OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

ezmacncheese · Post by **ezmacncheese** » Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:18 pm

These just arrived. Shiznit is about to go down this weekend. I P500ed Pericles too which should arrive in early April.

EDIT: resized pic

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:39 pm

Comancheria is a blast. I liked Navajo Wars, but this stand alone sequel is more focused and easier to grasp. Pericles I almost ordered. You'll have to let us know how it is.

ezmacncheese · Post by **ezmacncheese** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 8:15 am

hepcat wrote:Comancheria is a blast. I liked Navajo Wars, but this stand alone sequel is more focused and easier to grasp. Pericles I almost ordered. You'll have to let us know how it is.

Awesome, I'm very much looking forward to carving out some time with it this weekend. I'll definitely report back on Pericles. It's one that I was a little on the fence on but I'm a sucker for the classical period and I just sold some games so I said why not. I've read through the rules posted online and I'm just not sure I'm going to get it to the table much so hopefully solo play is robust.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 10:44 am

You bastards... I had not heard of Pericles and I was sure it was some Peloponnesian tactical war sim (like a Command and Colors game) that required at least two people. But a soloable strategy game of the ancient period... Now that I might have to P500. DAMN YOU OO EFFECT!

ezmacncheese · Post by **ezmacncheese** » Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:01 pm

Got to play some Fields of Despair this weekend. I have the luxury of a very good games store in town and I like to sit and read the rules of play for my new games in their game room. Sometimes someone will be intrigued and approach me and I can set up a game then or I will get his contact and we will schedule a time to play. Today I went down there with FoD and someone wanted to play in the first 30 min! I was not very far along with the rules but the guy was undaunted. He was meeting someone later and just needed to kill some time. Well ok then!!!

Anyway, we only got through the first turn before he had to leave but I'm really impressed with it so far. The guy I sat down with called it "complex stratego". I'd agree. The rules are actually a lot simpler than I expected but there seems to be some real depth to it. The abstraction of the naval war and eastern front feel right. It's actually simple enough I'm considering introducing it at the Euro-heavy game night here.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:15 am

My CC was charged for Pericles today. It should be here before Octocon I would think. It's not really an Octocon friendly game though.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:21 am

But it is a Churchill Gang friendly game. Let me know if you want to get together to play this after you get it and we'll grab the usual crew.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:24 am

No gaming. But I did hit Ikea and grab a 4x4 Kallax shelf unit. Put that together yesterday. Today I'm going to move my games. I overflowed the 1x4 shelf.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:31 am

hepcat wrote:But it is a Churchill Gang friendly game. Let me know if you want to get together to play this after you get it and we'll grab the usual crew.

100% will do.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 11:48 am

Two years ago, Mice & Mystics was a family flop. My son, then 5, couldn't handle the stress of bad dice rolls and walked away from the board when it looked like the brave little mice might lose. So it went up on a high shelf, out of sight and out of mind.

What a difference two years make. On Saturday, he noticed it on the shelf and asked me to take it down. We set up the board, watched a tutorial video, and had a great time playing through the first chapter. On Sunday, we tackled Chapter 2, and he's eager for more -- talking about the characters, reminding me what awesome feats he accomplished, wondering what comes next. Whew!

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Mar 29, 2017 10:41 am

Pulled out an old favorite last night, Lords of Waterdeep. Man, I love this game. It was only 3 player, and I prefer to have at least 4, but it was still a great time. The game is just backstabby enough to give you some good gotcha moments without being able to completely piss someone off. I decided we needed this after a glut of co-op games that we've been playing. It was a great palate cleanser. Next week, either back to Gloomhaven, or maybe test games of Desperado or Blood and Plunder.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Wed Mar 29, 2017 10:59 am

AWS260 wrote:Two years ago, Mice & Mystics was a family flop. My son, then 5, couldn't handle the stress of bad dice rolls and walked away from the board when it looked like the brave little mice might lose. So it went up on a high shelf, out of sight and out of mind.

What a difference two years make. On Saturday, he noticed it on the shelf and asked me to take it down. We set up the board, watched a tutorial video, and had a great time playing through the first chapter. On Sunday, we tackled Chapter 2, and he's eager for more -- talking about the characters, reminding me what awesome feats he accomplished, wondering what comes next. Whew!

