What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Jormi_Boced]

So this week I am late posting because I was at Adepticon all weekend. It was a great time with lots of cool painted minis for tons of different games.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pics from the event as my camera isn't working well, but hopefully I will get a new one soon.

I started off Thursday playing in two 1k tourney, and I did pretty well with my Lizardmen going 2 and 1. My afternoon was not as good with my Empire going 0-2-1.

Friday was the team tourney where my I teamed up with Ryan Nicol to run a boar themed army of Warriors of Chaos and Orcs and Goblins. It was a lot of fun and I think our armies looked really pretty, but they did not perform well. We knew we were taking a lot softer lists than we had the year before when we got third, but expected to do better than 0 and 3 I think the list wasn't that bad, but we had some terrible luck. Nicol couldn't roll a re-rollable 8 leadership test ever


Saturday I played in the Wild West Exodus Gunslinger. I went 2 and 1 and got 3rd overall.


Saturday night I had some after tourney gaming with Red 7, Hanabi, Race for the Galaxy and Warcraft.

On Sunday I finished out the weekend with a little 7 wonders tourney. I think I got 3rd or 4th in it, can't remember for sure.

It was a great weekend and I can't wait to go back next year!

I did get a few Imperial Assault minis finished this week too.

I think the different colored optical sensors should work out well.

Hopefully I will have the storm troopers done soon. They have been bogging me down pretty well lately.

[Hahma]

Last night I played:

Ys - This was an okay area control, market speculation game. You have a number of broker pieces that you send out through the city that is broken up in to several sections. The brokers are numbered 0-4. Each turn you will place 2 of your 7 available broker pawns down on the board, but one of them has to be flipped up to see it's value with the other one flipped down. So there is some bluffing and deduction etc. You are trying to win majority value in certain areas to ether get straight up VP's, a bonus card, or a black gem. Also there are 4 gems available for each quadrant of the city each round, so the majority in each quadrant will get 2 of those gems, then the 2nd value player will get a choice of the next one and 3rd place gets final gem. There is a market track for each of the gem types and it can fluctuate based on some factors. At the end of the game, you earn VP's based on what place you are in # of gem types for each gem.

Cosmic Encounter - Been awhile since I've played this one. This is a pretty fun game where you are one many types of alien races with your own special ability. You have some home planets and spaceships. There are encounter cards you draw and start out with 6. Each turn, a player will draw a card from a deck to determine which other player they have to attack one of their home planets. You put 1-4 of your ships into the battle and can ask for allies. The defender can also ask for allies to contribute. Then you play an encounter card and the highest value between number of ships committed and encounter card wins. There are boost cards and special other cards that can be added to the battle. The winning attacker/allies get to settle on the loser's planet. The loser sends his ships to the warp area where they can only take 1 back each turn to use. There's a lot of other stuff involved, but basically player/s that get 5 settlements will win. Fun negotiation and backstabbing.

Homeland - This one is from the show called Homeland. We played with 5 players and 6 is the max. Each player is dealt a loyalty card and will be either an Agent, Politician or Terrorist. There are 3 Agents, 2 Politicians and 1 Terrorist possible. We ended up with nobody being the Terrorist, but there was doubt about that toward the end and one Agent did some things to try to mess up a suspected Terrorist. This is a very fun game and similar to Battlestar Galactica but more streamlined and there is only one winner based on VP's. Very fun.

[Hahma]

Just got a quick play in of Love Letter Batman with my daughters and it was fun.

It was different enough from the Tempest (original U.S. version) to make it worth getting and playing. There's no variable number of tokens you need to get based on player count, it's always the first player to 7 Bat tokens wins.

You get a Bat token for winning a round like you would for normal Love Letter, but you can also get one for knocking someone out of the game when playing the Batman card (like the Guard card in regular LL). There were a few times when someone got 2 tokens in the same play as they won the round (1) by knocking out the final player when using Batman (1). Though you can only get the Bat token from a knockout with Batman when knocking out the villains, you can't knock out Batman (just like Guard) but even though you can knock out Robin, you don't get a Bat token for doing so.

[Jormi_Boced]

Played the new Legendary Villains expansion last night and Goblins Inc. Love that game!

