OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[hentzau]

I played a 3 player game of the DC Deckbuilder with my kids today. They enjoyed it, but they both agreed that Legendary is a much better game. The DC Deckbuilder was kind of generic in it's play as opposed to Legendary. My 10 year old said "Legendary had a better game mechanic" and I had to stifle a chuckle when he said that.

[hepcat]

It's not as bad as I expected it to be from the reviews on BGG. I have to agree that it's more like "Speed Ascension", as the guys at the gamestore called it. I think it has a place in my collection as such.

I'm anxious to graduate to the full game of Through the Ages soon. That scratched my civ building itch quite well.

[hentzau]

It's not as bad as I expected it to be from the reviews on BGG. I have to agree that it's more like "Speed Ascension", as the guys at the gamestore called it. I think it has a place in my collection as such.

I'm anxious to graduate to the full game of Through the Ages soon. That scratched my civ building itch quite well.

Yeah, that was fun. Still not quite sure how I won, though.

[Blackhawk]

The kids raked in the board games for Christmas this year:

LEGO Ninjago: The Board Game
Wrath of Ashardalon
Gears of War: The Board Game
Tannhauser
Battleship Galaxies
Forbidden Island

We tried out Ninjago and Forbidden Island today, as I'm still a bit sick and didn't feel up to a two hour game.

Ninjago's main appeal is that the kids love the setting and regular Ninjago toys/shows. The game was fun, but not great. We lost - the skeleton general trounced us. I'll play it occasionally for them, but don't plan on playing regularly.

Forbidden Island was fantastic. The rules were simple and quick to learn, but a good bit of teamwork and strategy were required, and the balance was such that we managed to pull off a win with the island crumbling around us. We were probably only a turn or two away from defeat when we escaped with the treasures. This is going to be a staple for us, as I needed more short games - all we had before was Zombie Dice - everything else on the shelf requires hours.

[Daveman]

In referring it, I mentioned Forbidden Island was "Pandemic-lite" but I need stop doing so. It has all of the essential gameplay as Pandemic, it just plays faster and, as Blackhawk mentioned, has that great "board is falling to pieces around you" effect that really adds tension to the end game.

Pandemic certainly has more "to it", with more varied player abilities, options for discarding to move around the board and so on... but I don't think that makes it a more complex game, just more complicated. Ditto, in my opinion, is Defenders of the Realm, but I know I'm in the minority here on that game.

I don't know if whatever edition of FI they're selling now in the US has it, but the EU edition has alternate board setups, some of them pretty tough. There was a link to them on BGG.

[Holman]

Help! I'm trying to remember a game! I think it was mentioned by someone in this thread, possibly shortly before or after GenCon, but now I can't find it.

The game was a historical treatment of religious/political/scientific ideas during the renaissance or after. I seem to recall that it had cards for major figures of the time (Shakespeare, Calvin, etc.). It was not Here I Stand or Virgin Queen.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I was hoping to look up reviews at BGG, but I just can't remember the name.

Road to Enlightenment is a game I've mentioned on here, and sounds similar to what you've described, although there's no Shakespeare card, the game's timeframe is 200ish years later.

Ah, that's the one. I must have invented the Shakespeare card in my head.

Thanks for the name!

[baelthazar]

I plan to make a review video, but I just want to say that Clash of Cultures is a magnificent game!

[Chrisoc13]

Christmas was good for us with games. Dominion, Ticket to Ride Heart of Africa, Spot It, Star Trek Catan, and Lords of Waterdeep. Haven't had a chance to really play any of them yet but looking forward to getting into them.

[hentzau]

Lords of Waterdeep is an awesome game. Absolutely love it.

[Zarathud]

Will probably play Lords of Waterdeep and X Wing tonight. . Lords is a great gateway game.

[MythicalMino]

Lost to Yggdrasil, then played a game of Lords of Waterdeep, then lost to Defenders of the Realm, then lost a game of Castle Panic w/ the Wizard's Tower x-pack, then lost another game of Yggdrasil.

That was my New Years Eve.

[hentzau]

We played a game of Flash Point, and then I stomped my wife in a game of TtR:Nordic Countries.

[YellowKing]

The buddy of mine who I bought Mr. Jack for came down so we were able to give that a spin. Fun game and we both enjoyed it a great deal.

