Board games!

[RedEyedGhost]

September has been an amazing month of gaming for me:

• Played 1846 for the first and second times - looking forward to playing more 18XX
• Got my first win in Madeira - love this game, very happy to be kickstarting the collector's edition
• Irish Gauge is a wonderful short train/stock game
• Gaia Project - I think I had either my best or second best score after thinking I was doing terribly, still got destroyed by the winner
• Another first time win with Container - after proclaiming all game that "I know how to play the game, but I have no idea how to win the game"  I think I might actually know how to win the game.
• Anachrony - either my first or second place worker placement game, I don't play this nearly often enough
• The Great Zimbabwe - such a good game, and so hard to describe
• Viticulture with Tuscany - a top 10 worker placement game for me that had also been way too long since I played it last, scored 21 of my 35 points in the final round - was down by 5 going into the final round, won by 3
• And played Barrage three times - the game is freaking amazing, but it does make me mad every time I play it as I think about how much I paid for those terrible quality components, really don't want to ever buy a Cranio Creations game again

And there's a convention here in town that I'll be attending the next 3 days where I have the following scheduled (and completely booked):

• Antiquity
• Great Western Trail
• Pipeline
• Brass: Birmingham
• City of the Big Shoulders
• Concordia
• Food Chain Magnate
• The Great Zimbabwe

Will hopefully be able to get in a game or three of QE and Irish Gauge.  I fully intend to be broken by Sunday evening, and I'm going to love it (thankfully most of the games I'll be playing with people that know how to play already, so I won't feel like I'm on the hook for making sure everybody is playing correctly and will be able to think about what I need to do on my turn when it is not actually my turn).

[HokieStone]

7 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

And there's a convention here in town that I'll be attending the next 3 days where I have the following scheduled (and completely booked):

• Antiquity
• Great Western Trail
• Pipeline
• Brass: Birmingham
• City of the Big Shoulders
• Concordia
• Food Chain Magnate
• The Great Zimbabwe

Will hopefully be able to get in a game or three of QE and Irish Gauge.  I fully intend to be broken by Sunday evening, and I'm going to love it (thankfully most of the games I'll be playing with people that know how to play already, so I won't feel like I'm on the hook for making sure everybody is playing correctly and will be able to think about what I need to do on my turn when it is not actually my turn).

I really enjoy Great Western Trail, and Brass is a pretty thinky game.  I'm kind of "meh" on Concordia, although I know I'm in the minority on that.  I've been wanting to try Food Chain Magnate.  Saw on Twitter that some friends of mine were playing Pipeline last night...they seemed to like it a lot...one comment was that it was "Power Grid on steroids"...

[RedEyedGhost]

42 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

I really enjoy Great Western Trail, and Brass is a pretty thinky game.  I'm kind of "meh" on Concordia, although I know I'm in the minority on that.  I've been wanting to try Food Chain Magnate.  Saw on Twitter that some friends of mine were playing Pipeline last night...they seemed to like it a lot...one comment was that it was "Power Grid on steroids"...

I love how much depth Concordia has relative to its simple rule set - so many possible paths to victory, with amazing decision space.  On any given day, the odds of all eight of those games being in my top ten is very high (with The Great Zimbabwe being the most likely to not make the cut - Indonesia would likely get the nod over it, as that feels like a combination between tGZ and FCM).

That's a very strange comparison for Pipeline... It feels much more like any of Vital Lacerda's games mixed with any route building game than Powergrid - it has no auctions, and while it's very mathy, it's not mathy in the same way as Powergrid.  Very highly recommended though.  Have you tried the new version of Powergrid?  I've only played it once, and am really unsure about the new rule on the lowest power plant during the auction.  Definitely need to try it again.

[Buckwheat]

I have been playing a lot of games recently.

Taboo is still my favourite. Especially playing with a group of translators who can basically play in two languages at once. (My cards are all in German.) The record was 10 guesses in 2 minutes.

I also got a chance to play exploding kittens in a larger group - previously I had only played with one friend and it wasn't that much fun, but if there are at least 4 players, the game is much better.

The Slovene equivalent of cards against humanity is ... vulgar and not much else I guess? It gets repetitive soon. (I suppose the same is true of the English version, but I happened to play with another language version.)

A friend taught me to play kalaha. It might sound really boring at first, but it actually draws you in really quickly.

Oh, and I learned not to attempt to play uno with anybody but your established group who knows your rules. I brought a pack of uno cards to people who all had completely different ideas about what rules apply (regarding skipping, adding to a +2, ending on a +2 or +4, the existence of a +5, continuing the game after one person has played the final card, etc.), and that was a nightmare. Don't recommend.  

 

I also have a question, since I cannot remember the name of this game that I played and had a lot of fun with: There is a board with different symbols, most fairly abstract (male, female, old, young, different symbols for shapes, colours, sizes, materials, activities), there are cards with nouns people have to guess that are supposed to be in 3 different levels of difficulty, and there are pieces that one has to put on the symbols on the board so the other players have to deduct what is on the card from the positions of the pieces on the board. The pieces are in the shape of a question mark, exclamation mark, and small cubes. The person who gives the clue is not supposed to talk, only to put the pieces on the board, and the rest of the players are guessing.

