What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote: Mark, there are two different kinds of Marbles, the orange embers are not supposed to be dropped through Vulkar. They're just slightly bigger and that may be why you had one get stuck.

No, it was a red one. The game came with.. I want to say 5 red marbles and 6 orange marbles. All of them are visibly inconsistent in size. I don't think it will really be an issue, but it was surprising.

Ah ok, I made that mistake when I first broke it out and noticed some of the orange marbles sticking, but my red ones are all fine (and I didn't visually notice their size varying).

My birthday was last Friday and I celebrated by spending time with my family and eating wonderful Thai food. Saturday, however, was a huge game day.

Black Hole Council is the newest release from Don Eskridge (Resistance). It feels closest to Tiefe Taschen but it's kind of its own thing with some deduction thrown in as well. My first play was enjoyable but four was not a great player count.

With five players it was definitely better. I think this is a solid game and I really enjoy the real-time pressure to negotiating, but I'm not sure I'd ever reach for this over Tiefe. That's hardly an indictment, however.

Got in a game of KeyForge and my best deck is now 6-0. Played an annoying deck that kept stealing aember but I was able to generate enough through card play that it didn't matter.

We played a four player game of Rising Sun which was fantastic. I started off strong enough, ending the first season with three strongholds as the Bonsai clan. Unfortunately the Dragonfly player really hammered a multitude of combos through training and acquiring extra cards from Kami worship. One of us should have pressure him more for the Kami but he grabbed the lion monster which counts as a shinto which propelled him in that regard.

I could never get much going as I lost a couple of key fights and ended up losing by over 25 points. Had a great time and the Dragonfly player's most successful round of combat featured some very dramatic reversals we didn't see coming (such as committing Sepuku with five dudes and an Oni).

We had a wonderful nine player game of Secret Hitler where I nailed three out of the four Fascistsby mid-game. I was wrong about one player but it didn't matter, at that point we secured victory and the Libs won.

One of the most interesting plays was a 4v4 game of Wings of Glory using my Battle of Britain stuff. We had two Spits (one flown by me) and two Hurricanes taking on two Me109s and BF110s.

I flew up the right flank with the other Spitfire and we traded an attack run with a 109. He ended up banged up with engine damage but I was limping after the close range fire. I circled wide heading left, aiming for the middle scrum where everyone else was. This allowed me to nail the other 109 coming out of the pack and finish him off.

My brother was flying a Hurricane and went right up the gut. He took massive amounts of fire from three of the Germans and ended up with around 10 damage chits. He'd keep getting nailed and proclaim, "Still alive!" Lots of German anger.

He finally bit the dust from a tail gun shot after passing by a Bf110.

We ended up winning, cleaning up everyone but the engine damaged 109 who would concede.

I had a blast and really enjoyed the game. There was some moaning that the planes weren't evenly balanced due to the maneuverability of our Spitfires. We played with blindspots on the 110s tailguns which was perhaps the wrong move since we didn't use altitude (I've never been a fan of the altitude rules in WoW).

The player who received engine damage on the 109 is a habitual complainer when luck goes against him and I'm not sure he'd play again. He felt crippled since he couldn't immelman and his plane turned too slowly to really get in on the action since he had to fly at slow speed. Glad the complainer lost.

We also got in a game of Fireball Island which I mentioned a few posts ago, very fun.

Erik Twice wrote: I actually played Dice Hospital today too, Mezike. I had fun but this is a good quote:

What was their strategy? I honestly have no idea, and I don’t think it mattered much.

I think what makes the game fun is that you can go "aha, I'll use this to do this and then THIS to do that and I'll get a lot of people cured!". It's fun to try to fit everthing together and I liked being a force of good for once. I don't mind a game being nice when it's about nice things.

It would be cool if there were shared incentives, though. As in, the pool of patients is shared and you could specialize in a kind or something. But it would be difficult to keep it nice. I would enjoy a cutthroat satire of for-profit healthcare systems, but I feel sensitive right now and would prefer a happy, non-evil game where you do good things.

You might then be interested to know that the designer is working on an expansion where you drive ambulances around town picking up patients and bringing them back to your hospital that will give a bit more control over who you take in to your wards. We saw it in action at the convention we went to last week but didn't get an opportunity to try it ourselves. It looked a little busy, maybe too much so for the light approach that makes the game attractive in the first place, but it's in playtest and development so will no doubt change over time.

charlest wrote: One of the most interesting plays was a 4v4 game of Wings of Glory using my Battle of Britain stuff. We had two Spits (one flown by me) and two Hurricanes taking on two Me109s and BF110s.

I flew up the right flank with the other Spitfire and we traded an attack run with a 109. He ended up banged up with engine damage but I was limping after the close range fire. I circled wide heading left, aiming for the middle scrum where everyone else was. This allowed me to nail the other 109 coming out of the pack and finish him off.

My brother was flying a Hurricane and went right up the gut. He took massive amounts of fire from three of the Germans and ended up with around 10 damage chits. He'd keep getting nailed and proclaim, "Still alive!" Lots of German anger.

