What game is hitting your table?

[Jolo]

It has been almost 2 months since I last posted here, so it must be time for an update, 18 different games, a total of 32 plays.

As usual, I start with the game I played the most, Sentinels of the Multiverse leads the pack, with 7 plays in two months and almost 20 this year. There are some that don't care for the game but I still find this the most accessible of the super hero card games, each hero has a distinct play style and the game is easy to pick up and play.

Elder Sign came in as my second most played game with 5 plays, these are the first plays of the year for this Arkham Horror styled co-op. It also means that I have play almost half of my games in the past 2 months as co-ops. I like the small form factor of it and the speed it plays in.

The Great Zimbabwe got two plays in two months. This is a really good game and is easy to learn, easy to teach and can be exceedingly deep. This was the most expensive game I purchased this year and I am glad I  bought it as it hits one of my big likes, that of civ building.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set is maintaining it's one play a month average with 2 plays in the previous two months. We are on the fourth expansion now, but once I play it, I am selling it as I don't think I will want to replay it, much like a RPG.

Quartermaster General is my second new game on the list, and it also got two plays, and it is a weird style it is a "war" game about logistics. This game is pretty fast playing, and is a card game with a board. Combat is really simple, but is not really the heart of the game, the heart is controlling scoring areas on the board on your turn.

Takenoko is simple, pretty and nice fun. I don't know if it is my ideal game, but it is easy to teach to others and is pretty enough to get non gamers to play it. It also had two plays.

The rest of these games are all one play each, at meetups or visiting relations.
7 Wonders always seems to be good for everyone, I taught this to about 6 new peoples and half of them bought their own copy, a light civ building that managed 7 plays for me all year.

Age of Steam is a game I don't play enough of, it is difficult at times to get it to the table, as it is meaner than Steam or RotW, but I still love the tightness and meanness of it. This is easily one of the best track building games on the market.

Cacao is a fairly light tile laying area control game. I don't mind it, and would play it again, I just doubt I would suggest it.

Chaos in the Old World is still a 9 on BGG for me, it includes the meatiness of a area control game with varied victory conditions and direct conflict.  Some people are put off by the theme, but I don't put any truck in that.

Coup is a pretty light deduction bluffing game, played it in the bar once.

DungeonQuest (third edition) will probably never be played at my place again. My wife hated it, the entire game is random from tiles to monsters to combat. I won, because everyone else died from monsters...

London is another Wallace game, a city building game based on rebuilding after the Great Fire of London. It is on the lighter side for Wallace games and I think it holds to the theme pretty strongly.

Scrabble, I know more words than anyone else at the table...

Sorry! Card Revenge is just a variant of Sorry!

Tiny Epic Galaxies is a small footprint area control and influence game. It has a similar feel to Roll for the Galaxy but there is only one type of dice and each planet has a special power.

UNO

Viticulture is easily my favourite worker placement, which is a pretty low bar anyway but I like how the theme is married to the game and how the game flows.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I ran a couple 4-player games of Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island.  Since one or two of the players were new, we played the "introductory" scenario Castaways.  Although this scenario is a little more stream-lined in terms of rules than the other scenarios, it doesn't pull its punches on the players at all.  We lost badly on the first try but ended up successfully surviving long enough to signal the rescue ship on the second, in part because the dice decided to be much friendlier and in part because I added the Dog character (which essentially adds an additional worker piece to be used for certain types of actions).  This continues to be my favourite co-op game: it constantly gives players substantial decisions to make and it has a coherent narrative that is very engaging.

Another game of CO².  We all managed to not pollute the earth beyond repair and, thankfully, the other players also managed to not prevent me from getting victory.  I think this game has been a bit overlooked by the gaming community, which is a shame.  It's well-balanced, has a unique theme and setting and, unlike the vast majority of games, has something important to say.

I was taught the game Qwixx while frequenting my favourite watering hole.  Considering it's a close cousin of Yahtzee, I had a strangely difficult time learning it.   (Though that have been because I was just finishing a pretty strong Belgian Quad at the time...)  Good game to play in a pub, though I'd probably find it boring in a different atmosphere.

The wife and I continued to break out Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization.  I squeaked out another win, with a score of 265 to 260.  The game is very competitive once both players know not just the rules but also the synergy between cards.  We still play a fairly friendly version and play few if any of the aggressive cards against each other.

Two more sessions of T.I.M.E Stories.  If the designer of the game was at our table, Ameya would have thrown his drink in his face at one point.  Matt thought we should try using word association to help remember things between sessions.  I'm curious how many of them he remembers.  (I wrote them down, just in case.)

