OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[YellowKing]

I decided to tackle SWORD & SORCERY again as I was in the mood for a dungeon crawl and it's one I never really gave a proper chance. I'd always get bogged down in the rules and give up on it.

This time around a bunch of the previous attempts had apparently sunk their way into my dense brain, as everything just started to click. While I still had to consult the rule book quite a bit, by the end of the session things were flowing pretty smoothly. I went with a three character party which seemed like the sweet spot and was plenty manageable.

Unfortunately I got totally screwed over with bad enemy draws and dice rolls, so I wound up running out of time in the prologue. I lost due to discarding the last Event card, because my party couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and took FOREVER to kill anything. Ugh. However, it was a GREAT learning experience and I finally feel comfortable with the game mechanics. I'll give it another go this weekend, perhaps with a slightly different character lineup.

UPDATE - Took it for another spin and this time got past the prologue fairly easily. Swapped my lame ass Legolas archer out for Auriel the Sorceress. That was a game changer. Instead of chasing a raider around the map until time ran out like last game, I just nuked the shit out of him. KA-BLAM. Got a crap ton of money out of the prologue so I'm headed into the first proper mission loaded for bear.

[YellowKing]

Tuesday Game Night Update:

Played three rounds of THUNDERBIRDS last night with the TRACY ISLAND expansion. This expansion adds two new vehicles, four new pod vehicles, an island, and three new characters. It also replaces the Disaster cards from the core game so that they're compatible with the new characters. In general it makes the game slightly harder, but I would play with it from here on out because the new characters and vehicles are great.

We played two games on Standard difficulty and lost both. Played one on Intro difficulty and won (barely). It's really a testament to this game that it can challenge a group of experienced, hardcore co-op players like ourselves. We've played literally every version of Pandemic, and yet this game can still kick our ass. For a game based on a children's television show featuring puppets, that's high praise.

I REALLY love this game and consider it one of my favorite co-ops. I think the hook for me is the (mitigatable) dice rolls. It adds just enough of a gambling/luck element to elevate it beyond base Pandemic.

Once I got back home I tackled Quest 2 of SWORD & SORCERY. This quest ran much smoother now that I have the rules down, and I finished with all characters at Level 2 and a ton of money. So far I've found it to be just challenging enough to be enjoyable, but not so challenging that I have to stress over it.

The jury's out on whether I will pursue this game's expansions. I'll wait until I get to the end of the campaign and see how I feel. i just have SO many games in the backlog that I may just call this one finished when I get to the end and move on. That's not a fault of the game, just my backlog. I'm having a lot of fun with it and it absolutely satisfies the dungeon crawler itch.

[AWS260]

[MonkeyFinger]

Sorry... and that is?

[RMC]

Sorry... and that is?

Twilight Imperium. It is an awesome 4X game, but takes forever to play.

[MonkeyFinger]

Ah, thanks. And several (what I assume to be) turkey handprints are spectating. Nice.

[AWS260]

Yep. My cousin picked it up a year ago, and this was the first time he's been able to play through a full game.

Took us maybe 8 hours for a 4-player game. We were all learning, so I don't think that's too bad. The time certainly flew by.

[RMC]

Yep. My cousin picked it up a year ago, and this was the first time he's been able to play through a full game.

Took us maybe 8 hours for a 4-player game. We were all learning, so I don't think that's too bad. The time certainly flew by.

Is that the latest version? My group has played it a few times, and it seems to go a little faster than the older versions.

We enjoy it, just have to plan a day for it.

[hentzau]

Got a few games in over the Turkey Day holiday. Played Villainous with the family, lost to Ursula while my Captain Hook was still trying to get Peter Pan to the Jolly Roger.

Then a game of Gaslands, 50 cans a side. Amazing mayhem as usual.

Finished it up with a game of Clank last night. Pulled off a win, but the other two players had never played before.

[AWS260]

Is that the latest version? My group has played it a few times, and it seems to go a little faster than the older versions.

Yes, it was the 4th edition.

[Fishbelly]

Played Villainous for the first time, though it dragged fiercly--due to my wife thinking "My non-gamer parents will love this, because they love Disney. That'll make for a fun 6 player game!". Sigh.

I think I will like the game, with fewer players and NOT my in-laws.

