Had an awesome board game day on Saturday. 8 people came over and we played:
- Confusion (x2): This is an awesome 2-player abstract strategy game. It's basically a chess match where you have no idea how your pieces can move. You must deduce their movement abilities by attempting moves and having your opponent tell you whether they are legal or not. It has a tacked-on Cold War theme but it was a good choice of theme if any. They tie it into the victory condition. One side of the board is USA, the other USSR. Gget one of your pieces to the center of the board where a top secret briefcase lies, get that pawn to the other side of the board to win. - Puzzle Strike (x3): Put this down as an awesome deckbuilding game. First thing to note is in stead of a deck of cards you get a bag of poker chips. The chips have similar information on them to what you would expect to be on a card in a deckbuilding game. Bonus: no shuffling, just bag shaking! The game is styled after Super Puzzle Fighter, and is made by David Sirlin, who is the same guy who designed Yomi. It actually uses chibi versions of the same characters, just as Supper Puzzle Fighter used that style for the Street Fighter Characters. - Kingsburg: First time I played it. Loved it. Not sure if I like this or Alien Frontiers better. - Small World Underground: First time I played. Loved this as well (I am a Small World nut so I'd be surprised if I didn't like it). Still not sure if I like this or original Small World better, but this was a very fun change of pace. - Robo Rally: One of my favorite games and was very happy to get a 6-player round in.
Interestingly, they retired their card game Aquarius and have re-themed/relaunched it as 7 Dragons, complete with artwork by Larry Elmore. Solid move.
I have Aquarius. It's basically dominoes.
Eh that doesn't sound very exciting. Never played it myself. I've met the Looney crew, they're good people, so just glad to see a company making smart moves.
The only bad moves I ever thought they made were releasing the same game multiple times with different themes as opposed to releasing more completely new games. Nanofictionary is their best.
I like how they removed the action cards. They were always kinda bleh. Plagiarism just pissed people off. Brainstorm was the most useful. The others were lame. I don't like using pointing instead of the award cards. Pointing is definitely more streamlined and simpler. But people will vote differently with a secret ballot than without.
Has anyone here played Twilight Struggle? Although it's just a game, I found it to be more educational about the cold war than what I was taught in high school. I can't tell if I like the game just because of its cleverness in depicting the cold war, or if it really is a good game or not.
Has anyone here played Twilight Struggle? Although it's just a game, I found it to be more educational about the cold war than what I was taught in high school. I can't tell if I like the game just because of its cleverness in depicting the cold war, or if it really is a good game or not.
Has anyone here played Twilight Struggle? Although it's just a game, I found it to be more educational about the cold war than what I was taught in high school. I can't tell if I like the game just because of its cleverness in depicting the cold war, or if it really is a good game or not.
I own the deluxe edition that came out a year or two ago (fancy components and a few extra cards). It does not sit at #1 for me, as it is in the BoardGameGeek rankings, because I don't often want to sit down and play a 4-hour game that is only 2-players. However, I do still really like the game and will never get rid of my copy. The reason I would give it praise is that it has mechanics that actually make sense given the theme. All of that distribution of influence and backing of coups works great to create the Cold War feel. It's not a war game at all but scratches people's war game itch!
BTW, yes the game is a bit fiddly, but there is a PC version in the works. It may be more enjoyable there.
Lyddi and I have been playing a lot of two player Dominion recently and it works surprisingly well. We picked up Prosperity at a Border's going out of business sale and bought Cornucopia this week.
4 is the best, imo. Also a good way to be one of those people that no one pays attention to while everyone else is trying to do strategy X, you go and do strategy Y and end up winning.
I'll be receiving a few awesome games this week: - Battleship: Galaxies, which is a very odd beast. It's a Hasbro title, not WotC or Avalon Hill, but it's clearly a geek game, and is only being sold in the hobby channel at first. No big box distribution details yet. It's a full-fledged miniatures combat game in space with some awesome starship minis. It actually retains some semblance of a Battleship game because when you do get a shot off, you use the familiar coordinates grid to see if and where you hit. Compare it to some secret setup your opponent did and you'll find out how much damage it deals. - Quarriors, which is a deckbuilding (dicebuilding?) game that uses 130 dice. I'm sold already. This looks to fill the "HOLY SHIT THAT'S A LOT OF DICE" niche that Dicecapades failed at when it turned out to be a big turd of a party game. - Ikusa, a WotC/Avalon Hill revised edition of Shogun. The job they did printing up D&D: Conquest of Nerath wargame (which is a re-theming of an old war game I can't remember the name of) was so good that my faith in them is restored. Hope this one is good.
