What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Fantastic write up. I appreciate the detail on the rest of the goings on (food, drink, etc.) with the appropriate BGG titles. Sounds like a total blast and I am both pleased that you had such a great time and insanely jealous that I'll likely never be able to organize something like this with my current groups.

Well now I feel bad. I'll have to get you a copy.

I'm just joshin' ya'. I used to have it back in the day; had fun with it, but don't know that I really need to revisit it.

Not Sure, Count Orlok and I played Border Reivers from GMT. A totally weird wargame. No controlled territory, each turn starts with a drafting capability cards phase and then you do a weird simultaneous targeting thing by laying cards. Then you raid sheep, break guys out of jail, or feud directly with the other players for VPs and to steal their shit.

I don't know if it's good or not, I'd like to try it again. For god's sake, do not try it with 2p or 3p for your first games, those counts have you controlling two houses each which I swear added an hour onto our game and melted our brains. I could see getting it to 3 hours or so, our play was 5 hours which was too long for what it was.

TICKET TO RIDE: SAN FRANCISCO. It's TTR. There's two little twists; (1) certain locations give you a little tourist token if you connect to them, get points on total tourist tokens; (2) certain routes require a wild card. It's all unobjectionable but don't go buy it.

PUZZLE STRIKE 2. Valerie (me) vs. Persephone vs. Argagarg, using the Birthday Bash bank. Argagarg busted, then Persephone crashed one more gem than me in the sudden death showdown. This gets better with every play.

SAGRADA. Also unobjectionable. Cute but easy to screw up. Some of the rules seemed unclear but that might have been the explanation.

I started playing Magic Realm again on TTS, this time using the Super Magic Realm expansion/remake (check BGG) that tried to execute on all the expansion ideas Hamblen had talked about years ago. It makes a couple additions I don't really need but that's ok. I see why they're in there (parries eliminate some impossible to run from but impossible to win scenarios, separating monster directions and your fight direction makes monster fights less predictable which is good and bad). it helps that the TTS Super Magic Realm has the Carthagian graphics update and a six .pdf tutorial that someone spent a lot of time on.

This is the first time I've played it outside Realmspeak, and I must say having to run the system helped me understand the game better. I've played twice and died once to 6 skeletons on day 1 and 6 goblins on day 3 after a failed hide.

It's a great game that could be cleaned up. There's still literally nothing like it from a gameplay sensibilities perspective. It's singular.

I have been thinking about Magic Realm again lately. Came across my ringbinder of the Book of Learning, with one of the early chapters bookmarked. But I am behind on my summer home projects, so I doubt I will have much free time until November. (October is my busiest month of the year for social activities.)

Pretty good gaming weekend for me.

Battlelore 2nd. ed with the 11yo. He trounced me in the first game, and in the second game (where I was joined by his 7yo brother) I gained a quick lead and then elimated all his three cavalry units in one turn, so we called the game right there. Love the game, but it pains me how in some games a large portion of your army just stands there doing nothing. Still, would love to get some of the expansion content - especially the undead army.

In a similar vein the 11yo and I played a game of Age of Sigmar - my Stormcast vs. his Blades of Khorne. I like the game a lot, especially becasue you get to play with cool dolls and roll lots of dice (I got to roll 36 dice in an attack at one point!). What I don't like is that a lot of the special abilities are hidden in artifacts, command traits, battalions (which we don't bother to use so far), and so on. It slows the game down, especially when you don't play that often. So we might have to do that, play more often.

Finally I soloed a game of Runebound 3rd ed. I recently got a copy with all the expansion at a very good price, and the coop expansion (Unbreakable Bonds) is great. I had to cure a plague, and halfway through the game I felt like it was a walk in the park. And then suddenly the event cards created a ton of obstacles and I ended up losing because local antivaxers robber barons and riots kept me from doling out the cure. Using the combat boards from Unbreakable Bonds for solo combat is very satisfying, and having more scenarios, more characters, and more adventure cards is great. I still have very fond memories of 2nd edition, but I think 3rd edition is one of the best adventure games when it comes to having lots of choices, lots of development, and lots of story.

Return of the Twilight Emperor: Several years ago, I traded away my copy of Twilight Imperium, 3rd Edition. 4th Edition had already been released, but I had played so many games of TI3, whether in person or via the excellent website version (which was later randomly hacked and destroyed by some total asshole) that I was ready to move on to other things. And that stood through TI4 and the expansion. But then I played a couple games of Twilight Inscription and felt the old hankering again. So I managed a trade for the base game of Twilight Imperium 4 and just went out and bought the expansion. I spent a couple weeks printing (or getting printed) the cards from the FFG codices and sorting through the new rules and reading some advice on the subReddit and today we finally put cardboard to table.

We only managed to get five people together, but three of them were part of my regular TI3 group, with one total newbie. The inclusion of the warp lanes from the Prophecy of Kings expansion is really helpful with odd-numbered maps, too. I wanted to try the Titans of Ul, and their god-awesome cruisers but they got taken before I could look at the faction pile (I was setting up all the other stuff.) So instead I decided to try the Argent Flight and their god-awesome destroyers. Joining us were the Nomad, the Jol-Nar, and the Hacan. People started slowly because there's a lot to absorb with the differences in tech acquisition and the presence of the Leaders from Prophecy and so on. The Nomad, Titans, and Jol'Nar were in the three spaces at the bottom of the map, while the Hacan and I were separated by the warp lane cluster at the top. But the Titans soon moved in on Mecatol Rex but in the five or so rounds that they held it, only took Imperial once, because they figured they'd instantly become target #1 if they kept exploiting it (and they're almost certainly right.) Meanwhile, I progressed basically unmolested in my far away corner, holding on to the Abaddon/Ashtroth/Loki system in the middle of the warp lanes and just grinding away on objectives.

