OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[Jeff V]

I did.



(not my pic)

We had it too. Not much fun really.

Certainly looks nicer. Anyway, here's the posted video on our project.

[TheMix]

Pretty neat. Nicely done!

[YellowKing]

Have almost wrapped up my STUFFED FABLES campaign, with just one story left to go tonight.

I've enjoyed it a great deal (and actually found it tougher in some spots than I imagined), but last night's adventures brought to light two problems I have with it:

1. Certain maps can be very swingy in terms of ease or difficulty. For instance, in one map I simply had to get all my stuffies from one side of a bridge to another. Unfortunately through some bad dice pulls one stuffy got stuck in a constant loop of getting pushed off the bridge, and only with extremely lucky dice pulls would I have any chance of getting out. It was a good example of a relatively easy map becoming frustratingly difficult due to bad luck.

On the flip side, there are some maps where I got killer rolls right out of the gate and completed the map objectives in a couple of turns. Kind of anti-climactic.

2. There are some map rules that are just downright unclear, and in one I found an error that makes it virtually impossible to win with the wrong dice draws (the creator did acknowledge the error on BGG). Frustrating.

However, I will say that unlike most other games where I'll pore over BGG for rules clarifications, I didn't do it in this case as I just wanted to knock it out. So while I can't defend unclear rules or errors, I will say that I didn't make the extra effort to get those answers which may have saved me some irritation.

So it's not a perfect game, but I can't deny I've had a great time with it even playing solo. I definitely understand why it's such a hit as a family game and introductory dungeon crawler.

[paulbaxter]

Last weekend I received my copy of the new edition of Fury of Dracula, having read lots of good things about it on BGG. Managed to find a "dinged and dented" copy online at about 40% off, which was very nice, especially as it has no actually visible damage.

The game bears a few similarities to something like Eldritch Horror, with a group of monster hunters moving around a map in search of clues. Except in this case one player is the quarry, Dracula himself. Dracula moves around the map invisibly, leaving little traps and special presents where he has been. Beyond that it's a bit hard to describe, but I thought it was great fun. My only caveat for those new to the game would be to remember when you play as Dracula to take extra care to make sure all of your plays are legal within the rules. If the hunters find that you accidentally broke a rule, the penalty on you is pretty harsh. This makes sense in the game context, as the hunters have to use deduction to find you and if you move illegally, that breaks the game for them.

[coopasonic]

I don't think you need to describe Fury of Dracula for most of us. It's a pretty well known game. Mostly known for being an overly complex Letters from Whitechapel.

Specter Ops is another pretty interesting implementation of the hidden movement/deduction mechanic.

[AWS260]

Last weekend I received my copy of the new edition of Fury of Dracula

A good choice! I like Fury of Dracula a lot, although my wife is much better at playing Dracula than I am at playing the investigators -- and she always plays Dracula.

[YellowKing]

Also forgot to mention I got FALLOUT: THE BOARD GAME for free from my 10th work anniversary. We get to pick from a catalog what we want, and it was the only decent board game available.

I've heard mixed reviews; some people love it, some people hate it. However, I have read the New California expansion fixes a lot of the problems people had with the base game in terms of endgame scoring, and adds the true solo and co-op I'm looking for. And I'm a big fan of the video game series, so at least the theme appeals to me.

Haven't had a chance to crack it open yet but will hopefully get to mess around with it this weekend.

[hepcat]

It’s fun, especially win New California. In solo before that, the game seemed too unbalanced against you. But the expansion takes away the wonky end game for the core game and replaces it with a better alternative.

[$iljanus]

It’s fun, especially win New California. In solo before that, the game seemed too unbalanced against you. But the expansion takes away the wonky end game for the core game and replaces it with a better alternative.

This is good to know! I played the base game once and it's been sitting on the shelf because it didn't quite grab me. Kind of regretted it because I love the world of Fallout. But after reading this and various comments on BGG I pulled the trigger on New California and hopefully the game will see the table more.

[hepcat]

If you love Fallout, you should check out Fallout Wasteland Warfare. I don’t even like the world of Fallout that much and I still love that game. Both 2 player AND solo.

[hentzau]

If you love Fallout, you should check out Fallout Wasteland Warfare. I don’t even like the world of Fallout that much and I still love that game. Both 2 player AND solo.

I really need to get this painted up and on the table.

