Octopus Overlords

wonderpug wrote:Any recommendations for something quick to learn, fun for casuals, and good for 6 players? Have some relatives invading for the coming week and it'd be great to have something to bring everyone together and break the ice a bunch.

This group is largely of the Monopoly/Sorry/Clue upbringing, as well as things like Spades/Hearts/Poker.

Current typical gettogether favorite is Rage (Spades on crack with hallucinogens).

Right now, kind of considering buying Dixit

Remus West wrote:Wizard might work. It is a bidding trump game. I think it plays 6. Might max at 5. I'll try to remember to check at home. I love the game. Chaosraven dislikes it. I believe both LordMortis and redrun enjoy it.

Wizard is a good trick taking game similar to Spades with an added level of difficulty.

If you want to pull them away from playing cards as a gateway into other games I might suggest 6 Nimmt:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamee ... nimmt-plus" target="_blank

This allows you to play a parlour trick taking game while divorcing yourself from traditional playing cards. Now you open the idea that card games step outside of playing cards without stepping outside of their comfort zone. Then you can start to look into game like Great Dalmuti or Bang! to play larger party card games in general. Then you can expand them beyond card games.

I own Rage but we haven't played it.

7 Wonders? I don't like it as much as many on here, but it's pretty good.

The Resistance is a great game for 6 as well. Of course, Settlers goes to 6 with the 5-6 expansion, although I think 4 players is easily the best number.

Fluxx, in its myriad of incarnations. (and for the record, I just care less for Wizard than every other game we collectively have, so I would rather play anything else.) Cosmic Encounter with 6 is great, Bang! With 6 is great.

Chaosraven wrote: (and for the record, I just care less for Wizard than every other game we collectively have, so I would rather play anything else.)

We should put that to the test... Just kidding... Mainly, because there are plenty of games that are crowd favorites that I don't care for and if I know a large portion of the evening is going to revolve around them ahead of time then I'll stay home. That hex game Remus owns with plastic mountain inserts comes to mind.

Bohnanza usually works well for a group that size.

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote: (and for the record, I just care less for Wizard than every other game we collectively have, so I would rather play anything else.)

We should put that to the test... Just kidding... Mainly, because there are plenty of games that are crowd favorites that I don't care for and if I know a large portion of the evening is going to revolve around them ahead of time then I'll stay home. That hex game Remus owns with plastic mountain inserts comes to mind.

Runewars. Also, I don't think any of us are exactly thrilled with that. It just doesn't work out well. Ever. I like the idea a lot. The execution just leaves to much to be desired. Mage Knight seems a better adaptation of a similar idea (at least in my very limited exposure).

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1353/times-up

Best party game evar!

Remus West wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote: (and for the record, I just care less for Wizard than every other game we collectively have, so I would rather play anything else.)

We should put that to the test... Just kidding... Mainly, because there are plenty of games that are crowd favorites that I don't care for and if I know a large portion of the evening is going to revolve around them ahead of time then I'll stay home. That hex game Remus owns with plastic mountain inserts comes to mind.

Runewars. Also, I don't think any of us are exactly thrilled with that. It just doesn't work out well. Ever. I like the idea a lot. The execution just leaves to much to be desired. Mage Knight seems a better adaptation of a similar idea (at least in my very limited exposure).

The game I am thinking of you each have a kingdom and there are lots of troops on square, triangle, round, and octagonal bases, and you fight over stones, some of which have dragon symbols hidden on them in the game I am thinking of. The game is divided into seasons and your ability to do anything is largely determined by choosing the right action with the right season modifier. It's not really like MK. You do have a game that is sort of like MK which isn't bad, though I agree MK seems better (so far).

Jow wrote:http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1353/times-up

Best party game evar!

That sounds like fun.

LordMortis wrote:

Remus West wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote: (and for the record, I just care less for Wizard than every other game we collectively have, so I would rather play anything else.)

We should put that to the test... Just kidding... Mainly, because there are plenty of games that are crowd favorites that I don't care for and if I know a large portion of the evening is going to revolve around them ahead of time then I'll stay home. That hex game Remus owns with plastic mountain inserts comes to mind.