I won my quarter-final match in the Twilight Struggle league I'm participating in.  My opponent (US) was forced to play the event on the card "Wargames," which subtracts 6 VP from his opponent and automatically ends the game (though it may have been a misinterpretation of the card on our part that he was forced to follow through on that event).  I had enough of a cushion that that gave me the victory.  I think that's the first time I've ever benefited from that card... (previously I'd either lost to it or used it myself for its points value rather than as an event).  It was a very fun game that had major swings, both in terms of score and in terms of domination of regions.  Twilight Struggle continues to be a favourite.  I think I'm getting better at it - or at least more comfortable with it - which only increases my enthusiasm for it.

I also got to try The Grizzled, a fairly simple co-op card game that's essentially a political cartoon about the incredible personal toll and sacrifice that is taken by soldiers in the trenches, as well as the necessary bonds that form among compatriots with whom these horrors are shared.  Heavy stuff for a fairly simple co-op card game.  I think it pulls it off fairly admirably, even though we were playing it more as a light-hearted game.  (I wonder if we'd have taken the same approach to it if it used actual pictures of WWI soldiers rather than scribbly cartoon art.)  I've played better games, sure, but there are few if any that I admire more in terms of artistry, and I'm not just referring to the unique aesthetics.  (Incidentally, the artist - Bernard Verlhac (aka Tignous) - became a "casualty of war" himself, having been killed in the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.  He had submitted the illustrations for this game not long before that.)

[Jolo]

I can tell it was over Christmas, lots of light games, and an emphasis on party style

Spyfall - 7 plays of this deduction game, it is light fun and easy to pick up, although, with a couple of drinks in you the thinky bit gets harder.

Sentinels of the Multiverse - 3 more plays over Christmas means it almost made it a quarter (25 plays in a year) as I fell short by 3.

2 plays of Innovation made me want to play more Glory to Rome as well, as I prefer it over Innovation, but I still enjoy a game of this.

Carcassonne: The Discovery - one play, and is my wife's preferred Carc game (she won).

1 play of Dominion, it is what it is, with 6 plays since 2011, I see it has lost a lot of sheen.

I finally got my first game of Frostgrave from Osprey Publishing in, it is a skirmish game in the style of Mordheim, except you only play humans, and the only ones that get experience are the wizard and their apprentices. Units are about 6-10, with a hard cap of ten miniatures. Casters get experience for direct kills, casting spells and recovering loot. My caster has no offensive spells so I didn't kill anything, but I did cast 11 spells (half of them Push). I really like this, although the D20 used is very swingy.

Princes of the Renaissance - 1 play, and I still cannot believe how good this game is, if you like games with a ton of interaction and screwage, you should play this game, as almost everything is an auction.

Saboteur - 1 play, it is a pretty light card game with lots of yelling...

Smash Up - 1 play, it is neat, light and ok

Sushi Go! - 1 play, this may be easier to teach than 7 Wonders, but I prefer 7 Wonders

San Juan - 1 play, I still enjoy this as a race game, and I should play it more often.

[rucker73]

In the last month or so here's what's been hitting the table:

Codenames - Played with lots of people and needed large group games, this one saw almost double digits with 9 plays

Spyfall - A secret Santa present that went over very well with my gaming group. 5 Plays

Exploding Kittens - Several friends have this one and it get brought out a many gatherings.  4 plays

Red 7 - A great little filler game.  3 plays

Smash Up - Normally I really enjoy this one but played a game with a couple of newer players and one prone to AP and it really fell flat and dragged long.  1 Play

Nations: The Dice Game - my first foray into dice games and I really enjoyed it. - 1 Play

Roll for the Galaxy - After liking Nations (above) I was really looking forward to trying this one and was not disappointed.  I loved this one - 2 plays

Legendary: Marvel - My favorite game hands down.  Mostly due to theme and the fact it has a solo variant. - 4 plays

Overpower - First game played in years of this CCG from the 90's.  So happy to have the chance to break this one out. - 1 play

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

Another session of T.I.M.E Stories.  We're obviously near the end, but weren't quite able to complete the scenario.  One more try should do it.  Ameya and I held hands for so long that it started off uncomfortable, became comfortable, and then that increased comfort level became uncomfortable again.  We haven't talked since.

