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

Gary Sax wrote: My partner suggested Vantage last night, so we played for like an hour and a half. I ended up getting beat up in an alien fight club and lost my last health.

It's because you talked about fight club!

Gary Sax wrote: I don't know what you even do with this thing at like a proper normal game night situation where people who are mainly game night friends come together.

That's a thought that we've often had about Oath and Arcs, in that the best way to enjoy them is in a continuing campaign (Oath) or a campaign that would definitely take more than one typical sessions to complete (Arcs.) I wonder if Jamey and Co. were inspired by Oath when making Vantage what it is?

I'd only played Crescent Moon once before, at 5 players, so this was not only my second time playing, but also my first time at 4 players. Like many on BGG, I think there's more to be said for the 5 player game. Designer Steven Mathers was supposedly inspired by Chaos in the Old World and I guess I can see that in terms of each side having different methods of scoring. But the far closer comparison is Root because the central (dominating) aspect of the game is the brutal action economy. In the standard game of three years (rounds), each player is going to be taking 12 total actions in the entire game. That's far closer to the frequent scenario in the latter, where some factions can be limited to maybe two or three actions on their turn than to the mid- and late game of CitOW, where increases in power points and the prevalence of discounted cost cards can see people taking 5 or 6 actions in any given round. Crescent Moon can be susceptible to analysis paralysis, as that action economy is so stringent that weighing the value of each step can take some time. But we breezed right through the rules explanation and the game in about two hours, which is less than I expected. The lack of the Nomad meant there was also less competition for the Murshid in terms of Influence contests. As the Caliph, I was feeling the direct impact of the Warlord, so I couldn't really challenge the Murshid on that front, either, and he went on to win the game, 39-32 (me), 27-26. Again, I think the presence of the Nomad and just having a fifth player lends a lot to the game's flow and dynamism. I think we'll definitely go for the long game (4 rounds/years) the next time we try. No one was bowled over by it but everyone was at least intrigued enough to try again, though.

An old friend from high school moved to the Twin Cities many years ago, but I only found out two years ago because we had lost touch during college. Since re-connecting, I have been gradually getting him and his girlfriend hooked on board games. Camp Grizzly, Rock Hard: 1977, Firefly, and now Kill Doctor Lucky. I had brought a couple of other games over, but they just wanted to play Kill Doctor Lucky three times in a row. Then I remembered how much I wanted to play Kill Doctor Lucky when I first got it. I won the first two games, which is unusual because I usually play worse than usual when I am teaching people how to play a game.

A couple of days ago, I went to a friend's big birthday party, in the rooftop lounge of his high-rise condo. The social types hovered around the food area or went out on the deck to chat, while the board gamers took over the three tables inside. I knew that at least 25 people were going to show up, so I brought mostly lighter games that could handle more than a handful of players.

First we played two games of This Game is KILLER!: Alien on Board. The first game had nine players, but lasted just three turns. Three were killed, but six were triumphant. So we had to immediately play a second game, but only had six players. We won on the first turn with zero casualties! Then I pulled out This Game is KILLLER!: Frozen Horror, but by now we were down to four players. On the first turn, one player was killed but we also killed the Horror. Game over, man!

I really want to like both versions of This Game is KILLER! The first one is a nice implementation of the original Alien movie, while the second one is definitely the John Carpenter classic The Thing. Both games are tight, efficient designs that deliver a respectable game in a small box. Sadly, both games will likely end up with the nickname This Game is FILLER! Our party group was initially thrilled about the prospect of playing an Alien game, but a third of them were dissatisfied that the game ended so quickly. Two more people bailed after the brief second game, and everybody lost interest after the one-turn game of Frozen Horror. It seems like a waste to have a great set up for a story-oriented game and then have it end so quickly.

Next, we played Room 25 (Ultimate edition). It's a boardgame version of The Cube movie. We had four players, and played in co-op mode. We tried really hard to win and found the key room midway through the game. But we didn't find the exit room until the final turn, and just didn't have enough actions left to get more than one person in the room. We probably could have won if we played a second game, as it took some time to get a feel for how to exploit the rooms.

