Boardgames

[Hot Heart]

Okay. Time for a huge-ish update after my absence. Played a few new games since then, all of them good. Well, except for Rialto, where the only interesting thing was making jokes about 'doge track' (much points! very win!).

 

Firefly: The Game - Pirates & Bounty Hunters

 

Adds direct PvP to the game but without diluting anything else or drastically altering the feel. Now you can hunt bounties, steal them from other people or just attack them to steal their goods, parts or fuel (or earn and steal a goal token for one of the new story cards). We got a few rules wrong thanks to poor wording and me trying to wrangle a five-player game while getting drinks, snacks and answering all the rules queries and running the game's bank... but it was still heaps of fun and a very close game. I managed to triumph by letting others fight it out over bounties and such, focusing on my straight arrow Monty doing some regular old crime (even got an awesome setup where I did a Badger job that attacked Niska's operation, got away clean and then dealt with Niska to take a job attacking Badger's operation...and got away clean).

 

Now we've all had a go with it (and it was the 'quickest' playing game yet) things should be even tighter. It becomes especially tense when someone's got Jubal Early's Interceptor, with a strong, scary crew, and can reach you halfway across the board.

 

Caverna

 

Going in, I didn't know much about this, or its predecessor Agricola, and boy, did it look confusing. There are thousands of pieces. There is a whole forest of wood in there. When Ron Jeremy dies, his coffin still won't contain as much wood as this thing. *ahem* Anyway...

 

Really enjoyable game once you get to grips with it. In general terms, it's a sort of 'lazy Sunday' game, like Firefly, where you're going to want to devote a whole afternoon or whatever, doing your thing. And in the same way Firefly is fairly sandbox-y and it can be fun just flying around, doing whatever, this allows you to do so many little things. It takes a long time to play, but it's a leisurely game of collecting bits and hoarding them and cackling, "Mine. All mine!"

 

The premise is that you have your little family of dwarves and you have a field and a cave. You can then branch out into different things, achieved by using a dwarf to perform one of the available actions (more unlock as you go). The actual playing itself is simple, you place a dwarf on an available action and you do the thing. It can be gathering resources of a certain kind, getting to build a thing or plant seeds or going on a cave expedition (basically pay coal to level up dwarves to find goodies, and they gain experience after each one). From there, it's up to you how you want to play.

 

I kept my family of dwarves down to 3 rather than 4+, but I felt that was optimal since, sure, you get fewer available actions but it means fewer mouths to feed (which starts happening pretty much every round from the halfway point). Within that, I did a little bit of cave exploring and keeping animals in the fields, almost completely ignored vegetable growing (mainly due to early confusion) making sure I had rubies to buy anything I really needed (usually more food) and put a lot of money into building rooms that worked on multipliers. Another player really focused on the cave side of things, while others tried to do everything, though more with animals and vegetables and bigger families.

 

Anyway, during our first play, we got to the totalling up and you go through all your stuff (numbers of this, subtract any missing animal types or unfilled spaces, etc.) and I actually did pretty well. Finished 1 point below the guy who'd owned Agricola.

 

...but then I discovered I'd missed off my two dogs during the animal counting stage. WINNER! Totally annoyed the guy who thought he'd won... until I made the original "Much doge. Very win" comment.

 

Bang! the Bullet

 

This is the version that comes with a load of decent expansions...and a shiny sheriff star!

 

A hidden roles card game that recreates a hectic, spaghetti western-style shootout (it's by an Italian game designer and even features the Italian translations "Birra!"). Everyone knows who the sheriff is, but no one quite knows who his deputy is, who the two outlaws are and if there's a renegade trying to be the last man standing. It scales based on number of players, but victory conditions are the same. Sheriff and Deputy need to kill the Outlaws, Outlaws need to kill the Sheriff, Renegade needs to be the last man standing (i.e. get rid of the deputy and outlaws, saving the sheriff for last).

 

Gameplay is mostly about laying down weapons that let you shoot a certain distance around the table (you start with only range 1, as in, the people either side of you) then using Bang! cards to fire at others (making sure to declare that you are 'banging' them, of course) and whittle down their health, unless they play a 'Miss!' card to prevent that. In addition to that though, each player will have a unique character with some sort of special ability (one can use Bang! and Miss! cards interchangably, one is allowed to fire multiple Bangs! a turn, etc.) and there are other cards with different gameplay elements (Prison, Dynamite, Beer, Horses) such as increasing the range for others targeting you, restoring health, trying to blow them up.

 

It's a fun game and can get pretty tense at times. Howeever, there are a few huge drawbacks. One is that there is player elimination, and sometimes it'll just be because another player wanted to 'thin out the numbers'. Mostly it's a foolish move with an Outlaw killing another Outlaw, but that's still no fun, and with usual health of about 4-5 (with lower health also reducing your hand limit) it's not uncommon to get no more than one turn in a game before you're killed off. And it doesn't play as quickly as you'd hope. There can be a lot of back and forth and there was one game where the sheriff hadn't figured out who his deputy was so was playing it so cautious that it dragged for the two of us no longer playing. However, the best moment was fooling the Sheriff into shooting his own Deputy and enabling the Renegade to win the game.

 

Fortunately, the designer seems to have come up with Bang! 2.0 in the form of...

 

Samurai Sword

 

It's the same premise, except with Shogun and his Samurai, Ninja and a Ronin, but with various tweaks that should make it a lot more enjoyable. For starters, there's no player elimination. Instead, players have honour points that get passed if they're killed (sometimes, it can be smarter to kill a vulnerable teammate to keep the points in your team... if you're sure they trust you). A game ends usually when one person is left without any honour points (there is an outright, everyone else is 'dead' condition, but that can be harder to achieve). Additionally, to wind the game down quicker, if the main deck needs to be reshuffled (usually happens once per game) everyone loses an honour point back to the game box.

