OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[Chrisoc13]

Lots of gaming (I'm on vacation), X-wing hit the table (but written up in the X-wing thread for anyone interested).

Other games-

1775: Rebellion
My second game in my collection fro Academy Games, (the other being the reprint of Mare Nostrum, which I love).

This is a 2-4 player war game (primary 2 players) which is card driven for actions with dice for combat. There are 4 main factions (2 US, 2 British essentially) which are teamed up as appropriate. I played it 2 players, which I think it works very well. The goal of the game is to control the majority of the colonies which are available (more than just the 13 base colonies, also includes two Canadian colonies and Maine, for 16 total "colonies" to attempt to control. The game has an indefinite ending, once all 4 treaty cards have been played the game ends with whoever has the most colonies winning. There are also independent Indian nations on the western border which you can send troops to recruit and use in battle. The US can recruit French troops and the British can recruit German troops to assist.

Your turn consists of simply getting new troops (4 each round plus any that have fled), followed by playing a single movement card and any event cards you would like to play (there are 4 total event cards in each deck, so timing is important). The movement cards have various numbers of armies you get to move specific distances. Then you roll dice to see who wins, and draw a new card and see who is next.

The game has a surprising amount of strategy for being so incredibly light. Any blank dice allow you to make "command decisions" which are re-positioning moves which can really mess up your enemies. There are also water movement cards in each deck. Each deck has a single one. These cards allow you to make movers anywhere along the waterfront. In my first game I used it to take troops from boston down to Savannah to solidify Georgia for the US, and to later take my extra French armies from North Carolina past the hotly contested mid-atlantic to sneak attack the British in Nova Scotia. While I wasn't able to claim Nova Scotia for myself I was able to break up control of the colony which allowed me to win by denying a controlled colony to the British.

The game is relatively light and accessible for a war game. Each faction has individualized dice (for instance the British do not flee) that you use during combat. This is important when deciding what armies to move where. Also some factions will commit for to the fight than others. For instance the Patriots have 3 dice maximum in a fight, but the French will max out at 2, so taking 10 french and 2 Patriots would give you less dice than 3 Patriots and 2 french, which I think is a very interesting mechanism.

Academy games also does a great job steeping things in history. Each card has a blurb of history at the bottom, and the rule book even has a 5 page history reference in the back. They did similar things with Mare Nostrum with an additional book in the back dedicated to the history of the Mediterranean and the heroes in the game. Very well done. They even sell a book for use for teachers to use to teach using the games. Cool company. I like this system, and like this company. 1812 looks less interesting to me due to what I have read about it. They also are coming out with 1754 soon that is in the same system and the same line (Birth of America line). But perhaps more intersting they are starting to come out with the Birth of Europe system, which the first entry is 878: Vikings- Invasion of England. Looks interesting as well, though it is largely the same system. Yes it is a simple war game, but I am pretty happy with it, it scratches an itch and manages to do so in less than an hour. Not bad!

We also played my friend's version of Manhattan Project: Energy Empire. Manhattan Project is my wife's favorite game (or at least up there with Food Chain Magnate) so we were looking forward to this game. It is an interesting idea, but it has almost nothing to do with Manhattan project other than the play mechanism of either placing workers during your turn or retrieving workers during your turn. Unlike the original game which is aptly named about building a nuclear bomb, this game is about... not sure? Building stuff while trying to not pollute your map? I'm not entirely sure what the purpose is. The theme barely fits, but the mechanisms are a lot of fun. You score points at the end based on achievements, building score points, and how unpolluted your world is, as well as how far you go in the United Nations. You each have your own country with different ways to go up the UN, but these are pretty week, and honestly they are not as interesting as the country differences in Manhattan project which are actually very interesting.

I actually really enjoyed the game, but I am not entirely sure why they kept the name. It is barely a fit at all. Fun game, worth trying, but... manhattan project is better. I don't think I will pick this one up, instead I'll wait for the Manhattan Project 2. Energy Empire is essentially just a standard worker placement game with the twist of the retrieval mechanism and a beloved name.

[YellowKing]

We finished up MECHS VS MINIONS last night with Mission 10.

First attempt is the first time we've well and truly got our asses kicked by this game. We have lost twice before (in the whole campaign), but they were very narrow losses. We did misread one rule which actually made things harder on ourselves, but I think we still would have lost anyway.

Second attempt we re-thought our strategy and won fairly convincingly.

So what are my final thoughts on the game, having now played the full campaign?

Coming from a group that enjoys really hard co-op games like Robinson Crusoe, Ghost Stories, etc. I do agree with the general consensus that the game is fairly easy - particularly if your game group consists of real-life engineers and programmers. Our record in the game is 10-3, so the vast majority of the scenarios we beat on the first attempt. As I've pointed out before, however, most scenarios never felt easy - and many of them, at least to start, seemed downright impossible. In fact, we had a running joke. One of our group (Terry) would say "This is going to be impossible!" after I read nearly every mission setup. Of course we'd end up coasting to victory, but that wouldn't stop him from declaring the next mission impossible, and the next.