Finally, we played Sons of Anarchy. By this point in the party, nobody was keeping watch over the CD player, so I put one of my Sons of Anarchy mixes on. We only had three players, so I lost a couple of early fights to lower my profile. The other two players turned on each other while I focused on stacking up the money. They finally noticed on turn 5 (of 6) that I might be winning, and started coming after me, but I had a clear edge in terms of order tokens and held on for the win. Sons of Anarchy is a great game that has been sadly overlooked due to the biker gang theme, but it still probably needs at least four players for good gameplay.

Yesterday was "Gamefound delivery day" for my copy of Dark Blood. Take a grim worker placement game and mash it up with Cthulhu Wars-style powers, and you get an idea of what's on offer. A poor village of peasants is under siege by 4 different cults: The Demonologists, the Necromancers, the Doomsayers, and the Warlocks.

Each faction has its own spell book. While all factions do similar things, the "way" they do them can vary widely. This results in different factions valuing different resources more highly, or having an easier time accomplishing certain tasks than other factions.

The town is divided up into 6 locations, but only 5 of them are commonly used. You send cultists to these locations, and as they gather, you strive for majority control so that you can not only act first, but also utilize special location powers and in the case of gathering resources, gather more than other cults.

One of the things you can do at these locations is sacrifice peasants to gain Blood, or proselytize to them to turn them into cultists. The peasants come back in the next round in these cases. However, you can also move your Cultist to the Tree of the Damned (the 6th location) to sacrifice a peasant for good, literally hanging the peasant miniature from the tree miniature. The game includes 6 little strings you are supposed to tie into nooses. I found actually creating a noose to be beyond my dexterity, so I just made little loops and knots to hang the poor souls. Doing this moves up your Unholy Favor which can break ties and is generally a good thing to be high in, but has the secondary effect of removing permanently one of the 8 peasants in town.

I ran myself through 3 rounds last night (the game goes for 5 rounds) running two factions just to get a feel for the rules. The rule book is vague in places and there is already an official growing FAQ thread on BGG. Hopefully soon I get it to the table properly and will report back, but I think this might be a good one!

I have to talk about the components, because this is one of those over-produced games... the box is styled to look like a book, it is absolutely enormous, and then when you realize that the curved "book spine" portion doesn't actually hold any game content and literally increases the width by 2" for solely aesthetic purposes you have to roll your eyes.

The miniature sculpts are pretty good, and I'm glad I didn't pay extra for the wash because apparently it was a disaster and made them look terrible. I can wash my own minis, thank you very much. There are "graveyard dirt" resources that are little clear vials full of what appears to be black foam, stopped with a tiny cork. Very slick. There are also "bones" which are little bones that are way too small and I'm afraid of them becoming lost.

The peasant miniatures have removable bases to make them look better when they hang from the tree, but they don't really pop into the bases very well. I might just glue them on.

Spell books are dual layer (the rules say triple layer but I don't see it) and are really slick. Each faction has cultists and a "monstrosity" that can be summoned. Once on the board, I'm not sure the monstrosity does much other than uncover a new power that was hidden beneath it on the spell book, but I'm not entirely sure on that one yet. Each spell book has a LOT of powers that can be triggered, and passive powers that can be gained (and lost) throughout the game. It's a lot.

Played Pax VIking for the first time. I picked it up in the Dice Tower charity auction a few months back. I'm not even sure how I stumbled across it there, but I got it for $20, which is a pretty good price for a game that normally costs three times that. Plus, money for charity. I've played Pax Porfiriana, which I really like and Pax Pamir, which is among my favorite games of all time, so I was expecting good things from this and I wasn't disappointed. You're playing a Viking clan leader, venturing out across Europe to establish trading posts and spread influence. You can recruit (buy) advocates and gods which give you regular powers and have a unique ability of your own, in addition to being able to activate the various posts for different results. However, you only ever have 4 actions per turn, so there are a lot of tough decisions to make, not least because there are 4 different victory conditions that anyone can fulfill when an Event card is played. Like all Pax games, there's a market of cards that's continually flowing, so new opportunities will show up regularly. I enjoyed it and everyone at the table (we played with 4, it can go to 6) was similarly intrigued. I think I'll be bringing this one back to the Tuesday group quite soon, but next week it's TMNT: Shadows of the Past, then LotR: Fate of the Fellowship, followed by GMT's Gandhi, so maybe sometime in November...

