What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[chas]

Played my first game of Star Trek Ascendancy. I'll hold my comments until after my second play coming up Wednesday. But all three of us liked it and would play again. There were no significant unsolved rules issues. And it felt like Trek!

[Hahma]

Played another game of Scythe today with my daughters. That's 7 with just the 3 of us, plus they played in a 5 player game as well. My one daughter, Morgan, won again, while trying out a new faction for the first time. She's a natural. I also have a 4 and 5 player game with my game group.

Tomorrow night it looks like Mare Nostrum Empires and Tyrants of the Underdark. Next Saturday may be C&C Ancients or Arkham Horror.

[Ranior]

Got a game day in so was able to squeeze in a few more plays of some gencon pickups as well as other old favorites.

Tsuro x2

We still like using this while waiting for players to show up. It's fun and quick and works perfectly for the quick filler games.

Sushi Go Party x4

Had a blast getting to play this with 4 and 5 players. I'm pretty well convinced that this has had the side effect of making Sushi Go seem obsolete to us. The crazy combinations that arise and the different strategies that you want to go after each round just make the game so much fresher and more interesting. Can't wait to keep playing more rounds--we haven't even tried all the different cards once yet, and many we've only seen once anyhow.

Fury of Dracula 3rd Edition x1

One of my boyfriends favorite games still, it is always a fun time. The hidden movement and trying to deduce Dracula's location is really interesting. I played Dracula this time and managed pretty well, but died in one horrible combat when 3 of the hunters managed to get on to my location the same turn and ambush me with lots of special cards and items that took chunks out of my health fast. As is usual, I quickly realized a few minutes later where I should have moved instead and what powers I should have used, but ah well. It was a fun round where I had almost gotten far enough to win and the hunters played well to deserve their victory.

Istanbul x1

Got around to playing this with 5 players and had a good time. As I was teaching new people yet again, I wound up playing the basic paths set up that I've become quite accustomed to. Fortunately as this is my regularish game group, next time I should finally be able to try out some random paths to make the game more interesting. Still this is probably my favorite pick up from gencon this year. I'm loving this game and sad I didn't run into it sooner. I just love the decision making that takes place, but also appreciate how it plays pretty quickly. Even with teaching and the full five players it didn't take more than an hour yet still has enough strategic depth and options that keeps me as engrossed and engaged as some of the heaviest Euro's.

Evolution Climate x 1

Only our second game of this thus far. I enjoy it and think it is fun and interesting, but often find I feel somewhat limited by the cards I'm drawing. Seems that this game might not offer quite as much control as I was hoping and some of the ability to win or influence events how you want to is quite dependent on card draw. All my opponents were getting species that had the Climbing trait, so my carnivore simply couldn't eat them, and I never drew any card that would allow me to overcome that. Made the game difficult for me, but I still had fun. Plus more plays may help me understand more of what I could have done to better overcome that.

Overall had a great game day. Looking like some family will be in town next weekend, so hoping we can start up our Pandemic Legacy game with them, as well as getting to play some other of the new games we have that we haven't gotten around to playing much including Saloon Tycoon, Isle of Skye, Robinson Crusoe, Power Grid, and Coup.

[chas]

STAR TREK ASCENDANCY GAME SESSIONS

By Chas

(The following summary was posted to the other players who would be in the Second Game a few days later).

Game One

The new game is most like Fleet Captains in the exploration, where anything can happen, and you have to deal with it. As the Romulans I ran into a "Phenomenon" (space terrain other than planets), and Matt managed to roll two sixes, destroying both my ships This very bad luck would plague me the entire game. When I rolled up a "lost Klingon colony" on the border near his Klingon territory, I noted how whenever that happens in a SciFi game (likeTwilight Imperium) the person whose race it is insists on claiming it, rather than letting it go. Whereupon, ignoring my warning, Matt connected our territories and sent ships there, offering peace and a trade agreement.

I accepted, but then immediately betrayed him on my turn, as I had the initial advancement Cloaking Device/First Fire, and blew his two ships away with my two. At this point he had no ships on the board, and should have been set far back, and away from me. But he built a star base because he controlled the Lost Colony planet (I had missed that possibility), and therefore built more ships there and wiped me out on his following turn Whereupon we made peace and never bothered each other again. My own territory was now very small and poor.

