What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[chas]

Hahma,

Yes, the activity around The Great War shows how its sadly still the case that so many board gamers have no contact with their miniatures bretheren! The folks who lost their British bayonets never heard of a sprue cutter! One guy was nice enough to post a short tutorial on cutting the figures off the sprues on bgg, but it came too late for the more impatient board gamers, it seems! Luckily, with my 54mm toy soldier collecting, I'm up on that kind of technique! You're right that the company is working I hear on making the sprues more accessible--if I manage to snag a copy soon though, I'll get the first draft old tough ones too!!!

[chas]

THE CANADIAN GAMES

My old Canadian gamer pal from Calgary is winding up his visit! He only comes down once every couple of years. Many of the games we played were new to him. We ranged from old classics to new designs, in two or three player sessions. The following dozen games were played over the last week:

Hold The Line* (Worthington) x3 (The New York City Campaign: Long Island, Harlem Heights, White Plains)
Battle Cry 150 Leadership* x2 (my first fan scenarios with our new CCN Leadership Mods: Petersburg and Sharp's Cornfield/Wilson's Creek)
Kemet* **
Fire & Axe (Asmodee)* **
Texas Glory* (Columbia) x2
Axis & Allies D-Day*
Axis & Allies Guadalcanal**
Star Trek Fleet Captains**

*First Time Play for my pal
** With Taeblewalker

I also took him around to some local American Revolutionary War sites from The Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes mistakenly, erroneously, and inaccurately called The Battle of Long Island): Battle Pass, The Old Stone House, and Fulton Ferry Landing.

[Hahma]

Last night I played:

WWE Superstar Showdown - kind of fun and light wresting game where you move your figure around in the ring (or out of, if you get thrown out), and play cards to try to out do the opponent's choice of cards.

Viticulture - My first time playing this one. It's a worker placement game with the theme of running a place that grows grapes, stores them, turns them into wine etc. to fulfill contracts for specific types of wine, as well as many other things you can do to earn victory points. Cool game.

Die sieben Siegel (The Seven Seals) (aka Zing)- A German trick taking card game, where you are dealt your hand of cards of maybe 12 cards or so of various colors # 1-12 in a 4 player game. In order from the left of the dealer clockwise around, you will take tokens of colors of suits you think you can win. Basically the lead player will play a card and others must play a card of that suit, and red is trump and can be played if you don't have that color. So any tokens that are leftover that you don't win, you get 2 points for (points are bad). If you take a trick that you don't have a token to turn in for, then you take a black token and that is worth 3 points at the end of the round. There's also a Saboteur that someone can take instead of taking tokens for tricks they think they can get, but the Saboteur player is starting out with 4 points and takes 1 less point for each black token other players have. So they are trying to thwart other players and make them win tricks they don't want to . There's only one Saboteur in the game each round and the player to the left of the dealer is the first person to decide if they want it or not.

Pandante - is a game that is a twist on the poker game Texas Holdem. It uses different cards and there are limits as to betting and such. There are also abilities players can choose to use and lying/bluffing is encouraged.

[Porkins]

I traded in a large pile of books at the local used book/stuff/dvd trade store and picked up a brand new looking copy of Flash Point for 20 bucks. Played it a bunch with my kids and my dad who was visiting for the weekend. We played the "family game" a few times, then the "Experienced Game" a few times. It's a lot of fun. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Pandemic, but more fun.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Porkins

I traded in a large pile of books at the local used book/stuff/dvd trade store and picked up a brand new looking copy of Flash Point for 20 bucks. Played it a bunch with my kids and my dad who was visiting for the weekend. We played the "family game" a few times, then the "Experienced Game" a few times. It's a lot of fun. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Pandemic, but more fun.

Great price there Porkins, glad you liked it.

[IAmBatman]

A lot less set up and quicker play than Pandemic, but, yeah, a lot of the Pandemic feel and good sides as well.

[davidlhsl]

Met with my nephews (in their 20s) and my great-niece/nephew for some gaming goodness this past Labor Day weekend. Contractions were only 15 minutes apart.

In preparation for our game day, I made up some sympathy cards on my computer and handed it to them when I arrived. They looked at their cards with an understandable puzzled expression, but laughed when they opened and read their cards.

Card 1 (based on memory, as I didn't write these down): "'It's not whether you win or lose. It's whether you can pull down your opponent's pants and make them cry like little girls.' - Donald Trump. Please accept my condolences for beating you in today's games. Uncle D"

Card 2: "My sympathies during this difficult time in your life for wiping you out in today's games. Uncle D"

Arena of the Planeswalkers: My younger nephew was eager to try this. I teamed with my great-niece (around 6 years old, I think) against my nephews. I was red, she was green, my younger nephew was white, and my older nephew was black. I let my great-nephew (too young to play at around 4 years old) play with the blue figures on the floor.