Does anybody know this game? I cannot remember the name at all, but it was very interesting and intriguing.

[Rorshach]

I mostly get to play two player with my son (we'd like to get second son on board, but he's to young yet), but we do have fun.

So far, we've been playing Dominion, Kingdomino, Splendor, Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders. The last one we really need more players on, because I know (having played it with seven) that it's a lot more fun with more players.

[RedEyedGhost]

17 hours ago, Rorshach said:

and 7 Wonders. The last one we really need more players on, because I know (having played it with seven) that it's a lot more fun with more players.

Have you tried 7 Wonders Duel?  It's definitely different, but still has quite a bit of the same feel as 7 Wonders.  

[Rorshach]

28 minutes ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Have you tried 7 Wonders Duel?  It's definitely different, but still has quite a bit of the same feel as 7 Wonders.  

If it is the two players option in the normal game, yes. That is, you introduce a third player that the players alternate on controlling (exploiting).

If not, then I haven't. May have to look into it, if so.

[polishgenius]

7 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

If not, then I haven't. May have to look into it, if so.

It's not, it's a separate game designed purely for two players.

[Rorshach]

6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

It's not, it's a separate game designed purely for two players.

Ah. 

I'll look for it when I've got the time, then. Will probably be a couple of years before Son#2 will want to start playing

[HokieStone]

On 9/27/2019 at 10:29 AM, RedEyedGhost said:

That's a very strange comparison for Pipeline... It feels much more like any of Vital Lacerda's games mixed with any route building game than Powergrid - it has no auctions, and while it's very mathy, it's not mathy in the same way as Powergrid.  Very highly recommended though.  Have you tried the new version of Powergrid?  I've only played it once, and am really unsure about the new rule on the lowest power plant during the auction.  Definitely need to try it again.

Hmm..curious, just going off what I read from a friend on Twitter (re: Pipeline and Powergrid).  I've not tried the new Powergrid - "Recharged"?  Took a brief look at the rules, and I'm a little confused...the lowest plant in the market can be auctioned starting at $1?  And there was some weird rules about how it's replaced.

[RedEyedGhost]

On 9/29/2019 at 9:21 AM, Rorshach said:

Ah. 

I'll look for it when I've got the time, then. Will probably be a couple of years before Son#2 will want to start playing

Yeah, it's a version specifically designed for two players.  Supposed to be quite excellent (but I so rarely play at two, that I haven't had the opportunity to try it myself).

 

21 hours ago, HokieStone said:

Hmm..curious, just going off what I read from a friend on Twitter (re: Pipeline and Powergrid).  I've not tried the new Powergrid - "Recharged"?  Took a brief look at the rules, and I'm a little confused...the lowest plant in the market can be auctioned starting at $1?  And there was some weird rules about how it's replaced.

The lowest plant being up for purchase at $1 is definitely the biggest change.  In the one game I played of it, the winner was able to slightly upgrade power plants, at the cost of a buck, twice because he was the only one left in those auctions.  The were plants that definitely wouldn't have been able worth the cost printed on them, but at a dollar for the amount of improvement they were a steal.

[HokieStone]

Got a chance to play "Underwater Cities" this week - been wanting to try it for a while.  I enjoyed it while playing, but after pondering for a few days, my reaction is a bit mixed.  One of the people I played with compared it to Terraforming Mars, in that there can definitely be some card luck - happen to get several cards that combo well together, and you're good to go.  I dunno...I'd like to play again, but it is a long game.  Took us 3 hours or so (although we were all more or less new at the game).

[Werthead]

Played Kingdomino this week - a fun, quick-playing tile game - as well as Formula D, which was very good, although I suspect the simple mechanics might wear thin in the long run.

[HokieStone]

18 hours ago, Werthead said:

Played Kingdomino this week - a fun, quick-playing tile game - as well as Formula D, which was very good, although I suspect the simple mechanics might wear thin in the long run.

I haven't played Formula D in a while.  It's one of those games that sits on my shelf unloved...along with 3 or 4 expansion maps.

[Werthead]

Massive preowned board games fair in my home town today, but fortunately it was low on must-get games. I did pick up Stronghold as it was very cheap. I suspect this might be a flipper, fun to play once or twice but too fiddly to keep around.

I did get Crusader Kings and its expansion. I played a few games of this with a friend who got the original Kickstarter and it was - surprisingly - superb, nailing the best bit of the video game (the dynastic roleplaying game) and massively downplaying the stuff that didn't work (the military side of things). It was also dirt cheap, at least compared to what my friend paid for it new. Also grabbed Thirteen Minutes, a very quick filler game where you can nuke the planet if you're not careful.

Also had great fun playing Clank! at the board game cafe. Probably not good enough to consider buying, but the noise mechanic is cool. Noise mechanics should really be in more games, but the only other prevalent example I've seen of it was in a Zombiecide spin-off (Black Plague I think?) which was pants.

