What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[quozl]

The goatee looks good on you!

[Hahma]

Thanks Q.

I shaved it a couple months after that picture from last winter. It got longer and I kept twisting it and messing with it, annoying my wife. So she was glad it came off, as were se people at work

[chas]

Just received: Commands & Colors Napoleonics Expansion #5:
Generals, Marshals, and Tacticians

aka "GMT" (see what they did there?)

(Edit)

Just played my first solitaire scenario, and arranged for my first FTF over the weekend. If anyone has any questions feel free. I'll just say that for a game with two decks its simple; you just pick another tactical card when a command card you play so directs you--there are no decisions to make about what you take at the end of your turn, and no purchasing required, as in other relatively more complex Borg games.

[A3n]

My Operation FAUST kickstarter arrived & I took it with me to Brisbane (where I'm currently working each week - flying home each weekend), there is a local (online) game store that host gaming nights so I took FAUST along & got a game in. If your group likes Coup then this is probably up your alley. Unlike Coup, FAUST doesn't have player elimination. I think FAUST has a bit more strategy then Coup & makes you think more. But I will need to play it with my Rockhampton games group before I decide if I like FAUST more than Coup or not. They do play differently & will probably both have a place at the table for their differences.

Final had a chance to play Black Fleet. It seemed like a game I could like, but it seemed a little unbalanced. The person that went on to win led the whole game & never looked like being caught. The end game mechanic seems a bit biased also considering the first player (& to a lesser extent the 2nd player) seemed to get picked on early & seemed to never be able to recover. The ability card (I don't remember it's name) that allows your pirate ship to shoot & sink opponents pirate ships seems over-powered. Not only does it grant you the ability to sink other pirate ships but when you do so you get monetary rewards for it. That's the ability the winner got & just ran away with the game from there.

[Hahma]

Messing around with another Heroes for Hire (LC, Torch, Spidey, Iron Fist and Jewel plus Civilians x 4) vs. Kingpin, Hired Guns, Rhino, Sandman, Electro and Green Goblin

Rhino had a nice Charge vs. Luke Cage, but Impenetrable Skin only allowed 1 wound on LC (2nd overall). Combination of LC and Human Torch (Jim Hammond) finished off poor ol' Rhino.

[chas]

"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
--Jack Nicholson as The Joker, Batman

Sounds and looks great! I love mixing and matching Supers, but I haven't seen many "published" scenarios yet which attempt to recreate actual comic stories with the corresponding good and evil participants. I have posted a number of such scenarios onsite, such as the two for The Infinity Gauntlet, "Pulp Adventure" WWII, etc.

[Hahma]

I may have check those out some time Chas.

Generally with supers, I like thematic armies over a real miss mash of units that may be better competitively.

[chas]

Yes, I usually don't mix good and evil Super figures in the same army in my own scenarios. Sometimes I do when my buddies do a scenario that allows it.

[japes]

Originally Posted by chas

"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
--Jack Nicholson as The Joker, Batman

Sounds and looks great! I love mixing and matching Supers, but I haven't seen many "published" scenarios yet which attempt to recreate actual comic stories with the corresponding good and evil participants. I have posted a number of such scenarios onsite, such as the two for The Infinity Gauntlet, "Pulp Adventure" WWII, etc.

Originally Posted by Hahma

I may have check those out some time Chas.

Generally with supers, I like thematic armies over a real miss mash of units that may be better competitively.

Hahma has seen it already I believe, but chas I do have a short 6 issue arc campaign that could use an outside fresh set of eyes.

We tend to play thematic armies mainly in my house and having scenario's keeps it interesting and fun. Variety is always nice. It's part of what makes this game so awesome is the number of ways you can play it.

[Hahma]

Had an all day game day today.

I played:

Council of Verona - Card drafting game where you start out with one card dealt face down, and then the start player for that round takes the rest of the cards and chooses one and passes clockwise. In a 4 player game, this continues until all players have 3 cards, where the last player has 2 to choose from for his last one and discards the other one that nobody but him knows what it was.

There is the Exile area and Council area. This takes place in the Romeo and Juliet world of the Capulets and Monteques sp? Some cards just have an ability, while others are agendas where players can score points from at the end of the round. Each player has tokens, 0, 3, 5, poison and healing. After playing a card, a player can place one of their tokens face down on the agenda card and so on. After the last card is played, each player is allowed to place one more token. You are hoping to have your points score with an agenda that succeeds, while doing something to prevent other players to succeed at getting points. Fun light game.

Vault Wars - Fun game by Jon Gilmour, who also designed Dead of Winter. Basically, it's like the show storage wars, but set in a fantasy setting. Fun game for sure.

Mafia de Cuba - 12 player game of this. Social deduction game, where one player is the crime boss and has a right hand man that has a special ability. The game box is like a cigar box and has 15 diamonds in it and some poker chips of different colors, each with different roles. There are a few loyal henchmen, a couple FBI agents, a couple drivers and an assassin. Basically, you pass the box around and each player secretly takes out any number of diamonds, or a roll chip, and places it in their own bag. After it has gone around to the boss, they start to ask questions to players as to how many diamonds were in it when they got the box, which chips were still there, etc. You can lie or tell the truth. Then the boss must accuse others of stealing his diamonds by telling them to empty their bag. He's trying to get all of his diamonds back. He has 2 rum tokens. If he accuses a player that doesn't have any diamonds, he can give them a rum token to keep them happy. But after those 2 tokens are used up and he guesses wrong, he loses. There are various winning conditions for the other roles of players.

