Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[VictorViper]

I finished assembling the models required to play the first scenario of Wolfenstein, and so that’s just what I did this morning. Between the unpainted terrain and player dashboards, this is the beige-est game I own and I would wager the beige-est game one can own. Using it was a treat though, and it’s really going to be something else once I’ve painted it all up.

*Game Over

The game itself is way better than I had really expected, if I’m being honest. I was pretty keen on the rules, but had seen a number of comments comparing it to Zombicide, and that had me worried. Thankfully, I don’t understand that comparison at all, beyond sharing a few concepts and loosely belonging to the same genre of game.

Anyway, the main trackers and resources in the game (briefly: time, noise, alarm, action points, glory/special abilities) come together to establish an exciting pace. In my game there was this ebb and flow between carefully moving my heroes into position before busting down a door and running in guns-blazing. Skirmishes need to be short and brutal as well, since each enemy is uniquely dangerous and presents a serious threat any time they’re allowed to activate.

This was enough to commit me to the paint project. It’s a bear to set up and it’s a dense 3x3 footprint, but I felt the experience was more than worth the effort and sprawl. I had real agency over how the scenario unfolded, and feel like I could tackle it in a variety of ways should I wish to challenge it again. It’s a thinky-dumb-dumb game and those are some of my favourites, so a keeper is born. Lots of fun!

[lalunaverde]

It was Pax day on Sat. We started with Pax Porfiriana with 2. Starting with nationalisations and banditry. No income to our players. We soon end up on different paths, my opponent relies on enraging the American titan just north of us and hope that Teddy will send his cavalry over, overthrow Diaz, and put my enemy instead to power in Mexico City. I relied on the simmering social unrest in Mexico and ride the revolutionary fervour to power. It was a close game, but I end up on top.

Long Live President Luna!

Pax Pamir 2. 4 lords of Afghanistan vying for control (well, more like stumbling over repeatedly). The Emir’s forces are nowhere to be found, and both imperial powers are encroaching. We had two checks (one of them was a double dominance checks, so we had 1 fewer) and neither Russian nor British proved dominant, with the latter being the stronger force.

Things became unstable where a faction only needs 2 blocks to win dominance Everyone ditched the Russians for the British and vied for influence at the final dominance check. The British rewarded the lord who has been always loyal to them since the start of the conflict and end up winning the game.

[bengeile]

Had a rough week, so I set up a scenario of Bardsung to unwind. I think I may have made a terrible mistake…

[bengeile]

It got even worse two turns later…

[Phil]

I’m going to guess that your character is the yellow one.

[bengeile]

Yes, and he handled himself admirably until his friends arrived, at which point he bravely ran away, away…

[Phil]

Bravely taking to his feet, he beat a very brave retreat.

[raged_norm]

[Chewy77]

The best thing about Nightfeather is how it can hit and move, getting out of pickles like that. But that looks like you hit an ambush card?? I had one in a corridor and I was really lucky with the dice, it could have been 6 baddies in three spaces on the same tile…

You inspired me to have another go tonight…

[Griffster77]

I never! …

[Phil]

We played another Castle Ravenloft mission tonight, and as some frustration was evident (my partner suffered a streak of very bad dice rolls), I’m not going to push my luck by suggesting another one for a while; but I’m hoping that a monthly Ravenloft evening might be deemed acceptable, as it would be neat to continue through the adventure book.

To be completely honest I’m also finding it a little frustrating playing a cooperative game with someone who isn’t showing much interest in trying to establish optimal (or at least vaguely optimal) moves or find synergy between the abilities of our characters. There’s an element of puzzle solving needed to improve our chances which she isn’t engaging in very much, and I’m trying hard not to ‘quarterback’, but I’m finding it a little tricky to navigate. It might be that it’s simply not the best game for us; however, so long as she’s showing any interest in playing, I’m going to make the most of it, and hope for the best.