However, the game is really fun and I never felt it easy enough to be boring. And there are always options to make missions harder, so it's not difficult to up the challenge. I loved the game mechanics and how new features are introduced throughout the course of the campaign. Most of all, I loved the sense of progression. Everyone starts out completely useless at the start, and winds up being a total wrecking machine bad-ass by the end. The excitement of drafting that perfect card to make your mech a powerhouse or to fulfill that grand strategy you had in your mind was really gratifying.

We're planning on moving into MANSIONS OF MADNESS, but everyone agreed to take a week or two off and knock some one-off games out of the way. Over the next couple of weeks we hope to knock out XCOM, PANDEMIC:REIGN OF CTHULHU, the newest CASTLE PANIC expansion, and maybe a couple of other little odds and ends. Then it will be back into the world of Arkham to fight Cthulhu and his minions. I have a lot of painting to get done!

[Isgrimnur]

Managed a one-movement-point win as the Nazis in Escape from Colditz.

Waiting for turn four, if possible, as my character died on turn one of chapter three in Last Friday.

[TheMix]

Had a couple of friends over for dinner.

Played a couple games of Sentinels of the Multiverse. ...

Thankfully dinner was excellent.

The games did not go well. Lost both easily.

[AWS260]

We brought a few small games with us on vacation, and just enjoyed the old reliable Chrononauts. While it's by no means a perfect game, I love the concept and always have a good time with it.

In the holiday home that we're renting, there is a copy of the 2004 edition of Trump: The Game. It requires a minimum of 3 players, so I'm afraid that we won't be able to try it out. Sad!

[Moat_Man]

This weekend we played one game of Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization. We started on Friday night and put in ~2.5 hours. We finished on Saturday night after another 4 hour session. It's a long game. In our defense we hadn't played in a while so it took a bit to get back into the swing of things.

Moat_Boy won in a pretty close game (<15 points).

[coopasonic]

Managed a one-movement-point win as the Nazis in Escape from Colditz.

Waiting for turn four, if possible, as my character died on turn one of chapter three in Last Friday.

I started a game of Clank! on the "advanced" side before Isg showed up. I managed to win without escaping the dungeon. Two escaped and finished second and third. 89-80-63-31

Came one freaking move away from beating Isg at Escape from Colditz. It's a 50 round game. Each round you roll two dice for movement points, with rerolls on doubles for extra movement... I needed a 10 to get my second escape on the very last turn. I know it is expected as a 10+ is a longshot on 2d6, but rolling a 9 was painful. I know I blew some earlier opportunities so it's definitely winnable. We'll play again Isgrimnur.

Last Friday closed out the day with a chapter 4 loss for the maniac (me). I managed to get trapped in a corner with no useful options. Maybe next time.

3 board games in the same day! I may have only won once, but I call making it to game day a win too!

[hepcat]

Seppe and Hentzau were over on Saturday for a bit of gaming.

Seppe arrived earlier in the morning, so we played a game of Star Wars Destiny first. Such a great mechanic. I love everything about the game play. I just wish I was more of a Star Wars fan. But I love that I don't need to go all in on this one. I can have fun with it using just the starters.

Then we broke out the Arkham Horror card game to continue our campaign in the base set. I've gone all out on this one, so I had the big player mat, the customized storage case, etc.. Unfortunately, we didn't do so hot in scenario 2 of the campaign. I may have to go back and try it again with different characters later to see if it's easier with a different combo.

Hentzau then showed up and we set up a game of Star Trek Ascendancy. Hent got the Feds, Seppe the Romulans and I the Klingons. It was a long game, but I had a blast. Hent's Feds built up a culture engine while exploring, while I turtled like a moron (I should have been attacking right from the get go...that's how Klingons are supposed to be played, dagnabit), and Seppe kept to himself in his corner of the galaxy. The Romulans didn't advertise the number of culture points he had for Ascendancy, relying on the other players to NOT notice what was going on with him, and then cashing them all in the same turn right before declaring a win with 5 Ascendancy tokens. He's done that in two different games and I should remember to look over his resources to make sure I know where he stands, instead of waiting for him to cash his culture in for Ascendancy tokens as soon as he has enough for one, like everyone else does I've played with.

But that final round was a doozy. Hent and Seppe both had enough for the 5 Ascendancy token win condition. The tie breaker in that situation is who has the most systems. So Hent bid enough to take first player away from Seppe, then went after his settlements. He tore through them pretty quickly, but unfortunately he wasn't able to get to enough to ensure his win in the tie breaker.

