What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Matthias Maccabeus]

July gaming: I bet you can't figure out what my go to solo game currently is...

Lord of the Rings LCG x 7 (Signed up for Con of the Rings again this year so been playing through the AP cycles that they are featuring)

Marvel Champions x 70 (Yes 70. Great solo and my buddies are really digging it as well. In fact 4 of them have purchased it now...)

Heroscape x 3 (Helping Garenex getting ready for ScapeCon)

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game x 2 (I always have a campaign going of this)

Batman Love Letter (The kids enjoy this one)

Quicksand (Another good one with the kids)

King of Tokyo (An oldie but a goodie)

Apocrypha (Been working my way through a campaign with my Wed night game group...when we're not playing Marvel Champions....)

Marvel Villianous (It was fine. I'd play it again)

Cloudspire x 3 (I'm featuring this at Ken Con and just wanted to make sure I still have a good flow of how everything works)

Street Masters x 2 (Was glad to get this back to the table. Super fun and thematic game that I will be bringing to Ken Con)

Godtear x 2 (Prepping for Ken Con. It scrathes a similar itch to Heroscape. However there's less destroying of units and more area control that you initially think)

[Tornado]

Godtear looks pretty cool. Can you describe the game style a little bit?

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Godtear looks pretty cool. Can you describe the game style a little bit?

You have Champions (or whatever they call them in this game) with followers. There's probably 2 or 3 dozen of them out now. Most games you play with 3 Champions. You can play with 1 or 2 and maybe even 4? I usually play with 2 or 3. It's a hex based board with "Godtears" as objective hexes basically with 6 different scenarios to choose from that revolve around how the objective hexes can move based on who won or lost the round.

There's 2 phases: The first is the plot phase. One person activates all their units, then the 2nd person does. Then you flip your character cards and it's the clash phase where you alternate turns. There's 4 types of units: (I forget the actual names) Green gets a bonus for planting a banner, Blue gets a bonus if the banner lasts the whole round, Yellow gets a bonus for taking out followers, Red gets a bonus for taking out champions.

You get points on a ladder system (think tug of war) by accomplishing the above mentioned tasks. At the end of the round whoever has the marker on their side of the ladder gets the points for the rounds. It's a "hill" system when the points are: Round 1 (1), Round 2 (2), Round 3(3), Round 4 (2), Round 5 (1). The first one to 5 points wins.

When I first played I was all about taking out the bad guys (think heroscape) but they don't really stay dead and I roll like crap in this game anyway. I don't like the hit distribution on the dice. It's a bit too random for my tastes: Blank, Blank, 2 Hits, 1 Hit, 1 Hit, 1 Hit. My son will get 8 hits on 4 dice and I roll 12 and get 3...Anyway what I've learned the more I play is it's more about placing the banners and protecting them, at least that seems to be working for me currently but I only own like 12 Champions. However killing followers with Yellow also seems to be a legit win condition.

[Tornado]

Sounds fun. Thanks!

[NecroBlade]

Aside from all the 'scape at ScapeCon (19-13 total record), also managed:

Power Rangers with @MegaSilver : pretty solid mechanics, but we drew a nightmare of a boss and ultimately lost.

Coin Age and Love Letter with @Viideosayg both and @Dysole the latter: won then lost CA and our combined scores were close and we played a third and I came out ahead by just 1-2 points. Everyone had a turn at winning Love Letter, and some games were over in one turn while others took the whole deck, that's why it's great repeatable filler.

Pitch Car with 6 players. Tons of fun. After failing my start, I ended up passing three other cars to come in third.

Also a couple short playtests for AotV, for which I'll do a quick writeup later.

[MegaSilver]

Originally Posted by NecroBlade

Power Rangers with @MegaSilver : pretty solid mechanics, but we drew a nightmare of a boss and ultimately lost.

We both had rangers good at blocking damage, but the Final Boss specialized at milling decks.

[Scapemage]

Originally Posted by chas

Played two games of the new Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, by the designer and artist of Root. I did it once online on TTS 6 Player and then here with another's copy (I don't own it) with 4 Players. It was lots of wacky fun, and I can say that I know almost know what I am doing in it. In the first game, all six of us had a juicy change to go for a victory at different times. (In that way, it reminded me of Inis). In the second, I would have won with one battle roll on my final turn which was also the last in the game, which then went against me!

Awaiting pending shipping notification are a pal's copy of Dark Ages: Heritage of Charlemagne, and my Empire of the Stars and Ankh: Gods of Egypt. Empire is down at the distribution hum in Florida. Ankh is on the water, having arrived in Asia, Australia, and now Europe. Both are expected in August.

I got to play 3 games of Oath from a person at my local game group. The way the game changes each time is spectacular. That said, the game's not for me. I play heavy games regularly, and after 3 plays, I've still not the faintest clue how to accomplish anything.


