Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
#1302

Did the first two scenarios of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. It’s great.

If it’s aiming to appeal to as many people as possible, the starting scenarios are excellent: the first one is basically just trying out the action cards without too much other fuss, and the second brings in more of the mechanics. Very easy to follow, especially as the box is so full it’d be totally intimidating to non-gamers.

The choice between the upper/lower actions is entertaining right away, the book map (and especially the “black / white / gold” bars to tell you if a monster is placed there or not) couldn’t be simpler. I think they’ve succeeded in making it mass marketable.

Now I’ve just got to see if I like it this much when I’ve finished all the scenarios, and whether that makes me spend on Big GH…

4 Likes
#1303

I’m currently hanging on to The Fox In The Forest Duet just because it’s small, pretty, and a very unusual style of game. Sadly it was a bit of a dud on our table, though. Duet has a nice enough puzzle, but we just didn’t find it much fun – even I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for it, so I wasn’t surprised that my less-gamesy other half wasn’t enthralled.

The original, competitive, The Fox In The Forest (which is a very different game) fared much better.

(I’ve since picked up The Crew: TQFP9 and am pinning my co-op trick-taking hopes on that. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I feel that I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, so I’m optimistic.)

I’ve also gotten more mileage than I expected from the two-player mode of The Hobbit Card Game (another trick-taking game). It’s an asymmetric game, and BGG doesn’t really like it at all, and reckons it’s best with the maximum five players; but for whatever reasons it was a (relative) hit – any game that gets requested is good by me : )

(Edit: To be clear, I think THCG is a pretty neat little game which deserves a better average rating – and as the things people seem to dislike most are the player elimination and the Thorin ability, it’s worth pointing out that with two players neither of those things are an issue. You do still play with Thorin, but the random allocations only kick in if Bilbo is killed (which isn’t so easy to do); so it’s more like you have an unreliable backup waiting in the wings, which I think is a system that more people could get on board with.)

5 Likes
#1304

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion , scenario 4. We got our “real” cards for the start of this, replacing the tutorial cards. Went ok, one of us nearly died. Still takes ages to play, one of my gripes about the original. I’d probably rather play 2 other games instead of a single game of this. I still enjoy playing with my friends, and they bought it, so we have to play it.

Ghost Stories , did a bit better this week. Still lost, but we were defeating ghosts fairly well. We all died on the same turn, boards were full and we all were down to our last health. Still happy with the improvement from last week. Unfortunately I made a huge rules blunder, I didn’t think you could move diagonally, which obviously made it much harder for us. My group was not happy with me…hopefully I haven’t been making that mistake all the time, really cant remember.

Search for Planet X , not a great game for me. Didnt find the planet, was taking me ages to even identify the basic objects (asteroids and comets).

The Crew

Dogs of War , one of my favourite games, doesn’t get talked about much. We might have played it a bit late in the day/night too, harder to concentrate. And I made my second major rules blunder of the day. I thought you could take any colour shields you wanted – but you have take the shields for the house you are supporting. Which makes a lot more sense.

Sunday, we played:

Search for Planet X , my first win, wooooo. Ok, against first time players…still taking it.

Babylonia

6 Likes
#1305

Scenarios 5&6 of GH:JOTL

Still really enjoying this. I reckon setup and tear down included we’re under the 2 hour mark. We’re beginning to understand our characters now and what each other can do which makes the combinations of moves more interesting.

Co-ops are always tricky with difficulty, especially when adjustable. We’ve not played the full game. These scenarios need thought, but apart from number 4 we’re getting through quite comfortably. The instructions are pretty clear that you shouldn’t ramp it up too early but I think I’d like a bigger challenge soon. Having said that the kids are really getting into it and I worry they’ll lose interest if we get hammered.

3 Likes
#1306

I recently played my first 2-handed Castles of Burgundy after playing the app a bunch of times. I finally grokked how the trade goods work. The app doesn’t do well on teaching this. As posted elsewhere I immediately went and built myself a foamcore insert to improve setup time for the game.

Played my 2nd solo of A Feast for Odin, scoring much better with 85 points this time. Still learning. Today I found out that I do not have to use actions and resources to get ships, I can use my money to buy them!

