Board Games!

[Faraday]

has anyone played robinson crusoe: adventure on a cursed island? it looks fun (and it looks like there's a lot of variety + game in the box) but just wondering if anyone has played it/what their thoughts on it was?

and that's a fairly quick sale <_< damn

[hasdgfas]

has anyone played robinson crusoe: adventure on a cursed island? it looks fun (and it looks like there's a lot of variety + game in the box) but just wondering if anyone has played it/what their thoughts on it was?

and that's a fairly quick sale <_< damn

I've played it a couple times. It doesn't quite have the right...tension for a co-op game for me. I've never really felt like we could die at any point the way I do in Pandemic or Forbidden Island or Arkham Horror.

[Fenchurch]

Played what I think was called Ultimate Werewolf Inquisition the other night. Rather than being in a mafia game, it kind of has a smaller group of you (with one or two werewolf sympathisers) manipulating a game of mafia. I liked the attempt to do something different with the concept but I think I've played too much mafia to forgive some of the necessary thematic wonkiness (we won by making the last werewolf eat itself at night, so, y'know, don't think about it too much). Found it quite interesting though.

Oh, we also played this for the first time at games day last weekend! I actually thought it was pretty good. Were you following the rule about merging columns that only had one card left in them? Because I thought that would make it impossible to force the werewolves to eat the

last

wolf card; you could only do that kind of force if there were multiple wolf cards in a column and no villager cards.

And yeah, the theme makes it a bit awkward to distinguish verbally between the wolf/human players playing the game, and the wolf/human cards within the game; but I didn't see that as a major downside. I imagined us being some kind of wolf/human gods, controlling the players in a game (i.e. the cards on the table).

The wolves won both times when it was played in our group - even though by the end of the game it had become obvious who the wolf-gods were, the challenge still came down to correctly identifying where the wolf cards lay on the table, and ensuring that the human-gods had enough power to get them lynched. It's quite tough, as far as I could tell the six-player game only allowed for one mislynch.

I thought it felt like a much lighter version of BSG: more complex mechanics than regular Werewolf (the different actions that the players can take), and a similar kind of dynamic, discussing together as a group to decide which players will take which actions, who will gain different types of information/power - whilst knowing that some amongst you are traitors.

[ChannelDelibird]

Were you following the rule about merging columns that only had one card left in them?

The person teaching us the game said we only merged columns if there were two columns with one card left, but I didn't check the rules myself so it may be that we shouldn't have won.

The BSG-lite comparison is a good one, although I think our game suffered for only having four players and therefore just the one wolf sympathiser. I would have liked to have seen a scumteam - I think more than I tend to worry about it in BSG, but maybe that's the mafia player in me getting too thematically involved.

Our game was also pretty dependent on the Seers - we had one full Seer and one Apprentice Seer and almost all of our actions ended up just being to use them. It struck me that it would have been quite a different game (and a much harder one) without them.

[Fenchurch]

The person teaching us the game said we only merged columns if there were two columns with one card left, but I didn't check the rules myself so it may be that we shouldn't have won.

Oh yeah that's true; so then it would be possible.

We also had both Seers in play at the start of the game but they got eaten fairly quickly, I think we managed to check about 4 or 5 cards out of the 12 on the table (all of them were Not Werewolf, although we subsequently got lucky picking a couple of werewolves-lynches at random from the remaining unknown cards). Also because the Seer checks had all been made by different players we suffered from a reasonable amount of suspicion that somebody had actually checked a werewolf and then lied about it, I think we 'wasted' a number of action points using the Sorcerer for this reason.

[Porochaz]

Saw Gormenghast today, anyone recommend it/tell me what its about?

[Mr. Flay]

There's a Gormenghast board game??

[xRECKONERx]

Terra Mystica just arrived...

oh my god this box is heav-- HOLY SHIT THE PIECES. THE PIECES. SO MANY PIECES.

[MauriceMoss]

I go to a board game meetup every tuesday although this week I had to work - I think I've missed it a total of 4 times. It's been about 2 years straight. It's a good group of people and it's interesting to learn new games all the time. I grew up playing board games all the time with my family so it's nice to learn the newer often better games.

Terra is a good game but I never felt like I got the strategy down. We have some uber gamers who were playing a game of Terra every day so just playing it once a week I didn't stay at their level.

[xRECKONERx]

The races look WILDLY different at a cursory glance. Some of the special abilities look insane. Alchemists, for example, just being able to turn VP into gold and gold into VP at will seems just NUTS. Then being able to trade workers for priests after your stronghold is built? Holy hell. Meanwhile, the giants seem very underwhelming. Terraforming costs two instead of one shovel? Uhh, okay.

[Mr. Flay]

Saw Gormenghast today, anyone recommend it/tell me what its about?

BGG is, uhhh, nonplussed.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1076187 ... ormenghast

[Shmugen]

The races look WILDLY different at a cursory glance. Some of the special abilities look insane. Alchemists, for example, just being able to turn VP into gold and gold into VP at will seems just NUTS. Then being able to trade workers for priests after your stronghold is built? Holy hell. Meanwhile, the giants seem very underwhelming. Terraforming costs two instead of one shovel? Uhh, okay.

