OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[AWS260]

Here you go.

/edit - although I'd find the non-premium edition myself.

Any idea what race/class combos this one includes? I can't seem to find the info in the store page or on BGG.

Looking at the manual, it appears to be:
gnome rogue
human sorceror
human paladin
half-elf cleric
tiefling fighter

[Blackhawk]

If you flip through the pictures on BGG, they have all of the characcter cards up.

[wonderpug]

Thanks!

[Skinypupy]

- Temple of Elemental Evil (just me and Little B 10.0 playing, Wonder Twins helping)
- Legend of Drizzt (with all the kids playing)

[Snip]
My brain is crying for mercy, but they're still sitting in the other room asking what we can all play next.

Here you go.

/edit - although I'd find the non-premium edition myself.

Yep, this one's already on the list for once we finish up the ToEE campaign. DEFINITELY the non-premium version.

For this weekend, I'm hoping that we'll get a chance to give the Xwing miniatures game a try. Little B seemed a bit less excited about it than I was expecting when I brought it home earlier in the week, but that may just have been because I interrupted her Minecraft video time to show her.

[coopasonic]

We played two games of For Sale. My first time playing it and it's pretty interesting for such a simple game. We also started a game of Hanabi (first time I have played with more than two), but didn't have enough time to finish. It wasn't going to end well anyway.

[AWS260]

I picked up Dice Throne with a gift certificate and took it for a spin with the 9-year-old this evening. It's a neat little dice-and-card battler with some impressive asymmetry. Big thumbs-up from the kid, and I had a really good time too.

We bought the Tactician vs. Huntress box. The Tactician focuses on accumulating and spending "tactical advantage" tokens for very useful effects, while the Huntress's powers revolve around her pet tiger, who enhances attacks and tanks damage.

I was playing the Huntress, and lost a pretty tight game - when I hit 0 hp, my opponent was at 6 (you start with 50 each). I can definitely see room for improvement in my Huntress strategy the next time around, but I'm also itching to try the Tactician.

[Smoove_B]

When I picked up Dice Throne I thought it had a solo mode, but sadly it doesn't. However, I did learn that they're planning on it for the next KS so at least that was good news and maybe i was just confusing future plans with current releases. Regardless, I love the art and can imagine it's slick to play. Broadly speaking, I tend to like card/dice combo games so I grabbed it.

I did play a round of Legendary X-Files the other night and made it to the end game scenario. Unfortunately I was defeated by Lord Kinbote, which has been bumming me out now for like three days. On the one hand, he's a creature from what is arguably my favorite episode of the show. On the other...to lose the game because he killed me? Man...that stings.

[hentzau]

Just played a game of Sergeants Miniatures Battle with my buddy Tom and his son. I played the Germans and completely got my ass handed to me. We were playing a Pegasus Bridge scenario and during the second round he was able to walk a machine gun attack down the bridge killing 3 out of the 5 of my troops. The reinforcements that arrived on the next turn didn’t fare much better.

I really do love this game, but damn that was a humiliating defeat by the time it was done. Like 56 vps to 11.

[Skinypupy]

First game of X-Wing is in the books, and it went pretty well. Game took a little longer than I expected and I realized I could use a bigger table, but Little B won when her TIE swooped in behind my X-Wing and blasted away my last hit point. She was pretty stoked, but I could tell she was getting a little bored when we spent the last few turns circling each other.

We played on the very basic rules for our first try (no range penalties, no crits, etc.), and will mix in a bit more complexity next time around.

[wonderpug]

First game of X-Wing is in the books, and it went pretty well. Game took a little longer than I expected and I realized I could use a bigger table, but Little B won when her TIE swooped in behind my X-Wing and blasted away my last hit point. She was pretty stoked, but I could tell she was getting a little bored when we spent the last few turns circling each other.

We played on the very basic rules for our first try (no range penalties, no crits, etc.), and will mix in a bit more complexity next time around.

Funny enough, I just tried X-Wing 2.0 with my 6.5-year-old son for the first time just now with just the basic one X-wing (me) and two TIEs. He caught on to the rules pretty quick, and mostly was able to be autonomous with the movement choices, but like your experience our battle started to run on a bit too long to keep his attention.