I love, love, love this game...but I really want to play other races. Fortunately, they're planning quite a few. And they all sound like they'll have unique play styles without burdening the game with a lot of rule additions.

After Ascendancy, Hent took off and Seppe and I finished up mission 5 for Mechs vs. Minions. At first I thought it was going to be impossible, but oddly enough it ended up being much easier than I thought it would be. I still enjoy this game quite a bit and plan on finishing out the game.

[Chrisoc13]

I want to play Ascendancy badly, but I can't justify purchasing a game that is 3 players only. It's just such a rare situation that I will be in to have exactly 3 players for a game, and on top of that 3 players who are interested in Star Trek. But it looks so good.

I've been on a bit of a Splotter spending spree. I love, love, love Food Chain Magnate so I decided to take a look at other Splotter games. Thing is when they go out of print (and they only do short print runs) they stay out of print for a really long time. Food Chain Magnate is done printing now and their website simply says that they have no plans right now for another print run, usually they wait some 5-10 years to print it again. So they just reprinted Indonesia and The Great Zimbabwe both of which are very highly rated games. The great Zimbabwe they are completely all out of now (per Splotter) and all that is left is whatever stores have, once they are sold out they currently say they have no plans right now for a reprint. So I couldn't help it, I just decided to pull the trigger and buy both of the new reprints in case they run out and prices sky rocket. So I couldn't help it. And then I found a good price for Roads and Boats and again I just pulled the trigger on it.

So now I am sitting on 3 deep splotter games that are going to take hours to learn to play and play... but oh the goodness. So we will see how those go. I'm sure I'll like them once I get around to playing them.

Recently also played another game of 1775, which I am continuing to love in the light war department. Perfect for a weeknight war game. Hopefully it will hit the table again this week.

[coopasonic]

I've been on a bit of a Splotter spending spree. I love, love, love Food Chain Magnate so I decided to take a look at other Splotter games. Thing is when they go out of print (and they only do short print runs) they stay out of print for a really long time. Food Chain Magnate is done printing now and their website simply says that they have no plans right now for another print run, usually they wait some 5-10 years to print it again.

Food Chain Magnate for sale, $1000. Includes fan-fold card holder and whiteboard "bonus" trackers.

[hepcat]

I want to play Ascendancy badly, but I can't justify purchasing a game that is 3 players only.

It will be 3 to 5 players within a few weeks.

[Chrisoc13]

I want to play Ascendancy badly, but I can't justify purchasing a game that is 3 players only.

It will be 3 to 5 players within a few weeks.

Why... why... why are you tempting me! I'll keep an eye on it, for sure.

[hepcat]

Hey, the more people who buy it, the more GF9 will expand it. And there's already hints about some of the new races in the base game (a card that works best for a "Tholian player", for example...Tholian, for God's sake.). But even more importantly, releasing expansions that are just races is absolutely brilliant for a Star Trek game. Each race can bring with it with numerous gameplay differences, but yet keep to the base mechanics. Ferengi will be about the economy, of course. While the Cardassians are all about occupation. I find the ability to play an almost asymmetric Star Trek grand strategy game intriguing as hell.

So yes, I want you to buy it. I want everyone here to buy it. That way we get more goodies.

[Chrisoc13]

I've been on a bit of a Splotter spending spree. I love, love, love Food Chain Magnate so I decided to take a look at other Splotter games. Thing is when they go out of print (and they only do short print runs) they stay out of print for a really long time. Food Chain Magnate is done printing now and their website simply says that they have no plans right now for another print run, usually they wait some 5-10 years to print it again.

Food Chain Magnate for sale, $1000. Includes fan-fold card holder and whiteboard "bonus" trackers.

Ha so it includes the $15 bgg stuff for it basically. That's funny, especially because for now the game is still available both on admission for retail price and prime and that the bgg store isn't out of the extras.

Mine is pimped with the Meeple source tokens and a cool insert from Etsy... What can I say I just love that game.

[YellowKing]

Played the second half of the Dunwich Legacy campaign in the Arkham Horror LCG. I'll throw the full breakdown of that in the Arkham Horror LCG thread.

Then it was on to a game of ONE DECK DUNGEON! This was the first time playing it for both Terry and I, so we spent quite a bit of time trying to wrap our head around the rules. They're not overly difficult, but it's heavily symbol based so it just took a little bit of a learning curve to understand what everything meant.

Here's the rundown:

The game can be played solo or with two players cooperatively. The goal of the game is to get through the three floors of your chosen dungeon and defeat the boss at the bottom. Along the way you'll kill monsters, defeat "peril" (trap-like encounters), and gain loot to make you stronger and more able to face the tougher floors below.

Each player chooses one of the five classes (Warrior, Rogue, Archer, Paladin, Wizard), each of which has a particular number of dice they can roll per stat (combat - yellow, agility - [pink, magic - blue) and basic skills unique to their class. The encounter deck is shuffled with the stairs on the bottom.

