What game is hitting your table?

[Bix Conners]

Very cool. Quite an assortment of games!!!

Board game weekends are good for the soul. I have been doing this on the Family Day Weekend (February) for a few years. It is a weekend I very much look forward to every year. I really need to look at having it more than once a year though.

[Jolo]

Much like Mr Newell, I used to post on FortressAT what I played, but since it got blocked at work (what?) I have not in awhile. So here is what I have been playing.
May 23rd
Vegas Showdown  -  I really enjoy this game, it has nothing new, but it is a really enjoyable play. Last night we played 5 player and "Big Money" Conal beat me by one point. We had some time left so we finished with
For Sale in which Brent "Gary doesn't lie" beat me by a buck...

May 16th
Rolling Freight - new game from APE Games that I got on KS. It is my third play since I received it and all three have been enjoyable, although my dice rolling ability sucks... Did I mention I finished last?

May 9th
Miskatonic School for Girls - a light deck building game in which you build your deck plus the deck of the person to your left, you put good things in yours, and bad in their deck. We played

Next Month!
Descent: Road to Legend

[ChadBoudreau]

Here is what has been hitting the table at my home lately...

Space Alert
My six year-old (Breton) and I have bent this one to our own needs. We don't play with the CD. Instead, I set a mental time limit for planning our 13 actions. We also play campaign style, meaning we've named our two human characters and our two android sidekicks. When a section of the ship is destroyed, anyone in that section is lost (killed), and all other crew make it to the escape pods and return to base. We've played four games in this style and only 1 crew member has made it through four missions: Liam (as named by Breton). Playing in this way scratches a growing RPG itch I've developed-- this need to create a character and watch him / her develop. And I find Breton has a keen sense of "story" so this style of play suits his imagination. But, damn, it makes for tense play when you know the lives of your veterens are on the line!

Heroclix
Does this count as a "board game"? Probably not, but its on the table a lot these days. I think we've got 7 or 8 games in since Breton learned the game at Free Comic BooK Day on May 5. We play a modified game-- scaling to our needs. We don't use some of the more complex powers / abilities of the characters, but our basic gameplay has been expanded slowly to include some additional rules. Once Breton had the basics I introduced a few more of the rules. We've had some good scraps! And the superhero-based teams pleases both me and him.

Alien Frontiers
Played this for the first time last night. What a great game-- I'm digging these dice mechanics games. All three players pretty much ignored the alien artifact cards until late in the game so I suspect the next time we play the game will be quite a bit different. I like a good sci-fi themed game (seem to be few and far between to me) and Alien Frontiers fits the bill.

Survive: Escape From Atlantis
We love the squids in our house. Watching those tentacles yank a victim off the beach or out of a crowded boat is a great feeling.

[Kurt Swekla]

1989: Dawn of Freedom
Just finished off my first game of this Twilight Struggle pseudo sequel. It's a pretty awesome game, very much like TS but focused in the Eastern European Communist countries.

Nightfall
Have been playing Nightfall and its expansions for the past couple months. Its actually a lot more fun than I thought at first and is really growing on me. Basically like Dominion except with werewolves, vampires, etc and more direct conflict against each other.

Betrayal at House on the Hill
Played this a fair bit a couple years back, but we got our own copy so starting playing it again. A fun exploration haunting game with a good twist part way through, but I still find it lacking in the strategic area.

Horus Heresy
Have been working our way through the 6 scenarios of this one. A surprisingly fun warhammer themed wargame, which is a big surprise for me since I don't really like the warhammer universe at all.

[Bix Conners]

@Chad:
I think the expansion for Space Alert actually has sheets for characters (campaign play). Your missions sound fun.
Also, if you enjoy Alien Frontiers, I bet you would really enjoy playing Kingsburg and Castles of Burgundy. I like all three. I am realy looking forward to the expansions for Alien Frontiers.

@Kurt:
1989 sounds like a great game. I am interested to see how your enjoyment of the game progresses with more plays. Some of these games are like wine and get better with age.

[Bix Conners]

Twilight Struggle
Our oldest daughter, (26), saw Twilight Struggle on my game shelf a couple of months back and proclaimed that she would like to play it. She is not an avid gamer and enjoys an occasional game of Alhambra, Catan, or Carcassonne. I explained that this game was a little more "meat and potatoes" and she just said "so what, I am interested in the Cold War era and I want to play." Music to my ears. Last night I set up two boards of Twilight Struggle. My daughter Krystal and I played one game, and my wife Kathy played Bob, a friend of ours. Bob played a partial game about a year ago, and Kathy had not played the game. I went through the rules, and off we went.
Krystal (USSR) vs Matt (USA) - She won by getting 20vp in Turn 4.
Kathy (USSR) vs Bob (USA) - Bob won by getting Europe Control at the end of the game, Turn 10.