I forget, does the game have a built-in way to scale the difficulty down?

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:52 pm

I don't think so. We misinterpreted the rules in our favor a couple of times, but that wasn't on purpose.

Bad Demographic · Post by **Bad Demographic** » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:52 pm

Played Dastardly Dirigibles last night. Surprisingly fun and the rules are pretty simple.
Players try to be the first to build a dirigible, earning points by either having multiples of a style or by having each of the 7 dirigible parts be of a different style. The tricky part is when one player places a part, all the other players must also place the same part (if they have one). This could help other players complete a dirigible before you but can also mess up their carefully designed style.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Mar 31, 2017 8:21 am

See the Arkham Horror thread if you want to relive last night's misery.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:01 pm

Played a fair number of games since last posting. Some of the highlights...

Terraforming Mars- This game has been all over the hotness at BGG. The point of the game is to terraform mars, as you would imagine. You are corporations undertaking these projects in order to accomplish this goal. Each company has a power and variable starting bonus. As you terraform mars you gain points for raising the temperature, planting green spaces which increases oxygen content of the atmosphere, and building oceans.

The guts of the game is a deck of cards which have projects on them that you can implement. Each turn you have 4 cards (projects) you can choose to purchase (paying for them only gives you the ability to play them later, it doesn't actually play them). Each card then has an associated cost on the card and a benefit that comes from it. Some of the cards have requirements that are not cost related. For instance some might require a certain oxygen level (animal projects for instance).

On an individual level the game is a tableau builder. The game ends when Mars has been terraformed, and then whoever has the most victory points wins.

Overall I like the game, but I think it is gaining a lot from being the new hotness. The game itself is very good, fun, and interesting. The theme actually fits very well. But... it isn't THAT special. I like it more than a lot of other major releases last year that gained huge hype(I'm looking at you Scythe). It will have a place in my collection for some time, but I won't be that surprised if eventually I trade it away.

The end of our 2 player game, the bits are nice and pretty although the actuall quality of the components could be a little better.

Duck Dealer- A relatively forgotten Splotter Spellen title. It is commonly referred to as a less luck driven version of Merchant of Venus. I find Merchant of Venus to be really fun, and I love splotter games so I was looking forward to trying this one out (it's out of print and very unlikely to ever be reprinted as it wasn't a very big hit). After finding a copy of Duck Dealer I was excited to try it out.

It has a very interesting mechanic that is both a positive and a negative. On each turn you have two choices, either you take a disc that gives you a future action, or you spend your discs. It's a really cool mechanic in that you have to really carefully plan your turns. The three discs you can grab are for trade, movement, or building. The game has elements of exploration with most of the planets being unexplored at the beginning of the game. From there it becomes an efficiency engine with creating trade routes of production and converting goods into better goods before selling them at markets at different planets, using goods to upgrade your ship to specialize in movement or carrying lots of items. There are far more details in the actual gameplay but that is basically the gist of it.

The game has a total of 24 action turns no matter how many players you have. In a 4 player game you might only get 5 or 6 action turns to do everything you want so you have to plan very carefully. In a 2 player game I played I only had 8 total turns. I ended up winning so the other player who had 16 action turns didn't get an advantage by having more turns because their turns were not used well.

It's got potential to be fun, but it's no merchant of Venus. While merchant of Venus may be a bit too long for what I want, it's a better game in that it is fun every turn. Duck Dealer goes from incredibly boring turns of grabbing discs to do nothing, to an actual action turn where everything must be carefully calculated and perfectly spent to create perfect efficiency that allows you to sell the highest price items. But the action turns are not necessarily fun, because you have to do everything to the dot or else you might have just wasted an opportunity. Worse still are the opposing players turns. Talk about painful, their actions do affect you but not enough to really care to pay attention as they take endlessly long action turns while you wait to simply take a disc and move on.

In the end the game has some great positives like personalizing and upgrading your ship )which is really cool), the exploration, and the idea of the action disc mechanic, but in the end it just isn't that much fun to actually play. I'll probably keep it in my collection because it is unique, but I cannot recommend anyone actually try it.