I then introduced him to Pandemic which he really liked. We got lucky and beat it on our second try (though admittedly I'm pretty good at the base game so I was able to tell him what we needed to do to win).

We've got another night lined up later this week to hit Ticket to Ride, Elder Sign, and possibly Defenders of the Realm. He's eager to try as many as he can while he's down since he doesn't have anyone to game with back home.

[Chrisoc13]

At my in-laws so we got some gaming in, mostly light games. Introduced them all to Ticket to Ride Europe which went over well. Also played some killer bunnies and dix it. Not sure what I think about killer bunnies. I really enjoy the game, but hate the end game mechanism.

[Zarathud]

We played everything I brought except Lords of Waterdeep and X-Wing last night -- a few games of King of Tokyo, Zombicide, and Skull & Roses. We watched a game of X-Wing instead.

In Zombicide, we lost about 2 turns away from getting the last objective. We triggered an Abomination and extra turn for the walkers while at Orange threat. We would have been better off with the 15 extra Zombies that would have triggered instead if we allowed one player to get to Red threat.

[MythicalMino]

The boys, my wife, and myself played another game of Yggdrasil...and if you guessed that we lost, you would be right!! Still such a fun game.

Also, we played another game of Castle Panic...and lost that one, too.

I have ordered War of the Ring 2nd Edition and Lords of Middle Earth expansion. I plan on attempting to teach it to my 9 year old. He could still be too young for it, but he has been able to grasp some of the other more complex games I have. Plus, he is crazy into Lord of the Rings right now (he just finished watching all the movies again, and has been trying to get our wedding rings off our fingers, saying " They stoles it from usss, we wants the precious, precious...we wants it all for ussss". Kinda scary, to be honest...

[EzeKieL]

The time has come to try out all the games I bought or got the past few weeks ^^.

A couple of days ago we started out with Air King.
A fun, short card game where there are 10 airplanes, divided in 5 on each side, that need to reach the airport on the other side.
Everyone gets a card in the beginning which contains the 4 plane numbers that you need to get accross. It's entirely possible that
one, two or even three of your numbers are the same than someone else. This can make it easy for someone to win but you'll
never know until the game ends. You also have some action cards that you can use to block spaces, halt airplanes, send them
back to the start, move extra spaces, etc. I liked it.

Yesterday, I played Kingsburg with my girlfriend for the first time. I absolutely love it ^^. Amazing artwork and production!
I also love games with a dice mechanic -and- worker placement, although here you place your dice ^^. Since it was the first time
we played kind of slow and made some mistakes along the way (forget to use a building's advantages,..). In the end I managed to
win but a win in a game you play the first time doesn't really mean anything over here ^^.
I can recommend it to everyone without a doubt. Tom Vasel compares the difficulty learn this with Ticket to Ride and he's totally right.
It's very easy to learn and I think it can also be a great gateway game.

I'll be playing this a lot in the future ^^.

This afternoon we'll be trying Seasons and maybe later on Dominion.

[hepcat]

Yesterday, I played Kingsburg with my girlfriend for the first time. I absolutely love it ^^. Amazing artwork and production!

I love Kingsburg. I sometimes wish I didn't have gamer's ADD and could stick with one game for more than a half dozen plays.

[Zarathud]

Seasons is a very good game, with a decent amount of critical choices -- but a few turns can take a while when you're putting into play combos.

[AWS260]

Played the Mage Knight walkthrough campaign. The mechanics mesh nicely, but there sure are a lot of them. I basically ignored Tactics and kept forgetting about Skills. It's going to take a few more playthroughs to get the hang of this one.

[hepcat]

Played the Mage Knight walkthrough campaign. The mechanics mesh nicely, but there sure are a lot of them. I basically ignored Tactics and kept forgetting about Skills. It's going to take a few more playthroughs to get the hang of this one.

Vlaada is currently my favorite game designer, but you have to gradually ease yourself into most of his games via a simple game, an advanced game and finally the full game to really understand how they work. Thankfully, the rules to his games (so far) do a fantastic job of reflecting this via walkthroughs.

[EzeKieL]

Yesterday, I played Kingsburg with my girlfriend for the first time. I absolutely love it ^^. Amazing artwork and production!

I love Kingsburg. I sometimes wish I didn't have gamer's ADD and could stick with one game for more than a half dozen plays.

