I blinked, and enough of a score to take the round convincingly; but a mistake made entirely within my agency rather than being stiffed by some random factor or lack of experience with game mechanisms.

It’s really neat and runs fairly quick with a lot of tension involved, and I think it’ll have legs for repeat play because it thrives on the interactions between the players rather than the mechanisms of the game. Tough that it isn’t in wide distribution though.

Colour 5 or something similar. Play four cards, if there are too many then they go bust otherwise the most prolific colour that isn’t tied scores the value of the cards played. Because the gameplay is so wafer thin they also stuck an incongruous rule in there that if you have a certain number of value 1 cards then they trump the scoring. It’s as dead and flaccid to play as it sounds, instantly forgotten in the sea of very similar trick taking games that rely entirely on a single ‘neat’ idea as a hook.

Finished of the evening with Fine Sand which is the latest of Friedemann Friese’s legacy deck games. This one is all about deck deconstruction where you all have the same deck but are trying to thin down by building and giving away cards. The legacy element is pretty straightforward in that at the end of each game the winner gets to swap out one identical card from each deck with something from the legacy stack.

The one thing that struck me with this is that it is a game where you are simultaneously running the engine that you are building. In that respect it reminded me somewhat of Trewicek games like 51st State or Imperial Settlers except that this one is a simple little oddity about building sandcastles. You’ve got to be single minded in your strategy yet prepared to change gears at a moments notice part way through. The passing of cards can be disruptive as it changes the shape of everybody’s decks dependent on what they choose to pass, but cards stack up and are only passed once everyone has put one to the side. So you can end up burying cards that you were trying to seed into your neighbour's deck because the person on your other side keeps deciding to use all their cards and have none left to pass. There is also a little bit of pressure on timing your end game (which is when someone is unable to draw a card because their deck has run out) as if you get it wrong you can still end up in last place despite finishing the round. Just enough unpredictability involved to start throwing the fixed setup out of kilter so that it isn't just rote, 'solveable' play at work.

In a nutshell it's simple and compelling if everyone is able to be fast and loose, but feels like pulling teeth if someone is slow and considerate of their turn. I get the feeling that digging into the legacy deck will be unfulfilling; the previous entries into this cannon felt to me like app games where the impetus is to keep playing in order to turn over something new rather than the actual game itself delivering any long term payback. So my prediction is that it’ll be fun for a few times round then left on the wayside.


At home:

Ahhh, time for a refreshing bout of Gaslands with one car each in a deathmatch on some very busy terrain. My son set his car off in a sprinting loop in an attempt to come around behind mine, which left me with two options; I could either take the relatively sedate road and try to slip away with him flanking me, or I could brave a treacherous chicane to spoil his attack run and make him change tactic. So of course I compromised and did neither, or rather both, and went headlong as fast as I could into the chicane. The goddess of dice was on my side and I rolled spin and slide just when I needed it to fishtail round the tight bend and come out with guns blazing direct at my target.

Not to be outdone in recklessness, my lad did me proud by eschewing the opportunity to slip past me while licking his wounds and instead turned in toward me and hit me with a head on collision. Both of us now bruised and battered we pulled away in opposite directions, with him now stuck navigating the chicane with less luck than I had and a few more dents to show for it. There was a long lazy loop of safe road that would bring us both back into contact but the blood was up and I was eager to do battle much sooner. I dropped a gear and pulled a handbrake turn across the rough median so that I could get some shots in and finish things off, however my earlier fortune abandoned me and everything missed.

Seeing that he was in a hopeless position with low hull and the enemy bearing down on him, the little madman of my loins decided to go all-in on a sacrificial run. Pinching into a tight turn to bring himself around and going overboard on hazards in the process he gunned me down to just a single hull point. But now the wipeout came and it was freaking spectacular. Black smoke and sticky rubber were streaking behind what was left of his wheels as his car popped up onto two battered wheel rims on the turn, the recoil from his guns tilting him over the edge. A tumble and a roll followed by an explosion that sent the flaming wreck of his car flying across the sand smack bang into the windshield of my car, tearing through its weathered hull and sending yet more fireworks on the go.

We decided that fun was the winner here.

Something interesting here about Gaslands versus X-Wing. When we play X-Wing he wins nearly as much as he loses and yet he always gets really emotional when his ships get blown up. In Gaslands it’s the exact opposite, he takes immense delight in seeing everything explode even though it is ostensibly the same game. I think the difference is that X-Wing demands a lot more investment, a lot more planning and setup, so the impact is higher when things don’t work out. Whereas Gaslands revels in fast and loose play, shifting situations, and encouraging absolute carnage so it’s more immediate and less personal. You don’t have to plan anything, just get stuck in. When you get shafted in Gaslands you can usually take immediate revenge or simply laugh at the ridiculous chain of events that are unfolding, which isn’t the case in X-Wing where you can be outflown and turned into a miserable punchbag as a result.