The party performs a turn as a group. Each turn, two cards are flipped and discarded. This represents the passing of time. Some encounters and triggers will cause you to lose time, and time can even be one of the types of "wounds" you get in combat. It's a penalty because the faster you get through a dungeon floor, the less time you've had to level and power up. While you can choose not to descend once you've reach the stairs at the bottom of the deck, you start taking damage penalties the longer you avoid descending.

The party then draws and lays out four face-down cards (or fills in empty slots until four doors are available) that represent four closed doors in the dungeon. The party picks a door, opens it by flipping it face up, then chooses to Fight the encounter within or Flee. Fleeing incurs no penalty other than the next turn starting and more time passing. However, opened doors stay in play until you fight them, so you may end up having to deal with them sooner or later.

To Fight, the party rolls their stat dice, any heroic (black) dice they may have obtained through skills or bonuses, and use those dice to attempt to cover boxes on the encounter card. To cover a single box, you must have a die (of that color) that equals or exceeds the number in the box. To cover a wide box, you can use any number of dice (of that color) to meet or exceed the number in the box. Black heroic dice can be used as any color. However, there are two gotchas - first, the dungeon has a default box or boxes that must be covered with each encounter in addition to the boxes on the encounter card. This is how the floors get harder - as you descend, the dungeons add more default boxes. Also, any box that shows a shield (armor) symbol *must* be covered before covering any other boxes.

After covering as many boxes as you can, you total the damage/time wounds from any boxes you didn't cover, and apply those to the party. Even if you were unable to cover all boxes, you still get the loot from every encounter.

The loot mechanic is one of my favorite mechanics of the game. Each encounter card has a skill, stats, and experience. When it is looted, the party can choose to either assign the skill to one player (by sliding the card under their character sheet so just the skill is showing). Or they can choose to assign the stats as an "item" (by sliding the card to the side of their character sheet so that the stats stack with their existing stats). Or they can choose to use it as XP, in which case it is slid under the Level card which shows the level of the party. Leveling up gives you bonuses like the ability to hold more skills, more items, potions, and bonus heroic dice.

Play continues in this manner with the party resolving encounters and moving through the deck until they hit the stairs and descend. When they hit the next floor, the dungeon card slides up to reveal the new floor's default encounter boxes, and play continues. When they get to the very bottom, they fight the boss which is just like a super encounter that lasts multiple rounds.

Don't let the "one deck' moniker fool you. The game has a lot more going on than it first appears. Skills will allow you to change dice, negate wounds, roll extra dice, and do all sort of other neat things. Potions allow you to heal, turn invisible, add magic dice to your pool, etc. And two dice of the wrong color can be combined to form a heroic die equal to the lowest number of the two die. Each encounter involves a lot of quick math and puzzle solving as you determine the most efficient way to cover all the encounter boxes as a group. In this way, the cooperative aspect is really strong - every turn is performed as a group, so you will live or die by your group consensus.

We ran out of time and didn't finish our game, but we found it extremely difficult in the early stages, but progressively easier as we added stats and skills and leveled up. Supposedly co-op is easier than solo, and I found our session to be slightly *too* easy at times. However, we were playing the easiest level dungeon, so I'd have to play some other levels to make an informed decision on the game's difficulty.

We both really enjoyed this one, and for the price (~$25) and small form factor (it comes in a box only a little larger than two card decks), it's a fantastic travel game if you want some complexity without a huge box and lots of components. Even though we played Terry's copy, I'm strongly considering picking up a copy for myself just to play solo. Lots of fun.

[hentzau]

So last night we replayed the first mission of Gloomhaven again, and we're still kind of meh on the whole thing. We managed to defeat the scenario, and did a lot better with the moving forward, keeping the game going, holding onto your "lose" cards until the end of the battle, etc. I'm about to a pretty important decision point on this game, though. I need to figure out now if I'm going to keep it and keep trying it and making changes to the game, or try and sell it now with only a single sticker (the first) applied to the board.

[Smoove_B]

Demand seems rather high for the game - as I understand, relatively few retail copies were made and vendors ended up cancelling preorders that couldn't be filled. I'm betting you'd be able to sell it and recover your investment, particularly if its something you can do locally and skip the shipping.

[hepcat]

I actually bought a copy of Gloomhaven today for online pricing at the discount game store near work. I had started watching videos for it after reading quite a few glowing reviews, and it gave me a mage knight/Mistfall/myth feel, so I jumped on a preorder when I learned that the store was still taking them late last week. I'm guessing this one will be hard to find soon. So if I don't like it, I can always eBay it, I suppose. The minis are great, by the way.

