OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[YellowKing]

As long as the app serves some function that would be difficult, time-consuming, or cumbersome to do analog, I'm all for it. It's just a component like any other that opens up new game modes and mechanics.

Some of my best game experiences of all time have used app assistance. Namely Mansions of Madness, Detective, and now Gloomhaven (using helper app to streamline monster deck management and round upkeep).

That said, everybody has their own preferences in board gaming so I don't begrudge anyone who is against apps. I'm not fond of heavy Euros and worker placement, and that's all some people play.

[Blackhawk]

App assistance is fine. But unless every board game is going to keep their app updated as hardware changes, I don't want mandatory apps. I don't want board games that can't be played because I can't start the app in eight or ten years.

[wonderpug]

I also picked up a fist-sized d20 for the kids, which made our Saturday game of LoD all the more exciting.

LoD = Legend of Delda?
Lords of (not so watery) Deep?
Legend of Drizzt?

[Blackhawk]

I also picked up a fist-sized d20 for the kids, which made our Saturday game of LoD all the more exciting.

LoD = Legend of Delda?
Lords of (not so watery) Deep?
Legend of Drizzt?

[Blackhawk]

It's a shame that it is so hard to find the flashing LED d20s these days. I have one, and they're a lot of fun. They're huge, and flash red when you roll a 20. It always gets the table cheering (or groaning.)

[Skinypupy]

I also picked up a fist-sized d20 for the kids, which made our Saturday game of LoD all the more exciting.

LoD = Legend of Delda?
Lords of (not so watery) Deep?
Legend of Drizzt?

Sorry, Legend of Drizzt. It has become the go-to board game for Wonder Twins 5.10.

[wonderpug]

I also picked up a fist-sized d20 for the kids, which made our Saturday game of LoD all the more exciting.

LoD = Legend of Delda?
Lords of (not so watery) Deep?
Legend of Drizzt?

Sorry, Legend of Drizzt. It has become the go-to board game for Wonder Twins 5.10.

Well apparently we're on the same timeline for kids and boardgames, since I've got Temple of Elemental Evil and Tomb of Annihilation queued up to try out on my kiddos. Did you end up changing the rules at all to make it easier for them? I think Blackhawk had recommended using tokens to delay the encounter deck so you get half as many draws?

[Blackhawk]

The system was that if you are supposed to draw an encounter, you draw a 'hazard token' instead if you don't have one (I used red glass counters.) If you have a hazard token, you discard it and draw an encounter.

[Skinypupy]

I also picked up a fist-sized d20 for the kids, which made our Saturday game of LoD all the more exciting.

LoD = Legend of Delda?
Lords of (not so watery) Deep?
Legend of Drizzt?

Sorry, Legend of Drizzt. It has become the go-to board game for Wonder Twins 5.10.

Well apparently we're on the same timeline for kids and boardgames, since I've got Temple of Elemental Evil and Tomb of Annihilation queued up to try out on my kiddos. Did you end up changing the rules at all to make it easier for them? I think Blackhawk had recommended using tokens to delay the encounter deck so you get half as many draws?

Yep, we definitely include Blackhawk's encounter rule. I find that it makes the game feel much more balanced in general. An encounter plus new monsters on nearly every turn feels way too punitive to the player, imo.

If it's just a 2-player game, we also have a rule that monsters don't activate until their next turn, instead of on the turn they come out. This definitely turns it into "easy mode", so if your kids have a greater tolerance for not winning regularly (mine tend to lose interest pretty quickly when they lose), then ignore this one. Ignore it if you've got more than two players as well. With three players, delaying the monster action means that the mobs usually die before they ever have a chance to act.

When all the kids are playing, I usually act as a GM rather than a PC and end up being a little more flexible on some of the rules if I see them getting overly frustrated. I.E. I might "forget" to add a poison damage at the beginning of a turn, or maybe have a monster attack someone with 12 HP when they were supposed to attack the person with 2. Since the twins are only 5, it's much more important to me for them to have fun and stay interested than for me to be a stickler with the rules. We still follow the general structure, but I adjust behind the scenes so they keep engaged.

[wonderpug]

My 8.5 year old daughter is also interested in trying [X-wing Miniatures] -- not sure how that will go. My son is quick to learn technical rules but short on patience, while my daughter has infinite patience but might have a harder time with the rules and tactics.

And X-wing ended up being a huge success with my daughter. Did two TIE Fighters vs. one X-wing again (should I be concerned that both my kids chose to play Empire) and other than a few questionable maneuver choices I helped her change, she took to the rules just fine and was getting fully excited about dice rolls and critical hits.

After the exciting finish (I blew up one of her TIEs but then crashed my damaged X-wing into an asteroid), I showed her my Plano boxes filled with the rest of my collection and her eyes lit up. She fell in love with the Decimator on first sight, so I'll have to start planning out a list for her for next time.