Oh, and as cool as Battleship: Galaxies looks, you may want to save your money if you're really into spaceship combat. The big news out of Gen Con is that Fantasy Flight picked up the Star Wars gaming license, dormant for 18 months now. One of their first two games will be an x-wing versus tie fighter miniatures combat game based on their Wings of War franchise's mechanics.
Played demo copies of Quarriors and Eminent Domain.
Quarriors seems cool when you look at it, and all those dice sure are sexy, but it's not really a dice-building game, even though it advertises itself as one. The two levels of randomness (drawing random dice out of your dice bag every turn and actually rolling the dice) don't let you actually build a "machine" or "engine" the way a normal deck-building game does. You don't get the feeling that your turns are building on each other because it's completely random which dice you'll end up drawing, let alone what the dice will come up as once you roll them. You can actually read my friend Jeremy's initial review of the game here and I pretty much agree with him 100%. Later on in the thread, I came up with a variant of the game that removes the dice bag and adds more strategy to the game. Since then, that's the only way I'll play it. Using the dice bag and pulling random dice every turn just makes the game too random for me.
Eminent Domain on the other hand was really cool and is basically Race for the Galaxy meets Dominion. You have various cards that performs functions (survey, colonize, research, produce/trade, and warfare) and you use and draw them from a central pool to perform your actions every turn. Eminent Domain is cool and unique in that on your turn, you play an action card from your hand, then you draw a "role" card from the central pool and perform that action. Every other player can then "agree" with your role card, and do the same thing if they have cards in their hand, or "dissent," not perform that role action and draw another card from their deck into their hand. This speeds up the game tremendously because either you're playing a lot of cards from your hand on other players' turns, leaving you with very few cards in your own hand on your turn, but it doesn't matter because you're acting on everyone elses, or, if you keep dissenting, you end up with a very large handsize that lets you do a lot on your own turn.
Dune is coming back. Fantasy Flight is re-publishing it in 2012. Same game, improved compnents and such, but it's no longer Dune-themed. They re-did it to be a game set in their Twilight Imperium universe which is about as good as anyone could do if they couldn't secure the dune license.
Dune is coming back. Fantasy Flight is re-publishing it in 2012. Same game, improved compnents and such, but it's no longer Dune-themed. They re-did it to be a game set in their Twilight Imperium universe which is about as good as anyone could do if they couldn't secure the dune license.
I know I've been waiting for this forever, I wish they could have gotten the license. However, not a big deal for me since I own a original copy of Dune.
Dune is coming back. Fantasy Flight is re-publishing it in 2012. Same game, improved compnents and such, but it's no longer Dune-themed. They re-did it to be a game set in their Twilight Imperium universe which is about as good as anyone could do if they couldn't secure the dune license.
I know I've been waiting for this forever, I wish they could have gotten the license. However, not a big deal for me since I own a original copy of Dune.
I know this is probably heresy, but while I enjoy playing the original Dune, the theme didn't really fit some of the mechanics:
Can you really see open warfare on Arrakis? Do the Trade Guild or the Bene Gesserit even have troops? The auction mechanic made very little sense The whole weirdness with the shield wall? If the Guild was involved in combat, why would they still agree to transport people who are attacking them? "Why yes, we'll drop your troops right off at our own base so you can kill us!"
I'm actually excited about the Twilight Imperium re-theme. Yes, I'd love a new version of Dune, but the game is far from perfect and could use a few tweaks here and there.
Little known fact, but the designers of Dune have said that the game was not originally made for the Dune setting. They actually changed the theme and setting of the game to accommodate the Dune universe.
Had many friends over yesterday to play tons of board games. Jeremy loves Nightfall and bought it. I played Grimoire from ZMan games. They best way I can describe this game is a combination of Greed Quest and Ascension.
As most games are, you collect victory points to win. Every character has the same grimoire/spellbook to select what spells they want to cast for that round. You do it in secret and when all the spells are revealed, then initiative for turn order is figured out. You then select items/or characters to put into your playing field. Each character has certain bonuses that helps you collect VP.
As each round continues, the types of spells to choose from increases. The game ends when a player has 10 cards of either character cards or treasure cards.
It's really easy to learn and play. I like how it has the mechanic of choosing what sort of play you will make and everyone reveals it at the same time. It can benefit you or screw you over depending upon the other spells your opponents choose. This will be brought to PAX for those who want to play. ^___^
I finally caved and bought Formula D over the weekend. It's a light, fun game with a surprising amount of strategy that plays up to 10 people. I'm really looking forward to playing it again with some of the advanced rules. All kinds of cool things on BGG for this game including an entire race season ruleset and the obligatory car combat weapons variant. Good times.