 

And, interestingly, the score calculations vary based on the number of players. In some games the Samurai's points are worth double, in another there will be a higher grade Ninja among that team who doubles their points, and since the Ronin works alone, they'll usually double or triple theirs.

 

Overall, I think it fixes the main issues and brings in a lot of other useful little tweaks (that I won't go into) that allow for deeper strategy and more misdirection. I think maybe I replaced my own initial purchase with another one...

 

 

I've also played that Ultimate Werewolf game, but Dean covered it, plus I wish I'd known there was a Tanner and Minion character. Probably would've been really useful to have those in the four-player games we played. It was fun, but kinda sucked that I was a werewolf for 3/4 games. Though actually won 2 of them. Both wins were thanks to having a teammate help with misdirection ("Oh, well I swapped those two cards...") and the loss was because I was a lone werewolf, looked at the village cards and found the other werewolf and a villager. BIG HELP THERE!

 

Aaaaand, I think I'll cover Android: Infiltration another time. Phew!

Edited June 10, 2014 by Hot Heart

[Hot Heart]

Okay, more! Gonna hotlink some pics temporarily until I can get back on my PC.

 

First, a couple of other games I forgot to mention

 

Cockroach Poker

 

 

Little filler game where you are trying to get your cards played in front of other people so they get a set of 4. The card sets are animals like bats, rats, frogs, spiders, stinkbugs and, yes, cockroaches. The artwork is really nice, with each card featuring a unique picture, even within the same set (they're all colour-coded for easy recognition). Gameplay is simply a matter of playing a card from your hand face-down in front of a player of your choosing and saying which creature it is. You can choose to be honest or you can lie. The other player then has a few options. They can try and guess correctly whether you told the truth or a lie (obviously you should defiantly yell, "You're lying!" for maximum effect if you think they're bluffing), with a correct guess meaning the card stays down in front of you instead, or they can take the card themselves, look at it, and do the same routine with any other player.

 

It's a fun, simple game though it can become easy to pounce on someone who's started to get more than 2 of any set, since you can say it's one instead of the other and then other players can latch onto that. Still, it goes by quickly and setup is a doddle so you can get in a few games. I think the most interesting move was when I 'colluded' with another player to honestly pass them a card to harm another player, knowing that they'd seize the opportunity to fool them by switching it over. Other than that, I don't think there's much depth beyond trying to figure out how many of a certain type of card remain.

 

Tanto Cuore

 

 

This is Dominion but with an anime theme and some slightly more interesting mechanics. The actual theme is something to do with being a housemaster and having maids, but it's the same deck-building style game. Instead of money you have 'love' and there is a mechanic with a pointing finger (or as we called it 'fingering'... after having played Bang! where we were 'banging' people) that allows you to bank your maids for extra victory points. Within that, there are opportunities to purchase permanent buffs or place bad things on other players and you can collect sets of maids for bonus points.

 

Not a fan of the theme at all, but then it's pretty much null in Dominion anyway and while the mechanics were more interesting, it was a little confusing for me during that first play. Needless to say I lost. Badly.

 

Android: Infiltration

 

 

This is one I bought because I wanted something that supports 5 players but with a little bit more depth than the party-style games and without being some epic day-consumer like Firefly. This fills that niche perfectly.

 

It's set in the Android universe, so it's all cyberpunk. You take on the role of a special operative hired by a mysterious Mr. White to break into a rival cybernetics corporation and steal their valuable data or even make off with one of their cyborg prototypes. However, this isn't some fancy, high-tech style heist (sorry, Ethan). No, this is a clusterfuck of a smash-and-grab robbery where even though you're a team, you'll be messing up each other's moves and competing for those data-files.

 

Firstly, you get your characters. Each has a little bit of flavour text relating to their reason for taking on the job, and if you really want you can use the 'advanced rules' to deal them items appropriate to their characters (robot-smashing hammer for the guy who lost his job to a cyborg, gun for the assassin). For our first game, we simply dealt everything randomly, so everyone was 'equal'.

 

Then you 'build' the facility by randomly-dealing out 'room cards' face-down, which represent the various areas within the building, with a selection of 6 first floor (ground floor) rooms and 6 second floor rooms (first floor, duh!) cards as well as 1 of the 3 available secret rooms (requires a secret entrance to be revealed on one of the regular cards so may be inaccessible or left undiscovered).

 

Each room is unknown until a player enters and reveals it, and they will carry different amounts of data-file tokens, some locked behind lab workers or tech locks. Sometimes, there will be 'Interface' functions that trigger certain effects, and sometimes they will introduce NPCs who can really ruin your day.

 

For turn-to-turn gameplay, players each have a hand of reusable, basic actions: Advance (move forward 1 room), Retreat (move backward 1 room), Extract/Download (gather data files reliant on the number of people doing the same in that room) and Interface (activate the room's Interface function if one exists), as well as 4 unique items that offer special abilities. Some combine basic actions but with a thematic twist like a jump pack that lets you shoot forward 2 rooms, but can also be guns for killing NPCs/labworkers or breaking tech locks. Most are one-use, but occasional ones are reusable like the regular actions (it will say on the card).

 

Each turn, players will choose one of their cards to play face-down and then they're all revealed simultaneously before being resolved in turn order (with the starting player changing each round). Extract/Download is always resolved last, so there is a potential for other player's actions to screw them over. Either way, it's really cool since you're having to guess what your opponent will do. If there are 4 data-files with multiple players in the room, two Extraction plays will net those players 2 each, three players doing so will only get 1 each, and only one player doing so will gather 4 to themselves. And since the upper rooms are filled with more goodies, it might be wiser to push on ahead.

 

The other thing to note with the data-file tokens is that they are randomly selected from the 'server pool' and can carry values from 1-3 (with 1 being more common and 3 the rarest) so there's no guarantee that you'll always be well-rewarded (you can look at your tokens but they are not revealed to other players).