[Johngee]

While supporting a new friend in getting a monthly family game night off the ground at a near by church my wife and I attended for the second time and are making new friends in the area. She got to teach Carcassonne to four other adults, so I could play something other than Carcassonne at the next table. I demo'ed / taught Black Fleet to three guys and finally won that game, but only by two doubloons. About 2/3rds into the game, one of the Navy ships conveniently parked it self near Port La Barbaria and because the "Letter of Marque" card was on the table, it seemed like every round it had an opportunity to steal a cargo of RUM from one of the merchants. We all got some good laughs about the drunken sailors on board who could no longer concern themselves with patrolling the high seas to thwart piracy running amuck in other sectors.

[chas]

JG,

Black Fleet sounds like lots of fun. If I didn't already have Firefly, I might be tempted. Maybe I'll get to play it some day.

[stubobj]

Got a few games of Imperial Assault skirmish this week. Chewbacca has quickly become one of my favorite characters in the game. He rolls a black and a white defense so either hes blocking plenty of damage or hes dodging it all. I was playing a Smuggler/Spies squad. I had Han and Jyn podded up with Chewie most of the game. Jyn stayed out front with Chewie so could quick draw. She killed 2 troopers from this. Before even rolling he die she has 2 blocks and an evade because of the duo and being cunning. Han stayed in the back and would pop out to shoot when he could. I then used Mak and some Saboteurs to either go after objectives or as snipers/assassins. I was really impressed with the entire team. Held their own much better than I expected. I feel the command cards from wave 1 has really opened up some options and I think it has made rebels better. I still feel Leader is the best trait in the game though and those figures do some awesome work for their points. Cant wait to see what the next expansion does for the game. Can't wait to play Vader against a bunch of Tuskens!

[Johngee]

Originally Posted by chas

JG,

Black Fleet sounds like lots of fun. If I didn't already have Firefly, I might be tempted. Maybe I'll get to play it some day.

Chas,

No problem. I'll bring it with me the next time I make an unexpected journey to Middle Liny, because I'd also like to try Firefly, even though I know nothing about the game or storyline other than it has something to do with a spaceship. &OBTW: I'll be in NYC tomorrow, if you want to wave at the Norwegian Breakaway as it pulls out of port at 3:00.

[Hahma]

Yesterday our group had an all day gaming event from 10am-midnight. People came and went throughout the day and some were there from the beginning to end, except to go get something to eat. I was there from 12:30-11:30.

I had gotten up early and played a few solo games of Rivet Wars that I borrowed, because it's one of the games I have to demo at a con in a few weeks. I only did the 1st two scenarios (2nd one twice), which are introductory ones. It's a meat-grinder where you are going to go through a lot of troops, but you can bring back more each round, so it's kind of the mechanic. Kind of like Summoner Wars in that regard, where you throw out troops to do specific things but knowing they'll die at some point. Also you can save up Rivet points (an additional resource that carries over) to be able to spawn a tank like unit or hero unit. The figures are great and it's pretty easy, but some tactical decisions.

Now at the group event, I played:

Flash Point: Fire Rescue - 6 player game on the original house map, but with some new characters like the Fire Prevention Specialist and the Veteran. I played as the Rescue Specialist. We played on heroic level, so it was pretty tough. The killer for us were the hot spots. One player hit them a good 3 times in one turn and caused all kinds of issues. We also hit 4 blank POI's that wasted some of our time searching. Ultimately we were able to save 5 of 7 required victims before the house collapsed and we lost.

Spurs: A Tale in the Old West - 3 player game, where I was the Lawman, though not a very good one I should have focused on going to fight the player that was the Outlaw (or bandit/whichever). But I was more focused on other things and it cost me in the end as I came in 3rd place. I did manage to escort a stagecoach safely, tame a wild horse, mine for gold and sell it and the horse, and fight some desperados. We had some fun and the game owner had gotten the really cool painted wooden bullets from a kickstarter to replace the cardboard bullet tokens that came with the game.

Thunder Alley - 7 player again. Our group loves this game, so I'm glad I had gotten it. We had 4 returning players from the last time we played and 3 that this was their first play. Last time I had won, but this time I came in 5th. I did poorly in linking up at key times to get my cars carried along on other player's turns with their movement. Had one car fall behind early and it was never able to catch up to the pack, but hung out there with a few other stragglers. Really fun game that you can have fun with in trash talking others, make temporary alliances with others and just have fun racing. I'm not a real life racing fan, but I don't need to be to love this game. Others in my group that are racing fans like it, and others that have seen racing movies (comedies or dramatic) enjoyed using movie lines throughout the game.