I played in a learning game of Blood Rage.  I think it might come out on top of the mountain of bodies that are piling up in a very competitive sub-genre of 90-120 minute dudes-on-a-map bloodbaths, which also includes Kemet, Cyclades, and Cthulhu Wars.  I really liked the 7-Wonders-esque card draw before each round, which allows you to formulate some flexible strategies.  Definitely a winner.  (Speaking of winners: I won.)

I soloed a game of Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game.  (Thanks, FFG, for making sure I knew it was a card game.)  This is probably my favourite solo game because it's so quick to set up and play, but still has some meat on it.  Unfortunately, most of the meat on it came from the body parts of my dismembered squad.  Them Tyranids is tough...

The wife and I played two games of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization.  The first was a tie.  A TIE!  I scrounged through the rules, flummoxed by the fact that I couldn't find a tie-breaker.  After a Google search, I confirmed that there is none.  Weird.  Game #2 wasn't close at all.  I don't like bragging so won't say who won.  (I did!  I won!  I totally won by so much!)

I played in my fourth game of Kemet.  Hold on there, Blood Rage.  Maybe I spoke too soon about it being the clear best in show.  Both provide very similar no-fuss, no-muss combat, with plenty of ability to differentiate your faction.  I can't choose.

I tried a game of Patchwork, a relatively abstract game about making a patchwork quilt.  It's heritage obviously lies in Blokus Duo, but it goes in some interesting directions, such as competing for / spending resources on the limited Tetris pieces.  I can see this being a very competitive game between experienced players.

Tried a game of A Study in Emerald (second edition).  Game play is fairly straightforward but holy cow is that ever some convoluted scoring.  I really liked the game, though, and hope a second try with the weird scoring now internalized will help me figure out how to play the game well.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife has had an itching to play some Arkham Horror recently, so we played a few games of that.  I have 3 big expansions and 3 small expansions, which is really too much to incorporate at one time: the footprint becomes unwieldy, the amount of administration increases with each option you include, and the flavour of each expansion gets diluted in those massive decks of cards.  So we now select one expansion for each play and focus on all of its goodies and just ignore card draws from other expansions (we simply discard them during rather than remove them beforehand). 

In the first game, we utilized Innsmouth Horror.  We allowed too many gates to open, which awoke the Great Old One, Bokrug.  He devoured us quickly since we neglected to weaken him throughout the game by killing his followers.  We used The Lurker at the Threshold in the second.  This was a fairly long and epic game, though perhaps a little light on tension until the end.  We managed to seal three gates in one turn, which allowed us to have the requisite number of elder signs on the board for victory.  We were lucky, though, that a seventh gate didn't open while our three intrepid investigators were traveling through the Other Worlds, or Ghataothoa would have devoured our world without mercy.

We also played back-to-back games of Firefly: The Game, both using the "Down and Out" scenario from the small Esmerelda expansion.  Like Arkham Horror, this game is bloated now with all the expansion material, but in this case it prefer to play it all-in.  The wife creamed me in the first game but I won the second in a very tight race.  This is actually a pretty good scenario for playing shorter sessions, and it's a little more competitive since you are using a small common pool of available jobs rather than each player having an individual hand of jobs to work.

The two of us also played a couple games of Eclipse so I could refresh the rules for a big 6-player game that I'll be running in the near future.  She beat me in a tie-breaker in game one.  I ended up with a much higher score in game two after she became over-aggressive with her number of actions in the final round and had to give up a lot of influence to avoid bankruptcy.  She also underestimated the offensive capabilities of my cruisers (no hulls; all guns and initiative).  I need to find a better storage solution for this one.  My box must have at least 40 zip lock baggies in there.
.
Tried another game of A Study in Emerald (second edition), this time with 4 players.  I had a better handle on strategy but didn't manage to improve my score very much.  Maybe I didn't have a better handle on strategy...

I also tried Isle of Skye: From Chieftan to King.  Never heard of it before.  It reminded me of Carcassonne when the rules were first being explained, but once we started playing it reminded me more of something like Alhambra with a Knizia-esque auction phase.  And with Feld-ian "points salad" scoring.  I liked the simple auction phase, especially having to valuate your own tiles that will be up for sale based on what you want to keep and what you think others will be willing to pay.  The tile laying phase, though, is pretty straight-forward and not terribly interesting.  Since you each have your own tableau, you can't really mess with other people.

[nanowsk]

So this past weekend some good folks in Moose Jaw held another successful GAX event, our weekend-long boardgame/LAN party.  Seventy five people were in attendance, and there were a lot of first timers mixed in with the returning gamers.  There were a few games that kept coming out:

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a favorite amongst many in the group, and switching around the roles in the base game and the Daybreak expansion helped prevent the game from getting stale.  After ten pm or so the table was replaced with the Cards Against Humanity crowd.  Well, to each his/her own I suppose.

