What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[nyys]

Originally Posted by B:T:L Matt

Today, I received Omen: A Reign of War (per suggestion of 1Mmirg) and I absolutely loved how this game is packaged. It's the coolest little box/case ever.

I got that one too recently and here I thought I'd never see another VHS case ever again. It is a nice little package, now if I can just get it played.

[Drumline3469]

Played Whitechapel last night. I found it horribly unbalanced. I made my hideout 48 and always put a wretched on 27 (One space away from my hideout) and always waited so they had to move her and so I would kill her and just carriage to my hideout every single night with nothing they could do to stop me. Did we mess up a rule, or is the game really that broken?

[B:T:L Matt]

Originally Posted by nyys

I got that one too recently and here I thought I'd never see another VHS case ever again. It is a nice little package, now if I can just get it played.

Yeah, I'm just kickin' around the house tonight since the little lady won't be around, so I can't play it. Might have to try some solo games or something instead...

[Codeman]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Sweet!!!

Just how big is the box? I've read it's big, and I'm wondering how much space it's going to take up... I might be in trouble when the SW/BG package shows up from CSI...

Nominally it is 3" X 14" x 14"
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[yagyuninja]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Does anyone own or have played Earth Reborn? It seems like an awesome game.

Got it from Tanga a little while back and finally played my first game. It was pretty fun, even playing with the most basic ruleset (scenario 1). It introduces the rules a couple pages at a time, and I get the feeling it is going to be crazy once all the rules are in play.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by yagyuninja

Got it from Tanga a little while back and finally played my first game. It was pretty fun, even playing with the most basic ruleset (scenario 1). It introduces the rules a couple pages at a time, and I get the feeling it is going to be crazy once all the rules are in play.

Yeah you are one of the lucky ones that got it from Tanga.

I've seen some video reviews of it and the interview of the designer by BGG in Essen and it seems like there are tons of possibilities. He said you don't even learn combat until like scenario 3. But from everything I've seen/heard, despite all the symbols/markings on the cards etc, once you've played it a bit, everything becomes pretty intuitive.

A guy in my gaming group also got EB from Tanga and offered to let me try it before I buy it to see if I like it. But I'm pretty sure that once I show the videos to my nephew, he'll be like heck yeah!

The designer also showed how when you search for something, you have the items deck so everyone sees what's on top since the cards are two-sided. Then you can take the deck under the table if you get a shuffle icon on the die or something and you can shuffle the cards or pretend to shuffle them and place the item you want third from the top. Then when the other player sees a crappy item left on top, they might not cut the deck and then you use whatever points it takes to ditch the top two cards to get to the third one, the one you wanted all along. It seems kind of borderline RPG but in a board game format.

[Hahma]

Just got done with a few games.

1 x Settlers of Catan - Taught my 15 year-old nephew the game and included my 8 year-old twin girls. I finished with 8 points, Morgan had 7, Paige had 5, but my nephew finished with 10 right after playing his 4th Knight to take over the Biggest Army card from Paige. This game took 2 1/2 hours and reminded me how long some games take with my daughters. The trading parts of the game and the counting/deciding/discarding cards for the Robber added a lot of time for them, plus their general 8 year-old over-tired silliness.

2 x Dominion - These were with just my nephew and me and we finally broke in the Prosperity expansion that I've had for several months, waiting to be played. The first game we mixed Dominion and Prosperity with the pre-made aggressive setup and my nephew just beat me 40-39. In the second game, we went with straight Prosperity kingdom cards with the friendly non-interaction pre-made setup and once again he beat me, this time 56-50. He utilized his Bishop better to trash some expensive cards to soak up the VP tokens. I made use of the Trade Route card a few times, but it didn't help enough.

Well considering Tyler didn't wake up until noon today and I've been up since 5:30am, I blame my tired old mind for the losses. Then again, Tyler is good at board games. I brought him to a Friday game night with my group last week and he had a blast and some of the other guys there noticed Tyler's aptitude for games.

[Omahavice]

5 games of Ascension on my Ipad. This is a great game and has a fantastic user inter-face. One of the best apps I have downloaded. The really good news is that I just found out a little while ago that you can play 2-player pass+play even on the Lite(FREE) version. I was messing around with what I thought was the AI difficulty level and accidently found out you cuold play 2 player. SWEET

[Dignan]

We had a little send off party for one of our friends last night and had a great group together. Among other things, we had two awesome games of Resistance. Below is a session report where my head nearly exploded. Enjoy.

