Board Games!

[petroleumjelly]

7 Wonders is some good stuff, and there's a ton of content that adds depth and additional strategy. Cities is good, Leaders is slightly better, and BGG has fan-made expansions that seem snazzy.

Ya, I've played it a good bit (with the Leaders expansion as well); easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to play, lots of replayability. Just lamenting the lack of boardgaming I get to do.

[zoraster]

do you think leaders is better than cities? I prefer cities just because the leaders mechanic is kind of eh

[KageLord]

Wow, that sale has a lot of good games. My friend has been looking to buy the DC Deck Building game for a while now, so this is kinda perfect. Thanks for posting it. We've had a couple of those games run in Mish Mash actually (Resistance and Dixit for sure). And some more of them were played by Wil Wheaton on his Tabletop show.

Actually just had a board game night with some friends. 7 Wonders, chess, Power Grid, and of course a bit of Mafia.

[Shmugen]

I think the leaders mechanic adds the ability to plan what you want to do before the game starts whereas City adds variation to the main phase. I value one over the other a little bit.

[Amrun]

Forgot to post this!!

A friend of mine designed this game, and it looks fun. It has 6 days or something left on Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gam ... i?ref=live

He's a cool guy and he worked hard for this. Check it out.

[Swift Justice]

I played 7 wonders for the first time last week. I found it fun, and managed to joint first, although I think it was mostly luckyish since I made a couple of fairly obvious misplays in hindsight. It's fun though!

[Nexus]

7 wonders is brilliant. I really enjoy it. I played it with CDB and others the other day, scoring no points except for Science, and came 2nd by 1 point.

I don't recommend doing only Science though, because once everyone else realises you're doing Science, they'll fuck you up.

[Sudo_Nym]

I've been playing seven wonders on BSW, and I'm really enjoying it. I usually go military and blues, myself.

[xRECKONERx]

The buildings you go for should entirely depend on what civilization you're playing.

[Sudo_Nym]

Sure, but you also have to cop to what cards you get passed, which is probably meta dependent.

[xRECKONERx]

Meh, if you know the specific number of cards in each setup (for each number of players), the decisions aren't that hard to make.

[AngryPidgeon]

I've been playing seven wonders on BSW, and I'm really enjoying it. I usually go military and blues, myself.

OH shit, I have been. We should play sometime. My handle is the same >.>

[AngryPidgeon]

Reck, pleeeaaaaase. I've played at LEAST 100 games of 7 wonders. The things you are saying are not factual.

In reality the cards you should go for depend largely on your neighbors plays and how many people are in the game.

EDIT: Also military is pretty much always something you should be actively manipualting.

And making plays to ensure you get a caravansery over anyone else is also always solid.

[AngryPidgeon]

So my friend got the Exodus expansion for Battlestar Galactica.

Its kinda worth it, it fixes space battles a bit. Also Cally can just execute someone as her one-shot. Fancy.

[xRECKONERx]

Reck, pleeeaaaaase. I've played at LEAST 100 games of 7 wonders. The things you are saying are not factual.

In reality the cards you should go for depend largely on your neighbors plays and how many people are in the game.

EDIT: Also military is pretty much always something you should be actively manipualting.

And making plays to ensure you get a caravansery over anyone else is also always solid.

I have, too.

I find that military play is entirely dependent upon your neighbors. If they're investing a bunch into military resources, let them have it, because it only has a finite amount of potential point gain possible. Focusing on military is rarely the way to win because at most you're going to get 18 victory points from it. And if someone makes a surprise final build to tie your military, then you've just wasted your resources.

Playing to your specific wonder's strengths or complementing your wonder is the way to go, because there's usually going to be at least one card you need to pass by you. The only time this doesn't apply is with the guilds IMO, because there's only one of each and they're highly contested, AND people are more likely to bury guilds that they don't want their neighbors to get.

For example: if you're Giza B, you're going to be able to get some insane victory point value out of building your wonder, but it's also going to require a fuckload of resources. Scooping up as much of the natural resource cards as possible round one is the correct play. This naturally promotes grabbing a Haven ASAP in Age II. You also want to go for Baths & Aqueduct because you're going to have the stone to play it anyway. So, Age I, you're focusing on grabbing as much wood and stone and natural resources as possible, and pick up Baths, and any grey resources you can. This forces people to pay you for resources, and allows you to build your structures for free when you get a dead hand or want to hate out a card. Age II you fill in the holes in your raw materials, and get the last 1-2 grey resources so you have a full spread. Then you grab aqueduct and double down on building your wonder, since you have all the materials buy now to build it without paying. When Age III comes around, your build naturally supports Haven/Chamber of Commerce, and even Arena after you grab your fourth wonder stage.

This is all entirely based upon the idea that Giza needs tons of resources early to make use of its passive advantage. If you're not playing to your wonder's strengths, then you're missing out on a large advantage that you're afforded naturally.