The end of a game we played. Action discs in piles on the left with the universe explored in front. Customized ships built on each side.

We also played a game I have had my eye on for a very long time but it has been out of print for a long time and I only recently traded for it.
Pillars of the Earth- A simple worker placement game with some interesting mechanics that I am surprised no other game has rally picked up. The game is about building a cathedral, and each player has 3 master builders that they control and place each round. On top of that you control workers which can gather resources (and only gather resources) and craftsmen that are used each round to convert goods into things to be used in the cathedral building (in an abstract sense honestly). Overall the game is just your normal run of the mill worker placement with some variations.

But the one variation that I think is especially interesting is that in order to determine master builder sequence they are pulled blindly out of a bag. The first worker pulled out costs 7 gold for the player to play. The second costs 6, and so on until they are free. The trick is the player who's master builder is pulled can pass and not pay anything, and once all master builders have been drawn the ones which passed are played. This leads to some interesting decisions as to when is the right time to pay for your worker and when is the time to hold off and place them in what is essentially the second wave of worker placement. In practice it actually works out well.

I've only played it once, and it was 2 players, but I really enjoyed it a lot. I ended up losing (turns out when your opponent is giving both glass and stone to the cathedral your wood just isn't as appreciated as you would have hoped) but I thoroughly enjoyed the game and look forward to more plays. Best of all the game has recently been announced to be receiving a reprint so it should be widely available again in a year or so. Incidentally it also inspired me to order the book from Amazon since I have never read it.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:15 am

Argh, I keep dancing around Watson and Holmes. The Shut Up and Sit Down review makes it sound fantastically tense, plus I'm a huge fan of the Consulting Detective series, with which this shares some aspects. But it has zero replay ability after you finish it. However, if it sells out, I could probably huck mine on ebay or at a convention.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Sat Apr 08, 2017 9:16 am

Great gaming night last night.

Another game of The Great Zimbabwe. I've talked about it a bit in the past, but this time it was a 4 player game. The game is, in my experience, the most accessible splotter game available. It has many of the mechanics common to Splotter games but is shorter and scales well 2-5 players. Very well. If anyone has interest in trying what splotter has to offer, The Great Zimbabwe certainly is an easy jumping in point.

Last night's game I went all in on creating craftsman towns. I managed to manipulate all of the ivory on the board, and then the clay as well. Eventually even the diamonds. Only the wood was left in the control of other players. Unfortunately that raised my victory point requirement too high. I did indeed manage to be swimming in money as everyone had to use my resources to increase their monuments. But while I was by far the richest in the game I couldn't upgrade my monuments fast enough and the game ended with me in dead last despite controlling the flow of almost all resources. Fantastically fun game, I can't wait to play it again.

The end of the game, I had 4 craftsman village out of 6 total in the game. Great for having huge herds (which is wealth), but I couldn't upgrade my monuments quick enough.

We followed this up with a 4 player game of Terraforming Mars.

This game is rapidly growing on me. It was a learning game for 2 players, and Terraforming Mars is the type of game where knowledge of the possible cards greatly increases your chance of winning (much like Race for the Galaxy). I had a fantastic city building engine going. I also played some big asteroid cards which rapidly raised the temperature and placed oceans. It certainly was the best I have ever played the game, keeping in mind that two players were learning for the first time. I grabbed 2 milestones quickly and managed to take the lead on 2 awards. Then as my little engine was really starting to crank up our babysitter texted us that she had to go home suddenly. So, sadly, the game ended abruptly. But luckily everyone enjoyed it, and wants to try it again. So it will hit the table again before long.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Sun Apr 09, 2017 10:46 pm

With my better half and kid out of town, I had the time and space to get High Frontier on the table. I had run through an initial learning game a few weeks ago, but this is the first time that I've tried to play through a full game proper. To keep things simple, I'm playing as both India and the European Space Agency, and avoiding competitive auctions for research cards.

So far, India has claimed and built a factory on Mars, while the ESA has done the same on Ceres. The ESA also prospected a bunch of asteroids in the Gefion family and Karin cluster, but with no luck.

