OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[Remus West]

0 for 4 in edh last night, thanks to Remus for Kingmakering. My partners seemed unclear on the concept of ALLIES. (not remus, he handed the win to his ally to keep me from killing him). 2 star games and 2 four player free for alls. Kenetickid had a sick Infect/Proliferate deck.

Please. I did not Kingmaker. I merely killed the enemy before my ally was going to. She couldn't have stopped him any more than she could me and he had enough on the board to kill her. The part where both of us got hosed by both of our allies at one point or another (you first admittedly or the game would have been much shorter) was a bit frustrating though.

[Chaosraven]

Guess we should sit next to each other from now on...

[Remus West]

Guess we should sit next to each other from now on...

I wasn't the one who changed seats.

[Chaosraven]

Guess we should sit next to each other from now on...

I wasn't the one who changed seats.

crystals seat was still star opposed.

[Chaosraven]

Remus, kenetickid, his wife, and I won a second game of Defenders of the Realm (and it sounds like I may have to pick up a copy, as my kids were interested in playing). Two games we've won out of five played and they're talking about playing tougher variants. Then we played San Juan with the two expansions, remus won at 37, kk at 34, me at 30, kk wife at 24. I liked the new buildings and thought the Events added a nice option.

[hentzau]

The creator of Defenders has put up a summer league for play on BGG. I've linked to the first chapter, he's posted 4 of the chapters so far, and has one more to post. If you're looking for more of a challenge with the game, I recommend you try those. I think I'm going to try the first chapter with Tommy and Stuart Monday night.

Also, check out the five and six player variant of the game he has posted. We did a five player game at Gen Con that was a lot of fun (even though one of the people playing was a bit of a "bend the rules so we win" sort of guy.)

[hentzau]

Last Monday Tommy, Stuart and I finally had a chance to break out Conquest of Nerath. We started at 8, and I didn't have high hopes of us actually finishing a game, looking at all of the pieces and the fact that I was going to be teaching the game as we went along, but it actually moved surprisingly quickly.

The game is played in one of two modes: Alliance or Free-for-all. The only way to play a free-for-all game is to have four players, and since we were playing with three we were stuck with an Alliance game. I took the two good factions, Nerath (humans) and Valin (elves), Tommy had Iron Circle (orcs), and Stuart had Karkoth (undead). There is a standard setup, where specific units are placed at specific spots on the board, and they have you right next to your enemies, so immediate conflict is inevitable.

Each faction has access to the same units: Footsoldiers, Warriors, Wizards, Siege Engines, Warships, Monsters, Storm Elementals, Castles, and Dragons. Each unit has a different die that it rolls in combat (Footsoldiers: D6, Warriors and Wizards: D10, Siege Engines, Warships and Elementals: D8, Castles and Dragons: D20) and a unit hits another unit on a roll of 6+. Even though every faction has the same units, the nice thing about the game is that the sculpts for each faction are different, so the Valin footsoldiers look different than the Iron Circle Footsoldiers.

The game is won (in an alliance game) by being the first faction to reach a set number of victory points. You have options for short, medium and long games. We went with a "shortened" short game to 15 vps instead of 20, in the interest of time. You get VP's for every territory you conquer, and for obtaining and using Magic Items.

Play is very similar to Risk or Conquest of the Empire or any number of "conquer the board" type games: Event phase, Move Phase, Combat Phase, Redistribution Phase, Purchase Phase. You start off by drawing an event card. These cards can be used to change the outcome of battles, give you more units, etc. They are usually played during the combat phase (from what we saw). Move Phase is pretty self explanatory, you move your units. Unlike most other games in the conquer variety, you do not have to leave units behind in your territories. You can conquer them and abandon them, and as long as an enemy doesn't take it from you, it still counts as your territory. Combat involves tons of dice rolling, and is very fast and easy. Redistribution allows you flying units that survived combat to move to other areas that you control. Purchase phase, you get gold for every territory you currently control, and then buy units, spawning them at your castles and giving each unit a free move.

