OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Chrisoc13
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

I did two solo games of Roads & Boats. I am planning on playing it with my group this week but I wanted to make sure I had the rules down so I took a stab at a couple of the solo scenarios. I have to say I planned on only doing one game of it with the thought that it would be a relatively ho hum solo game, but it's a real puzzle and I had enough fun and it was short enough (an hour and a half or so) that I instantly set up another scenario and tried it again. It is a real brain burner, no way around it.

Roads & Boats is a splotter game, their original big hit. It's difficult to find currently but I was lucky enough to land a copy. The game is all about logistics and civ building with logistics as the primary function. The map is created by hexes of varios terrain (pastures, mountains, stone, forests, sea, deserts) and you start with several donkeys and geese, and some planks. From there you have to transport the goods around the map and build production buildings around the map to produce goods, then refine these goods, and finally refine them further into goods that score points (coins, stock, and Gold are the only goods that score). You can build factories to produce better transporters including rafts, steamboats, trucks, wagons, airplanes and trains. You also create roads for the transporters to move things around. The more advanced the transporters the farther they can travel and the more they can carry.

As all splotter games in my experience the game is simple to learn with limited rules, but incredibly hard to master. The rulebook is only 15 pages long, yet I found myself unsure how to even accomplish my goals.

The first scenario was called "Lord of the Ring". I started out pretty good I thought before long I was cutting wood, refining it into planks, quarrying stone, and I even built a mine and was preparing to build rafts to cross the see as quick as possible. I had to build a ring of roads around the map to tray and get goods moved around quicker (donkeys can more without roads, but only 1 space per turn while with roads they can move 2).

Image
My small civilization growing with a donkey down south preparing to produce a raft while two donkleys up north headup into the mountains to build a mine for gold production.

But then I didn't stay organized. Even though I had rafts built and could have easily focused on transporting goods via water I decided to also build a wagon factory to increase my land transport. The game was too short to be spread out. I should have upgraded my rafts instead to rowboats or even steam ships. I managed to build a paper mill and get some gold out of my mine for a final score of 90 points, but that is pretty lackluster since the high score reported by splotter is 360 points... yeah I wasn't even close.

Image
My final civilization. Not terribly impressive...

I loved the challenge though and set it up again with a new scenario, "River runs through it".

This time I quickly spent two turns to mate my donkeys from 3 to 5. Then I decided since this new map was so small I would focus on getting stock created for major points (each stock certificate is worth 120 points on their own) and just use my army of donkeys to deliver the goods. It takes some real work to get to stocks. You have to have paper, fuel, gold, and mint coins and then transport the coins and paper to the stock market. I managed to mint coins, and build the stock market and my donkeys were transporting the coins to the stock market and I needed one more turn to get the coins to the stock market and I just barely missed it. In the end I scored 160 points, so a big improvement and over my previous score and just barely short of another 40 points hitting 200. That just kept my short of the 260 suggested score and 300 high score. So not too shabby for a second game.

Image
The end product of my civilization, completely on the back of a donkey army this time. I called this one a success.

Overall I really enjoy this game. I think it is really going to have legs in my collection. Splotter keeps hitting the spot for me.
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baelthazar
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

If you bought a copy of the game 504, I think you could feasibly use their higher quality pieces to replace many of those pieces (and have a game that has 504 iterations). There are some similarities in 504 to this, although this fleshes out stuff that 504 had to leave vague for adaptability.
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OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

baelthazar wrote:If you bought a copy of the game 504, I think you could feasibly use their higher quality pieces to replace many of those pieces (and have a game that has 504 iterations). There are some similarities in 504 to this, although this fleshes out stuff that 504 had to leave vague for adaptability.
504 I looked into but it seemed... Interesting but not fleshed out well. A cool idea that doesn't seem to work as well. Roads & Boats is arguably a masterpiece from splotter that works beautifully.

The pieces aren't perfect but it actually works really well.