My main lesson learned so far: leaving Mars is hard. After building a factory there, I had to bring my crew back to Earth. The crew module's thruster was (barely) strong enough to lift itself into Mars orbit, but way too fuel-hungry for the engine burns required to return home. Eventually I was able to build a solar sail at the factory, and use that for propulsion on the journey to Earth.

The game ends after four factories are produced, so I'm still only halfway there. Fingers crossed that the cats don't mess up the board too much overnight.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 6:33 am

I'm interested in seeing more of this game. Looks really intriguing, albeit a bit daunting.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 9:15 am

Started a Gloomhaven scenario on Saturday that's still going on. I'm running it solo with 3 characters. The scenario is an escort mission and it's exceptionally well done.

I've been so impressed by the designer that I went ahead and ordered his last game, Forge War. I had almost backed it on kickstarter, but decided against it. Now that I've seen what he can do with game mechanics, I'm interested in it again.

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:55 am

I recently got a bunch of games and got to try out a couple this weekend. My gaming partners were my wife and two kids (10.9 and 7.9)

One Night Ultimate Werewolf:

Get the free app - it calls out the order of Night activities and is fully customizable for the roles in play as well as the delays for actions. Really impressive, actually.
Didn't work great with 3 people - worked slightly better with 4. Think bigger groups would be even better.
The above may be influenced by the fact that my kids are terrible liars and they think I am always lying.

Hive Carbon:

Easy to learn but seems to have some strategic depth. Pieces are nice and solid. One nit is that the black ones are a bit scuffed straight out of the box, but doesn't effect gameplay at all.
Only played one game to teach the kids the rules so they could play while I was reading the rules for the other games
Kids are having a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure they are playing correctly. 7 year old consistently beating the 10 year old.

Puerto Rico:

Played with 3 players
A lot of rules, but it all makes sense once you start playing. 10 year old picked it up right away and whipped us.
Everyone had a lot of fun and wanted to play again.

Pandemic:

Played 4 player and the 7 year old was pretty cranky
Played 3 games and lost every time - need to come up with a strategy because what we had wasn't working
Game seems to end quickly - like 5 rounds - so want to double check the rules to make sure we are playing right
General consensus was that it was fun, but losing every game put a damper on it.

Twilight Struggle:

This was a tough sell, but wife said she'd try it with me. Spent 2 hours reading the rules and trying to figure out the game only to fail. Went on Youtube and found some great walkthroughs and now it all makes sense. Going to try again this weekend.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 11:53 am

That's some good gaming!

For pandemic if the kids start getting tired of losing just make it easier one game (take out an epidemic card) and go at it again. As long as it's fun who cares if you dummed it down a bit. Losing in fine rounds sounds very quick. Either really bad luck, ignoring areas completely, or more likely a rule is wrong. First thing to check is the number of epidemic cards and that they are being organized correctly because that's usually what ends up killing you and having them in incorrectly could really kill you.

I recently obtained twilight struggle as part of a big trade. It's on my back log of games to get to. Looking forward to hearing about it.

Anonymous Bosch · Post by **Anonymous Bosch** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:07 pm

Indeed, that's a rock solid selection of games, stessier.

General tips for success in Pandemic: As Chrisoc13 said, since you're playing with children, it may behoove you to tone down the difficulty a wee bit to help maintain their interest. But realistically, you must reconcile the fact that you won’t win every game while first playing and learning, and will more likely lose most of them (which does fit the theme of the game, and makes victory that much sweeter when you do pull it off). Anyway, try to prioritise finding a cure for at least one disease within the first three rounds. If you can't do that, chances are you'll probably lose, though you still have a slim chance of winning if you're able to hold everything off and are fortunate enough to draw most of what you need for the cures. But since that's contingent upon making some very lucky draws, it should only be used as a last resort. Also, be sure to use all methods of transportation at your disposal; it's easy to forget about some of them, particularly the Charter Flight. You should use all methods (Drive, Direct Flight, Charter Flight, and Shuttle Flight) in every game of Pandemic to travel optimally. In terms of treating disease, don't worry about cities with one or even two cubes on them; a city with three cubes is a much more serious threat, and you’re really just trying to hold down the fort until you're able to find the cures. One other related tip: on cities with three cubes, stacking them in a pyramid (2 on bottom, 1 on top) can help provide a useful, distinctive visual cue of the most critical threats on the board.