Spoiler Alert!

9v1 – They're all against me!


So last night I experienced my single most frustrating game of The Resistance (but it was still great fun). We had a ten man group with about a 50/50 mix of newbs and experienced players. This was the second game we played of the night (after we had one game to give everyone their bearings). We added the plot thickens to game for this go round to give the spies a harder time. Here is the setup:


Spies:
Myself
Curtis
Doug (newb)
Trey (newb)


Resistance:
Drew
Jeff
Rob
Nathan
Jon (newb)
Brandon (newb)


It was a pretty fair mix of players to each side. Myself, Curtis and Rob are the group's stronger players (meaning we push the conversations along) and there was a good mix of experienced players on both sides. However, little did I know this was going to be a disaster, as the spies were completely on different wavelengths the whole (albeit very short) game.


Brandon started out as the leader and proposed a mission with Doug, Drew and himself. We had a short round of table talk and approved the mission. The three of them went off and returned successful with Doug choosing to stay hidden for the round. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. Curtis was next up on the leader rotation and we tend to have the leader attach himself to the same group as the first mission if it was successful. The logic being that if a spy was hiding in the first mission the resistance will be able to infer something about the second leader based on his reaction to putting himself with the same group. A spy would be reluctant to add himself to a group that already had one spy in it because of the difficulty with deciding who will throw out the failure card for the mission.


This ended up being a problem. It might have been best for Doug to kill the first mission and cast all three of those players into suspicion to give Curtis free reign to pick a fresh group with only one spy.


Also in the first mission, Rob was given a card that had him show his character card to Brandon (who cleared him as resistance). This gave both Rob and Brandon confidence in each other and give us spies a possible way out of putting Curtis on the team. With Curtis now the leader, there was a debate between just adding him to the same team or adding Rob (as he had been cleared by Brandon). I immediately latched onto this idea as it would be a great boon for the spies. I gave my support to Rob and it looked like we would be able to get that team to go (with two of the biggest mouths at the table both allied).


However, inexplicably Curtis started arguing against me. This was the first “WTF!” moment in my head. While I thought it was a good idea for Curtis to offer some opposition to my arguments (so we didn't seem too aligned), I couldn't believe how adamant he was arguing for a two spy mission. Unfortunately he wouldn't relent and I was forced to stop my line of argument so as not too draw any extra attention to the somewhat unorthodox group logic I was suggesting.


After some healthy discussion, the team of Curtis, Doug, Brandon, and Drew was approved. Now I switched gears and started to figure out how to orchestrate who would play the “fail” for this mission (either Doug or Curtis). Luckily, in the previous round Trey was given a card that would force a player to play their mission card face up. There was some suspicion around Curtis so several people were for the idea of making Curtis play his card face up. “Great!” now we have a way to coordinate between Doug and Curtis. Trey would play the card on Curtis, Curtis would play a “Pass” face up, and Doug would play a “fail” face down with the other two team members. I take great pains to discuss exactly how it will play out in as much detail as I can.


“We'll play the card on Curtis and he'll have to play his pass face up. Even a spy would never play a fail face up. He'll have to play a pass.” I said this several times as clearly as I could without drawing too much suspicion.


But here comes the second WTF moment. Rob sees that we have to distribute another card that will let us look at a player's submitted mission card. He starts arguing to save Trey's card for now and play it together on the next round for a double whammy of mission card revealing. Obviously the spies can't have this and I start a somewhat weak argument against Rob. To my dismay, Trey latches onto Rob's idea and appears to be ready to roll with it. Now I'm about to start pulling my hair out. I have to argue with Trey for 5 minutes to get him off the ledge. About 4 minutes into it I remember that Trey is a Spy and I can't believe that I'm having to jump through all these hoops to get him back on track.


Before the mission goes out, we have three cards to distribute. Here comes a succession of events that nearly cause me to lose it (to the point where I leave the room under the guise of getting a drink and have to yell and vent to myself). A very important card is up to hand out that will force a player to look at the character card of the guy to his left or right. I'm very nervous about this because the other two spies are newbs and I'm pretty sure they are going to botch things up. I consider myself a pretty devious SOB and really think that I need this card for the well being of the spy team.