Xia: Legends of a Drift System - 4 player game. I played this once a while ago right after the owner of it had gotten it from KS (he's also the one with Spurs). This is a cool space game that you can play in many ways. You play to earn Fame Points to become the most renowned pilot, and you can set the length of the game to different Fame Point requirements on the scoring track. We played to 7 Fame Points, but it can go up to 20, but that would be a really long game. As it is, this one was a couple hours. Everyone starts out with a unique ship that has its own unique ability and layout. You have 3,000 credits to outfit the ship with an engine/weapons/shields, and they come in pieces that are of different shapes that have to fit into the allotted spaces on your ship. There are 3 different qualities of each engine/shield/weapons (and 2 different types of weapons, blasters and missiles).

There are like 4 space tiles set out at the start and throughout the game, players can scan/explore to get more tiles put out, or blind jump to get more tiles brought out, but blind jumping can be a dangerous proposition. There are spaces on the tiles that you can go to pick up missions to try to complete to earn a Fame Point and usually some money. There are spaces you can mine various types of goods, but often there's a chance your ship can get destroyed in the process because it's a dangerous push your luck deal. There are planets that you can buy and sell things (mined or bought goods), as well as where you can get your energy back up, repair your ship, upgrade your engine/weapons/shields, or upgrade to a higher level ship if you have the money.

It's a pretty open ended game where players can try to earn Fame Points in several different ways. You can try to do the pick up and delivery game to earn money and Fame Points, or you can attack other players to earn Fame Points or a combination of both, with other means of getting Fame Points along the way too. Fun game! And it didn't hurt that I won too

Splendor - 4 player game. Not going to go into detail with this one as it's been mentioned a few times already. Fun game that I've played 20 times now. I've played it with a lot of different types of gamers and everyone seems to dig it. It's got simple mechanics and is light and fairly quick.

Quixx - 4 players. My first time playing this game and it's pretty fun, we played several games. There is a pair of white dice, one blue, red, yellow and green die that you roll on your turn. You have a score sheet that has a row of numbered spaces for each color, with red and yellow going from 2-12, and with blue and green going from 12-2. On your turn, you roll all the dice. The white dice are community dice that everyone can use the number total and check off that number box in any color they want. The active player can also use one of the white die results plus one of the color die results to check off a box with that total in that color. But once you check off a box, you can't go back and check off a box to the left of it, so you have to be careful to leave yourself some options.

Once you get 5 boxes checked off in a row, you can then close it out if you are able to check off the last box to the right (either 12's or 2's depending on the color). When you lock that out, you get to check off an unlock box as well. Multiple players can end up locking a row if they are able to use the community dice to do so. One a row is locked, that color die is removed from being rolled. Once 2 rows are locked, the game is over. If you are not able to check off a box for some reason when you are the active player, you can check off a -5 points box that you will deduct at the end of the game for each one.

At the bottom of the score sheet is a list of points you get for the number of checked off boxes you have in each color. So you go have a space for each of the 4 colors to put your total in. The more checked boxes, the greater the increments are, so it's not a static increase. It plays pretty quick and is fun. Played basic game and added the Quixx gemixxt expansion for a couple games.

We also played Quixx: Das Kartenspiel (the card game), which is similar with the scoring and such, but uses cards to make the game a bit different and fun.

Love Letter: Batman - 4 player. Fun variation of the basic LL game. Nice to earn victory tokens when knocking another player out of the round when using Batman, in addition to getting a token for winning the round. First to 7 Bat tokens wins.

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Johngee

I'd also like to try Firefly, even though I know nothing about the game or storyline other than it has something to do with a spaceship.

Never seen Firefly?

[chas]

Johngee,

Firefly the TV series and its sequel film Serenity was about the crew of a beat up second hand space transport ship flying dubious cargo through a postwar frontier zone. Thus its game has been compared to Merchants and Marauders and other such. The show is heavily discussed on board game geek as part of the current multimedia "Browncoat" (Firefly fan) revival, and has been covered extensively over the years by Convention Panels on youtube, often featuring its main star Nathan Fillion, who is currently starring in the TV show Castle, which has shown a number of clever Firefly references! He just did a cameo on The Big Bang Theory.

Many of us Browncoats hope that Joss Whedon will get back to it after he's done with the Avengers movies. Shiny!

Have a nice trip.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Never seen Firefly?

I've never seen it either, but there are several guys in my game group that play the Firefly game. I haven't had a chance to yet. It seems to have always gotten played later in the night on our Monday night meetings and I wasn't going to be staying 'til midnight and have to get up at 5:30 for work.

From what I've seen and heard, it seems like the games go pretty long.