 

The reason for these mechanics is that this is a push-your-luck game. If you look at the bottom-right of the image I've used, you'll see the proximity counter. After each round, the starting player will roll the die and add that amount to the proximity counter. In addition to that, there is an alarm dial (the little one in the middle) that will modify each roll. When the proximity counter reaches 99, that's it, the corporation's mercs have arrived to lockdown the facility. Game over, man. GAME OVER!

 

And it's never easy to calculate how much time you have, because as you delve farther into the facility, certain rooms will have 'Reveal' or 'Enter' conditions that increase the alarm dial or proximity counter or players might carry items that can adjust it. Other times, allowing an NPC to proceed to a certain point can cause a sudden jump for the proximity counter. It's up to you to assess how far into the facility you can infiltrate while still allowing you to get out with your data tokens.

 

The components are nice (tiny item cards though!) and the artwork is lovely (even on tiny item cards!), it's simple to setup, teach and play, all wrapped in a cool, chaotic little theme. Our first game with four was a lot of fun.

 

One player charged ahead, discovering a room early on that lets you discard an item to travel forward or backward three rooms (some Mobility Testing Lab that I assume slingshots you). It was handy also because if you were escaping, it was in just the right place to shoot you straight out of the building if you could get back to that room in time. Anyway, he was filled with confidence, ignoring the early data-files and racing ahead of everyone, grabbing loads to himself from later rooms and even discovering a secret prototype lab. Problem is, by the time he'd got so far, the proximity counter had been rising exponentially thanks to him setting alarms blaring. One player had decided to try and get out early while I and another player realised it would probably be close and luck-dependent for us.

 

The boldest player is doing all he can to lower the alarm dial via some gained items and hoping he can discover the secret exit (there is one, just requires sacrificing randomly selected data-files) on the final second floor room card. Meanwhile, I help us by lowering the proximity counter with an Interface function. Unfortunately, the room he wanted isn't there and some high die rolls convince this guy that there is not a chance he's getting out in time.

 

So, there we are, one guy's escaped, and another player and I are still running for our lives, knowing that if we can just get back to that Mobility Testing Lab, we'll be home free. It's looking like I have the advantage with the amount of tokens, but you can never tell. Come on...

 

Then, the proximity counter is at 89, we're so close, and the player who is guaranteed to lose uses the final room's Interface function to draw 2 new items. On his next turn, he uses 'Call For Backup' which gives him the ability to raise or lower the proximity counter by 10.

 

...so he raises it to 99 and dooms us three. Son of a...!

 

So the guy with a score of 16 wins as the only escaping player. We check everyone else's for the 'what could have been' outcomes. The other unlucky player had 18, and I had 22. The evil bastard had around 26-28.

 

Either way, it was great fun and I really look forward to trying it with five players. I think I will set the alarm dial to start at -1 instead of 0, to give us probably a couple more rounds and stick with Extract over Download (both do the same, but Extract gives 4/2/1 and Download 2/1/1 with multiple players simultaneously)

[Hot Heart]

Played a couple of new games yesterday.

 

Get Bit!

 

Another filler game where you are robots being chased by a shark, and it takes a bite out of whoever is at the back of the line. Each round you'll choose one of your numbered cards to play face-down the same time as everyone else -- in a five player game you'll have 1-6 -- that will govern where you move in the queue of death. Any ties get ignored and then movement proceeds from low numbers to high. So a 1 would go to the front, then a 2 would go to the front, etc. So it could be possible that there are no ties but the person who played the lowest number still winds up at the back.

 

After a card is played it cannot be collected until either you get down to your last card or you get bitten (at which point you also jump up to the front of the line), which obviously means you can try and assess the chance of a certain number resulting in a tie or get an idea of what others might play.

 

I enjoyed it, even though I was the second person out. Didn't help that I actually got a bitten because of a rule mess-up (whereby I was left with just one card after being SO GOOD beforehand and we weren't aware I should have gotten the other cards back) but it did affect someone else as well, so the cock-up stayed consistent.

 

Flash Point: Fire Rescue

 

 

You are a firefighter, there is a building on fire and you have to GET THOSE PEOPLE OUTTA THERE.

 

This is a co-op game (if you hadn't guessed) for 1-6 players, tasking you as a team to rescue at least 7/10 people (including cats and dogs!) from a burning building. I say 7/10 because getting to 7 is the auto-win and losing any more than 3 is a loss.

 

I missed the setup phase, so I'm not sure if it is done by the dice rolls (if you look at the picture you'll see the black triangles for the d8 and the standard d6 as your longitude and latitude) but those do govern the other elements like new fires and 'points of interest' (not revealed until you reach them, could be a false alarm).

 

In many ways it is similar to Pandemic, except I think it is far better in that it is way more thematic and way more engaging. You get 4 action points on your turn but can also save any spares for your next go (up to 4 max) and after each turn you roll those dice to see where new fires start (or new POIs if you rescued one) which can lead to further ignitions or even explosions (like outbreaks in Pandemic!). All the actions and their AP costs feel logical, and as a team there will always be something useful you can do. Whether you're carrying someone to safety, keeping a fire in check or hacking down a wall, it's quick and simple to take your turn.

 

That said, we did learn the game using the 'Family rules' rather than the Experienced ones, so things were a little easier and we were probably a little more able to take risks and not really have to coordinate as a team. I think the difficulty is somewhat modifiable too, and there are a bunch of extra elements (fire engines with hoses and ambulances, oh my!) to try, so I'm looking forward to trying those.

 

Either way, I really enjoyed it; especially some of the funny emergent situations you encounter. Placing someone down in a spot then immediately burning them with your next dice roll (while I get to stand there helpless and watch!), having two POIs starting on the building's two toilets but not knowing if it's a false alarm ("Excuse me, are you pooping in there?") or taking advantage of saved points so that one player takes a POI off you to get them one space farther so you can catch up, take them back and carry them to safety ("To me. To you").