[RedEyedGhost]

I had an excellent day of gaming yesterday.  Played Trickerion for the first time (as the kickstarter deluxe edition just fulfilled in the US a week/week and a half ago) - wow, did that ever destroy my brain.  I'm not usually a big fan of "programing" in games, but I don't mind it when you're charting out your turns like you do here.  Also being able to look at which sections everybody else selected to then map out the order in which you'll do the actions you selected was very interesting.  What really killed me, and most everybody else at the table was trying to figure out what resources to buy.  If I had spent $1 more in the first round of the game I could have earned 14 points at the end of the game, but that wouldn't have actually factored in to my second place finish as I was 15 points behind the winner, and one point ahead of third place   The different worker types you can get, the action point allotment, the setting up of the tricks, the performing of the tricks (like Mindclash Games' other game that I'm very fond of - Anachrony - Trickerion feels very thematic)... oh so good.  Each player has an individual player power, and I complete forgot about mine the minute I set my card on the player board - I think I probably lost a few points because I forgot about it, but certainly not enough to be the difference in the game.  Very much looking forward to playing it again.  Highly recommend checking this out if you like heavy games.

Then I played a 3 player game of City of the Big Shoulders with the other 2 players also being experienced with it.  It took 2:30 to set up, play, and put away which was fantastic in and of itself.  But I also won in by more than $3000 over a tight second and third race (where they each were under $4000).  I was the only one focusing on the appeal track at the beginning, and that helped quite a bit, as did placing building that I wanted to use repeatedly myself.  In my previous game of this the scores were around $5000, and came in second by a measly $31 to one of the players in this game as well (and realized after the game how I could have been able to win that one by $95 - I thought way too much about that!), I had been using the winner building constantly which pushed so much money their direction.  In yesterday's game we played that you couldn't start the game with any of the expansion companies, and the third player took the strongest of the base game companies (and he's probably the strongest player of games all around that I play with - won Trickerion and was the one who destroyed me in Gaia Project that I talked about at the top of this page) so I was quite worried when he did that.  I was able to slyly out maneuver him when I started my second company.  He started his second company right before I did, which was a food and dairy company that was competing with player two's underperforming initial company, so I took a dry goods company that would go up against his strong initial company.  Because he had been ignoring the appeal track, I was able to take a company that started higher than his which forced him to sell the vast majority of his very high priced goods at half price in the final two rounds.  The other two players had been purchasing stock in each other's companies, so at the end when my two companies had the highest valued stock with one that underperforming food and dairy company being tied for my lower of the two (which was hilarious because it had been doing so poorly the company still owned 70% of its shares) I had an extremely valuable portfolio that I had funded mostly by myself.  They really should have trusted my companies more, and got in on them when the stock was cheep. 

And then I played the longest game of Food Chain Magnate that I have ever played.  Because I had played it exactly one week before I think I had a bit of a leg up on the other three players.  I actually ended up doing the exact same thing this game that I had done in the previous one, but I ended up coming out first instead of last.  The main difference being that I was able to pick a very nice spot on the board that I was able to grow into an even better spot through new business development.  The way this game was different than every other game I have played of this was in how aggressive the price wars were.  I think the lowest prices I had previously seen were $6 (maybe $5, but I don't think so), and in the last round of this one two of us were at $2 and the other two were at $3.  One of the $3 players could have been at $2 as well, but he wanted to avoid selling to a couple of the low demand/non-garden houses that he was close to.  I really started off well, but took quite awhile to start training anybody, and felt like I was doing very poorly in the mid-game.  By the end I was feeling mostly confident again though as I had a decent amount of drink marketing with the bonus for selling drinks so I was still making a decent amount every round (with my first to $100 CFO milestone).

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Food Chain Magnate

I play this game too infrequently I think, maybe every month or two. Somebody usually bosses it due to a mistake by the other player, although it’s still enjoyable. You just need to be really up on the tactical side to not get left behind. I think if we played more often we’d see closer games ... but, Gloomhaven still looms very large over my gaming time, and they’ve finally got Brass: Birmingham back in stock most places. Played three incredibly close games so far, really enjoying it.

 

[Werthead]

Played Twilight Struggle for the first time today. Just an exceptional game with exceptional design. Was concerned because it's the same design as The Expanse, which didn't work very well, but the systems in Twilight Struggle are much better and the theme is much more instinctive. The only weakness is that The Expanse can handle 4 players but TS only does 2.

Dune appears to be totally OOS in the UK. The suppliers sent over hardly any copies to this market and it looks like they totally underestimated demand, which given the prevalence of the franchise and the reputation of the game built up over forty years seems extremely foolish. Keeping an eye on eBay for a good deal in the meantime.

[A True Kaniggit]

Someone got a Harry Potter deck builder called "Death Eaters Rising" and it has been kicking our collective butts (it's one of those where the players work together to try and win)

What is screwing us is the fact that in order to gain more cards, you must use dice and roll certain symbols. But the dice have not been kind. Seven tries and we haven't won once.

Another problem is one of the players isn't used to playing cooperative games. So when he has chances to help other players build their team, he ops to hold off using his resources in order to bulk up his own.  Though I think with the last few losses he might be figuring out we'll never actually win that way.

[The Last Storm]

I’ll have to stick with Stratego, you damn kids and your rock music.