OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:50 am

Got together with friends last night and played a Mansions of Madness scenario, which was great fun even though I spent most of the game running from a Shoggoth, only to meet a horrific and untimely demise in the basement. Ultimately the investigators were victorious when the Keeper realized he'd forgotten to read the Objective card and secure his win condition. Doh!

After that was a 3-player game of War of Honor, the "board game" adaptation of the Legend of the Five Rings CCG. It comes with four pre-built decks, a series of fortress tiles that make up the board, and a scoreboard to track progress on four different scoring tracks. Rather than the typical "destroy 3 provinces" win condition of the CCG, there are multiple paths to victory including honor gain, military victory, dishonoring other clans, or playing a series of Rings of power. It also allows for alliances between clans during combat, determined by the fortress placement on the board. The CCG by itself is pretty good but the board game adaptation is terrific. I managed a come-from behind victory with my Scorpion clan after building a vast network of seedy houses of ill repute and growing my political influence to the point where I could dishonor anyone who stood in my way. I'd pick this up in a heartbeat if our game group didn't already have a copy.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:12 am

Boudreaux wrote:Got together with friends last night and played a Mansions of Madness scenario, which was great fun even though I spent most of the game running from a Shoggoth, only to meet a horrific and untimely demise in the basement. Ultimately the investigators were victorious when the Keeper realized he'd forgotten to read the Objective card and secure his win condition. Doh!

After that was a 3-player game of War of Honor, the "board game" adaptation of the Legend of the Five Rings CCG. It comes with four pre-built decks, a series of fortress tiles that make up the board, and a scoreboard to track progress on four different scoring tracks. Rather than the typical "destroy 3 provinces" win condition of the CCG, there are multiple paths to victory including honor gain, military victory, dishonoring other clans, or playing a series of Rings of power. It also allows for alliances between clans during combat, determined by the fortress placement on the board. The CCG by itself is pretty good but the board game adaptation is terrific. I managed a come-from behind victory with my Scorpion clan after building a vast network of seedy houses of ill repute and growing my political influence to the point where I could dishonor anyone who stood in my way. I'd pick this up in a heartbeat if our game group didn't already have a copy.

I was eyeing this game as well at Origins. I keep passing that and Battleship Galaxies at our FLGS and instinctively reaching for my wallet. I'm trying to hold off and get in a game at Gencon first, though.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:13 pm

I've never been interested in CCGs just because of the huge money sink, and I don't find deck-building all that interesting. The prebuilt decks in War of Honor appear to have plenty of depth to make the game fun and interesting for many, many games. The multiplayer aspect and political/alliance mechanics allow for a lot of strategy and variety beyond just the card combos from your decks.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 3:42 am

Given an impromptu weekend midweek, I spent it playing games with the kids. Got in a game of Cities & Knights of Catan, a game of 51st State, half dozen games of EDH, BSG with Pegasus, hours of Great Dalmuti, and just finished Nuclear Monopoly with Remus decimating kenetickid, myself, and kk's wife (five minutes ago).

It was like our own minicon of Gaming.

OH! And chaosfaerie found my old 2nd ed Talisman! Complete, we verified.

Won: Cities & Knights (by 1 pt), 51st State (by 2 pt), the EDH games, about half the Dalmuti. Lost with the other 2 humans in BSG to Centurions (*ANY* doggoned Cylon ship activation other than HEAVY and we had it... grrr). Slaughtered as first man out by Remus who had a Space Platform keeping me from passing GO repeatedly.

Remus West · Post by **Remus West** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:37 pm

Chaosraven wrote:Given an impromptu weekend midweek, I spent it playing games with the kids. Got in a game of Cities & Knights of Catan, a game of 51st State, half dozen games of EDH, BSG with Pegasus, hours of Great Dalmuti, and just finished Nuclear Monopoly with Remus decimating kenetickid, myself, and kk's wife (five minutes ago).

It was like our own minicon of Gaming.

OH! And chaosfaerie found my old 2nd ed Talisman! Complete, we verified.

Won: Cities & Knights (by 1 pt), 51st State (by 2 pt), the EDH games, about half the Dalmuti. Lost with the other 2 humans in BSG to Centurions (*ANY* doggoned Cylon ship activation other than HEAVY and we had it... grrr). Slaughtered as first man out by Remus who had a Space Platform keeping me from passing GO repeatedly that was only up because I forgot to play my Saboteur against it.