[$iljanus]

If you love Fallout, you should check out Fallout Wasteland Warfare. I don’t even like the world of Fallout that much and I still love that game. Both 2 player AND solo.

I'm trying to exercise restraint by purchasing the New California expansion in order to give a currently owned game more playtime. Also a new campaign for the SW: Imperial Assault app just dropped using the Return to Hoth expansion so I had to buy that recently. And I couldn't resist buying Leaving Earth along with the Outer Planets and Stations expansions and I have to say that I never had so much fun doing basic math until that game and I think it's coming back to the table soon! So if the usual pattern continues I'll be going to BGG to do some light reading on Fallout Wasteland and we'll see where that leads...

[hepcat]

If you love Fallout, you should check out Fallout Wasteland Warfare. I don’t even like the world of Fallout that much and I still love that game. Both 2 player AND solo.

I really need to get this painted up and on the table.

If you haven't read the rules and want a walk through, or just wanna play, let me know.

[YellowKing]

I just snagged a copy of CLANK! from the clearance bin at Barnes & Noble for $27. Amazon's got it for $38 so not a huge savings, but for under $30 I hated to pass it up. I'm not a huge fan of "beat your best score" solo experiences, but I think the theme, deck-building, and not-overly-competitive gameplay may get it to our group table. And I've heard enough good things that I"m sure I'll enjoy the solo experience to some degree.

[coopasonic]

I'm a big fan of Clank! though I wouldn't imagine playing it solo.

I just ordered "Fog of Love" and I am now actually looking forward to Valentine's Day possibly for the first time since I got married.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I played Pulsar 2843 for the first time this weekend. It's a dice drafting game where you can use the dice to either perform actions that require a specific die number (e.g. buy a technology) or you can use the die to move your space ship around the map to settle worlds. One nice thing is that there is a lot of variability in the set-up and so you may play many games before seeing the same technologies. It also seems like the game could be played in ~60 minutes with experienced players. Despite getting crushed, I had fun with it, but I do wish there was more player interaction; the guys I played with were looking at their phones most of the time when it wasn't their turn.

[Fishbelly]

I just ordered "Fog of Love" and I am now actually looking forward to Valentine's Day possibly for the first time since I got married.

My wife and I just played Fog of Love recently, and while it ran a titch long for her, we both enjoyed it. The game is a bit dry, unless you encourage table talk and enjoy role playing your relationship.

I picked up the paranormal romance expansion, hoping she'll dig it and it will drag her just a bit further into the world of board games.

[YellowKing]

I actually got CLANK! to the table with my gaming group. This is astounding because we are almost completely co-op focused, and I think in 2+ years this is only the second competitive game we've ever gotten to the table.

However, everyone really loved it. I got greedy and died in the depths, so my score didn't count. Had I made it out, I would have won.

The first and second place players were within 1 point of each other.

It was a really tense endgame, and much laughter and screaming ensued. So needless to say it was a big hit. I don't think it's going to suddenly cause this group to dip into competitive stuff (our co-op backlog is still far too large), but I do think it loosened some of the resistance they have to competitive games in the future.

[YellowKing]

I had a mega-gaming marathon today, starting at 9:30am and finishing up at 8:30pm minus a couple of breaks for lunch and dinner.

First up was a concerted effort to finish off the last three Mythos packs of THE PATH TO CARCOSA campaign in ARKHAM HORROR: THE LCG. This has been a long time coming, and we finally knocked it out, even though we officially "lost" 2 of the 3 we played. Still a great time and it was nice to finally get this one behind us after it being on hold for six months.

Then we broke out some HOPLOMACHUS: THE LOST CITIES. It was my buddy's first time seeing the game, and my first time back playing it in a few months. After a bit of a rocky start remembering the rules, we soon got into the flow. This was my first time playing it co-op and not solo, but I was really impressed how well it worked. We had a great time, even though we ran out of time to finish all three rounds. Definitely looking forward to getting this back into the solo rotation as part of my 10x10 challenge.

[$iljanus]

My copy of the expansion for Talon, Talon 1000, and replacement ship tiles just shipped from GMT. For anyone who hasn't played this little gem of a game, it's essentially Starfleet Battles with a rulebook that can be read and understood within 30 minutes. For those who played Starfleet Battles back in the day, that analogy should require no explanation.

