OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed May 17, 2017 10:38 am

I played a couple of 2 player games of The Grizzled last night. Very interesting, short small box co-op card game set in WWI, where you aren't trying to win the war, just survive. You and your friends have to go out on missions, and cards in your hand represent the threats of the mission. Snow, Rain, Night, Gas, Shells, or the "over the top" whistle. You take turns playing these threats into No-Man's Land. If at any time you play a 3rd matching threat, the mission is a failure and all of the cards you had end up back in the original threat deck. Your characters will also pick up "Hard Knocks" which will give you traumas and phobias and in general just bad things that get attached to your character. You can withdraw at any time from the assault, and once all characters have withdrawn, they hand out Aid to their buddies (in secret), if you end up with the most aid, you can remove two of the Hard Knocks cards or recover other effects. After you withdraw, cards from the Morale deck (more threats and Hard Knocks) are added to the threat deck, a minimum of 3 but it can be up to as many cards as you have left in your hand after you withdrew. Game ends when you get rid of all of the threats from the threat deck and all of the cards from your hand. If the morale deck runs out, or if any character ends up with 4 hard knocks after the recovery phase, you lose.

Fun, quick little game. Very different in that you aren't trying to WIN the war, just survive. And there is no way that you could survive this without the help of your friends, passing aid to you when you need it. I like the art a lot on this one, reminds me of Archinerd's work. However, I don't think this game works very well for only 2 players. With only 2 you play with a "dummy" player, a Chaplain that randomly hands out aid. Plus, the hard knocks pile up REALLY quickly with only two players. Really can't wait to play this one with 3 or 4 players.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Wed May 17, 2017 1:37 pm

I remember playing Grizzled with 4 people a few months ago. I remember it being difficult and tense, which was appropriate for the theme. The game was ok - fine for a short game and I'd play it if someone wanted to play it, but not something I'd go out of my way to play.

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Wed May 17, 2017 2:02 pm

Thanks for the review! I had considered getting that one. Don't think my kids are ready for it though.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed May 17, 2017 2:42 pm

stessier wrote:Thanks for the review! I had considered getting that one. Don't think my kids are ready for it though.

At an abstract level it's a cooperative anti-matching game. If you don't talk about gas attacks, it's just a symbol of a gas mask they are trying not to match. And the art is in no way brutal or bloody or anything. I actually think it would be a great game for kids, because they have to learn to figure out who needs the most help and then try and get the help to them.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Wed May 17, 2017 8:29 pm

A good way for kids to learn hard truths in life -- about losing. Played a bunch of times with hepcat in groups of 2-4. We lost them all, often getting rolled over like drunken French Legionaries.

I would like to try again at a con and see if miracles do happen.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu May 18, 2017 12:54 pm

Grizzled is a harsh mistress.

I'll bring my copy to Origins.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri May 19, 2017 9:33 am

Oh Mansions, thou art a cruel mistress!

So after our last devastating defeat, we decided to replay the same scenario. But this time we had a "foolproof' plan. Instead of wasting time searching every rock and tree, we'd rush straight to the end game, burn the boss down, and declare victory. Why, we'd be done in 90 minutes tops and on to a new scenario! We picked a crack team of investigators based on recommendations from Boardgame Geek. We were unstoppable!

...3 HOURS LATER...

I am Wounded and Insane. Terry is Insane. Jay is Wounded. Duane is fine, but heavily damaged and has no weapons. Half the board is one fire, and the creature we have to kill is only at half health. We make one last stand and the app declares "Sorry, folks. Scenario's closed. Dunwich Horror out front shoulda told ya."

Yeah....the best laid plans... Turns out the app this time decided to throw a lot more little monsters at us than we got the first go 'round. Our strategy to ignore searches led to a complete lack of clues that wound up hurting us in the long run. While we did reach the end game faster, it still wasn't fast enough due to the weird map layout and the number of critters we had to fight. In hindsight, some of the stuff we skipped probably directly led to more enemies on the board and more things stacked against us. Moral of the story: Don't try to cheat the app, bro. It WILL make you pay!

At any rate I'm pretty sure we're done with this scenario. We're now at a pitiful 1-5 record over 3 scenarios.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri May 19, 2017 11:25 am

YellowKing wrote:Oh Mansions, thou art a cruel mistress!