I have the same problem ;_;

[SpaceLord]

Played the Mage Knight walkthrough campaign. The mechanics mesh nicely, but there sure are a lot of them. I basically ignored Tactics and kept forgetting about Skills. It's going to take a few more playthroughs to get the hang of this one.

Vlaada is currently my favorite game designer, but you have to gradually ease yourself into most of his games via a simple game, an advanced game and finally the full game to really understand how they work. Thankfully, the rules to his games (so far) do a fantastic job of reflecting this via walkthroughs.

Glad you liked your first play of Through the Ages! Did you play the short game, and score points at the end for science cards in play?

[SpaceLord]

In other news, Hanabi, the best co-op game I've ever played, is being printed in the U.S. for the first time in early Spring.

A quick refresher on how the game works:

Hanabi has a deck of 50 cards, with 5 colors of cards, and each color has numbers with the following distribution: 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5
The goal is to play each of the 5 colors in order: 1,2,3,4,5. For example, if the red 1 and blue 2 are in play, the legal plays are red 2, blue 3, green 1, black 1 white 1.
Each player holds 4-5 cards(depending on the number of participants). At the end of the game(when the deck runs out), the face up-cards are totaled, and that is the final score. Thus, a perfect game is 25 points: 5 green, 5 red, 5 blue, 5 white, and 5 black.



However, the crux of the game is this: You hold your hand of cards face-out, and do not know what cards you hold, but know what all other players have.

During a player’s turn, they can do one of 3 things: Attempt to play a card from hand, discard a card, or give a clue to another player

Giving a clue consists of pointing out cards in the player’s hand, and giving them a single hint: The number OR color of those cards.
For example, if a player has the following cards in hand: green 3, red 3, green 1, blue 1, another player can point out G3 and G1, and say they are green. Or, they can point out the other player has two 1s, but not reveal the colors. When a clue is given, a clue token is spent. If the players are out of tokens, clues cannot be given.

Playing a card simply means placing one of your cards onto the table. If you play a wrong card, the players lose 1 of their 3 “mistake” tokens. If all 3 of these tokens are lost, the game ends and the players lose.

Finally, discarding a card means throwing a card in the discard piles, face-up. If a player does this, the players regain a lost clue token.

===================================================


One of the many awesome things about Hanabi is that it totally bypasses the problem many people have with cooperative games: An "alpha" player that tells everyone what to do, and ruins the experience.

Another big boost in Hanabi's favor is that it gets better the more you play, as everyone learns how the inferences, both stated and unstated, can give hints on how to play. For example, if I don't tell someone about a specific card in their hand, that can mean that card is not playable, and can be discarded.

[hepcat]

Played the Mage Knight walkthrough campaign. The mechanics mesh nicely, but there sure are a lot of them. I basically ignored Tactics and kept forgetting about Skills. It's going to take a few more playthroughs to get the hang of this one.

Vlaada is currently my favorite game designer, but you have to gradually ease yourself into most of his games via a simple game, an advanced game and finally the full game to really understand how they work. Thankfully, the rules to his games (so far) do a fantastic job of reflecting this via walkthroughs.

Glad you liked your first play of Through the Ages! Did you play the short game, and score points at the end for science cards in play?

Yup, I forced Seppe and Hentzau to play Saturday morning/afternoon. We played the simple game and it took about 2 hours to play a single game (not counting setup and explanation time). I had listened to the How to Play podcast friday on my way to and from work, so I was fairly well prepared for some of the eccentricities of the game.

I think the hardest concepts to grasp for folks (including me) at first was the yellow tokens existing as both population AND buildings, how yellow tokens become buildings, and upgrading buildings.

I believe we scored for everything required in a simple game. I just used the handy scoring list in the rule book.

I'm definitely hoping to get a full game going at the next Octocon so I'm hoping experienced players show up.

[SpaceLord]

Yesterday, I played Kingsburg with my girlfriend for the first time. I absolutely love it ^^. Amazing artwork and production!

I love Kingsburg. I sometimes wish I didn't have gamer's ADD and could stick with one game for more than a half dozen plays.

If anyone likes the mechanics of Kingsburg, I suggest Troyes. It also has dice used for actions, and it's a bit more complicated, but it's definitely a great game that's similar to KB and Alien Frontiers. I like KB a lot, but Troyes is in my personal top 10 games.

[SpaceLord]

Played the Mage Knight walkthrough campaign. The mechanics mesh nicely, but there sure are a lot of them. I basically ignored Tactics and kept forgetting about Skills. It's going to take a few more playthroughs to get the hang of this one.