I can say this was a proud moment. Kathy slogging it out to the end in a very close game and Krystal handily beating me by turn 4. Fun times.

Battle Line
Since Krystal made quick work of me in Twilight Struggle, we had time some other games. Played 2 games of this. This is a great two player game. We have sleeved the cards to make the game "pub proof" so we can take it on our travels.

Tsuro
Introduced this to Krystal as well. Played 1 quick game. It is ok with two, but is much better with 4+ players.

Kogworks
Krystal and I played three games of this to end the evening while Bob & Kathy finished up on their game of Twilight Struggle. This is a clever little abstract game that has great components. It is fun to put this on the table every once in awhile.

[Bix Conners]

Poker
I run a poker league for friends. I played in a League game on Friday night and played 6th out of 9 players. I am currently in a slump in my poker play, so it is time to mix it up a bit. I like the deep stack format for our tournaments and the group is awesome to play with.

Loopin' Louie
Once you are knocked out of the poker game, you are invited to stick around and visit the "loser's lounge" where you can play Loopin' Louie or RockBand. Loopin' Louie has been such a hit with people that we have ordered in 7 more copies for people. Fun times. Got to love games designed for 4 yr olds.

[Colin Dearborn]

Got a couple games to the table with the family this weekend.


SETTLERS OF CATAN
Saturday night we decided to skip the TV and pull out the old classic. My daughter took us down easily, 4's and 10's where hitting all night for her.


MAORI

Picked this up on Friday and taught Alex. We got a couple games in. I really like the mechanic that all players use the same ship going around the tiles to pick their island pieces. There is a fair bit of strategy in what looks like a light filler game.

[doctorb23]

great idea for a thread!  I don't think I 've checked this site for a few years and was directed to it from a thread on BGG.

I have a small group that meets 2-3 times a month for short sessions of 2-3 hrs and one to two weekends per year.  All of us are relatively new to the hobby although I have gone all in so I have a closet full of games that half of which will nver get played.  Democratically we takes turns choosing the game we will play, so I may get a chance to introduce 8-10 new games per year.

I've been able in recent months to introduce:

AGE OF EMPIRES III: which I loved and I think the group enjoyed as well.  The bits are quite nice and I am ken to get a few more plays in.  I won the game by a small margin without gaining a single discovery token.  I simply kept flooding the new world with missionaries and colonists to gain control of the colonies.  I am interested to try again and send a number of soldiers to the new world and explore geting the win by using the war action.  However, my group may not ask to play this again because they love...

SHOGUN: I introduced this about a month before AoE III, and we have played it twice more since.  There is just something so fun about  dropping those cubes into the battle tower.  I think we will get quite a few plays of this before it gets old.  However, a game that might be our new favorite (supplanting Puerto Rico), is

HANSA TEUTONICA.  I think it took us 6 or 8 plays to get all the rules and all the scoring correct, and we still enjoyed every play of it.  the newer edition has a better rule book, the earlier edition I have is not a great translation to english, and finally now we are playing correctly.  The amazing thing is that this game is actually ridiculously simple to teach, but there are just so many ways to win, and you can switch strategy on the fly.  We love Power Grid too but we end up playing this because we can rip out a game of HT in about 1/3 the time, and after every game we want to play again, to try out a new srategy we thought of during th elast game.  We haven't even bothered to unwrap the expansion for this game because we are still having so much fun with the original.

QUARRIORS has become our "go to" filler game, with occasional games of Citadels and Innovation.  I was lukewarm on Quarriors but it is better with the expansion, and I hope the latest exansion will improve it more.  I also hope it expands the game to 5 players, which is the usual size of my game group, which is why I plan to get the Innovation expansion.

I will probably start a separate thread, but In case someone sees this and can help me: 
I have acquired a copy of Space Alert in a BGG trade and was dismayed to find out it is a French edition.  I have downloaded the english rules and sound files for the CD, and even the missions logs, but Rio Grand won't help me out or even sell me a card set.  Would anyone be willing to make a copy of their english card set for me to paste up on my set?  You could suggest a  reasonable reward.  On BGG I posted a request offering up a trade of my extra unplayed copies of Anomia and the Resistance.

any takers?  heck I will even trade my french set for the english one although I can't imagine anyone taking me up on that offer.

[Mac Grassick]

Wow, there's a lot of gaming going on out there! That's awesome!

