OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Sun Apr 12, 2015 12:30 pm

Lordnine wrote:I ended up with a free copy of X-COM and we played our first game.

After one game, I give it thumbs up. We lost horribly but it still managed to be very fun. The timed nature of the game ensures that players stick to their defined roles and there isn’t a lot of opportunity for leader mentality or power gaming. Between this and Dead of Winter I now have TWO co-op games I like, which is shocking.

I feel the same way about it. You ate so worried about your own role that there is no time due to the timer for anyone to be the alpha player. I really have enjoyed it. It does have warts (most notably the lack of a real rulebook) but it overcomes them.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:48 pm

This weekend:

Shadows of Brimstone (Demoing it for a friend who has wanted to play it for a while)
Bang: The Dice Game (Did about 4 games of this one. Great game)
Machi Koro (Might need to try the Harbor expansion for it. The fun has worn off for me.)
Legendary (been a while since we've played that one)
Cash and Guns (Really fun, really inappropriate)
Camel Up! (Going to have to pick this one up. Helps that I won the first time I played)
Dead Man's Hand (My buildings, my town, my figures, my game, my outlaw was the first one gunned down. No justice, I tell you!)
Tobago (really really enjoy this game. Needs to get played more often.)
Tokaido (got crushed by BadDemographic)
One hand of Batman Love Letter (Which I won.)

I think that's all. It was a busy two days.

The Rocketman · Post by **The Rocketman** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:12 am

AWS260 wrote:Played the tutorial and first campaign mission of Imperial Assault with my wife last night. Lots of fun and not too fiddly.

She won, playing four rebel heroes. It wasn't even close -- I barely managed to wound one hero, and all of my trooper' shots at the wookie just seemed to make him mad. I'm kind of worried about the viability of the Imperial side over the long term -- the heroes are just overwhelmingly stronger.

I've played the tutorial against myself as a learning experience, and while I thought the imperials didn't stand a chance, I actually managed to defeat myself with the imperials

Mainly because I managed to order a stormtrooper with my officer to run towards a terminal and activating it. So it's doable.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:13 am

Oh yeah. That reminds me. I got in a teaching game of Imperial Assault this weekend too.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:23 am

Games I played at Octocon:

-Thunder Alley: Loved it! A must have for me.

-Snowdonia: A nice, lighter version of a worker placement game in the same vein as Agricola and Caverna, but with a railway. I liked it.

-Patchistory: A civ game with a tile placement gimmick that helps prevent players from buying every upgrade they see. I liked it, but it's WAY too long for what it is. I think I'd rather play Through the Ages for my civ building fix.

-Cash n Guns: great party game. Simple and sure to cause laughter. I'm betting I'll be playing a copy from Marty's collection in the future as I know he loved it as well.

-Camel Up: Unfortunately, I was in a food and drink coma right after lunch, so I wasn't really paying as much attention to this one as I should have. Still, it was a nice take on a racing game.

-Steam Torpedo: I bought this one last week and finally played it Friday at Octocon. It's a great little game I can't recommend enough. You build a sub out of 10 tiles that you choose, then randomly place in a 5 x 2 grid. Then you place a sub cut out in between your tile layout and your opponents with the 5 tiles on either side forming the movement grid. Then you put down 5 crewmembers and use them to move into the tiles of your sub and activate weapons, engines, etc.. It's got radio controlled sharks, so of course it's a winner.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 12:15 pm

Posted in the Octocon thread, but I ended up getting in a lot of games over the weekend so I'll post a bit here too:

Five Tribes- Played it twice, fast becoming one of my favorite DoW games. Quick to learn, quick to play, and lots of opportunities for strategy. And it is DoW so of course the game is beautifully polished with excellent player aides and great components.

Tokaido- One of the games I really wanted to try out. I enjoyed it a lot. Surprisingly tight game, very competitive.

Imperial Settlers- Another one of the games I really wanted to try and I liked what I saw. I need to try it again but it was fun.