It’s all solos with me lately. My partner offered to play any game I wanted (within reason, so Odin was out of the consideration) yesterday, but I was just too tired. Instead, this morning we played a round of Junk Art. He didn’t want to. His only experience with such games is Jenga. We played 3 cities two of which I won and then came the third where we had to build on the same base and give each other pieces… and when I finally dropped 3 pieces because it was just impossible to place the piece he had given me… he was laughing so hard. So we’re agreed, it can stay in the collection :slight_smile:

6 Likes
#1307

Since everyone’s talking about JotL: just did scenario 3. There’s a BIG increase in difficulty (I very nearly ran out of action cards despite leaving loads of loot behind to run as fast as I could, and one of the two characters went to 0 health). Very impressed with the way the mechanics are introduced a few at a time, and the decks are slowly levelled up.

As Bort said though, the play time is surprisingly long. But then, I suppose this is the cheaper version for you to find out if you can put up with that in the bigger box.

5 Likes
#1308

Because this week was a bust for the regular gaming sessions, we did an off-book session tonight, down one person. So…we tried out the super fancy, heavily scripted Mage Knight tabletop sim mod. Because hey, surely automating a ton of tracking and setup would make it not take many many hours…yeah, we’ve not finished the first round and spent nearly 2h30 playing. But, in fairness, two players (myself and my friend Ed) hadn’t played in, gosh, years. And my girlfriend Maddy never has at all. So we’re learning. It’s very slick, though. Menus, smart cleanup when you end your turn, automated score tracking and marker movement, autoflipping reference cards and hexes, detecting the type of space you’re on and reminding you to do stuff that you need to pick manually or just automatically giving it to you if it can do it with scripting. Etc.

The game itself…well, we’re having fun (playing Volkare’s Return, in coop), but the layout’s not been great for us and both I and Ed had a choice between taking a ton of wounds (Brutal enemies) and actually defeating the enemy and claiming the dungeon/tomb, or blocking successfully and being unable to defeat the enemy and wasting that turn as well as a bunch of combat cards. Naturally, we chose to take the wounds. But man, would it have been nice to have some weaker stuff to fight first. The only rampaging orc was a summoner that summoned dungeon enemies for its attack, so, not exactly optimal. But hey, learning game.

2 Likes
#1309

I think about 3-4 hours is what I would budget for a full coop game on Vassal. Two and half hours for the first, shortest, round would be tough to sit through.

1 Like
#1310

I mean my last, RL three player coop game took on the order of 8 hours. With interface teething pains and trying to remember wtf the game even involves doing (plus of course our third having zero experience with it), I’ll be happy to come in at that or under. Most of our TTS games seem to run a bit longer than they would IRL because of interface struggles and similar. This, with all the scripting, should hopefully end up shorter. Like, I think easily 40 minutes to an hour of that time was teaching/looking up rules, figuring out how the scripting was implemented, and trying to have any sort of plan for going into the first turn. And I think we’re just about done with the round, too.

1 Like
#1311

I forgot a game we played last weekend: Spicy, which I heard about from a SUSD podcast

It’s an easy enough game to play - you play a card with a higher number in the same suit as the previously played card. But you can lie of course, cards are played face down. You can challenge the top card played. Its fun enough I guess. But when you play your last card, people are going to challenge it, because if they don’t challenge, that player will get one of the three trophy cards. Get 2 trophy cards, and you instantly win. So, it seems that you have to be lucky enough to have a valid card to play as your last card.

2 Likes
#1312

Played games with LLV and others yesterday. Started with 18Chesapeake where I got all experimental and finished dead last. It’s got me excited to play again. I have more things to try out next time. Mr Verde took the win with some fast paced play and leaping on some errors at the table. I played quite long range and the game Was just a little too short for what I was doing to stand a chance of coming off. Maybe my poor play made that guaranteed, maybe the game will never work with what I was trying. Only more games will tell. Such hardship :grimacing:

In a fit of expecting conditions preventing gaming to apply soon and much enjoyment around the table we leapt in to a game ofChicago Express. I had soooo much fun. It’s so ruthless, everyone’s at the mercy of the table, dick moved are 9/10 times the best move and yet it still feels like a party game for heavy gamers. I enjoyed the trash talk and cursing almost as much as the game itself. Hysterical!! I’ll get the pacing down one day…

4 Likes
#1313

Im (not) sorry for the faster pace of the game. I wanted to rust everyone’s trains :joy:

I love 18Ches. I definitely want to dive more into 1889.

