OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[hentzau]

Found my copy of DinoGenics (been missing since the previous OctoCon.) Got in a game of it last night (my second) against two people that had never played it. I wouldn't call myself an expert in the game, having only one game under my belt, but I really ran away with the game. Seemed like once I took the lead they just couldn't catch up again.

We had one question come up, but I'm going to pop over to the DinoGenics thread just to make sure that Lordnine sees it.

[hepcat]

Where did you find your copy of Dinogenics?

[hentzau]

Where did you find your copy of Dinogenics?

It was hiding, meekly, under my big ass box of The Fantasy Trip.

[hepcat]

I love that big ass fantasy trip box. i don't play RPGs and I still had to resist the urge to grab it at gencon.

[hentzau]

In my brief foray back into it, I forgot what unforgiving games Melee and Wizard were.

And really, I think the "choose your own adventure" style of solo play with the game would really appeal to you.

[Isgrimnur]

"choose your own adventure"

Apparently Z-Man got the rights to some of the old books.

[AWS260]

"choose your own adventure"

Apparently Z-Man got the rights to some of the old books.

We have the House of Danger CYOA game. Do not recommend.

[Smoove_B]

I've read that War With the Evil Power Master is a better game than House of Danger, but I can't say for sure.

[YellowKing]

I played a little SPACE CADETS: AWAY MISSIONS. It's a light sci-fi "dungeon crawl" with a lot of pulp sci-fi minis.

The basic mechanics are pretty simple. Maps are made up of face down hex tiles with enemy alien and item tokens. On your turn you must scan a tile (flip it over) and reveal the enemies and/or items it has. Then you can spend actions moving, fighting aliens, etc.

There are two unique mechanics in the game that make it interesting. The first is that each tile edge may or may not have a hatch door, which must be opened in order to move or shoot through it. Because the tiles are randomized and face down, you're never quite sure how a map will play out in terms of forcing you through alternate routes or making you spend precious action points on opening hatches.

The other mechanic I like is Overkill. Combat is resolved by rolling d10s, and values of 1,2, or 3 count as a success. However, rolling MORE than one success grants you an Overkill, which are essentially bonus actions. Each character has an Overkill action, weapons have an Overkill action, and even enemies you are targeting have an Overkill effect. Rolling Overkills allows you to pick and choose between all these Overkill options, which allows for some pretty neat combos and strategic decisions.

I also like that the game comes with 20 scenarios of increasing difficulty and complexity. They can be quite varied as well, which keeps the game from getting too stale.

On the downside, enemy variety (despite the large number of miniatures included) is pretty sparse, and the scan/combat/move mechanic can get a bit samey after awhile. However, I'm still enjoying the 1950s sci-fi theme and it scratches the dungeon crawl itch without me having to drag out some bloated fiddly beast of a game.

It currently sits at 7.5 on BGG and I'd say that's a pretty spot-on score.

[AWS260]

Last night was Reef Encounter, a 15-year-old tile-laying, reef-building, parrotfish-feeding game.

The goal is to build large reefs and then feed them to your parrotfish. At the end of the game, your score is determined by the reef tiles in your parrotfish's stomach. Basically.

It's a hard game to describe, because all of the mechanics interact very tightly. You can place tiles to build a reef, consume existing reefs, or place shrimp to protect reefs from being consumed (don't look at me, I'm not a marine biologist). You can also shift the game parameters so that certain types of reef can (or cannot) consume other types. This reef "dominance" affects the value of reef tiles in end-game scoring.

Confusing rules aside, it played pretty smoothly and quickly once we had a couple of turns under our belts. The winner did a great job of tucking his reefs into corners where they were harder for us to attack/consume. I came in second, scoring a large reef at the beginning of the game and another big one at the end, but almost nothing in between. The owner, who had only played once before, came in a relatively close third.

From its BGG page, it looks like Reef Encounter was pretty popular in the 2000s but has largely faded from memory. I wouldn't go out of my way to track it down, but if you happen to come across it, I would recommend giving it a try.

[AWS260]

My wife picked up Akrotiri, a two-player game about discovering ancient Greek temples in the Aegean sea. Both players start from a central base on Thera (modern-day Santorini), taking turns laying tiles that create other islands in the sea. Then you sail around the sea collecting resources and unearthing temples.

Some islands have a distinctive characteristic -- a volcano, mountain, forest, etc. -- and you discover temples by following "maps" that rely on these landmarks. For example, you may have map card that shows a temple with two mountains to the west, a volcano to the south, and a forest to the east. You can "discover" that temple on any square that meets those requirements.

