What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I have played Colonies but we didn't have anything that worked with Jovians.

I can very much see the animal spam, though. In general, all the non-TR stuff seemed strong simply because it's far more available than usual.

Five hours for a 3 player game of Ascendancy is about double the time games normally take. I hope you can convince them to give it another shot because it's really a great game,

I don't doubt it can be sped up. I'd kind of like to play it again too. We'll see.

More light games, all new to me. Trying to get through all my unplayed games.

Blue Lagoon
This was decent. It's a set collection and sorta area controlish abstract game. The map and the pieces are nice. I felt it was a bit loose with 2 players, 3/4 players (or an alternate side of the board for 2) might tighten it up a bit. It also dragged on a little for what it is. But that's all the bad stuff I can say about it. It's a solid light game.

Tides of Madness
Dull dull dull. Themeless nonsense. I didn't have an iota of fun playing this. File under "bin".

The Fox In The Forest
Hard to know what to make of this. For some reason I couldn't get the strategy down, while my boyfriend did. I lost abysmally (21-8) but I still had fun. It's basically just a very simple trick-taking game. I'd play it again but at the same time I'm in no rush.

Played 3 rounds of 3 player Hellapagos with the kids. They really like it! They never request to immediately play again.

First round, we managed to get 2 rafts built, and it came time to vote who was not coming along on the trip. One son and I had quietly agreed to vote the other off, and that deal held. Joint victory.

The second round started with a fortuitous card draw; I started with the axe, and managed to build 3 rafts in short order. We actually got all the resources necessary to get off the island before the hurricane came. Everyone's a winner!

For the third round, we were in pretty dire straights since nobody had any tools to aid in resource gathering. We got two rafts built and barely managed enough resources to get to the point of voting someone off. One son pulled out the crystal ball, which allows him to vote last. He was also the first player, so he could break ties. I made a pact with the other son to both vote him off, so his crystal ball would be pointless. I was betrayed, and voted off. Sadly, the little bastards had enough sandwiches to make the trip, and they sailed away as the storm pummeled my lifeless body.

RobertB wrote: I am on a 7-game losing streak of Terraforming Mars* to the missus. I think she's sold her soul to the devil. Some of the new Colonies cards might have busted up what passes for a strategy for me, because wins used to be shared about 50/50. She's convinced that emphasizing greeneries + cities = a loss in 2-player w/Colonies, and the evidence is in her favor. It could also be because I suck, but that's unpossible.

Yesterday I played Star Trek: Ascendancy with my brother and nephew. I had Klingons and jumped Romulans early. I failed to capture Romulus (which was the plan), which gave the game to the Federation. He ended up with 5 culture nodes, and was too big for us to beat him back. They liked it, but thought it ran a bit long. That particular game did run long - 5 hours total. They were new to it, and liked it, but I bet it will be hard to get it played again.

*Just to reiterate, Terraforming Mars on Steam flat-out sucks. The AI is too stupid to win, and the head-to-head is unplayably buggy. If you're interested in buying it, I'd give them a few months to fix it first.

It’s been out for six months, that’s pretty pathetic.

I played a game that finally made me promise to myself that I will read the final rulebook before I preorder another wargame. So... that probably does it for me for wargame preorders!

In another note, I have a copy of the brand new Triumph of Chaos v2 for trade.

ratpfink wrote: I played a game that finally made me promise to myself that I will read the final rulebook before I preorder another wargame. So... that probably does it for me for wargame preorders!

In another note, I have a copy of the brand new Triumph of Chaos v2 for trade.

What are you looking for in trade for ToC?

ratpfink wrote: I played a game that finally made me promise to myself that I will read the final rulebook before I preorder another wargame. So... that probably does it for me for wargame preorders!

In another note, I have a copy of the brand new Triumph of Chaos v2 for trade.

The first game had a rulebook that was a form of fever dream. The game wasn't bad if it wasn't for the 10,000 exceptions though. I think I still have it. From a time when my brain could contain more rules than today.

Triumph of Chaos remains my favourite game bar ASL.

Looking forward to version 2 (which I preordered a while ago - guess I'd better contact Clash of Arms)

I eventually wrote a totally revised rulebook for my own use as his rulebook writing skills are bloody awful.

It does some really cool things. The political phase and the fact that there are just major forces sitting off map (or sometimes on map) waiting for you to invest resources in them reminds me of some of these dudes on a map games where you draft monsters/forces except 15 years earlier and in wargame form.