FTFY

MythicalMino · Post by **MythicalMino** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 6:32 pm

my (used, but nearly new) copy of the original, base game, Tomb arrived today. I now have both Tomb and Cryptmaster, so pretty excited about that.

Also, been playing Runebound solo (with 3 characters).

enjoying my gaming life right now.

Chris

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 11:45 pm

Hey remus, hear that? It's the sound of seventy six million middle fingers.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:56 am

MythicalMino wrote:
Also, been playing Runebound solo (with 3 characters).

enjoying my gaming life right now.

Chris

seppe picked up copies of the runebound collection of the card expansions that FFG recently released for himself and I. I need to try it out solo one of these days, though. i do like it...although that may be because it was one of my earliest forays into board gaming.

MythicalMino · Post by **MythicalMino** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:35 pm

Talking about the Essential Collection or whatever it is called? I got that also when I bought the base game.

What big box expansions should I pick up:

Sands of Al'Kalim,
Island of Dread,
or, Mists of Zanaga

I want to pick one up soon. I really am liking the Runebound game. I have yet to really get into Descent for some reason. Having such a hard time wanting to play that one at all.

I also am VERY interested in Merchants & Marauders....too many games, not enough time (or money)

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:28 pm

All I have is the base game and the essentials collection. It doesn't hit the table near enough to warrant any more purchases for me, unfortunately.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Sun Jul 24, 2011 1:29 am

If you're playing Runebound with a group of people, I would highly suggest buying a second set of movement dice. That way the next player can roll their movement and figure out the symbols where to go, saving precious time.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Sun Jul 24, 2011 2:47 am

Played lots of EDH over the last 24 hr.

Round one (chaosraven, kenetickid, his wife, our friend): my Ghave deck goes infinite and I take out the other three players.
Round two: Our friend talks kk's wife into killing me while he has board control and he wipes them out shortly thereafter.
Round three: kk's wife takes out Our Friend, then kenetickid, and it comes down to one turn too late to keep me from taking the win.

Headed back over to play with Our Friend and Remus West and my eldest son.
6 players allows us to play Emperor. (3 vs 3, with Targeted Effects allowed up to 2 'zones' away, tap a creature to move it a 'zone', team loses if Emperor dies)

Round four (chaosraven, Remus, kk's Wife vs Kenetickid, Our Friend, cr's son, kenetickid): kk's wife floods the skies with Dragons Demons and Angels and wipes out Our Friend to reach kenetickid(Emperor).

Round five: Our Friend is crippled by kk's wife and chaosraven using Braids to destroy his army, while CR Son stomps CR nearly into the dust with Animar before Ghave goes infinite to draw a concession from the enemy.

Round six (chaosraven and son take opposing Emperor positions with new decks, Sen Triplets and Ezuri, kenetickid switches to The Reaper King, Remus switches to the Twins): kk's wife thumps kk with Dragons and Angels, drawing his Day of Judgement to clear the board of creatures (which is ok, as Remus was getting smashed by CR's Son with a 10/10 Omnath). Remus clears the board later with a doubled Firespout in preperation for CR to drop the kickered Desolation Angel destroying all the lands. With kk's wife controlling her Commander, Remus with his Commander, and CR with a 5/4 flying Angel, the opposing Team surrenders.

Had an awesome time, as we haven't played Emperor magic in YEARS (usually stall out at 5 players for Star)

Remus West · Post by **Remus West** » Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:50 pm

Chaosraven wrote:Hey remus, hear that? It's the sound of seventy six million middle fingers.

all disappearing in a nuclear cloud burst?

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:34 pm

1989 has been pushed back to 2012. (What an odd sentence.)

GMT Games wrote:This game has undergone very comprehensive testing - about 300 games played to date, with until recently a 52-48 win percentage, pretty doggone balanced. But Bruce contacted us last week and said that recently they had uncovered a strategy that caused balance problems with the game (even some of the great CDG players we have on the test team were losing consistently against it). So of course Ted and Bruce were concerned and they are working with the development team to address and fix the problem.

But because we were very close to sending maps, counters, cards and rules to the printers, they asked us to hold off until they have a chance to make the fixes and retest to make sure everyone is satisfied with the result. (This way they won't have their hands tied because "the cards are already printed" or something; they can make modifications to any of the components as they see fit to best address the issue - THEN we'll send it all to the printers.)