He finally bit the dust from a tail gun shot after passing by a Bf110.

We ended up winning, cleaning up everyone but the engine damaged 109 who would concede.

I had a blast and really enjoyed the game. There was some moaning that the planes weren't evenly balanced due to the maneuverability of our Spitfires. We played with blindspots on the 110s tailguns which was perhaps the wrong move since we didn't use altitude (I've never been a fan of the altitude rules in WoW).

The World War II version of the game is much more intense, due to just two changes. First is the way you place maneuver cards, which keeps you heads-down and seriously concentrating on controlling your airplane. You're placing a card every turn so you have to always be looking at the layout of the field. The second is, damn, one mistake can be really costly. Getting hit by a 20mm cannon is decidedly not good, and that's what your whiner had in his nose. He had significant firepower advantages on you. He can do something like 15 points of damage with one shot.

I had played this years back when it first came out but then it sat on the shelf with no one looking to play. It came back out again on a lark and I realized how much more intense it was. Really a game where "oh shit" is the phrase of the day, regardless of which plane you're playing. Altitude rules add to the complexity, but you sure don't need 'em. The game plays just fine 2-D.

Had heard about Perdition's Mouth for a couple years, and finally pulled the trigger on it. Dungeon crawl with a rondel action system and some card/deck management. It looked pretty cool, and had some eager supporters, but after a couple plays, I kept feeling like it would have seemed great before Gloomhaven came along, but not any more. GH is just cleaner around the edges, and also has a more interesting way of playing the cards and actions. A rondel may have seemed novel and different for a dungeon-crawl, but it also feels wrong and gimmicky for that kind of game, and gets in the way of the fun. So I'm bailing. Anyone wants a Perdition's Mouth Gamer Bundle for $80 plus $20 shipping, let me know. That's a good deal less than what it's going for.

But... after the disappointment of that, and still kind of jonesing for some solo dungeon-crawling, I took a look again at Sword & Sorcery, which I'd glossed over before. And after trying it on TTS, I quite like that. And really, Perdition's Mouth is probably better in terms of tactical decision-making, and S&S is super heavy with rules bloat. And yet, for whatever reason, I like the S&S system and flow a lot better. So I've ordered that and will play through the base campaign, at least.

I also realized I had never really looked at its predecessor, Galaxy Defenders, and I think I like the look of that even better. People seem to be saying that S&S tightened that one up, but to me, GD seems to have a better mission feel to it... S&S can be a little scripted and limiting, as far as what you're doing moving through the corridors and engaging every monster. GD seems a little more dynamic, with a more open map and more tactics involved.

Anyone who has played both S&S and GD able to comment a bit on the difference, and whether I should grab GD later if I've already played through S&S?

I spent the last week with limited internet out of state visiting a bunch of my wife's side of the family. It was nice. It also changed our gaming diet a bit, and that was a pleasant experience.

We brought Cursed Court with us and it went over well both times it got played. It's an absolute crime that people don't know about this one. After playing it for about a year we finally had a 4 of a kind happen for the first time, only for it to happen in the second game as well! I of course scored neither of them because I'm unforgivably bad at this game. Love it though.

We learned Mahjong. Just straight up American-style Mahjong, taught by a little New England lady who's been playing for years. It took a game for us to understand what was going on, but we ended up playing quite a bit of it over a couple days and loving it. I don't know if I've had this much fun collecting sets in any other game. We played with the initial draft (Charleston, I think it's called) before the standard discard/draw. Identifying what game you're playing and knowing when to pivot to a different one is a fantastic puzzle. It's also a puzzle the wife is a savant at. She pulled off one particular hand that our teacher said she'd never seen anyone succeed at before. We'll probably end up owning a set in the future. What a great game.

I pulled out Voodoo Prince for four of us later in the trip. I thought it'd go over a bit better than it did as it's become a staple game for my work group, but it just kind of happened until we put it away. Goes to show no game is bulletproof. Still a really good trick taker, though not my favorite boxed game in the genre (still The Dwarf King).

My mother in law had just purchased Exploding Kittens. Like, literally earlier that day. I taught it, we played it, it wasn't bad. Not a ton to say about it outside of I'm not a fan of the player elimination. I see why it's so popular, I just wouldn't buy it.

Finally, same mother in law acquired a copy of Trekking the National Parks 2nd Ed. She's very much an outdoorsy type so it was a no brainer for her. It didn't blow my mind or anything but it's definitely a solid Ticket to Ride alternative and quite a bit of fun. Having two distinct scoring methods (visiting parks and collecting stones) is a spicy twist. I leaned into visits, MIL leaned into rocks, and my wife struck a balance. She ended up winning but the scores were fairly tight. That's a good sign as far as I'm concerned. Really well produced too.

A few takeaways from this last week. My wife's family is wonderful, she's a fucking card shark in any game that lets her be, and I have absolutely been bitten by the Mahjong bug.

my initial reaction to Dual Powers: Revolution 1917:

I was completely hyped for the subject matter of this game, love the artwork and design, and couldn't wait to get it to the table. It arrived yesterday; I played it last night.