Oh, and anyone who has the game and has NOT tossed the black foam slabs that shipped inside the box, do yourself a favor and don't toss them out. Someone on BGG came up with a brilliant storage solution for the standees using those things. I did it last night and it makes storage so much easier.

[hepcat]

I started up a solo campaign last night in Gloomhaven. I did so because I'll probably be playing it primarily solo, but I love the fact that they make it easy for people to drop in/drop out of the campaign.

I gotta say, I'm lovin' it. It really does feel like Mage Knight strategically. Since that's a VERY divisive game, I can understand why some folks might not like it. But since I love Mage Knight, I was on board the moment I had to agonize over what card to use and for what purpose.

I was going to use all the material on BGG that allows a player to avoid the legacy aspect of the game (stickers on the board, etc.), but now I think I'll just play it and not worry about it. There's easily 200 hours or more of game play in this box.

Anyone in the Chicago area ever wants to drop in on a game, just let me know.

[TheMix]

I'm kind of waiting for my gaming table. I suspect that this is a game that I'll have set up for a while.

[hepcat]

I keep hearing these stories about how Gloomhaven takes up tremendous amounts of table space. Yet I had no trouble fitting everything I needed to play last night on my rather small kitchen table. I don't know why people would leave the board open and on the table when all you do is refer to it occasionally for sticker placement or paths to scenarios.

[$iljanus]

I keep hearing these stories about how Gloomhaven takes up tremendous amounts of table space. Yet I had no trouble fitting everything I needed to play last night on my rather small kitchen table. I don't know why people would leave the board open and on the table when all you do is refer to it occasionally for sticker placement or paths to scenarios.

It looks like the dungeon would fit OK on our one table. Unfortunately my wife and daughter are finishing up a jigsaw puzzle on our one table so there isn't a hurry to punch out the remaining pieces.

[Punisher]

I keep hearing these stories about how Gloomhaven takes up tremendous amounts of table space. Yet I had no trouble fitting everything I needed to play last night on my rather small kitchen table. I don't know why people would leave the board open and on the table when all you do is refer to it occasionally for sticker placement or paths to scenarios.

It looks like the dungeon would fit OK on our one table. Unfortunately my wife and daughter are finishing up a jigsaw puzzle on our one table so there isn't a hurry to punch out the remaining pieces.

Once they go to bed, stay up tonight and finish the puzzle. Problem solved.
Long term solution. Leave as is but hide 3 pieces. This will most likely put them off puzzles for the foreseeable future.

[hentzau]

Played a couple of games of Star Trek:The Dice Game today. Tough game. 1st game I only made it through 2 missions before the Enterprise was destroyed, 2nd game only one. Very fun, but a couple of bad rolls early on can destroy you.

[hepcat]

I need to get a copy of this. Is there a link on BGG for the places you can order the pieces parts from?

[Chrisoc13]

I need to get a copy of this. Is there a link on BGG for the places you can order the pieces parts from?

Yeah I need it too. Looks awesome.

[hepcat]

Last night I beat the tutorial scenario for Gloomhaven after one failed attempt that I wrote off as a training session. It...was...close. This game is incredibly fine tuned. I played solo with two characters after creating my party. A Cragheart and a Human Scoundrel. The former ranged with earth elemental type powers, the latter melee...with stealth aspects and poison. The first time I played, I didn't even make it out of the first of three rooms. The second time, I knew what I was doing and even though I exhausted my scoundrel early in order to take out an elite archer, the cragheart soldiered on and defeated an entire room full of low level guards and skeletons with some well placed area attacks and a retaliate effect that caused melee damage done to him to cause a small amount of damage back to the striker.

I haven't had that sense of accomplishment in a game in a long time, I must say. I fought every step of the way to win, and it was incredibly satisfying when I did so.

Now on to the second mission, then back to the city to sell some stuff, buy some stuff and do a city event before moving on to the next scenario in my campaign.

Gloomhaven has rocketed to the top of my must play list in less than a week. It's just a great, great game. However, if you don't like games that are essentially puzzles at their core (like Mage Knight), you will probably not enjoy this. Every turn consists of trying to find the right "pieces to the puzzle", in this case the right cards to get you where you need to go and to do the damage that you need to do.

[hentzau]

I need to get a copy of this. Is there a link on BGG for the places you can order the pieces parts from?

I'm ready to help a fellow Star Fleet Officer out!

You need to get two separate decks of playing cards from Artscow:

Deck 1

Deck 2

The playmat I had printed at Artscow as well, but you could also just print that off yourself and laminate it if you want, to save some money. The playmat is neoprene.

PDF (Apparently the PDF is sized so that you could upload it to Printers Studio for their 11x17 folding game board.)

Artscow

Finally, the dice I ordered from someone on BGG, great service, had them within a week. Had to color them in myself, but that was really easy to do.

Link to thread where they talk about the laser cut dice.

