Board Games!

[TheButtonmen]

Anyone here seen, played or heard about Among the Stars?

I'm debating it as my next pickup.

[ChannelDelibird]

Anyone here seen, played or heard about Among the Stars?

I'm debating it as my next pickup.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p6224975

I like it!

[Chevre]

just put Steam Park together.

so much cardboard

[Faraday]

It looks fun, tho!

[TierShift]

Ego

[ChannelDelibird]

Well, that took about twice as long as it was supposed to, but the humans pulled out an extremely unlikely victory long after everybody had assumed that they were done for.

The crew:
Patrick (Helo [Daybreak pilot])
Prozac (Roslin)
CDB (Doc Cottle)
LLD (Caprica Six)

A tough crisis deck gave us a slow start as Six inflitrated to briefly pretend to be helpful before brigging everybody and spamming their hands with treachery - but nobody could deal with her because of the constant Cylon fleet attacks. Eventually, with Helo in the clink, Admiral Cottle took the fleet into sleeper and promptly heard the music, leading the next jump to a wasteland before revealing on 6 distance with both fuel and morale creaking ominously.

Six, openly clamouring for a swift Cylon victory, hammered Caprica with Cottle while Helo and Roslin tried desperately to haul first the latter and then both of them out of the brig against an alarmingly treacherous destiny deck. But the Cylons just couldn't find that final crisis to push fuel down from 1 and it cost them too many jump preps digging for it - eventually the humans finally found a way to circumvent destiny and spring Roslin out to hit FTL Control and narrowly escape with 1 population. The very next crisis would have killed them on morale. Six had all of the minutiae of her motives fulfilled, just not the crucial allegiances, so the humans won alone.

Today's lesson: Scummers take too long to debate their turns.

[Porochaz]

Actually I rolled an 8 on the last shot. So we left with 4 population. Not that it matters.

That lovely little green card that used the treachery cards against you.

How we won that I have no idea.

[Patrick]

Just the 6.5 hours to complete the game. And I had been so hoping to turn into a Cylon at sleeper phase, with how we were doing.

The lovely green card won it for us.

[Nexus]

Glad I didn't stay up in that case.

[Chevre]

Played a real entertaining game of 7 Wonders with 6 players, 5 of which had played before and the 6th was familiar with board games and drafting.

They suggested

Boss Monster

and

Eldritch Horror

, neither of which I think is a good fit for our group. Boss Monster is great for the video game theme but it does seem like a pretty simple puzzle that will tire quickly. Eldritch Horror even though it is simpler than Arkham still seems really complex and finicky for our group.

Anyone have experience with

Revolution!

? I've heard about it for a while but didn't watch a review til tonight and it looks pretty good.

[GreyICE]

Got in plays of

City of Horror

. Everyone is too nice. I need to play this with scummers or something so the pain is more real.

Lords of Vegas

is what monopoly wants to be - a push-your-luck area control game with both randomness and significant methods to control it.

Mage Wars

is kind of Magic the Gathering's older brother. Scary-good game.

Twilight Struggle

remains way too fun for what should be an insanely dry game.

[xRECKONERx]

Amazon has

Splendor

for $25.32 with free Prime shipping. Anyone played this and want to give thoughts on it? Considering scooping it up.

[diginova]

Splendor is really fun, though $25 is a pretty standard online price.
It's a light game but with a nice amount of strategy... it's a pretty standard 30-45 minute game in my group now.
I ran it in MM last month if you want to see how it plays out.

[GreyICE]

Amazon has

Splendor

for $25.32 with free Prime shipping. Anyone played this and want to give thoughts on it? Considering scooping it up.

It's... light. It's very light.

It's strategic, and it's got the basics of a good thing, but for my money there are better. Basically you pick up chips, buy stuff, and go for goals, but there's no sort of engine, and no real variety. It's extremely Euro.

The components are a joy though.

[diginova]

King's Forge is very similar but more random, but it also has a bit more player interaction than Splendor.

[GreyICE]

Haven't played King's Forge.

I would actually lean towards Spyrium as a replacement. It's going for a similar $25, and it's a damn good game. A little bit of worker placement feel, but with good bidding mechanics, and a lot more complexity and depth. Underrated little gem.

[xRECKONERx]

Huh, I've only seen Splendor for like $40 elsewhere. Doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy... "light" games, to me, need to be a 15-30 minute ordeal, not 30-60min.

[Juls]

So I made this post: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59417

Thanks for directing me here Reck.

TLDR; I am interested in playing board games via Vassal or whatever else.

[Juls]

just put Steam Park together.

so much cardboard

I have

Steam Park

. I like it. It is a game I can play with my daughter (8 years old) but also keeps my interest. My husband doesn't like it because he doesn't like the randomness of the dice rolling. So, sadly, I don't get to play as much as I would like.

[GreyICE]

Huh, I've only seen Splendor for like $40 elsewhere. Doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy... "light" games, to me, need to be a 15-30 minute ordeal, not 30-60min.

I played with two the times I tried it, so maybe its longer with more, but I'd say around 20-30 minutes seems right if you have some experience.

Oh, for a really good light game, go with

No Thanks

! It's basically about taking cards, where you get 8 little red chips, and points are bad. On your turn, you can either send a card in front of you on to the next person by putting a red chip on it, or take it, and all of the red chips on it.

Simple as fuck, I just explained the entire game, plays pretty quickly, and has a lot more strategy than you'd think.

[Chevre]

I'm curious: how "successful" was your punch-out and construct session? Ultimately everything got together but there are definitely more than a few rips and tears. I think part of one of the sides of the Black 1-seater wasn't even perforated so that's created an interesting shape. :/

PEDIT: Grey don't forget that red chips are -1 point IIRC. And also if you have collected a consecutive streak of cards only the lowest card counts. But I totally agree that it's a fantastic game and definitely on my wishlist.

[Juls]

I think everything went relatively smoothly. I had a tear or two. It's been about 8 months so I forget.


Another light game which is currently in print-and-play beta is

Stuff and Nonsense

. It's particularly fun if you get into the storytelling.

[xRECKONERx]

I've actually been looking for more games like Love Letter, Hanabi, Mascarade, and Coup. Our group has definitely gravitated towards the quick burst micro games to space out other activities. Our usual hangouts involve people coming and going at random times, so being able to start and finish a game in under 30 minutes is pretty important.

[xRECKONERx]

Also, Juls, from my understanding there's a group that gets together to play Battlestar Galactica via Vassal every couple of weeks. (Mostly Brits I think). But also, lots of board games get run in MishMash, which is way easier to parse and play at your own pace. I've played Game of Thrones several times on Vassal with a few Scummers.

I'd actually like to get a BSW group going again, playing random games with scumchatters on BSW was like my favorite thing ever.

[diginova]

I'd be up for the BSW group.