After the LoL tournament was over there was a gamer from Alberta sending players dungeon crawling with his Descent, Journeys in the Dark 2nd edition.  I'm a new fan of that one and I'm glad I got the chance to try it out, even if I died a horrible death by giant spiders.  Twice.

Several kids came by, and so in between Mario Kart and Smash Bros we brought out King of Tokyo, Flick em Up, and Roar-a-saurus, among others.  All were a lot of fun, but I think the kids especially enjoyed playing Ca$h n Guns with the parents, and it kept getting requested.

Moose Jaw's local board game store owner Callum came out to demo a few games.  He showed off the latest edition of Thunderbirds to a very interested crowd, and then finished off the night with some classic Smash Up.

A lot of D & D 5th edition came out, with two to four tables playing through almost all of Friday and Saturday.  There were experienced players, newbies, and even some of the kids keeping the volounteer GMs busy.

I think the most-played game over the weekend had to be Dead of Winter.  My own game group has no interest in playing it, and I have now realized that they are the odd ones out because it was a smash hit.  I'm sure I set the game up for various groups five or six times.  One of my favourite parts of the evening was when a group of players set it up without my help late Saturday evening, but they didn't realize that only ONE betrayal mission card had to be shuffled in, and the game ended in a gong show with four of the five people being betrayers.  They may have woke up the neighbors with that gong show.

There were also a few other games that I got a chance to play myself.  The Resistance, Castles of Burgundy, Roll for the Galaxy, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and Arkham Horror with four expansions all came out to help turn my brain to mush by Sunday afternoon.  It was worth it though, and I'm looking forward to the next one in August.

[Jolo]

Since the last time I posted, I have played an assortment. Here they are, ordered by games played:
Sentinels of the Multiverse - 4 plays, 2 of these were using the latest expansion, but were still solid games. Villains may not add enough for some players, but I was happy with the game.

Drakon (third edition) - 3 plays, another light dungeon crawl style game, a friend of mine loves these, but I am indifferent to the randomness of the game.

Automobile - 2 plays of this meaty Wallace game, and my first plays in 5 years. I should play this more often.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set - 2 plays, as we started the campaign up again, currently on the 4th expansion

Biblios - 1 play at a bar, a good drafting game.

Camel Up - 1 play of this betting game

Chicago Express - 1 play of this Wallace inspired train game, fast playing, great design

Crop Cycle -1 play of this filler I first saw at FragCon last year, not a great game, but it is solid.

London - 1 more play of this great game, fun and pretty accessible

Nautilus Industries - I finally got 1 play in of this Saskatoon designed economic game, lighter than I thought it would be, but still good.

P.I. - 1 play of this light deduction game

Power Grid -   1 play, I don't need to say much, it is Power Grid

Railways of the World - 1 play of the Canada map

Roll for the Galaxy    - 1 play

Small World - 1 play of this now 7 year old game, still a brilliant design

Steam - 1 play of my final Wallace designed game for the month, 6 plays of Wallace in 6 weeks, incredibly high total

Takenoko - 1 play, bamboo farming and pandas?

Tiny Epic Galaxies   - 1 play, light and accessible. I think this and Roll for the galaxy might occupy the same niche, so time to get rid of one.

Viticulture - 1 play of one of the few WP games I will willingly play, great theme, married to a great game.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I took part in three sessions of Codenames, which is far and away my favourite word/party game.  The best moment of the day came in when an exasperated opponent said, "let's just touch fork."  And they did.  And it gave them the win.

I taught Thunder Road a few times.  This 80s Milton Bradley title, inspired strongly by the Mad Max movies, pairs perfectly with beer and pretzels.  I died historic.  Witness!

I played a game of Rhino Hero, which I'd never heard of before.  It's a combo of Jenga, Uno, and building a house of cards.  It's quite fun, though I prefer my tower-fall-down games to be made with wood.  The noise is important.  Which is why I quite enjoyed a few sessions of Villa Paletti.  When that sucker falls, neighbouring tables look up to see what just happened.  I managed to do pretty well at that one, despite my shaky fingers.

I was in a 4-player game of A Game of Thrones (first edition).  I played as the Lannisters and took Westeros with 5 strongholds in final scoring, winning in a tie-breaker.  I enjoy this game more now than I did when I first played it years ago.  It's aged well, I think.