Last Sunday, we had another game day. Kelly had the plague, so was unable to attend. Nate, as usual, showed up. The Boy wanted to play again, but something simple.... So, we played Munchkin... SHUSH!

We were doing fine, but neither Nate or I were able to go up much in levels. They Boy kept getting Lame Goblins and Potted plants to kill. I on the other hand, kept getting Plutonium Dragons, Bullrogs, and Squidzillas... ONE AFTER THE OTHER. The Boy ended up easily winning, with me being dead last. We also played with the Judge Dredd Expansion (pulled the card that invoked the seal and left the seal out). It was funny running around with a Lawgiver, and each of us trying to wrap our heads around how we were able to use it, despite not being code locked to the weapon.

The Boy retired, and my wife joined us to play Infamy. And I felt bad, that we were not able to get it to the table sooner. Everybody took to the bidding mechanics rather well, and then subsequently learned that you do not blow your bribes all in the Day phase, because one player can just snap up all the contacts, and get into a runaway position. In the end, I was just behind Nate, who was slightly behind my wife. My wife won during the day phase, and neither I nor Nate could increase our Infamy to match hers. Overall, they really liked it.

Since it's spoopy season, I've pulled out the games in that vein. These are what will be on tap: Bloodsuckers, Betrayal at the House on the Hill, City of Horror, Eaten by Zombies!, FaceEater, Nemesis, Nightfall, Nyctophobia (though I highly doubt it will go over well), V-Wars, and Zombie Dice. I'll be sending out a text to find out what Sunday this month we'll be able to play.

Hosted my annual day of horror-themed board games today. It was supposed to be the last really nice day of the year, according to the forecast, so most of the people that I invited made other plans, even though the forecast changed abruptly this morning to rainy. So we only had four players.

First we played a non-horror game called Gun It, which was brought by one of other players because he hadn't had a chance to play it yet. It is a co-op game for 3 or 4 players. We each got a generic character, and we were escaping in order to expose the sinister secret of The Inertia Corporation. The goal is to rack up as many XP (excitement points!) in six turns without wrecking our getaway car. The rules were not written well, but we figured out the game during the first three turns.

Each turn, we randomly dealt each player an initiative rank, a direction to face, and an equipment card. Three of the equipment cards are guns and the fourth is the steering wheel, but you can only use the steering wheel if you are one of the two players in the front seat. But randomly switching weapons every turn seemed unthematic, and usually irrelevant because we are allowed to freely trade with each other. However, there is sandtimer, so there isn't enough time to fully optimize the trades. One player draws an event card, and that player can choose to discard it but then must accept the results of the replacement event card. A different player draws a card that allows a choice between two direction, often creating another strategic choice.

We won easily, so we wondered if we had missed a couple of crucial rules.

Next, we played The Gothic Game. One of our players was new to the group, so he had never played The Gothic Game before. He did know another local player who owned The Gothic Game, and even though there are 2.5 million people in the metro area, I correctly named that player, a former FATtie who went by the handle Wadenels. I killed someone with the stone club. The second person to temporarily become the vampire killed someone.

(I stole the idea of the Death Knell cards from the relatively recent Kickstarter version of this game, but had to make up my own cards because I didn't have the Kickstarter version or direct knowledge of what most of the official Death Knell cards do. I did know that the Death Knell cards accelerate the endgame with nasty global effects, so I made some up.)

Anyway, I got killed by a Death Knell card that inflicted 5 damage each turn unless your character was in the Great Spiral Staircase, because a previous Death Knell card said that the next person to take damage would die.

Our third game was Camp Grizzly, but we were down to 3 players at that point. We used two rules from the upcoming Kickstarter version, so the keys token entered play on a random nature trail after the first time the body count increased. And we also let people start a new character immediately after their existing character died. We had two casualties, but assembled the items for the van escape. I was too wounded and slow and far away, so the other two players left me behind at the camp. Their characters got into a heavy makeout session in the van, tempted fate, and got attacked by Otis. One of the players defeated Otis, which saved all of us for a full team win.

Finally, there were just two of us, so we played Masters of the Night, a co-op game for 2 to 5 players. I played Imre, the manipulative vampire with the vampire hands pose, while my friend played Ishtvan the demon summoning vampire. We played on easy setting, but won by enough of a margin that we probably would have also won if we were playing with average difficulty. I wrote a detailed review of this game about four years for this site, so you can read more there.