 

So, yeah, highly recommended if you like Pandemic; replaces it, in my eyes.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I was going to argue that Flash Point does not replace Pandemic, but now that I think about it, I have traded both my copies of Pandemic since I got Flash Point so... maybe it does in practice.

 

---

 

Played Uncharted the Board Game (really a card game that has a playmat type board for the cards). I got it in a math trade. 

 

The solo mode is ridiculously hard, but the multiplayer seems like it has potential as you juggle going for treasures versus fighting enemies and try to eke out the most points by game's end.

 

[deanb]

So I come bearing many games. Also I've made an album to begin storing my images and links to my mini-reviews in: http://imgur.com/a/y50vJ#0

This includes some bonus secondary images for games below!

 

 

 

Red November

So you're a bunch of gnomes on a submarine that's having all sorts of trouble, you have around 50 minutes to survive before help arrives. As a rough idea of how the game plays, there was a pretty solid musing of "hmm, I wonder if you could turn FTL into a board game". This is pretty close. You've got reactor malfunctions, flooded rooms and infernos. Oh and a healthy amount of grog (though the grog room became "fire room 2" for most of the game. Fire Room 1 being the airlock so we didn't bother too much with that.

Each turn you take an action, assigning/betting up to 10 minutes against that action. You roll lower than that and you can do that action, these including repairing parts of the ship, unsticking doors, putting out fires, etc. You can gain items that help with your actions, allowing you to take less time. Once turn is complete you move around the board, and draw the appropriate amount of event cards, usually meaning in the time you unstuck a door the missiles engages. In our case we eventually died due to a reactor meltdown that I couldn't reach in time. Though one of the guys used his Aqualung to flee the ship, and the game, completely (to go read the GOT:TCG rules). We therefore won.

 

 

 

 

Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre

In case the name didn't given this away it's a rather silly game. You are wizards, doing battle, at My Skullzfyre. You have a hand of cards, you build up epic spells with a combination of source, quality, and delivery, which builds up and eventually kills most of your combatants. There's different types of spell which can give you a bonus to combine a spell of all type (allows more dice in your roll, so higher chance of the higher scoring attacks), but might impede the strategy you're aiming for. If you have less cards you go first, in a complete set the "delivery" has an initiative, so you can sometimes go first or last, and there's many mixed advantages to both set ups. As I found with going last and having my Source being "anyone who has already played gets three damage". Boom, two dead people.

You play several rounds until you've been the victor twice, death meaning nothing to wizards (when you die you get death cards, which offer bonuses for next round. Well unless you draw one saying you're actually dead. Tough luck).

 

All in all rather fun, though can get slightly math heavy and can take a while if you've the full set of players (we had 6, can theoretically do 8).

 

 

Games of Thrones: The Card Game

As alluded to above we've a new game in the family. Housemate picked up GOT:TCG other day. Intended to play it Saturday but ran out of time, played it Sunday instead. Hence change of lighting in the photos.

We played 4 players, the recommended amount, I was Lannisters. I lost pretty bad, Baratheon won. Aim is to be the first to 15 power tokens, you can earn power through card effects and challenges. In my case eyeball challenges (I don't know the actual name, but I imagine "intrigue" or something like that since my deck was full of them) got me Power tokens. You play plot cards that apply to that round (in my case first round was a blockade which stopped anyone getting money the first round ), then through 7 stages which involve playing characters and locations, doing actions with those characters (usually "kneeling/tapping" them in the process), and trying to take each other out.

This card is what ended the game for me. In the same round I played my final plot card which protected characters with a ring symbol (usually the bug guys, Robert Barathenon, Eddard Stark and Danerys all in play on other teams), I had none like that. So ended up with only Tyrion and he had no military might, meaning I was weak prey for the Starks. Thankfully I could redirect attackers to other people but only protected me for so long.

It's probably one of the more complex games I've played in a while. Also one of the more spacious. Erin opened the box at Saturday gamers and one of the guys looks at the inlay and goes "Is that from Fantasy Flight by any chance?". Huge box, inside is four decks,rule book and plastic statues. I think it may be a while before I crack at it again, I imagine it'd go much faster. Also I think it's one where getting a good look through deck beforehand is a good idea.

 

 

 

Corporate America

This was given to a friend at Saturday Gamers and since he crashed at ours and didn't want to take it home we're kind of long-term borrowing it for a while. It was a game that none of us knew anything about going in, which is quite a rarity. I think it was mentioned it's a Kickstarter game.

Essentially you play powerful businessmen, acquiring stocks in companies and earning more money through consumer choices, and eventually battling for presidency allowing to pass laws favourable to yourself. I was never president and I won. Lewis was president twice, lost horrible due to him self funding his presidential campaign. Silly boy. We actually found it quite fun, I imagine that there would be a kick out of it in US too. Certainly a game we'll be playing again. It's relatively quick too, as you can see there's only like 5 phases to the game, the longest being wall street and main street, and once executive privilege is used up that's the end of the game (so 6 rounds in total)

 

 

I've a horrible feeling there was something else. We played Saboteur with like proper rules in place this time, very fun. Also I got in a game of 8 minute empire with the guy who convinced me to buy it.

[TheMightyEthan]

FTL: The Boardgame is now a thing that I want...

[Hot Heart]

FTL: The Boardgame is now a thing that I want...

 

That would be pretty cool, but incredibly complex. Space Alert is a lot of fun in that respect. Otherwise, the next closest might be Space Cadets.

 

In other news, I did get to play A Study In Emerald the other day and it was good fun. Tense at times because you really need to know who's on your team, lest you end the game with a 'teammate' in last place. Only slight issue was one player misunderstanding how that worked, so he was in last place when he decided to assassinate another player's main agent, who turned out to be a Restorationist (automatically ending the game).

