OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[hepcat]

I finished session 2 of my third try at a campaign yesterday. The status doesn't really bother me that much as I rarely get more than 1 or 2 during a battle. And when you get the same one, it just moves that die to the back of the cooldown track. Also, don't forget that enemies pretty much ignore you when you're two tiles away from them or more, which happens in dungeons and delves.

Yesterday's session 2 closer was a dungeon....and I loved it. That mode is what got me to buy into this. And it does not disappoint. I still find the round limit of 6 rounds a bit annoying, but if you manage your overfatigue correctly and get one or two of the many items that manage the round die (ticking it down in some cases), you can probably last a few more rounds...or even more. Plus, many of the longer end session games involving delves or dungeons actually tick down the round die 2 to 3 numbers when you're halfway through, or have met a major goal of the quest's first part.

My observations so far are that two handed skills can devastate enemies...if you take care to control your cooldown. Those hefty damage numbers come with a huge price in adding light fatigue. And if you're not careful, you'll suddenly find yourself with no place to put newly exhausted dice and you have to drain them and add even MORE fatigue. It's a rough balance to maintain.

And light armor is a must if you go mage. The fact that it uses the magic battleform means it works with pretty much any magic school you go with.

[Skinypupy]

Also, don't forget that enemies pretty much ignore you when you're two tiles away from them or more, which happens in dungeons and delves.

I thought I read that enemies move 2 tiles towards their priority target if out of range. Or did I just make that up in my head, because it seems like the logical thing for them to do?

[hepcat]

Hmmm....I may be mistaken then. I just posted this question on BGG though. I've been playing that if not in sight, they don't move. It was part of my winning strategy in yesterday's dungeon even.

edit: Yup, I'm wrong. Damn it. There goes one of my winning strategies.

[LordMortis]

Two plus years in to the world of post employment and I'm still trying to convince myself that it's OK to spend money. I've been playing Ark Nova and Forest Shuffle a lot on BGA so I broke down and ordered physical copies that should arrive today in time to come to the table this week. $100 is nothing to most of you but for me it's therapy.

[disarm]

I haven't posted in this thread in a long time, but I'm trying to get my family back into games again. We started playing a lot while we were home during the pandemic, but that slowly faded out over the last year or two. To that end, I picked up a few new games to get us going again, and got my son to play with me last night...

Seaside - quick, easy tile-drawing game that you can learn and play a full game in 15 minutes or less. It's very simple, but fun as a warm-up or a game to take outside home

Horrified: Greek Monsters - grabbed this one because the Horrified series is well regarded and I thought my 10yo son would like the subject matter. We played twice last night and it was a lot of fun...got destroyed the first time, but got a pretty easy win using the same heroes/monsters the second time once we better understood how the game works. This was fun enough that I think we'll be going back to it a lot and trying to get more of the family to play with us.

Lastly, I finally got a copy of Pandemic and we'll probably play during tonight's snow storm. I'm familiar with it after playing a couple times with friends, and we enjoy Forbidden Island which has very similar gameplay but a little simpler. One of goals with getting into Pandemic is to get my family interested enough to give the Legacy series a try. The idea of a 'legacy' game is really cool to me and the Pandemic series are supposedly some of the best. We'll see how it goes...

[AWS260]

Then third was a game of Medina. Abstract city building game. You lay down wood pieces to build castles. But anyone can claim the castles but as soon as they do they can't grow anymore. The bigger the castle the more they score so you have to time it carefully. You want to build bigger castles but stop at just the right time so nobody steals your big castle. Fun quick abstract game. Highly recommended.

I played Medina for the first time tonight. Very fun! It's weird - because you're building the city together from a blank slate, the early game is kind of confused and meandering. But then the buildings start to take shape, and suddenly it's a cutthroat battle for real estate. Great stuff.

[Montag]

Played a second session of Arydia. Not very enthused about it yet. Combat has a complexity twist on where you hit your target based on the weapon type. It makes sense, but kind of clunky. Money seems too tight - especially with more players. You can get a new skill when you level up - but it may require you to go somewhere or meet some condition to actually use the new skill. Not thrilled about that.

So far I am glad it was somebody else's money. We will keep going and see if it picks up.