So after our last devastating defeat, we decided to replay the same scenario. But this time we had a "foolproof' plan. Instead of wasting time searching every rock and tree, we'd rush straight to the end game, burn the boss down

I know the scenario you speak of. We also lost that one when RMC joined some friends and I for our annual Christmas game day last year. I should go back and give it another whirl.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Fri May 19, 2017 12:33 pm

I learned and played a number of Eurogames recently. One of them I played was...

Great Western Trail: In this game, you're moving up the western trail, going towards the end of the board where you can sell your cattle (the value of your current hand at that point) at the end of the board, and then loop back to the beginning of the board. Along the way at different building/spots, you can take different actions that might allow you to hire staff, build your own buildings on the trail, add a higher value card to your deck, move a train along a track, replace cards with money, remove pitfalls, get goal cards, and so forth.

There are three types of staff, one which helps to get cards, one which helps to build buildings and one which helps you to move the train. Getting higher value cards means it's more likely you can get further when you reach the end of the trail to deliver to a better location. When you deliver, you can uncover part of your player board, which allows you to take more/different actions, or might increase your hand size or your speed. Also, for most locations, if you've delivered to two neighbors, you get a bonus, like victory points or a free goal cards, although for lower locations, it might be a negative VP. However, with every delivery, you also bring the game closer towards the end.

Building buildings allows you to place buildings on the board, which can slow other people (since it counts as a movement, but they can't perform actions on your location). Also, some of them require people to pay you - location placement can be very important (eg, if you place it at a place people are more likely to go, you'll get more money for them - but if you play it too late on the trail, they might have run out of money and have none to give you). There are alternative routes, though, but some of them are likely to contain pitfalls that cost money (to the bank) to pass. And finally, moving the train makes it cheaper when you deliver your goods, and also allows you to get depots (other locations which also allows you to uncover one of the spots on your board, and also give you a VP condition). There's more to it, but I guess that's a good enough simple run down.

There are a lot of things you get VP points for (higher value cards, buildings, neighboring deliveries, lots of workers of the same type, money, goal card conditions, etc) So it's one of those games like, say, Seven Wonders, where there are a lot of potential strategies, but it can also very difficult to keep track of how players are doing during the game.

It seems to me you probably want to focus on one area (getting cards, building building or moving your train up) and less on the other areas (but not ignore them completely). Although that's going to be dependent both on what staff is available, as well as what other players are going for. There's also the question of do you want to speed through the trail (to make more deliveries, replenish your hand and money, etc), or do you want to go slow to go through all the actions you need on the board which might allow you to gain money or replace your hand there, etc.

From what I played through, I do think getting higher cards might be a more powerful strategy than some of the others (I'm not that wild on the pushing the train a lot strategy, and as for building buildings, while it is powerful (especially if you want to do the go slow route and also want to get money from others going through), there's also a limit of 10 buildings you have, and only 20 spots on the board for what could be 4 players, whereas, there wasn't a limit on getting cards.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Fri May 19, 2017 2:18 pm

Other games I played:

Tribune: A worker placement game. One large area of the board you can get cards or money in various ways (buy, auction, etc). Cards belong to different houses, and you can try to gain power fro one or more of the seven houses in another section of the board (which requires two or more cards of that color, and higher than whatever the current controller of that house has). Being the current controller gives you a special ability. There are also a few more spots where you can get a few different things (free your slave cards, get wreaths, get a favor from the emperor or gain one of five powers (that help in things like getting money or getting your workers to locations more quickly).

There are eight different win conditions, and you need to get four of them first to win. The win conditions include things like having controlled (now or in the past) four of the houses, having eight wreaths, having a favor from the emperor, having freed slaves, etc. I messed up early on (someone mentioned that you needed a pair of cards to get control of a house, and I thought that meant the number in addition to the color had to be the same, but it just needs to be the color), though I was able to come back from behind in the last turn, going from 0 to 3 win conditions (and almost a fourth), so I did like that you could regain your footing. And the number of different conditions does mean you can pursue different strategies at different times, so that was nice.

And I played Terraforming Mars, which was good. Though I definitely was buying too many cards towards the beginning and middle of the game, thinking they were great cards, but didn't end up being useful for me.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Fri May 19, 2017 4:26 pm

Thanks for the GWT overview. Really want to give this one a try.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Sat May 20, 2017 7:29 pm

Hey what do you know, I also played Great Western Trail for the first time this weekend. I really enjoyed it a lot, I might like it as much as Terraforming Mars, or even more (the other hit from Stronghold this year).