When I try again, I think I'm going to try upping the ship counts for both of us so that there's more to shoot at and more blowing up. Or maybe I'll give my son a ship with a turret so he's more guaranteed to be able to take a shot at my ships.

Overall a success, though. We didn't play to the end, but he liked the amount we played and he did get very excited every time we rolled dice.

[Isgrimnur]

I’ve got a 1st-gen starter set that’s never going to hit the table that’s available for a small donation.

[AWS260]

Went to a friend's house to play Lorenzo il Magnifico, a eurogame that's sort of worker-placement, sort of engine-building, and lots of make-your-points-go-up-along-numerous-tracks.

I think it's by the same designers as Coimbra, which I tried a couple of months ago. Somewhat similar in feel, but I think Lorenzo holds together better. The various systems interact more seamlessly than in Coimbra. The other folks playing said that Marco Polo is still their favorite from this family of games (I haven't played it).

Given the maze of strategic possibilities, I was surprised that we had such a tight game: the final scores were 100, 100, 99, and 86. One player went big on military and religion, another focused on territories and leaders, a third focused on buildings, and the winner focused on "ventures," but with a healthy presence in each of the other areas.

[Skinypupy]

Funny enough, I just tried X-Wing 2.0 with my 6.5-year-old son for the first time just now with just the basic one X-wing (me) and two TIEs.

Exact same set-up we used. Little B was complaining about how "powerful" my one X-wing was, until I pointed out that she had the exact same number of HP, it was just split between two ships. After that, she just complained about unlucky dice rolls instead.

When I try again, I think I'm going to try upping the ship counts for both of us so that there's more to shoot at and more blowing up.

Thought about that, but I wondered if that might actually make it more difficult. My brother is bringing a huge storage case full of ships when he comes next month, so we'll see how that goes.

Out of curiosity, were you just using the basic rules? Or did you mix in any of the advanced stuff (i.e. skills, critical hits, stress markers, etc.)?

Or maybe I'll give my son a ship with a turret so he's more guaranteed to be able to take a shot at my ships.

Great idea, would love to hear if/how you implement that.

Overall a success, though.

Same, although I can't help but wonder if the reaction might have been different had she lost.

My biggest challenge was figuring out how to accurately place ships that kept overlapping each other. When two ships end a turn in basically the same spot, it just gets sorta weird.

[wonderpug]

When I try again, I think I'm going to try upping the ship counts for both of us so that there's more to shoot at and more blowing up.

Thought about that, but I wondered if that might actually make it more difficult. My brother is bringing a huge storage case full of ships when he comes next month, so we'll see how that goes.

My main worry with the high ship count is making each turn take too long. Maybe 3-4 ships each? Or maybe I'll give him a pair of shielded tough ships and I'll use a bunch of easily destroyed stuff?

Out of curiosity, were you just using the basic rules? Or did you mix in any of the advanced stuff (i.e. skills, critical hits, stress markers, etc.)?

I avoided any special skills on this play, but I might introduce something easy to understand when we try again. The only upgrade card I added was to give one of my son's TIE fighters a shield point.

I did introduce the basic abilities right from the start, and he took to that well. I boiled it down to "you can focus so you can shoot me better, evade to make it harder for me to hit you, and barrel roll to move like this". Other than a few unnecessary barrel rolls, he was choosing focus and evade pretty well on his own.

I brought up stress markers partway through the match, the first time it really made sense for my son to do a U-turn. He took to those rules really easily, and even chose a blue maneuver on his own on his next turn.

For critical hits, at first I just explained that the crit symbol on the die was extra bad, and then when one of us almost got hit by a crit I showed him a few of the cards to show what they might do. That seemed to work well for him -- he started getting really excited any time he got potential crits on his attack rolls.

I did play with the rule for extra attack die at range 1 and extra defense at range 3 -- he got a little confused sometimes at how many dice he was supposed to get for something, but overall it worked fine with me walking him through it.

Overall a success, though.

Same, although I can't help but wonder if the reaction might have been different had she lost.

Same worry here. My son can handle losing a game here and there, but I'm going to stack the deck in his favor for this game at least for the first few times.

