Board Games!

[brassherald]

I always forget Discord is a thing. Now we have a thread.

[shaft.ed]

I'd love to, but I don't usually have the time
also the wife gets upset if I'm gaming too much since it annoys her while we're living in a smallish apartment

[brassherald]

I mostly only play over the weekends, myself, my fiancee doesn't mind because she'll just play Animal Crossing or Paper Mario or something else on the television. Might even be better for her when I'm not on the television.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Approaching Game 7 of 10 in Machi Koro Legacy and...

I can't say spoilers here but the game literally broke at this point. It's unplayable. Without doing house rules, one player is likely to win in no more than 5 turns.

We made sure not to misinterpret the new rules but that's really what happened.

[Ythan]

In other news, who here has Tabletop Simulator? I'd love to organize a TI4 game with expansion this weekend.

This may be of use.

[Ythan]

Oh i missed this page.

[shaft.ed]

started Clank! Legacy with bro and nephew
Couldn't find the rule regarding pulling 4 cubes from the dragon bag after returning to town
so didn't pull cubes and the whole end game felt obviously weird, and we realized it was broken once only one player was left
then i finally found the rule in the Game End and Scoring section of the rulebook

oh well, still was a decent time. And Game 1 is pretty light anyway
i was kinda disappointed because I really wanted to explore, but I ended up getting wrecked and was two health from getting knocked out by the time I had reached an artifact

[VP Baltar]

I felt like the first couple games of clank legacy were mediocre, but it got better quick. The flavor is fun. We had one game left wen the pandemic really started to get bad over the winter. I feel like it will be an anti-climatic end since our group has likely forgotten everything at this point.

[shaft.ed]

would playing a game on the current board state before the last legacy installment jog some memories?

First game had a lot of megaturns as 2 to 3 tome entries were read. I think it went well though. Usually no one wants to read flavor text. But this time my brother and even my nephew were both reading aloud and even voicing the speakers.

I think the bigger problem we had was not being familiar with the TTS script. So now that we know how it works, we should have a much better time with the next round. I guess that's a downside of playing over TTS. You have to learn the game itself and you have to learn how to interact with the program.

[VP Baltar]

That does seem like a challenge, particularly since the front half of the game has plenty of mechanics added.

The plus side of the legacy is that you get rewarded a ton for exploring in terms of game entertainment, so even if we forgot where we were in the story, it should be enjoyable regardless. This is the first clank version where I was fine risking dying in the dungeon just to unlock some more goods for the group.

[implosion]

I've found over the pandemic that TTS has a very steep learning curve, but generally knowledge of how to interact with any one mod will mostly transfer over to how to interact with others.

[shaft.ed]

I'm using it a lot
the problem is with scripting (which i don't want to complain about because they are awesome and the people that spend time making them are awesome)
i can log in to test the game by myself, but a lot of scripts don't function with one person on the game board

the Clank script has a button that toggles between "New Game", "Game in Progress, and "Scoring"
Someone mashed this button over to "Scoring" midgame
We should have known something was off because cards in play weren't read by the script, but we weren't aware of the state and impact of this button

We have a bad track record with Clank on TTS
our first non-legacy game was unscripted, but we didn't realize the dragon bag didn't auto-randomize the cubes
so whatever last cubes were put in were the first out. Didn't notice this until my brother pulled about 6 straight of his own color

[VP Baltar]

Didn't notice this until my brother pulled about 6 straight of his own color

Haha, that's an ouch

[brassherald]

So, game night was a success, we played a 5 player round of Marvel Villainous, I ended up winning as Thanos, mostly through pointing out that one of my opponents would win on the turn before I won when a good fate card came out. I successfully used a chain reaction of activating a stone to pull out my card that lets me both put a stone into another realm and relocate one ally, choosing Corvus Glaive, who can also move the Legions of Thanos with him, which was convenient because I needed both the stone that Corvus Glaive had and a second one I attached to one of my fiancee's two 1 strength allies. Anyway, I destroyed half of all life on Saturday.

We also played Cards Against Muggles which is not my favorite type of game but whatever.

And the Trolley Problem, which was fun enough.