I won in a close game, primarily by choosing easy maps so that I could to get all of my temples out as quickly as possible. At the end-game scoring, my wife's temples were more valuable, but I had more of them on the board.

We only played the once, but I think I really like it. It's a short game, probably 30-40 minutes, that packs some quality decision-making into a relatively breezy package.

We also bought Star Trek Chrononauts yesterday, but didn't have time to play it. I am a sucker for the original Chrononauts game, and Star Trek seems like an ideal theme for a new version, given its penchant for time-travel shenanigans.

[hepcat]

Four of us got together and played two games on Saturday.

First up was Black Angel. It was one of the hot sellers at Gencon this year and one of our players picked it up while we were there. It's a pretty standard Euro game, but it also takes a bit from Teotihuacan (a really great Euro I picked up earlier this year that I love) in that you use dice to determine the strength of your actions. The timer is your ship's movement across a group of levels that fall off behind the ship and go to the front of it every time someone resets (to get back the dice they've spent on actions). When you hit a certain number of "drop offs" the game goes into the final rounds.

I liked it and won't turn down a game of it if offered, but I honestly would prefer to play Anachrony and/or Teotihuacan if I have the choice. Those two feel more thematic (in the case of Anachrony) or more innovative (Teotihuacan).

Then we played an 8 hour game of Cloudspire.

I knew going in that it was NOT going to be a short game. Hell, I knew it wasn't going to be a medium length game. That's just now how Chip Theory Games do things. But as long as I'm enjoying myself, I don't care about time.

And for the most part, I was completely happy with Cloudspire. It takes the vast customization from Too Many Bones (but this time for a faction, not a character) and then pastes it on top of a MOBA/Tower Defense hybrid (the latter being one of my weaknesses in gaming...I put in hundreds...HUNDREDS of hours in Defense Grid 1 and 2). There's a LOT to consider when upgrading your fortress (it has numerous technologies/tools/magic devices/spells you can unlock), deploying your troops during a wave, or when selecting mercenaries during the market phase (minion? tech? spell?, etc.).

After you get your mind wrapped around all that, the game itself is pretty straightforward (although it does have a few balancing rules that seem counter-intuitive...but that's part and parcel of all their games, I've found). There are 4 waves. You deploy your heroes and/or minions out your front gate at the start of each wave after declaring who you're attacking, then they march towards that enemy. Minions have to follow a path and always have to move forward. Heroes can do whatever they want though, moving/attacking as you see fit.

When they reach your chosen opponent's gate. they damage it. Each gate starts with 10 health (normally) and if it gets destroyed, you lose all your source to the attacker and you have to sit out that wave, coming back in the next one with, at most, 3 gate health.

Each wave lasts until all minions are destroyed. Then you start another one.

Trying to figure out what to upgrade, who to deploy, where to attack is a blast. I enjoyed it immensely.

The only downside in the competitive game though is that if you get knocked out in one of the later waves, it's almost impossible to stage a comeback. Then you're stuck sitting around as more or less a spectator for potentially 2 to 3 hours as everyone else plays.

Thankfully the game comes with a huge variety of coop scenarios, which is what I'm hoping we play the next time.

Sunday, I played a solo tutorial for Legends Untold. It’s an interesting take on the card based dungeon crawler. I like that you build your character using a base template character (farmhand, evicted noble, etc.) and then add 1 weapon and 3 talent cards (one of which is a combat related talent for your weapon). When you level up, you can add more talents/switch out talents, upgrade weapons, and or add armor/weapons/items.

The two base games are considered “novice” sets and take you up to level 9 with a generous collection of scenarios that can be combined into a campaign. They plan on releasing “apprentice” level sets next that would take you higher. The rulebook is a dense 40 or so pages, so it’s got some depth. But honestly, during my training mission, it all felt pretty intuitive. And each scenario is about an hour to 90 minutes, it seems.

I enjoyed it enough that I immediately went online after finishing and ordered the 2nd novice set (I only have one the one that I found at the coolstuff booth at Gencon, along with the druid and alchemist character class card packs)…at a surprisingly reasonable cost from a U.K. game store. Then I’ll have around 32 different talent cards for character builds (since each talent card has 3 abilities on it, they serve multiple purposes too). It should be here a few days before I go under the knife and have to spend a 4 day weekend on my ass recovering from a hernia operation.

[hentzau]

Played a Gangs of Rome game on Saturday with my usual suspects. Unusual for us to get a weekend game in but a friend of mine was in town borrowing a bunch of Gaslands stuff from me, so we took advantage of the opportunity. 4 player game that I won fairly handily, but even so it was great fun. Worst roll of the day:



(Although in my opinion it was best roll, since it was aimed at my fighter Manlius. )

Great game. I need to do a full write up of this one sometime.