Now, it couldn't be a D&D based game without dungeons, and this game is no exception. Certain spaces on the board can never be controlled by a faction, they have a picture of a dungeon entrance on them (and each is named after a famous D&D module of yore, such as Tomb of Horrors and Lost Shrine of Tamoachan). At game set up, you place a dungeon tile randomly on the space. You can send your heroes and wizards into the dungeons, and have them combat the creatures lurking there. You may get lucky, and find a pack of scrawnly goblins. Or you may find a Beholder there. Just luck of the draw. If you succeed in defeating the dungeon, you get to draw a treasure card, which is used to give you bonuses, as well as victory points.

Play seems, at least from the one time we played it, to be a smash and grab affair. Mass your troops, take over territory, hope your dice rolls don't suck, make sure you have footsoldiers to soak up some of the damage. It doesn't seem to be worth your time to turtle at all, if you aren't taking territory, you aren't going to win. The event cards and the treasures add a bit of a randomized element to the game, where a sure thing attack can suddenly turn against you with the well-timed play of an event card. Despite my misgivings about us getting in a full game, we were able to play a short short game in under 3 hours, including learning the rules and punching out all of the tokens. In our game, the Evil Alliance BARELY squeaked out a victory over the Good, I ended up being 1 VP short of winning and Tommy snagged the 15th VP on his next turn.

I had a lot of fun with the game, despite me generally not liking these types of games. It will definitely be hitting my table again.

[baelthazar]

I love Conquest of Nerath! And I thought I had moved past the Risk and Axis & Allies style games of my past.

[SpaceLord]

Busy gaming weekend!

I played:

Asara, a tower-building worker placement game. It was pretty neat, liked the components.

Mansions of Madness again, with 2 players versus the Keeper. We played the school-themed story, and barely had any combat. It was weird.

Galaxy Trucker -first time playing this one, and I liked it. Was kind of strange that there are few decisions to actually make during the rounds, most of the game is in the building of your ship, which was very cool.

Asteroyds was next on my list. It's a programmed movement game, sort of like Robo Rally. Entertaining.

Got another game of Battleship Galaxies in, I'm enjoying this one more each time I play.

[El Guapo]

Played a four-player game of Warrior Knights on Saturday evening. First time playing, so I'm sure we messed up a million rules, but I'm glad we got it on the table. Not sure how many people have played it, but basically each player represents a Baron vying to replace the now-deceased King. You win either by conquering more than half the board (which based on this play seems very difficult, especially without triggering the other victory condition first), or by having the most Influence Points (victory points) when the pool of starting influence points runs out (with victory point primarily accrued via controlling cities for extended periods of time).

I won a sound victory in the end; I was able to acquire a few cities fairly early on. Attacks on me came probably too late to do much good, and I was able to throw back the ones that did come with some favorable fate draws.

It was fun, though I was disappointed that no one stormed out of the Assembly, but then there never seemed to be a good opportunity to.

[Isgrimnur]

Asteroyds was next on my list. It's a programmed movement game, sort of like Robo Rally. Entertaining.

It makes me think of a space version of Powerboats.

[Boudreaux]

Played a four-player game of Warrior Knights on Saturday evening. First time playing, so I'm sure we messed up a million rules, but I'm glad we got it on the table. Not sure how many people have played it, but basically each player represents a Baron vying to replace the now-deceased King.

I love Warrior Knights, although like Game of Thrones it's a big, complicated meaty game that I hardly ever get to play. I really want to get the Crown and Glory expansion and give that a try.

We actually had a player storm out of the Assembly once when the rest of us wanted to pass a law (I forget which) that would have dissolved his armies out from under him. He was forced to go on an all-out blitz and almost won the game before we stopped him. It was great.

[hentzau]

I still have a copy of the original Games Workshop Warrior Knights. I think it got played once or twice since I bought it all those years ago.