As Curtis is deciding who to give the card to, I start making some arguments for me to have it. I don't have a ton of reasoning to back me up, but I sell it as best as I can. Curtis vehemently opposes me on this idea and I'm really struggling to figure out a way to get my hands on the card. Again, I'm flabbergasted with Curtis's actions. I can see that he is trying to show a rift between the two of us, but I fell that it's endangering the team (especially considering how important this card is). I make a few comments that give him an opening to give it to me in a joking way, but he appears to want to make sure we aren't seen as a team more than he wants this card to help the spies out. He gives the card toDoug and my worst fears start to come to life.


Doug gets it and chooses to look at Brandon's card. Before doing so he looks straight at me. I ever so slightly shake my head hoping that he takes that as me telling him not to accuse Brandon of being a spy. After looking Brandon's card he looks back at me again and I again shake my head. Doug then takes the world's longest pause before the world's worst lie, “He's a spy.” And no one at the table believes it. I'm crushed. It was exactly what I feared would happen. New spies like the idea of accusing resistance members of being spies because it seems like a good move. However, I find it muddies the waters much more if a spy early in the game clears another resistance member (and that's why I was dying for that card).


So the spies have really stubbed their toes so far and we haven't even gone on the second mission. Curtis still has to hand out another pretty powerful card that will allow someone to look at a played mission card. This is a fairly big deal that can really sink the spies. Again I campaign to get the card but again he opposes me and gives to the resistance member Nathan!!! WTF! I just can't believe it. In my opinion Curtis is taking the “let's make sure they don't think we are on the same team” idea too far and is putting the spies in some insane peril.


Anyway, back to the mission. It's time to hand out cards and get going. Before we do so, Trey decides to bring up the argument for keeping his card in hand for now and playing it as a double whammy next round!!! Seriously!!! This is my nightmare! I can't believe this! How many times can I scream WTF in my head? I nearly flip the table over at that point. But again I talk him down and he's going to use the card this round. However, now the table decides they want it played on Doug. Ok, that's fine.


Again I careful explain, “Play the card on Doug and he'll be forced to play his pass card. Then the other three will play their's as normal.”


So Doug plays his card faceup and the other players turn in their mission cards. The mission cards are revealed and all three are “pass”! Great Ceasar's ghost, what the hell is happening here!? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! What happened? How did that mission pass?!! Who shot JR?!


After the game, Curtis explained that he somehow thought that Doug would play a “fail” faceup. Obviously this would be a terrible move effectively taking him out of the game and leaving no doubt to his allegiance. No one was sure why he thought that, but our goose was essentially cooked at that point. We would need three failed missions in a row to pull out a victory.


The table is embroiled in some serious debate and I have a few players on my side of the table with me. However, a few of the experienced players on the resistance side have got most of it figured out and it's very tough to put up much of an argument in the face of some of the moves the spies have made. I work like crazy to get teams with spies formed, but none of them get approved. We end up not approving 4 missions in a row and it comes down to the fifth leader. The resistance will be forced to accept whatever team he proposes. Unfortunately, the leader is a resistance member and he has things well figured out. He picks 3 other resistance members and they go on to pass the mission with ease.


It was a simply devastating loss for the spies. We could never get on the same page and ended up killing ourselves in a comedy of errors and inexplicable decisions. I've never seen the spies work so poorly together in a game and I about had an embolism. However, after my heart rate returned to normal I was able to joke about it and laugh it off. It was great fun even if we did so poorly. There's nothing like a great game of Resistance!

[rym]

Originally Posted by Dignan

We had a little send off party for one of our friends last night and had a great group together. Among other things, we had two awesome games of Resistance. Below is a session report where my head nearly exploded. Enjoy.

Spoiler Alert!

9v1 – They're all against me!


