What game is hitting your table?

[Jolo]

So, in the last month, I have played an assortment of games, and [resent them, in quantity of plays:
No Thanks! - quick playing filler that I use for playing at the end of the night or bridging between games. I like it, and have liked it since Jasen taught it to me (8 years ago!). 3 plays, 2 at the library, one at Woods.

Bohnanza - easily Uwe Rosenberg's best game, highly interactive, highly competitive and highly fun. 2 plays, one at the library, one at Woods.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set - We have started the giants or ogre scenarios, it is a reasonably good game. 2 plays, both at home.

7 Wonders - Easy to teach and filler with a little crunchiness. 1 play at Woods

Castle Dice - Light dice rolling and WP game, not bad, one play at home

High Frontier - and here it is again, it seems to be a favourite here, and I may never get a 4X game back on the schedule, one play at home.

Ingenious - my favourite Knizia, I taught it at Woods and one of the players loved it (she also won).

Love Letter: Batman - light quick filler, I taught it a Carlyle King Library. One play

Power Grid - Oh look, another play for this, I taught it by request at Woods, and I think I may be teaching it tonight.

Princes of the Renaissance - One play of Wallace's classic, I like it, we played it pretty quickly but it went well. We played at home.

Sentinels of the Multiverse Just one play of Matt's favourite game, we played it Saturday night while waiting for the last two people to show up for GURPS

Tinner's Trail - One play last week, a mining game from Wallace.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted... not a whole lot considering it's been over a month.

I played the second game of Twilight Struggle for our league. My first league game was a 5-hour tug of war that ended with a US victory in final scoring with 1 point.  My second game couldn't have been more different.  I was the US again, but lost when the USSR conducted his first action of the 4th round (at least I made it to mid-war...)  I'd like to use my lousy hand in the very first round (in which every card but one was a USSR event) as my excuse but, truthfully, my utter failure was primarily due to my forgetful neglect of military operations each and every frigging round.

I tried Dead of Winter.  I was extremely impressed with how easy it was to learn.  We literally took off the shrink wrap, punched the tokens, read the rules and setup in around half an hour and then we were playing with little reason to reference the rulebook.  Well done, Plaid Hat.  There was a betrayer who had two very close opportunities to win -- once before we exiled him and once after -- but instead we all lost when morale fell to zero.

The wife and I tried the Robinson Family scenario for Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island.  My character died on the sixth turn and we weren't particularly close to the winning conditions which involved inventing a whole lot of stuff for our permanent home.

I played a few games of King of Tokyo.  This is still my favourite dice game (though that's not as ringing an endorsement as it sounds because I haven't tried that many).  I think I died both times. I always try and stubbornly hold Tokyo.  I just... I want to be king.

I bought my friend a copy of Kemet for his 40th birthday because he stubbornly bought me a lot of alcohol the night before.  I was a little nervous about teaching a game for which I'd never read the rulebook, but it went fine.  We played a 5-player game with extremely tight scoring (9-9-9-8-8).  Great game that gets better with experience.

I played my third game in the Carcassonne league, this session now including The River, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, and Hills & Sheep.  The expansions each add some neat stuff, but I think I still prefer vanilla Carcassonne.  Just the base game.  The expansions add a lot of finnicky scoring stuff, especially when combined (like how a big meeple counts as 2 meeples whereas a meeple on a hill basically counts as 1.5).  The expansions add a lot of breadth, which means extra things to remember, but they don't really add any depth.

And I also tried Historia, which I'd never heard of until about ten minutes before it was being set up.  I'm kinda ambivalent on this one.  There are aspects I really like: the board is a glorious mess that appeals to my love of spreadsheets; the representation for advancing civilizations along the grid (the y-axis is military and the x-axis is technology) is novel, elegant, and frustrating in that good kinda way; I like that there's a geographic component, though highly abstracted; I'm a fan of hand management; the rules are super easy to learn and even the intimidating iconography isn't all that bad.