I've only played one game of it so far, and it was a two player game but I went for buildings and pushing my train and my wife went for lots of cows, and the game was incredibly close. Within 4 points or so close. I was very happy with it. I pushed my train almost as far as it could go and the further you go there are stations that just start pulling in the money. Then I had a varied enough deck of cows that I could turn them for decent points every turn.

I'm looking forward to trying more games of GWT, especially at higher player counts, though it is nice that it works very well at 2. I have to say I'm impressed with what stronghold games pulled off this year, two strong games that I see staying in my collection possibly forever.

Another new game I played after receiving the kickstarter recently was Yokohama. I backed the deluxe version, and I have to admit, it is very nice. Metal coins are an especially nice touch (but I am of course a big sucker for metal coins and always try to add them to games when possible).

The game essentially is the city of Yokohama laid out by these different tiles. The tiles each have an action that you can carry out in order to gain something from the tile. These can include more employees, fish, silk, copper, tea, faith (which gives you victory points), more buildings, etc. The game play is some mix of Istanbul and Five Tribes from my experience. On your turn you put assistants down on different locations (you get to do either 2 on one location or 3 an 3 locations) and then you move your boss (your big meeple). You move the boss along the route you have created by your little assistant meeples and then do the action wherever you decide to stop. The power of your action depends on how many assistants are on that square, and if you have built any buildings there. Ideally you plan ahead and hit the right locations at the right time to optimize your actions as much as possible.

I've played this game twice so far since receiving it and I have to say I really enjoy it to this point. It is fun with both strategy and tactics, and it scales very well 2-4 players, being just as fun at 2 as higher player counts. I'm looking forward to more of it.

My gaming group played Endeavor which for some reason is currently out of print but my friend owns a copy of it. This game I had heard a lot about so I had been looking forward to trying it out. You are running empires attempting to spread around the world via occupation, shipping, trading, building, and of course war... all in a very abstract manner. Essentially on your turn you do a build action (grab a building and add it to your tableau), then hire new workers, then pay workers you already have, then proceed to your actually actions. The number of actual actions you get per round (there are only 7 rounds in the game) depends on how many workers you have available and the action building you have available. You take turns going around the board doing different actions which almost all essentially lead to adding one of your discs (which represent workers) to the board and taking a token from that spot which increases either the size of buildings you can build, the number of workers you can hire etc. There are multiple different regions of the world represented (for instance India, South America, the Far East etc) that at the beginning of the game you can ship to. If the area gets shipped to enough (enough player discs end up on the map section) then you can occupy cities there which give you increased building and hiring each turn and victory points at the end of the game. Have cities occupied in a connected fashion along trade routes increases your victory points from them even more.

It's a relatively fun game, but it is one of those games that is so balanced that I feel like you can do anything and win, but you also can do anything and not really lose either. It's minuscule increases in efficiency that leads to victories. One of my friends I game with is all about that so he loves this game, whereas I find it to be just pretty good. I think some of the hype I have seen around it on BGG is partially because it is out of print and harder to find now.

Lastly we have been playing a few games of The Climbers. This is an abstract game that I think has just fantastic components. It plays 2-5 players (all very well too) and you all start at the bottom of this pile of blocks you build quickly to start the game. On your turn you can basically do two things, move a single block, and then move your climber up. The climbers can only go up by 1/2 steps (unless you use one of the one-time use ladders you start with), only being able to stand on either your own color, or grey.

It's a simple, fun abstract game that I just find so much fun to play. It has these nice huge chunky pieces that you move around and it just looks great on the table. It's quick to learn and makes for some lively discussion around the table. Two players it plays in around 20-30 minutes, with more players it gets closer to an hour. I've really enjoyed it as a closer for the night at game nights. Sadly the company that made it is not longer in business so it is increasingly becoming harder to find, but there are still new copies floating around out there.

The end of one of our 4-player games of The Climbers to end the night.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Sat May 20, 2017 7:52 pm

Played a couple rounds of Gunslinger and one of Eastern Blades with the designer, followed up with A 3rd place finish to Fire and Axe.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon May 22, 2017 10:58 am

So I found a shop that was selling Great Western Trail for $50 and couldn't resist pulling the trigger. Want to get it to the table on Tuesday, so I've been watching a bunch of "How to Play" videos. Looks like my kind of game!