Edit- that sounded more negative than I intended. It's a good suggestion, but I'm really happy with the game as is.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

A couple of more new games to me this weekend so far, first up was Dominant Species. My friend has had it for a couple of years, and always mentions wanting to get it to the table. For some reason it kept getting pushed to the back-burner. The game is area control with worker placement actions to control the areas. It is asymmetrical, and has an interesting theme. I won't go into the details of the game rules etc, but it is very long, and the game is ruthless. It is ruthless from all angles. Other players actions almost always actively hurt you, and not just hurt but absolutely slam you, and the game itself is literally constantly beating you down. If that's your sort of thing... this game is right up your alley. But for me it was essentially 3 hours of constant beat down. I know it is highly rated, but overall I felt it was too long for what it actually offers. I am willing to give it another shot sometime, but it won't be on my acquire list.

Then to a game I have been looking to play for a very, very long time: Indonesia. This has long been out of print (as splotter games always seem to be) and was finally reprinted for a single current print run. My copy came a couple of weeks ago and I have been looking for the right chance to play it.

For a brief overview the game is very different than anything else I have played. You are setting up and running companies in Indonesia, and then shipping the goods to cities according to their demand. You can start Rice, spice, rubber, oil, TV dinner, and shipping companies. The goods have to ship via the shipping companies. It's relatively straightforward in principle, each plantation produces a good every year, and those goods have to ship if they can. When they get to the city they make a set amount of income for the owner from 20 rupiah for rice up to 40 for the oil. The trick is you have to pay shipping companies all along the way. If you own the shipping companies your shipping is free, if you don't you have to pay everyone else who owns the ships you are using. And you HAVE to deliver goods if possible, which means sometimes you end up losing money on your goods, especially with rice etc. Several times in our game my friend had to ship rice and ended up paying his wife 30 rupiah for shipping while he only made 20 so he had a 10 rupiah loss overall. It's interesting.

But that isn't the meat of the game, the meat of the game is mergers and acquisitions. Every year you can propose mergers based on your research level and then everyone who can buy the company gets to bid. You fancy someone else's oil company? Well propose a merger between your oil company and theirs and win the bid. You want a shipping company? Gain one in a merger. You don't even have to own the company to propose a merger. For instance my friend had 2 shipping companies. I proposed a merger between the two of them. She wasn't able to retain the company as my other friend had made a killing the turn before and had more money and picked up her shipping companies. Once mergers are completed you can acquire new companies by filling any company slots you have available (you start with 1 slot but can upgrade it to up to 5 companies).

Finally the last round of the game is shipping goods. You ship every good possible and calculate profits, what you owe to shipping companies, and then expand if possible. You can invest in your company at this point to expand as well. By the end of the game you have a map full of cities that are receiving piles of goods from plantations all around the board.

Image
The board our last round, large piles of goods moving everywhere.

If all of that sounds like a game that is basically Math: The Game.... it's because it is. The game has a certain genius to it, and it is incredibly balanced and well designed... but... it felt like 3 hours of doing math homework. Conversations are frequently happening such as:
Me: "Ok I'm putting this rubber company up for a merger with that rubber company. There are 7 plantations so the minimum bid is 210. I'm starting there. Now who wants to go next?"
Other player: "I'll bid 250"
Me: "You can't, you have to bid multiples of 7."
Friend: "Ok, I'll bid [checks calculator]......... 266"

And so on. Each merger taking 5-10 minutes, most of it being calculating math. Then once a price is agreed to...

Me: "Ok so... [so and so] owes 4/7 of the winning bid to Joe, so that comes to [enters into calculator again] 152 rupiah"

And then when you get to the operations phase...
"Ok I'm shipping these 2 TV dinners to these cities. That's 70 rupiah for me. But I used three shipping companies so that is 15 rupiah of that to Jane. Ok now the next TV dinner is shipping."

It doesn't seem like much, but when 1/2 of the game is in these math phases it starts feeling like a lot. Everyone had a calculator out the entire game. Now that doesn't mean it is a bad game, in fact the game is genius, but it means the game quite literally can feel like real work sometimes. I think my taxes were much easier to file sometimes than calculating the math in this game.

