What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

Got in my first play of Star Wars: Imperial Assault as the Imperial side of things, after a buddy of mine used a gift certificate to buy the game yesterday. I really enjoyed managing threat and knowing all the secret info and watching them fail miserably. Fun game. I'm looking to playing more of it in campaign mode.

That's cool Bats. Some guys in my group have been doing the campaign for awhile, and have started the 2nd one. I wish I could have gotten in on it, but as with Pandemic Legacy that I missed as well, seats fill up quickly for campaign games in our group. Though, I did get in on the Galaxy Defenders campaign and hoping to go through the campaign for the expansion sometime. I also barely got a seat in a campaign of Seafall that we'll get into after GenCon. I have Gloomhaven coming in the fall, which is a long campaign game, but I might have to hold off on starting that until next year. Still hoping my buddy can get the COIN series of games going that we want to get through, but those are some hardcore games. I just got Falling Sky:The Gaelic Revolt Against Caesar, the latest COIN game, and the rules are pretty daunting.

Originally Posted by chas

Hahma,

"All old people know each other."
--The White Lotus Society, Avatar the Animated Series

Hal Thinglum's bucolically named Midwest Association Wargamer's Newsletter (MWAN) was in fact one of the major wargaming publications of its day. He finally sold it and later it went out of circulation.

For some years toward the end of its run, you could find a regular column there called "Those Fightin' Fifty-Fours," which helped revive the popularity of the 54mm (2 1/2") Big Scale of toy soldiers being used in actual wargames, rather than just skirmish actions. And if you find a copy of one of those issues, you'll know my real name, because its the author's byline!

My fansite copy of the tank rules says Field Artillery gets the Deadly Die at a 2 or 3 range with Line of Sight, but doesn't mention the close combat die either.

Definitely a small world Chas. That's cool that you did that with the 54mm soldiers.

I know your real name, it's Jon Snow

Regarding the Field Artillery, I'm thinking the Deadly Die in close combat was omitted for both the tanks and field artillery because it seems to be a general rule that all units get the Deadly Die in close combat. As far as them mentioning that field artillery gets the Deadly Die at range 2 and 3 (if target is in LoS), then that's there as an exception, and thus included with these rules. Now that I have my rules with me, I was able to look at it again. The thing about the rules in the Tanks expansion, is that it doesn't go through the 8 step Close Combat procedure that the base game rules do. So it would seem that you would follow the 8 steps found in the base rules, including step 5, Score Hits, where it specifically says that Deadly Die count in close combat. When looking back at page 13 of the base game rules, where it lists the different units and ranges, it doesn't say anything about Deadly Die in close combat there, and likely why it doesn't say that in the tanks listings in the Tanks expansion.

[TREX]

@IAmBatman, glad to hear you liked Imperial Assault. Good to hear about the campaign being fun. Me and my brothers have played the heck out of the Skirmish mode with almost all of the expansions, and its really fun. We have yet to play the campaign though. I've been itching to play it again.

[Jormi_Boced]

Played some Elder Sign this weekend and assembled some Silver Tower.

[Johngee]

Originally Posted by chas

@Griznakh has run some BattleCry150 games out in Suffolk County Long Island using minis and 3D terrain; I always participate when I can. I've got about 100 fan scenarios for that game and have solitaired through them all, as they cover almost the entire American Civil War.

I've actually stockpiled four copies of the old (not the original MB American Heritage series version, although I have that one as well) ... Battle Cry game I found at Thrift Stores or online and one of the newer BC-150th Anniversary edition (for the rules tweaks). My intention has always been to eventually run through several huge Am. Civil War battles in a campaign mode using the 15mm unpainted plastic figurines. But haven't gotten around to it yet!


Fortunately last year I connected with a local group, the "South Jersey Confedeation of Wargamers" that meets once a month at the Cape May Court House Senior Citizen's Center. I've gotten to participate in several Am. Civil War Table Top battle reenactments, along with a few WW-II, Viking, Renaissance, and Sci-Fi games with 15mm and 28mm models, but these old-school, purist grognards scoff at the mention of the pre-painted larger plastic soldiers or HeroScape.


C'est la vie. c'est la guerre, c'est les jeux.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Johngee

I've actually stockpiled four copies of the old (not the original MB American Heritage series version, although I have that one as well) ... Battle Cry game I found at Thrift Stores or online and one of the newer BC-150th Anniversary edition (for the rules tweaks). My intention has always been to eventually run through several huge Am. Civil War battles in a campaign mode using the 15mm unpainted plastic figurines. But haven't gotten around to it yet!