[Zarathud]

Don't be concerned until your daughter hugs Kylo Ren at Disney and tells you her favorite part of TLJ is Solo's death.

[coopasonic]

My 9yo's favorite T-shirt is a Darth Vader costume T-shirt and he is learning to play guitar on a 3/4 scale Darth Vader electric guitar. He also thinks Kylo Ren is a pathetic substitute.

[hentzau]

Don't be concerned until your daughter hugs Kylo Ren at Disney and tells you her favorite part of TLJ is Solo's death.

Especially since that happened in TFA...

[Zarathud]

True. Darth T doesn't have to watch movies, the other kids tell all the plots at school.

I bought Darth T the DC Deckbuilding Game (Teen Titans GO Edition) and she proceeded to destroy me 62-42. It helped that her favorite characters gave card draw and super power bonuses that filled my hand with weaknesses the last few turns. Still, owch.

[Punisher]

Don't be concerned until your daughter hugs Kylo Ren at Disney and tells you her favorite part of TLJ is Solo's death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5mK7dzyUkM

EDIT: "In the interview she said she was planning to kill Vader after she becomes his apprentice and take Vader's place. Oh what a fine Sith lord she will be :3 "
That is from the comments...

[Skinypupy]

Finished the "Flight of the Freedom Fighter" campaign in Star Wars Imperial Assault this afternoon. Played through with Female Han Solo and The Wookie. My first ever board game campaign finished, and what an absolute blast that was! I'll admit that I dialed down the difficulty with a few house rules (mainly only using Elites every other deployment), but still had a ton of fun. Will probably run through it again with some different characters to see how they play.

Only disappointment is that the campaign felt really short. I'm a little surprised there aren't more downloadable campaigns in the app. Do the individual character packs come with one? Or are the only campaigns available in the app the ones from the big xpacs (i.e. Hoth, Jabba, etc.)?

I also spent some time with LotR: Journeys In Middle Earth, which hasn't clicked with me at all. Whereas Imperial Assault is difficult but doable, LotR just doesn't feel like there's any way to succeed at all. Maybe that's fun for some folks, but I mostly just feel like I'm constantly failing.

[hentzau]

I spent the weekend at a con running demo games of Gunfighters Ball for Knuckleduster Minis. Ran about 10 games of it. Lots of fun.

[$iljanus]

Finished the "Flight of the Freedom Fighter" campaign in Star Wars Imperial Assault this afternoon. Played through with Female Han Solo and The Wookie. My first ever board game campaign finished, and what an absolute blast that was! I'll admit that I dialed down the difficulty with a few house rules (mainly only using Elites every other deployment), but still had a ton of fun. Will probably run through it again with some different characters to see how they play.

Only disappointment is that the campaign felt really short. I'm a little surprised there aren't more downloadable campaigns in the app. Do the individual character packs come with one? Or are the only campaigns available in the app the ones from the big xpacs (i.e. Hoth, Jabba, etc.)?

I also spent some time with LotR: Journeys In Middle Earth, which hasn't clicked with me at all. Whereas Imperial Assault is difficult but doable, LotR just doesn't feel like there's any way to succeed at all. Maybe that's fun for some folks, but I mostly just feel like I'm constantly failing.

Campaigns are only for the big expansions like Jabba or Hoth. A bit of an investment but that Rancor in Jabba's Palace is really impressive!

[wonderpug]

Do the app-driven campaigns have the random side missions like the 1 vs. all version of the game has? Like if you play Jabba's campaign three times, would you see different missions each time?

[coopasonic]

True. Darth T doesn't have to watch movies, the other kids tell all the plots at school.

I bought Darth T the DC Deckbuilding Game (Teen Titans GO Edition) and she proceeded to destroy me 62-42. It helped that her favorite characters gave card draw and super power bonuses that filled my hand with weaknesses the last few turns. Still, owch.

I haven't played anything this weekend, but I have today off too since school is closed (makeup snow day) and I am expecting Teen Titans GO DC deckbuilding to be delivered since I learned it was a thing from your post. My 9yo loves TTG so I hope it doesn't suck (I also got the Birds of Prey expansion for daddy).

[Zarathud]

It's a DC Deckbuilder so don't expect much but the theme is good and the girl loved it.

[Moat_Man]

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. My daughter just got home from university on Wednesday. Tonight I was driving her to a friend's house and she turns to me and says, "Dad I really want to play Through the Ages." My little girl! Makes me want to cry.

So I got home and went to my son and said, "Your sister wants to play Through the Ages". He says, "Sure".

[coopasonic]

It's a DC Deckbuilder so don't expect much but the theme is good and the girl loved it.

I hadn't played any DC deckbuilder before. We played today and it was exactly the same as every other deckbuilder ever... he kicked my butt solidly, 54 to 27 and I wasn't really helping him decide what to buy, other than pushing him to pick up the Nemesis when he had the opportunity.