I'd recommend looking around for a coupon for Artscow. This ended up being a bit more expensive than I probably should have gone, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

[hepcat]

Thanks!

[hentzau]

Just played a 3rd game and wasn't even able to complete my first mission before the Enterprise was so much space junk. An explosive decompression event followed by a Romulan Warbird attack can pretty much ruin your day.

[hepcat]

Unless you're a Romulan, of course.

[hentzau]

So, I guess I may be hanging on to Gloomhaven after all.

One of my usual game players wasn't able to make it so it was just me and Tom. When he arrived at my place, I asked what would he like to play. He said "Well, Gloomhaven is right here, how about we try that again?" I was kinda shocked, but said "Sure!"

So we went after the second mission, down our Cragheart, but between the two of us we were able to actually cruse through the scenario with only minor difficulties. We really started to understand how our characters were working, and how to play a bit more tactically. Not to say that there weren't a couple of spots where my Spellweaver would have been downed from a higher initiative draw on the monsters. But that's what makes the risks fun, right?

Next game I'm going to mix the "X" cards into the session to see if I can't get even more effectiveness out of my Spellweaver. And I'm jealous of the tinker, he already has gotten his first perk...

So yeah, I think I found the fun in it.

[Chrisoc13]

Had some solid gaming this week. First up was a play of The Great Zimbabwe. It's a Splotter game which was just reprinted and already is out of print again. Prices are reasonable for now but once the current stock sells out I imagine they will climb very high again.

The game is actually relatively simple in terms of rules (as Splotter games seem to be) with great depth of strategy. In many ways it is a simpler version of Food Chain Magnate. The board is a variable board with bodies of water and resources spread throughout the tiles. Very similar to setup of Food Chain Magnate. Your goal is to gain victory points by building the tallest monuments. In order to build monuments you need to deliver resources to your monument. 1 different resource to get to level 2, 2 different resources to get to level 3 etc. The difficulty is in collecting these different resources as your monuments grow. Each resource can only be used once in a turn which means you want to get them before your opponents do, as such there is an auction to determine player order. But the process to obtain the resources is really where the game plays out.

In order to gain the resources you have to create villages that refine the resources, a monument to your God needs refined resources. To create the village you need to obtain the skill to do so by taking a special skill card. This is a free action (although there is a cost associated I'll talk about in a bit). Now you can refine goods. So the goods must be able to go from the original source to the village to your monument. Eventually you are building secondary resources which mean they must go from the resource source to the village to a second village to the monument. An example is you have an ivory source, you initially refine it into Ivory. Then later someone makes a throne village and now your goods have to go through the throne village before going to the monument because your God demands the best and now thrones are available.

During your turn you can also hire specialists to make tasks easier. Could be something as simple as a specialist that increases the range of your products, or it could be "the herd" which allows you to mate your cows (which are the currency in the game) to produce more cows. You also may choose a single God during the course of the game in order to have a permanent special ability. For example my wife chose a God that allowed her to ignore the restriction on using different goods to build up monuments so she used 4 different sets of Diamonds to get to level 5, allowing her to skyrocket past me. You only get to choose one God during the game, once you do that is the God you worship for this entire game.

The real genius in the game (IMO) comes in the cost associated with taking a technology (or the ability to create villages of a certain type), a specialist, or a God. The game starts with everyone having a victory point end point of 20. But every specialist you take increases your requirements. So you want more money and take "The herd"? Well that increases your victory points required to 26. You want to refine diamonds in your cities? Well the first person to gain that technology increases their requirements by 3 victory points, the next by 4, and nobody else even gets to take that technology. You like the God that allows you to use the same resource over and over? You need 4 more victory points. So it becomes a real discussion, how advanced are you willing to become, knowing that doing so will make your target higher.

You can use anyone else's villages during the game by paying them so you could conceivably not build anything, keep your victory requirements at 20, and try to win by just slowly advancing.

Really great game so far, looking forward to many more plays. It plays a bit faster than Food Chain Magnate, and is a little more stream-lined. But Food Chain Magnate is still a much better game in my book, that being said I think it still has a place in my collection due to being just different enough and playing a little quicker, as well as having several unique mechanisms.

Also managed to play a 4 player game of Imperial. I'm not sure if I have posted about this game before, but it is a gem that I don't hear much about. The game is really a stock game with area control on top. The game consists of 6 countries, which any player can control by being the highest stock holder in the game. Whoever controls the country decides what actions to take by using a rondel. You can only use the money that has been invested in the country so it is to your benefit to get other players to invest as well. You can then use that money to build factories which build troops for free, or to import troops, or most importantly to pay out stock holders.

