What game is hitting your table?

[Jolo]

I played 2 different games since i last posted, but 4X-ish.

The one with 2 plays being Tiny Epic Galaxies a game where you roll dice to determine what moves you can make, and how effective you are. There is no combat but there are some ways to have conflict with the other players, but very little is direct. On my vast experience of playing the game twice, always try to have some culture...

The second game is Exodus: Proxima Centauri, which is more of a  true 4X game. It has a similar feel to Eclipse, but is not as complex and the board is all visible. It took us about an hour/player, which is not bad for a first play.

[PhotoJim]

I also enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) a rousing game of Monopoly.  I don't think too many other games generated as much interest from people walking past than this one.  We were asked questions such as "You're playing Monopoly?!" and "Why are you playing Monopoly?!" and, simply, "Seriously?  Monopoly?!"  But, played by the actual rules and not by the "old wives' tales" house-rules that people tend to use (e.g., getting cash for Free Parking), it's actually a pretty decent negotiation game that doesn't really deserve the bad rep it gets from hobbyists.  Are there better games?  Of course there are, but we had as much fun playing this as anything else we played at PWYF (and more fun than several of them, really).  The fact that we played at a break-neck speed also helped.  Our game took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  We used my buddy's copy, though, which I hated.  It has a mid-2000s, computer-generated aesthetic that's just... wrong.  That's not how Monopoly Man is supposed to look when he wins $10 for second place in a beauty contest!

The key to successful Monopoly is playing the rules as they are written.  No extra cash thrown in (Free Parking, double money on Go - both bad things), properties that aren't bought by the person that landed on them immediately go to auction (which can be strategic, too, if the other players are short of cash), etc.  90 minutes is about right.

Maybe I'll bring my 50th-anniversary edition of Monopoly from 1985 sometime.  It feels very authentic.    (I have the wooden bookshelf box edition that is sold at Target in the USA too, which I've not managed to play yet.)

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

Thursday nights at the Rebellion Brewing Co. is cask night, in which they tap a cask on a beer special for that night.  The cask beer I enjoyed while playing Ha! Ha! Moustache was the Simcoe Rye Pale Ale.  But this is about the game, not the beverage.  This fits-in-your-pocket trivia game is simply a collection of cards that, on the front, feature a silhouette of a moustache and, on the back, have five clues as to its matching celebrity (specifically a deceased celebrity with the deck we were using).  The fewer clues read out before someone correctly identifies the moustache's owner, the more points that player is awarded.  I absolutely crushed at this, which is bizarre because I typically stink at trivia games.  But apparently all my trivia knowledge is related to a) celebrities, and b) moustaches.  I had fun playing it but it's actually kind of a crap game in that it would have zero replay value for any of the guessers.

Over nine hours of my Halloween Saturday was spent playing the last Heroscape game of the year on the glorious garage-filling map that had hosted so many great sessions this autumn.  But this 2000-point triple-threat factions session was easily the best.  There was action in almost every nook and cranny (the exceptions being the jungle area and the bay).  There were so many dramatic, hilarious moments that generated loud cheers and sullen groans.  Incredible ebb and flow.  Greg eventually won after I played kingmaker by taking my revenge out on Matt's flagbearer.  "For Spartacus!!" yelled Crixus as he delivered the killing blow.

My wife continues to have a fixation on Firefly.  We played the Any Port in a Storm scenario.  I can't remember anything about it except that I won.  This may be a sign that we've played this too much recently...

I played in a 6-player game of Fief: France 1429, an Academy Games kickstarter that reprints an early 80s conflict/diplomacy game.  I'm going to preface the following comments by saying I had a lot of fun playing it.  That said, I had so much fun because I was with the right group to enjoy a conflict/diplomacy game.  My fun was in spite of this dinosaur of game design.  I've never played any of the previous iterations, but I can't imagine Academy Games did much to bring it more in line with modern gaming tastes.

There are several design quirks that killed it for me:

• the negative event cards (like plagues) that show up at random times and in random locations can have a greater affect on the state of the game than player decisions,
• there is no game clock (i.e., finite number of rounds) so the game can go on indefinitely,
• the niggling rules are full of esoteric terminology that make the game difficult to learn and internalize, so we were constantly looking through reference sheets and the rule book,
• the double-sided reference sheets are overloaded with information, but that's the fault of a busy rules system that's difficult to internalize,
• the voting system is much more awkward than in any other game I've played, to the point that we were trying to come up with a better system to count votes than what the game provides, and
• apart from shared victory conditions, the alliances don't really benefit players, so there's not enough impetus to marry each other's nobles and ladies (which seems like it's supposed to be a major part of the game).

I'd play it again because I did have fun and I'd like to be proven wrong on some of my first impressions but, right now, I'd much rather play A Game of Thrones or Dune or Dominant Species.