But, I think I hate the wonders.  These are cards that each player can draft over the course of the game and tap to gain their (minimal to moderate) effect.  I thought they had little impact on how the game played out in relation to how fiddly they are, how easy they are to forget, how much table space they take up, how little sense they make thematically, and how much they add to the play time.  "I'm going to tap this card to untap this card, then I'm going to retap this card, so that gets me one more victory point.  Then I'll tap this card to get one of my cubes back..."  It's just so dry and mechanical and solitary compared to the rest of the game.  I did like Historia overall, but those wonders have really stuck in my craw.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife and I played a game of Mage Knight, which was only the second time we've played it so far this year (this is easily the game we've played the most over the past few years).  I squeaked past her in points in a Full Conquest scenario, largely because I re-conquered one of her conquered keeps.  There's another expansion due out later this summer so I'm sure this will once again be my most played game of the year despite a slow start.

We also played a game of Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit.  As usual, she played as the Jedi/Naboo critters and I played as the the most boring movie villains ever, the dastardly Trade Federation.  Also as usual, I won the game because the wife tends to neglect little Anakin.  Understandably so.  The Jedi battle was an epic one this time, and a severely wounded Obi Wan was able to avenge Qui Gon's death and rush into the palace to help the queen.  Except one of my battle droids promptly shot him in the head.  Glory for the Trade Federation!  Hurray for continuing blockades!

I played in a couple of games of Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition of Ultimateness.  I've yet to understand how someone can spin a lie that is based on anything or that anyone should actually believe.  Werewolves lost both times, meaning I went 1-1.

The wife and I tried Eldritch Horror at Chewsday Challenge.  I think some aspects are an improvement over Arkham Horror due to some streamlining and the addition of some consequences to decisions, but I think I still prefer AH due to greater built-in breadth (which admittedly makes the game much more bloated).

I played in my third league game of Twilight Struggle and lost when my opponent (Dana as USSR) played War Games with his first action in the first turn of Late War.  His experience and knowledge of early and mid war cards (which helps a player know when and where to optimally place influence) helped him take strong footholds in most regions that essentially had me with my back against the ropes for most of the game.  It was a good learning experience because Dana was helpful in pointing out areas where ops points aren't a very good bang for the buck.   Hopefully my brain will retain some of that info before I play my fourth league game...

I played a few solo games of Lord of the Rings, which, despite being perhaps the first prominent co-operative board game, still feels very unique in that genre.  It's highly abstracted but captures the high level themes and narrative points of the story very well.  I lost both times after having traveled most of the way up the Crack of Doom in Mordor.  I've played 10 times now and want to a) actually play with multiple people because I've only ever tried it solo, and b) get at least one of the expansions (probably Battlefields).

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I soloed another game of Lord of the Rings.  Sam felt overly comfortable and gambled by not using Gollum to finish guiding the hobbitses completely through Shelob's Lair and chose instead to rest.  That decision ended up costing him his life. Frodo was almost able to enter Mordor and destroy the ring himself (well, with some fleeting help from Gandalf) but, in the end, one little hobbit without his fellowship would not be enough.  It was a loss in Mordor at the Crack of Doom itself... So close! It came down to a single die roll, which advanced Sauron's encroaching darkness and corrupted the ring bearer. (Frodo's last words: "It's miiiine!") 

I also played another session in which I taught the game to the wife.  She slam dunked the ring over Sauron, no problem.  We were very lucky in our event draws, but that was still ridiculous how much she crushed it.

I picked up the LOTR Battlefields expansion at Dragon's Den in Saskatoon this past weekend.  I'm looking forward to incorporating that, even though the boards are incomprehensible flowcharts.