 

Funnily enough, he killed the guy who was in first place and since there were no other score multipliers or things affecting it, that guy won.

 

Now, with a few more games this shouldn't happen. Partly because the guy learned his lesson, plus shouldn't have been doing something so risky when in last place anyway. In fact, because he was the only Loyalist, he only needed to beat one other player (Restorationist in last place, all others get eliminated, automatic victory for Loyalist). Additionally, the guy who got assassinated wasn't recruiting more agents as 'buffers' (can't target someone's main agent if they have other agents) and if the Loyalist player hadn't been so foolish, a bunch of us would've stolen back his point-giving cities and put him in last.

 

...which really would've helped the Loyalist. Whoops.

 

Anyway, I still enjoyed it and look forward to discovering the further depth to it, and the various strategies thrown out by the cards. It was cool seeing someone steal a Double Agent after faking a bid for it... or one player acting coy about holding a Double Agent token for a powerful agent (allows you to look at someone else's identity) that only he wasn't bidding for, after I'd blocked it a few times and then someone completely shutdown the city so no one got it. At one point I was considering stealing an agent with a token I had for them but realised the guy was on my team and a better moment might present itself.

 

Plus, next time, we'll have the full five players.

[Hot Heart]

Oh, I totally forgot to mentioned I played a two-player game of Seasons, too.

 

 

I remember seeing it and being tempted, but passing because it's only up to four players.

 

The premise is that you are duelling wizards showing off magic spells and things in a tournament throughout the year (hence, 'seasons') so you'll have your hand of 9 basic cards and then you have to decide to store 3 each for two later years as the season track goes round. In each season, you'll roll the appropriate dice (one for every player, plus an extra) and that will govern certain things you can do and resources you'll receive, some will be more plentiful at certain times of the year, while more scarce ones can net you more crystals (VPs) if you 'transmute' them. Each player will pick one in order, with the remainder advancing the season track that many dots).

 

So you'll be figuring out the best timings for your cards, making sure you can get them all played, balancing which resources you'll need or when best to transmute them for more crystals, etc.

 

I played with a very basic setup, and it was still a lot of fun. There's an element of getting your long-term earning cards out first, saving your multiplier ones for later, making use of recall and replay abilities. I believe the more advanced cards open up more aggressive play, and more than two players is supposed to make the game drag a bit. Definitely good for two people though, and the artwork is beeeaaautiful.

 

Though Dean's Epic Spell Wars game sounds closer to the game I envisioned when I first heard about the concept. Will definitely have to look into that.

 

I like games with a slightly humorous theme, which is also why I've backed Assault on Doomrock (besides it looking like a cool D&D questing card game with some deep combat mechanics).

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

FTL the board game: Galaxy Trucker, yes Space Alert, Space Cadets Dice Duel. B-17 Queen of the Skies (except the theme, obviously...)

 

The FTL dev posted on BGG that he was playtesting a prototype, but I don't think anything came of it: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1000803/need-people-help-test-ftl-inspired-prototype-north

 

Dean I really wanted to like AGOT LCG but I never got to try it with a good group. I have just the old CCG two-player starter set now. Red November is hilarious.

[Mister Jack]

What's the best board game to get someone who hasn't really played much more than Monopoly?  I got a friend who just bought a house with like 50 closets and his birthday is next month and I thought I might get him one to help him start a board game closet.  To clarify, he doesn't play them rarely because he doesn't like them, but because he just never really owned many of them before.  I thought Risk might be nice but I'm not especially famliar with that game myself so I don't know if it's too complicated.  I just don't want to get him something too simple either.

[TheMightyEthan]

Get him something like Catan, that's outside the norm of what Americans think of when we hear "boardgame".

[Hot Heart]

What's the best board game to get someone who hasn't really played much more than Monopoly?  I got a friend who just bought a house with like 50 closets and his birthday is next month and I thought I might get him one to help him start a board game closet.  To clarify, he doesn't play them rarely because he doesn't like them, but because he just never really owned many of them before.  I thought Risk might be nice but I'm not especially famliar with that game myself so I don't know if it's too complicated.  I just don't want to get him something too simple either.

 

Can't speak for Settlers of Catan.

 

Ticket To Ride is a decent 'gateway' game. Pandemic is the co-op 'gateway' game (Castle Panic is fairly decent, too). You probably won't see it mentioned around a lot, since it's not so well-known, but I think Relic Expedition would be pretty good, because it's not ridiculously simple yet is by no means complex. Plus, the theme does show through as well.

 

Really depends on what sort of stuff he likes though. A few of us had a brief discussion a while back on Twitter regarding classifications and preferences with regards to theme and mechanics and such and I've started to get a feel of what I'm drawn towards and what my friends like.

 

The real problem is that 'designer board games' don't tend to be cheap...

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Without knowing much about the person in question (theme preferences, game length attention span, typical player count), here are some different directions you can go:

• Carcassonne: I recommend this because it's 2-5 players and plays well at all counts, it's cheap, and it's over in 30-40 minutes. So it doesn't ask too much of a board game noob, but it's a fantastic game. You lay tiles and try to control areas for points. Bloody and cutthroat with 2-3 players, more party-type feel with more.
• Survive!: This is an easy sell: get your survivors off an exploding island, and murder everyone else's in horrible ways. Plays in 45 minutes or thereabouts, best with 4 players. Relatively cheap.
• Ticket to Ride: Yeah it really is a great gateway game. The theme doesn't make any sense but it's cutthroat and dead simple. Plays in 45-60 minutes and plays well with 2-5.
• Forbidden Island: You're trying to grab sacred treasures and "get to the choppa" before the island sinks. It's a co-op, it's fast, it's small, it's easy, it plays 1-4 players and it's like $15.
• Snake Oil: If you think this person would like a party game, this is one of the best. It's like Apples to Apples and its many clones, except you combine two words from your hand to create a product that you then have to pitch. If you ever wanted to sell a "blood umbrella" to a vampire or "happy socks" to a college co-ed, this is the game for you. Cheap, plays 3-10ish.