Also played two games of Rune Age, Fantasy Flight Games new deck-builder. I've been looking forward to this for a while because while it is a deck-building game, it plays differently enough from Dominion, Thunderstone, and games like that, to really stand out. I love that each player is a different race/faction with unique units and abilities and that there are common cards that everyone is competing over and faction specific cards that only you can "buy" through money, influence, or combat.
The game is also unique in that it has 4 scenarios out of the box, each giving the game a very different feel. There's a pure co-op scenario where everyone has to team up against a super strong monster, a pure competitive scenario where you have to try and kill the other players, a race to beat the dragon scenario where each playing is trying to fight a huge dragon while fending off each other, and a more traditional "solitaire" scenario where each race is trying to build a monument and the first one to complete it wins. I know FFG has a bad reputation with pumping out expansions for their games, but honestly, I can't wait for more scenarios and cards for Rune Age. I can't wait to pick up this game.
Oh, also played another game of Eminent Domain. Fans of Race for the Galaxy and Dominion should definitely check it out when it's released.
I've been thinking of adding a route type game to my collection. If you had to choose between Ticket to Ride USA, Ticket to Ride Europe or Thurn and Taxis which would you choose?
I haven't played Thurn and Taxis but I prefer Ticket to Ride Europe over USA, simply because it is a much more strategic game. That being said, Ticket to Ride USA is far and away one of the best "gateway games" you can own, so this really depends on your audience. If you've got a solid group of gamers and don't need to be doing initiations to the hobby, just go straight to Europe.
I've been thinking of adding a route type game to my collection. If you had to choose between Ticket to Ride USA, Ticket to Ride Europe or Thurn and Taxis which would you choose?
Ticket to Ride Europe has the best replay value of those. TtR USA has broken scoring and while T&T; is a very good game, optimal strategies are (too) easily discovered.
Oh, and as cool as Battleship: Galaxies looks, you may want to save your money if you're really into spaceship combat. The big news out of Gen Con is that Fantasy Flight picked up the Star Wars gaming license, dormant for 18 months now. One of their first two games will be an x-wing versus tie fighter miniatures combat game based on their Wings of War franchise's mechanics.
Son of a... this will be absolutely incredible. I love Wings of War, and I've been really, really hoping for a good Star Wars miniatures game. You made my day.
Went ahead and bought a copy of Ticket to Ride Europe. Game is a lot of fun. It took a good part of the game to get my niece (10yrs) and nephew (12yrs) to understand the concept of building their routes according to what tickets they have. It could just have been that they don't know the map of Europe at all really. They knew where Paris and London are and that was about it. They understood how to claim the tunnel and ferry routes easily enough though. But I don't think they quite understand how to use train stations just yet though. Dad pretty much got the rules of the game except he tried claiming the longest route using the train stations with the other players routes. It took some explaining that train stations only let you claim your ticket routes and that's all. I'm looking forward to playing this game with my adult friends. It's should be a blast.
Glad to hear you all had fun. I know it sounds like heresy, but sometimes when you are playing with kids it's best to take a an element or two out of the game for the first round just to get the rules down. For instance, I've heard that people have had success with getting kids as young as 5 to play a decent round of Carcassonne by first allowing them to play with no farmers and getting a decent grasp of the gameplay. Here, 10 and 12 should be old enough to handle full games at first play, but you've gotta know your audience.
Comments
- Confusion (x2): This is an awesome 2-player abstract strategy game. It's basically a chess match where you have no idea how your pieces can move. You must deduce their movement abilities by attempting moves and having your opponent tell you whether they are legal or not. It has a tacked-on Cold War theme but it was a good choice of theme if any. They tie it into the victory condition. One side of the board is USA, the other USSR. Gget one of your pieces to the center of the board where a top secret briefcase lies, get that pawn to the other side of the board to win.
- Puzzle Strike (x3): Put this down as an awesome deckbuilding game. First thing to note is in stead of a deck of cards you get a bag of poker chips. The chips have similar information on them to what you would expect to be on a card in a deckbuilding game. Bonus: no shuffling, just bag shaking! The game is styled after Super Puzzle Fighter, and is made by David Sirlin, who is the same guy who designed Yomi. It actually uses chibi versions of the same characters, just as Supper Puzzle Fighter used that style for the Street Fighter Characters.
- Kingsburg: First time I played it. Loved it. Not sure if I like this or Alien Frontiers better.
- Small World Underground: First time I played. Loved this as well (I am a Small World nut so I'd be surprised if I didn't like it). Still not sure if I like this or original Small World better, but this was a very fun change of pace.
- Robo Rally: One of my favorite games and was very happy to get a 6-player round in.
BTW, yes the game is a bit fiddly, but there is a PC version in the works. It may be more enjoyable there.