Fortunately last year I connected with a local group, the "South Jersey Confedeation of Wargamers" that meets once a month at the Cape May Court House Senior Citizen's Center. I've gotten to participate in several Am. Civil War Table Top battle reenactments, along with a few WW-II, Viking, Renaissance, and Sci-Fi games with 15mm and 28mm models, but these old-school, purist grognards scoff at the mention of unpainted plastic soldiers or HeroScape.


C'est la vie. c'est la guerre, c'est les jeux.

Yeah, some grognards are pretty snobbish when it comes to certain things.

[chas]

JohnGee,

Or you could just look at my Epic BC150 on bgg in the Files section!

[akden]

My wife's parents have been staying with us through the week-end, and my mother-in-law is always interested in trying something light, so I introduced them to a wonderful little card game called Biblios. For anyone who hasn't tried it, I highly recommend it and consider it a near-perfect light strategy card game. If scales very well from two to four and is portable, well-presented, and easy to teach.

As a brief description, the game involves modified drafting, set collection, a bit of press-your-luck, bidding, and a lot of player interaction. Each player attempts to score the most victory points by acquiring the highest total value of various sets of cards. The victory points awarded are represented by nice, chunky 6-sided dice (that are never rolled), and certain cards allow players to adjust the number showing on each die, thus increasing or decreasing the number of victory points awarded for winning a set. The first half of the game starts off with a modified draft that builds your hand, the other players' hands, and the auction pile. The tough part is that you draft by looking at one card at a time and deciding where it goes, either in your hand, the auction pile, or to your opponents. You can only allocate one card to each place, and once you put a card in one stack, you can't change your mind, which leads to some tough decisions and a bit of pushing your luck. In the second half, players bid on the cards from the auction pile using the cards they've accumulated during the first phase. This has a lot of player interaction as you take turns bidding for the same cards. Once the pile is depleted, you add up your value for each color and award points.

I taught my son, daughter, and mother-in-law, and we enjoyed it enough to play half a dozen times over the week-end. Everyone picked it up quickly, and all the games were pretty close. Again, I'd highly recommend it.

[Hahma]

Last night I played:

Alan's Adventureland - I had played a 4p game of it last week and came in 2nd with 204 points and the winner had 205. Last night I played a 3p game and won with 216 points to 208 and 205. Though there isn't much theme, it's supposed to be that everyone is trying to build the best amusement park. Each round, players draft cards and then each will play one card between 2 players, it's one of the ride cards, but it's considered a building permit in this fashion and allows players the permit is adjacent to, to build that color/type of attraction. The players play a card of an attraction they wish to build and take the appropriate wooden block that has the corresponding attraction sticker on it and place it on their player board. The attractions are worth various amount of points, with some being able to be stacked 2 high to max the points, some can go up to 4 high to max points. Then there are bonus cards you are using to try to match the shape/placement of tiles and you get points for that. At the end of the game there is also a scoring mechanism that takes into account how many attractions you have in each row and column. The designer of the game has been in our group for years, but is moving to the east coast this weekend.

The Great War - scenario 3, Loos -Diversionary Attack - I played a buddy of mine who also got the kickstarter base and tanks expansion, but hasn't had a chance to play yet. I was the Germans and he was the British. I ended up winning 6-3. My off board artillery was very effective in this game.

[davidlhsl]

For the Crown (w/expansions)

Got this Dominion/Chess hybrid back on the table against my dad. You each begin with a single King on the board (and that's all) and a starting deck of 10 cards, and will purchase cards for your deck to put pieces on the board and provide different effects for your units or deck.

My dad started off massively strong in develop his buying engine and was able to put three queens on the board. Ouch! I thought I didn't have a chance, but I took advantage of his too-defensive play. I was able to get and put an Amazon on the board, which moves like both a queen and a knight. Using that allowed me to tank one of her queens. Then I was able to use a nifty combo by moving my Amazon adjacent to his King and play an action card that moved my rook next to my Amazon for protection. He didn't have any way to counter that checkmate situation. Important distinction for technical reasons: the game doesn't end at checkmate, but ends by actually capturing the King (or all the Kings if there's more than one).

[IAmBatman]

That sounds like a crazy fun game! I played way more chess as a kid than I would've if I knew what other games were out there ....

[caps]

Got Dominion: Alchemy today. The set might be okay overall, but the first suggested set of cards to play with is terrible.. It's the kind of set that encourages you to have a huge unwieldy deck that you can still play in its entirety in one turn. To top it all off, it provides Possession, which is a means for you to take a turn with the player to your left's huge unwieldy deck one or more times in a row immediately after taking a turn with your own. I won by a lot but it was kind of a miserable game.

My wife says she'll never play with Possession again.

[IAmBatman]

Alchemy might be the weakest Dominion set, just on it having so many cards that require potions, that it just doesn't mix very organically with the rest of the sets. And part of the pleasure of having a ton of Dominion expansions is mixing them with abandon.