[deanb]

I'll second Carcasonne and Forbidden Island (of the ones recommended that I've played). Both kind of small storage, and quite simple to set up, play and score.

[Hot Heart]

My friend wanted me to write up my thoughts on his newest game, even though he only visits the forum as a guest. IF YOU'RE READING THIS I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.

 

Firstly, though, I want to talk about my newest game.

 

Epic Spell Wars of the blah blah blah

 

Grabbed this after seeing Dean mention it, and reading a bunch of reviews. Was a decent price as well.

 

The artwork and theme are pretty funny, sort of Ren & Stimpy-esque mixed with Adventure Time on even more drugs. We didn't get fully into the 'announcing spells in a wizard voice' but it was late, and I was kinda tired (that's my excuse), so maybe it didn't shine as much as it had for others.

 

Still, it was good fun, even if it only lasted 3 games. I was all set up with some decent treasure for one game, but it wasn't enough thanks to stupid, bad dice rolls!

 

It does seem a bit like a game at odds with itself, or maybe it's just too chaotic with five players (usually the case), because it has these somewhat tactical considerations with how big a spell to create and what types of attack/glyph to use, etc. but if you were to really try and play strategically, you would bog the game down with checking HP and other people's treasures and things like that, and then you're still relying on die rolls to get a desired effect.

 

A fun little filler game to whip out every now and again, though.

 

And now for my friend's request

 

Cosmic Encounter

 

You might have heard about this game recently (since it was featured on Eurogamer), but if you haven't my brief description is 'poker, but with fun and spaceships'.

 

The aim of the game is to land your ships on other people's home planets, creating 'colonies'. The first to five wins. Everyone always has five planets, and starts with stacks of five ships on each (or four maybe? I think it's five...) ANYWAY! They're like poker chips, except poker ships. You are betting with spaceships -- little flying saucers -- that stack.

 

The way you get to land ships on someone else's planet is by having a... cosmic encounter. On a person's turn, they flip over a card from the 'destiny deck' and that governs who they will have an encounter with. If they draw their own colour they can simply place ships back on an empty planet (if they have one) or perhaps challenge another player who has landed ships on their planet. If they go up against another player, it's face-off time.

 

The attacking player will then choose which of the planets they wish to attack, keeping in mind that the ships the defending player owns on their planet will contribute to their attack score. The players may call for alliances from other players to help tip the balance, but those players have to keep in mind the risks and rewards involved. Once that's settled, players will place their 'encounter' card face down and then both are revealed, with the higher number winning.

 

Sounds simple, right? Well, it isn't. Because, like poker, you'll never know quite what encounter cards another player has. You can bluff, intimidate or even try and negotiate (based on trust and both playing 'negotiate' cards if they have them). It really comes down to what you are really capable of, and what you think the other player is holding. In one instance I volunteered to negotiate, not feeling confident in my attack ability, but the other player didn't believe me or appeared overwhelmingly confident. I guess I hadn't ever tried to negotiate before (do or die!), and I didn't really press the point because, admittedly, I was almost tempted to attack instead. I called it wrong. My opponent attacked while I played a negotiate, and his attack card was so low that I actually could've won. Drat.

 

But the considerations don't end there. The game is chock full of various races, each with their own game altering/unbalancing powers as well as various cards that can add reinforcements, sacrifice ships to incur greater losses for the winners, zap powers or even other cards. There's nothing like seeing a player feel confident that they've secured a solo victory and then slapping down a card that forces them to negotiate instead. Or knowing that you're bound to lose an encounter but have a sneaky move that screws over the victors.

 

The great thing is that even if the cards and powers somewhat unbalance the game, it's the interactions between the players that redresses it somewhat (even if we seemed to play a 'variant' where race powers were kept secret until they were mandatory or the player wanted to use them). No one's going to want to help the player sitting at four colonies and ready to win their fifth, just as no one should call for assistance from people who are one colony from winning. Our game did see one player do particularly well and come close to victory, only to see their forces gradually worn down and, thus, slip down the ranks.

 

And so the game goes on until you all betray each other and hate each other and give people the finger (+5 reinforcements trumps your +3, bitch!) and then realise that maybe you shouldn't be aggressive towards everyone else because then they won't help you if you need it. Ah, forget it, give them the finger.

 

In our session, we got a few rules wrong (I think I even missed an instance for the Reincarnator that could've altered the final outcome) and I know I made some poor card play choices at times (mostly missing opportunities in other encounters) but I really enjoyed it. It was just a pity that such an epic back and forth struggle ended with one player pretty much throwing the game by inviting the two leading players to attack me at the worst possible time and gain a shared victory. Or to borrow a new term I learned: a diet coke victory.

 

Anyway, I got to leverage the very circumstantial Fodder race power twice, twice! And against the same player. So I got what I wanted out of it.

 

Like A Study In Emerald, its appeal (to me) is that it's one of those games where you can look back at all the various moments, and lament that just a different decision here or a different move there would've completely changed the outcome of the game and, oh well, you've learned your lesson and you'll do better next time and then you'll win except the random nature of things means THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME NEXT TIME SUCK IT LOSER.

 

Fin.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Hot Heart

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

P4 love Cosmic Encounter. 

 

Many hilarious moments. One of the best designs of the '70s, still better than most games today.

[Hot Heart]

Good news. My friend found a local board gaming group, so we joined them down the pub for some games.

