What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Dad_Scaper]

Smash Up came in for me and I happened to be in the area for work so I picked it up right away.

I played with both kids - ages 13 and 9 - and it was a little challenging for the 9 year old, maybe a step up or two up from Munchkin, where she can normally pick cards more or less at random and be competitive. Smash Up is more unforgiving.

I won when KidScaper and I were tied at 13 VPs and he had 13 points of Minions at the Temple of Goju, which scores 2-3-2 and breaks at 18, and I placed the NukeBot there, giving me 5 points to break the base with me in second place, so I got the 3 and he got 2 and I won 16-15.

[IAmBatman]

Good stuff, guys! Thanks.

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Thunderdome!! Thunderdome!!! 2 Men enter, 1 man leaves!!

The Wizard and the Warlock both heard these cheers from the onlookers as they entered the arena. The Wizard, a master or manipulation of mana draw, traps, and redirection was a little hesitant to take on the battle hardened Warlock. He had also heard rumors and whispers on how he uses his curses to inflict wounds upon foe after foe.

The Warlock started out by sumoning a Battle Forge and a Mana Crystal to increase his channeling and to better bring forth his dark equipment. The Wizard quickly countered with a mana crystal of his own and a Gate of Voltari to gain mana quickly to summon creatures from another world.

The Warlock advanced towards the wizard with every chance he had equipping his guantlets of power, ring of curses, and talisman of torment (forget actual name). The wizard was frantically summoning traps left and right while equipping his flame resistant armor and an elemental wand bound with purge magic.

The Warlock had gotten within 2 zones of the wizard and summoned a pentagram that required a blood sacrifice to increase it's mana. The Wizard summoned a Mana Leach as it waited for the Warlock to make his move.

The Warlock became a bit cautious and summoned a Bat and threw a curse onto the wizard, (ghoul rot)causing him to take 2 wounds during every upkeep phase. The wizard continually summoned creatures to his aid, Gorgon and Hydra. The Warlock summoned an imp and cast a seeking dispel on a face down trap. The trap was but a decoy. The Warlock frustrated by the Wizards trickery commanded his imp to enter closer to the wizard. A teleport trap was triggered sending the imp away. The Warlock quickly moved closer to the Wizard ready to bring the pain.

However the Wizard was still tricky, he force pushed the Warlock into a hellfire trap. The Warlock smirked in pain as he began to burn. The Wizard smiled as he stunned the warlock as well with a blinding flash.

The gorgon then took several shots at the warlock causing him to become weak. The Warlock frantically searched his spell book for a way to remove these conditions but to no avail (totally adjusting my deck for that one!).

The Warlock shook off the stun and exploded both the wizards fire resistant armor and his elemental wand. It was time to make his move, but the hyrda stood there waiting for the warlock.

The warlock force pushed the hydra and then went all in against the wizard. The battle was furious. The bat and fire imp threw down burns and rots, while the wizard kept blasting away along with his minions. The Warlock deathlinked himself with one of the wizard's summoned fairies to constanly heal.

The game came down to a 5 HP wizard and a 8 HP Warlock. The Warlock was in the same zone as the triplestriking hydra and all out of force pushes. He knew one more attack from the hydra and he was a goner. He also knew that the wizard was probably preparing a heal spell. With initiative in his corner the warlock used his last 12 mana to cast drain power on the wizard. He summoned forth all his arcane knowledge he knew (I rolled the dice) and boomshakalaka 5 hits!!!

The wizard slumped over as the Warlock roared out in a gutteral victorious scream, "2 Men enter, 1 man leaves."

Mage Wars - Do yourself a favor and buy a copy. It freakin rocks!

[Hahma]

I watched a little bit of Mage Wars being played by a couple guys in my game group. It looks pretty darn cool, though it seems like it is a pretty long game, especially with new players trying to figure all the crazy stuff going on. But it certainly looks cool and something I'll keep an eye on.

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by Hahma

I watched a little bit of Mage Wars being played by a couple guys in my game group. It looks pretty darn cool, though it seems like it is a pretty long game, especially with new players trying to figure all the crazy stuff going on. But it certainly looks cool and something I'll keep an eye on.

My first couple games were 2 to 2.5 hours. Ever since then I've never gone longer than 90 mins, most of the time only about an hour.

There's lots of keywords, but for the most part they do what you expect them to do. Plus the codex in the back of the rule book is by far the best codex / glossary I have seen ever.

There's some apprentice spell books too that they encourage first time players to use. Of course nobody here does that anyway.

[Hahma]

Yeah, I'm sure it's one of those games that will take a few plays to get the time down, especially when both players have played a few times.

And who wants to be an apprentice anyway

[Killer Lawnmower]

I've looked at Mage Wars multiple times, but I'm wondering if it will be too similar to Summoner Wars. We all love Summoner Wars, for me especially the simplicity as well. I wouldn't want one of them to be benched, and I think it would be Mage Wars because of the "more complexity." But if ya'll have other thoughts I'd like to hear.