Broke out Bargain Quest to demo to my daughter and son-in-law. Lots of fun with the right crowd. Sell items and weapons to cannon fodder adventurers, fleecing them for all their cash and hoping they survive to come spend more money in your shop. It was a tight race for victory points, which helped keep everyone engaged.

Finally, I got to play Mechs vs. Minions with other players. My family fully embraced the wackiness and we had a glorious time maneuvering our glitching mechs around, stomping and whacking minions to our heart's content. Can't wait to play the next mission for this one.

[YellowKing]

Nice! MECHS VS MINIONS is one of my favorites. So much fun. We went through the whole campaign a year or two ago but I may need to break it out again.

I got in my first game of ARKHAM HORROR 3RD EDITION.

I really, really like it even though I got my ass kicked. Rules-wise it was pretty simple to pick up (particularly since I've played all the other Arkham games), but there's definitely a strategy learning curve.

It really is like Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror: The LCG had a baby. That's not a bad thing, as I love both games. Having been a fan of the FF Arkham games for years, it's really neat to see how they pulled concepts from here and there for this third edition to create something that feels both familiar and fresh at the same time.

I'll also say the modular board is not as terrible as it seemed from seeing pictures (where people compared it to a space station). Once you get in close and can see the detail, it makes sense. I really like the concept, and can see how having it modular opens up some really cool possibilities for future expansions. The Arkham Horror card game uses the concept of modular locations in very unique ways, so I support the idea completely.

My game group loves Mansions of Madness and AH: LCG, so I think this one will be a big hit when I get it to the table. In the meantime, it's a fantastic solo experience and allows me to scratch my Cthulhu itch when I'm not with the group. So that's a win-win.

The one negative I've seen repeated is the small number of scenarios (4) included in the box, but at first glance the replay value still seems sky high. While the initial setup and overarching goals are the same, there's no way to know how encounter cards and the token bag will change the game state, so it's going to play out differently no matter what.

[Fishbelly]

My game group loves Mansions of Madness and AH: LCG, so I think this one will be a big hit when I get it to the table. In the meantime, it's a fantastic solo experience and allows me to scratch my Cthulhu itch when I'm not with the group. So that's a win-win.

PLEASE don't give me an excuse to buy another Cthulhu-based game. My wife loves Mansions of Madness, I love the Arkham LCG, and I quite like Eldritch Horror. I'm so weak . . .

[YellowKing]

I've waffled back and forth on whether it's worth owning both Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror 3rd Edition. For me the choice was fairly easy because I don't own Eldritch, and figured I'd be better off just grabbing AH and buying into that ecosystem since it's the new hotness.

The advantage to EH is that it's a little more open-ended in terms of replayability, since it's not following a scenario structure. For me, however, that's the only big advantage. I like the streamlining they did with AH, the incorporation of the card game mechanics, and (IMO) the better solo scaling.

[Smoove_B]

Scaling in general has been my major issue with any of the FFG Cthulhu games. Elder Sign seems to work great for <2 people and we managed to finish the LCG with two investigators (cycled between numerous ones that did go insane). However, for Mansions of Madness (1st and 2nd ed.) and Eldritch Horror, none seemed possible with fewer than 4 investigators. And if I'm remembering correctly, there was some wacky difficulty scaling with Eldritch Horror where 2 investigators was nearly impossible, 3 was noticeably easier and then 4 was nearly as difficult as 2. I never actually played Arkham Horror, but I'm pretty sure it also had scaling issues. I haven't researched how well the 3rd edition deals with it, but it does seem to be a recurring problem for many of their titles.

[YellowKing]

The general consensus on BGG is that 3rd Edition scales much better than Eldritch (at least in the fewer players direction). Because the Mythos phase has you draw 2 tokens per player, the amount of bad stuff that can possibly happen per round is directly proportional to the number of players. The trade-off is that you have fewer total actions to deal with the board, but items and spells can help offset that a bit.

I'm really interested to see how it plays at higher player counts. Huge total pool of actions, but you're drawing half the Mythos bag every round. Yikes.

I've lost twice with 2 characters; I'm going to try a true solo round next and see if it feels any easier. Some folks have reported winning the most with just one character. The fact that it's even *possible* to win with 1 character is a big step forward for an Arkham game.