So last night I experienced my single most frustrating game of The Resistance (but it was still great fun). We had a ten man group with about a 50/50 mix of newbs and experienced players. This was the second game we played of the night (after we had one game to give everyone their bearings). We added the plot thickens to game for this go round to give the spies a harder time. Here is the setup:


Spies:
Myself
Curtis
Doug (newb)
Trey (newb)


Resistance:
Drew
Jeff
Rob
Nathan
Jon (newb)
Brandon (newb)


It was a pretty fair mix of players to each side. Myself, Curtis and Rob are the group's stronger players (meaning we push the conversations along) and there was a good mix of experienced players on both sides. However, little did I know this was going to be a disaster, as the spies were completely on different wavelengths the whole (albeit very short) game.


Brandon started out as the leader and proposed a mission with Doug, Drew and himself. We had a short round of table talk and approved the mission. The three of them went off and returned successful with Doug choosing to stay hidden for the round. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. Curtis was next up on the leader rotation and we tend to have the leader attach himself to the same group as the first mission if it was successful. The logic being that if a spy was hiding in the first mission the resistance will be able to infer something about the second leader based on his reaction to putting himself with the same group. A spy would be reluctant to add himself to a group that already had one spy in it because of the difficulty with deciding who will throw out the failure card for the mission.


This ended up being a problem. It might have been best for Doug to kill the first mission and cast all three of those players into suspicion to give Curtis free reign to pick a fresh group with only one spy.


Also in the first mission, Rob was given a card that had him show his character card to Brandon (who cleared him as resistance). This gave both Rob and Brandon confidence in each other and give us spies a possible way out of putting Curtis on the team. With Curtis now the leader, there was a debate between just adding him to the same team or adding Rob (as he had been cleared by Brandon). I immediately latched onto this idea as it would be a great boon for the spies. I gave my support to Rob and it looked like we would be able to get that team to go (with two of the biggest mouths at the table both allied).


However, inexplicably Curtis started arguing against me. This was the first “WTF!” moment in my head. While I thought it was a good idea for Curtis to offer some opposition to my arguments (so we didn't seem too aligned), I couldn't believe how adamant he was arguing for a two spy mission. Unfortunately he wouldn't relent and I was forced to stop my line of argument so as not too draw any extra attention to the somewhat unorthodox group logic I was suggesting.


After some healthy discussion, the team of Curtis, Doug, Brandon, and Drew was approved. Now I switched gears and started to figure out how to orchestrate who would play the “fail” for this mission (either Doug or Curtis). Luckily, in the previous round Trey was given a card that would force a player to play their mission card face up. There was some suspicion around Curtis so several people were for the idea of making Curtis play his card face up. “Great!” now we have a way to coordinate between Doug and Curtis. Trey would play the card on Curtis, Curtis would play a “Pass” face up, and Doug would play a “fail” face down with the other two team members. I take great pains to discuss exactly how it will play out in as much detail as I can.


“We'll play the card on Curtis and he'll have to play his pass face up. Even a spy would never play a fail face up. He'll have to play a pass.” I said this several times as clearly as I could without drawing too much suspicion.


But here comes the second WTF moment. Rob sees that we have to distribute another card that will let us look at a player's submitted mission card. He starts arguing to save Trey's card for now and play it together on the next round for a double whammy of mission card revealing. Obviously the spies can't have this and I start a somewhat weak argument against Rob. To my dismay, Trey latches onto Rob's idea and appears to be ready to roll with it. Now I'm about to start pulling my hair out. I have to argue with Trey for 5 minutes to get him off the ledge. About 4 minutes into it I remember that Trey is a Spy and I can't believe that I'm having to jump through all these hoops to get him back on track.


Before the mission goes out, we have three cards to distribute. Here comes a succession of events that nearly cause me to lose it (to the point where I leave the room under the guise of getting a drink and have to yell and vent to myself). A very important card is up to hand out that will force a player to look at the character card of the guy to his left or right. I'm very nervous about this because the other two spies are newbs and I'm pretty sure they are going to botch things up. I consider myself a pretty devious SOB and really think that I need this card for the well being of the spy team.


As Curtis is deciding who to give the card to, I start making some arguments for me to have it. I don't have a ton of reasoning to back me up, but I sell it as best as I can. Curtis vehemently opposes me on this idea and I'm really struggling to figure out a way to get my hands on the card. Again, I'm flabbergasted with Curtis's actions. I can see that he is trying to show a rift between the two of us, but I fell that it's endangering the team (especially considering how important this card is). I make a few comments that give him an opening to give it to me in a joking way, but he appears to want to make sure we aren't seen as a team more than he wants this card to help the spies out. He gives the card toDoug and my worst fears start to come to life.