I also played two very similar games in the last few days -- Nations and Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization (TtA) -- so I'll compare those a bit.  Nations is obviously heavily influenced by TtA, to the point that I'd say it's derivative of it.  It tries (fairly successfully) to fix some of TtA's more awkward elements: it streamlines most of the processes and contains fewer rules exceptions to remember, it replaces markers to slide on tracks with resource tokens, and it reduces the number of actions players have over the course of the game to make the play time more manageable.  I don't want to say these changes are superficial, because they actually are quite substantial, but I do think Nations doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from its older brother, and so feels a bit like a Johnny-come-lately.  It tries to improve an older design but doesn't bring anything new to the table (and I'd say most of the changes are lateral rather than definite improvements).  I think there are tangible reasons to still prefer TtA, despite its admittedly awkward processes: the civilization theme comes through much stronger in the card tableau you build and, for us combative folk, it's much more geared towards conflict and aggression, but I understand why someone would prefer Nations.  At the end of the day, both great games that I'd be happy to play.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife and I have played a few more games of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization.  I think that's kind of necessary with this title because it's fairly complicated and the layout of the rules is a hot mess, so re-learning and re-teaching it is a chore.  The game is much better and smoother when the rules are solidified in your mind.  I've won handily each time so far, but I'm not sure why that is.  I honestly can't see what I'm doing more efficiently than she is when it comes to how I've built up my economic (cultural) engine. 

One thing I continue to have a hard time with is remembering to adjust the sliders during and after each player turn.  I don't know if I've played another game that involves so much administrative work (well, maybe Twilight Imperium...).

I took part in three games of Bomb Squad at The Artful Dodger, where I enjoy their quirky ambiance and Guinness on tap.  It's a neat little game that pretty much combines Space Alert with Hanabi.  Players work together to operate a bomb-diffusing robot to move, open doors, rescue hostages, and diffuse bombs, all against a real-time clock (the game uses an app).  Each player has a handful of cards that enable these actions, but they're held face out so your fellow players need to provide you with clues as to what cards you're holding (ala Hanabi) before you can assist in programming the bot.  There's nothing really innovative about the game, but the clever fusion of existing game mechanics, the constant countdown to detonation, and the unique theme make it a fun play.  The game comes with multiple scenarios -- I think we were playing one of the easier ones.  We finally won on our third attempt.

The wife and I blew the dust off Agricola after about a five-year hiatus.  Part of the reason it sat on the shelf for so long is that I HATE the rule book.  It makes the game seem so much more complex than it really is.  We punched through two games in about 90 minutes.  I didn't remember the game being so quick, but I always played with more than 2 players before.  We each won once.  She was fairly ho-hum on it so I may decide to find it a new home in the near future.

I was glad to try CO² again.  I think it's a very unique game -- mechanically, aesthetically, thematically, and I'd even say in terms of utilizing game play to express an artistic / political statement.  The designer obviously believes that energy industries need to widen their narrow focus on profits and be more collaborative in terms of developing innovative green technologies.  But you can also tell he's cynical that this will actually happen as the world's reliance on energy inexorably increases.  I think he thinks we're screwed.

As for the session we played, the four of us managed to not pollute the earth (pssh... so much for his cynicism) and ended up with very tight scores, ranging from 46 to 49.  We got a few rules wrong, but we've scheduled another session in a few days, this time with five players, so we'll see how impactful those misplayed rules were.

I took part in the first mission of the recently released T.I.M.E Stories. This is a hard game to describe, in part because pretty much any description of the session would include story spoilers and in part because there really isn't a comparable tabletop game that I can think of... the closest analogues I can think of are Nintendo DS puzzle games like Professor Layton or Phoenix Wright mixed with the movie Groundhog Day and TV show Quantum Leap ("Oh, boy...").  Basically, the game comes with a single story scenario that players will play through, again and again until they get it right in the time allotted.  Some clues you learn become consistent changes in the scenario, though, so it's not like you're just playing the exact thing over and over.  It's incredibly unique and innovative, and full of great characters and loads of style.  Once you've finished a scenario, though, there's really no replayability, but future expansions providing all new scenarios are already in the works.

One critique I have is that it's over-produced.  It has a superfluous board and seems to have more tokens than necessary.  For a game with such low replayability that necessarily puts you on the expansion treadmill, it'd be nice if they made the package smaller and with a lower price tag.

"If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the Fury Road!"