[Smoove_B]

I hadn't realized you could actually do a true solo with this new 3rd edition. Not helping! But yeah, if that's really possible it does represent a huge change in design. Interesting. I'm definitely going to look into it more.

[raydude]

I hadn't realized you could actually do a true solo with this new 3rd edition. Not helping! But yeah, if that's really possible it does represent a huge change in design. Interesting. I'm definitely going to look into it more.

Yeah, the solo thing sold me on it. Even though I also recently bought the FFG Cthulhu card game and still haven't played it. I'm weak.

[hepcat]

Saturday before last I played Heroes of Terrinoth, Ashes of the Phoenixborn[url], and [url=https://www.boardgamegeek.co ... e Doctors. We also tackled the last mission in Mechs vs. Minions, which we lost. I think that one requires more than 2 people though.

Heroes of Terrinoth seems a little too easy at the second difficulty level. Once you get past the initial swarm of enemies and set up a plan to manage them, you can usually cruise through to the end. But I'm betting that same strategy won't hold true with the highest difficulty level. It's the same game as Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game though, and I really enjoyed that one. So this one is a no brainer for fans of that.

Ashes and The Twelve Doctors are just pure fun. I never have a bad time playing these.

Mechs vs Minions started off easily enough, but quickly went south as the boss villain just destroyed us. Two players can't really finish this one, I suspect. At least not the two players that were playing it that day, that's for sure.

The day after Thanksgiving I had a few more folks over for a day of gaming and turkey sandwiches. One player was late getting out, so I got in another game of The Twelve Doctors with the first player that showed up.

Then we broke out T.I.M.E. Stories. I have resisted this one for ages as it's a one and done type game. You play through the adventure then you're finished with it for good. However, it takes multiple sessions to finish it as you have to go back and do it again if you don't succeed the previous time.

I really like the game, but I only own it because I got it dirt cheap off a clearance table at Barnes and Nobles, then found a story expansion for 5 bucks on another clearance table a gaming store. I couldn't recommend it for anyone at full price, but at that cut rate cost, it's well worth it.

Then we played Zarathud's copy of Alien Artifacts, a space tableau builder with quite a bit of meat on its bones. It ends with scoring what is essentially set collections, but the theme was applied well enough that I didn't feel like that was all I was doing. I'd give it another go if offered.

We broke out Heroes of Terrinoth again after that. We won, rather easily, but it was tough at the beginning. I also suspect we gave ourselves a boost by skipping a turn, but I was in the minority in thinking we had.

[YellowKing]

Ok, played a true solo (one character) game of ARKHAM HORROR 3RD EDITION. The good news is that it plays just fine with one investigator - the only thing you miss out on is taking advantage of any abilities that also affect allies. The bad news is I still lost. So I'm sitting at 0-3 for the first scenario.

True solo seemed *slightly* easier at first (as in, I obtained certain goals quicker than I had with 2), but I still lost in about the same way so it was pretty much a wash. The caveat is that my investigator, who was really well-rounded due to a ton of items, died suddenly and unexpectedly midway through the game. This left me replacing him with a starter character who, though talented, didn't have the resources he did. I'd be really curious to see how the rest of the game would have played out had he not died.

Even though I'm 0-3, I'm enjoying the challenge. My games tend to average around an hour and a half to two hours, which sure beats 2nd edition's all day sessions.

[hepcat]

Just a heads up: the new Fallout Wasteland Warfare 2 player core game is on thinkgeek.com. For a few more hours, everything on their site is 50 percent off with the code DOTCOM. Free shipping at 35 bucks or more. So for about 40 bucks, you can get an 80 dollar miniatures game that includes solo rules and a campaign mode.

[$iljanus]

So I recently bought Heroes of Terranoth and broke it out last week. It helped that I owned Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game so the learning curve wasn't bad at all. But if anyone wanted to try the game without having owned the Warhammer version it wouldn't be hard since the rules are easy to pick up. Was trying to "solve" a pesky Goblin problem (by killing everything in sight of course) which is the first scenario and even though there were some pitched battles at times it wasn't a difficult starting scenario to win. I loved the synergy between characters and I look forward to bringing this to the table more often since setup isn't very involved. There's no campaign like the Warhammer version but I'm betting that future expansions will probably have one. Since FFG owns the Terranoth title I'm hoping that it will be well supported by them.