Vlaada is currently my favorite game designer, but you have to gradually ease yourself into most of his games via a simple game, an advanced game and finally the full game to really understand how they work. Thankfully, the rules to his games (so far) do a fantastic job of reflecting this via walkthroughs.

Glad you liked your first play of Through the Ages! Did you play the short game, and score points at the end for science cards in play?

Yup, I forced Seppe and Hentzau to play Saturday morning/afternoon. We played the simple game and it took about 2 hours to play a single game (not counting setup and explanation time). I had listened to the How to Play podcast friday on my way to and from work, so I was fairly well prepared for some of the eccentricities of the game.

I think the hardest concepts to grasp for folks (including me) at first was the yellow tokens existing as both population AND buildings, how yellow tokens become buildings, and upgrading buildings.

I believe we scored for everything required in a simple game. I just used the handy scoring list in the rule book.

I'm definitely hoping to get a full game going at the next Octocon so I'm hoping experienced players show up.

If you do play the Full game, I suggest considering leaving Wars out the first time. Personally, I think Wars are fine, but the pansy, euro-centric crowd I often game with doesn't usually want to play with them.

They're definitely a big part of the game. Losing a war is often a prelude to losing the game. However, the way they work prevents someone springing a surprise declaration of war. Usually a player that decides to start a war builds up military for a turn, then declares war, building up more, and the other player potentially can prep for two turns.

[SpaceLord]

I plan to make a review video, but I just want to say that Clash of Cultures is a magnificent game!

I picked this up from Z-Man himself at BGG con, and have played it around 6 times so far. It's the best Civ-game-on-a-map game I've played. I *love* these kind of games: Through the Ages is my favorite game, and Advanced Civ is up there as well. TTA is going to be hard to top for me, but Clash is just an elegant system for civ-building. We played on New Year's eve, and I managed to score 44, a personal best.

I highly recommend trying the "Short" game, where players start with 2 settlers and a happy starting city. The only problem is that with the shortened number of rounds, Wonders seem to rarely be build until the last 2 turns of the game.

[baelthazar]

I plan to make a review video, but I just want to say that Clash of Cultures is a magnificent game!

I picked this up from Z-Man himself at BGG con, and have played it around 6 times so far. It's the best Civ-game-on-a-map game I've played. I *love* these kind of games: Through the Ages is my favorite game, and Advanced Civ is up there as well. TTA is going to be hard to top for me, but Clash is just an elegant system for civ-building. We played on New Year's eve, and I managed to score 44, a personal best.

I highly recommend trying the "Short" game, where players start with 2 settlers and a happy starting city. The only problem is that with the shortened number of rounds, Wonders seem to rarely be build until the last 2 turns of the game.

I will have to try the short game, I might even get my wife to play that version (the normal version was way too long for her taste). Our first play was something at 5-6 hours long, but the subsequent play was more like 2-3 hours. My only beef with Clash of Cultures is that the rules are written well, but in a manner that tends to obscure some of the important rules. Some major things need to be bolded out and put on a reference sheet. There is a very good fan-made reference sheet on BGG, but it should have been included in the box.

We also tended to flub the things like:
1. Making sure we had the pre-req tech to build the city building (not usually a problem, but when things get more complicated in the mid-game, it is easy to lose track).
2. Making sure we did not built cities larger than the number of cities we had (this is surprisingly easy to do, particularly when you are constantly factoring in the +1 modifier for happiness)
3. Not getting more than 4 gold or food when you have the Trade Routes and Currency Techs.
4. Remembering to award Culture (which we call Frankenstein Heads) and Happiness (which we called Happy Faces) tokens for various actions and techs.

But still, the game really is magnificent. I was figuring that it would be more war heavy, but really war is a sideline to the other parts of the game. Sure, you could go all warlike, but I'm not sure it is always a viable strategy (rather than just the occasional conquest of key locations).