I took part in a game of Railways of the World .  I stretched my rail line from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota.  And took out a lot of bonds to do it.  I ended up in last place, but I have the moral victory of establishing an important shipping line that will benefit America's north-west for generations.  (I take moral victories where I can get them.)

I was taught the game Guildhall, which is a tableau builder with some screwage.  Unfortunately, I think the screwage tends to mostly extend the length of the game, so it's both welcome and unwelcome.  Fun little game, though.  Just maybe a bit too long.

I took part in an epic game of Eclipse.  Six players and almost five hours.  All the fixings, including the freshly released Shadow of the Rift expansion.   This was probably the craziest, most combat-filled, and unpredictable game of Eclipse I've played.  Very fun and competitive.  This really needs to hit the table more often.  I think I still prefer Twilight Imperium 3, but this is much easier to get to the table with the people I most commonly game with.

I tried Risk 2210 A.D..  I'm a big fan of Rob Daviau and Craig Van Ness.  I think they're superb when it comes to making family-friendly games about killing each other with dice.  There were only two of us for this session, which isn't at all ideal for this type of game, so I hope to play it again soon with four or five players.  I ended up crushing my opponent using the brilliant strategy of rolling really high on my dice.  His strategy of rolling really low didn't work nearly as well.

I also got to enjoy a few hilarious sessions of Space Alert.  I just... I want to look out the window so much...

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

I played a couple solo games of Lord of the Rings, once to refresh myself on the rules, and once to try incorporating the Battlefields expansion.  I lost really badly in both sessions.  The expansion boards are extremely ugly (they're baffling flowcharts when taken out of context) but do change up the game quite a bit.  And they definitely ramp up the difficulty.  It'll take me a while to find the proper balance between focusing on the hobbits and their long journey to Mount Doom and the Fellowship protecting Middle Earth from the incursions of Sauron's minions.

I played another game of A Study in Emerald, this time with three players.  I think the board isn't congested enough in the early part of the game at this player count.  It needs four or five for players to really rub shoulders (and elbow each other in the ribs).

Sometimes I get over-enamoured by long, epic games with lots of theme, so I end up not playing games like For Sale as often as I should.  What a little gem (it reminds me a lot of another little favourite, No Thanks!).  I won both sessions we played because I was teaching a couple of newbies and there is a bit of a learning curve on how to value the cards you're bidding on.  The second game was much closer than the first, though.

I broke out Mansions of Madness for the first time in a long while, using the 'Til Death Do Us Part Print-On-Demand expansion.  I got to play as an investigator, which was a rare treat.  My fellow investigator and I made the mistake of trying to kill all the zombies that the Keeper was sending at us, which cost us too much time.  In the future, I'm just going to try and evade them.  This isn't a combat game, it's a Scooby-Doo-esqe mystery game, but I can't not try and shoot things in the face that are shambling towards me.

My buddy is a huge fan of the entirely unique Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.  I got him a copy of the old expansion, The Mansions Murders, which adds five more cases to solve and includes a twist on the existing system by adding a three-level mansion as an uber-location for each case.  We solved case #11: The Termination of a Teetotaler with little difficulty, and then went back and solved the secondary mystery (each case typically has more than just the primary case to solve).  Fun stuff, as always.

Another six-player game of Eclipse.  The base game was always a superlative design, but the expansions and promo material really have helped it grow as it's become more of a satisfying balance between being an efficiency engine with combat and  a thematic sandbox.  Which means it now sits precisely in my wheelhouse.  This was the first game in which I saw Alliances being used, and those two players ended up sharing victory.  (A hollow, yellow-bellied victory, but technically still a victory.)

I took part in a very fun tournament of Baseball Highlights: 2045, an early fundraiser for the 2016 Play With Your Food.  Neither my teammate nor I did a very good job of building our decks with any kind of synergy, so we did increasingly poorly as the round-robin went on.  We did not qualify for the semi-finals.  Neat game that does a surprisingly fun job of melding abstractions of both the game of baseball and the business of baseball.  Fans of Blood Bowl: Team Manager would find a lot to like here (and vice versa).

I tried the game Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game, which I received from my brother for Christmas.  He doesn't know anything about games, but the game's box caught his eye.  Which it should, because the game's box is awesome.  The game itself is pretty decent, too.  It's a very fun theme (playing the bad guy in an old-school side-scroller) and the mechanics are pretty clever.  I'll probably get the expansions since I don't think the base game has enough variety to have a lot of longevity.

I tried Thunder Road with just two players.  The game benefits from the added mayhem of a full complement of players clogging up the road.