Board Games!

[Chevre]

Played BAHOTH twice today, was traitor in both, won one lost one. Nothing really new to say, of course it is unbalanced but it's just such a fun experience.

Also played Guillotine, and everyone enjoyed it, so I'll definitely look to pick that up soon.

[Sudo_Nym]

I love Guillotine as an icebreaker game. It's strategic, but simple, so it's very nice for introducing people to gaming. Same with Chononauts.

[hasdgfas]

I enjoyed Love Letter

immensely

, hooooooly shit. It was so good. I'm in love. It's not as "quck" as you'd think with having to play till 4-7 cubes, but it's FANTASTIC for what it is. Very interesting game, we quite enjoyed it, I think we played 5 times last night.

I enjoy love letter much more when not even paying attention to the cubes and just playing round after round.

[Chevre]

I lost one of the Love Letter cubes. It is very sad

[quadz08]

Guillotine is a pretty great game.

[Chevre]

I think, should I buy it, it will get better with time as we get more familiar with the cards. It was our first playthrough so we were all overwhelmed with choices.

[BipolarChemist]

Played BAHOTH twice today, was traitor in both, won one lost one. Nothing really new to say, of course it is unbalanced but it's just such a fun experience.

Also played Guillotine, and everyone enjoyed it, so I'll definitely look to pick that up soon.

I was addicted to this game for a while. Probably seen more than half of the scenarios. My fav by far was the 'Saw' scenario.

[Fenchurch]

I enjoyed Love Letter

immensely

, hooooooly shit. It was so good.

I like Love Letter a lot too. At the last mini-meet CDB created a Love Letter Mafia setup - every player has a role independent of their alignment, and the role abilities are taken from (or inspired by) the Love Letter deck.

Priest forces someone to show you their current role. Countess compulsively bodyguards a Prince or King if they get killed. I think one of the cards can vig people (under certain conditions) but I can't remember if it's the Guard or the Baron... probably the Baron? And what did the Princess do?? CDB should post the full details because I can't remember them now but I thought it was surprisingly good!

[ChannelDelibird]

It's here! Though that reminds me to put it on the wiki.

[zoraster]

Traitor making it to the end undiscovered turns two white swords black, IIRC.

Yeah. You need 9 because if traitor makes it to the end, he flips 2 to black. So having 7 or 8 makes it 5 or 6 white swords, which aren't enough to win.

But if you get 7 swords on the board, and you have it narrowed to 2, you should accuse both. In this way, you'll end up with 7 or 8 white swords. Even if you narrow it to three, you probably should accuse each anyway if it's getting toward the end. You have a 67% chance of getting 7 or 8 swords and only a 33% chance of ending up with 6. That's better than reaching the end and having 5 white swords.

[xRECKONERx]

Hmmm. So apparently the Tzolkin expansion ups the player count to five, which was one of the main things holding me back.

Anyone have experience with the game? Is it any good?

Also curious about Seasons, because it kind of looks like drafting dice, and that makes me giddy.

[Thesp]

Hmmm. So apparently the Tzolkin expansion ups the player count to five, which was one of the main things holding me back.

Anyone have experience with the game? Is it any good?

Also curious about Seasons, because it kind of looks like drafting dice, and that makes me giddy.

Everyone else seemed to enjoy T'zolkin more than I did. (I think it has one too many moving parts - pun intended.) I do enjoy Seasons a good bit, though. The drafting of cards is more important than the drafting of dice, but I enjoy both aspects of the game.

[xRECKONERx]

So Tzolkin was overly complex in your mind? Or what?

[Thesp]

So Tzolkin was overly complex in your mind? Or what?

There were a lot of different resources and tracks that you had to keep up with. I'm usually pretty good about keeping several things juggled at once, but this felt to me like needless extra parts and paths to pursue that didn't need to be there. I will note that I was in the minority in the group on this thought, and most of the others loved it.

[xRECKONERx]

Narrowed it down to:

Suburbia
Tzolk'in
Archipelago
Agricola
Caverna
Citadels

Well, I guess you can call that "narrowed down".

[Shmugen]

I've played a few of those, and want to try Tzolk'in a lot, but no game on that list makes me get that cardboard lust up like Archipelago. I've only read about it, but it sounds perfect for scummers.

[xRECKONERx]

It sounds like the game to end all games... expansion, resource management, worker placement, fighting over tiles, slight co-op, board control... like it sounds like it literally has everything.

[Shmugen]

But yet it doesn't seem to feel patchwork-y. Mage Knight and A Study in Emerald both have a ton of different mechanisms that work but feel cobbled together. Archipelago sounds smoother.

[GreyICE]

Own Archipelago. It is HIGHLY patchworky. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but it has so many moving parts that all move separately. The entire game, in point of fact, is a tension between two moving parts - your own goals, win conditions, and agendas, and the ongoing crisis mess that can make you lose the game easily. Anything you do to stop a crisis usually lowers your chance of victory.

If you're playing with a fairly competitive crowd your island is going to explode the first time because you're all too busy trying to compete and the natives revolt.

Eventually you'll find the balance of churches, market sales, and idle worker management to effectively handle everything with little issue, but trust me the first time you'll play you'll realize there's five different gameboards, none of them are the ones you play the game on (that's done with hex tiles), you can build any one of four structures on those hexes, interact with any sideboard, there's an entire deck of cards that gives you a whole NEW mechanic for interaction, and then you'll be burned at the stake because you're a witch.

[GreyICE]

Like - the design philosophy of Suburbia. It is the opposite of that. Also extreme color blindness warning.

[Brandi]

I love Suburbia but I haven't played it with more than 2 people yet.

[GreyICE]

Oh. Well it plays just as well with 3 or 4. Expansion also genius.

Basically it manages to be a completely one-mechanic game with absolute elegance of design that is quite balanced, and yet avoids the perils of games like Lords of Waterdeep - you never feel the game is overbalanced. Sheer brilliance in action, it reminds me of Dominion and that is not faint praise.

Archipeligo is a mash up of every mechanic the designers thought was cool, but it's been playtested enough that it actually kind of works really well despite the immense amount of noise.

[Chevre]

Suburbia does sound very interesting, but I've heard that there is a lot of bookkeeping since so many of the tiles can work together and continue to do so throughout turns and thus I'm hesitant about trying it.

Also, does anyone attending college know if their library has board games? Mine does in it's "talk zone"; stuff like Risk, Settlers, and Carcassone are out on a more public shelf, but I've seen stuff like the Alhambra Big Box and Bohnanza hidden in the shelves of Media Services. Unfortunately I've never seen anyone play them, so I don't know if they're even getting a lot of use.

[xRECKONERx]

Question: if I don't own and have never played Agricola, should I just go straight for Caverna? Because people basically seem to say "Caverna is good but it's just more Agricola", but if I don't own and haven't played either, which should I go for?

It basically puts this thing in a question of {Agricola v Caverna} or Archipelago or Suburbia or Tzolk'in+Expansion.

We just found about $60 in Amazon giftcards so if we did pick up Tzolk'in we'd want to grab the expansion as well.

[Brandi]

Suburbia does sound very interesting, but I've heard that there is a lot of bookkeeping since so many of the tiles can work together and continue to do so throughout turns and thus I'm hesitant about trying it.

That's what you might think at first glance before actually playing it, but everything happens in a way that it's not really any trouble at all. I have a horrid memory and am terrible of keeping track of things in games but Suburbia has never given me these problems.