- Battleship: Galaxies, which is a very odd beast. It's a Hasbro title, not WotC or Avalon Hill, but it's clearly a geek game, and is only being sold in the hobby channel at first. No big box distribution details yet. It's a full-fledged miniatures combat game in space with some awesome starship minis. It actually retains some semblance of a Battleship game because when you do get a shot off, you use the familiar coordinates grid to see if and where you hit. Compare it to some secret setup your opponent did and you'll find out how much damage it deals.
- Quarriors, which is a deckbuilding (dicebuilding?) game that uses 130 dice. I'm sold already. This looks to fill the "HOLY SHIT THAT'S A LOT OF DICE" niche that Dicecapades failed at when it turned out to be a big turd of a party game.
- Ikusa, a WotC/Avalon Hill revised edition of Shogun. The job they did printing up D&D: Conquest of Nerath wargame (which is a re-theming of an old war game I can't remember the name of) was so good that my faith in them is restored. Hope this one is good.
Quarriors seems cool when you look at it, and all those dice sure are sexy, but it's not really a dice-building game, even though it advertises itself as one. The two levels of randomness (drawing random dice out of your dice bag every turn and actually rolling the dice) don't let you actually build a "machine" or "engine" the way a normal deck-building game does. You don't get the feeling that your turns are building on each other because it's completely random which dice you'll end up drawing, let alone what the dice will come up as once you roll them. You can actually read my friend Jeremy's initial review of the game here and I pretty much agree with him 100%. Later on in the thread, I came up with a variant of the game that removes the dice bag and adds more strategy to the game. Since then, that's the only way I'll play it. Using the dice bag and pulling random dice every turn just makes the game too random for me.
Eminent Domain on the other hand was really cool and is basically Race for the Galaxy meets Dominion. You have various cards that performs functions (survey, colonize, research, produce/trade, and warfare) and you use and draw them from a central pool to perform your actions every turn. Eminent Domain is cool and unique in that on your turn, you play an action card from your hand, then you draw a "role" card from the central pool and perform that action. Every other player can then "agree" with your role card, and do the same thing if they have cards in their hand, or "dissent," not perform that role action and draw another card from their deck into their hand. This speeds up the game tremendously because either you're playing a lot of cards from your hand on other players' turns, leaving you with very few cards in your own hand on your turn, but it doesn't matter because you're acting on everyone elses, or, if you keep dissenting, you end up with a very large handsize that lets you do a lot on your own turn.
Can you really see open warfare on Arrakis?
Do the Trade Guild or the Bene Gesserit even have troops?
The auction mechanic made very little sense
The whole weirdness with the shield wall?
If the Guild was involved in combat, why would they still agree to transport people who are attacking them? "Why yes, we'll drop your troops right off at our own base so you can kill us!"
I'm actually excited about the Twilight Imperium re-theme. Yes, I'd love a new version of Dune, but the game is far from perfect and could use a few tweaks here and there.
Little known fact, but the designers of Dune have said that the game was not originally made for the Dune setting. They actually changed the theme and setting of the game to accommodate the Dune universe.
As most games are, you collect victory points to win. Every character has the same grimoire/spellbook to select what spells they want to cast for that round. You do it in secret and when all the spells are revealed, then initiative for turn order is figured out. You then select items/or characters to put into your playing field. Each character has certain bonuses that helps you collect VP.
As each round continues, the types of spells to choose from increases. The game ends when a player has 10 cards of either character cards or treasure cards.
It's really easy to learn and play. I like how it has the mechanic of choosing what sort of play you will make and everyone reveals it at the same time. It can benefit you or screw you over depending upon the other spells your opponents choose. This will be brought to PAX for those who want to play. ^___^
Also played two games of Rune Age, Fantasy Flight Games new deck-builder. I've been looking forward to this for a while because while it is a deck-building game, it plays differently enough from Dominion, Thunderstone, and games like that, to really stand out. I love that each player is a different race/faction with unique units and abilities and that there are common cards that everyone is competing over and faction specific cards that only you can "buy" through money, influence, or combat.
The game is also unique in that it has 4 scenarios out of the box, each giving the game a very different feel. There's a pure co-op scenario where everyone has to team up against a super strong monster, a pure competitive scenario where you have to try and kill the other players, a race to beat the dragon scenario where each playing is trying to fight a huge dragon while fending off each other, and a more traditional "solitaire" scenario where each race is trying to build a monument and the first one to complete it wins. I know FFG has a bad reputation with pumping out expansions for their games, but honestly, I can't wait for more scenarios and cards for Rune Age. I can't wait to pick up this game.
Oh, also played another game of Eminent Domain. Fans of Race for the Galaxy and Dominion should definitely check it out when it's released.
My Little Pony Battletech, anyone?