Also, if you're consistently losing Pandemic in the same way, that provides useful information on how best to improve your strategy. Losing from the Outbreak Meter? Focus more on ensuring no city ever has three cubes on it when drawing from the infection deck (or as close to this as possible). Running out of player cards? Focus more on curing diseases quicker, and improving turn efficiency. Running out of cubes of one colour? Make sure you aren’t concentrating too much on a particular disease.

BTW, the digital versions of Twilight Struggle include an excellent tutorial, which makes teaching and introducing the game to beginners much simpler and easier.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:14 pm

After getting a new iPad and some time for my ego to heal, I'm ready to play Twilight Struggle online again. Look me up!

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:27 pm

Anonymous Bosch wrote:
BTW, the digital versions of Twilight Struggle include an excellent tutorial, which makes teaching and introducing the game to beginners much simpler and easier.

Good idea. I think I'll learn it that way ha

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:48 am

stessier, if you enjoyed Puerto Rico, pick up San Juan.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:55 am

Zarathud wrote:After getting a new iPad and some time for my ego to heal, I'm ready to play Twilight Struggle online again. Look me up!

I'll send you an invite. I've been enjoying my games against El Guapo but I'd like to win once in awhile.

Also, anybody else can feel free to send me an invite for games too, I really can't get enough at this point.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 3:50 pm

coop, the DGM event is stating that Renegade Game Studio, makers of Clank! will be in attendance on the weekend of the 21st, and even running a tournament.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 10:33 am

AWS260 wrote:With my better half and kid out of town, I had the time and space to get High Frontier on the table.

I blame you that I now own this game. I started researching it and decided to jump on it while Kickstarter copies are still available. That's the forum effect for you.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 11:46 am

Chrisoc13 wrote:
AWS260 wrote:With my better half and kid out of town, I had the time and space to get High Frontier on the table.
I blame you that I now own this game. I started researching it and decided to jump on it while Kickstarter copies are still available. That's the forum effect for you.

My work here is done.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 8:18 am

See the Arkham Horror LCG thread for my experiences on the Essex County Express. The completion of that scenario officially puts us halfway through the Dunwich Legacy campaign, and like every scenario thus far, was a lot of fun.

Because the night was still young, we broke out ONE DECK DUNGEON, which we had not yet played to completion. Terry went Warrior and I went Wizard, easiest dungeon. Had a great time and spent nearly 2 hours journeying through its depths. Things got a little "dicey" (hehe) near the bottom of Level 3 when we ran out of heal potions, but we managed to survive and kill the boss in two rounds. Lots of fun, and one of the rare games in our group I'll probably double dip on and pick up for myself just due to the strong solo play.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 1:21 pm

Hmm. Appears that a post I put out here got eaten.

Anyway. What with all of the news of Star Wars coming out of Celebration, and after having just re-watched Rogue One, I ventured into my gaming archive and pulled out all of my old Star Wars minis and copies of Star Wars Miniatures Battles (the old West End Games mass battle rules) and laid out a skirmish. Went minimalist for it, just on my dining room table, no fancy terrain, just what was at hand that could act like an obstacle. Did use an old Micromachine Imperial Shuttle as an objective, though.

So Tom and i grabbed a couple of pre-made squads from the book, and set up on opposite ends, and filled out the sheets, and quickly skimmed through the rules to refresh our memories. Got right into the action, played for about 2 hours. And did not like it sir. Did not like it at all.

The biggest problem is that the rules set is just so...80's. It's very fiddly. It takes multiple multiple roles to resolve anything that you do. You have a sheet full of numbers that apply to your squad, so playing with more that a couple of units seems like it would be problematic. Targeting was kind of wonky. Morale rules were opposed rolls, and that made morale VERY swingy.. Never got into hand to hand to find out if that was OK or not.

I'm going to give the rules a thorough reading to make sure I'm not royally screwing anything up. But I do really want to do a good Star Wars battle (because I have hundreds of the damn miniatures.) We're talking bout trying to convert GASLIGHT or Brother Against Brother. GASLIGHT at least has vehicle rules, but I really love the BAB combat system.