Bang! the dice game- I'm pretty tired of Bang! So I was surprised with how much I not only liked, but loved this game. It is simple, but it was lots of fun and even felt very fresh even though the core concepts were the same. Also very quick to learn or teach.

The Resistance- Always crowd dependent, but we had a good crowd and a lot of fun playing this. So we played it a lot. Things start getting pretty intense by the end but I really enjoyed it.

Skull and Roses- A fun bluffing and push your luck type game that I found quick and fresh, good times with this one.

Sheriff of Nottingham- Still enjoying this, it's fun to see people try different strategies with it.

Pairs- This one made me sad that I passed on the KS, although now it is available everywhere so I will probably pick up a deck down the road.

Trajan- The surprise of the weekend for me. I had heard good things but honestly the game looks intimidating. And at first it was. But I started figuring it out quickly and ended up really enjoying it. I would love to play this game again.

Then yesterday my wife and I played a quick game of Pandemic which I really enjoy but never have gotten around to buying so it was great that my wife won it at Octocon. Now I need to try out the expansion for it that she won as well.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 1:09 pm

Pairs and X-Wing. I am Captain Ahab and the Millennium Falcon is my White Whale. We called on time with the Falcon at 2 hull left and my Decimator guaranteed to ram for 2 damage the next turn. The Decimator is a fun ship but I really didn't have enough firepower with the Shuttle (aka Space Cow) and a single TIE Fighter. Next time, I pick the teams!

I taught the game Diner, a real-time card game where you act as waiters in a diner. When the waiters hoard all the food and don't serve tables until after the mid-game break, the scores are very low and the second round is much too short. People want to be fed!!

MythicalMino · Post by **MythicalMino** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:36 pm

Finally got my hands on Dead of Winter last night. Got a game set up on the table for me, my wife, and my two boys...excited about this one!!

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:47 pm

MythicalMino wrote:Finally got my hands on Dead of Winter last night. Got a game set up on the table for me, my wife, and my two boys...excited about this one!!

Great game. I'm surprised it didn't get pulled out at OctoCon.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 8:37 pm

Almost had TWO copies pulled out because we had 10 people looking for a group. One half split, and the other half started X-Wing. I want to play, especially now that I have the Broken Token card organizer.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:35 am

AWS260 wrote:Played the tutorial and first campaign mission of Imperial Assault with my wife last night. Lots of fun and not too fiddly.

She won, playing four rebel heroes. It wasn't even close -- I barely managed to wound one hero, and all of my trooper' shots at the wookie just seemed to make him mad. I'm kind of worried about the viability of the Imperial side over the long term -- the heroes are just overwhelmingly stronger.

OK, now that I've won the first side mission, I'm feeling better about the Empire's prospects. It helped that the heroes chose a side mission that gave me imperial guards (the red guys) to start out. Imperial guards backed up by probe droids with healing abilities make for a pretty formidable roadblock. The heroes eventually broke through, but by that point they were nearly out of time.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:51 pm

When I played a test game of the tutorial by myself (in order to be able to better train the wife), the Empire almost won but the Rebels squeaked by in the last bit. I found that the empire has a load of damage potential but tends to be a glass cannon. Once those rebels close the distance, then the Empire has a harder time. Swarming and ganging up was the best way to bloody the rebels significantly.

I look forward to trying it again and also trying the Skirmish game. Robert Florence over at RPS was going on and on about how good the Skirmish rules were.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:04 pm

Broke out Le Havre for the first time for my group. Nobody played it before, but I spent a couple of days familiarizing myself with the rules and watching some videos on YouTube. I served as a guide and did not play myself and we played a condensed 4 player game. It went very well! My goal was simply to introduce the flow of the game and some of the buildings to the players and by the third round or so, the players grasped the general concept.

The compressed game really only serves as a teaser to the full game I think. No special buildings, a smaller building deck and reduced rounds keeps it from going too long. It works really well as an introduction though.

The mechanisms are pretty similar, but the strategy is surprisingly deep. One should probably get some small containers to contain the goods on the table, as they tend to scatter and go everywhere.