Yet that's the thing. The game was a huge amount of work. I was mentally tired after playing the game. I got sick and tired of the math turns. And yet... somehow... after all of that I can't help but think about this game a lot since last time playing it, and I want to play it again and soon. Last night after 3 hours I was ready to be done. Today I want to play it again. It's a genius game, it just isn't relaxing, and is very taxing. But I have never played anything quite like it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

I felt the same way about Imperial 2030. All of the different values and stocks mixed with the ownership of the units and the movement on the rondel - it was taxing. But after playing I was like - I can't wait to play again. Financial games are like that for me.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

baelthazar wrote:I felt the same way about Imperial 2030. All of the different values and stocks mixed with the ownership of the units and the movement on the rondel - it was taxing. But after playing I was like - I can't wait to play again. Financial games are like that for me.
I love imperial and imperial 2030. Great underappreciated games. But yeah I have a similar feeling after them.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Played a side scenario in Gloomhaven with Zarathud and Seppe Saturday night that Seppe and I unlocked earlier in the day. It was an absolute blast. Very imaginative. I don't want to ruin it for anyone else, but the scenarios in the campaign are well thought out and varied. It's like a boardgame version of The Elder Scrolls series in terms of open endedness and narrative.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Redfive »

hepcat wrote:Played a side scenario in Gloomhaven with Zarathud and Seppe Saturday night that Seppe and I unlocked earlier in the day. It was an absolute blast. Very imaginative. I don't want to ruin it for anyone else, but the scenarios in the campaign are well thought out and varied. It's like a boardgame version of The Elder Scrolls series in terms of open endedness and narrative.
Was visiting a friend in Plano this weekend and he pulled that out of the closet. I've never seen a board game with so much heft. What is it, 10-12 lbs?

Looked cool though.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by TheMix »

Redfive wrote:
hepcat wrote:Played a side scenario in Gloomhaven with Zarathud and Seppe Saturday night that Seppe and I unlocked earlier in the day. It was an absolute blast. Very imaginative. I don't want to ruin it for anyone else, but the scenarios in the campaign are well thought out and varied. It's like a boardgame version of The Elder Scrolls series in terms of open endedness and narrative.
Was visiting a friend in Plano this weekend and he pulled that out of the closet. I've never seen a board game with so much heft. What is it, 10-12 lbs?

Looked cool though.
9.2kg... I think. Somewhere around there. 18+ lbs. anyway.

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Redfive »

TheMix wrote:
Redfive wrote:
hepcat wrote:Played a side scenario in Gloomhaven with Zarathud and Seppe Saturday night that Seppe and I unlocked earlier in the day. It was an absolute blast. Very imaginative. I don't want to ruin it for anyone else, but the scenarios in the campaign are well thought out and varied. It's like a boardgame version of The Elder Scrolls series in terms of open endedness and narrative.
Was visiting a friend in Plano this weekend and he pulled that out of the closet. I've never seen a board game with so much heft. What is it, 10-12 lbs?

Looked cool though.
9.2kg... I think. Somewhere around there. 18+ lbs. anyway.
Ha, my first guess was 20lbs but I figured I'd be telling a fish story. Guess I was close after all.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by TheMix »

I remember it because I laughed watching an unboxing video. The author made a comment about how heavy the box is, while the side of the box, with the weight, was showing to the camera. I also laughed when he commented on how thick the instructions were. He went on to state "it's not like you have to read 50 pages... let's see how many pages there are... 51...." :D

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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To be fair, no one has to read the back cover or copyright page.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by TheMix »

True.

One odd thing I noticed, the cover of the scenario book is page 1. Why not just start the inside on page one?

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Tomorrow is my birthday, and today is the one day a week that my local FLGS stays open late enough for me to stop by after work. I definitely don't need another board game, but...
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

Played my first co-op game of Warfighter last night. Went pretty well until I added a "Kill Zone" location and had to spawn 11 points worth of enemies. When you have jungle Cartel rocket soldiers screened by thugs = pain. I'd played a much shorter solo mission before this one and it was quite different because the loadout points were more than double. The rules are actually really easy to understand. The game is in coming up with a load out for a team of soldiers to try and tackle a mission. It is luck based with die rolling, but quite a bit of fun. Once you start adding in all the expansion decks the options are overwhelming. Tons of replay value though, which is nice.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hentzau »

Played our third, no, fourth game of Gloomhaven last night. Fun scenario. When I set it up, I thought for sure that is was going to be impossible, but we actually did pretty well against it, managed to defeat the scenario without anyone going exhausted and get the treasure at the end to boot.

