OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Jow · Post by **Jow** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:05 am

most people who don't have experience with these kinds of games get thrown for a loop. I have a group i play with occasionally now that has only really ever done party games. I'm trying to gently introduce them to heavier things (e.g, Citadels, which isn't really heavy) but it's gonna take some time.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 12:43 pm

Skeptic wrote:I and my friends have been playing board games recently. Twilight Empirium, Labyrinth, and Twilight Struggle mostly. I am amazed at the complexity of the designs of these games. I don't normally play a lot of board games(and when I do it is usually things like Risk) so these kind of threw me.

I think of it as boardgame training. I did the same thing, went from Risk to things like Twilight Imperium. After the initial "shock" you begin to put rules together, see grander strategies, work out new avenues for victory.

In some ways, it's almost like you can feel your brain exercising. What was once difficult a month ago, in regards to boardgames, becomes second hand!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 1:37 pm

If they're new to gaming, I would immediately start them off with Advanced Squad Leader. After that, everything will seem like Parcheesi.

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:13 pm

How in the hell do you win a 4-player game of Pandemic? I played about a half-dozen games of it the other night with friends, and we could not get close. In our best game I think we cured 3 diseases before just failing miserably (we weren't even close to the fourth). In our worst, we had 6 outbreaks by the third person's turn and it went downhill from there. In one game we had two diseases cured and were keeping a pretty good handle on outbreaks, but we ran out of cards.

Still fun, though.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:29 pm

Teamwork. Without it, Pandemic will kick your ass.

Speaking of insidiously hard coop games, I bought Ghost Stories on impulse saturday morning. Looking forward to getting in a game soon.

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:58 pm

Pandemic is definitely winnable with 4. Not 100%, but definitely better than 50%.

Ghost Stories is incredibly hard though. I don't remember where, but some forum started referring to it as The Cast Iron Bitch.

I need to re-buy Pandemic and its expansion. My old copy went with the ex, but now I think I want it again.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:13 pm

Coincidentally, I just got Ghost Stories last week for my birthday. I've only gotten one game in so far, but I can already see why it's the Cast-Iron Bitch!

Wife: "Awesome! First ghost down. How many do we have to beat to win the game?"
Me: "Pretty much this entire deck. Including the super-tough ghost at the end."
Wife: "Are you serious?"

I'm looking forward to spending some more time with the game. It seems to do a great job of combining brain-wracking strategy with fast gameplay, which is important for me, since I don't have time for three-hour games these days.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:41 pm

Chaz wrote:Ghost Stories is incredibly hard though. I don't remember where, but some forum started referring to it as The Cast Iron Bitch.

Heh. That was us, 6 pages ago.

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 4:08 pm

Boudreaux wrote:
Chaz wrote:Ghost Stories is incredibly hard though. I don't remember where, but some forum started referring to it as The Cast Iron Bitch.
Heh. That was us, 6 pages ago.

Hooray! I wasn't making it up!

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 5:17 pm

I did discover a problem with the last game of DotR that I wrote up. In the first game, apparently you can take minions from your quest cards and add them back to the pool where needed. Also, you don't lose the game until you cannot place a minion, so we had a turn of minion bashing we could have done to clean up some of the Orcs from the table.

Game night tonight. I'd really like to play DotR again, but we'll see if my partners in crime will sit still for it again...

Daveman · Post by **Daveman** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:41 pm

I don't think I made that mistake when playing DoTR, but I did assume the tainted crystals worked in the same manner (game is over when you need to place a crystal and there's none left)... but they don't. When the final crystal is placed it's game over.

Never liked how that part wasn't consistent with the minion placement.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:02 pm

hepcat wrote:Teamwork. Without it, Pandemic will kick your ass.

Speaking of insidiously hard coop games, I bought Ghost Stories on impulse saturday morning. Looking forward to getting in a game soon.

Mansions of Madness arrived, so you had to get another game.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:20 pm

It's a sickness.

Let's go over my purchases since the Christmas holidays, shall we?

Mansions of Madness
Day of the Fox (Tide of Iron expansion)
Conquest of Planet Earth
Forbidden Island
Earth Reborn
Ghost Stories
Campaign Manager 2008
and I just put in an order for the 4 latest decks from Summoner Wars.

I think it's time to put a hold on my gaming purchases for now.

Thankfully, most of the stuff I bought was via online sites where the price was significantly lower than retail...or via Tanga sales for even deeper price cuts.

Poor Seppe lives near me and is being forced to play all this stuff lately.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:10 pm

Clever Mojo currently expects the second edition of Alien Frontiers to be available by the end of April 30, 2011. Hopefully my copy will arrive just in time for Octocon.

