Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

hotseatgames wrote: Yeah, there is no good reason that these models couldn't be single pieces. My friend struggled to build it all.

Assembling - or trying to - those fucking minis was rage inducing. I mean, I get that single piece models are more expensive. But the LEAST they could have done was make them press fit to assemble like say SPACE HULK. Instead, you had bizarre shit like heads that you sort of had to balance on the torso to glue into place, or limbs with no male/female attachment mechanism. Huge fucking fail. I put together the characters and said FUCK this as far as assembling the aliens and just used tokens .


BTW, here's Charlies review: arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/aliens-bo...hum-dungeon-crawler/

His review is spot on - basically, the entire game revolves - or devolves - around manipulating the deck.

I've been playing more Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor. I like it a lot as a co-op, though its early game is just a little too repetitive and scripted to think it's an absolute world beater coop like Spirit Island.

I do think the various hero feat decks are really well designed and give you cool powers; you are GOING to lose unless you buy good items and use your feats effectively. The game isn't too bad on time, sornars and I played 3 hours solo with his first time playing. More than anything, I like how dramatic and high stakes the battles are; it feels impossible that you will be able to beat threat 6 and 7 bosses near the end so when you do you feel like a complete badass.

Anyway, the whole thing is quite well put together even if it lacks a bit to take it over the top to masterpiece. I'll probably back it in their next kickstarter for the final version.

I started playing Captain's Chair, the Star Trek Imperium game from Turzci and Buckle. I'm still not sure where I stand with it; it's definitely chunkier than Imperium in terms of options, even if the game is shorter. I have found even complexity 1 Picard's deck can be hard to get his mission done against aggressive bot opponents, and lining up all the dimensions right is a real challenge. I'm not sure if the increased card complexity is buying enough in terms of bigger strategy space yet.

I'm debating picking up CAPTAINS CHAIR. While I appreciate the IMPERIUM engine, the pics in Dan Thurot’s review gave me pause - there's a lot of shit going on in those cards, info/icon wise. And I can barely get IMPERIUM on the table. I might be able to sucker my local opponent into picking it up, he's usually good for anything Star Trek. He can be my retail red shirt, LOL.

I would try it first. The multiple action option cards crank complexity, but then the game is shorter and more straightforward in other little ways imperium is messy. The area control is also a solid addition; the locations are powerful and valuable.

Msample wrote: I'm debating picking up CAPTAINS CHAIR. While I appreciate the IMPERIUM engine, the pics in Charlie's review gave me pause - there's a lot of shit going on in those cards, info/icon wise. And I can barely get IMPERIUM on the table. I might be able to sucker my local opponent into picking it up, he's usually good for anything Star Trek. He can be my retail red shirt, LOL.

I think you mean, Dan. I haven't reviewed this one (or Imperium).

Once in a while, a shelf toad gets pulled out and played and played and played. This has been the case with Battles of Westeros in my house. I got it brand new and played it once. Even tried to trade it, then I randomly pulled it out last summer and played with my 16 year old and we have now played all the base game scenarios and tried some skirmish games. We are fans of command and colors, and this is pretty much a bit more complicated version. I like the need to think about where you place your leaders. Wishing I had picked up the expansions when they were cheap. Anyone have some laying about?

I recommend posting that you are looking for expansions for Battles of Westeros on this Minnesota Facebook group:

www.facebook.com/groups/131774610911239/

Somebody in that group was looking for a copy of Mansions of Madness, and I was happy to sell mine at a reduced price just to get rid of a large toad.

It's Jen Con time again (my friends, Brad and Jen, host a mini gaming convention at their house every winter.) We had a couple people bail out on the first night, so the group was smaller than expected at only 5 people. We started with Ready, Set, Bet, which they had just picked up and hadn't played and neither had I, but one other person in the group had. Brad decided to be the caller, who rolled the dice and moved the horses, while the rest of us were the bettors. Three of the VIP cards I drew were additional betting tokens, with two of them being 7s. More opportunities for points are always a good thing in this kind of game, so I gladly took those over the alternatives, which were more situational. Another thing I've discovered in these kind of game is that the parlays (X horse wins over Y horses are less risk, etc.) which have lower penalties if you fail then just betting on the main track, but they're also harder to make work (thus, the lower risk) so simply spreading out your odds on the main track will generally get you a better return. Also, I'd played Warhammer with Brad for years, so I had the (probably imaginary) foreknowledge of his rolling tendencies (i.e. if he's on a run of 5s, it's going to last.) It was still a close game, even with my "edge", but I won 108-102-88-74. I liked it, in general, but probably not something I'd suggest on the regular.