Okay, the trashy classic that is Thunder Road was released almost 30 years before the amazing spectacle that is Mad Max: Fury Road, but the quote applies very well to this game.  (Milton Bradley's 1986 release was an obvious love letter to The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.)  Each player controls three vehicles and a helicopter racing down a highway trough a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  What is the prize for this race... a tanker of gasoline?  An oasis of water?  Avoiding being pasted across the hot asphalt?  Whatever the prize, there is a sense that your survival depends on you leaving your competitors as mangled wrecks far in your rear-view mirror.  To that end, you must ram, shoot, and speed past the other drivers any which way you can.

The game has a neat mechanic in which the arrow-straight highway and surrounding ditch are portrayed on two separate interconnected boards.  Once the first car drives off the lead board, the back one detaches, dumping any stragglers, and is moved to the front to become the new lead board.  The more cars get dumped, the fewer cars left to reach the end of this infinite highway to nowhere.  The last player who still has cars on the board is the winner.

Great fun with many laughs, cheers, and groans of despair.  This is what simple beer and pretzel games should aspire to.

[Lori]

I took part in the first mission of the recently released T.I.M.E Stories.

<snip>

One critique I have is that it's over-produced.  It has a superfluous board and seems to have more tokens than necessary.  For a game with such low replayability that necessarily puts you on the expansion treadmill, it'd be nice if they made the package smaller and with a lower price tag.

I think part of the deal with the extra tokens for T.I.M.E Stories is that the base box is going to stand in for most (if not all) of the supplies for the upcoming expansions.  I haven't opened my expansion but my understanding is that it's just the card deck and you will use all the other bits from the base game box with them being re-assigned based on the theme of each expansion.  I do agree that the board is far too large for what it tracks, especially since all the chits are still out on the table but someone had a grand idea at some point and the board helps hold down all the bits if you use the insert to "save" your game midway through a time run.  I'm a sucker for stuff like this, a puzzle to solve (or mystery to unravel), tests to pass, overall time travel theme, and a bit of light role playing thrown in. 

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife and I played two more games of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization.  The first saw an extinction event within the third age that wiped out all semblance of civilization as we know it.  This event took the form of a cat who thought it would be more fun to swipe the wooden markers off the table and onto the floor.  So that game was a write-off.

The second we managed to finish.  It ended up being a very close one, with me squeaking out a win by an extremely narrow margin (248 to 244).  This was the first game in which she played aggression cards against me.  I thought we had an unspoken agreement that we'd leave each other's civilizations alone.  She opened the floodgates now...

CO² hit the table again, this time with 5 players, and this time correcting the rules that we'd played incorrectly last time.  Those errors we made last time must have made the game easier on us, because this time we polluted the world beyond saving by the 2010s, making us all losers.

We made two more attempts at the scenario that comes with the base game of T.I.M.E Stories.  I think it'll have more legs than I originally thought.  The difficulty definitely ramps up the deeper you get into this scenario, so I can see having to make a few attempts to get through some of the stickier locations.

Due to my brain becoming increasingly infected with Star Wars fever, I brought out Star Wars: Epic Duels to Chewsday Challenge and enjoyed a 5-player free-for-all.  It's a fun, sometimes frantic, and super simple tactical miniatures game.  Definitely beer and pretzels.  Vader ended up being the last one standing after defeating his Emperor.  All too easy.  (But not really.)

The wife, meanwhile, has Firefly fever, so she picked up the new Kalidasa expansion, which adds yet another board.  This sucker is almost Arkham Horror levels of bloatedness now, which is not something I expected when I first bought the game a few years ago.  We played the Patience's War scenario.  We had loads of Reaver attacks and Alliance interference.  I ended up winning a tight one after the wife had a hard time misbehaving through her second goal.

I took part in a 5-player game of Orléans, which I would describe as a cross between Hyperborea (at the micro level) and Terra Mystica (at the macro level).

There are some aspects of the game that especially impressed me: 1) the graphic design is pretty much second to none (right up there with Eclipse), making the game extremely easy to learn and follow; 2) the game plays surprisingly quickly, thanks in large part to the simultaneous planning phase; and 3) it seems very well-balanced in that you could try various strategies and not worry that you're not doing that ONE THING you need to focus on to win.  (I came in second place by focusing almost solely on guildhouses on the map and whatever that book track thing is called.)

There is, however, an aspect that makes my preference lean slightly more towards Hyperborea: it could desperately use an injection of player interaction.   The various tracks and the half-assed area control doesn't herd the players into bumping elbows (or throwing punches) as much as I'd like.  I think Orléans  is the better, tighter design but I find Hyperborea more fun to play.  I'm not sure which end of the spectrum is more important...  They're both great games, so maybe it doesn't matter.

The wife and I also broke out Mage Knight, a game we've strangely neglected this year.  It was a lot of fun.  She outscored me 96 to 83 in a basic Full Conquest game.  I managed to find both cities to be conquered on my side of the map, but she rushed over before I could claim both for myself.  I played as the character from the latest expansion for the first time.   What's his name... the nature dude.  He's very good at healing and movement, but a little weaker when it comes to combat.  Sort of a middling character, really.