My biggest challenge was figuring out how to accurately place ships that kept overlapping each other. When two ships end a turn in basically the same spot, it just gets sorta weird.

You're playing with 1.0, right? The 2.0 game makes this aspect a wee bit easier. The maneuver templates have thin white lines running down the center, and the ship bases likewise have centered white lines on each edge. When you need to have a ship back up along a template, you can line up the lines to make sure the ship is centered at any point in a turn template.

My 8.5 year old daughter is also interested in trying the game -- 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.

[Skinypupy]

You're playing with 1.0, right? The 2.0 game makes this aspect a wee bit easier. The maneuver templates have thin white lines running down the center, and the ship bases likewise have centered white lines on each edge. When you need to have a ship back up along a template, you can line up the lines to make sure the ship is centered at any point in a turn template.

I have the 2.0 core starter set. I figured out how to use the templates that show where your ship is when you need to take it off the board for an opponent's maneuver, but doing any sort of movement in close quarters still felt really awkward.

[coopasonic]

Two player game of The Bloody Inn. Relatively simple, but still interesting enough. I want to play it with more to see how it works with more players and competition.

[YellowKing]

My wife got me Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth for Easter. By "wife got me" I mean I ordered it then told her that's what she got me for Easter.

I'm a little on the fence about it based on the playthroughs/reviews I've seen, but I think the theme and my love for all things FF/Mansions of Madness will probably make it worth the while. Plus LOTR minis, preciousss.

My game group is completely ambivalent about it due to our Gloomhaven campaign (and I can't really blame them), so I'm picking this up primarily for solo play.

[Skinypupy]

Picked up Star Wars Imperial Assault yesterday and played through the three tutorial missions last night. I absolutely LOVE it! Very easy to learn with a ton of fun strategic elements. Even the basic tutorial missions were thrilling, as I frantically hotwired a door to open while two Royal Guards (who would destroy me) were bearing down on me from the other side of the map. The way this game is integrated with the app is brilliant, and I doubt I’d be half as geeked about it if that support wasn’t available.

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

[$iljanus]

Picked up Star Wars Imperial Assault yesterday and played through the three tutorial missions last night. I absolutely LOVE it! Very easy to learn with a ton of fun strategic elements. Even the basic tutorial missions were thrilling, as I frantically hotwired a door to open while two Royal Guards (who would destroy me) were bearing down on me from the other side of the map. The way this game is integrated with the app is brilliant, and I doubt I’d be half as geeked about it if that support wasn’t available.

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

The app is pretty cool and it now has a campaign for the Jabba's Palace (which I'm playing through) and Return to Hoth.

[Blackhawk]

I'm haven't played anything this weekend, but I'm about done with the rules for Sword & Sorcery. It's a cooperative dungeon crawler, a bit like the D&D Adventure board games, but with a lot more depth and complexity. I hope it plays as well as it looks like it will. The rulebook is fairly thick, and feels more like RPG rules than boardgame rules.

Once I get that one down, I need to start working on the rules for Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, our other summer game, and another 60-page rulebook.

[YellowKing]

Sword & Sorcery can be quite fiddly, but once it clicks it's a lot of fun. I wound up playing through it solo, which is why it got to be a bit overwhelming at times. More players definitely helps "spread the load" of remembering everything.

[Blackhawk]

Yep, that's what I heard. There will be three of us. We have the expansions, the door and chest pack, a couple of extra characters, the coins pack, the crit bag, and extra dice. I'm starting on the painting now, too.

It'll be fun playing a game with everything. I decided before the last GenCon that it was time to stop collecting board games out and start collecting up, so to speak. Pick games that I really like (or that seem to be perfect fits after reviews) and work on getting the full experience with those games rather than getting more, different games. The other game I've been working on that way is Champions of Midgaard. We have the upgrade packs (save for one that's unavailable), one of the two expansions, the mat that combines all of them into one board, and I bought a big pack of metal coins that I replaced all the in-game money with. One more expansion and we'll have the whole shebang.

[Skinypupy]

Dammit, you guys are killing me.

[Smoove_B]

We're just getting started.

Welcome. Welcome to the board gaming group here on OO.