[Jow]

So I swore I was done buying into Fantasy Flight's LCGs after buying a little Warhammer Invasion, a little Call of Cthulhu, and a whole mess of Game of Thrones and never playing them. I've gotten a tremendous amount of joy from reading rulebooks, sleeving cards, putting cards into a carrying album, trying deckbuilding, and admiring my collection but that's about it. I was tempted by LotR, but ultimately passed. Star Wars tempted me not at all, but then along came Netrunner. I'm a huge fan of strong asymmetric games and this one fits the bill, fo sho. A friend of mine bought a couple of the core sets and we ran through a couple games. My eyes lit up as I stared lovingly at all the little bits imagining how much fun playing YOU CAN'T TOUCH MY STUFF was going to be. I left for home that evening firmly in control, saying no matter how cool it was, I was NOT going to buy into any more of these things until I at least started selling off all the old stuff I never played.

This actually worked for a couple of months until something got me reading about the game on BGG about a week ago. The mental salivary glands kicked into gear and I started thinking about it... just got a nice Christmas bonus, maybe... NONONONONO, I said. New Years Eve I decided to pick up a new party game (Dixit) from my FLGS for the group I'd be spending the evening with and immediately started thinking, "well, maybe i can pick up a core set, and oh the first expansion pack is out"... NONONO, I said. I kept telling myself NONONONO all the way up until I stood in the store, holding a copy of the core set and the first expansion. NONONONONO got weaker until after like 10 minutes of standing in front of that bloody shelf arguing with myself I bought the damn stuff. I'm now the proud owner of Netrunner and the first expansion and jeez louise do I suck.

[Isgrimnur]

I have the core set wrapped in plastic in the living room. It came in yesterday.

Let me know how What Lies Ahead looks.

[coopasonic]

I have the core set wrapped in plastic in the living room. It came in yesterday.

Let me know how What Lies Ahead looks.

Mine is on still in plastic on my game shelf (yeah, still, it was delivered yesterday also). We really need to find a time to meet up and play (meaning I need to get away for a night). I also got Memoir 44, the new TtR Africa map, Mage Wars Core Set 1 and Gauntlet of Fools yesterday. I have to check, I may be over 100 games now... some of them I have even played!

[Isgrimnur]

Put in a spousal request for January 19th and meet me at the Dallas Games Marathon.

[YellowKing]

Finally got a 3-player game night together with a couple of friends.

We decided to break out Arkham Horror since we had not played it in years. Got our asses handed to us but it was a good time and it was nice to get re-acquainted with the game after so long on the shelf.

For a follow-up we decided to play some Elder Sign, and that went much better with us defeating Nyarlathotep on the first try (albeit narrowly). I still think the game is a bit too easy, but it's definitely a great way to get your Arkham Horror fix without the significant time investment. Playing the two games back to back really helped me enjoy Elder Sign much more, and what became one of my dust collectors may now get a lot more play.

[MythicalMino]

I have War of the Ring 2nd Edition all set up on the kitchen table...currently reading through the rule book, trying to relearn the game.

Gotta say, that is a gorgeous game when it is all set up...

[hepcat]

So I bought Love Letter last night after hearing so many rave reviews about it being a great filler game.

...I'm not sure how I can ever bring myself to whip out a bright red and yellow cloth bag with the words "Love Letter" written in a flamboyant cursive font across the front though.

[Lorini]

I bought Coup instead of Love Letter, much more fun. I totally fail to see what the Love Letter fuss is all about, while Coup is a ten minute version of Liars Dice, much better.

[coopasonic]

So I bought Love Letter last night after hearing so many rave reviews about it being a great filler game.

...I'm not sure how I can ever bring myself to whip out a bright red and yellow cloth bag with the words "Love Letter" written in a flamboyant cursive font across the front though.

Your path here is clear. You need to re-theme the game. Start with a studded black leather bag and change all the character cards to something more butch, like denizens of the Blue Oyster Bar.

[Jow]

What Lies Ahead: i'm too new to be able to say with authority, but the buzz is it leaves Jinteki as the weakest of the factions and that Weyland is quite strong. Project Atlas is truly ridiculous.

Project Atlas

When you score Project Atlas, place 1 agenda counter on it for each advancement token on it over 3.
Hosted agenda counter: Search R&D for 1 card, reveal it, and add it to HQ. Shuffle R&D.



Just fearful in a Scorched Earth deck. I also like Imp, a lot:

Imp

Place 2 virus counters on Imp when it is installed.
Once per turn, you may remove 1 hosted virus counter to trash a card you access at no cost (even if it cannot normally be trashed).

[SpaceLord]

What Lies Ahead: i'm too new to be able to say with authority, but the buzz is it leaves Jinteki as the weakest of the factions.

Fixed, and soon:



That's F'n amazing.