[YellowKing]

Our group played the final campaign scenario of Frosthaven last night. We've been playing since around this time 2023, almost every week for 2 years straight.

Unfortunately we got our butts handed to us, so we're going to have to drop a few levels and try again next week. Typically for a loss we drop the difficulty level by 1 and try again, but in this case we are probably just going to drop it to Level 0 just to get past it and move on.

As we did with Gloomhaven, we also plan on going back and playing any scenarios we never unlocked during the campaign. That should keep us busy for another 3 months, then we'll move on to our backlog of non-campaign one-off games.

I found Frosthaven to be largely superior to Gloomhaven in most ways for experienced players. The scenarios and characters were typically much more interesting mechanically speaking. The outpost stuff wasn't entirely well-implemented, but it did offer a fairly interesting side project to occupy us between scenarios. There were a couple of significant flaws that I won't go into due to spoilers, but on the whole certainly one of the most epic board game journeys I've ever experienced.

Coming to the end is a little bittersweet. While I'm definitely looking forward to knocking out a variety of other games (and eventually starting a new campaign dungeon crawler), an adventure of 2 years (nearly 4 if you count our Gloomhaven sessions) is not something you can just toss aside lightly.

[Fardaza]

Our group played the final campaign scenario of Frosthaven last night. We've been playing since around this time 2023, almost every week for 2 years straight.

Unfortunately we got our butts handed to us, so we're going to have to drop a few levels and try again next week. Typically for a loss we drop the difficulty level by 1 and try again, but in this case we are probably just going to drop it to Level 0 just to get past it and move on.

As we did with Gloomhaven, we also plan on going back and playing any scenarios we never unlocked during the campaign. That should keep us busy for another 3 months, then we'll move on to our backlog of non-campaign one-off games.

I found Frosthaven to be largely superior to Gloomhaven in most ways for experienced players. The scenarios and characters were typically much more interesting mechanically speaking. The outpost stuff wasn't entirely well-implemented, but it did offer a fairly interesting side project to occupy us between scenarios. There were a couple of significant flaws that I won't go into due to spoilers, but on the whole certainly one of the most epic board game journeys I've ever experienced.

Coming to the end is a little bittersweet. While I'm definitely looking forward to knocking out a variety of other games (and eventually starting a new campaign dungeon crawler), an adventure of 2 years (nearly 4 if you count our Gloomhaven sessions) is not something you can just toss aside lightly.

That is so cool. I wish I had a group like that to campaign with!

Definitely understand the bittersweet part though. That's been a major part of your gaming life and life in general for 4 years!

After you play a lot of one-offs and such, you should really consider Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood as your next campaign game. It should only take you about a year to finish!

[YellowKing]

Yeah I own Oathsworn so it's near the top of the list for next campaign game. I think the guys would really enjoy it coming off Gloomhaven since it's also card-driven and very tactical. Along with the town intermissions, it seems like a very natural progression from Frosthaven. We've also tossed around the idea of knocking out Tales from the Red Dragon Inn as a light palate cleanser before diving into something heavy.

As far as the game group goes, it came about completely by accident. We had a big ice storm come through 7 or 8 years ago, and my work was put on lockdown which meant essential employees had to come in and shelter in place. I was just getting into board gaming as a serious hobby at the time, so I threw Pandemic in the trunk of the car in case I got bored.

Well the overnight shelter in place turned into 4 days due to the hazardous road conditions, so we were definitely bored. I wound up teaching Pandemic to my co-workers and every night we'd play multiple sessions.

We had so much fun that we decided to start meeting after work once a week. By this point we were all picking up games (mostly co-op), so we'd meet in an empty conference room we were given permission to use and play whatever the newest shiny thing was.

The (real) pandemic hit in the middle of our Gloomhaven campaign, so unable to meet in person we still met over Tabletop Simulator and finished the campaign that way. We wound up losing our office space after the pandemic when everyone started working from home, so we started meeting at one of the guy's apartments. And that's where we've been to this day

One of the highlights of my first GenCon was getting to meet Matt Leacock (Pandemic designer) and tell him how his game had led to us co-workers becoming good friends who had bonded over many years of gaming.

