What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Gurei-Ornery]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Have you ever tried Thunder Alley G-O? I have been looking into getting that to have a racing game to my collection, though I'm not a NASCAR fan. I've heard a lot of good things about the game.

I can't see how it could be better than Formula 90. The oval tracks leave little strategy to the imagination. I think Formula 90 is it for me. Today's race Stephen Universe was able to get to the front and due to his qualifying strategy, he was able to pit later than the rest of the cars which allowed him to hold off my furious charge in the last turn. During my pit I changed strategies to Hazard which allows you to push your car to the limit, but at a significant structural cost. By the last turn, my car could take no more damage and had only 2 tire markers, but I made up 2/3 of lap to finish one space behind him. The robot cars also did a good job blocking my path and taking the better lines from me, which helped him. All this while still using the basic rules. The advanced rules allow for weather, tire types, flags, faster robots, and much more. Then there is an expansion that has rules for team and championship racing. Can't wait.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Gurei-Ornery

I can't see how it could be better than Formula 90. The oval tracks leave little strategy to the imagination. I think Formula 90 is it for me. Today's race Stephen Universe was able to get to the front and due to his qualifying strategy, he was able to pit later than the rest of the cars which allowed him to hold off my furious charge in the last turn. During my pit I changed strategies to Hazard which allows you to push your car to the limit, but at a significant structural cost. By the last turn, my car could take no more damage and had only 2 tire markers, but I made up 2/3 of lap to finish one space behind him. The robot cars also did a good job blocking my path and taking the better lines from me, which helped him. All this while still using the basic rules. The advanced rules allow for weather, tire types, flags, faster robots, and much more. Then there is an expansion that has rules for team and championship racing. Can't wait.

Checked Formula 90 out and that looks pretty neat too. I think the main difference in how Thunder Alley works is that you don't just control 1 car, but a team of 4 cars, like in NASCAR. There are cards you play or actions that affect other cars and not just yours, so you can be helping out other players as well because they may be able to draft you. So I think you have to maneuver in such a way to help out your team team cars more than you help other players. Crossing the finish line gives X points based on when you finish, so you might have one of your four cars finish first, but the others finish near the bottom, whereas another player might have more higher finishing cars to end up with more total points.

So it seems like two different types of racing games that will allow for different experiences.

[caps]

If you like Star Realms, you can get it, along with some other electronic card-games for $1 (for all platforms, I believe) in the current Humble Bundle.

On that note, PM me your username if you want to play. I'm hoping this one burns less background processing power than the Ascension app did.

[A3n]

My KS for Rise to Power arrived yesterday. My eldest & I played a game last night. We enjoyed it. It is deceptively involved but is easy to play.

[Johngee]

Originally Posted by stubobj

Im not as concerned about blocks as much I am the Dodge on the white die. I can pierce or do extra damage to get around the blocks but theres nothing an Imp player can do to get around a Dodge. Had that happen 3 times in a row against Mak when all I need was a couple more wounds on him.

After a handful of mission games and some solo games in skirmish I really like what they've done with the dice. Ive never played Decent so I don't have anything to really compare to other than Heroscape. I like how the White die doesn't give crap for blocks but it does have the Dodge. So while your hero might get slapped around a bit there is that chance to avoid the entire attack. My players are starting to understand the dice better as well. For instance the Mak player has really learned to stay in Covert and use the accuracy on the 2x blue dice to shoot from across the map.

This sounds good in theory and may be useful as a future custom 'Scape ability, but not at a 1 in 6 probability (16.66%). IMO: it should be more like 5% or 10% like Thanos rejecting Death or Cyprien's chilling touch. I'm surprised that the SW:IA Defense Dice are only d6's. That doesn't allow for very many variations of the results.

Originally Posted by Matthias Maccabeus

I like the fact that the attack dice don't have any auto miss results. I also like how combat is a lot closer. It's tough to one shot a bad guy, though throw in cleave, blast, snap kick, brutal cleave, hammer and anvil, etc, it makes for a lot tougher choices than in Descent imo.

The white dice is awesome. Sometimes it sucks, but sometimes you get that dodge right when you need it. Throw in Foresight or Take cover and you get a lot more decisions than say in regular Descent. I also like how strain seems to be a much bigger deal than it was in Descent.

Last night Vader was able to find Luke on the very last turn of the mission. I almost had him, it was so close. My daughter played it very well. The more I play the Rebels the more I think Fenn is the all star of their team.

Obviously, I still have a lot to learn about his game. I was very disappointed with the Learn to Play Rules Booklet, when I hit the boxes that stated, "STOP! You now know everything needed to play the tutorial mission..." and then again, "You now know all general rules and are ready to play a FULL game." Are you kidding me? I almost threw THE whole box out the window. I even read that booklet twice. I guess I was just spoiled by all of the over simplified photographic and diagram examples of how to do everything step-by-step in the HeroScape rules.