 

Started with Samurai Sword, simply because it supported 6 people. I like the game, but it's not something you can truly understand/appreciate with just one game (I doubt even I know all the nuances). It did seem to take a lot longer than I thought as well, but I suppose when you've got four other new players, that's bound to happen. One person, playing the revealed Shogun, did ask, "Why the secret roles?" which I guess suggests they didn't enjoy it or comprehend how to play (Shogun is perhaps the easiest role if everyone else is staying quiet anyway)

 

The thing you begin to learn is that the Shogun/Samurai team actually have an advantage and will most likely win unless the Ninja team or Ronin do something. I was a ninja who was trying to secretly 'hold back' the Ronin and the Samurai, while levelling out the scores. I managed to knock the Samurai down a bit, but sadly, I was attacking another Ninja not the Ronin (he'd asked me what team I was on, which just seems like suspicious Ronin behaviour!) One of the other Ninja got completely obliterated so while us two squabbling Ninja managed 4+4, the Ronin got 9 and the Shogun/Samurai managed 8+4, as well as another 2 bonus from Daimyo cards. D'oh!

 

In future, I think it's really in the interest of the Ninja to either try and make it obvious to the others or draw out the Samurai by pretending to be one himself. The Ronin just has to try and sneak in with the Ninja. You definitely need to play up that social part of the social deduction.

 

Next we split the groups so my friend hosted a four player game of Seasons. And my friend was correct: it does take ages. I think they spent half an hour alone just drafting cards thanks to one person who didn't want to use beginner decks (to help the other two new players)... plus that guy did miserable in the scoring anyway!

 

I joined a nine-player game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which was cool because it's not often I'd get to try a game with such a large group (if ever). It was good fun except for the fact that I was Mason in nearly every game and there was one player who would always lie about his role for a bit and then later go, "Well, actually, I was the..." no matter his team, which probably made things more complicated than they should've been, leading to a lot of Tanner wins. Worst of all, though, the one time I got an interesting role as the Seer, I looked at his card and saw he was a Werewolf but some bloody Troublemaker switched him with a Tanner... except I couldn't trust the Troublemaker (could've been another Werewolf or a Minion) and the person who was the Tanner didn't seem to try and affect things!

 

After that, had a game of Hanabi, which is a really smart design but makes my brain hurt. It's a little co-op card game where you don't see your hand of (five) cards, but your teammates do, and you have to make sure the cards are all played in sequence (1-5 in colours red, blue, white, green and yellow) to create a fireworks display. You can do one of three things on your turn: play a card, use up a clue to give another player a hint or discard a card to earn back a clue.

 

Problem with the hints is that you can only tell someone if they have a colour or a number, so it's not always going to be clear-cut. e.g. "These cards are all 4s" or "These are all green." which means there's a lot of memorisation and hand-sorting needed. Duplicates in the deck, and your replacement cards after you play one also add to the confusion.

 

The owner of the game was a bit of an alpha gamer, and I wasn't exactly at my sharpest in a pub at that time of night, so it perhaps wasn't as enjoyable as it could be in the right hands (taking mistakes too seriously, really). Still we scored 21 out of a maximum of 25.

[deanb]

 

Archer: The Board Game

 

It's a relatively simple game, you each pick a character with different stats (essentially you can roll 1, 2, or 3 dice for certain actions across "Booze", "Guns", "Sex" and "Smarts".). I was Malory so my primary skill was Booze. Then you try and reach the 20 on the "Upper Hand Track". Game is played out over however many rounds it takes. Rounds are in several stages, first you pick where you'd like to go with your charachter, in this case we have Kriegers Lab (you may re-roll skill checks), Malorys Office (you get an event), ISIS reception (get the Initiative), or Mission control (become Mission Leader). You place your tokens in clockwise order, the Initiative person going first (see the big orange disc on krieger). If you're first you get the areas ability, if you're after that you roll against something, I can't super remember, and you get to draw one of your player cards, which usually either lets you get upperhand, or knock someone else back or similar. There's also insults which you play against other people, letting you stop them doing stuff like using thier main ability, going on missions, etc. Then you go on the missions, I think it was either 3 or 4 (it changes on amount of players), and they have like "Sex: 12", so you roll a 12 or higher with your Sex score to win, netting you the respective Upper hand.

Then rinse and repeat to the end.

 

All in all it's a pretty simple game, great if you're into Archer, probably less so if you're not an Archer fan and the various quotes and insults (oh shit *goes back to edit*) wouldn't mean much to you. My only major complaint being the player tokens are as big as the spaces, and you can frequently end up with multiple people on the same space.

 

 

 

Blood Bowl: Team Manager

 

Errrrm. You do stuff. I honestly didn't fully grasp the rules and strategies of this.

[Hot Heart]

Finished my epic review and overview of Sentinels of the Multiverse!

http://pressxordie.com/2014/07/28/roll-6-or-die-review-sentinels-of-the-multiverse/

 

Might do one for Android: Infiltration or A Study In Emerald next. Had a great game of the latter last week where the zombies came out to play.

[deanb]

Oh god. I had a 10AM-3AM boardgaming day on Saturday(-Sunday) so I've a big post. I might have to do it in shifts.

 

So first of all here's someone else's photo of the day:

 

 

Zombicide

 

I think we used one of the expansions, or at least it was on the board but due to time constraints we sort of bypassed that part of the board. "Look, a magical door appears". It was pretty good, I guess it sort of plays a bit more like a short RPG than a tabletop given the wide range of playable piece formations and the fact it's in campaigns. We played a campaign done by one of the guys, it was meant to be a three chapter campaign taking three hours. We started at 10am, and ended up putting in a 3PM "if not done by then the zombies then explode and we all die regardless" limit. Aim was to get petrol from the tanks of several cars, work our way around a police station and rubble to fill a generator, then in chapter 2 to progress through a mall, clearing out, then in security station lock it down for the night (or similar, as I said, chapter 3 didn't quite happen due to magical door).