[Chaz]

After the Warrior Knights game Guapo mentioned, I remembered thinking the same thing I thought the other time I played it years ago: the default size for the VP pool/game timer seems small. It feels like the game's just starting to get going with bigger armies and a need to take over land right about when the pool runs out and the game ends. I think I remember reading variant on BGG with a bigger pool that lengthen the game by a bit, but allow for more late-game maneuvering.

[El Guapo]

Played a four-player game of Warrior Knights on Saturday evening. First time playing, so I'm sure we messed up a million rules, but I'm glad we got it on the table. Not sure how many people have played it, but basically each player represents a Baron vying to replace the now-deceased King.

I love Warrior Knights, although like Game of Thrones it's a big, complicated meaty game that I hardly ever get to play. I really want to get the Crown and Glory expansion and give that a try.

We actually had a player storm out of the Assembly once when the rest of us wanted to pass a law (I forget which) that would have dissolved his armies out from under him. He was forced to go on an all-out blitz and almost won the game before we stopped him. It was great.

There is a law that caps army size at 500 (which passed, largely due to my support since I had smaller, more diffuse armies). No one breached 500 though (though at least one player came right up to that), so no one had to storm out.

[El Guapo]

After the Warrior Knights game Guapo mentioned, I remembered thinking the same thing I thought the other time I played it years ago: the default size for the VP pool/game timer seems small. It feels like the game's just starting to get going with bigger armies and a need to take over land right about when the pool runs out and the game ends. I think I remember reading variant on BGG with a bigger pool that lengthen the game by a bit, but allow for more late-game maneuvering.

The manual itself mentions expanding or contracting the VP pool to alter the game length. We did 10 VP per player, which is the standard, but the game also suggests 8 VP or 15 VP if you want a shorter or longer game. Since it was the first game I didn't want to tinker too much with variants, though.

I'd be happy to play a more VP / longer game sometime, though there's still many long games that I'd like to get on the table as well, so I suspect that's going to the back of the line. I'm going to keep my eye out for the expansion as well, to see if I can get a good deal on that, since it seems to be very highly regarded on BGG.

[Zarathud]

Played a four-player game of Warrior Knights on Saturday evening. First time playing, so I'm sure we messed up a million rules, but I'm glad we got it on the table. Not sure how many people have played it

I have done about 4 rules demos of Warrior Knights since it came out, but have never been able to take a player through the full game. I really like the promise from its depth, but it's quite dense to absorb in one sitting.

[Isgrimnur]

And Steve Jackson Games is planning a release of Ogre 6th edition later this year. It's going to be a mega-box 3d commemorative edition.

Updated today:

August 16, 2011: Ogre 6e Status Report: 2012

I haven't done a good enough job recently of communicating the status of Ogre 6th Edition. The status is: Still planned, still the super-fancy as per the prototypes you can see on that page (and which I expect will show up in the display case at PAX in a couple of weeks) . . .

And definitely still not on track for 2011. I warned everyone in May that it might not happen in 2011, and now I can say it definitely won't. I knew that at the end of June, before I took July off, and I should have shared.

There's no sophisticated marketing reason (and, for that matter, no sinister financial reason) for the delay. It's just "not enough hours in Steve's day." Ogre takes a certain amount of concentration and "getting into state" to do right. It's fun, but it's a lot more demanding fun than, say, making up Munchkin curses.

I continue to get more mail about this than any other upcoming project (definitely more than for any single Munchkin projects, probably more than for any two). I know you want it; I want to do it . . . it's just going to take more work.

-- Steve Jackson

[SpaceLord]

Now on my radar:

Space Empires 4x - from GMT. GMT's one of the best in the business, and SE4X has an interesting story: It's a home-brewed game that the designer has been tweaking for twenty years. GMT finally gave him a shot at the big-time.

First Review of the Game

Pictures!





The old-school gamer in me is stoked!