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:37 am

I thought you had it already, hentzau.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:00 pm

No, been wanting it ever since it came out.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:24 pm

hentzau wrote:So I found a shop that was selling Great Western Trail for $50 and couldn't resist pulling the trigger. Want to get it to the table on Tuesday, so I've been watching a bunch of "How to Play" videos. Looks like my kind of game!

I think you'll really like it. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to play it again. I even already pimped it with some nice metal coins. Really fun game with a great underused theme.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:27 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:Gunslinger

Kickstarter

$35 gets you Gunslinger and Gambler. Both are standalone. Oh, and shell casings as health points.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:31 pm

Chrisoc13 wrote:
hentzau wrote:So I found a shop that was selling Great Western Trail for $50 and couldn't resist pulling the trigger. Want to get it to the table on Tuesday, so I've been watching a bunch of "How to Play" videos. Looks like my kind of game!
I think you'll really like it. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to play it again. I even already pimped it with some nice metal coins. Really fun game with a great underused theme.

I was thinking about replacing the coins with clay poker chips, if I can find cheap old timey ones.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Thu May 25, 2017 9:36 am

Some games I've played recently:

Quatermaster General: This is a light WW2 war game, which players playing different countries (Germany, UK, Japan, Soviet Union, Italy, US). Each player plays from a hand you draw from your own personal deck. Some allow you to attack or build units on land or sea, and you have to maintain a supply link to a supply center (over sea, you (awkwardly) need an army between two naval units). Others allow you to defend against attacks, or allow you to perform one time actions (that might help you or one of your allies, or they might hurt your opponent in certain conditions) or can be placed in front of you and are now actions you can take (eg, discard X cards to play a card from your discard pile) or an effect that happens (opponent loses one more card if you play Y). Discarded cards aren't put back into your deck, so when you finish your deck, you're done.

So one positive for the game is that the decks are very different, and it gives people different experiences. But some of them aren't that great (Japan, for instance had very, very few cards with regards to fighting/building armies, I think? Like maybe 2?), and that's exacerbated by the heavy luck component - if that card you need is at the bottom of the deck or ended up in the discard pile without your choice, it can cut off your ability to do anything really useful.

Raise Your Goblet: Kind of a memorization game, but where you only have partial information. There's a goblet in front of everyone. Everyone has some wine, some poison and some antidotes in front of them, as well as a target (publicly visible) that they want to kill. On your turn, you can do two actions, which is any combination of:
1. Put one of your piece (wine or poison or etc) into any cup (people can see which cup you place in, but not what)
2. Look in the cup in front of you
3. Move the cups (swap two cups, or rotate all of the cups).
If you're the first to get rid of all of your wine, you can raise a toast, which means the last round happens, where everyone gets one last action and you get the final one. Then you drink up. You get one point for staying alive, and another for killing your target, and a third point for doing both.

It's a light little time waster, but it's more amusing than anything else, since people usually had no idea if they were going to die or not (those who tried to keep track and look in their cup, usually had the cup moved away from them)

Trans America - kind of a quicker version of Ticket to Ride, where everyone's laying the same type of tracks (so as long as you're connected, you can use other players tracks as well), and each player is trying to connect to their own five unique cities (one in each of the five regions). I'm not a fan of Ticket to Ride, and while I'm not that fond of this either, it's at least a lot quicker to play.

Punisher · Post by **Punisher** » Sat May 27, 2017 1:43 am

We are in the process of painting our kitchen, which is our current game room, so game night has been on hiatus for a bit..
I did order these 2 games though and they should be here by Wednesday..
Aliens Vs. Predator: The Hunt Begins 2nd Edition and Mansions of Madness: 2nd Edition
We are also putting in a new 4K TV there that I picked up as an open box for $250. We will use this to watch movies, game tutorials and hoping to find an easy way to use Tabletop Simulator as well.. Not sure how well it will work when we play competitive games with secret hands...I may just use the screen as an overall game view and get everyone laptops setup to use..

Zenn7 · Post by **Zenn7** » Sat May 27, 2017 9:38 pm

Had my monthly board game meeting today. Was a little late and had to leave an hour early, but got 2 games in:

Ravenspire - played this last month. The winner last month got the dead dragon for the big bad. He was the first one to the big bad this time, and got Lord Ravenspire. He died. Second player to get there rolled even better stats (12/16/11) and had 2 adventures from his deck he had to deal with. He died. I was the third and last player, but didn't get to try cause the 2nd player's death was the last life for the whole group. We all lost. But it was still great fun.