Overall, a very good game. Don't play with more than four to start and definitely begin with a condensed game. One could possibly force their way to victory by playing very mathematically, but I don't think doing so ruins the fun for others who just want to collect cattle. Even with the condensed building decks and no special buildings, there were plenty of options for everyone each turn.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:12 pm

Great weekend, managed to squeeze in a few games as well.

Started off with learning Armada yesterday after receiving it in the mail. Loved it. Great game, and happy to have it now. I really enjoyed it a lot. I was worried that there wouldn't be room in my collection for another game this similar to X-wing (after all that's the reason I got rid of Attack Wing, too similar to X-wing). But Armada is a completely different experience. You really feel like you are controlling a large ship a whole bunch of fighter squadrons around to protect and command. It really works well, and was intuitive. I'm looking forward to the new ships coming out to have some real fleet building options available. FFG has done it again though.

Then after an introductory game of Armada we played some X-wing, both of us taking scum. My brother took a couple of Y-wings and a HWK and I took 2 Z-95s, to M3-As, and a Star Viper. It was an extremely competitive game, and as fun as ever.

Lastly continuing the FFG star wars theme I was able to play a skirmish game of Imperial Assault. I've played the campaign a couple of times before, which I have enjoyed a fair amount (although I tend to have to play the imperial side every time so that's a bit of a let down), so I was happy to play a skirmish. Really was surprisingly fun. For two players I think it actually is more fun than p-laying the campaign two players. Looking forward to doing another skirmish match soon. And now really looking forward to the new expansion packs coming out to add some new variety to skirmish teams.

Also played a few games of pandemic (like 6 or 7). Nice to be able to play my newly won game of Pandemic a few times. Lost every game as I seem to do on cooperative games like this but still had fun. My wife is pretty into it right now so I'm sure it will get some more play time.

Good weekend of gaming all around, especially with plenty of star wars ha.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 1:26 pm

Four of us played Specter Ops for the first time on Saturday for the first time, and I loved it. The other three in the group all seemed to also really like it as well.

One player is the bad guy Agent who is trying to stealthily move through the good guy facility and steal 3 objectives. One to four other players play as the good guys trying to track down and kill the Agent. Everything is done in a sci-fi theme with EMP grenades, mutants, robots, all that good stuff.

What makes the game really unique is the way the Agent handles his actions and movement. The Agent player gets a pad of paper with the board map on it and writes down moves in secret on it. The Agent's chosen action cards are also kept secret, sometimes even staying secret when played. The good guys can only spot the Agent when they have a clear line of sight, so the Agent player is responsible for placing tokens indicating glimpses of Agent movement and placing the Agent figure when spotted.

I played as the Agent player, and the secret movements and actions were such a fun game mechanic. For instance, after spotting me on one turn, my 3 opponents could be trying to figure out my possible new locations based on my limit of travelling 4 spaces. Unbeknownst to them, I may actually have played a card that lets me travel 6 spaces, or secretly activated a stealth field that limits their line of sight for one turn. They move their figures to cover all the possibilities, then are left puzzled as all the alleyways turn up empty.

Really great theme, really great gameplay. Can't wait to try it again.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 1:28 pm

Then you also need to look at Letters from White Castle ..., er, Whitechapel.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 1:36 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:Then you also need to look at Letters from White Castle ..., er, Whitechapel.

Yup, I did read it's similar to both that and Scotland Yard. Just judging books by covers, I think I'd like the sci-fi theme of Specter Ops better, but I do definitely want to give Whitechapel a try if I get the chance.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 2:13 pm

Fury of Dracula has a very sweet hidden move system, combined with a fight mechanic that makes Dracula powerful at night but week during days. It ends up a cat and mouse chase where both sides take turns trying to surprise the other.

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 2:21 pm

Whitechapel is very good. There's no real line of sight, so there's a lot more of the cops having to move around and physically block off or search areas.

I liked Fury of Dracula too, except that I didn't love the combat at all. Whitechapel takes the core bits of Dracula, and pulls out the combat.