Originally Posted by Gurei-Ornery

I actually miss the X on the blue Descent die. I guess I need to play more, which I will be forced to, to find what I can like better about IA vs Descent. Another thing I miss is the variety in the starting character choices, but that may only be a real comparison against Descent 1.0. I don't remember how many came with Descent 2.0, but we have so many choices for starting characters now. I also find myself wanting to put the creatures from Descent into IA. I am sure once we get deep into the campaign I will start to care about my IA characters, but I will never care as much as I did for Grisban the Thirsty (aka The Blind).

@ G_O ~ I don't think anyone is twisting your arm ~~lol~~ ; It's apparent that you're just being a G0^0D parent. &btw: Where do you work that you can play games all day? And are they hiring? I need a job like that to satisfy my gaming desires.

Originally Posted by Hahma

Have you ever tried Thunder Alley G-O? I have been looking into getting that to have a racing game to my collection, though I'm not a NASCAR fan. I've heard a lot of good things about the game.

As far as Racing Games go, I'll stick with "Mille Bornes" < http://www.BoardGameGeek.COM/Boardgame/590/mille-bornes > from 1954 that I played with my parents when I was a kid. However, my youngest son was recently bitten by the addictive NASCAR bug, so by next Christmas, I may be looking for board game version of a racing simulation in order to win him back from The DARK Side.

[Johngee]

* &OBTW: A woman from my hometown area started a thread on BGG, saying that she wanted to start a regular Gaming Group. So even though it is now 100 miles away, I joined in the conversation to encourage others to come out and support her efforts. (You can read the details here: < http://www.BoardGameGeek.COM/thread/1231319 >)

Anyway, after two months of introductions and negotiations, last night was the very FIRST TIME these people attempted to get together face-to-face at a Starbucks café inside a Barnes & Noble at Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ - and I participated. Whoohoo! We actually had 8 guys there. One of whom claims to have a lot of HeroScape stuff, but hasn't played in a while, and has never heard of this fan site.


I played: Splendor, Tokaido, Love Letter, and Survive: Escape from Atlantis.
Three hour trip there and back again ......... it's questionable what my time is worth
Ten gallons of gasoline at $2.00/gal .......... $20.00 at the pump
6x the strategically placed toll booths ........ $9.00 to the GSP Trolls
A chance to play something other than Carcassonne . . . PRICELESS!

[stubobj]

Got a couple more missions in for Imperial Assault. The first one we played was Sorry about the Mess. The reward is Han Solo as an Ally. This ended before the players even got to the Garage Door. With 3 heroes it was hard for them keep Han protected. There was also a couple times they moved him first out into the open which just allowed me to surround him. Relentless is a great ability for taking out Allies.

The second mission we played was a story mission, Fly Solo. Well this game they did a lot better at protecting Han. They made mistake and attacked and killed my Nexu who was actually blocking any my guys from getting a shot. I also had him set up so the Imperial Officer could Command the Nexu to move and block the entrance. Had they killed my weak officer instead and left my already activated Nexu they wouldve easily won this one. Oh and I love Iggy Pop! Relentless with Assault and a choice of 2 red dice means Han is taking a TON of damage!

Next mission: Dark Obsession(?) The Vader agenda mission. The Rebels are seriously thinking about just letting me have Vader since he is 18 threat.

@Johngee : The odds on the White die dodge seem ok in the games Ive played. We don't see it alot maybe like 4 times in a mission. I like it better than it being on the attack die which from what Ive read is what Decent did. I do agree though that it wouldve been nice to have seen more than just D6's. Maybe something we will see with expansions? I feel like they have a lot of room to work with right now. I want more Bounty Hunters!

[Raider30]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

If you like Star Realms, you can get it, along with some other electronic card-games for $1 (for all platforms, I believe) in the current Humble Bundle.

On that note, PM me your username if you want to play. I'm hoping this one burns less background processing power than the Ascension app did.

This might be a dumb question but Ive never done a humble bundle. Are these games for a computer or for my iPad? Or some mixture of both? And if both, how can I tell?

- Raider30

[caps]

For those of you who like to sleeve your cards, MiniatureMarket has 10% off all clearance items with coupon code CVTW99, and it has Swan card sleeves on Clearance in a variety of sizes for a ridiculously low price.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Raider30

This might be a dumb question but Ive never done a humble bundle. Are these games for a computer or for my iPad? Or some mixture of both? And if both, how can I tell?

- Raider30

Typically a Humble Bundle will have games for PC, and sometimes Mac or Linux. If you mouse over the little gray symbols below each game in the bundle, a dropdown list shows which platforms that game is available for. In this case, Star Realms is available for Windows, Mac, and Android. However, I am pretty sure that buying Star Realms for one platform unlocks it for all other platforms (including iOS), so in the case of that game it should be available on your iPad also. I can't speak for the other games either way.

The Dominion Online expansions work in any browser, and I believe that includes mobile browsers as well.

[Scaperedude]

Pandemic is the only real "board game" I am playing Maybe some Trans-America as well.

[chas]

Played my first game of Fortune and Glory (2 player cooperative). We both had two characters. After about 5 hours, the game was so close that we hit our victory conditions just when the NPC Nazis hit theirs on the same turn, so they won.

"Nazis--I hate those guys!"
--Indiana Jones