That is a very apt way to describe Chicago Express.

1 Like
#1314

Ches Month continues?!

5 Likes
#1315

It cannot be stop. By 2075, Cyborg-Quinns finally reviews Catan for Chess Month.

4 Likes
#1316

You just gave me flashbacks to the boys going into actual shops and asking to trade goods. Does anyone know/remember which episode those were?

1 Like
#1317

@Phil - I think that was Paul going into Starlit Citadel, but cannot remember the exact game

@bort - I think that is where Passing comes into play. If you know you have no chance of not being called on your play, Passing is the best option. Otherwise, if you do have a chance to win, your opponents have to guess which thing you are lying about, the number or the spice, which gives you a 50/50 shot.

OT - Last night I played Marvel Champions, not using one of the pre-constucted decks for the first time. Although with just a core set, that is not saying much. I made an Iron Man deck using the Leadership aspect and ran it through the intro Rhino villain scenario and won pretty easily.

Iron Man takes a bit of time to ramp up, but once most of his tech cards are out, he’s pretty unstoppable, at least in this beginning scenario. He gets a ton of HP with his tech, so he can shrug off a lot of attacks. I did almost lose to an encounter card that let Rhino scheme, right after he already had, so another unlucky card draw for the Boost would have ended the game, but it didn’t happen.

I never used Iron Man’s default Attack either, just his Thwart. All damage to Rhino and minions came from Allies, Tech abilities, and direct damage cards, which is a change of pace from how I played Spider-Man and Captain Marvel. Which is nice, really, as it shows the variety of play available.

I think it is time to try out the Klaw scenario.

3 Likes
#1318

Some games with my wife this evening:

Super Big Boggle, bunch of quite close games up until our last game - she kicked my butt at that one with multiple six letter words and I believe a seven! We don’t often get sevens and only once or twice managed anything beyond. We’re pretty well matched at this one though, it’s her current favourite because of that. (She tires from completely outplaying me at Fox in the Forest!)

Bananagrams, as usually seems to happen, I was ahead for most of the game, but she strategically dumped a Z which I then drew and left me floundering while she stole the win. Very well played.

Go Cuckoo, she won our game of this also - she got quite lucky with her stick draws, though I am also terrible at this game so i’m not sure how much of the blame I can really deflect into those horrible little sticks!

4 Likes
#1319

Monday night Gamers Club session last night, with two games of medium length that I thoroughly enjoyed, despite not being great at either.
First, a three players game of Western Legends, which went rather well. I managed a few visits to the mines and some cattle to the railway, but was behind on my Legendary Points, by the time I got into double figures, the lead was nearly at 15, and scored 4 straight away, so I went after the guy that had decided to go for the Wanted just for the fun of it on my last game. Managed a second place tie.
After that, we got an addition and had a game of 4 at Village. Two of us had played it before, and with the help of the Club Chairman that was on the next table for the odd rules consultation we managed to pull through it.
I did well establishing a scroll craftsman to get into the village council early on, plus continuing with church. The four of us were at the wedding services like no tomorrow, so it was always tough to renew generations, and besides leading all the way till the very last round, running out of people in my farm did not help me at all progressing in the church on the last mass. The results on the final count up could not have been tighter with the three first on 76, 75 and 74, and me last on 71. Considering that the guy that won the first game and finished second on Village is a great adversary, I am quite happy with myself, particularly as his turn was always right before mine.

Now I am really looking forward to Saturday, we have an all day session with the club (10.00 to 22.00), and I already have booked a game of Merchants and Marauders and will take my copy of Battle for Rokugan to have its cherry taken.

4 Likes
#1320

Which just gives you more cards to get rid of. And sooner or later you’re back to the same problem: last card, have I been lucky enough to play a legit card

#1321

Yeah, but eventually, either through holding a card or lucky draw, you should get around to a card you can play with some chance of success, and it is better than getting called out correctly.