What game is hitting your table?

[Bix Conners]

Been awhile since I posted here, need to fix that. And what better way than to share one of my favourite games: Merchant of Venus

I recently played two games of this, a four player game with a time limit, and a six player game with a $3500 victory condition. Both were fantastic.

4 Player Game in Progress


6 Player Game in Progress

The components are beautifully made and the game play is always varied and engaging. This game has so much re-playability with the random placement of the cultures, the random market start, and the random exploration markers. No two games are similar. When we play, we use some of the original designer's optional and variant rules:
(1) Random market start
(2) All extra ships are available for purchase
(3) We include the additional race (4C) Wraiths
(4) Mining Colonies

I have not played the fantasy flight remake of this game so I cannot comment on that version, but this version is simply superb.

[R Newell]

I hosted my annual drinking and gaming weekend with friends from back home this past weekend.  The games I took part in included:

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island: a close loss after some devastating weather and an animal attack shortly before we could get the signal fire lit.

King of Tokyo: Played twice, winning once on points.

Fury of Dracula: We hunters successfully cornered Dracula and staked him.

Epic Tiny Kingdoms: I hadn't heard of this Kickstarter title before.  Played twice.  I thought it was pretty good.  My friend works at a signage company and was able to make a pretty awesome print and play version.  I was impressed.

Room 25: Played Suspicion mode.  Us prisoners lost in hilarious fashion when we turned on each other.  Suspicion, indeed.

Citadels: I like the game but it always seems to run too long.

Cave Evil: A black metal inspired dungeon crawler.  I was hoping to love it and think I do.  Not a hugely innovative game or anything, but fun and totally embraces its theme.

Clash of Cultures: It's been a long time since I first tried this one, but it all came back pretty smoothly.  Great game.

Forbidden Desert: Neat little Pandemic-like game with pretty cool pieces.

Some of the games others played that I missed out on included Letters from Whitechapel, Blood Bowl: Team Manager, Valley of the Kings, and X-Wing.

[R Newell]

Played a few things this long weekend.

MANSIONS OF MADNESS - My wife and I played twice, each of us taking a turn as the Keeper.  The scenarios we played were Classroom Curses and 'Til Death Do Us Part.  I want to play the scenarios from the Call of the Wild expansion but I'd have to re-read the additional rules first and was too lazy.

FREEDOM: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - I played this solo three times.  Challenging game.  Came close to beating it twice, though.

MAGE KNIGHT - This was my 50th game of MK.  My wife and I played our go-to scenario (Full Conquest) and I squeaked out a narrow victory, thanks to a spell called Underground Travel that enabled me to sneak in and conquer a city that she would have attempted on her next turn.

[scuudz]

I've been playing Innovation pretty consistently every day at lunch for the last few months, mainly due to the fact that it has a great web app here: http://innovation.isotropic.org/
Always play with the Echoes and Leaders expansion.  We don't like the No Place Like Home expansion as much.

Recently completed a couple of 3-player Agricola games on iOS.  Won the first one by 2 points, and lost the second one by a point.

[dcole]

I played Settlers of Catan with some co-workers during our down time at work over the weekend.

I also purchased King of Tokyo recently and have played a few modified versions of the game with my kids.  They are 5 & 6.  To modify the game I just removed the energy cubes and cards from the game.

[Jolo]

I was at ToonCon all weekend and played... nothing!

last night at Woods Alehouse we played Roll through the Ages, Love Letter and Airships

[R Newell]

Play With Your Food!  Congratulations to all the teams for raising 25 grand!  Amazing.

But the games.  Here's what I played:

My friends (Adam and Devon) and I started the event off with back-to-back games of Robinson Crusoe. We failed at exorcising the evil at the Cursed Island, with all three of us dying at night due to cold weather.  We did snatch victory in Volcano Island, mainly because we used both Dog and Friday to boost our confidence.

Next we played in a social mixer. Sixty people were split into three simultaneous back-to-back sessions of Two Rooms and a Boom.  Not my kind of game.  Felt kind of like speed dating.  But thanks to Nikki and Roxanne for running it.  Must have felt to them a bit like herding cats.

Back to just the overly anti-social group of Adam, Devon and I. We played back-to-back games of Letters from Whitechapel. In the first game, I was Jack. The investigators were on my trail the entire game, but didn't finally arrest me until THE VERY FINAL MOVE BEFORE I WOULD HAVE REACHED MY HIDEOUT! So tense... Adam was Jack in game number two. We were right on his trail in night two but he managed to inadvertently convince us he was heading northeast rather than southwest through a combination of dumb luck on his part and just being dumb on our part.  He cruised to victory after that because we were fixated on the wrong part of the map.  I hate to say it, but I think I now prefer this to Fury of Dracula. I feel anxiety playing this game like I do playing none other.

Next up, three rounds of Lost Legacy: The Starship followed by a full game of Love Letter. Lost Legacy feels like Love Letter but with player interaction largely replaced with interacting with the draw decks. Not as fun.

After that was StarCraft, which we hadn't played for six years or so. Oh, man. WAY better than I remembered. It's now my favourite tactical combat game.