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:45 pm

Yeah, that's disappointing news re: 1989. But then it's not like I need it in the short-term, so I guess it's better that it get fixed while it's feasible to do so.

I also played a round of Twilight Struggle (as well as Campaign Manager 2008) last week. Campaign Manager was entertaining enough, but (at least on first play) didn't seem to have a ton of substance. I wound up winning as Obama, winning mostly states that Obama actually won (I think I also took WV, but lost OR).

I also won Twilight Struggle as the U.S. A good initial draw (particularly the Marshall Plan, but also generally high value cards) let me withstand the initial Soviet push in Europe with good control of France and Italy. I drew the Korean War card, which let me safely consolidate South Korea / Japan / Taiwan in East Asia. A successful Indo-Pakistani War by the Soviets left them in control of India, Pakistan, and Thailand in the late early / early mid war, which was a problem, but during the mid-war I was able to wrest Pakistan away with the China card, and gained Thailand via a successful coup.

I never was able to gain all that much traction in the Middle East (partly due to a successful Arab- Israeli War), but I was able to withstand the point loss there by making it up mostly in Europe and Asia (also some in South America through Alliance for Progress, and dominating Africa). Ended via hitting 20 points in the late war.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 3:33 pm

Got in a couple games of EDH magic before work with the kids. My Ghave deck versus Zaks Kamahl, then Sliver Overlord, with Drake using Sen Triplets. Took the first game quickly. Second game it looked like Drake had it locked up, but pulled a nasty Vampire that gave me the game (with lifelink and Sanguine Bond in play). Spent some time discussing with Drake the finer points of the deck he borrowed from me and combos for a couple of his.

Jow · Post by **Jow** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:22 pm

played four games of summoner wars with a buddy the other night, first time in a while. Took him out twice with Guild Dwarves vs. Vanguard (both times taking down his only wall before he had a second, just bad drawing luck on his part), then once with the Tundra Orcs vs. Vanguard before taking the Vanguard and beating his Cave Goblins in the tightest game of the night. We're convinced the stock Vanguard deck is the toughest to play with among the six races in the starter sets and the first two expansions. You really need to be proactive about protecting your starting wall without overextending. In the case of VG vs. the Cave Goblins, the sole reason I pulled the game out was that I maintained a solid line across the entire map throughout, minimizing the impacts of the ridiculous events the Cave Goblins have. I've lost way too many games to the CGs that I've been ahead in due to combinations of events taking me by surprise to let that happen again.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 2:42 pm

i had to step back from Summoner Wars. The last two times I've played Seppe, I've come THIS close to winning...I'm talking to the point where he had 2 hits or less left on his summoner while I had full health on mine...only to lose spectacularly due to my own idiocy. Talk about frustrating.

I think I need to stick to coop games for a bit.

edit: but man do i love the Deep Dwarves. They're just magic using bulldozers.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 2:59 pm

Early rising boy talked me into some Munchkin and EDH this morning before shopping.

Won the Munchkin Fu, then kept the little girl from winning but couldn't stop the boy from winning Star Munchkin (with his Lazer Razer Bobazer).
Then Ghave crushed Uril thanks to my Spike Feeder keeping his giant 13/13 ass from slaughtering me.

I love summertime games with the kids.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:03 pm

hepcat wrote:I think I need to stick to coop games for a bit.

My Defenders of the Realm sense is tingling!!!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:18 pm

Chaosraven wrote:Early rising boy talked me into some Munchkin and EDH this morning before shopping.

Won the Munchkin Fu, then kept the little girl from winning but couldn't stop the boy from winning Star Munchkin (with his Lazer Razer Bobazer).

You know I love ya, Chaos...but you really do need to eventually name your kids.

Jow · Post by **Jow** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:26 pm

hepcat wrote:i had to step back from Summoner Wars. The last two times I've played Seppe, I've come THIS close to winning...I'm talking to the point where he had 2 hits or less left on his summoner while I had full health on mine...only to lose spectacularly due to my own idiocy. Talk about frustrating.

I think I need to stick to coop games for a bit.

edit: but man do i love the Deep Dwarves. They're just magic using bulldozers.

The Deep Dwarves do seem intriguing. I'm holding off on grabbing the Master Set, though, because as much as I'd like to patronize Plaid Hat themselves, I'd be paying almost $20 more than online retailers will be charging to get it early. I can wait.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:35 pm

Jow wrote:
hepcat wrote:i had to step back from Summoner Wars. The last two times I've played Seppe, I've come THIS close to winning...I'm talking to the point where he had 2 hits or less left on his summoner while I had full health on mine...only to lose spectacularly due to my own idiocy. Talk about frustrating.