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.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:36 pm

Zarathud wrote: 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.

I will find the money to pre-order this one.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:44 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:
Zarathud wrote: 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.
I will find the money to pre-order this one.

I remember playing a computer game version of that on my (very primitive) Mac back when I was 10 or so. I also remember concluding that it was essentially impossible to destroy the OGRE.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 12:03 am

El Guapo wrote:
Isgrimnur wrote:
Zarathud wrote: 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.
I will find the money to pre-order this one.
I remember playing a computer game version of that on my (very primitive) Mac back when I was 10 or so. I also remember concluding that it was essentially impossible to destroy the OGRE.

Ogre was the very first game I bought, along with Wizard, out of an ad in Boy's Life magazine. While I was never a huge fan, I'm not sure I would be anywhere near the gaming geek that I am without it.

To this day, I can remember quite vividly my first play of the game. It was with my dad, I had begged him to play it with me, but he was reluctant. Finally he caved in. I played the Ogre. He played the ground forces. I explained the rules, and we were off and running. I was plowing down the hex grid, blowing away all of his tanks and GEVs and infantry units. I was having a ball.

But my dad...he was really good at chess. He grasped the strategy of the game way better than I did, and so I found myself about 5/6 of the way down the map, when he took out my last tread. I had a few turrets left, and he had several tanks. I was panicking. I was going to lose the first play of my new game! So I start leafing through the rule book, looking for something, anything that would help me out (I call this the "Zarathud Maneuver").

"I self destruct!" I cried out.
"You what?" he asked.
"I self destruct! I destroy the Ogre, and it takes out everything within 5 hexes. That eliminates all of the rest of your forces, and that gives me a nominal victory! I win!"
"You didn't tell me about that rule!" he argued back. "I would have held someone back had I known about it!"
"Sorry. It's right there, in the rules. I'm sure I told you about it, and you just forgot."

Boy, was he pissed. He vowed to never again play any game with hexes on it. He kept that vow, too, all the way until I introduced him to Battle Cry (which he loved).

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 10:05 pm

hentzau wrote:So I start leafing through the rule book, looking for something, anything that would help me out (I call this the "Zarathud Maneuver").

No way you're pinning what you've done decades ago on me and making it stick. Besides, there's no need to thumb through the rules when I understand them.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 10:46 pm

Zarathud wrote:
hentzau wrote:So I start leafing through the rule book, looking for something, anything that would help me out (I call this the "Zarathud Maneuver").
No way you're pinning what you've done decades ago on me and making it stick. Besides, there's no need to thumb through the rules when I understand them.

Sorry, I misspoke. I should have said "I NOW call this the "Zarathud Maneuver".

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:20 am

Zarathud wrote: No way you're pinning what you've done decades ago on me and making it stick. Besides, there's no need to thumb through the rules when I interpret them.

ftfy

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:09 pm

Went out to an area boardgame group that coop had suggested and met up with him there. Started out with a game of Ticket to Ride where I successfully agitated the other players to block coop out, which led to his coming in last and me taking third, as the guy I was "helping" leapfrogged over both of us with longest route.

We followed that up with California, which was much more fun than I anticipated from the initial description. I managed to win a victory there.

Then we switched over to a quick game of Walk the Dogs before moving on to Kayak Chaos. Coop left after the first game, but I stayed for a couple more. Which worked to my advantage, as I got the number of the cute girl that had joined our group for the last couple games.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:15 pm

Played Pinochole with my father's family. I had two Pinochole in the same hand and thought I also had 4 Queens at the same time (tricks on all 7 cards). Unfortunately, I was missing the Queen in one suit so the Queens didn't count. Yes, I am one lucky bastard.

The A-10 order kept getting me turned around, so I'm not sure how well I played on the other hands.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:24 pm

Saturday was Mansions of Madness, where LordMortis as Keeper trounced kenetickid, Remus West and I. And didn't realize it

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:29 pm

Sunday was Heroscape (600 pt armies for point kills) with my younger son and a friend. Friend took Sentinels and Concan, Sir Gilbert and Thorgrim with two sets of Knights, and Raelin. Heavily defended on a hilltop. My son took Mimring, Swog Rider, Ice Troll and Arrow gruts; Blade Gruts, Heavy Gruts and Nerak; plus the Frost Giant. I took five squads of DzuTeh and three squads of 10th Regiment. I got 530pt before being wiped out, my son had 450pt and our friend conceded as he realized his Turtle Defense left him unable to get enough points to win even if he managed to beat my son (who still had the Heavy Gruts, the Blade Gruts, and the Frost Giant.)