[Ertic]

Sunday, I played a solo tutorial for Legends Untold. It’s an interesting take on the card based dungeon crawler. I like that you build your character using a base template character (farmhand, evicted noble, etc.) and then add 1 weapon and 3 talent cards (one of which is a combat related talent for your weapon). When you level up, you can add more talents/switch out talents, upgrade weapons, and or add armor/weapons/items.

The two base games are considered “novice” sets and take you up to level 9 with a generous collection of scenarios that can be combined into a campaign. They plan on releasing “apprentice” level sets next that would take you higher. The rulebook is a dense 40 or so pages, so it’s got some depth. But honestly, during my training mission, it all felt pretty intuitive. And each scenario is about an hour to 90 minutes, it seems.

I enjoyed it enough that I immediately went online after finishing and ordered the 2nd novice set (I only have one the one that I found at the coolstuff booth at Gencon, along with the druid and alchemist character class card packs)…at a surprisingly reasonable cost from a U.K. game store. Then I’ll have around 32 different talent cards for character builds (since each talent card has 3 abilities on it, they serve multiple purposes too). It should be here a few days before I go under the knife and have to spend a 4 day weekend on my ass recovering from a hernia operation.

Bought all of the Legends Untold stuff a while back. Played the tutorial and just couldn't get into it. I believe we played with three players and it just came across as 'dry'.

Will have to give it another go.

[hepcat]

I hope my initial enjoyment of the game doesn't fade after a few more plays. But it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was enthusiastic about something...until I had a few games of it under my belt.

The combat is usually cited as being the weaker part of the game, while the narrative is brought up as its greatest strength. I hope to test both of those to a fuller extent this weekend/next weekend when I'm laid up.

[Ertic]

I hope my initial enjoyment of the game doesn't fade after a few more plays. But it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was enthusiastic about something...until I had a few games of it under my belt.

The combat is usually cited as being the weaker part of the game, while the narrative is brought up as its greatest strength. I hope to test both of those to a fuller extent this weekend/next weekend when I'm laid up.

Makes sense. I remember the combat being 'strange' with the advance / advantage mechanisms; at least that's what I remember about them. I don't recall much of a story, of course it was just the intro. I forget if there is a campaign, or how it plays out, yet I am sure there is one.

Just another game for the pile for me right now.

[Isgrimnur]

Clank! meets Legacy meets Acquisitions Incorporated (Penny Arcade), coming this fall.

It’s up for preorder at $100.

[AWS260]

Yesterday I played Root for the second time. My last time was about 10 months ago (a learning game that I lost badly as the Woodland Alliance), so I pretty much had to learn the rules all over again. Especially since I had never played my faction, the Eyrie, before.

I found the Eyrie to be a lot of fun. Their mechanic is basically programming: each turn you add more commands to your program - recruit, move, build, fight - and then run the program. If you ever cannot execute a command, the whole thing collapses and you have to start building up your program from scratch. It makes every turn a fun little puzzle, as you try to figure out how to keep your program going based on the game state.

My opponents were the Cats and the Woodland Alliance. The Woodland Alliance player took a while to grok that faction, since it was her first time playing them and second time playing Root, so she never really built up a head of steam. I started strong, maintaining a lead until about 2/3 through the game, and then the Cats really started pressing. We couldn't pull them back and they won pretty easily.

As with the last time, I enjoyed Root and came away thinking that there's a lot more to explore here. Hopefully it won't take another year until I can play again.

[YellowKing]

A co-worker of mine and I have been using one lunch hour a week to try out different modes of HORRIFIED just trying to get a sense of how the game scales in difficulty with different combinations of monsters, players, etc.

So far we've beat the game on Easy and Standard difficulty (2 or 3 monters respectively), using combinations of monsters from easiest to hardest and with a 2-player count.

Today's challenge was Hard difficulty, which is 4 monsters. We picked Dracula, Creature, Frankenstein/Bride, and Invisible Man, and two roles we thought were powerful (one can move anywhere, the other can move heroes or villagers anywhere on the board one space for an action). Ultimately we were able to keep the threat level under control, but lost by running out of cards in the monster deck. Just for fun we kept playing by reshuffling the monster deck, and still had to get in an additional 11 turns to win.

