What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

Tried to play Yu Gi Oh for the first time with my sister's boyfriend. There were no instructions and he explained the game miserably. I also couldn't concentrate because Men In Black 3 (a terrible move btw) was on the TV. That, and I hated how every single monster looked. And all the cards were in card sleeves that were one size too big. Overall a horrible experience. Even if I were to have it explained to me better it just doesn't seem like my game.

[chas]

SEPTEMBER GAME COUNTDOWN

Four new games or expansions this month, due to the massive Gen Con inspired industry releases:

1. Quartermaster General This WWII strategy has a map with army and navy units, but its six national card decks are its heart. Got it and played it solitaire for orientation, and then both two and four player so far. Everyone loves this. "Best card game I ever played!"--Kolakoski This hot new game is doing so well that the designer is already planning an expansion.

2. Star Trek Fleet Captains: Dominion Expansion (Exp3) Just received. Have spaceships; will paint. An early player on bgg reports the Dominion won by one point in his first play, and they didn't even use any of their big ships. Their fleet is:
Jem Hadar: (8 ships: Sizes 6,5,5, 1,1,1,1)
Cardassian: (3 ships: Sizes 4,3,3)
Breen: (1 ship: Size 4)
For me, this is the best Star Trek game ever made. See my separate thread here.

3. Firefly the Game: Blue Sun Rim Space Expansion (Exp3) Should be out next week. Its been noted that last time an FTG expansion showed up on the very last day of the month it was announced. Well worth waiting for. Just re-watched the pilot episode on my new 55" TV screen.

4. Cyclades: Titans Expansion (Exp3) Expected late this month or early October. Tom Vassal just reviewed this game and said "For Cyclades fans, this expansion is a must have." Supposedly makes a great game incredible. My take: moving it in the direction of their even more popular game Kemet--whose upcoming First Expansion itself is on my Fall/Pre Christmas Buy List along with the much delayed Commands and Colors Napoleonics: The Prussian Army Expansion (Exp 4) now due in November.

Over the next two Saturdays in early October, I'll upping my 11 game play of solitaire/2 Players on Memoir 44: D-Day Landings (received in July) with first a 3 US map/6 Player and then a full 6 map/12 Player at my FLGS! Everybody who has come over for this so far gives it the thumbs up, as it boosts M44 to a new level, which I guess is close to the game Richard Borg himself plays with his own pals!

[Wind Lane]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Glad to hear that Rivet Wars seems to have more options now. It seemed like it could be a neat game, but then the reviews seemed kind of meh. Probably just one of those things where a little more "stuff" can make a big difference in options and more bang.

Glad you like Black Fleet, but more importantly, I'm glad that mama does too. (funny, I call my wife that too. ). It's a good game for sure.

From my own play throughs of Rivet Wars I can say that the system feels fun to me. The core game.


But, like other games where your army can be vastly different from scenario to scenario, it definitely benefits from having a wider variety to draft from.


I still think the core box is worth the purchase price even with no expansions - I just won't be the person proving that.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by chas

SEPTEMBER GAME COUNTDOWN


1. Quartermaster General This WWII strategy has a map with army and navy units, but its six national card decks are its heart. Got it and played it solitaire for orientation, and then both two and four player so far. Everyone loves this. "Best card game I ever played!"--Kolakoski This hot new game is doing so well that the designer is already planning an expansion.

Glad everyone liked QG Chas. Though I only have gotten to play it once so far, it was blast. It's been popular with the group as I've seen it being played several other times while I was in the middle of other games.

Originally Posted by Wind Lane

From my own play throughs of Rivet Wars I can say that the system feels fun to me. The core game.


But, like other games where your army can be vastly different from scenario to scenario, it definitely benefits from having a wider variety to draft from.


I still think the core box is worth the purchase price even with no expansions - I just won't be the person proving that.

That's funny WL More is always better

[chas]

Yes; you'll notice in my post above that three of the four new items I'm getting this month are in fact expansions!

[Hahma]

Unfortunately, of those 3 expansions, I've only played Cyclades base game, which I hope to play again sometime with the expansion.

[chas]

When are you coming to New York City?

[davidlhsl]

Up Front

A week following a tutorial trial with my dad, we tried for a full game this time.

Up Front is an out-of-print wargame that attempts to bring the Squad Leader game into card format. Each nationality has personality cards representing an individual man each, and fields 10-15 men based on the scenario. Each player then draws a hand of cards from the 162 card action deck, and these cards are how you accomplish most tasks in the game.

