What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by chas

Hahma,

Really interesting and imaginative board for Supers! (Can't give you more rep yet).

Thanks Chas, that's one of the great things about Scape, you can come up with some neat maps and get pretty creative. Half the fun is coming up with interesting maps.

I tweaked it a little bit this morning, adding a 2 space piece to connect the two overpasses/walkways. I added the wall pieces to the sides of the wider overpass/walkway, manhole cover DO, and a couple cars that were left abandoned.

This battle was between Selene Gallio and her 4 Sentinel enforcers, going against Wolverine, Colossus, Iceman, Gambit and Angel.

Selene's Inanimate Object Control 9 is interesting indeed, as it allows her to choose an obstacle or DO within 5 spaces (not clear sight spaces) and roll a d20 vs. opponent's figures within 2 spaces of the chosen obstacle or DO. I can't recall the official ruling on obstacles, but for this map, I allowed for basically anything to be an obstacle. Castle wall, walkway wall, and even a space on an overpass/walkway being able to affect figures on that overpass/walkway or below it, as they would be considered within 2 spaces. So needless to say, she could affect a lot of enemy units on a map like this and bypass their defense.

Though while it helped somewhat, Wolverine was just too much for her and her mechanical cronies. Gambit didn't do much before dying, Angel helped with some movement of teammates on occasion, a 3 wound Iceman survived long enough to roll 5 skulls vs. a full health Sentinel that had OM's 1 and 2 on it, and it only rolled 1 shield and died. Colossus did some damage. But it was Wolverine and that won the day and was the lone survivor, though it was scary early on as he had gotten up to 5 wounds before his going with OM3 that round and then after that and the X was able to get down to 3 and then heal up and never get more than 2 wounds afterward.

[Tornado]

Cool. I have one of those IM figures for a proxy also. Great pics.

[Johngee]

Originally Posted by Johngee

RE: HeroScape - I CONCUR! It's still the best. One group that I'm in meets Tuesday evenings, but plans a quarterly All Day Saturday Events. I've mentioned HS so often when I'm there that they encouraged me to run an HS Demo at the next one. Soooo, I'll be bringing FIVE 4-Player maps and TWENTY 400 pt. Armies there TOMORROW. I'm hoping some willing participants will show up and I can give a positive report next week.

Yesterday, I ran a HeroScape Demo at an all day gaming event for the Board Game Geek Guild: "Exit 105 Gamers" in Tinton Falls, New Jersey - just 1/4 mile from GSP exit #105, but 90 miles from my house "down the shore" near AC/OC.


It was a BLAST! - BUT also a lot of freakin' work on my part for very little personal reward. I built four huge 4-Player maps that I embellished with my own custom terrain enhancements, - a bridge over a swampy river, a forested mountain, an oriental garden temple, and a demolished factory. I also constructed twenty 400 point Armies to loan out to any players without their own figures. I also brought all the dice, cards, tokens, etc. needed to run a BIG event.

Early in the day I taught and coached two young couples (twenty-ish) play each other with Mohicans and Vipers vs. Wolves and Varkaanans; then played a nice 30-ish guy who only had the Marvel Set with Samurai vs. Ashigaru, while his two very young children just played with my Orks and Dwarves; and finally played my new friend Dan and his brother with 10th Reg., Q-10; Valgard, and Blackgaard Knights vs. me with 4th Mass, Raelin, and Knights of Weston and an 11 y.o. boy named Mason with his own Kurrock and two each elementals.


The best part was seeing an old friend, @Northgate , show up with his son and play each other on every map. Back in the day of HS's popularity, he used to come to the 'local' (NJ/PA/MD) tournaments and we've played each other many times, but I had not seen or heard from him in several years. This truly is a community when you can enjoy another person's company again after a separation like that. I talked to a lot of curious onlookers, but couldn't convince them to try the game.

Now it's kind of sad to be putting everything away again. For me this was a last hurrah for HeroScape. I know in my heart that I'm packing it up for the winter and probably won't even look at it for several months. I hope this is NOT the complete End of an Era in my life, as I'll soon be getting more involved with the local Star Wars: X-Wing Leagues again, and don't have high hopes any more of Magic-AotP reviving the HS scene after seeing and trying the actual Hasbro/WotC product.