Rollplayer - close game, 31, 33, 34. I was 33. Monk, probably used too many market discards to trigger my special ability to use an attribute special. Got 5 out of 6 attributes where they needed to be and just missed the last 1 by 1-2 points. But only had 2 traits and only got 2 pieces of my armor (didn't have a chance to do better on my armor, may have passed up a trait or two I should have taken and did not take proper advantage of my skills to optimize the dice.

Got to peak in on people using Memoir '44 to reenact D-Day (they do this around this time every year). Had 6 players, 3 Axis, 3 Allies. All 5 beaches on big maps, took up 2 sizeable conference room type tables. Always cool to check out.

Still, good fun day.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Sun May 28, 2017 12:17 am

I played a second game of Great Western Trail. Four player game, with me and another player who had played before, and two others that were playing for the first time (I think, in the future, I'd rather play with people on the same level - it slowed down the game, and the point difference between us and the other two was significant).

I went with the Cow strategy - I got my cowboys (going up to four earlier on, and then got the fifth and sixth before the end of the game), and I bought six or seven cows over the course of the game - that ended up being about where I would get a third of my points. In part I went with this strategy cause there were a lot of cowboys available in early game. The other players went building strategy early (the two new people copied the other player), but they split off, one doing building, one cowboys and one engineer.

I had also built a few buildings, but one that I built ended up being critical to me (though I hadn't realized it at the time). I put down a 2 gold toll card towards the end of the trail, that also bumped up my movement another 3 spaces so I could reach Kansas city if I wanted to (or stop off a little earlier, if I wanted to). Only another action that I didn't realize at that point was that I could exchange in as many cards as I had cowboys (I thought it just allowed a single exchange). Towards the end of the game, when I had lots of cowboys, I learned that that's what I could do, so I pretty much went through until I had a good hand when arriving at kansas city. I also made liberal use of certificates (either by getting a free one at a spot, or using my own action that would cost a gold and move my train back one for a certificate). That helped me get a bunch of deliveries to san francisco and some of the other cities at that end, which ended up being where I got another third of my points. I ended up winning from those.

I also played Evolution, a game where you make and modify species with cards, and can increase their population and body size. You have to make sure you can feed your animals (cards may provide powers that make it easier to feed them, but depending on how much food there is, animals can starve and lose their population or even go extinct) - food you eat also becomes victory points. Also, some animals turn carnivores and eat other animals (provided they're bigger than them and the animal cant protect itself).

It was enjoyable, but I prefer an older game called Primordial Soup (havent played it in like 5 years though), which had a similar concept, but your biological entities would move on a board and try to eat cubes that other animals would leave behind, with evolution giving your creates powers like being able to attack other creates, move certain ways, require less food, etc. Though that game always felt like it could use another 30 minutes or so of game time (what do you mean, the game is almost over, I just got this cool new power last turn!)

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Tue May 30, 2017 8:46 am

I was in full solo mode this holiday weekend. Both in gaming and in drinking.

Friday after work I tackled a Gloomhaven scenario that I and another player lost the weekend prior. Thankfully, I was able to complete it.

The accompanying beer was a quart of Mississippi Mud Black and Tan.

I would give this one a 2 out of 5 tentacles. It tasted watered down and thin.

Saturday I set up a game of Dawn of the Zeds third edition. It went swimmingly...for about 3 turns. Then I started getting Brains cards and they resulted in numerous spontaneous outbreaks, which then spawned super zeds. I didn't finish the game as I become too discouraged.

This was accompanied by Shock Top Lemon Shandy.

Light, but still packing a punch, I would give this one 3.5 out of 5 tentacles.

Sunday I returned to my game of Dawn of the Zeds to see if I could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

...I could not.

But the beer was great!

Great Lakes Brewery Turntable Pilsner. Absolutely fantastic. 4 out 5 tentacles (Half Acre brewery still makes the only 5 out of 5 pilsner I've ever tasted). I drank too many, I'm afraid to admit. However, it did make the David Lynch reboot of Twin Peaks later that evening somewhat entertaining at least.

I also picked up One Deck Dungeon yesterday and played an intro solo game over a Shock Top Lemon Shandy. A fantastic little game. I can see why it sells out quickly.

