I want details
2 Likes
Weāve been playing a few games of guild of merchant explorers. Itās super fast and has the normal roll and write feel of marking off a board but then gives everyone a wild power to use. Itās really good fun.
1 Like
Had way more fun playing Get on Board with the kids than I expected. Didnāt appreciate that everyoneās tickets to mark the routes were in different orders.
5 Likes
I finished up my game of Return to Dark Tower this morning andāperhaps of interest to @mistercrayonātook a surprise defeat against the boss at the tail end of month 5 (still had a month to spend if I wanted). I felt like I was in a pretty good position to take it on, but it seems like I woefully underestimated the scope of the adversaries because where I took it on proved fatal.
After my Relic Hunter took a shot at it and retreated, the adversary (the Ashstrider) moved into his home territory and wiped out a building. This earned the Relic Hunter a second corruption. My Orphaned Scion was now within range to make her own attempt on the beast, so I thought Iād try to finish it off. I drew a critical hit, was forced to dump more skulls than I could afford to allocate and, BAM!, my Relic HunterāNOT the Scion!āfell to corruption. My mistake was taking it on in a realm that was in terrible shape, and owned by a player near death.
Iāll admit this felt a bit sudden and was very obviously avoidable (hubris and ignorance lost the day here), but I was grinning about it for the following 20 minutes. Iām so glad these boss enemies are properly dangerous and surprising. Something about the way this fell apart for me really elevated the threat management aspect (the skulls). More than just a logistical wrinkle itās a nicely incorporated abstraction point that helps drive home the idea that four entire kingdoms are under siege and ready to fall.
Reserving judgment for now but Iām eager to play again.
[EDIT]
Finally getting around to teaching Long Shot The Dice Game to my partner. The top 3 are nearing the finish so of course our daughter woke up. 
Sharp viewers will notice all horseshoes used up on one sheet (mine) and none used on the other. That D8 absolutely hates me today!
4 Likes
Hi! Iām Charles. Yes: Charles. As in *Charles, by the Grace of God, Emperor of the Romans, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of Castile and Leon, King of Aragon and Sicily, King of Naples, King of both Sicily (yes both of them!), King of Jerusalem, King of the Indies, of the small islands and the big mainland too of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of-[kept droning on and on and on for a few minutes]
Round 1: I thought āyou know what? Screw the Fr*nch!ā 
. Italy is my turf you know!? So, here was my plan: I amassed all of my power against France and make them sue for peace. One army made an advance from Spain to Bordeaux and sieged it. Another army from Austria proper was redeployed to Flanders to make the thrust to Paris. Charles, you are a genius! You canāt go wrong with this!
Okay. It turns out Bordeaux was captured (and the rest of Aquitaine), but the battle for Paris was a disaster. My Austrian army was pummelled. France refused to sue for peace. They are fine with awarding me some VPs, but they donāt want to give up any card from their hand (which inhibits their future turns).
Oh great!
Round 1 & 2: As the quagmire continues, some dude decided to shitpost on a door about 95 things. Turns out, he is the president of his local debate club and keeps trashing our side on repeated debates. And people started listening to him! I swear to God, this fucking nerd needs to get a life.
Apparently, he said that our current pay-to-win system is a bad thing. You know who complains about this sort of thing? Poor people. In other news, a conquistador of mine came back from the New World and returned with literal boatloads of gold. Charles, you are a genius.
Round 2 & 3: As if it wasnāt enough, the heathen Turks captured Buda and the Hungarian kingdom collapsed. All the while my armies are still tied up in France, because that nincompoop, Francis, doesnāt want to give up and even allied himself with my sodding cousin-in-law, Henry. Well, former cousin-in-law because the idiot Pope give him a divorce! So many idiots, so little time!
The Turks, unhindered, went in and sack my Vienna. No Winged Hussars showing up to save the day because I accidentally told the Polacks last Christmas that their Pierogi taste like shit.
Round 3: It happened. Mr. I-Am-Smarter-Than-All-Of-You-Also-I-Translated-The-Bible-To-German-So-You-Can-Suck-It got way too popular that every fricking German prince converted to heresy and even made a league against me. AGAINST ME! This sucks. It totally sucks. I donāt even speak German that often. I only speak German to my horse.