Runewars. Also, I don't think any of us are exactly thrilled with that. It just doesn't work out well. Ever. I like the idea a lot. The execution just leaves to much to be desired. Mage Knight seems a better adaptation of a similar idea (at least in my very limited exposure).

The game I am thinking of you each have a kingdom and there are lots of troops on square, triangle, round, and octagonal bases, and you fight over stones, some of which have dragon symbols hidden on them in the game I am thinking of. The game is divided into seasons and your ability to do anything is largely determined by choosing the right action with the right season modifier. It's not really like MK. You do have a game that is sort of like MK which isn't bad, though I agree MK seems better (so far).

Runewars is the game with the different bases on the armies looking for the dragon stone. I think the concept is similar. They both seem based on the same world that Descent is based on. The execution is much different. Other than that I have no clue what other game you are talking about.

LordMortis wrote:

Jow wrote:http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1353/times-up

Best party game evar!

That sounds like fun.

With creative, easygoing people the game's provided the funniest experiences I've ever had gaming. Still holds the lofty position of being the only game that has caused someone to shoot beer out their nose (and all over my carpet). it's been a while, but next time y'all are looking at getting a group of 6 or 8 together lemme know and I can bring it along.

Yep, Runewars is the game I'm thinking of

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/694133/runewars" target="_blank

I don't think it's anything like MK



OTOH, another game you own in the same universe that I think is like MK (but not as good so far) is Runebound.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4661 ... nd-edition" target="_blank

LordMortis wrote:Yep, Runewars is the game I'm thinking of

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/694133/runewars" target="_blank

I don't think it's anything like MK



OTOH, another game you own in the same universe that I think is like MK (but not as good so far) is Runebound.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4661 ... nd-edition" target="_blank

Runebound, Runewars, and Descent are all based in the same game world. That was why Mage Knight reminded me of them. The world setting seems similar.

Remus West wrote: Runewars. Also, I don't think any of us are exactly thrilled with that. It just doesn't work out well. Ever. I like the idea a lot. The execution just leaves to much to be desired. Mage Knight seems a better adaptation of a similar idea (at least in my very limited exposure).

I think we discussed that at an Octocon a while back. I feel exactly the same about it. I WANT to like it, but when playing it just seems something is missing. Not sure what, to be honest.

Mage Knight gives me the grand strategy feel I wanted from Rune Wars though.

I *think* the Runewars expansion fixes a lot of the issues with it, but I haven't tried it myself so don't know if that's true or I'm mis-remembering

IceBear wrote:I *think* the Runewars expansion fixes a lot of the issues with it, but I haven't tried it myself so don't know if that's true or I'm mis-remembering

I have the expansion. I'll have to look at it again but my initial impression was that it would not fix the issues.

hepcat wrote:Mage Knight gives me the grand strategy feel I wanted from Rune Wars though.

I think of it more as an adventure game so far, without having played any PvP or Co Op games or even having played against a castle.

I get the grandness, though. I'm hoping the game gets to be grander adventure game when I get to play more than three rounds. Right as the game really starts getting interesting it's over and some of the grandness is let out of the balloon.

Conquest scenarios should give you much more time game time.

LordMortis wrote:

hepcat wrote:Mage Knight gives me the grand strategy feel I wanted from Rune Wars though.

I think of it more as an adventure game so far, without having played any PvP or Co Op games or even having played against a castle.

I get the grandness, though. I'm hoping the game gets to be grander adventure game when I get to play more than three rounds. Right as the game really starts getting interesting it's over and some of the grandness is let out of the balloon.

To me, the walkthrough felt like "this is how you play now that you've finished this go play a real game". Considering the highest level any of us acheived was third before end game I assume the other scenarios provide more advancement opportunities.

Remus West wrote:To me, the walkthrough felt like "this is how you play now that you've finished this go play a real game". Considering the highest level any of us acheived was third before end game I assume the other scenarios provide more advancement opportunities.

Concurred, but keep in mind we played with 75% of the tiles in the basic game. What they basic game did was encourage exploration to bring the game to an end more quickly.