I currently have Nemo's War 2nd Ed. on the table. In my shame this is the first time playing the game after getting it when the kickstarter was finished. It really is a work of art with the art style of the board and counters, the stylized font, and the story on each event card. It's a packed rulebook but as I read through it as I play everything is well explained and it all makes sense to me. My motive for my first play is to explore the seas. I'm trying not to sink ships for a while but the ocean is starting to get rather crowded and those ship upgrades aren't cheap. I'm glad that I finally started a game and hope to have more adventures in the future. Looking forward to causing some uprisings to fight the colonizers and oppressors!

[YellowKing]

Played a couple of 4-person games of X-FILES LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS last night.

I'm still torn on this one. We lost both games handily, even though we're LE veterans who breezed through Aliens and Predator.

My biggest problem is the Evidence collection mechanic that replaces the objectives from Aliens. If you get a Lead, you have an opportunity to reveal evidence by doing some action and then collect that evidence by doing the same action again. Any evidence you collect weakens the final enemy. All well and good.

The problem is that if a Lead is not revealed early in the Shadows, you're pretty much screwed. And it's going to be your only chance at it (since there is only one lead per evidence in the deck). In one game, by pure luck of the draw, Leads were revealed late or in The Field, and we had virtually no chance to collect them. Contrast that to Alien's objective mechanics, which didn't just "disappear" if they were revealed late.

Yes, I know the expectation is that you will be scanning the Shadows early and often in order to reveal those Leads and give yourself time to work on them. But we found it very difficult to get the Attack necessary to scan those expensive Shadow slots - particularly when we were fending off so many enemies (this game throws a LOT of enemies at you).

It may just be a lack of strategic understanding on our part, but the game feels like you have much less control over your deck building combined with a relentless onslaught of cards you can't handle because you never have the resources to deal with them (due to the sub-par deck building).

On the other hand, I've read reviews from people who consider this one of the best LE games from a game mechanics perspective, so who knows. Our group enjoyed it, but it wasn't an enthusiastic reception. More of a "Well we gave that a go, what's next?"

[YellowKing]

Haven't played it yet, but I did pick up LEGENDS OF ANDOR on sale today at Amazon. I've been waiting it to come down in price, as the base set has been unusually high (and a bit scarce) as of late.

This is the last game we played at GenCon this last year and we really enjoyed it. I'm well aware that the game is more of a puzzle-solving mechanic than a traditional fantasy RPG, but that's fine by me. It will most likely be something I just go through solo anyway.

[hentzau]

Got in a couple of games of Dungeon Mayhem with my kids this weekend. Fun light bloodthirsty filler game. Takes about 5 minutes to learn and about 15 to play. Cards and actions are fun. Recommended.

[YellowKing]

Finally won a 4-player game of LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: X-FILES. Damn this game is hard. We barely pulled it out. Overall my group has been a little lukewarm on it. Two of our group have never seen the X-Files, so the IP was meaningless. The guy that was a big X-Files fan disliked the randomness of the Lead/Evidence mechanic, and preferred objectives in Alien even if they aren't quite as replayable.

I like the game quite a bit, but there are some aspect of it in terms of the deck building that I don't find as satisfying as ALIEN. However, I think I'd need to give it some more plays and experiment with some different strategies before I can really judge.

[LordMortis]

Got the Colonies and Prelude expansions for the full set (minus promos which I refuse to pay for like they are rare magic singles) for Terraformnig Mars. It's still a crowd pleaser for BB2112 and redrun but now the pace is too slow for me and my patience/attentativenessitude between my actions is wearing too thin. A draft game for three players who have played a lot over the last year is about three hours and the pace has a bit more drag, as Colonies adds a whole new decision making and balancing dimension, which is ostensibly good. I'll still play but play will now mean one game and then the rest of gaming time for light and quick games, not a day of TM (meaning two rounds, taking six hours)

[YellowKing]

We started back into MANSIONS OF MADNESS 2nd Edition with the next 9 scenarios we haven't played. This includes everything from Sanctum of Twilight, Streets of Arkham, and Horrific Journeys as well as 1 DLC scenario.