[AWS260]

Stuff I tried today:

Catan: The Dice Game: A very boring roll-and-write. Avoid.

Wingspan: A solid tableau/engine-builder on which you're balancing multiple resources to create a valuable tableau of beautifully illustrated birds. I didn't love it - the theme doesn't really resonate with me, and there's very little player interaction. But I'd have no problem sitting down for a game if someone else suggested it.

Dice Forge: Does what it says on the box. You roll dice for resources, then spend those resources to upgrade your dice - as in, literally swap out new die faces. It's a gimmick, but a well-executed one. A really good family game, I think.

[coopasonic]

It's a DC Deckbuilder so don't expect much but the theme is good and the girl loved it.

I hadn't played any DC deckbuilder before. We played today and it was exactly the same as every other deckbuilder ever... he kicked my butt solidly, 54 to 27 and I wasn't really helping him decide what to buy, other than pushing him to pick up the Nemesis when he had the opportunity.

I got both kids to play Legendary Marvel with me and the randomized setup was tragic. We basically had no chance. Hopefully they'll give it another shot. Anything to save me from playing Teen Titans Go again.

[AWS260]

This just in: Galaxy Trucker is still good.

[wonderpug]

This just in: Galaxy Trucker is still good.

Coming up on 7 years since a gaggle of OOers came into my old apartment in Cambridge to play it!

[hepcat]

It's probably time for you to work up the nerve to ask them to leave though.

[wonderpug]

It's probably time for you to work up the nerve to ask them to leave though.

Why do you think I moved to Albuquerque?!

[YellowKing]

I'm 9 scenarios into Journeys in Middle Earth and still enjoying it a great deal. It can get tough, though. I've lost the last two scenarios....badly.

The game does suffer from the same issue as Mansions of Madness - namely, there is some scenario unevenness. There have been some that I've won at the last minute that were a blast and very well balanced. There have been some that were so easy I've won before I even meant to. There have also been some that seem almost brutally unfair, and I felt rushed on top of it.

However, it helps to just go with the flow and not worry so much about individual sessions and instead look at the campaign as an overall experience. From that perspective, I'm already planning my next run-through with a different character set. Considering I rarely re-play campaign-style games, that's a huge plus in its favor.

I think this is one of those FF games that will shine brighter as more expansions and figure packs come out to introduce more variety and game mechanics. While the base game is very good, it's not quite at "great" status for me yet.

[Skinypupy]

Played three more rounds of LotR, and lost all three when the timer ran out.

This is the first game I've tried with one, and I've come to the realization that I'm really just not much of a fan of games with timers. I like the strategy of this game, I like the combat system, and I like the general game mechanics, but I hate feeling like the timer is essentially running the game. I know some folks like the tension it adds, but I'm not one of them, apparently.

Probably going to sell LotR: JiME at a pretty steep discount. If anyone is interested, shoot me a PM. (Yes, a proactive "shut up, Coop" is appropriate here. )

[Smoove_B]

I also hate games with timers, but went against my gut to purchase this, simply because of the scope of the story (i.e. world map, exploration, etc...) Very rarely does this work out, but I needed to get it out of my system at least. I guess we'll see.

[coopasonic]

Probably going to sell LotR: JiME at a pretty steep discount. If anyone is interested, shoot me a PM. (Yes, a proactive "shut up, Coop" is appropriate here. )

I am in no position to judge on board games. I have bought around 300 board games and still own around 50. Many of them sold without ever having played them and almost always at a significant loss.

[Daveman]

I'm sorry to hear you're having issues with the threat bar/timer. I know you had the movement rules wrong early on and wonder if something else might be off? We were very close to running out of time in the first scenario but chalked that up to learning the game, also possibly a bad random element to the scenario...

Spoiler:

We got to the point where we needed to find 3 sets of tracks to locate where the bad guys were. It took several explore tokens before we found the first one and we wondered if this was just bad luck that they were all located near the end, assuming their locations were randomly generated by the app.

Since then (we're on scenario 6 now) the timer has been a non-element for us but perhaps we've just been very lucky. For scenario 3...

Spoiler:

We found one plant sample for the cure in the first set of caves near the wounded ranger. From what the app said we knew we'd have better luck finding more samples but we were both still near the ranger so we went back with the one plant sample. Aragorn had it and the test was Wisdom (his best stat) and with the sample's +1 success, what he drew, plus he had the discard for +1 success when testing Wisdom card equipped and I as Gimli played my Kinship card that let him draw 2 more cards. Put 5 or 6 successes and that was a win with nearly half the timer to go.

Then for scenario 5...

Spoiler:

Also won with half the timer still to use. We were beat pretty bad in the opening battle so we were anxious to accomplish the main goal and get out. We found 3 scepters and got to the lake without any other real trouble. I actually wanted to explore more to maybe find some trinkets or lore but tested our scepters and got a win on the 2nd one.