And I'm also going to look pretty closely at trying to adapt and use the dice from the RPGs to see if we can roll our own miniatures system using that.

Too many systems. Too little time.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 12:04 pm

Been eyeing Pax Porfiriana recently. If I remember correctly Hepcat owns this right? I remember you posting something about it before, but I couldn't remember thoughts about it. The collector's edition is almost not available anymore, and I was looking at picking it up.

I also was wondering if anyone has played Pax Pamir and if so, how it compares.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 12:35 pm

I own Pax Porfiriana, Pax Pamir and Pax Renaissance. I'm a bit of a nut for Eklund's small box, deep mechanics games.

Out of all of them, I'd say Pax Porfiriana is still my favorite. The history and artwork on the cards is worth the price of admission alone...and when you realize that every single card in the game is unique, it's even more impressive. I also love how it is the anti-deck builder. You want to expand your tableau with ranches and other money making enterprises, but you are not going to be hanging onto those things for long. Heck, you may even attack your own cards in order to get the victim cards that come from making a "strawman" play. Those cards can be used to give you victory points in one of the game's influence areas. And having more than anyone else in that area when that influence topple card comes up will win you the game. But for folks who like to turtle in their games and build out an impressive tableau, it can be a maddening experience. One of our friends played in a full game one afternoon, and spent all his cash on building a ton of ranches and banks. He was churning out money like crazy...for two rounds. Then someone attacked one of his ranches, while another player nationalized his banks. I thought the poor guy was going to openly sob. He still refuses to play the game to this day.

The map in the deluxe edition is a pixelated piece of crap, by the way, but still useful for eyeballing card pricing. However, the deluxe edition of Porfiriana has rules that are clean and precise. Something the first edition was lacking in somewhat.

Pax Pamir is a more interesting theme, and incorporates some really unique mechanics, but it's also very tough to understand the win conditions. The same complaint can be made for Pax Porfiriana, but after a few games, you can see how "topples" (sort of like scoring cards in Twilight Struggle) play out.

In Pamir, I love how spies actually move around the table across the cards of other players. I've never seen anything quite like it. You're sitting there, watching another player slowly advance across everyone's tableau, and you are constantly worrying that you won't be able to defend yourself from his subversive attacks if he decides to stop on one of your cards. It's pretty dang cool.

Pax Renaissance I'm still mulling over. Seppe and I played it once, and while it has much easier to understand win conditions, it also has some mechanics I was having trouble grasping.

But in spite of the steep learning curve and the oftentimes confusing mechanics, the Pax series is truly a unique and fascinating game series.

Oh, and Ricky Royal created a fantastic solo variant for Porfiriana that plays almost as good as a human opponent. I highly recommend playing it solo a few times with these rules so you can get familiar with the game. Pamir has solo rules too by Eklund. They are in the expansion I bought, but I haven't had a chance to try them out.

And if you ever have any component issues with one of Phil's games, just send an email to Sierra Madre games. I had a set of player pieces that were the wrong color (the duplicate of another player's), and I did that. Phil himself responded within 24 hours and I had the pieces within a week. Fantastic customer service.

p.s. if you don't mind me throwing another game of Phil's onto the pile, I highly recommend checking out Greenland. Another small box, deep mechanics game of his. It's the start of another series like Pax, and was followed up by Neanderthal. But I still prefer Greenland for its relative simplicity in comparison to many of his other games.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 6:12 pm

Great to hear. I'm pretty tempted to pull the trigger on the collector's edition, but I must admit I have a ton of unplayed games right now that I recently traded for so I'm not really even sure why I am still looking...

Greenland I have recently started looking at as well. Interesting that you should bring it up, it's just recently entered my radar, so I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the insight!

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Apr 21, 2017 1:45 pm

Finally got MANSIONS OF MADNESS 2nd EDITION to the table last night. Terry was familiar with the Cthulhu mythos after playing ARKHAM HORROR LCG, but Jay was a bit of a Lovecraftian newbie.

I had played the first scenario 3 times before, so I was trying to sit back and let the other players make the bulk of the decisions. Jay was a bit bewildered by the idea that we really did not know what our goal was or what we needed to do to win, but as the night went on the app really won him over. We had a fantastic time, though due to the learning curve this 90 minute scenario still lasted a good 3 hours.

