What game is hitting your table?

[Jolo]

Descent 2nd Edition Preview
5 hours today, 5 hours tomorrow and 5 hours on Sunday at the Dragon's Den. The game goes pretty quickly, the players 2 of the starting party were new to Descent completely did the Introduction and the FIrst QUest in less than 5 hours.

Gameplay is slightly different. You get characters and they can choose a class, warriors can choose to either be Knights or Berserkers, which determines the starting weapon and the skills you can get from XP.

Combat is faster, roll the blue die and the enhancement die you get, one or two red (melee) or yellow (range), add up the damage and the defender rolls the defence dice which will subtract from the damage. The Overlord only gets 15 cards in his deck, so Dark Charm comes out wayyyyyy faster 

No Conquest points, you get 1 XP for completing the dungeon and possibly a bonus for winning the scenario. Everytime the Overlord defeats a character he gets an Overlord card, and the other characters can chose to revive him (spend an action and roll the two red dice for health) or the player can "Stand up" which leaves him at 0 health but upright.

[Mac Grassick]

Talisman

Played my 2nd game of talisman on friday night. It was a 2 player game with the dungeon expansion. I used the priest & my buddy Derek had the thief. The priest can add a +1 when praying & also can dismiss any enemies that are spirits. The thief can steal a card from the market as well as any player it moves into contact with. The stealing ability managed to keep me at a safe distance for most of the game. This resulted in Derek roaming the entrance of the dungeon getting super powerful while I only got in there a couple of times before he chased me out leaving me to wander the normal board growing at a much slower pace. I lost quite badly but that is the way it goes. I don't mind this game but I do find it a bit slow moving. I've only played twice, like I mentioned, so I may have to wait before I pass judgment. Derek plans to purchase the other expansions so I'll see how that goes.

[Kurt Swekla]

played more 1989:Dawn of Freedom.
Now have 3 games under my belt and finally won and got that monkey off my back. So far 2 games to final scoring, and 1 game won auto victory half-way through. Mainly through the poor democrat power struggle victory rolls, giving the communists a lot of power victory points as the game went on. I can never decide if this is better than Twilight Struggle, but it is definitely different enough to warrant having both. TS is a grander game obviously since it is on the world level while 1989 is focused around Eastern Europe, so from that standpoint I prefer TS, but the game seems less scripted in terms of events and strategies than TS, but maybe that is because I am new to 1989. And I am really enjoying the little power struggle mini-game in 1989, it makes the game run a bit longer than TS but adds another interesting layer.

[celticgriffon]

Last Thursday at the German Club I manged to get in a few titles:

Lords of Waterdeep:  My first play.  Very puzzle like game where you really need to manage resources to score victory points.  Very thin theme based on the beloved Forgotten Realms setting.  I was hit with two "forced" missions and this took me out of the running for a very close end game.  No other players recieved any forced missions this game so that left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Vegas: This one is up for SdJ.  Again my first play.  I managed to get a win by a fairly considerable margin.  I was quite hesitant to play this to be honest.  But it was good fun and on a similar weight scale to Alea's Royal Turf.  A lot more fun than expected and yet another good dice game with simple rules.

Euphrates and Tigris.  This was one of the first true German Games I purchased.  I bought it right after it was released by Hans Im Gluck.  Had to search the net for the rules translations.  I love this version a million times better than the more recent Mayfair editions.  One of my favourite games of all time.  Ryan managed to score duel monument points for a few turns and won by a slight margin.  Jim mentioned that he plays this all the time online - can't remember which site he plays on though... and that a normal score is around 40 points... Obviously they have created new rules or mistranslated the game online.  Our games usually have a winning score of 7 - 10 points with four players.

Cheers,
Michael

[Jolo]

Last night there were four of us, and since it was Reiner night we played 2 Knizias, the first was the FacetoFace version of Royal Turf called Winner's Circle. This is a horse racing/gambling game. A set of 7 horses are placed on the board, with different attributes (from 1-20), and all the players place bets face down on each horse they prefer. A die is roll and based on what is rolled (Horse's head, saddle, jockey cap, horseshoe)  the player picks a horse to move that distance. Now no horse can move twice until every horse has moved once, so there is some jockeying for position.  If you have bet on a horse you may want to move it the best speed it can go, but if you have not bet on a horse such as Regret (who has a 20 saddle attibute) you may want to spend your action moving Regret only one (his head attribute).

Secondly we played Titan: The Arena, a Knizia game that was published by Avalon Hill, back when they were still TAHGC. This is a lightly themed card game about a series of battles between creatures, with betting (of course!).  Players are all dealt 8 cards and 5 betting chips on which to bet on the 8 creatures. You play a card with a value of 0-9 on a creature and when every creature has a card, the lowest is eliminated. Play continues for five rounds. Whoever makes the most wins. I enjoyed this, there was tension and a lot of opponent screwage.

[doctorb23]

tried a first game of Lord of the Rings living card game on Tuesday this week.  my buddy owns it but wasn't ready to teach it so we watched the handy tutorial on the fantasy flight website which got us started.  Need to get a few more plays of this in but I think I will enjoy it more than Thunderstone, although with all the expansions it could be a more expensive option and I will happily play it but won't be investing in it myself.

I have just unboxed copies of Eclipse and Manhattan Project which hopefully will make it to the game table in the coming weeks....

[Jolo]

I have just unboxed copies of Eclipse and Manhattan Project which hopefully will make it to the game table in the coming weeks....

Eclipse is awesome

[Colin Dearborn]

Received my order from germanboardgames.com at the start of the week.


Mostly light filler to play with the kids. We managed to get a few plays in this week.

Survive:Escape from Atlantis (30th anniversary edition)
I was surprised by the quality of the components in this version, it was listed at around 15$ cheaper than the regular version and has superior components. The artwork on the tiles is much better and the iconography is much easier for new players to pick up.

This is the best backstabbing family game ever.......yes, there is nothing more fun than sailing away from your wife and daughter as the sharks close in.



Mamma Mia

A fun little card game about making pizza. Managed 4 plays this week already, quickly becoming a family favorite.



Hare and Tortise

A very interesting little race game. Easy to teach, but has some levels of strategy. 2 steps forward, 1 step back........but moving back at the right times is crucial.

[celticgriffon]

Played a game of Peurto Rico last night.

Easily one of my favourite games.  And having been there once as well helps bring back some great memories.

I picked up coffee and the small market quite early.  I managed to lock up a ship for 1/2 of the game as I was the only person with coffee.  Add in 5 corn production, a small warehouse to ensure no spoilage, and a wharf and I sailed to victory by a 10 point margin.

Amazing game that I could happily play anytime, anywhere.

Michael

[Jolo]

2 games of Dominant Species: The Card Game, both with 5 players. It is an ok game, but not one I would consider great.