I may have to take a look at Specter Ops. I really like the whole hidden movement thing, for whatever reason. There's a ninja game that uses it too, but I think that one got iffier reviews.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:07 pm

I'm a big fan of Fury of Dracula - lots of fun. The issue with the combat system in my mind is that it can be a little "feast or famine" sometimes - if the hunters get lucky Dracula can go down super quickly (in an anticlimactic way), but for the most part it's adequate.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:14 pm

Game tonight: Cowboys or Pirates?

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:20 pm

hentzau wrote:Game tonight: Cowboys or Pirates?

Cowboys

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:34 pm

hentzau wrote:Game tonight: Cowboys or Pirates?

Cowboys versus Pirates

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:43 pm

AWS260 wrote:
hentzau wrote:Game tonight: Cowboys or Pirates?
Cowboys versus Pirates

Hmm. San Francisco's Barbary Coast?

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:48 pm

We went pirates. Broke out Merchants and Marauders. It had probably been a solid year since the last time we played, so we had to re-learn the rules almost from the ground up. Plus we got off to a late start, so we called the game at 11:00 with me in a very comfortable Glory Point lead of 8, and the next closest competitor with 4. One of the things I wanted to do was to add some of the rules from the expansion into the game, but since we really needed to re-learn the game I decided to go easy. All I added in was the new rumors, missions, and events, those just add variety without upping the complexity. We also added the contraband missions into the game. Basically, it adds a bunch of new cargo cards that behave just like regular cargo cards but will say something like "Prisoners: Port Royale" Each of these contraband missions cost you 3 gold, and when you complete it you get 10 gold back. After you complete two such missions, you get a glory point. So pretty easy to implement.

I really do want to try out some the other new things they've added through the expansion, like variable winds, the Storm, new locations, and the Treasure Fleet.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Apr 22, 2015 6:59 pm

hentzau wrote:We went pilates.

Good for you! How did you feel this morning?

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Wed Apr 22, 2015 8:09 pm

Feel the burn...

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:27 am

DC Dice Masters ships next week. Someone stop me, please!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:42 am

Stop you? I'm going to join you!

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:51 am

hepcat wrote:Stop you? I'm going to join you!

When you do, please figure out how you can store (120+90+90+90+4)*2 dice from booster packs in an organized manner and let me know. Oh, let's add 90*2 to that total because I know the Age of Ultron set is coming. That brings it really close to a thousand dice just from boosters. Way over that if you include the dice (~44 each) from the 5 starter packs. Oh and one setup box (20 dice).

394*2 + 180 + 220 + 20 =1208 dice

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:59 am

coopasonic wrote: When you do, please figure out how you can store (120+90+90+90+4)*2 dice from booster packs in an organized manner and let me know.

Zen Bins?

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:00 am

Played my first 2 games of Five Tribes last night (yes, I caved and bought it). Lots of fun but I suck at it. Finished 2nd in a 3 player game and last in a 4 player game. I think that not paying attention to resource cards isn't the best strategy...

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:21 am

Smoove_B wrote:
coopasonic wrote: When you do, please figure out how you can store (120+90+90+90+4)*2 dice from booster packs in an organized manner and let me know.
Zen Bins?

That looks to be pretty damn close to perfect. Dammit.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:21 pm

coopasonic wrote:
hepcat wrote:Stop you? I'm going to join you!
When you do, please figure out how you can store (120+90+90+90+4)*2 dice from booster packs in an organized manner and let me know. Oh, let's add 90*2 to that total because I know the Age of Ultron set is coming. That brings it really close to a thousand dice just from boosters. Way over that if you include the dice (~44 each) from the 5 starter packs. Oh and one setup box (20 dice).

394*2 + 180 + 220 + 20 =1208 dice

I'm not a hoarder like you. Get some help!

but seriously, i'm tempted to dump my marvel dice master sets and just go with DC. I'm a bit of a DC fanboy.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:40 pm

Broken Token is allegedly working on dice organizers.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:44 pm

Zarathud wrote:Broken Token is allegedly working on dice organizers.

