Board Games!

[Faraday]

It does seem a tad easy, but that might be because there were only two of us. (Although, the game booklet has some suggestions to increase the difficulty, and we've come up with a few cards we could conceivably remove from play to up the difficulty.) It might be a different story with 4 or 5 players, though. And regardless of difficulty, it seems very well-designed, and is both fun to play and has billions of replay value (and lots of built-in room for expansions as well).

When watching a review for it, I heard that's the case (although it was said that the expansions up the difficulty by a super lot, so I guess there's always that down the road)

[Aegor]

Been having lots of fun with Terra Mystica. For those who enjoy Eurogames, this is the best one in years.

[Mr. Flay]

Smash Up

is fun, but holy SHIT are the rules written terribly. Too much emphasis on being 'hip', not enough on things like clarity. Once you play a game or two it goes fast and is fairly intuitive (especially if you've ever done something like Magic), but I kinda wish the winpoint was set at 20 rather than 15. Seems a little random and kept taking us off guard that the game was already over (especially since there are 16 bases to smash, and the most we ever saw was 6).

No one has won

Mr. Jack

as the Ripper yet... we screwed up and cleared one too many players Turn 1 in the last game, but overall it seems difficult for Jack to win. I could have gotten out Turn 3 if I'd been able to get away from being observed, but I was stuck by a lightpole, 2 squares away from the exit...

Got

Timeline

and

Timeline: Historical Events

for giftmas, but going to try to exchange it for

Chrononauts

(based on the excellent time we had playing it at the Portland minimeet, thanks Sudo). Timeline looks like it will suffer badly in replayability.

Also we played

The Resistance

finally last night, after having enough people present. Definitely a better game with the Plot Card expansion, it's nearly random in the basegame).

[xtopherusD]

So I played "Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game" at a friend's place the other day with a bunch of comic nerds. I was that one guy who had no idea about the subject matter and just recognised the Avengers and X-Men

Lots of fun. We had three players who had played it before, one who knew the Marvel stuff but hasn't played any deck-buildings, and I practically knew the mechanics from the similarity to Dominion - and it was equally enjoyable for all of us. It's one of those cooperat-ish games where you all lose together, but if you work together to win, one of you wins "best" and the others still lose. So, naturally, I got to throw the game as soon as someone else was about to take it all.* Never play cooperatish board games with me, apparently.
* It was the second round we played, and this was after a certain game of Arkham Horror where he made sure everyone else was moving through R'Lyeh before winning the game without us. I think we're even now.

I haven't played many deck builders at all but it had good unique play as far as I'm aware. I'd get it myself if other people would play games with me


EDIT: Another thing I like about this style of games is that the majority of the rules is found on the cards - same as games like Killer Bunnies or Munchkin. Helps new players get in without an hour of explanation of how

absolutely everything

works.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

I found Legendary to be alright but if I'm playing a co-op Superhero game I think I prefer Sentinels and if I'm going deck building them I prefer competitive and Ascension, worth having around but not something high in the rotation.

Galazy Trucker on the other hand was a whole lot of fun and in our second playthrough I beat a bunch on Engineers in the ship building game so that was also a positive.

Finally, we finally got Eclipse added to the collection, as expected the first playthrough was immensely long as we figured out the nuances of the game but it seems like the top end game it's supposed to be. Only issue is that like Power Grid it takes so long I'm not sure how much regular play it'll see which could be a shame.

[Aegor]

Eclipse is excellent, though expensive.

[quadz08]

Glork and I have been playing a good amount of Legendary the past few days. We lost our first game yesterday. We were playing the Superhero Civil War scheme (scheme twist KOs the HQ, and you lose when the hero deck runs out), and we added an extra twist to the deck and gave Loki an extra strength point to bump the difficulty. The heroes we drew weren't great at punching things (Gambit, Iron Man, Cyclops, Captain America (I think)), so we never got enough attack to actually fight Loki at any point. >_>

[hasdgfas]

Got Battlestar Galactica for Xmas, as the group I used to play with at college is everywhere now. Still as fun as I remember it in college.

[xRECKONERx]

Commune got a few new additions for Christmas:
King of Tokyo: Pretty fun for a filler game, a little bit basic, though.

Space Cadets: Holy shit. I'm glad Gamma knew what was going on because the rest of us were thoroughly confused by all the little moving pieces of the game, but I guess the beauty of it is that it's a very complex co-op game where you only need to know how to do your specific mini game. Really enjoyed it... first co-op game I've ever really enjoyed.

Masquerade: Beautiful little game.

Also got some Netrunner datapacks

[imaginality]

Got

Tigris and Euphrates

after playing it online a bit (at gametableonline). I'm falling in love with this game and wish I'd got into it earlier, can't believe I let it slip by so long. Elegant rules leading to tactically deep gameplay. Some people on boardgamegeek see the theme (development of early civilisations) but to me the ebb and flow of the game feels very in line with its theme. and the rules feel thematically justified. The merging of euro scoring and mechanics with direct conflict also tickles my tastebuds. I suspect this could become my favourite modern boardgame.