My only piece of good luck was finding The Horta, who boosted up my Production Nodes on her planet (this was probably one of the 50th Anniversary TOS cards). Another flavorful thing that happened in our first STA game is that the Organian Intervention Exploration Card showed up on the Sherman's Planet system disc. This surprised me, as it exactly followed the scenario created in the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles," where no one was allowed to take over the planet unless they reached a high Ascendancy Level! So the game did “feel” like Trek, but at a strategic 4E level.

Meanwhile Nick as the Federation was using his culture boosting abilities and having good luck exploring, which gave him even more. Matt meanwhile kept finding civilizations so advanced that he couldn't Invade or Hegemony them. Not connecting to our territory at all, Nick as the Federation was looking to run away with the game. By the time we connected up to him, it was almost to late. Nick had even developed an Advancement which negated my Cloaking Device! (Yes, that's the kind of luck I was having--he'd only checked out about 4 of his 15 advancement cards, and that's one he got! Go figure!)

Then my only fleet,desperately trying to hook up my territory with the Federation, ran right into The Neutron Star, possibly the worst hazard in the game (its been duly noted on bgg as such; equivalent to the Black Hole in Star Fleet Captains). There went my fleet, with Matt rolling fatally as the neutral hazard once more, and so I lost my only outside chance of stopping Nick. Meanwhile the Klingons had connected to the Federation also, on the other flank, but not where Matt had his Klingon Fleet. So Nick, with three Fleets on the board (maximum faction fleet strength) proceeded to hand Matt's single ship their walking papers with one of his fleets.

Matt now had to leave unexpectedly, and we awarded Nick the game. The Federation had three Ascendancy out of the five he'd need to win, but we only had one each. We could have had two each, but needed the culture tokens for more mundane building uses. Nick also had a large three culture node income each turn, and we were both left too weak to do much about it over the next three or so turns he'd need to win.

We all enjoyed the game and would play it again. The rules went down pretty easily; we'd all looked at them before game day. There are many elements such as Exploration cards and faction Development (tech) cards we haven't begun to examine yet, so each game should be very different. I have a two page player aids for you someone just posted on bgg, and a bit of FAQ that came in handy. I also did a Table of Contents for the rules book, which proved so essential for Star Fleet Captains as well.

We played from 1:30-4:15 PM (Nick was late), and estimated that the game would have gone about 3 hour 45 min total to finish. 21 of the 30 systems were on the board when we broke, so only five were left. There was just about enough table space (using a 3' x 2' central play area) to put all the systems on the board, since you also needed room to place the sizable individual pIayer component areas! Nick was actually about to run out of table space on which to expand further! I note that in the back of the rules book there are a number of rules to shorten game length; but we wanted to try the standard game first.

Looking forward to Wednesday, when, with your permission, I'll try playing the Federation myself! Although Victor couldn't make Saturday as an extra player, we'll soon have a trained cadre of five players including me.

[Porkins]

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like these guys could use a bit of drybrushing around the edges to make them really stand out.

Originally Posted by Hahma

It took awhile, but I finally finished the USCR faction from Mercs Recon. Not studio quality, but considering I'm a newb to painting minis and still have over 150 left, these will suffice for playing with.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Porkins

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like these guys could use a bit of drybrushing around the edges to make them really stand out.

The ligthing isn't that great, but the guns were uniform grey (except some stocks) and have a gun metal drybrush that makes them pop, whereas the just look dark in the pictures. The pants have more variance between the low and high points from the ink wash.

Probably the things that could use a drybrush would be the leather brown shoulder pouches and maybe the boots. Thanks for the idea

My previous painted minis for the Lost Margin faction look much better in person, as the lighting in my office doesn't do the best for pictures, especially since there is no window in there for natural light.

[Hahma]

Last night I played Tyrants of the Underdark for the first time. A friend got it at GenCon. I liked it a lot. It's a deckbuilder (which I haven't played in awhile) but it is also and mainly an area control game. The board is set up with several locations of the dark elves underworld and there a many neutral soldier pieces (shields) that are spread out at the start of the game. Each player has their own soldier pieces as well as some spy pieces of their color, and will place them out on the board through use of cards played. You have to branch out from the first place you start, unless you have a spy somewhere that allows you to place a soldier at that location as well. Through playing certain cards you can assassinate other pieces to eliminate competition or make room for your guys in an area.