I had almost forgotten how amazingly fun this game is. Even though we didn't beat back the Elder Gods this evening, we had a blast. Tonight cemented this as one of my favorite games, period.

We currently own everything available for it, and I'm *almost* caught up with painting all the minis. I've got all 36 investigators done, and am now focusing on the remaining monsters I have left. I'm hoping to finish them up over the next couple of weeks and take one massive photo of every mini available for the game fully painted.

[Fishbelly]

We currently own everything available for it, and I'm *almost* caught up with painting all the minis. I've got all 36 investigators done, and am now focusing on the remaining monsters I have left. I'm hoping to finish them up over the next couple of weeks and take one massive photo of every mini available for the game fully painted.

Please post a photo. Maybe I can show my wife to shame her into painting the rest of our Mansions of Madness minis.

She had never painted minis before, and ignored my suggestion to start with a small game with only a few models. She quit halfway thru, and now the rest are just sitting there, naked and neglected.

[YellowKing]

(Click to embiggen):



I'll take a better pic once I have everything done; this was just a quick shot of all 36 investigators painted I took at game night last night. There are a handful in there that I've got to finish the bases on, but other than that they're pretty much done. Not my best work, but these were quick and dirty in order to get them to the table.

The black mat to the right is one of those super expensive Quiver gaming mats. One of the guys in our group sprung for it and while I can't see laying out that kind of money for one, I have to admit it's REALLY nice. Particularly for Mansions it keeps the tiles from sliding out of position, and we ditched our dice trays to just roll directly on top of it which saved a bunch of room.

[AWS260]

Yesterday I taught the kid Paper Tales, and he picked up on it right away. I love how tight this little kingdom-builder is, with lots of meaningful decisions packed into four short rounds.

We also learned Isle of Monsters, a game of raising adorable monsters in cages and then setting them loose to terrorize the populace. Each round has three phases: Nurture, in which you capture and feed monsters (each monster is a card, and food is represented by tokens); Mature, in which fully-fed monsters leave their cages and move into your hand; and Scare, in which you play monsters from your hand in a scaring contest that generates VPs. It's well-tuned for families, I think -- lightly competitive, with a bit of friction as you compete for food, and a shower of VPs so that everyone feels they're making progress.

[Daveman]

Picked up Pandemic: Fall of Rome yesterday and played a two-player game last night. It's another take on Pandemic where the goal is to fight off 5 encroaching barbarian tribes throughout Europe and defend Rome. It has city cards, action cards, different player roles with special abilities, outbreak and infection rate tracks (called Decline and Invasion rate in this game), everything you'd expect from a Pandemic game but this one has a very light wargame aspect to it.

The five tribes all have spawn points in Asia and Eastern Europe with invasion/migration routes that spread out from them marked out on the map, most of which wind their way toward Rome. When you draw a card to see where new barbarians will invade you first look to see how far that tribe has progressed along their route. If you drew a card that would spawn in the 5th city along that route but they've only progressed to the 2nd city, the new barbarian in placed in the 3rd city instead... so for the most part barbarians spread gradually from the east.

At a glance we thought this might make the game relatively simpler... just focus your attention on the east and they'll never get through. But, when you draw a revolt card (this game's version of Epidemics) a large group of barbarians will spawn in any city drawn, so you could suddenly wind up with a large group in north Africa or in Spain and that's bad. So you do need to spread out or at least be ready to respond anywhere.

The big difference in this game is that combating and removing barbarian cubes isn't simply a matter of moving your pawn to a city and spending actions to discard them... you need to battle them with legions. Legions are a separate meeple in the game that must be recruited in cities with forts (think Research Stations). Early in the game each recruit action gets you 3 legions but as the Invasion rate increases you get 2 and finally only 1 legion per recruit action. There's no limit to the number of legions per city but a player's pawn can only take up to 3 legions with them as they move. You will gradually lose legions so eventually you need to return to forts to get more.

You lose legions because battling barbarians also involves custom d6. Combat lets you roll 1 die per legion with you (max of 3) and each die rolled can eliminate 0-2 barbarians at a possible cost of 0-1 legion. It's not too chaotic or frustrating as the odds are in your favor. Only 1 side fails to kill any barbarians, most kill 1-2 at a cost of 1 legion so it's not so much "will I kill any barbarians?" as it is "how many legions will I lose?" Unless there's a large concentration of barbarians you rarely want to roll more than 1-2 dice since rolling 3 dice might mean losing 3 legions.