The wife and I also played two games of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In the first, I was The Master and managed to trap Buffy in a room with no exit.  Xander, with the help of Wesley, managed to sneak up behind The Master and wound him, but Buffy failed to follow up on that momentum and dust him.  Buffy was soon killed, allowing the Master to squash Sunnydale under his heel and bring forth a reign of darkness and despair.  In the second, the wife played as the Big Bad (in her case, The Judge). Xander found the Judge's Arm, which attracted the attention of Vamp X, who quickly snapped Xander's neck and used the Arm to fully summon The Judge.  It wasn't long until all the Scoobies fell.  Where's a rocket launcher when you need one?

I tried Cthulhu Wars.  Crazy minis! The game itself is fun but maybe a little too short (it ended shortly after the action looked like it was picking up) and a little too simplistic.  I also wonder if it's imbalanced in favour of Cthulhu, as his objectives are very easy to achieve.  (Two of the six simply happen and don't require the player to do anything.)  Still, it's fun and that plastic is a sight to behold.  I'm looking forward to trying it again next week.

I played two five-player games of No Thanks!  This might be my favourite push-your-luck game and I'm strangely succesful at it.  I won both games, the first with -13 and in the second I squeaked out a win with -22.

With the same five, I also played a game of Sushi Go!  It's a simplified reimplementation of 7 Wonders.  I like this take on that system much better: it's smaller, it's faster, it's simpler, it's easier to explain, and it's easier to score.

The wife and I played a game of Mage Knight.  As per usual, we played Full Conquest.  I won 124 to 98.  The wife had a handful of wound cards after conquering a city that hurt her score.  I played as Krang, which is probably my favourite character released so far.  He has some very cool skills that he can earn (Pupper Master rocks).

[R Newell]

Huh.  This thread used to be fairly popular.  Now it is nothing but my personal gaming memoirs...

Anyways, since last time I posted...

Pandemic hadn't hit my table for quite a while so I decided to enjoy some back-to-back solo sessions utilizing the Virulent Strain and Mutation variants from the On the Brink expansion.  I managed to win both, which surprised me because usually I let global calamity slip past me.

The wife and I tried World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game.  It's in the same vein as Talisman and Prophecy: move around a heavily abstracted "map," fight enemies, earn items, boost stats.  It's definitely nothing groundbreaking, but it's not bad.  We ended up quitting the game about half way through due to sleepiness, but I'd play again (not too many times, though).

I played in my fourth Twilight Struggle league game, again losing to War Games in the Late War.  Damn you, War Games!  I did make a monumentally stupid play with my very first action by not scoring the Middle East while I had control.  That one brain fart was a 7 point swing (though I guess I can take solace in the fact that my opponent didn't even need those bonus 7 points to trounce me).  I kinda feel like I've hit a wall in my development in this game.  I don't seem to be playing any better or smarter than the first time I played it.  Will someone please tear down this wall?

I got in my second game of Cthulhu Wars, this time I managed the win with the Black Goat faction.  I was able to detect the differential play styles between factions more strongly my second time around.  I'm still wishy-washy regarding how I feel about the quality of the gameplay -- and I wouldn't describe it as a particularly good game, objectively speaking -- but I'd like to play it for at least a third time, so I guess I can say I like it.

I played a couple of Knizia games: Blue Moon City and Ra.  I hadn't played BMC for about 7 years.  It was better than I remembered it.  Or, more accurately, my tastes have evolved since then so that I no longer require a strong narrative in my games.  I still don't regard it as a top-tier Knizia title, but it does make for kind of a fun scrambling race to gain cubes and spend them for VP.  It's the Cannonball Run of strategy games.  Ra is a top-tier Knizia.  Just a fantastic game that's plays quick but presents the players with many tough decisions.

I finally got around to trying the solo war game Field Commander: Alexander.  It's a campaign game in which the player recreates the battles of Alexander the Great.  I made three attempts at the first of four campaigns.  I would describe my attempts as ranging from Alexander the Pretty Good to Alexander the Dud.  Incidentally, I can't remember the last time I unleashed so many f-bombs while sitting by myself at the kitchen table.