You're making me want to put that on my wishlist again!

Msample wrote:

ratpfink wrote: I played a game that finally made me promise to myself that I will read the final rulebook before I preorder another wargame. So... that probably does it for me for wargame preorders!

In another note, I have a copy of the brand new Triumph of Chaos v2 for trade.

What are you looking for in trade for ToC?

Yeah, now I've managed to make myself interested too.

Gary Sax wrote: It does some really cool things. The political phase and the fact that there are just major forces sitting off map (or sometimes on map) waiting for you to invest resources in them reminds me of some of these dudes on a map games where you draft monsters/forces except 15 years earlier and in wargame form.

Oh yeah, it has some cool ideas and I don't have a problem with the complexity per se. I just don't want to spend the time to work through bad rulebooks in general anymore. There are too many other games I could play.

This only would have taken someone who had never played the game before one read through the rulebook to find dozens of just simple issues.

Nevermind the problems on the cards where they tell you to add units/move tracks that don't exist in the game or are contradicted by the rulebook.

I started to keep a working list of all the little problems, but very quickly I gave up when I realized I wasn't ever going to play again.

I did cancel 100% of my wargame preorders this morning. It felt... good.

Pirate Tricks is the latest from Soaring Rhino (Craig and Jeff Van Ness) and it's one of the better trick takers I've played. This is a genre that's grown on me the last few years.

The twist here is that you bid on your hands. You're dealt some random cards, but the bulk of your hand is procured through open building for sets of randomly dealt cards in the middle of the table. You bid with VP so this is very precarious and sharp.

The other big shift is the inclusion of three decks which spit out goals for you to accomplish and define strategy. They reward you points for simply possessing certain cards (such as two of a kind or straights, or whatever), this influences the bidding for hands as well.

The other objective cards define how we score the actual tricks. Some want you to win tricks, some have you predict how many you will win, some want you to have the fewest tricks. A final card will change the value of specific colors, such as each red card you win in a trick being worth a point, or each blue card being worth -1 point.

The end result is a trick taker with less randomness and rotating goals. It's simple, light, yet more strategic than most and offers a solid challenge to wrap your head around each hand. I really dug it as a 20 minute filler (you only play 3 rounds). It will be seeing more play.

I was a fan of Grant Rodiek's Solstice so it's no surprise that Imperius hit the spot. This is one of the most spectacular short drafting games I've played. It's basically area control where you place cards to a location and each card may have special rules. The hook is that we draft from a deck that contains everyone's cards. So I can draft all of your units and then later place them in an inopportune location to minimize their scoring. That central question of drafting your own versus theirs is compelling. The only downside here is that it can often feel like much is out of your control and fate is conspiring against you. It nails the psuedo-Dune theme pretty well overall.

Comanauts is the latest from Plaid Hat, the adult sequel to Stuffed Fables. I was interested the first half hour or so, wonderful artwork a decent narrative that was vaguely TIME Stories-ish, but then it just drug on. 2 hours (the upper limit on the box) is too long for this sort of thing.

You play through different scenes in the book which span different time periods and locations (this is all taking part in a character's unconscious mind), but each location is a bit thin and there's about 2 minutes of gnarly content in each 15 minute game segment. By the end of the game I had felt like it went on for twice as long as it should have. I'm going to play it again for the review thing, but otherwise I'd just chuck it.

Tumblin-Dice and Mars Open made good on re-infusing the fun that was lost from Comanauts.

I played two games of Beta Colony this week, a new rondel/area control game that I know Charlie said was okay. It’s not going to win any awards, but I do enjoy it, though I am partial to both rondels and area control as mechanics. It bucks the trend in modern Euro games in that it has only 2 major ways to score points, not the plethora of options in order to minimize interaction and give the illusion of multiple paths to victory. However, the actual area control scoring is a bit more convoluted than I’d like, though I appreciate the thought behind it. You score points based on the difference between the most and least control in each area. I really like the idea that if I’m able to keep a tight race going, you won’t score as well if I had ignored that area all together. It’s the having to consult a chart that bothers me, as it always will.

It’s certainly a fine game, and with a bit more polish in both design and production (which is cheap, guess that’s what happens when you completely go American in manufacturing these days), it could have been a great way in for some folks. As it stands, it’s a really solid game that will likely go unnoticed and be forgotten.