I checked out a prototype of a "deck" box they had at BGG.CON. I don't think they had any solution for the collection. Not that they haven't come up with anything since then.

I really like the looks of the zen bins. The modularity of it is very attractive to me.

Chrisoc13 · Post by **Chrisoc13** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:19 pm

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:Played my first 2 games of Five Tribes last night (yes, I caved and bought it). Lots of fun but I suck at it. Finished 2nd in a 3 player game and last in a 4 player game. I think that not paying attention to resource cards isn't the best strategy...

Yeah resource cards can be huge. It's a game with lots of strategy. I've really enjoyed it.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 1:53 pm

My wife and I tried to play the new version of Super Dungeon Explore, but I think we need to hit the book again and make sure we were doing it right. We played for at least an hour and she had not yet gotten off the first (of three) boards. It also seems like the Dark Consul is way too powerful, particularly when that mini-boss hits the floor (and I still had another mini-boss and a Mega Boss to deploy). We were playing it a little too much like Arcadia Quest, and she was not constantly moving her heroes after (and during) her attack actions - so that may be why things were off. I think the heroes need to constantly move to be sure to funnel the Consul's forces, since the Consul can only activate 2-3 guys per turn.

The game would feel a lot more "hit and run" that way, but that does coincide with the theme of Gauntlet and other arcade action RPGs.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 3:28 pm

wonderpug wrote:Four of us played Specter Ops for the first time on Saturday for the first time, and I loved it. The other three in the group all seemed to also really like it as well.

One player is the bad guy Agent who is trying to stealthily move through the good guy facility and steal 3 objectives. One to four other players play as the good guys trying to track down and kill the Agent. Everything is done in a sci-fi theme with EMP grenades, mutants, robots, all that good stuff.

What makes the game really unique is the way the Agent handles his actions and movement. The Agent player gets a pad of paper with the board map on it and writes down moves in secret on it. The Agent's chosen action cards are also kept secret, sometimes even staying secret when played. The good guys can only spot the Agent when they have a clear line of sight, so the Agent player is responsible for placing tokens indicating glimpses of Agent movement and placing the Agent figure when spotted.

I played as the Agent player, and the secret movements and actions were such a fun game mechanic. For instance, after spotting me on one turn, my 3 opponents could be trying to figure out my possible new locations based on my limit of travelling 4 spaces. Unbeknownst to them, I may actually have played a card that lets me travel 6 spaces, or secretly activated a stealth field that limits their line of sight for one turn. They move their figures to cover all the possibilities, then are left puzzled as all the alleyways turn up empty.

Really great theme, really great gameplay. Can't wait to try it again.

I was looking for something to do last night and ended up watching the Watch It Played run through of Specter Ops and I think I have to have it. Faster playing than Whitechapel and it looks to be more two player friendly, which would work out better for me. Oh, and my wife wouldn't scream bloody murder if I let a kid play it.

Zenn7 · Post by **Zenn7** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:47 pm

Monthly game day - we almost played Imperial Assault - but none of us had played and the guy setting up had just played a demo once, we all decided may not as this would take 2-4 hours with training (at least). So we switched to Ticket to Ride - which I had never played before (the Kasey gave me a free Steam copy recently in the Trade Forum free games - got it installed, haven't had a chance to play it yet). Always wanted to try it out and see what the excitement was all about. Enjoyed it but didn't quite get the awesomeness of it - pulled 2nd place out of 5 players and got the longest route though.

Kid got a Milton Bradley game at the Library book sale today based on the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books. It was kind of fun (if you like the book style, they used that same narrative tone for the rules and the cards in the game).

Game of RoboRally next - never played that before either - won against 4 others. Enjoyed that very much!

Game of Castle Panic next - never played that before either - we won, but we played on easy mode with our hands face up so we could coordinate really well. Enjoyable, but not quite as much as I had hoped (I'd hope this would be super-fun, maybe get to play with kid).

Then some Love Letters to end the day. Got my butt kicked badly at that.

Great day though, 3 classic games I have never played and always wanted to try!