[hepcat]

Is Space Empires out yet? It's been on my radar for a while too.

[El Guapo]

I like the space theme, but unless the reviews are really positive I have such a backlog that I can't really justify getting another game (especially since I just got Founding Fathers). So in some ways I'm hoping that the reviews are not stellar.

Also usually "old school" translates to "takes 20 hours to play" in my experience.

[Chaosraven]

AAAAHHHHH!

HEX MAP!

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

CARDBOARD UNITS WITH STUFF ON THEM!!!!!!

Yeah, my OSG is yearning to fly!

[Chaosraven]

I like the space theme, but unless the reviews are really positive I have such a backlog that I can't really justify getting another game (especially since I just got Founding Fathers). So in some ways I'm hoping that the reviews are not stellar.

Also usually "old school" translates to "takes 20 hours to play" in my experience.

Now you've done it.

I have to break out Divine Right over my vacation.

[coopasonic]

Well, with only one game in it's a little hard to know for sure, but I'd say Quarriors is a great little game for what it's supposed to be... a light 30 minute game that can hinge a fair amount on the luck of the dice. I'd put it above filler but a good distance from medium weight

In every good way it felt like Dominion to me, and as the box jokes "without all the shuffling". While there is some hand management and deck cycling present in Quarriors, it doesn't appear to get to the extent there can be in Dominion (seemingly endless chains of drawing more cards that in turn let you draw/play more cards, etc.) While Dominion is won by figuring out how to best stuff your deck with victory point cards, Quarriors comes down to some light-hearted creature battling. It's not very detailed but it feels much more adversarial and engaging to me.

Essentially each turn you draw your dice, roll them and see how many creatures you have to activate, and how much quiddity you have to spend. You then decide how much you're going to spend on activating creatures, and how much to buy a new die with, and what new die you're going to buy, if applicable. A common situation for us early in our game last night was to roll a total of 5 quiddity and 2 creatures (1 quiddity each to activate). Do you summon both and buy a cheap 3 quiddity die, summon none and buy a 5 quiddity die, etc. As the game progressed we might have rolled more quiddity, but also had creatures that cost 2-3 to activate... the cheap dice might have been bought out, and so on.

There seems to be a good amount of replay value too. There's a small deck of cards, similar to the Dominion cards used to randomly select which Kingdom cards will be used each game. There are also I believe 5 sets of spell dice and 10 sets of creature dice. For each different set of dice there's 3 corresponding reference cards. For example, the Deathdealer dice (black with red lettering) have 3 cards, Deathdealer, Mighty Deathdealer and Powerful Deathdealer or something like that. When you start the game you randomly draw 3 spell cards and 7 creature cards. So in one game you might get the Powerful Deathdealer, in another just the plain old Deathdealer, or no Deathdealers at all and so on. Each card has different abilities so the dice will vary a lot from game to game.

This arrived Monday and I read through the rules. It's kind of hard to imagine the gameplay based on the read through. I'm also curious how you could score ANY points in a 4 player game. I'll be bringing it to the board game meetup Saturday if I can make it.

Lots of manuals to read this week.

[SpaceLord]

Link to PDF of Rulebook for Space Empires

I broke down and preordered it.

[El Guapo]

I like the space theme, but unless the reviews are really positive I have such a backlog that I can't really justify getting another game (especially since I just got Founding Fathers). So in some ways I'm hoping that the reviews are not stellar.

Also usually "old school" translates to "takes 20 hours to play" in my experience.

Now you've done it.

I have to break out Divine Right over my vacation.

This is one of the games I played back in middle school - we'd start at 12:30 or 1 pm, and then do an all-nighter, usually finishing around 3 am or 4 am. Good times. Though once (out of maybe 12 or so games) everything fell into place and I steamrolled everyone, and we finished around 9:30 pm. We really didn't know what to do at that point.

[coopasonic]

Opened up Formula D and read through the rules last night. It looks pretty awesome. I want to play RIGHT NOW!