[xRECKONERx]

EBWOP: Obviously, playing reactionary is part of it, but playing to your wonder's strengths should come first... and analyzing what wonders are near you will also inform your decisions. For example, are you next to Rhodes while playing Giza? Then you're going to be in a resource battle, because Rhodes is

heavily

dependent upon raw materials, too, and that'll prioritize certain cards over others. But it's all informed by your base strategy, which

should

play to the strengths of your wonder.

[AngryPidgeon]

I find that military plays is entirely dependent upon your neighbors. If they're investing a bunch into military resources, let them have it, because it only has a finite amount of potential point gain possible. Focusing on military is rarely the way to win because at most you're going to get 18 victory points from it. And if someone makes a surprise final build to tie your military, then you've just wasted your resources.

The key to military is when your neighbors build it, it hurts YOU. Seeing/knowing what military plays your neighbors can make (and will probably prioritize over other things) and either making those plays yourself or otherwise denying them the play is critical. If you can maintain a military lead with minimal amounts of military cards, your Points/card ratio will be HUGE.

18 points (in a non-expansion game) can EASILY be 1/3 of your winning score (and dont discount the negative points your opponents eat). Military plays well with blue since both need mostly brown resources and are not dependent on other picks.

--

I'll say undervaluing my monument is one of my weaknesses since I get the value of counterpicking in 3-4 player games especially and building your monument is the best way to keep counterpicking options available without effectively wasting turns/points in doing so.

--

Haven isn't an age 2 card, I think you mean the one in age 3 that gets you 1/1 per brown?
Also re Giza B: I disagree that being Giza makes Baths a great play. The point of that card is to be able to build Aqueduct WITHOUT having the stone resources which...as you pointed out...you SHOULD have if you are Giza.

--

I'm not saying that your monument is 100% irrelevant to your plays, you can bet your ass that Im doing nothing but racing to stage 2 in Age 1 if I'm Babylon B.
Im just saying there are a lot of good static monument-neutral plays that people vastly tend to disregard in my experience.

[AngryPidgeon]

Also I base my plays a lot more on number of players. 3,4, and 5 player games are completely different beasts. 6/7 are similar to 5 p games.

In a 4P game, Trading posts and grey cards are more valuable in age 1 since you have one more player and the same number of those cards. Also people can be COMPLETELY denied grey if their opposite neighbor is grabbing them all up. There are souble the amount of brown resources in age 2 from 3->4 players which makes them less valuable overall and ups the value of trading posts.

[xRECKONERx]

Taking a 1 point hit on military where your neighbors are going to waste valuable time and cards building their military isn't that big of a trade IMO. Though I do agree -- military becomes bonkers when you can get away with only building like one structure per age. I love playing Halikarnassos B (I think it's B) for that very reason... I can just wait to see what my opponents are doing and then dig through the discard pile for as much military as I want if it helps me beat them. I usually wait until at least Age II to build my first wonder for that very reason.

I don't think there's ever a time when I don't complete my wonder. The special abilities are insane in most cases, plus at the very worst, it's a way to bury a card I don't want my neighbor to get while also gaining incremental advantage.

And yes, Haven is age 3... it's also the one that gives 1/1 per brown... isn't that what I said? I need to doublecheck but I'm too lazy to get my copy out.

What makes the Bath play so good is that there's only ONE of them in the deck, from 2 player all the way up to 6 player. A second one gets added at 7 players, so grabbing it cuts off everyone else.

[AngryPidgeon]

The problem isn't the one point hit and I got frustrated on another forum reading a guy saying that militart is irrelevant because you can only suffer -6. If you ignore military early, then all those military cards in Age 3 are no longer feasible plays which sucks when the most important thing in the game is not getting stuck w/o a play.

Also military has the best point/card return in the game if your opponents aren't building it. Which means that if YOU aren't building any, your opponents can coast several free points off you for building one or 2 military cards.

[AngryPidgeon]

And ya, getting into pissing contests sucks which is why I almost always think about military plays in Age 1 and how to deny them. If you pull off an early military lead its easy to keep it ahead without too much effort.

[AngryPidgeon]

I would argue that your wonder is a bigger concern in 4P games. In 3P games its SO easy to get denied the resource you need to build stage 2 or whatever and then get totally screwed.

[AngryPidgeon]

Also science is the most troll thing ever. Even more than military. If no one contests you, you win. If someone else goes for it, you are going to lose.

If you are in a game where one person is going for all of it and no one else is, then you HAVE to start counterpicking them and its like a mexican standoff as to who wastes points doing the counterpicking.

[KageLord]

Idk man, last game I played one of the other people went for all of one science type and I also got a lot of science (1 set and a good amount of another type) with a bit of guild boost and I came in first while he came in second (in a game of 7).

Now my 7 Wonders experience is limited to 3 or 4 games, so I can't make any general statements about strategy, but that's just one of my experiences.

Also, Power Grid is a lot of fun.

[AngryPidgeon]

My friends refuse to play power grid because it destroys friendships.