Doug gets it and chooses to look at Brandon's card. Before doing so he looks straight at me. I ever so slightly shake my head hoping that he takes that as me telling him not to accuse Brandon of being a spy. After looking Brandon's card he looks back at me again and I again shake my head. Doug then takes the world's longest pause before the world's worst lie, “He's a spy.” And no one at the table believes it. I'm crushed. It was exactly what I feared would happen. New spies like the idea of accusing resistance members of being spies because it seems like a good move. However, I find it muddies the waters much more if a spy early in the game clears another resistance member (and that's why I was dying for that card).


So the spies have really stubbed their toes so far and we haven't even gone on the second mission. Curtis still has to hand out another pretty powerful card that will allow someone to look at a played mission card. This is a fairly big deal that can really sink the spies. Again I campaign to get the card but again he opposes me and gives to the resistance member Nathan!!! WTF! I just can't believe it. In my opinion Curtis is taking the “let's make sure they don't think we are on the same team” idea too far and is putting the spies in some insane peril.


Anyway, back to the mission. It's time to hand out cards and get going. Before we do so, Trey decides to bring up the argument for keeping his card in hand for now and playing it as a double whammy next round!!! Seriously!!! This is my nightmare! I can't believe this! How many times can I scream WTF in my head? I nearly flip the table over at that point. But again I talk him down and he's going to use the card this round. However, now the table decides they want it played on Doug. Ok, that's fine.


Again I careful explain, “Play the card on Doug and he'll be forced to play his pass card. Then the other three will play their's as normal.”


So Doug plays his card faceup and the other players turn in their mission cards. The mission cards are revealed and all three are “pass”! Great Ceasar's ghost, what the hell is happening here!? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! What happened? How did that mission pass?!! Who shot JR?!


After the game, Curtis explained that he somehow thought that Doug would play a “fail” faceup. Obviously this would be a terrible move effectively taking him out of the game and leaving no doubt to his allegiance. No one was sure why he thought that, but our goose was essentially cooked at that point. We would need three failed missions in a row to pull out a victory.


The table is embroiled in some serious debate and I have a few players on my side of the table with me. However, a few of the experienced players on the resistance side have got most of it figured out and it's very tough to put up much of an argument in the face of some of the moves the spies have made. I work like crazy to get teams with spies formed, but none of them get approved. We end up not approving 4 missions in a row and it comes down to the fifth leader. The resistance will be forced to accept whatever team he proposes. Unfortunately, the leader is a resistance member and he has things well figured out. He picks 3 other resistance members and they go on to pass the mission with ease.


It was a simply devastating loss for the spies. We could never get on the same page and ended up killing ourselves in a comedy of errors and inexplicable decisions. I've never seen the spies work so poorly together in a game and I about had an embolism. However, after my heart rate returned to normal I was able to joke about it and laugh it off. It was great fun even if we did so poorly. There's nothing like a great game of Resistance!

That's an awesome write up, Dignan. Those 2 games of Resistance really were a total blast.

Spoiler Alert!

You should have been a Resistance member that last game. You did a much better job convincing us than your own Spies.

Good times indeed, man.

[Cyborgs Gaming]

Today was both the Redakai league and Pokemon league. Only one person showed up for the Redakai league. Very suprising since there has been so much intrest in it. The Pokemon league went a bit better, though at first it was only 2 people also. Later some more showed up. Most importantly though someone bought Battleship Galaxies. The comic book is very nice. Not some small comic book like the Heroscape one nor one full of adds like everything on Free Comic Book Day. It is a full length, ad free one that I have yet to actually read. The ships are nice, really all of the compenents are nice except for the cheap, thin card stock. I think that is a minor thing though as long as they don't rip too easily since there really isn't much shuffling of cards in it. We should be ready to play it tonight or possibly tomarrow.

[Land-based AE]

Love the Resistance. The plot thickens cards seem like a good idea. I've played the game 6 times and only seen the good guys win once and that was because our spy in that mission (her first game) acidentally put the wrong vote card in and passed it.

Oh, and last night I played:

Atlantic Storm x1
Race for the Galaxy x1
Can't Stop x1
Tumblin Dice x2