Personality Cards are divided into 2-4 groups, with anywhere from 2-10 men in each group. Players determine how to set up the groups, which is part of the strategy.

Type of action cards include: Rally (rallies pinned men), Movement, Fire, Terrain, Concealment (defense bonus you don't reveal to opponent until you're attacked), Sniper, Hero.

You don't play on a map. Instead, you identify positions of your groups with Range Chits. All groups normally start at Range Chit 0. This is an abstract representation of position. To determine the Relative Range to opposing groups, you simply add the Range Chits. So groups begin the game at Relative Range 0 (0+0) to the opposing groups. As you advance, you advance the Range Chit, which also increases the Relative Range. When opposing groups reach Relative Range 5, they are as close to each other as possible. There's more to this concept which I'll bypass for the sake of brevity.

In Scenario A, you win if you can get 4 Personality Cards to Range Chit 4 (not Relative Range!) in protective terrain. These cards don't all have to be in the same group. You can also win if you eliminate more than half the Personality Cards of the other side. Finally, you can win based on points if you go through the Action Deck 3 times.

Our game actually went the full distance of 3 decks, which surprised me. I was mainly surprised, because I was getting slaughtered in the beginning. My dad knocked out 3 of my 10 guys in the early going, one of which was my Squad Leader! I recall that one was taken out by a Sniper. I, on the other hand, had the ability to fire but not move. I had to entrench in open terrain in order to get any protection. My dad caught on to the fact that you don't have to do something every turn if you could instead improve your hand by cycling cards by discarding. Every time I had the chance to attack, it seemed he was able to slap down a Concealment Card, I was drawing bad numbers, and/or he was able to quickly Rally any pinned men.

Towards the third deck, in an act of desperation, I attemted to transfer two men from one group to the other in order to increase that group's firepower. One got pinned and knocked back to the original group, but the other made it. I was then able to play some better fire cards and worked on one of his groups. I was able to kill only one guy, but I did Rout four others (Routed men are worth 1 VP instead of 2 VP for a kill).

The third deck emptied, and nobody had achieve Range Chit 4 or eliminated more than half the squad. So it was down to Victory Points. You score 2 VP per killed opponent, 1 VP per routed opponent, and X VP = Non-moving and unpinned men multiplied by the Range Chit. Final score: 19 - 18 in my favor. Due to the way he slaughterd me initially, this came as a huge surprise to me.

As I've been spending the past two weeks studying the rules pretty heavily, I was able to proceed without referencing the rules, though I would've if we had attempted infiltration or close combat. There were some things my dad would've done if he had known about them. He would've tried to transfer men to another group, but didn't realize he could do this until I attempted it. He also forgot from our tutorial trial last week that you can combine more than one Fire Card, as he would've been able to make larger attacks. I try to pre-emptively explain concepts as we play any game, but there's a lot to juggle in this game. I did allow him to cancel his movement card in one of his groups at the end, which would've prevented him from scoring points. This was because I hadn't explained this, and it would've been unfair. But we're going to get this on the table at least every other week for the moment in order to become more familiar with the game, which should improve the experience.

Tough learning curve, but this is a pretty amazing game.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by chas

When are you coming to New York City?

Would love to, but it's not in the budget

Originally Posted by davidlhsl

Up Front

A week following a tutorial trial with my dad, we tried for a full game this time.

Up Front is an out-of-print wargame that attempts to bring the Squad Leader game into card format. Each nationality has personality cards representing an individual man each, and fields 10-15 men based on the scenario. Each player then draws a hand of cards from the 162 card action deck, and these cards are how you accomplish most tasks in the game.


Tough learning curve, but this is a pretty amazing game.

This one sounds neat. I believe there is some nasty litigation going on for a reprinting of this game. Not sure if it was for a kickstarter or what, but on BGG, there is a crazy long thread called, "But what does this mean for Up Front". Seems like a lot of people are out some money they put toward it. You're lucky to have an old copy of the game.

[spidysox]

Went to a board game auction at Games Keep in West Chester PA with Tom yesterday. The auction was a real hoot. I could not believe how much money people were spending. I bet one guy walked out of there with more than 25 games!

I picked up a small lot of kid friendly games (Lord of the Rings Stratego, Lord of the Rings Risk, and a battleship variant)for my classroom for $11, and Space Hulk the card game for myself for $7.

Then I bought Descent 2.0 and a few mini expansions for Sentinels of the Multiverse. Descent has been a game I have wanted to pick up for a long time and I finally pulled the trigger.