Then we moved on to Whistle Stop. I am not a train game person. At all. My lone exception in that genre is Ravensburger's Pan Am, which has always struck me as something somewhat different in that sphere and which I really enjoy. But most train games repel me and I can't say I was too fond of this one, either. I was the first player in each round which I soon discovered to be more of a disadvantage, since others can take more opportunity from the board changes that you create and build on them more quickly, which leaves you behind. There were some interesting ways to build some point-scoring combos, as with similar games like the Brass series. But, yeah, totally not my thing and the scoring reflected it, as I came in dead last.

Then Jen went to bed, so we were down to four and I broke out my contribution to the evening, which was Mycelia. It's a Kickstarter project by an indie designer. I'm not even sure how I found his project (maybe a targeted ad on BGG?) and I only took notice of it because my girlfriend is an occasional mushroom hunter, so I thought she might like it. The campaign completed last fall and it's been sitting around the house since then, but I knew this crowd would probably like it. Its design aesthetics are similar to Wingspan, as the mushroom cards are very nice watercolor paintings. It's kind an area/network control thing, but far more interactive than Wingspan, since you have a main piece (your Mother Mushroom) that moves around the board dropping spores, swiping spores from opponents to fruit new mushrooms which can also spore and eventually decay, which grants you more abilities/effects, and you also can expand the map and draw different mushrooms from the market. You have to take two different actions each turn (Move, Explore, Discover, Spore, Fruit, Decay) and the game ends when any one player has at least one decayed mushroom under each of their 5 player boards. That player scores the end of game token and then everyone scores for all of their decayed and fruited mushrooms, which have varying points. It plays pretty quickly once you get the hang of it and I really liked it. Not sure how enamored everyone else was, not least because I won, 32-30-28-18. I'd like to try it again and see how it stands up to repeated plays. It's definitely something with a variety of approaches and could easily be played in under an hour by experienced players.

Not a game, but I picked up a D&D puzzle and it's very fun. It's six different puzzles but they all fit together to tell the tale of a party's harrowing journey through the Underdark. 1000 pieces altogether. We just finished #4, a raid on a mind flayer encampment.

The wife, kid, and I started last night and it's cleverly done in some ways that make it challenging without being stupid-hard. E.g. the edges are often curvy instead of straight, and there's also some interior edges that go around circular pieces (like a giant beholder). So the trick of doing all the edges first doesn't work very well.

2nd day of Jen Con and there were only eight of us, but that's better than five. I started with a three-player game of First in Flight. The owner is the one of us that had played before, but I'm a deckbuilding guy, so that was the most appealing of the two games on offer. You're an early pilot (Wright Brothers, etc.) trying to keep your plane in the air and fly farther than anyone else. The first one to 40 units/miles/somethings ends the game. You can do upgrades to your speed, but those bring flaws with them, and you can also learn maneuvers and have friends who help out once a year (one trip around the board.) It's a last-goes-first turn-taking system, so if someone is far enough behind, they could take multiple turns in a row, so there's a bit of risk assessment involved in moving forward to get that thing you really want to do if it means someone might take several more turns before you get to move again. You also have to, you know, land your plane and, if you crash it, will spend a turn doing nothing as you recover in the hospital. I liked it and not just because I won.

Then we played some Wits and Wagers over lunch. It only goes to 7 players, so we split into 4 teams of 2. It was three actual couples and two friends. Brad and Jen won that one. I think my girlfriend and I came in last.

I had brought Wonderland's War with me, hoping to get another play in this year, but with fewer people, it wasn't to be. Instead, I joined a game of Ostia. This almost couldn't be more of a Euro, unless it was Agricola. That said, I appreciated the mancala approach to action decision as it made for some interesting choices on almost every turn. But it was very much about moving to the right spots and generating resources and using those resources to score points in bog-standard, classic Euro fashion. I also figured out quite quickly that it's easy to get distracted to try to compete in every avenue of point scoring and decided to just focus on two things: buildings and ships. That focus bore fruit because I kinda stomped the field, 229-184-174-145. It's an interesting game; not one that I would suggest at any given gathering, but I'd be fine with playing it again.