Tonight’s mission came down to the wire, as we used all three of our health surge tokens, and had just three hit points left between us at the end. I’d thought we were were going to be fine but then we both successively failed to damage an inanimate object for its one remaining hit point to destroy it and take the win; and in the meantime a wolf which had started quite a long way away had rapidly moved into range to attack me. I initially thought it would kill me if I failed to defend, causing us to lose the mission; but fortunately, it was actually one space away from being able to use that particular attack, and its other attack could only do 1 damage, which meant I would survive the turn regardless of what happened, giving us a second chance at finishing the game. My partner then destroyed the object, and the victory was ours.

[Marx]

Yesterday I got to play games with a good friend. It was nice!

We played War of the Ring 2nd Edition, and that was lovely. The last time we played I lost due to a significant rules misunderstanding (that captured Towns, Cities, and Strongholds could be used to muster for the force that captures them… that is definitely not true, and resulted in Rohan being obliterated by turn 3).

This time I won because the Shadow Player (Terry) forgot two very significant rules:

1. That a Sword result can be used to start a battle with an army led by a Nazgul
2. That a Banner result can be used to start 1 fight OR Move 2 different armies.

The end result was that for the first 2-3 turns the Shadow built just overwhelming force across from Osgiliraith (sp?)… two 10-unit armies, one with 3 Nazgul and the Witch King and the other with 2 more Nazgul (thematically appropriate), and another massive army across from the Fords of Isen (plus Sarumon and his ability to use Elites like Leaders)… but he didn’t start attacking until turn 4 or 5, at which point the Ringbearer was right outside Mordor (literally 2 steps away before he was revealed).

That stated, the game was still shockingly close… Minas Tirith was overwhelmed in a mutually-assured-destruction (2 Infantry, Boromir, Aragorn, and a Leader against 2 Elites with 3 Nazgul and the Witch King… we wiped each other out to the man, which bought me another 2 turns… by the game end Gondor had 3 Regular Infantry remaining on the board and everything else… everything else… had been wiped out), the Southerners were swinging towards a surrounded Rohan, but more importantly… the Ringbearer reached the penultimate step of the Mordor track with 10 Corruption.

For that last step, I had 2 Companions remaining (Gandalf the White was off staring at Sarumon across the Fords, Boromir and Aragorn died arm-in-arm at Minas Tirith, and Gimli and Pip had both died at different steps to minimize some Corruption from Shelob)… so Merry and Legolas were still with Frodo and Sam. If Terry pulled a 3 or one of the Eye tokens I would lose (there were, like, 6 dice in the Hunt box), and if he pulled a Stop token he would get to try again. If he pulled a 0-2, I would win.

He pulled a 1, revealing the Ring but not stopping it, and I won.

Still a wonderful game, and I look forward to playing it correctly next time!

After we finished that, we tried out a new Phil Walker-Harding called eXplorers, which was a really lovely, light roll-n’-write like Cartographers but faster and less mean. Great components, honestly (big, thick cardboard with punch-out inserts), and we had a good time with it… I managed to win that one as well (104 to 95).

Then we broke for dinner: Bao Sandwich Bar… Terry had 2 “Pork Belly Bao” and a Deepfried Fish bao, my partner had a Deepfried Fish bao and a Tofu bao, and I had two small bahn mi… a chicken katsu (mediocre, honestly, but not bad) and a “Seoul Beef” which was spectacular, and then the three of us split an order of Kimchi Beef Poutine (not really poutine at all, since there was no cheese or gravy, but honestly I have always preferred not-poutine poutines… I just don’t like cheese or gravy on my fries, but I love all the other stuff they throw on there sometimes… there’s a place in town that does a killer shawarma “poutine” with garlic and hot sauce… but I digress).

After dinner we roped my partner in for two quick games: Longshot the Dice Game, which I enjoy, Terry really enjoyed, and Andy hated. On a hunch, we then tried another game of eXplorers, and Andy loved it… so Terry and I swapped his copy of eXplorers for my copy of Longshot and everybody was happy (I mean, I liked Longshot as much as eXplorers so it was a net-zero for me, but Andy wanting to play games makes my life way easier!).