I spent about 15 minutes looking at my Spellweaver and the different card options with the X cards, and really couldn't decide which of the base cards to dump in favor of those cards. Made my head hurt. This is a very thinky game.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I swapped some of mine out, but then ended up missing my base skills. The problem with the X skills was that they were either too situation dependent, or they got used up - so I hoarded them more. A few times I was wishing I had a nice simple damage spell.

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Just got back from two games (and our final hurrah) with XCOM.

Again we played on Easy, since with the three of us we found that pretty well balanced for our skill level.

First game we got way behind on our UFO defense, and combined with an inability to get through missions, just ended up worn down through attrition. We made the mistake of pouring money into research right out of the gate. Though we wound up with great assets, they were negated by our weak air power and military. Out of the three ways to lose (base destroyed, HQ panicked, or two continents panicked), we were pretty much one turn away from losing with all three. Base destroyed wound up biting us due to a freaking crisis card.

Second game we re-evaluated our strategy, and focused on Interceptors from the get-go. This helped immensely, and we found ourselves flush with money every round as we kept the board clear of threats. Some lucky rolls also helped us win a mission early, so we stayed in good shape through most of the game. Unfortunately our air force was wiped out in one fell swoop by a particularly nasty wave of UFOs towards the end, but by this point we were concentrating on the final mission. Our diligence in the early game allowed us to soak up the enormous amount of panic that occurred due to our lack of air support, and we triumphed with the help of some solid researched techs. It was a great team effort, and a nice way to go out.

Because we have such a backlog, we're moving on to something different next week. I believe the group has decided instead of leaping into MANSIONS OF MADNESS which will probably consume several weeks, we're going to have another "one off" night and hit PANDEMIC: REIGN OF CTHULHU and possibly ROLL PLAYER. We set up 2017 to be a year where we tried to tear through our backlog, and so far we've stuck to it. The only new game we're definitely dropping everything to play when it arrives is FIRST MARTIANS: ADVENTURES ON THE RED PLANET, which Terry has on pre-order. We'll be hitting that one in campaign mode.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Just a heads up, a reprint of Gloomhaven has been announced. It will be embedded in the developer's next kickstarter (although you can just buy Gloomhaven without having to back the other game). They will include an updated rules manual and scenario book, as well as new health/xp tracker dials to replace the rather crappy version that ships with the original game. Turnaround is supposed to be very quick, with shipping happening by Gencon of this year.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

Gloomhaven does look interesting. It's not really the style of grabbing in looking for at this time but I can't deny it has draw. I'll keep a close eye on that Kickstarter.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by AWS260 »

New Bedford was popular with the whole family over the weekend. It's essentially a worker-placement game in which you have to balance actions between resource-gathering, infrastructure-building, and launching whaling boats. Pretty much Moby Dick, but with more trips to the marketplace and fewer graphic descriptions of flensing.

Overall, it's light, fast, and just thoughtful enough, with a distinctive historical theme. I'd strongly recommend it for families (less so for hardcore board gamers). Also, the box is pretty small, which is a plus in my apartment.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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My game group is jointly chipping in for the Gloomhaven second run. Looking forward to it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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got together with bb2112, redrun, and LordMortis to play multiple games of Splendor, which was marvelous. Followed by a few games of Evolution, and finished off with a game of Kingsburg.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I have to say I really dug Splendor and hope it finds it way around more often. I know lots of people don't care for it but I really dig dynamic.

If it weren't for bb2112, I think evolution would have been a let down but watching his evolving relationship to the watering hole absolutely made my whole day.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chaosraven »

YOU LIED TO ME RAVEN
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Sister, wife, and I played Puerto Rico. My sister walked away with the win after being left to corner the coffee market, diversify to a full factory reward, and earn her way to victory.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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LordMortis wrote:I have to say I really dug Splendor and hope it finds it way around more often. I know lots of people don't care for it but I really dig dynamic.