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:25 am

And the Buy Train continues.

Sunday I stopped in at our FLGS to pick up two lousy packs of Summoner Wars reinforcement decks...only to spy with my little eye a brand new, fresh off the boat copy of 51st State sitting on the shelf near the exit. It's a Race for the Galaxy style card game in the Neuroshima Hex universe (think Fallout), so of course I had to have it. Then, after I got home and was reading up on 51st State, I realized Nightfall (Thunderstone/deck building style game with a modern horror theme) was released in the last few days as well. Remembering I had some credit on Amazon for their botched handling of my Mansions of Madness pre-order, I used that to order a copy.

Hopefully I'll get them on the table this week. In the case of 51st State, there's a solo variant by the designer available on BGG at least.

I need to force myself to hold off on any more games until Origins. This is getting ridiculous.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:58 am

Played a couple of games of Wrath of Ashardalon on Friday and Saturday at C2E2, and played in a D&D LFR game Friday night that was probably one of the worst games I've ever played in.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:20 pm

hentzau wrote:Played a couple of games of Wrath of Ashardalon on Friday and Saturday at C2E2, and played in a D&D LFR game Friday night that was probably one of the worst games I've ever played in.

What is LFR?

I need to crack open WoA myself. What are your feelings Hentzau of WoA versus Castle Ravenloft?

Hep, let me know how Nightfall is. I was very interested in that one, but my overspending on other games forces me to forgo that one at the moment.

Daveman · Post by **Daveman** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:29 pm

Despite fairly luke-warm reviews, and in part because I'm a Days of Wonder fan... I picked up Cargo Noir and played 2 games of 2 player, and 2 games of 3 player. We don't have any similar auction/item set collecting games so it was a new, different experience for us. We all liked it a lot. I enjoyed our 2 player games but found the 3 player games much better. In our 2 player games we usually just placed huge bids the other player couldn't outbid, whereas in our 3 player games there was enough stuff out there to bid on it didn't feel like a waste to place a few bids out and not worry if one got picked off. All of our games were very close calls and I'm looking forward to playing it again.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:33 pm

Let me know how nightfall is. For $25 it may be worth picking up.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:02 pm

25 bucks if you buy it online. 39.99 at retail. it seems like the days of 29.99 card based games is truly gone.

Speaking of which, I'm really annoyed at the makers of 51st State for going the extra mile in cheapness. The game requires a victory track...but instead of actually freakin' having one IN the damn box, they refer you to the back of the main box where they have one running around the blurb for the game. You couldn't freakin' spend the extra 25 cents to make a cardboard insert for that?

And at 39.99, you definitely aren't getting a lot in the box. It's mostly air.

Ah well, as I tell myself whenever i get a game like this...i'm paying mostly for the time and thought behind it.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:15 pm

hepcat wrote:Ah well, as I tell myself whenever i get a game like this...i'm paying mostly for the time and thought behind it.

I tell myself this when a game is new. After a game has been out for a few years I get really annoyed at the price points or that they pull the game out of print when it won't sell at such a high price point anymore. So I can't replace Red Empire for which I lost a bunch of cards years ago and Steve Jackson wants me to pay $130 to replace a whole set of Nuke War, a nearly 30 year old game, that is essentially two decks of cards, a few construction paper placements, a die, a plastic spinner, and a few dozen glossy sheets of perforated light stock cardboard sheets.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:36 pm

Check ebay for nuke war, esc, and prof. I gathered the three for about $70 altogether to remake my Nuclear Monopoly set. Now if I can just find the trading pacck sets...

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:42 pm

Send Redwarlord a PM. He has access to a ton of older game components via his job. If anyone has nuke war stuff, he's the man.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:42 pm

Chaosraven wrote:Check ebay for nuke war, esc, and prof. I gathered the three for about $70 altogether to remake my Nuclear Monopoly set. Now if I can just find the trading pacck sets...

EBay + $70 is still too much. I should be able to get the whole damned set in a "complete" version for about $35 and they'd should still make a killing.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:28 pm

LordMortis wrote:
Chaosraven wrote:Check ebay for nuke war, esc, and prof. I gathered the three for about $70 altogether to remake my Nuclear Monopoly set. Now if I can just find the trading pacck sets...
EBay + $70 is still too much. I should be able to get the whole damned set in a "complete" version for about $35 and they'd should still make a killing.

the damned set cost $45 when it came out twenty plus years ago, didn't it?