After playing the game around a dozen times now, the most glaring "flaw" is that a bad card draw can create a situation in which a villager can come out on the board and die on the same turn, with literally no way to prevent it. From my experience this tends to happen an average of twice a game, so you could effectively consider the threat track 2 spots shorter (and it already seems perilously short to begin with). To compensate for this, it's imperative that you minimize any chance of the threat track going up by an attack that you could have prevented.

This is where I really find the fun in the game's strategic decisions. Saving villagers takes precious time away from completing monster objectives, but not protecting them puts the threat track in danger. And don't forget players dying moves the threat track as well, so you better have items to negate attacks. It becomes a three ball juggling act between villagers, items, and monster progress, making any turn in which you can advance two or more of those goals with one turn extremely satisfying.

We want to give Hard one more shot, and then we're going to see how the game scales with 4 players (each controlling 2 characters).

At any rate, great fun and I've really enjoyed tinkering with the mechanics. I think the game's biggest strength is the vast difficulty range you can build in just by easily tweaking a couple of variables. It's a game you could play with your kids one night and play with your seasoned gaming group the next, and still have a rewarding experience.

[paulbaxter]

Somewhat off topic, but I've become hopelessly addicted to the Shut Up & Sit Down reviews on youtube. I just want to binge all of them.

[Skinypupy]

Somewhat off topic, but I've become hopelessly addicted to the Shut Up & Sit Down reviews on youtube. I just want to binge all of them.

Same. They’re my favorite reviewers, by far.

[Daveman]

I don't always agree with them but enjoy their reviews very much. I already had and loved Inis but their review of it is one of my favorites...

https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-inis/

[hepcat]

They brought the world the reference pear.

[AWS260]

Spirit Island is still so, so good. I am increasingly convinced that it is an all-time classic of tabletop gaming.

[Skinypupy]

I finally got around to picking up Exploding Kittens. That game’s a hoot, especially with the kids.

I see there’s a couple expansions. They worth it?

[disarm]

Exploding Kittens is a lot of fun, and pretty easy for kids to pick up. I haven't tried the expansions, mostly because we haven't felt the need to add anything.

You should check out Throw Throw Burrito...tons of fun for kids and adults alike. We took it camping and our kids loved running around outside for the burrito fights

[Anonymous Bosch]

In terms of kids and adult appeal, nothing beats the coconut-flinging monkey fun of Coconuts, IMO:

[AWS260]

This weekend I got to play A Few Acres of Snow for the first time in quite a while. It was a very raid-heavy session, with just a handful of sieges. I lost all of the sieges, but eked out a win as the British with near-constant raiding at the end. In retrospect, if my opponent had taken the time to fortify a couple of key settlements, he could have stopped me cold -- but then he might not have been able to build up his military and win those sieges.

Now I have to get him to try Hands in Sea.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Got Hyberborea pretty cheap from Amazon two weeks back and got to try it out for the first time yesterday. It's a a bit of a mix of dudes-on-a-map + engine-building + draw-from-a-bag game. Each player has their own faction (with one special power per faction) and you take actions each turn by drawing three colored cubes from your bag and placing them on action spaces. The color of the cubes you draw (I think there are 7 colors total) dictate what actions you can do (move, fight, gain victory points, buy technologies that give your faction additional potential actions, etc). As the game goes on, you'll be able to add more cubes into your bag which in turn allows you to complete more actions (although you still only draw three cubes each turn unless a special power allows you to do otherwise). Victory points are awarded at the end for hexes controlled, enemies killed, technologies purchased, gems acquired, and number of cubes in your bag. I only played it with one other person (the game plays up to six) and so we never ended up in conflict, but the game was still pretty fun. I definitely want to give it a shot with more players, especially now that I have a better sense of how things work.

[AWS260]

This weekend's plays:

Darkest Night -- I got absolutely wrecked by the Necromancer. 11 heroes died. For the last 45 minutes, I knew that I had no chance but was just playing out the thread. Still, I really like this game.

Dicey Peaks -- A short, very light press-your-luck dice-chucker. I wouldn't recommend it, but my son had a good time.

Suburbia -- And then he asked to play Suburbia. Neither of us had played before, so it took a while to set up and figure out the rules. We ended up getting one rule wrong (we didn't notice that you can discard a market tile when drawing a basic tile), so the game lasted several turns longer than it should have. Toward the end, my city ground to a halt in a blizzard of red tape, while he was able to push on, thanks to a casino keeping his income in the black. I lost by an enormous amount.

Keyforge -- My wife picked up the starter set out of curiosity, and we played a couple of games, so that we could both try each deck. The first game was kind of a bust, because she didn't realize that every creature can take the "reap" action, so I ended up winning handily. The second game was much closer, but I pulled out a close win. I like the mechanics, but the theming in this game is utterly nonsensical.