LordMortis wrote:

Remus West wrote:To me, the walkthrough felt like "this is how you play now that you've finished this go play a real game". Considering the highest level any of us acheived was third before end game I assume the other scenarios provide more advancement opportunities.

Concurred, but keep in mind we played with 75% of the tiles in the basic game. What they basic game did was encourage exploration to bring the game to an end more quickly.

End game came more quickly due to the particular goal of the walk through. I have not seen what the other goals are. It seemed to me there was great variation in the outcome of tiles simply based on how they faced and which tiles they were connected with as well as the monsters that occupied them. Combine that with the monster/tower tiles changing the challenge factor for taking them as well as the burning monastery trick (which I thought was a very good trick on your part) I think there is a great deal of variation available. Simply altering the terrain and placement of the locations on a tile will have great impact on the options. I'm assuming the final 25% of the tiles are simply variations like that which is fine with me.

Wait til you try to take over actual cities. That's not something you do in the tutorial scenario. You'll want tolevel up quite a bit before you tackle one of the higher level cities...hell, any city.

But if you feel it's too easy still, they have a variant in the rule book for making cities even harder.

Many thanks for the game recommendations! Will be looking up all the recs in BGG when I can.

Guillotine was pretty fun and BGG tells me it will sit 5 players.

NickAragua and I along with a couple others did some gaming this weekend - Age of Conan, and a four-player game of Chaos in the Old World (using expansion cards / abilities). Really enjoyed both - Conan was definitely more enjoyable the second time through due to actually having some understanding of the rules. Played as Stygia (the snake / James Earl Jones nation) - successfully crowned Conan, which was worth a ton of points, but still came up 1 point short of victory.

Chaos was fun too, as always. My only concern was that after I picked the Bloodletter ability I kind of ran away with the game, and wound up cruising to a solid win in (IIRC) turn 4 or 5 with like 62 VPs. There's some discussion online about whether Khorne's expansion Bloodletter power (2 VPs per figure killed in a region where a Bloodletter is present) is overpowered, and this tends towards yes, though it's only one play with the ability so too early to say. Also I was going pretty strong towards a dial victory as well, so may have won regardless.

wonderpug wrote:Many thanks for the game recommendations! Will be looking up all the recs in BGG when I can.

I should find my "Box o' Card Games" for more suggestions, as it contains Guillotine, Fluxx, Great Dalmuti, Family Business, Circus Flohcati, Bohnanza, 3 Dragon Ante, Franks Zoo, Wheres Bobs Hat, Mille Borne, and others I can't remember right now

Found it.

Chez Geek
Chez Goth
Chrononauts
Earthquake
as well.

LordMortis wrote:

hepcat wrote:Mage Knight gives me the grand strategy feel I wanted from Rune Wars though.

I think of it more as an adventure game so far, without having played any PvP or Co Op games or even having played against a castle.

I get the grandness, though. I'm hoping the game gets to be grander adventure game when I get to play more than three rounds. Right as the game really starts getting interesting it's over and some of the grandness is let out of the balloon.

In short, Mage Knight was the game I wanted Runebound and Talisman to be. Not saying Talisman can't be fun with the right people and some beer, but Mage Knight is a true RPG adventure game.

a few weeks ago, I spent some time only playing Mage Knight. That game is quite awesome.

El Guapo, we played Age of Conan yesterday, also. I like it, though, there are areas in the game that I feel could have been done better. I wish Conan's adventures played more of a role, for example. I read that there was a full expansion in the works (fully playtested and all, according to the designer, I believe). But the company (Nexus?) collapsed. Too bad, because I do think the game had great potential to be a very awesome game.

Got in another game of Dungeon Run last night...it was kind of a "let's give this one more try to see if I can save it before it hits the auction table at RockCon this fall" play. Sadly, it didn't survive the cut.

I'm not sure what it exactly is about it. It has lots of elements that I like...dungeon crawl, loot and random monsters, interesting combat mechanic, quite a bit of strategy, a mix of co-op and screw your neighbor game play, quite a bit of variation in the characters and customization of their abilities, and relatively short play time. But it seems that the sum does not quite add up to all of its parts. It was a great idea that just didn't quite gel. All three of us agreed that if we wanted to do a dungeon crawl, we'd just pull out one of the D&D adventure board games.