You can also choose to leave legions behind as you move. If a barbarian would spawn in a city with a legion the legion is killed instead, so you can preemptively fight the spread of barbarians which is a nice touch.

To win you need to either make alliances with each tribe (same mechanic of cashing in matching colored cards in Pandemic) or by removing all of a tribe off the map. Our game last night was a win with 4 allied tribes, then we wiped out the Saxons since we'd discarded a lot of their cards during the game. Allied tribes still spawn and invade but there's a neat mechanic where a player pawn can convert allied barbarians into legions by paying a matching colored card. This is great late-game because you generally don't need those colored cards anymore and your native recruiting rate lowers as the game goes on.

[AWS260]

I received Raiders of the North Sea for Christmas, and we took it for a test drive. Raiders is a worker-placement game about gathering a band of Vikings, provisioning your longship, and raiding innocent harbors and monasteries. I like the theme, and the card art is fantastic.



The actions cycle quickly, and there's a nice rhythm to preparing for and then executing a raid. In our game, 1st (my son) and 2nd (me) ended up very close in score. I gathered more points from raiding, but he netted a big bonus for sending a bunch of his crew to Valhalla (a.k.a., getting them killed on raids).

As far as worker placement games, I'd rank Raiders of the North Sea below Everdell, but I looove Everdell. Raider is fun, easy to pick up, and I'm glad that I own it. My only criticisms are that it ends in a math-y scramble to max out victory points, which doesn't feel very thematic, and that the occasional dice rolls are so inconsequential that they could have been left out altogether.

[MonkeyFinger]

So... Everdell? Looks like it's what, a $48 game that is going for $100? Collector's Edition over $150... dang. Did you Kickstart it?

[AWS260]

I bought the collector's edition at PAX Unplugged for $85, which seems reasonable for what you get in the box -- a sprawling board, a ridiculous slot-together 3D tree, adorable meeples (hedgehogs! turtles!), metal coins, squishy plastic berries, top-notch art on everything. I wouldn't pay more than that.

Scarcity is driving up the price, but I think the publisher is doing a second print run for release sometime in 2019.

[coopasonic]

Eight games of Aeon's End Legacy... I don't want to say anything else because it would be cruel to hepcat. Actually, maybe not saying anything is more cruel. I'm good with that.

[RMC]

Eight games of Aeon's End Legacy... I don't want to say anything else because it would be cruel to hepcat. Actually, maybe not saying anything is more cruel. I'm good with that.

We did play two games of Aeon's Legacy at his Ohio gathering, and I think his copy is still sitting in Chicago.

We also won a game of Manzions of Madness, which honetly was one of the best feelings in playing board games.

[baelthazar]

Eight games of Aeon's End Legacy... I don't want to say anything else because it would be cruel to hepcat. Actually, maybe not saying anything is more cruel. I'm good with that.

Without spoiling, can you answer a question - if we want to play but only use two mages, does that mean our other two mages will not get upgrades (or we cannot start another campaign with the leftover cards)? I heard that people were just upgrading unplayed mages as they went (as if they were doing a 4-player game). Any thoughts?

[coopasonic]

Yes, you could easily use the leftover stickers on the mages you aren't using. Doing it all over again with the other two mages could be a challenge with all the stickers that get put on various cards.

[hepcat]

Eight games of Aeon's End Legacy... I don't want to say anything else because it would be cruel to hepcat. Actually, maybe not saying anything is more cruel. I'm good with that.

We did play two games of Aeon's Legacy at his Ohio gathering, and I think his copy is still sitting in Chicago.

We also won a game of Manzions of Madness, which honetly was one of the best feelings in playing board games.

We played Aeon's End, not Aeon's Legacy. That's sitting on my desk at work. I'm going to get it when I go back in Friday. Then I have 4 days to play it! I think tomorrow I'm going to break out my new copy of Thunderstone Quest and try a solo game using a variant I found on BGG.

And yeah, that Mansions of Madness dirigible scenario will forever stand out as one of my best Lovecraft experiences. God I love that game.