My copy of Ankh arrived earlier this week. I got to play a 5-player game and a 3-player game over the weekend. Really cool! It is unique for area control, as fighting gives some advantages but it's not always about beating everything up. There's even player elimination and merging mechanics done gracefully.

[Taeblewalker]

On Saturday I played Horrified: Monsters, Above and Below and Firefly.

[chas]

Played my third game of Oath and won as the Chancellor; the first time anyone has done that here. There is a learning curve for sure. This was also the first time the game was influenced by the winner of the last--played as the first two games of a series, as both were live here rather than on TTS.

Played one game of Dark Ages: Heritage of Charlemagne. Next time we'll add some modules and probably try it with more than two players. I don't own it. Thought it was interesting but not great so far.

Four of us locals are getting Ankh: Gods of Egypt, and one just got a copy. Our first game will be this Saturday. The new review by Dice Tower said its the best of the Eric Lang Myth Trilogy games as a 2 Player. The Merge remains very controversial on BGG, with an entire spectrum of opinions on it.

Empire of the Stars and Ankh are both now in Florida shipping here any time now.

Also played Commands & Colors Samurai Battles, C&C Medieval, and C&C Jacobite Rising. I love them all.

Later today I will be playing War of the Ring. I own this but only played it once. It was great, but took all day. A new pal is bringing over his Second Edition with a new scenario that allows you to play only the second half of the game. We expect to play it more than once in the next month or two. This is the granddaddy of Tolkien games, and very beautiful. I'm very glad to be getting it back to the table after my old play back in 2004! I've also seen the updates, which are minor, that will change my First Edition into the second with a few rules and card changes. Ares Games also produced its stepchild the Battle of Five Armies, which is also coming out with a Second Edition soon; I haven't played that one.

Next month will take delivery of The Great Wall (Awaken Realms). Like the other big Kickstarters, its a work of art. I always go Game Play All In for these. The Unboxing Videos on BGG for these show off their amazing components and graphics.

This month instead of the usual one session of Heroscape I'm hosting three, for various players who have limited availability on the various dates. The details can be seen on our NYCG4 thread, linked down in my signature below. The first two were or will be our normal big multiplayer scenarios, the third will be a mini tournament!

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Ken Con 3.0 gaming:

Marvel Champions, we lost to Ronan….sigh

Zombicide, Jeff set up a cool modern custom scenario against aliens and I got to play as Sarah Connor

Legendary Aliens X 3, We played through both Alien and Aliens. It took us two games to win Aliens because I got a face hugger and died…

Roll for Adventure x 2, A fast fun dice rolling filler game

Last Night on Earth, I hadn’t played this in years. It was definitely a great nostalgia feel for me

Maximum Apocalypse, we managed to defeat the Yokai and light the pyres

Godtear x 2, I was just showcasing this game to new players

Myth, Myth is always fun but always way too long

Descent “3rd edition”, It was fun, the 3D terrain was cool, though Altar Quest does it better and is cheaper, and the app was fun, but it definitely slowed the game down I felt

Heroscape x 5, Interestingly enough the newer players seemed to enjoy the draft aspect more than the veteran players

Cloudspire, 4 player 2 v 2. There was a fairly clear winner after the 2nd wave but we still had to play it out. I still think the sweet spot for this game is 1 v 1.

Lord of the Rings LCG x 5, We played mostly 3 player games. We played through the Sands of Haradrim cycle.

Too Many Bones, Always a blast to play. We played the splice and dice tyrant and built him as he went.

Mansions of Madness, I always like Arkham as a change of pace game

Marvel United, A quick little game that my kids might enjoy

Hexplore it, As always we saved the world, well kind of, we upped it to epic mode against the mage and basically got one shotted

King of Tokyo, As always I set up to kill all the other monsters but someone always is rolling stars way faster than me.

Other games played at Ken Con
Pathfinder RPG
Star Wars RPG
Tapestry
Valor and Villiany
Dark Souls
Hawken
Tiny Epic Galaxies

Chris M won the speed painting contest
Chris F won the King of Tokyo tournament
Matthias beat lonewolf in the Heroscape Ken Con championship

Good times. Looking forward to doing it again!

[Tornado]

Nice. What armies were you and lonewolf playing?

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Nice. What armies were you and lonewolf playing?

It was a draft pod of 600 for each player and then you drafted a 400 point army from the combined pods.

Matthias:
Grubs x 2
WSG
Warden
Guilty
Otonashi
Chain fighters x 3 (of course there has to be chain fighters)
Granite Guardians x 2

Lonewolf:
Blasts x 2
Glads
X17
Quasatch x 2
Repulsors
Zetacron