Then I taught a game of Roll, Camera! My review is on the site for those really interested in how it plays, but it's basically a co-op about making movies and it's really a great game. We ended up completing our film, making a Surprise Hit on the very last day that we had available to shoot. If we hadn't finished our last scene that day with the help of an Idea card to change two dice, we would've lost. Mal has just finished a KS campaign for his next game, Power Vacuum, that got a positive review from SU&SD, so I'm hoping to pick that up at some point.

And then we ended the night with Fromage. The other option was For Sale!, which is an all-time favorite, but I'd seen people raving on r/boardgames and BGG about Fromage, so I wanted to give it a try. I can see some of the clever design elements in it, but I was kinda meh on the whole experience. It's not a bad game. It's just incredibly mechanical, which doesn't give me any impression of producing cheese in France whatsoever. We could've been producing engine parts in Detroit and played the game the same way. The whole turn-the-board-to-get-your-workers-back idea is cute, but the overall gameplay is kinda tedious. I think I came in last of four.

Anyway, another great Jen Con. We went out for dinner and were already talking about thematic approaches to next time.

Was scheduled to do lunch today with a female friend who I was actively dating for a while. Minutes before I was ready to leave, she texted that maybe we could go to her house afterwards and play Scrabble. I volunteered to bring a game with me. After a quick scan of my collection, I felt like the two best possibilities for a 2-player game that wouldn't be too complex or too long were Camp Grizzly and Masters of the Night. I showed her both games, and said that we could still play Scrabble if she didn't like my vampire game or my slasher movie game.

She chose Camp Grizzly. I brought 80s mixes, but she couldn't get her old boom box to play a CD without skipping, so she instead had Alexa play some 80s pop. With just two players, you are supposed to play two characters each, which was a bit of trouble for her at first because it was a lot of information to track. I got Tracy the scream queen and CJ the coach, while she got Jody the loner and Sherry, who can automatically use nature trails and never gets lost.

Tracy also had cooties, while Jody was a virgin. Early in the game, Sherry snapped, which meant that she would attack anybody who crossed her path, including counselors, campers, and cameos. There was a fair amount of fooling around early on, which caused Sherry to hurt a couple of counselors, plus Tracy passed the cooties to CJ, who gave it to Sherry while Jody lost his virginity during a game of strip poker.

Then the game turned deadly. We all got weapons, and usually won against Otis, but both CJ and Tracy got worn down. Sherry killed a camper and felt bad about it, but kept hurting us. We assembled the items for the van escape, but an ill-timed skindipping put my two characters on the far end of the board with all the escape items. In the end, only Sherry was still alive, but she managed to get to our dead bodies and recover the van escape items. In her van finale, Sherry drove off in the van, but Otis was riding on top. She hit the brakes and Otis sailed off into a deep ravine. The End? Yes, for now. My friend really enjoyed the game, and is now scheming to assemble some friends of hers to play Camp Grizzly with me some time soon.

Played some stuff this weekend.

Played some Spirit Island with my spouse Friday. Good time had by all, as always. I played the Mud Otter from Horizons which is a really clever simple spirit for teaching new players key skills. It's nudging players to understand the importance of having presence in the right place at the right time and look ahead to where they will be needed. Sharp design in these later sets, much better than the base game Spirits. Base game spirit island should probably have these Horizons spirits in them in some way just due to cleaner designed spirits without a lot of dead ends on the presence tracks in them.

We had a couple of casual gamer friends over, so I was subjected to Exploding Kittens. I generally don't have a problem playing light games in a social setting, but I find Exploding Kittens one of the worst games I have ever played. Everything about it is tuned wrong, even for a silly take-that card game. I'd much rather play Uno. I'd rather play an equally length game of War. I despise this game.

After that, I got out something I put in an order for some other stuff, The Crew ripoff Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking game. I don't really love trick taking but it's so easy in a social setting because everyone in the US has played some regional form of a trick taker so teaching and playing is really easy. This game is quite good and, to its credit, the Lord of the Rings theme on it helped our casual players a lot in connecting with the themes, suits, and win conditions associated with it, so the theme was actually quite helpful beyond the top notch art.

I've been playing a bunch of Captain's Chair solo trying to hone in my feelings on it. It has been a big adjustment from Imperium even though they are very similar games because the card flow is really different in practice. Maybe I'll post my thoughts in a separate thread when I've firmed up my thoughts, I am warming on it considerably from where I started with it.