The Titans and Nomad started jousting and the Jol-Nar were not only boxed in by the Titans and the expansionist Hacan (Pro tip: Don't let the Hacan keep the Mallice system.) but also ended up with an elected post through the blind voting agenda that gave the Universities a VP, but also denied them use of Action cards for the rest of the game. The Titans surged ahead to 7 points with the Nomad at 6, Argent at 5, and the other two at 4. But that round, I scored a secret objective by taking Mecatol Rex from the Titans and a 2-point public and suddenly I was in the lead with 8 and also had the Speaker token. So I took Imperial. They were all hellbent on knocking me off Mecatol so that I didn't score the extra point and the Hacan succeeded with the help of a Flank Speed from the Titans. But that extra point is only half of Imperial's primary ability. The other half is that you don't have to wait until the Status phase to score a public objective and we had Hoard Vast Reserves revealed and, after losing Rex, I had precisely 6 resources, 5 influence, and 7 trade goods. Used one TG for influence and that was game.

I appreciate most of the changes to the game that they've made, including doing away with a flowchart-like tech tree and instead just putting in requirement to have earlier techs of the right color (or skips.) I also like the unit upgrades being a class unto themselves and the construction of PDS and space docks usually only being possible through the Construction strategy card. Even with the enhancement to Diplomacy (refresh planets) it still was only taken once during the whole game when the Hacan used their Arbiter post to swap it with the Tech card that the Titans had chosen. The main problem with it is that you usually want to use Diplomacy very early in the round BEFORE you've exhausted many, if any, planets. The other problem that has long dogged the TI series is the general irrelevance of the Assembly/voting function (and continues to dog Twilight Inscription.) Despite a couple votes that were generally unnoticeable, many of ours did have real impact on the game, like the posts assigned to people and the Regulated Recruiting law that made fighters and infantry cost 1-for-1, rather than 2-for-1. So, it was an enjoyable game, even though all of us missed abilities and techs at one point or another, given all of the new stuff and three of us playing new factions. All of them walked out talking about the next time.

I think TI:4 is mostly a pretty smartly designed experience these days if you accept that they are indeed actually shooting for a 6 hour game length. You definitely had some heavy hitter factions in there, which is good that no one was rocking like the plant people and facing 3-4 good factions.

Yep. And that's almost precisely what it turned out to be: started at noon, finished at 6:30, including packing the game up. I recommended the Hacan to our one new player, since it's a solid faction that is very straightforward and almost always creates some interesting moments where people have to really pay attention to the Space Cats (see: Mallice.) True to the podcast, we almost had the Peace Turtles in there, too, before the Nomad player remembered that he had played them before and decided to try something different. I kinda warned everyone away from the current version of the Arborec, primarily because they are seen as the one genuinely "lesser" faction of the game right now. Codex 2 from FFG fixed the minor problems with the Xxcha and the decent problems with the Naalu (in fact, probably overfixing them...), and the significant problems with the Yin all in one stroke with Leader and Mech changes. It's kind of confusing why they haven't tried to make some adjustments to the Arborec, given how widespread the opinion against them is.

I think my win was based partly on my experience with the game over the decades but also because I have tunnel vision with that game: Play. To. The. Objectives. Everything you do should be in service of scoring at least one objective every round. After I scored my first secret in round 2 (have ships at the alpha and beta wormholes, both of which were two systems and one system away from my homeworld, respectively), no one picked Imperial for a while so there was no way for me to get another one. That meant I was simply locked in to pursuing a public one every round. When Imperial did get taken, my two secrets were: Destroy an opposing war sun or flagship and Occupy Mecatol Rex with 3 ships in system. I almost managed the first when I was attacked by the Nomad with 3 dreads, their flagship, and a war sun, carrying three mechs and with three fighters. I had fully-upgraded destroyers by then and wiped out the fighters and put all three mechs on Sustain, but I couldn't get through all of the Sustain of the capital ships in the ensuing battle. But then I scored the second by taking Mecatol from the Titans and that set me up for the win. I was the only player who didn't develop and build war suns. I've often found them to be a luxury and not needed for the win.

Very true. It's really impossible to overemphasize how much this is a scoring points game. You can literally negotiate to give up everything else in the game as long as you up with 10 points.

My pal and I are still trucking along with the Terminator Genisys: Rise of the Resistance campaign we started at least a year ago. We only play every month or so and we're now two missions away from the end. The game is very cinematic. I really like it. It's a fun beer n' pretzels, dice-chucking game that's very Ameritrash. Other pluses are that it comes in a reasonably sized box that's full of cool minis and that it doesn't cost hundreds of dollars.

I picked up the G.I Joe Deckbuilding Game when it popped up fairly cheap secondhand recently and have played around 8 games solo. I wanted something quick and easy to set up and it fulfils that brief. The game does some fun and unique stuff and I dig that the art is from the old comics. There's decent variability in the box but despite that, it has begun to feel a bit samey. Given the choice of hunting down expansions or moving it on I'm leaning towards the latter. Though I will get some more plays out of it first.

And finally, after a long hiatus, I finally started my first run through The Path to Carcosa campaign in Arkham Horror LCG. It has a pleasingly creepy vibe and the three scenarios I've played so far have been really cool.

I regret getting rid of Terminator Genisys, such a great game.

I think the G.I. Joe Deckbuilder is much more interesting multiplayer. Lots of good discussion regarding missions and deciding who should buy what. We've hit nearly 20 plays of it and have only thrown in the first expansion.

I still have Terminator and love it. Haven't played in some time.