[Fardaza]

Yeah I own Oathsworn so it's near the top of the list for next campaign game. I think the guys would really enjoy it coming off Gloomhaven since it's also card-driven and very tactical. Along with the town intermissions, it seems like a very natural progression from Frosthaven. We've also tossed around the idea of knocking out Tales from the Red Dragon Inn as a light palate cleanser before diving into something heavy.


One of the highlights of my first GenCon was getting to meet Matt Leacock (Pandemic designer) and tell him how his game had led to us co-workers becoming good friends who had bonded over many years of gaming.

That's excellent that you got to tell Matt that.

I'm waiting for Tales From the Red Dragon Inn to arrive from Kickstarter. That's going to be my next solo campaign game. Hopefully soon.

[YellowKing]

i spent the last two nights learning Freedom Five and I really, really like it. Note that I don't own Hour of Need or that other Defenders game hepcat compared this game to, so all of it felt new to me.

What I am familiar with, however, is Pandemic, having played literally every iteration that exists. And this feels a lot like Pandemic on steroids. Mechanically this made the game really easy to learn, but it seems like one that's going to take a few (failed) attempts to master since I found even the tutorial scenario to be very challenging on my first go.

I haven't had enough time with it to be able to speak to any weaknesses, but I can speak to what I do like. I like that the heroes themselves feel powerful. Being able to play an ability that just insta-wipes all henchmen from an area, or move multiple spaces across the map feels....heroic. I also like the crunchiness of the decision-making you have to do - with five actions per turn, you have a LOT of options, and figuring out the most efficient combination of those actions is a very satisfying puzzle.

I think the theme/mechanic integration is also very tight. For my first game I played Tachyon, and as you might expect she has a lot of great movement abilities that let her zip around the board. I also played Bunker, so also as you might expect is very slow but can deal major damage. I thought they did a really good job making the heroes feel like they're supposed to feel. In addition, Villains are very tough (as you'd expect), and it became quite apparent early on that teaming up against them is the optimal strategy. It really does feel like even though you're a powerful hero, you're battling odds that test the limits of your strength.

I also love the "plot" mechanic which changes the scenario up when you either hit certain milestones on the doom track or when heroes complete their objectives (another fun feature). It really makes the scenario feel like a long comic book battle rather than just one static mission. As hepcat pointed out this does make the game long, but that's OK with me.

Probably the biggest thing I'm a little iffy on is the dice. Dice are used to attack henchmen, Villains, and make attribute checks of all kinds, and each hero is better or worse in some dice than others. I had TERRIBLE luck with the dice on my first playthrough, and I admit it got a bit frustrating when I had a great plan foiled by crappy rolls. On the other hand, I also think a lot of that frustration is a lack of understanding the strategy. You really have to think about which heroes have better odds against different color henchmen, and know where to play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses

I'm already planning one of my famous "game day" days off from work so my buddy and I can try an all-day session. He's the biggest Pandemic fan I know, so I can already tell he's going to absolutely love it.

[Fardaza]

Got in a 5-player game of Cascadia: Rolling Rivers last night. It's a fun roll and write. I taught the other 4 how to play, and we all had a good time! It's more difficult to teach than I expected. Two of the newbies beat my score, so I guess I was doing something right! All of us said we want to play it again next time.

[paulbaxter]

I got my copy of Earthborne Rangers, but I didn't have my full crew with me this weekend, and they really didn't want to get started on it with someone missing. But we did play a couple of rounds of So Clover. So Clover has always been a good time with everyone I've every played it with except for one odd guy who completely hated it for some reason.

[AWS260]

I had a great boardgame retreat with friends this weekend. A few highlights from many games played:

Molly House - This is the new game from Wehrlegig (Pax Pamir, John Company), about the "molly houses" of 18th century London that served as safe havens and community hubs for queer men. You are trying to build your reputation in the community by hosting parties and engaging in spicy activities. But the higher your profile, the greatest risk that you'll be arrested by the authorities.

I found the mechanisms pretty novel, which meant that it took a few rounds to pick up the flow of the game. And even then, it wasn't immediately obvious why things worked the way they did. Reflecting afterwards, I realized that the rules and theme are tightly intertwined - of course you lose reputation when you play a Constable card during a party! - but this wasn't clear in the moment. I suspect that this will turn out to be an excellent game, but more plays are needed.