Yesterday we played Disney Picture Trivial Pursuit.

So, lots of board games, not lots of real complex board games or interesting ones. 5 player Marvel Villainous is doable, despite the box only saying up to 4, though, it's just very long. I'd suggest removing all event cards when you do 5 players.

[shaft.ed]

Puerto Rico and Seven Wonders scripts were both somehow broken last night
took about an hour and a half before we even started playing

was somehow one of the more amusing game nights we've had in a while due to some of the silliness of the broken bits

[Xtoxm]

TTS takes some getting used to
its really good for board games once u do tho

[shaft.ed]

played Architects of the West Kingdom
I'm not generally a fan of worker placement, but I liked this more than normal
I think the fact that you are rarely blocked from going anywhere and are just slightly disincentivized from going where you want to go was nice
Gameplay is also super fast once everyone knows whats going on

Downside was pointsalad scoring, which is somewhat unavoidable in these games
Also a few random elements in the game made can make a huge difference. The biggest being building requirements merging with laborer types. We had a game where every laborer was the same 'suit' and certain buildings and bonuses were essentially impossible to get. I guess you could houserule around that if you wanted to

[Chevre]

Hey everyone! I was at a board game convention this weekend and have hot thoughts on a bunch of games!

Calico

– This was my must-play, top of my list, and so of course we played it first. I had watched Before You Play’s playthrough for it but had no actual experience because it was sold out. Roommates loved the theme with the quilts and cute cats. As expected, Calico is a furious puzzler in a cute package. I would strike up one plan only to be distracted by another plan or thrown off by what tiles were up for grabs. This is probably a must-purchase for me; it’s just too good to pass up.

ICECOOL

– I had heard a lot of good things about this, but my group had 0 experience with dexterity games, so this was kind of an overwhelming experience. Especially the way the boxes become the board (though my roommate was disappointed in the lack of variability for the board)! ICECOOL had us up and around our table as we tried to flick our penguins. It was an experience but I think we found it more a novelty than anything. The scoring is too random and we hadn’t really nailed our flicking technique.

Takenoko

– So we saw this one being played during ICECOOL and my roommate was attracted to the cute panda (amazingly, it wasn’t the deluxe version so she has eagle eyes!). I knew about Takenoko since I started playing board games since it was a very early BGA game, but I think I tried it there and didn’t quite grasp the strategy. Which was weird because now that we’re many years in, Takenoko is very parsible. It’s an interesting concept where you don’t really “own” any area, but you can kind of watch what other players are doing and grasp it from there, if you care to block it. Possibly a purchase? It just feels silly because it’s been out for so long.

Roll for the Galaxy

– This is the spiciest one! So my other roommate had heard that Race for the Galaxy was good, and also pointed out this one too, but I’ve always been sort of hesitant around them. I don’t think of it as a very receptive theme for our group. I watched a tutorial video in the morning before we played, but the teaching was rough. Explaining a mechanic where you’re picking secretly is always tough, and Roll for the Galaxy’s is complicated, especially if you’re not familiar with the phase structure. At a point though, we sort of “broke through” the frustration and kind of got what was going on (though the “Ship” action still boggled our brains). It’s weirdly maybe my third-choice pick to buy though? I’m very intrigued to play it again.

Can’t Stop

– Sigh . . . so if you are on the Discord you know I’m a Can’t Stop STAN. I love the play games on Can’t Stop, as I feel the quick automated nature is just perfect. However . . . my roommates were not into it. I explained the rules and they were just kind of like, “that’s it?” and then as I rolled the dice and calculated and failed to stop, they were still kind of boggled. Just a total mismatch and their least favorite game of the convention. I guess that’s good, because since Can’t Stop is out of print I was going to try to laser-cut a board or something, but that’s work I don’t have to do now! And I’ll always have BGA.

Clank! In! Space!