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Tue May 30, 2017 9:45 am

This weekend we played Small World and Star Wars Risk.

First up was Small World played with my wife, and daughters (10.10 and 7.9). It was our first time with the game, so there was a lot of rules checking and the 7.9 year old did not approve of the amount of time between turns. Everyone proclaimed it fun when it was over, but I think they will be more enthusiastic next time now that we've all been through it once.

Star Wars Risk I played with my 10.10 year old. We played once Sunday where I was the Rebels and once Monday where she was the Rebels. We messed up a couple of the rules on the first play through and she didn't really understand the power of the Executor, so I was able to take down the shield and blow up the Death Star on my first attempt even though she killed Luke (man the Emperor's power to hurt Luke without a die roll is annoying!).

The second play through, she wanted to be the Rebels and right from the start set out to redeem Vadar. I spent a lot of turns launching TIEs but still found time to take pot shots at Luke. In a dramatic moment, Luke damaged Vader into the Redeem Zone and then Vader struck back killing Luke. It was soooo close as her next order would have been Redeem. With the extra orders, the Empire loaded up Endor with stormtroopers. Next, the Rebels tried to use the Millenium Falcon to take down the Executor even though it was completely surrounded by TIEs. The initial attack did a fair amount of damage but failed to take out the ship. In retaliation, the Executor blasted the Falcon to bits. Unfortunately, the Empire wasn't paying attention and a swarm of X-wings closed in and avenged the Falcon by blowing the Executor to bits with about a third of the total TIEs still on-board. The Empire was still feeling good, though, as the TIEs consolidated into three groups and started chasing down the Rebel ships. There were occasional potshots from the Death Star thrown in, but while the laser may have been fully functional, the targeting computer most certainly was not. Finally the Rebels got the shield down but it seemed like too little, too late as their fleet had been reduced to two squadrons: one of B-wings and one of Y-wings. Against that, the empire still had nearly 20 TIEs grouped into two sectors. The B-wings exploited a whole in the defense to get to the Death Star and launch a single shot that missed (the Empire had gotten stuck with three straight useless orders that meant their TIEs sat their as the B-wings made their run). While the TIEs swarmed to destroy the B-wing, they regrouped in poorly chosen areas and let 3 Y-wings make their attack run scoring a direct hit with their last shot. The Rebels had won again!

She really likes that game and already asked if we can play it and either Pandemic or Puerto Rico again next weekend. I think I may have been successful in turning her to the Dark Side.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Tue May 30, 2017 12:27 pm

Anonymous Bosch wrote:
hentzau wrote:
Anonymous Bosch wrote:
Smoove_B wrote:
Zarathud wrote:There apparently is a sweet organizer from Meeple Realty.

Organizers are my kyrptonite. EDIT: $74 shipped is bananas.
Yeah, that is bananas. Personally, I plan on following the storage and organization advice for Gloomhaven posted here.
I went ahead and bought one of the meeple source organizers. I tried to work out a storage solution using plano boxes, but was never satisfied. It's nuts spending almost as much on the storage as you did on the game, but I do like this organizer. It's my first foray into 3rd party organizers. I feel kinda unclean.
Indeed, pre-play organization of this game seems to be a challenge unto itself. I'm thinking more along the lines of using the expanding file folder and envelopes method, combined with GMT Counter Trays for the rest.

Well, I got my organizer, and I'm kind of regretting my purchase. There appears to be absolutely 0 tolerance in the cuts for this, and so I think I'm going to have to sand down each of the interlocking tabs prior to assembly. So this will probably take about 3-4 hours (easy) to assemble and that has me somewhat daunted. And don't get me wrong here, I have assembled a ton of pre-cut MDF buildings for my wild west layout. This one has me annoyed.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Tue May 30, 2017 1:41 pm

Whoo hoo, my copy of the new Tiny Epic Galaxies expansion just arrived. Anyone have a beer suggestion for it?

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Tue May 30, 2017 1:51 pm

PBR?

</ducks>

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Tue May 30, 2017 2:04 pm

hepcat wrote:Whoo hoo, my copy of the new Tiny Epic Galaxies expansion just arrived. Anyone have a beer suggestion for it?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Tue May 30, 2017 2:07 pm

My God, how were you able to get into the land of the giants and escape with your life?