The game is amazing, Reck. Glad to hear you finally got something decent.

[xRECKONERx]

Played the first game last night.

Oh my god this is the best board game I've ever played

[xRECKONERx]

.

[Porochaz]

Saw Gormenghast today, anyone recommend it/tell me what its about?

BGG is, uhhh, nonplussed.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1076187 ... ormenghast

Thanks for the link flay. There are a few others in the shop that I was surprised about, so I'll keep looking.

Finished off our first board of Risk Legacy today with a tense game. I was on to a good shot at winning (game 15, not the whole thing, was never going to win from about game 9) but got screwed over by the guy who has made a habit of it and left his base in South America open...

It was good fun though. If you like Risk even a little (I pretty much am not incredibly interested in actual Risk) and you have 3/4 friends that are willing to play 15 couple hour games, its a good investment.

[ChannelDelibird]

I really want to play Risk Legacy but do not have people to play with. This irks me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Finally got around to playing Avalon, the King Arthur-themed variant of The Resistance! We didn't use all the possible roles - just Merlin, Percival and Morgana - but I enjoyed the Assassins in the Palace twist on what was otherwise pretty much the exact same experience. Neither better nor worse, methinks, and which you'd rather play will probably be impacted by mood or how much you like AITP.

[mith]

I really want to play Risk Legacy but do not have people to play with. This irks me.

This. ish. I have a copy, and will probably end up playing it with my group in Austin, but I see them infrequently enough that it may take us several years to complete.

[xRECKONERx]

It's a cool idea that lost novelty very quickly for me because at its core it's still Risk.

On another note, seriously Terra Mystica is the best game I've ever played. Wow.

[Shmugen]

Early to mid 2014 we'll be hearing more about Seafall, a Legacy game built from the ground up to take advantage of the innovations that Risk Legacy brought around without the constraints of having to still be Risk.

Played Caverna: The Cave Dwellers a few days ago. Fucking great. I still want Terra Mystica though.

[mith]

My copy of Terra Mystica is on the way (but apparently delayed by weather, boo). I still haven't played Caverna, but I intend to do something about that this weekend.

[xRECKONERx]

Another few thoughts about Terra Mystica:

- It's WAY more important than I realized to just devise ways to keep taking arbitrary actions during turns. The ability to wait out that last person for one turn longer can prove the difference between victory or defeat. I was way in the lead tonight in the 2nd to last round, where we got bonus VP for scoring trading posts. Fate had the bonus tile for scoring even MORE VP for trading posts and managed to catch up to me. I tried to wait for as long as possible but he was able to outlast me the final round so I didn't get the bonus.

- Races, in a vacuum, are definitely unbalanced. But looking at what's going on with the round tiles will mean some races that are shitty become amazing. I think Giants are the worst race in the game, in a vacuum, but in a world where the turn one round tile is the stronghold/sanctuary bonus? Well, that works AMAZING on a race like Giants that wants their stronghold out as early as humanly possible.

- Tonight was my first time playing with five people, and holy shit, the cult board becomes a different game altogether. In my previous experiences playing with 3-4 people, there was never a huge race for cult spots. Tonight, however, there was a clusterfuck on that cult board that ended up causing Fate to skyrocket ahead of me at endgame and come in first.

- Still trying to figure out the optimal way to play the "teleporting" races (Witches, flying carpet dudes, Dwarves, Mermaids). It seems to me that through our experiences, the INCORRECT way to play them is to try and expand all over the board early, because resources are TIGHT in this game. I think using their special powers properly means just staying connected like a normal race and trying to force players to cut you off, then using your special ability to branch elsewhere OR use it as a surprise cut-off for another player.

- The interactivity component is something we all completely overlooked until tonight. Nuwen chose a race that wound up with her easiest terraforms being immediate opponents' home tiles, which meant a ton of cut-off that ultimately lead to her loss. I found a set of PDFs that show the map in "heat" mode for each race, with the "hottest" areas being where it's easiest for your race to terraform.

- Finally... this is the first game where I don't feel I can "figure out" who wins two turns ahead of time. Most of the time I can do the math near late game and see "Oh shit, so-and-so is unstoppable now"... this game feels

slightly

like solitaire but there are so many variables that it's nearly impossible to do the math ahead of time and accurately predict what's going to happen.

I so so so so so love this game.

[Brandi]

It really sounds like a good game. I was interested in it ever since I saw the Shut up and Sit down guys do a review on it. (Possibly the best board game reviewers I've ever seen btw)

If you fellow board game lovers haven't checked them out yet you should. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/

[Porochaz]

I really want to play Risk Legacy but do not have people to play with. This irks me.

I'd play you across 3/4 meets. We could get it done in erm... two years, providing everyone came to each meet.

[Gammagooey]

yeah shut up and sit down are pretty fantastic

also they have their older videos on vimeo with big theme episodes that cover several games, but they didn't want those on the main site since some of them have copyrighted music they don't have rights for
http://vimeo.com/shutupshow/