[BritAdam]

Brad and I tried out a couple of our new two player games tonight.  We've been trying to find good two player games for a while since we like to play a lot at home by ourselves.  Our favourite used to be CIA vs KGB, and now I think we have new favourites...

The first was Jaipur, which I thought he was goin to kick my butt in, but I actually won!  Once he gets the hang of it he will crush me every time in sure, so I will brag while I can.  He really enjoyed it and it is definitely one we will be taking with us while travelling. 

The second was a game suggested to us by Matt, Dana, Lori, and Jim.  All creatures big and small was a great two player worker placement game that is a mini version of Agricola and just as strategic!  The first time around we missed the breeding phase in every round and the game didn't make much sense to us.  We thought to ourselves that something didn't seem right, so we re-read the rules and sure enough there was the bit about the breeding phase that we completely missed.  The second time around made much more sense.  It is a great game when you only have two players and not enough time to set up the full Agricola game!  We loved it and will play often I'm sure.

[R Newell]

You might want to look into Star Wars: Empire vs Rebellion.  I've never played, but I think it's basically CIA vs KGB, except it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

[Bricktown]

Star Wars: X-wing

Every since I picked put his game, I have really only played the competitive 1 vs 1 play of the game.  I feel like building 100pt squads and playing in that fashion takes a lot away from the game, always trying to squeeze in one more ship at the sacrifice of filling in any of those upgrade slots.  I had not taken the time to play the scenarios that are included in a lot of the big box expansions, which showcase more thematic play.  But then came a fan made campaign called 'Hero's of the Arturi Cluster' which has rekindled my fasciation with this game.

http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/

In this mission based campaign setting, you play the role of rebel pilots that level up as the game progresses.  As you gain experience, you spend it on things like new skills, outfitting your ship with torpedoes and missiles, modify your fighter with more shields or better engines.  As you progress from a rookie to a hardened veteran of the rebellion, you can access new fighters and unlock even deadlier pilot skills.  Now those empty upgrade slots get filled out and your personalized star fighter feels a little more whole.

But beyond the individual progression, there is a solid cooperative aspect that I find this campaign brings out.  Go into combat with your friends, up to 6 pilots, and take it to the empire.  The campaign can be scaled to accommodate 2 to 6 ships, variants to change the difficulty and additional content is continually being play tested for it.

I give this game 4 exploding death stars out of 5

Kingdom Death Monster

I love this game.  The dark horror survival might turn some people off to this game but I think they would be making a mistake not getting to know this game.  I like all aspects of this game.  I feel like this is the fantasy style version of what xcom is.  The game is played in three stages.  First you take your unsuspecting villagers on a hunt, where they leave the marginal safety of their homes to venture you and bring back food and materials.  As they cautiously progress through the hunt track they encounter random events, opportunities or just rotten luck.  Then, after going through the unknown, you meet up with your prey.  Boss battle ensues, here you get to do a bit of tactical combat against an AI deck driven monster and the hits start coming.  Will you get a couple of lucky rolls and end this beast early or will it start relentlessly tear through your survivors.  The usual kind of onslaught of broken bones, head trauma, being torn limb from limb or even the dreaded decapitation.  You really can't be sure who will come back in one piece or come back at all for that matter, nothing is certain until the beast goes down.  Finally, you head back to your village if your lucky enough, resources and food in tow.  Now you get to do my favourite part of the adventure, building up the village.  Do we create new armour so our next hunts survivors have a fighting chance of all coming back alive or do we improve our living conditions building homes and places to sleep.  Do we develop culture that unlocks new upgrades, new tools, breeding new survivors so that last hunts victims have replacements.. so many choices, all fleshed out with some story background from the game. 

I really like the uncertainty of the survivors, attachment in this game ends with sad emoji    Things will eventually get better as you start to advance in the game but the first few turns can really leave a new player partially discouraged as your survivor (insert awesome name here) gets dragged all over the encounter map by a raging lion only to die and leave you wondering why you wasted your favourite name on that guy/girl.  The story book is a big pit of unknown which is the way it should stay.  Reading ahead and making all the best decision is not the way to play this game, the game actually says what if you can't decide which side to rule in favour of, then choose what is worst for the survivors... awesome    This 'let the chips fall where they may', 'no takesie backsie', 'make a choice and stick with the outcome' is what more games need. 

I give this game 4 and half returning survivors out of 5 

[BritAdam]

You might want to look into Star Wars: Empire vs Rebellion.  I've never played, but I think it's basically CIA vs KGB, except it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Awesome!  Thanks for the tip Ryan!