[YellowKing]

Both scenarios I lost due to the timer were after scenario 6, Daveman, so you may just have not run into the pain yet.

There are some general things the game requires to be successful:

- Exploration - because uncovered areas add threat, it's essential to keep opening up the map

- Threat Tokens - threat tokens also greatly add to threat, so it's essential to take care of them quickly

- Movement - I've found that scenario goals tend to be at the far reaches of the map. That's a broad generalization, but in general I try to stay on the move and hit the farthest outskirts if I feel pressed for time

- Read - the search token descriptions are very important in determining whether it's likely loot, inspiration, or a scenario goal. If I'm searching for something specific and threat is high, I've learned to pass up the tokens that don't seem relevant. Note that this is a slight double-edged sword, as some search tokens give Lore or even reduce Threat, but that's what keeps the game unpredictable.

TLDR; I don't mind the timer mechanic because I feel that it adds a layer of strategy, and there are mechanisms to combat it. On the other hand, I definitely understand the view of not liking timers. It would be wonderful (albeit too easy), to just wander around and explore every nook and cranny of these maps.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I recently got to play an immensely enjoyable game I've wanted for a while, courtesy of my beloved British mum (where the game is more widely available): Push It -- essentially a much more economical, convenient, and portable dexterity game along the lines of Crokinole. Here's Tom Vasel's Dice Tower review of the game:



And here are the simple rules courtesy of the game's creator:



It may not be much to look at (it's essentially just a box/bag of great-quality, light wooden pucks along with a rules pamphlet), but it truly is terrifically enjoyable to play. Suffice to say, I'm hooked. If you're in the US, you can purchase the game via Amazon here or from Canada via BoardgameBliss.com here.

Anyway, I strongly recommend it to anyone intrigued by the idea of Crokinole, yet leery of the price tag/necessary table and storage space required for a decent set. Unless you're fortunate enough to live in a palatial mansion, I suspect you're much more likely to get Push It to the table on a recurrent basis than a fancy Crokinole set.

[YellowKing]

Finished my Journeys in Middle Earth campaign and lost. Which is OK - it gives me an excuse to replay it again.

Overall it was a lot of fun. The number of satisfying scenarios far outweighed the frustrating over the course of the adventure, and I learned a lot of lessons that will probably make the next attempt easier.

The next go-round I'm going to attempt to juggle three characters now that I have some experience under my belt. It will give me a chance to see the remaining three characters, and also see how the player count affects difficulty.

While I do have my quibbles with the game, it has kept my interest through a dozen or so plays and I still want to play through it again. One of the big draws for me, I think, is that setup is fairly quick and each scenario only takes 45 minutes to an hour. In that respect it's perfect to knock out a quick session here and there when I find myself with some free time. With the app tracking, it also lends itself well to pausing and coming back, even mid-scenario.

[coopasonic]

Played 7 Wonders at lunch today with 5 people. I won 53-52-52-3x-3x... 26 points of science ftw. It was first time playing vanilla 7 wonders (I've played duel a couple times and once with whatever expansion came out last fall/winter). I still haven't wrapped my head around everything but I love how there is basically no downtime even the 5+ players.

[hentzau]

7 Wonders really is a great game. But it's probably been 5 years since the last time I played it. And I think then I was moderating in a game room at C2E2 and didn't actually play but taught.

[AWS260]

I played Terraforming Mars for the first time over the weekend. In our three-player game, I ended up tied for second, thanks to a whole bunch of cows on a Livestock card. I had almost no presence on the board itself -- just two tiles. Some impressions, trivial and otherwise:

• I liked the card interactions and synergies, and I can see how they become more important and powerful when you play with unique corporations and drafting (we didn't, since it was everyone's first game). I'd be interested to try it again with those in the mix.

• For a game about terraforming Mars, I was expecting to see more changes on the main board. It turns out that most of the advances and events just live in your card tableau, not on the board. That's not a terrible thing, but it was a bit disappointing.

• I love those metal currency cubes! The colors are intuitive, they're just the right size for easily moving around and making change, and they're just so shiny.

• The player boards, on the other hand, are awfully chintzy -- particularly given how critical they are to the game play. The whole game, we were terrified that someone would accidentally bump the table or brush their sleeve over their player board, sending cubes scattering. The publisher needs to take a cue from Ninth Haven and upgrade to double-layer boards that can hold tracking cubes in place.

I don't know if I'll have an opportunity to play it again any time soon, at least with my family. My son thought it was too heavy for him (although he did fine, tying with me for second), and my wife thought it was kind of dry (there's a Mars joke in there somewhere).

In happier news, I think I may have convinced some folks in my area to get together for a game of High Frontier sometime this summer...