[Dad_Scaper]

@Johngee!! What the heck, you big goofball?! You'll need it in November, right???

[davidlhsl]

I celebrated my brother's birthday with some grillin' and chillin' (= playing games) with him, his girlfriend, and our parents.

On the grill: chicken breast stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and basil leaf; and marinated in olive oil/lemon juice/rosemary. corn on the cob, basted in butter/terragon/sesame ginger spices. zuccini squash basted in same.

My brother's girlfriend brought cream cheese pie and baked apple cobbler

On to the games:

7 Wonders: Played with four players for the first time, and this was my brother's/girlfriend's first time. That didn't hurt her, as she won with points coming from several sources. My main source of points was from science, which I usually neglect when I play. I came in second, and the top three scores were only one point apart (x, x+1, x+2 / I can't remember actual score). My brother came in last, though he enjoyed the game.

Can't Stop: This is a Sid Sackson game, and I don't think I mentioned this before. Three people played.

On your turn, you roll 4 6-sided dice, and you group them into 2 groups of two dice and total each group. For example, a roll of 2/2/4/5 could be grouped 2+2=4/4+5=9, or 2+4=6/2+5=7, etc. You have 3 "runners" (white pawns) that you first place, then advance on the scoring track with columns labeled 2-12, reflecting the possible dice results. The number of spaces in each column reflects the bell curve distribution of results, with 7 having the most, and 2 and 12 having the fewest. Only one pair of dice needs to match one of your three runners to advance that/those runners. You can end your turn and place your colored pawns in the spaces where your runners are located, which locks your progress. Or -- you can't stop! You roll again, hoping that you can at least get a pair that can advance or place your runners. If you get a bad roll and can't do either, you lose the progress you made during the turn.

I'll note that you can actually have more than 3 of your colored pawns on the board during play. The three runners reflect your progress during just that turn, and you can always try for a new column that you haven't played or choose to advance one of your existing pawns.

When a player reaches the top of a column and ends his turn to lock his progress, that column is considered taken by that player. That column is locked and can't be used by the runners for the rest of the game. Object of the game: lock your pawns on 3 of the columns.

My brother had an amazing first turn where he kept rolling and rolling and advancing and advancing and finally stopped with his pawns about halfway up the tracks in three columns (4/5/6, i believe). He had captured 2 of the columns shortly afterwards before I could capture my first.

Dominion: Again 3 played (dad, brother, and I). I had 4 kingdom card stacks from the game, 3 stacks from Intrigue, and 3 stacks from Cornucopia. My dad and brother finished with scores very close to each other, but I won with about a 10 point lead.

King of Tokyo: My mother and my brother's girlfriend joined in for a 5 player game, and I had to refresh myself on how to handle 5+ players. My mom enjoys this game, but she hates going into Tokyo and prefers scoring victory points. My dad, on the other hand, loves to push his luck in Tokyo, and he was able to rack up points just hanging around and even managed to knock out my brother's girlfriend. He pushed his luck too far and got knocked out, with my brother following shortly thereafter. My mom saw the opportunity to take advantage of my weakened state in Tokyo and was able to take me out for the victory.

Mexican Train: We wrapped everything with a couple of rounds of this domino game. We just like playing a couple of rounds of this to fill time and don't even bother keeping score.

This coming Saturday: I'll take some games over to my nephew's place to celebrate his birthday.

Edit: Oh, there was one other game (3 players)
Ingenious: This is a tile laying game by Reiner Knizia (sp?). The tiles are more approximate to dominoes -- they have two ends. Each end has one of six possible colors (also includes a shape to match the color, which is handy for color-blind gamers). The board on which they are placed are hexagons. You score points for each color as you place the tiles based on how many of the matching color extend in a straight line from the tile placed. When a color gets the maximum score, you call "Ingenious" and get a free turn.

Determining the winner of the game is complicated to explain, which is the reason my brother came in last. You compare the poorest scoring color for each player, and the highest of those scores is the winner. My brother thought that his poorest scoring color was supposed to be worse than the other players, so he had held some of his colors back until I clarified the situation mid-game. I offered another game so he can try again, but he wanted to move to something else.

