Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

yashima · 27 May 2021 21:36

This morning I lost Rallyman GT Hockenheimring with an embarrassing half round left for me to drive…

In the afternoon I taught a friend Race for the Galaxy on BGA. I have not played in a while. He won both games. I did really badly At least I won Roll for the Galaxy which I taught him after.

Tonight I got stomped into the ground by my partner in a round of “can we play something where I don’t need to think” Space Base. It was his 45 points to my 14 and I only had 14 points because I was able to shift my last die roll with an arrow to a spot that gave 7 VP and doubled it.

(To complete my day, we played Borderlands 3 on the computer and as soon as my partner left the game (he had a late night meeting), I got beat up by the game.)

I don’t mind, apparently today was not my winning day. Other things were good. And I got to play games.

bruitist · 27 May 2021 21:47

No matter how many times I play it, I doubt I’ll ever manage to stop misreading “Grünfink” as “Grand Funk”.

EnterTheWyvern · 27 May 2021 21:54

And it’s game that is definitely full of Gold Hammers too.

COMaestro · 27 May 2021 21:54

Well no wonder it was cold. Looks like you were playing on the outside of the Death Star.

raged_norm · 27 May 2021 22:04

That’s the kind of mat I can get behind.

Chewy77 · 27 May 2021 23:34

Is it worth starting a topic : Good games to play Outdoors…?

VictorViper · 28 May 2021 02:23

This is the thinking that nailed you. My partner and I have dozens of games under our belts and I still get caught with my pants down from time to time when I’m burnt out mentally. It’s dumb fun, but not quite brain-dead, as our scoresheets will attest.

COMaestro · 28 May 2021 06:37

Actually got two games in tonight. First up, Patchwork with my wife. Not my best game, as I lost a whopping 20 - 2, and that was with her a bit high stressed after our older kid threw his tablet at her (which luckily I intercepted).

Kiddo fell asleep in time out, which probably partly explains his behavior. His younger brother seemed taken with the idea and kept climbing into his own bed, so I cleaned him up and tucked him in. Suddenly we had an extra kid-free hour of evening available. So after nightly chores, we played Everdell with the two of us and her brother.

It was a really good game, which my wife probably would have won if she had noticed one of the special event cards, worth 9 points (we have decided we need to display these better). Instead, her brother got it, which helped give him the win with 69 points. Wife was in second with 67, and me in last with 60. It is nice to see that we are all scoring higher as we become accustomed to the game.

Marx · 28 May 2021 13:08

My partner and I played the first mission of The ??? Initiative, which we both enjoyed. It was a very gentle introduction to the mechanics, and we utterly crushed the mission.

Added bonus: she was WAY more confident about the “answer” than I was, which is nice! She’s very, very good at this kinds of puzzles.

Looking forward to playing Scenario 2 on Saturday, hopefully! It’s been a long time since we actually finished a full campaign game!

pillbox · 28 May 2021 15:50

Last night (ostensibly September of 1939), the illustrious(?) career of Kapitänleutnant Fritz Stöckheim began. For his first patrol he was refused his choice of assignment and was instead dispatched to patrol the British Isles. Shortly after leaving the Bay of Biscay, he was spotted by a veteran aircraft crew and the ensuing strafing run nearly demoralized the young Kapitänleutnant, damaging his aft torpedo tube doors and injuring the U-boat’s Engineer. The hull of U-834 I rolled dice to randomly determine the U-boat number, only to later find that the range of IDs used by the IXA’s were U-37 through U-44 was damaged but not severely.

Eager to prove himself, KptLt Stöckheim made the decision to continue on his designated patrol route without the use of his aft torpedo tubes.

Post-Aircraft Encounter Status Report

Immediately, when arriving along the coast of England during daytime, KptLt was notified that a ship had been spotted along with its escort. U-834 attempted to shadow the duo until nightfall but the trail was lost.

Shortly after, a single ship without escort was identified and the crew were notified that a close-range surface attack was underway. With only fore-torpedoes available, being able to surface and use the 105mm deck gun was crucial. At short range, it was trivial to hit the Leonidis M. with two G7as (steam torpedoes, 1 a dud) and finish her off with a single burst from the deck gun. KptLt’s patrol assignment just became a success: 4600 tonnes sunk.