We have tried LotR: Fate of the Fellowship and Charlie is... not wrong. As some of you may have seen in our brief exchanges here and on Bluesky, I detest Pandemic and Charlie is no fan of it, either, and I was concerned that this is Pandemic: LotR. It still has the elements of the Pandemic model, but there is so much story woven in through the Tolkien elements that it feels more like resisting the armies of the Shadow than it does watching cubes (this time, cubes with swords/maces) build up in a spot and having to go take care of them. Plus, having the unique powers of the various characters to play AND the objectives AND controlling two characters at once so no one feels like their role is useless unless X circumstances prevail AND the presence of dice makes this into something both more interesting and far more replayable than trying to solve the problem of Pandemic in the usual chokepoints of Mumbai and Dallas (or wherever.)

Plus, the absurd overproduction of the thing is admittedly a huge selling point. You know how one of the appealing things of games like Rising Sun is pushing cool-looking minis around the table (no matter what Barnes says)? Yeah. This has that. From the Barad-Dur dice tower to the Nazgul minis to the Fellowship meeples to the brilliant map, everything simply looks cool and is fun to have on the table. I'm running it again tomorrow night for the usual Tuesday group, so I'll have at least another game in before I start writing a genuine review of the thing and I might try to go again with it this coming weekend before having something on site next week.

Oh, and we lost. We took the suggested pairings of Frodo & Sam/Legolas, Merry & Pippin/Eowyn, and Arwen/Aragorn. We smashed Isengard and made it a haven; gained the favor of the Elves, and were thisclose to challenging Sauron at North Ithilien, when two Shadow armies strolled into Helm's Deep and claimed it, costing us 3 Hope and the game. It was still a good time and playing tomorrow with 5 people should be even more entertaining..

We were attempting to decide the Fate of the Fellowship again and... we got kruuuussshed. I mean, we were on the back foot (football term) from the very first turn, which was mine, playing Gimli and Eomer because one of the two player cards I drew after taking my 4 and 1 actions was The Skies Darken. So, right away, we lose 2 Hope, there are more dudes on the board, and the discard pile goes back on top of the Shadow deck. We didn't even get a chance to add variety to it. It was the opening 9 cards, plus Sauron and Saruman for the rest of the game. And what was the first card I drew after my Skies Darkened? Saruman, which meant that two more allied troops came off the board. So, yeah, we were in a hole from the very first turn. I probably should have restarted the game, since I was playing with four new players, but they were all pretty experienced players... except the Frodo/Legolas player who really didn't want to take ANY risk in moving Frodo. We had a situation, midway through the game, where getting another move through Mirkwood would have been a whole two Search dice, with her also sitting on 3 Friendship tokens and/or cards for rerolls and she wasn't having any of it. In the end, there were red guys swarming the board (the Shadow army pool got as low as four at one point; if you're required to place more and you can't, you lose Hope for every one you can't place) and a cluster of them moved in on Helm's Deep yet again, which was defended by a lone Rohirrim who was overwhelmed and Middle-Earth fell to darkness for the second time.

I think playing with 5 may be a bit too much. There were moments in playing with three where we would definitely reposition to set up for the next turn, knowing it would be just two turns away until it came back to the player in question. In this case it was four turns away and the whole situation would often be radically different for anyone trying to do that mid-term thinking. I think we'll start mixing up the character pairings, too, because I at least felt kind of like a sideshow with Gimli and Eomer. If there weren't military tasks to be done, I wasn't accomplishing much. And there ARE military tasks to be done, but you have to be in position with armies to wield in order to make it happen. I ventured forth into Rhovanion with Gimli at one point to try to (again) be in position for a future turn and a horde poured out of Rhun and destroyed my whole army. By the time it got to my next turn, I could basically do nothing useful with the son of Gloin except retreat to Erebor. I'm still intrigued, but it's seeming fairly daunting right now.

Stealing this from someone over on BGG...

There are two types of players of Fate of the Fellowship:
1. Those that think the game is hard
2. Those that always move the Eye of Sauron away from Frodo

If you are the first player and have ANY way to make an attack to draw the Eye away, you do it, regardless of how suboptimal the actions might be. Now, I've not played with 5 players, and that does sound much harder, especially with new players. It's gotta be so much harder to plan ahead to your next turn...