I think I need to stick to coop games for a bit.

edit: but man do i love the Deep Dwarves. They're just magic using bulldozers.

The Deep Dwarves do seem intriguing. I'm holding off on grabbing the Master Set, though, because as much as I'd like to patronize Plaid Hat themselves, I'd be paying almost $20 more than online retailers will be charging to get it early. I can wait.

As a fellow wallet owner, I can understand your plight.

Speaking of plaidhat games, i'm looking forward to Dungeon Run. If they have it Gencon, I hope to pick it up. It sounds like a nice, descent lite (albeit VERY lite) kind of game.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 7:46 pm

hepcat wrote:
Chaosraven wrote:Early rising boy talked me into some Munchkin and EDH this morning before shopping.

Won the Munchkin Fu, then kept the little girl from winning but couldn't stop the boy from winning Star Munchkin (with his Lazer Razer Bobazer).

You know I love ya, Chaos...but you really do need to eventually name your kids.

i am pretty sure they were named sometime in the distant past. Now that I can tell the difference visually they can cut their hair or not to the length desired.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:46 am

Yesterdaay, we played Dominion (I was winning until the last few rounds but managed to make a comeback in the last turn and snatch victory) and Scotland Yard (Mr X got away, and not only that, but in three of the five reveals, he was in the same exact spot

).

We also played Take Stock which was a lot of fun. There are five commodities that start at 1. Every turn, people get an extra stock card (with a value of 2-12 for the price, but also a value of 1-3 for the number of shares the card represents) and then either use a card to increase the stock price of a commodity, or they discard a card and either save a second card as a stock certificate, or get one of the event cards to use now or later. Your wealth for the round is computed by multiplying the shares of your certificates by the price of the stock. So you need to judge whether to save a card as a certificate for something that's expensive/going to be expensive (but which may possibly tumble in a crash or audit, or potentially* increase if the stock is split) but could potentially get people to harm the stock (or at least avoid helping).

(* A stock split removes the top price card while doubling the price of the commodity, so it potentially reduces it in the short term)

It managed to be an exciting game, with the top place changing very quickly in the last round as stock splits and crashes were made. The instructions aren't the best (hopefully I explained the general idea of the game here) and it took much longer then the box said (almost 2 hours), but its a fun game.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:26 pm

Played Earth Reborn yesterday three times, lost all three games. One game lasted less than a single turn. Fantastic tactical game, but so far all of the scenarios seem to require some very specific tactics on one side or the other to grant any chance at success.

Then moved on to Claustrophobia. Lost two games in a row, once as the humans and once as the monsters. I apparently do not grok this game, after five or six games I have never won.

Then moved on to Confusion: Espionage in the Cold War or whatever the subtitle is. Lost another game, this time to an opponent who only moved one piece the entire game. AAAAGH!

Finally got a win in the second game of Confusion, thanks to (IMO) a brilliant ploy that diverted the one piece that had a chance of spoiling the win for me.

Still, 1-for-7 on the night. Bleah.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:15 pm

Did you sleep? That's quite the night.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:13 pm

El Guapo wrote:Did you sleep? That's quite the night.

Yeah, we only played for like 7 hours. Oh, you meant him.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:14 pm

Boudreaux wrote:Played Earth Reborn yesterday three times

I got that game recently. Now that is a game in a big box.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:17 pm

Earth Reborn has a lot of fantastic game mechanics. They're made even better after you realize you can pick and choose which mechanic(s) you want to use in your game. The only downside is that setup can be a bit long...but that's par for the course with all mini games, I guess.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:35 pm

Played three games of Dominion with kenetickid and his wife last night, and won two of them (even after a disatrous Lookout where the next three cards were Colony Colony Colony... Ouch). Older boychild made revisions to his EDH Animar deck and Younger boychild used it to kick the hell out of my new Vampire deck twice in a row before work today.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 5:53 pm

hepcat wrote:Earth Reborn has a lot of fantastic game mechanics. They're made even better after you realize you can pick and choose which mechanic(s) you want to use in your game. The only downside is that setup can be a bit long...but that's par for the course with all mini games, I guess.