Lords of Waterdeep

I played this one late into the morning. We played three games & each one played quite a bit differently from the others. We had three players for all three games as well. It is playable by 2-5 players & I really think that, without playing anything but a 3 player game yet, the game will really change, as far as strategy is concerned, with the different group size. It is very simple to explain the rules & was surprisingly easy to jump into & play. Very simplely, it is a game of acquiring adventurers to complete quests with the goal of scoring the most victory points. As a incredible fan of the forgotten realms & specifically the Drizzt series of books, I was going to buy this game on pure subject manner alone. I was so happy to get a game that is one of the most well rounded I've played in along time, nevermind incredibly fun! The components are top shelf as well. I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to give it a try.

Carabande

I absolutely love this game! I purchased it on the German eBay site. It is by far the most expensive game I've ever purchased, but it is more then worth it. It is the early version of Pitch car, a DEX game involving flicking the wooden disc around the track. I usually use it as a ice breaker for new gamers. not the usually "board game" people think of & I love to break that stereotype with new gamers. Other then Matt, I don't usually hear much excitement when it comes to the DEX game category but I really enjoy these games.

4th Edition D&D

This is a bit of a curve ball but I figured I'd throw it in here anyway. In the last 6 months or so I've gotten back into playing a bit of D&D after about a 2 decade hiatus. I was very impressed with the new rules & mechanics of the game. It is much more of a tactical game then when I last played with the attacks of opportunity & flanking rules. The addition of the skills, feats & powers make the characters much deeper & really give you a chance to customize they characters to your own particular style of play. Now, with the books & adventures offering double sided maps & punch outs for the monsters(minis are a million times better but also much more $), wizards has really gone the extra mile to help players visualize what is happening in the game.

As a side note, I'm looking to recruit some players or even a DM. There are 3 of us & we'd like to play at least once a month but hopefully more. Let me know if you are interested.

The Legend of Drizzt

Another example of my love of the forgotten realms material. A very solid game with multiple replay value. All the favorite characters from the Drizzt books. The game comes with an adventure book with 13, or so, adventures varying from mostly cooperative adventures but also having some team options & one me vs the world adventures. Excellent component again. One of three similar games games by wizards. I haven't played the other two but I hope to in the future.

Catacombs

This is a DEX based dungeon crawl game. This game blends my two favorite genres. The board could be bigger. This does add to the difficulty of the game but would probably be a huge improvement for the game if it was bigger. The different size disc add an unexpected level of difficulty I wasnt expecting when I first played it. Things like arrows or fireballs shot by the players or monsters are about half the size & weight of the other pieces. It makes for a different & more difficult shot, especially at first. Tons of fun to play. The variant rules & gameplay I found online were excellent & I encorporated a bunch into my regular games.

Descent: Journey in the Dark

I've purchased all the expansions for this game & I've gotten more then my money's worth out of this game. It is another dungeon crawl game with one of the expansions offering a larger & continuous adventure. The components for tis game is why I purchased & immediately loved this game. It has puzzle like tiles to build the dungeons as you go but the real attraction was the 3D pieces(no glasses required). Instead of just having a punched out piece to represent the doors they take a punched out foot, put it in a stand so it give you a better image to help immerse yourself in the game. The game also has excellent minis. I use them whenever I can in other games & especially D&D. There is so much stuff in the box that I had to buy a 30 drawer tackle box just to fit all the pieces so I can take it out of the house. It is pretty involved game with just about, but not quite, as many rules as D&D. This game was actually the spring board for getting back into D&D. It's an awesome game if you have 3-4 hours to kill.

Willow

If you liked the movie, you will love the game. I played with some people that hadn't seen the film(I don't know what rock they've been under) & they still enjoyed the game. It plays out like the movie, the good guys try to save Alora & the bad guys try & capture her & take her back to the castle where she is to banished from the plane of existence. It's an old school style game with the stand up cardboard player pieces. I have a soft spot for these game, especially when they are in such good condition. Willow is about a two hour play & I think I've had a few games go longer & left unfinished but we all still thought it was a fun experience even though we ran out of time.

Wizard/Extreme Wizard

I was never one for trick taking games or card game in general but these games changed that for me. These are basically the same game with some tweaks to how you bids on the tricks you hope to take. The two new cards from the standard game are the wizard & the jester. The wizard is the beat everything card, even trump & the jester is a free pass card if you don't want to play a card. I like to use these games as openers for the night because they're quick & easy to explain so you can start playing & they are less intimidating then the other games we usually end up getting into. Good game, give them a try.

Happy gaming everyone!

Mac