What game is hitting your table?

[R Newell]

More Mage Knight.  It's come to the point that the wife asking "Want to play a game?" is in fact a command that I must sit at the table because we're about to play Mage Knight.  We're very different game players in that way: I like a lot of variety and she sees no reason to try anything else once she's found a favourite.  But me complaining (tongue in cheek or not) about having a wife who always wants to play Mage Knight is stupid.  It's an awesome game that should be played frequently. 

Last night was a great seesaw competitive game in which we were both kicking butt all over the map of... whatever the hell fantasy realm Mage Knight takes place in.  She snatched victory from me with the game's final and seemingly impossible action very soon after I'd built up what I thought was an insurmountable lead.  She's consistently beating me now after many months of me showing her what's what in... whatever the hell fantasy realm Mage Knight takes place in, which I think is fuelling this recent obsession to play it.

[Cordawg]

This weekend at bgg con I played tons of games but here is my top 3 the weekend I also played cards against hummanity and the game show was great 
1) pathfinder the card game love it it's such a awesome game it's like a campaign in over 2 hours ya  all ur doing is rolling Dice and adding your stats but hey that's wat real rpg kinda is and it doesn't help when playing with the designer
2) eldriitch horror like arkham horror but way better and plus it takes1/8 of the time  a for sure game to get if like the arkham theme
3) nations  I really like this game from asmodee game sits like through the ages buts anymore stream lined only thing I don't like  about this game if u lose a war and u have high social I forget the term u lose nothing but it's a awesome game none of less
I really enjoyed myself this weekend next year is the 10th anniversary of bgg con I hope u can make it I will b coming back I hope

[Jolo]

2 games of Eldritch Horror this weekend, strongly thematic game in the Arkham Horror mould. Gameplay is simpler with a game clock (Doom table). I like it, 4 tentacles up!

[Bix Conners]

Time to post another batch of board game plays...

Bora Bora x1 @Home
Another home run by Stefan Feld. A lot of decisions in this game. Another example of how Feld makes very innovative use of dice. This game was the straw on the camel's back that convinced me I need to track down the rest of Feld's designs and add them to my collection. I think I am a fan boy.

Shogun x1 @Home
Got another play of this in. It is great to get a game to the table a couple times in a row. It means you are not struggling to remember the mechanics and can immerse yourself in the gameplay. This is a solid design and is worthy of any praise it gets.

Clash of Cultures x1 @Home
This was my first play of this game. I really enjoyed it. I have discovered that I quite enjoy boardgames with a civilization building element involving Tech Trees. I would be most interested in playing this again. At some point, I will likely add a Civ game to my collection. Just not sure if it will be this one or Sid Meier's Civilization. Would like to play them both again.

Troyes x1 @ ChewsDay Challenge
Finally got a four player game of this to the table. This has sticking power and will be climbing the charts with me. Plays well with 2 and plays well with 4. Bonus is that Kathy really enjoys it as well.

Timeline x 1 @ ChewsDay Challenge
A fun fast filler game that is great for non-gamers. I think I will always keep this in the bag for family gatherings.

Las Vegas x1 @ ChewsDay Challenge
Another fast fun filler that is popular with non gamers. This one has some sticking power and will always be in the gaming travel bag.

Thurn & Taxis x1 @ ChewsDay Challenge
This is a pretty solid gateway game. I rate it up there with Carcassonne & Ticket to Ride for ease of learning and depth of gameplay. Good one to get to the table periodically.

Creationary x1 @ ChewsDay Challenge
If Lego and Pictionary had a love child, this would be it. You have to build things out of lego and have others guess what you are building. Did I mention LEGO!!!

Friedrich x 1 @ Home
Wow. I played this on Wednesday night and I am still thinking about the game. This is a very brilliant design and has the potential to be a top ten game for me, easily. I am thinking about trying to schedule another game very soon. I would like to introduce Kathy to this and I really hopes she likes it. It is a long and epic game that would go very well with a pot of tea and a Sunday afternoon.

Castles of Burgundy x1 @ Home
Do not need to repeat what I have repeatedly said before, this is a great game.

Tigris & Euphrates x1 @ Home
I had my first play of this last week. At the start of the game I was quiet underwhelmed by the game, then around the midpoint of the game I started to see patterns of play emerge and I gained a new found respect for the game.

Dice Town x1 @ Home
This is a fun gateway game. Not sure why it does not hit the table more. Perhaps by thinning out my game collection, titles like this can see more attention.

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (second edition) x1 @ Home
The components are beautiful; counters and maps. The game play is simple and elegant, the historical notes and background information is very interesting. I am glad to finally get this on the table. Colin quite enjoyed it so I think there will be an opportunity to dig into some of the deeper scenarios. This is much more accessible than Squad Leader and delivers the goods for small scale WWII battles.