That's why we set up a scenario and played it through three times. Each one took less than 15-20 minutes to get through, so we only spent maybe an hour tops on those three games. It's definitely a game you want to set up and then do a few run-throughs on, rather than tear down the board and set up a new scenario each time.

MythicalMino · Post by **MythicalMino** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:38 pm

my copy of Legions of Darkness arrived today. ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/ ... f-darkness" target="_blank )

Read through the rules, played a game. Tough. Interesting, but pretty tough. It is designed by Chris Taylor...I believe he is the guy that did a few pc games? Supreme Commander, maybe? The one that SupCom was "based" off, maybe?

At any rate...pretty fun game, to be honest. The components are nothing to shout home about, but the gameplay is very solid. And it is designed for solo play.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 12:44 am

MythicalMino wrote:my copy of Legions of Darkness arrived today. ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/ ... f-darkness" target="_blank )

Read through the rules, played a game. Tough. Interesting, but pretty tough. It is designed by Chris Taylor...I believe he is the guy that did a few pc games? Supreme Commander, maybe? The one that SupCom was "based" off, maybe?

At any rate...pretty fun game, to be honest. The components are nothing to shout home about, but the gameplay is very solid. And it is designed for solo play.

Different Chris Taylor, actually. This Chris Taylor helped design Fallout though, so he was involved in PC gaming.

SpaceLord · Post by **SpaceLord** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:11 am

Quick Hit:

Went to the Denver Boardgame Group MeetUp today, and learned Troyes... we had to quit early, of course, I was just getting the hang of it.

But my big suprise of the day was an awesome little cooperative card game called Hanabi and Ikebana - hereafter referred to as H&I.

In H&I, there's a deck of 5 suits, with each suit having 2 1s through 5, and a single 5. The object of the game is to play 1-5 of each suit in order, i.e. 1black, 2black, 3black, etc. Each player always has four cards in their hand. HOWEVER, there's a problem here: Each player plays with their hands facing the other players, and does not look at their own cards. During your turn, you have three possibilities:

First, you can attempt to play a card from your hand onto the board, without looking. If it's appropriate for one of the color piles, it stays in play. If you're wrong, the card is discarded, the team loses 1 of the 3 orange markers...if they run out, the game is over.

Secondly, you can discard a card to the trash, which is kept face-up. If you do, the team gains a blue "hint" token.

Finally, the hint tokens can be discarded to give a hint to another player. There's only two things you can tell the other player: How many cards they have of a color(pointing to the cards), or how many of a specific number they hold(also pointing them out.) If the deck runs out, each player gets one more turn, and you score points from 0-25, based on the completed/uncompleted piles.

Sounds simple? Well, it's mind-bending. Each draw of the deck and card played is an exercise in tension, and deduction. There's times when you *know* a card in your hand needs to be played, but the guy to your right is holding two unique 5s, and he knows nothing about his hand, so you have to decide whether to give a hint to him, or play yourself.

MonkeyFinger · Post by **MonkeyFinger** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:46 am

I was reading about Hanabi & Ikebana at your BGG link, you played Hanabi (fireworks) which is the co-op version. Ikebana (flower arrangement) is the competitive variant.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:36 am

Played a game of Wrath of Ashardalon with my 6 and 9 year olds over the weekend. My oldest son cannot seem to get it through his head that a wizard is not good at going toe-to-toe with all the monsters.

freelunch · Post by **freelunch** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:10 am

Saturday we played A Few Acres of Snow, a Dominion-inspired card-driven wargame about the French and British conflict over control of colonial America. one play wasn't enough to scratch the surface but I like what I saw, looking forward to playing it some more.

Sunday we played Defenders Of The Realm, Paris Connection (fun, fast stock control/train game - might be too simple for some but I like it), North Pole (racing-themed card game, fun for kids) and Zombie in my Pocket.

SpaceLord · Post by **SpaceLord** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:28 am

MonkeyFinger wrote:I was reading about Hanabi & Ikebana at your BGG link, you played Hanabi (fireworks) which is the co-op version. Ikebana (flower arrangement) is the competitive variant.

Yep, I knew that. The guy who brought the game said the competitive version wasn't as good. I haven't looked at the rules.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:42 am

Just posted this in Bargain Bin, but since it's of particular interest to this thread:

http://www.tanga.com/forum/blogs/its-ti ... dium=email" target="_blank

Tanga's having what basically looks like a board game woot-off starting at 10 pm EST tonight.