[hepcat]

Going back to City of Kings this weekend. I think I'll have to run three characters in order to complete Story 2 though.

[YellowKing]

Going back to City of Kings this weekend. I think I'll have to run three characters in order to complete Story 2 though.

About to do the same thing. I've heard enough people complaining about Story 2 being unbeatable with 2 that I'm not even going to try with less than 3.

I've been contemplating just running some of the single scenarios first just get back into the swing of things.

[coopasonic]

Dammit, you guys are killing me.

If you are lucky you will learn that it is completely possible to NOT buy every game that gets mentioned here. The most common posters in this thread go *way* overboard on their game purchases. You need to learn what works for you. I have easily spent $10k on board games in the past 20 years. My current collection of games probably cost me a little less than $1k. Only a fraction of that $9k difference was recovered in resale. The metagame is the hardest game.

[Smoove_B]

Indeed. It's took me 5+ years of board gaming to finally dial into what I really enjoy. It was an expensive lesson, but I don't think I would change anything. There's nothing greater than finding a game or a type of game that just *clicks*.

Also, buy all the games.

[Blackhawk]

Absolutely. I've picked up a couple of duds and a few that just don't work for me and mine, either thematically or mechanically. These days I research the living crap out of every game I buy. I want to be sure it is a perfect fit before I invest. This is also the reason I don't get many games on Kickstarter. There aren't any reviews!

[hepcat]

Going back to City of Kings this weekend. I think I'll have to run three characters in order to complete Story 2 though.

About to do the same thing. I've heard enough people complaining about Story 2 being unbeatable with 2 that I'm not even going to try with less than 3.

I've been contemplating just running some of the single scenarios first just get back into the swing of things.

Definitely doing better with 3 this time. I honestly don’t think it’s doable with 2.

[Skinypupy]

My wallet is probably fortunate that I don’t actually have a gaming group to play with. So I’m limited to what I can play with a 10 year old (a really smart 10 year old, but still) or what I can play solo.

This one was probably my last purchase for a while, with the exception of maybe an expansion (or two) for it.

[Skinypupy]

Quick Imperial Assault rules clarification I’m wondering if you guys can help with.

The Surge action for one of my weapons reads “+1 (damage icon), Pierce”. Does that comma mean it does +1 damage AND Pierce? Or does it do +1 damage OR pierce?

[Smoove_B]

Based on my knowledge of other FFG titles, the +1 increases the damage and the Pierce means it's something that likely ignores shields/defense. So in short, it does both.

[hentzau]

It does both.

[Skinypupy]

Thanks, I’d been playing it as “AND” last night.

[Daveman]

I picked up the new Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth on Thursday and my son and I have played 2 of the scenarios. We're really enjoying it. I'd describe it as a further refinement of the Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition formula (cooperative adventure game with an app as the dungeonmaster). Some of the things we like so far are:

1. All of the MoM2 scenarios we've played have a mostly hidden timer to them. So many turns in you'll get a vague warning like "the ritual chanting is getting louder, they must be opening the portal soon", then later a more dire warning but no specifics. I get the need for a timer to add tension, and to a point I can appreciate keeping it hidden so players are never sure what's going on and how much time they have left. But too many of our MoM2 games end abruptly when the app simply tells us we've lost because we took too long.

Journeys has a timer in the form of a Threat Bar. The bar fills up so much per turn based on the number of players and how many unexplored tiles are present on the board. The bar displays certain thresholds that, when reached, trigger something bad. So you know going in how much threat until the game ends, when some negative event is going to happen, and a general sense of how quickly threat is going to build up. In one scenario there was a mechanism where we subtracted threat from the bar, so that might come up now and then.

The tension, so far, has been in knowing generally what we have to do in that time frame but never really knowing exactly how to proceed. The board has encounter tokens spread around and interacting with them reveals new parts of the board, provides clues, or helps accomplish the scenario objective... but some are optional and you don't really know which are which. Maybe you got a clue that bad guys were to the west, but tokens to the east might provide useful bonuses or items. How much time do you spend searching every corner of the board vs. focusing on what you think might be the path to overall victory?