All the Electors and most princes went over to the Protestant side, they got their stupid army, and they rake in the points. Where the hell is the Pope!? Only Brunswick and Hamburg stayed with me #besties
But not all is lost. Emperor Charles - yes, me - executed a bold and genius plan against the Ottomans. Overstretched in Vienna, I went on and hit out his unprotected rear lines. Buda and Belgrade were besieged and were captured. The Ottomans are stuck in Vienna! A bold battle then was fought and the cut-off forces - including the Sultan himself - were defeated. Everyone was impressed. Even Francis and Henry were wowed by me.
Charles, you are a genius.
Round 3 & 4: of courseā¦ former cousin-in-law, Henry, declared war against me and captured Flanders off of me. He only used me so he can focused on the Scots, smash them, while I keep the French busy, and then he turn against me. What about Francis!? But no, he attacked poor me. Well, sucks to be him. He still doesnāt have a son.
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Our group ended the game after Round 4 due to time constraints. A lot of time was wasted on rules reading, despite watching how-to-plays. The game is on the complicated side with many small rules and exceptions that you can expect from a historical wargame like this.
If I can describe Root I Stand - sorry I mean, Here I Stand is that the asymmetry is very strong that everyone has their own game. The Protestants and the Papacy are stuck in their theological battles. But the Papacy was also preoccupied on controlling Italy. The Protestants are slow burn until they formed the Protestant League and flip as many German states to their cause.
Most of the powers get points from controlling key cities, but they all have their own way of scoring.
The Habsburg were pretty much on damage control, but I did the wrong move of being aggressive to France. In hindsight, I would be much more defensive, focus on the New World, and try to fend off the Protestants, the Ottomans, and the French, and maybe the English. The last one wouldnāt have gone to fight me if I wasnāt dominating the early game so significantly.
The English score points by either having a son, and/or have 1 VP per 2 home spaces that are Protestant. The Ottomans score additionally for piracy.
The game is incredibly rich in theme, and I serously had a great time. But I am not impressed on how complicated it is. Someone must know the rulebook by heart (okay. maybe like 90%) Successors, which I played recently, or Root are a much more straight forward titles (unsurprisingly, Cole Werhle really enjoys this game). I am much more keen on playing this game for 9 rounds so we can all see how the arc of our strategies and the arc of history as well, will looks like in 9 rounds. But our fastest round seems to clock at nearly an hour.
With the group that I have, I will enjoy this, but will end up unfulfilled as we couldnāt finish the game again. Despite that, I thought it was a positive experience. In fact, I had a better time with this than with High Frontier 4 All - another game that strives to be simulationist with such a complicated rules framework.
13 Likes
Transmissions , first play. This is a new KS game, bought by my friend. You control four robots as they move around the board, and each location allows you to do an action, like picking up resources, cards, pipes, and ideas. Ideas are cool, they slot into your player board for a robot, and then you have an extra ability when you use that robot. Which is pretty cool. We had a pretty good time with it, the robots are adorable.
Orleans , havenāt played this for a while. I have the expansion (Invasion) that allows you to play it as co-op, so I thought weād play the base game to get into the idea. I amā¦just so bad at this game. I actually managed to completely screw myself in about the third turn, I placed a meeple on a location, but to finish it off I need another coloured meeple, which I had already put somewhere else. I thought you could move meeples from locations, but couldnāt see it in the rules. My group allowed me to change them, otherwise my game was done.
Cryptid , weāre getting the hang of this game now. We went over how to fill out the deduction sheet for another player, who wasnāt quite getting it. And she won, so I think sheās ok with it now. Probably not going to be her favourite game still.
Break the Code , great game of this! Not only did I win (an unusual circumstance) but I managed to completely stuff up another player. I asked a question about a number that I had both the tiles for, and this made that other player think that I had at least of them. His look when he worked it out was priceless. We got a little bit stuck on one question, the position of your consecutive numbers. My numbers were 2,3,3,4, and I wasnāt sure how to answer. I ended up saying a,b and c,d, which is different than saying a,b,c,d.
Bravo! , we continue to be schooled by the same player, who doubles our score.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg , still a fun game of drawing chips.
4 Likes
By meeple in this instance, I am assuming you mean the tokens. As part of the drawing phase, in the place of drawing a token from the bag, you can pull one back from your board to the market spaces, and this can be done multiple times if you wish. Prevents just the circumstance you were describing.