I played a couple games of Claustrophobia, switching with my opponent between the demons and the condemned human prisoners.  Condemned human prisoners lost both games due to unfortunately nasty tunnels and an unending swarm of troglodytes.  Very fun game.  Definitely one of my favourite dungeon-crawlers, as well as one of my favourite dice-chuckers.

Next was a 2-player game of Arboretum, a card game about building a garden containing a variety of trees.  Gorgeous artwork on the cards.  I really liked the production.  The gameplay is elegant as well.  It reminded me a bit of a Richard James-esque design (Lords of Scotland, Court of the Medici) in that the rules are incredibly simple but belie the difficult decisions players will constantly be faced with.  I might have to pick myself up a copy.

Next was a 2-player abstract called Pikemen, which I'd never heard of before.  It's roots are in Chess, and I wouldn't say it reaches the dynamic greatness of that classic, but it is certainly an interesting and impressively simple design.  It's also a fairly unforgiving design -- it seemed to be very difficult to make up for a mistake unless your opponent were to generously make one as well.  My opponent was not generous.

I taught a game of Lord of the Rings, which was a nice change of pace because I usually play it solo.  We squeaked out a win after Sam destroyed the One Ring shortly after Frodo succumbed to corruption.

I finally got around to trying Castles of Burgundy.  I have very little experience with Stefan Feld games, with my only previous play being a single session of In the Year of the Dragon.  And it's a fine game.  I can see why it's so popular.  It's not in my personal wheelhouse, but I enjoyed it for what it is: a fairly casual points collector that leans more towards breadth than depth.

[Marc Bendig]

Well, even if it is just your memoires, it's a good read.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I tried Camel Up! and had fun with it.  It's a race game, but the race is as much about racing to get your bets in as it is the actual race around the track.

I also tried the unfortunately titled Maharaja: The Game of Palace Building in India.   I don't know how much it stands out in the crowded pack of 90-minute Euros (I'd already forgotten that I played it until I looked back at my played games just now) but it's one I'd like to play again to see how much it blossoms with experience.

I also tried Hyperborea but, rather than be a one-off, I've already gotten in four sessions of it.  If I compare it to other resource management Euro games, I quite like it; if I compare it to other dudes-on-a-map games, it maybe falls a bit short.  I don't know if it's one I'll still be playing years for now (few do have that kind of longevity) but it'll keep hitting the table for the near future.

I also got to try Samurai.  Typical Knizia: a brilliant strategy game with an abstracted theme and convoluted scoring.  I really liked this one and would like to try it at all possible player counts.  I think it will scale really well.

I played another game of Sushi Go!.  It continues to be better than 7 Wonders.

Battlestar Galactica hit the table after a few years hiatus. It became a shelf toad after I bought the Pegasus and Exodus expansions because a fairly simple game became convoluted and intimidating. I utilized the Pegasus ship, Cylon Leaders, all of the characters, and the Treachery cards. As I suspected, the additions added complication without adding to the fun, mainly because it's such a pain in the butt trying to reference rules across three rulebooks. I need to print off a good consolidation of all the rules.  Plus, there were 7 of us so the game was at times like herding cats.  As for the session, the Cylons won a close one.  I was a Cylon Leader sympathetic to the Cylons but was unable to share in the toasters' celebrations since I was wanting us to be a wee more genocidal.

That's Life! also hit the table.  It's a very fun push-your-luck game that I think is overlooked (or at least I never see mention of it), probably because it's a) out of print, b) has zero theme, and c) has weird comic art for no reason.

I'm not a fan of Terror in Meeple City / Rampage.  The basic idea of it is better than the awkward execution.

I played two games of Summoner Wars: Alliances, with me and my opponent swapped races (Deep Benders vs Jungle Shadows).  Jungle Shadows won both games, but my win was largely due to my opponent coming down with a bad case of crappy rolls.