– So we have original Clank! And it was kind of a lock that we would give this second version a try. However, when I watched the tutorial for it I was kind of worried. It’s a bit more complex than Clank standard, which threw me off but I mean, it increasing in features makes sense. Of course, since we love original Clank!, this was a good experience. I thought it was a tad better paced. However, this is maybe the winner of the worst rulebook? The original’s isn’t great, but this one straight-up failed to explain symbols or what some items might be used for. Granted, with our familiarity we didn’t read through the full thing, but it was very easy to miss that escaped or eliminated players still pulled cubes and thus we kind of pondered if you were immortal at the endgame. It was a good time but I don’t know if it’s top of my list, especially when we have the original.

Cinque Terre

– So I’ve been interested in this one for several years; it’s an out-of-print game with Ticket to Ride vibes in that it has different colored resources and objectives to complete. This was at the end of night two so we were plenty tired, but it just didn’t hit right. I love the style of this game; it’s vibrant and colorful and so ~Italian.~ However, if we were playing the game right, the play itself is so repetitive that it just didn’t go well. I think part of it is that as you get better you’re able to multitask better and take less turns to accomplish things, but we were tired newbies and it was a lot of trips around Italy for us! Couldn’t buy it if I wanted to, but I really would pass on this one.

Mariposas

– My roommate saw this one almost immediately on the Swap Meet table and I was shocked to see Elizabeth Hargrave of Wingspan was the designer! I had no idea she released another one. We didn’t buy that copy but played one from the library. In a recurring theme, Mariposas is an incredibly pretty game but Wingspan it is not. The trickiest thing is that some of the strategy of Mariposas isn’t really apparent or spelled out; you’re supposed to do a sort of shuttle-run up the Eastern United States and back but the game doesn’t explicitly tell you this, and it’s tricky to gauge timing, especially on your first game. I think it’s something I might revisit next time, but I also don’t know how much replay value it actually has.

Isle of Cats

– Isle of Cats! This one was incredibly popular as I saw people playing it throughout the convention and I’m glad we were able to get to it on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t know how receptive my group would be to a polyomino tile-laying game like this, but Isle of Cats makes up for any apprehensions with a TON of charm in the artwork and a really compelling play loop with a ton of interesting choices. A bit of card management can make it a little tricky at times, but I think this is my second choice to buy (imagine that, the two cat games are my top two! XD)

Spring Meadow

– I didn’t actually play this, but I just want to vent that I severely wanted to and looked for it every time I went to the game library, but it was apparently MISSING. UGGGGGH might still buy anyway because I love the video I watched.

But yeah, it was a ton of fun! Who knows if it was the healthiest choice in the midst of all this but it was happening at the same time as the 60,000+ attendee Garth Brooks concert in the same city soooooo

[shaft.ed]

if you want more Clank experience
I would suggest Clank Legacy
the Legacy portion is fantastic. And you finish with two new boards of Clank when you're done if you need some variety from standard.

[PJ.]

Ice cool is the coolest game ever.

[shaft.ed]

I've never played flicking games
but of the ones I've seen online, Flick 'em Up looks the best

[PJ.]

So, I've played a few flicking games (crokinole, catacombs, and Icecool) and there are definitely others I'd like to try, but the reason I like icecool so much is because I find the game to be incredibly simple in that you can basically explain the entire game in about one sentence - rules included. Also while being a simple kids game it provides an incredible amount of skill expression because of the awkwardness and uniqueness of the penguins you are flicking, for example you can ollie the penguins over the walls of the board. But yeah, i've literally sold 5 copies of this game by being so incredibly excited about it so I like..know i'm the minority of being so incredibly excited about this. I'm also like..a known children's game liker, Rhino Hero and IceCool are two of the most fun board games i've played.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Yeah I like the design of the penguins that I can do a lot of trickshots with them (in theory; I actually suck at flicking games)

Flick em up is also very good but I feel like I have trouble explaining the rules to my customers because of some language barrier. Also flicking games don't really appeal that much to some people.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I've started playing Charterstone Digital Edition with AI and I feel like without friends to share the experience with, the game plays fine but sometimes speed up in places I want to go a bit slower. For example, (spoilers-free) each endgame matters to at least one person and if it's an AI, the game would just skip to the outcome of that endgame so I feel like I lost some of the lore.

[bugspray]

i'ver been playing dominion sometimes with some of my clanmates in ootc and it's fun