You use dry erase markers to track your power, weapons, speed, damage, etc. on the laminated ship tiles. It's a lot of fun if you enjoy pushing space ships around a table but want a little more depth than a Wings of Glory style game. The expansion adds a full solo AI, as well as...well...over 1000 scenarios. Can't wait to get this back on the table.

Soooo...I’ve been trying to get more of the games I own to the table so in my quest to do this I ordered Talon and the Talon 1000 expansion for the solo AI. Yeah it’s a rather counterintuitive decision and I don’t even remember what the hell I was reading on BGG that led me to this. But it’s on the way and I’m curious if you’ve played against the AI in the expansion, Hepcat, and what your impressions are. I was a big Starfleet Battles player too and after reading the rules I think this will be up my alleyway. I also wonder if we could play against each other via email or on the forum with pretty pictures and witty commentary?

[hepcat]

I haven't had a chance to get in a solo game yet, but I'm hoping to do so in the next week or two. Just got a little sidetracked by a lot of other great games.

I have played it 1 vs 1 a few times in the past and it really is a streamlined version of Starfleet Battles. If you enjoyed that, you'll like this.

Not sure how you could do an online play. But I'll check around to see if anyone has done it and what they used/did.

[AWS260]

We hauled out Claustrophobia for the first time in a long time. The old girl's still got it.

I was the humans, while my better half played the demonspawn. As with most games of Claustrophobia, things looked pretty good for humans over the first few turns. But the endless stream of troglodytes took its toll. When it seemed like victory was within our grasp, an unexpected dead end forced us to retrace our steps through the catacombs, and we were ground to a bloody, inevitable pulp. Great fun was had by all, except perhaps the condemned convicts who were forced to sacrifice themselves in the bowels of hell.

[YellowKing]

We wrapped up Mansions of Madness last night and finished off the last of the expansion scenarios we haven't played. At this point we've done every bit of content for the game. Last scenario was a lot of fun as we had a random traitor (Deep One Hybrid) in our midst, so there was a lot of finger pointing and blame being thrown around for every unfortunate event that happened.

Then it was on to PANDEMIC: FALL OF ROME. This was our first attempt at a Standard difficulty game, and we beat it quite easily. Got lucky pulling two of the big "bottleneck" cities early and managed to get forts down that we kept pumped with legions. End result is that we essentially shut down two tribes. A quick ally with orange left us only two remaining tribes to deal with which we focused on mopping up. With the Vestsalis pulling event cards right and left, it was a simple matter to wipe everyone out.

I still think the Vestalis is overpowered for the game, particularly if you can keep the choke points blocked up. Next game I'd love to house rule her out of the game. Essentially we wound up getting to play around 10 event cards, which is just game breaking in my opinion.

[gbasden]

Every time I get together with my local boardgaming friends, we always seem to fall into our Gloomhaven campaign. It's been going well so far - we've all retired our first character and I'm up to level 4 on my Plagueherald. It's a nice substitute for a full pen and paper RPG given that none of us really has the time to be a good DM.

[Daveman]

We've had different experiences with the Vestalis, but maybe we've just been unlucky. She winds up drawing key colors she can't really afford to trade for event cards, and/or gets stuck having to fight a lot and her negative combat special keeps coming up. Glad to hear you're having success with her!

[hepcat]

Spoiler:

I'm up to level 4 on my Plagueherald.

Careful. Some folks may not have unlocked that one yet.

[Isgrimnur]

My copy of Andean Abyss came in.

Of course, we will have to stop playing Downtown to ever get it to the table. Perhaps it will see the light of day this year.

[Isgrimnur]

Everyone needs reference manuals for wargaming, right?

[YellowKing]

Kind of an oddball choice last night, but our game group was trying to knock out some simple one-offs before we dive into Gloomhaven.

The evening's entertainment was CASTLE PANIC. We started with the base game (which one of our group had never played), then added The Wizard's Tower, then added the Engines of War expansion which none of us had played yet.

The first (base) game was surprisingly close. With one tower left, a monster in our keep, and literally one turn before defeat, we pulled off a miracle and drew a Barbarian which won the game for us.

I'm a bit torn on the expansion. I liked the new enemies introduced as well as the ballista and catapult which were awesome. However, it also introduces a ton of other buildable traps and things that we just never bothered with. Why waste time and resources trying to build a one-time use pit or spring trap when you can just focus on killing stuff? After building the ballista and catapult, we pretty much ignore everything else for the rest of the game and won.

Next week we're getting in the Porkchop Express for a ride to BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA!