I played Jambo for the first time since my initial try about a year and a half ago.  I played the same opponent as then (Matt), though he'd played a few times since then.  I was up 33 to 5 at one point but I didn't have much of an economic engine going.  He caught up and blew past me for the win.

Matt taught me Red7.  I won a best 2-out-of-3.  Cool game.  I like that it's small, cheap and simple, but decisions on how to play your cards are never easy.

The Hobbit Card Game is not a fantastic trick-taking game (that would be Kaiser), but it's not bad.  The theme is actually a nice addition; it's not just pasting some Tolkien characters on the cards.  We played two 3-player games, both won by Smaug.

We played a few games of Deep Sea Adventure , a push-your-luck game from Japan available through the BGG store. Super fun. I loved it. This game generated a lot of laughs.  I need to get myself a copy.

Letters from Whitechapel is my favourite cat-and-mouse game.  It's distilled down to nothing more than what is the best part of this genre: the hunt.  So much tension, especially when playing as Jack the Ripper.  This game actually took over 4 hours (which is waaaaaay longer than it's supposed to run; most sessions should take about 2 hours) but none of us were bored for a second.  Jack lost after his final murder of a wretched after we investigators were able to set up an impassable net, cutting him off from his home.

I tried a game of Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem.  I don't think it's as successful as GF9's other games I've tried (Spartacus and Firefly) but it's still quite good.  I was the Lin Syndicate and absolutely crushed the other scores.  Not sure how I did that, though, so I won't be able to repeat that success.

A few of us played through the first three days of Gumshoe, a British game from the 80s that manages to be part board game, part RPG, yet quite distinct from either. (If you've played Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, this is basically the same thing.)  I LOVED it.  It's at least as good as Consulting Detective but I think I prefer this one.  The writing is great, the San Francisco detective theme is wonderfully implemented, and I like the rules changes, such as having to manage the clock and being able to split up from the other detectives to chase leads.  And add in autopsy reports, crime scene analysis, fingerprint identification... supremely awesome stuff.

[Bix Conners]

Thanks for the Session Reports Ryan. I enjoyed the games played this past weekend and I really enjoy your analysis in these commentaries. You distill your observations quite eloquently. 

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife and I played a game of Blokus Duo for the first time in about 7 years.  We'd played it over 30 times in the first year or two after I got into this hobby, but my growing collection over the years tended to push this one to the bottom of the pile.  Too bad.  It is a really good, colourful abstract game that's easy enough to play in front of the TV.

We also played a game of Firefly for the first time in a while, using the excellent Blue Sun expansion.  I'm not a fan of the way GF9 parcels out its expansions for some of its games -- the additional ships, in particular, should have been sold as a bunch rather than individually, but their more substantial expansions do have a strong, positive impact on the game.  The wife totally crushed me in the Jail Break scenario.

The wife, the mother-and-law and I tried a few games of Coloretto.   It's a pretty decent filler card game.  Not loads of fun or terribly strategic or anything, but some good risk/reward considerations with the occasional joy of screwing someone with a card they don't want.

I played in a 6-player game of Monopoly at my wife's family cottage.  They have plenty of classic family games in a chest and we opted for the most classic of the classics.  I finished middle of the pack.  I actually don't mind Monopoly, but it can go long, which this session did.

The wife and I tried Dungeonquest, playing the revised rules edition that FFG released fairly recently.  It's a pretty simple push-your-luck game, though I found the paper-rock-scissors style of combat to be weirdly confusing.  Either my brain was misfiring or the rules do an awkward job of explaining it.  My wife wasn't a big fan because she died early.  From what I've heard, that's Dungeonquest.

I managed to play several games at a recent Chewsday Challenge, including Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice (a dice-chucker that does not replace King of Tokyo because of less player agency and some finnicky rules; I love throwing dice into a ring complete with ropes, though), a 2-player game of Coloretto (and I thought it played just fine at that count), a 4-player game of Arboretum (and I thought it really openend up with 4, though 2-player makes for an interesting chess match as well) and Yggdrasil (a very challenging co-op about Norse gods that took me a while to grasp due to funky iconography and a beautiful board that does a lousy job of making the game coherent).