First and second plays were a little alarming. I was playing the Reds and got crushed. As in, didn't make it out of the second month.

Third play went all the way to October, however, but still ended up with a victory for the Whites. We felt that the Will of the People was a double-edged sword, and controlling the neutral tokens wasn't really balanced against that crucial last card play of the round. The combination of the Red player starting with it and not having a unit with a value higher than 3 seems to make them unable to really mobilize, and can result in a disastrous first turn that it's hard to come back from.

Nevertheless, we're eager to be proven wrong and are both stoked to give it more plays!

Vysetron wrote: We learned Mahjong. Just straight up American-style Mahjong, taught by a little New England lady who's been playing for years. It took a game for us to understand what was going on, but we ended up playing quite a bit of it over a couple days and loving it. I don't know if I've had this much fun collecting sets in any other game. We played with the initial draft (Charleston, I think it's called) before the standard discard/draw. Identifying what game you're playing and knowing when to pivot to a different one is a fantastic puzzle. It's also a puzzle the wife is a savant at. She pulled off one particular hand that our teacher said she'd never seen anyone succeed at before. We'll probably end up owning a set in the future. What a great game.

I love Mah-jong, although I've always played with what are supposed to be the straight-up Hoyle rules. Back in the early 90s, a roommate loved playing the matching pyramid game on her computer, so she mentioned it to her mother, who promptly went out and bought her an actual set for Christmas. The rules that came with it, however, may have been translated directly from Mandarin with no accounting for syntax, because they were English, but totally unintelligible. So I found a book of Hoyle rules for all kinds of games (poker, cribbage, backgammon, etc.), which had the rules for Mah-jong. My roommate had lost interest, so I picked up the set and started playing with my girlfriend at the time and her two kids. We became hardcore tile clickers. We used to play on this glass-topped bistro table in our apartment that also belonged to my roommate. The tiles were ceramic and we were such quick players by then that drawing and discarding happened very rapidly, so my roommate used to get nervous about the tabletop because of the rapid fire clicking that would take place. Occasionally pulling off the various sextuple scores (all tiles of one suit, four of your own wind, etc.) were also high points. Those were good times. I eventually traded my toaster oven to my roommate for the set and still have it. I keep trying to get my current girlfriend and her two kids into it, but haven't succeeded.

Another Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles game (this time 2v2). I'm a big fan of this release and just made the final pass on my review. Hoping to be able to return to it without a long wait between games.

I also was fired up enough over Wings of Glory to buy a B-17 (Memphis Belle) and another playmat (the coast). The B-17 is probably my favorite aircraft from that period and I'm looking forward to running 1942 scenarios with Spitfires escorting it across the channel and Germans attempting to take 'em out.

I played Container for the first time this week. A friend picked up the new deluxe edition with resin bits. It was an OK game where I enjoyed some of the conflict and negotiation, but it was also a bit dry. I can't ever see myself wanting to play it though when we could be playing Sidereal Confluence in the same time frame.

Then we pulled out the new Armistice Edition of The Grizzled. Besides offering beautiful, fully painted minis and some larger components, this version offers a campaign mode of play where results carry over to some degree. It's actually very clever as you play through the major battles of the war with little bits of flavor text written up like newspaper snippets interjected between games. We played three games and are really digging it.

If you were not a fan of The Grizzled previously this won't change anything, however.

Finally, got in a game of Divinare which I had never played before. I think I liked it but it befuddled me for the first half as I had difficulty calculating odds and figuring out the math of the game (mostly due to blocking and how that undercuts the deduction).

You played Sidereal Confluence in a while? Is it holding up?

Gary Sax wrote: You played Sidereal Confluence in a while? Is it holding up?

Last time was in May. We'd play it more often but one guy who's a regular in the group doesn't like negotiation games.

My play in May was my 6th play of it, and we pulled it out and played without me re-reading the rules before hand. Just had to quickly look at setup and that was about it.

Still love it absolutely.

Played a game of the old cheapass games Kill Dr. Lucky- the cardboard one where you provide your own tokens. I was a sculpty figure made by a 5 year old, my wife was a snotling and my 16 year old daughter was a penis pencil topper. Ah dick jokes with my teenage daughter while playing board games, bonding right there.

The dick won, killing off the Doctor with pinking shears. We play that you have to describe why the attempt fails, and my wife's failure one card, declared that the pinking shears were for fabric only. Anyone who lives with a sewer knows that that should be a failure 3.

Good time.

edulis wrote: . . . declared that the pinking shears were for fabric only. Anyone who lives with a sewer knows that that should be a failure 3.

Just attempting to cut flesh with the pinking shears is grounds for a severe beat-down at my house.

I got a little more upset than I probably should have when I found my wife cutting paper with my Ginghers.

Shears in my house, whatever. But use the wrong knife for cutting food or set my BBQ too high and that’s a shanking