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:40 pm

Chaosraven wrote:
LordMortis wrote:
Chaosraven wrote:Check ebay for nuke war, esc, and prof. I gathered the three for about $70 altogether to remake my Nuclear Monopoly set. Now if I can just find the trading pacck sets...
EBay + $70 is still too much. I should be able to get the whole damned set in a "complete" version for about $35 and they'd should still make a killing.
the damned set cost $45 when it came out twenty plus years ago, didn't it?

I think it the whole set was closer to $70 ($30+$20+$20) twenty plus years ago but that's not the point. The point was:

I tell myself whenever i get a game like this...i'm paying mostly for the time and thought behind it.

which I get. But after twenty plus years I don't feel so good about paying for the time and thought behind the game. It's all good. I'm just not replacing my copy at those prices. Other people apparently are happy to pay that kind of money for those components that many years after the fact. Have at it.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:58 pm

LordMortis wrote:
Chaosraven wrote:
LordMortis wrote:
Chaosraven wrote:Check ebay for nuke war, esc, and prof. I gathered the three for about $70 altogether to remake my Nuclear Monopoly set. Now if I can just find the trading pacck sets...
EBay + $70 is still too much. I should be able to get the whole damned set in a "complete" version for about $35 and they'd should still make a killing.
the damned set cost $45 when it came out twenty plus years ago, didn't it?
I think it the whole set was closer to $70 ($30+$20+$20) twenty plus years ago but that's not the point. The point was:

I tell myself whenever i get a game like this...i'm paying mostly for the time and thought behind it.
which I get. But after twenty plus years I don't feel so good about paying for the time and thought behind the game. It's all good. I'm just not replacing my copy at those prices. Other people apparently are happy to pay that kind of money for those components that many years after the fact. Have at it.

you DO realize i was addressing only my misgivings on my purchase of 51st State and not disparaging you and your situation with Nuke War, right?

Jow · Post by **Jow** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:28 pm

how do y'all feel about what seems like a glut of deck-building games lately? Are they different enough that they scratch different gaming itches for you?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:33 pm

Jow wrote:how do y'all feel about what seems like a glut of deck-building games lately? Are they different enough that they scratch different gaming itches for you?

whenever anything proves popular, there's always a ton of copycats. that's to be expected. That being said, I think it's less annoying in gaming than most other areas because the majority of gamers are a pretty savvy lot when it comes to their hobby. they're not going to stand for simply putting new pictures on an old product and then reselling it over and over again (myself not included because I AM really that stupid). therefore, most of these deck building games are bringing something new to the table (pardon the pun). I know 51st State incorporates multiple mechanics from other games (worker placement a la Agricola...albeit VERY lightly, conquest of cards a la Thunderstone, roles a la RftG/San Juan) and I've never seen that before. Whether or not it's fun is yet to be seen. Ascension took all that was great about Dominion and boiled it down into a faster version. And 7 Wonders turned the whole concept on its ear with the rotating hand mechanic.

It's like various types of cake. A lot of them are good, but they all use many of the same ingredients.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:33 pm

baelthazar wrote:
hentzau wrote:Played a couple of games of Wrath of Ashardalon on Friday and Saturday at C2E2, and played in a D&D LFR game Friday night that was probably one of the worst games I've ever played in.
What is LFR?

I need to crack open WoA myself. What are your feelings Hentzau of WoA versus Castle Ravenloft?

Hep, let me know how Nightfall is. I was very interested in that one, but my overspending on other games forces me to forgo that one at the moment.

LFR = Living Forgotten Realms. It's a means whereby you can have D&D characters transportable from con game to con game without munchinkinism creeping in. For example, you create a 1st level character, and you have specific rules that govern it's creation. You take it to your FLGS or a con, and you play a game. You garner experience and rewards from that game, apply it to that character, and then bring the same character to the next event. It gives you a bit more of a stake in a convention game playing the same character over and over. Also, you can garner other types of rewards from running or playing in the events...they track the games you play based on an ID number.

WoA is just as much if not more fun than CR. It's a more claustrophobic game...more long corridors and the like that suddenly open up into larger chambers. They've cleaned up the movement rules a bit for monsters, and added more useful magic items to the treasure deck vs the CR deck that had a lot of instantaneous events. The new sentry character type is a pain in the ass. It helps to spawn a TON of monsters at once. One of the games I played in over the weekend we had a sentry that pulled another sentry that pulled a long hallway that pulled a cultist and another room that pulled a cave bear. We were suddenly ass deep in monsters. It ramps up VERY quickly.