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by Killer Lawnmower

I've looked at Mage Wars multiple times, but I'm wondering if it will be too similar to Summoner Wars. We all love Summoner Wars, for me especially the simplicity as well. I wouldn't want one of them to be benched, and I think it would be Mage Wars because of the "more complexity." But if ya'll have other thoughts I'd like to hear.

I'll try to be brief here out of respect for truth and all. I don't want to get into this too much, but to me Mage Wars is what I had hoped Summoner Wars was going to be.

When I play Mage Wars I feel like I'm in an arena throwing down with another mage, strategizing, attacking, summoning.

When I play Summoner Wars I feel like I'm playing a board game with mechanincs that sometimes reflect theme.

[Hahma]

Well the guys I watched play Mage Wars in my group had been Magic The Gathering players and may still play that. They said that Mage Wars is what Magic should have been.

So I think Mage Wars seems to have found the perfect combination of other games and made it into a real thematic winner.

I love Summoner Wars and enjoy it for what it is and feels like, a board game using cards that feel like minis and having a chess-like feel to it while also having some powers that offer some cool theme.

But, for a straight up Wizard/Mage or whatever throw down dual, Mage Wars appears to have nailed that to a T.

They are different games, but if someone is looking for a straight up dual type game with a more realistic/thematic feel with magical powers and items, Mage Wars would be the way to go. But if people want a simpler game with more of a tactical minis feel to it, then Summoner Wars is the way to go.

[Hahma]

I won a game called Fear & Greed from the Cardboard Jungle Facebook site run by our own Onacara and NYYS. All I had to do was like the "Like" Cardboard Jungle page to get signed up for drawings and following them on Tweeter added an extra name in the hat so to speak. Cardboard Jungle has some neat podcasts with game discussions other neat stuff on their site.

Anyway I gave the game a quick solo run through to get the mechanics of it down before teaching it and it's pretty light and quick. Likely about 30 minutes for 3 or 4 players. Not too deep of a game and mostly a light filler.

[chas]

"And we're like the cavalry in one of those American westerns, riding to the rescue!"
--General Horrocks, Commanding British XXX Corps, 1944


The air is clear over my living room table, where the paratroops have dropped over the Memoir 44 Overlord Dutch countryside hexes. Allied intelligence reports only second line German units in the vicinity...certainly no Elite SS or Tiger Tanks. Four or more players will assemble at noon for what has so far been the most popular of the Overlord scenarios with my player posse.

I've counted up everything I have with the new Equipment Pack, and it now comes to over 200 scenarios for M44. A few of which I haven't played yet from the Scenario Books.

***
I've also come up with proxies for all the brand new Heroscape C3V stuff. Love those giant monster types. I bought a new dragon at the local toy store yesterday. Luckily the only type they had turned out to be a Schleich blue one with turquoise highlights, and red electric type veins flashing along his outspread wings. Very cool to be Quahon, our new Acquillan Blue Electric Dragon!!!

[Raider30]

Greetings all,

I've gotten to play quite a few(for me) games in the past week, starting last weekend with Matthias and some others. Was a pretty good time all around. Because of playing Dixit and Loot last weekend I just *had* to put an order in to CSI so I could bring those games to our Thanksgiving feast with my family.

I'm thinking they will really like Dixit since they already like Apples to Apples and it's very similar. Loot the kids should like because it's basically 'war' with a pirate theme and some minor variations and lasts about 20 minutes.

But as we all know you just have to get to $100 for the free shipping....So I snagged Halo: Risk legendary edition for Christmas for one of my 10 year olds who is into Halo(well they both are but only one regularly likes to play games so he gets it!). And wonder of wonders it just so happened on the day I placed my order Legendary and Quest of the Qladiator both came off of pre-order status so I grabbed those as well.

Everything arrived today so I've got a nice relaxing weekend of reading rules, organizing and trying to convince the kids to play with me.

Also I played 2 solo games of Return of the Heroes. This is probably the first game(besides heroscape) that I read about and then had to hunt and hunt to find it. Took probably 6 months or so before a copy came up for sale on ebay(well actually it was the second copy in that time but I missed bidding on the first). It's really like a lighter version of Runebound. Still was pretty fun. I'm going to see if I can get one of the kids to play it just to see what, if anything changes in the game play. It's semi-co-op game, semi in that you don't really mess with other players but you are all trying to kill the bad guy.

I'd just like to thank Tornado again for his Random Army generator. The kids and I have used it twice in the past 2 days to play games of HS. They really like the initial rolling to see what units they are going to get to play with. I know he's got some squad based and small point army stuff set up, but if anyone has about 20 500pt armies they can list out that we could then roll for that would be awesome.

- Raider30

link to Tornado's Random Army generator: http://www.heroscapers.com/community...77#post1430977