Poker x1 @ Home
Played the eight and final game of the 2013 BSOP (Bixbys Series of Poker). My highlight was slow playing quad 7's and getting another player to push all in on that hand. Fun times. Unfortunately, I could not hold on to my chip lead, and was eliminated on the bubble (4th spot). Another successful year of running the poker league. 7 years into the league and still loving the game. Sure helps that we have an amazing group of friends that play. Makes the games very enjoyable.

[R Newell]

Yesterday I received Freedom: The Underground Railroad (my first and so far only crowd funding contribution) and gave it a solo try last night.  It's a cooperative game that accommodates 1-4 in which players must balance raising funds and political support for the abolitionist movement while helping escaped slaves make their way north to Canada.  Suprisingly easy to learn and surprisingly quick to play.

The closest comparable is Pandemic, though in that game you're trying to remove static cubes from a map and in Freedom you're essentially trying to spread out movable cubes on a map until you can move some right off the map (into Canada).

Freedom beats Pandemic in the theme department.  There's a deck of event/action cards that will either help or harm your efforts and they add a lot of historical specificity.  While you won't understand communicable diseases any more after playing Pandemic, you should have a better understanding of the abolitionist movement after playing Freedom (especially if you have a general ignorance of history like me).

But my initial impression is that Pandemic beats Freedom in terms of developing tension.  The Infection deck in Pandemic does a great job of creating a feeling of impending catastrophe that can erupt any time.  Freedom has less randomness, which makes it more calculable, so the game's final moments felt a bit predictable even though I just barely lost.

Overall, seems like a very good, light (mechanically, not thematically) historical game that fans of co-op puzzles should like.  I'll bring it to Boston Pizza sometime.

[R Newell]

My friend's wife went out of town on Friday for the weekend.  Time for games.

We spent the day Friday blowing the dust off an old favourite of ours: War of the Ring.  Hadn`t played it in five years.  Hot damn is it still an amazing game.  I played as the Shadow Forces and he played as the Free Peoples.  We tried it with the expansion for the first time and saw appearances by the Ents, Galadriel, and the Hillsmen of Dunland.  I really liked the additions because I think it tamed the importance of Orthanc / Saurumon.  I was heavily focused on military assaults, so he answered in kind by separating the Fellowship and using Muster dice to convince Rohan, Gondor, and the Elves that it was time for war (the Northerners and Dwarves were rarely involved).  There were basically no forces in the southwestern or western sides of the map by the time we were done.  The lands were laid to waste and covered with the blood of man and Uruk-hai alike.  And that was almost enough distraction for the Ringbearers.  Pippin guided them into Mordor (how'd that dummy know the way?) but quickly had to sacrifice himself to protect Sam and Frodo from the circling Nazgul.  The Ringbearers almost made it to the Crack of Doom, with Golem now the guide, but Frodo had to use the ring one too many times and succumbed to its corruption.  Epic stuff, as always.

Then the wife came home from work and the three of us played a couple scenarios of Firefly.  Both were fun games with some great thematic moments.  Our friend won game 1 and the wife won game 2.

Then the wife wanted to play Mage Knight, as always, but I managed to convince her that 11:30 was pretty late to begin a game of that.  So instead she went to bed to watch American Horror Story and us other two played a bizarre game of Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit.  This is very much a lighter game in the same vein as War of the Ring, but based on the craptacular The Phantom Menace.  I played as the Jedi / Gungans / Palace Guards / Anakin while he played as the Trade Federation / Sith.  After about an hour and a half, it was fairly obvious that I was on the verge of winning, but the game still lasted an astounding three hours.  It became a war of attrition.  All my Gungans were dead, Obi Wan and Darth Maul were dead, Qui Gon was half dead, almost all of the droids were dead, almost all of the palace guards were dead... but the game just kept going and going and going because Anakin "now this is podracing" Skywalker is a useless tit.  But it was still a lot of fun, just more farcical than tense.

Then yesterday the three of us, at the wife's suggestion, blew the dust off another old favourite: Twilight Imperium III.  We played as the three factions that came with the Shards of the Throne expansion from a few years ago: me as the spreading brain slugs, our friend as the wormhole hopping ghosts from another dimension, and the wife as the technology absorbing robots.  (Unlike Eclipse, TI3 has actual differentiation between factions, which I appreciate).  One addition in that expansion I love are the Flagships -- huge, heavily armed ships that are unique to each faction.  Mine was a traveling space dock that could produce units, our friend's was a moving wormhole that could drag in fleets of ships from his home dimension, and my wife's was a mobile bomb that, if destroyed, would also destroy every other ship in the system.  I ended up with a crushing victory with final scores of 6-3-1, mainly because I focused more on earning victory points than building a fleet or attacking.  I was actually not too many turns away from being wiped out when the end was triggered.  That's my one complaint about TI3: the ways to earn VP don't always mesh with what you feel like you should be doing, so they come off as overly gamey in what is otherwise a pretty thematic space opera.  But extremely fun, as always.  I wish it hit my table more often.