Most of the rest of the patrol was quiet with no contact. Shortly before concluding the patrol, another contact: this time a large freighter was spotted, again without escort. With nothing much to lose, a full salvo of torpedoes, two G7a and two G7e (electric torpedoes) were sent, both G7a and one of the G7e’s striking the freighter but without explosion. The final G7e struck squarely and all-but sunk the target with its explosion; meanwhile, the 105mm deck gunners were finishing the job, struggling at first to home in on key areas but eventually dealing the critical killing blow.

Kapitänleutnant Stöckheim beamed with pride as he and his crew made their way back to port, the first patrol of his career resulting in 13400 tonnes sank even after the tragic aircraft attack that left his U-boat somewhat damaged and less-than-perfectly ready to fight.

The hull damage suffered early on in the patrol meant that the refit would leave him and his crew (his Engineer having recovered fully from his wounds) in port until January of 1940.

Our story so far

I’m extremely glad I took a chance on this, The Hunters: German U-boats at War, 1939-43. I really think SUSD missed the boot when they had a chance to discuss The Hunted and dropped the ball. What I’ve found in The Hunters is nothing less than a solo RPG about a U-boat captain, his crew, and the awful tragedies of war.

I think perhaps I have two criticisms:

The RNG is nasty. Before engaging any ships, I encountered an aircraft; an aircraft that could have very well killed my Kapitän instead of merely injuring my Engineer (about equal chances of either happening).
There aren’t a lot of interesting decisions. You’re never asked to consider more than one or two things at any given point. It’s extremely procedural, and the procedure usually presents binary decisions.

Both of those criticisms are why I would call this a solo RPG rather than a tactical wargame. A wargame it is not (probably), but a great narrative with satisfying gameplay? Ja.

VictorViper · 28 May 2021 16:39

Damn. Something about this one caught my eye on release and I managed to let it go forgotten. This sounds amazing, criticisms aside.

EnterTheWyvern · 28 May 2021 21:31

Got 1 and a half games of Spirit Island in today both against Scotland.

First up level 2 Scotland being scared off by Starlight Seeks It’s Form and Downpour Drenches the World. The combination was killer. Getting off some serious repetition of high damage powers and plenty of control meant it was reasonably straight forward.

Second game we upped Scotland to level 3 and used Finders of Paths Unseen and Lure of the Forbidden Wilderness. We had to stop the game at the start of the 3 cards but it was much more hairy. Didn’t feel on top of things at all. Finder is interesting but I’ll have to play it again to really get some knowledge on it’s subtleties and strategies. It wasn’t necessarily a write off but I wasn’t hopeful.

Remains a great game and lockdown meant I haven’t played Jagged Earth anywhere near enough yet.

InkyBloc · 29 May 2021 02:20

My wife picked up some EXIT games we haven’t played, as that is our escape room box of choice, although we’ve been mostly slightly disappointed by some of the recent boxes. Tonight we played The Cemetary of the Knight and let me tell you, it was a LOT of fun. A good amount of getting clues from the box and materials and no puzzles that we thought were unfair (except for one that depended on reading something out with what we would call the wrong pronunciation). I would definitely recommend this as a high water mark of escape room boxes.

yashima · 29 May 2021 06:35

I need to play some more Jagged Earth, too.

Yesterday, my partner and I played our first case pf Chronicles of Crime. We didn’t find the murder weapon.

I also taught my partner Splendor on BGA and then we played it in parallel with our current Rallyman GT race. That was weird but fun. I won both games but barely.

Also, finally told my former Tash Kalar Mitspieler about BGA and we started up a game. Neither of us remembered the rules anymore so we had to get out our respective boxes to read the rules. It seems to be a good one to play async.

Race and Roll do seem like they don’t do well in async.

But we’re getting closer anf closer to an actual game night.

RogerBW · 29 May 2021 10:17

Have you been to Scotland?

This is a game I’d really like to try some time.

DJCT · 29 May 2021 10:31

If it helps, it’s not raining in my bit of Scotland today. Yet …

bort · 29 May 2021 12:02

Nemesis , full co-op. Things went fairly smoothly, I think we got lucky on bag draws. Had a couple of adult aliens, but they were dealt with pretty quickly. It did take us a while to find the Nest (needed to destroy it for my objective). We killed one egg, buggered off with another one, and then set fire to the room, so that killed the rest. And by then we could hibernate, so a fairly comfortable win. It’s probably a bit too easy in full cooperative mode, and there are only seven co-op objectives, so not huge variety.