(wait...tiny epic beer?)

gilraen · Post by **gilraen** » Tue May 30, 2017 4:29 pm

I requested and got Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle for my birthday, so we broke it out last night and played through the first 2 chapters. As expected, it was pretty easy (since it's the equivalent of tutorial/"intro" level), and we weren't in any danger of losing, but still, we had all our heroes hover around 1-3 health for a better part of chapter 2. After reading hentzau's impressions of the game, I expect the difficulty to crank up going forward. Not very impressed with the quality of cards and tokens, though, a couple of the cardboard "attack" tokens are already starting to peel apart at the edges, and we've barely touched them.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Tue May 30, 2017 4:33 pm

Yeah. Those "cards" are barely thicker than regular paper. I might have to sleeve them to help them hold up better.

It was fun completely controlling the locations in the second chapter. On the first turn we snagged Dobby and spell that removes a control token. Then a couple turns later grabbed another spell.

If Ron hadn't gotten stunned on the last turn, then we'd have beaten the villains with no control tokens placed at all. At least Ron was able to finish off the basilisk.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Tue May 30, 2017 4:52 pm

Funny you should mention HP:HB. This weekend my daughter came home from Norway, so we added her into our game so we were playing with a full 4 characters. We tackled Book 5 again...and lost again. This time we made it a lot farther, but we lost with...well, with two villains left, and one down to 2 hits. We had a couple of ways of removing "Dark Marks" (that's what we call the control tokens) from the final location for the next two players, but before we could play them, we drew two Dark Arts events that both placed a Dark Mark on the location, and game over.

My younger daughter was all about house ruling the game to make it easier. I would be tempted to make one change, and have the villains come out in order of appearance instead of randomly, because if you get a later villain out early, he can hurt you big time before you get strong enough to take him out. But I told her we're going to try it once more before we tinker.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Tue May 30, 2017 4:56 pm

Interesting. So for the 6 villains for Chapter 2, you'd put the 3 from Chapter 1 on top? That's not a bad idea. You could still shuffle them, I suppose.

Although, our last villain was the basilisk. Which was appropriate for the movie. For immersion, it definitely would make sense to put the villains in a specific order.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Tue May 30, 2017 4:58 pm

Yeah, that allows you time to build up your spells and allies before the bigger guns start really messing you up. I hesitate to state any more for fear of spoilers...

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Tue May 30, 2017 5:54 pm

We played Exploding Kittens with my kids, my mom and her boyfriend. My kids were unable to hide their evil gee at placing an exploding kitten in the deck, but I was saved each time by a quick reshuffle.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Tue May 30, 2017 5:58 pm

Hentzau: It could be all the humidity lately. The fit was snug on my Twilight Struggle set but not on the Rebellion set. I was able to trim a few places as needed with an exacto knife. Just go slow and don't force anything.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Sat Jun 03, 2017 8:46 pm

coopasonic wrote:On the plus side, I've ordered Clank!, Last Friday and Captain Sonar (and a replacement copy of YINSH). I am dreaming of playing Captain Sonar at work. We have a curtained space behind our desks with a table that would seat 8 comfortably and be perfect for this. It's a silly dream, but it lives nonetheless. If I were to actually bring it up, I assume everyone would look at me like I am crazy so just based on that assumption I will never bring it up.

I posted this in January. Yesterday the dream became reality. One Friday a month we schedule an outdoor sports day for our teams at work (soccer, volleyball, kickball, ultimate, cricket). We had already rescheduled May's event and yesterday it was pouring rain when we were supposed to be on the sand courts playing volleyball. (Yes, we have sand volleyball courts at work - and putting greens and a sports field with a baseball diamond and soccer goals.)

Anyway, I hinted that instead of rescheduling again we could maybe play a board game. Once that discussion started I pulled Captain Sonar out of a desk drawer and we grabbed a conference room and were off. We have about 13 people, so I asked for eight people to play and I taught, answered questions and shared strategic tips. Others watched with interest and snacked. They played turn based since it was the first time. I think everyone had a lot of fun with it. One person asked where they could buy it. Unfortunately it is one of the two that are moving to DC at the end of the month.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:44 pm

I've played Clank 4 times in the last week. What a great game.

Anonymous Bosch · Post by **Anonymous Bosch** » Sun Jun 04, 2017 12:14 pm

coopasonic wrote:One Friday a month we schedule an outdoor sports day for our teams at work (soccer, volleyball, kickball, ultimate, cricket).

Texans playing cricket? Now that's throwing a googly.