[R Newell]

Here's a recap of the games I played at the inaugural and very packed Prairie Games Expo (PGX) in Regina.  Thanks to Chad and Dana from Comic Readers for this great event, as well as all the other people who helped make it happen.

I believe Jon Enns and I christened the event by breaking out the first game.  We played Fjords, a 2-player game that has two stages: the first being drawing and laying landscape tiles to build a map, very much in the same vein as Carcassonne (but with hexes instead of squares), during which players also strategically position their 4 farms, and, once the map is finished and farms are placed, there is a second phase, very much in the same vein as Go or Through the Desert, in which players take turns claiming fields in chains, starting from those initial farms, and trying to block off your opponents chains.  It's a very neat fusion that combines two classic game styles, though sometimes turns can feel a bit automated because there may only be one legal option (or one obviously best option).  Jon and I only played 1 round instead of 3 because I had to set up my next game.

Next I ran a 4-player game of Nexus Ops, which, more than any other game I've played, encourages players to attack, attack, attack.  Lots of dice were rolled, many Fungoids were slaughtered, and in the end I achieved my first ever Nexus Ops victory.  (Actually, it's the first time I haven't finished in a distant last place.)

Next up was a 4-player game of Lords of Scotland, which I'd played once before at a Chewsday Challenge event and was thoroughly impressed by.  I've come to appreciate card games that can be explained in a few minutes but are full of agonizing decisions.  LoS is probably best in class in that category.  I've played one other game (Court of the Medici) by the designer, Richard James, and it's equally brilliant.  For some reason, though, both games have fairly mediocre ratings at boardgamegeek.  I don't get it.  He'd be up there with the most underappreciated designers.

Then I finished my time at PGX with a 3-player game of Call to Glory, another card game that can be explained in a minute or two.  Its decisions aren't nearly as difficult to make as Lords of Scotland's, but it's a fun, light set collection card game with some neat twists.  It's one I'd definitely like to play on occasion.

All that fun and I was only there for 4 hours.  I'm jealous of all the gaming those lucky people who are there for the full 12 hours are going to enjoy.  Already looking forward to the next PGX.

[Bix Conners]

Here area  couple of recent plays:

Tammany Hall
Five of us all played our first game of Tammany Hall a week or so ago. I like the concept of the game and it has lots of player interaction. The early game was relatively gentle, but as the years rolled by, the game got more vicious. I really felt like I was doing poorly, but ended up with a surprise victory at the end. With our concentration on the points leader(s) in the mid-game, it made it so I was able to sneak in from behind. I doubt the group will allow that to happen again. I cannot say I even saw it myself. The game is light on rules and heavy on strategy. A perfect combo. It will see repeated plays at my game table.

Eclipse
Last night I played a three player game of eclipse. We have almost all of the promos and expansions. I played Eridani, and the other two players were Planta and Orion Hegemony. I was worried about the Orion player at the start of the game and was keeping a cautious eye in his direction. In the meantime, the Planta expanded quickly and got a strong resource engine going. My own resource engine was coming a long, but not fast enough. Unfortunately, the Orion player got boxed in behind a bunch of bad tile draws with kickin' ancients on them. My plan was to build tiles to prevent Orion from getting me and having them attack the Planta. That never happened and by the time the two of them clashed, the Planta had a very strong force to be reckoned with. Orion was almost obliterated. We conceded the game to Planta at Turn 6. I really like this game and want to play more this year. My concern is that with fewer than four players, it may be best to play symmetrical races, (Terran or Magellan). With 2-3 players, the racial powers combines with tile draws can create an imbalance. Not sure how others feel about this. Not to take anything away from Planta, they played a very strong game. Looking back at last night's game, Orion and I should have made a move earlier, but hindsight offers more clarity than was evident at the time. Look to see more entries about this game in 2014. PS. The Ship Pack #1 sculpts are awesome!!!

[scuudz]

Sadly, I haven't been able to get many gaming sessions done at home lately.  However, the last few times, Twilight Struggle has hit the table.  Probably played it about 20 times in the last year alone.  Great game, but getting slightly burnt out now.  Time to play something different for a while!

[prairieguy]

Pizza Box Football This game was released in 2005 and if you are a fan of football board games it is a lot of fun. I have played with the solitaire rules several times and over half of those games went into overtime, they have the dice mechanics extremely well done.
Played on Wednesday with 3 buddies at the Artful Dodger [we each took either O or D for our team] and we had a great time, game was close and there was lots of taunting each other!
The most recent teams you can get are for the 2007 NFL season, so that kind of sucks, but there are generic cards as well and I have the expansion which adds some much needed complexity to the play calling.
Actionmat Football Didn't play this one but it is the newest in my football game collection, looks like a good beer drinking game as it combines strategy with finger-flicking a plastic football, can't wait to try it out as the playmat is 60" x 32" !!!!!
Cards Against Humanity Followed up football with a rousing and raunchy game with the first expansion - first time for my 3 friends - was the hit of the night, tons of laughs and disgusted sounds.