If it weren't for bb2112, I think evolution would have been a let down but watching his evolving relationship to the watering hole absolutely made my whole day.
I think Splendor is a great quick little game. It's not that I don't care for it, it's just that after a few plays I found the choices less interesting, but I still enjoyed playing it every time I did. I traded it recently for Pillars of the Earth but I actually think the game is quite good and if the new expansion adds some more interesting choices again I am looking forward to trying it. Also I love the poker chips.
Isgrimnur wrote:Sister, wife, and I played Puerto Rico. My sister walked away with the win after being left to corner the coffee market, diversify to a full factory reward, and earn her way to victory.
I love Puerto Rico. I cannot get enough of that game. It's one of the few games that every time I hear it's name I think "yeah... I could play that now." Now if only I could get my hands on a copy of the anniversary edition for a reasonable price.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

We played PANDEMIC: REIGN OF CTHULHU last night. First time for our group.

The guy who bought it only bought it because he has every other edition/expansion of PANDEMIC, and wanted to complete his collection. We broke it out really just to say we played it, and I don't think any of us (including me - a huge Lovecraft fan) thought it would be much more than vanilla PANDEMIC with a Cthulhu re-skin.

We all ended up being very pleasantly surprised, and after four rounds I think we would have still kept going had it not been so late. We started on Easy and lost our first game due to running out of cultists. We got behind the ball and could never recover. Second round we won fairly easily thanks to our Hunter who kept our cultist stock plenty full.

Third game we played on Normal and lost almost right out of the gate due to some unforeseen "outbreaks" (Awakening Rituals). We weren't even half an hour in and had to surrender. Final game of the evening we held our own, getting two gates closed and close to a third before we all went insane.

The thing I liked about it was the same thing that may turn some people off - it's a VERY volatile game. Depending on what Old Ones you happen to draw, the game can be more or less fair or punishingly cruel. You can skate along fine for half of the game, only to have everything go to hell in a single turn. While that may seem frustrating to some, our group really enjoyed the challenge and uncertainty.

I never would have believed it going in, but I actually think this may be one I wind up picking up for myself just to have. It's just different enough to stand on its own.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

hentzau wrote:
hepcat wrote: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.
SHIPPED20 code will get you free shipping. I just put in my order for the cards and the mat.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hentzau »

hepcat wrote:
hentzau wrote:
hepcat wrote: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.
SHIPPED20 code will get you free shipping. I just put in my order for the cards and the mat.
Well, the creator just announced that he had to pull all of the files because he's working on a publishing deal for the game.

So, nice timing on your part...or maybe bad, because if he does get it published, it will probably be cheaper.
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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Well...crap.

I wonder who can afford the licensing fee? I'm guessing Wizkids since they already have one with Paramount for Star Trek.
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Chrisoc13
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chrisoc13 »

Ugh wiz kids. It bums me out that they have star trek. I wish fantasy flight had it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

I did love Fleet Captains, ST: Attack Wing and Frontiers. But I wish they'd take more risks like Fleet Captains, instead of just retheming other game mechanics like they did with Attack Wing and Frontiers.

Although reusing game mechanics with different branding for any game maker seems much more popular these days than in previous years, it seems to me.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Isgrimnur »

It's the Monopoly syndrome. How much money have they made off of turning that game into a branded 'gift' item?
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

I did think Terms of Endearment Monopoly was an odd theme choice...
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Isgrimnur »

Better than the Sophie's Choice and Brian's Song versions.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hentzau »

Some guy just did a custom build of the game. I want his board.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Leslie Nielsen was never a Starfleet Captain, was he?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat wrote:Leslie Nielsen was never a Starfleet Captain, was he?
If not, he should have been...
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Another three rounds of PANDEMIC:REIGN OF CTHULHU last night, all on standard.

First round was typical - started out kicking ass, got two gates closed, then made a major mistake. Forgot about a Shoggoth, he hit a gate, and the ensuing Old One awakening (which led to yet another awakening) did us in.

Second game we got screwed right out of the gate, but managed to pull things together. Got three gates closed before running out of player cards and losing that way. Just couldn't get the last set together in time, particularly since Yig was out and forced the last gate to require 6 cards to close.

Third game was epic. We had characters go insane and come back from insanity, crazy "just in the nick of time" relic pulls, etc. We wound up winning with just two turns left thanks to some timely relic usage. Used a lot of lessons learned from the first two games to pull out the victory.

Next week we'll start diving into MANSIONS OF MADNESS, which I'm really looking forward to. I'm waaaay behind in getting the minis painted, but we're just going to press forward.
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