Shovel Knight: Dungeon Duels , first play, KS edition (not mine). Based on the video game, which I know nothing about (but have heard of it vaguely). The board game has you moving around tiles with spikes and enemies, and it “scrolls”, so the first tile column drops off (bad luck if you’re still on it), and a new one gets added. We started with a column full of spikes, which required as to roll “jump” faces on our dice. We all failed, so we died straight away. Strange start for a game I thought. Death isn’t a huge deal, you drop half your coins and restart. The rule book was a good size, but it seemed hard to find specific information. And there’s only a few questions on bgg, it’s pretty new I guess. Can’t say I really enjoyed it. Nice minis I guess. There’s a boss at the end, which didn’t last long.

Marshmallow Test , first play. This is a trick taking game from Reiner Knizia. The game is named after a psychology experiment from the 70’s, where a marshmallow is placed in front of a child. They can either eat it now, or if they wait they get two marshmallows. It seems a strange idea to base a game on, but it’s actually pretty good. It’s mostly a standard trick taking game, but with one gimmick. You’re trying to go “out” by winning four tricks (for a 3p game). But when you go out, your points are the number of tricks won by the other players. So, if you win the first four tricks, congratulations – you get nothing. If you are the last player to go out, again, you get nothing.

So, having a great hand of cards may not be to your advantage. Being last to go out does have one perk – you get to name the trump suit for the next round. One thing is done a bit differently to most trick taking games. You generally have to follow suit if you can, but, if an earlier player has played a trump (because they couldn’t follow suit), then you are also allowed to play a trump, even if you could have followed suit.

Really enjoyed this, simple trick taking, but you need to time your run. I won our game, but it was close. You need to get to twenty points (tracked by cool squishy marshmallow tokens). In the second last round, I had nineteen points, and was kept scoreless by being last to go out. But picking the trump was a big advantage, so I got the win.

RATS: High Tea at Sea , first play. I’m sure people are aware of this one. Nothing to buy, just download the player sheets and you’re away (but you can give a donation). This was a lot of fun to play. I felt like being the host most of the time helped me, and if the six didn’t get rolled, no one could take it away from me. Still, i only won by four points.

With this and Regicide, you could have a very cheap gaming night

raged_norm · 29 May 2021 14:23

Having played Voodoo Prince it’s predecessor, the changes sound like a improvement.

There’s no split trick on a 7 and playing to 20 rather than a fixed number of rounds.

lalunaverde · 29 May 2021 15:28

Ooohhh! I didnt know about Mashmallow Test being a reimplementation of Voodoo Prince

RogerBW · 29 May 2021 17:12

Tried a solo play of Terminator: Dark Fate, and all I can say at the moment is “hmm”.

That’s not a good hmm and it’s not a bad hmm. Not yet.

So the basic paradigm is standard deckbuildy in a cooperative mode: your deck includes cards that give you cash and cards that give you fighting power. You use the cash to buy cards from the market row into your discard, and the fight to destroy hostile cards, which will otherwise damage you when they get activated, or to damage the big boss (the “Rev-9”). So far so Star Realms. (But some of cards in the deck are more hostile cards…)

But the big boss is what makes things a bit innovative here. After you set up the initial market, you shuffle it in with the top five cards of the market deck. Then when you refresh the market (at the end of each player’s turn):

you draw the market up to four cards
you draw one card
you draw as many cards as you like

If any of those draws is the Rev-9 card, it cancels the rest of the draws and it goes on the hunt. At which point you have a choice:

(if it’s damaged and you want to) Flee from it, remove all its damage, and shuffle it into the top (amount of damage) cards; or
Let it hunt, either activating hostile cards already in the market or drawing new market cards and activating any hostile ones.

Most hostile cards put Wounds into your discard; if you have three in your hand, you die and everyone loses.

The rules don’t make it explicit (and there are several places where they could), but I’m reasonably confident that while the Rev-9 is in the deck you can’t damage it. So once you have the cards you need to destroy it you need to let it out to hunt, then hit it with damage to “stagger” it, then activate whatever your finishing move combo is.

And this game is all about the combos, which with a 150-odd-card market deck is a bit painful. I got a skill card that let me draw a pistol from my discard pile whenever I used one; I never saw a pistol. I got a grenade launcher, but never saw a grenade.

Stack that with an unfortunately put together manual (it even misnames one of the starting cards) and learning this game is more work than it needs to be, but in spite of that I rather enjoyed it. I suspect it’ll be rather harder in multiplayer where you have to time things in terms of whose turn it is rather than just what’s in your hand.