One Night Ultimate Vampire - similar to One Night Ultimate Werewolf, but slightly different. Hidden role type game where a lot of it is done with eyes closed while certain characters get to do something one at a time. Roles or other tokens can be changed during these actions and then you have to vote to hang one player based on what people know, or lie etc. Vampires win if a non-vampire is chosen, non-vampires win if a vampire is chosen.

T.I.M.E. Stories - Now this is a really cool game. This is a very story/them/immersion type game, where players are agents sent back in time to stop certain events from occurring. We go in these pod type things and are kind of virtually sent back into the bodies of people of that other time that are part of the event.

Quote from the BGG page.

You usually take possession of local hosts to navigate in a given environment, but who knows what you'll have to do to succeed? Roam a med-fan city, looking for the dungeon where the Syaan king is hiding? Survive in the Antarctic while enormous creatures lurk beneath the surface of the ice? Solve a puzzle in an early 20th century asylum? That is all possible, and you might even have to jump from one host to another, or play against your fellow agents from time to time...

I can't say too much specific about it because of the spoiler issue. But needless to say, it was incredible. All I can say, due to people may need to know the subject matter for appropriateness, is that the base set comes with the early 20th century asylum setting. You get to choose from like 8 different characters to be "possessing", each with personalities and stats/abilities. The art is awesome the story is immersive. You go to different places to get clues to solve that scenario's event crisis, but you only have so much time. It takes from 3-4 times to get through the scenario, as you will for sure fail the first 2-3 times because of the time running out while you are looking for clues. But the next time, you know what to do more to use your time more efficiently.

The thing about this game is that it will cost $30+ from an online retailer, and you get the game material (board, dice, tokens etc.), but only one scenario. The scenario will take 3-4 times to get through, and each play through will take about 90 minutes. So that is like 4-6 hours of gaming experience for the scenario. So you won't want to play that scenario again for maybe a few years when you have forgotten it mostly. But there are expansion scenarios that are about $20 with a new setting/story/characters/cards etc. and 4-6 more hours of play time. So that's the thing people will have to justify the cost vs. play time. Fortunately, a friend of mine bought it, so I don't have to worry about that. It plays up to 4, and is really best with 4 and not good with only 2. So if you have the same 4 people get 4-6 hours of awesome game experience/immersion, then that's still cheaper than 4 people going to a movie, and you will get a few more hours of entertainment out of it.

Kingdom Death Monster - One of the guys in the group recently got this. It was a Kickstarter that had the campaign from December 2012, and it was a bit delayed for sure as it took almost 3 years for delivery. But man, if you are into minis, this game has some awesome minis, though everything comes on sprues, so lots of assembly.

Basically there are 4 heroes that are from the same village and there are different phases of the game. The hunt, where you hope to hunt the creature before it finds you. Then there is the encounter phase where you actually battle the monster, and then a phase where you build up your village and make things from the creature that you killed.

It's RPGish in that you have a stat sheet that you keep track of wounds and upgrades etc. You have different locations on your body that can take damage, head, arm, chest, waist and legs. You can get insanity values and other stuff. When you fight the beast, it has various abilities it can use for it's attacks, and it's all AI controlled with cards. When it hits you, you roll a special die to see where you are hurt and check that off. If you get more than say 2 damage to your chest, you roll a d10 on a chart to see what other effects you can have. Same thing with the beast, it can take damage to specific ares and get hampered as you go.

There is a 223 page rulebook, though a lot of it is art and examples, charts and whatnot. But it's a really neat game. The thing is that when you kill a beast, you will harvest parts from it and you will later decide what to do with that stuff and what to make. You only start out with a loincloth and a stone dagger, so you will want to upgrade as you go. There are basic hero figures, but the thing that really gets mini hobby enthusiasts into this, is that there are sprues with tons of other stuff you can use to create upgraded minis figures with. As your characters build up, you can add armor or different weapons to the minis, so they look like you want them, based on what they've battled. So you can't upgrade to the Phoenix armor until you have encountered and killed it.

The box for it is HUGE! It weighed in at just over 18lbs when my buddy got it.

Here's some pix. Our first battle was against a white lion, but this is in a fantasy type setting, so this lion is nasty, and has a roar that can send all figures back 6 spaces and maybe give them some insanity and knock them down. Not to mention the grab ability and it's claw attacks.

[IAmBatman]

That looks pretty sweet (and probably expensive! ).

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

That looks pretty sweet (and probably expensive! ).

Well I know the company is having a special pre-order price now for short time before before they stock up for retail. So right now it's a deal at $295, but normal price will be $400.

Not sure what the guy in my group paid on the Kickstarter for it, though the base part of it was a lot cheaper, though he also got a lot of extra add ons.