Also got in several turns of A Few Acres of Snow, to get a handle on the game mechanics before I bring it down to play a game with my brother (who's a huge F&I War nut). This game seems like it has a lot going for it. We struggled to get something going through our first 5 or so turns, but we were also learning at the same time. I'm going to hit up BGG to see if there are any gameplay videos to reinforce what I was interpreting from the rulebook, but from our 20 minute attempt at playing, it seems like a winner.

MythicalMino wrote:a few weeks ago, I spent some time only playing Mage Knight. That game is quite awesome.

El Guapo, we played Age of Conan yesterday, also. I like it, though, there are areas in the game that I feel could have been done better. I wish Conan's adventures played more of a role, for example. I read that there was a full expansion in the works (fully playtested and all, according to the designer, I believe). But the company (Nexus?) collapsed. Too bad, because I do think the game had great potential to be a very awesome game.

In some ways Conan's adventures are too little, in some ways too much. They're probably too little in that they should figure more prominently in the game (though having Conan present for a battle can make a huge difference). But in some ways they're too much / too important because Conan's adventures and the tokens can cause a huge point swing. Collecting Conan adventure tokens netted me about 18 points - +3 for crowning Conan, +10 for having the most tokens in two categories, and -5 to my main opponent who could not cash in on the one category where he had the most tokens (monsters) because I had crowned conan. The 13 points that added were almost half of my final total of 29.

So collecting tokens (which has a strong random element to it) made up almost half of my final point total - more than half if you factor in -5 to my main rival. Which almost caused me to win despite a lackluster performance in the main part of the game.

I played a few games of 1989 last week, first with my wife and then my brother-in-law. It's a close cousin of Twilight Struggle, so if you like that game, you're likely to enjoy 1989. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

However, there are a couple of differences that I think may limit its appeal:

First, the events in 1989 are likely to be far less familiar to players than those in Twilight Struggle. The latter game features many events that still resonate today (Korean War, "We Will Bury You"). While 1989 has some big moments (rise of Lech Walesa, death of Ceausescu), most of the cards are more obscure (László Tőkés, expulsion of the Bulgarian Turks). This makes for a great learning experience -- the rule book gives a capsule history for each card -- but also makes it more difficult to link your in-game actions to the real-world history that you lived and/or learned about.

Second, because 1989 is an asymmetric game, there's not a clear sense of winning and losing. The Communist starts in power, and spends the whole game trying to slow the relentless march of the Democrat. The victory point track provides a mechanism for determining a "winner" at the end of the game, but in the games I played, no one had a real sense of triumph at the end -- as the Communist, the best you can do is delay the inevitable, and as the Democrat, you can only really match, not exceed, the historical record.

Despite these issues, I had a blast. The history is engaging, the Twilight Struggle mechanics as solid as ever, and the new card battles inject an addition layer of strategy and uncertainty.

El Guapo wrote:

MythicalMino wrote:a few weeks ago, I spent some time only playing Mage Knight. That game is quite awesome.

El Guapo, we played Age of Conan yesterday, also. I like it, though, there are areas in the game that I feel could have been done better. I wish Conan's adventures played more of a role, for example. I read that there was a full expansion in the works (fully playtested and all, according to the designer, I believe). But the company (Nexus?) collapsed. Too bad, because I do think the game had great potential to be a very awesome game.

In some ways Conan's adventures are too little, in some ways too much. They're probably too little in that they should figure more prominently in the game (though having Conan present for a battle can make a huge difference). But in some ways they're too much / too important because Conan's adventures and the tokens can cause a huge point swing. Collecting Conan adventure tokens netted me about 18 points - +3 for crowning Conan, +10 for having the most tokens in two categories, and -5 to my main opponent who could not cash in on the one category where he had the most tokens (monsters) because I had crowned conan. The 13 points that added were almost half of my final total of 29.