I love this game because it is an area control game where you don't actually own the countries you are playing. In fact in this recent game I started off as Great Britain, then took over Italy (much to the anger of my opponent) then drove Italy into the ground and flushed all the money out of it using the troops to help Britain fight off France before finally ignoring Italy completely. Meanwhile the player I took over Italy from decided that since I had clearly trashed that country she would instead use her money to buy out Austria, which she used to conquer all the way to Italy and invade into Russia. Meanwhile another player (who initially owned France) took over Russia and rode it easily to second place despite the Austrian force from below. During this time France surged into Germany and 3 of the 4 players (myself included) bought heavily into France as it was doing well and was thought to score high. But since we were all heavily invested into France there was no incentive to do anything spectacular with them since the results would almost equally help our opponents as well. I briefly lost control of Britain at a critical time (by the player controlling Russia) which they instantly used to concede all of Scandinavia (which Britain and Germany had been fighting over) to the Russians in order to greatly increase Russian influence.

It's the complete fluidity of the game which I love. When is it right to tank a country? When is it right to invest in a new country? When should you enrich an opponent's controlled country in order to ride their coattails a little bit. So many decisions. The game plays in about 2 hours. It can seem very mean, and you need the right group, but the most important thing players need to be told when starting is that their starting country means very little. When I have run into trouble with other players with this game is when they think of a country as "theirs" and get upset with takeovers and scuttling their country rather than readjusting and changing their strategy. If everyone realizes you are just manipulating these countries then the game really becomes something special. Try it out if you haven't and know someone with a copy, I highly recommend it. It was out of print for some time, but was recently reprinted. Also available (and it is essentially the exact same game) is Imperial 2030 which is set in the future with a more global outlook.

My log of unplayed and owned games has become excessive. I think I need to implement a rule, no new games without playing that which I have. Current backlog is:

Roads and Boats
Indonesia
Fury of Dracula
Star Wars: Rebellion
Duck Dealer
Oraklos
The Pillars of the Earth

Too many big games just waiting, unplayed. Hopefully this next week a couple more will fall...

In the process of unloading games too, mostly trying to trade for a few things I've always wanted but can't find. Dumped about 5 games last week, hopefully a few more in the coming weeks. Some fresh blood into the collection is always nice.

[Smoove_B]

Played a game of Posthuman last night. I'm embarrassed to admit it's been sitting untouched since it was delivered to me a year and a half ago.

It was a slow, learning game but I like the general theme and variety of cards. It's a bit more Euro in presentation than I can tolerate, but once you understand the quirks of movement, it's fine. Combat is weird and the die rolling mechanic isn't like other games so that does take some adjustment. I think I need to play it a few more times to get the rules down and see how quickly it plays. The box suggests 30 minutes a person, but that seems off. Setup alone is a solid 10 minutes with all the bits and cards. Not sure I'd play this with more than three people (even though my KS version comes with materials to cover up to 6), but maybe once everyone knows the rules, it really does go faster. Randomness and replay value seems rather high, so that's a plus. Has elements of Robinson Crusoe and felt equally as punishing at times. So if you're a "Why do the cards/dice hate me?" gamer, this might fill a void.

[YellowKing]

Just got back from two rounds of XCOM.

This was the first time I've ever actually played it non-solo, so I was looking forward to finally getting it to the table. Unfortunately we only had three, but decided to give it a go anyway, with me as most experienced taking on two roles.

First game we went with Easy since everyone was just learning. We lucked out with a weak alien deck, and managed to just barely stay ahead of what the app was throwing at us. We blew through two missions early, which helped us accelerate the Final Mission. At the end, our Researcher had two techs that would auto-kill the last enemy of the Final Mission. Our squad leader rolled lights out on the first two mission tasks, which set us up for the automatic win at the end.

Second game we decided to stick with Easy since we had flubbed a couple of rules early on in the previous round. Even though we had rolled back and corrected them, we wanted to win it "clean." This time around we drew a much harder alien deck and found ourselves outgunned early. I couldn't keep up with global defense, and our squad leader had no soldiers to speak of. We were in big trouble.

We decided to take one round to go all in on research, in the hopes of guaranteeing some really good cards that might enable us to survive long enough to win. We poured all of our budget into research, and took some painful hits to panic level in return. However, we still managed to complete a couple of missions and survive.

Final round. The Final Mission was exposed, but there were UFOs everywhere. If we didn't globally defend properly, we would lose. If we didn't defend our base, we would lose. And if we didn't complete the final mission on this turn, we would most likely lose.

I poured every dime I had into global defense, and whatever was left over we poured into soldiers. I told our Researcher to take a back seat.

During Resolution I managed to again roll lights out, and even though we wound up with all continents in the red, we were still alive. Now it was our squad leader's turn. He had to kill two enemies in the base or we would lose, and he only had one soldier. Through some clever use of tech, we managed to up his chances as much as possible, and by some miracle he managed to pull it off. Much cheering and high fiving ensued.