3 Likes
I have the upgrade kit, so theyāre meeples
Yeah, I thought you could pull back, just couldnt find it in the rules - didnt want to hold the game up
2 Likes
We met up with @mistercrayon yesterday afternoon to tackle The Gallerist. This was my first competitive Lacerda game.
The theme and production of the game are great. Itās kind of a worker placement, but you only have one worker and can kick someone out of the space you want. The ākicked outā actions are cool, but with 3 newbies made the turn flow really confusing.
With the set up, teach and tear down I think we were going for a good 3 hours. Itās really good, lots of interlocking mechanisms and really trying to strive for efficiency, however I donāt think itās for me.
We had planned a double bill with Ra, but we ran out of time.
Iād definitely play it again if it happened soon enough to not have to learn it again, but there are so many other games!
6 Likes
Ha thanks for having me @Captbnut
I kind of erā¦appreciated it. I think though it needs a play or two to really settle everything down in the head for me. There were actions - eg buy a painting- which required something like 7 steps to complete and they required a grasp of the state in about 2-3 places on the boards. Iām not sure itās really possible to enjoy or flex in a game like this until you can internalise a couple of moves ahead but when one grapples with the implications of a single move i think itās really tricky to do anything more than play reactively and Iām not sure thatās a good fit for this.
Iām not convinced my teach helped! I think if I was to teach it again I might just start the game and explain each bit as a person wants to do that bit. I think it might be possible to do this because technically the game is quite smooth and intuitive on a macro level (you want to do things like buy and sell paintings, you want to ādiscoverā an artist to get a cheap painting and then you want to promote them to increase their values etc.)
6 Likes
Went over to my friendās place to try out his new Crokinole board last night and played some other stuff as well.
Crokinole - It was a lot of fun! I managed some good shots, but I think that was more luck than intention. Much like snooker/pool and other similar games, I canāt see myself getting better than āit goes in the right directionā.
Fort - A close game. I think I might have won it if I hadnāt lost my only āadd to lookoutā card near the start and been unable to get another one until much later.
Oriflamme - Definitely becoming one of my preferred filler games. Itās incredibly quick b but still has plenty to think about.
7 Likes
I think the teach was good; there were so many moving parts in the game that covering every situation was really difficult. We werenāt looking at the rule book all the time.
2 Likes
Introduced my parents to Wingspan (along with the expansions) yesterday while they were visiting. My Dad thought it was okay, but said he would prefer more player interaction. Theyāve started going to board game nights at their church recently, so they spent a lot more time than usual perusing our collection for inspiration.
12 Likes
Got some games played today.
First game to actually get played was German Railways. Also a first play if this one for me and it was a promising experience. First blush is to be impressed at the auctions. They remind me of the auctions in Indonesia where the board state and shares each person has obscures the value. Also the idea of positioning being useful further messes with the value as itās not just calculable based on revenue. I hope this is a long lasting game and not diminishing returns quickly.
Due to time limits we followed it up with light games. First up was The Legend of the Cherry Tree that Blossoms Every Ten Years. Silly push your luck that is nice and fast. Iāll score it 5 Blossoms without busting.
Lastly we played Heul Doch Mau Mau, itās ok. Iām slightly tempted to flick it as I think in the same space itās just not as good as 6 Nimmt!
Edit: First game we played was Trick
Of the Rails. It was excellent. I made a big cock up counting wrong and missing a card in the discards so ended up dead last. Regardless it was really fun. Up there amongst my favourite trick takers
5 Likes
My OH surprise me yesterday after dinner when she proposed, of all things, to play a board game (!!)
We went to a favourite of hers, of course, Splendor. This time, she really got a good run for her money. The first game she managed to get away ude to luck of the draw ( a few cards that turned up on her turn very conveniently gave her the edge). The second one, I managed to keep her off the green emeralds, and that proved key as we went to the last turn with both on 14 points, and I could score a 3 while she only could score a 1 due to that.
After that tense game, we left it there (she thinks I am improving and this is turning into our sort of Chess Championship) on a nice draw
5 Likes
A buddy expressed some interest in learning how to play Battletech. And despite owningā¦ well, a few robotsā¦
(Pictured is 1 of every Battletech mechs released to non-Kickstarter backers except for a few I have 2 or 3 or 4 of, plus countless mixed armour, aircraft, and aerospace fighters)
ā¦ I have never actually played a gameā¦ well, Iāve played two Alpha Strike games online, but I concluded that Iām not actually crazy about Alpha Strike (itās good, but needs a lot of homebrewing to make it good enough for me to be excited about). And Eric wanted to learn āproperā Battletech, starting with the Battletech Beginner Box.