[quozl]

Drafted from a booster box of Magic yesterday.

[Johngee]

Originally Posted by davidlhsl

On the grill: chicken breast stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and basil leaf; and marinated in olive oil/lemon juice/rosemary. corn on the cob, basted in butter/terragon/sesame ginger spices. zuccini squash basted in same.

Sounds like a delicious recipe, but shouldn't this paragraph be on the "What FOODS Are You Currently Eating?" thread - because you're making us all hungry and tempted to head to TN. (~~lol~~) ;oD


Sounds like a great day of gaming for your brother's birthday. My extended family (with about twenty birthdays scattered though out the year) loves "Grillin' & Chillin'" also, but then they want to sit around a fire pit or coffee table and just start Talkin'. I've given up Askin' them to play a game with me.

[NecroBlade]

For my birthday, I had a bunch of people over to hang out after the Heroscape tournament. We ended up playing a bunch of back-to-back rounds of Codenames with players anywhere from 4-9. This game is a lot of fun and I especially enjoyed being the spymaster. As spymaster, you give single-word clues to your teammates who are trying to correctly guess the identities of spies of their team's color. For example, saying "Bird, 2" will hopefully get your team to pick "Duck" and "Crane" out of the options on the board. You want to avoid one "assassin" word that will automatically lose you the game, as well as avoiding accidentally having your team pick the other team's spies (like saying "Flight" instead above, leading your team to "Airplane" which was the wrong color). The game ends when one team connects with all of its spies. Challenging and at times frustrating, nevertheless worth it for the occasional hilarity as well as exercising your brain. Recommended if you like "puzzles".

After that and some guests left, most of the party broke out Fauna (where we learned who was and wasn't so good at knowing their animals), while I sat down with MegaSilver to teach him a little more about Anachronism. In Fauna, you are given an animal and have to guess things like where it lives and how much it weighs. You score for being close, though more points are awarded for being right on the money. Different animals are guessed until one player scores enough points. Anachronism is a dead card game that had some unfortunate barriers to enjoying its true awesomeness. That does mean you can find some of it for cheap now, though. It's an arena combat game that pits historical warriors against each other like gladiators, wielding a mix-and-match (that's where the game's strength lies) of different cultures' weapons, armor, etc. If you're familiar with the rules, a game can take as little as 5 minutes.

[Hahma]

Yeah @NecroBlade , Codenames is a fun game for sure.

Tonight I played:

Las Vegas, - 5 players. In Las Vegas, there are 6 casino pieces put out in the center of the table, each one has a die number 1-6. At the beginning of each of the 3 rounds you deal out money cards to each casino with a $60,000 minimum each (if you reveal a $60k+ then that's it for that casino, but if you reveal less than $60, you flip another until you get $60k+ there).

Each player has their own set of 8 colored d6's. At the beginning of a turn, everyone rolls their dice. In turn order, each player will choose a casino to put one number die/dice at. What ever number you choose, you have to put all of that number you rolled at the appropriate casino. So if you roll 3 1's, you can't just put 1 of them at the #1 casino, they all have to go. So after each player put out their die/dice for that turn, everyone rolls again and you place them again etc. until every die has been placed. It's an area control/push your luck game, so at the end of the round, whoever has majority dice at a casino gets first choice of the money there. Sometimes there is only one money card, and sometimes there are several. After first place player chooses his money card, then second place does etc. But often there are pushes/ties, and if majority is tied with say 4 dice, if someone only had 1 die there, then they would be the winner and get the first choice of money, where players that end up tied get nothing.

You play 3 rounds like this and the player with the most money wins.

Omen: A Reign of War Omega Edition,

and Run, Fight or Die!

[A3n]

Lots of Exploding Kittens. As well as King of Tokyo, Coloretto, Shadow Hunters, Batman Love Letters & 12 Days of Christmas.

[chas]

Just bought Smash Up (AEG). What are the best initial combos? What are the best expansions to get?

[quozl]

Seriously? Just play the game and enjoy it.