And that was it! Terry and I had a long, long talk about life, work, family, and the various stresses and emotional issues we’re both having, including a long talk about what a jerk Gary Gygax was (anyone who hasn’t seen the first half of the NPI “Sleeping Gods” review, go watch it… it’s really insightful and verbalized a lot of issues I couldn’t verbalize about my issues with “Old Skool” D&D).

A really lovely day.

[acharlie1377]

@Bondy034

I think my fave so far is the mining one - though I’m still more fond of the original Welcome To… at this stage, that may change with more plays though.

The more I play around with Welcome to the Moon, the more convinced I am that it and the original slot into entirely different genres. I consider Welcome To… to be a breezy, relatively “standard” roll-and-write–you flip some cards, fill in a space, and go up a track. The way you go up each track, and how that ties into the core puzzle, make it more interesting, but it feels definitively like a roll-and-write. Welcome to the Moon feels more like a light-to-medium Euro, which just so happens to also be a roll-and-write. You still have those tracks, but they’re all more complex and interconnected, and the ascending-number restriction of the placement is an avenue to interact with those systems, rather than the core of the game. That makes it much more interesting to me as a solo game, but as a thing to show to my family and non-gamery partner, the original is probably still my go-to.

[bort]

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland , first play. This is a competitive, trick taking area majority game. There are eight regions with a various number of towns. Each town is either red, blue or yellow, corresponding with the colours on the cards. Red is associated with battle, blue are for church, and yellow are to do with the marriage track. There are three areas to interact with, the battle area, the church area, and the marriage track. The player with the active town marker (the winner of the previous trick) selects a town, and then plays a card of that colour. The other players play a card as well. You don’t have to follow suit. Each card has a primary action (performed by the winner of the trick) and either one or two secondary actions, you choose one of these if you don’t win the trick. Often you’ll play a card and you don’t want to win the trick (easy enough unless you lead). All of the primary actions allow you to gain control of the active town, and may have other symbols. Generally, the lower value a card, the more symbols it will have.

After all but one cards have been played, you check the various areas. If there are viking tokens left in the battle area, then the player with the lowest number of tokens loses a town, and that town is taken over by the vikings. The player at the top of the marriage tracks takes the current marriage card. Whoever has the most tokens in the church area places a monastery on one of their towns – this now counts as two instead of one. If you have enough control in a region, you get that areas claim tile, worth VP at the end of the game.

This was a lot of fun. There aren’t many rules, and they are fairly easy to remember. There are only three rounds (in a 3p game), so it doesn’t take long. And it’s not like a lot of trick taking where winning the trick is your only priority. In this game you consider your cards, do you take the trick or play another card for better actions? It’s usually easy enough to play off suit, unless you have the wild (white) cards, which are considered the same colour as the lead suit. There’s a card draft at the beginning, so have a chance to grab the cards you want.

Cryptid X 3. We had played this a while back, and found it a bit confusing. But we’ve played a lot of deduction games since then, so I thought I’d give it another go. The map is made of five different region types, and you also have two types of buildings, and two animal habitats. Everyone has a secret clue, for example, forest or mountain. Which would indicate the cryptid is on one of those types. On your turn, you select a hex and either ask another player if the cryptid could be there (according to that players clue), or search a hex. If you question a player, then they must place a disc (if the cryptid could be there), or a cube (cryptid could not be there). If you search a hex, then each player places either a disc or a cube. If everyone places a disc, then you have found the cryptid, and win the game. We ended up playing three games, the first was mucked up by a mistake, and the other two games were over in a few moves.

The LOOP , we again failed badly to stop the evil Dr Faux. Still without a win at this game.

Break the Code X 3. More deduction goodness! I made a mistake in the first game, had the question about where my fives were,and I gave a single location, but I had both of them, so should have answered with two locations. The second game was stuffed up because another player didn’t report a zero tile as an even number (the question card even says that). Easy mistake to make. Third game was the charm, we didn’t make any mistakes. We’re quite enjoying this game.

