Board Games!

[Equinox]

I played a game of "Wars of the Roses: Lancaster versus York", which seemed like a fun, balanced strategy game. It's also the most complex game I've ever tried, yet I picked this up much faster than I did Carcassonne (which, I am ashamed to say, I still sort of do not understand). The board looked like this at the end:

Spoiler: Large Image Inside

My York counterpart and I had an early lead that we lost due to different blunders -- I'd focused on maintaining territory at the cost of income, and she'd spread herself too thin -- but we managed to flip the war in favor of York at the end of the game, even if we ultimately lost points-wise. One of the Lancasters also grabbed great territory at the start of the game, which we ignored for longer than we should have. Looking forward to round two whenever we can get a spare two-hour block of time.

The game seems to be out-of-print, though, which is too bad.

[Equinox]

But wow, the game you talked about sounds and looks awesome. Tell us more!

Come to think of it, this might be up your alley. There's plenty of historical detail in the game.

It's designed for two to four players; however, it plays best with four because you then have two teams of two. You're not allowed to communicate strategy with your counterpart and in fact are encouraged to betray them if they are too far ahead of you. It behooves you and your counterpart to work together where possible to gain territory for your side, though, because that gets you points at the end of each turn. Anyway, the object of the game is to gain the most victory points by the end of the wars, and you do that by controlling territory each turn.

Each turn represents ten years of the Wars of the Roses. To start, players take turns -- based on turn order, which is in turn determined by how well you are doing in the game -- picking cards drawn from the deck. Each card is either a person (e.g., Bishop of Exeter, House of Tudor, Ship of Plymouth) or locale (e.g., London). Some cards provide income each turn, and others don't. You spend your income on one or more of (1) bribes of personae to either keep them on your side or take them away from an opponent, (2) armies to defend or attack a locale, and (3) a bribe to the Captain of Calais to gain additional power in a southeastern county.

Each item you own in a county represents the amount of control you have in that county. If your side controls the majority of the county, then all of that county's Parliament votes are given to your side; if your side controls the majority of Parliament votes, then your side is said to have won that decade. Some items (particularly personae) can be moved to different counties to help you gain control in other areas.

There's loads more detail, but that's the gist of the game. What is nice about it is that the only random factor is which cards get drawn each turn. Everything else is determined by players, so you win or lose by how good you are at strategy and reading your opponents. Good tactics can get you a lot of points but won't do much if you don't plan for the future.

[Equinox]

Oh, hey, someone else bought the Oregon Trail Card Game, too. Make sure to check the rules updates when you play.

[Equinox]

https://goo.gl/NNMKe4

I blame my current board game group for getting me sucked into strategy games. I was happy enough with simply having fun before.

Top five recommendations: Russian Railroad, Food Chain Magnate, Space Alert, Mombasa, Keyflower

[Equinox]

Guys review on terraform mars or something like that

It's a great deal of fun once everyone at the table knows what they are doing! As Panzerjager said, it can be a fairly long game. If I remember correctly, my first time took about two hours, but we've been consistently finishing at about an hour now that we don't need to refer to the rules so much. If you're familiar with Fate of the World at all, it's very similar.

[Equinox]

I found out about Tragedy Looper a couple of weeks ago while browsing the local game store. One bad life decision later, I am the proud owner of one box.

This is relevant to absolutely no one. I just wanted to share because it'll be some time before I can find someone who would play.

[Equinox]

i want to play

San Diego mini meetup! Wooo!

[Equinox]

Sushi Go anyone?

How about Sushi No?*

* - As much as I would find this rude joke amusing, it's an actual variant that I've yet to try but sounds like fun. The goal is to have the fewest amount of points.

[Equinox]

Four of us played Twilight Imperium 4E today, and there was plenty of conflict to go around toward the end of the game. That said, with three of us being new to 4E, it took us ten hours to clear the game.

[Equinox]

Well, it was furthered by two of the factions being Hacan and Xxcha, though it ended in a blaze of fury. I played Naalu, equinox played Sol. A concerted final effort and some magical dice rolls managed to reduce me down to just 3 production so I couldn't win on the final status (also kept hito from winning by taking his homeworld), leading to an Xxcha win.

Long live the peace turtles.

[Equinox]

If it's longer than 90 minutes, it's too long

any game shorter than 120 minutes does not feel like a game was played.

[Equinox]

This is probably my absolute limit for a game. Once you're cutting into that 2hr+ area of time(and even really 2 hours flat), the game needs to be as fun as playing 2 games. I just hate when I'm in like..minute 97 and I'm just like "man..this is kinda boring. The game seems pretty much set to be decided a certain way. I really wish I didn't have another 37 minutes of this." And I'm just sitting there, grinding out the end of this game in the name of politeness, while thinking to myself, "I'd really rather have been playing an entire game of Evolution or something"

I don't disagree with that line of thought... but I also only play games that I enjoy (and keep replaying them). 's why I would be okay if someone made me an offer for an airline-battered copy of Five Tribes, which shouldn't be a three-hour game but tends to turn into one.

With that said I don't really understand the appeal of games that are so short that you count your wins in sets, like Love Letter or Coup.

i was semi-trolling with my remark about two-hour games, but here's a serious response, i guess: long games must have a mechanism to keep players engaged throughout or players run into the problem that panzerjager described. there are games that i think do a good job with this, such as spirit island. the classic example of doing this poorly is monopoly. even terraforming mars falls into that trap; with evenly-matched players, the game runs more or less smoothly, but it can become dragging very quickly for someone who is too far ahead or too far behind. for me, the sweet spot is somewhere between an hour to two hours, though i'll play something longer if it's a game i enjoy or if it's a gaming group who i know well (see: twilight imperium).

short games are good icebreakers or even breathers between two longer games. we played cockroach poker between a game of between two castles and terraforming mars, and that was a nice break to chill out and be goofballs between relatively serious games. outside of that, i wouldn't enjoy playing multiples of love letter or coup back to back, as fun as they can be.

[Equinox]

I'm sure someone will bring it to a scum meet someday

host one and invite the games.

give me the excuse, dammit.

[Equinox]

E didn't appreciate it until the discovery of hordes of pirates to raid my score pile.

wow i am sorry i gave off the impression that i don't enjoy games unless i'm winning?

[Equinox]

maybe i should clarify: i was trying to understand the game and didn't quite grasp the win condition until i drew that pirate card when the scoring mechanism clicked because of how that card worked, so i deeply resent the implication that i didn't "appreciate" the game until i could fuck someone over.

[Equinox]

exactly what it needed?

Why settle for 10 hours when you can do 14?