So collecting tokens (which has a strong random element to it) made up almost half of my final point total - more than half if you factor in -5 to my main rival. Which almost caused me to win despite a lackluster performance in the main part of the game.

This was pretty much the first game of Age of Conan that I've played where the guy who crowned Conan didn't also win the game.

If his adventures played any more role, nobody would even need to bother with the rest of the game - just make sure to grab up every "Court + Conan" action and win the Conan bid as often as possible, then crown him at the end. Being able to benefit by up to 18 points is pretty hefty.

Storywise, yeah, Conan is more of a sidebar. I would classify this game as "The wars and intrigues of nations set against the background of Conan's adventures".

Some other thoughts:

The game favors the attacker quite heavily. The defender wins ties but has only a 1/3 chance of scoring a hit, but the attacker has 1/2 chance. In a 1 on 1 fight (which almost never happens), the defender breaks even on odds, but in an even contest with more guys than that, the attacker gets progressively more and more likely to win. This makes it incredibly difficult to hold territory, especially out in the middle of the map. Even if you have five guys stacked up, chances are you'll lose when someone attacks you with an equivalent force. It almost seems like the game encourages establishing a buffer zone around your borders using emissaries and then responding to incoming attacks with counterattacks rather than trying to hold territory. By the same token, don't bother building cities on your frontiers.

Component limitations means that you can generally field two or three full-strength armies, as can your opponents.

Who the hell would want to take over Nemedia via military campaign? It's a strength 4 territory with 4 campaign stages!

It's worth it to note that the guy who won the game actually had the Sword of Atlantis, which enables attackers to win ties, which was crucial to him scoring so many military victories, netting him a very large number of points.

That's true. I think if I could suggest one revision to the game it would be to make the implementation of Conan's adventures more strategic and less luck driven. As it is all you do with Conan is point him towards his destination and collect tokens, so 90% of it is just how often you have "crown & conan" available to you on your turns, and what tokens you happen to draw, which is luck.

What the mechanic should be is that Conan does his adventures, and the nations have choices along the way as to whether to spend resources to help, ignore, or hinder Conan. If you help Conan you'd have a better shot at crowning him, but you'd have to devote resources to that at the expense of military campaigns and the like. If you hinder him, maybe you're less likely to get to crown him, but might get some other rewards sooner instead (like, maybe you get the ring of ultimate power instead of Conan).

That said, the game as it is definitely is a lot of fun.

Also I think we got one rule wrong - whereas we had Conan get crowned as soon as he reached the relevant player territory in Age III, I think it's supposed to happen when he's there at the end of the adventure. So there would've been a turn or two for people to do stuff to get more points before the end. Not sure whether that would've made a difference in any event though.

hepcat wrote:Nice. Let us know what you think of it. I was going to start up a game this morning but got sidetracked by work.

My initial impression was very much like seeing Dalton for the first time -- I thought the box would be bigger. Then upon opening it...holy underpants that's a lot of parts. Since I cannot play D3, might as well dive into the rulebooks, right?

Spent most of my day learning and playing the solo variant rather than doing housework . Beat it in the last turn of the last round with 112 points... before subtracting 24 for having 12 wound markers in my deck. I beat the game with the red guy who ended up at level 7 at the end. Castles are crazy tough and the dynamic of the dummy player is interesting. Sadly, I'll forget most of the game before we play again. It's going to be a while until the rules are just something I understand and not something I look up again and again and again.

My copy got here.

Smoove_B wrote:

hepcat wrote:Nice. Let us know what you think of it. I was going to start up a game this morning but got sidetracked by work.

My initial impression was very much like seeing Dalton for the first time -- I thought the box would be bigger. Then upon opening it...holy underpants that's a lot of parts. Since I cannot play D3, might as well dive into the rulebooks, right?

One play through and it really does make sense. The rules are quite elegant in design. I predict you'll enjoy it a great deal.

I'm skeptical of "wasting" my one night this week gaming LEARNING a game.

Normally we can LEARN one until comfortable and start over to actually PLAY it, then play the hell out of it for a few months.

((although that 1 Night is with the BoardGame crew... I spent a couple nights playing MtG with others))