Scout , not sure if 3p is the best number for this game. Seems too often you get stuck and have to scout, and the round is over if one player makes a play and then every other player scouts. When you scout, you take a card from the currently played cards, giving you an extra card, and making the play easier to beat. Still, a fun game.

Noch Mal!

Fantasy Realms X 2, couldn’t get anything going.

[Chewy77]

@bort

Cryptid. We ended up playing three games, the first was mucked up by a mistake

I think this must be one of the games with the highest rates of mistakes ever. I have played it a handful of times, and on each session at least one game was a mistake. Still enjoy it, though.

[mistercrayon]

Welcome to the moon feels like a lot of different games that have a very loose structure in common but spin off in different ways. A different marketing strategy might easily have released these in a far less generous way I think.

[pillbox]

[following on from What Should I Play? (Help me decide)]

Last week, I did get Fantastic Factories to the table for a solo game. I was a bit disappointed. The “AI” wasn’t very competitive and the whole thing felt like a fairly flimsy solo experience. I’m surprised, then, at how much love the BGG 1PG has shown FF over the years.

Still, I will hang on to Fantastic Factories for the moment because I think a “build your tableau and then run it” where everyone is running their factory at the same time is a valuable design-artifact to have around, if it works as well as it looks like it might. Concurrent turns is such a hard thing to do in a game; the only thing left to determine is how samey and solitaire the multiplayer experience is.

I’m glad I resisted the temptation to buy the recent expansions when they were on Kickstarter.

---

That night, I was going to follow up Fantastic Factories with a game of Baseball Highlights: 2045. I got everything out of the box and was looking at integrating some more of the expansions when I realized I was missing a rulebook for roughly half of the expansions (which is normal, I think?). I checked and found that I had downloaded the missing reference document, but had not yet printed it for ease of play. Feeling a bit tired, I packed everything away again.

Until last night. I got everything out, printed the missing document, along with a fan-made solo variant that is nearly ubiquitous at this point, for playing with the expansions. The key differences with the solo variant are as follows:

• After resolving the immediate effects and hits for the AI’s card, if its cost is 5 or less, send it down to the AI’s minor leagues and replace it with a card from the Free Agent deck before placing it in the Dugout; do not resolve the new card.
• Keep 10 available free agent cards in the market instead of the usual 6.

With the new rules reference in-hand, I shuffled all of the expansions into the Free Agent deck, using everything except the Coaches and Ballparks expansions.

For my starter team, I chose United Kingdom, in honour of all my UK friends here. I opted to do easy mode with 4 buy rounds before starting; but only 3 of them yielded any roster changes.

I was competitive throughout the first game; keeping it roughly tied through most of the game. The last AI card would have cancelled all 3 of my Average runners if I had been in the lead, but luck would have it I was trailing by a point, nullifying the AI’s ability and then allowing for me to take the win by 2 points (1 Average on base, 3 single Average runners threatened). The AI threatened 1 at the end and by luck I pulled a Cancel 1 Hit for the Visitor Save.

Only once did the AI draw a card with a cost of 5 or less (and it was a 5, of course). Even still, I feel the solo game with all of the expansions is a lot flimsier than the base game or with just Rally Cap. The AI’s team has tons of really expensive, very powerful players – but they are all randomly assembled and their abilities are highly contextual.

Unfortunately, by that point in the evening, it was too late to play another game of the series, so I packed away everything carefully so that I can continue another time.

[Whistle_Pig]

On Sunday we had a very close game of The Great Zimbabwe. Two of us reached our points goal on the same turn, and initially I had overshot my goal by two points more, which gave me the win on a tie. Unfortunately for me my husband pointed out how our friend could have upgraded a different monument, so he redid his entire last turn and beat me by a single point

I’d read a few comments on BGG from people who were disappointed with the game (comparing it unfavourably to other Splotter games), so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it!

[Phil]

I’m pretty sure that means your victory was real and your friend’s victory was hypothetical : )

[Benkyo]

I like it a lot. It’s Splotter crunchiness, but condensed into an hour.