I actually ran through a simplified, simplified game with the 5 year old this morning (no slowing down for turns, yes our tires are made of glue! Indestructible glue!). I think if I add the rules slowly he will be able to figure it out.

It also looks like a solid game to play/practice solo. I no longer care about finding powerboats.

[Isgrimnur]

Excellent news. One thing the De Trippers here in Dallas did was they would get small label-type stickers about the size of , say the butterfly bandages, and place them on the board whenever there was a debris drop or something similar. This allowed them to keep track of it without having some piece slide off the board if bumped and made it easily removable after the race.

[coopasonic]

Excellent news. One thing the De Trippers here in Dallas did was they would get small label-type stickers about the size of , say the butterfly bandages, and place them on the board whenever there was a debris drop or something similar. This allowed them to keep track of it without having some piece slide off the board if bumped and made it easily removable after the race.

Sounds like a job for colorforms!

[Isgrimnur]

Not a bad idea at all!

[Daveman]

With all the talk of Castle Panic in the kid-friendly game discussion, I took a look on BGG to see if there's any news and lo and behold... there's an expansion coming!

http://www.firesidegames.com/thewizardstower.html" target="_blank

Looks like a pretty beefy expansion too... a new deck of cards to draw from so long as the new Wizard tower is still up, new monsters, new boss monsters, and FIRE!!

[Boudreaux]

With all the talk of Castle Panic in the kid-friendly game discussion, I took a look on BGG to see if there's any news and lo and behold... there's an expansion coming!

http://www.firesidegames.com/thewizardstower.html" target="_blank

That looks pretty sweet.

[baelthazar]

Link to PDF of Rulebook for Space Empires

I broke down and preordered it.

I should be getting a review copy of this and have a review posted before too long. I was initially excited for the game, but it is fairly heavy wargaming. Maybe a nice change of pace?

The reviewer on BGG did say to play with instant upgrading of ship tech, otherwise the game becomes a micromanagement headache.

[hentzau]

Opened up Formula D and read through the rules last night. It looks pretty awesome. I want to play RIGHT NOW!

I actually ran through a simplified, simplified game with the 5 year old this morning (no slowing down for turns, yes our tires are made of glue! Indestructible glue!). I think if I add the rules slowly he will be able to figure it out.

It also looks like a solid game to play/practice solo. I no longer care about finding powerboats.

I am a HUGE fan of Formula D. Some day I'd love to get a series race in, with teams of racers. One thing that can happen with Formula D if you aren't careful is that people can spend a lot of time counting their path through turns, to the an optimal number of spaces. The count, go back, count, go back, count, go back...If I did do a series race (on several tracks) I would make a rule that you count your move one time, and one time only. Where you end up is where you end up.

Oh, and a second set of dice for this also helps to speed things along.

[Jow]

Played our first few games with the new Summoner Wars master set and I have to say so far I'm not impressed with the direction they've taken in faction design. Specifically, using the Deep Dwarves as an example, the races seem much more similar to the CAve Goblins from the original set in that they can pull off wild and crazy shit there's no real possibility of adequately preparing for short of walling yourself in behind units. The first game, Cloaks vs. the Deep Dwarves, saw the Dwarves basically running circles around me all game until my buddy trapped me in the corner of MY side of the board using his own summoner and finished me off. I really couldn't believe the amount of extra movement they were able to get, the fact that he could easily combine gem mages and scholars to create what basically amounted to a 4-attack common, etc. Their weakness appears to be that they burn through their deck megaquick, but with so much extra movement, attack power, and lockdown ability (via magic stasis), I don't see that as much of a weakness at all because surviving that long with anything but stout races like the Vanguard seems bloody unlikely.