It plays quite alright, though it can take way too long with a large group and really needs a limit of 5 and no more. I think some of my issues with it would likely largely come down to it being a custom campaign, so not super balanced, we ended up with a couple people having essentially pass turns or they'd dick everyone over by levelling too fast, and one group clearing police station ended up with way too much gear compared to the team that collected petrol (which included me, I had a pan for most of the first chapter). I think it has a lot of neat ideas, like the noise tokens working to balance of the more powerful weapons against potential threat the cause to you. The "priority" chart stuff was a bit annoying, this meant that if you fired a ranged weapon on a square with other players, they were highest priority, you shot them before you shot zombies. Oh yeah, the squares and movement was a bit odd too, I guess it provides a bit of flexibility in map design, but I think a more consistent square system might have worked well to better understand how much you can move, espeically outside.

 

 

 

Boss Monster

 

One of my housemates games. You play the role of an RPG/platforming boss from retro games, building up a dungeon and luring heroes to your dungeon then killing them. There's different types and levels of rooms, and each has different...hmm not sure on the proper term but stuff like religious/loot/fight/magic to which if your rooms have more of you lure those types of heroes. You can place a single room each turn(unless say you have a construction room, so free room build), up to a max of five rooms in your dungeons (then you start upgrading or building over old rooms).

Overall aim is to survive and to have the most souls from heroes. We kinda nearly almost died, but I ended up winning with a strike of three Epic Heroes in a single round pushing me ahead of the remaining player. There's elements of dicking people over, removing other rooms, making it so they're forced to take on certain heroes, so on so forth. It's quite a quick game to pick up, play, and has a cool NES themed box.

 

 

Legendary: Marvel Villains

 

It basically plays like normal Legendary but you're the bad guys. Main changes are the board is now a mat with grippy texture, you can get "New Recruits" which are cheap units that let you draw extra cards when you discard, and you can directly dick each other over. The last change is why I'm unlikely to want to play it again. Legendary can be challenging enough when the worst you can do is go for a card someone else wants/works in their deck than yours. We lost pretty quickly (admittedly given we had 4 ...or 5?... of the "these cards will kill you if they Overrun you" out in a row we figured shit shuffling didn't super help).

So yeah, I'd just stick to the main game personally, the new mat is nice, but not really a killer feature over the new mechanics, and since they're part of the cards you can't really just write that mechanic change out.

 

 

Battle Merchants

 

This was a new one for all of us, and I quite enjoyed it. Basically you're a weapons supplier in a fantasy land supplying all sides of the war (I played Hellyburton & Co, it's not super subtle). As you play the game you can build and sell weapons, improve your forging skill and take "Kingdom" cards to boost other abilities. As you supply sides you earn resource tokens, which improve how much your weapons sell for next time you supply that race. I mainly focused on Orcs since I started with them and got the Desert kingdom card, so an extra boost. I think for myself I mainly sucked in not improving my weapons right away, so lost a couple of battles  except where I supplied both sides in single battles. Though it meant I had quite a heavy cash reserve to forge Vorpal weapons later on (they always beat basic weapons regardless of skill).

There's a heavy long term tactical element to it, in that each battle equipped for both sides pushes the seasons on forwards, so you could attempt to force the game in just a dozen or so turns instead of letting others level up and then begin building. Also a minor flaw is if not paying attention it can be easy, as one lass did, to spend money levelling up and then end up with no cash to build weapons which can fuck you over

 

Arkahm Horror

 

My housemate got this in an auction a while back at the game group but it was missing pieces, but Fantasy Flight were pretty cool and replaced them free of charge.

I think a few of you have played this already. Aim of the game is to close X amount of gates while making sure you don't get killed or go mad. We lost, devoured by Yig. But might have won if we'd fully grasped the rules (tbh we still don't think we have cos the terror track never moved), we might have shut the final gate and won but fought monsters instead. Despite being the professor I actually caused the most damage to Yig, which was kinda cool. And odd given that up until fighting him I was the weakest of us all, my only major grace being I'd lucked out and ended up with a ton of clue tokens.

An element I like is that you can change you stats up each turn, sometimes might dick you over, other times you're like "phew, thank fuck I gave myself 3 will this turn". Going through a turn can take a while tough since there's this whole "other world stuff", so a turn can be in two phases, once for the people in Arkham, and another half for the people in Otherworld. I totally aced my single visit to Otherworld (and got my bunch of clue tokens and some cash too. "Dean goes to the Otherworld and finds a tone of clues, money lying on the ground then walks out the gate and closes the gate by sneezing without a single monster or bad thing happening. And yet I get lost in Time & Space. Da fuck".

I haven't really looked too deep into it, but I'm aware it's a game some folks don't like at all, but I felt it was quite fine, only major issue is space and the board layout annoyed me cos the streets you moved along didn't line up with the streets on the map drawn below. We have a ton of expansions too (they all came with the auction).

Oh yeah, we totally had a faux skull as our Monster Cup. Oh and I need to build up like a "spooky/horror" playlist for this n Betrayal.

 

As per usual I've more images in my growing Imgur gallery.

[deanb]

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4972

Via one of my boardgamer guys.

 

 

Also played "Myth" today. I shall write up when it's not nearly 11pm (I might have also played Fortune & Glory tomorrow too). Oh and I bought Saboteur 2 today (the 2 throws off, it's an expansion), but won't be playing that til Saturday (another all day long one ).

[Mister Jack]

Which game is better, Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne?

[deanb]

I guess I prefer Carcassonne cos it's much simpler and quicker to play, just a bit of a pain at the end to count up. But I guess Catan is the biggy, and has expansions.

 

Actually we saw a Kid Carcassonne the other day, was somewhat confusing why you'd need a kid version. Heck we glanced at the back of box and it almost seemed like it would be more complex.

[TheMightyEthan]

They're very different, I like them both.  Carcassonne is a lot faster.

[deanb]

 

Yay, no need to have our games randomly stored around the house or taking up a dining chair or two.