Might've been a fun game if I had applied the rules correctly. I had mistakenly thought that hasten allowed all Blazing Firecat squad figures to attack when summoned instead of just one of the three figures. I compounded the error by making the same mistake when I cast "Seize the Day" during the same turn. Net effect: I wiped out my younger nephew's White planeswalker on one turn, and he hadn't even summoned any units! My older nephew stayed around a little longer, but he was no match against the massive range of my great-niece's long ranged elves and went down.

My older nephew didn't care for the fact that he was only able to take one turn against my team's two turns and felt it would've been more fair if the turns alternated between teams (me, then him, then my g-niece, then him, and back to me...) instead of (him, then my g-niece, then me, then him...). I think I interpreted the turn order we played correctly.

My older nephew wanted to move on to another game instead of a rematch. I texted my younger nephew later that evening of my error and promised a revenge match. Hopefully, that bad impact of our first game won't sour it for them, and I'm debating on whether my older nephew's suggestion on team turn order would be more fair.

Anyone familiar with my Heroscape superhero battle thread knows I often struggle in games with units that each have special abilities. (sigh)

Magic: the Gathering: I then prepared some of my Magic: the Gathering cards for some drafting. I bought commons/uncommons (no rares) for peasant drafting, and I put together 4 sets of 90 cards to simulate a sealed deck draft. My nephews and I each picked one of the 4 sets (we didn't inspect the cards), then spent an hour putting together our 40-card decks for playing. We then played three games: Me vs. younger nephew, my two nephews, then me vs. older nephew (1 game each due to time shortage).

This time, I needed a sympathy card, because I lost both of my games. My older nephew won both of his games, and my younger nephew won a game and lost a game. Even though I lost both games, I had a much better time than when I play constructed deck format where you play 60-card decks with no more than 4 copies of a card. What I love about a drafting/sealed deck format is that each time you play is a different experience as opposed to simply playing the same deck that you tweak. And even though I spent more money than originally planned to get my peasant (commons/uncommons) collection*, I would've spent even more money for fewer cards if I had purchased for constructed play. I have the 2014 commander decks that have a bunch of rares, plus rares from some other stuff I bought, if I ever decide to put those into the mix. However, I thought the commons and uncommons were fun to play on their own.

My older nephew prefers the constructed format and even had a nasty deck I played against from a prior visit, but he stated he had fun putting together a deck on the fly from a limited card pool.

* No matter how you try to avoid it, Magic: the Gathering is a money sink

[1Mmirg]

Sounds like some great gaming, davidlhsl!

We pulled out Medieval Academy twice in the last two days. Really like this drafting game. The board play/positioning aspects make it different from most other drafting games (7 Wonder, Among the Stars, Fairy Tale, etc.) and I like it quite a bit. Plus, it's got cute art and a pretty fun theme--and it plays quickly. Definitely one of the best of this genre, imo.

[Yodaking]

Played a couple more games of Run & Bones, mixing in the mercenaries and trying some new strategies. Was starting to get concerned that whoever goes first wins the game as the 2nd game was also a lopsided win but in the 3rd game the team that went second won the game. We have now learned that the key is not to get too caught up trying to play defense and instead just going on attack yourself. The first two games out the first team went on offense and never let up so the second team couldn't get off defense. Once we had the 'defender' also go on offense right way it balanced out.

The game really is just a race to see who can get the 6 VP first, and while the first player can get an early jump on that race you can catch up and pass them when going second. It is a combination of smart play, good dice rolls, and having the right Tide Cards to play. Speaking of the Tide Cards, I've also learned to just discard any cards you don't think you can play soon. Playing cards is key so even if you have a really good card in your hand, if it is a situational card you won't be playing soon then just get rid of it and try to draw a card you can use sooner. Last tip, try to get in a position to go after the Cannon and Armory ASAP as those are the easier two objects to destroy since they are not being protected by the crew.

[Dad_Scaper]

Did anyone else get the Epic KS? It looks like a good little card game, though Italy still be a couple days before we get to play.

[Gurei-Ornery]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Did anyone else get the Epic KS? It looks like a good little card game, though Italy still be a couple days before we get to play.

I got the store pledge of 10 copies plus the tournament kit. Sadly, no email to say it has shipped yet.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Did anyone else get the Epic KS? It looks like a good little card game, though Italy still be a couple days before we get to play.

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