Discouraged but feeling experimental, I decided to try the Jungle Elves and took a risk on turn 2, exchanging my summoner with my lone lioneer in order to roll 3 attack almost right away vs. his summoner and used the summoner to take out a miner in one shot. Pretty good second turn for me, but it put my summoner one square onto his side of the board. I was, however, 4 or 5 spaces from the enemy wall and figured I could just duck and run on the next turn. On his turn, My buddy proceeded to drop a summoning surge, an illusionary warrior (bringing out a gem mage), and who knows what else, moved it all into range, rolled *8* dice against me, and one-hit me for the win... on turn 2.

What I really loved about Summoner Wars in the earlier was how chesslike and tactical it felt. At least with the Deep Dwarves, that feeling is pretty much gone for me.

[MythicalMino]

I might be picking up either Ikusa (remake of Samurai Swords/Shogun) OR Merchants & Marauders. I have also had my eye out on Conquest of Nerath (I think that is the spelling).

Which one do you all recommend me pick up tomorrow? All 3 look like lots of fun...

[baelthazar]

I might be picking up either Ikusa (remake of Samurai Swords/Shogun) OR Merchants & Marauders. I have also had my eye out on Conquest of Nerath (I think that is the spelling).

Which one do you all recommend me pick up tomorrow? All 3 look like lots of fun...

I very much enjoy Conquest of Nerath, and if you like a lighter but action packed strategy game that is a step beyond Risk and Axis & Allies, but far from the brain burning of Twilight Imperium, then you will love it too. Also, it works best with 4 players, so you can play the Alliance game of 2v2. That makes it very special. If you have more than 4 usually, then it may not be the best choice. It takes around 3 hours to play even a medium or short game, so be wary of that.

I have Merchants & Marauders, but have yet to play it (for over 7 months now). It looks like a boardgame version of Pirates! by Sid Meiers, and I hear that is pretty accurate. However, it is a long game, perhaps too long for what it is.

I known nothing about Ikusa.

[hentzau]

I might be picking up either Ikusa (remake of Samurai Swords/Shogun) OR Merchants & Marauders. I have also had my eye out on Conquest of Nerath (I think that is the spelling).

Which one do you all recommend me pick up tomorrow? All 3 look like lots of fun...

I very much enjoy Conquest of Nerath, and if you like a lighter but action packed strategy game that is a step beyond Risk and Axis & Allies, but far from the brain burning of Twilight Imperium, then you will love it too. Also, it works best with 4 players, so you can play the Alliance game of 2v2. That makes it very special. If you have more than 4 usually, then it may not be the best choice. It takes around 3 hours to play even a medium or short game, so be wary of that.

I have Merchants & Marauders, but have yet to play it (for over 7 months now). It looks like a boardgame version of Pirates! by Sid Meiers, and I hear that is pretty accurate. However, it is a long game, perhaps too long for what it is.

I known nothing about Ikusa.

I have, and have played both Conquest of Nerath and Merchants and Marauders, and like both a lot. What baelthazar said appears to be accurate, based on the couple of plays that I have gotten in. If I were pressed to have one over the other, I think I would probably go with M&M. It's an awesome theme, they've done a great job with the art, and it really does play like Sid Meier's Pirates. But the games have been pretty long so far, but they've been learning/teaching games. I think once you have the rules down it'll move much faster. The down time in the ports seems like it's the biggest drag on the game.

[Smoove_B]

Played through a custom Heroscape scenario, The Sunken Crypt and had a great time. Took us about 4 hours, which is apparently double what it should have taken, but we're old and slow. For a fan created adventure, it is extremely well balanced and it absolutely came down to the wire whether or not we were going to win. We had so much fun we're planning on doing it again next month and just mixing up the roles. If you have the pieces, I'd highly recommend it.

Managed to get a few rounds of Dominion in as well and then Inn-Fighting closed the night.

So many games...not enough time.

[Chaosraven]

Remus and I tried Defenders of the Realm with the dragons last night. The imps spread like wildfire and after killing the Green Dragon, we lost as we ran out of Green Minions, woof.