[coopasonic]

I gave my wife Fog of Love for Valentine's Day (any excuse for a board game right?). I've looked over the rules, watched the SU&SD and Watch it Played videos and it looks like it might actually be fun. Hopefully she will play it with me!

[AWS260]

Tonight I played Architects of the West Kingdom with some guys from my FLGS. It's a worker placement game about building landmarks in the Carolingian Empire. While there are a million worker placement games out there, I find the mechanics in this one particularly satisfying. Work locations are open, so there's no blocking other players, and you can multiply the benefits of a location by sending multiple workers there. But if you build up a sizeable workforce on a single space, another player is likely to swoop in and arrest those workers, sending them to prison for a tidy profit. You'll then have to take on debt to ransom them and put them back to work. It's a great way to empower players to keep the game balanced -- both tense and easy to grok.

In our game, I focused on building the cathedral, a special landmark that grants a lot of points. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the cathedral that I neglected to build anything else and came in last by a sizeable margin. On my very last turn, I sent some of the leaders' workers to prison, knowing that imprisoned workers subtract victory points at the end of the game. He lost by a single point -- a satisfying (a)moral victory for me.

[YellowKing]

Architects is high on my wish list. I've heard great things. Apparently it has a really good solo variant as well.

[AWS260]

The owner told me that, too. He doesn't normally like the solo versions of multiplayer games, but he liked this one.

[hepcat]

I've had Architects for a while now. I played it solo a couple of times and it was fun. However, it really shines with 3 or more. We played with 3 Saturday and had a great time...except for one player who was really hung up on the "everyone gets one last turn after the final spot in the guildhall is filled" rule. He was pretty annoyed that the first player was basically getting an extra turn thanks to that. I didn't think it WAS that big of a deal, to be honest.

If you want a worker placement with an amazing solo AI, I cannot recommend strongly enough Teotihuacan. The game itself is fun, but David Turczi developed a solo AI for it that's amazing. Turczi is the genius behind Anachrony and THAT has a genius AI as well. He's rapidly becoming my favorite AI designer...as well as a favorite game designer in his own right.

[coopasonic]

I gave my wife Fog of Love for Valentine's Day (any excuse for a board game right?). I've looked over the rules, watched the SU&SD and Watch it Played videos and it looks like it might actually be fun. Hopefully she will play it with me!

I've played through the tutorial story twice, once with my 12yo and then again with my wife. The "game" part of it is really pretty simple. Without the storytelling/roleplay aspect I don't think it would be much of a game, but if it gets my wife interested in playing something, I am happy with that. We definitely had some good laughs along the way.

[AWS260]

I played Coimbra last night for the first time. It's a dice-drafting game set in Coimbra, Portugal, during the age of exploration. The overall goal is to assemble a distinguished group of citizens that will give you resources, influence, abilities, and ultimately victory points.

There's a lot going on. I've spoilered the overview of mechanics because there are a lot of them:

Spoiler:

You take turns assigning dice to a pool of cards representing citizens. You then take turns buying cards, starting with the highest die number. The number on the die is the price you pay, so placing a 6 will get you first pick of the cards, but you'll also be paying the highest price to buy that card.

There are four faction tracks, which show your influence with the city's councilors, merchants, clerics, and scholars. Each track grants benefits each round -- but only if you chose a die in the color of that track.

These two mechanics combine for some interesting decisions. For example, perhaps you are high on the merchant (orange) track, which gives you a lot of gold every round, as long as you select an orange die. But in this round, the only orange die is a 1 -- which means you'll have last pick of the citizen cards, probably won't be able to buy the citizen that you desperately need. Do you pick a different color die and forgo that fat stack of gold? Or is the gold more important than that card?

During the dice drafting, instead of bidding on a card you can use your die to get one of the "favor tiles," which grant various bonuses. The tiles are generally not as powerful as the cards, but you don't have to pay resources for them.

There's also a "pilgrimage" map, where you send your pilgrim around the country to visit various monasteries. Each monastery you pass grants a benefit -- resources, influence on a faction track, or perhaps some victory point scoring. Map movement is tightly integrated with the cards and faction track, since some citizens and the cleric track allow you to move your pilgrim more quickly.

Finally, there are the "voyage" cards, which let you invest in global trade routes. They're expensive, but can pay out major victory points at the end of the game.