We played complementary characters - Terry was our bookworm who had a lot of strength in re-rolling. Jay was our fighter/athlete, with good combat and movement. I played the magician, focusing on spell casting and charisma.

Things went fairly well until I split off from the group and managed to go temporarily insane during a Mythos phase, starting a fire that threatened to burn down the entire mansion. This is where we spent two turns screwing up royally. We misread the fire rules, and though that the fire spread to *every* adjacent area at the beginning of the Mythos phase, instead of *an* adjacent area. So we found ourselves spending two turns fighting a fire that we couldn't possibly contain. After clarification we decided to just continue, since if anything botching the rules had made it harder, not easier.

I won't give any of the story away, but suffice it to say I wound up putting my life on the line to hold off an enemy while Jay and Terry tried to complete the scenario goals. Jay and I both became wounded, but still survived. We managed to eke out a victory just as impending doom approached.

At any rate, I think the game was a hit, and we're all looking forward to tackling the next scenario. Terry's got a big iPad Pro, which was perfect for running the app at a size that everyone could see. We're hoping to bring on a fourth player for next week's festivities. And I need to really get to painting!

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Fri Apr 21, 2017 1:55 pm

I seem to light the place on fire every scenario. At this point, I'm given the fire extinguisher and give away anything flammable. It's a curse....

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Fri Apr 21, 2017 9:39 pm

Got to play Star Wars Rebellion. I've owned this game since launch, but haven't gotten around to playing it for some reason. With the player aids suggested here printed out we finally sat down and played our first game of it.

I played as the rebels, my wife as the empire. I hid my base in Dantooine and then completely ignored that side of the board. I focused all of my efforts sending my ships and leaders and sabatoging the opposite side of the board. I started thinking I was going to get into trouble for a short time with my wife slowly moving her death star straight for Dantooine. I kept trying to play it cool. I didn't want her to know that was my base, but I was afraid she would notice I was getting nervous.

Suddenly my wife decided my base was on the exact opposite side of the board. My ploy had finally worked. One move away from moving the death star onto Dantooine she reversed course and went the other direction. Such fortune. I played it up even more moving everything I had to attack her as if I were trying to protect my base and she continued to bite even harder. When she finally got to the planet she KNEW was my base she was shocked when I told her it was not. It was too late though. She realized Dantooine was the only reasonable option left and I won.

It's a good game, I really enjoyed it. I am really happy it's in my collection. Likely it won't see that much play, maybe every 5 or 6 months, but I enjoyed it. There are a couple of things I wish were different though- the combat is finicky. It feels long as a result. I wish it were just more straight-forward like 1775 Rebellion. Instead the game grinds to a halt for combat and I really don't feel like I'm getting much out of the finicky combat. The game also runs a little bit longer than I would like. If it were 90 minutes it would see a ton more play. But as it is at the end I was slightly more ready for it to be over.

Fun game! Can't wait to play it again.

raydude · Post by **raydude** » Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:37 am

This was from a playthrough of Mansions of Madness 2 that a group of friends and I did two weekends ago. Didn't have time to put together an AAR until now. Work and stuff and a March for Science intervened.

This playthrough was for the introductory scenario so fair warning that there are spoilers below. Or at least people may consider them spoilers.

Played some Mansions of Madness at a friends house. We had five players total and my friend did a chromecast of the app from his tablet to an lcd monitor so we could all see the screen at the same time.

We did the introductory scenario since we were still learning the game. Went in with:

Michael McGleen - mobster
Carolyn Fern - psychologist
Jenny Barnes - dilletante (me)
Monterey Jack - archaeologist
William Yorick - gravedigger

Warning! Spoilers ahead if you haven't played this scenario and plan on playing it! Edit: Decided to hide it behind a spoiler tag. You have been warned!

Spoiler:

All in all, great game. My friend's idea of chromecasting from his table to a large LCD screen was great. Also a good idea: assigning various bookkeeping tasks to the other players. I was in charge of items, someone else was in charge of placing room tokens, and others were in charge of focus tokens and monsters.