So we did!
Ericās (extremely well painted red) Griffin faced off against my (acceptably painted blue) Wolverine. The Griffin is equipped with a punishing long range 1-2 punch in its PPC and LRM10 (āParticle Projection Cannonā and āLong Range Missileā), while the Wolverine really needs to close to short range to pound away with its more modest Medium Laser, SRM6 (āShort Range Missilesā), and AC5 (āAutocannonā).
Eric managed to get a few lucky hits, taking out my Wolverineās SRM6 (which accounts for over 50% of its damage output), and eventually managed to take me out.
The first game only taking about an hour, we decided to try 2 mechs per side, adding a Thunderbolt to each player. Eric got the Thunderbolt 5S, and I took a Thunderbolt 5SE (using a Crusader model because it turns out I donāt have 2 Thunderbolts). Theyāre almost identical, except Ericās has Jumpjets and mine does not but instead has an SRM2, 2 Machineguns, and an LRM15 instead of an LRM10.
The Machineguns, hilariously, have 200 turns worth of ammunition. Ridiculous. Anyway.
We also took 1 pilot each: Eric got an ace Griffin pilot who was Skill 2 (twice as good as a normal pilot) AND was -2 to hit with its PPC (so if the PPC usually hit on a 7+, he would hit on a 5+ā¦ really, really dang good. A lot of the game he was automatically hitting targets). I, on the other hand, got a Thunderbolt pilot who has a skill called āSniperā where he halves the penalty for hitting at medium and long rangeā¦ not as strictly good as the Griffin pilot, but since he was in a Thunderbolt with 8 guns rather than a Griffin with only 2ā¦
Eric kept his Griffin in the back, sniping away with its long range weaponry, while he rushed his Thunderbolt forward in āOperation Bullet-Spongeā. I managed to take out the Thunderbolt by surrounding it, by that time my own Thunderbolt had taken a remarkably high amount of damageā¦ I managed to rake his Griffin with both my mechs for a turn or two, but then the Griffin pilot landed a few deep blows on my Thunderbolt and downed it. Left only with our medium mechs, the game turned into a brawl, the two pilots trading blows (Ericās PPC literally couldnāt miss, hitting on 2+ on 2d6, and he again managed to take out my SRM pretty quickly).
The final turn saw both of us with 1 point remaining in our center hullā¦ Ericās PPC hit, but only struck my right legā¦ but then his LRM hammered my Wolverine down with itās final salvoā¦ in response, my Wolverineās medium laser missed, but then the AC5 managed to blast through his core, ending the game in a tie.
Can I just say itās a relief that I actually like this game? Because gosh have I spent a lot of money and time on little robotsā¦ Iām enjoying it so far. Itās definitely more beer-and-pretzel than Infinity, but thatās okay! Eric wants to try the next size box next (āA Game of Armoured Combatā), so weāre going to try running a lance each (4 mechs), and maybe introducing a scenarioā¦ slugging matches are nice and all, but I find scenario gameplay is usually stronger.
12 Likes
Particularly given that with their short range and low damage they hardly ever actually help. (Later rules gave them bonuses against infantry, because otherwise you were effectively just paying in capability to carry something that could blow up and kill you.)
My experience is that lance-on-lance is about as big as this game should go to keep reasonable play times. (Thereās some O(nĀ²) complexity in unit movement decisions.)
3 Likes
I have been told Piranhas are actually good Machinegun boatsā¦ theyāre light, fast, and carry 10 of the little things, which means statistically theyāre going to get a critical hit at least once or twice before they explode.
Fireflies (I think those are the ones with the batteries of Small Lasers) are more my speed, but I like the concept of hosing down enemy mechs with Machineguns. One of my favourite things in the original Mechwarrior Mercenaries (Blazing Aces forever!) was the two little MGs on the Battlemaster: Alpha your target with the full payload would result in your mech almost overheating, so you could just continue to bullet-hose them with the MGs until you cooled enough for another alpha!
1 Like
If you want to reach out beyond point blank, Medium Lasers are your friend.
https://tekeli.li/battletech/weapeff.html
2 Likes
Weāve been playing barenpark on boardgamearena. That game takes a few goes but seemingly gets into tight as a drum no room for manouver efficiency.
3 Likes