Ah Pook and I played a 2p game of Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor. We got some good breaks early, I scored 3 skulls on a "angry giant" quest result T1 crunching a chaos horde and Ah Pook rolled pretty well throughout the game, so he super powered up using the elf-ish faction. Later in the game he was supercharged and we managed to pull a quest I rolled up which dropped a big chaos horde (the coven) on the imperial capital. The imperial executioner legion did our work for us by chopping them to bits with no losses before Ah Pook blasted him in the next combat when he moved to engage us at the end of the turn. "Let them fight" indeed. An easy time, we won by like 20 powered by Ah Pook.

I have such enormous affection for the game, my tilt is off the chart on it. I really think, on this site in particular, there are a lot of people who would resonate with this game. It's not a general masterpiece to all audiences by any stretch, but Ah Pook and I were talking about it as hitting hard if you like this particular niche. It's an ameritrash game all the way down to its bones---big swing event cards, high stakes die rolling, crucial special powers---you can tell the designers grew up playing AT classics and have great affection for them. The distinction is that they played a bunch of euros and hybrids in the meantime and took the right lessons from them. So you have pure, undiluted 4x/troops on a map AT but sitting on the bones of a predictable enemy AI, limited action system, tight resource management, well designed troop limitations, in a three hour or less package. I would say it's well designed to anyone who asked, and I will probably buy the kickstarter when it goes up for another round, but I think any people remaining on *this site* in particular have a co-op game that is made for them almost exclusively. If you ever see someone play a copy in the wild and you like co-ops at all I would definitely ask to play, it's a bit difficult to find a copy since it's one of those smaller run "passion project" kickstarters.

Game night last night consisted of X-Wing 2.0 Legacy, The Adventurers, and Outer Rim with expansion. I'm going to talk about these in backwards order.

Outer Rim is absolutely the surprise hit for me. It is Runebound v2 in Space, in the best way possible. At first I didn't like the game, I don't really care much about Star Wars, and it just took forever. Well, now that I'm like 8 games deep in it I'm of the mind that yes, this is the one for me. I hope they come out with another new expansion, for sure.

The Adventurers: Horus is a nostalgic, fun jaunt. It's exactly how I remember as far as how it makes me feel. It's claustrophobic at times, definitely makes you feel some panic as the rocks are falling and potentially going to trap you with Horus and his mummified pals. We forgot a main part of the game, 2 characters per player, but that didn't cause any undue issues. My only complaint is the "lobby" area is a little gamey as you can just spend all your actions sitting right there in front to close out the game, with no exploration.

X-Wing 2.0 is the dudes on a map game I get to play because nobody wants to play the kinds of games I want to (Heroscape, Wastelands 2, Wreck Age). I've been playing 1.0 for years, regularly, and it is the only game I've ever played where I regularly win. Well, it was getting kind of stale because I get mad at the fact that you buy an expensive missile launcher and then have one missile. WTF? So, I favored more ships and less accessories, which put me at a disadvantage a lot of times. Enter the fall of X-Wing where they decided to cancel the game altogether...meaning huge discounts on the upgrade packs. I got most of 2 full sets of the upgrade packs for about 120$ versus 400$ and I gave one of them to one of my best friends for Christmas, who dutifully opened them and organized them, replacing his vast collection.

We played our first match last night as the opener for our session. It's mostly the same as the original, but fiddlier. It's not bad, per se, and it's fun as shit, but there's more dumb shit to remember. That's no biggie for me, but what is a biggie is that they don't print any of the values of the "buy price" on the cards. It's as if it was a huge beta release where the only way you know how much each character, ship, and accessory costs is to go to the ffg site and look them up. I feel robbed a bit. Still, we found a kinda sorta app that I got for us to share an account so we can build squads. So far, so good. Will report.

I love some X-wing, haven't gotten to play it in awhile.

I've thrown my (unofficial plaid) hat into the Summoner Wars ring. Its second edition is great and exactly my kind of game, in its own little niche of light war/tactical game with card play. I have over 5k games logged on the app, 30 episodes into our podcast, Discard for Magic, and I recently started streaming under the following link: www.twitch.tv/therealjexik

If any of you have wondered where I've been, it's mostly the summoner wars discord, where I'm a "community leader." Aside from work, the occasional commander MtG bout with friends, and schlepping the kid to Swim Team, this is what I've been doing.