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Johnny
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Interesting. I do tend to win games I own and constantly teach, but I try give a broad strategy overview at the beginning, and to notify players when they're making an odd move or when there's an objectively better move on the board. I don't think it's helpful for me to play sub-optimally in an attempt to keep them interested, but I agree it's lame to just blow people out of the water every time.

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What I try and do is play like I normally would, but coach the new players along as must as it seems like they need or want it.  So like you said, if it seems like they're doing something strange, or if I see maybe a longer-term strategy that they could use but don't yet have the experience to see themselves, I'll point it out and discuss the pros and cons of their various options with them, including how I could potentially use it against them.  "If you do that then I'll do this and you'll lose all this..."

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Had another gaming night with friends. Started with some Sentinels, beat probably the easiest guy on advanced mode; I tried a new hero in the process who seems to kick quite a bit of butt once she gets going. She has an ability that deals damage for every 'burst' card in her trash, plus a power that lets her look at her deck and trash a card if she wants to. In one go, I used some other equipment to chain a few card plays together and wound up doing about 15 damage (and letting other people draw cards), which was fairly good for about 6 rounds or so into the game.

 

Then another friend, who wasn't originally going to come, caught a break and joined us. Though, while we were waiting I got my friends to explain Small World (with expansions) to me, ready for a 5-player game. I remember seeing it before and getting confused, but it's fairly easy to pick up after a few turns. I lost the final round of rock-paper-scissors-off (rather than pointyness of ears) which meant I went last, but that seemed to work to my advantage. First go, I picked up Commando Barbarians, which gives you 14 troops and -1 to capturing so I spread those bad boys around in a (fortunately) mostly empty part of the board (damn lost tribes and mountains) and netted 10 points straight up. I think I took one more area on my next go, and the other guys were busy fight each other, so I got 11 on that one then went into decline the next time around. By now, all except one of us had gone into decline (one was stomping around as Pillaging Kobolds, I think) so I eyed up the Historian Trolls (nets you a victory point for each race in decline when chosen) and a space freed up to quickly establish a 5-pointer region. Luck was with me...or the other guys had some existing rivalries, so I was left alone for a bit, earning a decent 14 points after that. Gradually, they picked off the old barbarians but I had been expanding the trolls' base by then and still getting 9-10 a round, and they were still under the impression that one of the other guys was running away with a victory (or just angry at Kobolds guy) so battled each other.

 

When it came to the end, I got to see the guy who got a decent start with Halflings lament that he was 'so close' to the guy he thought had won (the guy who stuck with Kobolds the entire game) and then as my final turn was done, I revealed my 10s (all seven of them)...and slowly turned over the other eight tokens (two 5s, two 3s and four 1s). Ninety, bitches!

 

Cue "Son of a bitch..." (this time a chorus). Kinda wishing I'd secretly kepy two of the 10s as the last to be revealed, but didn't want to push it...

 

Then we did a 'quick' game of Sentinels (winning can still take an hour) against a promo version of a villain; which is pretty cool because it uses the same deck in innovative ways. Essentially, if we didn't win this quickly then we'd lost (involves a condition where his damage increases with new devices or, when flipped, with trashed cards). We were actually pretty fortunate to have Batman The Wraith who got rid of some nasty ongoing effects at crucial moments, and Absolute Zero who was converting any fire damage he receives back into cold damage against the enemy. The game ended after I finally got to loose off a decent barrage of damage and then Absolute Zero redirected the fire damage from a River of Lava (came from the environment turn right after mine) to finish off the villain. One friend thought it was anticlimactic. I thought it was pretty dang awesome. :P

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Should have posted this weekend that I played Here I Stand, a 6-player card-driven wargame based on the Protestant Reformation. Long and short of it is that it was brilliantly designed and a real treat to see history unfold before us. Took us 5-6 hours to play only 2 turns, but I'm itching for an all-day full game. My longer writeup is here.

 

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I played Smallworld for the second time this week. It was much better than last time I played it. I won. I think. One of the guys I was playing with was being a bit of a bellend and was supposed to have given me 5 points from the box but he fucked around and I don't actually know if I got the points or not. So dependent on that = whether I won or not.

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Yeah. Looks confusing from just the rulebook but I only scanned it, and I guess it becomes clearer when playing.

 

If it manages to capture the theme, then it could be good but I've played so many games where the theme is just window-dressing...or I just plain don't like the mechanics in relation to it.

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In case anyone is interested.

 

Forgot to mention I played a full game of Power Grid the other night. It took TWO. AND. A. HALF. FRICKIN. HOURS. The main amusement was two of the guys teaming up to dick over the guy who takes it too seriously by stockpiling all the resources he needed, so he couldn't actually power his cities come the endgame.

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Yeah, and the only reason it went so 'quickly' is because there were enough of us to carry out all the other tasks for running the game (restocking resources, determining play order based on number of cities and highest value power station, sorting out power station auction, bank)

 

Kinda glad I missed my friends playing Planet Steam, since I think that took 5 hours between the three of them and plays very much the same.

Edited by Hot Heart
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Played DOOM: The Boardgame last night. It's actually quite fun, though some of the rules are a tad unclear when it comes to weapons fire (and as we found out at the end also on what to do if there's not a full compliment of players). It basically plays out like a rather refined RPG than board game. You get cards, though the GM gets much more cards than you, and you roll dice and stuff and travel around x amount of spaces. Can be played as a campaign too (there's a pre-written one in the box which is what we played through level 1 of). Pretty much my only annoyance with is was my co-player who opted to open a door on his turn, he being the last player, and half of hell came through. He paid for it in the end, I died and with it the energy cell for the BFG he was impatient to get. :D

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You'll have to give a a good write-up on it. I might pick it up next month for myself. Gonna get a copy of Fluxx for myself tomorrow so I've got something small I can take with me over holidays (I'll take my Gloom too, though that's not great for kids)

 

Anywho. wow. much board game. many rules.

pic1278923_t.jpg

(via P4, so blame him)

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