After the auction, we got in two games of Shadowrun, 1 game of Sentinels, and 2 quick games of Star Realms.

Overall a really fun day of gaming.

[davidlhsl]

Originally Posted by Hahma

This one sounds neat. I believe there is some nasty litigation going on for a reprinting of this game. Not sure if it was for a kickstarter or what, but on BGG, there is a crazy long thread called, "But what does this mean for Up Front". Seems like a lot of people are out some money they put toward it. You're lucky to have an old copy of the game.

Yes, I am one of the victims of the Kickstarter campaign. Up Front was supposed to be reprinted with an updated design, a promised rulebook written more clearly than the original, include a ton of additional nationalities that were created by fans over the years, and have different action decks for different environments (country, city, jungle, desert, winter).


In addition to getting a copy of the original game plus the Banzai expansion (adds Japan and Britain to the mix of German, American, and Russians), I also bought several Artscow decks that feature a graphical redesign of the game. There are some really neat features to the redesign, such as allowing you to turn a terrain card to the side if you successfully entrench. I've printed a score of player aids and a great implementation of the rulebook that includes the FAQ for the game incorporated into the rulebook. Another bonus to the redesign is that it gives me the Italians, French, and Greek nationalities.


On a related Kickstarter front, the D-Day Sergeants Kickstarter that I supported is probably a month away. Similar to the complaints on BGG, some backers have verbalized their own frustrations in the Kickstarter comments. I am concerned about getting a bunch of goodies that aren't adequately explained, but I'm fully prepared to house rule anything I need to. But scenarios for the additional chapters might not be ready at launch. I've read some of your own frustrations with the company and seen some of your efforts. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns, though it would be nice if the company would pause and catch up on their backlog of fulfilling their promises to complete their past efforts before tossing out more stuff. It'll be interesting if their upcoming Kickstarter that introduces armor will suffer from the growing frustrations of their fans.


I'll share the news of the game when I get it.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by davidlhsl

Yes, I am one of the victims of the Kickstarter campaign. Up Front was supposed to be reprinted with an updated design, a promised rulebook written more clearly than the original, include a ton of additional nationalities that were created by fans over the years, and have different action decks for different environments (country, city, jungle, desert, winter).


In addition to getting a copy of the original game plus the Banzai expansion (adds Japan and Britain to the mix of German, American, and Russians), I also bought several Artscow decks that feature a graphical redesign of the game. There are some really neat features to the redesign, such as allowing you to turn a terrain card to the side if you successfully entrench. I've printed a score of player aids and a great implementation of the rulebook that includes the FAQ for the game incorporated into the rulebook. Another bonus to the redesign is that it gives me the Italians, French, and Greek nationalities.


On a related Kickstarter front, the D-Day Sergeants Kickstarter that I supported is probably a month away. Similar to the complaints on BGG, some backers have verbalized their own frustrations in the Kickstarter comments. I am concerned about getting a bunch of goodies that aren't adequately explained, but I'm fully prepared to house rule anything I need to. But scenarios for the additional chapters might not be ready at launch. I've read some of your own frustrations with the company and seen some of your efforts. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns, though it would be nice if the company would pause and catch up on their backlog of fulfilling their promises to complete their past efforts before tossing out more stuff. It'll be interesting if their upcoming Kickstarter that introduces armor will suffer from the growing frustrations of their fans.


I'll share the news of the game when I get it.

It stinks about the Up Front KS.

As far as D-Day Sergeants, I'd be interested in hearing how it goes. I'm not surprised by the delays, as they happen with KS'rs, but has with LBG before with Red Devils. They do it all in house, so it is generally some in house issue that screws them up. Very dependent on special computer programs, so when that gets messed up, then it seems to be a pain to fix.

While it would be nice for LBG to catch up with their Sergeants stuff (rules for expansion material mostly), I doubt it will ever happen, so that's why I just make up my own rulings. They were supposed to have an online roster system, an on line campaign system, ways to get your soldiers promoted and many more things. But Jeff is the key cog to the entire operation, so he can only do so much and doesn't seem to like to delegate much or have others that can do certain things. So every time there is a hiccup that takes time to fix in the programming or other in house issues, that time he spends on that keeps him from fulfilling other promises he's made in the past.

It will be interesting to see how the armor goes. Not sure how many veterans of Sergeants have much faith or money left to invest in that one. But we'll see what happens when he launches that KS and see what crazy incentives he gives to get people to buy in. I can't afford it, but am interested in seeing how it goes.