2. Journeys is a lengthy series of scenarios vs. stand alone scenarios that MoM2 has. There is progression in both upgrading items and adding new skill cards to your character. Losing one scenario doesn't mean the end, it just means you go into the next scenario with some setback.

3. There are no dice. The game is played using a small deck of skill cards per player. Everyone starts with 6 basic cards that are identical, 5 cards that are unique to that character (Aragorn, Gimli, etc.) and 3 cards unique to a role you've chosen for yourself. There are 6 roles... things like captain, burgular, musician. They have suggested roles (Aragorn - captain) but you're free to make Gimli a musician or whatever. You're even free to change after each scenario...

4. When you complete a scenario as one role you earn so much XP to spend and add a new card from that role to your character. So as a musician you learn a new song and add that card. But if you then choose to switch roles, maybe to a hunter, you keep that one new musician card while replacing the 3 "core" musician cards with 3 "core" hunter cards. After a few scenarios you could have a real multi-classed character or one who's focused and purchased a lot of cards from one role.

5. The cards themselves are used in 2 ways. First, they can be "readied" which just means they provide certain passive abilities or things you can do by discarding the card. Secondly, whenever you perform a test in the game (interacting with tokens, attacking, defending, etc.) you draw so many cards from your deck and look for success symbols on those cards, or "inspiration" symbols that can be converted into successes with certain tokens (just like MoM2's dice system). The catch is the cards with really strong passive/discard abilities are generally the cards that have success symbols on them. Do you ready them for those abilities, or leave those cards in your deck so that when you do test you're more likely to draw the success symbols?

The short version is, there's a mild deck-building and deck-cycling element to the game instead of dice and we really like it

[$iljanus]

Quick Imperial Assault rules clarification I’m wondering if you guys can help with.

The Surge action for one of my weapons reads “+1 (damage icon), Pierce”. Does that comma mean it does +1 damage AND Pierce? Or does it do +1 damage OR pierce?

Vibro blades are for slashing and for stabbing!

(paraphrasing arcane forum reference which makes me feel a bit old)

[YellowKing]

The short version is, there's a mild deck-building and deck-cycling element to the game instead of dice and we really like it

Thanks for the impressions, daveman. My copy should be here mid-week so I'm looking forward to it.

I've read and watched several reviews, and the card-based skill test mechanic seems to be a big hit. On paper it doesn't look that interesting, but everyone seems to really enjoy it. I'm guessing that familiarity with your deck and the strategic decisions involved in when and how to use your skills and scouting makes it a deeper mechanic than it appears on the surface.

The only negative I've seen so far from one reviewer was that she thought the skill test mechanic at times overshadowed the theme, so that instead of feeling like you were fighting monsters in Middle Earth it was more like resolving skill tests against generic numbers. However, technically the same criticism could be leveled at Mansions of Madness, and I absolutely love that game.

The BGG ratings have been creeping upward since more people have gotten their hands on it. I don't know how true it is, but someone on one of the FB groups I'm on mentioned that the game was ratings-bombed early by people who don't like app integration.

[Skinypupy]

The short version is, there's a mild deck-building and deck-cycling element to the game instead of dice and we really like it

Thanks for the impressions, daveman. My copy should be here mid-week so I'm looking forward to it.

I've read and watched several reviews, and the card-based skill test mechanic seems to be a big hit. On paper it doesn't look that interesting, but everyone seems to really enjoy it. I'm guessing that familiarity with your deck and the strategic decisions involved in when and how to use your skills and scouting makes it a deeper mechanic than it appears on the surface.

The only negative I've seen so far from one reviewer was that she thought the skill test mechanic at times overshadowed the theme, so that instead of feeling like you were fighting monsters in Middle Earth it was more like resolving skill tests against generic numbers. However, technically the same criticism could be leveled at Mansions of Madness, and I absolutely love that game.

The BGG ratings have been creeping upward since more people have gotten their hands on it. I don't know how true it is, but someone on one of the FB groups I'm on mentioned that the game was ratings-bombed early by people who don't like app integration.

I thought the MvM review was very thorough, and extremely positive. This one is definitely next on my list.

I get why people are against app integration (starts leaning towards video game status), but I really like what little I’ve seen of it so far.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm against app requirements.