[Aegor]

Got

Tigris and Euphrates

after playing it online a bit (at gametableonline). I'm falling in love with this game and wish I'd got into it earlier, can't believe I let it slip by so long. Elegant rules leading to tactically deep gameplay. Some people on boardgamegeek see the theme (development of early civilisations) but to me the ebb and flow of the game feels very in line with its theme. and the rules feel thematically justified. The merging of euro scoring and mechanics with direct conflict also tickles my tastebuds. I suspect this could become my favourite modern boardgame.

It is comparatively old for a popular Eurogame. I really enjoyed it, although I am the only one in my group who did. The theme appealed to me, and I, like you, found the gameplay to compliment it perfectly.

[Fenchurch]

Got

Timeline

and

Timeline: Historical Events

for giftmas, but going to try to exchange it for

Chrononauts

(based on the excellent time we had playing it at the Portland minimeet, thanks Sudo). Timeline looks like it will suffer badly in replayability.

The replayability comment may be true, but to date I've really enjoyed Timeline - having played it on 6 or 7 occasions. I think it's more interesting than Chrononauts, which I've only played once but found pretty generic. Obviously your tastes may differ.

Also we played

The Resistance

finally last night, after having enough people present. Definitely a better game with the Plot Card expansion, it's nearly random in the basegame).

Again, this is the opposite of my experience! I think the basegame works really well, there's so much more information to go on than there would be in a mountainous mafia game; whereas the plot cards make things a bit too zany imo.

Recent acquisitions here include:

Forbidden Island

, have enjoyed many games of this already, it totally lives up to the hype. Reminds me a lot of Pandemic, but lighter and quicker. We've only lost once though, and that was on Legendary difficulty.

Rivals of Catan

, the 2-player card game, a bit more complex than Settlers, good depth and seems well balanced.

Agricola

on the iPad (£2.99, I think it's on offer right now) - well worth it imo, it's a fraction of the price of the board game, and takes away all of the administration hassle. Also, the Solo challenge mode is a lot of fun, and quite different in feel compared to the multiplayer game, as you can plan moves ahead and develop your farm more easily.

[Xalxe]

Reminds me a lot of Pandemic

Same guy designed both.

[Chevre]

We were able to go to our game store's New Year's Eve party! We only played two games though, at least they were both new: Ticket to Ride, which I've been telling them about forever but we never got around to playing it, and by now I somewhat figured we were beyond it, but it was actually a lot of fun. One of my friends lucked out with an opening draw of two nearly similar cross-country routes, and that was practically unbeatable.

Then we tried Kingsburg! They seemed interested by the concepts, but overall it got an "okay" and "wouldn't get played often" if we owned it. I liked it a lot, but I guess now we have to somehow find a copy of 7 wonders to try out, or maybe look at other games.

[quadz08]

Forbidden Island, have enjoyed many games of this already, it totally lives up to the hype. Reminds me a lot of Pandemic, but lighter and quicker. We've only lost once though, and that was on Legendary difficulty.

you only lost once? on legendary?

teach me your wayyyyyys

[Faraday]

I think having played that and forbidden desert recently I prefer forbidden desert - it's slightly more challenging (I won forbidden island the two times I played it, fairly easily both times actually - although I'm sure legendary would be...difficult).

[quadz08]

Maybe I just suck at forbidden island, but I'm pretty sure we never won when you played with me, Faraday.

[Eddard Stark]

We won with chamber, though. (And the first time I'm pretty sure it was just impossible to win given where we started, and the fact we got fool's landing sunk + a waters rises + it removed almost immediately before we could shore it up).

When I played it last week though we won fairly comfortable and it never seemed like we were gonna lose, either. *shrug*

[quadz08]

Huh. Maybe we just had bad luck, then

[xRECKONERx]

I don't get how co-op games are enjoyable

[Nexus]

If you play with a bad loser they are.

Also it always feels really tense. Idk how to explain it.

[Shmugen]

If you have non-competitive friends, you can actually get them to the table with co-ops. If we win we all can talk about it fondly, if we lose we can all gripe, and if someone is not having fun we can cheat a little to spice it up.

[Brandi]

I don't get how co-op games are enjoyable

A LOT Of co-op games suffer from "everyone do what that ONE GUY says and we all win, no making your own decisions because they might not be the most efficient, wow we won that was easy, YAY!" syndrome.
Pandemic is a huge offender, and IMO is one of the worst co op games out there.

[Mina]

Isn't that more a function of your group than the game itself? I didn't have that problem with Pandemic. (Granted, we were only two players, and won really easily both times we played.) I like co-op games because I enjoy working as a team and discussing our next move together.

Either that, or I'm secretly the bossy one everyone hates, and they're all just too nice to tell me.

[Mina]

If you play with a bad loser they are.

Also it always feels really tense. Idk how to explain it.

Yeah, as maligned as

Arkham Horror

is, what I like is the creeping sense of dread as the Elder Track advances and monsters fill up the board. It's an actual challenge (unless we accidentally place too many clue tokens like at

Balto Meet

), and feels like a huge accomplishment to beat, particularly if it's by defeating the Elder One.