Your starting hand of 10 cards are like basic deckbuilding starting cards. Some will have a symbol that is like a coin for buying cards from the market, while others have swords that allow you to place soldiers, assassinate soldiers and some other things. On your turn you play all 5 cards from your hand and use them to buy from the market or place/assassinate. Once you start getting better cards from the market, you can chain certain abilities to be able to do a lot of neat things. There are 4 decks of market cards, but you only choose 2 to use and shuffle them together. We used the Dragons and Elementals. So within each of those decks each card has a symbol and some card's abilities take effect when played when played with another card with a certain symbol. The area control part is neat because there are some places that are a lot more beneficial to control, though someone can send a spy there to deny you total control and cost you from getting VP's from there, either from an ongoing bonus or a 2 VP bonus at the end of the game. Cool game and I can see a lot of expansions for market cards in the future.





Then we played Mare Nostrum Empires. I played my copy last time we played, but the friend with Tyrants brought his copy, and he's got the poker chip resource tokens and plastic buildings/caravans extra stuff that are awesome.

It was a 4 player game and I was Egypt. I played mostly a defensive strategy and tried to fortress up new areas I controlled. First in the west because I knew Carthage player could be aggressive, and then in Jerusalem to the northeast. I was going more for an economic approach, as I later built more temples and caravans. I had also bought the Hanging Gardens wonder card very early to allow for me to carry over 2 different resources from round to round, whereas normally you can't carry over any resources, but only 2 gold coins.

Carthage and Rome were warring, and Greece and Rome did a little war. I attacked and sacked an area in Carthage when it was weakened. Rome got it's 4th hero/wonder built and we were worried that he'd get his 5th to end the game. I had 10 coins and 8 different resources before trade of the final round, so since Egypt's leader Cleopatra has the ability to use one resource when paying with money/coins or one coin when paying with different resources, I was hoping to get a coin during trade to have 11 in order to use those and 1 resource to buy the Pyramids to win the game. The trade leader was Rome, and he only chose 2 resources to be traded that round, and Carthage had a leader that allowed him to ignore what the trade leader says and place from 0 to 5 resources up for trade. He chose 0 because he didn't want to give Rome anything he may need toward the 10 different resources he'd need for his 5th leader/wonder. I played 2 and was hoping Greece would play at least one coin, as he'd been putting coins up for trade just about every round. Well he didn't this time, and I was stuck being 1 coin short of being able to buy the pyramids. But that didn't matter as much because Greece, who was the Cultural leader choose himself to build first and he had 12 coins to build the pyramids with, that's why he didn't put any up that time. Rome would have been able to build his 5th hero/wonder if he were allowed to build first. So it was a pretty close game, though Carthage wasn't so close to being able to win because his warring nature cost him. Fun game!

[Porkins]

How did you like the poker chip tokens? I bought the building/caravan minis and they are great. Having played a few times, I kind of wish I had gotten the poker chips too.

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Porkins

How did you like the poker chip tokens? I bought the building/caravan minis and they are great. Having played a few times, I kind of wish I had gotten the poker chips too.

We liked them a lot. The only thing we didn't like about them was that it's harder to keep everything hidden as well behind the screen, since the screen is made for the cardboard tokens.

[TREX]

I got some Imperial Assault in on my birthday, a day or so ago. Me and two brothers played a three player skirmish battle. We played on a completely custom skirmish map I created in photoshop and printed out using layouts of scanned game tiles. We did not play with any side objectives besides gaining points for killing any units. We played with the standard army point limit of 40 pts with 15pts/15 cards of command cards. I played a scum team of bounty hunters-Boba Fett, IG88, Bossk, and Dengar. Brother 1 played with Imperials-General Weiss, a tank(Forget the name of it)and an AT-ST. Basically a Vehicle/Heavy Weapon team of hard hitters. Brother 2 played a rebel team-The Commando Fen Signis, The Jedi women Diala Passil, and a rebel named biv bodkirk. He also had some elite wookiee warriors and a couple of skirmish upgrades. Very fun game, came down very close to the end with some tricky command card plays by me to seize initiative and blast down my brothers general weiss for the win. I just wish I could play that game more. Birthday Victory! is always a plus. Also, just expanded my X WING fleet to from 3 ships to 21 ships over the last week. Can't wait to jump into some games of that one.

[Were-Skeleton]

@TREX Thanks! Just getting my feet wet in HS and I couldnt be more excited!

Side note: JABBA'S REALM!

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Were-Skeleton

@TREX Thanks! Just getting my feet wet in HS and I couldnt be more excited!

Side note: JABBA'S REALM!

Welcome!

There's a great local scene in Kentucky, I'm not sure where exactly. The geography of those flat states is fuzzy in my head.

But you should check it out. I know some of those guys, and they're terrific. They play at regular local events, and I wish they were here, instead of there.