[hepcat]

Stonemaier games is once again trying to sell Wingspan on Amazon for almost 90 bucks. They're doing this because it's sold out everywhere else. And they wonder why people think they're scumbags.

[AWS260]

Stonemaier games is once again trying to sell Wingspan on Amazon for almost 90 bucks. They're doing this because it's sold out everywhere else. And they wonder why people think they're scumbags.

It looks like all of the listings on Amazon are third-party sellers, not Amazon itself.

[Blackhawk]

I've found that Amazon rarely sells things much above retail themselves. It's always the third parties taking advantage of shortages/out of print products/collectors. Hell, Amazon has probably surpassed ebay as the go-to for scalpers.

[hepcat]

Stonemaier games is once again trying to sell Wingspan on Amazon for almost 90 bucks. They're doing this because it's sold out everywhere else. And they wonder why people think they're scumbags.

It looks like all of the listings on Amazon are third-party sellers, not Amazon itself.

Hmmm...perhaps I jumped the gun then, as I was looking at a listing for a storefront called "Amz Prime" which I believed to be Amazon Prime (includes fulfillment by Amazon). If that's not REALLY Amazon fulfilling for Stonemaier then I'm wrong.

[Isgrimnur]

My initial look at the page shows: Sold by Miniature Game Central and Fulfilled by Amazon. "Amz Prime" is listed as one of the alternate sellers, and has their own Storefront with a whopping 68 items.

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, the vendors are getting super crafty with their scams. There's a few that will make it seem like they have it in stock but after you order it, they change the day of delivery for some random month in 2020. It doesn't arrive and you contact them to complain and they tell you it's on order or being reprinted. Meanwhile, you've paid them and now they don't need to give a refund despite it going from in stock to what is essentially a preorder. They knew all along they didn't have it and wouldn't get it but they get away with it hoping the consumer doesn't realize the status of the game. It might take another minute or two to verify whether or not a game is coming from Amazon or a 3rd party vendor, but I absolutely always check now. New merchants and ones with recent bad ratings? Skip 'em.

[hepcat]

Then I call off the airstrike I just ordered on their headquarters and issue a humble apology.

[Isgrimnur]

Then I call off the airstrike I just ordered on their headquarters and issue a humble apology.

If Krebs can get scammed, it can happen to the best of us.

[coopasonic]

13yo and I played a couple two player games of Villanous yesterday. It was our first time playing and the most impressive thing was that in both games one person won the immediate turn before the other player would have won. The first game was Captain Hook vs Jafar and Jafar only won because Hook couldn't move Pan and fight on the same turn. The second game was Malificent vs Prince John. Prince John had the power to win on the next turn, but Malificent got lucky with the Fate deck and was able to take power from Prince John temporarily to forestall the win and was also able to play the last curse she needed to set herself up for the win and then Prince John got unlucky with his Fate draw and couldn't discard any of the Curses.

I really like it. I think they way they handle the player interaction is pretty clever. Totally silly that Jafar would send Peter Pan after Captain Hook, but I guess you could say he had a minion drop some hint to Peter Pan that Hook was up to something at the location. Now I am deciding if I go all in. I think I *might* be able to convince my wife to play this one with us.

[hentzau]

13yo and I played a couple two player games of Villanous yesterday. It was our first time playing and the most impressive thing was that in both games one person won the immediate turn before the other player would have won. The first game was Captain Hook vs Jafar and Jafar only won because Hook couldn't move Pan and fight on the same turn. The second game was Malificent vs Prince John. Prince John had the power to win on the next turn, but Malificent got lucky with the Fate deck and was able to take power from Prince John temporarily to forestall the win and was also able to play the last curse she needed to set herself up for the win and then Prince John got unlucky with his Fate draw and couldn't discard any of the Curses.

I really like it. I think they way they handle the player interaction is pretty clever. Totally silly that Jafar would send Peter Pan after Captain Hook, but I guess you could say he had a minion drop some hint to Peter Pan that Hook was up to something at the location. Now I am deciding if I go all in. I think I *might* be able to convince my wife to play this one with us.

Villainous was my best surprise in gaming last year. I've played it about a half dozen times, each with about 4 people, and each time almost everyone was close to winning. I have yet to win with Prince John, though, but he's a goal. I was SO close the last time, and got boned by a lucky card draw from my fate deck.

Also, the game is just flat out pretty. And if you like the art, Ravensburger has a series of puzzles based on the artwork from these games. Here's my favorite...