Final mission. The first task was an auto success due to one of the Researcher's cards, and due to another one we were able to partially succeed the second. Squad Leader managed to knock out the second task.

One last roll. Threat level is at 4, he needs two successes, he's rolling three dice and the alien die. Doable, but the odds are against him. He rolls..........and SUCCESS. We snatch victory from the jaws of defeat once again.

Our group enjoyed the game, but most likely this will be a one and done for us. Though we have discussed just attempting it on Normal at least once next week, I think we all have other games we're more excited about playing. Still, I'm glad I finally got a couple of solid plays in. Next week is up in the air, as we'll either take another week to hit some one-shots in our collections, or just dive headfirst into Mansions of Madness.

[hepcat]

So, I guess I may be hanging on to Gloomhaven after all.

I played the second part of scenario 1 last night with the history professor we all know. He took the scoundrel and I went with the cragheart (I didn't want to head back to town to switch out characters as it was a work night and we both didn't have more than 3 or 4 hours to play).

We played on easy because it was his first time with the game. About two thirds of the way through, we were complaining it was too easy. Two turns later, the scoundrel was exhausted, the cragheart only had 3 cards left, and the boss was only at about half health. Thankfully I pulled a good card during an attack and we won by the skin of our teeth.

Being a fellow Mage Knight lover, he was enamored with the game after the first turn. We even headed back to town to sell/buy stuff and take on a city adventure.

Still lovin' this one, I gotta say. I can't stop playing it.

[TheMix]

Friend from Texas was up visiting for about a week.

We started "easy" with a Sentinels game to pass some time. And got stomped. So we ended up doing another Sentinels game. Won that one.

Moved on to Gloomhaven. I ran with the Spellweaver and he took the Cragheart. We beat the initial scenario. Though I don't recall the specifics. We did tackle it on Easy. He wasn't too happy initially. He got annoyed that every combo he tried with the Cragheart failed; often because I went first and did something to screw it up.

Along the way we "found" a random scenario (I think it was from the chest in the first scenario?)... an island off the coast with elementals. We decided to pop back to the city (and the subsequent city/road events), and then headed to the island. I made an effort to avoid looking at the subsequent rooms. So we didn't really know what we were in for. We ended up barely scraping through. He got exhausted in the last room (well, technically in the doorway). I was able to finish off the last elemental in the next turn or two. That scenario was on Normal. Unfortunately, I had to give up on my battle goal. So my Spellweaver is behind on perks. But I'm getting a lot more XP.

As he was starting to enjoy the Cragheart a bit more, we went ahead and tackled the second scenario. It got a little dicey. We managed to kill the boss before he popped the 3rd door. I made a last ditch push to get to the chest on my final turn before becoming exhausted. He took out the last elemental.

I've gotten over my initial aversion to putting stickers on the map. Now I kind of dig it. It definitely makes me feel invested. Like my actions matter. The world is unfolding. Kind of cool.

I still haven't torn up any cards though. I'm just putting them back in the box for the moment.

I do still need to create a storage tray for the little pieces to keep things more organized.

Finally, yesterday, he and I rolled through the first 2 missions for Mechs vs. Minions. Then we broke open the 3rd on for the first time. I even talked my wife into joining us (since it seemed like we'd have a better luck with 3 mechs). I failed to read far enough and didn't realize how bad things would get; so our strategy was bad. We went for the crystals right off the bat. Big mistake. We ended up calling it. We'll have to try again with different strategy.

Mostly successful gaming visit.

[hepcat]

F

I still haven't torn up any cards though. I'm just putting them back in the box for the moment.

I wouldn't. I'm just putting them in a plastic baggie. I had read somewhere that there might be some surprises later in the game that could be callbacks to these cards that were removed, and that Isaac never intended for the cards to be physically destroyed (despite the icon he uses), just removed from the game.

[coopasonic]

Tripping around looking for a LfW: Dear Boss release date (4Q '16 ... sure)

CSI has it in stock now.

[Chrisoc13]

Just got back from two rounds of XCOM...

Our group enjoyed the game, but most likely this will be a one and done for us. Though we have discussed just attempting it on Normal at least once next week, I think we all have other games we're more excited about playing. Still, I'm glad I finally got a couple of solid plays in. Next week is up in the air, as we'll either take another week to hit some one-shots in our collections, or just dive headfirst into Mansions of Madness.

Yeah it's a good game, but I'm at a similar position with it currently. I've played it 6 times now, all but 1 on normal, probably have won half of the times. It's really fun while I am playing it, but I have little desire to play it again very frequently. Sometimes it gets frustrating because despite your best planning the game is really playing you especially with bad dice rolls. That starts to irritate me a little bit. But it is a good game. Currently my debate is if I should try the expansion for it and then move on or just move on now. Either way it is partially on the trade block for me as of now.