Malumière - A silly trick-taking game where the twist is that you can't see the face of a card until you've played it. You have to guess based on an icon on the card back: the blue 9 will have a large blue drop on the back, and the blue 1 will have a small blue drop. But the size difference is very slight. You can tell a 1 from a 9 from across the table, but telling a 4 from a 5 is practically guesswork. Fast and funny.

Mississippi Queen - Riverboat racing! Like Quest for El Dorado, you're building the map as you play, but Mississippi Queen is more straightforward, since you don't have to rely on a card draw to determine your options. Decent fun, but it's a bit too simple for my taste.

Lynx - An economic game about fur trapping in 18th century Canada. Your actions directly impact the ecosystem, causing animal populations, and thus trapping costs, to fluctuate wildly. You have to plan ahead, trying to anticipate your opponents' actions and how they will affect the ecosystem. I like it a lot, although it can feel punishing.

Agent Avenue - A two-player bluffing game. On your turn, you'll offer two cards, one face-up and one face-down. Your opponent chooses one of those to play for themself, and you play the other. The cards are tuned perfectly to dial up the stress and uncertainty on every turn. Simple and effective.

More than anything, the weekend was a great reminder of how much fun it can be to play games with friends.

[MattBGH]

I've been binging Little Alchemists with my eldest son. Alchemists is one of my favorite board games, but I have a hard time getting it to the table because my friends either think its too heavy or they don't like plain deduction. We've having a blast with Little Alchemists and I'm hopeful one day we'll move to Alchemists.

[Montag]

Played a couple sessions of SETI. I like it. Resource management is really tight and cards act as a resource as well. I am ready to play it again. This is the first game I went fully into printing off all the game storage stuff. A lot of variability / replayability with this one.

[LordMortis]

Playing Orleans on BGA right now as a new to me game. I'm still trying to determine if I like it. I do like the idea of a worker placement where the workers have deck shuffler dynamic. I'm just trying to figure out if it's done well enough to get any traction with me. I guess I'm already enjoying the initial discovery phase enough to keep going. So it's a winner in that regard no matter what opinion I eventually form.

[YellowKing]

My buddy and I took a day off and did one of our infamous all day game-marathons. On the slate was Freedom Five. Whlie I had messed around with the first scenario solo, this was our official deep dive into the game to try to get through as much of the campaign as possible.

We wound up completing the first three scenarios. Only scenario 3 gave us any real difficulty, and that one came down to a nail-biting one turn finish. But even breezing through the first two scenarios, we still had a lot of fun and they didn't really feel like we were crushing them until we hit the final winning condition. We have one scenario left in the base game, then I have a couple of expansions that add more that we plan on tackling on a future game day.

We had a blast with it, and despite some people saying it gets difficult with just 2 heroes, we didn't have a lot of trouble playing Legacy (who is an all around balanced hero with the crazy ability to always get an extra die), and Wraith, whose specialty in movement allows her to cover a lot of ground. We played all three scenarios with those two and managed just fine.

Really the only weakness of the game, as I pointed out in my earlier impressions, is that some people may find the swingy-ness of the dice off-putting. However, we really learned how to mitigate the dice pretty well, and over the course of the entire 10 hours we played I can only think of one instance where the dice totally screwed us over on a turn. And even then we still won the scenario. The game's more about good decision-making than lucky dice rolls.  

I know some people also don't like the game length, and I will admit scenarios are long. We average right at 3 hours per scenario. To me that's a plus because it's more game for the money, but I can see why some may not like that. I enjoy the fact that each scenario goes through several phases, though, as it feels dynamic.

The campaign mode is a lot of fun, and without spoiling anything I'll just say that it's worth playing campaign mode win or lose because it does unlock things. This isn't a true legacy game, but game features are added as you go along that can help offset some of the difficulty. I'm about 95% sure we were playing the game correctly as I watched multiple playthroughs and read the (pretty dang good) rulebook multiple times, as well as read the FAQ. It's a pretty straightforward game to learn, and rarely did we find ourselves consulting the rulebook after the first couple of scenarios.

Overall, very happy with it and relieved it was (for me) worth the extremely long KS wait.