Adam was Terran, Devon was Zerg and I was Protoss. I built up a huge early lead on combat points. I believe at one point it was 10 for me and 4 for each of them (out of a needed 15 for normal victory). I was cruising to victory until they rightly ganged up on me when I was at 12 points and removed me from all combat point areas. Adam could have easily wiped me out completely, but I convinced him to let me live so I could help him prevent Devon from winning a Special Victory (have three bases in Stage III). In the end, Devon narrowly missed the win because the card that would have kept his Ultralisk alive was the secondfrom-the-top card on his draw deck rather than being in his hand. Adam and I each finished with 15 points. However, Adam won in the "who has more resources" tie-breaker. So it was essentially a photo-finish between all three of us. Incredible.  I need to stop neglecting this one.  And we need to incorporate the Brood Wars expansions.

We followed that with a game of Firefly. We played the scenario in which, basically, the first to $12,000 wins so long as they're not penalized too much by unfinished jobs. We called it when it was obvious that Adam was going to win. Devon had to do a couple of runs around the table to wake up.

We were all feeling pretty frazzled by this point (about hour 20 or 21) so we played a couple games of easy, breezy Carcassonne, with the river as the only expansion material. I lost both times. Adam fell asleep with a tile in his hand and woke up when it fell from his fingers.

We finished the event with Freedom: The Underground Railroad. Devon wanted to quit halfway through because his brain stopped working, but I forced him to finish. Good thing, too, because what was looking like a devastating loss took a turn for the better and became a relatively easy victory in the final round.

We went for lunch, then I went home and fell asleep in the tub before settling in for a 16 hour snooze that only ended that early because my alarm went off.

Can't wait for next year!  (The three of us have decided to be less insular next time.)

[tbrminsanity]

Games I play all the time:
Love Letter: This is cute little game that takes anywhere between 1 min to 1 hour to complete (average game using stated rules take on average 5-10 min).
Pathfinder: The top selling RPG worldwide (sometimes called D&D 3.75).  I do game testing for a company called Purple Duck Games (check out their products on RPG Now).

Games I love to play when the opportunity arises:
Mechwarrior: Dark Age/Age of Destruction: I love this game, but it is hard to find players, and game pieces are no longer sold.
Shadowrun: My first RPG I ever learned to play.  I still have a special spot in my heart for this Dystopian Cyber-Punk RPG.

[Bix Conners]

Been awhile since I chimed in... so here goes.

Yedo
This is a well designed game that will hit the table again soon. I love the theme and the mechanics. It is a solid Euro design.

Glory To Rome
Very innovative game that shares some mechanics with Innovation. I really like this game and have played it three times recently. I can always be talked into bringing this to ChewsDay Challenge.

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game
This is just a great game. Each time I play it, I enjoy it more. Now with four full plays under my belt this is a top 10 game for me.

Merchant of Venus
What can I say, other than this game is AWESOME!?! (I am referring to the classic rules of course).

Cavum
Very clever route building game with some puzzle like qualities and abilities to screw over other players. Works for me.

Formula De
We are in our 6th season of the Formula De League. League play is where it is at for this game. Solid.

[R Newell]

Games played since my last update:

The wife and I have played three games of Arkham Horror last week. I have three big and three small expansions mixed into that behemoth of cards and tokens.  I've tried playing it a few times with everything going at once but, meh, too convoluted.  You don't get the flavour that the individual expansions bring.  My new preferred method is to pick one expansion, include all its options, and leave out all options/boards from the remaining expansions.  And when drawing cards, I now skip Mythos cards from those excluded expansions (but use all cards for every other card type for the sake of convenience).  A simple method that works well.  Our third game was a great Innsmouth Horror flavoured session; tasted fishy, as it should.  The game ended with cheers and a high five in a very close victory against the "tentacles from below" Great Old One.

Closer to Hallowe'en we tried A Touch of Evil but we quit that one about halfway through.  It just made us want to play Arkham Horror (thus the three sessions of that last week).  A comment by the wife as I was packing it away summed it up well: "There's nothing here for people who play games regularly."

We also recently tried the Blue Sun expansion for Firefly.  I love what it adds to the game, particularly how it makes Reavers a much stronger threat, thus making trips outside of Alliance Space into a much riskier adventure.  With three expansions, the game is getting admittedly bloated and overly expensive (I think the Breaking Atmo' card expansion has a negligible effect, so that one can be safely skipped), but it's also gotten a lot better in that it has almost a "sandbox adventure" feel to it now, even though it's still basically a pick-up-and-deliver game.

I've played several games of Court of the Medici at Chewsday Challenges after a long hiatus.  I still think it's one of the better bang-for-your-buck games you can get.  The tactical decisions can melt your brain.

Played Cyclades with all the trimmings recently.  I really like the elevated level of conflict that Hades brings to the game.  I still suck, largely because my play style tends to be "biding my time" but you can't stay on your heels in this one.  I'd blame being attacked a few times early for my loss, but that didn't seem to hamper Alex, who was in a strong position to win near the end despite being nearly wiped out in the early rounds.

I sucked at Conquest of Paradise for the same reason.  I waited too long to be aggressive.  And the ending snuck up on me in that one as well.  A surprisingly quick game.  But I did get a moral victory by only finishing second last.  Take that, Matt!  I'd like to play this one again soon now that I have a feel for when players should start fighting over territory.

And the wife and I played Mage Knight because that's what we do.