Did I say finally? Here, have a set-collection mechanic. Some (not all) citizen cards, and some monasteries, have a colored scroll. Sets of these scrolls are worth VPs at the end of the game.

That's a lot to take in, but it all flows together pretty smoothly. Coimbra is a generous game, in that you can pursue many routes to rack up the victory points. There's a decent amount of player interaction, especially later in the game as your opponents' strategies become clear. If you see a card that will grant them a lot of VPs, you can place a high-value die to try to take it yourself.

I really enjoyed Coimbra -- much more than I thought I would during the initial rules explanation. Evaluating the cards and dice each round, plotting your optimal actions and how to block your opponents, is a lot of fun. As is the massive shower of VPs during end-game scoring. Not something I'll buy, but I'd happily play it again.

[AWS260]

Everdell tonight with my wife. I continue to love this game. It builds up to an excruciating last few turns and ends exactly when it should.

[hepcat]

City of Kings and Root on Saturday with 4, then 1 and a half games of Twilight of the Gods with 2 players.

City of Kings I've pretty much been playing non-stop since I got it less than two weeks ago. It's a puzzle with theme like Mage Knight and Mistfall, and that appeals to me a great deal. Saturday we took our first crack at playing through story 1 and I had a blast with it. We never really felt like things were insurmountable, but we did have to think things through quite a bit. I even started a solo game on Sunday for story 2...and quickly lost as I faced the chapter 2 goal; something I felt was way too tough for 2 characters.

Honestly, this is one of my better purchases. Not since Dungeon Alliance have I taken such a shine to a game so quickly.

We then played Root, something I've always wanted to try as it's by the same designer who made Pax Pamir, a game in the Pax series from Phil Eklund's Sierra Madre games that had some very interesting and unique mechanics.

Root continues the designer's love of unique game play by creating a game that's completely asymmetrical, while still making you feel invested in the turns of other players. I played the Vagabond, which I felt was a little overpowered at first. Unfortunately, just as I was two points away from the 30 point victory requirement, another player was able to fulfill the win conditions on a card he had drawn earlier, giving him the game. Still, I really enjoyed my time with the game and look forward to trying the other factions.

Finally, I played a quick (re)learning game of Twilight of the Gods, a card combat game from Victory Point Games that was created to address some of designer's issues with Magic the Gathering. Unfortunately, my impression of the game is only slightly better than my initial impression after getting the game a year or two ago...the commitment requirement to actually make this one work is too great. I like a lot of what it does, but I don't want to spend 2 hours playing it when Ashes does everything I want in a similar type of game, and much more elegantly. However, TotG does have one really great mechanic I'd love to see used in other games. You use face down cards as a currency, but you have to trade with other players to get those cards. You propose such a trade in step 3 of your turn, and then if the other player doesn't want to trade, you have two more options to get one of their cards...the last one being very expensive as you have to discard a bunch of cards to get that resource from them. However, at the bottom of each card is an effect that only triggers if it's in other player's resource area and is "manifested" (i.e. another card forces you to turn it over). Once it's turned over, that effect goes off. Sometimes it's good, but more often than not it's a trap. It works out wonderfully as you try to figure out how to screw over your opponent each turn during trades.

Anyway, City of Kings is STILL set up on my table and ready for attempt number 3 at story 2. Hopefully I'll get to it this week after work sometime...and actually win it.

[YellowKing]

You're starting to talk me into City of Kings, hep. Damn you to hell!

As promised we got BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA to the table with four players. While it took the entire evening, we did end up winning. Act 1 was a little tough, and despite finishing two major quests we still lost to the Big Trouble track. However, it didn't make much of a difference in Act II which we won handily.

I'm still torn on this game. While we had a blast, there's definitely some weird difficulty/scaling issues. The great leap in difficulty I've heard about for four players just didn't materialize, so I feel like there can be some wild swinginess. Everybody enjoyed it, but nobody wanted to give it another go so I'm pretty much done with this one.

[hepcat]

You can grab the City of Kings core game off one of the usual online stores for less than 70 bucks, so it's not a huge money sink. If you want to add on the expansions, they're less than 20 bucks a pop for the 3 main ones. So overall, it's not a terribly expensive game.

However, I must stress that this is essentially a puzzle game. It's not really an RPG or a dungeon crawl. But even though one of our players from Saturday doesn't really like those types of games, he still enjoyed himself because he felt the theme was strong enough to help him forget that he was playing one.

That it plays just as well solo is icing on the cake.