The wife and I tried the new Mage Knight expansion, The Shades of Tezla.  She had a headache and so we abandoned the scenario and I re-started it as a solo game so I could try the new character  (I fully believe the Life and Death - Solo scenario is absolutely impossible, btw).  The production quality on this expansion is hugely dissapointing: flimsy cards that don't match the colour from previous releases; a terribly painted miniature that looks nothing like the character art; a crumpled rulebook stuffed in a too-small box; tokens that are cut smaller than the existing tokens they're supposed to be shuffled with; weird colour choices...  Despite these issues, though, there are things to like about the expansion for die-hard fans of the game.  It comes with four new scenarios based on warring factions, with co-op, competitive and solo versions of each; another character to play with is nice, even if he's perhaps not as distinct or as interesting to play as previous characters; the new single use items that are earned by defeating enemies affiliated with the warring factions are super cool.  I'm looking forward to playing all the scenarios, though I'm sure I'll keep grumbling about the production quality under my breath while I do.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I taught a few games to some new attendees at Chewsday Challenge, including No Thanks! (for my money, the best filler card game out there) and Ra (for my money, the best auction game out there).  I think the new players all enjoyed themselves, as did I.

The wife and I took a bag of games to the lake this Labour Day weekend.  We tried the brand-spanking new Star Wars Risk game that was released on Force Friday.  (For some reason, this game doesn't have a BGG entry yet.)  Calling it "Risk" is a bit of a misnomer / marketing tool, though combat does involve rolling up to 5 D6. For those who are familiar with the game Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, this is a streamlined re-implementation of that, except the new game recreates the climactic scenes of Return of the Jedi instead of The Phantom Menace.  It does have less of a toy factor than it's ancestor and it has also been simplified and abstracted to a greater degree and plays in much less time.  But this is a great game -- probably the best game you'll find at Toys R Us or Walmart -- and is a fine substitute for a game that's long been out of print.  Amazon is apparently going to have an exclusive pimped out version sometime in 2015 (adding plastic miniatures for things like the Millenium Falcon, the Star Destroyer, and the Death Star) but I think the production quality of the one in stores is perfectly serviceable.

We also played a couple of quick card games: Red7 (I prefer the scoring rules in which you accumulate points rather than one-round-and-done games so that there can be some ebb and flow) and Coloretto (which I now think is a pretty good 2-player game).

I tried a couple of brand new games at last night's Chewsday Challenge.  First was Star Trek: Five-Year Mission, a co-op game in which, basically, the players each have five dice in up to three colours which are rolled and then used to match the requirements on cards that need to be contained before they grow into too many.  Beat a card and you're likely closer to victory; fail to beat a card and you're likely closer to failing your five-year mission.  It's not a bad game but I don't know if it stands out that much in a crowded genre.  The game I participated in had 7 players, which is probably more than ideal.  The next few players to your left's turns aren't super interesting since you've still got quite a wait and the landscape of the tableau of cards to be vanquished will be very different by the time it comes back around to you.  You can play as either original series or Next Generation characters, which is cool, but I didn't get much of a Trek feel from the game, which was disappointing.

Next was a 4-player game of Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn.  It comes from Plaid Hat Games, who first hit the scene with Summoner Wars.  Like in that game, players control a character who can summon minions to do battle against other players.  Ashes actually feels kind of similar to that one (despite this designer not being involved in the development of that game), except remove the geographic component and replace it with card combinations and dice for resources.  This is a very, very cool game.  And the rules are surprisingly quite simple, though the iconography and text heavy cards add a lot to the learning curve.  Also like Summoner Wars, this game will be supported with additional characters and other content in the future.  This is one I might have to get for my own shelf.  I think the wife would dig it.