I think that's probably right. Moving the eye is probably the primary reason to fight, even though there are a bunch of other really important reasons.

Gary Sax wrote: I think that's probably right. Moving the eye is probably the primary reason to fight, even though there are a bunch of other really important reasons.

And that is very thematic; in the books both Aragorn and Gandalf knew that the Free People could never hope to defeat Sauron on the battelfield; even after they broke the siege of Minas Tirith there were still hordes of Shadow troops. The whole point of marching on the Black Gate was to distract Sauron/the Eye.

So Dave Bohnenberger was up visiting Chuck in Cambridge; they trespassed over the NH border to James Terry's house Thursday and I met them there at 10AM . James had initially suggested Successors, but I my rules fu was pretty rusty and even when you know the rules, its a funky game so I suggested Sword of Rome. 




 When this game first came out ( TWENTY ONE years ago, wholy crap ) I played it A LOT. Most of those plays were before I started logging plays on BGG in 2014, as I only found 3 plays over the last 10 years. 




I played the Greeks, James - Rome, Chuck - Etruscans, Dave - the Gauls. The early turns saw conservative activity as we all shook the rust off and reacqauinted ourselves with the game. I focused on building up city loyalty both to make my cities more resistant to capture but also to pay my expensive leaders, as I drew Pyrrhus on the first turn. I got him into play in Neapolis to threaten Capua while Dionysius kept a wary eye on the Carthaginians. James took Antium on turn 2, but I killed 2 CU with a Revolt event, then later he suffered a loss that resulted in Antium going Neutral where it stayed the rest of the game. No Appian Way for Rome !  I took Capua, to which he responded by summoning the Dictator the following turn. First he assassinated Pyrrhus, then the Dictator kicked me out of Capua, then Neapolis, albeit sacrificing  himself via the Devotio event to clinch the victory; Neapolis fell shortly thereafter. 




Meanwhile Dave's Gauls were doing the usual Gallic thing by raiding Etruscan spaces and making a nuisance of themselves. He and Chuck fought a lot of battles til around mid game when Chuck played Grand Coalition to bring them into a forced alliance to deal with some Romans who decided the Etruscan/Gallic conflict meant Tarquinii needed some unwanted Roman visitors. At mid game the score was roughly tied IIRC, much to Dave's shock after a fair amount of die rolling suckage on his part. By now I turned my attention to the Carthaginian mob gathering in Lilybaeum, who had briefly ventured to a revolting Messina before I sent them packing. I whacked the rest and sieged Lilybaeum to offset the loss of Neapolis, but that was as far as I got. Meanwhile Dave's Gallic empire was crumbling under repeated Etruscan intrusions, which were necessary due to James' settling of Fregellae, robbing the Samnites of a VP space. Final score was ( IIRC ) Rome/James 8, Etruscan/Samnite/Chuck 7, Dave/Gauls 5, Greeks/me 5 . 




We then turned to lighter fare, keeping the Roman theme alive with GLORY TO ROME. We all raced to build the usual GtR busted building combos. Both Chuck and James on either side of me had strong Laborer building/Client powers, so my ability to grab stuff from the Pool was non existent. I focused on Crafting via 2 Clients so when I lead/followed, I could Craft 3 times. Chuck was stashing stuff in his Vault like a doomsday prepper with his multiple Merchant clients and we thought he was running away with it. But the end game scoring was pretty close - Chuck had like 28, but me and James were only a couple points behind and Dave was not far off that




We ended with LOVE LETTER BATMAN. James got hot with several early correct Batman guesses to go up 6 to zip for the rest of us, then he stalled for awhile as the rest of us got to within striking distance but he ended up winning. 




Good times. 

Sweet. Like you, been many years since I played Sword of Rome. Have to get that back on the table at one of the Tuesday night gatherings. I know there are a bunch of people there who probably played it back in the day.

I got back to some Imperium, I had been playing exclusively Captain's Chair. I think Captain's Chair is a little more interesting turn to turn (the neutral zone mechanic is a strict upgrade)... but the tempo and flow in Imperium is better so for solo I think it's the better choice for me.

I used the Mayans, which I think are my favorite civ, and beat up on the Carthaginians pretty bad.